Interpretation of Dreams
The Fair One
“Apples have been desired by you,
Since first in Paradise they grew;
And I am moved with joy to know
That such within my garden grow.”
Translated by BAYARD TAYLOR.
There remains not the slightest doubt what is meant by the apple tree and the apples. A beautiful bosom stood high among the charms with which the actress had bewitched our dreamer.
According to the connections of the analysis we had every reason to assume that the dream went back to an impression from childhood. In this case it must have reference to the nurse of the patient, who is now a man of nearly fifty years of age. The bosom of the nurse is in reality a road-house for the child. The nurse as well as Daudet’s Sappho appears as an allusion to his abandoned sweetheart.
The (elder) brother of the patient also appears in the dream content; he is upstairs, the dreamer himself is below. This again is an inversion, for the brother, as I happen to know, has lost his social position, my patient has retained his. In reporting the dream content the dreamer avoided saying that his brother was upstairs and that he himself was down. It would have been too frank an expression, for a person is said to be “down and out” when he has lost his fortune and position. Now the fact that at this point in the dream something is represented as inverted must have a meaning. The inversion must apply rather to some other relation between the dream thoughts and dream content. There is an indication which suggests how this inversion is to be taken. It obviously applies to the end of the dream, where the circumstances of climbing are the reverse of those in Sappho. Now it may easily be seen what inversion is referred to; in Sappho the man carries the woman who stands in a sexual relation to him; in the dream thoughts, inversely, a woman carries a man, and as this state of affairs can only occur during childhood, the reference is again to the nurse who carries the heavy child. Thus the final portion of the dream succeeds in representing Sappho and the nurse in the same allusion.
Just as the name Sappho has not been selected by the poet without reference to a Lesbian custom, so the elements of the dream in which persons act above and below, point to fancies of a sexual nature with which the dreamer is occupied and which as suppressed cravings are not without connection with his neurosis. Dream interpretation itself does not show that these are fancies and not recollections of actual happenings; it only furnishes us with a set of thoughts and leaves us to determine their value as realities. Real and fantastic occurrences at first appear here as of equal value—and not only here but also in the creation of more important psychic structures than dreams. Much company, as we already know, signifies a secret. The brother is none other than a representative, drawn into the childhood scene by “fancying backwards,” of all of the later rivals for the woman. Through the agency of an experience which is indifferent in itself, the episode with the gentleman who scolds about the King of Italy again refers to the intrusion of people of low rank into aristocratic society. It is as though the warning which Daudet gives to youth is to be supplemented by a similar warning applicable to the suckling child.[DJ]
In order that we may have at our disposal a third example for the study of condensation in dream formation, I shall cite the partial analysis of another dream for which I am indebted to an elderly lady who is being psychoanalytically treated. In harmony with the condition of severe anxiety from which the patient suffered, her dreams contained a great abundance of sexual thought material, the discovery of which astonished as well as frightened her. Since I cannot carry the interpretation of the dream to completion, the material seems to fall apart into several groups without apparent connection.
III. Content of the dream: _She remembers that she has two June bugs in a box, which she must set at liberty, for otherwise they will suffocate. She opens the box, and the bugs are quite exhausted; one of them flies out of the window, but the other is crushed on the casement while she is shutting the window, as some one or other requests her to do (expressions of disgust)._
Analysis: Her husband is away travelling, and her fourteen-year-old daughter is sleeping in the bed next to her. In the evening the little one calls her attention to the fact that a moth has fallen into her glass of water; but she neglects to take it out, and feels sorry for the poor little creature in the morning. A story which she had read in the evening told of boys throwing a cat into boiling water, and the twitchings of the animal were described. These are the occasions for the dream, both of which are indifferent in themselves. She is further occupied with the subject of cruelty to animals. Years before, while they were spending the summer at a certain place, her daughter was very cruel to animals. She started a butterfly collection, and asked her for arsenic with which to kill the butterflies. Once it happened that a moth flew about the room for a long time with a needle through its body; on another occasion she found that some moths which had been kept for metamorphosis had died of starvation. The same child while still at a tender age was in the habit of pulling out the wings of beetles and butterflies; now she would shrink in horror from these cruel actions, for she has grown very kind.
Her mind is occupied with this contrast. It recalls another contrast, the one between appearance and disposition, as it is described in Adam Bede by George Eliot. There a beautiful but vain and quite stupid girl is placed side by side with an ugly but high-minded one. The aristocrat who seduces the little goose, is opposed to the working man who feels aristocratic, and behaves accordingly. It is impossible to tell character from people’s looks. Who could tell from her looks that she is tormented by sensual desires?
In the same year in which the little girl started her butterfly collection, the region in which they were staying suffered much from a pest of June bugs. The children made havoc among the bugs, and crushed them cruelly. At that time she saw a person who tore the wings off the June bugs and ate them. She herself had been born in June and also married in June. Three days after the wedding she wrote a letter home, telling how happy she was. But she was by no means happy.
During the evening before the dream she had rummaged among her old letters and had read various ones, comical and serious, to her family—an extremely ridiculous letter from a piano-teacher who had paid her attention when she was a girl, as well as one from an aristocratic admirer.[DK]
She blames herself because a bad book by de Maupassant had fallen into the hands of one of her daughters.[DL] The arsenic which her little girl asks for recalls the arsenic pills which restored the power of youth to the Duc de Mora in Nabab.
“Set at liberty” recalls to her a passage from the Magic Flute:
“I cannot compel you to love,
But I will not give you your liberty.”
“June bugs” suggests the speech of Katie:[DM]
“I love you like a little beetle.”
Meanwhile the speech from Tannhauser: “For you are wrought with evil passion.”
She is living in fear and anxiety about her absent husband. The dread that something may happen to him on the journey is expressed in numerous fancies of the day. A little while before, during the analysis, she had come upon a complaint about his “senility” in her unconscious thoughts. The wish thought which this dream conceals may perhaps best be conjectured if I say that several days before the dream she was suddenly astounded by a command which she directed to her husband in the midst of her work: “Go hang yourself.” It was found that a few hours before she had read somewhere that a vigorous erection is induced when a person is hanged. It was for the erection which freed itself from repression in this terror-inspiring veiled form. “Go hang yourself” is as much as to say: “Get up an erection, at any cost.” Dr. Jenkin’s arsenic pills in Nabab belong in this connection; for it was known to the patient that the strongest aphrodisiac, cantharides, is prepared by crushing bugs (so-called Spanish flies). The most important part of the dream content has a significance to this effect.
Opening and shutting the window is the subject of a standing quarrel with her husband. She herself likes to sleep with plenty of air, and her husband does not. Exhaustion is the chief ailment of which she complains these days.
In all three of the dreams just cited I have emphasized by italics those phrases where one of the elements of the dream recurs in the dream thoughts in order to make the manifold references of the former obvious. Since, however, the analysis of none of these dreams has been carried to completion, it will be well worth while to consider a dream with a fully detailed analysis, in order to demonstrate the manifold determination of its content. I select the dream of Irma’s injection for this purpose. We shall see without effort in this example that the condensation work has used more than one means for the formation of the dream.
The chief person in the content of the dream is my patient Irma, who is seen with the features which belong to her in waking life, and who therefore in the first instance represents herself. But her attitude as I examine her at the window is taken from the recollection of another person, of the lady for whom I should like to exchange my patient, as the dream thoughts show. In as far as Irma shows a diphtheritic membrane which recalls my anxiety about my eldest daughter, she comes to represent this child of mine, behind whom is concealed the person of the patient who died from intoxication and who is brought into connection by the identity of her name. In the further course of the dream the significance of Irma’s personality changes (without the alteration of her image as it is seen in the dream); she becomes one of the children whom we examine in the public dispensaries for children’s diseases, where my friends show the difference of their mental capabilities. The transference was obviously brought about through the idea of my infant daughter. By means of her unwillingness to open her mouth the same Irma is changed into an allusion to another lady who was once examined by me, and besides that to my wife, in the same connection. Furthermore, in the morbid transformations which I discover in her throat I have gathered allusions to a great number of other persons.
All these people whom I encounter as I follow the associations suggested by “Irma,” do not appear personally in the dream; they are concealed behind the dream person “Irma,” who is thus developed into a collective image, as might be expected, with contradictory features. Irma comes to represent these other persons, who are discarded in the work of condensation, in that I cause to happen to her all the things which recall these persons detail for detail.
I may also construct a collective person for the condensation of the dream in another manner, by uniting the actual features of two or more persons in one dream image. It is in this manner that Dr. M. in my dream was constructed, he bears the name of Dr. M., and speaks and acts as Dr. M. does, but his bodily characteristics and his suffering belong to another person, my eldest brother; a single feature, paleness, is doubly determined, owing to the fact that it is common to both persons. Dr. R. in my dream about my uncle is a similar composite person. But here the dream image is prepared in still another manner. I have not united features peculiar to the one with features of the other, and thereby abridged the remembered image of each by certain features, but I have adopted the method employed by Galton in producing family portraits, by which he projects both pictures upon one another, whereupon the common features stand out in stronger relief, while those which do not coincide neutralize one another and become obscure in the picture. In the dream of my uncle the blond beard stands out in relief, as an emphasized feature, from the physiognomy, which belongs to two persons, and which is therefore blurred; furthermore the beard contains an allusion to my father and to myself, which is made possible by its reference to the fact of growing grey.
The construction of collective and composite persons is one of the chief resources of the activity of dream condensation. There will soon be an occasion for treating of this in another connection.
The notion “dysentery” in the dream about the injection likewise has a manifold determination, on the one hand because of its paraphasic assonance with diphtheria, and on the other because of its reference to the patient, whom I have sent to the Orient, and whose hysteria has been wrongly recognised.
The mention of “propyls” in the dream also proves to be an interesting case of condensation. Not “propyls” but “amyls” were contained in the dream thoughts. One might think that here a simple displacement had occurred in the dream formation. And this is the case, but the displacement serves the purposes of condensation, as is shown by the following supplementary analysis. If I dwell for a moment upon the word “propyls,” its assonance to the word “propylæum” suggests itself to me. But the propylæum is to be found not only in Athens but also in Munich. In the latter city I visited a friend the year before who was seriously ill, and the reference to him becomes unmistakable on account of trimethylamin, which follows closely upon propyls.
I pass over the striking circumstance that here, as elsewhere in the analysis of dreams, associations of the most widely different values are employed for the establishment of thought connections as though they were equivalent, and I yield to the temptation to regard the process by which amyls in the dream thoughts are replaced by propyls, as though it were plastic in the dream content.
On the one hand is the chain of ideas about my friend Otto, who does not understand me, who thinks I am in the wrong, and who gives me the cordial that smells like amyls; on the other the chain of ideas—connected with the first by contrast—about my friend William, who understands me and who would always think I was in the right, and to whom I am indebted for so much valuable information about the chemistry of the sexual processes.
Those characteristics of the associations centering about Otto which ought particularly to attract my attention are determined by the recent occasions which are responsible for the dream; amyls belong to these elements so determined which are destined to get into the dream content. The group of associations “William” is distinctly vivified by the contrast to Otto, and the elements in it which correspond to those already excited in the “Otto” associations are thrown into relief. In this whole dream I am continually referring to a person who excites my displeasure and to another person whom I can oppose to him or her at will, and I conjure up the friend as against the enemy, feature for feature. Thus amyls in the Otto-group suggests recollections in the other group belonging to chemistry; trimethylamin, which receives support from several quarters, finds its way into the dream content. “Amyls,” too, might have got into the dream content without undergoing change, but it yields to the influence of the “William” group of associations, owing to the fact that an element which is capable of furnishing a double determination for amyls is sought out from the whole range of recollections which the name “William” covers. The association “propyls” lies in the neighbourhood of amyls; Munich with the propylæum comes to meet amyls from the series of associations belonging to “William.” Both groups are united in propyls—propylœum. As though by a compromise, this intermediary element gets into the dream content. Here a common mean which permits of a manifold determination has been created. It thus becomes perfectly obvious that manifold determination must facilitate penetration into the dream content. A displacement of attention from what is really intended to something lying near in the associations has thoughtlessly taken place, for the sake of this mean-formation.
The study of the injection dream has now enabled us to get some insight into the process of condensation which takes place in the formation of dreams. The selection of those elements which occur in the dream content more than once, the formation of new unities (collective persons, composite images), and the construction of the common mean, these we have been able to recognise as details of the condensing process. The purpose which is served by condensation and the means by which it is brought about will be investigated when we come to study the psychic processes in the formation of dreams as a whole. Let us be content for the present with establishing dream condensation as an important relation between the dream thoughts and the dream content.
The condensing activity of the dream becomes most tangible when it has selected words and names as its object. In general words are often treated as things by the dream, and thus undergo the same combinations, displacements, and substitutions, and therefore also condensations, as ideas of things. The results of such dreams are comical and bizarre word formations. Upon one occasion when a colleague had sent me one of his essays, in which he had, in my judgment, overestimated the value of a recent physiological discovery and had expressed himself in extravagant terms, I dreamed the following night a sentence which obviously referred to this treatise: “That is in true norekdal style.” The solution of this word formation at first gave me difficulties, although it was unquestionably formed as a parody after the pattern of the superlatives “colossal,” “pyramidal”; but to tell where it came from was not easy. At last the monster fell apart into the two names Nora and Ekdal from two well-known plays by Ibsen. I had previously read a newspaper essay on Ibsen by the same author, whose latest work I was thus criticising in the dream.
II.[DN] One of my female patients dreams that a man with a light beard and a peculiar glittering eye is pointing to a sign board attached to a tree which reads: uclamparia—wet.
Analysis. The man was rather authoritative looking, and his peculiar glittering eye at once recalled St. Paul’s Cathedral, near Rome, where she saw in mosaics the Popes that have so far ruled. One of the early Popes had a golden eye (this was really an optical illusion which the guides usually call attention to). Further associations showed that the general physiognomy corresponded to her own clergyman (Pope), and the shape of the light beard recalled her doctor (myself), while the stature of the man in the dream recalled her father. All these persons stand in the same relation to her; they are all guiding and directing her course of life. On further questioning, the golden eye recalled gold—money—the rather expensive psychoanalytic treatment which gives her a great deal of concern. Gold, moreover, recalls the gold cure for alcoholism—Mr. D., whom she would have married if it had not been for his clinging to the disgusting alcohol habit—she does not object to a person taking an occasional drink; she herself sometimes drinks beer and cordials—this again brings her back to her visit to St. Paul’s without the walls and its surroundings. She remembers that in the neighbouring monastery of the Three Fountains she drank a liquor made of eucalyptus by the Trappist monks who inhabit this monastery. She then relates how the monks transformed this malarial and swampy region into a dry and healthful neighbourhood by planting there many eucalyptus trees. The word “uclamparia” then resolves itself into eucalyptus and malaria, and the word “wet” refers to the former swampy nature of the place. Wet also suggests dry. Dry is actually the name of the man whom she would have married except for his over-indulgence in alcohol. The peculiar name of Dry is of Germanic origin (drei = three) and hence alludes to the Abbey of the Three (drei) Fountains above mentioned. In talking about Mr. Dry’s habit she used the strong words, “He could drink a fountain.” Mr. Dry jocosely refers to his habit by saying, “You know I must drink because I am always dry” (referring to his name). The eucalyptus also refers to her neurosis, which was at first diagnosed as malaria. She went to Italy because her attacks of anxiety, which were accompanied by marked trembling and shivering, were thought to be of malarial origin. She bought some eucalyptus oil from the monks, and she maintains that it has done her much good.
The condensation uclamparia—wet is therefore the point of junction for the dream as well as for the neurosis.[DO]
III. In a somewhat long and wild dream of my own, the chief point of which is apparently a sea voyage, it happens that the next landing is called Hearsing and the one farther on Fliess. The latter is the name of my friend living in B., who has often been the objective point of my travels. But Hearsing is put together from the names of places in the local environment of Vienna, which so often end in ing: Hietzing, Liesing, Moedling (Medelitz, “meæ deliciæ,” my own name, “my joy”) (joy = German Freude), and the English hearsay, which points to libel and establishes the relation to the indifferent dream excitement of the day—a poem in the Fliegende Blaetter about a slanderous dwarf, “Saidhe Hashesaid.” By connecting the final syllable “ing” with the name Fliess, “Vlissingen” is obtained, which is a real port on the sea-voyage which my brother passes when he comes to visit us from England. But the English for Vlissingen is Flushing, which signifies blushing and recalls erythrophobia (fear of blushing), which I treat, and also reminds me of a recent publication by Bechterew about this neurosis, which has given occasion for angry feelings in me.
IV. Upon another occasion I had a dream which consisted of two parts. The first was the vividly remembered word “Autodidasker,” the second was truthfully covered by a short and harmless fancy which had been developed a few days before, and which was to the effect that I must tell Professor N., when I saw him next: “The patient about whose condition I last consulted you is really suffering from a neurosis, just as you suspected.” The coinage “Autodidasker” must, then, not only satisfy the requirement that it should contain or represent a compressed meaning, but also that this meaning should have a valid connection with my purpose, which is repeated from waking life, of giving Professor N. his due credit.
Now Autodidasker is easily separated into author (German Autor), autodidact, and Lasker, with whom is associated the name Lasalle. The first of these words leads to the occasion of the dream—which this time is significant. I had brought home to my wife several volumes by a well-known author, who is a friend of my brother’s, and who, as I have learned, comes from the same town as I (J. J. David). One evening she spoke to me about the profound impression which the touching sadness of a story in one of David’s novels, about a talented but degenerate person, had made upon her, and our conversation turned upon the indications of talent which we perceive in our own children. Under the influence of what she had just read, my wife expressed a concern relative to our children, and I comforted her with the remark that it is just such dangers that can be averted by education. During the night my train of thoughts proceeded further, took up the concern of my wife, and connected with it all sorts of other things. An opinion which the poet had expressed to my brother upon the subject of marriage showed my thoughts a by-path which might lead to a representation in the dream. This path led to Breslau, into which city a lady who was a very good friend of ours had married. I found in Breslau Lasker and Lasalle as examples realising our concern about being ruined at the hands of a woman, examples which enabled me to represent both manifestations of this influence for the bad at once.[DP] The “Cherchez la femme,” in which these thoughts may be summed up, when taken in another sense, brings me to my brother, who is still unmarried and whose name is Alexander. Now I see that Alex, as we abbreviate the name, sounds almost like inversion of Lasker and that this factor must have taken part in giving my thoughts their detour by way of Breslau.
But this playing with names and syllables in which I am here engaged contains still another meaning. The wish that my brother may have a happy family life is represented by it in the following manner. In the artistic romance L’Œuvre, the writer, as is well known, has incidentally given an episodic account of himself and of his own family happiness, and he appears under the name of Sandoz. Probably he has taken the following course in the name transformation. Zola when inverted (as children like so much to do) gives Aloz. But that was still too undisguised for him; therefore he replaced the syllable Al, which stands at the beginning of the name Alexander, by the third syllable of the same name, sand, and thus Sandoz came about. In a similar manner my autodidasker originated.
