of the dream content, and it will be intimated that the process of analysis has subsequently established the connection. But the abundance and intricacy of the ties of association vouch for the truth of my explanation: cyclamen—favourite flower—favourite dish—artichoke; to pick to pieces like an artichoke, leaf by leaf (a phrase which at that time rang in our ears à propos of the dividing up of the Chinese Empire)—herbarium—bookworm, whose favourite dish is books. I may state further that the final meaning of the dream, which I have not given here, has the most intimate connection with the content of the childhood scene.
In another series of dreams we learn from analysis that the wish itself, which has given rise to the dream, and whose fulfilment the dream turns out to be, has originated in childhood—until one is astonished to find that the child with all its impulses lives on in the dream.
I shall now continue the interpretation of a dream which has already proved instructive—I refer to the dream in which friend R. is my uncle (p. 116). We have carried its interpretation far enough for the wish-motive, of being appointed professor, to assert itself tangibly; and we have explained the affection displayed in the dream for friend R. as a fiction of opposition and spite against the aspersion of the two colleagues, who appear in the dream thoughts. The dream was my own; I may, therefore, continue the analysis by stating that my feelings were not quite satisfied by the solution reached. I know that my opinion of these colleagues who are so badly treated in the dream thoughts would have been expressed in quite different terms in waking life; the potency of the wish not to share their fate in the matter of appointment seemed to me too slight to account for the discrepancy between my estimate in the dream and that of waking. If my desire to be addressed by a new title proves so strong it gives proof of a morbid ambition, which I did not know to exist in me, and which I believe is far from my thoughts. I do not know how others, who think they know me, would judge me, for perhaps I have really been ambitious; but if this be true, my ambition has long since transferred itself to other objects than the title and rank of assistant-professor.
Whence, then, the ambition which the dream has ascribed
