The Interpretation of Dreams

The difficulty dreamed of, and probably experienced during the dream- difficulty in climbing, accompanied by dyspnoea- was one of the symptoms which the patient had actually exhibited some years before, and which, in conjunction with other symptoms, was at the time attributed to tuberculosis (probably hysterically simulated). From our study of exhibition-dreams we are already acquainted with this sensation of being inhibited in motion, peculiar to dreams, and here again we find it utilized as material always available for the purposes of any other kind of representation. The part of the dream-content which represents climbing as difficult at first, and easier at the top of the hill, made me think, while it was being related, of the well-known masterly introduction to Daudet's Sappho. Here a young man carries the woman he loves upstairs; she is at first as light as a feather, but the higher he climbs the more she weighs; and this scene is symbolic of the process of their relation, in describing which Daudet seeks to admonish young men not to lavish an earnest affection upon girls of humble origin and dubious antecedents. * Although I knew that my patient had recently had a love-affair with an actress, and had broken it off, I hardly expected to find that the interpretation which had occurred to me was correct. The situation in Sappho is actually the reverse of that in the dream; for in the dream climbing was difficult at the first and easy later on; in the novel the symbolism is pertinent only if what was at first easily carried finally proves to be a heavy burden. To my astonishment, the patient remarked that the interpretation fitted in very well with the plot of a play which he had seen the previous evening. The play was called Rund um Wien (Round about Vienna), and treated of the career of a girl who was at first respectable, but who subsequently lapsed into the demimonde, and formed relations with highly-placed lovers, thereby climbing, but finally she went downhill faster and faster. This play reminded him of another, entitled Von Stufe zu Stufe (From Step to Step), the poster advertising which had depicted a flight of stairs.

* In estimating the significance of this passage we may recall the meaning of dreams of climbing stairs, as explained in the chapter on Symbolism.

To continue the interpretation: The actress with whom he had had his most recent and complicated affair had lived in X-street. There is no inn in this street. However, while he was spending part of the summer in Vienna for the sake of this lady, he had lodged (German: abgestiegen = stopped, literally stepped off) at a small hotel in the neighbourhood. When he was leaving the hotel, he said to the cab-driver: "I am glad at all events that I didn't get any vermin here!" (Incidentally, the dread of vermin is one of his phobias.) Whereupon the cab-driver answered: "How could anybody stop there! That isn't a hotel at all, it's really nothing but a pub!" The pub immediately reminded him of a quotation:

Of a wonderful host
I was lately a guest.

But the host in the poem by Uhland is an apple-tree. Now a second quotation continues the train of thought:

FAUST (dancing with the young witch).
A lovely dream once came to me;
I then beheld an apple-tree,
And there two fairest apples shone:
They lured me so, I climbed thereon.

THE FAIR ONE
Apples have been desired by you,
Since first in Paradise they grew;
And I am moved with joy to know
That such within my garden grow. *

* Faust I.

There is not the slightest doubt what is meant by the apple-tree and the apples. A beautiful bosom stood high among the charms by which the actress had bewitched our dreamer. Judging from the context of the analysis, we had every reason to assume that the dream referred to an impression of the dreamer's childhood. If this is correct, it must have referred to the wet-nurse of the dreamer, who is now a man of nearly thirty years of age. The bosom of the nurse is in reality an inn for the child. The nurse, as well as Daudet's Sappho, appears as an allusion to his recently abandoned mistress.

The (elder) brother of the patient also appears in the dream-content; he is upstairs, while the dreamer himself is downstairs. This again is an inversion, for the brother, as I happen to know, has lost his social position, while my patient has retained his. In relating the dream-content, the dreamer avoided saying that his brother was upstairs and that he himself was downstairs. This would have been to obvious an expression, for in Austria we say that a man is on the ground floor when he has lost his fortune and social position, just as we say that he has come down. Now the fact that at this point in the dream something is represented as inverted must have a meaning; and the inversion must apply to some other relation between the dream-thoughts and the dream-content. There is an indication which suggests how this inversion is to be understood. It obviously applies to the end of the dream, where the circumstances of climbing are the reverse of those described in Sappho. Now it is evident what inversion is meant: In Sappho the man carries the woman who stands in a sexual relation to him; in the dream-thoughts, conversely, there is a reference to a woman carrying a man: and, as this could occur only in childhood, the reference is once more to the nurse who carries the heavy child. Thus the final portion of the dream succeeds in representing Sappho and the nurse in the same allusion.

Just as the name Sappho has not been selected by the poet without reference to a Lesbian practise, so the portions of the dream in which people are busy upstairs and downstairs, above and beneath, point to fancies of a sexual content with which the dreamer is occupied, and which, as suppressed cravings, are not unconnected with his neurosis. Dream-interpretation itself does not show that these are fancies and not memories of actual happenings; it only furnishes us with a set of thoughts and leaves it to us to determine their actual value. In this case real and imagined happenings appear at first as of equal value- and not only here, but also in the creation of more important psychic structures than dreams. A large company, as we already know, signifies a secret. The brother is none other than a representative, drawn into the scenes of childhood by fancying backwards, of all of the subsequent for women's favours. Through the medium of an experience indifferent in itself, the episode of the gentleman who talks angrily of the King of Italy refers to the intrusion of people of low rank into aristocratic society. It is as though the warning which Daudet gives to young men were to be supplemented by a similar warning applicable to a suckling child. *

* The fantastic nature of the situation relating to the dreamer's wet-nurse is shown by the circumstance, objectively ascertained, that the nurse in this case was his mother. Further, I may call attention to the regret of the young man in the anecdote related to p. 222 above (that he had not taken better advantage of his opportunities with his wet-nurse) as the probable source of his dream.