Dreaming for Freud: A Novel
Known for her expressive writing and insightful explorations of her characters’ inner lives, Kohler is the ideal novelist to relate the story of Sigmund Freud and his best-known patient, the pseudonymous Dora, a restless and intellectually minded 17-year-old he treated for “hysteria” at his Vienna office in 1900, when he was still poor and struggling. With delicate precision, Kohler traces their ongoing dynamic, depicting his attempted cure for her symptoms (loss of voice, mysterious leg pain) through psychoanalysis and the even more fascinating undercurrent of manipulation present in their connection. Feeling ill-used by men, Dora suspects her father sent her to Freud, his former doctor, as a way of persuading her to accept his affair with Frau Z., a family friend. When Freud plants suggestions about the young woman’s unacknowledged desire for Frau Z.’s husband, she crafts a subtle plan of her own even as she appreciates his willingness to listen to her. By creatively imagining Dora’s viewpoint as well as Freud’s, Kohler presents a feminine perspective on this classic case. --Sarah Johnson