The legendary material to which he refers is the story of Oedipus. The Greek tragedy tells of the child of Laius, King of Thebes, and his wife Jocasta. The oracle foretold to Laius that his newborn son, Oedipus, would kill him and marry Jocasta, and so Laius ordered the child to be put out to die. But Oedipus was rescued and raised in an alien court. When he came of age, Oedipus too learned from the oracle that he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother. And so he left the family he knew. On the road he met a man whom he slew in a quarrel, and when he traveled on he came to the town of Thebes, whose king had just been slain on the road. The town was suffering under the spell of a sphinx, and when Oedipus was able to remove the spell, he was rewarded by the Thebans by being made their king, and given for his bride their queen Jocasta. To the ignorance of all, the oracle was fulfilled.

The drama of Oedipus as written by Sophocles portrays the gradual revelation of the truth to Oedipus, to his eventual horror. It was Freud’s contention that the power of this drama from Greek to modern times results from the fact that it expresses impulses that the audience shares with Oedipus, but of which they, too, are ignorant and would be horrified to learn. In later years Freud gave the term oedipus complex to this pair of impulses he thought universal in children: love toward the opposite-sex parent and
hostility toward the same-sex parent as a rival for that love. As humans, Freud argued, we are born with impulses toward sexuality and aggression, and these impulses find infantile expression in our earliest relations with the figures closest and most important to us.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

Freud examined his associations to the oddest manifest image of this dream, that of two people with birds’ beaks. He was led first to a memory of an illustration of Egyptian gods with falcons’ heads from the Philippson’s Bible he had in childhood. From this recollection he was led to another childhood memory of a boy named Philipp who first taught him the slang term for sexual intercourse. In German, this sexual term shares the root of the word for “bird.” His final interpretation of the dream was that it expressed in disguised form a sexual wish for his mother, disguised because of the abhorrence he would have felt on acknowledging such a wish consciously. In fact, in a long section in the dream book on dreams of the death of a loved one, by far the longest section in his consideration of typical dreams, Freud developed the argument that such unacceptable cravings are typical in children. Not surprisingly, many of his readers found this idea abhorrent.

After analyzing the anxiety dreams of a number of his patients, Freud wrote:
According to my experience, which is now large, parents play a leading part in the infantile psychology of all later neurotics, and falling in love with one member of the parental couple and hatred of the other help to make up that fateful sum of material furnished by the psychic impulses… But I do not think that psychoneurotics are here sharply distinguished from normal human beings… It is far more probable, as is shown also by occasional observation upon normal children, that in their loving or hostile wishes towards their parents psychoneurotics only show in exaggerated form feelings which are present less distinctly and less intensely in the minds of most children. Antiquity has furnished us with legendary material to confirm this fact.10

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

The basic principles of psychic content, dynamics, and structure were revealed to Freud in the dream of Irma’s injection, but he elaborated on this basic foundation in later chapters of The Interpretation of Dreams and in other works in later years. Let us explore how.

The dream of Irma’s injection is a wish-fulfillment, but what is the evidence that all dreams are wish-fulfillments and that more generally, as Freud was to claim at the end of the dream book, nothing but a wish can set our mental apparatus in motion? In particular, consideration of nightmares would seem to provide a challenge to the idea that all dreams represent wishes. But Freud insisted that the claim applies to these dreams as well. He demonstrated this through the analysis of many such dreams by others. His analysis of one of his own dreams is particularly illustrative, because it falls into a class that he regarded as “typical dreams”: dreams of the death of a loved relative.

Freud reported that he himself had not had a true anxiety dream in dozens of years, but he remembered an especially vivid one he had in his seventh or eighth year. In the dream, he saw his mother with a peculiarly peaceful sleeping expression being laid on her bed by two people with birds’ beaks. He woke up screaming and in tears, and he interrupted his parents’ sleep to make sure that his mother was not dead. Now it hardly seems that this dream could express a wish on Freud’s part. But we must remember the difference between the manifest and latent content of dreams, and that if the latent wish motivating a dream is unacceptable it will be distorted before finding expression in the manifest content.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

Freud argues that a dream appears odd or nonsensical because it expresses a wish that is not acceptable to consciousness and so has been distorted. He introduces a distinction between the manifest content and the latent content of a dream. In the Irma dream, manifest elements such as Irma’s looks, M.’s assurance, and Otto’s injection are expressions of a latent wish for vengeance. The wish for revenge on a patient or on colleagues for expressing doubt about his treatment was certainly not an acceptable wish in Freud’s mind. Yet it was felt at some level, and sought expression. The manifest dream provided a way of expressing this wish in disguised form, so that it was unrecognizable and so allowable to consciousness. Thus, Freud argues, the dream is a compromise between an unconscious wish that seeks expression and a censoring force that judges it as unacceptable.

