INFANTILE EXPERIENCES AS THE SOURCE OF DREAMS

As the third of the peculiarities of the dream-content, we have adduced the fact, in
agreement with all other writers on the subject (excepting Robert), that impressions from
our childhood may appear in dreams, which do not seem to be at the disposal of the
waking memory. It is, of course, difficult to decide how seldom or how frequently this
occurs, because after waking the origin of the respective elements of the dream is not
recognised. The proof that we are dealing with impressions of our childhood must thus be
adduced objectively, and only in rare instances do the conditions favour such proof. The
story is told by A. Maury, as being particularly conclusive, of a man who decides to visit
his birthplace after an absence of twenty years. On the night before his departure he
dreams that he is in a totally unfamiliar locality, and that he there meets a strange man
with whom he holds a conversation. Subsequently, upon his return home, he is able to
convince himself that this strange locality really exists in the vicinity of his home, and the
strange man in the dream turns out to be a friend of his dead father's, who is living in the
town. This is, of course, a conclusive proof that in his childhood he had seen both the
man and the locality. The dream, moreover, is to be interpreted as a dream of impatience,
like the dream of the girl who carries in her pocket her ticket for a concert, the dream of
the child whose father had promised him an excursion to the Hameau (p. 40), and so
forth. The motives which reproduce just these impressions of childhood for the dreamer
cannot, of course, be discovered without analysis.
One of my colleagues, who attended my lectures, and who boasted that his dreams were
very rarely subject to distortion, told me that he had sometime previously seen, in a
dream, his former tutor in bed with his nurse, who had remained in the household until
his eleventh year. The actual location of this scene was realised even in the dream. As he
was greatly interested, he related the dream to his elder brother, who laughingly
confirmed its reality. The brother said that he remembered the affair very distinctly, for
he was six years old at the time. The lovers were in the habit of making him, the elder
boy, drunk with beer whenever circumstances were favourable to their nocturnal
intercourse. The younger child, our dreamer, at that time three years of age, slept in the
same room as the nurse, but was not regarded as an obstacle.
In yet another case it may be definitely established, without the aid of dreaminterpretation,
that the dream contains elements from childhood -- namely, if the dream is
a so-called perennial dream, one which, being first dreamt in childhood, recurs again and
again in adult years. I may add a few examples of this sort to those already known,
although I have no personal knowledge of perennial dreams. A physician, in his thirties,
tells me that a yellow lion, concerning which he is able to give the precisest information,
has often appeared in his dream-life, from his earliest childhood up to the present day.
This lion, known to him from his dreams, was one day discovered in natura, as a longforgotten
china animal. The young man then learned from his mother that the lion had
been his favourite toy in early childhood, a fact which he himself could no longer
remember.
If we now turn from the manifest dream-content to the dream-thoughts which are
revealed only on analysis, the experiences of childhood may be found to recur even in
dreams whose content would not have led us to suspect anything of the sort. I owe a
particularly delightful and instructive example of such a dream to my esteemed colleague
of the `yellow lion'. After reading Nansen's account of his polar expedition, he dreamt
that he was giving the intrepid explorer electrical treatment on an ice-floe for the sciatica
of which the latter complained! During the analysis of this dream he remembered an
incident of his childhood, without which the dream would be wholly unintelligible. When
he was three or four years of age he was one day listening attentively to the conversation
of his elders; they were talking of exploration, and he presently asked his father whether
exploration was a bad illness. He had apparently confounded Reissen (journey, trips) with
Reissen (gripes, tearing pains), and the derision of his brothers and sisters prevented his
ever forgetting the humiliating experience.
We have a precisely similar case when, in the analysis of the dream of the monograph on
the genus cyclamen, I stumble upon a memory, retained from childhood, to the effect that
when I was five years old my father allowed me to destroy a book embellished with
coloured plates. It will perhaps be doubted whether this recollection really entered into
the composition of the dream-content, and it may be suggested that the connection was
established subsequently by the analysis. But the abundance and intricacy of the
associative connections vouch for the truth of my explanation: cyclamen-favourite
flower-favourite dish-artichoke; to pick to pieces like an artichoke, leaf by leaf (a phrase
which at that time one heard daily, àa propos of the dividing up of the Chinese empire);
herbarium-bookworm, whose favourite food is books. I can further assure the reader that
the ultimate meaning of the dream, which I have not given here, is most intimately
connected with the content of the scene of childish destruction.
In another series of dreams we learn from analysis that the very wish which has given rise
to the dream, and whose fulfilment the dream proves to be, has itself originated in
childhood, so that one is astonished to find that the child with all his impulses survives in
the dream.
I shall now continue the interpretation of a dream which has already proved instructive: I
refer to the dream in which my friend R. is my uncle. We have carried its interpretation
far enough for the wish-motive -- the wish to be appointed professor -- to assert itself
palpably; and we have explained the affection felt for my friend R. in the dream as the
outcome of opposition to, and defiance of, the two colleagues who appear in the dreamthoughts.
The dream was my own; I may, therefore, continue the analysis by stating that I
did not feel quite satisfied with the solution arrived at. I knew that my opinion of these
colleagues, who were so badly treated in my dream-thoughts, would have been expressed
in very different language in my waking life; the intensity of the wish that I might not
share their fate as regards the appointment seemed to me too slight fully to account for
the discrepancy between my dream-opinion and my waking opinion. If the desire to be
addressed by another title were really so intense it would be proof of a morbid ambition,
which I do not think I cherish, and which I believe I was far from entertaining. I do not
know how others who think they know me would judge me; perhaps I really was
ambitious; but if I was, my ambition has long since been transferred to objects other than
the rank and title of Professor extraordinarius.
Whence, then, the ambition which the dream has ascribed to me? Here I am reminded of
a story which I heard often in my childhood, that at my birth an old peasant woman had
prophesied to my happy mother (whose first-born I was) that she had brought a great man
into the world. Such prophecies must be made very frequently; there are so many happy
and expectant mothers, and so many old peasant women, and other old women who,
since their mundane powers have deserted them, turn their eyes toward the future; and the
prophetess is not likely to suffer for her prophecies. Is it possible that my thirst for
greatness has originated from this source? But here I recollect an impression from the
later years of my childhood, which might serve even better as an explanation. One
evening, at a restaurant on the Prater, where my parents were accustomed to take me
when I was eleven or twelve years of age, we noticed a man who was going from table to
table and, for a small sum, improvising verses upon any subject that was given him. I was
sent to bring the poet to our table, and he showed his gratitude. Before asking for a
subject he threw off a few rhymes about myself, and told us that if he could trust his
inspiration I should probably one day become a `minister'. I can still distinctly remember
the impression produced by this second prophecy. It was in the days of the `bourgeois
Ministry' my father had recently brought home the portraits of the bourgeois university
graduates, Herbst, Giskra, Unger, Berger and others, and we illuminated the house in
their honour. There were even Jews among them; so that every diligent Jewish schoolboy
carried a ministerial portfolio in his satchel. The impression of that time must be
responsible for the fact that until shortly before I went to the university I wanted to study
jurisprudence, and changed my mind only at the last moment. A medical man has no
chance of becoming a minister. And now for my dream: It is only now that I begin to see
that it translates me from the sombre present to the hopeful days of the bourgeois
Ministry, and completely fulfils what was then my youthful ambition. In treating my two
estimable and learned colleagues, merely because they are Jews, so badly, one as though
he were a simpleton, and the other as though he were a criminal, I am acting as though I
were the Minister; I have put myself in his place. What a revenge I take upon his
Excellency! He refuses to appoint me Professor extraordinarius, and so in my dream I
put myself in his place.
In another case I note the fact that although the wish that excites the dream is a
contemporary wish it is nevertheless greatly reinforced by memories of childhood. I refer
to a series of dreams which are based on the longing to go to Rome. For a long time to
come I shall probably have to satisfy this longing by means of dreams, since at the season
of the year when I should be able to travel Rome is to be avoided for reasons of health.1
Thus I once dreamt that I saw the Tiber and the bridge of Sant' Angelo from the window
of a railway carriage; presently the train started, and I realised that I had never entered the
city at all. The view that appeared in the dream was modelled after a well-known
engraving which I had casually noticed the day before in the drawing-room of one of my
patients. In another dream someone took me up a hill and showed me Rome half
shrouded in mist, and so distant that I was astonished at the distinctness of the view. The
content of this dream is too rich to be fully reported here. The motive, `to see the
promised land afar', is here easily recognisable. The city which I thus saw in the midst is
Lübeck; the original of the hill is the Gleichenberg. In a third dream I am at last in Rome.
To my disappointment the scenery is anything but urban: it consists of a little stream of
black water, on one side of which are black rocks, while on the other are meadows with
large white flowers. I notice a certain Herr Zucker (with whom I am superficially
acquainted), and resolve to ask him to show me the way into the city. It is obvious that I
am trying in vain to see in my dream a city which I have never seen in my waking life. If
I resolve the landscape into its elements, the white flowers point to Ravenna, which is
known to me, and which once, for a time, replaced Rome as the capital of Italy. In the
marshes around Ravenna we had found the most beautiful water-lilies in the midst of
black pools of water; the dream makes them grow in the meadows, like the narcissi of our
own Aussee, because we found it so troublesome to cull them from the water. The black
rock so close to the water vividly recalls the valley of the Tepl at Karlsbad. `Karlsbad'
now enables me to account for the peculiar circumstance that I ask Herr Zucker to show
me the way. In the material of which the dream is woven I am able to recognise two of
those amusing Jewish anecdotes which conceal such profound and, at times, such bitter
worldly wisdom, and which we are so fond of quoting in our letters and conversation.
One is the story of the `constitution'; it tells how a poor Jew sneaks onto the Karlsbad
express without a ticket; how he is detected, and is treated more and more harshly by the
conductor at each succeeding call for tickets; and how, when a friend whom he meets at
one of the stations during his miserable journey asks him where he is going, he answers:
`To Karlsbad -- if my constitution holds out.' Associated in memory with this is another
story about a Jew who is ignorant of French, and who has express instructions to ask in
Paris for the Rue Richelieu. Paris was for many years the goal of my own longing, and I
regarded the satisfaction with which I first set foot on the pavements of Paris as a warrant
that I should attain to the fulfilment of other wishes also. Moreover, asking the way is a
direct allusion to Rome, for, as we know, `all roads lead to Rome'. And further, the name
Zucker (sugar) again points to Karlsbad, whither we send persons afflicted with the
constitutional disease, diabetes (Zuckerkrankheit, sugar-disease). The occasion for this
dream was the proposal of my Berlin friend that we should meet in Prague at Easter. A
further association with sugar and diabetes might be found in the matters which I had to
discuss with him.
A fourth dream, occurring shortly after the last-mentioned, brings me back to Rome. I see
a street corner before me, and am astonished that so many German placards should be
posted there. On the previous day, when writing to my friend, I had told him, with truly
prophetic vision, that Prague would probably not be a comfortable place for German
travellers. The dream, therefore, expressed simultaneously the wish to meet him in Rome
instead of in the Bohemian capital, and the desire, which probably originated during my
student days, that the German language might be accorded more tolerance in Prague. As a
matter of fact, I must have understood the Czech language in the first years of my
childhood, for I was born in a small village in Moravia, amidst a Slav population. A
Czech nursery rhyme, which I heard in my seventeenth year, became, without effort on
my part, so imprinted upon my memory that I can repeat it to this day, although I have no
idea of its meaning. Thus in these dreams also there is no lack of manifold relations to the
impressions of my early childhood.
During my last Italian journey, which took me past Lake Trasimenus, I at length
discovered, after I had seen the Tiber, and had reluctantly turned back some fifty miles
from Rome, what a reinforcement my longing for the Eternal City had received from the
impressions of my childhood. I had just conceived a plan of travelling to Naples via
Rome the following year when this sentence, which I must have read in one of our
German classics, occurred to me:2 `It is a question which of the two paced to and fro in
his room the more impatiently after he had conceived the plan of going to Rome --
Assistant Headmaster Winckelmann or the great General Hannibal.' I myself had walked
in Hannibal's footsteps; like him I was destined never to see Rome, and he too had gone
to Campania when all were expecting him in Rome. Hannibal, with whom I had achieved
this point of similarity, had been my favourite hero during my years at the `gymnasium';
like so many boys of my age, I bestowed my sympathies in the Punic war not on the
Romans, but on the Carthaginians. Moreover, when I finally came to realise the
consequences of belonging to an alien race, and was forced by the anti-Semitic feeling
among my classmates to take a definite stand, the figure of the Semitic commander
assumed still greater proportions in my imagination. Hannibal and Rome symbolised, in
my youthful eyes, the struggle between the tenacity of the Jews and the organisation of
the Catholic Church. The significance for our emotional life which the anti-Semitic
movement has since assumed helped to fix the thoughts and impressions of those earlier
days. Thus the desire to go to Rome has in my dream-life become the mask and symbol
for a number of warmly cherished wises, for whose realisation one had to work with the
tenacity and single-mindedness of the Punic general, though their fulfilment at times
seemed as remote as Hannibal's lifelong wish to enter Rome.
And now, for the first time, I happened upon the youthful experience which even today
still expresses its power in all these emotions and dreams. I might have been ten or
twelve years old when my father began to take me with him on his walks, and in his
conversation to reveal his views on the things of this world. Thus it was that he once told
me the following incident, in order to show me that I had been born into happier times
than he: `When I was a young man, I was walking one Saturday along the street in the
village where you were born; I was well-dressed, with a new fur cap on my head. Up
comes a Christian, who knocks my cap into the mud, and shouts, ``Jew, get off the
pavement!'' ' -- `And what did you do?' -- `I went into the street and picked up the cap,' he
calmly replied. That did not seem heroic on the part of the big, strong man who was
leading me, a little fellow, by the hand. I contrasted this situation, which did not please
me, with another, more in harmony with my sentiments -- the scene in which Hannibal's
father, Hamilcar Barcas, made his son swear before the household altar to take vengeance
on the Romans.3 Ever since then Hannibal has had a place in my fantasies.
I think I can trace my enthusiasm for the Carthaginian general still further back into my
childhood, so that it is probably only an instance of an already established emotional
relation being transferred to a new vehicle. One of the first books which fell into my
childish hands after I learned to read was Thiers' Consulate and Empire. I remember that
I pasted on the flat backs of my wooden soldiers little labels bearing the names of the
Imperial marshals, and that at that time Masséna (as a Jew, Menasse) was already my
avowed favourite.4 This preference is doubtless also to be explained by the fact of my
having been born a hundred years later, on the same date. Napoleon himself is associated
with Hannibal through the crossing of the Alps. And perhaps the development of this
martial ideal may be traced yet farther back, to the first three years of my childhood, to
wishes which my alternately friendly and hostile relations with a boy a year older than
myself must have evoked in the weaker of the two playmates.
The deeper we go into the analysis of dreams, the more often are we put on to the track of
childish experiences which play the part of dream-sources in the latent dream-content.
We have learned that dreams very rarely reproduce memories in such a manner as to
constitute, unchanged and unabridged, the sole manifest dream-content. Nevertheless, a
few authentic examples which show such reproduction have been recorded, and I can add
a few new ones, which once more refer to scenes of childhood. In the case of one of my
patients a dream once gave a barely distorted reproduction of a sexual incident, which
was immediately recognised as an accurate recollection. The memory of it had never
been completely lost in the waking life, but it had been greatly obscured, and it was
revivified by the previous work of analysis. The dreamer had at the age of twelve visited
a bedridden schoolmate, who had exposed himself, probably only by a chance movement
in bed. At the sight of the boy's genitals he was seized by a kind of compulsion, exposed
himself, and took hold of the member of the other boy who, however, looked at him in
surprise and indignation, whereupon he became embarrassed and let it go. A dream
repeated this scene twenty-three years later, with all the details of the accompanying
emotions, changing it, however, in this respect, that the dreamer played the passive
instead of the active role, while the person of the schoolmate was replaced by a
contemporary.
As a rule, of course, a scene from childhood is represented in the manifest dream-content
only by an illusion, and must be disentangled from the dream by interpretation. The
citation of examples of this kind cannot be very convincing, because any guarantee that
they are really experiences of childhood is lacking; if they belong to an earlier period of
life, they are no longer recognised by our memory. The conclusion that such childish
experiences recur at all in dreams is justified in psychoanalytic work by a great number
of factors, which in their combined results appear to be sufficiently reliable. But when,
for the purposes of dream-interpretation, such references to childish experiences are torn
out of their context, they may not perhaps seem very impressive, especially where I do
not even give all the material upon which the interpretation is based. However, I shall not
let this deter me from giving a few examples.
Dream 1
With one of my female patients all dreams have the character of `hurry'; she is hurrying
so as to be in time, so as not to miss her train, and so on. In one dream she has to visit a
girl friend; her mother had told her to ride and not walk; she runs, however, and keeps
on calling. The material that emerged in the analysis allowed one to recognise a memory
of childish romping, and, especially for one dream, went back to the popular childish
game of rapidly repeating the words of a sentence as though it was all one word. All these
harmless jokes with little friends were remembered because they replaced other less
harmless ones.5
Dream 2
The following dream was dreamed by another female patient: She is in a large room in
which there are all sorts of machines; it is rather like what she would imagine an
orthopaedic institute to be. She hears that I am pressed for time, and that she must
undergo treatment along with five others. But she resists, and is unwilling to lie down on
the bed -- or whatever it is -- which is intended for her. She stands in a corner, and waits
for me to say `It is not true.' The others, meanwhile, laugh at her, saying it is all
foolishness on her part. At the same time, it is as though she were called upon to make a
number of little squares.
The first part of the content of this dream is an allusion to the treatment and to the
transference6 to myself. The second contains an allusion to a scene of childhood; the two
portions are connected by the mention of the bed. The orthopaedic institute is an allusion
to one of my talks, in which I compared the treatment, with regard to its duration and its
nature, to an orthopaedic treatment. At the beginning of the treatment I had to tell her that
for the present I had little time to give her, but that later on I would devote a whole hour
to her daily. This aroused in her the old sensitiveness, which is a leading characteristic of
children who are destined to become hysterical. Their desire for love is insatiable. My
patient was the youngest of six brothers and sisters (hence, with five others), and as such
her father's favourite, but in spite of this she seems to have felt that her beloved father
devoted far too little time and attention to her. Her waiting for me to say `It is not true'
was derived as follows: A little tailor's apprentice had brought her a dress, and she had
given him the money for it. Then she asked her husband whether she would have to pay
the money again if the boy were to lose it. To tease her, her husband answered `Yes' (the
teasing in the dream), and she asked again and again, and waited for him to say `It is not
true.' The thought of the latent dream-content may now be construed as follows: Will she
have to pay me double the amount when I devote twice as much time to her? -- a thought
which is stingy or filthy (the uncleanliness of childhood is often replaced in dreams by
greed for money; the word `filthy' here supplies the bridge). If all the passage referring to
her waiting until I say `It is not true' is intended in the dream as a circumlocution for the
word `dirty', the standing-in-the-corner and not lying-down-on-the-bed are in keeping
with this world, as component parts of a scene of her childhood in which she had soiled
her bed, in punishment for which she was put into the corner, with a warning that papa
would not love her any more, whereupon her brothers and sisters laughed at her, etc. The
little squares refer to her young niece, who showed her the arithmetical trick of writing
figures in nine squares (I think) in such a way that on being added together in any
direction they make fifteen.
Dream 3
Here is a man's dream: He sees two boys tussling with each other; they are cooper's boys,
as he concludes from the tools which are lying about; one of the boys has thrown the
other down; the prostrate boy is wearing earrings with blue stones. He runs towards the
assailant with lifted cane, in order to chastise him. The boy takes refuge behind a woman,
as though she were his mother, who is standing against a wooden fence. She is the wife of
a day-labourer, and she turns her back to the man who is dreaming. Finally she turns
about and stares at him with a horrible look, so that he runs away in terror; the red flesh
of the lower lid seems to stand out from her eyes.
This dream has made abundant use of trivial occurrences from the previous day, in the
course of which he actually saw two boys in the street, one of whom threw the other
down. When he walked up to them in order to settle the quarrel, both of them took to
their heels. Cooper's boys -- this is explained only by a subsequent dream, in the analysis
of which he used the proverbial expression: `To knock the bottom out of the barrel.' Earrings
with blue stones, according to his observation, are worn chiefly by prostitutes. This
suggests a familiar doggerel rhyme about two boys: `The other boy was called Marie':
that is, he was a girl. The woman standing by the fence: after the scene with the two boys
he went for a walk along the bank of the Danube and, taking advantage of being alone,
urinated against a wooden fence. A little farther on a respectably dressed, elderly lady
smiled at him very pleasantly, and wanted to hand him her card with her address.
Since, in the dream, the woman stood as he had stood while urinating, there is an allusion
to a woman urinating, and this explains the `horrible look' and the prominence of the red
flesh, which can only refer to the genitals gaping in a squatting posture; seen in
childhood, they had appeared in later recollection as `proud flesh', as a `wound'. The
dream unites two occasions upon which, as a little boy, the dreamer was enabled to see
the genitals of little girls, once by throwing the little girl down, and once while the child
was urinating; and, as is shown by another association, he had retained in his memory the
punishment administered or threatened by his father on account of these manifestations of
sexual curiosity.
Dream 4
A great mass of childish memories, which have been hastily combined into a fantasy,
may be found behind the following dream of an elderly lady: She goes out in a hurry to
do some shopping. On the Graben7 she sinks to her knees as though she had broken
down. A number of people collect around her, especially cab-drivers, but no one helps
her to get up. She makes many vain attempts; finally she must have succeeded, for she is
put into a cab which is to take her home. A large, heavily laden basket (something like a
market-basket) is thrown after her through the window.
This is the woman who is always harassed in her dreams, just as she used to be harassed
when a child. The first situation of the dream is apparently taken from the sight of a fallen
horse, just as `broken down' points to horse-racing. In her youth she was a rider; still
earlier she was probably also a horse. With the idea of falling down is connected her first
childish reminiscence of the seventeen-year-old son of the hall porter, who had an
epileptic seizure in the street and was brought home in a cab. Of this, of course, she had
only heard, but the idea of epileptic fits, of falling down, acquired a great influence over
her fantasies, and later on influenced the form of her own hysterical attacks. When a
person of the female sex dreams of falling, this almost always has a sexual significance;
she becomes a `fallen woman', and, for the purpose of the dream under consideration, this
interpretation is probably the least doubtful, for she falls in the Graben, the street in
Vienna which is known as the concourse of prostitutes. The market-basket admits of
more than one interpretation; in the sense of refusal (German, Korb = basket = snub,
refusal) it reminds her of the many snubs which she at first administered to her suitors
and which, she thinks, she herself received later. This agrees with the detail: no one will
help her up, which she herself interprets as `being disdained'. Further, the market-basket
recalls fantasies which have already appeared in the course of analysis, in which she
imagines that she has married far beneath her station and now goes to the market as a
market-woman. Lastly, the market-basket might be interpreted as the mark of a servant.
This suggests further memories of her childhood -- of a cook who was discharged
because she stole; she, too, sank to her knees and begged for mercy. The dreamer was at
that time twelve years of age. Then emerges a recollection of a chambermaid, who was
dismissed because she had an affair with the coachman of the household, who,
incidentally, married her afterwards. This recollection, therefore, gives us a clue to the
cab-drivers in the dream (who, in opposition to the reality, do not stand by the fallen
woman). But there still remains to be explained the throwing of the basket; in particular,
why is it thrown through the window? This reminds her of the forwarding of luggage by
rail, to the custom of Fensterln8 in the country, and to trivial impressions of a summer
resort, of a gentleman who threw some blue plums into the window of a lady's room, and
of her little sister, who was frightened because an idiot who was passing looked in at the
window. And now, from behind all this emerges an obscure recollection from her tenth
year of a nurse in the country to whom one of the menservants made love (and whose
conduct the child may have noticed), and who was `sent packing', `thrown out', together
with her lover (in the dream we have the expression `thrown into'); an incident which we
have been approaching by several other paths. The luggage or box of a servant is
disparagingly described in Vienna as `seven plums'. `Pack up your seven plums and get
out!'
My collection, of course, contains a plethora of such patients' dreams, the analysis of
which leads back to impressions of childhood, often dating back to the first three years of
life, which are remembered obscurely, or not at all. But it is a questionable proceeding to
draw conclusions from these and apply them to dreams in general, for they are mostly
dreams of neurotic, and especially hysterical, persons; and the part played in these
dreams by childish scenes might be conditioned by the nature of the neurosis, and not by
the nature of dreams in general. In the interpretation of my own dreams, however, which
is assuredly not undertaken on account of grave symptoms of illness, it happens just as
frequently that in the latent dream-content I am unexpectedly confronted with a scene of
my childhood, and that a whole series of my dreams will suddenly converge upon the
paths proceeding from a single childish experience. I have already given examples of
this, and I shall give yet more in different connections. Perhaps I cannot close this chapter
more fittingly than by citing several dreams of my own, in which recent events and longforgotten
experiences of my childhood appear together as dream-sources.
I. After I have been travelling, and have gone to bed hungry and tired, the prime
necessities of life begin to assert their claims in sleep, and I dream as follows: I go into a
kitchen in order to ask for some pudding. There three women are standing, one of whom
is the hostess; she is rolling something in her hands, as though she were making
dumplings. She replies that I must wait until she has finished (not distinctly as a speech).
I become impatient, and go away affronted. I want to put on an overcoat; but the first I
try on is too long. I take it off, and am somewhat astonished to find that it is trimmed with
fur. A second coat has a long strip of cloth with a Turkish design sewn into it. A stranger
with a long face and a short, pointed beard comes up and prevents me from putting it on,
declaring that it belongs to him. I now show him that it is covered all over with Turkish
embroideries. He asks: `How do the Turkish (drawings, strips of cloth . . .) concern you?'
But we soon become quite friendly.
