CHAPTER 3
THE DREAM AS WISH-FULFILMENT
When, after passing through a narrow defile, one suddenly reaches a
height beyond which the ways part and a rich prospect lies outspread in
different directions, it is well to stop for a moment and consider
whither one shall turn next. We are in somewhat the same position after
we have mastered this first interpretation of a dream. We find ourselves
standing in the light of a sudden discovery. The dream is not comparable
to the irregular sounds of a musical instrument, which, instead of being
played by the hand of a musician, is struck by some external force; the
dream is not meaningless, not absurd, does not presuppose that one part
of our store of ideas is dormant while another part begins to awake. It
is a perfectly valid psychic phenomenon, actually a wish-fulfilment; it
may be enrolled in the continuity of the intelligible psychic activities
of the waking state; it is built up by a highly complicated intellectual
activity. But at the very moment when we are about to rejoice in this
discovery a host of problems besets us. If the dream, as this theory
defines it, represents a fulfilled wish, what is the cause of the
striking and unfamiliar manner in which this fulfilment is expressed?
What transformation has occurred in our dream-thoughts before the
manifest dream, as we remember it on waking, shapes itself out of them?
How has this transformation taken place? Whence comes the material that
is worked up into the dream? What causes many of the peculiarities which
are to be observed in our dream-thoughts; for example, how is it that
they are able to contradict one another? Is the dream capable of
teaching us something new concerning our internal psychic processes and
can its content correct opinions which we have held during the day? I
suggest that for the present all these problems be laid aside, and that
a single path be pursued. We have found that the dream represents a wish
as fulfilled. Our next purpose should be to ascertain whether this is a
general characteristic of dreams, or whether it is only the accidental
content of the particular dream (the dream about Irma's injection) with
which we have begun our analysis; for even if we conclude that every
dream has a meaning and psychic value, we must nevertheless allow for
the possibility that this meaning may not be the same in every dream.
The first dream which we have considered was the fulfilment of a wish;
another may turn out to be the realization of an apprehension; a third
may have a reflection as its content; a fourth may simply reproduce a
reminiscence. Are there, then dreams other than wish-dreams; or are
there none but wish-dreams? -
It is easy to show that the wish-fulfilment in dreams is often
undisguised and easy to recognize, so that one may wonder why the
language of dreams has not long since been understood. There is, for
example, a dream which I can evoke as often as I please, experimentally,
as it were. If, in the evening, I eat anchovies, olives, or other
strongly salted foods, I am thirsty at night, and therefore I wake. The
waking, however, is preceded by a dream, which has always the same
content, namely, that I am drinking. I am drinking long draughts of
water; it tastes as delicious as only a cool drink can taste when one's
throat is parched; and then I wake, and find that I have an actual
desire to drink. The cause of this dream is thirst, which I perceive
when I wake. From this sensation arises the wish to drink, and the dream
shows me this wish as fulfilled. It thereby serves a function, the
nature of which I soon surmise. I sleep well, and am not accustomed to
being waked by a bodily need. If I succeed in appeasing my thirst by
means of the dream that I am drinking, I need not wake up in order to
satisfy that thirst. It is thus a dream of convenience. The dream takes
the place of action, as elsewhere in life. Unfortunately, the need of
water to quench the thirst cannot be satisfied by a dream, as can my
thirst for revenge upon Otto and Dr. M, but the intention is the same.
Not long ago I had the same dream in a somewhat modified form. On this
occasion I felt thirsty before going to bed, and emptied the glass of
water which stood on the little chest beside my bed. Some hours later,
during the night, my thirst returned, with the consequent discomfort. In
order to obtain water, I should have had to get up and fetch the glass
which stood on my wife's bed- table. I thus quite appropriately dreamt
that my wife was giving me a drink from a vase; this vase was an
Etruscan cinerary urn, which I had brought home from Italy and had since
given away. But the water in it tasted so salt (apparently on account of
the ashes) that I was forced to wake. It may be observed how
conveniently the dream is capable of arranging matters. Since the
fulfilment of a wish is its only purpose, it may be perfectly egoistic.
Love of comfort is really not compatible with consideration for others.
The introduction of the cinerary urn is probably once again the
fulfilment of a wish; I regret that I no longer possess this vase; it,
like the glass of water at my wife's side, is inaccessible to me. The
cinerary urn is appropriate also in connection with the sensation of an
increasingly salty taste, which I know will compel me to wake. [1] -
Such convenience-dreams came very frequently to me in my youth.
