turning our attention to the functional significance of the dream. It
represents a pursuit. The attitude displayed towards the physician is
clear. The physician pursues him through all his memories (the flight
through the rooms). This flight through rooms has been interpreted by
_Freud_ as a flight from women (brothel). I have repeatedly pointed out
that rooms represent the compartments of the soul, that the pursuit
is really through all the parts of the brain (the upper story stands
for brain; compare the colloquialism, there is something the matter
with some one’s “upper story”). We see that a certain thought pursues
him past all obstacles and hindrances, and he is unable to elude
that searching thought. His sister is the one who comes to his aid.
She hands him a miniature stove with which to defend himself against
the horse. The stove and the lids represent the sister’s sex.... The
dream means: _only your sister, only a woman can save you from your
homosexual inclination towards your father_. The dream also indicates a
prospective tendency: he throws the sister upon the father and saves
himself through another door. He means to overcome his complexes. The
attitude towards the physician is also clear: he expects to put me off
his trail by confessing to me his incest fancies about his sister,
when I had not asked him about it. The dream indicates his intention
of telling me about his fancies and episodes in which his sister
figures. But he expects to escape thereby any further inquiry into his
wish phantasies and to avoid telling me about his attitude towards his
parents.
Then the patient falls asleep again and repeats the dream so as to
be able to tell it. We may presume that the dream was distorted and
changed somewhat in the course of its first rendition. We really get
but an extract, the chief parts omitted.... In the next dream he
tells me the first dream. Such dreams are seldom remembered. When a
woman dreams that she has told her physician the dream, it means that
she is through with the unpleasant task and the dream vanishes from
memory as in the cases when the patients declare: Today I dreamed
something important; I said to myself in my half slumber: “This is
something I must tell the doctor! I don’t remember what it was. But
it was something really significant.” Thus is the physician thwarted;
the resistance is vicariously overcome in the dream, the wish to tell
the dream is fulfilled but the wish to keep it from the physician
is stronger; during his dream experience both tendencies are given
expression by the subject.
The next dream: Again, an exposition of analysis. I am upstairs busy
with a closet, which represents the brain or his shut-up soul. But
the analysis will not last long. The wild hunting after his secrets
and treasures will cease soon. The physician has to leave (die?).
Here the physician substitutes the father. The dream shows plainly
the transference from the father to the physician. The first dream
dramatizes the pursuit of the father, in the second and third the
father no longer figures. His name is not mentioned at all in the
dream, he is the secret, the unspeakable theme.... The physician laces
his shoes; that is commonly known as a death symbol and shows the clear
wish to be through with the analysis.
An engine has to be started. He is a machinist and has daily to do with
machines. Engine is symbol for his soul which functions so poorly, a
symbol for himself, for all the impulses and energies within him. He
accomplishes through his own powers what his physician and his mother
are unable to bring about. First I try to put the engine in motion. I
take the mysterious paper package and throw it on; the mother attends
to the other side of the fire. But he gets up and takes care of the
fire from above.[24] He is above, he triumphs over me and surpasses
me in the ability to cure him. He recalls a pupil of his who had to
commute to Brünn. It brings to his mind an occasion when he was the
teacher. Thus I am his pupil, I am learning from him how to start
an engine. Though I may know something about sick souls, I don’t
understand a thing about his specialty (he is a machinist), there
he is the master and I am ignorant. This consoling thought serves
to strengthen his feeling of self-regard and prevents a feeling of
inferiority from developing in his relations to me. There are a number
of scornful references to the impotent father and to the equally
unskilful physician. He is with me one half hour daily. He had noticed
that I looked at the watch, to see whether his time was up. The half
hour and the looking at the watch appear in the dream. The day before
he showed his father how a technical problem was solved. In this dream
he also shows me that something must be done a particular way.
We observe that this attitude towards the physician, as representative
of the father, pervades the whole dream. But this does not exhaust the
meaning of the dream. It is a pollution dream (gratification without
responsibility). It is interesting to see how the onanistic act,
represented as pollution, is dramatized in the dreams. In the first
dream he flees from homosexuality and there the relationship between
homosexuality and the hidden mother complex is clearly shown. In the
second dream the mechanism of sexuality is represented in action.
