The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud
III. Here is a third example from my own experience:
_I go to the hospital with P. through a region in which houses and gardens occur. With this comes the idea that I have already seen this region in dreams several times. I do not know my way very well; P. shows me a way which leads through a corner to a restaurant (a room, not a garden); here I ask for Mrs. Doni, and I hear that she is living in the background in a little room with three children. I go there, and while on the way I meet an indistinct person with my two little girls, whom I take with me after I have stood with them for a while. A kind of reproach against my wife for having left them there._
Upon awakening I feel great _satisfaction_, the cause for this being the fact that I am now going to learn from the analysis what is meant by the idea “_I have already dreamed of that_.”[EY] But the analysis of the dream teaches me nothing on the subject; it only shows me that the satisfaction belongs to the latent dream content, and not to my judgment upon the dream. It is _satisfaction over the fact that I have had children by my marriage_. P. is a person in whose company I walked the path of life for a certain space, but who has since far outdistanced me socially and materially—whose marriage, however, has remained childless. The two occasions for the dream furnishing the proof of this may be found by means of complete analysis. On the previous day I had read in the paper the obituary notice of a certain Mrs. Dona A——y (out of which I make Doni), who had died in childbirth; I was told by my wife that the dead woman had been nursed by the same midwife she herself had had at the birth of our two youngest boys. The name Dona had caught my attention, for I had recently found it for the first time in an English novel. The other occasion for the dream may be found in the date on which it was dreamed; it was on the night before the birthday of my eldest boy, who, it seems, is poetically gifted.
IV. The same satisfaction remained with me after awakening from the absurd dream that my father, after his death, had played a political part among the Magyars, and it is motivated by a continuance of the feeling which accompanied the last sentence of the dream: “_I remember that on his death-bed he looked so much like Garibaldi, and I am glad that it has really come true. (Here belongs a forgotten continuation.)_” I can now supply from the analysis what belongs in this gap of the dream. It is the mention of my second boy, to whom I have given the first name of a great historical personage, who attracted me powerfully during my boyhood, especially during my stay in England. I had to wait for a year after making up my mind to use this name in case the expected child should be a son, and I greeted him with it _in high satisfaction_ as soon as he was born. It is easy to see how the father’s lust for greatness is transferred in his thoughts to his children; it will readily be believed that this is one of the ways in which the suppression of this lust which becomes necessary in life is brought about. The little fellow won a place in the text of this dream by virtue of the fact that the same accident—quite pardonable in a child or a dying person—of soiling his clothes had happened to him. With this may be compared the allusion “_Stuhlrichter_” (judge on the stool-bench, _i.e._ presiding judge) and the wish of the dream: To stand before one’s children great and pure.
V. I am now called upon to find expressions of judgment which remain in the dream itself, and are not retained in or transferred to our waking thoughts, and I shall consider it a great relief if I may find examples in dreams, which have already been cited for other purposes. The dream about Goethe’s attacking Mr. M. seems to contain a considerable number of acts of judgment. _I try to find some explanation of the chronological relations, which seem improbable to me._ Does not this look like a critical impulse directed against the nonsensical idea that Goethe should have made a literary attack upon a young man of my acquaintance? “_It seems plausible to me_ that he was 18 years old.” That sounds quite like the result of a dull-witted calculation; and “_I do not know exactly what year it is_” would be an example of uncertainty or doubt in the dream.
But I know from analysis that these acts of judgment, which seem to have been performed in the dream for the first time, admit of a different construction in the light of which they become indispensable for interpreting the dream, and at the same time every absurdity is avoided. With the sentence, “_I try to find some explanation of the chronological relations_,” I put myself in the place of my friend who is actually trying to explain the chronological relations of life. The sentence then loses its significance as a judgment that objects to the nonsense of the previous sentences. The interposition, “_which seems improbable to me_,” belongs to the subsequent “_it seems plausible to me_.” In about the same words I had answered the lady who told me the story of her brother’s illness: “_It seems improbable to me_ that the cry of ‘Nature, Nature,’ had anything to do with Goethe; _it appears much more plausible_ that it had the sexual significance which is known to you.” To be sure, a judgment has been passed here, not, however, in the dream but in reality, on an occasion which is remembered and utilised by the dream thoughts. The dream content appropriates this judgment like any other fragment of the dream thoughts. The numeral 18, with which the judgment in the dream is meaninglessly connected, still preserves a trace of the context from which the real judgment was torn. Finally, “_I am not certain what year it is_” is intended for nothing else than to carry out my identification with the paralytic, in the examination of whom this point of confirmation had actually been established.
In the solution of these apparent acts of judgment, in the dream, it may be well to call attention to the rule of interpretation which says that the coherence which is fabricated in the dream between its constituent parts is to be disregarded as specious and unessential, and that every dream element must be taken by itself and traced to its source. The dream is a conglomeration, which is to be broken up into its elements for the purposes of investigation. But other circumstances call our attention to the fact that a psychic force is expressed in dreams which establishes this apparent coherence—that is to say, which subjects the material that is obtained by the dream activity to a _secondary elaboration_. We are here confronted with manifestations of this force, upon which we shall later fix our attention as being the fourth of the factors which take part in the formation of the dream.
The analysis of this dream should be continued here. With the inquest of the Professor there is connected the recollection of an index (published in Latin during my time) of the university students; also of my course of studies. The _five years_ provided for the study of medicine were as usual not enough for me. I worked along unconcernedly in the succeeding years; in the circle of my acquaintances I was considered a loafer, and there was doubt as to whether I would “get through.” Then all at once I decided to take my examinations; and I got “through,” _in spite of the postponement_. This is a new confirmation of the dream thoughts, which I defiantly hold up to my critics: “Even though you are unwilling to believe it, because I take my time, I shall reach a conclusion (German _Schluss_, meaning either end or conclusion, _inference_). It has often happened that way.”
In its introductory portion this dream contains several sentences which cannot well be denied the character of an argumentation. And this argumentation is not at all absurd; it might just as well belong to waking thought. _In the dream I make sport of the communication of the Common Council, for in the first place I was not yet in the world in 1851, and in the second place, my father, to whom it might refer, is already dead._ Both are not only correct in themselves, but coincide completely with the arguments that I should use in case I should receive a communication of the sort mentioned. We know from our previous analysis that this dream has sprung from deeply embittered and scornful dream thoughts; if we may assume further that the motive for censorship is a very strong one, we shall understand that the dream activity has every reason to create _a flawless refutation of a baseless insinuation_ according to the model contained in the dream thoughts. But analysis shows that in this case the dream activity has not had the task of making a free copy, but it has been required to use subject-matter from the dream thoughts for its purpose.
It is as if in an algebraic equation there occurred plus and minus signs, signs of powers and of roots, besides the figures, and as if someone, in copying this equation without understanding it, should take over into his copy the signs of operation as well as the figures, and fail to distinguish between the two kinds. The two arguments may be traced to the following material. It is painful for me to think that many of the assumptions upon which I base my solution of psychoneuroses, as soon as they have become known, will arouse scepticism and ridicule. Thus I must maintain that impressions from the second year of life, or even from the first, leave a lasting trace upon the temperament of persons who later become diseased, and that these impressions—greatly distorted it is true, and exaggerated by memory—are capable of furnishing the original and fundamental basis of hysterical symptoms. Patients to whom I explain this in its proper place are in the habit of making a parody upon the explanation by declaring themselves willing to look for reminiscences of the period _when they were not yet alive_.
It would quite accord with my expectation, if enlightenment on the subject of the unsuspected part played by the father in the earliest sexual impulses of feminine patients should get a similar reception. (_Cf._ the discussion on p. 218.) And, nevertheless, both positions are correct according to my well-founded conviction. In confirmation I recall certain examples in which the death of the father happened when the child was very young, and later events, otherwise inexplicable, proved that the child had unconsciously preserved recollections of the persons who had so early gone out of its life. I know that both of my assertions are based upon _inferences_ the validity of which will be attacked. If the subject-matter of these very inferences which I fear will be contested is used by the dream activity for setting up _incontestable inferences_, this is a performance of the wish-fulfilment. VII. In a dream which I have hitherto only touched upon, astonishment at the subject to be broached is distinctly expressed at the outset.
“_The elder Bruecke must have given me some task or other; strangely enough it relates to the preparation of my own lower body, pelvis and legs, which I see before me as though in the dissecting room, but without feeling my lack of body and without a trace of horror. Louise N. is standing near, and doing her work next to me. The pelvis is eviscerated; now the upper, now the lower view of the same is seen, and the two views mingle. Thick fleshy red lumps (which even in the dream make me think of hæmorrhoids) are to be seen. Also something had to be carefully picked out, which lay over these and which looked like crumpled tinfoil.[FA] Then I was again in possession of my legs and made a journey through the city, but took a wagon (owing to my fatigue). To my astonishment the wagon drove into a house door, which opened and allowed it to pass into a passage that was snapped off at the end, and finally led further on into the open.[FB] At last I wandered through changing landscapes with an Alpine guide, who carried my things. He carried, me for some way, out of consideration for my tired legs.
