Part 23

This warning applies to ourselves and to our pride, to us, who have grown so wise and so powerful in our own estimation since the years of our childhood. Like Oedipus, we live in ignorance of the wishes that offend morality, wishes which nature has forced upon us, and after the revelation of which we want to avert every glance from the scenes of our childhood.

In the very text of Sophocles’ tragedy there is an unmistakable reference to the fact that the Oedipus legend originates in an extremely old dream material, which consists of the painful disturbance of the relation towards one’s parents by means of the first impulses of sexuality. Jocasta comforts Oedipus—who is not yet enlightened, but who has become worried on account of the oracle—by mentioning to him the dream which is dreamt by so many people, though she attaches no significance to it—

“For it hath already been the lot of many men in dreams to think themselves partners of their mother’s bed. But he passes most easily through life to whom these circumstances are trifles” (Act iv. sc. 3).

The dream of having sexual intercourse with one’s mother occurred at that time, as it does to-day, to many people, who tell it with indignation and astonishment. As may be understood, it is the key to the tragedy and the complement to the dream of the death of the father. The story of Oedipus is the reaction of the imagination to these two typical dreams, and just as the dream when occurring to an adult is experienced with feelings of resistance, so the legend must contain terror and self-chastisement. The appearance which it further assumes is the result of an uncomprehending secondary elaboration which tries to make it serve theological purposes (cf. the dream material of exhibitionism, p. 206). The attempt to reconcile divine omnipotence with human responsibility must, of course, fail with this material as with every other.

I must not leave the typical dream of the death of dear relatives without somewhat further elucidating the subject of their significance for the theory of the dream in general. These dreams show us a realisation of the very unusual case where the dream thought, which has been created by the repressed wish, completely escapes the censor, and is transferred to the dream without alteration. There must be present peculiar conditions making possible such an outcome. I find circumstances favourable to these dreams in the two following factors: First, there is no wish which we believe further from us; we believe such a wish “would never occur to us in a dream”; the dream censor is therefore not prepared for this monstrosity, just as the legislation of Solon was incapable of establishing a punishment for patricide. Secondly, the repressed and unsuspected wish is in just this case particularly often met by a fragment of the day’s experience in the shape of a concern about the life of the beloved person. This concern cannot be registered in the dream by any other means than by taking advantage of the wish that has the same content; but it is possible for the wish to mask itself behind the concern which has been awakened during the day. If one is inclined to think all this a more simple process, and that one merely continues during the night and in dreams what one has been concerned with during the day, the dream of the death of beloved persons is removed from all connection with dream explanation, and an easily reducible problem is uselessly retained.

It is also instructive to trace the relation of these dreams to anxiety dreams. In the dream of the death of dear persons the repressed wish has found a way of avoiding the censor, and the distortion which it causes. In this case the inevitable concomitant manifestation is that disagreeable sensations are felt in the dream. Thus the dream of fear is brought about only when the censor is entirely or partially overpowered, and, on the other hand, the overpowering of the censor is made easier when fear has already been furnished by somatic sources. Thus it becomes obvious for what purpose the censor performs its office and practises dream distortion; it does this in order to prevent the development of fear or other forms of disagreeable emotion.

I have spoken above of the egotism of the infantile mind, and I may now resume this subject in order to suggest that dreams preserve this characteristic—thus showing their connection with infantile life. Every dream is absolutely egotistical; in every dream the beloved ego appears, even though it may be in a disguised form. The wishes that are realised in dreams are regularly the wishes of this ego; it is only a deceptive appearance if interest in another person is thought to have caused the dream. I shall subject to analysis several examples which appear to contradict this assertion.

I. A boy not yet four years old relates the following: He saw a large dish garnished, and upon it a large piece of roast meat, and the meat was all of a sudden—not cut to pieces—but eaten up. He did not see the person who ate it.

Who may this strange person be of whose luxurious repast this little fellow dreams? The experiences of the day must give us the explanation of this. For a few days the boy had been living on a diet of milk according to the doctor’s prescription; but on the evening of the day before the dream he had been naughty, and as a punishment he had been deprived of his evening meal. He had already undergone one such hunger-cure, and had acted very bravely. He knew that he would get nothing to eat, but he did not dare to indicate by a word that he was hungry. Education was beginning to have its influence upon him; this is expressed even in the dream which shows the beginnings of dream disfigurement. There is no doubt that he himself is the person whose wishes are directed toward this abundant meal, and a meal of roast meat at that. But since he knows that this is forbidden him, he does not dare, as children do in the dream (cf. the dream about strawberries of my little Anna, p. 110), to sit down to the meal himself. The person remains anonymous.

