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DREAM PSYCHOLOGY
PSYCHOANALYSIS FOR BEGINNERS
BY
PROF. DR. SIGMUND FREUD
AUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATION
BY
M. D. EDER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
ANDRÉ TRIDON
Author of "Psychoanalysis, its History, Theory and Practice."
"Psychoanalysis and Behavior" and "Psychoanalysis, Sleep and
Dreams"
NEW YORK
THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY
1920
THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
INTRODUCTION
The medical profession is justly conservative. Human life should not
be considered as the proper material for wild experiments.
Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds,
loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.
Remember the scornful reception which first was accorded to Freud's
discoveries in the domain of the unconscious.
When after years of patient observations, he finally decided to
appear before medical bodies to tell them modestly of some facts which
always recurred in his dream and his patients' dreams, he was first
laughed at and then avoided as a crank.
The words "dream interpretation" were and still are indeed fraught
with unpleasant, unscientific associations. They remind one of all sorts
of childish, superstitious notions, which make up the thread and woof of
dream books, read by none but the ignorant and the primitive.
The wealth of detail, the infinite care never to let anything pass
unexplained, with which he presented to the
public the result of his investigations, are impressing more and more
serious-minded scientists, but the examination of his evidential data
demands arduous work and presupposes an absolutely open mind.
This is why we still encounter men, totally unfamiliar with Freud's
writings, men who were not even interested enough in the subject to
attempt an interpretation of their dreams or their patients' dreams,
deriding Freud's theories and combatting them with the help of
statements which he never made.
Some of them, like Professor Boris Sidis, reach at times conclusions
which are strangely similar to Freud's, but in their ignorance of
psychoanalytic literature, they fail to credit Freud for observations
antedating theirs.
Besides those who sneer at dream study, because they have never
looked into the subject, there are those who do not dare to face the
facts revealed by dream study. Dreams tell us many an unpleasant
biological truth about ourselves and only very free minds can thrive on
such a diet. Self-deception is a plant which withers fast in the
pellucid atmosphere of dream investigation.
The weakling and the neurotic attached to his neurosis are not
anxious to turn such a powerful searchlight upon
the dark corners of their psychology.
Freud's theories are anything but theoretical.
He was moved by the fact that there always seemed to be a close
connection between his patients' dreams and their mental abnormalities,
to collect thousands of dreams and to compare them with the case
histories in his possession.
He did not start out with a preconceived bias, hoping to find
evidence which might support his views. He looked at facts a thousand
times "until they began to tell him something."
His attitude toward dream study was, in other words, that of a
statistician who does not know, and has no means of foreseeing, what
conclusions will be forced on him by the information he is gathering,
but who is fully prepared to accept those unavoidable conclusions.
This was indeed a novel way in psychology. Psychologists had always
been wont to build, in what Bleuler calls "autistic ways," that is
through methods in no wise supported by evidence, some attractive
hypothesis, which sprung from their brain, like Minerva from Jove's
brain, fully armed.
After which, they would stretch upon that unyielding frame the hide
of a reality which they had previously killed.
It is only to minds suffering from the same
distortions, to minds also autistically inclined, that those empty,
artificial structures appear acceptable molds for philosophic
thinking.
The pragmatic view that "truth is what works" had not been as yet
expressed when Freud published his revolutionary views on the psychology
of dreams.
Five facts of first magnitude were made obvious to the world by his
interpretation of dreams.
First of all, Freud pointed out a constant connection between some
part of every dream and some detail of the dreamer's life during the
previous waking state. This positively establishes a relation between
sleeping states and waking states and disposes of the widely prevalent
view that dreams are purely nonsensical phenomena coming from nowhere
and leading nowhere.
Secondly, Freud, after studying the dreamer's life and modes of
thought, after noting down all his mannerisms and the apparently
insignificant details of his conduct which reveal his secret thoughts,
came to the conclusion that there was in every dream the attempted or
successful gratification of some wish, conscious or unconscious.
Thirdly, he proved that many of our dream visions are symbolical,
which causes us to consider them as absurd and unintelligible; the
universality of those symbols, however, makes
them very transparent to the trained observer.
Fourthly, Freud showed that sexual desires play an enormous part in
our unconscious, a part which puritanical hypocrisy has always tried to
minimize, if not to ignore entirely.
Finally, Freud established a direct connection between dreams and
insanity, between the symbolic visions of our sleep and the symbolic
actions of the mentally deranged.
There were, of course, many other observations which Freud made while
dissecting the dreams of his patients, but not all of them present as
much interest as the foregoing nor were they as revolutionary or likely
to wield as much influence on modern psychiatry.
Other explorers have struck the path blazed by Freud and leading into
man's unconscious. Jung of Zurich, Adler of Vienna and Kempf of
Washington, D.C., have made to the study of the unconscious,
contributions which have brought that study into fields which Freud
himself never dreamt of invading.
One fact which cannot be too emphatically stated, however, is that
but for Freud's wishfulfillment theory of dreams, neither Jung's
"energic theory," nor Adler's theory of "organ inferiority and
compensation," nor Kempf's "dynamic mechanism"
might have been formulated.
Freud is the father of modern abnormal psychology and he established
the psychoanalytical point of view. No one who is not well grounded in
Freudian lore can hope to achieve any work of value in the field of
psychoanalysis.
On the other hand, let no one repeat the absurd assertion that
Freudism is a sort of religion bounded with dogmas and requiring an act
of faith. Freudism as such was merely a stage in the development of
psychoanalysis, a stage out of which all but a few bigoted camp
followers, totally lacking in originality, have evolved. Thousands of
stones have been added to the structure erected by the Viennese
physician and many more will be added in the course of time.
But the new additions to that structure would collapse like a house
of cards but for the original foundations which are as indestructible as
Harvey's statement as to the circulation of the blood.
Regardless of whatever additions or changes have been made to the
original structure, the analytic point of view remains unchanged.
That point of view is not only revolutionising all the methods of
diagnosis and treatment of mental derangements, but compelling the
intelligent, up-to-date physician to revise
entirely his attitude to almost every kind of disease.
The insane are no longer absurd and pitiable people, to be herded in
asylums till nature either cures them or relieves them, through death,
of their misery. The insane who have not been made so by actual injury
to their brain or nervous system, are the victims of unconscious forces
which cause them to do abnormally things which they might be helped to
do normally.
Insight into one's psychology is replacing victoriously sedatives and
rest cures.
Physicians dealing with "purely" physical cases have begun to take
into serious consideration the "mental" factors which have predisposed a
patient to certain ailments.
Freud's views have also made a revision of all ethical and social
values unavoidable and have thrown an unexpected flood of light upon
literary and artistic accomplishment.
But the Freudian point of view, or more broadly speaking, the
psychoanalytic point of view, shall ever remain a puzzle to those who,
from laziness or indifference, refuse to survey with the great Viennese
the field over which he carefully groped his way. We shall never be
convinced until we repeat under his guidance all his laboratory
experiments.
We must follow him through the thickets of the
unconscious, through the land which had never been charted because
academic philosophers, following the line of least effort, had decided
a priori that it could not be charted.
Ancient geographers, when exhausting their store of information about
distant lands, yielded to an unscientific craving for romance and,
without any evidence to support their day dreams, filled the blank
spaces left on their maps by unexplored tracts with amusing inserts such
as "Here there are lions."
Thanks to Freud's interpretation of dreams the "royal road" into the
unconscious is now open to all explorers. They shall not find lions,
they shall find man himself, and the record of all his life and of his
struggle with reality.
And it is only after seeing man as his unconscious, revealed by his
dreams, presents him to us that we shall understand him fully. For as
Freud said to Putnam: "We are what we are because we have been what we
have been."
Not a few serious-minded students, however, have been discouraged
from attempting a study of Freud's dream psychology.
The book in which he originally offered to the world his
interpretation of dreams was as circumstantial as a legal record to be
pondered over by scientists at their leisure,
not to be assimilated in a few hours by the average alert reader. In
those days, Freud could not leave out any detail likely to make his
extremely novel thesis evidentially acceptable to those willing to sift
data.
Freud himself, however, realized the magnitude of the task which the
reading of his magnum opus imposed upon those who have not been
prepared for it by long psychological and scientific training and he
abstracted from that gigantic work the parts which constitute the
essential of his discoveries.
The publishers of the present book deserve credit for presenting to
the reading public the gist of Freud's psychology in the master's own
words, and in a form which shall neither discourage beginners, nor
appear too elementary to those who are more advanced in psychoanalytic
study.
Dream psychology is the key to Freud's works and to all modern
psychology. With a simple, compact manual such as Dream Psychology
there shall be no longer any excuse for ignorance of the most
revolutionary psychological system of modern times.
ANDRE TRIDON.
121 Madison Avenue, New York.
November, 1920.
CONTENTS
DREAM PSYCHOLOGY
I
DREAMS HAVE A MEANING
In what we may term "prescientific days" people were in no
uncertainty about the interpretation of dreams. When they were recalled
after awakening they were regarded as either the friendly or hostile
manifestation of some higher powers, demoniacal and Divine. With the
rise of scientific thought the whole of this expressive mythology was
transferred to psychology; to-day there is but a small minority among
educated persons who doubt that the dream is the dreamer's own psychical
act.
But since the downfall of the mythological hypothesis an
interpretation of the dream has been wanting. The conditions of its
origin; its relationship to our psychical life when we are awake; its
independence of disturbances which, during the state of sleep, seem to
compel notice; its many peculiarities repugnant to our waking thought;
the incongruence between its images and the feelings they engender; then
the dream's evanescence, the way in which, on
awakening, our thoughts thrust it aside as something bizarre, and our
reminiscences mutilating or rejecting it—all these and many other
problems have for many hundred years demanded answers which up till now
could never have been satisfactory. Before all there is the question as
to the meaning of the dream, a question which is in itself double-sided.
There is, firstly, the psychical significance of the dream, its position
with regard to the psychical processes, as to a possible biological
function; secondly, has the dream a meaning—can sense be made of
each single dream as of other mental syntheses?
Three tendencies can be observed in the estimation of dreams. Many
philosophers have given currency to one of these tendencies, one which
at the same time preserves something of the dream's former
over-valuation. The foundation of dream life is for them a peculiar
state of psychical activity, which they even celebrate as elevation to
some higher state. Schubert, for instance, claims: "The dream is the
liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a
detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter." Not all go so far as
this, but many maintain that dreams have their origin in real spiritual
excitations, and are the outward manifestations of spiritual powers
whose free movements have been hampered during
the day ("Dream Phantasies," Scherner, Volkelt). A large number of
observers acknowledge that dream life is capable of extraordinary
achievements—at any rate, in certain fields ("Memory").
In striking contradiction with this the majority of medical writers
hardly admit that the dream is a psychical phenomenon at all. According
to them dreams are provoked and initiated exclusively by stimuli
proceeding from the senses or the body, which either reach the sleeper
from without or are accidental disturbances of his internal organs. The
dream has no greater claim to meaning and importance than the sound
called forth by the ten fingers of a person quite unacquainted with
music running his fingers over the keys of an instrument. The dream is
to be regarded, says Binz, "as a physical process always useless,
frequently morbid." All the peculiarities of dream life are explicable
as the incoherent effort, due to some physiological stimulus, of certain
organs, or of the cortical elements of a brain otherwise asleep.
