Freud’s investigation of dreams drew heavily from his first psychological effort, his treatment of patients with psychoneuroses. This chapter examines how Freud extrapolates from analysis to genesis in the case of neuroses and whether the extrapolation stands on firmer ground than does the one he makes for dreams. It reviews his first complete analysis, of Fräulein Elisabeth von R, conducted in 1892, and then a portion of his “Wolf Man” case history, completed in 1914.

The convergence of the ebb and flow of symptoms in both cases with the uncovering of significant emotional material lends strong support to the idea that the symptoms and themes were related. No comparable external support exists for Freud’s vision of the genesis of dreams, including in the Wolf Man’s case, in which the analysis of a dream proved instrumental in his recovery.