Anyone who has formed a proper idea of the abundance of dream condensation will easily be able to imagine how great a number of pages the detailed analysis of this dream must fill. Luckily for the context, I shall take from it merely the one example of astonishment, in the dream, which makes its appearance in the parenthetical remark, “_strangely enough_.” Let us take up the occasion of the dream. It is a visit of this lady, Louise N., who assists at the work in the dream. She says: “Lend me something to read.” I offer her _She_, by Rider Haggard. “A _strange_ book, but full of hidden sense,” I try to explain to her; “the eternal feminine, the immortality of our emotions——” Here she interrupts me: “I know that book already. Haven’t you something of your own?” “No, my own immortal works are still unwritten.” “Well, when are you going to publish your so-called latest revelations which you promised us would be good reading?” she asks somewhat sarcastically. I now perceive that she is a mouthpiece for someone else, and I become silent. I think of the effort it costs me to publish even my work on the Dream, in which I have to surrender so much of my own intimate character.
“The best that you know you can’t tell to the children.” The preparation of _my own body_, which I am ordered to make in the dream, is thus the _self-analysis_ necessitated in the communication of my dreams. The elder Bruecke very properly finds a place here; in these first years of my scientific work it happened that I neglected a discovery, until his energetic commands forced me to publish it. But the other trains of thought which start from my conversation with Louise N. go too deep to become conscious; they are side-tracked by way of the related material which has been awakened in me by the mention of Rider Haggard’s _She_. The comment “strangely enough” goes with this book, and with another by the same author, _The Heart of the World_, and numerous elements of the dream are taken from these two fantastic novels. The muddy ground over which the dreamer is carried, the chasm which must be crossed by means of the boards that have been brought along, come from _She_; the Indians, the girl, and the wooden house, from the _Heart of the World_. In both novels a woman is the leader, both treat of dangerous wanderings; _She_ has to do with an adventurous journey to the undiscovered country, a place almost untrodden by foot of man.
According to a note which I find in my record of the dream, the fatigue in my legs was a real sensation of those days. Doubtless in correspondence with this came a tired frame of mind and the doubting question: “How much further will my legs carry me?” The adventure in _She_ ends with the woman leader’s meeting her death in the mysterious fire at the centre of the earth, instead of attaining immortality for herself and others. A fear of this sort has unmistakably arisen in the dream thoughts. The “wooden house,” also, is surely the coffin—that is, the grave. But the dream activity has performed its masterpiece in representing this most unwished-for of all thoughts by means of a wish-fulfilment. I have already once been in a grave, but it was an empty Etruscan grave near Orvieto—a narrow chamber with two stone benches on the walls, upon which the skeletons of two grown-up persons had been laid. The interior of the wooden house in the dream looks exactly like this, except that wood has been substituted for stone. The dream seems to say: “If you must so soon lie in your grave, let it be this Etruscan grave,” and by means of this interpolation it transforms the saddest expectation into one that is really to be desired. As we shall learn, it is, unfortunately, only the idea accompanying an emotion which the dream can change into its opposite, not usually the emotion itself. Thus I awake with “frightened thoughts,” even after the dream has been forced to represent my idea—that perhaps the children will attain what has been denied to the father—a fresh allusion to the strange novel in which the identity of a person is preserved through a series of generations covering two thousand years.
VIII. In the context of another dream there is a similar expression of astonishment at what is experienced in the dream. This, however, is connected with a striking and skilfully contrived attempt at explanation which might well be called a stroke of genius—so that I should have to analyse the whole dream merely for the sake of it, even if the dream did not possess two other features of interest. I am travelling during the night between the eighteenth and the nineteenth of July on the Southern Railway, and in my sleep I hear someone call out: _“Hollthurn, 10 minutes.” I immediately think of Holothurian—of a museum of natural history—that here is a place where brave men have vainly resisted the domination of their overlord. Yes, the counter reformation in Austria! As though it were a place in Styria or the Tyrol. Now I distinctly see a little museum in which the remains or the possessions of these men are preserved. I wish to get off, but I hesitate to do so. Women with fruit are standing on the platform; they crouch on the floor, and in that position hold out their baskets in an inviting manner. I hesitate, in doubt whether we still have time, but we are still standing. I am suddenly in another compartment in which the leather and the seats are so narrow that one’s back directly touches the back rest.[FC] I am surprised at this, but I may have changed cars while asleep. Several people, among them an English brother and sister; a row of books distinctly on a shelf on the wall. I see_ The Wealth of Nations, _then_ Matter and Motion (_by Maxwell_)—_the books are thick and bound in brown linen. The man asks his sister for a book by Schiller, and whether she has forgotten it. These are books which first seem mine, then seem to belong to the brother and sister. At this point I wish to join in the conversation in order to confirm and support what is being said——._ I awaken sweating all over my body, because all the windows are shut. The train stops at Marburg.
