Review: The Scene of Psychoanalysis: The Unanswered Questions of Dora

Reviewed Work(s): "L'Intervention sur le Transfert" in Ecrits by Jacques Lacan:

Speculum de L'Autre Femme by Luce Irigaray
Review by: Suzanne Gearhart
Source: Diacritics , Spring, 1979, Vol. 9, No. 1, The Tropology of Freud (Spring, 1979),
pp. 113-126+128
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/464704

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 THE SCENE OF
PSYCHOANAL YSIS: The
Unanswered Questions
of Dora

SUZANNE GEARHART

Jacques Lacan. "L'INTERVENTION SUR LE TRANSFERT" in ECRITS. Paris: Seuil,

Luce Irigaray. SPECULUM DE L'AUTRE FEMME. Paris: Minuit, 1974.

In the debate which continues to surround Freud's work, he is seen by som

the founder of an authentic science and by others as a thinker who attempted t
scientific status to a set of inherited social and political values. The psychoanal
phenomenon of transference has provided a focal point in this debate bet
Freud's critics, and in particular between his feminist critics and certain of his
sans. For the former, Freud never wholly succeeds in overcoming his limitatio
an individual-his historical and social limitations and, ultimately, even his
desires. The result, for these critics, is that he never adequately analyzes the pr
of countertransference, that is, the distortion or bias imposed on his psychoan
theory and practice by those limitations and desires. For Jacques Lacan, on the
hand, the countertransference is the negative phase of a dialectical process wh
leads, practically speaking, to the positive transference-the key to all succ
analyses-and, theoretically speaking, to an ultimately coherent, unified, scient
theory. This debate is a highly significant one, for not only does it relate to all
of psychoanalytic interpretation, but, moreover, to all theories of society inso
they imply a theory of sexual difference. More significant than what divides Fr
critics and his defenders, however, is what unites them. Even the critical interp
of Freud have accepted the argument of Freud's partisans, in particular the ass
tions at the basis of transference, by continuing to privilege the principle of pat
according to which Freud is the author, the master, the sovereign subjec
ultimately the father of his work. Among Freud's case histories, Dora has solic
the attention of interpreters who have seen the issue of transference as vital
larger question of the scientific claims Freud made for his work, for though D
treatment was to fail, according to Freud due to his inability to recognize and t
with the transference, the case nonetheless represents the beginning of F
effort to determine the theoretical status of transference. For our purposes, th
case represents neither the immanence of Freud, the scientist, who would in t
instance be responsible for the unity of his work, nor of a Freud who would b
passive medium of an autonomous socio-historical process, but rather, an inter
gation of the principle of paternity-the symbolic status of the father-both as
key to the "ultimate" explanation of Dora's illness and as the basis of the ident
Freud and his work.
In a much-cited letter to Fliess, Freud described a turning-point in his theory of
the role of the father in the aetiology of hysteria. "Let me tell you straight away th
114

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great secret which has been slowly dawning on me in recent months. I no longer
believe in my neurotica. [. . .] There was the definite realization that there is no
'indication of reality' in the unconscious, so that it is impossible to distinguish be-
tween truth and emotionally charged fiction" [The Origins of Psychoanalysis (New
York; 1954), pp. 215-16]. Freud and Breuer's original hypothesis had been that
hysteria stemmed from a memory so distressing to consciousness that it had of
necessity to be repressed, thus becoming both unconscious and pathogenic. Freud
had also found, however, that in the case of the hysteric, this memory was, more
often than not, not just any memory, but the memory of a seduction of the patient by
her father. But as the number of cases cured or not cured by the cathexis of this
particular memory had increased, Freud's belief in the reality of his patients' accusa-
tions had diminished. Whereas Freud's early theory of hysteria had been based on
the reality of the seduction scene, by the time of his letter to Fliess he had come to
regard the seduction scene as a phantasy or screen which was itself in need of
interpretation. The historical reality of the child's relation to her father was no longer
the central question. The imaginary-if not symbolic-nature of that relationship was
clear. Freud thus came to see the scene of seduction as a knife which cut both ways.
The accusation against the father went with and concealed an accusation directed by
the patient against herself-that she had desired a child by her own father.
The "return to Freud" inaugurated by Jacques Lacan has served to underscore
the fundamental importance of Freud's remarks to Fliess. This is especially clear in
Lacan's interpretation of the Dora case in "L'lntervention sur le Transfert," for the
psychoanalytic procedure of treating even coherent, logical accusations on the pa-
tient's part as screens or symptoms was first set down there.' The role of this proce-
dure in Freud's analysis of Dora and its implications for psychoanalysis as a whole
provide the focal point for Lacan's interpretation of the Dora case.
According to Lacan's analysis, Freud's interpretation of Dora's illness begins
with the turning back of her accusations against her-a procedure which Lacan calls
the "reversal of the beautiful soul" (the term comes from Hegel's Phenomenology;
just how this borrowing indebts Lacan to Hegel will be discussed further on). But in
asking what benefits Dora derives from a situation she describes as objective, as
existing independently of her will or interests, Freud cannot fail to find his own
interpretation of Dora's illness put to a similar test. The theoretical validity of Freud's
procedure hinges on the result of this test, and Lacan takes care to show that, in
certain respects, Freud must be said to have failed. Under ideal circumstances, Freud
would have remained aloof from the scene by the lake between Herr K. and Dora
which is at the center of his analysis of Dora. In fact, as even Freud himself admits, he
became implicated in the scene through a countertransference onto Herr K.; and the
theoretical consequences of this countertransference are evident, for rLacan, in the
relative single-mindedness with which Freud repeatedly brings his interpretation of
Dora's illness back to her relationship with Herr K.
Lacan's point, however, is that while Freud's personal and historical limitations
may have blinded him to the psychoanalytic consequences of this countertransfer-
ence, the neutral perspective from which the problems it caused could have been
resolved is still discoverable in Freud's exposition of the case: "In Freud's observa-
tions, even those which, like this one, are cut short, don't all the keys always fall into
his hands?" [Ecrits, p. 221]. Lacan's defense of Freud's handling of the Dora case
invokes a distinction between a Freud who still in some sense believes that the scene
which is the focus of his analysis has an historical referent and a Freud who nonethe-

1 "When a patient brings forward a sound and 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 perfectly true and correct, isn't it? ...' But it soon
becomes evident that the patient is using thoughts of this kind, which the analysis cannot
attack, for the purpose of cloaking others which are anxious to escape from criticism and
consciousness." ["Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria," The Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition, vol. VII (London: Hogarth Press, 1953), p. 35;
hereafter referred to in the text as Dora.]

diacritics/March 1979 115

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less succeeds in uncovering the imaginary, non-referential nature of that scene. For
Lacan, the ultimate effect of the counter transference is not to implicate Freud in the
Dora case, but rather, to open the way to a transcendence of his historical role in it.
In this sense, the countertransference exists only to permit the emergence of a
(positive) transference.

What is this transference after all... ? Cannot it be considered to be an

entity entirely relative to the countertransference defined as the sum of th
prejudices, the passions, the difficulties [. . .] of the analyst at a given mo
ment of the dialectical process? [. . .] What does it mean, then, to interpr
the transference? Nothing other than to fill this dead space with a decoy. B
this decoy is useful, for though it misleads, it restarts the process. [Ecrits,
225]

In the sense that Lacan's analysis of Dora hinges on a distinction between an

actor implicated in the scene and a neutral position not directly implicated in it,
"L'Intervention sur le Transfert" restates the principal themes of the "return to
Freud," and Dora and the seduction scene around which Freud's interpretation of
the case is organized come to represent and to repeat the "primal scene" of
psychoanalysis-the scene which in a sense condenses the whole of the Oedipus
phase and in which the castration of the little girl2 is revealed to the children of both
sexes. Up until the event of this scene, the little boy believes that there is only one
(masculine) sex, and that all of its members possess a penis. The scene itself, then,
can have two effects, one imaginary, one symbolic. Insofar as the scene merely
reassures the little boy that, though the little girl may be "castrated," he himself still
possesses his sex, insofar as he continues to believe that the measure of sexuality-
the Phallus-and the penis are one and the same, the effect of the scene is said to be
imaginary.3 Insofar as the scene reveals to the little boy that his own sex is contin-
gent, that the Phallus and the penis are not the same, the scene becomes the "pivot"
of a symbolic process: "Freud unveiled this imaginary function of the phallus as the
pivot of a symbolic process which is brought to its completion for both sexes by the
putting into question of (the) sex by the castration complex" [Ecrits, p. 555]. It is
because his work unveils the imaginary nature of the phallus that Freud, for Lacan,
must be distinguished from the little boy who persists in his denial of castration
through a variety of psychic mecanisms (fetishism, forclusion, etc.). Freud's counter-
transference onto Herr K. implicates him in the scene of psychoanalysis, but he still
holds all the keys. For Lacan, the distinction between the Imaginary and the Sym-
bolic, between the subject who is caught up in the imaginary relationships described
by the scene and the (position of the) analyst, is absolute, even if the knowledge of
the "little boy"/actor is in some sense retained by the analyst. The phallus, like the
seduction scene in whose historical reality Freud has ceased to believe, is a value

2 Though historically speaking the feminine role is, for Freud, generally played by the little
girl, the ultimate significance of the discovery of her "castration" lies in the application of that
discovery to the mother. For Luce Irigaray, that the little girl should figure in the scene only as
the representative of the mother is itself significant, for according to her analysis, it is the
equation of feminine sexuality with maternity which permits Freud to avoid raising the question
of feminine sexuality per se and to assimilate it to a fundamentally masculine model in which
the child functions as a penis and the desire for a child becomes the woman's dominant sexual
aim. Freud's portrayal of what he calls the primary virility of the little girl and the displaced virility
of the mother reflects the fundamentally masculine character of desire as it has been defined by
psychoanalysis (and not only by psychoanalysis). In this respect, Freud's comments on a young
lesbian are of general significance: "A woman who has felt herself to be a man, and has loved in
a masculine fashion, will hardly let herself be forced into playing the part of a woman [if] she
must pay for this transformation, which is not in every way advantageous, by renouncing all
hope of motherhood."
3 Under certain historical and cultural conditions this imaginary relationship to castration can
become a norm. Indeed, for Lacan, the normative (ideological) use of psychoanalysis-which
he attacks in the form of American ego psychology-represents a reinforcement of the Imagi-
nary.

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without a referent, natural or ideal, except from the mystified perspective of the little
boy or of the Freud of the countertransference.
In Lacan's analysis of the Dora case, the distinction between the Symbolic and
the Imaginary,4 between the Freud of the countertransference and the Freud of the
transference, functions implicitly as a refutation of a feminist critique of
psychoanalysis. Feminists have found Dora a particularly sympathetic figure, and this
is not surprising when one considers that Freud's strategy with Dora-that of turning
her rational indictment of her father back against her-was precisely that adopted by
Freud towards the feminists' indictment of a masculine bias of psychoanalysis:

It is to be anticipated that men analysts with feminist views, as well as ...

women analysts, will disagree with what I have said here. They will hardly fail
to object that such notions spring from the 'masculinity complex' of the
male and are designed to justify on theoretical grounds his innate inclination
to disparage and suppress women. But this sort of psychoanalytic argumen-
tation reminds us here, as it does so often, of Dostoevsky's famous 'knife
that cuts both ways.' The opponents of those who argue in this way will on
their side think it quite natural that the female sex would refuse to accept a
view which appears to contradict their eagerly coveted equality with men.
The use of analysis as a weapon of controversy can clearly lead to no deci-
sion. ["On Female Sexuality," Standard Edition, vol. XXI, p. 230]

The use of the distinction between the Symbolic and the Imaginary as a defense of
psychoanalysis against feminist accusations becomes explicit in Moustapha
Safouan's La sexualit6 feminine dans la doctrine freudienne [Paris: Seuil, 1976],
which contains a direct response to Luce Irigaray's analysis of the "masculine bias"
of psychoanalysis in her Speculum de I'Autre Femme. Safouan turns to the Lacanian
distinction between the Symbolic and the Imaginary in order, if not to refute, then to
limit the pertinence of Irigaray's analysis of the castration scene. Safouan says of the
scene in question:

That this absence should signify "castration" to him [the little boy] can only
result from an interpretation. [. . .] If it is thus, it is because the kid already
desires the little girl he observes. [...] [The experience of castration] is
indeed a new one, but it is not a perceptual experience: rather it is the
experience of desire. [p. 80]

Safouan attempts to refute Irigaray's argument by assenting to it in part. Insofar as

the castration of the little girl is perceived from the imaginary perspective of the little
boy, it would indeed be subject to Irigaray's critique. But the fact that, for Safouan,
the castration scene represents the experience of desire means that it belongs to a
different, Symbolic order, and this fact neutralizes castration, making it impossible
to criticize or to analyze it as a value.
While Safouan's argument may have merit with respect to some feminist writing
on psychoanalysis, its application to Irigaray raises some questions. Indeed, Irigaray
distinguishes her own position from that characteristic of Freud's feminist critics, for,
as Irigaray sees it, their critique of Freud is aimed at demonstrating that women are
equally capable of representing phallic values since those values are culturally and
not biologically defined. In this sense, their attack has been aimed only at the Freud
of the countertransference, whose pronouncements are not always consistent with
the insights of his letter to Fliess and who, at times assigns to the phallus a natural

4 The opposition between the Symbolic and the Imaginary is often supplemented by a third
term-the real. But, for Lacan, the "real" is not an autonomous term, but rather always a
function of one or the other of the two orders [see Ecrits, p. 68]. That is, the real functions
either symbolically, as the impossible, as absence, as a "beance," or as a projection or mirage of
the imaginary values of the moi.
diacritics/March 1979 117

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referent which his theory as a whole, according to Lacan, shows is absent. In contrast
to these critics, the focus of Irigaray's analysis is the value which feminists, in disput-
ing Freud, have continued to respect. The scene which opens (and closes) the phallic
phase in the child of either sex occupies a central position in Irigaray's critique of
Freud, not simply because it fixes the sexual destiny of each child (the adult's sexual
and social comportment being traceable to the role played in it), but because it
naturalizes a whole system of phallic values by grafting them on to a "perception"
which is already part and parcel of that system. In denouncing the complicity of this
perception of sexual difference and this set of values, Irigaray does not pretend, at
least immediately, to speak in the name of "another" perception or "other" values.
For Irigaray, the scene in question is not merely the representation of certain values
which happen to be phallic-it is the representation of the conditions of the exis-
tence of any value whatsoever. The perception of castration which serves as the
content of the scene is not just one thing among others that can be perceived by the
subject-this perception is the condition of the existence of the subject, and as such,
it determines the subject as essentially masculine: "all theories of the 'subject' will
always have been appropriated by the 'masculine.'. . . The subjectivity denied to the
woman is, without doubt, the condition which guarantees the constitution of any
object: object of representation, of discourse, of desire" [p. 165]. The scene of
castration has only one subject then, as the concept of "penisneid" implies. The little
girl will have seen herself through the eyes of the little boy; she, like the little boy,
will have no knowledge of nor attach any value to her "invisible" or "less visible"
sex. It is on this ground that Irigaray challenges the absolute nature of the distinction
between the little boy and the (position of) the analyst. For though the little boy may
confound penis and phallus, he knows one thing the analyst knows-he knows the
truth of the little girl's sex, the truth-as-castration. This fundamental identity is the
basis of the oppositions articulated by the scene-between the Imaginary and the
Symbolic, between the Freud of the countertransference (or the little boy) and the
Freud who holds all the keys-the Freud of the transference.
Irigaray's critical analysis of psychoanalysis confirms in its way the decisiveness
of the turning point described by Freud in his letter to Fliess, in which the structural
as opposed to the historical significance of the seduction scene becomes evident.
Decisive as this point is for Freud, it is doubtless even more so for Lacan, in that it
serves as the authority for his claim to be rescuing Freud from the general effects of
the countertransference on his work, while at the same time remaining faithful,
more faithful than Freud himself, to Freud's own doctrine. In the case of Dora, the
status of two fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis-transference and
bisexuality-is "blurred" by what Lacan will analyze as the effects of the counter-
transference. Our aim is to follow the process by which Lacan's discussion of these
two concepts rescues the Freud of the transference from the Freud of the counter-
transference, to analyze the conditions under which this process takes place, and to
raise the questions which Lacan's recuperation of the countertransference leaves
unanswered.
For Lacan, the principal psychoanalytic concept of which the Dora case is a
expos6 is that of transference-his references to the case invariably mention it in th
light. The enigma of the case, in his view, is in the relationship between the theme
transference and the theme of homosexuality which is stated only at the very end
the case. Each problem is at various times named by Freud as the factor which led
Dora's analysis being broken off prematurely, and yet, as Lacan points out, no at-
tempt is made by Freud to synthesize the two themes. In Lacan's view, the key to
Freud's failure to do so lay in "his prejudice which from the beginning falsifies th
conception of the Oedipus complex by making him [Freud] consider as natural, rathe
than normative, the prevalence of the paternal figure" [Ecrits, p. 223]. Though in
other respects Freud's handling of Dora's case is consistent with the revelations of
his letter to Fliess, in certain respects, according to Lacan, Freud remained a prisone
of the notion that the "paternal figure" did have a natural referent. According to t
erroneous view, the repressed attraction of Dora for Herr K., which Freud initiall
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viewed as the mainspring of her illness, would be a reflection of her Oedipal love for
her father, and this love itself would ultimately reflect the "natural" attraction of the
opposite sexes for each other and the father's "natural" position as the first member
of the opposite sex known to the infant girl. In the light of such an interpretation,
Dora's homosexuality could appear only as a disruptive, incoherent element.
The concept which was to resolve Freud's perplexity in the face of female
homosexuality was that of identification. By the time of the Three Introductory Lec-
tures (1905), Freud had ceased to view the choice of a sexual partner as a natural,
objective phenomenon. Freud's analysis of homosexuality had convinced him both
of the "non-objective" nature of the object choice and of the existence of an under-
lying bisexual disposition in men and women which could account for deviations
from the "norm" of heterosexuality. This bisexual disposition was in turn based on
the capacity of the subject to identify with either partner in an imagined sexual
scene:

the assumption of a bisexual predisposition in man i

brought out by psychoanalysis of neurotics. A quit
occurs when anyone in his conscious masturbatory pha
self both as the man and as the woman in an imagin
counterparts of this are found in certain hysterical atta
tient acts at one and the same time both parts of th
phantasy. [... . ["Hysterical Phantasies and their rela
Dora, an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, Philip Rie
Collier Books, 1963), p. 151]

Lacan sees this principle of identification at work in the

Dora is both participant and spectator. Because she is b
with Herr K. and with his feminine partner, who is Frau
instance, is Dora herself. This identification establishe
tween masculinity and femininity. Her own sexual identity
become roles, devoid of any natural referent which would
ing or oblige her to assume that identity. It is in the light
that Lacan interprets the scene by the lake.5 For him, Ke
nothing from my wife," is interpreted by Dora as indicat
what Dora's identification with Herr K. permits her to
specific to Frau K. or more generally to women. This is a
bolic) castration-which affects both the masculine and feminine roles. While Herr
K.'s declaration expresses only contempt for his wife, according to Lacan, Dora
immediately recognizes that his contempt, by right, should extend to Herr K. him-
self.
Interpreted in this way, the scene by the lake makes clear Freud's "mistake" in
his dealings with Dora. For if the purpose of his analysis was to bring Dora to a
"recognition of the virile object," the scene by the lake reveals that Herr K. was not a
sufficient instrument of such a recognition. "Fantouche," a marionette, a shadow of
the virile object (or its "natural referent") is what, in Lacan's interpretation, Herr K.
rightly becomes for Dora. The result of the scene by the lake is revealed to be
identical to the result of the scene in which the castration of the little girl is revealed
for both sexes. Each is the "pivot of a symbolic process which is brought to its
completion for both sexes by the putting into question of (the) sex by the castration

5 His interpretation of this scene differs significantly from that proposed by Catherine Cle-
ment and H&l/ne Cixous in La jeune n~e (Paris: U. G.E., 1975). For them, the slap with which Dora
greets Herr K.'s proposition (or proposal) stems directly from her identification with Frau K. and
signifies her refusal to accept the contempt for Frau K. (and, ultimately for herself as a woman)
implicit in Herr K.'s opening words: "You know I get nothing from my wife." Lacan's interpreta-
tion takes account of Dora's identification with Herr K. as well as of her identification with Frau K.,
and Dora's ensuant neuralgia of the cheek supports his interpretation-it is as though she gave
and received the slap at the same time.
diacritics/March 1979 119

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complex" [Ecrits, p. 555]. Thus while Freud's countertransference blinds him to the
relationship between Dora's homosexuality and the symbolic process which is the
basis of transference, Dora's rejection of Herr K.'s proposal demonstrates a superior,
if not ultimate, insight into the relationship between the two themes. While Freud
envisages a "practical" solution of Dora's nervous problems-marriage to Herr K.,
etc.-Dora's simultaneous identification with the masculine and feminine roles in
the scene by the lake makes clear the imaginary nature of the "virile object" and
thereby, of Freud's identification with Herr K. Ultimately Freud could have been
identified with Frau K. as well as Herr K.; Dora's homosexual love itself could hav
been transferred to Freud. The transference and the problem posed by Do
homosexuality could (only) have been mastered simultaneously:

Thus, if, in a third dialectical reversal, Freud had oriented Dora towards the
recognition of what Mme K. was for her. .., by obtaining a confession of the
ultimate secrets of her [Dora's] relationship to her [Frau K.], his own prestige
would have benefited greatly (we are at this point only beginning to pose
the question of the sense of the positive transference), thus opening the
way to the recognition of the virile object. [Ecrits, p. 222]

For Lacan, Herr K.'s desire for Dora and the "interest" of the analyst for her a
only shadows of the desire of which "she" is ultimately the object. And if D
desires an object, that object is neither Herr K. nor Frau K., but the transcendan
object which her identification with each entails:

The problem of her [feminine] condition is at bottom to accept herself as an

object of man's desire, and this is, for Dora, the mystery which motivates her
idolatry of Mme K. . . , just as, in her long meditation in front of the painting
of the Madonna ... it [the problem of her condition] pushes her towards the
solution which Christianity has given to the subjective impasse, by making
the woman the object of a divine desire or, what amounts to the same thing,
a transcendent object of desire. [Ecrits, p. 222]

