F RE U D

A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS

Edited by
Perry M e£se I ,
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"

Prentice-Hall, Inc. ta\

ASlfCllUIi lOOK
Englewood Cliffs, N.f.
 IB2 Jacques Derrida
respectful of the originality of the literary signifier has not yet begun, and
this is surely not an accident. Until now, only the analysis of literary
signlfieds, that is, nonliterary signified meanings, has been undertaken.
But such questions refer to the entire history of literary forms themselves,
and to the history of everything within them which was destined precisely
to authorize this disdain of the signifier.
4. Finally, to continue designating these fields according to traditional
Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History
and problematic boundaries, what might be called a new psychoanalytic
graphology, which would take into account the contributions of the three By Steven Marcus
kinds of research we have just outlined roughly. Here, Melanie Klein per­
haps opens the way. As concerns the forms of signs, even within phonetic
writing, the cathexes of gestures, and of movements, of letters, lines, I
points, the elements of the writing apparatus (instrument, surface, sub­
stance, etc.), a text like The Role of the School in the Libidinal Develop­ It is generally agreed that Freud's case histories are unique. Today more
ment ofthe Child (1923) indicates the direction to be taken (d. also, Strachey, than half a century after they were written they are still widely read. Even
Some Unconscious Factors in Reading). more, they are still widely used for instruction and training in psychoanalytic
Melanie Klein's entire thematic, her analysis of the constitution of good institutes. One of the inferences that such a vigorous condition of survival
and bad objects, her genealogy of morals could doubtless begin to illum­ prompts is that these writings have not yet been superseded. Like other
inate, if followed prudently, the entire problem of the arch i-trace, not in masterpieces of literature or the arts, these works seem to possess c;e~in
its essence (it does not have one), but in terms of valuation and devaluation. transhistorical qualities-although it may by no means be easy to s~cifYI
Writing as sweet nourishment or as excrement, the trace as seed or mortal what those qualities are. The implacable "march of science" has not\-or
germ, wealth or weapon, detritus and/or penis, etc. has not yet-consigned them to "mere" history. Their singular and mys­
How, for example, on the stage of history, can writing as excrement terious complexity, density, and richness have thus far preve~d such a
separated from the living flesh and the sacred body of the hieroglyph transformation and demotion.
(Artaud), be put into communication with what is said in Numbers about This state of affairs has received less attention than it merits. Freud's case
the parched woman drinking the inky dust of the law; or what is said in histories-and his works in general-are unique as pieces or kinds of
Ezekiel about the son of man who fills his entrails with the scroll of the law writing, and it may be useful to examine one of Freud's case histories from
which has become sweet as honey in his mouth? the point of view of literary criticism, to analyze it as a piece of writing, and
to determine whether this method of proceeding may yield results that
other means have not. My assumption-and conclusion-is that Freud is a
great writer and that one of his major case histories is a great work of
literature-that is to say it is both an outstanding creative and imaginative
performance and an intellectual and cognitive achievement of the highest
order. And yet this triumphant greatness is in part connected with the cir­
cumstance that it is about a kind of failure, and that part of the failure re­
mains in fact unacknowledged and unconscious.
"Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria," better known as the case
of Dora, is Freud's first great case history-oddly enough he was to write
only four others. It may be helpful for the reader if at the outset I refresh

"Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History," by Steven Marcus. Copyright <0 1974
by Steven Marcus. The essay first appeared in its present form in Partisan Review 41:1 (1974),
12-23, 89-108; the full version appears in Representations: Essays on Literature and Society
(New York: Random House, 1975). Reprinted by permission of the author.

183
 184 Steven Marcus Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History 185
his memory by briefly reviewing some of the external facts of the case. In 'petite hysterie 'with the commonest of all somatic and mental symptoms....
the autumn of 1900, Dora, an eighteen-year-old young woman, began treat­ More interesting cases of hysteria have no doubt been published."
ment with Freud. She did so reluctantly and against her will, and, Freud This disavowal of anything sensational to come is of course a bit of shrewd
writes, "it was only her father's authority which induced her to come to me disingenuousness on Freud's part, for what follows at once is his assertion
at all." Neither Dora nor her father were strangers to Freud. He had made that he is going to elucidate the meaning, origin, and function of every one
separate acquaintance with both of them in the past. during certain episodes of these symptoms by means of the events and experiences of Dora's life.
of illness that characterized their lives if not the life of the family as a He is going in other words to discover the "psychological determinants"
whole. (Freud knew other members of the family as well.) that will account for Dora's illnesses; among these determinants he lists
As for Dora herself, her afflictions, both mental and physical, had be­ three principal conditions: "a psychical trauma, a conflict of affects, and ...
gun in early childhood and had persisted and flourished with variations a disturbance in the sphere of sexuality." And so Freud begins the treatment
and fluctuating intensities until she was presented to Freud for therapy. by asking Dora to talk about her experiences. What emerges is the substance
Among the symptoms from which she suffered were to be found dyspnea, of the case history, a substance which takes all of Freud's immense analytic,
migraine, and periodic attacks of nervous coughing often accompanied by expository, and narrative talents to bring into order. I will again very
complete loss of voice during part of the episode. Dora had in fact first been roughly and briefly summarize some of this material.
brought by her father to Freud two years earlier, when she was sixteen and Sometime after 1888, when the family had moved to B ___ , the health
suffering from a cough and hoarseness; he had then "proposed giving her resort where the father's tuberculosis had sent them, an intimate and en­
psychological treatment," but this suggestion was not adopted since "the during friendship sprang up between them and a couple named K. Dora's
attack in question, like the others, passed off spontaneously." In the course father was deeply unhappy in his marriage and apparently made no bones
of his treatment of Dora, Freud also learned of further hysterical-or about it. The K.'s too were unhappily married, as it later turned out. Frau "
hysterically connected-productions on her part, such as a feverish attack K. took to nursing Dora's father during these years of his illness. She also \
that mimicked appendicitis, a periodic limp, and a vaginal catarrh or dis­ befriended Dora, and they behaved toward one another in the most familiar
charge. Moreover, during the two-year interval between Dora's first visit way and talked together about the most intimate subjects. Herr ~ her
and the occasion on which her father brought her to Freud a second time, husband, also made himself a close friend of Dora's-going regular1}.for
and "handed her over to me for psychotherapeutic treatment. .. Dora had walks with her and giving her presents. Dora in her turn befriended the
grown unmistakably neurotic." Dora was now "in the first bloom of youth­ K.'s two small children, "and had been almost a mother to them." What
a girl of intelligent and engaging looks." Her character had, however, begins to be slowly if unmistakably disclosed is that Dora's father and
undergone an alteration. She had become chronically depressed, and was Frau K. had established a sexual liaison and that this relation had by the
generally dissatisfied with both herself and her family. She had become time of Dora's entering into treatment endured for many years. At the same
unfriendly toward the father whom she had hitherto loved, idealized, and time Dora's father and Frau K. had tacitly connived at turning Dora over
identified with. She was "on very bad terms" with her mother, for whom to Herr K., just as years later her father "handed her over to me [Freud]
she felt a good deal of scorn. "She tried to avoid social intercourse, and em­ for psychotherapeutic treatment." In some sense everyone was conspiring
ployed herself-so far as she was allowed to by the fatigue and lack of con­ to conceal what was going on; and in some yet further sense everyone was
centration of which she complained-with attending lectures for women conspiring to deny that anything was going on at all. What we have here, on
and with carrying on more or less serious studies." Two further events one of its sides, is a classical Victorian domestic drama, that is at the same
precipitated the crisis which led to her being delivered to Freud. Her time a sexual and emotional can of worms.
parents found a written note in which she declared her intention to commit Matters were brought to a crisis by two events that occurred to Dora at
suicide because "as she said, she could no longer endure her life. " Following two different periods of her adolescence. When she was fourteen, Herr K.
this there occurred one day "a slight passage of words" between Dora and contrived one day to be alone with her in his place of business; in a state
her father, which ended with Dora suddenly losing consciousness-the of sexual excitement, he "suddenly clasped the girl to him and pressed a
attack, Freud believed, was "accompanied by convulsions and delirious kiss on her lips." Dora responded with a "violent feeling of disgust," and
states," although it was lost to amnesia and never came up in the analysis. hurried away. This experience, like those referred to in the foregoing
Having outlined this array of affections, Freud dryly remarks that such paragraph, was never discussed with or mentioned to anyone, and relations
a case "does not upon the whole seem worth recording. It is merely a case of continued as before. The second scene took place two years later in the
 186 Steven Marcus Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History 187
summer when Dora was sixteen (it was just after she had seen Freud for the was in his customary way skeptical about such impassioned protestations
first time). She and Herr K. were taking a walk by a lake in the Alps. In and repudiations-and surmised that something in the way of an opposite
Dora's words, as they come filtered to us through Freud, Herr K. "had the series of thoughts or self-reproaches lay behind them-he was forced to
audacity to make her a proposal." Apparently he had begun to declare his come to "the conclusion that Dora's story must correspond to the facts in
love for this girl whom he had known so well for so long. "No sooner had every respect." If we try to put ourselves in the place of this girl between
she grasped Herr K.'s intention than, without letting him finish what he had her sixteenth and eighteenth years, we can at once recognize that her situa­
to say, she had given him a slap in the face and hurried away." The episode tion was a desperate one. The three adults to whom she was closest, whom
as a whole leads Freud quite plausibly to ask: "If Dora loved Herr K., what she loved the most in the world, were apparently conspiring-separately,
was the reason for her refusing him in the scene by the lake? Or at any rate, in tandem, or in concert-to deny her the reality of her experience. They
why did her refusal take such a brutal form, as though she were embittered were conspiring to deny Dora her reality and reality itself. This betrayal
against him? And how could a girl who was in love feel insulted by a pro­ touched upon matters that might easily unhinge the mind of a young per­
posal which was made in a manner neither tactless nor offensive?" It may son; for the three adults were not betraying Dora's love and trust alone;
occur to us to wonder whether in the extended context of this case that slap they were betraying the structure of the actual world. And indeed when
in the face was a "brutal form" of refusal; but as for the other questions Dora's father handed her over to Freud with the parting injunction "Please
posed by Freud they are without question rhetorical in character. try and bring her to reason," there were no two ways of taking what he
On this second occasion Dora did not remain silent. Her father was pre­ meant. Naturally he had no idea of the mind and character of the physician
paring to depart from the Alpine lake, and she declared her determination to whom he had dealt this leading remark.
to leave at once with him. Two weeks later she told the story of the scene by
the lake to her mother, who relayed it-as Dora had clearly intended-to \
her father. In due course Herr K. was "called to account" on this score, but II
he "denied in the most emphatic terms having on his side made any ad­ \
vances" and suggested that she "had merely fancied the whole scene she Dora began treatment with Freud some time in October 1900. Freud wrote
had described." Dora's father "believed" the story concocted by Herr­ to Fliess that "the case has opened smoothly to my collection of p~locks,"
and Frau- K., and it is from this moment, more than two years before she but the analysis was not proceeding well. The material produced was very
came to Freud for treatment, that the change in Dora's character can be rich, but Dora was there more or less against her will. Moreover, she was
dated. Her love for the K. 's turned into hatred, and she became obsessed more than usually amnesic about events in her remote past and about her
with the idea of getting her father to break off relations with them. She inner l,lnd mental life. The analysis found its focus and climax in two
saw through the rationalizations and denials of her father and Frau K., dreams. The first of these was the production by Dora of a dream that in
and had "no doubt that what bound her father to this young and beautiful the past she had dreamed recurrently. Among the many messages con­
woman was a common love-affair." Nothing that could help to confirm this cealed by it, Freud made out one that he conveyed to his patient: "'You
view had escaped her perception, which in this connection was pitilessly have decided to give up the treatment,'" he told her, adding, '''to which,
sharp...." Indeed, "the sharp-sighted Dora" was an excellent detective after all, it is only your father who makes you come.''' It was a self-fulfilling
when it came to uncovering her father's clandestine sexual activities, and interpretation. A few weeks after the first dream, the second dream occurred.
her withering criticisms of her father's character- that he was "insincere ... Freud spent two hours elucidating it, and at the beginning of the third,
had a strain of baseness in his character ... only thought of his own enjoy­ which took place on December 31, 1900, Dora informed him that she was
ment ... had a gift for seeing things in the light which suited him best"­ there for the last time. Freud pressed on during this hour and presented
were in general concurred in by Freud. Freud also agreed with Dora that Dora with a series of stunning and outrageously intelligent interpretations.
there was something in her embittered if exaggerated contention that "she The analysis ended as follows: "Dora had listened to me without any of her
had been handed over to Herr K. as the price of his tolerating the relations usual contradictions. She seemed to be moved; she said good-bye to me very
between her father and his wife." Nevertheless, the cause of her greatest warmly, with the heartiest wishes for the New Year, and came no more."
embitterment seems to have been her father's "readiness to consider the Dora's father subsequently called on Freud two or three times to reassure
scene by the lake as a product of her imagination." And although Freud him that Dora was returning, but Freud knew better than to take him at
 188 Steven Marcus Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History 189

his word. Fifteen months later, in April 1902, Dora returned for a single off the work. One month later, he made up his mind and sent it off, an­
visit; what she had to tell Freud on that occasion was of some interest, but nouncing to Fliess that "it will meet the gaze of an astonished public in the
he knew that she was done with him, as indeed she was. autumn." But nothing of the sort was to occur, and what happened next
Dora was actuated by many impulses in breaking off the treatment; was, according to Jones, "entirely mysterious" and remains so. Freud either
prominent among these partial motives was revenge-upon men in general sent it off to Ziehen, the editor who had already accepted it, and then having
and at that moment Freud in particular, who was standing for those other sent it asked for it back. Or he sent it off to another magazine altogethet,
men in her life who had betrayed and injured her. He writes rather rue­ the Journal fur Psychologie und Neurologie, whose editor, one Brodmann,
fully of Dora's "breaking off so unexpectedly, just when my hopes of a suc­ refused to publish it. The upshot was that Freud returned the manuscript
cessful termination of the treatment were at their highest, and her thus to a drawer for four more years. And when he did at last send it into print,
bringing those hopes to nothing-this was an unmistakable act of vengeance it was in the journal that had accepted it in the first place.
on her part." And although Dora's "purpose of self-injury" was also served But we are not out of the darkness and perplexities yet, for when Freud
by this action, Freud goes on clearly to imply that he felt hurt and wounded finally decided in 1905 to publish the case, he revised the work once again.
by her behavior. Yet it could not have been so unexpected as all that, since There is one further touch of puzzlements. Freud got the date of his case
as early as the first dream, Freud both understood and had communicated wrong. When he wrote or rewrote it, either in January 1901 or in 1905,
this understanding to Dora that she had already decided to give up the he assigned the case to the autumn of 1899 instead of 1900. And he continued
treatment. What is suggested by this logical hiatus is that although Dora to date it incorrectly, repeating the error in 1914 in the "History of the
had done with Freud, Freud had not done with Dora. And this supposition Psychoanalytic Movement" and again in 1923 when he added a number of
is supported by what immediately followed. As soon as Dora left him, Freud new footnotes to the essay on the occasion of its publication in the eighth
began writing up her case history - a proceeding that, as far as I have been volume of his Gesammelte SchTlften. Among the many things suggested"
able to ascertain, was not in point of immediacy a usual response for him. by this recurrent error is that in some sense he had still not done witl;l
He interrupted the composition of The Psychopathology of Everyday LtJe Dora, as indeed I think we shall see he had not. The modern reader maY'
on which he was then engaged and wrote what is substantially the case of be inclined to remark that these questions of date, of revision, problems of
Dora during the first three weeks of January 1901. On January 25, he wrote textual status and authorial uncertainties of attitude would be mo,suit­
to Fliess that he had finished the work the day before and added, with that able to a discussion of a literary text-a poem, play, or novel-than to a
terrifying self-confidence of judgment that he frequently revealed, "Any­ work of "science." But such a conception of the nature of scientific dis­
how, it is the most subtle thing I have yet written and will produce an even course-particularly the modes of discourse that are exercised in those
more horrifying effect than usual." The title he had at first given the new disciplines which are not preponderantly or uniformly mathematical or
work-HDreams and Hysteria"-suggests the magnitude of ambition that quantitative-has to undergo a radical revision.
was at play in him. At the same time, however, Freud's settling of his ac­ The general form of what Freud has written bears certain suggestive
count with Dora took on the proportions of a heroic inner and intellectual resemblances to a modern experimental noveL Its narrative and expository
enterprise. course, for example, is neither linear nor rectilinear; instead its organiza­
Yet that account was still by no means settled, as the obscure subsequent tion is plastic, involuted, and heterogeneous, and follows spontaneously
history of this work dramatically demonstrates. In the first letter of January an inner logic that seems frequently to be at odds with itself; it often loops
25, 1901, Freud had written to Fliess that the paper had already been ac­ back around itself and is multidimensional in its representation of both its
cepted by Ziehen, joint editor of the Monatsschrift fur Psychiatrie und material and itself. Its continuous innovations in formal structure seem
Neurologie. On the fifteenth of February, in another letter to Fliess, he unavoidably to be dictated by its substance, by the dangerous, audacious,
remarks that he is now finishing up The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, disreputable, and problematical character of the experiences being repre­
and that when he has done so, he will correct it and the case history. About sented and dealt with, and by the equally scandalous intentions of the
two months later, in March 1901, according to Ernest Jones, Freud showed author and the outrageous character of the role he has had the presumption
"his notes of the case" to his close friend, Oscar Rie. The reception Rie to assume. In content, however, what Freud has written is in parts rather
gave to them was such, reports Freud, that "I thereupon determined to like a play by Ibsen, or more precisely like a series of Ibsen's plays. And as
make no further effort to break down my state of isolation." On May 8, one reads through the case of Dora, scenes and characters from such works
1901, Freud wrote to Fliess that he had not yet "made up his mind" to send as Pillars of Society, A Doll's House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, The
 190 Steven Marcus Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History 191

Wild Duck, and Rosmersholm rise up and flit through the mind. There is, to be subjected, but only the results of that process." That is to say, what
however, this difference. In this Ibsen-like drama, Freud is not only Ibsen, we have before us is not a transcription in print of a tape recording of
the creator and playwright; he is also and directly one of the characters in eleven weeks of analysis but something that is abridged, edited, synthesized,
the action, and in the end suffers in a way that is comparable to the suffering and constructed from the very outset. And as if this were not enough, Freud
of the others. introduces yet another context in which the work has to be regarded as
What I have been reiterating is that the case of Dora is first and last an fragmentary and incomplete. It is obvious, he argues, "that a single case
extraordinary piece of writing, and it is to this circumstance in several of history, even if it were complete and open to no doubt, cannot provide an
its most striking aspects that we should direct our attention. For it is a case answer to all questions arising out of the problem of hysteria." Thus, like
history, a kind or genre of writing-that is to say a particular way of con­ a modernist writer-which in part he is-Freud begins by elaborately
ceiving and constructing human experience in written language- that in announcing the problematical status of his undertaking and the dubious
Freud's hands became something that it never was before. character of his achievement.
Even more, like some familiar "unreliable narrator" in modernist fic­
tion, Freud pauses at regular intervals to remind the reader of this case
III history that "my insight into the complex of events composing it [has]
remained fragmentary," that his understanding of it remains in some es­
The ambiguities and difficulties begin with the very title of the work, sential sense permanently occluded. This darkness and constraint are the
"Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria." It is a fragment in the sense result of a number of converging circumstances, some of which have al­
that its "results" are "incomplete." The treatment was "broken off at the ready been touched on and include the shortness of the analysis and its
patient's own wish," at a time when certain problems "had not been attacked having been broken off by Dora at a crucial point. But it also includes the
and others had only been imperfectly elucidated." It follows that the analysis circumstance that the analysis-any analysis-must proceed by frag~ ,
itself is "only a fragment," as are "the following pages" of writing which mentary methods, by analyzing thoughts and events bit by discontinuous, \
present it. To which the modern reader, flushed with the superior powers bit. And at the end of one virtuoso passage in which Freud demonstrates'
of his educated irony, is tempted to reply: how is it that this fragment is through a series of referential leaps and juxtapositions the occurrence in
also a whole, an achieved totality, an integral piece of writing called a case Dora's past of childhood masturbation, he acknowledges that this ~ the
history? And how is it, furthermore, that this "fragment" is fuller, richer, essence of his procedure. "Part of this material," he writes, "I was able to
and more complete than the most "complete" case histories of anyone else? obtain directly from the analysis, but the rest required supplementing.
But there is no more point in asking such questions of Freud-particularly And, indeed, the method by which the occurrence of masturbation in
at this preliminary stage of proceedings-than there would be in posing Dora's case has been verified has shown us that material belonging to a
similar "theoretical" questions to Joyce or Proust. single subject can only be collected piece by piece at various times and in
The work is also fragmentary, Freud continues, warming to his subject, different connections." In sum the process resembles "reality" itself, a word
because of the very method he has chosen to pursue; on this plan, that of that, as contemporary writers like to remind us, should always be sur­
nondirectional free association, "everything that has to do with the clear­ rounded by quotation marks.
ing-up of a particular symptom emerges piecemeal, woven into various We are then obliged to ask-and Freud himself more than anyone else
contexts, and distributed over widely separate periods of time." Freud's has taught us most about this obligation-what else are all these protesta­
technique itself is therefore fragmentary; his way of penetrating to the tions of fragmentariness and incompleteness about? They refer in some
micro-structure-the "finer structure" as he calls it-of a neurosis is to measure, as Freud himself indicates in the Postscript, to a central inade­
allow the material to emerge piecemeaL At the same time these fragments quacy and determining incompleteness that he discovered only after it
only appear to be incoherent and disparate; in actuality they eventually was too late-the "great defect" of the case was to be located in the un­
will be understood as members of a whole. developed, misdeveloped, and equivocal character of the "transference,"
Furthermore, Freud goes on, there is still another "kind of incomplete­ of the relation between patient and physician in which so much was focused.
ness" to be found in this work, and this time it has been "intentionally Something went wrong in the relation between Freud and Dora-or in the
introduced." He has deliberately chosen not to reproduce "the process of relation between Dora and Freud. But the protestations refer, I believe, to
interpretation to which the patient's associations and communications had something else as well, something of which Freud was not entirely con­
 192 Steven Marcus Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History 193

scious. For the work is also fragmentary or incomplete in the sense of here is a history framed by an explanation which is itself slightly out of
Freud's self-knowledge, both at the time of the actual case and at the time focus.
of his writing it. And he communicates in this piece of writing a less than Third, he roundly declares, this case history is science and not literature:
complete understanding of himself, though like any great writer he pro­ "I am aware that-in this city, at least-there are many physicians who
vides us with the material for understanding some things that have escaped (revolting though it may seem) choose to read a case history of this kind
his own understanding, for filling in some gaps, for restoring certain not as a contribution to the psychopathology of neuroses, but as a roman
fragments into wholes. a clef designed for their private delectation." This may indeed be true; but
How else can we finally explain the fact that Freud chose to write up this it is equally true that nothing is more literary-and more modern-than
particular history'in such extensive detail? The reasons that he offers in the disavowal of all literary intentions. And when Freud does this again
both the Prefatory Remarks arid the Postscript aren't entirely convincing­ later on toward the end of "The Clinical Picture," the situation becomes
which doesn't of course deny them a real if fractional validity. Why should even less credible. The passage merits quotation at length.
he have chosen so problematic a case, when presumably others of a more I must now turn to consider a further complication to which I should cer­
complete yet equally brief kind were available? I think this can be under­ tainly give no space if I were a man of letters engaged upon the creation of
stood in part through Freud's own unsettled and ambiguous role in the a mental state like this for a short story, instead of being a medical man en­
case; that he had not yet, so to speak, "gotten rid" of it; that he had to write gaged upon its dissection. The element to which I must now allude can only
it out, in some measure, as an effort of self-understanding-an effort, I serve to obscure and efface the outlines of the fine poetic conflict which we
think we shall see, that remained heroically unfinished, a failure that have been able to ascribe to Dora. This element would rightly fall a sacrifice
nonetheless brought lasting credit with it. to the censorship of a writer, for he, after all, simplifies and abstracts when
he appears in the character of a psychologist. But in the world of reality,
which I am trying to depict here, a complication of motives, an accumula­
tion and conjunction of mental activities- in a word, overdetermination.,- ,
IV is the rule. . \

