Choose a language

Sigmund FreudNight of 23 to 24 July 1895

Irma's injection

The dream Freud chose to open his method with, and the first one he analysed line by line in print.

DraftAn editor has not reviewed this page yet.

The dream

Retold in our own words from the sources below, not quoted.

Freud dreamed of a large hall where he and his wife were receiving guests. Among them was Irma, a young woman he had been treating. He took her aside and reproached her for not accepting his explanation of her symptoms; she answered that she was in pain in her throat, stomach and abdomen.

Alarmed, he looked into her throat and saw strange white patches. Several doctors he knew gathered round and examined her. In the dream it became clear that a colleague had given her an injection with a chemical preparation, carelessly and probably with a syringe that was not clean. The formula of the chemical appeared before Freud's eyes in heavy type.

Where the story comes from

Freud wrote the dream down in the summer of 1895 and published it in Die Traumdeutung (dated 1900) as his model example. He went through it phrase by phrase, noting what each image reminded him of from the previous day and from his work.

Irma was a real patient, and the colleagues in the dream were real people. Freud admitted that the analysis stopped short of everything it touched, because some associations were too private to publish.

How it has been read

Psychoanalysis

Freud's conclusion was that the dream fulfilled a wish: it cleared him of responsibility for Irma's continuing illness by placing the blame on others. This case became the foundation of his claim that every dream is a wish fulfilment, a claim most later researchers do not accept in that general form.

Research

Seen through the continuity idea, the dream stages a worry that clearly occupied Freud while awake: whether a patient's suffering was his fault. Modern researchers would look less for a hidden wish and more for the concern the dream keeps returning to.

Questions for your own dreams

  1. Is there a situation where you are worried that something is your fault?
  2. Which people from the last few days showed up in your recent dreams?
  3. If you went through your own dream line by line, which image would you start with?

Symbols in this dream

Had a dream that stayed with you?

Tell us your dream

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. Sigmund Freud (1913). The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by A. A. Brill. New York: Macmillan.

    first published 1900

    public domain

    • Cited at: Ch. II, the analysis of a specimen dream (reference not yet checked)
    • Cited at: Ch. II and Ch. III (reference not yet checked)

    First English translation, of the third German edition. Public domain; scholars consider it looser than the later Strachey translation, which is copyrighted.

  2. Sigmund Freud (1900). Die Traumdeutung. Leipzig and Vienna: Franz Deuticke.

    first published November 1899 (title page dated 1900)

    public domain

    • Cited at: Ch. II (reference not yet checked)

    The German original. Many of its claims are not supported by later dream research; we present it as a historical lens.

  3. G. William Domhoff (2001). A New Neurocognitive Theory of Dreams. Dreaming 11(1): 13-33.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: pp. 13-33 (reference not yet checked)

    Dreams as embodied simulations of personal concerns (the continuity view). The backbone of our psychology lens.