Dream I. He is to make phenylmagnesiumbromid; he sees the apparatus with particular clearness, but he has substituted himself for the magnesium. He is now in a curious swaying attitude. He keeps repeating to himself, “This is the right thing, it is working, my feet are beginning to dissolve and my knees are getting soft.” Then he reaches down and feels for his feet, and meanwhile (he does not know how) he takes his legs out of the crucible, and then again he says to himself, “That cannot be.... Yes, it must be so, it has been done correctly.” Then he partially awakens, and repeats the dream to himself, because he wants to tell it to me. He is distinctly afraid of the analysis of the dream. He is much excited during this semi-sleeping state, and repeats continually, “Phenyl, phenyl.”
II. He is in ... ing with his whole family; at half-past eleven. He is to be at the Schottenthor for a rendezvous with a certain lady, but he does not wake up until half-past eleven. He says to himself, “It is too late now; when you get there it will be half-past twelve.” The next instant he sees the whole family gathered about the table—his mother and the servant girl with the soup-tureen with particular clearness. Then he says to himself, “Well, if we are eating already, I certainly can’t get away.”
Analysis: He feels sure that even the first dream contains a reference to the lady whom he is to meet at the rendezvous (the dream was dreamed during the night before the expected meeting). The student to whom he gave the instruction is a particularly unpleasant fellow; he had said to the chemist: “That isn’t right,” because the magnesium was still unaffected, and the latter answered as though he did not care anything about it: “It certainly isn’t right.” He himself must be this student; he is as indifferent towards his analysis as the student is towards his synthesis; the He in the dream, however, who accomplishes the operation, is myself. How unpleasant he must seem to me with his indifference towards the success achieved!
Moreover, he is the material with which the analysis (synthesis) is made. For it is a question of the success of the treatment. The legs in the dream recall an impression of the previous evening. He met a lady at a dancing lesson whom he wished to conquer; he pressed her to him so closely that she once cried out. After he had stopped pressing against her legs, he felt her firm responding pressure against his lower thighs as far as just above his knees, at the place mentioned in the dream. In this situation, then, the woman is the magnesium in the retort, which is at last working. He is feminine towards me, as he is masculine towards the woman. If it will work with the woman, the treatment will also work. Feeling and becoming aware of himself in the region of his knees refers to masturbation, and corresponds to his fatigue of the previous day.... The rendezvous had actually been set for half-past eleven. His wish to over-sleep and to remain with his usual sexual objects (that is, with masturbation) corresponds with his resistance.
In relation to the repetition of the name phenyl, he gives the following thoughts: All these radicals ending in yl have always been pleasing to him; they are very convenient to use: benzyl, azetyl, &c. That, however, explained nothing. But when I proposed the radical Schlemihl[[DH]] he laughed heartily, and related that during the summer he had read a book by Prévost which contained a chapter: “Les exclus de l’amour,” the description in which made him think of the Schlemihls, and he added, “That is my case.” He would have again acted the Schlemihl if he had missed the rendezvous.
VI
THE DREAM-WORK
All previous attempts to solve the problems of the dream have been based directly upon the manifest dream content as it is retained in the memory, and have undertaken to obtain an interpretation of the dream from this content, or, if interpretation was dispensed with, to base a judgment of the dream upon the evidence furnished by this content. We alone are in possession of new data; for us a new psychic material intervenes between the dream content and the results of our investigations: and this is the latent dream content or the dream thoughts which are obtained by our method. We develop a solution of the dream from this latter, and not from the manifest dream content. We are also confronted for the first time with a problem which has not before existed, that of examining and tracing the relations between the latent dream thoughts and the manifest dream content, and the processes through which the former have grown into the latter.
We regard the dream thoughts and the dream content as two representations of the same meaning in two different languages; or to express it better, the dream content appears to us as a translation of the dream thoughts into another form of expression, whose signs and laws of composition we are to learn by comparing the original with the translation. The dream thoughts are at once intelligible to us as soon as we have ascertained them. The dream content is, as it were, presented in a picture-writing, whose signs are to be translated one by one into the language of the dream thoughts. It would of course be incorrect to try to read these signs according to their values as pictures instead of according to their significance as signs. For instance, I have before me a picture-puzzle (rebus): a house, upon whose roof there is a boat; then a running figure whose head has been apostrophised away, and the like. I might now be tempted as a critic to consider this composition and its elements nonsensical. A boat does not belong on the roof of a house and a person without a head cannot run; the person, too, is larger than the house, and if the whole thing is to represent a landscape, the single letters of the alphabet do not fit into it, for of course they do not occur in pure nature. A correct judgment of the picture-puzzle results only if I make no such objections to the whole and its parts, but if, on the contrary, I take pains to replace each picture by the syllable or word which it is capable of representing by means of any sort of reference, the words which are thus brought together are no longer meaningless, but may constitute a most beautiful and sensible expression. Now the dream is a picture-puzzle of this sort, and our predecessors in the field of dream interpretation have made the mistake of judging the rebus as an artistic composition. As such it appears nonsensical and worthless.
(a) The Condensation Work
The first thing which becomes clear to the investigator in the comparison of the dream content with the dream thoughts is that a tremendous work of condensation has taken place. The dream is reserved, paltry, and laconic when compared with the range and copiousness of the dream thoughts. The dream when written down fills half a page; the analysis, in which the dream thoughts are contained, requires six, eight, twelve times as much space. The ratio varies with different dreams; it never changes its essential meaning, as far as I have been able to observe. As a rule the extent of the compression which has taken place is under-estimated, owing to the fact that the dream thoughts which are brought to light are considered the complete material, while continued work of interpretation may reveal new thoughts which are concealed behind the dream. We have already mentioned that one is really never sure of having interpreted a dream completely; even if the solution seems satisfying and flawless, it still always remains possible that there is a further meaning which is manifested by the same dream. Thus the amount of condensation is—strictly speaking—indeterminable. An objection, which at first sight seems very plausible, might be raised against the assertion that the disproportion between dream content and dream thought justifies the conclusion that an abundant condensation of psychic material has taken place in the formation of dreams. For we so often have the impression that we have dreamed a great deal throughout the night and then have forgotten the greater part. The dream which we recollect upon awakening would thus be only a remnant of the total dream-work, which would probably equal the dream thoughts in range if we were able to remember the former completely. In part this is certainly true; there can be no mistake about the observation that the dream is most accurately reproduced if one tries to remember it immediately after awakening, and that the recollection of it becomes more and more defective towards evening. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the impression that we have dreamed a good deal more than we are able to reproduce is often based upon an illusion, the cause of which will be explained later. Moreover, the assumption of condensation in the dream activity is not affected by the possibility of forgetting in dreams, for it is proved by groups of ideas belonging to those particular parts of the dream which have remained in the memory. If a large part of the dream has actually been lost to memory, we are probably deprived of access to a new series of dream thoughts. It is altogether unjustifiable to expect that those portions of the dream which have been lost also relate to the thoughts with which we are already acquainted from the analysis of the portions which have been preserved.