Quotes from Juliet Mitchell

wanting to replace him, but not wanting to because of his love for him. It would also have involved an identification with what Freud imagined it would be like to face death.

Hysteria involves a relationship — one cannot be a hysteric on one's own. It always engages the other, inducing a reciprocity or a refusal. If the other refuses to participate in the free flow of mutual identification (the folie a deux), then the hysteric demands to be a spectacle only something one can look at or observe.

Identifications with dogs, or possession by dogs who themselves are good imitators, have featured in descriptions of hysteria since the ancient Greeks. The ancient Greek hysteric experienced her body as being filled with an uncontrollable rampaging, like an animal gnawing her from within (which is quite a good description of uncontrollable desire). Her body was experienced or described as occupiedby a wild dog.

The language of lists is not symbolic; it is an enumeration given meaning only if one recognizes it as the accoutrements of the subject.