The Dream of Greensboro -- Revised

Highlighted in yellow are several additions to the original dream interpretation I made in the days following December 9, 1992.

Highlighted in blue are comments I have made as of this posting on January 4, 2011.

 December 3, 1992
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Apt. 136
Washington, DC  20008

Dr. Suzanne M. Pitts
Dept. of Psychiatry
GW Univ. Medical Center
2150 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC  20037

Dear Dr. Pitts:

I had some additional thoughts regarding a dream I related at our session on Tuesday December 1, 1992.  I decided to reduce these thoughts to a writing because of the complexity of the factual data, but I would also like to discuss this with you.

The materials may provide important insights regarding my homosexuality.  Further the materials seem to provide some evidence that in my case the resistance is the functional equivalent of the transference.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Gary Freedman
________________________

December 9, 1992
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Apartment 136
Washington, DC  20008

Dr. Suzanne M. Pitts
Department of Psychiatry
GW University Medical Center
2150 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC  20037

Dear Dr. Pitts:

I respectfully submit a summary of our discussion of a dream originally discussed at our session on December 1, 1992.  The materials are submitted for the sake of completeness of the clinical record.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Gary Freedman

Dr. Pitts:

Please note that emendations to my letter to you dated December 3, 1992 are indicated by double-bar lines in the left-hand margin.
_____________________

The Dream of Greensboro

Tuesday November 24, 1992

Telephone call to sister: Sister discusses her plans for Thanksgiving, explaining plans to go to friends' house for dinner.  Says she saw on television a film of a coronary artery bypass procedure.  My father had undergone such a procedure on June 30, 1976 (he died following the operation, on July 1, 1976).  I mentioned that the name of the surgeon who performed the procedure was Dr. Michael Strong, and noted that Dr. Strong is now a professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Hahnemann.  (Dr. Strong is a native of North Carolina.)  (Note that the issues of loneliness at Thanksgiving and sclerotic heart disease can be related at a basic symbolic level, with the loneliness symbolizing oral frustration and sclerotic heart disease symbolizing myocardial "frustration," or ischemia.  Prolonged oral frustration leads to death by starvation just as prolonged ischemia leads to death by infarction.)

Wednesday night, November 25, 1992

Dream: I find myself in Greensboro, North Carolina.  I am in a residential section that appears to be deserted.  The houses appear to built on sand.  There are sand dunes everywhere.  Feelings of isolation and anxiety.  Am aware that this is place where Jesse Raben, a former co-worker, is from.  (Jesse Raben's father is a professor of Radiology at the University of North Carolina).  I see a building that appears to be a school.  The building's cornerstone has the inscription "1954."  I note that the building's design suggests that the school was built much earlier than 1954; this strikes me as peculiar,.  The building has a tower.

[Note that the Dream About Craig at Wanamakers featured the clock tower of the Philadelphia City Hall.  The tower is a phallic symbol.]

I am filled with feelings of awe, and imagine that Jesse Raben must have attended this school.   I want to leave the town.  I am afraid to ask anyone where the train station is located lest I reveal that I am desperate to leave.  I fear that questions will be raised concerning what I am doing in the town; I have the feeling that I am not supposed to be here and fear that others will discover my "transgression."  Instead of asking where the train station is located, I ask where the business district is located, reasoning that the train station must be located somewhere in the business district.  I think that if I can be directed to the business district, I will be able to find the train station on my own.  The locale begins to resemble the business district in Moorestown, New Jersey, where my sister lives.  (During my session with Dr. Pitts on Tuesday December 1, 1992, I omit this last fact in my narration of the dream.)

Thursday November 26, 1992 (Thanksgiving)

Prepare a letter for Dr. Pitts about the issue of political retaliation concerning the composer Richard Wagner.  The letter discusses Wagner's possible sense of guilt, the importance of the superego in Wagner’s music, the Nazis' reinterpretation of Wagner's work, and the ban on the performance of Wagner's music in Israel.

Saturday November 28, 1992

Prepare a parable about the ban on the performance of Wagner’s music in Israel.

The parable reads: In the 1930's a group of scientists is gathered together under a physicist named Wagner to develop nuclear fission.  It is the aim of Wagner to develop nuclear fission for the ultimate purpose of developing a nuclear reactor to generate electric power.  The development program has a socially beneficial aim and a peaceful purpose. The program is successful, nuclear fission is achieved, and nuclear reactors are built in various countries around the world. The reactors are viewed as a boon, providing a ready source of cheap electric power. (In Japan, nuclear power plants become quite popular; many attribute the growth of the Japanese economy to nuclear power. Wagner is personally venerated in Japan. There is a saying: No one loves Wagner like the Japanese.)  At the same time, however, there are those who question the safety of nuclear reactors. These individuals cite the fact that nuclear reactors use radioactive fuel, a lethally toxic substance, and also generate nuclear waste, which also is toxic. They claim that nuclear reactors are intrinsically dangerous and threatening. Popular thinking, however, does not associate nuclear reactors with nuclear weapons and the possible devastation of entire cities, since nuclear weapons have not yet been developed. The horror of nuclear war is not part of the mythology of nuclear fission in the popular mind, though some individuals do view nuclear fission as an evil. Years later there is a war.  As part of the war effort, the technology of nuclear fission is used to develop nuclear weapons. The physicist Wagner had no part in this latter effort, though his original work on nuclear fission is the essential sine qua non

Sunday November 29, 1992:

I faxed the above parable to my sister with the note: "I wrote the "Notes Regarding an Aspect of the Resistance" on 12/31/91-1/1/92, at the exact same time that the controversy over Wagner in Israel was going on.  I suspect that whatever Janusian thought lies in the above piece is a central conflict for me."

Tuesday December 1, 1992:

Session with D. Pitts.  Discussed the dream about Greensboro, North Carolina.  State various associations to the dream:

1.  Jesse Raben

2.  Jesse Raben's father as a professor of radiology at the University of North Carolina, and association to the issue of radiation in the Wagner parable.  (This observation emerges in the session as a startling eruption, as if it had been repressed.)

3.  Fact that Jesse Raben had lived in Israel, and association with ban on performance of Wagner's music in Israel as discussed in letter to Dr. Pitts.

4.  Discuss desire in childhood for special friend.

[Note the discussion of the fantasy of having a twin sibling in various of my dreams.]

5.  Discuss difficulties in learning how to read in the first grade.

6. Discuss anecdote concerning incident in first grade in which I felt shamefully different and defective with respect to all the other students; I was the only student who had a spiral notebook--all the other students had bound composition books.  Connected these childhood feelings to adult feelings of alienation.

7.  Noted phallic quality of school building in dream.

8.  Noted two pictures in Dr. Pitts' office depict beach scenes, which resemble the beach-like quality of the dream.  (This observation emerges at very end of the session as a spontaneous insight.  Had not made the connection earlier in session despite fact that I had been looking at the pictures during the session.)

9.  Noted personal identification with school building in dream, whose cornerstone is inscribed "1954." (I was born in late December 1953; in calculating my age I always think "1954." (In the movie Wagner, Wagner lays the cornerstone of his festival theater, "the Temple on the Hill," on his birthday, May 22.  See infra.)

[This dream interpretation dates from November 1992.  I did not begin work on my book Significant Moments until April 1993.  A section of the book is devoted to Wagner laying the cornerstone at his theater in Bayreuth on May 22, 1872, the composer's birthday.]

10.  Narrate dream to Dr. Pitts, which I told Dr. Palombo: I am at a school reunion.  There is a crowd of persons there, who don't mean anything to me.  Am waiting for Craig Dye (really Dr. Wiener?  See paragraph 13) to arrive, but he never shows up.  Feelings of isolation and loneliness.

11.  Analogize houses in dream about Greensboro to crowd of people whose faces are indistinct.  State that school building was different from the other buildings in that it had an individual identity, which I could describe.  The school building, I believe I said, was like a person who stands out in a crowd.  Mentioned that Jesse Raben is tall, about 6'5".  Also compared the design of the school building to a church.

12.  In my associations I failed to connect Jesse Raben's father, a professor of medicine, with Dr. Michael Strong, the surgeon who operated on my father at Temple, and now a professor of medicine.  (Note the word play: the dream image of the school that looked like a church, or "temple."  Compare the geographic location of the main campus of the University of North Carolina: Chapel Hill).  I had mentioned Dr. Strong in the conversation with my sister on Tuesday November 24.

13.  Noted that GW, where I meet with Dr. Pitts, is also a school, like the school in the dream.  (Dr. Pitts did not seem to think this was significant.  But see paragraph 12.  Did Dr. Pitts unconsciously perceive that the dream symbolically indicated my desire to be in therapy with Dr. Wiener, a fact that she could not acknowledge?)

