Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/402

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384
THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

dream which had quite the opposite effect. With the unfavourable news during the first days of the operation, I also received the injunction to speak to no one about the whole affair, which hurt my feelings, for it betrayed an unnecessary distrust of my discretion. I knew, of course, that this request did not proceed from my friend, but that it was due to clumsiness or excessive timidity on the part of the messenger, but the concealed reproach made me feel very badly because it was not altogether unjustified. Only reproaches which "have something in them" have power to irritate, as everyone knows. For long before, in the case of two persons who were friendly to each other and who were willing to honour me with their friendship, I had quite needlessly tattled what the one had said about the other; to be sure this incident had nothing to do with the affairs of my friend F. Nor have I forgotten the reproaches which I had to listen to at that time. One of the two friends between whom I was the trouble-maker was Professor Fleischl; the other one I may name Joseph, a name which was also borne by my friend and antagonist P., who appears in the dream.

Two dream elements, first inconspicuously, and secondly the question of Fl. as to how much of his affairs I have mentioned to P., give evidence of the reproach that I am incapable of keeping anything to myself. But it is the admixture of these recollections which transposes the reproach for arriving too late from the present to the time when I was living in Bruecke's laboratory; and by replacing the second person in the annihilation scene of the dream by a Joseph I succeed in representing not only the first reproach that I arrive too late, but also a second reproach, which is more rigorously suppressed, that I keep no secrets. The condensing and replacing activity of this dream, as well as the motives for it, are now obvious.

My anger at the injunction not to give anything away, originally quite insignificant, receives confirmation from sources that flow far below the surface, and so become a swollen stream of hostile feelings towards persons who are in reality dear to me. The source which furnishes the confirmation is to be found in childhood. I have already said that my friendships as well as my enmities with persons of my own age go back to my childish relations with my nephew, who