The fact that language has at its disposal a great number of words which
were originally intended in a picturesque and concrete sense but are at
present used in a faded abstract sense has in other cases made it very
easy for the dream to represent its thoughts. The dream need only
restore to these words their full significance, or follow the evolution
of their meaning a little way back. For example, a man dreams that his
friend, who is struggling to get out of a very tight place, calls upon
him to help him. The analysis shows that the tight place is a hole, and
that the dream uses symbolically his very words to his friend, “Be
careful, or you’ll get yourself into a hole.”[EN] Another dreamer climbs
upon a mountain from which he sees a very extraordinary broad view. He
identifies himself with his brother who is editing a “review” which
deals with relations to the Farthest East.
It would be a separate undertaking to collect such methods of
representation and to arrange them according to the principles upon
which they are based. Some of the representations are quite witty. They
give the impression that they would have never been divined if the
dreamer himself had not reported them.
1. A man dreams that he is asked for a name, which, however, he cannot
recall. He himself explains that this means: _It does not occur to me in
the dream._
2. A female patient relates a dream in which all the persons concerned
were especially big. “That means,” she adds, “that it must deal with an
episode of my early childhood, for at that time all grown up people
naturally seemed to me immensely big.”
The transference into childhood is also expressed differently in other
dreams by translating time into space. One sees the persons and scenes
in question as if at a great distance, at the end of a long road, or as
if looked at through the wrong end of the opera-glass.
3. A man, who in waking life shows an inclination to abstract and
indefinite expressions, but who is otherwise endowed with wit enough,
dreams in a certain connection that he is at a railroad station while a
train is coming in. But then the station platform approaches the train,
which stands still; hence an absurd inversion of the real state of
affairs. This detail is again nothing but an index to remind one that
something else in the dream should be turned about. The analysis of the
same dream brings back the recollection of a picture-book in which men
are represented standing on their heads and walking on their hands.
4. The same dreamer on another occasion relates a short dream which
almost recalls the technique of a rebus. His uncle gives him a kiss in
an automobile. He immediately adds the interpretation, which I should
never have found: it means _Autoerotism_. This might have been made as a
joke in the waking state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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