Part 51

But I regret to say that here, too, this connection seems somewhat less inevitable when we enter into the interpretation of this dream. The dream was occasioned by the information, received on the day of the dream, that the lecture-room in the clinic in which I was invited to deliver my lectures had been changed to some other place. I took it for granted that the new room was very inconveniently situated, and said to myself, it is as bad as not having any lecture-room at my disposal. My thoughts must have then taken me back to the time when I first became a docent, when I really had no lecture-room, and when, in my efforts to get one, I met with little encouragement from the very influential gentlemen councillors and professors. In my distress at that time, I appealed to L., who then had the title of dean, and whom I considered kindly disposed. He promised to help me, but that was all I ever heard from him. In the dream he is the Archimedes, who gives me the πήστω and leads me into the other room. That neither the desire for revenge nor the consciousness of one’s own importance is absent in this dream will be readily divined by those familiar with dream interpretation. I must conclude, however, that without this motive for the dream, Archimedes would hardly have got into the dream that night. I am not certain whether the strong and still recent impression of the statue in Syracuse did not also come to the surface at a different interval of time.

III.—_Dream from October 2–3, 1910._

(Fragment) ... Something about Professor Oser, who himself prepared the menu for me, which served to restore me to great peace of mind (rest forgotten).

The dream was a reaction to the digestive disturbances of this day, which made me consider asking one of my colleagues to arrange a diet for me. That in the dream I selected for this purpose Professor Oser, who had died in the summer, is based on the recent death (October 1) of another university teacher, whom I highly revered. But when did Oser die, and when did I hear of his death? According to the newspaper notice, he died on the 22nd of August, but as I was at the time in Holland, whither my Vienna newspapers were regularly sent me, I must have read the obituary notice on the 24th or 25th of August. This interval no longer corresponds to any period. It takes in 7 and 30 and 2, equals 39, days, or perhaps 38 days. I cannot recall having spoken or thought of Oser during this interval.

Such intervals as were not available for the “period theory” without further elaboration, were shown from my dreams to be far more frequent than the regular ones. As maintained in the text, the only thing constantly found is the relation to an impression of the day of the dream itself.

Footnote AR:

_Cf._ my essay, “Ueber Deckerinnerungen,” in the _Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie_, 1899.

Footnote AS:

Ger., _blühend_.

Footnote AT:

The tendency of the dream function to fuse everything of interest which is present into simultaneous treatment has already been noticed by several authors, for instance, by Delage,[15] p. 41, Delbœuf,[16] _Rapprochement Forcé_, p. 236.

Footnote AU:

The dream of Irma’s injection; the dream of the friend who is my uncle.

Footnote AV:

The dream of the funeral oration of the young physician.

Footnote AW:

The dream of the botanical monograph.

Footnote AX:

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

Footnote AY:

_Cf._ Chap. VII. upon “Transference.”

Footnote AZ:

Substitution of the opposite, as will become clear to us after interpretation.

Footnote BA:

The Prater is the principal drive of Vienna. (Transl.)

Footnote BB:

I have long since learned that it only requires a little courage to fulfil even such unattainable wishes.

Footnote BC:

In the first edition there was printed here the name Hasdrubal, a confusing error, the explanation of which I have given in my _Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens_.

Footnote BD:

A street in Vienna.

Footnote BE:

_Fensterln_ is the practice, now falling into disuse, found in rural districts of the German Schwarzwald, of lovers wooing at the windows of their sweethearts, bringing ladders with them, and becoming so intimate that they practically enjoy a system of trial marriages. The reputation of the young woman never suffers on account of _fensterln_, unless she becomes intimate with too many suitors. (Translator.)

Footnote BF:

Both the emotions which belong to these childish scenes—astonishment and resignation to the inevitable—had appeared in a dream shortly before, which was the first thing that brought back the memory of this childhood experience.

Footnote BG:

I do not elaborate plagiostomi purposely; they recall an occasion of angry disgrace before the same teacher.

Footnote BH:

_Cf._ Maury’s dream about kilo-lotto, p. 50.

Footnote BI:

Popo = backside in German nursery language.

Footnote BJ:

This repetition has insinuated itself into the text of the dream apparently through my absent-mindedness, and I allow it to remain because the analysis shows that it has its significance.

Footnote BK:

Not in _Germinal_, but in _La Terre_—a mistake of which I became aware only in the analysis. I may call attention also to the identity of the letters in _Huflattich_ and _Flatus_.

Footnote BL:

Translator’s note.

Footnote BM:

In his significant work (“Phantasie und Mythos,” _Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse_, Bd. ii., 1910), H. Silberer has endeavoured to show from this part of the dream that the dream-work is able to reproduce not only the latent dream thoughts, but also the psychic processes in the dream formation (“Das functionale Phänomen”).

Footnote BN:

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

Footnote BO:

I here add some material for interpretation. Holding the urinal recalls the story of a peasant who tries one glass after another at the opticians, but still cannot read (peasant-catcher, like girl-catcher in a portion of the dream). The treatment among the peasants of the father who has become weak-minded in Zola’s _La Terre_. The pathetic atonement that in his last days the father soils his bed like a child; hence, also, I am his sick-attendant in the dream. Thinking and experiencing are here, as it were; the same thing recalls a highly revolutionary closet drama by Oscar Panizza, in which the Godhead is treated quite contemptuously, as though he were a paralytic old man. There occurs a passage: “Will and deed are the same thing with him, and he must be prevented by his archangel, a kind of Ganymede, from scolding and swearing, because these curses would immediately be fulfilled.” Making plans is a reproach against my father, dating from a later period in the development of my critical faculty; just as the whole rebellious, sovereign-offending dream, with its scoff at high authority, originates in a revolt against my father. The sovereign is called father of the land (_Landesvater_), and the father is the oldest, first and only authority for the child, from the absolutism of which the other social authorities have developed in the course of the history of human civilisation (in so far as the “mother’s right” does not force a qualification of this thesis). The idea in the dream, “thinking and experiencing are the same thing,” refers to the explanation of hysterical symptoms, to which the male urinal (glass) also has a relation. I need not explain the principle of the “Gschnas” to a Viennese; it consists in constructing objects of rare and costly appearance out of trifles, and preferably out of comical and worthless material—for example, making suits of armour out of cooking utensils, sticks and “salzstangeln” (elongated rolls), as our artists like to do at their jolly parties. I had now learned that hysterical subjects do the same thing; besides what has actually occurred to them, they unconsciously conceive horrible or extravagant fantastic images, which they construct from the most harmless and commonplace things they have experienced. The symptoms depend solely upon these phantasies, not upon the memory of their real experiences, be they serious or harmless. This explanation helped me to overcome many difficulties and gave me much pleasure. I was able to allude to it in the dream element “male urinal” (glass) because I had been told that at the last “Gschnas” evening a poison chalice of Lucretia Borgia had been exhibited, the chief constituent of which had consisted of a glass urinal for men, such as is used in hospitals.

Footnote BP:

_Cf._ the passage in Griesinger[31] and the remarks in my second essay on the “defence-neuropsychoses”—_Selected Papers on Hysteria_, translated by A. A. Brill.

Footnote BQ:

In the two sources from which I am acquainted with this dream, the report of its contents do not agree.

Footnote BR:

An exception is furnished by those cases in which the dreamer utilises in the expression of his latent dream thoughts the symbols which are familiar to us.

Footnote BS:

“The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

Footnote BT:

The child also appears in the fairy tale, for there a child suddenly calls: “Why, he hasn’t anything on at all.”

Footnote BU:

Ferenczi has reported a number of interesting dreams of nakedness in women which could be traced to an infantile desire to exhibit, but which differ in some features from the “typical” dream of nakedness discussed above.

Footnote BV:

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

Footnote BW:

A supplementary interpretation of this dream: To spit on the stairs, led me to “esprit d’escalier” by a free translation, owing to the fact that “Spucken” (English: spit, and also to act like a _spook_, to haunt) is an occupation of ghosts. “Stair-wit” is equivalent to lack of quickness at repartee (German: _Schlagfertigkeit_—readiness to hit back, to strike), with which I must really reproach myself. Is it a question, however, whether the nurse was lacking in “readiness to hit”?

Footnote BX:

_Cf._ “Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben” in the _Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen_, vol. i., 1909, and “Ueber infantile Sexualtheorien,” in _Sexualprobleme_, vol. i., 1908.

Footnote BY:

The three-and-a-half-year-old Hans, whose phobia is the subject of analysis in the above-mentioned publication, cries during fever shortly after the birth of his sister: “I don’t want a little sister.” In his neurosis, one and a half years later, he frankly confesses the wish that the mother should drop the little one into the bath-tub while bathing it, in order that it may die. With all this, Hans is a good-natured, affectionate child, who soon becomes fond of his sister, and likes especially to take her under his protection.

