hysterical position

is a failure to distinguish between what one is (i.e. His desire) and what others see and desire in him.

The problem for the hysteric is how to distinguish what he or she is (his true desire) from what others see and desire in him or her. This brings us to another of Lacan's formulas, that 'man's desire is the other's desire.' For Lacan, the fundamental impasse of human desire is that it is the other's desire in both subjective and objective genitive: desire for the other, desire to be desired by the other, and, especially, desire for what the other desires. (Zizek 'how to read lacan' 30)

is summed up in the phrase 'protect me from what I want', which means at one and the same time 'protect me from my self-destructive desire' as well as 'protect me from the desire that is already the 'others' (i.e. That is already formulated in me) at the core of my being.'.

Jenny Holzer's famous truism 'Protect me from what I want' renders in a very precise way the fundamental ambiguity of the hysterical position. (Zizek 'how to read lacan' 32). It can either be read as an ironic reference to the standard male chauvinist wisdom that a woman, when left to herself, gets caught in the self-destructive fury, so that she must be protected from herself by the benevolent male domination: 'Protect me from the excessive self-destructive desire in me that I myself am not able to dominate.' (Zizek 'how to read lacan' 32). Or it can be read in a more radical way, as pointing towards the fact that in today's patriarchal society, woman's desire is radically alienated, that she desires what men expect her to desire, that she desires to be desired by men. In this case, 'Protect me from what I want' means 'What I want, precisely when I seem to formulate my authentic innermost longing, is already imposed on me by the patriarchal order that tells me what to desire, so the first condition of my liberation is that I break up the vicious cycle of my alienated desire and learn to formulate my desire in an autonomous way.' (Zizek 'how to read lacan' 32)

is that which emerges when a subject starts to question or feel discomfort in his or her symbolic identity.

Hysteria emerges when a subject starts to question or to feel discomfort in his or her symbolic identity: 'You say I am your beloved what is there in me that makes me that' What do you see in me that causes you to desire me in that way'' Richard II is Shakespeare's ultimate play about hystericization (in contrast to Hamlet, the ultimate play about obsessionalization). Its topic is the progressive questioning by the King of his own 'kingness' what is it that makes me a king' What remains of me if the symbolic title 'king' is taken away from me' (Zizek 'how to read lacan' 30)

hysterical position, n.Definitions

hysterical position