Freud - Complete Works (131 page)

                                               
Ein Tritt tausend Fäden regt,

                                               
Die Schifflein herüber hinüber schiessen,

               
                               
Die Fäden ungesehen fliessen,

                                               
Ein Schlag tausend Verbindungen schlägt.
¹

So, too, ‘monograph’ in the dream
touches upon two subjects: the one-sidedness of my studies and the
costliness of my favourite hobbies.

   This first investigation leads us
to conclude that the elements ‘botanical’ and
‘monograph’ found their way into the content of the
dream because they possessed copious contacts with the majority of
the dream-thoughts, because, that is to say, they constituted
‘nodal points’ upon which a great number of the
dream-thoughts converged, and because they had several meanings in
connection with the interpretation of the dream. The explanation of
this fundamental fact can also be put in another way: each of the
elements of the dream’s content turns out to have been
‘overdetermined’ - to have been represented in the
dream-thoughts many times over.

  
¹
[. . . a thousand threads one treadle
throws,

      Where fly
the shuttles hither and thither,

      Unseen the
threads are knit together,

      And an
infinite combination grows.]

The Interpretation Of Dreams

757

   We discover still more when we
come to examine the remaining constituents of the dream in relation
to their appearance in the dream-thoughts. The
coloured
plate
which I was unfolding led (see the analysis,
p. 660 f.
) to a new topic, my
colleagues’ criticisms of my activities, and to one which was
already represented in the dream, my favourite hobbies; and it led,
in addition, to the childhood memory in which I was pulling to
pieces a book with coloured plates. The
dried specimen of the
plant
touched upon the episode of the herbarium at my secondary
school and specially stressed that memory.

   The nature of the relation
between dream-content and dream thoughts thus becomes visible. Not
only are the elements of a dream determined by the dream-thoughts
many times over, but the individual dream-thoughts are represented
in the dream by several elements. Associative paths lead from one
element of the dream to several dream-thoughts, and from one dream
thought to several elements of the dream. Thus a dream is not
constructed by each individual dream-thought, or group of
dream-thoughts, finding (in abbreviated form) separate
representation in the content of the dream - in the kind of way in
which an electorate chooses parliamentary representatives; a dream
is constructed, rather, by the whole mass of dream-thoughts being
submitted to a sort of manipulative process in which those elements
which have the most numerous and strongest supports acquire the
right of entry into the dream-content - in a manner analogous to
election by
scrutin de liste
. In the case of every dream
which I have submitted to an analysis of this kind I have
invariably found these same fundamental principles confirmed: the
elements of the dream are constructed out of the whole mass of
dream-thoughts and each one of those elements is shown to have been
determined many times over in relation to the dream-thoughts.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

758

   It will certainly not be out of
place to illustrate the connection between dream-content and
dream-thoughts by a further example, which is distinguished by the
specially ingenious interweaving of their reciprocal relations. It
is a dream produced by one of my patients - a man whom I was
treating for claustrophobia. It will soon become clear why I have
chosen to give this exceptionally clever dream-production the title
of

II

‘A LOVELY DREAM’

  
He was driving with a large
party to X Street, in which there was an unpretentious inn.
(This is not the case.)
There was a play being acted inside it.
At one moment he was audience, at another actor. When it was over,
they had to change their clothes so as to get back to town. Some of
the company were shown into rooms on the ground floor and others
into rooms on the first floor. Then a dispute broke out. The ones
up above were angry because the ones down below were not ready, and
they could not come downstairs. His brother was up above and he was
down below and he was angry with his brother because they were so
much pressed.
(This part was obscure.)
Moreover it had been
decided and arranged even when they first arrived who was to be up
above and who was to be down below. Then he was walking by himself
up the rise made by X Street in the direction of town. He walked
with such difficulty and so laboriously that he seemed glued to the
spot. An elderly gentleman came up to him and began abusing the
King of Italy. At the top of the rise he was able to walk much more
easily
.

   His difficulty in walking up the
rise was so distinct that after waking up he was for some time in
doubt whether it was a dream or reality.

   We should not think very highly
of this dream, judging by its manifest content. In defiance of the
rules, I shall begin its interpretation with the portion which the
dreamer described as being the most distinct.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

