Freud The early Twentith Century Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Freud The early Twentith cytosine - Essay ExampleDoras father had been a patient of Freuds and recommended that she seek treatment from him after discovering a self-destructive note on or in her writing-desk (Freuds account is equivocal on this particular). Though her father did not suspect that she would harm herself, he was none the less very much shaken (Freud 17) and sought c are for his obviously ailing daughter. Doras symptoms included a host of somatic and mental affects such as dyspnea (difficulty breathing or hysterical choking), aphonia (loss of voice), hysterical unsociability, and depression. All of these symptoms Freud would trace back to the repression of Doras familiarity. The willful repression of the sexual urges Dora felt for the adults around her (including her father, her fathers mistress Frau K., and her husband Herr K.), Freud concludes, is responsible for all of her hysterical symptoms and, using the interpretative techniques demonstrable in The Interpretat ion of Dreams, Freud attempts to show that Doras denial of these conclusions is a resistance to her own natural inclinations. In otherwise words, Dora represses her true desires and this repression is the source of her hysterical symptoms.Whereas the practical aim of the treatment is to remove all possible symptoms and to flip them by conscious thoughts, Freud writes, we may regard it as a second and theoretical aim to holdfast all the damages to the patients memory. These two aims are coincident. When one is reached, so is the other and the same path leads to them both(prenominal) (Freud 11). In other words, Freud must convince Dora of the correctness of his psychoanalytical interpretation in rear for her symptoms to abate. The impairments to her memory, Freud claims, are just those repressed desires that have caused her hysterical symptoms. She must accept Freuds analysis in order to be cured of her ailment. It is this diagnosis of the origin of Doras symptoms and the path to a cure that I wish to challenge. In order to effectively demonstrate the flaws in Freuds account, I shall turn to the circumstances leading up to Doras treatment.Doras father was in a loveless marriage with a woman whose interests in life, we are told, were confined to the upkeep of the family home. Doras family had travel to a health-resort outside Vienna to provide a better climate for her fathers tubercular ailments and made friends with a couple that had lived at the resort for several years, Herr K. and his wife Frau K. Frau K. became her fathers nurse and, in time, his mistress. Dora cared for the K.s two children and was almost a mother to them (Freud 19). Two incidents of a sexual nature occurred between Herr K. and Dora, both of which Freud would misinterpret to his patients detriment. Herr K. would accompany Dora on walks and one day made sexual advances toward her after a trip to the lake. When she told her father about the incident, he called on Herr K. to explain himse lf. Herr K. denied any such overtures and conjectured that Dora had imagined the whole thing. She had, after all, read Mantegazzas Physiology of Love and books of that sort in their house on the lake (Freud 19). It was, Herr K. claimed, most likely that she had been over-excited by such reading and fantasized that Herr K. might be amorously intwined with her. Much to Doras