Part 27

If it be considered that of those dream thoughts which are found only the smallest number are represented in the dream by means of one of its ideal elements, it might be concluded that condensation is accomplished by means of ellipsis, in that the dream is not an accurate translation or a projection point by point of the dream thoughts, but a very incomplete and defective reproduction of them. This view, as we shall soon find, is a very inadequate one. But let us take it as a starting point for the present, and ask ourselves: If only a few of the elements of the dream thoughts get into the dream content, what conditions determine their choice?

In order to gain enlightenment on this subject let us turn our attention to those elements of the dream content which must have fulfilled the conditions we are seeking. A dream to the formation of which an especially strong condensation has contributed will be the most suitable material for this investigation. I select the dream, cited on page 142, of the botanical monograph.

Dream content: I have written a monograph upon a (obscure) certain plant. The book lies before me, I am just turning over a folded coloured plate. A dried specimen of the plant is bound with every copy as though from a herbarium.

The most prominent element of this dream is the botanical monograph. This comes from the impressions received on the day of the dream; I had actually seen a monograph on the genus “cyclamen” in the show-window of a book-store. The mention of this genus is lacking in the dream content, in which only the monograph and its relation to botany have remained. The “botanical monograph” immediately shows its relation to the work on cocaine which I had once written; thought connections proceed from cocaine on the one hand to a “Festschrift,” and on the other to my friend, the eye specialist, Dr. Koenigstein, who has had a share in the utilisation of cocaine. Moreover, with the person of this Dr. Koenigstein is connected the recollection of the interrupted conversation which I had had with him on the previous evening and of the manifold thoughts about remuneration for medical services among colleagues. This conversation, then, is properly the actual stimulus of the dream; the monograph about cyclamen is likewise an actuality but of an indifferent nature; as I soon see, the “botanical monograph” of the dream turns out to be a common mean between the two experiences of the day, and to have been taken over unchanged from an indifferent impression and bound up with the psychologically significant experience by means of the most abundant associations.

Not only the combined idea, “botanical monograph,” however, but also each of the separate elements, “botanical” and “monograph,” penetrates deeper and deeper into the confused tangle of the dream thoughts. To “botanical” belong the recollections of the person of Professor Gartner (German: Gärtner = gardener), of his blooming wife, of my patient whose name is Flora, and of a lady about whom I told the story of the forgotten flowers. Gartner, again, is connected with the laboratory and the conversation with Koenigstein; the mention of the two female patients also belongs to the same conversation. A chain of thoughts, one end of which is formed by the title of the hastily seen monograph, leads off in the other direction from the lady with the flowers to the favourite flowers of my wife. Besides this, “botanical” recalls not only an episode at the Gymnasium, but an examination taken while I was at the university; and a new subject matter—my hobbies—which was broached in the conversation already mentioned, is connected by means of my humorously so-called favourite flower, the artichoke, with the chain of thoughts proceeding from the forgotten flowers; behind “artichoke” there is concealed on the one hand a recollection of Italy, and on the other a reminiscence of a childhood scene in which I first formed my connection with books which has since grown so intimate. “Botanical,” then, is a veritable nucleus, the centre for the dream of many trains of thought, which, I may assure the reader, were correctly and justly brought into relation to one another in the conversation referred to. Here we find ourselves in a thought factory, in which, as in the “Weaver’s Masterpiece”:

“One tread moves thousands of threads, The little shuttles fly back and forth, The threads flow on unseen, One stroke ties thousands of knots.”

“Monograph” in the dream, again, has a bearing upon two subjects, the one-sidedness of my studies and the costliness of my hobbies.

The impression is gained from this first investigation that the elements “botanical” and “monograph” have been accepted in the dream content because they were able to show the most extensive connections with the dream thoughts, and thus represent nuclei in which a great number of dream thoughts come together, and because they have manifold significance for the dream interpretation. The fact upon which this explanation is based may be expressed in another form: Every element of the dream content turns out to be over-determined—that is, it enjoys a manifold representation in the dream thoughts.

We shall learn more by testing the remaining component parts of the dream as to their occurrence in the dream thoughts. The coloured plate refers (cf. the analysis on p. 145) to a new subject, the criticism passed upon my work by colleagues, and to a subject already represented in the dream—my hobbies—and also to a childish recollection in which I pull to pieces the book with the coloured plates; the dried specimen of the plant relates to an experience at the Gymnasium centering about and particularly emphasizing the herbarium. Thus I see what sort of relation exists between the dream content and dream thoughts: Not only do the elements of the dream have a manifold determination in the dream thoughts, but the individual dream thoughts are represented in the dream by many elements. Starting from an element of the dream the path of associations leads to a number of dream thoughts; and from a dream thought to several elements of the dream. The formation of the dream does not, therefore, take place in such fashion that a single one of the dream thoughts or a group of them furnishes the dream content with an abridgment as its representative therein, and that then another dream thought furnishes another abridgment as its representative—somewhat as popular representatives are elected from among the people—but the whole mass of the dream thoughts is subjected to a certain elaboration, in the course of which those elements that receive the greatest and completest support stand out in relief, analogous, perhaps, to election by scrutins des listes. Whatever dream I may subject to such dismemberment, I always find the same fundamental principle confirmed—that the dream elements are constructed from the entire mass of the dream thoughts and that every one of them appears in relation to the dream thoughts to have a multiple determination.

It is certainly not out of place to demonstrate this relation of the dream content to the dream thoughts by means of a fresh example, which is distinguished by a particularly artful intertwining of reciprocal relations. The dream is that of a patient whom I am treating for claustrophobia (fear in enclosed spaces). It will soon become evident why I feel myself called upon to entitle this exceptionally intellectual piece of dream activity in the following manner:

II. “A Beautiful Dream”

The dreamer is riding with much company to X-street, where there is a modest road-house (which is not the fact). A theatrical performance is being given in its rooms. He is first audience, then actor. Finally the company is told to change their clothes, in order to get back into the city. Some of the people are assigned to the rooms on the ground floor, others to the first floor. Then a dispute arises. Those above are angry because those below have not yet finished, so that they cannot come down. His brother is upstairs, he is below, and he is angry at his brother because there is such crowding. (This part obscure.) Besides it has already been decided upon their arrival who is to be upstairs and who down. Then he goes alone over the rising ground, across which X-street leads toward the city, and he has such difficulty and hardship in walking that he cannot move from the spot. An elderly gentleman joins him and scolds about the King of Italy. Finally, towards the end of the rising ground walking becomes much easier.

The difficulties experienced in walking were so distinct that for some time after waking he was in doubt whether they were dream or reality.

According to the manifest content, this dream can hardly be praised. Contrary to the rules, I shall begin with that portion which the dreamer referred to as the most distinct.

The difficulties which were dreamed of, and which were probably experienced during the dream—difficult climbing accompanied by dyspnœa—is one of the symptoms which the patient had actually shown years before, and which, in conjunction with other symptoms, was at that time attributed to tuberculosis (probably hysterically simulated). We are already from exhibition dreams acquainted with this sensation of being hindered, peculiar to the dream, and here again we find it used for the purpose of any kind of representation, as an ever-ready material. That part of the dream content which ascribes the climbing as difficult at first, and as becoming easier at the end of the hill, made me think while it was being told of the well-known masterful introduction to Sappho by A. Daudet. Here a young man carries the girl whom he loves upstairs—she is at first as light as a feather; but the higher he mounts the more heavily she weighs upon his arm, and this scene symbolises a course of events by recounting which Daudet tries to warn young men not to waste serious affection upon girls of humble origin or of questionable past. Although I knew that my patient had recently had a love affair with a lady of the theatre, and had broken it off, I did not expect to find that the interpretation which had occurred to me was correct. Moreover, the situation in Sappho was the reverse of that in the dream; in the latter the climbing was difficult at the beginning and easy later on; in the novel the symbolism serves only if what was at first regarded as easy finally turns out to be a heavy load. To my astonishment, the patient remarked that the interpretation corresponded closely to the plot of a play which he had seen on the evening before at the theatre. The play was called Round about Vienna, and treated of the career of a girl who is respectable at first but later goes over to the demi-monde, who has affairs with persons in high places, thus “climbing,” but finally “goes down” faster and faster. This play had reminded him of another entitled From Step to Step, in the advertisement of which had appeared a stairway consisting of several steps.

Now to continue the interpretation. The actress with whom he had had his most recent affair, a complicated one, had lived in X-street. There is no inn in this street. However, while he was spending a part of the summer in Vienna for the sake of the lady, he had lodged (German abgestiegen = stopped, literally stepped off) at a little hotel in the neighbourhood. As he was leaving the hotel he said to the cab-driver, “I am glad I didn’t get any vermin anyway” (which incidentally is one of his phobias). Whereupon the cab-driver answered: “How could anybody stop there! It isn’t a hotel at all, it’s really nothing but a road-house!”

The road-house immediately suggests to the dreamer’s recollection a quotation:

“Of that marvellous host I was once a guest.”

But the host in the poem by Uhland is an apple tree. Now a second quotation continues the train of thought:

FAUST (dancing with the young witch).

“A lovely dream once came to me; I then beheld an apple tree, And there two fairest apples shone: They lured me so, I climbed thereon.”

THE FAIR ONE.

“Apples have been desired by you, Since first in Paradise they grew; And I am moved with joy to know That such within my garden grow.”

Translated by BAYARD TAYLOR.

There remains not the slightest doubt what is meant by the apple tree and the apples. A beautiful bosom stood high among the charms with which the actress had bewitched our dreamer.

According to the connections of the analysis we had every reason to assume that the dream went back to an impression from childhood. In this case it must have reference to the nurse of the patient, who is now a man of nearly fifty years of age. The bosom of the nurse is in reality a road-house for the child. The nurse as well as Daudet’s Sappho appears as an allusion to his abandoned sweetheart.

The (elder) brother of the patient also appears in the dream content; he is upstairs, the dreamer himself is below. This again is an inversion, for the brother, as I happen to know, has lost his social position, my patient has retained his. In reporting the dream content the dreamer avoided saying that his brother was upstairs and that he himself was down. It would have been too frank an expression, for a person is said to be “down and out” when he has lost his fortune and position. Now the fact that at this point in the dream something is represented as inverted must have a meaning. The inversion must apply rather to some other relation between the dream thoughts and dream content. There is an indication which suggests how this inversion is to be taken. It obviously applies to the end of the dream, where the circumstances of climbing are the reverse of those in Sappho. Now it may easily be seen what inversion is referred to; in Sappho the man carries the woman who stands in a sexual relation to him; in the dream thoughts, inversely, a woman carries a man, and as this state of affairs can only occur during childhood, the reference is again to the nurse who carries the heavy child. Thus the final portion of the dream succeeds in representing Sappho and the nurse in the same allusion.

Just as the name Sappho has not been selected by the poet without reference to a Lesbian custom, so the elements of the dream in which persons act above and below, point to fancies of a sexual nature with which the dreamer is occupied and which as suppressed cravings are not without connection with his neurosis. Dream interpretation itself does not show that these are fancies and not recollections of actual happenings; it only furnishes us with a set of thoughts and leaves us to determine their value as realities. Real and fantastic occurrences at first appear here as of equal value—and not only here but also in the creation of more important psychic structures than dreams. Much company, as we already know, signifies a secret. The brother is none other than a representative, drawn into the childhood scene by “fancying backwards,” of all of the later rivals for the woman. Through the agency of an experience which is indifferent in itself, the episode with the gentleman who scolds about the King of Italy again refers to the intrusion of people of low rank into aristocratic society. It is as though the warning which Daudet gives to youth is to be supplemented by a similar warning applicable to the suckling child.