just as though you had thought at the time of the request: ‘Of course,
I’ll invite you, so you can eat yourself fat at my house and become
still more pleasing to my husband. I would rather give no more suppers.’
The dream then tells you that you cannot give a supper, thereby
fulfilling your wish not to contribute anything to the rounding out of
your friend’s figure. The resolution of your husband to refuse
invitations to supper for the sake of getting thin teaches you that one
grows fat on the things served in company.” Now only some conversation
is necessary to confirm the solution. The smoked salmon in the dream has
not yet been traced. “How did the salmon mentioned in the dream occur to
you?” “Smoked salmon is the favourite dish of this friend,” she
answered. I happen to know the lady, and may corroborate this by saying
that she grudges herself the salmon just as much as my patient grudges
herself the caviare.
The dream admits of still another and more exact interpretation, which
is necessitated only by a subordinate circumstance. The two
interpretations do not contradict one another, but rather cover each
other and furnish a neat example of the usual ambiguity of dreams as
well as of all other psychopathological formations. We have seen that at
the same time that she dreams of the denial of the wish, the patient is
in reality occupied in securing an unfulfilled wish (the caviare
sandwiches). Her friend, too, had expressed a wish, namely, to get
fatter, and it would not surprise us if our lady had dreamt that the
wish of the friend was not being fulfilled. For it is her own wish that
a wish of her friend’s—for increase in weight—should not be fulfilled.
Instead of this, however, she dreams that one of her own wishes is not
fulfilled. The dream becomes capable of a new interpretation, if in the
dream she does not intend herself, but her friend, if she has put
herself in the place of her friend, or, as we may say, has identified
herself with her friend.
I think she has actually done this, and as a sign of this identification
she has created an unfulfilled wish in reality. But what is the meaning
of this hysterical identification? To clear this up a thorough
exposition is necessary. Identification is a highly important factor in
the mechanism of hysterical symptoms; by this means patients are enabled
in their symptoms to represent not merely their own experiences, but the
experiences of a great number of other persons, and can suffer, as it
were, for a whole mass of people, and fill all the parts of a drama by
means of their own personalities alone. It will here be objected that
this is well-known hysterical imitation, the ability of hysteric
subjects to copy all the symptoms which impress them when they occur in
others, as though their pity were stimulated to the point of
reproduction. But this only indicates the way in which the psychic
process is discharged in hysterical imitation; the way in which a
psychic act proceeds and the act itself are two different things. The
latter is slightly more complicated than one is apt to imagine the
imitation of hysterical subjects to be: it corresponds to an unconscious
concluded process, as an example will show. The physician who has a
female patient with a particular kind of twitching, lodged in the
company of other patients in the same room of the hospital, is not
surprised when some morning he learns that this peculiar hysterical
attack has found imitations. He simply says to himself: The others have
seen her and have done likewise: that is psychic infection. Yes, but
psychic infection proceeds in somewhat the following manner: As a rule,
patients know more about one another than the physician knows about each
of them, and they are concerned about each other when the visit of the
doctor is over. Some of them have an attack to-day: soon it is known
among the rest that a letter from home, a return of love-sickness or the
like, is the cause of it. Their sympathy is aroused, and the following
syllogism, which does not reach consciousness, is completed in them: “If
it is possible to have this kind of an attack from such causes, I too
may have this kind of an attack, for I have the same reasons.” If this
were a cycle capable of becoming conscious, it would perhaps express
itself in _fear_ of getting the same attack; but it takes place in
another psychic sphere, and, therefore, ends in the realisation of the
dreaded symptom. Identification is therefore not a simple imitation, but
a sympathy based upon the same etiological claim; it expresses an “as
though,” and refers to some common quality which has remained in the
unconscious.
Identification is most often used in hysteria to express sexual
community. An hysterical woman identifies herself most readily—although
not exclusively—with persons with whom she has had sexual relations, or
who have sexual intercourse with the same persons as herself. Language
takes such a conception into consideration: two lovers are “one.” In the
hysterical phantasy, as well as in the dream, it is sufficient for the
identification if one thinks of sexual relations, whether or not they
become real. The patient, then, only follows the rules of the hysterical
thought processes when she gives expression to her jealousy of her
friend (which, moreover, she herself admits to be unjustified, in that
she puts herself in her place and identifies herself with her by
creating a symptom—the denied wish). I might further clarify the process
specifically as follows: She puts herself in the place of her friend in
the dream, because her friend has taken her own place in relation to her
husband, and because she would like to take her friend’s place in the
esteem of her husband.[AJ]
The contradiction to my theory of dreams in the case of another female
patient, the most witty among all my dreamers, was solved in a simpler
manner, although according to the scheme that the non-fulfilment of one
wish signifies the fulfilment of another. I had one day explained to her
that the dream is a wish-fulfilment. The next day she brought me a dream
to the effect that she was travelling with her mother-inlaw to their
common summer resort. Now I knew that she had struggled violently
against spending the summer in the neighbourhood of her mother-in-law. I
also knew that she had luckily avoided her mother-in-law by renting an
estate in a far-distant country resort. Now the dream reversed this
wished-for solution; was not this in the flattest contradiction to my
theory of wish-fulfilment in the dream? Certainly, it was only necessary
to draw the inferences from this dream in order to get at its
interpretation. According to this dream, I was in the wrong. _It was
thus her wish that I should be in the wrong, and this wish the dream
showed her as fulfilled._ But the wish that I should be in the wrong,
which was fulfilled in the theme of the country home, referred to a more
serious matter. At that time I had made up my mind, from the material
furnished by her analysis, that something of significance for her
illness must have occurred at a certain time in her life. She had denied
it because it was not present in her memory. We soon came to see that I
was in the right. Her wish that I should be in the wrong, which is
transformed into the dream, thus corresponded to the justifiable wish
that those things, which at the time had only been suspected, had never
occurred at all.
Without an analysis, and merely by means of an assumption, I took the
liberty of interpreting a little occurrence in the case of a friend, who
had been my colleague through the eight classes of the Gymnasium. He
once heard a lecture of mine delivered to a small assemblage, on the
novel subject of the dream as the fulfilment of a wish. He went home,
dreamt _that he had lost all his suits_—he was a lawyer—and then
complained to me about it. I took refuge in the evasion: “One can’t win
all one’s suits,” but I thought to myself: “If for eight years I sat as
Primus on the first bench, while he moved around somewhere in the middle
of the class, may he not naturally have had a wish from his boyhood days
that I, too, might for once completely disgrace myself?”
In the same way another dream of a more gloomy character was offered me
by a female patient as a contradiction to my theory of the wish-dream.
The patient, a young girl, began as follows: “You remember that my
sister has now only one boy, Charles: she lost the elder one, Otto,
while I was still at her house. Otto was my favourite; it was I who
really brought him up. I like the other little fellow, too, but of
course not nearly as much as the dead one. Now I dreamt last night that
_I saw Charles lying dead before me_. _He was lying in his little
coffin, his hands folded: there were candles all about, and, in short,
it was just like the time of little Otto’s death, which shocked me so
profoundly._ Now tell me, what does this mean? You know me: am I really
bad enough to wish my sister to lose the only child she has left? Or
does the dream mean that I wish Charles to be dead rather than Otto,
whom I like so much better?”
I assured her that this interpretation was impossible. After some
reflection I was able to give her the interpretation of the dream, which
I subsequently made her confirm.
Having become an orphan at an early age, the girl had been brought up in
the house of a much older sister, and had met among the friends and
visitors who came to the house, a man who made a lasting impression upon
her heart. It looked for a time as though these barely expressed
relations were to end in marriage, but this happy culmination was
frustrated by the sister, whose motives have never found a complete
explanation. After the break, the man who was loved by our patient
avoided the house: she herself became independent some time after little
Otto’s death, to whom her affection had now turned. But she did not
succeed in freeing herself from the inclination for her sister’s friend
in which she had become involved. Her pride commanded her to avoid him;
but it was impossible for her to transfer her love to the other suitors
who presented themselves in order. Whenever the man whom she loved, who
was a member of the literary profession, announced a lecture anywhere,
she was sure to be found in the audience; she also seized every other
opportunity to see him from a distance unobserved by him. I remembered
that on the day before she had told me that the Professor was going to a
certain concert, and that she was also going there, in order to enjoy
the sight of him. This was on the day of the dream; and the concert was
to take place on the day on which she told me the dream. I could now
easily see the correct interpretation, and I asked her whether she could
think of any event which had happened after the death of little Otto.
She answered immediately: “Certainly; at that time the Professor
returned after a long absence, and I saw him once more beside the coffin
of little Otto.” It was exactly as I had expected. I interpreted the
dream in the following manner: If now the other boy were to die, the
same thing would be repeated. You would spend the day with your sister,
the Professor would surely come in order to offer condolence, and you
would see him again under the same circumstances as at that time. The
dream signifies nothing but this wish of yours to see him again, against
which you are fighting inwardly. I know that you are carrying the ticket
for to-day’s concert in your bag. Your dream is a dream of impatience;
it has anticipated the meeting which is to take place to-day by several
hours.
In order to disguise her wish she had obviously selected a situation in
which wishes of that sort are commonly suppressed—a situation which is
so filled with sorrow that love is not thought of. And yet, it is very
easily probable that even in the actual situation at the bier of the
second, more dearly loved boy, which the dream copied faithfully, she
had not been able to suppress her feelings of affection for the visitor
whom she had missed for so long a time.
A different explanation was found in the case of a similar dream of
another female patient, who was distinguished in her earlier years by
her quick wit and her cheerful demeanour, and who still showed these
qualities at least in the notions which occurred to her in the course of
treatment. In connection with a longer dream, it seemed to this lady
that she saw her fifteen-year-old daughter lying dead before her in a
box. She was strongly inclined to convert this dream-image into an
objection to the theory of wish-fulfilment, but herself suspected that
the detail of the box must lead to a different conception of the
dream.[AK] In the course of the analysis it occurred to her that on the
evening before, the conversation of the company had turned upon the
English word “box,” and upon the numerous translations of it into
German, such as box, theatre box, chest, box on the ear, &c. From other
components of the same dream it is now possible to add that the lady had
guessed the relationship between the English word “box” and the German
_Büchse_, and had then been haunted by the memory that _Büchse_ (as well
as “box”) is used in vulgar speech to designate the female genital
organ. It was therefore possible, making a certain allowance for her
notions on the subject of topographical anatomy, to assume that the
child in the box signified a child in the womb of the mother. At this
stage of the explanation she no longer denied that the picture of the
dream really corresponded to one of her wishes. Like so many other young
women, she was by no means happy when she became pregnant, and admitted
to me more than once the wish that her child might die before its birth;
in a fit of anger following a violent scene with her husband she had
even struck her abdomen with her fists in order to hit the child within.
The dead child was, therefore, really the fulfilment of a wish, but a
wish which had been put aside for fifteen years, and it is not
surprising that the fulfilment of the wish was no longer recognised
after so long an interval. For there had been many changes meanwhile.
The group of dreams to which the two last mentioned belong, having as
content the death of beloved relatives, will be considered again under
the head of “Typical Dreams.” I shall there be able to show by new
examples that in spite of their undesirable content, all these dreams
must be interpreted as wish-fulfilments. For the following dream, which
again was told me in order to deter me from a hasty generalisation of
the theory of wishing in dreams, I am indebted, not to a patient, but to
an intelligent jurist of my acquaintance. “_I dream_,” my informant
tells me, “_that I am walking in front of my house with a lady on my
arm_. _Here a closed wagon is waiting, a gentleman steps up to me, gives
his authority as an agent of the police, and demands that I should
follow him. I only ask for time in which to arrange my affairs._ Can you
possibly suppose this is a wish of mine to be arrested?” “Of course
not,” I must admit. “Do you happen to know upon what charge you were
arrested?” “Yes; I believe for infanticide.” “Infanticide? But you know
that only a mother can commit this crime upon her newly born child?”
