You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
There is a reason to mark Freud's Interpretation of Dreams as the birth of psychoanalysis. Dreams really are the “royal road to the unconscious” in a way few other things are. Dreams get a glimpse of mental activity when the external world's influence is at a minimum. Otto Rank's 1910 book, Ein tram, der sich selbst deutet is published in English for the first time and available through Karnac as A Dream that Interprets Itself (2024). It is translated by Gregory Richter and edited with an introduction by Robert Kramer. The book is a mere 86 pages long including endnotes and index, so will be a quick read for many. It provides a dream and the interpretation that traces itself back to the associations and personality of the dreamer, and as such, is an important reference for those interested in dream interpretation in clinical work as well as for those teaching dream interpretation, symbolic communication, and research in psychoanalysis. The dream is unpacked in a meticulous way that shows the importance and power of interpretation in understanding a patient.
In the first part of the dream, the dreamer reports being a governess in a royal palace. She is to lie down on the floor in supplication, but refuses and is beaten by the Queen. A female attendant is then told to take her into the lilac room and the dreamer is surprised that “I wasn't being treated so badly after all; I had been granted the honor of examining this room” (p. 11).
A male tutor comes into the room with her although they were supposed to wait until she was gone. She then happens upon the King as he is combing his hair and wonders what a handsome King is doing with an old Queen. In the second part of the dream, she cuts some ears of barley and rye while walking along a road. She then feels guilty, lies about it, and finally admits, “I was with my classmate B. in her house: we were naked and loved each other” (p. 21).
In quoting the dream, Rank highlights the parts that change in subsequent tellings b