Sigmund Freud’s Counter-Transference in

Dreams, Phantasies and Social Relations©

Jon Snodgrass, Ph.D.

Professor of Human Development
Department of Sociology
California State University
Los Angeles 90032
(323) 343-2215
jsnodgr@calstatela.edu

The author holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania

(1972) and a Ph.D. in Child Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from Reiss-Davis
Child Study Center in Los Angeles (1985). He is in private practice in South
Pasadena, CA and licensed as a Research Psychoanalyst by the Medical Board
of the State of California.

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Abstract
An ubiquitous pattern in human relations is to seek intimacy from another that is betrayed and
followed by vindictive fantasies and actions. Freud offered “repetition compulsion” as a basic
explanation. A child originally possesses the love of the mother that is terminated by the father in
the Oedipal triangle. What was lost in the mind of the child in the past is then sought in the pres-
ent unconsciously in relationships as an adult. Trying to repair the breach only aggravates the old
trauma; yet the hope of fulfillment springs ever anew.

Freud interpreted The Dream of Irma’s Injection in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) as his
sleeping wish to avenge the treachery of clients, colleagues and family. The theme reappears in
treatment cases like Irma and Dora, and in estranged collegial relations with Brueur, Fliess and
Jung. The responsibility for the unplanned pregnancy of his wife with daughter Anna, for exam-
ple, was controversial between the Freuds. His dream about her impregnation is missing from the
Interpretation of Dreams and from the Freud-Fliess correspondence.

The theme of “desire-betrayal-revenge” abounds in literature and film also. Frequently, the story
takes the form of a lost document that proves misconduct by some celebrated figure. The genre
began with Poe’s, “The Purloined Letter” (1844) and returned to psychoanalysis via Lacan’s
“Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’” in Écrits (1956). Historically, the psychoanalytic movement
has been possessed by questions of sexual misconduct in the family. This essay argues that a
sense of abandonment is registered in unconscious phantasy in everyone, but individual cases are
always open to investigation in reality.

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The Story of Irma
The opening chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) is a lengthy literature survey on
dreams that no one reads nowadays. A more personable second chapter introduces the reader to
the study of the unconscious mind and reveals Freud’s own dream from the midsummer’s night
of 23 July 1895. “The Dream of Irma’s Injection” is used to present “free association” as a new
method for deciphering the meaning of dreams. To avoid controversy, the author did not discuss
the dreams of neurotic patients.

“Irma” was a pseudonym given to a young woman in treatment with Freud who was “on very
friendly terms with me and my family.” She is identified as Anna Lichtheim, née Hammerschlag,
(1866-1938) the widowed daughter of Freud’s Hebrew teacher. She also may have been Emma
Eckstein (1865-1924) (Schur 1972, Gay 1988). Freud said that Irma in the dream was a compos-
ite patient. He noted the personal relationship was problematic because it made his “interest
greater and his authority less” (Freud 1900, 106).

Emma Eckstein was twenty-seven years old when she became the first woman to undergo psy-
choanalysis. She also became the victim of negligent nose surgery in February 1895, performed
by Freud’s colleague and dear friend, Dr. Wilhelm Fleiss (1858-1928). Since she had not re-
sponded to psychoanalytic treatment, four months prior to I Dream of Irma, Freud had referred
Emma to Fleiss, concerned about an organic basis for her illness.

A parallel existed between the genitals and the nose, according to Fliess, and Freud endorsed his
diagnosis of “nasal reflex neurosis” (Thornton 1984). The surgery was designed to relieve Irma’s
symptoms (nausea, gastro-intestinal-menstrual pain and intensive masturbation) by removing the
spongy bone in her nose. For different reasons (cardiac arrhythmia) Fliess had cauterized Freud’s
nose twice (Jones 1963, 196). From gauze left in the wound by the surgeon, an infection fol-
lowed Irma’s operation; she hemorrhaged and almost bled to death.

Freud exonerated Fliess claiming the bleeding was hysterical (Masson 1985a, 67-72; 1985b,
1988). Irma remained Freud’s patient, but just before the summer vacation of 1895, against the
doctor’s advice, she ended therapy. Freud thought her condition had improved; she was less
anxious, but somatic complaints persisted. He tried to resolve the dispute with a suggestion she
did not accept. Presumably, he proposed an interruption instead of termination. This transference-
counter–transference conflict was the apex of deeper differences between the two.

On vacation, Freud was visited by another doctor-friend, Oskar Rie (1863-1931) the family
pediatrician. Rie may have come to examine Martha Freud who was then pregnant with their
sixth child, Anna, born 3 December 1895 and named after her godmother, Anna Lichtheim. Rie
was a “younger colleague” and “close friend,” called “Otto” in the dream. Wax (1999) says Rie
may have been involved romantically with Anna Lichtheim and that Fliess was married to Rie’s
wife’s sister. Anna was also “the sister of Breuer’s son-in-law” (Peters 1985, 4).

3
Rie had just come from vacationing with the Lichtheim family in the countryside and Freud in-
quired of him about Irma’s condition. “She is better, but not entirely recovered,” he said. (Es
geht ihr besser, aber nich ganz gut) (Freud 1900, 106). In the tone of the reply, Freud thought he
heard criticism of his treatment of the case. He penned a clinical history late into the night “in
order to justify myself.”

Two days hence, Irma was invited to Martha Freud’s thirty-fourth birthday celebration (b. 26
July 1861) at Bellevue, a summer retreat. In a letter to Fliess on June 12, 1900, Freud wondered
whether someday it might be recorded: “In this house, on July 24, 1895, the Mystery of the
Dream unveiled itself to Dr. Sigmund Freud” (Masson 1985b, 417). A commemorative plaque
was erected on the spot by the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1977. The “monument to a
dream” is located on the former site of the villa on the outskirts of Vienna in an area known as
“Himmel” (heaven).

Another doctor-friend of Freud’s, Josef Breuer (1842-1925) originally referred the case of Irma
to Freud. Breuer was a well known Viennese internist with an established reputation and a
thriving medical practice. In his thirties, Freud was just starting his career in neurology. Fifteen
years his senior, Breuer mentored and lent money to the relatively poor Freud. Breuer and Freud
jointly authored Studies in Hysteria that same year (1895b) and had been colleagues since 1877
(Hirschmüller 1978).

The case book on hysteria contained four studies by Freud and an introductory case by Breuer
(Anna O.). Breuer contributed a chapter on etiology and Freud a chapter on treatment, but Irma
did not appear in the text. Like Irma’s treatment, the friendship between Freud and Breuer (and
Freud and Fliess) deteriorated in the summer of 1895. Freud was arriving at the “seduction
theory of hysteria.” He thought the cause of the disorder was the sexual abuse of a child by a
father figure. Breuer did not accept the seduction theory, which contributed to their breakup.

Published 15 years later, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) claimed that dreams are the ful-
fillment of infantile sexual wishes. Today there is nothing unusual about the idea that dreams
have meaning, but what the wishes are and whether they are infantile, still is disputed. In his
dream book Freud said, “There is some natural hesitation about revealing so many intimate facts
about one’s mental life; nor can there be any guarantee against misinterpretation by strangers”
(Freud 1900, 105). According to Forrester (1998) the quasi-autobiographical approach was an
invitation to psychoanalyze Freud.

One hundred years later, the literature on Irma is extensive, with more than forty books, chapters
and articles about the case (Kramer 1999). Lang (1989) has identified eight interpretations of
the dream. [Independently, Borch-Jacobsen (1996) and Forrester (1990) both have written, The
True Story of Anno O.]. Wax (1999) reads the Irma dream in light of Freud’s relationship with
his pregnant wife, Martha. Freud interpreted his own dream as a hidden wish to blame the other
doctors (Rie, Fliess, Breuer) and to exculpate himself for the mistreatment of Irma (and Martha)
in the dream (and in reality).

4
 Freud’s interpretation concerned neither infancy nor sexuality (Kramer 1999). Few commenta-
tors have recognized that the dream appears to involve Freud’s own counter-transference
sexual phantasies about his patient, Irma. Forrester, the author of an enticingly entitled, The
Seductions of Psychoanalysis (1990) in a chapter, “The Temptation of Freud,” wrote that the
wish fulfillment and the seduction theories appeared at the same time. Putting the two together
suggests the dream is a wish for seduction.
In Freud as Philosopher, Richard Boothby (2001, 105-6) wrote:

The indications of a sexual meaning are centered on the pivotal idea of a

“solution” (lösung) which in both German and English possesses the same
ambiguity between an answer to a problem and a fluid. Our suspicion that
it refers in part to the fluids of love is reinforced by the way the dream is
centrally concerned with Irma’s unwillingness to accept it. This ‘recalcit-
rance’ takes the form of a reluctance to “open her mouth properly.” ... the
double meaning of the word “solution,” ... forms a kind of linchpin on
which the meaning of the dream hangs.

The hidden wish to seduce Irma as a cure for her and his own hysteria, is implied in Freud’s
counter-transference eidetic imagery. Hysterical patients were known to eroticize social rela-
tions with their doctors (Kerr 1983). A prescription for hysterical treatment, mentioned in Freud’s
On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement (1914, 15) reads, Rx: “penis normalis, dosim
repetatur.” Ancient physicians regarded hysteria as a reaction to not being loved and recom-
mended sexual intercourse, and marriage, as remedies (Gay 1988).

The Dream of Irma’s Injection

The inaugural dream of psychoanalysis began in a large hall where party guests were being re-
received and therefore the occasion was social. Upon arrival and with the familiar “du,” Freud
chastised Irma for not accepting his “solution.” He took her aside, suggesting a private, not a
professional conversation and examined her throat. For consultation he called-in three colleagues
known to Irma both socially and professionally. The doctors began poking (“percussing”) her
body through her dress as part of their examination. Freud added, “A portion of the skin on the
left shoulder was infiltrated” (Freud 1900, 107).

In the dream, Freud says, “I … reproach her for not having yet accepted the ‘solution’ ” (Freud
1900, 107). He puts “solution” in quotes, calling attention to another possible meaning. In real-
ity, he may have rebuked Irma for not accepting his proposal to continue psychotherapy after
the holiday break, and in the dream, for not submitting to his medical examination. “Injection,”
however, might stand for the act of sexual intercourse and “solution” may then might symbolize
semen (i.e., “specimen”).

Freud was worried that Irma’s illness had an “organic basis” (Freud 1900, 109). Had he, in his
imagination, prescribed insemination instead of inoculation? Irma resisted both the solution
and the examination in his dream (Finzi 1997). “Specimen” was James Stratchey’s (1887-1967)

5
medicalized term for traummuster, meaning “model dream.” Strachey was a British psychoana-
lyst authorized by Freud to translate into English, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psycho-
logical Works of Sigmund Freud.

Irma complained to Freud, “… what pains I’ve got now in my throat and stomach and abdomen
—it’s choking me” (Freud 1900, 107). In associating to the scene he adds, “I was astonished at
the symptoms ... Irma complained of to me in the dream since they were not the same as those
for which I had been treating her” (in the consulting room) (108). Freud disregards his own origi-
nal insight that symptoms are always symbolic and refers instead to the manifest content of the
dream. According to the master, however, the true wish in a dream is never conscious.

The historian Swales (1983) thinks Irma shows Freud overt symptoms of pregnancy. An exchan-
ge of fluids and pregnancy are fateful consequences of sexual intercourse. “I took her to the win-
dow and looked down her throat ... I found a big white patch ... some remarkable curly structures
...” (Freud 1900, 107). He interpreted the sequence as evidence of a throat infection (manifest
content again). An alternate hypothesis concerns the latent content—Irma had been treated to fel-
latio and given a dose of seminal fluid at the back of her throat?

Boothby (2001,108) says the white patch is evidence of the “solution that Irma has refused to
swallow.” Forrester (1990) footnotes Michael Balint’s (1957) understanding that the doctor him-
self was the drug. The big white patch was diagnosed as syphilis by Karl Abraham (Falzeder
2002) and as tuberculosis (Kramer 1999). In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud gave the fol-
lowing associations to the injected drug, trimethylamin, spelled without a final e, and known
today also as “TMA”:

I saw the chemical formula of this substance in my dream … printed in heavy

type … to lay emphasis as being of quite special importance. What was … tri-
methylamin? … a conversation with another friend … confided some ideas to me
on the subject of the chemistry of the sexual process and … products of sexual
metabolism was trimethylamin. Thus this substance led me to sexuality … the
origin of the nervous disorders which it was my aim to cure (Freud 1900, 116).

The essence of Freud’s night dream and Irma’s illness is the drug trimethlyamin. Freud noted
elsewhere that: the “friend” was Fliess, the formula was “intensely vivid” and the nature of her
illness was sexual (1895a, 341-2). Analysts have assumed trimethylamin involved semen in some
way. Lacan said, for example, “I’ve made inquiries—trimethylamine is a decomposition product
of sperm and ... gives ... its ammoniacal smell ...” (Miller 1988, 158). Paul (2006, 165) calls it a
“component of semen.”

Lotto (2001, 1291) reports, “There is no reference to TMA in the three major books published by
Fliess (1897, 1906, 1909).” As part of “Fliess’1894 toxic theory of trimethylamine,” however,
Kuhn (1997, 112) provides Fliess’ idea about the chemical:

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 Over lunch in the dining room of the Park Hotel, Fliess told Freud about his lat-
est “remarkable” discovery-trimethylamine-the chemical (substance) which he
believed was secreted by the sexual organs during (sexual) arousal. In the normal
course of heterosexual procreative intercourse, trimethylamine would be reabsorb-
ed naturally post-coitus. During acts of sexual “abuse,” however, this natural ab-
sorption process failed to occur with the result that those engaged in long-term
sexually abusive practices ended up neurologically poisoning themselves.

Thus, the secretions of the sexual organs of men and women contain trimethylamin. Ironically,
in German, “fliess” means “flow.” To Freud, “biochemical toxins were ultimately at the root of
every psychic disorder” (Wax 1999, 98). The associations to trimethylamin referred also to pro-
pyl. The evening prior to the Irma dream, Martha had opened a bottle of liqueur, gifted by Dr. Rie
(Otto). The label read “Ananas” and smelled like “fusel oil.” Freud explained, “ ‘Ananas’ bears a
remarkable resemblance to that of my patient Irma’s family name” (Freud 1900, 115). The family
names, however, were Eckstein and Lichtheim.

The label repeats “Ana” twice. The two “Anas” might be Anna Lichtheim and “Anna O.,”
Breuer’s famous case of hysteria. (Also, Freud’s sister and daughter were both named Anna).
Decker (1991, 136) wrote, “… there were remarkable similarities in the lives of both Breuer’s
Anna O. and Freud’s Dora.” Both unilaterally terminated treatment and were refused readmis-
sion. Decker (1982) thought “Dora’s” namesake might also be Breuer’s daughter. The family
names of Ida Bauer (Dora) and Dora Breuer’s do resemble one another.

In the dream, Freud states that the infection originated from an injection by Otto with a needle
that was not clean. Demorest (2005, 37) infers from Freud’s associations that “This means Otto
has injected Irma with a sexual substance,” supporting the equation: injection=intercourse. Fur-
ther, the term for hypodermic syringe is given in the German vernacular: “die spritze” (“the
squirter,” Wax 1999, 77). Fliess’ dirty squirter accounts for Irma’s big white patch with curly
structures at the back of her throat (Bosnak 1984).

In reminding fellow doctors in the dream that “such injections are not to be given lightly,” Freud
possibly overlooked a double meaning. The German, leightfertig, was translated as “thought-
lessly” in the Standard Edition (Freud 1900, 107). Unintentional puns based on the Irma Dream
have been made also by Jungian psychoanalysts. For example, “was seminal in the history of
psychoanalysis” (Bourreille 1994, 43) and “was the creation myth of psychoanalysis” (Bosnak
1984, 105).

Two early psychoanalysts recognized that Freud’s interpretation of Irma’s infection alluded to
sexual themes (Sulloway 1979, Schur 1972) but neither one pursued the thesis (Boothby 2001).
Schur was Freud’s last physician and an official biographer, who had access to the Freud-Fleiss
letters. He painted a portrait of Freud as pure science researcher. Peter Gay (Fröhlich) an inde-
pendent scholar, of the same generation as Sulloway and Schur, wrote in Freud: A Life for Our
Time (1988, 83):

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 Freud pressing his solution on his patient, Irma refusing to open her mouth prop-
erly, to say nothing of the dirty syringe his friend Otto had used, all invite the psy-
choanalytically inclined reader to reflect on Freud’s sexual fantasies.

Upon the publication of the unabridged Freud to Fliess correspondence in 1985, Anna Freud was
quoted as saying in the New York Times, “They are looking for secrets. But there are no secrets”
(Blumenthal 1981). Some suspicion about Freud’s erotic counter-transference dream, however,
had emerged as early as 8 January 1908 when Karl Abraham, a prominent Berlin colleague,
wrote a letter to Freud to inquire:

I should like to know whether the interpretation of the paradigm dream in the
Interpretation of Dreams is incomplete on purpose (Irma’s injection). I think that
trimethylamin leads to the most important part, to sexual allusions that become
more and more distinct in the last lines. Surely everything does point to the sus-
picion of syphilitic infection in the patient? (Falzeder 2002, 19).

The next day Freud replied straightforwardly:

In the paradigm dream there is no mentioning of syphilis. Sexual megalomania

is hidden behind it, the three women, Mathilde, Sophie and Anna are the three
godmothers of my daughters, and I have them all! There would be one simple
remedy for widowhood, of course. All sorts of intimate things, naturally.

Thus, in private communication and in the tripling of the given names, Freud seems to have ack-
nowledged latent libidinous-incestuous phantasies, not just about dream figures and patients,
but about daughters and daughters’ godmothers. The Freud’s oldest daughter was named after
Breuer’s wife, Mathilde and their youngest daughter after Anna Lichtheim, whose alias was
“Irma.”

The seduction theme played out also in Irma’s phantasies. In a letter May 4, 1896, for example,
one year after the mangled nose operation, Freud confided to Fleiss:

She (Irma) described a scene from the age of fifteen, in which she suddenly began
to bleed from the nose when she had the wish to be treated by a certain young
doctor who was present and who also appeared in the dream. When she saw how
affected I was by her first hemorrhage while she was in the hands of Rosanes, she
experienced this realization of an old wish to be loved in her illness, and in spite
of the danger during the succeeding hours, she felt happy as never before (Masson
1985b, 136).

The quote refers to the string of gauze left in Irma’s nasal cavity during the Fleiss surgery. When
removed by another surgeon, Irma hemorrhaged. Freud became nauseated and exited for a shot
of cognac to settle his nerves. Upon returning, Irma reportedly said to him, “So this is the strong

8
sex” (Gay 1988, Appignanesi 2000). Apparently, Irma was gratified to have aroused a strong
emotional reaction in Freud. Ironically, The Interpretation of Dreams reveals the cover-up of
Freud’s feelings of guilt about Irma’s mistreatment in reality (Breger 2000).

To promote his career and to finance his marriage, Freud was eager for recognition among an
inner circle of Viennese physicians. His relationship with Irma was influenced by their personal
acquaintance and possibly by his unconscious counter-transference sexual imagination. There
is no evidence that he actually proposed intercourse as a solution to her and to his own, medical
condition. “The search for forbidden heterosexual gratification (is) implied in the symbolism and
language of the dream …” (of Irma’s injection) concluded Robert Langs (1989, 432).