“That is true.”[AL] “And under what circumstances did you dream; what
happened on the evening before?” “I would rather not tell you that; it
is a delicate matter.” “But I must have it, otherwise we must forgo the
interpretation of the dream.” “Well, then, I will tell you. I spent the
night, not at home, but at the house of a lady who means very much to
me. When we awoke in the morning, something again passed between us.
Then I went to sleep again, and dreamt what I have told you.” “The woman
is married?” “Yes.” “And you do not wish her to conceive a child?” “No;
that might betray us.” “Then you do not practise normal coitus?” “I take
the precaution to withdraw before ejaculation.” “Am I permitted to
assume that you did this trick several times during the night, and that
in the morning you were not quite sure whether you had succeeded?” “That
might be the case.” “Then your dream is the fulfilment of a wish. By
means of it you secure the assurance that you have not begotten a child,
or, what amounts to the same thing, that you have killed a child. I can
easily demonstrate the connecting links. Do you remember, a few days ago
we were talking about the distress of matrimony (Ehenot), and about the
inconsistency of permitting the practice of coitus as long as no
impregnation takes place, while every delinquency after the ovum and the
semen meet and a fœtus is formed is punished as a crime? In connection
with this, we also recalled the mediæval controversy about the moment of
time at which the soul is really lodged in the fœtus, since the concept
of murder becomes admissible only from that point on. Doubtless you also
know the gruesome poem by Lenau, which puts infanticide and the
prevention of children on the same plane.” “Strangely enough, I had
happened to think of Lenau during the afternoon.” “Another echo of your
dream. And now I shall demonstrate to you another subordinate
wish-fulfilment in your dream. You walk in front of your house with the
lady on your arm. So you take her home, instead of spending the night at
her house, as you do in actuality. The fact that the wish-fulfilment,
which is the essence of the dream, disguises itself in such an
unpleasant form, has perhaps more than one reason. From my essay on the
etiology of anxiety neuroses, you will see that I note interrupted
coitus as one of the factors which cause the development of neurotic
fear. It would be consistent with this that if after repeated
cohabitation of the kind mentioned you should be left in an
uncomfortable mood, which now becomes an element in the composition of
your dream. You also make use of this unpleasant state of mind to
conceal the wish-fulfilment. Furthermore, the mention of infanticide has
not yet been explained. Why does this crime, which is peculiar to
females, occur to you?” “I shall confess to you that I was involved in
such an affair years ago. Through my fault a girl tried to protect
herself from the consequences of a _liaison_ with me by securing an
abortion. I had nothing to do with carrying out the plan, but I was
naturally for a long time worried lest the affair might be discovered.”
“I understand; this recollection furnished a second reason why the
supposition that you had done your trick badly must have been painful to
you.”
A young physician, who had heard this dream of my colleague when it was
told, must have felt implicated by it, for he hastened to imitate it in
a dream of his own, applying its mode of thinking to another subject.
The day before he had handed in a declaration of his income, which was
perfectly honest, because he had little to declare. He dreamt that an
acquaintance of his came from a meeting of the tax commission and
informed him that all the other declarations of income had passed
uncontested, but that his own had awakened general suspicion, and that
he would be punished with a heavy fine. The dream is a poorly-concealed
fulfilment of the wish to be known as a physician with a large income.
It likewise recalls the story of the young girl who was advised against
accepting her suitor because he was a man of quick temper who would
surely treat her to blows after they were married. The answer of the
girl was: “I wish he _would_ strike me!” Her wish to be married is so
strong that she takes into the bargain the discomfort which is said to
be connected with matrimony, and which is predicted for her, and even
raises it to a wish.
