Character Analysis
Josef Paneth was a junior colleague of Freud's who worked for some time with Freud, Ernst Fleischl von Marxow, and Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke at Brücke's Institute of Physiology. He appears as "P." in Freud's Non Vixit Dream, and he is the unlucky dude who gets annihilated by Freud's "piercing look" (6.7.50).
As Freud explains in his detailed interpretation of the Non Vixit Dream, during the time that they worked together in Brücke's lab, Paneth had been impatient about his desire for promotion (6.9.51). Fleischl was one of Paneth's senior colleagues, and Paneth knew that he wouldn't be promoted while other men occupied the lab's most senior positions. On top of that, Fleischl was already "seriously ill" (6.9.51).
As Freud explains, although he could understand and sympathize with Paneth's strong desire for promotion, he felt that it was inappropriate to express that desire under the circumstances. As Freud notes, Paneth's "wish" to have his senior colleague Fleischl "out of the way" could easily be interpreted as a wish for Fleischl to be dead and gone (6.9.51).
In the Non Vixit Dream, Freud annihilates Paneth because of his inappropriate ambition. Given Freud's own intense ambition, it's easy to see that the "P." who appears in the dream is entangled with Freud's personal objectives and desires too. As with the other family members, friends, and colleagues who appear throughout The Interpretation of Dreams, Paneth's brief cameo in Freud's dream-life tells us more about the dreamer than about the historical man himself.