Part 38

The thing which distinguishes and reveals this part of the dream activity is its tendency. This function proceeds in a manner similar to that which the poet spitefully attributes to the philosopher; with its scraps and rags, it stops up the breaches in the structure of the dream. The result of its effort is that the dream loses the appearance of absurdity and incoherence, and approaches the pattern of an intelligible experience. But the effort is not always crowned with complete success. Thus dreams occur which may seem faultlessly logical and correct upon superficial examination; they start from a possible situation, continue it by means of consistent changes, and end up—although this is very rare—with a not unnatural conclusion. These dreams have been subjected to the most thorough elaboration at the hands of a psychic function similar to our waking thought; they seem to have a meaning, but this meaning is very far removed from the real signification of the dream. If they are analysed, one is convinced that the secondary elaboration has distorted the material very freely, and has preserved its proper relations as little as possible. These are the dreams which have, so to speak, already been interpreted before we subject them to waking interpretation. In other dreams this purposeful elaboration has been successful only to a certain point; up to this point consistency seems to be dominant, then the dream becomes nonsensical or confused, and perhaps finally it lifts itself for a second time in its course to an appearance of rationality. In still other dreams the elaboration has failed completely; we find ourselves helpless in the presence of a senseless mass of fragmentary contents.

I do not wish to deny to this fourth dream-moulding power, which will soon seem to us a familiar one—it is in reality the only one among the four dream-moulders with which we are familiar,—I do not wish to deny this fourth factor the capability of creatively furnishing the dream with new contributions. But surely its influence, like that of the others, manifests itself preponderatingly in the preferring and choosing of already created psychic material in the dream thoughts. Now there is a case where it is spared the work, for the most part, of building, as it were, a façade to the dream, by the fact that such a structure, waiting to be used, is already to be found complete in the material of the dream thoughts. The element of the dream thoughts which I have in mind, I am in the habit of designating as a “phantasy”; perhaps I shall avoid misunderstanding if I immediately adduce the day dream of waking life as an analogy. The part played by this element in our psychic life has not yet been fully recognised and investigated by the psychiatrists; in this study M. Benedikt has, it seems to me, made a highly promising beginning. The significance of the day dream has not yet escaped the unerring insight of poets; the description of the day dreams of one of his subordinate characters which A. Daudet gives us in Nabab is universally known. A study of the psychoneuroses discloses the astonishing fact that these phantasies or day dreams are the immediate predecessors of hysterical symptoms—at least of a great many of them; hysterical symptoms directly depend not upon the memories themselves, but upon phantasies built on the basis of memories. The frequent occurrence of conscious day phantasies brings these formations within the scope of our knowledge; but just as there are such conscious phantasies, so there are a great many unconscious ones, which must remain unconscious on account of their content and on account of their origin from repressed material. A more thorough examination into the character of these day phantasies shows with what good reason the same name has been given to these formations as to the products of our nocturnal thought,—dreams. They possess an essential part of their properties in common with nocturnal dreams; an examination of them would really have afforded the shortest and best approach to an understanding of night dreams.

Like dreams, they are fulfilments of wishes; like dreams a good part of them are based upon the impressions of childish experiences; like dreams their creations enjoy a certain amount of indulgence from the censor. If we trace their formation, we see how the wish motive, which is active in their production, has taken the material of which they are built, mixed it together, rearranged it, and composed it into a new unit. They bear the same relation to the childish memories, to which they go back, as some of the quaint palaces of Rome bear to the ancient ruins, whose freestones and pillars have furnished the material for the structure built in modern form.

In the “secondary elaboration” of the dream content which we have ascribed to our fourth dream-making factor, we again find the same activity which in the creation of day dreams is allowed to manifest itself unhampered by other influences. We may say without further preliminary that this fourth factor of ours seeks to form something like a day dream from the material at hand. Where, however, such a day dream has already been formed in connection with the dream thought, this factor of the dream-work will preferably get control of it, and strive to introduce it into the dream content. There are dreams which consist merely of the repetition of such a day fancy, a fancy which has perhaps remained unconscious—as, for instance, the dream of the boy that he is riding with the heroes of the Trojan war in a war chariot. In my dream “Autodidasker,” at least the second part of the dream is the faithful repetition of a day phantasy—harmless in itself—about my dealings with Professor N. The fact that the phantasy thus provided more often forms only one part of the dream, or that only one part of the phantasy that makes its way to the dream content, has its origin in the complexity of the conditions which the dream must satisfy at its genesis. On the whole, the phantasy is treated like any other component of the latent material; still it is often recognisable in the dream as a whole. In my dreams parts often occur which are emphasized by an impression different from that of the rest. They seem to me to be in a state of flux, to be more coherent and at the same time more transient than other pieces of the same dream. I know that these are unconscious phantasies which get into the dream by virtue of their association, but I have never succeeded in registering such a phantasy. For the rest these phantasies, like all other component parts of the dream thoughts, are jumbled together and condensed, one covered up by another, and the like; but there are all degrees, from the case where they may constitute the dream content or at least the dream façade unchanged to the opposite case, where they are represented in the dream content by only one of their elements or by a remote allusion to such an element. The extent to which the phantasies are able to withstand the demands of the censor and the tendency to condensation are, of course, also decisive of their fate among the dream thoughts.

In my choice of examples for dream analysis I have, wherever possible, avoided those dreams in which unconscious fancies play a somewhat important part, because the introduction of this psychic element would have necessitated extensive discussion of the psychology of unconscious thought. But I cannot entirely omit the “phantasy” even in this matter of examples, because it often gets fully into the dream and still more often distinctly pervades it. I may mention one more dream, which seems to be composed of two distinct and opposed phantasies, overlapping each other at certain places, of which the first is superficial, while the second becomes, as it were, the interpreter of the first.

The dream—it is the only one for which I have no careful notes—is about to this effect: The dreamer—an unmarried young man—is sitting in an inn, which is seen correctly; several persons come to get him, among them someone who wants to arrest him. He says to his table companions, “I will pay later, I am coming back.” But they call to him, laughing scornfully: “We know all about that; that’s what everybody says.” One guest calls after him: “There goes another one.” He is then led to a narrow hall, where he finds a woman with a child in her arms. One of his escorts says: “That is Mr. Müller.” A commissioner or some other official is running through a bundle of tickets or papers repeating Müller, Müller, Müller. At last the commissioner asks him a question, which he answers with “Yes.” He then takes a look at the woman, and notices that she has grown a large beard.

The two component parts are here easily separated. What is superficial is the phantasy of being arrested; it seems to be newly created by the dream-work. But behind it appears the phantasy of marriage, and this material, on the contrary, has undergone but slight change at the hands of the dream activity. The features which are common to both phantasies come into distinct prominence as in a Galton’s composite photograph. The promise of the bachelor to come back to his place at the club table, the scepticism of the drinking companions, sophisticated in their many experiences, the calling after: “There goes (marries) another one,”—all these features can easily be capable of the other interpretation. Likewise the affirmative answer given to the official. Running through the bundle of papers with the repetition of the name, corresponds to a subordinate but well-recognised feature of the marriage ceremonies—the reading aloud of the congratulatory telegrams which have arrived irregularly, and which, of course, are all addressed to the same name. In the matter of the bride’s personal appearance in this dream, the marriage phantasy has even got the better of the arrest phantasy which conceals it. The fact that this bride finally displays a beard, I can explain from an inquiry—I had no chance to make an analysis. The dreamer had on the previous day crossed the street with a friend who was just as hostile to marriage as himself, and had called his friend’s attention to a beautiful brunette who was coming towards them. The friend had remarked: “Yes, if only these women wouldn’t get beards, as they grow older, like their fathers.”

Of course there is no lack of elements in this dream, on which the dream disfigurement has done more thorough work. Thus the speech: “I will pay later,” may have reference to the conduct of the father-in-law in the matter of dowry—which is uncertain. Obviously all kinds of scruples are preventing the dreamer from surrendering himself with pleasure to the phantasy of marrying. One of these apprehensions—lest one’s freedom be lost when one marries—has embodied itself in the transformation to a scene of arrest.

Let us return to the thesis that the dream activity likes to make use of a phantasy which is finished and at hand, instead of creating one afresh from the material of the dream thoughts; we shall perhaps solve one of the most interesting riddles of the dream if we keep this fact in mind. I have on page 21 related the dream of Maury, who is struck on the back of the neck with a stick, and who awakes in the possession of a long dream—a complete romance from the time of the French Revolution. Since the dream is represented as coherent and as explicable by reference to the disturbing stimulus alone, about the occurrence of which stimulus the sleeper could suspect nothing, only one assumption seems to be left, namely, that the whole richly elaborated dream must have been composed and must have taken place in the short space of time between the falling of the stick on Maury’s cervical vertebra and the awakening induced by the blow. We should not feel justified in ascribing such rapidity to the waking mental activity, and so are inclined to credit the dream activity with a remarkable acceleration of thought as one of its characteristics.

