Part 53

The neurosis also proceeds in the same manner. I know a patient who involuntarily—contrary to her own wishes—hears (hallucinatory) songs or fragments of songs without being able to understand their meaning to her psychic life. She is surely not a paranoiac. Analysis showed that she wrongly utilised the text of these songs by means of a certain license. “Oh thou blissful one, Oh thou happy one,” is the beginning of a Christmas song. By not continuing it to the word “Christmas time” she makes a bridal song out of it, &c. The same mechanism of disfigurement may take place also without hallucinations as a mere mental occurrence.

Footnote EP:

As a contribution to the over-determination: My excuse for coming late was that after working late at night I had in the morning to make the long journey from Kaiser Josef Street to Waehringer Street.

Footnote EQ:

In addition Cæsar—Kaiser.

Footnote ER:

I have forgotten in what author I found a dream mentioned that was overrun with unusually small figures, the source of which turned out to be one of the engravings of Jacques Callot, which the dreamer had looked at during the day. These engravings contained an enormous number of very small figures; a series of them treats of the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War.

Footnote ES:

The frequency with which in the dream dead persons appear as living, act, and deal with us, has called forth undue astonishment and given rise to strange explanations, from which our ignorance of the dream becomes strikingly evident. And yet the explanation for these dreams lies very close at hand. How often we have occasion to think: “_If_ father were still alive, what would he say to it?” The dream can express this _if_ in no other way than by present time in a definite situation. Thus, for instance, a young man, whose grandfather has left him a great inheritance, dreams that his grandfather is alive and demands an accounting of him, upon an occasion when the young man had been reproached for making too great an expenditure of money. What we consider a resistance to the dream—the objection made by our better knowledge, that after all the man is already dead—is in reality a consolation, because the dead person did not have this or that experience, or satisfaction at the knowledge that he has nothing more to say.

Another form of absurdity found in dreams of deceased relatives does not express folly and absurdity, but serves to represent the most extreme rejection; as the representation of a repressed thought which one would gladly have appear as something least thought of. Dreams of this kind are only solvable if one recalls that the dream makes no distinction between things desired and realities. Thus, for example, a man who nursed his father during his sickness, and who felt his death very keenly, sometime afterward dreamed the following senseless dream: _The father was again living, and conversed with him as usual, but_ (the remarkable thing about it) _he had nevertheless died, though he did not know it_. This dream can be understood if after “he had nevertheless died,” one inserts _in consequence of the dreamer’s wish, and_ if after “but he did not know it” one adds _that the dreamer has entertained this wish_. While nursing his father, the son often wishes his father’s death; _i.e._ he entertained the really compassionate desire that death finally put an end to his suffering. While mourning after his death, this very wish of compassion became an unconscious reproach, as if it had really contributed to shorten the life of the sick man. Through the awakening of early infantile feelings against the father, it became possible to express this reproach as a dream; and it was just because of the world-wide contrast between the dream inciter and day thought that this dream had to come out so absurdly (_cf._ with this, “Formulierungen über die zwei Prinzipien des seelischen Geschehens,” _Jahrbuch_, Bleuler-Freud, III, 1, 1911).

Footnote ET:

Here the dream activity parodies the thought which it designates as ridiculous, in that it creates something ridiculous in relation to it. Heine does something similar when he tries to mock the bad rhymes of the King of Bavaria. He does it in still worse rhymes:

“Herr Ludwig ist ein grosser Poet Und singt er, so stuerzt Apollo Vor ihm auf die Knie und bittet und fleht, ‘Halt ein, ich werde sonst toll oh!’”

Footnote EU:

Note the resemblance of _Geseres_ and _Ungeseres_ to the German words for salted and unsalted—_gesalzen_ and _ungesalzen_; also to the German words for soured and unsoured—_gesauert_ and _ungesauert_. (Translator.)

Footnote EV:

This dream also furnishes a good example for the general thesis that dreams of the same night, even though they be separated in memory, spring from the same thought material. The dream situation in which I am rescuing my children from the city of Rome, moreover, is disfigured by a reference to an episode belonging to my childhood. The meaning is that I envy certain relatives who years ago had occasion to transplant their children to another soil.

Footnote EW:

This German expression is equivalent to our saying “You are not responsible for that,” or “That has not been acquired through your own efforts.” (Translator.)

Footnote EX:

The injunction or purpose contained in the dream, “I must tell that to the doctor,” which occurs in dreams that are dreamed in the course of psychoanalytical treatment, regularly corresponds to a great resistance to the confession involved in the dream, and is not infrequently followed by forgetting of the dream.

Footnote EY:

A subject about which an extensive discussion has taken place in the volumes of the _Revue Philosophique_—(Paramnesia in the Dream).

Footnote EZ:

These results correct in several respects my earlier statements concerning the representation of logical relations (p. 290). The latter described the general conditions of dream activity, but they did not take into consideration its finest and most careful performances.

Footnote FA:

Stanniol, allusion to _Stannius_, the nervous system of fishes; _cf._ p. 325.

Footnote FB:

The place in the corridor of my apartment house where the baby carriages of the other tenants stand; it is also otherwise several times over-determined.

Footnote FC:

This description is not intelligible even to myself, but I follow the principle of reproducing the dream in those words which occur to me while I am writing it down. The wording itself is a part of the dream representation.

Footnote FD:

Schiller was not born in one of the Marburgs, but in Marbach, as every graduate of a Gymnasium knows, and as I also knew. This again is one of those errors (_cf._ p. 165) which are included as substitutes for an intended deception at another place—an explanation of which I have attempted in the _Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens_.

Footnote FE:

As analogy to this, I have since explained the extraordinary effect of pleasure produced by “tendency” wit.

Footnote FF:

It is this fancy from the unconscious dream thoughts which peremptorily demands _non vivit_ instead of _non vixit_. “You have come too late, he is no longer alive.” The fact that the manifest situation also tends towards “non vivit” has been mentioned on page 334.

Footnote FG:

It is striking that the name Joseph plays such a large part in my dreams (see the dream about my uncle). I can hide my ego in the dream behind persons of this name with particular ease, for Joseph was the name of the _dream interpreter_ in the Bible.

Footnote FH:

Rêve, petit roman—day-dream, story.

Footnote FI:

I have analysed a good example of a dream of this kind having its origin in the stratification of several phantasies, in the _Bruchstück einer Hysterie Analyse_, 1905. Moreover I undervalued the significance of such phantasies for dream formation, as long as I was working chiefly with my own dreams, which were based rarely upon day dreams, most frequently upon discussions and mental conflicts. With other persons it is often much easier to prove the _full analogy between the nocturnal dream and the day dream_. It is often possible in an hysterical patient to replace an attack by a dream; it is then obvious that the phantasy of day dreams is the first step for both psychic formations.

Footnote FJ:

See the _Psychopathology of Everyday Life_, 4th ed., 1912. (English translation in preparation.)

Footnote FK:

Concerning the object of forgetting in general, see the _Psychopathology of Everyday Life_.

Footnote FL:

Translated by A. A. Brill, appearing under the title _Selected Papers on Hysteria_.

Footnote FM:

Jung has brilliantly corroborated this statement by analyses of Dementia Praecox. (_The Psychology of Dementia Praecox_, translated by F. Peterson and A. A. Brill.)

Footnote FN:

The same considerations naturally hold true also for the case where superficial associations are exposed in the dream, as, _e.g._, in both dreams reported by Maury (p. 50, _pélerinage_—_pelletier_—_pelle_, _kilometer_—_kilogram_—_gilolo_, _Lobelia_—_Lopez_—_Lotto_). I know from my work with neurotics what kind of reminiscence preferentially represents itself in this manner. It is the consultation of encyclopædias by which most people pacify their desire for explanation of the sexual riddle during the period of curiosity in puberty.

Footnote FO:

The above sentences, which when written sounded very improbable, have since been justified experimentally by Jung and his pupils in the _Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien_.

Footnote FP:

_Selected Papers on Hysteria and Other Psychoneuroses_, p. 165, translated by A. A. Brill (_Journal Mental and Nervous Disease_ Publishing Co.).

Footnote FQ:

The German word “Dutzendmensch” (a man of dozens) which the young lady wished to use in order to express her real opinion of her friend’s fiancé, denotes a person with whom figures are everything. (Translator.)

Footnote FR:

They share this character of indestructibility with all psychic acts that are really unconscious—that is, with psychic acts belonging to the system of the unconscious only. These paths are constantly open and never fall into disuse; they conduct the discharge of the exciting process as often as it becomes endowed with unconscious excitement. To speak metaphorically they suffer the same form of annihilation as the shades of the lower region in the _Odyssey_, who awoke to new life the moment they drank blood. The processes depending on the foreconscious system are destructible in a different way. The psychotherapy of the neuroses is based on this difference.

Footnote FS:

Le Lorrain justly extols the wish-fulfilment of the dream: “Sans fatigue sérieuse, sans être obligé de recourir à cette lutte opiniâtre et longue qui use et corrode les jouissances poursuivies.”

Footnote FT:

This idea has been borrowed from _The Theory of Sleep_ by Liébault, who revived hypnotic investigation in our days. (_Du Sommeil provoqué_, etc.; Paris, 1889.)

Footnote FU:

The German of the word _bird_ is “Vogel,” which gives origin to the vulgar expression “vöglen,” denoting sexual intercourse. (Trans. note.)

Footnote FV:

The italics are my own, though the meaning is plain enough without them.

Footnote FW:

The italics are mine.

Footnote FX:

_Cf._ the significant observations by J. Breuer in our _Studies on Hysteria_, 1895, and 2nd ed. 1909.

Footnote FY:

Here, as in other places, there are gaps in the treatment of the subject, which I have left intentionally, because to fill them up would require on the one hand too great effort, and on the other hand an extensive reference to material that is foreign to the dream. Thus I have avoided stating whether I connect with the word “suppressed” another sense than with the word “repressed.” It has been made clear only that the latter emphasizes more than the former the relation to the unconscious. I have not entered into the cognate problem why the dream thoughts also experience distortion by the censor when they abandon the progressive continuation to consciousness and choose the path of regression. I have been above all anxious to awaken an interest in the problems to which the further analysis of the dream-work leads and to indicate the other themes which meet these on the way. It was not always easy to decide just where the pursuit should be discontinued. That I have not treated exhaustively the part played in the dream by the psychosexual life and have avoided the interpretation of dreams of an obvious sexual content is due to a special reason which may not come up to the reader’s expectation. To be sure, it is very far from my ideas and the principles expressed by me in neuropathology to regard the sexual life as a “pudendum” which should be left unconsidered by the physician and the scientific investigator. I also consider ludicrous the moral indignation which prompted the translator of Artemidoros of Daldis to keep from the reader’s knowledge the chapter on sexual dreams contained in the _Symbolism of the Dreams_. As for myself, I have been actuated solely by the conviction that in the explanation of sexual dreams I should be bound to entangle myself deeply in the still unexplained problems of perversion and bisexuality; and for that reason I have reserved this material for another connection.

Footnote FZ:

The dream is not the only phenomenon tending to base psychopathology on psychology. In a short series of unfinished articles (“Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie” entitled _Über den psychischen Mechanismus der Vergesslichkeit_, 1898, and _Über Deckerinnerungen_, 1899) I attempt to interpret a number of psychic manifestations from everyday life in support of the same conception. These and other articles on “Forgetting,” “Lapse of Speech,” &c., have since been published collectively under the title of _Psychopathology of Everyday Life_, 1904 and 1907, of which an English translation will shortly appear.

Footnote GA:

“The Conception of the Unconscious in Psychology”: Lecture delivered at the Third International Congress of Psychology at Munich, 1897.

Footnote GB:

_Cf._ here (p. 82) the dream (Σα-τυρος) of Alexander the Great at the siege of Tyrus.

Footnote GC:

Professor Ernst Oppenheim (Vienna) has shown me from folk-lore material that there is a class of dreams for which even the people drop the expectation of future interpretation, and which they trace in a perfectly correct manner to wish feelings and wants arising during sleep. He will in the near future fully report upon these dreams, which for the most part are in the form of “funny stories.”

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. Edinburgh & London.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 3. Not all numbered items in the Literary Index have corresponding crossreferences in the text. 4. Footnotes were re-indexed using letters and collected together at the end of the last chapter. 5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.