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There is one among the many anxiety dreams that has attracted particular attention ever since the beginning of human culture. The content of this dream is the following: A heavy weight lies on the chest of the dreamer who feels unable to move and breathe (12). The dream is called Nightmare, Cauchemare, Alptraum, “boszorkany-nyomas” (the translation of this Hungarian word being: witches pressure). As for the social and cultural bearing of this dream I wish to refer to Jones’ work dealing with it in detail. He points out that a number of superstitions playing an important part in cultural history are derived from this dream; he shows further, based on the study of an extensive anthropological and cultural material, that “an attack of the nightmare is an expression of a mental conflict over an incestuous desire” and adds, that “the definite proof of this conclusion is best obtained by the psycho-analysis of a number of cases” (13). It may be assumed that such observations have indeed been recorded, though I have not been able to trace any in psychoanalytic literature. So I believe that it would be of some value to report on the observations made in the analysis of a patient on the nightmare-syndrome which, in its pure form is rarely met with in analytic work.
A man of thirty-eight, a skilled workman, employed in a large industrial plant in a responsible post, wishes to be analysed because of impotence. In one of the first sessions he relates, that as a child, he suffered much from “witches pressure”, i.e. nightmare attacks: dreams that involved somebody he cannot now describe more closely, who pressed on his chest so as to arrest his breathing; he would try to struggle himself free, but was unable to move and would wake up groaning, in an agony.
The patient comes of a peasant family, both father and mother having been peasants. His mother is very superstitious. When he first had his nightmare attack, his mother said with resignation,” they have started “; that is to say