Freud - Complete Works (144 page)

   The deeper interpretation of this
dream was shown by another dream of the same night, in which the
dreamer identified herself with her brother. She had actually been
a boyish girl, and had often been told that she should have been a
boy. This identification with her brother made it particularly
clear that ‘the little one’ meant a genital organ. Her
mother was threatening him (or her) with castration, which could
only have been a punishment for playing with her penis; thus the
identification also proved that she herself had masturbated as a
child - a memory which till then she had only had as applied to her
brother. The information supplied by the second dream showed that
she must have come to know about the male organ at an early age and
have afterwards forgotten it. Further, the second dream alluded to
the infantile sexual theory according to which girls are boys who
have been castrated. When I suggested to her that she had had this
childish belief, she at once confirmed the fact by telling me that
she had heard the anecdote of the little boy’s saying to the
little girl: ‘Cut off?’ and of the little girl’s
replying: ‘No, always been like that.’

   Thus the sending away of the
little one (of the genital organ) in the first dream was also
related to the threat of castration. Her ultimate complaint against
her mother was for not having given birth to her as a boy.

   The fact that ‘being run
over’ symbolizes sexual intercourse would not be obvious from
this dream, though it has been confirmed from many other
sources.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

826

III

THE GENITALS REPRESENTED BY BUILDINGS,
STAIRS AND SHAFTS

  
He was going for a walk with
his father in a place which must certainly have been the Prater,
since he saw the
ROTUNDA
,
with a
SMALL ANNEX IN FRONT OF
IT
to which
A CAPTIVE
BALLOON
was attached, though it looked rather
LIMP
.
His father asked him what
all this was for; he was surprised at his asking, but explained it
to him. Then they came into a courtyard which had a large sheet
laid out in it. His father wanted to
PULL OFF
a large piece of it, but
first looked around to see if anyone was watching. He told him that
he need only tell the foreman and he could take some without any
bother.
A STAIRCASE
led
down from this yard into
A
SHAFT
,
whose walls were cushioned in some soft material,
rather like a leather armchair. A the end of the shaft was a
longish platform and then another
SHAFT
started
. . .

  
ANALYSIS
. -This dreamer belonged to
a type whose therapeutic prospects are not favourable: up to a
certain point they offer no resistance at all to analysis, but from
then onwards turn out to be almost inaccessible. He interpreted
this dream almost unaided. ‘The Rotunda’, he said,
‘was my genitals and the captive balloon in front of it was
my penis, whose limpness I have reason to complain of.’ Going
into greater detail, then, we may translate the Rotunda as the
bottom (habitually regarded by children as part of the genitals)
and the small annex in front of it as the scrotum. His father asked
him in the dream what all this was, that is, what was the purpose
and function of the genitals. It seemed plausible to reverse this
situation and turn the dreamer into the questioner. Since he had in
fact never questioned his father in this way, we had to look upon
the dream-thought as a wish, or take it as a conditional clause,
such as: ‘If I had asked my father for sexual enlightenment.
. .’ We shall presently find the continuation of this thought
in another part of the dream.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

827

   The courtyard in which the sheet
of tin was spread out is not to be taken symbolically in the first
instance. It was derived from the business premises of the
dreamer’s father. For reasons of discretion I have
substituted ‘tin’ for another material in which his
father actually dealt: but I have made no other change in the
wording of the dream. The dreamer had entered his father’s
business and had taken violent objection to the somewhat dubious
practices on which the firm’s earnings in part depended.
Consequently the dream-thought I have just interpreted may have
continued in this way: ‘(If I had asked him), he would have
deceived me just as he deceives his customers.’ As regards
the ‘pulling off’ which served to represent his
father’s dishonesty in business, the dreamer himself produced
a second explanation - namely that it stood for masturbating. Not
only was I already familiar with this interpretation (see
p. 817
n
.
above), but there was
something to confirm it in the fact that the secret nature of
masturbation was represented by its reverse: it might be done
openly. Just as we should expect, the masturbatory activity was
once again displaced on to the dreamer’s father, like the
questioning in the first scene of the dream. He promptly
interpreted the shaft as a vagina, having regard to the soft
cushioning of its walls. I added from my own knowledge derived
elsewhere that climbing down, like climbing up in other cases,
described sexual intercourse in the vagina. (See my remarks, quoted
above,
p. 821 n.
)

