Freud - Complete Works (118 page)
I
Tired and hungry after a journey,
I went to bed, and the major vital needs began to announce their
presence in my sleep; I dreamt as follows:
I went into a kitchen in
search of some pudding. Three women were standing in it; one of
them was the hostess of the inn and was twisting something about in
her hands, as though she were making Knödel
.
She
answered that I must wait until she was ready
. (These were not
definite spoken words.)
I felt impatient and went off with a
sense of injury. I put on an overcoat. But the first I tried on was
too long for me. I took it off, rather surprised to find it was
trimmed with fur. A second one that I put on had had a long strip
with a Turkish design let into it. A stranger with a long face and
a short pointed beard came up and tried to prevent my putting it
on, saying it was his. I showed him then that it was embroidered
all over with a Turkish pattern. He asked: ‘What have the
Turkish (designs, stripes . . .) to do with you?’ But then we
became quite friendly with each other
.
The Interpretation Of Dreams
688
When I began analysing this dream,
I thought quite unexpectedly of the first novel I ever read (when I
was thirteen, perhaps); as a matter of fact I began at the end of
the first volume. I have never known the name of the novel or of
its author; but I have a vivid memory of its ending. The hero went
mad and kept calling out the names of the three women who had
brought the greatest happiness and sorrow into his life. One of
these names was
Pélagie
. I still had no notion what
this recollection was going to lead to in the analysis. In
connection with the three women I thought of the three Fates who
spin the destiny of man, and I knew that one of the three women -
the inn-hostess in the dream - was the mother who gives life, and
furthermore (as in my own case) gives the living creature its first
nourishment. Love and hunger, I reflected, meet at a woman’s
breast. A young man who was a great admirer of feminine beauty was
talking once - so the story went - of the good-looking wet-nurse
who had suckled him when he was a baby: ‘I’m
sorry’, he remarked, ‘that I didn’t make a better
use of my opportunity.’ I was in the habit of quoting this
anecdote to explain the factor of ‘deferred action’ in
the mechanism of the psychoneuroses. - One of the Fates, then, was
rubbing the palms of her hands together as though she was making
dumplings: a queer occupation for a Fate, and one that cried out
for an explanation. This was provided by another and earlier memory
of my childhood. When I was six years old and was given my first
lessons by my mother, I was expected to believe that we were all
made of earth and must therefore return to earth. This did not suit
me and I expressed doubts of the doctrine. My mother thereupon
rubbed the palms of her hands together - just as she did in making
dumplings, except that there was no dough between them - and showed
me the blackish scales of
epidermis
produced by the friction
as a proof that we were made of earth. My astonishment at this
ocular demonstration knew no bounds and I acquiesced in the belief
which I was later to hear expressed in the words: ‘
Du bist
der Natur einen Tod schuldig
.’ [‘Thou owest Nature
a death.’]¹ So they really were Fates that I found in
the kitchen when I went into it - as I had so often done in my
childhood when I was hungry, while my mother, standing by the fire,
had admonished me that I must wait till dinner was ready. - And now
for the dumplings - the
Knödel
! One at least of my
teachers at the University - and precisely the one to whom I owe my
histological knowledge (for instance of the
epidermis
) -
would infallibly be reminded by the name
Knödl
of a
person against whom he had been obliged to take legal action for
plagiarizing
his writings. The idea of plagiarizing - of
appropriating whatever one can, even though it belongs to someone
else - clearly led on to the second part of the dream, in which I
was treated as though I were the thief who had for some time
carried on his business of stealing overcoats in the lecture-rooms.
I had written down the word ‘plagiarizing’, without
thinking about it, because it occurred to me; but now I noticed
that it could form a bridge [
Brücke
] between different
pieces of the dream’s manifest content. A chain of
associations (
Pélagie - plagiarizing -
plagiostomes²
or sharks [
Haifische
] -
a
fish’s swimming-bladder
[
Fischblase
]) connected
the old novel with the case of Knödl and with the overcoats,
which clearly referred to implements used in sexual technique. (Cf.
Maury’s alliterative dreams.) No doubt it was a very
far-fetched and senseless chain of thought; but I could never have
constructed it in waking life unless it had already been
constructed by the dream-work. And, as though the need to set up
forced connections regarded
nothing
as sacred, the honoured
name of Brücke (cf. the verbal
bridge
above) reminded
me of the Institute in which I spent the happiest hours of my
student life, free from all other desires -
So wird’s Euch an der Weisheit
Brüsten
Mit jedem Tage mehr gelüsten
³
- in complete contrast to the desires which
were now
plaguing
me in my dreams. Finally there came to
mind another much respected teacher - his name, Fleischl
[‘
Fleisch
’ = ‘meat’], like
Knödl, sounded like something to eat - and a distressing scene
in which
scales of epidermis
played a part (my mother and
the inn-hostess) as well as
madness
(the novel) and a drug
from the dispensary which removes
hunger
: cocaine.
¹
Both of the emotions that were attached to
these childhood scenes - astonishment and submission to the
inevitable - had occurred in a dream which I had had shortly before
this one and which had first reminded me of this event in my
childhood.
²
I have deliberately avoided enlarging upon
the plagiostomes; they reminded me of an unpleasant occasion on
which I had disgraced myself in connection with this same
University teacher.
³
[‘Thus, at the
breasts
of
Wisdom clinging,
Thou’lt find
each day a greater rapture bringing.’]
The Interpretation Of Dreams
689
I might pursue the intricate
trains of thought further along these lines and explain fully the
part of the dream which I have not analysed; but I must desist at
this point because the personal sacrifice demanded would be too
great. I will only pick out one thread, which is qualified to lead
us straight to one of the dream-thoughts underlying the confusion.
The stranger with the long face and pointed beard who tried to
prevent my putting on the overcoat bore the features of a
shop-keeper at Spalato from whom my wife had bought a quantity of
Turkish
stuffs. He was called Popovic, an equivocal name, on
which a humorous writer, Stettenheim, has already made a suggestive
comment: ‘He told me his name and blushingly pressed my
hand.’ Once again I found myself misusing a name, as I
already had done with Pélagie, Knödl, Brücke and
Fleischl. It could scarcely be denied that playing about with names
like this was a kind of childish naughtiness. But if I indulged in
it, it was as an act of retribution; for my own name had been the
victim of feeble witticisms like these on countless occasions.
Goethe, I recalled, had remarked somewhere upon people’s
sensitiveness about their names: how we seem to have grown into
them like our
skin
. He had said this
á propos
of a line written on his name by Herder:
‘Der du von Göttern abstammst, von Gothen oder vom
Kote.’ -
¹
‘So seid ihr Götterbilder auch zu Staub.’
²
I noticed that my digression on the subject of
the misuse of names was only leading up to this complaint. But I
must break off here. - My wife’s purchase made at Spalato
reminded me of another purchase, made at Cattaro, which I had been
too cautious over, so that I had lost an opportunity of making some
nice acquisitions. (Cf. the neglected opportunity with the
wet-nurse.) For one of the thoughts which my hunger introduced into
the dream was this: ‘One should never neglect an opportunity,
but always take what one can even when it involves doing a small
wrong. One should never neglect an opportunity, since life is short
and death inevitable.’ Because this lesson of ‘
carpe
diem
’ had among other meanings a sexual one, and because
the desire it expressed did not stop short of doing wrong, it had
reason to dread the censorship and was obliged to conceal itself
behind a dream. All kinds of thoughts having a
contrary
sense then found voice: memories of a time when the dreamer was
content with
spiritual
food, restraining thoughts of every
kind and even threats of the most revolting sexual punishments.
¹
[`Thou who art the offspring of gods or of
Goths or of dung’]
²
[`So you too, divine figures, have turned
to dust!’]
The Interpretation Of Dreams
690
II
The next dream calls for a rather
long preamble:
I had driven to the Western
Station to take the train for my summer holiday at Aussee, but had
arrived on the platform while an earlier train, going to Ischl, was
still standing in the station. There I had seen Count Thun who was
once again travelling to Ischl for an audience with the Emperor.
Though it was raining, he had arrived in an open carriage. He had
walked straight in through the entrance for the Local Trains. The
ticket inspector at the gate had not recognized him and had tried
to take his ticket, but he had waved the man aside with a curt
motion of his hand and without giving any explanation. After the
train for Ischl had gone out, I ought by rights to have left the
platform again and returned to the waiting room; and it had cost me
some trouble to arrange matters so that I was allowed to stop on
the platform. I had passed the time in keeping a look-out to see if
anyone came along and tried to get a reserved compartment by
exercising some sort of ‘pull’. I had intended in that
case to make a loud protest: that is to say to claim equal rights.
Meantime I had been humming a tune to myself which I recognized as
Figaro’s aria from
Le Nozze di Figaro
:
Se vuol ballare, signor contino,
Se vuol ballare, signor contino,
Il chitarino le suonerò
¹
(It is a little doubtful whether anyone else
would have recognized the tune.)
¹
[‘If my Lord Count is inclined to go
dancing,
If my
Lord Count is inclined to go dancing,
I’II be quite ready to play him a
tune . . .’]
The Interpretation Of Dreams
691
The whole evening I had been in
high spirits and in a combative mood. I had chaffed my waiter and
my cab-driver - without, I hope, hurting their feelings. And now
all kinds of insolent and revolutionary ideas were going through my
head, in keeping with Figaro’s words and with my
recollections of Beaumarchais’ comedy which I had seen acted
by the
Comédie français
. I thought of the
phrase about the great gentlemen who had taken the trouble to be
born, and of the
droit du Seigneur
which Count Almaviva
tried to exercise over Susanna. I thought, too, of how our
malicious opposition journalists made jokes over Count Thun’s
name, calling him instead ‘Count Nichtsthun’. Not that
I envied him. He was on his way to a difficult audience with the
Emperor, while
I
was the real Count Do-nothing -(just off on
my holidays. There followed all sorts of enjoyable plans for the
holidays. At this point a gentleman came on to the platform whom I
recognized as a Government invigilator at medical examinations, and
who by his activities in that capacity had won the flattering
nickname of ‘Government bedfellow’. He asked to be
given a first-class half-compartment to himself in virtue of his
official position, and I heard one railwayman saying to another:
‘Where are we to put the gentleman with the half first-class
ticket?’ This, I thought to myself, was a fine example of
privilege; after all
I
had paid the full first-class fare.
And I did in fact get a compartment to myself, but not in a
corridor coach, so that there would be no lavatory available during
the night. I complained to an official without any success; but I
got my own back on him by suggesting that he should at all events
have a hole made in the floor of the compartment to meet the
possible needs of passengers. And in fact I did wake up at a
quarter to three in the morning with a pressing need to micturate,
having had the following dream: