(_b_) A sceptical patient had a longer dream, in which certain people were telling her about my book on _Wit_ and praising it very highly. Then something else came in about a _canal; it might have been another book in which the word canal occurred, or something else to do with a canal ... she did not know ... it was quite vague_. Now you will certainly be inclined to suppose that the _canal_ in the dream will defy interpretation on account of its vagueness. You are right in expecting difficulty, but the difficulty is not caused by the vagueness; on the contrary, the difficulty in interpretation is caused by something else, by the same thing that makes the element vague. The dreamer had no association to the word “canal”; naturally I did not know what to say either. Shortly afterwards, to be accurate, on the next day, she told me that an association had occurred to her which _perhaps_ had something to do with it. It was in fact a witty remark which some one had told her. On board ship between Dover and Calais a well-known author was talking to an Englishman who in some particular context quoted the words: “Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.” The author answered: “Oui, le Pas-de-Calais,” meaning that he regarded France as sublime and England as ridiculous. Of course, the Pas-de-Calais is a _canal_—that is to say, the Canal la Manche—the English Channel. Now, you ask, do I think that this association had anything to do with the dream? Certainly I think so: it gives the true meaning of the puzzling dream-element. Or are you inclined to doubt that the joke already existed before the dream and was the unconscious thought behind the element “canal,” and to maintain that it was a subsequent invention? The association reveals the scepticism disguised under the obtrusive admiration, and resistance was no doubt the cause both of the association being so long in occurring to her, and of the corresponding dream-element being so vague. Observe here the relation between the dream-element and the unconscious thought underlying it: it is, as it were, a fragment of the thought, an allusion to it; by being isolated in that way it became quite incomprehensible. (_c_) A patient had a fairly long dream, part of which was as follows: _Several members of his family were seated at a table of a particular shape_ ... etc. This table reminded the dreamer that he had seen one of the same sort when he was visiting a certain family. From that his thoughts ran on thus: in this family the relationship between father and son was a peculiar one, and the patient presently added that his own relationship to his father was, as a matter of fact, of the same nature. So the table was introduced into the dream to indicate this parallelism.