by pulling out a tree._" Herewith her remark that "_she misses the
tree_." She means that she did not see the tree in the dream, but the
same phrase serves to express another thought which symbolic
interpretation makes completely certain. The dream deals with another
bit of the infantile sex theory, namely, with the belief that girls
originally had the same genitals as boys and that the later conformation
resulted from castration (pulling out of a tree).
(_c_). "_She is standing in front of the drawer of her writing table,
with which she is so familiar that she knows immediately if anybody has
been through it._" The writing-table drawer, like every drawer, chest,
or box, stands for the female genital. She knows that one can recognize
from the genital the signs of sexual intercourse (and, as she thinks,
even of any contact at all) and she has long been afraid of such a
conviction. I believe that the accent in all these dreams is to be laid
upon the idea of _knowing_. She is reminded of the time of her childish
sexual investigations, the results of which made her quite proud at the
time.
5. Again a little bit of symbolism. But this time I must first describe
the psychic situation in a short preface. A man who spent the night with
a woman describes his partner as one of those motherly natures whose
desire for a child irresistibly breaks through during intercourse. The
circumstances of their meeting, however, necessitated a precaution
whereby the fertilizing discharge of semen is kept away from the womb.
Upon awaking after this night, the woman tells the following dream:
"_An officer with a red cap follows her on the street. She flees from
him, runs up the staircase, and he follows after her. Breathlessly she
reaches her apartment and slams and locks the door behind her. He
remains outside and as she looks through a peephole she sees him sitting
outside on a bench and weeping._"
You undoubtedly recognize in the pursuit by an officer with a red cap,
and the breathless stair climbing, the representation of the sexual act.
The fact that the dreamer locks herself in against the pursuer may serve
as an example of that inversion which is so frequently used in dreams,
for in reality it was the man who withdrew before the completion of the
act. In the same way her grief has been transposed to the partner, it is
he who weeps in the dream, whereby the discharge of the semen is also
indicated.
You must surely have heard that in psychoanalysis it is always
maintained that all dreams have a sexual meaning. Now you yourselves are
in a position to form a judgment as to the incorrectness of this
reproach. You have become acquainted with the wish-fulfillment dreams,
which deal with the satisfying of the plainest needs, of hunger, of
thirst, of longing for freedom, the dreams of convenience and of
impatience and likewise the purely covetous and egoistic dreams. But
that the markedly distorted dreams preponderantly--though again not
exclusively--give expression to sex wishes, is a fact you may certainly
keep in mind as one of the results of psychoanalytical research.
6. I have a special motive for piling up examples of the use of symbols
in dreams. At our first meeting I complained of how hard it is, when
lecturing on psychoanalysis, to demonstrate the facts in order to awaken
conviction; and you very probably have come to agree with me since then.
But the various assertions of psychoanalysis are so closely linked that
one's conviction can easily extend from one point to a larger part of
the whole. We might say of psychoanalysis that if we give it our little
finger it promptly demands the whole hand. Anyone who was convinced by
the explanation of errors can no longer logically disbelieve in all the
rest of psychoanalysis. A second equally accessible point of approach is
furnished by dream symbolism. I shall give you a dream, already
published, of a peasant woman, whose husband is a watchman and who has
certainly never heard anything about dream symbolism and psychoanalysis.
You may then judge for yourselves whether its explanation with the help
of sex symbols can be called arbitrary and forced.
"_Then someone broke into her house and she called in fright for a
watchman. But the latter had gone companionably into a church together
with two 'beauties.' A number of steps led up to the church. Behind the
church was a hill, and on its crest a thick forest. The watchman was
fitted out with a helmet, gorget and a cloak. He had a full brown beard.
The two were going along peacefully with the watchman, had sack-like
aprons bound around their hips. There was a path from the church to the
hill. This was overgrown on both sides with grass and underbrush that
kept getting thicker and that became a regular forest on the crest of
the hill._"
You will recognize the symbols without any difficulty. The male genital
is represented by a trinity of persons, the female by a landscape with a
chapel, hill and forest. Again you encounter steps as the symbol of the
sexual act. That which is called a hill in the dream has the same name
in anatomy, namely, _mons veneris_, the mount of Venus.
7. I have another dream which can be solved by means of inserting
symbols, a dream that is remarkable and convincing because the dreamer
himself translated all the symbols, even though he had had no
preliminary knowledge of dream interpretation. This situation is very
unusual and the conditions essential to its occurrence are not clearly
known.
