The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
DREAM OF JULY 23- 24, 1895

A great hall- a number of guests, whom we are receiving- among them Irma, whom I immediately take aside, as though to answer her letter, and to reproach her for not yet accepting the "solution." I say to her: "If you still have pains, it is really only your own fault."- She answers: "If you only knew what pains I have now in the throat, stomach, and abdomen- I am choked by them." I am startled, and look at her. She looks pale and puffy. I think that after all I must be overlooking some organic affection. I take her to the window and look into her throat. She offers some resistance to this, like a woman who has a set of false teeth. I think, surely, she doesn't need them.- The mouth then opens wide, and I find a large white spot on the right, and elsewhere I see extensive grayish-white scabs adhering to curiously curled formations, which are evidently shaped like the turbinal bones of the nose.- I quickly call Dr. M, who repeats the examination and confirms it.... Dr. M looks quite unlike his usual self; he is very pale, he limps, and his chin is clean-shaven.... Now my friend Otto, too, is standing beside her, and my friend Leopold percusses her covered chest, and says "She has a dullness below, on the left," and also calls attention to an infiltrated portion of skin on the left shoulder (which I can feel, in spite of the dress).... M says: "There's no doubt that it's an infection, but it doesn't matter; dysentery will follow and the poison will be eliminated." ... We know, too, precisely how the infection originated. My friend Otto, not long ago, gave her, when she was feeling unwell, an injection of a preparation of propyl... propyls... propionic acid... trimethylamin (the formula of which I see before me, printed in heavy type).... One doesn't give such injections so rashly.... Probably, too, the syringe was not clean.

This dream has an advantage over many others. It is at once obvious to what events of the preceding day it is related, and of what subject it treats. The preliminary statement explains these matters. The news of Irma's health which I had received from Otto, and the clinical history, which I was writing late into the night, had occupied my psychic activities even during sleep. Nevertheless, no one who had read the preliminary report, and had knowledge of the content of the dream, could guess what the dream signified. Nor do I myself know. I am puzzled by the morbid symptoms of which Irma complains in the dream, for they are not the symptoms for which I treated her. I smile at the nonsensical idea of an injection of propionic acid, and at Dr. M's attempt at consolation. Towards the end the dream seems more obscure and quicker in tempo than at the beginning. In order to learn the significance of all these details I resolve to undertake an exhaustive analysis.