the dream of psychoanalysis irmas dream, some commentaries, and a contemplation of its navel文档.pdf

The Dream of Psychoanalysis: Irmas Dream, Some Commentaries, and a Contemplation of its Navel Sian Morgan ABSTRACT. Freuds dream of 1895, Irmas Dream, stands at the beginning of psychoanalytic theory, but Freuds analysis only glancingly refers to the unknown elements that are found at the navel of the dream. The imagery of the dream suggests this phrasing is significant and that unconscious elements refer to the oracle at Delphi. At Delphi a chthonic goddess was supplanted by a patriarchy; the unknown at the centre of the dream is the archaic mother, repressed by Freud and by the patriarchal character of early psychoanalytic theory. Irmas dream is a dream of the conception and gestation of psychoanalysis, of Freuds fear of his discovery, and his resistance to it. At its centre is what Freud called the navel of the dream. In a footnote, Freud identified the navel as the point of contact with the unknown. If the navel is interpreted to represent the omphalos, then the unknown can be interpreted to represent the archaic mother. In this paper I describe various interpretations of Irmas dream, and through them I focus on what may have been repressed in Freud and in the subsequent development of psychoanalytic theory. I will suggest that the navel represents the difficulty of articulating feminine desire within masculine discourse. While the origins of psychoanalysis offer a theory to help us understand the unconscious structure of patriarchy, they do not offer a way to change that structure. Psychoanalytic theory deprives the preoedipal mother of her subjectivity, of her difference and otherness; the navel commemorates the point of our origin while marking the otherness of the preoedipal mother.