"_He is going for a walk with his father in some place which must be the
Prater_,[35] _for one can see the rotunda and before it a smaller
building to which is anchored a captive balloon, which, however, seems
fairly slack. His father asks him what all that is for; he wonders at it
himself but explains it to his father. Then they come to a courtyard in
which there lies spread out a big sheet of metal. His father wants to
break off a big piece of it for himself but first looks about him to see
if anyone might see him. He says to him that all he needs to do is to
tell the inspector and then he can take some without more ado. There are
steps leading from this courtyard down into a pit, the walls of which
are upholstered with some soft material rather like a leather arm chair.
At the end of this pit is a longish platform and then a new pit
begins...._"
The dreamer himself interprets as follows: "The rotunda is my genital,
the balloon in front of it is my penis, of whose slackness I have been
complaining." Thus one may translate in more detail, that the rotunda is
the posterior--a part of the body which the child regularly considers as
part of the genital--while the smaller building before it is the
scrotum. In the dream his father asks him what all that is for; that is
to say, he asks the object and function of the genitals. It is easy to
turn this situation around so that the dreamer is the one who does the
asking. Since no such questioning of the father ever took place in real
life, we must think of the thought of this dream as a wish or consider
it in the light of a supposition, "If I had asked father for sexual
enlightenment." We will find the continuation of this idea in another
place shortly.
The courtyard, in which the sheet metal lies spread out, is not to be
considered primarily as symbolical but refers to the father's place of
business. For reasons of discretion I have substituted the "sheet metal"
for another material with which the father deals, without changing
anything in the literal wording of the dream. The dreamer entered his
father's business and took great offense at the rather dubious practices
upon which the profits depended to a large extent. For this reason the
continuation of the above idea of the dream might be expressed as "if I
had asked him, he would only have deceived me as he deceives his
customers." The dreamer himself gives us the second meaning of "breaking
off the metal," which serves to represent the commercial dishonesty. He
says it means masturbation. Not only have we long since become familiar
with this symbol, but the fact also is in agreement. The secrecy of
masturbation is expressed by means of its opposite--"It can be safely
done openly." Again our expectations are fulfilled by the fact that
masturbatory activity is referred to as the father's, just as the
questioning was in the first scene of the dream. Upon being questioned
he immediately gives the interpretation of the pit as the vagina on
account of the soft upholstering of its walls. I will add arbitrarily
that the "going down" like the more usual "going up" is meant to
describe the sexual intercourse in the vagina.
Such details as the fact that the first pit ends in a platform and then
a new one begins, he explains himself as having been taken from his own
history. He practiced intercourse for a while, then gave it up on
account of inhibitions, and now hopes to be able to resume it as a
result of the treatment.
8. The two following dreams are those of a foreigner, of very polygamous
tendencies, and I give them to you as proof for the claim that one's ego
appears in every dream, even in those in which it is disguised in the
manifest content. The trunks in the dream are a symbol for woman.
(_a_). "_He is to take a trip, his luggage is placed on a carriage to
be taken to the station, and there are many trunks piled up, among which
are two big black ones like sample trunks. He says, consolingly, to
someone, 'Well, they are only going as far as the station with us.'_"
In reality he does travel with a great deal of luggage, but he also
brings many tales of women with him when he comes for treatment. The two
black trunks stand for two dark women who play the chief part in his
life at present. One of them wanted to travel to Vienna after him, but
he telegraphed her not to, upon my advice.
(_b_). A scene at the customs house: "_A fellow traveler opens his trunk
and says indifferently while puffing a cigarette, 'There's nothing in
here.' The customs official seems to believe him but delves into the
trunk once more and finds something particularly forbidden. The traveler
then says resignedly, 'Well, there's no help for it.'_"
He himself is the traveler, I the customs official. Though otherwise
very frank in his confessions, he has on this occasion tried to conceal
from me a new relationship which he had struck up with a lady whom he
was justified in believing that I knew. The painful situation of being
convicted of this is transposed into a strange person so that he himself
apparently is not present in the dream.
9. The following is an example of a symbol which I have not yet
mentioned:
"_He meets his sister in company with two friends who are themselves
sisters. He extends his hand to both of them but not to his sister._"
This is no allusion to a real occurrence. His thoughts instead lead him
back to a time when his observations made him wonder why a girl's
breasts develop so late. The two sisters, therefore, are the breasts. He
would have liked to touch them if only it had not been his sister.
10. Let me add an example of a symbol of death in a dream:
"_He is walking with two persons whose name he knows but has forgotten.
By the time he is awake, over a very high, steep iron bridge. Suddenly
the two people are gone and he sees a ghostly man with a cap, and clad
in white. He asks this man whether he is the telegraph messenger.... No.
Or is he a coachman? No. Then he goes on,_" and even in the dream he is
in great fear. After waking he continues the dream by a phantasy in
which the iron bridge suddenly breaks, and he plunges into the abyss.
