Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/334

322 goes beyond such a thought, by attaching to its more unessential parts memory images until the condensed psychic intensity of these latter is able to distract the attention from the particularly interesting thought. As an example of the displaced centre of the conscious dream in comparison with the centre of the dream thoughts I may mention the already cited dream of the aunt concerning the death of her beloved, nephew. The actually non-essential funeral took up the largest place in the dream, the personality which was very significant for the dream thoughts was on the contrary present in the dream only through a distant allusion.

I was once called upon to analyze the very short dream of a woman; she had wrung the neck of a little barking, white dog. She was very much amazed that she, who ' 'could not hurt a fly" could dream such a cruel dream; she did not remember having had one like it before. She admitted that she was very fond of cooking and that many times she had with her own hands killed chickens and doves. Then it occurred to her that she had wrung the neck of the little dog in her dream in exactly the same way that she was accustomed to do with the doves in order to cause the birds less pain. The thoughts and associations which followed had to do with pictures and stories of executions, and especially with the thought that the executioner, when he has fastened the cord about the neck of the criminal, arranges it so as to give the neck a twist, to hasten death. Asked against whom she felt strong enmity at the present time, she named a sister-in-law, and related at length her bad qualities and the malicious deeds, with which she had disturbed the family harmony, before so beautiful, after insinuating herself like a tame dove into the favor of her later husband. Not long before.there had taken place between her and the patient a very violent scene, which ended by the patient showing the other woman the door with the words: "Get out; I cannot endure a biting dog in my house." Now it was clear whom the little white dog represented, and whose neck she wrung in her dream. The sister-in-law is also a small person, with an extraordinarily white complexion. This little analysis enables us to observe the dream in its displacing and so disguising activity.

Without doubt the dream has used the comparison with the biting dog, instead of the real object of the execution-fancy (the sister-in-law), smuggling in a little white dog, just as the angel in the Biblical story gave Abraham a ram to slaughter at the last instant, when he was preparing to sacrifice his son. In order to accomplish this, the dream had to heap up memory images of the killing of animals until by means of their condensed psychic energy the image of the hated person paled,