Freud - Complete Works (428 page)

  
They had hardly been lying down any time when the door opened and a
white figure glided through the room. One fellow said to the other:
‘Didn’t you see something?’ ‘Yes.’
‘Well, why didn’t you say anything?’ ‘Just
wait, it’s going to come through the room again.’ Sure
enough, the figure glided in again. One of the lads jumped up
swiftly, but swifter still the ghost glided out through the crack
in the door. The lad, by no means slow, pulled open the door and
saw the figure, a beautiful woman, already half way down the
stairs. ‘What are you doing there?’ the lad shouted
out. The figure stood still, turned round and spoke: ‘Now I
am released. I have long had to wander. As a reward take the
treasure which lies just at the spot where you are standing.’
The lad was as much frightened as delighted, and in order to mark
the place he lifted up his shirt and planted a fine pile, for he
thought that no one would wipe out that mark. But just as he was at
his happiest, he felt someone suddenly seize hold of him.
‘You dirty swine,’ someone bellowed in his ear,
‘you’re shitting on my shirt.’ At these coarse
words the happy dreamer awoke from his fairy-tale good fortune to
find himself; roughly hurled out of bed.

HE SHAT ON THE GRAVE

   Two
gentlemen arrived at a hotel, ate their evening meal and drank and
at last wanted to go to bed. They asked the host if he would show
them to a room. As the rooms were all occupied the host gave up his
own bed to them, which they were both to sleep in, and he would
soon find a place for himself to sleep somewhere else. The two men
lay down in the same bed. A spirit appeared to one of them in a
dream, lit a candle and led him to the churchyard. The lychgate
opened and the spirit with the candle in its hand and the man
behind walked up to the grave of a maiden. When they had reached
the grave, the candle suddenly went out. ‘What shall I do
now? How shall I tell which is the maiden’s grave to-morrow,
when it is day?’ he asked in the dream. Then an idea came to
his rescue, he pulled down his drawers and shat on the grave. When
he had finished shitting, his comrade, who was sleeping beside him,
struck him first on one cheek and then on the other: ‘What!
You’d shit right in my face?’

  
¹
F. Wernert, ‘Deutsche
Bauernerzählungen gesammelt im Ober- und Unterelsass [German
Peasant-Tales, Collected in Upper and Lower Alsace]’,
Anthropophyteia
,
3
, 72, No. 15.

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2531

   In these two dreams, in place of
the Devil other super, natural figures appear, namely ghosts - that
is, spirits of dead people. ‘the spirit in the second dream
actually leads the dreamer to the churchyard, where he is to mark a
particular grave by defaecating on it. A part of this situation is
very easy to understand. The sleeper knows that the bed is not the
proper place for satisfying his need; hence in the dream he causes
himself to be led away from it and procures a person who shows his
hidden urge the right way to another place where he is permitted to
satisfy his need, indeed is required by the circumstances to do so.
The spirit in the second dream actually makes use of a candle when
leading him, as a servant would do if he was conducting a stranger
to the W.C. at night when it was dark. But why are these
representatives of the demand for a change of scene, which the lazy
sleeper wants to avoid at all costs, such uncanny individuals as
ghosts and spirits of dead people? Why does the spirit in the
second dream lead the way to a churchyard as if to desecrate a
grave? After all, these: elements seem to have nothing to do with
the urge to defaecate and the symbolization of faeces by gold.
There is an indication; in them of an anxiety which could perhaps
be traced back to an: effort to suppress the achievement of
satisfaction in bed; but that anxiety would not explain the
specific nature of the dream-content - its reference to death. We
will refrain from making an interpretation at this point and will
stress further, as being in need of explanation, the fact that in
both these situations, where two men are sleeping together, the
uncanny element of the ghostly guide is associated with a woman.
The spirit in the first dream is early on revealed as a beautiful
woman who feels she is now released, and the spirit in the second
dream leads the way to the grave of a girl, on which the
distinguishing mark is to be placed.