This is the conclusion towards which the Dora case tends, according to Lacan, eve
though Freud, due to his countertransference is unable to come to it himself. Th
countertransference veils the truth of the Dora case, but this function itself is ne
sary in the ultimate unveiling of the truth-"for though it misleads, it restarts t
process."
But the countertransference, like the text it determines, can only play this role
it is carefully watched, only if it is carefully confined within a dialectic which pr
dains its sense and limits its potentially disruptive effects, only if the unity and
originality of the scene of sexual difference is maintained. Lacan's interpretation
the relationship between the countertransference and (positive) transference, be-
tween the theme of bisexuality and of transference, and between the text of the D
case and the truth of psychoanalysis leaves several aspects of the Dora case un
plained. Lacan's analysis does not take into consideration all the inconsistencies of
Dora, and it must be asked if those he neglects can be analyzed within the framew
elaborated in "L'Intervention sur le Transfert."
Luce Irigaray has focused on many of these "inconsistencies," and for her the
are symptomatic of a certain disarray which characterizes Freud's pronouncement
on the issue of feminine sexuality. She traces these inconsistencies to vari
sources. The imminence of Freud's own death and "a 'scientific honesty' on Freud
part which exists beyond all doubt" [pp. 74-75] may have provoked remarks whic
call into question the fundamental tenets of his theory of feminine sexuality, and
own unconscious may have been responsible for a failure of his writings on t
subject of feminine sexuality to live up to the logical prescriptions he set for hims
as a scientist. Indeed, on certain points-notably with respect to his "deconstr
tion" of the concept of presence-Ilrigaray sees Freud as the eminent critic of the
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system of representation underlying his own theory of sexuality. In formulating his
theory of sexual difference he is nonetheless, for Irigaray, "prisoner himself of a
certain economy of language, of a certain logic, notably where 'desire' is concerned,
whose link to classical philosophy he 'misunderstands' [. . .], caught up in an 'ideol-
ogy' which he does not question" [pp. 28-29]. Thus any inconsistencies in Freud's
work are for Irigaray subordinate to the figure of a Freud who controls his work and
who, in this sense, can be accused of not having "put sufficiently into question [.. ..]
an economy of representation to which he has recourse" [p. 55, my underlining].
Irigaray's analysis of the question of feminine sexuality forcefully demonstrates the
strategic value of the critique of the subject, and yet, in one important form, she
respects the notion: for Irigaray, the name "Freud" designates a totality in whose
name the "contradictions" of the work can be reduced. Though in important re-
spects her critique opposes her to Lacan, in this sense Irigaray participates in a
"return to Freud." The Freud who guarantees the coherence of the Dora case for
Lacan is the same Freud called to account by Irigaray. While there may be strategic
reasons for respecting in Freud's case a concept whose authority she questions
everywhere else, Irigaray never discusses them, and the status of "Freud" in this
sense falls outside the scope of her critique of the subject. One must ask, therefore,
if the inconsistencies which exist in Dora can be reduced in the name of a subject
which, as the tool of a critical strategy, itself escapes scrutiny, any more than in the
name of the subject of a positive transference.
To begin with, one must ask if the case of Dora relates the themes of female
homosexuality and of transference in the way Lacan says: "But each time he again
invokes this explanation [that he failed to recognize and to master the transference
in good time], .. .a note appears at the bottom of the page which duplicates it by
referring to his insufficient appreciation of the homosexual link between Dora and
Mme K." [Ecrits, p. 223]. In Lacan's view, the text of Dora-the procedures adopted by
Freud in combining the theoretical and narrative aspects of the case as well as the
problems unresolved by this procedure-is determined by the countertransference,
that is, by the historical and personal limitations of Freud. Thus for Lacan, the fact
that Freud's remarks on homosexuality appear only as footnotes to the passages on
transference is explainable by the development of Freud's thought between 1905,
"date of publication of the Dora case," and 1923, the date of the addition of the
footnotes. Freud's failure to synthesize the two themes in Dora itself would thus be
anecdotal and devoid of any theoretical consequences.
And yet if the importance of a bisexual disposition of the libido fundamental to
both normal sexuality and to the various forms of neurosis was evident to Freud at a
later date, one would expect later analyses dealing with these problems to have a
different result. Indeed, by the time of the Three Introductory Lectures (1905), Freud
writes, the presence of a homosexual current in the unconscious life of hysterics and
neurotics was a firmly established hypothesis.6 And yet, judging from the
"Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman" (1920), Freud continued to
view female homosexuality as a psychic current which, though it did not exclude the
development of the transference, at least under certain circumstances did exclude
any possibility of the transference acquiring a positive sense:

It seemed, further, as though nothing resembling a transference to the

physician had been effected. That, however, is of course absurd, or, at least,
is a loose way of expressing it; for some kind of relation to the analyst must
come about, and this is usually transferred from an infantile one. In reality
she transferred to me the deep antipathy to men which had dominated her
ever since the disappointment she had suffered from her father. [. . .] So as
soon as I recognized the girl's attitude to her father, I broke off the treatment

6 This in itself seems to cast doubt on Lacan's contention, since the Three Introductory
Lectures and Dora appeared in the same year.
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 and gave the advice that, if it was thought worthwhile to continue the
therapeutic efforts, it should be done by a woman. ["Psychogenesis of a
Case of Homosexuality in a Woman," Standard Edition, vol. XVIII, p. 164]

The resistance which female homosexuality opposes in this case to the development
of a positive transference causes Freud to fall back on the "natural prejudice" (natu-
ral in the sense of "common," and in the sense that this prejudice views the father as
a natural rather than normative figure) which was the source of his failings with Dora.
Freud's feeling that the young lesbian's attitude towards him has a natural determin-
ant (apparent in his advice that, if her analysis has any chance of success, it would
only be with a woman analyst) recalls his hope that Dora's hysteria would find a
natural solution-in marriage to Herr K. or to some other young man. Twenty years
after his failure to synthesize the themes of transference and female homosexuality
(bisexuality) in his analysis of Dora, Freud once again presents himself as incapable
of integrating the current of female homosexuality into a dynamic transference
which would transcend its strictly negative phase. That female homosexuality is still
experienced by Freud as an absolute obstacle in the "Psychogenesis of a Case of
Homosexuality in a Woman" casts doubt on Lacan's assertion that a positive trans-
ference could have begun to emerge in the case of Dora from the moment Freud had
obtained "the confession of the ultimate secrets" of Dora's relation to Frau K. Lacan
views the hypothesis of an analysis "based on the principle that all of its formulati
are systems of defense" as an aberration which would result in, or be the sign of
total disorientation of the patient (leaving us free to speculate as to what suc
situation would mean for the analyst) and affirms that Freud's interpretation of D
ra's illness "does not present these dangers" [Ecrits, p. 305]. And yet the theme o
female homosexuality as exposed in these two case studies does seem to endan
the theoretical pre-eminence of the positive transference which, in Lacan's interp
tation, bestows upon the Dora case the coherence it lacked under Freud's pen
Within Dora itself, the theme of bisexuality which is in question in Freu
discussion of female homosexuality is not entirely exhausted by Lacan's
interpretation-that it points the way towards the development of a positive trans-
ference. Freud treats the problem of bisexuality explicitly only in his discussion of
Dora's homosexual relation to Frau K. Lacan takes over this circumscription of the
problem by carrying out his own analysis of Dora within the framework of three
"dialectical reversals." This dialectical framework, as well as the critique of the
beautiful soul which, for Lacan, opens Freud's analysis of Dora, constitute a signifi-
cant borrowing from Hegal's Phenomenology and, like all "exchanges" between
Lacanian psychoanalysis and the history of philosophy, this one takes place only
accompanied by the most careful precautions. Lacan's reinterpretation of the rela-
tionship between psychoanalysis and the history of philosophy exhibits a distinction
which parallels that between the Freud of the countertransference and the Freud of
the transference, between the Imaginary and the Symbolic. There is a history of
philosophy of which psychoanalysis is a part. "You have heard me [...] refer with
respect and admiration to Descartes and to Hegel. It is fashionable nowadays to 'go
beyond' the classical philosophers. [. . .] Neither Socrates, nor Descartes, nor Marx,
nor Freud can be 'gone beyond' in that they have conducted their research with that
passion to uncover which has an object: the truth" [Ecrits, p. 193]. Psychoanalysis
carries on a philosophical tradition extending from Plato to Heidegger and retains its
"truth." But where that tradition was fascinated and even deluded by idealism,
psychoanalysis permits the unveiling of what that idealism tended to mask: a "dead
space," a "lack," the truth-as-castration.
Lacan's comment on the "Aufhebung" of Hegelian dialectics typifies the distinc-
tion which for him exists between psychoanalysis and the history of philosophy and
reveals the qualifications to which his use of Hegel in "L'lntervention sur le Trans-
fert" is subject: "it is our own Aufhebung which transforms that of Hegel, his being a
decoy [by which, Lacan hints, he himself was fooled] into an opportunity to relever
[that is, both to point out and to aufheben or to synthesize in the Hegelian sense]
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instead of and in the place of the leaps forward of an ideal progress, the ups and
downs [or transformations] of a lack" [Ecrits, p. 837]. In Lacan's view, Hegel's own
critique of idealism in the section of the Phenomenology dealing with Kant, Fichte
and the German romantics does not prevent the Phenomenology itself from being
implicated in that idealism in the form of the "Aufhebung."
Even if one accepts Lacan's distinction between the ideal or the "aufhebung" on
the one hand and the Symbolic order which organizes the unconscious on the other,
the consequences of Lacan's borrowings from the Phenomenology cannot be en-
tirely neutralized. The Hegelian dialectic provides Lacan with the methodological
authority which facilitates one of the most critical aspects of his interpretation: his
schematization of the relationship between Dora's heterosexual desires and her
homosexual ones. The analysis which is designed to show the synthetic relationship
between the two unconscious currents begins by pigeon-holing each current in a
discrete stage of the dialectical process. The result is that the second (homosexual)
current can appear only as derived from the first.
The issue of bisexuality is restricted to the second dialectical stage, and can only
be raised once the first dialectical stage is "complete," that is, only once Dora's
logical, rational account of her situation has been scrutinized in every detail from the
standpoint of the psychic benefits Dora herself derives from it. But one aspect of
Dora's version of her family history is never scrutinized, though it is duly noted by
Freud. This notation implicitly raises the issue of bisexuality from the beginning of
the case, and in a manner which disrupts the dialectical schema of Lacan. "Dora,"
writes Freud, "looked down on her mother and used to criticize her mercilessly, and
she had withdrawn completely from her influence" [Dora, p. 20]. Dora's opinion of
her mother and her interpretation of their relationship differ insignificantly from
Freud's own view, but unlike the rest of her story, the "truth" of this assertion will
not be scrutinized for its value as an alibi. And this, despite the fact that the case was
written up when the concurrence of female homosexuality in the aetiology of Dora's
hysteria was clear:

I never made her mother's acquaintance. From the account given me by the
girl and her father I was led to imagine her as an uncultivated woman and
above all a foolish one, who had concentrated all her interests upon domes-
tic affairs. . . . She had no understanding of her children's more active inter-
ests, and was occupied all day long in cleaning the house and its furniture
and in keeping them clean-to such an extent as to make it almost impossi-
ble to use or enjoy them. [Dora, p. 20]

