I suspect why the formula of trimethylamin has made itself so prominent
in the dream. So many important things are gathered up in this one word:
Trimethylamin is not only an allusion to the overpowering factor of
sexuality, but also to a person whose sympathy I remember with
satisfaction when I feel myself forsaken in my opinions. Should not this
friend, who plays such a large part in my life, occur again in the chain
of thoughts of the dream? Of course, he must; he is particularly
acquainted with the results which proceed from affections of the nose
and its adjacent cavities, and has revealed to science several highly
remarkable relations of the turbinated bones to the female sexual organs
(the three curly formations in Irma’s throat). I have had Irma examined
by him to see whether the pains in her stomach might be of nasal origin.
But he himself suffers from suppurative rhinitis, which worries him, and
to this perhaps there is an allusion in pyæmia, which hovers before me
in the metastases of the dream.
_Such injections are not made so rashly._ Here the reproach of
carelessness is hurled directly at my friend Otto. I am under the
impression that I had some thought of this sort in the afternoon, when
he seemed to indicate his siding against me by word and look. It was
perhaps: “How easily he can be influenced; how carelessly he pronounces
judgment.” Furthermore, the above sentence again points to my deceased
friend, who so lightly took refuge in cocaine injections. As I have
said, I had not intended injections of the remedy at all. I see that in
reproaching Otto I again touch upon the story of the unfortunate
Matilda, from which arises the same reproach against me. Obviously I am
here collecting examples of my own conscientiousness, but also of the
opposite.
_Probably also the syringe was not clean._ Another reproach directed at
Otto, but originating elsewhere. The day before I happened to meet the
son of a lady eighty-two years of age whom I am obliged to give daily
two injections of morphine. At present she is in the country, and I have
heard that she is suffering from an inflammation of the veins. I
immediately thought that it was a case of infection due to contamination
from the syringe. It is my pride that in two years I have not given her
a single infection; I am constantly concerned, of course, to see that
the syringe is perfectly clean. For I am conscientious. From the
inflammation of the veins, I return to my wife, who had suffered from
emboli during a period of pregnancy, and now three related situations
come to the surface in my memory, involving my wife, Irma, and the
deceased Matilda, the identity of which three persons plainly justifies
my putting them in one another’s place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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