My fancy, that I am telling Professor N. that the patient whom we had both seen is suffering from a neurosis, got into the dream in the following manner. Shortly before the close of my working year I received a patient in whose case my diagnosis failed me. A serious organic affliction—perhaps some changes in the spine—was to be assumed, but could not be proved. It would have been tempting to diagnose the trouble as a neurosis, and this would have put an end to all difficulties, had it not been for the fact that the sexual anamnesis, without which I am unwilling to admit a neurosis, was so energetically denied by the patient. In my embarrassment I called to my assistance the physician whom I respect most of all men (as others do also), and to whose authority I surrender most completely. He listened to my doubts, told me he thought them justified, and then said: “Keep on observing the man, it is probably a neurosis.” Since I know that he does not share my opinions about the etiology of neuroses, I suppressed my disagreement, but I did not conceal my scepticism. A few days after I informed the patient that I did not know what to do with him, and advised him to go to some one else. Thereupon, to my great astonishment, he began to beg my pardon for having lied to me, saying that he had felt very much ashamed; and now he revealed to me just that piece of sexual etiology which I had expected, and which I found necessary for assuming the existence of a neurosis. This was a relief to me, but at the same time a humiliation; for I had to admit that my consultant, who was not disconcerted by the absence of anamnesis, had made a correct observation. I made up my mind to tell him about it when I saw him again, and to say to him that he had been in the right and I in the wrong.
This is just what I do in the dream. But what sort of a wish is supposed to be fulfilled if I acknowledge that I am in the wrong? This is exactly my wish; I wish to be in the wrong with my apprehensions—that is to say, I wish that my wife whose fears I have appropriated in the dream thoughts may remain in the wrong. The subject to which the matter of being in the right or in the wrong is related in the dream is not far distant from what is really interesting to the dream thoughts. It is the same pair of alternatives of either organic or functional impairment through a woman, more properly through the sexual life—either tabetic paralysis or a neurosis—with which the manner of Lasalle’s ruin is more or less loosely connected.
In this well-joined dream (which, however, is quite transparent with the help of careful analysis) Professor N. plays a part not merely on account of this analogy and of my wish to remain in the wrong, or on account of the associated references to Breslau and to the family of our friend who is married there—but also on account of the following little occurrence which was connected with our consultation. After he had attended to our medical task by giving the above mentioned suggestion, his interest was directed to personal matters. “How many children have you now?”—“Six.”—A gesture of respect and reflection.—“Girls, boys?”—“Three of each. They are my pride and my treasure.”—“Well, there is no difficulty about the girls, but the boys give trouble later on in their education.” I replied that until now they had been very tractable; this second diagnosis concerning the future of my boys of course pleased me as little as the one he had made earlier, namely, that my patient had only a neurosis. These two impressions, then, are bound together by contiguity, by being successively received, and if I incorporate the story of the neurosis into the dream, I substitute it for the conversation upon education which shows itself to be even more closely connected with the dream thoughts owing to the fact that it has such an intimate bearing upon the subsequently expressed concerns of my wife. Thus even my fear that N. may turn out to be right in his remarks on the educational difficulties in the case of boys is admitted into the dream content, in that it is concealed behind the representation of my wish that I may be wrong in such apprehensions. The same fancy serves without change to represent both conflicting alternatives.
The verbal compositions of the dream are very similar to those which are known to occur in paranoia, but which are also found in hysteria and in compulsive ideas. The linguistic habits of children, who at certain periods actually treat words as objects and invent new languages and artificial syntaxes, are in this case the common source for the dream as well as for psychoneuroses.
When speeches occur in the dream, which are expressly distinguished from thoughts as such, it is an invariable rule that the dream speech has originated from a remembered speech in the dream material. Either the wording has been preserved in its integrity, or it has been slightly changed in the course of expression; frequently the dream speech is pieced together from various recollections of speeches, while the wording has remained the same and the meaning has possibly been changed so as to have two or more significations. Not infrequently the dream speech serves merely as an allusion to an incident, at which the recollected speech occurred.[DQ]
(b) The Work of Displacement
Another sort of relation, which is no less significant, must have come to our notice while we were collecting examples of dream condensation. We have seen that those elements which obtrude themselves in the dream content as its essential components play a part in the dream thoughts which is by no means the same. As a correlative to this the converse of this thesis is also true. That which is clearly the essential thing in the dream thoughts need not be represented in the dream at all. The dream, as it were, is eccentric; its contents are grouped about other elements than the dream thoughts as a central point. Thus, for example, in the dream about the botanical monograph the central point of the dream content is apparently the element “botanical”; in the dream thoughts we are concerned with the complications and conflicts which result from services rendered among colleagues which put them under obligations to one another, subsequently with the reproach that I am in the habit of sacrificing too much to my hobbies, and the element “botanical” would in no case find a place in this nucleus of the dream thoughts if it were not loosely connected with it by an antithesis, for botany was never among my favourite studies. In the Sappho dream of my patient the ascending and descending, being upstairs and down, is made the central point; the dream, however, is concerned with the danger of sexual relations with persons of low degree, so that only one of the elements of the dream thoughts seems to have been taken over into the dream content, albeit with unseemly elaboration. Similarly in the dream about June bugs, whose subject is the relation of sexuality to cruelty, the factor of cruelty has indeed reappeared but in a different connection and without the mention of the sexual, that is to say, it has been torn from its context and transformed into something strange. Again, in the dream about my uncle, the blond beard, which seems to be its central point, appears to have no rational connection with the wishes for greatness which we have recognised as the nucleus of the dream thoughts. It is only to be expected if such dreams give a displaced impression. In complete contrast to these examples, the dream of Irma’s injection shows that individual elements can claim the same place in the formation of dreams which they occupy in the dream thoughts. The recognition of these new and entirely variable relations between the dream thoughts and the dream content is at first likely to excite our astonishment.
If we find in a psychic process of normal life that an idea has been culled from among a number of others, and has acquired particular vividness in our consciousness, we are in the habit of regarding this result as a proof that the victorious idea is endowed with a peculiarly high degree of psychic value—a certain degree of interest. We now discover that this value of the individual elements in the dream thoughts is not preserved in the formation of the dream, or does not come into consideration. For there is no doubt as to the elements of the dream thoughts which are of the highest value; our judgment tells us immediately. In the formation of dreams those elements which are emphasized with intense interest may be treated as though they were inferior, and other elements are put in their place which certainly were inferior in the dream thoughts. We are at first given the impression that the psychic intensity[DR] of the individual ideas does not come into consideration at all for the selection made by the dream, but only their greater or smaller multiplicity of determination. Not what is important in the dream thoughts gets into the dream, but what is contained in them several times over, one might be inclined to think; but our understanding of the formation of dreams is not much furthered by this assumption, for at the outset it will be impossible to believe that the two factors of manifold determination and of integral value do not tend in the same direction in the influence they exert on the selection made by the dream. Those ideas in the dream thoughts which are most important are probably also those which recur most frequently, for the individual dream thoughts radiate from them as from central points. And still the dream may reject those elements which are especially emphasized and which receive manifold support, and may take up into its content elements which are endowed only with the latter property.
This difficulty may be solved by considering another impression received in the investigation of the manifold determination of the dream content. Perhaps many a reader has already passed his own judgment upon this investigation by saying that the manifold determination of the elements of the dream is not a significant discovery, because it is a self-evident one. In the analysis one starts from the dream elements, and registers all the notions which are connected with them; it is no wonder, then, that these elements should occur with particular frequency in the thought material which is obtained in this manner. I cannot acknowledge the validity of this objection, but shall say something myself which sounds like it. Among the thoughts which analysis brings to light, many can be found which are far removed from the central idea of the dream, and which appear distinguished from the rest as artificial interpolations for a definite purpose. Their purpose may easily be discovered; they are just the ones which establish a connection, often a forced and far-fetched one, between the dream content and the dream thoughts, and if these elements were to be weeded out, not only over-determination but also a sufficient determination by means of the dream thoughts would often be lacking for the dream content. We are thus led to the conclusion that manifold determination, which decides the selection made by the dream, is perhaps not always a primary factor in dream formation, but is often the secondary manifestation of a psychic power which is still unknown to us. But in spite of all this, manifold determination must nevertheless control the entrance of individual elements into the dream, for it is possible to observe that it is established with considerable effort in cases where it does not result from the dream material without assistance.
The assumption is not now far distant that a psychic force is expressed in dream activity which on the one hand strips elements of high psychic value of their intensity, and which on the other hand creates new values, by way of over-determination, from elements of small value, these new values subsequently getting into the dream content. If this is the method of procedure, there has taken place in the formation of the dream a transference and displacement of the psychic intensities of the individual elements, of which the textual difference between the dream and the thought content appears as a result. The process which we assume here is nothing less than the essential part of the dream activity; it merits the designation of dream displacement. Dream displacement and dream condensation are the two craftsmen to whom we may chiefly attribute the moulding of the dream.
I think we also have an easy task in recognising the psychic force which makes itself felt in the circumstances of dream displacement. The result of this displacement is that the dream content no longer resembles the core of the dream thoughts at all, and that the dream reproduces only a disfigured form of the dream-wish in the unconscious. But we are already acquainted with dream disfigurement; we have traced it back to the censorship which one psychic instance in the psychic life exercises upon the other. Dream displacement is one of the chief means for achieving this disfigurement. Is fecit, cui profuit. We may assume that dream displacement is brought about by the influence of this censor, of the endopsychic repulsion.[DS]
The manner in which the factors of displacement, condensation, and over-determination play into one another in the formation of the dream, which is the ruling factor and which the subordinate one, all this will be reserved as the subject of later investigations. For the present we may state, as a second condition which the elements must satisfy in order to get into the dream, that they must be withdrawn from the censor of resistance. From now on we shall take account of dream displacement as an unquestionable fact in the interpretation of dreams.
(c) Means of Representation in the Dream
Besides the two factors of dream condensation and dream displacement which we have found to be active in the transformation of the latent dream material into the manifest content, we shall come in the course of this investigation upon two other conditions which exercise an unquestionable influence upon the selection of the material which gets into the dream. Even at the risk of seeming to stop our progress, I should like to glance at the processes by which the interpretation of dreams is accomplished. I do not deny that I should succeed best in making them clear, and in showing that they are sufficiently reliable to insure them against attack, by taking a single dream as a paradigm and developing its interpretation, as I have done in Chapter II. in the dream of “Irma’s Injection,” and then putting together the dream thoughts which I have discovered, and reconstructing the formation of the dream from them—that is to say, by supplementing the analysis of dreams by a synthesis of them. I have accomplished this with several specimens for my own instruction; but I cannot undertake to do it here because I am prevented by considerations, which every right-minded person must approve of, relative to the psychic material necessary for such a demonstration. In the analysis of dreams these considerations present less difficulty, for an analysis may be incomplete and still retain its value even if it leads only a short way into the thought labyrinth of the dream. I do not see how a synthesis could be anything short of complete in order to be convincing. I could give a complete synthesis only of the dreams of such persons as are unknown to the reading public. Since, however, only neurotic patients furnish me with the means for doing this, this part of the description of the dream must be postponed until I can carry the psychological explanation of neuroses far enough—elsewhere—to be able to show their connection with the subject matter under consideration.[DT]
From my attempts synthetically to construct dreams from the dream thoughts, I know that the material which is obtained from interpretation varies in value. For a part of it consists of the essential dream thoughts which would, therefore, completely replace the dream, and which would in themselves be sufficient for this replacement if there were no censor for the dream. The other part may be summed up under the term “collaterals”; taken as a whole they represent the means by which the real wish that arises from the dream thoughts is transformed into the dream-wish. A first part of these “collaterals” consists of allusions to the actual dream thoughts, which, considered schematically, correspond to displacements from the essential to the non-essential. A second part comprises the thoughts which connect these non-essential elements, that have become significant through displacement with one another, and which reach from them into the dream content. Finally a third part contains the ideas and thought connections which (in the work of interpretation) conduct us from the dream content to the intermediary collaterals, all of which need not necessarily have participated in the formation of the dream.
At this point we are interested exclusively in the essential dream thoughts. These are usually found to be a complex of thoughts and memories of the most intricate possible construction, and to possess all the properties of the thought processes which are known to us from waking life. Not infrequently they are trains of thought which proceed from more than one centre, but which do not lack points of connection; almost regularly a chain of thought stands next to its contradictory correlative, being connected with it by contrast associations.
The individual parts of this complicated structure naturally stand in the most manifold logical relations to one another. They constitute a foreground or background, digressions, illustrations, conditions, chains of argument, and objections. When the whole mass of these dream thoughts is subjected to the pressure of the dream activity, during which the parts are turned about, broken up, and pushed together, something like drifting ice, there arises the question, what becomes of the logical ties which until now had given form to the structure? What representation do “if,” “because,” “as though,” “although,” “either—or,” and all the other conjunctions, without which we cannot understand a phrase or a sentence, receive in the dream?
At first we must answer that the dream has at its disposal no means for representing these logical relations among the dream thoughts. In most cases it disregards all these conjunctions, and undertakes the elaboration only of the objective content of the dream thoughts. It is left to the interpretation of the dream to restore the coherence which the activity of the dream has destroyed.
If the dream lacks ability to express these relations, the psychic material of which the dream is wrought must be responsible. The descriptive arts are limited in the same manner—painting and the plastic arts in comparison with poetry, which can employ speech; and here too the reason for this impotence is to be found in the material in the treatment of which the two arts strive to give expression to something. Before the art of painting had arrived at an understanding of the laws of expression by which it is bound, it attempted to escape this disadvantage. In old paintings little tags were hung from the mouths of the persons represented giving the speech, the expression of which in the picture the artist despaired of.
Perhaps an objection will here be raised challenging the assertion that the dream dispenses with the representation of logical relations. There are dreams in which the most complicated intellectual operations take place, in which proof and refutation are offered, puns and comparisons made, just as in waking thoughts. But here, too, appearances are deceitful; if the interpretation of such dreams is pursued, it is found that all of this is dream material, not the representation of intellectual activity in the dream. The content of the dream thoughts is reproduced by the apparent thinking of the dream, not the relations of the dream thoughts to one another, in the determination of which relations thinking consists. I shall give examples of this. But the thesis which is most easily established is that all speeches which occur in the dream, and which are expressly designated as such, are unchanged or only slightly modified copies of speeches which are likewise to be found in the recollections of the dream material. Often the speech is only an allusion to an event contained in the dream thoughts; the meaning of the dream is a quite different one.
I shall not deny, indeed, that there is also critical thought activity which does not merely repeat material from the dream thoughts and which takes part in the formation of the dream. I shall have to explain the influence of this factor at the close of this discussion. It will then become clear that this thought activity is evoked not by the dream thoughts, but by the dream itself after it is already finished in a certain sense.
We shall, therefore, consider it settled for the present that the logical relations among the dream thoughts do not enjoy any particular representation in the dream. For instance, where there is a contradiction in the dream, this is either a contradiction directed against the dream itself or a contradiction derived from the content of one of the dream thoughts; a contradiction in the dream corresponds to a contradiction among the dream thoughts only in a highly indirect manner.
But just as the art of painting finally succeeded in depicting in the represented persons, at least their intention in speaking—their tenderness, threatening attitude, warning mien, and the like—by other means than the dangling tag, so also the dream has found it possible to render account of a few of the logical relations among its dream thoughts by means of an appropriate modification of the peculiar method of dream representation. It will be found by experience that different dreams go to different lengths in taking this into consideration; while one dream entirely disregards the logical coherence of its material, another attempts to indicate it as completely as possible. In so doing the dream departs more or less widely from the subject-matter which it is to elaborate. The dream also takes a similarly varying attitude towards the temporal coherence of the dream thoughts, if such coherence has been established in the unconscious (as for example in the dream of Irma’s injection).
But what are the means by which the dream activity is enabled to indicate these relations in the dream material which are so difficult to represent? I shall attempt to enumerate these separately.
In the first place, the dream renders account of the connection which is undeniably present between all the parts of the dream thoughts by uniting this material in a single composition as a situation or process. It reproduces logical connection in the form of simultaneousness; in this case it acts something like the painter who groups together all the philosophers or poets into a picture of the school of Athens or of Parnassus, although these were never at once present in any hall or on any mountain top—though they do, however, form a unity from the point of view of reflective contemplation.
The dream carries out this method of representation in detail. Whenever it shows two elements close together, it vouches for a particularly intimate connection between those elements which correspond to them in the dream thoughts. It is as in our method of writing: to signifies that the two letters are to be pronounced as one syllable, while t with o after a free space shows that t is the last letter of one word and o the first letter of another. According to this, dream combinations are not made of arbitrary, completely incongruent elements of the dream material, but of elements that also have a somewhat intimate relation to one another in the dream thoughts.
For representing causal relation the dream has two methods, which are essentially reducible to one. The more frequent method, in cases, for example, where the dream thoughts are to the effect: “Because this was so and so, this and that must happen,” consists in making the premise an introductory dream and joining the conclusion to it in the form of the main dream. If my interpretation is correct, the sequence may also be reversed. That part of the dream which is more completely worked out always corresponds to the conclusion.
A female patient, whose dream I shall later give in full, once furnished me with a neat example of such a representation of causal relationship. The dream consisted of a short prologue and of a very elaborate but well organised dream composition, which might be entitled: “A flower of speech.” The prologue of the dream is as follows: _She goes to the two maids in the kitchen and scolds them for taking so long to prepare “a little bite of food.” She also sees a great many coarse dishes standing in the kitchen, inverted so that the water may drop off them, and heaped up in a pile. The two maids go to fetch water, and must, as it were, step into a river, which reaches up to the house or into the yard._
Then follows the main dream, which begins as follows: She is descending from a high place, over balustrades that are curiously fashioned, and she is glad that her dress doesn’t get caught anywhere, &c. Now the introductory dream refers to the house of the lady’s parents. Probably she has often heard from her mother the words which are spoken in the kitchen. The piles of unwashed dishes are taken from an unpretentious earthenware shop which was located in the same house. The second part of this dream contains an allusion to the dreamer’s father, who always had a great deal to do with servant girls, and who later contracted a fatal disease during a flood—the house stood near the bank of a river. The thought which is concealed behind the introductory dream, then, is to this effect: “Because I was born in this house, under such limited and unlovely circumstances.” The main dream takes up the same thought, and presents it in a form that has been altered by the tendency to wish-fulfilment: “I am of exalted origin.” Properly then: “Because I was born in such low circumstances, my career has been so and so.”
As far as I can see, the partition of a dream into two unequal portions does not always signify a causal relation between the thoughts of the two portions. It often appears as though the same material were being presented in the two dreams from different points of view; or as though the two dreams have proceeded from two separated centres in the dream material and their contents overlap, so that the object which is the centre of one dream has served in the other as an allusion, and vice versa. But in a certain number of cases a division into shorter fore-dreams and longer subsequent dreams actually signifies a causal relation between the two portions. The other method of representing causal relation is used with less abundant material and consists in the change of one image in the dream, whether a person or a thing, into another. It is only in cases where we witness this change taking place in the dream that any causal relation is asserted to exist, not where we merely notice that one thing has taken the place of another. I said that both methods of representing causal relation are reducible to the same thing; in both cases causation is represented by a succession, now by the sequence of the dreams, now by the immediate transformation of one image into another. In the great majority of cases, of course, causal relation is not expressed at all, but is obliterated by the sequence of elements which is unavoidable in the dream process.
The dream is altogether unable to express the alternative, “either—or”; it is in the habit of taking both members of this alternative into one context, as though they were equally privileged. A classic example of this is contained in the dream of Irma’s injection. Its latent thoughts obviously mean: I am innocent of the continued presence of Irma’s pains; the fault rests either with her resistance to accepting the solution, or with the fact that she is living under unfavourable sexual conditions, which I am unable to change, or her pains are not of a hysteric nature at all, but organic. The dream, however, fulfils all these possibilities, which are almost exclusive, and is quite ready to extract from the dream-wish an additional fourth solution of this kind. After interpreting the dream I have therefore inserted the either—or in the sequence of the dream thoughts.
