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 interested to ascertain whether we had thereby
discovered a general characteristic of dreams, and for the time
being we put aside every other scientific problem which may
have suggested itself in the course of the interpretation. 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 interpre-
tation, to detect a latent dream-content whose significance far
surpasses that of the manifest dream-content, we are naturally
impelled to return to the individual dream-problems, in order
to see whether the riddles and contradictions 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
been given at some length in the introductory chapter. We may
recall 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 and
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 It 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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 167

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 elements 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 someone else’s,
this experience is always confirmed. Knowing this, I may per-
haps begin the work of interpretation by looking for the experi-
ence 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
difficulty, 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 remit-
tance 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 monograph 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.
tenable if indifferent memories of our childhood appear in our dreams with some

degree of frequency. We should be obliged to conclude that our dreams generally
perform their prescribed task very inadequately.

168 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

4. At S. and Rs 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.

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 2 member.

6. Aman on a steep rock rising from the sea, in the manner of Bócklin.

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 extended to include impressions from a
longer period of time in the immediate 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 investi-
gation that this impression 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-exciting 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.”

1 As I mentioned in my first chapter (р. 103), H. Swoboda has, in a general
fashion, transferred to the psychic activities the biological intervals of 23 and
28 days discovered by W. Fliess, and, in particular, he asserts that these periods
determine the emergence of the dream-elements in dreams. Dream-interpretation
would not be essentially modified if this could be proved, but there would be a
new source of dream-material. I have recently investigated some of my own

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 169

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 before the date
of the dream (250 days) (p. 227).

dreams in order to test the applicability of the “periodic doctrine” to the material
of these dreams, and I have selected for this purpose particularly striking ele-
ments of the dream-content, the date of whose occurrence in life could be definitely
ascertained :—

I. DREAM OF OCTOBER 1-2, 1910

(Fragment) . . . Somewhere in Italy. Three daughters are showing me some little objets
de vertu, as though in an antique-shop. As they do so they sit in my lap. On examining one
of these objects I remark: “Why, you got this from me!” I see distinctly a small profile
relief with the sharply-cut features of Savonarola.

When did I last see a portrait of Savonarola? According to my travel diary,
I was in Florence on September 4th and 5th, and while there it occurred to me
to show my travelling companion the medallion of the features of the fanatical
monk in the Piazza Signoria, at the very spot where he met his death at the pyre.
I believe I called his attention to it on the morning of the 5th. Between this
impression and its recurrence in the dream there was, to be sure, an interval of
27 + 1 days—a “female period,” according to Fliess. But unfortunately for the
demonstrative value of this example, I have to add that on the very day of the
dream I was visited (for the first time since my return from Italy) by the able
but mournful-looking colleague whom I had years before nicknamed "Rabbi
Savonarola.” He brought me a patient who had met with an accident on the
Pontebba railway by which I had myself travelled a week earlier, thereby re-
calling to my mind my last Italian journey. The appearance in the dream-content
of the conspicuous Savonarola element is explained by my colleague’s visit on the
day preceding the dream; the twenty-eight day interval had lost any significance
in respect of its origin.

II. DREAM ‏עס‎ OCTOBER 10-11, 1910

I am once more studying chemistry in the University laboratory. Hofrat L. invites me to
follow him, and precedes me down the corridor, carrying before him, in his uplifted hand,
a lamp or some sort of acute (ingenious?) instrument. He walks with a peculiar bearing,
stretching out his head. We then cross an open space . . . (remainder forgotten).

The most striking thing in this dream-content is the manner in which Hofrat L.
carries the lamp (or lens?) in front of him, gazing into the distance. I have not
seen L. for many years, but I realize at once that he is merely a substitute for
another and greater personage—for Archimedes beside the Arethusa fountain in

170 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

Thus the impressions of the immediate past (with the excep-
tion of the day before the night of the dream) stand 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)
to that earlier period.

Syracuse, who stands there just like L. in the dream, holding his burning mirror
and gazing towards the besieging army of the Romans. When had I first (and
last) seen this monument? According to my notes, it was on September 17th, in
the evening, and between this date and the dream there actually elapsed 13 + 10
= 23 days—according to Fliess a “male period.”

But here too, unfortunately, when we proceed to the interpretation of the
dream, this relation seems somewhat less inevitable. The dream was occasioned
by the information, received on the day of the dream, that the clinic in which
I was delivering my lectures was shortly removing to another address. I believed
that the new address was very inconveniently situated, and I told myself, “it
will really be as bad as not having any lecture-room at all at my disposal.” My
thoughts must have thereupon taken me back to the beginning of my career as
lecturer, when I actually had no lecture-room, and when in my efforts to get one
I met with very little encouragement from influential councillors and professors.
In my perplexity I appealed to L., who had just been appointed dean, and
whom I believed to be kindly disposed towards me. He promised to help me,
but that was all I ever heard of the matter. In the dream he is the Archimedes
who gives me 700 0100, and leads me to the other address. That neither the motive
of revenge nor that of self-importance is absent from the dream will readily be
divined by those familiar with dream-interpretation. I am obliged to conclude,
however, that without this occasion for the dream Archimedes would hardly have
found his way into it. I am not certain whether the strong and still recent impres-
sion of the statue in Syracuse did not also recur after another and a different

interval.

III. DREAM OF OCTOBER 2-3, 1910

(Fragment). . . . Something about Professor Oser, who himself prepared a menu for me,
which comforted me greatly (remainder forgotten).

The dream is the reaction to digestive trouble on the day of the dream, which
made me consider whether I should not ask one of my colleagues to prescribe a
diet for me. The fact that in the dream I selected Professor Oser, who had died
the previous summer, may be ascribed to the recent death (October ist) of another
university professor, whom I greatly esteemed. But when did Oser die, and when
did I hear of his death? According to the press obituary, he died on August 22nd,
but since I was at that time in Holland, and my Vienna newspapers were posted
to me, I must have read the obituary notice on August 24th or 25th. This interval
no longer corresponds with any period; it consists of 7 + 30 + 2 = 39, or perhaps
40 days. I cannot recall having spoken or thought of Oser during this interval.

Such intervals, which without further elaboration do not go to confirm the
“periodic theory,” were shown by my dreams to be far more frequent than
regular intervals. Constantly I find only a reference (as stated in the text) to the
impressions on the day of the dream.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 171

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

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 remembering 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 forget-
fulness always enables us to form a deduction about the secret
disposition of the forgetful person. A young woman who has
been accustomed 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 something
like a monograph 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 alka-
loid might be employed as an anaesthetic, but I was not

172 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

thorough enough to pursue the matter farther. It occurs to me,
too, that on the morning of the day following the dream (for
the interpretation 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-dream
do I realize that there is concealed behind it the memory of a
definite event. Shortly after Koller’s discovery, my father con-
tracted 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 together.
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 Festschrift, a publication in which grateful
pupils had commemorated the jubilee of their teacher and
laboratory director. Among the titles to fame of persons con-
nected 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. Koenigstein 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 Festschrift 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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 173

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-content. 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
“gymnasium” 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 crucifer,
and failed to recognize it; had not my theoretical knowledge
come to my aid, I should have fared badly indeed. Crucifers
suggest composites. 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, 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 coloured plates afforded me much
delight. I was rather proud of this inclination to thoroughness.
When I subsequently began to publish books myself, 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, I do not exactly
know how, a very early memory 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 narrative of a journey
through Persia) in order that we might destroy it. From an
educational point of view this was hardly to be commended.

174 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

I was at the time five years old, and my sister less than three,
and the picture 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 period of my life which has remained
vivid in my memory. When I afterwards became a student, I
developed a conspicuous fondness for collecting and possessing
books (an analogy to the inclination for studying from mono-
graphs, 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 memory” for my subsequent
bibliophilia.r 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 interpretation 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 tome. 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 colleagues, my preference for mono-
graphical 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

* Cf. my essay Uber Deckerinnerungen in the Monatschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie,
1899 (Ges. Schriften, Bd. i).

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 175

be analysed) ; it even continues the theme which that dream
introduced, and discusses it in association 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 thorough and industrious
student”; and in both instances I find the meaning: “I can
allow myself this.” But I may dispense with the further inter-
pretation 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 experience 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 awakened memories in connection with
which I was aware of a great variety of inner stimuli. Further,
this conversation was broken off unfinished, because some
acquaintances joined us. What, now, is the relation of these
two impressions of the day to one another, and to the dream
which followed during the night?

In the manifest dream-content I find merely an allusion to
the indifferent 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

176 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

odds and ends of the day’s experiences has no justification :
I am also compelled to contradict the assertion 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 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 referred to
as a psychic force playing the part of a censorship. The
recollection 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 intermediate 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 furnished by the analysis
is as follows: Such relations between the two impressions as do
not exist from the first are established subsequently between
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, perhaps 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-

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 177

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 (gardener), 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 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
Gartner and his blooming 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, would have formed an associa-
tion 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 Hánschen Schlau, be
astonished that "only the rich people of the world possess the
most money.”

M

178 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

Still, the psychological process by which, according to our
exposition, the indifferent experience substitutes itself for the
psychologically important 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 con-
stantly 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
intensity which enables them to force their way into conscious-
ness. Such displacements 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 becomes 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 examples of psychic displacements which to
us seem incontestable. But if, by the same means, and in
accordance with the same fundamental principles, 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 discussion 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 displacement), 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 MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 179

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 objection 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 impressions of the day against which
we should have to protect our memory is obviously immeasur-
ably 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 con-
tribution to the dream-content. The relations between this
impression and the real source of the dream in the unconscious
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 recent but indifferent
impression ; this impression must possess some quality that gives
it a special fitness. Otherwise it would be just as easy for the
drcam-thoughts to shift their accentuation to some inessential
component of their own sphere of ideas.

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 example: One summer after-
noon I entered a railway carriage in which I found two
acquaintances of mine who were unknown to one another.

180 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

One of them was an influential colleague, the other a member
of a distinguished family which I had been attending in my
professional capacity. I introduced the two gentlemen to each
other; but during the long journey 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 appear-
ance 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 illness. 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 fashionable 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 connection
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." 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

+ 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, р. 41; Delbæuf: Rapprochement Force, p. 236.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 181

event, a train of thought—may assume the råle of a dream-
stimulus. The very definite answer, derived from numerous
analyses, is as follows: The stimulus of the dream may be a
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.

(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 fulfilled that one component of the dream-content
repeats a recent impression 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 multiplicity 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 (cf. p. 87).

In considering this series of sources we note further that the

* The dream of Irma’s injection ; the dream of the friend who is my uncle.
2 The dream of the funeral oration delivered by the young physician.

3 The dream of the botanical monograph.

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

182 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

psychologically significant but not recent element (a train of
thought, a recollection) may be replaced for the purposes of
dream-formation by a recent but psychologically indifferent
element, provided the two following conditions 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, somewhat equivalent to the value of emotionally
accentuated memories or trains of thought. Later on, in the
light of certain psychological considerations, we shall be able
to divine the explanation of this importance of recent impressions
in dream-formation.*

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 before 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.

1 Cf. Chap. VII on Transference.

* An important contribution to the subject of the part played by recent im-
pressions in the formation of dreams is made by O. Pötzl in an extensively docu-
mented essay (Experimentell erregte Traumbilder in ihren Beziehungen zum indirekten
Schen, in Zeitschr. fur die ges. Neurologie und Psychiatrie, vol. xxxvii, 1917). In
his experiments Pötzl requested a number of persons to draw what they had
consciously perceived of a tachistoscopically exposed picture. He then investi-
gated the dreams which each of these persons had on the following night, and
required them to represent suitable portions of their dreams by drawings. It was
then irrefutably demonstrated that it was precisely those details of the exposed
picture which had not been consciously perceived which had furnished material
for dream-formation, whereas those which had been consciously perceived, and
had been represented in the drawings made after the exposure, had not re-
appeared in the manifest dream-content. The material utilized by the dream
was elaborated by it in the well-known “capricious” or rather “autocratic”
manner in the service of the dream-forming tendencies. The suggestions evoked

by Pôtzl’s essay go far beyond the purposes of such an interpretation of dreams
as is attempted in this book. It should be noted, in passing, how far removed is

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 183

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 repro-
duced in the dream.

From the foregoing exposition the reader may rightly con-
clude that I assert that there are no indifferent dream-stimuli,
and therefore no guileless 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 com-
plete interpretation, 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.* 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 per-
mitted the expression, they all show "the mark of the beast.”

this new method of studying dreams experimentally from the former crude
technique, which consisted of introducing sleep-disturbing stimuli into the dream-
content.

* Havelock Ellis, a kindly critic of The Interpretation of Dreams, writes (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.

184 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

Since this is another point on which I may expect contradic-
tion, 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: 7 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?" The dreamer has not used these words ;
she has perhaps avoided them; but let us look for the inter-
pretation 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 distinction can usually be made with certainty—then
it originates in the utterances of waking life, which have, of
course, been treated as raw material, dismembered, and
slightly altered, and above all removed from their context.?
In the work of interpretation we may take such utterances as
1 Its meaning is: “Your fly is undone.” (TRANS.)

+ Cf. what is said of speech in dreams in the chapter on The Work of the Dream.

Only one of the writers on the subject—Delbæuf—seems to have recognized the
origin of the speeches heard in dreams (p. 226). He compares them with clichés.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 185

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 ex-
periences 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 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 greengrocer 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 interpret 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 For 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 attempts,
and now, as it were, wish in their dreams for them to be repeated,

186 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

IT

Another guileless dream of the same patient, which in some
respects is a pendant to the above. Her husband asks her:
“Oughin't we to have the piano tuned?" She replies: “Its 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 a bad tone; it belonged to her husband before they
were married," 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 while, I
must go in a moment.” At this point I recall that yesterday,
during 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,
indeed, 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

1 À substitution by the opposite, as will be clear after analysis.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 187

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 dangerous, 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 singing rapturously, or
rather yelling: “When the Queen of Sweden, behind 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.

188 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

V

Lest it may seem too easy a matter to draw conclusions from
dreams concerning the dreamer’s real circumstances, I add
another dream originating 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 exam-
ples 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. 158, 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 child-
hood 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, because 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 do the conditions favour such proof. The story
is told by A. Maury, as being particularly conclusive, of a man

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 189

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. 110), 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
laughingly 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 circumstances 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 childhood—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,

190 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

known to him from his dreams, was one day discovered in
natura, as a long-forgotten china animal. 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 suspect anything of
the sort. I owe a particularly delightful and instructive 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, retained 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 connection 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 assure 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.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 191

In another series of dreams we learn from analysis that the
very wish which has given rise to the dream, and whose fulfil-
ment 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,
continue 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 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; perhaps 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
extraordinarius.

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,

192 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

which might serve even better as an explanation. One evening,
at a restaurant on the Prater, where my parents were accus-
tomed 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 inspiration I should probably one day become a “minister.”
I can still distinctly remember the impression 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 schoolboy 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 bourgeois Ministry, and completely fulfils what was then
my youthful ambition. In treating my two estimable and
learned colleagues, merely because 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 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." Thus I once dreamt that I saw the Tiber

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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 193

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 appeared 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 from afar,” is here easily
recognizable, The city which I thus saw in the mist is Lübeck;
the original of the hill is the Gleichenberg. 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 circumstance 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 wordly 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
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 answers: “To Karlsbad—if my constitution holds
N

194 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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. Moreover, 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 understood 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 longing for the Eternal City had
received from the impressions of my childhood. 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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 195

German classics, occurred to me:: “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 Campania
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 Carthaginians. Moreover, when I
finally came to realize the consequences of belonging 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
commander assumed still greater proportions in my imagina-
tion. 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 realization one had to work with the tenacity and
single-mindedness of the Punic general, though their fulfilment
at times seemed as remote as Hannibal’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!” ー“And what did you do?"—*T
went into the street and picked up the cap,” he calmly replied.
* The writer in whose works I found this passage was probably Jean Paul Richter.

196 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 sentiments—the scene in which Hannibal's
father, Hamilcar Barcas, made his son swear before the house-
hold altar to take vengeance on the Romans." 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 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 1 pasted on
the flat backs of my wooden soldiers little labels bearing the
names of the Imperial marshals, and that at that time Masséna
(as a Jew, Menasse) was already my avowed favourite.
This preference is doubtless 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 Hannibal 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 (p. 37) 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

* 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 (Translated by
A. A. Brill. Ernest Benn & Co., Ltd., London, and the Macmillan Co., New York).
3 The Jewish descent of the Marshal is somewhat doubtful.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 197

accurate recollection. The memory of it had never been com-
pletely 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 embarrassed
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 röle, while the person of the
schoolmate was replaced by a contemporary.

As a rule, of course, a scene from childhood is represented
in the manifest dream-content only by an allusion, 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 psycho-
analytic 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.

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

198 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 because they replaced other less harmless
ones."

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 whatever 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 treatment and to the transference: 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 nature, 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 destined 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
answered “Yes” (the feasing in the dream), and she asked
again and again, and waited for him to say “It is not true.” The
thought of the latent dream-content may now be construed as
* [In the original this paragraph contains many plays on the word “Hetz”

(hurry, chase, scurry, game, etc.).—Trans.]
+ [This word is here used in the psychoanalytical sense. —TRANs.]

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 199

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 “Itis not true” is intended in the dream as a circumlocution
for the word "dirty,” the standing-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

200 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 look” and the prominence of the red
flesh, which can only refer to the genitals gaping in a squatting
posture; seen in childhood, they had appeared in later recol-
lection 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 association, 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 Graben‘ 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 apparently 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

3 [A street in Vienna.—TRANs.]

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 201

over her phantasies, and later on influenced the form of her
own hysterical attacks. When a person of the female 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 interpretation ; 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 already 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-woman. Lastly, the
market-basket might be interpreted as the mark of a servant.
This suggests further memories of her childhood—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 chamber-maid,
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 basket; in particular, why is it thrown
through the window? This reminds her of the forwarding of
luggage by rail, to the custom of Fensterln" 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 recollection from her tenth year
of a nurse in the country to whom one of the menservants made
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
windows, 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.]

202 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 opposite 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 akcount 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 converge upon the paths proceeding from a single
childish experience. I have already given examples of this, and
I shall give yet more in different connections. Perhaps I cannot
close this chapter more fittingly than by citing several dreams
of my own, in which recent events and long-forgotten
experiences 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 replies 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, declaring that it

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 203

belongs to him. I now show him that it is covered all over
with Turkish embroideries. He asks: ‘How do the Turkish (draw-
ings, 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. Pélagie 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 hand-
some 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 receiving 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 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:

204 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

“Thou owest nature a death.” 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 Parcae. And
now for the dumplings! At least one of my teachers at the Uni-
versity—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 pro-
secute for plagiarising his writing. 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 written the word
plagiarism—without definite intention—because it occurred 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—plagiarism—plagiostomi? (sharks)—fish-bladder—connects
the old novel with the affair of Knódl and the overcoats
(German: Uberzieher = pullover, overcoat or condom), which
obviously refer to an appliance appertaining to the technique
of sex.3 This, it is true, is a very forced and irrational con-
nection, but it is nevertheless one which I could not have
established 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
(Fleischl—Fleisch = meat—like Knödl = dumpling), and of a
pathetic scene in which the scales of epidermis play a part

* Both the affects pertaining to these childish scenes—astonishment and resigna-
tion to the inevitable—appeared in a dream of slightly carlier 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
of disgrace before the same teacher.

3 Cf. kilo-lotto, in Maury’s dream, p. 72.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 205

(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 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 Turkish cloth. His name was
Popovié, 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.” 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 indulge 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 of his name, which he feels
that he fills even as he fills his skin; Herder having written the
following lines on his name :—

“Der du von Göttern abstammst, von Gothen oder vom Kote.”
“So seid ihr Gótterbilder 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 cautious, and missed the
opportunity of making an excellent bargain. (Missing 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
+ Popo = backside in German nursery language.

206 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 recollec-
tions 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, 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 waiting-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 afterwards 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 revolu-
tionary thoughts came into my mind, such as would fit
themselves to the words of Figaro, and to memories of
Beaumarchais" comedy, of which I had seen a performance at
the Comédie Frangaise. The speech about the great men who have
taken the trouble to be born; the seigneurial right which Count
Almaviva wishes to exercise with regard to Susanne ; the jokes
which our malicious Opposition journalists make on the name

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 207

of Count Thun (German, fun = do), calling 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 examinations, and who has won
the flattering nickname of “the Governmental bedfellow”
(literally, “by-sleeper”) by his activities in this capacity. By
insisting on his official status he secured half a first-class com-
partment, and I heard one guard say to another: "Where are
we going to put the gentleman 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 passengers. 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 coltsfoot, and he then puts into his butlonhole something like
a torn leaf, really the crumpled skeleton of a leaf. I jump up, and I
jump up,” but I am surprised 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.

* 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.

208 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

Again indistinctly : It is as though my second task were to get away
rom 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
reproaches 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 revived 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; to whom several
features of the manifest dream-content might refer. The associa-
tion 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 facade of an Italian church, without
organic connection with the structure behind it; but unlike
such a fagade it is full of gaps, and confused, and in many

1 This is an error and not a slip, for 1 learned later that the Emmersdorf in Wachau
is not identical with the refuge of the revolutionist Fischof, a place of the same
name.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 209

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 occurred
in my fifteenth year. We had hatched a conspiracy against an
unpopular and ignorant teacher; the leading spirit in this
conspiracy was a schoolmate who since that time seems to have
taken Henry VIII of England as his model. It fell to me to
carry out the coup d’état, and a discussion of the importance of
the Danube (German, Donau) to Austria (Wachau!) was the
occasion of an open revolt. One of our fellow-conspirators was
our only aristocratic schoolmate—he was called “the giraffe”
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 them-
selves 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 railway journey in beautiful Saxony (Anglo-
Saxon). The third scene contributing 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,
o

210 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

had herded swine in his youth, and had then returned repentant
to his father’s house. I jumped up (as in the dream), became
piggishly rude, and retorted that since I knew he had herded
swine, I was not surprised 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 reference 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. Further-
more, 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.* And now
I cannot but observe how the way to this flatus has been
prepared 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 inscription: Flavit et
dissipati sunt, for the storm had scattered the Spanish fleet.?

= 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.

* An unsolicited biographer, Dr. Е. Wittels, reproaches me for having omitted
the name of Jehovah from the above motto. The English medal contains the

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 211

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 account 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 myself in the place of a certain eminent
gentleman of the revolutionary period, 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 censor-
ship, 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) 2

I must also 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
this suppression ; but he may not be content with this explana-
tion. There are many things of which one makes no secret to
oneself, but which must be treated as secrets in addressing

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 inscription.

1 [Translator's Note.]

? In his important work on Phaníasie und Mythos (1910), H. Silberer has en-
deavoured to show from this part of the dream that the dream-work is able to
reproduce not only the latent dream-thoughts, but also the psychic processes
in the dream-formation (Das functionale Phänomen). Y think, however, that he
overlooks the fact that the “psychic processes in dream-formation" are, to my
thinking, thought-material, like all other psychic processes. In this high-spirited
dream I am apparently proud that I have discovered these processes.

212 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

others, and here we are concerned not with the reasons which
induce me to conceal the solution, but of the motive of the
inner censorship which conceals the real content of the dream
even from myself. Concerning this, I will confess that the
analysis reveals these three portions of the dream as impertinent
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 per-
fectly 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 enrol 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 minis-
terial chambers). Children, we know, believe that one attracts
peoples attention with anything new. Now I have been told of
the following incident of my childhood ; 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, more-
over, the association of the male urinal and the woman's
trunk, box.) All the megalomania of the child is contained 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. 171).
The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize
the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the
character trait of ambition.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 213

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’ bed-
room, and in their presence. Reprimanding me for this delin-
quency, my father remarked: “That boy will never amount
to anything.” This must have been a terrible affront to my
ambition, for allusions 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 réles 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,?
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 ‏בת‎

* Another 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.

‎Here is some more material for interpretation: Holding the urine-glass recalls‏ ג
‎the story of a peasant (illiterate) at the opticians, who tried on now one pair of‏
‎spectacles, 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, 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 ignomini-‏
‎ously 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, because 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 as the whole rebellious content of the dream, which‏
‎commits lise 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 qualifi-‏
‎cation of this doctrine). — The words which occurred to me in the dream, “thinking‏
‎and experiencing are the same thing,” refer to the explanation of hysterical‏

214 THE INTERPRETATION 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 circumstance 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 unusual for me to be dis-
turbed 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 circum-
stances. 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 charac-
teristic 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

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; besides what
really happens to them, they unconsciously conceive for themselves horrible or
extravagantly fantastic incidents, which they build up out of the most harmless
and commonplace material of actual experience. The symptoms attach them-
selves 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 con-
stituent of which had consisted of a glass urinal for men, such as is used in hospitals.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 215

content it is connected with the most remote experiences ; 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 the present. But I still find it very difficult to prove this
conjecture; I shall have to return to the probable réle 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 explain or evaluate; a place will have to be
found for them elsewhere, either in the discussion of the psy-
chology of the sleeping state, or in the consideration 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.” 2

? The 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 possibility 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 imperfectly 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,

216 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
0

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 for-
mation 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 chapter (p. 38) we examined at length
the opinion of scientific writers on the réle 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 (p. 54). 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 stimuli operating during sleep, or such
as cannot be excluded from the dormant psychic life—has
been definitely established by numerous observations and con-
firmed by experiment (p. 40); that the part played by the
subjective sensory stimuli appears to be demonstrated by the
recurrence of hypnagogic sensory images in dreams (p. 46);
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.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 217

“Nerve stimulus” and “bodily stimulus” would thus be the
anatomical sources of dreams; that is, according to many
writers, the sole and exclusive 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 content 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 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 objec-
tion presents itself, namely, the inadequacy of the explanations
of dreams afforded by this category of dream-sources. There are
two things which the representatives 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 (cf. the alarm-clock dreams, p. 43); and
secondly, why the result of the reaction of the perceiving mind
to this misconceived stimulus should be so indeterminate and
variable. We have seen that Striimpell, 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

218 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

interpretation of the objective sensory stimulus, but is forced
to construct illusions on the basis of the indefinite stimu-
lation arriving from many directions. In his own words
(p. 108) : 一

“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 perceptual 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 con-
ditioned 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 gencral sensation, and are therefore mostly
phantastic illusions—probably only to a small extent pure
memory-conceptions raised to the condition of hallucinations.
To illustrate the relation between dream-content and dream-
stimuli which follows from this theory, Striimpell 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 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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 219

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 interpretation. It may consequently be
represented in the dream-content by an extraordinary number
of different concepts. But the theory of Strümpell and Wundt
cannot point to any sort of motive which controls the relation
between 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, Grundtatsachen des Seelen-
lebens, 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 accor-
dance with this correct interpretation, inasmuch as he demon-
strates 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 (Chapter I, p. 64). 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 un-
changed 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 addressed

* 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 understanding of the problems of dreams.

220 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 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 response 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 ineffective 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

1 Cf. К. Landauer, “Handlungen des Schlafenden,” Zeitschr. f. d. ges. Neurologie
und Psychiatrie, XXXIX, 1918. Every observer finds that the sleeper is capable of
actions which are plainly intelligent. He is not absolutely void of understanding ;
on the contrary, he is able to act logically and to exert his will.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 221

Scherner, in the free activity of the phantasy, which has been
released from the shackles imposed 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 expressed 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” (p. 39). “Many different
symbols are employed by our dreams for the same organ:
thus the breathing lung finds its symbol in a roaring stove,
filled with flames, the heart in 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 with-
out 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” (p. 35). 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
comprehensible 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

222 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 phan-
tasies 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 under-
stand 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
possible 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 Strimpell, 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 constantly 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 which are in need of explanation, and
which seem to promise fresh discoveries. It is quite true that
symbolizations of the bodily organs and functions do occur
in dreams: for example, that water in a dream often signifies
a desire to urinate, that the male genital organ may be repre-
sented 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 stimulation” can hardly
be dismissed, nor can we dispute the participation of illusion-
formation in dreams which contain noise and a medley of

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 223

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 writers relate a great number, forbid our
dismissing Scherner's theory as an idle invention without
seeking the kernel of truth which may be contained in it.
We are therefore confronted with the task of finding a different
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 investi-
gation of dreams we can prove that the dream possesses intrinsic
value as psychic action, that a wish supplies the motive 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 investi-
gation—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 com-
pulsion to elaborate into a unified whole all the dream-stimuli
which are simultaneously present (p. 179). 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 of the previous day unite in

224 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 psychological
actuality, though the nature of this actuality was not at the
time determinable. We shall now have little difficulty in pre-
dicting 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 importance to the
dream because they are actual ; they are united with the other
psychic actualities to provide the material for dream-formation.
To express 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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 225

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 demon-
strable, and it will be highly instructive to see what effect the
external stimulus had in this particular dream.

I am riding a grey 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 intelligent horse; I sit more comfortably, and I find that
I am quite at home up here. My saddle is a sort of pad, which com-
pletely fills the space between 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 under-
lined, "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 influence, or rather under the compulsion, of a
pain-stimulus. The day before, 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

P

226 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

the pain to upset me. I was not altogether in a condition to
discharge my duties as a physician, but in view of the nature
and the location of the malady, it was possible 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 there no one could ride!” And the dream was success-
ful; 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 representation. I am riding on a grey horse—the
colour of the horse exactly corresponds 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 explana-
tion 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,

* Cf. the passage in Griesinger’s work, and the observation in my second paper
on the Abwehr-Neuropsychosen, Neurologisches Zentralb., 1896 (Ges. Schriften, Bd. i).

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 227

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 house-
hold 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 psychotherapy 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 references 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 disturbance of my sleep; this time the threat
came from a sensory stimulus. It was only chance, however,
that enabled me to discover the connection 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

228 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 under-
stood 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 interest in the tolling of the bells.

