The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud
INDEX
Work of displacement, 283–288 Wundt, 23, 34, 48, 49, 71, 187, 188; quoted, 75 — theory of, 198 Zola, E., 182 ----- Footnote A: Translated by A. A. Brill (_Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease_ Publishing Company). Footnote B: _Cf._ the works of Ernest Jones, James J. Putnam, the present writer, and others. Footnote C: For examples demonstrating these facts, _cf._ my work, _Psychoanalysis; its Theories and Practical Application_, W. B. Saunders’ Publishing Company, Philadelphia & London. Footnote D: To the first publication of this book, 1900. Footnote E: Compare, on the other hand, O. Gruppe, _Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte_, p. 390. “Dreams were divided into two classes; the first were influenced only by the present (or past), and were unimportant for the future: they embraced the ἐνύπνια, insomnia, which immediately produces the given idea or its opposite, _e.g._ hunger or its satiation, and the φαντάσματα, which elaborates the given idea phantastically, as _e.g._ the nightmare, ephialtes. The second class was, on the other hand, determinant for the future. To this belong: (1) direct prophecies received in the dream (χρηματισμός, oraculum); (2) the foretelling of a future event (ὅραμα); (3) the symbolic or the dream requiring interpretation (ὄνειρος, somnium). This theory has been preserved for many centuries.” Footnote F: From subsequent experience I am able to state that it is not at all rare to find in dreams repetitions of harmless or unimportant occupations of the waking state, such as packing trunks, preparing food, work in the kitchen, &c., but in such dreams the dreamer himself emphasizes not the character but the reality of the memory, “I have really done all this in the day time.”
Footnote G: _Chauffeurs_ were bands of robbers in the Vendée who resorted to this form of torture. Footnote H: Gigantic persons in a dream justify the assumption that it deals with a scene from the dreamer’s childhood. Footnote I: The first volume of this Norwegian author, containing a complete description of dreams, has recently appeared in German. See Index of Literature, No. [74a]. Footnote J: Periodically recurrent dreams have been observed repeatedly. _Cf._ the collection of Chabaneix.[11] Footnote K: Silberer has shown by nice examples how in the state of sleepiness even abstract thoughts may be changed into illustrative plastic pictures which express the same thing (_Jahrbuch_ von Bleuler-Freud, vol. i. 1900). Footnote L: Haffner[32] made an attempt similar to Delbœuf’s to explain the dream activity on the basis of an alteration which must result in an introduction of an abnormal condition in the otherwise correct function of the intact psychic apparatus, but he described this condition in somewhat different words. He states that the first distinguishing mark of the dream is the absence of time and space, _i.e._ the emancipation of the presentation from the position in the order of time and space which is common to the individual. Allied to this is the second fundamental character of the dream, the mistaking of the hallucinations, imaginations, and phantasy-combinations for objective perceptions. The sum total of the higher psychic forces, especially formation of ideas, judgment, and argumentation on the one hand, and the free self-determination on the other hand, connect themselves with the sensory phantasy pictures and at all times have them as a substratum. These activities too, therefore, participate in the irregularity of the dream presentation. We say they participate, for our faculties of judgment and will power are in themselves in no way altered during sleep. In reference to activity, we are just as keen and just as free as in the waking state.
Dr. Alfred Robitsek calls my attention to the fact that Oriental dream books, of which ours are pitiful plagiarisms, undertake the interpretation of dream elements, mostly according to the assonance and similarity of the words. Since these relationships must be lost by translation into our language, the incomprehensibility of the substitutions in our popular “dream books” may have its origin in this fact. Information as to the extraordinary significance of puns and punning in ancient Oriental systems of culture may be found in the writings of Hugo Winckler. The nicest example of a dream interpretation which has come down to us from antiquity is based on a play upon words. Artemidoros[2] relates the following (p. 225): “It seems to me that Aristandros gives a happy interpretation to Alexander of Macedon. When the latter held Tyros shut in and in a state of siege, and was angry and depressed over the great loss of time, he dreamed that he saw a Satyros dancing on his shield. It happened that Aristandros was near Tyros and in the convoy of the king, who was waging war on the Syrians. By disjoining the word Satyros into σα and τύρος, he induced the king to become more aggressive in the siege, and thus he became master of the city. (Σα τύρος—thine is Tyros.) The dream, indeed, is so intimately connected with verbal expression that Ferenczi[87] may justly remark that every tongue has its own dream language. Dreams are, as a rule, not translatable into other languages.”
