The psychoanalytic encounter of Sigmund Freud, at mid-life, and Dora, an emotionally troubled adolescent suffering from hysteria, provides a glimpse into the private lives of upper-middle-class Jews in fin-de-siecle Vienna - their professional concerns, familial relations, sexual undercurrents, and responses to the social forces of anti-semitism and the derogation of women. Decker places the treatment of Dora in a larger social and historical context and pursues the lives of the two protagonists before and after their meeting.