Unresolved Problems in the Dream of Irma's Injection

Freud's dream of “Irma's Injection” has been and remains the focus of great interest. Some 40 or more articles, books, chapters, or letters have been published directed at expanding our understanding of the Irma dream and of the dreamer (Kramer, 1997). Freud offered it in “The Interpretation of Dreams” (Freud, 1900) as the “Specimen Dream” to illustrate his method for unraveling and establishing the meaning of dreams.

From a Freudian point of view the dream may be seen as the attempted disguised, hallucinatory fulfillment of an infantile, often sexual (libidinous) wish in the service of maintaining the continuity of sleep (Nagera, 1969). It is striking that in Freud's interpretation of the dream there is no infantile source provided for the Irma dream nor does he provide an explicit libidinous basis for the dream (Freud, 1900). Further, Freud recognized that displacement, a key dream-work mechanism, was not illustrated by this dream.

The literature about the dream of “Irma's Injection” to a large extent is an effort to expand on Freud's interpretation of the dream. This is done by providing additional day residues as precipitants of the dream and then seeing the dream text from the point of view of the newly offered day residue. It is what others felt Freud should have been concerned about. An analogous process is undertaken in searching for and suggesting the infantile source of the dream. An episode from Freud's early life history is suggested and an attempt made to show how it serves to illuminate the dreamer.

The undisciplined nature of these approaches to provide additional day residues and suggest possible infantile sources for the Irma dream was reviewed in “Does Dream Interpretation Have Any Limits? An Evaluation of Interpretations of the Dream of Irma's Injection” presented at the 41^st Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis (Kramer, 1997). Rather than explore the dream and see what topics it