the same night in which the dreamer identifies herself with her brother.
She was a “tomboy,” and was always being told that she should have been
born a boy. This identification with the brother shows with special
clearness that “the little one” signifies the genital. The mother
threatened him (her) with castration, which could only be understood as
a punishment for playing with the parts, and the identification,
therefore, shows that she herself had masturbated as a child, though
this fact she now retained only in a memory concerning her brother. An
early knowledge of the male genital which she later lost she must have
acquired at that time according to the assertions of this second dream.
Moreover the second dream points to the infantile sexual theory that
girls originate from boys through castration. After I had told her of
this childish belief, she at once confirmed it with an anecdote in which
the boy asks the girl: “Was it cut off?” to which the girl replied, “No,
it’s always been so.”
The sending away of the little one, of the genital, in the first dream
therefore also refers to the threatened castration. Finally she blames
her mother for not having been born a boy.
That “being run over” symbolises sexual intercourse would not be evident
from this dream if we were not sure of it from many other sources.
3. Representation of the genital by structures, stairways, and shafts.
(Dream of a young man inhibited by a father complex.)
“He is taking a walk with his father in a place which is surely the
Prater, for the _Rotunda_ may be seen in front of which there is a small
front structure to which is attached a captive balloon; the balloon,
however, seems quite collapsed. His father asks him what this is all
for; he is surprised at it, but he explains it to his father. They come
into a court in which lies a large sheet of tin. His father wants to
pull off a big piece of this, but first looks around to see if anyone is
watching. He tells his father that all he needs to do is to speak to the
watchman, and then he can take without any further difficulty as much as
he wants to. From this court a stairway leads down into a shaft, the
walls of which are softly upholstered something like a leather
pocket-book. At the end of this shaft there is a longer platform, and
then a new shaft begins....”
Analysis. This dream belongs to a type of patient which is not
favourable from a therapeutic point of view. They follow in the analysis
without offering any resistances whatever up to a certain point, but
from that point on they remain almost inaccessible. This dream he almost
analysed himself. “The Rotunda,” he said, “is my genital, the captive
balloon in front is my penis, about the weakness of which I have
worried.” We must, however, interpret in greater detail; the Rotunda is
the buttock which is regularly associated by the child with the genital,
the smaller front structure is the scrotum. In the dream his father asks
him what this is all for—that is, he asks him about the purpose and
arrangement of the genitals. It is quite evident that this state of
affairs should be turned around, and that he should be the questioner.
As such a questioning on the side of the father has never taken place in
reality, we must conceive the dream thought as a wish, or take it
conditionally, as follows: “If I had only asked my father for sexual
enlightenment.” The continuation of this thought we shall soon find in
another place.
The court in which the tin sheet is spread out is not to be conceived
symbolically in the first instance, but originates from his father’s
place of business. For discretionary reasons I have inserted the tin for
another material in which the father deals, without, however, changing
anything in the verbal expression of the dream. The dreamer had entered
his father’s business, and had taken a terrible dislike to the
questionable practices upon which profit mainly depends. Hence the
continuation of the above dream thought (“if I had only asked him”)
would be: “He would have deceived me just as he does his customers.” For
the pulling off, which serves to represent commercial dishonesty, the
dreamer himself gives a second explanation—namely, onanism. This is not
only entirely familiar to us (see above, p. 234), but agrees very well
with the fact that the secrecy of onanism is expressed by its opposite
(“Why one can do it quite openly”). It, moreover, agrees entirely with
our expectations that the onanistic activity is again put off on the
father, just as was the questioning in the first scene of the dream. The
shaft he at once interprets as the vagina by referring to the soft
upholstering of the walls. That the act of coition in the vagina is
described as a going down instead of in the usual way as a going up, I
have also found true in other instances.[CZ]
The details that at the end of the first shaft there is a longer
platform and then a new shaft, he himself explains biographically. He
had for some time consorted with women sexually, but had then given it
up because of inhibitions and now hopes to be able to take it up again
with the aid of the treatment. The dream, however, becomes indistinct
toward the end, and to the experienced interpreter it becomes evident
that in the second scene of the dream the influence of another subject
has begun to assert itself; in this his father’s business and his
dishonest practices signify the first vagina represented as a shaft so
that one might think of a reference to the mother.
4. The male genital symbolised by persons and the female by a landscape.
(Dream of a woman of the lower class, whose husband is a policeman,
reported by B. Dattner.)
... Then someone broke into the house and anxiously called for a
policeman. But he went with two tramps by mutual consent into a
church,[DA] to which led a great many stairs;[DB] behind the church
there was a mountain,[DC] on top of which a dense forest.[DD] The
policeman was furnished with a helmet, a gorget, and a cloak.[DE] The
two vagrants, who went along with the policeman quite peaceably, had
tied to their loins sack-like aprons.[DF] A road led from the church to
the mountain. This road was overgrown on each side with grass and
brushwood, which became thicker and thicker as it reached the height of
the mountain, where it spread out into quite a forest.
5. A stairway dream.
(Reported and interpreted by Otto Rank.)
For the following transparent pollution dream, I am indebted to the same
colleague who furnished us with the dental-irritation dream reported on
p. 235.
“I am running down the stairway in the stair-house after a little girl,
whom I wish to punish because she has done something to me. At the
bottom of the stairs some one held the child for me. (A grown-up woman?)
I grasp it, but do not know whether I have hit it, for I suddenly find
myself in the middle of the stairway where I practise coitus with the
child (in the air as it were). It is really no coitus, I only rub my
genital on her external genital, and in doing this I see it very
distinctly, as distinctly as I see her head which is lying sideways.
During the sexual act I see hanging to the left and above me (also as if
in the air) two small pictures, landscapes, representing a house on a
green. On the smaller one my surname stood in the place where the
painter’s signature should be; it seemed to be intended for my birthday
present. A small sign hung in front of the pictures to the effect that
cheaper pictures could also be obtained. I then see myself very
indistinctly lying in bed, just as I had seen myself at the foot of the
stairs, and I am awakened by a feeling of dampness which came from the
pollution.”
Interpretation. The dreamer had been in a book-store on the evening of
the day of the dream, where, while he was waiting, he examined some
pictures which were exhibited, which represented motives similar to the
dream pictures. He stepped nearer to a small picture which particularly
took his fancy in order to see the name of the artist, which, however,
was quite unknown to him.
Later in the same evening, in company, he heard about a Bohemian
servant-girl who boasted that her illegitimate child “was made on the
stairs.” The dreamer inquired about the details of this unusual
occurrence, and learned that the servant-girl went with her lover to the
home of her parents, where there was no opportunity for sexual
relations, and that the excited man performed the act on the stairs. In
witty allusion to the mischievous expression used about wine-adulterers,
the dreamer remarked, “The child really grew on the cellar steps.”
These experiences of the day, which are quite prominent in the dream
content, were readily reproduced by the dreamer. But he just as readily
reproduced an old fragment of infantile recollection which was also
utilised by the dream. The stair-house was the house in which he had
spent the greatest part of his childhood, and in which he had first
become acquainted with sexual problems. In this house he used, among
other things, to slide down the banister astride which caused him to
become sexually excited. In the dream he also comes down the stairs very
rapidly—so rapidly that, according to his own distinct assertions, he
hardly touched the individual stairs, but rather “flew” or “slid down,”
as we used to say. Upon reference to this infantile experience, the
beginning of the dream seems to represent the factor of sexual
excitement. In the same house and in the adjacent residence the dreamer
used to play pugnacious games with the neighbouring children, in which
he satisfied himself just as he did in the dream.
If one recalls from Freud’s investigation of sexual symbolism[DG] that
in the dream stairs or climbing stairs almost regularly symbolises
coitus, the dream becomes clear. Its motive power as well as its effect,
as is shown by the pollution, is of a purely libidinous nature. Sexual
excitement became aroused during the sleeping state (in the dream this
is represented by the rapid running or sliding down the stairs) and the
sadistic thread in this is, on the basis of the pugnacious playing,
indicated in the pursuing and overcoming of the child. The libidinous
excitement becomes enhanced and urges to sexual action (represented in
the dream by the grasping of the child and the conveyance of it to the
middle of the stairway). Up to this point the dream would be one of pure
sexual symbolism, and obscure for the unpractised dream interpreter. But
this symbolic gratification, which would have insured undisturbed sleep,
was not sufficient for the powerful libidinous excitement. The
excitement leads to an orgasm, and thus the whole stairway symbolism is
unmasked as a substitute for coitus. Freud lays stress on the rhythmical
character of both actions as one of the reasons for the sexual
utilisation of the stairway symbolism, and this dream especially seems
to corroborate this, for, according to the express assertion of the
dreamer, the rhythm of a sexual act was the most pronounced feature in
the whole dream.
Still another remark concerning the two pictures, which, aside from
their real significance, also have the value of “Weibsbilder” (literally
_woman-pictures_, but idiomatically _women_). This is at once shown by
the fact that the dream deals with a big and a little picture, just as
the dream content presents a big (grown up) and a little girl. That
cheap pictures could also be obtained points to the prostitution
complex, just as the dreamer’s surname on the little picture and the
thought that it was intended for his birthday, point to the parent
complex (to be born on the stairway—to be conceived in coitus).
The indistinct final scene, in which the dreamer sees himself on the
staircase landing lying in bed and feeling wet, seems to go back into
childhood even beyond the infantile onanism, and manifestly has its
prototype in similarly pleasurable scenes of bed-wetting.
6. A modified stair-dream.
To one of my very nervous patients, who was an abstainer, whose fancy
was fixed on his mother, and who repeatedly dreamed of climbing stairs
accompanied by his mother, I once remarked that moderate masturbation
would be less harmful to him than enforced abstinence. This influence
provoked the following dream:
“His piano teacher reproaches him for neglecting his piano-playing, and
for not practising the _Études_ of Moscheles and Clementi’s _Gradus ad
Parnassum_.” In relation to this he remarked that the _Gradus_ is only a
stairway, and that the piano itself is only a stairway as it has a
scale.
It is correct to say that there is no series of associations which
cannot be adapted to the representation of sexual facts. I conclude with
the dream of a chemist, a young man, who has been trying to give up his
habit of masturbation by replacing it with intercourse with women.
_Preliminary statement._—On the day before the dream he had given a
student instruction concerning Grignard’s reaction, in which magnesium
is to be dissolved in absolutely pure ether under the catalytic
influence of iodine. Two days before, there had been an explosion in the
course of the same reaction, in which the investigator had burned his
hand.
Dream I. _He is to make phenylmagnesiumbromid; he sees the apparatus
with particular clearness, but he has substituted himself for the
magnesium. He is now in a curious swaying attitude. He keeps repeating
to himself, “This is the right thing, it is working, my feet are
beginning to dissolve and my knees are getting soft.” Then he reaches
down and feels for his feet, and meanwhile (he does not know how) he
takes his legs out of the crucible, and then again he says to himself,
“That cannot be.... Yes, it must be so, it has been done correctly.”
Then he partially awakens, and repeats the dream to himself, because he
wants to tell it to me. He is distinctly afraid of the analysis of the
dream. He is much excited during this semi-sleeping state, and repeats
continually, “Phenyl, phenyl.”_
II. _He is in ... ing with his whole family; at half-past eleven. He is
to be at the Schottenthor for a rendezvous with a certain lady, but he
does not wake up until half-past eleven. He says to himself, “It is too
late now; when you get there it will be half-past twelve.” The next
instant he sees the whole family gathered about the table—his mother and
the servant girl with the soup-tureen with particular clearness. Then he
says to himself, “Well, if we are eating already, I certainly can’t get
away.”_
Analysis: He feels sure that even the first dream contains a reference
to the lady whom he is to meet at the rendezvous (the dream was dreamed
during the night before the expected meeting). The student to whom he
gave the instruction is a particularly unpleasant fellow; he had said to
the chemist: “That isn’t right,” because the magnesium was still
unaffected, and the latter answered as though he did not care anything
about it: “It certainly isn’t right.” He himself must be this student;
he is as indifferent towards his analysis as the student is towards his
synthesis; the _He_ in the dream, however, who accomplishes the
operation, is myself. How unpleasant he must seem to me with his
indifference towards the success achieved!
Moreover, he is the material with which the analysis (synthesis) is
made. For it is a question of the success of the treatment. The legs in
the dream recall an impression of the previous evening. He met a lady at
a dancing lesson whom he wished to conquer; he pressed her to him so
closely that she once cried out. After he had stopped pressing against
her legs, he felt her firm responding pressure against his lower thighs
as far as just above his knees, at the place mentioned in the dream. In
this situation, then, the woman is the magnesium in the retort, which is
at last working. He is feminine towards me, as he is masculine towards
the woman. If it will work with the woman, the treatment will also work.
Feeling and becoming aware of himself in the region of his knees refers
to masturbation, and corresponds to his fatigue of the previous day....
The rendezvous had actually been set for half-past eleven. His wish to
over-sleep and to remain with his usual sexual objects (that is, with
masturbation) corresponds with his resistance.
In relation to the repetition of the name phenyl, he gives the following
thoughts: All these radicals ending in _yl_ have always been pleasing to
him; they are very convenient to use: benzyl, azetyl, &c. That, however,
explained nothing. But when I proposed the radical Schlemihl[DH] he
laughed heartily, and related that during the summer he had read a book
by Prévost which contained a chapter: “Les exclus de l’amour,” the
description in which made him think of the Schlemihls, and he added,
“That is my case.” He would have again acted the Schlemihl if he had
missed the rendezvous.
VI
THE DREAM-WORK
All previous attempts to solve the problems of the dream have been based
directly upon the manifest dream content as it is retained in the
memory, and have undertaken to obtain an interpretation of the dream
from this content, or, if interpretation was dispensed with, to base a
judgment of the dream upon the evidence furnished by this content. We
alone are in possession of new data; for us a new psychic material
intervenes between the dream content and the results of our
investigations: and this is the _latent_ dream content or the dream
thoughts which are obtained by our method. We develop a solution of the
dream from this latter, and not from the manifest dream content. We are
also confronted for the first time with a problem which has not before
existed, that of examining and tracing the relations between the latent
dream thoughts and the manifest dream content, and the processes through
which the former have grown into the latter.
We regard the dream thoughts and the dream content as two
representations of the same meaning in two different languages; or to
express it better, the dream content appears to us as a translation of
the dream thoughts into another form of expression, whose signs and laws
of composition we are to learn by comparing the original with the
translation. The dream thoughts are at once intelligible to us as soon
as we have ascertained them. The dream content is, as it were, presented
in a picture-writing, whose signs are to be translated one by one into
the language of the dream thoughts. It would of course be incorrect to
try to read these signs according to their values as pictures instead of
according to their significance as signs. For instance, I have before me
a picture-puzzle (rebus): a house, upon whose roof there is a boat; then
a running figure whose head has been apostrophised away, and the like. I
might now be tempted as a critic to consider this composition and its
elements nonsensical. A boat does not belong on the roof of a house and
a person without a head cannot run; the person, too, is larger than the
house, and if the whole thing is to represent a landscape, the single
letters of the alphabet do not fit into it, for of course they do not
occur in pure nature. A correct judgment of the picture-puzzle results
only if I make no such objections to the whole and its parts, but if, on
the contrary, I take pains to replace each picture by the syllable or
word which it is capable of representing by means of any sort of
reference, the words which are thus brought together are no longer
meaningless, but may constitute a most beautiful and sensible
expression. Now the dream is a picture-puzzle of this sort, and our
predecessors in the field of dream interpretation have made the mistake
of judging the rebus as an artistic composition. As such it appears
nonsensical and worthless.
