Freud - Complete Works (330 page)

Delusions And Dreams In Jensen's Gradiva

1869

   Next day Hanold came upon the
supposed brother and sister in an affectionate embrace, and was
thus able to correct his earlier mistake. They were in fact a pair
of lovers, and moreover on their honeymoon, as we discovered later
when they so unexpectedly interrupted Hanold’s third
interview with Zoe. If now we are willing to assume that Hanold,
though consciously taking them for a brother and sister, had
immediately recognized their true relationship (which was
unambiguously betrayed next day) in his unconscious,
Gradiva’s speech in the dream acquires a clear meaning. The
red rose had become the symbol of a love-relation. Hanold
understood that the couple were already what he and Gradiva had yet
to become; the lizard-catching had come to signify man-catching;
and Gradiva’s speech meant something like: ‘Only let me
alone: I know how to win a man just as well as the other girl
does.’

   But why was it necessary for this
penetration of Zoe’s intentions to appear in the dream in the
form of the old zoologist’s speech?   the old
gentleman’s skill in lizard-catching? Well, we can have no
difficulty in answering that question. We guessed long ago that the
lizard-catcher was none other than Bertgang, the professor of
Zoology and Zoe’s father, who, incidentally, must have known
Hanold too - which explains how he came to address him as an
acquaintance. Let us assume, once again, that in his unconscious
Hanold at once recognized the Professor. ‘He had a vague
notion that he had already had a passing glimpse of the lizard
hunter’s face, probably in one of the two hotels.’
This, then, is the explanation of the strange disguise under which
the intention attributed to Zoe made its appearance: she was the
lizard-catcher’s daughter and had acquired her skill from
him.

Delusions And Dreams In Jensen's Gradiva

1870

   The replacement of the
lizard-catcher by Gradiva in the content of the dream is
accordingly a representation of the relation between the two
figures which was known to Hanold in his unconscious; the
introduction of the ‘lady colleague’ instead of
‘our colleague Eimer’ allowed the dream to express
Hanold’s realization that she was wooing a man. So far the
dream welded together (‘condensed’, as we say) two
experiences of the previous day into one situation, in order to
bring to expression (in a very obscure way, it is true) two
discoveries which were not allotted to become conscious. But we can
go further, we can diminish the strangeness of the dream still more
and we can demonstrate the influence of his other experiences of
the previous day on the form taken by the manifest dream.

   We may declare ourselves
dissatisfied with the explanation that has hitherto been given of
why it was that precisely the scene of the lizard-catching was made
into the nucleus of the dream, and we may suspect that still other
elements of the dream-thoughts were bringing their influence to
bear in the emphasis that was laid on the ‘lizard’ in
the manifest dream. Indeed, it may easily have been so. It will be
recalled that Hanold had discovered a gap in the wall at the point
where Gradiva had seemed to vanish - a gap ‘which was
nevertheless wide enough to allow a form that was unusually
slim’ to slip through. This observation led him in daytime to
make an alteration in his delusion - an alteration to the effect
that when Gradiva disappeared from his sight she did not sink into
the earth but used the gap as a way of reaching her grave. In his
unconscious thoughts he may have told himself that he had now
discovered the natural explanation of the girl’s surprising
disappearance. But must not the idea of slipping through narrow
gaps and disappearing in them have recalled the behaviour of
lizards? Was not Gradiva herself in this way behaving like an agile
little lizard? In our view, then, the discovery of the gap in the
wall contributed to determining the choice of the element
‘lizard’ in the manifest content of the dream. The
lizard situation in the dream represented this impression of the
previous day as well as the encounter with Zoe’s father, the
zoologist.

Delusions And Dreams In Jensen's Gradiva

1871

   And what if now, growing bold, we
were to try to find a representation in the content of the dream of
the one experience of the previous day which has not yet been
exploited - the discovery of the third inn, the Albergo del Sole?
The author has treated this episode at such length and has linked
so many things to it that it would surprise us if it alone had made
no contribution to the construction of the dream. Hanold went into
this inn, which, owing to its out-of-the-way situation and its
distance from the railway station, had remained unknown to him, to
purchase a bottle of soda-water to cool his heated blood. The
landlord took the opportunity of displaying his antiquities, and
showed him a clasp which the pretended had belonged to the Pompeian
girl who had been found in the neighbourhood of the Forum closely
embraced by her lover. Hanold, who had never hitherto believed this
often-repeated tale, was now compelled by a power unknown to him to
believe in the truth of this moving story and in the genuineness of
the find; he purchased the brooch and left the inn with his
acquisition. As he was going out, he saw, standing in a glass of
water in a window, a nodding sprig of asphodel covered with white
blossoms, and took the sight of it as a confirmation of the
genuineness of his new possession. He now felt a positive
conviction that the green clasp had belonged to Gradiva and that
she had been the girl who had died in her lover’s arms. He
quieted the jealousy which thereupon seized him, by deciding that
next day he would show the clasp to Gradiva herself and arrive at
certainty about his suspicion. It cannot be denied that this was a
curious new piece of delusion; yet are we to suppose that no trace
of it was to be found in his dream of the same night?

Delusions And Dreams In Jensen's Gradiva

1872

   It will certainly be worth while
to explain the origin of this addition to the delusion and to look
for the fresh piece of unconscious discovery which was replaced by
the fresh piece of delusion. The delusion appeared under the
influence of the landlord of the ‘Sun Hotel’ to whom
Hanold behaved in such a remarkably credulous fashion that it was
almost as though he had been given a hypnotic suggestion by him.
The landlord showed him a metal clasp for a garment, represented it
as genuine and as having belonged to the girl who had been found
buried in the arms of her lover; and Hanold, who was capable of
being sufficiently critical to doubt both the truth of the story
and the genuineness of the clasp, was at once taken in, and
purchased the highly dubious antique. Why he should have behaved in
this way is quite incomprehensible, and there is nothing to suggest
that the landlord’s personality might offer us a solution.
But there is yet another riddle about the incident, and two riddles
often solve each other. As he was leaving the
albergo
he saw
a sprig of asphodel standing in a glass in a window and took it as
a confirmation of the genuineness of the metal clasp. How could
that have come about? But fortunately this last point is easy to
solve. The white flower was no doubt the one which he had given to
Gradiva at mid-day, and it is perfectly true that something was
confirmed by the sight of it in the window of the inn. Not, it is
true, the genuineness of the clasp, but something else that had
already become clear to him when he discovered this
albergo
after having previously overlooked it. Already on the day before he
had behaved as though he was searching in the two Pompeii hotels to
find the person who appeared to him as Gradiva. And now, since he
had so unexpectedly come upon a third one, he must have said to
himself in his unconscious: ‘So
this
is where she is
staying!’ And added, as he was going out: ‘Yes,
that’s right! There’s the asphodel that I gave her! So
that’s her window!’ This then was the new discovery
which was replaced by the delusion, and which could not become
conscious because its underlying postulate that Gradiva was a
living person whom he had once known could not become
conscious.

Delusions And Dreams In Jensen's Gradiva

1873

   But how did the replacement of
the new discovery by the delusion take place? What happened, I
think, was that the sense of conviction attaching to the discovery
was able to persist and was retained, while the discovery itself,
which was inadmissible to consciousness, was replaced by another
ideational content connected with it by associations of thought.
Thus the sense of conviction became attached to a content which was
in fact foreign to it and this, in the form of a delusion, won a
recognition which did not apply to it. Hanold transferred his
conviction that Gradiva lived in the house to other impressions
which he had received in the house; this led to his credulity in
regard to the landlord’s remarks, the genuineness of the
metal clasp and the truth of the anecdote about the discovery of
the embracing lovers - but only through his linking what he heard
in the house with Gradiva. The jealousy which was already latent in
him seized upon this material and the consequence was the delusion
(though it contradicted his first dream) that Gradiva was the girl
who had died in her lover’s arms and that the clasp he had
bought had belonged to her.

   It will be observed that his
conversation with Gradiva and her hint at wooing him (her
‘saying it with flowers’) had already brought about
important changes in Hanold. Traits of masculine desire -
components of the libido - had awakened in him, though it is true
that they could not yet dispense with the disguise of conscious
pretexts. But the problem of the ‘bodily nature’ of
Gradiva, which pursued him all that day, cannot disavow its origin
in a young man’s erotic curiosity about a woman’s body,
even if it is involved in a scientific question by the conscious
insistence on Gradiva’s peculiar oscillation between death
and life. His jealousy was a further sign of the increasingly
active aspect of Hanold’s love; he expressed this jealousy at
the beginning of their conversation the next day and with the help
of a fresh pretext proceeded to touch the girl’s body and, as
he used to do in the far-off past, to hit her.

