The Interpretation of Dreams

At this point we are interested exclusively in the essential dream thoughts. These are usually found to be a complex of thoughts and memories of the most intricate possible construction, and to possess all the properties of the thought processes which are known to us from waking life. Not infrequently they are trains of thought which proceed from more than one centre, but which do not lack points of connection; almost regularly a chain of thought stands next to its contradictory correlative, being connected with it by contrast associations. The individual parts of this complicated structure naturally stand in the most manifold logical relations to one another. They constitute a foreground or background, digressions, illustrations, conditions, chains of argument, and objections. When the whole mass of these dream thoughts is subjected to the pressure of the dream activity, during which the parts are turned about, broken up, and pushed together, something like drifting ice, there arises the question, what becomes of the logical ties which until now had given form to the structure? What representation do “if,” “because,” “as though,” “although,” “either—or,” and all the other conjunctions, without which we cannot understand a phrase or a sentence, receive in the dream?

At first we must answer that the dream has at its disposal no means for representing these logical relations among the dream thoughts. In most cases it disregards all these conjunctions, and undertakes the elaboration only of the objective content of the dream thoughts. It is left to the interpretation of the dream to restore the coherence which the activity of the dream has destroyed. If the dream lacks ability to express these relations, the psychic material of which the dream is wrought must be responsible. The descriptive arts are limited in the same manner—painting and the plastic arts in comparison with poetry, which can employ speech; and here too the reason for this impotence is to be found in the material in the treatment of which the two arts strive to give expression to something. Before the art of painting had arrived at an understanding of the laws of expression by which it is bound, it attempted to escape this disadvantage. In old paintings little tags were hung from the mouths of the persons represented giving the speech, the expression of which in the picture the artist despaired of.

Perhaps an objection will here be raised challenging the assertion that the dream dispenses with the representation of logical relations. There are dreams in which the most complicated intellectual operations take place, in which proof and refutation are offered, puns and comparisons made, just as in waking thoughts. But here, too, appearances are deceitful; if the interpretation of such dreams is pursued, it is found that all of this is dream material, not the representation of intellectual activity in the dream. The content of the dream thoughts is reproduced by the apparent thinking of the dream, not the relations of the dream thoughts to one another, in the determination of which relations thinking consists. I shall give examples of this. But the thesis which is most easily established is that all speeches which occur in the dream, and which are expressly designated as such, are unchanged or only slightly modified copies of speeches which are likewise to be found in the recollections of the dream material. Often the speech is only an allusion to an event contained in the dream thoughts; the meaning of the dream is a quite different one.

I shall not deny, indeed, that there is also critical thought activity which does not merely repeat material from the dream thoughts and which takes part in the formation of the dream. I shall have to explain the influence of this factor at the close of this discussion. It will then become clear that this thought activity is evoked not by the dream thoughts, but by the dream itself after it is already finished in a certain sense. We shall, therefore, consider it settled for the present that the logical relations among the dream thoughts do not enjoy any particular representation in the dream. For instance, where there is a contradiction in the dream, this is either a contradiction directed against the dream itself or a contradiction derived from the content of one of the dream thoughts; a contradiction in the dream corresponds to a contradiction among the dream thoughts only in a highly indirect manner.

But just as the art of painting finally succeeded in depicting in the represented persons, at least their intention in speaking—their tenderness, threatening attitude, warning mien, and the like—by other means than the dangling tag, so also the dream has found it possible to render account of a few of the logical relations among its dream thoughts by means of an appropriate modification of the peculiar method of dream representation. It will be found by experience that different dreams go to different lengths in taking this into consideration; while one dream entirely disregards the logical coherence of its material, another attempts to indicate it as completely as possible. In so doing the dream departs more or less widely from the subject-matter which it is to elaborate. The dream also takes a similarly varying attitude towards the temporal coherence of the dream thoughts, if such coherence has been established in the unconscious (as for example in the dream of Irma’s injection). But what are the means by which the dream activity is enabled to indicate these relations in the dream material which are so difficult to represent? I shall attempt to enumerate these separately.

In the first place, the dream renders account of the connection which is undeniably present between all the parts of the dream thoughts by uniting this material in a single composition as a situation or process. It reproduces logical connection in the form of simultaneousness; in this case it acts something like the painter who groups together all the philosophers or poets into a picture of the school of Athens or of Parnassus, although these were never at once present in any hall or on any mountain top—though they do, however, form a unity from the point of view of reflective contemplation. The dream carries out this method of representation in detail. Whenever it shows two elements close together, it vouches for a particularly intimate connection between those elements which correspond to them in the dream thoughts. It is as in our method of writing: to signifies that the two letters are to be pronounced as one syllable, while t with o after a free space shows that t is the last letter of one word and o the first letter of another. According to this, dream combinations are not made of arbitrary, completely incongruent elements of the dream material, but of elements that also have a somewhat intimate relation to one another in the dream thoughts.

For representing causal relation the dream has two methods, which are essentially reducible to one. The more frequent method, in cases, for example, where the dream thoughts are to the effect: “Because this was so and so, this and that must happen,” consists in making the premise an introductory dream and joining the conclusion to it in the form of the main dream. If my interpretation is correct, the sequence may also be reversed. That part of the dream which is more completely worked out always corresponds to the conclusion.

A female patient, whose dream I shall later give in full, once furnished me with a neat example of such a representation of causal relationship. The dream consisted of a short prologue and of a very elaborate but well organised dream composition, which might be entitled: “A flower of speech.” The prologue of the dream is as follows: _She goes to the two maids in the kitchen and scolds them for taking so long to prepare “a little bite of food.” She also sees a great many coarse dishes standing in the kitchen, inverted so that the water may drop off them, and heaped up in a pile. The two maids go to fetch water, and must, as it were, step into a river, which reaches up to the house or into the yard._

Then follows the main dream, which begins as follows: _She is descending from a high place, over balustrades that are curiously fashioned, and she is glad that her dress doesn’t get caught anywhere_, &c. Now the introductory dream refers to the house of the lady’s parents. Probably she has often heard from her mother the words which are spoken in the kitchen. The piles of unwashed dishes are taken from an unpretentious earthenware shop which was located in the same house. The second part of this dream contains an allusion to the dreamer’s father, who always had a great deal to do with servant girls, and who later contracted a fatal disease during a flood—the house stood near the bank of a river. The thought which is concealed behind the introductory dream, then, is to this effect: “Because I was born in this house, under such limited and unlovely circumstances.” The main dream takes up the same thought, and presents it in a form that has been altered by the tendency to wish-fulfilment: “I am of exalted origin.” Properly then: “Because I was born in such low circumstances, my career has been so and so.”

As far as I can see, the partition of a dream into two unequal portions does not always signify a causal relation between the thoughts of the two portions. It often appears as though the same material were being presented in the two dreams from different points of view; or as though the two dreams have proceeded from two separated centres in the dream material and their contents overlap, so that the object which is the centre of one dream has served in the other as an allusion, and vice versa. But in a certain number of cases a division into shorter fore-dreams and longer subsequent dreams actually signifies a causal relation between the two portions. The other method of representing causal relation is used with less abundant material and consists in the change of one image in the dream, whether a person or a thing, into another. It is only in cases where we witness this change taking place in the dream that any causal relation is asserted to exist, not where we merely notice that one thing has taken the place of another. I said that both methods of representing causal relation are reducible to the same thing; in both cases causation is represented by a succession, now by the sequence of the dreams, now by the immediate transformation of one image into another. In the great majority of cases, of course, causal relation is not expressed at all, but is obliterated by the sequence of elements which is unavoidable in the dream process.

The dream is altogether unable to express the alternative, “either—or”; it is in the habit of taking both members of this alternative into one context, as though they were equally privileged. A classic example of this is contained in the dream of Irma’s injection. Its latent thoughts obviously mean: I am innocent of the continued presence of Irma’s pains; the fault rests either with her resistance to accepting the solution, or with the fact that she is living under unfavourable sexual conditions, which I am unable to change, or her pains are not of a hysteric nature at all, but organic. The dream, however, fulfils all these possibilities, which are almost exclusive, and is quite ready to extract from the dream-wish an additional fourth solution of this kind. After interpreting the dream I have therefore inserted the either—or in the sequence of the dream thoughts.

In the case where the dreamer finds occasion in telling the dream to use either—or: “It was either a garden or a living-room,” &c., it is not really an alternative which occurs in the dream thoughts, but an “and,” a simple addition. When we use either—or we are usually describing a characteristic of indistinctness belonging to an element of the dream which is still capable of being cleared up. The rule of interpretation for this case is as follows: The separate members of the alternative are to be treated as equals and connected by “and.” For instance, after waiting for a long time in vain for the address of my friend who is living in Italy, I dream that I receive a telegram which tells me this address. Upon the strip of telegraph paper I see printed in blue the following; the first word is blurred: perhaps via, or villa, the second is distinctly: Sezerno or perhaps (Casa).

The second word, which sounds like an Italian name and which reminds me of our etymological discussions, also expresses my displeasure on account of the fact that my friend has kept his place of residence secret from me for so long a time; every member of the triple suggestion for the first word may be recognised in the course of analysis as a self-sufficient and equally well-justified starting point in the concatenation of ideas. During the night before the funeral of my father I dreamed of a printed placard, a card or poster—perhaps something like signs in railway waiting-rooms which announce the prohibition of smoking—which reads either: It is requested to shut the eyes or It is requested to shut an eye which I am in the habit of representing in the following form: the It is requested to shut eye(s). an

Each of the two variations has its own particular meaning, and leads us along particular paths in the interpretation of the dream. I had made the simplest kind of funeral arrangements, for I knew how the deceased thought about such matters. Other members of the family, however, did not approve of such puritanic simplicity; they thought we would have to be ashamed before the mourners. Hence one of the wordings of the dream requests the “shutting of one eye,” that is to say, that people should show consideration. The significance of the blurring, which we describe with an either—or, may here be seen with particular ease. The dream activity has not succeeded in constructing a unified but at the same time ambiguous wording for the dream thoughts. Thus the two main trains of thought are already distinguished even in the dream content. In a few cases the division of the dream into two equal parts expresses the alternative which the dream finds it so difficult to represent.

The attitude of the dream towards the category of antithesis and contradiction is most striking. This category is unceremoniously neglected; the word “No” does not seem to exist for the dream. Antitheses are with peculiar preference reduced to unity or represented as one. The dream also takes the liberty of representing any element whatever by its desired opposite, so that it is at first impossible to tell about any element capable of having an opposite, whether it is to be taken negatively or positively, in the dream thoughts.[DU] In one of the last-mentioned dreams, whose introductory portion we have already interpreted (“because my parentage is such”), the dreamer descends over a balustrade and holds a blossoming twig in her hands. Since this picture suggests to her the angel in paintings of the Annunciation (her own name is Mary) carrying a lily stem in his hand, and the white-robed girls marching in the procession on Corpus Christi Day when the streets are decorated with green bows, the blossoming twig in the dream is very certainly an allusion to sexual innocence. But the twig is thickly studded with red blossoms, each one of which resembles a camelia. At the end of her walk, so the dream continues, the blossoms have already fallen considerably apart; then unmistakable allusions to menstruation follow. But this very twig which is carried like a lily and as though by an innocent girl, is also an allusion to Camille, who, as is known, always wore a white camelia, but a red one at the time of her menstruation.

The same blossoming twig (“the flower of maidenhood” in the songs about the miller’s daughter by Goethe) represents at once sexual innocence and its opposite. The same dream, also, which expresses the dreamer’s joy at having succeeded in passing through life unsullied, hints in several places (as at the falling-off of the blossom), at the opposite train of thought—namely, that she had been guilty of various sins against sexual purity (that is in her childhood). In the analysis of the dream we may clearly distinguish the two trains of thought, of which the comforting one seems to be superficial, the reproachful one more profound. The two are diametrically opposed to each other, and their like but contrasting elements have been represented by the identical dream elements.

The mechanism of dream formation is favourable in the highest degree to only one of the logical relations. This relation is that of similarity, correspondence, contiguity, “as though,” which is capable of being represented in the dream as no other can be, by the most varied expedients. The correspondences occurring in the dream, or cases of “as though,” are the chief points of support for the formation of dreams, and no inconsiderable part of the dream activity consists in creating new correspondences of this sort in cases where those which are already at hand are prevented by the censor of resistance from getting into the dream. The effort towards condensation shown by the dream activity assists in the representation of the relation of similarity. Similarity, agreement, community, are quite generally expressed in the dream by concentration into a unity, which is either already found in the dream material or is newly created. The first case may be referred to as identification, the second as composition. Identification is used where the dream is concerned with persons, composition where things are the objects of unification; but compositions are also made from persons. Localities are often treated as persons.

Identification consists in giving representation in the dream content to only one of a number of persons who are connected by some common feature, while the second or the other persons seem to be suppressed as far as the dream is concerned. This one representative person in the dream enters into all the relations and situations which belong to itself or to the persons who are covered by it. In cases of composition, however, when this has to do with persons, there are already present in the dream image features which are characteristic of, but not common to, the persons in question, so that a new unity, a composite person, appears as the result of the union of these features. The composition itself may be brought about in various ways. Either the dream person bears the name of one of the persons to whom it refers—and then we know, in a manner which is quite analogous to knowledge in waking life, that this or that person is the one who is meant—while the visual features belong to another person; or the dream image itself is composed of visual features which in reality are shared by both. Instead of visual features, also, the part played by the second person may be represented by the mannerisms which are usually ascribed to him, the words which he usually speaks, or the situations in which he is usually imagined. In the latter method of characterisation the sharp distinction between identification and composition of persons begins to disappear. But it may also happen that the formation of such a mixed personality is unsuccessful. The situation of the dream is then attributed to one person, and the other—as a rule the more important one—is introduced as an inactive and unconcerned spectator. The dreamer relates something like “My mother was also there” (Stekel).

The common feature which justifies the union of the two persons—that is to say, which is the occasion for it—may either be represented in the dream or be absent. As a rule, identification or composition of persons simply serves the purpose of dispensing with the representation of this common feature. Instead of repeating: “A is ill disposed towards me, and B is also,” I make a composite person of A and B in the dream, or I conceive A as doing an unaccustomed action which usually characterises B. The dream person obtained in this way appears in the dream in some new connection, and the fact that it signifies both A and B justifies me in inserting that which is common to both—their hostility towards me—at the proper place in the interpretation of the dream. In this manner I often achieve a very extraordinary degree of condensation of the dream content; I can save myself the direct representation of very complicated relations belonging to a person, if I can find a second person who has an equal claim to a part of these relations. It is also obvious to what extent this representation by means of identification can circumvent the resisting censor, which makes the dream activity conform to such harsh conditions. That which offends the censor may lie in those very ideas which are connected in the dream material with the one person; I now find a second person, who likewise has relation to the objectionable material, but only to a part of it. The contact in that one point which offends the censor now justified me in forming a composite person, which is characterised on either hand by indifferent features. This person resulting from composition or identification, who is unobjectionable to the censor, is now suited for incorporation in the dream content, and by the application of dream condensation I have satisfied the demands of the dream censor.

In dreams where a common feature of two persons is represented, this is usually a hint to look for another concealed common feature, the representation of which is made impossible by the censor. A displacement of the common feature has here taken place partly in order to facilitate representation. From the circumstance that the composite person appears to me with an indifferent common feature, I must infer that another common feature which is by no means indifferent exists in the dream thoughts.

According to what has been said, identification or composition of persons serves various purposes in the dream; in the first place, to represent a feature common to the two persons; secondly, to represent a displaced common feature; and thirdly, even to give expression to a community of features that is merely wished for. As the wish for a community between two persons frequently coincides with the exchanging of these persons, this relation in the dream is also expressed through identification. In the dream of Irma’s injection I wish to exchange this patient for another—that is to say, I wish the latter to be my patient as the former has been; the dream takes account of this wish by showing me a person who is called Irma, but who is examined in a position such as I have had the opportunity of seeing only when occupied with the other person in question. In the dream about my uncle this substitution is made the centre of the dream; I identify myself with the minister by judging and treating my colleague as shabbily as he does.

It has been my experience—and to this I have found no exception—that every dream treats of one’s own person. Dreams are absolutely egotistic. In cases where not my ego, but only a strange person occurs in the dream content, I may safely assume that my ego is concealed behind that person by means of identification. I am permitted to supplement my ego. On other occasions when my ego appears in the dream, I am given to understand by the situation in which it is placed that another person is concealing himself behind the ego. In this case the dream is intended to give me notice that in the interpretation I must transfer something which is connected with this person—the hidden common feature—to myself. There are also dreams in which my ego occurs along with other persons which the resolution of the identification again shows to be my ego. By means of this identification I am instructed to unite in my ego certain ideas to whose acceptance the censor has objected. I may also give my ego manifold representation in the dream, now directly, now by means of identification with strangers. An extraordinary amount of thought material may be condensed by means of a few such identifications.[DV]

The resolution of the identification of localities designated under their own names is even less difficult than that of persons, because here the disturbing influence of the ego, which is all-powerful in the dream, is lacking. In one of my dreams about Rome (p. 164) the name of the place in which I find myself is Rome; I am surprised, however, at the great number of German placards at a street corner. The latter is a wish-fulfilment, which immediately suggests Prague; the wish itself probably originated at a period in my youth when I was imbued with a German nationalistic spirit which is suppressed to-day. At the time of my dream I was looking forward to meeting a friend in Prague; the identification of Rome and Prague is thus to be explained by means of a desired common feature; I would rather meet my friend in Rome than in Prague, I should like to exchange Prague for Rome for the purpose of this meeting.

The possibility of creating compositions is one of the chief causes of the phantastic character so common in dreams, in that it introduces into the dream elements which could never have been the objects of perception. The psychic process which occurs in the formation of compositions is obviously the same which we employ in conceiving or fashioning a centaur or a dragon in waking life. The only difference is that in the phantastic creations occurring in waking life the intended impression to be made by the new creation is itself the deciding factor, while the composition of the dream is determined by an influence—the common feature in the dream thoughts—which is independent of the form of the image. The composition of the dream may be accomplished in a great many different ways. In the most artless method of execution the properties of the one thing are represented, and this representation is accompanied by the knowledge that they also belong to another object. A more careful technique unites the features of one object with those of the other in a new image, while it makes skilful use of resemblance between the two objects which exist in reality. The new creation may turn out altogether absurd or only phantastically ingenious, according to the subject-matter and the wit operative in the work of composition. If the objects to be condensed into a unity are too incongruous, the dream activity is content with creating a composition with a comparatively distinct nucleus, to which are attached less distinct modifications. The unification into one image has here been unsuccessful, as it were; the two representations overlap and give rise to something like a contest between visual images. If attempt were made to construct an idea out of individual images of perception, similar representations might be obtained in a drawing.

