in the dream. If it were an anecdote, we should say the performance; but in the dream we may consider the sentence as it is, declare it to be ambiguous, and add before she married. The interpretation secret love is then confirmed by the mention of the cousin who is sitting with his wife in the stalls, and by the open love-affair attributed to the latter. The contrasts between secret and open love, between the dreamer's fire and the coldness of the young wife, dominate the dream. Moreover, here once again there is a person in a high position as a middle term between the aristocrat and the musician who is justified in raising high hopes.

* The German sitzen geblieben is often applied to women who have not succeeded in getting married.- TR.

In the above analysis we have at last brought to light a third factor, whose part in the transformation of the dream-thoughts into the dream-content is by no means trivial: namely, consideration of the suitability of the dream-thoughts for representation in the particular psychic material of which the dream makes use- that is, for the most part in visual images. Among the various subordinate ideas associated with the essential dream-thoughts, those will be preferred which permit of visual representation, and the dream- work does not hesitate to recast the intractable thoughts into an: other verbal form, even though this is a more unusual form provided it makes representation possible, and thus puts an end to the psychological distress caused by strangulated thinking. This pouring of the thought- content into another mould may at the same time serve the work of condensation, and may establish relations with another thought which otherwise would not have been established. It is even possible that this second thought may itself have previously changed its original expression for the purpose of meeting the first one halfway.

Herbert Silberer * has described a good method of directly observing the transformation of thoughts into images which occurs in dream-formation, and has thus made it possible to study in isolation this one factor of the dream-work. If, while in a state of fatigue and somnolence, he imposed upon himself a mental effort, it frequently happened that the thought escaped him and in its place there appeared a picture in which he could recognize the substitute for the thought. Not quite appropriately, Silberer described this substitution as auto-symbolic. I shall cite here a few examples from Silberer's work, and on account of certain peculiarities of the phenomena observed I shall refer to the subject later on.

* Bleuler-Freud Jahrbuch, i (1909).

"Example 1. I remember that I have to correct a halting passage in an essay.

"Symbol. I see myself planing a piece of wood.

"Example 5. I endeavour to call to mind the aim of certain metaphysical studies which I am proposing to undertake.

"This aim, I reflect, consists in working one's way through, while seeking for the basis of existence, to ever higher forms of consciousness or levels of being.

"Symbol. I run a long knife under a cake as though to take a slice out of it.

"Interpretation. My movement with the knife signifies working one's way through... The explanation of the basis of the symbolism is as follows: At table it devolves upon me now and again to cut and distribute a cake, a business which I perform with a long, flexible knife, and which necessitates a certain amount of care. In particular, the neat extraction of the cut slices of cake presents a certain amount of difficulty; the knife must be carefully pushed under the slices in question (the slow working one's way through in order to get to the bottom). But there is yet more symbolism in the picture. The cake of the symbol was really a dobos-cake- that is, a cake in which the knife has to cut through several layers (the levels of consciousness and thought).