CHAPTER FIVE (Continued...)
B. Infantile Experiences as the Source of Dreams
As the third of the peculiarities of the dream-content,
we have adduced the fact, in agreement with all other writers on the
subject (excepting Robert), that impressions from our childhood may appear
in dreams, which do not seem to be at the disposal of the waking memory.
It is, of course, difficult to decide how seldom or how frequently this
occurs, because after waking the origin of the respective elements of the
dream is not recognized. The proof that we are dealing with impressions of
our childhood must thus be adduced objectively, and only in rare instances
do the conditions favor such proof. The story is told by A. Maury, as
being particularly conclusive, of a man who decides to visit his
birthplace after an absence of twenty years. On the night before his
departure he dreams that he is in a totally unfamiliar locality, and that
he there meets a strange man with whom he holds a conversation.
Subsequently, upon his return home, he is able to convince himself that
this strange locality really exists in the vicinity of his home, and the
strange man in the dream turns out to be a friend of his dead father's,
who is living in the town. This is, of course, a conclusive proof that in
his childhood he had seen both the man and the locality. The dream,
moreover, is to be interpreted as a dream of impatience, like the dream of
the girl who carries in her pocket the ticket for a concert, the dream of
the child whose father had promised him an excursion to the Hameau (ch.
III), and so forth. The motives which reproduce just these impressions of
childhood for the dreamer cannot, of course, be discovered without
analysis.
One of my colleagues, who attended my lectures, and who
boasted that his dreams were very rarely subject to distortion, told me
that he had sometime previously seen, in a dream, his former tutor in bed
with his nurse, who had remained in the household until his eleventh year.
The actual location of this scene was realized even in the dream. As he
was greatly interested, he related the dream to his elder brother, who
laughingly confirmed its reality. The brother said that he remembered the
affair very distinctly, for he was six years old at the time. The lovers
were in the habit of making him, the elder boy, drunk with beer whenever
circumstances were favorable to their nocturnal intercourse. The younger
child, our dreamer, at that time three years of age, slept in the same
room as the nurse, but was not regarded as an obstacle.
In yet another case it may be definitely established,
without the aid of dream-interpretation, that the dream contains elements
from childhood- namely, if the dream is a so-called perennial dream, one
which, being first dreamt in childhood, recurs again and again in adult
years. I may add a few examples of this sort to those already known,
although I have no personal knowledge of perennial dreams. A physician, in
his thirties, tells me that a yellow lion, concerning which he is able to
give the precisest information, has often appeared in his dream-life, from
his earliest childhood up to the present day. This lion, known to him from
his dreams, was one day discovered in natura, as a longforgotten china
animal. The young man then learned from his mother that the lion had been
his favorite toy in early childhood, a fact which he himself could no
longer remember.
If we now turn from the manifest dream-content to the
dream-thoughts which are revealed only on analysis, the experiences of
childhood may be found to recur even in dreams whose content would not
have led us to suspect anything of the sort. I owe a particularly
delightful and instructive example of such a dream
to my esteemed colleague of the "yellow lion." After
reading Nansen's account of his polar expedition, he dreamt that he was
giving the intrepid explorer electrical treatment on an ice-floe for the
sciatica of which the latter complained! During the analysis of this dream
he remembered an incident of his childhood, without which the dream would
be wholly unintelligible. When he was three or four years of age he was
one day listening attentively to the conversation of his elders; they were
talking of exploration, and he presently asked his father whether
exploration was a bad illness. He had apparently confounded Reisen
(journey, trips) with Reissen (gripes, tearing pains), and the derision of
his brothers and sisters prevented his ever forgetting the humiliating
experience.
We have a precisely similar case when, in the analysis
of the dream of the monograph on the genus cyclamen, I stumble upon a
memory, retained from childhood, to the effect that when I was five years
old my father allowed me to destroy a book embellished with colored
plates. It will perhaps be doubted whether this recollection really
entered into the composition of the dream content, and it may be suggested
that the connection was established subsequently by the analysis. But the
abundance and intricacy of the associative connections vouch for the truth
of my explanation: cyclamen- favorite flower- favorite dish- artichoke;
to pick to pieces like an artichoke, leaf by leaf (a phrase which at that
time one heard daily, a propos of the dividing up of the Chinese empire);
herbarium- bookworm, whose favorite food is books. I can further assure
the reader that the ultimate meaning of the dream, which I have not given
here, is most intimately connected with the content of the scene of
childish destruction.
In another series of dreams we learn from analysis that
the very wish which has given rise to the dream, and whose fulfillment the
dream proves to be, has itself originated in childhood, so that one is
astonished to find that the child with all his impulses survives in the
dream.
I shall now continue the interpretation of a dream
which has already proved instructive: I refer to the dream in which my
friend R is my uncle. We have carried its interpretation far enough for
the wish-motive- the wish to be appointed professor- to assert itself
palpably; and we have explained the affection felt for my friend R in the
dream as the outcome of opposition to, and defiance of, the two colleagues
who appear in the dream-thoughts. Thee dream was my own; I may, therefore,
continue the analysis by stating that I did not feel quite satisfied with
the solution arrived at. I knew that my opinion of these colleagues. who
were so badly treated in my dream-thoughts, would have been expressed in
very different language in my waking life; the intensity of the wish that
I might not share their fate as regards the appointment seemed to me too
slight fully to account for the discrepancy between my dream- opinion and
my waking opinion. If the desire to be addressed by another title were
really so intense, it would be proof of a morbid ambition, which I do not
think I cherish, and which I believe I was far from entertaining. I do not
know how others who think they know me would judge me; perhaps I really
was ambitious; but if I was, my ambition has long since been transferred
to objects other than the rank and title of Professor extraordinarius.
Whence, then, the ambition which the dream has ascribed
to me? Here I am reminded of a story which I heard often in my childhood,
that at my birth an old peasant woman had prophesied to my happy mother
(whose first-born I was) that she had brought a great man into the world.
Such prophecies must be made very
frequently; there are so many happy and expectant
mothers, and so many old peasant women, and other old women who, since
their mundane powers have deserted them, turn their eyes toward the
future; and the prophetess is not likely to suffer for her prophecies. Is
it possible that my thirst for greatness has originated from this source?
