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(2004). Annual of Psychoanalysis, 32:169-184

In Search of Theory: Freud, Dora, and Women Analysts

Marian Tolpin

A Purse, A Jewel-Case, the Shell of Venus, or a Penis—What Do Women Want?

This study provides a historical perspective on Freud's search for the “key” with which to “open the door” (see fn. 1905a, p. 67) to understanding women's sexuality and their hysterical symptoms, depression, and sense of injury. The first part of the study focuses on Freud's theorizing when he treated Dora for her hysterical symptoms during a transitional phase of “bewilderment” when he was forced to recognize that his seduction theory of hysteria was “mistaken” (1914; 1925a). The second part of the study, following Dora's abortive treatment, focuses on Freud's lengthy search for a “normal female castration complex” and his finding the “proof” he sought from the interpretations and reconstructions he made to aspiring women analysts in training analyses with him. Specifically, his analytic patients Anna F

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