Freud - Complete Works (87 page)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

527

   The fact that dreams have at
their command memories which are inaccessible in waking life is so
remarkable and of such theoretical importance that I should like to
draw still more attention to it by relating some further
‘hypermnesic’ dreams. Maury tells us how for some time
the word ‘Mussidan’ kept coming into his head during
the day. He knew nothing about it except that it was the name of a
town in France. One night he dreamt that he was talking to someone
who told him he came from Mussidan, and who, on being asked where
that was, replied that it was a small town in the Department of
Dordogne. When he woke up, Maury had no belief in the information
given him in the dream; he learnt from a gazetteer, however, that
it was perfectly correct. In this case the fact of the
dream’s superior knowledge was confirmed, but the forgotten
source of that knowledge was not discovered.

   Jessen (1855, 551) reports a very
similar event in a dream dating from remoter times: ‘To this
class belongs among others a dream of the elder Scaliger (quoted by
Hennings, 1784, 300) who wrote a poem in praise of the famous men
of Verona. A man who called himself Brugnolus appeared to him in a
dream and complained that he had been overlooked. Although Scaliger
could not remember having ever heard of him, he wrote some verses
on him. His son learnt later in Verona that someone named Brugnolus
had in fact been celebrated there as a critic.’

   The Marquis d’Hervey de St.
Denys, quoted by Vaschide (1911, 232 f.), describes a hypermnesic
dream which has a special peculiarity, for it was followed by
another dream which completed the recognition of what was at first
an unidentified memory: ‘I once dreamt of a young woman with
golden hair, whom I saw talking to my sister while showing her some
embroidery. She seemed very familiar to me in the dream and I
thought I had seen her very often before. After I woke up, I still
had her face very clearly before me but I was totally unable to
recognize it. I then went to sleep once more and the dream-picture
was repeated. . . . But in this second dream I spoke
to the fair-haired lady and asked her if I had not had the pleasure
of meeting her before somewhere. "Of course," she
replied, "don’t you remember the
plage
at
Pornic?" I immediately woke up again and I was then able to
recollect clearly all the details associated with the attractive
vision in the dream.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

528

   The same author (quoted again by
Vaschide, ibid., 233-4-) tells how a musician of his acquaintance
once heard in a dream a tune which seemed to him entirely new. It
was not until several years later that he found the same tune in an
old collected volume of musical pieces, though he still could not
remember ever having looked through it before.

   I understand that Myers has
published a whole collection of hypermnesic dreams of this kind in
the
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research
; but
these are unluckily inaccessible to me.

   No one who occupies himself with
dreams can, I believe, fail to discover that it is a very common
event for a dream to give evidence of knowledge and memories which
the waking subject is unaware of possessing. In my psycho-analytic
work with nervous patients, of which I shall speak later, I am in a
position several times a week to prove to patients from their
dreams that they are really quite familiar with quotations, obscene
words and so on, and make use of them in their dreams, though they
have forgotten them in their waking life. I will add one more
innocent case of hypermnesia in a dream, because of the great ease
with which it was possible to trace the source of the knowledge
that was accessible only in the dream.

   One of my patients dreamt in the
course of a fairly lengthy dream that he had ordered a
‘
Kontuszówka
’ while he was in a cafe.
After telling me this, he asked me what a
‘
Kontuszówka
’ was, as he had never heard
the name. I was able to tell him in reply that it was a Polish
liqueur, and that he could not have invented the name as it had
long been familiar to me from advertisements on the hoardings. At
first he would not believe me; but some days later, after making
his dream come true in a cafe, he noticed the name on a hoarding at
a street corner which he must have gone past at least twice a day
for several months.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

529

   I have noticed myself from my own
dreams how much it a matter of chance whether one discovers the
source of particular elements of a dream. Thus, for several years
before completing this book, I was pursued by the picture of a
church tower of very simple design, which I could not remember ever
having seen. Then I suddenly recognized it, with absolute
certainty, at a small station on the line between Salzburg and
Reichenhall. That was during the second half of the eighteen
nineties and I had travelled over the line for the first time in
1886. During later years, when I was already deeply absorbed in the
study of dreams, the frequent recurrence in my dreams of the
picture of a particular unusual-looking place became a positive
nuisance to me. In a specific spatial relation to myself, on my
left-hand side, I saw a dark space out of which there glimmered a
number of grotesque sandstone figures. A faint recollection, which
I was unwilling to credit, told me it was the entrance to a
beer-cellar. But I failed to discover either the meaning of the
dream-picture or its origin. In 1907 I happened to be in Padua,
which, to my regret, I had not been able to visit since 1895. My
first visit to that lovely University town had been a
disappointment, as I had not been able to see Giotto’s
frescoes in the Madonna dell’Arena. I had turned back
half-way along the street leading there, on being told that the
chapel was closed on that particular day. On my second visit,
twelve years later, I decided to make up for this and the first
thing I did was to set off towards the Arena chapel. In the street
leading to it, on my left-hand side as I walked along and in all
probability at the point at which I had turned back in 1895, I came
upon the place I had seen so often in my dreams, with the sandstone
figures that formed part of it. It was in fact the entrance to the
garden of a restaurant.

   One of the sources from which
dreams derive material for reproduction - material which is in part
neither remembered nor used in the activities of waking thought -
is childhood experience. I will quote only a few of the authors who
have noticed and stressed this fact.

   Hildebrandt (1875, 23): ‘I
have already expressly admitted that dreams sometimes bring back to
our minds, with a wonderful power of reproduction, very remote and
even forgotten events from our earliest years.’

   Strümpell (1877, 40):
‘The position is even more remarkable when we observe how
dreams sometimes bring to light, as it were, from beneath the
deepest piles of débris under which the earliest experiences
of youth are buried in later times, pictures of particular
localities, things or people, completely intact and with all their
original freshness. This is not limited to experiences which
created a lively impression when they occurred or enjoy a high
degree of psychical importance and return later in a dream as
genuine recollections at which waking consciousness will rejoice.
On the contrary, the depths of memory in dreams also include
pictures of people, things, localities and events dating from the
earliest times, which either never possessed any psychical
importance or more than a slight degree of vividness, or which have
long since lost what they may have possessed of either, and which
consequently seem completely alien and unknown alike to the
dreaming and waking mind till their earlier origin has been
discovered.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

530

   Volkelt (1875, 119): ‘It is
especially remarkable how readily memories of childhood and youth
make their way into dreams. Dreams are continually reminding us of
things which we have ceased to think of and which have long ceased
to be important to us.’

   Since dreams have material from
childhood at their command, and since, as we all know, that
material is for the most part blotted out by gaps in our conscious
faculty of memory, these circumstances give rise to interesting
hypermnesic dreams, of which I will once more give a few
examples.

   Maury (1878, 92) relates how when
he was a child he used often to go from Meaux, which was his
birthplace, to the neighbouring village of Trilport, where his
father was superintending the building of a bridge. One night in a
dream he found himself in Trilport and was once more playing in the
village street. A man came up to him who was wearing a sort of
uniform. Maury asked him his name and he replied that he was called
G. and was a watchman at the bridge. Maury awoke feeling sceptical
as to the correctness of the memory, and asked an old maid-servant,
who had been with him since his childhood, whether she could
remember a man of that name. ‘Why, yes’, was the reply,
‘he was the watchman at the bridge when your father was
building it.’

   Maury (ibid., 143-4) gives
another equally well corroborated example of the accuracy of a
memory of childhood emerging in a dream. It was dreamt by a
Monsieur F., who as a child had lived at Montbrison. Twenty-five
years after leaving it, he decided to revisit his home and some
friends of the family whom he had not since met. During the night
before his departure he dreamt that he was already at Montbrison
and, near the town, met a gentleman whom he did not know by sight
but who told him he was Monsieur T., a friend of his
father’s. The dreamer was aware that when he was a child he
had known someone of that name, but in his waking state no longer
remembered what he looked like. A few days later he actually
reached Montbrison, found the locality which in his dream had
seemed unknown to him, and there met a gentleman whom he at once
recognized as the Monsieur T. in the dream. The real person,
however, looked much older than he had appeared in the dream.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

531

   At this point I may mention a
dream of my own, in which what had to be traced was not an
impression but a connection. I had a dream of someone who I knew in
my dream was the doctor in my native town. His face was indistinct,
but was confused with a picture of one of the masters at my
secondary school, whom I still meet occasionally. When I woke up I
could not discover what connection there was between these two men.
I made some enquiries from my mother, however, about this doctor
who dated back to the earliest years of my childhood, and learnt
that he had only one eye. The schoolmaster whose figure had covered
that of the doctor in the dream, was also one-eyed. It was
thirty-eight years since I had seen the doctor, and so far as I
know I had never thought of him in my waking life, though a scar on
my chin might have reminded me of his attentions.

   A number of writers, on the other
hand, assert that elements are to be found in most dreams, which
are derived from the very last few days before they were dreamt;
and this sounds like an attempt to counterbalance the laying of too
much weight upon the part played in dream-life by experiences in
childhood. Thus Robert (1886, 46) actually declares that normal
dreams are as a rule concerned only with the impressions of the
past few days. We shall find, however, that the theory of dreams
constructed by Robert makes it essential for him to bring forward
the most recent impressions and leave the oldest out of sight. None
the less the fact stated by him remains correct, as I am able to
confirm from my own investigations. An American writer, Nelson, is
of the opinion that the impressions most frequently employed in a
dream arise from the day next but one before the dream occurs, or
from the day preceding that one - as though the impressions of the
day
immediately
before the dream were not sufficiently
attenuated or remote.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

532

   Several writers who are anxious
not to cast doubts on the intimate connection between the content
of dreams and waking life have been struck by the fact that
impressions with which waking thoughts are intensely occupied only
appear in dreams after they have been pushed somewhat aside by the
workings of daytime thought. Thus, after the death of someone dear
to them, people do not as a rule dream of him to begin with, while
they are overwhelmed by grief (Delage, 1891). On the other hand one
of the most recent observers, Miss Hallam (Hallam and Weed, 1896,
410-11), has collected instances to the contrary, thus asserting
the right of each of us to psychological individualism in this
respect.

   The third, most striking and
least comprehensible characteristic of memory in dreams is shown in
the
choice
of material reproduced. For what is found worth
remembering is not, as in waking life, only what is most important,
but on the contrary what is most indifferent and insignificant as
well. On this point I will quote those writers who have given the
strongest expression to their astonishment.

   Hildebrandt (1875, 11):
‘For the remarkable thing is that dreams derive their
elements not from major and stirring events nor the powerful and
compelling interests of the preceding day, but from incidental
details, from the worthless fragments, one might say, of what has
been recently experienced or of the remoter past. A family
bereavement, which has moved us deeply and under whose immediate
shadow we have fallen asleep late at night, is blotted out of our
memory till with our first waking moment it returns to it again
with disturbing violence. On the other hand, a wart on the forehead
of a stranger whom we met in the street and to whom we owe no
second thought after passing him
has
a part to play in our
dream. . . .’