CHAPTER SIX (Continued...)
F. Examples- Arithmetic and Speech in Dreams
Before I proceed to assign to its proper place the
fourth of the factors which control the formation of dreams, I shall cite
a few examples from my collection of dreams, partly for the purpose of
illustrating the co-operation of the three factors with which we are
already acquainted, and partly for the purpose of adducing evidence for
certain unsupported assertions which have been made, or of bringing out
what necessarily follows from them. It has, of course, been difficult in
the foregoing account of the dream-work to demonstrate my conclusions by
means of examples. Examples in support of isolated statements are
convincing only when considered in the context of an interpretation of a
dream as a whole; when they are wrested from their context, they lose
their value; on the other hand, a dream-interpretation, even when it is by
no means profound, soon becomes so extensive that it obscures the thread
of the discussion which it is intended to illustrate. This technical
consideration must be my excuse if I now proceed to mix together all sorts
of things which have nothing in common except their reference to the text
of the foregoing chapter.
We shall first consider a few examples of very peculiar
or unusual methods of representation in dreams. A lady dreamed as follows:
A servant-girl is standing on a ladder as though to clean the windows, and
has with her a chimpanzee and a gorilla cat (later corrected, angora cat).
She throws the animals on to the dreamer; the chimpanzee nestles up to
her, and this is very disgusting. This dream has accomplished its purpose
by a very simple means, namely, by taking a mere figure of speech
literally, and representing it in accordance with the literal meaning of
its words. Monkey, like the names of animals in general, is an opprobrious
epithet, and the situation of the dream means merely to hurl invectives.
This same collection will soon furnish us with further examples of the
employment of this simple artifice in the dream-work.
Another dream proceeds in a very similar manner: A
woman with a child which has a conspicuously deformed cranium; the dreamer
has heard that the child acquired this deformity owing to its position in
its mother's womb. The doctor says that the cranium might be given a
better shape by means of compression, but that this would injure the
brain. She thinks that because it is a boy it won't suffer so much from
deformity. This dream contains a plastic representation of the abstract
concept: Childish impressions, with which the dreamer has become familiar
in the course of the treatment.
In the following example the dream-work follows rather
a different course. The dream contains a recollection of an excursion to
the Hilmteich, near Graz: There is a terrible storm outside; a miserable
hotel- the water is dripping from the walls, and the beds are damp. (The
latter part of the content was less directly expressed than I give it.)
The dream signifies superfluous. The abstract idea occurring in the
dream-thoughts is first made equivocal by a certain abuse of language; it
has perhaps been replaced by overflowing, or by fluid and super-fluid (-fluous),
and has then been brought to representation by an accumulation of like
impressions. Water within, water without, water in the beds in the form of
dampness- everything fluid and super fluid. That for the purposes of
dream-representation the spelling is much less considered than the sound
of words ought not to surprise us when we remember that rhyme exercises a
similar privilege.
The fact that language has at its disposal a great
number of words which were originally used in a pictorial and concrete
sense, but are at present used in a colorless and abstract fashion, has,
in certain other cases, made it very easy for the dream to represent its
thoughts. The dream has only to restore to these words their full
significance, or to follow their change of meaning a little way back. For
example, a man dreams that his friend, who is struggling to get out of a
very tight place, calls upon him for help. The analysis shows that the
tight place is a hole, and that the dreamer symbolically uses these very
words to his friend: "Be careful, or you'll get yourself into a hole." *
Another dreamer climbs a mountain from which he obtains an extraordinarily
extensive view. He identifies himself with his brother, who is editing a
review dealing with the Far East.
* English Example.- TR.
In a dream in Der Grune Heinrich, a spirited horse is
plunging about in a field of the finest oats, every grain of which is
really "a sweet almond, a raisin and a new penny" wrapped in red silk and
tied with a bit of pig's bristle." The poet (or the dreamer) immediately
furnishes the meaning of this dream, for the horse felt himself pleasantly
tickled, so that he exclaimed: "The oats are pricking me" ("I feel my
oats").
In the old Norse sagas (according to Henzen) prolific
use is made in dreams of colloquialisms and witty expressions; one
scarcely finds a dream without a double meaning or a play upon words.
It would be a special undertaking to collect such
methods of representation and to arrange them in accordance with the
principles upon which they are based. Some of the representations are
almost witty. They give one the impression that one would have never
guessed their meaning if the dreamer himself had not succeeded in
explaining it.
1. A man dreams that he is asked for a name, which,
however, he cannot recall. He himself explains that this means: "I
shouldn't dream of it."
2. A female patient relates a dream in which all the
persons concerned were singularly large. "That means," she adds, "that it
must deal with an episode of my early childhood, for at that time all
grown-up people naturally seemed to me immensely large." She herself did
not appear in the dream.
The transposition into childhood is expressed
differently in other dreams- by the translation of time into space. One
sees persons and scenes as though at a great distance, at the end of a
long road, or as though one were looking at them through the wrong end of
a pair of opera-glasses.
3. A man who in waking life shows an inclination to
employ abstract and indefinite expressions, but who otherwise has his wits
about him, dreams, in a certain connection, that he reaches a railway
station just as a train is coming in. But then the platform moves towards
the train, which stands still; an absurd inversion of the real state of
affairs. This detail, again, is nothing more than an indication to the
effect that something else in the dream must be inverted. The analysis of
the same dream leads to recollections of picture-books in which men were
represented standing on their heads and walking on their hands.
4. The same dreamer, on another occasion, relates a
short dream which almost recalls the technique of a rebus. His uncle gives
him a kiss in an automobile. He immediately adds the interpretation, which
would never have occurred to me: it means auto-erotism. In the waking
state this might have been said in jest.
5. At a New Year's Eve dinner the host, the patriarch
of the family, ushered in the New Year with a speech. One of his sons-in-
law, a lawyer, was not inclined to take the old man seriously, especially
when in the course of his speech he expressed himself as follows: "When I
open the ledger for the Old Year and glance at its pages I see everything
on the asset side and nothing, thank the Lord, on the side of liability;
all you children have been a great asset, none of you a liability." On
hearing this the young lawyer thought of X, his wife's brother, who was a
cheat and a liar, and whom he had recently extricated from the
entanglements of the law. That night, in a dream. he saw the New Year's
celebration once more, and heard the speech, or rather saw it. Instead of
speaking, the old man actually opened the ledger, and on the side marked
assets he saw his name amongst others, but on the other side, marked
liability, there was the name of his brother-in-law, X. However, the word
liability was changed into Lie-Ability, which he regarded as X's main
characteristic. *
* Reported by Brill in his Fundamental Conceptions of
Psychoanalysis.
6. A dreamer treats another person for a broken bone.
The analysis shows that the fracture represents a broken marriage vow,
etc.
7. In the dream-content the time of day often
represents a certain period of the dreamer's childhood. Thus, for example,
5:15 a.m. means to one dreamer the age of five years and three months;
when he was that age, a younger brother was born.
8. Another representation of age in a dream: A woman is
walking with two little girls; there is a difference of fifteen months in
their ages. The dreamer cannot think of any family of her acquaintance in
which this is the case. She herself interprets it to mean that the two
children represent her own person, and that the dream reminds her that the
two traumatic events of her childhood were separated by this period of
time 3 1/2 and 4 3/4 years).
9. It is not astonishing that persons who are
undergoing psycho- analytic treatment frequently dream of it, and are
compelled to give expression in their dreams to all the thoughts and
expectations aroused by it. The image chosen for the treatment is as a
rule that of a journey, usually in a motor-car, this being a modern and
complicated vehicle; in the reference to the speed of the car the
patient's ironical humour is given free play. If the unconscious, as an
element of waking thought, is to be represented in the dream, it is
replaced, appropriately enough, by subterranean localities, which at other
times, when there is no reference to analytic treatment, have represented
the female body or the womb. Below in the dream very often refers to the
genitals, and its opposite, above, to the face, mouth or breast. By wild
beasts the dream-work usually symbolizes passionate impulses; those of the
dreamer, and also those of other persons of whom the dreamer is afraid; or
thus, by means of a very slight displacement, the persons who experience
these passions. From this it is not very far to the totemistic
representation of the dreaded father by means of vicious animals, dogs,
wild horses, etc. One might say that wild beasts serve to represent the
libido, feared by the ego, and combated by repression. Even the neurosis
itself, the sick person, is often separated from the dreamer and exhibited
in the dream as an independent person.
One may go so far as to say that the dream-work makes
use of all the means accessible to it for the visual representation of the
dream-thoughts, whether these appear admissible or inadmissible to waking
criticism, and thus exposes itself to the doubt as well as the derision of
all those who have only hearsay knowledge of dream-interpretation, but
have never themselves practised it. Stekel's book, Die Sprache des Traumes,
is especially rich in such examples, but I avoid citing illustrations from
this work as the author's lack of critical judgment and his arbitrary
technique would make even the unprejudiced observer feel doubtful.
10. From an essay by V. Tausk ("Kleider und Farben in
Dienste der Traumdarstellung," in Interna. Zeitschr. fur Ps. A., ii
[1914]):
(a) A dreams that he sees his former governess wearing
a dress of black lustre, which fits closely over her buttocks. That means
he declares this woman to be lustful.
(b) C in a dream sees a girl on the road to X bathed in
a white light and wearing a white blouse.
The dreamer began an affair with a Miss White on this
road.
11. In an analysis which I carried out in the French
language I had to interpret a dream in which I appeared as an elephant. I
naturally had to ask why I was thus represented: "Vous me trompez,"
answered the dreamer (Trompe = trunk).
The dream-work often succeeds in representing very
refractory material, such as proper names, by means of the forced
exploitation of very remote relations. In one of my dreams old Brucke has
set me a task. I make a preparation, and pick something out of it which
looks like crumpled tinfoil. (I shall return to this dream later.) The
corresponding association, which is not easy to find, is stanniol, and now
I know that I have in mind the name of the author Stannius, which appeared
on the title- page of a treatise on the nervous system of fishes, which in
my youth I regarded with reverence. The first scientific problem which my
teacher set me did actually relate to the nervous system of a fish- the
Ammocoetes. Obviously, this name could not be utilized in the
picture-puzzle.
Here I must not fail to include a dream with a curious
content, which is worth noting also as the dream of a child, and which is
readily explained by analysis: A lady tells me: "I can remember that when
I was a child I repeatedly dreamed that God wore a conical paper hat on
His head. They often used to make me wear such a hat at table, so that I
shouldn't be able to look at the plates of the other children and see how
much they had received of any particular dish. Since I had heard that God
was omniscient, the dream signified that I knew everything in spite of the
hat which I was made to wear."
What the dream-work consists in, and its unceremonious
handling of its material, the dream-thoughts, may be shown in an
instructive manner by the numbers and calculations which occur in dreams.
Superstition, by the way, regards numbers as having a special significance
in dreams. I shall therefore give a few examples of this kind from my
collection.
1. From the dream of a lady, shortly before the end of
her treatment:
She wants to pay for something or other; her daughter
takes 3 florins 65 kreuzer from her purse; but the mother says: "What are
you doing? It costs only 21 kreuzer." This fragment of the dream was
intelligible without further explanation owing to my knowledge of the
dreamer's circumstances. The lady was a foreigner, who had placed her
daughter at school in Vienna, and was able to continue my treatment as
long as her daughter remained in the city. In three weeks the daughter's
scholastic year would end, and the treatment would then stop. On the day
before the dream the principal of the school had asked her whether she
could not decide to leave the child at school for another year. She had
then obviously reflected that in this case she would be able to continue
the treatment for another year. Now, this is what the dream refers to, for
a year is equal to 365 days; the three weeks remaining before the end of
the scholastic year, and of the treatment, are equivalent to 21 days
(though not to so many hours of treatment). The numerals, which in the
dream- thoughts refer to periods of time, are given money values in the
dream, and simultaneously a deeper meaning finds expression- for time is
money. 365 kreuzer, of course, are 3 florins 65 kreuzer. The smallness of
the sums which appear in the dream is a self- evident wish-fulfillment; the
wish has reduced both the cost of the treatment and the year's school
fees.
