In Sigmund Freud’s dream about Irma, he tries to blame her illness on Otto. When he is interpreting the dream, he says that this reflects a hidden desire to cast blame on other people in order to avoid responsibility. His interpretation is an explanation for the dream, but it is not fact. Not only does the dream depend on the individual dreaming it, but the interpretation depends on them too. In the end of his dream analogy, Freud says that everyone’s dreams are based on wish fulfillment, but this is just based off of the dreams that he has. “The dream represented a particular state of affairs as I should have wished it to be. Thus its content was a fulfillment of a wish at its motive was a wish.” (140). Do you think that the interpretation of someone’s dream should be left to that person alone, or can other people like Freud that did not experience the dream come up with a better formula for dreams? Does Freud’s interpretation of his dream make it more valuable than any other person’s since he was the one who dreamt it?
Making the Modern World: Europe in the 19th Century
Liberalism and socialism and imperialism, oh my!
