Freud, Dora, and Compulsory Sexuality

Abstract

In this examination of Freud’s Dora, I show that Freud insisted that Dora’s comments and gestures reflected her underlying sexual motivations, despite her repeated denials and objections. The main point is that, just as Freud “ruled in” certain ways of talking, defining Dora’s sexual fantasies and dreams as acceptable and valid representations of her feelings, so also, Freud “ruled out” other kinds of talking, in particular, Dora’s accounts of nonsexual motivation. In treating those accounts as false and meaningless, as so much cover for her “true” sexual feelings, Freud not only imposed his vision of sexuality onto a patient, he showed an entire historical period how to read sexuality into everything people say and do.