Irmas injektioner

Abstract

Irma’s Injections. Psychiatric Power and Female Resistance in Patriarchal Wienna 1900
 Die Traumdeutung (1900) contains the first dream that Sigmund Freud devoted a full analysis to, using the new method of dream interpretation. In the psychoanalytic tradition it is known as the dream of Irma’s injections. In this article I propose a reading of the dream as a vignette from the turn of the century medical environment characterized by a patriarchal order, that is expressed through the relationship between a female patient and male physicians. Freud presents the dream as containing a secret, which has given rise to a variety of interpretations. He thus encouraged the notion that there is an intrinsic meaning hidden beneath the signifier, a primary and definitive meaning that is hidden beneath what is written and so doubles it in secret. I argue that it is only when we abstain from a hermeneutic analysis of the dream, that this dream record of the relationship between doctor and patient can tell us something about the origin of psychoanalysis in contemporary patriarchy. The interpretative framework is the male social network, which in the dream is permeated by desire and depicted in the form of rivalry, male social ties and libidinal investment. The future investment in sexuality by medical science, psychiatry and psychoanalysis appears in the dream through the cluster of men grouped around Irma whose body adopts phantasmatic forms. The female patient’s resistance to psychiatric and medical power thereby becomes a crucial component of psychoanalytic theory and method, initially formulated as a penetration of secrets.