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CHAPTER THREE
The Dream as a Wish-Fulfilment
When, after passing through a narrow defile, one suddenly reaches a height
beyond
which the ways part and a rich prospect lies outspread in different directions,
it is well to
stop for a moment and consider whither one shall turn next. We are in somewhat
the
same position after we have mastered this first interpretation of a dream. We
find
ourselves standing in the light of a sudden discovery. The dream is not
comparable to the
irregular sounds of a musical instrument, which, instead of being played by the
hand of a
musician, is struck by some external force; the dream is not meaningless, not
absurd,
does not presuppose that one part of our store of ideas is dormant while another
part
begins to awake. It is a perfectly valid psychic phenomenon, actually a wish-fulfilment;
it
may be enrolled in the continuity of the intelligible psychic activities of the
waking state;
it is built up by a highly complicated intellectual activity. But at the very
moment when
we are about to rejoice in this discovery a host of problems besets us. If the
dream, as this
theory defines it, represents a fulfilled wish, what is the cause of the
striking and
unfamiliar manner in which this fulfilment is expressed? What transformation has
occurred in our dream-thoughts before the manifest dream, as we remember it on
waking,
shapes itself out of them? How has this transformation taken place? Whence comes
the
material that is worked up into the dream? What causes many of the peculiarities
which
are to be observed in our dream-thoughts; for example, how is it that they are
able to
contradict one another? (see the analogy of the kettle, p. 32). Is the dream
capable of
teaching us something new concerning our internal psychic processes, and can its
content
correct opinions which we have held during the day? I suggest that for the
present all
these problems be laid aside, and that a single path be pursued. We have found
that the
dream represents a wish as fulfilled. Our next purpose should be to ascertain
whether this
is a general characteristic of dreams, or whether it is only the accidental
content of the
particular dream (`the dream about Irma's injection') with which we have begun
our
analysis; for even if we conclude that every dream has a meaning and psychic
value, we
must nevertheless allow for the possibility that this meaning may not be the
same in
every dream. The first dream which we have considered was the fulfilment of a
wish;
another may turn out to be the realisation of an apprehension; a third may have
a
reflection as its content; a fourth may simply reproduce a reminiscence. Are
there, then,
dreams other than wish-dreams; or are there none but wish-dreams?
It is easy to show that the wish-fulfilment in dreams is often undisguised and
easy to
recognise, so that one may wonder why the language of dreams has not long since
been
understood. There is, for example, a dream which I can evoke as often as I
please,
experimentally, as it were. If, in the evening, I eat anchovies, olives, or
other strongly
salted foods, I am thirsty at night, and therefore I wake. The waking, however,
is
preceded by a dream, which has always the same content, namely, that I am
drinking. I
am drinking long draughts of water; it tastes as delicious as only a cool drink
can taste
when one's throat is parched; and then I wake, and find that I have an actual
desire to
drink. The cause of this dream is thirst, which I perceive when I wake. From
this
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sensation arises the wish to drink, and the dream shows me this wish as
fulfilled. It
thereby serves a function, the nature of which I soon surmise. I sleep well, and
am not
accustomed to being waked by a bodily need. If I succeed in appeasing my thirst
by
means of the dream that I am drinking, I need not wake up in order to satisfy
that thirst. It
is thus a dream of convenience. The dream takes the place of action, as
elsewhere in life.
Unfortunately, the need of water to quench the thirst cannot be satisfied by a
dream, as
can my thirst for revenge upon Otto and Dr M., but the intention is the same.
Not long
ago I had the same dream in a somewhat modified form. On this occasion I felt
thirsty
before going to bed, and emptied the glass of water which stood on the little
chest beside
my bed. Some hours later, during the night, my thirst returned, with the
consequent
discomfort. In order to obtain water, I should have had to get up and fetch the
glass which
stood on my wife's bed-table. I thus quite appropriately dreamt that my wife was
giving
me a drink from a vase; this vase was an Etruscan cinerary urn, which I had
brought
home from Italy, and had since given away. But the water in it tasted so salt
(apparently
on account of the ashes) that I was forced to wake. It may be observed how
conveniently
the dream is capable of arranging matters. Since the fulfilment of a wish is its
only
purpose, it may be perfectly egoistic. Love of comfort is really not compatible
with
consideration for others. The introduction of the cinerary urn is probably once
again the
fulfilment of a wish; I regret that I no longer possess this vase; it, like the
glass of water
at my wife's side, is inaccessible to me. The cinerary urn is appropriate also
in connection
with the sensation of an increasingly salty taste, which I know will compel me
to wake.1
Such convenience-dreams came very frequently to me in my youth. Accustomed as I
had
always been to working until late at night, early waking was always a matter of
difficulty.
I used then to dream that I was out of bed and standing at the washstand. After
a while I
could no longer shut out the knowledge that I was not yet up; but in the
meantime I had
continued to sleep. The same sort of lethargy-dream was dreamed by a young
colleague
of mine, who appears to share my propensity for sleep. With him it assumed a
particularly amusing form. The landlady with whom he was lodging in the
neighbourhood of the hospital had strict orders to wake him every morning at a
given
hour, but she found it by no means easy to carry out his orders. One morning
sleep was
especially sweet to him. The woman called into his room: `Herr Pepi, get up;
you've got
to go to the hospital.' Whereupon the sleeper dreamt of a room in the hospital,
of a bed in
which he was lying, and of a chart pinned over his head, which read as follows:
`Pepi M.,
medical student, 22 years of age.' He told himself in the dream: `If I am
already at the
hospital, I don't have to go there,' turned over, and slept on. He had thus
frankly admitted
to himself his motive for dreaming.
Here is yet another dream of which the stimulus was active during sleep: One of
my
women patients, who had been obliged to undergo an unsuccessful operation on the
jaw,
was instructed by her physicians to wear by day and night a cooling apparatus on
the
affected cheek; but she was in the habit of throwing it off as soon as she had
fallen
asleep. One day I was asked to reprove her for doing so; she had again thrown
the
apparatus on the floor. The patient defended herself as follows: `This time I
really
couldn't help it; it was the result of a dream which I had during the night. In
the dream I
was in a box at the opera, and was taking a lively interest in the performance.
But Herr
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Karl Meyer was lying in the sanatorium and complaining pitifully on account of
pains in
his jaw. I said to myself, ``Since I haven't the pains, I don't need the
apparatus either'';
that's why I threw it away.' The dream of this poor sufferer reminds me of an
expression
which comes to our lips when we are in a disagreeable situation: `Well, I can
imagine
more amusing things!' The dream presents these `more amusing things!' Herr Karl
Meyer,
to whom the dreamer attributed her pains, was the most casual acquaintance of
whom she
could think.
It is quite as simple a matter to discover the wish-fulfilment in several other
dreams
which I have collected from healthy persons. A friend who was acquainted with my
theory of dreams, and had explained it to his wife, said to me one day: `My wife
asked
me to tell you that she dreamt yesterday that she was having her menses. You
will know
what that means.' Of course I know: if the young wife dreams that she is having
her
menses, the menses have stopped. I can well imagine that she would have liked to
enjoy
her freedom a little longer, before the discomforts of maternity began. It was a
clever way
of giving notice of her first pregnancy. Another friend writes that his wife had
dreamt not
long ago that she noticed milk-stains on the front of her blouse. This also is
an indication
of pregnancy, but not of the first one; the young mother hoped she would have
more
nourishment for the second child than she had for the first.
A young woman who for weeks had been cut off from all society because she was
nursing a child who was suffering from an infectious disease dreamt, after the
child had
recovered, of a company of people in which Alphonse Daudet, Paul Bourget, Marcel
Prévost and others were present; they were all very pleasant to her and amused
her
enormously. In her dream these different authors had the features which their
portraits
give them. M. Prévost, with whose portrait she is not familiar, looked like the
man who
had disinfected the sickroom the day before, the first outsider to enter it for
a long time.
Obviously the dream is to be translated thus: `It is about time now for
something more
entertaining than this eternal nursing.'
Perhaps this collection will suffice to prove that frequently, and under the
most complex
conditions, dreams may be noted which can be understood only as
wish-fulfilments, and
which present their content without concealment. In most cases these are short
and simple
dreams, and they stand in pleasant contrast to the confused and overloaded
dreamcompositions
which have almost exclusively attracted the attention of the writers on the
subject. But it will repay us if we give some time to the examination of these
simple
dreams. The simplest dreams of all are, I suppose, to be expected in the case of
children
whose psychic activities are certainly less complicated than those of adults.
Child psychology, in my opinion, is destined to render the same services to the
psychology of adults as a study of the structure or development of the lower
animals
renders to the investigation of the structure of the higher orders of animals.
Hitherto but
few deliberate efforts have been made to make use of the psychology of the child
for such
a purpose.
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The dreams of little children are often simple fulfilments of wishes, and for
this reason
are, as compared with the dreams of adults, by no means interesting. They
present no
problem to be solved, but they are invaluable as affording proof that the dream,
in its
inmost essence, is the fulfilment of a wish. I have been able to collect several
examples of
such dreams from the material furnished by my own children.
For two dreams, one that of a daughter of mine, at that time eight and a half
years of age,
and the other that of a boy of five and a quarter, I am indebted to an excursion
to
Hallstatt, in the summer of 1896. I must first explain that we were living that
summer on
a hill near Aussee, from which, when the weather was fine, we enjoyed a splendid
view
of the Dachstein. With a telescope we could easily distinguish the Simony hut.
The
children often tried to see it through the telescope -- I do not know with what
success.
Before the excursion I had told the children that Hallstatt lay at the foot of
the Dachstein.
They looked forward to the outing with the greatest delight. From Hallstatt we
entered
the valley of Eschern, which enchanted the children with its constantly changing
scenery.
One of them, however, the boy of five, gradually became discontented. As often
as a
mountain came into view, he would ask: `Is that the Dachstein?' whereupon I had
to
reply: `No, only a foothill.' After this question had been repeated several
times he fell
quite silent, and did not wish to accompany us up the steps leading to the
waterfall. I
thought he was tired. But the next morning he came to me, perfectly happy, and
said:
`Last night I dreamt that we went to the Simony hut.' I understood him now; he
had
expected, when I spoke of the Dachstein, that on our excursion to Hallstatt he
would
climb the mountain, and would see at close quarters the hut which had been so
often
mentioned when the telescope was used. When he learned that he was expected to
content himself with foothills and a waterfall he was disappointed, and became
discontented. But the dream compensated him for all this. I tried to learn some
details of
the dream; they were scanty. `You go up steps for six hours,' as he had been
told.
On this excursion the girl of eight and a half had likewise cherished wishes
which had to
be satisfied by a dream. We had taken with us to Hallstatt our neighbour's
twelve-yearold
boy; quite a polished little gentleman, who, it seemed to me, had already won
the
little woman's sympathies. Next morning she related the following dream: `Just
think, I
dreamt that Emil was one of the family, that he said ``papa'' and ``mamma'' to
you, and
slept at our house, in the big room, like one of the boys. Then mamma came into
the
room and threw a handful of big bars of chocolate, wrapped in blue and green
paper,
under our beds.' The girl's brothers, who evidently had not inherited an
understanding of
dream-interpretation, declared, just as the writers we have quoted would have
done: `That
dream is nonsense.' The girl defended at least one part of the dream, and from
the
standpoint of the theory of the neuroses it is interesting to learn which part
it was that she
defended: `That Emil was one of the family was nonsense, but that part about the
bars of
chocolate wasn't.' It was just this latter part that was obscure to me, until my
wife
furnished the explanation. On the way home from the railway-station the children
had
stopped in front of a slot-machine, and had wanted exactly such bars of
chocolate,
wrapped in paper with a metallic lustre, such as the machine, in their
experience,
provided. But the mother thought, and rightly so, that the day had brought them
enough
wish-fulfilments, and therefore left this wish to be satisfied in the dream.
This little scene
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had escaped me. That portion of the dream which had been condemned by my
daughter I
understood without any difficulty. I myself had heard the well-behaved little
guest
enjoining the children, as they were walking ahead of us, to wait until `papa'
or `mamma'
had come up. For the little girl the dream turned this temporary relationship
into a
permanent adoption. Her affection could not as yet conceive of any other way of
enjoying
her friend's company permanently than the adoption pictured in her dream, which
was
suggested by her brothers. Why the bars of chocolate were thrown under the bed
could
not, of course, be explained without questioning the child.
