uld I have liked her as a patient, since I had noticed that she was bashful in my presence, and I could not think that she would make an amenable patient” (110). Freud’s condensation of his wife with a patient that cannot be healed shows that she too is dissatisfied with her role as wife and mother. As her husband, he has confined her to this role, thus he is responsible for her complaints. Shoshana Felman points out that, “According to the patriarchal criteria, Freud’s wife, beloved by her husband and pregnant with his child, is the social epitome of the fulfilled woman. Irma, on the other hand, as the widowed hysteric, deprived of child and husband, is the social epitome of the unfulfilled woman. And yet the dream is saying that both women are unhappy, lacking something” (106). The patriarchal system’s portrayal of the ingredients for a woman’s happiness not only causes her dissatisfaction, but in fact leads to her unhappiness. Freud’s feelings of inadequacy that germinated with Irma come to climax during his sessions with Dora in 1905 in which he constantly battles to be the controlling, masculine force. In Dora—An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, Freud’s analysis of his young female patient displays that the therapy was as big of an event to him as it was for her because he became so caught up in her life and the quest to help her that, “Freud and not Dora has become the central character in the action” (Marcus, 85). By framing Dora’s own story with his interpretation, Freud, the Victorian gentleman, strives to dominate and thrust her back into the feminine constraints from which she tries to escape. Freud is a product of his time by failing to realize the flaws of his social pressures. Freud’s use of a frame narrative illustrates his egoism; however, it does not prove that he is a sexist. As opposed to the other dominant male figures in D...
