from responsibility for Irma’s illness is not so transparent: the
illness of my daughter and that of a patient of the same name, the
harmfulness of cocaine, the illness of my patient travelling in Egypt,
concern about the health of my wife, my brother, of Dr. M., my own
bodily troubles, and concern about the absent friend who is suffering
from suppurative rhinitis. But if I keep all these things in view, they
combine into a single train of thought, labelled perhaps: Concern for
the health of myself and others—professional conscientiousness. I recall
an undefined disagreeable sensation as Otto brought me the news of
Irma’s condition. I should like to note finally the expression of this
fleeting sensation, which is part of the train of thought that is
mingled into the dream. It is as though Otto had said to me: “You do not
take your physician’s duties seriously enough, you are not
conscientious, do not keep your promises.” Thereupon this train of
thought placed itself at my service in order that I might exhibit proof
of the high degree in which I am conscientious, how intimately I am
concerned with the health of my relatives, friends, and patients.
Curiously enough, there are also in this thought material some painful
memories, which correspond rather to the blame attributed to Otto than
to the accusation against me. The material has the appearance of being
impartial, but the connection between this broader material, upon which
the dream depends, and the more limited theme of the dream which gives
rise to the wish to be innocent of Irma’s illness, is nevertheless
unmistakable.
I do not wish to claim that I have revealed the meaning of the dream
entirely, or that the interpretation is flawless.
I could still spend much time upon it; I could draw further explanations
from it, and bring up new problems which it bids us consider. I even
know the points from which further thought associations might be traced;
but such considerations as are connected with every dream of one’s own
restrain me from the work of interpretation. Whoever is ready to condemn
such reserve, may himself try to be more straightforward than I. I am
content with the discovery which has been just made. If the method of
dream interpretation here indicated is followed, it will be found that
the dream really has meaning, and is by no means the expression of
fragmentary brain activity, which the authors would have us believe.
_When the work of interpretation has been completed the dream may be
recognised as the fulfilment of a wish._
III
THE DREAM IS THE FULFILMENT OF A WISH
When after passing a defile one has reached an eminence where the ways
part and where the view opens out broadly in different directions, it is
permissible to stop for a moment and to consider where one is to turn
next. Something like this happens to us after we have mastered this
first dream interpretation. We find ourselves in the open light of a
sudden cognition. The dream is not comparable to the irregular sounds of
a musical instrument, which, instead of being touched by the hand of the
musician, is struck by some outside force; the dream is not senseless,
not absurd, does not presuppose that a part of our store of ideas is
dormant while another part begins to awaken. It is a psychic phenomenon
of full value, and indeed the fulfilment of a wish; it takes its place
in the concatenation of the waking psychic actions which are
intelligible to us, and it has been built up by a highly complicated
intellectual activity. But at the very moment when we are inclined to
rejoice in this discovery, a crowd of questions overwhelms us. If the
dream, according to the interpretation, represents a wish fulfilled,
what is the cause of the peculiar and unfamiliar manner in which this
fulfilment is expressed? What changes have occurred in the dream
thoughts before they are transformed into the manifest dream which we
remember upon awaking? In what manner has this transformation taken
place? Whence comes the material which has been worked over into the
dream? What causes the peculiarities which we observe in the dream
thoughts, for example, that they may contradict one another? (The
analogy of the kettle, p. 87). Is the dream capable of teaching us
something new about our inner psychic processes, and can its content
correct opinions which we have held during the day? I suggest that for
the present all these questions be laid aside, and that a single path be
pursued. We have found that the dream represents a wish as fulfilled. It
will be our next interest to ascertain whether this is a universal
characteristic of the dream, or only the accidental content of the dream
(“of Irma’s injection”) with which we have begun our analysis, for even
if we make up our minds that every dream has a meaning and psychic
value, we must nevertheless allow for the possibility that this meaning
is not the same in every dream. The first dream we have considered was
the fulfilment of a wish; another may turn out to be a realised
apprehension; a third may have a reflection as to its content; a fourth
may simply reproduce a reminiscence. Are there then other wish dreams;
or are there possibly nothing but wish dreams?
