Association of ideas; Memory; Paragrammatism; Psychoanalysis; Psychology, Pathological; Repression (Psychology)
A nice example, one which may be justly called prophetic, was
once brought to me for exhaustive analysis by an intelligent and
truth-loving patient. She related that she once dreamed that she had
met a former friend and family physician in front of a certain store
in a certain street, and next morning when she went down town she
actually met him at the place named in the dream. I may observe that
the significance of this wonderful coincidence was not proven to be due
to any subsequent event--that is, it could not be justified through
future occurrences.
Careful examination definitely established the fact that there was no
proof that the woman recalled the dream in the morning following the
night of the dream--that is, before the walk and before the meeting.
She could offer no objection when this state of affairs was presented
in a manner that robbed this episode of everything miraculous, leaving
only an interesting psychologic problem. One morning she had walked
through this very street, had met her old family physician before that
certain store, and on seeing him received the conviction that during
the preceding night she had dreamed of this meeting at this place.
The analysis then showed with great probability how she came to
this conviction, to which, in accordance with the general rule, we
cannot deny a certain right to credence. A meeting at a definite
place following a previous expectation really describes the fact of a
rendezvous. The old family physician awakened her memory of old times,
when meetings with a third person, also a friend of the physician, were
of marked significance to her. Since that time she had continued her
relations with this gentleman, and the day before the mentioned dream
she had waited for him in vain. If I could report in greater detail the
circumstances here before us, I could easily show that the illusion
of the prophetic dream at the sight of the friend of former times is
perchance equivalent to the following speech: “Ah, doctor, you now
remind me of bygone times, when I never had to wait in vain for N. when
we had arranged a meeting.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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