Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/344

326 the mother says: "What are you doing? It only costs 21 kreuzer." This bit of dream was immediately intelligible to me without further explanation from my knowledge of the dreamer's circumstances. The lady was a foreigner who had provided for her daughter in an educational institution in Vienna, and who could continue my treatment as long as her daughter stayed in the city. In three weeks the daughter's school year was to end, and with that the treatment also stopped. On the day before the dream the principal of the institute had urged her to make up her mind to allow her child to remain with her for another year. She had then obviously worked out this suggestion to the conclusion that in this case she would be able to continue the treatment for one year more. Now, this is what the dream refers to, for a year is equal to 365 days; the three weeks that remain before the close of the school year and of the treatment are equivalent to 21 days (though the hours of treatment are not as many as that). The numerals, which in the dream thoughts referred to time, are given money values in the dream, not without also giving expression to a deeper meaning for "time is money." 365 kreuzer, to be sure, are 3 florins and 65 kreuzer. The smallness of the sums which appear in the dream is a self-evident wish-fulfilment; the wish has reduced the cost of both the treatment and the year's instruction at the institution.

II. The numerals in another dream involve more complicated relations. A young lady, who, however, has already been married a number of years, learns that an acquaintance of hers of about her own age, Elsie L., has just become engaged. Thereupon she dreams: ''She is sitting in the theatre with her husband, and one side of the orchestra is quite unoccupied. Her husband tells her that Elsie L. and her husband had also wanted to go, but that they had been able to get nothing but poor seats, three for 1 florin and 50 kreuzer, and of course they could not take those. She thinks that they didn't lose much either.''

Where do the 1 florin and 50 kreuzer come from? From an occurrence of the previous day which is really indifferent. The dreamer's sister-in-law had received 150 florins as a present from her husband, and had quickly got rid of them by buying some jewelry. Let us note that 150 florins is 100 times more than 1 florin and 50 kreuzer. Whence the 3 which