In the case where the dreamer finds occasion in telling the dream to use either—or: “It was either a garden or a living-room,” &c., it is not really an alternative which occurs in the dream thoughts, but an “and,” a simple addition. When we use either—or we are usually describing a characteristic of indistinctness belonging to an element of the dream which is still capable of being cleared up. The rule of interpretation for this case is as follows: The separate members of the alternative are to be treated as equals and connected by “and.” For instance, after waiting for a long time in vain for the address of my friend who is living in Italy, I dream that I receive a telegram which tells me this address. Upon the strip of telegraph paper I see printed in blue the following; the first word is blurred:
perhaps via, or villa, the second is distinctly: Sezerno or perhaps (Casa).
The second word, which sounds like an Italian name and which reminds me of our etymological discussions, also expresses my displeasure on account of the fact that my friend has kept his place of residence secret from me for so long a time; every member of the triple suggestion for the first word may be recognised in the course of analysis as a self-sufficient and equally well-justified starting point in the concatenation of ideas.
During the night before the funeral of my father I dreamed of a printed placard, a card or poster—perhaps something like signs in railway waiting-rooms which announce the prohibition of smoking—which reads either:
It is requested to shut the eyes
or
It is requested to shut an eye which I am in the habit of representing in the following form:
the
It is requested to shut eye(s).
an
Each of the two variations has its own particular meaning, and leads us along particular paths in the interpretation of the dream. I had made the simplest kind of funeral arrangements, for I knew how the deceased thought about such matters. Other members of the family, however, did not approve of such puritanic simplicity; they thought we would have to be ashamed before the mourners. Hence one of the wordings of the dream requests the “shutting of one eye,” that is to say, that people should show consideration. The significance of the blurring, which we describe with an either—or, may here be seen with particular ease. The dream activity has not succeeded in constructing a unified but at the same time ambiguous wording for the dream thoughts. Thus the two main trains of thought are already distinguished even in the dream content.
In a few cases the division of the dream into two equal parts expresses the alternative which the dream finds it so difficult to represent.
The attitude of the dream towards the category of antithesis and contradiction is most striking. This category is unceremoniously neglected; the word “No” does not seem to exist for the dream. Antitheses are with peculiar preference reduced to unity or represented as one. The dream also takes the liberty of representing any element whatever by its desired opposite, so that it is at first impossible to tell about any element capable of having an opposite, whether it is to be taken negatively or positively, in the dream thoughts.[DU] In one of the last-mentioned dreams, whose introductory portion we have already interpreted (“because my parentage is such”), the dreamer descends over a balustrade and holds a blossoming twig in her hands. Since this picture suggests to her the angel in paintings of the Annunciation (her own name is Mary) carrying a lily stem in his hand, and the white-robed girls marching in the procession on Corpus Christi Day when the streets are decorated with green bows, the blossoming twig in the dream is very certainly an allusion to sexual innocence. But the twig is thickly studded with red blossoms, each one of which resembles a camelia. At the end of her walk, so the dream continues, the blossoms have already fallen considerably apart; then unmistakable allusions to menstruation follow. But this very twig which is carried like a lily and as though by an innocent girl, is also an allusion to Camille, who, as is known, always wore a white camelia, but a red one at the time of her menstruation. The same blossoming twig (“the flower of maidenhood” in the songs about the miller’s daughter by Goethe) represents at once sexual innocence and its opposite. The same dream, also, which expresses the dreamer’s joy at having succeeded in passing through life unsullied, hints in several places (as at the falling-off of the blossom), at the opposite train of thought—namely, that she had been guilty of various sins against sexual purity (that is in her childhood). In the analysis of the dream we may clearly distinguish the two trains of thought, of which the comforting one seems to be superficial, the reproachful one more profound. The two are diametrically opposed to each other, and their like but contrasting elements have been represented by the identical dream elements.
The mechanism of dream formation is favourable in the highest degree to only one of the logical relations. This relation is that of similarity, correspondence, contiguity, “as though,” which is capable of being represented in the dream as no other can be, by the most varied expedients. The correspondences occurring in the dream, or cases of “as though,” are the chief points of support for the formation of dreams, and no inconsiderable part of the dream activity consists in creating new correspondences of this sort in cases where those which are already at hand are prevented by the censor of resistance from getting into the dream. The effort towards condensation shown by the dream activity assists in the representation of the relation of similarity.
Similarity, agreement, community, are quite generally expressed in the dream by concentration into a unity, which is either already found in the dream material or is newly created. The first case may be referred to as identification, the second as composition. Identification is used where the dream is concerned with persons, composition where things are the objects of unification; but compositions are also made from persons. Localities are often treated as persons.
Identification consists in giving representation in the dream content to only one of a number of persons who are connected by some common feature, while the second or the other persons seem to be suppressed as far as the dream is concerned. This one representative person in the dream enters into all the relations and situations which belong to itself or to the persons who are covered by it. In cases of composition, however, when this has to do with persons, there are already present in the dream image features which are characteristic of, but not common to, the persons in question, so that a new unity, a composite person, appears as the result of the union of these features. The composition itself may be brought about in various ways. Either the dream person bears the name of one of the persons to whom it refers—and then we know, in a manner which is quite analogous to knowledge in waking life, that this or that person is the one who is meant—while the visual features belong to another person; or the dream image itself is composed of visual features which in reality are shared by both. Instead of visual features, also, the part played by the second person may be represented by the mannerisms which are usually ascribed to him, the words which he usually speaks, or the situations in which he is usually imagined. In the latter method of characterisation the sharp distinction between identification and composition of persons begins to disappear. But it may also happen that the formation of such a mixed personality is unsuccessful. The situation of the dream is then attributed to one person, and the other—as a rule the more important one—is introduced as an inactive and unconcerned spectator. The dreamer relates something like “My mother was also there” (Stekel).
The common feature which justifies the union of the two persons—that is to say, which is the occasion for it—may either be represented in the dream or be absent. As a rule, identification or composition of persons simply serves the purpose of dispensing with the representation of this common feature. Instead of repeating: “A is ill disposed towards me, and B is also,” I make a composite person of A and B in the dream, or I conceive A as doing an unaccustomed action which usually characterises B. The dream person obtained in this way appears in the dream in some new connection, and the fact that it signifies both A and B justifies me in inserting that which is common to both—their hostility towards me—at the proper place in the interpretation of the dream. In this manner I often achieve a very extraordinary degree of condensation of the dream content; I can save myself the direct representation of very complicated relations belonging to a person, if I can find a second person who has an equal claim to a part of these relations. It is also obvious to what extent this representation by means of identification can circumvent the resisting censor, which makes the dream activity conform to such harsh conditions. That which offends the censor may lie in those very ideas which are connected in the dream material with the one person; I now find a second person, who likewise has relation to the objectionable material, but only to a part of it. The contact in that one point which offends the censor now justified me in forming a composite person, which is characterised on either hand by indifferent features. This person resulting from composition or identification, who is unobjectionable to the censor, is now suited for incorporation in the dream content, and by the application of dream condensation I have satisfied the demands of the dream censor.
In dreams where a common feature of two persons is represented, this is usually a hint to look for another concealed common feature, the representation of which is made impossible by the censor. A displacement of the common feature has here taken place partly in order to facilitate representation. From the circumstance that the composite person appears to me with an indifferent common feature, I must infer that another common feature which is by no means indifferent exists in the dream thoughts.
According to what has been said, identification or composition of persons serves various purposes in the dream; in the first place, to represent a feature common to the two persons; secondly, to represent a displaced common feature; and thirdly, even to give expression to a community of features that is merely wished for. As the wish for a community between two persons frequently coincides with the exchanging of these persons, this relation in the dream is also expressed through identification. In the dream of Irma’s injection I wish to exchange this patient for another—that is to say, I wish the latter to be my patient as the former has been; the dream takes account of this wish by showing me a person who is called Irma, but who is examined in a position such as I have had the opportunity of seeing only when occupied with the other person in question. In the dream about my uncle this substitution is made the centre of the dream; I identify myself with the minister by judging and treating my colleague as shabbily as he does.
It has been my experience—and to this I have found no exception—that every dream treats of one’s own person. Dreams are absolutely egotistic. In cases where not my ego, but only a strange person occurs in the dream content, I may safely assume that my ego is concealed behind that person by means of identification. I am permitted to supplement my ego. On other occasions when my ego appears in the dream, I am given to understand by the situation in which it is placed that another person is concealing himself behind the ego. In this case the dream is intended to give me notice that in the interpretation I must transfer something which is connected with this person—the hidden common feature—to myself. There are also dreams in which my ego occurs along with other persons which the resolution of the identification again shows to be my ego. By means of this identification I am instructed to unite in my ego certain ideas to whose acceptance the censor has objected. I may also give my ego manifold representation in the dream, now directly, now by means of identification with strangers. An extraordinary amount of thought material may be condensed by means of a few such identifications.[DV]
The resolution of the identification of localities designated under their own names is even less difficult than that of persons, because here the disturbing influence of the ego, which is all-powerful in the dream, is lacking. In one of my dreams about Rome (p. 164) the name of the place in which I find myself is Rome; I am surprised, however, at the great number of German placards at a street corner. The latter is a wish-fulfilment, which immediately suggests Prague; the wish itself probably originated at a period in my youth when I was imbued with a German nationalistic spirit which is suppressed to-day. At the time of my dream I was looking forward to meeting a friend in Prague; the identification of Rome and Prague is thus to be explained by means of a desired common feature; I would rather meet my friend in Rome than in Prague, I should like to exchange Prague for Rome for the purpose of this meeting.
The possibility of creating compositions is one of the chief causes of the phantastic character so common in dreams, in that it introduces into the dream elements which could never have been the objects of perception. The psychic process which occurs in the formation of compositions is obviously the same which we employ in conceiving or fashioning a centaur or a dragon in waking life. The only difference is that in the phantastic creations occurring in waking life the intended impression to be made by the new creation is itself the deciding factor, while the composition of the dream is determined by an influence—the common feature in the dream thoughts—which is independent of the form of the image. The composition of the dream may be accomplished in a great many different ways. In the most artless method of execution the properties of the one thing are represented, and this representation is accompanied by the knowledge that they also belong to another object. A more careful technique unites the features of one object with those of the other in a new image, while it makes skilful use of resemblance between the two objects which exist in reality. The new creation may turn out altogether absurd or only phantastically ingenious, according to the subject-matter and the wit operative in the work of composition. If the objects to be condensed into a unity are too incongruous, the dream activity is content with creating a composition with a comparatively distinct nucleus, to which are attached less distinct modifications. The unification into one image has here been unsuccessful, as it were; the two representations overlap and give rise to something like a contest between visual images. If attempt were made to construct an idea out of individual images of perception, similar representations might be obtained in a drawing.
Dreams naturally abound in such compositions; several examples of these I have given in the dreams already analysed; I shall add more. In the dream on p. 296, which describes the career of my patient “in flowery language,” the dream ego carries a blossoming twig in her hand, which, as we have seen, signifies at once innocence and sexual transgression. Moreover, the twig recalls cherry-blossoms on account of the manner in which the blossoms are clustered; the blossoms themselves, separately considered, are camelias, and finally the whole thing also gives the impression of an exotic plant. The common feature in the elements of this composition is shown by the dream thoughts. The blossoming twig is made up of allusions to presents by which she was induced or should have been induced to show herself agreeable. So it was with the cherries in her childhood and with the stem of camelias in her later years; the exotic feature is an illusion to a much-travelled naturalist, who sought to win her favour by means of a drawing of a flower. Another female patient creates a middle element out of bath-houses at a bathing resort, rural outside water-closets, and the garrets of our city dwellings. The reference to human nakedness and exposure is common to the two first elements; and we may infer from their connection with the third element that (in her childhood) the garret was likewise the scene of exposure. A dreamer of the male sex makes a composite locality out of two places in which “treatment” is given—my office and the public hall in which he first became acquainted with his wife. Another female patient, after her elder brother has promised to regale her with caviare, dreams that his legs are covered thick with black caviare pearls. The two elements, “contagion” in a moral sense and the recollection of a cutaneous eruption in childhood which made her legs look as though studded over with red dots instead of black ones, have here been united with the caviare pearls to form a new idea—the idea of “what she has inherited from her brother.” In this dream parts of the human body are treated as objects, as is usually the case in dreams. In one of the dreams reported by Ferenczi[87] there occurred a composition made up of the person of a physician and a horse, over which was spread a night-shirt. The common feature in these three components was shown in the analysis after the night-shirt had been recognised as an allusion to the father of the dreamer in an infantile scene. In each of the three cases there was some object of her sexual inquisitiveness.
As a child she had often been taken by her nurse to the military breeding station, where she had the amplest opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, which was at that time uninhibited.
I have already asserted that the dream has no means for expressing the relation of contradiction, of contrast, of negation. I am about to contradict this assertion for the first time. A part of the cases, which may be summed up under the word “contrast,” finds representation, as we have seen, simply by means of identification—that is, when an interchange or replacement can be connected with the contrast. We have given repeated examples of this. Another part of the contrasts in the dream thoughts, which perhaps falls into the category “turned into the opposite,” is represented in the dream in the following remarkable manner, which may almost be designated as witty. The “inversion” does not itself get into the dream content, but manifests its presence there by means of the fact that a part of the already formed dream content which lies at hand for other reasons, is—as it were subsequently—inverted. It is easier to illustrate this process than to describe it. In the beautiful “Up and Down” dream (p. 267) the representation of ascending is an inversion of a prototype in the dream thoughts, that is to say, of the introductory scene of Daudet’s Sappho; in the dream climbing is difficult at first, and easy later on, while in the actual scene it is easy at first, and later becomes more and more difficult. Likewise “above” and “below” in relation to the dreamer’s brother are inverted in the dream. This points to a relation of contraries or contrasts as obtaining between two parts of the subject-matter of the dream thoughts and the relation we have found in the fact that in the childish fancy of the dreamer he is carried by his nurse, while in the novel, on the contrary, the hero carries his beloved. My dream about Goethe’s attack upon Mr. M. (p. 345) also contains an “inversion” of this sort, which must first be set right before the interpretation of the dream can be accomplished. In the dream Goethe attacks a young man, Mr. M.; in reality, according to the dream thoughts, an eminent man, my friend, has been attacked by an unknown young author. In the dream I reckon time from the date of Goethe’s death; in reality the reckoning was made from the year in which the paralytic was born. The thought determining the dream material is shown to be an objection to the treatment of Goethe as a lunatic. “The other way around,” says the dream; “if you cannot understand the book, it is you who are dull-witted, not the author.” Furthermore, all these dreams of inversion seem to contain a reference to the contemptuous phrase, “to turn one’s back upon a person” (German: “einen die Kehrseite zeigen”; cf. the inversion in respect to the dreamer’s brother in the Sappho dream). It is also remarkable how frequently inversion becomes necessary in dreams which are inspired by repressed homosexual feelings.
Moreover, inversion or transformation into an opposite is one of the favourite methods of representation, and one of the methods most capable of varied application which the dream activity possesses. Its first function is to create the fulfilment of a wish with reference to a definite element of the dream-thoughts. “If it were only just the other way!” is often the best expression of the relation of the ego to a disagreeable recollection. But inversion becomes extraordinarily useful for the purposes of the censor, for it brings about in the material represented a degree of disfiguration which all but paralyses our understanding of the dream. For this reason it is always permissible, in cases where the dream stubbornly refuses to yield its meaning, to try the inversion of definite portions of its manifest content, whereupon not infrequently everything becomes clear.
Besides this inversion, the subject-matter inversion in temporal relation is not to be overlooked. A frequent device of dream disfigurement consists in presenting the final issue of an occurrence or the conclusion of an argument at the beginning of the dream, or in supplying the premises of a conclusion or the causes of an effect at the end of it. Any one who has not considered this technical method of dream disfigurement stands helpless before the problem of dream interpretation.[DW]
Indeed in some cases we can obtain the sense of the dream only by subjecting the dream content to manifold inversion in different directions. For example, in the dream of a young patient suffering from a compulsion neurosis, the memory of an infantile death-wish against a dreaded father was hidden behind the following words: His father upbraids him because he arrives so late. But the context in the psychoanalytic treatment and the thoughts of the dreamer alike go to show that the sentence must read as follows: He is angry at his father, and, further, that his father is always coming home too early (i.e. too soon). He would have preferred that his father should not come home at all, which is identical with the wish (see page 219) that his father should die. As a little boy the dreamer was guilty of sexual aggression against another person while his father was away, and he was threatened with punishment in the words: “Just wait until father comes home.”
If we attempt to trace the relations between dream content and dream thoughts further, we shall do this best by making the dream itself our starting-point and by asking ourselves the question: What do certain formal characteristics of dream representation signify with reference to the dream thoughts? The formal characteristics which must attract our attention in the dream primarily include variations in the distinctness of individual parts of the dream or of whole dreams in relation to one another. The variations in the intensity of individual dream images include a whole scale of degrees ranging from a distinctness of depiction which one is inclined to rate as higher—without warrant, to be sure—than that of reality, to a provoking indistinctness which is declared to be characteristic of the dream, because it cannot altogether be compared to any degree of indistinctness which we ever see in real objects. Moreover, we usually designate the impression which we get from an indistinct object in the dream as “fleeting,” while we think of the more distinct dream images as remaining intact for a longer period of perception. We must now ask ourselves by what conditions in the dream material these differences in the vividness of the different parts of the dream content are brought about.
There are certain expectations which will inevitably arise at this point and which must be met. Owing to the fact that real sensations during sleep may form part of the material of the dream, it will probably be assumed that these sensations or the dream elements resulting from them are emphasized by peculiar intensity, or conversely, that what turns out to be particularly vivid in the dream is probably traceable to such real sensations during sleep. My experience has never confirmed this. It is incorrect to say that those elements of the dream which are the derivatives of impressions occurring in sleep (nervous excitements) are distinguished by their vividness from others which are based on recollections. The factor of reality is of no account in determining the intensity of dream images.
Furthermore, the expectation will be cherished that the sensory intensity (vividness) of individual dream images has a relation to the psychic intensity of the elements corresponding to them in the dream-thoughts. In the latter intensity is identical with psychic value; the most intense elements are in fact the most significant, and these are the central point of the dream. We know, however, that it is just these elements which are usually not accepted in the dream content owing to the censor. But still it might be possible that the elements immediately following these and representing them might show a higher degree of intensity, without, however, for that reason constituting the centre of the dream representation. This expectation is also destroyed by a comparison of the dream and the dream material. The intensity of the elements in the one has nothing to do with the intensity of the elements in the other; a complete “transvaluation of all psychic values” takes place between the dream-material and the dream. The very element which is transient and hazy and which is pushed into the background by more vigorous images is often the single and only element in which may be traced any direct derivative from the subject which entirely dominated the dream-thoughts.
The intensity of the elements of the dream shows itself to be determined in a different manner—that is, by two factors which are independent of each other. It is easy to see at the outset that those elements by means of which the wish-fulfilment is expressed are most distinctly represented. But then analysis also teaches us that from the most vivid elements of the dream, the greatest number of trains of thought start, and that the most vivid are at the same time those which are best determined. No change of sense is involved if we express the latter empirical thesis in the following form: the greatest intensity is shown by those elements of the dream for which the most abundant condensation activity was required. We may therefore expect that this condition and the others imposed by the wish-fulfilment can be expressed in a single formula.
The problem which I have just been considering—the causes of greater or less intensity or distinctness of individual elements of the dream—is one which I should like to guard against being confused with another problem, which has to do with the varying distinctness of whole dreams or sections of dreams. In the first case, the opposite of distinctness is blurredness; in the second, confusion. It is of course unmistakable that the intensities rise and fall in the two scales in unison. A portion of the dream which seems clear to us usually contains vivid elements; an obscure dream is composed of less intense elements. But the problem with which we are confronted by the scale, ranging from the apparently clear to the indistinct or confused, is far more complicated than that formed by variations in the vividness of the dream elements; indeed the former will be dropped from the discussion for reasons which will be given later. In isolated cases we are astonished to find that the impression of clearness or indistinctness produced by the dream is altogether without significance for its structure, and that it originates in the dream material as one of its constituents. Thus I remember a dream which seemed particularly well constructed, flawless, and clear, so that I made up my mind, while I was still in the somnolent state, to recognise a new class of dreams—those which had not been subject to the mechanism of condensation and displacement, and which might thus be designated “Fancies while asleep.” A closer examination proved that this rare dream had the same breaches and flaws in its construction as every other; for this reason I abandoned the category of dream fancies. The content of the dream, reduced to its lowest terms, was that I was reciting to a friend a difficult and long-sought theory of bisexuality, and the wish-fulfilling power of the dream was responsible for the fact that this theory (which, by the way, was not stated in the dream) appeared so clear and flawless. What I considered a judgment upon the finished dream was thus a part of the dream content, and the essential one at that. The dream activity had extended its operations, as it were, into waking thought, and had presented to me in the form of a judgment that part of the dream material which it had not succeeded in reproducing with exactness. The exact opposite of this once came to my attention in the case of a female patient who was at first altogether unwilling to tell a dream which was necessary for the analysis, “because it was so obscure and confused,”
and who declared, after repeatedly denying the accuracy of her description, that several persons, herself, her husband, and her father, had occurred in the dream, and that it seemed as though she did not know whether her husband was her father, or who her father was anyway, or something of that sort. Upon considering this dream in connection with the ideas that occurred to the dreamer in the course of the sitting, it was found unquestionably to be concerned with the story of a servant girl who had to confess that she was expecting a child, and who was now confronted with doubts as to “who was really the father.”[DX] The obscurity manifested by the dream, therefore, is again in this case a portion of the material which excited it. A part of this material was represented in the form of the dream. The form of the dream or of dreaming is used with astonishing frequency to represent the concealed content.
Comments on the dream and seemingly harmless observations about it often serve in the most subtle manner to conceal—although they usually betray—a part of what is dreamed. Thus, for example, when the dreamer says: Here the dream is vague, and the analysis gives an infantile reminiscence of listening to a person cleaning himself after defecation. Another example deserves to be recorded in detail. A young man has a very distinct dream which recalls to him phantasies from his infancy which have remained conscious to him: he was in a summer hotel one evening, he mistook the number of his room, and entered a room in which an elderly lady and her two daughters were undressing to go to bed. He continues: “Then there are some gaps in the dream; then something is missing; and at the end there was a man in the room who wished to throw me out with whom I had to wrestle.” He endeavoured in vain to recall the content and purpose of the boyish fancy to which the dream apparently alludes. But we finally become aware that the required content had already been given in his utterances concerning the indistinct part of the dream. The “gaps” were the openings in the genitals of the women who were retiring: “Here something is missing” described the chief character of the female genitals. In those early years he burned with curiosity to see a female genital, and was still inclined to adhere to the infantile sexual theory which attributes a male genital to the woman.
All the dreams which have been dreamed in the same night belong to the same whole when considered with respect to their content; their separation into several portions, their grouping and number, all these details are full of meaning, and may be considered as information coming from the latent dream content. In the interpretation of dreams consisting of many principal sections, or of dreams belonging to the same night, one must not fail to think of the possibility that these different and succeeding dreams bring to expression the same feelings in different material. The one that comes first in time of these homologous dreams is usually the most disfigured and most bashful, while the succeeding is bolder and more distinct.
Even Pharaoh’s dream in the Bible of the ears and the kine, which Joseph interpreted, was of this kind. It is reported by Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, bk. ii. chap, iii.) in greater detail than in the Bible. After relating the first dream, the King said: “When I had seen this vision I awaked out of my sleep, and being in disorder, and considering with myself what this appearance should be, I fell asleep again, and saw another dream much more wonderful than the first, which did still more affright and disturb me.” After listening to the report of the dream, Joseph said, “This dream, O King, although seen under two forms, signifies one and the same issue of things.”
Jung,[99] who, in his Beitrag zur Psychologie des Gerüchtes relates how the veiled erotic dream of a school-girl was understood by her friends without interpretation and continued by them with variations, remarks in connection with reports of this dream, “that the last of a long series of dream pictures contained precisely the same thought whose representation had been attempted in the first picture of the series. The censor pushed the complex out of the way as long as possible, through constantly renewed symbolic concealments, displacements, deviations into the harmless, &c.” (l.c. p. 87). Scherner[58] was well acquainted with the peculiarities of dream disfigurement and describes them at the end of his theory of organic stimulation as a special law, p. 166: “But, finally, the phantasy observes the general law in all nerve stimuli emanating from symbolic dream formations, by representing at the beginning of the dream only the remotest and freest allusions to the stimulating object; but towards the end, when the power of representation becomes exhausted, it presents the stimulus or its concerned organ or its function in unconcealed form, and in the way this dream designates its organic motive and reaches its end.”
A new confirmation of Scherner’s law has been furnished by Otto Rank[106] in his work, A Self Interpretation Dream. This dream of a girl reported by him consisted of two dreams, separated in time of the same night, the second of which ended with pollution. This pollution dream could be interpreted in all its details by disregarding a great many of the ideas contributed by the dreamer, and the profuse relations between the two dream contents indicated that the first dream expressed in bashful language the same thing as the second, so that the latter—the pollution dream—helped to a full explanation of the former. From this example, Rank, with perfect justice, draws conclusions concerning the significance of pollution dreams in general.
But in my experience it is only in rare cases that one is in a position to interpret clearness or confusion in the dream as certainty or doubt in the dream material. Later I shall try to discover the factor in the formation of dreams upon whose influence this scale of qualities essentially depends.
In some dreams, which adhere for a time to a certain situation and scenery, there occur interruptions described in the following words: “But then it seemed as though it were at the same time another place, and there such and such a thing happened.” What thus interrupts the main trend of the dream, which after a while may be continued again, turns out to be a subordinate idea, an interpolated thought in the dream material. A conditional relation in the dream-thoughts is represented by simultaneousness in the dream (wenn—wann; if—when).
What is signified by the sensation of impeded movement, which so often occurs in the dream, and which is so closely allied to anxiety? One wants to move, and is unable to stir from the spot; or one wants to accomplish something, and meets one obstacle after another. The train is about to start, and one cannot reach it; one’s hand is raised to avenge an insult, and its strength fails, &c. We have already encountered this sensation in exhibition dreams, but have as yet made no serious attempt to interpret it. It is convenient, but inadequate, to answer that there is motor paralysis in sleep, which manifests itself by means of the sensation alluded to. We may ask: “Why is it, then, that we do not dream continually of these impeded motions?” And we are justified in supposing that this sensation, constantly appearing in sleep, serves some purpose or other in representation, and is brought about by a need occurring in the dream material for this sort of representation.
Failure to accomplish does not always appear in the dream as a sensation, but also simply as a part of the dream content. I believe that a case of this sort is particularly well suited to enlighten us about the significance of this characteristic of the dream. I shall give an abridged report of a dream in which I seem to be accused of dishonesty. _The scene is a mixture, consisting of a private sanatorium and several other buildings. A lackey appears to call me to an examination. I know in the dream that something has been missed, and that the examination is taking place because I am suspected of having appropriated the lost article. Analysis shows that examination is to be taken in two senses, and also means medical examination. Being conscious of my innocence, and of the fact that I have been called in for consultation, I calmly follow the lackey. We are received at the door by another lackey, who says, pointing to me, “Is that the person whom you have brought? Why, he is a respectable man.” Thereupon, without any lackey, I enter a great hall in which machines are standing, and which reminds me of an Inferno with its hellish modes of punishment. I see a colleague strapped on to one apparatus who has every reason to be concerned about me; but he takes no notice of me. Then I am given to understand that I may now go. Then I cannot find my hat, and cannot go after all._
The wish which the dream fulfils is obviously that I may be acknowledged to be an honest man, and may go; all kinds of subject-matter containing a contradiction of this idea must therefore be present in the dream-thoughts. The fact that I may go is the sign of my absolution; if, then, the dream furnishes at its close an event which prevents me from going, we may readily conclude that the suppressed subject-matter of the contradiction asserts itself in this feature. The circumstance that I cannot find my hat therefore means: “You are not an honest man after all.” Failure to accomplish in the dream is the expression of a contradiction, a “No”; and therefore the earlier assertion, to the effect that the dream is not capable of expressing a negation, must be revised accordingly.[DY]
In other dreams which involve failure to accomplish a thing not only as a situation but also as a sensation, the same contradiction is more emphatically expressed in the form of a volition, to which a counter volition opposes itself. Thus the sensation of impeded motion represents a conflict of will. We shall hear later that this very motor paralysis belongs to the fundamental conditions of the psychic process in dreaming. Now the impulse which is transferred to motor channels is nothing else than the will, and the fact that we are sure to find this impulse impeded in the dream makes the whole process extraordinarily well suited to represent volition and the “No” which opposes itself thereto. From my explanation of anxiety, it is easy to understand why the sensation of thwarted will is so closely allied to anxiety, and why it is so often connected with it in the dream. Anxiety is a libidinous impulse which emanates from the unconscious, and is inhibited by the foreconscious. Therefore, when a sensation of inhibition in the dream is accompanied by anxiety, there must also be present a volition which has at one time been capable of arousing a libido; there must be a sexual impulse.
What significance and what psychic force is to be ascribed to such manifestations of judgment as “For that is only a dream,” which frequently comes to the surface in dreams, I shall discuss in another place (vide infra, p. 390). For the present I shall merely say that they serve to depreciate the value of the thing dreamed. An interesting problem allied to this, namely, the meaning of the fact that sometimes a certain content is designated in the dream itself as “dreamed”—the riddle of the “dream within the dream”—has been solved in a similar sense by W. Stekel[114] through the analysis of some convincing examples. The part of the dream “dreamed” is again to be depreciated in value and robbed of its reality; that which the dreamer continues to dream after awakening from the dream within the dream, is what the dream-wish desires to put in place of the extinguished reality. It may therefore be assumed that the part “dreamed” contains the representation of the reality and the real reminiscence, while, on the other hand, the continued dream contains the representation of what the dreamer wished. The inclusion of a certain content in a “dream within the dream” is therefore equivalent to the wish that what has just been designated as a dream should not have occurred. The dream-work utilises the dream itself as a form of deflection.
(d) Regard for Presentability
So far we have been attempting to ascertain how the dream represents the relations among the dream-thoughts, but we have several times extended our consideration to the further question of what alterations the dream material undergoes for the purposes of dream formation. We now know that the dream material, after being stripped of the greater parts of its relations, is subjected to compression, while at the same time displacements of intensity among its elements force a psychic revaluation of this material. The displacements which we have considered were shown to be substitutions of one idea for another, the substitute being in some way connected with the original by associations, and the displacements were put to the service of condensation by virtue of the fact that in this manner a common mean between two elements took the place of these two elements in the formation of the dream. We have not yet mentioned any other kind of displacement. But we learn from the analyses that another exists, and that it manifests itself in a change of the verbal expression employed for the thought in question. In both cases we have displacement following a chain of associations, but the same process takes place in different psychic spheres, and the result of this displacement in the one case is that one element is substituted for another, while in the other case an element exchanges its verbal expression for another.
This second kind of displacement occurring in dream formation not only possesses great theoretical interest, but is also peculiarly well fitted to explain the semblance of phantastic absurdity in which the dream disguises itself. Displacement usually occurs in such a way that a colourless and abstract expression in the dream-thought is exchanged for one that is visual and concrete. The advantage, and consequently the purpose, of this substitution is obvious. Whatever is visual is capable of representation in the dream, and can be wrought into situations where the abstract expression would confront dream representation with difficulties similar to those which would arise if a political editorial were to be represented in an illustrated journal. But not only the possibility of representation, but also the interests of condensation and of the censor, can be furthered by this change. If the abstractly expressed and unwieldy dream-thought is recast into figurative language, this new expression and the rest of the dream material are more easily furnished with those identities and cross references, which are essential to the dream activity and which it creates whenever they are not at hand, for the reason that in every language concrete terms, owing to their evolution, are more abundant in associations than conceptual ones. It may be imagined that in dream formation a good part of the intermediary activity, which tries to reduce the separate dream-thoughts to the tersest and simplest possible expression in the dream, takes place in the manner above described—that is to say, in providing suitable paraphrase for the individual thoughts. One thought whose expression has already been determined on other grounds will thus exert a separating and selective influence upon the means available for expressing the other, and perhaps it will do this constantly throughout, somewhat after the manner of the poet. If a poem in rhyme is to be composed, the second rhyming line is bound by two conditions; it must express the proper meaning, and it must express it in such a way as to secure the rhyme. The best poems are probably those in which the poet’s effort to find a rhyme is unconscious, and in which both thoughts have from the beginning exercised a mutual influence in the selection of their verbal expressions, which can then be made to rhyme by a means of slight remodification.
In some cases change of expression serves the purposes of dream condensation more directly, in making possible the invention of a verbal construction which is ambiguous and therefore suited to the expression of more than one dream-thought. The whole range of word-play is thus put at the service of the dream activity. The part played by words in the formation of dreams ought not to surprise us. A word being a point of junction for a number of conceptions, it possesses, so to speak, a predestined ambiguity, and neuroses (obsessions, phobias) take advantage of the conveniences which words offer for the purposes of condensation and disguise quite as readily as the dream.[DZ] That dream conception also profits by this displacement of expression is easily demonstrated. It is naturally confusing if an ambiguous word is put in the place of two ambiguous ones; and the employment of a figurative expression instead of the sober everyday one thwarts our understanding, especially since the dream never tells us whether the elements which it shows are to be interpreted literally or figuratively, or whether they refer to the dream material directly or only through the agency of interpolated forms of speech.[EA] Several examples of representations in the dream which are held together only by ambiguity have already been cited (“her mouth opens without difficulty,” in the dream of Irma’s injection; “I cannot go yet,” in the last dream reported, p. 312), &c. I shall now cite a dream in the analysis of which the figurative expression of abstract thought plays a greater part. The difference between such dream interpretation and interpretation by symbolism may again be sharply distinguished; in the symbolic interpretation of dreams the key to the symbolism is arbitrarily chosen by the interpreter, while in our own cases of verbal disguise all these keys are universally known and are taken from established customs of speech. If the correct notion occurs at the right opportunity, it is possible to solve dreams of this sort completely or in part, independently of any statements made by the dreamer.
A lady, a friend of mine, dreams: _She is in the opera-house. It is a Wagnerian performance which has lasted till 7.45 in the morning. In the parquette and parterre there are tables, around which people dine and drink. Her cousin and his young wife, who have just returned from their honeymoon, sit next to her at one of these tables, and next to them sits one of the aristocracy. Concerning the latter the idea is that the young wife has brought him back with her from the wedding journey. It is quite above board, just as if she were bringing back a hat from her trip. In the midst of the parquette there is a high tower, on the top of which is a platform surrounded by an iron grating. There, high up, stands the conductor with the features of Hans Richter; he is continually running around behind the grating, perspiring awfully, and from this position conducting the orchestra, which is arranged around the base of the tower. She herself sits in a box with a lady friend (known to me). Her youngest sister tries to hand her from the parquette a big piece of coal with the idea that she did not know that it would last so long and that she must by this time be terribly cold. (It was a little as if the boxes had to be heated during the long performance.)_
The dream is senseless enough, though the situation is well developed too—the tower in the midst of the parquette from which the conductor leads the orchestra; but, above all, the coal which her sister hands her! I purposely asked for no analysis of this dream. With the knowledge I have of the personal relations of the dreamer, I was able to interpret parts of it independently. I knew that she had entertained warm feelings for a musician whose career had been prematurely blasted by insanity. I therefore decided to take the tower in the parquette verbally. It was apparent, then, that the man whom she wished to see in the place of Hans Richter towered above all the other members of the orchestra. This tower must, therefore, be designated as a composite picture formed by an apposition; with its pedestal it represents the greatness of the man, but with its gratings on top, behind which he runs around like a prisoner or an animal in a cage (an allusion to the name of the unfortunate man), it represents his later fate. “Lunatic-tower” is perhaps the word in which both thoughts might have met.
Now that we have discovered the dream’s method of representation, we may try with the same key to open the second apparent absurdity,—that of the coal which her sister hands her. “Coal” must mean “secret love.”
“No coal, no fire so hotly glows
As the secret love which no one knows.”
She and her friend remain seated while her younger sister, who still has opportunities to marry, hands her up the coal “because she did not know it would last so long.” What would last so long is not told in the dream. In relating it we would supply “the performance”; but in the dream we must take the sentence as it is, declare it ambiguous, and add “until she marries.” The interpretation “secret love” is then confirmed by the mention of the cousin who sits with his wife in the parquette, and by the open love-affair attributed to the latter. The contrasts between secret and open love, between her fire and the coldness of the young wife, dominate the dream. Moreover, here again there is a person “in high position” as a middle term between the aristocrat and the musician entitled to high hopes.
By means of the above discussion we have at last brought to light a third factor, whose part in the transformation of the dream thoughts into the dream content is not to be considered trivial; it is the regard for presentability (German: Darstellbarkeit) in the peculiar psychic material which the dream makes use of,—that is fitness for representation, for the most part by means of visual images. Among the various subordinate ideas associated with the essential dream thoughts, that one will be preferred which permits of a visual representation, and the dream-activity does not hesitate promptly to recast the inflexible thought into another verbal form, even if it is the more unusual one, as long as this form makes dramatisation possible, and thus puts an end to the psychological distress caused by cramped thinking. This pouring of the thought content into another mould may at the same time be put at the service of the condensation work, and may establish relations with another thought which would otherwise not be present. This other thought itself may perhaps have previously changed its original expression for the purpose of meeting these relations half-way.
In view of the part played by puns, quotations, songs, and proverbs in the intellectual life of educated persons, it would be entirely in accordance with our expectation to find disguises of this sort used with extraordinary frequency. For a few kinds of material a universally applicable dream symbolism has been established on a basis of generally known allusions and equivalents. A good part of this symbolism, moreover, is possessed by the dream in common with the psychoneuroses, and with legends and popular customs.
