“The Open-Air Closet”

In his The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud describes and analyzes in some detail a notable dream which is commonly titled “The Open-Air Closet.”1^{(p. 486-471)},2^{(pp. 243-446)} This is the dream as Freud relates it:

A hill, on which there was something like an open-air closet: a very long seat with a large hole at the end of it. Its back edge was thickly covered with small heaps of faeces of all sizes and degrees of freshness. There were bushes behind the seat. I micturated on the seat; a long stream of urine washed everything clean; the lumps of faeces came away easily and fell into the opening. It was as though at the end there was still some left.1^{(pp. 468-469)}

Freud proceeds to give a number of associations which came to him in connection with this dream. Many of these pertain to (mock-)heroic figures of literature and mythology. He begins by asking, “Why did I feel no disgust during this dream?” In reply he continues:

Because, as the analysis showed, the most agreeable and satisfying thoughts contributed to bringing the dream about. What at once occurred to me in the analysis were the Augean stables which were cleansed by Hercules. This Hercules was I…. The stream of urine which washed everything clean was an unmistakable sign of greatness. It was in that way that Gulliver extinguished the great fire in Lilli-put—though incidentally this brought him into disfavour with its tiny queen. But Gargantua, too, Rabelais’ superman, revenged himself in the same way on the Parisians by sitting astride on Notre Dame and turning his stream of urine upon the city. It was only on the previous evening before going to sleep that I had been turning over Garnier's illustrations to Rabelais….^{1(p. 469)}