Dream and Vision—Some Remarks on Freud's Egyptian Bird Dream

When we celebrate a great man's birthday we like to catch a glimpse of him as the child he once was. When we celebrate a hundredth birthday, the day which commemorates his immortality, we have all the more reason to turn to his childhood days. We look with awe and delight at the first traces of a superior mind; we look for dates of portent which fertilized this mind. Looking back we then say: here was an event which captivated his fancy; there one which contributed to the phantasies and thoughts which stimulated his genius. Yet the mystery of the rare mind which can blend all impressions into one great chord is unsolved, though Freud, the founder of psycho-analysis, has done much to introduce us to the seed-bed of all personality: childhood. Only since Freud can we speak of the emancipation of the child: only since psycho-analysis have we awakened completely to our responsibility towards the future generation. Modern medicine has done much to lengthen man's span of life. Psycho-analysis has done this strangely in the reverse way: man begins his destiny at birth. From his most tender days onwards he has a history, and we are ever more engrossed in tracing and shaping that history.

When we look around for dates of special import in Freud's life, we find one which starts—spiritually—the gestation period of a new and original thought. This important date is one night in his childhood, when the small boy, 'the first-born son of a youthful mother'—wakes up from a dream and screams. His mother hastens to his bed, he sees her safe and sound and goes to sleep again. This dream is mentioned by the dreamer in The Interpretation of Dreams. He reports there that he analysed it 'some thirty years later', that is probably in 1895. We know from his letters to Fliess that in the years leading up to 1895, Freud was deeply engrossed in revolutionary discoveries. I quote two examples, one from a manuscript sent to Fliess between Easter and June 1893:

I do not think you