Character Analysis

Flora is one of the many female patients Freud mentions throughout The Interpretation of Dreams, and she has special significance because she figures in one of Freud's own dreams. In the Dream of the Botanical Monograph (5.2.7), Flora plays the same role that the Gärtners do. Because her name calls up distinct associations with plants and flowers ("Flora" means "flower"), her latent presence contributes to what Freud calls the overdetermination of botanical themes in the dream.