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This paper deals with the analysis of an unusual dream in a patient who survived a cardiac infarct. I hope to show how closely the dream and the bodily occurrence were connected, and also how it is possible to gain understanding of the disease process through an analysis of the psychic situation displayed so vividly in the dream.
After a brief account of the patient's history, which shows clearly the sources of his emotional conflicts, I will give his own record of the dream and discuss the relation of the physical symptoms to the dream content. Since the patient was not under analysis, his associations are lacking, but I have commented on certain themes appearing in the dream which help towards an understanding of both the psychic and somatic events. I will conclude with observations on this conjunction considered as an attempted solution of his conflicts.
The man, now about 50 years old, grew up in a Swiss town. A brother suffers from paranoia, and a sister from a “mysterious mental illness”. A sensitive, even delicate child, he was strongly attached to his deeply religious mother, but inclined to reject his father, who suffered from drinking bouts. At about 17, when an apprentice gardener at a boarding-school, he came to know the then prospective ruler of a distant country racked by political strife, and a close relationship ensued. The ruler later persuaded him to accompany him to his country, and, as the patient was intelligent, raised him to a fairly influential position at court. The patient has remained devoted to this ruler, and is identified with his life in a masochistic way as if it were his own.
His neurosis manifested itself in a number of psychic and somatic disturbances. At 20 he made an attempt at suicide, partly out of guilt feelings