Part 86

The dream afterwards accomplished the same purpose in the case of the grandmother, who is older than the child by about seventy years, as it did in the case of the granddaughter. After she had been forced to go hungry for several days on account of the restlessness of her floating kidney, she dreamed, apparently with a transference into the happy time of her flowering maidenhood, that she had been “asked out,” invited as a guest for both the important meals, and each time had been served with the most delicious morsels.

Footnote AB:

A more searching investigation into the psychic life of the child teaches us, to be sure, that sexual motive powers in infantile forms, which have been too long overlooked, play a sufficiently great part in the psychic activity of the child. This raises some doubt as to the happiness of the child, as imagined later by the adults. Cf. the author’s “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory,” translated by A. A. Brill, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Publishing Company.

Footnote AC:

It should not be left unmentioned that children sometimes show complex and more obscure dreams, while, on the other hand, adults will often under certain conditions show dreams of an infantile character. How rich in unsuspected material the dreams of children of from four to five years might be is shown by examples in my “Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben” (Jahrbuch, ed. by Bleuler & Freud, 1909), and in Jung’s “Ueber Konflikte der kindlichen Seele” (ebda. ii. vol., 1910). On the other hand, it seems that dreams of an infantile type reappear especially often in adults if they are transferred to unusual conditions of life. Thus Otto Nordenskjold, in his book Antarctic (1904), writes as follows about the crew who passed the winter with him. “Very characteristic for the trend of our inmost thoughts were our dreams, which were never more vivid and numerous than at present. Even those of our comrades with whom dreaming had formerly been an exception had long stories to tell in the morning when we exchanged our experiences in the world of phantasies. They all referred to that outer world which was now so far from us, but they often fitted into our present relations. An especially characteristic dream was the one in which one of our comrades believed himself back on the bench at school, where the task was assigned him of skinning miniature seals which were especially made for the purposes of instruction. Eating and drinking formed the central point around which most of our dreams were grouped. One of us, who was fond of going to big dinner parties at night, was exceedingly glad if he could report in the morning ‘that he had had a dinner consisting of three courses.’ Another dreamed of tobacco—of whole mountains of tobacco; still another dreamed of a ship approaching on the open sea under full sail. Still another dream deserves to be mentioned. The letter carrier brought the mail, and gave a long explanation of why he had had to wait so long for it; he had delivered it at the wrong place, and only after great effort had been able to get it back. To be sure, we occupied ourselves in sleep with still more impossible things, but the lack of phantasy in almost all the dreams which I myself dreamed or heard others relate was quite striking. It would surely have been of great psychological interest if all the dreams could have been noted. But one can readily understand how we longed for sleep. It alone could afford us everything that we all most ardently desired.”

Footnote AD:

A Hungarian proverb referred to by Ferenczi states more explicitly that “the pig dreams of acorns, the goose of maize.”

Footnote AE:

It is quite incredible with what stubbornness readers and critics exclude this consideration, and leave unheeded the fundamental differentiation between the manifest and the latent dream content.

Footnote AF:

It is remarkable how my memory narrows here for the purposes of analysis—while I am awake. I have known five of my uncles, and have loved and honoured one of them. But at the moment when I overcame my resistance to the interpretation of the dream I said to myself, “I have only one uncle, the one who is intended in the dream.”

Footnote AG:

The word is here used in the original Latin sense instantia, meaning energy, continuance or persistence in doing. (Translator.)

Footnote AH:

Such hypocritical dreams are not unusual occurrences with me or with others. While I am working up a certain scientific problem, I am visited for many nights in rapid succession by a somewhat confusing dream which has as its content reconciliation with a friend long ago dropped. After three or four attempts, I finally succeeded in grasping the meaning of this dream. It was in the nature of an encouragement to give up the little consideration still left for the person in question, to drop him completely, but it disguised itself shamefacedly in the opposite feeling. I have reported a “hypocritical Oedipus dream” of a person, in which the hostile feelings and the wishes of death of the dream thoughts were replaced by manifest tenderness. (“Typisches Beispiel eines verkappten Oedipustraumes,” Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, Bd. 1, Heft 1–11, 1910.) Another class of hypocritical dreams will be reported in another place.

Footnote AI:

To sit for the painter. Goethe: “And if he has no backside, how can the nobleman sit?”

Footnote AJ:

I myself regret the introduction of such passages from the psychopathology of hysteria, which, because of their fragmentary representation and of being torn from all connection with the subject, cannot have a very enlightening influence. If these passages are capable of throwing light upon the intimate relations between the dream and the psychoneuroses, they have served the purpose for which I have taken them up.

Footnote AK:

Something like the smoked salmon in the dream of the deferred supper.

Footnote AL:

It often happens that a dream is told incompletely, and that a recollection of the omitted portions appears only in the course of the analysis. These portions subsequently fitted in, regularly furnish the key to the interpretation. Cf. below, about forgetting in dreams.

Footnote AM:

Similar “counter wish-dreams” have been repeatedly reported to me within the last few years by my pupils who thus reacted to their first encounter with the “wish theory of the dream.”

Footnote AN:

We may mention here the simplification and modification of this fundamental formula, propounded by Otto Rank: “On the basis and with the help of repressed infantile sexual material, the dream regularly represents as fulfilled actual, and as a rule also erotic, wishes, in a disguised and symbolic form.” (“Ein Traum, der sich selbst deutet,” Jahrbuch, v., Bleuler-Freud, II. B., p. 519, 1910.)

Footnote AO: