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The Dream. I see my father-in-law before me. In the centre of his breast is the physical formula
The formula is (on the left) multiplied by something else, which I can no longer remember.
Previous history. The patient suffers from a supraorbital neuralgia, which was already cured, and from partial impotence, especially with his wife, whom otherwise he loved very much. His father-in-law had married a second time, and seemed to be very potent sexually. Patient had thought on the previous day that his wife, to whom he could at present afford no satisfaction, would conplain of this to her father, who might reproach him. How would he then excuse himself? In the dream he defends himself by opposing his father-in-law with an equation from physics. Patient is an engineer, and at present is occupied with theoretical physics.
Analysis.
This formula does not exist, and is compounded of parts of two others. In the electron theory the coefficient of refraction and the dispersion of light satisfy the following relation.
The index i is a determinate number, specifying a mode of vibration of the elementary charge in the atom; vo is the frequency of the vibrations, v that of the incident light, Ni the number of vibrators in unit volume, e the electronic charge, and g the ratio
where m is the mass of the electron.1