fact that I am now going to learn from the analysis what is meant by the
idea “_I have already dreamed of that_.”[EY] But the analysis of the
dream teaches me nothing on the subject; it only shows me that the
satisfaction belongs to the latent dream content, and not to my judgment
upon the dream. It is _satisfaction over the fact that I have had
children by my marriage_. P. is a person in whose company I walked the
path of life for a certain space, but who has since far outdistanced me
socially and materially—whose marriage, however, has remained childless.
The two occasions for the dream furnishing the proof of this may be
found by means of complete analysis. On the previous day I had read in
the paper the obituary notice of a certain Mrs. Dona A——y (out of which
I make Doni), who had died in childbirth; I was told by my wife that the
dead woman had been nursed by the same midwife she herself had had at
the birth of our two youngest boys. The name Dona had caught my
attention, for I had recently found it for the first time in an English
novel. The other occasion for the dream may be found in the date on
which it was dreamed; it was on the night before the birthday of my
eldest boy, who, it seems, is poetically gifted.
IV. The same satisfaction remained with me after awakening from the
absurd dream that my father, after his death, had played a political
part among the Magyars, and it is motivated by a continuance of the
feeling which accompanied the last sentence of the dream: “_I remember
that on his death-bed he looked so much like Garibaldi, and I am glad
that it has really come true. (Here belongs a forgotten continuation.)_”
I can now supply from the analysis what belongs in this gap of the
dream. It is the mention of my second boy, to whom I have given the
first name of a great historical personage, who attracted me powerfully
during my boyhood, especially during my stay in England. I had to wait
for a year after making up my mind to use this name in case the expected
child should be a son, and I greeted him with it _in high satisfaction_
as soon as he was born. It is easy to see how the father’s lust for
greatness is transferred in his thoughts to his children; it will
readily be believed that this is one of the ways in which the
suppression of this lust which becomes necessary in life is brought
about. The little fellow won a place in the text of this dream by virtue
of the fact that the same accident—quite pardonable in a child or a
dying person—of soiling his clothes had happened to him. With this may
be compared the allusion “_Stuhlrichter_” (judge on the stool-bench,
_i.e._ presiding judge) and the wish of the dream: To stand before one’s
children great and pure.
V. I am now called upon to find expressions of judgment which remain in
the dream itself, and are not retained in or transferred to our waking
thoughts, and I shall consider it a great relief if I may find examples
in dreams, which have already been cited for other purposes. The dream
about Goethe’s attacking Mr. M. seems to contain a considerable number
of acts of judgment. _I try to find some explanation of the
chronological relations, which seem improbable to me._ Does not this
look like a critical impulse directed against the nonsensical idea that
Goethe should have made a literary attack upon a young man of my
acquaintance? “_It seems plausible to me_ that he was 18 years old.”
That sounds quite like the result of a dull-witted calculation; and “_I
do not know exactly what year it is_” would be an example of uncertainty
or doubt in the dream.
But I know from analysis that these acts of judgment, which seem to have
been performed in the dream for the first time, admit of a different
construction in the light of which they become indispensable for
interpreting the dream, and at the same time every absurdity is avoided.
With the sentence, “_I try to find some explanation of the chronological
relations_,” I put myself in the place of my friend who is actually
trying to explain the chronological relations of life. The sentence then
loses its significance as a judgment that objects to the nonsense of the
previous sentences. The interposition, “_which seems improbable to me_,”
belongs to the subsequent “_it seems plausible to me_.” In about the
same words I had answered the lady who told me the story of her
brother’s illness: “_It seems improbable to me_ that the cry of ‘Nature,
Nature,’ had anything to do with Goethe; _it appears much more
plausible_ that it had the sexual significance which is known to you.”
To be sure, a judgment has been passed here, not, however, in the dream
but in reality, on an occasion which is remembered and utilised by the
dream thoughts. The dream content appropriates this judgment like any
other fragment of the dream thoughts.
The numeral 18, with which the judgment in the dream is meaninglessly
connected, still preserves a trace of the context from which the real
judgment was torn. Finally, “_I am not certain what year it is_” is
intended for nothing else than to carry out my identification with the
paralytic, in the examination of whom this point of confirmation had
actually been established.
In the solution of these apparent acts of judgment, in the dream, it may
be well to call attention to the rule of interpretation which says that
the coherence which is fabricated in the dream between its constituent
parts is to be disregarded as specious and unessential, and that every
dream element must be taken by itself and traced to its source. The
dream is a conglomeration, which is to be broken up into its elements
for the purposes of investigation. But other circumstances call our
attention to the fact that a psychic force is expressed in dreams which
establishes this apparent coherence—that is to say, which subjects the
material that is obtained by the dream activity to a _secondary
elaboration_. We are here confronted with manifestations of this force,
upon which we shall later fix our attention as being the fourth of the
factors which take part in the formation of the dream.
VI. I select other examples of critical activity in the dreams which
have already been cited. In the absurd dream about the communication
from the common council I ask the question: “_You married shortly after?
I figure that I was born in 1856, which appears to me as though
following immediately_.” This quite takes the form of an _inference_. My
father married shortly after his attack in the year 1851; I am the
oldest son, born in 1856; this agrees perfectly. We know that this
inference has been interpolated by the wish-fulfilment, and that the
sentence which dominates the dream thoughts is to the following effect:
_4 or 5 years, that is no time at all, that need not enter the
calculation_. But every part of this chain of inferences is to be
determined from the dream thoughts in a different manner, both as to its
content and as to its form. It is the patient—about whose endurance my
colleague complains—who intends to marry immediately after the close of
the treatment. The manner in which I deal with my father in the dream
recalls an _inquest_ or _examination_, and with that the person of a
university instructor who was in the habit of taking a complete list of
credentials at the enrolment of his class: “You were born when?” In
1856. “Patre?” Then the applicant gave the first name of his father with
a Latin ending, and we students assumed that the Aulic Councillor drew
_inferences_ from the first name of the father which the name of the
enrolled student would not always have supplied. According to this, the
_drawing of inferences_ in the dream would be merely a repetition of the
_drawing of inferences_ which appears as part of the subject-matter in
the dream thoughts. From this we learn something new. If an inference
occurs in the dream content, it invariably comes from the dream
thoughts; it may be contained in these as a bit of remembered material,
or it may serve as a logical connective in a series of dream thoughts.
In any case an inference in the dream represents an inference in the
dream thoughts.[EZ]
The analysis of this dream should be continued here. With the inquest of
the Professor there is connected the recollection of an index (published
in Latin during my time) of the university students; also of my course
of studies. The _five years_ provided for the study of medicine were as
usual not enough for me. I worked along unconcernedly in the succeeding
years; in the circle of my acquaintances I was considered a loafer, and
there was doubt as to whether I would “get through.” Then all at once I
decided to take my examinations; and I got “through,” _in spite of the
postponement_. This is a new confirmation of the dream thoughts, which I
defiantly hold up to my critics: “Even though you are unwilling to
believe it, because I take my time, I shall reach a conclusion (German
_Schluss_, meaning either end or conclusion, _inference_). It has often
happened that way.”
In its introductory portion this dream contains several sentences which
cannot well be denied the character of an argumentation. And this
argumentation is not at all absurd; it might just as well belong to
waking thought. _In the dream I make sport of the communication of the
Common Council, for in the first place I was not yet in the world in
1851, and in the second place, my father, to whom it might refer, is
already dead._ Both are not only correct in themselves, but coincide
completely with the arguments that I should use in case I should receive
a communication of the sort mentioned. We know from our previous
analysis that this dream has sprung from deeply embittered and scornful
dream thoughts; if we may assume further that the motive for censorship
is a very strong one, we shall understand that the dream activity has
every reason to create _a flawless refutation of a baseless insinuation_
according to the model contained in the dream thoughts. But analysis
shows that in this case the dream activity has not had the task of
making a free copy, but it has been required to use subject-matter from
the dream thoughts for its purpose. It is as if in an algebraic equation
there occurred plus and minus signs, signs of powers and of roots,
besides the figures, and as if someone, in copying this equation without
understanding it, should take over into his copy the signs of operation
as well as the figures, and fail to distinguish between the two kinds.
The two arguments may be traced to the following material. It is painful
for me to think that many of the assumptions upon which I base my
solution of psychoneuroses, as soon as they have become known, will
arouse scepticism and ridicule. Thus I must maintain that impressions
from the second year of life, or even from the first, leave a lasting
trace upon the temperament of persons who later become diseased, and
that these impressions—greatly distorted it is true, and exaggerated by
memory—are capable of furnishing the original and fundamental basis of
hysterical symptoms. Patients to whom I explain this in its proper place
are in the habit of making a parody upon the explanation by declaring
themselves willing to look for reminiscences of the period _when they
were not yet alive_. It would quite accord with my expectation, if
enlightenment on the subject of the unsuspected part played by the
father in the earliest sexual impulses of feminine patients should get a
similar reception. (_Cf._ the discussion on p. 218.) And, nevertheless,
both positions are correct according to my well-founded conviction. In
confirmation I recall certain examples in which the death of the father
happened when the child was very young, and later events, otherwise
inexplicable, proved that the child had unconsciously preserved
recollections of the persons who had so early gone out of its life. I
know that both of my assertions are based upon _inferences_ the validity
of which will be attacked. If the subject-matter of these very
inferences which I fear will be contested is used by the dream activity
for setting up _incontestable inferences_, this is a performance of the
wish-fulfilment.
VII. In a dream which I have hitherto only touched upon, astonishment at
the subject to be broached is distinctly expressed at the outset.
“_The elder Bruecke must have given me some task or other; strangely
enough it relates to the preparation of my own lower body, pelvis and
legs, which I see before me as though in the dissecting room, but
without feeling my lack of body and without a trace of horror. Louise N.
is standing near, and doing her work next to me. The pelvis is
eviscerated; now the upper, now the lower view of the same is seen, and
the two views mingle. Thick fleshy red lumps (which even in the dream
make me think of hæmorrhoids) are to be seen. Also something had to be
carefully picked out, which lay over these and which looked like
crumpled tinfoil.[FA] Then I was again in possession of my legs and made
a journey through the city, but took a wagon (owing to my fatigue). To
my astonishment the wagon drove into a house door, which opened and
allowed it to pass into a passage that was snapped off at the end, and
finally led further on into the open.[FB] At last I wandered through
changing landscapes with an Alpine guide, who carried my things. He
carried, me for some way, out of consideration for my tired legs. The
ground was muddy, and we went along the edge; people sat on the ground,
a girl among them, like Indians or Gypsies. Previously I had moved
myself along on the slippery ground, with constant astonishment that I
was so well able to do it after the preparation. At last we came to a
small wooden house which ended in an open window. Here the guide set me
down, and laid two wooden boards which stood in readiness on the window
sill, in order that in this way the chasm might be bridged which had to
be crossed in order to get to the window. Now, I grew really frightened
about my legs. Instead of the expected crossing, I saw two grown-up men
lying upon wooden benches which were on the walls of the hut, and
something like two sleeping children next to them. It seems as though
not the boards but the children were intended to make possible the
crossing. I awakened with frightened thoughts._”
Anyone who has formed a proper idea of the abundance of dream
condensation will easily be able to imagine how great a number of pages
the detailed analysis of this dream must fill. Luckily for the context,
I shall take from it merely the one example of astonishment, in the
dream, which makes its appearance in the parenthetical remark,
“_strangely enough_.” Let us take up the occasion of the dream. It is a
visit of this lady, Louise N., who assists at the work in the dream. She
says: “Lend me something to read.” I offer her _She_, by Rider Haggard.
“A _strange_ book, but full of hidden sense,” I try to explain to her;
“the eternal feminine, the immortality of our emotions——” Here she
interrupts me: “I know that book already. Haven’t you something of your
own?” “No, my own immortal works are still unwritten.” “Well, when are
you going to publish your so-called latest revelations which you
promised us would be good reading?” she asks somewhat sarcastically. I
now perceive that she is a mouthpiece for someone else, and I become
silent. I think of the effort it costs me to publish even my work on the
Dream, in which I have to surrender so much of my own intimate
character. “The best that you know you can’t tell to the children.” The
preparation of _my own body_, which I am ordered to make in the dream,
is thus the _self-analysis_ necessitated in the communication of my
dreams. The elder Bruecke very properly finds a place here; in these
first years of my scientific work it happened that I neglected a
discovery, until his energetic commands forced me to publish it. But the
other trains of thought which start from my conversation with Louise N.
go too deep to become conscious; they are side-tracked by way of the
related material which has been awakened in me by the mention of Rider
Haggard’s _She_. The comment “strangely enough” goes with this book, and
with another by the same author, _The Heart of the World_, and numerous
elements of the dream are taken from these two fantastic novels. The
muddy ground over which the dreamer is carried, the chasm which must be
crossed by means of the boards that have been brought along, come from
_She_; the Indians, the girl, and the wooden house, from the _Heart of
the World_. In both novels a woman is the leader, both treat of
dangerous wanderings; _She_ has to do with an adventurous journey to the
undiscovered country, a place almost untrodden by foot of man. According
to a note which I find in my record of the dream, the fatigue in my legs
was a real sensation of those days. Doubtless in correspondence with
this came a tired frame of mind and the doubting question: “How much
further will my legs carry me?” The adventure in _She_ ends with the
woman leader’s meeting her death in the mysterious fire at the centre of
the earth, instead of attaining immortality for herself and others. A
fear of this sort has unmistakably arisen in the dream thoughts. The
“wooden house,” also, is surely the coffin—that is, the grave. But the
dream activity has performed its masterpiece in representing this most
unwished-for of all thoughts by means of a wish-fulfilment. I have
already once been in a grave, but it was an empty Etruscan grave near
Orvieto—a narrow chamber with two stone benches on the walls, upon which
the skeletons of two grown-up persons had been laid. The interior of the
wooden house in the dream looks exactly like this, except that wood has
been substituted for stone. The dream seems to say: “If you must so soon
lie in your grave, let it be this Etruscan grave,” and by means of this
interpolation it transforms the saddest expectation into one that is
really to be desired. As we shall learn, it is, unfortunately, only the
idea accompanying an emotion which the dream can change into its
opposite, not usually the emotion itself. Thus I awake with “frightened
thoughts,” even after the dream has been forced to represent my
idea—that perhaps the children will attain what has been denied to the
father—a fresh allusion to the strange novel in which the identity of a
person is preserved through a series of generations covering two
thousand years.
VIII. In the context of another dream there is a similar expression of
astonishment at what is experienced in the dream. This, however, is
connected with a striking and skilfully contrived attempt at explanation
which might well be called a stroke of genius—so that I should have to
analyse the whole dream merely for the sake of it, even if the dream did
not possess two other features of interest. I am travelling during the
night between the eighteenth and the nineteenth of July on the Southern
Railway, and in my sleep I hear someone call out: _“Hollthurn, 10
minutes.” I immediately think of Holothurian—of a museum of natural
history—that here is a place where brave men have vainly resisted the
domination of their overlord. Yes, the counter reformation in Austria!
As though it were a place in Styria or the Tyrol. Now I distinctly see a
little museum in which the remains or the possessions of these men are
preserved. I wish to get off, but I hesitate to do so. Women with fruit
are standing on the platform; they crouch on the floor, and in that
position hold out their baskets in an inviting manner. I hesitate, in
doubt whether we still have time, but we are still standing. I am
suddenly in another compartment in which the leather and the seats are
so narrow that one’s back directly touches the back rest.[FC] I am
surprised at this, but I may have changed cars while asleep. Several
people, among them an English brother and sister; a row of books
distinctly on a shelf on the wall. I see_ The Wealth of Nations, _then_
Matter and Motion (_by Maxwell_)—_the books are thick and bound in brown
linen. The man asks his sister for a book by Schiller, and whether she
has forgotten it. These are books which first seem mine, then seem to
belong to the brother and sister. At this point I wish to join in the
conversation in order to confirm and support what is being said——._ I
awaken sweating all over my body, because all the windows are shut. The
train stops at Marburg.
While writing down the dream, a part of it occurs to me which my memory
wished to omit. _I say to the brother and sister about a certain work:
“It is from ...” but I correct myself: “It is by ...” The man remarks to
his sister: “He said it correctly.”_
The dream begins with the name of a station, which probably must have
partially awakened me. For this name, which was Marburg, I substituted
Hollthurn. The fact that I heard Marburg when it was first called, or
perhaps when it was called a second time, is proved by the mention in
the dream of Schiller, who was born in Marburg, though not in the one in
Styria.[FD] Now this time, although I was travelling first-class, it was
under very disagreeable circumstances. The train was overcrowded; I had
met a gentleman and lady in my compartment who seemed persons of
quality, but who did not have the good breeding or who did not think it
worth while to conceal their displeasure at my intrusion. My polite
salutation was not answered, and although the man and the woman sat next
each other (with their backs in the direction in which we were riding),
the woman made haste to pre-empt the place opposite her and next the
window with her umbrella; the door was immediately closed and
demonstrative remarks about the opening of windows were exchanged.
Probably I was quickly recognised as a person hungry for fresh air. It
was a hot night, and the air in the compartment, thus shut on all sides,
was almost suffocating. My experience as a traveller leads me to believe
that such inconsiderate, obtrusive conduct marks people who have only
partly paid for their tickets, or not at all. When the conductor came,
and I presented my dearly bought ticket, the lady called out
ungraciously, and as though threateningly: “My husband has a pass.” She
was a stately figure with sour features, in age not far from the time
set for the decay of feminine beauty; the man did not get a chance to
say anything at all, and sat there motionless. I tried to sleep. In the
dream I take terrible revenge on my disagreeable travelling companions;
no one would suspect what insults and humiliations are concealed behind
the disjointed fragments of the first half of the dream. After this
desire has been satisfied, the second wish, to exchange my compartment
for another, makes itself evident. The dream makes changes of scene so
often, and without raising the least objection to such changes, that it
would not have been in the least remarkable if I had immediately
replaced my travelling companions by more pleasant ones for my
recollection. But this was one of the cases where something or other
objected to the change of scene and considered explanation of the change
necessary. How did I suddenly get into another compartment? I surely
could not remember having changed cars. So there was only one
explanation: _I must have left the carriage while asleep_, a rare
occurrence, examples for which, however, are furnished by the experience
of the neuropathologist. We know of persons who undertake railroad
journeys in a crepuscular state without betraying their abnormal
condition by any sign, until some station on the journey they completely
recover consciousness, and are then surprised at the gap in their
memory. Thus, while I am still dreaming, I declare my own case to be
such a one of “_Automatisme ambulatoire_.”