ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NUMBER-DREAMS[165]
The symbolism of numbers which greatly engaged the imaginative philosophy of earlier centuries has again acquired a fresh interest from the analytic investigations of Freud and his school. But in the material of number-dreams we no longer discover conscious puzzles of symbolic concatenations of numbers but the unconscious roots of the symbolism of numbers. There is scarcely anything quite fundamentally new to offer in this sphere since the presentations of Freud, Adler and Stekel. It must here suffice to corroborate their experiences by recording parallel cases. I have had under observation a few cases of this kind which are worth reporting for their general interest.
The first three instances are from a middle-aged married man whose conflict of the moment was an extra-conjugal love affair. The piece of the dream from which I take the symbolised number is: in front of the manager his general subscription. The manager comments on the high number of the subscription. It reads 2477.
The analysis of the dream brings out a rather ungentlemanly reckoning up of the expense of the affair, which is foreign to the generous nature of the dreamer, and which the unconscious makes use of as a resistance to this affair. The preliminary interpretation is, therefore, that the number has some financial importance and origin. A rough estimate of the expenses so far leads to a number which in fact approaches 2477 francs; a more exact reckoning, however, gives 2387 francs, which could be only arbitrarily translated into 2477. I then left the numbers to the free association of the patient; it occurs to him that the figure in the dream should be divided as 24-77. Perhaps it is a telephone number; this supposition proves incorrect. The next association is that it is the total of some numbers. A reminiscence then occurs to him that he once told me that he had celebrated the 100th birthday of his mother and himself when his mother was 65 and he was 35 years old. (Their birthdays are on the same day.)
In this way the patient arrived at the following series of associations:—
| He is born on | 26 II. |
| His mistress | 28 VIII. |
| His wife | 1 III. |
| His mother (his father is long dead) | 26 II. |
| His two children | 29 IV. |
| and | 13 VII. |
| The patient is born | II. 75. |
| His mistress | VIII. 85. |
He is now 36 years old, his mistress 25.
If this series of associations is written in the usual figures, the following addition is arrived at:—
| 26. II. | = | 262 |
| 28. VIII. | = | 288 |
| 1. III. | = | 13 |
| 26. II. | = | 262 |
| 29. IV. | = | 294 |
| 13. VII. | = | 137 |
| II. 75. | = | 275 |
| VIII. 85 | = | 885 |
| 25 | = | 25 |
| 36 | = | 36 |
| —— | ||
| 2477 |
This series, which includes all the members of his family, gives the number 2477.