319

VI

THE DREAM-WORK

ALL other previous attempts to solve the problems of dreams have con-
cerned themselves directly with the manifest dream-content as it is re-
tained in the memory. They have sought to obtain an interpretation of
the dream from this content, or, if they dispensed with an interpretation,
to base their conclusions concerning the dream on the evidence provided
by this content. We, however, are confronted by a different set of data;
for us a new psychic material interposes itself between the dream-content
and the results of our investigations: the latent dream-content, or dream-
thoughts, which are obtained only by our method. We develop the solu-
tion of the dream from this latent content, and not from the manifest
dream-content. We are thus confronted with a new problem, an entirely
novel task—that of examining and tracing the relations between the
latent dream-thoughts and the manifest dream-content, and the processes
by which the latter has grown out of the former.

The dream-thoughts and the dream-content present themselves as two
descriptions of the same content in two different languages; or, to put it
more clearly, the dream-content appears to us as a translation of the
dream-thoughts into another mode of expression, whose symbols and
laws of composition we must learn by comparing the origin with the
translation. The dream-thoughts we can understand without further
trouble the moment we have ascertained them. The dream-content is, as
it were, presented in hieroglyphics, whose symbols must be translated,
one by one, into the language of the dream-thoughts. It would of course,
be incorrect to attempt to read these symbols in accordance with their
values as pictures, instead of in accordance with their meaning as sym-
bols. For instance, I have before me a picture-
puzzle (rebus)—a house,
upon whose roof there is a boat; then a single letter; then a running
figure, whose head has been omitted, and so on. As a critic I might be
tempted to judge this composition and its elements to be nonsensical. A
boat is out of place on the roof of a house, and a headless man cannot run;
the man, too, is larger than the house, and if the whole thing is meant to

320

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
represent a landscape the single letters of the alphabet have no right in it,
since they do not occur in nature. A correct judgment of the picture-
puzzle is possibly only if I make no such objections to the whole and its
parts, and if, on the contrary, I take the trouble to replace each image by
a syllable or word which it may represent by virtue of some allusion or
relation. The words thus put together are no longer meaningless, but might
constitute the most beautiful and pregnant aphorism. Now a dream is
such a picture-puzzle, and our predecessors in the art of dream-interpre-
tation have made the mistake of judging the rebus as an artistic composi-
tion. As such, of course, it appears nonsensical and worthless.

A. CONDENSATION

The first thing that becomes clear to the investigator when he compares
the dream-content with the dream-thoughts is that a tremendous work of
condensation has been accomplished. The dream is meagre, paltry and
laconic in comparison with the range and copiousness of the dream-
thoughts. The dream, when written down, fills half a page; the analysis,
which contains the dream-thoughts, requires six, eight, twelve times as
much space. The ratio varies with different dreams; but in my experience
it is always of the same order. As a rule, the extent of the compression
which has been accomplished is under-estimated, owing to the fact that
the dream-thoughts which have been brought to light are believed to be
the whole of the material, whereas a continuation of the work of inter-
pretation would reveal still further thoughts hidden in the dream. We
have already found it necessary to remark that one can never be really
sure that one has interpreted a dream completely; even if the solution
seems satisfying and flawless, it is always possible that yet another mean-
ing has been manifested by the same dream. Thus the degree of conden-
sation is—strictly speaking—indeterminable. Exception may be taken—
and at first sight the objection seems perfectly plausible—to the assertion
that the disproportion between dream-content and dream-thoughts justi-
fies the conclusion that a considerable condensation of psychic material
occurs in the formation of dreams. For we often have the feeling that we
have been dreaming a great deal all night, and have then forgotten most
of what we have dreamed. The dream which we remember on waking
would thus appear to be merely a remnant of the total dream-work, which
would surely equal the dream-thoughts in range if only we could remem-
ber it completely. To a certain extent this is undoubtedly true; there is no
getting away from the fact that a dream is most accurately reproduced if
we try to remember it immediately after waking, and that the recollection
of it becomes more and more defective as the day goes on. On the other
hand, it has to be recognized that the impression that we have dreamed a
good deal more than we are able to reproduce is very often based on an

321

illusion, the origin of which we shall explain later on. Moreover, the as-
sumption of a condensation in the dream-work is not affected by the
possibility of forgetting a part of dreams, for it may be demonstrated by
the multitude of ideas pertaining to those individual parts of the dream
which do remain in the memory. If a large part of the dream has really
escaped the memory, we are probably deprived of access to a new series of
dream-thoughts. We have no justification for expecting that those por-
tions of the dream which have been lost should likewise have referred
only to those thoughts which we know from the analysis of the portions
which have been preserved.¹⁾

In view of the very great number of ideas which analysis elicits for each
individual element of the dream-content, the principal doubt in the minds
of many readers will be whether it is permissible to count everything that
subsequently occurs to the mind during analysis as forming part of the
dream-thoughts—in other words, to assume that all these thoughts have
been active in the sleeping state, and have taken part in the formation of
the dream. Is it not more probable that new combinations of thoughts are
developed in the course of analysis, which did not participate in the
formation of the dream? To this objection I can give only a conditional
reply. It is true, of course, that separate combinations of thoughts make
their first appearance during the analysis; but one can convince oneself
every time this happens that such new combinations have been established
only between thoughts which have already been connected in other ways
in the dream-thoughts; the new combinations are, so to speak, corollaries,
short-circuits, which are made possible by the existence of other, more
fundamental modes of connection. In respect of the great majority of the
groups of thoughts revealed by analysis, we are obliged to admit that they
have already been active in the formation of the dream, for if we work
through a succession of such thoughts, which at first sight seem to have
played no part in the formation of the dream, we suddenly come upon a
thought which occurs in the dream-content, and is indispensable to its
interpretation, but which is nevertheless inaccessible except through this
chain of thoughts. The reader may here turn to the dream of the botanical
monograph, which is obviously the result of an astonishing degree of con-
densation, even though I have not given the complete analysis.

But how then, are we to imagine the psychic condition of the sleeper
which precedes dreaming? Do all the dream-thoughts exist side by side,
or do they pursue one another, or are there several simultaneous trains of
thought, proceeding from different centres, which subsequently meet? I
do not think it is necessary at this point to form a plastic conception of the

¹⁾References to the condensation in dreams are to be found in the works of many
writers on the subject. Du Prel states in his Philosophie der Mystik that he is abso-
lutely certain that a condensation-process of the succession of ideas had occurred.

322

psychic condition at the time of dream-
formation. But let us not forget
that we are concerned with unconscious thinking, and that the process
may easily be different from that which we observe in ourselves in de-
liberate contemplation accompanied by consciousness.

The fact, however, is irrefutable that dream-
formation is based on a
process of condensation. How, then, is this condensation effected?

Now, if we consider that of the dream-
thoughts ascertained only the
most restricted number are represented in the dream by means of one of
their conceptual elements, we might conclude that the condensation is
accomplished by means of omission, inasmuch as the dream is not a faith-
ful translation or projection, point by point, of the dream-
thoughts, but a
very incomplete and defective reproduction of them. This view, as we
shall soon perceive, is a very inadequate one. But for the present let us
take it as a point of departure, and ask ourselves: If only a few of the
elements of the dream-
thoughts make their way into the dream-
content,
what are the conditions that determine their selection?

In order to solve this problem, let us turn our attention to those ele-
ments of the dream-
content which must have fulfilled the conditions for
which we are looking. The most suitable material for this investigation
will be a dream to whose formation a particularly intense condensation
has contributed. I select the dream, cited on page 241, of the botanical
monograph.

I

Dream-
content: I have written a monograph upon a certain (indetermi-
nate) species of plant. The book lies before me. I am just turning over a
folded coloured plate. A dried specimen of the plant is bound up in this
copy, as in a herbarium.

The most prominent element of this dream is the botanical monograph.
This is derived from the impressions of the dream-
day; I had actually
seen a monograph on the genus Cyclamen in a bookseller’s window. The
mention of this genus is lacking in the dream-
content; only the mono-
graph and its relation to botany have remained. The “botanical mono-
graph” immediately reveals its relation to the work on cocaine which I
once wrote; from cocaine the train of thought proceeds on the one hand
to a Festschrift, and on the other to my friend, the oculist, Dr. Koenig-
stein, who was partly responsible for the introduction of cocaine as a
local anaesthetic. Moreover, Dr. Koenigstein is connected with the recol-
lection of an interrupted conversation I had had with him on the previous
evening, and with all sorts of ideas relating to the remuneration of medical
and surgical services among colleagues. This conversation, then, is the
actual dream-
stimulus; the monograph on cyclamen is also a real inci-
dent, but one of an indifferent nature; as I now see, the “botanical mono-

323

THE DREAM-WORK

graph” of the dream proves to be a common mean between the two ex-
periences of the day, taken over unchanged from an indifferent impres-
sion, and bound up with the psychically significant experience by means
of the most copious associations.

Not only the combined idea of the botanical monograph, however, but
also each of its separate elements, “botanical” and “monograph,” pene-
trates farther and farther, by manifold associations, into the confused
tangle of the dream-thoughts. To botanical belong the recollections of
the person of Professor Gärtner (German: Gärtner = gardener), of his
blooming wife, of my patient, whose name is Flora, and of a lady con-
cerning whom I told the story of the forgotten flowers. Gärtner, again,
leads me to the laboratory and the conversation with Koenigstein; and
the allusion to the two female patients belongs to the same conversation.
From the lady with the flowers a train of thoughts branches off to the
favourite flowers of my wife, whose other branch leads to the title of the
hastily seen monograph. Further, botanical recalls an episode at the
“Gymnasium”, and a university examination; and a fresh subject—that
of my hobbies—which was broached in the above-mentioned conversa-
tion, is linked up, by means of what is humorously called my favourite
flower, the artichoke, with the train of thoughts proceeding from the for-
gotten flowers; behind “artichoke” there lies, on the one hand, a recol-
lection of Italy, and on the other a reminiscence of a scene of my child-
hood, in which I first formed an acquaintance—which has since then
grown so intimate—with books. Botanical, then, is a veritable nucleus,
and, for the dream, the meeting-point of many trains of thought; which,
I can testify, had all really been brought into connection by the conversa-
tion referred to. Here we find ourselves in a thought-factory, in which, as
in The Weaver’s Masterpiece:—

“The little shuttles to and fro
Fly, and the threads unnoted flow;
One throw links up a thousand threads.”

Monograph in the dream, again, touches two themes: the one-sided na-
ture of my studies, and the costliness of my hobbies.

The impression derived from this first investigation is that the elements
“botanical” and “monograph” were taken up into the dream-content be-
cause they were able to offer the most numerous points of contact with
the greatest number of dream-thoughts, and thus represented nodal
points at which a great number of the dream-thoughts met together, and be-
cause they were of manifold significance in respect of the meaning of the
dream. The fact upon which this explanation is based may be expressed in
another form: Every element of the dream-content proves to be over-
determined—that is, it appears several times over in the dream-thoughts.

324

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

We shall learn more if we examine the other components of the dream
in respect of their occurrence in the dream-thoughts. The coloured plate
refers (cf. the analysis on p. 242) to a new subject, the criticism passed
upon my work by colleagues, and also to a subject already represented
in the dream—my hobbies—and, further, to a memory of my childhood,
in which I pull to pieces a book with coloured plates; the dried specimen
of the plant relates to my experience with the herbarium at the “Gym-
nasium”, and gives this memory particular emphasis. Thus I perceive the
nature of the relation between the dream-content and dream-thoughts:
Not only are the elements of the dream determined several times over by
the dream-thoughts, but the individual dream-thoughts are represented in
the dream by several elements. Starting from an element of the dream,
the path of the association leads to a number of dream-thoughts; and
from a single dream-thought to several elements of the dream. In the
process of dream-formation, therefore, it is not the case that a single
dream-thought, or a group of dream-thoughts, supplies the dream-content
with an abbreviation of itself as its representative, and that the next
dream-thought supplies another abbreviation as its representative (much
as representatives are elected from among the population); but rather
that the whole mass of the dream-thoughts is subjected to a certain elab-
oration, in the course of which those elements that receive the strongest
and completest support stand out in relief; so that the process might
perhaps be likened to election by the scrutin du liste. Whatever dream I
may subject to such a dissection, I always find the same fundamental
principle confirmed—that the dream-elements have been formed out of
the whole mass of the dream-thoughts, and that every one of them ap-
pears, in relation to the dream-thoughts, to have a multiple determina-
tion.

It is certainly not superfluous to demonstrate this relation of the dream-
content to the dream-thoughts by means of a further example, which is
distinguished by a particularly artful intertwining of reciprocal relations.
The dream is that of a patient whom I am treating for claustrophobia
(fear of enclosed spaces). It will soon become evident why I feel myself
called upon to entitle this exceptionally clever piece of dream-activity:

II. “A Beautiful Dream”

The dreamer is driving with a great number of companions in X-street,
where there is a modest hostelry (which is not the case). A theatrical
performance is being given in one of the rooms of the inn. He is first
spectator, then actor. Finally the company are told to change their
clothes, in order to return to the city. Some of the company are shown
into rooms on the ground floor, others to rooms on the first floor. Then a
dispute arises. The people upstairs are annoyed because those downstairs

325

have not yet finished changing, so that they can
not come down. His
brother is upstairs; he is downstairs; and he is angry with his brother be-
cause they are so hurried. (This part obscure.) Besides, it was already
decided, upon their arrival, who was to go upstairs and who down. Then
he goes alone up the hill towards the city, and he walks so heavily, and
with such difficulty, that he cannot move from the spot. An elderly gentle-
man joins him and talks angrily of the King of Italy. Finally, towards the
top of the hill, he is able to walk much more easily.

The difficulty experienced in climbing the hill was so distinct that for
some time after waking he was in doubt whether the experience was a
dream or the reality.

Judged by the manifest content, this dream can hardly be eulogized.
Contrary to the rules, I shall begin the interpretation with that portion
to which the dreamer referred as being the most distinct.

The difficulty dreamed of, and probably experienced during the dream
—difficulty in climbing, accompanied by dyspnoea—was one of the symp-
toms which the patient had actually exhibited some years before, and
which, in conjunction with other symptoms, was at the time attributed to
tuberculosis (probably hysterically simulated). From our study of ex-
hibition-dreams we are already acquainted with this sensation of being
inhibited in motion, peculiar to dreams, and here again we find it utilized
as material always available for the purposes of any other kind of repre-
sentation. The part of the dream-content which represents climbing as
difficult at first, and easier at the top of the hill, made me think, while it
was being related, of the well-known masterly introduction to Daudet’s
Sappho. Here a young man carries the woman he loves upstairs; she is at
first as light as a feather, but the higher he climbs the more she weighs;
and this scene is symbolic of the progress of their relation, in describ-
ing which Daudet seeks to admonish young men not to lavish an earnest-
ness affection upon girls of humble origin and dubious antecedents.¹ Although
I knew that my patient had recently had a love-affair with an actress, and
had broken it off, I hardly expected to find that the inter-
pretation which
had occurred to me was correct. The situation in Sappho is actually the
reverse of that in the dream; for in the dream climbing was diffi-
cult at
the first and easy later on; in the novel the symbolism is per-
tinent only
if what was at first easily carried finally proves to be a heavy burden. To
my astonishment, the patient remarked that the inter-
pretation fitted in
very well with the plot of a play which he had seen the previous evening.

The play was called Rund um Wien (“Round about Vienna”), and
treated of the career of a girl who was at first respec-
table, but who sub-
sequently lapsed into the demi-monde, and formed relations with highly-

1In estimating the significance of this passage we may recall the meaning of dreams
of climbing stairs, as explained in the chapter on Symbolism.

326

placed lovers, thereby climbing, but finally she went downhill faster and
faster. This play reminded him of another, entitled Von Stufe zu Stufe
(‘From Step to Step’), the poster advertising which had depicted a
flight of stairs.

To continue the interpretation: The actress with whom he had had his
most recent and complicated affair had lived in X-street. There is no inn
in this street. However, while he was spending part of the summer in
Vienna for the sake of this lady, he had lodged (German: abgestiegen =
stopped, literally stepped off) at a small hotel in the neighbourhood.
When he was leaving the hotel, he said to the cab-driver: “I am glad at
all events that I didn’t get any vermin here!” (Incidentally, the dread
of vermin is one of his phobias.) Whereupon the cab-driver answered:
“How could anybody stop there! That isn’t a hotel at all, it’s really
nothing but a pub!”

The “pub” immediately reminded him of a quotation:

“Of a wonderful host
I was lately a guest.”

But the host in the poem by Uhland is an apple-tree. Now a second quo-
tation continues the train of thought:

Faust: (dancing with the young witch).
“A lovely dream once came to me;
I then beheld an apple-tree,
And there two fairest apples shone:
They lured me so, I climbed thereon.”

The Fair One:
“Apples have been desired by you,
Since first in Paradise they grew:
And I am moved with joy to know
That such within my garden grow.”¹

There is not the slightest doubt what is meant by the apple-tree and the
apples. A beautiful bosom stood high among the charms by which the
actress had bewitched our dreamer.

Judging from the context of the analysis, we had every reason to as-
sume that the dream referred to an impression of the dreamer’s child-
hood. If this is correct, it must have referred to the wet-nurse of the
dreamer, who is now a man of nearly thirty years of age. The bosom of
the nurse is in reality an inn for the child. The nurse, as well as Daudet’s
Sappho, appears as an allusion to his recently abandoned mistress.

¹Translated by Bayard Taylor.

341

The (elder) brother of the patient also appears in the dream-
content; he is upstairs, while the dreamer himself is downstairs. This again is an
inversion, for the brother, as I happen to know, has lost his social posi-
tion, while my patient has retained his. In relating the dream-
content, the dreamer avoided saying that his brother was upstairs and that he him-
self was downstairs. This would have been too obvious an expression, for
in Austria we say that a man is on the ground floor when he has lost his
fortune and social position, just as we say that he has come down. Now
the fact that at this point in the dream something is represented as in-
verted must have a meaning; and the inversion must apply to some other
relation between the dream-thoughts and the dream-content. There is an
indication which suggests how this inversion is to be understood. It ob-
viously applies to the end of the dream, where the circumstances of climb-
ing are the reverse of those described in Sappho. Now it is evident what
inversion is meant: In Sappho the man carries the woman who stands in
a sexual relation to him; in the dream-thoughts, conversely, there is a
reference to a woman carrying a man; and, as this could occur only in
childhood, the reference is once more to the nurse who carries the heavy
child. Thus the final portion of the dream succeeds in representing Sappho
and the nurse in the same allusion.

Just as the name Sappho has not been selected by the poet without ref-
erence to a Lesbian practice, so the portions of the dream in which people
are busy upstairs and downstairs, “above” and “beneath,” point to fancies
of a sexual content with which the dreamer is occupied, and which, as sup-
pressed cravings, are not unconnected with his neurosis. Dream-interpre-
tation itself does not show that these are fancies and not memories of
actu-
al happenings; it only furnishes us with a set of thoughts and leaves
it to us to determine their actual value. In this case real and imagined
happenings appear at first as of equal value—and not only here, but also
in the creation of more important psychic structures than dreams. A large
company, as we already know, signifies a secret. The brother is none other
than a representative, drawn into the scenes of childhood by “fancying
backwards,” of all of the subsequent rivals for women’s favours. Through
the medium of an experience indifferent in itself, the episode of the gentle-
man who talks angrily of the King of Italy refers to the intrusion of peo-
ple of low rank into aristocratic society. It is as though the warning which
Daudet gives to young men were to be supplemented by a similar warn-
ing applicable to a suckling child.¹

1The fantastic nature of the situation relating to the dreamer’s wet-nurse is shown
by the circumstance, objectively ascertained, that the nurse in this case was his
mother. Further, I may call attention to the regret of the young man in the anecdote
related on p. 266 (that he had not taken better advantage of his opportunities with
his wet-nurse) as the probable source of this dream.

328

In the two dreams here cited I have shown by italics where one of the
elements of the dream recurs in the dream-thoughts, in order to make the
multiple relations of the former more obvious. Since, however, the analy-
sis of these dreams has not been carried to completion, it will prob-
ably be worth while to consider a dream with a full analysis, in order to
demonstrate the manifold determination of the dream-content. For this
purpose I shall select the dream of Irma’s injection (see p. 195). From
this example we shall readily see that the condensation-
work in the
dream-formation has made use of more means than one.

The chief person in the dream-content is my patient Irma, who is seen
with the features which belong to her in waking life, and who therefore,
in the first instance, represents herself. But her attitude, as I examine her
at the window, is taken from a recollection of another person, of the lady
for whom I should like to exchange my patient, as is shown by the dream-
thoughts. Inasmuch as Irma has a diphtheritic membrane, which recalls
my anxiety about my eldest daughter, she comes to represent this child
of mine, behind whom, connected with her by the identity of their names,
is concealed the person of the patient who died from the effects of poison.
In the further course of the dream the significance of Irma’s personality
changes (without the alteration of her image as it is seen in the dream):
she becomes one of the children whom we examine in the public dispen-
saries for children’s diseases, where my friends display the differences in
their mental capacities. The transition was obviously effected by the idea
of my little daughter. Owing to her unwillingness to open her mouth, the
same Irma constitutes an allusion to another lady who was once examined
by me, and, also in the same connection, to my wife. Further, in the mor-
bid changes which I discover in her throat I have summarized allusions
to quite a number of other persons.

All these people whom I encounter as I follow up the associations sug-
gested by “Irma” do not appear personally in the dream; they are con-
cealed behind the dream-
person “Irma,” who is thus developed into a
collective image, which, as might be expected, has contradictory features.
Irma comes to represent these other persons, who are discarded in the
work of condensation, inasmuch as I allow anything to happen to her
which reminds me of these persons, trait by trait.

For the purposes of dream-
condensation I may construct a composite
person in yet another fashion, by combining the actual features of two
or more persons in a single dream-
image. It is in this fashion that the
Dr. M. of my dream was constructed; he bears the name of Dr. M., and
he speaks and acts as Dr. M. does, but his bodily characteristics and his
malady belong to another person, my eldest brother; a single feature,
paleness, is doubly determined, owing to the fact that it is common to
both persons. Dr. R., in my dream about my uncle, is a similar composite

324

person. But here the dream-image is constructed in yet another fashion.
I have not united features peculiar to the one person with the features of
the other, thereby abridging by certain features the memory-picture of
each; but I have adopted the method employed by Galton in producing
family portraits; namely, I have superimposed the two images, so that
the common features stand out in stronger relief, while those which do not
coincide neutralize one another and become indistinct. In the dream of
my uncle the fair beard stands out in relief, as an emphasized feature,
from a physiognomy which belongs to two persons, and which is conse-
quently blurred; further, in its reference to growing grey the beard con-
tains an allusion to my father and to myself.

The construction of collective and composite persons is one of the
principal methods of dream-condensation. We shall presently have occa-
sion to deal with this in another connection.

The notion of dysentery in the dream of Irma’s injection has likewise
a multiple determination; on the one hand, because of its paraphasic
assonance with diphtheria, and on the other because of its reference to
the patient whom I sent to the East, and whose hysteria had been wrongly
diagnosed.

The mention of propyls in the dream proves again to be an interesting
case of condensation. Not propyls but amyls were included in the dream-
thoughts. One might think that here a simple displacement had occurred
in the course of dream-formation. This is in fact the case, but the dis- placement serves the purposes of the condensation, as is shown from the
following supplementary analysis: If I dwell for a moment upon the word
propylen (German) its assonance with the word propylaeum suggests
itself to me. But a propylaeum is to be found not only in Athens, but also
in Munich. In the latter city, a year before my dream, I had visited a
friend who was seriously ill, and the reference to him in trimethylamin,
which follows closely upon propyls, is unmistakable.

I pass over the striking circumstance that here, as elsewhere in the
analysis of dreams, associations of the most widely differing values are
employed for making thought-connections as though they were equiva-
lent, and I yield to the temptation to regard the procedure by which amyls
in the dream-thoughts are replaced in the dream-content by propyls as
a sort of plastic process.

On the one hand, here is the group of ideas relating to my friend Otto,
who does not understand me, thinks I am in the wrong, and gives me the
liqueur that smells of amyls; on the other hand, there is the group of
ideas—connected with the first by contrast—relating to my Berlin friend
who does understand me, who would always think that I was right, and to
whom I am indebted for so much valuable information concerning the
chemistry of sexual processes.

330

What elements in the Otto group are to attract my particular attention
are determined by the recent circumstances which are responsible for the
dream; amyls belong to the element so distinguished, which are predes-
tined to find their way into the dream-content. The large group of ideas
centering upon William is actually stimulated by the contrast between
William and Otto, and those elements in it are emphasized which are in
tune with those already stirred up in the “Otto” group. In the whole of
this dream I am continually recoiling from somebody who excites my
displeasure towards another person with whom I can at will confront the
first; trait by trait I appeal to the friend as against the enemy. Thus
“amyls” in the Otto group awakes recollections in the other group, also
belonging to the region of chemistry; “trimethylamin,” which receives
support from several quarters, finds its way into the dream-content.
“Amyls,” too, might have got into the dream-content unchanged, but it
yields to the influence of the “William” group, inasmuch as out of the
whole range of recollections covered by this name an element is sought
out which is able to furnish a double determination for “amyls.” “Pro-
pyls” is closely associated with “amyls”; from the “William” group comes
Munich with its propylaeum. Both groups are united in “propyls—pro-
pylaeum.” As though by a compromise, this intermediate element then
makes its way into the dream-content. Here a common mean which per-
mits of a multiple determination must facilitate penetration into the
dream-content. For the purpose of this mean-formation a displacement
of the attention has been unhesitatingly effected from what is really in-
tended to something adjacent to it in the associations.

The study of the dream of Irma’s injection has now enabled us to ob-
tain some insight into the process of condensation which occurs in the
formation of dreams. We perceive, as peculiarities of the condensing
process, a selection of those elements which occur several times over in
the dream-content, the formation of new unities (composite persons,
mixed images), and the production of common means. The purpose which
is served by condensation, and the means by which it is brought about,
will be investigated when we come to study in all their bearings the psy-
chic processes at work in the formation of dreams. Let us for the present
be content with establishing the fact of dream-condensation as a rela-
tion between the dream-thoughts and the dream-content which deserves
attention.

The condensation-work of dreams becomes most palpable when it takes
words and means as its objects. Generally speaking, words are often
treated in dreams as things, and therefore undergo the same combinations
as the ideas of things. The results of such dreams are comical and bizarre
word-formations.

331

THE DREAM-
WORK

1. A colleague sent an essay of his, in which he had, in my opinion,
overestimated the value of a recent physiological discovery, and had ex-
pressed himself, moreover, in extravagant terms. On the following night
I dreamed a sentence which obviously referred to this essay: “That is a
truly norekdal style.” The solution of this word-formation at first gave
me some difficulty; it was unquestionably formed as a parody of the
superlatives “colossal,” “pyramidal”; but it was not easy to say where it
came from. At last the monster fell apart into the two names Nora and
Ekdal, from two well-known plays by Ibsen. I had previously read a
newspaper article on Ibsen by the writer whose latest work I was now
criticizing in my dream.

