Girls for Sale: Freuds Dora and Schnitzlers Else

Lilian R. Furst

The remarkable thematic parallelism between the works of two major early
twentieth-century Austrian writers, Freuds Bruchstck einer Hysterie-Analyse
(1905), popularly known simply as Dora, and Schnitzlers Frulein Else (1924),
has so far elicited surprisingly little attention. Bareikis merely drops the com-
ment that Else and Freuds case histories had much in common (28). In Freud,
Dora, and Vienna 1900, Decker observes that one [Schnitzler] story, that of
Miss Else, is startlingly reminiscent of Dora (109). This is echoed by Lange-
Kirchheim in her article on Adoleszenz, Hysterie und Autorenschaft in Arthur
Schnitzlers Novelle Frulein Else: Die Parallelen zwischen beiden Texten
sind stupend (288). Ellenberger, the historian of dynamic psychiatry, notes that
Freuds Dora seems to belong to one of Schnitzlers short stories (28384).
However, this parallelism has so far not been explored in detail.
Instead of any close comparison of Freuds and Schnitzlers writings, the
spotlight has fallen rather on their somewhat problematic personal relationship,
which has been well documented. Hausners meticulous compilation of the sun-
dry contacts between these contemporaneous Viennese physicians reveals just
how lapidary their communication was and how scant their personal meetings
although they lived in the same city.1 Hausner argues nonetheless that Freud felt
sich mit Schnitzler innerlich verwandt (54), and that he was der werbende
Teil (57) whereas Schnitzler preferred to keep his distance. The closest scrutiny
has been directed at the question of their Doppelgngertum, a topic initially
raised by Freud in his celebrated letter of 14 May 1922 on the occasion of
Schnitzlers fiftieth birthday. Freuds actual word was Doppelgngerscheu
(Briefe 97). The first part of the word has been repeatedly discussed. Lorenz, for
example, in A Companion to the Works of Arthur Schnitzler, just published in
2003, writes of the oft cited references to Schnitzler as his [Freuds] Doppel-
Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 36, No. 3/4, 2003
2004 by the Modern Austrian Literature and Culture Association
20 LILIAN R. FURST

gnger (138). Yet those references are dangerously flawed, for Freuds actual
words were, Ich meine, ich habe Sie gemieden aus einer Art von Doppelgn-
gerscheu. The addition of Scheu to Doppelgnger gives an entirely new
dimension to Freuds pronouncement: the doubling is coupled with a strain of
avoidance. Schnitzlers merely formal responsiveness to Freuds warm advances
lends credence to Nehrings contrary conclusion that Schnitzler and Freud are
not doubles (191); but other studies have continued to center on the doubling.
Urban, for instance, concentrates on the origins of the Doppelgnger appella-
tion by focusing on the two mens early work on hysteria. In an effort simultane-
ously to compare and to differentiate, Lumprecht examines the impact on them
of the controversy at the Viennese Medical School surrounding medicines re-
sponsibility and ability to help patients. He claims that Freud and Schnitzler
were conditioned in divergent directions by the analogous training they re-
ceived, Freud becoming a determinist skeptic and Schnitzler a skeptical deter-
minist.
While these and many other biographical considerations of the rapport be-
tween Freud and Schnitzler are in themselves quite legitimate, they do not lead
to the heart of the obviously complex relationship between them as trenchantly
as a detailed comparison of their writings can. It is precisely an analysis of the
unique interplay of similarity and heterogeneity that is most apt to uncover both
the affinity and the tensions between these two great Austrian figures. The fact
that their works have not previously been juxtaposed seems puzzling at first,
especially as several critics have seen the resemblance as noted above.
The most likely reason for this gap is the difference in genre between their
works. Frulein Else is an imaginative fiction, a short story often singled out,
together with Leutnant Gustl (1901), as one of the premier examples of consis-
tent interior monologue. Dora, on the other hand, is classified as a psychiatric
case study, although nowadays it certainly appears much more frequently on the
curriculum of humanities courses than in departments of psychiatry or even of
psychology. This already suggests the fallaciousness of such sharp dichotomiza-
tion into disparate genres. Particularly in our postmodern age, the categories
have come to be considerably more porous than they used to be. To study the
pattern of overlap between Dora and Frulein Else in both their similarity and
their heterogeneity leads to a better understanding of Freud and Schnitzler alike,
as well as of their perplexing relationship.

The basic stories of Dora and Frulein Else have much in common, as do
their central figures social and psychological situations. Both these girls are for
sale. They are bargaining chips exploited by their fathers for their own deleteri-
ous ends, hostages to the tolerance of turpitude, sacrifices on the altar of main-
taining the appearance of an honorable family. The girls dishonor is the price
 Freuds Dora and Schnitzlers Else 21

