freud dora case study summary

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Dora Case Study

A look at the background and dreams of sigmund freud's well-known patient, dora..

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Sigmund Freud

Subjects of his case studies included Ernst Lanzer, who became known as Rat Man owing to his irrational fear of family members being injured by rodents, and a patient of his friend, Josef Breuer, referred to as Anna O , who had been regressed in an effort to discover the causes of her symptoms.

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Through the treatment of actual clients, Freud claimed that repressed traumatic events of the past could contribute towards a person’s present day problems.

Another patient who sought help from Freud and whose story was published as a case study was Dora, a girl whose inexplicable cough led Freud to pursue psychological causes of her symptoms. Her treatment was reported by Freud in Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria in 1905, five years after she had consulted Freud.

Dora was Freud’s pseudonym for a girl named Ida Bauer, who was born into a middle-class Jewish family on November 1st, 1882 at Bergassa 32, Vienna on the same street as Freud resided. Her ancestors had emigrated from Bohemia prior to her birth but her father, Phillipp, continued to earn a living from the clothing factories there. Dora had an older brother, Otto Bauer (1881-1938), who would later become a key member of the Austro-Marxist movement.

Freud described himself as a “ conscientious archaeologist”, uncovering past events in Dora’s life and investigating her familial relationships. He reported that Dora admired her brother and father, with the latter maintaining a close relationship with Dora. By contrast, she was distant from her mother, Katharina Gerber, who assumed the role and duties of housewife and developed habits of obsessive cleaning. Her relationship with her daughter gradually deteriorated to the point of Dora ignoring her.

Throughout her childhood, Dora’s father suffered from ill health and was temporarily blinded by a detached retina in 1905, although was later able to regain partial sight. The symptoms of syphilis which he had contracted prior to marriage led him too to seek help from Freud in 1894, when he experienced partial paralysis and psychological issues including confusion.

Dora herself had suffered from health problems too - since an outing involving climbing, she had also developed a nervous cough and at times, lost her voice. At the age of around 12, she also experienced headaches and at times, migraines. Dora visited Freud in 1898 but as she appeared to recover, the full treatment that Freud had suggested had been unnecessary.

Two years later, Dora became reclusive, refusing company and expressed a wish to commit suicide.

Diagnosed with hysteria, she underwent hydrotherapy and electric shocks in an effort to combat the symptoms, but to no avail. A turning point was reached when she accused a family friend of making a pass at her, insisting that relations between her father and the man were ended. In 1900, Phillipp Bauer sought help from Freud once more for his daughter.

Freud referred to Dora’s symptoms as “petite hystérie” and was keen to understand her circumstances. He discovered that the Bauers were close friends with another couple, Herr and Frau K. Whilst Phillipp Bauer’s wife had become distant, Frau K had been keen to care for him during his illness, and although Dora had enjoyed an amicable relationship with her, she had become convinced that she was having an affair with her father. Throughout her childhood, Herr K had also shown affection towards Dora, who accused him of making advances towards her - and accusation which, confronted by her father, Herr K denied, blaming the books that she had been reading, such as Paulo Mantegazza’s Physiology of Love , for influencing her.

Dora’s father was skeptical of the accusation and refused to cease relations with Herr and Frau K. However, on further investigation, Freud obtained further suggestions of Herr K making advances towards Dora, which she had also resisted, prior to the present allegations.

During their sessions together, Dora also revealed the content of her dreams to Freud, who encouraged her to de-construct them in an effort to identify any themes or symbolic elements which might reveal repressed anxieties - factors which Freud believed could be linked to Dora’s other symptoms.

In a recurring dream, Dora recalled being awoken in bed by her father as the house was on fire. Although her mother insisted on staying in the burning house to find her jewellery box, her father refused, insisting that he did not perish with his two children just to save the vanity item.

At face value, the dream reflected a fear of being burnt alive, which Freud attributed to Dora’s cousins playing with matches along with her mother insisting on locking the dining room door, which prevented her brother’s route of exit had there been a fire in the house. Whilst this fear may not have affected Dora consciously, the anxiety evidently played on her mind at a subconscious level.

Freud viewed specific elements of the dreams as being symbolic, representing more obscure thoughts. He believed that Dora’s close relationship with her father and Herr K’s harassment of her were symbolised in the dream. Having once been taken by surprise by Herr K, Dora had been wary of him appearing unannounced. Freud believed that Herr K was represented in the dream therefore by her father, who awoke her unannounced in a reversal of symbols to represent her affection towards her father

Herr K had previously given her a jewellery box as a gift, and, as the term ‘jewellery box’ was, at the time, also a colloquial reference to female genitals, Dora was anxious to protect this representation of chastity from her father’s, who wanted to save his family in the dream from the passion that the house fire embodied.

Freud also de-constructed a second dream, in which Dora found herself walking through a strange town to her apartment, where a letter from her mother reveals her that her father has died, inviting her to return home. In pursuit of the train station, strangers keep telling her that it is just five more minutes away. When Dora finally reaches the station and reaches her mother’s house, the family have already left for the cemetery.

Dora recalled that, after resisting Frau K’s advances towards her by a lake, she had left him and asked a stranger for directions, but despaired when they told her that she would have to walk for a further 2 ½ hours. Freud attributed this to the situation in the dream, when she walked hopelessly asking for directions. Making a more contrived interpretation, he assumed that the train station was symbolically phallic and suggested to Dora that the dream represented ideas of “defloration” and explained her experience of appendicitis, which she claimed to have felt nine months following her experience with Frau K, as a “childbirth fantasy”.

Freud’s interpretation of Dora’s dreams epitomised the approach that he described in his 1899 book The Interpretation of Dreams . However, it did not solve the mystery of Dora’s symptoms. Instead, he felt that the oral stage of psychosexual development during the first year of Dora’s life has been interrupted , leading to an oral fixation which would explain Dora’s smoking habit and nervous cough. Other symptoms such as a stomach ache in the absence of her parents were, according to Freud, an attempt to gain the attention and love of Dora’s parents when she had to share such affection with her brother. Freud believed that she was also jealous of the affection that Frau K attracted from her father. This subconscious desire for her father’s attention might today be attributed to the Electra complex , the equivalent in females to the Oedipus Complex that Freud theorised. 1

Freud, S., Bell, A. and Robertson, R. A Case of Hysteria: (Dora) . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Case Studies: Dora – Sigmund Freud

The bauer’s and the zellenka’s.

In Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905) , Freud first published a case study on Ida Bauer, under the pseudonym “Dora”, a daughter of parents in a loveless marriage. Her father, a merchant, and mother, immigrated from Bohemia to Vienna. In Freud’s case study, the 18 year old subject was stuck in what could be called an imbroglio, with a couple the family befriended, under the pseudonym “the K’s”: Hans and Peppina Zellenka, also in a loveless marriage. Dora’s mother was described by Freud as having a “‘housewife’s psychosis’. She had no understanding of her children’s more active interests, and was occupied all day long in cleaning the house with its furniture and utensils and in keeping them clean – to such an extent as to make it almost impossible to use or enjoy them. This condition, traces of which are to be found often enough in normal housewives, inevitably reminds one of forms of obsessional washing and other kinds of obsessional cleanliness.” Fights between the family led to Dora supporting her father and her brother supporting their mother. The typical Oedipus Complex pattern.

Dora was forced to enter analysis by her father, after failed hydro and electro treatments with physicians. With nervous obsessive thoughts, difficulties breathing, a shuffled step, and a persistent nervous cough, Freud put her under the label of hysteria. Dora at the time would introduce to Freud what he termed as transference: See below. Psychologists today are readily aware of how their patients can project emotions they have for other significant people in their lives, onto the them. There is often a difficulty in finding the concealed truth behind the patient’s resistance and transference, or even more difficult to be aware of one’s own countertransference response as an analyst. Reacting with contempt towards the patient naturally leads to them becoming more hostile and quitting early, but in the early days of psychoanalysis it was something new to investigate. Freud delved deeper into Dora’s resistance and eventually found that transferences could be useful for him, and future therapists. Especially to harvest information to make the client aware of their unconscious material, and defenses.

Does Psychoanalysis work?

Freud’s famous and controversial case studies are considered by some critics a fiction, and even to Freud himself to a smaller extent, simply incomplete. Psychoanalysis has the tendency to over-analyze or under-analyze manifesting as a lack of resonance with the patient. On the other hand, what these case studies do well, is to show the reader the different theories, and how they might apply. The problem with Freud, and all psychology, and even all science, is understanding the correct context and applying the right interpretation at the right time. As science moves on, and more data is collected, the theories are forced to become more refined. Though, the danger of throwing out a particular psychologist’s entire bibliography, because it’s been surpassed, means throwing out all the good insight already found.

This is the particular the problem with Freud’s work. He conflates experiences together from different clients into theories and then tries to interpret case studies in a way that can be too general, and invites outright dismissal. His insights hit the mark some of the time, and at other times individuals are put into boxes that don’t give the full picture, or are misleading. Also having notes on clients written farther and father away from the session in question can lead to errors by the analyst. Freud did this to avoid distracting the client, but this could lead to forgetfulness and a conflation of material from different patients. Ultimately, interpretations have to predict behaviour and allow others to test their validity to gain wider acceptance. Even more difficult with Freud’s work is that some situations are untestable. For example, can we really test what was running through the mind of a patient at a particular time in the past? Or, how do you test dreams? In those cases, we are only left with theories to rally around. This is even more the case as later critics and authors re-read his case studies with more facts than Freud had, and also with new interpretations based on data from later patients in similar circumstances.

Deliberate falsification and Screen Memories

The opposite extreme of dumping psychoanalysis is believing patients who have resistances and needs for impression management to avoid stigma and ostracism. They will resist correct interpretations because they hit the mark and are threatening. In many cases the reader will never really know which interpretation is more correct, the therapist’s, or the client’s interpretations. For example, Freud talks about forgotten knowledge of the client. “[Patients] can, give the physician plenty of coherent information about this or that period of their lives; but it is sure to be followed by another period as to which their communications run dry, leaving gaps unfilled, and riddles unanswered; and then again will come yet another period which will remain totally obscure and unilluminated by even a single piece of serviceable information.” Accounts from patients can seem realistic, but still untrue.

For Freud this comes from clients being “consciously or unconsciously disingenuous.” Recollections in the first stage of repression are full of doubts trying to disguise the memory. The second stage of repression involves actual forgetting, or a falsification of memory. Here is where screen memories can fill in the blanks. These are narratives from a later period in adolescence, which can include justifications, or disguises caused by displacement and condensation, that are believed by the subject to be situations that actually occurred. [See: Dreams – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtf6j-dreams-sigmund-freud.html ]

Freud favours the recollections that are being attacked by doubt over the later censored ones that are comfortable for the client. This is also keeping in mind there is another goal of the analyst: “Whereas the practical aim of the treatment is to remove all possible symptoms and to replace them by conscious thoughts, we may regard it as a second and theoretical aim to repair all the damages to the patient’s memory.”

Psychoanalysis when all else fails

In Freud’s narrative, Dora was emotionally attached to her father, especially during his illnesses. Her mother’s constant attention to domestic affairs, plus her father’s illnesses led to their estrangement. As Dora continued being dissatisfied with her family life, she left a suicide letter in a desk for her parents to find.

For many people who run away from friendships and romantic relationships it’s often because of the unexpected and unwanted entanglements and expectations. Dora’s family connected with the K’s, and like in many situations, friends start helping each other. Over time, the family roles can get interchanged. For example, Freud says of Dora that she “had taken the greatest care of the K.’s two little children, and been almost a mother to them.” Dora had private conversations and influences from governesses, Frau K., Herr K., on top of her own family’s influence. As the different values are imitated, an ambivalence is already starting. When friends exchange help they naturally think of utility and how these friends can help in other ways. As emotional claims are made unconsciously, some of those claims conflict with the claims of others. This is especially true when values are different and are violated.

Dora’s example was when she was 14, (possibly 13 in reality) she was approached by Herr K., alone in his workplace, and forced into an embrace and a kiss. She ran away in disgust. Later on she was approached again for a kiss by Herr K., at a lake. She rejected him and complained to her father. Herr K. said that she was reading “Mantegazza’s Physiology of Love and books of that sort in their house on the lake. It was most likely, he had added, that ‘she had been over-excited by such reading and had merely ‘fancied’ the whole scene she had described.'” When denials like this happen, the result is neurosis for the victim when they can’t find anyone to believe them.

“Dora”

Dora’s father brought her to Freud, a man who helped him with his syphilis in prior appointments, to sort her out. “‘I have no doubt’, [he said], ‘that this incident is responsible for Dora’s depression and irritability and suicidal ideas. She keeps pressing me to break off relations with Herr K. and more particularly with Frau K., whom she used to positively worship formerly. But that I cannot do. For, to begin with, I myself believe that Dora’s tale of the man’s immoral suggestions is a phantasy that has forced its way into her mind; and besides, I am bound to Frau K. by ties of honourable friendship and I do not wish to cause her pain. The poor woman is most unhappy with her husband, of whom, by the way, I have no very high opinion. She herself has suffered a great deal with her nerves, and I am her only support. With my state of health I need scarcely assure you that there is nothing wrong in our relations. We are just two poor wretches who give one another what comfort we can by an exchange of friendly sympathy. You know already that I get nothing out of my own wife. But Dora, who inherits my obstinacy, cannot be moved from her hatred of the K.’s. She had her last attack after a conversation in which she had again pressed me to break with them. Please try and bring her to reason.’”

During their sessions Freud found that, “Dora’s criticisms of her father were the most frequent: he was insincere, he had a strain of falseness in his character, he only thought of his own enjoyment, and he had a gift for seeing things in the light which suited him best.”

Freud concurred: “I could not in general dispute Dora’s characterization of her father; and there was one particular respect in which it was easy to see that her reproaches were justified. When she was feeling embittered she used to be overcome by the idea that she had been handed over to Herr K. as the price of his tolerating the relations between her father and his wife; and her rage at her father’s making such a use of her was visible behind her affection for him.”

These were the early days in psychoanalysis, and Freud was bound to make some big mistakes, including not seeing his own sexism. The year was 1900 and his attitude towards women was irritating Dora. He said that “the two men (Dora’s father and Herr K.) had of course never made a formal agreement in which she was treated as an object for barter; her father in particular would have been horrified at any such suggestion. But he was one of those men who know how to evade a dilemma by falsifying their judgement upon one of the conflicting alternatives. If it had been pointed out to him that there might be danger for a growing girl in the constant and unsupervised companionship of a man who had no satisfaction from his own wife, he would have been certain to answer that he could rely upon his daughter, that a man like K. could never be dangerous to her, and that his friend was himself incapable of such intentions, or that Dora was still a child and was treated as a child by K.” Yet Freud is conscious enough to see. “But as a matter of fact things were in a position in which each of the two men avoided drawing any conclusions from the other’s behaviour which would have been awkward for his own plans.”

That pattern, as can be seen in the Irma injection dream in The Interpretation of Dreams , shows a willingness for men to collude together, and ignore each other’s actions, while also having an opposite attitude of increased scanning of women and their foibles. Freud emphasizes, in the illicit kisses, how this could arouse sexual feelings in the girl, and be hysterical if rejected. His point was that she should have been more flattered at these attentions. “The behaviour of this child of fourteen was already entirely and completely hysterical. I should without question consider a person hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings that were preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable; and I should do so whether or not the person were capable of producing somatic symptoms.” Naturally an adolescent would, even in 1900, find this invalidating.

Transference and counter-transference

Freud admitted that he “did not succeed in mastering the transference in good time.” This was his reason for the failure of the treatment. He recounts “at the beginning it was clear that I was replacing her father in her imagination, which was not unlikely, in view of the difference between our ages. She was constantly comparing me with him consciously, and kept anxiously trying to make sure whether I was being quite straightforward with her, for her father ‘always preferred secrecy and roundabout ways.’ But when the first dream came, in which she gave herself the warning that she had better leave my treatment just as she had formerly left Herr K.’s house, I ought to have listened to the warning myself. ‘Now,’ I ought to have said to her, ‘it is from Herr K. that you have made a transference on to me. Have you noticed anything that leads you to suspect me of evil intentions similar to Herr K.’s? Or have you been struck by anything about me or got to know anything about me which has caught your fancy, as happened previously with Herr K.’ Her attention would then have been turned to some detail in our relations, or in my person or circumstances, behind which there lay concealed something analogous but immeasurably more important concerning Herr K. And when this transference had been cleared up, the analysis would have obtained access to new memories, dealing, probably, with actual events…In this way the transference took me unawares, and, because of the unknown quantity in me which reminded Dora of Herr K., she took her revenge on me as she wanted to take her revenge on him, and deserted me as she believed herself to have been deceived and deserted by him.”

Freud also had trouble seeing his own transferences of sexual interest in Dora, calling her “a girl in the bloom of youth, with intelligent and pleasing features,” and his being titillated with the sexual conversation similar to the position of Frau K. talking to Dora about sexuality. He also had trouble seeing his low attitude towards her by using the pseudonym Dora, a name given to a nursemaid of his sister.

Freud goes on describing the phenomenon of transference. “They are new editions or facsimiles of the impulses and phantasies which are aroused and made conscious during the progress of the analysis; but they have this peculiarity, which is characteristic for their species, that they replace some earlier person by the person of the physician. Some of these transferences have a content which differs from that of their model in no respect whatever except for the substitution.” It becomes difficult to develop rapport if the therapist is dealing with negative transferences, but “psycho-analytic treatment does not create transferences, it merely brings them to light… All the patient’s tendencies, including hostile ones, are aroused; they are then turned to account for the purposes of the analysis by being made conscious, and in this way the transference is constantly being destroyed. Transference, which seems ordained to be the greatest obstacle to psycho-analysis, becomes its most powerful ally, if its presence can be detected each time and explained to the patient.” [See: The ‘Ratman’: https://rumble.com/v1gu9qj-case-studies-the-ratman-freud-and-beyond.html ]

The pot calling the kettle black – Projection

In particular Freud was trying to detect a form of projection originating in Dora by her efforts to enable the relationship. One of the clues for Freud is how the person who accuses another person of an indiscretion seems to know every detail about it, and this may in fact tell about similar situations in the accuser, that they also know a lot about, but are repressing. Freud uses the example of her accusations towards her father’s infidelity, “there were no gaps in her memory on this point.”

Just like the ambivalence that Freud often describes, people have similar goals, like romantic love, and it’s easy to point out what others are doing while ignoring that we have the same goals, and similar approaches to them. Our consciousness is like a spotlight and when it’s on someone else, it’s not on ourselves. Freud says, “a string of reproaches against other people leads one to suspect the existence of a string of self-reproaches with the same content. All that need be done is to turn back each particular reproach on to the speaker himself. There is something undeniably automatic about this method of defending oneself against a self-reproach by making the same reproach against some one else. A model of it is to be found in the ‘you too’ arguments of children.” It’s a kind of “I feel better if other people are doing it too.” Pride is maintained if everyone else is guilty. Also if two people make the same claim for another individual, based on an interest like love, they usually have reasons that are justifiable to only to themselves.

Behind these reproaches is also another layer of unconscious material. Freud says, “but it soon becomes evident that the patient is using thoughts of this kind, which the analysis cannot attack, for the purpose of cloaking others which are anxious to escape from criticism and from consciousness.”

The partially conscious, or unconscious agreements happen when a person’s self-interest becomes front and center. Freud used as evidence Dora’s past attitude of leaving her father and Frau K. alone, and taking the K.’s children for a walk, since they would have been sent out anyways. The scene at the lake was when she realized that she was being passed off onto Herr K., to make it convenient for her father and Frau K. Being slighted in that way enraged her. Dora described similar behaviour in her governess. “So long as the governess had any influence she used it for stirring up feeling against Frau K. She explained to Dora’s mother that it was incompatible with her dignity to tolerate such an intimacy between her husband and another woman; and she drew Dora’s attention to all the obvious features of their relations. But her efforts were in vain. Dora remained devoted to Frau K. and would hear of nothing that might make her think ill of her relations with her father. On the other hand she very easily fathomed the motives by which her governess was actuated. She might be blind in one direction, but she was sharp-sighted enough in the other. She saw that the governess was in love with her father. When he was there, she seemed to be quite another person: at such times she could be amusing and obliging. While the family were living in the manufacturing town and Frau K. was not on the horizon, her hostility was directed against Dora’s mother, who was then her more immediate rival. Up to this point Dora bore her no ill-will. She did not become angry until she observed that she herself was a subject of complete indifference to the governess, whose pretended affection for her was really meant for her father. While her father was away from the manufacturing town the governess had no time to spare for her, would not go for walks with her, and took no interest in her studies. No sooner had her father returned from B– than she was once more ready with every sort of service and assistance. Thereupon Dora dropped her.”

