Two Dreams

— J. Chr. de Vries

I saw her in a dream, which seemed like a vision. I knew it was not she herself, but an image she had created for me.
C. G. Jung — Erinnerungen, Träume, Gedanken

The publicist C.J. uit den Westh looked up from the text on which he had been staring unremittingly for the past hour, and gazed for a full minute out of the window of his study, a lofty room on the first floor of his stately house in the Archipel neighborhood of the government capital in the west of the country. The text was a publication in an international scientific journal, written by the Leiden neurologist Dr. S. Zeele. It was a commentary on a study by the German-Croatian psychoanalyst Dr. Theo Heppe-Tausčy, concerning the relationship between Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity and the phenomenon of dreaming. The text was a summary of Zeele’s master’s thesis. Heppe-Tausčy, in turn, had commented on a dream analysis by the Hungarian physician Dr. Yschá Píëte. In the late 1920s, when he was working in Zagreb, Píëte had treated a student suffering from severe depressive complaints; he recorded this extensively in a case study volume published in 1935. The intriguing part of this case is that Heppe-Tausčy had treated the very same student, immediately after the appearance of Píëte’s book. Two years later, in 1937, the student committed suicide; his case has since become known in psychoanalytic circles as ‘the AV case’. Heppe-Tausčy wrote several articles about it himself, which were published in 1946 as part of his collected works. Zeele’s article appeared two years after that, in 1948. Heppe-Tausčy had supervised Zeele’s doctoral paper sometime in the mid-1940s in Paris. Heppe-Tausčy, for his part, had studied under Píëte in Zagreb.

Uit den Westh tried to connect the different layers of the text with one another: Zeele’s article ¹⁾ was the starting point, in which the relationship was established between the writings of Píëte ²⁾ and Heppe-Tausčy ³⁾. And finally, the text Thoughts, Dreams, Visions of Jung ⁴⁾ was drawn in as well, because of Heppe-Tausčy’s reference to this Swiss forefather of psychoanalysis. The central theme of Zeele’s article — the claim that Freud’s work is ultimately based on textual analysis, while Jung’s is based on image analysis — had set off a kind of alarm in Uit den Westh’s mind. Alarm was really too strong a word; it was more of a ripple in his memory, a vague suspicion of something hidden somewhere in his brain, a commentary, perhaps even a clue — but was it text, or was it image? He decided to imagine how Zeele had struggled to fuse the differing views of Píëte and Heppe-Tausčy into a convincing thesis, how he had absorbed their writings; swallowed might be the better word — Uit den Westh sensed a certain voracity in Zeele’s text. Hopefully, this voracity would in turn stimulate his own memory to yield its secret — or secret, was that not too grand a word? At most it was a discomfort, something was napping, something or someone needed to be roused. And yet, it was not an innocent nap, there was more to it; that was what troubled him. If it was not a nap, then perhaps a dream. Or more than that, a vision? But what, after all, was the difference between the two?

¹⁾ Dr. Zeele, Tekst of Verbeelding? – Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, year 1948, nr.3
²⁾ Y. Píëte, Prophecies of the Memory – English translation, 1935
³⁾ Th. Heppe-Tausčy, Erinnerungen an die Zukunft – 1946
⁴⁾ The only work by Jung approaching this title is: Erinnerungen, Träume, Gedanken – thirteen years later than the last date mentioned in the case. The quotations used in the ‘AV case’ are indeed drawn from it, but not entirely accurately.

It was especially this last question that now preoccupied Uit den Westh. He had already written extensively on the ‘AV case’ before; it concerned a student of German-Hungarian descent named Anté Vélöprős. This student had come to Píëte for treatment because of severe depression, which — so the young man was convinced — had been caused by the disappearance of his girlfriend, Máráia Rőt. This had ultimately led to his self-chosen death, after he had come to the realization that he had murdered her.

Uit den Westh was now mainly interested in one small element of that case: namely, two dreams (or were they visions?) of AV, as recorded by Píëte and later elaborated upon by Heppe-Tausčy and Zeele. Heppe-Tausčy’s conclusion had been that at least one of the dreams must be considered a vision. For the other, he had found no such evidence.

Uit den Westh, however, possessed more information than the psychiatrists in question; he had conducted his own research and had stumbled upon something the three therapists had overlooked. The distinction between dream and vision played a crucial role here.