for the adultery of Doras father and the criminality of Elses. Neither of them is
unaware of this function that they are forced to fulfill. Doras father bergab
(177) her to Freud with the plea that he seek sie jetzt auf bessere Wege zu brin-
gen (184), that is, to accede to Herr K., an action she continues to resist. Dora,
who is in Freuds judgment scharfsichtig (192), accuses her father of having
made a formal pact with Herr K., in dem sie als Tauschobjekt behandelt wor-
den (193). She asserts furthermore that her father shares the blame (mit-
schuldig) for her present danger because he had sie wegen eigener Liebesin-
teressen dem fremden Manne ausgeliefert (249).
Else actually spells out what is happening even more clearly: Die edle
Tochter verkauft sich fr den geliebten Vater, und hat am End noch ein Ver-
gngen davon (333). The note of irony and bitterness is unmistakable here.
Scathingly she reflects: wie wrs, Papa, wenn ich mich heute abend versteiger-
te? (333). What is her commercial value? a palace? a string of pearls? For all
her indignation she recognizes that in this capitalist society marriage, too, is a
financial transaction in which the partners are commodities. Her friend Fanny
hat sich am Ende auch verkauft. Sie hat mir selber gesagt, dass sie sich vor
ihrem Mann graut (333). Else imagines selling herself to her cousin Paul, to
whom she is attracted, but who is himself involved with Cissy. She recalls, too,
how her family had tried to palm her off on the aging but rich Direktor
Wilomitzer. Altogether she feels revulsion at being degraded to the level of a
prostitute by none other than her family.2
Although Freuds Bruchstck appeared in 1905 and Schnitzlers Frulein
Else not until 1924, the internal time of the two works is virtually contempora-
neous. The action of Schnitzlers story takes place on 3 September 1896, and
Doras analysis lasted from October to December 1899. While both are short in
their time-span, they also reach back into the protagonists earlier lives. More
important, those lives are played out in the same social environment, that of fin-
de-sicle Vienna. While Else is on vacation in Northern Italy (which was then,
incidentally, still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and Dora has lived in
resort towns for the sake of her fathers health, the two are really rooted in the
capital, Vienna. They are also of the same age: Freud designates Dora as an
eighteen-year-old, and Else mentions that she is nineteen. They are, therefore, at
the close of adolescence, on the verge of womanhood, ripe for sexuality and
marriage.
Dora and Else come from the same social class, the mid-level bourgeoisie.
Doras father is in his late forties and is perceived by Freud, who had known
him for several years as a patient, as a man von nicht ganz gewhnlicher
Rhrigkeit und Begabung (176), a large manfacturer in very comfortable eco-
nomic circumstances. Elses father, on the other hand, though a lawyer with a
major case pending, is definitely in extremely uncomfortable circumstances. A
gambler and speculator on the stock exchange, he has teetered on the edge of
bankruptcy for seven or eight years (according to Elses memory) and had to be
22 LILIAN R. FURST

rescued from disgrace by large sums of money lent by family and friends. Now
he is once more in the direst straits, in need of a sizeable infusion of funds to
save him from imprisonment for embezzlement. But Doras father is also by no
means as upright as he is at first made to seem. He has a long-standing syphilitic
infection and an illicit relationship with Frau K. and possibly to Doras govern-
ess as well. Elses doubts about her fathers faithfulness suggests another paral-
lel: Ob er die Mama einmal betrogen hat, she wonders, concluding Sicher.
fters (325). Else is here portrayed as at least initially more or less acquiescing
in the mores of the society into which she has been born, including its tolerance
of hypocrisy. However, she also recognizes this pervasive hypocrisy for what it
is when she characterizes herself as a junge Dame aus guter Familie and im-
mediately adds: Ha, gute Familie. Der Vater veruntreut Mndelgelder (335).
She has noticed that her mother no longer has any jewelry, yet her parents have
thrown an extravagant party to buttress their sustained effort to keep up the ap-
pearance that all is well. While Doras family has no money problems, it is beset
by another kind of inner rottenness and a similar striving to maintain a sem-
blance of propriety. To send Dora to Freud for psychoanalysis is, arguably, one
tactic to cover up the complicated set of amorous affairs in progress. Rieff sug-
gests, rightly, that what is needed is milieu much rather than individual ther-
apy (10). So both these young women are entrapped in a poisonous morass.
That morass is created primarily by the libertine sexuality with which this
milieu is so heavily charged and which seems to be accepted as the norm.
Eroticism dominated literature, and an abundant medical or pseudo-medical
literature on perversions was readily available and found a large audience (El-
lenberger 282). In Doras immediate family, her father is deeply embroiled with
Frau K., the wife of a friend, the woman who had nursed him during his bout of
tuberculosis. Doras governess also seems to have set her sights on Doras fa-
ther. Meanwhile, Herr K. has been making advances to Dora ever since she was
fourteen, for a time sending her gifts of flowers daily and trying to embrace her
at every opportunity. Her father not only condones these attempts at seduction,
he positively endorses them as compensation for his own theft of Herr K.s wife.
His taking his daughter to Freud so that she be brought to reason can certainly
be seen as a barely veiled plea that she be induced to yield to Herr K. Frulein
Else likewise throbs with sexuality from the opening tennis game onward when
Else, realizing that she is the superfluous third, leaves the court to Paul and Cis-
sy. Else senses the liaison between them although Cissy is a married woman
who neglects her child in pursuit of her own illicit pleasures. Elses suspicions
are confirmed at the end when Paul and Cissy, believing her to be unconscious,
address each other in the familiar du form that testifies to their intimacy. Else
herself, although she claims never to have been in love, is preoccupied with the
possibilities open to her. She is jealous of Cissy because of her own strong at-
traction to Paul; she considers various young men among the hotel guests; she
fantasizes about marriage, aspiring to glamor and wealth in preference to her
 Freuds Dora and Schnitzlers Else 23

