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The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 6 - D. Regard for Representability Psychology
VI. THE DREAM-WORK (continued)
E. Representation in Dreams by Symbols: Some Further Typical Dreams -
The analysis of the last biographical dream shows that I recognized the
symbolism in dreams from the very outset. But it was only little by little that
I arrived at a full appreciation of its extent and significance, as the result
of increasing experience, and under the influence of the works of W. Stekel,
concerning which I may here fittingly say something.
This author, who has perhaps injured psychoanalysis as much as he has benefited
it, produced a large number of novel symbolic translations, to which no credence
was given at first, but most of which were later confirmed and had to be
accepted. Stekel's services are in no way belittled by the remark that the
sceptical reserve with which these symbols were received was not unjustified.
For the examples upon which he based his interpretations were often
unconvincing, and, moreover, he employed a method which must be rejected as
scientifically unreliable. Stekel found his symbolic meanings by way of
intuition, by virtue of his individual faculty of immediately understanding the
symbols. But such an art cannot be generally assumed; its efficiency is immune
from criticism, and its results have therefore no claim to credibility. It is as
though one were to base one's diagnosis of infectious diseases on the olfactory
impressions received beside the sick-bed, although of course there have been
clinicians to whom the sense of smell- atrophied in most people- has been of
greater service than to others, and who really have been able to diagnose a case
of abdominal typhus by their sense of smell.
The progressive experience of psycho-analysis has enabled us to discover
patients who have displayed in a surprising degree this immediate understanding
of dream-symbolism. Many of these patients suffered from dementia praecox, so
that for a time there was an inclination to suspect that all dreamers with such
an understanding of symbols were suffering from that disorder. But this did not
prove to be the case; it is simply a question of a personal gift or idiosyncrasy
without perceptible pathological significance.
When one has familiarized oneself with the extensive employment of symbolism for
the representation of sexual material in dreams, one naturally asks oneself
whether many of these symbols have not a permanently established meaning, like
the signs in shorthand; and one even thinks of attempting to compile a new
dream-book on the lines of the cipher method. In this connection it should be
noted that symbolism does not appertain especially to dreams, but rather to the
unconscious imagination, and particularly to that of the people, and it is to be
found in a more developed condition in folklore, myths, legends, idiomatic
phrases, proverbs, and the current witticisms of a people than in dreams. We
should have, therefore, to go far beyond the province of dream- interpretation
in order fully to investigate the meaning of symbolism, and to discuss the
numerous problems- for the most part still unsolved- which are associated with
the concept of the symbol. * We shall here confine ourselves to saying that
representation by a symbol comes under the heading of the indirect
representations, but that we are warned by all sorts of signs against
indiscriminately classing symbolic representation with the other modes of
indirect representation before we have clearly conceived its distinguishing
characteristics. In a number of cases, the common quality shared by the symbol
and the thing which it represents is obvious; in others, it is concealed; in
these latter cases the choice of the symbol appears to be enigmatic. And these
are the very cases that must be able to elucidate the ultimate meaning of the
symbolic relation; they point to the fact that it is of a genetic nature. What
is today symbolically connected was probably united, in primitive times, by
conceptual and linguistic identity. *(2) The symbolic relationship seems to be a
residue and reminder of a former identity. It may also be noted that in many
cases the symbolic identity extends beyond the linguistic identity, as had
already been asserted by Schubert (1814). *(3) -
* Cf. the works of Bleuler and his Zurich disciples, Maeder. Abraham, and
others, and of the non-medical authors (Kleinpaul and others) to whom they
refer. But the most pertinent things that have been said on the subject will be
found in the work of O. Rank and H. Sachs, Die Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse fur
die Geisteswissenschaft, (1913), chap. i.
*(2) This conception would seem to find an extraordinary confirmation in a
theory advanced by Hans Sperber ("Uber den Einfluss sexueller momente auf
Entstehung und Entwicklung der Sprache," in Imago, i. [1912]). Sperber believes
that primitive words denoted sexual things exclusively, and subsequently lost
their sexual significance and were applied to other things and activities, which
were compared with the sexual.
*(3) For example, a ship sailing on the sea may appear in the urinary dreams of
Hungarian dreamers, despite the fact that the term of to ship, for to urinate,
is foreign to this language (Ferenczi). In the dreams of the French and the
other romance peoples room serves as a symbolic representation for woman,
although these peoples have nothing analogous to the German Frauenzimmer. Many
symbols are as old as language itself, while others are continually being coined
(e.g., the aeroplane, the Zeppelin). -
Dreams employ this symbolism to give a disguised representation to their latent
thoughts. Among the symbols thus employed there are, of course, many which
constantly, or all but constantly, mean the same thing. But we must bear in mind
the curious plasticity of psychic material. Often enough a symbol in the
dream-content may have to be interpreted not symbolically but in accordance with
its proper meaning; at other times the dreamer, having to deal with special
memory-material, may take the law into his own hands and employ anything
whatever as a sexual symbol, though it is not generally so employed. Wherever he
has the choice of several symbols for the representation of a dream- content, he
will decide in favour of that symbol which is in addition objectively related to
his other thought-material; that is to say, he will employ an individual
motivation besides the typically valid one.
Although since Scherner's time the more recent investigations of dream-problems
have definitely established the existence of dream- symbolism- even Havelock
Ellis acknowledges that our dreams are indubitably full of symbols- it must yet
be admitted that the existence of symbols in dreams has not only facilitated
dream- interpretation, but has also made it more difficult. The technique of
interpretation in accordance with the dreamer's free associations more often
than otherwise leaves us in the lurch as far as the symbolic elements of the
dream-content are concerned. A return to the arbitrariness of
dream-interpretation as it was practised in antiquity, and is seemingly revived
by Stekel's wild interpretations, is contrary to scientific method.
Consequently, those elements in the dream-content which are to be symbolically
regarded compel us to employ a combined technique, which on the one hand is
based on the dreamer's associations, while on the other hand the missing
portions have to be supplied by the interpreter's understanding of the symbols.
Critical circumspection in the solution of the symbols must coincide with
careful study of the symbols in especially transparent examples of dreams in
order to silence the reproach of arbitrariness in dream-interpretation. The
uncertainties which still adhere to our function as dream-interpreters are due
partly to our imperfect knowledge (which, however, can be progressively
increased) and partly to certain peculiarities of the dream-symbols themselves.
These often possess many and varied meanings, so that, as in Chinese script,
only the context can furnish the correct meaning. This multiple significance of
the symbol is allied to the dream's faculty of admitting over-interpretations,
of representing, in the same content, various wish-impulses and
thought-formations, often of a widely divergent character.
After these limitations and reservations, I will proceed. The Emperor and the
Empress (King and Queen) * in most cases really represent the dreamer's parents;
the dreamer himself or herself is the prince or princess. But the high authority
conceded to the Emperor is also conceded to great men, so that in some dreams,
for example, Goethe appears as a father symbol (Hitschmann).- All elongated
objects, sticks, tree-trunks, umbrellas (on account of the opening, which might
be likened to an erection), all sharp and elongated weapons, knives, daggers,
and pikes, represent the male member. A frequent, but not very intelligible
symbol for the same is a nail-file (a reference to rubbing and scraping?).-
Small boxes, chests, cupboards, and ovens correspond to the female organ; also
cavities, ships, and all kinds of vessels.- A room in a dream generally
represents a woman; the description of its various entrances and exits is
scarcely calculated to make us doubt this interpretation. *(2) The interest as
to whether the room is open or locked will be readily understood in this
connection. (Cf. Dora's dream in Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria.) There is
no need to be explicit as to the sort of key that will unlock the room; the
symbolism of lock and key has been gracefully if broadly employed by Uhland in
his song of the Graf Eberstein.- The dream of walking through a suite of rooms
signifies a brothel or a harem. But, as H. Sachs has shown by an admirable
example, it is also employed to represent marriage (contrast). An interesting
relation to the sexual investigations of childhood emerges when the dreamer
dreams of two rooms which were previously one, or finds that a familiar room in
a house of which he dreams has been divided into two, or the reverse. In
childhood the female genitals and anus (the "behind") *(3) are conceived of as a
single opening according to the infantile cloaca theory, and only later is it
discovered that this region of the body contains two separate cavities and
openings. Steep inclines, ladders and stairs, and going up or down them, are
symbolic representations of the sexual act. *(4) Smooth walls over which one
climbs, facades of houses, across which one lets oneself down- often with a
sense of great anxiety- correspond to erect human bodies, and probably repeat in
our dreams childish memories of climbing up parents or nurses. Smooth walls are
men; in anxiety dreams one often holds firmly to projections on houses. Tables,
whether bare or covered, and boards, are women, perhaps by virtue of contrast,
since they have no protruding contours. Wood generally speaking, seems, in
accordance with its linguistic relations, to represent feminine matter (Materie).
The name of the island Madeira means wood in Portuguese. Since bed and board (mensa
et thorus) constitute marriage, in dreams the latter is often substituted for
the former, and as far as practicable the sexual representation-complex is
transposed to the eating-complex.- Of articles of dress, a woman's hat may very
often be interpreted with certainty as the male genitals. In the dreams of men,
one often finds the necktie as a symbol for the penis; this is not only because
neckties hang down in front of the body, and are characteristic of men, but also
because one can select them at pleasure, a freedom which nature prohibits as
regards the original of the symbol. Persons who make use of this symbol in
dreams are very extravagant in the matter of ties, and possess whole collections
of them. *(5) All complicated machines and appliances are very probably the
genitals- as a rule the male genitals- in the description of which the symbolism
of dreams is as indefatigable as human wit. It is quite unmistakable that all
weapons and tools are used as symbols for the male organ: e.g., ploughshare,
hammer, gun, revolver, dagger, sword, etc. Again, many of the landscapes seen in
dreams, especially those that contain bridges or wooded mountains, may be
readily recognized as descriptions of the genitals. Marcinowski collected a
series of examples in which the dreamer explained his dream by means of
drawings, in order to represent the landscapes and places appearing in it. These
drawings clearly showed the distinction between the manifest and the latent
meaning of the dream. Whereas, naively regarded, they seemed to represent plans,
maps, and so forth, closer investigation showed that they were representations
of the human body, of the genitals, etc., and only after conceiving them thus
could the dream be understood. *(6) Finally, where one finds incomprehensible
neologisms one may suspect combinations of components having a sexual
significance.- Children, too, often signify the genitals, since men and women
are in the habit of fondly referring to their genital organs as little man,
little woman, little thing. The little brother was correctly recognized by
Stekel as the penis. To play with or to beat a little child is often the dream's
representation of masturbation. The dream-work represents castration by
baldness, hair-cutting, the loss of teeth, and beheading. As an insurance
against castration, the dream uses one of the common symbols of the penis in
double or multiple form and the appearance in a dream of a lizard- an animal
whose tail, if pulled off, is regenerated by a new growth- has the same meaning.
Most of those animals which are utilized as genital symbols in mythology and
folklore play this part also in dreams: the fish, the snail, the cat, the mouse
(on account of the hairiness of the genitals), but above all the snake, which is
the most important symbol of the male member. Small animals and vermin are
substitutes for little children, e.g., undesired sisters or brothers. To be
infected with vermin is often the equivalent for pregnancy.- As a very recent
symbol of the male organ I may mention the airship, whose employment is
justified by its relation to flying, and also, occasionally, by its form.-
Stekel has given a number of other symbols, not yet sufficiently verified, which
he has illustrated by examples. The works of this author, and especially his
book: Die Sprache des Traumes, contain the richest collection of interpretations
of symbols, some of which were ingeniously guessed and were proved to be correct
upon investigation, as, for example, in the section on the symbolism of death.
The author's lack of critical reflection, and his tendency to generalize at all
costs, make his interpretations doubtful or inapplicable, so that in making use
of his works caution is urgently advised. I shall therefore restrict myself to
mentioning a few examples. -
* In the U.S.A. the father is represented in dreams as the President, and even
more often as the Governor- a title which is frequently applied to the parent in
everyday life.- TR.
*(2) "A patient living in a boarding-house dreams that he meets one of the
servants, and asks her what her number is; to his surprise she answers: 14. He
has, in fact, entered into relations with the girl in question, and has often
had her in his bedroom. She feared, as may be imagined, that the landlady
suspected her, and had proposed, on the day before the dream, that they should
meet in one of the unoccupied rooms. In reality this room had the number 14,
while in the dream the woman bore this number. A clearer proof of the
identification of woman and room could hardly be imagined," (Ernest Jones,
Intern. Zeitschr. f. Psychoanalyse, ii, [1914]). (Cf. Artemidorus, The Symbolism
of Dreams [German version by F. S. Krauss, Vienna, 1881, p. 110]: "Thus, for
example, the bedroom signifies the wife, supposing one to be in the house.")
*(3) Cf. "the cloaca theory" in Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex.
*(4) See p. 123-124 above.
*(5) Cf. in the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, ii, 675, the drawing of a
nineteen-year-old manic patient: a man with a snake as a neck-tie, which is
turning towards a girl. Also the story Der Schamhaftige (Anthropophyteia, vi,
334): A woman entered a bathroom, and there came face to face with a man who
hardly had time to put on his shirt. He was greatly embarrassed, but at once
covered his throat with the front of his shirt, and said: "Please excuse me, I
have no necktie."
*(6) Cf. Pfister's works on cryptography and picture-puzzles. -
Right and left, according to Stekel, are to be understood in dreams in an
ethical sense. "The right-hand path always signifies the way to righteousness,
the left-hand path the path to crime. Thus the left may signify homosexuality,
incest, and perversion, while the right signifies marriage, relations with a
prostitute, etc. The meaning is always determined by the individual moral
standpoint of the dreamer" (loc. cit., p. 466). Relatives in dreams generally
stand for the genitals (p. 473). Here I can confirm this meaning only for the
son, the daughter, and the younger sister- that is, wherever little thing could
be employed. On the other hand, verified examples allow us to recognize sisters
as symbols of the breasts, and brothers as symbols of the larger hemispheres. To
be unable to overtake a carriage is interpreted by Stekel as regret at being
unable to catch up with a difference in age (p. 479). The luggage of a traveller
is the burden of sin by which one is oppressed (ibid.) But a traveller's luggage
often proves to be an unmistakable symbol of one's own genitals. To numbers,
which frequently occur in dreams, Stekel has assigned a fixed symbolic meaning,
but these interpretations seem neither sufficiently verified nor of universal
validity, although in individual cases they can usually be recognized as
plausible. We have, at all events, abundant confirmation that the figure three
is a symbol of the male genitals. One of Stekel's generalizations refers to the
double meaning of the genital symbols. "Where is there a symbol," he asks,
"which (if in any way permitted by the imagination) may not be used
simultaneously in the masculine and the feminine sense?" To be sure, the clause
in parenthesis retracts much of the absolute character of this assertion, for
this double meaning is not always permitted by the imagination. Still, I think
it is not superfluous to state that in my experience this general statement of
Stekel's requires elaboration. Besides those symbols which are just as
frequently employed for the male as for the female genitals, there are others
which preponderantly, or almost exclusively, designate one of the sexes, and
there are yet others which, so far as we know, have only the male or only the
female signification. To use long, stiff objects and weapons as symbols of the
female genitals, or hollow objects (chests, boxes, etc.) as symbols of the male
genitals, is certainly not permitted by the imagination.
It is true that the tendency of dreams, and of the unconscious phantasy, to
employ the sexual symbols bisexually, reveals an archaic trait, for in childhood
the difference in the genitals is unknown, and the same genitals are attributed
to both sexes. One may also be misled as regards the significance of a bisexual
symbol if one forgets the fact that in some dreams a general reversal of sexes
takes place, so that the male organ is represented by the female, and vice
versa. Such dreams express, for example, the wish of a woman to be a man.
The genitals may even be represented in dreams by other parts of the body: the
male member by the hand or the foot, the female genital orifice by the mouth,
the ear, or even the eye. The secretions of the human body- mucus, tears, urine,
semen, etc.- may be used in dreams interchangeably. This statement of Stekel's,
correct in the main, has suffered a justifiable critical restriction as the
result of certain comments of R. Reitler's (Internat. Zeitschr. fur Psych., i,
1913). The gist of the matter is the replacement of an important secretion, such
as the semen, by an indifferent one.
These very incomplete indications may suffice to stimulate others to make a more
painstaking collection. * I have attempted a much more detailed account of
dream-symbolism in my General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis. -
* In spite of all the differences between Scherner's conception of
dream-symbolism and the one developed here, I must still insist that Scherner
should be recognized as the true discoverer of symbolism in dreams, and that the
experience of psycho analysis has brought his book (published in 1861) into
posthumous repute. -
I shall now append a few instances of the use of such symbols, which will show
how impossible it is to arrive at the interpretation of a dream if one excludes
dream-symbolism, but also how in many cases it is imperatively forced upon one.
At the same time, I must expressly warn the investigator against overestimating
the importance of symbols in the interpretation of dreams, restricting the work
of dream-translation to the translation of symbols, and neglecting the technique
of utilizing the associations of the dreamer. The two techniques of dream-
interpretation must supplement one another; practically, however, as well as
theoretically, precedence is retained by the latter process, which assigns the
final significance to the utterances of the dreamer, while the
symbol-translation which we undertake play an auxiliary part.
1. The hat as the symbol of a man (of the male genitals): *
(A fragment from the dream of a young woman who suffered from agoraphobia as the
result of her fear of temptation.) -
* From "Nachtrage sur Traumdeutung" in Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, i, Nos. 5
and 6, (1911). -
I am walking in the street in summer; I am wearing a straw hat of peculiar
shape, the middle piece of which is bent upwards, while the side pieces hang
downwards (here the description hesitates), and in such a fashion that one hangs
lower than the other. I am cheerful and in a confident mood, and as I pass a
number of young officers I think to myself: You can't do anything to me.
As she could produce no associations to the hat, I said to her: "The hat is
really a male genital organ, with its raised middle piece and the two
downward-hanging side pieces." It is perhaps peculiar that her hat should be
supposed to be a man, but after all one says: Unter die Haube kommen (to get
under the cap) when we mean: to get married. I intentionally refrained from
interpreting the details concerning the unequal dependence of the two side
pieces, although the determination of just such details must point the way to
the interpretation. I went on to say that if, therefore, she had a husband with
such splendid genitals she would not have to fear the officers; that is, she
would have nothing to wish from them, for it was essentially her temptation-
phantasies which prevented her from going about unprotected and unaccompanied.
This last explanation of her anxiety I had already been able to give her
repeatedly on the basis of other material.
It is quite remarkable how the dreamer behaved after this interpretation. She
withdrew her description of the hat and would not admit that she had said that
the two side pieces were hanging down. I was, however, too sure of what I had
heard to allow myself to be misled, and so I insisted that she did say it. She
was quiet for a while, and then found the courage to ask why it was that one of
her husband's testicles was lower than the other, and whether it was the same
with all men. With this the peculiar detail of the hat was explained, and the
whole interpretation was accepted by her.
The hat symbol was familiar to me long before the patient related this dream.
From other but less transparent cases I believed that I might assume the hat
could also stand for the female genitals. * -
* Cf. Kirchgraber for a similar example (Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, iii,
[1912], p. 95). Stekel reported a dream in which the hat with an
obliquely-standing feather in the middle symbolized the (impotent) man. -
2. The little one as the genital organ. Being run over as a symbol of sexual
intercourse.
(Another dream of the same agoraphobic patient.)
Her mother sends away her little daughter so that she has to go alone. She then
drives with her mother to the railway station, and sees her little one walking
right along the track, so that she is bound to be run over. She hears the bones
crack. (At this she experiences a feeling of discomfort but no real horror.) She
then looks through the carriage window, to see whether the parts cannot be seen
behind. Then she reproaches her mother for allowing the little one to go out
alone.
Analysis.- It is not an easy matter to give here a complete interpretation of
the dream. It forms part of a cycle of dreams, and can be fully understood only
in connection with the rest. For it is not easy to obtain the material necessary
to demonstrate the symbolism in a sufficiently isolated condition. The patient
at first finds that the railway journey is to be interpreted historically as an
allusion to a departure from a sanatorium for nervous diseases, with whose
director she was, of course, in love. Her mother fetched her away, and before
her departure the physician came to the railway station and gave her a bunch of
flowers; she felt uncomfortable because her mother witnessed this attention.
Here the mother, therefore, appears as the disturber of her tender feelings, a
role actually played by this strict woman during her daughter's girlhood.- The
next association referred to the sentence: She then looks to see whether the
parts cannot be seen behind. In the dream-facade one would naturally be
compelled to think of the pieces of the little daughter who had been run over
and crushed. The association, however, turns in quite a different direction. She
recalls that she once saw her father in the bath-room, naked, from behind; she
then begins to talk about sex differences, and remarks that in the man the
genitals can be seen from behind, but in the woman they cannot. In this
connection she now herself offers the interpretation that the little one is the
genital organ, and her little one (she has a four-year-old daughter) her own
organ. She reproaches her mother for wanting her to live as though she had no
genitals, and recognizes this reproach in the introductory sentence of the
dream: the mother sends her little one away, so that she has to go alone. In her
phantasy, going alone through the streets means having no man, no sexual
relations (coire = to go together), and this she does not like. According to all
her statements, she really suffered as a girl through her mother's jealousy,
because her father showed a preference for her.
The deeper interpretation of this dream depends upon another dream of the same
night, in which the dreamer identifies herself with her brother. She was a
tomboy, and was always being told that she should have been born a boy. This
identification with the brother shows with especial clearness that the little
one signifies the genital organ. The mother threatened him (her) with
castration, which could only be understood as a punishment for playing with the
genital parts, and the identification, therefore, shows that she herself had
masturbated as a child, though she had retained only a memory of her brother's
having done so. An early knowledge of the male genitals, which she lost later,
must, according to the assertions of this second dream, have been acquired at
this time. Moreover, the second dream points to the infantile sexual theory that
girls originate from boys as a result of castration. After I had told her of
this childish belief, she at once confirmed it by an anecdote in which the boy
asks the girl: "Was it cut off?" to which the girl replies: "No, it's always
been like that."
Consequently the sending away of the little one, of the genital organ, in the
first dream refers also to the threatened castration. Finally, she blames her
mother for not having borne her as a boy.
That being run over symbolizes sexual intercourse would not be evident from this
dream if we had not learned it from many other sources.
3. Representation of the genitals by buildings, stairs, and shafts.
(Dream of a young man inhibited by a father complex.)
He is taking a walk with his father in a place which is certainly the Prater,
for one can see the Rotunda, in front of which there is a small vestibule to
which there is attached a captive balloon; the balloon, however, seems rather
limp. His father asks him what this is all for; he is surprised at it, but he
explains it to his father. They come into a courtyard in which lies a large
sheet of tin. His father wants to pull off a big piece of this, but first looks
round to see if anyone is watching. He tells his father that all he needs to do
is to speak to the overseer, and then he can take as much as he wants to without
any more ado. From this courtyard a flight of stairs leads down into a shaft,
the walls of which are softly upholstered, rather like a leather arm-chair. At
the end of this shaft there is a long platform, and then a new shaft begins...
Analysis. This dreamer belonged to a type of patient which is not at all
promising from a therapeutic point of view; up to a certain point in the
analysis such patients offer no resistance whatever, but from that point onwards
they prove to be almost inaccessible. This dream he analysed almost
independently. "The Rotunda," he said, "is my genitals, the captive balloon in
front is my penis, about whose flaccidity I have been worried." We must,
however, interpret it in greater detail: the Rotunda is the buttocks, constantly
associated by the child with the genitals; the smaller structure in front is the
scrotum. In the dream his father asks him what this is all for- that is, he asks
him about the purpose and arrangement of the genitals. It is quite evident that
this state of affairs should be reversed, and that he ought to be the
questioner. As such questioning, on the part of the father never occurred in
reality, we must conceive the dream- thought as a wish, or perhaps take it
conditionally, as follows. "If I had asked my father for sexual
enlightenment..." The continuation of this thought we shall presently find in
another place.
The courtyard in which the sheet of tin is spread out is not to be conceived
symbolically in the first instance, but originates from his father's place of
business. For reasons of discretion I have inserted the tin for another material
in which the father deals without, however, changing anything in the verbal
expression of the dream. The dreamer had entered his father's business, and had
taken a terrible dislike to the somewhat questionable practices upon which its
profit mainly depended. Hence the continuation of the above dream-thought ("if I
had asked him") would be: "He would have deceived me just as he does his
customers." For the pulling off, which serves to represent commercial
dishonesty, the dreamer himself gives a second explanation, namely,
masturbation. This is not only quite familiar to us (see above), but agrees very
well with the fact that the secrecy of masturbation is expressed by its opposite
(one can do it quite openly). Thus, it agrees entirely with our expectations
that the autoerotic activity should be attributed to the father, just as was the
questioning in the first scene of the dream. The shaft he at once interprets as
the vagina, by referring to the soft upholstering of the walls. That the action
of coition in the vagina is described as a going down instead of in the usual
way as a going up agrees with what I have found in other instances. * -
* Cf. comment in the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, i; and see above, note (8)
in earlier paragraph. -
The details- that at the end of the first shaft there is a long platform, and
then a new shaft- he himself explains biographically. He had for some time had
sexual intercourse with women, but had given it up on account of inhibitions,
and now hopes to be able to begin it again with the aid of treatment. The dream,
however, becomes indistinct towards the end, and to the experienced interpreter
it becomes evident that in the second scene of the dream the influence of
another subject has already begun to assert itself; which is indicated by his
father's business, his dishonest practices, and the vagina represented by the
first shaft, so that one may assume a reference to his mother.
4. The male organ symbolized by persons and the female by a landscape.
(Dream of a woman of the lower class, whose husband is a policeman, reported by
B. Dattner.)
...Then someone broke into the house and she anxiously called for a policeman.
But he went peacefully with two tramps into a church, * to which a great many
steps led up, *(2) behind the church there was a mountain *(3) on top of which
there was a dense forest. *(4) The policeman was provided with a helmet, a
gorget, and a cloak. *(5) The two vagrants, who went along with the policeman
quite peaceably, had sack-like aprons tied round their loins. *(6) A road led
from the church to the mountain. This road was overgrown on each side with grass
and brushwood, which became thicker and thicker as it reached the top of the
mountain, where it spread out into quite a forest. -
* Or Chapel = vagina.
*(2) Symbol of coitus.
*(3) Mons veneris.
*(4) Crines pubis.
*(5) Demons in cloaks and hoods are, according to the explanation of a
specialist, of a phallic character.
*(6) The two halves of the scrotum. -
5. Castration dreams of children.
(a) A boy aged three years and five months, for whom his father's return from
military service is clearly inconvenient, wakes one morning in a disturbed and
excited state, and constantly repeats the question: Why did Daddy carry his head
on a plate? Last night Daddy carried his head on a plate.
(b) A student who is now suffering from a severe obsessional neurosis remembers
that in his sixth year he repeatedly had the following dream: He goes to the
barber to have his hair cut. Then a large woman with severe features comes up to
him and cuts off his head. He recognizes the woman as his mother.
6. A modified staircase dream.
To one of my patients, a sexual abstainer, who was very ill, whose phantasy was
fixated upon his mother, and who repeatedly dreamed of climbing stairs while
accompanied by his mother, I once remarked that moderate masturbation would
probably have been less harmful to him than his enforced abstinence. The
influence of this remark provoked the following dream:
His piano teacher reproaches him for neglecting his piano- playing, and for not
practicing the Etudes of Moscheles and Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum. With
reference to this he remarked that the Gradus, too, is a stairway, and that the
piano itself is a stairway, as it has a scale.
It may be said that there is no class of ideas which cannot be enlisted in the
representation of sexual facts and wishes.
7. The sensation of reality and the representation of repetition.
A man, now thirty-five, relates a clearly remembered dream which he claims to
have had when he was four years of age: The notary with whom his father's will
was deposited- he had lost his father at the age of three- brought two large
Emperor-pears, of which he was given one to eat. The other lay on the window
sill of the living-room. He woke with the conviction of the reality of what he
had dreamt, and obstinately asked his mother to give him the second pear; it
was, he said, still lying on the window-sill. His mother laughed at this.
Analysis. The notary was a jovial old gentleman who, as he seems to remember,
really sometimes brought pears with him. The window- sill was as he saw it in
the dream. Nothing else occurs to him in this connection, except, perhaps, that
his mother has recently told him a dream. She has two birds sitting on her head;
she wonders when they will fly away, but they do not fly away, and one of them
flies to her mouth and sucks at it.
The dreamer's inability to furnish associations justifies the attempt to
interpret it by the substitution of symbols. The two pears- pommes on poires-
are the breasts of the mother who nursed him; the window-sill is the projection
of the bosom, analogous to the balconies in the dream of houses. His sensation
of reality after waking is justified, for his mother had actually suckled him
for much longer than the customary term, and her breast was still available. The
dream is to be translated: "Mother, give (show) me the breast again at which I
once used to drink." The once is represented by the eating of the one pear, the
again by the desire for the other. The temporal repetition of an act is
habitually represented in dreams by the numerical multiplication of an object
It is naturally a very striking phenomenon that symbolism should already play a
part in the dream of a child of four, but this is the rule rather than the
exception. One may say that the dreamer has command of symbolism from the very
first.
The early age at which people make use of symbolic representation, even apart
from the dream-life, may be shown by the following uninfluenced memory of a lady
who is now twenty- seven: She is in her fourth year. The nursemaid is driving
her, with her brother, eleven months younger, and a cousin, who is between the
two in age, to the lavatory, so that they can do their little business there
before going for their walk. As the oldest, she sits on the seat and the other
two on chambers. She asks her (female) cousin: Have you a purse, too? Walter has
a little sausage, I have a purse. The cousin answers: Yes, I have a purse, too.
The nursemaid listens, laughing, and relates the conversation to the mother,
whose reaction is a sharp reprimand.
Here a dream may be inserted whose excellent symbolism permitted of
interpretation with little assistance from the dreamer:
8. The question of symbolism in the dreams of normal persons. * -
* Alfred Robitsek in the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, ii (1911), p. 340. -
An objection frequently raised by the opponents of psycho- analysis- and
recently also by Havelock Ellis- * is that, although dream-symbolism may perhaps
be a product of the neurotic psyche, it has no validity whatever in the case of
normal persons. But while psychoanalysis recognizes no essential distinctions,
but only quantitative differences, between the psychic life of the normal person
and that of the neurotic, the analysis of those dreams in which, in sound and
sick persons alike, the repressed complexes display the same activity, reveals
the absolute identity of the mechanisms as well as of the symbolism. Indeed, the
natural dreams of healthy persons often contain a much simpler, more
transparent, and more characteristic symbolism than those of neurotics, which,
owing to the greater strictness of the censorship and the more extensive dream-
distortion resulting therefrom, are frequently troubled and obscured, and are
therefore more difficult to translate. The following dream serves to illustrate
this fact. This dream comes from a non-neurotic girl of a rather prudish and
reserved type. In the course of conversation I found that she was engaged to be
married, but that there were hindrances in the way of the marriage which
threatened to postpone it. She related spontaneously the following dream: -
* The World of Dreams, London (1911), p. 168. -
I arrange the centre of a table with flowers for a birthday. On being questioned
she states that in the dream she seemed to be at home (she has no home at the
time) and experienced a feeling of happiness.
The popular symbolism enables me to translate the dream for myself. It is the
expression of her wish to be married: the table, with the flowers in the centre,
is symbolic of herself and her genitals. She represents her future fulfilled,
inasmuch as she is already occupied with the thoughts of the birth of a child;
so the wedding has taken place long ago.
I call her attention to the fact that the centre of a table is an unusual
expression, which she admits; but here, of course, I cannot question her more
directly. I carefully refrain from suggesting to her the meaning of the symbols,
and ask her only for the thoughts which occur to her mind in connection with the
individual parts of the dream. In the course of the analysis her reserve gave
way to a distinct interest in the interpretation, and a frankness which was made
possible by the serious tone of the conversation. To my question as to what kind
of flowers they had been, her first answer is: expensive flowers; one has to pay
for them; then she adds that they were lilies-of-the-valley, violets, and pinks
or carnations. I took the word lily in this dream in its popular sense, as a
symbol of chastity; she confirmed this, as purity occurred to her in association
with lily. Valley is a common feminine dream-symbol. The chance juxtaposition of
the two symbols in the name of the flower is made into a piece of
dream-symbolism, and serves to emphasize the preciousness of her virginity-
expensive flowers; one has to pay for them- and expresses the expectation that
her husband will know how to appreciate its value. The comment, expensive
flowers, etc. has, as will be shown, a different meaning in every one of the
three different flower-symbols.
I thought of what seemed to me a venturesome explanation of the hidden meaning
of the apparently quite asexual word violets by an unconscious relation to the
French viol. But to my surprise the dreamer's association was the English word
violate. The accidental phonetic similarity of the two words violet and violate
is utilized by the dream to express in the language of flowers the idea of the
violence of defloration (another word which makes use of flower-symbolism), and
perhaps also to give expression to a masochistic tendency on the part of the
girl. An excellent example of the word bridges across which run the paths to the
unconscious. One has to pay for them here means life, with which she has to pay
for becoming a wife and a mother.
In association with pinks, which she then calls carnations, I think of carnal.
But her association is colour, to which she adds that carnations are the flowers
which her fiance gives her frequently and in large quantities. At the end of the
conversation she suddenly admits, spontaneously, that she has not told me the
truth; the word that occurred to her was not colour, but incarnation, the very
word I expected. Moreover, even the word colour is not a remote association; it
was determined by the meaning of carnation (i.e., flesh-colour)- that is, by the
complex. This lack of honesty shows that the resistance here is at its greatest
because the symbolism is here most transparent, and the struggle between libido
and repression is most intense in connection with this phallic theme. The remark
that these flowers were often given her by her fiance is, together with the
double meaning of carnation, a still further indication of their phallic
significance in the dream. The occasion of the present of flowers during the day
is employed to express the thought of a sexual present and a return present. She
gives her virginity and expects in return for it a rich love-life. But the
words: expensive flowers; one has to pay for them may have a real, financial
meaning. The flower-symbolism in the dream thus comprises the virginal female,
the male symbol, and the reference to violent defloration. It is to be noted
that sexual flower-symbolism, which, of course, is very widespread, symbolizes
the human sexual organs by flowers, the sexual organs of plants; indeed,
presents of flowers between lovers may have this unconscious significance.
The birthday for which she is making preparations in the dream probably
signifies the birth of a child. She identifies herself with the bridegroom, and
represents him preparing her for a birth (having coitus with her). It is as
though the latent thought were to say: "If I were he, I would not wait, but I
would deflower the bride without asking her; I would use violence." Indeed, the
word violate points to this. Thus even the sadistic libidinal components find
expression.
In a deeper stratum of the dream the sentence I arrange, etc., probably has an
auto-erotic, that is, an infantile significance.
She also has a knowledge- possibly only in the dream- of her physical need; she
sees herself flat like a table, so that she emphasizes all the more her
virginity, the costliness of the centre (another time she calls it a
centre-piece of flowers). Even the horizontal element of the table may
contribute something to the symbol. The concentration of the dream is worthy of
remark: nothing is superfluous, every word is a symbol.
Later on she brings me a supplement to this dream: I decorate the flowers with
green crinkled paper. She adds that it was fancy paper of the sort which is used
to disguise ordinary flower-pots. She says also: "To hide untidy things,
whatever was to be seen which was not pretty to the eye; there is a gap, a
little space in the flowers. The paper looks like velvet or moss." With decorate
she associates decorum, as I expected. The green colour is very prominent, and
with this she associates hope, yet another reference to pregnancy. In this part
of the dream the identification with the man is not the dominant feature, but
thoughts of shame and frankness express themselves. She makes herself beautiful
for him; she admits physical defects, of which she is ashamed and which she
wishes to correct. The associations velvet and moss distinctly point to crines
pubis.
The dream is an expression of thoughts hardly known to the waking state of the
girl; thoughts which deal with the love of the senses and its organs; she is
prepared for a birth-day, i.e., she has coitus; the fear of defloration and
perhaps the pleasurably toned pain find expression; she admits her physical
defects and over-compensates them by means of an over-estimation of the value of
her virginity. Her shame excuses the emerging sensuality by the fact that the
aim of it all is the child. Even material considerations, which are foreign to
the lover, find expression here. The affect of the simple dream- the feeling of
bliss- shows that here strong emotional complexes have found satisfaction.
I close with the
9. Dream of a chemist.
(A young man who has been trying to give up his habit of masturbation by
substituting intercourse with a woman.)
Preliminary statement: On the day before the dream he had been instructing a
student as to Grignard's reaction, in which magnesium is dissolved in absolutely
pure ether under the catalytic influence of iodine. Two days earlier there had
been an explosion in the course of the same reaction, in which someone had
burned his hand.
Dream I. He is going to make phenylmagnesiumbromide; he sees the apparatus with
particular distinctness, but he has substituted himself for the magnesium. He is
now in a curious, wavering attitude. He keeps on repeating to himself: "This is
the right thing, it is working, my feet are beginning to dissolve, and my knees
are getting soft." Then he reaches down and feels for his feet, and meanwhile
(he does not know how) he takes his legs out of the carboy, and then again he
says to himself: "That can't be... Yes, it has been done correctly." Then he
partially wakes, and repeats the dream to himself, because he wants to tell it
to me. He is positively afraid of the analysis of the dream. He is much excited
during this state of semi-sleep, and repeats continually: "Phenyl, phenyl."
II. He is in... with his whole family. He is supposed to be at the Schottentor
at half-past eleven in order to keep an appointment with the lady in question,
but he does not wake until half-past eleven. He says to himself: "It is too late
now; when you get there it will be half-past twelve." The next moment he sees
the whole family gathered about the table- his mother and the parlourmaid with
the soup tureen with peculiar distinctness. Then he says to himself: "Well, if
we are sitting down to eat already, I certainly can't get away."
Analysis. He feels sure that even the first dream contains a reference to the
lady whom he is to meet at the place of rendezvous (the dream was dreamed during
the night before the expected meeting). The student whom he was instructing is a
particularly unpleasant fellow; the chemist had said to him: "That isn't right,
because the magnesium was still unaffected," and the student had answered, as
though he were quite unconcerned: "Nor it is." He himself must be this student;
he is as indifferent to his analysis as the student is to his synthesis; the he
in the dream, however, who performs the operation, is myself. How unpleasant he
must seem to me with his indifference to the result!
Again, he is the material with which the analysis (synthesis) is made. For the
question is the success of the treatment. The legs in the dream recall an
impression of the previous evening. He met a lady at a dancing class of whom he
wished to make a conquest; he pressed her to him so closely that she once cried
out. As he ceased to press her legs he felt her firm, responding pressure
against his lower thighs as far as just above the knees, the spot mentioned in
the dream. In this situation, then, the woman is the magnesium in the retort,
which is at last working. He is feminine towards me, as he is virile towards the
woman. If he succeeds with the woman, the treatment will also succeed. Feeling
himself and becoming aware of his knees refers to masturbation, and corresponds
to his fatigue of the previous day... The rendezvous had actually been made for
half-past eleven. His wish to oversleep himself and to keep to his sexual object
at home (that is, masturbation) corresponds to his resistance.
He says, in respect to the repetition of the name phenyl, that all these
radicals ending in yl have always been pleasing to him; they are very convenient
to use: benzyl, acetyl, etc. That, however, explained nothing. But when I
proposed the root Schlemihl he laughed heartily, and told me that during the
summer he had read a book by Prevost which contained a chapter: "Les exclus de
l'amour," and in this there was some mention of Schlemilies; and in reading of
these outcasts he said to himself: "That is my case." He would have played the
Schlemihl if he had missed the appointment.
It seems that the sexual symbolism of dreams has already been directly confirmed
by experiment. In 1912 Dr. K. Schrotter, at the instance of H. Swoboda, produced
dreams in deeply hypnotized persons by suggestions which determined a large part
of the dream- content. If the suggestion proposed that the subject should dream
of normal or abnormal sexual relations, the dream carried out these orders by
replacing sexual material by the symbols with which psycho-analytic
dream-interpretation has made us familiar. Thus, following the suggestion that
the dreamer should dream of homosexual relations with a lady friend, this friend
appeared in the dream carrying a shabby travelling-bag, upon which there was a
label with the printed words: "For ladies only." The dreamer was believed never
to have heard of dream-symbolization or of dream-interpretation. Unfortunately,
the value of this important investigation was diminished by the fact that Dr.
Schrotter shortly afterwards committed suicide. Of his dream-experiments be gave
us only a preliminary report in the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse.
Only when we have formed a due estimate of the importance of symbolism in dreams
can we continue the study of the typical dreams which was interrupted in an
earlier chapter. I feel justified in dividing these dreams roughly into two
classes; first, those which always really have the same meaning, and second,
those which despite the same or a similar content must nevertheless be given the
most varied interpretations. Of the typical dreams belonging to the first class
I have already dealt fairly fully with the examination-dream.
On account of their similar affective character, the dreams of missing a train
deserve to be ranked with the examination-dreams; moreover, their interpretation
justifies this approximation. They are consolation-dreams, directed against
another anxiety perceived in dreams- the fear of death. To depart is one of the
most frequent and one of the most readily established of the death-symbols. The
dream therefore says consolingly: "Reassure yourself, you are not going to die
(to depart)," just as the examination-dream calms us by saying: "Don't be
afraid; this time, too, nothing will happen to you." The difficulty is
understanding both kinds of dreams is due to the fact that the anxiety is
attached precisely to the expression of consolation.
The meaning of the dreams due to dental stimulus which I have often enough had
to analyse in my patients escaped me for a long time because, much to my
astonishment, they habitually offered too great a resistance to interpretation.
But finally an overwhelming mass of evidence convinced me that in the case of
men nothing other than the masturbatory desires of puberty furnish the motive
power of these dreams. I shall analyse two such dreams, one of which is also a
flying dream. The two dreams were dreamed by the same person- a young man of
pronounced homosexuality which, however, has been inhibited in life.
He is witnessing a performance of Fidelio from the stalls the of the operahouse;
sitting next to L, whose personality is congenial to him, and whose friendship
he would like to have. Suddenly he flies diagonally right across the stalls; he
then puts his hand in his mouth and draws out two of his teeth.
He himself describes the flight by saying that it was as though he were thrown
into the air. As the opera performed was Fidelio, he recalls the words: -
He who a charming wife acquires.... -
But the acquisition of even the most charming wife is not among the wishes of
the dreamer. Two other lines would be more appropriate: -
He who succeeds in the lucky (big) throw
The friend of a friend to be.... -
The dream thus contains the lucky (big) throw which is not, however, a
wish-fulfilment only. For it conceals also the painful reflection that in his
striving after friendship he has often had the misfortune to be thrown out, and
the fear lest this fate may be repeated in the case of the young man by whose
side he has enjoyed the performance of Fidelio. This is now followed by a
confession, shameful to a man of his refinement, to the effect that once, after
such a rejection on the part of a friend, his profound sexual longing caused him
to masturbate twice in succession.
The other dream is as follows: Two university professors of his acquaintance are
treating him in my place. One of them does something to his penis; he is afraid
of an operation. The other thrusts an iron bar against his mouth, so that he
loses one or two teeth. He is bound with four silk handkerchiefs.
The sexual significance of this dream can hardly be doubted. The silk
handkerchiefs allude to an identification with a homosexual of his acquaintance.
The dreamer, who has never achieved coition (nor has he ever actually sought
sexual intercourse) with men, conceives the sexual act on the lines of
masturbation with which he was familiar during puberty.
I believe that the frequent modifications of the typical dream due to dental
stimulus- that, for example, in which another person draws the tooth from the
dreamer's mouth- will be made intelligible by the same explanation. * It may,
however, be difficult to understand how dental stimulus can have come to have
this significance. But here I may draw attention to the frequent displacement
from below to above 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 localized in the genitals, may at all events be realized in other,
unobjectionable parts of the body. We have a case of such displacement when the
genitals are replaced by the face in the symbolism of unconscious thought. This
is corroborated by the fact that verbal usage relates the buttocks to the
cheeks, and the labia minora to the lips which enclose the orifice of the mouth.
The nose is compared to the penis in numerous allusions, and in each case the
presence of hair completes the resemblance. Only one feature- the teeth- is
beyond all possibility of being compared in this way; but it is just this
coincidence of agreement and disagreement which makes the teeth suitable for
purposes of representation under the pressure of sexual repression. -
* The extraction of a tooth by another is usually to be interpreted as
castration (cf. hair-cutting; Stekel). One must distinguish between dreams due
to dental stimulus and dreams referring to the dentist, such as have been
recorded, for example, by Coriat (Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse, iii, 440). -
I will not assert that the interpretation of dreams due to dental stimulus as
dreams of masturbation (the correctness of which I cannot doubt) has been freed
of all obscurity. * I carry the explanation as far as I am able, and must leave
the rest unsolved. But I must refer to yet another relation indicated by a
colloquial expression. In Austria there is in use an indelicate designation for
the act of masturbation, namely: "To pull one out," or "to pull one off." *(2) I
am unable to say whence these colloquialisms originate, or on what symbolisms
they are based; but the teeth would very well fit in with the first of the two.
-
* According to C. G. Jung, dreams due to dental stimulus in the case of women
have the significance parturition dreams. E. Jones has given valuable
confirmation of this. The common element of this interpretation with that
represented above may be found in the fact that in both cases (castration-birth)
there is a question of removing a part from the whole body.
*(2) Cf. the biographical dream earlier in this chapter. -
Dreams of pulling teeth, and of teeth falling out, are interpreted in popular
belief to mean the death of a connection. Psycho-analysis can admit of such a
meaning only at the most as a joking allusion to the sense already indicated.
To the second group of typical dreams belong those in which one is flying or
hovering, falling, swimming, etc. What do these dreams signify? Here we cannot
generalize. They mean, as we shall learn, something different in each case;
only, the sensory material which they contain always comes from the same source.
We must conclude from the information obtained in psycho-analysis that these
dreams also repeat impressions of our childhood- that is, that they refer to the
games involving movement which have such an extraordinary attraction for
children. Where is the uncle who has never made a child fly by running with it
across the room, with outstretched arms, or has never played at falling with it
by rocking it on his knee and then suddenly straightening his leg, or by lifting
it above his head and suddenly pretending to withdraw his supporting hand? At
such moments children shout with joy and insatiably demand a repetition of the
performance, especially if a little fright and dizziness are involved in it. In
after years they repeat their sensations in dreams, but in dreams they omit the
hands that held them, so that now they are free to float or fall. We know that
all small children have a fondness for such games as rocking and see-sawing; and
when they see gymnastic performances at the circus their recollection of such
games is refreshed. In some boys the hysterical attack consists simply in the
reproduction of such performances, which they accomplish with great dexterity.
Not infrequently sexual sensations are excited by these games of movement,
innocent though they are in themselves. To express the matter in a few words: it
is these romping games of childhood which are being repeated in dreams of
flying, falling, vertigo, and the like, but the pleasurable sensations are now
transformed into anxiety. But, as every mother knows, the romping of children
often enough ends in quarrelling and tears.
I have therefore good reason for rejecting the explanation that it is the
condition of our cutaneous sensations during sleep, the sensation of the
movements of the lungs, etc., that evoke dreams of flying and falling. As I see
it, these sensations have themselves been reproduced from the memory to which
the dream refers- that they are therefore dream-content, and not dream- sources.
* -
* This passage, dealing with dreams of motion, is repeated on account of the
context. Cf. chapter V., D. -
This material, consisting of sensations of motion, similar in character, and
originating from the same sources, is now used for the representation of the
most manifold dream-thoughts. Dreams of flying or hovering, for the most part
pleasurably toned, will call for the most widely differing interpretations-
interpretations of a quite special nature in the case of some dreamers, and
interpretations of a typical nature in that of others. One of my patients was in
the habit of dreaming very frequently that she was hovering a little way above
the street without touching the ground. She was very short of stature, and she
shunned every sort of contamination involved by intercourse with human beings.
Her dream of suspension- which raised her feet above the ground and allowed her
head to tower into the air- fulfilled both of her wishes. In the case of other
dreamers of the same sex, the dream of flying had the significance of the
longing: "If only I were a little bird!" Similarly, others become angels at
night, because no one has ever called them angels by day. The intimate
connection between flying and the idea of a bird makes it comprehensible that
the dream of flying, in the case of male dreamers, should usually have a
coarsely sensual significance; * and we should not be surprised to hear that
this or that dreamer is always very proud of his ability to fly. -
* A reference to the German slang word vogeln (to copulate) from Vogel (a
bird).- TR. -
Dr. Paul Federn (Vienna) has propounded the fascinating theory that a great many
flying dreams are erection dreams, since the remarkable phenomenon of erection,
which constantly occupies the human phantasy, cannot fail to be impressive as an
apparent suspension of the laws of gravity (cf. the winged phalli of the
ancients).
It is a noteworthy fact that a prudent experimenter like Mourly Vold, who is
really averse to any kind of interpretation, nevertheless defends the erotic
interpretation of the dreams of flying and hovering. * He describes the erotic
element as "the most important motive factor of the hovering dream," and refers
to the strong sense of bodily vibration which accompanies this type of dream,
and the frequent connection of such dreams with erections and emissions. -
* "Uber den Traum," Ges. Schriften, Vol. III. -
Dreams of falling are more frequently characterized by anxiety. Their
interpretation, when they occur in women, offers no difficulty, because they
nearly always accept the symbolic meaning of falling, which is a circumlocution
for giving way to an erotic temptation. We have not yet exhausted the infantile
sources of the dream of falling; nearly all children have fallen occasionally,
and then been picked up and fondled; if they fell out of bed at night, they were
picked up by the nurse and taken into her bed.
People who dream often, and with great enjoyment, of swimming, cleaving the
waves, etc., have usually been bed-wetters, and they now repeat in the dream a
pleasure which they have long since learned to forego. We shall soon learn, from
one example or another, to what representations dreams of swimming easily lend
themselves.
The interpretation of dreams of fire justifies a prohibition of the nursery,
which forbids children to play with fire so that they may not wet the bed at
night. These dreams also are based on reminiscences of the enuresis nocturna of
childhood. In my "Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria" * I have given the
complete analysis and synthesis of such a dream of fire in connection with the
infantile history of the dreamer, and have shown for the representation of what
maturer impulses this infantile material has been utilized. -
* Collected Papers, III. -
It would be possible to cite quite a number of other typical dreams, if by such
one understands dreams in which there is a frequent recurrence, in the dreams of
different persons, of the same manifest dream-content. For example: dreams of
passing through narrow alleys, or a whole suite of rooms; dreams of burglars, in
respect of whom nervous people take measures of precaution before going to bed;
dreams of being chased by wild animals (bulls, horses); or of being threatened
with knives, daggers, and lances. The last two themes are characteristic of the
manifest dream-content of persons suffering from anxiety, etc. A special
investigation of this class of material would be well worth while. In lieu of
this I shall offer two observations, which do not, however, apply exclusively to
typical dreams.
The more one is occupied with the solution of dreams, the readier one becomes to
acknowledge that the majority of the dreams of adults deal with sexual material
and give expression to erotic wishes. Only those who really analyse dreams, that
is, those who penetrate from their manifest content to the latent dream-
thoughts, can form an opinion on this subject; but never those who are satisfied
with registering merely the manifest content (as, for example, Nacke in his
writings on sexual dreams). Let us recognize at once that there is nothing
astonishing in this fact, which is entirely consistent with the principles of
dream- interpretation. No other instinct has had to undergo so much suppression,
from the time of childhood onwards, as the sexual instinct in all its numerous
components: * from no other instincts are so many and such intense unconscious
wishes left over, which now, in the sleeping state, generate dreams. In dream-
interpretation this importance of the sexual complexes must never be forgotten,
though one must not, of course, exaggerate it to the exclusion of all other
factors. -
* Cf. Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. -
Of many dreams it may be ascertained, by careful interpretation, that they may
even be understood bisexually, inasmuch as they yield an indisputable
over-interpretation, in which they realize homosexual impulses- that is,
impulses which are contrary to the normal sexual activity of the dreamer. But
that all dreams are to be interpreted bisexually, as Stekel * maintains, and
Adler, *(2) seems to me to be a generalization as insusceptible of proof as it
is improbable, and one which, therefore, I should be loth to defend; for I
should, above all, be at a loss to know how to dispose of the obvious fact that
there are many dreams which satisfy other than erotic needs (taking the word in
the widest sense), as, for example, dreams of hunger, thirst, comfort, etc. And
other similar assertions, to the effect that "behind every dream one finds a
reference to death" (Stekel), or that every dream shows "an advance from the
feminine to the masculine line" (Adler), seem to me to go far beyond the
admissible in the interpretation of dreams. The assertion that all dreams call
for a sexual interpretation, against which there is such an untiring polemic in
the literature of the subject, is quite foreign to my Interpretation of Dreams.
It will not be found in any of the eight editions of this book, and is in
palpable contradiction to the rest of its contents. -
* W. Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes (1911).
*(2) Alf. Adler, "Der Psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der Neurose,"
in Fortschritte der Medizin (1910), No. 16, and later papers in the Zentralblatt
fur Psychoanalyse, i (1910-11). -
We have stated elsewhere that dreams which are conspicuously innocent commonly
embody crude erotic wishes, and this we might confirm by numerous further
examples. But many dreams which appear indifferent, in which we should never
suspect a tendency in any particular direction, may be traced, according to the
analysis, to unmistakably sexual wish-impulses, often of an unsuspected nature.
For example, who, before it had been interpreted, would have suspected a sexual
wish in the following dream? The dreamer relates: Between two stately palaces
there stands, a little way back, a small house, whose doors are closed. My wife
leads me along the little bit of road leading to the house and pushes the door
open, and then I slip quickly and easily into the interior of a courtyard that
slopes steeply upwards.
Anyone who has had experience in the translating of dreams will, of course, at
once be reminded that penetration into narrow spaces and the opening of locked
doors are among the commonest of sexual symbols, and will readily see in this
dream a representation of attempted coition from behind (between the two stately
buttocks of the female body). The narrow, steep passage is, of course, the
vagina; the assistance attributed to the wife of the dreamer requires the
interpretation that in reality it is only consideration for the wife which is
responsible for abstention from such an attempt. Moreover, inquiry shows that on
the previous day a young girl had entered the household of the dreamer; she had
pleased him, and had given him the impression that she would not be altogether
averse to an approach of this sort. The little house between the two palaces is
taken from a reminiscence of the Hradschin in Prague, and once more points to
the girl, who is a native of that city.
If, in conversation with my patients, I emphasize the frequency of the Oedipus
dream- the dream of having sexual intercourse with one's mother- I elicit the
answer: "I cannot remember such a dream." Immediately afterwards, however, there
arises the recollection of another, an unrecognizable, indifferent dream, which
the patient has dreamed repeatedly, and which on analysis proves to be a dream
with this very content- that is, yet another Oedipus dream. I can assure the
reader that disguised dreams of sexual intercourse with the dreamer's mother are
far more frequent than undisguised dreams to the same effect. * -
* I have published a typical example of such a disguised Oedipus dream in No. 1
of the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse (see below): another, with a detailed
analysis, was published in No. 4 of the same journal by Otto Rank. For other
disguised Oedipus dreams in which the eye appears as a symbol, see Rank (Int.
Zeitschr. fur Ps. A., i, [1913]). Papers upon eye dreams and eye symbolism by
Eder, Ferenczi, and Reitler will be found in the same issue. The blinding in the
Oedipus legend and elsewhere is a substitute for castration. The ancients, by
the way, were not unfamiliar with the symbolic interpretation of the undisguised
Oedipus dream (see O. Rank, Jahrb. ii, p. 534: "Thus, a dream of Julius Caesar's
of sexual relations with his mother has been handed down to us, which the
oreirocopists interpreted as a favourable omen signifying his taking possession
of the earth (Mother Earth). Equally well known is the oracle delivered to the
Tarquinii, to the effect that that one of them would become the ruler of Rome
who should be the first to kiss his mother (osculum matri tulerit), which Brutus
conceived as referring to Mother Earth (terram osculo contigit, scilicet quod ea
communis mater omnium mortalium esset, Livy, I, lvi). Cf. here the dream of
Hippias in Herodotus vi, 107. These myths and interpretations point to a correct
psychological insight. I have found that those persons who consider themselves
preferred or favoured by their mothers manifest in life that confidence in
themselves, and that unshakable optimism, which often seem heroic, and not
infrequently compel actual success.
Typical example of a disguised Oedipus dream:
A man dreams: He has a secret affair with a woman whom another man wishes to
marry. He is concerned lest the other should discover this relation and abandon
the marriage; he therefore behaves very affectionately to the man; he nestles up
to him and kisses him. The facts of the dreamer's life touch the dream- content
only at one point. He has a secret affair with a married woman, and an equivocal
expression of her husband, with whom he is on friendly terms, aroused in him the
suspicion that he might have noticed something of this relationship. There is,
however, in reality, yet another factor, the mention of which was avoided in the
dream, and which alone gives the key to it. The life of the husband is
threatened by an organic malady. His wife is prepared for the possibility of his
sudden death, and our dreamer consciously harbours the intention of marrying the
young widow after her husband's decease. It is through this objective situation
that the dreamer finds himself transferred into the constellation of the Oedipus
dream; his wish is to be enabled to kill the man, so that he may win the woman
for his wife; his dream gives expression to the wish in a hypocritical
distortion. Instead of representing her as already married to the other man, it
represents the other man only as wishing to marry her, which indeed corresponds
with his own secret intention, and the hostile whishes directed against the man
are concealed under demonstrations of affection, which are reminiscences of his
childish relations to his father. -
There are dreams of landscapes and localities in which emphasis is always laid
upon the assurance: "I have been here before." but this Deja vu has a special
significance in dreams. In this case the locality is the genitals of the mother;
of no other place can it be asserted with such certainty that one has been here
before. I was once puzzled by the account of a dream given by a patient
afflicted with obsessional neurosis. He dreamed that he called at a house where
he had been twice before. But this very patient had long ago told me of an
episode of his sixth year. At that time he shared his mother's bed, and had
abused the occasion by inserting his finger into his mother's genitals while she
was asleep.
A large number of dreams, which are frequently full of anxiety, and often have
for content the traversing of narrow spaces, or staying long in the water, are
based upon phantasies concerning the intra-uterine life, the sojourn in the
mother's womb, and the act of birth. I here insert the dream of a young man who,
in his phantasy, has even profited by the intra-uterine opportunity of spying
upon an act of coition between his parents.
