Freud - Complete Works (112 page)

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1911:] As I have
mentioned in a postscript to my first chapter (
p. 599 f.
), Hermann Swoboda has made
a far-reaching application to the mental field of the biological
periodic intervals of 23 and 28 days discovered by Wilhelm Fliess.
He has asserted in particular that these periods determine the
emergence of the elements which appear in dreams. No essential
modification in dream-interpretation would be involved if this fact
were to be established; it would merely provide a fresh source of
origin of dream-material. I have, however, recently made some
investigations upon my own dreams, to test now far the
‘theory of periodicity’ is applicable to them. For this
purpose I chose some specially outstanding dream-elements the time
of whose appearance in real life could be determined with
certainty.

I. DREAM OF OCTOBER 1ST-2ND,
1910

  
(Fragment) . . .
Somewhere in Italy. Three
daughters were showing me some small curios, as though we were in
an antique shop, and were sitting on my lap. I commented on one of
the objects: ‘Why, you got that from me’, and saw
plainly before me a small profile relief with the clear-cut
features of Savonarola
.

  
When had I last seen a portrait of Savonarola? My travel-diary
proved that I had been in Florence on September 4th and 5th. While
I was there I thought I would show my travelling companion the
medallion bearing the fanatical monk’s features, let into the
pavement of the Piazza della Signoria, which marks the place where
he was burned. I pointed it out to him, I believe, on the morning
of the 3rd. Between this impression and its reappearance in the
dream 27 + 1 days elapsed - Fliess’s ‘female
period’. Unluckily for the conclusiveness of this example,
however, I must add that on the actual ‘dream-day’ I
had a visit (for the first time since my return) from a capable but
gloomy-looking medical colleague of mine whom I had many years
before nick-named ‘Rabbi Savonarola’. He introduced a
patient to me who was suffering from the effects of an accident to
the Pontebba express, in which I myself had travelled a week
earlier, and my thoughts were thus led back to my recent visit to
Italy. The appearance in the content of the dream of the
outstanding element ‘Savonarola’ is thus accounted for
by my colleague’s visit on the dream-day; and the interval of
28 days is deprived of its significance.

II. DREAM OF OCTOBER 10TH-11TH,
1910

  
I was once more working at chemistry in the University
laboratory. Hofrat L. invited me to come somewhere and walked in
front of me in the corridor, holding a lamp or some other
instrument before him in his uplifted hand and with his head
stretched forward in a peculiar attitude, with a clear-sighted (?
far-sighted) look about him. Then we crossed an open
space
. . . . (The remainder was
forgotten.)

   The
most outstanding point in the content of this dream was the way in
which Hofrat L. held the lamp (or magnifying glass ) before him,
with his eyes peering into the distance. It was many years since I
had last seen him; but I knew at once that he was only a substitute
figure in the place of someone else, someone greater than he -
Archimedes, whose statue stands near the Fountain of Arethusa at
Syracuse in that very attitude, holding up his burning-glass and
peering out towards the besieging army of the Romans. When did I
see that statue for the first (and last) time? According to my
diary it was on the evening of September 17th; and between then and
the time of the dream 13 + 10 = 23 days had elapsed -
Fliess’s ‘male period’.

  
Unfortunately, when we go into the interpretation of this dream in
greater detail, we once again find that the coincidence loses some
of its conclusiveness. The exciting cause of the dream was the news
I received on the dream-day that the clinic, in whose lecture room
I was able by courtesy to deliver my lectures, was shortly to be
removed to another locality. I took it for granted that its new
situation would be very out of the way and told myself that in that
case I might just as well not have a lecture room at my disposal at
all. From that point my thoughts must have gone back to the
beginning of my career as University Lecturer when I in fact had no
lecture room and when my efforts to get hold of one met with little
response from the powerfully placed Hofrats and Professors. In
those circumstances I had gone to L., who at that time held the
office of Dean of the Faculty and who I believed was friendlily
disposed to me, to complain of my troubles. He promised to help me,
but I beard nothing more from him. In the dream he was Archimedes,
giving me a
p
o
u
s
u
v
[footing] and himself leading me to the new
locality. Anyone who is an adept at interpretation will guess that
the dream-thoughts were not exactly free from ideas of vengeance
and self-importance. It seems clear, in any case, that without this
exciting cause Archimedes would scarcely have found his way into my
dream that night; nor am I convinced that the powerful and still
recent impression made on me by the statue in Syracuse might not
have produced its effect after some different interval of
time.

III. DREAM OF OCTOBER 2ND-3rd,
1910

  
(Fragment) . . .
Something about Professor Oser,
who had drawn up the menu for me himself, which had a very soothing
effect
. . . . (Some more that was
forgotten.)

  
This dream was a reaction to a digestive disturbance that day,
which made me consider whether I should go to one of my colleagues
to have a dietary prescribed for me. My reason for choosing Oser
for that purpose, who had died in the course of the summer, went
back to the death of another University teacher whom I greatly
admired, which had occurred shortly before (on October 1st). When
had Oser died? and when had I heard of his death? According to a
paragraph in the papers he had died on August 22nd. I had been in
Holland at that time and had my Vienna newspaper sent on to me
regularly; so that I must have read of his death on August 24th or
25th. But here the interval no longer corresponds to either period.
It amounts to 7 + 30 + 2 = 39 days or possibly 40 days. I could not
recall having spoken or thought of Oser in the meantime.

  
Intervals such as this one, which cannot be fitted into the theory
of periodicity without further manipulation, occur far more
frequently in my dreams than intervals which
can
be so
fitted. The only relation which I find occurs with regularity is
the relation which I have insisted upon in the text and which
connects the dream with some impression of the
dream-day.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

657

   Havelock Ellis, who has also given
some attention to this point, declares that he was unable to find
any such periodicity in his dreams in spite of looking for it. He
records a dream of being in Spain and of wanting to go to a place
called Daraus, Varaus or Zaraus. On waking he could not recall any
such place-name, and put the dream on one side. A few months later
he discovered that Zaraus was in fact the name of a station on the
line between San Sebastian and Bilbao, through which his train had
passed 250 days before he had the dream.

   I believe, then, that the
instigating agent of every dream is to be found among the
experiences which one has not yet ‘slept on’. Thus the
relations of a dream’s content to impressions of the most
recent past (with the single exception of the day immediately
preceding the night of the dream) differ in no respect from its
relations to impressions dating from any remoter period. Dreams can
select their material from any part of the dreamer’s life,
provided only that there is a train of thought linking the
experience of the dream-day (the ‘recent’ impressions)
with the earlier ones.

   But why this preference for
recent impressions? We shall form some notion on this point, if we
submit one of the dreams in the series I have just quoted to a
fuller analysis. For this purpose I shall choose the

DREAM OF THE BOTANICAL MONOGRAPH

  
I had written a monograph on a
certain plant. The book lay before me and I was at the moment
turning over a folded coloured plate. Bound up in each copy there
was a dried specimen of the plant, as though it had been taken from
a herbarium.

ANALYSIS

   That morning I had seen a new
book in the window of a book-shop, bearing the title
The Genus
Cyclamen
- evidently a
monograph
on that plant.

   Cyclamens, I reflected, were my
wife’s
favourite flowers
and I reproached myself for
so rarely remembering to
bring
her
flowers
, which was
what she liked. - The subject of ‘
bringing
flowers
’ recalled an anecdote which I had recently
repeated to a circle of friends and which I had used as evidence in
favour of my theory that forgetting is very often determined by an
unconscious purpose and that it always enables one to deduce the
secret intentions of the person who forgets. A young woman was
accustomed to receiving a bouquet of flowers from her husband on
her birthday. One year this token of his affection failed to
appear, and she burst into tears. Her husband came in and had no
idea why she was crying till she told him that to-day was her
birthday. He clasped his hand to his head and exclaimed:
‘I’m so sorry, but I’d quite forgotten.
I’ll go out at once and fetch your
flowers
.’ But
she was not to be consoled; for she recognized that her
husband’s forgetfulness was a proof that she no longer had
the same place in his thoughts as she had formerly. - This lady,
Frau L., had met my wife two days before I had the dream, had told
her that she was feeling quite well and enquired after me. Some
years ago she had come to me for treatment.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

658

   I now made a fresh start. Once, I
recalled, I really
had
written something in the nature of a
monograph on a plant
, namely a dissertation on the
coca-plant
, which had drawn Karl Koller’s attention to
the anaesthetic properties of cocaine. I had myself indicated this
application of the alkaloid in my published paper, but I had not
been thorough enough to pursue the matter further. This reminded me
that on the morning of the day after the dream - I had not found
time to interpret it till the evening - I had thought about cocaine
in a kind of day-dream. If ever I got glaucoma, I had thought, I
should travel to Berlin and get myself operated on, incognito, in
my friend’s house, by a surgeon recommended by him. The
operating surgeon, who would have no idea of my identity, would
boast once again of how easily such operations could be per formed
since the introduction of cocaine; and I should not give the
slightest hint that I myself had had a share in the discovery. This
phantasy had led on to reflections of how awkward it is, when all
is said and done, for a physician to ask for medical treatment for
himself from his professional colleagues. The Berlin eye-surgeon
would not know me, and I should be able to pay his fees like anyone
else. It was not until I had recalled this day-dream that I
realized that the recollection of a specific event lay behind it.
Shortly after Koller’s discovery, my father had in fact been
attacked by glaucoma; my friend Dr. Königstein, the ophthalmic
surgeon, had operated on him; while Dr. Koller had been in charge
of the cocaine anaesthesia and had commented on the fact that this
case had brought together all of the three men who had had a share
in the introduction of cocaine.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

659

   My thoughts then went on to the
occasion when I had last been reminded of this business of the
cocaine. It had been a few days earlier, when I had been looking at
a copy of a
Festschrift
in which grateful pupils had
celebrated the jubilee of their teacher and laboratory director.
Among the laboratory’s claims to distinction which were
enumerated in this book I had seen a mention of the fact that
Koller had made his discovery there of the anaesthetic properties
of cocaine. I then suddenly perceived that my dream was connected
with an event of the previous evening. I had walked home precisely
with Dr. Königstein and had got into conversation with him
about a matter which never fails to excite my feelings whenever it
is raised. While I was talking to him in the entrance-hall,
Professor
Gärtner
and his wife had joined us; and I
could not help congratulating them both on their
blooming
looks. But Professor Gärtner was one of the authors of the
Festschrift
I have just mentioned, and may well have
reminded me of it. Moreover, the Frau L., whose disappointment on
her birthday I described earlier, was mentioned - though only, it
is true, in another connection - in my conversation with Dr.
Königstein.

   I will make an attempt at
interpreting the other determinants of the content of the dream as
well. There was
a dried specimen of the plant
included in
the monograph, as though it had been a
herbarium
. This led
me to a memory from my secondary school. Our headmaster once called
together the boys from the higher forms and handed over the
school’s herbarium to them to be looked through and cleaned.
Some small
worms
- book worms - had found their way into it.
He does not seem to have had much confidence in my helpfulness, for
he handed me only a few sheets. These, as I could still recall,
included some Crucifers. I never had a specially intimate contact
with botany. In my preliminary examination in botany I was also
given a Crucifer to identify - and failed to do so. My prospects
would not have been too bright, if I had not been helped out by my
theoretical knowledge. I went on from the Cruciferae to the
Compositae. It occurred to me that artichokes were Compositae, and
indeed I might fairly have called them my
favourite flowers
.
Being more generous than I am, my wife often brought me back these
favourite flowers of mine from the market.