Footnote T: Breuer and Freud, _Studien über Hysterie_, Vienna, 1895; 2nd ed. 1909. Footnote U: The complaint, as yet unexplained, of pains in the abdomen, may also be referred to this third person. It is my own wife, of course, who is in question; the abdominal pains remind me of one of the occasions upon which her shyness became evident to me. I must myself admit that I do not treat Irma and my wife very gallantly in this dream, but let it be said for my excuse that I am judging both of them by the standard of the courageous, docile, female patient. Footnote V: I suspect that the interpretation of this portion has not been carried far enough to follow every hidden meaning. If I were to continue the comparison of the three women, I would go far afield. Every dream has at least one point at which it is unfathomable, a central point, as it were, connecting it with the unknown. Footnote W: “Ananas,” moreover, has a remarkable assonance to the family name of my patient Irma. Footnote X: In this the dream did not turn out to be prophetic. But in another sense, it proved correct, for the “unsolved” stomach pains, for which I did not want to be to blame, were the forerunners of a serious illness caused by gall stones.
Footnote Y: Even if I have not, as may be understood, given account of everything which occurred to me in connection with the work of interpretation. Footnote Z: The facts about dreams of thirst were known also to Weygandt,[75] who expresses himself about them (p. 11) as follows: “It is just the sensation of thirst which is most accurately registered of all; it always causes a representation of thirst quenching. The manner in which the dream pictures the act of thirst quenching is manifold, and is especially apt to be formed according to a recent reminiscence. Here also a universal phenomenon is that disappointment in the slight efficacy of the supposed refreshments sets in immediately after the idea that thirst has been quenched.” But he overlooks the fact that the reaction of the dream to the stimulus is universal. If other persons who are troubled by thirst at night awake without dreaming beforehand, this does not constitute an objection to my experiment, but characterises those others as persons who sleep poorly. Footnote AA: The dream afterwards accomplished the same purpose in the case of the grandmother, who is older than the child by about seventy years, as it did in the case of the granddaughter. After she had been forced to go hungry for several days on account of the restlessness of her floating kidney, she dreamed, apparently with a transference into the happy time of her flowering maidenhood, that she had been “asked out,” invited as a guest for both the important meals, and each time had been served with the most delicious morsels.
Footnote AB: A more searching investigation into the psychic life of the child teaches us, to be sure, that sexual motive powers in infantile forms, which have been too long overlooked, play a sufficiently great part in the psychic activity of the child. This raises some doubt as to the happiness of the child, as imagined later by the adults. _Cf._ the author’s “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory,” translated by A. A. Brill, _Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases_ Publishing Company. Footnote AC: It should not be left unmentioned that children sometimes show complex and more obscure dreams, while, on the other hand, adults will often under certain conditions show dreams of an infantile character. How rich in unsuspected material the dreams of children of from four to five years might be is shown by examples in my “Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben” (_Jahrbuch_, ed. by Bleuler & Freud, 1909), and in Jung’s “Ueber Konflikte der kindlichen Seele” (ebda. ii. vol., 1910). On the other hand, it seems that dreams of an infantile type reappear especially often in adults if they are transferred to unusual conditions of life. Thus Otto Nordenskjold, in his book _Antarctic_ (1904), writes as follows about the crew who passed the winter with him. “Very characteristic for the trend of our inmost thoughts were our dreams, which were never more vivid and numerous than at present. Even those of our comrades with whom dreaming had formerly been an exception had long stories to tell in the morning when we exchanged our experiences in the world of phantasies. They all referred to that outer world which was now so far from us, but they often fitted into our present relations.