Indeed, if we look more closely, we must recognise that in employing this method of substitution the dream is generally doing nothing original. For the attainment of its purpose, which in this case is the possibility of dramatisation without interference from the censor, it simply follows the paths which it finds already marked out in unconscious thought, and gives preference to those transformations of the suppressed material which may become conscious also in the form of wit and allusion, and with which all the fancies of neurotics are filled. Here all at once we come to understand Scherner’s method of dream interpretation, the essential truth of which I have defended elsewhere. The occupation of one’s fancy with one’s own body is by no means peculiar to, or characteristic of the dream alone. My analyses have shown me that this is a regular occurrence in the unconscious thought of neurotics, and goes back to sexual curiosity, the object of which for the adolescent youth or maiden is found in the genitals of the opposite sex, or even of the same sex. But, as Scherner and Volkelt very appropriately declare, the house is not the only group of ideas which is used for the symbolisation of the body—either in the dream or in the unconscious fancies of the neurosis. I know some patients, to be sure, who have steadily adhered to an architectural symbolism for the body and the genitals (sexual interest certainly extends far beyond the region of the external genital organs), to whom posts and pillars signify legs (as in the “Song of Songs”), to whom every gate suggests a bodily opening (“hole”), and every water-main a urinary apparatus, and the like. But the group of associations belonging to plant life and to the kitchen is just as eagerly chosen to conceal sexual images; in the first case the usage of speech, the result of phantastic comparisons dating from the most ancient times, has made abundant preparation (the “vineyard” of the Lord, the “seeds,” the “garden” of the girl in the “Song of Songs”). The ugliest as well as the most intimate details of sexual life may be dreamed about in apparently harmless allusions to culinary operations, and the symptoms of hysteria become practically unintelligible if we forget that sexual symbolism can conceal itself behind the most commonplace and most inconspicuous matters, as its best hiding-place. The fact that some neurotic children cannot look at blood and raw meat, that they vomit at the sight of eggs and noodles, and that the dread of snakes, which is natural to mankind, is monstrously exaggerated in neurotics, all of this has a definite sexual meaning.
Wherever the neurosis employs a disguise of this sort, it treads the paths once trodden by the whole of humanity in the early ages of civilisation—paths of whose existence customs of speech, superstitions, and morals still give testimony to this day.
I here insert the promised flower dream of a lady patient, in which I have italicised everything which is to be sexually interpreted. This beautiful dream seemed to lose its entire charm for the dreamer after it had been interpreted.
(a) Preliminary dream: _She goes to the two maids in the kitchen and scolds them for taking so long to prepare “a little bite of food.” She also sees a great many coarse dishes standing in the kitchen inverted so that the water may drip off them, and heaped up in a pile. Later addition: The two maids go to fetch water, and must, as it were, step into a river which reaches up into the house or into the yard._[EB]
(b) Main dream[EC]: _She is descending from a high place[ED] over balustrades that are curiously fashioned or fences which are united into big squares and consist of a conglomeration of little squares.[EE] It is really not intended for climbing upon; she is worried about finding a place for her foot, and she is glad her dress doesn’t get caught anywhere, and that she remains so respectable while she is going.[EF] She is also carrying a large bough in her hand,[EG] really a bough of a tree, which is thickly studded with red blossoms; it has many branches, and spreads out.[EH] With this is connected the idea of cherry blossoms, but they look like full-bloom camelias, which of course do not grow on trees. While she is descending, she first has one, then suddenly two, and later again only one.[EI] When she arrives at the bottom of the lower blossoms they have already fallen off to a considerable extent. Now that she is at the bottom, she sees a porter who is combing—as she would like to express it—just such a tree—that is, who is plucking thick bunches of hair from it, which hang from it like moss. Other workmen have chopped off such boughs in a garden, and have thrown them upon the street, where they lie about, so that many people take some of them. But she asks whether that is right, whether anybody may take one.[EJ] In the garden there stands a young man (having a personality with which she is acquainted, not a member of her family) up to whom she goes in order to ask him how it is possible to transplant such boughs into her own garden.[EK] He embraces her, whereat she resists and asks him what he means, whether it is permissible to embrace her in such a manner. He says that there is no wrong in it, that it is permitted.[EL] He then declares himself willing to go with her into the other garden, in order to show her the transplanting, and he says something to her which she does not correctly understand: “Besides this three metres—(later on she says: square metres) or three fathoms of ground are lacking.” It seems as though the man were trying to ask her something in return for his affability, as though he had the intention of indemnifying himself in her garden, as though he wanted to evade some law or other, to derive some advantage from it without causing her an injury. She does not know whether or not he really shows her anything._[EM]
I must mention still another series of associations which often serves the purpose of concealing sexual meaning both in dreams and in the neurosis,—I refer to the change of residence series. To change one’s residence is readily replaced by “to remove,” an ambiguous expression which may have reference to clothing. If the dream also contains a “lift” (elevator), one may think of the verb “to lift,” hence of lifting up the clothing.
I have naturally an abundance of such material, but a report of it would carry us too far into the discussion of neurotic conditions. Everything leads to the same conclusion, that no special symbolising activity of the mind in the formation of dreams need be assumed; that, on the contrary, the dream makes use of such symbolisations as are to be found ready-made in unconscious thought, because these better satisfy the requirements of dream formation, on account of their dramatic fitness, and particularly on account of their exemption from the censor.
(e) Examples—Arithmetic Speeches in the Dream
Before I proceed to assign to its proper place the fourth of the factors which control the formation of the dream, I shall cite several examples from my collection of dreams for the purpose partly of illustrating the co-operation of the three factors with which we are acquainted, and partly of supplying proof for assertions which have been made without demonstration or of drawing irrefutable inferences from them. For it has been very difficult for me in the foregoing account of the dream activity to demonstrate my conclusions by means of examples. Examples for the individual thesis are convincing only when considered in connection with a dream interpretation; when they are torn from their context they lose their significance, and, furthermore, a dream interpretation, though not at all profound, soon becomes so extensive that it obscures the thread of the discussion which it is intended to illustrate. This technical motive may excuse me for now mixing together all sorts of things which have nothing in common but their relation to the text of the foregoing chapter.
We shall first consider a few examples of very peculiar or unusual methods of representation in the dream. The dream of a lady is as follows: A servant girl is standing on a ladder as though to clean the windows, and has with her a chimpanzee and a gorilla cat (later corrected—angora cat). She throws the animals at the dreamer; the chimpanzee cuddles up to her, and this is disgusting to her. This dream has accomplished its purpose by the simplest possible means, namely by taking a mere mode of speech literally and representing it according to the meaning of its words. “Ape,” like the names of animals in general, is an epithet of opprobrium, and the situation of the dream means nothing but “to hurl invectives.” This same collection will soon furnish us with further examples of the use of this simple artifice.
Another dream proceeds in a very similar manner: _A woman with a child that has a conspicuously deformed cranium; the dreamer has heard that the child got into this condition owing to its position in its mother’s womb. The doctor says that the cranium might be given a better shape by means of compression, but that would harm the brain. She thinks that because it is a boy it won’t suffer so much from deformity. This dream contains a plastic representation of the concept: “Childish impressions_,” which the dreamer has heard of in the course of explanations concerning the treatment.
In the following example, the dream activity enters upon a different path. The dream contains a recollection of an excursion to the Hilmteich, near Graz: There is a terrible storm outside; a miserable hotel—the water is dripping from the walls, and the beds are damp. (The latter part of the content is less directly expressed than I give it.) The dream signifies “superfluous.” The abstract idea occurring in the dream thoughts is first made equivocal by a certain straining of language; it has, perhaps, been replaced by “overflowing” or by “fluid” and “super-fluid (-fluous)” and has then been given representation by an accumulation of like impressions. Water within, water without, water in the beds in the form of dampness—everything fluid and “super” fluid. That, for the purposes of the dream representation, the spelling is much less regarded than the sound of words ought not surprise us when we remember that rhyme exercises similar privileges.
The fact that language has at its disposal a great number of words which were originally intended in a picturesque and concrete sense but are at present used in a faded abstract sense has in other cases made it very easy for the dream to represent its thoughts. The dream need only restore to these words their full significance, or follow the evolution of their meaning a little way back. For example, a man dreams that his friend, who is struggling to get out of a very tight place, calls upon him to help him. The analysis shows that the tight place is a hole, and that the dream uses symbolically his very words to his friend, “Be careful, or you’ll get yourself into a hole.”[EN] Another dreamer climbs upon a mountain from which he sees a very extraordinary broad view. He identifies himself with his brother who is editing a “review” which deals with relations to the Farthest East.
It would be a separate undertaking to collect such methods of representation and to arrange them according to the principles upon which they are based. Some of the representations are quite witty. They give the impression that they would have never been divined if the dreamer himself had not reported them.
1. A man dreams that he is asked for a name, which, however, he cannot recall. He himself explains that this means: It does not occur to me in the dream.
2. A female patient relates a dream in which all the persons concerned were especially big. “That means,” she adds, “that it must deal with an episode of my early childhood, for at that time all grown up people naturally seemed to me immensely big.”
The transference into childhood is also expressed differently in other dreams by translating time into space. One sees the persons and scenes in question as if at a great distance, at the end of a long road, or as if looked at through the wrong end of the opera-glass.
3. A man, who in waking life shows an inclination to abstract and indefinite expressions, but who is otherwise endowed with wit enough, dreams in a certain connection that he is at a railroad station while a train is coming in. But then the station platform approaches the train, which stands still; hence an absurd inversion of the real state of affairs. This detail is again nothing but an index to remind one that something else in the dream should be turned about. The analysis of the same dream brings back the recollection of a picture-book in which men are represented standing on their heads and walking on their hands.
4. The same dreamer on another occasion relates a short dream which almost recalls the technique of a rebus. His uncle gives him a kiss in an automobile. He immediately adds the interpretation, which I should never have found: it means Autoerotism. This might have been made as a joke in the waking state.
The dream work often succeeds in representing very awkward material, such as proper names, by means of the forced utilisation of very far-fetched references. In one of my dreams the elder Bruecke has given me a task. I compound a preparation, and skim something from it which looks like crumpled tinfoil. (More of this later on.) The notion corresponding to this, which was not easy to find, is “stanniol,” and now I know that I have in mind the name of the author Stannius, which was borne by a treatise on the nervous system of fishes, which I regarded with awe in my youthful years. The first scientific task which my teacher gave me was actually concerned with the nervous system of a fish—the Ammocœtes. Obviously the latter name could never have been used in a picture puzzle.
I shall not omit here to insert a dream having a curious content, which is also remarkable as a child’s dream, and which is very easily explained by the analysis. A lady relates: “I can remember that when I was a child I repeatedly dreamed, that the dear Lord had a pointed paper hat on his head. They used to make me wear such a hat at table very often, so that I might not be able to look at the plates of the other children and see how much they had received of a particular dish. Since I have learned that God is omniscient, the dream signifies that I know everything in spite of the hat which I am made to wear.”
Wherein the dream work consists, and how it manages its material, the dream thoughts, can be shown in a very instructive manner from the numbers and calculations which occur in dreams. Moreover, numbers in dreams are regarded as of especial significance by superstition. I shall therefore give a few more examples of this kind from my own collection.
1. The following is taken from the dream of a lady shortly before the close of her treatment:
She wants to pay for something or other; her daughter takes 3 florins and 65 kreuzer from her pocket-book; but the mother says: “What are you doing? It only costs 21 kreuzer.” This bit of dream was immediately intelligible to me without further explanation from my knowledge of the dreamer’s circumstances. The lady was a foreigner who had provided for her daughter in an educational institution in Vienna, and who could continue my treatment as long as her daughter stayed in the city. In three weeks the daughter’s school year was to end, and with that the treatment also stopped. On the day before the dream the principal of the institute had urged her to make up her mind to allow her child to remain with her for another year. She had then obviously worked out this suggestion to the conclusion that in this case she would be able to continue the treatment for one year more. Now, this is what the dream refers to, for a year is equal to 365 days; the three weeks that remain before the close of the school year and of the treatment are equivalent to 21 days (though the hours of treatment are not as many as that). The numerals, which in the dream thoughts referred to time, are given money values in the dream, not without also giving expression to a deeper meaning for “time is money.” 365 kreuzer, to be sure, are 3 florins and 65 kreuzer. The smallness of the sums which appear in the dream is a self-evident wish-fulfilment; the wish has reduced the cost of both the treatment and the year’s instruction at the institution.
II. The numerals in another dream involve more complicated relations. A young lady, who, however, has already been married a number of years, learns that an acquaintance of hers of about her own age, Elsie L., has just become engaged. Thereupon she dreams: _She is sitting in the theatre with her husband, and one side of the orchestra is quite unoccupied. Her husband tells her that Elsie L. and her husband had also wanted to go, but that they had been able to get nothing but poor seats, three for 1 florin and 50 kreuzer, and of course they could not take those. She thinks that they didn’t lose much either._
Where do the 1 florin and 50 kreuzer come from? From an occurrence of the previous day which is really indifferent. The dreamer’s sister-in-law had received 150 florins as a present from her husband, and had quickly got rid of them by buying some jewelry. Let us note that 150 florins is 100 times more than 1 florin and 50 kreuzer. Whence the 3 which stands before the theatre seats? There is only one association for this, namely, that the bride is that many months—three—younger than herself. Information concerning the significance of the feature that one side of the orchestra remains empty leads to the solution of the dream. This feature is an undisguised allusion to a little occurrence which has given her husband good cause for teasing her. She had decided to go to the theatre during the week, and had been careful to get tickets a few days before, for which she had to pay the pre-emption charge. When they got to the theatre they found that one side of the house was almost empty; she certainly did not need to be in such a hurry.
I shall now substitute the dream thoughts for the dream: “It surely was nonsense to marry so early; there was no need for my being in such a hurry. From the case of Elsie L., I see that I should have got a husband just the same—and one who is a hundred times better (husband, sweetheart, treasure)—if I had only waited (antithesis to the haste of her sister-in-law). I could have bought three such men for the money (the dowry!). Our attention is drawn to the fact that the numerals in this dream have changed their meanings and relations to a much greater extent than in the one previously considered. The transforming and disfiguring activity of the dream has in this case been greater, a fact which we interpret as meaning that these dream thoughts had to overcome a particularly great amount of inner psychic resistance up to the point of their representation. We must also not overlook the circumstance that the dream contains an absurd element, namely, that two persons take three seats. We digress to the interpretation of the absurdity of dreams when we remark that this absurd detail of the dream content is intended to represent the most strongly emphasized detail of the dream thoughts: “It was nonsense to marry so early.” The figure 3 belonging to a quite subordinate relation of the two compared persons (three months’ difference in age) has thus been skilfully used to produce the nonsense demanded by the dream. The reduction of the actual 150 florins to 1 florin and 50 kreuzer corresponds to her disdain of her husband in the suppressed thoughts of the dreamer.”
III. Another example displays the arithmetical powers of the dream, which have brought it into such disrepute. A man dreams: He is sitting at B——’s (a family of his earlier acquaintance) and says, “It was nonsense for you not to give me Amy in marriage.” Thereupon he asks the girl, “How old are you?” Answer: “I was born in 1882.” “Ah, then you are 28 years old.”
Since the dream occurs in the year 1898, this is obviously poor arithmetic, and the inability of the dreamer to calculate may be compared to that of the paralytic, if there is no other way of explaining it. My patient was one of those persons who are always thinking about every woman they see. The person who followed him in my office, regularly for several months, was a young lady, whom he used to meet, about whom he used to ask frequently, and to whom he was very anxious to be polite. This was the lady whose age he estimated at 28 years. So much for explaining the result of the apparent calculation. But 1882 was the year in which he had married. He had been unable to refrain from engaging in conversation with the two females whom he met at my house—two girls, by no means youthful, who alternately opened the door for him, and as he did not find them very responsive, he had given himself the explanation that they probably considered him an elderly “settled” gentleman.
IV. For another number dream with its interpretation,—a dream distinguished by its obvious determination, or rather over-determination, I am indebted to B. Dattner:
My host, a policeman in the municipal service, dreamed that he was standing at his post in the street, which was a wish-realisation. The inspector then came over to him, having on his gorget the numbers 22 and 62 or 26—at all events there were many two’s on it. Division of the number 2262 in the reproduction of the dream at once points to the fact that the components have separate meanings. It occurs to him that the day before, while on duty, they were discussing the duration of their time of service. The occasion for this was furnished by an inspector who had been pensioned at 62 years. The dreamer had only completed 22 years of service, and still needed 2 years and 2 months to make him eligible for a 90 per cent. pension. The dream first shows him the fulfilment of a long wished for wish, the rank of inspector. The superior with 2262 on his collar is himself; he takes care to do his duty on the street, which is another preferred wish; he has served his 2 years and 2 months, and can now be retired from the service with full pension, like the 62–year-old inspector.
If we keep in mind these examples and similar ones (to follow), we may say: Dream activity does not calculate at all, whether correctly or incorrectly; it joins together in the form of a calculation numerals which occur in the dream thoughts, and which may serve as allusions to material which is incapable of being represented. It thus utilises numerals as material for the expression of its purposes in the same manner as it does names and speeches known as word presentations.
For the dream activity cannot compose a new speech. No matter how many speeches and answers may occur in dreams, which may be sensible or absurd in themselves, analysis always shows in such cases that the dream has only taken from the dream thoughts fragments of speeches which have been delivered or heard, and dealt with them in a most arbitrary manner. It has not only torn them from their context and mutilated them, taken up one piece and rejected another, but it has also joined them together in a new way, so that the speech which seems coherent in the dream falls into three or four sections in the course of analysis. In this new utilisation of the words, the dream has often put aside the meaning which they had in the dream thoughts, and has derived an entirely new meaning from them.[EO] Upon closer inspection the more distinct and compact constituents of the dream speech may be distinguished from others which serve as connectives and have probably been supplied, just as we supply omitted letters and syllables in reading. The dream speech thus has the structure of breccia stones, in which larger pieces of different material are held together by a solidified cohesive mass.
In a very strict sense this description is correct, to be sure, only for those speeches in the dream which have something of the sensational character of a speech, and which are described as “speeches.” The others which have not, as it were, been felt as though heard or spoken (which have no accompanying acoustic or motor emphasis in the dream) are simply thoughts such as occur in our waking thought activity, and are transferred without change into many dreams. Our reading, also, seems to furnish an abundant and not easily traceable source of material for speeches, this material being of an indifferent nature. Everything, however, which appears conspicuously in the dream as a speech can be referred to real speeches which have been made or heard by the dreamer himself.
We have already found examples for the explanation of such dream speeches in the analysis of dreams cited for other purposes. Here is one example in place of many, all of which lead to the same conclusion.
A large courtyard in which corpses are cremated. The dreamer says: “I’m going away from here, I can’t look at this.” (Not a distinct speech.) Then he meets two butcher boys and asks: “Well, did it taste good?” One of them answers: “No, it wasn’t good.” As though it had been human flesh.
The harmless occasion for this dream is as follows: After taking supper with his wife, the dreamer pays a visit to his worthy but by no means appetising neighbour. The hospitable old lady is just at her evening meal, and urges him (instead of this word a composite sexually-significant word is jocosely used among men) to taste of it. He declines, saying that he has no appetite. “Go on, you can stand some more,” or something of the kind. The dreamer is thus forced to taste and praise what is offered. “But that’s good!” After he is alone again with his wife, he scolds about the neighbour’s importunity and about the quality of the food he has tasted. “I can’t stand the sight of it,” a phrase not appearing even in the dream as an actual speech, is a thought which has reference to the physical charms of the lady who invites him, and which would be translated as meaning that he does not want to look at her.
The analysis of another dream which I cite at this point for the sake of the very distinct speech that forms its nucleus, but which I shall explain only when we come to consider emotions in the dream—will be more instructive. I dream very distinctly: _I have gone to Bruecke’s laboratory at night, and upon hearing a soft knocking at the door, I open it to (the deceased) Professor Fleischl, who enters in the company of several strangers, and after saying a few words sits down at his table. Then follows a second dream: My friend Fl. has come to Vienna in July without attracting much attention; I meet him on the street while he is in conversation with my (deceased) friend P., and I go somewhere or other with these two, and they sit down opposite each other as though at a little table, while I sit at the narrow end of the table facing them. Fl. tells about his sister and says: “In three-quarters of an hour she was dead,” and then something like: “That is the threshold.” As P. does not understand him, Fl. turns to me, and asks me how much I have told of his affairs. Whereupon, seized by strange emotions, I want to tell Fl. that P. (can’t possibly know anything because he) is not alive. But, noticing the mistake myself, I say: “Non vixit.” Then I look at P. searchingly, and under my gaze he becomes pale and blurred, his eyes a morbid blue—and at last he dissolves. I rejoice greatly at this; I now understand that Ernest Fleischl, too, was only an apparition, a revenant, and I find that it is quite possible for such a person to exist only as long as one wants him to, and that he can be made to disappear by the wish of another person._
This beautiful dream unites so many of the characteristics of the dream content which are problematic—the criticism made in the dream itself in that I myself notice my mistake in having said “Non vixit” instead of “Non vivit”; the unconstrained intercourse with dead persons, whom the dream itself declares to be dead; the absurdity of the inference and the intense satisfaction which the inference gives me—that “by my life” I should like to give a complete solution of these problems. But in reality I am incapable of doing this—namely, the thing I do in the dream—of sacrificing such dear persons to my ambition. With every revelation of the true meaning of the dream, with which I am well acquainted, I should have been put to shame. Hence I am content with selecting a few of the elements of the dream, for interpretation, some here, and others later on another page.
The scene in which I annihilate P. by a glance forms the centre of the dream. His eyes become strange and weirdly blue, and then he dissolves. This scene is an unmistakable copy of one really experienced. I was a demonstrator at the physiological institute, and began my service in the early hours, and Bruecke learned that I had been late several times in getting to the school laboratory. So one morning he came promptly for the opening of the class and waited for me. What he said to me was brief and to the point; but the words did not matter at all. What overwhelmed me was the terrible blue eyes through which he looked at me and before which I melted away—as P. does in the dream, for P. has changed rôles with him much to my relief. Anyone who remembers the eyes of the great master, which were wonderfully beautiful until old age, and who has ever seen him in anger, can easily imagine the emotions of the young transgressor on that occasion.
But for a long time I was unable to account for the “Non Vixit,” with which I execute sentence in the dream, until I remembered that these two words possessed such great distinctness in the dream, not because they were heard or spoken, but because they were seen. Then I knew at once where they came from. On the pedestal of the statue of Emperor Joseph in the Hofburg at Vienna, may be read the following beautiful words:
Saluti patriae _vixit
non_ diu sed totus.
I had culled from this inscription something which suited the one inimical train of thought in the dream thoughts and which now intended to mean: “That fellow has nothing to say, he is not living at all.” And I now recalled that the dream was dreamed a few days after the unveiling of the memorial to Fleischl in the arcades of the university, upon which occasion I had again seen Bruecke’s statue and must have thought with regret (in the unconscious) how my highly gifted friend P. with his great devotion to science had forfeited his just claim to a statue in these halls by his premature death. So I set up this memorial to him in the dream; the first name of my friend P. is Joseph.[EP]
According to the rules of dream interpretation, I should still not be justified in replacing non vivit, which I need, by non vixit, which is placed at my disposal by the recollection of the Joseph monument. Something now calls my attention to the fact that in the dream scene, two trains of thought concerning my friend P. meet, one hostile, the other friendly—of which the former is superficial, the latter veiled, and both are given representation in the same words: non vixit. Because my friend P. has deserved well of science, I erect a statue to him; but because he has been guilty of an evil wish (which is expressed at the end of the dream) I destroy him. I have here constructed a sentence of peculiar resonance, and I must have been influenced by some model. But where can I find similar antithesis, such a parallel between two opposite attitudes towards the same person, both claiming to be entirely valid, and yet both trying not to encroach upon each other? Such a parallel is to be found in a single place, where, however, a deep impression is made upon the reader—in Brutus’ speech of justification in Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar: “As Cæsar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him.” Is not this which I have discovered, the same sentence structure and thought contrast as in the dream thought? I thus play Brutus in the dream. If I could only find in the dream thoughts, one further trace of confirmation for this astonishing collateral connection! I think the following might be such: My friend comes to Vienna in July. This detail finds no support whatever in reality. To my knowledge my friend has never been in Vienna during the month of July. But the month of July is named after Julius Cæsar, and might therefore very well furnish the required allusion to the intermediary thought that I am playing the part of Brutus.[EQ]
Strangely enough I once actually played the part of Brutus. I presented the scene between Brutus and Cæsar from Schiller’s poems to an audience of children when I was a boy of fourteen years. I did this with my nephew, who was a year older than I, and who had come to us from England—also a revenant—for in him I recognised the playmate of my first childish years. Until the end of my third year we had been inseparable, had loved each other and scuffled with each other, and, as I have already intimated, this childish relation has constantly determined my later feelings in my intercourse with persons of my own age. My nephew John has since found many incarnations, which have revivified first one aspect, then another, of this character which is so ineradicably fixed in my unconscious memory. Occasionally he must have treated me very badly and I must have shown courage before my tyrant, for in later years I have often been told of the short speech with which I vindicated myself when my father—his grandfather—called me to account: “I hit him because he hit me.” This childish scene must be the one which causes non vivit to branch off into non vixit, for in the language of later childhood striking is called wichsen (German, wichsen—to smear with shoe-polish, to tan, i.e., to flog); the dream activity does not hesitate to take advantage of such connections. My hostility towards my friend P., which has so little foundation in reality—he was far superior to me, and might therefore have been a new edition of the playmate of my childhood—can certainly be traced to my complicated relations with John during our infancy. I shall, however, return to this dream later.
(f) Absurd Dreams—Intellectual Performances in the Dream
In our interpretation of dreams thus far we have come upon the element of absurdity in the dream-content so often that we must no longer postpone an investigation of its cause and significance. We remember, of course, that the absurdity of dreams has furnished the opponents of dream investigation with their chief argument for considering the dream nothing but the meaningless product of a reduced and fragmentary activity of the mind.
I begin with specimens in which the absurdity of the dream-content is only apparent and immediately disappears when the dream is more thoroughly examined. There are a few dreams which—accidentally one is at first inclined to think—are concerned with the dead father of the dreamer.
I. Here is the dream of a patient who had lost his father six years before:
A terrible accident has occurred to his father. He was riding in the night train when a derailment took place, the seats came together, and his head was crushed from side to side. The dreamer sees him lying on the bed with a wound over his left eyebrow, which runs off vertically. The dreamer is surprised that his father has had a misfortune (since he is dead already, as the dreamer adds in telling his dream). His father’s eyes are so clear.
According to the standards prevailing in dream criticism, this dream-content would have to be explained in the following manner: At first, when the dreamer is picturing his father’s misfortune, he has forgotten that his father has already been in his grave for years; in the further course of the dream this memory comes to life, and causes him to be surprised at his own dream even while he is still dreaming. Analysis, however, teaches us that it is entirely useless to attempt such explanations. The dreamer had given an artist an order for a bust of his father, which he had inspected two days before the dream. This is the thing which seems to him to have met with an accident. The sculptor has never seen the father, and is working from photographs which have been given him. On the very day before the dream the pious son had sent an old servant of the family to the studio in order to see whether he would pass the same judgment upon the marble head, namely, that it had turned out too narrow from side to side, from temple to temple. Now follows the mass of recollections which has contributed to the formation of this dream. The dreamer’s father had a habit, whenever he was harassed by business cares or family difficulties, of pressing his temples with both hands, as though he were trying to compress his head, which seemed to grow too large for him. When our dreamer was four years old he was present when the accidental discharge of a pistol blackened his father’s eyes (his eyes are so clear). While alive his father had had a deep wrinkle at the place where the dream shows the injury, whenever he was thoughtful or sad. The fact that in the dream this wrinkle is replaced by a wound points to the second occasion of the dream. The dreamer had taken a photograph of his little daughter; the plate had fallen from his hand, and when picked up showed a crack that ran like a vertical furrow across the forehead and reached as far as the orbital curve. He could not then get the better of his superstitious forebodings, for, on the day before his mother’s death, a photographic plate with her likeness had cracked as he was handling it.
Thus the absurdity of the dream is only the result of an inaccuracy of verbal expression, which does not take the trouble to distinguish the bust and the photograph from the original. We are all accustomed to say of a picture, “Don’t you think father is good?” Of course the appearance of absurdity in this dream might easily have been avoided. If it were permissible to pass judgment after a single experience, one might be tempted to say that this semblance of absurdity is admitted or desired.
II. Here is another very similar example from my own dreams (I lost my father in the year 1896):
After his death my father has been politically active among the Magyars, and has united them into a political body; to accompany which I see a little indistinct picture: _a crowd of people as in the Reichstag; a person who is standing on one or two benches, others round about him. I remember that he looked very like Garibaldi on his death-bed, and I am glad that this promise has really come true._
This is certainly absurd enough. It was dreamed at the time that the Hungarians got into a lawless condition, through Parliamentary obstruction, and passed through the crisis from which Koloman Szell delivered them. The trivial circumstance that the scene beheld in the dream consists of such little pictures is not without significance for the explanation of this element. The usual visual representation of our thoughts results in pictures which impress us as being life-size; my dream picture, however, is the reproduction of a wood-cut inserted in the text of an illustrated history of Austria, representing Maria Theresa in the Reichstag of Pressburg—the famous scene of “Moriamur pro rege nostro.”[ER] Like Maria Theresa, my father, in the dream, stands surrounded by the multitude; but he is standing on one or two benches, and thus like a judge on the bench. (He has united them—here the intermediary is the phrase, “We shall need no judge.”) Those of us who stood around the death-bed of my father actually noticed that he looked much like Garibaldi. He had a post-mortem rise of temperature, his cheeks shone redder and redder ... involuntarily we continue: “And behind him lay in phantom radiance that which subdues us all—the common thing.”
This elevation of our thoughts prepares us for having to deal with this very “common thing.” The post-mortem feature of the rise in temperature corresponds to the words, “after his death” in the dream content. The most agonising of his sufferings had been a complete paralysis of the intestines (obstruction), which set in during the last weeks. All sorts of disrespectful thoughts are connected with this. A man of my own age who had lost his father while he was still at the Gymnasium, upon which occasion I was profoundly moved and tendered him my friendship, once told me, with derision, about the distress of a lady relative whose father had died on the street and had been brought home, where it turned out upon undressing the corpse, that at the moment of death, or post-mortem, an evacuation of the bowels had taken place. The daughter of the dead man was profoundly unhappy at having this ugly detail stain her memory of her father. We have now penetrated to the wish that is embodied in this dream. To stand before one’s children pure and great after one’s death, who would not wish that? What has become of the absurdity of the dream? The appearance of it has been caused only by the fact that a perfectly permissible mode of speech—in the case of which we are accustomed to ignore the absurdity that happens to exist between its parts—has been faithfully represented in the dream. Here, too, we are unable to deny that the semblance of absurdity is one which is desired and has been purposely brought about.[ES]
III. In the example which I now cite I can detect the dream activity in the act of purposely manufacturing an absurdity for which there is no occasion at all in the subject-matter. It is taken from the dream that I had as a result of meeting Count Thun before my vacation trip. “_I am riding in a one-horse carriage, and give orders to drive to a railway station. ‘Of course I cannot ride with you on the railway line itself,’ I say, after the driver made an objection as though I had tired him out; at the same time it seems as though I had already driven with him for a distance which one usually rides on the train._” For this confused and senseless story the analysis gives the following explanation: During the day I had hired a one-horse carriage which was to take me to a remote street in Dornbach. The driver, however, did not know the way, and kept on driving in the manner of those good people until I noticed the fact and showed him the way, not sparing him a few mocking remarks withal. From this driver a train of thought led to the aristocratic personage whom I was destined to meet later. For the present I shall only remark that what strikes us middle-class plebeians about the aristocracy is that they like to put themselves in the driver’s seat. Does not Count Thun guide the Austrian car of state? The next sentence in the dream, however, refers to my brother, whom I identify with the driver of the one-horse carriage. I had this year refused to take the trip through Italy with him (“of course I cannot ride with you on the railway line itself”), and this refusal was a sort of punishment for his wonted complaint that I usually tired him out on this trip (which gets into the dream unchanged) by making him take hurried trips and see too many nice things in one day. That evening my brother had accompanied me to the railroad station, but shortly before getting there had jumped out, at the state railway division of the Western Station, in order to take a train to Purkersdorf. I remarked to him that he could stay with me a little longer, inasmuch as he did not go to Purkersdorf by the state railway but by the Western Railway. This is how it happens that in the dream I rode in the wagon a distance which one usually rides on the train. In reality, however, it was just the opposite; I told my brother:
The distance which you ride on the state railway you could ride in my company on the Western Railway. The whole confusion of the dream is therefore produced by my inserting in the dream the word “wagon” instead of “state railway,” which, to be sure, does good service in bringing together the driver and my brother. I then find in the dream some nonsense which seems hardly straightened out by my explanation, and which almost forms a contradiction to my earlier speech (“Of course I cannot ride with you on the railway line itself”). But as I have no occasion whatever for confounding the state railway with the one-horse carriage, I must have intentionally formed the whole puzzling story in the dream in this way.
But with what intention? We shall now learn what the absurdity in the dream signifies, and the motives which admitted it or created it. The solution of the mystery in the case in question is as follows: In the dream I needed something absurd and incomprehensible in connection with “riding” (Fahren) because in the dream thoughts I had a certain judgment which required representation. On an evening at the house of the hospitable and clever lady who appears in another scene of the same dream as the “hostess,” I heard two riddles which I could not solve. As they were known to the other members of the party, I presented a somewhat ludicrous figure in my unsuccessful attempts to find a solution. They were two equivoques turning on the words “Nachkommen” (to come after—offspring) and “vorfahren” (to ride in advance—forefathers, ancestry). They read as follows:
The coachman does it
At the master’s behest;
Everyone has it,
In the grave does it rest.
(Ancestry.)
It was confusing to find half of the second riddle identical with the first.
The coachman does it
At the master’s behest;
Not everyone has it,
In the cradle does it rest.
(Offspring.)
As I had seen Count Thun ride in advance (vorfahren), so high and mighty, and had merged into the Figaro-mood which finds the merit of aristocratic gentlemen in the fact that they have taken the trouble to be born (Nachkommen—to become offspring), the two riddles became intermediary thoughts for the dream-work. As aristocrats can be readily confounded with coachmen, and as coachmen were in our country formerly called brothers-in-law, the work of condensation could employ my brother in the same representation. But the dream thought at work in the background was as follows: It is nonsense to be proud of one’s ancestry. (Vorfahren.) I would rather be myself an ancestor. (Vorfahr.) For the sake of this judgment, “it is nonsense,” we have the nonsense in the dream. We can now also solve the last riddle in this obscure passage of the dream, namely, that I have already driven before (vorher gefahren, vorgefahren) with the coachman.
Thus the dream is made absurd if there occurs as one of the elements in the dream thoughts the judgment “That is nonsense,” and in general if disdain and criticism are the motives for one of the trains of unconscious thought. Hence absurdity becomes one of the means by which the dream activity expresses contradiction, as it does by reversing a relation in the material between the dream thoughts and dream content, and by utilising sensations of motor impediment. But absurdity in the dream is not simply to be translated by “no”; it is rather intended to reproduce the disposition of the dream thoughts, this being to show mockery and ridicule along with the contradiction. It is only for this purpose that the dream activity produces anything ridiculous. Here again it transforms a part of the latent content into a manifest form.[ET]
As a matter of fact we have already met with a convincing example of the significance of an absurd dream. The dream, interpreted without analysis, of the Wagnerian performance lasting until 7.45 in the morning, in which the orchestra is conducted from a tower, &c. (see p.
316) is apparently trying to say: It is a crazy world and an insane society. He who deserves a thing doesn’t get it, and he who doesn’t care for anything has it—and in this she means to compare her fate with that of her cousin. The fact that dreams concerning a dead father were the first to furnish us with examples of absurdity in dreams is by no means an accident. The conditions necessary for the creations of absurd dreams are here grouped together in a typical manner. The authority belonging to the father has at an early age aroused the criticism of the child, and the strict demands he has made have caused the child to pay particularly close attention to every weakness of the father for its own extenuation; but the piety with which the father’s personality is surrounded in our thoughts, especially after his death, increases the censorship which prevents the expressions of this criticism from becoming conscious.
IV. The following is another absurd dream about a dead father:
I receive a notice from the common council of my native city concerning the costs of a confinement in the hospital in the year 1851, which was necessitated by an attack from which I suffered. I make sport of the matter, for, in the first place, I was not yet alive in the year 1851, and, in the second place, my father, to whom the notice might refer, is already dead. I go to him in the adjoining room, where he is lying on a bed, and tell him about it. To my astonishment he recalls that in that year—1851—he was once drunk and had to be locked up or confined. It was when he was working for the house of T——. “Then you drank, too?” I ask. “You married soon after?” I figure that I was born in 1856, which appears to me as though immediately following.
In view of the preceding discussion, we shall translate the insistence with which this dream exhibits its absurdities as the sure sign of a particularly embittered and passionate controversy in the dream thoughts. With all the more astonishment, however, we note that in this dream the controversy is waged openly, and the father designated as the person against whom the satire is directed. This openness seems to contradict our assumption of a censor as operative in the dream activity. We may say in explanation, however, that here the father is only an interposed person, while the conflict is carried on with another one, who makes his appearance in the dream by means of a single allusion. While the dream usually treats of revolt against other persons, behind which the father is concealed, the reverse is true here; the father serves as the man of straw to represent others, and hence the dream dares thus openly to concern itself with a person who is usually hallowed, because there is present the certain knowledge that he is not in reality intended. We learn of this condition of affairs by considering the occasion of the dream. Now, it occurred after I had heard that an older colleague, whose judgment is considered infallible, had expressed disapproval and astonishment at the fact that one of my patients was then continuing psychoanalytical work with me for the fifth year. The introductory sentences of the dream point with transparent disguise to the fact that this colleague had for a time taken over the duties which my father could no longer perform (expenses, fees at the hospital); and when our friendly relations came to be broken I was thrown into the same conflict of feelings which arises in the case of misunderstanding between father and son in view of the part played by the father and his earlier functions. The dream thoughts now bitterly resent the reproach that I am not making better progress, which extends itself from the treatment of this patient to other things. Does this colleague know anyone who can get on faster? Does he not know that conditions of this sort are usually incurable and last for life? What are four or five years in comparison to a whole life, especially when life has been made so much easier for the patient during the treatment?
The impression of absurdity in this dream is brought about largely by the fact that sentences from different divisions of the dream thoughts are strung together without any reconciling transition. Thus the sentence, I go to him in the adjoining room, &c., leaves the subject dealt with in the preceding sentences, and faithfully reproduces the circumstances under which I told my father about my marriage engagement. Thus the dream is trying to remind me of the noble disinterestedness which the old man showed at that time, and to put it in contrast with the conduct of another, a new person. I now perceive that the dream is allowed to make sport of my father for the reason that in the dream thought he is held up as an example to another man, in full recognition of his merit. It is in the nature of every censorship that it permits the telling of untruth about forbidden things rather than truth. The next sentence, in which my father remembers having once been drunk, and having been locked up for it, also contains nothing which is actually true of my father. The person whom he covers is here a no less important one than the great Meynert, in whose footsteps I followed with such great veneration, and whose attitude towards me was changed into undisguised hostility after a short period of indulgence. The dream recalls to me his own statement that in his youth he was addicted to the chloroform habit, and that for this he had to enter a sanatorium. It recalls also a second experience with him shortly before his death. I carried on an embittered literary controversy with him concerning hysteria in the male, the existence of which he denied, and when I visited him in his last illness and asked him how he felt, he dwelt upon the details of his condition and concluded with the words: “You know, I have always been one of the prettiest cases of masculine hysteria.” Thus, to my satisfaction, and to my astonishment, he admitted what he had so long and so stubbornly opposed. But the fact that in this scene I can use my father to cover Meynert is based not upon the analogy which has been found to exist between the two persons, but upon the slight, but quite adequate, representation of a conditional sentence occurring in the dream thoughts, which in full would read as follows: “Of course if I were of the second generation, the son of a professor or of a court-councillor, I should have progressed more rapidly.” In the dream I now make a court-councillor and a professor of my father.
The most obvious and most annoying absurdity of the dream lies in the treatment of the date 1851, which seems to me to be hardly distinguishable from 1856, as though a difference of five years would signify nothing whatever. But it is just this idea of the dream thoughts which requires expression. Four or five years—that is the length of time which I enjoyed the support of the colleague mentioned at the outset; but it is also the time during which I kept my bride waiting before I married her; and, through a coincidence that is eagerly taken advantage of by the dream thoughts, it is also the time during which I am now keeping one of my best patients waiting for the completion of his cure. “What are five years?” ask the dream thoughts. “That is no time at all for me—that doesn’t come into consideration. I have time enough ahead of me, and just as what you didn’t want to believe came true at last, so I shall accomplish this also.” Besides the number 51, when separated from the number of the century, is determined in still another manner and in an opposite sense; for which reason it occurs in the dream again. Fifty-one is an age at which a man seems particularly exposed to danger, at which I have seen many of my colleagues suddenly die, and among them one who had been appointed to a professorship a few days before, after he had been waiting a long time.
V. Another absurd dream which plays with figures, runs as follows:
One of my acquaintances, Mr. M., has been attacked in an essay by no less a person than Goethe, with justifiable vehemence, we all think. Mr. M. has, of course, been crushed by this attack. He complains of it bitterly at a dinner party; but he says that his veneration for Goethe has not suffered from this personal experience. I try to find some explanation of the chronological relations, which seem improbable to me. Goethe died in 1832; since his attack upon M. must of course have taken place earlier, Mr. M. was at the time a very young man. It seems plausible to me that he was 18 years old. But I do not know exactly what year it is at present, and so the whole calculation lapses into obscurity. The attack, moreover, is contained in Goethe’s well-known essay entitled “Nature.”
We shall soon find means to justify the nonsense of this dream. Mr. M., with whom I became acquainted at a dinner-party, had recently requested me to examine his brother, who showed signs of paralytic insanity. The conjecture was right; the painful thing about this visit was that the patient exposed his brother by alluding to his youthful pranks when there was no occasion in the conversation for his doing so. I had asked the patient to tell me the year of his birth, and had got him to make several small calculations in order to bring out the weakness of his memory—all of which tests he passed fairly well. I see now that I am acting like a paralytic in the dream (I do not know exactly what year it is at present). Other subject-matter in the dream is drawn from another recent source. The editor of a medical journal, a friend of mine, had accepted for his paper a very unfavourable, a “crushing,” criticism of the last book of my friend Fl. of Berlin, the author of which was a very youthful reviewer, who was not very competent to pass judgment. I thought I had a right to interfere, and called the editor to account; he keenly regretted the acceptance of the criticism, but would not promise redress. Thereupon I broke off relations with the journal, and in my letter of resignation expressed the hope that our personal relations would not suffer from the incident. The third source of this dream is an account given by a female patient—it was fresh in my memory at the time—of the mental disease of her brother who had fallen into a frenzy, crying “Nature, Nature.” The physicians in attendance thought that the cry was derived from a reading of Goethe’s beautiful essay, and that it pointed to overwork in the patient in the study of natural philosophy. I thought rather of the sexual sense in which even less cultured people with us use the word “Nature,” and the fact that the unfortunate man later mutilated his genitals seemed to show that I was not far wrong. Eighteen years was the age of this patient at the time when the attack of frenzy occurred.
If I add further that the book of my friend so severely criticised (“It is a question whether the author is crazy or we are” had been the opinion of another critic) treats of the temporal relations of life and refers the duration of Goethe’s life to the multiple of a number significant from the point of view of biology, it will readily be admitted that I am putting myself in the place of my friend in the dream. (I try to find some explanation of the chronological relations.) But I behave like a paralytic, and the dream revels in absurdity. This means, then, as the dream thoughts say ironically. “Of course he is the fool, the lunatic, and you are the man of genius who knows better. Perhaps, however, it is the other way around?” Now, this other way around is explicitly represented in the dream, in that Goethe has attacked the young man, which is absurd, while it is perfectly possible even to-day for a young fellow to attack the immortal Goethe, and in that I figure from the year of Goethe’s death, while I caused the paralytic to calculate from the year of his birth.
But I have already promised to show that every dream is the result of egotistical motives. Accordingly, I must account for the fact that in this dream I make my friend’s cause my own and put myself in his place. My rational conviction in waking thought is not adequate to do this. Now, the story of the eighteen-year-old patient and of the various interpretations of his cry, “Nature,” alludes to my having brought myself into opposition to most physicians by claiming sexual etiology for the psychoneuroses. I may say to myself: “The same kind of criticism your friend met with you will meet with too, and have already met with to some extent,” and now I may replace the “he” in the dream thoughts by “we.” “Yes, you are right; we two are the fools.” That mea res agitur, is clearly shown by the mention of the short, incomparably beautiful essay of Goethe, for it was a public reading of this essay which induced me to study the natural science while I was still undecided in the graduating class of the Gymnasium.
VI. I am also bound to show of another dream in which my ego does not occur that it is egotistic. On page 228 I mentioned a short dream in which Professor M. says: “My son, the myopic ...”; and I stated that this was only a preliminary dream to another one, in which I play a part. Here is the main dream, omitted above, which challenges us to explain its absurd and unintelligible word-formation.
On account of some happenings or other in the city of Rome it is necessary for the children to flee, and this they do. The scene is then laid before a gate, a two-winged gate in antique style (the Porta Romana in Siena, as I know while I am still dreaming). I am sitting on the edge of a well, and am very sad; I almost weep. A feminine person—nurse, nun—brings out the two boys and hands them over to their father, who is not myself. The elder of the two is distinctly my eldest son, and I do not see the face of the other; the woman who brings the boy asks him for a parting kiss. She is distinguished by a red nose. The boy denies her the kiss, but says to her, extending his hand to her in parting, “Auf Geseres,” and to both of us (or to one of us) “Auf Ungeseres.” I have the idea, that the latter indicates an advantage.
This dream is built upon a tangle of thoughts induced by a play I saw at the theatre, called Das neue Ghetto (“The New Ghetto.”) The Jewish question, anxiety about the future of my children who cannot be given a native country of their own, anxiety about bringing them up so that they may have the right of native citizens—all these features may easily be recognised in the accompanying dream thoughts.
“We sat by the waters of Babylon and wept.” Siena, like Rome, is famous for its beautiful fountains. In the dream I must find a substitute of some kind for Rome (cf. p. 163) in localities which are known to me. Near the Porta Romana of Siena we saw a large, brightly illuminated building, which we found to be the Manicomio, the insane asylum. Shortly before the dream I had heard that a co-religionist had been forced to resign a position at a state asylum which he had secured with great effort.
Our interest is aroused by the speech: “Auf Geseres”—where we might expect, from the situation maintained throughout the dream, “Auf Wiedersehen” (Au revoir)—and by its quite meaningless opposite, “Auf Ungeseres.”
According to information I have received from Hebrew scholars, Geseres is a genuine Hebrew word derived from the verb goiser, and may best be rendered by “ordained sufferings, fated disaster.” From its use in the Jewish jargon one might think it signified “wailing and lamentation.” Ungeseres is a coinage of my own and first attracts my attention; but for the present it baffles me. The little observation at the end of the dream, that Ungeseres indicates an advantage over Geseres opens the way to the associations and to an explanation. The same relation holds good with caviare; the unsalted kind[EU] is more highly prized than the salted. Caviare to the general, “noble passions”; herein lies concealed a joking allusion to a member of my household, of whom I hope—for she is younger than I—that she will watch over the future of my children; this, too, agrees with the fact that another member of my household, our worthy nurse, is clearly indicated in the nurse (or nun) of the dream. But a connecting link is wanting between the pair, salted and unsalted, and Geseres—ungeseres. This is to be found in soured and unsoured. In their flight or exodus out of Egypt, the children of Israel did not have time to allow their bread to be leavened, and in memory of the event to this day they eat unsoured bread at Easter time. Here I can also find room for the sudden notion which came to me in this part of the analysis. I remembered how we promenaded about the city of Breslau, which was strange to us, at the end of the Easter holidays, my friend from Berlin and I. A little girl asked me to tell her the way to a certain street; I had to tell her I did not know it, whereupon I remarked to my friend, “I hope that later on in life the little one will show more perspicacity in selecting the persons by whom she allows herself to be guided.” Shortly afterwards a sign caught my eye: “Dr. Herod, office hours....” I said to myself: “I hope this colleague does not happen to be a children’s specialist.” Meanwhile my friend had been developing his views on the biological significance of bilateral symmetry, and had begun a sentence as follows: “If we had but one eye in the middle of our foreheads like Cyclops....” This leads us to the speech of the professor in the preliminary dream: “My son, the myopic.” And now I have been led to the chief source for Geseres.
Many years ago, when this son of Professor M., who is to-day an independent thinker, was still sitting on his school-bench, he contracted a disease of the eye, which the doctor declared gave cause for anxiety. He was of the opinion that as long as it remained in one eye it would not matter; if, however, it should extend to the other eye, it would be serious. The disease healed in the one eye without leaving any bad effects; shortly afterwards, however, its symptoms actually appeared in the other eye. The terrified mother of the boy immediately summoned the physician to the seclusion of her country resort. But he took another view of the matter. “What sort of ‘Geseres’ is this you are making?” he said to his mother with impatience. “If one side got well, the other side will get well too.” And so it turned out.
And now as to the connection between this and myself and those dear to me. The school-bench upon which the son of Professor M. learned his first lessons has become the property of my eldest son—it was given to his mother-into whose lips I put the words of parting in the dream. One of the wishes that can be attached to this transference may now easily be guessed. This school-bench is intended by its construction to guard the child from becoming shortsighted and one-sided. Hence, myopia (and behind the Cyclops) and the discussion about bilateralism. The concern about one-sidedness is of two-fold signification; along with the bodily one-sidedness, that of intellectual development may be referred to. Does it not seem as though the scene in the dream, with all its madness, were putting its negative on just this anxiety? After the child has said his word of parting on the one side, he calls out its opposite on the other side, as though in order to establish an equilibrium. He is acting, as it were, in obedience to bilateral symmetry!
Thus the dream frequently has the profoundest meaning in places where it seems most absurd. In all ages those who had something to say and were unable to say it without danger to themselves gladly put on the cap and bells. The listener for whom the forbidden saying was intended was more likely to tolerate it if he was able to laugh at it, and to flatter himself with the comment that what he disliked was obviously something absurd. The dream proceeds in reality just as the prince does in the play who must counterfeit the fool, and hence the same thing may be said of the dream which Hamlet says of himself, substituting an unintelligible witticism for the real conditions: “I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”[EV]
Thus my solution of the problem of the absurdity of dreams is that the dream thoughts are never absurd—at least not those belonging to the dreams of sane persons—and that the dream activity produces absurd dreams and dreams with individual absurd elements if criticism, ridicule, and derision in the dream thoughts are to be represented by it in its manner of expression. My next concern is to show that the dream activity is primarily brought about by the co-operation of the three factors which have been mentioned—and of a fourth one which remains to be cited—that it accomplishes nothing short of a transposition of the dream thoughts, observing the three conditions which are prescribed for it, and that the question whether the mind operates in the dream with all its faculties, or only with a portion of them, is deprived of its cogency and is inapplicable to the actual circumstances. But since there are plenty of dreams in which judgments are passed, criticisms made, and facts recognised, in which astonishment at some single element of the dream appears, and arguments and explanations are attempted, I must meet the objections which may be inferred from these occurrences by the citation of selected examples.
My answer is as follows: _Everything in the dream which occurs as an apparent exercise of the critical faculty is to be regarded, not as an intellectual accomplishment of the dream activity, but as belonging to the material of the dream thoughts, and it has found its way from them as a finished structure to the manifest dream content_. I may go even further than this. Even the judgments which are passed upon the dream as it is remembered after awakening and the feelings which are aroused by the reproduction of the dream, belong in good part to the latent dream content, and must be fitted into their place in the interpretation of the dream.
I. A striking example of this I have already given. A female patient does not wish to relate her dream because it is too vague. She has seen a person in the dream, and does not know whether it is her husband or her father. Then follows a second dream fragment in which there occurs a “manure-can,” which gives rise to the following reminiscence. As a young housewife, she once jokingly declared in the presence of a young relative who frequented the house that her next care would be to procure a new manure-can. The next morning one was sent to her, but it was filled with lilies of the valley. This part of the dream served to represent the saying, “Not grown on your own manure.”[EW] When we complete the analysis we find that in the dream thoughts it is a matter of the after-effects of a story heard in youth, to the effect that a girl had given birth to a child concerning whom it was not clear who was the real father. The dream representation here goes over into the waking thought, and allows one element of the dream thoughts to be represented by a judgment expressed in the waking state upon the whole dream.
II. A similar case: One of my patients has a dream which seems interesting to him, for he says to himself immediately after awakening: “I must tell that to the doctor.” The dream is analysed, and shows the most distinct allusion to an affair in which he had become involved during the treatment, and of which he had decided “to tell me nothing.”[EX]
III. Here is a third example from my own experience:
I go to the hospital with P. through a region in which houses and gardens occur. With this comes the idea that I have already seen this region in dreams several times. I do not know my way very well; P. shows me a way which leads through a corner to a restaurant (a room, not a garden); here I ask for Mrs. Doni, and I hear that she is living in the background in a little room with three children. I go there, and while on the way I meet an indistinct person with my two little girls, whom I take with me after I have stood with them for a while. A kind of reproach against my wife for having left them there.
Upon awakening I feel great satisfaction, the cause for this being the fact that I am now going to learn from the analysis what is meant by the idea “I have already dreamed of that.”[EY] But the analysis of the dream teaches me nothing on the subject; it only shows me that the satisfaction belongs to the latent dream content, and not to my judgment upon the dream. It is satisfaction over the fact that I have had children by my marriage. P. is a person in whose company I walked the path of life for a certain space, but who has since far outdistanced me socially and materially—whose marriage, however, has remained childless. The two occasions for the dream furnishing the proof of this may be found by means of complete analysis. On the previous day I had read in the paper the obituary notice of a certain Mrs. Dona A——y (out of which I make Doni), who had died in childbirth; I was told by my wife that the dead woman had been nursed by the same midwife she herself had had at the birth of our two youngest boys. The name Dona had caught my attention, for I had recently found it for the first time in an English novel. The other occasion for the dream may be found in the date on which it was dreamed; it was on the night before the birthday of my eldest boy, who, it seems, is poetically gifted.
IV. The same satisfaction remained with me after awakening from the absurd dream that my father, after his death, had played a political part among the Magyars, and it is motivated by a continuance of the feeling which accompanied the last sentence of the dream: “I remember that on his death-bed he looked so much like Garibaldi, and I am glad that it has really come true. (Here belongs a forgotten continuation.)” I can now supply from the analysis what belongs in this gap of the dream. It is the mention of my second boy, to whom I have given the first name of a great historical personage, who attracted me powerfully during my boyhood, especially during my stay in England. I had to wait for a year after making up my mind to use this name in case the expected child should be a son, and I greeted him with it in high satisfaction as soon as he was born. It is easy to see how the father’s lust for greatness is transferred in his thoughts to his children; it will readily be believed that this is one of the ways in which the suppression of this lust which becomes necessary in life is brought about. The little fellow won a place in the text of this dream by virtue of the fact that the same accident—quite pardonable in a child or a dying person—of soiling his clothes had happened to him. With this may be compared the allusion “Stuhlrichter” (judge on the stool-bench, i.e. presiding judge) and the wish of the dream: To stand before one’s children great and pure.
V. I am now called upon to find expressions of judgment which remain in the dream itself, and are not retained in or transferred to our waking thoughts, and I shall consider it a great relief if I may find examples in dreams, which have already been cited for other purposes. The dream about Goethe’s attacking Mr. M. seems to contain a considerable number of acts of judgment. _I try to find some explanation of the chronological relations, which seem improbable to me. Does not this look like a critical impulse directed against the nonsensical idea that Goethe should have made a literary attack upon a young man of my acquaintance? “It seems plausible to me that he was 18 years old.” That sounds quite like the result of a dull-witted calculation; and “I do not know exactly what year it is_” would be an example of uncertainty or doubt in the dream.
But I know from analysis that these acts of judgment, which seem to have been performed in the dream for the first time, admit of a different construction in the light of which they become indispensable for interpreting the dream, and at the same time every absurdity is avoided. With the sentence, “I try to find some explanation of the chronological relations,” I put myself in the place of my friend who is actually trying to explain the chronological relations of life. The sentence then loses its significance as a judgment that objects to the nonsense of the previous sentences. The interposition, “which seems improbable to me,” belongs to the subsequent “it seems plausible to me.” In about the same words I had answered the lady who told me the story of her brother’s illness: “It seems improbable to me that the cry of ‘Nature, Nature,’ had anything to do with Goethe; it appears much more plausible that it had the sexual significance which is known to you.” To be sure, a judgment has been passed here, not, however, in the dream but in reality, on an occasion which is remembered and utilised by the dream thoughts. The dream content appropriates this judgment like any other fragment of the dream thoughts.
The numeral 18, with which the judgment in the dream is meaninglessly connected, still preserves a trace of the context from which the real judgment was torn. Finally, “I am not certain what year it is” is intended for nothing else than to carry out my identification with the paralytic, in the examination of whom this point of confirmation had actually been established.
In the solution of these apparent acts of judgment, in the dream, it may be well to call attention to the rule of interpretation which says that the coherence which is fabricated in the dream between its constituent parts is to be disregarded as specious and unessential, and that every dream element must be taken by itself and traced to its source. The dream is a conglomeration, which is to be broken up into its elements for the purposes of investigation. But other circumstances call our attention to the fact that a psychic force is expressed in dreams which establishes this apparent coherence—that is to say, which subjects the material that is obtained by the dream activity to a secondary elaboration. We are here confronted with manifestations of this force, upon which we shall later fix our attention as being the fourth of the factors which take part in the formation of the dream.
