In order that we may have at our disposal a third example for the study
of condensation in dream formation, I shall cite the partial analysis of
another dream for which I am indebted to an elderly lady who is being
psychoanalytically treated. In harmony with the condition of severe
anxiety from which the patient suffered, her dreams contained a great
abundance of sexual thought material, the discovery of which astonished
as well as frightened her. Since I cannot carry the interpretation of
the dream to completion, the material seems to fall apart into several
groups without apparent connection.
III. Content of the dream: _She remembers that she has two June bugs in
a box, which she must set at liberty, for otherwise they will suffocate.
She opens the box, and the bugs are quite exhausted; one of them flies
out of the window, but the other is crushed on the casement while she is
shutting the window, as some one or other requests her to do
(expressions of disgust)._
Analysis: Her husband is away travelling, and her fourteen-year-old
daughter is sleeping in the bed next to her. In the evening the little
one calls her attention to the fact that a moth has fallen into her
glass of water; but she neglects to take it out, and feels sorry for the
poor little creature in the morning. A story which she had read in the
evening told of boys throwing a cat into boiling water, and the
twitchings of the animal were described. These are the occasions for the
dream, both of which are indifferent in themselves. She is further
occupied with the subject of _cruelty to animals_. Years before, while
they were spending the summer at a certain place, her daughter was very
cruel to animals. She started a butterfly collection, and asked her for
arsenic with which to kill the butterflies. Once it happened that a moth
flew about the room for a long time with a needle through its body; on
another occasion she found that some moths which had been kept for
metamorphosis had died of starvation. The same child while still at a
tender age was in the habit of pulling out the wings of beetles and
butterflies; now she would shrink in horror from these cruel actions,
for she has grown very kind.
Her mind is occupied with this contrast. It recalls another contrast,
the one between appearance and disposition, as it is described in _Adam
Bede_ by George Eliot. There a beautiful but vain and quite stupid girl
is placed side by side with an ugly but high-minded one. The aristocrat
who seduces the little goose, is opposed to the working man who feels
_aristocratic_, and behaves accordingly. It is impossible to tell
character from people’s _looks_. Who could tell from _her_ looks that
she is tormented by sensual desires?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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