Freud, S. (1901). On Dreams. The Standard Edition of the (PDF)

Freud, S. (1901). On Dreams. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume V (1900-1901): The Interpretation of Dreams (Second Part) and On Dreams, 629-686 On Dreams (1901) On Dreams Sigmund Freud On Dreams (1901) - 629 - Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  Editor's Note to "On Dreams" James Strachey (a) GERMAN EDITIONS: 1901 Über den Traum. First published as part (pp. 307-344) of a serial publication, Grenzfragen des Nervenund Seelen-lebens, edited by L. Löwenfeld and H. Kurella. Wiesbaden: Bergmann. 1911 Über den Traum2nd ed. (Issued as a separate brochure, enlarged.) Wiesbaden: Bergmann. Pp. 44. 1921 Über den Traum3rd ed. Munich and Wiesbaden: Bergmann. Pp. 44. 1925 Über den Traum In Freud's Gesammelte Schriften, 3, 189-256. Leipzig, Vienna and Zurich: Internationaler Psychoanalyt-ischer Verlag. 1931 Über den TraumIn Freud's collective volume Sexualtheorie und Traumlehre, 246-307. Leipzig, Vienna and Zurich: Internationaler Psychoanalyt-ischer Verlag. 1942 Über den TraumIn Freud's Gesammelte Werke, 2 and 3, 643-700. London: Imago Publishing Co. (b) English Translations: 1914 Über den Traum By M. D. Eder (with introduction by W. L. Mackenzie). London: Heinemann. New York: Rebman. Pp. xxxii + 110. 1952 Über den Traum By James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis. Pp. viii + 80. New York: Norton. Pp. 120. The present translation is a revised reprint of the one published in 1952. Only three or four months after the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams the notion of writing a shortened version of his book was already in Freud's mind. Fliess had evidently written to suggest something of the sort, for in a letter of April 4, 1900 (Freud, 1950a, Letter 132), Freud rejected the proposal on the ground, among others, that he had ‘already promised to let Löwenfeld have an essay of the same kind’. He also commented on his distaste for embarking on such a job so soon after finishing - 631 - Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  the large book. Evidently this reluctance persisted, for on May 20 (Standard Ed., Letter 136) he mentions that he has not even started the ‘brochure’, and on July 10 (Standard Ed., Letter 138) announces that he has put it off till October. His last reference to it in the Fliess correspondence is on October 14, 1900 (Standard Ed., Letter 139), where he remarks that he is writing the essay ‘without any real enjoyment’, since his mind is full of material for the Psycho- pathology of Everyday Life (which was to be his next production). In this latter work, incidentally, there is a reference (near the end of Chapter VII) to the essay On Dreams and to the question of whether the issue of a résumé might interfere with the sales of the big book. As will be seen, the only addition of importance made by Freud in the later issues of the essay was the section on symbolism introduced into the second edition. - 632 - Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  I During the epoch which may be described as pre-scientific, men had no difficulty in finding an explanation of dreams. When they remembered a dream after waking up, they regarded it as either a favourable or a hostile manifestation by higher powers, daemonic and divine. When modes of thought belonging to natural science began to flourish, all this ingenious mythology was transformed into psychology, and to-day only a small minority of educated people doubt that dreams are a product of the dreamer's own mind. Since the rejection of the mythological hypothesis, however, dreams have stood in need of explanation. The conditions of their origin, their relation to waking mental life, their dependence upon stimuli which force their way upon perception during the state of sleep, the many peculiarities of their content which are repugnant to waking thought, the inconsistency between their ideational images and the affects attaching to them, and lastly their transitory character, the manner in which waking thought pushes them on one side as something alien to it, and mutilates or extinguishes them in memory—all of these and other problems besides have been awaiting clarification for many hundreds of years, and till now no satisfactory solution of them has been advanced. But what stands in the foreground of our interest is the question of the significance of dreams, a question which bears a double sense. It enquires in the first place as to the psychical significance of dreaming, as to the relation of dreams to other mental processes, and as to any biological function that they may have; in the second place it seeks to discover whether dreams can be interpreted, whether the content of individual dreams has a ‘meaning’, such as we are accustomed to find in other psychical structures. In the assessment of the significance of dreams three lines of thought can be distinguished. One of these, which echoes, as it were, the ancient overvaluation of dreams, is expressed in the writings of certain philosophers. They consider that the basis of dream-life is a peculiar state of mental activity, and even go so ————————————— This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 2, Page 645 - 633 - [PEP] Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  far as to acclaim that state as an elevation to a higher level. For instance, Schubert [1814] declares that dreams are a liberation of the spirit from the power of external nature, and a freeing of the soul from the bonds of the senses. Other thinkers, without going so far as this, insist nevertheless that dreams arise essentially from mental impulses and represent manifestations of mental forces which have been prevented from expanding freely during the daytime. (Cf. the ‘dream imagination’ of Scherner [1861, 97 f.] and Volkelt [1875, 28 f.].) A large number of observers agree in attributing to dream-life a capacity for superior functioning in certain departments at least (e.g. in memory). In sharp contrast to this, the majority of medical writers adopt a view according to which dreams scarcely reach the level of being psychical phenomena at all. On their theory, the sole instigators of dreams are the sensory and somatic stimuli which either impinge upon the sleeper from outside or become active accidentally in his internal organs. What is dreamt, they contend, has no more claim to sense and meaning than, for instance, the sounds which would be produced if ‘the ten fingers of a man who knows nothing of music were wandering over the keys of a piano’. [Strümpell, 1877, 84.] Dreams are described by Binz [1878, 35] as being no more than ‘somatic processes which are in every case useless and in many cases positively pathological’. All the characteristics of dream-life would thus be explained as being due to the disconnected activity of separate organs or groups of cells in an otherwise sleeping brain, an activity forced upon them by physiological stimuli. Popular opinion is but little affected by this scientific judgement, and is not concerned as to the sources of dreams; it seems to persist in the belief that nevertheless dreams have a meaning, which relates to the prediction of the future and which can be discovered by some process of interpretation of a content which is often confused and puzzling. The methods of interpretation employed consist in transforming the content of the dream as it is remembered, either by replacing it piecemeal in accordance with a fixed key, or by replacing the dream as a whole by another whole to which it stands in a symbolic relation. Serious- minded people smile at these efforts: ‘Tráume sind Scháume’—‘dreams are froth’. ————————————— This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 2, Page 646 - 634 - [PEP] Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  II One day I discovered to my great astonishment that the view of dreams which came nearest to the truth was not the medical but the popular one, half involved though it still was in superstition. For I had been led to fresh conclusions on the subject of dreams by applying to them a new method of psychological investigation which had done excellent service in the solution of phobias, obsessions and delusions, etc. Since then, under the name of ‘psycho-analysis’, it has found acceptance by a whole school of research workers. The numerous analogies that exist between dream-life and a great variety of conditions of psychical illness in waking life have indeed been correctly observed by many medical investigators. There seemed, therefore, good ground for hoping that a method of investigation which had given satisfactory results in the case of psychopathic structures would also be of use in throwing light upon dreams. Phobias and obsessions are as alien to normal consciousness as dreams are to waking consciousness; their origin is as unknown to consciousness as that of dreams. In the case of these psychopathic structures practical considerations led to an investigation of their origin and mode of development; for experience had shown that the discovery of the trains of thought which, concealed from consciousness, connect the pathological ideas with the remaining contents of the mind is equivalent to a resolution of the symptoms and has as its consequence the mastering of ideas which till then could not be inhibited. Thus psychotherapy was the starting-point of the procedure of which I made use for the explanation of dreams. This procedure is easily described, although instruction and practice would be necessary before it could be put into effect. If we make use of it on someone else, let us say on a patient with a phobia, we require him to direct his attention on to the idea in question, not, however, to reflect upon it as he has done so often already, but to take notice of whatever occurs to his mind without any exception and report it to the physician. If he should then assert that his attention is unable to grasp anything at all, we dismiss this with an energetic assurance that a complete absence of any ideational subject-matter is quite impossible. ————————————— This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 2, Page 647 - 635 - [PEP] Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  And in fact very soon numerous ideas will occur to him and will lead on to others; but they will invariably be prefaced by a judgement on the part of the self-observer to the effect that they are senseless or unimportant, that they are irrelevant, and that they occurred to him by chance and without any connection with the topic under consideration. We perceive at once that it was this critical attitude which prevented the subject from reporting any of these ideas, and which indeed had previously prevented them from becoming conscious. If we can induce him to abandon his criticism of the ideas that occur to him, and to continue pursuing the trains of thought which will emerge so long as he keeps his attention turned upon them, we find ourselves in possession of a quantity of psychical material, which we soon find is clearly connected with the pathological idea which was our starting-point; this material will soon reveal connections between the pathological idea and other ideas, and will eventually enable us to replace the pathological idea by a new one which fits into the nexus of thought in an intelligible fashion. This is not the place in which to give a detailed account of the premises upon which this experiment was based, or the consequences which follow from its invariable success. It will therefore be enough to say that we obtain material that enables us to resolve any pathological idea if we turn our attention precisely to those associations which are ‘involuntary’, which ‘interfere with our reflection’, and which are normally dismissed by our critical faculty as worthless rubbish. If we make use of this procedure upon ourselves, we can best assist the investigation by at once writing down what are at first unintelligible associations. I will now show what results follow if I apply this method of investigation to dreams. Any example of a dream should in fact be equally appropriate for the purpose; but for particular reasons I will choose some dream of my own, one which seems obscure and meaningless as I remember it, and one which has the advantage of brevity. A dream which I actually had last night will perhaps meet these requirements. Its content, as I noted it down immediately after waking up, was as follows: ‘Company at table or table d'hôte … spinach was being eaten … Frau E. L. was sitting beside me; she was turning her whole attention to me and laid her hand on my knee in an intimate manner. I removed ————————————— This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 2, Page 648 - 636 - [PEP] Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  her hand unresponsively. She then said: “But you've always had such beautiful eyes.” … I then had an indistinct picture of two eyes, as though it were a drawing or like the outline of a pair of spectacles.…’ This was the whole of the dream, or at least all that I could remember of it. It seemed to me obscure and meaningless, but above all surprising. Frau E. L. is a person with whom I have hardly at any time been on friendly terms, nor, so far as I know, have I ever wished to have any closer relations with her. I have not seen her for a long time, and her name has not, I believe, been mentioned during the last few days. The dream-process was not accompanied by affects of any kind. Reflecting over this dream brought me no nearer to understanding it. I determined, however, to set down without any premeditation or criticism the associations which presented themselves to my self-observation. As I have found, it is advisable for this purpose to divide a dream into its elements and to find the associations attaching to each of these fragments separately. Company at table or table d’hôte. This at once reminded me of an episode which occurred late yesterday evening. I came away from a small party in the company of a friend who offered to take a cab and drive me home in it. ‘I prefer taking a cab with a taximeter,’ he said, ‘it occupies one's mind so agreeably; one always has something to look at.’ When we had taken our places in the cab and the driver had set the dial, so that the first charge of sixty hellers became visible, I carried the joke further. ‘We've only just got in,’ I said, ‘and already we owe him sixty hellers. A cab with a taximeter always reminds me of a table d'hôte. It makes me avaricious and selfish, because it keeps on reminding me of what I owe. My debt seems to be growing too fast, and I'm afraid of getting the worst of the bargain; and in just the same way at a table d'hôte I can't avoid feeling in a comic way that I'm getting too little, and must keep an eye on my own interests.’ I went on to quote, somewhat discursively: Ihr führt ins Leben uns hinein, Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden. ————————————— This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 2, Page 649 [Equivalent at the time to 6d. or 12½ cents.] [These lines are from one of the Harp-player's songs in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. In the original the words are addressed to the Heavenly Powers and may be translated literally: ‘You lead us into life, you make the poor creature guilty.’ But the words ‘Armen’ and ‘schuldig’ are both capable of bearing another meaning. ‘Armen’ might mean ‘poor’ in the financial sense and ‘schuldig’ might mean ‘in debt’. So in the present context the last line could be rendered: ‘You make the poor man fall into debt.’