Neither the father (the engineer working around the engine), the mother
nor the physician can do it. He alone is able to accomplish it. This
shows the secret pride of the masturbator, the self-sufficiency of the
autoerotic personality. (The engine’s flame covered running board, a
phallic symbol; later note.) Onanism is shown as a protection against
all sexual perils. The safety valve hisses and relieves itself—an
intimation of the subsequent pollution.
But the fear of onanism, the strong effects, the dread of homosexuality
and incest wake him from his sleep. Consciousness (the engine
conductor) attempts to control the thoughts and to banish the nocturnal
ghosts. The thoughts about a man and about his sister are interrupted
and he falls asleep once more. Three times he dreams of various
situations before the anxiety in him is transformed into wish. First
he fled from the horse and from his sister, then he fled from his
mother and the physician and finally there came his release. He was
strong enough to withstand his homosexuality, strong to overcome the
heterosexual longings. Now the instinct throws forward its highest
and strongest card to overcome the last inhibitions: bisexuality. The
girl with the phallus, his sister, appears ... and pursues him. He is
frankly preoccupied with the thought: give in and masturbate. The
thought itself he avoids, he tries to push out of his mind. He sees
himself in the dream. He sees the womanly side of himself, the woman
with the phallus, and this thought troubles him during the nightly
hours when he should be resting. He jumps at the female person to
strangle her: that is how he fights with his instinct, how he tries
to thwart his autoerotism. The instinct recognizes the weakness of
his defence and suggests that it seeks only his welfare. With the
right hand he seizes his genitals while with the left he carries out
an embrace. He has an orgasm (the sister smiles at him) but it does
not last long; for an old woman appears upon the scene. The door
opens, that is, the door of conscience (the threshold symbolism of
_Silberer_), and remorse seizes his soul. He rouses from his sleep and
the pollution worries him. The old woman may also be a symbol for his
mother (further significance of the old woman as symbol will be shown
later). But I have no proof of that inasmuch as the subject describes
her otherwise.
What is the sense of the dream with reference to its central theme?
Is it a wish-fulfillment, a warning, or a prophecy? Undoubtedly
many wishes are fulfilled in this dream. The subject resists many
temptations, he embraces his sister, he triumphs over his father and
over his physician as well. But the most important feature that the
dream portrays is the pollution as a defence against all sexual
dangers and as successful cover for all inner inhibitions.
Another meaning of the dream should be pointed out. His neurosis must
be represented by some person or object in the dream. Asked what the
engine suggests to his mind the subject answers: my illness. The
glass-covered porch: the transparency of his trouble; the engine: his
neurosis. The subject habitually compares his body to a steam engine,
especially his stomach. He shows various effects of starvation: unable
to eat, he loses weight, and looks like a skeleton because he wants
to starve out his sexual longing and punish himself for his sinful
passions. This man had built for himself a marvelous safety valve in
his neurosis. When he thinks of going to meet a girl, he gets such a
severe attack of gastric pain that he must give up the appointment.
The gastric discomfort is induced beforehand through excitement
and inability to eat. The clever staging of his gastric trouble is
noteworthy. Nausea and vomiting are first induced to prevent the taking
of food. Then hunger supervenes and that gnawing sense of hunger,
spoken of as gastric cramps, becoming so strong as to overshadow the
heart affair. The craving for food becomes more obsessive than the
desire for woman. These episodes are followed by a ravenous appetite.
He recalls that after the first dream he woke up with a terrible
hunger. This hunger was even stronger after the second dream but
disappeared after the pollution.
I have already maintained in my work on _Morbid Anxiety_ that hunger
may stand as a substitute for sexual libido and here this is clearly
shown and illustrated.
Now we understand the firing of the engine with the paper packages.