2. One of my female patients dreams that a man with a fair beard and
a peculiar glittering eye is pointing to a sign-board attached to a tree
which reads: uclamparia—wet.¹

Analysis.—The man was rather authoritative-looking, and his peculiar
glittering eye at once recalled the church of San Paolo, near Rome, where
she had seen the mosaic portraits of the Popes. One of the early Popes had
a golden eye (this is really an optical illusion, to which the guides usually
call attention). Further associations showed that the general physiog-
nomy of the man corresponded with her own clergyman (pope), and
the shape of the fair beard recalled her doctor (myself), while the stature
of the man in the dream recalled her father. All these persons stand in the
same relation to her; they are all guiding and directing the course of her
life. On further questioning, the golden eye recalled gold—money—the
rather expensive psychoanalytic treatment, which gives her a great deal of
concern. Gold, moreover, recalls the gold cure for alcoholism—Herr D.,
whom she would have married, if it had not been for his clinging to the
disgusting alcohol habit—she does not object to anyone’s taking an occa-
sional drink; she herself sometimes drinks beer and liqueurs. This again
brings her back to her visit to San Paolo (fuori la mura) and its surround-
ings. She remembers that in the neighbouring monastery of the Tre Fon-
tane she drank a liqueur made of eucalyptus by the Trappist monks of
the monastery. She then relates how the monks transformed this malarial
and swampy region into a dry and wholesome neighbourhood by planting
numbers of eucalyptus trees. The word “uclamparia” then resolves itself
into eucalyptus and malaria, and the word wet refers to the former
swampy nature of the locality. Wet also suggests dry. Dry is actually the
name of the man whom she would have married but for his over-indul-
gence in alcohol. The peculiar name of Dry is of Germanic origin (drei =
three) and hence, alludes to the monastery of the Three (drei) Fountains
In talking of Mr. Dry’s habit she used the strong expression: “He could
drink a fountain.” Mr. Dry jocosely refers to his habit by saying: “You

¹Given by translator, as the author’s example could not be translated.

332

know I must drink be-
cause I am always dry” (re-
ferring to his name).
The eucalyptus refers also to her neurosis, which was at first diagnosed as
malaria. She went to Italy because her attacks of anxiety, which were
accompanied by marked rigors and shivering, were thought to be of mala-
rial origin. She bought some eucalyptus oil from the monks, and she main-
tains that it has done her much good.

The condensation Euclamparia—wet is therefore the point of junction
for the dream as well as for the neurosis.

3. In a rather long and confused dream of my own, the apparent
nucleus of which is a sea-
voyage, it occurs to me that the next port is
Hearsing, and next after that Fliess. The latter is the name of my friend
in B., to which city I have often journeyed. But Hearsing is put together
from the names of the places in the neighbourhood of Vienna, which so
frequently end in “ing”: Hietzing, Liesing, Moedling (the old Medelitz,
“meæ deliciæ,” “my joy”; that is, my own name, the German for “joy”
being Freude), and the English hearsay, which points to calumny, and
establishes the relation to the indifferent dream-
stimulus of the day—a
poem in Fliegende Blätter about a slanderous dwarf, “Sagter Haterge-
sagt” (Saidhe Hashesaid). By the combination of the final syllable ing
with the name Fliess, Vlissingen is obtained, which is a real port through
which my brother passes when he comes to visit us from England. But
the English for Vlissingen is Flushing, which signifies blushing, and re-
calls patients suffering from erythrophobia (fear of blushing), whom I
sometimes treat, and also a recent publication of Bechterew’s, relating to
this neurosis, the reading of which angered me.¹

4. Upon another occasion I had a dream which consisted of two separate
parts. The first was the vividly remembered word “Autodidasker”: the
second was a faithful reproduction in the dream-
content of a short and
harmless fancy which had been developed a few days earlier, and which
was to the effect that I must tell Professor N., when I next saw him: “The

¹The same analysis and synthesis of syllables—a veritable chemistry of syllables—
serves us for many a jest in waking life. “What is the cheapest method of obtaining
silver? You go to a field where silver-
berries are growing and pick them; then the
berries are eliminated and the silver remains in a free state.” [Translator’s example]
The first person who read and criticized this book made the objection—with which
other readers will probably agree—“that the dreamer often appears too witty.” That
is true, so long as it applies to the dreamer; it involves a condemnation only when
its application is extended to the interpreter of the dream. In waking reality I can
make very little claim to the predicate “witty”; if my dreams appear witty, this is
not the fault of my individuality, but of the peculiar psychological conditions under
which the dream is fabricated, and is intimately connected with the theory of wit and
the comical. The dream becomes witty because the shortest and most direct way to
the expression of its thoughts is barred for it; the dream is under constraint. My
readers may convince themselves that the dreams of my patients give the expres-
sion of being quite as witty (at least, in intention) as my own, and even more so.
Nevertheless, this reproach impelled me to compare the technique of wit with the
dream-
work.

333

patient about whose condition I last consulted you is really suffering from
a neurosis, just as you suspected.” So not only must the newly-coined
“Autodidasker” satisfy the requirement that it should contain or repre-
sent a compressed meaning, but this meaning must have a valid connec-
tion with my resolve—re-
peated from waking life—to give Professor N.
due credit for his diagno-
sis.

Now Autodidasker is easily sepa-
rated into author (German, Autor),
autodidact, and Lasker, with whom is associated the name Lasalle. The
first of these words leads to the occasion of the dream—which this time is
significant. I had brought home to my wife several volumes by a well-
known author who is a friend of my brother’s, and who, as I have learned,
comes from the same neigh-
bourhood as myself (J. J. David). One eve-
ning she told me how pro-
foundly impressed she had been by the pathetic-
sadness of a story in one of David’s novels (a story of wasted talents), and
our conversation turned upon the signs of talent which we perceive-
in our
own children. Under the influence of what she had just read, my wife ex-
pressed some concern about our children, and I com-
forted her with the
remark that precisely-
such dangers as she feared can be averted-
by train-
ing. During the night my thoughts proceeded farther, took up my wife’s
concern for the children, and interwove-
with it all sorts of other things.
Something which the novelist had said to my brother on the subject of
marriage showed my thoughts a by-path which might lead to represen-
tation in the dream. This path led to Breslau; a-
lady who was a very good
friend of ours had mar-
ried and gone to live there. I found in Breslau-
Lasker and Lasalle, two examples to justify the fear lest our boys should
be ruined by women, examples which enabled me to represent simultane-
ously two ways of influencing a man to his under-
doing.¹⁾ The Cherchez la
femme, by which these thoughts may be summa-
rized, leads me, if taken
in another sense, to my brother, who is still unmar-
ried and whose name is
Alexander. Now I see that Alex, as we abbreviate-
the name, sounds al
most like an inversion of Lasker, and that this fact must have contributed
to send my thoughts on a détour-
by way of Breslau.

But the playing with names and syllables in which I am here engaged
has yet another meaning. It repre-
sents the wish that my brother may en-
joy a happy family life, and this in the following-
manner: In the novel
of artistic life, L'Œuvre, which, by virtue of its con-
tent, must have been
in association with my dream-thoughts, the author, as is well-
known, has
incidentally-
given a descrip-
tion of his own person and his own domestic-
happiness, and appears under the name of Sandoz. In the metamorphosis
of his name he probably went to work as follows: Zola, when inverted-
of

¹ Lasker died o. progressive paralysis; that is, of the consequences of an infection
caught from a woman (syphilis); Lasalle, also a syphilitic, was killed in a duel
which he fought on account of the lady whom he had been courting.

334

{as children are fond of inverting names) gives Aloz. But this was still
too undisguised; he therefore replaced the syllable Al, which stands at the
beginning of the name Alexander, by the third syllable of the same name,
sand, and thus arrived at Sandoz. My autodidasker originated in a simi-
lar fashion.

My phantasy—that I am telling Professor N. that the patient whom
we have both seen is suffering from a neurosis—found its way into the
dream in the following manner: Shortly before the close of my working
year I had a patient in whose case my powers of diagnosis failed me. A
serious organic trouble—possibly some alterative degeneration of the
spinal cord—was to be assumed, but could not be conclusively demon-
strated. It would have been tempting to diagnose the trouble as a neuro-
sis, and this would have put an end to all my difficulties, but for the fact
that the sexual anamnesis, failing which I am unwilling to admit a neuro-
sis, was so energetically denied by the patient. In my embarrassment I
called to my assistance the physician whom I respect most of all men (as
others do also), and to whose authority I surrender most completely. He
listened to my doubts, told me he thought them justified, and then said:
“Keep on observing the man, it is probably a neurosis.” Since I know that
he does not share my opinions concerning the etiology of the neuroses, I
refrained from contradicting him, but I did not conceal my scepticism.
A few days later I informed the patient that I did not know what to do
with him, and advised him to go to someone else. Thereupon, to my great
astonishment, he began to beg my pardon for having lied to me; he had
felt so ashamed; and now he revealed to me just that piece of sexual
etiology which I had expected, and which I found necessary for assum-
ing the existence of a neurosis. This was a relief to me, but at the same
time a humiliation; for I had to admit that my consultant, who was not
disconcerted by the absence of anamnesis, had judged the case more cor-
rectly. I made up my mind to tell him, when next I saw him, that he had
been right and I had been wrong.

This is just what I do in the dream. But what sort of a wish is fulfilled
if I acknowledge that I am mistaken? This is precisely my wish; I wish
to be mistaken as regards my fears—that is to say, I wish that my wife,
whose fears I have appropriated in my dream-thoughts, may prove to be
mistaken. The subject to which the fact of being right or wrong is related
in the dream is not far removed from that which is really of interest to the
dream-thoughts. We have the same pair of alternatives, of either organic
or functional impairment caused by a woman, or actually by the sexual
life—either tabetic paralysis or a neurosis—with which latter the nature
of Lasalle’s undoing is indirectly connected.

In this well-constructed (and on careful analysis quite transparent)
dream, Professor N. appears not merely on account of this analogy, and

335

THE DREAM-WORK

my wish to be proved mistaken, or the associated references to Breslau
and to the family of our married friend who lives there, but also on ac-
count of the following little dialogue which followed our consultation:
After he had acquitted himself of his professional duties by making the
above-mentioned suggestion, Dr. N. proceeded to discuss personal mat-
ters. “How many children have you now?”—“Six.”—A thoughtful and
respectful gesture.—“Girls, boys?”—“Three of each. They are my pride
and my riches.”—“Well, you must be careful; there is no difficulty about
the girls, but the boys are a difficulty later on as regards their upbring-
ing.” I replied that until now they had been very tractable; obviously this
prognosis of my boys’ future pleased me as little as his diagnosis of my
patient, whom he believed to be suffering only from a neurosis. These
two impressions, then, are connected by their contiguity, by their being
successively received; and when I incorporate the story of the neurosis
into the dream, I substitute it for the conversation on the subject of up-
bringing, which is even more closely connected with the dream-thoughts,
since it touches so closely upon the anxiety subsequently expressed by
my wife. Thus, even my fear that N. may prove to be right in his re-
marks on the difficulties to be met with in bringing up boys is admitted
into the dream-content, inasmuch as it is concealed behind the repre-
sentation of my wish that I may be wrong to harbour such apprehen-
sions. The same phantasy serves without alteration to represent both the
conflicting alternatives.

Examination-dreams present the same difficulties to interpretation that
I have already described as characteristic of most typical dreams. The
associative material which the dreamer supplies only rarely suffices for
interpretation. A deeper understanding of such dreams has to be accumu-
lated from a considerable number of examples. Not long ago I arrived at
a conviction that reassurances like “But you already are a doctor,” and
so on, not only convey a consolation but imply a reproach as well. This
would have run: “You are already so old, so far advanced in life, and yet
you still commit such follies, are guilty of such childish behaviour.” This
mixture of self-criticism and consolation would correspond with the
examination-dreams. After this it is no longer surprising that the re-
proaches in the last analysed examples concerning “follies” and “childish
behaviour” should relate to repetitions of reprehensible sexual acts.

The verbal transformations in dreams are very similar to those which
are known to occur in paranoia, and which are observed also in hysteria
and obsessions. The linguistic tricks of children, who at a certain age
actually treat words as objects, and even invent new languages and arti-
ficial syntaxes, are a common source of such occurrences both in dreams
and in the psychoneuroses.

The analysis of nonsensical word-formations in dreams is particularly

336

well suited to demonstrate the degree of condensation effected in the
dream-
work. From the small number of the selected examples here con-
sidered it must not be concluded that such material is seldom observed or
is at all exceptional. It is, on the contrary, very frequent, but owing to the
dependence of dream-
interpretation on psycho-
analytic treatment very
few examples are noted down and reported, and most of the analyses
which are reported are comprehensible only to the specialist in neuro-
pathology.

When a spoken utterance, expressly distinguished as such from a
thought, occurs in a dream, it is an invariable rule that the dream-
speech
has originated from a remembered speech in the dream-
material. The
wording of the speech has either been preserved in its entirety or has been
slightly altered in expression; frequently the dream-
speech is pieced to-
gether from different recollections of spoken remarks; the wording has
remained the same, but the sense has perhaps become ambiguous, or
differs from the wording. Not infrequently the dream-
speech serves
merely as an allusion to an incident in connection with which the remem-
bered speech was made.¹

B. THE WORK OF DISPLACEMENT

Another and probably no less significant relation must have already
forced itself upon our attention while we were collecting examples of
dream-
condensation. We may have noticed that these elements which
obtrude themselves in the dream-
content as its essential components do
not by any means play this same part in the dream-
thoughts. As a corol-
lary to this, the converse of this statement is also true. That which is
obviously the essential content of the dream-
thoughts need not be repre-
sented at all in the dream. The dream is, as it were, centred elsewhere;
its content is arranged about elements which do not constitute the cen-
tral point of the dream-
thoughts. Thus, for example, in the dream of the
botanical monograph the central point of the dream-
content is evidently
the element “botanical”; in the dream-
thoughts we are concerned with
the complications and conflicts resulting from services rendered between
colleagues which place them under mutual obligations; later on with the
reproach that I am in the habit of sacrificing too much time to my hob-
bies; and the element “botanical” finds no place in this nucleus of the
dream-
thoughts, unless it is loosely connected with it by antithesis, for
botany was never among my favourite subjects. In the Sappho-
dream of

¹ In the case of a young man who was suffering from obsessions, but whose intellec-
tual functions were intact and highly developed, I recently found the only exception
to this rule. The speeches which occurred in his dreams did not originate in speeches
which he had heard or had made himself, but corresponded to the undistorted verbal
expression of his obsessive thoughts, which came to his waking consciousness only in
an altered form.

337

my patient, ascending and descending, being upstairs and down, is made
the central point; the dream, however, is concerned with the danger of
sexual relations with persons of “low” degree; so that only one of the
elements of the dream-thoughts seems to have found its way into the
dream-content, and this is unduly expanded. Again, in the dream of my
uncle, the fair beard, which seems to be its central point, appears to have
no rational connection with the desire for greatness which we have recog-
nized as the nucleus of the dream-thoughts. Such dreams very naturally
give us an impression of a “displacement.” In complete contrast to these
examples, the dream of Irma’s injection shows that individual elements
may claim the same place in dream-formation as that which they occupy
in the dream-thoughts. The recognition of this new and utterly inconstan-
relation between the dream-thoughts and the dream-content will probably
astonish us at first. If we find in a psychic process of normal life that one
idea has been selected from among a number of others, and has acquired
a particular emphasis in our consciousness, we are wont to regard this as
proof that a peculiar psychic value (a certain degree of interest) attaches
to the victorious idea. We now discover that this value of the individual
element in the dream-thoughts is not retained in dream-formation, or is
not taken into account. For there is no doubt which of the elements of
the dream-thoughts are of the highest value; our judgment informs us
immediately. In dream-formation the essential elements, those that are
emphasized by intensive interest, may be treated as though they were sub-
ordinate, while they are replaced in the dream by other elements, which
were certainly subordinate in the dream-thoughts. It seems at first as
though the psychic intensity ¹⁾ of individual ideas were of no account in
their selection for dream-formation, but only their greater or lesser multi-
plicity of determination. One might be inclined to think that what gets
into the dream is not what is important in the dream-thoughts, but what
is contained in them several times over; but our understanding of dream-
formation is not much advanced by this assumption; to begin with, we
cannot believe that the two motives of multiple determination and in-
trinsic value can influence the selection of the dream otherwise than in
the same direction. Those ideas in the dream-thoughts which are most
important are probably also those which recur most frequently, since the
individual dream-thoughts radiate from them as centres. And yet the
dream may reject these intensively emphasized and extensively reinforced
elements, and may take up into its content other elements which are only
extensively reinforced.

This difficulty may be solved if we follow up yet another impression
received during the investigation of the over-determination of the dream-
 

¹⁾The psychic intensity or value of an idea—the emphasis due to interest—is of
course to be distinguished from perceptual or conceptual intensity.

338

content. Many readers of this investigation may already have decided,
in their own minds, that the discovery of the multiple determination of
the dream-
elements is of no great importance, because it is inevitable.
Since in analysis we proceed from the dream-
elements, and register all
the ideas which associate themselves with these elements, is it any wonder
that these elements should recur with peculiar frequency in the thought-
material obtained in this manner? While I cannot admit the validity of
this objection, I am now going to say something that sounds rather like
it: Among the thoughts which analysis brings to light are many which are
far removed from the nucleus of the dream, and which stand out like arti-
ficial interpolations made for a definite purpose. Their purpose may
readily be detected; they establish a connection, often a forced and far-
fetched connection, between the dream-
content and the dream-
thoughts,
and in many cases, if these elements were weeded out of the analysis, the
components of the dream-
content would not only not be over-
determined,
but they would not be sufficiently determined. We are thus led to the con-
clusion that multiple determination, decisive as regards the selection
made by the dream, is perhaps not always a primary factor in dream-
formation, but is often a secondary product of a psychic force which is
as yet unknown to us. Nevertheless, it must be of importance for the en-
trance of the individual elements into the dream, for we may observe that
in cases where multiple determination does not proceed easily from the
dream-
material it is brought about with a certain effort.

It now becomes very probable that a psychic force expresses itself in
the dream-
work which, on the one hand, strips the elements of the high
psychic value of their intensity and, on the other hand, by means of over-
determination, creates new significant values from elements of slight
value, which new values then make their way into the dream-
content.
Now if this is the method of procedure, there has occurred in the process
of dream-
formation a transference and displacement of the psychic inten-
sities of the individual elements, from which results the textual difference
between the dream-
content and the thought-
content. The process which
we here assume to be operative is actually the most essential part of the
dream-
work; it may fitly be called dream-
displacement. Dream-
displace-
ment and dream-
condensation are the two craftsmen to whom we may
chiefly ascribe the structure of the dream.

I think it will be easy to recognize the psychic force which expresses
itself in dream-
displacement. The result of this displacement is that the
dream-
content no longer has any likeness to the nucleus of the dream-
thoughts, and the dream reproduces only a distorted form of the dream-
wish in the unconscious. But we are already acquainted with dream-
dis-
tortion; we have traced it back to the censorship which one psychic
instance in the psychic life exercises over another. Dream-
displacement

339

THE DREAM-
WORK

is one of the chief means of achieving this distortion. Is fecit, cui profuit.
We must assume that dream-displacement is brought about by the influ-
ence of this censorship, the endopsychic defence.¹

The manner in which the factors of displacement, condensation and
over-determination interact with one another in dream-formation—which
is the ruling factor and which the subordinate one—all this will be re-
served as a subject for later investigation. In the meantime, we may
state, as a second condition which the elements that find their way into
the dream must satisfy, that they must be withdrawn from the resistance
of the censorship. But henceforth, in the interpretation of dreams, we
shall reckon with dream-displacement as an unquestionable fact.

C. THE MEANS OF REPRESENTATION IN DREAMS

Besides the two factors of condensation and displacement in dreams,
which we have found to be at work in the transformation of the latent
dream-material into the manifest dream-content, we shall, in the course
of this investigation, come upon two further conditions which exercise
an unquestionable influence over the selection of the material that even-
tually appears in the dream. But first, even at the risk of seeming to
interrupt our progress, I shall take a preliminary glance at the processes
by which the interpretation of dreams is accomplished. I do not deny
that the best way of explaining them, and of convincing the critic of their

¹Since I regard the attribution of dream-distortion to the censorship as the central
point of my conception of the dream, I will here quote the closing passage of a story,
Träumen wie Wachen, from Phantasien eines Realisten, by Lynkeus (Vienna, sec-
ond edition, 1900), in which I find this chief feature of my doctrine reproduced:
“Concerning a man who possesses the remarkable faculty of never dreaming non-
sense. . . .”
“Your marvellous faculty of dreaming as if you were awake is based upon your
virtues, upon your goodness, your justice, and your love of truth; it is the moral
clarity of your nature which makes everything about you intelligible to me.”
“But if I really give thought to the matter,” was the reply, “I almost believe that
all men are made as I am, and that no one ever dreams nonsense! A dream which
one remembers so distinctly that one can relate it afterwards, and which, there-
fore, is no dream of delirium, always has a meaning; why, it cannot be otherwise!
For that which is in contradiction to itself can never be combined into a whole. The
fact that time and space are often thoroughly shaken up, detracts not at all from
the real content of the dream, because both are without any significance whatever for
its essential content. We often do the same thing in waking life; think of fairy-tales,
of so many bold and pregnant creations of fantasy, of which only a foolish person
would say: ‘That is nonsense! For it isn’t possible.’ ”
“If only it were always possible to interpret dreams correctly, as you have just
done with mine!” said the friend.
“That is certainly not an easy task, but with a little attention it must always be
possible to the dreamer.—You ask why it is generally impossible? In your case there
seems to be something veiled in your dreams, something unchaste in a special and
exalted fashion, a certain secrecy in your nature, which it is difficult to fathom; and
that is why your dreams so often seem to be without meaning, or even nonsensical.
But in the profoundest sense, this is by no means the case; indeed it cannot be, for a
man is always the same person, whether he wakes or dreams.”

340

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

reliability, would be to take a single dream as an example, to detail its
interpretation, as I did (in Chapter II) in the case of the dream of Irma’s
injection, but then to assemble the dream-thoughts which I had discov-
ered, and from them to reconstruct the formation of the dream—that is
to say, to supplement dream-analysis by dream-synthesis. I have done
this with several specimens for my own instruction; but I cannot under-
take to do it here, as I am prevented by a number of considerations (relat-
ing to the psychic material necessary for such a demonstration) such as
any right-thinking person would approve. In the analysis of dreams these
considerations present less difficulty, for an analysis may be incomplete
and still retain its value, even if it leads only a little way into the struc-
ture of the dream. I do not see how a synthesis, to be convincing, could
be anything short of complete. I could give a complete synthesis only of
the dreams of such persons as are unknown to the reading public. Since,
however, neurotic patients are the only persons who furnish me with the
means of making such a synthesis, this part of the description of dreams
must be postponed until I can carry the psychological explanation of the
neuroses far enough to demonstrate their relation to our subject.¹ This
will be done elsewhere.

From my attempts to construct dreams synthetically from their dream-
thoughts, I know that the material which is yielded by interpretation
varies in value. Part of it consists of the essential dream-thoughts, which
would completely replace the dream and would in themselves be a suffi-
cient substitute for it, were there no dream-censorship. To the other part
one is wont to ascribe slight importance, nor does one set any value on the
assertion that all these thoughts have participated in the formation of
the dream; on the contrary, they may include notions which are associ-
ated with experiences that have occurred subsequently to the dream, be-
tween the dream and the interpretation. This part comprises not only all
the connecting-paths which have led from the manifest to the latent
dream-content, but also the intermediate and approximating associations
by means of which one has arrived at a knowledge of these connecting-
paths during the work of interpretation.

At this point we are interested exclusively in the essential dream-
thoughts. These commonly reveal themselves as a complex of thoughts
and memories of the most intricate possible construction, with all the
characteristics of the thought-processes known to us in waking life. Not
infrequently they are trains of thought which proceed from more than

¹I have since given the complete analysis and synthesis of two dreams in the Bruch-
stück einer Hysterieanalyse, 1905 (Ges. Schriften, Bd. viii). Fragment of an Analysis
of a Case of Hysteria, translated by Strachey, Collected Papers, vol. iii, Hogarth
Press, London. O. Rank’s analysis, Ein Traum der sich selbst deutet, deserves men-
tion as the most complete interpretation of a comparatively long dream.

34ʳ

one centre, but which are not without points of con-
tact; and almost invariably we find, along with a train of thought, its contradictory counter-
part, connected with it by the association of contrast.

The individual parts of this complicated structure naturally stand in
the most manifold logical relations to one another. They constitute fore-
ground and background, digressions, illustrations, conditions, lines of
argument and objections. When the whole mass of these dream-thoughts
is subjected to the pressure of the dream-work, during which the frag-
ments are turned about, broken up and compacted, somewhat like drift-
ing ice, the question arises, what becomes of the logical ties which had
hitherto provided the framework of the structure? What representation
do “if,” “because,” “as though,” “although,” “either—or” and all the
other conjunctions, without which we cannot understand a phrase or a
sentence, receive in our dreams?

To begin with, we must answer that the dream has at its disposal no
means of representing these logical relations between the dream-thoughts.
In most cases it disregards all these conjunctions, and undertakes the
elaboration only of the material content of the dream-thoughts. It is left
to the interpretation of the dream to restore the coherence which the
dream-work has destroyed.

If dreams lack the ability to express these relations, the psychic mate-
rial of which they are wrought must be responsible for this defect. As a
matter of fact, the representative arts—painting and sculpture—are sim-
ilarly restricted, as compared with poetry, which is able to employ speech;
and here again the reason for this limitation lies in the material by the
elaboration of which the two plastic arts endeavour to express something.
Before the art of painting arrived at an understanding of the laws of ex-
pression by which it is bound, it attempted to make up for this deficiency.
In old paintings little labels hung out of the mouths of the persons repre-
sented, giving in writing the speech which the artist despaired of express-
ing in the picture.

Here, perhaps an objection will be raised, challenging the assertion that
our dreams dispense with the representation of logical relations. There
are dreams in which the most complicated intellectual operations take
place; arguments for and against are adduced, jokes and comparisons
are made, just as in our waking thoughts. But here again appearances
are deceptive; if the interpretation of such dreams is continued it will
be found that all these things are dream-material, not the representation
of intellectual activity in the dream. The content of the dream-thoughts
is reproduced by the apparent thinking in our dreams, but not the rela-
tions of the dream-thoughts to one another, in the determination of which
relations thinking consists. I shall give some examples of this. But the
fact which is most easily established is that all speeches which cccur in

342

dreams, and which are expressly designated as such, are unchanged or
only slightly modified replicas of speeches which occur likewise among
the memories in the dream-material. Often the speech is only an allusion
to an event contained in the dream-thoughts; the meaning of the dream
is quite different.

However, I shall not dispute the fact that even critical thought-
activity, which does not simply repeat material from the dream-
thoughts, plays a part in dream-formation. I shall have to explain the
influence of this factor at the close of this discussion. It will then become
clear that this thought activity is evoked not by the dream-thoughts, but
by the dream itself, after it is, in a certain sense, already completed.

Provisionally, then, it is agreed that the logical relations between the
dream-thoughts do not obtain any particular representation in the dream.
For instance, where there is a contradiction in the dream, this is either a
contradiction directed against the dream itself or a contradiction con-
tained in one of the dream-thoughts; a contradiction in the dream corre-
sponds with a contradiction between the dream-thoughts only in the most
indirect and intermediate fashion.

But just as the art of painting finally succeeded in depicting, in the
persons represented, at least the intentions behind their words—tender-
ness, menace, admonition, and the like—by other means than by floating
labels, so also the dream has found it possible to render an account of cer-
tain of the logical relations between its dream-thoughts by an appropri-
ate modification of the peculiar method of dream-representation. It will
be found by experience that different dreams go to different lengths in
this respect; while one dream will entirely disregard the logical structure
of its material, another attempts to indicate it as completely as possible.
In so doing the dream departs more or less widely from the text which it
has to elaborate; and its attitude is equally variable in respect to the
temporal articulation of the dream-thoughts, if such has been established
in the unconscious (as, for example, in the dream of Irma’s injection).

