Chapter VIII: Literary Index 494 (16)

“_The elder Bruecke must have given me some task or other; strangely enough it relates to the preparation of my own lower body, pelvis and legs, which I see before me as though in the dissecting room, but without feeling my lack of body and without a trace of horror. Louise N. is standing near, and doing her work next to me. The pelvis is eviscerated; now the upper, now the lower view of the same is seen, and the two views mingle. Thick fleshy red lumps (which even in the dream make me think of hæmorrhoids) are to be seen. Also something had to be carefully picked out, which lay over these and which looked like crumpled tinfoil.[FA] Then I was again in possession of my legs and made a journey through the city, but took a wagon (owing to my fatigue). To my astonishment the wagon drove into a house door, which opened and allowed it to pass into a passage that was snapped off at the end, and finally led further on into the open.[FB] At last I wandered through changing landscapes with an Alpine guide, who carried my things. He carried, me for some way, out of consideration for my tired legs. The ground was muddy, and we went along the edge; people sat on the ground, a girl among them, like Indians or Gypsies. Previously I had moved myself along on the slippery ground, with constant astonishment that I was so well able to do it after the preparation. At last we came to a small wooden house which ended in an open window. Here the guide set me down, and laid two wooden boards which stood in readiness on the window sill, in order that in this way the chasm might be bridged which had to be crossed in order to get to the window. Now, I grew really frightened about my legs. Instead of the expected crossing, I saw two grown-up men lying upon wooden benches which were on the walls of the hut, and something like two sleeping children next to them. It seems as though not the boards but the children were intended to make possible the crossing. I awakened with frightened thoughts._”

Anyone who has formed a proper idea of the abundance of dream condensation will easily be able to imagine how great a number of pages the detailed analysis of this dream must fill. Luckily for the context, I shall take from it merely the one example of astonishment, in the dream, which makes its appearance in the parenthetical remark, “_strangely enough_.” Let us take up the occasion of the dream. It is a visit of this lady, Louise N., who assists at the work in the dream. She says: “Lend me something to read.” I offer her _She_, by Rider Haggard. “A _strange_ book, but full of hidden sense,” I try to explain to her; “the eternal feminine, the immortality of our emotions——” Here she interrupts me: “I know that book already. Haven’t you something of your own?” “No, my own immortal works are still unwritten.” “Well, when are you going to publish your so-called latest revelations which you promised us would be good reading?” she asks somewhat sarcastically. I now perceive that she is a mouthpiece for someone else, and I become silent. I think of the effort it costs me to publish even my work on the Dream, in which I have to surrender so much of my own intimate character. “The best that you know you can’t tell to the children.” The preparation of _my own body_, which I am ordered to make in the dream, is thus the _self-analysis_ necessitated in the communication of my dreams. The elder Bruecke very properly finds a place here; in these first years of my scientific work it happened that I neglected a discovery, until his energetic commands forced me to publish it. But the other trains of thought which start from my conversation with Louise N. go too deep to become conscious; they are side-tracked by way of the related material which has been awakened in me by the mention of Rider Haggard’s _She_. The comment “strangely enough” goes with this book, and with another by the same author, _The Heart of the World_, and numerous elements of the dream are taken from these two fantastic novels. The muddy ground over which the dreamer is carried, the chasm which must be crossed by means of the boards that have been brought along, come from _She_; the Indians, the girl, and the wooden house, from the _Heart of the World_. In both novels a woman is the leader, both treat of dangerous wanderings; _She_ has to do with an adventurous journey to the undiscovered country, a place almost untrodden by foot of man. According to a note which I find in my record of the dream, the fatigue in my legs was a real sensation of those days. Doubtless in correspondence with this came a tired frame of mind and the doubting question: “How much further will my legs carry me?” The adventure in _She_ ends with the woman leader’s meeting her death in the mysterious fire at the centre of the earth, instead of attaining immortality for herself and others. A fear of this sort has unmistakably arisen in the dream thoughts. The “wooden house,” also, is surely the coffin—that is, the grave. But the dream activity has performed its masterpiece in representing this most unwished-for of all thoughts by means of a wish-fulfilment. I have already once been in a grave, but it was an empty Etruscan grave near Orvieto—a narrow chamber with two stone benches on the walls, upon which the skeletons of two grown-up persons had been laid. The interior of the wooden house in the dream looks exactly like this, except that wood has been substituted for stone. The dream seems to say: “If you must so soon lie in your grave, let it be this Etruscan grave,” and by means of this interpolation it transforms the saddest expectation into one that is really to be desired. As we shall learn, it is, unfortunately, only the idea accompanying an emotion which the dream can change into its opposite, not usually the emotion itself. Thus I awake with “frightened thoughts,” even after the dream has been forced to represent my idea—that perhaps the children will attain what has been denied to the father—a fresh allusion to the strange novel in which the identity of a person is preserved through a series of generations covering two thousand years.

