Part 30

In the first place, the dream renders account of the connection which is undeniably present between all the parts of the dream thoughts by uniting this material in a single composition as a situation or process. It reproduces logical connection in the form of simultaneousness; in this case it acts something like the painter who groups together all the philosophers or poets into a picture of the school of Athens or of Parnassus, although these were never at once present in any hall or on any mountain top—though they do, however, form a unity from the point of view of reflective contemplation.

The dream carries out this method of representation in detail. Whenever it shows two elements close together, it vouches for a particularly intimate connection between those elements which correspond to them in the dream thoughts. It is as in our method of writing: to signifies that the two letters are to be pronounced as one syllable, while t with o after a free space shows that t is the last letter of one word and o the first letter of another. According to this, dream combinations are not made of arbitrary, completely incongruent elements of the dream material, but of elements that also have a somewhat intimate relation to one another in the dream thoughts.

For representing causal relation the dream has two methods, which are essentially reducible to one. The more frequent method, in cases, for example, where the dream thoughts are to the effect: “Because this was so and so, this and that must happen,” consists in making the premise an introductory dream and joining the conclusion to it in the form of the main dream. If my interpretation is correct, the sequence may also be reversed. That part of the dream which is more completely worked out always corresponds to the conclusion.

A female patient, whose dream I shall later give in full, once furnished me with a neat example of such a representation of causal relationship. The dream consisted of a short prologue and of a very elaborate but well organised dream composition, which might be entitled: “A flower of speech.” The prologue of the dream is as follows: She goes to the two maids in the kitchen and scolds them for taking so long to prepare “a little bite of food.” She also sees a great many coarse dishes standing in the kitchen, inverted so that the water may drop off them, and heaped up in a pile. The two maids go to fetch water, and must, as it were, step into a river, which reaches up to the house or into the yard.

Then follows the main dream, which begins as follows: She is descending from a high place, over balustrades that are curiously fashioned, and she is glad that her dress doesn’t get caught anywhere, &c. Now the introductory dream refers to the house of the lady’s parents. Probably she has often heard from her mother the words which are spoken in the kitchen. The piles of unwashed dishes are taken from an unpretentious earthenware shop which was located in the same house. The second part of this dream contains an allusion to the dreamer’s father, who always had a great deal to do with servant girls, and who later contracted a fatal disease during a flood—the house stood near the bank of a river. The thought which is concealed behind the introductory dream, then, is to this effect: “Because I was born in this house, under such limited and unlovely circumstances.” The main dream takes up the same thought, and presents it in a form that has been altered by the tendency to wish-fulfilment: “I am of exalted origin.” Properly then: “Because I was born in such low circumstances, my career has been so and so.”

As far as I can see, the partition of a dream into two unequal portions does not always signify a causal relation between the thoughts of the two portions. It often appears as though the same material were being presented in the two dreams from different points of view; or as though the two dreams have proceeded from two separated centres in the dream material and their contents overlap, so that the object which is the centre of one dream has served in the other as an allusion, and vice versa. But in a certain number of cases a division into shorter fore-dreams and longer subsequent dreams actually signifies a causal relation between the two portions. The other method of representing causal relation is used with less abundant material and consists in the change of one image in the dream, whether a person or a thing, into another. It is only in cases where we witness this change taking place in the dream that any causal relation is asserted to exist, not where we merely notice that one thing has taken the place of another. I said that both methods of representing causal relation are reducible to the same thing; in both cases causation is represented by a succession, now by the sequence of the dreams, now by the immediate transformation of one image into another. In the great majority of cases, of course, causal relation is not expressed at all, but is obliterated by the sequence of elements which is unavoidable in the dream process.

