Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/124

106 sleeper dreamt of a room in the hospital, a bed in which he was lying, and a chart pinned over his head reading: "Joe H.... cand. med. 22 years old." He said to 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 another dream, the stimulus for which acts during sleep itself: One of my women patients, who had had to undergo an unsuccessful operation on the jaw, was to wear a cooling apparatus on the affected cheek, according to the orders of the physicians. But she was in the habit of throwing it off as soon as she had got to sleep. One day I was asked to reprove her for doing so; for 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 in the night. In the dream, I was in a box at the opera and was taking a lively interest in the performance. But Mr. 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." This dream of the poor sufferer is similar to the idea in the expression which comes to our lips when we are in a disagreeable situation: "I know something that's a great deal more fun." The dream presents this great deal more fun. Mr. Karl Meyer, to whom the dreamer attributed her pains, was the most indifferent young man of her acquaintance whom she could recall.

It is no more difficult to discover the fulfilment of wishes in several dreams which I have collected from healthy persons. A friend who knew my theory of dreams and had imparted 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 understand that she would have liked to enjoy her freedom for a time longer before the discomforts of motherhood began. It was a clever way of giving notice of her first pregnancy. Another friend writes that his wife had recently dreamt that she noticed milk stains on the bosom of