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The presenters and discussants of this panel had been asked to contribute to the celebration of the birth, more than a century ago, of The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud, apparently half-joking, had wondered ‘if there would ever be a marble tablet with the inscription “Here the secret of dreams was revealed to Dr. Sigmund Freud on July 24, 1895”’. All panellists, as celebrants, emphasising different aspects of Freud's work, said essentially: ‘No joking necessary. Here is the plaque that honours your achievement’.
Harold Blum described and celebrated Freud's achievement by summarising major themes of the book and showing why it was a ‘landmark in the history of thought, a revolution in the understanding of the human psyche’. Then, working as an archival detective, Blum speculated on the probable peregrinations of a manuscript dealing with Freud's own dreams and the topic of typical dreams. Blum spoke of Freud's use of dreams in his self-analysis and Freud's early belief that dream self-analysis might be sufficient for some other ‘not-too-sick’ future analysts. Freud, as Blum pointed out, was aware of his wishes both to reveal and to hide content and interpretation of his own dreams. The fact that Freud's manuscript dealing with his own and with typical dreams was in the hands of Alfred Adler was the starting point of some of Blum's research and speculations not only about phases in the relationship between Freud and Adler but also about the intersecting historical tracks of scientific, educational, promotional and political ambitions of Freud and his entourage. Blum, in his presentation ‘The interpretation of dreams’, thus connected the development of psychoanalytic ideas with the fate of the psychoanalytic movement.
The language in the title of the panel, ‘The Interpretation of Dreams as the origin of the psychoanalytic method’, provided the focus for Grubrich-Simitis's carefully documented study of the sources of, and the development of, psychoanalytic method and te