The dream is altogether unable to express the alternative, “either—or”; it is in the habit of taking both members of this alternative into one context, as though they were equally privileged. A classic example of this is contained in the dream of Irma’s injection. Its latent thoughts obviously mean: I am innocent of the continued presence of Irma’s pains; the fault rests either with her resistance to accepting the solution, or with the fact that she is living under unfavourable sexual conditions, which I am unable to change, or her pains are not of a hysteric nature at all, but organic. The dream, however, fulfils all these possibilities, which are almost exclusive, and is quite ready to extract from the dream-wish an additional fourth solution of this kind. After interpreting the dream I have therefore inserted the either—or in the sequence of the dream thoughts.

In the case where the dreamer finds occasion in telling the dream to use either—or: “It was either a garden or a living-room,” &c., it is not really an alternative which occurs in the dream thoughts, but an “and,” a simple addition. When we use either—or we are usually describing a characteristic of indistinctness belonging to an element of the dream which is still capable of being cleared up. The rule of interpretation for this case is as follows: The separate members of the alternative are to be treated as equals and connected by “and.” For instance, after waiting for a long time in vain for the address of my friend who is living in Italy, I dream that I receive a telegram which tells me this address. Upon the strip of telegraph paper I see printed in blue the following; the first word is blurred:

perhaps via, or villa, the second is distinctly: Sezerno or perhaps (Casa).

The second word, which sounds like an Italian name and which reminds me of our etymological discussions, also expresses my displeasure on account of the fact that my friend has kept his place of residence secret from me for so long a time; every member of the triple suggestion for the first word may be recognised in the course of analysis as a self-sufficient and equally well-justified starting point in the concatenation of ideas.

During the night before the funeral of my father I dreamed of a printed placard, a card or poster—perhaps something like signs in railway waiting-rooms which announce the prohibition of smoking—which reads either:

It is requested to shut the eyes or It is requested to shut an eye

which I am in the habit of representing in the following form:

the It is requested to shut eye(s). an

Each of the two variations has its own particular meaning, and leads us along particular paths in the interpretation of the dream. I had made the simplest kind of funeral arrangements, for I knew how the deceased thought about such matters. Other members of the family, however, did not approve of such puritanic simplicity; they thought we would have to be ashamed before the mourners. Hence one of the wordings of the dream requests the “shutting of one eye,” that is to say, that people should show consideration. The significance of the blurring, which we describe with an either—or, may here be seen with particular ease. The dream activity has not succeeded in constructing a unified but at the same time ambiguous wording for the dream thoughts. Thus the two main trains of thought are already distinguished even in the dream content.

In a few cases the division of the dream into two equal parts expresses the alternative which the dream finds it so difficult to represent.

The attitude of the dream towards the category of antithesis and contradiction is most striking. This category is unceremoniously neglected; the word “No” does not seem to exist for the dream. Antitheses are with peculiar preference reduced to unity or represented as one. The dream also takes the liberty of representing any element whatever by its desired opposite, so that it is at first impossible to tell about any element capable of having an opposite, whether it is to be taken negatively or positively, in the dream thoughts. In one of the last-mentioned dreams, whose introductory portion we have already interpreted (“because my parentage is such”), the dreamer descends over a balustrade and holds a blossoming twig in her hands. Since this picture suggests to her the angel in paintings of the Annunciation (her own name is Mary) carrying a lily stem in his hand, and the white-robed girls marching in the procession on Corpus Christi Day when the streets are decorated with green bows, the blossoming twig in the dream is very certainly an allusion to sexual innocence. But the twig is thickly studded with red blossoms, each one of which resembles a camelia. At the end of her walk, so the dream continues, the blossoms have already fallen considerably apart; then unmistakable allusions to menstruation follow. But this very twig which is carried like a lily and as though by an innocent girl, is also an allusion to Camille, who, as is known, always wore a white camelia, but a red one at the time of her menstruation. The same blossoming twig (“the flower of maidenhood” in the songs about the miller’s daughter by Goethe) represents at once sexual innocence and its opposite. The same dream, also, which expresses the dreamer’s joy at having succeeded in passing through life unsullied, hints in several places (as at the falling-off of the blossom), at the opposite train of thought—namely, that she had been guilty of various sins against sexual purity (that is in her childhood). In the analysis of the dream we may clearly distinguish the two trains of thought, of which the comforting one seems to be superficial, the reproachful one more profound. The two are diametrically opposed to each other, and their like but contrasting elements have been represented by the identical dream elements.

