This quote reveals Freud's insight in to Dora's hysteria. He thinks that the existence of a real "erotic demand" causes internal difficulties within the patient. The word flee reminds the reader of Dora's actions in the situation with Herr K.. Dora literally fleed from Herr K. just as she flees from some realities in her thoughts, especially about sexual matters. Fear of seeing their phantasies realized is an important part of a patient's conditions. Freud shows how important these concepts are to neurotics by using the word "dominated," which elicits a strong image in a reader's mind.

“The right attitude is: “pour faire une omelette il faut casser des oeufs.� The patients themselves are easy to convince; and there are only too many opportunities of doing so in the course of the treatment� (Freud 42).

Freud says, “To make an omelet, you have to break some eggs.� Significantly, Freud discusses topics like sexuality and “cracks� the perfect “shell� below which society represses its thoughts. However, “breaking� eggs is a messy process. The shell often becomes completely smashed, and pieces may fall into the mixture. Freud’s analysis is also a somewhat messy process, because in the end, the treatment does fall apart.

Detectives and repairmen dismantle broken objects, find problems, and then put them back together. In the case of eggs, there is no way to put them back together. The mention of “eggs� is also interesting in the sense of a female “egg,� and the idea that patriarchal authority in society suppresses women’s rights.

Freud’s confidence in himself as an analyst is seen through his satisfaction in little victories, like “convincing� Dora that he ultimately knows her better than she knows herself. Freud refers to the patriarchal qualities of Dora’s father when he says, “‘…she had been virtually handed over to Herr K…as the price of tolerating the relations between her father and Frau K� (xvi). Yet, he himself demonstrates the overbearingly authoritative qualities that he denounces when he “convinces� (overpowers) Dora.

One of the most interesting things (for me) about Freud is thinking about why he is so popular and influential. Especially considering the fact the psychological world has for the most part turned its back on Freud and his psychoanalysis given their previous great interest. This passage here sparked my interest because it reminded me of another taboo -stomping trailblazer - Timothy Leary. Freud, himself, was a proponent of cocaine in his life. He also, at times, promoted said drug. To discover one's own latent content, maybe Frued is also talking about drug use and its possible benefits. Much like Leary, who promoted LSD, Freud might just have been a proto-merry prankster.

This quote occurs at the end of the book to describe Dora’s confrontation with Frau and Herr K. in order to fulfill a personal vendetta. She does so by discussing her father’s affair with Frau K. and her experiences with Herr K. The significance of this quote is found in Dora’s ability to seek her own revenge and thus achieve a conclusion. By stating aloud her previously unconscious and repressed feelings concerning the events that have caused her so much turmoil, she frees herself from Freud’s definition of hysteria. The use and repetition of the pronoun ‘she’ describes Dora’s autonomy in order to combat her hysterical symptoms on her own. She finds a self-determined ‘satisfactory conclusion’ by way of her own actions. The fact that she is a female also counters the previously dominant ideology of patriarchy within her life. In a sense, this ‘revenge’ is her independent cure for her own hysteria. On Freud’s terms, he has given Dora the ability to identify and contest her hysterical position by giving her the tools to turn her gaze inward, battle the forbidden thoughts, and return to ‘normalcy.’

This quotation comes at the end of the case history and subsequently the end of Dora’s treatment. Freud's analysis does not only apply Dora’s personal case study of hysteria; is also interesting that Freud fits romance, marriage and childbirth into a narrative story. Freud contends that Dora has internalized the shape of her mother’s sexual development with that of her own, and has placed herself in the same structural position as her mother. In this sense, Freud consigns a context on Dora’s linear progression of sexual identity. Although Dora longs to occupy a structural position analogous to her mother, she revolts against her mother. Finally, Freud configures Dora's case study in language of the romance genre - by fictionalizing Dora's sexual development, or rather fitting it into a fictionalized structure, he not only renders it more accessible, but renders sexual and other choices as fixed, as a kind of predestined structure.

This quote is part of Freud’s discussion on symptomatic acts (acts which people often do unconsciously, but which are significant expressions of the unconscious) after he notices Dora fiddling with her reticule. In the first sentence the word “mortal� emphasizes the fact that in undeliberate exposure of the unconscious is a natural thing, so much so that it is an unavoidable fact of life for all mortals. The word mortal is powerful here because it conveys something all-encompassing and all-inclusive, namely something that needs only the requirement of being mortal to occur. The second sentence derives a lot of meaning from the word “chatters.� Usually when someone is chattering, he or she is casually talking and not paying much attention to what they are revealing. This helps to describe Freud’s ability to see “chatter� when the person’s “lips are silent.� The word “betrayal� makes the reader think that we are not in control when it comes to hiding our unconscious and can be betrayed by our own selves. The last sentence shows Freud’s confidence in his abilities to unmask these hidden thoughts by acting like a detective and putting together all the small clues and actions which a person shows which consequently serve to betray his or her unconscious thoughts.

This quotation contains a very interesting mix of words that lend themselves to feelings of certainty and those that impart a very unsure feeling. First, Freud uses the term “attempt�, which already suggests that his intended result may or may not occur. He then says that these attempts are made by “roundabout methods�. In the thesaurus, the term “roundabout� has the word “roughly� as a synonym and “exactly� as its opposite. I found this to be intriguing because the dictionary definition of “analysis� is “The action of taking something apart in order to study it�. Now, it would appear to me that taking something apart to study it should be performed in a more exact fashion than “roundabout�. Next, Freud mentions that his goal is to “convince� the patient that there “exists in her� an “intention to be ill�. I found this to be a little bit odd because Freud sets up a situation in which an outsider (himself) wants to get his patient (Dora) to accept that what he is telling her about her own being is correct and therefore that he knows more about Dora than she knows about herself. The term “exists� lends me to think of something living. Freud’s theories of the id, ego, and superego are amost treated as such in many circumstances. Therefore, this “intention� to be ill could arguably be the id or, as he refers to it in this case, the “unconscious�.

This quote occurs within Freud’s analysis of Dora’s first dream as a way of explaining how he arrives at his conclusions about the significance of each aspect of the dream. Freud attributes symbolic meaning to the physical actions of the characters within the dream due to his belief that the enigmas of the unconscious can be decoded by the observation of outward expressions. The forbidden nature of the unconscious is expressed with the words ‘secret,’ ‘hidden,’ and ‘betrayal.’ The thoughts are deemed illicit by society’s unwillingness to acknowledge them in polite conversation. Much like the detectives we have encountered in the course thus far, Freud suggests that his ability to decipher aspects of the unconscious comes from his strong observational powers. He states that he has ‘eyes to see and ears to hear,’ making the interpretation of the physical expressions of hysterical symptoms ‘quite possible.’ Finally, Freud’s notion of the fluid action of transference in delivering unconscious thoughts to the conscious can be observed in his description of how the symptoms ‘ooze’ from the patient in a liquid form of enlightenment. This passage is significant in its ability to describe Freud’s rationalization of his interpretation of hysteria.

"For a long time I was in perplexity as to what the self-reproach could be which lay behind her passionate repudiation of this explanation of the episode. It was justifiable to suspect that there was something concealed, for a reproach which misses the mark gives no lasting offence." pg. 39

This quote occurs while Freud is setting up the background of Dora's story and talking about her relationship with her Father. This quote is significant in that it's symbolic of her course of treatment and her feelings toward Freud's treatment. Whenever Freud suggests an analysis of a story or dream, she emphatically denies his analysis and then later will slowly admit to his truths. Dora's father made her go to see Freud, and thus she may be reluctant to participate in his psychoanalysis. For this reason, Dora will want to disagree with his analysis and will conceal those things which she mentions to Freud. As his analysis progresses and he delves into her life and thoughts more, she probably feels even more reluctant to share perhaps out of embarrassment of her repressed thoughts.

This passage is found when Freud is explaining hysterical symptoms. He states that the capacity for the symptoms to repeat is a characteristic of a hysterical symptom. Those hysterical symptoms have psychical, or mental, significance. He then says the psychical meaning is “lent to it� or “welded to it�. I think these lines are interesting because they are giving physical characteristics to the suppressed thoughts. He also says the suppressed thoughts are “struggling for expression�. He again is giving mental thoughts a physical expression. This passage also shows how Freud can be considered a detective because he looks for the meaning of the suppressed thoughts which struggle for expression in Dora’s hysterical symptoms. This is complicated because in the passage he says the meanings can be different for each hysterical symptom. In this sense, he is investigating Dora’s symptoms to reconstruct the meaning of her suppressed thoughts. This also shows the contrast between discovering meaning and reconstructing meaning. Freud is reconstructing meaning because he can’t see what he is looking for; he must use what he knows about her symptoms and find their connections to suppressed thoughts.

