1068

The process of condensation further explains certain constituents of the content of dreams which are peculiar to them and are not found in waking ideation. What I have in mind are ‘collective’ and ‘composite figures’ and the strange composite structures’, which are creations not unlike the composite animals invented by the folk-imagination of the Orient. The latter, however, have already assumed stereotyped shapes in our thought, whereas in dreams fresh composite forms are being perpetually constructed in an inexhaustible variety. We are all of us familiar with such structures from our own dreams.

There are many sorts of ways in which figures of this kind can be put together. I may build up a figure by giving it the features of two people; or I may give it the form of one person but think of it in the dream as having the name of another person; or I may have a visual picture of one person, but put it in a situation which is appropriate to another. In all these cases the combination of different persons into a single representative in the content of the dream has a meaning; it is intended to indicate an ‘and’ or ‘just as’, or to compare the original persons with each other in some particular respect, which may even be specified in the dream itself. As a rule, however, this common element between the combined persons can only be discovered by analysis, and is only indicated in the contents of the dream by the formation of the collective figure.

The composite structures which occur in dreams in such immense numbers are put together in an equal variety of ways, and the same rules apply to their resolution. There is no need for me to quote any instances. Their strangeness disappears completely when once we have made up our minds not to class them with the objects of our waking perception, but to remember that they are products of dream-condensation and are emphasizing in an effectively abbreviated form some common characteristic of the objects which they are thus combining. Here again the common element has as a rule to be discovered by analysis. The content of the dream merely says as it were: ‘All these things have an element x in common.’ The dissection of these composite structures by means of analysis is often the shortest way to finding the meaning of a dream. - Thus, I dreamt on one occasion that I was sitting on a bench with one of my former University teachers, and that the bench, which was surrounded by other benches, was moving forward at a rapid pace. This was a combination of a lecture theatre and a trottoir roulant.¹ I will not pursue this train of ideas further. - Another time I was sitting in a railway carriage and holding on my lap an object in the shape of a top-hat [‘Zylinderhut’, literally ‘cylinder-hat’], which however was made of transparent glass. The situation made me think at once of the proverb: ‘Mit dem Hute in der Hand kommt man duchs ganze land.’² The glass cylinder led me by a short détour to think of an incandescent gas-mantle; and I soon saw that I should like to make a discovery which would make me as rich and independent as my fellow-countryman Dr. Auer von Welsbach was made by his, and that I should like to travel instead of stopping in Vienna. In the dream I was travelling with my discovery, the hat in the shape of a glass cylinder - a discovery which, it is true, was not as yet of any great practical use. - The dream-work is particularly fond of representing two contrary ideas by the same composite structure. Thus, for instance, a woman had a dream in which she saw herself carrying a tall spray of flowers, such as the angel is represented as holding in pictures of the Annunciation. (This stood for innocence; incidentally, her own name was Maria.) On the other hand, the spray was covered with large white flowers like camellias. (This stood for the opposite of innocence; it was associated with La dame aux camélias.)

¹ [The ‘trottoir roulant’ was a moving roadway installed at the Paris Exhibition of 1900.]

² [‘If you go hat in hand, you can cross the whole land.’]