2. In another dream the numerals are involved in even
more complex relations. A young lady, who has been married for some years,
learns that an acquaintance of hers, of about the same age, Elise L, has
just become engaged. Thereupon she dreams: She is sitting in the theatre
with her husband and one side of the stalls is quite empty. Her husband
tells her that Elise L and her fiancé had also wished to come to the
theatre, but that they only could have obtained poor seats; three for 1
florin 50 kreuzer, and of course they could not take those. She thinks
they didn't lose much, either.
What is the origin of the 1 florin 50 kreuzer? A really
indifferent incident of the previous day. The dreamer's sister-in- law had
received 150 florins as a present from her husband, and hastened to get
rid of them by buying some jewellery. Let us note that 150 florins is 100
times 1 florin 50 kreuzer. But whence the 3 in connection with the seats
in the theatre? There is only one association for this, namely, that the
fiancé is three months younger than herself. When we have ascertained the
significance of the fact that one side of the stalls is empty we have the
solution of the dream. This feature is an undisguised allusion to a little
incident which had given her husband a good excuse for teasing her. She
had decided to go to the theatre that week; she had been careful to obtain
tickets a few days beforehand, and had had to pay the advance booking-fee.
When they got to the theatre they found that one side of the house was
almost empty; so that she certainly need not have been in such a hurry.
I shall now substitute the dream-thoughts for the
dream: "It surely was nonsense to marry so early; there was no need for my
being in such a hurry. From Elise L's example I see that I should have got
a husband just the same- and one a hundred times better- If I had only
waited (antithesis to the haste of her sister-in- law), I could have
bought three such men for the money (the dowry)!"- Our attention is drawn
to the fact that the numerals in this dream have changed their meanings
and their relations to a much greater extent than in the. one previously
considered. The transforming and distorting activity of the dream has in
this case been greater- a fact which we interpret as meaning that these
dream-thoughts had to overcome an unusual degree of endo- psychic
resistance before they attained to representation. And we must not
overlook the fact that the dream contains an absurd element, namely, that
two persons are expected to take three seats. It will throw some light on
the question of the interpretation of absurdity in dreams if I remark that
this absurd detail of the dream-content is intended to represent the most
strongly emphasized of the dream-thoughts: "It was nonsense to marry so
early." The figure 3, which occurs in a quite subordinate relation between
the two persons compared (three months' difference in their ages), has
thus been adroitly utilized to produce the idea of nonsense required by
the dream. The reduction of the actual 150 florins to 1 florin 50 kreuzer
corresponds to the dreamer's disparagement of her husband in her
suppressed thoughts.
3. Another example displays the arithmetical powers of
dreams, which have brought them into such disrepute. A man dreams: He is
sitting in the B's house (the B's are a family with which he was formerly
acquainted), and he says: "It was nonsense that you didn't give me Amy for
my wife." Thereupon, he asks the girl: "How old are you?" Answer: "I was
born in 1882." "Ah, then you are 28 years old."
Since the dream was dreamed in the year 1898, this is
obviously bad arithmetic, and the inability of the dreamer to calculate
may, if it cannot be otherwise explained, be likened to that of a general
paralytic. My patient was one of those men who cannot help thinking about
every woman they see. The patient who for some months came next after him
in my consulting-room was a young lady; he met this lady after he had
constantly asked about her, and he was very anxious to make a good
impression on her. This was the lady whose age he estimated at 28. So much
for explaining the result of his apparent calculation. But 1882 was the
year in which he had married. He had been unable to refrain from entering
into conversation with the two other women whom he met at my house- the
two by no means youthful maids who alternately opened the door to him- and
as he did not find them very responsive, he had told himself that they
probably regarded him as elderly and serious.
Bearing in mind these examples, and others of a similar
nature (to follow), we may say: The dream-work does not calculate at all,
whether correctly or incorrectly; it only strings together, in the form of
a sum, numerals which occur in the dream-thoughts, and which may serve as
allusions to material which is insusceptible of representation. It thus
deals with figures, as material for expressing its intentions, just as it
deals with all other concepts, and with names and speeches which are only
verbal images.
For the dream-work cannot compose a new speech. No
matter how many speeches; and answers, which may in themselves be sensible
or absurd, may occur in dreams, analysis shows us that the dream has taken
from the dream-thoughts fragments of speeches which have really been
delivered or heard, and has dealt with them in the most arbitrary fashion.
It has not only torn them from their context and mutilated them, accepting
one fragment and rejecting another, but it has often fitted them together
in a novel manner, so that the speech which seems coherent in a dream is
dissolved by analysis into three or four components. In this new
application of the words the dream has often ignored the meaning which
they had in the dream-thoughts, and has drawn an entirely new meaning from
them. * Upon closer inspection, the more distinct and compact ingredients
of the dream-speech may be distinguished from others, which serve as
connectives, and have probably been supplied, just as we supply omitted
letters and syllables in reading. The dream-speech thus has the structure
of breccia, in which the larger pieces of various material are held
together by a solidified cohesive medium.
* Analyses of other numerical dreams have been given by
Jung, Marcinowski and others. Such dreams often involve very complicated
arithmetical operations, which are none the less solved by the dreamer
with astonishing confidence. Cf. also Ernest Jones, "Uber unbewusste
Zahlenbehandlung," Zentralb. fur Psychoanalyse, 4, ii, [1912], p. 241).
Neurosis behaves in the same fashion. I know a patient
who- involuntarily and unwillingly- hears (hallucinates) songs or
fragments of songs without being able to understand their significance for
her psychic life. She is certainly not a paranoiac. Analysis shows that by
exercising a certain license she gave the text of these songs a false
application. "Oh, thou blissful one! Oh, thou happy one!" This is the
first line of Christmas carol, but by not continuing it to the word,
Christmastide, she turns it into a bridal song, etc. The same mechanism of
distortion may operate, without hallucination, merely in association.
Strictly speaking, of course, this description is
correct only for those dream-speeches which have something of the sensory
character of a speech, and are described as speeches. The others, which
have not, as it were, been perceived as heard or spoken (which have no
accompanying acoustic or motor emphasis in the dream) are simply thoughts,
such as occur in our waking life, and find their way unchanged into many
of our dreams. Our reading, too, seems to provide an abundant and not
easily traceable source for the indifferent speech-material of dreams. But
anything that is at all conspicuous as a speech in a dream can be referred
to actual speeches which have been made or heard by the dreamer.
We have already found examples of the derivation of
such dream- speeches in the analyses of dreams which have been cited for
other purposes. Thus, in the innocent market-dream (chapter V., A.) where
the speech: That is no longer to be had serves to identify me with the
butcher, while a fragment of the other speech: I don't know that, I don't
take that, precisely fulfils the task of rendering the dream innocent. On
the previous day, the dreamer, replying to some unreasonable demand on the
part of her cook, had waved her aside with the words: I don't know that,
behave yourself properly, and she afterwards took into the dream the
first, indifferent-sounding part of the speech in order to allude to the
latter part, which fitted well into the phantasy underlying the dream, but
which might also have betrayed it.
Here is one of many examples which all lead to the same
conclusion:
A large courtyard in which dead bodies are being
burned. The dreamer says, "I'm going, I can't stand the sight of it." (Not
a distinct speech.) Then he meets two butcher boys and asks, "Well, did it
taste good?" And one of them answers, "No, it wasn't good." As though it
had been human flesh.
The innocent occasion of this dream is as follows:
After taking supper with his wife, the dreamer pays a visit to his worthy
but by no means appetizing neighbor. The hospitable old lady is just
sitting down to her own supper, and presses him (among men a composite,
sexually significant word is used jocosely in the place of this word) to
taste it. He declines, saying that he has no appetite. She replies: "Go on
with you, you can manage it all right," or something of the kind. The
dreamer is thus forced to taste and praise what is offered him. "But
that's good!" When he is alone again with his wife, he complains of his
neighbor's importunity, and of the quality of the food which he has
tasted. "I can't stand the sight of it," a phrase that in the dream, too,
does not emerge as an actual speech, is a thought relating to the physical
charms of the lady who invites him, which may be translated by the
statement that he has no desire to look at her.
The analysis of another dream- which I will cite at
this stage for the sake of a very distinct speech, which constitutes its
nucleus, but which will be explained only when we come to evaluate the
affects in dreams- is more instructive. I dream very vividly: I have gone
to Brucke's laboratory at night, and on hearing a gentle knocking at the
door, I open it to (the deceased) Professor Fleischl, who enters in the
company of several strangers, and after saying a few words sits down at
his table. Then follows a second dream: My friend Fl has come to Vienna,
unobtrusively, in July; I meet him in the street, in conversation with my
(deceased) friend P, and I go with them somewhere, and they sit down
facing each other as though at a small table, while I sit facing them at
the narrow end of the table. Fl speaks of his sister, and says: "In
three-quarters of an hour she was dead," and then something like "That is
the threshold." As P does not understand him, Fl turns to me, and asks me
how much I have told P of his affairs. At this, overcome by strange
emotions, I try to tell Fl that P (cannot possibly know anything, of
course, because he) is not alive. But noticing the mistake myself, I say:
"Non vixit." Then I look searchingly at P, and under my gaze he becomes
pale and blurred, and his eyes turn a sickly blue- and at last he
dissolves. I rejoice greatly at this; I now understand that Ernst
Fleischl, too, is only an apparition, a revenant, and I find that it is
quite possible that such a person should exist only so long as one wishes
him to, and that he can be made to disappear by the wish of another
person.
This very pretty dream unites so many of the
enigmatical characteristics of the dream-content- the criticism made in
the dream itself, inasmuch as I myself notice my mistake in saying Non
vixit instead of Non vivit, the unconstrained intercourse with deceased
persons, whom the dream itself declares to be dead, the absurdity of my
conclusion, and the intense satisfaction which it gives me- that "I would
give my life" to expound the complete solution of the problem. But in
reality I am incapable of doing what I do in the dream, i.e., of
sacrificing such intimate friends to my ambition. And if I attempted to
disguise the facts, the true meaning of the dream, with which I am
perfectly familiar, would be spoiled. I must therefore be content to
select a few of the elements of the dream for interpretation, some here,
and some at a later stage.
The scene in which I annihilate P with a glance forms
the centre of the dream. His eyes become strange and weirdly blue, and
then he dissolves. This scene is an unmistakable imitation of a scene that
was actually experienced. I was a demonstrator at the Physiological
Institute; I was on duty in the morning, and Brucke learned that on
several occasions I had been unpunctual in my attendance at the students'
laboratory. One morning, therefore, he arrived at the hour of opening, and
waited for me. What he said to me was brief and to the point; but it was
not what he said that mattered. What overwhelmed me was the terrible gaze
of his blue eyes, before which I melted away- as P does in the dream, for
P has exchanged roles with me, much to my relief. Anyone who remembers the
eyes of the great master, which were wonderfully beautiful even in his old
age, and has ever seen him angered, will readily imagine the emotions of
the young transgressor on that occasion.
But for a long while I was unable to account for the
Non vixit with which I pass sentence in the dream. Finally, I remembered
that the reason why these two words were so distinct in the dream was not
because they were heard or spoken, but because they were seen. Then I knew
at once where they came from. On the pedestal of the statue of the Emperor
joseph in the Vienna Hofburg are inscribed the following beautiful words:
Saluti patriae vixit
non diu sed totus. *
* The inscription in fact reads:
Saluti publicae vixit
non diu sed totus.
