Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/331

Rh of himself in his dream as already well; the painful throbbing of a boil on the perinaeum leads to the dream idea of riding. So it is made possible that the hunger, the thirst, the pressure on the head, the painful inflammation, do not waken the sleeper, but are transmitted into wish-fulfillments by the psychic forces.

The anxiety-dream known as "Alpdruck" brought on by an overloaded stomach, respiratory disturbances or disturbances of the circulation, or by intoxication, permits of explanation in the same way; the unpleasant bodily sensations offer an opportunity for deeply repressed wishes to fulfill themselves, wishes which the censorship of culture will not allow to pass and which can break into consciousness only in connection with feelings of anxiety and disgust.

In the process of analysis, as already said, we retrace, only in the reverse direction, the same way which the sleeping soul has travelled in the creation of the dream. And when we compare the manifest dream, often very short, with the rich material which is brought to light during the process of analysis, and when we consider that in spite of this quantitative difference all the elements of the latent dream-content are contained in some way in the portion which is manifest to us, we must agree that Freud is right when he considers this dream-condensation as the most toilsome part of the creation of the dream. I will attempt to show this by an example. A patient suffering from psychosexual impotence brought to me on one occasion a dream made up of two fragments. In the first fragment the only occurrence was that instead of a Hungarian paper, "Pesti Holap," which regularly came to him, he received the Vienna "Neue Freie Presse," to which as a matter of fact one of his colleagues subscribed. The second fragment of the dream dealt with a brunette, whom he wanted to marry at any price. It turned out that he acquired in his dream not the foreign paper, but in the hidden sense of the dream, a foreign woman, to whom in fact a colleague had "subscribed." This woman had long excited his interest, for it seemed to him that just this person could bring to functioning his sexuality which was struggling with strong inhibitions. The thought associations which came from this idea made it clear that he had been deceived in his hopes of another woman, with whom, with the same object in view, he had entered into a lasting relation. This woman, since she was a Hungarian, he had concealed in the dream behind the name of the paper "Pesti Holap." Of late he had occupied himself in seeking free sexual associations, which led to no obligations, instead of such more stable relations. When we know the great freedom with which the dream avails itself of symbols, we are not surprised to learn that my patient also applied the word "Press" in a sexual sense.