Dora

In October 1900, Philip Bauer, a Jewish industrialist living in Vienna, took his eighteen year old daughter to see Dr Freud. This was the same doctor who, a few years earlier, had successfully treated him for venereal symptoms. Now, his daughter was acting peculiarly, saying strange things; she had even threatened suicide; could Dr Freud restore her to reason? From Freud's point of view, the case did not seem to be particularly promising, at least in terms of offering new features for the theories which he was developing. The young woman was displaying the typical signs of 'hysteria', which he had encountered many times previously. However, Freud took her on. His finances at the time were none too secure. A few days later, writing to his friend Wilhelm Fleiss, Freud mentioned that the "case has smoothly opened to the existing collection of picklocks" (Freud, 1985: 427). The young patient was to terminate the treatment abruptly at the end of that December. Freud wrote up his case-notes in the January of the new year. It was not until