[He lived for the safety of the public, not for a long
time, but always.] The motive of the mistake: patriae [fatherland] for
publicae, has probably been correctly divined by Wittels.
From this inscription I had taken what fitted one
inimical train of thought in my dream-thoughts, and which was intended to
mean: "That fellow has nothing to say in the matter, he is not really
alive." And I now recalled that the dream was dreamed a few days after the
unveiling of the memorial to Fleischl, in the cloisters of the University,
upon which occasion I had once more seen the memorial to Brucke, and must
have thought with regret (in the unconscious) how my gifted friend P, with
all his devotion to science, had by his premature death forfeited his just
claim to a memorial in these halls. So I set up this memorial to him in
the dream; Josef is my friend P's baptismal name. *
* As an example of over-determination: My excuse for
coming late was that after working late into the night, in the morning I
had to make the long journey from Kaiser-Josef-Strasse to Wahringer
Strasse.
According to the rules of dream-interpretation, I
should still not be justified in replacing non vivit, which I need, by non
vixit, which is placed at my disposal by the recollection of the Kaiser
Josef memorial. Some other element of the dream-thoughts must have
contributed to make this possible. Something now calls my attention to the
fact that in the dream scene two trains of thought relating to my friend P
meet, one hostile, the other affectionate- the former on the surface, the
latter covered up- and both are given representation in the same words:
non vixit. As my friend P has deserved well of science, I erect a memorial
to him; as he has been guilty of a malicious wish (expressed at the end of
the dream), I annihilate him. I have here constructed a sentence with a
special cadence, and in doing so I must have been influenced by some
existing model. But where can I find a similar antithesis, a similar
parallel between two opposite reactions to the same person, both of which
can claim to be wholly justified, and which nevertheless do not attempt to
affect one another? Only in one passage which, however, makes a profound
impression upon the reader- Brutus's speech of justification in
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he
was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant. I honour him; but as he
was ambitious, I slew him." Have we not here the same verbal structure,
and the same antithesis of thought, as in the dream-thoughts? So I am
playing Brutus in my dream. If only I could find in my dream-thoughts
another collateral connection to confirm this! I think it might be the
following: My friend Fl comes to Vienna in July. This detail is not the
case in reality. To my knowledge, my friend has never been in Vienna in
July. But the month of July is named after Julius Caesar, and might
therefore very well furnish the required allusion to the intermediate
thought- that I am playing the part of Brutus. * -
* And also, Caesar = Kaiser.
Strangely enough, I once did actually play the part of
Brutus. When I was a boy of fourteen, I presented the scene between Brutus
and Caesar in Schiller's poem to an audience of children: with the
assistance of my nephew, who was a year older than I, and who had come to
us from England- and was thus a revenant- for in him I recognized the
playmate of my early childhood. Until the end of my third year we had been
inseparable; we had loved each other and fought each other and, as I have
already hinted, this childish relation has determined all my later
feelings in my intercourse with persons of my own age. My nephew John has
since then had many incarnations, which have revivified first one and then
another aspect of a character that is ineradicably fixed in my unconscious
memory. At times he must have treated me very badly, and I must have
opposed my tyrant courageously, for in later years I was often told of a
short speech in which I defended myself when my father- his grandfather-
called me to account: "Why did you hit John?" "I hit him because he hit
me." It must be this childish scene which causes non vivit to become non
vixit, for in the language of later childhood striking is known as wichsen
(German: wichsen = to polish, to wax, i.e., to thrash); and the dream-work
does not disdain to take advantage of such associations. My hostility
towards my friend P, which has so little foundation in reality- he was
greatly my superior, and might therefore have been a new edition of my old
playmate- may certainly be traced to my complicated relations with John
during our childhood. I shall, as I have said, return to this dream later
on. |