The mechanism of dream formation is favourable in the highest degree to only one of the logical relations. This relation is that of similarity, correspondence, contiguity, “as though,” which is capable of being represented in the dream as no other can be, by the most varied expedients. The correspondences occurring in the dream, or cases of “as though,” are the chief points of support for the formation of dreams, and no inconsiderable part of the dream activity consists in creating new correspondences of this sort in cases where those which are already at hand are prevented by the censor of resistance from getting into the dream. The effort towards condensation shown by the dream activity assists in the representation of the relation of similarity.

Similarity, agreement, community, are quite generally expressed in the dream by concentration into a unity, which is either already found in the dream material or is newly created. The first case may be referred to as identification, the second as composition. Identification is used where the dream is concerned with persons, composition where things are the objects of unification; but compositions are also made from persons. Localities are often treated as persons.

Identification consists in giving representation in the dream content to only one of a number of persons who are connected by some common feature, while the second or the other persons seem to be suppressed as far as the dream is concerned. This one representative person in the dream enters into all the relations and situations which belong to itself or to the persons who are covered by it. In cases of composition, however, when this has to do with persons, there are already present in the dream image features which are characteristic of, but not common to, the persons in question, so that a new unity, a composite person, appears as the result of the union of these features. The composition itself may be brought about in various ways. Either the dream person bears the name of one of the persons to whom it refers—and then we know, in a manner which is quite analogous to knowledge in waking life, that this or that person is the one who is meant—while the visual features belong to another person; or the dream image itself is composed of visual features which in reality are shared by both. Instead of visual features, also, the part played by the second person may be represented by the mannerisms which are usually ascribed to him, the words which he usually speaks, or the situations in which he is usually imagined. In the latter method of characterisation the sharp distinction between identification and composition of persons begins to disappear. But it may also happen that the formation of such a mixed personality is unsuccessful. The situation of the dream is then attributed to one person, and the other—as a rule the more important one—is introduced as an inactive and unconcerned spectator. The dreamer relates something like “My mother was also there” (Stekel).

The common feature which justifies the union of the two persons—that is to say, which is the occasion for it—may either be represented in the dream or be absent. As a rule, identification or composition of persons simply serves the purpose of dispensing with the representation of this common feature. Instead of repeating: “A is ill disposed towards me, and B is also,” I make a composite person of A and B in the dream, or I conceive A as doing an unaccustomed action which usually characterises B. The dream person obtained in this way appears in the dream in some new connection, and the fact that it signifies both A and B justifies me in inserting that which is common to both—their hostility towards me—at the proper place in the interpretation of the dream. In this manner I often achieve a very extraordinary degree of condensation of the dream content; I can save myself the direct representation of very complicated relations belonging to a person, if I can find a second person who has an equal claim to a part of these relations. It is also obvious to what extent this representation by means of identification can circumvent the resisting censor, which makes the dream activity conform to such harsh conditions. That which offends the censor may lie in those very ideas which are connected in the dream material with the one person; I now find a second person, who likewise has relation to the objectionable material, but only to a part of it. The contact in that one point which offends the censor now justified me in forming a composite person, which is characterised on either hand by indifferent features. This person resulting from composition or identification, who is unobjectionable to the censor, is now suited for incorporation in the dream content, and by the application of dream condensation I have satisfied the demands of the dream censor.

In dreams where a common feature of two persons is represented, this is usually a hint to look for another concealed common feature, the representation of which is made impossible by the censor. A displacement of the common feature has here taken place partly in order to facilitate representation. From the circumstance that the composite person appears to me with an indifferent common feature, I must infer that another common feature which is by no means indifferent exists in the dream thoughts.

According to what has been said, identification or composition of persons serves various purposes in the dream; in the first place, to represent a feature common to the two persons; secondly, to represent a displaced common feature; and thirdly, even to give expression to a community of features that is merely wished for. As the wish for a community between two persons frequently coincides with the exchanging of these persons, this relation in the dream is also expressed through identification. In the dream of Irma’s injection I wish to exchange this patient for another—that is to say, I wish the latter to be my patient as the former has been; the dream takes account of this wish by showing me a person who is called Irma, but who is examined in a position such as I have had the opportunity of seeing only when occupied with the other person in question. In the dream about my uncle this substitution is made the centre of the dream; I identify myself with the minister by judging and treating my colleague as shabbily as he does.

It has been my experience—and to this I have found no exception—that every dream treats of one’s own person. Dreams are absolutely egotistic. In cases where not my ego, but only a strange person occurs in the dream content, I may safely assume that my ego is concealed behind that person by means of identification. I am permitted to supplement my ego. On other occasions when my ego appears in the dream, I am given to understand by the situation in which it is placed that another person is concealing himself behind the ego. In this case the dream is intended to give me notice that in the interpretation I must transfer something which is connected with this person—the hidden common feature—to myself. There are also dreams in which my ego occurs along with other persons which the resolution of the identification again shows to be my ego. By means of this identification I am instructed to unite in my ego certain ideas to whose acceptance the censor has objected. I may also give my ego manifold representation in the dream, now directly, now by means of identification with strangers. An extraordinary amount of thought material may be condensed by means of a few such identifications.

The resolution of the identification of localities designated under their own names is even less difficult than that of persons, because here the disturbing influence of the ego, which is all-powerful in the dream, is lacking. In one of my dreams about Rome (p. 164) the name of the place in which I find myself is Rome; I am surprised, however, at the great number of German placards at a street corner. The latter is a wish-fulfilment, which immediately suggests Prague; the wish itself probably originated at a period in my youth when I was imbued with a German nationalistic spirit which is suppressed to-day. At the time of my dream I was looking forward to meeting a friend in Prague; the identification of Rome and Prague is thus to be explained by means of a desired common feature; I would rather meet my friend in Rome than in Prague, I should like to exchange Prague for Rome for the purpose of this meeting.

The possibility of creating compositions is one of the chief causes of the phantastic character so common in dreams, in that it introduces into the dream elements which could never have been the objects of perception. The psychic process which occurs in the formation of compositions is obviously the same which we employ in conceiving or fashioning a centaur or a dragon in waking life. The only difference is that in the phantastic creations occurring in waking life the intended impression to be made by the new creation is itself the deciding factor, while the composition of the dream is determined by an influence—the common feature in the dream thoughts—which is independent of the form of the image. The composition of the dream may be accomplished in a great many different ways. In the most artless method of execution the properties of the one thing are represented, and this representation is accompanied by the knowledge that they also belong to another object. A more careful technique unites the features of one object with those of the other in a new image, while it makes skilful use of resemblance between the two objects which exist in reality. The new creation may turn out altogether absurd or only phantastically ingenious, according to the subject-matter and the wit operative in the work of composition. If the objects to be condensed into a unity are too incongruous, the dream activity is content with creating a composition with a comparatively distinct nucleus, to which are attached less distinct modifications. The unification into one image has here been unsuccessful, as it were; the two representations overlap and give rise to something like a contest between visual images. If attempt were made to construct an idea out of individual images of perception, similar representations might be obtained in a drawing.

