In all three of the dreams just cited I have emphasized by italics those
phrases where one of the elements of the dream recurs in the dream
thoughts in order to make the manifold references of the former obvious.
Since, however, the analysis of none of these dreams has been carried to
completion, it will be well worth while to consider a dream with a fully
detailed analysis, in order to demonstrate the manifold determination of
its content. I select the dream of Irma’s injection for this purpose. We
shall see without effort in this example that the condensation work has
used more than one means for the formation of the dream.
The chief person in the content of the dream is my patient Irma, who is
seen with the features which belong to her in waking life, and who
therefore in the first instance represents herself. But her attitude as
I examine her at the window is taken from the recollection of another
person, of the lady for whom I should like to exchange my patient, as
the dream thoughts show. In as far as Irma shows a diphtheritic membrane
which recalls my anxiety about my eldest daughter, she comes to
represent this child of mine, behind whom is concealed the person of the
patient who died from intoxication and who is brought into connection by
the identity of her name. In the further course of the dream the
significance of Irma’s personality changes (without the alteration of
her image as it is seen in the dream); she becomes one of the children
whom we examine in the public dispensaries for children’s diseases,
where my friends show the difference of their mental capabilities. The
transference was obviously brought about through the idea of my infant
daughter. By means of her unwillingness to open her mouth the same Irma
is changed into an allusion to another lady who was once examined by me,
and besides that to my wife, in the same connection. Furthermore, in the
morbid transformations which I discover in her throat I have gathered
allusions to a great number of other persons.
All these people whom I encounter as I follow the associations suggested
by “Irma,” do not appear personally in the dream; they are concealed
behind the dream person “Irma,” who is thus developed into a collective
image, as might be expected, with contradictory features. Irma comes to
represent these other persons, who are discarded in the work of
condensation, in that I cause to happen to her all the things which
recall these persons detail for detail.
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