Discussion of John A. Lindon's Article, On Freud's Concept of Dream-Action

I would first make a comment on the role of the pathologist for Dr. V. and on his invoking the aid of his wife. Though a technical expert, the pathologist is a servant: his position is that of a key subordinate whose duty it is to guard his master from making mistakes; and, like many such subordinates, he is a confidant. One central reason for needing a confidant in the situation could be this. The innovator is necessarily, in the sphere of his innovations, cut off from all his fellows. However quickly he may share his discoveries, he is for a time completely alone. He even knows he may, like Semmelweis urging hygiene at childbirth or Simpson urging the use of chloroform, become ostracized.

Even the success of his innovation may not help him; but it is his one chance, and if he is wrong he is held beneath contempt. So he needs a confidant to mitigate his loneliness, and perhaps to foreshadow a future good reception, forgive him if he is successful (or if he fails), and to save him from error (one thinks of Freud and Fliess). But, in preparing to be alone at all, he is willing to invent a sphere with no other human beings in it—which is not far off a sphere in which he has destroyed all others. And an innovation destroys what has gone before by rendering it obsolete. I would say that a necessary condition for being able to face this would be that the innovation would be felt to be equivalent to the damage, a psychical restoration.

Applying this, I would suppose that Dr. V.'s innovation restored to life his aunt-in-law and his mother, which required the sanction of his unconsciously damaged and jealous wife (eminently compatible with Coodley's conjecture

of phallic abortive attacks); and restored them by a means that rendered their doctors obsolete, which required the sanction of the pathologist, in his capacity as confidant. (Further, the reason of waking would then be anxiety concerning the jealous wife and superseded colleagues.)

Another question that arises concern