F IS FOR TRAUMDEUTUNG?

“Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.”
- Sigmund Freud

Now looking much younger, Freud tapped the floor with his cane, still holding the unlit cigar in his fingers.  

I studied the man who was likewise studying me.

Freud couldn’t cure himself of the very complexes and defense mechanisms he coined. 

He claimed anxiety came from the unconscious and so to reveal and analyze led to a cure. 

But this depended on a person’s willingness to change 

and although Freud exhibited many neuroses he was unable or unwilling to cure himself. 

His terms to describe human behavior are used every day 

(passive-aggressive, repression, denial, defense mechanisms, ego, the conscious and unconscious) 

and many came from his personal experience.

"We are now at F," he said.  "What occurs to you at that?"

"Traumdeutung."

Freud closed his eyes as Mark Twain, eavesdropping though still playing poker at a distant table, began to chuckle.  

"Roland, yours is the most Byzantine mind I have ever run across."

He tapped his cane harder on the floor.  "Traumdeutung means dream interpretation and literally has nothing to do with the letter F."

I shook my head.  "But it does."

"Because of your 1899 publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, you became the Founder of a single school of thought.  

Rarely does one individual become a founder of something like that."

I nodded my head.  
"By 1902, you were hosting weekly discussions at your home in Vienna. 

These informal meetings would eventually grow to become the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society."

I nodded firmly, "So F is for you, Freud the Founder of Psychoanalysis." 

Freud muttered under his breath, and Mark Twain called out, 

"Did I just hear you use the F word, Freud, old chum?  I thought Roland was supposed to be doing the free associating?"