Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/372

354 sensical idea that Goethe should, have made a literary attack upon a young man of my acquaintance? "It seems plausible to me that he was 18 years old." That sounds quite like the result of a dull-witted calculation; and "I do not know exactly what year it is" would be an example of uncertainty or doubt in the dream.

But I know from analysis that these acts of judgment, which seem to have been performed in the dream for the first time, admit of a different construction in the light of which they become indispensable for interpreting the dream, and at the same time every absurdity is avoided. With the sentence, "I try to find some explanation of the chronological relations," I put myself in the place of my friend who is actually trying to explain the chronological relations of life. The sentence then loses its significance as a judgment that objects to the nonsense of the previous sentences. The interposition, "which seems improbable to me," belongs to the subsequent "it seems plausible to me." In about the same words I had answered the lady who told me the story of her brother's illness: "It seems improbable to me that the cry of 'Nature, Nature,' had anything to do with Goethe; it appears much more plausible that it had the sexual significance which is known to you." To be sure, a judgment has been passed here, not, however, in the dream but in reality, on an occasion which is remembered and utilised by the dream thoughts. The dream content appropriates this judgment like any other fragment of the dream thoughts.

The numeral 18, with which the judgment in the dream is meaninglessly connected, still preserves a trace of the context from which the real judgment was torn. Finally, "I am not certain what year it is" is intended for nothing else than to carry out my identification with the paralytic, in the examination of whom this point of confirmation had actually been established.

In the solution of these apparent acts of judgment, in the dream, it may be well to call attention to the rule of interpretation which says that the coherence which is fabricated in the dream between its constituent parts is to be disregarded us specious and unessential, and that every dream element must be taken by itself and traced to its source. The dream is