most faithful suitor, Fred, whom she writes off as inelegant. In short, she is sur-
rounded by a galaxy of men. The only one who arouses negative feelings in her
is Herr Dorsday, an elderly, rich art dealer who is, like Herr K., a family friend
who has petted her since she was thirteen or fourteen. Proliferating desire is thus
the rule in both Doras and Elses world.
If the men take the initiative in this sexual merry-go-round, the women are
obviously programmed to go along with it. Doras mother appears merely as a
passive spectator consumed by a Hausfrauenpsychose (178) which drives her
to an incessant obsessive compulsion to clean, perhaps in reaction to the fig-
urative dirt in her household. She remains quite peripheral and apparently im-
pervious to the goings-on in her family, as well as to her daughters distress.
Elses mother is rather more actively involved, but only as her husbands malle-
able agent in writing the two letters urgently entreating Else to obtain a loan
from Herr Dorsday. As Else reads her mothers hectic, frantic phrases, she
thinks to herself: Einen furchtbaren Stil schreibt Mama (329), and she brands
her as ziemlich dumm (325). Little love is lost between mother and daughter.
Else resents her mothers interference and manipulation for her fathers benefit.
The two mothers illustrate the essential marginality of older women in this soci-
ety, to be set aside or used at their husbands behest.
The emotional disconnection between this pair of mothers and daughters is
also indicative of the generational conflict implicit in both narratives. Dora and
Else alike have reached an age at which they aspire to more independence than
is granted to them. Dora, who attends lectures for women, is keen to develop her
mind so as to achieve greater emancipation, possibly in rebellion against her
mother, who is so utterly absorbed in housewifery. The more conventional Else
daydreams of marriage to a rich man who could provide her with the worldly
luxuries she craves. But both are thwarted in these fairly normal desires by the
intrusive, heavy-handed demands of the older generation. Elses parents press
her to act as the familys fund-raising savior, no matter what the cost to her.
Doras father places her under the dualindeed triple tutelage of his own
authority, that of Herr K., and finally that of Freud because of her refractory
resistance to the course of conduct these men consider appropriate for her.
So Dora and Else are forced into an unfair, untenable, double-bind position.
On the one hand they are infantilized as youngsters still subjected to commands
they are expected to obey without demur. Over and again Else is referred to as
Kind by her mother, by Dorsday, by Paul. And the adjectives attached to
Kind, namely gutes (321), liebes (343), and armes (379), suggest the
condescension with which she is treated together with an implied anticipation of
compliance. On the other hand, however, a weighty, adult burden of responsi-
bility is laid upon them as they are cast in the role of savior. Else is to salvage
her fathers and her familys honor by obtaining the necessary money. Doras
obligation is just as loathsome: in payment for her fathers affair with Frau K.,
she is to be handed over to Herr K.
24 LILIAN R. FURST

What these girls lack in the highest degree is freedom. Dora precipitates her
sense of powerlessness into her body through conversion into psychosomatic
disorders such as her cough and her recurrent aphonia. Loss of the capacity for
speech is a most effective, oblique way of expressing frustration and imple-
menting withdrawal. Else, significantly, is also in a way voiceless, for she pours
her anger into an interior monologue; that is, it remains contained within her
psyche. She is on the whole under less immediate pressure in the letters from her
mother, whereas Dora has to face daily the daunting authority of Freud, a man
roughly the same age as her father. The paternalism is therefore reinforced situ-
ationally. Some late twentieth-century critics, and not only feminists, see Freud
as guilty of The Victimization of Dora, to cite the title of an article by the psy-
chologist Maddi. The problem is summarized in another title, Father Knows
Best, in which Lakoff and Coyne argue that Freud acted as the fathers agent
rather than in his patients best interest (the father, they point out, moreover, was
paying for the therapy and had also initiated it).
Yet despite the impotence into which the social order would thrust them,
both Dora and Else finally assert their right to self-determination. Dora does so
by abruptly announcing, to Freuds surprise and dismay, her decision to termi-
nate the therapy. In walking out on him she defies the patriarchal jurisdiction not
only of her therapist, but also of her father. Else, too, emerges from a long series
of hesitations and ambivalences about her loyalty to her family and the (im-
moral) code of her milieu when she hits on the idea of exposing herself publicly
to the hotel guests: Herrlicher Gedanke! Alle sollen sie mich sehen (364). In
her eyes this is a triumphal gesture that resolves the problem and marks her
emancipation. She consummates this act of rebellion in the even more radical
step of suicide, the ultimate expression of the individuals prerogative to control
over ones self.
The motif of suicide is another link between Dora and Frulein Else, al-
though here differences between the two texts begin to surface: the theme is
minimal in Dora and pervasive in Frulein Else. A suicide note written by Dora
and found by her parents is the immediate impetus for taking her to Freud, and
cursory mention is made of a suicide threat by her father, apparently sometime
earlier when he spoke of wanting to hang himself in the woods and was saved
by Frau K. By contrast, in Schnitzlers story the possibility of suicide is ever
present, symbolized by the reiterated reference to the veronal that Else has at the
ready. The very opening scene, when she leaves the tennis court, has been seen
as a rehearsal for the final scene, once again in the presence of Paul and Cissy
(Kuttenberg 333). Like Doras aphonia, Elses suicide represents a means to
enact her protest. Suicide is on her mind throughout the narrative, primarily in
regard to herself, but also as a potential solution for her father to escape the in-
carceration and disgrace that threaten him. While Doras resolve seems none too
serious, Else wavers; she dreams of marriage and happiness, yet constantly re-
turns to the idea of death. For example, in projecting herself at forty-five, she
 Freuds Dora and Schnitzlers Else 25

muses: Vielleicht schon tot. Hoffentlich (327). Is her suicide then a way to
speak her silence?3

However, the handling of the theme of suicide serves, too, to reveal the im-
portant differences between Dora and Frulein Else alongside the striking par-
allelism. Their literary disposition is utterly at variance. The resemblance in the
presentation of suicide points at the same time to a dichotomy. The dissimilarity
resides in the possibility of verifying Doras and Elses words. We know what
Dora is alleged to have said solely through the mediation of Freuds report; her
utterances are filtered through the patriarchal interpretations put onto them. In
contrast, readers are totally dependent on Elses own testimony for her thoughts;
so in one instance we have an outsiders view of the girls situation, while in the
other we are limited to an internal perception of her predicament. This funda-
mental disparity of viewpoint between Dora and Frulein Else indicates a cen-
tral heterogeneity between Freuds and Schnitzlers narratives despite the fact
that many similarities are evident not only in theme, but also in the way in which
topics are presented. Both works are mosaics that require construction by alert
readers. Freud subdivides his account into five sections: Vorwort, Das
Krankenbild, Der erste Traum, Der zweite Traum, and Nachwort. The
more linear order of, e.g., Das Krankenbild is interlarded with the associative
manner of the dream interpretations. Schnitzler likewise follows a temporal se-
quence in the three hours encompassing Elses drama, but her actual thoughts
flit mercurially in time and place. So both texts combine linearity with free-flow
associationism.
Thus the comparison of Dora and Frulein Else, while testifying to the par-
allelism between them, at the same time shows up significant divergences,
above all in their format and genre. While Freud and Schnitzler portray the same
social system and the same dilemma on the girls part, the radical discrepancies
prove at least as important as the extensive similarities. The contrast between the
girls outer situation is quite fundamental: Dora is in therapy, whereas Else, de-
spite being in a resort hotel and surrounded by other guests, is nonetheless quite
alone with her thoughts. Interior monologue has been posited as the obvious
literary correlative of the psychoanalytic method (Swales 118); however, such
a contention brushes aside three central distinctions, namely that the speaker of
the interior monologue has no apparent addressee, receives no responsive inter-
pretation, and is left without therapeutic intervention. Analysis of ones own
thoughts in interior monologue can be conducive to catharsis if a satisfactory
solution to problems emerges, but it may result in a further descent into a vortex
of destructive self-entrapment. Here, the interior monologue becomes the vehi-
cle for a mire of indecisiveness; it runs the danger of involuted self-absorption
without corrective response. Psychoanalysis, by contrast, aims ideally for self-
26 LILIAN R. FURST

clarification, even if it does not always attain it. Freud functions, in Rieffs vivid
phrase, as Doras spiritual detective (10) by constructing a story for her, a sto-
ry open to question no doubt, but still an impetus to a further self-development
which does not seem to be an option for Else, who has to act as her own detec-
tive and closes in catastrophically on herself.
The presence of the analyst is the foremost difference between these two
texts. Admittedly, the voices of others intrude into Elses train of thought as she
overhears and registers them. Schnitzler adopted the clever device of noting
these intrusions in italics so that they are separated typographically from Elses
stream-of-consciousness and are immediately recognizable to readers. With
Dora, Freud is far from being the unobtrusive, mostly silent persona that is sup-
posed to be the analysts role. Indeed, he is a constant foregrounded figure as he
conducts the analysis and simultaneously adds a running commentary to it.
Ironically, it is Schnitzler who is the discreet narrator concealed behind Elses
monologue. Freud, on the other hand, enframes Doras story in a preliminary
and a concluding section, the Vorwort and the Nachwort respectively. Into
the three middle sections, too, he frequently inserts general comments about the
analytic process so as to open up a wider perspective. Die Krankengeschichte,
for instance, begins with a two-page disquisition on the importance of dreams
(17273). Later he interjects: Ich bergehe die Einzelheiten, aus denen sich er-
gab, wie vollkommen richtig alles war, und ziehe es vor, einige allgemeine Be-
merkungen ber die Rolle der Krankheitsmotive bei der Hysterie anzuschlies-
sen (202). He breaks off again subsequently: Ich unterbreche die Analyse, um
dieses Stckchen einer Traumdeutung an meinen allgemeinen Stzen ber den
Mechanismus der Traumbildung zu messen (229). This succession of inserted
generalizations endows Dora with a didactic streak centered on the principles of
psychoanalysis to be deduced from the treatment of the symptoms she presents.
The text therefore has a metalevel that arises out of this particular case history
and serves to infuse into it a more comprehensiveas it were, scientificval-
idity.

How, then, can this parallel yet disparate treatment of the theme of girls for
sale help to illuminate the relationship between Freud and Schnitzler? Specifi-
cally, what light can it shed on that strange Doppelgngerscheu that Freud felt
toward Schnitzler?
In many biographical respects they do indeed appear to be virtual doubles
insofar as they share a similar background. Both came from families of East
European origin. Freuds father had moved to Vienna from Moravia four years
before the birth of the eldest son of his second marriage; Schnitzlers father had
migrated to the city from Hungary. Schnitzler was definitely more privileged:
not only was he born in Vienna, a distinct advantage in that prejudice-ridden
 Freuds Dora and Schnitzlers Else 27

