Her entry begins:
I have been rereading Freud's case histories for my novel which comes out this May and also for the classes I'm teaching this semester. The more I reread these five case histories: Dora, Little Hans, The Ratman; the Wolfman and the President Schreber the more skillful they seem to me. Freud, of course, was well-read and quotes often from Shakespeare, for example. Still his taste was conservative in literature as it was in art, and perhaps the influence of a mystery writer like Conan Doyle is prevalent here. He creates suspense and mystery from the start of each of these cases. What is wrong, we wonder ...[read on]About Dreaming for Freud, from the publisher:
An award-winning author reimagines one of Freud’s most famous and controversial casesVisit Sheila Kohler's website.
Acclaimed for her spare prose and exceptional psychological insights in her novels Becoming Jane Eyre and Love Child, Sheila Kohler’s latest is inspired by Sigmund Freud’sDora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. Dreaming for Freud paints a provocative and sensual portrait of one of history’s most famous patients.
In the fall of 1900, Dora’s father forces her to begin treatment with the doctor. Visiting him daily, the seventeen-year-old girl lies on his ottoman and tells him frankly about her strange life, and above all about her father’s desires as far as she is concerned. But Dora abruptly ends her treatment after only eleven weeks, just as Freud was convinced he was on the cusp of a major discovery. In Dreaming for Freud, Kohler explores what might have happened between the man who changed the face of psychotherapy and the beautiful young woman who gave him her dreams.
Writers Read: Sheila Kohler (December 2009).
Writers Read: Sheila Kohler.
--Marshal Zeringue
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