When we awoke in the morning,
something
again passed between us.
Dream Psychology by Sigmund Freud
This assertion is not drawn from dreams
obviously of a sexual nature, which are known to all dreamers from their
own experience, and are the only ones usually described as "sexual
dreams. " These dreams are ever sufficiently mysterious by reason of the
choice of persons who are made the objects of sex, the removal of all
the barriers which cry halt to the dreamer's sexual needs in his waking
state, the many strange reminders as to details of what are called
perversions. But analysis discovers that, in many other dreams in whose
manifest content nothing erotic can be found, the work of interpretation
shows them up as, in reality, realization of sexual desires; whilst, on
the other hand, that much of the thought-making when awake, the thoughts
saved us as surplus from the day only, reaches presentation in dreams
with the help of repressed erotic desires.
Towards the explanation of this statement, which is no theoretical
postulate, it must be remembered that no other class of instincts has
required so vast a suppression at the behest of civilization as the
sexual, whilst their mastery by the highest psychical processes are in
most persons soonest of all relinquished. Since we have learnt to
understand _infantile sexuality_, often so vague in its expression, so
invariably overlooked and misunderstood, we are justified in saying that
nearly every civilized person has retained at some point or other the
infantile type of sex life; thus we understand that repressed infantile
sex desires furnish the most frequent and most powerful impulses for the
formation of dreams. [1]
If the dream, which is the expression of some erotic desire, succeeds in
making its manifest content appear innocently asexual, it is only
possible in one way. The matter of these sexual presentations cannot be
exhibited as such, but must be replaced by allusions, suggestions, and
similar indirect means; differing from other cases of indirect
presentation, those used in dreams must be deprived of direct
understanding. The means of presentation which answer these requirements
are commonly termed "symbols. " A special interest has been directed
towards these, since it has been observed that the dreamers of the same
language use the like symbols--indeed, that in certain cases community
of symbol is greater than community of speech. Since the dreamers do not
themselves know the meaning of the symbols they use, it remains a puzzle
whence arises their relationship with what they replace and denote. The
fact itself is undoubted, and becomes of importance for the technique of
the interpretation of dreams, since by the aid of a knowledge of this
symbolism it is possible to understand the meaning of the elements of a
dream, or parts of a dream, occasionally even the whole dream itself,
without having to question the dreamer as to his own ideas. We thus come
near to the popular idea of an interpretation of dreams, and, on the
other hand, possess again the technique of the ancients, among whom the
interpretation of dreams was identical with their explanation through
symbolism.
Though the study of dream symbolism is far removed from finality, we now
possess a series of general statements and of particular observations
which are quite certain. There are symbols which practically always have
the same meaning: Emperor and Empress (King and Queen) always mean the
parents; room, a woman[2], and so on. The sexes are represented by a
great variety of symbols, many of which would be at first quite
incomprehensible had not the clews to the meaning been often obtained
through other channels.
There are symbols of universal circulation, found in all dreamers, of
one range of speech and culture; there are others of the narrowest
individual significance which an individual has built up out of his own
material. In the first class those can be differentiated whose claim can
be at once recognized by the replacement of sexual things in common
speech (those, for instance, arising from agriculture, as reproduction,
seed) from others whose sexual references appear to reach back to the
earliest times and to the obscurest depths of our image-building. The
power of building symbols in both these special forms of symbols has not
died out. Recently discovered things, like the airship, are at once
brought into universal use as sex symbols.
It would be quite an error to suppose that a profounder knowledge of
dream symbolism (the "Language of Dreams") would make us independent of
questioning the dreamer regarding his impressions about the dream, and
would give us back the whole technique of ancient dream interpreters.
Apart from individual symbols and the variations in the use of what is
general, one never knows whether an element in the dream is to be
understood symbolically or in its proper meaning; the whole content of
the dream is certainly not to be interpreted symbolically. The knowledge
of dream symbols will only help us in understanding portions of the
dream content, and does not render the use of the technical rules
previously given at all superfluous. But it must be of the greatest
service in interpreting a dream just when the impressions of the dreamer
are withheld or are insufficient.
Dream symbolism proves also indispensable for understanding the
so-called "typical" dreams and the dreams that "repeat themselves. "
Dream symbolism leads us far beyond the dream; it does not belong only
to dreams, but is likewise dominant in legend, myth, and saga, in wit
and in folklore. It compels us to pursue the inner meaning of the dream
in these productions. But we must acknowledge that symbolism is not a
result of the dream work, but is a peculiarity probably of our
unconscious thinking, which furnishes to the dream work the matter for
condensation, displacement, and dramatization.
[1] Freud, "Three Contributions to Sexual Theory," translated by A. A.
Brill (_Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease_ Publishing Company, New
York).
[2] The words from "and" to "channels" in the next sentence is a short
summary of the passage in the original. As this book will be read by
other than professional people the passage has not been translated, in
deference to English opinion. --TRANSLATOR.
IV
DREAM ANALYSIS
Perhaps we shall now begin to suspect that dream interpretation is
capable of giving us hints about the structure of our psychic apparatus
which we have thus far expected in vain from philosophy. We shall not,
however, follow this track, but return to our original problem as soon
as we have cleared up the subject of dream-disfigurement. The question
has arisen how dreams with disagreeable content can be analyzed as the
fulfillment of wishes. We see now that this is possible in case
dream-disfigurement has taken place, in case the disagreeable content
serves only as a disguise for what is wished. Keeping in mind our
assumptions in regard to the two psychic instances, we may now proceed
to say: disagreeable dreams, as a matter of fact, contain something
which is disagreeable to the second instance, but which at the same time
fulfills a wish of the first instance. They are wish dreams in the sense
that every dream originates in the first instance, while the second
instance acts towards the dream only in repelling, not in a creative
manner. If we limit ourselves to a consideration of what the second
instance contributes to the dream, we can never understand the dream. If
we do so, all the riddles which the authors have found in the dream
remain unsolved.
That the dream actually has a secret meaning, which turns out to be the
fulfillment of a wish, must be proved afresh for every case by means of
an analysis. I therefore select several dreams which have painful
contents and attempt an analysis of them. They are partly dreams of
hysterical subjects, which require long preliminary statements, and now
and then also an examination of the psychic processes which occur in
hysteria. I cannot, however, avoid this added difficulty in the
exposition.
When I give a psychoneurotic patient analytical treatment, dreams are
always, as I have said, the subject of our discussion. It must,
therefore, give him all the psychological explanations through whose aid
I myself have come to an understanding of his symptoms, and here I
undergo an unsparing criticism, which is perhaps not less keen than that
I must expect from my colleagues. Contradiction of the thesis that all
dreams are the fulfillments of wishes is raised by my patients with
perfect regularity. Here are several examples of the dream material
which is offered me to refute this position.
"You always tell me that the dream is a wish fulfilled," begins a clever
lady patient. "Now I shall tell you a dream in which the content is
quite the opposite, in which a wish of mine is _not_ fulfilled. How do
you reconcile that with your theory? The dream is as follows:--
_"I want to give a supper, but having nothing at hand except some smoked
salmon, I think of going marketing, but I remember that it is Sunday
afternoon, when all the shops are closed. I next try to telephone to
some caterers, but the telephone is out of order. . . . Thus I must resign
my wish to give a supper. "_
I answer, of course, that only the analysis can decide the meaning of
this dream, although I admit that at first sight it seems sensible and
coherent, and looks like the opposite of a wish-fulfillment. "But what
occurrence has given rise to this dream? " I ask. "You know that the
stimulus for a dream always lies among the experiences of the preceding
day. "
_Analysis. _--The husband of the patient, an upright and conscientious
wholesale butcher, had told her the day before that he is growing too
fat, and that he must, therefore, begin treatment for obesity. He was
going to get up early, take exercise, keep to a strict diet, and above
all accept no more invitations to suppers. She proceeds laughingly to
relate how her husband at an inn table had made the acquaintance of an
artist, who insisted upon painting his portrait because he, the painter,
had never found such an expressive head. But her husband had answered in
his rough way, that he was very thankful for the honor, but that he was
quite convinced that a portion of the backside of a pretty young girl
would please the artist better than his whole face[1]. She said that she
was at the time very much in love with her husband, and teased him a
good deal. She had also asked him not to send her any caviare. What does
that mean?
As a matter of fact, she had wanted for a long time to eat a caviare
sandwich every forenoon, but had grudged herself the expense. Of course,
she would at once get the caviare from her husband, as soon as she asked
him for it. But she had begged him, on the contrary, not to send her the
caviare, in order that she might tease him about it longer.
This explanation seems far-fetched to me. Unadmitted motives are in the
habit of hiding behind such unsatisfactory explanations. We are reminded
of subjects hypnotized by Bernheim, who carried out a posthypnotic
order, and who, upon being asked for their motives, instead of
answering: "I do not know why I did that," had to invent a reason that
was obviously inadequate. Something similar is probably the case with
the caviare of my patient. I see that she is compelled to create an
unfulfilled wish in life. Her dream also shows the reproduction of the
wish as accomplished. But why does she need an unfulfilled wish?
The ideas so far produced are insufficient for the interpretation of the
dream. I beg for more. After a short pause, which corresponds to the
overcoming of a resistance, she reports further that the day before she
had made a visit to a friend, of whom she is really jealous, because her
husband is always praising this woman so much. Fortunately, this friend
is very lean and thin, and her husband likes well-rounded figures. Now
of what did this lean friend speak? Naturally of her wish to become
somewhat stouter. She also asked my patient: "When are you going to
invite us again? You always have such a good table. "
Now the meaning of the dream is clear. I may say to the patient: "It is
just as though you had thought at the time of the request: 'Of course,
I'll invite you, so you can eat yourself fat at my house and become
still more pleasing to my husband. I would rather give no more suppers. '
The dream then tells you that you cannot give a supper, thereby
fulfilling your wish not to contribute anything to the rounding out of
your friend's figure. The resolution of your husband to refuse
invitations to supper for the sake of getting thin teaches you that one
grows fat on the things served in company. " Now only some conversation
is necessary to confirm the solution. The smoked salmon in the dream has
not yet been traced. "How did the salmon mentioned in the dream occur to
you? " "Smoked salmon is the favorite dish of this friend," she answered.
I happen to know the lady, and may corroborate this by saying that she
grudges herself the salmon just as much as my patient grudges herself
the caviare.
The dream admits of still another and more exact interpretation, which
is necessitated only by a subordinate circumstance. The two
interpretations do not contradict one another, but rather cover each
other and furnish a neat example of the usual ambiguity of dreams as
well as of all other psychopathological formations. We have seen that at
the same time that she dreams of the denial of the wish, the patient is
in reality occupied in securing an unfulfilled wish (the caviare
sandwiches). Her friend, too, had expressed a wish, namely, to get
fatter, and it would not surprise us if our lady had dreamt that the
wish of the friend was not being fulfilled. For it is her own wish that
a wish of her friend's--for increase in weight--should not be fulfilled.
