How The Interpretation of Dreams drew on The Aeneid
A documented line of influence: Sigmund Freud demonstrably engaged Virgil’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Aeneid
Virgil · 19 BCE
Ancient RomeThe influenced
The Interpretation of Dreams
Sigmund Freud · 1900
ModernRelevance
8/10
On The Interpretation of Dreams’s page
- Open The Interpretation of Dreams and Virgil greets you — Freud's epigraph is a line from the Aeneid, "Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo"
- He chose it deliberately, to picture the repressed impulses forcing their way up — the unconscious as an underworld stirred
- The whole metaphor borrows the Aeneid's map of the dead; knowing where the line comes from sharpens what Freud meant by it
On The Aeneid’s page
- Freud crowned his most famous book with a line from the Aeneid — Acheronta movebo, "I will move the underworld" — printed as the epigraph
- He cast the descent into the unconscious as Virgil's descent into the dead, the repressed surging up where the gods above won't yield
- Virgil supplied the motto for psychoanalysis: if I cannot bend the heavens, I will stir the underworld