The key to the dream rests in the pollution with which it ends and the deepest effect: the disgust on account of the dirty, unclean hands of the woman above.
We see that the pollution is slowly prepared. First there is a representation of the heterosexual love (Tristan). But his inner voices—the public—express themselves against that love, the latter is deprecated: there is whistling and shouting and ironic applause. Next the father is upon the scene of action. He is represented in the act of leaving. Other women appear,—the old woman, the neighbor. But the orgasm is achieved only through the “woman above” (“upstairs,”—Frau da oben, literally, woman above),—the mother. This form of pollution, which at bottom represents merely an unconscious onanism (unclean hands!) brings on a feeling of disgust in him.
The next dream portrays a scene in which a man talks about his son. The scene takes place in a lavatory. Probably this reproduces an infantile scene wherein he may have observed his father at the lavatory. The dream following that is much clearer. I reproduce here both:
I found myself in a lavatory compartment and I watched my “victim.” The man turned his back to me and spoke to himself about his son. I noticed that the woman guardian was keeping watch on me from the outside and I started to leave, grabbing my hat just as she was opening the door to catch me at my observation post. I acted as if I were unconcerned, quietly picked up my handkerchief on which I had knelt down, picked off the floor the various things of mine that were still strewn about, gloves, muffler, etc., and went off with the feeling that through my cool behavior I disarmed the woman of her suspicions and had avoided a public scandal....
I went upstairs to a wide open store. Half way across I saw the saleswoman standing in a corner. At the sight of her I am seized with tremendous bowel cramps. I turned around and defecate publicly in the room. The woman over there will not see me?
This dream reminds him of the childhood incident already mentioned: When he was two years of age he was playing out of doors with another boy who prepared himself to move his bowels close to the street, in the open. Now he admits also that his own libido is greatly increased if he imagines he is watched during defecation. This is a typical instance of sexual infantilism. He is not only voyeur; he is also exhibitionist.
The first dream discloses the fear that the mother, the guardian, might find out his scatological tendencies. In the second, the woman upstairs was the onlooker during an infantile scene. It reproduces undoubtedly a frequent scene of childhood.
He has carried out a number of homosexual acts at public baths. In Denmark the men bathe together in steam rooms. Thus he had opportunity to permit himself bodily contact with others to the extent of inducing ejaculatio. He must also add something to yesterday’s dream about defecation. Once at the seashore he heard a man groan in the lavatory. He climbed upon the side wall and saw the man masturbate. This so excited him that he climbed down at once and also masturbated. The stranger revenged himself by looking on in his turn and that increased tremendously the subject’s libido.
His dreams today are very characteristic.
I am in a carriage and I am playing with an infant in swaddling clothes. I would gladly be rid of it. A man advises me to pack the child in a tin box,[[39]] and I actually do to.