Evaluating the psychoanalytic encounter of Sigmund Freud and Dora, an emotionally troubled adolescent suffering from hysteria, Hannah S. Decker places the treatment of Dora into a larger social and historical context. In an effort to provide a glimpse into the private lives of upper-middle-class Jews in fin-de-siecle Vienna, pursues the lives of both Freud and Dora before and after their meeting.