The baggage,
moreover, or the trunk of a servant, is disparagingly referred to in
Vienna as “seven plums.” “Pack up your seven plums and get out.”
My collection, of course, contains an abundant supply of such patients’
dreams, whose analysis leads to childish impressions that are remembered
obscurely or not at all, and that often date back to the first three
years of life. But it is a mistake to draw conclusions from them which
are to apply to the dream in general; we are in every case dealing with
neurotic, particularly with hysterical persons; and the part played by
childhood scenes in these dreams might be conditioned by the nature of
the neurosis, and not by that of the dream. However, I am struck quite
as often in the course of interpreting my own dreams, which I do not do
on account of obvious symptoms of disease, by the fact that I
unsuspectingly come upon a scene of childhood in the latent dream
content, and that a whole series of dreams suddenly falls into line with
conclusions drawn from childish experiences. I have already given
examples of this, and shall give still more upon various occasions.
Perhaps I cannot close the whole chapter more fittingly than by citing
several of my own dreams, in which recent happenings and long-forgotten
experiences of childhood appear together as sources of dreams.
I. After I have been travelling and have gone to bed hungry and tired,
the great necessities of life begin to assert their claims in sleep, and
I dream as follows: _I go into a kitchen to order some pastry. Here
three women are standing, one of whom is the hostess, and is turning
something in her hand as though she were making dumplings. She answers
that I must wait until she has finished_ (not distinctly as a speech).
_I become impatient and go away insulted. I put on an overcoat; but the
first one which I try is too long. I take it off, and am somewhat
astonished to find that it has fur trimming. A second one has sewn into
it a long strip of cloth with Turkish drawings. A stranger with a long
face and a short pointed beard comes up and prevents me from putting it
on, declaring that it belongs to him. I now show him that it is
embroidered all over in Turkish fashion. He asks, “What business are the
Turkish (drawings, strips of cloth ...) of yours?” But we then become
quite friendly with each other._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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