Another dream proceeds in a very similar manner: A woman with a child that has a conspicuously deformed cranium; the dreamer has heard that the child got into this condition owing to its position in its mother’s womb. The doctor says that the cranium might be given a better shape by means of compression, but that would harm the brain. She thinks that because it is a boy it won’t suffer so much from deformity. This dream contains a plastic representation of the concept: “Childish impressions,” which the dreamer has heard of in the course of explanations concerning the treatment.
In the following example, the dream activity enters upon a different path. The dream contains a recollection of an excursion to the Hilmteich, near Graz: There is a terrible storm outside; a miserable hotel—the water is dripping from the walls, and the beds are damp. (The latter part of the content is less directly expressed than I give it.) The dream signifies “superfluous.” The abstract idea occurring in the dream thoughts is first made equivocal by a certain straining of language; it has, perhaps, been replaced by “overflowing” or by “fluid” and “super-fluid (-fluous)” and has then been given representation by an accumulation of like impressions. Water within, water without, water in the beds in the form of dampness—everything fluid and “super” fluid. That, for the purposes of the dream representation, the spelling is much less regarded than the sound of words ought not surprise us when we remember that rhyme exercises similar privileges.
The fact that language has at its disposal a great number of words which were originally intended in a picturesque and concrete sense but are at present used in a faded abstract sense has in other cases made it very easy for the dream to represent its thoughts. The dream need only restore to these words their full significance, or follow the evolution of their meaning a little way back. For example, a man dreams that his friend, who is struggling to get out of a very tight place, calls upon him to help him. The analysis shows that the tight place is a hole, and that the dream uses symbolically his very words to his friend, “Be careful, or you’ll get yourself into a hole.”[[EN]] Another dreamer climbs upon a mountain from which he sees a very extraordinary broad view. He identifies himself with his brother who is editing a “review” which deals with relations to the Farthest East.
It would be a separate undertaking to collect such methods of representation and to arrange them according to the principles upon which they are based. Some of the representations are quite witty. They give the impression that they would have never been divined if the dreamer himself had not reported them.
1. A man dreams that he is asked for a name, which, however, he cannot recall. He himself explains that this means: It does not occur to me in the dream.
2. A female patient relates a dream in which all the persons concerned were especially big. “That means,” she adds, “that it must deal with an episode of my early childhood, for at that time all grown up people naturally seemed to me immensely big.”
The transference into childhood is also expressed differently in other dreams by translating time into space. One sees the persons and scenes in question as if at a great distance, at the end of a long road, or as if looked at through the wrong end of the opera-glass.
3. A man, who in waking life shows an inclination to abstract and indefinite expressions, but who is otherwise endowed with wit enough, dreams in a certain connection that he is at a railroad station while a train is coming in. But then the station platform approaches the train, which stands still; hence an absurd inversion of the real state of affairs. This detail is again nothing but an index to remind one that something else in the dream should be turned about. The analysis of the same dream brings back the recollection of a picture-book in which men are represented standing on their heads and walking on their hands.
4. The same dreamer on another occasion relates a short dream which almost recalls the technique of a rebus. His uncle gives him a kiss in an automobile. He immediately adds the interpretation, which I should never have found: it means Autoerotism. This might have been made as a joke in the waking state.
The dream work often succeeds in representing very awkward material, such as proper names, by means of the forced utilisation of very far-fetched references. In one of my dreams the elder Bruecke has given me a task. I compound a preparation, and skim something from it which looks like crumpled tinfoil. (More of this later on.) The notion corresponding to this, which was not easy to find, is “stanniol,” and now I know that I have in mind the name of the author Stannius, which was borne by a treatise on the nervous system of fishes, which I regarded with awe in my youthful years. The first scientific task which my teacher gave me was actually concerned with the nervous system of a fish—the Ammocœtes. Obviously the latter name could never have been used in a picture puzzle.