The Interpretation of Dreams

AM. Similar “counter wish-dreams” have been repeatedly reported to me within the last few years by my pupils who thus reacted to their first encounter with the “wish theory of the dream.”

AN. We may mention here the simplification and modification of this fundamental formula, propounded by Otto Rank: “On the basis and with the help of repressed infantile sexual material, the dream regularly represents as fulfilled actual, and as a rule also erotic, wishes, in a disguised and symbolic form.” (“Ein Traum, der sich selbst deutet,” Jahrbuch, v., Bleuler-Freud, II. B., p. 519, 1910.)

AO. See Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses, p. 133, translated by A. A. Brill, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Monograph Series.

AP. It is clear that the conception of Robert, that the dream is intended to rid our memory of the useless impressions which it has received during the day, is no longer tenable, if indifferent memories of childhood appear in the dream with some degree of frequency. The conclusion would have to be drawn that the dream ordinarily performs very inadequately the duty which is prescribed for it.

AQ. As mentioned in the first chapter, p. 67, H. Swoboda applies broadly to the psychic activity, the biological intervals of twenty-three and twenty-eight days discovered by W. Fliess, and lays especial emphasis upon the fact that these periods are determinant for the appearance of the dream elements in dreams. There would be no material change in dream interpretation if this could be proven, but it would result in a new source for the origin of the dream material. I have recently undertaken some examination of my own dreams in order to test the applicability of the “Period Theory” to the dream material, and I have selected for this purpose especially striking elements of the dream content, whose origin could be definitely ascertained:—

I.—Dream from October 1–2, 1910

(Fragment).... Somewhere in Italy. Three daughters show me small costly objects, as if in an antiquity shop. At the same time they sit down on my lap. Of one of the pieces I remark: “Why, you got this from me.” I also see distinctly a small profile mask with the angular features of Savonarola.

When have I last seen a picture of Savonarola? According to my travelling diary, I was in Florence on the fourth and fifth of September, and while there thought of showing my travelling companion the plaster medallion of the features of the fanatical monk in the Piazza Signoria, the same place where he met his death by burning. I believe that I called his attention to it at 3 A.M. To be sure, from this impression, until its return in the dream, there was an interval of twenty-seven and one days—a “feminine period,” according to Fliess. But, unfortunately for the demonstrative force of this example, I must add that on the very day of the dream I was visited (the first time after my return) by the able but melancholy-looking colleague whom I had already years before nicknamed “Rabbi Savonarola.” He brought me a patient who had met with an accident on the Pottebba railroad, on which I had myself travelled eight days before, and my thoughts were thus turned to my last Italian journey. The appearance in the dream content of the striking element of Savonarola is explained by the visit of my colleague on the day of the dream; the twenty-eight day interval had no significance in its origin.

II.—Dream from October 10–11

I am again studying chemistry in the University laboratory. Court Councillor L. invites me to come to another place, and walks before me in the corridor carrying in front of him in his uplifted hand a lamp or some other instrument, and assuming a peculiar attitude, his head stretched forward. We then come to an open space ... (rest forgotten).

In this dream content, the most striking part is the manner in which Court Councillor L. carries the lamp (or lupe) in front of him, his gaze directed into the distance. I have not seen L. for many years, but I now know that he is only a substitute for another greater person—for Archimedes near the Arethusa fountain in Syracuse, who stands there exactly like L. in the dream, holding the burning mirror and gazing at the besieging army of the Romans. When had I first (and last) seen this monument? According to my notes, it was on the seventeenth day of September, in the evening, and from this date to the dream there really passed 13 and 10, equals 23, days-according to Fliess, a “masculine period.”

But I regret to say that here, too, this connection seems somewhat less inevitable when we enter into the interpretation of this dream. The dream was occasioned by the information, received on the day of the dream, that the lecture-room in the clinic in which I was invited to deliver my lectures had been changed to some other place. I took it for granted that the new room was very inconveniently situated, and said to myself, it is as bad as not having any lecture-room at my disposal. My thoughts must have then taken me back to the time when I first became a docent, when I really had no lecture-room, and when, in my efforts to get one, I met with little encouragement from the very influential gentlemen councillors and professors. In my distress at that time, I appealed to L., who then had the title of dean, and whom I considered kindly disposed. He promised to help me, but that was all I ever heard from him. In the dream he is the Archimedes, who gives me the πήστω and leads me into the other room. That neither the desire for revenge nor the consciousness of one’s own importance is absent in this dream will be readily divined by those familiar with dream interpretation. I must conclude, however, that without this motive for the dream, Archimedes would hardly have got into the dream that night. I am not certain whether the strong and still recent impression of the statue in Syracuse did not also come to the surface at a different interval of time.

III.—Dream from October 2–3, 1910.

(Fragment) ... Something about Professor Oser, who himself prepared the menu for me, which served to restore me to great peace of mind (rest forgotten).

The dream was a reaction to the digestive disturbances of this day, which made me consider asking one of my colleagues to arrange a diet for me. That in the dream I selected for this purpose Professor Oser, who had died in the summer, is based on the recent death (October 1) of another university teacher, whom I highly revered. But when did Oser die, and when did I hear of his death? According to the newspaper notice, he died on the 22nd of August, but as I was at the time in Holland, whither my Vienna newspapers were regularly sent me, I must have read the obituary notice on the 24th or 25th of August. This interval no longer corresponds to any period. It takes in 7 and 30 and 2, equals 39, days, or perhaps 38 days. I cannot recall having spoken or thought of Oser during this interval.

Such intervals as were not available for the “period theory” without further elaboration, were shown from my dreams to be far more frequent than the regular ones. As maintained in the text, the only thing constantly found is the relation to an impression of the day of the dream itself.

AR. Cf. my essay, “Ueber Deckerinnerungen,” in the Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie, 1899.

AS. Ger., blühend.

AT. The tendency of the dream function to fuse everything of interest which is present into simultaneous treatment has already been noticed by several authors, for instance, by Delage,[15] p. 41, Delbœuf,[16] Rapprochement Forcé, p. 236.

AU. The dream of Irma’s injection; the dream of the friend who is my uncle.

AV. The dream of the funeral oration of the young physician.

AW. The dream of the botanical monograph.

AX. The dreams of my patients during analysis are mostly of this kind.

AY. Cf. Chap. VII. upon “Transference.”

AZ. Substitution of the opposite, as will become clear to us after interpretation.

BA. The Prater is the principal drive of Vienna. (Transl.)

BB. I have long since learned that it only requires a little courage to fulfil even such unattainable wishes.

BC. In the first edition there was printed here the name Hasdrubal, a confusing error, the explanation of which I have given in my Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens.

BD. A street in Vienna.

BE. Fensterln is the practice, now falling into disuse, found in rural districts of the German Schwarzwald, of lovers wooing at the windows of their sweethearts, bringing ladders with them, and becoming so intimate that they practically enjoy a system of trial marriages. The reputation of the young woman never suffers on account of fensterln, unless she becomes intimate with too many suitors. (Translator.)

BF. Both the emotions which belong to these childish scenes—astonishment and resignation to the inevitable—had appeared in a dream shortly before, which was the first thing that brought back the memory of this childhood experience.

BG. I do not elaborate plagiostomi purposely; they recall an occasion of angry disgrace before the same teacher.

BH. Cf. Maury’s dream about kilo-lotto, p. 50.

BI. Popo = backside in German nursery language.

BJ. This repetition has insinuated itself into the text of the dream apparently through my absent-mindedness, and I allow it to remain because the analysis shows that it has its significance.

BK. Not in Germinal, but in La Terre—a mistake of which I became aware only in the analysis. I may call attention also to the identity of the letters in Huflattich and Flatus.

BL. Translator’s note.

BM. In his significant work (“Phantasie und Mythos,” Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse, Bd. ii., 1910), H. Silberer has endeavoured to show from this part of the dream that the dream-work is able to reproduce not only the latent dream thoughts, but also the psychic processes in the dream formation (“Das functionale Phänomen”).

BN. Another interpretation: He is one-eyed like Odin, the father of the gods ... Odin’s consolation. The consolation in the childish scene, that I will buy him a new bed.

BO. I here add some material for interpretation. Holding the urinal recalls the story of a peasant who tries one glass after another at the opticians, but still cannot read (peasant-catcher, like girl-catcher in a portion of the dream). The treatment among the peasants of the father who has become weak-minded in Zola’s La Terre. The pathetic atonement that in his last days the father soils his bed like a child; hence, also, I am his sick-attendant in the dream. Thinking and experiencing are here, as it were; the same thing recalls a highly revolutionary closet drama by Oscar Panizza, in which the Godhead is treated quite contemptuously, as though he were a paralytic old man. There occurs a passage: “Will and deed are the same thing with him, and he must be prevented by his archangel, a kind of Ganymede, from scolding and swearing, because these curses would immediately be fulfilled.” Making plans is a reproach against my father, dating from a later period in the development of my critical faculty; just as the whole rebellious, sovereign-offending dream, with its scoff at high authority, originates in a revolt against my father. The sovereign is called father of the land (Landesvater), and the father is the oldest, first and only authority for the child, from the absolutism of which the other social authorities have developed in the course of the history of human civilisation (in so far as the “mother’s right” does not force a qualification of this thesis).