[129] The symbolism of numbers, which greatly engaged the philosophic fantasy of earlier centuries, has acquired a fresh interest from the analytical researches of Freud and his school. In the material of number dreams we no longer discover conscious speculations on the symbolic connections between numbers, but rather the unconscious roots of number symbolism. As there is nothing fundamentally new to be offered in this field since the researches of Freud, Adler, and Stekel, we must content ourselves with corroborating their experience by citing parallel cases. I have under observation a few cases of this kind which may be worth reporting for their general interest.
[130] The first three examples are from a middle-aged man whose conflict of the moment was an extramarital love-affair. The dream-fragment from which I take the symbolical number is: … the dreamer shows his season ticket to the conductor. The conductor protests at the high number on the ticket. It was 2477.
[131] The analysis of the dream brought out a rather ungentlemanly reckoning up of the expenses of this love-affair, which was foreign to the dreamer’s generous nature. His unconscious made use of this in order to resist the affair. The most obvious interpretation would be that this number had a financial significance and origin. A rough estimate of the expenses so far involved led to a number which in fact approached 2477 francs; a more careful calculation gave 2387 francs, a number which could only arbitrarily be translated into 2477. I then left the number to the free association of the patient. It occurred to him that in the dream the number appeared divided: 24 77. Perhaps it was a telephone number. This conjecture proved incorrect. The next association was that it was the sum of various other numbers. At this point the patient remembered telling me earlier that he had just celebrated the hundredth birthday of his mother and himself, since she was sixty-five and he was thirty-five. (Their birthdays fell on the same day.) In this way he arrived at the following series of associations:
He was born on |
26. II2 |
His mistress |
28. VIII |
His wife |
1. III |
His mother (his father was long dead) |
26. II |
His two children |
29. IV |
|
13. VII |
He was born |
II. 753 |
His mistress |
VIII. 85 |
He was now |
36 |
His mistress |
25 |
[132] If this series of associations is written down in the usual figures, we get the following sum:
262 |
288 |
13 |
262 |
294 |
137 |
275 |
885 |
36 |
25 |
2477 |
[133] This series, which includes all the members of his family, thus gives the number 2477. Its composition led to a deeper layer of the dream’s meaning. The patient was greatly attached to his family but on the other hand very much in love with his mistress. This caused him severe conflicts. The details of the “conductor’s” appearance (omitted here for the sake of brevity) pointed to the analyst, from whom the patient both feared and wished firm control as well as sharp censure of his dependent state.
[134] The dream that followed shortly afterwards ran (much abbreviated): The analyst asked the patient what he actually did when he was with his mistress. The patient said he gambled, and always on a very high number: 152. The analyst remarked: “You are sadly cheated.”
[135] Analysis once more revealed a repressed tendency to reckon up the costs of the affair. The monthly expenses amounted to close on 152 francs (actually between 148 and 158). The remark that he was being cheated alluded to the point at issue between himself and his mistress. She asserted that he deflowered her, but he was quite convinced that she was not a virgin and had already been deflowered by someone else at a time when he was seeking her favours and she was refusing him. The word “number” led to the association “size in gloves,” “size of calibre.” From there it was but a short step to the fact that he had noted at the first coitus a remarkable width of the opening instead of the expected resistance of the hymen. This seemed to him proof of deception. The unconscious naturally used this discovery as a most effective means of resistance against the relationship. The number 152 proved refractory at first to further analysis. But on a later occasion it led to the not so distant idea of a “house number,” followed by these associations: when he first knew her the lady lived at 17 X Street, then at 129 Y Street, then at 48 Z Street.
[136] Here the patient realized that he had already gone far beyond 152, for the total was 194. It then occurred to him that, for certain reasons, the lady had left 48 Z Street at his instigation, so the total must be 194 − 48 = 146. She was now living at 6 A Street, hence it was 146 + 6 = 152.
[137] Later in the analysis he had the following dream: He received a bill from the analyst charging him interest of 1 franc on a sum of 315 francs for delay in payment from the 3rd to the 29th September.
