CHAPTER II
Wish Structures and their Forms
I must refrain here from a statement of the Freudian investigations into the dream life and the significance of dreams as wish fulfilling and refer to Freud's "Traumdeutung"[1] itself. I cannot enter into a discussion of the results although it is now the order of the day in psychiatry. I rely upon numerous works of others who have successfully handled[2] Freud's methods, and on my own previous studies. Examples of well analyzed wish dreams are to be found nearly everywhere.
I cannot refrain, however, from taking an example from life.
A young man had seen, for the first time, the young lady who later was to become his wife. Soon thereafter on falling asleep he had the following optic, extraordinarily plastic, symbolic dream. He stood before a large portal hung with thick, blooming garlands. Two garlands were fastened to a button at the upper part of the door and hung down separated one from one another. While the portal was at first about the size of a mouth it became a church portal into which he as a very small man entered. It appeared to him as though he was leading someone.[3]
Naturally here we are dealing with an erotic wish dream which is prophetic of a happy future while indeed only too often the wish fulfillment in the dream is a surrogate for reality which refuses the fulfillment of the wish.
The single elements of this symbolic marriage in which coitus as well as the marriage ceremony are contained in strong condensation, in flowery, colored dramatization, spring from the events of the preceding day. The young man had called upon an acquaintance and stumbled unexpectedly upon the preparations for the arrival of an heir: the child's bed was embellished with the usual curtains, these gave the garlands in the dream their form,
- ↑ "Die Traumdeutung," 1900.
- ↑ For example, Bleuler and Jung in Zürich.
- ↑ Compare the picture "Triumphal Procession of Priapus" by Salvisti u. Fuchs, "Das erotische Element in der Karikatur," 1904.