If we turn now to the Prefatory Remarks it may be illuminating to re­ In this context it is next to impossible to tell whether Freud is up to another \
gard them as a kind of novelistic framing action, as in these few opening of his crafty maneuverings with the reader or whether he is actually s.imply
pages Freud rehearses his motives, reasons, and intentions and begins at unconscious of how much of a modern and modernist writer he iNor
the same time to work his insidious devices upon the reader. First, exactly when he takes to describing the difference between himself and some
like a novelist, he remarks that what he is about to let us in on is positively hypothetical man of letters and writer of short stories he is in fact embarked
scandalous, for "the complete elucidation of a case of hysteria is bound to upon an elaborate obfuscation. That hypothetical writer is nothing but a
involve the revelation of intimacies and the betrayal of ... secrets." Second, straw man; and when Freud in apparent contrast represents himself and
again like a writer of fiction, he has deliberately chosen persons, places, and his own activities he is truly representing how a genuine creative writer
circumstances that will remain obscure; the scene is laid not in metropolitan writes. And this passage, we must also recall, came from the same pen that
Vienna but "in a remote provincial town." He has from the beginning kept only a little more than a year earlier had written passages about Oedipus
the circumstance that Dora was his patient such a close secret that only and Hamlet that changed for good the ways in which the civilized world
one other physician-"in whose discretion I have complete confidence"­ would henceforth think about literature and writers.! What might be
knows about it. He has "postponed publication" of this essay for "four
whole years," also in the cause of discretion, and in the same cause has ISome years earlier Freud has been more candid and more innocent about the relation of
"allowed no name to stand which could put a non-medical reader on the his writing to literature. In Studies on Hysteria he introduces his discussion of the case of
. Fraulein Elisabeth von R. with the following disarming admission.
scent." Finally he has buried the case even deeper by publishing it "in a
purely scientific and technical periodical" in order to secure yet another I have not always been a psychotherapist. Like other neuropathologists, I was trained to
employ local diagnoses and electro-prognosis, and it still strikes me myself as strange that
"guarantee against unauthorized readers." He has in short made his own the case histories I write should read like short stories and that, as one might say, they lack
mystery within a mystery, and one of the effects of such obscure prelim­ the serious stamp of science. I must console myself with the reflection that the nature of the
inary goings-on is to create a kind of Nabokovian frame-what we have subject is evidently responsible for this, rather than any preference of my own. The fact is
 194 Steven Marcus Freud and Dora: Story, H~'story, Case History 195
thought of as this sly unliterariness of Freud's turns up in other contexts life, every existence-has a story, to which there is appended a corollary
as well. that most of us probably tell that story poorly. Furthermore, the relations
If we return to the point in the Prefatory Remarks, we find that Freud at this point in Freud's prose between the words "story," "history," and
then goes on to describe other difficulties, constraints, and problematical "report" are unspecified, undifferentiated, and unanalyzed and in the
circumstances attaching to the situation in which he finds himself. Among nature of the case contain and conceal a wealth of material.
them is the problem of "how to record for publication" even such a short Freud proceeds to specify what it is that is wrong with the stories his
case-the long ones are as yet altogether impossible. Moreover, since the patients tell him. The difficulties are in the first instance formal short­
material that critically illuminated this case was grouped about two dreams, comings of narrative: the connections, "even the ostensible ones-are for
their analysis formed a sec:,:ure point of departure for the writing. (Freud is the most part incoherent," obscured and unclear; "and the sequence of
of course at home with dreams, being the unchallenged master in the read­ different events is uncertain." In short these narratives are disorganized
ing of them.) Yet this tactical solution pushes the entire problematic back and the patients are unable to tell a coherent story of their lives. What is
only another step further, since Freud at once goes on to his additional more, he states, "the patients' inability to give an ordered history of their
presupposition, that only those who are already familiar with "the inter­ life in so far as it coincides with the history of their illness is not merely
pretation of dreams" -that is, The Interpreta#on of Dreams (1900), whose characteristic of the neurosis. It also possesses great theoretical significance."
readership in 1901 must have amounted to a little platoon indeed-are What we are led at this juncture to conclude is that Freud is implying that
likely to be satisfied at all with the present account. Any other reader "will a coherent story is in some manner connected with mental health (at the
find only bewilderment in these pages." As much as it is like anything else, very least with the absence of hysteria), and this in turn implies assump­
this is like Borges-as well as Nabokov. This off-putting and disconcerting tions of the broadest and deepest kind about both the nature of coherence
quality, it should go without saying, is characteristically modern; the and the form and structure of human life. On this reading, human life is,
writer succumbs to no impulse to make it easy for the reader; on the con­ ideally, a connected and coherent story, with all the details in explanatory \
trary, he is by preference rather forbidding and does not extend a cordial place, and with everything (or as close to everything as is practically pos-\
welcome. The reader has been, as it were, "softened up" by his first en­ sible) accounted for, in its proper causal or other sequence. And inversely
counter with this unique expository and narrative authority; he is thor­ illness amounts at least in part to suffering from an incoherent story.....o r an
oughly off balance and is as a consequence ready to be "educated," by inadequate narrative account of oneself. "­
Freud. By the same token, however, if he has followed these opening few Freud then describes in technical detail the various types and orders
pages carefully, he is certainly no longer as prepared as he was to assert the of narrative insufficiency that he commonly finds; they range from dis­
primacy and priority of his own critical sense of things. He is precisely ingenuousness, both conscious and unconscious, to amnesias and par­
where Freud-and any writer-wants him to be. amnesias of several kinds and various other means of severing connections
At the opening of Part I, "The Clinical Picture," Freud tells us that he and altering chronologies. In addition, he maintains, this discomposed
begins his "treatment, indeed, by asking the patient to give me the whole memory applies with particular force and virulence to "the history of the
story of his life and illness," and immediately adds that "the information illness" for which the patient has come for treatment. In the course of a
I receive is never enough to let me see my way about the case." This in­ successful treatment, this incoherence, incompleteness, and fragmentari­
adequacy and unsatisfactoriness in the stories his patients tell is in distinct ness are progressively transmuted, as facts, events, and memories are
contrast to what Freud has read in the accounts rendered by his psychiatric brought forward into the forefront of the patient's mind. And he adds as a
contemporaries, and he continues by remarking that "I cannot help wonder­ conclusion that these two aims "are coincident"-they are reached simul­
ing how it is that the authorities can produce such smooth and exact his­ . taneously and by the same path. Some of the consequences that can be de­
tories in cases of hysteria. As a matter of fact the patients are incapable of rived from these extraordinary observations are as follows. The history
giving such reports about themselves." There is a-great deal going on here. of any patient's illness is itself only a substory (or a subplot), although it
In the first place there is the key assumption that everyone - that every is at the same time a vital part of a larger structure. Furthermore, in the
course of psychoanalytic treatment, nothing less than "reality" itself is
that local diagnosis and electrical reactions lead nowhere in the study of hysteria, whereas made, constructed, or reconstructed. A complete story - "intelligible,
a detailed description of mental processes such as we are accustomed to find in the works of
imaginative writers enables me, with the use of a few psychological formulas, to obtain at
consistent, and unbroken" - is the theoretical, created end story. It is a
least some kind of insight into the course of that affection. story, or a fiction, not only because it has a narrative structure but also
 196 Steven Marcus Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History 197
because the narrative account has been rendered in language, in conscious and was heightened by my interest in its publication. Thus the record is not
speech, and no longer exists in the deformed language of symptoms, the absolutely-phonographically-exact, but it can llaim to possess a high de­
untranslated speech of the body. At the end-at the successful end-one gree of trustworthiness. Nothing of any importance has been altered in it
has come into possession of one's own story. It is a final act of self-ap­ except in some places the order in which the explanations are given; and this
propriation, the appropriation bY' oneself of one's own history. This is in has been done for the sake of presenting the case in a more connected form.
part so because one's own story is in so large a measure a phenomenon of
language, as psychoanalysis is in turn a demonstration of the degree to Such a passage raises more questions than it resolves. The first sentence
which language can go in the reading of all our experience. What we end is a kind of conundrum in which case history, writing, and memory dance
with, then, is a fictional construction which is at the same time satisfactory about in a series of logical entwinements, of possible alternate combinations,
to us in the form of the truth, and as the form of the truth. equivalences, and semiequivalences. These are followed by further equivo­
No larger tribute has ever been paid to a culture in which the various cations about "the record," "phonographic" exactitude, and so forth-the
narrative and fictional forms had exerted for centuries both moral and ambiguities of which jump out at one as soon as the terms begin to be ser­
philosophical authority and which had produced as one of its chief cli­ iously examined. For example, is "the report" the same thing as "the rec­
maxes the great bourgeois novels of the nineteenth century. Indeed we ord," and if "the record" were "phonographically" exact would it be a
must see Freud's writings-and method-as themselves part of this cul­ "report"? Like the prodigious narrative historian that he is, Freud is en­
mination, and at the same moment, along with the great modernist novels meshed in an irreducible paradox of history: that the term itself refers to
of the first half of the twentieth century, as the beginning of the end of that both the activity of the historian-the writing of history-and to the ob­
tradition and its authority. Certainly the passages we have just dealt with jects of his undertaking, what history is "about." I do not think, therefore,
contain heroic notions and offer an extension of heroic capabilities if not that we can conclude that Freud has created this thick context of historical
to all men then to most, at least as a possibility. Yet we cannot leave this Gontingency and ambiguity out of what he once referred to as Viennese , \

matter so relatively unexamined, and must ask ourselves how it is that schlamperei.
this "story" is not merely a "history" but a "case history" as well. We must The historical difficulties are further compounded by several other
ask ourselves how these associated terms are more intimately related in the sequential networks that are mentioned at the outset and that figure dis­
nexus that is about to be wound and unwound before us. To begin to under­ cernibly throughout the writing. First there is the virtual Proustian~m­
stand such questions we have to turn back to a central passage in the Pref­ plexity of Freud's interweaving of the various strands of time in the actual
atory Remarks. Freud undertakes therein "to describe the way in which I account; or, to change the figure, his geological fusing of various time
have overcome the technical difficulties of drawing up the report of this strata-strata which are themselves at the same time fluid and shifting. We
case history." Apparently "the report" and the "case history" referred to observe this most strikingly in the palimpsestlike quality of the writing it­
in this statement are two discriminable if not altogether discrete entities. self, which refers back to Studies on Hysteria of 1895; which records a
If they are then we can further presume that, ideally at any rate, Dora (or treatment that took place at the end of 19(X) (although it mistakes the date
any patient) is as much in possession of the "case history" as Freud him­ by a year); which then was written up in first form during the early weeks
self. And this notion is in some part supported by what comes next., Freud of 1901; which was then exhumed in 1905, and was revised and rewritten
mentions certain other difficulties, such as the fact that he "cannot make to an indeterminable extent before publication in that year; and to which
notes during the actual session ... for fear of shaking the patient's con­ additional critical comments in the form of footnotes were finally ap­
fidence and of disturbing his own view of the material under observation." pended in 1923. All of these are of course held together in vital connection
In the case of Dora, however, this obstacle was partly overcome because so and interanimation by nothing else than Freud's consciousness. But we
much of the material was grouped about two dreams, and "the wording of must take notice' as well of the copresence of still further different time
these dreams was recorded immediately after the session" so that "they sequences in Freud's presentation-this copresence being itself a historical
thus afforded a secure point of attachment for the chain of interpretations or novelistic circumstance of some magnitude. There is first the connection
and recollections which proceeded from there." Freud then writes as established by the periodically varied rehearsal throughout the account of
follows: Freud's own theory and theoretical notions as they had developed up to
that point; this practice provides a kind of running applied history of
The case history itself was only committed to writing from memory after the psychoanalytic theory as its development is refracted through the em­
treatment was at an end, but while my recollection of the case was still fresh broiled medium of this particular case. Then there are the different time
 198 Steven Marcus Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History 199
strata of Dora's own history, which Freud handles with confident and lov­ my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural,
ing exactitude. Indeed he is never more of a historical virtuoso than when or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human
he reveals himself to us as moving with compelling ease back and forth interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of
between the complex group of sequential histories and narrative accounts, imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which
with divergent sets of diction and at different levels of explanation, that constitutes poetic faith." We know very well that Freud had a more than
constitute the extraordinary fabric of this work. He does this most con­ ordinary capacity in this direction, and that one of the most dramatic mo­
spicuously in his analytic dealings with Dora's dreams, for every dream, ments in the prehistory of psychoanalysis had to do precisely with his
he reminds us, sets up a connection between two "factors," an "event during taking on faith facts that turned out to be fantasies. Yet Freud is not only
childhood" and an "event of the present day-and it endeavors to reshape the reader suspending judgment and disbelief until he has heard the other
the present on the model of the remote past." The existence or recreation side of the story; and he is not only the poet or writer who must induce a
of the past in the present is in fact "history" in more than one of its mani­ similar process in himself if he is to elicit it in his audience. He is also con­
fold senses, and is one of Freud's many analogies to the following equally comitantlya principal, an actor, a living character in the drama that he is
celebrated utterance. unfolding in print before us. Moreover, that suspension of disbelief is in
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; no sense incompatible with a large body of assumptions, many of them def­
they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under inite, a number of them positively alarming.
circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. They have to do largely with sexuality and in particular with female
The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the sexuality. They are brought to a focus in the central scene of Dora's life
brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionising (and case), a scene that Freud orchestrates with inimitable richness and to
themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, which he recurs thematically at a number of junctures with the tact and ,
precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up sense of form that one associates with a classical composer of music (or with \
the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle Proust, Mann, or Joyce). Dora told this episode to Freud toward the begin- \
cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this
ning of their relation, after "the first difficulties of the treatment had been
time-honored disguise and this borrowed language. (The Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.) overcome." It is the scene between her and Herr K. that took place \rhen
she was fourteen years old-that is, four years before the present ten~ of
And just as Marx regards the history-makers of the past as sleepwalkers, the case-and acted Freud said as a "sexual trauma." The reader will recall
"who required recollections of past world history in order to drug them­ that on this occasion Herr K. contrived to get Dora alone "at his place of
selves concerning their own content," so Freud similarly regards the con­ business" in the town of B and then without warning or prepara­
ditions of dream-formation, of neurosis itself, and even of the cure of tion "suddenly clasped the girl to him and pressed a kiss upon her lips."
neurosis, namely the analytic experience of transference. They are all of Freud then asserts that "this was surely just the situation to call up a dis­
them species of living past history in the present. If the last of these works tinct feeling of sexual excitement in a girl of fourteen who had never be­
out satisfactorily, then a case history is at the end transfigured. It becomes fore been approached. But Dora had at that moment a violent feeling of
an inseparable part of an integral life history. Freud is of course the master disgust, tore herself free from the man, and hurried past him to the stair­
historian of those transfigurations. case and from there to the street door" (all italics are mine). She avoided
seeing the K. 's for a few days after this, but then relations returned to "nor­
mal" - if such a term survives with any permissible sense in the present
v context. She continued to meet Herr K., and neither of them ever men­
tioned "the little scene." Moreover, Freud adds, "according to her account
At the very beginning, after he had listened to the father's account of Dora kept it a secret till her confession during the treatment," and he pretty
"Dora's impossible behavior," Freud abstained from comment, for, he re­ clearly implies that he believes this.
marks, "I had resolved from the first to suspend my judgement of the true This episode preceded by two years the scene at the lake that acted as the
state of affairs till I had heard the other side as well." Such a suspension precipitating agent for the severe stage of Dora's illness; and it was this
inevitably recalls an earlier revolutionary project. In describing the orig­ later episode and the entire structure that she and others had elaborated
inating plan of Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge writes that it "was agreed that about it that she had first presented to Freud, who continues thus:
 200 Steven Marcus Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History 201

In this scene-second in order of mention, but first jn order of time-the another a "child" - but in point of fact he treats her throughout as if this
behavior of this child of fourteen was already entirely and completely fourteen-, sixteen-, and eighteen-year-old adolescent had the capacities
hysterical. I should without question consider a person hysterical in whom for sexual response of a grown woman-indeed at a later point he con­
an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings that were preponderantly jectures again that Dora either responded, or should have responded, to
or exclusively unpleasurable; and I should do so whether or not the person the embrace with specific genital heat and moisture. Too many deter­
were capable of producing somatic symptoms. minations converge at this locus for us to do much more than single out a
Also, in Dora's feeling of disgust an obscure psychical mechanism called few of the more obvious influencing circumstances. In the first instance
the "reversal of affect" was brought into play; but so was another process, there was Freud's own state of knowledge about such matters at the time,
and here Freud introduces-casually and almost as a throwaway-one more which was better than anyone else's, but still relatively crude and un­
of his grand theoretical-clinical formulations, namely the idea of the differentiated. Second, we may be in the presence of what can only be
"displacement of sensation," or as it has more commonly come to be accounted for by assuming that a genuine historical-cultural change has
referred to, the "displacement upward." "Instead of the genital sensation taken place between then and now. It may be that Freud was expressing a
which would certainly have been felt by a healthy girl in such circumstances, legitimate partial assumption of his time and culture when he ascribes to a
Dora was overcome by the unpleasurable feeling which is proper to the fourteen-year-old adolescent-whom he calls a "child" -the normative
tract of mucous membrane at the entrance to the alimentary canal-that responses that are ascribed today to a fully developed and mature woman.
is by disgust." Although the disgust did not persist as a permanent symp­ This supposition is. borne out if we consider the matter from the other end,
tom but remained behind residually and potentially in a general distaste from the stan,dpb'int of what has happened to the conception of adolescence
for food and poor appetite, a second displacement upward was the resultant in our own time. It begins now in prepuberty and extends to-who knows
of this scene "in the shape of a sensory hallucination which occurred from when? Certainly its extensibility in our time has reached well beyond the
\
time to time and even made its appearance while she was telling me her age of thirty. Third, Freud is writing in this passage as an advocate of
story. She declared that she could still feel upon the upper part of her body nature, sexuality, openness, and candor-and within such a context Dora
the pressure of Herr K.'s embrace." Taking into account certain other of cannot hope to look good. The very framing of the context in such a man­
Dora's "inexplicable" -and hitherto unmentioned- "peculiarities" (such ner is itself slightly accusatory. In this connection we may note that F'{eud
as her phobic reluctance to walk past any man she saw engaged in animated goes out of his way to tell us that he knew Herr K. personally and that"'<{he
conversation with a woman), Freud "formed in my own mind the following was still quite young and of prepossessing appearance." If we let Nabokov
reconstruction of the scene. I believe that during the man's passionate back into the picture for a moment, we may observe that Dora is no Lolita,
embrace she felt not merely his kiss upon her lips but also his erect member and go on to suggest that Lolita is an anti-Dora.
against her body. The perception was revolting to her; it was dismissed Yet we must also note that in this episode-the condensed and focusing
from her memory, repressed, and replaced by the innocent sensation of scene of the entire case history-Freud is as much a novelist as he is an
pressure upon her thorax, which in turn derived an excessive intensity analyst. For the central moment of this central scene is a "reconstruction"
from its repressed source." This repressed source was located in the eroto­ that he "formed in [his] own mind." This pivotal construction becomes
genic oral zone, which in Dora's case had undergone a developmental henceforth the principal "reality" of the case, and we must also observe
deformation from the period of infancy. And thus, Freud concludes, "the that this reality remains Freud's more than Dora's, since he was never quite
pressure of the erect member probably led to an analogous change in the able to convince her of the plausibility of the construction, or, to regard it
corresponding female organ, the clitoris; and the excitation of this second from the other pole of the dyad, she was never quite able to accept this
erotogenic zone was referred by a process of displacement to the simul­ version of reality, of what "really" happened. Freud was not at first unduly
taneous pressure against the thorax and became fixed there." distressed by this resistance on her side, for part of his understanding of
There is something questionable and askew in this passage of unques­ what he had undertaken to do in psychoanalysis was to instruct his patients
tionable genius. In it Freud is at once dogmatically certain and very un­ -and his readers-in the nature of reality. This reality was the reality that
certain. He is dogmatically certain of what the normative sexual response modern readers of literature have also had to be educated in. It was con­
in young and other females is, and asserts himself to that effect. At the same ceived of as a world of meanings. As Freud put it in one of those stop-you­
time, he is, in my judgment, utterly uncertain about where Dora is, or was, dead-in-your-tracks footnotes that he was so expert in using strategically,
developmentally. At one moment in the passage he calls her a "girl," at we must at almost every moment "be prepared to be met not by one but by
 202 Steven Marcus Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History 203
several causes-by overdetermination." Thus the world of meanings is to fend off. For example, I will now take my head in my hands and suggest
a world of multiple and compacted causations; it is a world in which every­ that his extraordinary analysis of Dora's first dream is inadequate on just
thing has a meaning, which means that everything has more than one mean­ this count. He is only dimly and marginally aware of his central place in
ing. Every symptom is a concrete universal in several senses. It not only it (he is clearly incorporated into the figure of Dora's father), comments
embodies a network of significances but also "serves to represent several on it only as an addition to Dora's own addendum to the dream, and does
unconscious mental processes simultaneously." By the same token, since it nothing to exploit it. Instead of analyzing his own part in what he has done
is a world almost entirely brought into existence, maintained, and mediated and what he is writing, Freud continues to behave like an unreliable nar­
through a series of linguistic ~ransactions between patient and physician, rator, treating the material about which he is writing as if it were literature
it partakes in full measure of the virtually limitless complexity of language, but excluding himself from both that treatment and that material. At one
in particular its capacities for producing statements characterized by moment he refers to himself as someone "who has learnt to appreciate the
multiplicity, duplicity, and ambiguity of significance. Freud lays par­ delicacy of the fabric of structures such as dreams," intimating what I
ticular stress on the ambiguity, is continually on the lookout for it, and surmise he incontestably believed, that dreams are natural works of art.
brings his own formidable skills in this direction to bear most strikingly And when, in the analysis of the second dream, we find ourselves back at
on the analyses of Dora's dreams. The first thing he picks up in the first the scene at the lake again; when Dora reea.lls that the only plea to her of
of her dreams is in fact an ambiguous statement, with which he at once Herr K that she could remember is "You know I get nothing out of my
confronts her. wife"; when these were precisely the same words used by Dora's father in
As if this were not sufficient, the actual case itself was full of such literary describing to Freud his relation to Dora's mother; and when Freud specu­
and novelistic devices or conventions as thematic analogies, double plots, lates that Dora may even "have heard her father make the same complaint
reversals, inversions, variations, betrayals, etc.-full of what the "sharp­ ... just as I myself did from his own lips" - when a conjunction such as this
sighted" Dora as well as the sharp-sighted Freud thought of as "hidden occurs, then we know we are in a novel, probably by Proust. Time has \
connections"-though it is important to add that Dora and her physician recurred, the repressed has returned, plot, double plot, and counterplot\
mean different things by the same phrase. And as the case proceeds Freud have all intersected, and "reality" turns out to be something that for all \
continues to confront Dora with such connections and tries to enlist her practical purposes is indistinguishable from a systematic fictional creation.
assistance in their construction. For example, one of the least pleasant Finally when at the very end Freud turns to deal-rudimentaril~s it
characteristics in Dora's nature was her habitual reproachfulness-it was happens-with the decisive issue of the case, the transferences, everything
directed mostly toward her father but radiated out in all directions. Freud is transformed into literature, into reading and writing. Transferences,
regarded this behavior in his own characteristic manner: "A string of he writes, "are new editions or facsimiles" of tendencies, fantasies, and
reproaches against other people," he comments, "leads one to suspect the relations in which "the person of the physician" replaces some earlier
existence of a string of self-reproaches with the same content." Freud ac­ person. When the substitution is a simple one, the transferences may be
cordingly followed the procedure of turning back "each simple reproach said to be "merely new impressions or reprints": Freud is explicit about
on the speaker herself." When Dora reproached her father with malinger­ the metaphor he is using. Others "more ingeniously constructed ... will
ing in order to keep himself in the company of :Frau K, Freud felt "obliged no longer be new impressions, but revised editions." And he goes on, quite
to point out to the patient that her present ill-health was just as much carried away by these figures, to institute a comparison between dealing
actuated by motives and was just as tendentious as had been Frau K's with the transference and other analytic procedures. "It is easy to learn
illness, which she had understood so well." At such moments Dora begins how to interpret dreams," he remarks, "to extract from the patient's asso­
to mirror the other characters in the case, as they in differing degrees all ciations his unconscious thoughts and memories, and to practise similar
mirror one another as well. explanatory arts: for these the patient himself will always provide the
Part of that sense, we have come to understand, is that the writer is or text." The startling group of suppositions contained in this sentence should
ought to be conscious of the part that he-in whatever guise, voice, or not distract us from noting the submerged ambiguity in it. The patient
persona he chooses-invariably and unavoidably plays in the world he does not merely provide the text; he also is the text, the writing to be read,
represents. Oddly enough, although there is none of his writings in which the language to be interpreted. With the transference, however, we move to
Freud is more vigorously active than he is here, it is precisely this activity a different degree of difficulty and onto a different level of explanation.
that he subjects to the least self-conscious scrutiny, that he almost appears It is only after the transference has been resolved, Freud concludes, "that
 204 Steven Marcus Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History 205
a patient arrives at a sense of conviction of the validity of the connections by their technical names... . J'appelle un chat un chat. I have certainly
which have been constructed during the analysis." I will refrain from heard of some people-doctors and laymen-who are scandalized by a ther­
entering the veritable series of Chinese boxes opened up by that last state­ apeutic method in which conversations of this sort occur, and who appear to
ment, and will content myself by proposing that in this passage as a whole envy either me or my patients the titillation which, according to their notions,
Freud is using literature and writing not only creatively and heuristically­ such a method must afford. But I am too well acquainted with the respectabil­
as he so often does- but defensively as well. ity of these gentry to excite myself over them .... The right attitude is:
"pour fa ire une omelette it faut casser des oeufs."
The writer or novelist is not the only partial role taken up unconscious­
ly or semiconsciously by Freud' in the course of this work. He also figures I believe that Freud would have been the first to be amused by the observa­
prominently in the text in his capacity as a nineteenth-century man of tion that in this splendid extended declaration about plain speech (at this
science and as a representative Victorian critic-employing the serious­ point he takes his place in a tradition coming directly down from Luther),
ness, energy, and commitment of the Victorian ethos to deliver itself from he feels it necessary to disappear not once but twice into French. I think
its own excesses. We have already seen him affirming the positive nature he would have said that such slips-and the revelation of their meanings­
of female sexuality, "the genital sensation which would certainly have been are the smallest price one has to pay for the courage to go on. And he goes
felt by a healthy girl in such circumstances," but which Dora did not feel. on with a vengeance, immediately following this passage with another in
He goes a good deal further than this. At a fairly early moment in the which he aggressively refuses to moralize in any condemnatory sense
analysis he faces Dora with the fact that she has "an aim in view which she about sexuality. As for the attitude that regards the perverse nature of his
hoped to gain by her illness. That aim could be none other than to detach patient's fantasies as horrible:
her father from Frau K." Her prayers and arguments had not worked; her
I should like to say emphatically that a medical man has no business to in­
suicide letter and fainting fits had done no better. Dora knew quite well dulge in such passionate condemnation.... We are faced by a fact; and it is ,
how much her father loved her, and, Freud continues to address her: to be hoped that we shall grow accustomed to it, when we have learned to put, \
I felt quite convinced that she would recover at once if only her father were our own tastes on one side. We must learn to speak without indignation of\
to tell her that he had sacrificed Frau K. for the sake of her health. But, I what we call the sexual perversions.... The uncertainty in regard to the
added, I hoped he would not let himself be persuaded to do this, for then boundaries of what is to be called normal sexual life, when we take di(ferent
she would have learned what a powerful weapon she had in her hands, and races and different epochs into account, should in itself be enough t{}.cool
she would certainly not fail on every future occasion to make use once more the zealot's ardor. We surely ought not to forget that the perversion which
of her liability to ill-health. Yet if her father refused to give way to her, I is the most repellent to us, the sensual love of a man for a man, was not only
was quite sure she would not let herself be deprived of her illness so easily. tolerated by the people so far our superiors in cultivation as were the Greeks,
but was actually entrusted by them with important social functions.
This is pretty strong stuff, considering both the age and her age. I think,
moreover, that we are justified in reading an overdetermination out of We can put this assertion into one of its appropriate contexts by recalling
this utterance of Freud's and in suggesting that he had motives additional that the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde had taken place only five
to strictly therapeutic ones in saying what he did. years earlier. And the man who is speaking out here has to be regarded as
In a related sense Freud goes out of his way to affirm his entitlement to the greatest of Victorian physicians, who in this passage is fearlessly reveal­
speak freely and openly about sex-he is, one keeps forgetting, the great ing one of the inner and unacknowledged meanings of the famous "tyranny
liberator and therapist of speech. The passage is worth quoting at some of Greece over Germany." And as we shall see he has by no means reached
length. the limits beyond which he will not go.
How far he is willing to go begins to be visible as we observe him sliding
It is possible for a man to talk to girls and women upon sexual matters of almost imperceptibly from being the nineteenth-century man of science to
every kind without doing them harm and witlwut bringing suspicion upon being the remorseless "teller of truth," the character in a play by Ibsen who
himself, so long as, in the first place, he adopts a particular way of doing it,
and, in the second place, can make them feel convinced that it is unavoidable.
is not to be deterred from his "mission." In a historical sense the two roles
, .. The best way of speaking about such things is to be dry and direct; and that are not adventitiously related, any more than it is adventitious that the
is at the same time the method furthest removed from the prurience with "truth" that is told often has unforeseen and destructive consequences and
which the same subjects are handled in "society," and to which girls and that it can rebound upon the teller. But we see him most vividly at this
women alike are so thoroughly accustomed. I call bodily organs and processes implacable work in the two great dream interpretations, which are largely
 206 Steven Marcus Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History 207

