If we keep in mind these examples and similar ones (to follow), we may
say: Dream activity does not calculate at all, whether correctly or
incorrectly; it joins together in the form of a calculation numerals
which occur in the dream thoughts, and which may serve as allusions to
material which is incapable of being represented. It thus utilises
numerals as material for the expression of its purposes in the same
manner as it does names and speeches known as word presentations.
For the dream activity cannot compose a new speech. No matter how many
speeches and answers may occur in dreams, which may be sensible or
absurd in themselves, analysis always shows in such cases that the dream
has only taken from the dream thoughts fragments of speeches which have
been delivered or heard, and dealt with them in a most arbitrary manner.
It has not only torn them from their context and mutilated them, taken
up one piece and rejected another, but it has also joined them together
in a new way, so that the speech which seems coherent in the dream falls
into three or four sections in the course of analysis. In this new
utilisation of the words, the dream has often put aside the meaning
which they had in the dream thoughts, and has derived an entirely new
meaning from them.[EO] Upon closer inspection the more distinct and
compact constituents of the dream speech may be distinguished from
others which serve as connectives and have probably been supplied, just
as we supply omitted letters and syllables in reading. The dream speech
thus has the structure of breccia stones, in which larger pieces of
different material are held together by a solidified cohesive mass.
In a very strict sense this description is correct, to be sure, only for
those speeches in the dream which have something of the sensational
character of a speech, and which are described as “speeches.” The others
which have not, as it were, been felt as though heard or spoken (which
have no accompanying acoustic or motor emphasis in the dream) are simply
thoughts such as occur in our waking thought activity, and are
transferred without change into many dreams. Our reading, also, seems to
furnish an abundant and not easily traceable source of material for
speeches, this material being of an indifferent nature. Everything,
however, which appears conspicuously in the dream as a speech can be
referred to real speeches which have been made or heard by the dreamer
himself.
We have already found examples for the explanation of such dream
speeches in the analysis of dreams cited for other purposes. Here is one
example in place of many, all of which lead to the same conclusion.
_A large courtyard in which corpses are cremated. The dreamer says: “I’m
going away from here, I can’t look at this.”_ (Not a distinct speech.)
_Then he meets two butcher boys and asks: “Well, did it taste good?” One
of them answers: “No, it wasn’t good.” As though it had been human
flesh._
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