Dora: (Ida Bauer)

Freud’s assumption: the case of hysterical disorders are and only are to be found in the intimacies of
patients’ psychosexual life

Dora was treated in Secret at the age of 18

Dora related her story to Freud through a series of questions and then he ventured to interpret her dreams

Family:
Father was a dominating, well-off, and intelligent man. He and Dora were always together when they
were young and she emulated him.

Mother was, by all accounts, completely stupid and focused all of her energy on cleaning. Never wanted
to interact with anyone in her family

Brother: Older than Dora by 1.5 years and takes mother’s side in arguments, however, acknowledges her
many and overpowering shortcomings

Dora’s Illness:
Suffered from coughing and migranes which began at the age of 8 and persisted through 10 years. In the
later years the illness lasted 3-6 weeks as a rule and she lost her voice for the first 2 weeks.

Father’s Illness and the “Ks”

When father felt ill they went to a resort where the climate was better

Met a Family there: Frau and Herr K

Frau K. would take care of Dora’s father and Herr K. would always be very nice to Dora

THE LAKE
When Dora is 14: Herr arranges for his wife and Dora to meet him and then makes his wife not come to
the Lake.

- Kisses Dora and she feels disgusted

Freud: “I should without question consider a person hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement
elicited feelings that were preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable…instead of genital
sensation...feeling which is proper to the tract of mucus membrane at the entrance to the alimentary
canal”  Displacement from one body part to another
Dora’s account of “THE LAKE”
She could still feel a pressure of Herr K’s embrace on her thorax

- Freud suggests that this is the erection she felt elsewhere and she realizes he is correct
- Develops phobia of men in conversation with women in public

Dora Reproaches her father:

Widely known that father would fall sick to see frau K.

- Dora has no doubt they have a love-affair

- Dora has a very clear and district memory of the entire affair
- Dora criticizes father very harshly

Freud: a string of reproaches against other people leads one to suspect a string of self-reproaches

- She dismissed the signs of her own love for Herr K.

o Looked after Herr’s kids
o Admits this to Freud
- Until Herr came on to her she was very supportive of Frau’s relations with father

ILLNESS
Dora sees that Frau K. becomes ill when her husband returns home

- Dora begins to get ill whenever Herr K. is gone

o She stops talking because she only wants to talk to him – confirms this to Freud

Man of Means
Dora insists Frau loves father only for being a man of means

- Actually wants to say father was impotent –admits to Freud when he points out
- Freud questions her how a love affair can exist with impotence
o Demonstrates her knowledge of oral pleasure
 Freud asks what her coughs feel like
 “a tickling like a large member…”
- Dora explains that she threatened to kill herself through a letter to father as an ultimatum to
leave Frau
Dora and Frau
Dora explains how Frau had the loveliest white skin and was always very nice to her

- Tells a story of a governess who fell in love with her father and then was her friend only so
that her father would tolerate her
o Freud- actually talking about Frau you have homosexual tendencies for her
- Frau had a niece who slept with her in her bed when her husband and Dora’s father were not
there
o Went on trips with her Dora is jealous

Freud’s Theory: