A young lady had, in her early childhood, contracted the habit of going to sleep with her thumb in her mouth. She had tried for several years to break herself of the practice, but all her attempts were in vain, for even when by strong mental effort she succeeded in getting to sleep without the usual accompaniment, it was not long before the unruly member was in its accustomed place.

Finally she hit upon the plan of covering the offending thumb with extract of aloes just before she went to bed, hoping that if she put it into her mouth she would instantly awake. But she slept on through the night, and in the morning found her thumb in her mouth and all the extract of aloes sucked off.

During the night, however, she dreamed that she was crossing the ocean in a steamer made of wormwood, and that the vessel was furnished throughout with the same material. The plates, the dishes, tumblers, chairs, tables, etc. were all of wormwood, and the emanations so pervaded all parts of the ship that it was impossible to breathe without tasting the bitterness. Everything that she ate or drank was likewise, from being in contact with wormwood, so impregnated with the flavor that the taste was overpowering.

When she arrived at Havre she asked for a glass of water for the purpose of washing the taste from her mouth, but they brought her an infusion of wormwood, which she gulped down because she was thirsty, though the sight of it excited nausea.

She went to Paris and consulted a famous physician, M. Sauve Moi [Mr. Save Me] begging him to do something which would extract the wormwood from her body. He told her there was but one remedy, and that was ox gall. This he gave her by the pound, and in a few weeks the wormwood was all gone, but the ox gall had taken its place, and was fully as bitter and disagreeable.

To get rid of the ox gall she was advised to take counsel of the Pope. She accordingly went to Rome, and obtained an audience of the Holy Father.

He told her that she must make a pilgrimage to the plain where the pillar of salt stood, into which Lot's wife was transformed, and must eat a piece of the salt as big as her thumb.

During her journey in search of the pillar of salt she endured a great many sufferings, but finally triumphed over all obstacles, and reached the object of her journey.

What part to take was now the question. After a good deal of deliberation she reasoned that as she had a bad habit of sucking her thumb, it would be very philosophical to break off this part from the statue, and thus not only get cured of the bitterness in her mouth, but also of her failing.

She did so, put the piece of salt into her mouth, and awoke to find that she was sucking her own thumb.

My immediate source, Norman Mackenzie's Dreams and Dreaming (1965; p.112-13) comments "A psychoanalyst's interpretation would emphasize the 'father' symbols of the doctor and pope, and the phallic significance of the thumb." Freudian still ruled in 1965, but come on, if we're going all oral and infantile, wouldn't it really be about nipples and nursing not dicks? Where the heck is Mom?

Not that I can rule out phallic innuendo--I think it's part of what makes the dream funny, all these bigger and bigger dicks whose prescriptions just make it worse and worse. But I'd have read it less about sex than simply as about unhelpful authorities (in the 1860s, all are male--where else can she turn?) After all, that salt pillar is Lot's wife, killed for nothing much by the Biggest Dick of All. In the end, she learns she's on her own.

Oh--these goofy staged photos of dreams were a brief thing in the mid-sixties; there's a similar set in Jung's classic Man and his Symbols, too.

William Hammond, who published this dream in 1869, was of course pre-Freudian; his theory (mainstream then) is that dreams arise from night noises, cold feet, indigestion... bad-tasting thumbs. As mere reactions to outside stimuli, they lack psychological meaning. So Hammond ignores both the implicit feminist complaint and sexual innuendo; he has a third, unrelated reason to publish Thumbsucker. Taste and smell are rare in dream accounts, yet here, taste is relentless and central. Bad taste; but taste.

I reprint this dream for a fourth, unrelated reason: I think this dreamer's a comic genius. But then readers of my dreams know I rather like bad taste.

SOURCE: Norman Mackenzie's Dreams and Dreaming (1965; p.112-13, with staged photos by Mike Buselle); primary source Sleep and its Derangements by William Hammond, 1869, pp 136-8).

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