Dora (case study)

Dora is the pseudonym given by Sigmund Freud to a patient whom he diagnosed with hysteria. Her most manifest hysterical symptom was aphonia, or loss of voice. Freud published a famous case study about Dora, Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905 [1901], Standard Edition Vol.7, pp1–122).

The patient's real name was Ida Bauer (1882-1945). Ida's brother Otto Bauer was a leading member of the Austromarxism movement.

Case history

Dreams

Ida recounted two dreams to Freud. In the first:

[a] house was on fire. My father was standing beside my bed and woke me up. I dressed quickly. Mother wanted to stop and save her jewel-case; but Father said: 'I refuse to let myself and my two children be burnt for the sake of your jewel-case.' We hurried downstairs, and as soon as I was outside I woke up.^[1]

The second dream is substantially longer:

I was walking about in a town which I did not know. I saw streets and squares which were strange to me. Then I came into a house where I lived, went to my room, and found a letter from Mother lying there. She wrote saying that as I had left home without my parents' knowledge she had not wished to write to me to say Father was ill. "Now he is dead, and if you like you can come." I then went to the station and asked about a hundred times: "Where is the station?" I always got the answer: "Five minutes." I then saw a thick wood before me which I went into, and there I asked a man whom I met. He said to me: "Two and a half hours more." He offered to accompany me. But I refused and went alone. I saw the station in front of me and could not reach it. At the same time, I had the unusual feeling of anxiety that one has in dreams when one cannot move forward. Then I was at home. I must have been travelling in the meantime, but I knew nothing about that. I walked into the porter's lodge, and enquired for our flat. The maidservant opened the door to me and replied that Mother and the others were already at the cemetery.^[2]

Freud reads both dreams as referring to Ida Bauer's sexual life, which becomes progressively more complicated as his analysis progresses. Ida regularly babysat the children of a married couple known only as Herr and Frau K. Ida's father was the lover of Frau K, and (according to Ida, and believed by Freud), Herr K himself had repeatedly propositioned Ida, as early as when she was 14 years old. (Freud, "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria ('Dora')")

Ultimately, Freud sees Ida as repressing a desire for her father, a desire for Herr K, and a desire for Frau K as well. After only 11 weeks of therapy she broke off her therapy, much to Freud's disappointment. Freud saw this as his failure as an analyst and decided the whole treatment had failed.

After some time, however, Ida returned to see Freud and explained how her symptoms had mostly cleared. Freud had been the only person to believe her regarding 'Herr K' and her father. After the analysis, she chose to confront her tormentors (her father, his lover and his lover's husband). When confronted, they confessed that she had been right all along and following this, most of her symptoms had cleared.

Freud's interpretation

Through the analysis, Freud interprets Ida's hysteria as a manifestation of her jealousy toward the relationship between Frau K and her father, combined with the mixed feelings of Herr K's sexual approach to her.^[3] Although Freud was disappointed with the initial results of the case, he considered it important, as it raised his awareness of the phenomenon of transference, on which he blamed his seeming failures in the case.

Freud gave her the name 'Dora', and he describes in detail in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life what his unconscious motivations for choosing such a name might have been. His sister's nursemaid had had to give up her real name, Rosa, when she accepted the job because Freud's sister was also named Rosa—she took the name 'Dora' instead. Thus, when Freud needed a name for someone who could not keep her real name (this time, in order to preserve his patient's anonymity), Dora was the name that occurred to him.^[4]

Criticisms of interpretation

'Dora' remains one of Freud's most famous cases, and is often discussed in feminist circles. Freud's comments about the case, such as "This was surely just the situation to call up distinct feelings of sexual excitement in a girl of fourteen", in reference to Dora being kissed by a "young man of prepossessing appearance"^[5], are seen to imply a fundamental passivity in female sexuality.

Literature

• Hélène Cixous, Portrait de Dora, des femmes 1976, Translated into English as Portrait of Dora Routledge 2004, ISBN 0415236673
• Charles Bernheimer, Claire Kahane, In Dora's Case: Freud-Hysteria-Feminism: Freud, Hysteria, Feminism, Second Edition, Columbia University Press, 1990
• Hannah S. Decker, Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900, The Free Press, 1991
• Robin Tolmach Lakoff, James C. Coyne, Father Knows Best: The Use and Abuse of Power in Freud's Case of Dora, Teachers' College Press, 1993
• Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson: Against Therapy (Chapter 2: Dora and Freud),^[6]
• Patrick Mahoney, Freud's Dora: A Psychoanalytic, Historical, and Textual Study, Yale University Press 1996, ISBN 0300066228
• Gina Frangello, My Sister's Continent, Chiasmus Press, 2005
• Dan Chapman, ‘Adorable White Bodies’, a short story based on Freud's case, interpreting it from the perspective of Ida Bauer.^[7]

See also

• Anna O.
• Emma Eckstein
• Wolf man
• Rat man
• Little Hans

References

1. ^ Sigmund Freud, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, Standard Edition, Vol. VII, p. 64.
2. ^ Sigmund Freud, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, Standard Edition, Vol. VII, p. 94.
3. ^ Akavia, Naamah (2005). "Hysteria, identification, and the Family: A Rereading of Freud's Dora Case". American Imago 62 (2): 193–216. doi:10.1353/aim.2005.0021. 
4. ^ Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Standard Edition, Vol. VI, pp. 240-41.
5. ^ Sigmund Freud, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, Standard Edition, Vol. VII, p. 28.
6. ^ Against Therapy: Table of Contents
7. ^ Chapman, D. (2010), The Postmodern Malady of Dr. Peter Hudson ISBN: 978-1-4452-2721-4

External links

• Essay about Dora
• Outline of the Case
• Freud's Dora A Victorian Fable by Doug Davis
• Discussion on Dora's dreams
• Freud exhibit which contains images of 'Dora'

Persondata
Name	Bauer, Ida
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1882
Place of birth
Date of death	1945
Place of death