Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/330

3l8 The two broken chairs leaning against the wall were shown by analysis to be a scenic presentation of the proverb "To fall to the ground between two stools" (that is, to be deceived from two directions). The patient had already had two suitors, but the family constellation already mentioned (the unconscious love for her brother) prevented the marriage on both occasions. And although her unconscious ego, according to her repeated testimony, had long been reconciled to the thought of spinsterhood, she still seems in the depth of her soul to have regarded with some envy the recent betrothal of one of her friends. The affianced couple had in fact been calling on her the day before.

According to Freud's theory we can picture to ourselves the origin of this dream in the following way: The dream-work succeeded in uniting two experiences of the day before, the breaking of the pitcher and the visit of the betrothed pair, with that train of thought, always emotively toned, which, though already suppressed in childhood, was always in condition to lend its affective energy to any present mental image which could be brought into even a superficial connection with it. Freud compares the dream to the promotion of a business undertaking, in which the unconscious, suppressed complex furnishes the capital, that is, the affective energy, while the wishes play the rôle of promoters.

Another source of dreams is in those sensory and sensible nerve-stimulations to which the organism is subject during sleep. These may be: dermal stimuli, the pressure of mattress and covering, cooling of the skin; acoustic or optical stimuli to which the sleeper is subjected; organic sensations: hunger, thirst, an overloaded stomach; a stimulated condition of the sex parts, and so on. Most psychologists and physiologists are inclined to attribute too great significance to stimuli of this sort; they think that they have given a satisfactory explanation of all dreams when they say that the dream is nothing but the sum of such psychophysic reactions, set free by nerve stimuli of this character. On the other hand, Freud rightly says that the dream does not admit these bodily stimuli as such to consciousness, but disguises and alters them in particular ways; the motive and means of this disguise are given not through the outer stimuli, but from mental sources of energy. The nerve stimuli during sleep offer then, as it were, only the opportunity for the unfolding of certain immanent tendencies of the psychic life. Analysis shows that dreams caused by nerve stimulation are also open or concealed wish-fulfillments: the thirsty man drinks great amounts of water in his dreams, the hungry man satisfies himself; the sick man who is disturbed by the ice-packing on his head throws it away, for he thinks