My collection, of course, contains an abundant supply of such patients’ dreams, whose analysis leads to childish impressions that are remembered obscurely or not at all, and that often date back to the first three years of life. But it is a mistake to draw conclusions from them which are to apply to the dream in general; we are in every case dealing with neurotic, particularly with hysterical persons; and the part played by childhood scenes in these dreams might be conditioned by the nature of the neurosis, and not by that of the dream. However, I am struck quite as often in the course of interpreting my own dreams, which I do not do on account of obvious symptoms of disease, by the fact that I unsuspectingly come upon a scene of childhood in the latent dream content, and that a whole series of dreams suddenly falls into line with conclusions drawn from childish experiences. I have already given examples of this, and shall give still more upon various occasions. Perhaps I cannot close the whole chapter more fittingly than by citing several of my own dreams, in which recent happenings and long-forgotten experiences of childhood appear together as sources of dreams.

I. After I have been travelling and have gone to bed hungry and tired, the great necessities of life begin to assert their claims in sleep, and I dream as follows: I go into a kitchen to order some pastry. Here three women are standing, one of whom is the hostess, and is turning something in her hand as though she were making dumplings. She answers that I must wait until she has finished (not distinctly as a speech). I become impatient and go away insulted. I put on an overcoat; but the first one which I try is too long. I take it off, and am somewhat astonished to find that it has fur trimming. A second one has sewn into it a long strip of cloth with Turkish drawings. A stranger with a long face and a short pointed beard comes up and prevents me from putting it on, declaring that it belongs to him. I now show him that it is embroidered all over in Turkish fashion. He asks, “What business are the Turkish (drawings, strips of cloth ...) of yours?” But we then become quite friendly with each other.

In the analysis of this dream there occurs to me quite unexpectedly the novel which I read, that is to say, which I began with the end of the first volume, when I was perhaps thirteen years old. I have never known the name of the novel or of its author, but the conclusion remains vividly in my memory. The hero succumbs to insanity, and continually calls the names of the three women that have signified the greatest good and ill fortune for him during life. Pélagie is one of these names. I still do not know what to make of this name in the analysis. À propos of the three women there now come to the surface the three Parcæ who spin the fate of man, and I know that one of the three women, the hostess in the dream, is the mother who gives life, and who, moreover, as in my case, gives the first nourishment to the living creature. Love and hunger meet at the mother’s breast. A young man—so runs an anecdote—who became a great admirer of womanly beauty, once when the conversation turned upon a beautiful wet nurse who had nourished him as a child, expressed himself to the effect that he was sorry that he had not taken better advantage of his opportunity at the time. I am in the habit of using the anecdote to illustrate the factor of subsequence in the mechanism of psychoneuroses.... One of the Parcæ, then, is rubbing the palms of her hands together as though she were making dumplings. A strange occupation for one of the Fates, which is urgently in need of an explanation! This is now found in another and earlier childhood memory. When I was six years old, and was receiving my first instructions from my mother, I was asked to believe that we are made of earth, and that therefore we must return to earth. But this did not suit me, and I doubted her teaching. Thereupon my mother rubbed the palms of her hands together—just as in making dumplings, except that there was no dough between them—and showed me the blackish scales of epidermis which were thus rubbed off as a proof that it is earth of which we are made. My astonishment at this demonstration ad oculos was without limit, and I acquiesced in the idea which I was later to hear expressed in words: “Thou owest nature a death.”^[BF] Thus the women are really Parcæ whom I visit in the kitchen, as I have done so often in my childhood years when I was hungry, and when my mother used to order me to wait until lunch was ready. And now for the dumplings! At least one of my teachers at the University, the very one to whom I am indebted for my histological knowledge (epidermis), might be reminded by the name Knoedl (German, Knoedel = dumplings) of a person whom he had to prosecute for committing a plagiarism of his writings. To commit plagiarism, to appropriate anything one can get, even though it belongs to another, obviously leads to the second part of the dream, in which I am treated like a certain overcoat thief, who for a time plied his trade in the auditoria. I wrote down the expression plagiarism—without any reason—because it presented itself to me, and now I perceive that it must belong to the latent dream-content, because it will serve as a bridge between different parts of the manifest dream-content. The chain of associations—Pélagie—plagiarism—plagiostomi^[BG] (sharks)—fish bladder—connects the old novel with the affair of Knoedl and with the overcoats (German, Überzieher = thing drawn over—overcoat or condom), which obviously refer to an object belonging to the technique of sexual life.^[BH] This, it is true, is a very forced and irrational connection, but it is nevertheless one which I could not establish in waking life if it had not been already established by the activity of the dream. Indeed, as though nothing were sacred for this impulse to force connections, the beloved name, Bruecke (bridge of words, see above), now serves to remind me of the institution in which I spent my happiest hours as a student, quite without any cares (“So you will ever find more pleasure at the breasts of knowledge without measure”), in the most complete contrast to the urgent desires which vex me while I dream. And finally there comes to the surface the recollection of another dear teacher, whose name again sounds like something to eat (Fleischl—German, Fleisch = meat—like Knoedl), and of a pathetic scene, in which the scales of epidermis play a part (mother—hostess), and insanity (the novel), and a remedy from the Latin kitchen which numbs the sensation of hunger, to wit, cocaine.

In this manner I could follow the intricate trains of thought still further, and could fully explain the part of the dream which is missing in the analysis; but I must refrain, because the personal sacrifices which it would require are too great. I shall merely take up one of the threads, which will serve to lead us directly to the dream thoughts that lie at the bottom of the confusion. The stranger, with the long face and pointed beard, who wants to prevent me from putting on the overcoat, has the features of a tradesman at Spalato, of whom my wife made ample purchases of Turkish cloths. His name was Popovic̓, a suspicious name, which, by the way, has given the humorist Stettenheim a chance to make a significant remark: “He told me his name, and blushingly shook my hand.”^[BI] Moreover, there is the same abuse of names as above with Pélagie, Knoedl, Bruecke, Fleischl. That such playing with names is childish nonsense can be asserted without fear of contradiction; if I indulge in it, this indulgence amounts to an act of retribution, for my own name has numberless times fallen a victim to such weak-minded attempts at humour. Goethe once remarked how sensitive a man is about his name with which, as with his skin, he feels that he has grown up, whereupon Herder composed the following on his name:

I perceive that this digression about the abuse of names was only intended to prepare for this complaint. But let us stop here.... The purchase at Spalato reminds me of another one at Cattaro, where I was too cautious, and missed an opportunity for making some desirable acquisitions. (Missing an opportunity at the breast of the nurse, see above.) Another dream thought, occasioned in the dreamer by the sensation of hunger, is as follows: One should let nothing which one can have escape, even if a little wrong is done; no opportunity should be missed, life is so short, death inevitable. Owing to the fact that this also has a sexual significance, and that desire is unwilling to stop at a wrong, this philosophy of carpe diem must fear the censor and must hide behind a dream. This now makes articulate counter-thoughts of all kinds, recollections of a time when spiritual food alone was sufficient for the dreamer; it suggests repressions of every kind, and even threats of disgusting sexual punishments.

