A Dream Study

This study was undertaken because the vividness and detail of the dream showed it to be an unusually valuable index to the dreamer's unconscious attitude. It is reported because the completeness and dramatic arrangement of the dream are unique. It will be noted also that some of the common symbols appear with somewhat different interpretations than those which are ordinarily accepted. The dream coincides not only with Freud's dictum that a dream must be wish-fulfilling in character but also with Maeder's theory that a dream may often be of a confessional nature.

A brief account of the dreamer is necessary to an understanding of the situation underlying the dream. Born in Nova Scotia, an only daughter and an only child after the death of her brother which occurred in her early infancy, she was the recipient in her childhood of an undue amount of solicitude on the part of her parents. As she became adolescent, the parent complex showed itself in an antagonism toward the mother (herself a neurotic) for which she greatly overcompensated. Having completed a high-school course, she did library work in a nearby town for several years but continued to remain under the domination of her mother. At the age of twenty she became infatuated with a young man into whose society she was thrown by her work and was confidently expecting to marry him when he suddenly disappeared and she later heard of his marriage. She soon afterward became passively involved in homosexual activities with a charwoman who worked at her mother's house. This woman was enormously fat and none too careful of her personal cleanliness but possessed a certain amount of attraction for the girl, based perhaps on a few points of similarity to her mother. No other love affairs occurred, a situation to be expected in view of her strong father fixation, and the only men who had ever attracted her were ineligible for one reason or another— either already engaged or married or avowed celibates.

When she was