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In 1977, a statue of Freud was unveiled in Bellevue, a suburb of Vienna where Freud first grasped “the secret of the dream.” In an address delivered on that occasion, Anna Freud (1978), then eighty-two, stated: “I have been here twice, the first time in the year 1895, four months before my birth; the second time, at the age of four” (p. 332). With her characteristic humor, she added, “Regretfully, I cannot say that my memory has retained anything of the significant events of that time.” Also characteristic of her, she pointed simultaneously to a scientific observation. By serendipity or design, she was calling attention to the infantile amnesia.
Freud's interest in dreams did not begin with the Irma dream, nor his writings on the dream with his classic book, published in 1900. Freud began to collect his own dreams in the 1880s, while still in the early organic phase of his training and scientific development. In a letter to his bride, dated June 30, 1882 (Jones, 1953), Freud wrote of his discovery that dreams had to do with themes which occurred during the course of the day and were broken off. Fourteen years later these themes became the day residues.