VIII. In the context of another dream there is a similar expression of astonishment at what is experienced in the dream. This, however, is connected with a striking and skilfully contrived attempt at explanation which might well be called a stroke of genius—so that I should have to analyse the whole dream merely for the sake of it, even if the dream did not possess two other features of interest. I am travelling during the night between the eighteenth and the nineteenth of July on the Southern Railway, and in my sleep I hear someone call out: _“Hollthurn, 10 minutes.” I immediately think of Holothurian—of a museum of natural history—that here is a place where brave men have vainly resisted the domination of their overlord. Yes, the counter reformation in Austria! As though it were a place in Styria or the Tyrol. Now I distinctly see a little museum in which the remains or the possessions of these men are preserved. I wish to get off, but I hesitate to do so. Women with fruit are standing on the platform; they crouch on the floor, and in that position hold out their baskets in an inviting manner. I hesitate, in doubt whether we still have time, but we are still standing. I am suddenly in another compartment in which the leather and the seats are so narrow that one’s back directly touches the back rest.[FC] I am surprised at this, but I may have changed cars while asleep. Several people, among them an English brother and sister; a row of books distinctly on a shelf on the wall. I see_ The Wealth of Nations, _then_ Matter and Motion (_by Maxwell_)—_the books are thick and bound in brown linen. The man asks his sister for a book by Schiller, and whether she has forgotten it. These are books which first seem mine, then seem to belong to the brother and sister. At this point I wish to join in the conversation in order to confirm and support what is being said——._ I awaken sweating all over my body, because all the windows are shut. The train stops at Marburg.

While writing down the dream, a part of it occurs to me which my memory wished to omit. _I say to the brother and sister about a certain work: “It is from ...” but I correct myself: “It is by ...” The man remarks to his sister: “He said it correctly.”_

The dream begins with the name of a station, which probably must have partially awakened me. For this name, which was Marburg, I substituted Hollthurn. The fact that I heard Marburg when it was first called, or perhaps when it was called a second time, is proved by the mention in the dream of Schiller, who was born in Marburg, though not in the one in Styria.[FD] Now this time, although I was travelling first-class, it was under very disagreeable circumstances. The train was overcrowded; I had met a gentleman and lady in my compartment who seemed persons of quality, but who did not have the good breeding or who did not think it worth while to conceal their displeasure at my intrusion. My polite salutation was not answered, and although the man and the woman sat next each other (with their backs in the direction in which we were riding), the woman made haste to pre-empt the place opposite her and next the window with her umbrella; the door was immediately closed and demonstrative remarks about the opening of windows were exchanged. Probably I was quickly recognised as a person hungry for fresh air. It was a hot night, and the air in the compartment, thus shut on all sides, was almost suffocating. My experience as a traveller leads me to believe that such inconsiderate, obtrusive conduct marks people who have only partly paid for their tickets, or not at all. When the conductor came, and I presented my dearly bought ticket, the lady called out ungraciously, and as though threateningly: “My husband has a pass.” She was a stately figure with sour features, in age not far from the time set for the decay of feminine beauty; the man did not get a chance to say anything at all, and sat there motionless. I tried to sleep. In the dream I take terrible revenge on my disagreeable travelling companions; no one would suspect what insults and humiliations are concealed behind the disjointed fragments of the first half of the dream. After this desire has been satisfied, the second wish, to exchange my compartment for another, makes itself evident. The dream makes changes of scene so often, and without raising the least objection to such changes, that it would not have been in the least remarkable if I had immediately replaced my travelling companions by more pleasant ones for my recollection. But this was one of the cases where something or other objected to the change of scene and considered explanation of the change necessary. How did I suddenly get into another compartment? I surely could not remember having changed cars. So there was only one explanation: _I must have left the carriage while asleep_, a rare occurrence, examples for which, however, are furnished by the experience of the neuropathologist. We know of persons who undertake railroad journeys in a crepuscular state without betraying their abnormal condition by any sign, until some station on the journey they completely recover consciousness, and are then surprised at the gap in their memory. Thus, while I am still dreaming, I declare my own case to be such a one of “_Automatisme ambulatoire_.”

Analysis permits another solution. The attempt at explanation, which so astounds me if I am to attribute it to the dream activity, is not original, but is copied from the neurosis of one of my patients. I have already spoken on another page of a highly cultured and, in conduct, kind-hearted man, who began, shortly after the death of his parents, to accuse himself of murderous inclinations, and who suffered because of the precautionary measures he had to take to insure himself against these inclinations. At first walking along the street was made painful for him by the compulsion impelling him to demand an accounting of all the persons he met as to whither they had vanished; if one of them suddenly withdrew from his pursuing glance, there remained a painful feeling and a thought of the possibility that he might have put the man out of the way. This compulsive idea concealed, among other things, a Cain-fancy, for “all men are brothers.” Owing to the impossibility of accomplishing his task, he gave up taking walks and spent his life imprisoned within his four walls. But news of murderous acts which have been committed outside constantly reached his room through the papers, and his conscience in the form of a doubt kept accusing him of being the murderer. The certainty of not having left his dwelling for weeks protected him against these accusations for a time, until one day there dawned upon him the possibility that he might have left _his house while in an unconscious condition_, and might thus have committed the murder without knowing anything about it. From that time on he locked his house door, and handed the key over to his old housekeeper, and strictly forbade her to give it into his hands even if he demanded it.

