CHAPTER SIX (Continued...)
E. Representation in Dreams by Symbols: Some Further
Typical Dreams
The analysis of the last biographical dream shows that
I recognized the symbolism in dreams from the very outset. But it was only
little by little that I arrived at a full appreciation of its extent and
significance, as the result of increasing experience, and under the
influence of the works of W. Stekel, concerning which I may here fittingly
say something.
This author, who has perhaps injured psychoanalysis as
much as he has benefited it, produced a large number of novel symbolic
translations, to which no credence was given at first, but most of which
were later confirmed and had to be accepted. Stekel's services are in no
way belittled by the remark that the skeptical reserve with which these
symbols were received was not unjustified. For the examples upon which he
based his interpretations were often unconvincing, and, moreover, he
employed a method which must be rejected as scientifically unreliable.
Stekel found his symbolic meanings by way of intuition, by virtue of his
individual faculty of immediately understanding the symbols. But such an
art cannot be generally assumed; its efficiency is immune from criticism,
and its results have therefore no claim to credibility. It is as though
one were to base one's diagnosis of infectious diseases on the olfactory
impressions received beside the sick-bed, although of course there have
been clinicians to whom the sense of smell- atrophied in most people- has
been of greater service than to others, and who really have been able to
diagnose a case of abdominal typhus by their sense of smell.
The progressive experience of psycho-analysis has
enabled us to discover patients who have displayed in a surprising degree
this immediate understanding of dream-symbolism. Many of these patients
suffered from dementia praecox, so that for a time there was an
inclination to suspect that all dreamers with such an understanding of
symbols were suffering from that disorder. But this did not prove to be
the case; it is simply a question of a personal gift or idiosyncrasy
without perceptible pathological significance.
When one has familiarized oneself with the extensive
employment of symbolism for the representation of sexual material in
dreams, one naturally asks oneself whether many of these symbols have not
a permanently established meaning, like the signs in shorthand; and one
even thinks of attempting to compile a new dream-book on the lines of the
cipher method. In this connection it should be noted that symbolism does
not appertain especially to dreams, but rather to the unconscious
imagination, and particularly to that of the people, and it is to be found
in a more developed condition in folklore, myths, legends, idiomatic
phrases, proverbs, and the current witticisms of a people than in dreams.
We should have, therefore, to go far beyond the province of dream-
interpretation in order fully to investigate the meaning of symbolism, and
to discuss the numerous problems- for the most part still unsolved- which
are associated with the concept of the symbol. * We shall here confine
ourselves to saying that representation by a symbol comes under the
heading of the indirect representations, but that we are warned by all
sorts of signs against indiscriminately classing symbolic representation
with the other modes of indirect representation before we have clearly
conceived its distinguishing characteristics. In a number of cases, the
common quality shared by the symbol and the thing which it represents is
obvious; in others, it is concealed; in these latter cases the choice of
the symbol appears to be enigmatic. And these are the very cases that must
be able to elucidate the ultimate meaning of the symbolic relation; they
point to the fact that it is of a genetic nature. What is today
symbolically connected was probably united, in primitive times, by
conceptual and linguistic identity. *(2) The symbolic relationship seems
to be a residue and reminder of a former identity. It may also be noted
that in many cases the symbolic identity extends beyond the linguistic
identity, as had already been asserted by Schubert (1814). *(3) -
* Cf. the works of Bleuler and his Zurich disciples,
Maeder. Abraham, and others, and of the non-medical authors (Kleinpaul and
others) to whom they refer. But the most pertinent things that have been
said on the subject will be found in the work of O. Rank and H. Sachs, Die
Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse fur die Geisteswissenschaft, (1913), chap. i.
*(2) This conception would seem to find an
extraordinary confirmation in a theory advanced by Hans Sperber ("Uber den
Einfluss sexueller momente auf Entstehung und Entwicklung der Sprache," in
Imago, i. [1912]). Sperber believes that primitive words denoted sexual
things exclusively, and subsequently lost their sexual significance and
were applied to other things and activities, which were compared with the
sexual.
*(3) For example, a ship sailing on the sea may appear
in the urinary dreams of Hungarian dreamers, despite the fact that the
term of to ship, for to urinate, is foreign to this language (Ferenczi).
In the dreams of the French and the other romance peoples room serves as a
symbolic representation for woman, although these peoples have nothing
analogous to the German Frauenzimmer. Many symbols are as old as language
itself, while others are continually being coined (e.g., the aeroplane,
the Zeppelin). -
Dreams employ this symbolism to give a disguised
representation to their latent thoughts. Among the symbols thus employed
there are, of course, many which constantly, or all but constantly, mean
the same thing. But we must bear in mind the curious plasticity of psychic
material. Often enough a symbol in the dream-content may have to be
interpreted not symbolically but in accordance with its proper meaning; at
other times the dreamer, having to deal with special memory-material, may
take the law into his own hands and employ anything whatever as a sexual
symbol, though it is not generally so employed. Wherever he has the choice
of several symbols for the representation of a dream- content, he will
decide in favour of that symbol which is in addition objectively related
to his other thought-material; that is to say, he will employ an
individual motivation besides the typically valid one.
Although since Scherner's time the more recent
investigations of dream-problems have definitely established the existence
of dream- symbolism- even Havelock Ellis acknowledges that our dreams are
indubitably full of symbols- it must yet be admitted that the existence of
symbols in dreams has not only facilitated dream- interpretation, but has
also made it more difficult. The technique of interpretation in accordance
with the dreamer's free associations more often than otherwise leaves us
in the lurch as far as the symbolic elements of the dream-content are
concerned. A return to the arbitrariness of dream-interpretation as it was
practiced in antiquity, and is seemingly revived by Stekel's wild
interpretations, is contrary to scientific method. Consequently, those
elements in the dream-content which are to be symbolically regarded compel
us to employ a combined technique, which on the one hand is based on the
dreamer's associations, while on the other hand the missing portions have
to be supplied by the interpreter's understanding of the symbols. Critical
circumspection in the solution of the symbols must coincide with careful
study of the symbols in especially transparent examples of dreams in order
to silence the reproach of arbitrariness in dream-interpretation. The
uncertainties which still adhere to our function as dream-interpreters are
due partly to our imperfect knowledge (which, however, can be
progressively increased) and partly to certain peculiarities of the
dream-symbols themselves. These often possess many and varied meanings, so
that, as in Chinese script, only the context can furnish the correct
meaning. This multiple significance of the symbol is allied to the dream's
faculty of admitting over-interpretations, of representing, in the same
content, various wish-impulses and thought-formations, often of a widely
divergent character.
After these limitations and reservations, I will
proceed. The Emperor and the Empress (King and Queen) * in most cases
really represent the dreamer's parents; the dreamer himself or herself is
the prince or princess. But the high authority conceded to the Emperor is
also conceded to great men, so that in some dreams, for example, Goethe
appears as a father symbol (Hitschmann).- All elongated objects, sticks,
tree-trunks, umbrellas (on account of the opening, which might be likened
to an erection), all sharp and elongated weapons, knives, daggers, and
pikes, represent the male member. A frequent, but not very intelligible
symbol for the same is a nail-file (a reference to rubbing and
scraping?).- Small boxes, chests, cupboards, and ovens correspond to the
female organ; also cavities, ships, and all kinds of vessels.- A room in a
dream generally represents a woman; the description of its various
entrances and exits is scarcely calculated to make us doubt this
interpretation. *(2) The interest as to whether the room is open or locked
will be readily understood in this connection. (Cf. Dora's dream in
Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria.) There is no need to be explicit as
to the sort of key that will unlock the room; the symbolism of lock and
key has been gracefully if broadly employed by Uhland in his song of the
Graf Eberstein.- The dream of walking through a suite of rooms signifies a
brothel or a harem. But, as H. Sachs has shown by an admirable example, it
is also employed to represent marriage (contrast). An interesting relation
to the sexual investigations of childhood emerges when the dreamer dreams
of two rooms which were previously one, or finds that a familiar room in a
house of which he dreams has been divided into two, or the reverse. In
childhood the female genitals and anus (the "behind") *(3) are conceived
of as a single opening according to the infantile cloaca theory, and only
later is it discovered that this region of the body contains two separate
cavities and openings. Steep inclines, ladders and stairs, and going up or
down them, are symbolic representations of the sexual act. *(4) Smooth
walls over which one climbs, facades of houses, across which one lets
oneself down- often with a sense of great anxiety- correspond to erect
human bodies, and probably repeat in our dreams childish memories of
climbing up parents or nurses. Smooth walls are men; in anxiety dreams one
often holds firmly to projections on houses. Tables, whether bare or
covered, and boards, are women, perhaps by virtue of contrast, since they
have no protruding contours. Wood generally speaking, seems, in accordance
with its linguistic relations, to represent feminine matter (Materie). The
name of the island Madeira means wood in Portuguese. Since bed and board
(mensa et thorus) constitute marriage, in dreams the latter is often
substituted for the former, and as far as practicable the sexual
representation-complex is transposed to the eating-complex.- Of articles
of dress, a woman's hat may very often be interpreted with certainty as
the male genitals. In the dreams of men, one often finds the necktie as a
symbol for the penis; this is not only because neckties hang down in front
of the body, and are characteristic of men, but also because one can
select them at pleasure, a freedom which nature prohibits as regards the
original of the symbol. Persons who make use of this symbol in dreams are
very extravagant in the matter of ties, and possess whole collections of
them. *(5) All complicated machines and appliances are very probably the
genitals- as a rule the male genitals- in the description of which the
symbolism of dreams is as indefatigable as human wit. It is quite
unmistakable that all weapons and tools are used as symbols for the male
organ: e.g., ploughshare, hammer, gun, revolver, dagger, sword, etc.
Again, many of the landscapes seen in dreams, especially those that
contain bridges or wooded mountains, may be readily recognized as
descriptions of the genitals. Marcinowski collected a series of examples
in which the dreamer explained his dream by means of drawings, in order to
represent the landscapes and places appearing in it. These drawings
clearly showed the distinction between the manifest and the latent meaning
of the dream. Whereas, naively regarded, they seemed to represent plans,
maps, and so forth, closer investigation showed that they were
representations of the human body, of the genitals, etc., and only after
conceiving them thus could the dream be understood. *(6) Finally, where
one finds incomprehensible neologisms one may suspect combinations of
components having a sexual significance.- Children, too, often signify the
genitals, since men and women are in the habit of fondly referring to
their genital organs as little man, little woman, little thing. The little
brother was correctly recognized by Stekel as the penis. To play with or
to beat a little child is often the dream's representation of
masturbation. The dream-work represents castration by baldness,
hair-cutting, the loss of teeth, and beheading. As an insurance against
castration, the dream uses one of the common symbols of the penis in
double or multiple form and the appearance in a dream of a lizard- an
animal whose tail, if pulled off, is regenerated by a new growth- has the
same meaning. Most of those animals which are utilized as genital symbols
in mythology and folklore play this part also in dreams: the fish, the
snail, the cat, the mouse (on account of the hairiness of the genitals),
but above all the snake, which is the most important symbol of the male
member. Small animals and vermin are substitutes for little children,
e.g., undesired sisters or brothers. To be infected with vermin is often
the equivalent for pregnancy.- As a very recent symbol of the male organ I
may mention the airship, whose employment is justified by its relation to
flying, and also, occasionally, by its form.- Stekel has given a number of
other symbols, not yet sufficiently verified, which he has illustrated by
examples. The works of this author, and especially his book: Die Sprache
des Traumes, contain the richest collection of interpretations of symbols,
some of which were ingeniously guessed and were proved to be correct upon
investigation, as, for example, in the section on the symbolism of death.
The author's lack of critical reflection, and his tendency to generalize
at all costs, make his interpretations doubtful or inapplicable, so that
in making use of his works caution is urgently advised. I shall therefore
restrict myself to mentioning a few examples. -
* In the U.S.A. the father is represented in dreams as
the President, and even more often as the Governor- a title which is
frequently applied to the parent in everyday life.- TR.
*(2) "A patient living in a boarding-house dreams that
he meets one of the servants, and asks her what her number is; to his
surprise she answers: 14. He has, in fact, entered into relations with the
girl in question, and has often had her in his bedroom. She feared, as may
be imagined, that the landlady suspected her, and had proposed, on the day
before the dream, that they should meet in one of the unoccupied rooms. In
reality this room had the number 14, while in the dream the woman bore
this number. A clearer proof of the identification of woman and room could
hardly be imagined," (Ernest Jones, Intern. Zeitschr. f. Psychoanalyse,
ii, [1914]). (Cf. Artemidorus, The Symbolism of Dreams [German version by
F. S. Krauss, Vienna, 1881, p. 110]: "Thus, for example, the bedroom
signifies the wife, supposing one to be in the house.")
*(3) Cf. "the cloaca theory" in Three Contributions to
the Theory of Sex.
*(4) See p. 123-124 above.
*(5) Cf. in the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, ii,
675, the drawing of a nineteen-year-old manic patient: a man with a snake
as a neck-tie, which is turning towards a girl. Also the story Der
Schamhaftige (Anthropophyteia, vi, 334): A woman entered a bathroom, and
there came face to face with a man who hardly had time to put on his
shirt. He was greatly embarrassed, but at once covered his throat with the
front of his shirt, and said: "Please excuse me, I have no necktie."
*(6) Cf. Pfister's works on cryptography and
picture-puzzles. -
Right and left, according to Stekel, are to be
understood in dreams in an ethical sense. "The right-hand path always
signifies the way to righteousness, the left-hand path the path to crime.
Thus the left may signify homosexuality, incest, and perversion, while the
right signifies marriage, relations with a prostitute, etc. The meaning is
always determined by the individual moral standpoint of the dreamer" (loc.
cit., p. 466). Relatives in dreams generally stand for the genitals (p.
473). Here I can confirm this meaning only for the son, the daughter, and
the younger sister- that is, wherever little thing could be employed. On
the other hand, verified examples allow us to recognize sisters as symbols
of the breasts, and brothers as symbols of the larger hemispheres. To be
unable to overtake a carriage is interpreted by Stekel as regret at being
unable to catch up with a difference in age (p. 479). The luggage of a
traveller is the burden of sin by which one is oppressed (ibid.) But a
traveler's luggage often proves to be an unmistakable symbol of one's own
genitals. To numbers, which frequently occur in dreams, Stekel has
assigned a fixed symbolic meaning, but these interpretations seem neither
sufficiently verified nor of universal validity, although in individual
cases they can usually be recognized as plausible. We have, at all events,
abundant confirmation that the figure three is a symbol of the male
genitals. One of Stekel's generalizations refers to the double meaning of
the genital symbols. "Where is there a symbol," he asks, "which (if in any
way permitted by the imagination) may not be used simultaneously in the
masculine and the feminine sense?" To be sure, the clause in parenthesis
retracts much of the absolute character of this assertion, for this double
meaning is not always permitted by the imagination. Still, I think it is
not superfluous to state that in my experience this general statement of
Stekel's requires elaboration. Besides those symbols which are just as
frequently employed for the male as for the female genitals, there are
others which preponderantly, or almost exclusively, designate one of the
sexes, and there are yet others which, so far as we know, have only the
male or only the female signification. To use long, stiff objects and
weapons as symbols of the female genitals, or hollow objects (chests,
boxes, etc.) as symbols of the male genitals, is certainly not permitted
by the imagination.
It is true that the tendency of dreams, and of the
unconscious phantasy, to employ the sexual symbols bisexually, reveals an
archaic trait, for in childhood the difference in the genitals is unknown,
and the same genitals are attributed to both sexes. One may also be misled
as regards the significance of a bisexual symbol if one forgets the fact
that in some dreams a general reversal of sexes takes place, so that the
male organ is represented by the female, and vice versa. Such dreams
express, for example, the wish of a woman to be a man.
The genitals may even be represented in dreams by other
parts of the body: the male member by the hand or the foot, the female
genital orifice by the mouth, the ear, or even the eye. The secretions of
the human body- mucus, tears, urine, semen, etc.- may be used in dreams
interchangeably. This statement of Stekel's, correct in the main, has
suffered a justifiable critical restriction as the result of certain
comments of R. Reitler's (Internat. Zeitschr. fur Psych., i, 1913). The
gist of the matter is the replacement of an important secretion, such as
the semen, by an indifferent one.
These very incomplete indications may suffice to
stimulate others to make a more painstaking collection. * I have attempted
a much more detailed account of dream-symbolism in my General Introduction
to Psycho-Analysis. -
* In spite of all the differences between Scherner's
conception of dream-symbolism and the one developed here, I must still
insist that Scherner should be recognized as the true discoverer of
symbolism in dreams, and that the experience of psycho analysis has
brought his book (published in 1861) into posthumous repute. -
I shall now append a few instances of the use of such
symbols, which will show how impossible it is to arrive at the
interpretation of a dream if one excludes dream-symbolism, but also how in
many cases it is imperatively forced upon one. At the same time, I must
expressly warn the investigator against overestimating the importance of
symbols in the interpretation of dreams, restricting the work of
dream-translation to the translation of symbols, and neglecting the
technique of utilizing the associations of the dreamer. The two techniques
of dream- interpretation must supplement one another; practically,
however, as well as theoretically, precedence is retained by the latter
process, which assigns the final significance to the utterances of the
dreamer, while the symbol-translation which we undertake play an auxiliary
part.
