Schlaf ist ein Hineinkriechen des Menschen in sich Selbst.

[Sleep means man's withdrawal into himself.]

Hebbel

Mr. Sigma, whom we already know through some analyses (vid. Nos. 70, 71, 72, 73), dreams:

(82) Mary offers me a breast-pin as a gift

1 decline it saying: "I thank you. You know, needles bring bad luck as gifts. Moreover you will get a better (a living, warm) needle from me.

A rule established by Freud is as follows: Conversation in dreams is taken from some actual daytime conversation. This is very true here. The dreamer's bride, Mary, brought a number of gifts for his sister; but she retained for herself a very pretty breast-pin. The dreamer thought she should have also given that pin to his sister, Rose. Mary said: "I cannot do that; you know: needles bring bad luck as gifts."

Another recent dream instigator may be mentioned: at an outing in the woods the bride (after an embrace) remarked that she lost the breast-pin. They looked for it but in vain.

The dreamer admires handsome breasts. His greatest pleasure is to suck the breasts (hence the symbolism: breastpin), an act distinctly and typically infantile, traceable back to the nursing period.

Until his fifth years he was in the care of his nurse. He slept with her in bed, played with her mammae and fell asleep with the nipple in his mouth.1 The oral region is his strongest erogenous zone. The dream portrays the thought (also consciously entertained) of intercourse with the bride or of proposing fellatio to avoid the danger of pregnancy.

Another observation by Freud must be mentioned in this connection. He states (Bemerkungen uber einen Fall von Zwangsneurose. Jahrbuch f. Psycho-analytische Forschungen, vol. I, 1909): "Experience teaches us that dreams sometimes portray the actual theme of the compulsive inhibition, etc., which during the waking state is traceable only under the cover of a distortion and displacement, like a cyphered telegram. These themes appear in the dream as conversations, in spite of the rule that speeches in dreams are reproduced from day-time conversations."

Sigma, with whose history we are acquainted through the analysis of previous dreams, suffers of a very serious psychic conflict, which may be subsumed in the simple query: bride or sister (Mary or Rose)?2 Every detail becomes a theme of doubt

1Once when he had a cough the nurse gave him her own urine to drink as a remedy. An example of symbolic equation.

2In all cases of compulsive doubt I have found that the doubter, during childhood, was placed between two persons to whom he was linked equally with ties of love: mother and nurse or nurse girl, mother and aunt, mother and father. Mr. Sigma seeks expression for his conflict in the typical conto his mind: he doubts himself, his bride, his sister; he questions whether he can make her happy, whether he can support her, whether he can be true to her, whether he will be able to gratify her, whether she will be faithful to him, etc.

This dream shows us his compulsive thought. He wishes that Mary would turn over to Rose the needle (obvious symbol).

She did not do it. He takes his sister's side. Mary and Rose are cousins, - a typical incest compromise. The speech applies to Rose and means: "Be consoled. True, you did not get my bride's needle, but I have another one for you, - a prettier, living, warm one!"

The compulsive thought, therefore, of which he is a victim, sounds: love thy sister! Against this imperative he struggles with all his might and the consequences of the struggle is his severe neurosis.

Is the sister without a share of responsibility for his neurotic condition? One reading over carefully the subject's other dreams should be able to form one's own judgment. Before he undertook the journey to Vienna (to be psychoanalyzed) his sister said to him: "You may marry your Mary; but do not be surprised if I should then find a sweetheart for myself and become intimate with him!" This foolish threat on the part of his sister had worried him stellation. The old theme - mother or nurse - is brought up now under a new form, - bride or sister?

a great deal. "It would be his greatest misfortune:" Die Schwester soil keine andere Nadel erhalten. He begrudged her having any one. She must remain single. He is jealous when she entertains herself in conversation with other gentlemen. Neither does he want to give up his bride. He does not want her, either, to have any one else. He would like to hold on to both. The only solution he can find is suicide: that would end once for all these tortures, wishes, cravings and doubts.

Another dream of the same subject: