Freud - Complete Works (255 page)

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1440

   The labour of elucidating the
second dream had so far occupied two hours. At the end of the
second session, when I expressed my satisfaction at the result,
Dora replied in a depreciatory tone: ‘Why, has anything so
very remarkable come out?’ These words prepared me for the
advent of fresh revelations.

   She opened the third session with
these words: ‘Do you know that I am here for the last time
to-day?’ - ‘How can I know, as you have said nothing to
me about it?’ - ‘Yes. I made up my mind to put up with
it till the New Year.¹ But I shall wait no longer than that to
be cured.’ - ‘You know that you are free to stop the
treatment at any time. But for to-day we will go on with our work.
When did you come to this decision?’ - ‘A fortnight
ago, I think.’ - ‘That sounds just like a maidservant
or a governess - a fortnight’s notice.’ - ‘There
was a governess who gave notice with the K.’s, when I was on
my visit to them that time at L--, by the lake.’ -
‘Really? You have never told me about her. Tell
me.’

   ‘Well, there was a young
girl in the house, who was the children’s governess; and she
behaved in the most extraordinary way to Herr K. She never said
good morning to him, never answered his remarks, never handed him
anything at table when he asked for it, and in short treated him
like thin air. For that matter he was hardly any politer to her. A
day or two before the scene by the lake, the girl took me aside and
said she had something to tell me. She then told me that Herr K.
had made advances to her at a time when his wife was away for
several weeks; he had made violent love to her and had implored her
to yield to his entreaties, saying that he got nothing from his
wife, and so on.’ - ‘Why, those are the very words he
used afterwards, when he made his proposal to you and you gave him
the slap in his face’. - ‘Yes. She had given way to
him, but after a little while he had ceased to care for her, and
since then she hated him.’ - ‘And this governess had
given notice?’ - ‘No. She meant to give notice. She
told me that as soon as she felt she was thrown over she had told
her parents what had happened. They were respectable people living
in Germany somewhere. Her parents said that she must leave the
house instantly; and, as she failed to do so, they wrote to her
saying that they would have nothing more to do with her, and that
she was never to come home again.’ - ‘And why had she
not gone away?’ - ‘She said she meant to wait a little
longer, to see if there might not be some change in Herr K. She
could not bear living like that any more, she said, and if she saw
no change she should give notice and go away.’ - ‘And
what became of the girl?’ - ‘I only know that she went
away.’ - ‘And she did not have a child as a result of
the adventure? ‘ - ‘No.’

  
¹
It was December 31st.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1441

   Here, therefore (and quite in
accordance with the rules), was a piece of material information
coming to light in the middle of the analysis and helping to solve
problems which had previously been raised. I was able to say to
Dora: ‘Now I know your motive for the slap in the face with
which you answered Herr K.’s proposal. It was not that you
were offended at his suggestions; you were actuated by jealousy and
revenge. At the time when the governess was telling you her story
you were still able to make use of your gift for putting on one
side everything that is not agreeable to your feelings. But at the
moment when Herr K. used the words "I get nothing out of my
wife" - which were the same words he had used to the governess
- fresh emotions were aroused in you and tipped the balance.
"Does he dare", you said to yourself, "to treat me
like a governess, like a servant?" Wounded pride added to
jealousy and to the conscious motives of common sense - it was too
much.¹ To prove to you how deeply impressed you were by the
governess’s story, let me draw your attention to the repeated
occasions upon which you have identified yourself with her both in
your dream and in your conduct. You told your parents what happened
- a fact which we have hitherto been unable to account for - just
as the governess wrote and told
her
parents. You give me a
fortnight’s notice, just like a governess. The letter in the
dream which gave you leave to go home is the counterpart of the
governess’s letter from her parents forbidding her to do
so.’

  
¹
It is not a matter of indifference,
perhaps, that Dora may have heard her father make the same
complaint about his wife, just as I myself did from his own lips.
She was perfectly well aware of its meaning.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1442

   ‘Then why did I not tell my
parents at once?’

   ‘How much time did you
allow to elapse? ‘

   ‘The scene took place on
the last day of June; I told my mother about it on July
14th.’

