Sigmund Freud’s Dora

In 1889, Sigmund Freud began treatment with an 18-year-old girl who was brought to him for analysis by her father after she had written a suicide note. Freud was eager to use this case to demonstrate the hypotheses laid out in his “Interpretation of Dreams,” but after only three months of treatment the young woman walked out, without being cured. Five years later, Freud published an account of this failed treatment, calling it a “Fragment of an Analysis” and giving his patient the name Dora – that of a servant in his household. Recently, Dora has been a focus for the appropriation of psychoanalysis by feminist theory. Questions about the exchange of women, the representation of women, the representation of female sexuality, and the marginal or contradictory position of women in language, have been discovered in her story. “As a counter-text to Freud’s original work, the film raises important philosophical and political questions concerning the historical appearance of female hysterics and the male-prescribed ‘talking and hypnotic cures’ of the new mental health sciences. The film becomes an exploration of the limitations and inauthenticities of psychoanalytic discourse. All of this is accomplished by a filmic language that both shows and tells. From a philosophical point of view, this is undoubtedly the only film I have ever ‘read’ and enjoyed thoroughly. It’s hard to put it down.” – Jacquelyn Zita, Minnesota Daily