Ida Bauer

Ida Bauer (1882–1945) was a hysterical patient of Sigmund Freud. He wrote a famous case study about her using the pseudonym 'Dora' This Study is published in "Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" (1905 [1901], Standard Edition Vol.7, pp1-122.) Bauer's most manifested hysterical symptom was aphonia (loss of voice).

'Dora' remains one of Freud's most famous cases, and is often discussed in feminist circles because of Freud's comments in relation to this case, especially comments like This was surely just the situation to call up destinct feelings of sexual excitement in a girl of fourteen in reference to Dora being kissed by a 'young man of preposessing appearance' (S.E. 7. pp28) implying the passivity of female sexuality and his statement I should without question consider a person hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings that were preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable (ibid)

After only 11 weeks of therapy, she broke off her therapy much to Freud's disappointment. Freud saw this as his failure as an analyst and decided the whole treatment had failed.

After some time, Ida returned to see Freud and explained how her symptoms had mostly cleared. Freud had been the only person to believe her in regards to the situations with 'Herr K' and her father and after the analysis, she had chosen to confront her tormentors (her father, his lover and his lover's husband). When confronted, her tormentors confessed that she had been right all along and following this, most of her symptoms had cleared.

Though Freud was disappointed with the initial results of the case, he considered it important, as it raised his awareness of the phenomenon of transference, which he blamed for his seeming failures in the case.

Freud gave her the name 'Dora' after a maid working in the Freud house by the same name.

Ida's brother Otto Bauer was a leading member of the Austromarxism movement.

Criticism of Freud's account of the case
“We now understand Dora as a classic case of malpractice. Her father, though evincing of late stages of syphillis, had for some years been carrying on an affair with an attractive woman, identified as Frau K. Ida Bauer was fond of Frau K. She had long known of the affair. Herr K was a friend of the Buaers, and often gave Ida presents. His sexual interest in the girl was evident; she remembered with revulsion the time, when she was fourteen, that he forced a kiss on her. When she was 16, Herr K, during a country walk, made a sexual advance to which she reacted with disgust, slapping him and running away. She reported the incident to her father, who confronted Herr K, who denied it altogether. She insisted repeatedly that they break off relations with the Ks. Her father took Herr Ks side, and went on with the affair. She developed signs and symptoms including weeks-long attacks of coughing, a vaginal discharge, instances of bed wetting and thoughts of suicide. Her father sent her to Freud to be cured of these and of her rebelliousness. She went to Freud altogether against her will. Treatment was stormy and lasted only 3 months. None the less, in that time, Freud was able boldly to interpret several of Ida Bauer’s dreams and to elaborate a diagnosis. Briefly: He insisted to her that she was unconsciously in love with Herr K. Her bed-wetting and vaginal discharge he regarded as proof that she had been a masturbator—which he believed an unhealthy practice—although she denied it. The disgust she reported at the forced kiss masked the fact that she had actually been sexually excited by it—which Freud thought was the only healthy response of a pubescent girl. The urgency of her insistence that they break with the Ks masked the fact that she was in homosexual love with her mother as well as with Frau K as a mother surrogate, and jealous of her father’s affair." []

Literature

 * Charles Bernheimer, Claire Kahane, In Dora's Case: Freud-Hysteria-Feminism: Freud, Hysteria, Feminism, Second Edition, Columbia University Press, 1990
 * Hannah S. Decker, Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900, The Free Press, 1991
 * Robin Tolmach Lakoff, James C. Coyne, Father Knows Best: The Use and Abuse of Power in Freud's Case of Dora, Teachers' College Press, 1993
 * Patrick Mahoney, Freud's Dora: A Psychoanalytic, Historical, and Textual Study, Yale University Press 1996, ISBN 0300066228