But here I recollect an impression from the later years of my childhood,
which might serve even better as an explanation. One evening, at a
restaurant on the Prater, where my parents were accustomed to take me when
I was eleven or twelve years of age, we noticed a man who was going from
table to table and, for a small sum, improvising verses upon any subject
that was given him. I was sent to bring the poet to our table, and he
showed his gratitude. Before asking for a subject he threw off a few
rhymes about myself, and told us that if he could trust his inspiration I
should probably one day become a minister. I can still distinctly remember
the impression produced by this second prophecy. It was in the days of the
"bourgeois Ministry"; my father had recently brought home the portraits of
the bourgeois university graduates, Herbst, Giskra, Unger, Berger and
others, and we illuminated the house in their honor. There were even Jews
among them; so that every diligent Jewish schoolboy carried a ministerial
portfolio in his satchel. The impression of that time must be responsible
for the fact that until shortly before I went to the university I wanted
to study jurisprudence, and changed my mind only at the last moment. A
medical man has no chance of becoming a minister. And now for my dream: It
is only now that I begin to see that it translates me from the somber
present to the hopeful days of the bourgeois Ministry, and completely
fulfils what was then my youthful ambition. In treating my two estimable
and learned colleagues, merely because they are Jews, so badly, one as
though he were a simpleton and the other as though he were a criminal, I
am acting as though I were the Minister; I have put myself in his place.
What a revenge I take upon his Excellency! He refuses to appoint me
Professor extraordinarius, and so in my dream I put myself in his place.
In another case I note the fact that although the wish
that excites the dream is a contemporary wish it is nevertheless greatly
reinforced by memories of childhood. I refer to a series of dreams which
are based on the longing to go to Rome. For a long time to come I shall
probably have to satisfy this longing by means of dreams, since, at the
season of the year when I should be able to travel, Rome is to be avoided
for reasons of health. * Thus I once dreamt that I saw the Tiber and the
bridge of Sant' Angelo from the window of a railway carriage; presently
the train started, and I realized that I had never entered the city at
all. The view that appeared in the dream was modeled after a well-known
engraving which I had casually noticed the day before in the drawing-room
of one of my patients. In another dream someone took me up a hill and
showed me Rome half shrouded in mist, and so distant that I was astonished
at the distinctness of the view. The content of this dream is too rich to
be fully reported here. The motive, "to see the promised land afar," is
here easily recognizable. The city which I thus saw in the mist is Lubeck;
the original of the hill is the Gleichenberg. In a third dream I am at
last in Rome. To my disappointment the scenery is anything but urban: it
consists of a little stream of black water, on one side of which are black
rocks, while on the other are meadows with large white flowers. I notice a
certain Herr Zucker (with whom I am superficially acquainted), and resolve
to ask him to show me the way into the city. It is obvious that I am
trying in vain to see in my dream a city which I have never seen in my
waking life. If I resolve the landscape into its elements, the white
flowers point to Ravenna, which is known to me, and which once, for a
time, replaced Rome as the capital of Italy. In the marshes around Ravenna
we had found the most beautiful water-lilies in the midst of black pools
of water; the dream makes them grow in the meadows, like the narcissi of
our own Aussee, because we found it so troublesome to cull them from the
water. The black rock so close to the water vividly recalls the valley of
the Tepl at Karlsbad. Karlsbad now enables me to account for the peculiar
circumstance that I ask Herr Zucker to show me the way. In the material of
which the dream is woven I am able to recognize two of those amusing
Jewish anecdotes which conceal such profound and, at times, such bitter
worldly wisdom, and which we are so fond of quoting in our letters and
conversation. One is the story of the constitution; it tells how a poor
Jew sneaks into the Karlsbad express without a ticket; how he is detected,
and is treated more and more harshly by the conductor at each succeeding
call for tickets; and how, when a friend whom he meets at one of the
stations during his miserable journey asks him where he is going, he
answers: "To Karlsbad- if my constitution holds out." Associated in memory
with this is another story about a Jew who is ignorant of French, and who
has express instructions to ask in Paris for the Rue Richelieu. Paris was
for many years the goal of my own longing, and I regarded the satisfaction
with which I first set foot on the pavements of Paris as a warrant that I
should attain to the fulfilment of other wishes also. Moreover, asking the
way is a direct allusion to Rome, for, as we know, "all roads lead to
Rome." And further, the name Zucker (sugar) again points to Karlsbad,
whither we send persons afflicted with the constitutional disease,
diabetes (Zuckerkrankheit, sugardisease.) The occasion for this dream was
the proposal of my Berlin friend that we should meet in Prague at Easter.
A further association with sugar and diabetes might be found in the
matters which I had to discuss with him. -
* I long ago learned that the fulfillment of such wishes
only called for a little courage, and I then became a zealous pilgrim to
Rome. -
A fourth dream, occurring shortly after the
last-mentioned, brings me back to Rome. I see a street corner before me,
and am astonished that so many German placards should be posted there. On
the previous day, when writing to my friend, I had told him, with truly
prophetic vision, that Prague would probably not be a comfortable place
for German travelers. The dream, therefore, expressed simultaneously the
wish to meet him in Rome instead of in the Bohemian capital, and the
desire, which probably originated during my student days, that the German
language might be accorded more tolerance in Prague. As a matter of fact,
I must have understood the Czech language in the first years of my
childhood, for I was born in a small village in Moravia, amidst a Slay
population. A Czech nursery rhyme, which I heard in my seventeenth year,
became, without effort on my part, so imprinted upon my memory that I can
repeat it to this day, although I have no idea of its meaning. Thus in
these dreams also there is no lack of manifold relations to the
impressions of my early childhood.
During my last Italian journey, which took me past Lake
Trasimenus, I at length discovered, after I had seen the Tiber, and had
reluctantly turned back some fifty miles from Rome, what a reinforcement
my longing for the Eternal City had received from the impressions of my
childhood. I had just conceived a plan of traveling to Naples via Rome
the following year when this sentence, which I must have read in one of
our German classics, occurred to me: * "It is a question which of the two
paced to and fro in his room the more impatiently after he had conceived
the plan of going to Rome- Assistant Headmaster Winckelmann or the
great General Hannibal." I myself had walked in
Hannibal's footsteps; like him I was destined never to see Rome, and he
too had gone to Campania when all were expecting him in Rome. Hannibal,
with whom I had achieved this point of similarity, had been my favorite
hero during my years at the Gymnasium; like so many boys of my age, I
bestowed my sympathies in the Punic war not on the Romans, but on the
Carthaginians. Moreover, when I finally came to realize the consequences
of belonging to an alien race, and was forced by the anti-Semitic feeling
among my classmates to take a definite stand, the figure of the Semitic
commander assumed still greater proportions in my imagination. Hannibal
and Rome symbolized, in my youthful eyes, the struggle between the
tenacity of the Jews and the organization of the Catholic Church. The
significance for our emotional life which the anti-Semitic movement has
since assumed helped to fix the thoughts and impressions of those earlier
days. Thus the desire to go to Rome has in my dream- life become the mask
and symbol for a number of warmly cherished wishes, for whose realization
one had to work with the tenacity and single-mindedness of the Punic
general, though their fulfillment at times seemed as remote as Hannibal's
life-long wish to enter Rome. -
* The writer in whose works I found this passage was
probably Jean Paul Richter. -
And now, for the first time, I happened upon the
youthful experience which even to-day still expresses its power in all
these emotions and dreams. I might have been ten or twelve years old when
my father began to take me with him on his walks, and in his conversation
to reveal his views on the things of this world. Thus it was that he once
told me the following incident, in order to show me that I had been born
into happier times than he: "When I was a young man, I was walking one
Saturday along the street in the village where you were born; I was
well-dressed, with a new fur cap on my head. Up comes a Christian, who
knocks my cap into the mud, and shouts, 'Jew, get off the pavement!'"-
"And what did you do?"- "I went into the street and picked up the cap," he
calmly replied. That did not seem heroic on the part of the big, strong
man who was leading me, a little fellow, by the hand. I contrasted this
situation, which did not please me, with another, more in harmony with my
sentiments- the scene in which Hannibal's father, Hamilcar Barcas, made
his son swear before the household altar to take vengeance on the Romans.
* Ever since then Hannibal has had a place in my phantasies. -
* In the first edition of this book I gave here the
name "Hasdrubal," an amazing error, which I explained in my Psycho
pathology of Everyday Life. -
I think I can trace my enthusiasm for the Carthaginian
general still further back into my childhood, so that it is probably only
an instance of an already established emotional relation being transferred
to a new vehicle. One of the first books which fell into my childish hands
after I learned to read was Thiers' Consulate and Empire. I remember that
I pasted on the flat backs of my wooden soldiers little labels bearing the
names of the Imperial marshals, and that at that time Massena (as a Jew,
Menasse) was already my avowed favorite. * This preference is doubtless
also to be explained by the fact of my having been born, a hundred years
later, on the same date. Napoleon himself is associated with Hannibal
through the crossing of the Alps. And perhaps the development of this
martial ideal may be traced yet farther back, to the first three years of
my childhood, to wishes which my alternately friendly and hostile
relations with a boy a year older than myself must have evoked in the
weaker of the two playmates. -
* The Jewish descent of the Marshal is somewhat
doubtful. -
The deeper we go into the analysis of dreams, the more
often are we put on the track of childish experiences which play the part
of dream-sources in the latent dream-content.
We have learned that dreams very rarely reproduce
memories in such a manner as to constitute, unchanged and unabridged, the
sole manifest dream-content. Nevertheless, a few authentic examples which
show such reproduction have been recorded, and I can add a few new ones,
which once more refer to scenes of childhood. In the case of one of my
patients a dream once gave a barely distorted reproduction of a sexual
incident, which was immediately recognized as an accurate recollection.
The memory of it had never been completely lost in the waking life, but it
had been greatly obscured, and it was revivified by the previous work of
analysis. The dreamer had at the age of twelve visited a bedridden
schoolmate, who had exposed himself, probably only by a chance movement in
bed. At the sight of the boy's genitals he was seized by a kind of
compulsion, exposed himself, and took hold of the member of the other boy
who, however, looked at him in surprise and indignation, whereupon he
became embarrassed and let it go. A dream repeated this scene twenty-three
years later, with all the details of the accompanying emotions, changing
it, however, in this respect, that the dreamer played the passive instead
of the active role, while the person of the schoolmate was replaced by a
contemporary.
As a rule, of course, a scene from childhood is
represented in the manifest dream-content only by an allusion, and must be
disentangled from the dream by interpretation. The citation of examples of
this kind cannot be very convincing, because any guarantee that they are
really experiences of childhood is lacking; if they belong to an earlier
period of life, they are no longer recognized by our memory. The
conclusion that such childish experiences recur at all in dreams is
justified in psychoanalytic work by a great number of factors, which in
their combined results appear to be sufficiently reliable. But when, for
the purposes of dream-interpretation, such references to childish
experiences are torn out of their context, they may not perhaps seem very
impressive, especially where I do not even give all the material upon
which the interpretation is based. However, I shall not let this deter me
from giving a few examples. -
I.
With one of my female patients all dreams have the
character of hurry; she is hurrying so as to be in time, so as not to miss
her train, and so on. In one dream she has to visit a girl friend; her
mother had told her to ride and not walk; she runs, however, and keeps on
calling. The material that emerged in the analysis allowed one to
recognize a memory of childish romping, and, especially for one dream,
went back to the popular childish game of rapidly repeating the words of a
sentence as though it was all one word. All these harmless jokes with
little friends were remembered because they replaced other less harmless
ones. * -
* In the original this paragraph contains many plays on
the word
Hetz (hurry, chase, scurry, game, etc.).- TR. -
II.
The following dream was dreamed by another female
patient: She is in a large room in which there are all sorts of machines;
it is rather like what she would imagine an orthopedic institute to
be. She hears that I am pressed for time, and that she
must undergo treatment along with five others. But she resists, and is
unwilling to lie down on the bed- or whatever it is- which is intended for
her. She stands in a corner, and waits for me to say "It is not true." The
others, meanwhile, laugh at her, saying it is all foolishness on her part.
At the same time, it is as though she were called upon to make a number of
little squares.
The first part of the content of this dream is an
allusion to the treatment and to the transference to myself. The second
contains an allusion to a scene of childhood; the two portions are
connected by the mention of the bed. The orthopedic institute is an
allusion to one of my talks, in which I compared the treatment, with
regard to its duration and its nature. to an orthopedic treatment. At the
beginning of the treatment I had to tell her that for the present I had
little time to give her, but that later on I would devote a whole hour to
her daily. This aroused in her the old sensitiveness, which is a leading
characteristic of children who are destined to become hysterical. Their
desire for love is insatiable. My patient was the youngest of six brothers
and sisters (hence, with five others), and as such her father's favorite,
but in spite of this she seems to have felt that her beloved father
devoted far too little time and attention to her. Her waiting for me to
say It is not trite was derived as follows: A little tailor's apprentice
had brought her a dress, and she had given him the money for it. Then she
asked her husband whether she would have to pay the money again if the boy
were to lose it. To tease her, her husband answered "Yes" (the teasing in
the dream), and she asked again and again, and waited for him to say "It
is not true." The thought of the latent dream- content may now be
construed as follows: Will she have to pay me double the amount when I
devote twice as much time to her?- a thought which is stingy or filthy
(the uncleanliness of childhood is often replaced in dreams by greed for
money; the word filthy here supplies the bridge). If all the passage
referring to her waiting until I say It is not true is intended in the
dream as a circumlocution for the word dirty, the standing-in-the-corner
and not lying-down-on-the-bed are in keeping with this word, as component
parts of a scene of her childhood in which she had soiled her bed, in
punishment for which she was put into the corner, with a warning that papa
would not love her any more, whereupon her brothers and sisters laughed at
her, etc. The little squares refer to her young niece, who showed her the
arithmetical trick of writing figures in nine squares (I think) in such a
way that on being added together in any direction they make fifteen.