From a friend I have learned of a dream very much like that of my little boy. It
was
dreamed by a little girl of eight. Her father, accompanied by several children,
had started
on a walk to Dornbach, with the intention of visiting the Rohrer hut, but had
turned back,
as it was growing late, promising the children to take them some other time. On
the way
back they passed a signpost which pointed to the Hameau. The children now asked
him to
take them to the Hameau, but once more, and for the same reason, they had to be
content
with the promise that they should go there some other day. Next morning the
little girl
went to her father and told him, with a satisfied air: `Papa, I dreamed last
night that you
were with us at the Rohrer hut, and on the Hameau.' Thus, in the dream her
impatience
had anticipated the fulfilment of the promise made by her father.
Another dream, with which the picturesque beauty of the Aussee inspired my
daughter, at
that time three and a quarter years of age, is equally straightforward. The
little girl had
crossed the lake for the first time, and the trip had passed too quickly for
her. She did not
want to leave the boat at the landing, and cried bitterly. The next morning she
told us:
`Last night I was sailing on the lake.' Let us hope that the duration of this
dream-voyage
was more satisfactory to her.
My eldest boy, at that time eight years of age, was already dreaming of the
realisation of
his fancies. He had ridden in a chariot with Achilles, with Diomedes as
charioteer. On the
previous day he had shown a lively interest in a book on the myths of Greece
which had
been given to his elder sister.
If it can be admitted that the talking of children in their sleep belongs to the
sphere of
dreams, I can relate the following as one of the earliest dreams in my
collection: My
youngest daughter, at that time nineteen months old, vomited one morning, and
was
therefore kept without food all day. During the night she was heard to call
excitedly in
her sleep: `Anna F(r)eud, st'awbewy, wild st'awbewy, om'lette, pap!' She used
her name
in this way in order to express the act of appropriation; the menu presumably
included
everything that would seem to her a desirable meal; the fact that two varieties
of
strawberry appeared in it was a demonstration against the sanitary regulations
of the
household, and was based on the circumstance, which she had by no means
overlooked,
that the nurse had ascribed her indisposition to an over-plentiful consumption
of
strawberries; so in her dream she avenged herself for this opinion which met
with her
disapproval.2
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When we call childhood happy because it does not yet know sexual desire, we must
not
forget what a fruitful source of disappointment and renunciation, and therefore
of
dreamstimulation, the other great vital impulse may be for the child.3 Here is a
second
example. My nephew, twenty-two months of age, had been instructed to
congratulate me
on my birthday, and to give me a present of a small basket of cherries, which at
that time
of the year were scarce, being hardly in season. He seemed to find the task a
difficult one,
for he repeated again and again: `Cherries in it', and could not be induced to
let the little
basket go out of his hands. But he knew how to indemnify himself. He had, until
then,
been in the habit of telling his mother every morning that he had dreamt of the
white
soldier, an officer of the guard in a white cloak, whom he had once admired in
the street.
On the day after the sacrifice on my birthday he woke up joyfully with the
announcement, which could have referred only to a dream: `He[r] man eaten all
the
cherries!'4
What animals dream of I do not know. A proverb for which I am indebted to one of
my
pupils professes to tell us, for it asks the question: `What does the goose
dream of?' and
answers: `Of maize.'5 The whole theory that the dream is the fulfilment of a
wish is
contained in these two sentences.6
We now perceive that we should have reached our theory of the hidden meaning of
dreams by the shortest route had we merely consulted the vernacular. Proverbial
wisdom,
it is true, often speaks contemptuously enough of dreams -- it apparently seeks
to justify
the scientists when it says that `dreams are bubbles'; but in colloquial
language the dream
is predominantly the gracious fulfiller of wishes. `I should never have imagined
that in
my wildest dreams', we exclaim in delight if we find that the reality surpasses
our
expectations.