Footnote BZ:

The three-and-a-half-year old Hans embodies his crushing criticism of his little sister in the identical word (see previous notes). He assumes that she is unable to speak on account of her lack of teeth.

Footnote CA:

I heard the following idea expressed by a gifted boy of ten, after the sudden death of his father: “I understand that father is dead, but I cannot see why he does not come home for supper.”

Footnote CB:

At least a certain number of mythological representations. According to others, emasculation is only practised by Kronos on his father.

With regard to mythological significance of this motive, _cf._ Otto Rank’s “Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden,” fifth number of _Schriften zur angew. Seelenkunde_, 1909.

Footnote CC:

Act. i. sc. 2. Translated by George Somers Clark.

Footnote CD:

Another of the great creations of tragic poetry, Shakespeare’s _Hamlet_, is founded on the same basis as the _Oedipus_. But the whole difference in the psychic life of the two widely separated periods of civilisation—the age-long progress of repression in the emotional life of humanity—is made manifest in the changed treatment of the identical material. In _Oedipus_ the basic wish-phantasy of the child is brought to light and realised as it is in the dream; in _Hamlet_ it remains repressed, and we learn of its existence—somewhat as in the case of a neurosis—only by the inhibition which results from it. The fact that it is possible to remain in complete darkness concerning the character of the hero, has curiously shown itself to be consistent with the overpowering effect of the modern drama. The play is based upon Hamlet’s hesitation to accomplish the avenging task which has been assigned to him; the text does not avow the reasons or motives of this hesitation, nor have the numerous attempts at interpretation succeeded in giving them. According to the conception which is still current to-day, and which goes back to Goethe, Hamlet represents the type of man whose prime energy is paralysed by over-development of thought activity. (“Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”) According to others the poet has attempted to portray a morbid, vacillating character who is subject to neurasthenia. The plot of the story, however, teaches us that Hamlet is by no means intended to appear as a person altogether incapable of action. Twice we see him asserting himself actively, once in headlong passion, where he stabs the eavesdropper behind the arras, and on another occasion where he sends the two courtiers to the death which has been intended for himself—doing this deliberately, even craftily, and with all the lack of compunction of a prince of the Renaissance. What is it, then, that restrains him in the accomplishment of the task which his father’s ghost has set before him? Here the explanation offers itself that it is the peculiar nature of this task. Hamlet can do everything but take vengeance upon the man who has put his father out of the way, and has taken his father’s place with his mother—upon the man who shows him the realisation of his repressed childhood wishes. The loathing which ought to drive him to revenge is thus replaced in him by self-reproaches, by conscientious scruples, which represent to him that he himself is no better than the murderer whom he is to punish. I have thus translated into consciousness what had to remain unconscious in the mind of the hero; if some one wishes to call Hamlet a hysteric subject I cannot but recognise it as an inference from my interpretation. The sexual disinclination which Hamlet expresses in conversation with Ophelia, coincides very well with this view—it is the same sexual disinclination which was to take possession of the poet more and more during the next few years of his life, until the climax of it is expressed in _Timon of Athens_. Of course it can only be the poet’s own psychology with which we are confronted in _Hamlet_; from a work on Shakespeare by George Brandes (1896), I take the fact that the drama was composed immediately after the death of Shakespeare’s father—that is to say, in the midst of recent mourning for him—during the revival, we may assume, of his childhood emotion towards his father. It is also known that a son of Shakespeare’s, who died early, bore the name of Hamnet (identical with Hamlet). Just as _Hamlet_ treats of the relation of the son to his parents, _Macbeth_, which appears subsequently, is based upon the theme of childlessness. Just as every neurotic symptom, just as the dream itself, is capable of re-interpretation, and even requires it in order to be perfectly intelligible, so every genuine poetical creation must have proceeded from more than one motive, more than one impulse in the mind of the poet, and must admit of more than one interpretation. I have here attempted to interpret only the most profound group of impulses in the mind of the creative poet. The conception of the _Hamlet_ problem contained in these remarks has been later confirmed in a detailed work based on many new arguments by Dr. Ernest Jones, of Toronto (Canada). The connection of the _Hamlet_ material with the “Mythus von der Geburt des Helden” has also been demonstrated by O. Rank.—“The _Oedipus_ Complex as an Explanation of _Hamlet’s_ Mystery: a Study in Motive” (_American Journal of Psychology_, January 1910, vol. xxi.).

Footnote CE:

Likewise, anything large, over-abundant, enormous, and exaggerated, may be a childish characteristic. The child knows no more intense wish than to become big, and to receive as much of everything as grown-ups; the child is hard to satisfy; it knows no _enough_, and insatiably demands the repetition of whatever has pleased it or tasted good to it. It learns to practise moderation, to be modest and resigned, only through culture and education. As is well known, the neurotic is also inclined toward immoderation and excess.

Footnote CF:

While Dr. Jones was delivering a lecture before an American scientific society, and speaking of egotism in dreams, a learned lady took exception to this unscientific generalisation. She thought that the lecturer could only pronounce such judgment on the dreams of Austrians, and had no right to include the dreams of Americans. As for herself she was sure that all her dreams were strictly altruistic.

Footnote CG:

According to C. G. Jung, dreams of dental irritation in the case of women have the significance of parturition dreams.

Footnote CH:

_Cf._ the “biographic” dream on p. 235.

Footnote CI:

As the dreams of pulling teeth, and teeth falling out, are interpreted in popular belief to mean the death of a close friend, and as psychoanalysis can at most only admit of such a meaning in the above indicated parodical sense, I insert here a dream of dental irritation placed at my disposal by Otto Rank[109].

Upon the subject of dreams of dental irritation I have received the following report from a colleague who has for some time taken a lively interest in the problems of dream interpretation:

_I recently dreamed that I went to the dentist who drilled out one of my back teeth in the lower jaw. He worked so long at it that the tooth became useless. He then grasped it with the forceps, and pulled it out with such perfect ease that it astonished me. He said that I should not care about it, as this was not really the tooth that had been treated; and he put it on the table where the tooth (as it seems to me now an upper incisor) fell apart into many strata. I arose from the operating chair, stepped inquisitively nearer, and, full of interest, put a medical question. While the doctor separated the individual pieces of the strikingly white tooth and ground them up (pulverised them) with an instrument, he explained to me that this had some connection with puberty, and that the teeth come out so easily only before puberty; the decisive moment for this in women is the birth of a child. I then noticed (as I believe half awake) that this dream was accompanied by a pollution which I cannot however definitely place at a particular point in the dream; I am inclined to think that it began with the pulling out of the tooth._

_I then continued to dream something which I can no longer remember, which ended with the fact that I had left my hat and coat somewhere (perhaps at the dentist’s), hoping that they would be brought after me, and dressed only in my overcoat I hastened to catch a departing train. I succeeded at the last moment in jumping upon the last car, where someone was already standing. I could not, however, get inside the car, but was compelled to make the journey in an uncomfortable position, from which I attempted to escape with final success. We journeyed through a long tunnel, in which two trains from the opposite direction passed through our own train as if it were a tunnel. I looked in as from the outside through a car window._

As material for the interpretation of this dream, we obtained the following experiences and thoughts of the dreamer:—

I. For a short time I had actually been under dental treatment, and at the time of the dream I was suffering from continual pains in the tooth of my lower jaw, which was drilled out in the dream, and on which the dentist had in fact worked longer than I liked. On the forenoon of the day of the dream I had again gone to the doctor’s on account of the pain, and he had suggested that I should allow him to pull out another tooth than the one treated in the same jaw, from which the pain probably came. It was a ‘wisdom tooth’ which was just breaking through. On this occasion, and in this connection, I had put a question to his conscience as a physician.

II. On the afternoon of the same day I was obliged to excuse myself to a lady for my irritable disposition on account of the toothache, upon which she told me that she was afraid to have one of her roots pulled, though the crown was almost completely gone. She thought that the pulling out of eye teeth was especially painful and dangerous, although some acquaintance had told her that this was much easier when it was a tooth of the lower jaw. It was such a tooth in her case. The same acquaintance also told her that while under an anæsthetic one of her false teeth had been pulled—a statement which increased her fear of the necessary operation. She then asked me whether by eye teeth one was to understand molars or canines, and what was known about them. I then called her attention to the vein of superstitions in all these meanings, without however, emphasising the real significance of some of the popular views. She knew from her own experience, a very old and general popular belief, according to which _if a pregnant woman has toothache she will give birth to a boy_.