recalls the story of a peasant who tries one glass after another at
the opticians, but still cannot read (peasant-catcher, like
girl-catcher in a portion of the dream). The treatment among the
peasants of the father who has become weak-minded in Zola’s _La
Terre_. The pathetic atonement that in his last days the father soils
his bed like a child; hence, also, I am his sick-attendant in the
dream. Thinking and experiencing are here, as it were; the same thing
recalls a highly revolutionary closet drama by Oscar Panizza, in which
the Godhead is treated quite contemptuously, as though he were a
paralytic old man. There occurs a passage: “Will and deed are the same
thing with him, and he must be prevented by his archangel, a kind of
Ganymede, from scolding and swearing, because these curses would
immediately be fulfilled.” Making plans is a reproach against my
father, dating from a later period in the development of my critical
faculty; just as the whole rebellious, sovereign-offending dream, with
its scoff at high authority, originates in a revolt against my father.
The sovereign is called father of the land (_Landesvater_), and the
father is the oldest, first and only authority for the child, from the
absolutism of which the other social authorities have developed in the
course of the history of human civilisation (in so far as the
“mother’s right” does not force a qualification of this thesis). The
idea in the dream, “thinking and experiencing are the same thing,”
refers to the explanation of hysterical symptoms, to which the male
urinal (glass) also has a relation. I need not explain the principle
of the “Gschnas” to a Viennese; it consists in constructing objects of
rare and costly appearance out of trifles, and preferably out of
comical and worthless material—for example, making suits of armour out
of cooking utensils, sticks and “salzstangeln” (elongated rolls), as
our artists like to do at their jolly parties. I had now learned that
hysterical subjects do the same thing; besides what has actually
occurred to them, they unconsciously conceive horrible or extravagant
fantastic images, which they construct from the most harmless and
commonplace things they have experienced. The symptoms depend solely
upon these phantasies, not upon the memory of their real experiences,
be they serious or harmless. This explanation helped me to overcome
many difficulties and gave me much pleasure. I was able to allude to
it in the dream element “male urinal” (glass) because I had been told
that at the last “Gschnas” evening a poison chalice of Lucretia Borgia
had been exhibited, the chief constituent of which had consisted of a
glass urinal for men, such as is used in hospitals.
Footnote BP:
_Cf._ the passage in Griesinger[31] and the remarks in my second essay
on the “defence-neuropsychoses”—_Selected Papers on Hysteria_,
translated by A. A. Brill.
Footnote BQ:
In the two sources from which I am acquainted with this dream, the
report of its contents do not agree.
Footnote BR:
An exception is furnished by those cases in which the dreamer utilises
in the expression of his latent dream thoughts the symbols which are
familiar to us.
Footnote BS:
“The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
Footnote BT:
The child also appears in the fairy tale, for there a child suddenly
calls: “Why, he hasn’t anything on at all.”
Footnote BU:
Ferenczi has reported a number of interesting dreams of nakedness in
women which could be traced to an infantile desire to exhibit, but
which differ in some features from the “typical” dream of nakedness
discussed above.
Footnote BV:
For obvious reasons the presence of the “whole family” in the dream
has the same significance.
Footnote BW:
A supplementary interpretation of this dream: To spit on the stairs,
led me to “esprit d’escalier” by a free translation, owing to the fact
that “Spucken” (English: spit, and also to act like a _spook_, to
haunt) is an occupation of ghosts. “Stair-wit” is equivalent to lack
of quickness at repartee (German: _Schlagfertigkeit_—readiness to hit
back, to strike), with which I must really reproach myself. Is it a
question, however, whether the nurse was lacking in “readiness to
hit”?
Footnote BX:
_Cf._ “Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben” in the _Jahrbuch
für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen_, vol. i.,
1909, and “Ueber infantile Sexualtheorien,” in _Sexualprobleme_, vol.
i., 1908.
Footnote BY:
The three-and-a-half-year-old Hans, whose phobia is the subject of
analysis in the above-mentioned publication, cries during fever
shortly after the birth of his sister: “I don’t want a little sister.”
In his neurosis, one and a half years later, he frankly confesses the
wish that the mother should drop the little one into the bath-tub
while bathing it, in order that it may die. With all this, Hans is a
good-natured, affectionate child, who soon becomes fond of his sister,
and likes especially to take her under his protection.