But what are the means by which the dream-work is enabled to indi-
cate those relations in the dream-material which are difficult to repre-
sent? I shall attempt to enumerate these, one by one.

In the first place, the dream renders an account of the connection which
is undeniably present between all the portions of the dream-thoughts by
combining this material into a unity as a situation or a proceeding. It
reproduces logical connection in the form of simultaneity; in this case it
behaves rather like the painter who groups together all the philosophers
or poets in a picture of the School of Athens, or Parnassus. They never
were assembled in any hall or on any mountain-top, although to the re-
flective mind they do constitute a community.

The dream carries out in detail this mode of representation. Whenever

343

it shows two elements close together, it vouches for a particularly intimate
connection between their corresponding representatives in the dream-
thoughts. It is as in our method of writing: to signifies that the two letters
are to be pronounced as one syllable; while t with o following a blank
space indicates that t is the last letter of one word and o the first letter of
another. Consequently, dream-combinations are not made up of arbi-
trary, completely incongruous elements of the dream-material, but of
elements that are pretty intimately related in the dream-thoughts also.

For representing causal relations our dreams employ two methods,
which are essentially reducible to one. The method of representation
more frequently employed—in cases, for example, where the dream-
thoughts are to the effect: “Because this was thus and thus, this and that
must happen”—consists in making the subordinate clause a prefatory
dream and joining the principal clause on to it in the form of the main
dream. If my interpretation is correct, the sequence may likewise be re-
versed. The principal clause always corresponds to that part of the dream
which is elaborated in the greatest detail.

An excellent example of such a representation of causality was once
provided by a female patient, whose dream I shall subsequently give in
full. The dream consisted of a short prologue, and of a very circumstan-
tial and very definitely centred dream-composition. I might entitle it
“Flowery language.” The preliminary dream is as follows: She goes to
the two maids in the kitchen and scolds them for taking so long to pre-
pare “a little bite of food.” She also sees a very large number of heavy
kitchen utensils in the kitchen turned upside down in order to drain, even
heaped up in stacks. The two maids go to fetch water, and have, as it were,
to climb into a river, which reaches up to the house or into the courtyard.

Then follows the main dream, which begins as follows: She is climb-
ing down from a height over a curiously shaped trellis, and she is glad that
her dress doesn’t get caught anywhere, etc. Now the preliminary dream
refers to the house of the lady’s parents. The words which are spoken in
the kitchen are words which she has probably often heard spoken by her
mother. The piles of clumsy pots and pans are taken from an unpreten-
tious hardware shop located in the same house. The second part of this
dream contains an allusion to the dreamer’s father, who was always pes-
tering the maids, and who during a flood—for the house stood close to the
bank of the river—contracted a fatal illness. The thought which is con-
cealed behind the preliminary dream is something like this: “Because I
was born in this house, in such sordid and unpleasant surroundings . . .”
The main dream takes up the same thought and presents it in a form
that has been altered by a wish-fulfilment: “I am of exalted origin.”
Properly then: “Because I am of such humble origin, the course of my
life has been so and so.”

344

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

As far as I can see, the division of a dream into two unequal portions
does not always signify a causal relation between the thoughts of the two
portions. It often seems as though in the two dreams the same material
were presented from different points of view; this is certainly the case
when a series of dreams, dreamed the same night, end in a seminal emis-
sion, the somatic need enforcing a more and more definite expression. Or
the two dreams have proceeded from two separate centres in the dream-
material, and they overlap one another in the content, so that the subject
which in one dream constitutes the centre co-operates in the other as an
allusion, and vice versa. But in a certain number of dreams the division
into short preliminary dreams and long subsequent dreams actually sig-
nifies a causal relation between the two portions. The other method of
representing the causal relation is employed with less comprehensive ma-
terial, and consists in the transformation of an image in the dream into
another image, whether it be of a person or a thing. Only where this trans-
formation is actually seen occurring in the dream shall we seriously insist
on the causal relation; not where we simply note that one thing has taken
the place of another. I said that both methods of representing the causal
relation are really reducible to the same method; in both cases causation
is represented by succession, sometimes by the succession of dreams,
sometimes by the immediate transformation of one image into another.
In the great majority of cases, of course, the causal relation is not repre-
sented at all, but is effaced amidst the succession of elements that is un-
avoidable even in the dream-process.

Dreams are quite incapable of expressing the alternative “either—or”;
it is their custom to take both members of this alternative into the same
context, as though they had an equal right to be there. A classic example
of this is contained in the dream of Irma’s injection. Its latent thoughts
obviously mean: I am not responsible for the persistence of Irma’s pains;
the responsibility rests either with her resistance to accepting the solu-
tion or with the fact that she is living under unfavourable sexual condi-
tions, which I am unable to change, or her pains are not hysterical at all,
but organic. The dream, however, carries out all these possibilities, which
are almost mutually exclusive, and is quite ready to add a fourth solution
derived from the dream-wish. After interpreting the dream, I then in-
serted the either—or in its context in the dream-thoughts.

But when in narrating a dream the narrator is inclined to employ the
alternative either—or: “It was either a garden or a living-room,” etc.,
there is not really an alternative in the dream-thoughts, but an “and”—a
simple addition. When we use either—or we are as a rule describing a
quality of vagueness in some element of the dream, but a vagueness which
may still be cleared up. The rule to be applied in this case is as follows:
The individual members of the alternative are to be treated as equal and

345

THE DREAM-WORK

connected by an “and.” For instance, after waiting long and vainly for
the address of a friend who is travelling in Italy, I dream that I receive
a telegram which gives me the address. On the telegraph form I see
printed in blue letters: the first word is blurred—-
perhaps via

or villa; the second is distinctly Sezerno,
or even (Casa).

The second word, which reminds me of Italian names, and of our discus-
sions on etymology, also expresses my annoyance in respect of the fact
that my friend has kept his address a secret from me; but each of the pos-
sible first three words may be recognized on analysis as an independent
and equally justifiable starting-point in the concatenation of ideas.
During the night before the funeral of my father I dreamed of a printed
placard, a card or poster rather like the notices in the waiting-rooms of
railway stations which announce that smoking is prohibited. The sign
reads either:—

You are requested to shut the eyes

or

You are requested to shut one eye

an alternative which I am in the habit of representing in the following
form:

the
You are requested to shut 
eye(s).
one

Each of the two versions has its special meaning, and leads along par-
ticular paths in the dream-interpretation. I had made the simplest pos-
sible funeral arrangements, for I knew what the deceased thought about
such matters. Other members of the family, however, did not approve of
such puritanical simplicity; they thought we should feel ashamed in the
presence of the other mourners. Hence one of the wordings of the dream
asks for the “shutting of one eye,” that is to say, it asks that people
should show consideration. The significance of the vagueness, which is
here represented by an either—or, is plainly to be seen. The dream-work
has not succeeded in concocting a coherent and yet ambiguous wording
for the dream-thoughts. Thus the two principal trains of thought are sep-
arated from each other, even in the dream-content.
In some few cases the division of a dream into two equal parts expresses
the alternative which the dream finds it so difficult to present.
The attitude of dreams to the category of antithesis and contradiction
is very striking. This category is simply ignored; the word “No” does

346

not seem to exist for a dream. Dreams are particularly fond of reducing
antitheses to uniformity, or representing them as one and the same thing.
Dreams likewise take the liberty of representing any element whatever
by its desired opposite, so that it is at first impossible to tell, in respect of
any element which is capable of having an opposite, whether it is con-
tained in the dream-thoughts in the negative or the positive sense.¹⁾ In one
of the recently cited dreams, whose introductory portion we have already
interpreted (“because my origin is so and so”), the dreamer climbs down
over a trellis, and holds a blossoming bough in her hands. Since this pic-
ture suggests to her the angel in paintings of the Annunciation (her own
name is Mary) bearing a lily-stem in his hand, and the white-robed girls
walking in procession on Corpus Christi Day, when the streets are deco-
rated with green boughs, the blossoming bough in the dream is quite
clearly an allusion to sexual innocence. But the bough is thickly studded
with red blossoms, each of which resembles a camellia. At the end of her
walk (so the dream continues) the blossoms are already beginning to
fall; then follow unmistakable allusions to menstruation. But this very
bough, which is carried by an innocent girl, is also an allusion to Camille,
who, as we know, usually wore a white camellia, but a red one during menstruation. The same blossoming bough
(“the flower of maidenhood” in Goethe’s songs of the miller’s daughter)
represents at once sexual innocence and its opposite. Moreover, the same
dream, which expresses the dreamer’s joy at having succeeded in passing
through life unsullied, hints in several places (as in the falling of the
blossom) at the opposite train of thought, namely, that she had been
guilty of various sins against sexual purity (that is, in her childhood). In
the analysis of the dream we may clearly distinguish the two trains of
thought, of which the comforting one seems to be superficial, and the re-
proachful one more profound. The two are diametrically opposed to each
other, and their similar yet contrasting elements have been represented
by identical dream-elements.

The mechanism of dream-formation is favourable in the highest degree
to only one of the logical relations. This relation is that of similarity,
agreement, contiguity, “just as”; a relation which may be represented
in our dreams, as no other can be, by the most varied expedients.

¹⁾From a work of K. Abel’s, Der Gegensinn der Urworte, 1884, (see my review of it
in the Bleuler-Freud Jahrbuch, ii, 1910 (Ges. Schriften, Bd. x). I learned the sur-
prising fact, which is confirmed by other philologists, that the oldest languages be-
haved just as dreams do in this regard. They had originally only one word for both
extremes in a series of qualities or activities (strong–weak, old–young, far–near,
bind–separate), and formed separate designations for the two opposites only sec-
ondarily, by slight modifications of the common primitive word. Abel demonstrates
a very large number of those relationships in ancient Egyptian, and points to dis-
tinct remnants of the same development in the Semitic and Indo-Germanic lan-
guages.

347

“screening” which occurs in the dream-material, or the cases of “just as,”
are the chief points of support for dream-formation, and a not incon-
siderable part of the dream-
work consists in creating new “screenings”
of this kind in cases where those that already exist are prevented by the
resistance of the censorship from making their way into the dream. The
effort towards condensation evinced by the dream-
work facilitates the
representation of a relation of similarity.

Similarity, agreement, community, are quite generally expressed in
dreams by contraction into a unity, which is either already found in the
dream-
material or is newly created. The first case may be referred to as
identification, the second as composition. Identification is used where the
dream is concerned with persons, composition where things constitute the
material to be unified; but compositions are also made of persons. Local-
ities are often treated as persons.

Identification consists in giving representation in the dream-
content to
only one of two or more persons who are related by some common feature,
while the second person or other persons appear to be suppressed as far
as the dream is concerned. In the dream this one “screening” person en-
ters into all the relations and situations which derive from the persons
whom he screens. In cases of composition, however, when persons are
combined, there are already present in the dream-
image features which
are characteristic of, but not common to, the persons in question, so that
a new unity, a composite person, appears as the result of the union of these
features. The combination itself may be effected in various ways. Either
the dream-
person bears the name of one of the persons to whom he re-
fers—and in this case we simply know, in a manner that is quite analogous
to knowledge in waking life, that this or that person is intended—while
the visual features belong to another person; or the dream-
image itself is
compounded of visual features which in reality are derived from the two.
Also, in place of the visual features, the part played by the second per-
son may be represented by the attitudes and gestures which are usually
ascribed to him by the words he speaks, or by the situations in which he
is placed. In this latter method of characterization the sharp distinction
between the identification and the combination of persons begins to dis-
appear. But it may also happen that the formation of such a composite
person is unsuccessful. The situations or actions of the dream are then
attributed to one person, and the other—as a rule the more important—
is introduced as an inactive spectator. Perhaps the dreamer will say:
“My mother was there too” (Stekel). Such an element of the dream-
content is then comparable to a determinative in hieroglyphic script which
is not meant to be expressed, but is intended only to explain another sign.

The common feature which justifies the union of two persons—that is
to say, which enables it to be made—may either be represented in the

348

dream or it may be absent. As a rule identification or composition of per-
sons actually serves to avoid the necessity of representing this common
feature. Instead of repeating: “A is ill-
disposed towards me, and so is B,”
I make, in my dream, a composite person of A and B; or I conceive A as
doing something which is alien to his character, but which is character-
istic of B. The dream-
person obtained in this way appears in the dream
in some new connection, and the fact that he signifies both A and B justi-
fies my inserting that which is common to both persons—their hostility
towards me—at the proper place in the dream-
interpretation. In this
manner I often achieve a quite extraordinary degree of condensation of
the dream-
content; I am able to dispense with the direct representation
of the very complicated relations belonging to one person, if I can find a
second person who has an equal claim to some of these relations. It will
be readily understood how far this representation by means of identifica-
tion may circumvent the censoring resistance which sets up such harsh
conditions for the dream-
work. The thing that offends the censorship may
reside in those very ideas which are connected in the dream-
material with
the one person; I now find a second person, who likewise stands in some
relation to the objectionable material, but only to a part of it. Contact at
that one point which offends the censorship now justifies my formation
of a composite person, who is characterized by the indifferent features
of each. This person, the result of combination or identification, being
free of the censorship, is now suitable for incorporation in the dream-
content. Thus, by the application of dream-
condensation, I have satisfied
the demands of the dream-
censorship.

When a common feature of two persons is represented in a dream, this
is usually a hint to look for another concealed common feature, the rep-
resentation of which is made impossible by the censorship. Here a dis-
placement of the common feature has occurred, which in some degree
facilitates representation. From the circumstance that the composite per-
son is shown to me in the dream with an indifferent common feature, I
must infer that another common feature which is by no means indifferent
exists in the dream-
thoughts.

Accordingly, the identification or combination of persons serves vari-
ous purposes in our dreams; in the first place, that of representing a fea-
ture common to two persons; secondly, that of representing a displaced
common feature; and, thirdly, that of expressing a community of features
which is merely wished for. As the wish for a community of features in
two persons often coincides with the interchanging of these persons, this
relation also is expressed in dreams by identification. In the dream of
Irma’s injection I wish to exchange one patient for another—that is to
say, I wish this other person to be my patient, as the former person has
been; the dream deals with this wish by showing me a person who is called

149

Irma, but who is examined in a position such as I have had occasion to
see only the other person occupy. In the dream about my uncle this sub-
stitution is made the centre of the dream; I identify myself with the
minister by judging and treating my colleagues as shabbily as he does.
It has been my experience—and to this I have found no exception—
that every dream treats of oneself. Dreams are absolutely egoistic.¹⁾ In
cases where not my ego but only a strange person occurs in the dream-
content, I may safely assume that by means of identification my ego is
concealed behind that person. I am permitted to supplement my ego. On
other occasions, when my ego appears in the dream, the situation in which
it is placed tells me that another person is concealing himself, by means
of identification, behind the ego. In this case I must be prepared to find
that in the interpretation I should transfer something which is connected
with this person—the hidden common feature—to myself. There are also
dreams in which my ego appears together with other persons who, when
the identification is resolved, once more show themselves to be my ego.
Through these identifications I shall then have to connect with my ego
certain ideas to which the censorship has objected. I may also give my
ego multiple representation in my dream, either directly or by means of
identification with other people. By means of several such identifications
an extraordinary amount of thought material may be condensed.²⁾ That
one’s ego should appear in the same dream several times or in different
forms is fundamentally no more surprising than that it should appear, in
conscious thinking, many times and in different places or in different rela-
tions: as, for example, in the sentence: “When I think what a healthy
child I was.”

Still easier than in the case of persons is the resolution of identifications
in the case of localities designated by their own names, as here the dis-
turbing influence of the all-powerful ego is lacking. In one of my dreams
of Rome (p. 259) the name of the place in which I find myself is Rome;
I am surprised, however, by a large number of German placards at a street
corner. This last is a wish-fulfilment, which immediately suggests Prague,
the wish itself probably originated at a period of my youth when I was
imbued with a German-nationalistic spirit which to-day is quite subdued.
At the time of my dream I was looking forward to meeting a friend in
Prague; the identification of Rome with Prague is therefore explained by
a desired common feature; I would rather meet my friend in Rome than
in Prague; for the purpose of this meeting I should like to exchange
Prague for Rome.

1)Cf. here the observations made on pp. 313–14.

2)If I do not know behind which of the persons appearing in the dream I am to look
for my ego, I observe the following rule: That person in the dream who is subject
to an emotion which I am aware of while asleep is the one that conceals my ego.

350

The possibility of creating composite formations is one of the chief
causes of the fantastic character so common in dreams, in that it intro-
duces into the dream-content elements which could never have been ob-
jects of perception. The psychic process which occurs in the creation of
composite formations is obviously the same as that which we employ in
conceiving or figuring a dragon or a centaur in our waking senses. The
only difference is that in the fantastic creations of waking life the im-
pression intended is itself the decisive factor, while the composite forma-
tion in the dream is determined by a factor–the common feature in the
dream-thoughts–which is independent of its form. Composite forma-
tions in dreams may be achieved in a great many different ways. In the
most artless of these methods only the properties of the one thing are
represented, and this representation is accompanied by a knowledge that
they refer to another object also. A more careful technique combines
features of the one object with those of the other in a new image, while it
makes skilful use of any really existing resemblances between the two
objects. The new creation may prove to be wholly absurd, or even suc-
cessful as a fantasy, according as the material and the wit employed in
constructing it may permit. If the objects to be condensed into a unity are
too incongruous, the dream-work is content with creating a composite
formation with a comparatively distinct nucleus, to which are attached
more indefinite modifications. The unification into one image has here
been to some extent unsuccessful; the two representations overlap one
another, and give rise to something like a contest between the visual im-
ages. Similar representations might be obtained in a drawing if one were
to attempt to give form to a unified abstraction of disparate perceptual
images.

Dreams naturally abound in such composite formations; I have given
several examples of these in the dreams already analysed, and will now
cite more such examples. In the dream on p. 305, which describes the
career of my patient “in flowery language,” the dream-ego carries a spray
of blossom in her hand which, as we have seen, signifies at once sexual
innocence and sexual transgression. Moreover, from the manner in which
the blossoms are set on, they recall cherry-blossom; the blossoms them-
selves, considered singly, are camellias, and finally the whole spray gives
the dreamer the impression of an exotic plant. The common feature in
the elements of this composite formation is revealed by the dream-
thoughts. The blossoming spray is made up of allusions to presents by
which she was induced or was to have been induced to behave in a man-
ner agreeable to the giver. So it was with cherries in her childhood, and
with a camellia-tree in her later years; the exotic character is an allusion
to a much-travelled naturalist, who sought to win her favour by means
of a drawing of a flower. Another female patient contrives a composite

351

mean out of bathing machines at a seaside resort, country privies, and the
attics of our city dwelling-
houses. A reference to human nakedness and
exposure is common to the first two elements; and we may infer from
their connection with the third element that (in her childhood) the garret
was likewise the scene of bodily exposure. A dreamer of the male sex
makes a composite locality out of two places in which “treatment” is
given—my office and the assembly rooms in which he first became ac-
quainted with his wife. Another, a female patient, after her elder brother
has promised to regale her with caviare, dreams that his legs are covered
all over with black beads of caviare. The two elements “taint” in a moral
sense and the recollection of a cutaneous eruption in childhood which
made her legs look as though studded over with red instead of black spots,
have here been combined with the beads of caviare to form a new idea—
the idea of “what she gets from her brother.” In this dream parts of the
human body are treated as objects, as is usually the case in dreams. In one
of the dreams recorded by Ferenczi there occurs a composite formation
made up of the person of a physician and a horse, and this composite
being wears a nightshirt. The common feature in these three components
was revealed in the analysis, after the nightshirt had been recognized as
an allusion to the father of the dreamer in a scene of childhood. In each
of the three cases there was some object of her sexual curiosity. As a child
she had often been taken by her nurse to the army stud, where she had
the amplest opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, at that time still unin-
hibited.

I have already stated that the dream has no means of expressing the
relation of contradiction, contrast, negation. I shall now contradict this
assertion for the first time. A certain number of cases of what may be
summed up under the word “contrast” obtain representation, as we have
seen, simply by means of identification—that is, when an exchange, a
substitution, can be bound up with the contrast. Of this we have cited
repeated examples. Certain other of the contrasts in the dream-
thoughts,
which perhaps come under the category of “inverted, turned into the
opposite,” are represented in dreams in the following remarkable man-
ner, which may almost be described as witty. The “inversion” does not
itself make its way into the dream-
content, but manifests its presence in
the material by the fact that a part of the already formed dream-
content
which is, for other reasons, closely connected in context is—as it were
subsequently—inverted. It is easier to illustrate this process than to
describe it. In the beautiful “Up and Down” dream (p. 324) the dream-
representation of ascending is an inversion of its prototype in the dream-
thoughts: that is, of the introductory scene of Daudet’s Sappho; in the
dream climbing is difficult at first and easy later on, whereas in the novel
it is easy at first, and later becomes more and more difficult. Again,

152

“above” and “below,” with reference to the dreamer’s brother, are re-
versed in the dream. This points to a relation of inversion or contrast be-
tween two parts of the material in the dream-thoughts, which indeed we
found in them, for in the childish phantasy of the dreamer he is carried
by his nurse, while in the novel, on the contrary, the hero carries his be-
loved. My dream of Goethe’s attack on Herr M. (to be cited later) like-
wise contains an inversion of this sort, which must be set right before the
dream can be interpreted. In this dream Goethe attacks a young man,
Herr M.; the reality, as contained in the dream-thoughts, is that an
eminent man, a friend of mine, has been attacked by an unknown young
author. In the dream I reckon time from the date of Goethe’s death; in
reality the reckoning was made from the year in which the paralytic was
born. The thought which influences the dream-material reveals itself as
my opposition to the treatment of Goethe as though he were a lunatic. “It
is the other way about,” says the dream; “if you don’t understand the
book it is you who are feeble-minded, not the author.” All these dreams
of inversion, moreover, seem to me to imply an allusion to the contemptu-
ous phrase, “to turn one’s back upon a person” (German: einem die
Kehrseite zeigen, lit. to show a person one’s backside): cf. the inversion in
respect of the dreamer’s brother in the Sappho dream. It is further worth
noting how frequently inversion is employed in precisely those dreams
which are inspired by repressed homosexual impulses.

Moreover, inversion, or transformation into the opposite, is one of the
most favoured and most versatile methods of representation which the
dream-
work has at its disposal. It serves, in the first place, to enable the
wish-
fulfilment to prevail against a definite element of the dream-
thoughts. “If only it were the other way about!” is often the best expres-
sion for the reaction of the ego against a disagreeable recollection. But
inversion becomes extraordinarily useful in the service of the censorship,
for it effects, in the material to be represented, a degree of distortion
which at first simply paralyses our understanding of the dream. It is
therefore always permissible, if a dream stubbornly refuses to surrender
its meaning, to venture on the experimental inversion of definite portions
of its manifest content. Then, not infrequently, everything becomes clear.

Besides the inversion of content, the temporal inversion must not be
overlooked. A frequent device of dream-distortion consists in presenting
the final issue of the event or the conclusion of the train of thought at the
beginning of the dream, and appending at the end of the dream the prem-
ises of the conclusion, or the causes of the event. Anyone who forgets this
technical device of dream-distortion stands helpless before the problem
of dream-interpretation.¹

¹The hysterical attack often employs the same device of temporal inversion in
order to conceal its meaning from the observer. The attack of a hysterical girl, for

353

THE DREAM-WORK

In many cases, indeed, we discover the meaning of the dream only
when we have subjected the dream-content to a multiple inversion, in
accordance with the different relations. For example, in the dream of a
young patient who is suffering from obsessional neurosis, the memory of
the childish death-wish directed against a dreaded father concealed itself
behind the following words: His father scolds him because he comes home
so late, but the context of the psychoanalytic treatment and the impres-
sions of the dreamer show that the sentence must be read as follows: He
is angry with his father, and further, that his father always came home
too early (i.e. too soon). He would have preferred that his father should
not come home at all, which is identical with the wish (see p. 304) that
his father would die. As a little boy, during the prolonged absence of his
father, the dreamer was guilty of a sexual aggression against another
child, and was punished by the threat: “Just you wait until your father
comes home!”

If we should seek to trace the relations between the dream-content and
the dream-thoughts a little farther, we shall do this best by making the
dream itself our point of departure, and asking ourselves: What do cer-
tain formal characteristics of the dream-presentation signify in relation
to the dream-thoughts? First and foremost among the formal character-
istics which are bound to impress us in dreams are the differences in the
sensory intensity of the single dream-images, and in the distinctness of
various parts of the dream, or of whole dreams as compared with one an-
other. The differences in the intensity of individual dream-images cover
the whole gamut, from a sharpness of definition which one is inclined—
although without warrant—to rate more highly than that of reality, to a
provoking indistinctness which we declare to be characteristic of dreams,
because it really is not wholly comparable to any of the degrees of in-
distinctness which we occasionally perceive in real objects. Moreover, we
usually describe the impression which we receive of an indistinct object
in a dream as “fleeting,” while we think of the more distinct dream-images
as having been perceptible also for a longer period of time. We must now
ask ourselves by what conditions in the dream-material these differences
in the distinctness of the individual portions of the dream-content are
brought about.

example, consists in enacting a little romance, which she has imagined in the uncon-
scious in connection with an encounter in a tram. A man, attracted by the beauty of
her foot, addresses her while she is reading, whereupon she goes with him and a pas-
sionate love-scene ensues. Her attack begins with the representation of this scene by
writhing movements of the body (accompanied by movements of the lips and fold-
ing of the arms to signify kisses and embraces), whereupon she hurries into the next
room, sits down on a chair, lifts her skirt in order to show her foot, acts as though
she were about to read a book, and speaks to me (answers me). Cf. the observation
of Artemidorus: “In interpreting dream-stories one must consider them the first time
from the beginning to the end, and the second time from the end to the beginning.”

354

Before proceeding farther, it is necessary to deal with certain expecta
tions which seem to be almost inevitable. Since actual sensations exper-
ienced during sleep may constitute part of the dream-material, it will
probably be assumed that these sensations, or the dream-elements re-
sulting from them, are emphasized by a special intensity, or conversely,
that anything which is particularly vivid in the dream can probably be
traced to such real sensations during sleep. My experience, however, has
never confirmed this. It is not true that those elements of a dream which
are derivatives of real impressions perceived in sleep (nerve stimuli) are
distinguished by their special vividness from others which are based on
memories. The factor of reality is inoperative in determining the intensity
of dream-images.

Further, it might be expected that the sensory intensity (vividness) of
single dream-images is in proportion to the psychic intensity of the ele-
ments corresponding to them in the dream-thoughts. In the latter, in-
tensity is identical with psychic value; the most intense elements are in
fact the most significant, and these constitute the central point of the
dream-thoughts. We know, however, that it is precisely these elements
which are usually not admitted to the dream-content, owing to the vigi-
lance of the censorship. Still, it might be possible for their most immedi-
ate derivatives, which represent them in the dream, to reach a higher
degree of intensity without, however, for that reason constituting the
central point of the dream-representation. This assumption also vanishes
as soon as we compare the dream and the dream-material. The intensity
of the elements in the one has nothing to do with the intensity of the ele-
ments in the other; as a matter of fact, a complete “transvaluation of all
psychic values” takes place between the dream-material and the dream.
The very element of the dream which is transient and hazy, and screened
by more vigorous images, is often discovered to be the one and only direct
derivative of the topic that completely dominates the dream-thoughts.

