Freud's Dreams Revisited

Biographies of famous men are often written nowadays because new facts have been uncovered by historical research (the discovery of diaries, letters etc.), or because a new theory about the life—a new way of looking at it—has been arrived at. The first kind of biography is always of value at least insofar as new facts about great men are of value. An example of this in psychoanalytic writing is the recent paper of Max Schur (6) which illuminates one central issue in Freud's life at the time of the Irma dream. Schur discovered how Freud had reacted to Fliess's negligent error which had life-threatening consequences for their mutual patient, Emma. The paper shows the depth and the pathology of Freud's subjection to Fliess, and his struggle with it. The reader can empathize with how much Freud needed his “only audience,” and can be moved by his knowledge of the subsequent story of his liberation from Fliess and from self-deception. This insight is based on the discovery of something that occurred in Freud's life, and seeing it, undoubtedly correctly, as part of the material that went into Freud's famous Irma dream.

The kind of biography (or those portions of a biography) based on a new way of looking at a man's life requires a mind of great sensitivity; yet it can still turn out false or irrelevant. A psychoanalytic biography is likely to be of this kind—psychoanalytic theory providing a point of view. It is only a point of view, however basic and true. Empathy with a person, or a successful attempt to re-create and portray a person, transcends what can be put in terms of psychoanalytic theory. If psychoanalytic thinking is not used for a reductionist purpose (to reduce a man to his oedipus complex is more of a disservice, biographically speaking, than to ignore his oedipus complex), it can add to and sometimes centrally illuminate a man's life— as Hamlet is centrally illuminated by Freud's ideas even though Hamlet is much more than those ideas. A good biographer shows