The development of Freud's theory of hysteria is traced from the time of his letters to Fliess, emphasizing especially the problems of bisexuality and identification. In contrast to the massive incorporation involved in the narcissistic identifications of melancholia, hysterical identifications are labile, imperative, multiple, but partial. The Oedipal structure in the neurosis is always clearly shown in the triangular patterning of relationships. If Dora had multiple identifications, it was above all to maintain her different masculine and feminine impulses. Dora oscillated between making the people in her life objects of desire and objects of identification, thus keeping herself permanently suspended between the two poles of her bisexuality. She was involved in a ceaseless search for a model of identification as well as for a love object. If the partner in such a relationship refused to remain in midpath between being an object of desire and an object of identification, Dora responded by the perception of desire which led her into flight, disgust, or phobic behavior.