The Interpretation of Dreams (1900 [1899]) occupies a nodal place in the convoluted genealogy of understanding in the West. Some of its main readings have emphasized the concept of language and its structural analogy with the unconscious. Without questioning the validity of these readings, we propose a reading –not excluding, but alternative– that starts, on the one hand, from the notion of language as lingua or idioma and, on the other, from that of the image of thinking.