The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud (1900)

I will interrupt the analysis of this dreamer in order to insert a short, innocent dream which was dreamed by a young man. He dreamt that he was
putting on his winter overcoat again; this was terrible. The occasion for this dream is apparently the sudden advent of cold weather. On more
careful examination we note that the two brief fragments of the dream do not fit together very well, for what could be terrible about wearing a
thick or heavy coat in cold weather? Unfortunately for the innocency of this dream, the first association, under analysis, yields the recollection
that yesterday a lady had confidentially confessed to him that her last child owed its existence to the splitting of a condom. He now reconstructs
his thoughts in accordance with this suggestion: A thin condom is dangerous, a thick one is bad. The condom is a "pullover" (Ueberzieher =
literally pullover), for it is pulled over something: and Uebersieher is the German term for a light overcoat. An experience like that related by the
lady would indeed be terrible for an unmarried man.
We will now return to our other innocent dreamer.
She puts a candle into a candlestick; but the candle is broken, so that it does not stand up. The girls at school say she is clumsy; but she replies
that it is not her fault.
IV.
Here, too, there is an actual occasion for the dream; the day before she had actually put a candle into a candlestick; but this one was not broken.
An obvious symbolism has here been employed. The candle is an object which excites the female genitals; its being broken, so that it does not
stand upright, signifies impotence on the man's part (it is not her fault). But does this young woman, carefully brought up, and a stranger to all
obscenity, know of such an application of the candle? By chance she is able to tell how she came by this information. While paddling a canoe on
the Rhine, a boat passed her which contained some students, who were singing rapturously, or rather yelling: "When the Queen of Sweden,
behind closed shutters, with the candles of Apollo..."
She does not hear or else understand the last word. Her husband was asked to give her the required explanation. These verses are then replaced in
the dream-content by the innocent recollection of a task which she once performed clumsily at her boarding- school, because of the closed
shutters. The connection between the theme of masturbation and that of impotence is clear enough. Apollo in the latent dream-content connects
this dream with an earlier one in which the virgin Pallas figured. All this is obviously not innocent.
V.
Lest it may seem too easy a matter to draw conclusions from dreams concerning the dreamer's real circumstances, I add another dream originating
with the same person, which once more appears innocent. "I dreamt of doing something," she relates, "which I actually did during the day, that is
to say, I filled a little trunk so full of books that I had difficulty in closing it. My dream was just like the actual occurrence." Here the dreamer
herself emphasizes the correspondence between the dream and the reality. All such criticisms of the dream, and comments on the dream, although
they have found a place in the waking thoughts, properly belong to the latent dream-content, as further examples will confirm. We are told, then,
that what the dream relates has actually occurred during the day. It would take us too far afield to show how we arrive at the idea of making use
of the English language to help us in the interpretation of this dream. Suffice it to say that it is again a question of a little box (cf. chap. IV, the
dream of the dead child in the box) which has been filled so full that nothing can go into it.
In all these "innocent" dreams the sexual factor as the motive of the censorship is very prominent. But this is a subject of primary significance,
which we must consider later.
B. Infantile Experiences as the Source of Dreams
As the third of the peculiarities of the dream-content, we have adduced the fact, in agreement with all other writers on the subject (excepting
Robert), that impressions from our childhood may appear in dreams, which do not seem to be at the disposal of the waking memory. It is, of
course, difficult to decide how seldom or how frequently this occurs, because after waking the origin of the respective elements of the dream is
not recognized. The proof that we are dealing with impressions of our childhood must thus be adduced objectively, and only in rare instances do
the conditions favour such proof. The story is told by A. Maury, as being particularly conclusive, of a man who decides to visit his birthplace
after an absence of twenty years. On the night before his departure he dreams that he is in a totally unfamiliar locality, and that he there meets a
strange man with whom he holds a conversation. Subsequently, upon his return home, he is able to convince himself that this strange locality
really exists in the vicinity of his home, and the strange man in the dream turns out to be a friend of his dead father's, who is living in the town.
This is, of course, a conclusive proof that in his childhood he had seen both the man and the locality. The dream, moreover, is to be interpreted as
a dream of impatience, like the dream of the girl who carries in her pocket the ticket for a concert, the dream of the child whose father had
promised him an excursion to the Hameau (ch. III), and so forth. The motives which reproduce just these impressions of childhood for the
dreamer cannot, of course, be discovered without analysis.
One of my colleagues, who attended my lectures, and who boasted that his dreams were very rarely subject to distortion, told me that he had
sometime previously seen, in a dream, his former tutor in bed with his nurse, who had remained in the household until his eleventh year. The