Footnote BZ:
The three-and-a-half-year old Hans embodies his crushing criticism of
his little sister in the identical word (see previous notes). He
assumes that she is unable to speak on account of her lack of teeth.
Footnote CA:
I heard the following idea expressed by a gifted boy of ten, after the
sudden death of his father: “I understand that father is dead, but I
cannot see why he does not come home for supper.”
Footnote CB:
At least a certain number of mythological representations. According
to others, emasculation is only practised by Kronos on his father.
With regard to mythological significance of this motive, _cf._ Otto
Rank’s “Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden,” fifth number of
_Schriften zur angew. Seelenkunde_, 1909.
Footnote CC:
Act. i. sc. 2. Translated by George Somers Clark.
Footnote CD:
Another of the great creations of tragic poetry, Shakespeare’s
_Hamlet_, is founded on the same basis as the _Oedipus_. But the whole
difference in the psychic life of the two widely separated periods of
civilisation—the age-long progress of repression in the emotional life
of humanity—is made manifest in the changed treatment of the identical
material. In _Oedipus_ the basic wish-phantasy of the child is brought
to light and realised as it is in the dream; in _Hamlet_ it remains
repressed, and we learn of its existence—somewhat as in the case of a
neurosis—only by the inhibition which results from it. The fact that
it is possible to remain in complete darkness concerning the character
of the hero, has curiously shown itself to be consistent with the
overpowering effect of the modern drama. The play is based upon
Hamlet’s hesitation to accomplish the avenging task which has been
assigned to him; the text does not avow the reasons or motives of this
hesitation, nor have the numerous attempts at interpretation succeeded
in giving them. According to the conception which is still current
to-day, and which goes back to Goethe, Hamlet represents the type of
man whose prime energy is paralysed by over-development of thought
activity. (“Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”) According
to others the poet has attempted to portray a morbid, vacillating
character who is subject to neurasthenia. The plot of the story,
however, teaches us that Hamlet is by no means intended to appear as a
person altogether incapable of action. Twice we see him asserting
himself actively, once in headlong passion, where he stabs the
eavesdropper behind the arras, and on another occasion where he sends
the two courtiers to the death which has been intended for
himself—doing this deliberately, even craftily, and with all the lack
of compunction of a prince of the Renaissance. What is it, then, that
restrains him in the accomplishment of the task which his father’s
ghost has set before him? Here the explanation offers itself that it
is the peculiar nature of this task. Hamlet can do everything but take
vengeance upon the man who has put his father out of the way, and has
taken his father’s place with his mother—upon the man who shows him
the realisation of his repressed childhood wishes. The loathing which
ought to drive him to revenge is thus replaced in him by
self-reproaches, by conscientious scruples, which represent to him
that he himself is no better than the murderer whom he is to punish. I
have thus translated into consciousness what had to remain unconscious
in the mind of the hero; if some one wishes to call Hamlet a hysteric
subject I cannot but recognise it as an inference from my
interpretation. The sexual disinclination which Hamlet expresses in
conversation with Ophelia, coincides very well with this view—it is
the same sexual disinclination which was to take possession of the
poet more and more during the next few years of his life, until the
climax of it is expressed in _Timon of Athens_. Of course it can only
be the poet’s own psychology with which we are confronted in _Hamlet_;
from a work on Shakespeare by George Brandes (1896), I take the fact
that the drama was composed immediately after the death of
Shakespeare’s father—that is to say, in the midst of recent mourning
for him—during the revival, we may assume, of his childhood emotion
towards his father. It is also known that a son of Shakespeare’s, who
died early, bore the name of Hamnet (identical with Hamlet). Just as
_Hamlet_ treats of the relation of the son to his parents, _Macbeth_,
which appears subsequently, is based upon the theme of childlessness.
Just as every neurotic symptom, just as the dream itself, is capable
of re-interpretation, and even requires it in order to be perfectly
intelligible, so every genuine poetical creation must have proceeded
from more than one motive, more than one impulse in the mind of the
poet, and must admit of more than one interpretation. I have here
attempted to interpret only the most profound group of impulses in the
mind of the creative poet. The conception of the _Hamlet_ problem
contained in these remarks has been later confirmed in a detailed work
based on many new arguments by Dr. Ernest Jones, of Toronto (Canada).
