The Interpretation of Dreams

The idea in the dream, “thinking and experiencing are the same thing,” refers to the explanation of hysterical symptoms, to which the male urinal (glass) also has a relation. I need not explain the principle of the “Gschnas” to a Viennese; it consists in constructing objects of rare and costly appearance out of trifles, and preferably out of comical and worthless material—for example, making suits of armour out of cooking utensils, sticks and “salzstangeln” (elongated rolls), as our artists like to do at their jolly parties. I had now learned that hysterical subjects do the same thing; besides what has actually occurred to them, they unconsciously conceive horrible or extravagant fantastic images, which they construct from the most harmless and commonplace things they have experienced. The symptoms depend solely upon these phantasies, not upon the memory of their real experiences, be they serious or harmless. This explanation helped me to overcome many difficulties and gave me much pleasure. I was able to allude to it in the dream element “male urinal” (glass) because I had been told that at the last “Gschnas” evening a poison chalice of Lucretia Borgia had been exhibited, the chief constituent of which had consisted of a glass urinal for men, such as is used in hospitals.

BP. Cf. the passage in Griesinger[31] and the remarks in my second essay on the “defence-neuropsychoses”—Selected Papers on Hysteria, translated by A. A. Brill.

BQ. In the two sources from which I am acquainted with this dream, the report of its contents do not agree.

BR. An exception is furnished by those cases in which the dreamer utilises in the expression of his latent dream thoughts the symbols which are familiar to us.

BS. “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

BT. The child also appears in the fairy tale, for there a child suddenly calls: “Why, he hasn’t anything on at all.”

BU. Ferenczi has reported a number of interesting dreams of nakedness in women which could be traced to an infantile desire to exhibit, but which differ in some features from the “typical” dream of nakedness discussed above.

BV. For obvious reasons the presence of the “whole family” in the dream has the same significance.

BW. A supplementary interpretation of this dream: To spit on the stairs, led me to “esprit d’escalier” by a free translation, owing to the fact that “Spucken” (English: spit, and also to act like a spook, to haunt) is an occupation of ghosts. “Stair-wit” is equivalent to lack of quickness at repartee (German: Schlagfertigkeit—readiness to hit back, to strike), with which I must really reproach myself. Is it a question, however, whether the nurse was lacking in “readiness to hit”?

BX. Cf. “Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben” in the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, vol. i., 1909, and “Ueber infantile Sexualtheorien,” in Sexualprobleme, vol. i., 1908.

BY. The three-and-a-half-year-old Hans, whose phobia is the subject of analysis in the above-mentioned publication, cries during fever shortly after the birth of his sister: “I don’t want a little sister.” In his neurosis, one and a half years later, he frankly confesses the wish that the mother should drop the little one into the bath-tub while bathing it, in order that it may die. With all this, Hans is a good-natured, affectionate child, who soon becomes fond of his sister, and likes especially to take her under his protection.

BZ. The three-and-a-half-year old Hans embodies his crushing criticism of his little sister in the identical word (see previous notes). He assumes that she is unable to speak on account of her lack of teeth.

CA. I heard the following idea expressed by a gifted boy of ten, after the sudden death of his father: “I understand that father is dead, but I cannot see why he does not come home for supper.”

CB. At least a certain number of mythological representations. According to others, emasculation is only practised by Kronos on his father.

With regard to mythological significance of this motive, cf. Otto Rank’s “Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden,” fifth number of Schriften zur angew. Seelenkunde, 1909.

CC. Act. i. sc. 2. Translated by George Somers Clark.

CD. Another of the great creations of tragic poetry, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is founded on the same basis as the Oedipus. But the whole difference in the psychic life of the two widely separated periods of civilisation—the age-long progress of repression in the emotional life of humanity—is made manifest in the changed treatment of the identical material. In Oedipus the basic wish-phantasy of the child is brought to light and realised as it is in the dream; in Hamlet it remains repressed, and we learn of its existence—somewhat as in the case of a neurosis—only by the inhibition which results from it. The fact that it is possible to remain in complete darkness concerning the character of the hero, has curiously shown itself to be consistent with the overpowering effect of the modern drama. The play is based upon Hamlet’s hesitation to accomplish the avenging task which has been assigned to him; the text does not avow the reasons or motives of this hesitation, nor have the numerous attempts at interpretation succeeded in giving them. According to the conception which is still current to-day, and which goes back to Goethe, Hamlet represents the type of man whose prime energy is paralysed by over-development of thought activity. (“Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”) According to others the poet has attempted to portray a morbid, vacillating character who is subject to neurasthenia. The plot of the story, however, teaches us that Hamlet is by no means intended to appear as a person altogether incapable of action.

Twice we see him asserting himself actively, once in headlong passion, where he stabs the eavesdropper behind the arras, and on another occasion where he sends the two courtiers to the death which has been intended for himself—doing this deliberately, even craftily, and with all the lack of compunction of a prince of the Renaissance. What is it, then, that restrains him in the accomplishment of the task which his father’s ghost has set before him? Here the explanation offers itself that it is the peculiar nature of this task. Hamlet can do everything but take vengeance upon the man who has put his father out of the way, and has taken his father’s place with his mother—upon the man who shows him the realisation of his repressed childhood wishes. The loathing which ought to drive him to revenge is thus replaced in him by self-reproaches, by conscientious scruples, which represent to him that he himself is no better than the murderer whom he is to punish. I have thus translated into consciousness what had to remain unconscious in the mind of the hero; if some one wishes to call Hamlet a hysteric subject I cannot but recognise it as an inference from my interpretation. The sexual disinclination which Hamlet expresses in conversation with Ophelia, coincides very well with this view—it is the same sexual disinclination which was to take possession of the poet more and more during the next few years of his life, until the climax of it is expressed in Timon of Athens.

Of course it can only be the poet’s own psychology with which we are confronted in Hamlet; from a work on Shakespeare by George Brandes (1896), I take the fact that the drama was composed immediately after the death of Shakespeare’s father—that is to say, in the midst of recent mourning for him—during the revival, we may assume, of his childhood emotion towards his father. It is also known that a son of Shakespeare’s, who died early, bore the name of Hamnet (identical with Hamlet). Just as Hamlet treats of the relation of the son to his parents, Macbeth, which appears subsequently, is based upon the theme of childlessness. Just as every neurotic symptom, just as the dream itself, is capable of re-interpretation, and even requires it in order to be perfectly intelligible, so every genuine poetical creation must have proceeded from more than one motive, more than one impulse in the mind of the poet, and must admit of more than one interpretation. I have here attempted to interpret only the most profound group of impulses in the mind of the creative poet. The conception of the Hamlet problem contained in these remarks has been later confirmed in a detailed work based on many new arguments by Dr. Ernest Jones, of Toronto (Canada). The connection of the Hamlet material with the “Mythus von der Geburt des Helden” has also been demonstrated by O. Rank.—“The Oedipus Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet’s Mystery: a Study in Motive” (American Journal of Psychology, January 1910, vol. xxi.).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III. This saying interested me in its relation to the typical significance of dreams of dental irritation as a substitute for onanism as maintained by Freud in his Traumdeutung (2nd edition, p. 193), for the teeth and the male genital (Bub-boy) are brought in certain relations even in the popular saying. On the evening of the same day I therefore read the passage in question in the Traumdeutung, and found there among other things the statements which will be quoted in a moment, the influence of which on my dream is as plainly recognisable as the influence of the two above-mentioned experiences. Freud writes concerning dreams of dental irritation that ‘in the case of men nothing else than cravings for masturbation from the time of puberty furnishes the motive power for these dreams,’ p. 193. Further, ‘I am of the opinion that the frequent modifications of the typical dream of dental irritation—that e.g. of another person drawing the tooth from the dreamer’s mouth—are made intelligible by means of the same explanation. It may seem problematic, however, how “dental irritation” can arrive at this significance. I here call attention to the transference from below to above (in the dream in question from the lower to the upper jaw), which occurs so frequently, which is at the service of sexual repression, and by means of which all kinds of sensations and intentions occurring in hysteria which ought to be enacted in the genitals can be realised upon less objectionable parts of the body,’ p. 194. ‘But I must also refer to another connection contained in an idiomatic expression.

In our country there is in use an indelicate designation for the act of masturbation, namely: To pull one out, or to pull one down,’ p. 195, 2nd edition. This expression had been familiar to me in early youth as a designation for onanism, and from here on it will not be difficult for the experienced dream interpreter to get access to the infantile material which may lie at the basis of this dream. I only wish to add that the facility with which the tooth in the dream came out, and the fact that it became transformed after coming out into an upper incisor, recalls to me an experience of childhood when I myself easily and painlessly pulled out one of my wobbling front teeth. This episode, which I can still to this day distinctly remember with all its details, happened at the same early period in which my first conscious attempts at onanism began—(Concealing Memory). The reference of Freud to an assertion of C. G. Jung that dreams of dental irritation in women signify parturition (footnote p. 194), together with the popular belief in the significance of toothache in pregnant women, has established an opposition between the feminine significance and the masculine (puberty). In this connection I recall an earlier dream which I dreamed soon after I was discharged by the dentist after the treatment, that the gold crowns which had just been put in fell out, whereupon I was greatly chagrined in the dream on account of the considerable expense, concerning which I had not yet stopped worrying.

In view of a certain experience this dream now becomes comprehensible as a commendation of the material advantages of masturbation when contrasted with every form of the economically less advantageous object-love (gold crowns are also Austrian gold coins).

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

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

The dream is therefore also in this respect the fulfilment of a wish; namely, to be convinced of the importance and stability of this conception of Freud.

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

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

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

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