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In The [[Interpretation ]] of [[Dreams ]] (1900a), [[Freud ]] wrote, "There is often a passage in even the most thoroughly [[interpreted ]] [[dream ]] which has to be [[left ]] obscure; this is because we become aware during the [[work ]] of interpretation that at that point there is a tangle of dream-[[thoughts ]] which cannot be unraveled and which moreover adds [[nothing ]] to our [[knowledge ]] of the [[content ]] of the dream. This is the dream's [[navel]], the spot where it reaches down into the unknown" (p. 525).
This careful formulation seems to contradict Freud's [[whole ]] approach toanalyzing dreams, which is to take the [[analysis]] as far as possible.As he later wrote when discussing the [[Wolf Man]]'s dream, "It is always a strict law of [[dream interpretation]] that an explanation must be found for every detail" (1918b, p.42n).
It is therefore unsurprising that Freud, rather than accept "the unknown" as a [[barrier]], should wonder whether a given [[patient]]'s [[resistance]] indicated failure stemming from the inadequacy of the [[analyst]] or of the [[analytic]] method themselves. In "[[Notes]] on [[Dream Interpretation]]" (1925i) he returned to the issue, pondering "the limits to the possibility of interpretation of the interpretable" (p. 127). There he stressed, "Those dreams best fulfil their function [to [[satisfy]] a [[wish]] in spite of the ego] [[about]] which one [[knows]] nothing after waking" (p. 128) or that are quite simply forgotten. They therefore appear to be uninterpretable. All the same, "it sometimes happens, too, that after months or years of analytic labour, one returns to a dream which at the beginning of the [[treatment]] seemed meaningless and incomprehensible but which is now, in the light of knowledge obtained in the meantime, completely elucidated" (p. 129).
ROGER PERRON
See also: [[Analyzability]]; [[Incompleteness]]; [[Over-interpretation]]; [[Real]], the ([[Lacan]]); [[Surrealism]] and [[psychoanalysis]].
[[Bibliography]]
* Dadoun, Roger. (1972). Les ombilics du rêve. Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, 5, 239-254.
* Freud, Sigmund. (1900a). The interpretation of dreams. SE, 4: 1-338; 5: 339-625.
* ——. (1918b). From the history of an infantile neurosis. SE, 17: 1-122.
* ——. (1925i). Some additional notes on dream interpretation as a whole. SE, 19: 123-138.
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