Dora, P. 2

Freud often mixes fact and fiction together. However, it stood out to me when Freud was interpreting Dora’s thoughts, and writes how she could express her desires. One example of this is when Freud states, “The resolution might have been consciously expressed in some such words as these: “I must fly from this house, for I see that my virginity is threatened here; I shall go away with my father…”” (77). He writes in Dora’s voice, which is like fact, but since she didn’t actually say those words, they are fictional. Since psychoanalysis interprets each thing a patient says (or clue), then connects it to larger themes, Freud has to jump between the facts of what he is told to the fiction of what he believes it means. After he does that, he can show how all the clues come together to form an entire picture of the patient’s problem. This shows how much guesswork psychoanalysis takes. It is mainly conjecture, and can’t really be proven.

 Dora’s father put her in psychotherapy so that a therapist (Freud) can convince her that he and Frau K weren’t having an affair. As Freud interprets what Dora says, her dreams, she is annoyed by him telling her that she doesn’t really know what she is thinking about, and that he does. In a sense, Dora feels that Freud is treating her like her father would, so she transfers her feelings about her father onto Freud. That is why she quits therapy only after a few months to “take revenge” on Freud, much like she did to her father by leaving him letter and leaving the house. This action also shows that Dora might also transfer her feelings about Herr K. onto Freud because he is another middle-aged man that she wanted to defy. Freud also shows transference of his feelings onto Dora. I think that he often thinks about colleagues and others who criticize his theory of psychoanalysis, and feels the need to defend his ideas. It seems like he uses Dora and her case to prove psychoanalysis is legitimate. As we mentioned in class, “dora” means gift in Greek, and Freud considered Dora’s case as a gift to him to refute what his critics say. The way he interacts with Dora also indicates that he is “speaking” to his critics. He listens to what she says, and then corrects her or tells her she doesn’t know what she is talking about. Freud believes Dora is wrong about her own thoughts just as his critics are wrong about psychoanalysis and dream interpretation when they discredit them. He also claims several times that this case that he only “failed” because he didn’t have enough time with the patient, and not because his methods were inadequate. 

I think he is right about how dreams include specific real scenes and imagined ones; they are a combination of our waking reality and representations of our wishes. We don’t really understand or remember our dreams, so it seems that they do come from an unconscious, or source we are unaware of. Dreams are also a “safe zone” for people to express their deepest thoughts or wishes because nobody else can see what they are dreaming, and therefore can’t criticize them. However, his associations with words and symbols seem outlandish at points. He clings to certain ideas obsessively like the jewel case and bedwetting. In the postscript, he defends his methods of dream interpretation. He states that he wrote less about technique because if he hadn’t, “The result would have been almost unreadable” (103). He also claims that his theory isn’t just psychological, without mention of organic basis. Freud mentions that sexual function relates to organic cause, and as we know, he speaks a lot about that.