II. A second dream requires a longer preliminary statement:

I have taken a car to the West Station in order to begin a vacation journey to the Aussee, and I reach the station in time for the train to Ischl, which leaves earlier. Here I see Count Thun, who is again going to see the Emperor at Ischl. In spite of the rain, he has come in an open carriage, has passed out at once through the door for local trains, and has motioned back the gate-keeper, who does not know him and who wants to take his ticket, with a little wave of his hand. After the train to Ischl has left, I am told to leave the platform and go back into the hot waiting-room; but with difficulty I secure permission to remain. I pass the time in watching the people who make use of bribes to secure a compartment; I make up my mind to insist on my rights—that is, to demand the same privilege. Meanwhile I sing something to myself, which I afterwards recognise to be the aria from Figaro’s Wedding:

(Possibly another person would not have recognised the song.)

During the whole afternoon I have been in an insolent, combative mood; I have spoken roughly to the waiter and the cabman, I hope without hurting their feelings; now all kinds of bold and revolutionary thoughts come into my head, of a kind suited to the words of Figaro and the comedy of Beaumarchais, which I had seen at the Comédie Française. The speech about great men who had taken the trouble to be born; the aristocratic prerogative, which Count Almaviva wants to apply in the case of Susan; the jokes which our malicious journalists of the Opposition make upon the name of Count Thun (German, thun = doing) by calling him Count Do-Nothing. I really do not envy him; he has now a difficult mission with the Emperor, and I am the real Count Do-Nothing, for I am taking a vacation. With this, all kinds of cheerful plans for the vacation. A gentleman now arrives who is known to me as a representative of the Government at the medical examinations, and who has won the flattering nickname of “Governmental bed-fellow” by his activities in this capacity. By insisting on his official station he secures half of a first-class compartment, and I hear one guard say to the other: “Where are we going to put the gentleman with the first-class half-compartment?” A pretty favouritism; I am paying for a whole first-class compartment. Now I get a whole compartment for myself, but not in a through coach, so that there is no toilet at my disposal during the night. My complaints to the guard are without result; I get even by proposing that at least there be a hole made in the floor of this compartment for the possible needs of the travellers. I really awake at a quarter of three in the morning with a desire to urinate, having had the following dream:

Crowd of people, meeting of students.... A certain Count (Thun or Taafe) is making a speech. Upon being asked to say something about the Germans, he declares with contemptuous mien that their favourite flower is Colt’s-foot, and then puts something like a torn leaf, really the crumpled skeleton of a leaf, into his buttonhole. I make a start, I make a start then,^[BJ] but I am surprised at this idea of mine. Then more indistinctly: It seems as though it were the vestibule (Aula), the exits are jammed, as though it were necessary to flee. I make my way through a suite of handsomely furnished rooms, apparently governmental chambers, with furniture of a colour which is between brown and violet, and at last I come to a passage where a housekeeper, an elderly, fat woman (Frauenzimmer), is seated. I try to avoid talking to her, but apparently she thinks I have a right to pass because she asks whether she shall accompany me with the lamp. I signify to her to tell her that she is to remain standing on the stairs, and in this I appear to myself very clever, for avoiding being watched at last. I am downstairs now, and I find a narrow, steep way along which I go.

Again indistinctly.... It is as if my second task were to get away out of the city, as my earlier was to get out of the house. I am riding in a one-horse carriage, and tell the driver to take me to a railway station. “I cannot ride with you on the tracks,” I say, after he has made the objection that I have tired him out. Here it seems as though I had already driven with him along a course which is ordinarily traversed on the railroad. The stations are crowded; I consider whether I shall go to Krems or to Znaim, but I think that the court will be there, and I decide in favour of Graz or something of the sort. Now I am seated in the coach, which is something like a street-car, and I have in my buttonhole a long braided thing, on which are violet-brown violets of stiff material, which attracts the attention of many people. Here the scene breaks off.

I am again in front of the railroad station, but I am with a elderly gentleman. I invent a scheme for remaining unrecognised, but I also see this plan already carried out. Thinking and experiencing are here, as it were, the same thing. He pretends to be blind, at least in one eye, and I hold a male urinal in front of him (which we have had to buy in the city or did buy), I am thus a sick attendant, and have to give him the urinal because he is blind. If the conductor sees us in this position, he must pass us by without drawing attention. At the same time the attitude of the person mentioned is visually observed. Then I awake with a desire to urinate.

The whole dream seems a sort of phantasy, which takes the dreamer back to the revolutionary year 1848, the memory of which had been renewed by the anniversary year 1898, as well as by a little excursion to Wachau, where I had become acquainted with Emmersdorf, a town which I wrongly supposed to be the resting-place of the student leader Fischof, to whom several features of the dream content might refer. The thought associations then lead me to England, to the house of my brother, who was accustomed jokingly to tell his wife of “Fifty years ago,” according to the title of a poem by Lord Tennyson, whereupon the children were in the habit of correcting: “Fifteen years ago.” This phantasy, however, which subtilely attaches itself to the thoughts which the sight of the Count Thun has given rise to, is only like the façade of Italian churches which is superimposed without being organically connected with the building behind it; unlike these façades, however, the phantasy is filled with gaps and confused, and the parts from within break through at many places. The first situation of the dream is concocted from several scenes, into which I am able to separate it. The arrogant attitude of the Count in the dream is copied from a scene at the Gymnasium which took place in my fifteenth year. We had contrived a conspiracy against an unpopular and ignorant teacher, the leading spirit in which was a schoolmate who seems to have taken Henry VIII. of England as his model. It fell to me to carry out the coup-d’état, and a discussion of the importance of the Danube (German Donau) for Austria (Wachau!) was the occasion upon which matters came to open indignation. A fellow-conspirator was the only aristocratic schoolmate whom we had—he was called the “giraffe” on account of his conspicuous longitudinal development—and he stood just like the Count in the dream, while he was being reprimanded by the tyrant of the school, the Professor of the German language. The explanation of the favourite flower and the putting into the buttonhole of something which again must have been a flower (which recalls the orchids, which I had brought to a lady friend on the same day, and besides that the rose of Jericho) prominently recalls the scene in Shakespeare’s historical plays which opens the civil wars of the Red and the White Roses; the mention of Henry VIII. has opened the way to this reminiscence. It is not very far now from roses to red and white carnations. Meanwhile two little rhymes, the one German, the other Spanish, insinuate themselves into the analysis: “Roses, tulips, carnations, all flowers fade,” and “Isabelita, no llores que se marchitan las flores.” The Spanish is taken from Figaro. Here in Vienna white carnations have become the insignia of the Anti-Semites, the red ones of the Social Democrats. Behind this is the recollection of an anti-Semitic challenge during a railway trip in beautiful Saxony (Anglo-Saxon). The third scene contributing to the formation of the first situation in the dream takes place in my early student life. There was a discussion in the German students’ club about the relation of philosophy to the general sciences. A green youth, full of the materialistic doctrine, I thrust myself forward and defended a very one-sided view. Thereupon a sagacious older school-fellow, who has since shown his capacity for leading men and organising the masses, and who, moreover, bears a name belonging to the animal kingdom, arose and called us down thoroughly; he too, he said, had herded swine in his youth, and had come back repentant to the house of his father. I started up (as in the dream), became very uncivil, and answered that since I knew he had herded swine, I was not surprised at the tone of his discourse. (In the dream I am surprised at my national German sentiment.) There was great commotion; and the demand came from all sides that I take back what I had said, but I remained steadfast. The man who had been insulted was too sensible to take the advice, which was given him, to send a challenge, and let the matter drop.

