II. On the afternoon of the same day I was obliged to excuse myself to a lady for my irritable disposition on account of the toothache, upon which she told me that she was afraid to have one of her roots pulled, though the crown was almost completely gone. She thought that the pulling out of eye teeth was especially painful and dangerous, although some acquaintance had told her that this was much easier when it was a tooth of the lower jaw. It was such a tooth in her case. The same acquaintance also told her that while under an anæsthetic one of her false teeth had been pulled—a statement which increased her fear of the necessary operation. She then asked me whether by eye teeth one was to understand molars or canines, and what was known about them. I then called her attention to the vein of superstitions in all these meanings, without however, emphasising the real significance of some of the popular views. She knew from her own experience, a very old and general popular belief, according to which if a pregnant woman has toothache she will give birth to a boy.
III. This saying interested me in its relation to the typical significance of dreams of dental irritation as a substitute for onanism as maintained by Freud in his Traumdeutung (2nd edition, p. 193), for the teeth and the male genital (Bub-boy) are brought in certain relations even in the popular saying. On the evening of the same day I therefore read the passage in question in the Traumdeutung, and found there among other things the statements which will be quoted in a moment, the influence of which on my dream is as plainly recognisable as the influence of the two above-mentioned experiences. Freud writes concerning dreams of dental irritation that ‘in the case of men nothing else than cravings for masturbation from the time of puberty furnishes the motive power for these dreams,’ p. 193. Further, ‘I am of the opinion that the frequent modifications of the typical dream of dental irritation—that e.g. of another person drawing the tooth from the dreamer’s mouth—are made intelligible by means of the same explanation. It may seem problematic, however, how “dental irritation” can arrive at this significance. I here call attention to the transference from below to above (in the dream in question from the lower to the upper jaw), which occurs so frequently, which is at the service of sexual repression, and by means of which all kinds of sensations and intentions occurring in hysteria which ought to be enacted in the genitals can be realised upon less objectionable parts of the body,’ p. 194. ‘But I must also refer to another connection contained in an idiomatic expression. In our country there is in use an indelicate designation for the act of masturbation, namely: To pull one out, or to pull one down,’ p. 195, 2nd edition. This expression had been familiar to me in early youth as a designation for onanism, and from here on it will not be difficult for the experienced dream interpreter to get access to the infantile material which may lie at the basis of this dream. I only wish to add that the facility with which the tooth in the dream came out, and the fact that it became transformed after coming out into an upper incisor, recalls to me an experience of childhood when I myself easily and painlessly pulled out one of my wobbling front teeth. This episode, which I can still to this day distinctly remember with all its details, happened at the same early period in which my first conscious attempts at onanism began—(Concealing Memory). The reference of Freud to an assertion of C. G. Jung that dreams of dental irritation in women signify parturition (footnote p. 194), together with the popular belief in the significance of toothache in pregnant women, has established an opposition between the feminine significance and the masculine (puberty). In this connection I recall an earlier dream which I dreamed soon after I was discharged by the dentist after the treatment, that the gold crowns which had just been put in fell out, whereupon I was greatly chagrined in the dream on account of the considerable expense, concerning which I had not yet stopped worrying. In view of a certain experience this dream now becomes comprehensible as a commendation of the material advantages of masturbation when contrasted with every form of the economically less advantageous object-love (gold crowns are also Austrian gold coins).
Theoretically this case seems to show a double interest. First it verifies the connection revealed by Freud, inasmuch as the ejaculation in the dream takes place during the act of tooth-pulling. For no matter in what form a pollution may appear, we are obliged to look upon it as a masturbatic gratification which takes place without the help of mechanical excitation. Moreover the gratification by pollution in this case does not take place, as is usually the case, through an imaginary object, but it is without an object; and, if one may be allowed to say so, it is purely autoerotic, or at most it perhaps shows a slight homosexual thread (the dentist).
The second point which seems to be worth mentioning is the following: The objection is quite obvious that we are seeking here to validate the Freudian conception in a quite superfluous manner, for the experiences of the reading itself are perfectly sufficient to explain to us the content of the dream. The visit to the dentist, the conversation with the lady, and the reading of the Traumdeutung are sufficient to explain why the sleeper, who was also disturbed during the night by toothache, should dream this dream, it may even explain the removal of the sleep-disturbing pain (by means of the presentation of the removal of the painful tooth and simultaneous over-accentuation of the dreaded painful sensation through libido). But no matter how much of this assumption we may admit, we cannot earnestly maintain that the readings of Freud’s explanations have produced in the dreamer the connection of the tooth-pulling with the act of masturbation; it could not even have been made effective had it not been for the fact, as the dreamer himself admitted (‘to pull one off’) that this association had already been formed long ago. What may have still more stimulated this association in connection with the conversation with the lady is shown by a later assertion of the dreamer that while reading the Traumdeutung he could not, for obvious reasons, believe in this typical meaning of dreams of dental irritation, and entertained the wish to know whether it held true for all dreams of this nature. The dream now confirms this at least for his own person, and shows him why he had to doubt it. The dream is therefore also in this respect the fulfilment of a wish; namely, to be convinced of the importance and stability of this conception of Freud.
[CJ]. A young colleague, who is entirely free from nervousness, tells me in this connection: “I know from my own experience that while swinging, and at the moment at which the downward movement had the greatest impetus, I used to get a curious feeling in my genitals, which I must designate, although it was not really pleasant to me, as a voluptuous feeling.” I have often heard from patients that their first erections accompanied by voluptuous sensations had occurred in boyhood while they were climbing. It is established with complete certainty by psychoanalyses that the first sexual impulses have often originated in the scufflings and wrestlings of childhood.
[CK]. This naturally holds true only for German-speaking dreamers who are acquainted with the vulgarism “vögeln.”
[CL]. Sammlung kl. Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, zweite Folge, 1909.
[CM]. Cf. the author’s Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, translated by A. A. Brill.
[CN]. W. Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes, 1911.
[CO]. Alf. Adler, “Der Psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der Neurose,” Fortschritte der Medizin, 1910, No. 16, and later works in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, 1, 1910–1911.