Against this inference, which rapidly becomes popular, more recent authors (Le Lorrain, Egger, and others) have made emphatic objection. They partly doubt the correctness with which the dream was reported by Maury, and partly try to show that the rapidity of our waking mental capacity is quite as great as that which we may concede without reservation to the dream activity. The discussion raises fundamental questions, the settlement of which I do not think concerns me closely. But I must admit that the argument, for instance, of Egger has not impressed me as convincing against the guillotine dream of Maury. I would suggest the following explanation of this dream: Would it be very improbable that the dream of Maury exhibits a phantasy which had been preserved in his memory in a finished state for years, and which was awakened—I should rather say alluded to—at the moment when he became aware of the disturbing stimulus? The difficulty of composing such a long story with all its details in the exceedingly short space of time which is here at the disposal of the dreamer then disappears; the story is already composed. If the stick had struck Maury’s neck when he was awake there would perhaps have been time for the thought: “Why, that’s like being guillotined.” But as he is struck by the stick while asleep, the dream activity quickly finds occasion in the incoming stimulus to construct a wish-fulfilment, as though it thought (this is to be taken entirely figuratively): “Here is a good opportunity to realise the wish phantasy which I formed at such and such a time while I was reading.” That this dream romance is just such a one as a youth would be likely to fashion under the influence of powerful impressions does not seem questionable to me. Who would not have been carried away—especially a Frenchman and a student of the history of civilisation—by descriptions of the Reign of Terror, in which the aristocracy, men and women, the flower of the nation, showed that it was possible to die with a light heart, and preserved their quick wit and refinement of life until the fatal summons? How tempting to fancy one’s self in the midst of all this as one of the young men who parts from his lady with a kiss of the hand to climb fearlessly upon the scaffold! Or perhaps ambition is the ruling motive of the phantasy—the ambition to put one’s self in the place of one of those powerful individuals who merely, by the force of their thinking and their fiery eloquence, rule the city in which the heart of mankind is beating so convulsively, who are impelled by conviction to send thousands of human beings to their death, and who pave the way for the transformation of Europe; who, meanwhile, are not sure of their own heads, and may one day lay them under the knife of the guillotine, perhaps in the rôle of one of the Girondists or of the hero Danton? The feature, “accompanied by an innumerable multitude,” which is preserved in the memory, seems to show that Maury’s phantasy is an ambitious one of this sort.

But this phantasy, which has for a long time been ready, need not be experienced again in sleep; it suffices if it is, so to speak, “touched off.” What I mean is this: If a few notes are struck and someone says, as in Don Juan: “That is from Figaro’s Wedding by Mozart,” memories suddenly surge up within me, none of which I can in the next moment recall to consciousness. The characteristic phrase serves as an entrance station from which a complete whole is simultaneously put in motion. It need not be different in the case of unconscious thought. The psychic station which opens the way to the whole guillotine phantasy is set in motion by the waking stimulus. This phantasy, however, is not passed in review during sleep, but only afterwards in waking memory. Upon awakening one remembers the details of the phantasy, which in the dream was regarded as a whole. There is, withal, no means of making sure that one really has remembered anything which has been dreamed. The same explanation, namely, that one is dealing with finished phantasies which have been set in motion as wholes by the waking stimulus, may be applied to still other dreams which proceed from a waking stimulus—for instance to the battle dream of Napoleon at the explosion of the bomb. I do not mean to assert that all waking dreams admit of this explanation, or that the problem of the accelerated discharge of ideas in dreams is to be altogether solved in this manner.