Freud said, “the poor woman had thrown a most unwelcome light on a part of Dora’s own behaviour. What the governess had from time to time been to Dora, Dora had been to Herr K.’s children. She had been a mother to them, she had taught them, she had gone for walks with them, she had offered them a complete substitute for the slight interest which their own mother showed in them. Herr K. and his wife had often talked of getting a divorce; but it never took place, because Herr K., who was an affectionate father, would not give up either of the two children. A common interest in the children had from the first been a bond between Herr K. and Dora. Her preoccupation with his children was evidently a cloak for something else that Dora was anxious to hide from herself and from other people.”

Freud at this point offered the conclusion that she was in love with Herr K. more than she let on. This Dora did not assent to. Yet later on “when the quantity of material that had come up had made it difficult for her to persist in her denial, she admitted that she might have been in love with Herr K. at B–‘ but declared that since the scene by the lake it had all been over.”

Freud then gets caught in a bind. He asks “the question then arises: If Dora loved Herr K., what was the reason for her refusing him in the scene by the lake? Or at any rate, why did her refusal take such a brutal form, as though she were embittered against him? And how could a girl who was in love feel insulted by a proposal which was made in a manner neither tactless nor offensive?”

Oedipus complex, or just envy?

As expected, Freud brought up the Oedipus Complex in how Dora missed her father. The way Freud describes it, it’s a form of envy where the subject is putting themselves in the place of others, imitating their desires, and therefore their identity, and not recognizing the influence. In particular it’s a fear of losing social rewards. Each time you find an object, or person to desire, you step into a similar identity of all the people who want the same things, causing rivalry. This is where you see in the case study people playing people off of each other, and are only nice to people because they get something out of it, like her governess. There was also another governess, but she worked for the K.’s. She had a relationship with Herr K., but he never left is wife, and the governess eventually left. She told Dora about the line he gave her saying “there was nothing between him and his wife.” That was the same line given to Dora at the lake. This is the reason for her rejection of Herr K.

What was not expected was Dora’s possible attraction to Frau K. Freud recounts, “when Dora talked about Frau K., she used to praise her ‘adorable white body’ in accents more appropriate to a lover than to a defeated rival. Another time she told me, more in sorrow than in anger, that she was convinced the presents her father had brought her had been chosen by Frau K., for she recognized her taste. Another time, again, she pointed out that, evidently through the agency of Frau K., she had been given a present of some jewellery which was exactly like some that she had seen in Frau K.’s possession and had wished for aloud at the time.” Yet Frau K. betrayed Dora when she let Herr K. know of her reading of Mantegazza’s Physiology of Love , without disclosing her influence on Dora. Freud says, “Frau K. had not loved her for her own sake but on account of her father. Frau K. had sacrificed her without a moment’s hesitation so that her relations with her father might not be disturbed. This mortification touched her, perhaps, more nearly and had a greater pathogenic effect than the other one, which she tried to use as a screen for it, – the fact that she had been sacrificed by her father.”

Like an Agatha Christie style extra twist at the end, Freud adds the deeper layer. “I believe, therefore, that I am not mistaken in supposing that Dora’s supervalent train of thought, which was concerned with her father’s relations with Frau K., was designed not only for the purpose of suppressing her love for Herr K., which had once been conscious, but also to conceal her love for Frau K., which was in a deeper sense unconscious. The supervalent train of thought was directly contrary to the latter current of feeling. She told herself incessantly that her father had sacrificed her to this woman, and made noisy demonstrations to show that she grudged her the possession of her father; and in this was she concealed from herself the contrary fact, which was that she grudged her father Frau K.’s love, and had not forgiven the woman she loved for the disillusionment she had been caused by her betrayal. The jealous emotions of a woman were linked in the unconscious with a jealousy such as might have been felt by a man. These masculine or, more properly speaking, gynaecophilic currents of feeling are to be regarded as typical of the unconscious erotic life of hysterical girls.”

So Dora is now implicated in desire for her father, Herr K., and now Frau K., albeit in a more unconscious attitude. This ambivalence is very typical of Freud, and is maddening for critics who want something that is more testable and clear. Freud says, “thoughts in the unconscious live very comfortably side by side, and even contraries get on together without disputes – a state of things which persists often enough even in the conscious.” I think Freud’s statement that “an intention remains in existence until it has been carried out” , is the key to how he views desire. Once desires latches onto a target, but have too many obstacles, it can be repressed, and a new target is chosen. Yet when given the opportunity to be satisfied, the old desire can resurface. In a way, the Oedipus Complex is simply because a child has a lack of objects to pursue, and are around parents most of the time. As soon as other people enter the child’s life new influences are pursued.

Freud describes how this bisexual fluid desire can become convoluted. “In the world of reality, which I am trying to depict here, a complication of motives, an accumulation and conjunction of mental activities – in a word, overdetermination – is the rule. For behind Dora’s supervalent train of thought which was concerned with her father’s relations with Frau K. there lay concealed a feeling of jealousy which had that lady as its object – a feeling, that is, which could only be based upon an affection on Dora’s part for one of her own sex…I have never yet come through a single psycho-analysis of a man or a woman without having to take into account a very considerable current of homosexuality. When, in a hysterical woman or girl, the sexual libido which is directed towards men has been energetically suppressed, it will regularly be found that the libido which is directed towards women has become vicariously reinforced and even to some extent conscious.”

Cultural influences on psychological health

This being one of the famous Freud cases, there were other books written about it. One of the great books on this subject belongs to Hannah Decker, Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900. It gives the necessary background to Dora’s life and the life of Jewish immigrants and their ordeals in assimilating in Europe. A lot of psychological problems are in fact cultural problems. Survival fears of ostracism and abandonment wreak havoc on the psyche. Hannah says, “historically, hysteria has appeared prominently among groups – such as slaves, soldiers, and servants – who feel they have little control over their lives.” The ups and downs of life take their toll on people who feel constant insecurity, and these can lead to all kinds of desperate behaviour to regain that feeling of security. Learning the backgrounds of clients, and their ordeals helps to explain why they behave the way they do. This is often the weakness of psychotherapy. The therapist only has a small window of time to work in, and client’s lies and resistances keep back important information.

Uncertainty and mental health

Hannah describes the life of the Jews in Bohemia, where the Bauer’s had come from: “Although characterized by cruel social and economic injustices that readily slipped into extremes of murder and massacre, the history of the Jews in Bohemia was not one of unbroken misery. Its particular curse was eternal uncertainty. Frequent expulsions were usually followed by some limited permission to resettle, and life would once more resume, but never with ordinary surety. The legacy bequeathed to Philipp and Katharina Bauer and their two children by centuries of state-decreed inferiority, familial upheaval, and spasms of dubious quiet was the trauma of hopes raised only to be brutally dashed. This pattern appeared yet again once the Jews were formally emancipated, and it colored the background of Freud and Dora’s encounter…The result of many generations’ precarious existence was an inherent sense of vulnerability. Although this psychological state accurately reflected their history, it led to the Jews readily agreeing with anti-Semitic explanations of why they were more disposed to neurosis than the non-Jewish population. Evidence of the Jews’ belief in their own ‘hereditary taint’ is rife…In keeping with Darwinian and anthropological emphases of the time, they discussed their vulnerability in terms of centuries of ‘inbreeding.’ Or, taking refuge with – generally anti-semitic – critics of modernity, that pointed to the Jewish obsession with money or their high-strung, ‘overly civilized’ nature, stemming from generations of ‘cosmopolitan’ living. However, if nineteenth-century Jews felt themselves weaker and more susceptible to life’s risks – and certainly this was not true physically, Jews having a lower mortality rate than that from the surrounding peoples – such notions had to come in part from the sense of imminent danger Jewish parents continued to transmit, in countless small ways, to their children. It is a convergent conclusion of modern psychological, sociological, and historical literature that ethnic discrimination and the stresses of acculturation are sources of mental ill health, and experimental studies have buttressed this view.”

Homeland and Identity

Humans can be very self-critical and look for imperfections naturally, from years of critical upbringing and experiences in school. By the time a person who is a visible minority becomes an adult, there can be a habit of self-hatred. Criticisms from a ruling class can be absorbed into a masochism that emphasizes one’s weaknesses and ignores one’s strengths. A form of splitting against oneself, leading to neurosis. As a visible minority moves from location to location, only to be a minority again, but in a different location, it can bring up the same feelings of alienation. We need to seek approval from those in power to get our needs met, and stay stuck in helplessness.

Hannah describes this very well in her descriptions of Austria’s liberalization of immigration. The pattern of economic collapses, then followed by scapegoating and ostracism. “The old pattern – of the Jews raising their expectations only to be disappointed – reasserted itself.” One doesn’t have to look too deep to see the same pattern throughout history. Economic collapse, then blame and hostility aimed at an ethnic minority. The pattern existed before the NAZIS and the holocaust, and reactions towards immigrants today after the 2008 collapse, however mild compared to the massacres of the past, betray a certain human tendency to blame those who have less power, because they are accessible, and for frustrating the goals of the majority. A lot of the labels of inferiority aimed at immigrants cover another motivation, anti-competition from people who may not be so “inferior.”

Hannah describes the “Viennese artisans [who] reacted with anger and some desperation when faced with the lack of guild protection, encroachment by industrialization, depression following the 1873 crash, and, finally, competition from newly arrived Jews who peddled whatever and whenever they could. Traditionally anti-Jewish, the artisans now held the Jews responsible for the dislocations inflicted by the modern world. Moreover, an unending stream of Eastern Jews – either Austria’s own, seeking relief from the grinding poverty of Galicia, or Russia’s, fleeing for their lives from a czar set on destroying them – fired the native Viennese lower classes to action. By their language, dress, and distinctive customs, the new immigrants were highly visible on the streets of Vienna, and ‘the growth of the Jewish population of Vienna lent exaggerated emphasis to the impression of Jewish omnipotence.’ In 1882 the artisans’ groups amalgamated, forming the Austrian Reform Association, which became the main organ of the Viennese anti-semitism. Speeches at meetings of the Reform Association were highly inflammatory. At one rally in March 1882, the speaker urged the hundreds of workmen to “violence against the [Jewish] capitalists.” The meeting became rowdy, fights broke out, and furniture and beer glasses were smashed.”

Disturbing questions were asked, like “what would the Jewish ‘influence’ do to Austrian life? There was a feeling that a decisive struggle, which would have profound consequences, was taking place in all areas of society.” For the Jews there was a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation as described by Arthur Schnitzler. He said a jew “had the choice of being counted as insensitive, obtrusive and fresh; or of being oversensitive, shy and suffering from feelings of persecution. And even if you managed somehow to conduct yourself so that nothing showed, it was impossible to remain completely untouched…An assimilated Jew could not avoid being pained.”

As people split hairs, blame got thrown around within the Jewish community. “The questioning of the Jewish right to exist freely often took crude forms. But it also expressed itself in polite Christian society as a condemnation of the Jews’ ‘bad manners.’ Soon Jews, especially youthful ones, were saying the same thing about themselves. Jews began to blame each other for the antisemitism that surrounded them. Assimilated Jews blamed Eastern Jews and vice versa. Intellectual Jews were embarrassed by both. Modern Jewish self-hatred raged.”

Loss of pride, envy and self-destruction

A curious example of self-hatred is described by Hanna, “one of these Jews was the disturbed and brilliant Otto Weininger (1880-1903), Dora’s contemporary. The son of a Jewish anti-Semite. Weininger secured his doctorate in philosophy by the age of twenty-two, immediately converted to Protestantism, achieved fame for his expanded dissertation, Sex and Character , became depressed, and shot himself in the same house where Beethoven had died. Weininger’s bestseller was a diatribe between his self-hatred as a Jew and his misogyny. Weininger argued that a woman is pure sexuality, contaminating a man ‘in the paroxysm of orgasm.’ All women are prostitutes, even those who appear otherwise. Men could only elude women by avoiding sexual intercourse, and indeed, Weininger took a vow of sexual abstinence several months before he committed suicide. Weininger wrote that even the most superior woman was immeasurably below the most debased man, just as Judaism at its highest was immeasurably beneath even degraded Christianity. Judaism was so despicable because it was shot through with femininity. As women lacked souls, so too did Jews. Both were pimps, amoral and lascivious. Both sought to make other human beings suffer guilt. Women and Jews did not think logically, but rather intuitively, by association. Weininger declared his era to be not only the most feminine but the most Jewish of all eras. Jews were even worse than women; Jews were degenerate women.”

Fliess’ and Freud’s theories of human bisexuality, and even presaging Jung’s work on the Anima and Animus, showed the difficulty people back then had with expressing different sides of themselves. One is compelled by culture to pick a masculine or feminine side and repress the other side in oneself. It’s repressed but never really gone. Hannah describes, probably one of the best examples of psychological projection I’ve ever read. She says “Weininger killed himself because he felt he could not overcome the woman and Jew in him.” With projection one is disturbed by cultural influences found in oneself. One can see that one can live a life possibility that might be attractive, but that possibility may also be dangerous in a society that might punish it. Then the person who is projecting aims contempt at oneself at the same time aims contempt to those cultural influencers. If enough people are caught up in this ambivalence, then the same reaction of self-hatred and projection, with overt contempt, can motivate a cultural movement. A cleansing purge. To clean oneself, and then, if aggravated enough, ethnically cleanse the rest of society. Hannah says, “the truth is that Weininger had only expressed flamboyantly what many believed: that women were an inferior order of being and that all other inferior groups could be compared with women when one was trying to explain the essence of their deficiencies.” The self-hatred in this situation is to look at femininity as weakness and to have contempt towards weakness in part of oneself and blame others for their influence, and also the humiliation. Right here envy can be summed up as the pain of losing pride. In Weininger’s case, the pain was so large that suicide was his escape.

Hannah describes a warning by “Rosa Mayreder, the Austrian feminist, [who] gave a telling example of its widespread and authoritative existence [of these views]. “The Germans,” she pointed out, “ascribe womanly characteristics to the Slavs – a piece of national assumption expressed by Bismarck…in April, 1895. ‘I believe [he declared] that we Germans, by God’s grace, are fundamentally stronger; I mean, manlier in our character. God has established this dualism, this juxtaposition of manliness and womanliness, in every aspect of creation…It is not my wish to offend the Slavs, but they have many of the feminine advantages – they have grace and cleverness, subtlety and adroitness.'” Therefore, the Germans in Austria, Bismarck advised, should remember that they are the superior race and predominate, ‘just as in marriage the man ought to predominate.'”

Modern example of bigotry: https://ktla.com/2017/09/07/lousy-speaking-immigrant-oklahoma-woman-records-racist-rant-at-goodwill/

David Duke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yx3c0i5Fyk

A reminder that everyone can be traced back as a descendant to someone who was originally an immigrant with the same struggles: White Stripes – Icky Thump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OjTspCqvk8

Inferiority or superiority?

Yet if we go to that Bismarck quote extolling “might is always right”, there is an admission that femininity has advantages, meaning not inferior, but different. Since conflict is based on fighting over identities, identities being how well we can feed our pride, what people are complaining about is not inferiority, but superiority. If the Jews were considered “clever women”, then it was simply fear of competing with their cleverness, not their inferiority. Consciously or unconsciously, people want their competitors to be inferior. Going back to Bismarck’s quote one can also see the self-hatred of the feminine side of one self. If what Freud says is true, that most people have some bisexuality, that means this attitude requires a lot of internal and external repression.

Naturally Dora would have been affected by an environment like this and bring her frustrations towards men and aim them at Freud. Freud would also be transferring emotions towards Ida based on his upbringing and the contemporaneous understanding that women should know their place.

There were attempts to change this situation for the Jewish people by socialists. Otto, Ida’s brother, felt socialism was the method to help people integrate harmoniously in European society. By eliminating differences, exacerbated by the competition in capitalism, humanity would mix together in such a way as to make ethnic differences disappear. This motive led him to want to join politics. Yet Freud disagreed with Otto and “advised him to give up politics and become a teacher or university professor, a career better suited to his idealistic temperament than the volatile and hazardous arena of Austrian politics…[He] tried to talk Otto out of changing the world, warning him: ‘Don’t try to make people happy, people don’t want to be happy.'” This attitude would colour much of psychology all the way up to the beginning of positive psychology in the late 20th century. “Because his view that human nature was instinctive and not likely to be changed fundamentally by environmental manipulation, Freud believed that socialist and communist efforts to reform human society could not succeed,” as Otto had wished.

Yet this is partially disingenuous. Freud’s system is that of getting clients to accept the world as it is and to make changes to the environment, and to gain love. To repress the negative affect, and to be helpless, leads to self-destructive emotions. To deal with the world as it is, like a labour of love, or a laboured love in how it feels to make it happen, produces realistic positive emotions that can be achieved. Even if communism as tried, failed, a democratic socialism is accepted in most western countries. There is also generational socialist experiments that get partially accepted by conservative groups, when they are popular enough. If anything this is possibly the reason why there is ambivalence. People don’t actually know what a better future will be, and there will be experiments and failures along the way. There will also be some successes. People do want to be happy, but they are ambivalent on how to go about it, and may go down on paths they think are happiness, but end up being the opposite.

Blur – Tender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaHrqKKFnSA

Economic influences

The pattern of ups and downs of life keep repeating throughout humanity, surprising new generations without the experience of loss. The typical pattern: Economic success, a following complacency, reckless investments, economic collapse, scarcity, a gathering together in groups of the same ethnic and cultural backgrounds for safety and pride. Then there’s scapegoating of people of weaker power with excuses that their habits or cultures are at fault, weak and contemptible, but in reality this is a disguise for a fear of competition. This is especially true if some of ethnic minorities manage to achieve status, despite being labeled with contempt, while some from an ethnic majority lose status. If they really were so contemptible, there would be nothing to fear from their competition. What used to be a downward comparison that gave special treatment for some, becomes a painful and humiliating upward comparison. A threat to an identity, is based on emotional feeding and addictions to stable sources of pride and pleasure. Pride needs a core identity that supports it, and when lost, makes people want to identify as a “superior” race, identify with “superior” past generations, a distorted “golden age” nostalgia. The hope to regain a lost identity, is the desire to step into the shoes of some kind of recognition of value. Pride.

Violence and the Sacred – René Girard: https://rumble.com/v1gsnwv-the-origin-of-envy-and-narcissism-ren-girard.html

Emotional Feeding: https://rumble.com/v1gqvl1-emotional-feeding-thanissaro-bhikkhu.html

Conflation of enemies

Now this isn’t to say that Jewish people are perfect, and that there shouldn’t be some assimilation to values, principles and laws of a country, I mean that’s why you want to move to that country, because it has values you like! Yet there’s a tendency to take bad apples, which exist in all cultures, and lump them together with their entire ethnicity. The embarrassment is described very well by Freud. He “attended the funeral of a friend, Nathan Weiss, who had committed suicide. Weiss’s family and friends publicly blamed his death on the family of his new wife. Freud described one censorious funeral orator who ‘spoke with the powerful voice of the fanatic, with the ardor of the savage, merciless Jew.’ The reaction of Freud and his medical colleagues was to be ‘petrified with horror and shame in the presence of the Christians who were among us. It seemed as though we had given them reason to believe that we worship the God of Revenge, not the God of Love.'”

Self-respect

Yet this need for revenge, or at least an assertive response to bigotry, seems to be extremely hard to avoid, and also a qualification for healthy self-respect. This is something that Freud eventually came around to. Freud had to decide what his response to antisemitism would be. When Freud’s father told the story of being told to get off the sidewalk because he was a Jew, and his response to do just that and walk away, was too submissive of a response for him. Freud said, “I never understood why I should be ashamed of my descent or, as one was beginning to say, my race.”

“Freud’s son Martin recalled that in 1901, in the Bavarian summer resort of Thumsee, Freud routed a gang of about ten men, and some female supporters, who had been shouting antisemitic abuse at Martin and his brother Oliver, by charging furiously at them with his walking stick. Freud must have found these moments gratifying contrasts to his father’s passive submission to being bullied.”

One doesn’t have to start something with people to feel safe, but if agitated and provoked over and over again, it only stops if there is an assertive response. We have to respect the rights of others, be we also have to respect our own rights. This way we avoid being passive or aggressive, which all involve boundaries being violated.

Assertiveness – An Introduction: https://www.skillsyouneed.com/ps/assertiveness.html

The cycle of disappointment

Freud was right that communism wouldn’t work to eliminate conflict and racism, but he wasn’t able to see much further than that. The 2008 economic crash, as bad as it was, proved that a form of democratic socialism was something that people couldn’t do without. It prevented the fallout on the poor from being as bad as it was in prior generations, vindicating some of Otto’s idealism for a future with more stability.

Freud’s advice, based on his patient’s inability to deal with reality, and make healthy changes to the environment, was prophetic with his result with Ida. In Hannah’s book, accounts of Ida’s outcome identified her as being similar to her mother, with her “excessive cleanliness. She and her mother saw the dirt not only in their surroundings, but also on and within themselves. Both suffered from genital discharges.” Richie Robertson in the introduction of the Oxford World Classics version, hints that Ida’s mother, instead of having a psychosis of cleaning, was performing a form of revenge, since “you have made me a housewife; very well, I’ll be a perfect housewife and make you suffer for it.” Some of these feminist interpretations are quite modern. Another interpretation was that Ida’s mother wanted revenge for getting syphilis or gonorrhea from her husband. My interpretation is that the obsession to clean is more about cleaning a person’s self-esteem, to avoid rejection from others.

