ABSTRACT
Freud's mission in life was to father a science of the mind which would be as rigorous as any of the physical sciences. Concepts like "force" and "energy" were often invoked as a way to provide psychoanalysis with scientific rigor. Freud identified a new formula for hysteria soon after his Irma dream. There is a striking continuity and consistency in Freud's many religious reveries, made visible by his ongoing effort to decode them. The two scenes Emma produced and Freud reported to Fliess on January of 1897 shared the form, and hinted at the idea, of a blood covenant, a subject Clay Trumbull investigated in depth. Trumbull thought of blood as the most important symbol of life, and the blood covenant was the most solemn and binding agreement possible in ancient times. The "psychological value of archaeology to Freud", she wrote, "offers the notion of a status that is neither death nor life".
