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February 3, 1986
Frank R. Hartman, in "A Reappraisal of the Emma Episode and the Specimen Dream" (This Journal, 31:555-585), contends that Emma Eckstein, the victim of a nasal operation by Wilhelm Fliess, was not the Irma of Freud's speciman dream. This may be so, but, even if Emma was not Irma, Hartman tries too hard to dissociate the two.
Hartman disagrees with other scholars that the Emma episode even constituted day residue of the Irma dream. Hartman's main argument in this regard apparently is that Emma's massive nasal hemorrhage was in March, 1895, while the Irma dream and Freud's analysis of it occurred in July, 1895. The term "day residue," Hartman suggests, is generally not used to refer to an incident more than several days before the dream to which it contributes. Nevertheless, the subject matters of the Emma episode and the Irma dream are so similar that, as J. N. Isbister says in his recent biography of Freud, "It stretches our credulity to believe that this incident [the Emma episode] did not spring to mind when Freud was presenting his associations [to the Irma dream]."
Hartman also disputes the view that the Emma episode could be considered "current conflict" of the Irma dream. He apparently takes Freud's unawareness of current conflict in connection with his non vixet dream of 1898 as evidence that, if the Emma episode had been a current conflict in connection with the 1895 Irma dream, then Freud might have been unaware that it was. It is unclear how one's unawareness in one situation constitutes any significant evidence that one was unaware in another situation three years earlier.
After using Freud's unawareness of current conflict in one