“Nothing is good enough to join us!”

Hannah’s book goes further into Dora’s Christian conversion, and her, and Freud’s escape from the NAZIS. Again the pattern repeated of destroyed hopes for the Jewish. Even when deliberate attempts to imitate the culture of the ruling ethnic groups, her brother Otto said that “assimilated Jews [were] still obviously Jews according to their facial characteristics. Race instincts and race prejudices live on after assimilation.” Otto felt that Christian conversion wasn’t going to work, and only intermarriage with Christians would solve the problem. This differed at the time with the Zionists who felt that the only solution would ultimately be to live in a Jewish nation.

This is a great lesson for all people who want to immigrate to another country. The lesson is that if you compete with the status and identities that others have already claimed, they will split hairs in every way to put you down. “You’re too Jewish! Oh you’re Christian now, but you still look Semitic. Not good enough!” This goes more into my influences from René Girard’s Judeo-Christian works, but to enter into any new society, even if you are not that different from the culture you are joining, because you are a HUMAN, you have to be different in a way that is useful to others. This means creating new businesses, new products, and have something new to trade with the established identities of others.

Blue Ocean Strategy – W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781625274496/

If one can’t create those situations, then filling positions that are needed as opposed to competing for the most alluring hierarchies everyone else wants, creates the harmony that Otto was so desperately trying to seek. There will always be competition for pride and social rewards that leads to conflict, especially in economic crashes and the resulting scarcity of opportunities. People are forced to step on each other’s toes to hold onto an identity in a recession.

Circling around, zeroing in – Thanissaro Bhikkhu: https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y2018/181116_Circling_Around,_Zeroing_In.mp3

I remember coming out of the Spike Lee movie BlacKkKlansman , and seeing an interracial couple walking out with looks of relief of validation. They were obviously maintaining their identities and going to mind their own business and live their lives, which looks the same as everyone else’s lives.

But a society where people are trading their advantageous differences with each other means people can see value in those differences, and therefore less bigotry, and if there is intermarriage, it’s more authentic because the marriage isn’t a means to an end, to gain an identity. They have a healthy identity beforehand and appreciate each other’s. There’s always a commonality that can be found if people are willing to look for it. In my travels, most people are worried about the same things. Getting a good job, having their kids find success in school, and trying to gain a good marriage. After a period of culture shock, people eventually find new cultural habits to graft onto the ones they want to keep. Sometimes this takes a couple of generations, but it happens.

Flexible goals

With the help of her son, Ida was able to move to New York. She lived with the same physical problems as before and died of colon cancer in 1945. One can imagine that Dora would have loved to have lived long enough to see how things had changed for women, or visible minorities, but I think she would still notice the same cycles of dissatisfaction in modern people as in the past. As long as people are struggling with identities that have mutual claims, they will be stuck in the same conflicts, regardless of what their success looks like from afar to those followers outside their milieu. “Control of consciousness determines the quality of life,” as Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi reminds. A lot of people at the top of the pyramid feel they don’t have as much control over their life as they think they do. Having to make appearances, networking, dealing with politics and keeping allies satisfied, reduces a lot of that sense of control. René Girard, also noticed the intensity of the desire, and how it dissipates when the desired object is obtained, or how it intensifies again when the object is lost. The freedom of knowing this is that I can always look for a new object when there’s a rivalry, because ultimately, I will be bored with any possession, because no possession can make you eternally satisfied like an omnipotent God. New objects will always be desired. I can instead look at objects for their actual value, not whether the object will add to social proof that I’m a human deity. I also don’t have to worship an idol, like a missing parent, or pretend to be a God and all the effort at impression management that narcissists go through. The great value of this knowledge is that it doesn’t have to be hidden. I don’t need to hide this knowledge to one-up someone else. The knowledge is flexible, no matter how many people know it, and having more people know this, the better. Much like Galadriel’s “I pass the test” speech in Lord of the rings, we have to see this in ourselves. It’s not so much the ambition, which can be noble, but how aggressively we look at “Others”, as Girard emphasizes, with this ambition. It’s actually hard to let go of the sadomasochism of bullying and revenge. But for the one who does, narcissistic neurosis cools off into a beautiful peace and self-acceptance.

Finding personal meaning

Another solution to a lack of personal meaning and identity in life comes from Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning . He emphasized the need for people to actively find their own meanings in their current lives. His message was similar to Freud’s of actively using ingenuity and realistic choices and actions that have personal meaning, to reduce that sense of helplessness that makes people neurotic or violent. These negative feelings come from chasing activities to “be somebody important”, while at the same time putting oneself down for not being there already. Yet there are many important things in our lives we are doing now that should allow us to be as we are, without shame and envy. We remind ourselves what we are trying to achieve when we are taking care of someone who is sick, or serving a customer, or communicating important values. It doesn’t mean we let go of healthy ambitions, but we know that it’s okay to just start somewhere, and all these early activities are important stepping stones to where you want to go.

If we can’t control our consciousness all the time, if we have to change objects of desire, if we choose to see the meaning and importance of our current mundane activities, they become intrinsically satisfying, and then the self-hatred disappears. This meaning doesn’t require imitating a narcissistic idol providing a parental meaning for us. We don’t have to gather into the safety of ethnic groups and scapegoat others for our problems. A lot of Viktor’s message resonates with me, because meaning is found in those overlooked opportunities that are available to us right now. We shouldn’t get locked into objects that we are not ready for or are not available to us. ◊

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A Case of Hysteria – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780199639861/

Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900 – Hannah S. Decker: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780029072127/

Physiology of Love and Other Writings – Paolo Mantegazza: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781442691728/

Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780061339202/

Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780671023379/

Ellis, A. W. & Raitmayr, O. & Herbst, C. (2016). The Ks: The Other Couple in the Case of Freud’s “Dora”. Journal of Austrian Studies 48(4), 1-26. University of Nebraska Press.

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning – René Girard: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781570753190/

René Girard and Creative Mimesis – Thomas Ryba: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781498550574/

René Girard and Creative Reconciliation – Thomas Ryba: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780739169001/

The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780261103207/

A Survey of the Woman Problem – Rosa Mayreder: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781330999349/

Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/

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Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria

by Alex Gatlin

An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria ( 1905 ), better known simply as “Dora,” is a case study written by the neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud , which details the condition and treatment of Ida Bauer, a woman diagnosed with hysteria and given the pseudonym “Dora." One of Freud’s most famous works, the Dora case study is typically praised for the scientific empiricism of Freud’s method, as well as for its identification of, among others, the phenomenon known as transference.

Hysteria in the Twentieth Century

Although no longer a recognized illness, hysteria (specifically female hysteria) was until the mid-twentieth century a common medical diagnosis for extreme emotional excess. Since its earliest diagnoses in ancient Greece, it was deemed an exclusively female condition, which manifested itself in a wide range of symptoms. Freud believed that hysteria stemmed from psychologically traumatic sexual experiences in the patient’s past, or from problems in the patient’s sexual life; thus, it was to be treated typically, although not exclusively, with some sort of genital stimulation. By the twentieth century, however, both men and children had been diagnosed with hysteria, leading many physicians to consider it a hereditary or psychological disorder. [1] Despite these new findings, treatment methods typically remained unchanged.

Freud’s approach, however, sought to resolve the problem through talking. This allowed both the doctor and patient to identify the subconscious problem, confront it, resolve it, and thereby alleviate the symptoms. [2] As medical techniques advanced, symptoms typically associated with hysteria were identified as symptoms of other diseases, such as various conversion disorders, and the number of cases of hysteria declined sharply until it was no longer recognized as an illness.

Summary of Case Study

Freud’s case study opens with a short description of his research methodology, examining the effectiveness of his new method of treatment through conversation and acknowledging the limitations, both self-imposed and unavoidable, of the single individual case study (Freud 6-7). He then proceeds by emphasizing the importance of dreams to the psychoanalytic process he will later describe (Freud 9). Freud believed that dreams were the avenue through which traumatic experiences in our past manifest themselves; by examining the individual components of a dream, he argued, it would be possible to determine the underlying traumatic experiences.

Freud begins the actual case study by providing as detailed a patient history as possible, without betraying the actual identity of Dora. According to Freud, Dora’s family, which consists of Dora, her father, mother, and brother, display traits and relationships characteristic of the Oedipus complex. This complex, Freud argues, plays an important role in the relationship between Dora, her father, and their neighbors Herr and Frau K. He notes Dora’s symptoms as those of classic hysteria and believes they began around the age of eight but truly manifested themselves at the age of fourteen. At this time, Herr K., a neighbor and friend of the family, forcibly embraced and kissed Dora, pressing his genital region on her, causing the girl to flee in disgust.

It is at this point that Freud identifies two psychological effects typically associated with traumatic events. The first is the “reversal of affect,” in which an act that typically would be pleasurably stimulating instead has the opposite effect. The second is the phenomenon of “displacement,” in which sensation felt during a traumatic experience in one part of the body is later felt in another, seemingly unaffected region.

Freud’s account next focuses on the relationship between Dora and her father. In doing so, Freud asserts that Frau K., who while nursing Dora’s father back to health from an illness began in intimate relationship with him, was also an underlying factor in Dora’s hysteria: Dora’s repressed homosexual feelings for Frau K. came to manifest themselves in a similar way to her unconscious feelings for Herr K.

In keeping with the importance of dreams to psychoanalysis, Freud next examines two dreams told to him by Dora. In the first dream that Dora relates, her family’s house has been set on fire. Dora’s father wakes her in an attempt to get out of the house; however, Dora’s mother wants to look for her jewelry case before the family leaves the house. Freud correlates the jewel-case in the dream with Dora’s genitals, which she deemed were in danger because of Herr K., who is actually represented by her father in the dream. In her second dream, Dora finds herself in a strange town looking for the train station after reading a letter from her mother saying that she must return for her father’s funeral. She sets out walking through the town, asking people along the way how far the station is and always learning that it 5 minutes away. Finally, she comes to a forest where a man tells her that the station is two and half-hours away. Although she is eventually able to see the station, she cannot reach it. Suddenly, she finds herself at home and cannot remember how she got there. Freud determines that the dream was conceived as a fantasy of revenge against her father and Frau K. Freud also connects the letter that Dora receives from her mother in the dream to a letter that she actually received from Herr K., arguing that this displacement indicates how traumatic her experiences with Herr K. had actually been.

In the end, Freud’s treatment of Dora is cut short when Dora abruptly decides to end treatment, an act that Freud believes was perpetrated out of vengeance. Freud ends the case study by examining the importance of his most important discovery, that of transferences, which Freud defines as, “new editions or facsimiles of the tendencies and phantasies which are aroused and made conscious during the progress of the analysis; but they have this peculiarity…that they replace some earlier person by the person of the physician” (Freud 106). A consequence of his new therapeutic techniques, transference involves the projection of emotions held by the patient for a person from their past onto the physician himself. In Dora’s case, Freud believes that Dora projected her emotions towards Herr K. onto him, leading her to discontinue treatment as an act of vengeance toward Herr K.

Critical Receptions and Importance of the Work

The publication of Dora sparked both praise and controversy over Freud’s methods and underlying psychoanalytic theories, while simultaneously providing the field of psychology with arguably some of its most important findings of the twentieth century. Many have criticized Freud’s practice of tracing all psychological problems back to sexual issues. In regards to the Dora case, alternative issues, such as the anti-Semitic culture of Germany and Austria during this time, could have contributed to the specific doctor-patient relationship between Freud and Dora, unintentionally affecting the dynamic between the two and Dora’s interactions with Freud. [3]

Critics have also argued that Freud’s own inability to accept femininity, both his own and in general, limited his own ability to determine the importance of female desire. [4] Bernheimer notes this in Freud’s inability to answer the question, “What do women want?” (27).

Finally, others have criticized the psychoanalytic method as a coercive way for the analyst, a man, to assert his own power over the patient, a female. [5] By conforming to the whims of society and her father by conducting his research, Freud put their considerations before those of his patient. This, in turn, both biased his analysis and prevented the successful treatment of Dora.

Despite these drawbacks, the psychoanalytic techniques and their findings have influenced the various sub-fields of psychology and remain, at least in part, integral to the treatment of patients suffering from neurological disorders. Freud’s case study illustrates the powerful effect sexually traumatic experiences can have on adolescents, and also constitute the first practical analysis of the effects of bisexuality and the mouth as an erogenous zone (Decker 191). The use of talk therapy as a way to identify underlying or masked causes instituted by Freud has been accepted by mainstream psychologists as one of the best methods of treatment for psychological problems. Freud’s dream theory has also provided useful insight into the manifestation of subconscious desires through dreams, as well as a meaningful, if sometimes overly reductive, way of interpreting these dreams. [6]

Finally, the Dora case study identified the importance of the phenomenon of transference, the process by which the patient overlays strong emotions for a person from their past onto the physician. Typically considered an obstacle to the therapeutic process, some argue that the management and resolution of these transferences is the key to lifting repression and to successful treatment. [7] In the end, Freud himself admits that his inability to identify and resolve this transference was the probable reason for Dora discontinuing treatment (Freud 108).

↑ Hannah S. Decker, Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900.(New York: The Free Press, 1991), 6.
↑ Sigmund Freud. Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (New York: Touchstone 1963), 6.
↑ Harold P. Blum, “Dora’s Conversion Syndrome: A Contribution to the Prehistory of the fckLRHolocaust,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 63.1 (1994): 518-19.
↑ Charles Bernheimer and Claire Kahne, eds., In Dora’s Case: Freud-Hysteria-Feminism. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 27.
↑ James C. Coyne and Robin Tolmach Lakoff, Father Knows Best: The Use and Abuse of fckLRPower in Freud’s Case of Dora (New York: Teachers College Press 1993), 132.
↑ Phillip McCaffrey, Freud and Dora: The Artful Dream (New Jersey: Rutgers University fckLRPress 1984), 3.
↑ Richard D. Chessick, “Psychoanalytic Peregrinations I: Transference and Transference fckLRNeurosis Revisited,” Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis 30.1 (2002): 88

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Sigmund Freud

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R. Gray German 390/ Comp. Lit. 396/Engl 363/CHID 498/JSIS 488/Lit 298

"Freud and the Literary Imagination"

Lecture Notes: Freud, "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria ('Dora')"

I. Background:

A. Hysteria: Real or "Imagined"? In a 1984 book, The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory , Jeffrey Masson accuses Freud of undercutting the "truth" of his original theory of hysteria and its origins by abandoning the seduction theory. -- For Masson, Freud caves in to social and professional pressure and thereby sacrifices truth of his theory. What is at stake for Freud in valorizing the role of fantasy in the psychic economy? This is the move that gives structural coherence to psychoanalytic theory in its entirety: Desire (erotic wish) > Resistance > Repression > Distortion > Hysterical Symptom: Hysteria is structured is exactly the same way as all other expressions or "representations" of the unconscious mind: As in Freud's dream theory, a LATENT WISH must first be subjected to CENSORSHIP (Repression) before it can MAKE ITSELF MANIFEST in conscious life. Thus: The hysterical symptom = a distorted wish! B. Published 1905; Freud's motivation = to substantiate his earlier work on hysteria ("Studies in Hysteria," written together with J. Breuer and published in 1895; "Aetiology of Hysteria") and defend his theory on the origin of hysteria in sexual, infantile material. The treatment of Dora dates back to 1900-01. C. "Dora" = Ida Bauer (1882-1945); she came to Freud in Oct. 1900, when she was 18 years old. (To view a picture of Dora, age eight, with her brother Otto, click here .) Her case history is the history of a failure : Dora broke off her treatment before a cure was effected. -- Freud learned a great deal about his own analytical methods and their weaknesses from this case. In particular, he came to appreciate more the impact of the phenomenon known as transference for the therapeutic project. 1. Transference = the projection by the patient of the cause of his or her symptoms onto the analyst. The interaction between the patient and the analyst is structured or constructed by the patient as one in which the cause of the hysterical symptoms is transferred to the relationship with the physician.

D. The original working title of this essay was "Dreams and Hysteria": The functional or strategic purpose of the essay hence was to demonstrate the importance of dream interpretation for the work of analysis. -- Freud thus conceived this essay as a companion piece to the Interpretation of Dreams , which had just appeared shortly before Dora came to Freud. Hence the aim of the essay is to demonstrate the practical application of the theory Freud developed in Interpretation of Dreams .

II. The Clinical Picture of "Dora's" Case: (to view a diagram that graphs the pattern of Dora's hysteria onto the structure of hysteria Freud developed in the essay "The Aetiology of Hysteria," click here .)

A. Dora comes from a typical upper-middle-class family, composed of father and mother, son and daughter = "classical" configuration of bourgeois family. In terms of personality and familial status, the father is the dominating figure in the family circle. Dora exhibits an extreme emotional attachment to her father. Mother suffers from "housewife psychosis" = she is confined largely to the household, obsessed with order and cleanliness in the household sphere. -- Note Freud's derogatory, demeaning attitude toward this position of the mother in the family; he seems to have no sense that this role might be enforced upon the woman as a function of her demeaning status in the family or the limitation of her activities (by society) to the sphere of the home. Dora's brother has nothing but a distant emotional attachment to his father. On the contrary, he tends to side in all familial disputes with the mother, while Dora defends her father. -- For Freud this set of alliances, father�daughter; mother�son, confirms what he sees as the typical pattern for the establishment of familial allegiances: The generations join together in a pattern that crosses gender lines since the core motive of this alliance is sexual in nature. Dora also displays a peculiar emotional attachment to a paternal aunt = her father's sister. Her identification with this aunt runs not only through association with the father she loves, but is also reinforced by the fact that this aunt shows signs of psycho-neurosis. Freud's implication = Dora identifies with her symptoms. Family K as distorting mirror : also constituted as a typical bourgeois "nuclear" family, 2 parents, 2 children, equal gender balance. -- Dora�s father and Frau K have a (sexual) liaison; -- Herr K attracted to Dora as sexual substitute for a frigid wife. B. Dora's Symptoms: dyspnoea = difficulty breathing; hysterical choking depression avoidance of social contact; threatens suicide fainting spells aphonia = loss of voice C. "Trigger" that unleashes Dora's hysterical symptoms: The sexual advances made to her by a certain Herr K., a good friend of the family, while on vacation at Herr K's residence on a lake. When Dora later confronts Herr K. about this sexual liberty, he asserts that Dora merely imagined it ; she fantasizes this presumptive act of sexual seduction. (For Herr K, the best defense is a strong offense! He turns the tables on Dora's accusation.) See. Freud Reader 182. Dora's father sides completely with Herr K in this; he also asserts that Dora has imagined these sexual advances. (See Freud Reader 194) In Dora's world, the men take sides against her and construe Herr K's illicit advance as something she imagines or projects onto him. The victim of real sexual advances is thereby transformed into their perpetrator in the imagination . The men, at any rate, are absolved of all guilt. D. Complication of the relationship between Dora and Herr K Dora's father does not receive sexual satisfaction in his home life, from Dora's mother. Their relationship has become asexual. This gives rise to a long-term sexual relationship between Dora's father and Herr K's wife, Frau K. This, in turn, causes Dora to importune her father to abandon the relationship with Frau K. Moreover, she believes her father's willingness to take Herr K's side and interpret his sexual advance as Dora's imagination is motivated by his desire to protect his relationship with Frau K. He acts, in other words, out of selfish motives. -- Dora interprets this as her father's willingness to barter her off to Herr K in return for Herr K's wife: the father thinks (she believes): you can have my daughter as a sexual compensation for the fact that I have a sexual relationship with your wife. We have regressed, in short, to the act of primitive woman-trading. E. The events related to Dora's hysteria that are uncovered by Freud's analysis. Freud recognizes the impudent advance by Herr K as the trigger, but realizes also that this event itself does not suit the criterion of suitability for the hysterical symptoms. He must therefore seek in his analysis for memories that have a connection to coughing, aphonia, etc. 1. The sexual advance of Herr K at the lake, which occurred when Dora was 16 years old, is a screen memory for another, related event that happened when Dora was 14. Herr K arranges to meet Dora at his office, tells his wife not to come, and sends all his office staff home so he can be alone with Dora. He then kisses Dora passionately. Freud's prejudice: he believes that such a kiss by a mature man must elicit sexual excitement in a girl of 14. It must be pleasurable to her. Freud has no understanding for the possibility that Dora might not feel attracted to Herr K. Dora's reaction to the kiss is not pleasure, but rather disgust . Freud identifies hysteria with precisely this reversal of the pleasure of sex into a negative emotion. This, then, gives a partial explanation of Dora's symptoms: her choking, her nausea are connected to the disgust she feels when confronted by Herr K's lust. But she displaces the genital pleasure of a "healthy" girl in a two-fold manner: She displaces it from the lower to the upper body, from the genital region to the mouth and throat; She displaces the pleasure by transforming it into disgust. Freud also suggests that Dora was revolted by the sensation of Herr K's erect member when he pressed up against her to embrace her. Dora's reaction to this: She avoids all men who are in a state resembling sexual excitement. This also explains why Dora rejects her father's love for Frau K: it is disgusting not simply because it is her father, but because all male sexual expression is disgusting. 2. Dora acted as a babysitter for Herr and Frau K's children: Freud's interpretation = Dora displaces her feelings of affection for Herr K onto his children. a. There is a parallel to this in the story of the governess in Dora's own family whose affection for Dora is interpreted as displaced love for Dora's father.