While writing down the dream, a part of it occurs to me which my memory wished to omit. _I say to the brother and sister about a certain work: “It is from ...” but I correct myself: “It is by ...” The man remarks to his sister: “He said it correctly.”_ The dream begins with the name of a station, which probably must have partially awakened me. For this name, which was Marburg, I substituted Hollthurn. The fact that I heard Marburg when it was first called, or perhaps when it was called a second time, is proved by the mention in the dream of Schiller, who was born in Marburg, though not in the one in Styria.[FD] Now this time, although I was travelling first-class, it was under very disagreeable circumstances. The train was overcrowded; I had met a gentleman and lady in my compartment who seemed persons of quality, but who did not have the good breeding or who did not think it worth while to conceal their displeasure at my intrusion. My polite salutation was not answered, and although the man and the woman sat next each other (with their backs in the direction in which we were riding), the woman made haste to pre-empt the place opposite her and next the window with her umbrella; the door was immediately closed and demonstrative remarks about the opening of windows were exchanged. Probably I was quickly recognised as a person hungry for fresh air. It was a hot night, and the air in the compartment, thus shut on all sides, was almost suffocating.
My experience as a traveller leads me to believe that such inconsiderate, obtrusive conduct marks people who have only partly paid for their tickets, or not at all. When the conductor came, and I presented my dearly bought ticket, the lady called out ungraciously, and as though threateningly: “My husband has a pass.” She was a stately figure with sour features, in age not far from the time set for the decay of feminine beauty; the man did not get a chance to say anything at all, and sat there motionless. I tried to sleep. In the dream I take terrible revenge on my disagreeable travelling companions; no one would suspect what insults and humiliations are concealed behind the disjointed fragments of the first half of the dream. After this desire has been satisfied, the second wish, to exchange my compartment for another, makes itself evident. The dream makes changes of scene so often, and without raising the least objection to such changes, that it would not have been in the least remarkable if I had immediately replaced my travelling companions by more pleasant ones for my recollection. But this was one of the cases where something or other objected to the change of scene and considered explanation of the change necessary. How did I suddenly get into another compartment?
I surely could not remember having changed cars. So there was only one explanation: _I must have left the carriage while asleep_, a rare occurrence, examples for which, however, are furnished by the experience of the neuropathologist. We know of persons who undertake railroad journeys in a crepuscular state without betraying their abnormal condition by any sign, until some station on the journey they completely recover consciousness, and are then surprised at the gap in their memory. Thus, while I am still dreaming, I declare my own case to be such a one of “_Automatisme ambulatoire_.” Analysis permits another solution. The attempt at explanation, which so astounds me if I am to attribute it to the dream activity, is not original, but is copied from the neurosis of one of my patients. I have already spoken on another page of a highly cultured and, in conduct, kind-hearted man, who began, shortly after the death of his parents, to accuse himself of murderous inclinations, and who suffered because of the precautionary measures he had to take to insure himself against these inclinations. At first walking along the street was made painful for him by the compulsion impelling him to demand an accounting of all the persons he met as to whither they had vanished; if one of them suddenly withdrew from his pursuing glance, there remained a painful feeling and a thought of the possibility that he might have put the man out of the way. This compulsive idea concealed, among other things, a Cain-fancy, for “all men are brothers.” Owing to the impossibility of accomplishing his task, he gave up taking walks and spent his life imprisoned within his four walls. But news of murderous acts which have been committed outside constantly reached his room through the papers, and his conscience in the form of a doubt kept accusing him of being the murderer. The certainty of not having left his dwelling for weeks protected him against these accusations for a time, until one day there dawned upon him the possibility that he might have left _his house while in an unconscious condition_, and might thus have committed the murder without knowing anything about it. From that time on he locked his house door, and handed the key over to his old housekeeper, and strictly forbade her to give it into his hands even if he demanded it.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.