Sigmund Freud's case study of Miss Lucy R

FREUD AND THE CASE OF LUCY R.

Lucy R. was a patient of Freud's who was referred to him by a colleague who had been treating her unsuccessfully. She was thirty years old and was suffering from loss of her olfactory sense, chronic sinus inflammation and infection, and olfactory hallucinations. Specifically, she hallucinated the scent of burnt pudding. Lucy R. also suffered from acute bouts of depression with know apparent origin.

Lucy R. was resistant to Freud's preferred method of using hypnosis to encourage his patients to communicate with him about their inner feelings and conflicts. Because she could not be hypnotized, Freud just asked her to close her eyes and "concentrate" instead. He also used a technique whereby he placed his hand on her forehead and told her that when he removed his hand she would instantly recall the hidden source of her depression and whatever it was that was causing her symptoms. Freud wrote that this method of ordering his patients to think consciously about issues in their unconscious minds was very reliable.

Diagnosis

Freud assumed all along that Lucy R. had repressed difficult feelings or emotions or unpleasant associations into her subconscious and that her physical symptoms were displaced manifestations of the feelings that she refused to acknowledge consciously. As always, his psychodynamic approach was designed to draw out the necessary information from his patients to identify the true origin of their problems. In the case of Lucy R., Freud determined that the source of her symptoms was her having repressed her unrequited romantic affection for her employer. He was a widower with two small children for whom Lucy R. cared.

With Freud's help, Lucy R. eventually came to the realization that her employer did not care for her in the same way that she cared for him. Eventually, she recovered from most of her symptoms. During her recovery, she also experienced elements of the psychodynamic transference that Freud described in his writings. In general, Freud's transference principle typically accounts for the romantic feelings or sexual desires that patients undergoing psychotherapy often experience for their therapists. In the specific case of Lucy R., that transference manifested itself in her replacing her olfactory hallucinations of burnt pudding for the imagined odor of burning cigars. Freud frequently smoked cigars during his sessions and also described other similar transference experience having to do with his female patients and his cigars in that regard.

Conclusion