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PARTISAN REVIEW
senior colleague for being ignorant of hysteria. A further reflection
ensues: "Does Dr.
M.
realize that the symptoms of his patient (Ir–
ma's friend) which give grounds for fearing tuberculosis also have a
hysterical basis? Has he spotted this hysteria? Or has he been taken
in by it?" He infers from these thoughts that putting the nonsensical
words into Dr.
M.
's mouth in the dream was a form of revenge for
Dr.
M.
's disapproval of Freud's treatment of Irma in psycho–
therapy. It is a short step from this to the realization that the inter–
pretation accomplishes revenge against all three, Irma, Otto, and
Dr. M.
In all three cases the dream represents a desire to make a
substitution: Irma's friend for Irma, Leopold for Otto, and Freud's
unnamed friend (Wilhelm Fliess, it has since become apparent) for
Dr. M. The thematic substitution is more important, but not so
clearly emphasized by Freud in his interpretation: the dream
represents a desire to exchange his own ridicule of other doctors for
their disapproval of his practice of psychotherapy. Of course the
dream is more forthright about shifting the blame from the dreamer
to
Irma-blaming her for the persistence of her symptoms. But it no
less certainly shifts the blame for misdiagnosis and malpractice from
Freud to other physicians, and it transposes their disapproval of him
into ridicule of them. The dreamer's displeasure with Irma, Otto
and Dr. M. seems to have been aroused by their skepticism about
his psychotherapeutic treatment. So the dreamer accuses all three of
ignorance of hysteria. In Freud's interpretation, therefore, the
dream represents a scenario of vindication. Just as the preamble
begins by intimating Freud's anxiety about being the inventor of a
~
new practice of psychotherapy, the interpretation concludes by vin–
dicating him and his invention.
Freud's interpretation of the dream of Irma's injection
represents therefore a wish fulfillment of its own. The inter–
preter/dreamer tells a story of an unrecogn ized hero on a tortuous
voyage of discovery, enduring multifarious temptations and
reproaches. This is a story that Freud told about himself throughout
his life. In later years Freud was quick to minimize and even reject
popu lar recognition, preferring instead to portray himself as an
unappreciated discoverer of unpalatable truths. Of course, the
representation of Freud as unrecognized for his epoch-making
discoveries (and enduring the hostility of the world) became an im–
portant feature of the psychoanalytic legend. This feature of the
Freudian mythography has been scrutinized rather carefully in re-