—The lines were quoted again by Freud at the end of Chapter VII of Civilization and its Discontents (1930a).] - 637 - 1 2 [PEP] 1 2 Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  And now a second association to ‘table d'hôte’. A few weeks ago, while we were at table in a hotel at a mountain resort in the Tyrol, I was very much annoyed because I thought my wife was not being sufficiently reserved towards some people sitting near us whose acquaintance I had no desire at all to make. I asked her to concern herself more with me than with these strangers. This was again as though I were getting the worst of the bargain at the table d'hôte. I was struck too by the contrast between my wife's behaviour at table and that of Frau E. L. in the dream, who ‘turned her whole attention to me’. To proceed. I now saw that the events in the dream were a reproduction of a small episode of a precisely similar kind which occurred between my wife and me at the time at which I was secretly courting her. The caress which she gave me under the table-cloth was her reply to a pressing love letter. In the dream, however, my wife was replaced by a comparative stranger —E. L. Frau E. L. is the daughter of a man to whom I was once in debt. I could not help noticing that this revealed an unsuspected connection between parts of the content of the dream and my associations. If one follows the train of association starting out from one element of a dream's content, one is soon brought back to another of its elements. My associations to the dream were bringing to light connections which were not visible in the dream itself. If a person expects one to keep an eye on his interests without any advantage to oneself, his artlessness is apt to provoke the scornful question: ‘Do you suppose I'm going to do this or that for the sake of your beaux yeux [beautiful eyes]?’ That being so, Frau E. L.'s speech in the dream, ‘You've always had such beautiful eyes’, can only have meant: ‘People have always done everything for you for love; you have always had everything without paying for it.’ The truth is, of course, just the contrary: I have always paid dearly for whatever advantage I have had ————————————— This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 2, Page 650 [The episode is also referred to in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901b), Chapter VII (A).] - 638 - 1 [PEP] 1 Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  from other people. The fact that my friend took me home yesterday in a cab without my paying for it must, after all, have made an impression on me. Incidentally, the friend whose guests we were yesterday has often put me in his debt. Only recently I allowed an opportunity of repaying him to slip by. He has had only one present from me—an antique bowl, round which there are eyes painted: what is known as an ‘occkiale’, to avert the evil eye. Moreover he is an eye surgeon. The same evening I asked him after a woman patient, whom I had sent on to him for a consultation to fit her with spectacles. As I now perceived, almost all the elements of the dream's content had been brought into the new context. For the sake of consistency, however, the further question might be asked of why spinach, of all things, was being served in the dream. The answer was that spinach reminded me of an episode which occurred not long ago at our family table, when one of the children—and precisely the one who really deserves to be admired for his beautiful eyes—refused to eat any spinach. I myself behaved in just the same way when I was a child; for a long time I detested spinach, till eventually my taste changed and promoted that vegetable into one of my favourite foods. My own early life and my child's were thus brought together by the mention of this dish. ‘You ought to be glad to have spinach,’ the little gourmet's mother exclaimed; ‘there are children who would be only too pleased to have spinach.’ Thus I was reminded of the duties of parents to their children. Goethe's words Ihr führt ins Leben uns hinein, Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden. gained a fresh meaning in this connection. I will pause here to survey the results I had so far reached in my dream- analysis. By following the associations which arose from the separate elements of the dream divorced from their context, I arrived at a number of thoughts and recollections, which I could not fail to recognize as important products of my mental life. This material revealed by the analysis of the dream was intimately connected with the dream's content, yet the connection was of such a kind that I could never have inferred the ————————————— This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 2, Page 651 [See footnote on p. 637. The first line of the couplet might now be taken to mean that the verses are addressed to parents.] - 639 - 1 [PEP] 1 2 Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  fresh material from that content. The dream was unemotional, disconnected and unintelligible; but while I was producing the thoughts behind the dream, I was aware of intense and well-founded affective impulses; the thoughts themselves fell at once into logical chains, in which certain central ideas made their appearance more than once. Thus, the contrast between ‘selfish’ and ‘unselfish’, and the elements ‘being in debt’ and ‘without paying for it’ were central ideas of this kind, not represented in the dream itself. I might draw closer together the threads in the material revealed by the analysis, and I might then show that they converge upon a single nodal point, but considerations of a personal and not of a scientific nature prevent my doing so in public. I should be obliged to betray many things which had better remain my secret, for on my way to discovering the solution of the dream all kinds of things were revealed which I was unwilling to admit even to myself. Why then, it will be asked, have I not chosen some other dream, whose analysis is better suited for reporting, so that I could produce more convincing evidence of the meaning and connectedness of the material uncovered by analysis? The answer is that every dream with which I might try to deal would lead to things equally hard to report and would impose an equal discretion upon me. Nor should I avoid this difficulty by bringing up someone else's dream for analysis, unless circumstances enabled me to drop all disguise without damage to the person who had confided in me. At the point which I have now reached, I am led to regard the dream as a sort of substitute for the thought-processes, full of meaning and emotion, at which I arrived after the completion of the analysis. We do not yet know the nature of the process which has caused the dream to be generated from these thoughts, but we can see that it is wrong to regard it as purely physical and without psychical meaning, as a process which has arisen from the isolated activity of separate groups of brain cells aroused from sleep. Two other things are already clear. The content of the dream is very much shorter than the thoughts for which I regard it as a substitute; and analysis has revealed that the instigator of the dream was an unimportant event of the evening before I dreamt it. I should, of course, not draw such far-reaching conclusions if only a single dream-analysis was at my disposal. If experience ————————————— This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 2, Page 653 - 640 - [PEP] Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  shows me, however, that by uncritically pursuing the associations arising from any dream I can arrive at a similar train of thoughts, among the elements of which the constituents of the dream re-appear and which are interconnected in a rational and intelligible manner, then it will be safe to disregard the slight possibility that the connections observed in a first experiment might be due to chance. I think I am justified, therefore, in adopting a terminology which will crystallize our new discovery. In order to contrast the dream as it is retained in my memory with the relevant material discovered by analysing it, I shall speak of the former as the ‘manifest content of the dream’ and the latter—without, in the first instance, making any further distinction—as the ‘latent content of the dream’. I am now faced by two new problems which have not hitherto been formulated. (1) What is the psychical process which has transformed the latent content of the dream into the manifest one which is known to me from my memory? (2) What are the motive or motives which have necessitated this transformation? I shall describe the process which transforms the latent into the manifest content of dreams as the ‘dream-work’. The counterpart to this activity —one which brings about a transformation in the opposite direction—is already known to us as the work of analysis. The remaining problems arising out of dreams— questions as to the instigators of dreams, as to the origin of their material, as to their possible meaning, as to the possible function of dreaming, and as to the reasons for dreams being forgotten —all these problems will be discussed by me on the basis, not of the manifest, but of the newly discovered latent dream-content. Since I attribute all the contradictory and incorrect views upon dream-life which appear in the literature of the subject to ignorance of the latent content of dreams as revealed by analysis, I shall be at the greatest pains henceforward to avoid confusing the manifest dream with the latent dream- thoughts. ————————————— This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 2, Page 654 - 641 - [PEP] Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  III The transformation of the latent dream-thoughts into the manifest dream- content deserves all our attention, since it is the first instance known to us of psychical material being changed over from one mode of expression to another, from a mode of expression which is immediately intelligible to us to another which we can only come to understand with the help of guidance and effort, though it too must be recognized as a function of our mental activity. Dreams can be divided into three categories in respect of the relation between their latent and manifest content. In the first place, we may distinguish those dreams which make sense and are at the same time intelligible, which, that is to say, can be inserted without further difficulty into the context of our mental life. We have numbers of such dreams. They are for the most part short and appear to us in general to deserve little attention, since there is nothing astonishing or strange about them. Incidentally, their occurrence constitutes a powerful argument against the theory according to which dreams originate from the isolated activity of separate groups of brain cells. They give no indication of reduced or fragmentary psychical activity, but nevertheless we never question the fact of their being dreams, and do not confuse them with the products of waking life. A second group is formed by those dreams which, though they are connected in themselves and have a clear sense, nevertheless have a bewildering effect, because we cannot see how to fit that sense into our mental life. Such would be the case if we were to dream, for instance, that a relative of whom we were fond had died of the plague, when we had no reason for expecting, fearing or assuming any such thing; we should ask in astonishment: ‘How did I get hold of such an idea?’ The third group, finally, contains those dreams which are without either sense or intelligibility, which seem disconnected, confused and meaningless. The preponderant majority of the products of our dreaming exhibit these characteristics, which are the basis of the low opinion in which dreams are held and of the medical theory that they are the outcome of a restricted mental activity. The most evident signs of incoherence are seldom absent, especially ————————————— This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 2, Page 655 - 642 - [PEP] Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  in dream-compositions of any considerable length and complexity. The contrast between the manifest and latent content of dreams is clearly of significance only for dreams of the second and more particularly of the third category. It is there that we are faced by riddles which only disappear after we have replaced the manifest dream by the latent thoughts behind it; and it was on a specimen of the last category—a confused and unintelligible dream—that the analysis which I have just recorded was carried out. Contrary to our expectation, however, we came up against motives which prevented us from becoming fully acquainted with the latent dream-thoughts. A repetition of similar experiences may lead us to suspect that there is an intimate and regular relation between the unintelligible and confused nature of dreams and the difficulty of reporting the thoughts behind them. Before enquiring into the nature of this relation, we may with advantage turn our attention to the more easily intelligible dreams of the first category, in which the manifest and latent content coincide, and there appears to be a consequent saving in dream-work. Moreover, an examination of these dreams offers advantages from another standpoint. For children's dreams are of that kind —significant and not puzzling. Here, incidentally, we have a further argument against tracing the origin of dreams to dissociated cerebral activity during sleep. For why should a reduction in psychical functioning of this kind be a characteristic of the state of sleep in the case of adults but not in that of children? On the other hand, we shall be fully justified in expecting that an explanation of psychical processes in children, in whom they may well be greatly simplified, may turn out to be an indispensable prelude to the investigation of the psychology of adults. I will therefore record a few instances of dreams which I have collected from children. A little girl nineteen months old had been kept without food all day because she had had an attack of vomiting in the morning; her nurse declared that she had been upset by eating strawberries. During the night after this day of starvation she was heard saying her own name in her sleep and adding: ‘Stwawbewwies, wild stwawbewwies, omblet, pudden!’ She was thus dreaming of eating a meal, and she laid special stress in her menu on the particular delicacy of which, as she ————————————— This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 2, Page 656 - 643 - [PEP] Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).  had reason to expect, she would only be allowed scanty quantities in the near future.—A little boy of twenty-two months had a similar dream of a feast which he had been denied. The day before, he had been obliged to present his uncle with a gift of a basket of fresh cherries, of which he himself, of course, had only been allowed to taste a single sample. He awoke with this cheerful news: ‘Hermann eaten all the chewwies!’—One day a girl of three and a quarter made a trip across a lake. The voyage was evidently not long enough for her, for she cried when she had to get off the boat. Next morning she reported that during the night she had been for a trip on the lake: she had been continuing her interrupted voyage.—A boy of five and a quarter showed signs of dissatisfaction in the course of a walk in the neighbourhood of the Dachstein. Each time a new mountain came into view he asked if it was the Dachstein and finally refused to visit a waterfall with the rest of the company. His behaviour was attributed to fatigue; but it found a better explanation when next morning he reported that he had dreamt that he had climbed up the Dachstein. He had evidently had the idea that the expedition would end in a climb up the Dachstein, and had become depressed when the promised mountain never came in view. He made up in his dream for what the previous day had failed to give him.—A six-year-old girl had an exactly similar dream. In the course of a walk her father had stopped short of their intended goal as the hour was getting late. On their way back she had noticed a signpost bearing the name of another landmark; and her father had promised to take her there as well another time. Next morning she met her father with the news that she had dreamt that he had been with her to both places. The common element in all these children's dreams is obvious. All of them fulfilled wishes which were active during the day but had remained unfulfilled. The dreams were simple and undisguised wish-fulfilments. Here is another child's dream, which, though at first sight it is not quite easy to understand, is also nothing more than a wish-fulfilment. A little girl not quite four years old had been brought to town from the country because she was suffering ————————————— This page can be read in German in GESAMMELTE WERKE Vol 2, Page 657 [A mountain in the Austrian Alps.] [In The Interpretation of Dreams, where the same dream is reported (Standard Ed., 4, 129), the girl's age is twice given as ‘eight’.] - 644 - 1 2 [PEP] 1 2 Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web.org).