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the secret of dreams was revealed
to Dr. Sigmund Freud.
At the moment there seems little prospect of it.
PARTISAN REVIEW
This fantasy (which might itself have been a dream) contains the pa–
tent expression of another mythopoeic wish . But looking beyond
Freud's ascription of historical importance to his successful inter–
pretation of this particular dream, the concluding phrase of this let–
ter further illustrates my interpretation. Here too Freud represents
himself as the (undeservedly) unrecognized genius/hero and solver
of the riddles of dreams and hysteria .
* * *
Perhaps it goes without saying that
The Interpretation
oj
Dreams
is the master-text of psychoanalysis. But if this book is central
to psychoanalysis, its rhetorical shape underscores the extraordinary
importance of Freud's interpretation of the dream of Irma's injec–
tion in both the book and the discourse of psychoanalysis. Disre–
garding the large and diffuse first chapter that neglects even to
introduce the author's thesis while summarizing the extensive
literature on the subject of dreams, the book really begins with the
brief second chapter on the dream of Irma's injection. This chapter
introduces the thesis and argument of
The Interpretation ofDreams
as a
whole . Here Freud shows that dreams
are
interpretable. He also
demonstrates that his method of interpretation supersedes the tradi–
tional (popular, unscientific) methods of dream interpretation. And
he indicates his hypothesis that dreams are always expressions of
wish fulfillment.
The later chapters of
The Interpretation of Dreams
are a series of
extensions and amplifications of the ideas expressed in the second
chapter. They can be read in any order, as long as one has read the
second (and perhaps the third) . Every other section of the book
refers directly back to the second chapter rather than building upon
the intervening chapters, as would be the case in a book with a linear
argument. It is not impertinent to say, therefore, that the chapter
containing the dream of Irma's injection is the real starting-point of
psychoanalytic discourse: both Freud's scientific argument and his
myth of himself as the unrecognized genius were first published
here. Rhetorically it is the most important single chapter of
The Inter–
pretation of Dreams.
A metaphoric description of the strategic position
of the second chapter of
The Interpretation ofDreams
is found in the first
sentence of the third chapter:
