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In celebration of the centenary of the publication of Sigmund Freud's Traumdeutung, the Australian Society for Continental Philosophy held a special panel at their annual conference, at which I was invited to speak on what Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok have had to say on the subject of the “interpretation of dreams.” I begin now, as then, with an equivocation, by stating that I wish to be able to put together a few words on these matters. From the great dream book itself, of course, we learned that wishes never come true, save in dreams, the function of which is just this: wish fulfillment. Thus, by stating that I wish to write about Abraham and Torok and The Interpretation of Dreams, I suggest at the outset that the task is an impossible one.
To explain what I mean by this, I will add a few words by way of introduction for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with these theorists. Of Hungarian Jewish origins, Abraham and Torok emigrated to France on either side of World War II, and both lost their family to the genocide. They met in Paris in 1950, gained memberships to the Socie´te´ Psychanalytique, and began clinical practice as psychoanalysts in 1956. Over the next twenty years, they collaborated on a number of essays (half of which are contained in translation in The Shell and the Kernel, 1994) and produced a major book, Cryptonymie: Le Verbier de l'Homme aux Loups (1976; translated into English in 1986 as The Wolf Man's Magic Word: A Cryptonymy). The collaboration concluded with Abraham's unexpected death in 1975, prior to the publication of their book, although we may now think that their collaboration has been reinvigorated on a higher level, as Torok passed away in 1998.