This, then, is the origin of the attempted explanation, that I may have changed carriages while in an unconscious condition—it has been transferred from the material of the dream thoughts to the dream in a finished state, and is obviously intended to identify me with the person of that patient. My memory of him was awakened by an easy association. I had made my last night journey with this man a few weeks before. He was cured, and was escorting me into the country, to his relatives who were summoning me; as we had a compartment to ourselves, we left all the windows open through the night, and, as long as I had remained awake, we had a delightful conversation. I knew that hostile impulses towards his father from the time of his childhood, in connection with sexual material, had been at the root of his illness. By identifying myself with him, I wanted to make an analogous confession to myself. The second scene of the dream really resolves itself into a wanton fancy to the effect that my two elderly travelling companions had acted so uncivilly towards me for the reason that my arrival prevented them from exchanging love-tokens during the night as they had intended. This fancy, however, goes back to an early childhood scene in which, probably impelled by sexual inquisitiveness, I intruded upon the bedroom of my parents, and was driven from it by my father’s emphatic command.

I consider it superfluous to multiply further examples. All of them would confirm what we have learned from those which have been already cited, namely, that an act of judgment in the dream is nothing but the repetition of a prototype which it has in the dream thoughts. In most cases it is an inappropriate repetition introduced in an unfitting connection; occasionally, however, as in our last example, it is so artfully disposed that it may give the impression of being an independent thought activity in the dream. At this point we might turn our attention to that psychic activity which indeed does not seem to co-operate regularly in the formation of dreams, but whose effort it is, wherever it does co-operate, to fuse together those dream elements that are incongruent on account of their origins in an uncontradictory and intelligible manner. We consider it best, however, first to take up the expressions of emotion which appear in the dream, and to compare them with the emotions which analysis reveals to us in the dream thoughts.

(_g_) _The Affects in the Dream._

A profound remark of Stricker’s[77] has called our attention to the fact that the expressions of emotion in the dream do not permit of being disposed of in the slighting manner in which we are accustomed to shake off the dream itself, after we have awakened. “If I am afraid of robbers in the dream, the robbers, to be sure, are imaginary, but the fear of them is real,” and the same is true if I am glad in the dream. According to the testimony of our feelings, the emotion experienced in the dream is in no way less valid than one of like intensity experienced in waking life, and the dream makes its claim to be taken up as a part of our real mental experiences, more energetically on account of its emotional content than on account of its ideal content. We do not succeed in accomplishing this separation in waking life, because we do not know how to estimate an emotion psychically except in connection with a presentation content. If in kind or in intensity an affect and an idea are incongruous, our waking judgment becomes confused.

The fact that in dreams the presentation content does not entail the affective influence which we should expect as necessary in waking thought has always caused astonishment. Strümpell was of the opinion that ideas in the dream are stripped of their psychic values. But neither does the dream lack opposite instances, where the expression of intense affect appears in a content, which seems to offer no occasion for its development. I am in a horrible, dangerous, or disgusting situation in the dream, but I feel nothing of fear or aversion; on the other hand, I am sometimes terrified at harmless things and glad at childish ones.

This enigma of the dream disappears more suddenly and more completely than perhaps any other of the dream problems, if we pass from the manifest to the latent content. We shall then no longer be concerned to explain it, for it will no longer exist. Analysis teaches us _that presentation contents have undergone displacements and substitutions, while affects have remained unchanged_. No wonder, then, that the presentation content which has been altered by dream disfigurement no longer fits the affect that has remained intact; but there is no cause for wonder either after analysis has put the correct content in its former place.

In a psychic complex which has been subjected to the influence of the resisting censor the affects are the unyielding constituent, which alone is capable of guiding us to a correct supplementation. This state of affairs is revealed in psychoneuroses even more distinctly than in the dream. Here the affect is always in the right, at least as far as its quality goes; its intensity may even be increased by means of a displacement of neurotic attention. If a hysteric is surprised that he is so very afraid of a trifle, or if the patient with compulsive ideas is astonished that he develops such painful self-reproach out of a nonentity, both of them err in that they regard the presentation content—the trifle or the nonentity—as the essential thing, and they defend themselves in vain because they make this presentation content the starting point in their thought. Psychoanalysis, however, shows them the right way by recognising that, on the contrary, the affect is justified, and by searching for the presentation which belongs to it and which has been suppressed by means of replacement. The assumption is here made that the development of affect and the presentation content do not constitute such an indissoluble organic union as we are accustomed to think, but that the two parts may be, so to speak, soldered together in such a way that they may be detached from one another by means of analysis. Dream interpretation shows that this is actually the case.