Píëte drew the following line between dream and vision: a dream articulates a memory, and thus the past; a vision articulates the future. For him, the conventional distinction between ‘asleep’ and ‘awake’ was not of fundamental importance — after all, there is such a thing as ‘daydreaming’. Dreams are analytical; visions are prophetic. Whether the analysis proves sound or the prophecy comes true is beside the point. Vélöprős (‘AV’) described two violent dreams during his first sessions with Píëte: The Dream of the Forty Monks and The Dream of the Firing Squad.

The Dream of the Forty Monks

The dream began with the image of an old, yellowed newspaper clipping, no larger than five by five centimeters. AV remembered only the date from the heading: 1920. The text reported the execution of forty monks, hanged one by one from a tall derrick and then beheaded, their bodies tumbling into the mass grave below. What was extraordinary was that the monks, who walked in a line, were all singing, and kept singing until the moment of death. The choir grew smaller and smaller, until at last a lone soloist remained. After the newspaper report, the dream shifted to depict the execution in detail. Thus, the dream fell into two parts. The singing of the monks could be heard within the dream itself; AV was adamant about this, though when he awoke, he could no longer recall a single note.

From Píëte’s book it is clear that he did not consider the dream a vision, but rather a partially repressed memory, resurfacing through the dream. Heppe-Tausčy would later come to a different conclusion — but by then he had more information at his disposal.

From Píëte’s sessions with AV it emerged that one of AV’s uncles, a monk, had been brutally murdered together with a group of fellow monks during the period of the so-called ‘White Terror’ [1919–1921]. There was indeed a story circulating that they had been singing a hymn before the slaughter. But that was the only parallel with the dream.

The Dream of the Firing Squad

This dream, unlike the previous one, was of a personal nature: it depicted the dreamer’s own execution by gunshot. AV described how, during a bloody uprising somewhere in a southern land, he stood on a patio alongside six other fighters of a resistance movement, all lined up with their hands tied behind their backs. The walls of the villa surrounding the courtyard were whitewashed, though the broad overhang threw them into shadow. The wall behind the seven men was likewise white. Facing them stood a platoon of seven soldiers, with an officer beside them. In AV’s words: “The officer gave a command, and the soldiers raised their rifles, each one aiming at one of the prisoners. Then the officer gave the order to fire. And then something strange occurred: I heard the shot and expected to wake up. Evidently I realized at that moment that it was a dream, a ‘lucid dream’. But I did not wake. I felt the bullet enter my forehead, felt its devastating effect as it tore through, until it exited at the back of my head; I felt my brains splatter in all directions. Only then did I wake.”

AV added that he remembered it ‘as if it were yesterday’: how he had shot upright in his bed, awake with a pounding heart. Píëte did not consider this dream a vision either, even though AV had indicated that he was aware he was dreaming while it was happening. Heppe-Tausčy, however, concluded that it was indeed a vision — more than a mere lucid dream — and again, he had more information to go on at that time.

For none of the three psychiatrists was the question of dream or vision a fundamental part of the ‘AV case’; their focus lay above all on the disappearance of Máráia Rőt and AV’s possible involvement in it. Uit den Westh, however, who had already written extensively on that matter, now turned his attention to an aspect of the case that had escaped the notice of the three celebrated psychiatrists.

In that case, a table of two-letter combinations had played a major role. The table, as described in Píëte’s text, consisted of all possible pairings drawn from the following twelve consonants: B, D, G, K, M, N, P, R, S, T, W, and Z. Thus: BD, BG, BK, BM, and so on, up to BZ; then DB, DG, DK, up to DZ; and so forth, until finally ZW. In total, there are 132 possible combinations. In the table, associative words were listed after the combinations. In this way, AV could use them as mnemonic cues for ‘stories’. He very likely possessed an absolute memory: he could recite all the combinations effortlessly, which he indeed did during his sessions with Píëte.

For example, from the first series of twelve consonants, the following six pairs emerge: BD, GK, MN, PR, ST, WZ. These yield the associative chain: Bild, Gedanke, Mann, Paar, Salut, and Walz. That is a story: The image of the man of the pair who takes leave with a waltz. From any given sequence, stories could always be derived. To demonstrate this, Vélöprős offered the following example, based on the first eleven possible pairs derived from the letter B.