The intensity of the dream-elements proves to be determined in a dif-
ferent manner: that is, by two factors which are mutually independent.
It will readily be understood that those elements by means of which the
wish-fulfilment expresses itself are those which are intensely represented.
But analysis tells us that from the most vivid elements of the dream the
greatest number of trains of thought proceed, and that those which are
most vivid are at the same time those which are best determined. No
change of meaning is involved if we express this latter empirical propo-
sition in the following formula: The greatest intensity is shown by those
elements of the dream for whose formation the most extensive condensa-
tion-work was required. We may, therefore, expect that it will be possible
to express this condition, as well as the other condition of the wish-fulfil-
ment in a single formula.

35

THE DREAM-
WORK

I must utter a warning that the problem which I have just been con-
sidering—the causes of the greater or lesser intensity or distinctness of
single elements in dreams—is not to be confounded with the other prob-
lem—that of variations in the distinctness of whole dreams or sections of
dreams. In the former case the opposite of distinctness is haziness; in the
latter, confusion. It is, of course, undeniable that in both scales the two
kinds of intensities rise and fall in unison. A portion of the dream which
seems clear to us usually contains vivid elements; an obscure dream, on
the contrary, is composed of less vivid elements. But the problem offered
by the scale of definition, which ranges from the apparently clear to the
indistinct or confused, is far more complicated than the problem of the
fluctuations in vividness of the dream-elements. For reasons which will
be given later, the former cannot at this stage be further discussed. In
isolated cases one observes, not without surprise, that the impression of
distinctness or indistinctness produced by a dream has nothing to do with
the dream-structure, but proceeds from the dream-material, as one of its
ingredients. Thus, for example, I remember a dream which on waking
seemed so particularly well-constructed, flawless and clear that I made
up my mind, while I was still in a somnolent state, to admit a new cate-
gory of dreams—those which had not been subject to the mechanism of
condensation and distortion, and which might thus be described as “phan-
tasies during sleep.” A closer examination, however, proved that this
unusual dream suffered from the same structural flaws and breaches as
exist in all other dreams; so I abandoned the idea of a category of “dream-
phantasies.”¹ The content of the dream, reduced to its lowest terms,
was that I was expounding to a friend a difficult and long-sought theory
of bisexuality, and the wish-fulfilling power of the dream was responsible
for the fact that this theory (which, by the way, was not communicated
in the dream) appeared to be so lucid and flawless. Thus, what I believed
to be a judgment as regards the finished dream was a part, and indeed the
most essential part, of the dream-content. Here the dream-work reached
out, as it were, into my first waking thoughts, and presented to me, in the
form of a judgment of the dream, that part of the dream-material which
it had failed to represent with precision in the dream. I was once con-
fronted with the exact counterpart of this case by a female patient who at
first absolutely declined to relate a dream which was necessary for the
analysis “because it was so hazy and confused,” and who finally declared,
after repeatedly protesting the inaccuracy of her description, that it
seemed to her that several persons—herself, her husband, and her father
—had occurred in the dream, and that she had not known whether her
husband was her father, or who really was her father, or something of that
sort. Comparison of this dream with the ideas which occurred to the
I do not know to-day whether I was justified in doing so.

356

dreamer in the course of the sitting showed beyond a doubt that it dealt
with the rather commonplace story of a maidservant who has to confess
that she is expecting a child, and hears doubts expressed as to “who the
father really is.”¹ The obscurity manifested by this dream, therefore,
was once more a portion of the dream-exciting material. A fragment of
this material was represented in the form of the dream. The form of the
dream or of dreaming is employed with astonishing frequency to repre-
sent the concealed content.

Glosses on the dream, and seemingly harmless comments on it, often
serve in the most subtle manner to conceal—although, of course, they
really betray—a part of what is dreamed. As, for example, when the
dreamer says: Here the dream was wiped out, and the analysis gives an
infantile reminiscence of listening to someone cleaning himself after
defecation. Or another example, which deserves to be recorded in detail:
A young man has a very distinct dream, reminding him of phantasies of
his boyhood which have remained conscious. He found himself in a hotel
at a seasonal resort; it was night; he mistook the number of his room, and
entered a room in which an elderly lady and her two daughters were un-
dressing to go to bed. He continues: “Then there are some gaps in the
dream; something is missing; and at the end there was a man in the
room, who wanted to throw me out, and with whom I had to struggle.”
He tries in vain to recall the content and intention of the boyish phantasy
to which the dream obviously alluded. But we finally become aware that
the required content had already been given in his remarks concerning
the indistinct part of the dream. The “gaps” are the genital apertures of
the women who are going to bed: “Here something is missing” describes
the principal characteristic of the female genitals. In his young days he
burned with curiosity to see the female genitals, and was still inclined to
adhere to the infantile sexual theory which attributes a male organ to
women.

A very similar form was assumed in an analogous reminiscence of an-
other dreamer. He dreamed: I go with Fräulein K. into the restaurant of
the Volksgarten . . . then comes a dark place, an interruption . . .
then I find myself in the salon of a brothel, where I see two or three
women, one in a chemise and drawers.

Analysis.—Fräulein K. is the daughter of his former employer; as he
himself admits, she was a sister-
substitute. He rarely had the opportunity
of talking to her, but they once had a conversation in which “one recog-
nized one’s sexuality, so to speak, as though one were to say: I am a man
and you are a woman.” He had been only once to the above-
mentioned
restaurant, when he was accompanied by the sister of his brother-in-law,

¹Accompanying hysterical symptoms; amenorrhoea and profound depression were
the chief troubles of this patient.

357

THE DREAM-
WORK

a girl to whom he was quite indifferent. On another occasion he accom-
panied three ladies to the door of the restaurant. The ladies were his
sister, his sister-
in-
law, and the girl already mentioned. He was perfectly
indifferent to all three of them, but they all belonged to the “sister cate-
gory.” He had visited a brothel but rarely, perhaps two or three times in
his life.

The interpretation is based on the “dark place,” the “interruption” in
the dream, and informs us that on occasion, but in fact only rarely, ob-
sessed by his boyish curiosity, he had inspected the genitals of his sister,
a few years his junior. A few days later the misdemeanor indicated in
the dream recurred to his conscious memory.

All dreams of the same night belong, in respect of their content, to the
same whole; their division into several parts, their grouping and number,
are all full of meaning and may be regarded as pieces of information about
the latent dream-
thoughts. In the interpretation of dreams consisting of
several main sections, or of dreams belonging to the same night, we must
not overlook the possibility that these different and successive dreams
mean the same thing, expressing the same impulses in different material.
That one of these homologous dreams which comes first in time is usually
the most distorted and most bashful, while the next dream is bolder and
more distinct.

Even Pharaoh’s dream of the ears and the kine, which Joseph inter-
preted, was of this kind. It is given by Josephus in greater detail than in
the Bible. After relating the first dream, the King said: “After I had seen
this vision I awaked out of my sleep, and, being in disorder, and consider-
ing with myself what this appearance should be, I fell asleep again, and
saw another dream much more wonderful than the foregoing, which still
did more affright and disturb me.” After listening to the relation of the
dream, Joseph said: “This dream, O King, although seen under two
forms, signifies one and the same event of things.”¹

Jung, in his Beitrag zur Psychologie des Gerüchtes, relates how a veiled
erotic dream of a schoolgirl was understood by her friends without in-
terpretation, and continued by them with variations, and he remarks,
with reference to one of these narrated dreams, “that the concluding idea
of a long series of dream-
images had precisely the same content as the
first image of the series had endeavoured to represent. The censorship
thrust the complex out of the way as long as possible by a constant re-
newal of symbolic screenings, displacements, transformations into some-
thing harmless, etc.” Scherner was well acquainted with this peculiarity
of dream-
representation, and describes it in his Leben des Traumes (P.

¹Josephus; Antiquities of the Jews, book ii, chap. v, trans. by Wm. Whiston, David
McKay, Philadelphia.

358

166) in terms of a special law in the Appendix to his doctrine of organic
stimulation: “But finally, in all symbolic dream-formations emanating
from definite nerve stimuli, the phantasy observes the general law that
at the beginning of the dream it depicts the stimulating object only by
the remotest and freest allusions, but towards the end, when the graphic
impulse becomes exhausted, the stimulus itself is nakedly represented
by its appropriate organ or its function; whereupon the dream, itself
describing its organic motive, achieves its end. . . .”

A pretty confirmation of this law of Scherner’s has been furnished by
Otto Rank in his essay: Ein Traum, der sich selbst deutet. This dream,
related to him by a girl, consisted of two dreams of the same night, sep-
arated by an interval of time, the second of which ended with an orgasm.
It was possible to interpret this orgastic dream in detail in spite of the
few ideas contributed by the dreamer, and the wealth of relations be-
tween the two dream-contents made it possible to recognize that the first
dream expressed in modest language the same thing as the second, so that
the latter—the orgastic dream—facilitated a full explanation of the
former. From this example, Rank very justifiably argues the significance
of orgastic dreams for the theory of dreams in general.

But in my experience it is only in rare cases that one is in a position to
translate the lucidity or confusion of a dream, respectively, into a cer-
tainty or doubt in the dream-material. Later on I shall have to disclose a
hitherto unmentioned factor in dream-formation, upon whose operation
this qualitative scale in dreams is essentially dependent.

In many dreams in which a certain situation and environment are pre-
served for some time, there occur interruptions which may be described
in the following words: “But then it seemed as though it were, at the
same time, another place, and there such and such a thing happened.” In
these cases what interrupts the main action of the dream, which after a
while may be continued again, reveals itself in the dream-material as a
subordinate clause, an interpolated thought. Conditionality in the dream-
thoughts is represented by simultaneity in the dream-content (wenn or
wann = if or when, while).

We may now ask, What is the meaning of the sensation of inhibited
movement which so often occurs in dreams, and is so closely allied to
anxiety? One wants to move, and is unable to stir from the spot; or wants
to accomplish something, and encounters obstacle after obstacle. The
train is about to start, and one cannot reach it; one’s hand is raised to
avenge an insult, and its strength fails, etc. We have already met with
this sensation in exhibition-dreams, but have as yet made no serious at-
tempt to interpret it. It is convenient, but inadequate to answer that
there is motor paralysis in sleep, which manifests itself by means of the
sensation alluded to. We may ask: “Why is it, then, that we do not dream

359

THE DREAM-WORK

continually of such inhibited movements?” And we may permissibly
suspect that this sensation, which may at any time occur during sleep,
serves some sort of purpose for representation, and is evoked only when
the need of this representation is present in the dream-material.

Inability to do a thing does not always appear in the dream as a sensa-
tion; it may appear simply as part of the dream-content. I think one case
of this kind is especially fitted to enlighten us as to the meaning of this
peculiarity. I shall give an abridged version of a dream in which I seem to
be accused of dishonesty. The scene is a mixture made up of a private
sanatorium and several other places. A manservant appears to summon
me to an inquiry. I know in the dream that something has been missed,
and that the inquiry is taking place because I am suspected of having
appropriated the lost article. Analysis shows that inquiry is to be taken
in two senses; it includes the meaning of medical examination. Being con-
scious of my innocence, and my position as consultant in this sanatorium,
I calmly follow the manservant. We are received at the door by another
manservant, who says, pointing at me, “Have you brought him? Why, he
is a respectable man.” Thereupon, and unattended, I enter a great hall
where there are many machines, which reminds me of an inferno with its
hellish instruments of punishment. I see a colleague strapped to an ap-
pliance; he has every reason to be interested in my appearance, but he
takes no notice of me. I understand that I may now go. Then I cannot
find my hat, and cannot go after all.

The wish that the dream fulfils is obviously the wish that my honesty
shall be acknowledged, and that I may be permitted to go; there must
therefore be all sorts of material in the dream-thoughts which comprise
a contradiction of this wish. The fact that I may go is the sign of my
absolution; if, then, the dream provides at its close an event which pre-
vents me from going, we may readily conclude that the suppressed mate-
rial of the contradiction is asserting itself in this feature. The fact that I
cannot find my hat therefore means: “You are not after all an honest
man.” The inability to do something in the dream is the expression of a
contradiction, a “No”; so that our earlier assertion, to the effect that the
dream is not capable of expressing a negation, must be revised accord-
ingly.¹

¹A reference to an experience of childhood emerges, in the complete analysis, through
the following connecting-links: “The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go.” And
then follows the waggish question: “How old is the Moor when he has done his
duty?”—“A year, then he can go (walk).” (It is said that I came into the world with
so much black curly hair that my young mother declared that I was a little Moor.)
The fact that I cannot find my hat is an experience of the day which has been ex-
ploited in various senses. Our servant, who is a genius at stowing things away, had
hidden the hat. A rejection of melancholy thoughts of death is concealed behind the
conclusion of the dream: “I have not nearly done my duty yet; I cannot go yet.”

360

In other dreams in which the inability to do something occurs, not
merely as a situation, but also as a sensation, the same contradiction is
more emphatically expressed by the sensation of inhibited movement, or
a will to which a counter-
will is opposed. Thus the sensation of inhibited
movement represents a conflict of will. We shall see later on that this very
motor paralysis during sleep is one of the fundamental conditions of the
psychic process which functions during dreaming. Now an impulse which
is conveyed to the motor system is none other than the will, and the fact
that we are certain that this impulse will be inhibited in sleep makes the
whole process extraordinarily well-
adapted to the representation of a
will towards something and of a “No” which opposes itself thereto. From
my explanation of anxiety, it is easy to understand why the sensation of
the inhibited will is so closely allied to anxiety, and why it is so often
connected with it in dreams. Anxiety is a libidinal impulse which emanates
from the unconscious and is inhibited by the preconscious.¹⁾ Therefore,
when a sensation of inhibition in the dream is accompanied by anxiety,
the dream must be concerned with a volition which was at one time capa-
ble of arousing libido; there must be a sexual impulse.

As for the judgment which is often expressed during a dream: “Of
course, it is only a dream,” and the psychic force to which it may be
ascribed, I shall discuss these questions later on. For the present I will
merely say that they are intended to depreciate the importance of what
is being dreamed. The interesting problem allied to this, as to what is
meant if a certain content in the dream is characterized in the dream itself
as having been “dreamed”—the riddle of a “dream within a dream”—has
been solved in a similar sense by W. Stekel, by the analysis of some con-
vincing examples. Here again the part of the dream “dreamed” is to be
depreciated in value and robbed of its reality; that which the dreamer
continues to dream after waking from the “dream within a dream” is
what the dream-
wish desires to put in place of the obliterated reality. It
may therefore be assumed that the part “dreamed” contains the repre-
sentation of the reality, the real memory, while, on the other hand, the
continued dream contains the representation of what the dreamer merely
wishes. The inclusion of a certain content in “a dream within a dream” is
therefore equivalent to the wish that what has been characterized as a
dream had never occurred. In other words: when a particular incident is
represented by the dream-
work in a “dream,” it signifies the strongest
confirmation of the reality of this incident, the most emphatic affirmation
of it. The dream-
work utilizes the dream itself as a form of repudiation,
and thereby confirms the theory that a dream is a wish-
fulfilment.

Birth and death together—as in the dream of Goethe and the paralytic, which was
a little earlier in date.

¹This theory is not in accordance with more recent views.

36

D. REGARD FOR REPRESENTABILITY

We have hitherto been concerned with investigating the manner in which
our dreams represent the relations between the dream-thoughts, but we
have often extended our inquiry to the further question as to what altera-
tions the dream-material itself undergoes for the purposes of dream-
formation. We now know that the dream-material, after being stripped of
a great many of its relations, is subjected to compression, while at the
same time displacements of the intensity of its elements enforce a psychic
transvaluation of this material. The displacements which we have con-
sidered were shown to be substitutions of one particular idea for another,
in some way related to the original by its associations, and the displace-
ments were made to facilitate the condensation, inasmuch as in this man-
ner, instead of two elements, a common mean between them found its way
into the dream. So far no mention has been made of any other kind of
displacement. But we learn from the analyses that displacement of an
other kind does occur, and that it manifests itself in an exchange of the
verbal expression for the thought in question. In both cases we are deal-
ing with a displacement along a chain of associations, but the same process
takes place in different psychic spheres, and the result of this displace-
ment in the one case is that one element is replaced by another, while in
the other case an element exchanges its verbal shape for another.

This second kind of displacement occurring in dream-formation is not
only of great theoretical interest, but is also peculiarly well-fitted to ex-
plain the appearance of phantastic absurdity in which dreams disguise
themselves. Displacement usually occurs in such a way that a colourless
and abstract expression of the dream-thought is exchanged for one that is
pictorial and concrete. The advantage, and along with it the purpose, of
this substitution is obvious. Whatever is pictorial is capable of repre-
sentation in dreams and can be fitted into a situation in which abstract
expression would confront the dream-representation with difficulties not
unlike those which would arise if a political leading article had to be repre-
sented in an illustrated journal. Not only the possibility of representation,
but also the interests of condensation and of the censorship, may be
furthered by this exchange. Once the abstractly expressed and unservice-
able dream-thought is translated into pictorial language, those contacts
and identities between this new expression and the rest of the dream-
material which are required by the dream-work, and which it contrives
whenever they are not available, are more readily provided, since in every
language concrete terms, owing to their evolution, are richer in associa-
tions than are abstract terms. It may be imagined that a good part of the
intermediate work in dream-formation, which seeks to reduce the sep-
arate dream-thoughts to the tersest and most unified expression in the

362

dream, is effected in this manner, by fitting paraphrases of the various
thoughts. The one thought whose mode of expression has perhaps been
determined by other factors will therewith exert a distributive and selec-
tive influence on the expressions available for the others, and it may even
do this from the very start, just as it would in the creative activity of a
poet. When a poem is to be written in rhymed couplets, the second rhym-
ing line is bound by two conditions: it must express the meaning allotted
to it, and its expression must permit of a rhyme with the first line. The
best poems are, of course, those in which one does not detect the effort to
find a rhyme, and in which both thoughts have as a matter of course, by
mutual induction, selected the verbal expression which, with a little sub-
sequent adjustment, will permit of the rhyme.

In some cases the change of expression serves the purposes of dream-
condensation more directly, in that it provides an arrangement of words
which, being ambiguous, permits of the expression of more than one of
the dream-thoughts. The whole range of verbal wit is thus made to serve
the purpose of the dream-work. The part played by words in dream-
formation ought not to surprise us. A word, as the point of junction of a
number of ideas, possesses, as it were, a predestined ambiguity, and the
neuroses (obsessions, phobias) take advantage of the opportunities for
condensation and disguise afforded by words quite as eagerly as do
dreams.¹ That dream-distortion also profits by this displacement of ex-
pression may be readily demonstrated. It is indeed confusing if one am-
biguous word is substituted for two with single meanings, and the re-
placement of sober, everyday language by a plastic mode of expression
baffles our understanding, especially since a dream never tells us whether
the elements presented by it are to be interpreted literally or metaphori-
cally, whether they refer to the dream-material directly, or only by means
of interpolated expressions. Generally speaking, in the interpretation of
any element of a dream it is doubtful whether it

(a) is to be accepted in the negative or the positive sense (contras-
relation);

(b) is to be interpreted historically (as a memory);

(c) is symbolic; or whether

(d) its valuation is to be based upon its wording.

In spite of this versatility, we may say that the representation effected
by the dream-work, which was never even intended to be understood,
does not impose upon the translator any greater difficulties than those
that the ancient writers of hieroglyphics imposed upon their readers.
I have already given several examples of dream-representations which

¹Cf. Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious.

363

THE DREAM-WORK

are held together only by ambiguity of expression (“her mouth opens
without difficulty,” in the dream of Irma’s injection; “I cannot go yet
after all,” in the last dream related, etc.). I shall now cite a dream
in the analysis of which plastic representation of the abstract thoughts
plays a greater part. The difference between such dream-
interpretation and the interpretation by means of symbols may nevertheless be clearly
defined; in the symbolic interpretation of dreams the key to the sym-
bolism is selected arbitrarily by the interpreter, while in our own cases of
verbal disguise these keys are universally known and are taken from
established modes of speech. Provided one hits on the right idea on the
right occasion, one may solve dreams of this kind, either completely or in
part, independently of any statements made by the dreamer.

A lady, a friend of mine, dreams: She is at the opera. It is a Wagnerian
performance, which has lasted until 7.45 in the morning. In the stalls and
pit there are tables, at which people are eating and drinking. Her cousin
and his young wife, who have just returned from their honeymoon, are
sitting at one of these tables; beside them is a member of the aristocracy.
The young wife is said to have brought him back with her from the honey-
moon quite openly, just as she might have brought back a hat. In the
middle of the stalls there is a high tower, on the top of which there is a
platform surrounded by an iron railing. There, high overhead, stands the
conductor, with the features of Hans Richter, continually running round
behind the railing, perspiring terribly; and from this position he is con-
ducting the orchestra, which is arranged round the base of the tower. She
herself is sitting in a box with a friend of her own sex (known to me).
Her younger sister tries to hand her up, from the stalls, a large lump of
coal, alleging that she had not known that it would be so long, and that
she must by this time be miserably cold. (As though the boxes ought to
have been heated during the long performance.)

Although in other respects the dream gives a good picture of the situa-
tion, it is, of course, nonsensical enough: the tower in the middle of the
stalls, from which the conductor leads the orchestra, and above all the
coal which her sister hands up to her. I purposely asked for no analysis of
this dream. With some knowledge of the personal relations of the dreamer, I
was able to interpret parts of it independently of her. I knew that she
had felt intense sympathy for a musician whose career had been prema-
turely brought to an end by insanity. I therefore decided to take the
tower in the stalls verbally. It then emerged that the man whom she
wished to see in the place of Hans Richter towered above all the other
members of the orchestra. This tower must be described as a composite
formation by means of apposition; by its substructure it represents the
greatness of the man, but by the railing at the top, behind which he runs
round like a prisoner or an animal in a cage (an allusion to the name of

364

the unfortunate man),¹ it represents his later fate. “Lunatic-
tower” is perhaps the expression in which the two thoughts might have met.
Now that we have discovered the dream’s method of representation,
we may try, with the same key, to unlock the meaning of the second ap-
parent absurdity, that of the coal which her sister hands up to the
dreamer. “Coal” should mean “secret love.”

“No fire, no coal so hotly glows
As the secret love of which no one knows.”

She and her friend remain seated² while her younger sister, who still has
a prospect of marrying, hands her up the coal “because she did not know
that it would be so long.” What would be so long is not told in the dream.
If it were an anecdote, we should say “the performance”; but in the
dream we may consider the sentence as it is, declare it to be ambiguous,
and add “before she married.” The interpretation “secret love” is then
confirmed by the mention of the cousin who is sitting with his wife in the
stalls, and by the open love-affair attributed to the latter. The contrasts
between secret and open love, between the dreamer’s fire and the coldness
of the young wife, dominate the dream. Moreover, here once again there
is a person “in a high position” as a middle term between the aristocrat
and the musician who is justified in raising high hopes.

In the above analysis we have at last brought to light a third factor,
whose part in the transformation of the dream-thoughts into the dream-
content is by no means trivial: namely, consideration of the suitability of
the dream-thoughts for representation in the particular psychic material
of which the dream makes use—that is, for the most part in visual images.
Among the various subordinate ideas associated with the essential dream-
thoughts, those will be preferred which permit visual of representation,
and the dream-work does not hesitate to recast the intractable thoughts
into another verbal form, even though this is a more unusual form, pro-
vided it makes representation possible, and thus puts an end to the psy-
chological distress caused by strangled thinking. This pouring of the
thought-content into another mould may at the same time serve the work
of condensation, and may establish relations with another thought which
otherwise would not have been established. It is even possible that this
second thought may itself have previously changed its original expression
for the purpose of meeting the first one half-way.

Herbert Silberer³ has described a good method of directly observing
the transformation of thoughts into images which occurs in dream-forma-
tion.

¹⁾Hugo Wolf.

²⁾[The German “sitzen gelieben” is often applied to women who have not succeeded
in getting married.—Trans.]

³⁾Bleuler-Freud Jahrbuch, i, 1909.

365

tion, and has thus made it possible to study in isolation this one factor of
the dream-work. If while in a state of fatigue and somnolence he imposed
upon himself a mental effort, it frequently happened that the thought
escaped him, and in its place there appeared a picture in which he could
recognize the substitute for the thought. Not quite appropriately, Sil-
berer described this substitution as “auto-symbolic.” I shall cite here a
few examples from Silberer’s work, and on account of certain peculiarities
of the phenomena observed I shall refer to the subject later on.

“Example 1.—I remember that I have to correct a halting passage in
an essay.”

“Symbol.—I see myself planing a piece of wood.”

“Example 5.—I endeavour to call to mind the aim of certain meta-
-
physical studies which I am proposing to undertake.”

“This aim, I reflect, consists in working one’s way through, while seek-
-
ing for the basis of existence, to ever higher forms of consciousness or
levels of being.”

“Symbol.—I run a long knife under a cake as though to take a slice
out of it.”

“Interpretation.—My movement with the knife signifies ‘working one’s
way through.’ . . . The explanation of the basis of the symbolism is as
follows: At table it devolves upon me now and again to cut and distribute
a cake, a business which I perform with a long, flexible knife, and which
necessitates a certain amount of care. In particular, the neat extraction
of the cut slices of cake presents a certain amount of difficulty; the knife
must be carefully pushed under the slices in question (the slow ‘working
one’s way through’ in order to get to the bottom). But there is yet more
symbolism in the picture. The cake of the symbol was really a ‘dobos-
cake’—that is, a cake in which the knife has to cut through several layers
(the levels of consciousness and thought).”

“Example 9.—I lost the thread in a train of thought. I make an effort
to find it again, but I have to recognize that the point of departure has
completely escaped me.”

“Symbol.—Part of a form of type, the last lines of which have fallen
out.”

In view of the part played by witticisms, puns, quotations, songs, and
proverbs in the intellectual life of educated persons, it would be entirely
in accordance with our expectations to find disguises of this sort used
with extreme frequency in the representation of the dream-thoughts. Only
in the case of a few types of material has a generally valid dream-sym-
-
bolism established itself on the basis of generally known allusions and
verbal equivalents. A good part of this symbolism, however, is common
to the psychoneuroses, legends, and popular usages as well as to dreams.

366

In fact, if we look more closely into the matter, we must recognize that
in employing this kind of substitution the dream-
work is doing nothing
at all original. For the achievement of its purpose, which in this case is
representation without interference from the censorship, it simply follows
the paths which it finds already marked out in unconscious thinking, and
gives the preference to those transformations of the repressed material
which are permitted to become conscious also in the form of witticisms
and allusions, and with which all the phantasies of neurotics are replete.
Here we suddenly begin to understand the dream-
interpretations of Scher-
ner, whose essential correctness I have vindicated elsewhere. The pre-
occupation of the imagination with one’s own body is by no means
peculiar to or characteristic of the dream alone. My analyses have shown
me that it is constantly found in the unconscious thinking of neurotics,
and may be traced back to sexual curiosity, whose object, in the adoles-
cent youth or maiden, is the genitals of the opposite sex, or even of the
same sex. But, as Scherner and Volkelt very truly insist, the house does
not constitute the only group of ideas which is employed for the sym-
bolization of the body, either in dreams or in the unconscious phantasies
of neurosis. To be sure, I know patients who have steadily adhered to an
architectural symbolism for the body and the genitals (sexual interest, of
course, extends far beyond the region of the external genital organs)—
patients for whom posts and pillars signify legs (as in the Song of Songs),
to whom every door suggests a bodily aperture (“hole”), and every water-
pipe the urinary system, and so on. But the groups of ideas appertaining
to plant-
life, or to the kitchen, are just as often chosen to conceal sexual
images ¹⁾; in respect of the former everyday language, the sediment of
imaginative comparisons dating from the remotest times, has abundantly
paved the way (the “vineyard” of the Lord, the “seed” of Abraham, the
“garden” of the maiden in the Song of Songs). The ugliest as well as the
most intimate details of sexual life may be thought or dreamed of in ap-
parently innocent allusions to culinary operations, and the symptoms of
hysteria will become absolutely unintelligible if we forget that sexual
symbolism may conceal itself behind the most commonplace and incon-
spicuous matters as its safest hiding-
place. That some neurotic children
cannot look at blood and raw meat, that they vomit at the sight of eggs
and macaroni, and that the dread of snakes, which is natural to mankind,
is monstrously exaggerated in neurotics—all this has a definite sexual
meaning. Wherever the neurosis employs a disguise of this sort, it treads
the paths once trodden by the whole of humanity in the early stages of

¹⁾A mass of corroborative material may be found in the three supplementary volumes
of Edward Fuchs’s Illustrierte Sittengeschichte; privately printed by A. Lange,
Munich.

