Laboratory dreams
“As a young doctor I worked for a long time at the Chemical Institute
without ever becoming proficient in the skills which
that science demands; and for that reason in my waking life I have never
liked thinking of this barren and indeed humiliating episode in my apprenticeship.
Yet I often dream of that period... While I was interpreting one of these
dreams my attention was eventually attracted by the word ‘analysis’, which
gave me a key to their understanding. Since those days I have become an
‘analyst’, and I now carry out analyses which are very highly spoken of,
though it is true that they are ‘psycho-analyses’.... We may conclude that
the foundation of the dream was formed by an exaggeratedly ambitious phantasy,
but that humiliating thoughts poured cold water on the phantasy and found
their way into the dream instead....
“But a closer examination of some of these dreams brings something
more to light. In one of my laboratory dreams I was at an age which placed
me precisely in the gloomiest and most unsuccessful year of my medical
career. I was still without a post and had no idea how I could earn my
living; but at the same time I suddenly discovered that I had a choice
open to me between several women whom I might marry! So I was once more
young, and, more than everything, she was once more young - the woman who
had shared all these difficult years with me.”
I should have no objection to this class of dreams being distinguished
from ‘wish-fulfilment dreams’ under the name of ‘punishment dreams’; it
would be no more than a linguistic expedient for meeting the difficulties
of those who find it strange that opposites should converge.
BACK
