A. Translated by A. A. Brill (Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company).
B. Cf. the works of Ernest Jones, James J. Putnam, the present writer, and others.
C. For examples demonstrating these facts, cf. my work, Psychoanalysis; its Theories and Practical Application, W. B. Saunders’ Publishing Company, Philadelphia & London.
D. To the first publication of this book, 1900.
E. Compare, on the other hand, O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, p. 390. “Dreams were divided into two classes; the first were influenced only by the present (or past), and were unimportant for the future: they embraced the ἐνύπνια, insomnia, which immediately produces the given idea or its opposite, e.g. hunger or its satiation, and the φαντάσματα, which elaborates the given idea phantastically, as e.g. the nightmare, ephialtes. The second class was, on the other hand, determinant for the future. To this belong: (1) direct prophecies received in the dream (χρηματισμός, oraculum); (2) the foretelling of a future event (ὅραμα); (3) the symbolic or the dream requiring interpretation (ὄνειρος, somnium). This theory has been preserved for many centuries.”
F. From subsequent experience I am able to state that it is not at all rare to find in dreams repetitions of harmless or unimportant occupations of the waking state, such as packing trunks, preparing food, work in the kitchen, &c., but in such dreams the dreamer himself emphasizes not the character but the reality of the memory, “I have really done all this in the day time.”
G. Chauffeurs were bands of robbers in the Vendée who resorted to this form of torture.
H. Gigantic persons in a dream justify the assumption that it deals with a scene from the dreamer’s childhood.
I. The first volume of this Norwegian author, containing a complete description of dreams, has recently appeared in German. See Index of Literature, No. [74a].
J. Periodically recurrent dreams have been observed repeatedly. Cf. the collection of Chabaneix.[11]
K. Silberer has shown by nice examples how in the state of sleepiness even abstract thoughts may be changed into illustrative plastic pictures which express the same thing (Jahrbuch von Bleuler-Freud, vol. i. 1900).
L. Haffner[32] made an attempt similar to Delbœuf’s to explain the dream activity on the basis of an alteration which must result in an introduction of an abnormal condition in the otherwise correct function of the intact psychic apparatus, but he described this condition in somewhat different words. He states that the first distinguishing mark of the dream is the absence of time and space, i.e. the emancipation of the presentation from the position in the order of time and space which is common to the individual. Allied to this is the second fundamental character of the dream, the mistaking of the hallucinations, imaginations, and phantasy-combinations for objective perceptions. The sum total of the higher psychic forces, especially formation of ideas, judgment, and argumentation on the one hand, and the free self-determination on the other hand, connect themselves with the sensory phantasy pictures and at all times have them as a substratum. These activities too, therefore, participate in the irregularity of the dream presentation. We say they participate, for our faculties of judgment and will power are in themselves in no way altered during sleep. In reference to activity, we are just as keen and just as free as in the waking state. A man cannot act contrary to the laws of thought, even in the dream, i.e. he is unable to harmonise with that which represents itself as contrary to him, &c.; he can only desire in the dream that which he presents to himself as good (sub ratione boni). But in this application of the laws of thinking and willing the human mind is led astray in the dream through mistaking one presentation for another. It thus happens that we form and commit in the dream the greatest contradictions, while, on the other hand, we display the keenest judgments and the most consequential chains of reasoning, and can make the most virtuous and sacred resolutions. Lack of orientation is the whole secret of the flight by which our phantasy moves in the dream, and lack of critical reflection and mutual understanding with others is the main source of the reckless extravagances of our judgments, hopes, and wishes in the dream (p. 18).
N. Grundzüge des Systems der Anthropologie. Erlangen, 1850 (quoted by Spitta).
O. Das Traumleben und seine Deutung, 1868 (cited by Spitta, p. 192).
P. H. Swoboda, Die Perioden des Menschlichen Organismus, 1904.
Q. In a novel, Gradiva, of the poet W. Jensen, I accidentally discovered several artificial dreams which were formed with perfect correctness and which could be interpreted as though they had not been invented, but had been dreamt by actual persons. The poet declared, upon my inquiry, that he was unacquainted with my theory of dreams. I have made use of this correspondence between my investigation and the creative work of the poet as a proof of the correctness of my method of dream analysis (“Der Wahn und die Träume,” in W. Jensen’s Gradiva, No. 1 of the Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, 1906, edited by me). Dr. Alfred Robitsek has since shown that the dream of the hero in Goethe’s Egmont may be interpreted as correctly as an actually experienced dream (“Die Analyse von Egmont’s Träume,” Jahrbuch, edited by Bleuler-Freud, vol. ii., 1910.)
R. After the completion of my manuscript, a paper by Stumpf[65] came to my notice which agrees with my work in attempting to prove that the dream is full of meaning and capable of interpretation. But the interpretation is undertaken by means of an allegorising symbolism, without warrant for the universal applicability of the procedure.
S. Dr. Alfred Robitsek calls my attention to the fact that Oriental dream books, of which ours are pitiful plagiarisms, undertake the interpretation of dream elements, mostly according to the assonance and similarity of the words. Since these relationships must be lost by translation into our language, the incomprehensibility of the substitutions in our popular “dream books” may have its origin in this fact. Information as to the extraordinary significance of puns and punning in ancient Oriental systems of culture may be found in the writings of Hugo Winckler. The nicest example of a dream interpretation which has come down to us from antiquity is based on a play upon words. Artemidoros[2] relates the following (p. 225): “It seems to me that Aristandros gives a happy interpretation to Alexander of Macedon. When the latter held Tyros shut in and in a state of siege, and was angry and depressed over the great loss of time, he dreamed that he saw a Satyros dancing on his shield. It happened that Aristandros was near Tyros and in the convoy of the king, who was waging war on the Syrians. By disjoining the word Satyros into σα and τύρος, he induced the king to become more aggressive in the siege, and thus he became master of the city. (Σα τύρος—thine is Tyros.) The dream, indeed, is so intimately connected with verbal expression that Ferenczi[87] may justly remark that every tongue has its own dream language. Dreams are, as a rule, not translatable into other languages.”
T. Breuer and Freud, Studien über Hysterie, Vienna, 1895; 2nd ed. 1909.
U. The complaint, as yet unexplained, of pains in the abdomen, may also be referred to this third person. It is my own wife, of course, who is in question; the abdominal pains remind me of one of the occasions upon which her shyness became evident to me. I must myself admit that I do not treat Irma and my wife very gallantly in this dream, but let it be said for my excuse that I am judging both of them by the standard of the courageous, docile, female patient.
V. I suspect that the interpretation of this portion has not been carried far enough to follow every hidden meaning. If I were to continue the comparison of the three women, I would go far afield. Every dream has at least one point at which it is unfathomable, a central point, as it were, connecting it with the unknown.
W. “Ananas,” moreover, has a remarkable assonance to the family name of my patient Irma.
X. In this the dream did not turn out to be prophetic. But in another sense, it proved correct, for the “unsolved” stomach pains, for which I did not want to be to blame, were the forerunners of a serious illness caused by gall stones.
Y. Even if I have not, as may be understood, given account of everything which occurred to me in connection with the work of interpretation.
Z. The facts about dreams of thirst were known also to Weygandt,[75] who expresses himself about them (p. 11) as follows: “It is just the sensation of thirst which is most accurately registered of all; it always causes a representation of thirst quenching. The manner in which the dream pictures the act of thirst quenching is manifold, and is especially apt to be formed according to a recent reminiscence. Here also a universal phenomenon is that disappointment in the slight efficacy of the supposed refreshments sets in immediately after the idea that thirst has been quenched.” But he overlooks the fact that the reaction of the dream to the stimulus is universal. If other persons who are troubled by thirst at night awake without dreaming beforehand, this does not constitute an objection to my experiment, but characterises those others as persons who sleep poorly.
AA. The dream afterwards accomplished the same purpose in the case of the grandmother, who is older than the child by about seventy years, as it did in the case of the granddaughter. After she had been forced to go hungry for several days on account of the restlessness of her floating kidney, she dreamed, apparently with a transference into the happy time of her flowering maidenhood, that she had been “asked out,” invited as a guest for both the important meals, and each time had been served with the most delicious morsels.
AB. A more searching investigation into the psychic life of the child teaches us, to be sure, that sexual motive powers in infantile forms, which have been too long overlooked, play a sufficiently great part in the psychic activity of the child. This raises some doubt as to the happiness of the child, as imagined later by the adults. Cf. the author’s “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory,” translated by A. A. Brill, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Publishing Company.
AC. It should not be left unmentioned that children sometimes show complex and more obscure dreams, while, on the other hand, adults will often under certain conditions show dreams of an infantile character. How rich in unsuspected material the dreams of children of from four to five years might be is shown by examples in my “Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben” (Jahrbuch, ed. by Bleuler & Freud, 1909), and in Jung’s “Ueber Konflikte der kindlichen Seele” (ebda. ii. vol., 1910). On the other hand, it seems that dreams of an infantile type reappear especially often in adults if they are transferred to unusual conditions of life. Thus Otto Nordenskjold, in his book Antarctic (1904), writes as follows about the crew who passed the winter with him. “Very characteristic for the trend of our inmost thoughts were our dreams, which were never more vivid and numerous than at present. Even those of our comrades with whom dreaming had formerly been an exception had long stories to tell in the morning when we exchanged our experiences in the world of phantasies. They all referred to that outer world which was now so far from us, but they often fitted into our present relations. An especially characteristic dream was the one in which one of our comrades believed himself back on the bench at school, where the task was assigned him of skinning miniature seals which were especially made for the purposes of instruction. Eating and drinking formed the central point around which most of our dreams were grouped. One of us, who was fond of going to big dinner parties at night, was exceedingly glad if he could report in the morning ‘that he had had a dinner consisting of three courses.’ Another dreamed of tobacco—of whole mountains of tobacco; still another dreamed of a ship approaching on the open sea under full sail. Still another dream deserves to be mentioned. The letter carrier brought the mail, and gave a long explanation of why he had had to wait so long for it; he had delivered it at the wrong place, and only after great effort had been able to get it back. To be sure, we occupied ourselves in sleep with still more impossible things, but the lack of phantasy in almost all the dreams which I myself dreamed or heard others relate was quite striking. It would surely have been of great psychological interest if all the dreams could have been noted. But one can readily understand how we longed for sleep. It alone could afford us everything that we all most ardently desired.”
AD. A Hungarian proverb referred to by Ferenczi[87] states more explicitly that “the pig dreams of acorns, the goose of maize.”
AE. It is quite incredible with what stubbornness readers and critics exclude this consideration, and leave unheeded the fundamental differentiation between the manifest and the latent dream content.
AF. It is remarkable how my memory narrows here for the purposes of analysis—while I am awake. I have known five of my uncles, and have loved and honoured one of them. But at the moment when I overcame my resistance to the interpretation of the dream I said to myself, “I have only one uncle, the one who is intended in the dream.”
AG. The word is here used in the original Latin sense instantia, meaning energy, continuance or persistence in doing. (Translator.)
AH. Such hypocritical dreams are not unusual occurrences with me or with others. While I am working up a certain scientific problem, I am visited for many nights in rapid succession by a somewhat confusing dream which has as its content reconciliation with a friend long ago dropped. After three or four attempts, I finally succeeded in grasping the meaning of this dream. It was in the nature of an encouragement to give up the little consideration still left for the person in question, to drop him completely, but it disguised itself shamefacedly in the opposite feeling. I have reported a “hypocritical Oedipus dream” of a person, in which the hostile feelings and the wishes of death of the dream thoughts were replaced by manifest tenderness. (“Typisches Beispiel eines verkappten Oedipustraumes,” Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, Bd. 1, Heft 1–11, 1910.) Another class of hypocritical dreams will be reported in another place.
AI. To sit for the painter. Goethe: “And if he has no backside, how can the nobleman sit?”
AJ. I myself regret the introduction of such passages from the psychopathology of hysteria, which, because of their fragmentary representation and of being torn from all connection with the subject, cannot have a very enlightening influence. If these passages are capable of throwing light upon the intimate relations between the dream and the psychoneuroses, they have served the purpose for which I have taken them up.
AK. Something like the smoked salmon in the dream of the deferred supper.
AL. It often happens that a dream is told incompletely, and that a recollection of the omitted portions appears only in the course of the analysis. These portions subsequently fitted in, regularly furnish the key to the interpretation. Cf. below, about forgetting in dreams.
AM. Similar “counter wish-dreams” have been repeatedly reported to me within the last few years by my pupils who thus reacted to their first encounter with the “wish theory of the dream.”
AN. We may mention here the simplification and modification of this fundamental formula, propounded by Otto Rank: “On the basis and with the help of repressed infantile sexual material, the dream regularly represents as fulfilled actual, and as a rule also erotic, wishes, in a disguised and symbolic form.” (“Ein Traum, der sich selbst deutet,” Jahrbuch, v., Bleuler-Freud, II. B., p. 519, 1910.)
AO. See Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses, p. 133, translated by A. A. Brill, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Monograph Series.
AP. It is clear that the conception of Robert, that the dream is intended to rid our memory of the useless impressions which it has received during the day, is no longer tenable, if indifferent memories of childhood appear in the dream with some degree of frequency. The conclusion would have to be drawn that the dream ordinarily performs very inadequately the duty which is prescribed for it.
AQ. As mentioned in the first chapter, p. 67, H. Swoboda applies broadly to the psychic activity, the biological intervals of twenty-three and twenty-eight days discovered by W. Fliess, and lays especial emphasis upon the fact that these periods are determinant for the appearance of the dream elements in dreams. There would be no material change in dream interpretation if this could be proven, but it would result in a new source for the origin of the dream material. I have recently undertaken some examination of my own dreams in order to test the applicability of the “Period Theory” to the dream material, and I have selected for this purpose especially striking elements of the dream content, whose origin could be definitely ascertained:—
(Fragment).... Somewhere in Italy. Three daughters show me small costly objects, as if in an antiquity shop. At the same time they sit down on my lap. Of one of the pieces I remark: “Why, you got this from me.” I also see distinctly a small profile mask with the angular features of Savonarola.
When have I last seen a picture of Savonarola? According to my travelling diary, I was in Florence on the fourth and fifth of September, and while there thought of showing my travelling companion the plaster medallion of the features of the fanatical monk in the Piazza Signoria, the same place where he met his death by burning. I believe that I called his attention to it at 3 A.M. To be sure, from this impression, until its return in the dream, there was an interval of twenty-seven and one days—a “feminine period,” according to Fliess. But, unfortunately for the demonstrative force of this example, I must add that on the very day of the dream I was visited (the first time after my return) by the able but melancholy-looking colleague whom I had already years before nicknamed “Rabbi Savonarola.” He brought me a patient who had met with an accident on the Pottebba railroad, on which I had myself travelled eight days before, and my thoughts were thus turned to my last Italian journey. The appearance in the dream content of the striking element of Savonarola is explained by the visit of my colleague on the day of the dream; the twenty-eight day interval had no significance in its origin.
I am again studying chemistry in the University laboratory. Court Councillor L. invites me to come to another place, and walks before me in the corridor carrying in front of him in his uplifted hand a lamp or some other instrument, and assuming a peculiar attitude, his head stretched forward. We then come to an open space ... (rest forgotten).
In this dream content, the most striking part is the manner in which Court Councillor L. carries the lamp (or lupe) in front of him, his gaze directed into the distance. I have not seen L. for many years, but I now know that he is only a substitute for another greater person—for Archimedes near the Arethusa fountain in Syracuse, who stands there exactly like L. in the dream, holding the burning mirror and gazing at the besieging army of the Romans. When had I first (and last) seen this monument? According to my notes, it was on the seventeenth day of September, in the evening, and from this date to the dream there really passed 13 and 10, equals 23, days-according to Fliess, a “masculine period.”
But I regret to say that here, too, this connection seems somewhat less inevitable when we enter into the interpretation of this dream. The dream was occasioned by the information, received on the day of the dream, that the lecture-room in the clinic in which I was invited to deliver my lectures had been changed to some other place. I took it for granted that the new room was very inconveniently situated, and said to myself, it is as bad as not having any lecture-room at my disposal. My thoughts must have then taken me back to the time when I first became a docent, when I really had no lecture-room, and when, in my efforts to get one, I met with little encouragement from the very influential gentlemen councillors and professors. In my distress at that time, I appealed to L., who then had the title of dean, and whom I considered kindly disposed. He promised to help me, but that was all I ever heard from him. In the dream he is the Archimedes, who gives me the πήστω and leads me into the other room. That neither the desire for revenge nor the consciousness of one’s own importance is absent in this dream will be readily divined by those familiar with dream interpretation. I must conclude, however, that without this motive for the dream, Archimedes would hardly have got into the dream that night. I am not certain whether the strong and still recent impression of the statue in Syracuse did not also come to the surface at a different interval of time.
(Fragment) ... Something about Professor Oser, who himself prepared the menu for me, which served to restore me to great peace of mind (rest forgotten).
The dream was a reaction to the digestive disturbances of this day, which made me consider asking one of my colleagues to arrange a diet for me. That in the dream I selected for this purpose Professor Oser, who had died in the summer, is based on the recent death (October 1) of another university teacher, whom I highly revered. But when did Oser die, and when did I hear of his death? According to the newspaper notice, he died on the 22nd of August, but as I was at the time in Holland, whither my Vienna newspapers were regularly sent me, I must have read the obituary notice on the 24th or 25th of August. This interval no longer corresponds to any period. It takes in 7 and 30 and 2, equals 39, days, or perhaps 38 days. I cannot recall having spoken or thought of Oser during this interval.
Such intervals as were not available for the “period theory” without further elaboration, were shown from my dreams to be far more frequent than the regular ones. As maintained in the text, the only thing constantly found is the relation to an impression of the day of the dream itself.
AR. Cf. my essay, “Ueber Deckerinnerungen,” in the Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie, 1899.
AS. Ger., blühend.
AT. The tendency of the dream function to fuse everything of interest which is present into simultaneous treatment has already been noticed by several authors, for instance, by Delage,[15] p. 41, Delbœuf,[16] Rapprochement Forcé, p. 236.
AU. The dream of Irma’s injection; the dream of the friend who is my uncle.
AV. The dream of the funeral oration of the young physician.
AW. The dream of the botanical monograph.
AX. The dreams of my patients during analysis are mostly of this kind.
AY. Cf. Chap. VII. upon “Transference.”
AZ. Substitution of the opposite, as will become clear to us after interpretation.
BA. The Prater is the principal drive of Vienna. (Transl.)
BB. I have long since learned that it only requires a little courage to fulfil even such unattainable wishes.
BC. In the first edition there was printed here the name Hasdrubal, a confusing error, the explanation of which I have given in my Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens.
BD. A street in Vienna.
BE. Fensterln is the practice, now falling into disuse, found in rural districts of the German Schwarzwald, of lovers wooing at the windows of their sweethearts, bringing ladders with them, and becoming so intimate that they practically enjoy a system of trial marriages. The reputation of the young woman never suffers on account of fensterln, unless she becomes intimate with too many suitors. (Translator.)
BF. Both the emotions which belong to these childish scenes—astonishment and resignation to the inevitable—had appeared in a dream shortly before, which was the first thing that brought back the memory of this childhood experience.
BG. I do not elaborate plagiostomi purposely; they recall an occasion of angry disgrace before the same teacher.
BH. Cf. Maury’s dream about kilo-lotto, p. 50.
BI. Popo = backside in German nursery language.
BJ. This repetition has insinuated itself into the text of the dream apparently through my absent-mindedness, and I allow it to remain because the analysis shows that it has its significance.
BK. Not in Germinal, but in La Terre—a mistake of which I became aware only in the analysis. I may call attention also to the identity of the letters in Huflattich and Flatus.
BL. Translator’s note.
BM. In his significant work (“Phantasie und Mythos,” Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse, Bd. ii., 1910), H. Silberer has endeavoured to show from this part of the dream that the dream-work is able to reproduce not only the latent dream thoughts, but also the psychic processes in the dream formation (“Das functionale Phänomen”).
BN. Another interpretation: He is one-eyed like Odin, the father of the gods ... Odin’s consolation. The consolation in the childish scene, that I will buy him a new bed.
BO. I here add some material for interpretation. Holding the urinal 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.
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.
BQ. In the two sources from which I am acquainted with this dream, the report of its contents do not agree.
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.
BS. “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
BT. The child also appears in the fairy tale, for there a child suddenly calls: “Why, he hasn’t anything on at all.”
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.
BV. For obvious reasons the presence of the “whole family” in the dream has the same significance.
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”?
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.
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.
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.
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.”