1. The hat as the symbol of a man (of the male
genitals): *
(A fragment from the dream of a young woman who
suffered from agoraphobia as the result of her fear of temptation.) -
* From "Nachtrage sur Traumdeutung" in Zentralblatt fur
Psychoanalyse, i, Nos. 5 and 6, (1911). -
I am walking in the street in summer; I am wearing a
straw hat of peculiar shape, the middle piece of which is bent upwards,
while the side pieces hang downwards (here the description hesitates), and
in such a fashion that one hangs lower than the other. I am cheerful and
in a confident mood, and as I pass a number of young officers I think to
myself: You can't do anything to me.
As she could produce no associations to the hat, I said
to her: "The hat is really a male genital organ, with its raised middle
piece and the two downward-hanging side pieces." It is perhaps peculiar
that her hat should be supposed to be a man, but after all one says: Unter
die Haube kommen (to get under the cap) when we mean: to get married. I
intentionally refrained from interpreting the details concerning the
unequal dependence of the two side pieces, although the determination of
just such details must point the way to the interpretation. I went on to
say that if, therefore, she had a husband with such splendid genitals she
would not have to fear the officers; that is, she would have nothing to
wish from them, for it was essentially her temptation- phantasies which
prevented her from going about unprotected and unaccompanied. This last
explanation of her anxiety I had already been able to give her repeatedly
on the basis of other material.
It is quite remarkable how the dreamer behaved after
this interpretation. She withdrew her description of the hat and would not
admit that she had said that the two side pieces were hanging down. I was,
however, too sure of what I had heard to allow myself to be misled, and so
I insisted that she did say it. She was quiet for a while, and then found
the courage to ask why it was that one of her husband's testicles was
lower than the other, and whether it was the same with all men. With this
the peculiar detail of the hat was explained, and the whole interpretation
was accepted by her.
The hat symbol was familiar to me long before the
patient related this dream. From other but less transparent cases I
believed that I might assume the hat could also stand for the female
genitals. * -
* Cf. Kirchgraber for a similar example (Zentralblatt
fur Psychoanalyse, iii, [1912], p. 95). Stekel reported a dream in which
the hat with an obliquely-standing feather in the middle symbolized the
(impotent) man. -
2. The little one as the genital organ. Being run over
as a symbol of sexual intercourse.
(Another dream of the same agoraphobic patient.)
Her mother sends away her little daughter so that she
has to go alone. She then drives with her mother to the railway station,
and sees her little one walking right along the track, so that she is
bound to be run over. She hears the bones crack. (At this she experiences
a feeling of discomfort but no real horror.) She then looks through the
carriage window, to see whether the parts cannot be seen behind. Then she
reproaches her mother for allowing the little one to go out alone.
Analysis.- It is not an easy matter to give here a
complete interpretation of the dream. It forms part of a cycle of dreams,
and can be fully understood only in connection with the rest. For it is
not easy to obtain the material necessary to demonstrate the symbolism in
a sufficiently isolated condition. The patient at first finds that the
railway journey is to be interpreted historically as an allusion to a
departure from a sanatorium for nervous diseases, with whose director she
was, of course, in love. Her mother fetched her away, and before her
departure the physician came to the railway station and gave her a bunch
of flowers; she felt uncomfortable because her mother witnessed this
attention. Here the mother, therefore, appears as the disturber of her
tender feelings, a role actually played by this strict woman during her
daughter's girlhood.- The next association referred to the sentence: She
then looks to see whether the parts cannot be seen behind. In the
dream-facade one would naturally be compelled to think of the pieces of
the little daughter who had been run over and crushed. The association,
however, turns in quite a different direction. She recalls that she once
saw her father in the bath-room, naked, from behind; she then begins to
talk about sex differences, and remarks that in the man the genitals can
be seen from behind, but in the woman they cannot. In this connection she
now herself offers the interpretation that the little one is the genital
organ, and her little one (she has a four-year-old daughter) her own
organ. She reproaches her mother for wanting her to live as though she had
no genitals, and recognizes this reproach in the introductory sentence of
the dream: the mother sends her little one away, so that she has to go
alone. In her phantasy, going alone through the streets means having no
man, no sexual relations (coire = to go together), and this she does not
like. According to all her statements, she really suffered as a girl
through her mother's jealousy, because her father showed a preference for
her.
The deeper interpretation of this dream depends upon
another dream of the same night, in which the dreamer identifies herself
with her brother. She was a tomboy, and was always being told that she
should have been born a boy. This identification with the brother shows
with especial clearness that the little one signifies the genital organ.
The mother threatened him (her) with castration, which could only be
understood as a punishment for playing with the genital parts, and the
identification, therefore, shows that she herself had masturbated as a
child, though she had retained only a memory of her brother's having done
so. An early knowledge of the male genitals, which she lost later, must,
according to the assertions of this second dream, have been acquired at
this time. Moreover, the second dream points to the infantile sexual
theory that girls originate from boys as a result of castration. After I
had told her of this childish belief, she at once confirmed it by an
anecdote in which the boy asks the girl: "Was it cut off?" to which the
girl replies: "No, it's always been like that."
Consequently the sending away of the little one, of the
genital organ, in the first dream refers also to the threatened
castration. Finally, she blames her mother for not having borne her as a
boy.
That being run over symbolizes sexual intercourse would
not be evident from this dream if we had not learned it from many other
sources.
3. Representation of the genitals by buildings,
stairs, and shafts.
(Dream of a young man inhibited by a father complex.)
He is taking a walk with his father in a place which is
certainly the Prater, for one can see the Rotunda, in front of which there
is a small vestibule to which there is attached a captive balloon; the
balloon, however, seems rather limp. His father asks him what this is all
for; he is surprised at it, but he explains it to his father. They come
into a courtyard in which lies a large sheet of tin. His father wants to
pull off a big piece of this, but first looks round to see if anyone is
watching. He tells his father that all he needs to do is to speak to the
overseer, and then he can take as much as he wants to without any more
ado. From this courtyard a flight of stairs leads down into a shaft, the
walls of which are softly upholstered, rather like a leather arm-chair. At
the end of this shaft there is a long platform, and then a new shaft
begins...
Analysis. This dreamer belonged to a type of patient
which is not at all promising from a therapeutic point of view; up to a
certain point in the analysis such patients offer no resistance whatever,
but from that point onwards they prove to be almost inaccessible. This
dream he analysed almost independently. "The Rotunda," he said, "is my
genitals, the captive balloon in front is my penis, about whose flaccidity
I have been worried." We must, however, interpret it in greater detail:
the Rotunda is the buttocks, constantly associated by the child with the
genitals; the smaller structure in front is the scrotum. In the dream his
father asks him what this is all for- that is, he asks him about the
purpose and arrangement of the genitals. It is quite evident that this
state of affairs should be reversed, and that he ought to be the
questioner. As such questioning, on the part of the father never occurred
in reality, we must conceive the dream- thought as a wish, or perhaps take
it conditionally, as follows. "If I had asked my father for sexual
enlightenment..." The continuation of this thought we shall presently find
in another place.
The courtyard in which the sheet of tin is spread out
is not to be conceived symbolically in the first instance, but originates
from his father's place of business. For reasons of discretion I have
inserted the tin for another material in which the father deals without,
however, changing anything in the verbal expression of the dream. The
dreamer had entered his father's business, and had taken a terrible
dislike to the somewhat questionable practices upon which its profit
mainly depended. Hence the continuation of the above dream-thought ("if I
had asked him") would be: "He would have deceived me just as he does his
customers." For the pulling off, which serves to represent commercial
dishonesty, the dreamer himself gives a second explanation, namely,
masturbation. This is not only quite familiar to us (see above), but
agrees very well with the fact that the secrecy of masturbation is
expressed by its opposite (one can do it quite openly). Thus, it agrees
entirely with our expectations that the autoerotic activity should be
attributed to the father, just as was the questioning in the first scene
of the dream. The shaft he at once interprets as the vagina, by referring
to the soft upholstering of the walls. That the action of coition in the
vagina is described as a going down instead of in the usual way as a going
up agrees with what I have found in other instances. * -
* Cf. comment in the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, i;
and see above, note (8) in earlier paragraph. -
The details- that at the end of the first shaft there
is a long platform, and then a new shaft- he himself explains
biographically. He had for some time had sexual intercourse with women,
but had given it up on account of inhibitions, and now hopes to be able to
begin it again with the aid of treatment. The dream, however, becomes
indistinct towards the end, and to the experienced interpreter it becomes
evident that in the second scene of the dream the influence of another
subject has already begun to assert itself; which is indicated by his
father's business, his dishonest practices, and the vagina represented by
the first shaft, so that one may assume a reference to his mother.
4. The male organ symbolized by persons and the female
by a landscape.
(Dream of a woman of the lower class, whose husband is
a policeman, reported by B. Dattner.)
...Then someone broke into the house and she anxiously
called for a policeman. But he went peacefully with two tramps into a
church, * to which a great many steps led up, *(2) behind the church there
was a mountain *(3) on top of which there was a dense forest. *(4) The
policeman was provided with a helmet, a gorget, and a cloak. *(5) The two
vagrants, who went along with the policeman quite peaceably, had sack-like
aprons tied round their loins. *(6) A road led from the church to the
mountain. This road was overgrown on each side with grass and brushwood,
which became thicker and thicker as it reached the top of the mountain,
where it spread out into quite a forest. -
* Or Chapel = vagina.
*(2) Symbol of coitus.
*(3) Mons veneris.
*(4) Crines pubis.
*(5) Demons in cloaks and hoods are, according to the
explanation of a specialist, of a phallic character.
*(6) The two halves of the scrotum. -
5. Castration dreams of children.
(a) A boy aged three years and five months, for whom
his father's return from military service is clearly inconvenient, wakes
one morning in a disturbed and excited state, and constantly repeats the
question: Why did Daddy carry his head on a plate? Last night Daddy
carried his head on a plate.
(b) A student who is now suffering from a severe
obsessional neurosis remembers that in his sixth year he repeatedly had
the following dream: He goes to the barber to have his hair cut. Then a
large woman with severe features comes up to him and cuts off his head. He
recognizes the woman as his mother.
6. A modified staircase dream.
To one of my patients, a sexual abstainer, who was very
ill, whose phantasy was fixated upon his mother, and who repeatedly
dreamed of climbing stairs while accompanied by his mother, I once
remarked that moderate masturbation would probably have been less harmful
to him than his enforced abstinence. The influence of this remark provoked
the following dream:
His piano teacher reproaches him for neglecting his
piano- playing, and for not practicing the Etudes of Moscheles and
Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum. With reference to this he remarked that
the Gradus, too, is a stairway, and that the piano itself is a stairway,
as it has a scale.
It may be said that there is no class of ideas which
cannot be enlisted in the representation of sexual facts and wishes.
7. The sensation of reality and the representation of
repetition.
A man, now thirty-five, relates a clearly remembered
dream which he claims to have had when he was four years of age: The
notary with whom his father's will was deposited- he had lost his father
at the age of three- brought two large Emperor-pears, of which he was
given one to eat. The other lay on the window sill of the living-room. He
woke with the conviction of the reality of what he had dreamt, and
obstinately asked his mother to give him the second pear; it was, he said,
still lying on the window-sill. His mother laughed at this.
Analysis. The notary was a jovial old gentleman who, as
he seems to remember, really sometimes brought pears with him. The window-
sill was as he saw it in the dream. Nothing else occurs to him in this
connection, except, perhaps, that his mother has recently told him a
dream. She has two birds sitting on her head; she wonders when they will
fly away, but they do not fly away, and one of them flies to her mouth and
sucks at it.
The dreamer's inability to furnish associations
justifies the attempt to interpret it by the substitution of symbols. The
two pears- pommes on poires- are the breasts of the mother who nursed him;
the window-sill is the projection of the bosom, analogous to the balconies
in the dream of houses. His sensation of reality after waking is
justified, for his mother had actually suckled him for much longer than
the customary term, and her breast was still available. The dream is to be
translated: "Mother, give (show) me the breast again at which I once used
to drink." The once is represented by the eating of the one pear, the
again by the desire for the other. The temporal repetition of an act is
habitually represented in dreams by the numerical multiplication of an
object
It is naturally a very striking phenomenon that
symbolism should already play a part in the dream of a child of four, but
this is the rule rather than the exception. One may say that the dreamer
has command of symbolism from the very first.
The early age at which people make use of symbolic
representation, even apart from the dream-life, may be shown by the
following uninfluenced memory of a lady who is now twenty- seven: She is
in her fourth year. The nursemaid is driving her, with her brother, eleven
months younger, and a cousin, who is between the two in age, to the
lavatory, so that they can do their little business there before going for
their walk. As the oldest, she sits on the seat and the other two on
chambers. She asks her (female) cousin: Have you a purse, too? Walter has
a little sausage, I have a purse. The cousin answers: Yes, I have a purse,
too. The nursemaid listens, laughing, and relates the conversation to the
mother, whose reaction is a sharp reprimand.
Here a dream may be inserted whose excellent symbolism
permitted of interpretation with little assistance from the dreamer:
8. The question of symbolism in the dreams of normal
persons. * -
* Alfred Robitsek in the Zentralblatt fur
Psychoanalyse, ii (1911), p. 340. -
An objection frequently raised by the opponents of
psycho- analysis- and recently also by Havelock Ellis- * is that, although
dream-symbolism may perhaps be a product of the neurotic psyche, it has no
validity whatever in the case of normal persons. But while psychoanalysis
recognizes no essential distinctions, but only quantitative differences,
between the psychic life of the normal person and that of the neurotic,
the analysis of those dreams in which, in sound and sick persons alike,
the repressed complexes display the same activity, reveals the absolute
identity of the mechanisms as well as of the symbolism. Indeed, the
natural dreams of healthy persons often contain a much simpler, more
transparent, and more characteristic symbolism than those of neurotics,
which, owing to the greater strictness of the censorship and the more
extensive dream- distortion resulting therefrom, are frequently troubled
and obscured, and are therefore more difficult to translate. The following
dream serves to illustrate this fact. This dream comes from a non-neurotic
girl of a rather prudish and reserved type. In the course of conversation
I found that she was engaged to be married, but that there were hindrances
in the way of the marriage which threatened to postpone it. She related
spontaneously the following dream: -
* The World of Dreams, London (1911), p. 168. -
I arrange the centre of a table with flowers for a
birthday. On being questioned she states that in the dream she seemed to
be at home (she has no home at the time) and experienced a feeling of
happiness.
The popular symbolism enables me to translate the dream
for myself. It is the expression of her wish to be married: the table,
with the flowers in the centre, is symbolic of herself and her genitals.
She represents her future fulfilled, inasmuch as she is already occupied
with the thoughts of the birth of a child; so the wedding has taken place
long ago.
I call her attention to the fact that the centre of a
table is an unusual expression, which she admits; but here, of course, I
cannot question her more directly. I carefully refrain from suggesting to
her the meaning of the symbols, and ask her only for the thoughts which
occur to her mind in connection with the individual parts of the dream. In
the course of the analysis her reserve gave way to a distinct interest in
the interpretation, and a frankness which was made possible by the serious
tone of the conversation. To my question as to what kind of flowers they
had been, her first answer is: expensive flowers; one has to pay for them;
then she adds that they were lilies-of-the-valley, violets, and pinks or
carnations. I took the word lily in this dream in its popular sense, as a
symbol of chastity; she confirmed this, as purity occurred to her in
association with lily. Valley is a common feminine dream-symbol. The
chance juxtaposition of the two symbols in the name of the flower is made
into a piece of dream-symbolism, and serves to emphasize the preciousness
of her virginity- expensive flowers; one has to pay for them- and
expresses the expectation that her husband will know how to appreciate its
value. The comment, expensive flowers, etc. has, as will be shown, a
different meaning in every one of the three different flower-symbols.
I thought of what seemed to me a venturesome
explanation of the hidden meaning of the apparently quite asexual word
violets by an unconscious relation to the French viol. But to my surprise
the dreamer's association was the English word violate. The accidental
phonetic similarity of the two words violet and violate is utilized by the
dream to express in the language of flowers the idea of the violence of
defloration (another word which makes use of flower-symbolism), and
perhaps also to give expression to a masochistic tendency on the part of
the girl. An excellent example of the word bridges across which run the
paths to the unconscious. One has to pay for them here means life, with
which she has to pay for becoming a wife and a mother.
In association with pinks, which she then calls
carnations, I think of carnal. But her association is colour, to which she
adds that carnations are the flowers which her fiance gives her frequently
and in large quantities. At the end of the conversation she suddenly
admits, spontaneously, that she has not told me the truth; the word that
occurred to her was not color, but incarnation, the very word I expected.