An especially characteristic dream was the one in which one of our comrades believed himself back on the bench at school, where the task was assigned him of skinning miniature seals which were especially made for the purposes of instruction. Eating and drinking formed the central point around which most of our dreams were grouped. One of us, who was fond of going to big dinner parties at night, was exceedingly glad if he could report in the morning ‘that he had had a dinner consisting of three courses.’ Another dreamed of tobacco—of whole mountains of tobacco; still another dreamed of a ship approaching on the open sea under full sail. Still another dream deserves to be mentioned. The letter carrier brought the mail, and gave a long explanation of why he had had to wait so long for it; he had delivered it at the wrong place, and only after great effort had been able to get it back. To be sure, we occupied ourselves in sleep with still more impossible things, but the lack of phantasy in almost all the dreams which I myself dreamed or heard others relate was quite striking. It would surely have been of great psychological interest if all the dreams could have been noted. But one can readily understand how we longed for sleep. It alone could afford us everything that we all most ardently desired.”
Footnote AD: A Hungarian proverb referred to by Ferenczi[87] states more explicitly that “the pig dreams of acorns, the goose of maize.” Footnote AE: It is quite incredible with what stubbornness readers and critics exclude this consideration, and leave unheeded the fundamental differentiation between the manifest and the latent dream content. Footnote AF: It is remarkable how my memory narrows here for the purposes of analysis—while I am awake. I have known five of my uncles, and have loved and honoured one of them. But at the moment when I overcame my resistance to the interpretation of the dream I said to myself, “I have only one uncle, the one who is intended in the dream.” Footnote AG: The word is here used in the original Latin sense _instantia_, meaning energy, continuance or persistence in doing. (Translator.) Footnote AH: Such hypocritical dreams are not unusual occurrences with me or with others. While I am working up a certain scientific problem, I am visited for many nights in rapid succession by a somewhat confusing dream which has as its content reconciliation with a friend long ago dropped. After three or four attempts, I finally succeeded in grasping the meaning of this dream. It was in the nature of an encouragement to give up the little consideration still left for the person in question, to drop him completely, but it disguised itself shamefacedly in the opposite feeling. I have reported a “hypocritical Oedipus dream” of a person, in which the hostile feelings and the wishes of death of the dream thoughts were replaced by manifest tenderness. (“Typisches Beispiel eines verkappten Oedipustraumes,” _Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse_, Bd. 1, Heft 1–11, 1910.) Another class of hypocritical dreams will be reported in another place.
Footnote AI: To sit for the painter. Goethe: “And if he has no backside, how can the nobleman sit?” Footnote AJ: I myself regret the introduction of such passages from the psychopathology of hysteria, which, because of their fragmentary representation and of being torn from all connection with the subject, cannot have a very enlightening influence. If these passages are capable of throwing light upon the intimate relations between the dream and the psychoneuroses, they have served the purpose for which I have taken them up. Footnote AK: Something like the smoked salmon in the dream of the deferred supper. Footnote AL: It often happens that a dream is told incompletely, and that a recollection of the omitted portions appears only in the course of the analysis. These portions subsequently fitted in, regularly furnish the key to the interpretation. _Cf._ below, about forgetting in dreams. Footnote AM: Similar “counter wish-dreams” have been repeatedly reported to me within the last few years by my pupils who thus reacted to their first encounter with the “wish theory of the dream.” Footnote AN: We may mention here the simplification and modification of this fundamental formula, propounded by Otto Rank: “On the basis and with the help of repressed infantile sexual material, the dream regularly represents as fulfilled actual, and as a rule also erotic, wishes, in a disguised and symbolic form.” (“Ein Traum, der sich selbst deutet,” _Jahrbuch_, v., Bleuler-Freud, II. B., p. 519, 1910.)
(Fragment).... Somewhere in Italy. Three daughters show me small costly objects, as if in an antiquity shop. At the same time they sit down on my lap. Of one of the pieces I remark: “Why, you got this from me.” I also see distinctly a small profile mask with the angular features of Savonarola. When have I last seen a picture of Savonarola? According to my travelling diary, I was in Florence on the fourth and fifth of September, and while there thought of showing my travelling companion the plaster medallion of the features of the fanatical monk in the Piazza Signoria, the same place where he met his death by burning. I believe that I called his attention to it at 3 A.M. To be sure, from this impression, until its return in the dream, there was an interval of twenty-seven and one days—a “feminine period,” according to Fliess. But, unfortunately for the demonstrative force of this example, I must add that on the very day of the dream I was visited (the first time after my return) by the able but melancholy-looking colleague whom I had already years before nicknamed “Rabbi Savonarola.” He brought me a patient who had met with an accident on the Pottebba railroad, on which I had myself travelled eight days before, and my thoughts were thus turned to my last Italian journey. The appearance in the dream content of the striking element of Savonarola is explained by the visit of my colleague on the day of the dream; the twenty-eight day interval had no significance in its origin.
II.—_Dream from October 10–11_ I am again studying chemistry in the University laboratory. Court Councillor L. invites me to come to another place, and walks before me in the corridor carrying in front of him in his uplifted hand a lamp or some other instrument, and assuming a peculiar attitude, his head stretched forward. We then come to an open space ... (rest forgotten). In this dream content, the most striking part is the manner in which Court Councillor L. carries the lamp (or lupe) in front of him, his gaze directed into the distance. I have not seen L. for many years, but I now know that he is only a substitute for another greater person—for Archimedes near the Arethusa fountain in Syracuse, who stands there exactly like L. in the dream, holding the burning mirror and gazing at the besieging army of the Romans. When had I first (and last) seen this monument? According to my notes, it was on the seventeenth day of September, in the evening, and from this date to the dream there really passed 13 and 10, equals 23, days-according to Fliess, a “masculine period.”
But I regret to say that here, too, this connection seems somewhat less inevitable when we enter into the interpretation of this dream. The dream was occasioned by the information, received on the day of the dream, that the lecture-room in the clinic in which I was invited to deliver my lectures had been changed to some other place. I took it for granted that the new room was very inconveniently situated, and said to myself, it is as bad as not having any lecture-room at my disposal. My thoughts must have then taken me back to the time when I first became a docent, when I really had no lecture-room, and when, in my efforts to get one, I met with little encouragement from the very influential gentlemen councillors and professors. In my distress at that time, I appealed to L., who then had the title of dean, and whom I considered kindly disposed. He promised to help me, but that was all I ever heard from him. In the dream he is the Archimedes, who gives me the πήστω and leads me into the other room. That neither the desire for revenge nor the consciousness of one’s own importance is absent in this dream will be readily divined by those familiar with dream interpretation. I must conclude, however, that without this motive for the dream, Archimedes would hardly have got into the dream that night. I am not certain whether the strong and still recent impression of the statue in Syracuse did not also come to the surface at a different interval of time.
III.—_Dream from October 2–3, 1910._ (Fragment) ... Something about Professor Oser, who himself prepared the menu for me, which served to restore me to great peace of mind (rest forgotten). The dream was a reaction to the digestive disturbances of this day, which made me consider asking one of my colleagues to arrange a diet for me. That in the dream I selected for this purpose Professor Oser, who had died in the summer, is based on the recent death (October 1) of another university teacher, whom I highly revered. But when did Oser die, and when did I hear of his death? According to the newspaper notice, he died on the 22nd of August, but as I was at the time in Holland, whither my Vienna newspapers were regularly sent me, I must have read the obituary notice on the 24th or 25th of August. This interval no longer corresponds to any period. It takes in 7 and 30 and 2, equals 39, days, or perhaps 38 days. I cannot recall having spoken or thought of Oser during this interval. Such intervals as were not available for the “period theory” without further elaboration, were shown from my dreams to be far more frequent than the regular ones. As maintained in the text, the only thing constantly found is the relation to an impression of the day of the dream itself.
