Sex & Character / Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition

by Otto Weininger

I repeat: hysterical patients do not consciously simulate. It can only be made clear to them by suggestion that they actually have been simulating, and all the “confessions” of the dissimulation can only be explained in the same way. Otherwise they believe in their own natural honesty and morality. Neither are the various things which torture them imaginary; it is much more likely that in the fact that they feel them, and that the symptoms first disappear with what Breuer calls “catharsis” (the successive bringing to their consciousness of the true causes of their illness by hypnotism), lies the proof of their organic untruthfulness.

The self-accusations which hysterical people are so full of are nothing but unconscious dissimulation. The sense of guilt, which is equally poignant in great and most trifling things, cannot be genuine; if the hysterical self-torturers possessed a standard of morality for themselves and others they would not be so indiscriminate in their self-accusations, and not cast as much blame on themselves for a slight error as for real wrong-doing.

The most distinguishing character of the unconscious untruthfulness of their self-reproaches is their habit of telling others how wicked they are, what terrible things they have done, and then they ask if they (the hysterical) are not hopelessly abandoned sort of people. No one who really feels remorse could talk in such a way. The fallacy of representing the hysterical as being eminently moral is one which even Breuer and Freud have shared. The hysterical simply become imbued with moral ideas which are foreign to them in their normal state. They subordinate themselves to this code, they cease to prove things for themselves, they no longer exercise their own judgment.

Probably these hysterical subjects approach more closely than any other natures to the moral ideal of the social and utilitarian ethics which regard a lie as moral if it is for the good of society or of the race. Hysterical women realise that ideal ontogenetically inasmuch as their standard of morality comes from without, not from within, and practically as they appear to act most readily from altruistic motives. For them duty towards others is not merely a special application of duty towards oneself.

The untruthfulness of the hysterical is proportional to their belief in their own accuracy. From their complete inability to attain personal truth, to be honest about themselves—the hysterical never think for themselves, they want other people to think about them, they want to arouse the interest of others—it follows that the hysterical are the best mediums for hypnotic purposes. But any one who allows him or herself to be hypnotised is doing the most immoral thing possible. It is yielding to complete slavery; it is a renunciation of the will and consciousness; it means allowing another person to do what he likes with the subject. Hypnosis shows how all possibility of truth depends upon the wish to be truthful, but it must be the real wish of the person concerned: when a hypnotised person is told to do something, he does it when he comes out of the trance, and if asked his reasons will give a plausible motive on the spot, not only before others, but he will justify his action to himself by quite fanciful reasons. In this we have, so to speak, an experimental proof of Kant’s “Ethical Code.”

All women can be hypnotised and like being hypnotised, but this proclivity is exaggerated in hysterical women. Even the memory of definite events in their life can be destroyed by the mere suggestion of the hypnotiser. Breuer’s experiments on hypnotised patients show clearly that the consciousness of guilt in them is not deeply seated, as otherwise it could not be got rid of at the mere suggestion of the hypnotiser. But the sham conviction of responsibility, so readily exhibited by women of hysterical constitution, rapidly disappears at the moment when nature, the sexual impulse, appears to drive through the superficial restraints. In the hysterical paroxysm what happens is that the woman, while no longer believing it altogether herself, asseverates more and more loudly: “I do not want that at all, some one not really me is forcing it on me, but I do not want it at all.” Every stimulation from outside will now be brought into relation with that demand, which as she partly believes, is being forced on her, but which, in reality, corresponds with the deepest wish of her nature. That is why women in a hysterical attack are so easily seduced. The “attitudes passionelles” of the hysterical are merely passionate repudiations of sexual desire, which are loud merely because they are not real, and are more plaintive than at other times because the danger is greater. It is easy to understand why the sexual experiences of the time preceding puberty play so large a part in acute hysteria. The influence of extraneous moral views can be imposed comparatively easily on the child, as they have little to overcome in the almost unawakened state of the sexual inclinations. But, later on, the suppressed, although not wholly vanquished, nature lays hold of these old experiences, reinterprets them in the light of the new contents of consciousness, and the crisis takes place. The different forms that the paroxysms assume and their shifting nature are due very largely to the fact that the subject does not admit the true cause, the presence of a sexual desire, any consciousness of it being attributed by her to some extraneous influence, some self that is not her “real self.”

Medical observation or interpretation of hysteria is wrong; it allows itself to be deceived by the patients, who in turn deceive themselves. It is not the rejecting ego but the rejected which is the true and original nature of the hysterical patients, however much they pretend to themselves and others that it is foreign to them.

If the rejecting ego were really their natural ego they could act in opposition to the disturbing element which they say is foreign to them, and be fully conscious of it, and differentiate and recognise it in their memory. But the fraud is evident, because the rejecting ego is only borrowed, and they lack the courage to look their own desire in the face, although something seems to say that it is the real, inborn, and only powerful one they have. Even the desire itself has no real identity, for it is not seated in a real individual, and, as it is suppressed, leaps, so to speak, from one part of the body to the other. It may be that my attempt at an explanation will be thought fanciful, but at least it appears to be true that the various forms of hysteria are one and the same thing. This one thing is what the hysterical patient will not admit is part of her, although it is what is pressing on her. If she were able to ascribe it to herself and criticise it in the way in which she admits trivial matters of another kind, she would be in a measure outside and above her own experiences. The frantic rage of hysterical women at what they say is imposed on them by some strange will, whilst it in reality is their own will, shows that they are just as much under the domination of sexuality as are non-hysterical women, are just as subject to their destiny and incapable of averting it, since they, too, are without any intelligible, free ego.

But it may be asked, with reason, why all women are not hysterical, since all women are liars? This brings us to a necessary inquiry as to the hysterical constitution. If my theory has been on the right lines, it ought to be able to give an answer in accordance with facts. According to it, the hysterical woman is one who has passively accepted in entirety the masculine and conventional valuations instead of allowing her own mental character its proper play. The woman who is not to be led is the antithesis of the hysterical woman. I must not delay over this point; it really belongs to special female characterology. The hysterical woman is hysterical because she is servile; mentally she is identical with the maid-servant. Her opposite (who does not really exist) is the shrewish dame. So that women may be subdivided into the maid who serves, and the woman who commands.[20]

[20] We may find the analogy to this in men: there are masculine “servants” who are so by nature, and there is the masculine form of the shrew—e.g., the policeman. It is a noticeable fact that a policeman usually finds his sexual complement in the housemaid.