Freud : his dream and sex theories / by Joseph Jastrow.

  • Joseph Jastrow
Date:
1948,
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Freud : his dream and sex theories / by Joseph Jastrow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    87/324 page 67
    The interpreter has the privilege of drawing upon the entire range of the patient’s experience to find a fact to fit the theory. Wish-dreams that go by contraries: “Here is a pretty ‘water’ dream of a female patient, which was turned to extraordinary account in the course of treatment.” At her summer resort at Lake So-and-So, she hurls herself into the dark water at a place where the pale moon is reflected in the water. Interpretation: Dreams of this sort are parturi¬ tion dreams; their interpretation is accomplished by reversing the fact reported in the manifest dream content. Thus, instead of “ ‘throwing one’s self into the water,’ read ‘coming out of the water,’ that is, ‘being born.’. . . Now what can be the meaning of the patient’s wishing to be born at her summer re¬ sort? I asked the dreamer this, and she answered without hesitation: ‘Hasn’t the treatment made me as though I were born again?’ Thus the dream be¬ comes an invitation to continue the cure at this summer resort, that is, to visit her there; perhaps it also contains a very bashful allusion to the wish to become a mother herself.” These eclectic instances will serve their purpose, which is to illustrate the Freudian manner of deriving a connection between the dream-data and their inter¬ pretation. Freud assures his readers that through just such dream-data he “discovered” the nature of con¬ flicts and complexes of neurotic patients; he is equally confident that he does not prompt or suggest or in¬ vite such connections, a confidence which sceptical readers may not share. He finds the same principles applicable to ordinary dreams of normal persons. He
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