significance of an absurd dream. The dream, interpreted without
analysis, of the Wagnerian performance lasting until 7.45 in the
morning, in which the orchestra is conducted from a tower, &c. (see p.
316) is apparently trying to say: It is a _crazy_ world and an _insane_
society. He who deserves a thing doesn’t get it, and he who doesn’t care
for anything has it—and in this she means to compare her fate with that
of her cousin. The fact that dreams concerning a dead father were the
first to furnish us with examples of absurdity in dreams is by no means
an accident. The conditions necessary for the creations of absurd dreams
are here grouped together in a typical manner. The authority belonging
to the father has at an early age aroused the criticism of the child,
and the strict demands he has made have caused the child to pay
particularly close attention to every weakness of the father for its own
extenuation; but the piety with which the father’s personality is
surrounded in our thoughts, especially after his death, increases the
censorship which prevents the expressions of this criticism from
becoming conscious.
IV. The following is another absurd dream about a dead father:
_I receive a notice from the common council of my native city concerning
the costs of a confinement in the hospital in the year 1851, which was
necessitated by an attack from which I suffered. I make sport of the
matter, for, in the first place, I was not yet alive in the year 1851,
and, in the second place, my father, to whom the notice might refer, is
already dead. I go to him in the adjoining room, where he is lying on a
bed, and tell him about it. To my astonishment he recalls that in that
year—1851—he was once drunk and had to be locked up or confined. It was
when he was working for the house of T——. “Then you drank, too?” I ask.
“You married soon after?” I figure that I was born in 1856, which
appears to me as though immediately following._
In view of the preceding discussion, we shall translate the insistence
with which this dream exhibits its absurdities as the sure sign of a
particularly embittered and passionate controversy in the dream
thoughts. With all the more astonishment, however, we note that in this
dream the controversy is waged openly, and the father designated as the
person against whom the satire is directed. This openness seems to
contradict our assumption of a censor as operative in the dream
activity. We may say in explanation, however, that here the father is
only an interposed person, while the conflict is carried on with another
one, who makes his appearance in the dream by means of a single
allusion. While the dream usually treats of revolt against other
persons, behind which the father is concealed, the reverse is true here;
the father serves as the man of straw to represent others, and hence the
dream dares thus openly to concern itself with a person who is usually
hallowed, because there is present the certain knowledge that he is not
in reality intended. We learn of this condition of affairs by
considering the occasion of the dream. Now, it occurred after I had
heard that an older colleague, whose judgment is considered infallible,
had expressed disapproval and astonishment at the fact that one of my
patients was then continuing psychoanalytical work with me for the fifth
year. The introductory sentences of the dream point with transparent
disguise to the fact that this colleague had for a time taken over the
duties which my father could no longer perform (_expenses, fees at the
hospital_); and when our friendly relations came to be broken I was
thrown into the same conflict of feelings which arises in the case of
misunderstanding between father and son in view of the part played by
the father and his earlier functions. The dream thoughts now bitterly
resent the reproach that I _am not making better progress_, which
extends itself from the treatment of this patient to other things. Does
this colleague know anyone who can get on faster? Does he not know that
conditions of this sort are usually incurable and last for life? What
are four or five years in comparison to a whole life, especially when
life has been made so much easier for the patient during the treatment?
The impression of absurdity in this dream is brought about largely by
the fact that sentences from different divisions of the dream thoughts
are strung together without any reconciling transition. Thus the
sentence, _I go to him in the adjoining room, &c._, leaves the subject
dealt with in the preceding sentences, and faithfully reproduces the
circumstances under which I told my father about my marriage engagement.
Thus the dream is trying to remind me of the noble disinterestedness
which the old man showed at that time, and to put it in contrast with
the conduct of another, a new person. I now perceive that the dream is
allowed to make sport of my father for the reason that in the dream
thought he is held up as an example to another man, in full recognition
of his merit. It is in the nature of every censorship that it permits
the telling of untruth about forbidden things rather than truth. The
next sentence, in which my father remembers having _once been drunk_,
and having been _locked up for it_, also contains nothing which is
actually true of my father. The person whom he covers is here a no less
important one than the great Meynert, in whose footsteps I followed with
such great veneration, and whose attitude towards me was changed into
undisguised hostility after a short period of indulgence. The dream
recalls to me his own statement that in his youth he was addicted to the
_chloroform_ habit, and that for this he had to enter a sanatorium. It
recalls also a second experience with him shortly before his death. I
carried on an embittered literary controversy with him concerning
hysteria in the male, the existence of which he denied, and when I
visited him in his last illness and asked him how he felt, he dwelt upon
the details of his condition and concluded with the words: “You know, I
have always been one of the prettiest cases of masculine hysteria.”
Thus, to my satisfaction, and _to my astonishment_, he admitted what he
had so long and so stubbornly opposed. But the fact that in this scene I
can use my father to cover Meynert is based not upon the analogy which
has been found to exist between the two persons, but upon the slight,
but quite adequate, representation of a conditional sentence occurring
in the dream thoughts, which in full would read as follows: “Of course
if I were of the second generation, the son of a professor or of a
court-councillor, I should have _progressed more rapidly_.” In the dream
I now make a court-councillor and a professor of my father. The most
obvious and most annoying absurdity of the dream lies in the treatment
of the date 1851, which seems to me to be hardly distinguishable from
1856, as though _a difference of five years would signify nothing
whatever_. But it is just this idea of the dream thoughts which requires
expression. _Four or five years_—that is the length of time which I
enjoyed the support of the colleague mentioned at the outset; but it is
also the time during which I kept my bride waiting before I married her;
and, through a coincidence that is eagerly taken advantage of by the
dream thoughts, it is also the time during which I am now keeping one of
my best patients waiting for the completion of his cure. “_What are five
years?_” ask the dream thoughts. “_That is no time at all for me—that
doesn’t come into consideration._ I have time enough ahead of me, and
just as what you didn’t want to believe came true at last, so I shall
accomplish this also.” Besides the number 51, when separated from the
number of the century, is determined in still another manner and in an
opposite sense; for which reason it occurs in the dream again. Fifty-one
is an age at which a man seems particularly exposed to danger, at which
I have seen many of my colleagues suddenly die, and among them one who
had been appointed to a professorship a few days before, after he had
been waiting a long time.
V. Another absurd dream which plays with figures, runs as follows:
_One of my acquaintances, Mr. M., has been attacked in an essay by no
less a person than Goethe, with justifiable vehemence, we all think. Mr.
M. has, of course, been crushed by this attack. He complains of it
bitterly at a dinner party; but he says that his veneration for Goethe
has not suffered from this personal experience. I try to find some
explanation of the chronological relations, which seem improbable to me.
Goethe died in 1832; since his attack upon M. must of course have taken
place earlier, Mr. M. was at the time a very young man. It seems
plausible to me that he was 18 years old. But I do not know exactly what
year it is at present, and so the whole calculation lapses into
obscurity. The attack, moreover, is contained in Goethe’s well-known
essay entitled “Nature.”_
We shall soon find means to justify the nonsense of this dream. Mr. M.,
with whom I became acquainted _at a dinner-party_, had recently
requested me to examine his brother, who showed signs of _paralytic
insanity_. The conjecture was right; the painful thing about this visit
was that the patient exposed his brother by alluding to his youthful
pranks when there was no occasion in the conversation for his doing so.
I had asked the patient to tell me the year of his birth, and had got
him to make several small calculations in order to bring out the
weakness of his memory—all of which tests he passed fairly well. I see
now that I am acting like a paralytic in the dream (_I do not know
exactly what year it is at present_). Other subject-matter in the dream
is drawn from another recent source. The editor of a medical journal, a
friend of mine, had accepted for his paper a very unfavourable, a
“_crushing_,” criticism of the last book of my friend Fl. of Berlin, the
author of which was a very _youthful_ reviewer, who was not very
competent to pass judgment. I thought I had a right to interfere, and
called the editor to account; he keenly regretted the acceptance of the
criticism, but would not promise redress. Thereupon I broke off
relations with the journal, and in my letter of resignation expressed
the hope that _our personal relations would not suffer from the
incident_. The third source of this dream is an account given by a
female patient—it was fresh in my memory at the time—of the mental
disease of her brother who had fallen into a frenzy, crying “Nature,
Nature.” The physicians in attendance thought that the cry was derived
from a reading of Goethe’s beautiful _essay_, and that it pointed to
overwork in the patient in the study of natural philosophy. I thought
rather of the sexual sense in which even less cultured people with us
use the word “Nature,” and the fact that the unfortunate man later
mutilated his genitals seemed to show that I was not far wrong. Eighteen
years was the age of this patient at the time when the attack of frenzy
occurred.
If I add further that the book of my friend so severely criticised (“It
is a question whether the author is crazy or we are” had been the
opinion of another critic) treats of the _temporal relations of life_
and refers the duration of Goethe’s life to the multiple of a number
significant from the point of view of biology, it will readily be
admitted that I am putting myself in the place of my friend in the
dream. (_I try to find some explanation of the chronological
relations._) But I behave like a paralytic, and the dream revels in
absurdity. This means, then, as the dream thoughts say ironically. “Of
course he is the fool, the lunatic, and you are the man of genius who
knows better. Perhaps, however, it is the other way around?” Now, this
other way around is explicitly represented in the dream, in that Goethe
has attacked the young man, which is absurd, while it is perfectly
possible even to-day for a young fellow to attack the immortal Goethe,
and in that I figure from the year of Goethe’s death, while I caused the
paralytic to calculate from the year of his birth.
But I have already promised to show that every dream is the result of
egotistical motives. Accordingly, I must account for the fact that in
this dream I make my friend’s cause my own and put myself in his place.
My rational conviction in waking thought is not adequate to do this.
Now, the story of the eighteen-year-old patient and of the various
interpretations of his cry, “Nature,” alludes to my having brought
myself into opposition to most physicians by claiming sexual etiology
for the psychoneuroses. I may say to myself: “The same kind of criticism
your friend met with you will meet with too, and have already met with
to some extent,” and now I may replace the “he” in the dream thoughts by
“we.” “Yes, you are right; we two are the fools.” That _mea res agitur_,
is clearly shown by the mention of the short, incomparably beautiful
essay of Goethe, for it was a public reading of this essay which induced
me to study the natural science while I was still undecided in the
graduating class of the Gymnasium.
VI. I am also bound to show of another dream in which my ego does not
occur that it is egotistic. On page 228 I mentioned a short dream in
which Professor M. says: “My son, the myopic ...”; and I stated that
this was only a preliminary dream to another one, in which I play a
part. Here is the main dream, omitted above, which challenges us to
explain its absurd and unintelligible word-formation.
_On account of some happenings or other in the city of Rome it is
necessary for the children to flee, and this they do. The scene is then
laid before a gate, a two-winged gate in antique style (the Porta Romana
in Siena, as I know while I am still dreaming). I am sitting on the edge
of a well, and am very sad; I almost weep. A feminine person—nurse,
nun—brings out the two boys and hands them over to their father, who is
not myself. The elder of the two is distinctly my eldest son, and I do
not see the face of the other; the woman who brings the boy asks him for
a parting kiss. She is distinguished by a red nose. The boy denies her
the kiss, but says to her, extending his hand to her in parting, “Auf
Geseres,” and to both of us (or to one of us) “Auf Ungeseres.” I have
the idea, that the latter indicates an advantage._
This dream is built upon a tangle of thoughts induced by a play I saw at
the theatre, called _Das neue Ghetto_ (“The New Ghetto.”) The Jewish
question, anxiety about the future of my children who cannot be given a
native country of their own, anxiety about bringing them up so that they
may have the right of native citizens—all these features may easily be
recognised in the accompanying dream thoughts.
