The Condensation of the Secret: Dream Analysis and the Literary Fragment

In this article I read Freud's theory of dream condensation alongside Blanchot and Derrida's analysis of the literary fragment. Both these thinkers describe how an imperturbable secret provides an excess that calls out for a response. I thus analyze the structure of dream interpretation as one where the latent dream thoughts respond to a call imbedded in the condensed dream-content. Through a deconstructive reading of Freud and a quote by Nietzsche, I argue that the structure of this call is the condensation of the secret, which is both a mark and occurrence of forgetting.