Freud - Complete Works (644 page)

   Let us restrict ourselves to the
problem contained in the last phrase, which promised her two
children at the age of 32. These details seem quite arbitrary and
inexplicable. Even the most credulous person would scarcely
undertake to deduce them from an interpretation of the lines on a
hand. They would have received an indisputable justification if the
future had confirmed them. But this was not the case. She was now
forty years old and had no children. What, then, were the source
and meaning of these numbers? The patient herself had no notion.
The obvious thing would be to dismiss the question entirely and to
consign it to the rubbish heap among so many other meaningless and
ostensibly occult messages. That would be delightful: the simplest
solution and a greatly desirable relief. But unluckily I must add
that it was possible - and precisely by the help of analysis - to
find an explanation of the two numbers and one which, once again,
was completely satisfactory and arose, almost as a matter of
course, out of the actual situation.

Psycho-Analysis And Telepathy

3872

   For the two numbers fitted in
perfectly with the life-story of - our patient’s
mother
. She had not married till she was thirty and it was
in her thirty-second year that (unlike most women and to make up,
as it were, for her dilatoriness) she gave birth to two children.
So it is easy to translate the prophecy: ‘There’s no
need to worry about your present childlessness. There’s
nothing in that. You can still follow the example of your mother,
who was not even married at your age and nevertheless had two
children by the time she was thirty-two.’ The prophecy
promised her the fulfilment of the identification with her mother
which had been the secret of her childhood, and it was spoken
through the mouth of a fortune-teller who was in ignorance of all
her personal affairs and was busy examining an imprint in the sand.
And we may add, as the precondition of this wish-fulfilment
(unconscious as it was in every sense): ‘You will be set free
from your useless husband by his death, or you will find strength
to separate from him.’ The first alternative would fit in
better with the nature of an obsessional neurosis, while the second
is suggested by the struggles which, according to the prophecy, she
was successfully to overcome.

   As you will observe, the part
played by analytic interpretation is even more important in this
example than in the last one. Analysis may actually be said to have
created the occult fact. Accordingly, this example, too, would seem
to offer positively conclusive evidence of its being possible to
transfer an unconscious wish and the thoughts and knowledge
relating to it. I can see only one way of evading the
conclusiveness of this last case and you may be sure that I shall
not conceal it. It is possible that in the course of the twelve or
thirteen years that elapsed between the prophecy and the account of
it given during the treatment the patient may have formed a
paramnesia: the Professor may have uttered some general and
colourless consolation - which would be nothing to wonder at - and
the patient may have gradually inserted the significant numbers out
of her unconscious. If so, we should have avoided the fact which
threatened us with such momentous consequences. We will gladly
identify ourselves with the sceptics who will only attach value to
a report of this kind if it is made immediately after the event -
and even then, perhaps, not without hesitation. I remember that
after I was appointed to a professorship I had an audience with the
Minister to express my thanks. As I was on my way home from this
audience I caught myself in the act of trying to falsify the words
that had passed between us and I was never able to recapture
correctly the actual conversation. I must leave it to you to decide
whether the explanation I have suggested is tenable. I can neither
prove nor disprove it. Thus, this second observation, though in
itself more impressive than the first, is not equally free from
doubt.

Psycho-Analysis And Telepathy

3873

   The two cases that I have
reported to you are both concerned with unfulfilled prophecies.
Observations of this kind, in my opinion, can provide the best
material on the question of thought-transference, and I should like
to encourage you to collect similar ones. I had also intended to
bring you an example based on material of another kind - a case in
which a patient of a special sort talked during one session of
things which touched in the most remarkable way on an experience
which I had had myself immediately before. But I can now give you
visible proof of the fact that I discuss the subject of occultism
under the pressure of the greatest resistance. When, while I was at
Gastein, I looked out the notes which I had put together and
brought with me for the purpose of this paper, the sheet on which I
had noted down this last observation was not there, but in its
place I found another sheet of indifferent memoranda on quite
another topic, which I had brought with me by mistake. Nothing can
be done against such a clear resistance. I must ask you to excuse
me for omitting this case, for I cannot make the loss good from
memory.