Among the dreams mentioned in the previous chapters
there are several which might serve as examples of the ela-
boration 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-fulfilment ; it seems as though
the patient had temporarily succeeded in making herself
analgesic, and accompanied this by ascribing her pains to a
stranger. Į

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 incor-
porates the sound of an exploding 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 connection with the bankruptcy case, but

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 229

Hussiatyn (German: husten, to cough) forces itself upon his
attention still further; he is obliged to wake, 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 disturber. 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 employs 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 com-
ponent 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."

The wish to sleep, to which the conscious ego has adjusted itself,
and which (together with the dream-censorship and the "secondary
elaboration” 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

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

230 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 Striimpell and Wundt, and of explaining the per-
versity and capriciousness of the interpretation 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 interpreta-
tions which are possible at all only such are admitted as are
acceptable to the dictatorial censorship of the sleep-wish. The
logic 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 deter-
mined, and nothing is left to caprice. The misinterpretation is
not an illusion, but—if you will—an excuse. Here again, as in
substitution by displacement 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-formation, a nucleus in the
dream-material, for which an appropriate wish-fulfilment 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 disagreeable character, yet it is not unservice-
able for the purposes of dream-formation. The psychic life
has at its disposal even wishes whose fulfilment evokes dis-
pleasure, which seems a contradiction, but becomes perfectly
intelligible if we take into account the presence of two sorts

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 231

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 fulfil-
ment 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 repression, which
we need in the study of the psychoneuroses, asserts that such
repressed wishes still exist, but simultaneously with an inhi-
bition 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 happens that such a suppressed wish is fulfilled, the van-
quished 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 drcam-
activity to procure the fulfilment—with more or less
maintenance of the censorship—of an otherwise suppressed
wish.

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 excita-
tion, in which case the anxiety corresponds to repressed libido.
Then this anxiety, like the whole anxiety-dream, has the
significance 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 for-

232 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

mations, 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 content, 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 included 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 repre-
sentation 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 survives from the preceding day,
is of course connected with the psychic residues that are signi-
ficant 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 sensations 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-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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 233

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 uniform 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 accentuated does not make
its appearance in all dreams and every night."

Perhaps an example which takes us back to the interpretation
of dreams will best illustrate my meaning. One day I was trying
to understand 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 occur so frequently
in dreams, and are 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 con-
sultation-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, inde-
finite 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
recognized even in the dream, for the ease with which I run
upstairs reassures me as to the condition of my heart. Further,

* Rank has shown, in a number of studies, that certain awakening-dreams pro-
voked 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.

234 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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!

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 expense, 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 there-
after, 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 con-
fronted 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 justification 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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 235

does not credit me with excessive tidiness, so that my repu-
tation 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-content, 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 applicability of our method
of dream-interpretation is often seriously restricted.! But there
are dreams which exhibit a complete contrast to the individual’s
customary liberty to endow his dream-world with a special
individuality, 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 attaches 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 infor-
mation as to the sources of dreams.

1 The 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.).

236 THE INTERPRETATION 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 technique, 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 naked-
ness demands our attention only when shame and embarrass-
ment 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
situation. 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 connections, 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 unable 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 petti-
coat.” 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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 237

manner of dressing that is contrary to regulations. “I was in
the street without my sabre, and I saw some officers approach-
ing,” or “I had no collar,” or “I was wearing check 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 embarrass-
ment. On the contrary, the people in the dream appear to be
quite indifferent; or, as I was able to note in one particularly
vivid dream, they have stiff and solemn expressions. This
gives us food for thought.

The dreamer’s embarrassment and the spectators’ indifference
constitute 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, however, that this
obnoxious feature has been displaced by wish-fulfilment, while
the embarrassment is for some reason retained, so that the two
components are not in agreement. We have an interesting
proof that the dream which is partially distorted by wish-
fulfilment has not been properly understood; 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
Andersen 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 naked-
ness.

But this is really the situation in our dream. It is not very
venturesome to assume that the unintelligible dream-content
has provided an incentive 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 misunder-
standing of the dream-content often occurs through the
conscious activity of a second psychic system, and is to be

238 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

recognized as a factor of the final form of the dream; and
further, that in the development of obsessions 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, victims 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.” In the case of many
rather older children it may be observed that being undressed
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:
“Tie, that is shameful —you mustn’t do that!” Children often
show a desire to display themselves; 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 pre-
vented 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 un-
known, seems a paradise when we look back upon it later,
and paradise itself is nothing but the mass-phantasy of the

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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 239

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 without further reference to their
content, so that their repetition is a wish-fulfilment. Dreams
of nakedness, then, are exhibition-dreams.*

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 con-
sideration 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 fana-
tically 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 inti-
mately-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.” It will be seen that even that restitution
of the old state of affairs that occurs 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.”
> Ferenczi has recorded a number of interesting dreams of nakedness in women
which were without difficulty traced to the infantile delight in exhibitionism,
but which differ in many features from the “typical” dream of nakedness dis-
cussed above.

2 For obvious reasons the presence of “the whole family” in the dream has the
same significance.

240 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 con-
demned by the censorship has nevertheless succeeded 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 inhibition. In our dreams it represents to perfection a
conflict of the will, a denial. According to our unconscious purpose,
the exhibition is to proceed ; 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. Some-
times the penetrating insight of the poet has analytically
recognized the process of transformation 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: “1 do not wish, dear Lee, that
you should ever come to realize from experience the exquisite
and piquant truth in the situation of Odysseus, when he
appears, naked and covered with mud, before Nausicaa 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 forlorn, 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 indescribable feeling of shame and fear over-
comes 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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 241

humanity, which the poet commonly hopes to awaken in his
listeners, but these stirrings 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
permissibly conscious wishes of the homeless man, and it
is for this reason that the dream which is objectified in
the legend of Nausicaa regularly develops into an anxiety-
dream.

My own dream of hurrying upstairs (p. 223), which pre-
sently changed into being glued to the stairs, is likewise an
exhibition-dream, for it reveals the essential ingredients of
such a dream. It must therefore be possible 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 explana-
tion. One learns in a psychoanalysis to interpret 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 pro-
nounced as one syllable, ab. It is just the same with the inter-
relations 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. According 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 understanding of the
necessity for cleanliness. Inasmuch as the maid endeavoured
to continue my education in this respect, she is entitled to be
treated, in my dream, as an incarnation of the prehistoric old

s

242 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

woman. It is to be assumed, of course, that the child was fond
of his teacher in spite of her harsh behaviour."

(6) DREAMS OF THE DEATH OF BELOVED PERSONS

Another series of dreams which may be called typical are
those whose content 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. 157). 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 reason 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 distortion which has befallen the conceptual
content.

It is otherwise with those dreams in which the death of a
beloved relative 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.

* A 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
reproach myself. But was the nurse deficient in Schlag fertigkeit?

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 243

We have already cited a dream from which we could sce
that the wishes 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 account of their
reappearance 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. 158) contained a wish that had been
present fifteen years earlier, and which had at that time been
frankly admitted as real. Further—and this, perhaps, is not
unimportant from the standpoint of the theory of dreams—
a recollection from the dreamer’s earliest childhood was at
the root of this wish also. When the dreamer was a little child
—but exactly when cannot be definitely determined—she
heard that her mother, during the pregnancy of which she
was the outcome, had fallen into a profound emotional
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, how-
ever, that this limitation will not go far to appease my critics;
probably they will just as energetically deny the possibility
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 psychology on the basis of the evi-
dence of the present."

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

+ Cf. also: Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben in the Jahrbuch für psychoanal.
und psychopath. Forschungen, Bd. i, 1909 (Ges. Schriften, Bd. viii), and Uber infantile
Sexualtheorien, in the Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre (Ges. Schriften, Bd. v).

244 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

since we are so often able to verify the fact that this estrange-
ment originated during childhood, or has always existed.
Moreover, many adults who to-day are devoted to their
brothers and sisters, and support them in adversity, lived with
them in almost continuous enmity during their childhood.
The elder child ill-treated the younger, slandered him, and
robbed him of his toys; the younger was consumed with help-
less 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, and cannot find the reason for it. It is
not difficult to see that the character 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
competitors, 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 judgment or in the eyes of the
law. And this is as it should be; for we may expect 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 develop 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 uncovered again by an attack of hysteria. The corre-
spondence 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.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 245

Tt is, however, quite especially interesting to observe 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 P

I seriously declare it as my opinion that a child is able
to estimate the disadvantages which he has to expect on ac-
count of a new-comer. A connection 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 reservation: “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 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 house-
hold; 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?: Of course,
this attitude of the child towards the younger brother or sister
is, under normal circumstances, a mere function 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
* Hans, whose phobia was the subject of the analysis in the above-mentioned
publication, 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.

* Such 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.

246 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

far more frequently in children than is observed by their
obtuse elders.*

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 disturbed 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
convinced 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 (little? 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.” We all of us recollect the
case of the 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 interpreted into a con-

1 Since 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 childish attitude as he experienced it in his earliest childhood: "More-
over, 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 another.”

2 The three-and-a-half-year-old Hans embodied his devastating criticism of his
little sister in these identical words (loc. cit.). He assumed that she was unable to
speak on account of her lack of teeth.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 247

firmation 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 con-
sideration that day, she answered, to my astonishment, that
she had never had such dreams. But another dream occurred
to her, which presumably had nothing 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 to-
gether 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 misdeeds 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 common with our own. The child knows nothing of
the horrors of decay, of shivering in the cold grave, of the
terror of the infinite Nothing, the thought of which the adult,

248 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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, unable perhaps to forget that the greater
proportion of mortals do not survive beyond the years of
childhood. Even at the age of eight, a child returning from a
visit to a natural history museum may say to her mother: 7
“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."

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 ceasing to annoy the survivors. The child
does not distinguish the means by which this absence is brought
about, whether by distance, or estrangement, or death 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.

1 To my astonishment, I was told that a highly intelligent boy of ten, after the
sudden 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 sub-
ject will be found in the section Kinderseele, edited by Frau Dr. von Hug-Hellmuth,
in Imago, Bd. i-v, 1912-18.

2 The 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 trouble-
some at table, and noted that one of the waitresses in the pension was looking at
her with an expression 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 incon-
venience constitutes the crime of låse majesté, and, as in the Draconian code, the
child’s feelings prescribe for all such crimes the one invariable punishment,

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 249

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 reaction 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.

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 knowledge 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. Broadly speaking, it is
as though a sexual preference made itself felt at an early age,
as though the boy regarded 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 sanctity with which we have
endorsed the injunctions of the Decalogue dulls our per-
ception of the reality. Perhaps we hardly dare permit ourselves
to perceive that the greater part of humanity neglects to obey
1 The 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,

250 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

the fifth commandment. 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 * 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 supremacy through the death of his father. Even
in our own middle-class families 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
physician 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
Jamilias 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 con-

1 At 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.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 251

jecture beyond 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 lavished on the father,
while the earliest infantile desires of the boy are directed 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 appearance in the parents; it is a
natural tendency for the father to spoil his little 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 judg-
ment, 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
overlooked; 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 parti-
cularly 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;

252 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 accom-
modate themselves to the interpretation suggested, they do
not, it is true, carry the complete conviction which is forced
upon a physician by the psychoanalysis of adult neurotics.
The dreams of neurotic patients are communicated with
preliminaries of such a nature that their interpretation as
wish-dreams becomes inevitable. One day I find a lady de-
pressed 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: 4 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 informed 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 relatives 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 profusely.

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 aversion for her mother ;
she struck her and abused her whenever she approached 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 meaning of the dreams could not be doubted. During her

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 253

progressive improvement hysterical phobias made their
appearance, the most distressing of which was the fear that
something had happened to her mother. Wherever 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 confusion, 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
expression ; then, when the patient became calmer, the insur-
rection was suppressed, 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 insight into the unconscious psychic life of a young
man for whom an obsessional neurosis made life almost unen-
durable, 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 over-
strict father—impulses which, to his astonishment, had con-
sciously expressed themselves when he was seven years old,
but which, of course, had originated in a much earlier period
of his childhood. After the painful illness and death of his
father, when the young man was in his thirty-first year, the
obsessive reproach made its appearance, which transferred
itself to strangers in the form of this phobia. Anyone capable

254 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 related 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 per-
manent stock of the psychic impulses which arise in early
childhood, and are of such importance as the material of the
subsequent neurosis. But I do not believe that psychoneurotics
are to be sharply distinguished in this respect from other
persons who remain normal—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, psycho-
neurotics do no more than reveal to us, by magnification,
something that occurs less markedly and intensively in the
minds of the majority of children. Antiquity has furnished us
with legendary matter which corroborates this belief, and the
profound and universal validity of the old legends is explicable
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 exposed 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
rewarded 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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 255

—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 com-
parable 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 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 possible 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 occurring 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

256 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 primitive wish of
our childhood has been fulfilled with all the force of the
repression which these wishes have undergone in our minds
since childhood. 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 ;
Sec 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 estimation. Like Oedipus, we live in ignorance of
the desires that offend morality, 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.

In the very text of Sophocles’ tragedy there is an unmis-
takable reference to the fact that the Oedipus legend had its
source in dream-material of immemorial antiquity, the content
of which was the painful disturbance of the child’s relations

* None of the discoveries of psychoanalytical research has evoked such embittered
contradiction, such furious opposition, and also such entertaining acrobatics of
criticism, as this indication of the incestuous impulses of childhood which survive
in the 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 evolution of religion and morality. See Totem und Taboo, translated
by A. A. Brill. Dodd, Mead and Co.

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 257

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 anything :—

“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 common 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-chastisement. The form which it subsequently
assumed was the result of an uncomprehending secondary
elaboration of the material, which sought to make it serve a
theological intention." The attempt to reconcile divine omni-
potence 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 charac-
ter of the hero has proved to be quite consistent with the over-
powering effect of the tragedy. The play is based upon Hamlet's
hesitation in accomplishing the task of revenge assigned to
him; the text does not give the cause or the motive of this

+ Cf. the dream-material of exhibitionism, p. 238.
R

258 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

hesitation, nor have the manifold attempts at interpretation
succeeded in doing so. According to the still prevailing concep-
tion, 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 concep-
tion, 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 occasions 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 unscrupulousness 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 accomplishing the task which his father’s ghost has laid
upon him? Here the explanation offers itself that it is the pecu-
liar 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 concientious
scruples, which tell him that he himself is no better than the
murderer whom he is required to punish. I have here trans-
lated into consciousness what had to remain unconscious in
the mind of the hero; if anyone wishes to call Hamlet an hysteri-
cal subject I cannot but admit that this is the deduction to be
drawn from my interpretation. The sexual aversion which
Hamlet expresses in conversation 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 composed 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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 259

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 neurotic symptoms,
like dreams themselves, are capable of hyper-interpretation,
and even require such hyper-interpretation before they become
perfectly intelligible, so every genuine poetical creation must
have proceeded 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 attempted to interpret only the
deepest stratum of impulses in the mind of the creative poet."
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 unusual 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 monstrosity, just as
the laws of Solon did not foresee the necessity of establishing
a penalty for patricide. Secondly, the repressed and unsus-
pected 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 person. This anxiety cannot
enter into the dream otherwise than by taking advantage of
the corresponding wish; but the wish is able to mask itself
* These 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 psychoanolytischen Arbeit, in Imago, iv, 1916
(Ges. Schriften, 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.)

260 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

behind the concern which has been aroused during the day.
If one is inclined 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 censorship is responsible.
An invariable concomitant phenomenon, then, is that painful
emotions are felt in the dream. Similarly, an anxiety-dream
occurs only when the censorship is entirely or partially over-
powered, and on the other hand, the overpowering of the
censorship is facilitated when 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
development 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 disguised
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 examples 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.

* Even 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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 261

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 demon-
strated even by the dream, which reveals the beginnings
of dream-distortion. There is no doubt that he himself is the
person 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. 136),
tosit down to the meal himself. The person remains anonymous.

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 (monographs 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 Doctor
Lecher.

On analysis it seems to me improbable that the fame of
Dr. Lecher, the long-winded speaker ofthe German Opposition,
should occupy my thoughts while I am dreaming. The fact
is that a few days ago I undertook 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
acquaintance says to me: "My son, the myopic.” Then follows
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.

262 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 concerned, 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 noticed
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 incident
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 country. 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 unhurt.
But we were forced to spend the night at the nearest inn,
where the news of our mishap aroused great sympathy. A cer-

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 263

tain 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 peda-
gogue. (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 children as Baron L.
did for us, in spite of his amiable offers.” The egoistical flavour
of this dream should now be obvious enough."

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 something 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

1 While Dr. Ernest Jones was delivering a lecture before an American scientific
society, 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 restricted 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,

264 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

as I myself have done, and has only in his later years received
the title which he had 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 impressions 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 insatiably
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.? To express the matter in a few

* Psychoanalytic investigation has enabled us to conclude that in the pre-
dilection 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 observed in human beings or animals.

3 A young colleague, who is entirely free from nervousness, tells me, in this
connection: “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 feeling 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

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 265

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 movements 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, however, 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.

in boyhood occurred while they were climbing. It is established with complete
certainty by psychoanalysis that the first sexual sensations often have their origin
in the scufilings and wrestlings of childhood.

266 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

(6) 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 "examina-
tion-anxiety” of neurotics 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 punishment; the inexorable chain
of cause and effect of later life has taken over our further
education. Now we dream of our matriculation, or the examina-
tion 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 remark made by a colleague who had studied this
subject, who once stated, in the course of a scientific discussion,
that in his experience the examination-dream occurred only
to persons who had passed the examination, never to those
who had been “ploughed.” 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 justification, having, indeed,
been refuted by the outcome, Such a dream would be a very

THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 267

striking example of the way in which the dream-content is
misunderstood by the waking instance. The exclamation
which is regarded 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.! For example,
I failed in my examination for the doctor’s degree in medical
jurisprudence ; never once has the matter worried 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 (cf. p. 33) 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 matriculation examination,
only to pass it later, but failed in the officer’s examination, 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.

* See also p. 290.