Rod Hetzel wrote 27 February: <<As I was reading through his case study of Dora the other day I was thinking about how differently we think about about both physical and psychological medical problems these days (I recognize this distinction is somewhat artificial, particularly in light of emerging biopsychosocial models of health and illness). In the Dora case Freud refers to such physical ailments as tabo-paralysis and marasmus. We don't use these terms anymore in modern medicine and our understanding of the disease process is much more sophisticated, yet the medical doctors at the turn of the 20th century generally don't get the ridicule that seems to be reserved for Freud. Most people rightly recognize that physicians in the 1800s and 1900s were making informed decisions based on the information they knew at the time. Freud doesn't seem to get this understanding.>>
Maybe it's because Freud found convoluted analytic explanations for Dora's depression when her situation sufficed to explain why she was emotionally distressed; worse, he insisted that the eighteen-year-old Dora was unconsciously in love with the middle-aged friend of her father, Herr K., who had first tried to force his attentions on her when she was fourteen and whom she detested. Some more of Freud's contentions were: that the feelings of disgust "this child of fourteen" experienced when Herr K. waylaid her and "pressed a kiss upon her lips" showed that she was "already entirely and completely hysterical"; that Dora's tendency to drag her right foot after an attack of appendicitis (rediagnosed retrospectively by Freud as an hysterical childbirth phantasy) was related to a potential "a false step" as indicated by her having the appendicitis pains nine months after a seduction attempt by Herr K.; that Dora's reproaches towards her father for remaining friendly with Herr K., and even encouraging his attentions, concealed a self-accusation, namely that she had masturbated in infancy; that the exciting stimulus for her spasmodic cough, the "tickling in her throat", was her picturing a scene of fellatio between her father and his mistress Frau K.; that her 'hysterical' cough "came to represent sexual intercourse with her father", for whom she still retained a libidinal passion; that her asthma originated from her having as a young child overheard her father "breathing hard" while having sexual intercourse; and so on. Finally, it was in this case history that Freud wrote: "The 'No' uttered by a patient after a repressed thought has been presented to his conscious perception for the first time [by the analyst] does no more than register the existence of a repression and its severity." No wonder the admirably self-willed Dora took leave of Freud's ministrations after three months. Allen Esterson London www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
