Abstract:
Nawal El Saadawi, a well-known Middle Eastern writer, shouldered the grave responsibility of defending the right of women in her country, Egypt and the middle East in general. Hysteria is one of the major problems inhabiting the female characters of El Saadawi’s fiction. Many of those female characters suffer hysteric symptoms which manifest as a consequence of sexual violations such as rape, molestation and female circumcision in male-dominated, patriarchal-centered communities. These violations lead to psychological trauma which can eventually give rise to hysteria. Symptoms of alienation, loss of speech, fear, anorexia, disturbed sleep and many others are classified under the bold title of hysteria. Freud attributes the emergence of hysteria to sexual experiences that a subject goes through in childhood, which appear later in the guise of the aforementioned symptoms. This paper will focus on Hysteria according to Freudian perspectives, in order to explore its symptoms and reaction as well as action undertaken to absolve and actualize the self in El Saadawi’sWoman at Point Zero. It also underscores how characters go through this process to gain their subjectivity in this novel.
Keywords: El Saadawi, Freud, hysteria, self-actualization, sexual violence, subjectivity
DOI: 10.36349/djhs.2026.v04i01.009
author/Abdulrahman Abdulwaheed Idris, PhD and. Bilkisu Baba Saleh, PhD
journal/Dundaye JOHS, July 2026
