Author's Response

I thank the discussants for their thoughtful consideration of the ideas expressed in my paper.

Dr. de Saussure addresses himself to the question which has puzzled me from the moment it occurred to me that Freud himself might be the dreamer of the recurrent yellow lion dream. I find his suggestions most interesting and plausible. In a general way Freud had explained in the introduction to the first edition of the “Interpretation of Dreams” that he made omissions and substitutions because he “should have to reveal to the public gaze more of the intimacies of my mental life than I liked”. But why would he substitute a fictitious person for himself in this specific instance?

I have made several attempts to piece together a motive from examining other instances of known concealments, thinking that they might have something in common. None has really satisfied me. “Screen Memories” was identified as autobiographical only after Freud's death, so we have no comments from him. Freud insisted for many years on anonymity as author of the “Moses of Michelangelo,” and Jones reports various reasons which Freud gave for not wanting to put his name to the essay (Jones, Vol. 2, p. 366), adding that “they seem rather thin.” I am inclined to agree with Jones.

The Fliess correspondence contains a number of references to personal material which Freud did not want to make public. In one or two instances he gives reasons. Thus in letter No. 83 referring to the dream which followed a rumor that he was to be invested with the title of

professor he states: “Unfortunately it is unpublishable, because its background, its deeper meaning shuttles to and fro between my nurse (my mother) and my wife.”

He published the first half of this dream (about the uncle with the yellow beard mentioned in my paper) and tells Fliess in letter No. 85, “I hope you will not object to the candid remarks in the professor dream. The thing in the dream which will probably strike you most will be explained later (my am