Historical dream account · English · A. A. Brill, 1913 translation
An opera box instead of the cooling apparatus
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
The Interpretation of Dreams, authorised translation of the third German edition (1913) · Printed p. 106
Dreamer identified by the source: Anonymous woman recorded by Freud
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In the dream, I was in a box at the opera and was taking a lively interest in the performance. But Mr. Karl Meyer was lying in the sanatorium and complaining pitifully on account of pains in his jaw. I said to myself, 'Since I haven't the pains, I don't need the apparatus either,' that's why I threw it away.
No precise dream date inferred. Page or diary heading is a locator; publication year is not event date.
Source & context
Complete reported dream quote. Surrounding waking surgical history and Freud’s interpretation omitted, not converted into dream content. Karl Meyer is the printed dream figure, not the dreamer. In his preface (p. vi), Freud acknowledges that he disguised some personal disclosures through omissions and substitutions. These are historical reports as published in Brill’s 1913 English translation, rather than claims of untouched original dream logs. The cooling apparatus belongs to the waking circumstances in the source; the opera scene is the narrated dream.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), The Interpretation of Dreams, authorised translation of the third German edition (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913), translated with introduction by A. A. Brill (1874–1948), Printed p. 106. Dreamer: Anonymous woman recorded by Freud. Original-edition witness: Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Internet Archive scan funded by Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School. Original published qualifications, initials and uncertainty retained; descriptive title and navigation metadata added by Synastry.
No precise dream date inferred. Page or diary heading is a locator; publication year is not event date.
Public domain in the United States (original 1913 English edition) ↗
The original New York: Macmillan, 1913 English edition is beyond the maximum US publication term. The title page identifies Sigmund Freud and translator A. A. Brill; Countway Library catalogue metadata identifies their life dates as 1856–1939 and 1874–1948, respectively, so ordinary life-plus-70 terms have also elapsed. This uses Brill’s original 1913 translation, not a modern English translation or editorial adaptation. The original volume was digitized for Internet Archive with Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School funding. Public access or absence of a restrictive archive field is not itself a licence grant. No blanket worldwide clearance or new Creative Commons licence is asserted.
Source locator and text provenance
Printed p. 106
The original text and redactions are preserved. The page title is an editorial navigation label.
Original-scan-witnessed OCR repairs; line, page and type-spacing normalization; original lexical hyphens retained. Footnote/header furniture outside the continuous main-text account removed where a page intervenes. No new narrative words, endings, identifications or clinical interpretation.
- Account text SHA-256
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- Source file SHA-256
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Content notes
- Historical recollection
Connections in the Loom
Titles, theme labels, illustrations and map connections are editorial navigation aids. They are separate from the account’s words and do not establish connections between real people.