The Domestic Economy of the Soul: Freud’s Five Case Histories

241 Pages·2010·3.429 MB·English

by  John O’Neill

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‘One could perhaps place O’Neill’s theoretical framework among those of the object-
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relations analysts of the 1920’s and 1930’s. These analysts believed, as does O’Neill,
that psychic life takes its shape from the mother’s body and being. The beauty of T
O’Neill’s book does not lie in its theoretical framework, however, but within his h O
attention to detail. O’Neill proposes that Freud’s cases were his own fi ctionalized e ’
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accounts of various patients which represent Freud’s own universalizing theories. N
h Anyone who is interested in the closest reading you could fi nd of Freud’s cases will D
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e want to add O’Neill’s most recent book to your bookshelf.’
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o Ellie Ragland, Professor of English at the University of Missouri, Middlebush l
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r Chair and Editor of (Re-)turn: A Journal of Lacanian Studies.
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, ‘The pleasure of reading O’Neill lies in his encounter with Freud as an unruly writer,
C rather than solely as a theorist of the sexual body or therapist of mental suffering. s
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He shows us how the resistance of the patient’s desire to the power of the analyst
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u is refl ected and refracted in the struggle of readers with the texts of the fi ve case c
l histories. O’Neill’s symptomatic readings of an impressive range of clinical and
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u critical literature expose how the scientifi c ambitions of psychoanalysis cannot be
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separated from its family romances and its civilizing mythologies. At the same time,
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his illuminating visual displays of Little Hans’s drawings, Dora’s dreams, the Rat
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Man’s thought-trains, the Wolf Man’s cryptology, and Schreber’s swan pair introduce n

& us into the blindness and insights of Freud’s own psychic economy. This wonderful o
collection of studies and stories – which have been refi ned through generations of
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S graduate seminars and tested before multiple audiences – will challenge readers
o with the gift of O’Neill’s formidable interpretive acumen and uniquely lyrical voice.’
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c Thomas M. Kemple, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of
i British Columbia and author of Reading Marx Writing: Melodrama, the o
e Market, and the ‘Grundrisse’. f
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This is the fi rst major analysis of Freud’s fi ve celebrated case studies of Little Hans, Dora, h
the Rat Man, the Wolf Man and Schreber. O’Neill sets out the details of each case and
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critically engages with the narratives using a mixture of psychoanalytical insight and

social theory. S
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The book:
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• Provides a clear and powerful account of the fi ve major case studies that helped to
establish the Freud legend. l
• Situates the cases and the analysis in the appropriate social and historical contexts
• Offers distinctive interpretations of the symptomatic body, illness as a language, The Domestic
dream work and the Madonna complex.
• Challenges us to revisit the canonical texts of psychoanalysis.
Economy of the Soul
The book will be of interest to students of psychoanalysis, social theory and sociology.
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John O’Neill is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology at York University, N
Freud’s Five Case Studies
Toronto, Canada. e
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Cover image © iStockphoto | Cover design by Wendy Scott
The Domestic Economy of the Soul
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The Domestic Economy of the Soul
Freud’s Five Case Histories
John O’Neill
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© John O’Neill 2011
First published 2011
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or
private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication
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publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in
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those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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For Susan
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Publisher’s Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Love stories 2
The body-soul of psychoanalysis 8
1 Freud’s Baby – Little Hans (1909) 13
Putting the cart before the horse 32
2 Opening the Dora Case (1905 [1901]) 43
Dora’s dreams 63
Portraits of Dora 76
Dora’s Sistine Madonna 82
3 Rat Man’s Lady (1909) 97
A case of blindness and (in)sight 99
Chorisis versus cartography 105
Catching Rat Man’s train of thought 115
Rat Man’s (mis)marriage 121
4 Wolf Man’s Wake (1918 [1914]) 129
Supplement and rectification 134
Wolf Man’s cryptology 149
5 Schreber’s Blessed Assumption (1911 [1910]) 157
Schreber’s unmanning/gynesis 168
Schreber’s swan song 182
Concluding Postscript: The Debts of Psychoanalysis 211
Bibliography 216
Index 225
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Acknowledgements
I want to thank all those graduate students in Social and Political
Thought who have engaged with close readings of Freud’s case his-
tories since the Tuesday seminars we began at home in the late after-
noons where for a few hours in Toronto we were caught up in the
romance between Vienna and London. The pace of our work was
substantially advanced by a Social Science and Humanities Research
Council Grant for Studies in Textual Psychoanalysis (1988–1991).
I should mention in particular Tom Kemple, Geoff Miles, Gary
Genosko and Peter Flaherty who produced innovative dissertations
and later works that stand in their own right. In the past decade, my
seminars on Psychoanalysis, Law and Culture have remained lively
through the creative energies of Mark Featherstone, Siobhan Holohan,
Molly Mann, Frank Scherer, Igor Gontcharov, Frank Cimino, Feiyu
Sun, Raan Matalon and Adnan Selimovic.
In the same period, my approach to Freud’s texts was road tested
through university invitations at Hawaii, Stanford, Berkeley and
Boston, as well as McGill University, the University of Toronto, University
College, Dublin and the Universities of Kent, London and Cambridge.
The circle was completed by Ivan Ward’s generous invitation to talk
at the Freud Museum in London, a few miles from where I grew up
in ignorance of all this!
Finally, since I continue to handwrite in my study, I have no chance
of appearing in print without the generous support of Brad King
and Jordana Lobo-Pires and, of course, Susan – who graciously brings
the typescript home to book.
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Publisher’s Acknowledgements
Permission to use figures and text from the Standard Edition of
Sigmund Freud’s works by arrangement with Paterson Marsh Ltd.,
London.
Chapter 5 extracts reprinted by permission of the publisher from
MEMOIRS OF MY NERVOUS ILLNESS by Daniel Paul Schreber,
translated and edited by Ida MacAlpine and Richard A. Hunter, with
a New Introduction by Samuel M. Weber, pp. xviii, xxxvii, 52, 79,
175, 208–210, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright
© 1955 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Introduction
to the 1988 Edition © 1988 by the President and Fellows of Harvard
College.
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