The origin of the figures from the matter of the dream thoughts and the
changes the figures underwent are of interest. Whence came the one
florin fifty kreuzers? From a trifling occurrence of the previous day.
Her sister-in-law had received 150 florins as a present from her
husband, and had quickly got rid of it by buying some ornament. Note
that 150 florins is one hundred times one florin fifty kreuzers. For the
_three_ concerned with the tickets, the only link is that Elise L—— is
exactly three months younger than the dreamer. The scene in the dream is
the repetition of a little adventure for which she has often been teased
by her husband. She was once in a great hurry to get tickets in time for
a piece, and when she came to the theatre _one side of the stalls was
almost empty_. It was therefore quite unnecessary for her to have been
in _such a hurry_. Nor must we overlook the absurdity of the dream that
two persons should take three tickets for the theatre.
Now for the dream ideas. It was _stupid_ to have married so early; _I
need not_ have been _in so great a hurry_. Elise L——’s example shows me
that I should have been able to get a husband later; indeed, one a
_hundred times better_ if I had but waited. I could have bought _three_
such men with the money (dowry).
VIII.
In the foregoing exposition we have now learnt something of the dream
work; we must regard it as a quite special psychical process, which, so
far as we are aware, resembles nothing else. To the dream work has been
transferred that bewilderment which its product, the dream, has aroused
in us. In truth, the dream work is only the first recognition of a group
of psychical processes to which must be referred the origin of
hysterical symptoms, the ideas of morbid dread, obsession, and illusion.
Condensation, and especially displacement, are never-failing features in
these other processes. The regard for appearance remains, on the other
hand, peculiar to the dream work. If this explanation brings the dream
into line with the formation of psychical disease, it becomes the more
important to fathom the essential conditions of processes like dream
building. It will be probably a surprise to hear that neither the state
of sleep nor illness is among the indispensable conditions. A whole
number of phenomena of the everyday life of healthy persons,
forgetfulness, slips in speaking and in holding things, together with a
certain class of mistakes, are due to a psychical mechanism analogous to
that of the dream and the other members of this group.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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