Historical dream account · English · A. A. Brill, 1913 translation
The grey horse and the found card
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
The Interpretation of Dreams, authorised translation of the third German edition (1913) · Printed pp. 193–194
Dreamer identified by the source: Sigmund Freud
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I am riding on a grey horse, at first timidly and awkwardly, as though I were only leaning against something. I meet a colleague P., who is mounted on a horse and is wearing a heavy woollen suit; he calls my attention to something (probably to the fact that my riding position is bad). Now I become more and more expert on the horse, which is most intelligent; I sit comfortably, and I notice that I am already quite at home in the saddle. For a saddle I have a kind of padding, which completely fills the space between the neck and the rump of the horse. In this manner I ride with difficulty between two lumber-wagons. After having ridden up the street for some distance, I turn around and want to dismount, at first in front of a little open chapel, which is situated close to the street. Then I actually dismount in front of a chapel which stands near the first; the hotel is in the same street, I could let the horse go there by itself, but I prefer to lead it there. It seems as if I should be ashamed to arrive there on horseback. In front of the hotel is standing a hall-boy who shows me a card of mine which has been found, and who ridicules me on account of it. On the card is written, doubly underlined, "Eat nothing," and then a second sentence (indistinct) something like "Do not work"; at the same time a hazy idea that I am in a strange city, in which I do no work.
No precise dream date inferred. Page or diary heading is a locator; publication year is not event date.
Source & context
Complete quoted dream. Clinical explanation following it excluded; indistinct card wording remains indistinct. 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 card’s words are dream content rather than dietary or work advice.
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 pp. 193–194. Dreamer: Sigmund 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 pp. 193–194
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.