16
STEVEN MARCUS
away." The episode as a whole leads Freud quite plausibly to ask:
"If
Dora loved Herr K., what was the reason for her refusing him
in the scene by the lake? Or at any rate, why did her refusal take
such a brutal form, as though she were embittered against him?
And how could a girl who was in love feel insulted by a proposal
which was made in a manner neither tactless nor offensive?"
It
may occur to us to wonder whether in the extended context of
this case that slap in the face was a "brutal form" of refusal; but as
for the other questions posed by Freud they are without question
rhetorical in character.
On this second occasion Dora did not remain silent. Her
father was preparing to depart from the Alpine lake, and she
declared her determination 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
he "denied in the most emphatic terms having on his side made
any advances" and suggested that she "had merely fancied the
whole scene she had described." Dora's father "believed" the story
concocted by Herr -- and Frau -- K., and it is from this
moment, more than two years before she came to Freud for
treatment, that the change in Dora's character can be dated. Her
love for the K.'s turned into hatred, and she became obsessed with
the idea of getting her father to break off relations with them. She
saw through the rationalizations and denials of her father and Frau
K., and had "no doubt that what bound her father to this young
and beautiful woman was a common love-affair." Nothing that
could help to confirm this view had escaped her perception, which
in this connection was pitilessly sharp.... " Indeed, "the sharp–
sighted Dora" was an excellent detective when it came to un–
covering her father's clandestine sexual activities, and her wither–
ing criticisms of her father's character -- that he was "in–
sincere ... had a strain of baseness in his character ... only
thought of his own enjoyment ... had a gift for seeing things in
the light which suited him best" -- were in general concurred in
by Freud. Freud also agreed with Dora that there was something
in her embittered if exaggerated contention that "she had been
handed over to Herr K. as the price of his tolerating the relations