759

   The difficulty which he dreamt of
and probably actually experienced during the dream - the laborious
climbing up the rise accompanied by dyspnoea - was one of the
symptoms which the patient had in fact exhibited years before and
which had at that time been attributed, along with certain other
symptoms, to tuberculosis. (The probability is that this was
hysterically simulated.) The peculiar sensation of inhibited
movement that occurs in this dream is already familiar to us from
dreams of exhibiting and we see once more that it is material
available at any time for any other representational purpose. The
piece of the dream-content which described how the climb began by
being difficult and became easy at the end of the rise reminded me,
when I heard it, of the masterly introduction to Alphonse
Daudet’s
Sappho
. That well known passage describes how
a young man carries his mistress upstairs in his arms; at first she
is as light as a feather, but the higher he climbs the heavier
grows her weight. The whole scene foreshadows the course of their
love-affair, which was intended by Daudet as a warning to young men
not to allow their affections to be seriously engaged by girls of
humble origin and a dubious past.¹ Though I knew that my
patient had been involved in a love-affair which he had recently
broken off with a lady on the stage, I did not expect to find my
guess at an interpretation justified. Moreover the situation in
Sappho
was the
reverse
of what it had been in the
dream. In the dream the climbing had been difficult to begin with
and had afterwards become easy; whereas the symbolism in the novel
only made sense if something that had been begun lightly ended by
becoming a heavy burden. But to my astonishment my patient replied
that my interpretation fitted in very well with a piece he had seen
at the theatre the evening before. It was called
Rund um
Wien
[
Round Vienna
] and gave a picture of the career of
a girl who began by being respectable, who then became a
demi-mondaine
and had
liaisons
with men in high
positions and so ‘
went up in the world
’, but who
ended by ‘
coming down in the world
.’ The piece
had moreover reminded him of another, which he had seen some years
earlier, called
Von Stufe zu Stufe
[
Step by Step
],
and which had been advertised by a poster showing a staircase with
a flight of
steps
.

   To continue with the
interpretation. The actress with whom he had had this latest,
eventful
liaison
had lived in X Street. There is nothing in
the nature of an inn in that street. But when he was spending part
of the summer in Vienna on the lady’s account he had put up
at a small hotel in the neighbourhood. When he left the hotel he
had said to his cab-driver: ‘Anyhow I’m lucky not to
have picked up any vermin.’ (This, incidentally, was another
of his phobias.) To this the driver had replied: ‘How could
any one put up at such a place! It’s not a hotel, it’s
only an
inn
.’

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1911:] What I have
written below in the section on symbolism about the significance of
dreams of climbing throws light upon the imagery chosen by the
novelist.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

760

   The idea of an inn at once
recalled a quotation to his mind:

                                               
Bei einem
Wirte
wundermild,

                                               
Da war ich jüngst zu Gaste.
¹

The host in Uhland’s poem was an
apple tree
; and a second quotation now carried on his train
of thought:

FAUST
(
mit der Jungend
tanzend
):

                               
Einst hatt’ ich
einen schönen Traum
;

                               
Da sah ich einen
Apfelbaum
,

                               
Zwei schöne Äpfel glänzten dran,

                               
Sie reizten mich,
ich stieg hinan
.

DIE
SCHÖNE
:

                               
Der Äpfelchen begehrt ihr sehr,

                               
Und schon vom Paradiese her.

                               
Von Freuden fühl’ ich mich bewegt,

                               
Dass auch mein Garten solche trägt.
²

There cannot be the faintest doubt what the
apple-tree and the apples stood for. Moreover, lovely breasts had
been among the charms which had attracted the dreamer to his
actress.

   The context of the analysis gave
us every ground for supposing that the dream went back to an
impression in childhood. If so, it must have referred to the
wet-nurse of the dreamer, who was by now a man almost thirty years
old. For an infant the breasts of his wet-nurse are nothing more
nor less than an inn. The wet-nurse, as well as Daudet’s
Sappho, seem to have been allusions to the mistress whom the
patient had recently dropped.

   The patient’s (elder)
brother also appeared in the content of the dream, the brother
being
up above
and the patient himself
down below
.
This was once again the
reverse
of the actual situation;
for, as I knew, the brother had lost his social position while the
patient had maintained his. In repeating the content of the dream
to me, the dreamer had avoided saying that his brother was up above
and he himself ‘on the ground floor’. That would have
put the position too clearly, since here in Vienna if we say
someone is ‘
on the ground floor
’ we mean that he
has lost his money and his position - in other words, that he has
‘
come down in the world
.’. Now there must have
been a reason for some of this part of the dream being represented
by its
reverse
. Further, the reversal must hold good of some
other relation between dream-thoughts and dream-content as well;
and we have a hint of where to look for this reversal. It must
evidently be at the end of the dream, where once again there was a
reversal
of the difficulty in going upstairs as described in
Sappho
. We can then easily see what reversal is intended. In
Sappho
the man carried a woman who was in a sexual relation
to him; in the dream-thoughts the position was
reversed
, and
a woman was carrying a man. And since this can only happen in
childhood, the reference was once more to the wet-nurse bearing the
weight of the infant in her arms. Thus the end of the dream made a
simultaneous reference to Sappho and to the wet-nurse.

  
¹
[Literally: ‘I was lately a guest at
an
inn
with a most gentle host.’]

  
²
[
FAUST
(
dancing with the Young
Witch
):

               
A
lovely dream
once came to me,

               
And I beheld an
apple-tree
,

               
On which two lovely apples shone;

               
They charmed me so,
I climbed thereon
.

  
   THE LOVELY
WITCH:

               
Apples have been desired by you,

               
Since first in Paradise they grew;

               
And I am moved with joy to know

               
That much within my garden grow.]

The Interpretation Of Dreams