Are you a doctor, sir? : a sound work

This is the question Katharina asks of Sigmund Freud, in the lodging-house of his summer holiday in the Höhe Tauern. He goes there to forget medicine and the neuroses, and almost succeeds. Her story is one of the four case histories in Studies on Hysteria, where Freud begins to move towards the flow of free association. There is Katharina, and Frau Emmy von N., and Miss Lucy R., and Fräulein Elisabeth von R. They speak, and their words, the moments when events are recounted, subject to my revision and selection, are spoken by Gabrielle Abbott, Natalie Allistone, Manca Bajec, Sutapa Biswas, Jennifer Booth, Alison J. Carr, Heather Connelly, Cinzia Cremona, Karen di Franco, Clare Dove, Laura Gonzalez, Helen Goodwin, Rose-Anne Gush, Suzanne Hale, Lou Hazelwood, Lizzie Hughes, Alana Lake, Claire Manning, Kristin Mojsiewicz, Sadie Murdoch, Tamarin Norwood, Gilly Pawson, Claire Potter, Mandy Prowse, Olivia Punnett, Gabriella Sancisi, Erica Scourti, Janine Siddall-Burton, Isabella Streffen, Laima Vanaga, Eva Vaslamatzi, and Gillian Wylde. Sharon Kivland's readers have recorded their reading of her scripts, which also belong to Freud, Katharina, Frau Emmy, Miss Lucy, and Fräulein Elisabeth. 'I wonder if there is a matter of identification, and if so, with whom, for in the structure of hysteria desire is subordinated to what is imagined to be the desire of the other, who has been granted a privileged position (yes, I am a doctor), and who is able to respond to what is expected (you can say anything to a doctor). There is the demand to a master (to show his mettle, what he does not have), a certain renunciation of one’s own desire in favour of another’s'”