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2532

   Let us turn for further
enlightenment to some other defaecation-dreams of this kind, in
which the bedfellows are no longer two men but a man and a woman, a
married couple. The satisfying action accomplished in sleep as a
result of the dream seems here particularly repellent, but perhaps
for that very reason conceals a special meaning.

   First, however, we will introduce
a dream (on account of its connection in content with those that
follow) which does not strictly speaking fit in with the plan we
have just put forward It is incomplete, inasmuch as the element of
the dreamer’s dirtying his bedfellow, his wife, is absent. On
the other hand, the connection between the urge to defaecate and
the fear of death is extremely plain. The peasant, who is described
as married, dreams that he is struck by lightning and that his soul
flies up to Heaven. Up there he begs to be allowed to return once
more to the earth in order to see his wife and children, obtains
permission to transform himself into a spider and to let himself
down on the thread spun by himself. The thread is too short and the
effort to express still more thread out of his body results in
defaecation.

DREAM AND REALITY
¹

   A
peasant lay in bed and had a dream. He saw himself in the field
with his oxen, ploughing. Then suddenly down came a flash of
lightning and struck him dead. Then he felt quite clearly his soul
floating upwards until at last it reached Heaven. Peter stood by
the entrance gates and was going to send the peasant in without
more ado. But he begged to be allowed down to earth once more, so
that he could at least take leave of his wife and his children. But
Peter said that would not do, and once a man was in Heaven he was
not allowed to return to the world. At this the peasant wept and
begged pitifully, until at last Peter gave way. Now there was only
one possible way for the peasant to see his family again and that
was for Peter to change him into an animal and send him down. So
the peasant was turned into a spider and span a long thread on
which he let himself down. When he had arrived just over his
homestead, at about the level of the chimneys, and could already
see his children playing in the meadow, he noticed to his horror
that he could not spin any further. Naturally his fear was great,
for of course he wanted to get right down to the earth. So he
squeezed and he squeezed to make the thread longer. He squeezed
with all his might and main - there was a loud noise - and the
peasant awoke. Something very human had happened to him while he
slept.

   Here we encounter spun thread as
a new symbol for evacuated faeces, although psycho-analysis
furnishes us with no counterpart to this symbolization but on the
contrary attributes another symbolic meaning to thread. This
contradiction will be settled later on.

  
¹
Dr. von Waldheim, ‘Skatologische
Erzählungen aus Preussisch-Schlesien [Scatologic Tales from
Prussian Silesia]’,
Anthropophyteia
,
6
, 431,
No. 9.

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2533

   The next dream, richly elaborated
and pungently told, might be described as a ‘sociable’
one; it ends with the wife’s being dirtied. Its points of
agreement with the previous dream are, however, quite striking. The
peasant is, it is true, not dead, but he finds himself in Heaven,
wants to return to the earth and experiences the same difficulty
over ‘spinning’ a sufficiently long thread to let
himself down on. However, he does not make this thread for himself
as a spider out of his own body, but in a less fantastic way out of
everything that he can fasten together, and as the thread is still
not long enough to reach, the little angels actually advise him to
shit and to lengthen the rope with the turds.