When the dreamer emphasizes the fact that certain individuals in a dream
are unknown, that he has forgotten their names, they are generally
persons standing in very close relationship to the dreamer. This dreamer
has two sisters; if it be true, as his dream indicates, that he wished
these two dead, then it would only be justice if the fear of death fell
upon him for so doing. In connection with the telegraph messenger he
remarks that such people always bring bad news. Judged by his uniform he
might also have been the lamp-lighter, who, however, also extinguishes
the lamps--in other words, as the spirit of death extinguishes the flame
of life. The coachman reminds him of Uhland's poem of King Karl's ocean
voyage and also of a dangerous lake trip with two companions in which he
played the role of the king in the poem. In connection with the iron
bridge he remembers a recent accident and the stupid saying "Life is a
suspension bridge."
11. The following may serve as another example of the representation of
death in a dream: "_An unknown man leaves a black bordered visiting card
for him._"
12. The following dream will interest you for several reasons, though it
is one arising from a neurotic condition among other things:
"_He is traveling in a train. The train stops in an open field. He
thinks it means that there is going to be an accident, that he must save
himself, and he goes through all the compartments of the train and
strikes dead everyone whom he meets, conductors, engine drivers, etc._"
In connection with this he tells a story that one of his friends told
him. An insane man was being transported in a private compartment in a
certain place in Italy, but through some mistake another traveler was
put in the same compartment. The insane man murdered his fellow
passenger. Thus he identifies himself with this insane person and bases
his right so to do upon a compulsive idea which was then torturing him,
namely, he must "do away with all persons who knew of his failings." But
then he himself finds a better motivation which gave rise to the dream.
The day before, in the theatre, he again saw the girl whom he had
expected to marry but whom he had left because she had given him cause
for jealousy. With a capacity for intense jealousy such as he has, he
would really be insane if he married. In other words, he considers her
so untrustworthy that out of jealousy he would have to strike dead all
the persons who stood in his way. Going through a series of rooms, of
compartments in this case, we have already learned to recognize as the
symbol of marriage (the opposite of monogamy).
In connection with the train stopping in the open country and his fear
of an accident, he tells the following: Once, when he was traveling in a
train and it came to a sudden stop outside of a station, a young lady in
the compartment remarked that perhaps there was going to be a collision,
and that in that case the best precaution would be to pull one's legs
up. But this "legs up" had also played a role in the many walks and
excursions into the open which he had taken with the girl in that happy
period in their first love. Thus it is a new argument for the idea that
he would have to be crazy in order to marry her now. But from my
knowledge of the situation I can assume with certainty that the wish to
be as crazy as that nevertheless exists in him.
THIRTEENTH LECTURE
THE DREAM
_Archaic Remnants and Infantilism in the Dream_
Let us revert to our conclusion that the dream-work, under the influence
of the dream censorship, transforms the latent dream thoughts into some
other form of expression. The latent thoughts are no other than the
conscious thoughts known to us in our waking hours; the new mode of
expression is incomprehensible to us because of its many-sided features.
We have said it extends back to conditions of our intellectual
development which we have long progressed beyond, to the language of
pictures, the symbol-representations, perhaps to those conditions which
were in force before the development of our language of thought. So we
called the mode of expression of the dream-work the archaic or
regressive.
You may conclude that as a result of the deeper study of the dream-work
we gain valuable information about the rather unknown beginnings of our
intellectual development. I trust this will be true, but this work has
not, up to the present time, been undertaken. The antiquity into which
the dream-work carries us back is of a double aspect, firstly, the
individual antiquity, childhood; and, secondly (in so far as every
individual in his childhood lives over again in some more or less
abbreviated manner the entire development of the human race), also this
antiquity, the philogenetic. That we shall be able to differentiate
which part of the latent psychic proceeding has its source in the
individual, and which part in the philogenetic antiquity is not
improbable. In this connection it appears to me, for example, that the
symbolic relations which the individual has never learned are ground for
the belief that they should be regarded as a philogenetic inheritance.
However, this is not the only archaic characteristic of the dream. You
probably all know from your own experiences the peculiar amnesia, that
is, loss of memory, concerning childhood. I mean the fact that the first
years, to the fifth, sixth or eighth, have not left the same traces in
our memory as have later experiences. One meets with individual persons,
to be sure, who can boast of a continuous memory from the very beginning
to the present day, but the other condition, that of a gap in the
memory, is far more frequent. I believe we have not laid enough stress
on this fact. The child is able to speak well at the age of two, it soon
shows that it can become adjusted to the most complicated psychic
situations, and makes remarks which years later are retold to it, but
which it has itself entirely forgotten. Besides, the memory in the early
years is more facile, because it is less burdened than in later years.