The connection of the _Hamlet_ material with the “Mythus von der
Geburt des Helden” has also been demonstrated by O. Rank.—“The
_Oedipus_ Complex as an Explanation of _Hamlet’s_ Mystery: a Study in
Motive” (_American Journal of Psychology_, January 1910, vol. xxi.).
Footnote CE:
Likewise, anything large, over-abundant, enormous, and exaggerated,
may be a childish characteristic. The child knows no more intense wish
than to become big, and to receive as much of everything as grown-ups;
the child is hard to satisfy; it knows no _enough_, and insatiably
demands the repetition of whatever has pleased it or tasted good to
it. It learns to practise moderation, to be modest and resigned, only
through culture and education. As is well known, the neurotic is also
inclined toward immoderation and excess.
Footnote CF:
While Dr. Jones was delivering a lecture before an American scientific
society, and speaking of egotism in dreams, a learned lady took
exception to this unscientific generalisation. She thought that the
lecturer could only pronounce such judgment on the dreams of
Austrians, and had no right to include the dreams of Americans. As for
herself she was sure that all her dreams were strictly altruistic.
Footnote CG:
According to C. G. Jung, dreams of dental irritation in the case of
women have the significance of parturition dreams.
Footnote CH:
_Cf._ the “biographic” dream on p. 235.
Footnote CI:
As the dreams of pulling teeth, and teeth falling out, are interpreted
in popular belief to mean the death of a close friend, and as
psychoanalysis can at most only admit of such a meaning in the above
indicated parodical sense, I insert here a dream of dental irritation
placed at my disposal by Otto Rank[109].
Upon the subject of dreams of dental irritation I have received the
following report from a colleague who has for some time taken a lively
interest in the problems of dream interpretation:
_I recently dreamed that I went to the dentist who drilled out one of
my back teeth in the lower jaw. He worked so long at it that the tooth
became useless. He then grasped it with the forceps, and pulled it out
with such perfect ease that it astonished me. He said that I should
not care about it, as this was not really the tooth that had been
treated; and he put it on the table where the tooth (as it seems to me
now an upper incisor) fell apart into many strata. I arose from the
operating chair, stepped inquisitively nearer, and, full of interest,
put a medical question. While the doctor separated the individual
pieces of the strikingly white tooth and ground them up (pulverised
them) with an instrument, he explained to me that this had some
connection with puberty, and that the teeth come out so easily only
before puberty; the decisive moment for this in women is the birth of
a child. I then noticed (as I believe half awake) that this dream was
accompanied by a pollution which I cannot however definitely place at
a particular point in the dream; I am inclined to think that it began
with the pulling out of the tooth._
_I then continued to dream something which I can no longer remember,
which ended with the fact that I had left my hat and coat somewhere
(perhaps at the dentist’s), hoping that they would be brought after
me, and dressed only in my overcoat I hastened to catch a departing
train. I succeeded at the last moment in jumping upon the last car,
where someone was already standing. I could not, however, get inside
the car, but was compelled to make the journey in an uncomfortable
position, from which I attempted to escape with final success. We
journeyed through a long tunnel, in which two trains from the opposite
direction passed through our own train as if it were a tunnel. I
looked in as from the outside through a car window._
As material for the interpretation of this dream, we obtained the
following experiences and thoughts of the dreamer:—
I. For a short time I had actually been under dental treatment, and at
the time of the dream I was suffering from continual pains in the
tooth of my lower jaw, which was drilled out in the dream, and on
which the dentist had in fact worked longer than I liked. On the
forenoon of the day of the dream I had again gone to the doctor’s on
account of the pain, and he had suggested that I should allow him to
pull out another tooth than the one treated in the same jaw, from
which the pain probably came. It was a ‘wisdom tooth’ which was just
breaking through. On this occasion, and in this connection, I had put
a question to his conscience as a physician.
