A Case of Hysteria (Dora) (Oxford World's Classics)

This case study was presented by Freud, with a generous introduction.The details are maddening, especially from a female perspective. However, I would recommend this as a vital read to any student reading Psychology. It is a piece that can demonstrate how far the world of psychology has evolved and can also demonstrate how far the gender gap has decreased since this paper was published.

I love these Oxford World Classic editions, with their fantastic notes, footnotes, appendices and introductions, they are the complete package surrounding the classic text. I found that this edition made the text even more accessible with notes to aid the understanding and study of this text.

Along with the Wolf Man and the Rat Man this was Freud's most detailed published Case Study and one which has been claimed as providing much needed emprical evidence for Psychanalysis. The introduction by Ritche Robertson, Professor of German at Oxford claims that it does the opposite and that Freud's theoretical assumotions determined his empirical observations.Psychoanalysis is now taught mainly in Literature departments and valued for Freud's many profound and searching observations on human nature rather than as a therapeutic method. The long introducion, notes and new translation provide the reader with an opportunity to make up his own mind.Rating 5 out of 5.

I read this text on my unit at university, it is a short read but felt I had to re-read because it's kind of technical. Don't really agree with Freud's opinions but every body is entitled to them.

Notes and translation are excellent. It seems to me that more literary translators are getting hold of Freud and having a go at producing not just readable versions but ones that bring out the literary qualities of Freud the writer.For those who think psychoanalysis is a failed science would benefit from reading Freud as the heir of the German Idealists (Schelling in particular) and as one who tried to enact a geisteswissenchaften.

An absolute rule. Whoever wants to learn about psychoanalysis should start with Freud’s case-studies, not with his theoretical works; and foremost with the Dora study. Science has proved that it contains at least 19 deliberate lies (and lots of sloppy errors). Freud does not recall his own lies from one page to the next. Dora did not have hysteria but neurological diseases and an intolerable family situation. When she was 13 the three times as old Zellenka (Z.) violently caught hold of her and passionately kissed her. She fought herself free and ran away. But, Freud explains, every girl who would not sexually welcome such a kiss attack is mentally ill. The kiss made Dora fall in love but she repressed her feelings. She feared that her vagina would be repulsive to Z. because she had (??) masturbated when she was 8. When she was 15 Z. tried to seduce her. She immediately told her father (not her mother two weeks later). But Z. denied everything and blamed a teenager’s high-strung imagination. Her father completely joined Z.’s version. During four years Dora had to live in this contemptuous family atmosphere. She was even forced to undergo treatment by Freud, who should teach her that she had merely imagined the event. Her natural reaction was to demand her father to break his friendship with Z. During these four years nothing made Dora as mad as the claim that the seduction attempt had never occurred, Freud states. But he also claims that Dora did not have the slightest wish that her father should break with Mr. Z. Instead she was obstinate that he should break with Mrs. K. But elsewhere he forgets himself and tells a part of the truth. Dora was inconsequent and neurotic because she wanted her father to break with Z. She should instead have requested him to break with Mrs. Z., because the latter was the real cause of Dora’s hardship. Here is Freud’s proof. Dora read Mantegazza’s book “The Physiology of Love. [MS: Despite the title there is no word about anatomic differences between the sexes. Instead the writer gives educational advice, e.g. that a married couple should never see each other naked.] In the beginning there is not a word that Dora concealed her reading, or that anyone disapproved. We are only told that Mrs. Z. (much younger than her husband) was the only one with whom Dora could talk about such things. But when Freud later needs a certain argument he fabricates that Mrs. Z. was the only one who knew what Dora read, so she was the only one who COULD have told Z., who in turn used it as evidence of her high-strung imagination. [MS: Couldn’t he have attributed a high-strung imagination to her if he had not known about the reading?] But once more Freud’s memory is defect. Elsewhere he states that Z. explicitly informed that his wife had explicitly told what Dora read. So why would Freud need a developed argument about what only Mrs. Z. could have told? The whole case-study consists of comparable lies.

My daughter is studying psychology, she says this is an excellent read and that it impresses your teacher if you tell them you're reading it. She says you need to know and understand a bit about Freud and his theories before you read it, in order to appreciate it fully.

Freud's name has become something of a punchline in recent years, but his work continues to fascinate and be referenced everywhere from pop culture to academic texts. It is in cases like 'Dora' that we see both his genius, the groundbreaking psychoanalysis at work, and his sheer craziness and ridiculous assumptions. This book is a fascinating insight into a very interesting man, a historical document that lets us explore how attitudes to mental health and psychoanalysis has been changed overtime and an engrossing story of family drama. I will certainly be seeking our more of freud's case studies.

Edition reads well, complete and important contextual information about the times and life of Dora, but the introduction is as biased as the same text she accuses. It has been written to portray psychoanalysis as a mere work of fiction and male brutality without any further recognition of its inventions, relevance or transendence.

Had to read this for school. Total nonfiction of course, and it is of course by one of the more famous psychoanalysts of our time, who invented the field even. Interesting stories he recounts here, but I believe many will agree today that he had his head up you-know-where in many instances.

Freud is an acquired taste.

From Wikipedia one gets the impression that the case is about Ida Bauer. In the full text one realizes that "Dora" is not really a case study so much as a vehicle to showcase Freud's methods and theories. In a real sense it is a defense of those theories using Ida Bauer as corraborating evidence.Freud admits in the Forward that he supplemented a shortened, incomplete case analysis "with the most likely behaviour patterns known to me from other analyses . . ."In the Afterword he says: "While I have called this record the fragment of an analysis, the reader will have discovered that it is incomplete to a much wider extent than might be expected from that title."In other words, he filled in the gaps with his own assumptions. These assumptions are predictable since, after a full century, we are all familiar with his Oedipus obsession. In "Dora" he pours it into every empty gap and churns it around and around. The other thing he churns is his dream analyses. He uses "Dora" to showcase his dream theories from other publications.There was one surprise however. He says that it was abnormal for the fourteen year-old Ida not to feel sexually aroused when the middle-aged family friend made advances to her:"instead of going through the open door he suddenly held the girl close and pressed a kiss on her lips. That was exactly the situation likely to give a virginal girl of fourteen a clear sensation of sexual arousal. However, at that moment Dora was overcome by violent revulsion; she tore herself away, hurried past the man to the stairs, and from there to the door of the building."Freud assumes that the reader will obviously agree that the girl's reaction was abnormal. He says:"After she had understood what Herr K.’s intentions were, she did not let him explain himself but slapped his face and ran away. Her conduct probably appeared to Herr K. at the time, when he was left behind, as inexplicable as it does to us, for he must long ago have concluded, from innumerable little signs, that he could be sure of the girl’s feeling for him."Ida's response seems perfectly normal, and not "inexplicable" as Herr Doktor says. This, together with his assertion that children's bed-wetting is likely due to masterbation, makes one wonder what world Freud was living in. Additionally, Dora's little purse and an old lady patient's sweets box are both representations of female genitals, according to Freud.In one instance, her father asked her to fetch a bottle of brandy from the larder. Her mother had the key but didn't respond when Ida repeatedly asked for it. Ida got angry and spoke harshly to her mother. A fragment of this episode appeared in her dream that same night. Freud's take on the dream is:"Where is the key? sounds to me like the male counterpart to the question: Where is the box? (see the first dream, p. 56). These are questions about the genitals." . . . OMG!