Historical dream account · English · A. A. Brill, 1913 translation
Glued to the steps
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
The Interpretation of Dreams, authorised translation of the third German edition (1913) · Printed p. 201
Dreamer identified by the source: Sigmund Freud
Read in your language or share a constellation ↗
I am very incompletely dressed, and I go from a dwelling on the ground floor up a flight of stairs to an upper story. In doing this I jump over three steps at a time, and I am glad to find I can mount the steps so quickly. Suddenly I see that a servant girl is coming down the stairs, that is, towards me. I am ashamed and try to hurry away, and now there appears that sensation of being impeded; I am glued to the steps and cannot move from the spot.
No precise dream date inferred. Page or diary heading is a locator; publication year is not event date.
Source & context
Complete quoted dream. Non-explicit partial-dress embarrassment; no anatomical analysis included. 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 account concerns an adult dreamer; “servant girl” is retained as the historical occupational wording without an invented age.
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. 201. 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 p. 201
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
- 21ec5bc240dbeaec7371548b5c0549c05e647b4e225cebed83aad4bff970ee81
- Source file SHA-256
- 81d74537e2b19bdae7ad780593916ea8cbc0c13ec793e2cfe7ed49e227049568
Content notes
- Historical recollection
- Non explicit partial dress
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.