Nor is there any reason for considering the memory-function as a
particularly high or difficult psychic performance; in fact, the
contrary is true, and you can find a good memory in persons who stand
very low intellectually.
As a second peculiarity closely related to the first, I must point out
that certain well-preserved memories, for the most part formatively
experienced, stand forth in this memory-void which surrounds the first
years of childhood and do not justify this hypothesis. Our memory deals
selectively with its later materials, with impressions which come to us
in later life. It retains the important and discards the unimportant.
This is not true of the retained childhood memories. They do not bespeak
necessarily important experiences of childhood, not even such as from
the viewpoint of the child need appear of importance. They are often so
banal and intrinsically so meaningless that we ask ourselves in wonder
why just these details have escaped being forgotten. I once endeavored
to approach the riddle of childhood amnesia and the interrupted memory
remnants with the help of analysis, and I arrived at the conclusion that
in the case of the child, too, only the important has remained in the
memory, except that by means of the process of condensation already
known to you, and especially by means of distortion, the important is
represented in the memory by something that appears unimportant. For
this reason I have called these childhood memories "disguise-memories,"
memories used to conceal; by means of careful analysis one is able to
develop out of them everything that is forgotten.
In psychoanalytic treatment we are regularly called upon to fill out the
infantile memory gaps, and in so far as the cure is to any degree
successful, we are able again to bring to light the content of the
childhood years thus clouded in forgetfulness. These impressions have
never really been forgotten, they have only been inaccessible, latent,
have belonged to the unconscious. But sometimes they bob up out of the
unconscious spontaneously, and, as a matter of fact, this is what
happens in dreams. It is apparent that the dream life knows how to find
the entrance to these latent, infantile experiences. Beautiful examples
of this occur in literature, and I myself can present such an example. I
once dreamed in a certain connection of a person who must have performed
some service for me, and whom I clearly saw. He was a one-eyed man,
short in stature, stout, his head deeply sunk into his neck. I concluded
from the content that he was a physician. Luckily I was able to ask my
mother, who was still living, how the physician in my birth-place, which
I left when I was three years old, looked, and I learned from her that
he had one eye, was short and stout, with his head sunk into his neck,
and also learned at what forgotten mishap he had been of service to me.
This control over the forgotten material of childhood years is, then, a
further archaic tendency of the dream.
The same information may be made use of in another of the puzzles that
have presented themselves to us. You will recall how astonished people
were when we came to the conclusion that the stimuli which gave rise to
dreams were extremely bad and licentious sexual desires which have made
dream-censorship and dream-distortion necessary. After we have
interpreted such a dream for the dreamer and he, in the most favorable
circumstances does not attack the interpretation itself, he almost
always asks the question whence such a wish comes, since it seems
foreign to him and he feels conscious of just the opposite sensations.
We need not hesitate to point out this origin. These evil wish-impulses
have their origin in the past, often in a past which is not too far
away. It can be shown that at one time they were known and conscious,
even if they no longer are so. The woman, whose dream is interpreted to
mean that she would like to see her seventeen-year old daughter dead,
discovers under our guidance that she in fact at one time entertained
this wish. The child is the fruit of an unhappy marriage, which early
ended in a separation. Once, while the child was still in the womb, and
after a tense scene with her husband, she beat her body with her fists
in a fit of anger, in order to kill the child. How many mothers who
to-day love their children tenderly, perhaps too tenderly, received them
unwillingly, and at the time wished that the life within them would not
develop further; indeed, translated this wish into various actions,
happily harmless. The later death-wish against some loved one, which
seems so strange, also has its origin in early phases of the
relationship to that person.
The father, the interpretation of whose dream shows that he wishes for
the death of his eldest and favorite child, must be reminded of the fact
that at one time this wish was no stranger to him. While the child was
still a suckling, this man, who was unhappy in his choice of a wife,
often thought that if the little being that meant nothing to him would
die, he would again be free, and would make better use of his freedom. A
like origin may be found for a large number of similar hate impulses;
they are recollections of something that belonged to the past, were once
conscious and played their parts in the psychic life. You will wish to
conclude therefrom that such wishes and such dreams cannot occur if such
changes in the relationship to a person have not taken place; if such
relationship was always of the same character. I am ready to admit this,
only wish to warn you that you are to take into consideration not the
exact terms of the dream, but the meaning thereof according to its
interpretation. It may happen that the manifest dream of the death of
some loved person has only made use of some frightful mask, that it
really means something entirely different, or that the loved person
serves as a concealing substitute for some other.