Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case study

Critical Summary Paper of Steven Marcus’s article on Freud’s Dora

In “Fragment of an analysis of a case hysteria (“Dora”)”, the object of the study (Dora) appears to be totally opposed to her doctor, Freud, considered by Marcus as a modern writer. To the reader at first Dora represents innocence and inexperience (both mentally and sexually), when Freud represents both scientific knowledge and experience and maybe Freud’s logical control over Dora is accentuated by the fact that he is the one that analyses her according to his knowledge. His observations about Dora tell us a lot about Dora, but also about himself, since he cannot be objective and sees what he wants to see according to his wants and desires. Freud is fallible, since he is only human.

Although Dora is first seen as a “child” by both the reader and Freud, as a virgin that has never been close to a man, one cannot say Dora’s sexual knowledge is inexistent. She has read books and, according to Freud, has been “orally” taught by a woman with whom she was very intimate. This is a mystery Freud will never be able to understand ; they are sexually opposed (male vs. female) and Freud seems fascinated by the concept of a woman teaching a girl about sex.

Here, both Freud and the reader do not see Dora as an inexperienced girl anymore but as a sexual object. The very masculine, generally repressed, fantasy of a woman teaching a girl about sex is a combination of two other very masculine fantasies, one being homosexuality between woman, and the other well presented in Nabokov’s book Lolita, being the desire of men for nymphets. Lolita would therefore represent an anti-Dora.

The relationship between desire and knowledge appears clearly as a cause-effect relationship, as knowledge about sexuality creates desire.

The notion of desire does not have to be related to knowledge (and therefore consciousness) to be related to sexuality in general, it