This paper seeks to give a fresh and internally sensitive interpretation which would illuminate certain problems and peculiarities of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams.1 This work is approached not in the context of other Freudian writings and subsequent psychoanalytic literature, but as an autonomous philosophical or literary text which raises deep (and dreamlike) conceptual difficulties while offering powerful hermeneutical resources.

In light of this situation it might be helpful to let The Interpretation of Dreams treat itself, that is, to recognize the text itself as a dream and to apply the processes elucidated there reflexively to the site of their own production. Freud (1887-1904)