38

V

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

HAVING realized, as a result of analysing the dream of Irma’s injection,
that the dream was the fulfilment of a wish, we were immediately inter-
ested to ascertain whether we had thereby discovered a general charac-
teristic of dreams, and for the time being we put aside every other scientific
problem which may have suggested itself in the course of the interpreta-
tion. Now that we have reached the goal on this one path, we may turn
back and select a new point of departure for exploring dream-problems,
even though we may for a time lose sight of the theme of wish-fulfilment,
which has still to be further considered.

Now that we are able, by applying our process of interpretation, to de-
tect a latent dream-content whose significance far surpasses that of the
manifest dream-content, we are naturally impelled to return to the in-
dividual dream-problems, in order to see whether the riddles and contra-
dictions which seemed to elude us when we had only the manifest content
to work upon may not now be satisfactorily solved.

The opinions of previous writers on the relation of dreams to waking
life, and the origin of the material of dreams, have not been given here.
We may recall however three peculiarities of the memory in dreams, which
have been often noted, but never explained:—
1. That the dream clearly prefers the impressions of the last few days
(Robert, Strümpell, Hildebrandt; also Weed-Hallam);
2. That it makes a selection in accordance with principles other than
those governing our waking memory, in that it recalls not essential
and important, but subordinate ard disregarded things;
3. That it has at its disposal the earliest impressions of our childhood,
and brings to light details from this period of life, which, again, seem
trivial to us, and which in waking life were believed to have been
long since forgotten.¹

¹It is evident that Robert’s idea—that the dream is intended to rid our memory of
the useless impressions which it has received during the day—is no longer tenable
if indifferent memories of our childhood appear in our dreams with some degree of

239

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

These peculiarities in the dream’s choice of material have, of course,
been observed by previous writers in the manifest dream-content.

A. RECENT AND INDIFFERENT IMPRESSIONS
IN THE DREAM

If I now consult my own experience with regard to the origin of the ele-
ments appearing in the dream-content, I must in the first place express the
opinion that in every dream we may find some reference to the experiences
of the preceding day. Whatever dream I turn to, whether my own or some-
one else’s, this experience is always confirmed. Knowing this, I may per-
haps begin the work of interpretation by looking for the experience of
the preceding day which has stimulated the dream; in many cases this is
indeed the quickest way. With the two dreams which I subjected to a
close analysis in the last chapter (the dreams of Irma’s injection, and of
the uncle with the yellow beard) the reference to the preceding day is so
evident that it needs no further elucidation. But in order to show how
constantly this reference may be demonstrated, I shall examine a portion
of my own dream-chronicle. I shall relate only so much of the dreams as
is necessary for the detection of the dream-source in question.

1. I pay a call at a house to which I gain admittance only with diffi-
culty, etc., and meanwhile I am keeping a woman waiting for me.
Source: A conversation during the evening with a female relative to
the effect that she would have to wait for a remittance for which she had
asked, until … etc.

2. I have written a monograph on a species (uncertain) of plant.
Source: In the morning I had seen in a bookseller’s window a mono-
graph on the genus Cyclamen.

3. I see two women in the street, mother and daughter, the latter being
a patient.
Source: A female patient who is under treatment had told me in the
evening what difficulties her mother puts in the way of her continuing the
treatment.

4. At S. and R.’s bookshop I subscribe to a periodical which costs 20
florins annually.
Source: During the day my wife has reminded me that I still owe her
20 florins of her weekly allowance.

5. I receive a communication from the Social Democratic Committee,
in which I am addressed as a member.

frequency. We should be obliged to conclude that our dreams generally perform thei-
prescribed task very inadequately.

240

Source: I have received simultaneous communications from the Liberal
Committee on Elections and from the president of the Humanitarian
Society, of which latter I am actually a member.

6. A man on a steep rock rising from the sea, in the manner of Böcklin.
Source: Dreyfus on Devil’s Island; also news from my relatives in
England, etc.

The question might be raised, whether a dream invariably refers to the
events of the preceding day only, or whether the reference may be ex-
tended to include impressions from a longer period of time in the imme-
diate past. This question is probably not of the first importance, but I
am inclined to decide in favour of the exclusive priority of the day before
the dream (the dream-day). Whenever I thought I had found a case
where an impression two or three days old was the source of the dream, I
was able to convince myself after careful investigation that this impres-
sion had been remembered the day before; that is, that a demonstrable
reproduction on the day before had been interpolated between the day of
the event and the time of the dream; and further, I was able to point to
the recent occasion which might have given rise to the recollection of the
older impression. On the other hand, I was unable to convince myself that
a regular interval of biological significance (H. Swoboda gives the first
interval of this kind as eighteen hours) elapses between the dream-excit-
ing daytime impression and its recurrence in the dream.

I believe, therefore, that for every dream a dream-stimulus may be
found among those experiences “on which one has not yet slept.”

Havelock Ellis, who has likewise given attention to this problem, states
that he has not been able to find any such periodicity of reproduction in
his dreams, although he has looked for it. He relates a dream in which he
found himself in Spain; he wanted to travel to a place called Daraus,
Varaus, or Zaraus. On awaking he was unable to recall any such place-
names, and thought no more of the matter. A few months later he actually
found the name Zaraus; it was that of a railway-station between San
Sebastian and Bilbao, through which he had passed in the train eight
months (250 days) before the date of the dream.

Thus the impressions of the immediate past (with the exception of the
day before the night of the dream) stands in the same relation to the
dream-content as those of periods indefinitely remote. The dream may
select its material from any period of life, provided only that a chain of
thought leads back from the experiences of the day of the dream (the
“recent” impressions) of that earlier period.

But why this preference for recent impressions? We shall arrive at
some conjectures on this point if we subject one of the dreams already
mentioned to a more precise analysis. I select the

241

Dream of the Botanical Monograph

I have written a monograph on a certain plant. The book lies before me;
I am just turning over a folded coloured plate. A dried specimen of the
plant, as though from a herbarium, is bound up with every copy.

Analysis:

In the morning I saw in a bookseller’s window a volume entitled The
Genus Cyclamen, apparently a monograph on this plant.

The cyclamen is my wife’s favourite flower. I reproach myself for re-
membering so seldom to bring her flowers, as she would like me to do. In
connection with the theme of giving her flowers, I am reminded of a story
which I recently told some friends of mine in proof of my assertion that
we often forget in obedience to a purpose of the unconscious, and that
forgetfulness always enables us to form a deduction about the secret dis-
position of the forgetful person. A young woman, who has been accus-
tomed to receive a bouquet of flowers from her husband on her birthday
misses this token of affection on one of her birthdays, and bursts into
tears. The husband comes in, and cannot understand why she is crying
until she tells him: “To-day is my birthday.” He claps his hand to his
forehead, and exclaims: “Oh, forgive me, I had completely forgotten it!”
and proposes to go out immediately in order to get her flowers. But she
refuses to be consoled, for she sees in her husband’s forgetfulness a proof
that she no longer plays the same part in his thoughts as she formerly did.
This Frau L. met my wife two days ago, told her that she was feeling
well, and asked after me. Some years ago she was a patient of mine.

Supplementary facts: I did once actually write a mono-
graph on a plant, namely, an essay on the coca plant, which attracted the
attention of K. Koller to the anaesthetic properties of cocaine. I had
hinted that the alkaloid might be employed as an anaesthetic, but I was
not thorough enough to pursue the matter farther. It occurs to me, too,
that on the morning of the day following the dream (for the interpreta-
tion of which I did not find time until the evening) I had thought of
cocaine in a kind of day-dream. If I were ever afflicted with glaucoma, I
would go to Berlin, and there undergo an operation, incognito, in the
house of my Berlin friend, at the hands of a surgeon whom he would
recommend. The surgeon, who would not know the name of his patient,
would boast, as usual, how easy these operations had become since the
introduction of cocaine; and I should not betray the fact that I myself
had a share in this discovery. With this phantasy were connected thoughts
of how awkward it really is for a physician to claim the professional
services of a colleague. I should be able to pay the Berlin eye specialist,
who did not know me, like anyone else. Only after recalling this day-

242

dream do I realize that there is concealed behind it the memory of a
definite event. Shortly after Koller’s discovery, my father contracted
glaucoma; he was operated on by my friend Dr. Koenigstein, the eye
specialist. Dr. Koller was in charge of the cocaine anaesthetization, and
he made the remark that on this occasion all the three persons who had
been responsible for the introduction of cocaine had been brought to-
gether.

My thoughts now pass on to the time when I was last reminded of the
history of cocaine. This was a few days earlier, when I received a Fest-
schrift, a publication in which grateful pupils had commemorated the
jubilee of their teacher and laboratory director. Among the titles to fame
of persons connected with the laboratory I found a note to the effect that
the discovery of the anaesthetic properties of cocaine had been due to K.
Koller. Now I suddenly become aware that the dream is connected with
an experience of the previous evening. I had just accompanied Dr. Koe-
nigstein to his home, and had entered into a discussion of a subject which
excites me greatly whenever it is mentioned. While I was talking with
him in the entrance-hall Professor Gärtner and his young wife came up. I
could not refrain from congratulating them both upon their blooming
appearance. Now Professor Gärtner is one of the authors of the Fest-
schrift of which I have just spoken, and he may well have reminded me
of it. And Frau L., of whose birthday disappointment I spoke a little way
back, had been mentioned, though of course in another connection, in my
conversation with Dr. Koenigstein.

I shall now try to elucidate the other determinants of the dream-con-
tent. A dried specimen of the plant accompanies the monograph, as though
it were a herbarium. And herbarium reminds me of the “gymnasium.”
The director of our “gymnasium” once called the pupils of the upper
classes together, in order that they might examine and clean the “gym-
nasium” herbarium. Small insects had been found—book-worms. The
director seemed to have little confidence in my ability to assist, for he
entrusted me with only a few of the pages. I know to this day that there
were crucifers on them. My interest in botany was never very great. At
my preliminary examination in botany I was required to identify a cru-
cifer, and failed to recognize it; had not my theoretical knowledge come
to my aid, I should have fared badly indeed. Crucifers suggest compos-
ites. The artichoke is really a composite, and in actual fact one which I
might call my favourite flower. My wife, more thoughtful than I, often
brings this favourite flower of mine home from the market.

I see the monograph which I have written lying before me. Here again
there is an association. My friend wrote to me yesterday from Berlin: “I
am thinking a great deal about your dream-book. I see it lying before me,

243

completed, and I turn the pages.” How I envied him this power of vision!
If only I could see it lying before me, already completed!

The folded coloured plate. When I was a medical student I suffered a
sort of craze for studying monographs exclusively. In spite of my limited
means, I subscribed to a number of the medical periodicals, whose col-
oured plates afforded me much delight. I was rather proud of this inclina-
tion to thoroughness. When I subsequently began to publish books my-
self, I had to draw the plates for my own treatises, and I remember one of
them turned out so badly that a well-meaning colleague ridiculed me for
it. With this is associated a, I do not exactly know how, a very early mem-
ory of my childhood. My father, by way of a jest, once gave my elder
sister and myself a book containing coloured plates (the book was a nar-
rative of a journey through Persia) in order that we might destroy it.
From an educational point of view this was hardly to be commended. I
was at the time five years old, and my sister less than three, and the pic-
ture of us two children blissfully tearing the book to pieces (I should
add, like an artichoke, leaf by leaf), is almost the only one from this pe-
riod of my life which has remained vivid in my memory. When I after-
wards became a student, I developed a conspicuous fondness for collecting
and possessing books (an analogy to the inclination for studying from
monographs, a hobby alluded to in my dream-thoughts in connection
with cyclamen and artichoke). I became a book-worm (cf. herbarium).
Ever since I have been engaged in introspection I have always traced this
earliest passion of my life to this impression of my childhood: or rather,
I have recognized in this childish scene a “screen or concealing memory”
for my subsequent bibliophilia.¹⁾ And of course I learned at an early age
that our passions often become our misfortunes. When I was seventeen,
I ran up a very considerable account at the bookseller’s, with no means
with which to settle it, and my father would hardly accept it as an excuse
that my passion was at least a respectable one. But the mention of this
experience of my youth brings me back to my conversation with my friend
Dr. Koenigstein on the evening preceding the dream; for one of the
themes of this conversation was the same old reproach—that I am much
too absorbed in my hobbies.

For reasons which are not relevant here I shall not continue the inter-
pretation of this dream, but will merely indicate the path which leads to
it. In the course of the interpretation I was reminded of my conversation
with Dr. Koenigstein, and, indeed, of more than one portion of it. When
I consider the subjects touched upon in this conversation, the meaning of
the dream immediately becomes clear to me. All the trains of thought
which have been started—my own inclinations, and those of my wife, the
cocaine, the awkwardness of securing medical treatment from one’s own-

¹ Cf. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.

244

colleagues, my preference for monographical studies, and my neglect of
certain subjects, such as botany—all these are continued in and lead up
to one branch or another of this widely-ramified conversation. The dream
once more assumes the character of a justification, of a plea for my rights
(like the dream of Irma’s injection, the first to be analysed)¹⁾; it even con-
tinues the theme which that dream introduced, and discusses it in associa-
tion with the new subject-matter which has been added in the interval
between the two dreams. Even the dream’s apparently indifferent form
of expression at once acquires a meaning. Now it means: “I am indeed the
man who has written that valuable and successful treatise (on cocaine),”
just as previously I declared in self-justification: “I am after all a thor-
ough and industrious student”; and in both instances I find the meaning:
“I can allow myself this.” But I may dispense with the further interpreta-
tion of the dream, because my only purpose in recording it was to examine
the relation of the dream-content to the experience of the previous day
which arouses it. As long as I know only the manifest content of this
dream, only one relation to any impression of the day is obvious: but
after I have completed the interpretation, a second source of the dream
becomes apparent in another experience of the same day. The first of these
impressions to which the dream refers is an indifferent one, a subordinate
circumstance. I see a book in a shop window whose title holds me for a
moment, but whose contents would hardly interest me. The second ex-
perience was of great psychic value; I talked earnestly with my friend,
the eye specialist, for about an hour; I made allusions in this conversation
which must have ruffled the feelings of both of us, and which in me awak-
ened memories in connection with which I was aware of a great variety of
inner stimuli. Further, this conversation was broken off unfinished, be-
cause some acquaintances joined us. What, now, is the relation of these
two impressions of the day to one another, and to the dream which fol-
lowed during the night?

In the manifest dream-content I find merely an illusion to the indif-
ferent impression, and I am thus able to reaffirm that the dream prefers
to take up into its content experiences of a non-essential character. In the
dream-interpretation, on the contrary, everything converges upon the
important and justifiably disturbing event. If I judge the sense of the
dream in the only correct way, according to the latent content which is
brought to light in the analysis, I find that I have unwittingly lighted
upon a new and important discovery. I see that the puzzling theory that
the dream deals only with the worthless odds and ends of the day’s ex-
periences has no justification; I am also compelled to contradict the as-
sertion that the psychic life of the waking state is not continued in the
dream, and that hence, the dream wastes our psychic energy on trivial
material. The very opposite is true; what has claimed our attention during

245

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS
the day dominates our dream-thoughts also, and we take pains to dream
only in connection with such matters as have given us food for thought
during the day.

Perhaps the most immediate explanation of the fact that I dream of
the indifferent impression of the day, while the impression which has with
good reason excited me causes me to dream, is that here again we are
dealing with the phenomenon of dream-distortion, which we have re-
ferred to as a psychic force playing the part of a censorship. The recol-
lection of the monograph on the genus cyclamen is utilized as though it
were an allusion to the conversation with my friend, just as the mention
of my patient’s friend in the dream of the deferred supper is represented
by the allusion “smoked salmon.” The only question is, by what inter-
mediate links can the impression of the monograph come to assume the
relation of allusion to the conversation with the eye specialist, since such
a relation is not at first perceptible? In the example of the deferred supper
the relation is evident at the outset; “smoked salmon,” as the favourite
dish of the patient’s friend, belongs to the circle of ideas which the friend’s
personality would naturally evoke in the mind of the dreamer. In our new
example we are dealing with two entirely separate impressions, which at
first glance seem to have nothing in common, except indeed that they
occur on the same day. The monograph attracts my attention in the
morning; in the evening I take part in the conversation. The answer fur-
nished by the analysis is as follows: Such relations between the two im-
pressions as do not exist from the first are established subsequently be-
tween the idea-content of the one impression and the idea-content of the
other. I have already picked out the intermediate links emphasized in the
course of writing the analysis. Only under some outside influence, per-
haps the recollection of the flowers missed by Frau L., would the idea of
the monograph on the cyclamen have attached itself to the idea that the
cyclamen is my wife’s favourite flower. I do not believe that these in-
conspicuous thoughts would have sufficed to evoke a dream.

“There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this.”

as we read in Hamlet. But behold! in the analysis I am reminded that the
name of the man who interrupted our conversation was Gärtner (gar-
dener), and that I thought his wife looked blooming; indeed, now I even
remember that one of my female patients, who bears the pretty name of
Flora, was for a time the main subject of our conversation. It must have
happened that by means of these intermediate links from the sphere of
botanical ideas the association was effected between the two events of
the day, the indifferent one and the stimulating one. Other relations were
then established, that of cocaine for example, which can with perfect

246

appropriateness form a link between the person of Dr. Koenigstein and
the botanical monograph which I have written, and thus secure the fusion
of the two circles of ideas, so that now a portion of the first experience
may be used as an allusion to the second.

I am prepared to find this explanation attacked as either arbitrary or
artificial. What would have happened if Professor Gärtner and his bloom-
ing wife had not appeared, and if the patient who was under discussion
had been called, not Flora, but Anna? And yet the answer is not hard to
find. If these thought-relations had not been available, others would
probably have been selected. It is easy to establish relations of this sort,
as the jocular questions and conundrums with which we amuse ourselves
suffice to show. The range of wit is unlimited. To go a step farther: if no
sufficiently fertile associations between the two impressions of the day
could have been established, the dream would simply have followed a
different course; another of the indifferent impressions of the day, such
as come to us in multitudes and are forgotten, would have taken the place
of the monograph in the dream, and would have formed an association with
the content of the conversation, and would have represented this in the
dream. Since it was the impression of the monograph and no other that
was fated to perform this function, this impression was probably that
most suitable for the purpose. One need not, like Lessing’s Hänschen
Schlau, be astonished that “only the rich people of the world possess the
most money.”¹⁾

Still, the psychological process by which, according to our exposition,
the indifferent experience substitutes itself for the psychologically impor-
tant one seems to us odd and open to question. In a later chapter we shall
undertake the task of making the peculiarities of this seemingly incorrect
operation more intelligible. Here we are concerned only with the result of
this process, which we were compelled to accept by constantly recurring
experiences in the analysis of dreams. In this process it is as though, in the
course of the intermediate steps, a displacement occurs—let us say, of the
psychic accent—until ideas of feeble potential, by taking over the charge
from ideas which have a stronger initial potential, reach a degree of in-
tensity which enables them to force their way into consciousness. Such dis-
placements do not in the least surprise us when it is a question of the
transference of affective magnitudes or of motor activities. That the
lonely spinster transfers her affection to animals, that the bachelor be-
comes a passionate collector, that the soldier defends a scrap of coloured
cloth—his flag—with his life-blood, that in a love-affair a clasp of the
hands a moment longer than usual evokes a sensation of bliss, or that in
Othello a lost handkerchief causes an outburst of rage—all these are ex-
amples of psychic displacements which to us seem incontestable. But if,
by the same means, and in accordance with the same fundamental prin-

247

ciples, a decision is made as to what is to reach our consciousness and
what is to be withheld from it—that is to say, what we are to think—this
gives us the impression of morbidity, and if it occurs in waking life we
call it an error of thought. We may here anticipate the result of a discus-
sion which will be undertaken later, namely, that the psychic process
which we have recognized in dream-displacement proves to be not a
morbidly deranged process, but one merely differing from the normal,
one of a more primary nature.

Thus we interpret the fact that the dream-content takes up remnants
of trivial experiences as a manifestation of dream-distortion (by dis-
placement), and we thereupon remember that we have recognized this
dream-distortion as the work of a censorship operating between the two
psychic instances. We may therefore expect that dream-analysis will
constantly show us the real and psychically significant source of the
dream in the events of the day, the memory of which has transferred its
accentuation to some indifferent memory. This conception is in complete
opposition to Robert’s theory, which consequently has no further value
for us. The fact which Robert was trying to explain simply does not exist;
its assumption is based on a misunderstanding, on a failure to substitute
the real meaning of the dream for its apparent meaning. A further ob-
jection to Robert’s doctrine is as follows: If the task of the dream were
really to rid our memory, by means of a special psychic activity, of the
“slag” of the day’s recollections, our sleep would perforce be more
troubled, engaged in more strenuous work, than we can suppose it to be,
judging by our waking thoughts. For the number of the indifferent im-
pressions of the day against which we should have to protect our memory
is obviously immeasurably large; the whole night would not be long
enough to dispose of them all. It is far more probable that the forgetting
of the indifferent impressions takes place without any active interference
on the part of our psychic powers.

Still, something cautions us against taking leave of Robert’s theory
without further consideration. We have left unexplained the fact that one
of the indifferent impressions of the day—indeed, even of the previous
day—constantly makes a contribution to the dream-content. The rela-
tions between this impression and the real source of the dream in the un-
conscious do not always exist from the outset; as we have seen, they are
established subsequently, while the dream is actually at work, as though
to serve the purpose of the intended displacement. Something, therefore,
must necessitate the opening up of connections in the direction of the re-
cent but indifferent impression; this impression must possess some quality
that gives it a special fitness. Otherwise it would be just as easy for the
dream-thoughts to shift their accentuation to some inessential component
of their own sphere of ideas.

148

Experiences such as the following show us the way to an explanation:
If the day has brought us two or more experiences which are worthy to
evoke a dream, the dream will blend the allusion of both into a single
whole: it obeys a compulsion to make them into a single whole. For ex-
ample: One summer afternoon I entered a railway carriage in which I
found two acquaintances of mine who were unknown to one another. One
of them was an influential colleague, the other a member of a distin-
guished family which I had been attending in my professional capacity.
I introduced the two gentlemen to each other; but during the long jour-
ney they conversed with each other through me, so that I had to discuss
this or that topic now with one, now with the other. I asked my colleague
to recommend a mutual acquaintance who had just begun to practise as
a physician. He replied that he was convinced of the young man’s ability,
but that his undistinguished appearance would make it difficult for him
to obtain patients in the upper ranks of society. To this I rejoined: “That
is precisely why he needs recommendation.” A little later, turning to my
other fellow-traveller, I inquired after the health of his aunt—the mother
of one of my patients—who was at this time prostrated by a serious ill-
ness. On the night following this journey I dreamt that the young friend
whom I had asked one of my companions to recommend was in a fashion-
able drawing-room, and with all the bearing of a man of the world was
making—before a distinguished company, in which I recognized all the
rich and aristocratic persons of my acquaintance—a funeral oration over
the old lady (who in my dream had already died) who was the aunt of
my second fellow-traveller. (I confess frankly that I had not been on good
terms with this lady.) Thus my dream had once more found the con-
nection between the two impressions of the day, and by means of the
two had constructed a unified situation.

In view of many similar experiences I am persuaded to advance the
proposition that a dream works under a kind of compulsion which forces
it to combine into a unified whole all the sources of dream-stimulation
which are offered to it.¹⁾ In a subsequent chapter (on the function of
dreams) we shall consider this impulse of combination as part of the
process of condensation, another primary psychic process.

I shall now consider the question whether the dream-exciting source to
which our analysis leads us must always be a recent (and significant)
event, or whether a subjective experience—that is to say, the recollection
of a psychologically significant event, a train of thought—may assume
the rôle of a dream-stimulus. The very definite answer, derived from
numerous analyses, is as follows: The stimulus of the dream may be a

¹⁾The tendency of the dream at work to blend everything present of interest into a
single transaction has already been noticed by several authors, for instance, by Delage
and Delbœuf.

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THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS
subjective transaction, which has been made recent, as it were, by the
mental activity of the day.

And this is perhaps the best time to summarize in schematic form the
different conditions under which the dream-sources are operative.
The source of a dream may be:—
(a) A recent and psychologically significant event which is directly
represented in the dream.¹
(b) Several recent and significant events, which are combined by the
dream into a single whole.²
(c) One or more recent and significant events, which are represented
in the dream-content by allusion to a contemporary but indifferent event.³
(d) A subjectively significant experience (recollection, train of
thought), which is constantly represented in the dream by allusion to a
recent but indifferent impression.⁴

As may be seen, in dream-interpretation the condition is always ful-
filled that one component of the dream-content represents a recent impres-
sion of the day of the dream. The component which is destined to be
represented in the dream may either belong to the same circle of ideas as
the dream-stimulus itself (as an essential or even an inessential element
of the same), or it may originate in the neighbourhood of an indifferent
impression, which has been brought by more or less abundant associations
into relation with the sphere of the dream-stimulus. The apparent multi-
plicity of these conditions results merely from the alternative, that a
displacement has or has not occurred, and it may here be noted that this
alternative enables us to explain the contrasts of the dream quite as
readily as the medical theory of the dream explains the series of states
from the partial to the complete waking of the brain cells.

In considering this series of sources we note further that the psycho-
logically significant but not recent element (a train of thought, a recol-
lection) may be replaced for the purposes of dream-formation by a recent
but psychologically indifferent element, provided the two following con-
ditions are fulfilled: (1) the dream-content preserves a connection with
things recently experienced; (2) the dream-stimulus is still a psycho-
logically significant event. In one single case (a) both these conditions
are fulfilled by the same impression. If we now consider that these same
indifferent impressions, which are utilized for the dream as long as they
are recent, lose this qualification as soon as they are a day (or at most
several days) older, we are obliged to assume that the very freshness of
an impression gives it a certain psychological value for dream-formation,

¹The dream of Irma’s injection; the dream of the friend who is my uncle.
²The dream of the funeral oration delivered by the young physician.
³The dream of the botanical monograph.
⁴The dreams of my patients during analysis are mostly of this kind.

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THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
somewhat equivalent to the value of emotionally accentuated memories
or trains of thought. Later on, in the light of certain psychological con-
siderations, we shall be able to divine the explanation of this importance
of recent impressions in dream-formation.¹

Incidentally our attention is here called to the fact that at night, and
unnoticed by our consciousness, important changes may occur in the
material comprised by our ideas and memories. The injunction that be-
fore making a final decision in any matter one should sleep on it for a
night is obviously fully justified. But at this point we find that we have
passed from the psychology of dreaming to the psychology of sleep, a
step which there will often be occasion to take.

At this point there arises an objection which threatens to invalidate
the conclusions at which we have just arrived. If indifferent impressions
can find their way into the dream only so long as they are of recent origin,
how does it happen that in the dream-content we find elements also from
earlier periods of our lives, which at the time when they were still recent
possessed, as Strümpell puts it, no psychic value, and which, therefore,
ought to have been forgotten long ago; elements, that is, which are
neither fresh nor psychologically significant?

This objection can be disposed of completely if we have recourse to the
results of the psychoanalysis of neurotics. The solution is as follows: The
process of shifting and rearrangement which replaces material of psychic
significance by material which is indifferent (whether one is dreaming or
thinking) has already taken place in these earlier periods of life, and has
since become fixed in the memory. Those elements which were originally
indifferent are in fact no longer so, since they have acquired the value of
psychologically significant material. That which has actually remained
indifferent can never be reproduced in the dream.

From the foregoing exposition the reader may rightly conclude that I
assert that there are no indifferent dream-stimuli, and therefore no guile-
less dreams. This I absolutely and unconditionally believe to be the case,
apart from the dreams of children, and perhaps the brief dream-reactions
to nocturnal sensations. Apart from these exceptions, whatever one
dreams is either plainly recognizable as being psychically significant, or
it is distorted and can be judged correctly only after complete interpreta-
tion, when it proves after all to be of psychic significance. The dream
never concerns itself with trifles; we do not allow sleep to be disturbed
by trivialities.² Dreams which are apparently guileless turn out to be the
reverse of innocent if one takes the trouble to interpret them; if I may be

¹ Cf. Chap. VII on Transference.
² Havelock Ellis, a kindly critic of The Interpretation of Dreams, writes in The
World of Dreams (p. 169): “From this point on, not many of us will be able to follow
F.” But Mr. Ellis has not undertaken any analyses of dreams, and will not believe
how unjustifiable it is to judge them by the manifest dream-content.

251

permitted the expression, they all show “the mark of the beast.” Since
this is another point on which I may expect contradiction, and since I am
glad of an opportunity to show dream-distortion at work, I shall here
subject to analysis a number of “guileless dreams” from my collection.

I

An intelligent and refined young woman, who in real life is distinctly
reserved, one of those people of whom one says that “still waters run
deep,” relates the following dream: “I dreamt that I arrived at the market
too late, and could get nothing from either the butcher or the greengrocer
woman.” Surely a guileless dream, but as it has not the appearance of a
real dream I induce her to relate it in detail. Her report then runs as
follows: She goes to the market with her cook, who carries the basket.
The butcher tells her, after she has asked him for something: “That is no
longer to be obtained,” and wants to give her something else, with the
remark: “That is good, too.” She refuses, and goes to the greengrocer
woman. The latter tries to sell her a peculiar vegetable, which is bound
up in bundles, and is black in colour. She says: “I don’t know that, I
won’t take it.”

The connection of the dream with the preceding day is simple enough.
She had really gone to the market too late, and had been unable to buy
anything. The meatshop was already closed, comes into one’s mind as a
description of the experience. But wait, is not that a very vulgar phrase
which—or rather, the opposite of which—denotes a certain neglect with
regard to a man’s clothing?¹ The dreamer has not used these words; she
has perhaps avoided them; but let us look for the interpretation of the
details contained in the dream.

When in a dream something has the character of a spoken utterance
—that is, when it is said or heard, not merely thought—and the distinc-
tion can usually be made with certainty—then it originates in the utter-
ances of waking life, which have, of course, been treated as raw material,
dismembered, and slightly altered, and above all removed from their
context.² In the work of interpretation we may take such utterances as
our starting-point. Where, then, does the butcher’s statement, That is no
longer to be obtained, come from? From myself; I had explained to her
some days previously “that the oldest experiences of childhood are no
longer to be obtained as such, but will be replaced in the analysis by
‘transferences’ and dreams.” Thus, I am the butcher; and she refuses to
accept these transferences to the present of old ways of thinking and

1 Its meaning is: “Your fly is undone.” (TRANS.)

2 Cf. what is said of speech in dreams in the chapter on The Dream-Work. Only
one of the writers on the subject—Delbœuf—seems to have recognized the origin of
the speeches heard in dreams, he compares them with clichés.

252

feeling. Where does her dream utterance, I don’t know that, I won’t take
it, come from? For the purposes of the analysis this has to be dissected.
“I don’t know that” she herself had said to her cook, with whom she had
a dispute on the previous day, but she had then added: Behave yourself
decently. Here a displacement is palpable; of the two sentences which she
spoke to her cook, she included the insignificant one in her dream; but
the suppressed sentence, “Behave yourself decently!” alone fits in with
the rest of the dream-
content. One might use the words to a man who was
making indecent overtures, and had neglected “to close his meat-
shop.”
That we have really hit upon the trail of the interpretation is proved by
its agreement with the allusions made by the incident with the green-
grocer woman. A vegetable which is sold tied up in bundles (a longish
vegetable, as she subsequently adds), and is also black: what can this be
but a dream-
combination of asparagus and black radish? I need not in-
terpret asparagus to the initiated; and the other vegetable, too (think of
the exclamation: “Blacky, save yourself!”), seems to me to point to the
sexual theme at which we guessed in the beginning, when we wanted to
replace the story of the dream by “the meat-
shop is closed.” We are not
here concerned with the full meaning of the dream; so much is certain,
that it is full of meaning and by no means guileless.¹

II

Another guileless dream of the same patient, which in some respects is a
pendant to the above. Her husband asks her: “Oughtn’t we to have the
piano tuned?” She replies: “It’s not worth while, the hammers would
have to be rebuffed as well.” Again we have the reproduction of an actual
event of the preceding day. Her husband had asked her such a question,
and she had answered it in such words. But what is the meaning of her
dreaming it? She says of the piano that it is a disgusting old box which has
had no tone; it belonged to her husband before they were married,² etc.,
but the key to the true solution lies in the phrase: It isn’t worth while.
This has its origin in a call paid yesterday to a woman friend. She was
asked to take off her coat, but declined, saying: “Thanks, it isn’t worth

¹For the curious, I may remark that behind the dream there is hidden a phantasy
of indecent, sexually provoking conduct on my part, and of repulsion on the part of
the lady. If this interpretation should seem preposterous, I would remind the reader
of the numerous cases in which physicians have been made the object of such charges
by hysterical women, with whom the same phantasy has not appeared in a distorted
form as a dream, but has become undisguisedly conscious and delusional.—With this
dream the patient began her psychoanalytical treatment. It was only later that I
learned that with this dream she repeated the initial trauma in which her neurosis
originated, and since then I have noticed the same behaviour in other persons who
in their childhood were victims of sexual attacks, and now, as it were, wish in their
dreams for them to be repeated.

²A substitution by the opposite, as will be clear after analysis.

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THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

while, I must go in a moment.” At this point I recall that yesterday, dur-
ing the analysis, she suddenly took hold of her coat, of which a button had
come undone. It was as though she meant to say: “Please don’t look in,
it isn’t worth while.” Thus box becomes chest, and the interpretation of
the dream leads to the years when she was growing out of her childhood,
when she began to be dissatisfied with her figure. It leads us back, in-
deed, to earlier periods, if we take into consideration the disgusting and
the bad tone, and remember how often in allusions and in dreams the two
small hemispheres of the female body take the place—as a substitute and
an antithesis—of the large ones.

III

I will interrupt the analysis of this dreamer in order to insert a short,
innocent dream which was dreamed by a young man. He dreamt that he
was putting on his winter overcoat again; this was terrible. The occasion
for this dream is apparently the sudden advent of cold weather. On more
careful examination we note that the two brief fragments of the dream do
not fit together very well, for what could be terrible about wearing a thick
or heavy coat in cold weather? Unfortunately for the innocency of this
dream, the first association, under analysis, yields the recollection that
yesterday a lady had confidentially confessed to him that her last child
owed its existence to the splitting of a condom. He now reconstructs his
thoughts in accordance with this suggestion: A thin condom is danger-
ous, a thick one is bad. The condom is a “pullover” (Ueberzieher—
literally pullover), for it is pulled over something; and Ueberzieher is
the German term for a light overcoat. An experience like that related by
the lady would indeed be “terrible” for an unmarried man.
We will now return to our other innocent dreamer.

IV

She puts a candle into a candlestick; but the candle is broken, so that it
does not stand up. The girls at school say she is clumsy; but she replies
that it is not her fault.

Here, too, there is an actual occasion for the dream; the day before she
had actually put a candle into a candlestick; but this one was not broken.
An obvious symbolism has here been employed. The candle is an object
which excites the female genitals; its being broken, so that it does not
stand upright, signifies impotence on the man’s part (it is not her fault).
But does this young woman, carefully brought up, and a stranger to all
obscenity, know of such an application of the candle? By chance she is
able to tell how she came by this information. While paddling a canoe on
the Rhine, a boat passed her which contained some students, who were

254

singing rapturously, or rather yelling: “When the Queen of Sweden, be-
hind closed shutters, with the candles of Apollo. . . .”
She does not hear or else understand the last word. Her husband was
asked to give her the required explanation. These verses are then replaced
in the dream-content by the innocent recollection of a task which she
once performed clumsily at her boarding-school, because of the closed
shutters. The connection between the theme of masturbation and that of
impotence is clear enough. “Apollo” in the latent dream-content connects
this dream with an earlier one in which the virgin Pallas figured. All this
is obviously not innocent.

V

Lest it may seem too easy a matter to draw conclusions from dreams
concerning the dreamer’s real circumstances, I add another dream origi-
nating with the same person, which once more appears innocent. “I dreamt
of doing something,” she relates, “which I actually did during the day,
that is to say, I filled a little trunk so full of books that I had difficulty in
closing it. My dream was just like the actual occurrence.” Here the
dreamer herself emphasizes the correspondence between the dream and
the reality. All such criticisms of the dream, and comments on the dream,
although they have found a place in the waking thoughts, properly belong
to the latent dream-content, as further examples will confirm. We are
told, then, that what the dream relates has actually occurred during the
day. It would take us too far afield to show how we arrive at the idea of
making use of the English language to help us in the interpretation of
this dream. Suffice it to say that it is again a question of a little box (cf.
p. 231, the dream of the dead child in the box) which has been filled so
full that nothing can go into it.
In all these “innocent” dreams the sexual factor as the motive of the
censorship is very prominent. But this is a subject of primary significance,
which we must consider later.

B. INFANTILE EXPERIENCES AS
THE SOURCE OF DREAMS

As the third of the peculiarities of the dream-content, we have adduced
the fact, in agreement with all other writers on the subject (excepting
Robert), that impressions from our childhood may appear in dreams,
which do not seem to be at the disposal of the waking memory. It is, of
course, difficult to decide how seldom or how frequently this occurs, be-
cause after waking the origin of the respective elements of the dream is
not recognized. The proof that we are dealing with impressions of our
childhood must thus be adduced objectively, and only in rare instances

255

do the conditions favour such proof. The story is told by A. Maury, as
being particularly conclusive, of a man who decides to visit his birthplace
after an absence of twenty years. On the night before his departure he
dreams that he is in a totally unfamiliar locality, and that he there meets
a strange man with whom he holds a conversation. Subsequently, upon
his return home, he is able to convince himself that this strange locality
really exists in the vicinity of his home, and the strange man in the dream
turns out to be a friend of his dead father’s, who is living in the town.
This is, of course, a conclusive proof that in his childhood he had seen
both the man and the locality. The dream, moreover, is to be interpreted
as a dream of impatience, like the dream of the girl who carries in her
pocket her ticket for a concert, the dream of the child whose father had
promised him an excursion to the Hameau (p. 213), and so forth. The
motives which reproduce just these impressions of childhood for the
dreamer cannot, of course, be discovered without analysis.

One of my colleagues, who attended my lectures, and who boasted that
his dreams were very rarely subject to distortion, told me that he had
sometime previously seen, in a dream, his former tutor in bed with his
nurse, who had remained in the household until his eleventh year. The
actual location of this scene was realized even in the dream. As he was
greatly interested, he related the dream to his elder brother, who laugh-
ingly confirmed its reality. The brother said that he remembered the
affair very distinctly, for he was six years old at the time. The lovers were
in the habit of making him, the elder boy, drunk with beer whenever cir-
cumstances were favourable to their nocturnal intercourse. The younger
child, our dreamer, at that time three years of age, slept in the same room
as the nurse, but was not regarded as an obstacle.

In yet another case it may be definitely established, without the aid
of dream-interpretation, that the dream contains elements from child-
hood—namely, if the dream is a so-called perennial dream, one which,
being first dreamt in childhood, recurs again and again in adult years. I
may add a few examples of this sort to those already known, although
I have no personal knowledge of perennial dreams. A physician, in his
thirties, tells me that a yellow lion, concerning which he is able to give
the precisest information, has often appeared in his dream-life, from his
earliest childhood up to the present day. This lion, known to him from his
dreams, was one day discovered in natura, as a long-forgotten china ani-
mal. The young man then learned from his mother that the lion had been
his favourite toy in early childhood, a fact which he himself could no
longer remember.

If we now turn from the manifest dream-content to the dream-thoughts
which are revealed only on analysis, the experiences of childhood may be
found to recur even in dreams whose content would not have led us to

256

suspect anything of the sort. I owe a particularly delightful and instruc-
tive example of such a dream to my esteemed colleague of the “yellow
lion.” After reading Nansen’s account of his polar expedition, he dreamt
that he was giving the intrepid explorer electrical treatment on an ice-
floe for the sciatica of which the latter complained! During the analysis of
this dream he remembered an incident of his childhood, without which the
dream would be wholly unintelligible. When he was three or four years
of age he was one day listening attentively to the conversation of his
elders; they were talking of exploration, and he presently asked his father
whether exploration was a bad illness. He had apparently confounded
Reisen (journey, trips) with Reissen (gripes, tearing pains), and the
derision of his brothers and sisters prevented his ever forgetting the
humiliating experience.

We have a precisely similar case when, in the analysis of the dream of
the monograph on the genus cyclamen, I stumble upon a memory, re-
tained from childhood, to the effect that when I was five years old my
father allowed me to destroy a book embellished with coloured plates. It
will perhaps be doubted whether this recollection really entered into the
composition of the dream-content, and it may be suggested that the con-
nection was established subsequently by the analysis. But the abundance
and intricacy of the associative connections vouch for the truth of my
explanation: cyclamen—favourite flower—favourite dish—artichoke; to
pick to pieces like an artichoke, leaf by leaf (a phrase which at that time
one heard daily, à propos of the dividing up of the Chinese empire);
herbarium—bookworm, whose favourite food is books. I can further as-
sure the reader that the ultimate meaning of the dream, which I have not
given here, is most intimately connected with the content of the scene of
childish destruction.

In another series of dreams we learn from analysis that the very wish
which has given rise to the dream, and whose fulfilment the dream proves
to be, has itself originated in childhood, so that one is astonished to find
that the child with all his impulses survives in the dream.

I shall now continue the interpretation of a dream which has already
proved instructive: I refer to the dream in which my friend R. is my
uncle. We have carried its interpretation far enough for the wish-motive
—the wish to be appointed professor—to assert itself palpably; and we
have explained the affection felt for my friend R. in the dream as the
outcome of opposition to, and defiance of, the two colleagues who appear
in the dream-thoughts. The dream was my own; I may, therefore, con-
tinue the analysis by stating that I did not feel quite satisfied with the
solution arrived at. I knew that my opinion of these colleagues, who were
so badly treated in my dream-thoughts, would have been expressed in
very different language in my waking life: the intensity of the wish that

257

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

I might not share their fate as regards the appointment seemed to me too
slight fully to account for the discrepancy between my dream-
opinion and my waking opinion. If the desire to be addressed by another title
were really so intense it would be proof of a morbid ambition, which I
do not think I cherish, and which I believe I was far from entertaining. I
do not know how others who think they know me would judge me; per-
haps I really was ambitious; but if I was, my ambition has long since been
transferred to objects other than the rank and title of Professor extraordi-
narius.

Whence, then, the ambition which the dream has ascribed to me? Here
I am reminded of a story which I heard often in my childhood, that at my
birth an old peasant woman had prophesied to my happy mother (whose
first-born I was) that she had brought a great man into the world. Such
prophecies must be made very frequently; there are so many happy and
expectant mothers, and so many old peasant women, and other old women
who since their mundane powers have deserted them, turn their eyes
toward the future; and the prophetess is not likely to suffer for her
prophecies. Is it possible that my thirst for greatness has originated from
this source? But here I recollect an impression from the later years of my
childhood, which might serve even better as an explanation. One evening,
at a restaurant on the Prater, where my parents were accustomed to take
me when I was eleven or twelve years of age, we noticed a man who was
going from table to table and, for a small sum, improvising verses upon
any subject that was given him. I was sent to bring the poet to our table,
and he showed his gratitude. Before asking for a subject he threw off a
few rhymes about myself, and told us that if he could trust his inspira-
tion I should probably one day become a “minister.” I can still distinctly
remember the impression the produced by this second prophecy. It was in
the days of the “bourgeois Ministry”; my father had recently brought
home the portraits of the bourgeois university graduates, Herbst, Giskra,
Unger, Berger and others, and we illuminated the house in their honour.
There were even Jews among them; so that every diligent Jewish school-
boy carried a ministerial portfolio in his satchel. The impression of that
time must be responsible for the fact that until shortly before I went to
the university I wanted to study jurisprudence, and changed my mind
only at the last moment. A medical man has no chance of becoming a
minister. And now for my dream: It is only now that I begin to see that
it translates me from the sombre present to the hopeful days of the bour-
geois Ministry, and completely fulfils what was then my youthful ambi-
tion. In treating my two estimable and learned colleagues, merely be-
cause they are Jews, so badly, one as though he were a simpleton, and the
other as though he were a criminal, I am acting as though I were the
Minister; I have put myself in his place. What a revenge I take upon his

258

Excellency! He refuses to appoint me Professor extraordinarius, and so in
my dream I put myself in his place.

In another case I note the fact that although the wish that excites the
dream is a contemporary wish it is nevertheless greatly reinforced by
memories of childhood. I refer to a series of dreams which are based on
the longing to go to Rome. For a long time to come I shall probably have
to satisfy this longing by means of dreams, since at the season of the year
when I should be able to travel Rome is to be avoided for reasons of
health.¹ Thus I once dreamt that I saw the Tiber and the bridge of Sant’
Angelo from the window of a railway carriage; presently the train started,
and I realized that I had never entered the city at all. The view that ap-
peared in the dream was modelled after a well-known engraving which I
had casually noticed the day before in the drawing-room of one of my
patients. In another dream someone took me up a hill and showed me
Rome half shrouded in mist, and so distant that I was astonished at the
distinctness of the view. The content of this dream is too rich to be fully
reported here. The motive, “to see the promised land afar,” is here easily
recognizable. The city which I thus saw in the mist is Lübeck; the original
of the hill is the Gleichberg. In a third dream I am at last in Rome. To
my disappointment the scenery is anything but urban: it consists of a
little stream of black water, on one side of which are black rocks, while
on the other are meadows with large white flowers. I notice a certain Herr
Zucker (with whom I am superficially acquainted), and resolve to ask
him to show me the way into the city. It is obvious that I am trying in
vain to see in my dream a city which I have never seen in my waking life.
If I resolve the landscape into its elements, the white flowers point to
Ravenna, which is known to me, and which once, for a time, replaced
Rome as the capital of Italy. In the marshes around Ravenna we had
found the most beautiful water-lilies in the midst of black pools of water;
the dream makes them grow in the meadows, like the narcissi of our own
Aussee, because we found it so troublesome to cull them from the water.
The black rock so close to the water vividly recalls the valley of the Tepl
at Karlsbad. “Karlsbad” now enables me to account for the peculiar cir-
cumstance that I ask Herr Zucker to show me the way. In the material
of which the dream is woven I am able to recognize two of those amusing
Jewish anecdotes which conceal such profound and, at times, such bitter
worldly wisdom, and which we are so fond of quoting in our letters and
conversation. One is the story of the “constitution”; it tells how a poor
Jew sneaks into the Karlsbad express without a ticket; how he is detected,
and is treated more and more harshly by the conductor at each succeeding-
 

¹I long ago learned that the fulfilment of such wishes only called for a little cour-
age, and I then became a zealous pilgrim to Rome.

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THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

call for tickets; and how, when a friend whom he meets at one of the
stations during his miserable journey asks him where he is going, he an-
swers: “To Karlsbad—if my constitution holds out.” Associated in
memory with this is another story about a Jew who is ignorant of French,
and who has express instructions to ask in Paris for the Rue Richelieu.
Paris was for many years the goal of my own longing, and I regarded the
satisfaction with which I first set foot on the pavements of Paris as a
warrant that I should attain to the fulfilment of other wishes also. More-
over, asking the way is a direct allusion to Rome, for, as we know, “all
roads lead to Rome.” And further, the name Zucker (sugar) again points
to Karlsbad, whither we send persons afflicted with the constitutional
disease, diabetes (Zuckerkrankheit, sugar-disease). The occasion for this
dream was the proposal of my Berlin friend that we should meet in Prague
at Easter. A further association with sugar and diabetes might be found in
the matters which I had to discuss with him.

A fourth dream, occurring shortly after the last-mentioned, brings me
back to Rome. I see a street corner before me, and am astonished that so
many German placards should be posted there. On the previous day, when
writing to my friend, I had told him, with truly prophetic vision, that
Prague would probably not be a comfortable place for German travellers.
The dream, therefore, expressed simultaneously the wish to meet him in
Rome instead of in the Bohemian capital, and the desire, which probably
originated during my student days, that the German language might be
accorded more tolerance in Prague. As a matter of fact, I must have un-
derstood the Czech language in the first years of my childhood, for I was
born in a small village in Moravia, amidst a Slav population. A Czech
nursery rhyme, which I heard in my seventeenth year, became, without
effort on my part, so imprinted upon my memory that I can repeat it to
this day, although I have no idea of its meaning. Thus in these dreams
also there is no lack of manifold relations to the impressions of my early
childhood.

During my last Italian journey, which took me past Lake Trasimenus,
I at length discovered, after I had seen the Tiber, and had reluctantly
turned back some fifty miles from Rome, what a reinforcement my long-
ing for the Eternal City had received from the impressions of my child-
hood. I had just conceived a plan of travelling to Naples via Rome the
following year when this sentence, which I must have read in one of our
German classics, occurred to me:¹ “It is a question which of the two
paced to and fro in his room the more impatiently after he had conceived
the plan of going to Rome—Assistant Headmaster Winckelmann or the
great General Hannibal.” I myself had walked in Hannibal’s footsteps;
like him I was destined never to see Rome, and he too had gone to Cam-
¹The writer in whose works I found this passage was probably Jean Paul Richter.

260

pania when all were expecting him in Rome. Hannibal, with whom I had
achieved this point of similarity, had been my favourite hero during my
years at the “gymnasium”; like so many boys of my age, I bestowed my
sympathies in the Punic war not on the Romans, but on the Cartha-
ginians. Moreover, when I finally came to realize the consequences of be-
longing to an alien race, and was forced by the anti-
Semitic feeling among
my class-mates to take a definite stand, the figure of the Semitic com-
mander assumed still greater proportions in my imagination. Hannibal
and Rome symbolized, in my youthful eyes, the struggle between the
tenacity of the Jews and the organization of the Catholic Church. The
significance for our emotional life which the anti-Semitic movement has
since assumed helped to fix the thoughts and impressions of those earlier
days. Thus the desire to go to Rome has in my dream-life become the mask
and symbol for a number of warmly cherished wishes, for whose realiza-
tion one had to work with the tenacity and single-mindedness of the
Punic general, though their fulfilment at times seemed as remote as Han-
nibal’s lifelong wish to enter Rome.

And now, for the first time, I happened upon the youthful experience
which even to-day still expresses its power in all these emotions and
dreams. I might have been ten or twelve years old when my father began
to take me with him on his walks, and in his conversation to reveal his
views on the things of this world. Thus it was that he once told me the
following incident, in order to show me that I had been born into happier
times than he: “When I was a young man, I was walking one Saturday
along the street in the village where you were born; I was well-dressed,
with a new fur cap on my head. Up comes a Christian, who knocks my
cap into the mud, and shouts, ‘Jew, get off the pavement!’”—“And what
did you do?”—“I went into the street and picked up the cap,” he calmly
replied. That did not seem heroic on the part of the big, strong man who
was leading me, a little fellow, by the hand. I contrasted this situation,
which did not please me, with another, more in harmony with my senti-
ments—the scene in which Hannibal’s father, Hamilcar Barcas, made his
son swear before the household altar to take vengeance on the Romans.¹
Ever since then Hannibal has had a place in my phantasies.

I think I can trace my enthusiasm for the Carthaginian general still
further back into my childhood, so that it is probably an only an instance of
an already established emotional relation being transferred to a new
vehicle. One of the first books which fell into my childish hands after I
learned to read was Thiers’ Consulate and Empire. I remember that I
pasted on the flat backs of my wooden sol-
diers little labels bearing the
names of the Imperial marshals, and that at that time Masséna (as a Jew,

¹ In the first edition of this book I gave here the name “Hasdrubal,” an amazing error,
which I explained in my Psychopathology of Everyday Life.

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THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

Menasse) was already my avowed favourite.¹ This preference is doubt-
less also to be explained by the fact of my having been born, a hundred
years later, on the same date. Napoleon himself is associated with Han-
nibal through the crossing of the Alps. And perhaps the development of
this martial ideal may be traced yet farther back, to the first three years
of my childhood, to wishes which my alternately friendly and hostile
relations with a boy a year older than myself must have evoked in the
weaker of the two playmates.

The deeper we go into the analysis of dreams, the more often are we
put on to the track of childish experiences which play the part of dream-
sources in the latent dream-content.

We have learned that dreams very rarely reproduce memories in such
a manner as to constitute, unchanged and unabridged, the sole manifest
dream-content. Nevertheless, a few authentic examples which show such
reproduction have been recorded, and I can add a few new ones, which
once more refer to scenes of childhood. In the case of one of my patients
a dream once gave a barely distorted reproduction of a sexual incident,
which was immediately recognized as an accurate recollection. The mem-
ory of it had never been completely lost in the waking life, but it had been
greatly obscured, and it was revivified by the previous work of analysis.
The dreamer had at the age of twelve visited a bedridden school-
mate, who
had exposed himself, probably only by a chance movement in bed. At the
sight of the boy’s genitals he was seized by a kind of compulsion, exposed
himself, and took hold of the member of the other boy who, however,
looked at him in surprise and indignation, whereupon he became embar-
rassed and let it go. A dream repeated this scene twenty-three years later,
with all the details of the accompanying emotions, changing it, however, in
this respect, that the dreamer played the passive instead of the active rôle,
while the person of the schoolmate was replaced by a contemporary.

As a rule, of course, a scene from childhood is represented in the mani-
fest dream-
content only by an illusion, and must be disentangled from
the dream by interpretation. The citation of examples of this kind cannot
be very convincing, because any guarantee that they are really experiences
of childhood is lacking; if they belong to an earlier period of life, they are
no longer recognized by our memory. The conclusion that such childish
experiences recur at all in dreams is justified in psychoanalytic work by
a great number of factors, which in their combined results appear to be
sufficiently reliable. But when, for the purposes of dream-
interpretation,
such references to childish experiences are torn out of their context, they
may not perhaps seem very impressive, especially where I do not even
give all the material upon which the interpretation is based. However, I
shall not let this deter me from giving a few examples.

¹The Jewish descent of the Marshal is somewhat doubtful.

262

I

With one of my female patients all dreams have the character of “hurry”;
she is hurrying so as to be in time, so as not to miss her train, and so on. In
one dream she has to visit a girl friend; her mother had told her to ride
and not walk; she runs, however, and keeps on calling. The material that
emerged in the analysis allowed one to recognize a memory of childish
romping, and, especially for one dream, went back to the popular childish
game of rapidly repeating the words of a sentence as though it was all one
word. All these harmless jokes with little friends were remembered be-
cause they replaced other less harmless ones.¹

II

The following dream was dreamed by another female patient: She is in
a large room in which there are all sorts of machines; it is rather like what
she would imagine an orthopaedic institute to be. She hears that I am
pressed for time, and that she must undergo treatment along with five
others. But she resists, and is unwilling to lie down on the bed—or what-
ever it is—which is intended for her. She stands in a corner, and waits for
me to say “It is not true.” The others, meanwhile, laugh at her, saying it
is all foolishness on her part. At the same time, it is as though she were
called upon to make a number of little squares.

The first part of the content of this dream is an allusion to the treat-
ment and to the transference ² to myself. The second contains an allusion
to a scene of childhood; the two portions are connected by the mention of
the bed. The orthopaedic institute is an allusion to one of my talks, in
which I compared the treatment, with regard to its duration and its na-
ture, to an orthopaedic treatment. At the beginning of the treatment I had
to tell her that for the present I had little time to give her, but that later
on I would devote a whole hour to her daily. This aroused in her the old
sensitiveness, which is a leading characteristic of children who are des-
tined to become hysterical. Their desire for love is insatiable. My patient
was the youngest of six brothers and sisters (hence, with five others), and
as such her father’s favourite, but in spite of this she seems to have felt
that her beloved father devoted far too little time and attention to her.
Her waiting for me to say “It is not true” was derived as follows: A little
tailor’s apprentice had brought her a dress, and she had given him the
money for it. Then she asked her husband whether she would have to pay
the money again if the boy were to lose it. To tease her, her husband an-
swered “Yes” (the teasing in the dream), and she asked again and again,

¹ [In the original this paragraph contains many plays on the word “Hetz” (hurry,
chase, scurry, game, etc.).—Trans.]

² [This word is here used in the psychoanalytical sense.—Trans.]

263

and waited for him to say “It is not true.” The thought of the latent
dream-content may now be construed as follows: Will she have to pay me
double the amount when I devote twice as much time to her?—a thought
which is stingy or filthy (the uncleanliness of childhood is often replaced
in dreams by greed for money; the word “filthy” here supplies the bridge).
If all the passage referring to her waiting until I say “It is not true” is
intended in the dream as a circumlocution for the word “dirty,” the stand-
ing-in-the-corner and not lying-down-on-the-bed are in keeping with this
word, as component parts of a scene of her childhood in which she had
soiled her bed, in punishment for which she was put into the corner, with a
warning that papa would not love her any more, whereupon her brothers
and sisters laughed at her, etc. The little squares refer to her young niece,
who showed her the arithmetical trick of writing figures in nine squares
(I think) in such a way that on being added together in any direction they
make fifteen.

III

Here is a man’s dream: He sees two boys tussling with each other; they
are cooper’s boys, as he concludes from the tools which are lying about;
one of the boys has thrown the other down; the prostrate boy is wearing
ear-rings with blue stones. He runs towards the assailant with lifted cane,
in order to chastise him. The boy takes refuge behind a woman, as though
she were his mother, who is standing against a wooden fence. She is the
wife of a day-labourer, and she turns her back to the man who is dreaming.
Finally she turns about and stares at him with a horrible look, so that he
runs away in terror; the red flesh of the lower lid seems to stand out from
her eyes.

This dream has made abundant use of trivial occurrences from the
previous day, in the course of which he actually saw two boys in the street,
one of whom threw the other down. When he walked up to them in order
to settle the quarrel, both of them took to their heels. Cooper’s boys—this
is explained only by a subsequent dream, in the analysis of which he used
the proverbial expression: “To knock the bottom out of the barrel.” Ear-
rings with blue stones, according to his observation, are worn chiefly by
prostitutes. This suggests a familiar doggerel rhyme about two boys:
“The other boy was called Marie”; that is, he was a girl. The woman
standing by the fence, after the scene with the two boys he went for a
walk along the bank of the Danube and, taking advantage of being alone,
urinated against a wooden fence. A little farther on a respectably dressed,
elderly lady smiled at him very pleasantly, and wanted to hand him her
card with her address.

Since, in the dream, the woman stood as he had stood while urinating,
there is an allusion to a woman urinating, and this explains the “horrible

264

look” and the prominence of the red flesh, which can only refer to the gen-
itals gaping in a squatting posture; seen in childhood, they had appeared
in later recollection as “proud flesh,” as a “wound.” The dream unites
two occasions upon which, as a little boy, the dreamer was enabled to
see the genitals of little girls, once by throwing the little girl down, and
once while the child was urinating; and, as is shown by another associa-
tion, he had retained in his memory the punishment administered or
threatened by his father on account of these manifestations of sexual
curiosity.

IV

A great mass of childish memories, which have been hastily combined
into a phantasy, may be found behind the following dream of an elderly
lady: She goes out in a hurry to do some shopping. On the Graben¹⁾ she
sinks to her knees as though she had broken down. A number of people
collect around her, especially cab-drivers, but no one helps her to get up.
She makes many vain attempts; finally she must have succeeded, for she
is put into a cab which is to take her home. A large, heavily laden basket
(something like a market-basket) is thrown after her through the window.

This is the woman who is always harassed in her dreams, just as she
used to be harassed when a child. The first situation of the dream is ap-
parently taken from the sight of a fallen horse, just as “broken down”
points to horse-racing. In her youth she was a rider; still earlier she was
probably also a horse. With the idea of falling down is connected her first
childish reminiscence of the seventeen-year-old son of the hall porter, who
had an epileptic seizure in the street and was brought home in a cab. Of
this, of course, she had only heard, but the idea of epileptic fits, of falling
down, acquired a great influence over her phantasies, and later on influ-
enced the form of her own hysterical attacks. When a person of the fe-
male sex dreams of falling, this almost always has a sexual significance;
she becomes a “fallen woman,” and, for the purpose of the dream under
consideration, this interpretation is probably the least doubtful, for she
falls in the Graben, the street in Vienna which is known as the concourse
of prostitutes. The market-basket admits of more than one interpreta-
tion; in the sense of refusal (German, Korb = basket = snub, refusal) it
reminds her of the many snubs which she at first administered to her
suitors and which, she thinks, she herself received later. This agrees with
the detail: no one will help her up, which she herself interprets as “being
disdained.” Further, the market-basket recalls phantasies which have al-
ready appeared in the course of analysis, in which she imagines that she has
married far beneath her station and now goes to the market as a market-

¹⁾A street in Vienna.—Trans.]

265

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

woman. Lastly, the market-
basket might be interpreted as the mark of a 
servant. This suggests further memories of her child-
hood—of a cook who 
was discharged because she stole; she, too, sank to her knees and begged 
for mercy. The dreamer was at that time twelve years of age. Then emerges 
a recollection of a chambermaid, who was dismissed because she had an 
affair with the coachman of the household, who, incidentally, married her 
afterwards. This recollection, therefore, gives us a clue to the cab-
drivers 
in the dream (who, in opposition to the reality, do not stand by the fallen 
woman). But there still remains to be explained the throwing of the bas-
ket; in particular, why is it thrown through the window? This reminds 
her of the forwarding of luggage by rail, to the custom of Fensterln¹⁾ in 
the country, and to trivial impressions of a summer resort, of a gentleman 
who threw some blue plums into the window of a lady’s room, and of her 
little sister, who was frightened because an idiot who was passing looked 
in at the window. And now, from behind all this emerges an obscure recol-
lection from her tenth year of a nurse in the country to whom one of the 
menservants made love (and whose conduct the child may have noticed), 
and who was “sent packing,” “thrown out,” together with her lover (in 
the dream we have the expression: “thrown into”) ; an incident which we 
have been approaching by several other paths. The luggage or box of a 
servant is disparagingly described in Vienna as “seven plums.” “Pack up 
your seven plums and get out!”

My collection, of course, contains a plethora of such patients’ dreams, 
the analysis of which leads back to impressions of childhood, often dating 
back to the first three years of life, which are remembered obscurely, or 
not at all. But it is a questionable proceeding to draw conclusions from 
these and apply them to dreams in general, for they are mostly dreams of 
neurotic, and especially hysterical, persons; and the part played in these 
dreams by childish scenes might be conditioned by the nature of the 
neurosis, and not by the nature of dreams in general. In the interpretation 
of my own dreams, however, which is assuredly not undertaken on ac-
count of grave symptoms of illness, it happens just as frequently that in 
the latent dream-
content I am unexpectedly confronted with a scene of 
my childhood, and that a whole series of my dreams will suddenly con-
verge upon the paths proceeding from a single childish experience. I have 
already given examples of this, and I shall give yet more in different con-
nections. Perhaps I cannot close this chapter more fittingly than by citing

¹⁾ Fensterln is the custom, now falling into disuse, found in rural districts of the 
German Schwarzwald, of lovers who woo their sweethearts at their bedroom win-
dows, to which they ascend by means of a ladder, enjoying such intimacy that the 
relation practically amounts to a trial marriage. The reputation of the young woman 
never suffers on account of Fensterln, unless she becomes intimate with too many 
suitors.—TRANS.]

266

several dreams of my own, in which recent events and long-
forgotten ex-
periences of my childhood appear together as dream-sources.

I. After I have been travelling, and have gone to bed hungry and tired,
the prime necessities of life begin to assert their claims in sleep, and I
dream as follows: I go into a kitchen in order to ask for some pudding.
There three women are standing, one of whom is the hostess; she is rolling
something in her hands, as though she were making dumplings. She re-
plies that I must wait until she has finished (not distinctly as a speech).
I become impatient, and go away affronted. I want to put on an overcoat;
but the first I try on is too long. I take it off, and am somewhat astonished
to find that it is trimmed with fur. A second coat has a long strip of cloth
with a Turkish design sewn into it. A stranger with a long face and a
short, pointed beard comes up and prevents me from putting it on, de-
claring that it belongs to him. I now show him that it is covered all over
with Turkish embroideries. He asks: “How do the Turkish (drawings,
strips of cloth . . .) concern you?” But we soon become quite friendly.

In the analysis of this dream I remember, quite unexpectedly, the first
novel which I ever read, or rather, which I began to read from the end of
the first volume, when I was perhaps thirteen years of age. I have never
learned the name of the novel, or that of its author, but the end remains
vividly in my memory. The hero becomes insane, and continually calls
out the names of the three women who have brought the greatest happiness
and the greatest misfortune into his life. Pelagie is one of these names. I
still do not know what to make of this recollection during the analysis.
Together with the three women there now emerge the three Parcae, who
spin the fates of men, and I know that one of the three women, the hostess
in the dream, is the mother who gives life, and who, moreover, as in my
own case, gives the child its first nourishment. Love and hunger meet at
the mother’s breast. A young man—so runs an anecdote—who became a
great admirer of womanly beauty, once observed, when the conversation
turned upon the handsome wet-nurse who had suckled him as a child,
that he was sorry that he had not taken better advantage of his oppor-
tunities. I am in the habit of using the anecdote to elucidate the factor of
retrospective tendencies in the mechanism of the psychoneuroses.—One
of the Parcae, then, is rubbing the palms of her hands together, as though
she were making dumplings. A strange occupation for one of the Fates, and
urgently in need of explanation! This explanation is furnished by another
and earlier memory of my childhood. When I was six years old, and re-
ceiving my first lessons from my mother, I was expected to believe that we
are made of dust, and must, therefore, return to dust. But this did not
please me, and I questioned the doctrine. Thereupon my mother rubbed
the palms of her hands together—just as in making dumplings, except
that there was no dough between them—and showed me the blackish

261

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

scales of epidermis which were thus rubbed off, as a proof that it is of dust
that we are made. Great was my astonishment at this demonstration ad
oculos, and I acquiesced in the idea which I was later to hear expressed in
the words: “Thou owest nature a death.”¹⁾ Thus the women to whom I
go in the kitchen, as I so often did in my childhood when I was hungry
and my mother, sitting by the fire, admonished me to wait until lunch was
ready, are really the Parcæ. And now for the dumplings! At least one of
my teachers at the University—the very one to whom I am indebted for
my histological knowledge (epidermis)—would be reminded by the name
Knödl (Knödl means dumpling), of a person whom he had to prosecute
for plagiarising his writings. Committing a plagiarism, taking anything
one can lay hands on, even though it belongs to another, obviously leads
to the second part of the dream, in which I am treated like the overcoat
thief who for some time plied his trade in the lecture-halls. I have writ-
ten the word plagiarism—without definite intention—because it oc-
curred to me, and now I see that it must belong to the latent dream-
content and that it will serve as a bridge between the different parts of
the manifest dream-content. The chain of associations—Pélagie—pla-
giarism—plagiostomi²⁾ (sharks)—fish-bladder—connects the old novel
with the affair of Knödl and the overcoats (German: Überzieher = pull-
over, overcoat or condom), which obviously refer to an appliance apper-
taining to the technique of sex. This, it is true, is a very forced and
irrational connection, but it is nevertheless one which I could not have es-
tablished in waking life if it had not already been established by the dream-
work. Indeed, as though nothing were sacred to this impulse to enforce
associations, the beloved name, Brücke (bridge of words, see above), now
serves to remind me of the very institute in which I spent my happiest
hours as a student, wanting for nothing. “So will you at the breasts of
Wisdom every day more pleasure find”), in the most complete contrast
to the desires which plague me (German: plagen) while I dream. And
finally, there emerges the recollection of another dear teacher, whose
name once more sounds like something edible (Fleisch–Fleisch = meat
—like Knödl = dumplings), and of a pathetic scene in which the scales
of epidermis play a part (mother—hostess), and mental derangement
(the novel), and a remedy from the Latin pharmacopeia (Küche =
kitchen) which numbs the sensation of hunger, namely, cocaine.
In this manner I could follow the intricate trains of thought still farther,
and could fully elucidate that part of the dream which is lacking in the

¹⁾Both the affects pertaining to these childish scenes—astonishment and resignation
to the inevitable—appeared in a dream of slightly earlier date, which first reminded
me of this incident of my childhood.

²⁾I do not bring in the plagiostomi arbitrarily; they recall a painful incident
disgrace before the same teacher.

268

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

analysis; but I must refrain, because the personal sacrifice which this
would involve is too great. I shall take up only one of the threads, which
will serve to lead us directly to one of the dream-thoughts that lie at the
bottom of the medley. The stranger with the long face and pointed beard,
who wants to prevent me from putting on the overcoat, has the features
of a tradesman of Spalato, of whom my wife bought a great deal of Turk-
ish cloth. His name was Popović, a suspicious name, which even gave the
humorist Stettenheim a pretext for a suggestive remark: “He told me his
name, and blushingly shook my hand.”¹ For the rest, I find the same
misuse of names as above in the case of Pélagie, Knödl, Brücke, Fleischl.
No one will deny that such playing with names is a childish trick; if I in-
dulge in it the practice amounts to an act of retribution, for my own name
has often enough been the subject of such feeble attempts at wit. Goethe
once remarked how sensitive a man is in respect to his name, which he
feels that he fills even as he fills his skin; Herder having written the fol-
lowing lines on his name:—

“Der du von Göttern abstammst, von Gothen oder vom Kote.”
“So seid ihr Götterbilder auch zu Staub.”

“Thou who art born of the gods, of the Goths, or of the mud.”
“Thus are thy godlike images even dust.”

I realize that this digression on the misuse of names was intended merely
to justify this complaint. But here let us stop. . . . The purchase at
Spalato reminds me of another purchase at Cattaro, where I was too cau-
tious, and missed the opportunity of making an excellent bargain. (Miss-
ing an opportunity at the breast of the wet-nurse; see above.) One of the
dream-thoughts occasioned by the sensation of hunger really amounts to
this: We should let nothing escape; we should take what we can get, even
if we do a little wrong; we should never let an opportunity go by; life is
so short, and death inevitable. Because this is meant even sexually, and
because desire is unwilling to check itself before the thought of doing
wrong, this philosophy of carpe diem has reason to fear the censorship,
and must conceal itself behind a dream. And so all sorts of counter-
thoughts find expression, with recollections of the time when spiritual
nourishment alone was sufficient for the dreamer, with hindrances of
every kind and even threats of disgusting sexual punishments.

II. A second dream requires a longer preliminary statement:
I had driven to the Western Station in order to start on a holiday trip
to the Aussee, but I went on to the platform in time for the Ischl train,
which leaves earlier. There I saw Count Thun, who was again going to see
the Emperor at Ischl. In spite of the rain he arrived in an open carriage,
¹Popo = backside, in German nursery language.

269

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

came straight through the entrance-gate for the local trains, and with a
curt gesture and not a word of explanation he waved back the gatekeeper,
who did not know him and wanted to take his ticket. After he had left in
the Ischl train, I was asked to leave the platform and return to the wait-
ing-room; but after some difficulty I obtained permission to remain. I
passed the time noting how many people bribed the officials to secure a
compartment; I fully intended to make a complaint—that is, to demand
the same privilege. Meanwhile I sang something to myself, which I after-
wards recognized as the aria from The Marriage of Figaro:—

“If my lord Count would tread a measure, tread a measure,
Let him but say his pleasure,
And I will play the tune.”

(Possibly another person would not have recognized the tune.)
The whole evening I was in a high-spirited, pugnacious mood; I chaffed
the waiter and the cab-driver, I hope without hurting their feelings; and
now all kinds of bold and revolutionary thoughts came into my mind, such
as would fit themselves to the words of Figaro, and to memories of Beau-
marchais’ comedy, of which I had seen a performance at the Comédie
Française. The speech about the great men who have taken the trouble
to be born; the seigneurial right which Count Almaviva wishes to exer-
cise with regard to Susanne; the jokes which our malicious Opposition
journalists make on the name of Count Thun (German, thun = do), call-
ing him Graf Nichtsthun, Count-Do-Nothing. I really do not envy him;
he now has a difficult audience with the Emperor before him, and it is I
who am the real Count-Do-Nothing, for I am going off for a holiday. I
make all sorts of amusing plans for the vacation. Now a gentleman arrives
whom I know as a Government representative at the medical examina-
tions, and who has won the flattering nickname of “the Governmental bed-
fellow” (literally, “by-sleeper”) by his activities in this capacity. By in-
sisting on his official status he secured half a first-class compartment, and
I heard one guard say to another: “Where are we going to put the gentle-
man with the first-class half-compartment?” A pretty sort of favouritism!
I am paying for a whole first-class compartment. I did actually get a
whole compartment to myself, but not in a through carriage, so there was
no lavatory at my disposal during the night. My complaints to the guard
were fruitless; I revenged myself by suggesting that at least a hole be
made in the floor of this compartment, to serve the possible needs of pas-
sengers. At a quarter to three in the morning I wake, with an urgent desire
to urinate, from the following dream:—
A crowd, a students’ meeting. . . . A certain Count (Thun or Taaffe)
is making a speech. Being asked to say something about the Germans, he
declares, with a contemptuous gesture, that their favourite flower is colts-

270

foot, and he then puts into his buttonhole something like a torn leaf, really
the crumpled skeleton of a leaf. I jump up, and I jump up,¹⁾ but I am sur-
prised at my implied attitude. Then, more indistinctly: It seems as though
this were the vestibule (Aula); the exits are thronged, and one must
escape. I make my way through a suite of handsomely appointed rooms,
evidently ministerial apartments, with furniture of a colour between brown
and violet, and at last I come to a corridor in which a housekeeper, a fat,
elderly woman, is seated. I try to avoid speaking to her, but she apparently
thinks I have a right to pass this way, because she asks whether she shall
accompany me with the lamp. I indicate with a gesture, or tell her, that she
is to remain standing on the stairs, and it seems to me that I am very
clever, for after all I am evading detection. Now I am downstairs, and I
find a narrow, steeply rising path, which I follow.

Again indistinctly: It is as though my second task were to get away
from the city, just as my first was to get out of the building. I am riding
in a one-horse cab, and I tell the driver to take me to a railway station.
“I can’t drive with you on the railway line itself,” I say, when he re-
proaches me as though I had tired him out. Here it seems as though I had
already made a journey in his cab which is usually made by rail. The
stations are crowded; I am wondering whether to go to Krems or to
Znaim, but I reflect that the Court will be there, and I decide in favour of
Graz or some such place. Now I am seated in the railway carriage, which
is rather like a tram, and I have in my buttonhole a peculiar long braided
thing, on which are violet-brown violets of stiff material, which makes a
great impression on people. Here the scene breaks off.

I am once more in front of the railway station, but I am in the company
of an elderly gentleman. I think out a scheme for remaining unrecognized,
but I see this plan already being carried out. Thinking and experiencing
are here, as it were, the same thing. He pretends to be blind, at least in one
eye, and I hold before him a male glass urinal (which we have to buy in the
city, or have bought). I am thus a sick-nurse, and have to give him the
urinal because he is blind. If the conductor sees us in this position, he must
pass us by without drawing attention to us. At the same time the position
of the elderly man, and his urinating organ, is plastically perceived. Then
I wake with a desire to urinate.

The whole dream seems a sort of phantasy, which takes the dreamer
back to the year of revolution, 1848, the memory of which had been re-
vived by the jubilee of 1898, as well as by a little excursion to Wachau,
on which I visited Emmersdorf, the refuge of the student leader Fischof,²⁾

¹⁾This repetition has crept into the text of the dream, apparently through absent-
mindedness, and I have left it because analysis shows that it has a meaning.

²⁾This is an error and not a slip, for I learned later that the Emmersdorf in Wachau
is not identical with the refuge of the revolutionist Fischof, a place of the same na-
ture.

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THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS
to whom several features of the manifest dream-content might refer. The
association of ideas then leads me to England, to the house of my brother,
who used in jest to twit his wife with the title of Tennyson’s poem Fifty
Years Ago, whereupon the children were used to correct him: Fifteen
Years Ago. This phantasy, however, which attaches itself to the thoughts
evoked by the sight of Count Thun, is, like the façade of an Italian church,
without organic connection with the structure behind it, but unlike such
a façade it is full of gaps, and confused, and in many places portions of the
interior break through. The first situation of the dream is made up of a
number of scenes, into which I am able to dissect it. The arrogant attitude
of the Count in the dream is copied from a scene at my school which oc-
curred in my fifteenth year. We had hatched a conspiracy against an un-
popular and ignorant teacher; the leading spirit in this conspiracy was a
schoolmate who since that time seems to have taken Henry VIII of Eng-
land as his model. It fell to me to carry out the coup d’état, and a discus-
sion of the importance of the Danube (German, Donau) to Austria
(Wachau!) was the occasion of an open revolt. One of our fellow-con-
spirators was our only aristocratic schoolmate—he was called “the gi-
raffe” on account of his conspicuous height—and while he was being
reprimanded by the tyrant of the school, the professor of the German
language, he stood just as the Count stood in the dream. The explanation
of the favourite flower, and the putting into a buttonhole of something
that must have been a flower (which recalls the orchids which I had given
that day to a friend, and also a rose of Jericho) prominently recalls the
incident in Shakespeare’s historical play which opens the civil wars of the
Red and the White Roses; the mention of Henry VIII has paved the way
to this reminiscence. Now it is not very far from roses to red and white
carnations. (Meanwhile two little rhymes, the one German, the other
Spanish, insinuate themselves into the analysis: Rosen, Tulpen, Nelken,
alle Blumen welken, and Isabelita, no llores, que se marchitan las flores.
The Spanish line occurs in Figaro.) Here in Vienna white carnations have
become the badge of the Anti-Semites, red ones of the Social Democrats.
Behind this is the recollection of an anti-Semitic challenge during a rail-
way journey in beautiful Saxony (Anglo-Saxon). The third scene con-
tributing to the formation of the first situation in the dream dates from
my early student days. There was a debate in a German students’ club
about the relation of philosophy to the general sciences. Being a green
youth, full of materialistic doctrines, I thrust myself forward in order to
defend an extremely one-sided position. Thereupon a sagacious older
fellow-student, who has since then shown his capacity for leading men
and organizing the masses, and who, moreover, bears a name belonging to
the animal kingdom, rose and gave us a thorough dressing-down; he too,
he said, had herded swine in his youth, and had then returned repentant

272

to his father’s house. I jumped up (as in the dream), became piggish-
ly rude, and retorted that since I knew he had herded swine, I was not sur-
prised at the tone of his discourse. (In the dream I am surprised at my
German Nationalistic feelings.) There was a great commotion, and an
almost general demand that I should retract my words, but I stood my
ground. The insulted student was too sensible to take the advice which
was offered him, that he should send me a challenge, and let the matter
drop.

The remaining elements of this scene of the dream are of more remote
origin. What does it mean that the Count should make a scornful refer-
ence to coltsfoot? Here I must question my train of associations. Coltsfoot
(German: Huflattich), Lattice (lettuce), Salathund (the dog that
grudges others what he cannot eat himself). Here plenty of opprobrious
epithets may be discerned: Gir-
affe (German: Affe = monkey, ape), pig,
sow, dog; I might even arrive, by way of the name, at donkey, and thereby
pour contempt upon an academic professor. Furthermore, I translate
coltsfoot (Huflattich)—I do not know whether I do so correctly—by
pisse-
en-
lit. I get this idea from Zola’s Germinal, in which some children
are told to bring some dandelion salad with them. The dog—chien—has a
name sounding not unlike the verb for the major function (chier, as pisser
stands for the minor one). Now we shall soon have the indecent in all its
three physical categories, for in the same Germinal, which deals with the
future revolution, there is a description of a very peculiar contest, which
relates to the production of the gaseous excretions known as flatus.¹
And now I cannot but observe how the way to this flatus has been pre-
pared a long while since, beginning with the flowers, and proceeding to
the Spanish rhyme of Isabelita, to Ferdinand and Isabella, and, by way
of Henry VIII, to English history at the time of the Armada, after the
victorious termination of which the English struck a medal with the in-
scription: Flavit et dis-
sipati sunt, for the storm had scattered the Spanish
fleet.² I had thought of using this phrase, half jestingly, as the title of a
chapter on “Therapy,” if I should ever succeed in giving a detailed ac-
count of my conception and treatment of hysteria.

I cannot give so detailed an interpretation of the second scene of the
dream, out of sheer regard for the censorship. For at this point I put my
self in the place of a certain eminent gentleman of the revolutionary pe-
riod.

¹ Not in Germinal, but in La Terre—a mistake of which I became aware only in the
analysis.—Here I would call attention to the identity of letters in Huflattich and
Flatus.

² An unsolicited biographer, Dr. F. Wittels, reproaches me for having omitted the
name of Jehovah from the above motto. The English medal contains the name of the
Deity, in Hebrew letters, on the background of a cloud, and placed in such a manner
that one may equally well regard it as part of the picture or as part of the inscrip-
tion.

273

riod, who had an adventure with an eagle (German: Adler) and who is
said to have suffered from incontinence of the bowels, incontinentia alvi,
etc.; and here I believe that I should not be justified in passing the cen-
sorship, even though it was an aulic councillor (aula, consiliarius aulicus)
who told me the greater part of this history. The suite of rooms in the
dream is suggested by his Excellency’s private saloon carriage, into which
I was able to glance; but it means, as it so often does in dreams, a woman
(Frauenzimmer, German, Zimmer—room, is appended to Frauen-
woman, in order to imply a slight contempt¹⁾. The personality of the
housekeeper is an ungrateful allusion to a witty old lady, which ill repays
her for the good times and the many good stories which I have enjoyed in
her house. The incident of the lamp goes back to Grillparzer, who notes
a charming experience of a similar nature, of which he afterwards made
use in Hero and Leander (the waves of the sea and of love—the Armada
and the storm).

I must forego a detailed analysis of the two remaining portions of the
dream; I shall single out only those elements which lead me back to the
two scenes of my childhood for the sake of which alone I have selected the
dream. The reader will rightly assume that it is sexual material which
necessitates the suppression; but he may not be content with this ex-
planation. There are many things of which one makes no secret to one-
self, but which must be treated as secrets in addressing others, and here
we are concerned not with the reasons which induce me to conceal the
solution, but with the motive of the inner censorship which conceals the
real content of the dream even from myself. Concerning this, I will con-
fess that the analysis reveals these three portions of the dream as im-
pertinent boasting, the exuberance of an absurd megalomania, long ago
suppressed in my waking life, which, however, dares to show itself, with
individual ramifications, even in the manifest dream-content (it seems
to me that I am a cunning fellow), making the high-spirited mood of the
evening before the dream perfectly intelligible. Boasting of every kind,
indeed; thus, the mention of Graz points to the phrase: “What price
Graz?” which one is wont to use when one feels unusually wealthy.
Readers who recall master Rabelais’s inimitable description of the life
and deeds of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel will be able to enroll even
the suggested content of the first portion of the dream among the boasts
to which I have alluded. But the following belongs to the two scenes of
childhood of which I have spoken: I had bought a new trunk for this
journey, the colour of which, a brownish violet, appears in the dream
several times (violet-brown violets of a stiff cloth, on an object which is
known as a “girl-catcher”—the furniture in the ministerial chambers).
Children, we know, believe that one attracts people’s attention with any-

¹⁾[Translator’s Note.]

274

thing new. Now I have been told of the following incident of my child-
hood; my recollection of the occurrence itself has been replaced by my
recollection of the story. I am told that at the age of two I still used
occasionally to wet my bed, and that when I was reproved for doing so I
consoled my father by promising to buy him a beautiful new red bed in
N. (the nearest large town). Hence, the interpolation in the dream, that
we had bought the urinal in the city or had to buy it, one must keep one’s
promises. (One should note, moreover, the association of the male urinal
and the woman’s trunk, box.) All the megalomania of the child is con-
tained in this promise. The significance of dreams of urinary difficulties
in the case of children has already been considered in the interpretation
of an earlier dream (cf. the dream on p. 241). The psychoanalysis of
neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between
wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition.

Then, when I was seven or eight years of age another domestic incident
occurred which I remember very well. One evening, before going to bed,
I had disregarded the dictates of discretion, and had satisfied my needs
in my parents’ bedroom, and in their presence. Reprimanding me for this
delinquency, my father remarked: “That boy will never amount to any-
thing.” This must have been a terrible affront to my ambition, for allu-
sions to this scene recur again and again in my dreams, and are constantly
coupled with enumerations of my accomplishments and successes, as
though I wanted to say: “You see, I have amounted to something after
all.” This childish scene furnishes the elements for the last image of the
dream, in which the rôles are interchanged, of course for the purpose of
revenge. The elderly man, obviously my father, for the blindness in one
eye signifies his one-sided glaucoma,¹ is now urinating before me as I
once urinated before him. By means of the glaucoma I remind my father
of cocaine, which stood him in good stead during his operation, as though
I had thereby fulfilled my promise. Besides, I make sport of him; since
he is blind, I must hold the glass in front of him, and I delight in allusions
to my knowledge of the theory of hysteria, of which I am proud.²

¹Another interpretation: He is one-eyed like Odin, the father of the gods—Odin’s
consolation. The consolation in the childish scene: I will buy him a new bed.

²Here is some more material for interpretation: Holding the urine-glass recalls the
story of a peasant (illiterate) at the optician’s, who tried on now one pair of spec-
tacles, now another, but was still unable to read.—(Peasant-catcher—girl-catcher in
the preceding portion of the dream.) The peasants’ treatment of the feeble-
minded father in Zola’s La Terre.—The tragic atonement, in that in his last days my
father soiled his bed like a child; hence, I am his nurse in the dream.—“Thinking and
experiencing are here, as it were, identical”; this recalls a highly revolutionary closet
drama by Oscar Panizza, in which God, the Father, is ignominiously treated as a
palsied greybeard. With Him will and deed are one, and in the book he has to be
restrained by His archangel, a sort of Ganymede, from scolding and swearing, be-
cause His curses would immediately be fulfilled.—Making plans is a reproach against
my father, dating from a later period in the development of the critical faculty, much

275

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

If the two childish scenes of urination are, according to my theory,
closely associated with the desire for greatness, their resuscitation on the
journey to the Aussee was further favoured by the accidental circum-
stance that my compartment had no lavatory, and that I must be prepared
to postpone relief during the journey, as actually happened in the morning
when I woke with the sensation of a bodily need. I suppose one might be
inclined to credit this sensation with being the actual stimulus of the
dream; I should, however, prefer a different explanation, namely, that
the dream-thoughts first gave rise to the desire to urinate. It is quite un-
usual for me to be disturbed in sleep by any physical need, least of all at
the time when I woke on this occasion—a quarter to four in the morning.
I would forestall a further objection by remarking that I have hardly
ever felt a desire to urinate after waking early on other journeys made
under more comfortable circumstances. However, I can leave this point
undecided without weakening my argument.

Further, since experience in dream-analysis has drawn my attention
to the fact that even from dreams the interpretation of which seems at
first sight complete, because the dream-sources and the wish-stimuli are
easily demonstrable, important trains of thought proceed which reach
back into the earliest years of childhood, I had to ask myself whether this
characteristic does not even constitute an essential condition of dreaming.
If it were permissible to generalize this notion, I should say that every
dream is connected through its manifest content with recent experiences,
while through its latent content it is connected with the most remote ex-
periences; and I can actually show in the analysis of hysteria that these
remote experiences have in a very real sense remained recent right up to

as the whole rebellious content of the dream, which commits lèse majesté and scorns
authority, may be traced to a revolt against my father. The sovereign is called the
father of his country (Landesvater), and the father is the first and oldest, and for
the child the only authority, from whose absolutism the other social authorities have
evolved in the course of the history of human civilization (in so far as “mother-
right” does not necessitate a qualification of this doctrine).—The words which oc-
curred to me in the dream, “thinking and experiencing are the same thing,” refer to
the explanation of hysterical symptoms, with which the male urinal (glass) is also
associated.—I need not explain the principle of Gschnas to a Viennese; it consists in
constructing objects of rare and costly appearance out of trivial, and preferably
comical and worthless material—for example, making suits of armour out of kitchen
utensils, wisps of straw and Salzstangeln (long rolls), as our artists are fond of doing
at their jolly parties. I had learned that hysterical subjects do the same thing; be-
sides what really happens to them, they unconsciously conceive for themselves hor-
rible or extravagantly fantastic incidents, which they build up out of the most harm-
less and commonplace material of actual experience. The symptoms attach themselves
primarily to these phantasies, not to the memory of real events, whether serious or
trivial. This explanation had helped me to overcome many difficulties, and afforded
me much pleasure. I was able to allude to it by means of the dream-element “male
urine-glass,” because I had been told that at the last Gschnas evening a poison-
chalice of Lucretia Borgia’s had been exhibited, the chief constituent of which had
consisted of a glass urinal for men, such as is used in hospitals.

276

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

the present. But I still find it very difficult to prove this conjecture; I
shall have to return to the probable rôle in dream-
formation of the earliest
experiences of our childhood in another connection (Chapter VII).

Of the three peculiarities of the dream-
memory considered above, one
—the preference for the unimportant in the dream-
content—has been
satisfactorily explained by tracing it back to dream-
distortion. We have
succeeded in establishing the existence of the other two peculiarities—the
preferential selection of recent and also of infantile material—but we
have found it impossible to derive them from the motives of the dream.
Let us keep in mind these two characteristics, which we still have to ex-
plain or evaluate; a place will have to be found for them elsewhere, either
in the discussion of the psychology of the sleeping state, or in the con-
sideration of the structure of the psychic apparatus—which we shall
undertake later after we have seen that by means of dream-
interpretation
we are able to glance as through an inspection-
hole into the interior of
this apparatus.

But here and now I will emphasize another result of the last few dream-
analyses. The dream often appears to have several meanings; not only
may several wish-
fulfilments be combined in it, as our examples show,
but one meaning or one wish-
fulfilment may conceal another, until in the
lowest stratum one comes upon the fulfilment of a wish from the earliest
period of childhood; and here again it may be questioned whether the
word “often” at the beginning of this sentence may not more correctly
be replaced by “constantly.”¹

C. THE SOMATIC SOURCES OF DREAMS

If we attempt to interest a cultured layman in the problems of dreams,
and if, with this end in view, we ask him what he believes to be the source
of dreams, we shall generally find that he feels quite sure he knows at least
this part of the solution. He thinks immediately of the influence exercised
on the formation of dreams by a disturbed or impeded digestion (“Dreams
come from the stomach!”), an accidental position of the body, a trifling
occurrence during sleep. He does not seem to suspect that even after all
these factors have been duly considered something still remains to be
explained.

In the introductory chapter² we examined at length the opinion of sci-

¹The stratification of the meanings of dreams is one of the most delicate but also
one of the most fruitful problems of dream-
interpretation. Whoever forgets the pos-
sibility of such stratification is likely to go astray and to make untenable assertions
concerning the nature of dreams. But hitherto this subject has been only too imper-
fectly investigated. So far, a fairly orderly stratification of symbols in dreams due
to urinary stimulus has been subjected to a thorough evaluation only by Otto Rank.

²This part has been omitted from this text. Those who have a special interest in the
subject may read the original translation published by Macmillan Co., N. Y., and
Allen & Unwin, London.

277

entific writers on the rôle of somatic stimuli in the formation of dreams,
so that here we need only recall the results of this inquiry. We have seen
that three kinds of somatic stimuli will be distinguished: the objective
sensory stimuli which proceed from external objects, the inner states of
excitation of the sensory organs, having only a subjective reality, and the
bodily stimuli arising within the body; and we have also noticed that the
writers on dreams are inclined to thrust into the background any psychic
sources of dreams which may operate simultaneously with the somatic
stimuli, or to exclude them altogether. In testing the claims made on
behalf of these somatic stimuli we have learned that the significance of
the objective excitation of the sensory organs—whether accidental stim-
uli operating during sleep, or such as cannot be excluded from the dormant
relation of these dream-images and ideas to the internal bodily stimuli
and confirmed by experiment; that the part played by the subjective
sensory stimuli appears to be demonstrated by the recurrence of hypna-
gogic sensory images in dreams; and that, although the broadly accepted
relation of these dream-images and ideas to the internal bodily stimuli
cannot be exhaustively demonstrated, it is at all events confirmed by the
well-known influence which an excited state of the digestive, urinary and
sexual organs exercises upon the content of our dreams.
“Nerve stimulus” and “bodily stimulus” would thus be the anatomical
sources of dreams; that is, according to many writers, the sole and ex-
clusive sources of dreams.

But we have already considered a number of doubtful points, which
seem to question not so much the correctness of the somatic theory as its
adequacy.

However confident the representatives of this theory may be of its
factual basis—especially in respect of the accidental and external nerve-
stimuli, which may without difficulty be recognized in the dream-content
—nevertheless they have all come near to admitting that the rich con-
tent of ideas found in dreams cannot be derived from the external nerve-
stimuli alone. In this connection Miss Mary Whiton Calkins tested her
own dreams, and those of a second person, for a period of six weeks, and
found that the element of external sensory perception was demonstrable
in only 13.2 per cent. and 6.7 per cent. of these dreams respectively. Only
two dreams in the whole collection could be referred to organic sensations.
These statistics confirm what a cursory survey of our own experience
would already have led us to suspect.

A distinction has often been made between “nerve-stimulus dreams”
which have already been thoroughly investigated, and other forms of
dreams. Spitta, for example, divided dreams into nerve-stimulus dreams
and association-dreams. But it was obvious that this solution remained

278

unsatisfactory unless the link between the somatic sources of dreams and
their ideational content could be indicated.

In addition to the first objection, that of the insufficient frequency of
the external sources of stimulus, a second objection presents itself,
namely, the inadequacy of the explanations of dreams afforded by this
category of dream-sources. There are two things which the representa-
tives of this theory have failed to explain: firstly, why the true nature of
the external stimulus is not recognized in the dream, but is constantly
mistaken for something else; and secondly, why the result of the reaction
of the perceiving mind to this misconceived stimulus should be so inde-
terminate and variable. We have seen that Strümpell, in answer to these
questions, asserts that the mind, since it turns away from the outer world
during sleep, is not in a position to give the correct interpretation of the
objective sensory stimulus, but is forced to construct illusions on the basis
of the indefinite stimulation arriving from many directions. In his own
words (Die Natur und Entstehung der Träume, p. 108):—

“When by an external or internal nerve-stimulus during sleep a feeling,
or a complex of feelings, or any sort of psychic process arises in the mind,
and is perceived by the mind, this process calls up from the mind per-
ceptual images belonging to the sphere of the waking experiences, that is
to say, earlier perceptions, either unembellished, or with the psychic
values appertaining to them. It collects about itself, as it were, a greater
or lesser number of such images, from which the impression resulting from
the nerve-stimulus receives its psychic value. In this connection it is
commonly said, as in ordinary language we say of the waking procedure,
that the mind interprets in sleep the impressions of nervous stimuli. The
result of this interpretation is the so-called nerve-stimulus dream—that
is, a dream the components of which are conditioned by the fact that a
nerve-stimulus produces its psychical effect in the life of the mind in
accordance with the laws of reproduction.”

