Opera dream

... at the Opera ... She was at the Opera. A Wagner opera was being performed... There were tables set out in the stalls, at which people were eating and drinking.

In the middle of the stalls

there was a high tower, which

had a platform on top of it

surrounded by an iron railing.

High up at the top was the conductor, who had the features of Hans Richter. He kept running round the railing, and was perspiring violently;

and from that position he was conducting the orchestra which was grouped about the base of the tower.

I decided to take
the tower in the stalls metaphorically. It then emerged that the man whom she had wanted to see in Hans Richter's place towered high above the other members of the orchestra.

The foregoing discussion has led us at last to the discovery of a third factor [the two previous ones being condensation and displacement] whose share in the transformation of the dream-thoughts into the dream-content is not to be underrated: namely, considerations of representability in the peculiar psychical material of which dreams make use - for the most part, that is, representability in visual images. BACK