The Interpretation of Dreams

In our interpretation of dreams thus far we have come upon the element of absurdity in the dream-content so often that we must no longer postpone an investigation of its cause and significance. We remember, of course, that the absurdity of dreams has furnished the opponents of dream investigation with their chief argument for considering the dream nothing but the meaningless product of a reduced and fragmentary activity of the mind.

I begin with specimens in which the absurdity of the dream-content is only apparent and immediately disappears when the dream is more thoroughly examined. There are a few dreams which—accidentally one is at first inclined to think—are concerned with the dead father of the dreamer.

According to the standards prevailing in dream criticism, this dream-content would have to be explained in the following manner: At first, when the dreamer is picturing his father’s misfortune, he has forgotten that his father has already been in his grave for years; in the further course of the dream this memory comes to life, and causes him to be surprised at his own dream even while he is still dreaming. Analysis, however, teaches us that it is entirely useless to attempt such explanations. The dreamer had given an artist an order for a bust of his father, which he had inspected two days before the dream. This is the thing which seems to him to have met with an accident. The sculptor has never seen the father, and is working from photographs which have been given him. On the very day before the dream the pious son had sent an old servant of the family to the studio in order to see whether he would pass the same judgment upon the marble head, namely, that it had turned out too narrow from side to side, from temple to temple. Now follows the mass of recollections which has contributed to the formation of this dream. The dreamer’s father had a habit, whenever he was harassed by business cares or family difficulties, of pressing his temples with both hands, as though he were trying to compress his head, which seemed to grow too large for him. When our dreamer was four years old he was present when the accidental discharge of a pistol blackened his father’s eyes (his eyes are so clear).

While alive his father had had a deep wrinkle at the place where the dream shows the injury, whenever he was thoughtful or sad. The fact that in the dream this wrinkle is replaced by a wound points to the second occasion of the dream. The dreamer had taken a photograph of his little daughter; the plate had fallen from his hand, and when picked up showed a crack that ran like a vertical furrow across the forehead and reached as far as the orbital curve. He could not then get the better of his superstitious forebodings, for, on the day before his mother’s death, a photographic plate with her likeness had cracked as he was handling it.

Thus the absurdity of the dream is only the result of an inaccuracy of verbal expression, which does not take the trouble to distinguish the bust and the photograph from the original. We are all accustomed to say of a picture, “Don’t you think father is good?” Of course the appearance of absurdity in this dream might easily have been avoided. If it were permissible to pass judgment after a single experience, one might be tempted to say that this semblance of absurdity is admitted or desired.

After his death my father has been politically active among the Magyars, and has united them into a political body; to accompany which I see a little indistinct picture: a crowd of people as in the Reichstag; a person who is standing on one or two benches, others round about him. I remember that he looked very like Garibaldi on his death-bed, and I am glad that this promise has really come true.

This is certainly absurd enough. It was dreamed at the time that the Hungarians got into a lawless condition, through Parliamentary obstruction, and passed through the crisis from which Koloman Szell delivered them. The trivial circumstance that the scene beheld in the dream consists of such little pictures is not without significance for the explanation of this element. The usual visual representation of our thoughts results in pictures which impress us as being life-size; my dream picture, however, is the reproduction of a wood-cut inserted in the text of an illustrated history of Austria, representing Maria Theresa in the Reichstag of Pressburg—the famous scene of “Moriamur pro rege nostro.”[ER] Like Maria Theresa, my father, in the dream, stands surrounded by the multitude; but he is standing on one or two benches, and thus like a judge on the bench. (He has united them—here the intermediary is the phrase, “We shall need no judge.”) Those of us who stood around the death-bed of my father actually noticed that he looked much like Garibaldi. He had a post-mortem rise of temperature, his cheeks shone redder and redder ... involuntarily we continue: “And behind him lay in phantom radiance that which subdues us all—the common thing.”

This elevation of our thoughts prepares us for having to deal with this very “common thing.” The post-mortem feature of the rise in temperature corresponds to the words, “after his death” in the dream content. The most agonising of his sufferings had been a complete paralysis of the intestines (obstruction), which set in during the last weeks. All sorts of disrespectful thoughts are connected with this. A man of my own age who had lost his father while he was still at the Gymnasium, upon which occasion I was profoundly moved and tendered him my friendship, once told me, with derision, about the distress of a lady relative whose father had died on the street and had been brought home, where it turned out upon undressing the corpse, that at the moment of death, or post-mortem, an evacuation of the bowels had taken place. The daughter of the dead man was profoundly unhappy at having this ugly detail stain her memory of her father. We have now penetrated to the wish that is embodied in this dream. To stand before one’s children pure and great after one’s death, who would not wish that? What has become of the absurdity of the dream? The appearance of it has been caused only by the fact that a perfectly permissible mode of speech—in the case of which we are accustomed to ignore the absurdity that happens to exist between its parts—has been faithfully represented in the dream. Here, too, we are unable to deny that the semblance of absurdity is one which is desired and has been purposely brought about.[ES]

III. In the example which I now cite I can detect the dream activity in the act of purposely manufacturing an absurdity for which there is no occasion at all in the subject-matter. It is taken from the dream that I had as a result of meeting Count Thun before my vacation trip. “I am riding in a one-horse carriage, and give orders to drive to a railway station. ‘Of course I cannot ride with you on the railway line itself,’ I say, after the driver made an objection as though I had tired him out; at the same time it seems as though I had already driven with him for a distance which one usually rides on the train.” For this confused and senseless story the analysis gives the following explanation: During the day I had hired a one-horse carriage which was to take me to a remote street in Dornbach. The driver, however, did not know the way, and kept on driving in the manner of those good people until I noticed the fact and showed him the way, not sparing him a few mocking remarks withal. From this driver a train of thought led to the aristocratic personage whom I was destined to meet later. For the present I shall only remark that what strikes us middle-class plebeians about the aristocracy is that they like to put themselves in the driver’s seat. Does not Count Thun guide the Austrian car of state? The next sentence in the dream, however, refers to my brother, whom I identify with the driver of the one-horse carriage.

I had this year refused to take the trip through Italy with him (“of course I cannot ride with you on the railway line itself”), and this refusal was a sort of punishment for his wonted complaint that I usually tired him out on this trip (which gets into the dream unchanged) by making him take hurried trips and see too many nice things in one day. That evening my brother had accompanied me to the railroad station, but shortly before getting there had jumped out, at the state railway division of the Western Station, in order to take a train to Purkersdorf. I remarked to him that he could stay with me a little longer, inasmuch as he did not go to Purkersdorf by the state railway but by the Western Railway. This is how it happens that in the dream I rode in the wagon a distance which one usually rides on the train. In reality, however, it was just the opposite; I told my brother: The distance which you ride on the state railway you could ride in my company on the Western Railway. The whole confusion of the dream is therefore produced by my inserting in the dream the word “wagon” instead of “state railway,” which, to be sure, does good service in bringing together the driver and my brother. I then find in the dream some nonsense which seems hardly straightened out by my explanation, and which almost forms a contradiction to my earlier speech (“Of course I cannot ride with you on the railway line itself”).

But with what intention? We shall now learn what the absurdity in the dream signifies, and the motives which admitted it or created it. The solution of the mystery in the case in question is as follows: In the dream I needed something absurd and incomprehensible in connection with “riding” (Fahren) because in the dream thoughts I had a certain judgment which required representation. On an evening at the house of the hospitable and clever lady who appears in another scene of the same dream as the “hostess,” I heard two riddles which I could not solve. As they were known to the other members of the party, I presented a somewhat ludicrous figure in my unsuccessful attempts to find a solution. They were two equivoques turning on the words “Nachkommen” (to come after—offspring) and “vorfahren” (to ride in advance—forefathers, ancestry). They read as follows:

As I had seen Count Thun ride in advance (vorfahren), so high and mighty, and had merged into the Figaro-mood which finds the merit of aristocratic gentlemen in the fact that they have taken the trouble to be born (Nachkommen—to become offspring), the two riddles became intermediary thoughts for the dream-work. As aristocrats can be readily confounded with coachmen, and as coachmen were in our country formerly called brothers-in-law, the work of condensation could employ my brother in the same representation. But the dream thought at work in the background was as follows: It is nonsense to be proud of one’s ancestry. (Vorfahren.) I would rather be myself an ancestor. (Vorfahr.) For the sake of this judgment, “it is nonsense,” we have the nonsense in the dream. We can now also solve the last riddle in this obscure passage of the dream, namely, that I have already driven before (vorher gefahren, vorgefahren) with the coachman.

Thus the dream is made absurd if there occurs as one of the elements in the dream thoughts the judgment “That is nonsense,” and in general if disdain and criticism are the motives for one of the trains of unconscious thought. Hence absurdity becomes one of the means by which the dream activity expresses contradiction, as it does by reversing a relation in the material between the dream thoughts and dream content, and by utilising sensations of motor impediment. But absurdity in the dream is not simply to be translated by “no”; it is rather intended to reproduce the disposition of the dream thoughts, this being to show mockery and ridicule along with the contradiction. It is only for this purpose that the dream activity produces anything ridiculous. Here again it transforms a part of the latent content into a manifest form.[ET]

As a matter of fact we have already met with a convincing example of the significance of an absurd dream. The dream, interpreted without analysis, of the Wagnerian performance lasting until 7.45 in the morning, in which the orchestra is conducted from a tower, &c. (see p. 316) is apparently trying to say: It is a crazy world and an insane society. He who deserves a thing doesn’t get it, and he who doesn’t care for anything has it—and in this she means to compare her fate with that of her cousin. The fact that dreams concerning a dead father were the first to furnish us with examples of absurdity in dreams is by no means an accident. The conditions necessary for the creations of absurd dreams are here grouped together in a typical manner. The authority belonging to the father has at an early age aroused the criticism of the child, and the strict demands he has made have caused the child to pay particularly close attention to every weakness of the father for its own extenuation; but the piety with which the father’s personality is surrounded in our thoughts, especially after his death, increases the censorship which prevents the expressions of this criticism from becoming conscious.

In view of the preceding discussion, we shall translate the insistence with which this dream exhibits its absurdities as the sure sign of a particularly embittered and passionate controversy in the dream thoughts. With all the more astonishment, however, we note that in this dream the controversy is waged openly, and the father designated as the person against whom the satire is directed. This openness seems to contradict our assumption of a censor as operative in the dream activity. We may say in explanation, however, that here the father is only an interposed person, while the conflict is carried on with another one, who makes his appearance in the dream by means of a single allusion. While the dream usually treats of revolt against other persons, behind which the father is concealed, the reverse is true here; the father serves as the man of straw to represent others, and hence the dream dares thus openly to concern itself with a person who is usually hallowed, because there is present the certain knowledge that he is not in reality intended. We learn of this condition of affairs by considering the occasion of the dream. Now, it occurred after I had heard that an older colleague, whose judgment is considered infallible, had expressed disapproval and astonishment at the fact that one of my patients was then continuing psychoanalytical work with me for the fifth year.

The introductory sentences of the dream point with transparent disguise to the fact that this colleague had for a time taken over the duties which my father could no longer perform (expenses, fees at the hospital); and when our friendly relations came to be broken I was thrown into the same conflict of feelings which arises in the case of misunderstanding between father and son in view of the part played by the father and his earlier functions. The dream thoughts now bitterly resent the reproach that I am not making better progress, which extends itself from the treatment of this patient to other things. Does this colleague know anyone who can get on faster? Does he not know that conditions of this sort are usually incurable and last for life? What are four or five years in comparison to a whole life, especially when life has been made so much easier for the patient during the treatment?