I give first an example in which analysis explains the apparent absence of affect in a presentation content which ought to force a development of emotion.

I. _The dreamer sees three lions in a desert, one of which is laughing, but she is not afraid of them. Then, however, she must have fled from them, for she is trying to climb a tree, but she finds that her cousin, who is a teacher of French, is already up in the tree, &c._

The analysis gives us the following material for this dream: A sentence in the dreamer’s English lesson had become the indifferent occasion for it: “The _lion’s_ greatest beauty is his mane.” Her father wore a beard which surrounded his face like a mane. The name of her English teacher was Miss _Lyons_. An acquaintance of hers had sent her the ballads of _Loewe_ (German, Loewe—lion). These, then, are the three lions; why should she have been afraid of them? She has read a story in which a negro who has incited his fellows to revolt is hunted with bloodhounds and climbs a tree to save himself. Then follow fragments in wanton mood, like the following. Directions for catching lions from _Die Fliegende Blaetter_: “Take a desert and strain it; the lions will remain.” Also a very amusing, but not very proper anecdote about an official who is asked why he does not take greater pains to win the favour of his superior officer, and who answers that he has been trying to insinuate himself, but that the man ahead of him _is already up_. The whole matter becomes intelligible as soon as one learns that on the day of the dream the lady had received a visit from her husband’s superior. He was very polite to her, kissed her hand, and _she was not afraid of him at all_, although he is a “big bug” (German—_Grosses Tier_ = “big animal”) and plays the part of a “social lion” in the capital of her country. This lion is, therefore, like the lion in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, who unmasks as Snug, the joiner, and of such stuff are all dream lions made when one is not afraid.

II. As my second example, I cite the dream of the girl who saw her sister’s little son lying dead in a coffin, but who, I may now add, felt no pain or sorrow thereat. We know from analysis why not. The dream only concealed her wish to see the man she loved again; the affect must be attuned to the wish, and not to its concealment. There was no occasion for sorrow at all.

In a number of dreams the emotion at least remains connected with that presentation content which has replaced the one really belonging to it. In others the breaking up of the complex is carried further. The affect seems to be entirely separated from the idea belonging to it, and finds a place somewhere else in the dream where it fits into the new arrangement of the dream elements. This is similar to what we have learned of acts of judgment of the dream. If there is a significant inference in the dream thoughts, the dream also contains one; but in the dream the inference may be shifted to entirely different material. Not infrequently this shifting takes place according to the principle of antithesis.

I illustrate the latter possibility by the following dream, which I have subjected to the most exhaustive analysis.

III. _A castle by the sea; afterwards it lies not directly on the sea, but on a narrow canal that leads to the sea. A certain Mr. P. is the governor of it. I stand with him in a large salon with three windows, in front of which rise the projections of a wall, like battlements of a fort. I belong to the garrison, perhaps as a volunteer marine officer. We fear the arrival of hostile warships, for we are in a state of war. Mr. P. has the intention of leaving; he gives me instructions as to what must be done in case the dreaded event happens. His sick wife is in the threatened castle with her children. As soon as the bombardment begins the large hall should be cleared. He breathes heavily, and tries to get away; I hold him back, and ask him in what way I should send him news in case of need. He says something else, and then all at once falls over dead. I have probably taxed him unnecessarily with my questions. After his death, which makes no further impression upon me, I think whether the widow is to remain in the castle, whether I should give notice of the death to the commander-in-chief, and whether I should take over the direction of the castle as the next in command. I now stand at the window, and muster the ships as they pass by; they are merchantmen that dart past upon the dark water, several of them with more than one smokestack, others with bulging decks_ (that are quite similar to the railway stations in the preliminary dream which has not been told). _Then my brother stands next to me, and both of us look out of the window on to the canal. At the sight of a ship we are frightened, and call out: “Here comes the warship!” It turns out, however, that it is only the same ships which I have already known that are returning. Now comes a little ship, strangely cut off, so that it ends in the middle of its breadth; curious things like cups or salt-cellars are seen on the deck. We call as though with one voice: “That is the breakfast-ship.”_

The rapid motion of the ships, the deep blue of the water, the brown smoke of the funnels, all this together makes a highly tense, sombre impression.

