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PSAR 90(6):811-828 (2003)

The Interpretation of Dreams as Part of Freud's Psychobiography

Author: Valerii Leibin

Abstract

A hundred years have passed since the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams. Yet to this day the book is still one of the most important sources for understanding the founder of psychoanalysis. We discover something new with each reading of this source, something we had missed in previous readings. Thus it is not surprising that, when I again immersed myself in this work on the centenary of its publication, an insight splashed up into consciousness from the depths of my unconscious.

On the conceptual level this insight took the form of two propositions. The first concerns a question about a family secret that was never satisfactorily answered for Freud. The second is connected with a psychical trauma experienced in early childhood, and which was fated to have important consequences later in Freud's life. Both propositions are based on psychoanalytic ideas formulated by Freud, and which I use in a close textual reading of The Interpretation of Dreams.

The first proposition concerns one of Freud's dreams which, to my knowledge, scholars have not scrutinized. It is what the founder of psychoanalysis terms an “absurd” dream of his dead father:

I received a communication from the town council of my birthplace concerning the fees due for someone's maintenance in the hospital in the year 1851, which had been necessitated by an attack
This paper was first presented at the Centennary Conference on The Interpretation of breams held on November 4, 1999 at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in Moscow. The Russian version of this article appeared in the journal Questions of Psychology [Voprosy psikhologii] (2000, 5: 99-111).
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he had had in my house. I was amused by this since, in the first place, I was not yet alive in 1851 and, in the second place, my father, to whom it might have related, was already dead. I went to him in the next room, where he was lying on his bed, and told him about it. To my surprise, he recollected that in 1851 he had once got drunk and had had to be loc

PSAR 90(6):811-828 (2003)

The Interpretation of Dreams as Part of Freud's Psychobiography

Author: Valerii Leibin

Abstract

The first proposition concerns one of Freud's dreams which, to my knowledge, scholars have not scrutinized. It is what the founder of psychoanalysis terms an “absurd” dream of his dead father:

I received a communication from the town council of my birthplace concerning the fees due for someone's maintenance in the hospital in the year 1851, which had been necessitated by an attack
This paper was first presented at the Centennary Conference on The Interpretation of breams held on November 4, 1999 at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in Moscow. The Russian version of this article appeared in the journal Questions of Psychology [Voprosy psikhologii] (2000, 5: 99-111).
Page 811
he had had in my house. I was amused by this since, in the first place, I was not yet alive in 1851 and, in the second place, my father, to whom it might have related, was already dead. I went to him in the next room, where he was lying on his bed, and told him about it. To my surprise, he recollected that in 1851 he had once got drunk and had had to be loc