[The female gaze and theoretical writing].

Freud's Irma dream and the description of the real events accompanying the dream contained in his letters to Fliess reveal Freud's attempt to contain a traumatic experience of childhood by means of effacement and reversal. The seemingly weak patient Emma Eckstein (Irma) proves to be strong; the reversal is to the credit of the distorting (male) scientific description; the gaze upon the female experiential world is to be effaced.