Moreover, even the word color is not a remote association; it was
determined by the meaning of carnation (i.e., flesh-color)- that is, by
the complex. This lack of honesty shows that the resistance here is at its
greatest because the symbolism is here most transparent, and the struggle
between libido and repression is most intense in connection with this
phallic theme. The remark that these flowers were often given her by her
fiancé is, together with the double meaning of carnation, a still further
indication of their phallic significance in the dream. The occasion of the
present of flowers during the day is employed to express the thought of a
sexual present and a return present. She gives her virginity and expects
in return for it a rich love-life. But the words: expensive flowers; one
has to pay for them may have a real, financial meaning. The
flower-symbolism in the dream thus comprises the virginal female, the male
symbol, and the reference to violent defloration. It is to be noted that
sexual flower-symbolism, which, of course, is very widespread, symbolizes
the human sexual organs by flowers, the sexual organs of plants; indeed,
presents of flowers between lovers may have this unconscious significance.
The birthday for which she is making preparations in
the dream probably signifies the birth of a child. She identifies herself
with the bridegroom, and represents him preparing her for a birth (having
coitus with her). It is as though the latent thought were to say: "If I
were he, I would not wait, but I would deflower the bride without asking
her; I would use violence." Indeed, the word violate points to this. Thus
even the sadistic libidinal components find expression.
In a deeper stratum of the dream the sentence I
arrange, etc., probably has an auto-erotic, that is, an infantile
significance.
She also has a knowledge- possibly only in the dream-
of her physical need; she sees herself flat like a table, so that she
emphasizes all the more her virginity, the costliness of the centre
(another time she calls it a centre-piece of flowers). Even the horizontal
element of the table may contribute something to the symbol. The
concentration of the dream is worthy of remark: nothing is superfluous,
every word is a symbol.
Later on she brings me a supplement to this dream: I
decorate the flowers with green crinkled paper. She adds that it was fancy
paper of the sort which is used to disguise ordinary flower-pots. She says
also: "To hide untidy things, whatever was to be seen which was not pretty
to the eye; there is a gap, a little space in the flowers. The paper looks
like velvet or moss." With decorate she associates decorum, as I expected.
The green color is very prominent, and with this she associates hope, yet
another reference to pregnancy. In this part of the dream the
identification with the man is not the dominant feature, but thoughts of
shame and frankness express themselves. She makes herself beautiful for
him; she admits physical defects, of which she is ashamed and which she
wishes to correct. The associations velvet and moss distinctly point to
crines pubis.
The dream is an expression of thoughts hardly known to
the waking state of the girl; thoughts which deal with the love of the
senses and its organs; she is prepared for a birth-day, i.e., she has
coitus; the fear of defloration and perhaps the pleasurably toned pain
find expression; she admits her physical defects and over-compensates them
by means of an over-estimation of the value of her virginity. Her shame
excuses the emerging sensuality by the fact that the aim of it all is the
child. Even material considerations, which are foreign to the lover, find
expression here. The affect of the simple dream- the feeling of bliss-
shows that here strong emotional complexes have found satisfaction.
I close with the
9. Dream of a chemist.
(A young man who has been trying to give up his habit
of masturbation by substituting intercourse with a woman.)
Preliminary statement: On the day before the dream he
had been instructing a student as to Grignard's reaction, in which
magnesium is dissolved in absolutely pure ether under the catalytic
influence of iodine. Two days earlier there had been an explosion in the
course of the same reaction, in which someone had burned his hand.
Dream I. He is going to make phenylmagnesiumbromide; he
sees the apparatus with particular distinctness, but he has substituted
himself for the magnesium. He is now in a curious, wavering attitude. He
keeps on repeating to himself: "This is the right thing, it is working, my
feet are beginning to dissolve, and my knees are getting soft." Then he
reaches down and feels for his feet, and meanwhile (he does not know how)
he takes his legs out of the carboy, and then again he says to himself:
"That can't be... Yes, it has been done correctly." Then he partially
wakes, and repeats the dream to himself, because he wants to tell it to
me. He is positively afraid of the analysis of the dream. He is much
excited during this state of semi-sleep, and repeats continually: "Phenyl,
phenyl."
II. He is in... with his whole family. He is supposed
to be at the Schottentor at half-past eleven in order to keep an
appointment with the lady in question, but he does not wake until
half-past eleven. He says to himself: "It is too late now; when you get
there it will be half-past twelve." The next moment he sees the whole
family gathered about the table- his mother and the parlourmaid with the
soup tureen with peculiar distinctness. Then he says to himself: "Well, if
we are sitting down to eat already, I certainly can't get away."
Analysis. He feels sure that even the first dream
contains a reference to the lady whom he is to meet at the place of
rendezvous (the dream was dreamed during the night before the expected
meeting). The student whom he was instructing is a particularly unpleasant
fellow; the chemist had said to him: "That isn't right, because the
magnesium was still unaffected," and the student had answered, as though
he were quite unconcerned: "Nor it is." He himself must be this student;
he is as indifferent to his analysis as the student is to his synthesis;
the he in the dream, however, who performs the operation, is myself. How
unpleasant he must seem to me with his indifference to the result!
Again, he is the material with which the analysis
(synthesis) is made. For the question is the success of the treatment. The
legs in the dream recall an impression of the previous evening. He met a
lady at a dancing class of whom he wished to make a conquest; he pressed
her to him so closely that she once cried out. As he ceased to press her
legs he felt her firm, responding pressure against his lower thighs as far
as just above the knees, the spot mentioned in the dream. In this
situation, then, the woman is the magnesium in the retort, which is at
last working. He is feminine towards me, as he is virile towards the
woman. If he succeeds with the woman, the treatment will also succeed.
Feeling himself and becoming aware of his knees refers to masturbation,
and corresponds to his fatigue of the previous day... The rendezvous had
actually been made for half-past eleven. His wish to oversleep himself and
to keep to his sexual object at home (that is, masturbation) corresponds
to his resistance.
He says, in respect to the repetition of the name
phenyl, that all these radicals ending in yl have always been pleasing to
him; they are very convenient to use: benzyl, acetyl, etc. That, however,
explained nothing. But when I proposed the root Schlemihl he laughed
heartily, and told me that during the summer he had read a book by Prevost
which contained a chapter: "Les exclus de l'amour," and in this there was
some mention of Schlemilies; and in reading of these outcasts he said to
himself: "That is my case." He would have played the Schlemihl if he had
missed the appointment.
It seems that the sexual symbolism of dreams has
already been directly confirmed by experiment. In 1912 Dr. K. Schrotter,
at the instance of H. Swoboda, produced dreams in deeply hypnotized
persons by suggestions which determined a large part of the dream-
content. If the suggestion proposed that the subject should dream of
normal or abnormal sexual relations, the dream carried out these orders by
replacing sexual material by the symbols with which psycho-analytic
dream-interpretation has made us familiar. Thus, following the suggestion
that the dreamer should dream of homosexual relations with a lady friend,
this friend appeared in the dream carrying a shabby travelling-bag, upon
which there was a label with the printed words: "For ladies only." The
dreamer was believed never to have heard of dream-symbolization or of
dream-interpretation. Unfortunately, the value of this important
investigation was diminished by the fact that Dr. Schrotter shortly
afterwards committed suicide. Of his dream-experiments be gave us only a
preliminary report in the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse.
Only when we have formed a due estimate of the
importance of symbolism in dreams can we continue the study of the typical
dreams which was interrupted in an earlier chapter. I feel justified in
dividing these dreams roughly into two classes; first, those which always
really have the same meaning, and second, those which despite the same or
a similar content must nevertheless be given the most varied
interpretations. Of the typical dreams belonging to the first class I have
already dealt fairly fully with the examination-dream.
On account of their similar affective character, the
dreams of missing a train deserve to be ranked with the
examination-dreams; moreover, their interpretation justifies this
approximation. They are consolation-dreams, directed against another
anxiety perceived in dreams- the fear of death. To depart is one of the
most frequent and one of the most readily established of the
death-symbols. The dream therefore says consolingly: "Reassure yourself,
you are not going to die (to depart)," just as the examination-dream calms
us by saying: "Don't be afraid; this time, too, nothing will happen to
you." The difficulty is understanding both kinds of dreams is due to the
fact that the anxiety is attached precisely to the expression of
consolation.
The meaning of the dreams due to dental stimulus which
I have often enough had to analyze in my patients escaped me for a long
time because, much to my astonishment, they habitually offered too great a
resistance to interpretation. But finally an overwhelming mass of evidence
convinced me that in the case of men nothing other than the masturbatory
desires of puberty furnish the motive power of these dreams. I shall
analyze two such dreams, one of which is also a flying dream. The two
dreams were dreamed by the same person- a young man of pronounced
homosexuality which, however, has been inhibited in life.
