To Freud this second dream of Doras was far more complex than her first dream. He interpreted that the associations in the dream revealed Dora’s identification with a young suitor of hers who was an engineer that was residing in Germany, who would have to wait until his own future was secure before he could pursue her. Going on alone in the dream reminded Dora of her visit to the Dresden art gallery, where she had spent two hours sitting alone and admiring the Sistine Madonna. Freud felt that by depicting herself alternately as a young man far from home, or alone and identifying with a virgin mother, Dora was enacting a fantasy of revenge against her father.
“The next stage of the interpretation confirmed this vengeful craving: Freud discovered in the dream a picture of the defloration of the female genitals, in the clever puns on medical terms he attributed to Dora, turning the woods and nymphs glimpsed in a painting into pubic hair and vulva, her own vulva into which the young engineer would one day plunge, with this betrayal with a man other than her father fulfilling the desire for revenge in another way. Dora even managed to pun on her family name, the name of her father: Kalter Bauer means to ejaculate from nocturnal emission or from masturbation. A new piece of the dream came to consciousness: ’she went calmly to her room, and began reading a big book’. From this dream-element emerged the story
of her attack of appendicitis, shortly after her aunt’s death, which Freud, with no opposition from Dora, interpreted as a ‘phantasy (sic) of childbirth’ once he had calculated that the attack took place nine moths after the scene by the lake” (154 Appignanesi and Forrester).
Shortly after this piece of dream interpretation, Dora discontinued her sessions with Freud (154 Appignanesi and Forrester).
Freud thought that Dora’s second dream was incompletely understood because the analysis was broken off while it was being discussed (155 Appignanesi and Forrester). One would assume that Freud possessed a substantial case history of Dora a.k.a. Ida Bauer, considering that he was good friends with her father and knew the significant others that played predominant roles in her life. Also Freud’s own residence was located on the same street as the Bauer’s home (147 Appignanesi and Forrester). An attempt by this writer to interpret Ida Bauer’s two dreams one hundred years later is difficult especially without possessing the intimacy that Freud had available to him concerning this case. In Ida’s first dream where she relates to Freud that the house is on fire and that she had to flee the home; I would interpret this as her wanting to escape her family life. With her father standing beside her bed I would question Ida as to why her father would stand beside her bed. In real life did she often wake to find her father standing beside her bed? This would lead me to wonder if there was incest occurring between Ida and her father. In the dream, she said, that she had dressed quickly. Would this mean that she was sleeping totally nude in an era where extreme modesty was the norm? Her mother wanted to stop and save her jewel-case, but her father would not let her. The
jewel-case was obviously a valuable item, perhaps the jewel-case represented Ida and she wanted to save her from being sexually victimized. Most mothers hold their children as “valuable” and a normal mother would save her child first from a burning building. But, Ida’s father would not let her mother save the jewel-case, obviously the father was the dominant figure in the home and this dream portrays this fact. His wife and children are going to do as he wills, and no one is going to save Ida from his will, not even her mother could. In the second dream where Ida sees herself as walking in a town that is unknown to her, I would interpret this to mean that in real life she is confused and bewildered, not knowing what her future holds. The letter that she finds from her mother could relate to the fact that her mother could not defend or speak for herself in real life, therefore she had to express her feelings without speaking them, hence the letter. This would prompt me to question Ida concerning her mother’s actions and feelings in real life. Her mother states in the letter that now that Ida’s father is dead that she could come. With him dead, does this mean that the home is now safe and that Ida would not have to endure her father’s sexual abuse? In the dream Ida searches for the train station and questions the departure time over and over again. To me this points to confusion in her real life. She enters into thick woods in her dream and meets a man who offers to accompany her to the station, but she refuses and goes on alone. The thick woods to me represent that her life is confined in some way. Her refusal of the man’s offer to accompany her, could it be that Freud himself was the symbolic man in the dream? After all, as her analysand he would be the one to “accompany” her in her journey through her real life to help her overcome her problems. In her dream she refused the man’s offer to accompany her. It
is known that after this dream interpretation that Ida ended her sessions with Freud. Ida may have felt that at this point she no longer needed or wanted Freud’s therapy. She preferred to continue her life’s journey without Freud. In the dream where she felt that she could not move forward, maybe she felt that with Freud she was mired in her current therapy and that it was inhibiting her from moving forward. At the end of her dream she finds herself at home. The servant tells her that her mother and the others are at the cemetery. The cemetery would to me suggest death, perhaps a death of her past life and an opportunity for her to either go to the cemetery (return to her former family problems) or to move on in her life (to build a new life) without her father, who is dead in her dream, and without the guidance of Freud himself.
It is easy for me criticize Freud’s treatment, especially after a hundred years of growth and research in the area of psychology. One must remember that Freud was an originator of much of psychology’s modern day practice. The concepts of his that have endured in modified form are transference-countertransference, the unconscious, defenses (like repression), free association, historical/developmental influences on psychological development, insight, dream interpretation, unconscious fantasy, the metaphysical structure of the mind (i.e., id, ego, superego), and the role of sex and aggression in personality and psychopathology. Many of his concepts are used differently than he originally intended, but this does not make them of less importance. In addition we must
note that the process and goals of therapy are different now than they were in Freud’s era (1 Important Questions on Psychotherapy).
There had never been a real scientific approach to the understanding of dreams until Freud published his book Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. His book Interpretation of Dreams is a classic work that provides an assessment of earlier contributions to dream theory and focuses on wish fulfillment as the motivating force behind dreaming (47 Montague and Zimmerman). In the hands of a modern therapist a dream becomes an instrument for probing and confronting. The skills of a modern professional may facilitate dream work for those who are resistive to it, but they do not alter the nature of dream work itself. Dream work provides today’s therapist with a tool, which enables them, a penetrating glimpse of what lives beneath the surface of one’s psyche (315, 316 Montague and Zimmerman).