milieu, but also his father was a prominent laryngologist who numbered actors
and opera singers among his patients, whereas Freuds father remained a modest
grain merchant. Because of their prosperity, by the early 1880s the Schnitzlers
were able to relocate from Leopoldstadt, the traditional Jewish immigrant dis-
trict, to the inner city, a move replicated by Freud himself only later. Both at-
tended the Medical School in ViennaFreud from 1873 to 1881, Schnitzler
from 1879 to 1885so that they were taught by some of the same professors,
notably the psychiatrist Theodor Meynert. Both likewise cut loose from their
Jewish roots without, however, going as far as a formal apostasy.
On qualifying as MDs both initially embarked on conventional career pat-
terns. Freud did neuropathological research that resulted in a paper, ber den
Ursprung des Nervus accusticus, published in the Monatsschrift fr Ohrenheil-
kunde in 1886. Schnitzler, after an internship at the Allgemeines Krankenhaus,
became a Sekundararzt at the Poliklinik, as well as editor of the Internationale
klinische Rundschau founded by his father in 1887. The death of their fathers
precipitated a major turning point in the lives of both men. Finding medical
journalism insufficient to satisfy his artistic urge, Schnitzler turned to creative
writing and scored his first great success with the performance of Liebelei at the
Burgtheater in 1896. Freud, for his part, engaged after his fathers death in the
self-analysis that led to the publication of the Traumdeutung in 1900. From then
on both left the safer realms of traditional medicine to move onto riskier terrains,
Freud into the elaboration of psychoanalysis, Schnitzler into literary creativity.
Moreover, apart from these outer biographical parallels, Freud and Schnitz-
ler exhibit a palpable communality in the themes which preoccupied them. Lo-
renzs summation of Schnitzlers fascination with the dark undersides of Vien-
nese culture (The Self 130)with insecurity, hectic sensuality, promiscuity,
crime, and perversion just beneath the surface of apparent bourgeois propriety
is certainly equally apposite to Freud. The brittleness of Schnitzlers characters
matches that of Freuds patients. The fictional figures and the subjects for psy-
choanalysis share many problems such as anxiety, eroticism, loyalty, betrayal,
and jealousyin short, the crises of intimate interpersonal relationships.
Less well recognized is the fact that both stood, as it were, on the cusp of
medicine and literature, although their respective emphases and attitudes di-
verged so that in their later years their lives and careers bifurcated increasingly.
Schnitzler moved decisively into the literary realm. He attained great renown
with a long series of dramas and narratives that have entered the canon of Aus-
trian literature (Lorenz, Companion viixii). On the other hand, as his absorption
in Viennas artistic life increased, his commitment to medicine decreasednot
that he had ever been an enthusiastic student: as the son of an eminent physician,
he was pretty well destined for the profession, but from the outset he was luke-
warm about his studies. In his autobiography, Jugend in Wien, he is quite open
about his lack of zeal, admitting that the arts were his true passion (9093). For
instance, he joined a student association solely in order to get theater tickets at a
28 LILIAN R. FURST

discount. Later he liked to frequent horse races and coffeehouses, to play bil-
liards, and always to enjoy the company of women.
Schnitzler published only one piece of medical writing, ber funktionelle
Aphonie und deren Behandlung durch Hypnose und Suggestion, which ap-
peared in 1889 in the Internationale klinische Rundschau. A painstaking account
of six cases of aphonia he had treated at the outpatient clinic, it is faithful to all
the conventions of medical case-history writing of the period. The style has the
dry factuality of reportage, often lapsing into note form in abbreviations and in-
complete sentences. Only the initials of the patients names are given together
with their age, gender (they are all women), occupation, and their familys
health history, with particular reference to any hereditary degeneracy such as
alcoholism, epilepsy, or nervousness. However, they are not individualized:
their social context, i.e. their relationships with those around them, especially
any conflicts or tensions, are wholly passed over, as was customary before
Freud. In short, this article is extremely proper and staid. Schnitzler is honest
about recording the shortcomings of hypnosis as a treatment that is sometimes
successful, generally after repeated efforts, but at other times ineffective. No
greater contrast is conceivable than that between this sober report on a therapeu-
tic experiment and the highly imaginative manner of Frulein Else.
But it would be mistaken to assume a complete break between Schnitzlers
medical writing and his fiction. As a result of the many reviews he authored for
the Internationale klinische Rundschau of works by pioneering physicians of his
time, including Charcot, Bernheim, Forel, Krafft-Ebing, and Silas Weir Mitch-
ell, Schnitzler was extraordinarily well-versed in the newest thinking on what
were then called disorders of the nervous system. He singles out Freuds trans-
lations of Charcot and Bernheim for special praise for the clarity of the prose.
Although he is known to have harbored doubts about certain of Freuds tenets
such as incest and infantile sexuality, as a physician and for years editor of a
medical journal, Schnitzler was remarkably well-informed in psychopathology.
It is therefore not surprising that several of Schnitzlers fictions portray
characters who can at best be described as borderline in their behavior. The titu-
lar figure in Frau Beate und ihr Sohn (1913) is a young widow who indulges in
a brief relationship with her teenage sons friend. She suffers from such an over-
whelming sense of guilt at the damage she may have inflicted on her son that
she institutes their drowning. Her guilt complex is so extreme as to drive her to
an irrational destructiveness. Doktor Grsler, Badearzt (1917) opens on the sud-
den suicide of the doctors sister that is only partially explained late in the story
when traces of an unhappy love affair come to light. Dr. Grsler himself falls
prey to a chronic paralyzing inability to make crucial decisions so that he misses
his best opportunity for happiness and is eventually maneuvered into marriage
by a manipulative woman. In Therese. Chronik eines Frauenlebens (1928), the
psychopathology takes the form of criminal viciousness. From early childhood
onward, Franz, Thereses illegitimate son, exhibits a combination of gratuitous
 Freuds Dora and Schnitzlers Else 29

cruelty and mean selfishness that lead him to rob his mother of what little she
possesses, and when there is nothing more to take, to murder her for the sheer
pleasure of exercising this ultimate power. Murder recurs in Schnitzlers last and
grimmest fiction, Flucht in die Finsternis (1931), where the paranoid schizo-
phrenic, Robert, sinks deeper and deeper into the bizarre suspicions that culmi-
nate in his deadly assault on his physician brother, Otto, who has followed him
into the country in an attempt to care for him. In all these works Schnitzler
draws on his professional knowledge of various mental aberrations to delineate
character and to structure plot. While he may have virtually abandoned the ac-
tual practice of medicine, his medical expertise surfaces in his creative writing.
But the two genres, the case history and the fictions, are utterly separate in
mode.
Frulein Else bears out this separation: it is a fiction, yet with distinctive
medical undertones. It shows the extent to which Schnitzler was aware of the ex-
istence of multiple layers of human consciousness. In acknowledging their for-
merly often overlooked interaction in motivating human behavior, he recognizes
the power of the unconscious over the conscious. The interpenetration of the
adjacent levels of consciousness was, in Schnitzlers view, most strongly oper-
ative in an intermediate stage he regarded as mid- or half-consciousness (Mittel-
bewusstsein), in which the person simultaneously knows and does not know the
semiconscious factors determining the course of his/her actions. Schnitzlers
belief in the importance of the un- or semiconscious supports the Freudian inter-
pretations that have frequently been applied to Frulein Else. Within the text it-
self hysteria is mentioned as a likely explanation of Elses bizarre conduct in
publicly exposing herself in the hotel lobby. Afterwards, while she pretends to
be unconscious, she overhears Cissys contention: Ein hysterischer Anfall wird
behauptet (378). At the time of the storys action, in 1896, hysteria was riding
high as a favored diagnosis for aberrant behavior, especially in women. Breuer
and Freuds Studien ber Hysterie, originally published in 1895that is, just
before the internal time of Frulein Elsewas reissued in 1922, thus coinciding
with the storys composition between 1921 and 1924. Perhaps Schnitzler was
also affected by the impression of his first personal meeting with Freud in 1922.
The most clearly Freudian approach to Frulein Else has been put forward
by Bareikis, who conceptualizes Else as suffering from an Oedipus complex. He
lists her symptomatology as comprising a disturbed childhood, resentment
of her mother, narcissism and a consequent incapacity for a normal feeling of
love (20), and a latent exhibitionism (2123). The key to Elses problem,
he asserts, is her relationship to her father, who is mentioned as associated
from the outset with a significant note of anxiety (24). Dorsday assumes the
mask of paternal authority through his wealth, which controls the destinies of
Elses family. She herself is the victim of a repressed Oedipus complex which
was never resolved in a normal manner, and Dorsday has become a surrogate
father through whom Else can consummate her repressed desire (26). More
30 LILIAN R. FURST

precise and more amenable to documentation than the vague concept of hysteria,
the Oedipus complex has become the dominant psychological framework for the
reading of Frulein Else.
Among other critics who have pursued Freudian interpretation of Schnitz-
lers fictions is Weiss, who in two separate articles, respectively, explores the
psychiatric elements in Flucht in die Finsternis and provides a kind of diagnos-
tic table of the psychoses in Schnitzlers works. He categorizes the narrating
persona in Frulein Else as suffering from a psychotic break stemming from a
schizoid personality, insoluble conflicts, anxiety, and a guilt neurosis manifest in
an incident of exhibitionism, hysteric paralysis, and escape into suicide (Psy-
choses 39697). This story has also been assimilated to a psychiatric theory of
neurosis by Oswald and Mindess, albeit in a rather reductive manner.
Just as Schnitzlers fictions are replete with medical themes, Freuds case
histories, in a neat chiasmus, are decidedly literary in nature. Freud was deeply
engrossed in literature throughout his life. Jones tells how even during his busi-
est days as a medical student he attended a weekly reading group that studied
philosophy as well as literature (1:37). His writings are punctuated by literary
quotations, especially from Goethe and Shakespeare, but also from a wide array
of other poets ancient and modern. In 1907 he published a study of delusions
and dreams in Gradiva, a story by the Danish writer Wilhelm Jensen, and in
1930 he received the Goethe Prize in Frankfurt for his distinction as a German
stylist. Later in life he came increasingly to address other areas of culture such
as Michelangelos statue of Moses (1914) and Moses and monotheism (1939).
While participation in cultural life, including familiarity with music, art, the the-
ater, and literature, was quite usual for the educated middle class such as medi-
cal men in the Vienna of that era, Freuds commitment to literature clearly sur-
passed the norm.
In the richness of their evocation of the patients personal and social con-
text, all Freuds major individual case histories have a greater affinity to literary
portrayals than to the conventions then reigning in psychiatric case reports.
Dora, Ellenberger asserts, becomes a living reality as in truly Ibsenian fash-
ion we are at first confronted with a seemingly harmless situation, but as the
story unfolds, we are led to discover complex relationships and weighty secrets
are disclosed (499). Freud himself was quite anxious about this aspect of his
work (Furst). In the Studien ber Hysterie he already laments: es berhrt mich
selbst noch eigentmlich, dass die Krankengeschichten, die ich schreibe, wie
Novellen zu lesen sind (257). Freud fears that the literary aspect of his case
histories will prevent them from being taken seriously as science. His own
words are that they will seem, as it were, to lack the earnest imprint of science
(sozusagen des ernsten Geprges der Wissenschaften entbehren).
Given the crucial role of literature for Freud, it is natural that his own writ-
ing turned out to be pronouncedly literary in character, even if it confirmed his
fears about the lack of seriousness that would be imputed to his case histories. In
 Freuds Dora and Schnitzlers Else 31