The remaining elements of this scene of the dream are of more remote origin. What is the meaning of the Count’s proclaiming the colt’s foot? Here I must consult my train of associations. Colt’s-foot (German: Huflattich)—lattice—lettuce—salad-dog (the dog that grudges others what he cannot eat himself). Here plenty of opprobrious epithets may be discerned: Gir-affe (German Affe = monkey, ape), pig, sow, dog; I might even find means to arrive at donkey, on a detour by way of a name, and thus again at contempt for an academic teacher. Furthermore I translate colt’s-foot (Huflattich)—I do not know how correctly—by “pisse-en-lit.” I got this idea from Zola’s Germinal, in which children are ordered to bring salad of this kind. The dog—chien—has a name sounding like the major function (chier, as pisser stands for the minor one). Now we shall soon have before us the indecent in all three of its categories; for in the same Germinal, which has a lot to do with the future revolution there is described a very peculiar contest, depending upon the production of gaseous excretions, called flatus.^[BK] And now I must remark how the way to this flatus has been for a long while preparing, beginning with the flowers, and proceeding to the Spanish rhyme of Isabelita to Ferdinand and Isabella, and, by way of Henry VIII., to English history at the time of the expedition of the Armada against England, after the victorious termination of which the English struck a medal with the inscription: “Afflavit et dissipati sunt,” for the storm had scattered the Spanish fleet. I had thought of taking this phrase for the title of a chapter on “Therapeutics”—to be meant half jokingly—if I should ever have occasion to give a detailed account of my conception and treatment of hysteria.

I cannot give such a detailed solution of the second scene of the dream, out of regard for the censor. For at this point I put myself in the place of a certain eminent gentleman of that revolutionary period, who also had an adventure with an eagle, who is said to have suffered from incontinence of the bowels, and the like; and I believe I should not be justified at this point in passing the censor, although it was an aulic councillor (aula, consilarius aulicus) who told me the greater part of these stories. The allusion to the suite of rooms in the dream relates to the private car of his Excellency, into which I had opportunity to look for a moment; but it signifies, as so often in dreams, a woman (Frauenzimmer; German Zimmer—room is appended to Frauen—woman, in order to imply a slight amount of contempt).^[BL] In the person of the housekeeper I give scant recognition to an intelligent elderly lady for the entertainment and the many good stories which I have enjoyed at her house.... The feature of the lamp goes back to Grillparzer, who notes a charming experience of a similar nature, which he afterwards made use of in “Hero and Leander” (the billows of the ocean and of love—the Armada and the storm).^[BM]

I must also forgo detailed analysis of the two remaining portions of the dream; I shall select only those elements which lead to two childhood scenes, for the sake of which alone I have taken up the dream. The reader will guess that it is sexual matter which forces me to this suppression; but he need not be content with this explanation. Many things which must be treated as secrets in the presence of others are not treated as such with one’s self, and here it is not a question of considerations inducing me to hide the solution, but of motives of the inner censor concealing the real content of the dream from myself. I may say, then, that the analysis shows these three portions of the dream to be impertinent boasting, the exuberance of an absurd grandiose idea which has long since been suppressed in my waking life, which, however, dares show itself in the manifest dream content by one or two projections (I seem clever to myself), and which makes the arrogant mood of the evening before the dream perfectly intelligible. It is boasting, indeed, in all departments; thus the mention of Graz refers to the phrase: What is the price of Graz? which we are fond of using when we feel over-supplied with money. Whoever will recall Master Rabelais’s unexcelled description of the “Life and Deeds of Gargantua and his Son Pantagruel,” will be able to supply the boastful content intimated in the first portion of the dream. The following belongs to the two childhood scenes which have been promised. I had bought a new trunk for this journey, whose colour, a brownish violet, appears in the dream several times. (Violet-brown violets made of stiff material, next to a thing which is called “girl-catcher”—the furniture in the governmental chambers). That something new attracts people’s attention is a well-known belief of children. Now I have been told the following story of my childhood; I remember hearing the story rather than the occurrence itself. I am told that at the age of two I still occasionally wetted my bed, that I was often reproached on this subject, and that I consoled my father by promising to buy him a beautiful new red bed in N. (the nearest large city). (Hence the detail inserted in the dream that we bought the urinal in the city or had to buy it; one must keep one’s promises. Attention is further called to the identity of the male urinal and the feminine trunk, box). All the megalomania of the child is contained in this promise. The significance of the dream of difficulty in urinating in the case of the child has been already considered in the interpretation of an earlier dream (cf. the dream on p. 145).

Now there was another domestic occurrence, when I was seven or eight years old, which I remember very well. One evening, before going to bed I had disregarded the dictates of discretion not to satisfy my wants in the bedroom of my parents and in their presence, and in his reprimand for this delinquency my father made the remark: “That boy will never amount to anything.” It must have terribly mortified my ambition, for allusions to this scene return again and again in my dreams, and are regularly coupled with enumerations of my accomplishments and successes, as though I wanted to say: “You see, I have amounted to something after all.” Now this childhood scene furnishes the elements for the last image of the dream, in which of course, the rôles are interchanged for the sake of revenge. The elderly man, obviously my father, for the blindness in one eye signifies his glaucoma^[BN] on one side is now urinating before me as I once urinated before him. In glaucoma I refer to cocaine, which stood my father in good stead in his operation, as though I had thereby fulfilled my promises. Besides that I make sport of him; since he is blind I must hold the urinal in front of him, and I gloat over allusions to my discoveries in the theory of hysteria, of which I am so proud.^[BO]

If the two childhood scenes of urinating are otherwise closely connected with the desire for greatness, their rehabilitation on the trip to the Aussee was further favoured by the accidental circumstance that my compartment had no water-closet, and that I had to expect embarrassment on the ride as actually happened in the morning. I awoke with the sensation of a bodily need. I suppose one might be inclined to credit these sensations with being the actual stimulus of the dream; I should, however, prefer a different conception—namely, that it was the dream thoughts which gave rise to the desire to urinate. It is quite unusual for me to be disturbed in sleep by any need, at least at the time of this awakening, a quarter of four in the morning. I may forestall further objection by remarking that I have hardly ever felt a desire to urinate after awakening early on other journeys made under more comfortable circumstances. Moreover, I can leave this point undecided without hurting my argument.

Since I have learned, further, from experience in dream analysis that there always remain important trains of thought proceeding from dreams whose interpretation at first seems complete (because the sources of the dream and the actuation of the wish are easily demonstrable), trains of thought reaching back into earliest childhood, I have been forced to ask myself whether this feature does not constitute an essential condition of dreaming. If I were to generalise this thesis, a connection with what has been recently experienced would form a part of the manifest content of every dream and a connection with what has been most remotely experienced, of its latent content; and I can actually show in the analysis of hysteria that in a true sense these remote experiences have remained recent up to the present time. But this conjecture seems still very difficult to prove; I shall probably have to return to the part played by the earliest childhood experiences, in another connection (Chapter VII.).

Of the three peculiarities of dream memory considered at the beginning, one—the preference for the unimportant in the dream content—has been satisfactorily explained by tracing it back to dream disfigurement. We have been able to establish the existence of the other two—the selection of recent and of infantile material—but we have found it impossible to explain them by the motive of dream. Let us keep in mind these two characteristics, which still remain to be explained or evaluated; a place for them will have to be found elsewhere, either in the psychology of the sleeping state, or in the discussion of the structure of the psychic apparatus which we shall undertake later, after we have learned that the inner nature of the apparatus may be observed through dream interpretation as though through a window.

Just here I may emphasize another result of the last few dream analyses. The dream often appears ambiguous; not only may several wish-fulfilments, as the examples show, be united in it, but one meaning or one wish-fulfilment may also conceal another, until at the bottom one comes upon the fulfilment of a wish from the earliest period of childhood; and here too, it may be questioned whether “often” in this sentence may not more correctly be replaced by “regularly.”

(c) Somatic Sources of Dreams

If the attempt be made to interest the cultured layman in the problems of dreaming, and if, with this end in view, he be asked the question from what source dreams originate according to his opinion, it is generally found that the person thus interrogated thinks himself in assured possession of a part of the solution. He immediately thinks of the influence which a disturbed or impeded digestion (“Dreams come from the stomach”), accidental bodily position, and little occurrences during sleep, exercise upon the formation of dreams, and he seems not to suspect that even after the consideration of all these factors there still remains something unexplained.

We have explained at length in the introductory chapter (p. 16), what a rôle in the formation of dreams the scientific literature credits to the account of somatic exciting sources, so that we need here only recall the results of this investigation. We have seen that three kinds of somatic exciting sources are distinguished, objective sensory stimuli which proceed from external objects, the inner states of excitation of the sensory organs having only a subjective basis, and the bodily stimuli which originate internally; and we have noticed the inclination on the part of the authors to force the psychic sources of the dream into the background or to disregard them altogether in favour of these somatic sources of stimulation (p. 32).

In testing the claims which are made on behalf of these classes of somatic sources of stimulation, we have discovered that the significance of the objective stimuli of the sensory organs—whether accidental stimuli during sleep or those stimuli which cannot be excluded from our dormant psychic life—has been definitely established by numerous observations and is confirmed by experiments (p. 18); we have seen that the part played by subjective sensory stimuli appears to be demonstrated by the return of hypnogogic sensory images in dreams, and that although the referring of these dream images and ideas, in the broadest sense, to internal bodily stimulation is not demonstrable in every detail, it can be supported by the well-known influence which an exciting state of the digestive, urinary, and sexual organs exercise upon the contents of our dreams.

“Nerve stimulus” and “bodily stimulus,” then, would be the somatic sources of the dream—that is, the only sources whatever of the dream, according to several authors.

But we have already found a number of doubts, which seem to attack not so much the correctness of the somatic theory of stimulation as its adequacy.

However certain all the representatives of this theory may have felt about the actual facts on which it is based—especially in case of the accidental and external nerve stimuli, which may be recognised in the content of the dream without any trouble—nevertheless none of them has been able to avoid the admission that the abundant ideal content of dreams does not admit of explanation by external nerve-stimuli alone. Miss Mary Whiton Calkins^[12] has tested her own dreams and those of another person for a period of six weeks with this idea in mind, and has found only from 13·2 per cent. to 6·7 per cent. in which the element of external sensory perception was demonstrable; only two cases in the collection could be referred to organic sensations. Statistics here confirm what a hasty glance at our own experience might have led us to suspect.

The decision has been made repeatedly to distinguish the “dream of nerve stimulus” from the other forms of the dream as a well-established sub-species. Spitta^[64] divided dreams into dreams of nerve stimulus and association dreams. But the solution clearly remained unsatisfactory as long as the link between the somatic sources of dreams and their ideal content could not be demonstrated.

Besides the first objection, of the inadequate frequency of external exciting sources, there arises as a second objection the inadequate explanation of dreams offered by the introduction of this sort of dream sources. The representatives of the theory accordingly must explain two things, in the first place, why the external stimulus in the dream is never recognised according to its real nature, but is regularly mistaken for something else (cf. the alarm-clock dreams, p. 22), and secondly, why the reaction of the receiving mind to this misrecognised stimulus should result so indeterminately and changefully. As an answer to these questions, we have heard from Strümpell^[66] that the mind, as a result of its being turned away from the outer world during sleep, is not capable of giving correct interpretation to the objective sensory stimulus, but is forced to form illusions on the basis of the indefinite incitements from many directions. As expressed in his own words (p. 108):

“As soon as a sensation, a sensational complex, a feeling, or a psychic process in general, arises in the mind during sleep from an outer or inner nerve-stimulus, and is perceived by the mind, this process calls up sensory images, that is to say, earlier perceptions, either unembellished or with the psychic values belonging to them, from the range of waking experiences, of which the mind has remained in possession. It seems to collect about itself, as it were, a greater or less number of such images, from which the impression which originates from the nerve-stimulus receives its psychic value. It is usually said here, as the idiom does of waking thought, that the mind interprets impressions of nerve-stimuli in sleep. The result of this interpretation is the so-called nerve-stimulus dream—that is to say, a dream whose composition is conditioned by the fact that a nerve-stimulus brings about its effect in psychic life according to the laws of reproduction.”

The opinion of Wundt^[76] agrees in all essentials with this theory. He says that the ideas in the dream are probably the result, for the most part, of sensory stimuli, especially of those of general sensation, and are therefore mostly phantastic illusions—probably memory presentations which are only partly pure, and which have been raised to hallucinations. Strümpell has found an excellent simile (p. 84). It is as “if the ten fingers of a person ignorant of music should stray over the keyboard of an instrument”—to illustrate the relation between dream content and dream stimuli, which follows from this theory. The implication is that the dream does not appear as a psychic phenomenon, originating from psychic motives, but as the result of a physiological stimulus, which is expressed in psychic symptomology, because the apparatus which is affected by the stimulus is not capable of any other expression. Upon a similar assumption is based, for example, the explanation of compulsive ideas which Meynert tried to give by means of the famous simile of the dial on which individual figures are prominent because they are in more marked relief.

