Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology

by C. G. Jung

CHAPTER IV

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RUMOUR[161]

About a year ago the school authorities in N. asked me to give a professional opinion as to the mental condition of Marie X., a thirteen year old schoolgirl. Marie had been expelled from school because she had been instrumental in originating an ugly rumour, spreading gossip about her class-teacher. The punishment hit the child, and especially her parents, very hard, so that the school authorities were inclined to readmit her if protected by a medical opinion. The facts were as follows:—

The teacher had heard indirectly that the girls were attributing some equivocal sexual story to him. On investigation it was found that Marie X. had one day related a dream to three girl-friends which ran somewhat as follows:—

"The class was going to the swimming-baths. I had to go to the boys' because there was no more room. Then we swam a long way out in the lake (asked 'who did so': 'Lina P., the teacher, and myself'). A steamer came along. The teacher asked us if we wished to get into it. We came to K. A wedding was just going on there (asked 'whose': 'a friend of the teacher's'). We were also to take part in it. Then we went for a journey (who? 'I, Lina P., and the teacher'). It was like a honeymoon journey. We came to Andermatt, and there was no more room in the hotel, so we were obliged to pass the night in a barn. The woman got a child there, and the teacher became the godfather."

When I examined the child she told this dream. The teacher had likewise related the dream in writing. In this earlier version the obvious blanks after the word "steamer" in the above text were filled up as follows: "We got up. Soon we felt cold. An old man gave us a blouse which the teacher put on." On the other hand, there was an omission of the passage about finding no room in the hotel and being obliged to pass the night in the barn.

The child told the dream immediately, not only to her three friends but also to her mother. The mother repeated it to me with only trifling differences from the two versions given above. The teacher, in his further investigations, carried out with deepest misgivings, failed, like myself, to get indications of any more dangerous material. There is therefore a strong probability that the original recital could not have run very differently. (The passage about the cold and the blouse seems to be an early interpolation, for it is an attempt to supply a logical relationship. Coming out of the water one is wet, has on only a bathing dress, and is therefore unable to take part in a wedding before putting on some clothes.) At first, of course, the teacher would not allow that the whole affair had arisen only out of a dream. He rather suspected it to be an invention. He was, however, obliged to admit that the innocent telling of the dream was apparently a fact, and that it was unnatural to regard the child as capable of such guile as to indicate some sexual equivocation in this disguised form. For a time he wavered between the view that it was a question of cunning invention, and the view that it was really a question of a dream, innocent in itself, which had been understood by the other children in a sexual way. When his first indignation wore off he concluded that Marie X.'s guilt could not be so great, and that her phantasies and those of her companions had contributed to the rumour. He then did something really valuable. He placed Marie's companions under supervision, and made them all write out what they had heard of the dream.

Before turning our attention to this, let us cast a glance at the dream analytically. In the first place, we must accept the facts and agree with the teacher that we have to do with a dream and not with an invention; for the latter the ambiguity is too great. Conscious invention tries to create unbroken transitions; the dream takes no account of this, but sets to work regardless of gaps, which, as we have seen, here give occasion for interpolations during the conscious revision. The gaps are very significant. In the swimming-bath there is no picture of undressing, being unclothed, nor any detailed description of their being together in the water. The omission of being dressed on the ship is compensated for by the above-mentioned interpolation, but only for the teacher, thus indicating that his nakedness was in most urgent need of cover. The detailed description of the wedding is wanting, and the transition from the steamer to the wedding is abrupt. The reason for stopping overnight in the barn at Andermatt is not to be found at first. The parallel to this is, however, the want of room in the swimming-bath, which made it necessary to go into the men's department; in the hotel the want of room again emphasises the separation of the sexes. The picture of the barn is most insufficiently filled out. The birth suddenly follows and quite without sequence. The teacher as godfather is extremely equivocal. Marie's rôle in the whole story is throughout of secondary importance, indeed she is only a spectator.

All this has the appearance of a genuine dream, and those of my readers who have a wide experience of the dreams of girls of this age will assuredly confirm this view. Hence the meaning of the dream is so simple that we may quietly leave its interpretation to her school-companions, whose declarations are as follows:

Aural Witnesses.