Freud - Complete Works (129 page)

   I have spoken above of the egoism
of children’s minds, and I may now add, with a hint at a
possible connection between the two facts, that dreams have the
same characteristic. All of them are completely egoistic: the
beloved ego appears in all of them, even though it may be
disguised. The wishes that are fulfilled in them are invariably the
ego’s wishes, and if a dream seems to have been provoked by
an altruistic interest, we are only being deceived by appearances.
Here are a few analyses of instances which seem to contradict this
assertion.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

745

I

   A child of under four years old
reported having dreamt that
he had seen a big dish with a big
joint of roast meat and vegetables on it. All at once the joint had
been eaten up - whole and without being cut up. He had not seen the
person who ate it
.¹

   Who can the unknown person have
been whose sumptuous banquet of meat was the subject of the little
boy’s dream? His experiences during the dream-day must
enlighten us on the subject. By doctor’s orders he had been
put on a milk diet for the past few days. On the evening of the
dream-day he had been naughty, and as a punishment he had been sent
to bed without his supper. He had been through this hunger-cure
once before and had been very brave about it. He knew he would get
nothing, but would not allow himself to show by so much as a single
word that he was hungry. Education had already begun to have an
effect on him: it found expression in this dream, which exhibits
the beginning of dream-distortion. There can be no doubt that the
person whose wishes were aimed at this lavish meal - a meat meal,
too - was himself. But since he knew he was not allowed it, he did
not venture to sit down to the meal himself, as hungry children do
in dreams. (Cf. my little daughter Anna’s dream of
strawberries on
p. 628.
) The person
who ate the meal remained anonymous.

II

   I dreamt one night that I saw in
the window of a book-shop a new volume in one of the series of
monographs for connoisseurs which I am in the habit of buying -
monographs on great artists, on world history, on famous cities,
etc.
The new series was called ‘Famous Speakers’ or
‘Speeches’ and its first volume bore the name of Dr.
Lecher.

   When I came to analyse this, it
seemed to me improbable that I should be concerned in my dreams
with the fame of Dr. Lecher, the non-stop speaker of the German
Nationalist obstructionists in Parliament. The position was that a
few days earlier I had taken on some new patients for psychological
treatment, and was now obliged to talk for ten or eleven hours
every day. So it was I myself who was a non-stop speaker.

  
¹
The appearance in dreams of things of great
size and in great quantities and amounts, and of exaggeration
generally, may be another childish characteristic. Children have no
more ardent wish than to be big and grown-up and to get as much of
things as grown-up people do. They are hard to satisfy, know no
such word as `enough’ and insist insatiably on a repetition
of things which they have enjoyed or whose taste they liked. It is
only the civilizing influence of education that teaches them
moderation and how to be content or resigned. Everyone knows that
neurotics are equally inclined to be extravagant and
immoderate.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

746

III

   Another time I had a dream that a
man I knew on the staff of the University said to me: ‘
My
son, the Myops
.’ Then followed a dialogue made up of
short remarks and rejoinders. After this, however, there was yet a
third piece of dream in which I myself and my sons figured. So far
as the dream’s latent content was concerned, Professor M. and
his son were men of straw - a mere screen for me and my eldest son.
I shall have to return to this dream later, on account of another
of its features.

IV

   The dream which follows is an
instance of really low egoistic feelings concealed behind
affectionate worry.

  
My friend Otto was looking
ill. His face was brown and he had protruding eyes
.

   Otto is my family doctor, and I
owe him more than I can ever hope to repay: he has watched over my
children’s health for many years, he has treated them
successfully when they have been ill, and, in addition, whenever
circumstances have given him an excuse, he has given them presents.
He had visited us on the dream-day, and my wife had remarked that
he looked tired and strained. That night I had my dream, which
showed him with some of the signs of
Basedow’s
disease. Anyone who interprets this dream without regard for my
rules will conclude that I was worried about my friend’s
health and that this worry was realized in the dream. This would
not only contradict my assertion that dreams are wish-fulfilments,
but my other assertion, too, that they are accessible only to
egoistic impulses. But I should be glad if anyone interpreting the
dream in this way would be good enough to explain to me why my
fears on Otto’s behalf should have lighted on
Basedow’s
disease - a diagnosis for which his actual
appearance gives not the slightest ground. My analysis, on the
other hand, brought up the following material from an occurrence
six years earlier. A small group of us, which included Professor
R., were driving in pitch darkness through the forest of N., which
lay some hours’ drive from the place at which we were
spending our summer holidays. The coachman, who was not perfectly
sober, spilt us, carriage and all, over an embankment, and it was
only by a piece of luck that we all escaped injury. We were
obliged, however, to spend the night in a neighbouring inn, at
which the news of our accident brought us a lot of sympathy. A
gentleman, with unmistakable signs of Basedow’s disease -
incidentally, just as in the dream, only the brown discoloration of
the skin of the face and the protruding eyes, but no goitre -
placed himself entirely at our disposal and asked what he could do
for us. Professor R. replied in his decisive manner: ‘Nothing
except to lend me a night-shirt.’ To which the fine gentleman
rejoined: ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t do that’,
and left the room.

   As I continued my analysis, it
occurred to me that Basedow was the name not only of a physician
but also of a famous educationalist. (In my waking state I no
longer felt quite so certain about this.) But my friend Otto was
the person whom I had asked to watch over my children’s
physical education, especially at the age of puberty (hence the
night-shirt), in case anything happened to me. By giving my friend
Otto in the dream the symptoms of our noble helper, I was evidently
saying that if anything happened to me he would do just as little
for the children as Baron L. had done on that occasion in spite of
his kind offers of assistance. This seems to be sufficient evidence
of the egoistic lining of the dream.¹

   But where was its wish-fulfilment
to be found? Not in my avenging myself on my friend Otto, whose
fate it seems to be to be ill-treated in my dreams; but in the
following consideration. At the same time as I represented Otto in
the dream as Baron L., I had identified myself with someone else,
namely Professor R.; for just as in the anecdote R. had made a
request to Baron L., so I had made a request to Otto. And that is
the point. Professor R., with whom I should really not venture to
compare myself in the ordinary way, resembled me in having followed
an independent path outside the academic world and had only
achieved his well-merited title late in life. So once again I was
wanting to be a Professor! Indeed the words ‘late in
life’ were themselves a wish-fulfilment; for they implied
that I should live long enough to see my boys through the age of
puberty myself.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1911:] When Ernest
Jones was giving a scientific lecture on the egoism of dreams
before an American audience, a learned lady objected to this
unscientific generalization, saying that the author of the present
work could only judge of the dreams of Austrians and had no
business to speak of the dreams of Americans. So far as she was
concerned, she was certain that all her dreams were strictly
altruistic.- [
Added
1925:] By way of excuse for this
patriotic lady, I may remark that the statement that dreams are
entirely egoistic must not be misunderstood. Since anything
whatever that occurs in preconscious thought can pass into a dream
(whether into its actual content or into the latent dream-thoughts)
that possibility is equally open to altruistic impulses. In the
same way, an affectionate or erotic impulse towards someone else,
if it is present in the unconscious, can appear in a dream. The
truth in the assertion made in the text above is thus restricted to
the fact that among the unconscious instigators of a dream we very
frequently find egoistic impulses which seem to have been overcome
in waking life.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

747

   I have no experience of my own of
other kinds of typical dreams, in which the dreamer finds himself
flying through the air to the accompaniment of agreeable feelings
or falling with feelings of anxiety; and whatever I have to say on
the subject is derived from psycho-analyses. The information
provided by the latter forces me to conclude that these dreams,
too, reproduce impressions of childhood; they relate, that is, to
games involving movement, which are extraordinarily attractive to
children. There cannot be a single uncle who has not shown a child
how to fly by rushing across the room with him in his outstretched
arms, or who has not played at letting him fall by riding him on
his knee and then suddenly stretching out his leg, or by holding
him up high and then suddenly pretending to drop him. Children are
delighted by such experiences and never tire of asking to have them
repeated, especially if there is something about them that causes a
little fright or giddiness. In after years they repeat these
experiences in dreams; but in the dreams they leave out the hands
which held them up, so that they float or fall unsupported. The
delight taken by young children in games of this kind (as well as
in swings and see-saws) is well known; and when they come to see
acrobatic feats in a circus their memory of such games is
revived.¹ Hysterical attacks in boys sometimes consist merely
in reproductions of feats of this kind, carried out with great
skill. It not uncommonly happens that these games of movement,
though innocent in themselves, give rise to sexual feelings.²
Childish ‘romping’, if I may use a word which commonly
describes all such activities, is what is being repeated in dreams
of flying, falling, giddiness and so on; while the pleasurable
feelings attached to these experiences are transformed into
anxiety. But often enough, as every mother knows, romping among
children actually ends in squabbling and tears.

   Thus I have good grounds for
rejecting the theory that what provokes dreams of flying and
falling is the state of our tactile feelings during sleep or
sensations of the movement of our lungs, and so on. In my view
these sensations are themselves reproduced as part of the memory to
which the dream goes back: that is to say, they are part of the
content
of the dream and not its source.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1925:] Analytic
research has shown us that in addition to pleasure derived from the
organs concerned, there is another factor which contributes to the
delight taken by children in acrobatic performances and to their
repetition in hysterical attacks. This other factor is a
memory-image, often unconscious, of an observation of sexual
intercourse, whether between human beings or animals.

  
²
A young medical colleague, who is quite
free from any kind of nervous trouble, has given me the following
information on this point: ‘I know from my own experience
that in my childhood I had a peculiar sensation in my genitals when
I was on a swing and especially when the downward motion reached
its greatest momentum. And though I cannot say I really enjoyed
this sensation I must describe it as a pleasurable one.’ -
Patients have often told me that the first pleasurable erections
that they can remember occurred in their boyhood while they were
climbing about. - Psycho-analysis makes it perfectly certain that
the first sexual impulses frequently have their roots in games
involving romping and wrestling played during childhood.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

748

   I cannot, however, disguise from
myself that I am unable to produce any complete explanation of this
class of typical dreams. My material has left me in the lurch
precisely at this point. I must, however, insist upon the general
assertion that all the tactile and motor sensations which occur in
these typical dreams are called up immediately there is any
psychical reason for making use of them and that they can be
disregarded when no such need for them arises. I am also of the
opinion that the relation of these dreams to infantile experiences
has been established with certainty from the indications I have
found in the analyses of psychoneurotics. I am not able to say,
however, what other meanings may become attached to the
recollection of such sensations in the course of later life -
different meanings, perhaps, in every individual case, in spite of
the typical appearance of the dreams; and I should be glad to be
able to fill up the gap by a careful analysis of clear instances.
If anyone feels surprised that, in spite of the frequency precisely
of dreams of flying, falling and pulling out teeth, etc., I should
be complaining of lack of material on this particular topic, I must
explain that I myself have not experienced any dreams of the kind
since I turned my attention to the subject of dream-interpretation.
The dreams of neurotics, moreover, of which I might otherwise avail
myself, cannot always be interpreted not, at least, in many cases,
so as to reveal the whole of their concealed meaning; a particular
psychical force, which was concerned with the original constructing
of the neurosis and is brought into operation once again when
attempts are made at resolving it, prevents us from interpreting
such dreams down to their last secret.