Freud's Irma dream: a psychoanalytic interpretation

Abstract

This paper presents the hypothesis that Freud may have been haunted by the repressed memory of an incident of erotic aggression enacted by himself against his sister Anna when he was 5 years old and she 3 years old. It is suggested that this experience and its psychic ramifications make up the latent content of the Irma dream. The Irma dream is viewed here as the first dream of Freud's self-analysis. As in the analysis of the first reported dream in an actual treatment situation, meaning emerges progressively over time. The interpretation proposed in this paper is based on data emerging from 1895 until 1924. Principal sources are 'The interpretation of dreams', which is seen as an associative monologue, the letters to Wilhelm Fliess and Freud's early theoretical works.