Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 3.djvu/2

284 later time. In waking life too I have often become aware of presentiments of distant events. But these indications, foretellings, and forebodings have none of them been fulfilled: there proved to be no external reality corresponding to them, and they had therefore to be regarded as purely subjective anticipations. For example, I once dreamt during the ware that one of my sons then serving at the front had fallen. This was not directly stated in the dream, but was expressed in an unmistakable manner by means of the well-known death-symbolism of which an account was first given by W. Stekel. (Let us not omit here to fulfil the duty, often felt as inconveninent, of making laterary acknowledgements!) I saw the young soldier standing on a landing-stage, between land and water, as it were; he looked to me very pale; I spoke to him but be did not answer. There were other unmistakable indications. He was not wearing military uniform, but a ski-ing costume that he had worn when a serious ski-ing accident had happened to him several years bedore the war. He stood on something raised like a footstool with a chest in front of him; a situation always closely associated in my mind with the idea of 'falling', through a memory of my own childhood. As a child of little more than two years old I had myself climbed on such a footstool to get something out of a chest—probably something good to eat—whereupon i fell and gave myself a blow, of which I can even now show the scar. My son, however, whom the dreeam pronounced to be dead, came home from the was unscathed. Only a short time ago, I had another dream announcing misfortune; it was, I think, just before I decided on putting together these few remarks. This time there was not much attempt at disguise: I saw my two nieces who live in England; they were dressed in black and said to me 'We buried her on Thursday'. I know the reference was to the death of their mother, now eighty-seven years of age, the widow of my eldest brother. A time of disagreeable anticipation followed; there would of course be nothing surprising in so aged a woman suddenly passing away, yet it would be very unpleasant for the dream to coincide exactly with the occurrence. The next letter from England, however, disspated this fear. For the benefit of those who are concerned for the wish-fulfilment theory of dreams I may interpolate a reassurance by saying that there was no difficulty in detecting