III.
Here is a man's dream: He sees two boys tussling with
each other; they are cooper's boys, as he concludes from the tools which
are lying about; one of the boys has thrown the other down; the prostrate
boy is wearing ear-rings with blue stones. He runs towards the assailant
with lifted cane, in order to chastise him. The boy takes refuge behind a
woman, as though she were his mother, who is standing against a wooden
fence. She is the wife of a day-laborer, and she turns her back to the
man who is dreaming. Finally she turns about and stares at him with a
horrible look, so that he runs away in terror; the red flesh of the lower
lid seems to stand out from her eyes.
This dream has made abundant use of trivial occurrences
from the previous day, in the course of which he actually saw two boys in
the street, one of whom threw the other down. When he walked up to them in
order to settle the quarrel, both of them took to their heels. Cooper's
boys- this is explained only by a
subsequent dream, in the analysis of which he used the
proverbial expression: "To knock the bottom out of the barrel." Ear-rings
with blue stones, according to his observation, are worn chiefly by
prostitutes. This suggests a familiar doggerel rhyme about two boys: "The
other boy was called Marie": that is, he was a girl. The woman standing by
the fence: after the scene with the two boys he went for a walk along the
bank of the Danube and, taking advantage of being alone, urinated against
a wooden fence. A little farther on a respectably dressed, elderly lady
smiled at him very pleasantly and wanted to hand him her card with her
address.
Since, in the dream, the woman stood as he had stood
while urinating, there is an allusion to a woman urinating, and this
explains the horrible look and the prominence of the red flesh, which can
only refer to the genitals gaping in a squatting posture; seen in
childhood, they had appeared in later recollection as proud flesh, as a
wound. The dream unites two occasions upon which, as a little boy, the
dreamer was enabled to see the genitals of little girls, once by throwing
the little girl down, and once while the child was urinating; and, as is
shown by another association, he had retained in his memory the punishment
administered or threatened by his father on account of these
manifestations of sexual curiosity. -
IV.
A great mass of childish memories, which have been
hastily combined into a phantasy, may be found behind the following dream
of an elderly lady: She goes out in a hurry to do some shopping. On the
Graben she sinks to her knees as though she had broken down. A number of
people collect around her, especially cabdrivers, but no one helps her to
get up. She makes many vain attempts; finally she must have succeeded, for
she is put into a cab which is to take her home. A large, heavily laden
basket (something like a market- basket) is thrown after her through the
window.
This is the woman who is always harassed in her dreams;
just as she used to be harassed when a child. The first situation of the
dream is apparently taken from the sight of a fallen horse; just as broken
down points to horse-racing. In her youth she was a rider; still earlier
she was probably also a horse. With the idea of falling down is connected
her first childish reminiscence of the seventeen-year-old son of the hall
porter, who had an epileptic seizure in the street and was brought home in
a cab. Of this, of course, she had only heard, but the idea of epileptic
fits, of falling down, acquired a great influence over her phantasies, and
later on influenced the form of her own hysterical attacks. When a person
of the female sex dreams of falling, this almost always has a sexual
significance; she becomes a fallen woman, and, for the purpose of the
dream under consideration, this interpretation is probably the least
doubtful, for she falls in the Graben, the street in Vienna which is known
as the concourse of prostitutes. The market-basket admits of more than one
interpretation; in the sense of refusal (German, Korb = basket = snub,
refusal) it reminds her of the many snubs which she at first administered
to her suitors and which, she thinks, she herself received later. This
agrees with the detail: no one will help her up, which she herself
interprets as being disdained. Further, the market-basket recalls
phantasies which have already appeared in the course of analysis, in which
she imagines that she has married far beneath her station and now goes to
the market as a market-woman. Lastly, the market- basket might be
interpreted as the mark of a servant. This suggests further memories of
her childhood- of a cook who was discharged because she stole; she, too,
sank to her knees and begged for mercy. The dreamer was at that time
twelve years of age. Then emerges a recollection of a chamber-maid, who
was dismissed because she had an affair with the coachman of the
household, who, incidentally, married her afterwards. This recollection,
therefore, gives us a clue to the cab-drivers in the dream (who, in
opposition to the reality, do not stand by the fallen woman). But there
still remains to be explained the throwing of the basket; in particular,
why it is thrown through the window? This reminds her of the forwarding of
luggage by rail, to the custom of Fensterln * in the country, and to
trivial impressions of a summer resort, of a gentleman who threw some blue
plums into the window of a lady's room, and of her little sister, who was
frightened because an idiot who was passing looked in at the window. And
now, from behind all this emerges an obscure recollection from her tenth
year of a nurse in the country to whom one of the men-servants made love
(and whose conduct the child may have noticed), and who was sent packing,
thrown out, together with her lover (in the dream we have the expression:
thrown into); an incident which we have been approaching by several other
paths. The luggage or box of a servant is disparagingly described in
Vienna as "seven plums." "Pack up your seven plums and get out!" -
* Fensterln is the custom, now falling into disuse,
found in rural districts of the German Schwarzwald, of lovers who woo
their sweethearts at their bedroom windows, to which they ascend by means
of a ladder, enjoying such intimacy that the relation practically amounts
to a trial marriage. The reputation of the young woman never suffers on
account of Fensterln, unless she becomes intimate with too many suitors.-
TR. -
My collection, of course, contains a plethora of such
patients' dreams, the analysis of which leads back to impressions of
childhood, often dating back to the first three years of life, which are
remembered obscurely, or not at all. But it is a questionable proceeding
to draw conclusions from these and apply them to dreams in general, for
they are mostly dreams of neurotic, and especially hysterical, persons;
and the part played in these dreams by childish scenes might be
conditioned by the nature of the neurosis, and not by the nature of dreams
in general. In the interpretation of my own dreams, however, which is
assuredly not undertaken on account of grave symptoms of illness, it
happens just as frequently that in the latent dream content I am
unexpectedly confronted with a scene of my childhood, and that a whole
series of my dreams will suddenly converge upon the paths proceeding from
a single childish experience. I have already given examples of this, and I
shall give yet more in different connections. Perhaps I cannot close this
chapter more fittingly than by citing several dreams of my own, in which
recent events and long-forgotten experiences of my childhood appear
together as dream-sources.
I.
After I have been traveling, and have gone to bed
hungry and tired, the prime necessities of life begin to assert their
claims in sleep, and I dream as follows: I go into a kitchen in order to
ask for some pudding. There three women are standing, one of whom is the
hostess; she is rolling something in her hands, as though she were making
dumplings. She replies that I must wait until she has finished (not
distinctly as a speech). I become impatient, and go away affronted. I want
to put on an overcoat; but the first I try on is too long. I take it off,
and am somewhat astonished to find that it is trimmed with fur. A second
coat has a long strip of cloth with a Turkish design sewn into it. A
stranger with a long face and a short, pointed beard comes up and
prevents me from putting it on, declaring that it
belongs to him. I now show him that it is covered all over with Turkish
embroideries. He asks: "How do the Turkish (drawings, strips of cloth...)
concern you?" But we soon become quite friendly.
