PARTISAN REVIEW
13
failure, and that part of the failure remams m fact unacknowl–
edged 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 wilte only four others. It may be helpful
for the reader if at the outset I refresh his memory by briefly
reviewing some of the external facts of the case. In the autumn of
1900, Dora, an eighteen-year-old young woman, began treatment
with Freud. She did so reluctantly and against her will, and, Freud
writes, "it was only her father's authority which induced her to
come to me at all." Neither Dora nor her father were strangers to
Freud. He had made separate acquaintance with both of them in
the past, during certain episodes of illness that characterized their
lives if not the life of the family as a whole. (Freud knew other
members of the family as well.)
As for Dora herself, her afflictions, both mental and physical,
had begun in early childhood and had persisted and flourished
with variations and fluctuating intensities until she was presented
to Freud for therapy. Among the symptoms from which she
suffered were to be found dyspnea, migraine, and periodic attacks
of nervous coughing often accompanied by complete loss of voice
during part of the episode. Dora had in fact first been brought by
her father to Freud two years earlier, when she was sixteen and
suffering from a cough and hoarseness; he had then "proposed
giving her psychological treatment," but this suggestion was not
adopted since "the attack in question, ijke the others, passed off
spontaneously." In the course of his treatment of Dora, Freud also
learned of further hysterical -- or hysterically connected - –
productions on her part, such as a feverish attack that mimicked
appendicitis, a periodic limp, and a vaginal catarrh or discharge.
Moreover, during the two-year interval between Dora's first visit
and the occasion on which her father brought her to Freud a
second time, and "handed her over to me for psychotherapeutic
treatment ... Dora had grown unmistakably neurotic." Dora was
now "in the first bloom of youth - - a girl of intelligent and
engaging looks." Her character had, however, undergone an altera–
tion. She had become chronically depressed, and was generally
dissatisfied with both herself and her family. She had become
