Part 35

Anyone who has formed a proper idea of the abundance of dream condensation will easily be able to imagine how great a number of pages the detailed analysis of this dream must fill. Luckily for the context, I shall take from it merely the one example of astonishment, in the dream, which makes its appearance in the parenthetical remark, “_strangely enough_.” Let us take up the occasion of the dream. It is a visit of this lady, Louise N., who assists at the work in the dream. She says: “Lend me something to read.” I offer her _She_, by Rider Haggard. “A _strange_ book, but full of hidden sense,” I try to explain to her; “the eternal feminine, the immortality of our emotions——” Here she interrupts me: “I know that book already. Haven’t you something of your own?” “No, my own immortal works are still unwritten.” “Well, when are you going to publish your so-called latest revelations which you promised us would be good reading?” she asks somewhat sarcastically. I now perceive that she is a mouthpiece for someone else, and I become silent. I think of the effort it costs me to publish even my work on the Dream, in which I have to surrender so much of my own intimate character. “The best that you know you can’t tell to the children.” The preparation of _my own body_, which I am ordered to make in the dream, is thus the _self-analysis_ necessitated in the communication of my dreams. The elder Bruecke very properly finds a place here; in these first years of my scientific work it happened that I neglected a discovery, until his energetic commands forced me to publish it. But the other trains of thought which start from my conversation with Louise N. go too deep to become conscious; they are side-tracked by way of the related material which has been awakened in me by the mention of Rider Haggard’s _She_. The comment “strangely enough” goes with this book, and with another by the same author, _The Heart of the World_, and numerous elements of the dream are taken from these two fantastic novels. The muddy ground over which the dreamer is carried, the chasm which must be crossed by means of the boards that have been brought along, come from _She_; the Indians, the girl, and the wooden house, from the _Heart of the World_. In both novels a woman is the leader, both treat of dangerous wanderings; _She_ has to do with an adventurous journey to the undiscovered country, a place almost untrodden by foot of man. According to a note which I find in my record of the dream, the fatigue in my legs was a real sensation of those days. Doubtless in correspondence with this came a tired frame of mind and the doubting question: “How much further will my legs carry me?” The adventure in _She_ ends with the woman leader’s meeting her death in the mysterious fire at the centre of the earth, instead of attaining immortality for herself and others. A fear of this sort has unmistakably arisen in the dream thoughts. The “wooden house,” also, is surely the coffin—that is, the grave. But the dream activity has performed its masterpiece in representing this most unwished-for of all thoughts by means of a wish-fulfilment. I have already once been in a grave, but it was an empty Etruscan grave near Orvieto—a narrow chamber with two stone benches on the walls, upon which the skeletons of two grown-up persons had been laid. The interior of the wooden house in the dream looks exactly like this, except that wood has been substituted for stone. The dream seems to say: “If you must so soon lie in your grave, let it be this Etruscan grave,” and by means of this interpolation it transforms the saddest expectation into one that is really to be desired. As we shall learn, it is, unfortunately, only the idea accompanying an emotion which the dream can change into its opposite, not usually the emotion itself. Thus I awake with “frightened thoughts,” even after the dream has been forced to represent my idea—that perhaps the children will attain what has been denied to the father—a fresh allusion to the strange novel in which the identity of a person is preserved through a series of generations covering two thousand years.

VIII. In the context of another dream there is a similar expression of astonishment at what is experienced in the dream. This, however, is connected with a striking and skilfully contrived attempt at explanation which might well be called a stroke of genius—so that I should have to analyse the whole dream merely for the sake of it, even if the dream did not possess two other features of interest. I am travelling during the night between the eighteenth and the nineteenth of July on the Southern Railway, and in my sleep I hear someone call out: _“Hollthurn, 10 minutes.” I immediately think of Holothurian—of a museum of natural history—that here is a place where brave men have vainly resisted the domination of their overlord. Yes, the counter reformation in Austria! As though it were a place in Styria or the Tyrol. Now I distinctly see a little museum in which the remains or the possessions of these men are preserved. I wish to get off, but I hesitate to do so. Women with fruit are standing on the platform; they crouch on the floor, and in that position hold out their baskets in an inviting manner. I hesitate, in doubt whether we still have time, but we are still standing. I am suddenly in another compartment in which the leather and the seats are so narrow that one’s back directly touches the back rest.[FC] I am surprised at this, but I may have changed cars while asleep. Several people, among them an English brother and sister; a row of books distinctly on a shelf on the wall. I see_ The Wealth of Nations, _then_ Matter and Motion (_by Maxwell_)—_the books are thick and bound in brown linen. The man asks his sister for a book by Schiller, and whether she has forgotten it. These are books which first seem mine, then seem to belong to the brother and sister. At this point I wish to join in the conversation in order to confirm and support what is being said——._ I awaken sweating all over my body, because all the windows are shut. The train stops at Marburg.