In the passage, Freud details the method in which he examines Dora's dream. Freud goes on to mention the fact that he interprets the dream given his already forming hypothesis about what is ailing Dora. This, once again, is Freud letting his hubris take over. Instead of taking the dream at face value (whether he examined its latent content or not), Freud melds his interpretation of the dream into what he already believes of Dora. Whether or not this discredits Freud's methods, I feel this passage says something more about Freud than Dora. Freud always reiterating his genius was almost necessary at the time of his publishing. He was insecure because he was just one psychoanalyst trying to convert an entire discipline to radically change their core beliefs. It's easy to understand why Freud was so boisterous. The interesting thing about this text is that it's a case study about a person that, at times, can say more about the practitioner than the patient.

“…the information I receive is never enough to let me see my way about the case. This first account may be compared to an unnavigable river whose stream is at one moment choked by masses of rock and at another divided and lost among shallows and sandbanks. I cannot help wondering how it is that the authorities can produce such smooth and exact histories in cases of hysteria.� (Freud 10)

Dora reveals her side of the story because Freud has already heard what her father has to say. However, neither of these two variations pleases Freud; he trusts his own processes and interpretations. Freud is similar to other detectives that we have studied, including Holmes and Dupin. The “information� (clues) that Freud receives, as a medical “detective,� is not enough to help him solve the case; he has to apply his own intuition. His arrogance (“let me see my way about the case�) and dissatisfaction with authorities (he does not concur with their “smooth and exact histories�) is like Holmes’ and Dupin’s independence of the police.

Dora’s case is like the “unnavigable river� because, in a way, Freud is “along for the ride.� Although he claims superior knowledge throughout this study, he has no control over the outcome. Dora’s memory, like the river, is “choked by masses of rock,� and sexual thoughts have been repressed (“divided and lost among shallows and sandbanks�).

Freud, like Oedipus, is at a crossroads with Dora’s story on one side and her fathers on the other. Yet, he plunges onward with his own opinions, and is essentially defeated in the end because Dora stops treatment.

As this work is so titled “An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,� the focus was not Dora, but analyzing the disease, hysteria, from which she and others suffer; the evidence of the analysis happens to be the particular case involving the girl Dora. Freud writes, “I don’t know what […] she wanted from me,� which underlies the fact that Dora was the only one who could receive a personal benefit of this treatment, and that Freud was strictly analyzer through whom the treatment was delivered. Though Freud does not intentionally make this parallel, his analysis of Dora is very similar to analysis completed by any scientific researcher. The researcher does not have any personal stakes in the matter other than their own satisfaction of discovery or understanding of their subject. This is exactly how Freud describes his interest in Dora, the “satisfaction of according her a […] cure…� And the fact that Dora “deprived� Freud of this satisfaction is analogous to a researcher feeling disgruntled at not being able to complete his research because his employer broke off his funding for the research.
So this case happens to be that of the girl named Dora, but the focus is on Freud as an analyst and his own report of his experience of his work and theory.

This passage discusses a theme that has been found in a variety of the works we have studied this semester; that is the difficulty in understanding the commonplace. Freud makes the point that people often become too caught up in the cases that seem most extraordinary. They think that because a case is unusual, that automatically means it is most important. This same situation occured in the detective stories of Sherlock Holmes, through the character of Dupin. Dupin often commented that people were unable to solve certain cases because they were convinced that the answer to the mystery would have to be something extraordinary/unusual. Because of this, people oftentimes overlooked the answer to the mystery merely because it seemed too "obvious". Freud connects with this theme because he feels that in studying the case of Dora, a case that on the surface seems commonplace, he might be able to find the answer to the mystery of hysteria.

This quotation occurs toward the beginning of Freud’s exposition of Dora’s case history. Freud establishes his account of hysteria in the context of its essential failure: not only did Dora leave treatment, she also – consciously or unconsciously – omitted critical parts of her story. Dora’s inability to tell her story wholly exemplifies the human inability to turn ours gazes inward, an analogy that can be drawn to the alleged collective nature of Oedipus’s plight. Freud speaks of this “conscious disingenuousness� in theoretical and overtly medical terms – however, his decision to frame Dora’s illness as a narrative provides deeper implications for this project: as a narrative, psychological motivations and deletions become objectified and subject to narratorial voyeurism or vicariousness. In this sense, Dora’s shame regarding her hysterical or somatic symptoms and her past, including her omissions is fit into Freud’s narrative in order to render it accessible, edifying, and universal.