The Picture of Dora

Whether the seduction is real or imaginary, initiated by the therapist-parent, or by the patient-
child, are issues that have split the psychoanalytic movement historically. Psychoanalysts who
adopted the Freudian concept of the Oedipus complex absolved the father by rendering the event
in unconscious phantasy. Psychoanalytic historians who are not practitioners (Borch-Jacobsen
1996, Crews 1998, Skues 2006) viewed sexual abuse as non-existent (as neither real nor imagi-
nary). In the 1980s, feminists criticized Freudians for concealing widespread sexual exploitation
in the family (Miller 1978).

Radical feminists brought child abuse and psychoanalysis to the forefront using the case of
“Dora.” Among the first was French women’s rights theorist Hélène Cixous’s play, Portrait of
Dora (2007, Edition des Femmes, 1976). Cixous presented the case from Dora’s point of view,
giving voice to herstory and reshaping her image as rebel contra the oppressive feminine role
in patriarchal society (French 2008, Bernheimer and Kahane 1985). Cixous also drew Dora’s
portrait of Freud. To feminist scholars and activists in the United States and Europe, Dora
attained the status of Joan of Arc.

To supplement The Interpretation of Dreams, Dora’s treatment was published as Fragments of

an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905). Her father brought her to see Freud in the Fall of 1900,
when she was almost eighteen. Decker (1991, xi) says Freud consistently misrepresented her age
as one year older. She told Freud about two molestations by a family friend that took place when
she was 15 and 13 years old. The friend was married to a woman with whom the father was hav-
ing a long-term affair. The friend denied the charge, the father said Dora “fancied” the incidents
and her mother sided with her husband.

Dora’s main grievances against her father was that he did not believe her account of what had
happened with “Herr K.” Freud accepted Dora’s view that she was an object of trade by her
father in exchange for access to his friend’s wife. Further, he thought there was sufficient trauma
to cause the hysterical symptoms. Yet, as if Dora were an adult, he found it strange she was not
sexually aroused by the man’s advances. Claire Kahane wrote, “… Freud continually presses
Dora [the way Herr K. pressed Dora] to admit her desire and accept this suitor chosen by her
father …” (Bernheimer and Kahane 1985, 22).

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Freud believed Dora’s contempt for her adulterous father covered-up her unacknowledged love
for Herr K. and her jealousy of Frau K. Dora revealed to Freud at the end of her analysis, the un-
derlying reason for slapping and fleeing from Herr K., after he proposed sex to her by the Alpine
lake (second incident). “You know, I get nothing from my wife,” he reportedly said. Dora knew
he had used the same line in the seduction and abandonment of the governess of his own children
a few weeks earlier. Dora also knew her own governess had resisted Herr K.’s advances.

Decker (1985) pointed out that Freud had explained in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
(Freud 1901, 240-241) that “… one name and only one occurred to me—the name ‘Dora.’” He
recalled a nursemaid who had to use “Dora” because her own first name, “Rosa,” duplicated the
name of her employer, Freud’s second sister. Decker thought the name choice was influenced
also by similarities between Dora and Anna O., Breuer’s famous hysterical case. Dora Breuer, his
youngest daughter, was the same age as Ida Bauer (Dora) (Decker 1985, 133-4).

Freud introduced the concept of transference to account for the failure of the therapy. Lacan
(1966, 95) said that Dora was “… the first case in which Freud recognized that the analyst played
his part.” Freud did not use the term “counter-transference,” however, nor elaborate on his role.
At one point, he suspected that Dora, “would like to have a kiss from me” (Freud 1905, 92). He
did not acknowledge for himself any desire for Dora, sexual or medical. Lacan believed Freud
identified with Herr K. and that the counter-transference appeared as her persistent indoctrination
with his point of view, i.e., she really loved Herr K.

Both Herr K. and Doktor Freud pursued Dora, but for difference reasons. Freud wanted her case
to validate his theory of hysteria and to illustrate his technique of dream interpretation. Dora
understood Freud had acquiesced in her objectification by her father, but his own hand was now
in the affair. Freud thought his verbal persuasion had silenced her objections to his theory and
therapy might go forward on his terms. But Dora depreciated his contribution saying, “Why, has
anything so very remarkable come out?” (Freud 1905, 74).

Freud declared, “Her breaking off so unexpectedly, just when my hopes of a successful termina-
tion of the treatment were at their highest … was an unmistakable act of vengeance on her part”
(Freud 1905, 109). Was this curatio interruptus? A perturbed Freud implied that her rejection of
him was scathing (109) and he referred to her “cruel impulses and vengeful motives” placed onto
him instead of her father (120). Dora had done with Freud.

Dora might have stayed in treatment had Freud acknowledged her genuine importance to him.
He speculated as to what might have happened had he pretended to have had “a warm personal
interest.” In prefatory remarks, however, he had described her as “merely a case of petite hy-
stérie,” hardly worth recording (Freud 1905, 24). She attended six days a week for eleven weeks,
however, showing some intensity of interest in being understood on her part. Freud explained he
would have to fake his motive and contradict his role as conscientious doctor:

Might I perhaps have kept the girl under my treatment if I myself had acted a
part, if I had exaggerated the importance to me of her staying on, and had shown

10
 a warm personal interest in her—a course which, even after allowing for my
position as her physician, would have been tantamount to providing her with
a substitute for the affection she longed for? (Freud 1905, 109).

Validating his point of view by invalidating hers, Freud emphasized his importance over her need
to be understood as a troubled teenager and hysterical patient. In not being loved, Dora rejected
inclusively: her mother and father, their friend and his wife, as well as Freud. Retributively,
Freud described her “morbid” and “remorseless craving for revenge” (1905, 98, 110 and 120n1).
Dora apparently knew, within the self-absorbed domestic circle, no one cared personally about
her. She might have said, “You know, I get nothing from my family.”

Jules Glenn (1986) Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, New York University School of
Medicine, published an article on Freud’s counter-transference relation, “Freud, Dora and the
Maid.” He claimed Freud was sensitive to rejection by Dora because he associated her with his
own nursemaid who disappeared when he was two and one-half years old. She was fired and
imprisoned for stealing from the family. Freud’s attachment to his mother was jeopardized by the
birth of a brother within two years, “Julius” who died at age seven months in 1858. The oldest
sister, Anna, was born the same year.
The abstract to Glenn’s article reads:

I suggest that Freud’s attraction to Dora revealed itself in his libidinal imagery
of the treatment and his premature sexual interpretations, the effects of which he
misjudged. Defending against his attraction, he pushed her away from him, did
not act to keep her in analysis or allow her to reenter analysis later. In addition,
since Dora had left him as he must have felt his childhood nursemaid had, he re-
acted as if she were that maid. Hurt, saddened and angered, he used reversal and
deserted her, thus damping his feelings (Glenn 1986, 591).

