Varieties of Psychoanalytic Experience

Let us imagine, for a moment, that it is 1900. You are a doctor of nervous diseases, specializing in the treatment of hysteria, who has recently published a monumental study of the interpretation of dreams. You are married to the sweetheart of your youth and occupy a spacious apartment in a respectable quarter of Vienna, where you are raising a family of six – nicely balanced between boys and girls. Your wife manages the household, leaving you free to read, write, and receive patients whose ailments you hope to relieve through a new form of treatment based on principles you have developed through an arduous process of introspection. You believe that you have discovered the essence of psychic life, as expressed in classic Greek tragedy. At forty-four, you are in the prime of life, and you expect to make a name for yourself – one that will transcend the narrow circumstances of your origins and lead to world renown. Now imagine that you are a young woman, eighteen years of age, who is seriously unhappy. You suffer from headaches, depression, a slight limp, shortness of breath, an intermittent cough, and a vaginal discharge. You dislike your mother, who spends her time in obsessive housecleaning, and you have taken to criticizing your once beloved father in the sharpest terms. You are highly intelligent, but unlike your older brother, you do not attend university. At the height of your discontent, you have contemplated suicide. Alarmed, your father decides to have you examined by his friend, the doctor of nervous diseases, who also once treated him for syphilis. Your name will become famous, but not in a way that you imagine or desire.