I had some trouble in getting any light on this dream, but suddenly much of
the meaning became clear and a whole group of associations came up.
Undoubtedly the trouble I experienced at first was caused by the resistance
of the censor. I will give the associated memories first and explain them
later.
I delight in fishing and have spent many happy hours fishing for trout In
the clear waters of the Colorado streams; but, strange as it may seem, it
was not a memory of any of these which come into consciousness. Instead,
there came up memories of three different instances, each accompanied with
definite visual imagery, and in such rapid succession that I could hardly
tell which came first.
Six years ago last summer, I crossed the Ohio River to spend a day in
Carrolton, Kentucky, and on the way back, I bought some fish of a fisherman
at the river's edge. This man was barefooted and wore a little greasy wool
hat and very ragged clothes. I remember thinking at the time that his work
must be very degrading, and that the river fisherman must be about the
lowest type in that part of the country. I especially noticed his feet and
legs, which were bare to the knees, and which were so sunburned that they
hardly looked like parts of a white man's body. In the analysis of this
dream, the image of the man as he stood there and the memory of the incident
came back with great vividness.
A year or two later, my brother and I were riding along the road at about
the same place, and we met a very miserable-looking specimen of humanity,
driving a poor limping horse to a rickety wagon in which were some pieces of
driftwood. My brother was in a "spell of the blues" at this time, and he
remarked that he was coming to just that condition as fast as he could. The
image and memory of this incident also came into consciousness as if it had
been waiting repressed just under the surface.
The other memory was one in which I did not figure personally. A year or so
ago, my brother was telling me how he and his boy had gone to the river
several times and gone fishing with an old fisherman who lived there. My
nephew, like most boys, had a desire to become a fisherman or hunter, and my
brother had suspected that a little close acquaintance with the way a
fisherman lived would cure him of this desire; in this he was entirely
right, and after a few trips to visit the old fellow, he had expressed
himself as cured of any desire to live the beautiful, pleasant life of a
river fisherman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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