Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (Dora)

Freud's account of an analysis of roughly three months, conducted in 1900 with an eighteen year old woman he calls Dora, written up as a fragment because she broke off the treatment before he judged the work complete. Published in 1905, it applies the dream method of the previous year to a single case, reading Dora's aphonia, nervous cough and disgust as conversions that carry repressed wishes bound up with her father's affair, the advances of Herr K, and her own divided attachments.

The part clinicians return to is the postscript. There Freud reconstructs why the treatment collapsed: he had failed to register in time that Dora was directing toward him feelings that belonged to the figures around her, and that her sudden departure repeated an older act of revenge. The case therefore works two ways, as an early demonstration of interpretation in practice and as Freud's own record of missing the transference while it moved through the room.