14
STEVEN MARCUS
unfriendly toward the father whom she had hitherto loved, ideal–
ized, and identified with. She was "on very bad terms" with her
mother, for whom she felt a good deal of scorn. "She tried to,
avoid social intercourse, and employed herself -- so far as she
was allowed to by the fatigue and lack of concentration of which
she complained -- with attending lectures for women and with
carrying on more or less serious studies." Two further events
precipitated the crisis which led to her being delivered to Freud.
Her parents found a written note in which she declared her
intention to commit suicide because "as she said, she could no
longer endure her life." Following this there occurred one day "a
slight passage of words" between Dora and her father, which
ended with Dora suddenly losing consciousness -- the attack,
Freud believed, was "accompanied by convulsions and delirious
states," although it was lost to amnesia and never came up in the·
analysis.
Having outlined this array of affections, Freud dryly remarks
that such a case "does not upon the whole seem worth recording.
It is merely a case of
'petite
hyst~n:e'
with the commonest of all
somatic and mental symptoms.... More interesting cases of hys–
teria have no doubt been published."
This disavowal of anything sensational to come is of course a
bit of shrewd disingenuousness on Freud's part, for what follows
at once is his assertion that he is going to elucidate the meaning,
origin, and function of everyone of these symptoms by means of
the events and experiences of Dora's life. He is going in other
words to discover the "psychological determinants" that will ac–
count for Dora's illnesses; among these determinants he lists three
principal conditions: "a psychical trauma, a conflict of affects,
and ... a disturbance in the sphere of sexuality." And so Freud
begins the treatment by asking Dora to talk about her experiences.
What emerges is the substance of the case history, a substance
which takes all of Freud's immense analytic, expository, and
narrative talents to bring into order. I will again very roughly and
briefly summarize some of this material.
Sometime after 1888, when the family had moved to
B__ the health resort where the father's tuberculosis had sent
them -- an intimate and enduring friendship sprang up between