Dora he describes his procedure as that of a gewissenhafter Archolog who

does not fail to indicate where das Authentische of his excavation melds into
meine Konstruktion (16970). However, this claim is fraught with difficulties
since the entire narrative is in Freuds voice with Doras story filtered through
his eyesthat is, his construction, his interpretation of the authentic (?) situa-
tion as he perceives it. Already for this reason the entire text must read, as Freud
was only too aware, less as a detached clinical report than as a Novelle of
which he is the author. The inclusion of dialogue between Freud and Dora, pre-
sumably recalled and recorded immediately after the session, but possibly also
supplemented by invention, heightens the impression that the narrative is more
imaginative literature than dispassionate science. The dichotomization of medi-
cal man and storyteller is specifically underscored in Dora when Freud states, in
raising the question of Doras lesbian attraction to Frau K.: Ich muss nun einer
weiteren Komplikation gedenken, der ich gewiss keinen Raum gnnen wrde,
sollte ich als Dichter einen derartigen Seelenzustand fr eine Novelle erfinden,
anstatt ihn als Arzt zu zergliedern (220).
Precisely the denial of his status as a storyteller draws attention to it. Freud
here becomes the victim of his own conviction: Das Nein, das man vom Pa-
tienten hrt, nachdem man seiner bewussten Wahrnehmung zuerst den verdrng-
ten Gedanken vorgelegt hat, konstatiert bloss die Verdrngung und deren Ent-
schiedenheit, misst gleichsam die Strke derselben (219). Thus Freuds stren-
uous self-representation as an Arzt rather than as a Dichter corroborates,
according to his own hypothesis, instead of refuting the literary nature of his
work. His frequent footnotes either citing other cases or elaborating on state-
ments in the body of the text are a form of overdetermination that appears to
lend a scientific patina but does not counteract the overall essentially literary
design of Dora.
The literariness does not, of course, detract from the value of Freuds psy-
chological insights, whether we accept his version of Doras predicament or not.
On the contrary, it is the literary aspect of Dora that has led to its enduring fas-
cination for readers intrigued by its disposition as a palimpsest. In a brilliant
article, Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History, Steven Marcus extols
Dora as a great work of literature (57). He points to its suggestive resemblan-
ces to a modern experimental novel (64), to its recourse to elaborate obfusca-
tion (69) in a manner reminiscent of Borges or Nabokov. In recomposing mem-
ory, Freud also discomposes, offering a narrative that is at once organized and
disorganized through its use of such novelistic devices as hidden connections,
mirroring, and ambiguities of significance. It could well be argued that what
Marcus calls novelistic devices (79) are as much characteristic of the mental
processes uncovered in psychoanalysis. But there is no arguing with Marcuss
conclusion that Freud, a master of transfigurations, was as much a novelist as
an analyst (79).
32 LILIAN R. FURST

More recently, in her introduction to The Wolfman and Other Cases, a

volume in the new translation of Freud edited by Adam Phillips, Gillian Beer,
too, offers a penetrating study of the artistic tactics Freud used in the presenta-
tion of his case histories. Although she is concerned mainly with the Wolfman
and Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy (Little Hans), in the same
volume, her insights are equally apposite to Dora. Beer emphasizes Freuds ar-
rangement of the temporal order of his patients disclosure, his grasp of the in-
herently kaleidoscopic quality of recall, the effect of immanence, of a limitless
presence of past events (xix) in the present moment through the workings of
memory. Such artful construction of the case history on Freuds part is in stark
contrast to Schnitzlers very straightforward and, frankly, rather dull manner in
ber funktionelle Aphonie.
Yet Freud himself distrusted, even disapproved not only of the extent of his
attraction to literature but also of the seepage of literary traits into his medical
writing. He feared that his tendency to speculation would overshadow and un-
dermine the seriousness of his work as science, for science always remained his
supreme value and ideal. It was as a man of science that he wished to be recog-
nized. It is the fundamental irony of his legacy that his wish was not fulfilled,
that his case histories and his psychoanalytic method have in the long run been
of more interest to humanists than to psychiatrists, only a tiny minority of whom
nowadays practice psychoanalysis.

The comparison of Dora and Else as girls for sale, which at first yields such
striking parallels from many angles, proves on closer analysis to comprise not
just significant divergences but a veritable tangle of paradoxes. However, if the
juxtaposition turns out to be far more complex than anticipated, it also in the end
is illuminating beyond the limits of these two works by throwing light on the
delicate relationship between Freud and Schnitzler, notably on that puzzling
concept of Doppelgngerscheu.
The two, as I have argued, both straddled medicine and literature. They un-
derwent training as physicians in the same medical school and at almost the
same time. Both, moreover, experienced a powerful attraction to the arts, but
they responded to this differently. Schnitzler made a crossover, so to speak,
clearly opting to put all his energies into writing. Nonetheless, his medical back-
ground leaves distinctive traces in the psychopathological character of a fair
number of the figures he portrays. Freud, on the other hand, remained within the
realm of medicine, or at least on its periphery (the actual therapeutic value of
psychoanalysis has always remained open to dispute). Yet literature was more
than a mere leisure activity to him: he had the habit, unlike contemporary nerve
doctors, of introducing multiple literary examples and references into his medi-
cal writing. More telling even than the plethora of literary citations is the fact, as
 Freuds Dora and Schnitzlers Else 33

he himself recognized, that his case histories read like storieswhereas Schnitz-
lers stories read like case histories.
It is well-known how uneasy Freud was at the literary nature of his writing
because it aroused the fear in him that his work would not be taken seriously as
science. Considering the conventions of medical writing at the time, this fear
was by no means unjustified. Schnitzlers own study, ber funktionelle Apho-
nie, in its depersonalization of patients into mere types, exemplars of a syn-
drome, is a revealing foil to Freuds case histories, which offer such rich detail
of his patients lives as the context for, and at times the cause of, their com-
plaints. But Schnitzlers is the method of recording a case history that was sanc-
tioned by the profession, while Freuds was not approved by his colleagues.
Freuds ambivalence toward traditional medicine and even more toward
himself may well have played some part in his conflicted attitude toward
Schnitzler. For in his younger colleague he must have seen a man like himself,
with medical training and a strong attraction to literature, who had the audacity
to act out his desires. Swaless comment aptly captures the psychological con-
stellation:

