Freud - Complete Works (122 page)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

706

   The value of the views put
forward by Scherner and Volkelt lies in the fact that they draw
attention to a number of characteristics of the content of dreams
which call for explanation and seem to promise fresh discoveries.
It is perfectly true that dreams contain symbolizations of bodily
organs and functions, that water in a dream often points to a
urinary stimulus, and that the male genitals can be represented by
an upright stick or a pillar, and so on. In the case of dreams in
which the field of vision is full of movement and bright colours,
in contrast to the drabness of other dreams, it is scarcely
possible not to interpret them as ‘dreams with a visual
stimulus’; nor can one dispute the part played by illusions
in the case of dreams characterized by noise and a confusion of
voices. Scherner reports a dream of two rows of pretty, fair-haired
boys standing opposite each other on a bridge, and of their
attacking each other and then going back to their original
position, till at last the dreamer saw himself sitting down on a
bridge and pulling a long tooth out of his jaw. Similarly Volkelt
reports a dream in which two rows of drawers in a cupboard played a
part and which once more ended with the dreamer pulling out a
tooth. Dream-formations such as these, which are recorded in great
numbers by the two authors, forbid our dismissing Scherner’s
theory as an idle invention without looking for its kernel of
truth. The task, then, that faces us is to find an explanation of
another kind for the supposed symbolization of what is alleged to
be a dental stimulus.

   Throughout the whole of this
discussion of the theory of the somatic sources of dreams I have
refrained from making use of the argument based upon my
dream-analyses. If it can be proved, by a procedure which other
writers have not employed upon their dream-material, that dreams
possess a value of their own as psychical acts, that wishes are the
motive for their construction and that experiences of the preceding
day provide the immediate material for their content, then any
other theory of dreams, which neglects so important a procedure of
research and accordingly represents dreams as a useless and
puzzling psychical reaction to somatic stimuli, stands condemned
without there being any necessity for specific criticisms.
Otherwise - and this seems highly improbable - there would have to
be two quite different kinds of dreaming, one of which has come
only under
my
observation and the other only under that of
the earlier authorities. All that remains, therefore, is to find a
place in my theory of dreams for the facts upon which the current
theory of the somatic stimulation of dreams is based.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

707

   We have already taken the first
step in this direction by advancing the thesis (see
p. 666 f.
) that the dream-work is
under the necessity of combining into a unity all instigations to
dreaming which are active simultaneously. We found that, when two
or more experiences capable of creating an impression are left over
from the previous day, the wishes derived from them are combined in
a single dream, and similarly that the psychically significant
impressions and the indifferent experiences from the previous day
are brought together in the dream-material, provided always that it
is possible to set up communicating ideas between them. Thus a
dream appears to be a reaction to everything that is simultaneously
present in the sleeping mind as currently active material. So far
as we have hitherto analysed the material of dreams, we have seen
it as a collection of psychical residues and memory-traces, to
which (on account of the preference shown for recent and infantile
material) we have been led to attribute a hitherto indefinable
quality of being ‘currently active’. We can foresee,
then, without any great difficulty, what will happen if fresh
material in the form of sensations is added during sleep to these
currently active memories. It is once again owing to the fact of
their being currently active that these sensory excitations are of
importance for the dream; they are united with the other currently
active psychical material to furnish what is used for the
construction of the dream. To put it another way, stimuli arising
during sleep are worked up into a wish-fulfilment the other
constituents of which are the familiar psychical ‘day’s
residues’. This combination
need
not occur; as I have
already pointed out, there is more than one way of reacting to a
somatic stimulus during sleep. When it
does
occur, it means
that it has been possible to find ideational material to serve as
the content of the dream of such a sort as to be able to represent
both kinds of source of the dream - the somatic and the
psychical.

   The essential nature of the dream
is not altered by the fact of somatic material being added to its
psychical sources: a dream remains the fulfilment of a wish, no
matter in what way the expression of that wish-fulfilment is
determined by the currently active material.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

708

   I am prepared to leave room at
this point for the operation of a number of special factors which
can lend a varying importance to external stimuli in relation to
dreams. As I picture it, a combination of individual factors,
physiological and accidental, produced by the circumstances of the
moment, is what determines how a person shall behave in particular
cases of comparatively intense objective stimulation during sleep.
The habitual or accidental depth of his sleep, taken in conjunction
with the intensity of the stimulus, will make it possible in one
case for him to suppress the stimulus so that his sleep is not
interrupted and in another case will compel him to wake up or will
encourage an attempt to overcome the stimulus by weaving it into a
dream. In accordance with these various possible combinations,
external objective stimuli will find expression in dreams with
greater or less frequency in one person than in another. In my own
case, since I am an excellent sleeper and obstinately refuse to
allow anything to disturb my sleep, it very rarely happens that
external causes of excitation find their way into my dreams;
whereas psychical motives obviously cause me to dream very easily.
In fact I have only noted a single dream in which an objective and
painful source of stimulus is recognizable; and it will be most
instructive to examine the effect which the external stimulus
produced in this particular dream.

