Autobiographical note 28 страница

It would therefore carry us far beyond the sphere of dream-interpretation if we were to do justice to the significance of symbols and discuss the numerous, and to a large extent still unsolved, problems attaching to the concept of a symbol.¹ We must restrict ourselves here to remarking that representation by a symbol is among the indirect methods of representation, but that all kinds of indications warn us against lumping it in with other forms of indirect representation without being able to form any clear conceptual picture of their distinguishing features. In a number of cases the element in common between a symbol and what it represents is obvious; in others it is concealed and the choice of the symbol seems puzzling. It is precisely these latter cases which must be able to throw light upon the ultimate meaning of the symbolic relation, and they indicate that it is of a genetic character. Things that are symbolically connected to-day were probably united in prehistoric times by conceptual and linguistic identity.² The symbolic relation seems to be a relic and a mark of former identity. In this connection we may observe how in a number of cases the use of a common symbol extends further than the use of a common language, as was already pointed out by Schubert (1814).³ A number of symbols are as old as language itself, while others (e.g. ‘airship’, ‘Zeppelin’) are being coined continuously down to the present time.

¹ [Footnote added 1911:] Cf. the works of Bleuler and of his Zurich pupils, Maeder, Abraham], etc., on symbolism, and the non-medical writers to whom they refer (Kleinpaul, etc.). [Added 1914:] What is most to the point on this subject will be found in Rank and Sachs (1913, Chapter I). [Added 1925:] See further Jones (1916).

² [Footnote added 1925:] This view would be powerfully supported by a theory put forward by Dr. Hans Sperber (1912). He is of the opinion that all primal words referred to sexual things but afterwards lost their sexual meaning though being applied to other things and activities which were compared with the sexual ones.

³ [Added 1914:] For instance, according to Ferenczi, a ship moving on the water occurs in dreams of micturition in Hungarian dreamers, though the term ‘schiffen’ is unknown in that language. (See also p. 829 f. below.) In dreams of speakers of French and other Romance languages a room is used to symbolize a woman, though these languages have nothing akin to the German expression ‘Frauenzimmer.’

Dreams make use of this symbolism for the disguised representation of their latent thoughts. Incidentally, many of the symbols are habitually or almost habitually employed to express the same thing. Nevertheless, the peculiar plasticity of the psychical material must never be forgotten. Often enough a symbol has to be interpreted in its proper meaning and not symbolically; while on other occasions a dreamer may derive from his private memories the power to employ as sexual symbols all kinds of things which are not ordinarily employed as such. If a dreamer has a choice open to him between a number of symbols, he will decide in favour of the one which is connected in its subject-matter with the rest of the material of his thoughts - which, that is to say, has individual grounds for its acceptance in addition to the typical ones.

Though the later investigations since the time of Scherner have made it impossible to dispute the existence of dream symbolism - even Havelock Ellis admits that there can be no doubt that our dreams are full of symbolism - yet it must be confessed that the presence of symbols in dreams not only facilitates their interpretation but also makes it more difficult. As a rule the technique of interpreting according to the dreamer’s free associations leaves us in the lurch when we come to the symbolic elements in the dream-content. Regard for scientific criticism forbids our returning to the arbitrary judgement of the dream-interpreter, as it was employed in ancient times and seems to have been revived in the reckless interpretations of Stekel. We are thus obliged, in dealing with those elements of the dream-content which must be recognized as symbolic, to adopt a combined technique, which on the one hand rests on the dreamer’s associations and on the other hand fills the gaps from the interpreter’s knowledge of symbols. We must combine a critical caution in resolving symbols with a careful study of them in dreams which afford particularly clear instances of their use, in order to disarm any charge of arbitrariness in dream-interpretation. The uncertainties which still attach to our activities as interpreters of dreams spring in part from our incomplete knowledge, which can be progressively improved as we advance further, but in part from certain characteristics of dream-symbols themselves. They frequently have more than one or even several meanings, and, as with Chinese script, the correct interpretation can only be arrived at on each occasion from the context. This ambiguity of the symbols links up with the characteristic of dreams for admitting of ‘over-interpretation’ - for representing in a single piece of content thoughts and wishes which are often widely divergent in their nature.

