More Freudian syncs

I make no apologies for my admiration of the uncannily perceptive Sigmund Freud, even though just about everyone in my circle hates him. I don't have much patience with Freudians, or with the system to which they subscribe, but the man himself was one of the great observers of the human condition.

I find that my reading of his works tends to trigger synchronistic goings-on, the most notable of which (qv) being the time my wife and I both suddenly forgot the name of the country Monaco -- only to read the next day Freud's account of forgetting the same thing.

This most recent one is not so impressive, but it still got my attention. I had just dreamt the night before of going into a Starbucks, clad only in a pair of boxers, and ordering a coffee, a sandwich with the self-contradictory name "Giant Smallstar," and a hockey jersey. I was not at all embarrassed about being in public in my underwear, and no one else seemed to notice it, either. The day before the dream, I had read an adaptation of The Emperor's New Clothes as part of a children's English class. The day after the dream, I happened to pick up a volume of Freud after a long hiatus in which I had been reading other things. On the next page after the one where my bookmark was, I read this:

In a dream in which one is naked or scantily clad in the presence of strangers, it sometimes happens that one is not in the least ashamed of one's condition. But the dream of nakedness demands our attention only when shame and embarrassment are felt in it. . . . 

The persons before whom one is ashamed are almost always strangers, whose faces remain indeterminate. It never happens, in the typical dream, that one is reproved or even noticed on account of the lack of clothing which causes one such embarrassment. On the contrary, the people in the dream appear to be quite indifferent; or, as I was able to note in one particularly vivid dream, they have stiff and solemn expressions. This gives us food for thought. 

The dreamer's embarrassment and the spectator's indifference constitute a contradiction such as often occurs in dreams. It would be more in keeping with the dreamer's feelings if the strangers were to look at him in astonishment, or were to laugh at him, or be outraged. . . . [This dream] has been made the basis of a fairy-tale familiar to us all in Andersen's version of The Emperor's New Clothes . . . . In Andersen's fairy-tale we are told of two impostors who weave a costly garment for the Emperor, which shall, however, be visible only to the good and true. The Emperor goes forth clad to this invisible garment, and since the imaginary fabric serves as a sort of touchstone, the people are frightened into behaving as though they did not notice the Emperor's nakedness. But this is really the situation in our dream.

Not all of this can be ascribed to coincidence. Reading The Emperor's New Clothes may have prompted a dream about being naked in public, and the memorable dream may have prompted me to pick up Freud -- but it's still impressive that Freud mentioned by name the story I had read the day before, and that he mentioned the atypical dream-situation of being naked but not embarrassed.