Viewing “A Country Doctor” by Franz Kafka Through “ The Five Lectures On Physo-Analysis By Freud Sigmund

In the story “A Country Doctor”, Franz Kafka expresses some of Freud’s psychoanalytical concepts such as dreamwork, which is described in lecture three. We believe that the story “A Country Doctor” is not a real story and that it is a dreamlike story because of the way that these characters suddenly appear in the story. Such as, the patient mysteriously has an open wound even though the doctor looked for any signs of something wrong with him. This example illustrates how unrealistic it is and that it is an imaginary storytelling of a dream. To understand a dream there is a series of elements such as; the manifest content, latent content, displacement, and lastly through condensation. These elements help us understand the real meaning behind those dreams. Some of these elements were shown throughout the story of “A Country Doctor” where we can believe that the characters and animals symbolize a deeper meaning of the nightmare that the doctor is having trying to save Rose from the groom through the elements of the latent content, displacement and condensation.

While looking at Freud’s lecture three, you can see many elements of dreamwork. A dream defined by Frued is a disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish. In his lecture he gave us four concepts of this dreamwork. One being all the elements that make up the actual dream by looking at the wish fulfillments, which is the unconscious mind giving you what you want. In the

story “A Country Doctor”, all the doctor wanted to do was to get back to Rose and save her from the groom because the doctor knew the groom’s intentions weren’t pure while the little boy and his family’s wish was for the doctor to save him. At the beginning when the doctor first arrived the little boy didn’t want to be saved and said to the doctor, “Doctor, let me die.”(Kafka 2) but, the doctor wasn’t sure how he was going to save this poor boy. During his travels trying to help this patient, he had to leave the servant Rose behind with the groom, which he didn’t want to because the doctor did not trust the groom around Rose. 

Another concept that was shown through dreamworks in the story “A Country Doctor” is the manifest content which helps us understand the latent content which essentially is the actual elements of the dream. These elements are the disguised hidden messages that were in the dream making it a wish fulfillment. These elements are what make up the latent content which gives us the deeper meaning of a dream. One example of this is in the story “A Country Doctor” when the doctor’s horses die and suddenly spots his rescue, which is the groom. The groom gave the doctor two new horses and a carriage to get to the patient. “She screamed and fled back to me; on her cheek stood out in red the marks of two rows of teeth. “You brute,” I yelled in fury, “do you want a whipping?”(kafka 2) This shows an example of the manifest content of the doctor being really protective of the servant. But the deep meaning behind him being protective over her is simply because he doesn’t want the groom to hurt her. The doctor constantly brings up Rose letting the audience know the urgency of getting back to her.   

Additionally, another example of the freudian concepts shown through dreamworks is by condensation and displacement. Condensation according to the lecture  is the combination of the wish fulfillment and manifest content, and helps us figure out what these elements mean in a deeper way of thinking. Like stated prior, the doctor is very protective of the servant, not only because he knows the groom will hurt her. The doctor also might have a crush on the servant girl. In “A Country Doctor” the doctor repeatedly keeps mentioning that he wants to get back the servant girl and save her from the groom. “I had still to see that Rose was all right, and then the boy might have his way and I wanted to die too.” (kafka 2). This is not the first time he brings up Rose after leaving her with the groom. Consciously it is in the back of his head that he needs to get back to her. 

Throughout the story in “ A Country Doctor” you can see many examples of how Freud’s lecture on psycho-analysis was used. In Freud’s lecture he used the concept of dreamwork to understand a dream. In order to understand a dream and its true meaning, you need to understand the concepts such the wish fulfillment, manifest content, condensation and most importantly through displacement.