Historical dream account · English · A. A. Brill, 1913 translation

Two June bugs at the window

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

The Interpretation of Dreams, authorised translation of the third German edition (1913) · Printed p. 271

Dreamer identified by the source: Anonymous elderly woman recorded by Freud

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She remembers that she has two June bugs in a box, which she must set at liberty, for otherwise they will suffocate. She opens the box, and the bugs are quite exhausted; one of them flies out of the window, but the other is crushed on the casement while she is shutting the window, as some one or other requests her to do (expressions of disgust).

Source & context

Entire stated dream content. Source says its interpretation is unfinished, not that the quoted narrative lacks an ending. Flagged animal death (one beetle crushed); no clinical 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.

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. 271. Dreamer: Anonymous elderly 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.

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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. 271

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.

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Account text SHA-256
e018aaa808bf292b14f94eba7fd26bc5adfb359c9634911ddecee4ca6e960820
Source file SHA-256
81d74537e2b19bdae7ad780593916ea8cbc0c13ec793e2cfe7ed49e227049568
Content notes
  • Historical recollection
  • Animal death in dream

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.