Page:Jung - The psychology of dementia praecox.djvu/80

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
56
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DEMENTIA PRÆCOX.

up in a belt and dispatched upward like a package, especially took my fancy. Suddenly the cable broke and the horse dropped to the street. I thought that it was surely killed when, all at once, it started up and galloped away. At the same time I noticed that the horse was dragging along the heavy trunk of a tree, and I wondered how, in spite of that, it could advance so rapidly. Evidently it became skittish and was liable to do some damage. Then a rider on a small horse came along and slowly rode towards the unruly horse which also assumed a somewhat slower gait. Nevertheless, I feared that the horse might run over this rider when a cab came along and paced in front of the rider, thus bringing the horse to a still slower gait. I then thought now all is well, the danger is over."

I then took up the individual points of the dream and asked my friend X. to repeat to me whatever came into his mind at each point. The hoisting up of the horses recalled to him the idea of hoisting horses on a sky scraper and indeed they seemed to be covered up just like horses that are lowered into mines to work. X. recently saw in a periodical the picture of a sky scraper in process of building where the work is done at a dizzy height and at the same time thought that it was hard work that he would not care for. I then attempted to analyze this strange picture of hoisting a horse into the air. X. stated that the horse was tied around by a belt just as they used to tie horses which they lowered into the mines. What particularly struck the dreamer in the picture of the periodical was the work at such a dizzy height. The horse in the mines must also work. Perhaps the expression for mines (Berg-Werk, literally translated mountain-work) gave origin to the two thoughts of the dream, "mountain" expressing height and "work" expressing labor. I therefore asked X. to concentrate his mind on the word "mountain" and tell me the associations following it. He immediately remarked that he was a passionate mountain climber and especially about the time of the dream he had a great desire to make a high ascent and also to travel. But his wife felt very uneasy about it and would not allow him to go alone. She could not accompany him, as she was pregnant. For the same reasons they were obliged to give up a journey to America, whither they had planned to go together. They then realized that as soon as