As can be easily understood, the occasion was most painful to the teacher. The supposition that therein lay some secret motive of the schoolgirls is justified by the psychoanalytic axiom--judge actions by their results rather than by their conscious motives.[164] Consequently it would be probable that Marie X. had been especially troublesome to her teacher. Marie at first liked this teacher most of all. In the course of the latter half-year her position had, however, changed. She had become dreamy and inattentive, and towards the dusk of evening was afraid to go into the streets for fear of bad men. She talked several times to her companions about sexual things in a somewhat obscene way; her mother asked me anxiously how she should explain the approaching menstruation to her daughter. On account of this alteration in conduct Marie had forfeited the good opinion of her teacher, as was clearly evidenced for the first time by a school report, which she and some of her friends had received a few days before the outbreak of the rumour. The disappointment was so great that the girls had imagined all kinds of fancied acts of revenge against the teacher; for instance, they might push him on to the lines so that the train would run over him, etc. Marie was especially to the fore in these murderous phantasies. On the night of this great outburst of anger, when her former liking for her teacher seemed quite forgotten, that repressed part of herself announced itself in the dream, and fulfilled its desire for sexual union with the teacher--as a compensation for the hate which had filled the day. On waking, the dream became a subtle instrument of her hatred, because the wish-idea was also that of her school companions, as it always is in rumours of this kind. Revenge certainly had its triumph, but the recoil upon Marie herself was still more severe. Such is the rule when our impulses are given over to the unconscious. Marie X. was expelled from school, but upon my report she was allowed to return to it. I am well aware that this little communication is inadequate and unsatisfactory from the point of view of exact science. Had the original story been accurately verified we should have clearly demonstrated what we have now been only able to suggest. This case therefore only posits a question, and it remains for happier observers to collect convincing experiences in this field. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 161: "Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse," 1911, vol. I., p. 81.] [Footnote 162: Author's italics.] [Footnote 163: This also holds good for any objects that are repeated.] [Footnote 164: See "The Association Method," Lecture III.] CHAPTER V ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NUMBER-DREAMS[165]