Accustomed as I had always been to working until late at night, early
waking was always a matter of difficulty. I used then to dream that I
was out of bed and standing at the wash-stand. After a while I could no
longer shut out the knowledge that I was not yet up; but in the meantime
I had continued to sleep. The same sort of lethargy-dream was dreamed by
a young colleague of mine, who appears to share my propensity for sleep.
With him it assumed a particularly amusing form. The landlady with whom
he was lodging in the neighbourhood of the hospital had strict orders to
wake him every morning at a given hour, but she found it by no means
easy to carry out his orders. One morning sleep was especially sweet to
him. The woman called into his room: "Herr Pepi, get up; you've got to
go to the hospital." Whereupon the sleeper dreamt of a room in the
hospital, of a bed in which he was lying, and of a chart pinned over his
head, which read as follows: "Pepi M, medical student, 22 years of age."
He told himself in the dream: "If I am already at the hospital, I don't
have to go there," turned over, and slept on. He had thus frankly
admitted to himself his motive for dreaming.
Here is yet another dream of which the stimulus was active during
sleep: One of my women patients, who had been obliged to undergo an
unsuccessful operation on the jaw, was instructed by her physicians to
wear by day and night a cooling apparatus on the affected cheek; but she
was in the habit of throwing it off as soon as she had fallen asleep.
One day I was asked to reprove her for doing so; she had again thrown
the apparatus on the floor. The patient defended herself as follows:
"This time I really couldn't help it; it was the result of a dream which
I had during the night. In the dream I was in a box at the opera, and
was taking a lively interest in the performance. But Herr Karl Meyer was
lying in the sanatorium and complaining pitifully on account of pains in
his jaw. I said to myself, 'Since I haven't the pains, I don't need the
apparatus either'; that's why I threw it away." The dream of this poor
sufferer reminds me of an expression which comes to our lips when we are
in a disagreeable situation: "Well, I can imagine more amusing things!"
The dream presents these "more amusing things!" Herr Karl Meyer, to whom
the dreamer attributed her pains, was the most casual acquaintance of
whom she could think.
It is quite as simple a matter to discover the wish-fulfilment in
several other dreams which I have collected from healthy persons. A
friend who was acquainted with my theory of dreams, and had explained it
to his wife, said to me one day: "My wife asked me to tell you that she
dreamt yesterday that she was having her menses. You will know what that
means." Of course I know: if the young wife dreams that she is having
her menses, the menses have stopped. I can well imagine that she would
have liked to enjoy her freedom a little longer, before the discomforts
of maternity began. It was a clever way of giving notice of her first
pregnancy. Another friend writes that his wife had dreamt not long ago
that she noticed milk-stains on the front of her blouse. This also is an
indication of pregnancy, but not of the first one; the young mother
hoped she would have more nourishment for the second child than she had
for the first.
A young woman who for weeks had been cut off from all society because
she was nursing a child who was suffering from an infectious disease
dreamt, after the child had recovered, of a company of people in which
Alphonse Daudet, Paul Bourget, Marcel Prevost and others were present;
they were all very pleasant to her and amused her enormously. In her
dream these different authors had the features which their portraits
give them. M. Prevost, with whose portrait she is not familiar, looked
like the man who had disinfected the sickroom the day before, the first
outsider to enter it for a long time. Obviously the dream is to be
translated thus: "It is about time now for something more entertaining
than this eternal nursing."
Perhaps this collection will suffice to prove that frequently, and
under the most complex conditions, dreams may be noted which can be
understood only as wish-fulfilments, and which present their content
without concealment. In most cases these are short and simple dreams,
and they stand in pleasant contrast to the confused and overloaded
dream-compositions which have almost exclusively attracted the attention
of the writers on the subject. But it will repay us if we give some time
to the examination of these simple dreams. The simplest dreams of all
are, I suppose, to be expected in the case of children whose psychic
activities are certainly less complicated than those of adults. Child
psychology, in my opinion, is destined to render the same services to
the psychology of adults as a study of the structure or development of
the lower animals renders to the investigation of the structure of the
higher orders of animals. Hitherto but few deliberate efforts have been
made to make use of the psychology of the child for such a purpose.
The dreams of little children are often simple fulfilments of wishes,
and for this reason are, as compared with the dreams of adults, by no
means interesting. They present no problem to be solved, but they are
invaluable as affording proof that the dream, in its inmost essence, is
the fulfilment of a wish. I have been able to collect several examples
of such dreams from the material furnished by my own children.
For two dreams, one that of a daughter of mine, at that time eight
and a half years of age, and the other that of a boy of five and a
quarter, I am indebted to an excursion to Hallstatt, in the summer of
1806. I must first explain that we were living that summer on a hill
near Aussee, from which, when the weather was fine, we enjoyed a
splendid view of the Dachstein. With a telescope we could easily
distinguish the Simony hut. The children often tried to see it through
the telescope- I do not know with what success. Before the excursion I
had told the children that Hallstatt lay at the foot of the Dachstein.
They looked forward to the outing with the greatest delight. From
Hallstatt we entered the valley of Eschern, which enchanted the children
with its constantly changing scenery. One of them, however, the boy of
five, gradually became discontented. As often as a mountain came into
view, he would ask: "Is that the Dachstein?" whereupon I had to reply:
"No, only a foot-hill." After this question had been repeated several
times he fell quite silent, and did not wish to accompany us up the
steps leading to the waterfall. I thought he was tired. But the next
morning he came to me, perfectly happy, and said: "Last night I dreamt
that we went to the Simony hut." I understood him now; he had expected,
when I spoke of the Dachstein, that on our excursion to Hallstatt he
would climb the mountain, and would see at close quarters the hut which
had been so often mentioned when the telescope was used. When he learned
that he was expected to content himself with foot-hills and a waterfall
he was disappointed, and became discontented. But the dream compensated
him for all this. I tried to learn some details of the dream; they were
scanty. "You go up steps for six hours," as he had been told.
On this excursion the girl of eight and a half had likewise cherished
wishes which had to be satisfied by a dream. We had taken with us to
Hallstatt our neighbour's twelve-year-old boy; quite a polished little
gentleman, who, it seemed to me, had already won the little woman's
sympathies. Next morning she related the following dream: "Just think, I
dreamt that Emil was one of the family, that he said 'papa' and 'mamma'
to you, and slept at our house, in the big room, like one of the boys.
Then mamma came into the room and threw a handful of big bars of
chocolate, wrapped in blue and green paper, under our beds." The girl's
brothers, who evidently had not inherited an understanding of
dream-interpretation, declared, just as the writers we have quoted would
have done: "That dream is nonsense." The girl defended at least one part
of the dream, and from the standpoint of the theory of the neuroses it
is interesting to learn which part it was that she defended: "That Emil
was one of the family was nonsense, but that about the bars of chocolate
wasn't." It was just this latter part that was obscure to me, until my
wife furnished the explanation. On the way home from the railway-
station the children had stopped in front of a slot-machine, and had
wanted exactly such bars of chocolate, wrapped in paper with a metallic
lustre, such as the machine, in their experience, provided. But the
mother thought, and rightly so, that the day had brought them enough
wish-fulfilments, and therefore left this wish to be satisfied in the
dream. This little scene had escaped me. That portion of the dream which
had been condemned by my daughter I understood without any difficulty. I
myself had heard the well-behaved little guest enjoining the children,
as they were walking ahead of us, to wait until "papa" or "mamma" had
come up. For the little girl the dream turned this temporary
relationship into a permanent adoption. Her affection could not as yet
conceive of any other way of enjoying her friend's company permanently
than the adoption pictured in her dream, which was suggested by her
brothers. Why the bars of chocolate were thrown under the bed could not,
of course, be explained without questioning the child.
From a friend I have learned of a dream very much like that of my
little boy. It was dreamed by a little girl of eight. Her father,
accompanied by several children, had started on a walk to Dornbach, with
the intention of visiting the Rohrer hut, but had turned back, as it was
growing late, promising the children to take them some other time. On
the way back they passed a signpost which pointed to the Hameau. The
children now asked him to take them to the Hameau, but once more, and
for the same reason, they had to be content with the promise that they
should go there some other day. Next morning the little girl went to her
father and told him, with a satisfied air: "Papa, I dreamed last night
that you were with us at the Rohrer hut, and on the Hameau." Thus, in
the dream her impatience had anticipated the fulfilment of the promise
made by her father.
Another dream, with which the picturesque beauty of the Aussee
inspired my daughter, at that time three and a quarter years of age, is
equally straightforward. The little girl had crossed the lake for the
first time, and the trip had passed too quickly for her. She did not
want to leave the boat at the landing, and cried bitterly. The next
morning she told us: "Last night I was sailing on the lake." Let us hope
that the duration of this dream-voyage was more satisfactory to her.
My eldest boy, at that time eight years of age, was already dreaming
of the realization of his fancies. He had ridden in a chariot with
Achilles, with Diomedes as charioteer. On the previous day he had shown
a lively interest in a book on the myths of Greece which had been given
to his elder sister.
If it can be admitted that the talking of children in their sleep
belongs to the sphere of dreams, I can relate the following as one of
the earliest dreams in my collection: My youngest daughter, at that time
nineteen months old, vomited one morning, and was therefore kept without
food all day. During the night she was heard to call excitedly in her
sleep: "Anna F(r)eud, St'awbewy, wild st'awbewy, om'lette, pap!" She
used her name in this way in order to express the act of appropriation;
the menu presumably included everything that would seem to her a
desirable meal; the fact that two varieties of strawberry appeared in it
was demonstration against the sanitary regulations of the household, and
was based on the circumstance, which she had by no means overlooked,
that the nurse had ascribed her indisposition to an over-plentiful
consumption of strawberries; so in her dream she avenged herself for
this opinion which met with her disapproval.[2]
When we call childhood happy because it does not yet know sexual
desire, we must not forget what a fruitful source of disappointment and
renunciation, and therefore of dream- stimulation, the other great vital
impulse may be for the child.[3] Here is a second example. My nephew,
twenty-two months of age, had been instructed to congratulate me on my
birthday, and to give me a present of a small basket of cherries, which
at that time of the year were scarce, being hardly in season. He seemed
to find the task a difficult one, for he repeated again and again:
"Cherries in it," and could not be induced to let the little basket go
out of his hands. But he knew how to indemnify himself. He had, until
then, been in the habit of telling his mother every morning that he had
dreamt of the "white soldier," an officer of the guard in a white cloak,
whom he had once admired in the street. On the day after the sacrifice
on my birthday he woke up joyfully with the announcement, which could
have referred only to a dream: "He [r] man eaten all the cherries!"[4]
What animals dream of I do not know. A proverb, for which I am
indebted to one of my pupils, professes to tell us, for it asks the
question: "What does the goose dream of?" and answers: "Of maize."[5]
The whole theory that the dream is the fulfilment of a wish is contained
in these two sentences.[6]
We now perceive that we should have reached our theory of the hidden
meaning of dreams by the shortest route had we merely consulted the
vernacular. Proverbial wisdom, it is true, often speaks contemptuously
enough of dreams- it apparently seeks to justify the scientists when it
says that "dreams are bubbles"; but in colloquial language the dream is
predominantly the gracious fulfiller of wishes. "I should never have
imagined that in my wildest dreams," we exclaim in delight if we find
that the reality surpasses our expectations.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes
[1] The facts relating to dreams of thirst were known also to
Weygandt, who speaks of them as follows: "It is just this sensation of
thirst which is registered most accurately of all; it always causes a
representation of quenching the thirst. The manner in which the dream
represents the act of quenching the thirst is manifold, and is specified
in accordance with some recent recollection. A universal phenomenon
noticeable here is the fact that the representation of quenching the
thirst is immediately followed by disappointment in the inefficacy of
the imagined refreshment." But he overlooks the universal character of
the reaction of the dream to the stimulus. If other persons who are
troubled by thirst at night awake without dreaming beforehand, this does
not constitute an objection to my experiment, but characterizes them as
persons who sleep less soundly. Cf. Isaiah, 29. 8.
[2] The dream afterwards accomplished the same purpose in the case of
the child's grandmother, who is older than the child by about seventy
years. After she had been forced to go hungry for a day on account of
the restlessness of her floating kidney, she dreamed, being apparently
translated into the happy years of her girlhood, that she had been asked
out, invited to lunch and dinner, and had at each meal been served with
the most delicious titbits.
