about similar criticism of his own work, dreamt that he took Fliess’s place and saw the critic discredited. Freud interpreted this as wish-fulfillment, demonstrating his belief that all dreams are driven by selfish motives. In this instance, the dreamer (Freud) "makes my friend’s case my own." Another dream was triggered by Freud’s worry that Fliess might die following a recent operation. This dream brought up memories of Freud’s past habit of arriving late to work. Freud feared that he might reach Berlin (where Fliess lived) "too late" and find Fliess already deceased.The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1877–1904, edited by Jeffrey Masson, was published in 1985.

Amalia Freud

Amalia (née Nathansohn) Freud (1835–1930) was Freud’s mother. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud describes a dream featuring a woman in a kitchen making dumplings, which he associates with his mother. In another childhood dream, from when he was seven or eight, he dreamt that his mother had died. These dreams linked his mother to both nourishment and death. Freud’s strong childhood attachment to his mother, coupled with feelings of jealousy towards his father, formed the foundation of his theory of the Oedipus complex, a cornerstone of psychoanalysis.

Anna Freud

Anna Freud (1895–1982) was the youngest child of Sigmund Freud. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud recounts a dream from Anna's second year. She had fallen ill one morning and was not given any food for the rest of the day. Her nurse attributed the sickness to eating too many strawberries. That night, Anna was heard murmuring in her sleep: ‘‘Anna F[r]eud, strawberry, wild strawberry, scrambled eggs, mash.’’ Freud interpreted this as a clear instance of wish-fulfillment, as the child had been deprived of food, particularly strawberries: ‘‘the menu no doubt included everything that would have seemed to her a desirable meal.’’ After being told she had eaten too many strawberries, Freud noted, ‘‘she took her revenge in her dream for this annoying report.’’ As an adult, Anna maintained a very close relationship with her father, becoming his constant companion toward the end of his life. She also established herself as a distinguished psychoanalyst, pioneering in child and adolescent psychology. From 1925 to 1928, she served as chairman of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. In 1938, she fled Nazi-occupied Vienna with her family and settled in England. In 1947, she founded the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic in London, serving as its director from 1952 until her death in 1982. Anna Freud: A Biography, by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, was published in 1988.

Jacob Freud

Jacob Freud (1815–1896) was Sigmund Freud’s father. The mourning process following his father's death in 1896 inspired Freud's years of self-analysis, which culminated in the writing of The Interpretation of Dreams. Throughout the book, Freud refers to several dreams that include direct or indirect associations with his father. In many of these dreams, Freud expresses a desire to impress his father with his professional achievements. Freud recalls his father once saying to his mother about the young Sigmund, ‘‘nothing will come of the boy’’ (implying he would never amount to anything). Freud explains the lasting impact of this comment on his unconscious mind:

It must have been a terrible blow to my ambition, for allusions to this scene occur in my dreams again and again and are invariably connected with enumerations of my successes and achievements, as though I wanted to say: ‘You see, something did come of me.’

Freud’s early childhood attachment to his mother and resulting jealousy towards his father formed the basis of one of his fundamental theories of psychoanalysis: the Oedipus complex. Drawing from the Greek myth of Oedipus, who unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother as foretold by fate, Freud theorized that all (male) children go through a universal developmental stage of feeling a strong sexual attachment to their mother and a corresponding desire to kill their father, seen as their primary rival.

Joseph Freud

Joseph Freud was Sigmund Freud’s uncle. Freud had negative feelings towards his uncle, who was imprisoned in 1866 for involvement with counterfeit money. He remembers his father saying that his uncle Joseph "had never been a bad man, he had been a numbskull." Freud recounts a dream where his uncle Joseph appears as a "composite figure" along with two of his colleagues. He concludes that this association helped him label one colleague as a "criminal" and the other as a "numbskull," even though he held both men in high regard in his waking life.

Martha Freud

Martha (née Bernays) Freud (1861–1951) was Freud’s wife, whom he married in 1886, and together they had six children. Freud discusses several dreams that remind him of associations with Martha. In one dream, his patient Irma suffers from abdominal pains, similar to a symptom Martha had long ago. He notes that this dream contained many hints of his concern for the health of his friends, patients, and family. In one of Freud’s well-known dream examples, he dreams of writing a monograph on an unspecified plant. He connects this to the cyclamen, his wife’s favorite flower, and acknowledges feeling guilty because he seldom brings her flowers, despite knowing she would appreciate it.