1 The facts relating to dreams of thirst were known also to Weygandt, who speaks
of them
as follows: `It is just this sensation of thirst which is registered most
accurately of all; it
always causes a representation of quenching the thirst. The manner in which the
dream
represents the act of quenching the thirst is manifold, and is specified in
accordance with
some recent recollection. A universal phenomenon noticeable here is the fact
that the
representation of quenching the thirst is immediately followed by disappointment
in the
inefficacy of the imagined refreshment.' But he overlooks the universal
character of the
reaction of the dream to the stimulus. If other persons who are troubled by
thirst at night
awake without dreaming beforehand, this does not constitute an objection to my
experiment, but characterises them as persons who sleep less soundly. cf. here
Isaiah
xxix, 8: `It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he
eateth; but he
awaketh, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold
he
drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold he is faint. . . .'
2 The dream afterwards accomplished the same purpose in the case of the child's
grandmother, who is older than the child by about seventy years. After she had
been
forced to go hungry for a day on account of the restlessness of her floating
kidney, she
dreamed, being apparently translated into the happy years of her girlhood, that
she had
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been `asked out', invited to lunch and dinner, and had at each meal been served
with the
most delicious titbits.
3 A more searching investigation into the psychic life of the child teaches us,
of course,
that sexual motives, in infantile forms, play a very considerable part, which
has been too
long overlooked, in the psychic activity of the child. This permits us to doubt
to some
extent the happiness of the child, as imagined later by adults. cf. Three
Contributions to
the Theory of Sex.
4 It should be mentioned that young children often have more complex and obscure
dreams, while, on the other hand, adults, in certain circumstances, often have
dreams of a
simple and infantile character. How rich in unsuspected content the dreams of
children no
more than four or five years of age may be is shown by the examples in my
Analyse der
Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben (Jahrbuch von Blealer-Freud, vol. i, 1909), and
Jung's
`Experiences Concerning the Psychic Life of the Child', translated by Brill,
American
Journal of Psychology, April, 1910. For analytically interpreted dreams of
children, see
also von Hug-Hellmuth, Putnam, Raalte, Spielrein and Tausk; others by Banchieri,
Busemann, Doglia, and especially Wigam, who emphasises the wish-fulfilling
tendency
of such dreams. On the other hand, it seems that dreams of an infantile type
reappear with
especial frequency in adults who are transferred into the midst of unfamiliar
conditions.
Thus Otto Nordenskjöld, in his book, Antarctic (1904, vol. i, p. 336), writes as
follows of
the crew who spent the winter with him: `Very characteristic of the trend of our
inmost
thoughts were our dreams, which were never more vivid and more numerous. Even
those
of our comrades with whom dreaming was formerly exceptional had long stories to
tell in
the morning, when we exchanged our experiences in the world of fantasy. They all
had
reference to that outside world which was now so far removed from us, but they
often
fitted into our immediate circumstances. An especially characteristic dream was
that in
which one of our comrades believed himself back at school, where the task was
assigned
to him of skinning miniature seals, which were manufactured especially for
purposes of
instruction. Eating and drinking constituted the pivot around which most of our
dreams
revolved. One of us, who was especially fond of going to big dinner-parties, was
delighted if he could report in the morning ``that he had had a three-course
dinner''.
Another dreamed of tobacco, whole mountains of tobacco; yet another dreamed of a
ship
approaching on the open sea under full sail. Still another dream deserves to be
mentioned: The postman brought the post and gave a long explanation of why it
was so
long delayed; he had delivered it at the wrong address, and only with great
trouble was he
able to get it back. To be sure, we were often occupied in our sleep with still
more
impossible things, but the lack of fantasy in almost all the dreams which I
myself
dreamed, or heard others relate, was quite striking. It would certainly have
been of great
psychological interest if all these dreams could have been recorded. But one can
readily
understand how we longed for sleep. That alone could afford us everything that
we all
most ardently desired.' I will continue by a quotation from Du Prel (p. 231):
`Mungo
Park, nearly dying of thirst on one of his African expeditions, dreamed
constantly of the
well-watered valleys and meadows of his home. Similarly Trenck, tortured by
hunger in
the fortress of Magdeburg, saw himself surrounded by copious meals. And George
Back,
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