Freud's dream of 1895, ‘Irma's Dream’, stands at the beginning of psychoanalytic theory, but Freud's analysis only glancingly refers to the ‘unknown’ elements that are found at ‘the navel of the dream’. The imagery of the dream suggests this phrasing is significant and that unconscious elements refer to the oracle at Delphi. At Delphi a chthonic goddess was supplanted by a patriarchy; the ‘unknown’ at the centre of the dream is the archaic mother, repressed by Freud and by the patriarchal character of early psychoanalytic theory.