In the analysis of this dream I remember, quite
unexpectedly, the first novel which I ever read, or rather, which I began
to read from the end of the first volume, when I was perhaps thirteen
years of age. I have never learned the name of the novel, or that of its
author, but the end remains vividly in my memory. The hero becomes insane,
and continually calls out the names of the three women who have brought
the greatest happiness and the greatest misfortune into his life. Pelagie
is one of these names. I still do not know what to make of this
recollection during the analysis. Together with the three women there now
emerge the three Parcae, who spin the fates of men, and I know that one of
the three women, the hostess in the dream, is the mother who gives life,
and who, moreover, as in my own case, gives the child its first
nourishment. Love and hunger meet at the mother's breast. A young man- so
runs an anecdote- who became a great admirer of womanly beauty, once
observed, when the conversation turned upon the handsome wet-nurse who had
suckled him as a child, that he was sorry that he had not taken better
advantage of his opportunities. I am in the habit of using the anecdote to
elucidate the factor of retrospective tendencies in the mechanism of the
psychoneuroses. One of the Parcae, then, is rubbing the palms of her hands
together, as though she were making dumplings. A strange occupation for
one of the Fates, and urgently in need of explanation! This explanation is
furnished by another and earlier memory of my childhood. When I was six
years old, and receiving my first lessons from my mother, I was expected
to believe that we are made of dust, and must, therefore, return to dust.
But this did not please me, and I questioned the doctrine. Thereupon my
mother rubbed the palms of her hands together-just as in making dumplings,
except that there was no dough between them- and showed me the blackish
scales of epidermis which were thus rubbed off, as a proof that it is of
dust that we are made. Great was my astonishment at this demonstration ad
oculos, and I acquiesced in the idea which I was later to hear expressed
in the words: "Thou owest nature a death." * Thus the women to whom I go
in the kitchen, as I so often did in my childhood when I was hungry and my
mother, sitting by the fire, admonished me to wait until lunch was ready,
are really the Parcae. And now for the dumplings! At least one of my
teachers at the University- the very one to whom I am indebted for my
histological knowledge (epidermis)- would be reminded by the name Knodl
(Knodl means dumpling), of a person whom he had to prosecute for
plagiarizing his writings. Committing a plagiarism, taking anything one
can lay hands on, even though it belongs to another, obviously leads to
the second part of the dream, in which I am treated like the overcoat
thief who for some time plied his trade in the lecture halls. I have
written the word plagiarism- without definite intention- because it
occurred to me, and now I see that it must belong to the latent
dream-content and that it will serve as a bridge between the different
parts of the manifest dream-content. The chain of associations- Pelagie-
plagiarism- plagiostomi *(2) (sharks)- fish-bladder- connects the old
novel with the affair of Knodl and the overcoats (German: Uberzieher =
pullover, overcoat or condom), which obviously refer to an appliance
appertaining to the technique of sex. This, it is true, is a very forced
and irrational connection, but it is nevertheless one which I could not
have established in waking life if it had not already been established by
the dream-work. Indeed, as though nothing were sacred to this impulse to
enforce associations, the beloved name, Brucke (bridge of words, see
above), now serves to remind me of the very institute in which I spent my
happiest hours as a
student, wanting for nothing. "So will you at the
breasts of Wisdom every day more pleasure find"), in the most complete
contrast to the desires which plague me (German: plagen) while I dream.
And finally, there emerges the recollection of another dear teacher, whose
name once more sounds like something edible (Fleischl- Fleisch = meat-
like Knodl = dumplings), and of a pathetic scene in which the scales of
epidermis play a part (mother- hostess), and mental derangement (the
novel), and a remedy from the Latin pharmacopeia (Kuche = kitchen) which
numbs the sensation of hunger, namely, cocaine.
* Both the affects pertaining to these childish scenes-
astonishment and resignation to the inevitable- appeared in a dream of
slightly earlier date, which first reminded me of this incident of my
childhood.
*(2) I do not bring in the plagiostomi arbitrarily;
they recall a painful incident of disgrace before the same teacher.
In this manner I could follow the intricate trains of
thought still farther, and could fully elucidate that part of the dream
which is lacking in the analysis; but I must refrain, because the personal
sacrifice which this would involve is too great. I shall take up only one
of the threads, which will serve to lead us directly to one of the
dream-thoughts that lie at the bottom of the medley. The stranger with the
long face and pointed beard, who wants to prevent me from putting on the
overcoat, has the features of a tradesman of Spalato, of whom my wife
bought a great deal of Turkish cloth. His name was Popovic, a suspicious
name, which even gave the humorist Stettenheim a pretext for a suggestive
remark: "He told me his name, and blushingly shook my hand." * For the
rest, I find the same misuse of names as above in the case of Pelagie,
Knodl, Brucke, Fleischl. No one will deny that such playing with names is
a childish trick; if I indulge in it the practice amounts to an act of
retribution, for my own name has often enough been the subject of such
feeble attempts at wit. Goethe once remarked how sensitive a man is in
respect to his name, which he feels that he fills even as he fills his
skin; Herder having written the following lines on his name:
Der du von Gottern abstammst, von Gothen oder vom Kote.
So seid ihr Gotterbilder auch zu Staub. -
[Thou who art born of the gods, of the Goths, or of the
mud. Thus are thy godlike images even dust.]
I realize that this digression on the misuse of names
was intended merely to justify this complaint. But here let us stop....
The purchase at Spalato reminds me of another purchase at Cattaro, where I
was too cautious, and missed the opportunity of making an excellent
bargain. (Missing an opportunity at the breast of the wet- nurse; see
above.) One of the dream-thoughts occasioned by the sensation of hunger
really amounts to this: We should let nothing escape; we should take what
we can get, even if we do a little wrong; we should never let an
opportunity go by; life is so short, and death inevitable. Because this is
meant even sexually, and because desire is unwilling to check itself
before the thought of doing wrong, this philosophy of carpe diem has
reason to fear the censorship, and must conceal itself behind a dream. And
so all sorts of counter-thoughts find expression, with recollections of
the time when spiritual nourishment alone was sufficient for the dreamer,
with hindrances of every kind and even threats of disgusting sexual
punishments.
* Popo = "backside," in German nursery language. -
II.
A second dream requires a longer preliminary statement:
I had driven to the Western Station in order to start
on a holiday trip to the Aussee, but I went on to the platform in time for
the Ischl train, which leaves earlier. There I saw Count Thun, who was
again going to see the Emperor at Ischl. In spite of the rain he arrived
in an open carriage, came straight through the entrance- gate for the
local trains, and with a curt gesture and not a word of explanation he
waved back the gatekeeper, who did not know him and wanted to take his
ticket. After he had left in the Ischl train, I was asked to leave the
platform and return to the waiting- room; but after some difficulty I
obtained permission to remain. I passed the time noting how many people
bribed the officials to secure a compartment; I fully intended to make a
complaint- that is, to demand the same privilege. Meanwhile I sang
something to myself, which I afterwards recognized as the aria from The
Marriage of Figaro: -
If my lord Count would tread a measure, tread a
measure, Let him but say his pleasure,
And I will play the tune. -
(Possibly another person would not have recognized the
tune.) The whole evening I was in a high-spirited, pugnacious mood; I
chaffed the waiter and the cab-driver, I hope without hurting their
feelings; and now all kinds of bold and revolutionary thoughts came into
my mind, such as would fit themselves to the words of Figaro, and to
memories of Beaumarchais' comedy, of which I had seen a performance at the
Comedie Francaise. The
speech about the great men who have taken the trouble
to be born; the seigneurial right which Count Almaviva wishes to exercise
with regard to Susanne; the jokes which our malicious Opposition
journalists make on the name of Count Thun (German, thun = do), calling
him Graf Nichtsthun, Count-Do-Nothing. I really do not envy him; he now
has a difficult audience with the Emperor before him, and it is I who am
the real Count-Do-Nothing, for I am going off for a holiday. I make all
sorts of amusing plans for the vacation. Now a gentleman arrives whom I
know as a Government representative at the medical examinations, and who
has won the flattering nickname of "the Governmental bed-fellow"
(literally, by-sleeper) by his activities in this capacity. By insisting
on his official status he secured half a first-class compartment, and I
heard one guard say to another: "Where are we going to put the gentleman
with the first-class half-compartment?" A pretty sort of favoritism! I am
paying for a whole first-class compartment. I did actually get a whole
compartment to myself, but not in a through carriage, so there was no
lavatory at my disposal during the night. My complaints to the guard were
fruitless; I revenged myself by suggesting that at least a hole be made in
the floor of this compartment, to serve the possible needs of passengers.
At a quarter to three in the morning I wake, with an urgent desire to
urinate, from the following dream:
A crowd, a students' meeting.... A certain Count (Thun
or Taaffe) is making a speech. Being asked to say something about the
Germans, he declares, with a contemptuous gesture, that their favorite
flower is coltsfoot, and he then puts into his buttonhole something like a
torn leaf, really the crumpled skeleton of a leaf. I jump up, and I jump
up, * but I am surprised at my implied attitude. Then, more indistinctly:
It seems as though this were the vestibule (Aula); the exits are thronged,
and one must escape. I make my way through a suite of handsomely appointed
rooms, evidently ministerial apartments, with furniture of a color between
brown and violet, and at last I come to a corridor in which a housekeeper,
a fat, elderly woman, is seated. I try to avoid speaking to her, but she
apparently thinks I have a right to pass this way, because she asks
whether she shall accompany me with the lamp. I indicate with a gesture,
or tell her, that she is to remain standing on the stairs, and it seems to
me that I am very clever, for after all I am evading detection. Now I am
downstairs, and I find a narrow, steeply rising path, which I follow.
* This repetition has crept into the text of the dream,
apparently through absent-mindedness, and I have left it because analysis
shows that it has a meaning.
Again indistinctly: It is as though my second task were
to get away from the city, just as my first was to get out of the
building. I am riding in a one-horse cab, and I tell the driver to take me
to a railway station. "I can't drive with you on the railway line itself,"
I say, when he reproaches me as though I had tired him out. Here it seems
as though I had already made a journey in his cab which is usually made by
rail. The stations are crowded; I am wondering whether to go to Krems or
to Znaim, but I reflect that the Court will be there, and I decide in
favor of Graz or some such place. Now I am seated in the railway
carriage, which is rather like a tram, and I have in my buttonhole a
peculiar long braided thing, on which are violet-brown violets of stiff
material, which makes a great impression on people. Here the scene breaks
off.
I am once more in front of the railway station, but I
am in the company of an elderly gentleman. I think out a scheme for
remaining unrecognized, but I see this plan already being carried out.
Thinking and experiencing are here, as it were, the same thing. He
pretends to be blind, at least in one eye, and I hold before him a male
glass urinal (which we have to buy in the city, or have bought). I am thus
a sick-nurse, and have to give him the urinal because he is blind. If the
conductor sees us in this position, he must pass us by without drawing
attention to us. At the same time the position of the elderly man, and his
urinating organ, is plastically perceived. Then I wake with a desire to
urinate.
The whole dream seems a sort of phantasy, which takes
the dreamer back to the year of revolution, 1848, the memory of which had
been revived by the jubilee of 1898, as well as by a little excursion to
Wachau, on which I visited Emmersdorf, the refuge of the student leader
Fischof, * to whom several features of the manifest dream- content might
refer. The association of ideas then leads me to England, to the house of
my brother, who used in jest to twit his wife with the title of Tennyson's
poem Fifty Years Ago, whereupon the children were used to correct him:
Fifteen Years Ago. This phantasy, however, which attaches itself to the
thoughts evoked by the sight of Count Thun, is, like the facade of an
Italian church, without organic connection with the structure behind it,
but unlike such a facade it is full of gaps, and confused, and in many
places portions of the interior break through. The first situation of the
dream is made up of a number of scenes, into which I am able to dissect
it. The arrogant attitude of the Count in the dream is copied from a scene
at my school which occurred in my fifteenth year. We had hatched a
conspiracy against an unpopular and ignorant teacher; the leading spirit
in this conspiracy was a schoolmate who since that time seems to have
taken Henry VIII of England as his model. It fell to me to carry out the
coup d'etat, and a discussion of the importance of the Danube (German,
Donau) to Austria (Wachau!) was the occasion of an open revolt. One of our
fellow-conspirators was our only aristocratic schoolmate- he was called
"the giraffe" on account of his conspicuous height- and while he was being
reprimanded by the tyrant of the school, the professor of the German
language, he stood just as the Count stood in the dream. The explanation
of the favorite flower, and the putting into a button-hole of something
that must have been a flower (which recalls the orchids which I had given
that day to a friend, and also a rose of Jericho) prominently recalls the
incident in Shakespeare's historical play which opens the civil wars of
the Red and the White Roses; the mention of Henry VIII has paved the way
to this reminiscence. Now it is not very far from roses to red and white
carnations. (Meanwhile two little rhymes, the one German, the other
Spanish, insinuate themselves into the analysis: Rosen, Tulpen, Nelken,
alle Blumen welken, *(2) and Isabelita, no llores, que se marchitan las
flores. *(3) The Spanish line occurs in Figaro.) Here in Vienna white
carnations have become the badge of the Anti-Semites, red ones of the
Social Democrats. Behind this is the recollection of an anti-Semitic
challenge during a railway journey in beautiful Saxony (Anglo Saxon). The
third scene contributing to the formation of the first situation in the
dream dates from my early student days. There was a debate in a German
students' club about the relation of philosophy to the general sciences.
Being a green youth, full of materialistic doctrines, I thrust myself
forward in order to defend an extremely one-sided position. Thereupon a
sagacious older fellow- student, who has since then shown his capacity for
leading men and organizing the masses, and who, moreover, bears a name
belonging to the animal kingdom, rose and gave us a thorough
dressing-down; he too, he said, had herded swine in his youth, and had
then returned repentant to his father's house. I jumped up (as in the
dream), became piggishly rude, and retorted that since I knew he had
herded swine, I was not surprised at the tone of his discourse. (In the
dream I am surprised at my German Nationalistic feelings.) There was a
great commotion, and an almost general demand that I should retract my
words, but I stood my ground. The insulted student was too sensible to
take the advice which was offered him, that he should send me a challenge,
and let the matter drop. -
* This is an error and not a slip, for I learned later
that the Emmersdorf in Wachau is not identical with the refuge of the
revolutionist Fischof, a place of the same name.
*(2) Roses, tulips, and carnations, flowers all will
wither.
*(3) Do not cry, little Isabella because your flowers
have faded.
The remaining elements of this scene of the dream are
of more remote origin. What does it mean that the Count should make a
scornful reference to coltsfoot? Here I must question my train of
associations. Coltsfoot (German: Huflattich), Lattice (lettuce), Salathund
(the dog that grudges others what he cannot eat himself). Here plenty of
opprobrious epithets may be discerned: Gir-affe (German: Affe = monkey,
ape), pig, sow, dog; I might even arrive, by way of the name, at donkey,
and thereby pour contempt upon an academic professor. Furthermore, I
translate coltsfoot (Huflattich)- I do not know whether I do so correctly-
by pisse-en-lit. I get this idea from Zola's Germinal, in which some
children are told to bring some dandelion salad with them. The dog- chien-
has a name sounding not unlike the verb for the major function (chier, as
pisser stands for the minor one). Now we shall soon have the indecent in
all its three physical categories, for in the same Germinal, which deals
with the future revolution, there is a description of a very peculiar
contest, which relates to the production of the gaseous excretions known
as flatus. * And now I cannot but observe how the way to this flatus has
been prepared a long while since, beginning with the flowers, and
proceeding to the Spanish rhyme of Isabelita, to Ferdinand and Isabella,
and, by way of Henry VIII, to English history at the time of the Armada,
after the victorious termination of which the English struck a medal with
the inscription: Flavit et dissipati sunt, for the storm had scattered the
Spanish fleet. *(2) I had thought of using this phrase, half jestingly, as
the title of a chapter on "Therapy," if I should ever succeed in giving a
detailed account of my conception and treatment of hysteria. -
* Not in Germinal, but in La Terre- a mistake of which
I became aware only in the analysis. Here I would call attention to the
identity of letters in Huflattich and Flatus.
*(2) An unsolicited biographer, Dr. F. Wittels,
reproaches me for having omitted the name of Jehovah from the above motto.
The English medal contains the name of the Deity, in Hebrew letters, on
the background of a cloud, and placed in such a manner that one may
equally well regard it as part of the picture or as part of the
inscription.
I cannot give so detailed an interpretation of the
second scene of the dream, out of sheer regard for the censorship. For at
this point I put myself in the place of a certain eminent gentleman of the
revolutionary period, who had an adventure with an eagle (German: Adler)
and who is said to have suffered from incontinence of the bowels,
incontinentia and, etc.; and here I believe that I should not be justified
in passing the censorship, even though it was an aulic councillor (aula,
consiliarizis aulicus) who told me the greater part of this history. The
suite of rooms in the dream is suggested by his Excellency's private
saloon carriage, into which I was able to glance; but it means, as it so
often does in dreams, a woman. * The personality of the housekeeper is an
ungrateful allusion to a witty old lady, which ill repays her for the good
times and the many good stories which I have enjoyed in her house. The
incident of the lamp goes back to Grillparzer, who notes a charming
experience of a similar nature, of which he afterwards made use in Hero
and Leander (the waves of the sea and of love- the Armada and the storm).
-
* Frauenzimmer, German, Zimmer-room, is appended to
Frauen-woman, in order to imply a slight contempt.- TR. -
I must forego a detailed analysis of the two remaining
portions of the dream; I shall single out only those elements which lead
me back to the two scenes of my childhood for the sake of which alone I
have selected the dream. The reader will rightly assume that it is sexual
material which necessitates the suppression; but he may not be content
with this explanation. There are many things of which one makes no secret
to oneself, but which must be treated as secrets in addressing others, and
here we are concerned not with the reasons which induce me to conceal the
solution, but with the motive of the inner censorship which conceals the
real content of the dream even from myself. Concerning this, I will
confess that the analysis reveals these three portions of the dream as
impertinent boasting, the exuberance of an absurd megalomania, long ago
suppressed in my waking life, which, however, dares to show itself, with
individual ramifications, even in the manifest dream- content (it seems to
me that I am a cunning fellow), making the high-spirited mood of the
evening before the dream perfectly intelligible.
Boasting of every kind, indeed thus, the mention of
Graz points to the phrase: "What price Graz?" which one is wont to use
when one feels unusually wealthy. Readers who recall Master Rabelais's
inimitable description of the life and deeds of Gargantua and his son
Pantagruel will be able to enroll even the suggested content of the first
portion of the dream among the boasts to which I have alluded. But the
following belongs to the two scenes of childhood of which I have spoken: I
had bought a new trunk for this journey, the color of which, a brownish
violet, appears in the dream several times (violet-brown violets of a
stiff cloth, on an object which is known as a girl-catcher- the furniture
in the ministerial chambers). Children, we know, believe that one attracts
people's attention with anything new. Now I have been told of the
following incident of my childhood; my recollection of the occurrence
itself has been replaced by my recollection of the story. I am told that
at the age of two I still used occasionally to wet my bed, and that when I
was reproved for doing so I consoled my father by promising to buy him a
beautiful new red bed in N (the nearest large town). Hence, the
interpolation in the dream, that we had bought the urinal in the city or
had to buy it; one must keep one's promises. (One should note, moreover,
the association of the male urinal and the woman's trunk, box.) All the
megalomania of the child is contained in this promise. The significance of
dreams of urinary difficulties in the case of children has already been
considered in the interpretation of an earlier dream (cf. the dream in
chapter V., A.). The psycho-analysis of neurotics has taught us to
recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the
character trait of ambition.
Then, when I was seven or eight years of age another
domestic incident occurred which I remember very well. One evening, before
going to bed, I had disregarded the dictates of discretion, and had
satisfied my needs in my parents' bedroom, and in their presence.
Reprimanding me for this delinquency, my father remarked: "That boy will
never amount to anything." This must have been a terrible affront to my
ambition, for allusions to this scene recur again and again in my dreams,
and are constantly coupled with enumerations of my accomplishments and
successes, as though I wanted to say: "You see, I have amounted to
something after all." This childish scene furnishes the elements for the
last image of the dream, in which the roles are interchanged, of course
for the purpose of revenge. The elderly man obviously my father, for the
blindness in one eye signifies his one-sided glaucoma, * is now urinating
before me as I once urinated before him. By means of the glaucoma I remind
my father of cocaine, which stood him in good stead during his operation,
as though I had thereby fulfilled my promise. Besides, I make sport of
him; since he is blind, I must hold the glass in front of him, and I
delight in allusions to my knowledge of the theory of hysteria, of which I
am proud. *(2)
* Another interpretation: He is one-eyed like Odin, the
father of the gods- Odin's consolation. The consolation in the childish
scene: I will buy him a new bed.
*(2) Here is some more material for interpretation:
Holding the urine-glass recalls the story of a peasant (illiterate) at the
optician's, who tried on now one pair of spectacles, now another, but was
still unable to read.- (Peasant-catcher- girl-catcher in the preceding
portion of the dream.)- The peasants' treatment of the feeble-minded
father in Zola's La Terre.- The tragic atonement, that in his last days my
father soiled his bed like a child; hence, I am his nurse in the dream.-
"Thinking and experiencing are here, as it were, identical"; this recalls
a highly revolutionary closet drama by Oscar Panizza, in which God, the
Father, is ignominiously treated as a palsied greybeard. With Him will and
deed are one, and in the book he has to be restrained by His archangel, a
sort of Ganymede, from scolding and swearing, because His curses would
immediately be fulfilled.- Making plans is a reproach against my father,
dating from a later period in the development of the critical faculty,
much as the whole rebellious content of the dream, which commits lese
majeste and scorns authority, may be traced to a revolt against my father.
The sovereign is called the father of his country (Landesvater), and the
father is the first and oldest, and for the child the only authority, from
whose absolutism the other social authorities have evolved in the course
of the history of human civilization (in so far as mother-right does not
necessitate a qualification of this doctrine).- The words which occurred
to me in the dream, "thinking and experiencing are the same thing," refer
to the explanation of hysterical symptoms with which the male urinal
(glass) is also associated.- I need not explain the principle of Gschnas
to a Viennese; it consists in constructing objects of rare and costly
appearance out of trivial, and preferably comical and worthless material-
for example, making suits of armour out of kitchen utensils, wisps of
straw and Salzstangeln (long rolls), as our artists are fond of doing at
their jolly parties. I had learned that hysterical subjects do the same
thing; besides what really happens to them, they unconsciously conceive
for themselves horrible or extravagantly fantastic incidents, which they
build up out of the most harmless and commonplace material of actual
experience. The symptoms attach themselves primarily to these phantasies,
not to the memory of real events, whether serious or trivial. This
explanation had helped me to overcome many difficulties, and afforded me
much pleasure. I was able to allude to it by means of the dream-element
"male urine-glass," because I had been told that at the last Gschnas
evening a poison-chalice of Lucretia Borgia's had been exhibited, the
chief constituent of which had consisted of a glass urinal for men, such
as is used in hospitals.
If the two childish scenes of urination are, according
to my theory, closely associated with the desire for greatness, their
resuscitation on the journey to the Aussee was further favoured by the
accidental circumstance that my compartment had no lavatory, and that I
must be prepared to postpone relief during the journey, as actually
happened in the morning when I woke with the sensation of a bodily need. I
suppose one might be inclined to credit this sensation with being the
actual stimulus of the dream; I should, however, prefer a different
explanation, namely, that the dream- thoughts first gave rise to the
desire to urinate. It is quite unusual for me to be disturbed in sleep by
any physical need, least of all at the time when I woke on this occasion-
a quarter to four in the morning. I would forestall a further objection by
remarking that I have hardly ever felt a desire to urinate after waking
early on other journeys made under more comfortable circumstances.
However, I can leave this point undecided without weakening my argument.
Further, since experience in dream-analysis has drawn
my attention to the fact that even from dreams the interpretation of which
seems at first sight complete, because the dream-sources and the wish-
stimuli are easily demonstrable, important trains of thought proceed which
reach back into the earliest years of childhood, I had to ask myself
whether this characteristic does not even constitute an essential
condition of dreaming. If it were permissible to generalize this notion, I
should say that every dream is connected through its manifest content with
recent experiences, while through its latent content it is connected with
the most remote experiences; and I can actually show in the analysis of
hysteria that these remote experiences have in a very real sense remained
recent right up to the present. But I still find it very difficult to
prove this conjecture; I shall have to return to the probable role in
dream-formation of the earliest experiences of our childhood in another
connection (chapter VII).
Of the three peculiarities of the dream-memory
considered above, one- the preference for the unimportant in the
dream-content- has been satisfactorily explained by tracing it back to
dream distortion. We have succeeded in establishing the existence of the
other two peculiarities- the preferential selection of recent and also of
infantile material- but we have found it impossible to derive them from
the motives of the dream. Let us keep in mind these two characteristics,
which we still have to explain or evaluate; a place will have to be found
for them elsewhere, either in the discussion of the psychology of the
sleeping state, or in the consideration of the structure of the psychic
apparatus- which we shall undertake later after we have seen that by means
of dream-interpretation we are able to glance as through an inspection-
hole into the interior of this apparatus.
But here and now I will emphasize another result of the
last few dream-analyses. The dream often appears to have several meanings;
not only may several wish-fulfillments be combined in it, as our examples
show, but one meaning or one wish-fulfillment may conceal another. until in
the lowest stratum one comes upon the fulfillment of a wish from the
earliest period of childhood; and here again it may be questioned whether
the word often at the beginning of this sentence may not more correctly be
replaced by constantly. * -
*The stratification of the meanings of dreams is one of
the most delicate but also one of the most fruitful problems of dream
interpretation. Whoever forgets the possibility of such stratification is
likely to go astray and to make untenable assertions concerning the nature
of dreams. But hitherto this subject has been only too imperfectly
investigated. So far, a fairly orderly stratification of symbols in dreams
due to urinary stimulus has been subjected to a thorough evaluation only
by Otto Rank. |