In the analysis of this dream I remember, quite unexpectedly, the first novel which I ever
read, or rather, which I began to read from the end of the first volume, when I was
perhaps thirteen years of age. I have never learned the name of the novel, or that of its
author, but the end remains vividly in my memory. The hero becomes insane, and
continually calls out the names of the three women who have brought the greatest
happiness and the greatest misfortune into his life. Pélagie is one of these names. I still do
not know what to make of this recollection during the analysis. Together with the three
women there now emerge the three Parcae, who spin the fates of men, and I know that
one of the three women, the hostess in the dream, is the mother who gives life and who,
moreover, as in my own case, gives the child its first nourishment. Love and hunger meet
at the mother's breast. A young man -- so runs an anecdote -- who became a great admirer
of womanly beauty, once observed, when the conversation turned upon the handsome
wet-nurse who had suckled him as a child, that he was sorry that he had not taken better
advantage of his opportunities. I am in the habit of using the anecdote to elucidate the
factor of retrospective tendencies in the mechanism of the psychoneuroses. -- One of the
Parcae, then, is rubbing the palms of her hands together, as though she were making
dumplings. A strange occupation for one of the Fates, and urgently in need of
explanation! This explanation is furnished by another and earlier memory of my
childhood. When I was six years old, and receiving my first lessons from my mother, I
was expected to believe that we are made of dust, and must, therefore, return to dust. But
this did not please me, and I questioned the doctrine. Thereupon my mother rubbed the
palms of her hands together -- just as in making dumplings, except that there was no
dough between them -- and showed me the blackish scales of epidermis which were thus
rubbed off, as a proof that it is of dust that we are made. Great was my astonishment at
this demonstration ad oculos, and I acquiesced in the idea which I was later to hear
expressed in the words: `Thou owest nature a death.'9 Thus the women to whom I go in
the kitchen, as I so often did in my childhood when I was hungry and my mother, sitting
by the fire, admonished me to wait until lunch was ready, are really the Parcae. And now
for the dumplings! At least one of my teachers at the University -- the very one to whom I
am indebted for my histological knowledge (epidermis) -- would be reminded by the
name Knödl (Knödl means dumpling), of a person whom he had to prosecute for
plagiarising his writings. Committing a plagiarism, taking anything one can lay hands on,
even though it belongs to another, obviously leads to the second part of the dream, in
which I am treated like the overcoat thief who for some time plied his trade in the lecturehalls.
I have written the word plagiarism -- without definite intention -- because it
occurred to me, and now I see that it must belong to the latent dream-content and that it
will serve as a bridge between the different parts of the manifest dream-content. The
chain of associations -- Pélagie--plagiarism--plagiostomi10 (sharks)--fish-bladder --
connects the old novel with the affair of Knödl and the overcoats (German: Überzieher =
pullover, overcoat or condom), which obviously refer to an appliance appertaining to the
technique of sex. This, it is true, is a very forced and irrational connection, but it is
nevertheless one which I could not have established in waking life if it had not already
been established by the dream-work. Indeed, as though nothing were sacred to this
impulse to enforce associations, the beloved name, Brücke (bridge of words, see above),
now serves to remind me of the very institute in which I spent my happiest hours as a
student, wanting for nothing. `So will you at the breasts of Wisdom every day more
pleasure find'), in the most complete contrast to the desires which plague me (German:
plagen) while I dream. And finally, there emerges the recollection of another dear
teacher, whose name once more sounds like something edible (Fleischl -- Fleisch = meat
-- like Knödl = dumplings), and of a pathetic scene in which the scales of epidermis play
a part (mother--hostess), and mental derangement (the novel), and a remedy from the
Latin pharmacopeia (Küche = kitchen) which numbs the sensation of hunger, namely,
cocaine.
In this manner I could follow the intricate trains of thought still farther, and could fully
elucidate that part of the dream which is lacking in the analysis; but I must refrain,
because the personal sacrifice which this would involve is too great. I shall take up only
one of the threads, which will serve to lead us directly to one of the dream-thoughts that
lie at the bottom of the medley. The stranger with the long face and pointed beard, who
wants to prevent me from putting on the overcoat, has the features of a tradesman of
Spalato, of whom my wife bought a great deal of Turkish cloth. His name was Popovic, a
suspicious name, which even gave the humorist Stettenheim a pretext for a suggestive
remark: `He told me his name, and blushingly shook my hand.'11 For the rest, I find the
same misuse of names as above in the case of Pélagie, Knödl, Brücke, Fleischl. No one
will deny that such playing with names is a childish trick; if I indulge in it the practice
amounts to an act of retribution, for my own name has often enough been the subject of
such feeble attempts at wit. Goethe once remarked how sensitive a man is in respect to
his name, which he feels that he fills even as he fills his skin; Herder having written the
following lines on his name:
Der du von Göttern abstammst, von Gothen oder vom Kote
So seid ihr Götterbilder auch zu Staub.
Thou who art born of the gods, of the Goths,
or of the mud.
Thus are thy god-like images even dust.
I realise that this digression on the misuse of names was intended merely to justify this
complaint. But here let us stop . . . The purchase at Spalato reminds me of another
purchase at Cattaro, where I was too cautious, and missed the opportunity of making an
excellent bargain. (Missing an opportunity at the breast of the wet-nurse; see above.) One
of the dream-thoughts occasioned by the sensation of hunger really amounts to this: We
should let nothing escape; we should take what we can get, even if we do a little wrong;
we should never let an opportunity go by; life is so short, and death inevitable. Because
this is meant even sexually, and because desire is unwilling to check itself before the
thought of doing wrong, this philosophy of carpe diem has reason to fear the censorship,
and must conceal itself behind a dream. And so all sorts of counter-thoughts find
expression, with recollections of the time when spiritual nourishment alone was
sufficient for the dreamer, with hindrances of every kind and even threats of disgusting
sexual punishments.
II. A second dream requires a longer preliminary statement:
I had driven to the Western Station in order to start on a holiday trip to the Aussee, but I
went on to the platform in time for the Ischl train, which leaves earlier. There I saw
Count Thun, who was again going to see the Emperor at Ischl. In spite of the rain he
arrived in an open carriage, came straight through the entrance-gate for the local trains,
and with a curt gesture and not a word of explanation he waved back the gatekeeper, who
did not know him and wanted to take his ticket. After he had left in the Ischl train, I was
asked to leave the platform and return to the waiting-room; but after some difficulty I
obtained permission to remain. I passed the time noting how many people bribed the
officials to secure a compartment; I fully intended to make a complaint -- that is, to
demand the same privilege. Meanwhile I sang something to myself, which I afterwards
recognised as the aria from The Marriage of Figaro:
If my lord Count would tread a measure, tread a measure,
Let him but say his pleasure,
And I will play the tune.
(Possibly another person would not have recognised the tune.)
The whole evening I was in a high-spirited, pugnacious mood: I chaffed the waiter and
the cab-driver, I hope without hurting their feelings; and now all kinds of bold and
revolutionary thought came into my mind, such as would fit themselves to the words of
Figaro, and to memories of Beaumarchais' comedy, of which I had seen a performance at
the Comédie Française. The speech about the great men who have taken the trouble to be
born; the seigneurial right which Count Almaviva wishes to exercise with regard to
Susanne; the jokes which our malicious Opposition journalists make on the name of
Count Thun (German, thun = do); calling him Graf Nichtsthun, Count Do-Nothing. I
really do not envy him; he now has a difficult audience with the Emperor before him, and
it is I who am the real Count Do-Nothing, for I am going off for a holiday. I make all
sorts of amusing plans for the vacation. Now a gentleman arrives whom I know as a
Government representative at the medical examinations, and who has won the flattering
nickname of `the Governmental bedfellow' (literally, `by-sleeper') by his activities in this
capacity. By insisting on his official status he secured half a first-class compartment, and
I heard one guard say to another: `Where are we going to put the gentleman with the first
class half-compartment?' A pretty sort of favouritism! I am paying for a whole first-class
compartment. I did actually get a whole compartment to myself, but not in a through
carriage, so there was no lavatory at my disposal during the night. My complaints to the
guard were fruitless; I revenged myself by suggesting that at least a hole be made in the
floor of this compartment, to serve the possible needs of passengers. At a quarter to three
in the morning I wake, with an urgent desire to urinate, from the following dream:
A crowd, a students' meeting . . . A certain Count (Thun or Taaffe) is making a speech.
Being asked to say something about the Germans, he declares, with a contemptuous
gesture, that their favourite flower is coltsfoot, and he then puts into his buttonhole
something like a torn leaf, really the crumpled skeleton of a leaf. I jump up, and I jump
up,12 but I am surprised at my implied attitude. Then, more indistinctly: It seems as
though this were the vestibule (Aula); the exits are thronged, and one must escape. I
make my way through a suite of handsomely appointed rooms, evidently ministerial
apartments; with furniture of a colour between brown and violet, and at last I come to a
corridor in which a housekeeper, a fat, elderly woman, is seated. I try to avoid speaking
to her, but she apparently thinks I have a right to pass this way, because she asks whether
she shall accompany me with the lamp. I indicate with a gesture, or tell her, that she is to
remain standing on the stairs, and it seems to me that I am very clever, for after all I am
evading detection. Now I am downstairs, and I find a narrow, steeply rising path, which I
follow.
Again indistinctly: It is as though my second task were to get away from the city, just as
my first was to get out of the building. I am riding in a one-horse cab, and I tell the driver
to take me to a railway station. `I can't drive with you on the railway line itself,' I say,
when he reproaches me as though I had tired him out. Here it seems as though I had
already made a journey in his cab which is usually made by rail. The stations are
crowded; I am wondering whether to go to Krems or to Znaim, but I reflect that the Court
will be there, and I decide in favour of Graz or some such place. Now I am seated in the
railway carriage, which is rather like a tram, and I have in my buttonhole a peculiar long
braided thing, on which are violet-brown violets of stiff material, which makes a great
impression on people. Here the scene breaks off.
I am once more in front of the railway station, but I am in the company of an elderly
gentleman. I think out a scheme for remaining unrecognised, but I see this plan already
being carried out. Thinking and experiencing are here, as it were, the same thing. He
pretends to be blind, at least in one eye, and I hold before him a male glass urinal (which
we have to buy in the city, or have bought). I am thus a sick-nurse, and have to give him
the urinal because he is blind. If the conductor sees us in this position, he must pass us by
without drawing attention to us. At the same time the position of the elderly man, and his
urinating organ, is plastically perceived. Then I wake with a desire to urinate.
The whole dream seems a sort of fantasy, which takes the dreamer back to the year of
revolution, 1848, the memory of which had been revived by the jubilee of 1898, as well
as by a little excursion to Wachau, on which I visited Emmersdorf, the refuge of the
student leader Fischof,13 to whom several features of the manifest dream-content might
refer. The association of ideas then leads me to England, to the house of my brother, who
used in jest to twit his wife with the title of Tennyson's poem Fifty Years Ago, whereupon
the children were used to correct him: Fifteen Years Ago. This fantasy, however, which
attaches itself to the thoughts evoked by the sight of Count Thun, is, like the facade of an
Italian church, without organic connection with the structure behind it, but unlike such a
facade it is full of gaps, and confused, and in many places portions of the interior break
through. The first situation of the dream is made up of a number of scenes, into which I
am able to dissect it. The arrogant attitude of the Count in the dream is copied from a
scene at my school which occurred in my fifteenth year. We had hatched a conspiracy
against an unpopular and ignorant teacher; the leading spirit in this conspiracy was a
schoolmate who since that time seems to have taken Henry VIII of England as his model.
It fell to me to carry out the coup d'état, and a discussion of the importance of the Danube
(German, Donau) to Austria (Wachau!) was the occasion of an open revolt. One of our
fellow-conspirators was our only aristocratic schoolmate -- he was called `the giraffe' on
account of his conspicuous height -- and while he was being reprimanded by the tyrant of
the school, the professor of the German language, he stood just as the Count stood in the
dream. The explanation of the favourite flower, and the putting into a buttonhole of
something that must have been a flower (which recalls the orchids which I had given that
day to a friend, and also a rose of Jericho) prominently recalls the incident in
Shakespeare's historical play which opens the civil wars of the Red and the White Roses;
the mention of Henry VIII has paved the way to this reminiscence. Now it is not very far
from roses to red and white carnations. (Meanwhile two little rhymes, the one German,
the other Spanish, insinuate themselves into the analysis: Rosen, Tulpen, Nelken, alle
Blumen welken, and Isabelita, no llores, que se marchitan las flores. The Spanish line
occurs in Figaro.) Here in Vienna white carnations have become the badge of the anti-
Semites, red ones of the Social Democrats. Behind this is the recollection of an anti-
Semitic challenge during a railway journey in beautiful Saxony (Anglo-Saxon). The third
scene contributing to the formation of the first situation in the dream dates from my early
student days. There was a debate in a German students' club about the relation of
philosophy to the general sciences. Being a green youth, full of materialistic doctrines, I
thrust myself forward in order to defend an extremely one-sided position. Thereupon a
sagacious older fellow-student, who has since then shown his capacity for leading men
and organising the masses, and who, moreover, bears a name belonging to the animal
kingdom, rose and gave us a thorough dressing-down; he too, he said, had herded swine
in his youth, and had then returned repentant to his father's house. I jumped up (as in the
dream), became piggishly rude, and retorted that since I knew he had herded swine, I was
not surprised at the tone of his discourse. (In the dream I am surprised at my German
Nationalistic feelings.) There was a great commotion, and an almost general demand that
I should retract my words, but I stood my ground. The insulted student was too sensible
to take the advice which was offered him, that he should send me a challenge, and let the
matter drop.
The remaining elements of this scene of the dream are of more remote origin. What does
it mean that the Count should make a scornful reference to coltsfoot? Here I must
question my train of associations. Coltsfoot (German: Huflattich), Lattice (lettuce),
Salathund (the dog that grudges others what he cannot eat himself). Here plenty of
opprobrious epithets may be discerned: Gir-affe (German: Affe = monkey, ape), pig, sow,
dog; I might even arrive, by way of the name, at donkey, and thereby pour contempt upon
an academic professor. Furthermore, I translate coltsfoot (Huflattich) -- I do not know
whether I do so correctly -- by pisseen-lit. I get this idea from Zola's Germinal, in which
some children are told to bring some dandelion salad with them. The dog -- chien -- has a
name sounding not unlike the verb for the major function (chien, as pisser stands for the
minor one). Now we shall soon have the indecent in all its three physical categories, for
in the same Germinal, which deals with the future revolution, there is a description of a
very peculiar contest, which relates to the production of the gaseous excretions known as
flatus.14 And now I cannot but observe how the way to this flatus has been prepared a
long while since, beginning with the flowers, and proceeding to the Spanish rhyme of
Isabelita, to Ferdinand and Isabella, and, by way of Henry VIII, to English history at the
time of the Armada, after the victorious termination of which the English struck a medal
with the inscription: Flavit et dissipati sunt, for the storm had scattered the Spanish
fleet.15 I had thought of using this phrase, half jestingly, as the title of a chapter on
`Therapy', if I should ever succeed in giving a detailed account of my conception and
treatment of hysteria.
I cannot give so detailed an interpretation of the second scene of the dream, out of sheer
regard for the censorship. For at this point I put myself in the place of a certain eminent
gentleman of the revolutionary period, who had an adventure with an eagle (German:
Adler) and who is said to have suffered from incontinence of the bowels, incontinentia
alvi, etc.; and here I believe that I should not be justified in passing the censorship, even
though it was an aulic councillor (aula, consiliarius aulicus) who told me the greater part
of this history. The suite of rooms in the dream is suggested by his Excellency's private
saloon carriage, into which I was able to glance; but it means, as it so often does in
dreams, a woman (Frauenzimmer: German Zimmer -- room, is appended to Frauen --
woman, in order to imply a slight contempt).16 The personality of the housekeeper is an
ungrateful allusion to a witty old lady, which ill repays her for the good times and the
many good stories which I have enjoyed in her house. The incident of the lamp goes back
to Grillparzer, who notes a charming experience of a similar nature, of which he
afterwards made use in Hero and Leander (the waves of the sea and of love -- the
Armada and the storm).
I must forego a detailed analysis of the two remaining portions of the dream; I shall
single out only those elements which lead me back to the two scenes of my childhood for
the sake of which alone I have selected the dream. The reader will rightly assume that it
is sexual material which necessitates the suppression; but he may not be content with this
explanation. There are many things of which one makes no secret to oneself, but which
must be treated as secrets in addressing others, and here we are concerned not with the
reasons which induce me to conceal the solution, but with the motive of the inner
censorship which conceals the real content of the dream even from myself. Concerning
this, I will confess that the analysis reveals these three portions of the dream as
impertinent boasting, the exuberance of an absurd megalomania, long ago suppressed in
my waking life, which, however, dares to show itself, with individual ramifications, even
in the manifest dream-content (it seems to me that I am a cunning fellow), making the
high-spirited mood of the evening before the dream perfectly intelligible. Boasting of
every kind, indeed; thus, the mention of Graz points to the phrase: `What price Graz?'
which one is wont to use when one feels unusually wealthy. Readers who recall Master
Rabelais's inimitable description of the life and deeds of Gargantua and his son
Pantagruel will be able to enrol even the suggested content of the first portion of the
dream among the boasts to which I have alluded. But the following belongs to the two
scenes of childhood of which I have spoken: I had bought a new trunk for this journey,
the colour of which, a brownish violet, appears in the dream several times (violet-brown
violets of a stiff cloth, on an object which is known as a `girl-catcher' -- the furniture in
the ministerial chambers). Children, we know, believe that one attracts people's attention
with anything new. Now I have been told of the following incident of my childhood; my
recollection of the occurrence itself has been replaced by my recollection of the story. I
am told that at the age of two I still used occasionally to wet my bed, and that when I was
reproved for doing so I consoled my father by promising to buy him a beautiful new red
bed in N. (the nearest large town). Hence, the interpolation in the dream, that we had
bought the urinal in the city or had to buy it; one must keep one's promises. (One should
note, moreover, the association of the male urinal and the woman's trunk, box.) All the
megalomania of the child is contained in this promise. The significance of dreams of
urinary difficulties in the case of children has already been considered in the
interpretation of an earlier dream (cf. the dream on p.73 ff.). The psychoanalysis of
neurotics has taught us to recognise the intimate connection between wetting the bed and
the character trait of ambition.
Then, when I was seven or eight years of age another domestic incident occurred which I
remember very well. One evening, before going to bed, I had disregarded the dictates of
discretion, and had satisfied my needs in my parents' bedroom, and in their presence.
Reprimanding me for this delinquency, my father remarked: `That boy will never amount
to anything.' This must have been a terrible affront to my ambition, for allusions to this
scene recur again and again in my dreams, and are constantly coupled with enumerations
of my accomplishments and successes, as though I wanted to say: `You see, I have
amounted to something after all.' This childish scene furnishes the elements for the last
image of the dream, in which the roles are interchanged, of course for the purpose of
revenge. The elderly man, obviously my father, for the blindness in one eye signifies his
one-sided glaucoma,17 is now urinating before me as I once urinated before him. By
means of the glaucoma I remind my father of cocaine, which stood him in good stead
during his operation, as though I had thereby fulfilled my promise. Besides, I make sport
of him; since he is blind, I must hold the glass in front of him, and I delight in allusions to
my knowledge of the theory of hysteria, of which I am proud.18
If the two childish scenes of urination are, according to my theory, closely associated
with the desire for greatness, their resuscitation on the journey to the Aussee was further
favoured by the accidental circumstance that my compartment had no lavatory, and that I
must be prepared to postpone relief during the journey, as actually happened in the
morning when I woke with the sensation of a bodily need. I suppose one might be
inclined to credit this sensation with being the actual stimulus of the dream; I should,
however, prefer a different explanation, namely, that the dream-thoughts first gave rise to
the desire to urinate. It is quite unusual for me to be disturbed in sleep by any physical
need, least of all at the time when I woke on this occasion -- a quarter to four in the
morning. I would forestall a further objection by remarking that I have hardly ever felt a
desire to urinate after waking early on other journeys made under more comfortable
circumstances. However, I can leave this point undecided without weakening my
argument.
Further, since experience in dream-analysis has drawn my attention to the fact that even
from dreams the interpretation of which seems at first sight complete, because the dreamsources
and the wish-stimuli are easily demonstrable, important trains of thought proceed
which reach back into the earliest years of childhood, I had to ask myself whether this
characteristic does not even constitute an essential condition of dreaming. If it were
permissible to generalise this notion, I should say that every dream is connected through
its manifest content with recent experiences, while through its latent content it is
connected with the most remote experiences; and I can actually show in the analysis of
hysteria that these remote experiences have in a very real sense remained recent right up
to the present. But I still find it very difficult to prove this conjecture; I shall have to
return to the probable role in dream-formation of the earliest experiences of our
childhood in another connection (Chapter Seven).
Of the three peculiarities of the dream-memory considered above, one -- the preference
for the unimportant in the dream-content -- has been satisfactorily explained by tracing it
back to dream-distortion. We have succeeded in establishing the existence of the other
two peculiarities -- the preferential selection of recent and also of infantile material -- but
we have found it impossible to derive them from the motives of the dream. Let us keep in
mind these two characteristics, which we still have to explain or evaluate; a place will
have to be found for them elsewhere, either in the discussion of the psychology of the
sleeping state or in the consideration of the structure of the psychic apparatus -- which we
shall undertake later after we have seen that by means of dream-interpretation we are able
to glance as through an inspection-hole into the interior of this apparatus.
But here and now I will emphasise another result of the last few dream-analyses. The
dream often appears to have several meanings; not only may several wish-fulfilments be
combined in it, as our examples show, but one meaning or one wish-fulfilment may
conceal another, until in the lowest stratum one comes upon the fulfilment of a wish from
the earliest period of childhood; and here again it may be questioned whether the word
`often' at the beginning of this sentence may not more correctly be replaced by
`constantly'.19
1 I long ago learned that the fulfilment of such wishes only called for a little courage, and
I then became a zealous pilgrim to Rome.
2 The writer in whose works I found this passage was probably Jean Paul Richter.
3 In the first edition of this book I gave here the name `Hasdrubal', an amazing error,
which I explained in my Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
4 The Jewish descent of the Marshal is somewhat doubtful.
5 [In the original this paragraph contains many plays on the word Hetz (hurry chase,
scurry, game, etc.) -- TRANS.]
6 [This word is here used in the psychoanalytical sense. -- TRANS.]
7 [a street in Vienna -- TRANS.]
8 [Fensterln is the custom, now falling into disuse, found in rural districts of the German
Schwarzwald, of lovers who woo their sweethearts at their bedroom windows, to which
they ascend by means of a ladder, enjoying such intimacy that the relation practically
amounts to a trial marriage. The reputation of the young woman never suffers on account
of Fensterln unless she becomes intimate with too many suitors. -- TRANS.]
9 Both the affects pertaining to these childish scenes -- astonishment and resignation to the
inevitable -- appeared in a dream of slightly earlier date, which first reminded me of this
incident of my childhood.
10 I do not bring in the plagiostomi arbitrarily; they recall a painful incident of disgrace
before the same teacher.
11 Popo = backside, in German nursery language.
12 This repetition has crept into the text of the dream, apparently through absentmindedness,
and I have left it because analysis shows that it has a meaning.
13 This is an error and not a slip, for I learned later that the Emmersdorf in Wachau is not
identical with the refuge of the revolutionist Fischof, a place of the same name.
14 Not in Germinal, but in La Terre -- a mistake of which I became aware only in the
analysis. -- Here I would call attention to the identity of letters in Huflattich and Flatus.
15 An unsolicited biographer, Dr F. Wittels, reproaches me for having omitted the name of
Jehovah from the above motto. The English medal contains the name of the Deity, in
Hebrew letters, on the background of a cloud, and placed in such a manner that one may
equally well regard it as part of the picture or as part of the inscription.
16 [translator's note]
17 Another interpretation: He is one-eyed like Odin, the father of the gods -- Odin's
consolation. The consolation in the childish scene: I will buy him a new bed.
18 Here is some more material for interpretation: Holding the urine-glass recalls the story
of a peasant (illiterate) at the optician's, who tried on now one pair of spectacles, now
another, but was still unable to read. -- (Peasant-catcher-girl-catcher in the preceding
portion of the dream.) -- The peasants' treatment of the feeble-minded father in Zola's La
Terre. -- The tragic atonement, that in his last days my father soiled his bed like a child;
hence, I am his nurse in the dream. -- `Thinking and experiencing are here, as it were,
identical'; this recalls a highly revolutionary closet drama by Oscar Panizza, in which
God, the Father, is ignominiously treated as a palsied greybeard. With Him will and deed
are one, and in the book he has to be restrained by His archangel, a sort of Ganymede,
from scolding and swearing, because His curses would immediately be fulfilled. --
Making plans is a reproach against my father, dating from a later period in the
development of the critical faculty, much as the whole rebellious content of the dream,
which commits lèse majesté and scorns authority, may be traced to a revolt against my
father. The sovereign is called the father of his country (Landesvater), and the father is
the first and oldest, and for the child the only authority, from whose absolutism the other
social authorities have evolved in the course of the history of human civilisation (in so far
as `mother-right' does not necessitate a qualification of this doctrine). -- The words which
occurred to me in the dream, `thinking and experiencing are the same thing,' refer to the
explanation of hysterical symptoms with which the male urinal (glass) is also associated.
-- I need not explain the principle of Gschnas to a Viennese; it consists in constructing
objects of rare and costly appearance out of trivial, and preferably comical and worthless
material -- for example, making suits of armour out of kitchen utensils, wisps of straw
and Salzstangeln (long rolls), as our artists are fond of doing at their jolly parties. I had
learned that hysterical subjects do the same thing; besides what really happens to them,
they unconsciously conceive for themselves horrible or extravagantly fantastic incidents,
which they build up out of the most harmless and commonplace material of actual
experience. The symptoms attach themselves primarily to these fantasies, not to the
memory of real events, whether serious or trivial. This explanation had helped me to
overcome many difficulties, and afforded me much pleasure. I was able to allude to it by
means of the dream-element `male urine-glass', because I had been told that at the last
Gschnas evening a position-chalice of Lucretia Borgia's had been exhibited, the chief
constituent of which had consisted of a glass urinal for men, such as is used in hospitals.
19 The stratification of the meanings of dreams is one of the most delicate but also one of
the most fruitful problems of dream-interpretation. Whoever forgets the possibility of
such stratification is likely to go astray and to make untenable assertions concerning the
nature of dreams. But hitherto this subject has been only too imperfectly investigated. So
far, a fairly orderly stratification of symbols in dreams due to urinary stimulus has been
subjected to a thorough evaluation only by Otto Rank.