The Failures of Freud and Psychoanalysis Essays

The Failures of Freud and Psychoanalysis Essays The Failures of Freud and Psychoanalysis Paper The Failures of Freud and Psychoanalysis Paper In October 1900, Philip Bauer took his 18-year-old daughter to see the little known psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud. Bauer took his daughter to be treated by Freud for her recent display of strange behaviors such as saying strange things, and threatening suicide. From Freuds initial point of view the case did not seem to be particularly promising in terms of supplying new features for his theories in development. Freud diagnosed the young woman as possessing the typical signs of hysteria, a psychosis that he had previously encountered copiously. However, the resulting case proved to engage Freud more than he initially thought and slowly blossomed into Freuds most famous case history. A few days after taking the case, Freud wrote his friend Wilhelm Fleiss that a case has smoothly opened to the existing collection of picklocks. 1 Freuds newfound interest in the case unexpectedly was siphoned because the young patient abruptly terminated her psycho-analyitical treatment at the end of December of 1904, only eleven weeks after she first came to Freud. Freud wrote up his case-notes in January of 1901, but it wasnt until 1905 that his Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria , or known as Dora, was published in a specialist journal. 2 This was the inauspicious start of a case history that snowballed into being recognized as the first of Freuds great case histories and which has taken its place as one of the classic reports in the psychiatric literature. 3 The pseudonym that Freud gave to the patient Ida Bauer, Dora, has become commonly associated whenever Freud is mentioned. In his recounting of the Dora case, Freud is surprisingly frank about his inability to deal with his patient effectively. The Dora case morphed from a case that was supposed to strengthen Freuds psychoanalytical theory into an example of the failure on the part of both Freud and psychoanalysis. It was a combination of the ineffectiveness of Freud and his flawed theory that catalyzed Dora to stop her treatment. These failures and Freuds relative openness about them reveal that Freud was not able to clearly and effectively analyze his patient because of psychoanalysiss unwanted side effect of transference. As a medical scientist, Freud was so frank about his inability to deal with Dora because he wanted to improve his methods and ultimately learn from his mistakes. The failures in Dora also serve to show that Freuds method of psychoanalysis was attached with the phenomenon of transference, proving to be hugely detrimental to the success of Freuds attempt to cure his patient. Transference is the projection by the patient of the cause of his or her symptoms onto the analyst. The interaction between the patient and the analyst is structured or constructed by the patient as one in which the cause of the hysterical symptoms is transferred to the relationship with the physician. In the case of Dora, her symptoms brought on from exposure to Herr K and her father transferred to Freud becoming the cause of her hysteria. Transferences shifting of a psychosis from interaction with the original perpetrators to interaction with the analyst is something that Freud could not avoid. Psychoanalysis is flawed by nature and it took Dora to expose its downfalls and brought Freud an endless supply of criticism. Feminist scholars attack Freud for his clear annoyance with Dora and his inability to set aside male prejudices. Freud could be portrayed to show a lack of empathy for a suffering adolescent girl being victimized by egoistic adults, including her father. 4 Freud explained his lack of empathy for Dora because he had always avoided acting a part, and have contented myself with practicing the humbler arts of psychology. Freud attempted to adopt a laizze-fair and Baconian approach toward Dora but could not accomplish this because he was connected to Doras symptoms through the behavior of males in Doras life. Unknowingly Freud treated Dora like the other males in her life by not caring about her problems and seemingly use her for his own personal advantage. This is akin to Doras fear of her father using her to get closer to Frau K. Dora feels used by all men in her life and Freuds nonchalant behavior propagated these feelings concordantly with her symptoms of hysteria. This failure on Freuds part reveals that Freud was doing his job as a medical scientist by not playing a role, but his adherence to scientific methods made him unable to gain ground on Doras psychosis. Freud was not at fault for not sympathizing with Dora, he was emotionally confined within a scientific procedure that he believed was the only way to cure his patient. While bounded in the laws of science, Freud still aimed at describing Doras story in a manner that engaged any reader and was scientific enough to satisfy his contemporaries. Freud elucidates Doras story in a detective manner that paints a scene in which Freud is attempting to unearth the buried roots of Doras psychosis. The dialogue between him and Dora provides evidence supporting Freuds conclusions he surmises along the way, slowly exposing the repressed nature of Doras symptoms. For the most part Freud accepts Doras story yet he wonders why Dora claims to feel disgust, rather than sexual desire when Herr K grabs her, pressing his erect phallus against her body. Freud is of the opinion that Dora unconsciously desires Herr K and for good measure he also claims that she desires Frau K. The problem is no longer seen to be Doras resistance to the male phallus, but has become Freuds assumptions about womens desires. Freud also interprets that Doras obsession with her fathers love for Frau K acts as a cover-up or a displacement of Doras own attraction both to her father and to Herr K. Her love for her father is an infantile impulse that is revived in order to deceive Dora herself about her love for Herr K. Both of these conclusions are based upon speculation and have little facts attributed to them. This is an example of how Freud speculates a conclusion based upon no evidence therefore lending him to be criticized for repressing Doras urges further below the conscience. Freud claimed that he was uncovering hidden desires, but critics suggest that his revelations conceal as much as they expose. These assumptions by Freud show that accompanied with transference, an instrumental failure of his therapy is that his conclusions can only be based upon assumptions. Freud later acknowledges that it was his failures that made Dora end her treatment but it was necessary to publish the case history of Dora to show the failures of psychoanalysis so that they may be improved. It is surprising that Freud writes about his failures with such a magnitude of openness that he passes close to condemning himself and his own approach. Freud wrote so frankly about the failures of his methods and his overall therapy because he was above all a scientist and had to fail first to succeed in perfecting psychoanalysis. It was Freuds duty to publish his failures because he still believed that he was on the correct track to solving the mysteries of hysterias origin. In his prefatory remarks to Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria he states that, it becomes the physicians duty to publish what he believes he knows of the causes and structure of hysteria, and it becomes a disgraceful piece of cowardice on his part to neglect doing so. 6 Freud was obligated to publish Dora, and never seemed to regret it. In conclusion, Freud tried his best to cure Dora of her psychosis but because of the failures of his theory and failures on the part of Freud as a medical scientist, he failed Dora and psychoanalysis was irrevocably changed forever. These failures reveal that Freud was an astounding medical scientist who tried his best to succeed where others have failed, and that psychoanalysis came attached with transference. The transference of Doras fear of men to Freud was a side effect of psychoanalysis that Freud had not foreseen. Dora proves to be one of Freuds most famous case histories because it shows that psychoanalysis could work, but doesnt. Freud himself was also at fault for not comforting Dora while she told him things that she could tell no one else. In this manner of not paying attention to her emotional needs, Freud pushed Dora further away until she could not withstand his treatment any longer. Freuds openness about the failures within the case show that he wanted to improve upon his methods and that he truly believed in the positive effects of psychoanalysis, a theory that will be questioned forever.