‘Dora’ was less than eighteen in 1898[1] when his father – worried about her daughter sudden being moody, and also annoyed by her being in strong and unexplainable opposition to him - decided to call doctor Sigmund Freud who was living and working in Wien and about whom they knew some successful among patients of the incoming psychoanalytical method.

‘The Case of Dora – Fragment of an hysteria case’ was edited by Freud only in 1905, more than four years after the conclusion of that Case and without any reference to the young woman whose father asked and financed the therapy : the text refers without resistance how Freud decided to work in defense of the young patient, realizing she was the principal.

The father of ‘Dora’ pretended the daughter would become quiet and obedient and at first Freud accepted that but, as far as the analytical work went on, he began to seriously consider what her patient was asking for :  and he realized also that ‘Dora’ was diligent also about the rules in analytical work. Defending ‘Dora’ became then the real goal of the so named ‘psychoanalysis’, i.e. a respectful work between the two, patient and analyst : that professional position Freud was having did show a cross-road in the care of neurosis as the women were generally lead by husbands or fathers due to their not acceptable behaviours among people.

Freud realized that the way ‘Dora’ was leading herself would be enough to justify her defence – also towards her father as an external principal – and up to a hopeful recovery.

Publishing the Case was a formal step as regard as the analytical profession and towards Freud colleagues : in that Case you can see how neurosis make poor any individual defence, also worning out good chances in favour of someone.

It seems so suitable indee the title “The client” of a well known novel by John Grisham where Mark, eleven, decides to get to a lawyer on his own : he was present  - together his eight year brother – at a suicide which, when trying to foil, that got the boy into the violence of the man and his own previous crimes not be found out.

Mark realizes very soon – while calling Police to indicate the corpse and also when being informally  interrogated – that his defense can’t stand up. And the lawyer which seemed favourable when Mark was appointing her with some ingenuousness, will also be affordable ? But the boy hadn’t so much time.

Mark still doesn’t know that his position won’t meet the favour of Law : a witness infact, notwithstanding he is a minor and evidently exposed to reprisals,  can be easily condemned as ‘justice obstacling’[2] if he doesn’t say everything he knows about an investigation in progress.

“There was something absolutely not right in a Court system where a kid could be lead in a Law court, with lawyers quarreling while the judge observed them as an arbiter, among a number of laws, penal code paragraphs, sentences and legal uncomprehensible words, and finally the same kid had to know what was happening. It was irrimediably unfair and not at all acceptable.”[3]

That ‘unfairity’ has been correctly perceived by Mark, then : that is the same for any human ‘capable of understanding’.

However, being ‘capable of understanding’ is only a first access when structuring a defence where ‘capable of willing’ can honoraubly be linked, when that capability has come up down, lost or otherwise absconding, in a man, or a woman.

 

                                    Marina Bilotta Membretti, Cernusco sul Naviglio February 27, 2021

 

 

[1] ‘Il Caso di Dora – Frammento di un’analisi d’isteria’, S.Freud (1901) in “Sigmund Freud. Isteria e angoscia. Il Caso di Dora e altri scritti”, Edizione integrale di riferimento – Introd. by Cesare L. Musatti, Bollati Boringhieri editore (2014)

[2] p. 238, “Il cliente”, John Grisham (1993) – Mondadori editore (2016).

[3] pp. 285-286 “Il cliente”, John Grisham (1993) – Mondadori editore (2016).