Freud's treatment of Dora's relationship to her mother is faithful to the account

of the infant girl's development he was to present thirty years later in "On Female
Sexuality." In both places, the girl's "pre-Oedipal" phase is conceived in terms of
her ulterior relationship to the phallic values which, with the onset of the Oedipus
complex, will attach themselves to what Lacan calls the "paternal metaphor." But
what is particularly interesting about the evocation of the patient's relationship to
her mother in Dora is the fact that Freud's view of that relationship and Dora's view
of it mirror each other. The "reversal of the beautiful soul," the total putting into
question of Dora's version of things is thus not as systematic as one is led to believe.
Prior to the countertransference onto Herr K. which is to provide Freud with all his
insights, but which will cause the analysis to end prematurely, is at least a partial
countertransference onto Dora herself, through the identity of aspects of Freud's
and Dora's representations of her illness. The "secret" of this identity is as carefully
guarded by Freud as the secret of her attachment to Frau K. is by Dora: "Her father,
then, had fallen ill through leading a loose life, and she assumed that he had handed
on his bad health to her by heredity. I was careful not to tell her that, as I have
already mentioned, I was of the opinion too, that the offspring of luetics were very
specially predisposed to severe neuro-psychoses" [Dora, p. 75]. Indeed, if Dora's
relationship to Freud demonstrates "that agressivity in which we can discern the
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proper dimension of narcissistic alienation" [Ecrits, p. 222], what of Freud's relation
to Dora? Her last act is to give Freud fifteen days notice-to treat him like a maid
servant. The details of her story fully document Freud's interpretation of this point.
Freud's own last act is to (re)name Dora; for considerations of social propriety
prevented Freud from publishing the case under his patient's actual name. The name
he chose was-tit for tat-that of the Freuds' maid, who, like Dora, had been
"obliged" to renounce her own name [The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Standard
Edition, vol. VI, pp. 241-42].
The uneven execution of the "reversal of the beautiful soul" puts into question
both the "integrity" of Freud's countertransference onto Herr K. and the triadic
structure which provides the framework for Lacan's dialectical analysis of the case.
The "prejudice" concerning the natural referent of the Oedipus complex which had
to be disposed of in order to come to terms with the homosexual current of hysteria
finds refuge in the restriction of the problem of countertransference to Freud's
relationship to Herr K. It is with the analysis of the phenomenon of countertransfer-
ence that the prejudice concerning the natural referent of the Oedipus complex is
itself naturalized. The prejudice, in a process characteristic of denial, is broken down
into two parts. It is considered no longer credible (negation), but its very negation
permits the retention of the belief itself, as a "prejudice," and in this form it be-
comes the basis of the coherence and unity of the dialectical process which, for
Lacan, gives form to Dora. The countertransference, however, cannot be restricted
to Freud's identification with Herr K. It manifests itself in an identification with Dora
as well, and thus disrupts the unity of the dialectical process it was intended, in its
simple form, to guarantee.
There is (at least) one other direction in which the countertransference exceeds
the limits assigned to it by Lacan and by Freud himself. Lacan writes that the transfer-
ence is an entity "entirely relative to the countertransference defined as the sum of
the prejudices, the passions, the difficulties, and even of the insufficient information
of the analyst at a given moment of the dialectical process" [Ecrits, p. 225]. According
to this formula, Dora's attitude towards Freud is the complement of his counter-
transference. But Freud gives several indications that the transference of "the pater-
nal figure" onto Freud is more prevalent in the Dora case than Lacan suggests. If the
transference and countertransference are indeed complementary as Lacan affirms,
one is forced to conclude that Freud's countertransference was not restricted to Herr
K., but that there was a countertransference onto Dora's father as well, and that,
despite Lacan's affirmations, the former does not necessarily exclude the latter.
Lacan writes: "Does not Freud himself tell us that Dora could have transferred onto
him the paternal figure, if he had been stupid enough to believe the version of things
with which Dora's father had presented him?" [Ecrits, p. 225]. "Thus he had no
trouble putting out of his patient's mind any imputation of complacency as regards
this lie [that is, Dora's father's version of things]" [Ecrits, p. 219]. But Freud himself
writes that "at the beginning it was clear that I was replacing her father in her
imagination" [Dora, p. 118]. It is only with the narration of the second dream that Freud
can decisively state that he has come to occupy the place of Herr K. in Dora's imagina-
tion, that is, six weeks into an analysis that was to last only twelve weeks. As for the
exclusive character which Lacan ascribes to the countertransference, it is clear that
Dora's transference of her attitude towards Herr K. onto Freud is not incompatible
with the transference of her attitude towards her father onto Freud. Freud and Herr
K. are often coupled by both Freud himself and by Lacan without it being evident
why Dora's father (as well as Dora herself) should not be included in the series. The
perception of an odor of smoke will be traced back to Freud and to Herr K. But
Dora's father is a smoker (as is Dora herself). Dora's relations to Freud and Herr K.
are characterized by "that aggressivity in which we can discern the proper dimen-
sion of narcissistic alienation" [Ecrits, p. 222]. But not more than her relationship to
her own father is characterized by such aggressivity. Her homosexual love for Frau K.
certainly reinforces her identification with Herr K., but how could it not equally

124

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reinforce an identification with her father, whose relation to Frau K. was as intimate
as that of the husband?
The justification for putting aside the father in this series will be that Dora's
"love" for him is reactive, that is, it is a part of her neurotic defense against Herr K.'s
attentions [Ecrits, p. 222]. But Freud argues this point from a position which his
statements on bisexuality reveal after the fact to be only partially valid:

For years on end she had given no expression to this passion for her father.
On the contrary, she had for a long time been on the closest terms with the
woman who had supplanted her with her father, and she had actually [. . .]
facilitated this woman's relations with her father. Her own love for her father
had therefore been recently revived, [. . .] clearly as a reactive symptom, so
as to suppress something else. [Dora, p. 57-8]
Freud's own statements on the hysteric's identification with both actors in an imag-
ined sexual scene indicate that Dora's cooperation in Frau K.'s affair with her father
would not necessarily imply a waning of her Oedipal attitude towards him, and that it
could even be a means of fostering that attitude. Her relationship to the couple
certainly has a homosexual component. But that relationship could also serve as a
means of reappropriating and securing the place Frau K. had usurped from her,
through an identification with Frau K.
The insistence with which Lacan's interpretation of the countertransference
pushes Herr K. to the fore must be compared to his insistence in pushing Dora's
father into the background-and ultimately off the stage. Indeed, one can say that it
is the distinction between the two figures which maintains the distinction between
the inside of the scene of psychoanalysis and its outside-thus making that scene
visible to the theorizing glance of the psychoanalyst. For Dora's father to enter onto
the stage as an actor would be to run the risk of a fundamental blurring of the
distinction between himself and Herr K., and, thereby, of a fundamental disruption
of the unity and coherence of the scene. In theory, the Symbolic father who is the
object of the positive transference and the Imaginary father who is the object of
Dora's narcissism and her aggressivity are distinguishable. Nevertheless, Dora's
father is kept "hors scene" by arbitrarily cutting the associative chains which lead to
the father and implicate him in the case, by minimizing his role in determining
Dora's attitude towards her analyst, and by ignoring the fact that, despite his dis-
claimers, Freud does in several instances act as his representative-most notably
with respect to his portrayal of Dora's mother. If Dora's father must be thus excluded
from the scene, it can only be because his entry into it would threaten the schemati-
zation which is its principal support: not by showing that the Symbolic order is
subject to the Imaginary, not by showing that the Imaginary is charged with Symbolic
significance, but by revealing the fundamental complicity of these two orders, their
determination in and by the one scene.
Lacan's interpretation of Dora is ultimately an attempt to reduce the relation-
ships described in the case to the structure of the scene which Irigaray points to as
the fundamental scene of psychoanalysis: to the triad little girl/little boy/analyst. Or
rather, to an opposition little girl/little boy, and to a synthesis, (the position of) the
analyst. But that the phenomenon of countertransference extends to Freud's relation
to Dora's father and to Dora herself, as well as to Herr K., means that the dialectical
hierarchy within which Dora becomes the matrix for the emergence of a psychoana-
lytic truth is itself determined by a process of doubling.7 It is this process which

' Freud himself investigated this phenomenon of doubling in the essay which has been
translated into English as "The Uncanny." That Freud should thus explicitly thematize this
problem puts into question more than the homogeneity of his work; it puts into question the
coherence ascribed to it by Lacan and Irigaray. The effects of the process of doubling-the
Unheimlichkeit-play a central role in Jacques Derrida's fundamental and indispensable reading
of psychoanalysis, in "Le facteur de la vdrit'" [Po~tique, no. 27, 1975; translated in Yale French
Studies, no. 52].

diacritics/March 1979 125

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constitutes the relationships of Dora and which ultimately threatens the originality of
the interpretative scene itself. It is this endless process of identification which pre-
empts and pre-determines any value, however formal, that might serve as the basis
either of a positive transference or of a catharsis effected by a unique identification
with a hero-even an absent one.
The countertransference implicates Freud in the scene of psychoanaly
not only where Lacan "wants" him to be implicated. By the same token, Laca
of procedures "borrowed" from the Phenomenology implicates his interpret
Dora in the history of philosophy, but not only in the way he wants it
relationship between Hegel and Freud is subject to the same process of doubl
the relationship between Herr K. and Dora's father, and Lacan's interpretatio
each relationship hinge on similar strategies. The importation of the Hegelia
tic into the case study is responsible for the creation of certain interp
effects-the schematization of the contradictory elements of Dora and a neut
tion of the "reversal of the beautiful soul" which opens the analysis-an
effects in turn permit the neutralization of Freud's relation to the his
philosophy in general and to Hegel in particular. Like the relationships narr
Dora, the relationship between Hegel and Freud will be "reduced" to a triadic
ture composed of a couple (Hegel and the Freud of the countertransference)
transcendent term (the Freud of the transference). Though, for Lacan, t
designated by Freud's name is empty, it nonetheless comports all the guaran
the formal coherence of the work that the classical subject does. It is only i
name of such a subject that Lacan can claim to synthesize the conflicts left
solved by the case and, in so doing, to unveil the truth of Dora.
Thus it is not out of fidelity to any truth of Freud or his work that we have
the "mise-en-schne" of the problems of (counter) transference and bisexuali
point at which no synthesis of these two themes is possible. The conflict be
them-and Dora itself-can no longer be innocently assigned a place in a d
which would guarantee their synthesis, nor reduced in the name of a totalit
as the tool of a critical strategy, would itself escape criticism. Even after the
Freud, a "return to Freud" will not reveal only one Freud and one scene of s
difference. Insofar as the themes of bisexuality and transference cannot be
into play without fundamentally implicating psychoanalysis in a whole histor
sense it cannot neutralize, insofar as the handling of these themes cannot bu
the derivation of the scene of psychoanalysis with respect to a series of con
which both define and put into question its limits, Dora can only reopen the
tions concerning sexuality and Freud's understanding of it which the "r
Freud" has tended to close, and which, in fact, it too reopens.

Suzanne Gearhart teaches in the Department of Literature at the University of Califor

Diego.

126

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