It is easy to show that the character of wish-fulfilment in dreams is
often undisguised and recognisable, so that one may wonder why the
language of dreams has not long since been understood. There is, for
example, a dream which I can cause as often as I like, as it were
experimentally. If in the evening I eat anchovies, olives, or other
strongly salted foods, I become thirsty at night, whereupon I waken. The
awakening, however, is preceded by a dream, which each time has the same
content, namely, that I am drinking. I quaff water in long draughts, it
tastes as sweet as only a cool drink can taste when one’s throat is
parched, and then I awake and have an actual desire to drink. The
occasion for this dream is thirst, which I perceive when I awake. The
wish to drink originates from this sensation, and the dream shows me
this wish as fulfilled. It thereby serves a function the nature of which
I soon guess. I sleep well, and am not accustomed to be awakened by a
bodily need. If I succeed in assuaging my thirst by means of the dream
that I am drinking, I need not wake up in order to satisfy it. It is
thus a dream of convenience. The dream substitutes itself for action, as
elsewhere in life. Unfortunately the need of water for quenching thirst
cannot be satisfied with a dream, like my thirst for revenge upon Otto
and Dr. M., but the intention is the same. This same dream recently
appeared in modified form. On this occasion I became thirsty before
going to bed, and emptied the glass of water which stood on the little
chest next to my bed. Several hours later in the night came a new attack
of thirst, accompanied by discomfort. In order to obtain water, I should
have had to get up and fetch the glass which stood on the night-chest of
my wife. I thus quite appropriately dreamt that my wife was giving me a
drink from a vase; this vase was an Etruscan cinerary urn which I had
brought home from an Italian journey and had since given away. But the
water in it tasted so salty (apparently from the ashes) that I had to
wake. It may be seen how conveniently the dream is capable of arranging
matters; since the fulfilment of a wish is its only purpose, it may be
perfectly egotistic. Love of comfort is really not compatible with
consideration for others. The introduction of the cinerary urn is
probably again the fulfilment of a wish; I am sorry that I no longer
possess this vase; it, like the glass of water at my wife’s side, is
inaccessible to me. The cinerary urn is also appropriate to the
sensation of a salty taste which has now grown stronger, and which I
know will force me to wake up.[Z]
Such convenience dreams were very frequent with me in the years of my
youth. Accustomed as I had always been to work until late at night,
early awakening was always a matter of difficulty for me. I used then to
dream that I was out of bed and was standing at the wash-stand. After a
while I could not make myself admit that I have not yet got up, but
meanwhile I had slept for a time. I am acquainted with the same dream of
laziness as dreamt by a young colleague of mine, who seems to share my
propensity for sleep. The lodging-house keeper with whom he was living
in the neighbourhood of the hospital had strict orders to wake him on
time every morning, but she certainly had a lot of trouble when she
tried to carry out his orders. One morning sleep was particularly sweet.
The woman called into the room: “Mr. Joe, get up; you must go to the
hospital.” Whereupon the sleeper dreamt of a room in the hospital, a bed
in which he was lying, and a chart pinned over his head reading: “Joe
H.... cand. med. 22 years old.” He said to himself in the dream: “If I
am already at the hospital, I don’t have to go there,” turned over and
slept on. He had thus frankly admitted to himself his motive for
dreaming.
Here is another dream, the stimulus for which acts during sleep itself:
One of my women patients, who had had to undergo an unsuccessful
operation on the jaw, was to wear a cooling apparatus on the affected
cheek, according to the orders of the physicians. But she was in the
habit of throwing it off as soon as she had got to sleep. One day I was
asked to reprove her for doing so; for she had again thrown the
apparatus on the floor. The patient defended herself as follows: “This
time I really couldn’t help it; it was the result of a dream which I had
in the night. In the dream, I was in a box at the opera and was taking a
lively interest in the performance. But Mr. Karl Meyer was lying in the
sanatorium and complaining pitifully on account of pains in his jaw. I
said to myself, ‘Since I haven’t the pains, I don’t need the apparatus
either,’ that’s why I threw it away.” This dream of the poor sufferer is
similar to the idea in the expression which comes to our lips when we
are in a disagreeable situation: “I know something that’s a great deal
more fun.” The dream presents this great deal more fun. Mr. Karl Meyer,
to whom the dreamer attributed her pains, was the most indifferent young
man of her acquaintance whom she could recall.
