Freud - Complete Works (426 page)

   The analytic psychotherapist thus
has a threefold battle to wage - in his own mind against the forces
which seek to drag him down from the analytic level; outside the
analysis, against opponents who dispute the importance he attaches
to the sexual instinctual forces and hinder him from making use of
them in his scientific technique; and inside the analysis, against
his patients, who at first behave like opponents but later on
reveal the overvaluation of sexual life which dominates them, and
who try to make him captive to their socially untamed passion.

   The lay public, about whose
attitude to psycho-analysis I spoke at the outset, will doubtless
seize upon this discussion of transference-love as another
opportunity for directing the attention of the world to the serious
danger of this therapeutic method. The psycho-analyst knows that he
is working with highly explosive forces and that he needs to
proceed with as much caution and conscientiousness as a chemist.
But when have chemists ever been forbidden, because of the danger,
from handling explosive substances, which are indispensable, on
account of their effects? It is remarkable that psycho-analysis has
to win for itself afresh all the liberties which have long since
been accorded to other medical activities. I am certainly not in
favour of giving up the harmless methods of treatment. For many
cases they are sufficient, and, when all is said, human society has
no more use for the
furor sanandi
¹ than for any other
fanaticism. But to believe that the psychoneuroses are to be
conquered by operating with harmless little remedies is grossly to
under-estimate those disorders both as to their origin and their
practical importance. No; in medical practice there will always be
room for the ‘
ferrum
’ and the
‘
ignis
’ side by side with the
‘
medicina
’; and in the same way we shall never
be able to do without a strictly regular, undiluted psycho-analysis
which is not afraid to handle the most dangerous mental impulses
and to obtain mastery over them for the benefit of the patient.

  
¹
[’Passion for curing
people.’]

2521

DREAMS IN FOLKLORE

(FREUD AND OPPENHEIM)

(1957 [1911])

2522

Intentionally left blank

2523

DREAMS IN FOLKLORE

By
Sigm. Freud and Prof. Ernst Oppenheim (Vienna)

                                               
‘Celsi praetereunt austera poemata
Ramnes.’¹

                                                                                               
Persius,
Satirae
.

One of us (O.) in his studies of folklore has
made two observations with regard to the dreams narrated there
which seem to him worth communicating. Firstly, that the symbolism
employed in these dreams coincides completely with that accepted by
psycho-analysis, and secondly, that a number of these dreams are
understood by the common people in the same way as they would be
interpreted by psycho-analysis - that is, not as premonitions about
a still unrevealed future, but as the fulfilment of wishes, the
satisfaction of needs which arise during the state of sleep.
Certain peculiarities of these, usually indecent, dreams, which are
told as comic anecdotes, have encouraged the second of us (Fr.) to
attempt an interpretation of them which has made them seem more
serious and more deserving of attention.

I

PENIS-SYMBOLISM IN DREAMS OCCURRING IN FOLKLORE

   The dream which we introduce
first, although it contains no symbolic representations, sounds
almost like ridicule of the prophetic and a plea in favour of the
psychological interpretation of dreams.

A DREAM-INTERPRETATION
²

   A
girl got up from her bed and told her mother that she had had a
most strange dream.

  
‘Well, what did you dream, then?’ asked her
mother.

  
‘How shall I tell you? I don’t know myself what it was
- some sort of long and red and blunted thing.’

  
‘Long means a road,’ said her mother reflectively,
‘a long road; red means joy, but I don’t know what
blunted can mean.’

   The
girl’s father, who was getting dressed meanwhile, and was
listening to everything that the mother and daughter were saying,
muttered at this, more or less to himself: ‘It sounds rather
like my cock.’
³

  
¹
[‘Haughty persons in authority
disdain poems that are lacking in charm.’]

  
²
‘Sudslavische
Volksüberlieferungen, die sich auf den Geschlechtsverkehr
beziehen [Southern Slav Folk Traditions concerning Sexual
Intercourse]’, collected and elucidated by F. S. Krauss,
Anthropophyteia
,
7
, 450, No. 820.

  
³
[
Addition by
F. S. Krauss:] See
Anthropophyteia
,
1
, 4, No. 5. Cf. further the German
Jewish proverb: ‘The goose dreams of maize and the betrothed
girl of a prick.’

Dreams In Folklore

2524

   It is very much more convenient
to study dream-symbolism in folklore than in actual dreams. Dreams
are obliged to conceal things and only surrender their secrets to
interpretation; these comic anecdotes, however, which are disguised
as dreams, are intended as communications, meant to give pleasure
to the person who tells them as well as to the listener, and
therefore the interpretation is added quite unashamedly to the
symbol. These stories delight in stripping off the veiling
symbols.

   In the following quatrain the
penis appears as a sceptre:

                                                               
Last night I dreamt

                                                               
I was King of the land,

                                                               
And how jolly I was

                                                               
With a prick in my hand.
¹

   Now compare with this the
following examples in which the same symbolism is employed outside
a dream.

                                                               
I love a little lass

                                                               
The prettiest I’ve seen,

                                                               
I’ll put a sceptre in your hand

                                                               
And you shall be a queen.
²

                                                               
‘Remember, my boy’, said Napoleon,

                                                               
The Emperor of renown,

                                                               
‘So long as the prick is the sceptre

                                                               
The
 will be the
crown.’
³

A different variant of this symbolic
exaltation of the genitals is favoured in the imagination of
artists. A fine etching by Félicien Rops,
⁴
bearing the title ‘
Tout
est grand chez les rois
’ [’Everything about kings
is great’], shows the naked figure of a king with the
features of the
Roi Soleil
, whose gigantic penis, which
rises to arm level, itself wears a crown. The right hand balances a
sceptre, while the left clasps a large orb, which by reason of a
central cleft achieves an unmistakable resemblance to another part
of the body which is the object of erotic desires.
⁵
The index finger of the left hand
is inserted into this groove.

  
¹
‘Niederösterreichische
Schnadahüpfeln’, collected by Dr. H. Rollett.
Anthropophyteia
,
5
, 151, No. 2.

  
²
From the Austrian Alps,
Kryptadia
,
4
, 111, No. 160.

  
³
From Gaming in Lower Austria,
Anthropophyteia
,
3
, 190, No. 85, 4.

  
⁴
Rops, 1905, Plate 20.

  
⁵
[
Marginal Note by
Oppenheim:] Like
the orb in Rops’s picture, a Roman relief in the Amphitheatre
at Nîmes shows an egg transformed into a symbol of the female
sexual organs by means of a similar groove. Here, too, the male
counterpart is not absent. It appears as a phallus strangely
furbished up as a bird which sits on four eggs of the kind
described - one might say brooding them.

Dreams In Folklore

2525

   In the Silesian folksong that
follows, the dream is only invented in order to hide a different
occurrence. The penis appears here as a
worm
(‘fat
earthworm’), which has crawled into the girl, and at the
right time crawls out again as a
little worm
(baby).¹

                                                               
SONG OF THE EARTHWORMS
²

                                               
Asleep on the grass one day a young lass

                                               
Susanna of passion was dreaming;

                                               
A soft smile did play round her nose as she lay

                                               
While she thought of her swain and his scheming.

                                               
Then - dream full of fear! - it swift did appear

                                               
That her lover so handsome and charming

                                               
Had become as she slept a fat earthworm which crept

                                               
Right inside. What could be more alarming?

                                               
Full of dread in her heart she awoke with a start

                                               
And swift to the village she hied her

                                               
And tearfully told all the folk young and old

                                               
That an earthworm had crawled up inside her.

                                               
Her wailing and tears came at last to the ears

                                               
Of her mother who cursed and swore roundly;

                                               
With bodings of gloom she repaired to her room

                                               
And examined the maiden most soundly.

                                               
For the earthworm she sought, but alas! could find nought
-

                                               
An unfortunate thing which dismayed her.

                                               
So she hurried away without further delay

                                               
To ask the wise woman to aid her.

                                               
With cunning she laid out the cards for the maid

                                               
And said: ‘We must wait a while longer.

                                               
‘I have questioned the Knave, but no answer he
gave;

                                               
‘Perhaps the Red King will prove stronger.

                                               
‘'Tis the news that you fear which the Red
King
³
speaks
clear:

                                               
‘The worm really crawled in the girlie;

                                               
‘But as everything bides its due times and its
tides

                                               
‘To catch it 'tis yet much too early.’

                                               
When Susanna had heard the lugubrious word

                                               
She went to her chamber full sadly;

                                               
Till at last there appeared the dread hour that she
feared

                                               
And out crept the little worm gladly.

                                               
So be warned, every lass: do not dream on the grass,

                                               
But let poor Susanna’s fate guide you,

                                               
Or - as you too may know, to your grief and your woe -

                                               
A fat earthworm will creep up inside you.
⁴

   The same symbolization of the
penis by a
worm
is familiar from numerous obscene jokes.

  
¹
[‘
Würmchen
’
(‘little worm’) is a common German expression for
‘baby’.]

  
²
‘Schlesische Volkslieder [Silesian
Folksongs]’, transcribed by Dr. von Waldheim,
Anthropophyteia
,
7
, 369.

  
³
[’
Röter Konig
’
(‘Red King’) is an Austrian slang term for
‘menstruation’.]

  
⁴
[
Footnote by
F. S. Krauss:] Cf. p.
359 and the Southern Slav version in Krauss, ‘Die Zeugung in
Sitte, Brauch und Glauben der Südslaven [Procreation in the
Customs, Usages and Beliefs of the Southern Slavs]’,
Kryptadia
,
6
, 259-269 and 375 f.