Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/385

Rh Blaetter: "Take a desert and strain it; the lions will remain." Also a very amusing, but not very proper anecdote about an official who is asked why he does not take greater pains to win the favour of his superior officer, and who answers that he has been trying to insinuate himself, but that the man ahead of him is already up. The whole matter becomes intelligible as soon as one learns that on the day of the dream the lady had received a visit from her husband's superior. He was very polite to her, kissed her hand, and she was not afraid of him at all, although he is a "big bug" (German—Grosses Tier= "big animal") and plays the part of a "social lion" in the capital of her country. This lion is, therefore, like the lion in the Midsummer Night's Dream, who unmasks as Snug, the joiner, and of such stuff are all dream lions made when one is not afraid.

II. As my second example, I cite the dream of the girl who saw her sister's little son lying dead in a coffin, but who, I may now add, felt no pain or sorrow thereat. We know from analysis why not. The dream only concealed her wish to see the man she loved again; the affect must be attuned to the wish, and not to its concealment. There was no occasion for sorrow at all.

In a number of dreams the emotion at least remains connected with that presentation content which has replaced the one really belonging to it. In others the breaking up of the complex is carried further. The affect seems to be entirely separated from the idea belonging to it, and finds a place somewhere else in the dream where it fits into the new arrangement of the dream elements. This is similar to what we have learned of acts of judgment of the dream. If there is a significant inference in the dream thoughts, the dream also contains one; but in the dream the inference may be shifted to entirely different material. Not infrequently this shifting takes place according to the principle of antithesis.

I illustrate the latter possibility by the following dream, which I have subjected to the most exhaustive analysis.

III. ''A castle by the sea; afterwards it lies not directly on the sea, but on a narrow canal that leads to the sea. A certain Mr. P. is the governor of it. I stand with him in a large salon with three windows, in front of which rise the projections of a wall,''