Delusions And Dreams In Jensen's Gradiva

1874

   But it is now time to ask
ourselves whether the method of constructing a delusion which we
have inferred from our author’s account is one that is known
from other sources, or whether, indeed, it is possible at all. From
our medical knowledge we can only reply that it is certainly the
correct method, and perhaps the sole method, by which a delusion
acquires the unshakable conviction which is one of its clinical
characteristics. If a patient believes in his delusion so firmly,
this is not because his faculty of judgement has been overturned
and does not arise from what is false in the delusion. On the
contrary, there is a grain of truth concealed in every delusion,
there is something in it that really deserves belief, and this is
the source of the patient’s conviction, which is therefore to
that extent justified. This true element, however, has long been
repressed. If eventually it is able to penetrate into
consciousness, this time in a distorted form, the sense of
conviction attaching to it is over-intensified as though by way of
compensation and is now attached to the distorted substitute of the
repressed truth, and protects it from any critical attacks. The
conviction is displaced, as it were, from the unconscious truth on
to the conscious error that is linked to it, and remains fixated
there precisely as a result of this displacement. The instance of
the formation of a delusion which arose from Hanold’s first
dream is no more than a similar, though not identical, example of
such a displacement. Indeed, the method described here by which
conviction arises in the case of a delusion does not differ
fundamentally from the method by which a conviction is formed in
normal cases, where repression does not come into the picture. We
all attach our conviction to thought-contents in which truth is
combined with error, and let it extend from the former over the
latter. It becomes diffused, as it were, from the truth over the
error associated with it and protects the latter, though not so
unalterably as in the case of a delusion, against deserved
criticism. In normal psychology, too, being well-connected -
‘having influence’, so to speak - can take the place of
true worth.

Delusions And Dreams In Jensen's Gradiva

1875

   I will now return to the dream
and bring out a small but not uninteresting feature in it, which
forms a connection between two of its provoking causes. Gradiva had
drawn a kind of contrast between the white asphodel blossoms and
the red rose. Seeing the asphodel again in the window of the
Albergo del Sole became an important piece of evidence in support
of Hanold’s unconscious discovery, which was expressed in the
new delusion; and alongside this was the fact that the red rose in
the dress of the sympathetic girl helped Hanold in his unconscious
to a correct view of her relation to her companion, so that he was
able to make her appear in the dream as the ‘lady
colleague’.

   But where in the manifest content
of the dream, it will be asked, do we find anything to indicate and
replace the discovery for which, as we have seen, Hanold’s
new delusion was a substitute - the discovery that Gradiva was
staying with her father in the third, concealed Pompeii hotel, the
Albergo del Sole? Nevertheless it is all there in the dream, and
not even very much distorted, and I merely hesitate to point to it
because I know that even those of my readers who have followed me
patiently so far will begin to rebel strongly against my attempts
at interpretation. Hanold’s discovery, I repeat, is fully
announced in the dream, but so cleverly concealed that it is bound
to be overlooked. It is hidden behind a play upon words, an
ambiguity. ‘Somewhere in the sun Gradiva was sitting.’
We have quite correctly related this to the spot where Hanold met
her father, the zoologist. But could it not also mean in the
‘Sun’ - that is, Gradiva is staying in the Albergo del
Sole, the Sun Hotel? And was not the ‘somewhere’, which
had no bearing on the encounter with her father, made to sound so
hypocritically indefinite precisely because it introduced a
definite piece of information about the place where Gradiva was
staying? From my experience elsewhere of real dreams, I myself am
perfectly certain that this is how the ambiguity is to be
understood. But I should not in fact have ventured to present this
piece of interpretative work to my readers, if the author had not
at this point lent me his powerful assistance. He puts the very
same play upon words into the girl’s mouth when next day she
saw the metal clasp: ‘Did you find it in the sun, perhaps,
which produces things of this kind?’ And since Hanold failed
to understand what she had said, she explained that she meant the
Sun Hotel, which they call ‘Sole’ here, and where she
had already seen the supposititious antique.