The Interpretation of Dreams. Sigmund Freud
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after he had realised his dream of the café, he noticed the name on a signboard at the street corner, which he had been obliged to pass for months at least twice a day.
I have learned from my own dreams how largely the discovery of the origin of some of the dream elements depends on accident. Thus, for years before writing this book, I was haunted by the picture of a very simply formed church tower which I could not recall having seen. I then suddenly recognised it with absolute certainty at a small station between Salzburg and Reichenhall. This was in the later nineties, and I had travelled over the road for the first time in the year 1886. In later years, when I was already busily engaged in the study of dreams, I was quite annoyed at the frequent recurrence of the dream picture of a certain peculiar locality. I saw it in definite local relation to my person—to my left, a dark space from which many grotesque sandstone figures stood out. A glimmer of recollection, which I did not quite credit, told me it was the entrance to a beer-cellar, but I could explain neither the meaning nor the origin of this dream picture. In 1907 I came by chance to Padua, which, to my regret, I had been unable to visit since 1895. My first visit to this beautiful university city was unsatisfactory; I was unable to see Giotto's frescoes in the church of the Madonna dell' Arena, and on my way there turned back on being informed that the little church was closed on the day. On my second visit, twelve years later, I thought of compensating myself for this, and before everything else I started out for Madonna dell' Arena. On the street leading to it, on my left, probably at the place where I had turned in 1895, I discovered the locality which I had so often seen in the dream, with its sandstone figures. It was in fact the entrance to a restaurant garden.
One of the sources from which the dream draws material for reproduction—material which in part is not recalled or employed in waking thought—is to be found in childhood. I shall merely cite some of the authors who have observed and emphasized this.
Hildebrandt35 (p. 23): "It has already been expressly admitted that the dream sometimes brings back to the mind with wonderful reproductive ability remote and even forgotten experiences from the earliest periods."
Strümpell66 (p. 40): "The subject becomes more interesting when we remember how the dream sometimes brings forth, as it were, from among the deepest and heaviest strata which later years have piled upon the earliest childhood experiences, the pictures of certain places, things, and persons, quite uninjured and with their original freshness. This is not limited merely to such impressions as have gained vivid consciousness during their origin or have become impressed with strong psychic validity, and then later return in the dream as actual reminiscences, causing pleasure to the awakened consciousness. On the contrary, the depths of the dream memory comprise also such pictures of persons, things, places, and early experiences as either possessed but little consciousness and no psychic value at all, or have long ago lost both, and therefore appear totally strange and unknown both in the dream and in the waking state, until their former origin is revealed."
Volkelt72 (p. 119): "It is essentially noteworthy how easily infantile and youthful reminiscences enter into the dream. What we have long ceased to think about, what has long since lost for us all importance, is constantly recalled by the dream."
The sway of the dream over the infantile material, which, as is well known, mostly occupies the gaps in the conscious memory, causes the origin of interesting hypermnestic dreams, a few of which I shall here report. Maury48 relates (p. 92) that as a child he often went from his native city, Meaux, to the neighbouring Trilport, where his father superintended the construction of a bridge. On a certain night a dream transported him to Trilport, and he was again playing in the city streets. A man approached him wearing some sort of uniform. Maury asked him his name, and he introduced himself, saying that his name was C——, and that he was a bridge guard. On waking, Maury, who still doubted the reality of the reminiscence, asked his old servant, who had been with him in his childhood, whether she remembered a man of this name. "Certainly," was the answer, "he used to be watchman on the bridge which your father was building at that time."
Maury reports another example demonstrating just as nicely the reliability of infantile reminiscences appearing in dreams. Mr. F——, who had lived as a child in Montbrison, decided to visit his home and old friends of his family after an absence of twenty-five years. The night before his departure he dreamt that he had reached his destination, and that he met near Montbrison a man, whom he did not know by sight, who told him he was Mr. F., a friend of his father. The dreamer remembered that as a child he had known a gentleman of this name, but on waking he could no longer recall his features. Several days later, having really arrived at Montbrison, he found the supposedly unknown locality of his dream, and there met a man whom he at once recognised as the Mr. F. of his dream. The real person was only older than the one in the dream picture.
I may here relate one of my own dreams in which the remembered impression is replaced by an association. In my dream I saw a person whom I recognised, while dreaming, as the physician of my native town. The features were indistinct and confused with the picture of one of my colleague teachers, whom I still see occasionally. What association there was between the two persons I could not discover on awakening. But upon questioning my mother about the physician of my early childhood, I discovered that he was a one-eyed man. My teacher, whose figure concealed that of the physician in the dream, was also one-eyed. I have not seen the physician for thirty-eight years, and I have not to my knowledge thought of him in my waking state, although a scar on my chin might have reminded me of his help.
As if to counterbalance the immense rôle ascribed to the infantile impressions in the dream, many authors assert that the majority of dreams show elements from the most recent time. Thus Robert55 (p. 46) declares that the normal dream generally occupies itself only with the impressions of the recent days. We learn indeed that the theory of the dream advanced by Robert imperatively demands that the old impressions should be pushed back, and the recent ones brought to the front. Nevertheless the fact claimed by Robert really exists; I can confirm this from my own investigations. Nelson,50 an American author, thinks that the impressions most frequently found in the dream date from two or three days before, as if the impressions of the day immediately preceding the dream were not sufficiently weakened and remote. Many authors who are convinced of the intimate connection between the dream content and the waking state are impressed by the fact that impressions which have intensely occupied the waking mind appear in the dream only after they have been to some extent pushed aside from the elaboration of the waking thought. Thus, as a rule, we do not dream of a dead beloved person while we are still overwhelmed with sorrow. Still Miss Hallam,33 one of the latest observers, has collected examples showing the very opposite behaviour, and claims for the point the right of individual psychology.
The third and the most remarkable and incomprehensible peculiarity of the memory in dreams, is shown in the selection of the reproduced material, for stress is laid not only on the most significant, but also on the most indifferent and superficial reminiscences. On this point I shall quote those authors who have expressed their surprise in the most emphatic manner.
Hildebrandt35 (p. 11): "For it is a remarkable fact that dreams do not, as a rule, take their elements from great and deep-rooted events or from the powerful and urgent interests of the preceding day, but from unimportant matters, from the most worthless fragments of recent experience or of a more remote past. The most shocking death in our family, the impressions of which keep us awake long into the night, becomes obliterated from our memories, until the first moment of awakening brings it back to us with depressing force. On the other hand, the wart on the forehead of a passing stranger, of whom we did not think for a second after he was out of sight, plays its part in our dreams."
Strümpell66 (p. 39): "...such cases where the analysis of a dream brings to light elements which, although derived from events of the previous day or the day before the last, yet prove to be so unimportant and worthless for the waking state that they merge into forgetfulness shortly after coming to light. Such occurrences may be statements of others heard accidentally or actions superficially observed, or fleeting perceptions of things or persons, or single phrases from books, &c."
Havelock Ellis23 (p. 727): "The profound emotions of waking life, the questions and problems on which we spread our chief voluntary mental energy,