Term Paper on "Sigmund Freud's Dora an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria"

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SCHOLARSHIP REVIEW and INVESTIGATIVE NARRATIVE: The point can be made these hundred and seven years after Freud spent those seventy hours (over three months) in session with Dora that he was only human and hence, one would expect to discover at least minor errors in his presentation. The greater tragedy would be that those weaknesses would not only be overlooked all these years, but that they, if proven and positioned in proper context, became part of this great man's sterling legacy. But the real meat of the matter: this paper contends that Freud erred in judgment - based on his enormous ego and his desire to be the champion in his own game - and in the actual technical reporting of his research.

A logical beginning will be with his problems in reporting his findings. On page 26 of Freud: On War Sex and Neurosis, Freud admits that the "...presentation of my case histories remains a problem which is hard for me to solve." These "difficulties" he encounters are "partly of a technical kind," he writes, but also due to the nature of the "circumstances themselves." He goes on (Freud 26) to describe those circumstances: "If it is true..." that the underlying causes of hysteria are located in the patient's "psycho-sexual life" Freud explains, then it is the duty of the discoverer of those "secret and repressed wishes" that caused the hysteria to keep them secret. So, because of his desire not to reveal such intimate secrets about a client, he claims he waited four years from the time he was working with Dora to publish his findings.

In those four long years, isn't it conceivable that the editing of his copy - which no doubt included re-writing and second-guessing of the original posits as any editor would do - would be slanted towards what he learned in the time subsequent to his work with Dora? or, more specifically, isn't it possible that Freud's editing would be geared toward proving assertions he had made - both to build the case within the scientific and psychological community that he had been correct, and to reassure his bloated ego - previous to and/or during his Dora research?

Meanwhile, as to the "technical" problems in recording the results and theories that are part of the Dora case - which on page 28 he admits to "forcing through the limitations imposed" by "unfavorable circumstances" - Freud claims that he didn't take notes after each of his sessions with Dora. Those sessions included "six or eight psychotherapeutic treatments of the sort in a day" (Freud 28) and one cannot take notes during these sessions "for fear of shaking the patient's confidence," which is reasonable. But what is questionable in terms of Freud's note-taking - a vital ingredient in any investigative pursuit, particularly when human health is at risk - is the fact that he documented the case history "to writing from memory" (Freud 29) after the three months of sessions was completed. He considered the material "still fresh" in his memory after three months and his interest in making a fair recounting of those therapy sessions was "heightened by my interest in its publication" (Freud 29).

That having been said - and indeed it appears his desire to publish this steamy, ground-breaking and adventuresome research involving the sexual intimacies of an attractive 18-year-old woman was driven in part by his need for peer and popular recognition - Freud admits that the record of his work with Dora "...is not absolutely - phonographically - exact." He adds, however, assurances that the record "can claim to possess a high degree of trustworthiness."

The point of exploring Freud's tactics and strategies in the recording of this case is that Freud seems particularly concerned at the outset of his book that he explain why the results are less than perfect. Given Freud's concern, one can't help but wonder how severe the gaps really are in this case. On page 31 of his book Freud blames some of the study's "shortcomings" on Dora herself; "...its results remain incomplete..." Freud writes, because the "treatment" was "broken off at the patient's own wish when it had reached a certain point." A bit later in this paper the possible reasons as to why Dora quit the treatment will be discussed.

Dr. Patrick J. Mahony, Professor Emeritus at the University of Montreal and the Training and Supervising Analyst for the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, takes objection to previous scholarship on the Dora case. Mahony is put off by earlier critiques, that found the Dora case appropriate for use as a "model for students of psychoanalysis" (Mahony 28), and as "...a classic analysis of the structure and the genesis of a hysteria." Other psychoanalytic researchers were patently incorrect to have claimed the Dora writing by Freud is "...a landmark in the evolution of psychoanalytic technique," writes Mahony. Contrary to those admiring remarks, Mahony views Freud as "unsettled, disconcerted, even overwhelmed"; and he begins his assault on Freud's credibility by alluding to Freud's book, the Interpretation of Dreams, which Freud completed just prior to beginning his sessions with Dora.

The writing of the book was interrupted when Freud developed writer's block; he was then forced him into a systematic self-analysis, and that allowed a number of inconsistencies to be presented, Mahony goes on. The flaws in the book mentioned by Mahony are significant, and blatant, but suffice it to say Mahony has done his homework and there won't be space in this paper to extrapolate his particulars. Mahony spends time critiquing the dream book - in which "chauvinism thematically saturates [the] dialogue" - because much of what Freud used in his treatment of Dora sprang from his interpretation of her dreams.

A quick summary of why Dora wound up on Freud's couch to begin with is instructive. A "Mr. K" sexually molested Dora when she was 13, and made attempts when she was 15. Dora then told her parents about this but they offered nothing in the way of support for their daughter; "she was hung out to dry," Mahony asserted. Mr. K denied that he has molested Dora, and he was able to convince Dora's parents that, according to Mahony's recounting of the story, "...she was obsessed with sex and had fantasized the seductive incident." Meanwhile, Dora's father was willing "to offer her as a barter chip, a consolation prize, to the cuckolded Mr. K," Mahony explains on page 32. And moreover, during her sessions with Freud, in which she wondered out loud if in fact she was suffering more from trauma than hysteria (which was Freud's view of her problem), Freud "over empathized with Dora's traumatizer," Mahony insists.

Freud had a "pitiless attitude" toward Dora, Mahony expresses on page 34. Freud accused Dora of having told her parents about Mr. K's sexual wrongdoing because she wanted "revenge"; and Freud viewed Dora as a "vicious, cunning agent in an adult drama," Mahony believed. And without a "disapproving word toward her pedophilic harasser," Freud allowed Mr. K to slip away into the night and instead "put the spotlight on how Dora's early childhood masturbation" caused her later trauma. Is this the case of a male therapist attaching his chauvinistic bias to a young female patient? Does this begin to appear that Freud was trying to fit Dora into the… READ MORE