367

THE DREAM-WORK

civilization—paths to whose thinly veiled existence our idiomatic ex-
pressions, proverbs, superstitions, and customs testify to this day.

I here insert the promised “flower-dream” of a female patient, in which
I shall print in Roman type everything which is to be sexually interpreted.
This beautiful dream lost all its charm for the dreamer once it had been
interpreted.

(a) Preliminary dream: She goes to the two maids in the kitchen and
scolds them for taking so long to prepare “a little bite of food.” She also
sees a very large number of heavy kitchen utensils in the kitchen, heaped
into piles and turned upside down in order to drain. Later addition: The
two maids go to fetch water, and have, as it were, to climb into a river
which reaches up to the house or into the courtyard.¹

(b) Main dream²: She is descending from a height³ over curiously
constructed railings, or a fence which is composed of large square trellis-
work hurdles with small square apertures.⁴ It is really not adapted for
climbing; she is constantly afraid that she cannot find a place for her
foot, and she is glad that her dress doesn’t get caught anywhere, and that
she is able to climb down it so respectably.⁵ As she climbs she is carrying
a big branch in her hand,⁶ really like a tree, which is thickly studded with
red flowers; a spreading branch, with many twigs.⁷ With this is connected
the idea of cherry-blossoms (Blüten = flowers), but they look like fully
opened camellias, which of course do not grow on trees. As she is descend-
ing, she first has one, then suddenly two, and then again only one.⁸ When
she has reached the ground the lower flowers have already begun to fall.
Now that she has reached the bottom she sees an “odd man” who is
combing—as he would like to put it—just such a tree, that is, with a
piece of wood he is scraping thick bunches of hair from it, which hang
from it like moss. Other men have chopped off such branches in a garden,
and have flung them into the road, where they are lying about, so that
a number of people take some of them. But she asks whether this is right,
whether she may take one, too.⁹ In the garden there stands a young man

¹For the interpretation of this preliminary dream, which is to be regarded as
“causal,” see p. 343.

²Her career.

³Exalted origin, the wish-contrast to the preliminary dream.

⁴A composite formation, which unites two localities, the so-called garret (German:
Boden = floor, garret) of her father’s house, in which she used to play with her
brother, the object of her later phantasies, and the farm of a malicious uncle, who
used to tease her.

⁵Wish-contrast to an actual memory of her uncle’s farm, to the effect that she used
to expose herself while she was asleep.

⁶Just as the angel bears a lily-stem in the Annunciation.

⁷For the explanation of this composite formation, see p. 346; innocence, menstru-
ation, La Dame aux Camélias.

⁸Referring to the plurality of the persons who serve her phantasies.

⁹Whether it is permissible to masturbate. [“Sich einen herunterreissen” means “to
pull off” and colloquially “to masturbate.”—Trans.]

368

(he is a foreigner, and known to her) toward whom she goes in order to
ask him how it is possible to transplant such branches in her own gar-
den.¹⁾ He embraces her, whereupon she struggles and asks him what he
is thinking of, whether it is permissible to embrace her in such a manner.
He says there is nothing wrong in it, that it is permitted.²⁾ He then de-
clares himself willing to go with her into the other garden, in order to
show her how to put them in, and he says something to her which she does
not quite understand: “Besides this I need three metres (later she says:
square metres) or three fathoms of ground.” It seems as though he were
asking her for something in return for his willingness, as though he had
the intention of indemnifying (reimbursing) himself in her garden, as
though he wanted to evade some law or other, to derive some advantage
from it without causing her an injury. She does not know whether or not
he really shows her anything.

The above dream, which has been given prominence on account of
its symbolic elements, may be described as a “biographical” dream. Such
dreams occur frequently in psychoanalysis, but perhaps only rarely out-
side it.³⁾

I have, of course, an abundance of such material, but to reproduce it
here would lead us too far into the consideration of neurotic conditions.
Everything points to the same conclusion, namely, that we need not as-
sume that any special symbolizing activity of the psyche is operative in
dream-formation; that, on the contrary, the dream makes use of such
symbolizations as are to be found ready-made in unconscious thinking,
since these, by reason of their ease of representation, and for the most
part by reason of their being exempt from the censorship, satisfy more
effectively the requirements of dream-formation.

E. REPRESENTATION IN DREAMS BY SYMBOLS: SOME FURTHER TYPICAL
DREAMS

The analysis of the last biographical dream shows that I recognized the
symbolism in dreams from the very outset. But it was only little by little
that I arrived at a full appreciation of its extent and significance, as the
result of increasing experience, and under the influence of the works of
W. Stekel, concerning which I may here fittingly say something.
This author, who has perhaps injured psychoanalysis as much as he
has benefited it, produced a large number of novel symbolic translations,
to which no credence was given at first, but most of which were later con-
firmed and had to be accepted. Stekel’s services are in no way belittled by

¹⁾The branch (Ast) has long been used to represent the male organ, and, moreover,
contains a very distinct allusion to the family name of the dreamer.

²⁾Refers to matrimonial precautions, as does that which immediately follows.

³⁾An analogous “biographical” dream is recorded on p. 378, among the examples of
dream symbolism.

369

the remark that the scep-
ceived was not unjustified. For the examples upon which he based his
interpretations were often unconvincing, and, moreover, he employed a
method which must be rejected as scientifically unreliable. Stekel found
his symbolic meanings by way of intuition, by virtue of his individual
faculty of immediately understanding the symbols. But such an art can-
not be generally assumed; its efficiency is immune from criticism, and its
results have therefore no claim to credibility. It is as though one were
to base one’s diagnosis of infectious diseases on the olfactory impressions
received beside the sick-
bed, although of course there have been clinicians
to whom the sense of smell—atrophied in most people—has been of
greater service than to others, and who really have been able to diagnose a
case of abdominal typhus by their sense of smell.

The progressive experience of psychoanalysis has enabled us to dis-
cover patients who have displayed in a surprising degree this immediate
understanding of dream-
symbolism. Many of these patients suffered from
dementia praecox, so that for a time there was an inclination to suspect
that all dreamers with such an understanding of symbols were suffering
from that disorder. But this did not prove to be the case; it is simply a
question of a personal gift or idiosyncrasy without perceptible pathologi-
cal significance.

When one has familiarized oneself with the extensive employment of
symbolism for the representation of sexual material in dreams, one natu-
rally asks oneself whether many of these symbols have not a perma-
nently established meaning, like the signs in shorthand; and one even
thinks of attempting to compile a new dream-
book on the lines of the
cipher method. In this connection it should be noted that symbolism does
not appertain especially to dreams, but rather to the unconscious imagi-
nation, and particularly to that of the people, and it is to be found in a
more developed condition in folklore, myths, legends, idiomatic phrases,
proverbs, and the current witticisms of a people than in dreams. We
should have, therefore, to go far beyond the province of dream-
interpre-
tation in order fully to investigate the meaning of symbolism, and to dis-
cuss the numerous problems—for the most part still unsolved—which
are associated with the concept of the symbol.¹ We shall here confine our
selves to saying that representation by a symbol comes under the head-
ing of the indirect representations, but that we are warned by all sorts of
signs against indiscriminately classing symbolic representation with the

1) Cf. the works of Bleuler and his Zürich disciples, Maeder, Abraham, and others
and of the non-
medical authors (Kleinpaul and others) to whom they refer. But
the most pertinent things that have been said on the subject will be found in the
work of O. Rank and H. Sachs, Die Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse für die Geistes-
wissenschaft, 1913, chap. i; also E. Jones, Die Theorie der Symbolik Intern. Zeitschr.
für Psychoanalyse, v, 1919.

370

other modes of indirect representation before we have clearly conceived
its distinguishing characteristics. In a number of cases the common qual-
ity shared by the symbol and the thing which it represents is obvious, in
others it is concealed; in these latter cases the choice of the symbol ap-
pears to be enigmatic. And these are the very cases that must be able to
elucidate the ultimate meaning of the symbolic relation; they point to
the fact that it is of a genetic nature. What is to-day symbolically con-
nected was probably united, in primitive times, by conceptual and
linguistic identity.¹⁾ The symbolic relationship seems to be a residue and
reminder of a former identity. It may also be noted that in many cases
the symbolic identity extends beyond the linguistic identity, as had al-
ready been asserted by Schubert (1814).²⁾

Dreams employ this symbolism to give a disguised representation to
their latent thoughts. Among the symbols thus employed there are, of
course, many which constantly, or all but constantly, mean the same
thing. But we must bear in mind the curious plasticity of psychic mate-
rial. Often enough a symbol in the dream-content may have to be inter-
preted not symbolically but in accordance with its proper meaning; at
other times the dreamer, having to deal with special memory-material,
may take the law into his own hands and employ anything whatever as a
sexual symbol, though it is not generally so employed. Wherever he has
the choice of several symbols for the representation of a dream-content,
he will decide in favour of that symbol which is in addition objectively
related to his other thought-material; that is to say, he will employ an
individual motivation besides the typically valid one.

Although since Scherner’s time the more recent investigations of dream-
problems have definitely established the existence of dream-symbolism—
even Havelock Ellis acknowledges that our dreams are indubitably full
of symbols—it must yet be admitted that the existence of symbols in
dreams has not only facilitated dream-interpretation, but has also made
it more difficult. The technique of interpretation in accordance with the
dreamer’s free associations more often than otherwise leaves us in the
lurch as far as the symbolic elements of the dream-content are concerned.
A return to the arbitrariness of dream-interpretation as it was practised

¹⁾This conception would seem to find an extraordinary confirmation in a theory ad-
vanced by Hans Sperber (Über den Einfluss sexueller momente auf Entstehung und
Entwicklung der Sprache, in Imago, i, 1912). Sperber believes that primitive words
denoted sexual things exclusively, and subsequently lost their sexual significance and
were applied to other things and activities, which were compared with the sexual.

²⁾For example, a ship sailing on the sea may appear in the urinary dreams of Hun-
garian dreamers, despite the fact that the term of “to ship,” for “to urinate,” is for-
eign to this language (Ferenczi). In the dreams of the French and the other romance
peoples “room” serves as a symbolic representation for “woman,” although these
peoples have nothing analogous to the German Frauenzimmer. Many symbols are as
old as language itself, while others are continually being coined (e.g. the aeroplane, the
Zeppelin).

371

THE DREAM-WORK

in antiquity, and is seem-
ingly revived by Stekel’s wild interpretations, is
contrary to scientific method. Consequently, those elements in the dream-
content which are to be symbolically regarded compel us to employ a
combined technique, which on the one hand is based on the dreamer’s
associations, while on the other hand the missing portions have to be sup-
plied by the interpreter’s understanding of the symbols. Critical circum-
spection in the solution of the symbols must coincide with careful study
of the symbols in especially transparent examples of dreams in order to
silence the reproach of arbitrariness in dream-interpretation. The uncer-
tainties which still adhere to our function as dream-interpreters are due
partly to our imperfect knowledge (which, however, can be progressively
increased) and partly to certain peculiarities of the dream-symbols them-
selves. These often possess many and varied meanings, so that, as in
Chinese script, only the context can furnish the correct meaning. This
multiple significance of the symbol is allied to the dream’s faculty of ad-
mitting over-interpretations, of representing, in the same content, vari-
ous wish-impulses and thought-formations, often of a widely divergent
character.

After these limitations and reservations I will pro-
ceed. The Emperor and the Empress (King and Queen) ¹ in most cases really represent the
dreamer’s parents; the dreamer himself or herself is the prince or prin-
cess. But the high authority conceded to the Emperor is also conceded
to great men, so that in some dreams, for example, Goethe appears as a
father-symbol (Hitschmann).—All elongated objects, sticks, tree-trunks
umbrellas (on account of the opening, which might be likened to an erec-
tion), all sharp and elongated weapons, knives, daggers, and pikes, rep-
resent the male member. A frequent, but not very intelligible symbol for
the same is a nail-file (a reference to rubbing and scraping?).—Small
boxes, chests, cupboards, and ovens correspond to the female organ; also
cavities, ships, and all kinds of vessels.—A room in a dream generally
represents a woman; the description of its various entrances and exits is
scarcely calculated to make us doubt this interpretation.² The interest

¹ In the U.S.A. the father is represented in dreams as “the President,” and ever
more often as “the Governor”—a title which is frequently applied to the parent in
everyday life.—TRANS.]

² “A patient living in a boarding-
house dreams that he meets one of the servants
and asks her what her number is; to his surprise she answers: 14. He has in fact
entered into relations with the girl in question, and has often had her in his bedroom.
She feared, as may be imagined, that the landlady suspected her, and had proposed,
on the day before the dream, that they should meet in one of the unoccupied rooms.
In reality this room had the number 14, while in the dream the woman bore this
number. A clearer proof of the identification of woman and room could hardly be
imagined.” (Ernest Jones, Intern. Zeitschr. f. Psychoanalyse, ii, 1914). (Cf. Artemi-
dorus, The Symbolism of Dreams [German version by F. S. Krauss, Vienna, 1881, p.
110]: “Thus, for example, the bedroom signifies the wife, supposing one to be in the
house.”)

372

as to whether the room is “open” or “locked” will be readily understood
in this connection. (Cf. Dora’s dream in Fragment of an Analysis of
Hysteria.) There is no need to be explicit as to the sort of key that will
unlock the room; the symbolism of “lock and key” has been gracefully
if broadly employed by Uhland in his song of the Graf Eberstein.—The
dream of walking through a suite of rooms signifies a brothel or a harem.
But, as H. Sachs has shown by an admirable example, it is also employed
to represent marriage (contrast). An interesting relation to the sexual
investigations of childhood emerges when the dreamer dreams of two
rooms which were previously one, or finds that a familiar room in a house
of which he dreams has been divided into two, or the reverse. In child-
hood the female genitals and anus (the “behind”¹⁾) are conceived of
as a single opening according to the infantile cloaca theory, and only
later is it discovered that this region of the body contains two separate
cavities and openings. Steep inclines, ladders, and stairs, and going up
or down them, are symbolic representations of the sexual act.² Smooth
walls over which one climbs, façades of houses, across which one lets one
self down—often with a sense of great anxiety—correspond to erect
human bodies, and probably repeat in our dreams childish memories of
climbing up parents or nurses. “Smooth” walls are men; in anxiety
dreams one often holds firmly to “projections” on houses. Tables, whether
bare or covered, and boards, are women, perhaps by virtue of contrast,
since they have no protruding contours. “Wood,” generally speaking,
seems, in accordance with its linguistic relations, to represent feminine
matter (Materie). The name of the island Madeira means “wood” in
Portuguese. Since “bed and board” (mensa et thorus) constitute mar-
riage, in dreams the latter is often substituted for the former, and as far
as practicable the sexual representation-complex is transposed to the eat-
ing-complex.—Of articles of dress, a woman’s hat may very often be
interpreted with certainty as the male genitals. In the dreams of men

¹⁾Cf. “the cloaca theory” in Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex.

²I may here repeat what I have said in another place (Die Zukünftigen Chancen der
psychoanalytischen Therapie, Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, i, No. 1 and 2, 1910,
and Ges. Schriften, Bd. vi): “Some time ago I learned that a psychologist who is un-
familiar with our work remarked to one of my friends that we were surely over-
estimating the secret sexual significance of dreams. He stated that his most frequent
dream was that of climbing a flight of stairs, and that there was surely nothing
sexual behind this. Our attention having been called to this objection, we directed
our investigations to the occurrence in dreams of flights of stairs, ladders, and steps,
and we soon ascertained that stairs (or anything analogous to them) represent a
definite symbol of coitus. The basis for this comparison is not difficult to find; with
rhythmical intervals and increasing breathlessness one reaches a height, and may then
come down again in a few rapid jumps. Thus the rhythm of coitus is reproduced in
climbing stairs. Let us not forget to consider the colloquial usage. This tells us that
‘mounting’ is, without further addition, used as a substitutive designation for the
sexual act. In French, the step of a staircase is called la marche; un vieux marcheur
corresponds exactly to the German, ein alter Steiger.”

373

THE DREAM-WORK

one often finds the necktie as a symbol for the penis; this is not only be-
cause neckties hang down in front of the body, and are characteristic of
men, but also because one can select them at pleasure, a freedom which
nature prohibits as regards the original of the symbol. Persons who make
use of this symbol in dreams are very extravagant in the matter of ties,
and possess whole collections of them.¹ All complicated machines and ap-
pliances are very probably the genitals—as a rule the male genitals—in
the description of which the symbolism of dreams is as indefatigable as
human wit. It is quite unmistakable that all weapons and tools are used
as symbols for the male organ: e.g. ploughshare, hammer, gun, revolver,
dagger, sword, etc. Again, many of the landscapes seen in dreams, espe-
cially those that contain bridges or wooded mountains, may be readily
recognized as descriptions of the genitals. Marcinowski collected a series
of examples in which the dreamer explained his dream by means of draw-
ings, in order to represent the landscapes and places appearing in it.
These drawings clearly showed the distinction between the manifest and
the latent meaning of the dream. Whereas, naïvely regarded, they seemed
to represent plans, maps, and so forth, closer investigation showed that
they were representations of the human body, of the genitals, etc., and
only after conceiving them thus could the dream be understood.² Finally,
where one finds incomprehensible neologisms one may suspect combina-
tions of components having a sexual significance.—Children, too, often
signify the genitals, since men and women are in the habit of fondly refer-
ring to their genital organs as “little man,” “little woman,” “little thing.”
The “little brother” was correctly recognized by Stekel as the penis. To
play with or to beat a little child is often the dream’s representation of
masturbation. The dream-work represents castration by baldness, hair-
cutting, the loss of teeth, and beheading. As an insurance against castra-
tion, the dream uses one of the common symbols of the penis in double
or multiple form; and the appearance in a dream of a lizard—an animal
whose tail, if pulled off, is regenerated by a new growth—has the same
meaning. Most of those animals which are utilized as genital symbols in
mythology and folklore play this part also in dreams: the fish, the snail,
the cat, the mouse (on account of the hairiness of the genitals), but above
all the snake, which is the most important symbol of the male member.
Small animals and vermin are substitutes for little children, e.g. unde-
sired sisters or brothers. To be infected with vermin is often the equiva-
 

¹ Cf. in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, ii, 675, the drawing of a nineteen-year-
old manic patient: a man with a snake as a neck-tie, which is turning towards a
girl. Also the story Der Schamhaftige (Anthropophyteia, vi, 334): A woman en-
tered a bathroom, and there came face to face with a man who hardly had time to
put on his shirt. He was greatly embarrassed, but at once covered his throat with
the front of his shirt, and said: “Please excuse me, I have no necktie.”
² Cf. Pfister’s works on cryptography and picture-puzzles.

374

lent for pregnancy,—As a very recent symbol of the male organ I may
mention the airship, whose employment is justified by its relation to fly-
ing, and also, occasionally, by its form.—Stekel has given a number of
other symbols, not yet sufficiently verified, which he has illustrated by
examples. The works of this author, and especially his book: Die Sprache
des Traumes, contain the richest collection of interpretations of sym-
bols, some of which were ingeniously guessed and were proved to be cor-
rect upon investigation, as, for example, in the section on the symbolism
of death. The author’s lack of critical reflection, and his tendency to gen-
eralize at all costs, make his interpretations doubtful or inapplicable, so
that in making use of his works caution is urgently advised. I shall there-
fore restrict myself to mentioning a few examples.

Right and left, according to Stekel, are to be understood in dreams in
an ethical sense. “The right-hand path always signifies the way to right-
eousness, the left-hand path the path to crime. Thus the left may signify
homosexuality, incest, and perversion, while the right signifies marriage,
relations with a prostitute, etc. The meaning is always determined by the
individual moral standpoint of the dreamer” (loc. cit., p. 466). Relatives
in dreams generally stand for the genitals (p. 473). Here I can confirm
this meaning only for the son, the daughter, and the younger sister—that
is, wherever “little thing” could be employed. On the other hand, verified
examples allow us to recognize sisters as symbols of the breasts, and
brothers as symbols of the larger hemispheres. To be unable to overtake a
carriage is interpreted by Stekel as regret at being unable to catch up with
a difference in age (p. 479). The luggage of a traveller is the burden of
sin by which one is oppressed (ibid.). But a traveller’s luggage often
proves to be an unmistakable symbol of one’s own genitals. To numbers,
which frequently occur in dreams, Stekel has assigned a fixed symbolic
meaning; but these interpretations seem neither sufficiently verified nor
of universal validity, although in individual cases they can usually be
recognized as plausible. We have, at all events, abundant confirmation
that the figure three is a symbol of the male genitals. One of Stekel’s gen-
eralizations refers to the double meaning of the genital symbols. “Where
is there a symbol,” he asks, “which (if in any way permitted by the
imagination) may not be used simultaneously in the masculine and the
feminine sense?” To be sure, the clause in parenthesis retracts much of
the absolute character of this assertion, for this double meaning is not
always permitted by the imagination. Still, I think it is not superfluous
to state that in my experience this general statement of Stekel’s requires
elaboration. Besides those symbols which are just as frequently employed
for the male as for the female genitals, there are others which preponder-
antly, or almost exclusively, designate one of the sexes, and there are
yet others which, so far as we know, have only the male or only the

375

THE DREAM-
WORK

female signification. To use long, stiff objects and weapons as symbols
of the female genitals, or hollow objects (chests, boxes, etc.) as symbols
of the male genitals, is certainly not permitted by the imagination.

It is true that the tendency of dreams, and of the unconscious phan-
tasy, to employ the sexual symbols bisexually, reveals an archaic trait,
for in childhood the difference in the genitals is unknown, and the same
genitals are attributed to both sexes. One may also be misled as regards
the significance of a bisexual symbol if one forgets the fact that in some
dreams a general reversal of sexes takes place, so that the male organ is
represented by the female, and vice versa. Such dreams express, for ex-
ample, the wish of a woman to be a man.

The genitals may even be represented in dreams by other parts of the
body: the male member by the hand or the foot, the female genital orifice
by the mouth, the ear, or even the eye. The secretions of the human body
—mucus, tears, urine, semen, etc.—may be used in dreams interchange-
ably. This statement of Stekel’s, correct in the main, has suffered a justi-
fiable critical restriction as the result of certain comments of R. Reitler’s
(Internat. Zeitschr. für Psych., i, 1913). The gist of the matter is the
replacement of an important secretion, such as the semen, by an indiffer-
ent one.

These very incomplete indications may suffice to stimulate others to
make a more painstaking collection.¹ I have attempted a much more de-
tailed account of dream-symbolism in my Introductory Lectures on Psy-
choanalysis (trans. by Joan Riviere. Allen & Unwin, London).

I shall now append a few instances of the use of such symbols, which
will show how impossible it is to arrive at the interpretation of a dream
if one excludes dream-symbolism, but also how in many cases it is im-
peratively forced upon one. At the same time, I must expressly warn
the investigator against overestimating the importance of symbols in the
interpretation of dreams, restricting the work of dream-translation to
the translation of symbols, and neglecting the technique of utilizing the
associations of the dreamer. The two techniques of dream-interpretation
must supplement one another; practically, however, as well as theoreti-
cally, precedence is retained by the latter process, which assigns the final
significance to the utterances of the dreamer, while the symbol-transla-
tion which we undertake plays an auxiliary part.

1. The hat as the symbol of a man (of the male genitals):² (A frag-

¹ In spite of all the differences between Scherner’s conception of dream-symbolism
and the one developed here, I must still insist that Scherner should be recognized
as the true discoverer of symbolism in dreams, and that the experience of psycho-
analysis has brought his book (published in 1861) into posthumous repute.

² From Nachträge zur Traumdeutung in Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, ii, Nos. 5
and 6, 1911.

376

ment from the dream of a young woman who suffered from agoraphobia
as the result of her fear of temptation.)

“I am walking in the street in summer; I am wearing a straw hat of
peculiar shape, the middle piece of which is bent upwards, while the side
pieces hang downwards (here the description hesitates), and in such a
fashion that one hangs lower than the other. I am cheerful and in a confi-
dent mood, and as I pass a number of young officers I think to myself:
You can’t do anything to me.”

As she could produce no associations to the hat, I said to her: “The
hat is really a male genital organ, with its raised middle piece and the
two downward-hanging side pieces.” It is perhaps peculiar that her hat
should be supposed to be a man, but after all one says: Unter die Haube
kommen (to get under the cap) when we mean: to get married. I inten-
tionally refrained from interpreting the details concerning the unequal
dependence of the two side pieces, although the determination of just such
details must point the way to the interpretation. I went on to say that if,
therefore, she had a husband with such splendid genitals she would not
have to fear the officers; that is, she would have nothing to wish from
them, for it was essentially her temptation-phantasies which prevented
her from going about unprotected and unaccompanied. This last expla-
nation of her anxiety I had already been able to give her repeatedly on the
basis of other material.

It is quite remarkable how the dreamer behaved after this interpre-
tation. She withdrew her description of the hat, and would not admit that
she had said that the two side pieces were hanging down. I was, however,
too sure of what I had heard to allow myself to be misled, and so I insisted
that she did say it. She was quiet for a while, and then found the courage
to ask why it was that one of her husband’s testicles was lower than the
other, and whether it was the same with all men. With this the peculiar
detail of the hat was explained, and the whole interpretation was ac-
cepted by her.

The hat symbol was familiar to me long before the patient related this
dream. From other but less transparent cases I believed that I might
assume the hat could also stand for the female genitals.¹

2. The “little one” as the genital organ. Being run over as a symbol
of sexual intercourse.

(Another dream of the same agoraphobic patient.)
“Her mother sends away her little daughter so that she has to go alone.
She then drives with her mother to the railway station, and sees her little
one walking right along the track, so that she is bound to be run over.

¹Cf. Kirchgraber for a similar example (Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, iii, 1912,
p. 95). Stekel reported a dream in which the hat with an obliquely-
standing feather
in the middle symbolized the (impotent) man.

371

THE DREAM-WORK

She hears the bones crack. (At this she experiences a feeling of discom
fort but no real horror.) She then looks out through the carriage window,
to see whether the parts cannot be seen behind. Then she reproaches her
mother for allowing the little one to go out alone.”

Analysis.—It is not an easy matter to give here a complete interpreta-
tion of the dream. It forms part of a cycle of dreams, and can be fully un-
derstood only in connection with the rest. For it is not easy to obtain the
material necessary to demonstrate the symbolism in a sufficiently isolated
condition. The patient at first finds that the railway journey is to be inter-
preted historically as an allusion to a departure from a sanatorium for
nervous diseases, with whose director she was of course in love. Her
mother fetched her away, and before her departure the physician came
to the railway station and gave her a bunch of flowers; she felt uncom-
fortable because her mother witnessed this attention. Here the mother,
therefore, appears as the disturber of her tender feelings, a rôle actually
played by this strict woman during her daughter’s girlhood.—The next
association referred to the sentence: “She then looks to see whether the
parts cannot be seen behind.” In the dream-façade one would naturally
be compelled to think of the pieces of the little daughter who had been
run over and crushed. The association, however, turns in quite a differ-
ent direction. She recalls that she once saw her father in the bath-room,
naked, from behind; she then begins to talk about sex differences, and re-
marks that in the man the genitals can be seen from behind, but in the
woman they cannot. In this connection she now herself offers the inter-
pretation that “the little one” is the genital organ, and her little one (she
has a four-year-old daughter) her own organ. She reproaches her mother
for wanting her to live as though she had no genitals, and recognizes this
reproach in the introductory sentence of the dream: the mother sends
her little one away, so that she has to go alone. In her phantasy, going
alone through the streets means having no man, no sexual relations (coire
= to go together), and this she does not like. According to all her state-
ments, she really suffered as a girl through her mother’s jealousy, because
her father showed a preference for her.

