108
STEVEN MARCUS
"was deaf to this first note of warning," and as a result this negative
"transference took me unawares, and, because of the unknown quantity
in me which reminded Dora of Herr K., she took her revenge on me as
she wanted to take her revenge on him, and deserted me as she believed
herself to have been deceived and deserted by him." This 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 counter–
transference, 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 -- 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 increasingly evident that Dora is not respond–
ing adequately to Freud, it also becomes clear that Freud is not
responding favorably to this response, 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 remark–
able achievements in the direction of intolerable behavior." He doesn't
like her endless reproachfulness. Above all, he doesn't like her inability
to surrender herself to him. For what Freud was as yet unprepared to
face was not merely the transference, but the countertransference as well
-- in the case of Dora it was largely a negative countertransference -–
an unanalyzed part of himself. I should like to suggest tha t this cluster of
unanalyzed impulses and ambivalences was in part responsible 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, and
neutralizing such material. Yet the neutralization was not complete; or
we can put the matter in another way and state that Freud's creative
honesty was such that it compelled
~im
to write the case of Dora as he
did, and that his writing has allowed us to make out in this remarkable
fragment a still fuller picture. As I have said before, this fragment of
Freud's is more complete and coherent than the fullest case studies of
anyone else. Freud's case histories are a new form of literature -- they
are creative narratives that include their own analysis and interprC'ltation.
Nevertheless, like the living works of literature that they are, the material
they contain is always richer than the original analysis and interpretation
that accompany it; and this means that future generations will recur to
these works and will find in them a language they are seeking and a story
they need to be told.