“We sat by the waters of Babylon and wept.” Siena, like Rome, is famous
for its beautiful fountains. In the dream I must find a substitute of
some kind for Rome (_cf._ p. 163) in localities which are known to me.
Near the Porta Romana of Siena we saw a large, brightly illuminated
building, which we found to be the Manicomio, the insane asylum. Shortly
before the dream I had heard that a co-religionist had been forced to
resign a position at a state asylum which he had secured with great
effort.
Our interest is aroused by the speech: “_Auf Geseres_”—where we might
expect, from the situation maintained throughout the dream, “_Auf
Wiedersehen_” (_Au revoir_)—and by its quite meaningless opposite, “_Auf
Ungeseres_.”
According to information I have received from Hebrew scholars, _Geseres_
is a genuine Hebrew word derived from the verb _goiser_, and may best be
rendered by “ordained sufferings, fated disaster.” From its use in the
Jewish jargon one might think it signified “wailing and lamentation.”
_Ungeseres_ is a coinage of my own and first attracts my attention; but
for the present it baffles me. The little observation at the end of the
dream, that _Ungeseres_ indicates an advantage over _Geseres_ opens the
way to the associations and to an explanation. The same relation holds
good with caviare; the unsalted kind[EU] is more highly prized than the
salted. Caviare to the general, “noble passions”; herein lies concealed
a joking allusion to a member of my household, of whom I hope—for she is
younger than I—that she will watch over the future of my children; this,
too, agrees with the fact that another member of my household, our
worthy nurse, is clearly indicated in the nurse (or nun) of the dream.
But a connecting link is wanting between the pair, _salted_ and
_unsalted_, and _Geseres—ungeseres_. This is to be found in _soured and
unsoured_. In their flight or exodus out of Egypt, the children of
Israel did not have time to allow their bread to be leavened, and in
memory of the event to this day they eat unsoured bread at Easter time.
Here I can also find room for the sudden notion which came to me in this
part of the analysis. I remembered how we promenaded about the city of
Breslau, which was strange to us, at the end of the Easter holidays, my
friend from Berlin and I. A little girl asked me to tell her the way to
a certain street; I had to tell her I did not know it, whereupon I
remarked to my friend, “I hope that later on in life the little one will
show more perspicacity in selecting the persons by whom she allows
herself to be guided.” Shortly afterwards a sign caught my eye: “Dr.
_Herod_, office hours....” I said to myself: “I hope this colleague does
not happen to be a children’s specialist.” Meanwhile my friend had been
developing his views on the biological significance of _bilateral_
symmetry, and had begun a sentence as follows: “If we had but one eye in
the middle of our foreheads like _Cyclops_....” This leads us to the
speech of the professor in the preliminary dream: “My son, the
_myopic_.” And now I have been led to the chief source for _Geseres_.
Many years ago, when this son of Professor M., who is to-day an
independent thinker, was still sitting on his school-bench, he
contracted a disease of the eye, which the doctor declared gave cause
for anxiety. He was of the opinion that as long as it remained in one
eye it would not matter; if, however, it should extend to the other eye,
it would be serious. The disease healed in the one eye without leaving
any bad effects; shortly afterwards, however, its symptoms actually
appeared in the other eye. The terrified mother of the boy immediately
summoned the physician to the seclusion of her country resort. But he
took _another view_ of the matter. “_What sort of ‘Geseres’ is this you
are making?_” he said to his mother with impatience. “If one side got
well, the other side will get well too.” And so it turned out.
And now as to the connection between this and myself and those dear to
me. The school-bench upon which the son of Professor M. learned his
first lessons has become the property of my eldest son—it was given to
his mother-into whose lips I put the words of parting in the dream. One
of the wishes that can be attached to this transference may now easily
be guessed. This school-bench is intended by its construction to guard
the child from becoming shortsighted and one-sided. Hence, myopia (and
behind the Cyclops) and the discussion about _bilateralism_. The concern
about one-sidedness is of two-fold signification; along with the bodily
one-sidedness, that of intellectual development may be referred to. Does
it not seem as though the scene in the dream, with all its madness, were
putting its negative on just this anxiety? After the child has said his
word of parting _on the one side_, he calls out its opposite on the
_other side_, as though in order to establish an equilibrium. _He is
acting, as it were, in obedience to bilateral symmetry!_
Thus the dream frequently has the profoundest meaning in places where it
seems most absurd. In all ages those who had something to say and were
unable to say it without danger to themselves gladly put on the cap and
bells. The listener for whom the forbidden saying was intended was more
likely to tolerate it if he was able to laugh at it, and to flatter
himself with the comment that what he disliked was obviously something
absurd. The dream proceeds in reality just as the prince does in the
play who must counterfeit the fool, and hence the same thing may be said
of the dream which Hamlet says of himself, substituting an
unintelligible witticism for the real conditions: “I am but mad
north-north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a
handsaw.”[EV]
Thus my solution of the problem of the absurdity of dreams is that the
dream thoughts are never absurd—at least not those belonging to the
dreams of sane persons—and that the dream activity produces absurd
dreams and dreams with individual absurd elements if criticism,
ridicule, and derision in the dream thoughts are to be represented by it
in its manner of expression. My next concern is to show that the dream
activity is primarily brought about by the co-operation of the three
factors which have been mentioned—and of a fourth one which remains to
be cited—that it accomplishes nothing short of a transposition of the
dream thoughts, observing the three conditions which are prescribed for
it, and that the question whether the mind operates in the dream with
all its faculties, or only with a portion of them, is deprived of its
cogency and is inapplicable to the actual circumstances. But since there
are plenty of dreams in which judgments are passed, criticisms made, and
facts recognised, in which astonishment at some single element of the
dream appears, and arguments and explanations are attempted, I must meet
the objections which may be inferred from these occurrences by the
citation of selected examples.
My answer is as follows: _Everything in the dream which occurs as an
apparent exercise of the critical faculty is to be regarded, not as an
intellectual accomplishment of the dream activity, but as belonging to
the material of the dream thoughts, and it has found its way from them
as a finished structure to the manifest dream content_. I may go even
further than this. Even the judgments which are passed upon the dream as
it is remembered after awakening and the feelings which are aroused by
the reproduction of the dream, belong in good part to the latent dream
content, and must be fitted into their place in the interpretation of
the dream.
I. A striking example of this I have already given. A female patient
does not wish to relate her dream because it is too vague. She has seen
a person in the dream, and does not know whether it is her husband or
her father. Then follows a second dream fragment in which there occurs a
“manure-can,” which gives rise to the following reminiscence. As a young
housewife, she once jokingly declared in the presence of a young
relative who frequented the house that her next care would be to procure
a new manure-can. The next morning one was sent to her, but it was
filled with lilies of the valley. This part of the dream served to
represent the saying, “Not grown on your own manure.”[EW] When we
complete the analysis we find that in the dream thoughts it is a matter
of the after-effects of a story heard in youth, to the effect that a
girl had given birth to a child _concerning whom it was not clear who
was the real father_. The dream representation here goes over into the
waking thought, and allows one element of the dream thoughts to be
represented by a judgment expressed in the waking state upon the whole
dream.
II. A similar case: One of my patients has a dream which seems
interesting to him, for he says to himself immediately after awakening:
“_I must tell that to the doctor_.” The dream is analysed, and shows the
most distinct allusion to an affair in which he had become involved
during the treatment, and of which he had decided “_to tell me
nothing_.”[EX]
III. Here is a third example from my own experience:
_I go to the hospital with P. through a region in which houses and
gardens occur. With this comes the idea that I have already seen this
region in dreams several times. I do not know my way very well; P. shows
me a way which leads through a corner to a restaurant (a room, not a
garden); here I ask for Mrs. Doni, and I hear that she is living in the
background in a little room with three children. I go there, and while
on the way I meet an indistinct person with my two little girls, whom I
take with me after I have stood with them for a while. A kind of
reproach against my wife for having left them there._