ABSTRACT
Freud’s dream of the botanical monograph expresses and gratifies a wish, a wish to amount to something. As he associates to that dream, he begins to understand it, but he also takes over the process of gratifying it. The gratifications continue in the process of analyzing it, but in such a way that he is able to take it over. That is, in the associations, the form and content of Freud’s own imaginative capacity are laid out for him. The question thus arises for him: how does he want to live with it? His own choice is a radical gratification of the original wish. He takes his dream and analyzes it; on the basis of that analysis he devises a theory of dreams; he writes his dream book. He is now the real-life author of a botanical monograph – that is, a monograph about (the dream of) a botanical monograph. And finally, he can say to his father, ‘You see, I have come to something!’ Ironically, had he analyzed himself well, at the moment when he could say that to his father, he’d no longer need to.