The localities in this dream are put together from several journeys to the Adriatic Sea (Miramare, Duino, Venice, Aquileja). A short but enjoyable Easter trip to Aquileja with my brother, a few weeks before the dream, was still fresh in my memory. Besides, the naval war between America and Spain, and the worry connected with it about my relatives living in America, play a part. Manifestations of emotion appear at two places in this dream. In one place an emotion that would be expected is lacking—it is expressly emphasized that the death of the governor makes no impression upon me; at another point, where I see the warships I am _frightened_, and experience all the sensations of fright while I sleep. The distribution of affects in this well-constructed dream has been made in such a way that every obvious contradiction is avoided. For there is no reason why I should be frightened at the governor’s death, and it is fitting that as the commander of the castle I should be alarmed by the sight of the warship. Now analysis shows that Mr. P. is nothing but a substitute for my own Ego (in the dream I am his substitute). I am the governor who suddenly dies. The dream thoughts deal with the future of those dear to me after my premature death. No other disagreeable thought is to be found among the dream thoughts. The fright which is attached to the sight of the warship must be transferred from it to this disagreeable thought. Inversely, the analysis shows that the region of the dream thoughts from which the warship comes is filled with most joyous reminiscences. It was at Venice a year before, one charmingly beautiful day, that we stood at the windows of our room on the Riva Schiavoni and looked upon the blue lagoon, in which more activity could be seen that day than usually. English ships were being expected, they were to be festively received; and suddenly my wife called out, happy as a child: “_There come the English warships!_” In the dream I am frightened at the very same words; we see again that speeches in the dream originate from speeches in life. I shall soon show that even the element “English” in this speech has not been lost for the dream activity. I thus convert joy into fright on the way from the dream thoughts to the dream content, and I need only intimate that by means of this very transformation I give expression to a part of the latent dream content. The example shows, however, that the dream activity is at liberty to detach the occasion for an affect from its context in the dream thoughts, and to insert it at any other place it chooses in the dream content.

I seize the opportunity which is incidentally offered, of subjecting to closer analysis the “breakfast ship,” whose appearance in the dream so nonsensically concludes a situation that has been rationally adhered to. If I take a closer view of this object in the dream, I am now struck by the fact that it was black, and that on account of its being cut off at its greatest breadth it closely resembled, at the end where it was cut off, an object which had aroused our interest in the museums of the Etruscan cities. This object was a rectangular cup of black clay with two handles, upon which stood things like coffee cups, or tea cups, very similar to our modern _breakfast_ table service. Upon inquiring, we learned that this was the toilet set of an Etruscan lady, with little boxes for rouge and powder; and we said jokingly to each other that it would not be a bad idea to take a thing like that home to the lady of the house. The dream object, therefore, signifies “_black toilet_” (German, _toilette_—dress)—mourning—and has direct reference to a death. The other end of the dream object reminds us of the “boat” (German, _Nachen_), from the root νέχυς, as a philological friend has told me, upon which corpses were laid in prehistoric times and were left to be buried by the sea. With this circumstance is connected the reason for the return of the ships in the dream.

“Quietly the old man on his rescued boat drifts into the harbour.”

It is the return voyage after the ship_wreck_ (German, schiff_bruch_; ship-_breaking_, _i.e._ shipwreck), the breakfast-ship looks as though it were _broken_ off in the middle. But whence comes the name “breakfast”-ship? Here is where the “English” comes in, which we have left over from the warships. _Breakfast—a breaking of the fast._ Breaking again belongs to ship-_wreck_ (Schiff_bruch_), and _fasting_ is connected with the mourning dress.

The only thing about this breakfast-ship, which has been newly created by the dream, is its name. The thing has existed in reality, and recalls to me the merriest hours of my last journey. As we distrusted the fare in Aquileja, we took some food with us from Goerz, and bought a bottle of excellent Istrian wine in Aquileja, and while the little mail-steamer slowly travelled through the Canal delle Mee and into the lonely stretch of lagoon towards Grado, we took our breakfast on deck—we were the only passengers—and it tasted to us as few breakfasts have ever tasted. This, then, was the “_breakfast-ship_,” and it is behind this very recollection of great enjoyment that the dream hides the saddest thoughts about an unknown and ominous future.

The detachment of emotions from the groups of ideas which have been responsible for their development is the most striking thing that happens to them in the course of dream formation, but it is neither the only nor even the most essential change which they undergo on the way from the dream thoughts to the manifest dream. If the affects in the dream thoughts are compared with those in the dream, it at once becomes clear that wherever there is an emotion in the dream, this is also to be found in the dream thoughts; the converse, however, is not true. In general, the dream is less rich in affects than the psychic material from which it is elaborated. As soon as I have reconstructed the dream thoughts I see that the most intense psychic impulses are regularly striving in them for self-assertion, usually in conflict with others that are sharply opposed to them. If I turn back to the dream, I often find it colourless and without any of the more intense strains of feeling. Not only the content, but also the affective tone of my thoughts has been brought by the dream activity to the level of the indifferent. I might say that a _suppression of the affects_ has taken place. Take, for example, the dream of the botanical monograph. It answers to a passionate plea for my freedom to act as I am acting and to arrange my life as seems right to me and to me alone. The dream which results from it sounds indifferent; I have written a monograph; it is lying before me; it is fitted with coloured plates, and dried plants are to be found with each copy. It is like the peacefulness of a battlefield; there is no trace left of the tumult of battle.

It may also turn out differently—vivid affective expressions may make their appearance in the dream; but we shall first dwell upon the unquestionable fact that many dreams appear indifferent, while it is never possible to go deeply into the dream thoughts without deep emotion.

A complete theoretical explanation of this suppression of emotions in the course of the dream activity cannot be given here; it would require a most careful investigation of the theory of the emotions and of the mechanism of suppression. I shall find a place here for two thoughts only. I am forced—on other grounds—to conceive the development of affects as a centrifugal process directed towards the interior of the body, analogous to the processes of motor and secretory innervation. Just as in the sleeping condition the omission of motor impulses towards the outside world seems to be suspended, so a centrifugal excitement of emotions through unconscious thought may be made more difficult during sleep. Thus the affective impulses aroused during the discharge of the dream thoughts would themselves be weak excitements, and therefore those getting into the dream would not be stronger. According to this line of argument the “suppression of the affects” would not be a result of the dream activity at all, but a result of the sleeping condition. This may be so, but this cannot possibly be all. We must also remember that all the more complex dreams have shown themselves to be a compromised result from the conflict of psychic forces. On the one hand, the thoughts that constitute the wish must fight the opposition of a censorship; on the other hand, we have often seen how, even in unconscious thinking, each train of thought is harnessed to its contradictory opposite. Since all of these trains of thought are capable of emotion, we shall hardly make a mistake, broadly speaking, if we regard the suppression of emotion as the result of the restraint which the contrasts impose upon one another and which the censor imposes upon the tendencies which it has suppressed. _The restraint of affects would accordingly he the second result of the dream censor as the disfigurement of the dream was the first._

I shall insert an example of a dream in which the indifferent affective tone of the dream content may be explained by a contrast in the dream thoughts. I have the following short dream to relate, which every reader will read with disgust:

IV. _A bit of rising ground, and on it something like a toilet in the open; a very long bench, at the end of which is a large toilet aperture. All of the back edge is thickly covered with little heaps of excrement of all sizes and degrees of freshness. A shrub behind the bench. I urinate upon the bench; a long stream of urine rinses everything clean, the patches of excrement easily come off and fall into the opening. It seems as though something remained at the end nevertheless._

Why did I experience no disgust in this dream?

Because, as the analysis shows, the most pleasant and satisfying thoughts have co-operated in the formation of this dream. Upon analysing it I immediately think of the Augean stables cleansed by Hercules. I am this Hercules. The rising ground and the shrub belong to Aussee, where my children are now staying. I have discovered the infantile etiology of the neuroses and have thus guarded my own children from becoming ill. The bench (omitting the aperture, of course) is the faithful copy of a piece of furniture which an affectionate female patient has made me a present of. This recalls how my patients honour me. Even the museum of human excrement is susceptible of less disagreeable interpretation. However much I am disgusted with it, it is a souvenir of the beautiful land of Italy, where in little cities, as everyone knows, water-closets are not equipped in any other way. The stream of urine that washes everything clean is an unmistakable allusion to greatness. It is in this manner that Gulliver extinguishes the great fire in Lilliput; to be sure, he thereby incurs the displeasure of the tiniest of queens. In this way, too, Gargantua, the superman in Master Rabelais, takes vengeance upon the Parisians, straddling Notre Dame and training his stream of urine upon the city. Only yesterday I was turning over the leaves of Garnier’s illustrations of Rabelais before I went to bed. And, strangely enough, this is another proof that I am the superman! The platform of Notre Dame was my favourite nook in Paris; every free afternoon I was accustomed to go up into the towers of the church and climb about among the monsters and devil-masks there. The circumstances that all the excrement vanishes so rapidly before the stream correspond to the motto: _Afflavit et dissipati sunt_, which I shall some day make the title of a chapter on the therapeutics of hysteria.

And now as to the occasion giving rise to the dream. It had been a hot afternoon in summer; in the evening I had given a lecture on the relation between hysteria and the perversions, and everything which I had to say displeased me thoroughly, appeared to me stripped of all value. I was tired, found no trace of pleasure in my difficult task, and longed to get away from this rummaging in human filth, to see my children and then the beauties of Italy. In this mood I went from the auditorium to a café, to find some modest refreshment in the open air, for my appetite had left me. But one of my audience went with me; he begged for permission to sit with me while I drank my coffee and gulped down my roll, and began to say flattering things to me. He told me how much he had learned from me, and that he now looked at everything through different eyes, that I had cleansed the Augean stables, _i.e._ the theory of the neuroses, of its errors and prejudices—in short, that I was a very great man. My mood was ill-suited to his song of praise; I struggled with disgust, and went home earlier in order to extricate myself. Before I went to sleep I turned over the leaves of Rabelais, and read a short story by C. F. Meyer entitled _Die Leiden eines Knaben_ (The Hardships of a Boy).

The dream had been drawn from these materials, and the novel by Meyer added the recollection of childish scenes (_cf._ the dream about Count Thun, last scene). The mood of the day, characterised by disgust and annoyance, is continued in the dream in the sense that it is permitted to furnish nearly the entire material for the dream content. But during the night the opposite mood of vigorous and even exaggerated self-assertion was awakened, and dissipated the earlier mood. The dream had to take such a form as to accommodate the expression of self-depreciation and exaggerated self-assertion in the same material. This compromise formation resulted in an ambiguous dream content, but likewise in an indifferent strain of feeling owing to the restraint of the contrasts upon each other.

According to the theory of wish-fulfilment this dream could not have happened had not the suppressed, but at the same time pleasurable, train of thought concerning personal aggrandisement been coupled with the opposing thoughts of disgust. For disagreeable things are not intended to be represented by the dream; painful thoughts that have occurred during the day can force their way into the dream only if they lend a cloak to the wish-fulfilment. The dream activity can dispose of the affects in the dream thoughts in still another way, besides admitting them or reducing them to zero. _It can change them into their opposite._ We have already become acquainted with the rule of interpretation that every element of the dream may be interpreted by its opposite, as well as by itself. One can never tell at the outset whether to set down the one or the other; only the connection can decide this point. A suspicion of this state of affairs has evidently got into popular consciousness; dream books very often proceed according to the principle of contraries in their interpretation. Such transformation into opposites is made possible by the intimate concatenation of associations, which in our thoughts finds the idea of a thing in that of its opposite. Like every other displacement this serves the purposes of the censor, but it is also often the work of the wish-fulfilment, for wish-fulfilment consists precisely in this substitution of an unwelcome thing by its opposite. The emotions of the dream thoughts may appear in the dream transformed into their opposites just as well as the ideas, and it is probable that this inversion of emotions is usually brought about by the dream censor. The _suppression_ and _inversion of affects_ are useful in social life, as the current analogy for the dream censor has shown us—above all, for purposes of dissimulation. If I converse with a person to whom I must show consideration while I am saying unpleasant things to him, it is almost more important that I should conceal the expression of my emotion from him, than that I modify the wording of my thoughts. If I speak to him in polite words, but accompany them by looks or gestures of hatred and disdain, the effect which I produce upon this person is not very different from what it would have been if I had recklessly thrown my contempt into his face. Above all, then, the censor bids me suppress my emotions, and if I am master of the art of dissimulation, I can hypocritically show the opposite emotion—smiling where I should like to be angry, and pretending affection where I should like to destroy.

We already know of an excellent example of such an inversion of emotion for the purposes of the dream censor. In the dream about my uncle’s beard I feel great affection for my friend R., at the same time that, and because, the dream thoughts berate him as a simpleton. We have drawn our first proof for the existence of the censor from this example of the inversion of emotions. Nor is it necessary here to assume that the dream activity creates a counter emotion of this kind out of nothing; it usually finds it lying ready in the material of the dream thoughts, and intensifies it solely with the psychic force of the resisting impulse until a point is reached where the emotion can be won over for the formation of the dream. In the dream of my uncle, just mentioned, the affectionate counter emotion has probably originated from an infantile source (as the continuation of the dream would suggest), for the relation between uncle and nephew has become the source of all my friendships and hatreds, owing to the peculiar nature of my childish experiences (_cf._ analysis on p. 334).

There is a class of dreams deserving the designation “hypocritical,” which puts the theory of wish-fulfilment to a severe test. My attention was called to them when Mrs. Dr. M. Hilferding brought up for discussion in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society the dream reported by Rosegger, which is reprinted below.

In _Waldheimat_, vol. xi., Rosegger writes as follows in his story, _Fremd gemacht_, p. 303:

“I have usually enjoyed healthful sleep, but I have lost the rest of
many a night. With my modest existence as a student and literary man,
I have for long years dragged along with me the shadow of a veritable
tailor’s life, like a ghost from which I could not become separated. I
cannot say that I have occupied myself so often and so vividly with
thoughts of my past during the day. An assailer of heaven and earth
arising from the skin of the Philistine has other things to think
about. Nor did I, as a dashing young fellow, think about my nocturnal
dreams; only later, when I got into the habit of thinking about
everything or when the Philistine within me again asserted itself, it
struck me that whenever I dreamed I was always the journeyman tailor,
and was always working in my master’s shop for long hours without any
remuneration. As I sat there and sewed and pressed I was quite aware
that I no longer belonged there, and that as a burgess of a town I had
other things to attend to; but I was for ever having vacations, and
going out into the country, and it was then that I sat near my boss
and assisted him. I often felt badly, and regretted the loss of time
which I might spend for better and more useful purposes. If something
did not come up to the measure and cut exactly, I had to submit to a
reproach from the boss. Often, as I sat with my back bent in the dingy
shop, I decided to give notice that I was going to quit. On one
occasion I actually did so, but the boss took no notice of it, and the
next time I was again sitting near him and sewing.

“How happy I was when I woke up after such weary hours! And I then
resolved that, if this dream came intruding again, I would throw it
off with energy and would cry aloud: ‘It is only a delusion, I am in
bed, and I want to sleep.’... And the next night I would be sitting in
the tailor shop again.