"photographic" reproductions of dramatic discourse and dialogue. Very Freud. Nevertheless, by the time he gets to the second dream he is able to
early on in the analysis of the first dream, Freud takes up the dream ele­ write, "I shall present the material produced during the analysis of this
ment of the "jewel-case" and makes the unavoidable symbolic interpreta­ dream in the somewhat haphazard order in which it recurs to my mind."
tion of it. He then proceeds to say the following to this Victorian maiden He makes such a presentation for several reasons, most of which are legit­
who has been in treatment with him for all of maybe six weeks. imate. But one reason almost certainly is that by this juncture it is his own
"So you are ready to give Herr K. what his wife withholds from him. That is
mind that chiefly matters to him, and it is his associations to her dream that
the thought which has had ~o be repressed with so much energy, and which are of principal importance.
has made it necessary for everyone of its elements to be turned into its op­ At the same time, as the account progresses, Freud has never been more
posite. The dream confirms once more what I had already told you before inspired, more creative, more inventive; as the reader sees Dora gradually
you dreamt it-that you are summoning up your old love for your father in slipping further and further away from Freud, the power and complexity
order to protect yourself against your love for Herr K. But what do all these of the writing reach dizzying proportions. At times they pass over into
efforts show? Not only that you are afraid of Herr K., but that you are still something else. Due allowance has always to be made for the absolutizing
more afraid of yourself, and of the temptation you feel to yield to him. In tendency of genius, especially when as in the case of Dora the genius is
short, these efforts prove once more how deeply you love him." writing with the license of a poet and the ambiguity of a seer. But Freud
He immediately adds that "naturally Dora would not follow me in this goes beyond this.
part of the interpretation," but this does not deter him for a moment from When Dora reports her second dream, Freud spends two hours of in­
pressing on with further interpretations of the same order; and this entire spired insight in elucidating some of its meanings. "At the end of the
transaction is in its character and quality prototypical for the case as a second session," he writes, "I expressed my satisfaction at the results."
whole. The Freud we have here is not the sage of the Berggasse, not the The satisfaction in question is in large measure self-satisfaction, for Dora .
master who delivered the incomparable Introductory Lectures of 1916­ responded to Freud's expression of it with the following words uttered in, \
1917, not the tragic Solomon of Civilization and Its Discontents. This is "a depreciatory tone: 'Why, has anything so remarkable come out?'" That '\
an earlier Freud, the Freud of the Fliess letters, the Freud of the case of satisfaction was to be of short duration, for Dora opened the third session
Dora as well. It is Freud the relentless investigator pushing on no matter by telling Freud that this was the last time she would be there - i(. was
what. The Freud that we meet with here is a demonic Freud, a Freud who is December 31, 1900. Freud's remarks that "her breaking off so unexpectEhlly
the servant of his daimon. That daimon in whose service Freud knows no just when my hopes of a successful termination of the treatment were at
limits is the spirit of science, the truth, or "reality" - it doesn't matter their highest, and her thus bringing those hopes to nothing-this was an
which; for him they are all the same. Yet it must be emphasized that the unmistakable act of vengeance on her part" are only partly warranted.
"reality" Freud insists upon is very different from the "reality" that Dora There was, or should have been, nothing unexpected about Dora's decision
is claiming and clinging to. And it has to be admitted that not only does to terminate; indeed Freud himself on the occasion of the first dream had
Freud overlook for the most part this critical difference; he also adopts already detected such a decision on Dora's part and had communicated
no measures for dealing with it. The demon of interpretation has taken this finding to her. Moreover, his "highest" hopes for a successful outcome
hold of him, and it is this power that presides over the case of Dora. of the treatment seem almost entirely without foundation. In such a context
In fact as the case history advances it becomes increasingly clear to' the the hopes of success almost unavoidably become a matter of self-reference
careful reader that Freud and not Dora has become the central character and point to the immense intellectual triumph that Freud was aware he
in the action. Freud the narrator does in the writing what Freud the first was achieving with the material adduced by his patient. On the matter of
psychoanalyst appears to have done in actuality. We begin to sense that it is "vengeance," however, Freud cannot be faulted; Dora was, among many
his story that is being written and not hers that is being retold. Instead of other things, certainly getting her own back on Freud by refusing to allow
letting Dora appropriate her own story, Freud became the appropriator him to bring her story to an end in the way he saw fit. And he in turn is
of it. The case history belongs progressively less to her than it does to him. quite candid about the injury he felt she had caused him. "No one who,
It may be that this was an inevitable development, that it is one of the like me," he writes, "conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons
typical outcomes of an analysis that fails, that Dora was under any cir­ that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect
cumstances unable to become the appropriator of her own history, the teller to come through the struggle unscathed."
of her own story. Blame does not necessarily or automatically attach to This admission of vulnerability, which Freud artfully manages to blend
 208 Steven Marcus
with the suggestion that he is a kind of modern combination of Jacob and VI
Faust, is in keeping with the weirdness and wildness of the case as a whole
and with this last hour. That hour recurs to the scene at the lake, two years In this extraordinary work Freud and Dora often appear as unconscious,
before, and its aftermath. And Freud ends this final hour with the following parodic refractions of each other. Both of them insist with implacable will
final interpretation. He reminds Dora that she was in love with Herr K.; upon the primacy of "reality," although the realities each has in mind differ
that she wanted him to divorce his wife; that even though she was quite radically. Both ofthem use reality, "the truth," as a weapon. Freud does so
young at the time she wanted "'to wait for him, and you took it that he was by forcing interpretations upon Dora before she is ready for them or can
only waiting till you were grown up enough to be his wife. I imagine that accept them. And this aggressive truth bounds back upon the teller, for
this was a perfectly serious plan for the future in your eyes.'" But Freud Dora leaves him. Dora in turn uses her version of reality-it is "outer"
does not say this in order to contradict it or categorize it as a fantasy of the reality that she insists upon-aggressively as well. She has used it from the
adolescent girl's unconscious imagination. On the contrary, he has very outset against her father, and five months after she left Freud she had the
different ideas in view, for he goes on to tell her, opportunity to use it against the K.'s. In May of 1901 one of the K.'s chil­
"You have not even got the right to assert that it was out of the question for dren dies. Dora took the occasion to pay them a visit of condolence-
Herr K. to have had any such intention; you have told me enough about him
She took her revenge on them .... To the wife she said: "I know you have an
that points directly towards his having such an intention. Nor does his
behavior at L ___contradict this view. After all, you did not let him affair with my father"; and the other did not deny it. From the husband she
drew an admission of the scene by the lake which he had disputed, and
finish his speech and do not know what he meant to say to you."
brought the news of her vindication home to her father.
He has not done with her yet, for he then goes on to bring in the other
relevant parties and offers her the following conclusion: She told this to Freud fifteen months after she had departed, when she "
returned one last time to visit him-to ask him, without sincerity, for \
"Incidentally, the scheme would by no means have been so impracticable. further help, and "to finish her story." She finished her story, and as for \
Your father's relation with Frau K. ... made it certain that her consent to a
the rest Freud remarks, "I do not know what kind of help she wanted Jrom
divorce could be obtained; and you can get anything you like out of your
fal.her. Indeed, if your temptation at L ___ had had a different upshot,
me, but I promised to forgive her for having deprived me of the ~is­
this would have been the only possible solution for all the parties concerned" faction of affording her a far more radical cure for her troubles."
mine] . But the matter is not hopelessly obscure, as Freud himself has already
confessed. What went wrong with the case, "its great defect, which led to
No one-at least no one in recent years-has accused Freud of being a its being broken off prematurely," was something that had to do with the
swinger, but this is without question a swinging solution that is being of­ transference; and Freud writes that "I did not succeed in mastering the
fered. It is of course possible that he feels free to make such a proposal transference in good time." He was in fact just beginning to learn about
only because he knows that nothing in the way of action can come of it; this therapeutic phenomenon, and the present passage is the first really
but with him you never can tell-as I hope I have already demonstrated. important one about it to have been written. It is also in the nature of things
One has only to imagine what in point of ego strength, balance, and self­ heavily occluded. On Dora's side the transference went wrong in several
acceptance would have been required of Dora alone in this arrangement senses. In the first place there was the failure on her part to establish an
of wife-and-daughter-swapping to recognize at once its extreme irre­ adequate positive transference to Freud. She was not free enough to re­
sponsibility, to say the least. At the same time we must bear in mind that spond to him erotically-in fantasy-or intellectually- by accepting his
such a suggestion is not incongruent with the recently revealed circum­ interpretations: both or either of these being prerequisites for the mys­
stance that Freud analyzed his own daughter. Genius makes up its own rules terious "talking cure" to begin to work. And in the second, halfway through
as it goes along-and breaks them as well. This "only possible solution" was the case a negative transference began to emerge, quite clearly in the first
one of the endings that Freud wanted to write to Dora's story; he had others dream. Freud writes that he "was deaf to this first note of warning," and as
in mind besides, but none of them were to come about. Dora refused or was a result this negative "transference took me unawares, and, because of the
unable to let him do this; she refused to be a character in the story that Freud unknown quantity in me which reminded Dora of Herr K., she took her
was composing for her, and wanted to finish it herself. As we now know, the revenge on me fl:s she wanted to take her revenge on him, and deserted me
ending she wrote was a very bad one indeed. as she believed herself to have been deceived and deserted by him." This