While writing down the dream, a part of it occurs to me which my memory wished to omit. _I say to the brother and sister about a certain work: “It is from ...” but I correct myself: “It is by ...” The man remarks to his sister: “He said it correctly.”_

The dream begins with the name of a station, which probably must have partially awakened me. For this name, which was Marburg, I substituted Hollthurn. The fact that I heard Marburg when it was first called, or perhaps when it was called a second time, is proved by the mention in the dream of Schiller, who was born in Marburg, though not in the one in Styria.[FD] Now this time, although I was travelling first-class, it was under very disagreeable circumstances. The train was overcrowded; I had met a gentleman and lady in my compartment who seemed persons of quality, but who did not have the good breeding or who did not think it worth while to conceal their displeasure at my intrusion. My polite salutation was not answered, and although the man and the woman sat next each other (with their backs in the direction in which we were riding), the woman made haste to pre-empt the place opposite her and next the window with her umbrella; the door was immediately closed and demonstrative remarks about the opening of windows were exchanged. Probably I was quickly recognised as a person hungry for fresh air. It was a hot night, and the air in the compartment, thus shut on all sides, was almost suffocating. My experience as a traveller leads me to believe that such inconsiderate, obtrusive conduct marks people who have only partly paid for their tickets, or not at all. When the conductor came, and I presented my dearly bought ticket, the lady called out ungraciously, and as though threateningly: “My husband has a pass.” She was a stately figure with sour features, in age not far from the time set for the decay of feminine beauty; the man did not get a chance to say anything at all, and sat there motionless. I tried to sleep. In the dream I take terrible revenge on my disagreeable travelling companions; no one would suspect what insults and humiliations are concealed behind the disjointed fragments of the first half of the dream. After this desire has been satisfied, the second wish, to exchange my compartment for another, makes itself evident. The dream makes changes of scene so often, and without raising the least objection to such changes, that it would not have been in the least remarkable if I had immediately replaced my travelling companions by more pleasant ones for my recollection. But this was one of the cases where something or other objected to the change of scene and considered explanation of the change necessary. How did I suddenly get into another compartment? I surely could not remember having changed cars. So there was only one explanation: _I must have left the carriage while asleep_, a rare occurrence, examples for which, however, are furnished by the experience of the neuropathologist. We know of persons who undertake railroad journeys in a crepuscular state without betraying their abnormal condition by any sign, until some station on the journey they completely recover consciousness, and are then surprised at the gap in their memory. Thus, while I am still dreaming, I declare my own case to be such a one of “_Automatisme ambulatoire_.”

Analysis permits another solution. The attempt at explanation, which so astounds me if I am to attribute it to the dream activity, is not original, but is copied from the neurosis of one of my patients. I have already spoken on another page of a highly cultured and, in conduct, kind-hearted man, who began, shortly after the death of his parents, to accuse himself of murderous inclinations, and who suffered because of the precautionary measures he had to take to insure himself against these inclinations. At first walking along the street was made painful for him by the compulsion impelling him to demand an accounting of all the persons he met as to whither they had vanished; if one of them suddenly withdrew from his pursuing glance, there remained a painful feeling and a thought of the possibility that he might have put the man out of the way. This compulsive idea concealed, among other things, a Cain-fancy, for “all men are brothers.” Owing to the impossibility of accomplishing his task, he gave up taking walks and spent his life imprisoned within his four walls. But news of murderous acts which have been committed outside constantly reached his room through the papers, and his conscience in the form of a doubt kept accusing him of being the murderer. The certainty of not having left his dwelling for weeks protected him against these accusations for a time, until one day there dawned upon him the possibility that he might have left _his house while in an unconscious condition_, and might thus have committed the murder without knowing anything about it. From that time on he locked his house door, and handed the key over to his old housekeeper, and strictly forbade her to give it into his hands even if he demanded it.

This, then, is the origin of the attempted explanation, that I may have changed carriages while in an unconscious condition—it has been transferred from the material of the dream thoughts to the dream in a finished state, and is obviously intended to identify me with the person of that patient. My memory of him was awakened by an easy association. I had made my last night journey with this man a few weeks before. He was cured, and was escorting me into the country, to his relatives who were summoning me; as we had a compartment to ourselves, we left all the windows open through the night, and, as long as I had remained awake, we had a delightful conversation. I knew that hostile impulses towards his father from the time of his childhood, in connection with sexual material, had been at the root of his illness. By identifying myself with him, I wanted to make an analogous confession to myself. The second scene of the dream really resolves itself into a wanton fancy to the effect that my two elderly travelling companions had acted so uncivilly towards me for the reason that my arrival prevented them from exchanging love-tokens during the night as they had intended. This fancy, however, goes back to an early childhood scene in which, probably impelled by sexual inquisitiveness, I intruded upon the bedroom of my parents, and was driven from it by my father’s emphatic command.

I consider it superfluous to multiply further examples. All of them would confirm what we have learned from those which have been already cited, namely, that an act of judgment in the dream is nothing but the repetition of a prototype which it has in the dream thoughts. In most cases it is an inappropriate repetition introduced in an unfitting connection; occasionally, however, as in our last example, it is so artfully disposed that it may give the impression of being an independent thought activity in the dream. At this point we might turn our attention to that psychic activity which indeed does not seem to co-operate regularly in the formation of dreams, but whose effort it is, wherever it does co-operate, to fuse together those dream elements that are incongruent on account of their origins in an uncontradictory and intelligible manner. We consider it best, however, first to take up the expressions of emotion which appear in the dream, and to compare them with the emotions which analysis reveals to us in the dream thoughts.

(_g_) _The Affects in the Dream._

A profound remark of Stricker’s[77] has called our attention to the fact that the expressions of emotion in the dream do not permit of being disposed of in the slighting manner in which we are accustomed to shake off the dream itself, after we have awakened. “If I am afraid of robbers in the dream, the robbers, to be sure, are imaginary, but the fear of them is real,” and the same is true if I am glad in the dream. According to the testimony of our feelings, the emotion experienced in the dream is in no way less valid than one of like intensity experienced in waking life, and the dream makes its claim to be taken up as a part of our real mental experiences, more energetically on account of its emotional content than on account of its ideal content. We do not succeed in accomplishing this separation in waking life, because we do not know how to estimate an emotion psychically except in connection with a presentation content. If in kind or in intensity an affect and an idea are incongruous, our waking judgment becomes confused.

The fact that in dreams the presentation content does not entail the affective influence which we should expect as necessary in waking thought has always caused astonishment. Strümpell was of the opinion that ideas in the dream are stripped of their psychic values. But neither does the dream lack opposite instances, where the expression of intense affect appears in a content, which seems to offer no occasion for its development. I am in a horrible, dangerous, or disgusting situation in the dream, but I feel nothing of fear or aversion; on the other hand, I am sometimes terrified at harmless things and glad at childish ones.

This enigma of the dream disappears more suddenly and more completely than perhaps any other of the dream problems, if we pass from the manifest to the latent content. We shall then no longer be concerned to explain it, for it will no longer exist. Analysis teaches us _that presentation contents have undergone displacements and substitutions, while affects have remained unchanged_. No wonder, then, that the presentation content which has been altered by dream disfigurement no longer fits the affect that has remained intact; but there is no cause for wonder either after analysis has put the correct content in its former place.

In a psychic complex which has been subjected to the influence of the resisting censor the affects are the unyielding constituent, which alone is capable of guiding us to a correct supplementation. This state of affairs is revealed in psychoneuroses even more distinctly than in the dream. Here the affect is always in the right, at least as far as its quality goes; its intensity may even be increased by means of a displacement of neurotic attention. If a hysteric is surprised that he is so very afraid of a trifle, or if the patient with compulsive ideas is astonished that he develops such painful self-reproach out of a nonentity, both of them err in that they regard the presentation content—the trifle or the nonentity—as the essential thing, and they defend themselves in vain because they make this presentation content the starting point in their thought. Psychoanalysis, however, shows them the right way by recognising that, on the contrary, the affect is justified, and by searching for the presentation which belongs to it and which has been suppressed by means of replacement. The assumption is here made that the development of affect and the presentation content do not constitute such an indissoluble organic union as we are accustomed to think, but that the two parts may be, so to speak, soldered together in such a way that they may be detached from one another by means of analysis. Dream interpretation shows that this is actually the case.

I give first an example in which analysis explains the apparent absence of affect in a presentation content which ought to force a development of emotion.

I. _The dreamer sees three lions in a desert, one of which is laughing, but she is not afraid of them. Then, however, she must have fled from them, for she is trying to climb a tree, but she finds that her cousin, who is a teacher of French, is already up in the tree, &c._

The analysis gives us the following material for this dream: A sentence in the dreamer’s English lesson had become the indifferent occasion for it: “The _lion’s_ greatest beauty is his mane.” Her father wore a beard which surrounded his face like a mane. The name of her English teacher was Miss _Lyons_. An acquaintance of hers had sent her the ballads of _Loewe_ (German, Loewe—lion). These, then, are the three lions; why should she have been afraid of them? She has read a story in which a negro who has incited his fellows to revolt is hunted with bloodhounds and climbs a tree to save himself. Then follow fragments in wanton mood, like the following. Directions for catching lions from _Die Fliegende Blaetter_: “Take a desert and strain it; the lions will remain.” Also a very amusing, but not very proper anecdote about an official who is asked why he does not take greater pains to win the favour of his superior officer, and who answers that he has been trying to insinuate himself, but that the man ahead of him _is already up_. The whole matter becomes intelligible as soon as one learns that on the day of the dream the lady had received a visit from her husband’s superior. He was very polite to her, kissed her hand, and _she was not afraid of him at all_, although he is a “big bug” (German—_Grosses Tier_ = “big animal”) and plays the part of a “social lion” in the capital of her country. This lion is, therefore, like the lion in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, who unmasks as Snug, the joiner, and of such stuff are all dream lions made when one is not afraid.

II. As my second example, I cite the dream of the girl who saw her sister’s little son lying dead in a coffin, but who, I may now add, felt no pain or sorrow thereat. We know from analysis why not. The dream only concealed her wish to see the man she loved again; the affect must be attuned to the wish, and not to its concealment. There was no occasion for sorrow at all.

In a number of dreams the emotion at least remains connected with that presentation content which has replaced the one really belonging to it. In others the breaking up of the complex is carried further. The affect seems to be entirely separated from the idea belonging to it, and finds a place somewhere else in the dream where it fits into the new arrangement of the dream elements. This is similar to what we have learned of acts of judgment of the dream. If there is a significant inference in the dream thoughts, the dream also contains one; but in the dream the inference may be shifted to entirely different material. Not infrequently this shifting takes place according to the principle of antithesis.

I illustrate the latter possibility by the following dream, which I have subjected to the most exhaustive analysis.

III. _A castle by the sea; afterwards it lies not directly on the sea, but on a narrow canal that leads to the sea. A certain Mr. P. is the governor of it. I stand with him in a large salon with three windows, in front of which rise the projections of a wall, like battlements of a fort. I belong to the garrison, perhaps as a volunteer marine officer. We fear the arrival of hostile warships, for we are in a state of war. Mr. P. has the intention of leaving; he gives me instructions as to what must be done in case the dreaded event happens. His sick wife is in the threatened castle with her children. As soon as the bombardment begins the large hall should be cleared. He breathes heavily, and tries to get away; I hold him back, and ask him in what way I should send him news in case of need. He says something else, and then all at once falls over dead. I have probably taxed him unnecessarily with my questions. After his death, which makes no further impression upon me, I think whether the widow is to remain in the castle, whether I should give notice of the death to the commander-in-chief, and whether I should take over the direction of the castle as the next in command. I now stand at the window, and muster the ships as they pass by; they are merchantmen that dart past upon the dark water, several of them with more than one smokestack, others with bulging decks_ (that are quite similar to the railway stations in the preliminary dream which has not been told). _Then my brother stands next to me, and both of us look out of the window on to the canal. At the sight of a ship we are frightened, and call out: “Here comes the warship!” It turns out, however, that it is only the same ships which I have already known that are returning. Now comes a little ship, strangely cut off, so that it ends in the middle of its breadth; curious things like cups or salt-cellars are seen on the deck. We call as though with one voice: “That is the breakfast-ship.”_

The rapid motion of the ships, the deep blue of the water, the brown smoke of the funnels, all this together makes a highly tense, sombre impression.