In all essential points identical with this doctrine is Wundt’s statement
that the concepts of dreams proceed, at all events for the most part, from
sensory stimuli, and especially from the stimuli of general sensation, and
are therefore mostly phantastic illusions—probably only to a small ex-
tent pure memory-conceptions raised to the condition of hallucinations.
To illustrate the relation between dream-content and dream-stimuli
which follows from this theory, Strümpell makes use of an excellent
simile. It is “as though the ten fingers of a person ignorant of music were
to stray over the keyboard of an instrument.” The implication is that the
dream is not a psychic phenomenon, originating from psychic motives,
but the result of a physiological stimulus, which expresses itself in psychic
symptomatology because the apparatus affected by the stimulus is not
capable of any other mode of expression. Upon a similar assumption is

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THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

based the explanation of obsessions which Meynert attempted in his
famous simile of the dial on which individual figures are most deeply
embossed.

Popular though this theory of the somatic dream-
stimuli has become, and seductive though it may seem, it is none the less
easy to detect its weak point. Every somatic dream-stimulus which provokes
the psychic apparatus in sleep to interpretation by the formation of
illusions may evoke an incalculable number of such attempts at interpre-
tation. It may consequently be represented in the dream-content by an
extraordinary number of different concepts.¹⁾ But the theory of Strümpell and
Wundt cannot point to any sort of motive which controls the relation be-
tween the external stimulus and the dream-concept chosen to interpret it,
and therefore it cannot explain the “peculiar choice” which the stimuli
“often enough make in the course of their productive activity” (Lipps, Grund-
tatsachen des Seelenlebens, p. 170). Other objections may be raised
against the fundamental assumption behind the theory of illusions—the
assumption that during sleep the mind is not in a condition to recognize
the real nature of the objective sensory stimuli. The old physiologist
Burdach shows us that the mind is quite capable even during sleep of a
correct interpretation of the sensory impressions which reach it, and of
reacting in accordance with this correct interpretation, inasmuch as he
demonstrates that certain sensory impressions which seem important to
the individual may be excepted from the general neglect of the sleeping
mind (as in the example of nurse and child), and that one is more surely
awakened by one’s own name than by an indifferent auditory impression;
all of which presupposes, of course, that the mind discriminates between
sensations, even in sleep. Burdach infers from these observations that we
must not assume that the mind is incapable of interpreting sensory stimuli
in the sleeping state, but rather that it is not sufficiently interested in them.
The arguments which Burdach employed in 1830 reappear unchanged
in the works of Lipps (in the year 1883), where they are employed for
the purpose of attacking the theory of somatic stimuli. According to these
arguments the mind seems to be like the sleeper in the anecdote, who, on
being asked, “Are you asleep?” answers “No,” and on being again ad-
dressed with the words: “Then lend me ten florins,” takes refuge in the
excuse: “I am asleep.”

The inadequacy of the theory of somatic dream-stimuli may be further
demonstrated in another way. Observation shows that external stimuli do

¹⁾I would advise everyone to read the exact and detailed records (collected in two
volumes) of the dreams experimentally produced by Mourly Vold in order to convince
himself how little the conditions of the experiments help to explain the content of
the individual dream, and how little such experiments help us towards an understand-
ing of the problems of dreams.

280

not oblige me to dream, even though these stimuli appear in the dream-
content as soon as I begin to dream—supposing that I do dream. In re-
sponse to a touch- or pressure-stimulus experienced while I am asleep, a
variety of reactions are at my disposal. I may overlook it, and find on
waking that my leg has become uncovered, or that I have been lying on
an arm; indeed, pathology offers me a host of examples of powerfully
exciting sensory and motor stimuli of different kinds which remain in-
effective during sleep. I may perceive the sensation during sleep, and
through my sleep, as it were, as constantly happens in the case of pain
stimuli, but without weaving the pain into the texture of a dream. And
thirdly, I may wake up in response to the stimulus, simply in order to
avoid it. Still another, fourth, reaction is possible: namely, that the nerve-
stimulus may cause me to dream; but the other possible reactions occur
quite as frequently as the reaction of dream-
formation. This, however,
would not be the case if the incentive to dreaming did not lie outside the
somatic dream-sources.

Appreciating the importance of the above-mentioned lacunae in the
explanation of dreams by somatic stimuli, other writers—Scherner, for
example, and, following him, the philosopher Volkelt—endeavoured to
determine more precisely the nature of the psychic activities which cause
the many-coloured images of our dreams to proceed from the somatic
stimuli, and in so doing they approached the problem of the essential
nature of dreams as a problem of psychology, and regarded dreaming as a
psychic activity. Scherner not only gave a poetical, vivid and glowing
description of the psychic peculiarities which unfold themselves in the
course of dream-
formation, but he also believed that he had hit upon the
principle of the method the mind employs in dealing with the stimuli
which are offered to it. The dream, according to Scherner, in the free
activity of the phantasy, which has been released from the shackles im-
posed upon it during the day, strives to represent symbolically the nature
of the organ from which the stimulus proceeds. Thus there exists a sort
of dream-book, a guide to the interpretation of dreams, by means of which
bodily sensations, the conditions of the organs, and states of stimulation,
may be inferred from the dream-images. “Thus the image of a cat ex-
pressed extreme ill-
temper, the image of pale, smooth pastry the nudity
of the body. The human body as a whole is pictured by the phantasy of
the dream as a house, and the individual organs of the body as parts of
the house. In ‘toothache-dreams’ a vaulted vestibule corresponds to the
mouth, and a staircase to the descent from the pharynx to the oesophagus;
in the ‘headache-dream’ a ceiling covered with disgusting toad-like spiders
is chosen to denote the upper part of the head.” “Many different sym-
bols are employed by our dreams for the same organ: thus the breath-
ing lung finds its symbol in a roaring stove, filled with flames, the heart in

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THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

empty boxes and baskets, and the bladder in round, bag-
shaped or merely
hollow objects. It is of particular significance that at the close of the dream
the stimulating organ or its function is often represented without disguise,
and usually on the dreamer’s own body. Thus the ‘toothache-ache dream’
commonly ends by the dreamer drawing a tooth out his mouth.” It
cannot be said that this theory of dream-interpretation has found much
favour with other writers. It seems, above all, extravagant; and so Scherner’s
readers have hesitated to give it even the small amount of credit to
which it is, in my opinion, entitled. As will be seen, it tends to a revival of
dream-interpretation by means of symbolism, a method employed by the
ancients; only the province from which the interpretation is to be derived
is restricted to the human body. The lack of a scientifically compre-
hensible technique of interpretation must seriously limit the applicability
of Scherner’s theory. Arbitrariness in the interpretation of dreams would
appear to be by no means excluded, especially since in this case also a
stimulus may be expressed in the dream-content by several representative
symbols; thus even Scherner’s follower Volkelt was unable to confirm the
representation of the body as a house. Another objection is that here again
the dream-activity is regarded as a useless and aimless activity of the
mind, since, according to this theory, the mind is content with merely
forming phantasies around the stimulus with which it is dealing, without
even remotely attempting to abolish the stimulus.

Scherner’s theory of the symbolization of bodily stimuli by the dream
is seriously damaged by yet another objection. These bodily stimuli are
present at all times, and it is generally assumed that the mind is more
accessible to them during sleep than in the waking state. It is therefore
impossible to understand why the mind does not dream continuously all
night long, and why it does not dream every night about all the organs. If
one attempts to evade this objection by positing the condition that special
excitations must proceed from the eye, the ear, the teeth, the bowels, etc.,
in order to arouse the dream-activity, one is confronted with the difficulty
of proving that this increase of stimulation is objective; and proof is pos-
sible only in a very few cases. If the dream of flying is a symbolization of
the upward and downward motion of the pulmonary lobes, either this
dream, as has already been remarked by Strümpell, should be dreamt
much oftener, or it should be possible to show that respiration is more
active during this dream. Yet a third alternative is possible—and it is the
most probable of all—namely, that now and again special motives are
operative to direct the attention to the visceral sensations which are con-
stantly present. But this would take us far beyond the scope of Scherner’s
theory.

The value of Scherner’s and Volkelt’s disquisitions resides in their
calling our attention to a number of characteristics of the dream-content

282

which are in need of 
explanation, and which seem to promise fresh discov-
eries. It is quite true that symbolizations of the bodily organs and func-
tions do occur in dreams: for example, that water in a dream often signifies 
a desire to urinate, that the male genital organ may be represented by an 
upright staff, or a pillar, etc. With dreams which exhibit a very animated 
field of vision and brilliant colours, in contrast to the dimness of other 
dreams, the interpretation that they are “dreams due to visual stimula-
tion” can hardly be dismissed, nor can we dispute the participation of 
illusion-formation in dreams which contain noise and a medley of voices. 
A dream like that of Scherner’s, that two rows of fair handsome boys 
stood facing one another on a bridge, attacking one another, and then 
resuming their positions, until finally the dreamer himself sat down on a 
bridge and drew a long tooth from his jaw; or a similar dream of Volkelt’s, 
in which two rows of drawers played a part, and which again ended in the 
extraction of a tooth; dream-formations of this kind, of which both writ-
ers relate a great number, forbid our dismissing Scherner’s theory as an 
idle invention without seeking the kernel of truth which may be con-
tained in it. We are therefore confronted with the task of finding a dif-
ferent explanation of the supposed symbolization of the alleged dental 
stimulus.

Throughout our consideration of the theory of the somatic sources of 
dreams, I have refrained from urging the argument which arises from our 
analyses of dreams. If by a procedure which has not been followed by 
other writers in their investigation of dreams we can prove that the dream 
possesses intrinsic value as psychic action, that a wish supplies the mo-
tive of its formation, and that the experiences of the previous day furnish 
the most obvious material of its content, any other theory of dreams which 
neglects such an important method of investigation—and accordingly 
makes the dream appear a useless and enigmatical psychic reaction to 
somatic stimuli—may be dismissed without special criticism. For in this 
case there would have to be—and this is highly improbable—two entirely 
different kinds of dreams, of which only one kind has come under our 
observation, while the other kind alone has been observed by the earlier 
investigators. It only remains now to find a place in our theory of dreams 
for the facts on which the current doctrine of somatic dream-stimuli is 
based.

We have already taken the first step in this direction in advancing the 
thesis that the dream-work is under a compulsion to elaborate into a uni-
fied whole all the dream-stimuli which are simultaneously present (p. 
248). We have seen that when two or more experiences capable of making 
an impression on the mind have been left over from the previous day, the 
wishes that result from them are united into one dream; similarly, that 
the impressions possessing psychic value and the indifferent experiences

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of the previous day unite in the dream–material, provided that connecting
ideas between the two can be established. Thus the dream appears to be a
reaction to everything which is simultaneously present as actual in the
sleeping mind. As far as we have hitherto analysed the dream–material,
we have discovered it to be a collection of psychic remnants and memory–
traces, which we were obliged to credit (on account of the preference
shown for recent and for infantile material) with a character of psycho-
logical actuality, though the nature of this actuality was not at the time
determinable. We shall now have little difficulty in predicting what will
happen when to these actualities of the memory fresh material in the form
of sensations is added during sleep. These stimuli, again, are of impor-
tance to the dream because they are actual; they are united with the other
psychic actualities to provide the material for dream-
formation. To ex-
press it in other words, the stimuli which occur during sleep are elaborated
into a wish-
fulfilment, of which the other components are the psychic
remnants of daily experience with which we are already familiar. This
combination, however, is not inevitable; we have seen that more than one
kind of behaviour toward the physical stimuli received during sleep is
possible. Where this combination is effected, a conceptual material for the
dream-
content has been found which will represent both kinds of dream–
sources, the somatic as well as the psychic.

The nature of the dream is not altered when somatic material is added
to the psychic dream-
sources; it still remains a wish-
fulfilment, no matter
how its expression is determined by the actual material available.

I should like to find room here for a number of peculiarities which are
able to modify the significance of external stimuli for the dream. I imagine
that a co-
operation of individual, physiological and accidental factors,
which depend on the circumstances of the moment, determines how one
will behave in individual cases of more intensive objective stimulation
during sleep; habitual or accidental profundity of sleep, in conjunction
with the intensity of the stimulus, will in one case make it possible so to
suppress the stimulus that it will not disturb the sleeper, while in another
case it will force the sleeper to wake, or will assist the attempt to subdue
the stimulus by weaving it into the texture of the dream. In accordance
with the multiplicity of these constellations, external objective stimuli
will be expressed more rarely or more frequently in the case of one person
than in that of another. In my own case, since I am an excellent sleeper,
and obstinately refuse to allow myself to be disturbed during sleep on any
pretext whatever, this intrusion of external causes of excitation into my
dreams is very rare, whereas psychic motives apparently cause me to
dream very easily. Indeed, I have noted only a single dream in which an
objective, painful source of stimulation is demonstrable, and it will be

284

highly instructive to see what effect the external stimulus had in this
particular dream.

I am riding a gray horse, at first timidly and awkwardly, as though I
were merely carried along. Then I meet a colleague, P., also on horseback,
and dressed in rough frieze; he is sitting erect in the saddle; he calls my
attention to something (probably to the fact that I have a very bad seat).
Now I begin to feel more and more at ease on the back of my highly in-
telligent horse; I sit more comfortably, and I find that I am quite at home
up here. My saddle is a sort of pad, which completely fills the space be-
tween the neck and the rump of the horse. I ride between two vans, and
just manage to clear them. After riding up the street for some distance, I
turn round and wish to dismount, at first in front of a little open chapel
which is built facing on to the street. Then I do really dismount in front
of a chapel which stands near the first one; the hotel is in the same street;
I might let the horse go there by itself, but I prefer to lead it thither. It
seems as though I should be ashamed to arrive there on horseback. In
front of the hotel there stands a page-boy, who shows me a note of mine
which has been found, and ridicules me on account of it. On the note is
written, doubly underlined, “Eat nothing,” and then a second sentence
(indistinct): something like “Do not work”; at the same time a hazy
idea that I am in a strange city, in which I do no work.

It will not at once be apparent that this dream originated under the in-
fluence, or rather under the compulsion, of a pain-stimulus. The day be-
fore, however, I had suffered from boils, which made every movement a
torture, and at last a boil had grown to the size of an apple at the root of
the scrotum, and had caused me the most intolerable pains at every step;
a feverish lassitude, lack of appetite, and the hard work which I had
nevertheless done during the day, had conspired with the pain to upset
me. I was not altogether in a condition to discharge my duties as a physi-
cian, but in view of the nature and the location of the malady, it was pos-
sible to imagine something else for which I was most of all unfit, namely
riding. Now it is this very activity of riding into which I am plunged by
the dream; it is the most energetic denial of the pain which imagination
could conceive. As a matter of fact, I cannot ride; I do not dream of doing
so. I never sat on a horse but once—and then without a saddle—and I
did not like it. But in this dream I ride as though I had no boil on the
perineum; or rather, I ride, just because I want to have none. To judge
from the description, my saddle is the poultice which has enabled me to
fall asleep. Probably, being thus comforted, I did not feel anything of my
pain during the first few hours of my sleep. Then the painful sensations
made themselves felt, and tried to wake me; whereupon the dream came
and said to me, soothingly: “Go on sleeping, you are not going to wake!
You have no boil, for you are riding on horseback, and with a boil just

285

there no one could ride!” And the dream was successful; the pain was
stifled, and I went on sleeping.

But the dream was not satisfied with “suggesting away” the boil by
tenaciously holding fast to an idea incompatible with the malady (thus
behaving like the hallucinatory insanity of a mother who has lost her
child, or of a merchant who has lost his fortune). In addition, the details
of the sensation denied and of the image used to suppress it serve the
dream also as a means to connect other material actually present in the
mind with the situation in the dream, and to give this material representa-
tion. I am riding on a gray horse—the colour of the horse exactly cor-
responds with the pepper-and-salt suit in which I last saw my colleague P.
in the country. I have been warned that highly seasoned food is the cause
of boils, and in any case it is preferable as an etiological explanation to
sugar, which might be thought of in connection with furunculosis. My
friend P. likes to “ride the high horse” with me ever since he took my
place in the treatment of a female patient, in whose case I had performed
great feats (Kunststücke: in the dream I sit the horse at first sideways,
like a trick-rider, Kunstreiter), but who really, like the horse in the story
of the Sunday equestrian, led me wherever she wished. Thus the horse
comes to be a symbolic representation of a lady patient (in the dream it is
highly intelligent). “I feel quite at home” refers to the position which I
occupied in the patient’s household until I was replaced by my colleague
P. “I thought you were safe in the saddle up there,” one of my few well-
wishers among the eminent physicians of the city recently said to me,
with reference to the same household. And it was a feat to practise psycho-
therapy for eight to ten hours a day, while suffering such pain, but I know
that I cannot continue my peculiarly strenuous work for any length of
time without perfect physical health, and the dream is full of dismal
allusions to the situation which would result if my illness continued (the
note, such as neurasthenics carry and show to their doctors): Do not
work, do not eat. On further interpretation I see that the dream-activity
has succeeded in finding its way from the wish-situation of riding to some
very early childish quarrels which must have occurred between myself
and a nephew, who is a year older than I, and is now living in England. It
has also taken up elements from my journeys in Italy; the street in the
dream is built up out of impressions of Verona and Siena. A still deeper
interpretation leads to sexual dream-thoughts, and I recall what the
dream-allusions to that beautiful country were supposed to mean in the
dream of a female patient who had never been to Italy (to Italy, German:
gen Italien = Genitalien = genitals); at the same time there are refer-
ences to the house in which I preceded my friend P. as physician, and to
the place where the boil is located.

In another dream I was similarly successful in warding off a threatened

286

disturbance of my sleep; this time the threat came from a sensory stimu-
lus. It was only chance, however, that enabled me to discover the connec-
tion between the dream and the accidental dream-stimulus, and in this
way to understand the dream. One midsummer morning in a Tyrolese
mountain resort I woke with the knowledge that I had dreamed: The
Pope is dead. I was not able to interpret this short, non-visual dream. I
could remember only one possible basis of the dream, namely, that shortly
before this the newspapers had reported that His Holiness was slightly
indisposed. But in the course of the morning my wife asked me: “Did you
hear the dreadful tolling of the church bells this morning?” I had no idea
that I had heard it, but now I understood my dream. It was the reaction
of my need for sleep to the noise by which the pious Tyroleans were trying
to wake me. I avenged myself on them by the conclusion which formed
the content of my dream, and continued to sleep, without any further in-
terest in the tolling of the bells.

Among the dreams mentioned in the previous chapters there are several
which might serve as examples of the elaboration of so-
called nerve-
stimuli. The dream of drinking in long draughts is such an example; here
the somatic stimulus seems to be the sole source of the dream, and the
wish arising from the sensation—thirst—the only motive for dreaming.
We find much the same thing in other simple dreams, where the somatic
stimulus is able of itself to generate a wish. The dream of the sick woman
who throws the cooling apparatus from her cheek at night is an instance
of an unusual manner of reacting to a pain-
stimulus with a wish-fulfil-
ment; it seems as though the patient had temporarily succeeded in making
herself analgesic, and accompanied this by ascribing her pains to a
stranger.

My dream of the three Parcae is obviously a hunger-
dream, but it has
contrived to shift the need for food right back to the child’s longing for
its mother’s breast, and to use a harmless desire as a mask for a more
serious one that cannot venture to express itself so openly. In the dream
of Count Thun we were able to see by what paths an accidental physical
need was brought into relation with the strongest, but also the most
rigorously repressed impulses of the psychic life. And when, as in the case
reported by Garnier, the First Consul incorporates the sound of an ex-
ploding infernal machine into a dream of battle before it causes him to
wake, the true purpose for which alone psychic activity concerns itself
with sensations during sleep is revealed with unusual clarity. A young
lawyer, who is full of his first great bankruptcy case, and falls asleep in
the afternoon, behaves just as the great Napoleon did. He dreams of a
certain G. Reich in Hussiatyn, whose acquaintance he has made in con-
nection with the bankruptcy case, but Hussiatyn (German: husten, to
‘ough) forces itself upon his attention still further; he is obliged to wake,

287

only to hear his wife—who is suffering from bronchial catarrh—violently
coughing.

Let us compare the dream of Napoleon I—who, incidentally, was an
excellent sleeper—with that of the sleepy student, who was awakened by
his landlady with the reminder that he had to go to the hospital, and who
thereupon dreamt himself into a bed in the hospital, and then slept on,
the underlying reasoning being as follows: If I am already in the hospital,
I needn’t get up to go there. This is obviously a convenience-
dream; the sleeper frankly admits to himself his motive in dreaming; but he thereby
reveals one of the secrets of dreaming in general. In a certain sense, all
dreams are convenience-dreams; they serve the purpose of continuing to
sleep instead of waking. The dream is the guardian of sleep, not its dis-
turber. In another place we shall have occasion to justify this conception
in respect to the psychic factors that make for waking; but we can already
demonstrate its applicability to the objective external stimuli. Either the
mind does not concern itself at all with the causes of sensations during
sleep, if it is able to carry this attitude through as against the intensity
of the stimuli, and their significance, of which it is well aware; or it em-
ploys the dream to deny these stimuli; or, thirdly, if it is obliged to
recognize the stimuli, it seeks that interpretation of them which will
represent the actual sensation as a component of a desired situation which
is compatible with sleep. The actual sensation is woven into the dream in
order to deprive it of its reality. Napoleon is permitted to go on sleeping;
it is only a dream-memory of the thunder of the guns at Arcole which is
trying to disturb him.¹

The wish to sleep, to which the conscious ego has adjusted itself, and
which (together with the dream-censorship and the “secondary elabora-
tion” to be mentioned later) represents the ego’s contribution to the
dream, must thus always be taken into account as a motive of dream-
formation, and every successful dream is a fulfilment of this wish. The
relation of this general, constantly present, and unvarying sleep-wish to
the other wishes of which now one and now another is fulfilled by the
dream-content, will be the subject of later consideration. In the wish to
sleep we have discovered a motive capable of supplying the deficiency in
the theory of Strümpell and Wundt, and of explaining the perversity and
capriciousness of the interpretaton of the external stimulus. The correct
interpretation, of which the sleeping mind is perfectly capable, would
involve active interest, and would require the sleeper to wake; hence, of
those interpretations which are possible at all only such are admitted as
are acceptable to the dictatorial censorship of the sleep-wish. The logic

¹ The two sources from which I know of this dream do not entirely agree as to its
content.

288

of dream situations would run, for example: “It is the nightingale, and
not the lark.” For if it is the lark, love’s night is at an end. From among
the interpretations of the stimulus which are thus admissible, that one is
selected which can secure the best connection with the wish-impulses that
are lying in wait in the mind. Thus everything is definitely determined,
and nothing is left to caprice. The misinterpretation is not an illusion,
but—if you will—an excuse. Here again, as in substitution by displace-
ment in the service of the dream-censorship, we have an act of deflection
of the normal psychic procedure.