The caloric value of paper is as small as that of nutrition, when
the latter is substituted for sexual desire. Thus he makes use of
his stomach as a remarkable safety valve. He starves himself out
because the gratification of food serves as a substitute for sexual
gratification. He relates a number of incidents showing how cleverly
his neurosis serves him. Every woman he meets excites him but even when
he goes so far as to arrange an appointment with one and she agrees
to call at his residence or to go to a hotel he stops short of actual
intimacy.
From the standpoint of the analysis the prognosis is unfavorable. He
does not want to give up the neurosis, his safety valve, he wants to
keep up his own way of “firing the engine” and wishes the physician
were out of the way. Indeed, he continues to have recourse to
masturbation, he endures the consequent regrets and self reproaches,
rather than give up his defence.
We observe inwardly a strong “will to power” and formally a decidedly
feminine attitude; the orgasm occurs while he plays the role of woman;
but the highest gratification always depends on the most powerful
inner forces. He does not avoid women because he fears defeat, for
he has repeatedly proven his _potentia_ through intercourse with
prostitutes and feels supremely confident that he could master any
situation involving no moral scruples. What hinders him seems to be the
association of his sister with all decent girls, and of his mother with
all married women. His homosexuality is inhibited by his fixation on
the father. And back of all inhibitions there stands his overstressed
religiosity, which he had cultivated for years although he had
apparently outgrown it. He intended to embrace a religious career but
gave up the idea when he was 14 years of age. It is very likely that
most of his troubles will disappear after marriage, if he should break
away from the parental circle.
I believe that even one who is inexperienced in dream analysis will
readily recognize a phallic symbol in the perolin sprayer which gives
forth a soapy fluid. It was natural that at 16 years of age he should
fall in love with a colleague who resembled a sister. The obvious
incest thoughts kept him from the girl. All girls of good family were
sisters; he treated them like sisters. The prostitutes were not in
the same class with his sister and he could be potent with them. The
homosexual path was closed to him also on account of his sister. In all
young men he saw his sister with a phallus.
It is significant that further analysis discloses a fixation upon
the father to an extent I had not quite suspected before. Back of
the apparent scorn of his father, underneath his tendency to speak
lightly of him there was an unquenchable love which nothing could quite
gratify. The ugly example given by his teacher suggested intimacies
possible only in the realm of phantasy. (His subsequent dreams placed
him with me in a similar situation.) Thus he vacillated between
homosexuality and Don Juanism.
Why do these men hesitate in the end and why do they not become
genuine Don Juans? In large measure this is due to the inner religious
scruples. These rudimentary types are weighted down by an excess of
morality. They like to play at immorality but very carefully see to it
that morality wins in the end.
I wish to add a few remarks about the religious significance of the
dream. It is remarkable that all dream interpreters have overlooked
the obvious import of dreams, from the religious standpoint, in spite
of the fact that they are aware of the great role which religion plays
in man’s mental life and must appreciate that such a force necessarily
finds expression through the dream.
The subject has been for years a very pious young man. Witches and
devils filled his fancies as real tempters. The dream also shows the
fear of the devil who misleads the weak to drink, whoredom, shortly,
into sin. The homosexual tendency is often felt as the work of the
devil.
Our subject who was so very pious for a long time, declaring himself
now an atheist and free thinker. He promised his mother, under oath,
that he would attend church services regularly on Sundays but he gave
this up when he reached the 20th year. At first his mother objected,
and was very angry over it, and desisted only after her son convinced
her that he had no faith. But she said repeatedly: “I feel certain that
the Lord will enlighten you and that some day you will come back to the
faith.” He only smiled at that for on his part he felt certain that he
would never again be a believer. His greatmother, whom he visited every
summer, was even more pious. Two weeks after the dream we analyzed he
had the following dream:
_I am with my grandmother. She goes early in the morning to church and
asks me to go along. I hesitate. Next morning she repeats the request.
I have a strong attack of gastric pains and tell her. I will take a
sunbath, it is the same thing...._
We see that, under the grandmother’s request, the dream portrays the
subject’s childhood disposition. We note a connection between the
hesitation to go to church and the gastric pains and we hear of
sunbaths as a substitute for religion,—a fact which I have repeatedly
observed in other cases as well.