It is no more difficult to discover the fulfilment of wishes in several
dreams which I have collected from healthy persons. A friend who knew my
theory of dreams and had imparted it to his wife, said to me one day:
“My wife asked me to tell you that she dreamt yesterday that she was
having her menses. You will know what that means.” Of course I know: if
the young wife dreams that she is having her menses, the menses have
stopped. I can understand that she would have liked to enjoy her freedom
for a time longer before the discomforts of motherhood began. It was a
clever way of giving notice of her first pregnancy. Another friend
writes that his wife had recently dreamt that she noticed milk stains on
the bosom of her waist. This is also an indication of pregnancy, but
this time not of the first one; the young mother wishes to have more
nourishment for the second child than she had for the first.
A young woman, who for weeks had been cut off from company because she
was nursing a child that was suffering from an infectious disease,
dreams, after its safe termination, of a company of people in which A.
Daudet, Bourget, M. Prevost, and others are present, all of whom are
very pleasant to her and entertain her admirably. The different authors
in the dream also have the features which their pictures give them. M.
Prevost, with whose picture she is not familiar, looks like—the
disinfecting man who on the previous day had cleaned the sick rooms and
had entered them as the first visitor after a long period. Apparently
the dream might be perfectly translated thus: “It is about time now for
something more entertaining than this eternal nursing.”
Perhaps this selection will suffice to prove that often and under the
most complex conditions dreams are found which can be understood only as
fulfilments of wishes, and which present their contents without
concealment. In most cases these are short and simple dreams, which
stand in pleasant contrast to the confused and teeming dream
compositions which have mainly attracted the attention of the authors.
But it will pay to spend some time upon these simple dreams. The most
simple dreams of all, I suppose, are to be expected in the case of
children, whose psychic activities are certainly less complicated than
those of adults. The psychology of children, in my opinion, is to be
called upon for services similar to those which a study of the anatomy
and development of the lower animals renders to the investigation of the
structure of the highest classes of animals. Until now only a few
conscious efforts have been made to take advantage of the psychology of
children for such a purpose.
The dreams of little children are simple fulfilments of wishes, and as
compared, therefore, with the dreams of adults, are not at all
interesting. They present no problem to be solved, but are naturally
invaluable as affording proof that the dream in its essence signifies
the fulfilment of a wish. I have been able to collect several examples
of such dreams from the material furnished by my own children.
For two dreams, one of my daughters, at that time eight and a half years
old, the other of a boy five and a quarter years of age, I am indebted
to an excursion to the beautiful Hallstatt in the summer of 1896. I must
make the preliminary statement that during this summer we were living on
a hill near Aussee, from which, when the weather was good, we enjoyed a
splendid view of the Dachstein from the roof of our house. The Simony
Hut could easily be recognised with a telescope. The little ones often
tried to see it through the telescope—I do not know with what success.
Before the excursion I had told the children that Hallstatt lay at the
foot of the Dachstein. They looked forward to the day with great joy.
From Hallstatt we entered the valley of Eschern, which highly pleased
the children with its varying aspects. One of them, however, the boy of
five, gradually became discontented. As often as a mountain came in
view, he would ask: “Is that the Dachstein?” whereupon I would have to
answer: “No, only a foot-hill.” After this question had been repeated
several times, he became altogether silent; and he was quite unwilling
to come along on the flight of steps to the waterfall. I thought he was
tired out. But the next morning, he approached me radiant with joy, and
said: “Last night I dreamt that we were at Simony Hut.” I understood him
now; he had expected, as I was speaking of the Dachstein, that on the
excursion to Hallstatt, he would ascend the mountain and would come face
to face with the hut, about which there had been so much discussion at
the telescope. When he learned that he was expected to be regaled with
foot-hills and a waterfall, he was disappointed and became discontented.
The dream compensated him for this. I tried to learn some details of the
dream; they were scanty. “Steps must be climbed for six hours,” as he
had heard.