   I will instead add a few remarks
about someone who is very well known in Vienna, a graphologist,
Rafael Schermann, who has a reputation for the most astonishing
performances. He is said to be able not merely to read a
person’s character from a specimen of his handwriting, but
also to describe his appearance and to add predictions about him
which later come true. Incidentally, many of these remarkable
achievements are based on his own stories. A friend of mine once,
without my previous knowledge, made the experiment of getting him
to allow his imagination to play over a specimen of my writing. All
that he produced was that the writing was that of an old gentleman
(which it was easy to guess), with whom it was hard to live since
he was an intolerable tyrant in his home. Those who share my house
would hardly confirm this. But, as we know, the field of the occult
is subject to the convenient principle that negative cases prove
nothing. I have made no direct observations on Schermann, but
through a patient of mine I have been in contact with him without
his knowing it. I will tell you about it.

Psycho-Analysis And Telepathy

3874

   A few years ago a young man came
to me who made a particularly sympathetic impression on me, so that
I gave him preference over a number of others. It appeared that he
was involved with one of the best known
demi-mondaines
and
that he wanted to get free from her, because the relationship
deprived him of all independence of action, but was unable to do
so. I succeeded in setting him free and at the same time I obtained
full insight into his compulsion. Not many months ago he contracted
a normal and respectable marriage. The analysis soon showed that
the compulsion against which he was struggling was not a tie with
the
demi-mondaine
but with a married lady in his own circle
with whom he had had a
liason
from his earliest youth. The
demi-mondaine
served merely as a whipping-boy on whom he
could satisfy all the feelings of revenge and jealousy which really
applied to the other lady. On a model that is familiar to us, he
had made use of displacement onto a fresh object in order to escape
the inhibition brought about by his ambivalence.

   It was his habit to inflict the
most refined torment on the
demi-mondaine
, who had fallen in
love with him in an almost unselfish fashion. But when she could no
longer conceal her sufferings, he in turn passed over on to her the
affection he had felt for the woman he had loved since his youth;
he made her presents and propitiated her, and the cycle started on
its course once more. When finally, under the influence of the
treatment, he broke with her, it became clear what it was that he
was trying to achieve by his behaviour to this substitute for his
early love: revenge for an attempt at suicide of his own when his
love had rejected his advances. After the attempted suicide he had
at last succeeded in overcoming her reluctance. During this period
of the treatment he used to visit the celebrated Schermann. And the
latter, on the basis of specimens of the
demi-mondaine’s
handwriting, repeatedly told him by
way of interpretation that she was at her last gasp, was at the
point of suicide and would quite certainly kill herself. This,
however, she did not do, but shook off her human weakness, and
recalled the principles of her profession and her duties to her
official friend. I saw clearly that the miracle-man had merely
revealed to my patient his own intimate wish.

Psycho-Analysis And Telepathy

3875

   After disposing of this spurious
figure, my patient set about seriously the task of freeing himself
from his real bond. I detected from his dreams a plan that he was
forming by means of which he would be able to escape from his
relation with his early love without causing her too much
mortification or material damage. She had a daughter, who was very
fond of the young friend of the family and ostensibly knew nothing
of the secret part he played. He now proposed to marry this girl.
Soon afterwards the scheme became conscious, and the man took the
first steps towards putting it into effect. I supported his
intentions, since it offered what was a possible way out of his
difficult situation even though an irregular one. But presently
there came a dream which showed hostility to the girl; and now once
more he consulted Schermann, who reported that the girl was
childish and neurotic and should not be married. This time the
great observer of human nature was right. The girl, who was by now
regarded as the man’s
fiancée
, behaved in a
more and more contradictory manner, and it was decided that she
should be analysed. As a result of the analysis the scheme for the
marriage was abandoned. The girl had a complete unconscious
knowledge of the relations between her mother and her
fiancé
, and was only attached to him on account of
her Oedipus complex.

   At about this time our analysis
broke off. The patient was free and capable of going his own way in
the future. He chose as his wife a respectable girl outside his
family circle - a girl on whom Schermann has passed a favourable
judgement. Let us hope that this time he will be right once
more.

   You will have grasped the sense
in which I am inclined to interpret these experiences of mine with
Schermann. You will see that all my material touches only on the
single point of thought-transference. I have nothing to say about
all the other miracles that are claimed by occultism. My own life,
as I have already openly admitted, has been particularly poor in an
occult sense. Perhaps the problem of thought-transference may seem
very trivial to you in comparison with the great magical world of
the occult. But consider what a momentous step beyond what we have
hitherto believed would be involved in this hypothesis alone. What
the custodian of Saint-Denis used to add to his account of the
saint’s martyrdom remains true. Saint-Denis is said, after
his head was cut off, to have picked it up and to have walked quite
a distance with it under his arm. But the custodian used to remark:
‘
Dans des cas pareils, ce n’est que le premier pas
qui coûte
.’ The rest is easy.

3876

DREAMS AND TELEPATHY

(1922)

3877

Intentionally left blank

3878

DREAMS AND TELEPATHY

At the present time, when such great interest
is felt in what are called ‘occult’ phenomena, very
definite anticipations will doubtless be aroused by the
announcement of a paper with this title. I will therefore hasten to
explain that there is no ground for any such anticipations. You
will learn nothing from this paper of mine about the enigma of
telepathy; indeed, you will not even gather whether I believe in
the existence of ‘telepathy’ or not. On this occasion I
have set myself the very modest task of examining the relation of
the telepathic occurrences in question, whatever their origin may
be, to dreams, or more exactly, to our theory of dreams. You will
know that the connection between dreams and telepathy is commonly
held to be a very intimate one; I shall put forward the view that
the two have little to do with each other, and that if the
existence of telepathic dreams were to be established there would
be no need to alter our conception of dreams in any way.

   The material on which the present
communication is based is very slight. In the first place, I must
express my regret that I could make no use of my own dreams, as I
did when I wrote my
Interpretation of Dreams
(1900
a
).
But I have never had a ‘telepathic’ dream. Not that I
have been without dreams of the kind that convey an impression that
a certain definite event is happening at some distant place,
leaving it to the dreamer to decide whether the event is happening
at that moment or will do so at some later time. In waking life,
too, I have often become aware of presentiments of distant events.
But these hints, foretellings and premonitions have none of them
‘come true’, as we say; there proved to be no
external reality corresponding to them, and they had therefore to
be regarded as purely subjective anticipations.

   For example, I once dreamt during
the war that one of my sons then serving at the front had been
killed. This was not directly stated in the dream, but was
expressed in an unmistakable manner, by means of the well-known
death-symbolism of which an account was first given by Stekel. (We
must not omit to fulfil the duty, often felt to be inconvenient, of
making literary acknowledgements.)  I saw the young soldier
standing on a landing-stage, between land and water, as it were; he
looked to me very pale. I spoke to him but he did not answer. There
were other unmistakable indications. He was not wearing military
uniform, but a ski-ing costume that he had worn when a serious
ski-ing accident had happened to him several years before the war.
He stood on something like a footstool with a cupboard in front of
him; a situation always closely associated in my mind with the idea
of ‘falling’, through a memory of my own childhood. As
a child of little more than two years old I had myself climbed on a
footstool like this to get something off the top of a cupboard -
probably something good to eat - and I fell down and gave myself an
injury, of which I can even now show the scar. My son, however,
whom the dream pronounced to be dead, came home from the war
unscathed.

Dreams And Telepathy

3879

   Only a short time ago, I had
another dream bearing ill-tidings; it was, I think, just before I
decided to put together these few remarks. This time there was not
much attempt at disguise. I saw my two nieces who live in England.
They were dressed in black and said to me, ‘We buried her on
Thursday.’ I knew the reference was to the death of their
mother, now eighty-seven years of age, the widow of my eldest
brother.

   A time of disagreeable
anticipation followed; there would of course be nothing surprising
in such an old lady suddenly passing away, yet it would be very
unpleasant for the dream to coincide exactly with the occurrence.
The next letter from England, however, dissipated this fear. For
the benefit of those who are concerned for the wish-fulfilment
theory of dreams I may interpolate a reassurance by saying that
there was no difficulty in detecting by analysis the unconscious
motives that might be presumed to exist in these death-dreams just
as in others.

   I hope you will not object that
what I have just related is valueless because negative experiences
prove as little here as they do in less occult matters. I am well
aware of that and have not adduced these instances with any
intention whatever of proving anything or of surreptitiously
influencing you in any particular direction. My sole purpose was to
explain the paucity of my material.

Dreams And Telepathy

3880

   Another fact certainly seems to
me of more significance, namely, that during some twenty-seven
years of work as an analyst I have never been in a position to
observe a truly telepathic dream in any of my patients. And yet
those patients made up a fair collection of severely neuropathic
and ‘highly sensitive’ natures. Many of them have
related to me most remarkable incidents in their earlier life on
which they based a belief in mysterious occult influences. Events
such as accidents or illnesses of near relatives, in particular the
death of a parent, have often enough happened during the treatment
and interrupted it; but not on one single occasion did these
occurrences, eminently suitable as they were in character, afford
me the opportunity of registering a single telepathic dream,
although treatment extended over several months or even years.
Anyone who cares to may look for an explanation of this fact, which
still further restricts the material at my disposal. In any case it
will be seen that such an explanation would not affect the subject
of this paper.

   Nor does it embarrass me to be
asked why I have made no use of the abundant store of telepathic
dreams that have appeared in the literature of the subject. I
should not have had far to seek, since the publications of the
English as well as of the American Society for Psychical Research
are accessible to me as a member of both societies. In none of
these communications is any attempt ever made to subject such
dreams to analytic investigation, which would be our first interest
in such cases.¹ Moreover, you will soon perceive that for the
purposes of this paper one single dream will serve well enough.

   My material thus consists simply
and solely of two communications which have reached me from
correspondents in Germany. The writers are not personally known to
me, but they give their names and addresses: I have not the least
ground for presuming any intention to mislead on their part.

  
¹
In two publications by W. Stekel, the
author mentioned above (
Der telepathische Traum
, no date,
and
Die Sprache des Traumes
, Second Edition, 1922), there
are at least attempts to apply the analytic technique to alleged
telepathic dreams. The author expresses his belief in the reality
of telepathy.

Dreams And Telepathy

3881

I

   With the first of the two I had
already been in correspondence; he had been good enough to send me,
as many of my readers do, observations of everyday occurrences and
the like. He is obviously an educated and highly intelligent man;
this time he expressly places his material at my disposal if I care
to turn it ‘to literary account’.

   His letter runs as follows:

   ‘I consider the following
dream of sufficient interest for me to hand it on to you as
material for your researches.

   ‘I must first state the
following facts. My daughter, who is married and lives in Berlin,
was expecting her first confinement in the middle of December of
this year. I intended to go to Berlin about that time with my
(second) wife, my daughter’s stepmother. During the night of
November 16-17 I dreamt, with a vividness and clearness I have
never before experienced, that
my wife, had given birth to
twins. I saw the two healthy infants quite plainly with their
chubby faces lying in their cot side by side. I did not observe
their sex; one with fair hair had distinctly my features and
something of my wife’s, the other with chestnut-brown hair
clearly resembled her with a look of me. I said to my wife, who has
red-gold hair, "Probably ‘your’ child’s
chestnut hair will also go red later on." My wife gave them
the breast. In the dream she had also made some jam in a wash-basin
and the two children crawled about on all fours in the basin and
licked up the contents
.

   ‘So much for the dream.
Four or five times I had half woken from it, asked myself if it
were true that we had twins, but did not come to the conclusion
with any certainty that it was only a dream. The dream lasted till
I woke, and after that it was some little time before I felt quite
clear about the true state of affairs. At breakfast I told my wife
the dream, which much amused her. She said, "Surely Ilse (my
daughter) won’t have twins?" I answered, "I should
hardly think so, as twins are not the usual thing either in my
family or in G.’s" (her husband). On November 18, at ten
o’clock in the morning, I received a telegram from my
son-in-law, handed in the afternoon before, telling me of the birth
of twins, a boy and a girl. The birth thus took place at the time
when I was dreaming that my wife had twins. The confinement
occurred four weeks earlier than any of us had expected on the
basis of my daughter and son in-law’s calculations.

Dreams And Telepathy

3882

   ‘But there is a further
circumstance: the next night I dreamt
that my deceased wife, my
daughter’s own mother, had undertaken the care of forty-eight
new-born infants. When the first dozen were being brought in, I
protested
. At that point the dream ended.

   ‘My late wife was very fond
of children. She often talked about it, saying she would like a
whole troop round her, the more the better, and that she would do
very well if she had charge of a Kindergarten and would be quite
happy so. The noise children make was music to her. From time to
time she would invite in a whole troop of children from the streets
and regale them with chocolate and cakes in the courtyard of our
villa. My daughter must have thought at once of her mother after
her confinement, especially because of the surprise of its coming
on prematurely, the arrival of twins, and their difference in sex.
She knew her mother would have greeted the event with the liveliest
joy and sympathy. "Only think what mother would say, if she
were with me now!" This thought must undoubtedly have gone
through her mind. And then I dream of my dead wife, of whom I very
seldom dream, and had neither spoken of nor thought of after the
first dream.

   ‘Do you think that the
coincidence between dream and event was accidental in both cases?
My daughter is much attached to me and was most certainly thinking
of me during her labour, particularly because we had often
exchanged letters about her mode of living during her pregnancy and
I had constantly given her advice.’

   It is easy to guess what my
answer to this letter was. I was sorry to find that my
correspondent’s interest in analysis had been so completely
killed by his interest in telepathy. I therefore avoided his direct
question, and, remarking that the dream contained a good deal
besides its connection with the birth of the twins, I asked him to
give me any information or ideas that occurred to him which could
give me a clue to the meaning of the dream.

   Thereupon I received the
following second letter which, it must be admitted, did not give me
quite all I wanted:

   ‘I have not been able to
answer your kind letter of the 24th until to-day. I shall be only
too pleased to tell you "without omission or reserve" all
the associations that occur to me. Unfortunately there is not much;
more would come out in talking.

Dreams And Telepathy

3883

   ‘Well then - my wife and I
do not wish for any more children. We almost never have sexual
intercourse; at any rate at the time of the dream there was
certainly no "danger". My daughter’s confinement,
which was expected about the middle of December, was naturally a
frequent subject of conversation between us. My daughter had been
examined and X-rayed in the summer, and the doctor making the
examination was certain that the child would be a boy. My wife said
at the time, "I should laugh if it was a girl after all."
At the time she also remarked that it would be better if it were an
H. rather than a G. (my son-in-law’s family name); my
daughter is handsomer and has a better figure than my son-in-law,
although he has been a naval officer. I have made some study of the
question of heredity and am in the habit of looking at babies to
see whom they resemble. One more thing. We have a small dog which
sits with us at table in the evening to have his food and licks the
plates and dishes. All this material appears in the dream.

   ‘I am fond of small
children and have often said that I should like to have the
bringing up of a child once more, now that I should have so much
more understanding, interest and time to devote to it; but with my
wife I should not wish it, as she does not possess the necessary
qualities for rearing a child judiciously. The dream makes me a
present of two children - I did not observe their sex. I see them
even at this moment lying in the bed and I recognize the features,
the one more "me", the other more my wife, but each with
minor traits from the other side. My wife has red-gold hair, but
the one child had chestnut (reddish) brown hair. I said, "Oh
well, it will go red, too, later on." Both the children crawl
round a large wash basin in which my wife has been stirring jam and
lick its bottom and sides (dream). The origin of this detail is
easily explicable, just as is the dream as a whole. The dream would
not be difficult to understand or interpret if it had not coincided
with the unexpectedly early arrival of my grandchildren (three
weeks too soon), a coincidence of time almost to the hour. (I
cannot exactly say when the dream began; my grandchildren were born
at nine p. m. and a quarter past; I went to bed at about eleven and
had my dream during the course of the night.) Our knowledge too
that the child would be a boy adds to the difficulty, though
possibly the doubt whether this had been fully established might
account for the appearance of twins in the dream. All the same,
there remains the coincidence of the dream with the unexpected and
premature appearance of my daughter’s twins.