Instead of this, however, she dreams that one of her own wishes is not
fulfilled. The dream becomes capable of a new interpretation, if in the
dream she does not intend herself, but her friend, if she has put
herself in the place of her friend, or, as we may say, has identified
herself with her friend.
I think she has actually done this, and as a sign of this identification
she has created an unfulfilled wish in reality. But what is the meaning
of this hysterical identification? To clear this up a thorough
exposition is necessary. Identification is a highly important factor in
the mechanism of hysterical symptoms; by this means patients are enabled
in their symptoms to represent not merely their own experiences, but the
experiences of a great number of other persons, and can suffer, as it
were, for a whole mass of people, and fill all the parts of a drama by
means of their own personalities alone. It will here be objected that
this is well-known hysterical imitation, the ability of hysteric
subjects to copy all the symptoms which impress them when they occur in
others, as though their pity were stimulated to the point of
reproduction. But this only indicates the way in which the psychic
process is discharged in hysterical imitation; the way in which a
psychic act proceeds and the act itself are two different things. The
latter is slightly more complicated than one is apt to imagine the
imitation of hysterical subjects to be: it corresponds to an unconscious
concluded process, as an example will show. The physician who has a
female patient with a particular kind of twitching, lodged in the
company of other patients in the same room of the hospital, is not
surprised when some morning he learns that this peculiar hysterical
attack has found imitations. He simply says to himself: The others have
seen her and have done likewise: that is psychic infection. Yes, but
psychic infection proceeds in somewhat the following manner: As a rule,
patients know more about one another than the physician knows about each
of them, and they are concerned about each other when the visit of the
doctor is over. Some of them have an attack to-day: soon it is known
among the rest that a letter from home, a return of lovesickness or the
like, is the cause of it. Their sympathy is aroused, and the following
syllogism, which does not reach consciousness, is completed in them: "If
it is possible to have this kind of an attack from such causes, I too
may have this kind of an attack, for I have the same reasons. " If this
were a cycle capable of becoming conscious, it would perhaps express
itself in _fear_ of getting the same attack; but it takes place in
another psychic sphere, and, therefore, ends in the realization of the
dreaded symptom. Identification is therefore not a simple imitation, but
a sympathy based upon the same etiological claim; it expresses an "as
though," and refers to some common quality which has remained in the
unconscious.
Identification is most often used in hysteria to express sexual
community. An hysterical woman identifies herself most readily--although
not exclusively--with persons with whom she has had sexual relations, or
who have sexual intercourse with the same persons as herself. Language
takes such a conception into consideration: two lovers are "one. " In the
hysterical phantasy, as well as in the dream, it is sufficient for the
identification if one thinks of sexual relations, whether or not they
become real. The patient, then, only follows the rules of the hysterical
thought processes when she gives expression to her jealousy of her
friend (which, moreover, she herself admits to be unjustified, in that
she puts herself in her place and identifies herself with her by
creating a symptom--the denied wish). I might further clarify the
process specifically as follows: She puts herself in the place of her
friend in the dream, because her friend has taken her own place relation
to her husband, and because she would like to take her friend's place in
the esteem of her husband[2].
The contradiction to my theory of dreams in the case of another female
patient, the most witty among all my dreamers, was solved in a simpler
manner, although according to the scheme that the non-fulfillment of one
wish signifies the fulfillment of another. I had one day explained to
her that the dream is a wish of fulfillment. The next day she brought me
a dream to the effect that she was traveling with her mother-in-law to
their common summer resort. Now I knew that she had struggled violently
against spending the summer in the neighborhood of her mother-in-law. I
also knew that she had luckily avoided her mother-in-law by renting an
estate in a far-distant country resort. Now the dream reversed this
wished-for solution; was not this in the flattest contradiction to my
theory of wish-fulfillment in the dream? Certainly, it was only
necessary to draw the inferences from this dream in order to get at its
interpretation. According to this dream, I was in the wrong. _It was
thus her wish that I should be in the wrong, and this wish the dream
showed her as fulfilled. _ But the wish that I should be in the wrong,
which was fulfilled in the theme of the country home, referred to a more
serious matter. At that time I had made up my mind, from the material
furnished by her analysis, that something of significance for her
illness must have occurred at a certain time in her life. She had denied
it because it was not present in her memory. We soon came to see that I
was in the right. Her wish that I should be in the wrong, which is
transformed into the dream, thus corresponded to the justifiable wish
that those things, which at the time had only been suspected, had never
occurred at all.
Without an analysis, and merely by means of an assumption, I took the
liberty of interpreting a little occurrence in the case of a friend, who
had been my colleague through the eight classes of the Gymnasium. He
once heard a lecture of mine delivered to a small assemblage, on the
novel subject of the dream as the fulfillment of a wish. He went home,
dreamt _that he had lost all his suits_--he was a lawyer--and then
complained to me about it. I took refuge in the evasion: "One can't win
all one's suits," but I thought to myself: "If for eight years I sat as
Primus on the first bench, while he moved around somewhere in the middle
of the class, may he not naturally have had a wish from his boyhood days
that I, too, might for once completely disgrace myself? "
In the same way another dream of a more gloomy character was offered me
by a female patient as a contradiction to my theory of the wish-dream.
The patient, a young girl, began as follows: "You remember that my
sister has now only one boy, Charles: she lost the elder one, Otto,
while I was still at her house. Otto was my favorite; it was I who
really brought him up. I like the other little fellow, too, but of
course not nearly as much as the dead one. Now I dreamt last night that
_I saw Charles lying dead before me. He was lying in his little coffin,
his hands folded: there were candles all about, and, in short, it was
just like the time of little Otto's death, which shocked me so
profoundly_. Now tell me, what does this mean? You know me: am I really
bad enough to wish my sister to lose the only child she has left? Or
does the dream mean that I wish Charles to be dead rather than Otto,
whom I like so much better? "
I assured her that this interpretation was impossible. After some
reflection I was able to give her the interpretation of the dream, which
I subsequently made her confirm.
Having become an orphan at an early age, the girl had been brought up in
the house of a much older sister, and had met among the friends and
visitors who came to the house, a man who made a lasting impression upon
her heart. It looked for a time as though these barely expressed
relations were to end in marriage, but this happy culmination was
frustrated by the sister, whose motives have never found a complete
explanation. After the break, the man who was loved by our patient
avoided the house: she herself became independent some time after little
Otto's death, to whom her affection had now turned. But she did not
succeed in freeing herself from the inclination for her sister's friend
in which she had become involved. Her pride commanded her to avoid him;
but it was impossible for her to transfer her love to the other suitors
who presented themselves in order. Whenever the man whom she loved, who
was a member of the literary profession, announced a lecture anywhere,
she was sure to be found in the audience; she also seized every other
opportunity to see him from a distance unobserved by him. I remembered
that on the day before she had told me that the Professor was going to a
certain concert, and that she was also going there, in order to enjoy
the sight of him. This was on the day of the dream; and the concert was
to take place on the day on which she told me the dream. I could now
easily see the correct interpretation, and I asked her whether she could
think of any event which had happened after the death of little Otto.
She answered immediately: "Certainly; at that time the Professor
returned after a long absence, and I saw him once more beside the coffin
of little Otto. " It was exactly as I had expected. I interpreted the
dream in the following manner: "If now the other boy were to die, the
same thing would be repeated. You would spend the day with your sister,
the Professor would surely come in order to offer condolence, and you
would see him again under the same circumstances as at that time. The
dream signifies nothing but this wish of yours to see him again, against
which you are fighting inwardly. I know that you are carrying the ticket
for to-day's concert in your bag. Your dream is a dream of impatience;
it has anticipated the meeting which is to take place to-day by several
hours. "
In order to disguise her wish she had obviously selected a situation in
which wishes of that sort are commonly suppressed--a situation which is
so filled with sorrow that love is not thought of. And yet, it is very
easily probable that even in the actual situation at the bier of the
second, more dearly loved boy, which the dream copied faithfully, she
had not been able to suppress her feelings of affection for the visitor
whom she had missed for so long a time.
A different explanation was found in the case of a similar dream of
another female patient, who was distinguished in her earlier years by
her quick wit and her cheerful demeanors and who still showed these
qualities at least in the notion, which occurred to her in the course of
treatment. In connection with a longer dream, it seemed to this lady
that she saw her fifteen-year-old daughter lying dead before her in a
box. She was strongly inclined to convert this dream-image into an
objection to the theory of wish-fulfillment, but herself suspected that
the detail of the box must lead to a different conception of the
dream. [3] In the course of the analysis it occurred to her that on the
evening before, the conversation of the company had turned upon the
English word "box," and upon the numerous translations of it into
German, such as box, theater box, chest, box on the ear, &c. From other
components of the same dream it is now possible to add that the lady had
guessed the relationship between the English word "box" and the German
_Buchse_, and had then been haunted by the memory that _Buchse_ (as well
as "box") is used in vulgar speech to designate the female genital
organ. It was therefore possible, making a certain allowance for her
notions on the subject of topographical anatomy, to assume that the
child in the box signified a child in the womb of the mother. At this
stage of the explanation she no longer denied that the picture of the
dream really corresponded to one of her wishes. Like so many other young
women, she was by no means happy when she became pregnant, and admitted
to me more than once the wish that her child might die before its birth;
in a fit of anger following a violent scene with her husband she had
even struck her abdomen with her fists in order to hit the child within.
The dead child was, therefore, really the fulfillment of a wish, but a
wish which had been put aside for fifteen years, and it is not
surprising that the fulfillment of the wish was no longer recognized
after so long an interval. For there had been many changes meanwhile.
The group of dreams to which the two last mentioned belong, having as
content the death of beloved relatives, will be considered again under
the head of "Typical Dreams. " I shall there be able to show by new
examples that in spite of their undesirable content, all these dreams
must be interpreted as wish-fulfillments. For the following dream, which
again was told me in order to deter me from a hasty generalization of
the theory of wishing in dreams, I am indebted, not to a patient, but to
an intelligent jurist of my acquaintance. "_I dream_," my informant
tells me, "_that I am walking in front of my house with a lady on my
arm. Here a closed wagon is waiting, a gentleman steps up to me, gives
his authority as an agent of the police, and demands that I should
follow him. I only ask for time in which to arrange my affairs. _ Can you
possibly suppose this is a wish of mine to be arrested? " "Of course
not," I must admit. "Do you happen to know upon what charge you were
arrested? " "Yes; I believe for infanticide. " "Infanticide? But you know
that only a mother can commit this crime upon her newly born child? "
"That is true. "[4] "And under what circumstances did you dream; what
happened on the evening before? " "I would rather not tell you that; it
is a delicate matter. " "But I must have it, otherwise we must forgo the
interpretation of the dream. " "Well, then, I will tell you. I spent the
night, not at home, but at the house of a lady who means very much to
me.
When we awoke in the morning, something again passed between us.