II. On the afternoon of the same day I was obliged to excuse myself to
a lady for my irritable disposition on account of the toothache, upon
which she told me that she was afraid to have one of her roots pulled,
though the crown was almost completely gone. She thought that the
pulling out of eye teeth was especially painful and dangerous,
although some acquaintance had told her that this was much easier when
it was a tooth of the lower jaw. It was such a tooth in her case. The
same acquaintance also told her that while under an anæsthetic one of
her false teeth had been pulled—a statement which increased her fear
of the necessary operation. She then asked me whether by eye teeth one
was to understand molars or canines, and what was known about them. I
then called her attention to the vein of superstitions in all these
meanings, without however, emphasising the real significance of some
of the popular views. She knew from her own experience, a very old and
general popular belief, according to which _if a pregnant woman has
toothache she will give birth to a boy_.
III. This saying interested me in its relation to the typical
significance of dreams of dental irritation as a substitute for
onanism as maintained by Freud in his _Traumdeutung_ (2nd edition, p.
193), for the teeth and the male genital (Bub-boy) are brought in
certain relations even in the popular saying. On the evening of the
same day I therefore read the passage in question in the
_Traumdeutung_, and found there among other things the statements
which will be quoted in a moment, the influence of which on my dream
is as plainly recognisable as the influence of the two above-mentioned
experiences. Freud writes concerning dreams of dental irritation that
‘in the case of men nothing else than cravings for masturbation from
the time of puberty furnishes the motive power for these dreams,’ p.
193. Further, ‘I am of the opinion that the frequent modifications of
the typical dream of dental irritation—that _e.g._ of another person
drawing the tooth from the dreamer’s mouth—are made intelligible by
means of the same explanation. It may seem problematic, however, how
“dental irritation” can arrive at this significance. I here call
attention to the transference from below to above (in the dream in
question from the lower to the upper jaw), which occurs so frequently,
which is at the service of sexual repression, and by means of which
all kinds of sensations and intentions occurring in hysteria which
ought to be enacted in the genitals can be realised upon less
objectionable parts of the body,’ p. 194. ‘But I must also refer to
another connection contained in an idiomatic expression. In our
country there is in use an indelicate designation for the act of
masturbation, namely: To pull one out, or to pull one down,’ p. 195,
2nd edition. This expression had been familiar to me in early youth as
a designation for onanism, and from here on it will not be difficult
for the experienced dream interpreter to get access to the infantile
material which may lie at the basis of this dream. I only wish to add
that the facility with which the tooth in the dream came out, and the
fact that it became transformed after coming out into an upper
incisor, recalls to me an experience of childhood when I myself easily
and painlessly pulled out one of my wobbling front teeth. This
episode, which I can still to this day distinctly remember with all
its details, happened at the same early period in which my first
conscious attempts at onanism began—(Concealing Memory). The reference
of Freud to an assertion of C. G. Jung that dreams of dental
irritation in women signify parturition (footnote p. 194), together
with the popular belief in the significance of toothache in pregnant
women, has established an opposition between the feminine significance
and the masculine (puberty). In this connection I recall an earlier
dream which I dreamed soon after I was discharged by the dentist after
the treatment, that the gold crowns which had just been put in fell
out, whereupon I was greatly chagrined in the dream on account of the
considerable expense, concerning which I had not yet stopped worrying.
In view of a certain experience this dream now becomes comprehensible
as a commendation of the material advantages of masturbation when
contrasted with every form of the economically less advantageous
object-love (gold crowns are also Austrian gold coins).
Theoretically this case seems to show a double interest. First it
verifies the connection revealed by Freud, inasmuch as the ejaculation
in the dream takes place during the act of tooth-pulling. For no
matter in what form a pollution may appear, we are obliged to look
upon it as a masturbatic gratification which takes place without the
help of mechanical excitation. Moreover the gratification by pollution
in this case does not take place, as is usually the case, through an
imaginary object, but it is without an object; and, if one may be
allowed to say so, it is purely autoerotic, or at most it perhaps
shows a slight homosexual thread (the dentist).
The second point which seems to be worth mentioning is the following:
The objection is quite obvious that we are seeking here to validate
the Freudian conception in a quite superfluous manner, for the
experiences of the reading itself are perfectly sufficient to explain
to us the content of the dream. The visit to the dentist, the
conversation with the lady, and the reading of the _Traumdeutung_ are
sufficient to explain why the sleeper, who was also disturbed during
the night by toothache, should dream this dream, it may even explain
the removal of the sleep-disturbing pain (by means of the presentation
of the removal of the painful tooth and simultaneous over-accentuation
of the dreaded painful sensation through libido). But no matter how
much of this assumption we may admit, we cannot earnestly maintain
that the readings of Freud’s explanations have produced in the dreamer
the connection of the tooth-pulling with the act of masturbation; it
could not even have been made effective had it not been for the fact,
as the dreamer himself admitted (‘to pull one off’) that this
association had already been formed long ago. What may have still more
stimulated this association in connection with the conversation with
the lady is shown by a later assertion of the dreamer that while
reading the _Traumdeutung_ he could not, for obvious reasons, believe
in this typical meaning of dreams of dental irritation, and
entertained the wish to know whether it held true for all dreams of
this nature. The dream now confirms this at least for his own person,
and shows him why he had to doubt it. The dream is therefore also in
this respect the fulfilment of a wish; namely, to be convinced of the
importance and stability of this conception of Freud.
Footnote CJ:
A young colleague, who is entirely free from nervousness, tells me in
this connection: “I know from my own experience that while swinging,
and at the moment at which the downward movement had the greatest
impetus, I used to get a curious feeling in my genitals, which I must
designate, although it was not really pleasant to me, as a voluptuous
feeling.” I have often heard from patients that their first erections
accompanied by voluptuous sensations had occurred in boyhood while
they were climbing. It is established with complete certainty by
psychoanalyses that the first sexual impulses have often originated in
the scufflings and wrestlings of childhood.
Footnote CK:
This naturally holds true only for German-speaking dreamers who are
acquainted with the vulgarism “_vögeln_.”
Footnote CL:
_Sammlung kl. Schriften zur Neurosenlehre_, zweite Folge, 1909.
Footnote CM:
_Cf._ the author’s _Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory_,
translated by A. A. Brill.
Footnote CN:
W. Stekel, _Die Sprache des Traumes_, 1911.
Footnote CO:
Alf. Adler, “Der Psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der
Neurose,” _Fortschritte der Medizin_, 1910, No. 16, and later works in
the _Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse_, 1, 1910–1911.
Footnote CP:
I have published a typical example of such a veiled Oedipus dream in
No. 1 of the _Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse_; another with a detailed
analysis was reported in the same journal, No. IV., by Otto Rank.
Indeed the ancients were not unfamiliar with the symbolic
interpretation of the open Oedipus dream (see O. Rank,[108] p. 534);
thus a dream of sexual relations with the mother has been transmitted
to us by Julius Cæsar which the oneiroscopists interpreted as a
favourable omen for taking possession of the earth (Mother-earth). It
is also known that the oracle declared to the Tarquinii that that one
of them would become ruler of Rome who should first kiss the mother
(_osculum, matri tulerit_), which Brutus conceived as referring to the
mother-earth (_terram osculo contigit, scilicet quod ea communia mater
omnium mortalium esset_, Livius, I., lxi.). These myths and
interpretations point to a correct psychological knowledge. I have
found that persons who consider themselves preferred or favoured by
their mothers manifest in life that confidence in themselves and that
firm optimism which often seems heroic and brings about real success
by force.
Footnote CQ:
It is only of late that I have learned to value the significance of
fancies and unconscious thoughts about life in the womb. They contain
the explanation of the curious fear felt by so many people of being
buried alive, as well as the profoundest unconscious reason for the
belief in a life after death which represents nothing but a projection
into the future of this mysterious life before birth. _The act of
birth, moreover, is the first experience with fear, and is thus the
source and model of the emotion of fear._
Footnote CR:
For such a dream see Pfister: “Ein Fall von Psychoanalytischer
Seelensorge und Seelenheilung,” _Evangelische Freiheit_, 1909.
Concerning the symbol of “saving” see my lecture, “Die Zukünftigen
Chancen der psychoanalytischen Therapie,” _Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse_, No. I., 1910. Also “Beiträge zur Psychologie des
Liebeslebens, I. Ueber einen besonderen Typus der objektwahl beim
Manne,” _Jahrbuch_, Bleuler-Freud, vol. ii., 1910.
Footnote CS: