Introduction

The essays in this issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry raise questions that are vital for us as concerned citizens, as researchers, as teachers, as clinicians. They are questions about the varying effects of sexual trauma on individuals and about our responses to them. The questions raised are also about the nature of memory and about our own ways of understanding and treating those who have experienced sexual trauma. These questions do not lend themselves to easy answers or simple explanations. In fact, the matter is so complex that it is often hard to know exactly where to begin

For me, one starting place in trying to organize my thinking about sexual trauma and its treatment is a dream of Freud's. In the now famous “Irma dream”—something happens that is relevant to the subject at hand. You will remember that Freud felt criticized by a colleague who reported to Freud that one of Freud's patients, Emma Eckstein (Irma in Freud's dream) was still unwell despite psychoanalytic treatment. That night, Freud had a strange and complicated dream that he interpreted as being an argument for Irma's continuing difficulties not being his fault. In chapter 2 of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) he masterfully elaborates the wish-fulfilling and narcissistic bases of his Irma dream—and of all our dreams. Schur (1972) was later to point out that it was also a dream in which Freud struggles with recognizing and disguising the significance of his colleague Fliess's medical mistreatment. Fliess, to whom Freud had