Footnote AR: _Cf._ my essay, “Ueber Deckerinnerungen,” in the _Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie_, 1899. Footnote AS: Ger., _blühend_. Footnote AT: The tendency of the dream function to fuse everything of interest which is present into simultaneous treatment has already been noticed by several authors, for instance, by Delage,[15] p. 41, Delbœuf,[16] _Rapprochement Forcé_, p. 236. Footnote AU: The dream of Irma’s injection; the dream of the friend who is my uncle. Footnote AV: The dream of the funeral oration of the young physician. Footnote AW: The dream of the botanical monograph. Footnote AX: The dreams of my patients during analysis are mostly of this kind. Footnote AY: _Cf._ Chap. VII. upon “Transference.” Footnote AZ: Substitution of the opposite, as will become clear to us after interpretation. Footnote BA: The Prater is the principal drive of Vienna. (Transl.) Footnote BB: I have long since learned that it only requires a little courage to fulfil even such unattainable wishes. Footnote BC: In the first edition there was printed here the name Hasdrubal, a confusing error, the explanation of which I have given in my _Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens_. Footnote BD: A street in Vienna. Footnote BE: _Fensterln_ is the practice, now falling into disuse, found in rural districts of the German Schwarzwald, of lovers wooing at the windows of their sweethearts, bringing ladders with them, and becoming so intimate that they practically enjoy a system of trial marriages. The reputation of the young woman never suffers on account of _fensterln_, unless she becomes intimate with too many suitors. (Translator.)
Footnote BF: Both the emotions which belong to these childish scenes—astonishment and resignation to the inevitable—had appeared in a dream shortly before, which was the first thing that brought back the memory of this childhood experience. Footnote BG: I do not elaborate plagiostomi purposely; they recall an occasion of angry disgrace before the same teacher. Footnote BH: _Cf._ Maury’s dream about kilo-lotto, p. 50. Footnote BI: Popo = backside in German nursery language. Footnote BJ: This repetition has insinuated itself into the text of the dream apparently through my absent-mindedness, and I allow it to remain because the analysis shows that it has its significance. Footnote BK: Not in _Germinal_, but in _La Terre_—a mistake of which I became aware only in the analysis. I may call attention also to the identity of the letters in _Huflattich_ and _Flatus_. Footnote BL: Translator’s note. Footnote BM: In his significant work (“Phantasie und Mythos,” _Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse_, Bd. ii., 1910), H. Silberer has endeavoured to show from this part of the dream that the dream-work is able to reproduce not only the latent dream thoughts, but also the psychic processes in the dream formation (“Das functionale Phänomen”). Footnote BN: Another interpretation: He is one-eyed like Odin, the father of the gods ... Odin’s consolation. The consolation in the childish scene, that I will buy him a new bed.
Footnote BO: I here add some material for interpretation. Holding the urinal recalls the story of a peasant who tries one glass after another at the opticians, but still cannot read (peasant-catcher, like girl-catcher in a portion of the dream). The treatment among the peasants of the father who has become weak-minded in Zola’s _La Terre_. The pathetic atonement that in his last days the father soils his bed like a child; hence, also, I am his sick-attendant in the dream. Thinking and experiencing are here, as it were; the same thing recalls a highly revolutionary closet drama by Oscar Panizza, in which the Godhead is treated quite contemptuously, as though he were a paralytic old man. There occurs a passage: “Will and deed are the same thing with him, and he must be prevented by his archangel, a kind of Ganymede, from scolding and swearing, because these curses would immediately be fulfilled.” Making plans is a reproach against my father, dating from a later period in the development of my critical faculty; just as the whole rebellious, sovereign-offending dream, with its scoff at high authority, originates in a revolt against my father.
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