the other of the great life-impulses may become for it.[1] Here is a second example showing this. My nephew of twenty-two months had been given the task of congratulating me upon my birthday, and of handing me, as a present, a little basket of cherries, which at that time of the year were not yet in season. It seemed difficult for him, for he repeated again and again: "Cherries in it," and could not be induced to let the little basket go out of his hands. But he knew how to secure his compensation. He had, until now, been in the habit of telling his mother every morning that he had dreamt of the "white soldier," an officer of the guard in a white cloak, whom he had once admired on the street. On the day after the birthday, he awakened joyfully with the information which could have had its origin only in a dream: " He(r)man eat up all the cherries!"[2]
- ↑ A more searching investigation into the psychic life of the child teaches us, to be sure, that sexual motive powers in infantile forms, which have been too long overlooked, play a sufficiently great part in the psychic activity of the child. This raises some doubt as to the happiness of the child, as imagined later by the adults. Cf. the author's "Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory," translated by A. A. Brill, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Publishing Company.
- ↑ It should not be left unmentioned that children sometimes show complex and more obscure dreams, while, on the other hand, adults will often under certain conditions show dreams of an infantile character. How rich in unsuspected material the dreams of children of from four to five years might be is shown by examples in my "Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjahrigen Knaben" (Jahrbuch, ed. by Bleuler & Freud, 1909), and in Jung's "Ueber Konflikte der kindlichen Seele" (ebda. ii. vol., 1910). On the other hand, it seems that dreams of an infantile type reappear especially often in adults if they are transferred to unusual conditions of life. Thus Otto Nordenskjold, in his book Antarctic (1904), writes as follows about the crew who passed the winter with him. "Very characteristic for the trend of our inmost thoughts were our dreams, which were never more vivid and numerous than at present. Even those of our comrades with whom dreaming had formerly been an exception had long stories to tell in the morning when we exchanged our experiences in the world of phantasies. They all referred to that outer world which was now so far from us, but they often fitted into our present relations. An especially characteristic dream was the one in which one of our comrades believed himself back on the bench at school, where the task was assigned him of skinning miniature seals which were especially made for the purposes of instruction. Eating and drinking formed the central point around which most of our dreams were grouped. One of us, who was fond of going to big dinner parties at night, was exceedingly glad if he could report in the morning 'that he had had a dinner consisting of three courses.' Another dreamed of tobacco—of whole mountains of tobacco; still another dreamed of a ship approaching on the open sea under full sail. Still another dream deserves to be mentioned. The letter carrier brought the mail, and gave a long explanation of why he had had to wait so long for it; he had delivered it at the wrong place, and only after
