THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

When the analysis of the dream of Irma’s injection showed us that a

dream could be the fulfilment of a wish, our interest was at first wholly
absorbed
by the question of whether we had come upon a universal characteristic
of dreams, and for the time being we stifled our curiosity about any
other scientific problems that may have arisen during the work of the
interpretation.
Having followed one path to its end, we may now retrace our
steps and choose another starting-point for our rambles through the
problems
of dream-life: for the time being, we may leave the topic of wishfulfilment
on one side, though we are still far from having exhausted it.
Now that the application of our procedure for interpreting dreams
enables us to disclose a latent content in them which is of far greater
significance
than their manifest one, the pressing task at once arises of reexamining
one by one the various problems raised by dreams, to see
whether we may not now be in a position to find satisfactory solutions for
the conundrums and contradictions which seemed intractable so long as
we were only acquainted with the manifest content.
In the first chapter I have given a detailed account of the views of the
authorities on the relation of dreams with waking life [Section A] and on
the origin of the material of dreams [Section C]. No doubt, too, my readers
will recall the three characteristics of memory in dreams [Section B],
which
have been so often remarked on but which have never been explained:
(1) Dreams show a clear preference for the impressions of the immediately
preceding days [pp. 50 f.]. Cf. Robert [1886, 46], Strümpell [1877,
39], Hildebrandt [1875, 11] and Hallam and Weed [1896, 410 f.].
(2) They make their selection upon different principles from our
waking memory, since they do not recall what is essential and important
but what is subsidiary and unnoticed. [Pp. 51 ff.]
(3) They have at their disposal the earliest impressions of our childhood
and even bring up details from that period of our life which, once
again, strike us as trivial and which in our waking state we believe to have
been long since forgotten. [Pp. 48 ff.]1
All these peculiarities shown by dreams in their choice of material
have, of course, only been studied by earlier writers in connection with
their manifest content.

RECENT AND INDIFFERENT MATERIAL IN DREAMS

If I examine my own experience on the subject of the origin of the
elements
included in the content of dreams, I must begin with an assertion
that in every dream it is possible to find a point of contact with the
experiences
of the previous day. This view is confirmed by every dream that I
look into, whether my own or anyone else’s. Bearing this fact in mind, I
am able, on occasion, to begin a dream’s interpretation by looking for the
event of the previous day which set it in motion; in many instances,
indeed,
this is the easiest method.2 In the two dreams which I have analysed
in detail in my last chapters (the dream of Irma’s injection and the dream
of my uncle with a yellow beard) the connection with the previous day is
so obvious as to require no further comment. But in order to show the
regularity with which such a connection can be traced, I will go through
the records of my own dreams and give some instances. I shall only quote
enough of the dream to indicate the source we are looking for:
(1) I was visiting a house into which I had difficulty in gaining admittance
. . . ; in the meantime I kept a lady waiting.
Source: I had had a conversation with a female relative the evening before
in which I had told her that she would have to wait for a purchase
she wanted to make till . . . etc.
(2) I had written a monograph on a certain (indistinct) species of plant.
Source: That morning I had seen a monograph on the genus Cyclamen
in the window of a bookshop. [See below, pp. 193 ff.]
(3) I saw two women in the street, a mother and daughter, the latter
of whom was a patient of mine.
Source: One of my patients had explained to me the previous evening
the difficulties her mother was putting in the way of her continuing her
treatment.
(4) I took out a subscription in S. and R.’s bookshop for a periodical
costing
twenty florins a year.
Source: My wife had reminded me the day before that I still owed her
twenty florins for the weekly household expenses.
(5) I received a communication from the Social Democratic Committee,
treating me as though I were a member.
Source: I had received communications simultaneously from the Liberal
Election Committee and from the Council of the Humanitarian League,
of which latter body I was in fact a member.
(6) A man standing on a cliff in the middle of the sea, in the style
of Böcklin.
Source: Dreyfus on the Ile du Diable; I had had news at the same time
from my relatives in England, etc.
The question may be raised whether the point of contact with the
dream is invariably the events of the immediately preceding day or
whether
it may go back to impressions derived from a rather more extensive period
of the most recent past. It is unlikely that this question involves any matter
of theoretical importance; nevertheless I am inclined to decide in favour of
the exclusiveness of the claims of the day immediately preceding the
dream—which I shall speak of as the ‘dream-day.’ Whenever it has
seemed
at first that the source of a dream was an impression two or three days
earlier,
closer enquiry has convinced me that the impression had been recalled
on the previous day and thus that it was possible to show that a
reproduction
of the impression, occurring on the previous day, could be inserted
between
the day of the original event and the time of the dream; moreover it
has been possible to indicate the contingency on the previous day which
may have led to the recalling of the older impression.
On the other hand1 I do not feel convinced that there is any regular
interval of biological significance between the instigating daytime
impression
and its recurrence in the dream. (Swoboda, 1904, has mentioned an
initial period of eighteen hours in this connection.)2
Havelock Ellis [1911, 224],1 who has also given some attention to this
point, declares that he was unable to find any such periodicity in his
dreams in spite of looking for it. He records a dream of being in Spain
and of wanting to go to a place called Daraus, Varaus or Zaraus. On
waking
he could not recall any such place-name, and put the dream on one
side. A few months later he discovered that Zaraus was in fact the name
of a station on the line between San Sebastian and Bilbao, through which
his train had passed 250 days before he had the dream.
I believe, then, that the instigating agent of every dream is to be
found among the experiences which one has not yet ‘slept on.’ Thus the
relations of a dream’s content to impressions of the most recent past
(with the single exception of the day immediately preceding the night of
the dream) differ in no respect from its relations to impressions dating
from any remoter period. Dreams can select their material from any part
of the dreamer’s life, provided only that there is a train of thought linking
the experience of the dream-day (the ‘recent’ impressions) with the
earlier ones.
But why this preference for recent impressions? We shall form some
notion
on this point, if we submit one of the dreams in the series I have just
quoted [p. 189] to a fuller analysis.