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.
What happened to Sigmund Freud's young patient Dora?
· Was Freud's Dora one of the "most repulsive hysterics" as Felix Deutsch writes? Posted June 11, 2014 Four years after Freud has treated her, he tells us, his young patient whom he called Dora ( Ida...
What did Sigmund Freud learn from Dora’s sessions with her?
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.
What does Freud say about Dora's case of hysteria?
· 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 ...
Does Freud's sex-based approach to pschoanalysis apply to Dora's symptoms?
Freud was eager to use this case to demonstrate the hypotheses laid out in his “Interpretation of Dreams” but after only three months of treatment the young woman walked out, without being cured. Five years later Freud published an account of this failed treatment, calling it a “Fragment of an Analysis” and giving his patient the name Dora—that of a servant in his household. …
Why did Dora leave Freuds treatment?
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.
What did Freud do to Dora?
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.
What does Freud have to say about the transference between Dora and himself?
The simple answer is that with Dora Freud realised that the game had fundamentally changed. It was no longer the diagnosis or interpretation that mattered, but the dynamics of the relationship that he had with his patient. Freud called this the 'transference', and it's this phenomena that prompts Lacan's intervention.
What happened to Ida Bauer?
She died in 1912 of tuberculosis, as did her father, Philipp, in 1913. Ida married an aspiring (but unsuccessful) composer who was an employee of her father. The brother, Otto Bauer, was a leader of the Austrian Socialist party between 1918 and 1934.
What does Dora suffer from?
star, Dora the Explorer, has Down Syndrome, and that she also has hydrocephalus, which explains her uniquely large head. Dora's also believed to speak about three times louder than the other characters in the series, because of her mental disability.
Why has Freuds case study of Dora been criticized?
Dora denies both desires. In the late twentieth century, the problem is no longer seen to be Dora's resistance to the male phallus, but it has become Freud's assumptions about women's desires. Freud claimed that he was uncovering hidden desires, but critics suggest that his revelations conceal as much as they expose.
What is transference Freud?
Transference, first described by Sigmund Freud, is a phenomenon in psychotherapy in which there is an unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another. In his later writings, Freud learned that understanding the transference was an important piece of the psychotherapeutic work.
What did hysteria mean?
1 : a psychoneurosis marked by emotional excitability and disturbances of the psychogenic, sensory, vasomotor, and visceral (see visceral sense 4) functions. 2 : behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess political hysteria The plague had caused mass hysteria in the village.
What did Breuer and Freud mean when they said of hysterics like Spielrein hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences?
That hysterics "suffer mainly from reminiscences" is, from the doctors' point of view, good news. It means that these women can be cured by talking. We wish all of our problems could be cured by talking.
Who was Freud's most famous patient?
Sergei PankeevYet enough of speaking in riddles: the house located at 20 Marazlievskaya St. was the childhood home of Sigmund Freud's most notorious patient – Sergei Pankeev, who would become known to the world as the “Wolf Man”.
What did Freud mean by hysteria?
To Freud, hysteria is a psychological disorder (Freud, 1901). He thought that hysteria is rooted in the repression of unpleasant emotions that caused by a traumatic event in the patient`s life.
Who is Ida Bauer?
Ida Bauer (1882–1945) was a hysterical patient of Sigmund Freud. He wrote a famous case study about her using the pseudonym 'Dora' This Study is published in "Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" (1905 [1901], Standard Edition Vol.
What did Dora reveal to Freud?
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.
What did Freud call Dora's symptoms?
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.
What was the turning point in the life of Phillipp Bauer?
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.
Why did Dora's stomach ache?
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.
What is Freud's interpretation of Dora's dreams?
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.
How long did Dora walk in the dream?
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.
What does Dora find herself walking through?
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.
Who brought Dora to Freud?
The crisis that led her father to bring Dora to Freud was her accusation that Herr K had made a sexual advance to her, at which she slapped his face—an accusation which Herr K denied and which her own father disbelieved.
Who recounted Freud's dreams?
Ida (Dora) recounted two dreams to Freud. In the first:
What was Freud's case study?
Freud's case study was condemned in its first review as a form of mental masturbation, an immoral misuse of his medical position. A British physician, Ernest Jones, was led by the study to become a psychoanalyst, gaining "a deep impression of there being a man in Vienna who actually listened to every word his patients said to him...a true psychologist". Carl Jung also took up the study enthusiastically.
What does Freud interpret Ida's hysteria as?
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.
When did Ida return to see Freud?
One year later (April 1902), Ida returned to see Freud for the last time, and explained that her symptoms had mostly cleared up; that she had confronted the Ks, who confessed that she had been right all along; but that she had recently developed pains in her face. Freud added the details of this to his report, but still viewed his work as an overall failure; and (much later) added a footnote blaming himself for not stressing Ida's attachment to Frau K, rather than to Herr K, her husband.
How old was Ida when she was propositioned?
According to Ida, and believed by Freud, Herr K himself had repeatedly propositioned Ida, as early as when she was 14 years old. Ultimately, Freud sees Ida as repressing a desire for her father, a desire for Herr K, and a desire for Frau K as well.