Subject to these qualifications and reservations I will now proceed. The Emperor and Empress (or the King and Queen) as a rule really represent the dreamer’s parents; and a Prince or Princess represents the dreamer himself or herself. But the same high authority is attributed to great men as to the Emperor; and for that reason Goethe, for instance, appears as a father-symbol in some dreams (Hitschmann, 1913.) - All elongated objects, such as sticks, tree-trunks and umbrellas (the opening of these last being comparable to an erection) may stand for the male organ - as well as all long, sharp weapons, such as knives, daggers and pikes. Another frequent though not entirely intelligible symbol of the same thing is a nail-file - possibly on account of the rubbing up and down. - Boxes, cases, chests, cupboards and ovens represent the uterus, and also hollow objects, ships, and vessels of all kinds. - Rooms in dreams are usually women (‘Frauenzimmer’); if the various ways in and out of them are represented, this interpretation is scarcely open to doubt.¹ In this connection interest in whether the room is open or locked is easily intelligible. (Cf. Dora’s first dream in my ‘Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria’, 1905e.) There is no need to name explicitly the key that unlocks the room; in his ballad of Count Eberstein, Uhland has used the symbolism of locks and keys to construct a charming piece of bawdry. - A dream of going through a suite of rooms is a brothel or harem dream. But, as Sachs has shown by some neat examples, it can also be used (by antithesis) to represent marriage. - We find an interesting link with the sexual researches of childhood when a dreamer dreams of two rooms which were originally one, or when he sees a familiar room divided into two in the dream, or vice versa. In childhood the female genitals and the anus are regarded as a single area - the ‘bottom’ (in accordance with the infantile ‘cloaca theory’); and it is not until later that the discovery is made that this region of the body comprises two separate cavities and orifices. - Steps, ladders or staircases, or, as the case may be, walking up or down them, are representations of the sexual act.² - Smooth walls over which the dreamer climbs, the façades of houses, down which he lowers himself - often in great anxiety - correspond to erect human bodies, and are probably repeating in the dream recollections of a baby’s climbing up his parents or nurse. The ‘smooth’ walls are men; in his fear the dreamer often clutches hold of ‘projections’ in the façades of houses. Tables, tables laid for a meal, and boards also stand for women - no doubt by antithesis, since the contours of their bodies are eliminated in the symbols. ‘Wood’ seems, from its linguistic connections, to stand in general for female ‘material.’ The name of the Island of ‘Madeira’ means ‘wood’ in Portuguese. Since ‘bed and board’ constitute marriage, the latter often takes the place of the former in dreams and the sexual complex of ideas is, so far as may be, transposed on to the eating complex. - As regards articles of clothing, a woman’s hat can very often be interpreted with certainty as a genital organ, and, moreover, as a man’s. The same is true of an overcoat [German ‘Mantel’], though in this case it is not clear to what extent the use of the symbol is due to a verbal assonance. In men’s dreams a necktie often appears as a symbol for the penis. No doubt this is not only because neckties are long, dependent objects and peculiar to men, but also because they can be chosen according to taste - a liberty which, in the case of the object symbolized, is forbidden by Nature.³ Men who make use of this symbol in dreams are often very extravagant in ties in real life and own whole collections of them. - It is highly probable that all complicated machinery and apparatus occurring in dreams stand for the genitals (and as a rule male ones - in describing which dream-symbolism is as indefatigable as the ‘joke-work.’ Nor is there any doubt that all weapons and tools are used as symbols for the male organ: e.g. ploughs, hammers, rifles, revolvers, daggers, sabres, etc. - In the same way many landscapes in dreams, especially any containing bridges or wooded hills, may clearly be recognized as descriptions of the genitals. Marcinowski has published a collection of dreams illustrated by their dreamers with drawings that ostensibly represent landscapes and other localities occurring in the dreams. These drawings bring out very clearly the distinction between a dream’s manifest and latent meaning. Whereas to the innocent eye they appear as plans, maps, and so on, closer inspection shows that they represent the human body, the genitals, etc., and only then do the dreams become intelligible. (See in this connection Pfister’s papers on cryptograms and puzzle-pictures.) In the case of unintelligible neologisms, too, it is worth considering whether they may not be put together from components with a sexual meaning. -Children in dreams often stand for the genitals; and, indeed, both men and women are in the habit of referring to their genitals affectionately as their ‘little ones.’ Stekel is right in recognizing a ‘little brother’ as the penis. Playing with a little child, beating it, etc., often represent masturbation in dreams. - To represent castration symbolically, the dream-work makes use of baldness, hair-cutting, falling out of teeth and decapitation. If one of the ordinary symbols for a penis occurs in a dream doubled or multiplied, it is to be regarded as a warding-off of castration. The appearance in dreams of lizards - animals whose tails grow again if they are pulled off - has the same significance. (Cf. the lizard-dream on p. 525 f.) - Many of the beasts which are used as genital symbols in mythology and folklore play the same part in dreams: e.g. fishes, snails, cats, mice (on account of the pubic hair), and above all those most important symbols of the male organ - snakes. Small animals and vermin represent small children - for instance, undesired brothers and sisters. Being plagued with vermin is often a sign of pregnancy. - A quite recent symbol of the male organ in dreams deserves mention: the airship, whose use in this sense is justified by its connection with flying as well as sometimes by its shape.

¹ [Footnote added 1919:] ‘One of my patients, who was living in a boarding-house, dreamt that he met one of the maidservants and asked her what her number was. To his surprise she answered: "14". He had in fact started a liason with this girl and had paid several visits to her in her bedroom. She had not unnaturally been afraid that the landlady might become suspicious, and, on the day before the dream, she had proposed that they should meet in an unoccupied room. This room was actually "No. 14", while in the dream it was the woman herself who bore this number. It would hardly be possible to imagine clearer proof of an identification between a woman and a room.’ (Jones, 1914a.) Cf. Artemidorus, Oneirocritica, Book II, Chapter X: ‘Thus, for instance, a bed chamber stands for a wife, if such there be in the house.’ (Trans, F. S. Krauss, 1881, 110.)

² [Footnote added 1911:] I will repeat here what I have written on this subject elsewhere (Freud, 1910d): ‘A little time ago I heard that a psychologist whose views are somewhat different from ours had remarked to one of us that, when all was said and done, we did undoubtedly exaggerate the hidden sexual significance of dreams: his own commonest dream was of going upstairs, and surely there could not be anything sexual in that. We were put on the alert by this objection, and began to turn our attention to the appearance of steps, staircases and ladders in dreams, and were soon in a position to show that staircases (and analogous things) were unquestionably symbols of copulation. It is not hard to discover the basis of the comparison: we come to the top in a series of rhythmical movements and with increasing breathlessness and then, with a few rapid leaps, we can get to the bottom again. Thus the rhythmical pattern of copulation is reproduced in going upstairs. Nor must we omit to bring in the evidence of linguistic usage. It shows us that "mounting" [German "steigen"] is used as a direct equivalent for the sexual act. We speak of a man as a "Steiger" [a "mounter"] and of "nachsteigen" ["to run after", literally "to climb after"]. In French the steps on a staircase are called "marches" and "un vieux marcheur" has the same meaning as our "ein alter Steiger" ["an old rake"].’

³ [Footnote added 1914:] Compare the drawing made by a nineteen-year-old manic patient reproduced in Zbl. Psychoanal, 2, 675. It represents a man with a necktie consisting of a snake which is turning in the direction of a girl. See also the story of ‘The Bashful Man’ in Anthropophyteia, 6, 334: A lady went into a bathroom, and there she came upon a gentleman who scarcely had time to put on his shirt. He was very much embarrassed, but hurriedly covering his throat with the front part of his shirt, he exclaimed: ‘Excuse me, but I’ve not got my necktie on.’

A number of other symbols have been put forward, with supporting instances, by Stekel, but have not yet been sufficiently verified. Stekel’s writings, and in particular his Die Sprache des Traumes (1911), contain the fullest collection of interpretations of symbols. Many of these show penetration, and further examination has proved them correct: for instance, his section on the symbolism of death. But this author’s lack of a critical faculty and his tendency to generalization at all costs throw doubts upon others of his interpretations or render them unusable; so that it is highly advisable to exercise caution in accepting his conclusions. I therefore content myself with drawing attention to only a few of his findings.

According to Stekel, ‘right’ and ‘left’ in dreams have an ethical sense. ‘The right-hand path always means the path of righteousness and the left-hand one that of crime. Thus "left" may represent homosexuality, incest or perversion, and "right" may represent marriage, intercourse with a prostitute and so on, always looked at from the subject’s individual moral stand point.’ (Stekel, 1909, 466 ff.) - Relatives in dreams usually play the part of genitals (ibid., 473). I can only confirm this in the case of sons, daughters and younger sisters - that is only so far as they fall into the category of ‘little ones.’ On the other hand I have come across undoubted cases in which ‘sisters’ symbolized the breasts and ‘brothers’ the larger hemispheres. -Stekel explains failing to catch up with a carriage as regret at a difference in age which cannot be caught up with (ibid., 479). - Luggage that one travels with is a load of sin, he says, that weighs one down (loc. cit.). But precisely luggage often turns out to be an unmistakable symbol of the dreamer’s own genitals. - Stekel also assigns fixed symbolic meanings to numbers, such as often appear in dreams. But these explanations seem neither sufficiently verified nor generally valid, though his interpretations usually appear plausible in the individual cases. In any case the number three has been confirmed from many sides as a symbol of the male genitals.

One of the generalizations put forward by Stekel concerns the double significance of genital symbols. ‘Where’, he asks, ‘is there a symbol which - provided that the imagination by any means admits of it - cannot be employed both in a male and in a female sense?’ In any case the clause in parenthesis removes much of the certainty from this assertion, since in fact the imagination does not always admit of it. But I think it is worth while remarking that in my experience Stekel’s generalization cannot be maintained in the face of the greater complexity of the facts. In addition to symbols which can stand with equal frequency for the male and for the female genitals, there are some which designate one of the sexes predominantly or almost exclusively, and yet others which are known only with a male or a female meaning. For it is a fact that the imagination does not admit of long, stiff objects and weapons being used as symbols of the female genitals, or of hollow objects, such as chests, cases, boxes, etc., being used as symbols for the male ones. It is true that the tendency of dreams and of unconscious phantasies to employ sexual symbols bisexually betrays an archaic characteristic; for in childhood the distinction between the genitals of the two sexes is unknown and the same kind of genitals are attributed to both of them. But it is possible, too, to be misled into wrongly supposing that a sexual symbol is bisexual, if one forgets that in some dreams there is a general inversion of sex, so that what is male is represented as female and vice versa. Dreams of this kind may, for instance, express a woman’s wish to be a man.

The genitals can also be represented in dreams by other parts of the body: the male organ by a hand or a foot and the female genital orifice by the mouth or an ear or even an eye. The secretions of the human body - mucus, tears, urine, semen, etc. - can replace one another in dreams. This last assertion of Stekel’s, which is on the whole correct, has been justifiably criticized by Reitler (1913b) as requiring some qualification: what in fact happens is that significant secretions, such as semen, are replaced by indifferent ones.

It is to be hoped that these very incomplete hints may serve to encourage others to undertake a more painstaking general study of the subject.¹ I myself have attempted to give a more elaborate account of dream-symbolism in my Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916-17).