In this analysis of the Irma dream, Freud has introduced the basic scaffolding for a general model of psychic content, dynamics, and structure. In the next 40 years of his life he was to build on this scaffolding but never to dismantle the basic foundation. In all mental life, as in dreams, he would claim, wishes are the basic content. The dynamics of mental life involve a conflict between wishes seeking expression and judging forces seeking to censor those wishes, with the result representing the compromise struck by these conflicting forces. The mental structure consists of distinct regions, one manifest or conscious and another latent or unconscious.

This is an image of the psyche that envisions an intriguing mystery hidden under what is apparent, one that infers powerful forces battling unseen within us. Our familiarity with these notions today should not blind us to their novelty at the time Freud introduced them and to the incredible daring of his book. In studying dreaming he had turned an inquisitive eye on an experience so common as to be overlooked as unimportant by most people, and he had found in it the key to understanding the human psyche. Just as most people would never infer the relative speeds of light and sound from their common experience of seeing lightning before they hear thunder, they would never infer the important psychological laws that underlie their common experience of dreaming. It took Freud to unearth these laws. It is still a matter of debate how valid his particular principles are, but the enduring power of the overall vision is indisputable.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

Although Freud’s full analysis of the dream of Irma’s injection is much more complex and intricately woven than I have elaborated here, we now have before us sufficient information from which to extract the conclusions he derived about mental life. What, first, does the analysis tell us about the content of mental life? What is the dream about? A common thread can be extracted from the tapestry of associations that Freud makes to the different elements in the Irma dream. Freud was not to blame for Irma’s pains, for she herself was at fault for not accepting his solution. Freud could not be blamed for her lack of cure, for the problem was organic and not amenable to psychological treatment.

Freud need not worry about her continued pains, for all would be well once the toxin is eliminated. And it is not Freud, but Otto, who had caused her trouble by carelessly injecting her with an unsuitable drug. Could it be that this wish to be relieved of responsibility for Irma’s continued illness is the reason why the dream was dreamt? This is what Freud concludes. An event from the day before the dream, Otto’s report that Irma was not fully well and the apparent reproach in his words, had prompted in Freud a wish to be relieved of blame. Freud concludes: “The dream acquits me of responsibility for Irma’s condition by referring it to other causes, which indeed furnish a great number of explanations. The dream represents a certain condition of affairs as I should wish it to be; the content of the dream is thus the fulfilment of a wish; its motive is a wish.”9

And a second set of wishes is expressed in the dream as well. Irma, who had rejected Freud’s solution, has been replaced by a more favorable patient. M., who himself had rejected Freud’s solution, is made to look like a fool. Otto, who had seemed to blame Freud for Irma’s continuing troubles, is himself found to blame for Irma’s illness. Thus, the dream also fulfills a wish to get vengeance on those who had questioned Freud’s treatment: by replacing them, making fun of them, and throwing the accusation of mistreatment back on them. And it is this wish for revenge that accounts for the nonsensical elements in the dream. Irma looks different in the dream from the way she does in real life because of Freud’s wish to replace her with another who would be more congenial. The nonsensical statement by M. about dysentery relieving a toxin is an expression of Freud’s wish to make fun of M. The odd injection of propyl expresses Freud’s wish for vengeance
on Otto for blaming him for Irma’s illness. But why does this wish for revenge get expressed by such nonsensical elements?

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

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“M. says: ‘No doubt it is an infection, but it does not matter; dysentery will develop too, and the poison will be excreted.’” Freud’s first association to this element of the dream suggests that he may have been feeling guilty in his dream and seeking to make amends. The dream had been trying to shift the blame for Irma’s illness away from himself, but in the process it had invented a severe organic illness for Irma. M. is brought in to assure that all will be well in the end. But this could not be the whole story, for why is M.’s consolation so nonsensical? To claim that a toxic infection can be relieved by diarrhea is foolish. Freud is then reminded of two other physicians who had made foolish diagnoses, and he concludes that this dream element serves to make fun of M. by portraying him as similar to these other two physicians in his ignorance.

Freud now recalls that he has reason to suspect that the appealing patient of M., whom Freud wishes to have as his own, is herself a hysteric and that M. is ignorant of this. But why, Freud wonders, would he wish to treat M. so badly in his dream by making him out to be a fool? He suddenly understands that the reason he treated M. badly in the dream, by making him a fool, is the same as that which led him to treat Irma badly, by replacing her with a better patient. Just as Irma had rejected Freud’s proposed solution for curing her hysteric symptoms, M. too had recently rejected Freud’s solution to the problem of hysteria.

“We also have immediate knowledge of the origin of the infection. My friend Otto has recently given her an injection with a propyl preparation when she felt ill…. Such injections are not made so rashly.” In reporting his associations to this dream element, Freud recounts that when Otto had visited the day before the dream he had brought as a gift a bottle of liqueur. When Freud’s wife opened the bottle that evening it gave off such a strong smell of fusel oil that Freud refused to touch it. In his dream the propyl represents this distasteful smell. But another insult from Otto was the basis for the accusation in the dream, that Otto had been careless in making such an injection. Freud recalls that he had formed the idea that Otto was careless on the previous day, when Otto had told him that Irma was not fully well. Hearing an accusation in Otto’s tone, Freud judged that Otto had probably been too easily influenced by Irma’s family to side against him, and had rashly jumped to the conclusion that Freud had mishandled Irma’s treatment. In the dream, then, Freud takes revenge on Otto for criticizing his treatment of Irma by throwing the blame back on Otto: Irma’s illness has been caused by Otto’s injection.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

“I immediately take [Irma] aside … to reproach her for not yet accepting the ’solution.’ I say to her: ‘If you still have pains, it is really only your own fault.’” In looking at these elements at the beginning of the dream, Freud notices that his words show him to be anxious not to be responsible for the pains Irma still has. He blames Irma for her symptoms; if they are her fault they cannot be his. “I am frightened and look at her…. I think that after all I must be overlooking some organic affection.” Considering these dream elements, Freud finds himself suspicious of the alarm expressed. He notes that this organic trouble too may be an expression of his wish not to be responsible for Irma’s incomplete cure. For his treatment was designed to cure hysterical pains, not those of organic origin. If her problem is an organic one, he could not be blamed for her continuing illness.

“‘If you only knew what pains I now have in the neck, stomach, and abdomen’… I take her to the window and look into her throat.” In his associations to this part of the dream Freud notes that these are not symptoms Irma actually has, and he recalls that he has never had any occasion to look into her throat. Freud is reminded instead of another woman who suffered from choking symptoms and who was examined by a window. In the dream he apparently has replaced Irma’s characteristics with those of this other woman. This woman is a friend of Irma’s who was not a patient of Freud’s, but rather was a patient of M.’s. Freud reports that he has a very high opinion of this other woman and has previously had the wish that she would seek his medical services.

He now suspects that these elements of the dream express his wish to replace Irma, who had not yielded to his solution, with this more appealing patient who would have yielded to him more readily. In this series of associations to dream elements involving Irma, then, Freud finds the expression of a wish not to be at fault for Irma’s continuing illness, and a wish to replace Irma with a better patient.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest

A great hall—many guests whom we are receiving—among them Irma, whom I immediately take aside, as though to answer her letter, to reproach her for not yet accepting the “solution.” I say to her: “If you still have pains, it is really only your own fault.” She answers: “If you only knew what pains I now have in the neck, stomach, and abdomen; I am drawn together.” I am frightened and look at her. She looks pale and bloated; I think that after all I must be overlooking some organic affection. I take her to the window and look into her throat. She shows some resistance to this, like a woman who has a false set of teeth. I think anyway she does not need them. The mouth then really opens without difficulty and I find a large white spot to the right, and at another place I see extended grayish-white scabs attached to
curious curling formations, which have obviously been formed like the turbinated bone—I quickly call Dr. M., who repeats the examination and confirms it…. Dr. M.’s looks are altogether unusual; he is very pale, limps, and has no beard on his chin. … My friend Otto is now also standing next to her, and my friend Leopold percusses her small body and says “She has some dullness on the left below,” and also calls attention to an infiltrated portion of the skin of the left shoulder (something which I feel as he does, in spite of the dress)…. M. says: “No doubt it is an infection, but it does not matter; dysentery will develop too, and the poison will be excreted.” … We also have immediate knowledge of the origin of the infection. My friend Otto has recently given her an injection with a propyl preparation when she felt ill, propyls…. Propionic acid… Trimethylamin (the formula of which I see printed before me in heavy type)….Such injections are not made so rashly…. Probably also the syringe was not clean.8

Now, this dream seems like pure nonsense: For example, Irma is sick because of a shot Otto gave her and she will be made well by diarrhea. But rather than dismiss the dream as drivel, Freud adopts the assumption that it is neither nonsensical nor randomly generated, but rather that it has a meaning, if its language can only be deciphered. He analyzes the dream by following his own associations to each of the different elements of the dream. From these associations there emerges a story of the dream’s meaning, and more generally, a set of proposals about the content, dynamics, and structure of the human psyche. We consider here only a
portion of the dream analysis, but enough to lay the groundwork for Freud’s claims about the nature of the psyche.

Taken from :PSYCHOLOGY’S GRAND THEORISTS How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas - Amy Demorest