The sequence with the corresponding associative words of the first eleven letter-pairs, all beginning with the letter B, runs as follows:
 BD = Bild, BG = Beleg, BK = Bake, BL = Blume, BN = Bühne, BP = Blutstopp, BR = Begehr, BS = Buss, BT = Blut, BW = Beweis, and BZ = Bardauz.

The accompanying story might run like this: The image is the piece of evidence, a beacon on the stage; the staunching of the blood is a desire for the penance for the blood; this is the proof! Boom!
 The example came from Vélöprős himself.

From that point onward, Píëte’s session notes were filled with such stories. One associative chain of particular interest for solving the case was the following sequence: 
BM, ZS, GK, NT, PD, RW — yielding the words Blume, Zeugnis, Gedanke, Nacht, Pikdame, Rotwahn. The story that emerged was: The flowers are the testimony of the thought of the Night; of the Queen of Spades in her crimson delusion.

In the associative examples given by both Píëte and Heppe-Tausčy, the two dreams do not appear. Zeele likewise drew no connection. Presumably because, in the end, both dreams were not considered important enough to the case. Uit den Westh doubted this.

Uit den Westh set aside the texts of Píëte, Heppe-Tausčy, and Zeele; their conclusions regarding how they viewed the concepts of ‘dream’ or ‘vision’ were clear. For Píëte, both were dreams; for Heppe-Tausčy, the Dream of the Firing Squad was in fact a vision; but Zeele once again cast doubt on that conclusion. Unlike the other two psychiatrists — for whom the matter had ended with AV’s death — Zeele had further investigated the self-chosen death itself. That death was a story in its own right.

AV had gone to fight in the Spanish Civil War, against Franco’s supporters, in the camp of the Popular Front — resembling what the dream had described, only now made concrete. Up to this point, the information coincided with what Heppe-Tausčy knew, which was why he had considered the dream a ‘prophecy’, and thus a ‘vision’. Zeele agreed with him. He knew that while Píëte had indeed included both dreams in his text, it was in fact Heppe-Tausčy who had written them down during his sessions with AV. At that time, he was still Píëte’s doctoral student, and, as often happens in doctoral research, the supervisor could freely make use of the material gathered by his student.

The dreams had surfaced in the sessions between 1935 and 1936. Zeele believed that both dreams were connected to the Spanish Civil War, which was beginning around that time. For this reason he endorsed Heppe-Tausčy’s conclusion that at least the Firing Squad Dream was a vision. On that basis he also considered the dream of the monks to be a vision, though without further evidence.

The Second Table

Uit den Westh, however, believed that both dreams did not refer to the Spanish Civil War, but rather to the period between 1919 and 1921 in Hungary, known as the ‘White Terror’. He had two arguments for this. The first was not decisive, but it was nevertheless significant. Among the papers of Vélöprős there was a copy of André Malraux’s La condition humaine, an edition from 1934. The novel is set in Shanghai in 1927, during the revolution. The book is steeped in violence, and there is one scene in particular that must have left a profound impression on Vélöprős: the execution of a large group of men, each thrown one by one into the boiler of a steam locomotive. With every man who disappeared into the boiler, the steam whistle shrieked. The connection with the Dream of the Monks struck Uit den Westh as striking: the shriek of the whistle had been transformed into the monks’ singing. The execution had become a ritual.

The second argument was, for Uit den Westh, conclusive. In the legacy of Vélöprős he had discovered a second association table — an expanded version of the first. Whereas the first contained ‘only’ twelve consonants, this second table, clearly of later date, made use of the entire alphabet, and now also allowed for identical letter-pairs. Thus the combinations ‘AA’, ‘BB’, ‘CC’, and so on were possible. This created a table of 26 × 26 = 676 two-letter combinations, each with its own associative word. For a savant like Vélöprős, memorizing them was child’s play. Two combinations in particular drew Uit den Westh’s attention.