Dreams naturally abound in such compositions; several examples of these I have given in the dreams already analysed; I shall add more. In the dream on p. 296, which describes the career of my patient “in flowery language,” the dream ego carries a blossoming twig in her hand, which, as we have seen, signifies at once innocence and sexual transgression. Moreover, the twig recalls cherry-blossoms on account of the manner in which the blossoms are clustered; the blossoms themselves, separately considered, are camelias, and finally the whole thing also gives the impression of an exotic plant. The common feature in the elements of this composition is shown by the dream thoughts. The blossoming twig is made up of allusions to presents by which she was induced or should have been induced to show herself agreeable. So it was with the cherries in her childhood and with the stem of camelias in her later years; the exotic feature is an illusion to a much-travelled naturalist, who sought to win her favour by means of a drawing of a flower. Another female patient creates a middle element out of bath-houses at a bathing resort, rural outside water-closets, and the garrets of our city dwellings. The reference to human nakedness and exposure is common to the two first elements; and we may infer

from their connection with the third element that (in her childhood) the garret was likewise the scene of exposure. A dreamer of the male sex makes a composite locality out of two places in which “treatment” is given—my office and the public hall in which he first became acquainted with his wife. Another female patient, after her elder brother has promised to regale her with caviare, dreams that his legs are covered thick with black caviare pearls. The two elements, “contagion” in a moral sense and the recollection of a cutaneous eruption in childhood which made her legs look as though studded over with red dots instead of black ones, have here been united with the caviare pearls to form a new idea—the idea of “what she has inherited from her brother.” In this dream parts of the human body are treated as objects, as is usually the case in dreams. In one of the dreams reported by Ferenczi there occurred a composition made up of the person of a physician and a horse, over which was spread a night-shirt. The common feature in these three components was shown in the analysis after the night-shirt had been recognised as an allusion to the father of the dreamer in an infantile scene. In each of the three cases there was some

object of her sexual inquisitiveness. As a child she had often been taken by her nurse to the military breeding station, where she had the amplest opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, which was at that time uninhibited.

I have already asserted that the dream has no means for expressing the relation of contradiction, of contrast, of negation. I am about to contradict this assertion for the first time. A part of the cases, which may be summed up under the word “contrast,” finds representation, as we have seen, simply by means of identification—that is, when an interchange or replacement can be connected with the contrast. We have given repeated examples of this. Another part of the contrasts in the dream thoughts, which perhaps falls into the category “turned into the opposite,” is represented in the dream in the following remarkable manner, which may almost be designated as witty. The “inversion” does not itself get into the dream content, but manifests its presence there by means of the fact that a part of the already formed dream content which lies at hand for other reasons, is—as it were subsequently—inverted. It is easier to illustrate this process than to describe it. In the beautiful “Up and Down” dream (p. 267) the representation of ascending is an inversion of a prototype in the dream thoughts, that is to say, of the introductory scene of Daudet’s Sappho; in the dream climbing is difficult at first, and easy later on, while in the actual scene it is easy at first, and later

becomes more and more difficult. Likewise “above” and “below” in relation to the dreamer’s brother are inverted in the dream. This points to a relation of contraries or contrasts as obtaining between two parts of the subject-matter of the dream thoughts and the relation we have found in the fact that in the childish fancy of the dreamer he is carried by his nurse, while in the novel, on the contrary, the hero carries his beloved. My dream about Goethe’s attack upon Mr. M. (p. 345) also contains an “inversion” of this sort, which must first be set right before the interpretation of the dream can be accomplished. In the dream Goethe attacks a young man, Mr. M.; in reality, according to the dream thoughts, an eminent man, my friend, has been attacked by an unknown young author. In the dream I reckon time from the date of Goethe’s death; in reality the reckoning was made from the year in which the paralytic was born. The thought determining the dream material is shown to be an objection to the treatment of Goethe as a lunatic. “The other way around,” says the dream; “if you cannot understand the book, it is you who are dull-witted, not the author.” Furthermore, all these dreams of inversion seem to contain a reference to the

contemptuous phrase, “to turn one’s back upon a person” (German: “einen die Kehrseite zeigen”; cf. the inversion in respect to the dreamer’s brother in the Sappho dream). It is also remarkable how frequently inversion becomes necessary in dreams which are inspired by repressed homosexual feelings.

Moreover, inversion or transformation into an opposite is one of the favourite methods of representation, and one of the methods most capable of varied application which the dream activity possesses. Its first function is to create the fulfilment of a wish with reference to a definite element of the dream-thoughts. “If it were only just the other way!” is often the best expression of the relation of the ego to a disagreeable recollection. But inversion becomes extraordinarily useful for the purposes of the censor, for it brings about in the material represented a degree of disfiguration which all but paralyses our understanding of the dream. For this reason it is always permissible, in cases where the dream stubbornly refuses to yield its meaning, to try the inversion of definite portions of its manifest content, whereupon not infrequently everything becomes clear. Besides this inversion, the subject-matter inversion in temporal relation is not to be overlooked. A frequent device of dream disfigurement consists in presenting the final issue of an occurrence or the conclusion of an argument at the beginning of the dream, or in supplying the premises of a conclusion or the causes of an effect at the end of it. Any one who has not considered this technical method of dream disfigurement stands helpless before the problem of dream interpretation.[DW]

Indeed in some cases we can obtain the sense of the dream only by subjecting the dream content to manifold inversion in different directions. For example, in the dream of a young patient suffering from a compulsion neurosis, the memory of an infantile death-wish against a dreaded father was hidden behind the following words: His father upbraids him because he arrives so late. But the context in the psychoanalytic treatment and the thoughts of the dreamer alike go to show that the sentence must read as follows: He is angry at his father, and, further, that his father is always coming home too early (i.e. too soon). He would have preferred that his father should not come home at all, which is identical with the wish (see page 219) that his father should die. As a little boy the dreamer was guilty of sexual aggression against another person while his father was away, and he was threatened with punishment in the words: “Just wait until father comes home.”

If we attempt to trace the relations between dream content and dream thoughts further, we shall do this best by making the dream itself our starting-point and by asking ourselves the question: What do certain formal characteristics of dream representation signify with reference to the dream thoughts? The formal characteristics which must attract our attention in the dream primarily include variations in the distinctness of individual parts of the dream or of whole dreams in relation to one another. The variations in the intensity of individual dream images include a whole scale of degrees ranging from a distinctness of depiction which one is inclined to rate as higher—without warrant, to be sure—than that of reality, to a provoking indistinctness which is declared to be characteristic of the dream, because it cannot altogether be compared to any degree of indistinctness which we ever see in real objects. Moreover, we usually designate the impression which we get from an indistinct object in the dream as “fleeting,” while we think of the more distinct dream images as remaining intact for a longer period of perception. We must now ask ourselves by what conditions in the dream material these differences in the vividness of the different parts of the dream content are brought about.

There are certain expectations which will inevitably arise at this point and which must be met. Owing to the fact that real sensations during sleep may form part of the material of the dream, it will probably be assumed that these sensations or the dream elements resulting from them are emphasized by peculiar intensity, or conversely, that what turns out to be particularly vivid in the dream is probably traceable to such real sensations during sleep. My experience has never confirmed this. It is incorrect to say that those elements of the dream which are the derivatives of impressions occurring in sleep (nervous excitements) are distinguished by their vividness from others which are based on recollections. The factor of reality is of no account in determining the intensity of dream images.

Furthermore, the expectation will be cherished that the sensory intensity (vividness) of individual dream images has a relation to the psychic intensity of the elements corresponding to them in the dream-thoughts. In the latter intensity is identical with psychic value; the most intense elements are in fact the most significant, and these are the central point of the dream. We know, however, that it is just these elements which are usually not accepted in the dream content owing to the censor. But still it might be possible that the elements immediately following these and representing them might show a higher degree of intensity, without, however, for that reason constituting the centre of the dream representation. This expectation is also destroyed by a comparison of the dream and the dream material. The intensity of the elements in the one has nothing to do with the intensity of the elements in the other; a complete “transvaluation of all psychic values” takes place between the dream-material and the dream. The very element which is transient and hazy and which is pushed into the background by more vigorous images is often the single and only element in which may be traced any direct derivative from the subject which entirely dominated the dream-thoughts.

The intensity of the elements of the dream shows itself to be determined in a different manner—that is, by two factors which are independent of each other. It is easy to see at the outset that those elements by means of which the wish-fulfilment is expressed are most distinctly represented. But then analysis also teaches us that from the most vivid elements of the dream, the greatest number of trains of thought start, and that the most vivid are at the same time those which are best determined. No change of sense is involved if we express the latter empirical thesis in the following form: the greatest intensity is shown by those elements of the dream for which the most abundant condensation activity was required. We may therefore expect that this condition and the others imposed by the wish-fulfilment can be expressed in a single formula.

The problem which I have just been considering—the causes of greater or less intensity or distinctness of individual elements of the dream—is one which I should like to guard against being confused with another problem, which has to do with the varying distinctness of whole dreams or sections of dreams. In the first case, the opposite of distinctness is blurredness; in the second, confusion. It is of course unmistakable that the intensities rise and fall in the two scales in unison. A portion of the dream which seems clear to us usually contains vivid elements; an obscure dream is composed of less intense elements. But the problem with which we are confronted by the scale, ranging from the apparently clear to the indistinct or confused, is far more complicated than that formed by variations in the vividness of the dream elements; indeed the former will be dropped from the discussion for reasons which will be given later. In isolated cases we are astonished to find that the impression of clearness or indistinctness produced by the dream is altogether without significance for its structure, and that it originates in the dream material as one of its constituents. Thus I remember a dream which seemed particularly well constructed, flawless, and clear, so that I made up my mind, while I was still

in the somnolent state, to recognise a new class of dreams—those which had not been subject to the mechanism of condensation and displacement, and which might thus be designated “Fancies while asleep.” A closer examination proved that this rare dream had the same breaches and flaws in its construction as every other; for this reason I abandoned the category of dream fancies. The content of the dream, reduced to its lowest terms, was that I was reciting to a friend a difficult and long-sought theory of bisexuality, and the wish-fulfilling power of the dream was responsible for the fact that this theory (which, by the way, was not stated in the dream) appeared so clear and flawless. What I considered a judgment upon the finished dream was thus a part of the dream content, and the essential one at that. The dream activity had extended its operations, as it were, into waking thought, and had presented to me in the form of a judgment that part of the dream material which it had not succeeded in reproducing with exactness. The exact opposite of this once came to my attention in the case of a female patient who was at first altogether unwilling to tell a dream which was necessary for the analysis, “because it was so obscure and confused,” and

who declared, after repeatedly denying the accuracy of her description, that several persons, herself, her husband, and her father, had occurred in the dream, and that it seemed as though she did not know whether her husband was her father, or who her father was anyway, or something of that sort. Upon considering this dream in connection with the ideas that occurred to the dreamer in the course of the sitting, it was found unquestionably to be concerned with the story of a servant girl who had to confess that she was expecting a child, and who was now confronted with doubts as to “who was really the father.”[DX] The obscurity manifested by the dream, therefore, is again in this case a portion of the material which excited it. A part of this material was represented in the form of the dream. The form of the dream or of dreaming is used with astonishing frequency to represent the concealed content.

Comments on the dream and seemingly harmless observations about it often serve in the most subtle manner to conceal—although they usually betray—a part of what is dreamed. Thus, for example, when the dreamer says: Here the dream is vague, and the analysis gives an infantile reminiscence of listening to a person cleaning himself after defecation. Another example deserves to be recorded in detail. A young man has a very distinct dream which recalls to him phantasies from his infancy which have remained conscious to him: he was in a summer hotel one evening, he mistook the number of his room, and entered a room in which an elderly lady and her two daughters were undressing to go to bed. He continues: “Then there are some gaps in the dream; then something is missing; and at the end there was a man in the room who wished to throw me out with whom I had to wrestle.” He endeavoured in vain to recall the content and purpose of the boyish fancy to which the dream apparently alludes. But we finally become aware that the required content had already been given in his utterances concerning the indistinct part of the dream. The “gaps” were the openings in the genitals of the women who were retiring: “Here something is missing” described the chief character of the female genitals. In those early years he burned with curiosity to see a female genital, and was still inclined to adhere to the infantile sexual theory which attributes a male genital to the woman.

All the dreams which have been dreamed in the same night belong to the same whole when considered with respect to their content; their separation into several portions, their grouping and number, all these details are full of meaning, and may be considered as information coming from the latent dream content. In the interpretation of dreams consisting of many principal sections, or of dreams belonging to the same night, one must not fail to think of the possibility that these different and succeeding dreams bring to expression the same feelings in different material. The one that comes first in time of these homologous dreams is usually the most disfigured and most bashful, while the succeeding is bolder and more distinct.

Even Pharaoh’s dream in the Bible of the ears and the kine, which Joseph interpreted, was of this kind. It is reported by Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, bk. ii. chap, iii.) in greater detail than in the Bible. After relating the first dream, the King said: “When I had seen this vision I awaked out of my sleep, and being in disorder, and considering with myself what this appearance should be, I fell asleep again, and saw another dream much more wonderful than the first, which did still more affright and disturb me.” After listening to the report of the dream, Joseph said, “This dream, O King, although seen under two forms, signifies one and the same issue of things.”

Jung, who, in his Beitrag zur Psychologie des Gerüchtes relates how the veiled erotic dream of a school-girl was understood by her friends without interpretation and continued by them with variations, remarks in connection with reports of this dream, “that the last of a long series of dream pictures contained precisely the same thought whose representation had been attempted in the first picture of the series. The censor pushed the complex out of the way as long as possible, through constantly renewed symbolic concealments, displacements, deviations into the harmless, &c.” (l.c. p. 87). Scherner was well acquainted with the peculiarities of dream disfigurement and describes them at the end of his theory of organic stimulation as a special law, p. 166: “But, finally, the phantasy observes the general law in all nerve stimuli emanating from symbolic dream formations, by representing at the beginning of the dream only the remotest and freest allusions to the stimulating object; but towards the end, when the power of representation becomes exhausted, it presents the stimulus or its concerned organ or its function in unconcealed form, and in the way this dream designates its organic motive and reaches its end.”

A new confirmation of Scherner’s law has been furnished by Otto Rank in his work, A Self Interpretation Dream. This dream of a girl reported by him consisted of two dreams, separated in time of the same night, the second of which ended with pollution. This pollution dream could be interpreted in all its details by disregarding a great many of the ideas contributed by the dreamer, and the profuse relations between the two dream contents indicated that the first dream expressed in bashful language the same thing as the second, so that the latter—the pollution dream—helped to a full explanation of the former. From this example, Rank, with perfect justice, draws conclusions concerning the significance of pollution dreams in general. But in my experience it is only in rare cases that one is in a position to interpret clearness or confusion in the dream as certainty or doubt in the dream material. Later I shall try to discover the factor in the formation of dreams upon whose influence this scale of qualities essentially depends.

In some dreams, which adhere for a time to a certain situation and scenery, there occur interruptions described in the following words: “But then it seemed as though it were at the same time another place, and there such and such a thing happened.” What thus interrupts the main trend of the dream, which after a while may be continued again, turns out to be a subordinate idea, an interpolated thought in the dream material. A conditional relation in the dream-thoughts is represented by simultaneousness in the dream (wenn—wann; if—when).

What is signified by the sensation of impeded movement, which so often occurs in the dream, and which is so closely allied to anxiety? One wants to move, and is unable to stir from the spot; or one wants to accomplish something, and meets one obstacle after another. The train is about to start, and one cannot reach it; one’s hand is raised to avenge an insult, and its strength fails, &c. We have already encountered this sensation in exhibition dreams, but have as yet made no serious attempt to interpret it. It is convenient, but inadequate, to answer that there is motor paralysis in sleep, which manifests itself by means of the sensation alluded to. We may ask: “Why is it, then, that we do not dream continually of these impeded motions?” And we are justified in supposing that this sensation, constantly appearing in sleep, serves some purpose or other in representation, and is brought about by a need occurring in the dream material for this sort of representation.

Failure to accomplish does not always appear in the dream as a sensation, but also simply as a part of the dream content. I believe that a case of this sort is particularly well suited to enlighten us about the significance of this characteristic of the dream. I shall give an abridged report of a dream in which I seem to be accused of dishonesty. _The scene is a mixture, consisting of a private sanatorium and several other buildings. A lackey appears to call me to an examination. I know in the dream that something has been missed, and that the examination is taking place because I am suspected of having appropriated the lost article. Analysis shows that examination is to be taken in two senses, and also means medical examination. Being conscious of my innocence, and of the fact that I have been called in for consultation, I calmly follow the lackey. We are received at the door by another lackey, who says, pointing to me, “Is that the person whom you have brought? Why, he is a respectable man.” Thereupon, without any lackey, I enter a great hall in which machines are standing, and which reminds me of an Inferno with its hellish modes of punishment. I see a colleague strapped on to one apparatus who has every reason to be concerned about me; but he takes no notice of me. Then I am given to understand that I may now go. Then I cannot find my hat, and cannot go after all._

The wish which the dream fulfils is obviously that I may be acknowledged to be an honest man, and may go; all kinds of subject-matter containing a contradiction of this idea must therefore be present in the dream-thoughts. The fact that I may go is the sign of my absolution; if, then, the dream furnishes at its close an event which prevents me from going, we may readily conclude that the suppressed subject-matter of the contradiction asserts itself in this feature. The circumstance that I cannot find my hat therefore means: “You are not an honest man after all.” Failure to accomplish in the dream is the expression of a contradiction, a “No”; and therefore the earlier assertion, to the effect that the dream is not capable of expressing a negation, must be revised accordingly.[DY]

In other dreams which involve failure to accomplish a thing not only as a situation but also as a sensation, the same contradiction is more emphatically expressed in the form of a volition, to which a counter volition opposes itself. Thus the sensation of impeded motion represents a conflict of will. We shall hear later that this very motor paralysis belongs to the fundamental conditions of the psychic process in dreaming. Now the impulse which is transferred to motor channels is nothing else than the will, and the fact that we are sure to find this impulse impeded in the dream makes the whole process extraordinarily well suited to represent volition and the “No” which opposes itself thereto. From my explanation of anxiety, it is easy to understand why the sensation of thwarted will is so closely allied to anxiety, and why it is so often connected with it in the dream. Anxiety is a libidinous impulse which emanates from the unconscious, and is inhibited by the foreconscious. Therefore, when a sensation of inhibition in the dream is accompanied by anxiety, there must also be present a volition which has at one time been capable of arousing a libido; there must be a sexual impulse.

What significance and what psychic force is to be ascribed to such manifestations of judgment as “For that is only a dream,” which frequently comes to the surface in dreams, I shall discuss in another place (vide infra, p. 390). For the present I shall merely say that they serve to depreciate the value of the thing dreamed. An interesting problem allied to this, namely, the meaning of the fact that sometimes a certain content is designated in the dream itself as “dreamed”—the riddle of the “dream within the dream”—has been solved in a similar sense by W. Stekel through the analysis of some convincing examples. The part of the dream “dreamed” is again to be depreciated in value and robbed of its reality; that which the dreamer continues to dream after awakening from the dream within the dream, is what the dream-wish desires to put in place of the extinguished reality. It may therefore be assumed that the part “dreamed” contains the representation of the reality and the real reminiscence, while, on the other hand, the continued dream contains the representation of what the dreamer wished. The inclusion of a certain content in a “dream within the dream” is therefore equivalent to the wish that what has just been designated as a dream should not have occurred. The dream-work utilises the dream itself as a form of deflection.

So far we have been attempting to ascertain how the dream represents the relations among the dream-thoughts, but we have several times extended our consideration to the further question of what alterations the dream material undergoes for the purposes of dream formation. We now know that the dream material, after being stripped of the greater parts of its relations, is subjected to compression, while at the same time displacements of intensity among its elements force a psychic revaluation of this material. The displacements which we have considered were shown to be substitutions of one idea for another, the substitute being in some way connected with the original by associations, and the displacements were put to the service of condensation by virtue of the fact that in this manner a common mean between two elements took the place of these two elements in the formation of the dream. We have not yet mentioned any other kind of displacement. But we learn from the analyses that another exists, and that it manifests itself in a change of the verbal expression employed for the thought in question. In both cases we have displacement following a chain of associations, but the same process takes place in different psychic spheres, and the result of this displacement in the one case is that one element is substituted for another, while in the other case an element exchanges its verbal expression for another.

This second kind of displacement occurring in dream formation not only possesses great theoretical interest, but is also peculiarly well fitted to explain the semblance of phantastic absurdity in which the dream disguises itself. Displacement usually occurs in such a way that a colourless and abstract expression in the dream-thought is exchanged for one that is visual and concrete. The advantage, and consequently the purpose, of this substitution is obvious. Whatever is visual is capable of representation in the dream, and can be wrought into situations where the abstract expression would confront dream representation with difficulties similar to those which would arise if a political editorial were to be represented in an illustrated journal. But not only the possibility of representation, but also the interests of condensation and of the censor, can be furthered by this change. If the abstractly expressed and unwieldy dream-thought is recast into figurative language, this new expression and the rest of the dream material are more easily furnished with those identities and cross references, which are essential to the dream activity and which it creates whenever they are not at hand, for the reason that in every language concrete terms, owing to their evolution, are more abundant in associations than conceptual ones. It may be imagined that in dream formation a good part of the intermediary activity, which tries to reduce the separate dream-thoughts to the tersest and simplest possible expression in the dream, takes place in the manner above described—that is to say, in providing suitable paraphrase for the individual thoughts.

One thought whose expression has already been determined on other grounds will thus exert a separating and selective influence upon the means available for expressing the other, and perhaps it will do this constantly throughout, somewhat after the manner of the poet. If a poem in rhyme is to be composed, the second rhyming line is bound by two conditions; it must express the proper meaning, and it must express it in such a way as to secure the rhyme. The best poems are probably those in which the poet’s effort to find a rhyme is unconscious, and in which both thoughts have from the beginning exercised a mutual influence in the selection of their verbal expressions, which can then be made to rhyme by a means of slight remodification.

In some cases change of expression serves the purposes of dream condensation more directly, in making possible the invention of a verbal construction which is ambiguous and therefore suited to the expression of more than one dream-thought. The whole range of word-play is thus put at the service of the dream activity. The part played by words in the formation of dreams ought not to surprise us. A word being a point of junction for a number of conceptions, it possesses, so to speak, a predestined ambiguity, and neuroses (obsessions, phobias) take advantage of the conveniences which words offer for the purposes of condensation and disguise quite as readily as the dream.[DZ] That dream conception also profits by this displacement of expression is easily demonstrated. It is naturally confusing if an ambiguous word is put in the place of two ambiguous ones; and the employment of a figurative expression instead of the sober everyday one thwarts our understanding, especially since the dream never tells us whether the elements which it shows are to be interpreted literally or figuratively, or whether they refer to the dream material directly or only through the agency of interpolated forms of speech.[EA] Several examples of representations in the dream which are held together only by ambiguity have already been cited (“her mouth opens without difficulty,” in the dream of Irma’s injection; “I cannot go yet,” in the last dream reported, p. 312), &c. I shall now cite a dream in the analysis of which the figurative expression of abstract thought plays a greater part.

The difference between such dream interpretation and interpretation by symbolism may again be sharply distinguished; in the symbolic interpretation of dreams the key to the symbolism is arbitrarily chosen by the interpreter, while in our own cases of verbal disguise all these keys are universally known and are taken from established customs of speech. If the correct notion occurs at the right opportunity, it is possible to solve dreams of this sort completely or in part, independently of any statements made by the dreamer.

A lady, a friend of mine, dreams: _She is in the opera-house. It is a Wagnerian performance which has lasted till 7.45 in the morning. In the parquette and parterre there are tables, around which people dine and drink. Her cousin and his young wife, who have just returned from their honeymoon, sit next to her at one of these tables, and next to them sits one of the aristocracy. Concerning the latter the idea is that the young wife has brought him back with her from the wedding journey. It is quite above board, just as if she were bringing back a hat from her trip. In the midst of the parquette there is a high tower, on the top of which is a platform surrounded by an iron grating. There, high up, stands the conductor with the features of Hans Richter; he is continually running around behind the grating, perspiring awfully, and from this position conducting the orchestra, which is arranged around the base of the tower. She herself sits in a box with a lady friend (known to me). Her youngest sister tries to hand her from the parquette a big piece of coal with the idea that she did not know that it would last so long and that she must by this time be terribly cold. (It was a little as if the boxes had to be heated during the long performance.)_

The dream is senseless enough, though the situation is well developed too—the tower in the midst of the parquette from which the conductor leads the orchestra; but, above all, the coal which her sister hands her! I purposely asked for no analysis of this dream. With the knowledge I have of the personal relations of the dreamer, I was able to interpret parts of it independently. I knew that she had entertained warm feelings for a musician whose career had been prematurely blasted by insanity. I therefore decided to take the tower in the parquette verbally. It was apparent, then, that the man whom she wished to see in the place of Hans Richter towered above all the other members of the orchestra. This tower must, therefore, be designated as a composite picture formed by an apposition; with its pedestal it represents the greatness of the man, but with its gratings on top, behind which he runs around like a prisoner or an animal in a cage (an allusion to the name of the unfortunate man), it represents his later fate. “Lunatic-tower” is perhaps the word in which both thoughts might have met.

Now that we have discovered the dream’s method of representation, we may try with the same key to open the second apparent absurdity,—that of the coal which her sister hands her. “Coal” must mean “secret love.” “No coal, no fire so hotly glows As the secret love which no one knows.” She and her friend remain seated while her younger sister, who still has opportunities to marry, hands her up the coal “because she did not know it would last so long.” What would last so long is not told in the dream. In relating it we would supply “the performance”; but in the dream we must take the sentence as it is, declare it ambiguous, and add “until she marries.” The interpretation “secret love” is then confirmed by the mention of the cousin who sits with his wife in the parquette, and by the open love-affair attributed to the latter. The contrasts between secret and open love, between her fire and the coldness of the young wife, dominate the dream. Moreover, here again there is a person “in high position” as a middle term between the aristocrat and the musician entitled to high hopes.

By means of the above discussion we have at last brought to light a third factor, whose part in the transformation of the dream thoughts into the dream content is not to be considered trivial; it is the regard for presentability (German: Darstellbarkeit) in the peculiar psychic material which the dream makes use of,—that is fitness for representation, for the most part by means of visual images. Among the various subordinate ideas associated with the essential dream thoughts, that one will be preferred which permits of a visual representation, and the dream-activity does not hesitate promptly to recast the inflexible thought into another verbal form, even if it is the more unusual one, as long as this form makes dramatisation possible, and thus puts an end to the psychological distress caused by cramped thinking. This pouring of the thought content into another mould may at the same time be put at the service of the condensation work, and may establish relations with another thought which would otherwise not be present. This other thought itself may perhaps have previously changed its original expression for the purpose of meeting these relations half-way.

In view of the part played by puns, quotations, songs, and proverbs in the intellectual life of educated persons, it would be entirely in accordance with our expectation to find disguises of this sort used with extraordinary frequency. For a few kinds of material a universally applicable dream symbolism has been established on a basis of generally known allusions and equivalents. A good part of this symbolism, moreover, is possessed by the dream in common with the psychoneuroses, and with legends and popular customs.

Indeed, if we look more closely, we must recognise that in employing this method of substitution the dream is generally doing nothing original. For the attainment of its purpose, which in this case is the possibility of dramatisation without interference from the censor, it simply follows the paths which it finds already marked out in unconscious thought, and gives preference to those transformations of the suppressed material which may become conscious also in the form of wit and allusion, and with which all the fancies of neurotics are filled. Here all at once we come to understand Scherner’s method of dream interpretation, the essential truth of which I have defended elsewhere. The occupation of one’s fancy with one’s own body is by no means peculiar to, or characteristic of the dream alone. My analyses have shown me that this is a regular occurrence in the unconscious thought of neurotics, and goes back to sexual curiosity, the object of which for the adolescent youth or maiden is found in the genitals of the opposite sex, or even of the same sex. But, as Scherner and Volkelt very appropriately declare, the house is not the only group of ideas which is used for the symbolisation of the body—either in the dream or in the unconscious fancies of the neurosis. I know some

patients, to be sure, who have steadily adhered to an architectural symbolism for the body and the genitals (sexual interest certainly extends far beyond the region of the external genital organs), to whom posts and pillars signify legs (as in the “Song of Songs”), to whom every gate suggests a bodily opening (“hole”), and every water-main a urinary apparatus, and the like. But the group of associations belonging to plant life and to the kitchen is just as eagerly chosen to conceal sexual images; in the first case the usage of speech, the result of phantastic comparisons dating from the most ancient times, has made abundant preparation (the “vineyard” of the Lord, the “seeds,” the “garden” of the girl in the “Song of Songs”). The ugliest as well as the most intimate details of sexual life may be dreamed about in apparently harmless allusions to culinary operations, and the symptoms of hysteria become practically unintelligible if we forget that sexual symbolism can conceal itself behind the most commonplace and most inconspicuous matters, as its best hiding-place. The fact that some neurotic children cannot look at blood and raw meat, that they vomit at the sight of eggs and noodles, and that the dread of snakes, which is natural to mankind, is monstrously exaggerated in neurotics, all of this has a

definite sexual meaning. Wherever the neurosis employs a disguise of this sort, it treads the paths once trodden by the whole of humanity in the early ages of civilisation—paths of whose existence customs of speech, superstitions, and morals still give testimony to this day.

I here insert the promised flower dream of a lady patient, in which I have italicised everything which is to be sexually interpreted. This beautiful dream seemed to lose its entire charm for the dreamer after it had been interpreted. (a) Preliminary dream: _She goes to the two maids in the kitchen and scolds them for taking so long to prepare “a little bite of food.” She also sees a great many coarse dishes standing in the kitchen inverted so that the water may drip off them, and heaped up in a pile._ Later addition: _The two maids go to fetch water, and must, as it were, step into a river which reaches up into the house or into the yard._[EB]

(b) Main dream[EC]: _She is descending from a high place[ED] over balustrades that are curiously fashioned or fences which are united into big squares and consist of a conglomeration of little squares.[EE] It is really not intended for climbing upon; she is worried about finding a place for her foot, and she is glad her dress doesn’t get caught anywhere, and that she remains so respectable while she is going.[EF] She is also carrying a large bough in her hand,[EG] really a bough of a tree, which is thickly studded with red blossoms; it has many branches, and spreads out.[EH] With this is connected the idea of cherry blossoms, but they look like full-bloom camelias, which of course do not grow on trees. While she is descending, she first has one, then suddenly two, and later again only one.[EI] When she arrives at the bottom of the lower blossoms they have already fallen off to a considerable extent. Now that she is at the bottom, she sees a porter who is combing—as she would like to express it—just such a tree—that is, who is plucking thick bunches of hair from it, which hang from it like moss. Other workmen have chopped off such boughs in a garden, and have thrown them upon the street, where they lie about, so that many people take some of them. But she asks whether that is right, whether anybody may take one.[EJ] In the garden there stands a young man_ (having a personality with which she is acquainted, not a member of her family) _up to whom she goes in order to ask him how it is possible to transplant such boughs into her own garden.[EK] He embraces her, whereat she resists and asks him what he means, whether it is permissible to embrace her in such a manner.

He says that there is no wrong in it, that it is permitted.[EL] He then declares himself willing to go with her into the other garden, in order to show her the transplanting, and he says something to her which she does not correctly understand: “Besides this three metres_—(later on she says: square metres) _or three fathoms of ground are lacking.” It seems as though the man were trying to ask her something in return for his affability, as though he had the intention of indemnifying himself in her garden, as though he wanted to evade some law or other, to derive some advantage from it without causing her an injury. She does not know whether or not he really shows her anything._[EM]

I must mention still another series of associations which often serves the purpose of concealing sexual meaning both in dreams and in the neurosis,—I refer to the change of residence series. To change one’s residence is readily replaced by “to remove,” an ambiguous expression which may have reference to clothing. If the dream also contains a “lift” (elevator), one may think of the verb “to lift,” hence of lifting up the clothing. I have naturally an abundance of such material, but a report of it would carry us too far into the discussion of neurotic conditions. Everything leads to the same conclusion, that no special symbolising activity of the mind in the formation of dreams need be assumed; that, on the contrary, the dream makes use of such symbolisations as are to be found ready-made in unconscious thought, because these better satisfy the requirements of dream formation, on account of their dramatic fitness, and particularly on account of their exemption from the censor. (e) Examples—Arithmetic Speeches in the Dream

Before I proceed to assign to its proper place the fourth of the factors which control the formation of the dream, I shall cite several examples from my collection of dreams for the purpose partly of illustrating the co-operation of the three factors with which we are acquainted, and partly of supplying proof for assertions which have been made without demonstration or of drawing irrefutable inferences from them. For it has been very difficult for me in the foregoing account of the dream activity to demonstrate my conclusions by means of examples. Examples for the individual thesis are convincing only when considered in connection with a dream interpretation; when they are torn from their context they lose their significance, and, furthermore, a dream interpretation, though not at all profound, soon becomes so extensive that it obscures the thread of the discussion which it is intended to illustrate. This technical motive may excuse me for now mixing together all sorts of things which have nothing in common but their relation to the text of the foregoing chapter.

We shall first consider a few examples of very peculiar or unusual methods of representation in the dream. The dream of a lady is as follows: A servant girl is standing on a ladder as though to clean the windows, and has with her a chimpanzee and a gorilla cat (later corrected—angora cat). She throws the animals at the dreamer; the chimpanzee cuddles up to her, and this is disgusting to her. This dream has accomplished its purpose by the simplest possible means, namely by taking a mere mode of speech literally and representing it according to the meaning of its words. “Ape,” like the names of animals in general, is an epithet of opprobrium, and the situation of the dream means nothing but “to hurl invectives.” This same collection will soon furnish us with further examples of the use of this simple artifice.

Another dream proceeds in a very similar manner: _A woman with a child that has a conspicuously deformed cranium; the dreamer has heard that the child got into this condition owing to its position in its mother’s womb. The doctor says that the cranium might be given a better shape by means of compression, but that would harm the brain. She thinks that because it is a boy it won’t suffer so much from deformity._ This dream contains a plastic representation of the concept: “Childish impressions,” which the dreamer has heard of in the course of explanations concerning the treatment.

In the following example, the dream activity enters upon a different path. The dream contains a recollection of an excursion to the Hilmteich, near Graz: There is a terrible storm outside; a miserable hotel—the water is dripping from the walls, and the beds are damp. (The latter part of the content is less directly expressed than I give it.) The dream signifies “superfluous.” The abstract idea occurring in the dream thoughts is first made equivocal by a certain straining of language; it has, perhaps, been replaced by “overflowing” or by “fluid” and “super-fluid (-fluous)” and has then been given representation by an accumulation of like impressions. Water within, water without, water in the beds in the form of dampness—everything fluid and “super” fluid. That, for the purposes of the dream representation, the spelling is much less regarded than the sound of words ought not surprise us when we remember that rhyme exercises similar privileges.

The fact that language has at its disposal a great number of words which were originally intended in a picturesque and concrete sense but are at present used in a faded abstract sense has in other cases made it very easy for the dream to represent its thoughts. The dream need only restore to these words their full significance, or follow the evolution of their meaning a little way back. For example, a man dreams that his friend, who is struggling to get out of a very tight place, calls upon him to help him. The analysis shows that the tight place is a hole, and that the dream uses symbolically his very words to his friend, “Be careful, or you’ll get yourself into a hole.”[EN] Another dreamer climbs upon a mountain from which he sees a very extraordinary broad view. He identifies himself with his brother who is editing a “review” which deals with relations to the Farthest East. It would be a separate undertaking to collect such methods of representation and to arrange them according to the principles upon which they are based. Some of the representations are quite witty. They give the impression that they would have never been divined if the dreamer himself had not reported them.

1. A man dreams that he is asked for a name, which, however, he cannot recall. He himself explains that this means: It does not occur to me in the dream. 2. A female patient relates a dream in which all the persons concerned were especially big. “That means,” she adds, “that it must deal with an episode of my early childhood, for at that time all grown up people naturally seemed to me immensely big.” The transference into childhood is also expressed differently in other dreams by translating time into space. One sees the persons and scenes in question as if at a great distance, at the end of a long road, or as if looked at through the wrong end of the opera-glass.

3. A man, who in waking life shows an inclination to abstract and indefinite expressions, but who is otherwise endowed with wit enough, dreams in a certain connection that he is at a railroad station while a train is coming in. But then the station platform approaches the train, which stands still; hence an absurd inversion of the real state of affairs. This detail is again nothing but an index to remind one that something else in the dream should be turned about. The analysis of the same dream brings back the recollection of a picture-book in which men are represented standing on their heads and walking on their hands. 4. The same dreamer on another occasion relates a short dream which almost recalls the technique of a rebus. His uncle gives him a kiss in an automobile. He immediately adds the interpretation, which I should never have found: it means Autoerotism. This might have been made as a joke in the waking state.

The dream work often succeeds in representing very awkward material, such as proper names, by means of the forced utilisation of very far-fetched references. In one of my dreams the elder Bruecke has given me a task. I compound a preparation, and skim something from it which looks like crumpled tinfoil. (More of this later on.) The notion corresponding to this, which was not easy to find, is “stanniol,” and now I know that I have in mind the name of the author Stannius, which was borne by a treatise on the nervous system of fishes, which I regarded with awe in my youthful years. The first scientific task which my teacher gave me was actually concerned with the nervous system of a fish—the Ammocœtes. Obviously the latter name could never have been used in a picture puzzle.

I shall not omit here to insert a dream having a curious content, which is also remarkable as a child’s dream, and which is very easily explained by the analysis. A lady relates: “I can remember that when I was a child I repeatedly dreamed, that the dear Lord had a pointed paper hat on his head. They used to make me wear such a hat at table very often, so that I might not be able to look at the plates of the other children and see how much they had received of a particular dish. Since I have learned that God is omniscient, the dream signifies that I know everything in spite of the hat which I am made to wear.” Wherein the dream work consists, and how it manages its material, the dream thoughts, can be shown in a very instructive manner from the numbers and calculations which occur in dreams. Moreover, numbers in dreams are regarded as of especial significance by superstition. I shall therefore give a few more examples of this kind from my own collection. 1. The following is taken from the dream of a lady shortly before the close of her treatment:

She wants to pay for something or other; her daughter takes 3 florins and 65 kreuzer from her pocket-book; but the mother says: “What are you doing? It only costs 21 kreuzer.” This bit of dream was immediately intelligible to me without further explanation from my knowledge of the dreamer’s circumstances. The lady was a foreigner who had provided for her daughter in an educational institution in Vienna, and who could continue my treatment as long as her daughter stayed in the city. In three weeks the daughter’s school year was to end, and with that the treatment also stopped. On the day before the dream the principal of the institute had urged her to make up her mind to allow her child to remain with her for another year. She had then obviously worked out this suggestion to the conclusion that in this case she would be able to continue the treatment for one year more. Now, this is what the dream refers to, for a year is equal to 365 days; the three weeks that remain before the close of the school year and of the treatment are equivalent to 21 days (though the hours of treatment are not as many as that). The numerals, which in the dream thoughts referred to time, are given money values in the dream, not without also giving expression to a deeper meaning for “time is money.” 365 kreuzer, to be sure, are 3 florins and 65 kreuzer. The smallness of the sums which appear in the dream is a self-evident wish-fulfilment; the wish has reduced the cost of both the treatment and the year’s instruction at the institution.

II. The numerals in another dream involve more complicated relations. A young lady, who, however, has already been married a number of years, learns that an acquaintance of hers of about her own age, Elsie L., has just become engaged. Thereupon she dreams: _She is sitting in the theatre with her husband, and one side of the orchestra is quite unoccupied. Her husband tells her that Elsie L. and her husband had also wanted to go, but that they had been able to get nothing but poor seats, three for 1 florin and 50 kreuzer, and of course they could not take those. She thinks that they didn’t lose much either._

Where do the 1 florin and 50 kreuzer come from? From an occurrence of the previous day which is really indifferent. The dreamer’s sister-in-law had received 150 florins as a present from her husband, and had quickly got rid of them by buying some jewelry. Let us note that 150 florins is 100 times more than 1 florin and 50 kreuzer. Whence the 3 which stands before the theatre seats? There is only one association for this, namely, that the bride is that many months—three—younger than herself. Information concerning the significance of the feature that one side of the orchestra remains empty leads to the solution of the dream. This feature is an undisguised allusion to a little occurrence which has given her husband good cause for teasing her. She had decided to go to the theatre during the week, and had been careful to get tickets a few days before, for which she had to pay the pre-emption charge. When they got to the theatre they found that one side of the house was almost empty; she certainly did not need to be in such a hurry.

I shall now substitute the dream thoughts for the dream: “It surely was nonsense to marry so early; there was no need for my being in such a hurry. From the case of Elsie L., I see that I should have got a husband just the same—and one who is a hundred times better (husband, sweetheart, treasure)—if I had only waited (antithesis to the haste of her sister-in-law). I could have bought three such men for the money (the dowry!). Our attention is drawn to the fact that the numerals in this dream have changed their meanings and relations to a much greater extent than in the one previously considered. The transforming and disfiguring activity of the dream has in this case been greater, a fact which we interpret as meaning that these dream thoughts had to overcome a particularly great amount of inner psychic resistance up to the point of their representation. We must also not overlook the circumstance that the dream contains an absurd element, namely, that two persons take three seats. We digress to the interpretation of the absurdity of dreams when we remark that this absurd detail of the dream content is intended to represent the most strongly emphasized detail of the dream thoughts: “It was nonsense to marry so early.” The figure 3 belonging to a quite subordinate relation of the two compared persons (three months’ difference in age) has thus been skilfully used to produce the nonsense demanded by the dream. The reduction of the actual 150 florins to 1 florin and 50 kreuzer corresponds to her disdain of her husband in the suppressed thoughts of the dreamer.”

III. Another example displays the arithmetical powers of the dream, which have brought it into such disrepute. A man dreams: He is sitting at B——’s (a family of his earlier acquaintance) _and says, “It was nonsense for you not to give me Amy in marriage.” Thereupon he asks the girl, “How old are you?” Answer: “I was born in 1882.” “Ah, then you are 28 years old.”_

Since the dream occurs in the year 1898, this is obviously poor arithmetic, and the inability of the dreamer to calculate may be compared to that of the paralytic, if there is no other way of explaining it. My patient was one of those persons who are always thinking about every woman they see. The person who followed him in my office, regularly for several months, was a young lady, whom he used to meet, about whom he used to ask frequently, and to whom he was very anxious to be polite. This was the lady whose age he estimated at 28 years. So much for explaining the result of the apparent calculation. But 1882 was the year in which he had married. He had been unable to refrain from engaging in conversation with the two females whom he met at my house—two girls, by no means youthful, who alternately opened the door for him, and as he did not find them very responsive, he had given himself the explanation that they probably considered him an elderly “settled” gentleman. IV. For another number dream with its interpretation,—a dream distinguished by its obvious determination, or rather over-determination, I am indebted to B. Dattner:

My host, a policeman in the municipal service, dreamed that he was standing at his post in the street, which was a wish-realisation. The inspector then came over to him, having on his gorget the numbers 22 and 62 or 26—at all events there were many two’s on it. Division of the number 2262 in the reproduction of the dream at once points to the fact that the components have separate meanings. It occurs to him that the day before, while on duty, they were discussing the duration of their time of service. The occasion for this was furnished by an inspector who had been pensioned at 62 years. The dreamer had only completed 22 years of service, and still needed 2 years and 2 months to make him eligible for a 90 per cent. pension. The dream first shows him the fulfilment of a long wished for wish, the rank of inspector. The superior with 2262 on his collar is himself; he takes care to do his duty on the street, which is another preferred wish; he has served his 2 years and 2 months, and can now be retired from the service with full pension, like the 62–year-old inspector.

If we keep in mind these examples and similar ones (to follow), we may say: Dream activity does not calculate at all, whether correctly or incorrectly; it joins together in the form of a calculation numerals which occur in the dream thoughts, and which may serve as allusions to material which is incapable of being represented. It thus utilises numerals as material for the expression of its purposes in the same manner as it does names and speeches known as word presentations.

For the dream activity cannot compose a new speech. No matter how many speeches and answers may occur in dreams, which may be sensible or absurd in themselves, analysis always shows in such cases that the dream has only taken from the dream thoughts fragments of speeches which have been delivered or heard, and dealt with them in a most arbitrary manner. It has not only torn them from their context and mutilated them, taken up one piece and rejected another, but it has also joined them together in a new way, so that the speech which seems coherent in the dream falls into three or four sections in the course of analysis. In this new utilisation of the words, the dream has often put aside the meaning which they had in the dream thoughts, and has derived an entirely new meaning from them.[EO] Upon closer inspection the more distinct and compact constituents of the dream speech may be distinguished from others which serve as connectives and have probably been supplied, just as we supply omitted letters and syllables in reading. The dream speech thus has the structure of breccia stones, in which larger pieces of different material are held together by a solidified cohesive mass.

In a very strict sense this description is correct, to be sure, only for those speeches in the dream which have something of the sensational character of a speech, and which are described as “speeches.” The others which have not, as it were, been felt as though heard or spoken (which have no accompanying acoustic or motor emphasis in the dream) are simply thoughts such as occur in our waking thought activity, and are transferred without change into many dreams. Our reading, also, seems to furnish an abundant and not easily traceable source of material for speeches, this material being of an indifferent nature. Everything, however, which appears conspicuously in the dream as a speech can be referred to real speeches which have been made or heard by the dreamer himself. We have already found examples for the explanation of such dream speeches in the analysis of dreams cited for other purposes. Here is one example in place of many, all of which lead to the same conclusion.

A large courtyard in which corpses are cremated. The dreamer says: “I’m going away from here, I can’t look at this.” (Not a distinct speech.) _Then he meets two butcher boys and asks: “Well, did it taste good?” One of them answers: “No, it wasn’t good.” As though it had been human flesh._

The harmless occasion for this dream is as follows: After taking supper with his wife, the dreamer pays a visit to his worthy but by no means appetising neighbour. The hospitable old lady is just at her evening meal, and urges him (instead of this word a composite sexually-significant word is jocosely used among men) to taste of it. He declines, saying that he has no appetite. “Go on, you can stand some more,” or something of the kind. The dreamer is thus forced to taste and praise what is offered. “But that’s good!” After he is alone again with his wife, he scolds about the neighbour’s importunity and about the quality of the food he has tasted. “I can’t stand the sight of it,” a phrase not appearing even in the dream as an actual speech, is a thought which has reference to the physical charms of the lady who invites him, and which would be translated as meaning that he does not want to look at her.

The analysis of another dream which I cite at this point for the sake of the very distinct speech that forms its nucleus, but which I shall explain only when we come to consider emotions in the dream—will be more instructive. I dream very distinctly: _I have gone to Bruecke’s laboratory at night, and upon hearing a soft knocking at the door, I open it to (the deceased) Professor Fleischl, who enters in the company of several strangers, and after saying a few words sits down at his table._ Then follows a second dream: _My friend Fl. has come to Vienna in July without attracting much attention; I meet him on the street while he is in conversation with my_ (deceased) _friend P., and I go somewhere or other with these two, and they sit down opposite each other as though at a little table, while I sit at the narrow end of the table facing them. Fl. tells about his sister and says: “In three-quarters of an hour she was dead,” and then something like: “That is the threshold.” As P. does not understand him, Fl. turns to me, and asks me how much I have told of his affairs. Whereupon, seized by strange emotions, I want to tell Fl. that P._ (can’t possibly know anything because he) _is not alive. But, noticing the mistake myself, I say: “Non vixit.” Then I look at P. searchingly, and under my gaze he becomes pale and blurred, his eyes a morbid blue—and at last he dissolves. I rejoice greatly at this; I now understand that Ernest Fleischl, too, was only an apparition, a revenant, and I find that it is quite possible for such a person to exist only as long as one wants him to, and that he can be made to disappear by the wish of another person._

This beautiful dream unites so many of the characteristics of the dream content which are problematic—the criticism made in the dream itself in that I myself notice my mistake in having said “Non vixit” instead of “Non vivit”; the unconstrained intercourse with dead persons, whom the dream itself declares to be dead; the absurdity of the inference and the intense satisfaction which the inference gives me—that “by my life” I should like to give a complete solution of these problems. But in reality I am incapable of doing this—namely, the thing I do in the dream—of sacrificing such dear persons to my ambition. With every revelation of the true meaning of the dream, with which I am well acquainted, I should have been put to shame. Hence I am content with selecting a few of the elements of the dream, for interpretation, some here, and others later on another page.

The scene in which I annihilate P. by a glance forms the centre of the dream. His eyes become strange and weirdly blue, and then he dissolves. This scene is an unmistakable copy of one really experienced. I was a demonstrator at the physiological institute, and began my service in the early hours, and Bruecke learned that I had been late several times in getting to the school laboratory. So one morning he came promptly for the opening of the class and waited for me. What he said to me was brief and to the point; but the words did not matter at all. What overwhelmed me was the terrible blue eyes through which he looked at me and before which I melted away—as P. does in the dream, for P. has changed rôles with him much to my relief. Anyone who remembers the eyes of the great master, which were wonderfully beautiful until old age, and who has ever seen him in anger, can easily imagine the emotions of the young transgressor on that occasion.

But for a long time I was unable to account for the “Non Vixit,” with which I execute sentence in the dream, until I remembered that these two words possessed such great distinctness in the dream, not because they were heard or spoken, but because they were seen. Then I knew at once where they came from. On the pedestal of the statue of Emperor Joseph in the Hofburg at Vienna, may be read the following beautiful words: Saluti patriae vixit non diu sed totus. I had culled from this inscription something which suited the one inimical train of thought in the dream thoughts and which now intended to mean: “That fellow has nothing to say, he is not living at all.” And I now recalled that the dream was dreamed a few days after the unveiling of the memorial to Fleischl in the arcades of the university, upon which occasion I had again seen Bruecke’s statue and must have thought with regret (in the unconscious) how my highly gifted friend P. with his great devotion to science had forfeited his just claim to a statue in these halls by his premature death. So I set up this memorial to him in the dream; the first name of my friend P. is Joseph.[EP]

According to the rules of dream interpretation, I should still not be justified in replacing non vivit, which I need, by non vixit, which is placed at my disposal by the recollection of the Joseph monument. Something now calls my attention to the fact that in the dream scene, two trains of thought concerning my friend P. meet, one hostile, the other friendly—of which the former is superficial, the latter veiled, and both are given representation in the same words: non vixit. Because my friend P. has deserved well of science, I erect a statue to him; but because he has been guilty of an evil wish (which is expressed at the end of the dream) I destroy him. I have here constructed a sentence of peculiar resonance, and I must have been influenced by some model. But where can I find similar antithesis, such a parallel between two opposite attitudes towards the same person, both claiming to be entirely valid, and yet both trying not to encroach upon each other? Such a parallel is to be found in a single place, where, however, a deep impression is made upon the reader—in Brutus’ speech of justification in Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar: “As Cæsar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him.” Is not this which I have discovered, the same sentence structure and thought contrast as in the dream thought?

I thus play Brutus in the dream. If I could only find in the dream thoughts, one further trace of confirmation for this astonishing collateral connection! I think the following might be such: My friend comes to Vienna in July. This detail finds no support whatever in reality. To my knowledge my friend has never been in Vienna during the month of July. But the month of July is named after Julius Cæsar, and might therefore very well furnish the required allusion to the intermediary thought that I am playing the part of Brutus.[EQ]

Strangely enough I once actually played the part of Brutus. I presented the scene between Brutus and Cæsar from Schiller’s poems to an audience of children when I was a boy of fourteen years. I did this with my nephew, who was a year older than I, and who had come to us from England—also a revenant—for in him I recognised the playmate of my first childish years. Until the end of my third year we had been inseparable, had loved each other and scuffled with each other, and, as I have already intimated, this childish relation has constantly determined my later feelings in my intercourse with persons of my own age. My nephew John has since found many incarnations, which have revivified first one aspect, then another, of this character which is so ineradicably fixed in my unconscious memory. Occasionally he must have treated me very badly and I must have shown courage before my tyrant, for in later years I have often been told of the short speech with which I vindicated myself when my father—his grandfather—called me to account: “I hit him because he hit me.” This childish scene must be the one which causes non vivit to branch off into non vixit, for in the language of later childhood striking is called wichsen (German, wichsen—to smear with shoe-polish, to tan, i.e., to flog); the dream activity does not hesitate to take advantage of such connections. My hostility towards my friend P., which has so little foundation in reality—he was far superior to me, and might therefore have been a new edition of the playmate of my childhood—can certainly be traced to my complicated relations with John during our infancy. I shall, however, return to this dream later.

(f) Absurd Dreams—Intellectual Performances in the Dream In our interpretation of dreams thus far we have come upon the element of absurdity in the dream-content so often that we must no longer postpone an investigation of its cause and significance. We remember, of course, that the absurdity of dreams has furnished the opponents of dream investigation with their chief argument for considering the dream nothing but the meaningless product of a reduced and fragmentary activity of the mind. I begin with specimens in which the absurdity of the dream-content is only apparent and immediately disappears when the dream is more thoroughly examined. There are a few dreams which—accidentally one is at first inclined to think—are concerned with the dead father of the dreamer. I. Here is the dream of a patient who had lost his father six years before:

_A terrible accident has occurred to his father. He was riding in the night train when a derailment took place, the seats came together, and his head was crushed from side to side. The dreamer sees him lying on the bed with a wound over his left eyebrow, which runs off vertically. The dreamer is surprised that his father has had a misfortune (since he is dead already, as the dreamer adds in telling his dream). His father’s eyes are so clear._

According to the standards prevailing in dream criticism, this dream-content would have to be explained in the following manner: At first, when the dreamer is picturing his father’s misfortune, he has forgotten that his father has already been in his grave for years; in the further course of the dream this memory comes to life, and causes him to be surprised at his own dream even while he is still dreaming. Analysis, however, teaches us that it is entirely useless to attempt such explanations. The dreamer had given an artist an order for a bust of his father, which he had inspected two days before the dream. This is the thing which seems to him to have met with an accident. The sculptor has never seen the father, and is working from photographs which have been given him. On the very day before the dream the pious son had sent an old servant of the family to the studio in order to see whether he would pass the same judgment upon the marble head, namely, that it had turned out too narrow from side to side, from temple to temple. Now follows the mass of recollections which has contributed to the formation of this dream. The dreamer’s father had a habit, whenever he was harassed by business cares or family difficulties, of pressing his temples with both hands, as though he were trying to compress his head, which seemed to grow too large for him.

When our dreamer was four years old he was present when the accidental discharge of a pistol blackened his father’s eyes (his eyes are so clear). While alive his father had had a deep wrinkle at the place where the dream shows the injury, whenever he was thoughtful or sad. The fact that in the dream this wrinkle is replaced by a wound points to the second occasion of the dream. The dreamer had taken a photograph of his little daughter; the plate had fallen from his hand, and when picked up showed a crack that ran like a vertical furrow across the forehead and reached as far as the orbital curve. He could not then get the better of his superstitious forebodings, for, on the day before his mother’s death, a photographic plate with her likeness had cracked as he was handling it.

Thus the absurdity of the dream is only the result of an inaccuracy of verbal expression, which does not take the trouble to distinguish the bust and the photograph from the original. We are all accustomed to say of a picture, “Don’t you think father is good?” Of course the appearance of absurdity in this dream might easily have been avoided. If it were permissible to pass judgment after a single experience, one might be tempted to say that this semblance of absurdity is admitted or desired. II. Here is another very similar example from my own dreams (I lost my father in the year 1896): After his death my father has been politically active among the Magyars, and has united them into a political body; to accompany which I see a little indistinct picture: _a crowd of people as in the Reichstag; a person who is standing on one or two benches, others round about him. I remember that he looked very like Garibaldi on his death-bed, and I am glad that this promise has really come true._