Freud notes that it was difficult to direct Dora’s attention to her relationship with Herr K. The “uppermost layer of her associations” 21 was always connected with her father and with his continuing relationship with Herr and Frau K, for which she could not forgive him. For “she viewed those relations in a very different light from that in which her father wished them to appear. In her mind there was no doubt that what bound her father to this young and beautiful woman was a common love affair.” 22 The affair became so obvious, in fact, that Herr K complained to Dora’s mother about what was becoming a matter of general observation. Dora noted that her father had begun to shower Frau K with gifts, and then, in an effort to disguise his activity, had become especially generous with her mother and herself. Dora accused her father of insincerity, falseness of character, egoism, and a tendency to view matters in such light as pleased him.
I could not in general dispute Dora’s characterization of her father; and there was one particular respect in which it was easy to see that her reproaches were justified. When she was feeling embittered she used to be overcome by the idea that she had been handed over to Herr K as the price of his tolerating the relations between her father and his wife; and her rage at her father’s making such a use of her was visible behind her affection for him. At other times she was quite well aware that she had been guilty of exaggeration in talking like this. The two men had of course never made a formal agreement in which she was treated as an object for barter; her father in particular would have been horrified at any such suggestion. But he was one of those men who know how to evade a dilemma by falsifying their judgment upon one of the conflicting alternatives . . . each of the two men avoided drawing any conclusions from the other’s behavior which would have been awkward for his own plans, [emphasis added] 23
This passage is of inestimable value in understanding Freuds therapeutic methodology. And we discover, as we will continue to discover, the same inclusion and bracketing of significant social relations to which I previously alluded. I o begin with, the phrase handed over may reverberate in the reader’s mind; it is the same phrase that Freud employed when he described how Dora’s father “handed her over to me for psychotherapeutic treatment.” I he phrase is not an accident. Instead, it points to the fact that an identical structure lies behind the initiation of Dora’s therapy by her father and his tacit bribe of Flerr K through the “gift” of his daughter. Dora’s father wanted simply to be let alone and he contrived to accomplish this task by bartering his daughter to Herr K on the one hand, and by seeking Freud’s assistance in making Dora herself more compliant, on the other. But Freud does not, for all his ingenuity in hounding words to their hidden origins, note the repetition of the phrase “handed over.” To have done so would have raised an important question about his own relationship to Dora’s situation. Yet, the string of terms is impressive: “handed over,” “making such a use of her,” “the price of his tolerating the relations,” and, finally, “an object for barter.” The exchange of women for the sake of continued masculine domination, either as price affixed to a commodity or in the form of barter as an equivalent of “items of exchange, is almost too obvious to ignore.
Freud seems to struggle against the consequence of his own participation when he misdirects the entire inquiry by noting that the two men had never “made a formal agreement.” But then Dora’s father had not made a formal agreement with Freud when he handed Dora over to him, nor had they discussed the terms of the therapy or the criteria of its successful resolution. Nevertheless, Freud’s conceptions and those of Dora’s father are wholly consonant. On the one hand Freud notes that Dora’s reproaches were justified, and on the other he observes that she was guilty of exaggeration. Can it fail to have entered Freud’s mind that he, like Dora’s father, could evade his own dilemma by avoiding drawing any conclusions from the other’s behavior? Freud knew too much to avoid the issue completely.
Toward the conclusion of the presentation Freud says of Dora’s father:
He had given his support to the treatment so long as he could hope that I should “talk” Dora out of her belief that there was something more than a friendship between him and Frau K. His interest faded when he observed that it was not my intention to bring about that result . 24
What was Freud’s ultimate intention in this issue? That is not so easy to determine, as we shall see.
At the heart of Dora’s situation was the overwhelming fact of be
trayal. The corrupt bartering of Dora to Herr K by her father was only the last of a series of incidents that previously involved his neglect and rejection of this once favored companion and confidante, and that ultimatelv stretched back to his contraction of syphilis. But this betrayal, rather than an isolated incident, was part of a pattern of exploitation and hypocrisy engaged in by every powerful adult in Dora’s life, all of whom used her in one way or another to achieve purposes for which she was merely a means of convenience. From her mother she received nothing but the dreary repetition of despair and household compulsion. The fact that she herself had been deceived and replaced by Frau K did not evoke compassion from Dora. The roles available to Dora, mirroring her mother or Frau K, were as victim or victimizes One could vivaciously “steal away” the father and husband of other women, as Frau K, or suffer the encroachments of a woman more skilled at seduction than one’s self, as her mother. But in neither case could one live openly in the world nurtured by the secure love of others, as one had been instructed by these “loving” parties themselves.
It was Dora’s governess who had First attempted to reveal the truth of Frau K's relation w'ith her father. This woman, who was “well-read and of advanced view's,” 25 insisted to Dora’s mother that it was undignified for her to tolerate the relationship that was occurring in her presence and she offered the same account to Dora herself. For a while all was well between them, despite the fact that Dora continued to deny the accusation and to remain devoted to Frau K. But eventually she became hostile to the governess when she realized that her motive, too, had been the love of Dora’s father:
She did not become angry until she observed that she herself was a subject of
complete indifference to the governess, whose pretended affection for her
was really meant for her father. 26
It w r as for possession of her father that she was betrayed; for this father who replaced her with another in his affections, who disbelieved her account of the advances of Herr K, who lied to her and persisted in his lie, whose syphilis was a threat to her health, who nevertheless remained her access to the social world, “the dominating figure in this circle, owing to his intelligence and character."
Nor did she fare much better at the hands of Frau K. At one point the two of them had been extremely intimate. When Dora visited the K’s she used to share a bedroom with Frau K while Herr K slept elsewhere. Dora had become Frau K’s “confidante and advisor in all the difficulties of her married life.’ 27 1 hey talked about everything and Dot a piaisid Frau K in terms that seemed to Freud more appropriate for a lover than an older friend. And yet, how had Frau K dealt with Dora? Remember that after Dora had accused Herr K of indecent advances toward her he
had responded by meeting with her father and vehemently denying her accusations. Although he first spoke of his high regard for Dora, his tone soon changed to disparagement and in this context he accused her of a perverted interest in sexual matters as illustrated by her reading of Mantegazza.
Frau K., therefore had betrayed her and had calumniated her; for it had only been with her that she had read Mantegazza and discussed forbidden topics. It was a repetition of what had happened with the governess: Frau K had sacrificed her without a moment’s hesitation so that her relations with her father might not be disturbed . 28
It is not accidental that Frau K repeats the betrayal by the governess. Women in Dora’s life deny each other in time of need and do not hesitate to sacrifice each other to their interests with men. Their rivalry is masked by the pretension of affection, which serves to hide both the domination of men and the true nature of the purported concern for each other. Nothing could have been better calculated to teach Dora her sexual subservience than to have witnessed its acting out by Frau K, who not only colluded with the deceitful neglect of her father, but who revealed at the same time the ideological significance of the sweet, comraderly ties of these women to each other. That Frau K revealed her intimacies with Dora to her husband must have meant that she knew of Herr K’s liaison with the young girl and was prepared for the sake of her own affair to support his groundless accusations against her regardless of the cost to Dora’s life.
The final repetition of sacrifice and self-aggrandizement occurs again in the case of Herr K. Whatever Dora’s ambivalent feelings toward his charming flattery and painful deceit, her meaning to Herr K was imposed upon her unmistakably by an incident Freud related toward the end of the analysis. There was a governess of the K’s who two days before the incident of Herr K’s proposal to Dora at the lake had taken her aside to relate how Herr K had made advances toward her at a time when his wife was away. He pursued her passionately and remarked specifically “that he got nothing from his wife.”
“Why, those are the very words he used afterwards, when he made his proposal to you and you gave him the slap in the face.”—“Yes. She had given way to him, but after a little while he had ceased to care for her, and since then she hated him.”
“Now I know your motive for the slap in the face with which you answered Herr K’s proposal. It was not that you were offended at his suggestions; you were actuated by jealousy and revenge. At the time when the governess was telling you her story you were still able to make use of your gift for putting on one side everything that is not agreeable to your feelings. But at the moment when Herr K used the words ‘I get nothing out of my wife'—which were the
same words he had used to the governess—fresh emotions were aroused in you and tipped the balance. ‘Does he dare,’ you said to yourself, ‘to treat me like a governess, like a servant?’ ” 2a
Just as Freud does not respond to the repetition of the words "handed over” so too, Herr K’s statement that he “gets nothing out of his wife,” used each time in a context of seduction, is met with silence. To obtain Dora and the governess Herr K must denigrate Frau K for her lack of contribution to him. They, apparently, will yield him up better results. Herr K does not deny the criterion of female usefulness to men, but suggests, instead, that Dora will fare better by this standard than Frau K herself. Women are measured by their ability to satisfy men. Still Freud can conclude that “she was not offended by his suggestions.” Once again the pattern of sexual domination is obscured, and Herr K’s manipulation of Dora is replaced with an account of her role in bringing about the feelings for w hich she is now made responsible.
It is impossible for Freud to ignore the structure of power without simultaneously shifting the balance of responsibility from the social corruption of sexual roles under capitalism to Dora’s participation in her own subservience. In this ideological perspective even the truth of the charge of Dora’s compliance is totally mystified. For Freud is wholly incapable of understanding Dora’s dissimulation as the last line of defense in a world significantly devoid of the possibility of her acting directly in accordance with the truth. It is this ideological blindness that skews Freud’s considerable insight and renders his genius in grasping the nature of self-deception another device to be employed against the victims of exploitation. Freud offers no criticism of what Dora includes in her account: “I could not in general dispute Dora’s characterization of her father.” 30 Instead, he adopts a different approach:
When the patient brings forward a sound incontestable train of argument during psycho-analytic treatment, the physician is liable to feel a moment’s embarrassment, and the patient may take advantage of it by asking. This is all perfecdy correct and true, isn’t it? What do you want to change in it now that I’ve told it you?” But it soon becomes evident that the patient uses thoughts of this kind, which the analysis cannot attack, for the purpose ol cloaking others which are anxious to escape from criticism and from consciousness. A string of reproaches against other people leads one to suspect the existence of a string of self-reproaches with the same content . 31