How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #7
The content of the dream had to find a form which would enable it to express both the delusions of inferiority and the megalomania in the same material. The compromise between them produced an ambiguous dream-content; but it also resulted in an indifferent feeling-tone owing to the mutual inhibition of these contrary impulses. (6.9.24)
These comments also apply to Freud's Dream of the "Augean Stables." Although the sight of so much number two in the dream didn't produce any feelings of disgust or revulsion, Freud interprets the objectively repulsive content of the dream as an expression of the self-loathing that he had been feeling earlier that day. As the dream demonstrates, Freud's deep ambition went hand-in-hand with his anxious concern that his methods would not be praised and valued—that, in fact, they might be seen as worthless.
Quote #8
Since those days I have become an "analyst," and I now carry out analyses which are very highly spoken of, though it is true that they are "psycho-analyses." It was now clear to me: if I have grown proud of carrying out analyses of that kind in my daytime life and feel inclined to boast to myself of how successful I have become, my dreams remind me during the night of those other, unsuccessful analyses of which I have no reason to feel proud. (6.9.37)
As Freud begins to develop a theory of "punishment" dreams, he asks why it is that he frequently dreams of his time as a young doctor employed in a chemistry lab. Freud felt that he had never become "proficient" in chemistry, and he describes that time as a "barren and indeed humiliating episode in my apprenticeship" (6.9.37). Luckily for him, his ambition was satisfied in another way—through the success he achieved in his pioneering work as a psychoanalyst.
Quote #9
It must not be forgotten that in interpreting a dream we are opposed by the psychical forces which were responsible for its distortion. It is thus a question of relative strength whether our intellectual interest, our capacity for self-discipline, our psychological knowledge and our practice in interpreting dreams enable us to master our internal resistance. (7.2.22)
Freud makes these comments in a long passage that offers tips and tricks for dream-interpretation, and so it's easy to read them as a bit of not-so-subtle boasting about his own skill as an interpreter of dreams. Freud knew that it would be easy for readers to assume that if his methods didn't work for them, it would be because his theories were wrong. He anticipates that objection by insisting that self-discipline, knowledge, and mastery are key—and by claiming those qualities for himself while he's at it.