Interpersonal Factors in Hysteria: Freud's Seduction Theory and the Case of Dora*

From the earliest descriptions almost 4000 years ago to the present, Hysteria has always been closely tied to sexuality. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks considered hysteria as a discrete medical disorder of women caused by the womb. The term hysteria is derived from the Greek word for womb, hystera. The womb was likened to an animal longing to create children, which wandered about the body causing physical symptoms until appeased by sexual intercourse. Later Galen proposed that hysteria resulted from the toxic effects of retained semen in men and uterine secretions in women (Veith 1965). Interestingly, Freud's earliest writings mention that hysteria might be cured by sexual intercourse and his theory of dammed up libido bears some semblence to these ancient medical theories. Freud considered the hysteric as fixated at the phallic phase of psychosexual development, not having resolved the oedipal complex and suffering from sexual conflicts. However, a re-examination of Freud's cases of hysteria by Reichard (1956), who summarized a number of psychoanalytic writers using current diagnostic criteria as well as follow-up information, concludes that many of Freud's cases were either latent or overtly schizophrenic. Similarly, Marmor (1953) considers the fixation in hysteria as occurring at an earlier oral level, with the major conflict