If the external nerve-stimuli and the inner bodily stimuli are sufficiently
intense to compel psychic attention, they represent—that is, if they result
in dreaming at all, and not in waking—a fixed point for dream-forma-
tion, a nucleus in the dream-material, for which an appropriate wish-ful-
filment is sought, just as (see above) mediating ideas between two
psychical dream-stimuli are sought. To this extent it is true of a number
of dreams that the somatic element dictates the dream-content. In this
extreme case even a wish that is not actually present may be aroused for
the purpose of dream-formation. But the dream cannot do otherwise than
represent a wish in some situation as fulfilled; it is, as it were, confronted
with the task of discovering what wish can be represented as fulfilled by
the given sensation. Even if this given material is of a painful or disagree-
able character, yet it is not unserviceable for the purposes of dream-
formation. The psychic life has at its disposal even wishes whose fulfil-
ment evokes displeasure, which seems a contradiction, but becomes per-
fectly intelligible if we take into account the presence of two sorts of
psychic instance and the censorship that subsists between them.

In the psychic life there exist, as we have seen, repressed wishes, which
belong to the first system, and to whose fulfilment the second system is
opposed. We do not mean this in a historic sense—that such wishes have
once existed and have subsequently been destroyed. The doctrine of re-
pression, which we need in the study of psychoneuroses, asserts that such
repressed wishes still exist, but simultaneously with an inhibition which
weighs them down. Language has hit upon the truth when it speaks of the
“suppression” (sub-pression, or pushing under) of such impulses. The
psychic mechanism which enables such suppressed wishes to force their
way to realization is retained in being and in working order. But if it hap-
pens that such a suppressed wish is fulfilled, the vanquished inhibition of
the second system (which is capable of consciousness) is then expressed
as discomfort. And, in order to conclude this argument: If sensations of a
disagreeable character which originate from somatic sources are present
during sleep, this constellation is utilized by the dream-activity to pro-
cure the fulfilment—with more or less maintenance of the censorship—
of an otherwise suppressed wish.

289

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

This state of affairs makes possible a certain number of anxiety-
dreams, while others of these dream-formations which are unfavourable to the
wish-theory exhibit a different mechanism. For the anxiety in dreams
may of course be of a psychoneurotic character, originating in psycho-
sexual excitation, in which case, the anxiety corresponds to repressed
libido. Then this anxiety, like the whole anxiety-dream, has the signifi-
cance of a neurotic symptom, and we stand at the dividing-line where the
wish-fulfilling tendency of dreams is frustrated. But in other anxiety-
dreams the feeling of anxiety comes from somatic sources (as in the case
of persons suffering from pulmonary or cardiac trouble, with occasional
difficulty in breathing), and then it is used to help such strongly sup-
pressed wishes to attain fulfilment in a dream, the dreaming of which
from psychic motives would have resulted in the same release of anxiety.
It is not difficult to reconcile these two apparently contradictory cases.
When two psychic formations, an affective inclination and a conceptual
content, are intimately connected, either one being actually present will
evoke the other, even in a dream; now the anxiety of somatic origin evokes
the suppressed conceptual content, now it is the released conceptual con-
tent, accompanied by sexual excitement, which causes the release of
anxiety. In the one case it may be said that a somatically determined
affect is psychically interpreted; in the other case all is of psychic origin,
but the content which has been suppressed is easily replaced by a somatic
interpretation which fits the anxiety. The difficulties which lie in the way
of understanding all this have little to do with dreams; they are due to
the fact that in discussing these points we are touching upon the problems
of the development of anxiety and of repression.

The general aggregate of bodily sensation must undoubtedly be in-
cluded among the dominant dream-stimuli of internal bodily origin. Not
that it is capable of supplying the dream-content; but it forces the dream-
thoughts to make a choice from the material destined to serve the purpose
of representation in the dream-content, inasmuch as it brings within easy
reach that part of the material which is adapted to its own character, and
holds the rest at a distance. Moreover, this general feeling, which sur-
vives from the preceding day, is of course connected with the psychic
residues that are significant for the dream. Moreover, this feeling itself
may be either maintained or overcome in the dream, so that it may, if it
is painful, veer round into its opposite.

If the somatic sources of excitation during sleep—that is, the sensa-
tions of sleep—are not of unusual intensity, the part which they play in
dream-formation is, in my judgment, similar to that of those impressions
of the day which are still recent, but of no great significance. I mean that
they are utilized for the dream-formation if they are of such a kind that
they can be united with the conceptual content of the psychic dream-

290

source, but not otherwise. They are treated as a cheap ever-
ready material, which can be used whenever it is needed, and not as valuable material
which itself prescribes the manner in which it must be utilized. I might
suggest the analogy of a connoisseur giving an artist a rare stone, a piece
of onyx, for example, in order that it may be fashioned into a work of art.
Here the size of the stone, its colour, and its markings help to decide what
head or what scene shall be represented; while if he is dealing with a uni-
form and abundant material such as marble or sandstone, the artist is
guided only by the idea which takes shape in his mind. Only in this way,
it seems to me, can we explain the fact that the dream-content furnished
by physical stimuli of somatic origin which are not unusually accentu-
ated does not make its appearance in all dreams and every night.¹

Perhaps an example which takes us back to the interpretation of
dreams will best illustrate my meaning. One day I was trying to under-
stand the significance of the sensation of being inhibited, of not being
able to move from the spot, of not being able to get something done, etc.,
which occurs so frequently in dreams, and is so closely allied to anxiety.
That night I had the following dream: I am very incompletely dressed,
and I go from a flat on the ground-floor up a flight of stairs to an upper
story. In doing this I jump up three stairs at a time, and I am glad to find
that I can mount the stairs so quickly. Suddenly I notice that a servant-
maid is coming down the stairs—that is, towards me. I am ashamed, and
try to hurry away, and now comes this feeling of being inhibited; I am
glued to the stairs, and cannot move from the spot.

Analysis: The situation of the dream is taken from an every-day
reality. In a house in Vienna I have two apartments, which are connected
only by the main staircase. My consultation-rooms and my study are on
the raised ground-floor, and my living-rooms are on the first floor. Late
at night, when I have finished my work downstairs, I go upstairs to my
bedroom. On the evening before the dream I had actually gone this short
distance with my garments in disarray—that is, I had taken off my collar,
tie and cuffs; but in the dream this had changed into a more advanced,
but, as usual, indefinite degree of undress. It is a habit of mine to run up
two or three steps at a time; moreover, there was a wish-fulfilment recog-
nized even in the dream, for the ease with which I run upstairs reassures
me as to the condition of my heart. Further, the manner in which I run
upstairs is an effective contrast to the sensation of being inhibited, which
occurs in the second half of the dream. It shows me—what needed no
proof—that dreams have no difficulty in representing motor actions fully
and completely carried out; think, for example, of flying in dreams!

¹Rank has shown, in a number of studies, that certain awakening-dreams provoked
by organic stimuli (dreams of urination and ejaculation) are especially calculated to
demonstrate the conflict between the need for sleep and the demands of the organic
need, as well as the influence of the latter on the dream-content.

291

But the stairs up which I go are not those of my own house; at first I
do not recognize them; only the person coming towards me informs me
of their whereabouts. This woman is the maid of an old lady whom I visit
twice daily in order to give her hypodermic injections; the stairs, too, are
precisely similar to those which I have to climb twice a day in this old
lady’s house.

How do these stairs and this woman get into my dream? The shame of
not being fully dressed is undoubtedly of a sexual character; the servant
of whom I dream is older than I, surly, and by no means attractive. These
questions remind me of the following incident: When I pay my morning
visit at this house I am usually seized with a desire to clear my throat;
the sputum falls on the stairs. There is no spittoon on either of the two
floors, and I consider that the stairs should be kept clean not at my ex-
pense, but rather by the provision of a spittoon. The housekeeper, another
elderly, curmudgeonly person, but, as I willingly admit, a woman of
cleanly instincts, takes a different view of the matter. She lies in wait for
me, to see whether I shall take the liberty referred to, and if she sees that
I do I can distinctly hear her growl. For days thereafter, when we meet,
she refuses to greet me with the customary signs of respect. On the day
before the dream the housekeeper’s attitude was reinforced by that of
the maid. I had just finished my usual hurried visit to the patient when
the servant confronted me in the ante-room, observing: “You might as
well have wiped your shoes to-day, doctor, before you came into the room.
The red carpet is all dirty again from your feet.” This is the only justifica-
tion for the appearance of the stairs and the maid in my dream.

Between my leaping upstairs and my spitting on the stairs there is an
intimate connection. Pharyngitis and cardiac troubles are both supposed
to be punishments for the vice of smoking, on account of which vice my
own housekeeper does not credit me with excessive tidiness, so that my
reputation suffers in both the houses which my dream fuses into one.

I must postpone the further interpretation of this dream until I can
indicate the origin of the typical dream of being incompletely clothed. In
the meantime, as a provisional deduction from the dream just related, I
note that the dream-sensation of inhibited movement is always aroused
at a point where a certain connection requires it. A peculiar condition of
my motor system during sleep cannot be responsible for this dream-con-
tent, since a moment earlier I found myself, as though in confirmation of
this fact, skipping lightly up the stairs.

D. TYPICAL DREAMS

Generally speaking, we are not in a position to interpret another person’s
dream if he is unwilling to furnish us with the unconscious thoughts which
lie behind the dream-
content, and for this reason the practical applica-
tion of dream-interpretation is limited.

292

bility of our method of dream-interpretation is often seriously restricted.¹⁾
But there are dreams which exhibit a complete contrast to the individ-
-
ual’s customary liberty to endow his dream-world with a special individ-
uality, thereby making it inaccessible to an alien understanding: there
are a number of dreams which almost every one has dreamed in the same
manner, and of which we are accustomed to assume that they have the
same significance in the case of every dreamer. A peculiar interest at-
-
taches to these typical dreams, because, no matter who dreams them, they
presumably all derive from the same sources, so that they would seem to
be particularly fitted to provide us with information as to the sources of
dreams.

With quite special expectations, therefore, we shall proceed to test
our technique of dream-interpretation on these typical dreams, and only
with extreme reluctance shall we admit that precisely in respect of this
material our method is not fully verified. In the interpretation of typical
dreams we as a rule fail to obtain those associations from the dreamer
which in other cases have led us to comprehension of the dream, or else
these associations are confused and inadequate, so that they do not help
us to solve our problem.

Why this is the case, and how we can remedy this defect in our tech-
-
nique, are points which will be discussed in a later chapter. The reader
will then understand why I can deal with only a few of the group of
typical dreams in this chapter, and why I have postponed the discussion
of the others.

(a) The Embarrassment–Dream of Nakedness

In a dream in which one is naked or scantily clad in the presence of
strangers, it sometimes happens that one is not in the least ashamed of
one’s condition. But the dream of nakedness demands our attention only
when shame and embarrassment are felt in it, when one wishes to escape
or to hide, and when one feels the strange inhibition of being unable to
stir from the spot, and of being utterly powerless to alter the painful situ-
-
ation. It is only in this connection that the dream is typical; otherwise
the nucleus of its content may be involved in all sorts of other connec-
tions, or may be replaced by individual amplifications. The essential
point is that one has a painful feeling of shame, and is anxious to hide
one’s nakedness, usually by means of locomotion, but is absolutely un-
-
 

¹The statement that our method of dream-interpretation is inapplicable when we
have not at our disposal the dreamer’s association-material must be qualified. In one
case our work of interpretation is independent of these associations: namely, when
the dreamer makes use of symbolic elements in his dream. We then employ what is,
strictly speaking, a second or auxiliary method of dream-interpretation (vid. inf.).

293

able to do so. I believe that the great majority of my readers will at some
time have found themselves in this situation in a dream.

The nature and manner of the exposure is usually rather vague. The
dreamer will say, perhaps, “I was in my chemise,” but this is rarely a
clear image; in most cases the lack of clothing is so indeterminate that it is
described in narrating the dream by an alternative: “I was in my chemise
or my petticoat.” As a rule the deficiency in clothing is not serious enough
to justify the feeling of shame attached to it. For a man who has served
in the army, nakedness is often replaced by a manner of dressing that
is contrary to regulations. “I was in the street without my sabre, and I
saw some officers approaching,” or “I had no collar,” or “I was wearing
checked civilian trousers,” etc.

The persons before whom one is ashamed are almost always strangers,
whose faces remain indeterminate. It never happens, in the typical dream,
that one is reproved or even noticed on account of the lack of clothing,
which causes one such embarrassment. On the contrary, the people in the
dream appear to be quite indifferent; or, as I was able to note in one par-
ticularly vivid dream, they have stiff and solemn expressions. This gives
us food for thought.

The dreamer’s embarrassment and the spectator’s indifference consti-
tute a contradiction such as often occurs in dreams. It would be more in
keeping with the dreamer’s feelings if the strangers were to look at him
in astonishment, or were to laugh at him, or be outraged. I think, how-
ever, that this obnoxious feature has been displaced by wish-fulfilment,
while the embarrassment is for some reason retained, so that the two com-
ponents are not in agreement. We have an interesting proof that the dream
which is partially distorted by wish-fulfilment has not been properly un-
derstood; for it has been made the basis of a fairy-tale familiar to us all
in Andersen’s version of The Emperor’s New Clothes, and it has more
recently received poetical treatment by Fulda in The Talisman. In Ander-
sen’s fairy-tale we are told of two impostors who weave a costly garment
for the Emperor, which shall, however, be visible only to the good and
true. The Emperor goes forth clad in this invisible garment, and since the
imaginary fabric serves as a sort of touchstone, the people are frightened
into behaving as though they did not notice the Emperor’s nakedness.

But this is really the situation in our dream. It is not very venturesome
to assume that the unintelligible dream-content has provided an incen-
tive to invent a state of undress which gives meaning to the situation
present in the memory. This situation is thereby robbed of its original
meaning, and made to serve alien ends. But we shall see that such a mis-
understanding of the dream-content often occurs through the conscious
activity of a second psychic system, and is to be recognized as a factor of
the final form of the dream; and further, that in the development of ob-

294

sessions and phobias similar misunderstandings—still, of course, within
the same psychic personality—play a decisive part. It is even possible
to specify whence the material for the fresh interpretation of the dream
is taken. The impostor is the dream, the Emperor is the dreamer himself,
and the moralizing tendency betrays a hazy knowledge of the fact that
there is a question, in the latent dream-content, of forbidden wishes, vic-
tims of repression. The connection in which such dreams appear during
my analyses of neurotics proves beyond a doubt that a memory of the
dreamer’s earliest childhood lies at the foundation of the dream. Only in
our childhood was there a time when we were seen by our relatives, as
well as by strange nurses, servants and visitors, in a state of insufficient
clothing, and at that time we were not ashamed of our nakedness.¹ In the
case of many rather older children it may be observed that being un-
dressed has an exciting effect upon them, instead of making them feel
ashamed. They laugh, leap about, slap or thump their own bodies; the
mother, or whoever is present, scolds them saying, “Fie, that is shame-
ful—you mustn’t do that!” Children often show a desire to display them-
selves; it is hardly possible to pass through a village in country districts
without meeting a two- or three-year-old child who lifts up his or her
blouse or frock before the traveller, possibly in his honour. One of my
patients has retained in his conscious memory a scene from his eighth
year, in which, after undressing for bed, he wanted to dance into his
little sister’s room in his shirt, but was prevented by the servant. In the
history of the childhood of neurotics exposure before children of the
opposite sex plays a prominent part; in paranoia the delusion of being
observed while dressing and undressing may be directly traced to these
experiences; and among those who have remained perverse there is a
class in whom the childish impulse is accentuated into a symptom: the
class of exhibitionists.

This age of childhood, in which the sense of shame is unknown, seems
a paradise when we look back upon it later, and paradise itself is nothing
but the mass-phantasy of the childhood of the individual. This is why in
paradise men are naked and unashamed, until the moment arrives when
shame and fear awaken; expulsion follows, and sexual life and cultural
development begin. Into this paradise dreams can take us back every
night; we have already ventured the conjecture that the impressions of
our earliest childhood (from the prehistoric period until about the end
of the third year) crave reproduction for their own sake, perhaps with
out further reference to their content, so that their repetition is a wish-
fulfilment. Dreams of nakedness, then, are exhibition-dreams.²

¹The child appears in the fairy-tale also, for there a little child suddenly cries out:
“But he hasn’t anything on at all!”

²Ferenczi has recorded a number of interesting dreams of nakedness in women which

295

The nucleus of an exhibition-dream is furnished by one’s own person,
which is seen not as that of a child, but as it exists in the present, and by
the idea of scanty clothing which emerges indistinctly, owing to the
superimposition of so many later situations of being partially clothed, or
out of consideration for the censorship; to these elements are added the
persons in whose presence one is ashamed. I know of no example in which
the actual spectators of these infantile exhibitions reappear in a dream;
for a dream is hardly ever a simple recollection. Strangely enough, those
persons who are the objects of our sexual interest in childhood are omitted
from all reproductions, in dreams, in hysteria or in obsessional neurosis;
paranoia alone restores the spectators, and is fanatically convinced of
their presence, although they remain unseen. The substitute for these
persons offered by the dream, the “number of strangers” who take no
notice of the spectacle offered them, is precisely the counter-wish to that
single intimately-
known person for whom the exposure was intended.
“A number of strangers,” moreover, often occur in dreams in all sorts of
other connections; as a counter-wish they always signify “a secret.”¹⁾ It
will be seen that even that restitution of the old state of affairs that oc-
curs in paranoia complies with this counter-tendency. One is no longer
alone; one is quite positively being watched; but the spectators are “a
number of strange, curiously indeterminate people.”

Furthermore, repression finds a place in the exhibition-
dream. For
the disagreeable sensation of the dream is, of course, the reaction on the
part of the second psychic instance to the fact that the exhibitionistic
scene which has been condemned by the censorship has nevertheless suc-
ceeded in presenting itself. The only way to avoid this sensation would
be to refrain from reviving the scene.

In a later chapter we shall deal once again with the feeling of inhibi-
tion. In our dreams it represents to perfection a conflict of the will, a
denial. According to our unconscious purpose, the exhibition is to pro-
ceed; according to the demands of the censorship, it is to come to an
end.

The relation of our typical dreams to fairy-
tales and other fiction and
poetry is neither sporadic nor accidental. Sometimes the penetrating in-
sight of the poet has analytically recognized the process of transforma-
tion of which the poet is otherwise the instrument, and has followed it up
in the reverse direction; that is to say, has traced a poem to a dream. A
friend has called my attention to the following passage in G. Keller’s
Der Grüne Heinrich: “I do not wish, dear Lee, that you should ever

¹ were without difficulty traced to the infantile delight in exhibitionism, but which
differ in many features from the “typical” dream of nakedness discussed above.
For obvious reasons the presence of “the whole family” in the dream has the same
significance.

296

come to realize from experience the exquisite and piquant truth in the
situation of Odysseus, when he appears, naked and covered with mud,
before Nausicaä and her playmates! Would you like to know what it
means? Let us for a moment consider the incident closely. If you are ever
parted from your home, and from all that is dear to you, and wander
about in a strange country; if you have seen much and experienced much;
if you have cares and sorrows, and are, perhaps, utterly wretched and for-
lorn, you will some night inevitably dream that you are approaching your
home; you will see it shining and glittering in the loveliest colours; lovely
and gracious figures will come to meet you; and then you will suddenly
discover that you are ragged, naked, and covered with dust. An indescrib-
able feeling of shame and fear overcomes you; you try to cover yourself,
to hide, and you wake up bathed in sweat. As long as humanity exists, this
will be the dream of the care-laden, tempest-tossed man, and thus Homer
has drawn this situation from the profoundest depths of the eternal nature
of humanity.”

What are the profoundest depths of the eternal nature of humanity,
which the poet commonly hopes to awaken in his listeners, but these stir-
rings of the psychic life which are rooted in that age of childhood, which
subsequently becomes prehistoric? Childish wishes, now suppressed and
forbidden, break into the dream behind the unobjectionable and permis-
sibly conscious wishes of the homeless man, and it is for this reason that
the dream which is objectified in the legend of Nausicaä regularly de-
velops into an anxiety-dream.

My own dream of hurrying upstairs, which presently changed into
being glued to the stairs, is likewise an exhibition-dream, for it re-
veals the essential ingredients of such a dream. It must therefore be pos-
sible to trace it back to experiences in my childhood, and the knowledge
of these should enable us to conclude how far the servant’s behaviour to
me (i.e. her reproach that I had soiled the carpet) helped her to secure
the position which she occupies in the dream. Now I am actually able to
furnish the desired explanation. One learns in a psychoanalysis to inter-
pret temporal proximity by material connection; two ideas which are
apparently without connection, but which occur in immediate succession,
belong to a unity which has to be deciphered: just as an a and a b, when
written in succession, must be pronounced as one syllable, ab. It is just
the same with the interrelations of dreams. The dream of the stairs has
been taken from a series of dreams with whose other members I am
familiar, having interpreted them. A dream included in this series must
belong to the same context. Now, the other dreams of the series are based
on the memory of a nurse to whom I was entrusted for a season, from
the time when I was still at the breast to the age of two and a half, and
of whom a hazy recollection has remained in my consciousness. Accord-
 

297

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

ing to information which I recently obtained from my mother, she was old
and ugly, but very intelligent and thorough; according to the inferences
which I am justified in drawing from my dreams, she did not always treat
me quite kindly, but spoke harshly to me when I showed insufficient un-
derstanding of the necessity for cleanliness. Inasmuch as the maid en-
deavoured to continue my education in this respect, she is entitled to be
treated, in my dream, as an incarnation of the prehistoric old woman. It
is to be assumed, of course, that the child was fond of his teacher in spite
of her harsh behaviour.¹

(b) Dreams of the Death of Beloved Persons

Another series of dreams which may be called typical are those whose con-
tent is that a beloved relative, a parent, brother, sister, child, or the like,
has died. We must at once distinguish two classes of such dreams: those
in which the dreamer remains unmoved, and those in which he feels pro-
foundly grieved by the death of the beloved person, even expressing this
grief by shedding tears in his sleep.

We may ignore the dreams of the first group; they have no claim to be
reckoned as typical. If they are analysed, it is found that they signify
something that is not contained in them, that they are intended to mask
another wish of some kind. This is the case in the dream of the aunt who
sees the only son of her sister lying on a bier (p. 229). The dream does
not mean that she desires the death of her little nephew; as we have
learned, it merely conceals the wish to see a certain beloved person again
after a long separation—the same person whom she had seen after as
long an interval at the funeral of another nephew. This wish, which is
the real content of the dream, gives no cause for sorrow, and for that rea-
son no sorrow is felt in the dream. We see here that the feeling contained
in the dream does not belong to the manifest, but to the latent dream-
content, and that the affective content has remained free from the dis-
tortion which has befallen the conceptual content.

It is otherwise with those dreams in which the death of a beloved rela-
tive is imagined, and in which a painful affect is felt. These signify, as
their content tells us, the wish that the person in question might die; and
since I may here expect that the feelings of all my readers and of all who
have had such dreams will lead them to reject my explanation, I must
endeavour to rest my proof on the broadest possible basis.

We have already cited a dream from which we could see that the wishes

¹A supplementary interpretation of this dream: To spit (spucken) on the stairs,
since spuken (to haunt) is the occupation of spirits (cf. English, spook), led me by
a free translation to esprit d’escalier. “Stair-wit” means unreadiness at repartee
(Schlagfertigkeit = literally: readiness to hit out) with which I really have to re-
proach myself. But was the nurse deficient in Schlagfertigkeit?

298

represented as fulfilled in dreams are not always current wishes. They
may also be bygone, discarded, buried and repressed wishes, which we
must nevertheless credit with a sort of continued existence, merely on ac-
count of their reappen-
rance in a dream. They are not dead, like persons
who have died, in the sense that we know death, but are rather like the
shades in the Odyssey which awaken to a certain degree of life so soon as
they have drunk blood. The dream of the dead child in the box (p. 231)
contained a wish that had been present fifteen years earlier, and which
had at that time been frankly admitted as real. Further—and this, per-
haps, is not unimportant from the standpoint of the theory of dreams—
a recollec-
tion from the dreamer’s earliest childhood was at the root of this
wish also. When the dreamer was a little child—but exactly when can-
not be definitely deter-
mined—she heard that her mother, during the
pregnancy of which she was the outcome, had fallen into a profound emo-
tional depression, and had passionately wished for the death of the child
in her womb. Having herself grown up and become pregnant, she was only
following the example of her mother.

If anyone dreams that his father or mother, his brother or sister, has
died, and his dream expresses grief, I should never adduce this as proof
that he wishes any of them dead now. The theory of dreams does not go
as far as to require this; it is satisfied with concluding that the dreamer
has wished them dead at some time or other during his childhood. I fear,
however, that this limitation will not go far to appease my critics; prob-
ably they will just as energetically deny the possi-
bility that they ever
had such thoughts, as they protest that they do not harbour them now. I
must, therefore, reconstruct a portion of the submerged infantile psy-
chology on the basis of the evidence of the present.¹⁾

Let us first of all consider the relation of children to their brothers
and sisters. I do not know why we presuppose that it must be a loving one,
since examples of enmity among adult brothers and sisters are frequent
in everyone’s experience, and since we are so often able to verify the fact
that this estrangement originated during childhood, or has always existed.
Moreover, many adults who to-day are devoted to their brothers and sis-
ters, and support them in adversity, lived with them in almost continu-
ous enmity during their childhood. The elder child ill-
treated the younger,
slandered him, and robbed him of his toys; the younger was consumed
with helpless fury against the elder, envied and feared him, or his earliest
impulse toward liberty and his first revolt against injustice were directed
against his oppressor. The parents say that the children do not agree,

¹Cf. also: Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben in the Jahrbuch für psycho-
path. Forschungen, Bd. i, 1909 (Ges. Schriften, Bd. viii), and Über
infantile Sexualtheorien, in the Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre (Ges.
Schriften, Bd. v).

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THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

and cannot find the reason for it. It is not difficult to see that the charac-
ter even of a well-behaved child is not the character we should wish to
find in an adult. A child is absolutely egoistical; he feels his wants acutely,
and strives remorselessly to satisfy them, especially against his competi-
tors, other children, and first of all against his brothers and sisters. And
yet we do not on that account call a child “wicked”—we call him
“naughty”; he is not responsible for his misdeeds, either in our own judg-
ment or in the eyes of the law. And this is as it should be; for we may ex-
pect that within the very period of life which we reckon as childhood,
altruistic impulses and morality will awake in the little egoist, and that,
in the words of Meynert, a secondary ego will overlay and inhibit the
primary ego. Morality, of course, does not develop simultaneously in all
its departments, and furthermore, the duration of the amoral period of
childhood differs in different individuals. Where this morality fails to de-
velop we are prone to speak of “degeneration”; but here the case is
obviously one of arrested development. Where the primary character is
already overlaid by the later development it may be at least partially un-
covered again by an attack of hysteria. The correspondence between the
so-called hysterical character and that of a naughty child is positively
striking. The obsessional neurosis, on the other hand, corresponds to a
super-morality, which develops as a strong reinforcement against the
primary character that is threatening to revive.

Many persons, then, who now love their brothers and sisters, and who
would feel bereaved by their death, harbour in their unconscious hostile
wishes, survivals from an earlier period, wishes which are able to realize
themselves in dreams. It is, however, quite especially interesting to ob-
serve the behaviour of little children up to their third and fourth year
towards their younger brothers or sisters. So far the child has been the
only one; now he is informed that the stork has brought a new baby. The
child inspects the new arrival, and expresses his opinion with decision:
“The stork had better take it back again!”¹

I seriously declare it as my opinion that a child is able to estimate the
disadvantages which he has to expect on account of a new-comer. A con-
nection of mine, who now gets on very well with a sister, who is four years
her junior, responded to the news of this sister’s arrival with the reserva-
tion: “But I shan’t give her my red cap, anyhow.” If the child should
come to realize only at a later stage that its happiness may be prejudiced

¹Hans, whose phobia was the subject of the analysis in the above-mentioned pub-
lication, cried out at the age of three and a half, while feverish, shortly after the birth
of a sister: “But I don’t want to have a little sister.” In his neurosis, eighteen months
later, he frankly confessed the wish that his mother should drop the child into the
bath while bathing it, in order that it might die. With all this, Hans was a good-
natured, affectionate child, who soon became fond of his sister, and took her under
his special protection.

300

by a younger brother or sister, its enmity will be aroused at this period
I know of a case where a girl, not three years of age, tried to strangle an
infant in its cradle, because she suspected that its continued presence
boded her no good. Children at this time of life are capable of a jealousy
that is perfectly evident and extremely intense. Again, perhaps the little
brother or sister really soon disappears, and the child once more draws to
himself the whole affection of the household; then a new child is sent by
the stork; is it not natural that the favourite should conceive the wish that
the new rival may meet the same fate as the earlier one, in order that he
may be as happy as he was before the birth of the first child, and during
the interval after his death?¹ Of course, this attitude of the child towards
the younger brother or sister is, under normal circumstances, a mere func-
tion of the difference of age. After a certain interval the maternal instincts
of the older girl will be awakened towards the helpless new-born infant.

Feelings of hostility towards brothers and sisters must occur far more
frequently in children than is observed by their obtuse elders.²

In the case of my own children, who followed one another rapidly, I
missed the opportunity of making such observations. I am now retrieving
it, thanks to my little nephew, whose undisputed domination was dis-
turbed after fifteen months by the arrival of a feminine rival. I hear, it is
true, that the young man behaves very chivalrously toward his little sister,
that he kisses her hand and strokes her; but in spite of this I have con-
vinced myself that even before the completion of his second year he is
using his new command of language to criticize this person, who, to him,
after all, seems superfluous. Whenever the conversation turns upon her he
chimes in, and cries angrily: “Too (l)ittle, too (l)ittle!” During the last
few months, since the child has outgrown this disparagement, owing to her
splendid development, he has found another reason for his insistence that
she does not deserve so much attention. He reminds us, on every suitable
pretext: “She hasn’t any teeth.”³ We all of us recollect the case of the

¹Such cases of death in the experience of children may soon be forgotten in the
family, but psychoanalytical investigation shows that they are very significant for a
later neurosis.

²Since the above was written a great many observations relating to the originally
hostile attitude of children toward their brothers and sisters, and toward one of their
parents, have been recorded in the literature of psychoanalysis. One writer, Spitteler,
gives the following peculiarly sincere and ingenuous description of this typical child-
ish attitude as he experienced it in his earliest childhood: “Moreover, there was now
a second Adolf. A little creature whom they declared was my brother, but I could
not understand what he could be for, or why they should pretend he was a being
like myself. I was sufficient unto myself; what did I want with a brother? And he
was not only useless, he was also even troublesome. When I plagued my grandmother,
he too wanted to plague her; when I was wheeled about in the baby-carriage he sat
opposite me, and took up half the room, so that we could not help kicking one an-
other.”

³The three-and-a-half-year-old Hans embodied his devastating criticism of his little

301

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS
eldest daughter of another sister of mine. The child, who was then six
years of age, spent a full half-hour in going from one aunt to another with
the question: “Lucie can’t understand that yet, can she?” Lucie was her
rival—two and a half years younger.

I have never failed to come across this dream of the death of brothers
or sisters, denoting an intense hostility, e.g. I have met it in all my female
patients. I have met with only one exception, which could easily be inter-
preted into a confirmation of the rule. Once, in the course of a sitting,
when I was explaining this state of affairs to a female patient, since it
seemed to have some bearing on the symptoms under consideration that
day, she answered, to my astonishment, that she had never had such
dreams. But another dream occurred to her, which presumably had noth-
ing to do with the case—a dream which she had first dreamed at the age
of four, when she was the youngest child, and had since then dreamed
repeatedly. “A number of children, all her brothers and sisters with her
boy and girl cousins, were romping about in a meadow. Suddenly they all
grew wings, flew up, and were gone.” She had no idea of the significance
of this dream; but we can hardly fail to recognize it as a dream of the
death of all the brothers and sisters, in its original form, and but little
influenced by the censorship. I will venture to add the following analysis
of it: on the death of one out of this large number of children—in this
case the children of two brothers were brought up together as brothers
and sisters—would not our dreamer, at that time not yet four years of
age, have asked some wise, grown-up person: “What becomes of children
when they are dead?” The answer would probably have been: “They
grow wings and become angels.” After this explanation, all the brothers
and sisters and cousins in the dream now have wings, like angels and—
this is the important point—they fly away. Our little angel-maker is left
alone: just think, the only one out of such a crowd! That the children
romp about a meadow, from which they fly away, points almost certainly
to butterflies—it is as though the child had been influenced by the same
association of ideas which led the ancients to imagine Psyche, the soul,
with the wings of a butterfly.

Perhaps some readers will now object that the inimical impulses of
children toward their brothers and sisters may perhaps be admitted, but
how does the childish character arrive at such heights of wickedness as
to desire the death of a rival or a stronger playmate, as though all mis-
deeds could be atoned for only by death? Those who speak in this fashion
forget that the child’s idea of “being dead” has little but the word in com-
mon with our own. The child knows nothing of the horrors of decay, of

sister in these identical words (loc. cit.). He assumed that she was unable to speak
on account of her lack of teeth.

302

shivering in the cold grave, of the terror of the infinite Nothing, the
thought of which the adult, as all the myths of the hereafter testify, finds
so intolerable. The fear of death is alien to the child; and so he plays with
the horrid word, and threatens another child: “If you do that again, you
will die, just like Francis died;” at which the poor mother shudders, un-
able perhaps to forget that the greater proportion of mortals do not sur-
vive beyond the years of childhood. Even at the age of eight, a child re-
turning from a visit to a natural history museum may say to her mother:
“Mamma, I do love you so; if you ever die, I am going to have you stuffed
and set you up here in the room, so that I can always, always see you!”
So different from our own is the childish conception of being dead.¹

Being dead means, for the child, who has been spared the sight of the
suffering that precedes death, much the same as “being gone,” and ceas-
ing to annoy the survivors. The child does not distinguish the means by
which this absence is brought about, whether by distance, or estrange-
ment, or death.² If, during the child’s prehistoric years, a nurse has been
dismissed, and if his mother dies a little while later, the two experiences,
as we discover by analysis, form links of a chain in his memory. The fact
that the child does not very intensely miss those who are absent has been
realized, to her sorrow, by many a mother, when she has returned home
from an absence of several weeks, and has been told, upon inquiry: “The
children have not asked for their mother once.” But if she really departs
to “that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns,”
the children seem at first to have forgotten her, and only subsequently do
they begin to remember their dead mother.

While, therefore, the child has its motives for desiring the absence of
another child, it is lacking in all those restraints which would prevent it
from clothing this wish in the form of a death-wish; and the psychic re-
action to dreams of a death-wish proves that, in spite of all the differences
of content, the wish in the case of the child is after all identical with the
corresponding wish in an adult.

¹To my astonishment, I was told that a highly intelligent boy of ten, after the sud-
den death of his father, said: “I understand that father is dead, but I can’t see why
he does not come home to supper.” Further material relating to this subject will be
found in the section Kinderseele, edited by Frau Dr. von Hug-Hellmuth, in Imago
Bd. i–v, 1912–18.

²The observation of a father trained in psychoanalysis was able to detect the very
moment when his very intelligent little daughter, aged four, realized the difference
between “being away” and “being dead.” The child was being troublesome at table,
and noted that one of the waitresses in the pension was looking at her with an ex-
pression of annoyance. “Josephine ought to be dead,” she thereupon remarked to her
father. “But why dead?” asked the father, soothingly. “Wouldn’t it be enough if
she went away?” “No,” replied the child, “then she would come back again.” To
the uncurbed self-love (narcissism) of the child every inconvenience constitutes the
crime of lèse majesté, and, as in the Draconian code, the child’s feelings prescribe for
all such crimes the one invariable punishment.

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If, then, the death-wish of a child in respect of his brothers and sisters
is explained by his childish egoism, which makes him regard his brothers
and sisters as rivals, how are we to account for the same wish in respect of
his parents, who bestow their love on him, and satisfy his needs, and
whose preservation he ought to desire for these very egoistical reasons?

Towards a solution of this difficulty we may be guided by our knowl-
edge that the very great majority of dreams of the death of a parent refer
to the parent of the same sex as the dreamer, so that a man generally
dreams of the death of his father, and a woman of the death of her
mother. I do not claim that this happens constantly; but that it happens
in a great majority of cases is so evident that it requires explanation by
some factor of general significance.¹ Broadly speaking, it is as though a
sexual preference made itself felt at an early age, as though the boy re-
garded his father, and the girl her mother, as a rival in love—by whose
removal he or she could but profit.

Before rejecting this idea as monstrous, let the reader again consider
the actual relations between parents and children. We must distinguish
between the traditional standard of conduct, the filial piety expected in
this relation, and what daily observation shows us to be the fact. More
than one occasion for enmity lies hidden amidst the relations of parents
and children; conditions are present in the greatest abundance under
which wishes which cannot pass the censorship are bound to arise. Let us
first consider the relation between father and son. In my opinion the sanc-
tity with which we have endorsed the injunctions of the Decalogue dulls
our perception of the reality. Perhaps we hardly dare permit ourselves to
perceive that the greater part of humanity neglects to obey the fifth com-
mandment. In the lowest as well as in the highest strata of human society,
filial piety towards parents is wont to recede before other interests. The
obscure legends which have been handed down to us from the primeval
ages of human society in mythology and folklore give a deplorable idea
of the despotic power of the father, and the ruthlessness with which it was
exercised. Kronos devours his children, as the wild boar devours the litter
of the sow; Zeus emasculates his father ² and takes his place as ruler. The
more tyrannically the father ruled in the ancient family, the more surely
must the son, as his appointed successor, have assumed the position of an
enemy, and the greater must have been his impatience to attain to suprem-
acy through the death of his father. Even in our own middle-class families

¹The situation is frequently disguised by the intervention of a tendency to punish-
ment, which, in the form of a moral reaction, threatens the loss of the beloved parent.

²At least in some of the mythological accounts. According to others, emasculation
was inflicted only by Kronos on his father Uranos.

With regard to the mythological significance of this motive, cf. Otto Rank’s Der
Mythus von der Geburt des Helden, in Heft v of Schriften zur angew. Seelenkunde,
1909, and Das Inzestmotiv in Dichtung und Sage, 1912, chap. ix, 2.

304

the father commonly fosters the growth of the germ of hatred which is
naturally inherent in the paternal relation, by refusing to allow the son
to be a free agent or by denying him the means of becoming so. A physi-
cian often has occasion to remark that a son’s grief at the loss of his father
cannot quench his gratification that he has at last obtained his freedom.
Fathers, as a rule, cling desperately to as much of the sadly antiquated
potestas patris familias as still survives in our modern society, and the
poet who, like Ibsen, puts the immemorial strife between father and son
in the foreground of his drama is sure of his effect. The causes of conflict
between mother and daughter arise when the daughter grows up and finds
herself watched by her mother when she longs for real sexual freedom,
while the mother is reminded by the budding beauty of her daughter that
for her the time has come to renounce sexual claims.

All these circumstances are obvious to everyone, but they do not help
us to explain dreams of the death of their parents in persons for whom
filial piety has long since come to be unquestionable. We are, however,
prepared by the foregoing discussion to look for the origin of a death-wish
in the earliest years of childhood.

In the case of psychoneurotics, analysis confirms this conjecture be-
yond all doubt. For analysis tells us that the sexual wishes of the child—
in so far as they deserve this designation in their nascent state—awaken
at a very early age, and that the earliest affection of the girl-child is lav-
ished on the father, while the earliest infantile desires of the boy are di-
rected upon the mother. For the boy the father, and for the girl the
mother, becomes an obnoxious rival, and we have already shown, in the
case of brothers and sisters, how readily in children this feeling leads to
the death-wish. As a general rule, sexual selection soon makes its appear-
ance in the parents; it is a natural tendency for the father to spoil his lit-
tle daughters, and for the mother to take the part of the sons, while both,
so long as the glamour of sex does not prejudice their judgment, are strict
in training the children. The child is perfectly conscious of this partiality,
and offers resistance to the parent who opposes it. To find love in an adult
is for the child not merely the satisfaction of a special need; it means
also that the child’s will is indulged in all other respects. Thus the child is
obeying its own sexual instinct, and at the same time reinforcing the
stimulus proceeding from the parents, when its choice between the parents
corresponds with their own.

The signs of these infantile tendencies are for the most part over-
looked; and yet some of them may be observed even after the early years
of childhood. An eight-year-old girl of my acquaintance, whenever her
mother is called away from the table, takes advantage of her absence to
proclaim herself her successor. “Now I shall be Mamma; Karl, do you
want some more vegetables? Have some more, do,” etc. A particularly

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clever and lively little girl, not yet four years of age, in whom this trait
of child psychology is unusually transparent, says frankly: “Now mummy
can go away; then daddy must marry me, and I will be his wife.” Nor
does this wish by any means exclude the possibility that the child may
most tenderly love its mother. If the little boy is allowed to sleep at his
mother’s side whenever his father goes on a journey, and if after his
father’s return he has to go back to the nursery, to a person whom he likes
far less, the wish may readily arise that his father might always be absent,
so that he might keep his place beside his dear, beautiful mamma; and the
father’s death is obviously a means for the attainment of this wish; for
the child’s experience has taught him that “dead” folks, like grandpapa,
for example, are always absent; they never come back.

While such observations of young children readily accommodate them-
selves to the interpretation suggested, they do not, it is true, carry the
complete conviction which is forced upon a physician by the psycho-
analysis of adult neurotics. The dreams of neurotic patients are com-
municated with preliminaries of such a nature that their interpretation as
wish-dreams becomes inevitable. One day I find a lady depressed and
weeping. She says: “I do not want to see my relatives any more; they
must shudder at me.” Thereupon, almost without any transition, she tells
me that she has remembered a dream, whose significance, of course, she
does not understand. She dreamed it when she was four years old, and it
was this: A fox or a lynx is walking about the roof; then something falls
down, or she falls down, and after that, her mother is carried out of the
house—dead; whereat the dreamer weeps bitterly. I have no sooner in-
formed her that this dream must signify a childish wish to see her mother
dead, and that it is because of this dream that she thinks that her rela-
tives must shudder at her, than she furnishes material in explanation of
the dream. “Lynx-eye” is an opprobrious epithet which a street boy once
bestowed on her when she was a very small child; and when she was three
years old a brick or tile fell on her mother’s head, so that she bled pro-
fusely.

I once had occasion to make a thorough study of a young girl who was
passing through various psychic states. In the state of frenzied confusion
with which her illness began, the patient manifested a quite peculiar aver-
sion for her mother; she struck her and abused her whenever she ap-
proached the bed, while at the same period she was affectionate and sub-
missive to a much older sister. Then there followed a lucid but rather
apathetic condition, with badly disturbed sleep. It was in this phase that
I began to treat her and to analyse her dreams. An enormous number of
these dealt, in a more or less veiled fashion, with the death of the girl’s
mother; now she was present at the funeral of an old woman, now she saw
herself and her sister sitting at a table, dressed in mourning; the mean-

306

ing of the dreams could not be doubted. During her progressive improve-
ment hysterical phobias made their appearance, the most distressing of
which was the fear that something had happened to her mother. Wher-
ever she might be at the time, she had then to hurry home in order to con-
vince herself that her mother was still alive. Now this case, considered in
conjunction with the rest of my experience, was very instructive; it
showed, in polyglot translations, as it were, the different ways in which
the psychic apparatus reacts to the same exciting idea. In the state of con-
fusion, which I regard as an overthrow of the second psychic instance by
the first instance, at other times suppressed, the unconscious enmity
towards the mother gained the upper hand, and found physical expres-
sion; then, when the patient became calmer, the insurrection was sup-
pressed, and the domination of the censorship restored, and this enmity
had access only to the realms of dreams, in which it realized the wish that
the mother might die; and after the normal condition had been still
further strengthened it created the excessive concern for the mother as a
hysterical counter-reaction and defensive phenomenon. In the light of
these considerations, it is no longer inexplicable why hysterical girls are
so often extravagantly attached to their mothers.

On another occasion I had an opportunity of obtaining a profound in-
sight into the unconscious psychic life of a young man for whom an ob-
sessional neurosis made life almost unendurable, so that he could not go
into the streets, because he was tormented by the fear that he would kill
everyone he met. He spent his days in contriving evidence of an alibi in
case he should be accused of any murder that might have been com-
mitted in the city. It goes without saying that this man was as moral as
he was highly cultured. The analysis—which, by the way, led to a cure—
revealed, as the basis of this distressing obsession, murderous impulses
in respect of his rather overstrict father—impulses which, to his astonish-
ment, had consciously expressed themselves when he was seven years old,
but which, of course, had originated in a much earlier period of his child-
hood. After the painful illness and death of his father, when the young
man was in his thirty-first year, the obsessive reproach made its appear-
ance, which transferred itself to strangers in the form of this phobia. Any-
one capable of wishing to push his own father from a mountain-top into
an abyss cannot be trusted to spare the lives of persons less closely re-
lated to him; he therefore does well to lock himself into his room.

According to my already extensive experience, parents play a leading
part in the infantile psychology of all persons who subsequently become
psychoneurotics. Falling in love with one parent and hating the other
forms part of the permanent stock of the psychic impulses which arise in
early childhood, and are of such importance as the material of the subse-
quent neurosis. But I do not believe that psychoneurotics are to be

307

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

sharply distinguished in this respect from other persons who remain nor-
mal—that is, I do not believe that they are capable of creating something
absolutely new and peculiar to themselves. It is far more probable—and
this is confirmed by incidental observations of normal children—that in
their amorous or hostile attitude toward their parents, psychoneurotics
do no more than reveal to us, by magnification, something that occurs less
markedly and intensively in the minds of the majority of children. An-
tiquity has furnished us with legendary matter which corroborates this
belief, and the profound and universal validity of the old legends is ex-
plicable only by an equally universal validity of the above-mentioned
hypothesis of infantile psychology.

I am referring to the legend of King Oedipus and the Oedipus Rex of
Sophocles. Oedipus, the son of Laius, king of Thebes, and Jocasta, is ex-
posed as a suckling, because an oracle had informed the father that his
son, who was still unborn, would be his murderer. He is rescued, and grows
up as a king’s son at a foreign court, until, being uncertain of his origin,
he, too, consults the oracle, and is warned to avoid his native place, for he
is destined to become the murderer of his father and the husband of his
mother. On the road leading away from his supposed home he meets King
Laius, and in a sudden quarrel strikes him dead. He comes to Thebes,
where he solves the riddle of the Sphinx, who is barring the way to the
city, whereupon he is elected king by the grateful Thebans, and is re-
warded with the hand of Jocasta. He reigns for many years in peace and
honour, and begets two sons and two daughters upon his unknown mother,
until at last a plague breaks out—which causes the Thebans to consult
the oracle anew. Here Sophocles’ tragedy begins. The messengers bring
the reply that the plague will stop as soon as the murderer of Laius is
driven from the country. But where is he?

“Where shall be found,
Faint, and hard to be known, the trace of the ancient guilt?”

The action of the play consists simply in the disclosure, approached
step by step and artistically delayed (and comparable to the work of a
psychoanalysis) that Oedipus himself is the murderer of Laius, and that
he is the son of the murdered man and Jocasta. Shocked by the abominable
crime which he has unwittingly committed, Oedipus blinds himself, and
departs from his native city. The prophecy of the oracle has been fulfilled.
The Oedipus Rex is a tragedy of fate; its tragic effect depends on the
conflict between the all-powerful will of the gods and the vain efforts of
human beings threatened with disaster; resignation to the divine will, and
the perception of one’s own impotence is the lesson which the deeply
moved spectator is supposed to learn from the tragedy. Modern authors
have therefore sought to achieve a similar tragic effect by expressing the

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same conflict in stories of their own invention. But the playgoers have
looked on unmoved at the unavailing efforts of guiltless men to avert the
fulfilment of curse or oracle; the modern tragedies of destiny have failed
of their effect.

