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Freud's “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria” is his only psychoanalytic case study about a woman, yet it has become the prototype for understanding the psychosexual development of women. Except for Erikson's critique, which focused on the lack of honesty, sincerity, and integrity in those around Dora, no one has questioned or supplemented Freud's original observations. I would like to reassess Dora's psychosexual development, her unconscious motivations, her characterological defenses, and her identifications.
One of Freud's problems in formulating the case was what he considered “normal” female-male relationships in 1900 Vienna. His other difficulty was mistaking Dora's defenses to be Dora's conflicts. Considering those handicaps, it is remarkable that Freud deduced so much correctly about hysteria, masochism, and female psychosexual development from a single case.
Freud's relationship with Dora and her family is rather complex. He had first treated Dora's father for central nervous system syphilis, originally referred by none other than Dora's admirer, Herr K. himself. No doubt upon entering therapy Dora would consider Freud her father's doctor and ally. She would have considerable suspicion about Freud's primary allegiance and might consider that his therapy was in the service of her father's bidding. Freud's comment, “I never made her mother's acquaintance,’ is the crux of the case. He accepted as accurate the description of the mother given by Dora and her father, a team of observers unreliable because of their personal biases, as Freud discovered later. He never re-examined Dora's relationship with her mother and the cause of their feud. In fact