The impression of absurdity in this dream is brought about largely by the fact that sentences from different divisions of the dream thoughts are strung together without any reconciling transition. Thus the sentence, I go to him in the adjoining room, &c., leaves the subject dealt with in the preceding sentences, and faithfully reproduces the circumstances under which I told my father about my marriage engagement. Thus the dream is trying to remind me of the noble disinterestedness which the old man showed at that time, and to put it in contrast with the conduct of another, a new person. I now perceive that the dream is allowed to make sport of my father for the reason that in the dream thought he is held up as an example to another man, in full recognition of his merit. It is in the nature of every censorship that it permits the telling of untruth about forbidden things rather than truth. The next sentence, in which my father remembers having once been drunk, and having been locked up for it, also contains nothing which is actually true of my father. The person whom he covers is here a no less important one than the great Meynert, in whose footsteps I followed with such great veneration, and whose attitude towards me was changed into undisguised hostility after a short period of indulgence. The dream recalls to me his own statement that in his youth he was addicted to the chloroform habit, and that for this he had to enter a sanatorium. It recalls also a second experience with him shortly before his death.

I carried on an embittered literary controversy with him concerning hysteria in the male, the existence of which he denied, and when I visited him in his last illness and asked him how he felt, he dwelt upon the details of his condition and concluded with the words: “You know, I have always been one of the prettiest cases of masculine hysteria.” Thus, to my satisfaction, and to my astonishment, he admitted what he had so long and so stubbornly opposed. But the fact that in this scene I can use my father to cover Meynert is based not upon the analogy which has been found to exist between the two persons, but upon the slight, but quite adequate, representation of a conditional sentence occurring in the dream thoughts, which in full would read as follows: “Of course if I were of the second generation, the son of a professor or of a court-councillor, I should have progressed more rapidly.” In the dream I now make a court-councillor and a professor of my father. The most obvious and most annoying absurdity of the dream lies in the treatment of the date 1851, which seems to me to be hardly distinguishable from 1856, as though a difference of five years would signify nothing whatever. But it is just this idea of the dream thoughts which requires expression.

Four or five years—that is the length of time which I enjoyed the support of the colleague mentioned at the outset; but it is also the time during which I kept my bride waiting before I married her; and, through a coincidence that is eagerly taken advantage of by the dream thoughts, it is also the time during which I am now keeping one of my best patients waiting for the completion of his cure. “What are five years?” ask the dream thoughts. “That is no time at all for me—that doesn’t come into consideration. I have time enough ahead of me, and just as what you didn’t want to believe came true at last, so I shall accomplish this also.” Besides the number 51, when separated from the number of the century, is determined in still another manner and in an opposite sense; for which reason it occurs in the dream again. Fifty-one is an age at which a man seems particularly exposed to danger, at which I have seen many of my colleagues suddenly die, and among them one who had been appointed to a professorship a few days before, after he had been waiting a long time.

We shall soon find means to justify the nonsense of this dream. Mr. M., with whom I became acquainted at a dinner-party, had recently requested me to examine his brother, who showed signs of paralytic insanity. The conjecture was right; the painful thing about this visit was that the patient exposed his brother by alluding to his youthful pranks when there was no occasion in the conversation for his doing so. I had asked the patient to tell me the year of his birth, and had got him to make several small calculations in order to bring out the weakness of his memory—all of which tests he passed fairly well. I see now that I am acting like a paralytic in the dream (I do not know exactly what year it is at present). Other subject-matter in the dream is drawn from another recent source. The editor of a medical journal, a friend of mine, had accepted for his paper a very unfavourable, a “crushing,” criticism of the last book of my friend Fl. of Berlin, the author of which was a very youthful reviewer, who was not very competent to pass judgment. I thought I had a right to interfere, and called the editor to account; he keenly regretted the acceptance of the criticism, but would not promise redress. Thereupon I broke off relations with the journal, and in my letter of resignation expressed the hope that our personal relations would not suffer from the incident. The third source of this dream is an account given by a female patient—it was fresh in my memory at the time—of the mental disease of her brother who had fallen into a frenzy, crying “Nature, Nature.”

The physicians in attendance thought that the cry was derived from a reading of Goethe’s beautiful essay, and that it pointed to overwork in the patient in the study of natural philosophy. I thought rather of the sexual sense in which even less cultured people with us use the word “Nature,” and the fact that the unfortunate man later mutilated his genitals seemed to show that I was not far wrong. Eighteen years was the age of this patient at the time when the attack of frenzy occurred.