Freud's case study of Dora

This research examines Freud's case study of a patient he calls "Dora." The research will set forth the cultural context in which the case study appeared and then discuss ways in which a feminist reading of Freud's text has the effect of interrogating, without necessarily entirely discrediting, the theory, methodology, and analysis employed, as well as conclusions reached, by Freud in treatment of Dora.

It is impossible to address the content of Dora's case without some reference to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis that Freud was developing. Freud's theory of personality is constructed out of three principal components (ego, superego, and id), plus one ancillary component (libido). In what is commonly referred to as the structural hypothesis, Freud defines each component operationally, explaining how each functions to build an individual's psychoemotional sense of self and place in the world. In his monograph Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud refers to the ego as the "immediate feeling" of self, "as something autonomous and unitary" (12-13). The superego, meanwhile, represents the ego's internalization of and trade-offs with external influences, or "objects," whether conscience, family, or society (74). Complicating interplay of ego and superego is the id, or unconscious drives that are the energy source "for which [the ego] serves as a kind of fa�ade" (13). Two additional instincts--the libido, or eros or sexual instinct, and its opposite the death instinct--

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K., Freud says that Dora describes Frau K. "in accents more appropriate to a lover than to a defeated rival" (Freud 54). Dora's situation verges on soap opera: Her father, a syphilitic bounder who has evidently passed certain physical aspects of his disease to wife and children, is currently involved in a protracted love affair with his friend's wife Frau K. Meanwhile, Herr K., evidently having little else to occupy him, has propositioned Dora, whereupon she is packed off to the good Dr. Freud because of what Dora's father and Herr K. declare to be her fantasy. Dora's father denies that his relationship with Frau K. is improper, and both he and Frau K. have expressed shock, shock at Dora's preoccupation with sexual issues. Dora's attempt to force a confrontation of the scandal with Frau K. does not serve her very well. Indeed, Frau K., formerly Dora's confidante, has really been ingratiating herself so as to win the affections of her father. Freud almost passes over the soap opera aspects of the family circle, instead decoding Dora's dreams to highlight her psychological repression of Oedipal attachment to her father on one hand and--more crucially--a homosexual attachment to his love object (Frau K.) on the other. Freud cites "

Category: Psychology - F