by a desired common feature; I would rather meet my friend in Rome than in Prague; for the purpose of this meeting I should like to exchange Prague for Rome.

The possibility of creating composite formations is one of the chief causes of the fantastic character so common in dreams. in that it introduces into the dream-content elements which could never have been objects of perception. The psychic process which occurs in the creation of composite formations is obviously the same as that which we employ in conceiving or figuring a dragon or a centaur in our waking senses. The only difference is that, in the fantastic creations of waking life, the impression intended is itself the decisive factor, while the composite formation in the dream is determined by a factor- the common feature in the dream-thoughts- which is independent of its form. Composite formations in dreams may be achieved in a great many different ways. In the most artless of these methods, only the properties of the one thing are represented, and this representation is accompanied by a knowledge that they refer to another object also. A more careful technique combines features of the one object with those of the other in a new image, while it makes skillful use of any really existing resemblances between the two objects. The new creation may prove to be wholly absurd, or even successful as a phantasy, according as the material and the wit employed in constructing it may permit. If the objects to be condensed into a unity are too incongruous, the dream-work is content with creating a composite formation with a comparatively distinct nucleus, to which are attached more indefinite modifications. The unification into one image has here been to some extent unsuccessful; the two representations overlap one another, and give rise to something like a contest between the visual images. Similar representations might be obtained in a drawing if one were to attempt to give form to a unified abstraction of disparate perceptual images.

Dreams naturally abound in such composite formations; I have given several examples of these in the dreams already analysed, and will now cite more such examples. In the dream earlier in this chapter which describes the career of my patient in flowery language, the dream-ego carries a spray of blossoms in her hand which, as we have seen, signifies at once sexual innocence and sexual transgression. Moreover, from the manner in which the blossoms are set on, they recall cherry-blossom; the blossoms themselves, considered singly, are camellias, and finally the whole spray gives the dreamer the impression of an exotic plant. The common feature in the elements of this composite formation is revealed by the dream- thoughts. The blossoming spray is made up of allusions to presents by which she was induced or was to have been induced to behave in a manner agreeable to the giver. So it was with cherries in her childhood, and with a camellia-tree in her later years; the exotic character is an allusion to a much- travelled naturalist, who sought to win her favour by means of a drawing of a flower. Another female patient contrives a composite mean out of bathing machines at a seaside resort, country privies, and the attics of our city dwelling-houses. A reference to human nakedness and exposure is common to the first two elements; and we may infer from their connection with the third element that (in her childhood) the garret was likewise the scene of bodily exposure. A dreamer of the male sex makes a composite locality out of two places in which "treatment" is given- my office and the assembly rooms in which he first became acquainted with his wife. Another, a female patient, after her elder brother has promised to regale her with caviar, dreams that his legs are covered all over with black beads of caviar. The two elements, taint in a moral sense and the recollection of a cutaneous eruption in childhood which made her legs look as though studded over with red instead of black spots, have here combined with the beads of caviar to form a new idea- the idea of what she gets from her brother. In this dream parts of the human body are treated as objects, as is usually the case in dreams. In one of the dreams recorded by Ferenczi there occurs a composite formation made up of the person of a physician and a horse, and this composite being wears a night-shirt. The common feature in these three components was revealed in the analysis, after the nightshirt had been recognized as an allusion to the father of the dreamer in a scene of childhood. In each of the three cases there was some object of her sexual curiosity. As a child she had often been taken by her nurse to the army stud, where she had the amplest opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, at that time still uninhibited.

I have already stated that the dream has no means of expressing the relation of contradiction, contrast, negation. I shall now contradict this assertion for the first time. A certain number of cases of what may be summed up under the word contrast obtain representation, as we have seen, simply by means of