ABSTRACT
In spite of Dora’s reluctance, after years of irritability and depression, capped by a suicide note and a brief episode of delirious convulsions, she was brought to Freud by her father to be treated for a mysterious chronic cough and loss of voice. Freud revealed that this 18-year-old woman, who was on quite bad terms with her mother, was so devoted to her father that she helped him sustain an extramarital affair. Dora not only took care of the children of her father’s mistress during their illicit encounters but also ended up as an object of barter since she was offered as a token to the husband of her father’s lover. Freud was suspicious of Dora’s apparently “innocent” complicity and speculated that Dora’s collaboration was not without motivation. Dora’s adoring attitude toward her father’s mistress caught Freud’s attention. He noticed her interest in the “other woman” who embodied a compelling mystery for the young woman and gured that this mystery held the key to a femininity that Dora was discovering. It is true that Dora praised the mistress, Frau K.’s “‘adorable white body’ in accents more appropriate to a lover than to a defeated rival” (Freud, 1901/1905, p. 60). Was it only that Dora’s homosexual love was a love of knowledge and her infatuation with Frau K. a wish to acquire the latter’s knowledge of sexual matters (p. 120)? It took almost two decades to start resolving the mystery.