But slightly affected by scientific opinion and untroubled as to the
origin of dreams, the popular view holds firmly to the belief that
dreams really have got a meaning, in some way they do foretell the
future, whilst the meaning can be unravelled in
some way or other from its oft bizarre and enigmatical content. The
reading of dreams consists in replacing the events of the dream, so far
as remembered, by other events. This is done either scene by scene,
according to some rigid key, or the dream as a whole is replaced by
something else of which it was a symbol. Serious-minded persons laugh
at these efforts—"Dreams are but sea-foam!"
One day I discovered to my amazement that the popular view grounded
in superstition, and not the medical one, comes nearer to the truth
about dreams. I arrived at new conclusions about dreams by the use of a
new method of psychological investigation, one which had rendered me
good service in the investigation of phobias, obsessions, illusions, and
the like, and which, under the name "psycho-analysis," had found
acceptance by a whole school of investigators. The manifold analogies of
dream life with the most diverse conditions of psychical disease in the
waking state have been rightly insisted upon by a number of medical
observers. It seemed, therefore, a priori, hopeful to apply to the
interpretation of dreams methods of investigation which had been tested
in psychopathological processes. Obsessions and those peculiar
sensations of haunting dread remain as strange to normal consciousness
as do dreams to our waking consciousness; their
origin is as unknown to consciousness as is that of dreams. It was
practical ends that impelled us, in these diseases, to fathom their
origin and formation. Experience had shown us that a cure and a
consequent mastery of the obsessing ideas did result when once those
thoughts, the connecting links between the morbid ideas and the rest of
the psychical content, were revealed which were heretofore veiled from
consciousness. The procedure I employed for the interpretation of dreams
thus arose from psychotherapy.
This procedure is readily described, although its practice demands
instruction and experience. Suppose the patient is suffering from
intense morbid dread. He is requested to direct his attention to the
idea in question, without, however, as he has so frequently done,
meditating upon it. Every impression about it, without any exception,
which occurs to him should be imparted to the doctor. The statement
which will be perhaps then made, that he cannot concentrate his
attention upon anything at all, is to be countered by assuring him most
positively that such a blank state of mind is utterly impossible. As a
matter of fact, a great number of impressions will soon occur, with
which others will associate themselves. These will be invariably
accompanied by the expression of the observer's
opinion that they have no meaning or are unimportant. It will be at once
noticed that it is this self-criticism which prevented the patient from
imparting the ideas, which had indeed already excluded them from
consciousness. If the patient can be induced to abandon this
self-criticism and to pursue the trains of thought which are yielded by
concentrating the attention, most significant matter will be obtained,
matter which will be presently seen to be clearly linked to the morbid
idea in question. Its connection with other ideas will be manifest, and
later on will permit the replacement of the morbid idea by a fresh one,
which is perfectly adapted to psychical continuity.
This is not the place to examine thoroughly the hypothesis upon which
this experiment rests, or the deductions which follow from its
invariable success. It must suffice to state that we obtain matter
enough for the resolution of every morbid idea if we especially direct
our attention to the unbidden associations which disturb our
thoughts—those which are otherwise put aside by the critic as
worthless refuse. If the procedure is exercised on oneself, the best
plan of helping the experiment is to write down at once all one's first
indistinct fancies.
I will now point out where this method leads when I apply it to the examination of dreams. Any dream
could be made use of in this way. From certain motives I, however,
choose a dream of my own, which appears confused and meaningless to my
memory, and one which has the advantage of brevity. Probably my dream of
last night satisfies the requirements. Its content, fixed immediately
after awakening, runs as follows:
"Company; at table or table d'hôte.... Spinach is served. Mrs. E.L.,
sitting next to me, gives me her undivided attention, and places her
hand familiarly upon my knee. In defence I remove her hand. Then she
says: 'But you have always had such beautiful eyes.'.... I then
distinctly see something like two eyes as a sketch or as the contour of
a spectacle lens...."
This is the whole dream, or, at all events, all that I can remember.
It appears to me not only obscure and meaningless, but more especially
odd. Mrs. E.L. is a person with whom I am scarcely on visiting terms,
nor to my knowledge have I ever desired any more cordial relationship. I
have not seen her for a long time, and do not think there was any
mention of her recently. No emotion whatever accompanied the dream
process.
Reflecting upon this dream does not make it a bit clearer to my mind.
I will now, however, present the ideas, without
premeditation and without criticism, which introspection yielded. I soon
notice that it is an advantage to break up the dream into its elements,
and to search out the ideas which link themselves to each fragment.
Company; at table or table d'hôte. The recollection of the slight
event with which the evening of yesterday ended is at once called up. I
left a small party in the company of a friend, who offered to drive me
home in his cab. "I prefer a taxi," he said; "that gives one such a
pleasant occupation; there is always something to look at." When we were
in the cab, and the cab-driver turned the disc so that the first sixty
hellers were visible, I continued the jest. "We have hardly got in and
we already owe sixty hellers. The taxi always reminds me of the table
d'hôte. It makes me avaricious and selfish by continuously reminding me
of my debt. It seems to me to mount up too quickly, and I am always
afraid that I shall be at a disadvantage, just as I cannot resist at
table d'hôte the comical fear that I am getting too little, that I must
look after myself." In far-fetched connection with this I quote:
"To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye
let us heedless go."
Another idea about the table d'hôte. A few
weeks ago I was very cross with my dear wife at the dinner-table at a
Tyrolese health resort, because she was not sufficiently reserved with
some neighbors with whom I wished to have absolutely nothing to do. I
begged her to occupy herself rather with me than with the strangers.
That is just as if I had been at a disadvantage at the table d'hôte.
The contrast between the behavior of my wife at the table and that of
Mrs. E.L. in the dream now strikes me: "Addresses herself entirely to
me."
Further, I now notice that the dream is the reproduction of a little
scene which transpired between my wife and myself when I was secretly
courting her. The caressing under cover of the tablecloth was an answer
to a wooer's passionate letter. In the dream, however, my wife is
replaced by the unfamiliar E.L.
Mrs. E.L. is the daughter of a man to whom I owed money! I cannot
help noticing that here there is revealed an unsuspected connection
between the dream content and my thoughts. If the chain of associations
be followed up which proceeds from one element of the dream one is soon
led back to another of its elements. The thoughts evoked by the dream stir up associations which were not
noticeable in the dream itself.
Is it not customary, when some one expects others to look after his
interests without any advantage to themselves, to ask the innocent
question satirically: "Do you think this will be done for the sake of
your beautiful eyes?" Hence Mrs. E.L.'s speech in the dream. "You have
always had such beautiful eyes," means nothing but "people always do
everything to you for love of you; you have had everything for
nothing." The contrary is, of course, the truth; I have always paid
dearly for whatever kindness others have shown me. Still, the fact that
I had a ride for nothing yesterday when my friend drove me home in his
cab must have made an impression upon me.
In any case, the friend whose guests we were yesterday has often made
me his debtor. Recently I allowed an opportunity of requiting him to go
by. He has had only one present from me, an antique shawl, upon which
eyes are painted all round, a so-called Occhiale, as a charm against
the Malocchio. Moreover, he is an eye specialist. That same evening
I had asked him after a patient whom I had sent to him for
glasses.
As I remarked, nearly all parts of the dream have been brought into
this new connection. I still might ask why in
the dream it was spinach that was served up. Because spinach called up
a little scene which recently occurred at our table. A child, whose
beautiful eyes are really deserving of praise, refused to eat spinach.
As a child I was just the same; for a long time I loathed spinach,
until in later life my tastes altered, and it became one of my favorite
dishes. The mention of this dish brings my own childhood and that of my
child's near together. "You should be glad that you have some spinach,"
his mother had said to the little gourmet. "Some children would be very
glad to get spinach." Thus I am reminded of the parents' duties towards
their children. Goethe's words—
"To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye
let us heedless go"—
take on another meaning in this connection.
Here I will stop in order that I may recapitulate the results of the
analysis of the dream. By following the associations which were linked
to the single elements of the dream torn from their context, I have been
led to a series of thoughts and reminiscences where I am bound to
recognize interesting expressions of my psychical life. The matter
yielded by an analysis of the dream stands in intimate relationship with
the dream content, but this relationship is so
special that I should never have been able to have inferred the new
discoveries directly from the dream itself. The dream was passionless,
disconnected, and unintelligible. During the time that I am unfolding
the thoughts at the back of the dream I feel intense and well-grounded
emotions. The thoughts themselves fit beautifully together into chains
logically bound together with certain central ideas which ever repeat
themselves. Such ideas not represented in the dream itself are in this
instance the antitheses selfish, unselfish, to be indebted, to work for
nothing. I could draw closer the threads of the web which analysis has
disclosed, and would then be able to show how they all run together into
a single knot; I am debarred from making this work public by
considerations of a private, not of a scientific, nature. After having
cleared up many things which I do not willingly acknowledge as mine, I
should have much to reveal which had better remain my secret. Why, then,
do not I choose another dream whose analysis would be more suitable for
publication, so that I could awaken a fairer conviction of the sense and
cohesion of the results disclosed by analysis? The answer is, because
every dream which I investigate leads to the same difficulties and
places me under the same need of discretion;
nor should I forgo this difficulty any the more were I to analyze the
dream of some one else. That could only be done when opportunity allowed
all concealment to be dropped without injury to those who trusted
me.
The conclusion which is now forced upon me is that the dream is a
sort of substitution for those emotional and intellectual trains of
thought which I attained after complete analysis. I do not yet know the
process by which the dream arose from those thoughts, but I perceive
that it is wrong to regard the dream as psychically unimportant, a
purely physical process which has arisen from the activity of isolated
cortical elements awakened out of sleep.
I must further remark that the dream is far shorter than the thoughts
which I hold it replaces; whilst analysis discovered that the dream was
provoked by an unimportant occurrence the evening before the dream.
Naturally, I would not draw such far-reaching conclusions if only one
analysis were known to me. Experience has shown me that when the
associations of any dream are honestly followed such a chain of thought
is revealed, the constituent parts of the dream reappear correctly and
sensibly linked together; the slight suspicion that this concatenation
was merely an accident of a single first
observation must, therefore, be absolutely relinquished. I regard it,
therefore, as my right to establish this new view by a proper
nomenclature. I contrast the dream which my memory evokes with the dream
and other added matter revealed by analysis: the former I call the
dream's manifest content; the latter, without at first further
subdivision, its latent content. I arrive at two new problems hitherto
unformulated: (1) What is the psychical process which has transformed
the latent content of the dream into its manifest content? (2) What is
the motive or the motives which have made such transformation exigent?
The process by which the change from latent to manifest content is
executed I name the dream-work. In contrast with this is the work of
analysis, which produces the reverse transformation. The other problems
of the dream—the inquiry as to its stimuli, as to the source of
its materials, as to its possible purpose, the function of dreaming, the
forgetting of dreams—these I will discuss in connection with the
latent dream-content.
I shall take every care to avoid a confusion between the manifest
and the latent content, for I ascribe all the contradictory as well as
the incorrect accounts of dream-life to the ignorance of this latent content, now first laid bare through
analysis.
The conversion of the latent dream thoughts into those manifest
deserves our close study as the first known example of the
transformation of psychical stuff from one mode of expression into
another. From a mode of expression which, moreover, is readily
intelligible into another which we can only penetrate by effort and with
guidance, although this new mode must be equally reckoned as an effort
of our own psychical activity. From the standpoint of the relationship
of latent to manifest dream-content, dreams can be divided into three
classes. We can, in the first place, distinguish those dreams which have
a meaning and are, at the same time, intelligible, which allow us to
penetrate into our psychical life without further ado. Such dreams are
numerous; they are usually short, and, as a general rule, do not seem
very noticeable, because everything remarkable or exciting surprise is
absent. Their occurrence is, moreover, a strong argument against the
doctrine which derives the dream from the isolated activity of certain
cortical elements. All signs of a lowered or subdivided psychical
activity are wanting. Yet we never raise any objection to characterizing
them as dreams, nor do we confound them with the products of our waking
life.
A second group is formed by those dreams
which are indeed self-coherent and have a distinct meaning, but appear
strange because we are unable to reconcile their meaning with our mental
life. That is the case when we dream, for instance, that some dear
relative has died of plague when we know of no ground for expecting,
apprehending, or assuming anything of the sort; we can only ask ourself
wonderingly: "What brought that into my head?" To the third group those
dreams belong which are void of both meaning and intelligibility; they
are incoherent, complicated, and meaningless. The overwhelming number
of our dreams partake of this character, and this has given rise to the
contemptuous attitude towards dreams and the medical theory of their
limited psychical activity. It is especially in the longer and more
complicated dream-plots that signs of incoherence are seldom
missing.
The contrast between manifest and latent dream-content is clearly
only of value for the dreams of the second and more especially for those
of the third class. Here are problems which are only solved when the
manifest dream is replaced by its latent content; it was an example of
this kind, a complicated and unintelligible dream, that we subjected to
analysis. Against our expectation we, however, struck upon reasons which
prevented a complete cognizance of the latent
dream thought. On the repetition of this same experience we were forced
to the supposition that there is an intimate bond, with laws of its
own, between the unintelligible and complicated nature of the dream and
the difficulties attending communication of the thoughts connected with
the dream. Before investigating the nature of this bond, it will be
advantageous to turn our attention to the more readily intelligible
dreams of the first class where, the manifest and latent content being
identical, the dream work seems to be omitted.
The investigation of these dreams is also advisable from another
standpoint. The dreams of children are of this nature; they have a
meaning, and are not bizarre. This, by the way, is a further objection
to reducing dreams to a dissociation of cerebral activity in sleep, for
why should such a lowering of psychical functions belong to the nature
of sleep in adults, but not in children? We are, however, fully
justified in expecting that the explanation of psychical processes in
children, essentially simplified as they may be, should serve as an
indispensable preparation towards the psychology of the adult.
I shall therefore cite some examples of dreams which I have gathered
from children. A girl of nineteen months was
made to go without food for a day because she had been sick in the
morning, and, according to nurse, had made herself ill through eating
strawberries. During the night, after her day of fasting, she was heard
calling out her name during sleep, and adding: "Tawberry, eggs, pap."
She is dreaming that she is eating, and selects out of her menu exactly
what she supposes she will not get much of just now.
The same kind of dream about a forbidden dish was that of a little
boy of twenty-two months. The day before he was told to offer his uncle
a present of a small basket of cherries, of which the child was, of
course, only allowed one to taste. He woke up with the joyful news:
"Hermann eaten up all the cherries."
A girl of three and a half years had made during the day a sea trip
which was too short for her, and she cried when she had to get out of
the boat. The next morning her story was that during the night she had
been on the sea, thus continuing the interrupted trip.
A boy of five and a half years was not at all pleased with his party
during a walk in the Dachstein region. Whenever a new peak came into
sight he asked if that were the Dachstein, and, finally, refused to
accompany the party to the waterfall. His
behavior was ascribed to fatigue; but a better explanation was
forthcoming when the next morning he told his dream: he had ascended
the Dachstein. Obviously he expected the ascent of the Dachstein to be
the object of the excursion, and was vexed by not getting a glimpse of
the mountain. The dream gave him what the day had withheld. The dream of
a girl of six was similar; her father had cut short the walk before
reaching the promised objective on account of the lateness of the hour.
On the way back she noticed a signpost giving the name of another place
for excursions; her father promised to take her there also some other
day. She greeted her father next day with the news that she had dreamt
that her father had been with her to both places.
What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely
satisfy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are
simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.
The following child-dream, not quite understandable at first sight,
is nothing else than a wish realized. On account of poliomyelitis a
girl, not quite four years of age, was brought from the country into
town, and remained over night with a childless aunt in a big—for
her, naturally, huge—bed. The next morning she stated that she had
dreamt that the bed was much too small for
her, so that she could find no place in it. To explain this dream as a
wish is easy when we remember that to be "big" is a frequently expressed
wish of all children. The bigness of the bed reminded Miss
Little-Would-be-Big only too forcibly of her smallness. This nasty
situation became righted in her dream, and she grew so big that the bed
now became too small for her.
Even when children's dreams are complicated and polished, their
comprehension as a realization of desire is fairly evident. A boy of
eight dreamt that he was being driven with Achilles in a war-chariot,
guided by Diomedes. The day before he was assiduously reading about
great heroes. It is easy to show that he took these heroes as his
models, and regretted that he was not living in those days.
From this short collection a further characteristic of the dreams of
children is manifest—their connection with the life of the day.
The desires which are realized in these dreams are left over from the
day or, as a rule, the day previous, and the feeling has become intently
emphasized and fixed during the day thoughts. Accidental and indifferent
matters, or what must appear so to the child, find no acceptance in the
contents of the dream.
Innumerable instances of such dreams of the
infantile type can be found among adults also, but, as mentioned, these
are mostly exactly like the manifest content. Thus, a random selection
of persons will generally respond to thirst at night-time with a dream
about drinking, thus striving to get rid of the sensation and to let
sleep continue. Many persons frequently have these comforting dreams
before waking, just when they are called. They then dream that they are
already up, that they are washing, or already in school, at the office,
etc., where they ought to be at a given time. The night before an
intended journey one not infrequently dreams that one has already
arrived at the destination; before going to a play or to a party the
dream not infrequently anticipates, in impatience, as it were, the
expected pleasure. At other times the dream expresses the realization of
the desire somewhat indirectly; some connection, some sequel must be
known—the first step towards recognizing the desire. Thus, when a
husband related to me the dream of his young wife, that her monthly
period had begun, I had to bethink myself that the young wife would have
expected a pregnancy if the period had been absent. The dream is then a
sign of pregnancy. Its meaning is that it shows the wish realized that
pregnancy should not occur just yet. Under
unusual and extreme circumstances, these dreams of the infantile type
become very frequent. The leader of a polar expedition tells us, for
instance, that during the wintering amid the ice the crew, with their
monotonous diet and slight rations, dreamt regularly, like children, of
fine meals, of mountains of tobacco, and of home.
It is not uncommon that out of some long, complicated and intricate
dream one specially lucid part stands out containing unmistakably the
realization of a desire, but bound up with much unintelligible matter.
On more frequently analyzing the seemingly more transparent dreams of
adults, it is astonishing to discover that these are rarely as simple as
the dreams of children, and that they cover another meaning beyond that
of the realization of a wish.
It would certainly be a simple and convenient solution of the riddle
if the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the
meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type,
to the realization of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But
there is no warrant for such an expectation. Their dreams are generally
full of the most indifferent and bizarre matter, and no trace of the
realization of the wish is to be found in their content.
Before leaving these infantile dreams, which
are obviously unrealized desires, we must not fail to mention another
chief characteristic of dreams, one that has been long noticed, and one
which stands out most clearly in this class. I can replace any of these
dreams by a phrase expressing a desire. If the sea trip had only lasted
longer; if I were only washed and dressed; if I had only been allowed to
keep the cherries instead of giving them to my uncle. But the dream
gives something more than the choice, for here the desire is already
realized; its realization is real and actual. The dream presentations
consist chiefly, if not wholly, of scenes and mainly of visual sense
images. Hence a kind of transformation is not entirely absent in this
class of dreams, and this may be fairly designated as the dream work.
An idea merely existing in the region of possibility is replaced by a
vision of its accomplishment.
II
THE DREAM MECHANISM
We are compelled to assume that such transformation of scene has also
taken place in intricate dreams, though we do not know whether it has
encountered any possible desire. The dream instanced at the
commencement, which we analyzed somewhat thoroughly, did give us
occasion in two places to suspect something of the kind. Analysis
brought out that my wife was occupied with others at table, and that I
did not like it; in the dream itself exactly the opposite occurs, for
the person who replaces my wife gives me her undivided attention. But
can one wish for anything pleasanter after a disagreeable incident than
that the exact contrary should have occurred, just as the dream has it?
The stinging thought in the analysis, that I have never had anything for
nothing, is similarly connected with the woman's remark in the dream:
"You have always had such beautiful eyes." Some portion of the
opposition between the latent and manifest content of the dream must be
therefore derived from the realization of a wish.
Another manifestation of the dream work which
all incoherent dreams have in common is still more noticeable. Choose
any instance, and compare the number of separate elements in it, or the
extent of the dream, if written down, with the dream thoughts yielded by
analysis, and of which but a trace can be refound in the dream itself.
There can be no doubt that the dream working has resulted in an
extraordinary compression or condensation. It is not at first easy to
form an opinion as to the extent of the condensation; the more deeply
you go into the analysis, the more deeply you are impressed by it. There
will be found no factor in the dream whence the chains of associations
do not lead in two or more directions, no scene which has not been
pieced together out of two or more impressions and events. For instance,
I once dreamt about a kind of swimming-bath where the bathers suddenly
separated in all directions; at one place on the edge a person stood
bending towards one of the bathers as if to drag him out. The scene was
a composite one, made up out of an event that occurred at the time of
puberty, and of two pictures, one of which I had seen just shortly
before the dream. The two pictures were The Surprise in the Bath, from
Schwind's Cycle of the Melusine (note the bathers suddenly separating),
and The Flood, by an Italian master. The little
incident was that I once witnessed a lady, who had tarried in the
swimming-bath until the men's hour, being helped out of the water by the
swimming-master. The scene in the dream which was selected for analysis
led to a whole group of reminiscences, each one of which had contributed
to the dream content. First of all came the little episode from the time
of my courting, of which I have already spoken; the pressure of a hand
under the table gave rise in the dream to the "under the table," which I
had subsequently to find a place for in my recollection. There was, of
course, at the time not a word about "undivided attention." Analysis
taught me that this factor is the realization of a desire through its
contradictory and related to the behavior of my wife at the table
d'hôte. An exactly similar and much more important episode of our
courtship, one which separated us for an entire day, lies hidden behind
this recent recollection. The intimacy, the hand resting upon the knee,
refers to a quite different connection and to quite other persons. This
element in the dream becomes again the starting-point of two distinct
series of reminiscences, and so on.
The stuff of the dream thoughts which has been accumulated for the
formation of the dream scene must be naturally fit for this application.
There must be one or more common factors. The
dream work proceeds like Francis Galton with his family photographs. The
different elements are put one on top of the other; what is common to
the composite picture stands out clearly, the opposing details cancel
each other. This process of reproduction partly explains the wavering
statements, of a peculiar vagueness, in so many elements of the dream.
For the interpretation of dreams this rule holds good: When analysis
discloses uncertainty, as to either—or read and, taking
each section of the apparent alternatives as a separate outlet for a
series of impressions.
When there is nothing in common between the dream thoughts, the dream
work takes the trouble to create a something, in order to make a common
presentation feasible in the dream. The simplest way to approximate two
dream thoughts, which have as yet nothing in common, consists in making
such a change in the actual expression of one idea as will meet a slight
responsive recasting in the form of the other idea. The process is
analogous to that of rhyme, when consonance supplies the desired common
factor. A good deal of the dream work consists in the creation of those
frequently very witty, but often exaggerated, digressions. These vary
from the common presentation in the dream
content to dream thoughts which are as varied as are the causes in form
and essence which give rise to them. In the analysis of our example of a
dream, I find a like case of the transformation of a thought in order
that it might agree with another essentially foreign one. In following
out the analysis I struck upon the thought: I should like to have
something for nothing. But this formula is not serviceable to the
dream. Hence it is replaced by another one: "I should like to enjoy
something free of cost."1 The
word "kost" (taste), with its double meaning, is appropriate to a table
d'hôte; it, moreover, is in place through the special sense in the
dream. At home if there is a dish which the children decline, their
mother first tries gentle persuasion, with a "Just taste it." That the
dream work should unhesitatingly use the double meaning of the word is
certainly remarkable; ample experience has shown, however, that the
occurrence is quite usual.
Through condensation of the dream certain constituent parts of its content are explicable which are
peculiar to the dream life alone, and which are not found in the waking
state. Such are the composite and mixed persons, the extraordinary mixed
figures, creations comparable with the fantastic animal compositions of
Orientals; a moment's thought and these are reduced to unity, whilst the
fancies of the dream are ever formed anew in an inexhaustible profusion.
Every one knows such images in his own dreams; manifold are their
origins. I can build up a person by borrowing one feature from one
person and one from another, or by giving to the form of one the name of
another in my dream. I can also visualize one person, but place him in a
position which has occurred to another. There is a meaning in all these
cases when different persons are amalgamated into one substitute. Such
cases denote an "and," a "just like," a comparison of the original
person from a certain point of view, a comparison which can be also
realized in the dream itself. As a rule, however, the identity of the
blended persons is only discoverable by analysis, and is only indicated
in the dream content by the formation of the "combined" person.
The same diversity in their ways of formation and the same rules for
its solution hold good also for the innumerable medley of dream
contents, examples of which I need scarcely
adduce. Their strangeness quite disappears when we resolve not to place
them on a level with the objects of perception as known to us when
awake, but to remember that they represent the art of dream condensation
by an exclusion of unnecessary detail. Prominence is given to the common
character of the combination. Analysis must also generally supply the
common features. The dream says simply: All these things have an "x" in
common. The decomposition of these mixed images by analysis is often
the quickest way to an interpretation of the dream. Thus I once dreamt
that I was sitting with one of my former university tutors on a bench,
which was undergoing a rapid continuous movement amidst other benches.
This was a combination of lecture-room and moving staircase. I will not
pursue the further result of the thought. Another time I was sitting in
a carriage, and on my lap an object in shape like a top-hat, which,
however, was made of transparent glass. The scene at once brought to my
mind the proverb: "He who keeps his hat in his hand will travel safely
through the land." By a slight turn the glass hat reminded me of
Auer's light, and I knew that I was about to invent something which
was to make me as rich and independent as his invention had made my
countryman, Dr. Auer, of Welsbach; then I
should be able to travel instead of remaining in Vienna. In the dream I
was traveling with my invention, with the, it is true, rather awkward
glass top-hat. The dream work is peculiarly adept at representing two
contradictory conceptions by means of the same mixed image. Thus, for
instance, a woman dreamt of herself carrying a tall flower-stalk, as in
the picture of the Annunciation (Chastity-Mary is her own name), but the
stalk was bedecked with thick white blossoms resembling camellias
(contrast with chastity: La dame aux Camelias).
A great deal of what we have called "dream condensation" can be thus
formulated. Each one of the elements of the dream content is
overdetermined by the matter of the dream thoughts; it is not derived
from one element of these thoughts, but from a whole series. These are
not necessarily interconnected in any way, but may belong to the most
diverse spheres of thought. The dream element truly represents all this
disparate matter in the dream content. Analysis, moreover, discloses
another side of the relationship between dream content and dream
thoughts. Just as one element of the dream leads to associations with
several dream thoughts, so, as a rule, the one dream thought represents
more than one dream element. The threads of
the association do not simply converge from the dream thoughts to the
dream content, but on the way they overlap and interweave in every
way.
Next to the transformation of one thought in the scene (its
"dramatization"), condensation is the most important and most
characteristic feature of the dream work. We have as yet no clue as to
the motive calling for such compression of the content.
In the complicated and intricate dreams with which we are now
concerned, condensation and dramatization do not wholly account for the
difference between dream contents and dream thoughts. There is evidence
of a third factor, which deserves careful consideration.
When I have arrived at an understanding of the dream thoughts by my
analysis I notice, above all, that the matter of the manifest is very
different from that of the latent dream content. That is, I admit, only
an apparent difference which vanishes on closer investigation, for in
the end I find the whole dream content carried out in the dream
thoughts, nearly all the dream thoughts again represented in the dream
content. Nevertheless, there does remain a certain amount of
difference.
The essential content which stood out clearly and broadly in the
dream must, after analysis, rest satisfied with
a very subordinate rôle among the dream thoughts. These very dream
thoughts which, going by my feelings, have a claim to the greatest
importance are either not present at all in the dream content, or are
represented by some remote allusion in some obscure region of the dream.
I can thus describe these phenomena: During the dream work the
psychical intensity of those thoughts and conceptions to which it
properly pertains flows to others which, in my judgment, have no claim
to such emphasis. There is no other process which contributes so much
to concealment of the dream's meaning and to make the connection between
the dream content and dream ideas irrecognizable. During this process,
which I will call the dream displacement, I notice also the psychical
intensity, significance, or emotional nature of the thoughts become
transposed in sensory vividness. What was clearest in the dream seems to
me, without further consideration, the most important; but often in some
obscure element of the dream I can recognize the most direct offspring
of the principal dream thought.
I could only designate this dream displacement as the transvaluation
of psychical values. The phenomena will not have been considered in all
its bearings unless I add that this displacement or transvaluation is shared by different dreams in
extremely varying degrees. There are dreams which take place almost
without any displacement. These have the same time, meaning, and
intelligibility as we found in the dreams which recorded a desire. In
other dreams not a bit of the dream idea has retained its own psychical
value, or everything essential in these dream ideas has been replaced by
unessentials, whilst every kind of transition between these conditions
can be found. The more obscure and intricate a dream is, the greater is
the part to be ascribed to the impetus of displacement in its
formation.
The example that we chose for analysis shows, at least, this much of
displacement—that its content has a different center of interest
from that of the dream ideas. In the forefront of the dream content the
main scene appears as if a woman wished to make advances to me; in the
dream idea the chief interest rests on the desire to enjoy disinterested
love which shall "cost nothing"; this idea lies at the back of the talk
about the beautiful eyes and the far-fetched allusion to "spinach."
If we abolish the dream displacement, we attain through analysis
quite certain conclusions regarding two problems of the dream which are
most disputed—as to what provokes a dream at all, and as to the connection of the dream with our waking
life. There are dreams which at once expose their links with the events
of the day; in others no trace of such a connection can be found. By the
aid of analysis it can be shown that every dream, without any exception,
is linked up with our impression of the day, or perhaps it would be more
correct to say of the day previous to the dream. The impressions which
have incited the dream may be so important that we are not surprised at
our being occupied with them whilst awake; in this case we are right in
saying that the dream carries on the chief interest of our waking life.
More usually, however, when the dream contains anything relating to the
impressions of the day, it is so trivial, unimportant, and so deserving
of oblivion, that we can only recall it with an effort. The dream
content appears, then, even when coherent and intelligible, to be
concerned with those indifferent trifles of thought undeserving of our
waking interest. The depreciation of dreams is largely due to the
predominance of the indifferent and the worthless in their content.
Analysis destroys the appearance upon which this derogatory judgment
is based. When the dream content discloses nothing but some indifferent
impression as instigating the dream, analysis ever indicates some
significant event, which has been replaced by
something indifferent with which it has entered into abundant
associations. Where the dream is concerned with uninteresting and
unimportant conceptions, analysis reveals the numerous associative paths
which connect the trivial with the momentous in the psychical estimation
of the individual. It is only the action of displacement if what is
indifferent obtains recognition in the dream content instead of those
impressions which are really the stimulus, or instead of the things of
real interest. In answering the question as to what provokes the dream,
as to the connection of the dream, in the daily troubles, we must say,
in terms of the insight given us by replacing the manifest latent dream
content: The dream does never trouble itself about things which are not
deserving of our concern during the day, and trivialities which do not
trouble us during the day have no power to pursue us whilst asleep.
What provoked the dream in the example which we have analyzed? The
really unimportant event, that a friend invited me to a free ride in
his cab. The table d'hôte scene in the dream contains an allusion to
this indifferent motive, for in conversation I had brought the taxi
parallel with the table d'hôte. But I can indicate the important event
which has as its substitute the trivial one. A few days before I had disbursed a large sum of money
for a member of my family who is very dear to me. Small wonder, says the
dream thought, if this person is grateful to me for this—this love
is not cost-free. But love that shall cost nothing is one of the prime
thoughts of the dream. The fact that shortly before this I had had
several drives with the relative in question puts the one drive with
my friend in a position to recall the connection with the other person.
The indifferent impression which, by such ramifications, provokes the
dream is subservient to another condition which is not true of the real
source of the dream—the impression must be a recent one,
everything arising from the day of the dream.
I cannot leave the question of dream displacement without the
consideration of a remarkable process in the formation of dreams in
which condensation and displacement work together towards one end. In
condensation we have already considered the case where two conceptions
in the dream having something in common, some point of contact, are
replaced in the dream content by a mixed image, where the distinct germ
corresponds to what is common, and the indistinct secondary
modifications to what is distinctive. If displacement is added to
condensation, there is no formation of a mixed
image, but a common mean which bears the same relationship to the
individual elements as does the resultant in the parallelogram of forces
to its components. In one of my dreams, for instance, there is talk of
an injection with propyl. On first analysis I discovered an
indifferent but true incident where amyl played a part as the excitant
of the dream. I cannot yet vindicate the exchange of amyl for propyl. To
the round of ideas of the same dream, however, there belongs the
recollection of my first visit to Munich, when the Propylœa
struck me. The attendant circumstances of the analysis render it
admissible that the influence of this second group of conceptions caused
the displacement of amyl to propyl. Propyl is, so to say, the mean
idea between amyl and propylœa; it got into the dream as a
kind of compromise by simultaneous condensation and displacement.
The need of discovering some motive for this bewildering work of the
dream is even more called for in the case of displacement than in
condensation.
Although the work of displacement must be held mainly responsible if
the dream thoughts are not refound or recognized in the dream content
(unless the motive of the changes be guessed), it is another and milder
kind of transformation which will be considered with the dream thoughts
which leads to the discovery of a new but
readily understood act of the dream work. The first dream thoughts which
are unravelled by analysis frequently strike one by their unusual
wording. They do not appear to be expressed in the sober form which our
thinking prefers; rather are they expressed symbolically by allegories
and metaphors like the figurative language of the poets. It is not
difficult to find the motives for this degree of constraint in the
expression of dream ideas. The dream content consists chiefly of visual
scenes; hence the dream ideas must, in the first place, be prepared to
make use of these forms of presentation. Conceive that a political
leader's or a barrister's address had to be transposed into pantomime,
and it will be easy to understand the transformations to which the dream
work is constrained by regard for this dramatization of the dream
content.
Around the psychical stuff of dream thoughts there are ever found
reminiscences of impressions, not infrequently of early
childhood—scenes which, as a rule, have been visually grasped.
Whenever possible, this portion of the dream ideas exercises a definite
influence upon the modelling of the dream content; it works like a
center of crystallization, by attracting and rearranging the stuff of
the dream thoughts. The scene of the dream is not infrequently nothing but a modified repetition, complicated by
interpolations of events that have left such an impression; the dream
but very seldom reproduces accurate and unmixed reproductions of real
scenes.
The dream content does not, however, consist exclusively of scenes,
but it also includes scattered fragments of visual images,
conversations, and even bits of unchanged thoughts. It will be perhaps
to the point if we instance in the briefest way the means of
dramatization which are at the disposal of the dream work for the
repetition of the dream thoughts in the peculiar language of the
dream.
The dream thoughts which we learn from the analysis exhibit
themselves as a psychical complex of the most complicated
superstructure. Their parts stand in the most diverse relationship to
each other; they form backgrounds and foregrounds, stipulations,
digressions, illustrations, demonstrations, and protestations. It may be
said to be almost the rule that one train of thought is followed by its
contradictory. No feature known to our reason whilst awake is absent. If
a dream is to grow out of all this, the psychical matter is submitted to
a pressure which condenses it extremely, to an inner shrinking and
displacement, creating at the same time fresh surfaces, to a selective
interweaving among the constituents best
adapted for the construction of these scenes. Having regard to the
origin of this stuff, the term regression can be fairly applied to
this process. The logical chains which hitherto held the psychical stuff
together become lost in this transformation to the dream content. The
dream work takes on, as it were, only the essential content of the dream
thoughts for elaboration. It is left to analysis to restore the
connection which the dream work has destroyed.
The dream's means of expression must therefore be regarded as meager
in comparison with those of our imagination, though the dream does not
renounce all claims to the restitution of logical relation to the dream
thoughts. It rather succeeds with tolerable frequency in replacing these
by formal characters of its own.
By reason of the undoubted connection existing between all the parts
of dream thoughts, the dream is able to embody this matter into a single
scene. It upholds a logical connection as approximation in time and
space, just as the painter, who groups all the poets for his picture of
Parnassus who, though they have never been all together on a mountain
peak, yet form ideally a community. The dream continues this method of
presentation in individual dreams, and often when it displays two
elements close together in the dream content it
warrants some special inner connection between what they represent in
the dream thoughts. It should be, moreover, observed that all the dreams
of one night prove on analysis to originate from the same sphere of
thought.
The causal connection between two ideas is either left without
presentation, or replaced by two different long portions of dreams one
after the other. This presentation is frequently a reversed one, the
beginning of the dream being the deduction, and its end the hypothesis.
The direct transformation of one thing into another in the dream seems
to serve the relationship of cause and effect.
The dream never utters the alternative "either-or," but accepts
both as having equal rights in the same connection. When "either-or" is
used in the reproduction of dreams, it is, as I have already mentioned,
to be replaced by "and."
Conceptions which stand in opposition to one another are preferably
expressed in dreams by the same element.2 There seems no "not" in dreams.
Opposition between two ideas, the relation of
conversion, is represented in dreams in a very remarkable way. It is
expressed by the reversal of another part of the dream content just as
if by way of appendix. We shall later on deal with another form of
expressing disagreement. The common dream sensation of movement
checked serves the purpose of representing disagreement of
impulses—a conflict of the will.
Only one of the logical relationships—that of similarity,
identity, agreement—is found highly developed in the mechanism of
dream formation. Dream work makes use of these cases as a starting-point
for condensation, drawing together everything which shows such agreement
to a fresh unity.
These short, crude observations naturally do not suffice as an
estimate of the abundance of the dream's formal means of presenting the
logical relationships of the dream thoughts. In this respect, individual
dreams are worked up more nicely or more carelessly, our text will have
been followed more or less closely, auxiliaries of the dream work will have been taken more or less into
consideration. In the latter case they appear obscure, intricate,
incoherent. When the dream appears openly absurd, when it contains an
obvious paradox in its content, it is so of purpose. Through its
apparent disregard of all logical claims, it expresses a part of the
intellectual content of the dream ideas. Absurdity in the dream denotes
disagreement, scorn, disdain in the dream thoughts. As this
explanation is in entire disagreement with the view that the dream owes
its origin to dissociated, uncritical cerebral activity, I will
emphasize my view by an example:
"One of my acquaintances, Mr. M____, has been attacked by no less a
person than Goethe in an essay with, we all maintain, unwarrantable
violence. Mr. M____ has naturally been ruined by this attack. He
complains very bitterly of this at a dinner-party, but his respect for
Goethe has not diminished through this personal experience. I now
attempt to clear up the chronological relations which strike me as
improbable. Goethe died in 1832. As his attack upon Mr. M____ must, of
course, have taken place before, Mr. M____ must have been then a very
young man. It seems to me plausible that he was eighteen. I am not
certain, however, what year we are actually in, and the whole
calculation falls into obscurity. The attack
was, moreover, contained in Goethe's well-known essay on 'Nature.'"
The absurdity of the dream becomes the more glaring when I state that
Mr. M____ is a young business man without any poetical or literary
interests. My analysis of the dream will show what method there is in
this madness. The dream has derived its material from three sources:
1. Mr. M____, to whom I was introduced at a dinner-party, begged me
one day to examine his elder brother, who showed signs of mental
trouble. In conversation with the patient, an unpleasant episode
occurred. Without the slightest occasion he disclosed one of his
brother's youthful escapades. I had asked the patient the year of his
birth (year of death in dream), and led him to various calculations
which might show up his want of memory.
2. A medical journal which displayed my name among others on the
cover had published a ruinous review of a book by my friend F____ of
Berlin, from the pen of a very juvenile reviewer. I communicated with
the editor, who, indeed, expressed his regret, but would not promise any
redress. Thereupon I broke off my connection with the paper; in my
letter of resignation I expressed the hope that our personal relations
would not suffer from this. Here is the real
source of the dream. The derogatory reception of my friend's work had
made a deep impression upon me. In my judgment, it contained a
fundamental biological discovery which only now, several years later,
commences to find favor among the professors.
3. A little while before, a patient gave me the medical history of
her brother, who, exclaiming "Nature, Nature!" had gone out of his
mind. The doctors considered that the exclamation arose from a study of
Goethe's beautiful essay, and indicated that the patient had been
overworking. I expressed the opinion that it seemed more plausible to
me that the exclamation "Nature!" was to be taken in that sexual meaning
known also to the less educated in our country. It seemed to me that
this view had something in it, because the unfortunate youth afterwards
mutilated his genital organs. The patient was eighteen years old when
the attack occurred.
The first person in the dream-thoughts behind the ego was my friend
who had been so scandalously treated. "I now attempted to clear up the
chronological relation." My friend's book deals with the chronological
relations of life, and, amongst other things, correlates Goethe's
duration of life with a number of days in many ways important to
biology. The ego is, however, represented as a
general paralytic ("I am not certain what year we are actually in").
The dream exhibits my friend as behaving like a general paralytic, and
thus riots in absurdity. But the dream thoughts run ironically. "Of
course he is a madman, a fool, and you are the genius who understands
all about it. But shouldn't it be the other way round?" This inversion
obviously took place in the dream when Goethe attacked the young man,
which is absurd, whilst any one, however young, can to-day easily attack
the great Goethe.
I am prepared to maintain that no dream is inspired by other than
egoistic emotions. The ego in the dream does not, indeed, represent only
my friend, but stands for myself also. I identify myself with him
because the fate of his discovery appears to me typical of the
acceptance of my own. If I were to publish my own theory, which gives
sexuality predominance in the ætiology of psychoneurotic disorders (see
the allusion to the eighteen-year-old patient—"Nature,
Nature!"), the same criticism would be leveled at me, and it would even
now meet with the same contempt.
When I follow out the dream thoughts closely, I ever find only
scorn and contempt as correlated with the dream's absurdity. It is
well known that the discovery of a cracked sheep's skull on the Lido in
Venice gave Goethe the hint for the so-called
vertebral theory of the skull. My friend plumes himself on having as a
student raised a hubbub for the resignation of an aged professor who had
done good work (including some in this very subject of comparative
anatomy), but who, on account of decrepitude, had become quite
incapable of teaching. The agitation my friend inspired was so
successful because in the German Universities an age limit is not
demanded for academic work. Age is no protection against folly. In the
hospital here I had for years the honor to serve under a chief who, long
fossilized, was for decades notoriously feebleminded, and was yet
permitted to continue in his responsible office. A trait, after the
manner of the find in the Lido, forces itself upon me here. It was to
this man that some youthful colleagues in the hospital adapted the then
popular slang of that day: "No Goethe has written that," "No Schiller
composed that," etc.
We have not exhausted our valuation of the dream work. In addition to
condensation, displacement, and definite arrangement of the psychical
matter, we must ascribe to it yet another activity—one which is,
indeed, not shared by every dream. I shall not treat this position of
the dream work exhaustively; I will only point out that the readiest way to arrive at a conception of it is to take for
granted, probably unfairly, that it only subsequently influences the
dream content which has already been built up. Its mode of action thus
consists in so coördinating the parts of the dream that these coalesce
to a coherent whole, to a dream composition. The dream gets a kind of
façade which, it is true, does not conceal the whole of its content.
There is a sort of preliminary explanation to be strengthened by
interpolations and slight alterations. Such elaboration of the dream
content must not be too pronounced; the misconception of the dream
thoughts to which it gives rise is merely superficial, and our first
piece of work in analyzing a dream is to get rid of these early attempts
at interpretation.
The motives for this part of the dream work are easily gauged. This
final elaboration of the dream is due to a regard for
intelligibility—a fact at once betraying the origin of an action
which behaves towards the actual dream content just as our normal
psychical action behaves towards some proffered perception that is to
our liking. The dream content is thus secured under the pretense of
certain expectations, is perceptually classified by the supposition of
its intelligibility, thereby risking its falsification, whilst, in fact,
the most extraordinary misconceptions arise if
the dream can be correlated with nothing familiar. Every one is aware
that we are unable to look at any series of unfamiliar signs, or to
listen to a discussion of unknown words, without at once making
perpetual changes through our regard for intelligibility, through our
falling back upon what is familiar.
We can call those dreams properly made up which are the result of
an elaboration in every way analogous to the psychical action of our
waking life. In other dreams there is no such action; not even an
attempt is made to bring about order and meaning. We regard the dream as
"quite mad," because on awaking it is with this last-named part of the
dream work, the dream elaboration, that we identify ourselves. So far,
however, as our analysis is concerned, the dream, which resembles a
medley of disconnected fragments, is of as much value as the one with a
smooth and beautifully polished surface. In the former case we are
spared, to some extent, the trouble of breaking down the
super-elaboration of the dream content.
All the same, it would be an error to see in the dream façade nothing
but the misunderstood and somewhat arbitrary elaboration of the dream
carried out at the instance of our psychical life. Wishes and phantasies
are not infrequently employed in the erection
of this façade, which were already fashioned in the dream thoughts; they
are akin to those of our waking life—"day-dreams," as they are
very properly called. These wishes and phantasies, which analysis
discloses in our dreams at night, often present themselves as
repetitions and refashionings of the scenes of infancy. Thus the dream
façade may show us directly the true core of the dream, distorted
through admixture with other matter.
Beyond these four activities there is nothing else to be discovered
in the dream work. If we keep closely to the definition that dream work
denotes the transference of dream thoughts to dream content, we are
compelled to say that the dream work is not creative; it develops no
fancies of its own, it judges nothing, decides nothing. It does nothing
but prepare the matter for condensation and displacement, and refashions
it for dramatization, to which must be added the inconstant last-named
mechanism—that of explanatory elaboration. It is true that a good
deal is found in the dream content which might be understood as the
result of another and more intellectual performance; but analysis shows
conclusively every time that these intellectual operations were already
present in the dream thoughts, and have only been taken over by the dream content. A syllogism in the dream is
nothing other than the repetition of a syllogism in the dream thoughts;
it seems inoffensive if it has been transferred to the dream without
alteration; it becomes absurd if in the dream work it has been
transferred to other matter. A calculation in the dream content simply
means that there was a calculation in the dream thoughts; whilst this is
always correct, the calculation in the dream can furnish the silliest
results by the condensation of its factors and the displacement of the
same operations to other things. Even speeches which are found in the
dream content are not new compositions; they prove to be pieced together
out of speeches which have been made or heard or read; the words are
faithfully copied, but the occasion of their utterance is quite
overlooked, and their meaning is most violently changed.
It is, perhaps, not superfluous to support these assertions by
examples:
1. A seemingly inoffensive, well-made dream of a patient. She was
going to market with her cook, who carried the basket. The butcher said
to her when she asked him for something: "That is all gone," and wished
to give her something else, remarking; "That's very good." She declines,
and goes to the greengrocer, who wants to sell her a peculiar vegetable which is bound up in bundles
and of a black color. She says: "I don't know that; I won't take
it."
The remark "That is all gone" arose from the treatment. A few days
before I said myself to the patient that the earliest reminiscences of
childhood are all gone as such, but are replaced by transferences and
dreams. Thus I am the butcher.
The second remark, "I don't know that" arose in a very different
connection. The day before she had herself called out in rebuke to the
cook (who, moreover, also appears in the dream): "Behave yourself
properly; I don't know that"—that is, "I don't know this kind
of behavior; I won't have it." The more harmless portion of this speech
was arrived at by a displacement of the dream content; in the dream
thoughts only the other portion of the speech played a part, because the
dream work changed an imaginary situation into utter irrecognizability
and complete inoffensiveness (while in a certain sense I behave in an
unseemly way to the lady). The situation resulting in this phantasy is,
however, nothing but a new edition of one that actually took place.
2. A dream apparently meaningless relates to figures. "She wants to
pay something; her daughter takes three florins sixty-five kreuzers out
of her purse; but she says: 'What are you
doing? It only cost twenty-one kreuzers.'"
The dreamer was a stranger who had placed her child at school in
Vienna, and who was able to continue under my treatment so long as her
daughter remained at Vienna. The day before the dream the directress of
the school had recommended her to keep the child another year at school.
In this case she would have been able to prolong her treatment by one
year. The figures in the dream become important if it be remembered that
time is money. One year equals 365 days, or, expressed in kreuzers, 365
kreuzers, which is three florins sixty-five kreuzers. The twenty-one
kreuzers correspond with the three weeks which remained from the day of
the dream to the end of the school term, and thus to the end of the
treatment. It was obviously financial considerations which had moved the
lady to refuse the proposal of the directress, and which were answerable
for the triviality of the amount in the dream.
3. A lady, young, but already ten years married, heard that a friend
of hers, Miss Elise L____, of about the same age, had become engaged.
This gave rise to the following dream:
She was sitting with her husband in the theater; the one side of the
stalls was quite empty. Her husband tells her,
Elise L____ and her fiancé had intended coming, but could only get some
cheap seats, three for one florin fifty kreuzers, and these they would
not take. In her opinion, that would not have mattered very much.
The origin of the figures from the matter of the dream thoughts and
the changes the figures underwent are of interest. Whence came the one
florin fifty kreuzers? From a trifling occurrence of the previous day.
Her sister-in-law had received 150 florins as a present from her
husband, and had quickly got rid of it by buying some ornament. Note
that 150 florins is one hundred times one florin fifty kreuzers. For the
three concerned with the tickets, the only link is that Elise L____ is
exactly three months younger than the dreamer. The scene in the dream is
the repetition of a little adventure for which she has often been teased
by her husband. She was once in a great hurry to get tickets in time for
a piece, and when she came to the theater one side of the stalls was
almost empty. It was therefore quite unnecessary for her to have been
in such a hurry. Nor must we overlook the absurdity of the dream that
two persons should take three tickets for the theater.
Now for the dream ideas. It was stupid to have married so early; I
need not have been in so great a hurry.
Elise L____'s example shows me that I should have been able to get a
husband later; indeed, one a hundred times better if I had but waited.
I could have bought three such men with the money (dowry).
Footnote
1: "Ich möchte gerne etwas geniessen ohne 'Kosten' zu haben." A a
pun upon the word "kosten," which has two meanings—"taste" and
"cost." In "Die Traumdeutung," third edition, p. 71 footnote, Professor
Freud remarks that "the finest example of dream interpretation left us
by the ancients is based upon a pun" (from "The Interpretation of
Dreams," by Artemidorus Daldianus). "Moreover, dreams are so intimately
bound up with language that Ferenczi truly points out that every tongue
has its own language of dreams. A dream is as a rule untranslatable into
other languages."—TRANSLATOR.
Footnote
2: It is worthy of remark that eminent philologists maintain that
the oldest languages used the same word for expressing quite general
antitheses. In C. Abel's essay, "Ueber den Gegensinn der Urworter"
(1884, the following examples of such words in England are given:
"gleam—gloom"; "to lock—loch"; "down—The Downs"; "to
step—to stop." In his essay on "The Origin of Language"
("Linguistic Essays," p. 240), Abel says: "When the Englishman says
'without,' is not his judgment based upon the comparative juxtaposition
of two opposites, 'with' and 'out'; 'with' itself originally meant
'without,' as may still be seen in 'withdraw.' 'Bid' includes the
opposite sense of giving and of proffering." Abel, "The English Verbs of
Command," "Linguistic Essays," p. 104; see also Freud, "Ueber den
Gegensinn der Urworte"; Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und
Psychopathologische Forschungen, Band II., part i., p.
179).—TRANSLATOR.
III
WHY THE DREAM DISGUISES THE DESIRES
In the foregoing exposition we have now learnt something of the dream
work; we must regard it as a quite special psychical process, which, so
far as we are aware, resembles nothing else. To the dream work has been
transferred that bewilderment which its product, the dream, has aroused
in us. In truth, the dream work is only the first recognition of a group
of psychical processes to which must be referred the origin of
hysterical symptoms, the ideas of morbid dread, obsession, and illusion.
Condensation, and especially displacement, are never-failing features in
these other processes. The regard for appearance remains, on the other
hand, peculiar to the dream work. If this explanation brings the dream
into line with the formation of psychical disease, it becomes the more
important to fathom the essential conditions of processes like dream
building. It will be probably a surprise to hear that neither the state
of sleep nor illness is among the indispensable conditions. A whole
number of phenomena of the everyday life of
healthy persons, forgetfulness, slips in speaking and in holding things,
together with a certain class of mistakes, are due to a psychical
mechanism analogous to that of the dream and the other members of this
group.
Displacement is the core of the problem, and the most striking of all
the dream performances. A thorough investigation of the subject shows
that the essential condition of displacement is purely psychological; it
is in the nature of a motive. We get on the track by thrashing out
experiences which one cannot avoid in the analysis of dreams. I had to
break off the relations of my dream thoughts in the analysis of my dream
on p. 8 because I found some experiences which I
do not wish strangers to know, and which I could not relate without
serious damage to important considerations. I added, it would be no use
were I to select another instead of that particular dream; in every
dream where the content is obscure or intricate, I should hit upon dream
thoughts which call for secrecy. If, however, I continue the analysis
for myself, without regard to those others, for whom, indeed, so
personal an event as my dream cannot matter, I arrive finally at ideas
which surprise me, which I have not known to be mine, which not only
appear foreign to me, but which are unpleasant, and which I would
like to oppose vehemently, whilst the chain of
ideas running through the analysis intrudes upon me inexorably. I can
only take these circumstances into account by admitting that these
thoughts are actually part of my psychical life, possessing a certain
psychical intensity or energy. However, by virtue of a particular
psychological condition, the thoughts could not become conscious to
me. I call this particular condition "Repression." It is therefore
impossible for me not to recognize some casual relationship between the
obscurity of the dream content and this state of repression—this
incapacity of consciousness. Whence I conclude that the cause of the
obscurity is the desire to conceal these thoughts. Thus I arrive at
the conception of the dream distortion as the deed of the dream work,
and of displacement serving to disguise this object.
I will test this in my own dream, and ask myself, What is the thought
which, quite innocuous in its distorted form, provokes my liveliest
opposition in its real form? I remember that the free drive reminded me
of the last expensive drive with a member of my family, the
interpretation of the dream being: I should for once like to experience
affection for which I should not have to pay, and that shortly before
the dream I had to make a heavy disbursement for this very person. In
this connection, I cannot get away from the
thought that I regret this disbursement. It is only when I acknowledge
this feeling that there is any sense in my wishing in the dream for an
affection that should entail no outlay. And yet I can state on my honor
that I did not hesitate for a moment when it became necessary to expend
that sum. The regret, the counter-current, was unconscious to me. Why it
was unconscious is quite another question which would lead us far away
from the answer which, though within my knowledge, belongs
elsewhere.
If I subject the dream of another person instead of one of my own to
analysis, the result is the same; the motives for convincing others is,
however, changed. In the dream of a healthy person the only way for me
to enable him to accept this repressed idea is the coherence of the
dream thoughts. He is at liberty to reject this explanation. But if we
are dealing with a person suffering from any neurosis—say from
hysteria—the recognition of these repressed ideas is compulsory by
reason of their connection with the symptoms of his illness and of the
improvement resulting from exchanging the symptoms for the repressed
ideas. Take the patient from whom I got the last dream about the three
tickets for one florin fifty kreuzers. Analysis shows that she does not
think highly of her husband, that she regrets
having married him, that she would be glad to change him for some one
else. It is true that she maintains that she loves her husband, that her
emotional life knows nothing about this depreciation (a hundred times
better!), but all her symptoms lead to the same conclusion as this
dream. When her repressed memories had rewakened a certain period when
she was conscious that she did not love her husband, her symptoms
disappeared, and therewith disappeared her resistance to the
interpretation of the dream.
This conception of repression once fixed, together with the
distortion of the dream in relation to repressed psychical matter, we
are in a position to give a general exposition of the principal results
which the analysis of dreams supplies. We learnt that the most
intelligible and meaningful dreams are unrealized desires; the desires
they pictured as realized are known to consciousness, have been held
over from the daytime, and are of absorbing interest. The analysis of
obscure and intricate dreams discloses something very similar; the dream
scene again pictures as realized some desire which regularly proceeds
from the dream ideas, but the picture is unrecognizable, and is only
cleared up in the analysis. The desire itself is either one repressed,
foreign to consciousness, or it is closely bound up with repressed ideas. The formula for these dreams
may be thus stated: They are concealed realizations of repressed
desires. It is interesting to note that they are right who regard the
dream as foretelling the future. Although the future which the dream
shows us is not that which will occur, but that which we would like to
occur. Folk psychology proceeds here according to its wont; it believes
what it wishes to believe.
Dreams can be divided into three classes according to their relation
towards the realization of desire. Firstly come those which exhibit a
non-repressed, non-concealed desire; these are dreams of the infantile
type, becoming ever rarer among adults. Secondly, dreams which express
in veiled form some repressed desire; these constitute by far the
larger number of our dreams, and they require analysis for their
understanding. Thirdly, these dreams where repression exists, but
without or with but slight concealment. These dreams are invariably
accompanied by a feeling of dread which brings the dream to an end. This
feeling of dread here replaces dream displacement; I regarded the dream
work as having prevented this in the dream of the second class. It is
not very difficult to prove that what is now present as intense dread in
the dream was once desire, and is now secondary
to the repression.
There are also definite dreams with a painful content, without the
presence of any anxiety in the dream. These cannot be reckoned among
dreams of dread; they have, however, always been used to prove the
unimportance and the psychical futility of dreams. An analysis of such
an example will show that it belongs to our second class of
dreams—a perfectly concealed realization of repressed desires.
Analysis will demonstrate at the same time how excellently adapted is
the work of displacement to the concealment of desires.
A girl dreamt that she saw lying dead before her the only surviving
child of her sister amid the same surroundings as a few years before she
saw the first child lying dead. She was not sensible of any pain, but
naturally combatted the view that the scene represented a desire of
hers. Nor was that view necessary. Years ago it was at the funeral of
the child that she had last seen and spoken to the man she loved. Were
the second child to die, she would be sure to meet this man again in her
sister's house. She is longing to meet him, but struggles against this
feeling. The day of the dream she had taken a ticket for a lecture,
which announced the presence of the man she
always loved. The dream is simply a dream of impatience common to those
which happen before a journey, theater, or simply anticipated pleasures.
The longing is concealed by the shifting of the scene to the occasion
when any joyous feeling were out of place, and yet where it did once
exist. Note, further, that the emotional behavior in the dream is
adapted, not to the displaced, but to the real but suppressed dream
ideas. The scene anticipates the long-hoped-for meeting; there is here
no call for painful emotions.
There has hitherto been no occasion for philosophers to bestir
themselves with a psychology of repression. We must be allowed to
construct some clear conception as to the origin of dreams as the first
steps in this unknown territory. The scheme which we have formulated not
only from a study of dreams is, it is true, already somewhat
complicated, but we cannot find any simpler one that will suffice. We
hold that our psychical apparatus contains two procedures for the
construction of thoughts. The second one has the advantage that its
products find an open path to consciousness, whilst the activity of the
first procedure is unknown to itself, and can only arrive at
consciousness through the second one. At the borderland of these two
procedures, where the first passes over into the second, a censorship is established which only passes what pleases it,
keeping back everything else. That which is rejected by the censorship
is, according to our definition, in a state of repression. Under certain
conditions, one of which is the sleeping state, the balance of power
between the two procedures is so changed that what is repressed can no
longer be kept back. In the sleeping state this may possibly occur
through the negligence of the censor; what has been hitherto repressed
will now succeed in finding its way to consciousness. But as the
censorship is never absent, but merely off guard, certain alterations
must be conceded so as to placate it. It is a compromise which becomes
conscious in this case—a compromise between what one procedure has
in view and the demands of the other. Repression, laxity of the censor,
compromise—this is the foundation for the origin of many another
psychological process, just as it is for the dream. In such compromises
we can observe the processes of condensation, of displacement, the
acceptance of superficial associations, which we have found in the dream
work.
It is not for us to deny the demonic element which has played a part
in constructing our explanation of dream work. The impression left is
that the formation of obscure dreams proceeds as if a person had something to say which must be
agreeable for another person upon whom he is dependent to hear. It is by
the use of this image that we figure to ourselves the conception of the
dream distortion and of the censorship, and ventured to crystallize
our impression in a rather crude, but at least definite, psychological
theory. Whatever explanation the future may offer of these first and
second procedures, we shall expect a confirmation of our correlate that
the second procedure commands the entrance to consciousness, and can
exclude the first from consciousness.
Once the sleeping state overcome, the censorship resumes complete
sway, and is now able to revoke that which was granted in a moment of
weakness. That the forgetting of dreams explains this in part, at
least, we are convinced by our experience, confirmed again and again.
During the relation of a dream, or during analysis of one, it not
infrequently happens that some fragment of the dream is suddenly
forgotten. This fragment so forgotten invariably contains the best and
readiest approach to an understanding of the dream. Probably that is why
it sinks into oblivion—i.e., into a renewed suppression.
Viewing the dream content as the representation of a realized desire,
and referring its vagueness to the changes made
by the censor in the repressed matter, it is no longer difficult to
grasp the function of dreams. In fundamental contrast with those saws
which assume that sleep is disturbed by dreams, we hold the dream as
the guardian of sleep. So far as children's dreams are concerned, our
view should find ready acceptance.
The sleeping state or the psychical change to sleep, whatsoever it
be, is brought about by the child being sent to sleep or compelled
thereto by fatigue, only assisted by the removal of all stimuli which
might open other objects to the psychical apparatus. The means which
serve to keep external stimuli distant are known; but what are the means
we can employ to depress the internal psychical stimuli which frustrate
sleep? Look at a mother getting her child to sleep. The child is full of
beseeching; he wants another kiss; he wants to play yet awhile. His
requirements are in part met, in part drastically put off till the
following day. Clearly these desires and needs, which agitate him, are
hindrances to sleep. Every one knows the charming story of the bad boy
(Baldwin Groller's) who awoke at night bellowing out, "I want the
rhinoceros." A really good boy, instead of bellowing, would have
dreamt that he was playing with the rhinoceros. Because the dream
which realizes his desire is believed during
sleep, it removes the desire and makes sleep possible. It cannot be
denied that this belief accords with the dream image, because it is
arrayed in the psychical appearance of probability; the child is without
the capacity which it will acquire later to distinguish hallucinations
or phantasies from reality.
The adult has learnt this differentiation; he has also learnt the
futility of desire, and by continuous practice manages to postpone his
aspirations, until they can be granted in some roundabout method by a
change in the external world. For this reason it is rare for him to have
his wishes realized during sleep in the short psychical way. It is even
possible that this never happens, and that everything which appears to
us like a child's dream demands a much more elaborate explanation. Thus
it is that for adults—for every sane person without
exception—a differentiation of the psychical matter has been
fashioned which the child knew not. A psychical procedure has been
reached which, informed by the experience of life, exercises with
jealous power a dominating and restraining influence upon psychical
emotions; by its relation to consciousness, and by its spontaneous
mobility, it is endowed with the greatest means of psychical power. A
portion of the infantile emotions has been
withheld from this procedure as useless to life, and all the thoughts
which flow from these are found in the state of repression.
Whilst the procedure in which we recognize our normal ego reposes
upon the desire for sleep, it appears compelled by the
psycho-physiological conditions of sleep to abandon some of the energy
with which it was wont during the day to keep down what was repressed.
This neglect is really harmless; however much the emotions of the
child's spirit may be stirred, they find the approach to consciousness
rendered difficult, and that to movement blocked in consequence of the
state of sleep. The danger of their disturbing sleep must, however, be
avoided. Moreover, we must admit that even in deep sleep some amount of
free attention is exerted as a protection against sense-stimuli which
might, perchance, make an awakening seem wiser than the continuance of
sleep. Otherwise we could not explain the fact of our being always
awakened by stimuli of certain quality. As the old physiologist Burdach
pointed out, the mother is awakened by the whimpering of her child, the
miller by the cessation of his mill, most people by gently calling out
their names. This attention, thus on the alert, makes use of the
internal stimuli arising from repressed desires, and fuses them into the
dream, which as a compromise satisfies both
procedures at the same time. The dream creates a form of psychical
release for the wish which is either suppressed or formed by the aid of
repression, inasmuch as it presents it as realized. The other procedure
is also satisfied, since the continuance of the sleep is assured. Our
ego here gladly behaves like a child; it makes the dream pictures
believable, saying, as it were, "Quite right, but let me sleep." The
contempt which, once awakened, we bear the dream, and which rests upon
the absurdity and apparent illogicality of the dream, is probably
nothing but the reasoning of our sleeping ego on the feelings about what
was repressed; with greater right it should rest upon the incompetency
of this disturber of our sleep. In sleep we are now and then aware of
this contempt; the dream content transcends the censorship rather too
much, we think, "It's only a dream," and sleep on.
It is no objection to this view if there are borderlines for the
dream where its function, to preserve sleep from interruption, can no
longer be maintained—as in the dreams of impending dread. It is
here changed for another function—to suspend the sleep at the
proper time. It acts like a conscientious night-watchman, who first does
his duty by quelling disturbances so as not to waken the citizen, but equally does his duty quite properly
when he awakens the street should the causes of the trouble seem to him
serious and himself unable to cope with them alone.
This function of dreams becomes especially well marked when there
arises some incentive for the sense perception. That the senses aroused
during sleep influence the dream is well known, and can be
experimentally verified; it is one of the certain but much overestimated
results of the medical investigation of dreams. Hitherto there has been
an insoluble riddle connected with this discovery. The stimulus to the
sense by which the investigator affects the sleeper is not properly
recognized in the dream, but is intermingled with a number of indefinite
interpretations, whose determination appears left to psychical
free-will. There is, of course, no such psychical free-will. To an
external sense-stimulus the sleeper can react in many ways. Either he
awakens or he succeeds in sleeping on. In the latter case he can make
use of the dream to dismiss the external stimulus, and this, again, in
more ways than one. For instance, he can stay the stimulus by dreaming
of a scene which is absolutely intolerable to him. This was the means
used by one who was troubled by a painful perineal abscess. He dreamt
that he was on horseback, and made use of the
poultice, which was intended to alleviate his pain, as a saddle, and
thus got away from the cause of the trouble. Or, as is more frequently
the case, the external stimulus undergoes a new rendering, which leads
him to connect it with a repressed desire seeking its realization, and
robs him of its reality, and is treated as if it were a part of the
psychical matter. Thus, some one dreamt that he had written a comedy
which embodied a definite motif; it was being performed; the first act
was over amid enthusiastic applause; there was great clapping. At this
moment the dreamer must have succeeded in prolonging his sleep despite
the disturbance, for when he woke he no longer heard the noise; he
concluded rightly that some one must have been beating a carpet or bed.
The dreams which come with a loud noise just before waking have all
attempted to cover the stimulus to waking by some other explanation, and
thus to prolong the sleep for a little while.
Whosoever has firmly accepted this censorship as the chief motive
for the distortion of dreams will not be surprised to learn as the
result of dream interpretation that most of the dreams of adults are
traced by analysis to erotic desires. This assertion is not drawn from
dreams obviously of a sexual nature, which are known to all dreamers
from their own experience, and are the only
ones usually described as "sexual dreams." These dreams are ever
sufficiently mysterious by reason of the choice of persons who are made
the objects of sex, the removal of all the barriers which cry halt to
the dreamer's sexual needs in his waking state, the many strange
reminders as to details of what are called perversions. But analysis
discovers that, in many other dreams in whose manifest content nothing
erotic can be found, the work of interpretation shows them up as, in
reality, realization of sexual desires; whilst, on the other hand, that
much of the thought-making when awake, the thoughts saved us as surplus
from the day only, reaches presentation in dreams with the help of
repressed erotic desires.
