Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/387

Rh at another point, where I see the warships I am frightened, and experience all the sensations of fright while I sleep. The distribution of affects in this well-constructed dream has been made in such a way that every obvious contradiction is avoided. For there is no reason why I should be frightened at the governor's death, and it is fitting that as the commander of the castle I should be alarmed by the sight of the warship. Now analysis shows that Mr. P. is nothing but a substitute for my own Ego (in the dream I am his substitute). I am the governor who suddenly dies. The dream thoughts deal with the future of those dear to me after my premature death. No other disagreeable thought is to be found among the dream thoughts. The fright which is attached to the sight of the warship must be transferred from it to this disagreeable thought. Inversely, the analysis shows that the region of the dream thoughts from which the warship comes is filled with most joyous reminiscences. It was at Venice a year before, one charmingly beautiful day, that we stood at the windows of our room on the Riva Schiavoni and looked upon the blue lagoon, in which more activity could be seen that day than usually. English ships were being expected, they were to be festively received; and suddenly my wife called out, happy as a child: "There come the English warships!" In the dream I am frightened at the very same words; we see again that speeches in the dream originate from speeches in life. I shall soon show that even the element "English" in this speech has not been lost for the dream activity. I thus convert joy into fright on the way from the dream thoughts to the dream content, and I need only intimate that by means of this very transformation I give expression to a part of the latent dream content. The example shows, however, that the dream activity is at liberty to detach the occasion for an affect from its context in the dream thoughts, and to insert it at any other place it chooses in the dream content.

I seize the opportunity which is incidentally offered, of subjecting to closer analysis the "breakfast ship," whose appearance in the dream so nonsensically concludes a situation that has been rationally adhered to. If I take a closer view of this object in the dream, I am now struck by the fact that it was black, and that on account of its being cut off at its greatest 2 A