The deeper interpretation of this dream depends upon another dream
of the same night, in which the dreamer identifies herself with her brother.
She was a “tomboy,” and was always being told that she should have
been born a boy. This identification with the brother shows with especial
clearness that “the little one” signifies the genital organ. The mother
threatened him (her) with castration, which could only be understood as
a punishment for playing with the genital parts, and the identification,
therefore, shows that she herself had masturbated as a child, though she
had retained only a memory of her brother’s having done so. An early
knowledge of the male genitals, which she lost later, must, according to

378

the assertions of this second dream, have been acquired at this time
Moreover, the second dream points to the infantile sexual theory that
girls originate from boys as a result of castration. After I had told her of
this childish belief, she at once confirmed it by an anecdote in which the
boy asks the girl: “Was it cut off?” to which the girl replies: “No, it’s
always been like that.”
Consequently the sending away of “the little one,” of the genital organ,
in the first dream refers also to the threatened castration. Finally, she
blames her mother for not having borne her as a boy.

That “being run over” symbolizes sexual intercourse would not be evi-
dent from this dream if we had not learned it from many other sources.

3. Representation of the genitals by buildings, stairs, and shafts.
(Dream of a young man inhibited by a father complex.)
“He is taking a walk with his father in a place which is certainly the
Prater, for one can see the Rotunda, in front of which there is a small
vestibule to which there is attached a captive balloon; the balloon, how-
ever, seems rather limp. His father asks him what this is all for; he is sur-
prised at it, but he explains it to his father. They come into a courtyard
in which lies a large sheet of tin. His father wants to pull off a big piece of
this, but first looks round to see if anyone is watching. He tells his father
that all he needs to do is to speak to the overseer, and then he can take as
much as he wants to without any more ado. From this courtyard a flight
of stairs leads down into a shaft, the walls of which are softly upholstered,
rather like a leather arm-chair. At the end of this shaft there is a long
platform, and then a new shaft begins . . .”

Analysis.—This dreamer belonged to a type of patient which is not
at all promising from a therapeutic point of view; up to a certain point
in the analysis such patients offer no resistance whatever, but from that
point onwards they prove to be almost inaccessible. This dream he ana-
lysed almost independently. “The Rotunda,” he said, “is my genitals,
the captive balloon in front is my penis, about whose flaccidity I have
been worried.” We must, however, interpret it in greater detail: the
Rotunda is the buttocks, constantly associated by the child with the
genitals; the smaller structure in front is the scrotum. In the dream his
father asks him what this is all for—that is, he asks him about the pur-
pose and arrangement of the genitals. It is quite evident that this state
of affairs should be reversed, and that he ought to be the questioner. As
such questioning on the part of the father never occurred in reality, we
must conceive the dream-thought as a wish, or perhaps take it condition-
ally, as follows. “If I had asked my father for sexual enlightenment . . .”
The continuation of this thought we shall presently find in another place.

The courtyard in which the sheet of tin is spread out is not to be con-
ceived symbolically in the first instance, but originates from his father’s

379

place of business. For reasons of discretion I have inserted the tin for an-
other material in which the father deals without, however, changing any-
thing in the verbal expression of the dream. The dreamer had entered his
father’s business, and had taken a terrible dislike to the somewhat ques-
tionable practices upon which its profit mainly depended. Hence the con-
tinuation of the above dream-thought (“if I had asked him”) would be:
“He would have deceived me just as he does his customers.” For the
“pulling off,” which serves to represent commercial dishonesty, the
dreamer himself gives a second explanation, namely, masturbation. This
is not only quite familiar to us (see above, p. 367), but agrees very well
with the fact that the secrecy of masturbation is expressed by its oppo-
site (one can do it quite openly). Thus, it agrees entirely with our expec-
tations that the autoerotic activity should be attributed to the father,
just as was the questioning in the first scene of the dream. The shaft he
at once interprets as the vagina, by referring to the soft upholstering of
the walls. That the action of coition in the vagina is described as a going
down instead of in the usual way as a going up agrees with what I have
found in other instances.¹

The details—that at the end of the first shaft there is a long platform,
and then a new shaft—he himself explains biographically. He had for
some time had sexual intercourse with women, but had given it up on ac-
count of inhibitions, and now hopes to be able to begin it again with the
aid of the treatment. The dream, however, becomes indistinct towards
the end, and to the experienced interpreter it becomes evident that in the
second scene of the dream the influence of another subject has already
begun to assert itself; which is indicated by his father’s business, his dis-
honest practices, and the vagina represented by the first shaft, so that one
may assume a reference to his mother.

4. The Male Organ symbolized by Persons and the Female by a Land-
scape.

(Dream of a woman of the lower class, whose husband is a policeman,
reported by B. Dattner.)

“ . . . Then some-
one broke into the house and she anxiously called for
a policeman. But he went peacefully with two tramps into a church² to
which a great many steps led up³; behind the church there was a moun-
tain⁴ on top of which there was a dense forest.⁵ The policeman was pro-
vided with a helmet, a gorget, and a cloak.⁶ The two vagrants, who went

¹Cf. comment in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, i; and see above, p. 367, note 9.

²Or chapel = vagina.

³Symbol of coitus.

⁴Mons Veneris.

⁵Crines pubis.

⁶Demons in cloaks and hoods are, according to the explanation of a specialist, of
phallic character.

380

along with the policemen quite peaceably, had sack-like aprons tied
round their loins.¹⁾ A road led from the church to the mountain. This road
was overgrown on each side with grass and brushwood, which became
thicker and thicker as it reached the top of the mountain, where it spread
out into quite a forest.”

5. Castration Dreams of children.

(a) “A boy aged three years and five months, for whom his father’s
return from military service is clearly inconvenient, wakes one morning
in a disturbed and excited state, and constantly repeats the question:
Why did Daddy carry his head on a plate? Last night Daddy carried his
head on a plate.”

(b) “A student who is now suffering from a severe obsessional neurosis
remembers that in his sixth year he repeatedly had the following dream:
He goes to the barber to have his hair cut. Then a large woman with
severe features comes up to him and cuts off his head. He recognizes the
woman as his mother.”

6. A modified staircase dream.

To one of my patients, a sexual abstainer, who was very ill, whose
phantasy was fixated upon his mother, and who repeatedly dreamed of
climbing stairs while accompanied by his mother, I once remarked that
moderate masturbation would probably have been less harmful to him
than his enforced abstinence. The influence of this remark provoked the
following dream:

His piano teacher reproaches him for neglecting his piano-playing, and
for not practicing the Études of Moscheles and Clementi’s Gradus ad
Parnassum. With reference to this he remarked that the Gradus, too, is a
stairway, and that the piano itself is a stairway, as it has a scale.

It may be said that there is no class of ideas which cannot be enlisted
in the representation of sexual facts and wishes.

7. The Sensation of Reality and the Representation of Repetition.

A man, now thirty-five, relates a clearly remembered dream which he
claims to have had when he was four years of age: The notary with whom
his father’s will was deposited—he had lost his father at the age of three
—brought two large Emperor-pears, of which he was given one to eat.
The other lay on the window-sill of the living-room. He woke with the
conviction of the reality of what he had dreamt, and obstinately asked
his mother to give him the second pear; it was, he said, still lying on the
window-sill. His mother laughed at this.

Analysis.—The notary was a jovial old gentleman who, as he seems
to remember, really sometimes brought pears with him. The window-sill
was as he saw it in the dream. Nothing else occurs to him in this connec-
tion, except, perhaps, that his mother has recently told him a dream.

¹⁾The two halves of the scrotum.

381

THE DREAM-WORK

She has two birds sitting on her head; she wonders when they will fly
away, but they do not fly away, and one of them flies to her mouth and
sucks at it.

The dreamer’s inability to furnish associations justifies the attempt to
interpret it by the substitution of symbols. The two pears—pommes ou
poires—are the breasts of the mother who nursed him; the window-
sill is the projection of the bosom, analogous to the balconies in the dream of
houses. His sensation of reality after waking is justified, for his mother
had actually suckled him for much longer than the customary term, and
her breast was still available. The dream is to be translated: “Mother,
give (show) me the breast again at which I once used to drink.” The
“once” is represented by the eating of the one pear, the “again” by
the desire for the other. The temporal repetition of an act is habitually
represented in dreams by the numerical multiplication of an object.

It is naturally a very striking phenomenon that symbolism should
already play a part in the dream of a child of four, but this is the rule
rather than the exception. One may say that the dreamer has command
of symbolism from the very first.

The early age at which people make use of symbolic representation,
even apart from the dream-
life, may be shown by the following uninflu-
enced memory of a lady who is now twenty-
seven: She is in her fourth
year. The nursemaid is driving her, with her brother, eleven months
younger, and a cousin, who is between the two in age, to the lavatory, so
that they can do their little business there before going for their walk. As
the oldest, she sits on the seat and the other two on chambers. She asks
her (female) cousin: Have you a purse, too? Walter has a little sausage,
I have a purse. The cousin answers: Yes, I have a purse, too. The nurse-
maid listens, laughing, and relates the conversation to the mother, whose
reaction is a sharp reprimand.

Here a dream may be inserted whose excellent symbolism permitted of
interpretation with little assistance from the dreamer:

8. The Question of Symbolism in the Dreams of Normal Persons.¹

An objection frequently raised by the opponents of psychoanalysis—
and recently also by Havelock Ellis ²—is that, although dream-
symbolism
may perhaps be a product of the neurotic psyche, it has no validity what-
ever in the case of normal persons. But while psychoanalysis recognizes
no essential distinctions, but only quantitative differences, between the
psychic life of the normal person and that of the neurotic, the analysis of
those dreams in which, in sound and sick persons alike, the repressed
complexes display the same activity, reveals the absolute identity of the
mechanisms as well as of the symbolism. Indeed, the natural dreams of

1 Alfred Robitsek in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, ii, 1911, p. 340.

2 The World of Dreams, London, 1911, p. 168.

382

healthy persons often contain a much simpler, more transparent, and
more characteristic symbolism than those of neurotics, which, owing to
the greater strictness of the censorship and the more extensive dream-
distortion resulting therefrom, are frequently troubled and obscured, and
are therefore more difficult to translate. The following dream serves to
illustrate this fact. This dream comes from a non-neurotic girl of a rather
prudish and reserved type. In the course of conversation I found that she
was engaged to be married, but that there were hindrances in the way of
the marriage which threatened to postpone it. She related spontaneously
the following dream:

I arrange the centre of a table with flowers for a birthday. On being
questioned she states that in the dream she seemed to be at home (she has
no home at the time) and experienced a feeling of happiness.

The “popular” symbolism enables me to translate the dream for my-
self. It is the expression of her wish to be married: the table, with the
flowers in the centre, is symbolic of herself and her genitals. She repre-
sents her future wishes as fulfilled, inasmuch as she is already occupied
with thoughts of the birth of a child; so the wedding has taken place long
ago.

I call her attention to the fact that “the centre of a table” is an unusual
expression, which she admits; but here, of course, I cannot question her
more directly. I carefully refrain from suggesting to her the meaning of
the symbols, and ask her only for the thoughts which occur to her mind
in connection with the individual parts of the dream. In the course of the
analysis her reserve gave way to a distinct interest in the interpretation,
and a frankness which was made possible by the serious tone of the con-
versation.—To my question as to what kind of flowers they had been,
her first answer is “expensive flowers; one has to pay for them”; then she
adds that they were lilies-of-the-valley, violets, and pinks or carnations.
I took the word lily in this dream in its popular sense, as a symbol of
chastity; she confirmed this, as purity occurred to her in association with
lily. Valley is a common feminine dream-symbol. The chance juxtapos-
ition of the two symbols in the name of the flower is made into a piece of
dream-symbolism, and serves to emphasize the preciousness of her vir-
ginity—expensive flowers; one has to pay for them—and expresses the
expectation that her husband will know how to appreciate its value. The
comment, expensive flowers, etc., has, as will be shown, a different mean-
ing in every one of the three different flower-symbols.

I thought of what seemed to me a venturesome explanation of the hid-
den meaning of the apparently quite asexual word violets by an uncon-
scious relation to the French viol. But to my surprise the dreamer’s asso-
ciation was the English word violate. The accidental phonetic similarity of
the two words violet and violate is utilized by the dream to express in “the

383

THE DREAM–WORK

language of flowers” the idea of the violence of defloration (another word
which makes use of flower-symbolism), and perhaps also to give expres-
sion to a masochistic tendency on the part of the girl.—An excellent ex-
ample of the word bridges across which run the paths to the unconscious.
“One has to pay for them” here means life, with which she has to pay for
becoming a wife and a mother.

In association with pinks, which she then calls carnations, I think of
carnal. But her association is colour, to which she adds that carnations
are the flowers which her fiancé gives her frequently and in large quanti-
ties. At the end of the conversation she suddenly admits, spontaneously,
that she has not told me the truth; the word that occurred to her was not
colour, but incarnation, the very word I expected. Moreover, even the
word “colour” is not a remote association; it was determined by the
meaning of carnation (i.e. flesh-colour)—that is, by the complex. This
lack of honesty shows that the resistance here is at its greatest because
the symbolism is here most transparent, and the struggle between libido
and repression is most intense in connection with this phallic theme. The
remark that these flowers were often given her by her fiancé is, together
with the double meaning of carnation, a still further indication of their
phallic significance in the dream. The occasion of the present of flowers
during the day is employed to express the thought of a sexual present and
a return present. She gives her virginity and expects in return for it a
rich love-life. But the words: “expensive flowers; one has to pay for them”
may have a real, financial meaning.—The flower-symbolism in the dream
thus comprises the virginal female, the male symbol, and the reference to
violent defloration. It is to be noted that sexual flower-symbolism, which,
of course, is very widespread, symbolizes the human sexual organs by
flowers, the sexual organs of plants; indeed, presents of flowers between
lovers may perhaps have this unconscious significance.

The birthday for which she is making preparations in the dream prob-
ably signifies the birth of a child. She identifies herself with the bride-
groom, and represents him preparing her for a birth (having coitus with
her). It is as though the latent thoughts were to say: “If I were he, I
would not wait, but I would deflower the bride without asking her; I
would use violence.” Indeed, the word violate points to this. Thus even
the sadistic libidinal components find expression.

In a deeper stratum of the dream the sentence I arrange, etc., probably
has an auto-erotic, that is, an infantile significance.

She also has a knowledge—possible only in the dream—of her physical
need; she sees herself flat like a table, so that she emphasizes all the more
her virginity, the costliness of the centre (another time she calls it a cen-
tre-piece of flowers). Even the horizontal element of the table may con-

384

tribute something to the symbol.—The concentration of the dream is
worthy of remark; nothing is superfluous, every word is a symbol.

Later on she brings me a supplement to this dream: “I decorate the
flowers with green crinkled paper.” She adds that it was fancy paper of
the sort which is used to disguise ordinary flower-pots. She says also: “To
hide untidy things, whatever was to be seen which was not pretty to the
eye; there is a gap, a little space in the flowers. The paper looks like vel-
vet or moss.” With decorum she associates decorum, as I expected. The
green colour is very prominent, and with this she associates hope, yet
another reference to pregnancy.—In this part of the dream the identifi-
cation with the man is not the dominant feature, but thoughts of shame
and frankness express themselves. She makes herself beautiful for him;
she admits physical defects, of which she is ashamed and which she wishes
to correct. The associations velvet and moss distinctly point to crimes
pubis.

The dream is an expression of thoughts hardly known to the waking
state of the girl; thoughts which deal with the love of the senses and its
organs; she is “prepared for a birth-
day,” i.e. she has coitus; the fear of
defloration and perhaps the pleasurably toned pain find expression; she
admits her physical defects and over-compensates them by means of an
over-estimation of the value of her virginity. Her shame excuses the
emerging sensuality by the fact that the aim of it all is the child. Even
material considerations, which are foreign to the lover, find expression
here. The affect of the simple dream—the feeling of bliss—shows that
here strong emotional complexes have found satisfaction.

I close with the

9. Dream of a Chemist.

(A young man who has been trying to give up his habit of masturba-
tion by substituting intercourse with a woman.)

Preliminary statement: On the day before the dream he had been in-
structing a student as to Grignard’s reaction, in which magnesium is dis-
solved in absolutely pure ether under the catalytic influence of iodine.
Two days earlier there had been an explosion in the course of the same
reaction, in which someone had burned his hand.

Dream I. He is going to make phenylmagnesiumbromide; he sees the
apparatus with particular distinctness, but he has substituted himself for
the magnesium. He is now in a curious, wavering attitude. He keeps on
repeating to himself: “This is the right thing, it is working, my feet are
beginning to dissolve, and my knees are getting soft.” Then he reaches
down and feels for his feet, and meanwhile (he does not know how) he
takes his legs out of the carboy, and then again he says to himself: “That
can’t be . . . Yes, it has been done correctly.” Then he partially wakes,
and repeats the dream to himself, because he wants to tell it to me. He is

385

THE DREAM-WORK

positively afraid of the analysis of the dream. He is much excited during
this state of semi-sleep, and repeats continually: “Phenyl, phenyl.”
II. He is in . . . with his whole family. He is supposed to be at the
Schottentor at half-past eleven in order to keep an appointment with the
lady in question, but he does not wake until half-past eleven. He says to
himself: “It is too late now; when you get there it will be half-past
twelve.” The next moment he sees the whole family gathered about the
table—his mother and the parlourmaid with the soup-tureen with pecul-
iar distinctness. Then he says to himself: “Well, if we are sitting down
to eat already, I certainly can’t get away.”
Analysis.—He feels sure that even the first dream contains a reference
to the lady whom he is to meet at the place of rendezvous (the dream was
dreamed during the night before the expected meeting). The student
whom he was instructing is a particularly unpleasant fellow; the chemist
had said to him: “That isn’t right, because the magnesium was still un-
affected,” and the student had answered, as though he were quite uncon-
cerned: “Nor it is.” He himself must be this student; he is as indifferent
to his analysis as the student is to his synthesis; the he in the dream, how-
ever, who performs the operation, is myself. How unpleasant he must
seem to me with his indifference to the result!
Again, he is the material with which the analysis (synthesis) is made.
For the question is the success of the treatment. The legs in the dream
recall an impression of the previous evening. He met a lady at a dancing
class of whom he wished to make a conquest; he pressed her to him so
closely that she once cried out. As he ceased to press her legs he felt her
firm, responding pressure against his lower thighs as far as just above the
knees, the spot mentioned in the dream. In this situation, then, the
woman is the magnesium in the retort, which is at last working. He is
feminine towards me, as he is virile towards the woman. If he succeeds
with the woman, the treatment will also succeed. Feeling himself and
becoming aware of his knees refers to masturbation, and corresponds to
his fatigue of the previous day . . . The rendezvous had actually been
made for half-past eleven. His wish to oversleep himself and to keep to
his sexual object at home (that is, masturbation) corresponds to his re-
sistance.
He says, in respect to the repetition of the name phenyl, that all these
radicals ending in yl have always been pleasing to him; they are very con-
venient to use: benzyl, acetyl, etc. That, however, explained nothing. But
when I proposed the root Schlemihl¹ he laughed heartily, and told me
that during the summer he had read a book by Prévost which contained
a chapter: Les exclus de l’amour, and in this there was some mention of

¹[This Hebrew word is well known in German-speaking countries, even among Gen-
tiles, and signifies an unlucky, awkward person.—Trans.]

386

Schlemiliés; and in reading of these outcasts he said to himself: “That is
my case.” He would have played the Schlemihl if he had missed the ap-
pointment.

It seems that the sexual symbolism of dreams has already been directly
confirmed by experiment. In 1912 Dr. K. Schrötter, at the instance of H.
Swoboda, produced dreams in deeply hypnotized persons by suggestions
which determined a large part of the dream-content. If the suggestion
proposed that the subject should dream of normal or abnormal sexual
relations, the dream carried out these orders by replacing sexual material
by the symbols with which psychoanalytic dream-interpretation has made
us familiar. Thus, following the suggestion that the dreamer should dream
of homosexual relations with a lady friend, this friend appeared in the
dream carrying a shabby travelling-bag, upon which there was a label
with the printed words: “For ladies only.” The dreamer was believed
never to have heard of dream-symbolization or of dream-interpretation.
Unfortunately, the value of this important investigation was diminished
by the fact that Dr. Schrötter shortly afterwards committed suicide. Of
his dream-experiments he gave us only a preliminary report in the
Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse.

Similar results were reported in 1923 by G. Roffenstein. Especially in-
teresting were the experiments performed by Betlheim and Hartmann,
because they eliminated hypnosis. These authors told stories of a crude
sexual content to confused patients suffering from Korsakoff’s psychosis,
and observed the distortions which appeared when the material related
was reproduced.¹⁾ It was shown that the reproduced material contained
symbols made familiar by the interpretation of dreams (climbing stairs,
stabbing and shooting as symbols of coitus, knives and cigarettes as sym-
bols of the penis). Special value was attached to the appearance of the
symbol of climbing stairs, for, as the authors justly observed, “a symboli-
zation of this sort could not be effected by a conscious wish to distort.”

Only when we have formed a due estimate of the importance of sym-
bolism in dreams can we continue the study of the typical dreams which
was interrupted in an earlier chapter (p. 311). I feel justified in dividing
these dreams roughly into two classes; first, those which always really
have the same meaning, and second, those which despite the same or a
similar content must nevertheless be given the most varied interpretations.
Of the typical dreams belonging to the first class I have already dealt
fairly fully with the examination-dream.

On account of their similar affective character, the dreams of missing
a train deserve to be ranked with the examination-dreams; moreover,
their interpretation justifies this approximation. They are consolation-
 

¹⁾Über Fehlreaktionen bei der Korsakoffschen Psychose, Arch. f. Psychiatrie, Bd.
xxii, 1924

387

THE DREAM-WORK

dreams, directed against another anxiety perceived in dreams—the fear
of death. “To depart” is one of the most frequent and one of the most
readily established of the death-symbols. The dream therefore says con-
solingly: “Reassure yourself, you are not going to die (to depart),” just
as the examination-dream calms us by saying: “Don’t be afraid; this
time, too, nothing will happen to you.” The difficulty in understanding
both kinds of dreams is due to the fact that the anxiety is attached pre-
cisely to the expression of consolation.

The meaning of the “dreams due to dental stimulus” which I have often
enough had to analyse in my patients escaped me for a long time because,
much to my astonishment, they habitually offered too great a resistance
to interpretation. But finally an overwhelming mass of evidence con-
vinced me that in the case of men nothing other than the masturbatory
desires of puberty furnish the motive power of these dreams. I shall an-
alyse two such dreams, one of which is also a “flying dream.” The two
dreams were dreamed by the same person—a young man of pronounced
homosexuality which, however, has been inhibited in life.

He is witnessing a performance of Fidelio from the stalls of the opera-
house; he is sitting next to L., whose personality is congenial to him, and
whose friendship he would like to have. Suddenly he flies diagonally right
across the stalls; he then puts his hand in his mouth and draws out two of
his teeth.

He himself describes the flight by saying that it was as though he
were thrown into the air. As the opera performed was Fidelio, he recalls
the words:—

“He who a charming wife acquires. . . .”

But the acquisition of even the most charming wife is not among the
wishes of the dreamer. Two other lines would be more appropriate:—

“He who succeeds in the lucky (big) throw
The friend of a friend to be. . . .”

The dream thus contains the “lucky (big) throw,” which is not, how-
ever, a wish-fulfilment only. For it conceals also the painful reflection
that in his striving after friendship he has often had the misfortune to be
“thrown out,” and the fear lest this fate may be repeated in the case of
the young man by whose side he has enjoyed the performance of Fidelio.
This is now followed by a confession, shameful to a man of his refinement,
to the effect that once, after such a rejection on the part of a friend, his
profound sexual longing caused him to masturbate twice in succession.

The other dream is as follows: Two university professors of his ac-
quaintance are treating him in my place. One of them does something to
his penis; he is afraid of an operation. The other thrusts an iron bar

388

against his mouth, so that he loses one or two teeth. He is bound with
four silk handkerchiefs.

The sexual significance of this dream can hardly be doubted. The silk
handkerchiefs allude to an identification with a homosexual of his ac-
quaintance. The dreamer, who has never achieved coition (nor has he ever
actually sought sexual intercourse) with men, conceives the sexual act
on the lines of masturbation with which he was familiar during puberty.

I believe that the frequent modifications of the typical dream due to
dental stimulus—that, for example, in which another person draws the
tooth from the dreamer’s mouth—will be made intelligible by the same
explanation.¹ It may, however, be difficult to understand how “dental
stimulus” can have come to have this significance. But here I may draw
attention to the frequent “displacement from below to above” which is
at the service of sexual repression, and by means of which all kinds of
sensations and intentions occurring in hysteria, which ought to be local-
ized in the genitals, may at all events be realized in other, unobjectionable
parts of the body. We have a case of such displacement when the genitals
are replaced by the face in the symbolism of unconscious thought. This is
corroborated by the fact that verbal usage relates the buttocks to the
cheeks,² and the labia minora to the lips which enclose the orifice of the
mouth. The nose is compared to the penis in numerous allusions, and in
each case the presence of hair completes the resemblance. Only one fea-
ture—the teeth—is beyond all possibility of being compared in this way; but
it is just this coincidence of agreement and disagreement which makes the
teeth suitable for purposes of representation under the pressure of sexual
repression.

I will not assert that the interpretation of dreams due to dental stim-
ulus as dreams of masturbation (the correctness of which I cannot doubt)
has been freed of all obscurity.³ I carry the explanation as far as I am
able, and must leave the rest unsolved. But I must refer to yet another
relation indicated by a colloquial expression. In Austria there is in use
an indelicate designation for the act of masturbation, namely: “To pull
one out,” or “to pull one off.” ⁴ I am unable to say whence these colloquial-
expressions

¹ The extraction of a tooth by another is usually to be interpreted as castration (cf.
hair-cutting; Stekel). One must distinguish between dreams due to dental stimulus
and dreams referring to the dentist, such as have been recorded, for example, by
Coriat (Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, iii, 440).

² [In German “Backen” = cheeks and “Hinterbacken” (lit. “hind-cheeks”) = but-
tocks.—Trans.]

³ According to C. G. Jung, dreams due to dental stimulus in the case of women have
the significance of parturition dreams. E. Jones has given valuable confirmation of
this. The common element of this interpretation with that represented above may be
found in the fact that in both cases (castration-birth) there is a question of remov-
ing a part from the whole body.

⁴ Cf. the “biographical” dream on pp. 367–8.

389

isms originate, or on what symbolisms they are based; but the teeth
would very well fit in with the first of the two.

Dreams of pulling teeth, and of teeth falling out, are interpreted in
popular belief to mean the death of a connection. Psychoanalysis can ad-
mit of such a meaning only at the most as a joking allusion to the sense
already indicated.

To the second group of typical dreams belong those in which one is
flying or hovering, falling, swimming, etc. What do these dreams signify?
Here we cannot generalize. They mean, as we shall learn, something dif-
ferent in each case: only the sensory material which they contain always
comes from the same source.

We must conclude from the information obtained in psychoanalysis
that these dreams also repeat impressions of our childhood—that is, that
they refer to the games involving movement which have such an extraor-
dinary 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 sud-
denly straightening his leg, or by lifting it above his head and suddenly
pretending to withdraw his supporting hand? At such moments children
shout with joy and insatiably demand a repetition of the performance,
especially if a little fright and dizziness are involved in it. In after years
they repeat their sensations in dreams, but in dreams they omit the hands
that held them, so that now they are free to float or fall. We know that all
small children have a fondness for such games as rocking and see-
sawing; and when they see gymnastic performances at the circus their recollection
of such games is refreshed. In some boys the hysterical attack consists
simply in the reproduction of such performances, which they accom-
plish with great dexterity. Not infrequently sexual sensations are ex-
cited by these games of movement, innocent though they are in them-
selves. To express the matter in a few words: it is these romping games
of childhood which are being repeated in dreams of flying, falling, vertigo,
and the like, but the pleasurable sensations are now transformed into
anxiety. But, as every mother knows, the romping of children often
enough ends in quarrelling and tears.

I have therefore good reason for rejecting the explanation that it is the
condition of our cutaneous sensations during sleep, the sensation of the
movements of the lungs, etc., that evoke dreams of flying and falling. As
I see it, these sensations have themselves been reproduced from the
memory to which the dream refers—that they are therefore dream-
content, and not dream-
sources.¹

This material, consisting of sensations of motion, similar in character,

¹This passage, dealing with dreams of motion, is repeated on account of the con-
text. Cf. p. 315.

390

and originating from the same sources, is now used for the representa-
tion of the most manifold dream-thoughts. Dreams of flying or hovering,
for the most part pleasurably toned, will call for the most widely differing
interpretations—interpretations of a quite special nature in the case of
some dreamers, and interpretations of a typical nature in that of others.
One of my patients was in the habit of dreaming very frequently that she
was hovering a little way above the street without touching the ground.
She was very short of stature, and she shunned every sort of contamina-
tion involved by intercourse with human beings. Her dream of suspension-which raised her feet above the ground and allowed her head to tower
into the air—fulfilled both of her wishes. In the case of other dreamers of
the same sex, the dream of flying had the significance of the longing: “If
only I were a little bird!” Similarly, others become angels at night, be-
cause no one has ever called them angels by day. The intimate connection
between flying and the idea of a bird makes it comprehensible that the
dream of flying, in the case of male dreamers, should usually have a
coarsely sensual significance¹; and we should not be surprised to hear
that this or that dreamer is always very proud of his ability to fly.

Dr. Paul Federn (Vienna) has propounded the fascinating theory that
a great many flying dreams are erection dreams, since the remarkable
phenomenon of erection, which constantly occupies the human phantasy,
cannot fail to be impressive as an apparent suspension of the laws of grav-
ity (cf. the winged phalli of the ancients).

It is a noteworthy fact that a prudent experimenter like Mourly Vold,
who is really averse to any kind of interpretation, nevertheless defends the
erotic interpretation of the dreams of flying and hovering.² He describes
the erotic element as “the most important motive factor of the hovering
dream,” and refers to the strong sense of bodily vibration which accom-
panies this type of dream, and the frequent connection of such dreams
with erections and emissions.

Dreams of falling are more frequently characterized by anxiety. Their
interpretation, when they occur in women, offers no difficulty, because
they nearly always accept the symbolic meaning of falling, which is a cir-
cumlocution for giving way to an erotic temptation. We have not yet ex-
hausted the infantile sources of the dream of falling; nearly all children
have fallen occasionally, and then been picked up and fondled; if they fell
out of bed at night, they were picked up by the nurse and taken into her
bed.

People who dream often, and with great enjoyment, of swimming, cleav-
ing the waves, etc., have usually been bed-wetters, and they now repeat in

¹[A reference to the German slang word “vögeln” (to copulate) from “Vogel” (a
bird).—Trans.]

²Über den Traum, Ges. Schriften, Bd. iii.

391

THE DREAM-
WORK

the dream a pleasure which they have long since learned to forgo. We shall
soon learn, from one example or another, to what representations dreams
of swimming easily lend themselves.

The interpretation of dreams of fire justifies a prohibition of the nurs-
ery, which forbids children to “play with fire” so that they may not wet
the bed at night. These dreams also are based on reminiscences of the
enuresis nocturna of childhood. In my Fragment of an Analysis of Hys-
teria¹ I have given the complete analysis and synthesis of such a dream
of fire in connection with the infantile history of the dreamer, and have
shown for the representation of what maturer impulses this infantile ma-
terial has been utilized.

It would be possible to cite quite a number of other “typical” dreams,
if by such one understands dreams in which there is a frequent recurrence,
in the dreams of different persons, of the same manifest dream-content.
For example: dreams of passing through narrow alleys, or a whole suite
of rooms; dreams of burglars, in respect of whom nervous people take
measures of precaution before going to bed; dreams of being chased by
wild animals (bulls, horses); or of being threatened with knives, daggers,
and lances. The last two themes are characteristic of the manifest dream-
content of persons suffering from anxiety, etc. A special investigation of
this class of material would be well worth while. In lieu of this I shall offer
two observations, which do not, however, apply exclusively to typical
dreams.

The more one is occupied with the solution of dreams, the readier one
becomes to acknowledge that the majority of the dreams of adults deal
with sexual material and give expression to erotic wishes. Only those who
really analyse dreams, that is, those who penetrate from their manifest
content to the latent dream-thoughts, can form an opinion on this subject;
but never those who are satisfied with registering merely the manifest
content (as, for example, Näcke in his writings on sexual dreams). Let us
recognize at once that there is nothing astonishing in this fact, which is
entirely consistent with the principles of dream-interpretation. No other
instinct has had to undergo so much suppression, from the time of child-
hood onwards, as the sexual instinct in all its numerous components:²—
from no other instinct are so many and such intense unconscious wishes
left over, which now, in the sleeping state, generate dreams. In dream-
interpretation this importance of the sexual complexes must never be for-
gotten, though one must not, of course, exaggerate it to the exclusion of
all other factors.

Of many dreams it may be ascertained, by careful interpretation, that

¹Collected Papers, vol. iii, trans. by Alix and James Strachey. Hogarth Press,
London.

²Cf. Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex.

392

they may even be understood bisexually, inasmuch as they yield an indis putable over-
interpretation, in which they realize homosexual impulses— that is, impulses which are contrary to the normal sexual activity of the dreamer. But that all dreams are to be interpreted bisexually, as Stekel¹ maintains, and Adler,² seems to me to be a generalization as insusceptible of proof as it is improbable, and one which, therefore, I should be loth to defend; for I should, above all, be at a loss to know how to dispose of the obvious fact that there are many dreams which satisfy other than erotic needs (taking the word in the widest sense), as, for example, dreams of hunger, thirst, comfort, etc. And other similar assertions, to the effect that “behind every dream one finds a reference to death” (Stekel), or that every dream shows “an advance from the feminine to the masculine line” (Adler), seem to me to go far beyond the admissible in the interpretation of dreams. The assertion that all dreams call for a sexual interpretation, against which there is such an untiring polemic in the literature of the sub ject, is quite foreign to my Interpretation of Dreams. It will not be found in any of the eight editions of this book, and is in palpable contradiction to the rest of its contents.

We have stated elsewhere that dreams which are conspicuously inno cent commonly embody crude erotic wishes, and this we might confirm by numerous further examples. But many dreams which appear indifferent, in which we should never suspect a tendency in any particular direction, may be traced, according to the analysis, to unmistakably sexual wish impulses, often of an unsuspected nature. For example, who, before it had been interpreted, would have suspected a sexual wish in the following dream? The dreamer relates: Between two stately palaces there stands, a little way back, a small house, whose doors are closed. My wife leads me along the little bit of road leading to the house and pushes the door open, and then I slip quickly and easily into the interior of a courtyard that slopes steeply upwards.

Anyone who has had experience in the translating of dreams will, of course, at once be reminded that penetration into narrow spaces and the opening of locked doors are among the commonest of sexual symbols, and will readily see in this dream a representation of attempted coition from behind (between the two stately buttocks of the female body). The nar row, steep passage is, of course, the vagina; the assistance attributed to the wife of the dreamer requires the interpretation that in reality it is only consideration for the wife which is responsible for abstention from such an attempt. Moreover, inquiry shows that on the previous day a young girl

¹W. Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes, 1911. ²Alf. Adler, Der Psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der Neurose, in Fortschritte der Medizin, 1910, No. 16, and later papers in the Zentralblatt für Psy choanalyse, i, 1910–11.

393

THE DREAM-
WORK

had entered the household of the dreamer; she had pleased him, and had
given him the impression that she would not be altogether averse to an
approach of this sort. The little house between the two palaces is taken
from a reminiscence of the Hradschin in Prague, and once more points to
the girl, who is a native of that city.

If, in conversation with my patients, I emphasize the frequency of the
Oedipus dream—the dream of having sexual intercourse with one’s mother
—I elicit the answer: “I cannot remember such a dream.” Immediately
afterwards, however, there arises the recollection of another, an unrecog-
nizable, indifferent dream, which the patient has dreamed repeatedly, and
which on analysis proves to be a dream with this very content—that is, yet
another Oedipus dream. I can assure the reader that disguised dreams of
sexual intercourse with the dreamer’s mother are far more frequent than
undisguised dreams to the same effect.¹

¹I have published a typical example of such a disguised Oedipus dream in No. 1
of the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse (see below); another, with a detailed analysis,
was published in No. 4 of the same journal by Otto Rank. For other disguised
Oedipus dreams in which the eye appears as a symbol, see Rank (Int. Zeitschr. für
Ps.A., i, 1913). Papers upon eye dreams and eye symbolism by Eder, Ferenczi, and
Reitler will be found in the same issue. The blinding in the Oedipus legend and else-
where is a substitute for castration. The ancients, by the way, were not unfamiliar
with the symbolic interpretation of the undisguised Oedipus dream (see O. Rank,
Jahrb. ii, p. 534: “Thus, a dream of Julius Caesar’s of sexual relations with his
mother has been handed down to us, which the oneiroscopists interpreted as a
favourable omen signifying his taking possession of the earth (Mother Earth).
Equally well known is the oracle delivered to the Tarquinii, to the effect that that
one of them would become the first to kiss his mother (osculum matris tulerit), which Brutus conceived as referring to Mother
Earth (terram osculo contigit, scilicet quod ea communis mater omnium mortalium
esset, Livy, I, lxi). Cf. here the dream of Hippias in Herodotus, VI, 107: “But Hip-
pias led the barbarians to Marathon after he had had the following dream-vision the
previous night. It had seemed to Hippias that he was sleeping with his own mother.
He concluded from this dream that he would return home to Athens, and would
regain power, and that he would die in his fatherland in his old age.” These myths
and interpretations point to a correct psychological insight. I have found that those
persons who consider themselves preferred or favoured by their mothers manifest
in life that confidence in themselves, and that unshakable optimism, which often
seem heroic, and not infrequently compel actual success.

Typical example of a disguised Oedipus dream:—
A man dreams: He has a secret affair with a woman whom another man wishes to
marry. He is concerned lest the other should discover this relation and abandon the
marriage. He therefore behaves very affectionately to the man; he nestles up to
him and kisses him.—The facts of the dreamer’s life touch the dream-content only
at one point. He has a secret affair with a married woman, and an equivocal ex-
pression of her husband, with whom he is on friendly terms, aroused in him the
suspicion that he might have noticed something of this relationship. There is, how-
ever, in reality, yet another factor, the mention of which was avoided in the
dream, and which alone gives the key to it. The life of the husband is threatened
by an organic malady. His wife is prepared for the possibility of his sudden death,
and our dreamer consciously harbours the intention of marrying the young widow
after her husband’s decease. It is through this objective situation that the dreamer
finds himself transferred into the constellation of the Oedipus dream; his wish is to be
enabled to kill the man, so that he may win the woman for his wife; his dream

394

There are dreams of landscapes and localities in which emphasis is al-
ways laid upon the assurance: “I have been here before.” But this “Déjà
vu” has a special significance in dreams. In this case the locality is always
the genitals of the mother; of no other place can it be asserted with such
certainty that one “has been here before.” I was once puzzled by the ac-
count of a dream given by a patient afflicted with obsessional neurosis.
He dreamed that he called at a house where he had been twice before. But
this very patient had long ago told me of an episode of his sixth year. At
that time he shared his mother’s bed, and had abused the occasion by in-
serting his finger into his mother’s genitals while she was asleep.

A large number of dreams, which are frequently full of anxiety, and
often have for content the traversing of narrow spaces, or staying long in
the water, are based upon phantasies concerning the intra-uterine life, the
sojourn in the mother’s womb, and the act of birth. I here insert the dream
of a young man who, in his phantasy, has even profited by the intra-uterine
opportunity of spying upon an act of coition between his parents.

“He is in a deep shaft, in which there is a window, as in the Semmering
tunnel. Through this he sees at first an empty landscape, and then he com-
poses a picture in it, which is there all at once and fills up the empty space.
The picture represents a field which is being deeply tilled by an imple-
ment, and the wholesome air, the associated idea of hard work, and the
bluish-black clods of earth make a pleasant impression on him. He then
goes on and sees a work on education lying open . . . and is surprised
that so much attention is devoted in it to the sexual feelings (of children),
which makes him think of me.”

Here is a pretty water-dream of a female patient, which was turned to
special account in the course of treatment.

“At her usual holiday resort on the . . . Lake, she flings herself into the
dark water at a place where the pale moon is reflected in the water.”

Dreams of this sort are parturition dreams; their interpretation is ef-
fected by reversing the fact recorded in the manifest dream-content; thus,
instead of “flinging oneself into the water,” read “coming out of the water”
—that is, “being born.”¹ The place from which one is born may be recog-
nized if one thinks of the humorous sense of the French “la lune.” The
pale moon thus becomes the white “bottom,” which the child soon guesses
to be the place from which it came. Now what can be the meaning of the
patient’s wishing to be born at a holiday resort? I asked the dreamer this,
gives expression to the wish in a hypocritical distortion. Instead of representing her
as already married to the other man, it represents the other man only as wishing
to marry her, which indeed corresponds with his own secret intention, and the
hostile wishes directed against the man are concealed under demonstrations of
affection, which are reminiscences of his childish relations to his father.

¹For the mythological meaning of water-birth, see Rank: Der Mythus von der
Geburt des Helden, 1909.

395

and she replied without hesitation: “Hasn’t the treatment made me as
though I were born again?” Thus the dream becomes an invita-
tinue the treatment at this summer resort—that is, to visit her there; per-
haps it also contains a very bashful allusion to the wish to become a mother
herself.¹

Another dream of parturition, with its interpretation, I take from a
paper by E. Jones. “She stood at the seashore watching a small boy, who
seemed to be hers, wading into the water. This he did till the water covered
him and she could only see his head bobbing up and down near the surface.
The scene then changed to the crowded hall of an hotel. Her husband left
her, and she ‘entered into conversation with’ a stranger.”

The second half of the dream was discovered in the analysis to repre-
sent flight from her husband, and the entering into intimate relations with
a third person, behind whom was plainly indicated Mr. X.’s brother, men-
tioned in a former dream. The first part of the dream was a fairly evident
birth-phantasy. In dreams, as in mythology, the delivery of a child from
the uterine waters is commonly represented, by way of distortion, as the
entry of the child into water; among many other instances, the births of
Adonis, Osiris, Moses, and Bacchus are well-known illustrations of this.
The bobbing up and down of the head in the water at once recalled to the
patient the sensation of quickening which she had experienced in her only
pregnancy. Thinking of the boy going into the water induced a reverie in
which she saw herself taking him out of the water, carrying him into the
nursery, washing and dressing him, and installing him in her household.

“The second half of the dream, therefore, represents thoughts concern-
ing the elopement, which belonged to the first half of the underlying la-
tent content; the first half of the dream corresponded with the second half
of the latent content, the birth phantasy. Besides this inversion in the
order, further inversions took place in each half of the dream. In the first
half the child entered the water, and then his head bobbed; in the under-
lying dream-thoughts the quickening occurred first, and then the child left
the water (a double inversion). In the second half her husband left her;
in the dream-thoughts she left her husband.”

Another parturition dream is related by Abraham—the dream of a
young woman expecting her first confinement: From one point of the floor
of the room a subterranean channel leads directly into the water (path of
parturition—amniotic fluid). She lifts up a trap in the floor, and there im-
 

¹⁾It was not for a long time that I learned to appreciate the significance of the
phantasies and unconscious thoughts relating to life in the womb. They contain
the explanation of the curious dread, felt by so many people, of being buried alive,
as well as the profoundest unconscious reason for the belief in life after death,
which represents only the projection into the future of this mysterious life before
birth. The act of birth, moreover, is the first experience attended by anxiety, and
is thus, the source and model of the affect of anxiety.

396

mediately appears a creature dressed in brownish fur, which almost resem-
bles a seal. This creature changes into the dreamer’s younger brother, to
whom her relation has always been maternal in character.

Rank has shown from a number of dreams that parturition-dreams em-
ploy the same symbols as micturition-dreams. The erotic stimulus ex-
presses itself in these dreams as an urethral stimulus. The stratification
of meaning in these dreams corresponds with a change in the significance of
the symbol since childhood.

We may here turn back to the interrupted theme (see p. 210) of the
part played by organic, sleep-disturbing stimuli in dream-formation.
Dreams which have come into existence under these influences not only
reveal quite frankly the wish-fulfilling tendency, and the character of con-
venience-dreams, but they very often display a quite transparent sym-
bolism as well, since waking not infrequently follows a stimulus whose
satisfaction in symbolic disguise has already been vainly attempted in the
dream. This is true of emission dreams as well as those evoked by the need
to urinate or defecate. The peculiar character of emission dreams permits
us directly to unmask certain sexual symbols already recognized as typ-
ical, but nevertheless violently disputed, and it also convinces us that
many an apparently innocent dream-situation is merely the symbolic prel-
ude to a crudely sexual scene. This, however, finds direct representation,
as a rule, only in the comparatively infrequent emission dreams, while it
often enough turns into an anxiety-dream, which likewise leads to waking.

The symbolism of dreams due to urethral stimulus is especially obvious,
and has always been divined. Hippocrates had already advanced the
theory that a disturbance of the bladder was indicated if one dreamt of
fountains and springs (Havelock Ellis). Scherner, who has studied the
manifold symbolism of the urethral stimulus, agrees that “the powerful
urethral stimulus always turns into the stimulation of the sexual sphere
and its symbolic imagery. . . . The dream due to urethral stimulus is
often at the same time the representative of the sexual dream.”

O. Rank, whose conclusions (in his paper on Die Symbolschichtung im
Wecktraum) I have here followed, argues very plausibly that a large num-
ber of “dreams due to urethral stimulus” are really caused by sexual
stimuli, which at first seek to gratify themselves by way of regression to
the infantile form of urethral eroticism. Those cases are especially instruc-
tive in which the urethral stimulus thus produced leads to waking and the
emptying of the bladder, whereupon, in spite of this relief, the dream is
continued, and expresses its need in undisguisedly erotic images.¹

¹ “The same symbolic representations which in the infantile sense constitute the
basis of the vesical dream appear in the ‘recent’ sense in purely sexual significance:
water = urine = semen = amniotic fluid; ship = ‘to pump ship’ (urinate) =
seed-capsule; getting wet = enuresis = coitus = pregnancy; swimming = full
bladder = dwelling-place of the unborn; rain = urination = symbol of fertili-
ty.”

397

THE DREAM-
WORK

In a quite analogous manner dreams due to intestinal stimulus disclose
the pertinent symbolism, and thus confirm the relation, which is also
amply verified by ethno-psychology, of gold and feces.¹ “Thus, for ex-
ample, a woman, at a time when she is under the care of a physician on ac-
count of an intestinal disorder, dreams of a digger for hidden treasure who
is burying a treasure in the vicinity of a little wooden shed which looks
like a rural privy. A second part of the dream has as its content how she
wipes the posterior of her child, a little girl, who has soiled herself.”

Dreams of “rescue” are connected with parturition dreams. To rescue,
especially to rescue from the water, is, when dreamed by a woman, equiva-
lent to giving birth; this sense is, however, modified when the dreamer is
a man.²

Robbers, burglars, and ghosts, of which we are afraid before going to
bed, and which sometimes even disturb our sleep, originate in one and the
same childish reminiscence. They are the nightly visitors who have waked
the child in order to set it on the chamber, so that it may not wet the bed,
or have lifted the coverlet in order to see clearly how the child is holding
its hands while sleeping. I have been able to induce an exact recollection
of the nocturnal visitor in the analysis of some of these anxiety-dreams.
The robbers were always the father; the ghosts more probably corre-
sponded to female persons in white night-gowns.

F. EXAMPLES—ARITHMETIC AND SPEECH IN DREAMS

Before I proceed to assign to its proper place the fourth of the factors
which control the formation of dreams, I shall cite a few examples from
my collection of dreams, partly for the purpose of illustrating the co-
operation of the three factors with which we are already acquainted, and
partly for the purpose of adducing evidence for certain unsupported asser-
tions which have been made, or of bringing out what necessarily follows
from them. It has, of course, been difficult in the foregoing account of the
dream-work to demonstrate my conclusions by means of examples. Exam-
ples in support of isolated statements are convincing only when considered
in the context of an interpretation of a dream as a whole; when they are

zation; traveling (journeying—alighting) = getting out of bed = having sexual
intercourse (honeymoon journey); urinating = sexual ejaculation” (Rank, I, c.).
¹Freud, Charakter und Analerotik; Rank, Die Symbolschichtung, etc.; Dattner,
Intern. Zeitschr. f. Psych., i, 1913; Reik, Intern. Zeitschr., iii, 1915.
²For such a dream see Pfister, Ein Fall von psychoanalytischer Seelsorge und Seelen-
heilung, in Evangelische Freiheit, 1909. Concerning the symbol of “rescuing,” see my
paper, Die Zukünftigen Chancender Psychoanalytischen Therapie, in Zentralblatt
für Psychoanalyse, No. I, 1910. Also Beiträge zur Psychologie des Liebeslebens, I,
Über einen besonderen Typus der objektwahl beim Manne, in Jahrbuch für Ps.A.,
Bd. ii, 1910 (Ges. Schriften, Bd. v). Also Rank, Beilege zur Rettungs-phantasie in the
Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, i, 1910, p. 331; Reik, Zur Rettungssymbolic; ibid.,
p. 299.

398

wrested from their context, they lose their value; on the other hand, a
dream-interpretation, even when it is by no means profound, soon be-
comes so extensive that it obscures the thread of the discussion which it
is intended to illustrate. This technical consideration must be my excuse
if I now proceed to mix together all sorts of things which have nothing
in common except their reference to the text of the foregoing chapter.
We shall first consider a few examples of very peculiar or unusual
methods of representation in dreams. A lady dreamed as follows: A
servant-girl is standing on a ladder as though to clean the windows, and
has with her a chimpanzee and a gorilla cat (later corrected, angora cat).
She throws the animals on to the dreamer; the chimpanzee nestles up to
her, and this is very disgusting. This dream has accomplished its pur-
pose by a very simple means, namely, by taking a mere figure of speech
literally, and representing it in accordance with the literal meaning of its
words. “Monkey,” like the names of animals in general, is an approbri-
ous epithet, and the situation of the dream means merely “to hurl invec-
tives.” This same collection will soon furnish us with further examples
of the employment of this simple artifice in the dream-work.

Another dream proceeds in a very similar manner: A woman with a
child which has a conspicuously deformed cranium; the dreamer has heard
that the child acquired this deformity owing to its position in its mother’s
womb. The doctor says that the cranium might be given a better shape by
means of compression, but that this would injure the brain. She thinks that
because it is a boy it won’t suffer so much from deformity. This dream con-
tains a plastic representation of the abstract concept: “Childish impres-
sions,” with which the dreamer has become familiar in the course of the
treatment.

In the following example the dream-work follows rather a different
course. The dream contains a recollection of an excursion to the Hilmteich,
near Graz: There is a terrible storm outside; a miserable hotel—the water
is dripping from the walls, and the beds are damp. (The latter part of the
content was less directly expressed than I give it.) The dream signifies
“superfluous.” The abstract idea occurring in the dream-thoughts is first
made equivocal by a certain abuse of language; it has perhaps been re-
placed by “overflowing,” or by “fluid” and “super-fluid” (–fluous),
and has then been brought to representation by an accumulation of like im-
pressions. Water within, water without, water in the beds in the form of
dampness—everything fluid and “super” fluid. That for the purposes of
dream-representation the spelling is much less considered than the sound
of words ought not to surprise us when we remember that rhyme exercises
a similar privilege.

The fact that language has at its disposal a great number of words
which were originally used in a pictorial and concrete sense, but are at

398

THE DREAM-WORK

present used in a colourless and abstract fashion, has, in certain other
cases, made it very easy for the dream to represent its thoughts. The
dream has only to restore to these words their full significance, or to fol-
low their change of meaning a little way back. For example, a man dreams
that his friend, who is struggling to get out of a very tight place, calls upon
him for help. The analysis shows that the tight place is a hole, and that
the dreamer symbolically uses these very words to his friend: “Be careful,
or you’ll get yourself into a hole.”¹⁾ Another dreamer climbs a mountain
from which he obtains an extraordinarily extensive view. He identifies
himself with his brother, who is editing a “review” dealing with the Far
East.

In a dream in Der Grüne Heinrich a spirited horse is plunging about in
a field of the finest oats, every grain of which is really “a sweet almond, a
raisin and a new penny” wrapped in red silk and tied with a bit of pig’s
bristle.” The poet (or the dreamer) immediately furnishes the meaning of
this dream, for the horse felt himself pleasantly tickled, so that he ex-
claimed: “The oats are pricking me” (“I feel my oats”).

In the old Norse sagas (according to Henzen) prolific use is made in
dreams of colloquialisms and witty expressions; one scarcely finds a dream
without a double meaning or a play upon words.

It would be a special undertaking to collect such methods of representa-
tion and to arrange them in accordance with the principles upon which
they are based. Some of the representations are almost witty. They give
one the impression that one would have never guessed their meaning if the
dreamer himself had not succeeded in explaining it.

1. A man dreams that he is asked for a name, which,
however, he cannot recall. He himself explains that this means: “I shouldn’t
dream of it.”

2. A female patient relates a dream in which all the
persons concerned were singularly large. “That means,” she adds, “that it
must deal with an episode of my early childhood, for at that time all grown-up people nat-
urally seemed to me immensely large.” She herself did not appear in the
dream.

The transposition into childhood is expressed differently in other
dreams—by the translation of time into space. One sees persons and
scenes as though at a great distance, at the end of a long road, or as though
one were looking at them through the wrong end of a pair of opera-glasses.

3. A man who in waking life shows an inclination to employ abstract
and indefinite expressions, but who otherwise has his wits about him,
dreams, in a certain connection, that he reaches a railway station just as a
train is coming in. But then the platform moves towards the train, which
stands still; an absurd inversion of the real state of affairs. This detail,
again, is nothing more than an indication to the effect that something else
is meant.

¹[Given by translator, as the author’s example could not be translated.]

700

in the dream must be inverted. The analysis of the same dream leads to
recollections of picture-books in which men were represented standing on
their heads and walking on their hands.

4. The same dreamer, on another occasion, relates a short dream which
almost recalls the technique of a rebus. His uncle gives him a kiss in an
automobile. He immediately adds the interpretation, which would never
have occurred to me: it means auto-erotism. In the waking state this might
have been said in jest.

5. At a New Year’s Eve dinner the host, the patriarch of the family,
ushered in the New Year with a speech. One of his sons-in-law, a lawyer,
was not inclined to take the old man seriously, especially when in the
course of his speech he expressed himself as follows: “When I open the
ledger for the Old Year and glance at its pages I see everything on the asset
side and nothing, thank the Lord, on the side of liability; all you children
have been a great asset, none of you a liability.” On hearing this the young
lawyer thought of X., his wife’s brother, who was a cheat and a liar, and
whom he had recently extricated from the entanglements of the law. That
night, in a dream, he saw the New Year’s celebration once more, and heard
the speech, or rather saw it. Instead of speaking, the old man actually
opened the ledger, and on the side marked “assets” he saw his name
amongst others, but on the other side, marked “liability,” there was the
name of his brother-in-law, X. However, the word “Liability” was changed
into “Lie-Ability,” which he regarded as X.’s main characteristic.¹

6. A dreamer treats another person for a broken bone. The analysis
shows that the fracture represents a broken marriage vow, etc.

7. In the dream-content the time of day often represents a certain pe-
riod of the dreamer’s childhood. Thus, for example, 5.15 a.m. means to
one dreamer the age of five years and three months; when he was that age,
a younger brother was born.

8. Another representation of age in a dream: A woman is walking with
two little girls; there is a difference of fifteen months in their ages. The
dreamer cannot think of any family of her acquaintance in which this is
the case. She herself interprets it to mean that the two children represent
her own person, and that the dream reminds her that the two traumatic
events of her childhood were separated by this period of time (3½ and
4¾ years).

9. It is not astonishing that persons who are undergoing psychoanalytic
treatment frequently dream of it, and are compelled to give expression in
their dreams to all the thoughts and expectations aroused by it. The image
chosen for the treatment is as a rule that of a journey, usually in a motor-
car, this being a modern and complicated vehicle; in the reference to the
speed of the car the patient’s ironical humour is given free play. If the

¹ Reported by Brill in his Fundamental Conceptions of Psychoanalysis.

401

“unconscious,” as an ele-
ment of waking thought, is to be represented in
the dream, it is replaced, appropriately enough, by sub-
terranean localities, which at other times, when there is no reference to analytic treatment,
have represented the female body or the womb. Below in the dream very
often refers to the genitals, and its opposite, above, to the face, mouth or
breast. By wild beasts the dream-work usually symbolizes passionate im-
pulses; those of the dreamer, and also those of other persons of whom
the dreamer is afraid; or thus, by means of a very slight displacement, the
persons who experience these passions. From this it is not very far to the
totemistic representation of the dreaded father by means of vicious ani-
mals, dogs, wild horses, etc. One might say that wild beasts serve to repre-
sent the libido, feared by the ego, and combated by repression. Even the
neurosis itself, the sick person, is often separated from the dreamer and
exhibited in the dream as an independent person.

One may go so far as to say that the dream-work makes use of all the
means accessible to it for the visual representation of the dream-thoughts,
whether these appear admissible or inadmissible to waking criticism, and
thus exposes itself to the doubt as well as the derision of all those who
have only hearsay knowledge of dream-interpretation, but have never
themselves practised it. Stekel’s book, Die Sprache des Traumes, is espe-
cially rich in such examples, but I avoid citing illustrations from this work
as the author’s lack of critical judgment and his arbitrary technique would
make even the unprejudiced observer feel doubtful.

10. From an essay by V. Tausk (Kleider und Farben im Dienste der
Traumdarstellung, in Interna. Zeitschr. für Ps.A., ii, 1914):—

(a) A. dreams that he sees his former governess wearing a dress of
black lustre, which fits closely over her buttocks.—That means he declares
this woman to be lustful.

(b) C. in a dream sees a girl on the road to X, bathed in a white light
and wearing a white blouse.

The dreamer began an affair with a Miss White on this road.

11. In an analysis which I carried out in the French language I had to
interpret a dream in which I appeared as an elephant. I naturally had to
ask why I was thus represented. “Vous me trompez,” answered the
dreamer (Trompe = trunk).

The dream-work often succeeds in representing very refractory mate-
rial, such as proper names, by means of the forced exploitation of very
remote relations. In one of my dreams old Brücke has set me a task. I
make a preparation, and pick something out of it which looks like crum-
pled tinfoil. (I shall return to this dream later.) The corresponding asso-
ciation, which is not easy to find, is stanniol, and now I know that I have in
mind the name of the author Stannius, which appeared on the title-page of
a treatise on the nervous system of fishes, which in my youth I regarded

402

with reverence. The first scientific problem which my teacher set me did
actually relate to the nervous system of a fish—the Ammocoetes. Ob-
viously, this name could not be utilized in the picture-puzzle.

Here I must not fail to include a dream with a curious content, which
is worth noting also as the dream of a child, and which is readily explained
by analysis. A lady tells me: “I can remember that when I was a child I
repeatedly dreamed that God wore a conical paper hat on His head. They
often used to make me wear such a hat at table, so that I shouldn’t be able
to look at the plates of the other children and see how much they had re-
ceived of any particular dish. Since I had heard that God was omniscient,
the dream signified that I knew everything in spite of the hat which I was
made to wear.”

What the dream-work consists in, and its unceremonious handling of its
material, the dream-thoughts, may be shown in an instructive manner by
the numbers and calculations which occur in dreams. Superstition, by
the way, regards numbers as having a special significance in dreams. I
shall therefore give a few examples of this kind from my collection.

1. From the dream of a lady, shortly before the end of her treat-
ment:—

She wants to pay for something or other; her daughter takes 3 florins
65 kreuzer from her purse; but the mother says: “What are you doing?
It costs only 21 kreuzer.” This fragment of the dream was intelligible
without further explanation owing to my knowledge of the dreamer’s
circumstances. The lady was a foreigner, who had placed her daughter
at school in Vienna, and was able to continue my treatment as long as
her daughter remained in the city. In three weeks the daughter’s scho-
lastic year would end, and the treatment would then stop. On the day
before the dream the principal of the school had asked her whether she
could not decide to leave the child at school for another year. She had
then obviously reflected that in this case she would be able to continue
the treatment for another year. Now, this is what the dream refers to, for
a year is equal to 365 days; the three weeks remaining before the end of
the scholastic year, and of the treatment, are equivalent to 21 days
(though not to so many hours of treatment). The numerals, which in the
dream-thoughts refer to periods of time, are given money values in the
dream, and simultaneously a deeper meaning finds expression—for “time
is money.” 365 kreuzer, of course, are 3 florins 65 kreuzer. The smallness
of the sums which appear in the dream is a self-evident wish-fulfilment;
the wish has reduced both the cost of the treatment and the year’s school
fees.

2. In another dream the numerals are involved in even more complex
relations. A young lady, who has been married for some years, learns that
an acquaintance of hers, of about the same age, Elise L., has just become

403

engaged. Thereupon she dreams: She is sitting in the theatre with her
husband, and one side of the stalls is quite empty. Her husband tells her
that Elise L. and her fiancé had also wished to come to the theatre, but
that they only could have obtained poor seats; three for 1 florin 50
kreuzer, and of course they could not take those. She thinks they didn’t
lose much, either.

What is the origin of the 1 florin 50 kreuzer? A really indifferent inci-
dent of the previous day. The dreamer’s sister-in-law had received 150
florins as a present from her husband, and hastened to get rid of them by
buying some jewellery. Let us note that 150 florins is 100 times 1 florin
50 kreuzer. But whence the 3 in connection with the seats in the theatre?
There is only one association for this, namely, that the fiancé is three
months younger than herself. When we have ascertained the significance
of the fact that one side of the stalls is empty we have the solution of the
dream. This feature is an undisguised allusion to a little incident which
had given her husband a good excuse for teasing her. She had decided to
go to the theatre that week; she had been careful to obtain tickets a few
days beforehand, and had had to pay the advance booking-fee. When
they got to the theatre they found that one side of the house was almost
empty; so that she certainly need not have been in such a hurry.

I shall now substitute the dream-thoughts for the dream: “It surely
was nonsense to marry so early; there was no need for my being in such
a hurry. From Elise L.’s example I see that I should have got a husband
just the same—and one a hundred times better—if I had only waited
(antithesis to the haste of her sister-in-law), I could have bought three
such men for the money (the dowry)!”—Our attention is drawn to the
fact that the numerals in this dream have changed their meanings and
their relations to a much greater extent than in the one previously con-
sidered. The transforming and distorting activity of the dream has in this
case been greater—a fact which we interpret as meaning that these dream-
thoughts had to overcome an unusual degree of endo-psychic resistance
before they attained to representation. And we must not overlook the fact
that the dream contains an absurd element, namely, that two persons are
expected to take three seats. It will throw some light on the question of
the interpretation of absurdity in dreams if I remark that this absurd
detail of the dream-content is intended to represent the most strongly
emphasized of the dream-thoughts: “It was nonsense to marry so early.”
The figure 3, which occurs in a quite subordinate relation between the
two persons compared (three months’ difference in their ages), has thus
been adroitly utilized to produce the idea of nonsense required by the
dream. The reduction of the actual 150 florins to 1 florin 50 kreuzer cor-
responds to the dreamer’s disparagement of her husband in her sup-
pressed thoughts.

404

3. Another example displays the arithmetical powers of dreams, which
have brought them into such disrepute. A man dreams: He is sitting in
the B.’s house (the B.’s are a family with which he was formerly ac-
quainted), and he says: “It was nonsense that you didn’t give me Amy
for my wife.” Thereupon, he asks the girl: “How old are you?” Answer:
I was born in 1882.” “Ah, then you are 28 years old.”

Since the dream was dreamed in the year 1898, this is obviously bad
arithmetic, and the inability of the dreamer to calculate may, if it cannot
be otherwise explained, be likened to that of a general paralytic. My
patient was one of those men who cannot help thinking about every
woman they see. The patient who for some months came next after him
in my consulting-room was a young lady; he met this lady after he had
constantly asked about her, and he was very anxious to make a good im-
pression on her. This was the lady whose age he estimated at 28. So much
for explaining the result of his apparent calculation. But 1882 was the
year in which he had married. He had been unable to refrain from enter-
ing into conversation with the two other women whom he met at my
house—the two by no means youthful maids who alternately opened the
door to him—and as he did not find them very responsive, he had told
himself that they probably regarded him as elderly and “serious.”

Bearing in mind these examples, and others of a similar nature (to
follow), we may say: The dream-work does not calculate at all, whether
correctly or incorrectly; it only strings together, in the form of a sum,
numerals which occur in the dream-thoughts, and which may serve as
allusions to material which is insusceptible of representation. It thus
deals with figures, as material for expressing its intentions, just as it deals
with all other concepts, and with names and speeches which are only
verbal images.

For the dream-work cannot compose a new speech. No matter how
many speeches and answers, which may in themselves be sensible or ab-
surd, may occur in dreams, analysis always shows us that the dream has
merely taken from the dream-thoughts fragments of speeches which have
really been delivered or heard, and has dealt with them in the most arbi-
trary fashion. It has not only torn them from their context and mutilated
them, accepting one fragment and rejecting another, but it has often
fitted them together in a novel manner, so that the speech which seems
coherent in a dream is dissolved by analysis into three or four com-
ponents. In this new application of the words the dream has often ignored
the meaning which they had in the dream-thoughts, and has drawn an en-
tirely new meaning from them.¹⁾ Upon closer inspection the more distinct

¹⁾Analyses of other numerical dreams have been given by Jung, Marcinowski and
others. Such dreams often involve very complicated arithmetical operations, which
are none the less solved by the dreamer with astonishing confidence. Cf. also Ernest

405

and compact ingredients of the dream-
speech may be distinguished from
others, which serve as connectives, and have probably been supplied, just
as we supply omitted letters and syllables in reading. The dream-
speech thus has the structure of breccia, in which the larger pieces of various
material are held together by a solidified cohesive medium.

Strictly speaking, of course, this description is correct only for those
dream-
speeches which have something of the sensory character of a
speech, and are described as “speeches.” The others, which have not, as it
were, been perceived as heard or spoken (which have no accompanying
acoustic or motor emphasis in the dream) are simply thoughts, such as
occur in our waking life, and find their way unchanged into many of our
dreams. Our reading, too, seems to provide an abundant and not easily
traceable source for the indifferent speech-
material of dreams. But any-
thing that is at all conspicuous as a speech in a dream can be referred to
actual speeches which have been made or heard by the dreamer.

We have already found examples of the derivation of such dream-
speeches in the analyses of dreams which have been cited for other pur-
poses. Thus, in the “innocent market-
dream” (p. 251) where the speech:
“That is no longer to be had” serves to identify me with the butcher, while
a fragment of the other speech: “I don’t know that, I don’t take that,”
precisely fulfils the task of rendering the dream innocent. On the previous
day the dreamer, replying to some unreasonable demand on the part of
her cook, had waved her aside with the words: “I don’t know that, behave
yourself properly,” and she afterwards took into the dream the first, in-
different-
sounding part of the speech in order to allude to the latter part,
which fitted well into the phantasy underlying the dream, but which
might also have betrayed it.

Here is one of many examples which all lead to the same conclusion:–

A large courtyard in which dead bodies are being burned. The dreamer
says, “I’m going, I can’t stand the sight of it.” (Not a distinct speech.)
Then he meets two butcher boys and asks, “Well, did it taste good?”
And one of them answers, “No, it wasn’t good.” As though it had been
human flesh.

The innocent occasion of this dream is as follows: After taking supper
with his wife, the dreamer pays a visit to his worthy but by no means

Jones, Über unbewusste Zahlenbehandlung Zentralb. für Psychoanalyse, 4, ii, 1912,
p. 241).

Neurosis behaves in the same fashion. I know a patient who—involuntarily and
unwillingly—hears (hallucinates) songs or fragments of songs without being able to
understand their significance for her psychic life. She is certainly not a paranoiac.
Analysis shows that by exercising a certain license she gave the text of those songs
a false application. “Oh, thou blissful one! Oh, thou happy one!” This is the first line
of Christmas carol, but by not continuing it to the word, Christmastide, she turns it
into a bridal song, etc. The same mechanism of distortion may operate, without
hallucination, merely in association.

406

appetizing neighbour. The hospitable old lady is just sitting down to her
own supper, and presses him (among men a composite, sexually signifi-
cant word is used jocosely in the place of this word) to taste it. He de-
clines, saying that he has no appetite. She replies: “Go on with you, you
can manage it all right,” or something of the kind. The dreamer is thus
forced to taste and praise what is offered him. “But that’s good!” When
he is alone again with his wife, he complains of his neighbour’s impor-
tunity, and of the quality of the food which he has tasted. “I can’t stand
the sight of it,” a phrase that in the dream, too, does not emerge as an
actual speech, is a thought relating to the physical charms of the lady
who invites him, which may be translated by the statement that he has no
desire to look at her.

The analysis of another dream—which I will cite at this stage for the
sake of a very distinct speech, which constitutes its nucleus, but which
will be explained only when we come to evaluate the affects in dreams—is
more instructive. I dream very vividly: “I have gone to Brücke’s labora-
tory at night, and on hearing a gentle knocking at the door, I open it to
(the deceased) Professor Fleischl, who enters in the company of several
strangers, and after saying a few words sits down at his table. Then fol-
lows a second dream: My friend Fl. has come to Vienna, unobtrusively,
in July; I meet him in the street, in conversation with my (deceased)
friend P., and I go with them somewhere, and they sit down facing each
other as though at a small table, while I sit facing them at the narrow end
of the table. Fl. speaks of his sister, and says: “In three-quarters of an
hour she was dead,” and then something like “That is the threshold.” As
P. does not understand him, Fl. turns to me, and asks me how much I
have told P. of his affairs. At this, overcome by strange emotions, I try to
tell Fl. that P. (cannot possibly know anything, of course, because he)
is not alive. But noticing the mistake myself, I say: “Non vixit.” Then
I look searchingly at P., and under my gaze he becomes pale and blurred,
and his eyes turn a sickly blue—and at last he dissolves. I rejoice greatly
at this, I now understand that Ernst Fleischl, too, is only an apparition,
a revenant, and I find that it is quite possible that such a person should
exist only so long as one wishes him to, and that he can be made to disap-
pear by the wish of another person.”

This very pretty dream unites so many of the enigmatical character-
istics of the dream—the criticism made in the dream itself, inas-
much as I myself notice my mistake in saying Non vixit instead of Non
vivit, the unconstrained intercourse with deceased persons, whom the
dream itself declares to be dead, the absurdity of my conclusion, and the
intense satisfaction which it gives me—that “I would give my life” to
expound the complete solution of the problem. But in reality I am in-
capable of doing what I do in the dream, i.e. of sacrificing such intimate

407

friends to my ambition. And if I attempted to disguise the facts, the true
meaning of the dream, with which I am perfectly familiar, would be
spoiled. I must therefore be content to select a few of the elements of the
dream for interpretation, some here, and some at a later stage.

The scene in which I annihilate P. with a glance forms the centre of the
dream. His eyes become strange and weirdly blue, and then he dissolves.
This scene is an unmistakable imitation of a scene that was actually ex-
perienced. I was a demonstrator at the Physiological Institute; I was on
duty in the morning, and Brücke learned that on several occasions I had
been unpunctual in my attendance at the students’ laboratory. One morn-
ing, therefore, he arrived at the hour of opening, and waited for me. What
he said to me was brief and to the point; but it was not what he said that
mattered. What overwhelmed me was the terrible gaze of his blue eyes,
before which I melted away—as P. does in the dream, for P. has ex-
changed rôles with me, much to my relief. Anyone who remembers the
eyes of the great master, which were wonderfully beautiful even in his old
age, and has ever seen him angered, will readily imagine the emotions of
the young transgressor on that occasion.

But for a long while I was unable to account for the Non vixit with
which I pass sentence in the dream. Finally, I remembered that the rea-
son why these two words were so distinct in the dream was not because
they were heard or spoken, but because they were seen. Then I knew
at once where they came from. On the pedestal of the statue of the Em-
peror Joseph in the Vienna Hofburg are inscribed the following beautiful
words:—

Saluti patriae vixit
non diu sed totus.¹⁾

From this inscription I had taken what fitted one inimical train of thought
in my dream-thoughts, and which was intended to mean: “That fellow
has nothing to say in the matter, he is not really alive.” And I now recalled
that the dream was dreamed a few days after the unveiling of the me-
morial to Fleischl, in the cloisters of the University, upon which occasion
I had once more seen the memorial to Brücke, and must have thought
with regret (in the unconscious) how my gifted friend P., with all his
devotion to science, had by his premature death forfeited his just claim

¹⁾The inscription in fact reads:—

Saluti publicae vixit
non diu sed totus.

The motive of the mistake: patriae for publicae, has probably been correctly divined
by Wittels.

408

to a memorial in these halls. So I set up this memorial to him in the
dream; Josef is my friend P.’s baptismal name.¹⁾

According to the rules of dream-
interpretation, I should still not be
justified in replacing non vixit, which I need, by non vixit, which is
placed at my disposal by the recollection of the Kaiser Josef memorial.
Some other element of the dream-thoughts must have contributed to
make this possible. Something now calls my attention to the fact that in
the dream scene two trains of thought relating to my friend P. meet, one
hostile, the other affectionate–the former on the surface, the latter cov-
ered up–and both are given representation in the same words: non vixit.
As my friend P. has deserved well of science, I erect a memorial to him;
as he has been guilty of a malicious wish (expressed at the end of the
dream), I annihilate him. I have here constructed a sentence with a special
cadence, and in doing so I must have been influenced by some existing
model. But where can I find a similar antithesis, a similar parallel be-
tween two opposite reactions to the same person, both of which can claim
to be wholly justified, and which nevertheless do not attempt to affect one
another? Only in one passage which, however, makes a profound impres-
sion upon the reader–Brutus’s speech of justification in Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar: “As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate,
I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him; but as he was ambitious, I
slew him.” Have we not here the same verbal structure, and the same
antithesis of thought, as in the dream-thoughts? So I am playing Brutus
in my dream. If only I could find in my dream-thoughts another col-
lateral connection to confirm this! I think it might be the following: “My
friend Fl. comes to Vienna in July.” This detail is not the case in reality.
To my knowledge, my friend has never been in Vienna in July. But the
month of July is named after Julius Caesar, and might therefore very well
furnish the required allusion to the intermediate thought–that I am
playing the part of Brutus.²⁾

Strangely enough, I once did actually play the part of Brutus. When I
was a boy of fourteen, I presented the scene between Brutus and Caesar
in Schiller’s poem to an audience of children: with the assistance of my
nephew, who was a year older than I, and who had come to us from
England–and was thus a revenant–for in him I recognized the play-
mate of my early childhood. Until the end of my third year we had been
inseparable; we had loved each other and fought each other and, as I
have already hinted, this childish relation has determined all my later
feelings in my intercourse with persons of my own age. My nephew John

¹As an example of over-determination: My excuse for coming late was that after
working late into the night, in the morning I had to make the long journey from
Kaiser-Josef-Strasse to Währinger Strasse.

²And also, Caesar = Kaiser.

409

THE DREAM-WORK

has since then had many incarnations, which have revivified first one and
then another aspect of a character that is ineradicably fixed in my un-
conscious memory. At times he must have treated me very badly, and I
must have opposed my tyrant courageously, for in later years I was often
told of a short speech in which I defended myself when my father—his
grandfather—called me to account: “Why did you hit John?” “I hit him
because he hit me.” It must be this childish scene which causes non vivit
to become non vixit, for in the language of later childhood striking is
known as wichsen (German: wichsen = to polish, to wax, i.e. to thrash);
and the dream-work does not disdain to take advantage of such associa-
tions. My hostility towards my friend P., which has so little foundation
in reality—he was greatly my superior, and might therefore have been a
new edition of my old playmate—may certainly be traced to my com-
plicated relations with John during our childhood. I shall, as I have said,
return to this dream later on.

G. ABSURD DREAMS—INTELLECTUAL PERFORMANCES IN DREAMS

I

Hitherto, in our interpretation of dreams, we have come upon the ele-
ment of absurdity in the dream-content so frequently that we must no
longer postpone the investigation of its cause and its meaning. We re-
member, of course, that the absurdity of dreams has furnished the op-
ponents of dream-interpretation with their chief argument for regarding
the dream as merely the meaningless product of an attenuated and frag-
mentary activity of the psyche.

I will begin with a few examples in which the absurdity of the dream-
content is apparent only, disappearing when the dream is more thor-
oughly examined. These are certain dreams which—accidentally, one be-
gins by thinking—are concerned with the dreamer’s dead father.

1. Here is the dream of a patient who had lost his father six years be-
fore the date of the dream:—

His father had been involved in a terrible accident. He was travelling
by the night express when the train was derailed, the seats were tele-
scoped, and his head was crushed from side to side. The dreamer sees him
lying on his bed; from his left eyebrow a wound runs vertically upwards.
The dreamer is surprised that his father should have met with an acci-
dent (since he is dead already, as the dreamer adds in relating his dream).
His father’s eyes are so clear.

According to the prevailing standards of dream-criticism, this dream-
content would be explained as follows: At first, while the dreamer is pic-
turing his father’s accident, he has forgotten that his father has already
been many years in his grave; in the course of the dream this memory

410

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

awakens, so that he is surprised at his own dream even while he is dream-
ing it. Analysis, however, tells us that it is quite superfluous to seek for
such explanations. The dreamer had commissioned a sculptor to make a
bust of his father, and he had inspected the bust two days before the
dream. It is this which seems to him to have come to grief (the German
word means “gone wrong” or “met with an accident”). The sculptor has
never seen his father, and has had to work from photographs. On the very
day before the dream the son had sent an old family servant to the studio
in order to see whether he, too, would pass the same judgment upon the
marble bust—namely, that it was too narrow between the temples. And
now follows the memory-material which has contributed to the formation
of the dream: The dreamer’s father had a habit, whenever he was har-
assed by business cares or domestic difficulties, of pressing his temples
between his hands, as though his head was growing too large and he was
trying to compress it. When the dreamer was four years old, he was pres-
ent when a pistol was accidentally discharged, and his father’s eyes were
blackened (his eyes are so clear). When his father was thoughtful or
depressed, he had a deep furrow in his forehead just where the dream
shows his wound. The fact that in the dream this wrinkle is replaced by
a wound points to the second occasion for the dream. The dreamer had
taken a photograph of his little daughter; the plate had fallen from his
hand, and when he picked it up it revealed a crack which ran like a verti-
cal furrow across the child’s forehead, extending as far as the eyebrow.
He could not help feeling a superstitious foreboding, for on the day before
his mother’s death the negative of her portrait had been cracked.
Thus, the absurdity of this dream is simply the result of a carelessness
of verbal expression, which does not distinguish between the bust o- the
photograph and the original. We are all accustomed to making remarks
like: “Don’t you think it’s exactly your father?” The appearance of ab-
surdity in this dream might, of course, have been easily avoided. If it
were permissible to form an opinion on the strength of a single case, one
might be tempted to say that this semblance of absurdity is admitted or
even desired.

II

Here is another example of the same kind from my own dreams (I lost
my father in the year 1896):—
After his death my father has played a part in the political life of the
Magyars, and has united them into a political whole; and here I see, in-
distinctly, a little picture: a number of men, as though in the Reichstag;
a man is standing on one or two chairs; there are others round about him.
I remember that on his death-bed he looked so like Garibaldi, and I am
glad that this promise has really come true.

411

Certainly this is absurd enough. It was dreamed at the time when the
Hungarians were in a state of anarchy, owing to Parliamentary obstruc-
tion, and were passing through the crisis from which Koloman Széll sub-
sequently delivered them. The trivial circumstance that the scenes beheld
in dreams consist of such little pictures is not without significance for the
elucidation of this element. The customary visual dream-representations
of our thoughts present images that impress us as being life-size; my
dream-picture, however, is the reproduction of a wood-cut inserted in the
text of an illustrated history of Austria, representing Maria Theresa in
the Reichstag of Pressburg–the famous scene of Moriamur pro rege
nostro.¹⁾ Like Maria Theresa, my father, in my dream, is surrounded by
the multitude; but he is standing on one or two chairs (Stühlen), and is
thus, like a Stuhlrichter (presiding judge). (He has united them; here the
intermediary is the phrase: “We shall need no judge.”) Those of us who
stood about my father’s death-bed did actually notice that he looked very
like Garibaldi. He had a post-mortem rise of temperature; his cheeks
shone redder and redder … involuntarily we continue: “And behind
him, in unsubstantial (radiance), lay that which subdues us all–the
common fate.”

This uplifting of our thoughts prepares us for the fact that we shall
have to deal with this “common fate.” The post-mortem rise in tempera-
ture corresponds to the words “after his death” in the dream-content. The
most agonizing of his afflictions had been a complete paralysis of the in-
testines (obstruction) during the last few weeks of his life. All sorts of
disrespectful thoughts associate themselves with this. One of my con-
temporaries, who lost his father while still at the “gymnasium”–upon
which occasion I was profoundly moved, and tendered him my friendship
–once told me, derisively, of the distress of a relative whose father had
died in the street, and had been brought home, when it appeared, upon
undressing the corpse, that at the moment of death, or post-mortem, an
evacuation of the bowels (Stuhlentleerung) had taken place. The daugh-
ter was deeply distressed by this circumstance, because this ugly detail
would inevitably spoil her memory of her father. We have now penetrated
to the wish that is embodied in this dream. To stand after one’s death
before one’s children great and undefiled: who would not wish that?
What now has become of the absurdity of this dream? The appearance of
absurdity was due only to the fact that a perfectly permissible figure of
speech, in which we are accustomed to ignore any absurdity that may
exist as between its components, has been faithfully represented in the
dream.