II. Once I dream that I see on the show-table of a book store a new number in the Book-lovers’ Collection—the collection which I am in the habit of buying (art monographs, monographs on the history of the world, famous art centres, &c.). The new collection is called Famous Orators (or Orations), and the first number bears the name of Doctor Lecher.

In the course of analysis it appears improbable that the fame of Dr. Lecher, the long-winded orator of the German Opposition, should occupy my thoughts while I am dreaming. The fact is that, a few days before, I undertook the psychic cure of some new patients, and was now forced to talk for from ten to twelve hours a day. Thus I myself am the long-winded orator.

III. Upon another occasion I dream that a teacher of my acquaintance at the university says: My son, the Myopic. Then there follows a dialogue consisting of short speeches and replies. A third portion of the dream follows in which I and my sons appear, and as far as the latent dream content is concerned, father, son, and Professor M. are alike only lay figures to represent me and my eldest son. I shall consider this dream again further on because of another peculiarity.

IV. The following dream gives an example of really base egotistical feelings, which are concealed behind affectionate concern:

My friend Otto looks ill, his face is brown and his eyes bulge.

Otto is my family physician, to whom I owe a debt greater than I can ever hope to repay, since he has guarded the health of my children for years. He has treated them successfully when they were taken sick, and besides that he has given them presents on all occasions which gave him any excuse for doing so. He came for a visit on the day of the dream, and my wife noticed that he looked tired and exhausted. Then comes my dream at night, and attributes to him a few of the symptoms of Basedow’s disease. Any one disregarding my rules for dream interpretation would understand this dream to mean that I am concerned about the health of my friend, and that this concern is realised in the dream. It would thus be a contradiction not only of the assertion that the dream is a wish-fulfilment, but also of the assertion that it is accessible only to egotistic impulses. But let the person who interprets the dream in this manner explain to me why I fear that Otto has Basedow’s disease, for which diagnosis his appearance does not give the slightest justification? As opposed to this, my analysis furnishes the following material, taken from an occurrence which happened six years ago. A small party of us, including Professor R., were driving in profound darkness through the forest of N., which is several hours distant from our country home. The coachman, who was not quite sober, threw us and the wagon down a bank, and it was only by a lucky accident that we all escaped unhurt. But we were forced to spend the night at the nearest inn, where the news of our accident awakened great sympathy. A gentleman, who showed unmistakable signs of the morbus Basedowii—nothing but a brownish colour of the skin of the face and bulging eyes, no goitre—placed himself entirely at our disposal and asked what he could do for us. Professor R. answered in his decided way: “Nothing but lend me a night-shirt.” Whereupon our generous friend replied: “I am sorry but I cannot do that,” and went away.

In continuing the analysis, it occurs to me that Basedow is the name not only of a physician, but also of a famous educator. (Now that I am awake I do not feel quite sure of this fact.) My friend Otto is the person whom I have asked to take charge of the physical education of my children—especially during the age of puberty (hence the night-shirt)—in case anything should happen to me. By seeing Otto in the dream with the morbid symptoms of our above-mentioned generous benefactor, I apparently mean to say, “If anything happens to me, just as little is to be expected for my children from him as was to be expected then from Baron L., in spite of his well-meaning offers.” The egotistical turn of this dream ought now to be clear.

But where is the wish-fulfilment to be found? It is not in the vengeance secured upon my friend Otto, whose fate it seems to be to receive ill-treatment in my dreams, but in the following circumstances: In representing Otto in the dream as Baron L., I have at the same time identified myself with some one else, that is to say, with Professor R., for I have asked something of Otto, just as R. asked something of Baron L. at the time of the occurrence which has been mentioned. And that is the point. For Professor R. has pursued his way independently outside the schools, somewhat as I have done, and has only in later years received the title which he earned long ago. I am therefore again wishing to be a professor! The very phrase “in later years” is the fulfilment of wish, for it signifies that I shall live long enough to pilot my boy through the age of puberty myself.

I gave only a brief account of the other forms of typical dreams in the first edition of this book, because an insufficient amount of good material was at my disposal. My experience, which has since been increased, now makes it possible for me to divide these dreams into two broad classes—first, those which really have the same meaning every time, and secondly, those which must be subjected to the most widely different interpretations in spite of their identical or similar content. Among the typical dreams of the first sort I shall closely consider the examination dream and the so-called dream of dental irritation.

Every one who has received his degree after having passed the final college examination, complains of the ruthlessness with which he is pursued by the anxiety dream that he will fail, that he must repeat his work, &c. For the holder of the university degree this typical dream is replaced by another, which represents to him that he has to pass the examination for the doctor’s degree, and against which he vainly raises the objection in his sleep that he has already been practising for years—that he is already a university instructor or the head of a law firm. These are the ineradicable memories of the punishments which we suffered when we were children for misdeeds which we had committed—memories which were revived in us on that dies irae, dies illa of the severe examination at the two critical junctures in our studies. The “examination-phobia” of neurotics is also strengthened by this childish fear. After we have ceased to be schoolboys it is no longer our parents and guardians as at first, or our teachers as later on, who see to our punishment; the inexorable chain of causes and effects in life has taken over our further education. Now we dream of examinations for graduation or for the doctor’s degree—and who has not been faint-hearted in these tests, even though he belonged to the righteous?—whenever we fear that an outcome will punish us because we have not done something, or because we have not accomplished something as we should—in short whenever we feel the weight of responsibility.

I owe the actual explanation of examination dreams to a remark made by a well-informed colleague, who once asserted in a scientific discussion that in his experience the examination dream occurs only to persons who have passed the examination, never to those who have gone to pieces on it. The anxiety dream of the examination, which occurs, as is being more and more corroborated, when the dreamer is looking forward to a responsible action on his part the next day and the possibility of disgrace, has therefore probably selected an occasion in the past where the great anxiety has shown itself to have been without justification and has been contradicted by the result. This would be a very striking example of a misconception of the dream content on the part of the waking instance. The objection to the dream, which is conceived as the indignant protest, “But I am already a doctor,” &c., would be in reality a consolation which the dreams offer, and which would therefore be to the following effect: “Do not be afraid of the morrow; think of the fear which you had before the final examination, and yet nothing came of it. You are a doctor this minute,” &c. The fear, however, which we attribute to the dream, originates in the remnants of daily experience.

The tests of this explanation which I was able to make in my own case and in that of others, although they were not sufficiently numerous, have been altogether successful. I failed, for example, in the examination for the doctor’s degree in legal medicine; never once have I been concerned about this matter in my dreams, while I have often enough been examined in botany, zoology, or chemistry, in which subjects I took the examinations with well-founded anxiety, but escaped punishment through the clemency of fortune or of the examiner. In my dreams of college examination, I am regularly examined in history, a subject which I passed brilliantly at the time, but only, I must admit, because my good-natured professor—my one-eyed benefactor in another dream (cf. p. 12)—did not overlook the fact that on the list of questions I had crossed out the second of three questions as an indication that he should not insist on it. One of my patients, who withdrew before the final college examinations and made them up later, but who failed in the officer’s examination and did not become an officer, tells me that he dreams about the former examination often enough, but never about the latter.

The above-mentioned colleague (Dr. Stekel of Vienna) calls attention to the double meaning of the word “Matura” (Matura—examination for college degree: mature, ripe), and claims that he has observed that examination dreams occur very frequently when a sexual test is set for the following day, in which, therefore, the disgrace which is feared might consist in the manifestation of slight potency. A German colleague takes exception to this, as it appears, justly, on the ground that this examination is denominated in Germany the Abiturium and hence lacks this double meaning.

On account of their similar affective impression dreams of missing a train deserve to be placed next to examination dreams. Their explanation also justifies this relationship. They are consolation dreams directed against another feeling of fear perceived in the dream, the fear of dying. “To depart” is one of the most frequent and one of the most easily reached symbols of death. The dream thus says consolingly: “Compose yourself, you are not going to die (to depart),” just as the examination dream calms us by saying “Fear not, nothing will happen to you even this time.” The difficulty in understanding both kinds of dreams is due to the fact that the feeling of anxiety is directly connected with the expression of consolation. Stekel treats fully the symbolisms of death in his recently published book Die Sprache des Traumes.

The meaning of the “dreams of dental irritation,” which I have had to analyse often enough with my patients, escaped me for a long time, because, much to my astonishment, resistances that were altogether too great obstructed their interpretation.

At last overwhelming evidence convinced me that, in the case of men, nothing else than cravings for masturbation from the time of puberty furnishes the motive power for these dreams. I shall analyse two such dreams, one of which is likewise “a dream of flight.” The two dreams are of the same person—a young man with a strong homosexuality, which, however, has been repressed in life.

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

He himself describes the flight by saying it was as if he were “thrown” into the air. As it was a performance of Fidelio he recalls the poet’s words:

“He who a charming wife acquired——”