Freud - Complete Works (247 page)

  
¹
We shall come upon this.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1396

   My expectations were by no means
disappointed when this explanation of mine was met by Dora with a
most emphatic negative. The ‘No’  uttered by a
patient after a repressed thought has been presented to his
conscious perception for the first time does no more than register
the existence of a repression and its severity; it acts, as it
were, as a gauge of the repression’s strength. If this
‘No’, instead of being regarded as the expression of an
impartial judgement (of which, indeed, the patient is incapable),
is ignored, and if work is continued, the first evidence soon
begins to appear that in such a case ‘No’ 
signifies the desired ‘Yes’. Dora admitted that she
found it impossible to be as angry with Herr K. as he had deserved.
She told me that one day she had met Herr K. in the street while
she was walking with a cousin of hers who did not know him. The
other girl had exclaimed all at once: ‘Why, Dora,
what’s wrong with you? You’ve gone as white as a
sheet!’ She herself had felt nothing of this change of
colour; but I explained to her that the expression of emotion and
the play of features obey the unconscious rather than the
conscious, and are a means of betraying the former.¹ Another
time Dora came to me in the worst of tempers after having been
uniformly cheerful for several days. She could give no explanation
of this. She felt so contrary to-day, she said; it was her
uncle’s birthday, and she could not bring herself to
congratulate him, she did not know why. My powers of interpretation
were at a low ebb that day; I let her go on talking, and she
suddenly recollected that it was Herr K.’s birthday too - a
fact which I did not fail to use against her. And it was then no
longer hard to explain why the handsome presents she had had on her
own birthday a few days before had given her no pleasure. One gift
was missing, and that was Herr K.’s, the gift which had
plainly once been the most prized of all.

   Nevertheless Dora persisted in
denying my contention for some time longer, until, towards the end
of the analysis, the conclusive proof of its correctness came to
light.

  
¹
Compare the lines:

               
Ruhig mag ich Euch erscheinen,

               
Ruhig gehen sehn.

               
[Quiet can I watch thy coming,

               
Quiet watch thee go.]

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1397

   I must now turn to consider a
further complication to which I should certainly give no space if I
were a man of letters engaged upon the creation of a mental state
like this for a short story, instead of being a medical man engaged
upon its dissection. The element to which I must now allude can
only serve to obscure and efface the outlines of the fine poetic
conflict which we have been able to ascribe to Dora. This element
would rightly fall a sacrifice to the censorship of a writer, for
he, after all, simplifies and abstracts when he appears in the
character of a psychologist. But in the world of reality, which I
am trying to depict here, a complication of motives, an
accumulation and conjunction of mental activities - in a word,
overdetermination - is the rule. For behind Dora’s
supervalent train of thought which was concerned with her
father’s relations with Frau K. there lay concealed a feeling
of jealousy which had that lady as its
object
- a feeling,
that is, which could only be based upon an affection on
Dora’s part for one of her own sex. It has long been known
and often been pointed out that at the age of puberty boys and
girls show clear signs, even in normal cases, of the existence of
an affection for people of their own sex. A romantic and
sentimental friendship with one of her school friends, accompanied
by vows, kisses, promises of eternal correspondence, and all the
sensibility of jealousy, is the common precursor of a girl’s
first serious passion for a man. Thenceforward, in favourable
circumstances, the homosexual current of feeling often runs
completely dry. But if a girl is not happy in her love for a man,
the current is often set flowing again by the libido in later years
and is increased up to a greater or lesser degree of intensity. If
this much can be established without difficulty of healthy persons,
and if we take into account what has already been said about the
fuller development in neurotics of the normal germs of perversion,
we shall expect to find in these latter too a fairly strong
homosexual predisposition. It must, indeed, be so; for I have never
yet come through a single psycho-analysis of a man or a woman
without having to take into account a very considerable current of
homosexuality. When, in a hysterical woman or girl, the sexual
libido which is directed towards men has been energetically
suppressed, it will regularly be found that the libido which is
directed towards women has become vicariously reinforced and even
to some extent conscious.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1398

   I shall not in this place go any
further into this important subject, which is especially
indispensable to an understanding of hysteria in men, because
Dora’s analysis came to an end before it could throw any
light on this side of her mental life. But I should like to recall
the governess, whom I have already mentioned, and with whom Dora
had at first enjoyed the closest interchange of thought, until she
discovered that she was being admired and fondly treated not for
her own sake but for her father’s; whereupon she had obliged
the governess to leave. She used also to dwell with noticeable
frequency and a peculiar emphasis on the story of another
estrangement which appeared inexplicable even to herself. She had
always been on particularly good terms with the younger of her two
cousins the girl who had later on become engaged - and had shared
all sorts of secrets with her. When, for the first time after Dora
had broken off her stay by the lake, her father was going back to
B--, she had naturally refused to go with him. This cousin had then
been asked to travel with him instead, and she had accepted the
invitation. From that time forward Dora had felt a coldness towards
her, and she herself was surprised to find how indifferent she had
become, although, as she admitted, she had very little ground for
complaint against her. These instances of sensitiveness led me to
inquire what her relations with Frau K. had been up till the time
of the breach. I then found that the young woman and the scarcely
grown girl had lived for years on a footing of the closest
intimacy. When Dora stayed with the K.’s she used to share a
bedroom with Frau K., and the husband used to be quartered
elsewhere. She had been the wife’s confidante and adviser in
all the difficulties of her married life. There was nothing they
had not talked about. Medea had been quite content that Creusa
should make friends with her two children; and she certainly did
nothing to interfere with the relations between the girl and the
children’s father. How Dora managed to fall in love with the
man about whom her beloved friend had so many bad things to say is
an interesting psychological problem. We shall not be far from
solving it when we realize that thoughts in the unconscious live
very comfortably side by side, and even contraries get on together
without disputes - a state of things which persists often enough
even in the conscious.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1399

   When Dora talked about Frau K.,
she used to praise her ‘adorable white body’ in accents
more appropriate to a lover than to a defeated rival. Another time
she told me, more in sorrow than in anger, that she was convinced
the presents her father had brought her had been chosen by Frau K.,
for she recognized her taste. Another time, again, she pointed out
that, evidently through the agency of Frau K., she had been given a
present of some jewellery which was exactly like some that she had
seen in Frau K.’s possession and had wished for aloud at the
time. Indeed, I can say in general that I never heard her speak a
harsh or angry word against the lady, although from the point of
view of her supervalent thought she should have regarded her as the
prime author of her misfortunes. She seemed to behave
inconsequently; but her apparent inconsequence was precisely the
manifestation of a complicating current of feeling. For how had
this woman to whom Dora was so enthusiastically devoted behaved to
her? After Dora had brought forward her accusation against Herr K.,
and her father had written to him and had asked for an explanation,
Herr K. had replied in the first instance by protesting sentiments
of the highest esteem for her and by proposing that he should come
to the manufacturing town to clear up every misunderstanding. A few
weeks later, when her father spoke to him at B--, there was no
longer any question of esteem. On the contrary, Herr K. spoke of
her with disparagement, and produced as his trump card the
reflection that no girl who read such books and was interested in
such things could have any title to a man’s respect. Frau K.,
therefore, had betrayed her and had calumniated her; for it had
only been with her that she had read Mantegazza and discussed
forbidden topics. It was a repetition of what had happened with the
governess: Frau K. had not loved her for her own sake but on
account of her father. Frau K. had sacrificed her without a
moment’s hesitation so that her relations with her father
might not be disturbed. This mortification touched her, perhaps,
more nearly and had a greater pathogenic effect than the other one,
which she tried to use as a screen for it, - the fact that she had
been sacrificed by her father. Did not the obstinacy with which she
retained the particular amnesia concerning the sources of her
forbidden knowledge point directly to the great emotional
importance for her of the accusation against her upon that score,
and consequently to her betrayal by her friend?

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1400

   I believe, therefore, that I am
not mistaken in supposing that Dora’s supervalent train of
thought, which was concerned with her father’s relations with
Frau K., was designed not only for the purpose of suppressing her
love for Herr K., which had once been conscious, but also to
conceal her love for Frau K., which was in a deeper sense
unconscious. The supervalent train of thought was directly contrary
to the latter current of feeling. She told herself incessantly that
her father had sacrificed her to this woman, and made noisy
demonstrations to show that she grudged her the possession of her
father; and in this was she concealed from herself the contrary
fact, which was that she grudged her father Frau K.’s love,
and had not forgiven the woman she loved for the disillusionment
she had been caused by her betrayal. The jealous emotions of a
woman were linked in the unconscious with a jealousy such as might
have been felt by a man. These masculine or, more properly
speaking,
gynaecophilic
currents of feeling are to be
regarded as typical of the unconscious erotic life of hysterical
girls.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1401

II

THE
FIRST DREAM

   Just at a moment when there was a
prospect that the material that was coming up for analysis would
throw light upon an obscure point in Dora’s childhood, she
reported that a few nights earlier she had once again had a dream
which she had already dreamt in exactly the same way on many
previous occasions. A periodically recurrent dream was by its very
nature particularly well calculated to arouse my curiosity; and in
any case it was justifiable in the interests of the treatment to
consider the way in which the dream worked into the analysis as a
whole. I therefore determined to make an especially careful
investigation of it.

   Here is the dream as related by
Dora: ‘
A house was on fire.
¹
My father was
standing beside my bed and woke me up. I dressed quickly. Mother
wanted to stop and save her jewel-case; but Father said: "I
refuse to let myself and my two children be burnt for the sake of
your jewel-case." We hurried downstairs, and as soon as I was
outside I woke up.
’

   As the dream was a recurrent one,
I naturally asked her when she had first dreamt it. She told me she
did not know. But she remembered having had the dream three nights
in succession at L-- (the place on the lake where the scene with
Herr K. had taken place ), and it had now come back again a few
nights earlier, here.² My expectations from the clearing-up of
the dream were naturally heightened when I heard of its connection
with the events at L--. But I wanted to discover first what had
been the exciting cause of its recent recurrence, and I therefore
asked Dora to take the dream bit by bit and tell me what occurred
to her in connection with it. She had already had some training in
dream-interpretation from having previously analysed a few minor
specimens.

  
¹
In answer to an inquiry Dora told me that
there had never really been a fire at their house.

  
²
The content of the dream makes it possible
to establish that it in fact  occurred
for the first
time
at L--.