Freud - Complete Works (436 page)

   Let us now go back to the
nurse’s dream, in order to demonstrate the quality of depth
in the wish-fulfilment contained in it. We already know that the
lady’s interpretation of the dream was by no means complete;
there were portions of it to which she was unable to do justice.
Moreover she suffered from an obsessional neurosis, a condition
which, from what I have observed, makes it considerably harder to
understand dream-symbols, just as dementia praecox makes it
easier.

   Nevertheless, our knowledge of
dream-symbolism enables us to understand uninterpreted portions of
this dream and to discover a deeper significance behind the
interpretations already given. We cannot but notice that some of
the material employed by the nurse came from the complex of giving
birth, of having children. The expanse of water (the Rhine, the
Channel where the whale was seen) was certainly the water out of
which children come. And then, too, she came to the water in search
of a child. The Jonah legend, which was a factor lying behind the
determination of this water, the question how Jonah (the child)
could get through such a narrow passage, belongs to the same
complex. And the nurse who threw herself into the Rhine out of
mortification found a sexual-symbolic consolation for her despair
of life in the mode of her death - by going into water. The narrow
footbridge on which the apparition met her was in all probability
also a genital symbol, although I must admit that here we lack as
yet more precise knowledge.

An Evidential Dream

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   The wish ‘I want to have a
child’ seems therefore to have been the dream-constructor
from the unconscious; no other would have been better calculated to
console the nurse for the distressing state of affairs in real
life. ‘I shall be discharged: I shall lose the child in my
care. What does it matter? I shall get a real child of my own
instead.’ The uninterpreted portion of the dream in which she
questioned everyone in the street about the child may perhaps
belong here; the interpretation would then run: ‘And even if
I have to offer myself on the streets I know how to get a child for
myself.’ A strain of defiance in the dreamer, hitherto
disguised, suddenly declares itself at this point. Her admission
fits in here for the first time: ‘I have shut my eyes and
compromised my professional reputation for conscientiousness; now I
shall lose my place. Shall I be such a fool as to drown myself like
Nurse X? Not I: I’ll give up nursing altogether and get
married; I’ll be a woman and have a real child; nothing shall
prevent me.’ This interpretation is justified by the
consideration that ‘having children’ is really the
infantile expression of a wish for sexual intercourse: indeed it
can be chosen in consciousness as a euphemistic expression of this
objectionable wish.

   Thus the dreamer’s
disadvantageous admission, to which she showed some inclination
even in waking life, was made possible in the dream by being
employed by a latent character-trait of hers for the purpose of
bringing about the fulfilment of an infantile wish. We may surmise
that this trait had a close connection - in regard both to time and
to content - with the wish for a child and for sexual
enjoyment.

   Subsequent enquiry from the lady
to whom I owe the first part of this interpretation afforded some
unexpected information about the nurse’s previous life.
Before she took up nursing she had wanted to marry a man who had
been keenly interested in her; but she had abandoned the projected
marriage on account of the opposition of an aunt, towards whom her
relations were a curious mixture of dependence and defiance. This
aunt who prevented the marriage was the Superior of a nursing
Order. The dreamer always regarded her as her pattern. She had
expectations of an inheritance from her and was tied to her for
that reason. Nevertheless, she opposed her aunt by not entering the
Order as that lady had planned. The defiance shown in the dream was
therefore directed against the aunt. We have ascribed an
anal-erotic origin to this character-trait, and may take into
consideration that the interests which made her dependent on her
aunt were of a financial nature; we are also reminded that children
favour the anal theory of birth.

