The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud

CD. Another of the great creations of tragic poetry, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is founded on the same basis as the Oedipus. But the whole difference in the psychic life of the two widely separated periods of civilisation—the age-long progress of repression in the emotional life of humanity—is made manifest in the changed treatment of the identical material. In Oedipus the basic wish-phantasy of the child is brought to light and realised as it is in the dream; in Hamlet it remains repressed, and we learn of its existence—somewhat as in the case of a neurosis—only by the inhibition which results from it. The fact that it is possible to remain in complete darkness concerning the character of the hero, has curiously shown itself to be consistent with the overpowering effect of the modern drama. The play is based upon Hamlet’s hesitation to accomplish the avenging task which has been assigned to him; the text does not avow the reasons or motives of this hesitation, nor have the numerous attempts at interpretation succeeded in giving them. According to the conception which is still current to-day, and which goes back to Goethe, Hamlet represents the type of man whose prime energy is paralysed by over-development of thought activity. (“Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”) According to others the poet has attempted to portray a morbid, vacillating character who is subject to neurasthenia. The plot of the story, however, teaches us that Hamlet is by no means intended to appear as a person altogether incapable of action. Twice we see him asserting himself actively, once in headlong passion, where he stabs the eavesdropper behind the arras, and on another occasion where he sends the two courtiers to the death which has been intended for himself—doing this deliberately, even craftily, and with all the lack of compunction of a prince of the Renaissance. What is it, then, that restrains him in the accomplishment of the task which his father’s ghost has set before him? Here the explanation offers itself that it is the peculiar nature of this task. Hamlet can do everything but take vengeance upon the man who has put his father out of the way, and has taken his father’s place with his mother—upon the man who shows him the realisation of his repressed childhood wishes. The loathing which ought to drive him to revenge is thus replaced in him by self-reproaches, by conscientious scruples, which represent to him that he himself is no better than the murderer whom he is to punish. I have thus translated into consciousness what had to remain unconscious in the mind of the hero; if some one wishes to call Hamlet a hysteric subject I cannot but recognise it as an inference from my interpretation. The sexual disinclination which Hamlet expresses in conversation with Ophelia, coincides very well with this view—it is the same sexual disinclination which was to take possession of the poet more and more during the next few years of his life, until the climax of it is expressed in Timon of Athens. Of course it can only be the poet’s own psychology with which we are confronted in Hamlet; from a work on Shakespeare by George Brandes (1896), I take the fact that the drama was composed immediately after the death of Shakespeare’s father—that is to say, in the midst of recent mourning for him—during the revival, we may assume, of his childhood emotion towards his father. It is also known that a son of Shakespeare’s, who died early, bore the name of Hamnet (identical with Hamlet). Just as Hamlet treats of the relation of the son to his parents, Macbeth, which appears subsequently, is based upon the theme of childlessness. Just as every neurotic symptom, just as the dream itself, is capable of re-interpretation, and even requires it in order to be perfectly intelligible, so every genuine poetical creation must have proceeded from more than one motive, more than one impulse in the mind of the poet, and must admit of more than one interpretation. I have here attempted to interpret only the most profound group of impulses in the mind of the creative poet. The conception of the Hamlet problem contained in these remarks has been later confirmed in a detailed work based on many new arguments by Dr. Ernest Jones, of Toronto (Canada). The connection of the Hamlet material with the “Mythus von der Geburt des Helden” has also been demonstrated by O. Rank.—“The Oedipus Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet’s Mystery: a Study in Motive” (American Journal of Psychology, January 1910, vol. xxi.).

CE. Likewise, anything large, over-abundant, enormous, and exaggerated, may be a childish characteristic. The child knows no more intense wish than to become big, and to receive as much of everything as grown-ups; the child is hard to satisfy; it knows no enough, and insatiably demands the repetition of whatever has pleased it or tasted good to it. It learns to practise moderation, to be modest and resigned, only through culture and education. As is well known, the neurotic is also inclined toward immoderation and excess.

CF. While Dr. Jones was delivering a lecture before an American scientific society, and speaking of egotism in dreams, a learned lady took exception to this unscientific generalisation. She thought that the lecturer could only pronounce such judgment on the dreams of Austrians, and had no right to include the dreams of Americans. As for herself she was sure that all her dreams were strictly altruistic.

CG. According to C. G. Jung, dreams of dental irritation in the case of women have the significance of parturition dreams.

CH. Cf. the “biographic” dream on p. 235.

CI. As the dreams of pulling teeth, and teeth falling out, are interpreted in popular belief to mean the death of a close friend, and as psychoanalysis can at most only admit of such a meaning in the above indicated parodical sense, I insert here a dream of dental irritation placed at my disposal by Otto Rank ^[109].

Upon the subject of dreams of dental irritation I have received the following report from a colleague who has for some time taken a lively interest in the problems of dream interpretation:

I recently dreamed that I went to the dentist who drilled out one of my back teeth in the lower jaw. He worked so long at it that the tooth became useless. He then grasped it with the forceps, and pulled it out with such perfect ease that it astonished me. He said that I should not care about it, as this was not really the tooth that had been treated; and he put it on the table where the tooth (as it seems to me now an upper incisor) fell apart into many strata. I arose from the operating chair, stepped inquisitively nearer, and, full of interest, put a medical question. While the doctor separated the individual pieces of the strikingly white tooth and ground them up (pulverised them) with an instrument, he explained to me that this had some connection with puberty, and that the teeth come out so easily only before puberty; the decisive moment for this in women is the birth of a child. I then noticed (as I believe half awake) that this dream was accompanied by a pollution which I cannot however definitely place at a particular point in the dream; I am inclined to think that it began with the pulling out of the tooth.

I then continued to dream something which I can no longer remember, which ended with the fact that I had left my hat and coat somewhere (perhaps at the dentist’s), hoping that they would be brought after me, and dressed only in my overcoat I hastened to catch a departing train. I succeeded at the last moment in jumping upon the last car, where someone was already standing. I could not, however, get inside the car, but was compelled to make the journey in an uncomfortable position, from which I attempted to escape with final success. We journeyed through a long tunnel, in which two trains from the opposite direction passed through our own train as if it were a tunnel. I looked in as from the outside through a car window.

As material for the interpretation of this dream, we obtained the following experiences and thoughts of the dreamer:—

I. For a short time I had actually been under dental treatment, and at the time of the dream I was suffering from continual pains in the tooth of my lower jaw, which was drilled out in the dream, and on which the dentist had in fact worked longer than I liked. On the forenoon of the day of the dream I had again gone to the doctor’s on account of the pain, and he had suggested that I should allow him to pull out another tooth than the one treated in the same jaw, from which the pain probably came. It was a ‘wisdom tooth’ which was just breaking through. On this occasion, and in this connection, I had put a question to his conscience as a physician.

II. On the afternoon of the same day I was obliged to excuse myself to a lady for my irritable disposition on account of the toothache, upon which she told me that she was afraid to have one of her roots pulled, though the crown was almost completely gone. She thought that the pulling out of eye teeth was especially painful and dangerous, although some acquaintance had told her that this was much easier when it was a tooth of the lower jaw. It was such a tooth in her case. The same acquaintance also told her that while under an anæsthetic one of her false teeth had been pulled—a statement which increased her fear of the necessary operation. She then asked me whether by eye teeth one was to understand molars or canines, and what was known about them. I then called her attention to the vein of superstitions in all these meanings, without however, emphasising the real significance of some of the popular views. She knew from her own experience, a very old and general popular belief, according to which if a pregnant woman has toothache she will give birth to a boy.