However popular this theory of somatic dream stimuli may have become, and however seductive it may seem, it is nevertheless easy to show the weak point in it. Every somatic dream stimulus which provokes the psychic apparatus to interpretation through the formation of illusions, is capable of giving rise to an incalculable number of such attempts at interpretation; it can thus attain representation in the dream content by means of an extraordinary number of different ideas. But the theory of Strümpell and Wundt is incapable of instancing any motive which has control over the relation between the external stimulus and the dream idea which has been selected to interpret it, and therefore of explaining the “peculiar choice” which the stimuli “often enough make in the course of their reproductive activity” (Lipps, Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens, p. 170). Other objections may be directed against the fundamental assumption of the whole theory of illusions—the assumption that during sleep the mind is not in a condition to recognise the real nature of the objective sensory stimuli. The old physiologist Burdach^[8] proves to us that the mind is quite capable even during sleep of interpreting correctly the sensory impressions which reach it, and of reacting in accordance with the correct interpretation. He establishes this by showing that it is possible to exempt certain impressions which seem important to the individuals, from the neglect of sleeping (nurse and child), and that one is more surely awakened by one’s own name than by an indifferent auditory impression, all of which presupposes, of course, that the mind distinguishes among sensations, even in sleep (Chapter I., p. 41). Burdach infers from these observations that it is not an incapability of interpreting sensory stimuli in the sleeping state which must be assumed, but a lack of interest in them. The same arguments which Burdach used in 1830, later reappear unchanged in the works of Lipps in the year 1883, where they are employed for the purpose of attacking the theory of somatic stimuli. According to this the mind seems to be like the sleeper in the anecdote, who, upon being asked, “Are you asleep?” answers “No,” and upon being again addressed with the words, “Then lend me ten florins,” takes refuge in the excuse: “I am asleep.”

The inadequacy of the theory of somatic dream stimuli may also be demonstrated in another manner. Observations show that I am not urged to dream by external stimulations, even if these stimulations appear in the dream as soon as, and in case that, I dream. In response to the tactile or pressure stimulus which I get while sleeping, various reactions are at my disposal. I can overlook it and discover only upon awakening that my leg has been uncovered or my arm under pressure; pathology shows the most numerous examples where powerfully acting sensory and motor stimuli of different sorts remain without effect during sleep. I can perceive a sensation during sleep through and through sleep, as it were, which happens as a rule with painful stimuli, but without weaving the pain into the texture of the dream; thirdly, I can awaken on account of the stimulus in order to obviate it. Only as a fourth possible reaction, I may be impelled to dream by a nerve stimulus; but the other possibilities are realised at least as often as that of dream formation. This could not be the case if the motive for dreaming did not lie outside of the somatic sources of dreams.

Taking proper account of the defect in the explanation of dreams by somatic stimuli which has just been shown, other authors—Scherner,^[58] who was joined by the philosopher Volkelt^[72]—have tried to determine more exactly the psychic activities which cause the variegated dream images to arise from the somatic stimuli, and have thus transferred the essential nature of dreams back to the province of the mind, and to that of psychic activity. Scherner not only gave a poetically appreciative, glowing and vivid description of the psychic peculiarities which develop in the course of dream formation; he also thought he had guessed the principle according to which the mind proceeds with the stimuli that are at its disposal. The dream activity, according to Scherner—after phantasy has been freed from the shackles imposed upon it during the day, and has been given free rein—strives to represent symbolically the nature of the organ from which the stimulus proceeds. Thus we have a kind of dream-book as a guide for the interpretation of dreams, by means of which bodily sensations, the conditions of the organs and of the stimuli may be inferred from dream images. “Thus the image of a cat expresses an angry discontented mood, the image of a light-coloured bit of smooth pastry the nudity of the body. The human body as a whole is pictured as a house by the phantasy of the dream, and each individual organ of the body as a part of the house. In ‘toothache-dreams’ a high vaulted vestibule corresponds to the mouth and a stair to the descent of the gullet to the alimentary canal; in the ‘headache-dream’ the ceiling of a room which is covered with disgusting reptile-like spiders is chosen to denote the upper part of the head” (Volkelt, p. 39). “Several different symbols are used by the dream for the same organ, thus the breathing lungs find their symbol in an oven filled with flames and with a roaring draught, the heart in hollow chests and baskets, and the bladder in round, bag-shaped objects or anything else hollow. It is especially important that at the end of a dream the stimulating organ or its function be represented undisguised and usually on the dreamer’s own body. Thus the ‘toothache-dream’ usually ends by the dreamer drawing a tooth from his own mouth” (p. 35). It cannot be said that this theory has found much favour with the authors. Above all, it seems extravagant; there has been no inclination even to discover the small amount of justification to which it may, in my opinion, lay claim. As may be seen, it leads to a revival of the dream interpretation by means of symbolism, which the ancients used, except that the source from which the interpretation is to be taken is limited to the human body. The lack of a technique of interpretation which is scientifically comprehensible must seriously limit the applicability of Scherner’s theory. Arbitrariness in dream interpretation seems in no wise excluded, especially since a stimulus may be expressed by several representations in the content of the dream; thus Scherner’s associate, Volkelt, has already found it impossible to confirm the representation of the body as a house. Another objection is that here again dream activity is attributed to the mind as a useless and aimless activity, since according to the theory in question the mind is content with forming phantasies about the stimulus with which it is concerned, without even remotely contemplating anything like a discharge of the stimulus.

But Scherner’s theory of the symbolisation of bodily stimuli by the dream receives a heavy blow from another objection. These bodily stimuli are present at all times, and according to general assumption the mind is more accessible to them during sleep than in waking. It is thus incomprehensible why the mind does not dream continually throughout the night, and why it does not dream every night and about all the organs. If one attempts to avoid this objection by making the condition that especial stimuli must proceed from the eye, the ear, the teeth, the intestines in order to arouse dream activity, one is confronted by the difficulty of proving that this increase of stimulation is objective, which is possible only in a small number of cases. If the dream of flying is a symbolisation of the upward and downward motion of the pulmonary lobes, either this dream, as has already been remarked by Strümpell, would be dreamt much oftener, or an accentuation of the function of breathing during the dream would have to be demonstrable. Still another case is possible—the most probable of all—that now and then special motives directing attention to the visceral sensations which are universally present are active, but this case takes us beyond the range of Scherner’s theory.

The value of Scherner’s and Volkelt’s discussions lies in the fact that they call attention to a number of characteristics of the dream content which are in need of explanation, and which seem to promise new knowledge. It is quite true that symbolisations of organs of the body and of their functions are contained in dreams, that water in a dream often signifies a desire to urinate, that the male genital may often be represented by a staff standing erect or by a pillar, &c. In dreams which show a very animated field of vision and brilliant colours, in contrast to the dimness of other dreams, the interpretation may hardly be dismissed that they are “dreams of visual stimulation,” any more than it may be disputed that there is a contribution of illusory formations in dreams which contain noise and confusion of voices. A dream like that of Scherner, of two rows of fair handsome boys standing opposite to each other on a bridge, attacking each other and then taking their places again, until finally the dreamer himself sits down on the bridge and pulls a long tooth out of his jaw; or a similar one of Volkelt’s, in which two rows of drawers play a part, and which again ends in the extraction of a tooth; dream formations of this sort, which are related in great numbers by the authors, prevent our discarding Scherner’s theory as an idle fabrication without seeking to find its kernel of truth. We are now confronted by the task of giving the supposed symbolisation of the dental stimulus an explanation of a different kind.

Throughout our consideration of the theory of the somatic sources of dreams, I have refrained from urging the argument which is inferred from our dream analyses. If we have succeeded in proving, by a procedure which other authors have not applied in their investigation of dreams, that the dream as a psychic action possesses value peculiar to itself, that a wish supplies the motive for its formation, and that the experiences of the previous day furnish the immediate material for its content, any other theory of dreams neglecting such an important method of investigation, and accordingly causing the dream to appear a useless and problematic psychic reaction to somatic stimuli, is dismissible without any particular comment. Otherwise there must be—which is highly improbable—two entirely different kinds of dreams, of which only one has come under our observation, while only the other has been observed by the earlier connoisseurs of the dream. It still remains to provide a place for the facts which are used to support the prevailing theory of somatic dream-stimuli, within our own theory of dreams.

We have already taken the first step in this direction in setting up the thesis that the dream activity is under a compulsion to elaborate all the dream stimuli which are simultaneously present into a unified whole (p. 151). We have seen that when two or more experiences capable of making an impression have been left over from the previous day, the wishes which result from them are united into one dream; similarly, that an impression possessing psychic value and the indifferent experiences of the previous day are united in the dream material, provided there are available connecting ideas between the two. Thus the dream appears to be a reaction to everything which is simultaneously present as actual in the sleeping mind. As far as we have hitherto analysed the dream material, we have discovered it to be a collection of psychic remnants and memory traces, which we were obliged to credit (on account of the preference shown for recent and infantile material) with a character of actuality, though the nature of this was not at the time determinable. Now it will not be difficult to foretell what will happen when new material in the form of sensations is added to these actualities of memory. These stimuli likewise derive importance for the dream because they are actual; they are united with the other psychic actualities in order to make up the material for dream formation. To express it differently, the stimuli which appear during sleep are worked over into the fulfilment of a wish, the other component parts of which are the remnants of daily experience with which we are familiar. This union, however, is not inevitable; we have heard that more than one sort of attitude towards bodily stimuli is possible during sleep. Wherever this union has been brought about, it has simply been possible to find for the dream content that kind of presentation material which will give representation to both classes of dream sources, the somatic as well as the psychic.

The essential nature of the dream is not changed by this addition of somatic material to the psychic sources of the dream; it remains the fulfilment of a wish without reference to the way in which its expression is determined by the actual material.

I shall gladly find room here for a number of peculiarities, which serve to put a different face on the significance of external stimuli for the dream. I imagine that a co-operation of individual, physiological, and accidental factors, conditioned by momentary circumstances, determines how one will act in each particular case of intensive objective stimulation during sleep; the degree of the profoundness of sleep whether habitual or accidental in connection with the intensity of the stimulus, will in one case make it possible to suppress the stimulus, so that it will not disturb sleep; in another case they will force an awakening or will support the attempt to overcome the stimulus by weaving it into the texture of the dream. In correspondence with the multiplicity of these combinations, external objective stimuli will receive expression more frequently in the case of one person than in that of another. In the case of myself, who am an excellent sleeper, and who stubbornly resists any kind of disturbance in sleep, this intermixture of external causes of irritation into my dreams is very rare, while psychic motives apparently cause me to dream very easily. I have indeed noted only a single dream in which an objective, painful source of stimulation is demonstrable, and it will be highly instructive to see what effect the external stimulus had in this very dream.

I am riding on a grey horse, at first timidly and awkwardly, as though I were only leaning against something. I meet a colleague P., who is mounted on a horse and is wearing a heavy woollen suit; he calls my attention to something (probably to the fact that my riding position is bad). Now I become more and more expert on the horse, which is most intelligent; I sit comfortably, and I notice that I am already quite at home in the saddle. For a saddle I have a kind of padding, which completely fills the space between the neck and the rump of the horse. In this manner I ride with difficulty between two lumber-wagons. After having ridden up the street for some distance, I turn around and want to dismount, at first in front of a little open chapel, which is situated close to the street. Then I actually dismount in front of a chapel which stands near the first; the hotel is in the same street, I could let the horse go there by itself, but I prefer to lead it there. It seems as if I should be ashamed to arrive there on horseback. In front of the hotel is standing a hall-boy who shows me a card of mine which has been found, and who ridicules me on account of it. On the card is written, doubly underlined, “Eat nothing,” and then a second sentence (indistinct) something like “Do not work”; at the same time a hazy idea that I am in a strange city, in which I do no work.

It will not be apparent at once that this dream originated under the influence, or rather under the compulsion, of a stimulus of pain. The day before I had suffered from furuncles, which made every movement a torture, and at last a furuncle had grown to the size of an apple at the root of the scrotum, and had caused me the most intolerable pains that accompanied every step; a feverish lassitude, lack of appetite, and the hard work to which I had nevertheless kept myself during the day, had conspired with the pain to make me lose my temper. I was not altogether in a condition to discharge my duties as a physician, but in view of the nature and the location of the malady, one might have expected some performance other than riding, for which I was very especially unfitted. It is this very activity, of riding into which I am plunged by the dream; it is the most energetic denial of the suffering which is capable of being conceived. In the first place, I do not know how to ride, I do not usually dream of it, and I never sat on a horse but once—without a saddle—and then I did not feel comfortable. But in this dream I ride as though I had no furuncle on the perineum, and why? just because I don’t want any. According to the description my saddle is the poultice which has made it possible for me to go to sleep. Probably I did not feel anything of my pain—as I was thus taken care of—during the first few hours of sleeping. Then the painful sensations announced themselves and tried to wake me up, whereupon the dream came and said soothingly: “Keep on sleeping, you won’t wake up anyway! You have no furuncle at all, for you are riding on a horse, and with a furuncle where you have it riding is impossible!” And the dream was successful; the pain was stifled, and I went on sleeping.

But the dream was not satisfied with “suggesting away” the furuncle by means of tenaciously adhering to an idea incompatible with that of the malady, in doing which it behaved like the hallucinatory insanity of the mother who has lost her child, or like the merchant who has been deprived of his fortune by losses.^[BP] In addition the details of the denied sensation and of the image which is used to displace it are employed by the dream as a means to connect the material ordinarily actually present in the mind with the dream situation, and to give this material representation. I am riding on a grey horse—the colour of the horse corresponds exactly to the pepper-and-salt costume in which I last met my colleague P. in the country. I have been warned that highly seasoned food is the cause of furunculosis, but in any case it is preferable as an etiological explanation to sugar which ordinarily suggests furunculosis. My friend P. has been pleased to “ride the high horse” with regard to me, ever since he superseded me in the treatment of a female patient, with whom I had performed great feats (in the dream I first sit on the horse side-saddle fashion, like a circus rider), but who really led me wherever she wished, like the horse in the anecdote about the Sunday equestrian. Thus the horse came to be a symbolic representation of a lady patient (in the dream it is most intelligent). “I feel quite at home up here,” refers to the position which I occupied in the patient’s household until I was replaced by my colleague P. “I thought you were securely seated in the saddle,” one of my few well-wishers among the great physicians of this city recently said to me with reference to the same household. And it was a feat to practise psychotherapy for ten hours a day with such pains, but I know that I cannot continue my particularly difficult work for any length of time without complete physical health, and the dream is full of gloomy allusions to the situation which must in that case result (the card such as neurasthenics have and present to doctors): No work and no food. With further interpretation I see that the dream activity has succeeded in finding the way from the wish-situation of riding to very early infantile scenes of quarrelling, which must have taken place between me and my nephew, who is now living in England, and who, moreover, is a year older than I. Besides it has taken up elements from my journeys to Italy; the street in the dream is composed of impressions of Verona and Siena. Still more exhaustive interpretation leads to sexual dream-thoughts, and I recall what significance dream allusions to that beautiful country had in the case of a female patient who had never been in Italy (Itlay—German gen Italien—Genitalien—genitals). At the same time there are references to the house in which I was physician before my friend P., and to the place where the furuncle is located.

Among the dreams mentioned in the previous chapter there are several which might serve as examples for the elaboration of so-called nerve stimuli. The dream about drinking in full draughts is one of this sort; the somatic excitement in it seems to be the only source of the dream, and the wish resulting from the sensation—thirst—the only motive for dreaming. Something similar is true of the other simple dreams, if the somatic excitement alone is capable of forming a wish. The dream of the sick woman who throws the cooling apparatus from her cheek at night is an instance of a peculiar way of reacting to painful excitements with a wish-fulfilment; it seems as though the patient had temporarily succeeded in making herself analgesic by ascribing her pains to a stranger.

My dream about the three Parcæ is obviously a dream of hunger, but it has found means to refer the need for food back to the longing of the child for its mother’s breast, and to make the harmless desire a cloak for a more serious one, which is not permitted to express itself so openly. In the dream about Count Thun we have seen how an accidental bodily desire is brought into connection with the strongest, and likewise the most strongly suppressed emotions of the psychic life. And when the First Consul incorporates the sound of an exploding bomb into a dream of battle before it causes him to wake, as in the case reported by Garnier, the purpose for which psychic activity generally concerns itself with sensations occurring during sleep is revealed with extraordinary clearness. A young lawyer, who has been deeply preoccupied with his first great bankruptcy proceeding, and who goes to sleep during the afternoon following, acts just like the great Napoleon. He dreams about a certain G. Reich in Hussiatyn (German husten—to cough), whom he knows in connection with the bankruptcy proceeding, but Hussiatyn forces itself upon his attention still further, with the result that he is obliged to awaken, and hears his wife—who is suffering from bronchial catarrh—coughing violently.

Let us compare the dream of Napoleon I., who, incidentally, was an excellent sleeper, with that of the sleepy student, who was awakened by his landlady with the admonition that he must go to the hospital, who thereupon dreams himself into a bed in the hospital, and then sleeps on, with the following account of his motives: If I am already in the hospital, I shan’t have to get up in order to go there. The latter is obviously a dream of convenience; the sleeper frankly admits to himself the motive for his dreaming; but he thereby reveals one of the secrets of dreaming in general. In a certain sense all dreams are dreams of convenience; they serve the purpose of continuing sleep instead of awakening. The dream is the guardian of sleep, not the disturber of it. We shall justify this conception with respect to the psychic factors of awakening elsewhere; it is possible, however, at this point to prove its applicability to the influence exerted by objective external excitements. Either the mind does not concern itself at all with the causes of sensations, if it is able to do this in spite of their intensity and of their significance, which is well understood by it; or it employs the dream to deny these stimuli; or thirdly, if it is forced to recognise the stimulus, it seeks to find that interpretation of the stimulus which shall represent the actual sensation as a component part of a situation which is desired and which is compatible with sleep. The actual sensation is woven into the dream in order to deprive it of its reality. Napoleon is permitted to go on sleeping; it is only a dream recollection of the thunder of the cannon at Arcole which is trying to disturb him.^[BQ]

The wish to sleep, by which the conscious ego has been suspended and which along with the dream-censor contributes its share to the dream, must thus always be taken into account as a motive for the formation of dreams, and every successful dream is a fulfilment of this wish. The relation of this general, regularly present, and invariable sleep-wish to the other wishes, of which now the one, now the other is fulfilled, will be the subject of a further explanation. In the wish to sleep we have discovered a factor capable of supplying the deficiency in the theory of Strümpell and Wundt, and of explaining the perversity and capriciousness in the interpretation of the outer stimulus. The correct interpretation, of which the sleeping mind is quite capable, would imply an active interest and would require that sleep be terminated; hence, of those interpretations which are possible at all, only those are admitted which are agreeable to the absolute censorship of the somatic wish. It is something like this: It’s the nightingale and not the lark. For if it’s the lark, love’s night is at an end. From among the interpretations of the excitement which are at the moment possible, that one is selected which can secure the best connection with the wish-possibilities that are lying in wait in the mind. Thus everything is definitely determined, and nothing is left to caprice. The misinterpretation is not an illusion, but—if you will—an excuse. Here again, however, there is admitted an action which is a modification of the normal psychic procedure, as in the case where substitution by means of displacement is effected for the purposes of the dream-censor.

If the outer nerve stimuli and inner bodily stimuli are sufficiently intense to compel psychic attention, they represent—that is, in case they result in dreaming and not in awakening—a definite point in the formation of dreams, a nucleus in the dream material, for which an appropriate wish-fulfilment is sought, in a way similar (see above) to the search for connecting ideas between two dream stimuli. To this extent it is true for a number of dreams that the somatic determines what their content is to be. In this extreme case a wish which is not exactly actual is aroused for the purpose of dream formation. But the dream can do nothing but represent a wish in a situation as fulfilled; it is, as it were, confronted by the task of seeking what wish may be represented and fulfilled by means of the situation which is now actual. Even if this actual material is of a painful or disagreeable character, still it is not useless for the purposes of dream formation. The psychic life has control even over wishes the fulfilment of which brings forth pleasure—a statement which seems contradictory, but which becomes intelligible if one takes into account the presence of two psychic instances and the censor existing between them.

There are in the psychic life, as we have heard, repressed wishes which belong to the first system, and to whose fulfilment the second system is opposed. There are wishes of this kind—and we do not mean this in an historic sense, that there have been such wishes and that these have then been destroyed—but the theory of repression, which is essential to the study of psychoneurosis, asserts that such repressed wishes still exist, contemporaneously with an inhibition weighing them down. Language has hit upon the truth when it speaks of the “suppression” of such impulses. The psychic contrivance for bringing such wishes to realisation remains preserved and in a condition to be used. But if it happens that such a suppressed wish is fulfilled, the vanquished inhibition of the second system (which is capable of becoming conscious) is then expressed as a painful feeling. To close this discussion; if sensations of a disagreeable character which originate from somatic sources are presented during sleep, this constellation is taken advantage of by the dream activity to represent the fulfilment—with more or less retention of the censor—of an otherwise suppressed wish.

This condition of affairs makes possible a number of anxiety dreams, while another series of the dream formations which are unfavourable to the wish theory exhibits a different mechanism. For anxiety in dreams may be of a psychoneurotic nature, or it may originate in psychosexual excitements, in which case the anxiety corresponds to a repressed libido. Then this anxiety as well as the whole anxiety dream has the significance of a neurotic symptom, and we are at the dividing-line where the wish-fulfilling tendency of dreams disappears. But in other anxiety-dreams the feeling of anxiety comes from somatic sources (for instance in the case of persons suffering from pulmonary or heart trouble, where there is occasional difficulty in getting breath), and then it is used to aid those energetically suppressed wishes in attaining fulfilment in the form of a dream, the dreaming of which from psychic motives would have resulted in the same release of fear. It is not difficult to unite these two apparently discrepant cases. Of two psychic formations, an emotional inclination and an ideal content, which are intimately connected, the one, which is presented as actual, supports the other in the dream; now anxiety of somatic origin supports the suppressed presentation content, now the ideal content, which is freed from suppression, and which proceeds with the impetus given by sexual emotion, assists the discharge of anxiety. Of the one case it may be said that an emotion of somatic origin is psychically interpreted; in the other case everything is of psychic origin but the content which has been suppressed is easily replaced by a somatic interpretation which is suited to anxiety. The difficulties which lie in the way of understanding all this have little to do with the dream; they are due to the fact that in discussing these points we are touching upon the problems of the development of anxiety and of repression.

Undoubtedly the aggregate of bodily feelings is to be included among the commanding dream stimuli which originate internally. Not that it is able to furnish the dream content, but it forces the dream thoughts to make a choice from the material destined to serve the purpose of representation in the dream content; it does this by putting within easy reach that part of the material which is suited to its own character, while withholding the other. Moreover this general feeling, which is left over from the day, is probably connected with the psychic remnants which are significant for the dream.

If somatic sources of excitement occurring during sleep—that is, the sensations of sleep—are not of unusual intensity, they play a part in the formation of dreams similar, in my judgment, to that of the impressions of the day which have remained recent but indifferent. I mean that they are drawn into the dream formation, if they are qualified for being united with the presentation content of the psychic dream-source, but in no other case. They are treated as a cheap ever-ready material, which is utilised as often as it is needed, instead of prescribing, as a precious material does, the manner in which it is to be utilised. The case is similar to that where a patron of art brings to an artist a rare stone, a fragment of onyx, in order that a work of art may be made of it. The size of the stone, its colour, and its marking help to decide what bust or what scene shall be represented in it, while in the case where there is a uniform and abundant supply of marble or sandstone the artist follows only the idea which takes shape in his mind. Only in this manner, it seems to me, is the fact explicable that the dream content resulting from bodily excitements that have not been accentuated to a usual degree, does not appear in all dreams and during every night.

Perhaps an example, which takes us back to the interpretation of dreams, will best illustrate my meaning. One day I was trying to understand the meaning of the sensations of being impeded, of not being able to move from the spot, of not being able to get finished, &c., which are dreamt about so often, and which are so closely allied to anxiety. That night I had the following dream: I am very incompletely dressed, and I go from a dwelling on the ground floor up a flight of stairs to an upper story. In doing this I jump over three steps at a time, and I am glad to find I can mount the steps so quickly. Suddenly I see that a servant girl is coming down the stairs, that is, towards me. I am ashamed and try to hurry away, and now there appears that sensation of being impeded; I am glued to the steps and cannot move from the spot.

Analysis: The situation of the dream is taken from everyday reality. In a house in Vienna I have two apartments, which are connected only by a flight of stairs outside. My consultation-rooms and my study are on an elevated portion of the ground floor, and one story higher are my living-rooms. When I have finished my work downstairs late at night, I go up the steps into my bedroom. On the evening before the dream I had actually gone this short distance in a somewhat disorderly attire—that is to say, I had taken off my collar, cravat, and cuffs; but in the dream this has changed into a somewhat more advanced degree of undress, which as usual is indefinite. Jumping over the steps is my usual method of mounting stairs; moreover it is the fulfilment of a wish that has been recognised in the dream, for I have reassured myself about the condition of my heart action by the ease of this accomplishment. Moreover the manner in which I climb the stairs is an effective contrast to the sensation of being impeded which occurs in the second half of the dream. It shows me—something which needed no proof—that the dream has no difficulty in representing motor actions as carried out fully and completely; think of flying in dreams!

But the stairs which I go up are not those of my house; at first I do not recognise them; only the person coming toward me reveals to me the location which they are intended to signify. This woman is the maid of the old lady whom I visit twice daily to give hypodermic injections; the stairs, too, are quite similar to those which I must mount there twice daily.

How do this flight of stairs and this woman get into my dream? Being ashamed because one is not fully dressed, is undoubtedly of a sexual character; the servant of whom I dream is older than I, sulky, and not in the least attractive. These questions call up exactly the following occurrences: When I make my morning visit at this house I am usually seized with a desire to clear my throat; the product of the expectoration falls upon the steps. For there is no spittoon on either of these floors, and I take the view that the stairs should not be kept clean at my expense, but by the provision of a spittoon. The housekeeper, likewise an elderly and sulky person, with instincts for cleanliness, takes another view of the matter. She lies in wait for me to see whether I take the liberty referred to, and when she has made sure of it, I hear her growl distinctly. For days thereafter she refuses to show me her customary regard when we meet. On the day before the dream the position of the housekeeper had been strengthened by the servant girl. I had just finished my usual hurried visit to the patient when the servant confronted me in the ante-room and observed: “You might as well have wiped your shoes to-day, doctor, before you came into the room. The red carpet is all dirty again from your feet.” This is the whole claim which the flight of stairs and the servant-girl can make for appearing in my dream.