Analysis of Hysteria by Sigmund Freud - Essay Example

Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria by Sigmund Freud Compare and Contrast Male and Female Perspectives and the Encompassing Cultural Prejudices and Presumptions Which Define and Determine the Analyst’s Analysis of his Female Patient’s Story and Psychological Trauma in Freud’s Dora. The analysis of Dora, described by Freud as a hysteric, is one of the most interesting cases of psychoanalysis. Some feel that this is the turning point between his abandonment of his belief that his female patients had been sexually abused, and his development of the Oedipus complex, and Psychoanalytic theory as a system for treating the depressed and disturbed. Despite the significance of the case with hindsight, the analysis was never completed, and many see this case history as an example of the way in which Freud misinterpreted the problems which his patients had, instead forcing their case to fit his theories, and not the other way around. It is clear, although again with the benefit of hindsight, that in the case of Dora, Freud was seriously mistaken about the situation she found herself in. He may even have willfully interpreted her very real sufferings at the hands of her father, and his friends, the ‘K’s as imagined in order to treat her symptoms as hysteria. The Event The event which triggers Dora’s unhappiness, and which leads to her analysis by Freud, concerns Dora and one of her father’s friends, and man named ‘Herr K’ by Freud. There are two versions of this event; in Dora’s version, the man accosts her by the lake, and makes sexual advances. According to Dora, this is the second time that Herr K had pressed himself upon her; on the first occasion, she was fourteen, and the friend of the family had first tricked her into meeting her alone, and then kissed her. Although modern society will understand the girl’s revulsion, Freud says “the behavior of this child of fourteen was already entirely and completely hysterical” (Freud, 1990, page 59). Herr K and, after initial belief, Dora’s father, rubbish the story; Herr K even suggests that she has read too many books on sex, and had been ‘over-excited’ in Freud’s phrase. Dora’s father agrees: I myself believe that Dora’s tale of the man’s immoral suggestions is a fantasy that has forced its way into her mind…I am bound to Frau K…the poor woman is most unhappy with her husband, of whom, by the by, I have no very high opinion (Freud, 1990, page 56. [my italics]). It seems very strange that Dora’s own father should take the word of a man whom he does not hold in high regard, above that of his only daughter. As the case history unfolds, we can see clearly that Herr K is a womanizer and a liar, as well as a cuckold. Dora is a young, intelligent and truthful woman from a good family; yet her account of the event by the lake is dismissed in favor of the man’s version. That Freud’s analysis of the case focuses upon Dora’s feelings for Herr K should therefore come as no surprise. In 1900, Sigmund Freud began treating a young girl, Ida Bauer, at the instigation of her father, Philip. He was a wealthy and influential businessman, whom Freud had already treated at the suggestion of a friend, Herr K. Freud himself makes clear that Ida’s father wanted her silenced: He had given his support to the treatment so long as he could hope that I should ‘talk’ Dora out of her belief that there was something more than friendship between him and Frau K. His interest faded when he observed that it was not my intention to bring about that result. (Freud, 1990, page 150) As Jeffrey Masson has noted, in Nineteenth Century Germany, young women who opposed their parents were frequently shut away in asylums, diagnosed with ‘Moral insanity’, the symptoms of which involved independence and willfulness: “Even when she was only seventeen, my daughter had the insane desire to be free and independent” (mother quoted in Masson, 1997, page 80) It is pretty evident, therefore, that Philip Bauer expected Freud, who had treated both himself and Herr K earlier, to help them keep Dora quiet, about not only Herr Bauer’s affair with Frau K, but also Herr K’s advances to Dora by the lake. Dora, it seems, was also hoping from something from Freud’s analysis; she never states clearly what this is, but it seems obvious that what she wants from the situation is vindication – she would like the professional, the influential, the doctor, her father’s confidante, and the man, namely Freud, to confirm her version of events Freud could be said to have disappointed them both – neither get absolutely what they want, though it is not without significance that Freud failed to include Dora’s claims about Herr K in her father’s concerns. At the start, it was this very incident which Herr Bauer put the most emphasis upon; in fact, he did not say anything at all about his affair with Frau K, although it seems as though most of fashionable Vienna knew about it, and were making pointed remarks in Dora’s direction (Freud, 1990, page 64). There are two central male figures in Dora’s life: her father, and Herr K. Freud manages to analyze Dora as being in love with both of them, although neither of them are particularly attractive figures; Dora’s father suffers from Syphilis, and is also impotent; he has probably passed this infection onto his wife and his children, since it is said by Freud to have originated ‘before his marriage’ (Freud, 1990 page 49). It is not impossible that some of Dora’s symptoms, which Freud defines as hysterical, were in fact the symptoms of tertiary Syphilis, which would have been well-known to Freud as a doctor. He clearly associates deviant sexuality with Dora, analyzing her stomach aches as a symptom of persistent masturbation, for example. Dora’s mother may also suffer from ‘guilt’ about having the disease, as is shown by her continual cleaning of the house. House may mean both home, as in building, and family, as in ‘the house of Tudor’, so we could see Frau Bauer as attempting to clean from her family the stigma of syphilis. As well as sick and self-deceiving, Herr Bauer is also carrying on a blatant affair with Frau K: the different male and female perspectives on this can be seen in Dora’s brother’s reply to her complaints: My brother says we children have no right to criticize this behavior of father’s. He declares that we ought not to trouble ourselves about it, and ought even to be glad, perhaps, that he has found a woman he can love (Freud 1990, page 88) Freud interprets Dora’s lack of agreement with her brother as a symptom of her suppressed desire for her father. We can see this as partially an effect of the society in which he lives: Freud sees the girl as owing obedience to her father, the Victorian equivalent of ‘love’ in the filial sense; she does not – therefore, that love must be being suppressed. If it is being suppressed, therefore it is sexual love: Dora is repressing her desire to ‘marry’ her father, or at least take Frau K’s place. She does not resent Frau K (because she sees her as a woman trapped in a hateful marriage), therefore she must want to take Frau K’s place in Herr Bauer’s bed. The other man is, if possible, even more odious than Herr Bauer. Herr K pursues a girl of fourteen, an age when we would consider his advances as abuse, or sexual grooming at best. In Dora’s lifetime, however, girls married as young as twelve, so there was nothing culturally wrong with Herr K’s advances, bar the fact that he was married. However, Dora not only finds him unattractive (and one has to ask how old Herr K is. Freud describes him as “Still quite young and of prepossessing appearance”, this seems to imply a man in his forties or fifties), but he has also had relationships with two governesses of her acquaintance, and Freud may be correct when he suggests that the slap was from “wounded pride” (Freud, 1990, page 147). The refusal, however, was simply that of a much younger girl to an aged and married man. Freud however, sees this refusal as evidence of the girl’s desire to be married, and more specifically to marry Herr K. “May you not have thought that he wanted to get a divorce so as to marry you” (Freud, 1990, page 149). Freud almost suggests to Dora that if her father was divorced, and the Ks were divorced, then the two men could have the women they desired, and everything would turn out happily. It is after this suggestion about the marriage that Dora agrees and leaves, never to return. Since Dora believes that she is being tacitly offered to Herr K in exchange for his acceptance of his wife’s adultery, the idea of marriage to the man must seem appalling. Herr K has been sending Dora “flowers everyday for a whole year…to take every opportunity of giving her presents” (Freud, 1990, page 66), clearly courting her, without her father making any objection. While Freud dismisses the possibility of a formal contract, this is not what Dora means; instead, she thinks her father has agreed to turn a blind eye to Herr K’s pursuit of her, in exchange for a similar blind eye over the father’s relationship with Frau K. There is the implicit suggestion, in the question of the divorce that Herr K was prepared to offer this to Frau K so long as Dora was offered up to him (Was this the purpose of Frau K teaching her about sex?) “Now she wants to [divorce] but he no longer does” (Freud, 1990, page 149). Freud and Dora heard the same story, but analyzed it in very different ways. For Dora, it was a story about the unhappiness male-female relationships bring: her mother, Frau K, the governesses, all caught in unhappy relationships with men, and Dora herself being used by the adults as a pawn in their sexual plays. Freud saw it as a story about the repressed love of a girl for both her father, and another wealthy, influential man. The sad truth seems to be that Dora was absolutely correct about what was happening to her; her father only wanted her silenced, not cured; Herr K only wanted her compliance, and was prepared to slander her sexually when she rebuffed him – Freud should have spotted that, at least, before suggesting that Dora and Herr K marry; or the fact that Herr Bauer was willing to offer his daughter to a man he had a low opinion of; neither of the men in her life cared about Dora, they only wanted to satisfy their own personal desires. Bibliography Freud, Sigmund “Dora”: Fragment of an analysis of a case of Hysteria in Case Histories I Penguin, New York, 1990. Masson, Jeffrey Against Therapy Harper Collins, London. 1997. Read More