  
I was riding on a grey horse,
timidly and awkwardly to begin with, as though I were only
reclining upon it. I met one of my colleagues, P., who was sitting
high on a horse, dressed in a tweed suit, and who drew my attention
to something (probably to my bad seat). I now began to find myself
sitting more and more firmly and comfortably on my highly
intelligent horse, and noticed that I was feeling quite at home up
there. My saddle was a kind of bolster, which completely filled the
space between its neck and crupper. In this way I rode straight in
between two vans. After riding some distance up the street, I
turned round and tried to dismount, first in front of a small open
chapel that stood in the street frontage. Then I actually did
dismount in front of another chapel that stood near it. My hotel
was in the same street; I might have let the horse go to it on its
own, but I preferred to lead it there. It was as though I should
have felt ashamed to arrive at it on horseback. A hotel
‘boots’ was standing in front of the hotel; he showed
me a note of mine that had been found, and laughed at me over it.
In the note was written, doubly underlined: ‘No food’
and then another remark
(indistinct)
such as ‘No
work’, together with a vague idea that I was in a strange
town in which I was doing no work
.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

709

   It would not be supposed at first
sight that this dream originated under the influence, or rather
under the compulsion, of a painful stimulus. But for some days
before I had been suffering from boils which made every movement a
torture; and finally a boil the size of an apple had risen at the
base of my scrotum, which caused me the most unbearable pain with
every step I took. Feverish lassitude, loss of appetite and the
hard work with which I nevertheless carried on - all these had
combined with the pain to depress me. I was not properly capable of
discharging my medical duties. There was, however, one activity for
which, in view of the nature and situation of my complaint, I
should certainly have been less fitted than for any other, and that
was - riding. And this was precisely the activity in which the
dream landed me: it was the most energetic denial of my illness
that could possibly be imagined. I cannot in fact ride, nor have I,
apart from this, had dreams of riding. I have only sat on a horse
once in my life and that was without a saddle, and I did not enjoy
it. But in this dream I was riding as though I had no boil on my
perineum - or rather
because I wanted not to have one
. My
saddle, to judge from its description, was the poultice which had
made it possible for me to fall asleep. Under its assuaging
influence I had probably been unaware of my pain during the first
hours of sleep. The painful feelings had then announced themselves
and sought to wake me; where upon the dream came and said
soothingly: ‘No! Go on sleeping! There’s no need to
wake up. You haven’t got a boil; for you’re riding on a
horse, and it’s quite certain that you couldn’t ride if
you had a boil in that particular place.’ And the dream was
successful. The pain was silenced, and I went on sleeping.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

710

   But the dream was not content
with ‘suggesting away’ my boil by obstinately insisting
upon an idea that was inconsistent with it and so behaving like the
hallucinatory delusion of the mother who had lost her child or the
merchant whose losses had robbed him of his fortune.¹ The
details of the sensation which was being repudiated and of the
picture which was employed in order to repress that sensation also
served the dream as a means of connecting
other
material
that was currently active in my mind with the situation in the
dream and of giving that material representation. I was riding on a
grey
horse, whose colour corresponded precisely to the
pepper-and-salt
colour of the suit my colleague P. was
wearing when I had last met him in the country. The cause of my
boils had been ascribed to my eating
highly-spiced
food - an
aetiology that was at least preferable to the
sugar
which
might also occur to one in connection with boils. My friend P.
liked to ride
the high horse
over me ever since he had taken
over one of my women patients on whom I had pulled off some
remarkable
feats
. (In the dream I began by riding
tangentially - like the
feat
of a trick rider.) But in fact,
like the horse in the anecdote of the Sunday horseman, this patient
had taken me wherever she felt inclined. Thus the horse acquired
the symbolic meaning of a woman patient. (It was
highly
intelligent
in the dream.) ‘
I felt quite at home up
there
’ referred to the position I had occupied in this
patient’s house before I was replaced by P. Not long before,
one of my few patrons among the leading physicians in this city had
remarked to me in connection with this same house: ‘You
struck me as being firmly in the saddle there.’ It was a
remarkable
feat
, too, to be able to carry on my
psychotherapeutic work for eight or ten hours a day while I was
having so much pain. But I knew that I could not go on long with my
peculiarly difficult work unless I was in completely sound physical
health; and my dream was full of gloomy allusions to the situation
in which I should then find myself. (The
note
which
neurasthenics bring with them to show the doctor;
no work, no
food
.) In the course of further interpretation I saw that the
dream-work had succeeded in finding a path from the wishful
situation of riding to some scenes of quarrelling from my very
early childhood which must have occurred between me and a nephew of
mine, a year my senior, who was at present living in England.
Furthermore, the dream had derived some of its elements from my
travels in Italy: the street in the dream was composed of
impressions of Verona and Siena. A still deeper interpretation led
to sexual dream-thoughts, and I recalled the meaning which
references to Italy seem to have had in the dreams of a woman
patient who had never visited that lovely country: ‘
gen
Italien
[to Italy]’ - ‘
Genitalien
[genitals]’; and this was connected, too, with the house in
which I had preceded my friend P. as physician, as well as with the
situation of my boil.

  
¹
Cf. the passage in Griesinger and my
remarks in my second paper on the neuro-psychoses of defence
(Freud, 1896
b
).

The Interpretation Of Dreams

711

   In another dream I similarly
succeeded in warding off a threatened interruption of my sleep
which came this time from a sensory stimulus. In this case it was
only by chance, however, that I was able to discover the link
between the dream and its accidental stimulus and thus to
understand the dream. One morning at the height of summer, while I
was staying at a mountain resort in the Tyrol, I woke up knowing I
had had a dream that
the Pope was dead
. I failed to
interpret this dream - a non-visual one - and only remembered as
part of its basis that I had read in a newspaper a short time
before that his Holiness was suffering from a slight indisposition.
In the course of the morning, however, my wife asked me if I had
heard the frightful noise made by the pealing of bells that
morning. I had been quite unaware of them, but I now understood my
dream. It had been a reaction on the part of my need for sleep to
the noise with which the pious Tyrolese had been trying to wake me.
I had taken my revenge on them by drawing the inference which
formed the content of the dream, and I had then continued my sleep
without paying any more attention to the noise.