In Search of Theory: Freud, Dora, and Women Analysts

A Purse, A Jewel-Case, the Shell of Venus, or a Penis—What Do Women Want?

This study provides a historical perspective on Freud's search for the “key” with which to “open the door” (see fn. 1905a, p. 67) to understanding women's sexuality and their hysterical symptoms, depression, and sense of injury. The first part of the study focuses on Freud's theorizing when he treated Dora for her hysterical symptoms during a transitional phase of “bewilderment” when he was forced to recognize that his seduction theory of hysteria was “mistaken” (1914; 1925a). The second part of the study, following Dora's abortive treatment, focuses on Freud's lengthy search for a “normal female castration complex” and his finding the “proof” he sought from the interpretations and reconstructions he made to aspiring women analysts in training analyses with him. Specifically, his analytic patients Anna Freud, Helene Deutsch, Lampl-de Groot, and Ruth Mack Brunswick confirmed his reconstructions of their lengthy “pre-oedipal” phase of development, including their hostility toward their mothers whom they held responsible for their castration, their narcissistic mortification, sense of deficiency, penis envy, and the turn to their fathers for a penis baby (Freud, 1933, p. 130; also corroboration came from his “eager crowd of fellow-workers” [Freud, 1925b, p. 249])—analytic students, colleagues, and friends, notably, Karl Abraham, Maria Bonaparte, and Lou Andreas-Salomé who made contributions of their own to his theory).

When Freud treated Dora in 1900, and published the fragment of her analysis five years later, he was in the beginning of his effort to correct the “mistaken” seduction etiology with a rudimentary theory based on the anatomy women actually have. That is to say, he based himself on women's anatomy, with the all-important