Dreams naturally abound in such compositions; several examples of these
I have given in the dreams already analysed; I shall add more. In the
dream on p. 296, which describes the career of my patient “in flowery
language,” the dream ego carries a blossoming twig in her hand, which,
as we have seen, signifies at once innocence and sexual transgression.
Moreover, the twig recalls cherry-blossoms on account of the manner in
which the blossoms are clustered; the blossoms themselves, separately
considered, are camelias, and finally the whole thing also gives the
impression of an _exotic_ plant. The common feature in the elements of
this composition is shown by the dream thoughts. The blossoming twig is
made up of allusions to presents by which she was induced or should have
been induced to show herself agreeable. So it was with the cherries in
her childhood and with the stem of camelias in her later years; the
exotic feature is an illusion to a much-travelled naturalist, who sought
to win her favour by means of a drawing of a flower. Another female
patient creates a middle element out of bath-houses at a bathing resort,
rural outside water-closets, and the garrets of our city dwellings. The
reference to human nakedness and exposure is common to the two first
elements; and we may infer from their connection with the third element
that (in her childhood) the garret was likewise the scene of exposure. A
dreamer of the male sex makes a composite locality out of two places in
which “treatment” is given—my office and the public hall in which he
first became acquainted with his wife. Another female patient, after her
elder brother has promised to regale her with caviare, dreams that his
legs are covered thick with black caviare pearls. The two elements,
“contagion” in a moral sense and the recollection of a cutaneous
eruption in childhood which made her legs look as though studded over
with red dots instead of black ones, have here been united with the
caviare pearls to form a new idea—the idea of “what she has inherited
from her brother.” In this dream parts of the human body are treated as
objects, as is usually the case in dreams. In one of the dreams reported
by Ferenczi[87] there occurred a composition made up of the person of a
physician and a horse, over which was spread a night-shirt. The common
feature in these three components was shown in the analysis after the
night-shirt had been recognised as an allusion to the father of the
dreamer in an infantile scene. In each of the three cases there was some
object of her sexual inquisitiveness. As a child she had often been
taken by her nurse to the military breeding station, where she had the
amplest opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, which was at that time
uninhibited.
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