   ‘Again a fortnight, then -
the time characteristic for a person in service. Now I can answer
your question. You understood the poor girl very well. She did not
want to go away at once, because she still had hopes, because she
expected that Herr K.’s affections would return to her again.
So that must have been your motive too. You waited for that length
of time so as to see whether he would repeat his proposals; if he
had, you would have concluded that he was in earnest, and did not
mean to play with you as he had done with the governess.’

   ‘A few days after I had
left he sent me a picture post-card.’¹

   ‘Yes, but when after that
nothing more came, you gave free rein to your feelings of revenge.
I can even imagine that at that time you were still able to find
room for a subsidiary intention, and thought that your accusation
might be a means of inducing him to travel to the place where you
were living. - ‘As he actually offered to do at first,’
Dora threw in. - ‘In that way your longing for him would have
been appeased’ - here she nodded assent, a thing which I had
not expected - ‘and he might have made you the amends you
desired.’

   ‘What amends?’

   ‘The fact is, I am
beginning to suspect that you took the affair with Herr K. much
more seriously than you have been willing to admit so far. Had not
the K.’s often talked of getting a divorce?’

   ‘Yes, certainly. At first
she did not want to, on account of the children. And now she wants
to, but he no longer does.’

  
¹
Here is the point of contact with the
engineer, who was concealed behind the figure of Dora herself in
the first situation in the dream.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1443

   ‘May you not have thought
that he wanted to get divorced from his wife so as to marry you?
And that now he no longer wants to because he has no one to replace
her? It is true that two years ago you were very young. But you
told me yourself that your mother was engaged at seventeen and then
waited two years for her husband. A daughter usually takes her
mother’s love-story as her model. So you too wanted to wait
for him, and you took it that he was only waiting till you were
grown up enough to be his wife.¹ I imagine that this was a
perfectly serious plan for the future in your eyes. You have not
even got the right to assert that it was out of the question for
Herr K. to have had any such intention; you have told me enough
about him that points directly towards his having such an
intention.² Nor does his behaviour at L-- contradict this
view. After all, you did not let him finish his speech and do not
know what he meant to say to you. Incidentally, the scheme would by
no means have been so impracticable. Your father’s relations
with Frau K.- and it was probably only for this reason that you
lent them your support for so long - made it certain that her
consent to a divorce could be obtained; and you can get anything
you like out of your father. Indeed, if your temptation at L-- had
had a different upshot, this would have been the only possible
solution for all the parties concerned. And I think that is why you
regretted the actual event so deeply and emended it in the phantasy
which made its appearance in the shape of the appendicitis. So it
must have been a bitter piece of disillusionment for you when the
effect of your charges against Herr K. was not that he renewed his
proposals but that he replied instead with denials and slanders.
You will agree that nothing makes you so angry as having it thought
that you merely fancied the scene by the lake. I know now - and
this is what you do not want to be reminded of - that you
did
fancy that Herr K.’s proposals were serious, and
that he would not leave off until you had married him.’

  
¹
The theme of waiting till the goal is
reached occurs in the content of the first situation in the dream.
I recognize in this phantasy of waiting for a fiancée a
portion of the third component of that situation. I have already
alluded to the existence of this third component.

  
²
In particular there was a speech which he
had made in presenting Dora with a letter-case for Christmas in the
last year in which they lived together at B.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1444

