Freud on Bismarck: Hanns Sachs': Interpretation of a Dream*

Freud always strove to maintain a scientific method of inquiry, and expected the adherents of psychoanalysis to do likewise. However, in the case of Hanns Sachs' appraisal of Otto von Bismarck, to which Freud gave his approval, he revealed a surprisingly emotional partisanship. In the fifth edition of The Interpretation of Dreams, there is an account of a dream by Bismarck which, curiously, Sachs had interpreted quite uncritically in 1913. From a reading of this interpretation, one can hardly gather that this is a dream by so eminent a figure as Bismarck, a man whose aggressive policies had momentous consequences and who affected the fortunes of Sachs and Freud so directly.

Freud introduces Sachs' interpretation of Bismarck's dream by noting that this is a “dream dreamt by a contemporary historical figure” (p. 377). He then explains the inclusion:

I am doing so because in it an object that would in any case appropriately represent a male organ has a further attribute which established it in the clearest fashion as a phallic symbol. The fact of a riding whip growing to an endless length could scarcely be taken to mean anything but an erection. Apart from this, too, the dream is an excellent instance of the way in which thoughts of a serious kind, far removed from anything sexual, can come to be represented by infantile sexual material (p. 377).

The dream is quoted here as it appears in The Interpretation of Dreams; it is, however, only the portion selected and interpreted by Sachs: