The "Irma Injection" Dream:
Perceptanalytic and Freudian
Interpretations

During the night of July 23-24, 1895, at the age of 39, Freud had the "Irma
Injection" dream. It is a celebrated dream, being the first to have serial
postdream interpretations applied to it by Freud and being the dream most
extensively analyzed by a host of subsequent writers. The dream led to
Freud's self-analysis and, in turn, to the development of psychoanalysis.
Irma Injection is the first dream discussed in Freud The Interpretation of
Dreams ( 1953). It is also an important seminal dream.

During the early part of 1895, Freud treated Irma, "a young lady who was
on very friendly terms with [him] and [his] family" (p. 106 ). This treatment
ended with partial success; the patient was relieved of her hysterical anxiety
but did not lose all her somatic symptoms. On the day preceding the dream,
Otto, "a junior colleague, one of [ Freud's] oldest friends, who had been
staying with . . . Irma, and her family at their country resort" (p. 106 ), de-
scribed how he had found her: "She is better but not quite well" (p. 106 ).
Freud was "annoyed" by these words and their tone: "I detected a reproof in
them . . . that I had promised the patient too much . . . The same evening I

to be continued...