ABSTRACT

This chapter considers a dream reported by Sigmund Freud in the 12th Lecture of his Introduction, entitled “Some analyses of sample dreams”. The dreamer was a neurotic subject. The analysis carried out by Freud is mainly focused on the search for the dream sources. The development of the manifest dream gives the dreamer the possibility of testing what the consequences of his madness are: good consequences, if that madness provides him with the capacity of killing his enemies. A textual analysis based on the recognition of synonyms or, more generally, of words semantically connected would suggest the possible presence of other interesting links among the sources of the dream. Freud’s analysis is certainly a “middle range analysis”, for which the childish sources proper of the Freudian Unconscious have no relevance. The dream sources regard Freud’s professional career and not his childhood.