Purloining Freud: Dora's Letter to Posterity

The references to letters in Freud's dream of Irma's injection are utilized as a springboard for an examination of letters in the Dora case. Invoking the hypothesis that the outcome of an action can be heuristically regarded as having been its intended purpose, the author argues that Dora intended her parents to find the letter in which she threatened to commit suicide so that they would take her to a consultation with Freud, who would then write up her case in a manner that simultaneously exposed the sordid living arrangements of her family and inadvertently also incriminate himself as a domineering patriarch. Thus, the Dora case is not simply Freud's letter to Fliess, or even Freud's letter to posterity, but ultimately Dora's letter to posterity in which she purloins Freud and becomes the Other of his discourse.