Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/377

Let us take up the occasion of the dream. It is a visit of this lady, Louise N., who assists at the work in the dream. She says: "Lend me something to read." I offer her She, by Rider Haggard. "A strange book, but full of hidden sense," I try to explain to her; "the eternal feminine, the immortality of our emotions——" Here she interrupts me: "I know that book already. Haven't you something of your own?" "No, my own immortal works are still unwritten." "Well, when are you going to publish your so-called latest revelations which you promised us would be good reading?" she asks somewhat sarcastically. I now perceive that she is a mouthpiece for someone else, and I become silent. I think of the effort it costs me to publish even my work on the Dream, in which I have to surrender so much of my own intimate character. "The best that you know you can't tell to the children." The preparation of my own body, which I am ordered to make in the dream, is thus the self-analysis necessitated in the communication of my dreams. The elder Bruecke very properly finds a place here; in these first years of my scientific work it happened that I neglected a discovery, until his energetic commands forced me to publish it. But the other trains of thought which start from my conversation with Louise N. go too deep to become conscious; they are side-tracked by way of the related material which has been awakened in me by the mention of Rider Haggard's She. The comment "strangely enough" goes with this book, and with another by the same author, The Heart of the World, and numerous elements of the dream are taken from these two fantastic novels. The muddy ground over which the dreamer is carried, the chasm which must be crossed by means of the boards that have been brought along, come from She; the Indians, the girl, and the wooden house, from the Heart of the World. In both novels a woman is the leader, both treat of dangerous wanderings; She has to do with an adventurous journey to the undiscovered country, a place almost untrodden by foot of man. According to a note which I find in my record of the dream, the fatigue in my legs was a real sensation of those days. Doubtless in correspondence with this came a tired frame of mind and the doubting question: "How much further will my legs carry me?" The adventure in She