   The dreamer himself gave a
biographical explanation of the fact that the first shaft was
followed by a longish platform and then by another shaft. He had
practised intercourse for a time but had then given it up on
account of inhibitions, and he now hoped to be able to resume it by
the help of the treatment. The dream became more indistinct,
however, towards the end, and it must seem probable to anyone who
is familiar with these things that the influence of another topic
was already making itself felt in the second scene of the dream,
and was hinted at by the father’s business, by his deceitful
conduct and by the interpretation of the first shaft as a vagina:
all this pointed to a connection with the dreamer’s
mother.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

828

IV

THE MALE ORGAN REPRESENTED BY PERSONS AND
THE

FEMALE ORGAN BY A LANDSCAPE

(The
dream of an uneducated woman whose husband was a policeman,
reported by B. Dattner.)

  
‘ . . . 
Then someone broke into the
house and she was frightened and called out for a policeman. But he
had quietly gone into a church
¹
, to which a number of
steps
²
led up, accompanied by two tramps. Behind the
church there was a hill
³
and above it a thick
wood.
⁴
The policeman
was dressed in a helmet, brass collar and cloak.
⁵
He had a brown beard. The two
tramps, who went along peaceably with the policeman, had sack-like
aprons tied around their middles.
⁶
In front of the church a path
led up to the hill; on both sides of it there grew grass and
brushwood, which became thicker and thicker and, at the top of the
hill, turned into a regular wood
.’

V

DREAMS OF CASTRATION IN CHILDREN

   (
a
) A boy aged three years
and five months, who obviously disliked the idea of his
father’s returning from the front, woke up one morning in a
disturbed and excited state. He kept on repeating: ‘
Why
was Daddy carrying his head on a plate? Last night Daddy was
carrying his head on a plate.
’

   (
b
) A student who is now
suffering from a severe obsessional neurosis remembers having
repeatedly had the following dream during his sixth year:
He
went to the hairdresser’s to have his hair cut. A big,
severe-looking woman came up to him and cut his head off. He
recognized the woman as his mother.

  
¹
‘Or chapel (=
vagina).’

  
²
‘Symbol of
copulation.’

  
³
‘
Mons
veneris
.’

  
⁴
‘Pubic hair.’

  
⁵
‘According to an expert, demons in
cloaks and hoods are of a phallic character.’

  
⁶
‘The two halves of the
scrotum.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

829

VI

URINARY SYMBOLISM

   The series of drawings were found
by Ferenczi in a Hungarian comic paper called
Fidibusz
, and
he at once saw how well they could be used to illustrate the theory
of dreams. Otto Rank has already reproduced them in a paper
(1912
a
).

   The drawings bear the title
‘A French Nurse’s Dream’; but it is only the last
picture, showing the nurse being woken up by the child’s
screams, that tells us that the seven previous pictures represent
the phases of a dream. The first picture depicts the stimulus which
should have caused the sleeper to wake: the little boy has become
aware of a need and is asking for help in dealing with it. But in
the dream the dreamer, instead of being in the bedroom, is taking
the child for a walk. In the second picture she has already led him
to a street corner where he is micturating - and she can go on
sleeping. But the arousal stimulus continues; indeed, it increases.
The little boy, finding he is not being attended to, screams louder
and louder. The more imperiously he insists upon his nurse waking
up and helping him, the more insistent becomes the dream’s
assurance that everything is all right and that there is no need
for her to wake up. At the same time, the dream translates the
increasing stimulus into the increasing dimensions of its symbols.
The stream of water produced by the micturating boy becomes
mightier and mightier. In the fourth picture it is already large
enough to float a rowing boat; but there follow a gondola, a
sailing-ship and finally a liner. The ingenious artist has in this
way cleverly depicted the struggle between an obstinate craving for
sleep and an inexhaustible stimulus towards waking.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

830

VII

A STAIRCASE DREAM

(Reported and Interpreted by Otto Rank.)

   ‘I have to thank a
colleague to whom I owe the dream with a dental-stimulus for an
equally transparent emission dream:

   ‘"
I was running
down the staircase in pursuit of a little girl who had done
something to me, in order to punish her. At the foot of the stairs
someone (a grown-up woman?) stopped the child for me. I caught hold
of her; but I don’t know whether I hit her, for I suddenly
found myself in the middle of the staircase copulating with the
child (as it were in the air). It was not a real copulation; I was
only rubbing my genitals against her external genitals, and while I
did so I saw them extremely distinctly, as well as her head, which
was turned upwards and sideways. During the sexual act I saw
hanging above me to my left (also as it were in the air) two small
paintings - landscapes representing a house surrounded by trees. At
the bottom of the smaller of these, instead of the painter’s
signature, I saw my own first name, as though it were intended as a
birthday-present for me. Then I saw a label in front of the two
pictures, which said that the cheaper pictures were also to be had.
(I then saw myself very indistinctly as though I were lying in bed
on the landing) and I was woken up by the feeling of wetness caused
by the emission I had had.
"

   ‘
INTERPRETATION
. -On the evening of
the dream-day the dreamer had been in a book-shop, and as he was
waiting to be attended to he had looked at some pictures which were
on view there and which represented subjects similar to those in
the dream. He went up close to one small picture which had
particularly pleased him, to look at the artist’s name - but
it had been quite unknown to him.

   ‘Later the same evening,
when he was with some friends, he had heard a story of a Bohemian
servant-girl who boasted that her illegitimate child had been
"made on the stairs." The dreamer had enquired the
details of this rather unusual event and had learnt that the
servant-girl had gone home with her admirer to her parents’
house, where there had been no opportunity for sexual intercourse,
and in his excitement the man had copulated with her on the stairs.
The dreamer had made a joking allusion to a malicious expression
used to describe adulterated wines, and had said that in fact the
child came of a "cellar-stair vintage".

The Interpretation Of Dreams

831

   ‘So much for the
connections with the previous day, which appeared with some
insistence in the dream-content and were reproduced by the dreamer
without any difficulty. But he brought up no less easily an old
fragment of infantile recollection which had also found its use in
the dream. The staircase belonged to the house where he had spent
the greater part of his childhood and, in particular, where he had
first made conscious acquaintance with the problems of sex. He had
frequently played on this staircase and, among other things, used
to slide down the banisters, riding astride on them - which had
given him sexual feelings. In the dream, too, he rushed down the
stairs extraordinarily fast - so fast, indeed, that, according to
his own specific account, he did not put his feet down on the
separate steps but "flew" down them, as people say. If
the infantile experience is taken into account, the beginning part
of the dream seems to represent the factor of sexual excitement. -
But the dreamer had also often romped in a sexual way with the
neighbours’ children on this same staircase and in the
adjacent building, and had satisfied his desires in just the same
way as he did in the dream.

   ‘If we bear in mind that
Freud’s researches into sexual symbolism (1910
d
) have
shown that stairs and going upstairs in dreams almost invariably
stand for copulation, the dream becomes quite transparent. Its
motive force, as indeed was shown by its outcome - an emission -
was of a purely libidinal nature. The dreamer’s sexual
excitement was awakened during his sleep - this being represented
in the dream by his rushing down the stairs. The sadistic element
in the sexual excitement, based on the romping in childhood, was
indicated by the pursuit and overpowering of the child. The
libidinal excitement increased and pressed towards sexual action -
represented in the dream by his catching hold of the child and
conveying it to the middle of the staircase. Up to that point the
dream was only
symbolically
sexual and would have been quite
unintelligible to any inexperienced dream-interpreter. But symbolic
satisfaction of that kind was not enough to guarantee a restful
sleep, in view of the strength of the libidinal excitation. The
excitation led to an orgasm and thus revealed the fact that the
whole staircase-symbolism represented copulation. -The present
dream offers a specially clear confirmation of Freud’s view
that one of the reasons for the use of going upstairs as a sexual
symbol is the rhythmical character of both activities: for the
dreamer expressly stated that the most clearly defined element in
the whole dream was the rhythm of the sexual act and its up and
down motion.

