Introduction

INTRODUCTION 1 Without tracing a direct line of influence, these pages bring together Freud's writings and ancient Jewish traditions of dream interpretation. This intertextual field has been misunderstood, in part because Freud himself vehemently renounced the early interpreters of dreams. Freud's disavowal provokes reexamination of what he so insistently denied. Numerous writers have commented on Freud's Jewish identity. 1 Their I. See David S. Blatt, "The Development of the Hero: Sigmund Freud and the Reformation of the Jewish Tradition," Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought II (1988), 639-703; Dennis Klein, Jewish Origins of the Psychoanalytic Movement (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985); Susan A. Handelman, The Slay ers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (Albany: State University of New York, 1982), pp. 129-52; Avner Falk, " Freud and Herzl," Contemporary Psychoanalysis 14 (July 1978), 357-87; Martin S. Berg mann, "Moses and the Evolution of Freud's Jewish Identity," The Israel Annals of Psychiatry and Related Disciplines 14 (March 1976), 3-26; Paul Roazen, Freud and His Followers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), pp. 22-27; Leon Vogel, " Freud and Judaism: An Analysis in the Light of His Correspondence," trans. Murray Sachs, Judaism 24 ( 1975), 181- 93 ; Robert Gordis, "The Two Faces of Freud," Ju daism 24 (1975), 194-200; Marthe Robert, D'(Edipe a Moise: Freud et Ia con science juive (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1974); in English, see Robert, From Oedipus to Moses: Freud's Jewish Identity. trans. Ralph Manhein (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1976); John Murray Cuddihy, The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Levi Strauss. and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity (New York: Basic Books, 1974); Max Schur, Freud: Living and Dying (New York: International Universities Press, 1972), pp. 22-27; Peter Loewenberg, " 'Sigmund Freud as a Jew': A Study in Am bivalence and Courage," Journal of the History of the Behavorial Sciences 7 (1971), 363-69, and "A Hidden Zionist Theme in Freud's 'My Son, the Myops . .. ' Dream," Journal of the History of Ideas 31 (1970), 129-32; Earl A. GroHman, Judaism in Sigmund Freud's World (New York: Appleton-Century, 1965); David Ba kan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition, ( 1958; repr. Boston: Bea con, 1975); Ernst Simon, "Sigmund Freud, the Jew," Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 2 (1957), 270-305; Karl Menninger, "The Genius of the Jew in Psychiatry" I 2 FREUD'S DREAM OF INTERPRETATION observations tend to conceive Freud's "Jewishness" too narrowly, however, in predominantly biographical terms. The present analysis turns from Freud the individual to Freud's works, and from personal influences to textual interrelationships between Freudian dream interpretation, the Bible, and the Talmud. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud admits to identifying with the biblical Joseph. Yet as a modern interpreter, he rejects what he takes to be Joseph's archaic methods, and Freud's work on dreams stands in an am bivalent relationship to biblical and Talmudic sources. Freud may not have known the central Talmudic passages on dream interpretation until Imago published a relevant article in 1913. 2 Nevertheless, he did study Scripture at an early age, and remarked on its importance for his development; Freud's dreams, letters, and occasional comments reflect his linguistic awareness of Hebrew and Yiddish. 3 Freud knew enough of Judaic traditions to be uneasy about his knowledge. Freud might have responded more fully and consistently to biblical sources. In order to counter the skepticism of modern science, he repudi- (1937), collected in A Psychiatrist's World: The Selected Papers of Karl Menninger, ed. Bernard H. Hall (New York: The Viking Press, 1959), pp. 415-24; and A. A. Roback, Jewish Influence in Modern Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Sci-Art Publish ers, 1929), pp . 152-97. For a dissenting view, see Peter Gay, A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism. and the Making of Psychoanalysis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). 2. Chaim Lauer, "Das Wesen des Traumes in der Beurteilung der talmudischen und rabbinischen Literatur," lnternationale Zeitschrijt fiir Psychoanalyse und "Imago" I (1913), 459-69. More recently, Gerard Haddad juxtaposes Freudian and Talmudic theories in L' enfant illegitime: Sources talmudiques de Ia psychanalyse (Paris: Ha chette, 1981). He observes that Freud "sought to leave this relationship in obscu rity" (p. 14). 3. See Willy Aron, "Notes on Sigmund Freud's Ancestry and Jewish Contacts," YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science 11 (1956/57), 286-95, and Regine Robin, "Le yiddish, langue fantasmatique?" L' ecrit du temps 5 (1984), 43-50. Concerning Freud and the Philippson Bible, see Eva M. Rosenfeld, "Dream and Vision-Some Remarks on Freud's Egyptian Bird Dream," International Journal of Psycho Analysis 37 (1956) , 97-105; Theo Pfrimmer, Freud: Lecteur de Ia bible (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1982), part 2; and William J. McGrath, Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell Univer sity Press, 1986), pp. 26-58. Freud discusses his relationship to Judaism in his Address to the B'nai Brith Society (GW 17 , 51-53/S£ 20, 273-74). Among other passages, see Freud's Autobiographical Study (GW 14, 33-35/S£ 7-9), his letter to the Jiidische Presszentrale Zurich (GW 14, 556/SE 19, 291 ), and his prefaces to the Hebrew editions of Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis and Totem and Taboo. Introduction 3 ated Joseph and Daniel, who approach dreams as bridges to the future. Freud opposed prophetic dream interpretation and ignored the potential le gitimacy of its future orientation. Determined to trace the dream report to prior causes, then, Freud underrated the dreamer's wish to have the dream turned toward a future. Wishes do not merely precede dreaming; they often color the commitment to interpretation. Because Freud convincingly estab lished new methods, few commentators have recognized that the prophetic dimension of ancient dream interpretation was at once suppressed by Freud and implicit in his practices. From the beginning, men and women have sought their fortunes in the enigmatic images of dreams. Interpreters respond by shedding light on the darker realm where elusive laws of fiction give birth to infinite possi bility. To dream is to deceive oneself: English dream and German trdumen derive from dreugh, to deceive. A dream text is a tale told by a dreamer, full of equivocations, signifying everything and nothing. Dreams veer away from reality, and the lost dreamer seeks a guide to a more certain world. But the interpretation of a dream is always subject to revision. One pragmatic thesis of this book is that no interpretation is intrinsi cally true, because a present truth depends upon the future reality that con firms, alters, or gives meaning to the interpretive act. Meaning does not stand waiting to be uncovered behind a dream or text, but evolves in front of it, actualized by readers and interpreters who produce new possibilities. It follows that while some commentaries are self-contradictory and demon strably false, others can only be measured against the way in which they modify the future. When Pablo Picasso was told that Gertrude Stein did not look like his portrait of her, he responded: "That does not make any differ ence, she will."4 Picasso's portrait has indeed become the predominant im age of Stein. This story illustrates the power of the interpretations performed by art, literary criticism, and psychoanalysis. Meaning is made, not discovered. Freud's analogies to adventure and archaeology deceptively suggest that the meaning of dreams lies buried in an objective ground. Since the medium of dream texts and interpretations is always language, strategies of interpretation have little in common with an archaeological dig . Language leaves its traces in elusive patterns of collec tive and individual rhetoric. Freud's basic approach to oneiric meaning-in the correspondence between a dream and the childhood wish that motivates it-is incomplete and awaits a supplemental future orientation. 4. Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (New York: Random House, 1961), p. 12 . 4 FREUD'S DREAM OF INTERPRETATION 2 If "all the world's a stage," then psychoanalysis revises personal dramas in a scenario of remembering, repeating, and working through. The patient's dream performances reveal typical roles. The dream interpreter, who never merely translates the text of a dreamer's fading past, facilitates a rewriting of'fhe future. Arthur Schopenhauer writes that "everyone, while he dreams, is a Shakespeare." 5 C. G. Jung also employs the dramatic metaphor and calls the dream "a theater, in which the dreamer is scene, player, prompter, di rector, author, audience, and critic."6 The psychoanalyst may also assume these roles. Psychoanalysis is a drama in which the patient tries on masks, playing opposite the analyst's feigned neutrality. To the experienced analyst this proceeding resembles child's play, a game of presence and absence in which the subject creates an imaginary world. Whether we reposition our objects in the world or dream of a new order, one primary impulse is to attain or maintain control. Playing, the child strives against an unpredict able world, as does the dreamer who stages a drama of chaos and order. Some authors assert that Freud manipulated his patients, but it is more ac curate to say that the "talking cure" manipulates a patient's fictions. The dream in itself is a fiction. Because no dream is ever directly conveyed, dream interpretation relies on the retelling of a dream that dis places whatever may have inspired it. To recall a dream is to generate a narrative based on heterogeneous materials; waking associations situate the dream text in a broader linguistic framework. Interpretation translates the dream text into new texts and contexts.

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