III. This saying interested me in its relation to the typical significance of dreams of dental irritation as a substitute for onanism as maintained by Freud in his Traumdeutung (2nd edition, p. 193), for the teeth and the male genital (Bub-boy) are brought in certain relations even in the popular saying. On the evening of the same day I therefore read the passage in question in the Traumdeutung, and found there among other things the statements which will be quoted in a moment, the influence of which on my dream is as plainly recognisable as the influence of the two above-mentioned experiences. Freud writes concerning dreams of dental irritation that ‘in the case of men nothing else than cravings for masturbation from the time of puberty furnishes the motive power for these dreams,’ p. 193. Further, ‘I am of the opinion that the frequent modifications of the typical dream of dental irritation—that e.g. of another person drawing the tooth from the dreamer’s mouth—are made intelligible by means of the same explanation. It may seem problematic, however, how “dental irritation” can arrive at this significance. I here call attention to the transference from below to above (in the dream in question from the lower to the upper jaw), which occurs so frequently, which is at the service of sexual repression, and by means of which all kinds of sensations and intentions occurring in hysteria which ought to be enacted in the genitals can be realised upon less objectionable parts of the body,’ p. 194. ‘But I must also refer to another connection contained in an idiomatic expression. In our country there is in use an indelicate designation for the act of masturbation, namely: To pull one out, or to pull one down,’ p. 195, 2nd edition. This expression had been familiar to me in early youth as a designation for onanism, and from here on it will not be difficult for the experienced dream interpreter to get access to the infantile material which may lie at the basis of this dream. I only wish to add that the facility with which the tooth in the dream came out, and the fact that it became transformed after coming out into an upper incisor, recalls to me an experience of childhood when I myself easily and painlessly pulled out one of my wobbling front teeth. This episode, which I can still to this day distinctly remember with all its details, happened at the same early period in which my first conscious attempts at onanism began—(Concealing Memory). The reference of Freud to an assertion of C. G. Jung that dreams of dental irritation in women signify parturition (footnote p. 194), together with the popular belief in the significance of toothache in pregnant women, has established an opposition between the feminine significance and the masculine (puberty). In this connection I recall an earlier dream which I dreamed soon after I was discharged by the dentist after the treatment, that the gold crowns which had just been put in fell out, whereupon I was greatly chagrined in the dream on account of the considerable expense, concerning which I had not yet stopped worrying. In view of a certain experience this dream now becomes comprehensible as a commendation of the material advantages of masturbation when contrasted with every form of the economically less advantageous object-love (gold crowns are also Austrian gold coins).

Theoretically this case seems to show a double interest. First it verifies the connection revealed by Freud, inasmuch as the ejaculation in the dream takes place during the act of tooth-pulling. For no matter in what form a pollution may appear, we are obliged to look upon it as a masturbatic gratification which takes place without the help of mechanical excitation. Moreover the gratification by pollution in this case does not take place, as is usually the case, through an imaginary object, but it is without an object; and, if one may be allowed to say so, it is purely autoerotic, or at most it perhaps shows a slight homosexual thread (the dentist).

The second point which seems to be worth mentioning is the following: The objection is quite obvious that we are seeking here to validate the Freudian conception in a quite superfluous manner, for the experiences of the reading itself are perfectly sufficient to explain to us the content of the dream. The visit to the dentist, the conversation with the lady, and the reading of the Traumdeutung are sufficient to explain why the sleeper, who was also disturbed during the night by toothache, should dream this dream, it may even explain the removal of the sleep-disturbing pain (by means of the presentation of the removal of the painful tooth and simultaneous over-accentuation of the dreaded painful sensation through libido). But no matter how much of this assumption we may admit, we cannot earnestly maintain that the readings of Freud’s explanations have produced in the dreamer the connection of the tooth-pulling with the act of masturbation; it could not even have been made effective had it not been for the fact, as the dreamer himself admitted (‘to pull one off’) that this association had already been formed long ago. What may have still more stimulated this association in connection with the conversation with the lady is shown by a later assertion of the dreamer that while reading the Traumdeutung he could not, for obvious reasons, believe in this typical meaning of dreams of dental irritation, and entertained the wish to know whether it held true for all dreams of this nature. The dream now confirms this at least for his own person, and shows him why he had to doubt it. The dream is therefore also in this respect the fulfilment of a wish; namely, to be convinced of the importance and stability of this conception of Freud.

CJ. A young colleague, who is entirely free from nervousness, tells me in this connection: “I know from my own experience that while swinging, and at the moment at which the downward movement had the greatest impetus, I used to get a curious feeling in my genitals, which I must designate, although it was not really pleasant to me, as a voluptuous feeling.” I have often heard from patients that their first erections accompanied by voluptuous sensations had occurred in boyhood while they were climbing. It is established with complete certainty by psychoanalyses that the first sexual impulses have often originated in the scufflings and wrestlings of childhood.

CK. This naturally holds true only for German-speaking dreamers who are acquainted with the vulgarism “vögeln.”

CL. Sammlung kl. Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, zweite Folge, 1909.

CM. Cf. the author’s Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, translated by A. A. Brill.

CN. W. Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes, 1911.

CO. Alf. Adler, “Der Psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der Neurose,” Fortschritte der Medizin, 1910, No. 16, and later works in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, 1, 1910–1911.

CP. I have published a typical example of such a veiled Oedipus dream in No. 1 of the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse; another with a detailed analysis was reported in the same journal, No. IV., by Otto Rank. Indeed the ancients were not unfamiliar with the symbolic interpretation of the open Oedipus dream (see O. Rank,^[108] p. 534); thus a dream of sexual relations with the mother has been transmitted to us by Julius Cæsar which the oneiroscopists interpreted as a favourable omen for taking possession of the earth (Mother-earth). It is also known that the oracle declared to the Tarquinii that that one of them would become ruler of Rome who should first kiss the mother (osculum, matri tulerit), which Brutus conceived as referring to the mother-earth (terram osculo contigit, scilicet quod ea communia mater omnium mortalium esset, Livius, I., lxi.). These myths and interpretations point to a correct psychological knowledge. I have found that persons who consider themselves preferred or favoured by their mothers manifest in life that confidence in themselves and that firm optimism which often seems heroic and brings about real success by force.

CQ. It is only of late that I have learned to value the significance of fancies and unconscious thoughts about life in the womb. They contain the explanation of the curious fear felt by so many people of being buried alive, as well as the profoundest unconscious reason for the belief in a life after death which represents nothing but a projection into the future of this mysterious life before birth. The act of birth, moreover, is the first experience with fear, and is thus the source and model of the emotion of fear.

CR. For such a dream see Pfister: “Ein Fall von Psychoanalytischer Seelensorge und Seelenheilung,” Evangelische Freiheit, 1909. Concerning the symbol of “saving” see my lecture, “Die Zukünftigen Chancen der psychoanalytischen Therapie,” Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, No. I., 1910. Also “Beiträge zur Psychologie des Liebeslebens, I. Ueber einen besonderen Typus der objektwahl beim Manne,” Jahrbuch, Bleuler-Freud, vol. ii., 1910.

CS. Cf. the works of Bleuler and of his pupils Maeder, Abraham, and others of the Zürich school upon symbolism, and of those authors who are not physicians (Kleinpaul and others), to which they refer.

CT. In this country the President, the Governor, and the Mayor often represent the father in the dream. (Translator.)

CU. I may here repeat what I have said in another place (“Die Zukünftigen Chancen der psychoanalytischen Therapie,” Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, I., No. 1 and 2, 1910): “Some time ago I learned that a psychologist who is unfamiliar with our work remarked to one of my friends that we are surely over-estimating the secret sexual significance of dreams. He stated that his most frequent dream was of climbing a stairway, and that there was surely nothing sexual behind this. Our attention having been called to this objection, we directed our investigations to the occurrence of stairways, stairs, and ladders in the dream, and we soon ascertained that stairs (or anything analogous to them) represent a definite symbol of coitus. The basis for this comparison is not difficult to find; under rhythmic intervals and with increasing difficulty in breathing one reaches to a height, and may come down again in a few rapid jumps. Thus the rhythm of coitus is recognisable in climbing stairs. Let us not forget to consider the usage of language. It shows us that the “climbing” or “mounting” is, without further addition, used as a substitutive designation of the sexual act. In French the step of the stairway is called “la marche”; “un vieux marcheur” corresponds exactly to our “an old climber.””

CV. In this country where the word “necktie” is almost exclusively used, the translator has also found it to be a symbol of a burdensome woman from whom the dreamer longs to be freed—“necktie—something tied to my neck like a heavy weight—my fiancée,” are the associations from the dream of a man who eventually broke his marriage engagement.

CW. In spite of all the differences between Scherner’s conception of dream symbolism and the one developed here, I must still assert that Scherner^[58] should be recognised as the true discoverer of symbolism in dreams, and that the experience of psychoanalysis has brought his book into honourable repute after it had been considered fantastic for about fifty years.

CX. From “Nachträge zur Traumdeutung,” Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, I., No. 5 and 6, 1911.

CY. “Beiträge zur Traumdeutung,” Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyt. und psychop. Forsch., Bd. I., 1909, p. 473. Here also (p. 475) a dream is reported in which a hat with a feather standing obliquely in the middle symbolises the (impotent) man.

CZ. Cf. Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, I.

DA. Or chapel-vagina.

DB. Symbol of coitus.

DE. Demons in cloaks and capucines are, according to the explanation of a man versed in the subject, of a phallic nature.

DF. The two halves of the scrotum.

DG. See Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, vol. i., p. 2.

DH. This Hebrew word is well known in German-speaking countries, even among non-Jews, and signifies an unlucky, awkward person. (Translator.)

DI. In estimating this description of the author one may recall the significance of stairway dreams, referred to on p. 246.

DJ. The fantastic nature of the situation relating to the nurse of the dreamer is shown by the objectively ascertained circumstance that the nurse in this case was his mother. Furthermore, I may call attention to the regret of the young man in the anecdote (p. 172), that he had not taken better advantage of his opportunity with the nurse as probably the source of the present dream.

DK. This is the real inciter of the dream.

DL. By way of supplement. Such books are poison to a young girl. She herself in youth had drawn much information from forbidden books.

DM. A further train of thought leads to Penthesileia by the same author: cruelty towards her lover.

DN. Given by translator as author’s example could not be translated.

DO. The same analysis and synthesis of syllables—a veritable chemistry of syllables—serves us for many a jest in waking life. “What is the cheapest method of obtaining silver? You go to a field where silver-berries are growing and pick them; then the berries are eliminated and the silver remains in a free state.” The first person who read and criticised this book made the objection to me—which other readers will probably repeat—“that the dreamer often appears too witty.” That is true, as long as it applies to the dreamer; it involves a condemnation only when its application is extended to the interpreter of the dream. In waking reality I can make very little claim to the predicate “witty”; if my dreams appear witty, this is not the fault of my individuality, but of the peculiar psychological conditions under which the dream is fabricated, and is intimately connected with the theory of wit and the comical. The dream becomes witty because the shortest and most direct way to the expression of its thoughts is barred for it: the dream is under constraint. My readers may convince themselves that the dreams of my patients give the impression of being witty (attempting to be witty), in the same degree and in a greater than my own. Nevertheless this reproach impelled me to compare the technique of wit with the dream activity, which I have done in a book published in 1905, on Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious. (Author.)

DP. Lasker died of progressive paralysis, that is of the consequences of an infection caught from a woman (lues); Lasalle, as is well known, was killed in a duel on account of a lady.

DQ. In the case of a young man who was suffering from obsessions, but whose intellectual functions were intact and highly developed, I recently found the only exception to this rule. The speeches which occurred in his dreams did not originate in speeches which he had heard or had made himself, but corresponded to the undisfigured wording of his obsessive thoughts, which only came to his consciousness in a changed state while he was awake.

DR. Psychic intensity, value, and emphasis due to the interest of an idea are, of course, to be kept distinct from sensational intensity, and from intensity of that which is conceived.

DS. Since I consider this reference of dream disfigurement to the censor as the essence of my dream theory, I here insert the latter portion of a story “Traumen wie Wachen” from Phantasien eines Realisten, by Lynkus, Vienna, (second edition, 1900), in which I find this chief feature of my theory reproduced:—

“Concerning a man who possesses the remarkable quality of never dreaming nonsense....”

“Your marvellous characteristic of dreaming as you wake is based upon your virtues, upon your goodness, your justice, and your love for truth; it is the moral clearness of your nature which makes everything about you intelligible.”

“But if you think the matter over carefully,” replied the other, “I almost believe that all people are created as I am, and that no human being ever dreams nonsense! A dream which is so distinctly remembered that it can be reproduced, which is therefore no dream of delirium, always has a meaning; why, it cannot be otherwise! For that which is in contradiction with itself can never be grouped together as a whole. The fact that time and space are often thoroughly shaken up detracts nothing from the real meaning of the dream, because neither of them has had any significance whatever for its essential contents. We often do the same thing in waking life; think of the fairy-tale, of many daring and profound phantastic creations, about which only an ignorant person would say: ‘That is nonsense! For it is impossible.’”

“If it were only always possible to interpret dreams correctly, as you have just done with mine!” said the friend.

“That is certainly not an easy task, but the dreamer himself ought always to succeed in doing it with a little concentration of attention.... You ask why it is generally impossible? Your dreams seem to conceal something secret, something unchaste of a peculiar and higher nature, a certain mystery in your nature which cannot easily be revealed by thought; and it is for that reason that your dreaming seems so often to be without meaning, or even to be a contradiction. But in the profoundest sense this is by no means the case; indeed it cannot be true at all, for it is always the same person, whether he is asleep or awake.”

DT. I have since given the complete analysis and synthesis of two dreams in the Bruchstueck einer Hysterieanalyse, 1905.

DU. From a work of K. Abel, Der Gegensinn der Urworte, 1884 (see my review of it in the Bleuler-Freud Jahrbuch, II., 1910), I learned with surprise a fact which is confirmed by other philologists, that the oldest languages behaved in this regard quite like the dream. They originally had only one word for both extremes in a series of qualities or activities (strong—weak, old—young, far—near, to tie—to separate), and formed separate designations for the two extremes only secondarily through slight modifications of the common primitive word. Abel demonstrated these relationships with rare exceptions in the old Egyptian, and he was able to show distinct remnants of the same development in the Semitic and Indo-Germanic languages.

DV. If I do not know behind which of the persons which occur in the dream I am to look for my ego, I observe the following rule: That person in the dream who is subject to an emotion which I experience while asleep, is the one that conceals my ego.

DW. The hysterical attack sometimes uses the same device—the inversion of time-relations—for the purpose of concealing its meaning from the spectator. The attack of a hysterical girl, for example, consists in enacting a little romance, which she has unconsciously fancied in connection with an encounter in the street car. A man, attracted by the beauty of her foot, addresses her while she is reading, whereupon she goes with him and experiences a stormy love scene. Her attack begins with the representation of this scene in writhing movements of the body (accompanied by motions of the lips to signify kissing, entwining of the arms for embraces), whereupon she hurries into another room, sits down in a chair, lifts her skirt in order to show her foot, acts as though she were about to read a book, and speaks to me (answers me).

DX. Accompanying hysterical symptoms: Failure to menstruate and profound depression, which was the chief ailment of the patient.

DY. A reference to a childhood experience is after complete analysis shown to exist by the following intermediaries: “The Moor has done his duty, the Moor may go.” And then follows the waggish question: “How old is the Moor when he has done his duty? One year. Then he may go.” (It is said that I came into the world with so much black curly hair that my young mother declared me to be a Moor.) The circumstance that I do not find my hat is an experience of the day which has been turned to account with various significations. Our servant, who is a genius at stowing away things, had hidden the hat. A suppression of sad thoughts about death is also concealed behind the conclusion of the dream: “I have not nearly done my duty yet; I may not go yet.” Birth and death, as in the dream that occurred shortly before about Goethe and the paralytic (p. 345).

DZ. Cf. Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, 2nd edit. 1912, and “word-bridges,” in the solutions of neurotic symptoms.

EA. In general it is doubtful in the interpretation of every element of the dream whether it—

(a) is to be regarded as having a negative or a positive sense (relation of opposition);

(b) is to be interpreted historically (as a reminiscence);

(d) its valuation is to be based upon the sound of its verbal expression.

In spite of this manifold signification, it may be said that the representation of the dream activity does not impose upon the translator any greater difficulties than the ancient writers of hieroglyphics imposed upon their readers.

EB. For the interpretation of this preliminary dream, which is to be regarded as “casual,” see p. 292.

ED. High birth, the wish contrast to the preliminary dream.

EE. A composite image, which unites two localities, the so-called garret (German Boden—floor, garret) of her father’s house, in which she played with her brother, the object of her later fancies, and the garden of a malicious uncle, who used to tease her.

EF. Wish contrast to an actual memory of her uncle’s garden, to the effect that she used to expose herself while she was asleep.

EG. Just as the angel bears a lily stem in the Annunciation.

EH. For the explanation of this composite image, see p. 296; innocence, menstruation, Camille.

EI. Referring to the plurality of the persons who serve the purpose of her fancy.

EJ. Whether it is permitted to “pull one off,” i.e. to masturbate.

EK. The bough has long since been used to represent the male genital, and besides that it contains a very distinct allusion to the family name of the dreamer.

EL. Refers to matrimonial precautions, as does that which follows.

EM. An analogous “biographical” dream was reported on p. 252, as the third of the examples of dream symbolism; a second example is the one fully reported by Rank^[106] under the title “Traum der sich selbst deutet”; for another one which must be read in the “opposite direction,” see Stekel^[114], p. 486.

EN. Given by translator as author’s example could not be translated.

EO. The neurosis also proceeds in the same manner. I know a patient who involuntarily—contrary to her own wishes—hears (hallucinatory) songs or fragments of songs without being able to understand their meaning to her psychic life. She is surely not a paranoiac. Analysis showed that she wrongly utilised the text of these songs by means of a certain license. “Oh thou blissful one, Oh thou happy one,” is the beginning of a Christmas song. By not continuing it to the word “Christmas time” she makes a bridal song out of it, &c. The same mechanism of disfigurement may take place also without hallucinations as a mere mental occurrence.

EP. As a contribution to the over-determination: My excuse for coming late was that after working late at night I had in the morning to make the long journey from Kaiser Josef Street to Waehringer Street.

EQ. In addition Cæsar—Kaiser.

ER. I have forgotten in what author I found a dream mentioned that was overrun with unusually small figures, the source of which turned out to be one of the engravings of Jacques Callot, which the dreamer had looked at during the day. These engravings contained an enormous number of very small figures; a series of them treats of the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War.

ES. The frequency with which in the dream dead persons appear as living, act, and deal with us, has called forth undue astonishment and given rise to strange explanations, from which our ignorance of the dream becomes strikingly evident. And yet the explanation for these dreams lies very close at hand. How often we have occasion to think: “If father were still alive, what would he say to it?” The dream can express this if in no other way than by present time in a definite situation. Thus, for instance, a young man, whose grandfather has left him a great inheritance, dreams that his grandfather is alive and demands an accounting of him, upon an occasion when the young man had been reproached for making too great an expenditure of money. What we consider a resistance to the dream—the objection made by our better knowledge, that after all the man is already dead—is in reality a consolation, because the dead person did not have this or that experience, or satisfaction at the knowledge that he has nothing more to say.

Another form of absurdity found in dreams of deceased relatives does not express folly and absurdity, but serves to represent the most extreme rejection; as the representation of a repressed thought which one would gladly have appear as something least thought of. Dreams of this kind are only solvable if one recalls that the dream makes no distinction between things desired and realities. Thus, for example, a man who nursed his father during his sickness, and who felt his death very keenly, sometime afterward dreamed the following senseless dream: The father was again living, and conversed with him as usual, but (the remarkable thing about it) he had nevertheless died, though he did not know it. This dream can be understood if after “he had nevertheless died,” one inserts in consequence of the dreamer’s wish, and if after “but he did not know it” one adds that the dreamer has entertained this wish. While nursing his father, the son often wishes his father’s death; i.e. he entertained the really compassionate desire that death finally put an end to his suffering. While mourning after his death, this very wish of compassion became an unconscious reproach, as if it had really contributed to shorten the life of the sick man. Through the awakening of early infantile feelings against the father, it became possible to express this reproach as a dream; and it was just because of the world-wide contrast between the dream inciter and day thought that this dream had to come out so absurdly (cf. with this, “Formulierungen über die zwei Prinzipien des seelischen Geschehens,” Jahrbuch, Bleuler-Freud, III, 1, 1911).