Towards the explanation of this statement, which is no theoretical
postulate, it must be remembered that no other class of instincts has
required so vast a suppression at the behest of civilization as the
sexual, whilst their mastery by the highest psychical processes are in
most persons soonest of all relinquished. Since we have learnt to
understand infantile sexuality, often so vague in its expression, so
invariably overlooked and misunderstood, we are justified in saying that
nearly every civilized person has retained at some point or other the
infantile type of sex life; thus we understand
that repressed infantile sex desires furnish the most frequent and most
powerful impulses for the formation of dreams.1
If the dream, which is the expression of some erotic desire, succeeds
in making its manifest content appear innocently asexual, it is only
possible in one way. The matter of these sexual presentations cannot be
exhibited as such, but must be replaced by allusions, suggestions, and
similar indirect means; differing from other cases of indirect
presentation, those used in dreams must be deprived of direct
understanding. The means of presentation which answer these requirements
are commonly termed "symbols." A special interest has been directed
towards these, since it has been observed that the dreamers of the same
language use the like symbols—indeed, that in certain cases
community of symbol is greater than community of speech. Since the
dreamers do not themselves know the meaning of the symbols they use, it
remains a puzzle whence arises their relationship with what they replace
and denote. The fact itself is undoubted, and becomes of importance for
the technique of the interpretation of dreams,
since by the aid of a knowledge of this symbolism it is possible to
understand the meaning of the elements of a dream, or parts of a dream,
occasionally even the whole dream itself, without having to question the
dreamer as to his own ideas. We thus come near to the popular idea of an
interpretation of dreams, and, on the other hand, possess again the
technique of the ancients, among whom the interpretation of dreams was
identical with their explanation through symbolism.
Though the study of dream symbolism is far removed from finality, we
now possess a series of general statements and of particular
observations which are quite certain. There are symbols which
practically always have the same meaning: Emperor and Empress (King and
Queen) always mean the parents; room, a woman2, and so on. The sexes are
represented by a great variety of symbols, many of which would be at
first quite incomprehensible had not the clews to the meaning been often
obtained through other channels.
There are symbols of universal circulation, found in all dreamers, of
one range of speech and culture; there are
others of the narrowest individual significance which an individual has
built up out of his own material. In the first class those can be
differentiated whose claim can be at once recognized by the replacement
of sexual things in common speech (those, for instance, arising from
agriculture, as reproduction, seed) from others whose sexual references
appear to reach back to the earliest times and to the obscurest depths
of our image-building. The power of building symbols in both these
special forms of symbols has not died out. Recently discovered things,
like the airship, are at once brought into universal use as sex
symbols.
It would be quite an error to suppose that a profounder knowledge of
dream symbolism (the "Language of Dreams") would make us independent of
questioning the dreamer regarding his impressions about the dream, and
would give us back the whole technique of ancient dream interpreters.
Apart from individual symbols and the variations in the use of what is
general, one never knows whether an element in the dream is to be
understood symbolically or in its proper meaning; the whole content of
the dream is certainly not to be interpreted symbolically. The knowledge
of dream symbols will only help us in understanding portions of the
dream content, and does not render the use of the technical rules previously given at all
superfluous. But it must be of the greatest service in interpreting a
dream just when the impressions of the dreamer are withheld or are
insufficient.
Dream symbolism proves also indispensable for understanding the
so-called "typical" dreams and the dreams that "repeat themselves."
Dream symbolism leads us far beyond the dream; it does not belong only
to dreams, but is likewise dominant in legend, myth, and saga, in wit
and in folklore. It compels us to pursue the inner meaning of the dream
in these productions. But we must acknowledge that symbolism is not a
result of the dream work, but is a peculiarity probably of our
unconscious thinking, which furnishes to the dream work the matter for
condensation, displacement, and dramatization.
Footnote
1: Freud, "Three Contributions to Sexual Theory," translated by A.A.
Brill (Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company, New
York).
Footnote
2: The words from "and" to "channels" in the next sentence is a
short summary of the passage in the original. As this book will be read
by other than professional people the passage has not been translated,
in deference to English opinion.—TRANSLATOR.
IV
DREAM ANALYSIS
Perhaps we shall now begin to suspect that dream interpretation is
capable of giving us hints about the structure of our psychic apparatus
which we have thus far expected in vain from philosophy. We shall not,
however, follow this track, but return to our original problem as soon
as we have cleared up the subject of dream-disfigurement. The question
has arisen how dreams with disagreeable content can be analyzed as the
fulfillment of wishes. We see now that this is possible in case
dream-disfigurement has taken place, in case the disagreeable content
serves only as a disguise for what is wished. Keeping in mind our
assumptions in regard to the two psychic instances, we may now proceed
to say: disagreeable dreams, as a matter of fact, contain something
which is disagreeable to the second instance, but which at the same time
fulfills a wish of the first instance. They are wish dreams in the sense
that every dream originates in the first instance, while the second
instance acts towards the dream only in repelling, not in a creative
manner. If we limit ourselves to a
consideration of what the second instance contributes to the dream, we
can never understand the dream. If we do so, all the riddles which the
authors have found in the dream remain unsolved.
That the dream actually has a secret meaning, which turns out to be
the fulfillment of a wish, must be proved afresh for every case by means
of an analysis. I therefore select several dreams which have painful
contents and attempt an analysis of them. They are partly dreams of
hysterical subjects, which require long preliminary statements, and now
and then also an examination of the psychic processes which occur in
hysteria. I cannot, however, avoid this added difficulty in the
exposition.
When I give a psychoneurotic patient analytical treatment, dreams are
always, as I have said, the subject of our discussion. It must,
therefore, give him all the psychological explanations through whose aid
I myself have come to an understanding of his symptoms, and here I
undergo an unsparing criticism, which is perhaps not less keen than that
I must expect from my colleagues. Contradiction of the thesis that all
dreams are the fulfillments of wishes is raised by my patients with
perfect regularity. Here are several examples of the dream material which is offered me to refute this
position.
"You always tell me that the dream is a wish fulfilled," begins a
clever lady patient. "Now I shall tell you a dream in which the content
is quite the opposite, in which a wish of mine is not fulfilled. How
do you reconcile that with your theory? The dream is as
follows:—
"I want to give a supper, but having nothing at hand except some
smoked salmon, I think of going marketing, but I remember that it is
Sunday afternoon, when all the shops are closed. I next try to telephone
to some caterers, but the telephone is out of order.... Thus I must
resign my wish to give a supper."
I answer, of course, that only the analysis can decide the meaning of
this dream, although I admit that at first sight it seems sensible and
coherent, and looks like the opposite of a wish-fulfillment. "But what
occurrence has given rise to this dream?" I ask. "You know that the
stimulus for a dream always lies among the experiences of the preceding
day."
Analysis.—The husband of the patient, an upright and
conscientious wholesale butcher, had told her the day before that he is
growing too fat, and that he must, therefore, begin treatment for
obesity. He was going to get up early, take exercise, keep to a strict diet, and above all accept no more
invitations to suppers. She proceeds laughingly to relate how her
husband at an inn table had made the acquaintance of an artist, who
insisted upon painting his portrait because he, the painter, had never
found such an expressive head. But her husband had answered in his rough
way, that he was very thankful for the honor, but that he was quite
convinced that a portion of the backside of a pretty young girl would
please the artist better than his whole face1. She said that she was at the
time very much in love with her husband, and teased him a good deal. She
had also asked him not to send her any caviare. What does that mean?
As a matter of fact, she had wanted for a long time to eat a caviare
sandwich every forenoon, but had grudged herself the expense. Of course,
she would at once get the caviare from her husband, as soon as she asked
him for it. But she had begged him, on the contrary, not to send her the
caviare, in order that she might tease him about it longer.
This explanation seems far-fetched to me. Unadmitted motives are in
the habit of hiding behind such unsatisfactory explanations. We are
reminded of subjects hypnotized by Bernheim, who
carried out a posthypnotic order, and who, upon being asked for their
motives, instead of answering: "I do not know why I did that," had to
invent a reason that was obviously inadequate. Something similar is
probably the case with the caviare of my patient. I see that she is
compelled to create an unfulfilled wish in life. Her dream also shows
the reproduction of the wish as accomplished. But why does she need an
unfulfilled wish?
The ideas so far produced are insufficient for the interpretation of
the dream. I beg for more. After a short pause, which corresponds to the
overcoming of a resistance, she reports further that the day before she
had made a visit to a friend, of whom she is really jealous, because her
husband is always praising this woman so much. Fortunately, this friend
is very lean and thin, and her husband likes well-rounded figures. Now
of what did this lean friend speak? Naturally of her wish to become
somewhat stouter. She also asked my patient: "When are you going to
invite us again? You always have such a good table."
Now the meaning of the dream is clear. I may say to the patient: "It
is just as though you had thought at the time of the request: 'Of
course, I'll invite you, so you can eat yourself fat at my house and become still more pleasing to my
husband. I would rather give no more suppers.' The dream then tells you
that you cannot give a supper, thereby fulfilling your wish not to
contribute anything to the rounding out of your friend's figure. The
resolution of your husband to refuse invitations to supper for the sake
of getting thin teaches you that one grows fat on the things served in
company." Now only some conversation is necessary to confirm the
solution. The smoked salmon in the dream has not yet been traced. "How
did the salmon mentioned in the dream occur to you?" "Smoked salmon is
the favorite dish of this friend," she answered. I happen to know the
lady, and may corroborate this by saying that she grudges herself the
salmon just as much as my patient grudges herself the caviare.
The dream admits of still another and more exact interpretation,
which is necessitated only by a subordinate circumstance. The two
interpretations do not contradict one another, but rather cover each
other and furnish a neat example of the usual ambiguity of dreams as
well as of all other psychopathological formations. We have seen that at
the same time that she dreams of the denial of the wish, the patient is
in reality occupied in securing an unfulfilled wish (the caviare
sandwiches). Her friend, too, had expressed a
wish, namely, to get fatter, and it would not surprise us if our lady
had dreamt that the wish of the friend was not being fulfilled. For it
is her own wish that a wish of her friend's—for increase in
weight—should not be fulfilled. Instead of this, however, she
dreams that one of her own wishes is not fulfilled. The dream becomes
capable of a new interpretation, if in the dream she does not intend
herself, but her friend, if she has put herself in the place of her
friend, or, as we may say, has identified herself with her friend.
I think she has actually done this, and as a sign of this
identification she has created an unfulfilled wish in reality. But what
is the meaning of this hysterical identification? To clear this up a
thorough exposition is necessary. Identification is a highly important
factor in the mechanism of hysterical symptoms; by this means patients
are enabled in their symptoms to represent not merely their own
experiences, but the experiences of a great number of other persons, and
can suffer, as it were, for a whole mass of people, and fill all the
parts of a drama by means of their own personalities alone. It will here
be objected that this is well-known hysterical imitation, the ability of
hysteric subjects to copy all the symptoms which impress them when they occur in others, as though their
pity were stimulated to the point of reproduction. But this only
indicates the way in which the psychic process is discharged in
hysterical imitation; the way in which a psychic act proceeds and the
act itself are two different things. The latter is slightly more
complicated than one is apt to imagine the imitation of hysterical
subjects to be: it corresponds to an unconscious concluded process, as
an example will show. The physician who has a female patient with a
particular kind of twitching, lodged in the company of other patients in
the same room of the hospital, is not surprised when some morning he
learns that this peculiar hysterical attack has found imitations. He
simply says to himself: The others have seen her and have done likewise:
that is psychic infection. Yes, but psychic infection proceeds in
somewhat the following manner: As a rule, patients know more about one
another than the physician knows about each of them, and they are
concerned about each other when the visit of the doctor is over. Some of
them have an attack to-day: soon it is known among the rest that a
letter from home, a return of lovesickness or the like, is the cause of
it. Their sympathy is aroused, and the following syllogism, which does
not reach consciousness, is completed in them: "If it is possible to have this kind of an attack from
such causes, I too may have this kind of an attack, for I have the same
reasons." If this were a cycle capable of becoming conscious, it would
perhaps express itself in fear of getting the same attack; but it
takes place in another psychic sphere, and, therefore, ends in the
realization of the dreaded symptom. Identification is therefore not a
simple imitation, but a sympathy based upon the same etiological claim;
it expresses an "as though," and refers to some common quality which has
remained in the unconscious.
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