If I group the very frequently occurring dreams of this sort, which seem
flatly to contradict my theory, in that they contain the denial of a
wish or some occurrence decidedly unwished for, under the head of
“counter wish-dreams,” I observe that they may all be referred to two
principles, of which one has not yet been mentioned, although it plays a
large part in the dreams of human beings. One of the motives inspiring
these dreams is the wish that I should appear in the wrong. These dreams
regularly occur in the course of my treatment if the patient shows a
resistance against me, and I can count with a large degree of certainty
upon causing such a dream after I have once explained to the patient my
theory that the dream is a wish-fulfilment.[AM] I may even expect this
to be the case in a dream merely in order to fulfil the wish that I may
appear in the wrong. The last dream which I shall tell from those
occurring in the course of treatment again shows this very thing. A
young girl who has struggled hard to continue my treatment, against the
will of her relatives and the authorities whom she has consulted, dreams
as follows: _She is forbidden at home to come to me any more. She then
reminds me of the promise I made her to treat her for nothing if
necessary, and I say to her: “I can show no consideration in money
matters.”_
It is not at all easy in this case to demonstrate the fulfilment of a
wish, but in all cases of this kind there is a second problem, the
solution of which helps also to solve the first. Where does she get the
words which she puts into my mouth? Of course I have never told her
anything like that, but one of her brothers, the very one who has the
greatest influence over her, has been kind enough to make this remark
about me. It is then the purpose of the dream that this brother should
remain in the right; and she does not try to justify this brother merely
in the dream; it is her purpose in life and the motive for her being
ill.
The other motive for counter wish-dreams is so clear that there is
danger of overlooking it, as for some time happened in my own case. In
the sexual make-up of many people there is a masochistic component,
which has arisen through the conversion of the aggressive, sadistic
component into its opposite. Such people are called “ideal” masochists,
if they seek pleasure not in the bodily pain which may be inflicted upon
them, but in humiliation and in chastisement of the soul. It is obvious
that such persons can have counter wish-dreams and disagreeable dreams,
which, however, for them are nothing but wish-fulfilments, affording
satisfaction for their masochistic inclinations. Here is such a dream. A
young man, who has in earlier years tormented his elder brother, towards
whom he was homosexually inclined, but who has undergone a complete
change of character, has the following dream, which consists of three
parts: (1) _He is “insulted” by his brother._ (2) _Two adults are
caressing each other with homosexual intentions._ (3) _His brother has
sold the enterprise whose management the young man reserved for his own
future._ He awakens from the last-mentioned dream with the most
unpleasant feelings, and yet it is a masochistic wish-dream, which might
be translated: It would serve me quite right if my brother were to make
that sale against my interest, as a punishment for all the torments
which he has suffered at my hands.
I hope that the above discussion and examples will suffice—until further
objection can be raised—to make it seem credible that even dreams with a
painful content are to be analysed as the fulfilments of wishes. Nor
will it seem a matter of chance that in the course of interpretation one
always happens upon subjects of which one does not like to speak or
think. The disagreeable sensation which such dreams arouse is simply
identical with the antipathy which endeavours—usually with success—to
restrain us from the treatment or discussion of such subjects, and which
must be overcome by all of us, if, in spite of its unpleasantness, we
find it necessary to take the matter in hand. But this disagreeable
sensation, which occurs also in dreams, does not preclude the existence
of a wish; everyone has wishes which he would not like to tell to
others, which he does not want to admit even to himself. We are, on
other grounds, justified in connecting the disagreeable character of all
these dreams with the fact of dream disfigurement, and in concluding
that these dreams are distorted, and that the wish-fulfilment in them is
disguised until recognition is impossible for no other reason than that
a repugnance, a will to suppress, exists in relation to the
subject-matter of the dream or in relation to the wish which the dream
creates. Dream disfigurement, then, turns out in reality to be an act of
the censor. We shall take into consideration everything which the
analysis of disagreeable dreams has brought to light if we reword our
formula as follows: _The dream is the (disguised) fulfilment of a
(suppressed, repressed) wish._[AN]