Historical dream account · English · A. A. Brill, 1913 translation
An impossible argument about Goethe
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
The Interpretation of Dreams, authorised translation of the third German edition (1913) · Printed p. 345
Dreamer identified by the source: Sigmund Freud
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One of my acquaintances, Mr. M., has been attacked in an essay by no less a person than Goethe, with justifiable vehemence, we all think. Mr. M. has, of course, been crushed by this attack. He complains of it bitterly at a dinner party; but he says that his veneration for Goethe has not suffered from this personal experience. I try to find some explanation of the chronological relations, which seem improbable to me. Goethe died in 1832; since his attack upon M. must of course have taken place earlier, Mr. M. was at the time a very young man. It seems plausible to me that he was 18 years old. But I do not know exactly what year it is at present, and so the whole calculation lapses into obscurity. The attack, moreover, is contained in Goethe's well-known essay entitled "Nature."
No precise dream date inferred. Page or diary heading is a locator; publication year is not event date.
Source & context
Complete dream quotation. M. is a printed initial, not expanded. The essay attack is an impossible dream event, not an assertion about Goethe’s real conduct. In his preface (p. vi), Freud acknowledges that he disguised some personal disclosures through omissions and substitutions. These are historical reports as published in Brill’s 1913 English translation, rather than claims of untouched original dream logs.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), The Interpretation of Dreams, authorised translation of the third German edition (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913), translated with introduction by A. A. Brill (1874–1948), Printed p. 345. Dreamer: Sigmund Freud. Original-edition witness: Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Internet Archive scan funded by Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School. Original published qualifications, initials and uncertainty retained; descriptive title and navigation metadata added by Synastry.
No precise dream date inferred. Page or diary heading is a locator; publication year is not event date.
Public domain in the United States (original 1913 English edition) ↗
The original New York: Macmillan, 1913 English edition is beyond the maximum US publication term. The title page identifies Sigmund Freud and translator A. A. Brill; Countway Library catalogue metadata identifies their life dates as 1856–1939 and 1874–1948, respectively, so ordinary life-plus-70 terms have also elapsed. This uses Brill’s original 1913 translation, not a modern English translation or editorial adaptation. The original volume was digitized for Internet Archive with Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School funding. Public access or absence of a restrictive archive field is not itself a licence grant. No blanket worldwide clearance or new Creative Commons licence is asserted.
Source locator and text provenance
Printed p. 345
The original text and redactions are preserved. The page title is an editorial navigation label.
Original-scan-witnessed OCR repairs; line, page and type-spacing normalization; original lexical hyphens retained. Footnote/header furniture outside the continuous main-text account removed where a page intervenes. No new narrative words, endings, identifications or clinical interpretation.
- Account text SHA-256
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- Source file SHA-256
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Content notes
- Historical recollection
Connections in the Loom
Titles, theme labels, illustrations and map connections are editorial navigation aids. They are separate from the account’s words and do not establish connections between real people.