Moreover, he is the material with which the analysis (synthesis) is
made. For it is a question of the success of the treatment. The legs in
the dream recall an impression of the previous evening. He met a lady at
a dancing lesson whom he wished to conquer; he pressed her to him so
closely that she once cried out. After he had stopped pressing against
her legs, he felt her firm responding pressure against his lower thighs
as far as just above his knees, at the place mentioned in the dream. In
this situation, then, the woman is the magnesium in the retort, which is
at last working. He is feminine towards me, as he is masculine towards
the woman. If it will work with the woman, the treatment will also work.
Feeling and becoming aware of himself in the region of his knees refers
to masturbation, and corresponds to his fatigue of the previous day....
The rendezvous had actually been set for half-past eleven. His wish to
over-sleep and to remain with his usual sexual objects (that is, with
masturbation) corresponds with his resistance.
In relation to the repetition of the name phenyl, he gives the following
thoughts: All these radicals ending in _yl_ have always been pleasing to
him; they are very convenient to use: benzyl, azetyl, &c. That, however,
explained nothing. But when I proposed the radical Schlemihl[DH] he
laughed heartily, and related that during the summer he had read a book
by Prévost which contained a chapter: “Les exclus de l’amour,” the
description in which made him think of the Schlemihls, and he added,
“That is my case.” He would have again acted the Schlemihl if he had
missed the rendezvous.
VI
THE DREAM-WORK
All previous attempts to solve the problems of the dream have been based
directly upon the manifest dream content as it is retained in the
memory, and have undertaken to obtain an interpretation of the dream
from this content, or, if interpretation was dispensed with, to base a
judgment of the dream upon the evidence furnished by this content. We
alone are in possession of new data; for us a new psychic material
intervenes between the dream content and the results of our
investigations: and this is the _latent_ dream content or the dream
thoughts which are obtained by our method. We develop a solution of the
dream from this latter, and not from the manifest dream content. We are
also confronted for the first time with a problem which has not before
existed, that of examining and tracing the relations between the latent
dream thoughts and the manifest dream content, and the processes through
which the former have grown into the latter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account