We must not neglect the relation of this secondary elaboration of the dream content to the other factors in the dream activity. Might the procedure be as follows: the dream-creating factors, the impulse to condense, the necessity of evading the censor, and the regard for dramatic fitness in the psychic resources of the dream—these first of all create a provisional dream content, and this is then subsequently modified until it satisfies the exactions of a second instance? This is hardly probable. It is necessary rather to assume that the demands of this instance are from the very beginning lodged in one of the conditions which the dream must satisfy, and that this condition, just like those of condensation, of censorship, and of dramatic fitness, simultaneously affect the whole mass of material in the dream thoughts in an inductive and selective manner. But of the four conditions necessary for the dream formation, the one last recognised is the one whose exactions appear to be least binding upon the dream. That this psychic function, which undertakes the so-called secondary elaboration of the dream content is identical with the work of our waking thought may be inferred with great probability from the following consideration:—Our waking (foreconscious) thought behaves towards a given object of perception just exactly as the function in question behaves towards the dream content. It is natural for our waking thought to bring about order in the material of perception, to construct relationships, and to make it subject to the requirements of an intelligible coherence. Indeed, we go too far in doing this; the tricks of prestidigitators deceive us by taking advantage of this intellectual habit. In our effort to put together the sensory impressions which are offered to us in a comprehensible manner, we often commit the most bizarre errors and even distort the truth of the material we have before us. Proofs for this are too generally familiar to need more extended consideration here. We fail to see errors in a printed page because our imagination pictures the proper words. The editor of a widely-read French paper is said to have risked the wager that he could print the words “from in front” or “from behind” in every sentence of a long article without any of his readers noticing it. He won the wager. A curious example of incorrect associations years ago caught my attention in a newspaper. After the session of the French chamber, at which Dupuy quelled a panic caused by the explosion of a bomb thrown into the hall by an anarchist by saying calmly, “La séance continue,” the visitors in the gallery were asked to testify as to their impression of the attempted assassination. Among them were two provincials. One of these told that immediately after the conclusion of a speech he had heard a detonation, but had thought that it was the custom in parliament to fire a shot whenever a speaker had finished. The other, who had apparently already heard several speakers, had got the same idea, with the variation, however, that he supposed this shooting to be a sign of appreciation following an especially successful speech.

Thus the psychic instance which approaches the dream content with the demand that it must be intelligible, which subjects it to preliminary interpretation, and in doing so brings about a complete misunderstanding of it, is no other than our normal thought. In our interpretation the rule will be in every case to disregard the apparent coherence of the dream as being of suspicious origin, and, whether the elements are clear or confused, to follow the same regressive path to the dream material.

We now learn upon what the scale of quality in dreams from confusion to clearness—mentioned above, page 305—essentially depends. Those parts of the dream with which the secondary elaboration has been able to accomplish something seem to us clear; those where the power of this activity has failed seem confused. Since the confused parts of the dream are often also those which are less vividly imprinted, we may conclude that the secondary dream-work is also responsible for a contribution to the plastic intensity of the individual dream structures.

If I were to seek an object of comparison for the definitive formation of the dream as it manifests itself under the influence of normal thinking, none better offers itself than those mysterious inscriptions with which Die Fliegende Blaetter has so long amused its readers. The reader is supposed to find a Latin inscription concealed in a given sentence which, for the sake of contrast, is in dialect and as scurrilous as possible in significance. For this purpose the letters are taken from their groupings in syllables and are newly arranged. Now and then a genuine Latin word results, at other places we think that we have abbreviations of such words before us, and at still other places in the inscription we allow ourselves to be carried along over the senselessness of the disjointed letters by the semblance of disintegrated portions or by breaks in the inscription. If we do not wish to respond to the jest we must give up looking for an inscription, must take the letters as we see them, and must compose them into words of our mother tongue, unmindful of the arrangement which is offered.

I shall now undertake a résumé of this extended discussion of the dream activity. We were confronted by the question whether the mind exerts all its capabilities to the fullest development in dream formation, or only a fragment of its capabilities, and these restricted in their activity. Our investigation leads us to reject such a formulation of the question entirely as inadequate to our circumstances. But if we are to remain on the same ground when we answer as that on which the question is urged upon us, we must acquiesce in two conceptions which are apparently opposed and mutually exclusive. The psychic activity in dream formation resolves itself into two functions—the provision of the dream thoughts and the transformation of these into the dream content. The dream thoughts are entirely correct, and are formed with all the psychic expenditure of which we are capable; they belong to our thoughts which have not become conscious, from which our thoughts which have become conscious also result by means of a certain transposition. Much as there may be about them which is worth knowing and mysterious, these problems have no particular relation to the dream, and have no claim to be treated in connection with dream problems. On the other hand, there is that second portion of the activity which changes the unconscious thoughts into the dream content, an activity peculiar to dream life and characteristic of it. Now, this peculiar dream-work is much further removed from the model of waking thought than even the most decided depreciators of psychic activity in dream formation have thought. It is not, one might say, more negligent, more incorrect, more easily forgotten, more incomplete than waking thought; it is something qualitatively altogether different from waking thought, and therefore not in any way comparable to it. It does not in general think, calculate, or judge at all, but limits itself to transforming. It can be exhaustively described if the conditions which must be satisfied at its creation are kept in mind. This product, the dream, must at any cost be withdrawn from the censor, and for this purpose the dream activity makes use of the displacement of psychic intensities up to the transvaluation of all psychic values; thoughts must exclusively or predominatingly be reproduced in the material of visual and acoustic traces of memory, and this requirement secures for the dream-work the regard for presentability, which meets the requirement by furnishing new displacements. Greater intensities are (probably) to be provided than are each night at the disposal of the dream thoughts, and this purpose is served by the prolific condensation which is undertaken with the component parts of the dream thoughts. Little attention is paid to the logical relations of the thought material; they ultimately find a veiled representation in the formal peculiarities of the dream. The affects of the dream thoughts undergo lesser changes than their presentation content. As a rule they are suppressed; where they are preserved they are freed from the presentations and put together according to their similarity. Only one part of the dream-work—the revision varying in amount, made by the partially roused conscious thought—at all agrees with the conception which the authors have tried to extend to the entire activity of dream formation.

VII THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM ACTIVITIES

Among the dreams which I have heard from others there is one which at this point is especially worthy of our attention. It was told to me by a female patient who in turn had heard it in a lecture on dreams. Its original source is unknown to me. This dream evidently made a deep impression upon the lady, as she went so far as to imitate it, i.e. to repeat the elements of this dream in a dream of her own in order to express by this transference her agreement with it in a certain point.

The essential facts of this illustrative dream are as follows: For days and nights a father had watched at the sick-bed of his child. After the child died, he retired to rest in an adjoining room, leaving the door ajar, however, so as to enable him to look from his room into the other, where the corpse lay surrounded by burning candles. An old man, who was left as a watch, sat near the corpse murmuring prayers. After sleeping a few hours the father dreamed that the child stood near his bed clasping his arms and calling out reproachfully, “Father, don’t you see that I am burning?” The father woke and noticed a bright light coming from the adjoining room. Rushing in, he found the old man asleep, and the covers and one arm of the beloved body burned by the fallen candle.

The meaning of this affecting dream is simple enough, and the explanation given by the lecturer, as my patient reported it, was correct. The bright light coming through the open door into the eyes of the sleeper produced the same impression on him as if he had been awake; namely, that a fire had been started near the corpse by a falling candle. It is quite possible that on going to sleep he feared that the aged guardian was not equal to his task.

We can find nothing to change in this interpretation. We can add only that the contents of the dream must be over-determined, and that the talking of the child consisted of phrases that it had uttered while still living, which recalled to the father important events. Perhaps the complaint, “I am burning,” recalled the fever from which the child died, and the words quoted, “Father, don’t you see?” recalled an emotional occurrence unknown to us.

But after we have recognised the dream as a senseful occurrence which can be correlated with our psychic existence, it may be surprising that a dream should have taken place under circumstances which necessitated such immediate awakening. We also notice that the dream does not lack the wish-fulfilment. The child acts as if living; it warns the father itself; it comes to his bed and clasps his arms, as it probably did on the occasion which gave origin to the first part of the speech in the dream. It was for the sake of this wish-fulfilment that the father slept a moment longer. The dream triumphed over the conscious reflection because it could show the child once more alive. If the father had awakened first, and had then drawn the conclusion which led him into the adjoining room, he would have shortened the child’s life by this one moment.

The peculiar feature in this brief dream which engages our interest is quite plain. So far we have mainly endeavoured to ascertain wherein the secret meaning of the dream consists, in what way this is to be discovered, and what means the dream-work uses to conceal it. In other words, our greatest interest has hitherto centred on the problems of interpretation. We now encounter a dream, however, which can be easily explained, the sense of which is plainly presented; and we notice that in spite of this fact the dream still preserves the essential features which plainly differentiate our dreaming from our conscious thinking, and thus clearly demands an explanation. After clearing up all the problems of interpretation, we can still feel how imperfect our psychology of the dream is.

Before entering, however, into this new territory, let us stop and reflect whether we have not missed something important on our way hither. For it must be frankly admitted that we have been traversing the easy and comfortable part of our journey. Hitherto all the paths we have followed have led, if I mistake not, to light, to explication, and to full understanding, but from the moment that we wish to penetrate deeper into the psychic processes of the dream all paths lead into darkness. It is quite impossible to explain the dream as a psychic process, for to explain means to trace to the known, and as yet we do not possess any psychological knowledge under which we can range what may be inferred from our psychological investigation of dreams as their fundamental explanation. On the contrary, we shall be compelled to build a series of new assumptions concerning the structure of the psychic apparatus and its active forces; and this we shall have to be careful not to carry beyond the simplest logical concatenation, as its value may otherwise merge into uncertainty. And, even if we should make no mistake in our conclusions, and take cognisance of all the logical possibilities involved, we shall still be threatened with complete failure in our solution through the probable incompleteness of our elemental data. It will also be impossible to gain, or at least to establish, an explanation for the construction and workings of the psychic instrument even through a most careful investigation of the dream or any other single activity. On the contrary, it will be necessary for this end to bring together whatever appears decisively as constant after a comparative study of a whole series of psychic activities. Thus the psychological conceptions which we shall gain from an analysis of the dream process will have to wait, as it were, at the junction point until they can be connected with the results of other investigations which may have advanced to the nucleus of the same problem from another starting point.

(a) Forgetting in Dreams.

I propose, then, first, to turn to a subject which has given rise to an objection hitherto unnoticed, threatening to undermine the foundation of our work in dream interpretation. It has been objected in more than one quarter that the dream which we wish to interpret is really unknown to us, or, to be more precise, that we have no assurance of knowing it as it has really occurred (see p. 37). What we recollect of the dream, and what we subject to our methods of interpretation, is in the first place disfigured through our treacherous memory, which seems particularly unfitted to retain the dream, and which may have omitted precisely the most important part of the dream content. For, when we pay attention to our dreams, we often find cause to complain that we have dreamed much more than we remember; that, unfortunately, we know nothing more than this one fragment, and that even this seems to us peculiarly uncertain. On the other hand, everything assures us that our memory reproduces the dream not only fragmentarily but also delusively and falsely. Just as on the one hand we may doubt whether the material dreamt was really as disconnected and confused as we remember it, so on the other hand may we doubt whether a dream was as connected as we relate it; whether in the attempt at reproduction we have not filled in the gaps existing or caused by forgetfulness with new material arbitrarily chosen; whether we have not embellished, rounded off, and prepared the dream so that all judgment as to its real content becomes impossible. Indeed, one author (Spitta) has expressed his belief that all that is orderly and connected is really first put into the dream during our attempt to recall it. Thus we are in danger of having wrested from our hands the very subject whose value we have undertaken to determine.

In our dream interpretations we have thus far ignored these warnings. Indeed, the demand for interpretation was, on the contrary, found to be no less perceptible in the smallest, most insignificant, and most uncertain ingredients of the dream content than in those containing the distinct and definite parts. In the dream of Irma’s injection we read, “I quickly called in Dr. M.,” and we assumed that even this small addendum would not have gotten into the dream if it had not had a special derivation. Thus we reached the history of that unfortunate patient to whose bed I “quickly” called in the older colleague. In the apparently absurd dream which treated the difference between 51 and 56 as quantité négligé, the number 51 was repeatedly mentioned. Instead of finding this self-evident or indifferent, we inferred from it a second train of thought in the latent content of the dream which led to the number 51. By following up this clue we came to the fears which placed 51 years as a limit of life, this being in most marked contrast to a dominant train of thought which boastfully knew no limit to life. In the dream “Non Vixit” I found, as an insignificant interposition that I at first overlooked, the sentence, “As P. does not understand him, Fl. asks me,” &c. The interpretation then coming to a standstill, I returned to these words, and found through them the way to the infantile phantasy, which appeared in the dream thoughts as an intermediary point of junction. This came about by means of the poet’s verses:

Seldom have you understood me, Seldom have I understood you, But when we got into the mire, We at once understood each other.