that the child bestowed his love upon this governess in spite of her bad treatment of him.[1]
Another series of dreams which might be called typical are those which have the content that a dear relative, parent, brother, or sister, child or the like, has died. Two classes of these dreams must immediately be distinguished—those in which the dreamer remains unaffected by sorrow while dreaming, and those in which he feels profound grief on account of the death, in which he even expresses this grief during sleep by fervid tears.
We may ignore the dreams of the first group; they have no claim to be reckoned as typical. If they are analysed, it is found that they signify something else than what they contain, that they are intended to cover up some other wish. Thus it is with the dream of the aunt who sees the only son of her sister lying on a bier before her (p. 129). This does not signify that she wishes the death of her little nephew; it only conceals, as we have learned, a wish to see a beloved person once more after long separation—the same person whom she had seen again after a similar long intermission at the funeral of another nephew. This wish, which is the real content of the dream, gives no cause for sorrow, and for that reason no sorrow is felt in the dream. It may be seen in this case that the emotion which is contained in the dream does not belong to the manifest content of the dream, but to the latent one, and that the emotional content has remained free from the disfigurement which has befallen the presentation content.
It is a different story with the dreams in which the death of a beloved relative is imagined and where sorrowful emotion is felt. These signify, as their content says, the wish that the person in question may die, and as I may here expect that the feelings of all readers and of all persons who have dreamt anything similar will object to my interpretation, I must strive to present my proof on the broadest possible basis.
We have already had one example to show that the wishes
- ↑ A supplementary interpretation of this dream: To spit on the stairs, led me to "esprit d'escalier" by a free translation, owing to the fact that "Spucken" (English: spit, and also to act like a spook, to haunt) is an occupation of ghosts. "Stair-wit" is equivalent to lack of quickness at repartee (German: Schlagerfertigkeit—readiness to hit back, to strike), with which I must really reproach myself. Is it a question, however, whether the nurse was lacking in "readiness to hit"?