Freud himself described missing his mother in a 1997 letter to Fliess:

My mother was nowhere to be found; I was crying in despair. My brother Philipp

(twenty years older than I) unlocked a wardrobe [Kasten] for me, and when I did
not find my mother inside it either, I cried even more until, slender and beauti-
ful, she came through the door. ... When I missed my mother, I was afraid she
had vanished from me, just as the old woman had a short time before. So I must
have heard that the old woman had been locked up and therefore must have be-
lieved that my mother had been locked up too - or rather, had been ‘boxed up’
[eingekastelt]. (Masson 1985b, 171-2).

Patrick Mahony, psychoanalyst and professor of English at the University of Montreal, Canada,
is the most severe critic of Freud’s treatment of Dora. He has authored a series of books on the
male cases: The Cries of the Wolfman (1983) and Freud and the Rat Man (1986). Adopting the
term “brutal,” which Freud used to describe Dora’s rejection of Herr K., Mahony states:

11
 The case of Dora has an array of negative distinctions. It is one of the great psy-
chotherapeutic disasters; one of the most remarkable exhibitions of a clinician’s
published rejection of his patient, spectacular; through tragic, evidence of sexual
abuse of a young girl and her own analyst’s published exoneration of that abuse
… . Dora had been traumatized and Freud retraumatized her. And for roughly half
a century the psychoanalytic community remained either collusively silent about
that abuse or ... simply ignorant of it (Mahony 1996, 148-9).

The theme of maltreatment, now between Freud and his daughter Anna, is pursued by the author
in another article, “Freud as Family Therapist” (Mahony 1992).

In the Irma Dream transcript, Freud had disclosed, “I at once took her on one side, as though
to answer her letter … .” (Freud 1900, 107). The “letter” is not referenced further in his many
associations to the dream. Paul (2006) used this reference in the Irma case to launch his essay,
“Purloining Freud: Dora’s Letter to Posterity.” Freud reported that Dora had concealed a letter
threatening suicide, intended for discovery by her parents (Freud 1905, 38). An alarmed father
brought the implacable teenager to Freud’s office in October 1900.

Dora had consulted with Freud two years prior when he had recommended psychotherapy. Four
years earlier, her father had been treated neurologically by Freud for paralysis arising from hav-
ing had syphilis as a young man. Paul claims Dora plotted revenge, planted the suicide note,
pretended to resist treatment and really wanted the story of her victimization to be published. He
reads Freud’s Fragments as Dora’s appropriated narrative, addressed to humanity. Apparently
pleased, “She said goodbye to me very warmly, with the heartiest wishes for the New Year and—
came no more” (Freud 1905, 109).

Fifteen months later, however, Dora reappeared at Freud’s office for further consultation. One
glance at her face told him she was not sincere about wanting his help (Freud 1905, 120-1). But,
he was not sincere about wanting to give her help either. She suffered facial pain and had lost her
voice again. She told him that on the anniversary of having started treatment with him, she had
met Herr K on a busy Vienna street and her symptoms had returned after she had witnessed that:

He had stopped in front of her as though in bewilderment and in his abstraction he

had allowed himself to be knocked down by a cart. She had not been able to con-
vince herself, however, that he escaped without serious injury (Freud 1905, 121).

Freud regarded her symptoms as self-punishment for boxing Herr K and for transferring “reven-
ge on to me.” Presumably, Dora now felt guilty about her retaliatory wishes against Herr K
having come true. Making it her loss, instead of his, Freud said, “I promised to forgive her for
having deprived me of the satisfaction of … a far more radical cure of her troubles” (122). He
feigned, “I do not know what kind of help she wanted from me” (122). Turning a deaf ear to her
plight, Freud refused to resume treatment and in effect, had the satisfaction of slapping her back.
Freud had done with Dora.

12
Dora had terminated the last day of the year 1900. Three years later, she married Ernst Adler who
worked for her father after his career as a musician failed. They had one son, Kurt Herbert Adler
(1905-1988) who became a well known conductor and the director of the San Francisco Opera
Company. In the late 1930s, the Nazis sought Dora because Otto Bauer, her brother, was a so-
cialist political party leader in Austria. Reportedly, Dora hid in Frau K’s house and later in New
York, the two were master bridge partners. Dora died of colon cancer in 1945 (Decker 1991).

Dora-Ida was to suffer greatly and to die miserably like Irma-Emma. The subsequent success
of Anna O. (Bertha Pappenheim, 1859-1936) who became famous as a women’s rights activ-
ist and pioneer social worker, contradicts the fate of most Freudian cases in hysteria. In 1923,
when Dora was forty, according to Roazen (2000, 368-9) her medical doctor referred her to Felix
Deutsch (1884-1964) Freud’s personal physician. She was bedridden with many physical symp-
toms. He diagnosed her as “one of the most repulsive hysterics” he had ever met (Deutsch, 167).
According to Decker (1991, 172) her maladies included:

“… her parents’ deaths, her brother’s wartime imprisonment, her husband’s per-
manent postwar [World War I] disabilities, the loss … of her inherited wealth and
her own aging. It is known that throughout her life she was repeatedly treated for
recurrences of the same conditions she had had as an adolescent.

Dora’s husband died in 1932, her brother died in 1938 and her son fled Austria the same year.
Previously, Dora had converted to Christianity and she immigrated to the United States in 1939
when 57 years old. She told Deutsch she had been “a famous case in psychiatric literature.” From
chronic cigar smoking, Freud had throat and jaw cancer for fifteen years. He immigrated to Eng-
land to escape the Nazi invasion of Austria and died there in 1939 at age 83. Deutsch published
his follow-up article in 1957, extolling Freud’s treatment and making Dora but a “Footnote to a
Fragment.”

The Disciple Emma E.

Presumably, to keep details of their relationship private, Freud destroyed his correspondence
with Fleiss and also tried to have Fleiss’ correspondence with him destroyed. Against Freud’s
wishes, Princess Marie Bonaparte (1882-1962) the great-grandniece of Napoleon I of France,
bought and preserved the letters that Fleiss’ widow, Ida, sold with malicious intent to a Berlin
bookseller. The Princess also paid the ransom to the Nazis that allowed Freud to emigrate from
Vienna to London. To her, Freud made the infamous remark, “What does a woman want?”

In 1985, Jeffrey Masson was authorized by Anna Freud and The Sigmund Freud Archives (freud-
archives.org) to edit and publish the whole of Freud’s correspondence with Fleiss. Anna Freud
had published half the letters in an abridged version in 1950, but the materials about Emma
Eckstein were expurgated as personal. The Masson edition contains a letter, dated 12 December
1897, in which Freud informed Fliess that Emma Eckstein was practising psychoanalysis in
Vienna with patients he had referred to her (Masson 1985a, 235).

13
In a letter to Emma in November 1905, Freud implored her again not to interrupt her psycho-
analytic treatment with him. Apparently, she had resumed psychotherapy, but had terminated a
second time, accusing Freud of victimizing her in some way. He tried to reason her out of her
point of view, but we have only his side of the argument. He lectured her on the truth, but she did
not accept his logical explanation that disregarded her deep feelings of attachment to him and his
desertion of her (Masson 1985a, 248-9).

Sándor Ferenczi, a Freudian protégé, devised the practice of “mutual analysis.” When he told a
young American woman patient that she had fallen in love with him, she reversed the interpre-
tation and Ferenczi admitted she was correct (Dupont 1988). He experimented with double and
alternating sessions, until complications caused him to halt her analysis of him. Following a
resentful interlude, she resumed psychoanalytic work with Ferenczi. He, like many other dis-
ciples, held grievances against Freud for his dogmatic and pedagogic aloofness.

Freud attributed Emma’s resistance to the “usual and expectable transference,” to her “female-
ness” and to her anger “that in our relationship love did not appear” (Masson 1985a, 248-9). He
remained objectively detached from her amorous feelings, but still he emotionally wanted her
to reassure him that he was right. Imitating pure reason, Emma found a woman doctor (Dora
Teleky) who treated her condition surgically. Emma improved quickly and her doctor pronounc-
ed the illness to be organic; Freud was wrong to think her medical condition revived an old
neurosis.

Indignant about “unprofessional interference,” Freud withdrew from the case, predicting Emma
“will never get well.” She soon was invalided again, but lived until 1924, passing at age fifty-
nine. Masson thought Freud’s reaction was influenced by guilt over his own unprofessional con-
duct in the Fleiss fiasco. Hidden guilt over unconscious libidinal counter-transference phantasies
have not been articulated by anyone trying to understand this landmark case in psychoanalysis.
According to psychodynamic theory, the manifest dream deceives the dreamer about the latent
fulfillment of sexual wishes (Lansky 1992).

Circumstantial evidence suggests Emma birthed an illegitimate son sometime before 1900. Mas-
son calculates the birth to coincide with the first phase of Emma’s psychoanalytic treatment
with Freud (1894-1898) (Masson 1985a, 240-42). Thus, both Martha and Emma may have had
unwanted pregnancies at the same time. But now Emma’s child is missing? The drama, intrigue,
scandals, deceit and secrets in the history of the psychoanalytic movement are sufficient to in-
spire many novels and films, i.e., Der Freud Code.

Associating Martha with Irma in the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud introduced his wife into the
mélange. A dream about Martha, first described in a letter to Fliess, mysteriously went missing
from The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Fliess. Masson reported that Fliess
insisted that Freud remove this dream from the Interpretation of Dreams. Known as “The Lost
Dream,” it contains “the only completely analyzed dream” in Freud’s work (Masson 1985b, 315,
n1). Freud noted, “... in scarcely any instance have I brought forward the complete interpretation
of one of my own dreams ...” (1900, 105n2).

14
Martha was pregnant and Emma (Irma) may have been pregnant at this time. Martha had been
with child continuously since her marriage to Freud in 1886. Anna was the sixth offspring in
eight years. Freud thought contraception unhealthy for both partners, but advocated birth control
publicly. Anna believed, “if any acceptable, safe means of contraception had been available to
her parents she would not have been born’’ according to Young-Bruehl (26-7). Consequently,
Anna was attached to her nursemaid, aunt and father more than to her mother (34).

Freud interrupted his lengthy interpretation of the Irma dream at the point of association to the
other women (Irma, Anna, Martha). He broke off the analysis explaining, “There is at least one
spot in every dream at which it is unplumable—a navel, as it were, that is its point of contact
with the unknown” (Freud 1900, 111, n1). To this point, he had entered a plea of “not guilty,”
regarding responsibility for the women’s illnesses and pregnancies—organic and hysteric.

A native German speaker, Erik Erikson (1954, 159) noticed in the dream that:

At this point something happens which is lost in the double meaning of the mani-
fest words, in the German original as well as in translation. When the dreamer
says that he can “feel” the infiltrated portion of skin on the (patient’s) left shoul-
der, he means to convey (as Freud states in his associations) that he can feel this
on his own body: one of those fusions of a dreamer with a member of his dream…

An intrusive feeling on the left shoulder suggests that Freud, Eckstein (and Erikson) all shared an
affliction of the heart. Emma felt hurt and rejected by Freud, and Freud was upset about estrange-
ments from Fliess and Breuer. Empathizing with her, Freud knew that Irma’s illness was identical
to his own neurosis. He testified “not guilty,” and claimed to be a hysterical victim himself. The
reader bear witness to this string of broken hearts. The projective identification of Freud with his
patient is pursued by Lotto (2001) Sprengnether (2003) and Paul (2006).

While Freud’s dream no doubt performs the surface labor he describes—exoner-

ateing him from the charge of having mistreated his patient—it works simultan-
eously on a subterranean level to negate this achievement by effacing the distinc-
tion between himself and Irma. By confessing to a lesser sin—his desire to defend
himself (as well as the unnamed Fliess) against the charge of malpractice—Freud
obscures what is for him the more troubling issue, his likeness to Irma.

For Freud, the meaning of the dream is: “I didn’t hurt Irma; it’s someone else’s
fault.” Rather, I believe, the dream is saying: “Both Irma and I have been hurt by
Fliess.” Freud’s interpretation, I maintain, is defensive, designed to divert both
his and our attention from the dream’s most powerful spectacle—its scene of oral
violation (Sprengnether 2003, 269).

The comment on “oral violation” raises the specter of a serious crime.

15
The Lost Dream of Martha
An enigmatic “missing letter” documenting criminal activity, goes back to Edgar Allan Poe’s,
“The Purloined Letter” (1844) which established the literary genre of detective mystery. In this
short story, C. Auguste Dupin, a Parisian detective, solves crimes by doubling with the criminal,
i. e., by thinking like one. In removing himself from the scene of the actual deed, where the
police attend to details of physical evidence, Dupin discovers what is hidden in plain sight that
goes unseen by the investigators.

Poe considered The Purloined Letter to be his best tale of deduction (“ratiocination”). It was
translated into French as “La Lettre Volée” by the acclaimed poet, Charles Baudelaire (1821-
1867). Baudelaire had discovered Poe’s work shortly before Poe’s death in 1849 at age 37.Writ-
ing an elegiac introduction to Poe’s entire oeuvre, the story was published in Histoires Extraordi-
naires (1856). Subsequently, Baudelaire was accused of plagiarizing Poe, i.e., stealing his letters
(Hysop 1952, Bandy 1973). In terms of macabre thinking and tragic lifestyle, Baudelaire was
Poe’s identical twin.