An Evidential Dream

2593

   This factor of infantile defiance
may perhaps allow us to assume a closer relation between the first
and last scenes in the dream. The former saleswoman in a provision
shop represents in the dream the attendant who brought the
lady’s supper into the room just when she was asking the
question ‘Did you see me?’ It appears, however, that
she was cast for the role of hostile rival in general. The dreamer
disparaged her capacities as a nurse by making her take not the
slightest interest in the lost child, but deal only with her own
private affairs in her answer. She had thus displaced on to this
figure the indifference about the child in her care which she was
beginning to feel. The unhappy marriage and divorce which she
herself must have dreaded in her most secret wishes were attributed
to the other woman. We know, however, that it was the aunt who had
separated the dreamer from her fiancé. Hence the
‘provision saleswoman’ (a figure not necessarily
without an infantile symbolic significance) may represent the
aunt-Superior, who was in fact not much older than the dreamer and
who had played the traditional part of mother-rival in her life. A
satisfactory confirmation of this interpretation is to be found in
the fact that the ‘familiar’ place where she came upon
this person standing in front of her door was precisely the place
where her aunt resided as a Superior.

   Owing to the lack of contact
between the analyst and the person under analysis, it is scarcely
advisable to penetrate deeper into the structure of the dream. But
we may perhaps say that so far as it was accessible to
interpretation it has provided us with plenty of confirmations as
well as with plenty of new problems.

2594

THE OCCURRENCE IN DREAMS OF MATERIAL FROM FAIRY TALES

(1913)

2595

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2596

THE OCCURRENCE IN DREAMS OF MATERIAL FROM FAIRY TALES

It is not surprising to find that
psycho-analysis confirms our recognition of the important place
which folk fairy tales have acquired in the mental life of our
children. In a few people a recollection of their favourite fairy
tales takes the place of memories of their own childhood; they have
made the fairy tales into screen memories.

   Elements and situations derived
from fairy tales are also frequently to be found in dreams. In
interpreting the passages in question the patient will produce the
significant fairy tale as an association. In the present paper I
shall give two instances of this very common occurrence. But it
will not be possible to do more than hint at the relations between
the fairy tales and the history of the dreamer’s childhood
and his neurosis, though this limitation will involve the risk of
breaking links which were of the utmost importance to the
analyst.

I

   Here is a dream of a young
married woman who had had a visit from her husband a few days
before:
She was in a room that was entirely brown. A little door
led to the top of a steep staircase, and up this staircase there
came into the room a curious manikin - small, with white hair, a
bald top to his head and a red nose. He danced round the room in
front of her, carried on in the funniest way, and then went down
the staircase again. He was dressed in a grey garment, through
which every part of his figure was visible
. (A correction was
made subsequently:
He was wearing a long black coat and grey
trousers
.)

   The analysis was as follows. The
description of the manikin’s personal appearance fitted the
dreamer’s father-in-law without any alteration being
necessary.¹ Immediately afterwards, however, she thought of
the story of ‘Rumpelstiltskin’, who danced around in
the same funny way as the man in the dream and in so doing betrayed
his name to the queen; but by that he lost his claim to the
queen’s first child, and in his fury tore himself in two.

  
¹
Except for the detail that the manikin had
his hair cut short, whereas her father-in-law wore his
long.

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2597

   On the day before she had the
dream she herself had been just as furious with her husband and had
exclaimed: ‘I could tear him in two.’

   The brown room at first gave rise
to difficulties. All that occurred to her was her parents’
dining-room, which was panelled in that colour - in brown wood. She
then told some stories of beds which were so uncomfortable for two
people to sleep in. A few days before, when the subject of
conversation had been beds in other countries, she had said
something very
mal à propos
- quite innocently, as
she maintained - and everyone in the room had roared with
laughter.

   The dream was now already
intelligible. The brown wood room¹ was in the first place a
bed, and through the connection with the dining-room it was a
marriage bed.² She was therefore in her marriage bed. Her
visitor should have been her young husband, who, after an absence
of several months, had visited her to play his part in the double
bed. But to begin with it was her husband’s father, her
father-in-law.

   Behind this first interpretation
we have a glimpse of deeper and purely sexual material. Here the
room was the vagina. (The room was in her - this was reversed in
the dream.) The little man who made grimaces and behaved so funnily
was the penis. The narrow door and the steep stairs confirmed the
view that the situation was a representation of intercourse. As a
rule we are accustomed to find the penis symbolized by a child; but
we shall find there was good reason for a father being introduced
to represent the penis in this instance.

   The solution of the remaining
portion of the dream will entirely confirm us in this
interpretation. The dreamer herself explained the transparent grey
garment as a condom. We may gather that considerations of
preventing conception and worries whether this visit of her
husband’s might not have sown the seed of a second child were
among the instigating causes of the dream.

  
¹
Wood, as is well known, is frequently a
female or maternal symbol: e.g.
materia
,
Madeira
,
etc.

  
²
For bed and board stand for
marriage.

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2598

  
The black coat
. Coats of
that kind suited her husband admirably. She wanted to persuade him
always to wear them, instead of his usual clothes. Dressed in the
black coat, therefore, her husband was as she liked to see him.
The black coat and grey trousers
. At two different levels,
one above the other, this had the same meaning: ‘I should
like you to be dressed like that. I like you like that.’

   Rumpelstiltskin was connected
with the contemporary thoughts underlying the dream - the
day’s residues - by a neat antithetic relation. In the fairy
tale he comes in order to take away the queen’s first child.
In the dream the little man comes in the shape of a father, because
he had presumably brought a second child. But Rumpelstiltskin also
gave access to the deeper, infantile stratum of the dream-thoughts.
The droll little fellow, whose very name is unknown, whose secret
is so eagerly canvassed, who can perform such extraordinary tricks
- in the fairy tale he turns straw into gold - the fury against
him, or rather against his possessor, who is envied for possessing
him (the girl’s envy for the penis) - all of these were
elements whose relation to the foundations of the patient’s
neurosis can, as I have said, barely be touched upon in this paper.
The short-cut hair of the manikin in the dream was no doubt also
connected with the subject of castration.

   If we carefully observe from
clear instances the way in which dreamers use fairy tales and the
point at which they bring them in, we may perhaps also succeed in
picking up some hints which will help in interpreting remaining
obscurities in the fairy tales themselves.

The Occurrence In Dreams Of Material From Fairy Tales

2599

II

   A young man told me the following
dream. He had a chronological basis for his early memories in the
circumstance that his parents moved from one country estate to
another just before he was five years old; the dream, which he said
was his earliest one, occurred while he was still upon the first
estate.

   ‘
I dreamt that it was
night and that I was lying in my bed. (My bed stood with its foot
towards the window: in front of the window there was a row of old
walnut trees. I know it was winter when I had the dream, and
night-time.) Suddenly the window opened of its own accord, and I
was terrified to see that some white wolves were sitting on the big
walnut tree in front of the window. There were six or seven of
them. The wolves were quite white, and looked more like foxes or
sheep-dogs, for they had big tails like foxes and they had their
ears pricked like dogs when they pay attention to something. In
great horror, evidently of being eaten up by the wolves, I
screamed
and woke up. My nurse hurried to my bed, to see what
had happened to me. It took quite a long while before I was
convinced that it had only been a dream; I had had such a clear and
life-like picture of the window opening and the wolves sitting on
the tree. At last I grew quieter, felt as though I had escaped from
some danger, and went to sleep again.

   ‘The only piece of action
in the dream was the opening of the window; for the wolves sat
quite still and without making any movement on the branches of the
tree, to the right and left of the trunk, and looked at me. It
seemed as though they had riveted their whole attention upon me. -
I think this was my first anxiety-dream. I was three, four, or at
most five years old at the time. From then until my eleventh or
twelfth year I was always afraid of seeing something terrible in my
dreams.’

   He added a drawing of the tree
with the wolves, which confirmed his description. The analysis of
the dream brought the following material to light.

   He had always connected this
dream with the recollection that during these years of his
childhood he was most tremendously afraid of the picture of a wolf
in a book of fairy tales. His elder sister, who was very much his
superior, used to tease him by holding up this particular picture
in front of him on some excuse or other, so that he was terrified
and began to scream. In this picture the wolf was standing upright,
striding out with one foot, with its claws stretched out and its
ears pricked. He thought this picture must have been an
illustration to the story of ‘Little Red
Riding-Hood’.

   Why were the wolves white? This
made him think of the sheep, large flocks of which were kept in the
neighbourhood of the estate. His father occasionally took him with
him to visit these flocks, and every time this happened he felt
very proud and blissful. Later on - according to enquiries that
were made it may easily have been shortly before the time of the
dream - an epidemic broke out among the sheep. His father sent for
a follower of Pasteur’s, who inoculated the animals, but
after the inoculation even more of them died than before.

The Occurrence In Dreams Of Material From Fairy Tales

2600

   How did the wolves come to be on
the tree? This reminded him of a story that he had heard his
grandfather tell. He could not remember whether it was before or
after the dream, but its subject is a decisive argument in favour
of the former view. The story ran as follows. A tailor was sitting
at work in his room, when the window opened and a wolf leapt in.
The tailor hit after him with his yard - no (he corrected himself),
caught him by his tail and pulled it off, so that the wolf ran away
in terror. Some time later the tailor went into the forest, and
suddenly saw a pack of wolves coming towards him; so he climbed up
a tree to escape from them. At first the wolves were in perplexity;
but the maimed one, which was among them and wanted to revenge
himself on the tailor, proposed that they should climb one upon
another till the last one could reach him. He himself - he was a
vigorous old fellow - would be the base of the pyramid. The wolves
did as he suggested, but the tailor had recognized the visitor whom
he had punished, and suddenly called out as he had before:
‘Catch the grey one by his tail!’ The tailless wolf,
terrified by the recollection, ran away, and all the others tumbled
down.

   In this story the tree appears,
upon which the wolves were sitting in the dream. But it also
contains an unmistakable allusion to the castration complex. The
old
wolf was docked of his tail by the tailor. The fox-tails
of the wolves in the dream were probably compensations for this
taillessness.

   Why were there six or seven
wolves? There seemed to be no answer to this question, until I
raised a doubt whether the picture that had frightened him could be
connected with the story of ‘Little Red Riding-Hood’.
This fairy tale only offers an opportunity for two illustrations -
Little Red Riding-Hood’s meeting with the wolf in the wood,
and the scene in which the wolf lies in bed in the
grandmother’s night-cap. There must therefore be some other
fairy tale behind his recollection of the picture. He soon
discovered that it could only be the story of ‘The Wolf and
the Seven Little Goats’ Here the number seven occurs, and
also the number six, for the wolf only ate up six of the little
goats, while the seventh hid itself in the clock-case. The white,
too, comes into this story, for the wolf had his paw made white at
the baker’s after the little goats had recognized him on his
first visit by his grey paw. Moreover, the two fairy tales have
much in common. In both there is the eating up, the cutting open of
the belly, the taking out of the people who have been eaten and
their replacement by heavy stones, and finally in both of them the
wicked wolf perishes. Besides all this, in the story of the little
goats the tree appears. The wolf lay down under a tree after his
meal and snored.

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2601

   I shall have, for a special
reason, to deal with this dream again elsewhere, and interpret it
and consider its significance in greater detail. For it is the
earliest anxiety-dream that the dreamer remembered from his
childhood, and its content, taken in connection with other dreams
that followed it soon afterwards and with certain events in his
earliest years, is of quite peculiar interest. We must confine
ourselves here to the relation of the dream to the two fairy tales
which have so much in common with each other, ‘Little Red
Riding-Hood’ and ‘The Wolf and the Seven Little
Goats’. The effect produced by these stories was shown in the
little dreamer by a regular animal phobia. This phobia was only
distinguished from other similar cases by the fact that the
anxiety-animal was not an object easily accessible to observation
(such as a horse or a dog), but was known to him only from stories
and picture-books.