Part 93

Footnote DK:

This is the real inciter of the dream.

Footnote DL:

By way of supplement. Such books are poison to a young girl. She herself in youth had drawn much information from forbidden books.

Footnote DM:

A further train of thought leads to Penthesileia by the same author: cruelty towards her lover.

Footnote DN:

Given by translator as author’s example could not be translated.

Footnote DO:

The same analysis and synthesis of syllables—a veritable chemistry of syllables—serves us for many a jest in waking life. “What is the cheapest method of obtaining silver? You go to a field where silver-berries are growing and pick them; then the berries are eliminated and the silver remains in a free state.” The first person who read and criticised this book made the objection to me—which other readers will probably repeat—“that the dreamer often appears too witty.” That is true, as long as it applies to the dreamer; it involves a condemnation only when its application is extended to the interpreter of the dream. In waking reality I can make very little claim to the predicate “witty”; if my dreams appear witty, this is not the fault of my individuality, but of the peculiar psychological conditions under which the dream is fabricated, and is intimately connected with the theory of wit and the comical. The dream becomes witty because the shortest and most direct way to the expression of its thoughts is barred for it: the dream is under constraint. My readers may convince themselves that the dreams of my patients give the impression of being witty (attempting to be witty), in the same degree and in a greater than my own. Nevertheless this reproach impelled me to compare the technique of wit with the dream activity, which I have done in a book published in 1905, on Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious. (Author.)

Footnote DP:

Lasker died of progressive paralysis, that is of the consequences of an infection caught from a woman (lues); Lasalle, as is well known, was killed in a duel on account of a lady.

Footnote DQ:

In the case of a young man who was suffering from obsessions, but whose intellectual functions were intact and highly developed, I recently found the only exception to this rule. The speeches which occurred in his dreams did not originate in speeches which he had heard or had made himself, but corresponded to the undisfigured wording of his obsessive thoughts, which only came to his consciousness in a changed state while he was awake.

Footnote DR:

Psychic intensity, value, and emphasis due to the interest of an idea are, of course, to be kept distinct from sensational intensity, and from intensity of that which is conceived.

Footnote DS:

Since I consider this reference of dream disfigurement to the censor as the essence of my dream theory, I here insert the latter portion of a story “Traumen wie Wachen” from Phantasien eines Realisten, by Lynkus, Vienna, (second edition, 1900), in which I find this chief feature of my theory reproduced:—

“Concerning a man who possesses the remarkable quality of never dreaming nonsense....”

“Your marvellous characteristic of dreaming as you wake is based upon your virtues, upon your goodness, your justice, and your love for truth; it is the moral clearness of your nature which makes everything about you intelligible.”

“But if you think the matter over carefully,” replied the other, “I almost believe that all people are created as I am, and that no human being ever dreams nonsense! A dream which is so distinctly remembered that it can be reproduced, which is therefore no dream of delirium, always has a meaning; why, it cannot be otherwise! For that which is in contradiction with itself can never be grouped together as a whole. The fact that time and space are often thoroughly shaken up detracts nothing from the real meaning of the dream, because neither of them has had any significance whatever for its essential contents. We often do the same thing in waking life; think of the fairy-tale, of many daring and profound phantastic creations, about which only an ignorant person would say: ‘That is nonsense! For it is impossible.’”

“If it were only always possible to interpret dreams correctly, as you have just done with mine!” said the friend.

“That is certainly not an easy task, but the dreamer himself ought always to succeed in doing it with a little concentration of attention.... You ask why it is generally impossible? Your dreams seem to conceal something secret, something unchaste of a peculiar and higher nature, a certain mystery in your nature which cannot easily be revealed by thought; and it is for that reason that your dreaming seems so often to be without meaning, or even to be a contradiction. But in the profoundest sense this is by no means the case; indeed it cannot be true at all, for it is always the same person, whether he is asleep or awake.”

Footnote DT:

I have since given the complete analysis and synthesis of two dreams in the Bruchstueck einer Hysterieanalyse, 1905.

Footnote DU:

From a work of K. Abel, Der Gegensinn der Urworte, 1884 (see my review of it in the Bleuler-Freud Jahrbuch, II., 1910), I learned with surprise a fact which is confirmed by other philologists, that the oldest languages behaved in this regard quite like the dream. They originally had only one word for both extremes in a series of qualities or activities (strong—weak, old—young, far—near, to tie—to separate), and formed separate designations for the two extremes only secondarily through slight modifications of the common primitive word. Abel demonstrated these relationships with rare exceptions in the old Egyptian, and he was able to show distinct remnants of the same development in the Semitic and Indo-Germanic languages.

Footnote DV: