for something that was already in the air. It was the spark which fell into the powder magazine. The material contains all the proofs essential for this view. I have repeatedly drawn attention to their own unrecognised participation in the dream by Marie’s school-companions, and the special points of interest where any of them have added their own phantasies or dreams. The class consists of girls between twelve and thirteen years of age, who therefore are in the midst of the prodromata of puberty. The dreamer Marie X. is herself physically almost completely developed sexually, and in this respect ahead of her class; she is therefore a leader who has given the watch-word for the Unconscious, and thus brought to expression the sexual complexes of her companions which were lying there ready prepared.
As can be easily understood the occasion was most painful to the teacher. The supposition that therein lay some secret motive of the schoolgirls is justified by the psychoanalytic axiom—judge actions by their results rather than by their conscious motives.[1] Consequently it would be probable that Marie X. had been especially troublesome to her teacher. Marie at first liked this teacher most of all. In the course of the latter half-year her position had, however, changed. She had become dreamy and inattentive, and towards the dusk of evening was afraid to go into the streets for fear of bad men. She talked several times to her companions about sexual things in a somewhat obscene way; her mother asked me anxiously how she should explain the approaching menstruation to her daughter. On account of this alteration in conduct Marie had forfeited the good opinion of her teacher, as was clearly evidenced for the first time by a school report, which she and some of her friends had received a few days before the outbreak of the rumour. The disappointment was so great that the girls had imagined all kinds of fancied acts of revenge against the teacher; for instance, they might push him on to the lines so that the train would run over him, etc. Marie was especially to the fore in these murderous phantasies. On the night of this great outburst of anger, when her former
- ↑ See “The Association Method,” Lecture III.
