The second part of the dream shows, as though it wished to confirm our interpretation, that the patient had often been obliged to think, not without anxiety, that relations which lasted too long, like that between himself and his friend, could easily lead to a mésalliance. One who does not know that, as Freud has shown in his monograph, the psychic motive and means of presentation of wit are almost exactly the same as those which come out in dreams,[1] might consider us guilty of cheap wit in saying that the dream succeeds in condensing in the words "Neue Freie Presse" all the patient's thoughts and wishes which concerned themselves with the pleasures of which his sickness had robbed him, and the means of benefit which he had in mind, namely, the stimulus of the new and the greater freedom for which he was striving. (Novelty and journal are expressed in Hungarian by the same word "ujsag.")
Very characteristic products of the dream-condensation are the composite images (Mischzbildungen) of persons, objects and words. These "monstrosities of the dream world" have contributed largely to the fact that dreams up to our day have been regarded as productions of the mind which were without value and without sense. But psychoanalysis convinces us that when the dream links together or fuses two features or concepts, it furnishes a less successful product of the same work of condensation to which the less obvious parts of the dream owe their disguise. One of the rules of the art of dream interpretation states that in cases of such composite images the dream material of the single constituents must first be sought, and then only can it be determined on what basis of a common element or similarity the welding together has taken place. An example of this, which is theoretically valuable, I owe to one of my patients. The Composite picture which occurred in one of her dreams, was made up of the person of a physician and of a horse, which in addition was attired in night clothing. Associations led from the horse into the childhood of the patient. She suffered as a girl for a long time from a pronounced phobia of horses; she avoided them particularly on account of their obvious and open satisfaction of their bodily needs. In addition it occured to her that as a child she had often been taken by her nurse to the military quarters, where she had had the opportunity to observe all these things with a curiosity which was at that time still unrestrained. The night clothing reminded her of her father, whom she had had the opportunity to see, while she still slept in the room of her parents, not only in such costume, but in
- ↑ S. Freud: Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, Deuticke, Vienna, 1909.