Then I went to sleep again, and dreamt what I have told you. " "The woman
is married? " "Yes. " "And you do not wish her to conceive a child? " "No;
that might betray us. " "Then you do not practice normal coitus? " "I take
the precaution to withdraw before ejaculation. " "Am I permitted to
assume that you did this trick several times during the night, and that
in the morning you were not quite sure whether you had succeeded? " "That
might be the case. " "Then your dream is the fulfillment of a wish. By
means of it you secure the assurance that you have not begotten a child,
or, what amounts to the same thing, that you have killed a child. I can
easily demonstrate the connecting links. Do you remember, a few days ago
we were talking about the distress of matrimony (Ehenot), and about the
inconsistency of permitting the practice of coitus as long as no
impregnation takes place, while every delinquency after the ovum and
the semen meet and a foetus is formed is punished as a crime? In
connection with this, we also recalled the mediaeval controversy about
the moment of time at which the soul is really lodged in the foetus,
since the concept of murder becomes admissible only from that point on.
Doubtless you also know the gruesome poem by Lenau, which puts
infanticide and the prevention of children on the same plane. "
"Strangely enough, I had happened to think of Lenau during the
afternoon. " "Another echo of your dream. And now I shall demonstrate to
you another subordinate wish-fulfillment in your dream. You walk in
front of your house with the lady on your arm. So you take her home,
instead of spending the night at her house, as you do in actuality. The
fact that the wish-fulfillment, which is the essence of the dream,
disguises itself in such an unpleasant form, has perhaps more than one
reason. From my essay on the etiology of anxiety neuroses, you will see
that I note interrupted coitus as one of the factors which cause the
development of neurotic fear. It would be consistent with this that if
after repeated cohabitation of the kind mentioned you should be left in
an uncomfortable mood, which now becomes an element in the composition
of your dream. You also make use of this unpleasant state of mind to
conceal the wish-fulfillment. Furthermore, the mention of infanticide
has not yet been explained. Why does this crime, which is peculiar to
females, occur to you? " "I shall confess to you that I was involved in
such an affair years ago. Through my fault a girl tried to protect
herself from the consequences of a _liaison_ with me by securing an
abortion. I had nothing to do with carrying out the plan, but I was
naturally for a long time worried lest the affair might be discovered. "
"I understand; this recollection furnished a second reason why the
supposition that you had done your trick badly must have been painful to
you. "
A young physician, who had heard this dream of my colleague when it was
told, must have felt implicated by it, for he hastened to imitate it in
a dream of his own, applying its mode of thinking to another subject.
The day before he had handed in a declaration of his income, which was
perfectly honest, because he had little to declare. He dreamt that an
acquaintance of his came from a meeting of the tax commission and
informed him that all the other declarations of income had passed
uncontested, but that his own had awakened general suspicion, and that
he would be punished with a heavy fine. The dream is a poorly-concealed
fulfillment of the wish to be known as a physician with a large income.
It likewise recalls the story of the young girl who was advised against
accepting her suitor because he was a man of quick temper who would
surely treat her to blows after they were married.
The answer of the girl was: "I wish he _would_ strike me! " Her wish to
be married is so strong that she takes into the bargain the discomfort
which is said to be connected with matrimony, and which is predicted for
her, and even raises it to a wish.
If I group the very frequently occurring dreams of this sort, which seem
flatly to contradict my theory, in that they contain the denial of a
wish or some occurrence decidedly unwished for, under the head of
"counter wish-dreams," I observe that they may all be referred to two
principles, of which one has not yet been mentioned, although it plays a
large part in the dreams of human beings. One of the motives inspiring
these dreams is the wish that I should appear in the wrong. These dreams
regularly occur in the course of my treatment if the patient shows a
resistance against me, and I can count with a large degree of certainty
upon causing such a dream after I have once explained to the patient my
theory that the dream is a wish-fulfillment. [5] I may even expect this
to be the case in a dream merely in order to fulfill the wish that I may
appear in the wrong. The last dream which I shall tell from those
occurring in the course of treatment again shows this very thing. A
young girl who has struggled hard to continue my treatment, against the
will of her relatives and the authorities whom she had consulted, dreams
as follows: _She is forbidden at home to come to me any more. She then
reminds me of the promise I made her to treat her for nothing if
necessary, and I say to her: "I can show no consideration in money
matters. "_
It is not at all easy in this case to demonstrate the fulfillment of a
wish, but in all cases of this kind there is a second problem, the
solution of which helps also to solve the first. Where does she get the
words which she puts into my mouth? Of course I have never told her
anything like that, but one of her brothers, the very one who has the
greatest influence over her, has been kind enough to make this remark
about me. It is then the purpose of the dream that this brother should
remain in the right; and she does not try to justify this brother merely
in the dream; it is her purpose in life and the motive for her being
ill.
The other motive for counter wish-dreams is so clear that there is
danger of overlooking it, as for some time happened in my own case. In
the sexual make-up of many people there is a masochistic component,
which has arisen through the conversion of the aggressive, sadistic
component into its opposite. Such people are called "ideal" masochists,
if they seek pleasure not in the bodily pain which may be inflicted upon
them, but in humiliation and in chastisement of the soul. It is obvious
that such persons can have counter wish-dreams and disagreeable dreams,
which, however, for them are nothing but wish-fulfillment, affording
satisfaction for their masochistic inclinations. Here is such a dream. A
young man, who has in earlier years tormented his elder brother, towards
whom he was homosexually inclined, but who had undergone a complete
change of character, has the following dream, which consists of three
parts: (1) _He is "insulted" by his brother. _ (2) _Two adults are
caressing each other with homosexual intentions. _ (3) _His brother has
sold the enterprise whose management the young man reserved for his own
future. _ He awakens from the last-mentioned dream with the most
unpleasant feelings, and yet it is a masochistic wish-dream, which might
be translated: It would serve me quite right if my brother were to make
that sale against my interest, as a punishment for all the torments
which he has suffered at my hands.
I hope that the above discussion and examples will suffice--until
further objection can be raised--to make it seem credible that even
dreams with a painful content are to be analyzed as the fulfillments of
wishes. Nor will it seem a matter of chance that in the course of
interpretation one always happens upon subjects of which one does not
like to speak or think. The disagreeable sensation which such dreams
arouse is simply identical with the antipathy which endeavors--usually
with success--to restrain us from the treatment or discussion of such
subjects, and which must be overcome by all of us, if, in spite of its
unpleasantness, we find it necessary to take the matter in hand. But
this disagreeable sensation, which occurs also in dreams, does not
preclude the existence of a wish; every one has wishes which he would
not like to tell to others, which he does not want to admit even to
himself. We are, on other grounds, justified in connecting the
disagreeable character of all these dreams with the fact of dream
disfigurement, and in concluding that these dreams are distorted, and
that the wish-fulfillment in them is disguised until recognition is
impossible for no other reason than that a repugnance, a will to
suppress, exists in relation to the subject-matter of the dream or in
relation to the wish which the dream creates. Dream disfigurement,
then, turns out in reality to be an act of the censor. We shall take
into consideration everything which the analysis of disagreeable dreams
has brought to light if we reword our formula as follows: _The dream is
the (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed, repressed) wish_.
Now there still remain as a particular species of dreams with painful
content, dreams of anxiety, the inclusion of which under dreams of
wishing will find least acceptance with the uninitiated. But I can
settle the problem of anxiety dreams in very short order; for what they
may reveal is not a new aspect of the dream problem; it is a question in
their case of understanding neurotic anxiety in general. The fear which
we experience in the dream is only seemingly explained by the dream
content. If we subject the content of the dream to analysis, we become
aware that the dream fear is no more justified by the dream content than
the fear in a phobia is justified by the idea upon which the phobia
depends. For example, it is true that it is possible to fall out of a
window, and that some care must be exercised when one is near a window,
but it is inexplicable why the anxiety in the corresponding phobia is so
great, and why it follows its victims to an extent so much greater than
is warranted by its origin. The same explanation, then, which applies to
the phobia applies also to the dream of anxiety. In both cases the
anxiety is only superficially attached to the idea which accompanies it
and comes from another source.
On account of the intimate relation of dream fear to neurotic fear,
discussion of the former obliges me to refer to the latter. In a little
essay on "The Anxiety Neurosis,"[6] I maintained that neurotic fear has
its origin in the sexual life, and corresponds to a libido which has
been turned away from its object and has not succeeded in being applied.
From this formula, which has since proved its validity more and more
clearly, we may deduce the conclusion that the content of anxiety dreams
is of a sexual nature, the libido belonging to which content has been
transformed into fear.
[1] To sit for the painter. Goethe: "And if he has no backside, how can
the nobleman sit? "
[2] 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.
[3] Something like the smoked salmon in the dream of the deferred
supper.
[4] It often happens that a dream is told incompletely, and that a
recollection of the omitted portions appear 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.
[5] 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. "
[6] See _Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses_, p. 133,
translated by A. A. Brill, _Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases_,
Monograph Series.
V
SEX IN DREAMS
The more one is occupied with the solution of dreams, the more willing
one must become to acknowledge that the majority of the dreams of adults
treat of sexual material and give expression to erotic wishes. Only one
who really analyzes dreams, that is to say, who pushes forward from
their manifest content to the latent dream thoughts, can form an opinion
on this subject--never the person who is satisfied with registering the
manifest content (as, for example, Nacke in his works on sexual dreams).
Let us recognize at once that this fact is not to be wondered at, but
that it is in complete harmony with the fundamental assumptions of dream
explanation. No other impulse has had to undergo so much suppression
from the time of childhood as the sex impulse in its numerous
components, from no other impulse have survived so many and such intense
unconscious wishes, which now act in the sleeping state in such a manner
as to produce dreams. In dream interpretation, this significance of
sexual complexes must never be forgotten, nor must they, of course, be
exaggerated to the point of being considered exclusive.
Of many dreams it can be ascertained by a careful interpretation that
they are even to be taken bisexually, inasmuch as they result in an
irrefutable secondary interpretation in which they realize homosexual
feelings--that is, feelings that are common to the normal sexual
activity of the dreaming person. But that all dreams are to be
interpreted bisexually, seems to me to be a generalization as
indemonstrable as it is improbable, which I should not like to support.
Above all I should not know how to dispose of the apparent fact that
there are many dreams satisfying other than--in the widest sense--erotic
needs, as dreams of hunger, thirst, convenience, &c. Likewise the
similar assertions "that behind every dream one finds the death
sentence" (Stekel), and that every dream shows "a continuation from the
feminine to the masculine line" (Adler), seem to me to proceed far
beyond what is admissible in the interpretation of dreams.
We have already asserted elsewhere that dreams which are conspicuously
innocent invariably embody coarse erotic wishes, and we might confirm
this by means of numerous fresh examples. But many dreams which appear
indifferent, and which would never be suspected of any particular
significance, can be traced back, after analysis, to unmistakably sexual
wish-feelings, which are often of an unexpected nature. For example,
who would suspect a sexual wish in the following dream until the
interpretation had been worked out? The dreamer relates: _Between two
stately palaces stands a little house, receding somewhat, whose doors
are closed. My wife leads me a little way along the street up to the
little house, and pushes in the door, and then I slip quickly and easily
into the interior of a courtyard that slants obliquely upwards. _
Any one who has had experience in the translating of dreams will, of
course, immediately perceive that penetrating into narrow spaces, and
opening locked doors, belong to the commonest sexual symbolism, and will
easily find in this dream a representation of attempted coition from
behind (between the two stately buttocks of the female body). The narrow
slanting passage is of course the vagina; the assistance attributed to
the wife of the dreamer requires the interpretation that in reality it
is only consideration for the wife which is responsible for the
detention from such an attempt. Moreover, inquiry shows that on the
previous day a young girl had entered the household of the dreamer who
had pleased him, and who had given him the impression that she would not
be altogether opposed to an approach of this sort. The little house
between the two palaces is taken from a reminiscence of the Hradschin
in Prague, and thus points again to the girl who is a native of that
city.
If with my patients I emphasize the frequency of the Oedipus dream--of
having sexual intercourse with one's mother--I get the answer: "I cannot
remember such a dream. " Immediately afterwards, however, there arises
the recollection of another disguised and indifferent dream, which has
been dreamed repeatedly by the patient, and the analysis shows it to be
a dream of this same content--that is, another Oedipus dream. I can
assure the reader that veiled dreams of sexual intercourse with the
mother are a great deal more frequent than open ones to the same effect.
There are dreams about landscapes and localities in which emphasis is
always laid upon the assurance: "I have been there before. " In this case
the locality is always the genital organ of the mother; it can indeed be
asserted with such certainty of no other locality that one "has been
there before. "
A large number of dreams, often full of fear, which are concerned with
passing through narrow spaces or with staying, in the water, are based
upon fancies about the embryonic life, about the sojourn in the mother's
womb, and about the act of birth. The following is the dream of a young
man who in his fancy has already while in embryo taken advantage of his
opportunity to spy upon an act of coition between his parents.
_"He is in a deep shaft, in which there is a window, as in the Semmering
Tunnel. At first he sees an empty landscape through this window, and
then he composes a picture into it, which is immediately at hand and
which fills out the empty space. The picture represents a field which is
being thoroughly harrowed by an implement, and the delightful air, the
accompanying idea of hard work, and the bluish-black clods of earth make
a pleasant impression. He then goes on and sees a primary school opened
. . . and he is surprised that so much attention is devoted in it to the
sexual feelings of the child, which makes him think of me. "_
Here is a pretty water-dream of a female patient, which was turned to
extraordinary account in the course of treatment.
_At her summer resort at the . . . Lake, she hurls herself into the dark
water at a place where the pale moon is reflected in the water. _
Dreams of this sort are parturition dreams; their interpretation is
accomplished by reversing the fact reported in the manifest dream
content; thus, instead of "throwing one's self into the water," read
"coming out of the water," that is, "being born. " The place from which
one is born is recognized if one thinks of the bad sense of the French
"la lune. " The pale moon thus becomes the white "bottom" (Popo), which
the child soon recognizes as the place from which it came. Now what can
be the meaning of the patient's wishing to be born at her summer resort?
I asked the dreamer this, and she answered without hesitation: "Hasn't
the treatment made me as though I were born again? " Thus the dream
becomes an invitation to continue the cure at this summer resort, that
is, to visit her there; perhaps it also contains a very bashful allusion
to the wish to become a mother herself. [1]
Another dream of parturition, with its interpretation, I take from the
work of E. Jones. _"She stood at the seashore watching a small boy, who
seemed to be hers, wading into the water. This he did till the water
covered him, and she could only see his head bobbing up and down near
the surface. The scene then changed to the crowded hall of a hotel. Her
husband left her, and she 'entered into conversation with' a
stranger. "_ The second half of the dream was discovered in the analysis
to represent a flight from her husband, and the entering into intimate
relations with a third person, behind whom was plainly indicated Mr.
X. 's brother mentioned in a former dream. The first part of the dream
was a fairly evident birth phantasy. In dreams as in mythology, the
delivery of a child _from_ the uterine waters is commonly presented by
distortion as the entry of the child _into_ water; among many others,
the births of Adonis, Osiris, Moses, and Bacchus are well-known
illustrations of this. The bobbing up and down of the head in the water
at once recalled to the patient the sensation of quickening she had
experienced in her only pregnancy. Thinking of the boy going into the
water induced a reverie in which she saw herself taking him out of the
water, carrying him into the nursery, washing him and dressing him, and
installing him in her household.
The second half of the dream, therefore, represents thoughts concerning
the elopement, which belonged to the first half of the underlying latent
content; the first half of the dream corresponded with the second half
of the latent content, the birth phantasy. Besides this inversion in
order, further inversions took place in each half of the dream. In the
first half the child _entered_ the water, and then his head bobbed; in
the underlying dream thoughts first the quickening occurred, and then
the child left the water (a double inversion). In the second half her
husband left her; in the dream thoughts she left her husband.
Another parturition dream is related by Abraham of a young woman looking
forward to her first confinement. From a place in the floor of the house
a subterranean canal leads directly into the water (parturition path,
amniotic liquor). She lifts up a trap in the floor, and there
immediately appears a creature dressed in a brownish fur, which almost
resembles a seal. This creature changes into the younger brother of the
dreamer, to whom she has always stood in maternal relationship.
Dreams of "saving" are connected with parturition dreams. To save,
especially to save from the water, is equivalent to giving birth when
dreamed by a woman; this sense is, however, modified when the dreamer is
a man.
Robbers, burglars at night, and ghosts, of which we are afraid before
going to bed, and which occasionally even disturb our sleep, originate
in one and the same childish reminiscence. They are the nightly visitors
who have awakened the child to set it on the chamber so that it may not
wet the bed, or have lifted the cover in order to see clearly how the
child is holding its hands while sleeping. I have been able to induce an
exact recollection of the nocturnal visitor in the analysis of some of
these anxiety dreams. The robbers were always the father, the ghosts
more probably corresponded to feminine persons with white night-gowns.
When one has become familiar with the abundant use of symbolism for the
representation of sexual material in dreams, one naturally raises the
question whether there are not many of these symbols which appear once
and for all with a firmly established significance like the signs in
stenography; and one is tempted to compile a new dream-book according to
the cipher method. In this connection it may be remarked that this
symbolism does not belong peculiarly to the dream, but rather to
unconscious thinking, particularly that of the masses, and it is to be
found in greater perfection in the folklore, in the myths, legends, and
manners of speech, in the proverbial sayings, and in the current
witticisms of a nation than in its dreams.
The dream takes advantage of this symbolism in order to give a disguised
representation to its latent thoughts. Among the symbols which are used
in this manner there are of course many which regularly, or almost
regularly, mean the same thing. Only it is necessary to keep in mind the
curious plasticity of psychic material. Now and then a symbol in the
dream content may have to be interpreted not symbolically, but according
to its real meaning; at another time the dreamer, owing to a peculiar
set of recollections, may create for himself the right to use anything
whatever as a sexual symbol, though it is not ordinarily used in that
way. Nor are the most frequently used sexual symbols unambiguous every
time.
After these limitations and reservations I may call attention to the
following: Emperor and Empress (King and Queen) in most cases really
represent the parents of the dreamer; the dreamer himself or herself is
the prince or princess. All elongated objects, sticks, tree-trunks, and
umbrellas (on account of the stretching-up which might be compared to an
erection! all elongated and sharp weapons, knives, daggers, and pikes,
are intended to represent the male member. A frequent, not very
intelligible, symbol for the same is a nail-file (on account of the
rubbing and scraping? ). Little cases, boxes, caskets, closets, and
stoves correspond to the female part. The symbolism of lock and key has
been very gracefully employed by Uhland in his song about the "Grafen
Eberstein," to make a common smutty joke. The dream of walking through a
row of rooms is a brothel or harem dream. Staircases, ladders, and
flights of stairs, or climbing on these, either upwards or downwards,
are symbolic representations of the sexual act. Smooth walls over which
one is climbing, facades of houses upon which one is letting oneself
down, frequently under great anxiety, correspond to the erect human
body, and probably repeat in the dream reminiscences of the upward
climbing of little children on their parents or foster parents. "Smooth"
walls are men. Often in a dream of anxiety one is holding on firmly to
some projection from a house. Tables, set tables, and boards are women,
perhaps on account of the opposition which does away with the bodily
contours. Since "bed and board" (_mensa et thorus_) constitute marriage,
the former are often put for the latter in the dream, and as far as
practicable the sexual presentation complex is transposed to the eating
complex. Of articles of dress the woman's hat may frequently be
definitely interpreted as the male genital. In dreams of men one often
finds the cravat as a symbol for the penis; this indeed is not only
because cravats hang down long, and are characteristic of the man, but
also because one can select them at pleasure, a freedom which is
prohibited by nature in the original of the symbol. Persons who make use
of this symbol in the dream are very extravagant with cravats, and
possess regular collections of them. All complicated machines and
apparatus in dream are very probably genitals, in the description of
which dream symbolism shows itself to be as tireless as the activity of
wit. Likewise many landscapes in dreams, especially with bridges or with
wooded mountains, can be readily recognized as descriptions of the
genitals. Finally where one finds incomprehensible neologisms one may
think of combinations made up of components having a sexual
significance. Children also in the dream often signify the genitals, as
men and women are in the habit of fondly referring to their genital
organ as their "little one. " As a very recent symbol of the male genital
may be mentioned the flying machine, utilization of which is justified
by its relation to flying as well as occasionally by its form. To play
with a little child or to beat a little one is often the dream's
representation of onanism. A number of other symbols, in part not
sufficiently verified are given by Stekel, who illustrates them with
examples. Right and left, according to him, are to be conceived in the
dream in an ethical sense. "The right way always signifies the road to
righteousness, the left the one to crime. Thus the left may signify
homosexuality, incest, and perversion, while the right signifies
marriage, relations with a prostitute, &c. The meaning is always
determined by the individual moral view-point of the dreamer. " Relatives
in the dream generally play the role of genitals. Not to be able to
catch up with a wagon is interpreted by Stekel as regret not to be able
to come up to a difference in age. Baggage with which one travels is the
burden of sin by which one is oppressed. Also numbers, which frequently
occur in the dream, are assigned by Stekel a fixed symbolical meaning,
but these interpretations seem neither sufficiently verified nor of
general validity, although the interpretation in individual cases can
generally be recognized as probable. In a recently published book by W.
Stekel, _Die Sprache des Traumes_, which I was unable to utilize, there
is a list of the most common sexual symbols, the object of which is to
prove that all sexual symbols can be bisexually used. He states: "Is
there a symbol which (if in any way permitted by the phantasy) may not
be used simultaneously in the masculine and the feminine sense!
obviously of a sexual nature, which are known to all dreamers from their
own experience, and are the only ones usually described as "sexual
dreams. " These dreams are ever sufficiently mysterious by reason of the
choice of persons who are made the objects of sex, the removal of all
the barriers which cry halt to the dreamer's sexual needs in his waking
state, the many strange reminders as to details of what are called
perversions. But analysis discovers that, in many other dreams in whose
manifest content nothing erotic can be found, the work of interpretation
shows them up as, in reality, realization of sexual desires; whilst, on
the other hand, that much of the thought-making when awake, the thoughts
saved us as surplus from the day only, reaches presentation in dreams
with the help of repressed erotic desires.
Towards the explanation of this statement, which is no theoretical
postulate, it must be remembered that no other class of instincts has
required so vast a suppression at the behest of civilization as the
sexual, whilst their mastery by the highest psychical processes are in
most persons soonest of all relinquished. Since we have learnt to
understand _infantile sexuality_, often so vague in its expression, so
invariably overlooked and misunderstood, we are justified in saying that
nearly every civilized person has retained at some point or other the
infantile type of sex life; thus we understand that repressed infantile
sex desires furnish the most frequent and most powerful impulses for the
formation of dreams. [1]
If the dream, which is the expression of some erotic desire, succeeds in
making its manifest content appear innocently asexual, it is only
possible in one way. The matter of these sexual presentations cannot be
exhibited as such, but must be replaced by allusions, suggestions, and
similar indirect means; differing from other cases of indirect
presentation, those used in dreams must be deprived of direct
understanding. The means of presentation which answer these requirements
are commonly termed "symbols. " A special interest has been directed
towards these, since it has been observed that the dreamers of the same
language use the like symbols--indeed, that in certain cases community
of symbol is greater than community of speech. Since the dreamers do not
themselves know the meaning of the symbols they use, it remains a puzzle
whence arises their relationship with what they replace and denote. The
fact itself is undoubted, and becomes of importance for the technique of
the interpretation of dreams, since by the aid of a knowledge of this
symbolism it is possible to understand the meaning of the elements of a
dream, or parts of a dream, occasionally even the whole dream itself,
without having to question the dreamer as to his own ideas. We thus come
near to the popular idea of an interpretation of dreams, and, on the
other hand, possess again the technique of the ancients, among whom the
interpretation of dreams was identical with their explanation through
symbolism.
Though the study of dream symbolism is far removed from finality, we now
possess a series of general statements and of particular observations
which are quite certain. There are symbols which practically always have
the same meaning: Emperor and Empress (King and Queen) always mean the
parents; room, a woman[2], and so on. The sexes are represented by a
great variety of symbols, many of which would be at first quite
incomprehensible had not the clews to the meaning been often obtained
through other channels.
There are symbols of universal circulation, found in all dreamers, of
one range of speech and culture; there are others of the narrowest
individual significance which an individual has built up out of his own
material. In the first class those can be differentiated whose claim can
be at once recognized by the replacement of sexual things in common
speech (those, for instance, arising from agriculture, as reproduction,
seed) from others whose sexual references appear to reach back to the
earliest times and to the obscurest depths of our image-building. The
power of building symbols in both these special forms of symbols has not
died out. Recently discovered things, like the airship, are at once
brought into universal use as sex symbols.
It would be quite an error to suppose that a profounder knowledge of
dream symbolism (the "Language of Dreams") would make us independent of
questioning the dreamer regarding his impressions about the dream, and
would give us back the whole technique of ancient dream interpreters.
Apart from individual symbols and the variations in the use of what is
general, one never knows whether an element in the dream is to be
understood symbolically or in its proper meaning; the whole content of
the dream is certainly not to be interpreted symbolically. The knowledge
of dream symbols will only help us in understanding portions of the
dream content, and does not render the use of the technical rules
previously given at all superfluous. But it must be of the greatest
service in interpreting a dream just when the impressions of the dreamer
are withheld or are insufficient.
Dream symbolism proves also indispensable for understanding the
so-called "typical" dreams and the dreams that "repeat themselves. "
Dream symbolism leads us far beyond the dream; it does not belong only
to dreams, but is likewise dominant in legend, myth, and saga, in wit
and in folklore. It compels us to pursue the inner meaning of the dream
in these productions. But we must acknowledge that symbolism is not a
result of the dream work, but is a peculiarity probably of our
unconscious thinking, which furnishes to the dream work the matter for
condensation, displacement, and dramatization.
[1] Freud, "Three Contributions to Sexual Theory," translated by A. A.
Brill (_Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease_ Publishing Company, New
York).
[2] The words from "and" to "channels" in the next sentence is a short
summary of the passage in the original. As this book will be read by
other than professional people the passage has not been translated, in
deference to English opinion. --TRANSLATOR.
IV
DREAM ANALYSIS
Perhaps we shall now begin to suspect that dream interpretation is
capable of giving us hints about the structure of our psychic apparatus
which we have thus far expected in vain from philosophy. We shall not,
however, follow this track, but return to our original problem as soon
as we have cleared up the subject of dream-disfigurement. The question
has arisen how dreams with disagreeable content can be analyzed as the
fulfillment of wishes. We see now that this is possible in case
dream-disfigurement has taken place, in case the disagreeable content
serves only as a disguise for what is wished. Keeping in mind our
assumptions in regard to the two psychic instances, we may now proceed
to say: disagreeable dreams, as a matter of fact, contain something
which is disagreeable to the second instance, but which at the same time
fulfills a wish of the first instance. They are wish dreams in the sense
that every dream originates in the first instance, while the second
instance acts towards the dream only in repelling, not in a creative
manner. If we limit ourselves to a consideration of what the second
instance contributes to the dream, we can never understand the dream. If
we do so, all the riddles which the authors have found in the dream
remain unsolved.
That the dream actually has a secret meaning, which turns out to be the
fulfillment of a wish, must be proved afresh for every case by means of
an analysis. I therefore select several dreams which have painful
contents and attempt an analysis of them. They are partly dreams of
hysterical subjects, which require long preliminary statements, and now
and then also an examination of the psychic processes which occur in
hysteria. I cannot, however, avoid this added difficulty in the
exposition.
When I give a psychoneurotic patient analytical treatment, dreams are
always, as I have said, the subject of our discussion. It must,
therefore, give him all the psychological explanations through whose aid
I myself have come to an understanding of his symptoms, and here I
undergo an unsparing criticism, which is perhaps not less keen than that
I must expect from my colleagues. Contradiction of the thesis that all
dreams are the fulfillments of wishes is raised by my patients with
perfect regularity. Here are several examples of the dream material
which is offered me to refute this position.
"You always tell me that the dream is a wish fulfilled," begins a clever
lady patient. "Now I shall tell you a dream in which the content is
quite the opposite, in which a wish of mine is _not_ fulfilled. How do
you reconcile that with your theory? The dream is as follows:--
_"I want to give a supper, but having nothing at hand except some smoked
salmon, I think of going marketing, but I remember that it is Sunday
afternoon, when all the shops are closed. I next try to telephone to
some caterers, but the telephone is out of order. . . . Thus I must resign
my wish to give a supper. "_
I answer, of course, that only the analysis can decide the meaning of
this dream, although I admit that at first sight it seems sensible and
coherent, and looks like the opposite of a wish-fulfillment. "But what
occurrence has given rise to this dream? " I ask. "You know that the
stimulus for a dream always lies among the experiences of the preceding
day. "
_Analysis. _--The husband of the patient, an upright and conscientious
wholesale butcher, had told her the day before that he is growing too
fat, and that he must, therefore, begin treatment for obesity. He was
going to get up early, take exercise, keep to a strict diet, and above
all accept no more invitations to suppers. She proceeds laughingly to
relate how her husband at an inn table had made the acquaintance of an
artist, who insisted upon painting his portrait because he, the painter,
had never found such an expressive head. But her husband had answered in
his rough way, that he was very thankful for the honor, but that he was
quite convinced that a portion of the backside of a pretty young girl
would please the artist better than his whole face[1]. She said that she
was at the time very much in love with her husband, and teased him a
good deal. She had also asked him not to send her any caviare. What does
that mean?
As a matter of fact, she had wanted for a long time to eat a caviare
sandwich every forenoon, but had grudged herself the expense. Of course,
she would at once get the caviare from her husband, as soon as she asked
him for it. But she had begged him, on the contrary, not to send her the
caviare, in order that she might tease him about it longer.
This explanation seems far-fetched to me. Unadmitted motives are in the
habit of hiding behind such unsatisfactory explanations. We are reminded
of subjects hypnotized by Bernheim, who carried out a posthypnotic
order, and who, upon being asked for their motives, instead of
answering: "I do not know why I did that," had to invent a reason that
was obviously inadequate. Something similar is probably the case with
the caviare of my patient. I see that she is compelled to create an
unfulfilled wish in life. Her dream also shows the reproduction of the
wish as accomplished. But why does she need an unfulfilled wish?
The ideas so far produced are insufficient for the interpretation of the
dream. I beg for more. After a short pause, which corresponds to the
overcoming of a resistance, she reports further that the day before she
had made a visit to a friend, of whom she is really jealous, because her
husband is always praising this woman so much. Fortunately, this friend
is very lean and thin, and her husband likes well-rounded figures. Now
of what did this lean friend speak? Naturally of her wish to become
somewhat stouter. She also asked my patient: "When are you going to
invite us again? You always have such a good table. "
Now the meaning of the dream is clear. I may say to the patient: "It is
just as though you had thought at the time of the request: 'Of course,
I'll invite you, so you can eat yourself fat at my house and become
still more pleasing to my husband. I would rather give no more suppers. '
The dream then tells you that you cannot give a supper, thereby
fulfilling your wish not to contribute anything to the rounding out of
your friend's figure. The resolution of your husband to refuse
invitations to supper for the sake of getting thin teaches you that one
grows fat on the things served in company. " Now only some conversation
is necessary to confirm the solution. The smoked salmon in the dream has
not yet been traced. "How did the salmon mentioned in the dream occur to
you? " "Smoked salmon is the favorite dish of this friend," she answered.
I happen to know the lady, and may corroborate this by saying that she
grudges herself the salmon just as much as my patient grudges herself
the caviare.
The dream admits of still another and more exact interpretation, which
is necessitated only by a subordinate circumstance. The two
interpretations do not contradict one another, but rather cover each
other and furnish a neat example of the usual ambiguity of dreams as
well as of all other psychopathological formations. We have seen that at
the same time that she dreams of the denial of the wish, the patient is
in reality occupied in securing an unfulfilled wish (the caviare
sandwiches). Her friend, too, had expressed a wish, namely, to get
fatter, and it would not surprise us if our lady had dreamt that the
wish of the friend was not being fulfilled. For it is her own wish that
a wish of her friend's--for increase in weight--should not be fulfilled.