14.  In my narration I left out the fact that at the end of the dream, as I walked past the school, the buildings began to resemble the business district in Moorestown, New Jersey, where my sister lives.  The only occasions I have been to my sister’s house were in the fall of 1990, 1991, and 1992, around the time of the Jewish New Year to attend services at the University of Pennsylvania (see paragraph 16).  [Note the connection between a school and a place of worship.  Note that Wagner compared his opera theater to a "temple."]

15.  Noted that I had encountered Jesse Raben on an elevator at work, at Akin Gump, the afternoon before Thanksgiving in 1989 (November 22, 1989--the anniversary of JFK's assassination.  Once again, the theme of "the death of the 'father.'"  I had learned about JFK's assassination upon leaving my own elementary school on the afternoon of Friday November 22, 1963).

Failed to narrate to Dr. Pitts the fact that I had telephoned Jesse Raben at home on the evening of Thursday September 29, 1989 to ask if he wanted to go to lunch the next day.  He said he couldn't meet me the next day for lunch because he was going to Greensboro.  The Jewish New Year began Friday evening September 29th that year.  He said, "If you want to meet me at the airport, I'd be glad to have lunch with you."

[I felt in September 1989 that Jesse Raben's attitude toward me was one of arrogance.  "If you want to meet me at the airport, I'd be glad to have lunch with you.  But other than that, I can't meet you for lunch."  I interpreted his arrogant behavior as typical of the phallic narcissist.  I never went to lunch with Mr. Raben despite my persistent efforts to befriend him.]

(Oral frustration here possibly expressed in anxieties in dream, specifically anxieties in connection with finding the train station [symbolic equivalent of airport].  Inability to have lunch with Jesse Raben = ban on Wagner in Israel?   Cf. paragraph 17.)

17.  Failed to narrate fact that on morning of Tuesday November 24, 1992, before session with Dr. Pitts, I had walked out into corridor adjacent to Dr. Wiener's office.  I had a feeling of awe when I saw him, but thought, "I'm intruding, I'm not supposed to be in this corridor; I have committed a transgression."  Inability to be in therapy with Dr. Wiener = ban on Wagner in Israel?  (Note the element of intrusive phallic-exhibitionistic/voyeuristic impudence in my walking into a nonpublic space adjacent to Dr. Wiener's office, apparently with the secret hope of catching a glimpse of the doctor.  Cf.  Erikson, E.  Insight and Responsibility, at 189 (Norton: 1964) (analyzing Freud's dream of Count Thun, which also is, incidentally, a railroad dream).  My reaction to Dr. Wiener's presence may have represented feelings in childhood upon seeing my father naked.  The theme of intrusive phallic exhibitionistic/voyeuristic impudence is overdetermined in my dream: my intrusive presence in Greensboro, and the phallic-like school building whose presence among the nondescript houses was a kind of intrusion.)

18.  Failed to note that the Yiddish word schul means both school and synagogue.

Tuesday December 1, 1992:

After session with Dr. Pitts, had insight about dream.  Occurs to me that dream can be related to something concrete from childhood.  When I was a child of about 5 or 6 my mother had purchased as a Christmas present: a set of toy trains.  The village in the dream was probably a representation of this toy village.  The houses on sand in the dream represented the toy houses on the artificial grass: granulated wood pulp that had been dyed green, hence Greensboro.  I later acquired a toy church for the village, which was apparently represented by the school building in the dream.  (I once narrated a dream to Dr. Palombo in which my mother’s funeral was held in my elementary school.  The dream thoughts about the train station correspond to the toy train set.  The toy trains were powered by electricity; the electricity was attenuated by a transformer.  The toy train transformer seems to correspond to the image of the nuclear powered electric generating plants in the parable about Wagner.  (It was as if I had a surplus of imagery that needed to be expressed, only part of which could be expressed in the dream.  This surplus of imagery was employed consciously after the dream in the letter to Dr. Pitts about Wagner and the parable to my sister about Wagner.)

Wednesday December 2, 1992:

It occurs to me that he dream about Greensboro can be related to he movie Wagner, a dramatization of the composer's life, specifically the final scenes of the movie, which take place in Venice.   This final part of the film opens with Wagner reminiscing with his father-in-law, the composer-pianist, Franz Liszt.  Liszt by that time had taken minor orders in the church, and was dressed in the scene in clerical garb (=surgical scrubs?).  The reference in the Wagner parable to "Shinto priest" may refer to Liszt.  (In the interpretation of an earlier dream I had associated Liszt with Dr. Palombo, thus, perhaps, the reference to "Shinto Priest" also refers to Dr. Palombo.  In one scene in the movie, Wagner says, referring to a certain melody, "I stole that from you, Liszt!"  My autobiographical sketch includes the following acknowledgment: "The contribution of Stanley R. Palombo, M.D. to this paragraph is kindly acknowledged."  It is the only such acknowledgment in the paper.)  Liszt and Wagner discuss Wagner's friendship with the conductor Hermann Levi, whose father was a rabbi.  Thus "son of a Shinto priest" also refers to Levi, the rabbi's son and, by implication, to Jesse Raben, the physician’s son.

Wagner discusses the fact that his 1876 opera festival was a financial disaster.  "We had to sell everything," he says, "lighting, machinery, costumes, scenery, to pay for it."  This statement may relate to the image of Greensboro in the dream, which as a symbolic representation of my childhood toy train village, had the quality of a stage setting.  Thus, a latent dream image is my unconscious perception of myself as living in an unreal world, a world of actors and stage sets rather than one inhabited by real people.  Also, Wagner's discussion of his debts in connection with this suggests guilt.  [In German the word schuld means both debt and guilt.]  (The reference to "costumes" might also relate to the Thanksgiving Day parade in Philadelphia that I attended as a child on a few occasions with my father, sometimes accompanied by my sister.  I can specifically recall that on one such occasion, as we rode to center city Philadelphia (the "business district") on the subway, my father pointed out that were were really riding on a train, which struck me as a novel observation at the time.)

[Note added 1/4/12: Compare the Dream of the Blue Oxford:

[Prosecutor]: Now, if you can tell us. You walked along Montana past Bundy, and you went left on Gretna Green?

[Witness]: Yes.

[Prosecutor]: How long did it take you to get to Gretna Green?

[Witness]: Well, I looked at my watch, when I turned to go down Gretna Green and that was 10:37. I remember that my dog had taken care of its business. I was deciding whether to return home or continue walking. And it was a nice night, so I decided to continue walking.

Wagner had gone to Venice for a vacation.  One scene depicts Wagner bathing in the Adriatic with his children.  This may correspond to the beach-like atmosphere in the dream image of Greensboro.  Further, this association suggests that the dream image of Greensboro also relates to Atlantic City where we used to vacation every year when I was a child.

(My father's death on July 1 occurred at about the same time of the year as our annual trips to Atlantic City, in early July.)  (Note the recurring theme of periodicity: the annual trips to Atlantic City in early July, the annual celebration of Thanksgiving, the annual celebration of Christmas at which time I would have played with my toy trains, the weekly visits to Dr. Pitts, the regular revolutions of the toy trains around the track--all possibly symbolizing that most fundamental and vital periodic event, the contractions of the heart.)

[Note added 1/4/12: Compare the Dream of the Four Miltons.

 http://dailstrug.blogspot.com/2011/06/paradise-lost-and-dream-of-four-miltons.html

Compare especially the idea of Jesse Owens running around the track.]

[Compare also Erik Erikson's observation about Freud in Insight and Responsibility:  "Freud at times expressed some despair and confessed to some neurotic symptoms which reveal phenomological aspects of a creative crisis.  He suffered from a 'railroad phobia' and from acute fears of an early death—both symptoms of an over-concern with the all too rapid passage of time.  'Railroad phobia' is an awkwardly clinical way of translating Reisefieber—a feverish combination of pleasant excitement and anxiety.  But it all meant, it seems, on more than one level that he was 'coming too late,' that he was 'missing the train,' that he would perish before reaching some 'promised land.'  He could not see how he could complete what he had visualized if every single step took so much 'work, time and error.'"           

The term 'coming too late' might also refer biologically to ejaculatory delay:

 http://dailstrug.blogspot.com/2011/07/funny-dream-monsieur-le-president-et.html]

In one flashback, Wagner is shown escorting the painter Joukowsky in the Cathedral at Siena.  The Cathedral has a tower, like the school in the dream.  The scene's symbolic meaning is suggested by the music that accompanies it: the transformation music from the first act of Parsifal that depicts Parsifal's entry into the Temple of the Grail with his mentor, the character Gurnemanz.  The dream image of the school may suggest the issue of mentoring or, in the case of the dream, the failure to find a mentor.

[Gurnemanz says to Parsifal: "You see, my son, space changes here to time." "Du siehst, mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit."

Note the sounding of the bells (Glocken) at 12:17 on the video.]

Wagner discusses his old friends, saying, "They're all gone now, all my so-called friends who would support me to the ends of life."  This observation parallels the feelings of isolation in the dream.

The movie closes with Wagner's death.  Wagner's family is shown  gathered around a table, eating; Wagner is in another room, writing.  The scene at the eating table is suggestive of a Thanksgiving dinner.

A servant arrives at the door to deliver a letter, which is read by Wagner's wife.  The letter is a from a paramour of Wagner’s who beseeches him to meet with her.  (This scene suggests a correspondence between Wagner's wife and Dr. Pitts, the recipient of my "love letters."  Also the relationship between Wagner's wife, Cosima, and her father, Liszt, and it correspondence to the relationship between Dr. Pitts and her symbolic father, Dr. Wiener (and possibly to Dr. Palombo: "I supervise residents at GW"--again the Liszt/Dr. Palombo identification)].

Wagner's wife walks to the adjoining room where Wagner is working and confronts him with the letter  He rises from his chair, is stricken with a fatal heart attack, and sinks back into the chair.  His last words are, "my watch."

[Note that in The Dream of the Blue Oxford a wristwatch was an element of the events of the previous day. In a broadcast of the O.J. Simpson preliminary hearing that I watched on television the witness Steven Schwab is directed to describe his watch by the prosecutor.]

The depiction of Wagner's death suggests that my dream about Greensboro was in some way related to the telephone conversation with my sister about my father's operation.  Certainly, the juxtaposition of material in the movie--the family meal, death--parallels the conversation with my sister, which concerned her plans for Thanksgiving and her discussion of the television depiction of heart surgery.

The following details are not depicted in the movie, but are worthy of note because of the correspondence to my dream.  After Wagner's death his remains were taken to the train station at Venice, from which location they were transported by rail back to his home in Germany.  At one point along the route, Levi ("the son of the Shinto priest") joined the entourage to accompany Wagner's remains; he later served as a pallbearer.

Wagner's last words, "my watch" are noteworthy.  In light of certain observations by Erikson, the phrase, which symbolically expresses a concern regarding the passage of time, carries certain existential implications (though certainly unintended by Wagner) that may have significance with regard to the interpretation of my dream.  Erikson's comments may shed light on the theme of the train station in my dream and its underlying relation to my father’s death from heart disease.  Erikson writes, "During these years [the 1890s]  Freud at times expressed some despair and confessed to some neurotic symptoms which reveal phenomenological aspects of a creative crisis.  He suffered from a 'railroad phobia' and from acute fears of an early death--both symptoms of an over-concern with the all too rapid passage of time.  'Railroad phobia' is an awkwardly clinical way of translating what in German is Reisefieber--a feverish combination of pleasant excitement and anxiety.  But it all meant, it seems, on more than one level that he was 'coming too late,' that he was 'missing the train,' that he would perish before reaching some 'promised land.'  He could not see how he could complete what he had visualized if every single step took so much 'work, time and error.'  As is often the case, such preoccupation with time leads to apprehension centered on the heart, that metronome and measure of endurance."  Insight and Responsibility, at 39 (Norton: 1964).

Tuesday December 8, 1992

During session with Dr. Pitts discuss additional interpretations of dream.  State that my having seen Dr. Wiener on the morning of Tuesday November 24, 1992 may have symbolically represented occasions in childhood when I may have seen my father naked.

State that the dream image of Greensboro may have represented my father's body after his death.  Explain that the last time I spoke with my father was on the telephone on the morning of his surgery, June 30, 1976.  My father told me that he was being prepared for surgery and that "they just shaved me."  These are the last words I can specifically recall my father saying.  The image of Greensboro as being denuded of all vegetation, as being a sandy wasteland, may have been an image representing my father's last words.  Noted that the dream image of the phallic-like school in Greensboro may have represented my father's penis.

Noted that the immediate cause of my father's death was cardiac fibrillation, and that defibrillators were used on my father in an attempt to restore normal heart contractions.  The references to nuclear powered electric generating plants in the parable about Wagner may have referred to the cardiac defibrillators.

Noted that the one and only time I saw Dr. Strong, the surgeon who operated on my father, was in the Cardiac Care Intensive Care Unit at Temple University Hospital, upon viewing my father's body.  I recall Dr. Strong at the time as somber and silent, as if he had suffered a personal loss.  Dr. Strong was about 34 years old; his character might be termed phallic.  The surgical procedure performed by Dr. Strong attempted to salvage a heart chronically starved of oxygenated blood.  (The dream may have been based in part on an unconscious equation of oral frustration and myocardial "frustration," or ischemia.)

Explained that my mother used to arrange my toy trains on the floor on a white sheet.  Stated hypothesis that I may have unconsciously related this sheet with the sheet that covered my father's body at the hospital and possibly with the table cloth that would have covered our dining room table at Thanksgiving.  Noted possible primary process equivalence in my case of death, eating, and play.

[Note 1/4/12: The Dream of the Blue Oxford includes a reference to nudity and the covering up of a naked corpse: 

The corpses, you mean?

Corpses. He says: "Well, they have a problem. If a Jew dies and the family wants a burial, they have to pay tax on it. So they just throw them in the street."

Because they cannot pay the tax?

Yes. They cannot afford it. So then he says: "Every rag counts. So they take their clothing. And then once the body, the corpse, is on the street, the Judenrat [i.e., the Jewish Council] has to take care of it."]

Noted that my father's body resembled the lifeless, plastic toy train village and the lifeless quality of the dream image of Greensboro.  Also noted that the objects of the toy train village arranged on the white sheet may be interpreted as resembling plates of food and eating utensils arranged on a tablecloth.

Based on the above associations, offered the tentative hypothesis that the dream indicates that my idealization of certain males is based on an identification of these males' total personality with may father's penis.  Put another way, my homosexuality seems to center not on the fact that certain persons have a penis, but that their total personality represents my father's penis.  An open question--the ultimate question in my case--is how this phallic identification relates to the issues of oral frustration and a decathexis of the mother.

Dr. Pitts noted that my presentation lacked affect.

Sigmund Freud's Dream of Count Thun:

 THE DREAM ABOUT COUNT TAAFE AND THE TIRED HORSE

Before reciting the next dream Freud presents some preliminary remarks. I shall summarize them briefly.

On the preceding day he was on the platform at the station awaiting his train, as he was leaving on his vacation. Count Thun arrived on the platform and waved back the gate keeper who did not know him with a curt gesture and without explanation. After the train which the minister took had left, Freud was told to leave the platform and had some difficulty to be allowed to remain. He passed the time noting whether anybody got a whole compartment because of his connections. He decided to make a row, that is, t o demand the same privilege. He was in high spirits. He sang the aria from The Marriage of Figaro:

"If my lord Count would tread a measure,
 Let him but say his pleasure” .

Count Thun (tun-do) is jokingly called Count Do-Nothing.

The dream. “A crowd, a students’ meeting. . . . A certain Count Thun (or Taaffe) is making a speech. Being asked to say something about the Germans, he declares with a contemptuous gesture, that their favorite flower is colts-foot, and he then puts into his button-hole something tike a fern leaf, really the crumpled skeleton of a leaf. I jump up, that is, I jump up (sic), but I am surprised at my implied attitude” .

Then follows an indistinct part of the dream which because of its length I do not repeat in folio (it can be read in the original): a hall, it is necessary to escape, all exits are barred, he makes his way through handsomely appointed governmental apartments with furniture in brown and violet, past an elderly housekeeper with a lamp, he “avoids speaking to her” , and “it seems to me that I am very clever to evade her control “. He ascends a steeply rising path . . . escapes again to the station in a cab drawn by one tired horse. “I can’t ride on the railway tracks” . The seats are all taken. Finally in the train and “I find a peculiar, long braided thing in my buttonhole” . Again in front of the station, with an elderly gentleman who is blind. He gives him a glass urinal, sees his genital “plastically” . He wants “to think out a scheme to remain unrecognized” . hopes to get away without being seen.

Freud gives a long chain of associations of memories and ideas for the interpretation, of which I wish to take up but a few.

"This phantasy which attaches itself to the thoughts evoked by the sight of Count Thun is, like the façade of an Italian church, without organic connection with the structure behind it, but unlike such a façade it is full of gaps, and confused, and in many places portions of the interior break through” .

"Here in Vienna white carnations have become the badge of the antisemites, red ones of the Social Democrats. Behind this is the recollection of an antisemitic challenge during a railway journey in beautiful Saxony “... ‘” Being a green youth, full of materialistic doctrines, I thrust myself forward in a German students’ society in order to defend an extremely one-sided position, I jump up” .

"The elderly man. obviously my father, for the blindness in one eye signifies his one-sided glaucoma, is now urinating before me... since he is blind, I must hold the glass in front of him.... I make fun of him.... Glaucoma ... cocaine” . “The analysis shows these three dreams fragments to be impertinent boasts as the result of a ridiculous megalomania which in my waking life I have long since overcome” . “In this dream I am not concerned with the reasons which force me to hide the solution, but with the motives of the inner censor who hides the true content of the dream from me” .

My interpretation. Freud again experiences an offense, he has difficulty to remain on the platform. He has occasion to make a comparison with the haughty attitude of the count. As a Jew he feels insulted, therefore he remembers Saxony and an anti-semitic incident in a train while there. His feeling of equal right which is inherent in everybody and the affront on the platform again prompt the wish to “demand the same privilege” , not only at the departure of the train but always and everywhere-this is the la tent content of the dream.

Count Taaffe stands for baptism (Taufe). “Favorite flower” is known from Freud’s associations to a previous dream and means “Crucifer” (leaf skeleton). Later in the dream, in the train, he has a “thing in his buttonhole” . Before “all seats had been taken “. Progress in his career is symbolized by walking through ministerial rooms. The only control, the housekeeper, and we recognize her from a previous dream, is his mother.” It seems to me that I am very clever to evade the control in the end” . He finds a steeply rising path. Many a Jew who escaped from the Ghetto, far from his home town, has taken the secret blessings of baptism in order to ascend the steep path of life without hindrance.

He is alone in his struggle for existence, tired and exhausted, he himself is the tired horse of the one-horse cab. Like a tired nag is the poor Jewish physician to whom a scientific career has been closed, who has been refused recognition of his attainments and for whom the struggle for existence is made difficult. “He can not ride on the railroad track” , there, where everybody finds the road laid out. For him alone everything is “taken” .

The doctor who has studied philosophy and medicine, and who could say with Faust:

"Then, too, Iive neither lands nor gold,
Nor the world’s least pomp or honor hold . . ."

hears the spirit of doubt whispering the words of Figaro:

"If my lord Count would tread a measure
Let him but say his pleasure . . . “

In the dream “He jumps up” . He has the “thing” in his buttonhole, he is no more in the one-horse cab, but in “the train” . Is not the violet color which is mentioned twice in the dream the color of the tempter, the Roman church, consecrated to the ritual of Baptism?

The dream cannot end. The fugitive has evaded “the control” of the mother. But his father’s eye directed toward the son will paralyze him, he wants to “invent a scheme, to remain unrecognized” . As Jacob once obtained his blind father’s blessing, without being recognized, so another son of a blind father makes an effort to “remain unrecognized” in order to escape the curse. Since the time of this arch father, through hundreds of generations, loyalty to the tribe has been guarded, and what the son sees “plastically” ere he becomes his father’s lost son is that part of the body into which this loyalty is carved with a knife.

And yet, his conscience participated in this trick, he becomes his father’s “nurse” , who does not want to bury those who brought him into the world. The plan of the previous dream was refused the tempter by the unconscious. Instead of burying the parents (as in the previous dream) one could keep the step a secret, deceive the mother (hinters Licht führen—lamp), present to the blind father a glass that is not meant for seeing, then climb the ascending path, get into the train, drive onward.

"Yet I am surprised at this attitude of mine” .

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Before continuing I should like to explain an important factor to the reader who may not be very familiar with the psychoanalytic theory. The night dreams even of highly ethical people, just as the dreams of innocent children, may contain veiled death wishes (desires to kill) which are especially directed towards parents, brothers and sisters, husband or wife, one’s own children. In their waking life these people will be self-sacrificing and affectionate. Only the true criminal does not need the disguise which occurs in the dream work, he carries out his wishes in his life.

We are, therefore, not justified to say: behold, here are the evil intentions of killing the parents or of doing something sinful in secrecy, thus the dreamer is a sinner. We find, on the contrary, that those thoughts have been repressed and banished from consciousness and the light of day into the darkness of the night and of the dream; and even there they remain veiled and concealed, so that the dreamer, be he even Freud himself, should not have to hear the suppressed voice of the banished sinner.