Dreams naturally abound in such compositions; several examples of these I have given in the dreams already analysed; I shall add more. In the dream on p. 296, which describes the career of my patient “in flowery language,” the dream ego carries a blossoming twig in her hand, which, as we have seen, signifies at once innocence and sexual transgression. Moreover, the twig recalls cherry-blossoms on account of the manner in which the blossoms are clustered; the blossoms themselves, separately considered, are camelias, and finally the whole thing also gives the impression of an exotic plant. The common feature in the elements of this composition is shown by the dream thoughts. The blossoming twig is made up of allusions to presents by which she was induced or should have been induced to show herself agreeable. So it was with the cherries in her childhood and with the stem of camelias in her later years; the exotic feature is an illusion to a much-travelled naturalist, who sought to win her favour by means of a drawing of a flower. Another female patient creates a middle element out of bath-houses at a bathing resort, rural outside water-closets, and the garrets of our city dwellings. The reference to human nakedness and exposure is common to the two first elements; and we may infer from their connection with the third element that (in her childhood) the garret was likewise the scene of exposure. A dreamer of the male sex makes a composite locality out of two places in which “treatment” is given—my office and the public hall in which he first became acquainted with his wife. Another female patient, after her elder brother has promised to regale her with caviare, dreams that his legs are covered thick with black caviare pearls. The two elements, “contagion” in a moral sense and the recollection of a cutaneous eruption in childhood which made her legs look as though studded over with red dots instead of black ones, have here been united with the caviare pearls to form a new idea—the idea of “what she has inherited from her brother.” In this dream parts of the human body are treated as objects, as is usually the case in dreams. In one of the dreams reported by Ferenczi there occurred a composition made up of the person of a physician and a horse, over which was spread a night-shirt. The common feature in these three components was shown in the analysis after the night-shirt had been recognised as an allusion to the father of the dreamer in an infantile scene. In each of the three cases there was some object of her sexual inquisitiveness. As a child she had often been taken by her nurse to the military breeding station, where she had the amplest opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, which was at that time uninhibited.

I have already asserted that the dream has no means for expressing the relation of contradiction, of contrast, of negation. I am about to contradict this assertion for the first time. A part of the cases, which may be summed up under the word “contrast,” finds representation, as we have seen, simply by means of identification—that is, when an interchange or replacement can be connected with the contrast. We have given repeated examples of this. Another part of the contrasts in the dream thoughts, which perhaps falls into the category “turned into the opposite,” is represented in the dream in the following remarkable manner, which may almost be designated as witty. The “inversion” does not itself get into the dream content, but manifests its presence there by means of the fact that a part of the already formed dream content which lies at hand for other reasons, is—as it were subsequently—inverted. It is easier to illustrate this process than to describe it. In the beautiful “Up and Down” dream (p. 267) the representation of ascending is an inversion of a prototype in the dream thoughts, that is to say, of the introductory scene of Daudet’s Sappho; in the dream climbing is difficult at first, and easy later on, while in the actual scene it is easy at first, and later becomes more and more difficult. Likewise “above” and “below” in relation to the dreamer’s brother are inverted in the dream. This points to a relation of contraries or contrasts as obtaining between two parts of the subject-matter of the dream thoughts and the relation we have found in the fact that in the childish fancy of the dreamer he is carried by his nurse, while in the novel, on the contrary, the hero carries his beloved. My dream about Goethe’s attack upon Mr. M. (p. 345) also contains an “inversion” of this sort, which must first be set right before the interpretation of the dream can be accomplished. In the dream Goethe attacks a young man, Mr. M.; in reality, according to the dream thoughts, an eminent man, my friend, has been attacked by an unknown young author. In the dream I reckon time from the date of Goethe’s death; in reality the reckoning was made from the year in which the paralytic was born. The thought determining the dream material is shown to be an objection to the treatment of Goethe as a lunatic. “The other way around,” says the dream; “if you cannot understand the book, it is you who are dull-witted, not the author.” Furthermore, all these dreams of inversion seem to contain a reference to the contemptuous phrase, “to turn one’s back upon a person” (German: “einen die Kehrseite zeigen”; cf. the inversion in respect to the dreamer’s brother in the Sappho dream). It is also remarkable how frequently inversion becomes necessary in dreams which are inspired by repressed homosexual feelings.