Martin Freud

Martin Freud was Freud’s second child and eldest son, born in 1889. Freud recounts a dream Martin had at eight years old, where, after reading Greek mythology stories, he dreamed of "riding in a chariot with Achilles, and Diomedes was the charioteer." Freud uses this as an example of how children’s dreams can be interpreted as simple wish-fulfillments. Martin Freud’s book, Sigmund Freud: Man and Father, was published in 1958.

Mathilde Freud

Mathilde Freud was Freud’s eldest child, born in 1887. Freud describes two of Mathilde’s childhood dreams to illustrate the simple wish-fulfillments expressed in children’s dreams. Mathilde is also mentioned in Freud’s discussion of an important dream involving his patient Irma. The dream reminds Freud of Mathilde in two ways: the illness observed in Irma resembles an illness Mathilde had years earlier, and the name Mathilde brings to mind another patient of Freud's with the same name, whose treatment he had not managed well.

Oliver Freud

Oliver Freud, Sigmund Freud’s third child, was born in 1891 and named after the renowned English statesman Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658). Freud references Oliver indirectly in a dream related to his own ambitious nature. He named his son after "a great figure in history who had captivated me powerfully when I was a boy." Freud explains that his aspirations for greatness were projected onto Oliver through the act of naming him after a "great figure in history." Freud notes, "It is not difficult to see how the vaulting ambition which the father has suppressed is transferred in his thoughts onto his children."

John

Freud's nephew, referred to simply as John in The Interpretation of Dreams, was actually a year older than Freud. The two were constant playmates throughout their childhood. Freud mentions John when describing a dream that references "very early scenes of the childhood quarrels" between them. He characterizes his "complicated infantile relationship" with John as a template for his later relationships, both personal and professional, with other men:

Until I was almost four we had been inseparable, had loved each other and fought each other; and this childhood relationship has been decisive . . . for all my later feelings for companions of my own age.

Freud reflects that his relationship with John significantly influenced his later interactions, stating, "all my friends are in some sense incarnations of this first figure." He further elaborates on this dynamic:

An intimate friend and a hated foe have always been necessary to my emotional life; I have always been able to create for myself afresh embodiments of both, and not infrequently my childhood ideal went so far that friend and foe coincided in one person—no longer at the same time, of course, or switching repeatedly from one to the other, which was probably the case in my earliest childhood years.

Biographers often refer to this dynamic in Freud’s life, especially when discussing his famous, irrevocable falling-out with his once intimate friend and devoted disciple Carl Jung. A similar dynamic was evident in Freud’s relationship with his friend and colleague Josef Breuer.

Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke

Ernst Brücke (1819–1892) served as a German physiology professor at the University of Vienna from 1849 to 1891. During his medical studies, Freud worked in Brücke’s physiological laboratory and was heavily influenced by the work of Hermann von Helmholtz through him. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud recounts a dream set in Brücke’s laboratory, where he is tasked with dissecting his own pelvis. Upon analyzing the dream, Freud links the dissection to the process of self-analysis, which culminated in the creation of The Interpretation of Dreams. The dream also reminds Freud of a time when Brücke scolded him for repeatedly arriving late to the laboratory as a student. Freud interprets the dream as a form of wish-fulfillment, expressing a desire to publish his book before it is too "late"—before he ages and dies.

Professor Ernst Fleischl von Marxow

Ernst Fleischl (1846–1891) was a close friend of Freud’s whose death from cocaine addiction was both a personal and professional blow to Freud. One of Freud’s early scientific achievements was discovering that cocaine could be used as an anesthetic, a finding he published in 1884, before the addictive and harmful nature of cocaine was widely known. Freud had advised Fleischl to use cocaine instead of morphine, to which Fleischl was already addicted, to manage his pain. Unfortunately, Fleischl became addicted to cocaine, which eventually led to his death. Freud references several dreams involving Fleischl, either directly or indirectly. In one dream filled with food and nourishment imagery, Freud connects Fleischl’s name with the German word "fleisch," meaning "flesh" or "meat." In another dream, Fleischl appears in a laboratory where Freud is working among several colleagues, who are acknowledged in the dream as being deceased.