If the Oedipus Rex is capable of moving a modern reader or playgoer
no less powerfully than it moved the contemporary Greeks, the only pos-
sible explanation is that the effect of the Greek tragedy does not depend
upon the conflict between fate and human will, but upon the peculiar
nature of the material by which this conflict is revealed. There must be a
voice within us which is prepared to acknowledge the compelling power
of fate in the Oedipus, while we are able to condemn the situations occur-
ring in Die Ahnfrau or other tragedies of fate as arbitrary inventions.
And there actually is a motive in the story of King Oedipus which explains
the verdict of this inner voice. His fate moves us only because it might
have been our own, because the oracle laid upon us before our birth the
very curse which rested upon him. It may be that we were all destined to
direct our first sexual impulses toward our mothers, and our first impulses
of hatred and violence toward our fathers; our dreams convince us that
we were. King Oedipus, who slew his father Laius and wedded his mother
Jocasta, is nothing more or less than a wish-fulfilment—the fulfilment of
the wish of our childhood. But we, more fortunate than he, in so far as we
have not become psychoneurotics, have since our childhood succeeded in
withdrawing our sexual impulses from our mothers, and in forgetting our
jealousy of our fathers. We recoil from the person for whom this primi-
tive wish of our childhood has been fulfilled with all the force of the re-
pression which these wishes have undergone in our minds since child-
hood. As the poet brings the guilt of Oedipus to light by his investigation,
he forces us to become aware of our own inner selves, in which the same
impulses are still extant, even though they are suppressed. The antithesis
with which the chorus departs:—

“. . . Behold, this is Oedipus,
Who unravelled the great riddle, and was first in power,
Whose fortune all the townsmen praised and envied;
See in what dread adversity he sank!”

—this admonition touches us and our own pride, us who since the years
of our childhood have grown so wise and so powerful in our own estima-
tion. Like Oedipus, we live in ignorance of the desires that offend mo-
rality, the desires that nature has forced upon us and after their unveiling
we may well prefer to avert our gaze from the scenes of our childhood.¹

¹None of the discoveries of psychoanalytical research has evoked such embittered
contradiction, such furious opposition, and also such entertaining acrobatics of criti-
cism, as this indication of the incestuous impulses of childhood which survive in the

309

In the very text of Sophocles’ tragedy there is an unmistakable refer-
ence to the fact that the Oedipus legend had its source in dream-material
of immemorial antiquity, the content of which was the painful disturb-
ance of the child’s relations to its parents caused by the first impulses of
sexuality. Jocasta comforts Oedipus—who is not yet enlightened, but is
troubled by the recollection of the oracle—by an allusion to a dream
which is often dreamed, though it cannot, in her opinion, mean any-
thing:—

“For many a man hath seen himself in dreams
His mother’s mate, but he who gives no heed
To suchlike matters bears the easier life.”

The dream of having sexual intercourse with one’s mother was as com-
mon then as it is to-day with many people, who tell it with indignation and
astonishment. As may well be imagined, it is the key to the tragedy and
the complement to the dream of the death of the father. The Oedipus
fable is the reaction of fantasy to these two typical dreams, and just as
such a dream, when occurring to an adult, is experienced with feelings of
aversion, so the content of the fable must include terror and self-chastise-
ment. The form which it subsequently assumed was the result of an un-
comprehending secondary elaboration of the material, which sought to
make it serve a theological intention.¹ The attempt to reconcile divine
omnipotence with human responsibility must, of course, fail with this
material as with any other.

Another of the great poetic tragedies, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is rooted
in the same soil as Oedipus Rex. But the whole difference in the psychic
life of the two widely separated periods of civilization, and the progress,
during the course of time, of repression in the emotional life of humanity,
is manifested in the differing treatment of the same material. In Oedipus
Rex the basic wish-phantasy of the child is brought to light and realized
as it is in dreams; in Hamlet it remains repressed, and we learn of its
existence—as we discover the relevant facts in a neurosis—only through
the inhibitory effects which proceed from it. In the more modern drama,
the curious fact that it is possible to remain in complete uncertainty as to
the character of the hero has proved to be quite consistent with the over-
powering effect of the tragedy. The play is based upon Hamlet’s hesita-
tion.

unconscious. An attempt has even been made recently, in defiance of all experience,
to assign only a “symbolic” significance to incest. Ferenczi has given an ingenious re-
interpretation of the Oedipus myth, based on a passage in one of Schopenhauer’s
letters, in Imago, i, 1912. The “Oedipus complex,” which was first alluded to here
in The Interpretation of Dreams, has through further study of the subject, acquired
an unexpected significance for the understanding of human history and the evolu-
tion of religion and morality. See Totem und Taboo.

¹Cf. the dream-material of exhibitionism, p. 294–5.

310

tion in accomplishing the task of revenge assigned to him; the text does
not give the cause or the motive of this hesitation, nor have the manifold
attempts at interpretation succeeded in doing so. According to the still
prevailing conception, a conception for which Goethe was first responsible,
Hamlet represents the type of man whose active energy is paralysed by
excessive intellectual activity: “Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of
thought.” According to another conception, the poet has endeavoured to
portray a morbid, irresolute character, on the verge of neurasthenia. The
plot of the drama, however, shows us that Hamlet is by no means intended
to appear as a character wholly incapable of action. On two separate oc-
casions we see him assert himself: once in a sudden outburst of rage, when
he stabs the eavesdropper behind the arras, and on the other occasion
when he deliberately, and even craftily, with the complete unscrupulous-
ness of a prince of the Renaissance, sends the two courtiers to the death
which was intended for himself. What is it, then, that inhibits him in ac- complishing the task which his father’s ghost has laid upon him? Here
the explanation offers itself that it is the peculiar nature of this task.
Hamlet is able to do anything but take vengeance upon the man who did
away with his father and has taken his father’s place with his mother—
the man who shows him in realization the repressed desires of his own
childhood. The loathing which should have driven him to revenge is thus
replaced by self-reproach, by conscientious scruples, which tell him that
he himself is no better than the murderer whom he is required to punish.
I have here translated into consciousness what had to remain unconscious
in the mind of the hero; if anyone wishes to call Hamlet an hysterical
subject I cannot but admit that this is the deduction to be drawn from
my interpretation. The sexual aversion which Hamlet expresses in con- versation with Ophelia is perfectly consistent with this deduction—the
same sexual aversion which during the next few years was increasingly to
take possession of the poet’s soul, until it found its supreme utterance in
Timon of Athens. It can, of course, be only the poet’s own psychology
with which we are confronted in Hamlet; and in a work on Shakespeare
by Georg Brandes (1896) I find the statement that the drama was com- posed immediately after the death of Shakespeare’s father (1601)—that
is to say, when he was still mourning his loss, and during a revival, as we
may fairly assume, of his own childish feelings in respect of his father. It
is known, too, that Shakespeare’s son, who died in childhood, bore the
name of Hamnet (identical with Hamlet). Just as Hamlet treats of the
relation of the son to his parents, so Macbeth, which was written about
the same period, is based upon the theme of childlessness. Just as all neu- rotic symptoms, like dreams themselves, are capable of hyper-interpreta- tion, and even require such hyper-interpretation before they become per- fectly intelligible, so every genuine poetical creation must have proceeded

311

from more than one motive, more than one impulse in the mind of the
poet, and must admit of more than one interpretation. I have here at-
tempted to interpret only the deepest stratum of impulses in the mind of
the creative poet.¹

With regard to typical dreams of the death of relatives, I must add a
few words upon their significance from the point of view of the theory of
dreams in general. These dreams show us the occurrence of a very unus-
ual state of things; they show us that the dream-thought created by the
repressed wish completely escapes the censorship, and is transferred to
the dream without alteration. Special conditions must obtain in order to
make this possible. The following two factors favour the production of
these dreams: first, this is the last wish that we could credit ourselves with
harbouring; we believe such a wish “would never occur to us even in a
dream”; the dream-censorship is therefore unprepared for this monstros-
ity, just as the laws of Solon did not foresee the necessity of establishing
a penalty for patricide. Secondly, the repressed and unsuspected wish is,
in this special case, frequently met half-way by a residue from the day’s
experience, in the form of some concern for the life of the beloved per-
son. This anxiety cannot enter into the dream otherwise than by taking
advantage of the corresponding wish; but the wish is able to mask itself
behind the concern which has been aroused during the day. If one is in-
clined to think that all this is really a very much simpler process, and to
imagine that one merely continues during the night, and in one’s dream,
what was begun during the day, one removes the dreams of the death of
those dear to us out of all connection with the general explanation of
dreams, and a problem that may very well be solved remains a problem
needlessly.

It is instructive to trace the relation of these dreams to anxiety-dreams.
In dreams of the death of those dear to us the repressed wish has found a
way of avoiding the censorship—and the distortion for which the censor-
ship is responsible. An invariable concomitant phenomenon, then, is that
painful emotions are felt in the dream. Similarly, an anxiety-dream oc-
curs only when the censorship is entirely or partially overpowered, and
on the other hand, the overpowering of the censorship is facilitated when

¹These indications in the direction of an analytical understanding of Hamlet were
subsequently developed by Dr. Ernest Jones, who defended the above conception
against others which have been put forward in the literature of the subject ( The
Problem of Hamlet and the Oedipus Complex, 1911). The relation of the material
of Hamlet to the “myth of the birth of the hero” has been demonstrated by O. Rank.
Further attempts at an analysis of Macbeth will be found in my essay on Einige
Charaktertypen, aus der psychoanalytischen Arbeit, in Imago, IV, 1916 (Ges. Schrif-
ten, Bd. X); in L. Jekels’s Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in Imago, V, 1918; and in The
Oedipus Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet’s Mystery: a Study in Motive
(American Journal of Psychology, 1910, vol. XXI).

312

the actual sensation of anxiety is already present from somatic sources. It
thus becomes obvious for what purpose the censorship performs its office
and practises dream-
distortion; it does so in order to prevent the develop-
ment of anxiety or other forms of painful affect.

I have spoken in the foregoing sections of the egoism of the child’s psyche,
and I now emphasize this peculiarity in order to suggest a connection,
for dreams too have retained this characteristic. All dreams are absolutely
egoistical; in every dream the beloved ego appears, even though in a dis-
guised form. The wishes that are realized in dreams are invariably the
wishes of this ego; it is only a deceptive appearance if interest in another
person is believed to have evoked a dream. I will now analyse a few ex-
amples which appear to contradict this assertion.

I

A boy not yet four years of age relates the following dream: He saw a
large garnished dish, on which was a large joint of roast meat; and the
joint was suddenly—not carved—but eaten up. He did not see the person
who ate it.¹

Who can he be, this strange person, of whose luxurious repast the little
fellow dreams? The experience of the day must supply the answer. For
some days past the boy, in accordance with the doctor’s orders, had been
living on a milk diet; but on the evening of the “dream-
day” he had been
naughty, and, as a punishment, had been deprived of his supper. He had
already undergone one such hunger-
cure, and had borne his deprivation
bravely. He knew that he would get nothing, but he did not even allude
to the fact that he was hungry. Training was beginning to produce its
effect; this is demonstrated even by the dream, which reveals the begin-
nings of dream-
distortion. There is no doubt that he himself is the per-
son whose desires are directed toward this abundant meal, and a meal of
roast meat at that. But since he knows that this is forbidden him, he does
not dare, as hungry children do in dreams (cf. my little Anna’s dream
about strawberries, p. 214), to sit down to the meal himself. The person
remains anonymous.

¹Even the large, over-
abundant, immoderate and exaggerated things occurring in
dreams may be a childish characteristic. A child wants nothing more intensely than
to grow big, and to eat as much of everything as grown-
ups do; a child is hard to
satisfy; he knows no such word as “enough,” and insatiably demands the repetition
of whatever has pleased him or tasted good to him. He learns to practise moderation,
to be modest and resigned, only through training. As we know, the neurotic also is
inclined to immoderation and excess.

313

II

One night I dream that I see on a bookseller’s counter a new volume of
one of those collectors’ series, which I am in the habit of buying (mono-
graphs on artistic subjects, history, famous artistic centres, etc.). The
new collection is entitled “Famous Orators” (or Orations), and the first
number bears the name of Dr. Lecher.

On analysis it seems to me improbable that the fame of Dr. Lecher, the
long-winded speaker of the German Opposition, should occupy my
thoughts while I am dreaming. The fact is that a few days ago I under-
took the psychological treatment of some new patients, and am now forced
to talk for ten to twelve hours a day. Thus I myself am a long-winded
speaker.

III

On another occasion I dream that a university lecturer of my acquaint-
ance says to me: “My son, the myopic.” Then follows a dialogue of brief
observations and replies. A third portion of the dream follows, in which
I and my sons appear, and so far as the latent dream-content is con-
cerned, the father, the son, and Professor M., are merely lay figures,
representing myself and my eldest son. Later on I shall examine this
dream again, on account of another peculiarity.

IV

The following dream gives an example of really base, egoistical feelings,
which conceal themselves behind an affectionate concern:

My friend Otto looks ill; his face is brown and his eyes protrude.

Otto is my family physician, to whom I owe a debt greater than I can
ever hope to repay, since he has watched for years over the health of my
children, has treated them successfully when they have been ill, and,
moreover, has given them presents whenever he could find any excuse for
doing so. He paid us a visit on the day of the dream, and my wife no-
ticed that he looked tired and exhausted. At night I dream of him, and
my dream attributes to him certain of the symptoms of Basedow’s disease.
If you were to disregard my rules for dream-
interpretation you would
understand this dream to mean that I am concerned about the health of
my friend, and that this concern is realized in the dream. It would thus
constitute a contradiction not only of the assertion that a dream is a
wish-
fulfilment, but also of the assertion that it is accessible only to
egoistical impulses. But will those who thus interpret my dream explain
why I should fear that Otto has Basedow’s disease, for which diagnosis
his appearance does not afford the slightest justification? My analysis, on
the other hand, furnishes the following material, deriving from an inci-
 

314

lent which had occurred six years earlier. We were driving—a small party
of us, including Professor R.—in the dark through the forest of N., which
lies at a distance of some hours from where we were staying in the coun-
try. The driver, who was not quite sober, overthrew us and the carriage
down a bank, and it was only by good fortune that we all escaped un-
hurt. But we were forced to spend the night at the nearest inn, where the
news of our mishap aroused great sympathy. A certain gentleman, who
showed unmistakable symptoms of morbus Basedowii—the brownish
colour of the skin of the face and the protruding eyes, but no goitre—
placed himself entirely at our disposal, and asked what he could do for
us. Professor R. answered in his decisive way, “Nothing, except lend me
a nightshirt.” Whereupon our generous friend replied: “I am sorry, but
I cannot do that,” and left us.

In continuing the analysis, it occurs to me that Basedow is the name
not only of a physician, but also of a famous pedagogue. (Now that I am
wide awake, I do not feel quite sure of this fact.) My friend Otto is the
person whom I have asked to take charge of the physical education of my
children—especially during the age of puberty (hence the nightshirt) in
case anything should happen to me. By seeing Otto in my dream with the
morbid symptoms of our above-mentioned generous helper, I clearly mean
to say: “If anything happens to me, he will do just as little for my chil-
dren as Baron L. did for us, in spite of his amiable offers.” The egoistical
flavour of this dream should now be obvious enough.¹⁾

But where is the wish-fulfilment to be found in this? Not in the
vengeance wreaked on my friend Otto (who seems to be fated to be badly
treated in my dreams), but in the following circumstance: Inasmuch as
in my dream I represented Otto as Baron L., I likewise identified myself
with another person, namely, with Professor R.; for I have asked some
thing of Otto, just as R. asked something of Baron L. at the time of the
incident I have described. And this is the point. For Professor R. has
gone his way independently, outside academic circles, just as I myself
have done, and has only in his later years received the title which he had

¹⁾While Dr. Ernest Jones was delivering a lecture before an American scientific so-
ciety, and was speaking of egoism in dreams, a learned lady took exception to this
unscientific generalization. She thought the lecturer was entitled to pronounce such
a verdict only on the dreams of Austrians, but had no right to include the dreams of
Americans. As for herself, she was sure that all her dreams were strictly altruistic.
In justice to this lady with her national pride it may, however, be remarked that
the dogma: “the dream is wholly egoistic” must not be misunderstood. For inasmuch
as everything that occurs in preconscious thinking may appear in dreams (in the
content as well as the latent dream-thoughts) the altruistic feelings may possibly
occur. Similarly, affectionate or amorous feelings for another person, if they exist in
the unconscious, may occur in dreams. The truth of the assertion is therefore re-
stricted to the fact that among the unconscious stimuli of dreams one very often finds
egoistical tendencies which seem to have been overcome in the waking state.

315

earned long before. Once more, then, I want to be a professor! The very
phrase “in his later years” is a wish-
fulfilment, for it means that I shall
live long enough to steer my boys through the age of puberty myself.

Of other typical dreams, in which one flies with a feeling of ease or falls in
terror, I know nothing from my own experience, and whatever I have to
say about them I owe to my psycho-
analyses. From the information thus
obtained one must conclude that these dreams also reproduce impres-
sions made in childhood—that is, that they refer to the games involving
rapid motion 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 in-
satiably demand a repetition of the performance, especially if a little
fright and dizziness are involved in the game; 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
if they see gymnastic performances at the circus their recollection of
such games is refreshed. In some boys a hysterical attack will consist
simply in the reproduction of such performances, which they accomplish
with great dexterity. Not infrequently sexual sensations are excited by
these games of movement, which are quite neutral in themselves.²⁾ To ex-
press the matter in a few words: the ‘exciting’ games of childhood are
repeated in dreams of flying, falling, reeling and the like, but the volup-
tuous feelings are now transformed into anxiety. But, as every mother
knows, the excited play of children often enough culminates in quarrelling
and tears.

I have therefore good reason for rejecting the explanation that it is the
state of our dermal sensations during sleep, the sensation of the move-
ment

¹⁾ Psychoanalytic investigation has enabled us to conclude that in the predilection
shown by children for gymnastic performances, and in the repetition of these in
hysterical attacks, there is, besides the pleasure felt in the organ, yet another factor
at work (often unconscious): namely, a memory-
picture of sexual intercourse ob-
served in human beings or animals.

²⁾ A young colleague, who is entirely free from nervousness, tells me, in this connec-
tion: “I know from my own experience that while swinging, and at the moment at
which the downward movement was at its maximum, I used to have a curious feel-
ing in my genitals, which, although it was not really pleasing to me, I must describe
as a voluptuous feeling.” I have often heard from patients that the first erections
with voluptuous sensations which they can remember to have had in boyhood oc-
curred while they were climbing. It is established with complete certainty by psycho-
analysis that the first sexual sensations often have their origin in the scufflings and
wrestlings of childhood.

316

ments of the lungs, etc., that evokes dreams of flying and falling. I see that
these very sensations have been reproduced from the memory to which
the dream refers—and that they are, therefore, dream-content and not
dream-sources.

I do not for a moment deny, however, that I am unable to furnish a full
explanation of this series of typical dreams. Precisely here my material
leaves me in the lurch. I must adhere to the general opinion that all the
dermal and kinetic sensations of these typical dreams are awakened as
soon as any psychic motive of whatever kind has need of them, and that
they are neglected when there is no such need of them. The relation to
infantile experiences seems to be confirmed by the indications which I
have obtained from the analyses of psychoneurotics. But I am unable to
say what other meanings might, in the course of the dreamer’s life, have
become attached to the memory of these sensations—different, perhaps,
in each individual, despite the typical appearance of these dreams—and
I should very much like to be in a position to fill this gap with careful
analyses of good examples. To those who wonder why I complain of a
lack of material, despite the frequency of these dreams of flying, falling,
tooth-drawing, etc., I must explain that I myself have never experienced
any such dreams since I have turned my attention to the subject of dream-
interpretation. The dreams of neurotics which are at my disposal, how-
ever, are not all capable of interpretation, and very often it is impossible
to penetrate to the farthest point of their hidden intention; a certain
psychic force which participated in the building up of the neurosis, and
which again becomes active during its dissolution, opposes interpretation
of the final problem.

(c) The Examination-Dream

Everyone who has received his certificate of matriculation after passing
his final examination at school complains of the persistence with which
he is plagued by anxiety-dreams in which he has failed, or must go
through his course again, etc. For the holder of a university degree this
typical dream is replaced by another, which represents that he has not
taken his doctor’s degree, to which he vainly objects, while still asleep,
that he has already been practising for years, or is already a university
lecturer or the senior partner of a firm of lawyers, and so on. These are
the ineradicable memories of the punishments we suffered as children for
misdeeds which we had committed—memories which were revived in us
on the dies irae, dies illa of the gruelling examination at the two critical
junctures in our careers as students. The “examination-anxiety” of neu-
rotics is likewise intensified by this childish fear. When our student days
are over: it is no longer our parents or teachers who see to our punish-

311

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

ment; the inexorable chain of cause and effect of later life has taken over
our further education. Now we dream of our matriculation, or the ex-
amination for the doctor’s degree—and who has not been faint-hearted on
such occasions?—whenever we fear that we may be punished by some
unpleasant result because we have done something carelessly or wrongly,
because we have not been as thorough as we might have been—in short,
whenever we feel the burden of responsibility.

For a further explanation of examination-dreams I have to thank a re-
mark made by a colleague who had studied this subject, who once stated,
in the course of a scientific discussion, that in his experience the examina-
tion-dream occurred only to persons who had passed the examination,
never to those who had flunked.” We have had increasing confirma-
tion of the fact that the anxiety-dream of examination occurs when
the dreamer is anticipating a responsible task on the following day, with
the possibility of disgrace; recourse will then be had to an occasion in the
past on which a great anxiety proved to have been without real justifica-
tion, having, indeed, been refuted by the outcome. Such a dream would
be a very striking example of the way in which the dream-content is
misunderstood by the waking instance. The exclamation which is re-
garded as a protest against the dream: “But I am already a doctor,” etc.,
would in reality be the consolation offered by the dream, and should,
therefore, be worded as follows: “Do not be afraid of the morrow; think
of the anxiety which you felt before your matriculation; yet nothing
happened to justify it, for now you are a doctor,” etc. But the anxiety
which we attribute to the dream really has its origin in the residues of the
dream-day.

The tests of this interpretation which I have been able to make in my
own case, and in that of others, although by no means exhaustive, were
entirely in its favour.¹⁾ For example, I failed in my examination for the
doctor’s degree in medical jurisprudence; never once has the matter wor-
ried me in my dreams, while I have often enough been examined in
botany, zoology, and chemistry, and I sat for the examinations in these
subjects with well-justified anxiety, but escaped disaster, through the
clemency of fate, or of the examiner. In my dreams of school examinations
I am always examined in history, a subject in which I passed brilliantly at
the time, but only, I must admit, because my good-natured professor—
my one-eyed benefactor in another dream—did not overlook the fact that
on the examination-paper which I returned to him I had crossed out
with my fingernail the second of three questions, as a hint that he should
not insist on it. One of my patients, who withdrew before the matricula-

¹See also pp. 334–5.

318

tion examination, only to pass it later, but failed in the officer’s examina-
tion, so that he did not become an officer, tells me that he often dreams
of the former examination, but never of the latter.
W. Stekel, who was the first to interpret the “matriculation dream,”
maintains that this dream invariably refers to sexual experiences and
sexual maturity. This has frequently been confirmed in my experience.