“I am on the stage, singing. I forget my part. A foreign looking conductor prompts me. In the wings, a man is looking at me, weeping. He falls in a faint. I rush to him. He looks like my husband. A foreign looking doctor picks him up and says to me: ‘He will sleep now, after which he will feel better.’ I go back to the stage and sing beautifully.”
Later, having acquired more self-confidence she visualized the situation as follows:
“I see a man leading a Jersey cow on a rope. The cow is trying to get under the fence but cannot. Then the cow is changed into a yellow bird which flies away, perches on top of a barn and sings joyfully.”
In the first dream, I am, of course the conductor and the doctor. In the second dream, the cow is an allusion to the patient’s tendency to gain weight. The song-bird is a very obvious symbol.
A series of dreams reported by a stammering patient not only presented the Freudian feature of wish-fulfilment but indicated clearly the patient’s changing attitude and his growing self-confidence, which finally culminated in his complete cure.
One of the first dreams he brought me at the beginning of the treatment read as follows:
“A congressman called Max Sternberg, who looks like me, is on the platform, making a speech. A gang of little Irish boys in the rear starts a disturbance. The audience, unable to hear the speaker, leaves the hall.”
On numberless occasions, small boys prevented him in his dreams from accomplishing his object, and in particular, disturbed him when he was speaking. Later the small boys became less and less aggressive. On one occasion he lead a group of them through a museum and they listened to his explanations without interrupting him.
One night he had the following dream.
“I am near Grand Central and thousands of children are lined on both sides of the avenue to welcome a school principal who is landing from the train. He arrives and they all cheer wildly and I have a feeling that I am that school principal.”