ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the case study of late-nineteenth-century psychopathologists' record. Cesare Romano revisits Dora's clinical case in light of Freud's own seduction theory. In 1896, when archaeology was still his heuristic model, Freud had explained the problem of the traumatic scenes. Freud had a preconceived thesis to demonstrate, namely that Dora's passion for Herr K. To achieve such a goal, he would not need the hoes, shovels, and spades indispensable to an archaeologist. A good collection of picklocks would be enough to break open Dora's "jewel-case". In The Aetiology of Hysteria Freud had reached the conclusion that: the aetiological pretensions of the infantile scenes rest not only on the regularity of their appearance in the anamneses of hysterics. With Dora, Freud, was satisfied with the scene of the kiss, which he judged to be "even better calculated to act as a sexual trauma". He had also left aside his archaeologist's tools and picked up his burglar's picklocks.