3. Dora's aphonia. This occurred, Freud is able to discover, when Herr K. was away from home on business. At a time when she can only have written contact with the person with whom she is secretly in love, Dora reflexively loses her voice . Loss of voice is a symptom of the value added to written communication in Herr K's absence.

4. Note that Freud takes over the position of the other two men, Dora's father and Herr K: he assumes that Dora is secretly in love with Herr K.

5. Dora insists that Frau K is only attached to her father because he is "wealthy" = "well endowed" [ ein vermoegender Mann ]; but Freud turns this into its opposite: Dora's father is not "well endowed" but in fact "unendowed" [ ein un vermoegender Mann ]. That is, he is sexually impotent.

F. Analysis of Dora's two dreams and the information they reveal.

1. First dream: Dora awakened by father at night because of fire: must rescue her jewelry box. 2. Herr K had once given Dora a jewelry box. The position of the father in the dream reveals that he is a displacement of Herr K. The latent dream idea thus is: Dora must return Herr K's favor and give him her jewelry box = have sex with him. 3. Extinguishing the fire: Freud associates this with Dora's bed-wetting as a child; for him, this is a reference to masturbation on her part and her attempts to repress it. 4. Freud asserts that Dora is more afraid of this truth (her desire to have sex with Herr K) than she is of his advances themselves. 5. Freud turns the tables on the woman: he makes the victim of sexual advances into their perpetrator, but the woman must punish herself for these wishes. This punishment, this repression, creates Dora's hysterical symptoms. 6. Dora's hysteria = self -inflicted. It is caused by her self-repression of her own sexual desires, not by her disgust with Herr K's intentions. 7. Second Dream: Dora is in a strange town and receives a letter from her mother reporting her father's death. Dora can't reach the train station [ Bahnhof ] and hence comes to late to the cemetery [ Friedhof ] for her father's funeral. Freud goes through a complex interpretation of this dream from which he concludes that Dora's dream is one of defloration ( Bahnhof and Friedhof as symbols of the female genitalia). Dora's dream is a fantasy of forced seduction . 8. Again Freud turns the tables on Dora: he transforms her into the willing victim, the lecherous woman who desires rape. The Dora analysis is like a rape case in which the male perpetrator is declared innocent because he was "led on" by the woman to expect consensual sex. (See Freud Reader , p. 195) To view a diagram of the complex character configurations of Dora's case that outlines her love of her father and Herr K, on the one hand, and her identifications with other women, on the other, click here .

III. Freud's Postscript:

A. Freud emphasizes the technique of his analysis. 1. He insists on the scientific empiricism of his method. It is based, he claims, on pure observation. That is, he ascribes to his conclusions the status of absolute objectivity , as though his interpretive work merely uncovered what was always there but remained hidden. He refuses to acknowledge that the scenario he has derived is a wholly constructed one, based on questionable interpolations. 2. Freud stresses how this case analysis demonstrates the usefulness of dream interpretation for the pragmatic side of psychoanalysis. (Does it not in fact show the opposite?) 3. A patient's symptoms do not disappear during analysis; they occur only afterward and are postponed by transference. Transferences = facsimiles, "reprints" of the symptomatic impulses and fantasies in which the physician replaces other persons. (Doesn't this presume that the analyst will always be a male, his patient a female? Or vice versa?) 4. Transference = the most recent manifestation of the disease itself: past psychic experiences are projected onto the physician in the present . 5. Only once the transference is overcome can the patient be cured and the symptoms dissolved. In Dora's case this never occurred because she broke off the treatment prematurely. (Who can blame her!?)

IV. Critical Conclusions:

A. The "Dora case" reveals psychoanalytic treatment to be a process of coercion of the female patient by the male analyst. The message is: the woman should admit her sexual desires, confront the fact that she has led the male on to believe she wants to have sex with him, and submit herself freely and without pangs of conscience to the male's sexual advances. B. Psychoanalysis is a strategy for male (sexual) mastery over the female , a theory that proclaims the duty of the woman to embrace sexual submission . It goes so far as to identify such submission with the woman's "pleasure principle": This is what she "really wants"! C. The analytical situation models this relationship of mastery and submission. What is "transferred" are not so much the sexual desires of the (woman) patient onto the (male) analyst, as the power-politics of the (male) analyst onto his (female) patient. "Transference" is a theory that displaces and disguises this strategic mastery of the (male) analyst (to turn Freud's interpretive strategies against him).

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The Case of Dora: Freud, Hysteria, and Feminist Theory

Ida Bauer, memorialized by Sigmund Freud as “Dora” in his “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,” is a striking figure—both at the origin of psychoanalysis and for feminist theorists. For Freud, Dora represented a “failure,” of his therapeutic method as much as his analytic observations. He proved not only unable to alleviate her “hysterical symptoms”—a nervous cough, loss of voice, and depression; but he also failed to account for her attraction to her father’s mistress. The case would haunt Freud in the years following his first fragments of an analysis, likely influencing how he went on to revise his thinking about transference, sexuality, and unconscious dynamics. Toward the end of the twentieth century, as Freud and psychoanalysis underwent a re-appraisal by feminists, Dora became, alternately, a hero in “silent revolt” against patriarchal norms of femininity (Hélène Cixous), an evocative albeit ineffective model for feminist politics (Catherine Clement), an index of psychoanalysis’s inability to theorize the feminine (Jacqueline Rose), an opportunity to rewrite the relationship between sexual politics and psychoanalytic theory (Toril Moi), and a “distinctly queer figurehead” (Heather Findlay), among other things. Dora has also been a muse for creative re-imaginings, including a play by Cixous ( Portrait de Dora ), a novel by Lidia Yuknavitc ( Dora: A Headcase ), and a short film by Kate Novack ( Hysterical Girl ), to name but a few. How, and why, has Dora become and remained such a rich and provocative figure for both psychoanalytic and feminist inquiry? What can her particular case teach us about both the role of the unconscious and the role of the social in the production of desire?

In this course, we’ll begin by situating Dora, and Freud’s first pass at analyzing her, both historically and epistemically within the fin-de-siècle bourgeois Viennese context and the emerging knowledge system of psychoanalysis respectively. We’ll then turn to key feminist texts that have attempted to analyze Freud’s oversights and omissions and to think with and beyond Dora in order to offer alternate modes of interpreting bodily symptoms that defy the logic of language. Some of the questions we’ll pursue include: In what ways do psychoanalysis and (feminist) politics overlap, inform, or diverge from one another? How have feminist thinkers resignified “hysteria” to evoke a different set of meanings than Freud did, and what are the implications of these meanings for queer theory, the body, perversion, or subjectivity generally? What new perspectives on sex and gender might yet be gleaned from the case of Dora? How do shifting frameworks alter the questions we ask of Dora, as well as the answers we seek about the entanglements of sexuality, language, the body, and the social-political world?

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Dora, Hysteria and Gender: Reconsidering Freud’s Case Study

In this Book

Daniela Finzi
Published by: Leuven University Press

Freud’s Dora case and contemporary debates on gender, sexuality and queer theory ‘Dora’ is one the most important and interesting case studies Sigmund Freud conducted and later described. It constitutes a key text in his oeuvre and finds itself at the crossroads of his studies in hysteria, the theory of sexuality and dream interpretation. The Dora case is both a literary and theoretically ground-breaking text and an account of a ‘failed’ treatment. In Dora, Hysteria and Gender renowned Freud scholars reflect on the Dora case, presenting various innovative and controversial perspectives and elaborating the significance of the text for contemporary debates on gender, sexuality and queer theory.

This volume is of interest for psychoanalysts and scholars working on psychoanalysis, sexuality, gender, queer theory, philosophical anthropology and literary studies.

Contributors: Rachel B. Blass (Heythrop College, University of London), Daniela Finzi (Sigmund Freud Foundation), Esther Hutfless (University of Vienna), Ulrike Kadi (Medical University of Vienna), Ilka Quindeau (Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences), Beatriz Santos (University Paris VII Diderot), Philippe Van Haute (Radboud University Nijmegen), Herman Westerink (Radboud University Nijmegen), Jeanne Wolff-Bernstein (Sigmund Freud University in Vienna)

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Half Title, Series Info, Title Page, Copyright, Frontispiece

Introduction
Daniela Finzi, Herman Westerink
Narrative Strategies and Hermeneutic Desire: Constructions of a Case History
Sexuality and Knowledge in Dora’s Case
Beatriz Santos
Trauma and Disgust: Dora between Freud and Laplanche
Philippe Van Haute
Sucking, Kissing and Disgust – Dora and the Theory of Infantile Sexuality
Herman Westerink
Dora, the Un-Ending and ever Unraveling Story
Jeanne Wolff Bernstein
On the Signification of Dora’s Father
Ulrike Kadi
pp. 101-114
From Dora to Conchita: Recent Views on Gender and Sexuality in Psychoanalysis
Ilka Quindeau
pp. 115-134
The Case of Dora – A Queer Perspective on Hysteria and Perversion
Esther Hutfless
pp. 135-148
Notes on the Contributors
pp. 149-152

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Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria

By sigmund freud, dora: an analysis of a case of hysteria summary and analysis of section 2: the clinical picture.

Freud begins the second section by emphasizing the psychoanalytic importance of dreams. Dreams allow taboo desires, which would normally be repressed because of their shameful content, to reach the consciousness. Dreams thus provide an indirect representation of a patient’s innermost thoughts and enable the psychoanalyst to understand the mental processes of a hysteric.

After discussing the significance of dreams, Freud gives information on Dora ’s family life and medical condition and explains how he came to take on her case. Dora was an eighteen year old girl whose immediate family consisted of her two parents and older brother. She was particularly fond of her father, who had been responsible for her education, and she grew more attached to him as he struggled with tuberculosis during her childhood. To alleviate his lung trouble, the family moved to a small town with a mild climate which Freud calls "B—" to protect the identity of his patient. After suffering an attack of paralysis, Dora’s father traveled to Vienna to receive Freud’s medical treatment. Four years later, he returned with his daughter whom he believed to be neurotic.

Freud believes that Dora’s neurotic symptoms started in her childhood. At age eight, Dora was subject to chronic dysponea (difficulty breathing). At age twelve, she began to suffer from migraine headaches and nervous coughing. When she begins her treatment with Freud, she continues to experience coughing attacks, which last between three and five weeks and cause a complete loss of voice for an extended period of time.

Despite the unexplained development of her symptoms, Freud comments that Dora’s case is rather ordinary as far as cases of hysteria are concerned. Dora suffers from the most common physical symptoms (difficulty breathing, nervous coughing, loss of voice, and migraines) along with the most common mental symptoms (depression and antisocial behavior). Although Freud considers the case to be unexciting, he asserts that the analysis of an ordinary case of hysteria will be most useful in furthering knowledge of the disorder.

Freud theorizes that hysterical symptoms stem from either psychological trauma or problems in the patient’s sexual life. To elucidate Dora’s symptoms, he considers her experiences while her father was recuperating at B—. During his time in the town, Dora’s father became close friends with a married couple, Herr and Frau K. Dora developed a close friendship with Herr K. who often accompanied her on walks and occasionally gave her gifts. However, their relation ship became strained after Dora alleged that Herr K. made an indecent proposal to her during one of their walks. Herr K. denied that this ever happened and Dora’s father agreed with his assessment that Dora imagined the event.

Freud believes that this experience was sufficiently traumatic to have influenced Dora’s hysteria, but not to explain it completely. Some of her symptoms existed before this incident, and thus if trauma is at the root of her hysteria, there must have been some analogous event that happened prior.

At the start of the second section, Freud makes two assertions that form the basis of his approach to psychoanalysis. The first is that dreams can be interpreted and that dream interpretation is crucial to understanding hysteria. The second is that hysterical symptoms can often be traced back to a patient’s sexual life.

In The Interpretation of Dreams , Freud argues that the focus of dreams is wish-fulfillment. People have many desires that they would like to act on but cannot because of social restrictions or a self-imposed sense of morality. The psychological agent that represses taboo impulses is what Freud calls the “super-ego.” During sleep, the “super-ego” or conscience is weakened and dreams can allow repressed desires to reach the consciousness. However, psychological resistance is still at work, and the dream material is distorted to hide its true meaning.

Freud believes that dream interpretation can help alleviate hysterical symptoms. In Dora’s case, Freud asserts that her hidden desires have manifested themselves through physical ailments. His goal in dream interpretation is to get the patient to acknowledge her repressed impulses and to provide them with an outlet.

Freud asserts that erotic desire is one of the prime motivators of human behavior. In his early works, he argues that sexual impulse is the only driver of people’s actions. In later works, such as Civilization and its Discontents , he adds a need for aggression or the “death-instinct.” In the case study, Freud relates nearly all of Dora’s symptoms back to her sexual life.

Freud's sex-based approach to pschoanalysis has drawn much criticism. At times, he reveals a key element of Dora’s thought process, but at other times, he appears to overreach and to make unsubstantiated conclusions to apply his theory. This tendency becomes particularly clear as the second section continues.

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Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

beyond the sky and the earth : a journey into bhutan

In what ways does the author use language and structure to convey the history of Bhutan?

Explain on what points was the freudian discovery got confirmed and on which points did his analysis failed

Gradesaver's short summary should have the information you need to answer this question. There are also detailed summaries of each section available.

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In Freud's "Dora" his interpretation of her dreams is incomplete why?

The case study "Dora" is a controversial one. Freud interprets "Dora's" (this is not actually the name of the actual patient, of course) dreams as symptomatic of her jealousy for her mother's sexual relationship with...

Study Guide for Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria

Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria study guide contains a biography of Sigmund Freud, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria.

It Ain't No Sin: Carter's Response to Freud's Views of Sex
The Relationship Between Freud and Dora: Insight into the Workings of a Daughter's Mind

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COMMENTS

Dora (case study)
Dora is the pseudonym given by Sigmund Freud to a patient whom he diagnosed with hysteria, and treated for about eleven weeks in 1900. Her most manifest hysterical symptom was aphonia, or loss of voice.The patient's real name was Ida Bauer (1882-1945); her brother Otto Bauer was a leading member of the Austro-Marxist movement.. Freud published a case study about Dora, Fragments of an ...
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria Summary
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria is a case study that Freud writes about an eighteen-year-old girl. Dora, whose actual name Freud keeps secret, suffers from a variety of hysterical symptoms, including dysponea (difficulty breathing), aphonia (loss of voice), nervous coughing and migraine headaches.Her father brings her to receive Freud's psychotherapeutic treatment, four years after ...
Dora Case Study
Her treatment was reported by Freud in Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria in 1905, five years after she had consulted Freud. Dora was Freud's pseudonym for a girl named Ida Bauer, who was born into a middle-class Jewish family on November 1st, 1882 at Bergassa 32, Vienna on the same street as Freud resided.
Case Studies: Dora
In Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905), Freud first published a case study on Ida Bauer, under the pseudonym "Dora", a daughter of parents in a loveless marriage. Her father, a merchant, and mother, immigrated from Bohemia to Vienna. In Freud's case study, the 18 year old subject was stuck in what could be called an ...
The Roots of Hysteria in Sigmund Freud's 'The Dora Case'
Ida Bauer (1882-1945), who was given the pseudonym 'Dora' in the case study, was Sigmund Freud's famous patient diagnosed as suffering from hysteria.She has been the subject of study for many academics willing to track down the roots of the pathology and analyze the means by which the family environment and societal norms led to the development of her hysteria.
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria Study Guide
Freud published Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria in 1905, four years after completing his final draft. He held off on publication for fear of damaging the reputation of his patient and her family. His apprehension is noticeably present in his "Prefatory Remarks" to the case study, and his concern for Dora's privacy is the reason why all of the names are pseudonyms.
Case Study: Dora
Freud used his first case history, that of Dora, to explain infant sexuality, transference and the interpretation of dreams. Yet the teenager left the analysis after just 11 weeks. Show more
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria
An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria ( 1905 ), better known simply as "Dora," is a case study written by the neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, which details the condition and treatment of Ida Bauer, a woman diagnosed with hysteria and given the pseudonym "Dora." One of Freud's most famous works, the Dora case study ...
Freud, "Dora"
The treatment of Dora dates back to 1900-01. C. "Dora" = Ida Bauer (1882-1945); she came to Freud in Oct. 1900, when she was 18 years old. (To view a picture of Dora, age eight, with her brother Otto, click here .) Her case history is the history of a failure: Dora broke off her treatment before a cure was effected.
PDF Hysteria, Identification, and the Family: A Rereading of Freud's Dora Case
AA Rereading of Freud's Dora Case. Introduction. Freud's first major case history, Fragment of an Analysis of a. Case of Hysteria (1905), has long been recognized as one of the. classic texts of psychoanalysis.1 While analysts have been in. clined to mine the Dora case for its description and treatment of hysteria, feminists have reframed it as ...
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria Summary and ...
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria study guide contains a biography of Sigmund Freud, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. ... There are two notable pieces of information concerning the jewel-case. First, Dora tells Freud that her mother is very fond of jewelry and on one occasion ...
'Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria ('Dora')'
By Paul Renn. Published on 4th July, 2007. Dora commenced an analysis with Freud at her father's instigation in October 1900. She abruptly ended treatment 11 weeks later. Freud wrote up the case study soon afterwards, but did not publish it until 1905. Before considering the conclusions Freud drew from this case, I will summarize the facts ...
PDF Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing: Fis of a Case of Hysteria (1905
Freud's letters to Wilhelm Fliess (Freud, 1950a) has given us a quantity of contemporary evidence on the subject. On October 14, 1900 (Letter 139), Freud tells Fliess that he has recently begun work with a new patient, 'an eighteen-year-old girl'. This girl was evidently 'Dora', and, as we know from the case history itself (p. 13 n. below),
Dora: An analysis of a case of hysteria.
In "Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria," Freud examines the case of an intelligent eighteen-year-old girl who is nevertheless very troubled. Exploring every aspect of her life, he discovers a series of intrigues that could be found in a detective novel. Freud finds many characters in Dora's neurotic family, ranging from her mother who cleans the house all day to her father and his ...
Nonfictional Narrative in Freud's Dora: History, Scripted History
Dora is at once history, scripted history, conscripted history. This "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" is, after all, Freud's first case study and still a canonical text for psychoanalytic training (Marcus. 56). While for some readers it remains an instruction manual, for others it offers. compelling, though perhaps unwitting ...
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria Summary and ...
Finally, Freud seeks to manage the expectations of his readers. Because "Dora" is the case study of a single person, Freud acknowledges that it cannot offer a complete understanding of hysteria. Even the case study itself is a fragment, as Dora walked out of treatment before she was cured.
The Case of Dora: Freud, Hysteria, and Feminist Theory
Ida Bauer, memorialized by Sigmund Freud as "Dora" in his "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria," is a striking figure—both at the origin of psychoanalysis and for feminist theorists. For Freud, Dora represented a "failure," of his therapeutic method as much as his analytic observations. He proved not only unable to ...
Freud and the Dora case: A promise betrayed.
Cesare Romano revisits Dora's clinical case in light of Freud's own seduction theory. His central thesis is that Freud failed to follow through with his initial proposition of confirming his theories on the traumatic aetiology of hysteria. He also suggests a new dating for the duration of Dora's therapy, placing the beginning of the analysis within the context of Freud's concurrent and recent ...
Project MUSE
In Dora, Hysteria and Gender renowned Freud scholars reflect on the Dora case, presenting various innovative and controversial perspectives and elaborating the significance of the text for contemporary debates on gender, sexuality and queer theory. This volume is of interest for psychoanalysts and scholars working on psychoanalysis, sexuality ...
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria Summary and Analysis of Section
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria study guide contains a biography of Sigmund Freud, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. ... In this part of the case study, Freud introduces the concepts "reversal of affect" and "displacement," two psychological processes, in which the true ...
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria Summary and ...
Throughout the case study, Dora questions Freud's assessments of her feelings and motivations. She denies that she was ever in love with Herr K. even though Freud insists that she must have been. The case study thus presents a complex power dynamic between Freud and Dora. As the psychoanalyst, Freud possesses the power of interpretation.
(PDF) Dora's Case By Freud
general. Freud reports that Dora is the second two children. Her brother is 18 months older, father has a "dominant" character and mother is a "foolish and uncultivated woman" and is ...
Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria Summary and ...
In the case study, Freud relates nearly all of Dora's symptoms back to her sexual life. Freud's sex-based approach to pschoanalysis has drawn much criticism. At times, he reveals a key element of Dora's thought process, but at other times, he appears to overreach and to make unsubstantiated conclusions to apply his theory.

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