Theodor Meynert

Character Analysis

Theodor Meynert was a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vienna while Freud studied there (source). He doesn't make much of a splash in The Interpretation of Dreams, but he does appear briefly—in disguised form—in one of the dreams featuring Freud's father (6.8.18). While interpreting this apparently "absurd" dream, Freud comes to the realization that the father-figure in it isn't his real father—it's totally Teddy Meynert.

As Freud writes: "Here the figure for whom he [his father] stood was no less a person than the great Meynert, in whose footsteps I had trodden with such deep veneration and whose behaviour towards me, after a short period of favour, had turned to undisguised hostility" (6.8.20).

As with so many of the other colleagues who appear in Freud's dreams, Meynert's presence opens up intriguing questions about the role that various father-figures played in Freud's professional and personal life.