Instead of this, however, she dreams that one of her own wishes is not
fulfilled. The dream becomes capable of a new interpretation, if in the
dream she does not intend herself, but her friend, if she has put
herself in the place of her friend, or, as we may say, has identified
herself with her friend.
I think she has actually done this, and as a sign of this identification
she has created an unfulfilled wish in reality. But what is the meaning
of this hysterical identification? To clear this up a thorough
exposition is necessary. Identification is a highly important factor in
the mechanism of hysterical symptoms; by this means patients are enabled
in their symptoms to represent not merely their own experiences, but the
experiences of a great number of other persons, and can suffer, as it
were, for a whole mass of people, and fill all the parts of a drama by
means of their own personalities alone. It will here be objected that
this is well-known hysterical imitation, the ability of hysteric
subjects to copy all the symptoms which impress them when they occur in
others, as though their pity were stimulated to the point of
reproduction. But this only indicates the way in which the psychic
process is discharged in hysterical imitation; the way in which a
psychic act proceeds and the act itself are two different things. The
latter is slightly more complicated than one is apt to imagine the
imitation of hysterical subjects to be: it corresponds to an unconscious
concluded process, as an example will show. The physician who has a
female patient with a particular kind of twitching, lodged in the
company of other patients in the same room of the hospital, is not
surprised when some morning he learns that this peculiar hysterical
attack has found imitations. He simply says to himself: The others have
seen her and have done likewise: that is psychic infection. Yes, but
psychic infection proceeds in somewhat the following manner: As a rule,
patients know more about one another than the physician knows about each
of them, and they are concerned about each other when the visit of the
doctor is over. Some of them have an attack to-day: soon it is known
among the rest that a letter from home, a return of lovesickness or the
like, is the cause of it. Their sympathy is aroused, and the following
syllogism, which does not reach consciousness, is completed in them: "If
it is possible to have this kind of an attack from such causes, I too
may have this kind of an attack, for I have the same reasons. " If this
were a cycle capable of becoming conscious, it would perhaps express
itself in _fear_ of getting the same attack; but it takes place in
another psychic sphere, and, therefore, ends in the realization of the
dreaded symptom. Identification is therefore not a simple imitation, but
a sympathy based upon the same etiological claim; it expresses an "as
though," and refers to some common quality which has remained in the
unconscious.
Identification is most often used in hysteria to express sexual
community. An hysterical woman identifies herself most readily--although
not exclusively--with persons with whom she has had sexual relations, or
who have sexual intercourse with the same persons as herself. Language
takes such a conception into consideration: two lovers are "one. " In the
hysterical phantasy, as well as in the dream, it is sufficient for the
identification if one thinks of sexual relations, whether or not they
become real. The patient, then, only follows the rules of the hysterical
thought processes when she gives expression to her jealousy of her
friend (which, moreover, she herself admits to be unjustified, in that
she puts herself in her place and identifies herself with her by
creating a symptom--the denied wish). I might further clarify the
process specifically as follows: She puts herself in the place of her
friend in the dream, because her friend has taken her own place relation
to her husband, and because she would like to take her friend's place in
the esteem of her husband[2].
The contradiction to my theory of dreams in the case of another female
patient, the most witty among all my dreamers, was solved in a simpler
manner, although according to the scheme that the non-fulfillment of one
wish signifies the fulfillment of another. I had one day explained to
her that the dream is a wish of fulfillment. The next day she brought me
a dream to the effect that she was traveling with her mother-in-law to
their common summer resort. Now I knew that she had struggled violently
against spending the summer in the neighborhood of her mother-in-law. I
also knew that she had luckily avoided her mother-in-law by renting an
estate in a far-distant country resort. Now the dream reversed this
wished-for solution; was not this in the flattest contradiction to my
theory of wish-fulfillment in the dream? Certainly, it was only
necessary to draw the inferences from this dream in order to get at its
interpretation. According to this dream, I was in the wrong. _It was
thus her wish that I should be in the wrong, and this wish the dream
showed her as fulfilled. _ But the wish that I should be in the wrong,
which was fulfilled in the theme of the country home, referred to a more
serious matter. At that time I had made up my mind, from the material
furnished by her analysis, that something of significance for her
illness must have occurred at a certain time in her life. She had denied
it because it was not present in her memory. We soon came to see that I
was in the right. Her wish that I should be in the wrong, which is
transformed into the dream, thus corresponded to the justifiable wish
that those things, which at the time had only been suspected, had never
occurred at all.
Without an analysis, and merely by means of an assumption, I took the
liberty of interpreting a little occurrence in the case of a friend, who
had been my colleague through the eight classes of the Gymnasium. He
once heard a lecture of mine delivered to a small assemblage, on the
novel subject of the dream as the fulfillment of a wish. He went home,
dreamt _that he had lost all his suits_--he was a lawyer--and then
complained to me about it. I took refuge in the evasion: "One can't win
all one's suits," but I thought to myself: "If for eight years I sat as
Primus on the first bench, while he moved around somewhere in the middle
of the class, may he not naturally have had a wish from his boyhood days
that I, too, might for once completely disgrace myself? "
In the same way another dream of a more gloomy character was offered me
by a female patient as a contradiction to my theory of the wish-dream.
The patient, a young girl, began as follows: "You remember that my
sister has now only one boy, Charles: she lost the elder one, Otto,
while I was still at her house. Otto was my favorite; it was I who
really brought him up. I like the other little fellow, too, but of
course not nearly as much as the dead one. Now I dreamt last night that
_I saw Charles lying dead before me. He was lying in his little coffin,
his hands folded: there were candles all about, and, in short, it was
just like the time of little Otto's death, which shocked me so
profoundly_. Now tell me, what does this mean? You know me: am I really
bad enough to wish my sister to lose the only child she has left? Or
does the dream mean that I wish Charles to be dead rather than Otto,
whom I like so much better? "
I assured her that this interpretation was impossible. After some
reflection I was able to give her the interpretation of the dream, which
I subsequently made her confirm.
Having become an orphan at an early age, the girl had been brought up in
the house of a much older sister, and had met among the friends and
visitors who came to the house, a man who made a lasting impression upon
her heart. It looked for a time as though these barely expressed
relations were to end in marriage, but this happy culmination was
frustrated by the sister, whose motives have never found a complete
explanation. After the break, the man who was loved by our patient
avoided the house: she herself became independent some time after little
Otto's death, to whom her affection had now turned. But she did not
succeed in freeing herself from the inclination for her sister's friend
in which she had become involved. Her pride commanded her to avoid him;
but it was impossible for her to transfer her love to the other suitors
who presented themselves in order. Whenever the man whom she loved, who
was a member of the literary profession, announced a lecture anywhere,
she was sure to be found in the audience; she also seized every other
opportunity to see him from a distance unobserved by him. I remembered
that on the day before she had told me that the Professor was going to a
certain concert, and that she was also going there, in order to enjoy
the sight of him. This was on the day of the dream; and the concert was
to take place on the day on which she told me the dream. I could now
easily see the correct interpretation, and I asked her whether she could
think of any event which had happened after the death of little Otto.
She answered immediately: "Certainly; at that time the Professor
returned after a long absence, and I saw him once more beside the coffin
of little Otto. " It was exactly as I had expected. I interpreted the
dream in the following manner: "If now the other boy were to die, the
same thing would be repeated. You would spend the day with your sister,
the Professor would surely come in order to offer condolence, and you
would see him again under the same circumstances as at that time. The
dream signifies nothing but this wish of yours to see him again, against
which you are fighting inwardly. I know that you are carrying the ticket
for to-day's concert in your bag. Your dream is a dream of impatience;
it has anticipated the meeting which is to take place to-day by several
hours. "
In order to disguise her wish she had obviously selected a situation in
which wishes of that sort are commonly suppressed--a situation which is
so filled with sorrow that love is not thought of. And yet, it is very
easily probable that even in the actual situation at the bier of the
second, more dearly loved boy, which the dream copied faithfully, she
had not been able to suppress her feelings of affection for the visitor
whom she had missed for so long a time.
A different explanation was found in the case of a similar dream of
another female patient, who was distinguished in her earlier years by
her quick wit and her cheerful demeanors and who still showed these
qualities at least in the notion, which occurred to her in the course of
treatment. In connection with a longer dream, it seemed to this lady
that she saw her fifteen-year-old daughter lying dead before her in a
box. She was strongly inclined to convert this dream-image into an
objection to the theory of wish-fulfillment, but herself suspected that
the detail of the box must lead to a different conception of the
dream. [3] In the course of the analysis it occurred to her that on the
evening before, the conversation of the company had turned upon the
English word "box," and upon the numerous translations of it into
German, such as box, theater box, chest, box on the ear, &c. From other
components of the same dream it is now possible to add that the lady had
guessed the relationship between the English word "box" and the German
_Buchse_, and had then been haunted by the memory that _Buchse_ (as well
as "box") is used in vulgar speech to designate the female genital
organ. It was therefore possible, making a certain allowance for her
notions on the subject of topographical anatomy, to assume that the
child in the box signified a child in the womb of the mother. At this
stage of the explanation she no longer denied that the picture of the
dream really corresponded to one of her wishes. Like so many other young
women, she was by no means happy when she became pregnant, and admitted
to me more than once the wish that her child might die before its birth;
in a fit of anger following a violent scene with her husband she had
even struck her abdomen with her fists in order to hit the child within.
The dead child was, therefore, really the fulfillment of a wish, but a
wish which had been put aside for fifteen years, and it is not
surprising that the fulfillment of the wish was no longer recognized
after so long an interval. For there had been many changes meanwhile.
The group of dreams to which the two last mentioned belong, having as
content the death of beloved relatives, will be considered again under
the head of "Typical Dreams. " I shall there be able to show by new
examples that in spite of their undesirable content, all these dreams
must be interpreted as wish-fulfillments. For the following dream, which
again was told me in order to deter me from a hasty generalization of
the theory of wishing in dreams, I am indebted, not to a patient, but to
an intelligent jurist of my acquaintance. "_I dream_," my informant
tells me, "_that I am walking in front of my house with a lady on my
arm. Here a closed wagon is waiting, a gentleman steps up to me, gives
his authority as an agent of the police, and demands that I should
follow him. I only ask for time in which to arrange my affairs. _ Can you
possibly suppose this is a wish of mine to be arrested? " "Of course
not," I must admit. "Do you happen to know upon what charge you were
arrested? " "Yes; I believe for infanticide. " "Infanticide? But you know
that only a mother can commit this crime upon her newly born child? "
"That is true. "[4] "And under what circumstances did you dream; what
happened on the evening before? " "I would rather not tell you that; it
is a delicate matter. " "But I must have it, otherwise we must forgo the
interpretation of the dream. " "Well, then, I will tell you. I spent the
night, not at home, but at the house of a lady who means very much to
me.
When we awoke in the morning, something again passed between us.