In his “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter,’ ” Lacan borrowed the tale in 1956 to introduce his
own collection of writings, Écrits. Examining the original German texts and announcing “a re-
turn to Freud,” Lacan refocused attention on the unconscious, instead of the ego. He believed
revisionist psychoanalytic theories mistook the imaginary for the real (Mitchell and Black 1995,
198). Literary scholars have noted an underlying inchoate search in both Poe and Baudelaire’s
writings for an illusive ideal.

Relying on Baudelaire’s translation, Lacan refreshed Freudian theory using Poe’s short story
about a missing letter. Lacan emphasized Freud’s concept of “the repetition compulsion,” calling
it “the repetition automatism.” Lacanian terminology (letters) tended to obfuscate the main point
(in plain sight) that a child’s play with a toy reel in the game of da und fort (“there and gone”)
tries continuously to recover consciously what has been lost unconsciously. The child was Ernst
Halberstadt at the age of 18 months (b. 1914). Freud’s grandson by his daughter Sophie, was to
die of influenza four years later (1920).

The dilemma of “there and gone” scars the personality and marks the human condition. In the
density of Lacanian language, however, the idea get clouded. He argues basically that society
splits the child’s mind into a fictional surface-self (ego) that overlays a genuine subsurface-self in
the pure natural body. It is entirely appropriate, Lacan believes, for a fictional tale to illustrate a
real social process. L’ individu vrai existé avant que la lettre translates as, “the true individual ex-
isted before the word.” The true-self cannot be found on the surface because it is unconscious—it
was there and then it went underground, which is what the ancients said happened to the sun.

n Poe’s tale, the Queen of France cannot reveal to the King of France the content of a letter, writ-
ten by an unknown hand, without provoking danger and defamation, concerning nefarious deal-
ings she has had with an anonymous associate of the King. On a night stand in the royal apart-

16
ments, the letter is taken by a sinister minister, who replaces it with an innocuous decoy under
the keen eye of the Queen. The missing letter documents some illicit act, blackmailable offense,
like adultery or incest. The specific content of the letter, that is, the exact nature of the misdeed is
not important, but the theme of missing letters ties all the cases together.

The Letter was a 1927 play by Somerset Maugham concerning the wife of a rubber plantation
manager in Malaya involved in murder, extortion, bribery and cover-up. The 1940 film, directed
by William Wyler, was nominated for seven academy awards, including best actress for Bette
Davis as the treacherous wife. She reprised her role in Jezebel with Henry Fonda which won
her the Oscar for best actress in 1938. Harold Pinter’s staged his version of Betrayal (1978) and
screenplay (1983) concerning a man’s affair with his best friend’s wife.

In The Letter, the wife kills a mutual friend of her husband’s in their bungalow claiming self-de-
fense against rape. A trial appears to be perfunctory until a letter, possessed by the widow, reveals
that the victim was invited to visit the home while the husband was away overnight. Without this
evidence, Davis will be acquitted, but the widow demands cash payment in person to expose the
deceiver and to retaliate in kind. Measure for Measure (1623) was William Shakespeare’s play
about sly misdeeds, secret identities and settling scores. Et tu Brute was Julius Caesar last words
to his assassin in the bard’s eponymous play.

Once the real-self is displaced onto the superficial plane as a counterfeit-self, ala Lacan, a chain
of signifiers casts the stage of colorful charlatans. For example: the Queen trumps (joué = plays)
the King, the Minister trumps the Queen, Dupin trumps the Minister, Poe trumps Dupin, Baude-
laire trumps Poe, Lacan trumps Baudelaire. In lucid prose, Lacan explains, “Everyone is being
duped which makes for our pleasure.” Critics think, however, psychoanalysis may have been
“laconned” (Mitchell and Black 1995, 193). Still, Lacan needles the profession and sews many
cases together?

Next, the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1974) trumps Lacan by establishing “deconstruc-
tionism” as a movement that sweeps the field of philosophy (Forrester 1990). Coincidentally,
Derrida’s first novel, written when he was just fifteen years-old, concerned a diary stolen for the
purpose of extortion. Meanwhile, Marie Bonaparte (1949) writes a psychoanalytic biography of
Poe, prefaced by Freud, proclaiming, in all sincerity, that “the mother’s penis is missing.” This
chain (letter) of betrayals is compiled into a single volume by Muller and Richardson, The Pur-
loined Poe (1988).

Fortuitously, Bonaparte’s book brings us back to Freud’s “The Lost Dream of Martha.” “‘Let-
ters’ were singularly important in Marie’s life,” wrote Appignanesi and Forrester (2000) con-
cerning her obsession with recording everything that happened to her in life. In her adolescence,
she wrote love letters to her father’s married secretary, Antoine Leandri and the young princess
exposed herself to blackmail. Her father, Roland, was the grandson of the dissipated Lucien
Bonaparate, brother of Emperor Napoleon I.

17
Her father discharged Leandri, but Marie quietly paid a ransom for his silence until her father
settled out of court. In Poe’s short story, not motivated alone by pure objectivity, Dupin him-
self had been wronged, in some grievous way, by the very same minister who has betrayed the
Queen. His investigation secretly seeks vengeance. Dupin was careful, however, to act the part
of an impartial detective. He actually was an undercover double-agent, double-crossing reason.
More duplicity emerges in the cold war espionage of the dawning twentieth century.

In her biography dedicated to Anna Freud, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl believed that the Dream of
Irma’s Injection is Martha’s Lost Dream. This hypothesis means that we do not recognize the
Lost Dream of Martha in plain sight when it is represented as the Dream of Irma’s Injection. We
can only speculate as to how the content may specifically have pertained to Martha Freud:

A dream that Freud had just before his wife’s thirty-fourth birthday, which ap-
peared later in The Interpretation of Dreams under the title “Irma’s Injection,“
reflected at a remove the tumultuous medical events of the early spring and quite
directly presented Martha Freud’s pregnancy. Both of the dream referents were
disguised in Freud’s report—or rather twice disguised: once by the dream itself
and once by Freud’s presentation in his book. “Of each dream,” Freud later told
his colleague Carl Jung, “I explain only as much as is needed to bring out a spe-
cific point” (Young-Bruehl 1988, 27).