   ‘I must add a word with
regard to the two pictures which, apart from their real meaning,
also figured in a symbolic sense as "
Weibsbilder
".
This was shown at once by there being a large picture and a small
picture, just as a large (or grown-up) girl and a small one
appeared in the dream. The fact that "cheaper pictures were
also to be had" led to the prostitute complex; while on the
other hand the appearance of the dreamer’s first name on the
small picture and the idea of its being intended as a birthday
present for him were hints at the parental complex. ("Born on
the stairs" = "begotten by copulation".)

   ‘The indistinct final
scene, in which the dreamer saw himself lying in bed on the landing
and had a feeling of wetness, seems to have pointed the way beyond
infantile masturbation still further back into childhood and to
have had its prototype in similarly pleasurable scenes of
bed-wetting.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

832

VIII

A MODIFIED STAIRCASE DREAM

   One of my patients, a man whose
sexual abstinence was imposed on him by a severe neurosis, and
whose phantasies were fixed upon his mother, had repeated dreams of
going upstairs in her company. I once remarked to him that a
moderate amount of masturbation would probably do him less harm
than his compulsive self-restraint, and this provoked the following
dream:

  
His piano-teacher reproached
him for neglecting his piano-playing, and for not practising
Mocheles’ ‘Etudes’ and Clementi’s
‘Gradus ad Parnassum
.’

   By way of comment, he pointed out
that ‘
Gradus
’ are also ‘steps’; and
that the key-board itself is a staircase, since it contains
scales.

   It is fair to say that there is
no group of ideas that is incapable of representing sexual facts
and wishes.

IX

THE FEELING OF REALITY AND THE
REPRESENTATION OF REPETITION

   A man who is now thirty-five
years old reported a dream which he remembered clearly and claimed
to have had at the age of four.
The lawyer who had charge of his
father’s will
- he had lost his father when he was three
-
brought two large pears. He was given one of them to eat; the
other lay on the window-sill in the sitting-room
. He awoke with
a conviction of the reality of what he had dreamt and kept
obstinately asking his mother for the second pear, and insisted
that it was on the window-sill. His mother had laughed at this.

  
ANALYSIS
. -The lawyer was a jovial
old gentleman who, the dreamer seemed to remember, had really once
brought some pears along. The window-sill was as he had seen it in
the dream. Nothing else occurred to him in connection with it -
only that his mother had told him a dream shortly before. She had
had two birds sitting on her head and had asked herself when they
would fly away; they did not fly away, but one of them flew to her
mouth and sucked at it.

   The failure of the
dreamer’s associations gave us a right to attempt an
interpretation by symbolic substitution. The two pears -
‘
pommes ou poires
’ - were his mother’s
breasts which had given him nourishment; the window-sill was the
projection formed by her bosom - like balconies in dreams of houses
(see
p. 821
). His feeling of reality
after waking was justified, for his mother had really suckled him,
and had done so, in fact, for far longer than the usual time and
his mother’s breast was still available to him. The dream
must be translated: ‘Give (or show) me your breast again,
Mother, that I used to drink from in the past.’ ‘In the
past’ was represented by his eating one of the pears;
‘again’ was represented by his longing for the other.
The
temporal repetition
of an act is regularly shown in
dreams by the
numerical multiplication
of an object.

   It is most remarkable, of course,
that symbolism should already be playing a part in the dream of a
four-year-old child. But this is the rule and not the exception. It
may safely be asserted that dreamers have symbolism at their
disposal from the very first.

   The following uninfluenced
recollection by a lady who is now twenty-seven shows at what an
early age symbolism is employed outside dream-life as well as
inside it.
She was between three and four years old. Her
nurse-maid took her to the lavatory along with a brother eleven
months her junior and a girl cousin of an age between the other
two, to do their small business before going out for a walk. Being
the eldest, she sat on the seat, while the other two sat on
chambers. She asked her cousin: ‘Have you got a purse too?
Walter’s got a little sausage; I’ve got a purse.’
Her cousin replied: ‘Yes, I’ve got a purse too.’
The nurse-maid heard what they said with much amusement and
reported the conversation to the children’s mother, who
reacted with a sharp reprimand
.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

833

   I will here interpolate a dream
(recorded in a paper by Alfred Robitsek, 1912) in which the
beautifully chosen symbolism made an interpretation possible with
only slight assistance from the dreamer.

X

‘THE QUESTION OF SYMBOLISM IN THE
DREAMS OF NORMAL PERSONS’

   ‘One objection which is
frequently brought forward by opponents of psycho-analysis, and
which has lately been voiced by Havelock Ellis (1911, 168), argues
that though dream-symbolism may perhaps occur as a product of the
neurotic mind, it is not to be found in normal persons. Now
psycho-analytic research finds no fundamental, but only
quantitative, distinctions between normal and neurotic life; and
indeed the analysis of dreams, in which repressed complexes are
operative alike in the healthy and the sick, shows a complete
identity both in their mechanisms and in their symbolism. The naive
dreams of healthy people actually often contain a much simpler,
more perspicuous and more characteristic symbolism than those of
neurotics; for in the latter, as a result of the more powerful
workings of the censorship and of the consequently more
far-reaching dream-distortion, the symbolism may be obscure and
hard to interpret. The dream recorded below will serve to
illustrate this fact. It was dreamt by a girl who is not neurotic
but is of a somewhat prudish and reserved character. In the course
of conversation with her I learnt that she was engaged, but that
there were some difficulties in the way of her marriage which were
likely to lead to its postponement. Of her own accord she told me
the following dream.

   ‘"
I arrange the
centre of a table with flowers for a birthday
." In reply
to a question she told me that in the dream she seemed to be in her
own home (where she was not at present living) and had "a
feeling of happiness."

   ‘"Popular"
symbolism made it possible for me to translate the dream unaided.
It was an expression of her bridal wishes: the table with its
floral centre-piece symbolized herself and her genitals; she
represented her wishes for the future as fulfilled, for her
thoughts were already occupied with the birth of a baby; so her
marriage lay a long way behind her.

   ‘I pointed out to her that
"
the ‘centre’ of a table
" was an
unusual expression (which she admitted), but I could not of course
question her further directly on that point. I carefully avoided
suggesting the meaning of the symbols to her, and merely asked her
what came into her head in connection with the separate parts of
the dream. In the course of the analysis her reserve gave place to
an evident interest in the interpretation and to an openness made
possible by the seriousness of the conversation.

   ‘When I asked what flowers
they had been, her first reply was: "
expensive flowers; one
has to pay for them
," and then that they had been
"
lilies of the valley, violets and pinks or
carnations
." I assumed that the word "lily"
appeared in the dream in its popular sense as a symbol of chastity;
she confirmed this assumption, for her association to
"lily" was "
purity
".
"
Valley
" is a frequent female symbol in dreams; so
that the chance combination of the two symbols in the English name
of the flower was used in the dream-symbolism to stress the
preciousness of her virginity - "
expensive flowers, one has
to pay for them
" - and to express her expectation that her
husband would know how to appreciate its value. The phrase
"
expensive flowers
, etc.”, as will be seen, had a
different meaning in the case of each of the three
flower-symbols.