“Thus years passed with dismal regularity. While the boss and I were
working at Alpelhofer’s, at the house of the peasant where I began my
apprenticeship, it happened that he was particularly dissatisfied with
my work. ‘I should like to know where in the world your thoughts are?’
cried he, and looked at me gloomily, I thought the most sensible thing
for me to do would be to get up and explain to the boss that I was
with him only as a favour, and then leave. But I did not do this. I
submitted, however, when the boss engaged an apprentice, and ordered
me to make room for him on the bench. I moved into the corner, and
kept on sewing. On the same day another tailor was engaged; he was
bigoted, as he was a Czech who had worked for us nineteen years
before, and then had fallen into the lake on his way home from the
public-house. When he tried to sit down there was no room for him. I
looked at the boss inquiringly, and he said to me, ‘You have no talent
for the tailoring business; you may go; you are free.’ My fright on
that occasion was so overpowering that I awoke.

“The morning gray glimmered through the clear window of my beloved
home. Objects of art surrounded me; in the tasteful bookcase stood the
eternal Homer, the gigantic Dante, the incomparable Shakespeare, the
glorious Goethe—all shining and immortal. From the adjoining room
resounded the clear little voices of the children, who were waking and
prattling with their mother. I felt as if I had found again that
idyllically sweet, that peaceful, poetical, and spiritual life which I
have so often and so deeply conceived as the contemplative fortune of
mankind. And still I was vexed that I had not given my boss notice
first, instead of allowing him to discharge me.

“And how remarkable it is; after the night when the boss ‘discharged
me’ I enjoyed rest; I no longer dreamed of my tailoring—of this
experience which lay in the remote past, which in its simplicity was
really happy, and which, nevertheless, threw a long shadow over the
later years of my life.”

I. In this dream, the series of the poet who, in his younger years, has been a journeyman tailor, it is hard to recognise the domination of the wish-fulfilment. All the delightful things occurred during the waking state, while the dream seemed to drag along the ghostlike shadow of an unhappy existence which had been long forgotten. My own dreams of a similar nature have put me in a position to give some explanation for such dreams. As a young doctor I for a long time worked in the chemical institute without being able to accomplish anything in that exacting science, and I therefore never think in my waking state about this unfruitful episode in my life, of which I am really ashamed. On the other hand, it has become a recurring dream with me that I am working in the laboratory, making analyses, and having experiences there, &c.; like the examination dreams, these dreams are disagreeable, and they are never very distinct. During the analysis of one of these dreams my attention was directed to the word “analysis,” which, gave me the key to an understanding of these dreams. For I had since become an “analyst.” I make analyses which are highly praised—to be sure, psychoanalyses. I then understood that when I grew proud of these analyses of the waking state, and wanted to boast how much I had accomplished thereby, the dream would hold up to me at night those other unsuccessful analyses of which I had no reason to be proud; they are the punitive dreams of the upstart, like those of the tailor who became a celebrated poet. But how is it possible for the dream to place itself at the service of self-criticism in its conflict with parvenu-pride, and to take as its content a rational warning instead of the fulfilment of a prohibitive wish? I have already mentioned that the answer to this question entails many difficulties. We may conclude that the foundation of the dream was at first formed by a phantasy of overweening ambition, but that only its suppression and its abashment reached the dream content in its stead. One should remember that there are masochistic tendencies in the psychic life to which such an inversion might be attributed. But a more thorough investigation of the individual dreams allows the recognition of still another element. In an indistinct subordinate portion of one of my laboratory dreams, I was just at the age which placed me in the most gloomy and most unsuccessful year of my professional career; I still had no position and no means of support, when I suddenly found that I had the choice of many women whom I could marry! I was, therefore, young again, and, what is more, she was young again—the woman who has shared with me all these hard years. In this way one of the wishes which constantly frets the heart of the ageing man was revealed as the unconscious dream inciter. The struggle raging in the other psychic strata between vanity and self-criticism has certainly determined the dream content, but the more deeply-rooted wish of youth has alone made it possible as a dream. One may say to himself even in the waking state: To be sure it is very nice now, and times were once very hard; but it was nice, too, even then, you were still so young.

In considering dreams reported by a poet one may often assume that he has excluded from the report those details which he perceived as disturbing and which he considered unessential. His dreams, then, give us a riddle which could be readily solved if we had an exact reproduction of the dream content.

O. Rank has called my attention to the fact that in Grimm’s fairy tale of the valiant little tailor, or “Seven at one Stroke,” a very similar dream of an upstart is related. The tailor, who became the hero and married the king’s daughter, dreamed one night while with the princess, his wife, about his trade; the latter, becoming suspicious, ordered armed guards for the following night, who should listen to what was spoken in the dream, and who should do away with the dreamer. But the little tailor was warned, and knew enough to correct his dream.