Further inquiry reveals that every evening the patient struggles with
the impulse to recite “Our Father”; he resents the inclination,—“it
is nonsense. I don’t believe any such folly as that.” Nevertheless
sometimes he murmurs portions of the prayer, while in a half dreamy
state, when he has the illusion of being again a child. He carries
around in his pocket, a couple of small “holy mother medallions” which
he bought at a fair: “it is really a superstition; I always carry them
in my coin purse, because I have an idea it is good luck.” He has
presented his prayer book to his younger sister and so the book is
always accessible. He goes to churches because he is “interested in the
church music.” ...
How does the dream show this? The devil appears to him in the shape of
a horse (horse’s hoof is a characteristic sign of the devil) and tries
to seduce him. The horse breaks down doors and all obstacles. At one
time he believed in a personal devil. He attended once a church where
the minister preached considerably about the devil and who said that
there were living witnesses to testify that they had seen the devil.
His grandfather was angry because the minister told believers such
far-fetched stories, and forbade him going to that church. But the
fear of a personal devil had been deeply implanted in him at home. If
he misbehaved, he was threatened with the evil one. If he refused to
pray some one knocked in the next room and he was told that it was the
devil that was after him. He was brought up the same way to believe in
witches. An ugly old woman once came to his room dressed as a witch to
scare him and the other children into better behavior and it affected
him so horribly that he remembered the scare for years. In his dream
the devil pursues him and he eludes the pursuit. In the second part
of the dream he himself is the devil and can do charms. To do magic
was his highest ambition in his youth and he would have gladly given
himself up to the devil for the privilege of learning magic. He starts
the engine by means of a charm. In his childhood his great wish was to
build a magic locomotive with which he could travel wherever he wanted.
The servant girl who brings down three bales of paper (play on
trinity?), (his love letters?), is a symbol of the Holy Virgin, as
it is in all dreams, a fact which I could easily prove. He was a
confirmed admirer of the Holy Mother. He must give this up if he is to
learn magic. But the dream is a compromise between the two tendencies
and expresses a bipolar attitude; he fires the engine with divine
fuel, with faith, which upholds his life along the right path and
protects it. He wishes me to the devil that he may continue secretly
to cling to his religion. But the infantile wish to be a magician
comes foremost to the surface. (The dream does not portray one wish,
but a number of wishes which criss-cross the soul.) The supplementary
portion of the lengthy dream also illustrates the power of magic. The
religious meaning of spraying (with holy water ... Perolin cleanses and
disinfects the air) is readily obvious and so is also the admixture
of religious and sexual motives which play such a tremendous role in
the neuroses and the psychoses.[25] He yields to the temptation, a
she-devil seduces him. The old woman, after all, is the witch of his
childhood, coming to punish him for his sins. (He admits also a strong
gerontophilia and once he fell in love with a 60-year-old woman).
The old and the new testament, his prayer books, his confession slips,
are in the paper packages which he must burn up to free himself of all
religious inhibitions.
The dream thus portrays a prospective tendency,—the overcoming
religious inhibitions, subduing the dread of hell and devil as well as
the fear of witches so as to give himself up to his cravings. He takes
his life in his own hands, fires his own engine,—he will take unto
himself any woman who looks like his sister.
The dream expresses clearly also that his homosexual fixation is due
to the mother and sister Imago which he finds in all women. Finding
himself upon a sexual path which leads away from women and in the
direction of man, he wants to leave that path and become a normal man
by overcoming all inhibitions. He no longer requires the protection
of his neurosis, he is master of himself, scorns the religious
imperatives, becoming magician and God in his own right.
Through the history of this subject we obtain a glimpse into the
mechanism which eventually leads to homosexuality. This subject might
have become a homosexual and would have then presented the usual
homosexual life history: Very tender for a time, girl-like, played with
dolls at his grandmother’s house, liked to be busy in the kitchen and
preferred the company of girls. Such experiences are commonly shared
also by the heterosexual persons but the latter forget them. Later, if
the course of development favors the outbreak of homosexuality, these
recollections, emphasized and fixed through repetition are pointed out
as proof that the condition is inborn.
