“Not Unsympathetic”: Freud’s Lesser-Known 1920 Case of the Female Homosexuality of Margarethe Csonka

Abstract

S i g m u n d F r e u d ’ S c a S e S t u d i e S are among his most wellresearched writings and include Dora (1905), Little Hans (1909), Rat Man (1909), Dr. Daniel Schreber (1911), and Wolf Man (1918). However, his sixth case, written in 1920 and dedicated to the homosexuality of a young woman, has received much less attention among psychoanalytic scholars and historians. The theorist Diana Fuss noted that it “may well be Freud’s most overlooked case study; certainly, compared to the volume of criticism generated by the Dora case.”1 Titled “The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman,” it is often omitted from “Freud’s cases,” despite being the only explicit instance of female homosexuality that Freud analyzed.2 Such scholarly