and the dream is a dismal allusion to the situation: “Do not work and do not eat.” The street in the dream is built up out of impressions of Verona and Siena, the association is Italy (“gen Italien” in German means to Italy) and an association to this;155
VELIKOVSKY’S INTERPRETATIONRiding horseback is also called to career. It is a career dream. Therefore “riding a high horse.” Colleague P., as Freud mentions, is a person who is after a successful career (we suppose a Christian or a baptized Jew, not a Jew). The gray, very intelligent horse consequently is Freud’s career. In the same book we read that his hair is already getting gray. One who worried about his career will frequently compare the color of his hair with the distance he has traveled and the success that did not come. He has a “bad seat.” Vans (Lastwagen) among which one rides may be symbolic of a load taken off one’s conscience, but usually means a load on one’s conscience (Entlastung—Belastung). “I turn around” means conversion (ich kehre um—Bekehrung). “Open chapel”—we know a psychoanalytic sexual interpretation for this, but the reader will know himself already what the open chapel means; it needs no interpretation.156 Velikovsky goes on to propose that the latter part of the dream refers to the explicit or implicit anti-Semitism found when traveling, since a Jew had to show his passport giving his religion when staying at a hotel. MY COMMENTS AND INTERPRETATIONVelikovsky’s suggestion that this is a career dream receives further support from information that was unavailable to him. Dr. P. was Freud’s colleague Dr. Josef Paneth, who took Freud’s place after Freud reluctantly left Brücke’s laboratory.157 The dream as Freud recounted it referred to two different chapels on a street of Italian character (another example of the Catholic meaning of Italy for Freud). What is interesting is that Freud in his analysis completely omitted any comment about the significance of either chapel. Since Freud in this book was demonstrating his theory of interpretation by analyzing dreams word by word, or at least phrase by phrase, the fact that Freud skipped this obviously important part of his dream meant that it was associated with highly censored ideas. Freud hinted at a sexual meaning for the dream (e.g., riding horseback on a female patient). However, a religious meaning is certainly present, and there is, of course, no reason why both sexual and religious meanings are not possible. (This possibility is taken up in the next chapter, and it is at the center of a recent thesis by Swales.158) |