The Interpretation of Dreams. Sigmund Freud

I see the chemical formula of this substance in the dream, a fact which probably gives evidence of a great effort on the part of my memory, and, moreover, the formula is printed in heavy type, as if to lay special stress upon something of particular importance, as distinguished from the context. To what does this trimethylamin lead, which has been so forcibly called to my attention? It leads to a conversation with another friend who for years has known all my germinating activities, as I have his. At that time he had just informed me of some of his ideas about sexual chemistry, and had mentioned, among others, that he thought he recognised in trimethylamin one of the products of sexual metabolism. This substance thus leads me to sexuality, to that factor which I credit with the greatest significance for the origin of the nervous affections which I attempt to cure. My patient Irma is a young widow; if I am anxious to excuse the failure of her cure, I suppose I shall best do so by referring to this condition, which her admirers would be glad to change. How remarkably, too, such a dream is fashioned! The other woman, whom I take as my patient in the dream instead of Irma, is also a young widow.

      I suspect why the formula of trimethylamin has made itself so prominent in the dream. So many important things are gathered up in this one word: Trimethylamin is not only an allusion to the overpowering factor of sexuality, but also to a person whose sympathy I remember with satisfaction when I feel myself forsaken in my opinions. Should not this friend, who plays such a large part in my life, occur again in the chain of thoughts of the dream? Of course, he must; he is particularly acquainted with the results which proceed from affections of the nose and its adjacent cavities, and has revealed to science several highly remarkable relations of the turbinated bones to the female sexual organs (the three curly formations in Irma's throat). I have had Irma examined by him to see whether the pains in her stomach might be of nasal origin. But he himself suffers from suppurative rhinitis, which worries him, and to this perhaps there is an allusion in pyæmia, which hovers before me in the metastases of the dream.

      Such injections are not made so rashly. Here the reproach of carelessness is hurled directly at my friend Otto. I am under the impression that I had some thought of this sort in the afternoon, when he seemed to indicate his siding against me by word and look. It was perhaps: "How easily he can be influenced; how carelessly he pronounces judgment." Furthermore, the above sentence again points to my deceased friend, who so lightly took refuge in cocaine injections. As I have said, I had not intended injections of the remedy at all. I see that in reproaching Otto I again touch upon the story of the unfortunate Matilda, from which arises the same reproach against me. Obviously I am here collecting examples of my own conscientiousness, but also of the opposite.

      Probably also the syringe was not clean. Another reproach directed at Otto, but originating elsewhere. The day before I happened to meet the son of a lady eighty-two years of age whom I am obliged to give daily two injections of morphine. At present she is in the country, and I have heard that she is suffering from an inflammation of the veins. I immediately thought that it was a case of infection due to contamination from the syringe. It is my pride that in two years I have not given her a single infection; I am constantly concerned, of course, to see that the syringe is perfectly clean. For I am conscientious. From the inflammation of the veins, I return to my wife, who had suffered from emboli during a period of pregnancy, and now three related situations come to the surface in my memory, involving my wife, Irma, and the deceased Matilda, the identity of which three persons plainly justifies my putting them in one another's place.

      I have now completed the interpretation of the dream. In the course of this interpretation I have taken great pains to get possession of all the notions to which a comparison between the dream content and the dream thoughts hidden behind it must have given rise. Meanwhile, the "meaning" of the dream has dawned upon me. I have become conscious of a purpose which is realised by means of the dream, and which must have been the motive for dreaming. The dream fulfils several wishes, which have been actuated in me by the events of the preceding evening (Otto's news, and the writing down of the history of the disease). For the result of the dream is that I am not to blame for the suffering which Irma still has, and that Otto is to blame for it. Now Otto has made me angry by his remark about Irma's imperfect cure; the dream avenges me upon him by turning the reproach back upon himself. 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.

      This much is apparent at first sight. But many things in the details of the dream become intelligible when regarded from the point of view of wish-fulfilment. I take revenge on Otto, not only for hastily taking part against me, in that I accuse him of a careless medical operation (the injection), but I am also avenged on him for the bad cordial which smells like fusel oil, and I find an expression in the dream which unites both reproaches; the injection with a preparation of propyl. Still I am not satisfied, but continue my revenge by comparing him to his more reliable competitor. I seem to say by this: "I like him better than you." But Otto is not the only one who must feel the force of my anger. I take revenge on the disobedient patient by exchanging her for a more sensible, more docile one. Nor do I leave the contradiction of Dr. M. unnoticed, but express my opinion of him in an obvious allusion, to the effect that his relation to the question is that of an ignoramus ("dysentery will develop," &c.).

      It seems to me, indeed, as though I were appealing from him to some one better informed (my friend, who has told me about trimethylamin); just as I have turned from Irma to her friend, I turn from Otto to Leopold. Rid me of these three persons, replace them by three others of my own choice, and I shall be released from the reproaches which I do not wish to have deserved! The unreasonableness itself of these reproaches is proved to me in the dream in the most elaborate way. Irma's pains are not charged to me, because she herself is to blame for them, in that she refuses to accept my solution. Irma's pains are none of my business, for they are of an organic nature, quite impossible to be healed by a psychic cure. Irma's sufferings are satisfactorily explained by her widowhood (trimethylamin!); a fact which, of course, I cannot alter. Irma's illness has been caused by an incautious injection on the part of Otto, with an ill-suited substance—in a way I should never have made an injection. Irma's suffering is the result of an injection made with an unclean syringe, just like the inflammation of the veins in my old lady, while I never do any such mischief with my injections. I am aware, indeed, that these explanations of Irma's illness, which unite in acquitting me, do not agree with one another; they even exclude one another. The whole pleading—this dream is nothing else—recalls vividly the defensive argument of a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle to him in a damaged condition. In the first place, he said, he had returned the kettle undamaged; in the second, it already had holes in it when he borrowed it; and thirdly, he had never borrowed the kettle from his neighbour at all. But so much the better; if even one of these three methods of defence is recognised as valid, the man must be acquitted.

      Still other subjects mingle in the dream, whose relation to my release from responsibility for Irma's illness is not so transparent: the illness of my daughter and that of a patient of the same name, the harmfulness of cocaine, the illness of my patient travelling in Egypt, concern about the health of my wife, my brother, of Dr. M., my own bodily troubles, and concern about the absent friend who is suffering from suppurative rhinitis. But if I keep all these things in view, they combine into a single train of thought, labelled perhaps: Concern for the health of myself and others—professional conscientiousness. I recall an undefined disagreeable sensation as Otto brought me the news of Irma's condition. I should like to note finally the expression of this fleeting sensation, which is part of the train of thought that is mingled into the dream. It is as though Otto had said to me: "You do not take your physician's duties seriously enough, you are not conscientious, do not keep your promises." Thereupon this train of thought placed itself at my service in order that I might exhibit proof of the high degree in which I am conscientious, how intimately I am concerned with the health of my relatives, friends, and patients. Curiously enough, there are also in this thought material some painful memories, which correspond rather to the blame attributed to Otto than to the accusation against me. The material has the appearance of being impartial, but the connection between this broader material, upon which the dream depends, and the more limited theme of the dream which gives rise