[3] A more searching investigation into the psychic life of the child
teaches us, of course, that sexual motives, in infantile forms, play a
very considerable part, which has been too long overlooked, in the
psychic activity of the child. This permits us to doubt to some extent
the happiness of the child, as imagined later by adults. Cf. Three
Contributions to the Theory of Sex.
[4] It should be mentioned that young children often have more
complex and obscure dreams, while, on the other hand, adults, in certain
circumstances, often have dreams of a simple and infantile character.
How rich in unsuspected content the dreams of children no more than four
or five years of age may be is shown by the examples in my "Analysis of
a Phobia in a five-year old Boy," Collected Papers, III, and Jung's
"Experiences Concerning the Psychic Life of the Child," translated by
Brill, American Journal of Psychology. April, 1910. For analytically
interpreted dreams of children, see also von Hug-Hellmuth, Putnam,
Raalte, Spielrein, and Tausk; others by Banchieri, Busemann, Doglia, and
especially Wigam, who emphasizes the wish- fulfilling tendency of such
dreams. On the other hand, it seems that dreams of an infantile type
reappear with especial frequency in adults who are transferred into the
midst of unfamiliar conditions. Thus Otto Nordenskjold, in his book,
Antarctic (1904, vol. i, p. 336), writes as follows of the crew who
spent the winter with him: "Very characteristic of the trend of our
inmost thoughts were our dreams, which were never more vivid and more
numerous. Even those of our comrades with whom dreaming was formerly
exceptional had long stories to tell in the morning, when we exchanged
our experiences in the world of phantasy. They all had reference to that
outside world which was now so far removed from us, but they often
fitted into our immediate circumstances. An especially characteristic
dream was that in which one of our comrades believed himself back at
school, where the task was assigned to him of skinning miniature seals,
which were manufactured especially for purposes of instruction. Eating
and drinking constituted the pivot around which most of our dreams
revolved. One of us, who was especially fond of going to big
dinner-parties, was delighted if he could report in the morning 'that he
had had a three-course dinner.' Another dreamed of tobacco, whole
mountains of tobacco; yet another dreamed of a ship approaching on the
open sea under full sail. Still another dream deserves to be mentioned:
The postman brought the post and gave a long explanation of why it was
so long delayed; he had delivered it at the wrong address, and only with
great trouble was he able to get it back. To be sure, we were often
occupied in our sleep with still more impossible things, but the lack of
phantasy in almost all the dreams which I myself dreamed, or heard
others relate, was quite striking. It would certainly have been of great
psychological interest if all these dreams could have been recorded. But
one can readily understand how we longed for sleep. That alone could
afford us everything that we all most ardently desired." I will continue
by a quotation from Du Prel (p. 231): "Mungo Park, nearly dying of
thirst on one of his African expeditions, dreamed constantly of the
well-watered valleys and meadows of his home. Similarly Trenck, tortured
by hunger in the fortress of Magdeburg, saw himself surrounded by
copious meals. And George Back, a member of Franklin's first expedition,
when he was on the point of death by starvation, dreamed continually and
invariably of plenteous meals."
[5] A Hungarian proverb cited by Ferenczi states more explicitly that
"the pig dreams of acorns, the goose of maize." A Jewish proverb asks:
"Of what does the hen dream?"- "Of millet" (Sammlung jud. Sprichw. u.
Redensarten., edit. by Bernstein, 2nd ed., p. 116).
[6] I am far from wishing to assert that no previous writer has ever
thought of tracing a dream to a wish. (Cf. the first passages of the
next chapter.) Those interested in the subject will find that even in
antiquity the physician Herophilos, who lived under the First Ptolemy,
distinguished between three kinds of dreams: dreams sent by the gods;
natural dreams- those which come about whenever the soul creates for
itself an image of that which is beneficial to it, and will come to
pass; and mixed dreams- those which originate spontaneously from the
juxtaposition of images, when we see that which we desire. From the
examples collected by Scherner, J. Starcke cites a dream which was
described by the author himself as a wish-fulfilment (p. 239). Scherner
says: "The phantasy immediately fulfills the dreamer's wish, simply
because this existed vividly in the mind." This dream belongs to the
"emotional dreams." Akin to it are dreams due to "masculine and feminine
erotic longing," and to "irritable moods." As will readily be seen,
Scherner does not ascribe to the wish any further significance for the
dream than to any other psychic condition of the waking state; least of
all does he insist on the connection between the wish and the essential
nature of the dream.