What does Freud mean by the jewel case?
Freud reads both dreams as referring to Ida Bauer's sexual life—the jewel case that was in danger being a symbol of the virginity which her father was failing to protect from Herr K. He interpreted the railway station in the second dream as a comparable symbol.
What did Freud call Dora?
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.
What did Freud find about Dora's father?
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.”
How did Freud detect 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.”
What were Freud's mistakes?
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.”
Who said "I could not in general dispute Dora's characterization of her father"?
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.”
How does Dora's family relate to the K's?
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.”.
What is the second stage of Freud's repression?
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://youtu.be/dIxp32W5ris]
What does Freud think of Dora?
Freud believes that Dora's case is rather ordinary as far of 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 ...
What did Dora tell Freud about Herr K?
Dora tells Freud of an earlier episode with Herr K. Once Herr K. arranged for Dora to meet him alone in his office and then kissed her by surprise. Dora felt disgusted by what Herr K. had done, and Freud finds it odd that Dora was repulsed by an experience that, in his opinion, should have elicited sexual excitement.
What does the maid tell Dora about the station?
The man tells her that the station was two and half hours more. Dora continues and can see the station in front of her but cannot reach it. Suddenly, Dora is at home and she cannot remember traveling from the station to her house. When she arrives, the maid tells her that her mother has already left for the cemetery.
What does Freud believe about smoking?
Freud believes that the smoke represents Dora’s longing to kiss a man, which in the case of a smoker would involve the smell of smoke. Freud, Herr K. and Dora’s father are all “passionate smokers.". Freud believes that Dora has thought about kissing him and during her psychotherapy, she has begun to develop feelings for him.
Why does Dora wake up in her first dream?
In her first dream, Dora’s father wakes her up because the house is on fire. Dora gets dressed quickly to leave the house, but her mother wants to look for her jewel-case before going. Dora’s father exclaims that he will not let himself and his two children die to save his wife’s jewel case.
Why did Freud move to a small town?
As a child, 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. 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.
What is Dora's dream?
Freud argues that Dora’s dream sprang from a fantasy of revenge, directed against her father. In her fantasy, Dora had left home and in her absence, her father had died from grief. As Freud wishes to analyze Dora’s case of hysteria in more depth, she unexpectedly decides to end her treatment.
How old was Dora when she came to Freud?
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.
Who does Freud assume Dora is in love with?
4. Note that Freud takes over the position of the other two men, Dora's father and Herr K : he assumesthat Dora is secretly in love with Herr K.
How is hysteria structured?
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 .
What is Dora's first dream?
1. First dream: Dora awakened by father at night because of fire : must rescue her jewelry box.
Who is Dora jealous of?
But Dora is also jealousof her father's love for Frau K. This explains her strong attachment to Frau K, who played the role of a kind of surrogate mother and friend for her.
What is Dora's hysterical symptom?
This, then, explains Dora’s hysterical symptom, her coughing: the woman's throat is the area of sexual gratification for her father and is also the place where her symptoms occur.
What is the parallel to the story of the governess in Dora's own family?
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.
What is Freud's second assertion?
The second is that hysterical symptoms can often be traced back to a patient’s sexual life.
Why is Freud's second section important?
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.
Overview
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.
Case history
Dora lived with her parents, who had a loveless marriage, but one which took place in close concert with another couple, Herr and Frau K, who were friends of Dora's parents. The crisis that led her father to bring Dora to Freud was her accusation that Herr K had made a sexual advance to her, at which she slapped his face—an accusation which Herr K denied and which her own father disbelieved.
Critical responses
Freud's case study was condemned in its first review as a form of mental masturbation, an immoral misuse of his medical position. A British physician, Ernest Jones, was led by the study to become a psychoanalyst, gaining "a deep impression of there being a man in Vienna who actually listened to every word his patients said to him...a true psychologist". Carl Jung also took up the study enthusiastically.
Literature and popular culture
• Lidia Yuknavitc, 2012. Dora: a Headcase. A novel based on the case, from a contemporary perspective sympathetic to Dora.
• Katz, Maya Balakirsky (2011). "A Rabbi, A Priest, and a Psychoanalyst: Religion in the Early Psychoanalytic Case History". Contemporary Jewry 31 (1): 3–24. doi:10.1007/s12397-010-9059-y
See also
• Emma Eckstein
• Little Hans
• Rat man
• Steven Marcus
• Wolf man
Further reading
• C. Bernheim/C. Kahane, In Dora's Case: Freud-Hysteria-Feminism (1985)
• Mary Jacobus, Reading Woman (1986)
• P. McCaffrey, Freud and Dora: The Artful Dream (1984)
• Günter Rebing: Freuds Phantasiestücke. Die Fallgeschichten Dora, Hans, Rattenmann, Wolfsmann. Athena Verlag Oberhausen 2019, ISBN 978-3-7455-1044-7.
External links
• Jacques Lacan's interpretation of the Dora case - article on LacanOnline.com
• Essay about Dora
• Outline of the Case
• Freud's Dora A Victorian Fable by Doug Davis