The pairs ‘AV’ and ‘NV’ gave two names: Anté Vélöprős and Néta Vélöprős. These combinations appeared only once in Vélöprős’s notes, in the following sequence: AV, NV, ZW, MN, WT, KP, SG, KW, TD. The corresponding associations were: Anté Vélöprős, Néta Vélöprős, Zwei, Mann, Weisse Terror, Kämpe, Schlag, Kopfweh, Tod. The references to the ‘White Terror’, to ‘struggle’, to ‘battle’ (which might also allude to the executioner’s sword in the monks’ dream), to ‘headache’, and to ‘death’ spoke for themselves. The ‘headache’ obviously referred also to the Firing Squad Dream. But what greatly astonished Uit den Westh were the first four combinations: the reference to Anté Vélöprős was unsurprising in itself, but the pairing with Néta Vélöprős was. Who was this figure? The third and fourth combinations translated as ‘Two Men’. What was the relationship between these men — were they brothers, or father and son, both in some way tied to the ‘White Terror’? Investigating this cost Uit den Westh several months.

When he completed this research, he was utterly confounded. Néta Vélöprős turned out to be Anté’s twin brother. Uit den Westh combed through Vélöprős’s notes again to see whether there were further references to the twin brother Néta.

In the case materials he stumbled upon the following associative chain: MZ, NT, ZM, WD, KR, BP. Through the corresponding associations — Metze, Nacht, Zaum, Wund, Kehr, Blutstopp — the story read: The whore of the night held in check, the wound turned, the bleeding staunched. ‘Whore’ undoubtedly referred to Máráia Rőt, who had very likely had an affair with the other twin.

The question was now: which of the brothers had been her true lover, or had it been both? It was a pair of identical twins, and so they would have been exceedingly difficult to tell apart. Uit den Westh eventually concluded that one brother had betrayed the other, on the basis of the word ‘Metze’ [‘whore’]. The only question remaining was: which of the two was the betrayer?

Since the case was named after Anté, Uit den Westh assumed that it was he who had presented himself as patient to Píëte. Inquiries at the civil registry in Zagreb revealed that Néta had died by suicide at the beginning of 1937. Anté was still alive then; his execution in Spain came at least half a year later. Uit den Westh delved into the case anew, comparing above all the notes of both psychiatrists. Suddenly he had an intuition: he noticed that there was a subtle difference between the associations in Píëte’s reports and those in Heppe-Tausčy’s. In one of the latter’s sessions the following chain was recorded: MZ, ZM, RT, KD, LN, BR, TZ, ST. These yielded, via the second table, the associations: Maráia Zart, Zimmer, Rot, Kleid, Lächeln, Begehr, Tanz, Salut.

Which in Heppe-Tausčy’s text read as: The lovely Máráia enters the room in a red dress, with a sensual smile; she dances out with a salute. Two letter-pairs were unmistakably from the second table: ‘MZ’ and ‘LN.’ The last pair does not occur in the first table, as the letter ‘L’ was not used there.

But more intriguing was the combination ‘MZ,’ which in the first table had the association ‘Metze’ [‘whore’], and in the second ‘Maráia Zart’ [‘Lovely Máráia’] — the exact opposite. This unexpected shift in association set Uit den Westh thinking, and he arrived at the following daring hypothesis: What if it had not been Anté who was Heppe-Tausčy’s patient, but Néta, who had taken his place? In that case, the second table must have been devised by Néta. Anté had killed himself because of Máráia’s infidelity with Néta. Néta had assumed his brother’s identity, convincing the authorities that he was dead. Thus he could go on living as Anté. His therapist Heppe-Tausčy had not noticed the substitution, for the brothers were indistinguishable.

After a time he had broken off the therapy. Regretful of his adultery with Máráia, and of his brother’s suicide which had resulted from it, he joined the Popular Front in Spain. There he allowed himself to be captured by the enemy and was executed by firing squad — exactly as Anté’s dream had described it, as a tribute to his brother. Uit den Westh had no trace of direct evidence for this theory, yet he was convinced that it must have happened this way.

In this way, the question of ‘dream’ or ‘vision’ was also resolved. The Firing Squad Dream was not a vision, not a prophecy, but a consciously staged act. The Monks’ Dream, likewise, was no vision, but a construction — dreamed, yes — but modeled on Malraux’s novel.

With a deep sigh, Uit den Westh swept the papers and books into a heap and shut them away in his archive cabinet.

— Bonnemort, 11 February 2023