   Dora had listened to me without
any of her usual contradictions. She seemed to be moved; she said
good-bye to me very warmly, with the heartiest wishes for the New
Year, and - came no more. Her father, who called on me two or three
times afterwards, assured me that she would come back again, and
said it was easy to see that she was eager for the treatment to
continue. But it must be confessed that Dora’s father was
never entirely straightforward. He had given his support to the
treatment so long as he could hope that I should ‘talk’
Dora out of her belief that there was something more than a
friendship between him and Frau K. His interest faded when he
observed that it was not my intention to bring about that result. I
knew Dora would not come back again. Her breaking off so
unexpectedly, just when my hopes of a successful termination of the
treatment were at their highest, and her thus bringing those hopes
to nothing - this was an unmistakable act of vengeance on her part.
Her purpose of self-injury also profited by this action. No one
who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons
that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can
expect to come through the struggle unscathed. Might I perhaps have
kept the girl under my treatment if I myself had acted a part, if I
had exaggerated the importance to me of her staying on, and had
shown a warm personal interest in her - a course which, even after
allowing for my position as her physician, would have been
tantamount to providing her with a substitute for the affection she
longed for? I do not know. Since in every case a portion of the
factors that are encountered under the form of resistance remains
unknown, I have always avoided acting a part, and have contented
myself with practising the humbler arts of psychology. In spite of
every theoretical interest and of every endeavour to be of
assistance as a physician, I keep the fact in mind that there must
be some limits set to the extent to which psychological influence
may be used, and I respect as one of these limits the
patient’s own will and understanding.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1445

   Nor do I know whether Herr K.
would have done any better if it had been revealed to him that the
slap Dora gave him by no means signified a final ‘No’
on her part, but that it expressed the jealousy which had lately
been roused in her, while her strongest feelings were still on his
side. If he had disregarded that first ‘No’, and had
continued to press his suit with a passion which left room for no
doubts, the result might very well have been a triumph of the
girl’s affection for him over all her internal difficulties.
But I think she might just as well have been merely provoked into
satisfying her craving for revenge upon him all the more
thoroughly. It is never possible to calculate towards which side
the decision will incline in such a conflict of motives: whether
towards the removal of the repression or towards its reinforcement.
Incapacity for meeting a
real
erotic demand is one of the
most essential features of a neurosis. Neurotics are dominated by
the opposition between reality and phantasy. If what they long for
the most intensely in their phantasies is presented to them in
reality, they none the less flee from it; and they abandon
themselves to their phantasies the most readily where they need no
longer fear to see them realized. Nevertheless, the barrier erected
by repression can fall before the onslaught of a violent emotional
excitement produced by a real cause; it is possible for a neurosis
to be overcome by reality. But we have no general means of
calculating through what person or what event such a cure can be
effected.¹

  
¹
I will add a few remarks on the structure
of this dream, though it is not possible to understand it
thoroughly enough to allow of a synthesis being attempted. A
prominent piece of the dream is to be seen in the phantasy of
revenge against her father, which stands out like a façade
in front of the rest. (She had gone away from home by her own
choice; her father was ill, and then dead. . . Then she
went home; all the others were already at the cemetery. She went to
her room, not the least sadly, and calmly began reading the
encyclopaedia.) This part of the material also contained two
allusions to her other act of revenge, which she had actually
carried out, when she let her parents discover a farewell letter
from her. (The letter - from her mother, in the dream and the
mention of the funeral of the aunt who had always been her model.)
Behind this phantasy lie concealed her thoughts of revenge against
Herr K., for which she found an outlet in her behaviour to me. (The
maidservant, the invitation, the wood, the two and a half hours -
all these came from material connected with the events at L--.) Her
recollection of the governess, and of the latter’s exchange
of letters with her parents, is related, no less than her farewell
letter, to the letter in the dream allowing her to come home. Her
refusal to let herself be accompanied and her decision to go alone
may perhaps be translated into these words: ‘Since you have
treated me like a servant, I shall take no more notice of you, I
shall go my own way by myself, and not marry.’ - Screened by
these thoughts of revenge, glimpses can be caught in other places
of material derived from tender phantasies based upon the love for
Herr K. which still persisted unconsciously in Dora. (‘I
would have waited for you till I could be your wife’ -
defloration - childbirth.) -Finally, we can see the action of the
fourth and most deeply buried group of thoughts - those relating to
her love for Frau K. - in the fact that the phantasy of defloration
is represented from the man’s point of view (her
identification of herself with her admirer who lived abroad) and in
the fact that in two places there are the clearest allusions to
ambiguous speeches (‘Does Herr -- live here?’) and to
that source of her sexual knowledge which had not been oral (the
encyclopaedia). - Cruel and sadistic tendencies find satisfaction
in this dream.