The Interpretation of Dreams Friendship Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)

Quote #4

The first reader and critic of this book—and his successors are likely to follow his example—protested that "the dreamer seems to be too ingenious and amusing." This is quite true so long as it refers only to the dreamer; it would only be an objection if it were to be extended to the dream-interpreter. (6.2.51)

As editor James Strachey notes, the "first reader" that Freud speaks of here is his good friend Wilhelm Fliess. As this passage suggests, not only does Fliess appear frequently in Freud's dreams, but his influence can also be felt in the ways that Freud frames his arguments.

Quote #5

In my embarrassment I sought help from the physician whom I, like many other people, respect more than any as a man and before whose authority I am readiest to bow. (6.2.56)

In Sigmund Freud's Dreams, Alexander Grinstein identifies this friend as Josef Breuer, a senior colleague of Freud's and the man with whom Freud collaborated on his first published book, Studies on Hysteria (source). As Grinstein also notes, by the time Freud dreamed his Dream of Irma's Injection (to which this passage refers), relations between Freud and Breuer had started to turn sour (source).

Quote #6

It then struck me as noticeable that in the scene in the dream there was a convergence of a hostile and an affectionate current of feeling towards my friend P., the former being on the surface and the latter concealed, but both of them being represented in the single phrase Non vixit. As he had deserved well of science I built him a memorial; but as he was guilty of an evil wish (which was expressed at the end of the dream) I annihilated him. (6.7.54)

During his interpretation of this dream, Freud asks himself why he has phrased things as he has here. Focusing on two of the lines that he has written—"As he had deserved well of science I built him a memorial; but as he was guilty of an evil wish I annihilated him"—Freud realizes that he has unconsciously echoed lines from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him" (6.7.54).