Dora

In October 1900, Philip Bauer, a Jewish industrialist living in Vienna, took his eighteen year old daughter to see Dr Freud. This was the same doctor who, a few years earlier, had successfully treated him for venereal symptoms. Now, his daughter was acting peculiarly, saying strange things; she had even threatened suicide; could Dr Freud restore her to reason? From Freud's point of view, the case did not seem to be particularly promising, at least in terms of offering new features for the theories which he was developing. The young woman was displaying the typical signs of 'hysteria', which he had encountered many times previously. However, Freud took her on. His finances at the time were none too secure. A few days later, writing to his friend Wilhelm Fleiss, Freud mentioned that the "case has smoothly opened to the existing collection of picklocks" (Freud, 1985: 427). The young patient was to terminate the treatment abruptly at the end of that December. Freud wrote up his case-notes in the January of the new year. It was not until 1905 that the cautiously entitled 'Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria' was published in a specialist journal.

This was the inauspicious beginnings of a report which has become recognized as "the first of Freud's great case histories" and which has taken its place as "one of the classic reports in the psychiatric literature" (Loewenberg, 1985: 188; see also Marcus, 1986). 'Dora', the pseudonym, which Freud gave to the patient, Ida Bauer, has become a familiar name in psycho-analytic circles. In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in Dora and in Freud's treatment of her (see, inter alia, Blum, 1994; Cixous and ClÐ"©mont, 1986; Gallop, 1982 and 1986; Gearhart, 1986; Jacobus, 1987; Lacan, 1986; Masson, 1990; Moi, 1986; Ramas, 1983; Rose, 1986; for background studies of 'Dora' and her family, see Appignanesi and Forrester, 1993; Deutsch, 1986; Rogow, 1978 and 1979; and, above all, Hannah Decker, 1991). Much of the renewed interest has stemmed from feminist questioning of psychoanalysis. Scholars have debated whether psycho-analytic ideas should be rejected outright for their masculine assumptions or whether a reformulation is possible (see, for example, Brennan, 1989; Frosh, 1994; Gallop, 1982; Holway, 1989; Mitchell, 1974; Sayers, 1990). These debates have led feminist scholars to look at the famous case-studies in new ways. This has involved reinterpreting what went on in the Bauer household and in Dr Freud's cramped consulting-room. For some feminists, Dora has become a heroine, who disrupts the deceits of the patriarchal family. Others have seen Dora as a tragic victim of masculine power. Freud's role in the saga is being reassessed. He no longer appears as a passive listener and detached scientist. He is part of patriarchal power. He thinks like a man; acts like one, and his new theories, it is said, expressed masculine assumptions in the guise of science.

Without doubt feminist re-analyses have succeeded in revealing aspects of the case which previously lay unnoticed. It is hard now not to see the behaviour of the males in the story as the problem, with Dora's symptoms as the effect. Dora tells Freud of the complex web of deception which has drawn her family close to the life of the K's. The two families often go on holiday together. Dora looks after the K's young children. She is particularly friendly with Frau K. The connections are not innocent. Her father, who has encouraged the closeness between the families, is having a protracted affair with Frau K, who is somewhat younger than himself. Herr K has been pursuing Dora since she was fourteen. On a couple of occasions, he grabs hold of her, trying to kiss her; one holiday he even tries to enter her bedroom while she sleeps. After an incident by a lake, when again he propositions her, Dora tells her father. However, her father accuses Dora of inventing the whole tale, suggesting that she is engaging in unhealthy sexual fantasies. Freud, for his part, accepts Dora's story. Yet he wonders why Dora claims to feel disgust, rather than sexual desire, when Herr K grabs her, pressing his erect phallus against her body. Freud is of the opinion that Dora unconsciously desires Herr K. For good measure, he also claims that she desires Frau K. 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. Feminist re-analyses often seek to reveal what Freud, unknowingly, was concealing, such as, for example, his own unadmitted attraction to the patient, whom he describes as being "in the first bloom of youth - a girl of intelligent and engaging looks" ('Fragment', 1977 ed.: 53). Yet, as will be suggested, revelation is not a simple matter. Just as Freud's revelations also involved omissions, or forgettings, then so do some of the present revealings of what Freud forgot to reveal. And, it will be argued, politics is central to these revelations and forgettings.

Omitting Politics

Feminist critics and other radicals have often accused Freudian psychoanalysis of being apolitical. It is said that Freud reduces all to family dramas, which he interprets in terms of universal, or biological, drives. In consequence, it is argued that Freud not only fails to discuss general politics, but also he does not notice the politics of the family. For instance, Jane Gallup writes of "the pernicious apoliticism of psychoanalysis"; she claims that "one of psychoanalysis's consistent errors is to reduce everything to a family paradigm, sociopolitical questions are always brought back to the model father-mother-child" (1982: 144). Toril Moi claims that an understanding of gender politics is vital for any re-analysis of Dora's case. Freud, she argues, failed to have an awareness of the inequalities of gender; in his treatment of Dora, he showed that he is necessarily on the side of oppression, for he is in a "patriarchal society...an educated bourgeois male, incarnating malgrÐ"© lui patriarchal values" (Moi, 1986: 192).

Freud appears, in such critiques, as the powerful male, at one with the patriarchal forces of his society. The doctor and the wealthy industrialist conspire, whether knowingly or unknowingly, against the young girl. Orthodox psychoanalysis, with its lack of political perspective, cannot understand its own complicity in the operation of social power. As such, psycho-analysis is deeply implicated in the