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to somatic stimuli, is dismissible without any particular comment. Otherwise there must be—which is highly improbable—two entirely different kinds of dreams, of which only one has come under our observation, while only the other has been observed by the earlier connoisseurs of the dream. It still remains to provide a place for the facts which are used to support the prevailing theory of somatic dream-stimuli, within our own theory of dreams.

      We have already taken the first step in this direction in setting up the thesis that the dream activity is under a compulsion to elaborate all the dream stimuli which are simultaneously present into a unified whole (p. 151). We have seen that when two or more experiences capable of making an impression have been left over from the previous day, the wishes which result from them are united into one dream; similarly, that an impression possessing psychic value and the indifferent experiences of the previous day are united in the dream material, provided there are available connecting ideas between the two. Thus the dream appears to be a reaction to everything which is simultaneously present as actual in the sleeping mind. As far as we have hitherto analysed the dream material, we have discovered it to be a collection of psychic remnants and memory traces, which we were obliged to credit (on account of the preference shown for recent and infantile material) with a character of actuality, though the nature of this was not at the time determinable. Now it will not be difficult to foretell what will happen when new material in the form of sensations is added to these actualities of memory. These stimuli likewise derive importance for the dream because they are actual; they are united with the other psychic actualities in order to make up the material for dream formation. To express it differently, the stimuli which appear during sleep are worked over into the fulfilment of a wish, the other component parts of which are the remnants of daily experience with which we are familiar. This union, however, is not inevitable; we have heard that more than one sort of attitude towards bodily stimuli is possible during sleep. Wherever this union has been brought about, it has simply been possible to find for the dream content that kind of presentation material which will give representation to both classes of dream sources, the somatic as well as the psychic.

      The essential nature of the dream is not changed by this addition of somatic material to the psychic sources of the dream; it remains the fulfilment of a wish without reference to the way in which its expression is determined by the actual material.

      I shall gladly find room here for a number of peculiarities, which serve to put a different face on the significance of external stimuli for the dream. I imagine that a co-operation of individual, physiological, and accidental factors, conditioned by momentary circumstances, determines how one will act in each particular case of intensive objective stimulation during sleep; the degree of the profoundness of sleep whether habitual or accidental in connection with the intensity of the stimulus, will in one case make it possible to suppress the stimulus, so that it will not disturb sleep; in another case they will force an awakening or will support the attempt to overcome the stimulus by weaving it into the texture of the dream. In correspondence with the multiplicity of these combinations, external objective stimuli will receive expression more frequently in the case of one person than in that of another. In the case of myself, who am an excellent sleeper, and who stubbornly resists any kind of disturbance in sleep, this intermixture of external causes of irritation into my dreams is very rare, while psychic motives apparently cause me to dream very easily. I have indeed noted only a single dream in which an objective, painful source of stimulation is demonstrable, and it will be highly instructive to see what effect the external stimulus had in this very dream.

      I am riding on a grey horse, at first timidly and awkwardly, as though I were only leaning against something. I meet a colleague P., who is mounted on a horse and is wearing a heavy woollen suit; he calls my attention to something (probably to the fact that my riding position is bad). Now I become more and more expert on the horse, which is most intelligent; I sit comfortably, and I notice that I am already quite at home in the saddle. For a saddle I have a kind of padding, which completely fills the space between the neck and the rump of the horse. In this manner I ride with difficulty between two lumber-wagons. After having ridden up the street for some distance, I turn around and want to dismount, at first in front of a little open chapel, which is situated close to the street. Then I actually dismount in front of a chapel which stands near the first; the hotel is in the same street, I could let the horse go there by itself, but I prefer to lead it there. It seems as if I should be ashamed to arrive there on horseback. In front of the hotel is standing a hall-boy who shows me a card of mine which has been found, and who ridicules me on account of it. On the card is written, doubly underlined, "Eat nothing," and then a second sentence (indistinct) something like "Do not work"; at the same time a hazy idea that I am in a strange city, in which I do no work.

      It will not be apparent at once that this dream originated under the influence, or rather under the compulsion, of a stimulus of pain. The day before I had suffered from furuncles, which made every movement a torture, and at last a furuncle had grown to the size of an apple at the root of the scrotum, and had caused me the most intolerable pains that accompanied every step; a feverish lassitude, lack of appetite, and the hard work to which I had nevertheless kept myself during the day, had conspired with the pain to make me lose my temper. I was not altogether in a condition to discharge my duties as a physician, but in view of the nature and the location of the malady, one might have expected some performance other than riding, for which I was very especially unfitted. It is this very activity, of riding into which I am plunged by the dream; it is the most energetic denial of the suffering which is capable of being conceived. In the first place, I do not know how to ride, I do not usually dream of it, and I never sat on a horse but once—without a saddle — and then I did not feel comfortable. But in this dream I ride as though I had no furuncle on the perineum, and why? just because I don't want any. According to the description my saddle is the poultice which has made it possible for me to go to sleep. Probably I did not feel anything of my pain—as I was thus taken care of—during the first few hours of sleeping. Then the painful sensations announced themselves and tried to wake me up, whereupon the dream came and said soothingly: "Keep on sleeping, you won't wake up anyway! You have no furuncle at all, for you are riding on a horse, and with a furuncle where you have it riding is impossible!" And the dream was successful; the pain was stifled, and I went on sleeping.

      But the dream was not satisfied with "suggesting away" the furuncle by means of tenaciously adhering to an idea incompatible with that of the malady, in doing which it behaved like the hallucinatory insanity of the mother who has lost her child, or like the merchant who has been deprived of his fortune by losses.²⁷ In addition the details of the denied sensation and of the image which is used to displace it are employed by the dream as a means to connect the material ordinarily actually present in the mind with the dream situation, and to give this material representation. I am riding on a grey horse—the colour of the horse corresponds exactly to the pepper-and-salt costume in which I last met my colleague P. in the country. I have been warned that highly seasoned food is the cause of furunculosis, but in any case it is preferable as an etiological explanation to sugar which ordinarily suggests furunculosis. My friend P. has been pleased to "ride the high horse" with regard to me, ever since he superseded me in the treatment of a female patient, with whom I had performed great feats (in the dream I first sit on the horse side-saddle fashion, like a circus rider), but who really led me wherever she wished, like the horse in the anecdote about the Sunday equestrian. Thus the horse came to be a symbolic representation of a lady patient (in the dream it is most intelligent). "I feel quite at home up here," refers to the position which I occupied in the patient's household until I was replaced by my colleague P. "I thought you were securely seated in the saddle," one of my few well-wishers among the great physicians of this city recently said to me with reference to the same household. And it was a feat to practise psychotherapy for ten hours a day with such pains, but I know that I cannot continue my particularly difficult work for any length of time without complete physical health, and the dream is full of gloomy allusions to the situation which must in that case result (the card such as neurasthenics have and present to doctors): No work and no food. With further interpretation I see that the dream activity has succeeded in finding the way from the wish-situation of riding to very early infantile scenes of quarrelling, which must have taken place between me and my nephew, who is now living in England, and who, moreover, is a year older than I. Besides

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