209
 210 Steven Marcus
is, I believe, the first mention in print of the conception that is known as
"acting out"-out of which, one may incidentally observe, considerable
fortunes have been made.
We are, however, in a position to say something more than this. For there
is a reciprocating process in the analyst known as the countertransference,
and in the case of Dora this went wrong too. Although Freud describes
Dora at the beginning of the account as being "in the first bloom of youth­ Freud and the Poetic Sublime:
a girl of intelligent and engaging looks," almost nothing attractive about
her comes forth in the course of the writing. As it unwinds, and it becomes A Catastrophe Theory of Creativity
increasingly evident that Dora is not responding adequately to Freud, it
also becomes clear that Freud is not responding favorably to this response,
By Harold Bloom
and that he doesn't in fact like Dora very much. He doesn't like her negative
sexuality, her inability to surrender to her own erotic impulses. He doesn't
like "her really remarkable achievements in the direction of intolerable
behavior." He doesn't like her endless reproachfulness. Above all, he Jacques Lacan argues that Freud "derived his inspiration, his ways of
doesn't like her inability to surrender herself to him. For what Freud was thinking and his technical weapons" from imaginative literature rather than
as yet unprepared to face was not merely the transference, but the counter­ from the sciences. On such a view, the precursors of Freud are not so much
transference as well-in the case of Dora it was largely a negative counter­ Charcot and Janet, Briicke and Helmholtz, Breuer and Fliess, but the rather
transference-an unanalyzed part of himself. I should like to suggest that more exalted company of Empedocles and Heraclitus, Plato and Goethe,
this cluster of unanalyzed impulses and ambivalences was in part respon­ Shakespeare and Schopenhauer. Lacan is the foremost advocate of a dialec-\ \
tical reading of Freud's text, a reading that takes into account those proble­
sible for Freud's writing of this great text immediately after Dora left
him. It was his way-and one way-of dealing with, mastering, expressing, matics of textual interpretation that stem from the philosophies of Hegel,
and neutralizing such material. Yet the neutralization was not complete; Nietzsche and Heidegger, and from developments in differentiallingu~stics.
or we can put the matter in another way and state that Freud's creative Such a reading, though it has attracted many intellectuals in Eng~h­
honesty was such that it compelled him to write the case of Dora as he speaking countries, is likely to remain rather alien to us, because of the
did, and that his writing has allowed us to make out in this remarkable strong empirical tradition in Anglo-American thought. Rather like Freud
fragment a still fuller picture. As I have said before, this fragment of himself, whose distaste for and ignorance of the United States were quite
Freud's is more complete and coherent than the fullest case studies of any­ invincible, Lacan and his followers distrust American pragmatism, which
one else. Freud's case histories are a new form of literature-they are crea­ to them is merely irritability with theory. Attacks by French Freudians
tive narratives that include their own analysis and interpretation. Never­ upon American psychoanalysis tend to stress issues of societal adjustment
theless, like the living works of literature that they are, the material they or else of a supposed American optimism concerning human nature. But I
contain is always richer than the original analysis and interpretation that think that Lacan is wiser in his cultural vision of Freud than he is in his
accompany it; and this means that future generations will recur to these polemic against ego psychology, interpersonal psychoanalysis, or any other
works and will find in them a language they are seeking and a story they American school. Freud's power as a writer made him the contemporary
need to be told. not so much of his rivals and disciples as of the strongest literary minds of
our century. We read Freud not as we read Jung or Rank, Abraham or
Ferenczi, but as we read Proust or Joyce, Valery or Rilke or Stevens. A
writer who achieves what once was called the Sublime will be susceptible
to explication either upon an empirical or dialectical basis.

"Freud and the Poetic Sublime: A Catastrophe Theory of Creativity," by Harold Bloom.
Copyright © 1978 by Harold Bloom. Reprinted by permission of the author. The essay first
appeared in Antaeus (Spring 1978), 355·77; originally delivered as an address to The William
Alanson White Psychoanalytic Society on SeptE;mber 23. 1977.
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