[138] This reproach of meanness and avariciousness levelled at the analyst covered, as analysis proved, a strong unconscious envy. There were several things in the analyst’s life that might arouse the envy of the patient. One thing in particular had made an impression on him: the analyst had lately had an addition to his family. The disturbed relations between the patient and his wife unfortunately permitted no such expectation in his case. There was therefore ample ground for invidious comparisons.
[139] As before, the analysis started by dividing the number 315 into 3 1 5. The patient associated 3 with the fact that the analyst had 3 children, with the recent addition of another 1. He himself would have had 5 children if all were living, as it was he had 3 − 1 = 2, for 3 children were stillborn. But these associations were far from exhausting the number symbolism of the dream.
[140] The patient remarked that the period from the 3rd to the 29th September comprised 26 days. His next thought was to add this and the remaining numbers together: 26 + 315 + 1 = 342. He then carried out the same operation on 342 as on 315, dividing it into 3 4 2. Whereas before it came out that the analyst had 3 children, with 1 in addition, and the patient would have had 5, now the meaning was: the analyst had 3 children, now has 4, but the patient only 2. He remarked that the second number sounded like a rectification of the wish-fulfilment of the first.
[141] The patient, who had discovered this explanation for himself without my help, declared himself satisfied. His analyst, however, was not; to him it seemed that the above revelations did not exhaust the possibilities determining the unconscious products. In connection with the number 5, the patient had carefully noted that, of the 3 stillborn children, 1 was born in the 9th and 2 in the 7th month. He also emphasized that his wife had had 2 miscarriages, 1 in the 5th week and 1 in the 7th. If we add these figures together we get the determination of the number 26:
1 child |
|
7 months |
1 ″ |
|
7 ″ |
1 ″ |
|
9 ″ |
2 miscarriages (5 + 7 weeks) |
= |
3 ″ |
|
|
26 |
[142] It seems as if 26 were determined by the number of lost periods of pregnancy. In the dream the period of 26 days denoted a delay for which the patient was charged 1 franc interest. Owing to the lost pregnancies he did in fact suffer a delay, for during the time in which the patient knew him the analyst got ahead by 1 child, 1 franc may therefore mean 1 child. We have already noted the patient’s tendency to add together all his children, including the dead ones, in order to outdo his rival. The thought that his analyst had outdone him by 1 child might influence even more strongly the determination of the number 1. We shall therefore follow up this tendency of the patient and continue his number game by adding to 26 the 2 successful pregnancies of 9 months each: 26 + 18 = 44.
[143] Dividing the numbers again into integers we get 2 + 6 and 4 + 4, two groups of figures which have only one thing in common, that each gives 8 by addition. It is to be noted that these figures are composed entirely of the months of pregnancy accruing to the patient. If we compare them with the figures indicating the progenitive capacity of the analyst, namely 315 and 342, we observe that the latter, added crosswise, each gives a total of 9. Now 9 − 8 = 1. Again it seems as if the thought of the difference of 1 were asserting itself. The patient had remarked earlier that 315 seemed to him a wish-fulfilment and 342 a rectification. Letting our fantasy play round them, we discover the following difference between the two numbers:
3 × 1 × 5 = 15 3 × 4 × 2 = 24 24 − 15 = 9
[144] Once more we come upon the significant figure 9, which fits very aptly into this calculus of pregnancies and births.
[145] It is difficult to say where the borderline of play begins–necessarily so, for an unconscious product is the creation of sportive fantasy, of that psychic impulse out of which play itself arises. It is repugnant to the scientific mind to indulge in this kind of playfulness, which tails off everywhere in inanity. But we should never forget that the human mind has for thousands of years amused itself with just this kind of game, so it would be no wonder if those tendencies from the distant past gained a hearing in dreams. Even in his waking life the patient gave free rein to his number-fantasies, as the fact of celebrating the 100th birthday shows. Their presence in his dreams is therefore beyond question. For a single example of unconscious determination exact proofs are lacking, only the sum of our experiences can corroborate the accuracy of the individual discoveries. In investigating the realm of free creative fantasy we have to rely, more almost than anywhere else, on a broad empiricism; and though this enjoins on us a high degree of modesty with regard to the accuracy of individual results, it by no means obliges us to pass over in silence what has happened and been observed, simply from fear of being execrated as unscientific. There must be no parleying with the superstition-phobia of the modern mind, for this is one of the means by which the secrets of the unconscious are kept veiled.
[146] It is particularly interesting to see how the problems of the patient were mirrored in the unconscious of his wife. His wife had the following dream: she dreamt–and this is the whole dream–Luke 137. Analysis of this number showed that she associated as follows: the analyst has got 1 more child. He had 3. If all her children (counting the miscarriages) were living, she would have 7; now she has only 3 − 1 = 2. But she wants 1 + 3 + 7 = 11 (a twin number, 1 and 1), which expresses her wish that her two children had been pairs of twins, for then she would have had the same number of children as the analyst. Her mother once had twins. The hope of getting a child by her husband was very precarious, and this had long since implanted in the unconscious the thought of a second marriage.
[147] Other fantasies showed her as “finished” at 44, i.e., when she reached the climacteric. She was now 33, so there were only 11 more years to go till she was 44. This was a significant number, for her father died in his 44th year. Her fantasy of the 44th year thus contained the thought of her father’s death. The emphasis on the death of her father corresponded to the repressed fantasy of the death of her husband, who was the obstacle to a second marriage.
[148] At this point the material to “Luke 137” comes in to help solve the conflict. The dreamer, it must be emphatically remarked, was not at all well up in the Bible, she had not read it for an incredible time and was not in the least religious. It would therefore be quite hopeless to rely on associations here. Her ignorance of the Bible was so great that she did not even know that “Luke 137” could refer only to the Gospel according to St. Luke. When she turned up the New Testament she opened it instead at the Acts of the Apostles.4 As Acts 1 has only 26 verses, she took the 7th verse: “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.” But if we turn to Luke 1 : 37, we find the Annunciation of the Virgin:
35. The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
36. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.
37. For with God nothing shall be impossible.
[149] The logical continuation of the analysis of “Luke 137” requires us also to look up Luke 13 : 7. There we read:
6. A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.
7. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?
[150] The fig-tree, since ancient times a symbol of the male genitals, must be cut down on account of its unfruitfulness. This passage is in complete accord with the numerous sadistic fantasies of the dreamer, which were concerned with cutting off or biting off the penis. The allusion to her husband’s unfruitful organ is obvious. It was understandable that the dreamer withdrew her libido from her husband, for with her he was impotent,5 and equally understandable that she made a regression to her father (“… which the Father hath put in his own power”) and identified with her mother, who had twins. By thus advancing her age she put her husband in the role of a son or boy, of an age when impotence is normal. We can also understand her wish to get rid of her husband, as was moreover confirmed by her earlier analysis. It is therefore only a further confirmation of what has been said if, following up the material to “Luke 137,” we turn to Luke 7 : 13:
12. Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow …
13. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.
14. And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.
[151] In the particular psychological situation of the dreamer the allusion to the raising up of the dead man acquires a pretty significance as the curing of her husband’s impotence. Then the whole problem would be solved. There is no need for me to point out in so many words the numerous wish-fulfilments contained in this material; the reader can see them for himself.
[152] Since the dreamer was totally ignorant of the Bible, “Luke 137” must be regarded as a cryptomnesia. Both Flournoy6 and myself7 have already drawn attention to the important effects of this phenomenon. So far as one can be humanly certain, any manipulation of the material with intent to deceive is out of the question in this case. Those familiar with psychoanalysis will know that the whole nature of the material rules out any such suspicion.
[153] I am aware that these observations are floating in a sea of uncertainties, but I think it would be wrong to suppress them, for luckier investigators may come after us who will be able to put them in the right perspective, as we cannot do for lack of adequate knowledge.