identification- that is when an exchange, a substitution, can be bound up with the contrast. Of this we have cited repeated examples. Certain other of the contrasts in the dream-thoughts, which perhaps come under the category of inverted, united into the opposite, are represented in dreams in the following remarkable manner, which may almost be described as witty. The inversion does not itself make its way into the dream-content, but manifests its presence in the material by the fact that a part of the already formed dream-content which is, for other reasons, closely connected in context is- as it were subsequently- inverted. It is easier to illustrate this process than to describe it. In the beautiful "Up and Down" dream (this chapter, A.), the dream-representation of ascending is an inversion of its prototype in the dream- thoughts: that is, of the introductory scene of Daudet's Sappho; in the dream, climbing is difficult at first and easy later on, whereas, in the novel, it is easy at first, and later becomes more and more difficult. Again, above and below, with reference to the dreamer's brother, are reversed in the dream. This points to a relation of inversion or contrast between two parts of the material in the dream-thoughts, which indeed we found in them, for in the childish phantasy of the dreamer he is carried by his nurse, while in the novel, on the contrary, the hero carries his beloved. My dream of Goethe's attack on Herr M (to be cited later) likewise contains an inversion of this sort, which must be set right before the dream can be interpreted. In this dream, Goethe attacks a young man, Herr M; the reality, as contained in the dream- thoughts, is that an eminent man, a friend of mine, has been attacked by an unknown young author. In the dream I reckon time from the date of Goethe's death; in reality the reckoning was made from the year in which the paralytic was born. The thought which influences the dream-material reveals itself as my opposition to the treatment of Goethe as though he were a lunatic. "It is the other way about," says the dream; "if you don't understand the book it is you who are feeble-minded, not the author." All these dreams of inversion, moreover, seem to me to imply an allusion to the contemptuous phrase, "to turn one's back upon a person" (German: einem die Kehrseite zeigen, lit. to show a person one's backside): cf. the inversion in respect of the dreamer's brother in the Sappho dream. It is further worth noting how frequently inversion is employed in precisely those dreams which are inspired by repressed homosexual impulses.

Moreover, inversion, or transformation into the opposite, is one of the most favoured and most versatile methods of representation which the dream-work has at its disposal. It serves, in the first place, to enable the wish-fulfilment to prevail against a definite element of the dream-thoughts. "If only it were the other way about!" is often the best expression for the reaction of the ego against a disagreeable recollection. But inversion becomes extraordinarily useful in the service of the censorship, for it effects, in the material to be represented, a degree of distortion which at first simply paralyses our understanding of the dream. It is therefore always permissible, if a dream stubbornly refuses to surrender its meaning, to venture on the experimental inversion of definite portions of its manifest content. Then, not infrequently, everything becomes clear.

Besides the inversion of content, the temporal inversion must not be overlooked. A frequent device of dream-distortion consists in presenting the final issue of the event or the conclusion of the train of thought at the beginning of the dream, and appending at the end of the dream the premises of the conclusion, or the causes of the event. Anyone who forgets this technical device of dream-distortion stands helpless before the problem of dream- interpretation. *

* The hysterical attack often employs the same device of temporal inversion in order to conceal its meaning from the observer. The attack of a hysterical girl, for example, consists in enacting a little romance, which she has imagined in the unconscious in connection with an encounter in a tram. A man, attracted by the beauty of her foot, addresses her while she is reading, whereupon she goes with him and a passionate love-scene ensues. Her attack begins with the representation of this scene by writhing movements of the body (accompanied by movements of the lips and folding of the arms to signify kisses and embraces), whereupon she hurries into the next room, sits down on a chair, lifts her skirt in order to show her foot, acts as though she were about to read a book, and speaks to me (answers me). Cf. the observation of Artemidorus: "In interpreting dream-stories, one must consider them the first time from the beginning to the end, and the second time from the end to the beginning."