I shall now append a few examples of the use of these symbols in dreams, with the idea of showing how impossible it becomes to arrive at the interpretation of a dream if one excludes dream-symbolism, and how irresistibly one is driven to accept it in many cases. At the same time, however, I should like to utter an express warning against over-estimating the importance of symbols in dream-interpretation, against restricting the work of translating dreams merely to translating symbols and against abandoning the technique of making use of the dreamer’s associations. The two techniques of dream-interpretation must be complementary to each other; but both in practice and in theory the first place continues to be held by the procedure which I began by describing and which attributes a decisive significance to the comments made by the dreamer, while the translation of symbols, as I have explained it, is also at our disposal as an auxiliary method.

¹ [Footnote added 1911:] However much Scherner’s view of dream-symbolism may differ from the one developed in these pages, I must insist that he is to be regarded as the true discoverer of symbolism in dreams, and that the investigations of psycho-analysis have at last brought recognition to his book, published as it was so many years ago (in 1861), and for so long regarded as fantastic.

IA HAT AS A SYMBOL OF A MAN (OR OF MALE GENITALS)

(Extract from the dream of a young woman suffering from agoraphobia as a result of fears of seduction.)

‘I was walking in the street in the summer, wearing a straw hat of peculiar shape; its middle-piece was bent upwards and its side-pieces hung downwards’ (the description became hesitant at this point) ‘in such a way that one side was lower than the other. I was cheerful and in a self-confident frame of mind; and, as I passed a group of young officers, I thought: "None of you can do me any harm!"'

Since nothing occurred to her in connection with the hat in the dream, I said: ‘No doubt the hat was a male genital organ, with its middle-piece sticking up and its two side-pieces hanging down. It may seem strange, perhaps, that a hat should be a man, but you will remember the phrase "Unter die Haube kommen" ["to find a husband" (literally "to come under the cap")].’ I intentionally gave her no interpretation of the detail about the two side-pieces hanging down unevenly; though it is precisely details of this kind that must point the way in determining an interpretation. I went on to say that as she had a husband with such fine genitals there was no need for her to be afraid of the officers - no need, that is, for her to wish for anything from them, since as a rule she was prevented from going for a walk unprotected and unaccompanied owing to her phantasies of being seduced. I had already been able to give her this last explanation of her anxiety on several occasions upon the basis of other material.

The way in which the dreamer reacted to this material was most remarkable. She withdrew her description of the hat and maintained that she had never said that the two side-pieces hung down. I was too certain of what I had heard to be led astray, and stuck to my guns. She was silent for a while and then found enough courage to ask what was meant by one of her husband’s testes hanging down lower than the other and whether it was the same in all men. In this way the remarkable detail of the hat was explained and the interpretation accepted by her.

At the time my patient told me this dream I had long been familiar with the hat-symbol. Other, less transparent cases had led me to suppose that a hat can also stand for female genitals.¹

¹ [Footnote added 1911:] Cf. an example of this in Kirchgraber (1912). Stekel (1909, 475) records a dream in which a hat with a feather standing up crooked in the middle of it symbolized an (impotent) man.

IIA ‘LITTLE ONE’ AS THE GENITAL ORGAN -

‘BEING RUN OVER’ AS A SYMBOL OF SEXUAL INTERCOURSE(Another dream of the same agoraphobic patient.)

Her mother sent her little daughter away, so that she had to go by herself. Then she went in a train with her mother and saw her little one walk straight on to the rails so that she was bound to be run over. She heard the cracking of her bones. (This produced an uncomfortable feeling in her but no real horror.) Then she looked round out of the window of the railway-carriage to see whether the parts could no be seen behind. Then she reproached her mother for having made the little one go by herself.

ANALYSIS. - It is no easy matter to give a complete interpretation of the dream. It formed part of a cycle of dreams and can only be fully understood if it is taken in connection with the others. There is difficulty in obtaining in sufficient isolation the material necessary for establishing the symbolism. - In the first place, the patient declared that the train journey was to be interpreted historically, as an allusion to a journey she had taken when she was leaving a sanatorium for nervous diseases, with whose director, needless to say, she had been in love. Her mother had fetched her away, and the doctor had appeared at the station and handed her a bouquet of flowers as a parting present. It had been very awkward that her mother should have witnessed this tribute. At this point, then, her mother figured as interfering with her attempts at a love affair; and this had in fact been the part played by that severe lady during the patient’s girlhood. - Her next association related to the sentence: ‘she looked round to see whether the parts could not be seen from behind.’ The façade of the dream would of course lead one to think of the parts of her little daughter who had been run over and mangled. But her association led in quite another direction. She recollected having once seen her father naked in the bath room from behind; she went on to talk of the distinctions between the sexes, and laid stress on the fact that a man’s genitals can be seen even from behind but a woman’s cannot. In this connection she herself interpreted ‘the little one’ as meaning the genitals and ‘her little one’ - she had a four-year-old daughter - as her own genitals. She reproached her mother with having expected her to live as though she had no genitals, and pointed out that the same reproach was expressed in the opening sentence of the dream: ‘her mother sent her little one away, so that she had to go by herself.’ In her imagination ‘going by herself in the streets’ meant not having a man, not having any sexual relations (‘coire’ in Latin means literally ‘to go with’) - and she disliked that. Her accounts all went to show that when she was a girl she had in fact suffered from her mother’s jealousy owing to the preference shown her by her father.

The deeper interpretation of this dream was shown by another dream of the same night, in which the dreamer identified herself with her brother. She had actually been a boyish girl, and had often been told that she should have been a boy. This identification with her brother made it particularly clear that ‘the little one’ meant a genital organ. Her mother was threatening him (or her) with castration, which could only have been a punishment for playing with her penis; thus the identification also proved that she herself had masturbated as a child - a memory which till then she had only had as applied to her brother. The information supplied by the second dream showed that she must have come to know about the male organ at an early age and have afterwards forgotten it. Further, the second dream alluded to the infantile sexual theory according to which girls are boys who have been castrated. When I suggested to her that she had had this childish belief, she at once confirmed the fact by telling me that she had heard the anecdote of the little boy’s saying to the little girl: ‘Cut off?’ and of the little girl’s replying: ‘No, always been like that.’

Thus the sending away of the little one (of the genital organ) in the first dream was also related to the threat of castration. Her ultimate complaint against her mother was for not having given birth to her as a boy.

The fact that ‘being run over’ symbolizes sexual intercourse would not be obvious from this dream, though it has been confirmed from many other sources.

III THE GENITALS REPRESENTED BY BUILDINGS, STAIRS AND SHAFTS

He was going for a walk with his father in a place which must certainly have been the Prater, since he saw the ROTUNDA, with a SMALL ANNEX IN FRONT OF IT to which A CAPTIVE BALLOON was attached, though it looked rather LIMP. His father asked him what all this was for; he was surprised at his asking, but explained it to him. Then they came into a courtyard which had a large sheet laid out in it. His father wanted to PULL OFF a large piece of it, but first looked around to see if anyone was watching. He told him that he need only tell the foreman and he could take some without any bother. A STAIRCASE led down from this yard into A SHAFT, whose walls were cushioned in some soft material, rather like a leather armchair. A the end of the shaft was a longish platform and then another SHAFT started...

ANALYSIS. -This dreamer belonged to a type whose therapeutic prospects are not favourable: up to a certain point they offer no resistance at all to analysis, but from then onwards turn out to be almost inaccessible. He interpreted this dream almost unaided. ‘The Rotunda’, he said, ‘was my genitals and the captive balloon in front of it was my penis, whose limpness I have reason to complain of.’ Going into greater detail, then, we may translate the Rotunda as the bottom (habitually regarded by children as part of the genitals) and the small annex in front of it as the scrotum. His father asked him in the dream what all this was, that is, what was the purpose and function of the genitals. It seemed plausible to reverse this situation and turn the dreamer into the questioner. Since he had in fact never questioned his father in this way, we had to look upon the dream-thought as a wish, or take it as a conditional clause, such as: ‘If I had asked my father for sexual enlightenment...’ We shall presently find the continuation of this thought in another part of the dream.

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