Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/158

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140
THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

3. I see two women on the street, mother and daughter, the latter of whom is my patient.
Source.—A female patient who is under treatment has told me what difficulties her mother puts in the way of her continuing the treatment.

4. At the book store of S. and R. I subscribe to a periodical which costs 20 florins annually.
Source.—During the day my wife has reminded me that I still owe her 20 florins of her weekly allowance.

5. I receive a communication, in which I am treated as a member, from the Social Democratic Committee.
Source.—I have received communications simultaneously from the Liberal Committee on Elections and from the president of the Humanitarian Society, of which I am really a member.

6. A man on a steep rock in the middle of the ocean, after the manner of Boecklin.
Source.—Dreyfus on Devil's Island; at the same time news from my relatives in England, &c.

The question might be raised, whether the dream is invariably connected with the events of the previous day, or whether the reference may be extended to impressions from a longer space of time in the immediate past. Probably this matter cannot claim primary importance, but I should like to decide in favour of the exclusive priority of the day before the dream (the dream-day). As often as I thought I had found a case where an impression of two or three days before had been the source of the dream, I could convince myself, after careful investigation, that this impression had been remembered the day before, that a demonstrable reproduction had been interpolated between the day of the event and the time of the dream, and, furthermore, I was able to point out the recent occasion upon which the recollection of the old impression might have occurred. On the other hand, I was unable to convince myself that a regular interval (H. Swoboda calls the first one of this kind eighteen hours) of biological significance occurs between the stimulating impression of the day and its repetition in the dream.[1]

  1. As mentioned in the first chapter, p. 67, H. Swoboda applies broadly to the psychic activity, the biological intervals of twenty-three and twenty-eight days discovered by W. Fliess, and lays especial emphasis upon the fact that these periods are determinant for the appearance of the dream elements