He is witnessing a performance of Fidelio from the
stalls the of the operahouse; sitting next to L, whose personality is
congenial to him, and whose friendship he would like to have. Suddenly he
flies diagonally right across the stalls; he then puts his hand in his
mouth and draws out two of his teeth.
He himself describes the flight by saying that it was
as though he were thrown into the air. As the opera performed was Fidelio,
he recalls the words: -
He who a charming wife acquires.... -
But the acquisition of even the most charming wife is
not among the wishes of the dreamer. Two other lines would be more
appropriate: -
He who succeeds in the lucky (big) throw
The friend of a friend to be.... -
The dream thus contains the lucky (big) throw which is
not, however, a wish-fulfillment only. For it conceals also the painful
reflection that in his striving after friendship he has often had the
misfortune to be thrown out, and the fear lest this fate may be repeated
in the case of the young man by whose side he has enjoyed the performance
of Fidelio. This is now followed by a confession, shameful to a man of his
refinement, to the effect that once, after such a rejection on the part of
a friend, his profound sexual longing caused him to masturbate twice in
succession.
The other dream is as follows: Two university
professors of his acquaintance are treating him in my place. One of them
does something to his penis; he is afraid of an operation. The other
thrusts an iron bar against his mouth, so that he loses one or two teeth.
He is bound with four silk handkerchiefs.
The sexual significance of this dream can hardly be
doubted. The silk handkerchiefs allude to an identification with a
homosexual of his acquaintance. The dreamer, who has never achieved
coition (nor has he ever actually sought sexual intercourse) with men,
conceives the sexual act on the lines of masturbation with which he was
familiar during puberty.
I believe that the frequent modifications of the
typical dream due to dental stimulus- that, for example, in which another
person draws the tooth from the dreamer's mouth- will be made intelligible
by the same explanation. * It may, however, be difficult to understand how
dental stimulus can have come to have this significance. But here I may
draw attention to the frequent displacement from below to above which is
at the service of sexual repression, and by means of which all kinds of
sensations and intentions occurring in hysteria, which ought to be
localized in the genitals, may at all events be realized in other,
unobjectionable parts of the body. We have a case of such displacement
when the genitals are replaced by the face in the symbolism of unconscious
thought. This is corroborated by the fact that verbal usage relates the
buttocks to the cheeks, and the labia minora to the lips which enclose the
orifice of the mouth. The nose is compared to the penis in numerous
allusions, and in each case the presence of hair completes the
resemblance. Only one feature- the teeth- is beyond all possibility of
being compared in this way; but it is just this coincidence of agreement
and disagreement which makes the teeth suitable for purposes of
representation under the pressure of sexual repression. -
* The extraction of a tooth by another is usually to be
interpreted as castration (cf. hair-cutting; Stekel). One must distinguish
between dreams due to dental stimulus and dreams referring to the dentist,
such as have been recorded, for example, by Coriat (Zentralblatt fur
Psychoanalyse, iii, 440). -
I will not assert that the interpretation of dreams due
to dental stimulus as dreams of masturbation (the correctness of which I
cannot doubt) has been freed of all obscurity. * I carry the explanation
as far as I am able, and must leave the rest unsolved. But I must refer to
yet another relation indicated by a colloquial expression. In Austria
there is in use an indelicate designation for the act of masturbation,
namely: "To pull one out," or "to pull one off." *(2) I am unable to say
whence these colloquialisms originate, or on what symbolisms they are
based; but the teeth would very well fit in with the first of the two. -
* According to C. G. Jung, dreams due to dental
stimulus in the case of women have the significance parturition dreams. E.
Jones has given valuable confirmation of this. The common element of this
interpretation with that represented above may be found in the fact that
in both cases (castration-birth) there is a question of removing a part
from the whole body.
*(2) Cf. the biographical dream earlier in this
chapter. -
Dreams of pulling teeth, and of teeth falling out, are
interpreted in popular belief to mean the death of a connection.
Psycho-analysis can admit of such a meaning only at the most as a joking
allusion to the sense already indicated.
To the second group of typical dreams belong those in
which one is flying or hovering, falling, swimming, etc. What do these
dreams signify? Here we cannot generalize. They mean, as we shall learn,
something different in each case; only, the sensory material which they
contain always comes from the same source.
We must conclude from the information obtained in
psycho-analysis that these dreams also repeat impressions of our
childhood- that is, that they refer to the games involving movement which
have such an extraordinary attraction for children. Where is the uncle who
has never made a child fly by running with it across the room, with
outstretched arms, or has never played at falling with it by rocking it on
his knee and then suddenly straightening his leg, or by lifting it above
his head and suddenly pretending to withdraw his supporting hand? At such
moments children shout with joy and insatiably demand a repetition of the
performance, especially if a little fright and dizziness are involved in
it. In after years they repeat their sensations in dreams, but in dreams
they omit the hands that held them, so that now they are free to float or
fall. We know that all small children have a fondness for such games as
rocking and see-sawing; and when they see gymnastic performances at the
circus their recollection of such games is refreshed. In some boys the
hysterical attack consists simply in the reproduction of such
performances, which they accomplish with great dexterity. Not infrequently
sexual sensations are excited by these games of movement, innocent though
they are in themselves. To express the matter in a few words: it is these
romping games of childhood which are being repeated in dreams of flying,
falling, vertigo, and the like, but the pleasurable sensations are now
transformed into anxiety. But, as every mother knows, the romping of
children often enough ends in quarrelling and tears.
I have therefore good reason for rejecting the
explanation that it is the condition of our cutaneous sensations during
sleep, the sensation of the movements of the lungs, etc., that evoke
dreams of flying and falling. As I see it, these sensations have
themselves been reproduced from the memory to which the dream refers- that
they are therefore dream-content, and not dream- sources. *
* This passage, dealing with dreams of motion, is
repeated on account of the context. Cf. chapter V., D.
This material, consisting of sensations of motion,
similar in character, and originating from the same sources, is now used
for the representation of the most manifold dream-thoughts. Dreams of
flying or hovering, for the most part pleasurably toned, will call for the
most widely differing interpretations- interpretations of a quite special
nature in the case of some dreamers, and interpretations of a typical
nature in that of others. One of my patients was in the habit of dreaming
very frequently that she was hovering a little way above the street
without touching the ground. She was very short of stature, and she
shunned every sort of contamination involved by intercourse with human
beings. Her dream of suspension- which raised her feet above the ground
and allowed her head to tower into the air- fulfilled both of her wishes.
In the case of other dreamers of the same sex, the dream of flying had the
significance of the longing: "If only I were a little bird!" Similarly,
others become angels at night, because no one has ever called them angels
by day. The intimate connection between flying and the idea of a bird
makes it comprehensible that the dream of flying, in the case of male
dreamers, should usually have a coarsely sensual significance; * and we
should not be surprised to hear that this or that dreamer is always very
proud of his ability to fly. -
* A reference to the German slang word vogeln (to
copulate) from Vogel (a bird).- TR.
Dr. Paul Federn (Vienna) has propounded the fascinating
theory that a great many flying dreams are erection dreams, since the
remarkable phenomenon of erection, which constantly occupies the human
phantasy, cannot fail to be impressive as an apparent suspension of the
laws of gravity (cf. the winged phalli of the ancients).
It is a noteworthy fact that a prudent experimenter
like Mourly Vold, who is really averse to any kind of interpretation,
nevertheless defends the erotic interpretation of the dreams of flying and
hovering. * He describes the erotic element as "the most important motive
factor of the hovering dream," and refers to the strong sense of bodily
vibration which accompanies this type of dream, and the frequent
connection of such dreams with erections and emissions. -
* "Uber den Traum," Ges. Schriften, Vol. III. -
Dreams of falling are more frequently characterized by
anxiety. Their interpretation, when they occur in women, offers no
difficulty, because they nearly always accept the symbolic meaning of
falling, which is a circumlocution for giving way to an erotic temptation.
We have not yet exhausted the infantile sources of the dream of falling;
nearly all children have fallen occasionally, and then been picked up and
fondled; if they fell out of bed at night, they were picked up by the
nurse and taken into her bed.
People who dream often, and with great enjoyment, of
swimming, cleaving the waves, etc., have usually been bed-wetters, and
they now repeat in the dream a pleasure which they have long since learned
to forego. We shall soon learn, from one example or another, to what
representations dreams of swimming easily lend themselves.
The interpretation of dreams of fire justifies a
prohibition of the nursery, which forbids children to play with fire so
that they may not wet the bed at night. These dreams also are based on
reminiscences of the enuresis nocturna of childhood. In my "Fragment of an
Analysis of Hysteria" * I have given the complete analysis and synthesis
of such a dream of fire in connection with the infantile history of the
dreamer, and have shown for the representation of what maturer impulses
this infantile material has been utilized. -
* Collected Papers, III. -
It would be possible to cite quite a number of other
typical dreams, if by such one understands dreams in which there is a
frequent recurrence, in the dreams of different persons, of the same
manifest dream-content. For example: dreams of passing through narrow
alleys, or a whole suite of rooms; dreams of burglars, in respect of whom
nervous people take measures of precaution before going to bed; dreams of
being chased by wild animals (bulls, horses); or of being threatened with
knives, daggers, and lances. The last two themes are characteristic of the
manifest dream-content of persons suffering from anxiety, etc. A special
investigation of this class of material would be well worth while. In lieu
of this I shall offer two observations, which do not, however, apply
exclusively to typical dreams.
The more one is occupied with the solution of dreams,
the readier one becomes to acknowledge that the majority of the dreams of
adults deal with sexual material and give expression to erotic wishes.
Only those who really analyze dreams, that is, those who penetrate from
their manifest content to the latent dream- thoughts, can form an opinion
on this subject; but never those who are satisfied with registering merely
the manifest content (as, for example, Nacke in his writings on sexual
dreams). Let us recognize at once that there is nothing astonishing in
this fact, which is entirely consistent with the principles of dream-
interpretation. No other instinct has had to undergo so much suppression,
from the time of childhood onwards, as the sexual instinct in all its
numerous components: * from no other instincts are so many and such
intense unconscious wishes left over, which now, in the sleeping state,
generate dreams. In dream- interpretation this importance of the sexual
complexes must never be forgotten, though one must not, of course,
exaggerate it to the exclusion of all other factors. -
* Cf. Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. -
Of many dreams it may be ascertained, by careful
interpretation, that they may even be understood bisexually, inasmuch as
they yield an indisputable over-interpretation, in which they realize
homosexual impulses- that is, impulses which are contrary to the normal
sexual activity of the dreamer. But that all dreams are to be interpreted
bisexually, as Stekel * maintains, and Adler, *(2) seems to me to be a
generalization as insusceptible of proof as it is improbable, and one
which, therefore, I should be loth to defend; for I should, above all, be
at a loss to know how to dispose of the obvious fact that there are many
dreams which satisfy other than erotic needs (taking the word in the
widest sense), as, for example, dreams of hunger, thirst, comfort, etc.
And other similar assertions, to the effect that "behind every dream one
finds a reference to death" (Stekel), or that every dream shows "an
advance from the feminine to the masculine line" (Adler), seem to me to go
far beyond the admissible in the interpretation of dreams. The assertion
that all dreams call for a sexual interpretation, against which there is
such an untiring polemic in the literature of the subject, is quite
foreign to my Interpretation of Dreams. It will not be found in any of the
eight editions of this book, and is in palpable contradiction to the rest
of its contents. -
* W. Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes (1911).
*(2) Alf. Adler, "Der Psychische Hermaphroditismus im
Leben und in der Neurose," in Fortschritte der Medizin (1910), No. 16, and
later papers in the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, i (1910-11). -
We have stated elsewhere that dreams which are
conspicuously innocent commonly embody crude erotic wishes, and this we
might confirm by numerous further examples. But many dreams which appear
indifferent, in which we should never suspect a tendency in any particular
direction, may be traced, according to the analysis, to unmistakably
sexual wish-impulses, often of an unsuspected nature. For example, who,
before it had been interpreted, would have suspected a sexual wish in the
following dream? The dreamer relates: Between two stately palaces there
stands, a little way back, a small house, whose doors are closed. My wife
leads me along the little bit of road leading to the house and pushes the
door open, and then I slip quickly and easily into the interior of a
courtyard that slopes steeply upwards.
Anyone who has had experience in the translating of
dreams will, of course, at once be reminded that penetration into narrow
spaces and the opening of locked doors are among the commonest of sexual
symbols, and will readily see in this dream a representation of attempted
coition from behind (between the two stately buttocks of the female body).
The narrow, steep passage is, of course, the vagina; the assistance
attributed to the wife of the dreamer requires the interpretation that in
reality it is only consideration for the wife which is responsible for
abstention from such an attempt. Moreover, inquiry shows that on the
previous day a young girl had entered the household of the dreamer; she
had pleased him, and had given him the impression that she would not be
altogether averse to an approach of this sort. The little house between
the two palaces is taken from a reminiscence of the Hradschin in Prague,
and once more points to the girl, who is a native of that city.
If, in conversation with my patients, I emphasize the
frequency of the Oedipus dream- the dream of having sexual intercourse
with one's mother- I elicit the answer: "I cannot remember such a dream."
Immediately afterwards, however, there arises the recollection of another,
an unrecognizable, indifferent dream, which the patient has dreamed
repeatedly, and which on analysis proves to be a dream with this very
content- that is, yet another Oedipus dream. I can assure the reader that
disguised dreams of sexual intercourse with the dreamer's mother are far
more frequent than undisguised dreams to the same effect. * -
* I have published a typical example of such a
disguised Oedipus dream in No. 1 of the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse
(see below): another, with a detailed analysis, was published in No. 4 of
the same journal by Otto Rank. For other disguised Oedipus dreams in which
the eye appears as a symbol, see Rank (Int. Zeitschr. fur Ps. A., i,
[1913]). Papers upon eye dreams and eye symbolism by Eder, Ferenczi, and
Reitler will be found in the same issue. The blinding in the Oedipus
legend and elsewhere is a substitute for castration. The ancients, by the
way, were not unfamiliar with the symbolic interpretation of the
undisguised Oedipus dream (see O. Rank, Jahrb. ii, p. 534: "Thus, a dream
of Julius Caesar's of sexual relations with his mother has been handed
down to us, which the oreirocopists interpreted as a favorable omen
signifying his taking possession of the earth (Mother Earth). Equally well
known is the oracle delivered to the Tarquinii, to the effect that that
one of them would become the ruler of Rome who should be the first to kiss
his mother (osculum matri tulerit), which Brutus conceived as referring to
Mother Earth (terram osculo contigit, scilicet quod ea communis mater
omnium mortalium esset, Livy, I, lvi). Cf. here the dream of Hippias in
Herodotus vi, 107. These myths and interpretations point to a correct
psychological insight. I have found that those persons who consider
themselves preferred or favored by their mothers manifest in life that
confidence in themselves, and that unshakable optimism, which often seem
heroic, and not infrequently compel actual success.
Typical example of a disguised Oedipus dream:
A man dreams: He has a secret affair with a woman whom
another man wishes to marry. He is concerned lest the other should
discover this relation and abandon the marriage; he therefore behaves very
affectionately to the man; he nestles up to him and kisses him. The facts
of the dreamer's life touch the dream- content only at one point. He has a
secret affair with a married woman, and an equivocal expression of her
husband, with whom he is on friendly terms, aroused in him the suspicion
that he might have noticed something of this relationship. There is,
however, in reality, yet another factor, the mention of which was avoided
in the dream, and which alone gives the key to it. The life of the husband
is threatened by an organic malady. His wife is prepared for the
possibility of his sudden death, and our dreamer consciously harbours the
intention of marrying the young widow after her husband's decease. It is
through this objective situation that the dreamer finds himself
transferred into the constellation of the Oedipus dream; his wish is to be
enabled to kill the man, so that he may win the woman for his wife; his
dream gives expression to the wish in a hypocritical distortion. Instead
of representing her as already married to the other man, it represents the
other man only as wishing to marry her, which indeed corresponds with his
own secret intention, and the hostile whishes directed against the man are
concealed under demonstrations of affection, which are reminiscences of
his childish relations to his father.
There are dreams of landscapes and localities in which
emphasis is always laid upon the assurance: "I have been here before." but
this Deja vu has a special significance in dreams. In this case the
locality is the genitals of the mother; of no other place can it be
asserted with such certainty that one has been here before. I was once
puzzled by the account of a dream given by a patient afflicted with
obsessional neurosis. He dreamed that he called at a house where he had
been twice before. But this very patient had long ago told me of an
episode of his sixth year. At that time he shared his mother's bed, and
had abused the occasion by inserting his finger into his mother's genitals
while she was asleep.
A large number of dreams, which are frequently full of
anxiety, and often have for content the traversing of narrow spaces, or
staying long in the water, are based upon phantasies concerning the
intra-uterine life, the sojourn in the mother's womb, and the act of
birth. I here insert the dream of a young man who, in his phantasy, has
even profited by the intra-uterine opportunity of spying upon an act of
coition between his parents.
He is in a deep shaft, in which there is a window, as
in the Semmering tunnel. Through this he sees at first an empty landscape,
and then he composes a picture in it, which is there all at once and fills
up the empty space. The picture represents a field which is being deeply
tilled by an implement, and the wholesome air, the associated idea of hard
work, and the bluish- black clods of earth make a pleasant impression on
him. He then goes on and sees a work on education lying open... and is
surprised that so much attention is devoted in it to the sexual feelings
(of children), which makes him think of me.
Here is a pretty water-dream of a female patient, which
was turned to special account in the course of treatment.
At her usual holiday resort on the... Lake, she flings
herself into the dark water at a place where the pale moon is reflected in
the water.
Dreams of this sort are parturition dreams; their
interpretation is effected by reversing the fact recorded in the manifest
dream- content; thus, instead of flinging oneself into the water, read
coming out of the water- that is, being born. * The place from which one
is born may be recognized if one thinks of the humorous sense of the
French la lune. The pale moon thus becomes the white bottom, which the
child soon guesses to be the place from which it came. Now what can be the
meaning of the patient's wishing to be born at a holiday resort? I asked
the dreamer this, and she replied without hesitation: "Hasn't the
treatment made me as though I were born again?" Thus the dream becomes an
invitation to continue the treatment at this summer resort- that is, to
visit her there; perhaps it also contains a very bashful allusion to the
wish to become a mother herself. *(2) -
* For the mythological meaning of water-birth, see
Rank: Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden (1909).
*(2) It was not for a long time that I learned to
appreciate the significance of the phantasies and unconscious thoughts
relating to life in the womb. They contain the explanation of the curious
dread, felt by so many people, of being buried alive, as well as the
profoundest unconscious reason for the belief in a life after death, which
represents only the projection into the future of this mysterious life
before birth. The act of birth, moreover, is the first experience attended
by anxiety, and is thus, the source and model of the affect of anxiety. -
Another dream of parturition, with its interpretation,
I take from a paper by E. Jones. "She stood at the seashore watching a
small boy, who seemed to be hers, wading into the water. This he did till
the water covered him and she could only see his head bobbing up and down
near the surface. The scene then changed to the crowded to hall of an
hotel. Her husband left her, and she 'entered into conversation with' a
stranger.
"The second half of the dream was discovered in the
analysis to represent flight from her husband, and the entering into
intimate relations with a third person, behind whom was plainly indicated
Mr. X's brother, mentioned in a former dream. The first part of the dream
was a fairly evident birth-phantasy. In dreams, as in mythology, the
delivery of a child from the uterine waters is commonly represented, by
way of distortion, as the entry of the child into water; among many other
instances, the births of Adonis, Osiris, Moses, and Bacchus are well-known
illustrations of this. The bobbing up and down of the head in the water at
once recalled to the patient the sensation of quickening which she had
experienced in her only pregnancy. Thinking of the boy going into the
water induced a reverie in which she saw herself taking him out of the
water, carrying him into the nursery, washing and dressing him, and
installing him in her household.
"The second half of the dream, therefore, represents
thoughts concerning the elopement, which belonged to the first half of the
underlying latent content; the first half of the dream corresponded with
the second half of the latent content, the birth phantasy. Besides this
inversion in the order, further inversions took place in each half of the
dream. In the first half the child entered the water, and then his head
bobbed; in the underlying dream-thoughts the quickening occurred first,
and then the child left the water (a double inversion). In the second half
her husband left her; in the dream-thoughts she left her husband."
Another parturition dream is related by Abraham- the
dream of a young woman expecting her first confinement: Front one point of
the floor of the room a subterranean channel leads directly into the water
(path of parturition- amniotic fluid). She lifts up a trap in the floor,
and there immediately appears a creature dressed in brownish fur, which
almost resembles a seal. This creature changes into the dreamer's younger
brother, to whom her relation has always been material in character.
Rank has shown from a number of dreams that
parturition-dreams employ the same symbols as micturition-dreams. The
erotic stimulus expresses itself in these dreams as in urethral stimulus.
The stratification of meaning in these dreams corresponds with a chance in
the significance of the symbol since childhood.
We may here turn back to the interrupted theme (see
chapter III) of the part played by organic, sleep-disturbing stimuli in
dream- formation. Dreams which have come into existence under these
influences not only reveal quite frankly the wish-fulfilling tendency, and
the character of convenience-dreams, but they very often display a quite
transparent symbolism as well, since waking not infrequently follows a
stimulus whose satisfaction in symbolic disguise has already been vainly
attempted in the dream. This is true of emission dreams as well as those
evoked by the need to urinate or defecate. The peculiar character of
emission dreams permits us directly to unmask certain sexual symbols
already recognized as typical, but nevertheless violently disputed, and it
also convinces us that many an apparently innocent dream-situation is
merely the symbolic prelude to a crudely sexual scene. This, however,
finds direct representation, as a rule, only in the comparatively
infrequent emission dreams, while it often enough turns into an
anxiety-dream, which likewise leads to waking.
The symbolism of dreams due to urethral stimulus is
especially obvious, and has always been divined. Hippocrates had already
advanced the theory that a disturbance of the bladder was indicated if one
dreamt of fountains and springs (Havelock Ellis). Scherner, who has
studied the manifold symbolism of the urethral stimulus, agrees that "the
powerful urethral stimulus always turns into the stimulation of the sexual
sphere and its symbolic imagery.... The dream due to urethral stimulus is
often at the same time the representative of the sexual dream."
O. Rank, whose conclusions (in his paper on Die
Symbolschichtung im Wecktraum) I have here followed, argues very plausibly
that a large number of "dreams due to urethral stimulus" are really caused
by sexual stimuli, which at first seek to gratify themselves by way of
regression to the infantile form of urethral erotism. Those cases are
especially instructive in which the urethral stimulus thus produced leads
to waking and the emptying of the bladder, whereupon, in spite of this
relief, the dream is continued, and expresses its need in undisguisedly
erotic images. * -
* "The same symbolic representations which in the
infantile sense constitute the basis of the vesical dream appear in the
recent sense in purely sexual significance: water = urine = semen =
amniotic fluid; ship = to pump ship (urinate) = seed-capsule; getting wet
= enuresis = coitus = pregnancy; swimming = full bladder = dwelling-place
of the unborn; rain = urination = symbol of fertilization: traveling
(journeying- alighting) = getting out of bed = having sexual intercourse
(honeymoon journey); urinating = sexual ejaculation" (Rank, I, c).
In a quite analogous manner dreams due to intestinal
stimulus disclose the pertinent symbolism, and thus confirm the relation,
which is also amply verified by ethno-psychology, of gold and feces. *
"Thus, for example, a woman, at a time when she is under the care of a
physician on account of an intestinal disorder, dreams of a digger for
hidden treasure who is burying a treasure in the vicinity of a little
wooden shed which looks like a rural privy. A second part of the dream has
as its content how she wipes the posterior of her child, a little girl,
who has soiled herself." -
* Freud, "Character and Anal Erotism," Collected
Papers, II; Rank, Die Symbolschictung, etc.; Dattner, Intern. Zeitschr. f.
Psych. i (1913); Reik Intern. Zeitschr., iii (1915). -
Dreams of rescue are connected with parturition dreams.
To rescue, especially to rescue from the water, is, when dreamed by a
woman, equivalent to giving birth; this sense is, however, modified when
the dreamer is a man. * -
* For such a dream see Pfister, "Ein Fall von
psychoanalytischer Seelensorge und Seelenheilung," in Evangelische
Freiheit (1909). Concerning the symbol of "rescuing," see my paper, "The
Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy" (p. 123 above). Also
"Contribution to the Theory of Love, I: A Special Type of Object Choice in
Men" in Collected Papers, iv. Also Rank, "Beilege zur Rettungs-phantasie,"
in the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse i (1910), p. 331; Reik; "Zur
Rettungssymbolic," ibid., p. 299. -
Robbers, burglars, and ghosts, of which we are afraid
before going to bed, and which sometimes even disturb our sleep, originate
in one and the same childish reminiscence. They are the nightly visitors
who have waked the child in order to set it on the chamber, so that it may
not wet the bed, or have lifted the coverlet in order to see clearly how
the child is holding its hands while sleeping. I have been able to induce
an exact recollection of the nocturnal visitor in the analysis of some of
these anxiety dreams. The robbers were always the father; the ghosts more
probably correspond to female persons in white night- gowns. |