On this excursion wishes, destined to be satisfied only in dreams, had
arisen also in the mind of the girl of eight and a half years. We had
taken with us to Hallstatt the twelve-year-old boy of our neighbour—an
accomplished cavalier, who, it seems to me, already enjoyed the full
sympathy of the little woman. The next morning, then, she related the
following dream: “Just think, I dreamt that Emil was one of us, that he
said papa and mamma to you, and slept at our house in the big room like
our boys. Then mamma came into the room and threw a large handful of
chocolate bars under our beds.” The brothers of the girl, who evidently
had not inherited a familiarity with dream interpretation, declared just
like the authors: “That dream is nonsense.” The girl defended at least a
part of the dream, and it is worth while, from the point of view of the
theory of neuroses, to know which part: “That about Emil belonging to us
is nonsense, but that about the bars of chocolate is not.” It was just
this latter part that was obscure to me. For this mamma furnished me the
explanation. On the way home from the railway station the children had
stopped in front of a slot machine, and had desired exactly such
chocolate bars wrapped in paper with a metallic lustre, as the machine,
according to their experience, had for sale. But the mother had rightly
thought that the day had brought enough wish-fulfilment, and had left
this wish to be satisfied in dreams. This little scene had escaped me. I
at once understood that portion of the dream which had been condemned by
my daughter. I had myself heard the well-behaved guest enjoining the
children to wait until papa or mamma had come up. For the little one the
dream made a lasting adoption based on this temporary relation of the
boy to us. Her tender nature was as yet unacquainted with any form of
being together except those mentioned in the dream, which are taken from
her brothers. Why the chocolate bars were thrown under the bed could
not, of course, be explained without questioning the child.
From a friend I have learnt of a dream very similar to that of my boy.
It concerned an eight-year-old girl. The father had undertaken a walk to
Dornbach with the children, intending to visit the Rohrerhütte, but
turned back because it had grown too late, and promised the children to
make up for their disappointment some other time. On the way back, they
passed a sign which showed the way to the Hameau. The children now asked
to be taken to that place also, but had to be content, for the same
reason, with a postponement to another day. The next morning, the
eight-year-old girl came to the father, satisfied, saying: “Papa, I
dreamt last night that you were with us at the Rohrerhütte and on the
Hameau.” Her impatience had thus in the dream anticipated the fulfilment
of the promise made by her father.
Another dream, which the picturesque beauty of the Aussee inspired in my
daughter, at that time three and a quarter years old, is equally
straightforward. The little one had crossed the lake for the first time,
and the trip had passed too quickly for her. She did not want to leave
the boat at the landing, and cried bitterly. The next morning she told
us: “Last night I was sailing on the lake.” Let us hope that the
duration of this dream ride was more satisfactory to her.
My eldest boy, at that time eight years of age, was already dreaming of
the realisation of his fancies. He had been riding in a chariot with
Achilles, with Diomed as charioteer. He had, of course, on the previous
day shown a lively interest in the _Myths of Greece_, which had been
given to his elder sister.
If it be granted that the talking of children in sleep likewise belongs
to the category of dreaming, I may report the following as one of the
most recent dreams in my collection. My youngest girl, at that time
nineteen months old, had vomited one morning, and had therefore been
kept without food throughout the day. During the night which followed
upon this day of hunger, she was heard to call excitedly in her sleep:
“Anna Feud, strawberry, huckleberry, omelette, pap!” She used her name
in this way in order to express her idea of property; the menu must have
included about everything which would seem to her a desirable meal; the
fact that berries appeared in it twice was a demonstration against the
domestic sanitary regulations, and was based on the circumstance, by no
means overlooked by her, that the nurse ascribed her indisposition to an
over-plentiful consumption of strawberries; she thus in the dream took
revenge for this opinion which was distasteful to her.[AA]
If we call childhood happy because it does not yet know sexual desire,
we must not forget how abundant a source of disappointment and
self-denial, and thus of dream stimulation, the other of the great
life-impulses may become for it.[AB] Here is a second example showing
this. My nephew of twenty-two months had been given the task of
congratulating me upon my birthday, and of handing me, as a present, a
little basket of cherries, which at that time of the year were not yet
in season. It seemed difficult for him, for he repeated again and again:
“Cherries in it,” and could not be induced to let the little basket go
out of his hands. But he knew how to secure his compensation. He had,
until now, been in the habit of telling his mother every morning that he
had dreamt of the “white soldier,” an officer of the guard in a white
cloak, whom he had once admired on the street. On the day after the
birthday, he awakened joyfully with the information which could have had
its origin only in a dream: “He(r)man eat up all the cherries!”[AC]
What animals dream of I do not know. A proverb for which I am indebted
to one of my readers claims to know, for it raises the question: “What
does the goose dream of?” the answer being: “Of maize!” The whole theory
that the dream is the fulfilment of a wish is contained in these
sentences.[AD]
We now perceive that we should have reached our theory of the hidden
meaning of the dream by the shortest road if we had merely consulted
colloquial usage. The wisdom of proverbs, it is true, sometimes speaks
contemptuously enough of the dream—it apparently tries to justify
science in expressing the opinion that “Dreams are mere bubbles;” but
still for colloquial usage the dream is the gracious fulfiller of
wishes. “I should never have fancied that in the wildest dream,”
exclaims one who finds his expectations surpassed in reality.
IV
DISTORTION IN DREAMS
If I make the assertion that wish fulfilment is the meaning of every
dream, that, accordingly, there can be no dreams except wish dreams, I
am sure at the outset to meet with the most emphatic contradiction.
Objections will be made to this effect: “The fact that there are dreams
which must be understood as fulfilments of wishes is not new, but, on
the contrary, has long since been recognised by the authors. _Cf._
Radestock[54] (pp. 137–138), Volkelt[72] (pp. 110–111), Tissié[68] (p.
70), M. Simon[63] (p. 42) on the hunger dreams of the imprisoned Baron
Trenck, and the passage in Griesinger[31] (p. 11). The assumption that
there can be nothing but dreams of wish fulfilment, however, is another
of those unjustified generalisations by which you have been pleased to
distinguish yourself of late. Indeed dreams which exhibit the most
painful content, but not a trace of wish fulfilment, occur plentifully
enough. The pessimistic philosopher, Edward von Hartman, perhaps stands
furthest from the theory of wish fulfilment. He expresses himself in his
_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, Part II. (stereotyped edition, p. 34),
to the following effect:—
“‘As regards the dream, all the troubles of waking life are transferred
by it to the sleeping state; only the one thing, which can in some
measure reconcile a cultured person to life-scientific and artistic
enjoyment is not transferred....’ But even less discontented observers
have laid emphasis on the fact that in dreams pain and disgust are more
frequent than pleasure; so Scholz[59] (p. 39), Volkelt[72] (p. 80), and
others. Indeed two ladies, Sarah Weed and Florence Hallam,[33] have
found from the elaboration of their dreams a mathematical expression for
the preponderance of displeasure in dreams. They designate 58 per cent.
of the dreams as disagreeable, and only 28·6 per cent. as positively
pleasant. Besides those dreams which continue the painful sensations of
life during sleep, there are also dreams of fear, in which this most
terrible of all disagreeable sensations tortures us until we awake, and
it is with just these dreams of fear that children are so often
persecuted (_Cf._ Debacker [17] concerning the Pavor Nocturnus), though
it is in the case of children that you have found dreams of wishing
undisguised.”
Indeed it is the anxiety dreams which seem to prevent a generalisation
of the thesis that the dream is a wish-fulfilment, which we have
established by means of the examples in the last section; they seem even
to brand this thesis as an absurdity.
It is not difficult, however, to escape these apparently conclusive
objections. Please observe that our doctrine does not rest upon an
acceptance of the manifest dream content, but has reference to the
thought content which is found to lie behind the dream by the process of
interpretation. Let us contrast the _manifest_ and the _latent dream
content_. It is true that there are dreams whose content is of the most
painful nature. But has anyone ever tried to interpret these dreams, to
disclose their latent thought content? If not, the two objections are no
longer valid against us; there always remains the possibility that even
painful and fearful dreams may be discovered to be wish fulfilments upon
interpretation.[AE]