A Virgil of the 20th Century

Abstract

This article’s goal is to state division landmarks in Freud’s exploration of the unconscious. The main issue of this paper can be divided in three different topics…One of them shows the atmosphere in Vienna in the period between the second half of the XIXth century and beginning of the XXth. It is full of the vitalistic line of thought that emphasizes understanding. The other point of view is characteristic of Nature Studies and attaches greater importance to explanation. Another aspect in this report’s main issue is the mail between Freud and Fliess. This friendship is shown as making possible Freud’s auto-analysis because Freud found in Fliess an essential “other one” who was able to listen to him, who he could argue with, who could encourage him and finally disappoint him. Freud also received from Fliess the impulse to write and publish his greatest piece of work that was an example of “approach to the dictionary of the special dialect of the unconscious”. The third branch refers to the publishing of “The interpretation of dreams”. Freud cuts the Gordian knot of the antinomy: Nature Studies versus Sciences of the Spirit using the meta-psychological enlightenment. The childhood’s unconscious desires sustained by drives are the forces that give rise to dreams, a staging of images, of repressed suffocated dream thoughts, that will be responsible for a picture writing, awaiting interpretation.