THE PEASANT’S ASSUMPTION TO
HEAVEN
¹

   A
peasant had the following dream. He had heard that wheat in Heaven
was standing at a high price. So he thought he would like to take
his wheat there. He loaded his cart, harnessed the horse and set
out. He journeyed a long way till he saw the road to Heaven and
followed it. Thus he came to the gates of Heaven, and look! they
stood open. He charged straight forward so as to drive right
inside, but he had scarcely headed the cart towards them when -
crash! the gates banged shut. Then he began to beg: ‘Let me
in, please be kind!’ But the angels did not let him in and
said he had come late. Then he saw that there was no business to be
done here; there was just nothing for him, and so he turned round.
But look! the road he had travelled on had vanished. What was he to
do? He addressed himself to the angels again. ‘Little dears,
please be kind and take me back to the earth, if it’s
possible! give me a road so that I can get home with my horse and
cart!’ But the angels said: ‘No, child of man, your
horse and cart stay here and you can go down how you please.’
‘But how shall I let myself down then, I haven’t any
rope?’ ‘Just look for something to let yourself down
with.’ So he took the reins, the bridle and the bit, fastened
them all together and began to let himself down. He crawled and he
crawled and he looked down - it was still a long way to the earth.
He crawled back again and lengthened the rope he had joined
together by adding the girth and the traces. Then he began to climb
down again and it still did not reach the earth. So he fastened on
the shafts and the body of the cart. It was still too short. What
was he to do next? He racked his brains and then he thought:
‘Ah, I’ll lengthen it with my coat and my breeches and
my shirt and then with my belt.’ And that is what he did,
joined everything together and climbed on. When he had reached the
end of the belt it was still a long way to the earth. Then he did
not know what to do; he had nothing more to fasten on and it was
dangerous to jump down: he might break his neck. He begged the
angels again: ‘Be kind, take me down to the earth!’ The
angels said: ‘Shit, and the muck will make a rope.’ So
he shat and he shat almost half an hour until he had nothing left
to shit with. It made a long rope and he climbed down it. He
climbed and he climbed and reached the end of the rope, but it was
still a long way to the earth. Then he began once more to beg the
angels to take him down to the earth. But the angels said:
‘Now, child of man, piss and it will make a silken
thread.’ The peasant pissed and he pissed, on and on, till he
could do no more. He saw that it really had turned into a silken
thread and he climbed on. He climbed and he climbed and he reached
the end of it, and look, it did not reach to the earth, it still
needed one and a half or two fathoms. He begged the angels again to
take him down. But the angels said: ‘No, brother, there is no
help for you now; just jump down!’ The peasant dangled
undecided; he could not find the courage to jump down. But then he
saw that there was no other was out left to him, and bump! instead
of jumping down from Heaven he came flying down from the stove and
only came to his senses in the middle of the room. Then he woke up
and shouted: ‘ Wife, wife, where are you?’ His wife
woke up, she heard the din and said: ‘The Devil take you,
have you gone mad?’ She felt round about her and saw the
mess: her husband had shat and pissed all over her. She began to
rate and to scold him roundly. The peasant said: ‘What are
you screaming about? There’s vexation enough anyway. The
horse is lost, stayed behind in Heaven, and I was almost done for.
God be thanked that I am alive at least!’ ‘What rubbish
you’re talking. You’ve had much too much to drink. The
horse is in the stable and you were on the stove, and dirtied me
all over and then jumped down.’ Then the man collected
himself. Only then did it dawn on him that he had merely dreamt it
all; and then he told his wife the dream, how he had journeyed up
to Heaven and how from there he came down to the earth
again.

  
¹
Tarasevsky (1909, 196).

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2534

   At this point, however,
psycho-analysis forces on our attention an interpretation which
changes our whole view of this class of dreams. Extensible objects,
so the experience of interpreting dreams tells us, are ordinarily
symbols of erection.¹ In both these anecdotes of dreams the
emphasis lies on the element of the thread’s refusing to get
long enough, and the anxiety in the dream is also attached to this
same element. Thread moreover, like all things analogous to it
(cord, rope, twine etc.), is a symbol of semen.² The peasant,
then, is striving to produce an erection and only when this is
unsuccessful does he resort to defaecation. All at once a sexual
need comes to view in these dreams behind the excremental one.

   This sexual need is, however,
much better adapted to explain the remaining constituents of the
dream’s content. We are bound to admit, if we are ready to
assume that these fictitious dreams are essentially correctly
constructed, that the dream-action with which they end must have a
meaning and must be one intended by the latent thoughts of the
dreamer. If the dreamer defaecates over his wife at the end of it,
then the whole dream must have this as its aim and provide the
reason for this outcome. It can signify nothing else but an insult
to the wife, or, strictly speaking, a rejection of her. It is then
easy to establish a connection between this and the deeper
significance of the anxiety expressed in the dream.