One episode in our subject’s life might have led him to overt
homosexuality: his experience with the teacher,—the more so as it
took place openly. But what amounts to an inciting factor in one case
may act as a deterrent in another. Every influence may assert itself
either on the negative or positive side. Childhood dreams as carried
out by adults, may generate either a gerontophilia, or a similar
inclination towards children, depending on whether the subject assumes
the role of the adult or of the younger person. Fixation on the mother
may drive a man entirely to homosexuality as I have clearly learned
through the history of a certain case. The homosexuals frequently have
a morbid mother, a woman who suffers of depression and is unwise in her
actions. Unfortunately my observations indicate that the fancies are
generated by parents as often as they are incited by guilty servants
and that such occurrences are far from rare.
In the case under consideration the experience with the teacher and
the latter’s revolting openness about it acted as an inhibition to
homosexuality. The thought, “You may get to be like that teacher,”
acted as a deterrent against the outbreak of a so-called genuine
homosexuality, though all conditions were otherwise favorable. Even the
characteristic dislike of women was there as well as the incestuous
fixation upon the female members of the family.
And although much of his sexual life was perfectly clear to this
subject’s mind, including things which to others appear only in the
dim light of day dreaming or upon the lowered state of threshold
consciousness, there was one thing about which he was entirely
ignorant: his true attitude towards, and relationship to, his father.
He was continually more irritated with his father and avoided to be
alone with him because he knew how easily they break into a quarrel
and how misunderstanding would arise between them on the slightest
provocation. This hypersensitiveness in his relations with his father,
shows that there were feelings at work over which he was not master.
What he demanded and expected of his father I have already indicated.
He wanted to be treated by him as he had been treated by his teacher.
In the course of the analysis he also had a dream during which I was
the one assuming that role. He is homosexually fixed on his father and
heterosexually fixed upon the female members of his family.
It is interesting to see that the homosexual inclination, despite all
childhood experiences, is repressed and masked under the feeling of
disgust. We understand in this light the meaning of the gastric pains.
He thinks only of women and is a typical instance of a would-be Don
Juan. He begins numerous adventures but always meets difficulties.
That is, he starts relations which from the beginning present these
difficulties and in that way there is no danger for him. If the
difficulties (symbol of the unattainable, that is of the incestuous
goal) are overcome, the attraction disappears or else his protective
defence comes to his aid: the gastric attacks. He goes so far as to
take a girl to a room but at the last moment he can do nothing on
account of his gastric pain. The nausea is a sign of disgust. It is
brought about by the homosexual tendency pressing forward as much as
by the subject’s inhibition against heterosexual relationship. At
the most critical time before meeting the girl he is restless, and a
voice within seems to say to him: “you do not really want this woman,
you want a man, like that teacher, or that friend of yours!” As a
protection against these homosexual notions his nausea comes up and
this also acts as a defence against women. For woman, as such, he feels
no dislike, he is able to have intercourse with prostitutes, without
aversion. But homosexual acts are repulsive to him. Thus he remains
hanging midway between homosexuality and heterosexuality. On account of
his religious scruples both pathways are closed to him and the result
is—his ascetic behavior at the end.
His asceticism is back of the rudimentary Don Juan role which he plays
but cannot carry out in accordance with his instinctive promptings on
account of his inhibitions. One step nearer and we have the Don Juan
of day-dreams and ascetic in fact,—if the adventures with women are
not even begun. A step further advanced is represented by the complete
repression of all sexual inclinations. We may define the ascete as a
person who remains in the narcissistic stage of fixation because both
paths of allerotism (that is, homo-, and heterosexuality) are equally
closed to him. An exclusive monosexual goal is incapable of rousing the
instinctive excitation necessary for carrying out a sexual act, because
the religious scruples are oppressive. His perennially unattainable
ideal is a bisexual being, he longs for a passion so strong that it
should be capable of overcoming all obstacles. His asceticism is not
voluntary, but a state induced by his sexual constellation.