He is in a deep shaft, in which there is a window, as in the Semmering tunnel.
Through this he sees at first an empty landscape, and then he composes a picture
in it, which is there all at once and fills up the empty space. The picture
represents a field which is being deeply tilled by an implement, and the
wholesome air, the associated idea of hard work, and the bluish- black clods of
earth make a pleasant impression on him. He then goes on and sees a work on
education lying open... and is surprised that so much attention is devoted in it
to the sexual feelings (of children), which makes him think of me.
Here is a pretty water-dream of a female patient, which was turned to special
account in the course of treatment.
At her usual holiday resort on the... Lake, she flings herself into the dark
water at a place where the pale moon is reflected in the water.
Dreams of this sort are parturition dreams; their interpretation is effected by
reversing the fact recorded in the manifest dream- content; thus, instead of
flinging oneself into the water, read coming out of the water- that is, being
born. * The place from which one is born may be recognized if one thinks of the
humorous sense of the French la lune. The pale moon thus becomes the white
bottom, which the child soon guesses to be the place from which it came. Now
what can be the meaning of the patient's wishing to be born at a holiday resort?
I asked the dreamer this, and she replied without hesitation: "Hasn't the
treatment made me as though I were born again?" Thus the dream becomes an
invitation to continue the treatment at this summer resort- that is, to visit
her there; perhaps it also contains a very bashful allusion to the wish to
become a mother herself. *(2) -
* For the mythological meaning of water-birth, see Rank: Der Mythus von der
Geburt des Helden (1909).
*(2) It was not for a long time that I learned to appreciate the significance of
the phantasies and unconscious thoughts relating to life in the womb. They
contain the explanation of the curious dread, felt by so many people, of being
buried alive, as well as the profoundest unconscious reason for the belief in a
life after death, which represents only the projection into the future of this
mysterious life before birth. The act of birth, moreover, is the first
experience attended by anxiety, and is thus, the source and model of the affect
of anxiety. -
Another dream of parturition, with its interpretation, I take from a paper by E.
Jones. "She stood at the seashore watching a small boy, who seemed to be hers,
wading into the water. This he did till the water covered him and she could only
see his head bobbing up and down near the surface. The scene then changed to the
crowded to hall of an hotel. Her husband left her, and she 'entered into
conversation with' a stranger.
"The second half of the dream was discovered in the analysis to represent flight
from her husband, and the entering into intimate relations with a third person,
behind whom was plainly indicated Mr. X's brother, mentioned in a former dream.
The first part of the dream was a fairly evident birth-phantasy. In dreams, as
in mythology, the delivery of a child from the uterine waters is commonly
represented, by way of distortion, as the entry of the child into water; among
many other instances, the births of Adonis, Osiris, Moses, and Bacchus are
well-known illustrations of this. The bobbing up and down of the head in the
water at once recalled to the patient the sensation of quickening which she had
experienced in her only pregnancy. Thinking of the boy going into the water
induced a reverie in which she saw herself taking him out of the water, carrying
him into the nursery, washing and dressing him, and installing him in her
household.
"The second half of the dream, therefore, represents thoughts concerning the
elopement, which belonged to the first half of the underlying latent content;
the first half of the dream corresponded with the second half of the latent
content, the birth phantasy. Besides this inversion in the order, further
inversions took place in each half of the dream. In the first half the child
entered the water, and then his head bobbed; in the underlying dream-thoughts
the quickening occurred first, and then the child left the water (a double
inversion). In the second half her husband left her; in the dream-thoughts she
left her husband."
Another parturition dream is related by Abraham- the dream of a young woman
expecting her first confinement: Front one point of the floor of the room a
subterranean channel leads directly into the water (path of parturition-
amniotic fluid). She lifts up a trap in the floor, and there immediately appears
a creature dressed in brownish fur, which almost resembles a seal. This creature
changes into the dreamer's younger brother, to whom her relation has always been
material in character.
Rank has shown from a number of dreams that parturition-dreams employ the same
symbols as micturition-dreams. The erotic stimulus expresses itself in these
dreams as in urethral stimulus. The stratification of meaning in these dreams
corresponds with a chance in the significance of the symbol since childhood.
We may here turn back to the interrupted theme (see chapter III) of the part
played by organic, sleep-disturbing stimuli in dream- formation. Dreams which
have come into existence under these influences not only reveal quite frankly
the wish-fulfilling tendency, and the character of convenience-dreams, but they
very often display a quite transparent symbolism as well, since waking not
infrequently follows a stimulus whose satisfaction in symbolic disguise has
already been vainly attempted in the dream. This is true of emission dreams as
well as those evoked by the need to urinate or defecate. The peculiar character
of emission dreams permits us directly to unmask certain sexual symbols already
recognized as typical, but nevertheless violently disputed, and it also
convinces us that many an apparently innocent dream-situation is merely the
symbolic prelude to a crudely sexual scene. This, however, finds direct
representation, as a rule, only in the comparatively infrequent emission dreams,
while it often enough turns into an anxiety-dream, which likewise leads to
waking.
The symbolism of dreams due to urethral stimulus is especially obvious, and has
always been divined. Hippocrates had already advanced the theory that a
disturbance of the bladder was indicated if one dreamt of fountains and springs
(Havelock Ellis). Scherner, who has studied the manifold symbolism of the
urethral stimulus, agrees that "the powerful urethral stimulus always turns into
the stimulation of the sexual sphere and its symbolic imagery.... The dream due
to urethral stimulus is often at the same time the representative of the sexual
dream."
O. Rank, whose conclusions (in his paper on Die Symbolschichtung im Wecktraum) I
have here followed, argues very plausibly that a large number of "dreams due to
urethral stimulus" are really caused by sexual stimuli, which at first seek to
gratify themselves by way of regression to the infantile form of urethral
erotism. Those cases are especially instructive in which the urethral stimulus
thus produced leads to waking and the emptying of the bladder, whereupon, in
spite of this relief, the dream is continued, and expresses its need in
undisguisedly erotic images. * -
* "The same symbolic representations which in the infantile sense constitute the
basis of the vesical dream appear in the recent sense in purely sexual
significance: water = urine = semen = amniotic fluid; ship = to pump ship
(urinate) = seed-capsule; getting wet = enuresis = coitus = pregnancy; swimming
= full bladder = dwelling-place of the unborn; rain = urination = symbol of
fertilization: traveling (journeying- alighting) = getting out of bed = having
sexual intercourse (honeymoon journey); urinating = sexual ejaculation" (Rank,
I, c). -
In a quite analogous manner dreams due to intestinal stimulus disclose the
pertinent symbolism, and thus confirm the relation, which is also amply verified
by ethno-psychology, of gold and feces. * "Thus, for example, a woman, at a time
when she is under the care of a physician on account of an intestinal disorder,
dreams of a digger for hidden treasure who is burying a treasure in the vicinity
of a little wooden shed which looks like a rural privy. A second part of the
dream has as its content how she wipes the posterior of her child, a little
girl, who has soiled herself." -
* Freud, "Character and Anal Erotism," Collected Papers, II; Rank, Die
Symbolschictung, etc.; Dattner, Intern. Zeitschr. f. Psych. i (1913); Reik
Intern. Zeitschr., iii (1915). -
Dreams of rescue are connected with parturition dreams. To rescue, especially to
rescue from the water, is, when dreamed by a woman, equivalent to giving birth;
this sense is, however, modified when the dreamer is a man. * -
* For such a dream see Pfister, "Ein Fall von psychoanalytischer Seelensorge und
Seelenheilung," in Evangelische Freiheit (1909). Concerning the symbol of
"rescuing," see my paper, "The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy" (p.
123 above). Also "Contribution to the Theory of Love, I: A Special Type of
Object Choice in Men" in Collected Papers, iv. Also Rank, "Beilege zur
Rettungs-phantasie," in the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse i (1910), p. 331;
Reik; "Zur Rettungssymbolic," ibid., p. 299. -
Robbers, burglars, and ghosts, of which we are afraid before going to bed, and
which sometimes even disturb our sleep, originate in one and the same childish
reminiscence. They are the nightly visitors who have waked the child in order to
set it on the chamber, so that it may not wet the bed, or have lifted the
coverlet in order to see clearly how the child is holding its hands while
sleeping. I have been able to induce an exact recollection of the nocturnal
visitor in the analysis of some of these anxiety dreams. The robbers were always
the father; the ghosts more probably correspond to female persons in white
night- gowns.
The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 6 - F. Examples- Arithmetic and Speech in Dreams
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