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Recently, I have written about a joke in a dream (Mahon 2002a), a parapraxis in a dream (Mahon 2005), and a dream within a dream (Mahon 2002b), bringing attention to the dream work's reasons for employing such extra flourishes in the service of disguise. In this brief communication, I would like to give an example of a pun in a dream and then comment on the cunning of the dream work as it selects what it needs to fulfill infantile wishes, using the most beguiling disguises.
Mr. J, a professor of English literature, in analysis for many years, recently reported the following dream:
I am at the closing of a real estate transaction. All the parties are assembled around an official looking table in a typical room of a bank or some such institution. The lawyers are present, but the deal cannot go through because the didn'ter isn't present.
The strange word didn'ter seemed to make sense in the dream, as if the didn'ter were as expectable a presence as the lawyers or bank officials who attend closings. Didn'ter was pronounced in the dream like didn't (the contracted form of did not) with an er attached to it, turning the verb into a noun. Initially, Mr. J did not recognize the pun that didn'ter concealed. When he did, he was