Opened and Closed Cases

Beyond the permutations of betrayal, the editors of The Purloined Poe found a deeper truth. The
murder mystery genre frames a general principle concerning the source of anguish in human
relations. Individuals habitually reenact an underlying grievance concerning mistreatment by as-
sociates when nothing has happened in reality at all. In unconscious denial, our self-relationship
replicates as the serial disloyalties of others. Every sly kiss on the cheek occurs in the shadow of
self-deceit.

Repressed memories of abuse by elders and the experience of molestation occur in childhood.
Child abuse is separate, but not secondary, to the idea that there are always subjective phatasmas
of mistreatment by caregivers, whether reinforced by objective events or not. The universality
of the trauma in the imagination was made evident when Freud linked the “father complex” to
an ancient legend recorded by Sophocles in his play, Oedipus Rex, 430 B.C. The point is made
again by Lacan (1979) when he describes the neuroses as myths of individuals.

The content of Freud’s letter detailing the lost dream of Martha is relatively unimportant. It is a
specific form of the general rule of guilt at the base of the mind—the root legacy of early child-
hood phantasy. A missing letter suggests that above the unconscious level, no real offense may
have taken place. Like silences, the missing letters are blank and without content. The answer to
the missing letter is in plain sight—the origin of the crime is illusion—regardless of the specific
form taken in reality. “Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain,” said Monsieur Dupin.

18
Adult relations are breached time and again by an underlying grievances in interpersonal rela-
tions. The unconscious phantasies of betrayal play continuously, like telenovellas, on the screen
of adult projection. The foundation of shame reinforces the separated self that is blamed on oth-
ers via projective identification. Or, the guilt is rerouted through the body as displaced physical
attacks in the form of: chronic illnesses, accidents, heart attacks, strokes and fatigue. The hidden
self-attacks misconstrue conspiracies everywhere.

The mistake appears as paranoia—interpersonal and international—as “enemies” and “terror-

ists”—in multifarious and multitudinous disguises. To be paranoid is to fear attack and pre-
emptively to attack first. The depressive position never fully supersedes the paranoid-schizoid
position, according to Klein. A feeling of something missing constantly reappears to attract our
attention. The loss is only apparent, however, due to the original, unconscious phantasy of bad
and good parents. As Doug Davis (2009) wrote in an article, “Lost Girl,” about Anna Freud,
“There is no Freud scholarship without a [positive and negative] transference onto Freud.”

Forgiving our self-other relationships and gaining psychological maturity relinquishes the legacy
of the original parent-child phantasy to healing. The fallacy at last recognized in adulthood starts
to bring an end to the smiling assassin—the “ego”—who withers like a raison in the sun. With-
out the awareness of projective identification, however, one repeats a lifelong pattern of betrayal
in adult social relations that originate in childhood phantasy. Due to denial of the unconscious,
external fixes are never the correct answer. The forgiving of self and others replaces holding
grudges and pursuing vengeance.

Psychoanalytic theory concerns the distortion, disguises and deceptions in the mind about the
self-other relationship (Lansky 1992). Because the dream of intimacy-betrayal-revenge is in-
curred developmentally, the dreamer condenses the manifest person (Irma, Anna, Emma. Dora,
Martha, Josef, Wilhelm, Otto, Carl) into a composite figure. The dreamer then seeks to make up
for ruined personal trust with myriad: children, wives, parents, patients, friends and colleagues,
only to have rejection perceived again and again. An external “solution” never works for a prob-
lem in internal relations (Wapnick 2010).

Freud played all three roles in The Dream of Irma’s Injection: judge, victim and defendant.
When he blames the other doctors for her maltreatment, he is the judge. When he identifies with
her injuries, he is the victim. When he excuses himself, he is the defendant. Oedipus took all
three parts in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. He put a curse on the murderer of Lauis as judge. He is
accused of being the murderer by Teiresias and he accuses Creon of treason. Trapped in compul-
sive repetition, Oedipus plays the fragmented ego in the roles of victim, victimizer and judge. In
the mind, we are subject, object and observer in all social relationships.

Freud discovered, denied and acted-out his counter-transference, self-relationship in dreams,

phantasies and social relations. Everyone makes the same mistake over and over in 10,000 dif-
ferent forms. In our thoughts we may aspire to be mature and authentic beings, but in our words

19
and deeds, we behave in contradictory and hypocritical ways. Potentially, we are of one mind,
capable of recognizing our common interests with others, but act out the split mind. Guilt is the
foundation of the ego thought system projected onto others to cover-up the betrayal of the self
(Wapnick 2010). The cycle ends when one decides to remember—desire-betrayal-revenge—it is
a phantasy.

A missing letter symbolizes the trauma of the lost mother, who in phantasy, abandoned the child
for the father. A lifelong search for compensation, diversion and retaliation may then consume
the lives of adults who blame each other for their misfortune. The thread of the argument must
get lost, like the mother, if the woven fabric is cut off from the loom of production in the uncon-
scious. When the origin in the imagination goes unrecognized, the discrete forms on the surface
will appear to be random and chaotic. If what links Anna O., Irma, Dora, Josef, Wilhelm, Carl,
Anna F. and Martha are superficial relational differences and not the common denominator of
loss in the mind, misunderstanding is unavoidable.

In the classical Freudian view, the father terminates the mother-child bond and the rest of life is
about trying to repair the breach in basic trust. Life is far more complex than this only when the
source of the conflict in phantasy is dismissed as ridiculously too simple. The mother and the fa-
ther are exonerated in the individuation of the child, for there would be no physical birth without
the desire of the parent and child egos. “Every person is born preceded by its desire” we are told
by poet, Lyn Hejinian (2009, 202). Single parents, gay couples and adopted children all come to
consciousness in the nexus of triangulation.

In Freudian terms the Oedipal phantasy is the universal foundation for the development of the
ego, a metaphor for how we came to be identified as separated body beings in an objective
world. A range of biological and sociological theories invent explanations of the same genesis at
various levels of the illusion. Neuro-psychiatry sees neuron transmitter malfunctions in the brain;
social work sees inadequate parenting in the family. The Oedipus complex is just a theory, but so
are “atoms,” “DNA,” “reality,” “the laws of nature” and “God.” Established scientific proof and
clinical verification are just more metaphors (phantasies).

Reason involves making a decision to no longer invest in any fairy story that believes the ego
is the true self. The mind is infected with guilt, the heart is infiltrated with pain, the ego is the
suffering false-self (the idiot) and the stage is the world of projection. Think about what the
discovery means that hysteria is cured by dream interpretation? Psychoanalysis studies “the over
arching role of phantasy” in daily life (Grotstein 2008). A dream image of a crowd of strangers
stands for secrecy, according to Freud (Paul 2006, 175). Thus everyone (every ego) in surrepti-
tiously shares an illusion—we are bound to roles society imposes only because we believe we
are false-selves.

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