Page:Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (1916).djvu/167

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THE ASSOCIATION METHOD
147

here to come to the surface. It reads: What does papa really do if he does not bear children? The little one is very anxious to have a solution for all these problems; she would like to know how Freddy came into the world, she would like to see how the little flowers come out of the earth in the spring, and these wishes are hidden behind the fear of earthquakes.

After this intermezzo Anna slept quietly until morning. In the morning her mother asked her what she had dreamed. She did not at first recall anything, and then said: “I dreamed that I could make the summer, and then some one threw a Punch[1] down into the closet.

This peculiar dream apparently has two different scenes which are separated by “then.” The second part draws its material from the recent wish to possess a Punch, that is, to have a boy doll just as mama has a little boy. Some one threw Punch down into the closet; one often lets other things fall down into the water closet. It is just like this that the children, too, come out. We have here an analogy to the “Lumpf-theory” of little Hans.[2] Whenever several scenes are found in one dream, each scene ordinarily represents a particular variation of the complex elaboration. Here accordingly the first part is only a variation of the theme found in the second part. The meaning of “to see the spring” or “to see the little flowers come out” we have already remarked. Anna now dreams that she can make the summer, that is she can bring it about that the little flowers shall come out. She herself can make a little child, and the second part of the dream represents this just as one makes a motion in the w.c. Here we find the egoistic wish which is behind the seemingly objective interest of the previous night's conversation.

A few days later the mother was visited by a lady who expected soon to become a mother. The children seemed to take no interest in the matter, but the next day they amused

  1. A doll from Punch and Judy.
  2. See analysis of a five-year-old boy, Jahrbuch f. Psychoanalytische u. Psychopathologische Forschungen, vol. I.