Then I went to sleep again, and dreamt what I have told you. " "The woman
is married? " "Yes. " "And you do not wish her to conceive a child? " "No;
that might betray us. " "Then you do not practice normal coitus? " "I take
the precaution to withdraw before ejaculation. " "Am I permitted to
assume that you did this trick several times during the night, and that
in the morning you were not quite sure whether you had succeeded? " "That
might be the case. " "Then your dream is the fulfillment of a wish. By
means of it you secure the assurance that you have not begotten a child,
or, what amounts to the same thing, that you have killed a child. I can
easily demonstrate the connecting links. Do you remember, a few days ago
we were talking about the distress of matrimony (Ehenot), and about the
inconsistency of permitting the practice of coitus as long as no
impregnation takes place, while every delinquency after the ovum and
the semen meet and a foetus is formed is punished as a crime? In
connection with this, we also recalled the mediaeval controversy about
the moment of time at which the soul is really lodged in the foetus,
since the concept of murder becomes admissible only from that point on.
Doubtless you also know the gruesome poem by Lenau, which puts
infanticide and the prevention of children on the same plane. "
"Strangely enough, I had happened to think of Lenau during the
afternoon. " "Another echo of your dream. And now I shall demonstrate to
you another subordinate wish-fulfillment in your dream. You walk in
front of your house with the lady on your arm. So you take her home,
instead of spending the night at her house, as you do in actuality. The
fact that the wish-fulfillment, which is the essence of the dream,
disguises itself in such an unpleasant form, has perhaps more than one
reason. From my essay on the etiology of anxiety neuroses, you will see
that I note interrupted coitus as one of the factors which cause the
development of neurotic fear. It would be consistent with this that if
after repeated cohabitation of the kind mentioned you should be left in
an uncomfortable mood, which now becomes an element in the composition
of your dream. You also make use of this unpleasant state of mind to
conceal the wish-fulfillment. Furthermore, the mention of infanticide
has not yet been explained. Why does this crime, which is peculiar to
females, occur to you? " "I shall confess to you that I was involved in
such an affair years ago. Through my fault a girl tried to protect
herself from the consequences of a _liaison_ with me by securing an
abortion. I had nothing to do with carrying out the plan, but I was
naturally for a long time worried lest the affair might be discovered. "
"I understand; this recollection furnished a second reason why the
supposition that you had done your trick badly must have been painful to
you. "
A young physician, who had heard this dream of my colleague when it was
told, must have felt implicated by it, for he hastened to imitate it in
a dream of his own, applying its mode of thinking to another subject.
The day before he had handed in a declaration of his income, which was
perfectly honest, because he had little to declare. He dreamt that an
acquaintance of his came from a meeting of the tax commission and
informed him that all the other declarations of income had passed
uncontested, but that his own had awakened general suspicion, and that
he would be punished with a heavy fine. The dream is a poorly-concealed
fulfillment of the wish to be known as a physician with a large income.
It likewise recalls the story of the young girl who was advised against
accepting her suitor because he was a man of quick temper who would
surely treat her to blows after they were married.
The answer of the girl was: "I wish he _would_ strike me! " Her wish to
be married is so strong that she takes into the bargain the discomfort
which is said to be connected with matrimony, and which is predicted for
her, and even raises it to a wish.
If I group the very frequently occurring dreams of this sort, which seem
flatly to contradict my theory, in that they contain the denial of a
wish or some occurrence decidedly unwished for, under the head of
"counter wish-dreams," I observe that they may all be referred to two
principles, of which one has not yet been mentioned, although it plays a
large part in the dreams of human beings. One of the motives inspiring
these dreams is the wish that I should appear in the wrong. These dreams
regularly occur in the course of my treatment if the patient shows a
resistance against me, and I can count with a large degree of certainty
upon causing such a dream after I have once explained to the patient my
theory that the dream is a wish-fulfillment. [5] I may even expect this
to be the case in a dream merely in order to fulfill the wish that I may
appear in the wrong. The last dream which I shall tell from those
occurring in the course of treatment again shows this very thing. A
young girl who has struggled hard to continue my treatment, against the
will of her relatives and the authorities whom she had consulted, dreams
as follows: _She is forbidden at home to come to me any more. She then
reminds me of the promise I made her to treat her for nothing if
necessary, and I say to her: "I can show no consideration in money
matters. "_
It is not at all easy in this case to demonstrate the fulfillment of a
wish, but in all cases of this kind there is a second problem, the
solution of which helps also to solve the first. Where does she get the
words which she puts into my mouth? Of course I have never told her
anything like that, but one of her brothers, the very one who has the
greatest influence over her, has been kind enough to make this remark
about me. It is then the purpose of the dream that this brother should
remain in the right; and she does not try to justify this brother merely
in the dream; it is her purpose in life and the motive for her being
ill.
The other motive for counter wish-dreams is so clear that there is
danger of overlooking it, as for some time happened in my own case. In
the sexual make-up of many people there is a masochistic component,
which has arisen through the conversion of the aggressive, sadistic
component into its opposite. Such people are called "ideal" masochists,
if they seek pleasure not in the bodily pain which may be inflicted upon
them, but in humiliation and in chastisement of the soul. It is obvious
that such persons can have counter wish-dreams and disagreeable dreams,
which, however, for them are nothing but wish-fulfillment, affording
satisfaction for their masochistic inclinations. Here is such a dream. A
young man, who has in earlier years tormented his elder brother, towards
whom he was homosexually inclined, but who had undergone a complete
change of character, has the following dream, which consists of three
parts: (1) _He is "insulted" by his brother. _ (2) _Two adults are
caressing each other with homosexual intentions. _ (3) _His brother has
sold the enterprise whose management the young man reserved for his own
future. _ He awakens from the last-mentioned dream with the most
unpleasant feelings, and yet it is a masochistic wish-dream, which might
be translated: It would serve me quite right if my brother were to make
that sale against my interest, as a punishment for all the torments
which he has suffered at my hands.
I hope that the above discussion and examples will suffice--until
further objection can be raised--to make it seem credible that even
dreams with a painful content are to be analyzed as the fulfillments of
wishes. Nor will it seem a matter of chance that in the course of
interpretation one always happens upon subjects of which one does not
like to speak or think. The disagreeable sensation which such dreams
arouse is simply identical with the antipathy which endeavors--usually
with success--to restrain us from the treatment or discussion of such
subjects, and which must be overcome by all of us, if, in spite of its
unpleasantness, we find it necessary to take the matter in hand. But
this disagreeable sensation, which occurs also in dreams, does not
preclude the existence of a wish; every one has wishes which he would
not like to tell to others, which he does not want to admit even to
himself. We are, on other grounds, justified in connecting the
disagreeable character of all these dreams with the fact of dream
disfigurement, and in concluding that these dreams are distorted, and
that the wish-fulfillment in them is disguised until recognition is
impossible for no other reason than that a repugnance, a will to
suppress, exists in relation to the subject-matter of the dream or in
relation to the wish which the dream creates. Dream disfigurement,
then, turns out in reality to be an act of the censor. We shall take
into consideration everything which the analysis of disagreeable dreams
has brought to light if we reword our formula as follows: _The dream is
the (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed, repressed) wish_.
Now there still remain as a particular species of dreams with painful
content, dreams of anxiety, the inclusion of which under dreams of
wishing will find least acceptance with the uninitiated. But I can
settle the problem of anxiety dreams in very short order; for what they
may reveal is not a new aspect of the dream problem; it is a question in
their case of understanding neurotic anxiety in general. The fear which
we experience in the dream is only seemingly explained by the dream
content. If we subject the content of the dream to analysis, we become
aware that the dream fear is no more justified by the dream content than
the fear in a phobia is justified by the idea upon which the phobia
depends. For example, it is true that it is possible to fall out of a
window, and that some care must be exercised when one is near a window,
but it is inexplicable why the anxiety in the corresponding phobia is so
great, and why it follows its victims to an extent so much greater than
is warranted by its origin. The same explanation, then, which applies to
the phobia applies also to the dream of anxiety. In both cases the
anxiety is only superficially attached to the idea which accompanies it
and comes from another source.
On account of the intimate relation of dream fear to neurotic fear,
discussion of the former obliges me to refer to the latter. In a little
essay on "The Anxiety Neurosis,"[6] I maintained that neurotic fear has
its origin in the sexual life, and corresponds to a libido which has
been turned away from its object and has not succeeded in being applied.
From this formula, which has since proved its validity more and more
clearly, we may deduce the conclusion that the content of anxiety dreams
is of a sexual nature, the libido belonging to which content has been
transformed into fear.
[1] To sit for the painter. Goethe: "And if he has no backside, how can
the nobleman sit? "
[2] 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.
[3] Something like the smoked salmon in the dream of the deferred
supper.
[4] It often happens that a dream is told incompletely, and that a
recollection of the omitted portions appear 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.
[5] 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. "
[6] See _Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses_, p. 133,
translated by A. A. Brill, _Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases_,
Monograph Series.
V
SEX IN DREAMS
The more one is occupied with the solution of dreams, the more willing
one must become to acknowledge that the majority of the dreams of adults
treat of sexual material and give expression to erotic wishes. Only one
who really analyzes dreams, that is to say, who pushes forward from
their manifest content to the latent dream thoughts, can form an opinion
on this subject--never the person who is satisfied with registering the
manifest content (as, for example, Nacke in his works on sexual dreams).
Let us recognize at once that this fact is not to be wondered at, but
that it is in complete harmony with the fundamental assumptions of dream
explanation. No other impulse has had to undergo so much suppression
from the time of childhood as the sex impulse in its numerous
components, from no other impulse have survived so many and such intense
unconscious wishes, which now act in the sleeping state in such a manner
as to produce dreams. In dream interpretation, this significance of
sexual complexes must never be forgotten, nor must they, of course, be
exaggerated to the point of being considered exclusive.
Of many dreams it can be ascertained by a careful interpretation that
they are even to be taken bisexually, inasmuch as they result in an
irrefutable secondary interpretation in which they realize homosexual
feelings--that is, feelings that are common to the normal sexual
activity of the dreaming person. But that all dreams are to be
interpreted bisexually, seems to me to be a generalization as
indemonstrable as it is improbable, which I should not like to support.
Above all I should not know how to dispose of the apparent fact that
there are many dreams satisfying other than--in the widest sense--erotic
needs, as dreams of hunger, thirst, convenience, &c. Likewise the
similar assertions "that behind every dream one finds the death
sentence" (Stekel), and that every dream shows "a continuation from the
feminine to the masculine line" (Adler), seem to me to proceed far
beyond what is admissible in the interpretation of dreams.
We have already asserted elsewhere that dreams which are conspicuously
innocent invariably embody coarse erotic wishes, and we might confirm
this by means of numerous fresh examples. But many dreams which appear
indifferent, and which would never be suspected of any particular
significance, can be traced back, after analysis, to unmistakably sexual
wish-feelings, which are often of an unexpected nature. For example,
who would suspect a sexual wish in the following dream until the
interpretation had been worked out? The dreamer relates: _Between two
stately palaces stands a little house, receding somewhat, whose doors
are closed. My wife leads me a little way along the street up to the
little house, and pushes in the door, and then I slip quickly and easily
into the interior of a courtyard that slants obliquely upwards. _
Any one who has had experience in the translating of dreams will, of
course, immediately perceive that penetrating into narrow spaces, and
opening locked doors, belong to the commonest sexual symbolism, and will
easily find in this dream a representation of attempted coition from
behind (between the two stately buttocks of the female body). The narrow
slanting passage is of course the vagina; the assistance attributed to
the wife of the dreamer requires the interpretation that in reality it
is only consideration for the wife which is responsible for the
detention from such an attempt. Moreover, inquiry shows that on the
previous day a young girl had entered the household of the dreamer who
had pleased him, and who had given him the impression that she would not
be altogether opposed to an approach of this sort. The little house
between the two palaces is taken from a reminiscence of the Hradschin
in Prague, and thus points again to the girl who is a native of that
city.
If with my patients I emphasize the frequency of the Oedipus dream--of
having sexual intercourse with one's mother--I get the answer: "I cannot
remember such a dream. " Immediately afterwards, however, there arises
the recollection of another disguised and indifferent dream, which has
been dreamed repeatedly by the patient, and the analysis shows it to be
a dream of this same content--that is, another Oedipus dream. I can
assure the reader that veiled dreams of sexual intercourse with the
mother are a great deal more frequent than open ones to the same effect.
There are dreams about landscapes and localities in which emphasis is
always laid upon the assurance: "I have been there before. " In this case
the locality is always the genital organ of the mother; it can indeed be
asserted with such certainty of no other locality that one "has been
there before. "
A large number of dreams, often full of fear, which are concerned with
passing through narrow spaces or with staying, in the water, are based
upon fancies about the embryonic life, about the sojourn in the mother's
womb, and about the act of birth. The following is the dream of a young
man who in his fancy has already while in embryo taken advantage of his
opportunity to spy upon an act of coition between his parents.
_"He is in a deep shaft, in which there is a window, as in the Semmering
Tunnel. At first he sees an empty landscape through this window, and
then he composes a picture into it, which is immediately at hand and
which fills out the empty space. The picture represents a field which is
being thoroughly harrowed by an implement, and the delightful air, the
accompanying idea of hard work, and the bluish-black clods of earth make
a pleasant impression. He then goes on and sees a primary school opened
. . . and he is surprised that so much attention is devoted in it to the
sexual feelings of the child, which makes him think of me. "_
Here is a pretty water-dream of a female patient, which was turned to
extraordinary account in the course of treatment.
_At her summer resort at the . . . Lake, she hurls herself into the dark
water at a place where the pale moon is reflected in the water. _
Dreams of this sort are parturition dreams; their interpretation is
accomplished by reversing the fact reported in the manifest dream
content; thus, instead of "throwing one's self into the water," read
"coming out of the water," that is, "being born. " The place from which
one is born is recognized if one thinks of the bad sense of the French
"la lune. " The pale moon thus becomes the white "bottom" (Popo), which
the child soon recognizes as the place from which it came. Now what can
be the meaning of the patient's wishing to be born at her summer resort?
I asked the dreamer this, and she answered without hesitation: "Hasn't
the treatment made me as though I were born again? " Thus the dream
becomes an invitation to continue the cure at this summer resort, that
is, to visit her there; perhaps it also contains a very bashful allusion
to the wish to become a mother herself. [1]
Another dream of parturition, with its interpretation, I take from the
work of E. Jones. _"She stood at the seashore watching a small boy, who
seemed to be hers, wading into the water. This he did till the water
covered him, and she could only see his head bobbing up and down near
the surface. The scene then changed to the crowded hall of a hotel. Her
husband left her, and she 'entered into conversation with' a
stranger. "_ The second half of the dream was discovered in the analysis
to represent a flight from her husband, and the entering into intimate
relations with a third person, behind whom was plainly indicated Mr.
X. 's brother mentioned in a former dream. The first part of the dream
was a fairly evident birth phantasy. In dreams as in mythology, the
delivery of a child _from_ the uterine waters is commonly presented by
distortion as the entry of the child _into_ water; among many others,
the births of Adonis, Osiris, Moses, and Bacchus are well-known
illustrations of this. The bobbing up and down of the head in the water
at once recalled to the patient the sensation of quickening she had
experienced in her only pregnancy. Thinking of the boy going into the
water induced a reverie in which she saw herself taking him out of the
water, carrying him into the nursery, washing him and dressing him, and
installing him in her household.
The second half of the dream, therefore, represents thoughts concerning
the elopement, which belonged to the first half of the underlying latent
content; the first half of the dream corresponded with the second half
of the latent content, the birth phantasy. Besides this inversion in
order, further inversions took place in each half of the dream. In the
first half the child _entered_ the water, and then his head bobbed; in
the underlying dream thoughts first the quickening occurred, and then
the child left the water (a double inversion). In the second half her
husband left her; in the dream thoughts she left her husband.
Another parturition dream is related by Abraham of a young woman looking
forward to her first confinement. From a place in the floor of the house
a subterranean canal leads directly into the water (parturition path,
amniotic liquor). She lifts up a trap in the floor, and there
immediately appears a creature dressed in a brownish fur, which almost
resembles a seal. This creature changes into the younger brother of the
dreamer, to whom she has always stood in maternal relationship.
Dreams of "saving" are connected with parturition dreams. To save,
especially to save from the water, is equivalent to giving birth when
dreamed by a woman; this sense is, however, modified when the dreamer is
a man.
Robbers, burglars at night, and ghosts, of which we are afraid before
going to bed, and which occasionally even disturb our sleep, originate
in one and the same childish reminiscence. They are the nightly visitors
who have awakened the child to set it on the chamber so that it may not
wet the bed, or have lifted the cover in order to see clearly how the
child is holding its hands while sleeping. I have been able to induce an
exact recollection of the nocturnal visitor in the analysis of some of
these anxiety dreams. The robbers were always the father, the ghosts
more probably corresponded to feminine persons with white night-gowns.
When one has become familiar with the abundant use of symbolism for the
representation of sexual material in dreams, one naturally raises the
question whether there are not many of these symbols which appear once
and for all with a firmly established significance like the signs in
stenography; and one is tempted to compile a new dream-book according to
the cipher method. In this connection it may be remarked that this
symbolism does not belong peculiarly to the dream, but rather to
unconscious thinking, particularly that of the masses, and it is to be
found in greater perfection in the folklore, in the myths, legends, and
manners of speech, in the proverbial sayings, and in the current
witticisms of a nation than in its dreams.
The dream takes advantage of this symbolism in order to give a disguised
representation to its latent thoughts. Among the symbols which are used
in this manner there are of course many which regularly, or almost
regularly, mean the same thing. Only it is necessary to keep in mind the
curious plasticity of psychic material. Now and then a symbol in the
dream content may have to be interpreted not symbolically, but according
to its real meaning; at another time the dreamer, owing to a peculiar
set of recollections, may create for himself the right to use anything
whatever as a sexual symbol, though it is not ordinarily used in that
way. Nor are the most frequently used sexual symbols unambiguous every
time.
After these limitations and reservations I may call attention to the
following: Emperor and Empress (King and Queen) in most cases really
represent the parents of the dreamer; the dreamer himself or herself is
the prince or princess. All elongated objects, sticks, tree-trunks, and
umbrellas (on account of the stretching-up which might be compared to an
erection! all elongated and sharp weapons, knives, daggers, and pikes,
are intended to represent the male member. A frequent, not very
intelligible, symbol for the same is a nail-file (on account of the
rubbing and scraping? ). Little cases, boxes, caskets, closets, and
stoves correspond to the female part. The symbolism of lock and key has
been very gracefully employed by Uhland in his song about the "Grafen
Eberstein," to make a common smutty joke. The dream of walking through a
row of rooms is a brothel or harem dream. Staircases, ladders, and
flights of stairs, or climbing on these, either upwards or downwards,
are symbolic representations of the sexual act. Smooth walls over which
one is climbing, facades of houses upon which one is letting oneself
down, frequently under great anxiety, correspond to the erect human
body, and probably repeat in the dream reminiscences of the upward
climbing of little children on their parents or foster parents. "Smooth"
walls are men. Often in a dream of anxiety one is holding on firmly to
some projection from a house. Tables, set tables, and boards are women,
perhaps on account of the opposition which does away with the bodily
contours. Since "bed and board" (_mensa et thorus_) constitute marriage,
the former are often put for the latter in the dream, and as far as
practicable the sexual presentation complex is transposed to the eating
complex. Of articles of dress the woman's hat may frequently be
definitely interpreted as the male genital. In dreams of men one often
finds the cravat as a symbol for the penis; this indeed is not only
because cravats hang down long, and are characteristic of the man, but
also because one can select them at pleasure, a freedom which is
prohibited by nature in the original of the symbol. Persons who make use
of this symbol in the dream are very extravagant with cravats, and
possess regular collections of them. All complicated machines and
apparatus in dream are very probably genitals, in the description of
which dream symbolism shows itself to be as tireless as the activity of
wit. Likewise many landscapes in dreams, especially with bridges or with
wooded mountains, can be readily recognized as descriptions of the
genitals. Finally where one finds incomprehensible neologisms one may
think of combinations made up of components having a sexual
significance. Children also in the dream often signify the genitals, as
men and women are in the habit of fondly referring to their genital
organ as their "little one. " As a very recent symbol of the male genital
may be mentioned the flying machine, utilization of which is justified
by its relation to flying as well as occasionally by its form. To play
with a little child or to beat a little one is often the dream's
representation of onanism. A number of other symbols, in part not
sufficiently verified are given by Stekel, who illustrates them with
examples. Right and left, according to him, are to be conceived in the
dream in an ethical sense. "The right way always signifies the road to
righteousness, the left the one to crime. Thus the left may signify
homosexuality, incest, and perversion, while the right signifies
marriage, relations with a prostitute, &c. The meaning is always
determined by the individual moral view-point of the dreamer. " Relatives
in the dream generally play the role of genitals. Not to be able to
catch up with a wagon is interpreted by Stekel as regret not to be able
to come up to a difference in age. Baggage with which one travels is the
burden of sin by which one is oppressed. Also numbers, which frequently
occur in the dream, are assigned by Stekel a fixed symbolical meaning,
but these interpretations seem neither sufficiently verified nor of
general validity, although the interpretation in individual cases can
generally be recognized as probable. In a recently published book by W.
Stekel, _Die Sprache des Traumes_, which I was unable to utilize, there
is a list of the most common sexual symbols, the object of which is to
prove that all sexual symbols can be bisexually used. He states: "Is
there a symbol which (if in any way permitted by the phantasy) may not
be used simultaneously in the masculine and the feminine sense!
