23/12/2022
“An association … carried us another step forward in our understanding of the dream: ‘The tree was a Christmas-tree.’ He now knew that he had dreamt the dream shortly before Christmas and in expectation of it. Since Christmas Day was also his birthday, it now became possible to establish with certainty the date of the dream and of the change in him which proceeded from it. It was immediately before his fourth birthday.
He had gone to sleep, then, in tense expectation of the day which ought to bring him a double quantity of presents. We know that in such circumstances a child may easily anticipate the fulfilment of his wishes. So it was already Christmas in his dream; the content of the dream showed him his Christmas box, the presents which were to be his were hanging on the tree. But instead of presents they had turned into—wolves…”
- Sigmund Freud (1918)
"From the History of an Infantile Neurosis" S.E., 17, p. 35
▶️ https://pep-web.org/browse/document/SE.017.0001A
Image / Drawing by Sergei Pankejeff, also known as "The Wolf Man" (p.30).