[C]ould it not be argued that Freuds strange diffidence towards

Schnitzler springs from a complex pattern of association and disso-
ciation, of attraction and repulsion whereby he recognized much of
himself in Schnitzler, and at the same time recognized much that was
different? [...] the fact remains that the essential points of contact be-
tween the two men are as striking as the lack of actual contact and
intimacy between them. (119)

Perhaps it is most accurate to speak of reluctance and avoidance on both sides

precisely as an outcome of their complementarity, a rather more complicated
relationship than just doubleness. Possibly they were even aware of a certain
uneasiness in their affinity that in itself led to the characteristic evasiveness.
Freud in fact expressed his sense of einer unheimlichen Vertrautheit with
Schnitzlers works (Briefe 97). In voicing his admiration for Schnitzler, Freud
allows a glimpse of a wisp of wistfulness: So habe ich den Eindruck gewonnen,
dass Sie durch Intuitioneigentlich aber in Folge feiner Selbstwahrnehmung
alles das wissen, was ich in mhseliger Arbeit an anderen Menschen aufgedeckt
habe. Schnitzler also enjoyed immense popularity and success in Vienna, espe-
cially in the theater, whereas Freud was criticized and marginalized by the med-
ical establishment.
The argument that mere chance kept the two men apart is not convincing,
although admittedly their lifestyles were very different. In many ways Freud was
very private, devoting his evenings to reading and to his voluminous correspon-
dence rather than to the social and artistic activities Vienna offered in such
abundance. His custom of convening his circle at his home instead of meeting in
34 LILIAN R. FURST

a coffeehouse was most unusual. Schnitzler lived in quite the opposite way, as a
man of the world and of the theater. In light of this basic disparity in their life-
styles, it is perhaps not so surprising that they had few friends in common and
that their paths did not cross spontaneously.
But it was far more than chance that kept Freud and Schnitzler apart.
Freuds Scheu sprang from the depths of his psyche, from his contradictory
feelings about his own writing, poised between science and literature. In
Schnitzler he saw a double who had the self-assured boldness to follow a path
Freud himself might have takenindeed, that he took partially in writing his
case histories as stories. There was thus an element of self-recognition, together
possibly with some self-reproach in Freuds perception of Schnitzler, who repre-
sented for Freud an inverted mirror image, at once a secretly desired and a cau-
tionary Doppelgnger.
The parallel yet different treatment of the theme of girls for sale in fin-de-
sicle Viennese society in Dora and Frulein Else has further ramifications be-
yond pinpointing the divergence between Freud and Schnitzler. It marks, too, an
important moment in the transformation of the psychiatric case history, namely
its migration from an exclusively clinical, medical genre into a humanistic, liter-
ary one. Freud bridges the two modes, standing on the cusp between the scien-
tific and the literary. In Schnitzler the two styles are still totally separate, as the
austerity of his study of the six cases of functional aphonia shows. With Freud
the psychiatric case history crosses the boundary between clinical and imagina-
tive literature in a unique conflation of the medical and the humanistic. The
lasting brilliance of Freuds writing lies precisely in this doubleness, a feat un-
equalled by Schnitzler and rarely achieved since Freud. Freuds Scheu vis--
vis Schnitzler, though comprehensible from his own perspective, was unwar-
ranted. His capacity to straddle the two cultures is one major source of his last-
ing importance.4
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Karen F. Jacobson for introducing
me to Frulein Else as a text at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hills
long-standing faculty reading group in psychoanalytic theory, a forum in which
Dora has been discussed, too. I want also to thank my two gracious research
assistants, Marina Alexandrova and Janice H. Koelb, who acted as my willing
legs, and to Erika H. Casey for reading the manuscript with such care.
 Freuds Dora and Schnitzlers Else 35

NOTES

1. Sigmund Freud, 18561939; Arthur Schnitzler, 18621931.

2. As a girl for sale, Else experiences what Swales deems a relativizing
moment (9) in which, like so many of Schnitzlers characters, she has to take
stock of herself and the life she has hitherto led. According to Swales, a moral
dilemma is at the heart of the personal dilemma, centered on the tension between
the self and those who make claims on it. Dora, too, perhaps experiences such a
relativizing moment on Freuds couch.
3. The phrase speaking silences was coined to characterize womens sui-
cide by Higonnet, who argues that it is a symbolic gesture, and doubly so for
women who inscribe on their bodies cultural reflections and projections, affir-
mation and negation (68). Essentially connected to free will and self-determi-
nation, Elses suicide is a performance (Kuttenberg 33) only insofar as it is an
acting out of the position at which she has arrived, her protest at being put up for
sale.
4. A recent example is the writing of neurologist Oliver Sacks, such as his
book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1970; New York: Basic Books,
1986).

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