(_a_) _The Condensation Work_
The first thing which becomes clear to the investigator in the
comparison of the dream content with the dream thoughts is that a
tremendous work of condensation has taken place. The dream is reserved,
paltry, and laconic when compared with the range and copiousness of the
dream thoughts. The dream when written down fills half a page; the
analysis, in which the dream thoughts are contained, requires six,
eight, twelve times as much space. The ratio varies with different
dreams; it never changes its essential meaning, as far as I have been
able to observe. As a rule the extent of the compression which has taken
place is under-estimated, owing to the fact that the dream thoughts
which are brought to light are considered the complete material, while
continued work of interpretation may reveal new thoughts which are
concealed behind the dream. We have already mentioned that one is really
never sure of having interpreted a dream completely; even if the
solution seems satisfying and flawless, it still always remains possible
that there is a further meaning which is manifested by the same dream.
Thus the _amount of condensation_ is—strictly speaking—indeterminable.
An objection, which at first sight seems very plausible, might be raised
against the assertion that the disproportion between dream content and
dream thought justifies the conclusion that an abundant condensation of
psychic material has taken place in the formation of dreams. For we so
often have the impression that we have dreamed a great deal throughout
the night and then have forgotten the greater part. The dream which we
recollect upon awakening would thus be only a remnant of the total
dream-work, which would probably equal the dream thoughts in range if we
were able to remember the former completely. In part this is certainly
true; there can be no mistake about the observation that the dream is
most accurately reproduced if one tries to remember it immediately after
awakening, and that the recollection of it becomes more and more
defective towards evening. On the other hand, it must be admitted that
the impression that we have dreamed a good deal more than we are able to
reproduce is often based upon an illusion, the cause of which will be
explained later. Moreover, the assumption of condensation in the dream
activity is not affected by the possibility of forgetting in dreams, for
it is proved by groups of ideas belonging to those particular parts of
the dream which have remained in the memory. If a large part of the
dream has actually been lost to memory, we are probably deprived of
access to a new series of dream thoughts. It is altogether unjustifiable
to expect that those portions of the dream which have been lost also
relate to the thoughts with which we are already acquainted from the
analysis of the portions which have been preserved.
In view of the great number of ideas which analysis furnishes for each
individual element of the dream content, the chief doubt with many
readers will be whether it is permissible to count everything that
subsequently comes to mind during analysis as a part of the dream
thoughts—to assume, in other words, that all these thoughts have been
active in the sleeping state and have taken part in the formation of the
dream. Is it not more probable that thought connections are developed in
the course of analysis which did not participate in the formation of the
dream? I can meet this doubt only conditionally. It is true, of course,
that particular thought connections first arise only during analysis;
but one may always be sure that such new connections have been
established only between thoughts which have already been connected in
the dream thoughts by other means; the new connections are, so to speak,
corollaries, short circuits, which are made possible by the existence of
other more fundamental means of connection. It must be admitted that the
huge number of trains of thought revealed by analysis have already been
active in the formation of the dream, for if a chain of thoughts has
been worked out, which seems to be without connection with the formation
of the dream, a thought is suddenly encountered which, being represented
in the dream, is indispensable to its interpretation—which nevertheless
is inaccessible except through that chain of thoughts. The reader may
here turn to the dream of the botanical monograph, which is obviously
the result of an astonishing condensation activity, even though I have
not given the analysis of it completely.