VI. I select other examples of critical activity in the dreams which have already been cited. In the absurd dream about the communication from the common council I ask the question: “You married shortly after? I figure that I was born in 1856, which appears to me as though following immediately.” This quite takes the form of an inference. My father married shortly after his attack in the year 1851; I am the oldest son, born in 1856; this agrees perfectly. We know that this inference has been interpolated by the wish-fulfilment, and that the sentence which dominates the dream thoughts is to the following effect: 4 or 5 years, that is no time at all, that need not enter the calculation. But every part of this chain of inferences is to be determined from the dream thoughts in a different manner, both as to its content and as to its form. It is the patient—about whose endurance my colleague complains—who intends to marry immediately after the close of the treatment. The manner in which I deal with my father in the dream recalls an inquest or examination, and with that the person of a university instructor who was in the habit of taking a complete list of credentials at the enrolment of his class: “You were born when?” In 1856. “Patre?” Then the applicant gave the first name of his father with a Latin ending, and we students assumed that the Aulic Councillor drew inferences from the first name of the father which the name of the enrolled student would not always have supplied. According to this, the drawing of inferences in the dream would be merely a repetition of the drawing of inferences which appears as part of the subject-matter in the dream thoughts. From this we learn something new. If an inference occurs in the dream content, it invariably comes from the dream thoughts; it may be contained in these as a bit of remembered material, or it may serve as a logical connective in a series of dream thoughts. In any case an inference in the dream represents an inference in the dream thoughts.[EZ]
The analysis of this dream should be continued here. With the inquest of the Professor there is connected the recollection of an index (published in Latin during my time) of the university students; also of my course of studies. The five years provided for the study of medicine were as usual not enough for me. I worked along unconcernedly in the succeeding years; in the circle of my acquaintances I was considered a loafer, and there was doubt as to whether I would “get through.” Then all at once I decided to take my examinations; and I got “through,” in spite of the postponement. This is a new confirmation of the dream thoughts, which I defiantly hold up to my critics: “Even though you are unwilling to believe it, because I take my time, I shall reach a conclusion (German Schluss, meaning either end or conclusion, inference). It has often happened that way.”
In its introductory portion this dream contains several sentences which cannot well be denied the character of an argumentation. And this argumentation is not at all absurd; it might just as well belong to waking thought. _In the dream I make sport of the communication of the Common Council, for in the first place I was not yet in the world in 1851, and in the second place, my father, to whom it might refer, is already dead._ Both are not only correct in themselves, but coincide completely with the arguments that I should use in case I should receive a communication of the sort mentioned. We know from our previous analysis that this dream has sprung from deeply embittered and scornful dream thoughts; if we may assume further that the motive for censorship is a very strong one, we shall understand that the dream activity has every reason to create a flawless refutation of a baseless insinuation according to the model contained in the dream thoughts. But analysis shows that in this case the dream activity has not had the task of making a free copy, but it has been required to use subject-matter from the dream thoughts for its purpose. It is as if in an algebraic equation there occurred plus and minus signs, signs of powers and of roots, besides the figures, and as if someone, in copying this equation without understanding it, should take over into his copy the signs of operation as well as the figures, and fail to distinguish between the two kinds. The two arguments may be traced to the following material. It is painful for me to think that many of the assumptions upon which I base my solution of psychoneuroses, as soon as they have become known, will arouse scepticism and ridicule. Thus I must maintain that impressions from the second year of life, or even from the first, leave a lasting trace upon the temperament of persons who later become diseased, and that these impressions—greatly distorted it is true, and exaggerated by memory—are capable of furnishing the original and fundamental basis of hysterical symptoms. Patients to whom I explain this in its proper place are in the habit of making a parody upon the explanation by declaring themselves willing to look for reminiscences of the period when they were not yet alive. It would quite accord with my expectation, if enlightenment on the subject of the unsuspected part played by the father in the earliest sexual impulses of feminine patients should get a similar reception. (Cf. the discussion on p. 218.) And, nevertheless, both positions are correct according to my well-founded conviction.
In confirmation I recall certain examples in which the death of the father happened when the child was very young, and later events, otherwise inexplicable, proved that the child had unconsciously preserved recollections of the persons who had so early gone out of its life. I know that both of my assertions are based upon inferences the validity of which will be attacked. If the subject-matter of these very inferences which I fear will be contested is used by the dream activity for setting up incontestable inferences, this is a performance of the wish-fulfilment.
VII. In a dream which I have hitherto only touched upon, astonishment at the subject to be broached is distinctly expressed at the outset.
“_The elder Bruecke must have given me some task or other; strangely enough it relates to the preparation of my own lower body, pelvis and legs, which I see before me as though in the dissecting room, but without feeling my lack of body and without a trace of horror. Louise N. is standing near, and doing her work next to me. The pelvis is eviscerated; now the upper, now the lower view of the same is seen, and the two views mingle. Thick fleshy red lumps (which even in the dream make me think of hæmorrhoids) are to be seen. Also something had to be carefully picked out, which lay over these and which looked like crumpled tinfoil.[FA] Then I was again in possession of my legs and made a journey through the city, but took a wagon (owing to my fatigue). To my astonishment the wagon drove into a house door, which opened and allowed it to pass into a passage that was snapped off at the end, and finally led further on into the open.[FB] At last I wandered through changing landscapes with an Alpine guide, who carried my things. He carried, me for some way, out of consideration for my tired legs. The ground was muddy, and we went along the edge; people sat on the ground, a girl among them, like Indians or Gypsies. Previously I had moved myself along on the slippery ground, with constant astonishment that I was so well able to do it after the preparation. At last we came to a small wooden house which ended in an open window. Here the guide set me down, and laid two wooden boards which stood in readiness on the window sill, in order that in this way the chasm might be bridged which had to be crossed in order to get to the window. Now, I grew really frightened about my legs. Instead of the expected crossing, I saw two grown-up men lying upon wooden benches which were on the walls of the hut, and something like two sleeping children next to them. It seems as though not the boards but the children were intended to make possible the crossing. I awakened with frightened thoughts._”
Anyone who has formed a proper idea of the abundance of dream condensation will easily be able to imagine how great a number of pages the detailed analysis of this dream must fill. Luckily for the context, I shall take from it merely the one example of astonishment, in the dream, which makes its appearance in the parenthetical remark, “strangely enough.” Let us take up the occasion of the dream. It is a visit of this lady, Louise N., who assists at the work in the dream. She says: “Lend me something to read.” I offer her She, by Rider Haggard. “A strange book, but full of hidden sense,” I try to explain to her; “the eternal feminine, the immortality of our emotions——” Here she interrupts me: “I know that book already. Haven’t you something of your own?” “No, my own immortal works are still unwritten.” “Well, when are you going to publish your so-called latest revelations which you promised us would be good reading?” she asks somewhat sarcastically. I now perceive that she is a mouthpiece for someone else, and I become silent. I think of the effort it costs me to publish even my work on the Dream, in which I have to surrender so much of my own intimate character. “The best that you know you can’t tell to the children.” The preparation of my own body, which I am ordered to make in the dream, is thus the self-analysis necessitated in the communication of my dreams. The elder Bruecke very properly finds a place here; in these first years of my scientific work it happened that I neglected a discovery, until his energetic commands forced me to publish it. But the other trains of thought which start from my conversation with Louise N. go too deep to become conscious; they are side-tracked by way of the related material which has been awakened in me by the mention of Rider Haggard’s She. The comment “strangely enough” goes with this book, and with another by the same author, The Heart of the World, and numerous elements of the dream are taken from these two fantastic novels. The muddy ground over which the dreamer is carried, the chasm which must be crossed by means of the boards that have been brought along, come from She; the Indians, the girl, and the wooden house, from the Heart of the World. In both novels a woman is the leader, both treat of dangerous wanderings; She has to do with an adventurous journey to the undiscovered country, a place almost untrodden by foot of man.
According to a note which I find in my record of the dream, the fatigue in my legs was a real sensation of those days. Doubtless in correspondence with this came a tired frame of mind and the doubting question: “How much further will my legs carry me?” The adventure in She ends with the woman leader’s meeting her death in the mysterious fire at the centre of the earth, instead of attaining immortality for herself and others. A fear of this sort has unmistakably arisen in the dream thoughts. The “wooden house,” also, is surely the coffin—that is, the grave. But the dream activity has performed its masterpiece in representing this most unwished-for of all thoughts by means of a wish-fulfilment. I have already once been in a grave, but it was an empty Etruscan grave near Orvieto—a narrow chamber with two stone benches on the walls, upon which the skeletons of two grown-up persons had been laid. The interior of the wooden house in the dream looks exactly like this, except that wood has been substituted for stone. The dream seems to say: “If you must so soon lie in your grave, let it be this Etruscan grave,” and by means of this interpolation it transforms the saddest expectation into one that is really to be desired. As we shall learn, it is, unfortunately, only the idea accompanying an emotion which the dream can change into its opposite, not usually the emotion itself. Thus I awake with “frightened thoughts,” even after the dream has been forced to represent my idea—that perhaps the children will attain what has been denied to the father—a fresh allusion to the strange novel in which the identity of a person is preserved through a series of generations covering two thousand years.
VIII. In the context of another dream there is a similar expression of astonishment at what is experienced in the dream. This, however, is connected with a striking and skilfully contrived attempt at explanation which might well be called a stroke of genius—so that I should have to analyse the whole dream merely for the sake of it, even if the dream did not possess two other features of interest. I am travelling during the night between the eighteenth and the nineteenth of July on the Southern Railway, and in my sleep I hear someone call out: _“Hollthurn, 10 minutes.” I immediately think of Holothurian—of a museum of natural history—that here is a place where brave men have vainly resisted the domination of their overlord. Yes, the counter reformation in Austria! As though it were a place in Styria or the Tyrol. Now I distinctly see a little museum in which the remains or the possessions of these men are preserved. I wish to get off, but I hesitate to do so. Women with fruit are standing on the platform; they crouch on the floor, and in that position hold out their baskets in an inviting manner. I hesitate, in doubt whether we still have time, but we are still standing. I am suddenly in another compartment in which the leather and the seats are so narrow that one’s back directly touches the back rest.[FC] I am surprised at this, but I may have changed cars while asleep. Several people, among them an English brother and sister; a row of books distinctly on a shelf on the wall. I see The Wealth of Nations, then Matter and Motion (by Maxwell)—the books are thick and bound in brown linen. The man asks his sister for a book by Schiller, and whether she has forgotten it. These are books which first seem mine, then seem to belong to the brother and sister. At this point I wish to join in the conversation in order to confirm and support what is being said——._ I awaken sweating all over my body, because all the windows are shut. The train stops at Marburg.
While writing down the dream, a part of it occurs to me which my memory wished to omit. I say to the brother and sister about a certain work: “It is from ...” but I correct myself: “It is by ...” The man remarks to his sister: “He said it correctly.”
The dream begins with the name of a station, which probably must have partially awakened me. For this name, which was Marburg, I substituted Hollthurn. The fact that I heard Marburg when it was first called, or perhaps when it was called a second time, is proved by the mention in the dream of Schiller, who was born in Marburg, though not in the one in Styria.[FD] Now this time, although I was travelling first-class, it was under very disagreeable circumstances. The train was overcrowded; I had met a gentleman and lady in my compartment who seemed persons of quality, but who did not have the good breeding or who did not think it worth while to conceal their displeasure at my intrusion. My polite salutation was not answered, and although the man and the woman sat next each other (with their backs in the direction in which we were riding), the woman made haste to pre-empt the place opposite her and next the window with her umbrella; the door was immediately closed and demonstrative remarks about the opening of windows were exchanged. Probably I was quickly recognised as a person hungry for fresh air. It was a hot night, and the air in the compartment, thus shut on all sides, was almost suffocating. My experience as a traveller leads me to believe that such inconsiderate, obtrusive conduct marks people who have only partly paid for their tickets, or not at all. When the conductor came, and I presented my dearly bought ticket, the lady called out ungraciously, and as though threateningly: “My husband has a pass.” She was a stately figure with sour features, in age not far from the time set for the decay of feminine beauty; the man did not get a chance to say anything at all, and sat there motionless. I tried to sleep. In the dream I take terrible revenge on my disagreeable travelling companions; no one would suspect what insults and humiliations are concealed behind the disjointed fragments of the first half of the dream. After this desire has been satisfied, the second wish, to exchange my compartment for another, makes itself evident. The dream makes changes of scene so often, and without raising the least objection to such changes, that it would not have been in the least remarkable if I had immediately replaced my travelling companions by more pleasant ones for my recollection. But this was one of the cases where something or other objected to the change of scene and considered explanation of the change necessary. How did I suddenly get into another compartment? I surely could not remember having changed cars. So there was only one explanation:
I must have left the carriage while asleep, a rare occurrence, examples for which, however, are furnished by the experience of the neuropathologist. We know of persons who undertake railroad journeys in a crepuscular state without betraying their abnormal condition by any sign, until some station on the journey they completely recover consciousness, and are then surprised at the gap in their memory. Thus, while I am still dreaming, I declare my own case to be such a one of “Automatisme ambulatoire.”
Analysis permits another solution. The attempt at explanation, which so astounds me if I am to attribute it to the dream activity, is not original, but is copied from the neurosis of one of my patients. I have already spoken on another page of a highly cultured and, in conduct, kind-hearted man, who began, shortly after the death of his parents, to accuse himself of murderous inclinations, and who suffered because of the precautionary measures he had to take to insure himself against these inclinations. At first walking along the street was made painful for him by the compulsion impelling him to demand an accounting of all the persons he met as to whither they had vanished; if one of them suddenly withdrew from his pursuing glance, there remained a painful feeling and a thought of the possibility that he might have put the man out of the way. This compulsive idea concealed, among other things, a Cain-fancy, for “all men are brothers.” Owing to the impossibility of accomplishing his task, he gave up taking walks and spent his life imprisoned within his four walls. But news of murderous acts which have been committed outside constantly reached his room through the papers, and his conscience in the form of a doubt kept accusing him of being the murderer. The certainty of not having left his dwelling for weeks protected him against these accusations for a time, until one day there dawned upon him the possibility that he might have left his house while in an unconscious condition, and might thus have committed the murder without knowing anything about it. From that time on he locked his house door, and handed the key over to his old housekeeper, and strictly forbade her to give it into his hands even if he demanded it.
This, then, is the origin of the attempted explanation, that I may have changed carriages while in an unconscious condition—it has been transferred from the material of the dream thoughts to the dream in a finished state, and is obviously intended to identify me with the person of that patient. My memory of him was awakened by an easy association. I had made my last night journey with this man a few weeks before. He was cured, and was escorting me into the country, to his relatives who were summoning me; as we had a compartment to ourselves, we left all the windows open through the night, and, as long as I had remained awake, we had a delightful conversation. I knew that hostile impulses towards his father from the time of his childhood, in connection with sexual material, had been at the root of his illness. By identifying myself with him, I wanted to make an analogous confession to myself. The second scene of the dream really resolves itself into a wanton fancy to the effect that my two elderly travelling companions had acted so uncivilly towards me for the reason that my arrival prevented them from exchanging love-tokens during the night as they had intended. This fancy, however, goes back to an early childhood scene in which, probably impelled by sexual inquisitiveness, I intruded upon the bedroom of my parents, and was driven from it by my father’s emphatic command.
I consider it superfluous to multiply further examples. All of them would confirm what we have learned from those which have been already cited, namely, that an act of judgment in the dream is nothing but the repetition of a prototype which it has in the dream thoughts. In most cases it is an inappropriate repetition introduced in an unfitting connection; occasionally, however, as in our last example, it is so artfully disposed that it may give the impression of being an independent thought activity in the dream. At this point we might turn our attention to that psychic activity which indeed does not seem to co-operate regularly in the formation of dreams, but whose effort it is, wherever it does co-operate, to fuse together those dream elements that are incongruent on account of their origins in an uncontradictory and intelligible manner. We consider it best, however, first to take up the expressions of emotion which appear in the dream, and to compare them with the emotions which analysis reveals to us in the dream thoughts.
(g) The Affects in the Dream.
A profound remark of Stricker’s[77] has called our attention to the fact that the expressions of emotion in the dream do not permit of being disposed of in the slighting manner in which we are accustomed to shake off the dream itself, after we have awakened. “If I am afraid of robbers in the dream, the robbers, to be sure, are imaginary, but the fear of them is real,” and the same is true if I am glad in the dream. According to the testimony of our feelings, the emotion experienced in the dream is in no way less valid than one of like intensity experienced in waking life, and the dream makes its claim to be taken up as a part of our real mental experiences, more energetically on account of its emotional content than on account of its ideal content. We do not succeed in accomplishing this separation in waking life, because we do not know how to estimate an emotion psychically except in connection with a presentation content. If in kind or in intensity an affect and an idea are incongruous, our waking judgment becomes confused.
The fact that in dreams the presentation content does not entail the affective influence which we should expect as necessary in waking thought has always caused astonishment. Strümpell was of the opinion that ideas in the dream are stripped of their psychic values. But neither does the dream lack opposite instances, where the expression of intense affect appears in a content, which seems to offer no occasion for its development. I am in a horrible, dangerous, or disgusting situation in the dream, but I feel nothing of fear or aversion; on the other hand, I am sometimes terrified at harmless things and glad at childish ones.
This enigma of the dream disappears more suddenly and more completely than perhaps any other of the dream problems, if we pass from the manifest to the latent content. We shall then no longer be concerned to explain it, for it will no longer exist. Analysis teaches us that presentation contents have undergone displacements and substitutions, while affects have remained unchanged. No wonder, then, that the presentation content which has been altered by dream disfigurement no longer fits the affect that has remained intact; but there is no cause for wonder either after analysis has put the correct content in its former place.
In a psychic complex which has been subjected to the influence of the resisting censor the affects are the unyielding constituent, which alone is capable of guiding us to a correct supplementation. This state of affairs is revealed in psychoneuroses even more distinctly than in the dream. Here the affect is always in the right, at least as far as its quality goes; its intensity may even be increased by means of a displacement of neurotic attention. If a hysteric is surprised that he is so very afraid of a trifle, or if the patient with compulsive ideas is astonished that he develops such painful self-reproach out of a nonentity, both of them err in that they regard the presentation content—the trifle or the nonentity—as the essential thing, and they defend themselves in vain because they make this presentation content the starting point in their thought. Psychoanalysis, however, shows them the right way by recognising that, on the contrary, the affect is justified, and by searching for the presentation which belongs to it and which has been suppressed by means of replacement. The assumption is here made that the development of affect and the presentation content do not constitute such an indissoluble organic union as we are accustomed to think, but that the two parts may be, so to speak, soldered together in such a way that they may be detached from one another by means of analysis. Dream interpretation shows that this is actually the case.
I give first an example in which analysis explains the apparent absence of affect in a presentation content which ought to force a development of emotion.
I. _The dreamer sees three lions in a desert, one of which is laughing, but she is not afraid of them. Then, however, she must have fled from them, for she is trying to climb a tree, but she finds that her cousin, who is a teacher of French, is already up in the tree, &c._
The analysis gives us the following material for this dream: A sentence in the dreamer’s English lesson had become the indifferent occasion for it: “The lion’s greatest beauty is his mane.” Her father wore a beard which surrounded his face like a mane. The name of her English teacher was Miss Lyons. An acquaintance of hers had sent her the ballads of Loewe (German, Loewe—lion). These, then, are the three lions; why should she have been afraid of them? She has read a story in which a negro who has incited his fellows to revolt is hunted with bloodhounds and climbs a tree to save himself. Then follow fragments in wanton mood, like the following. Directions for catching lions from Die Fliegende Blaetter: “Take a desert and strain it; the lions will remain.” Also a very amusing, but not very proper anecdote about an official who is asked why he does not take greater pains to win the favour of his superior officer, and who answers that he has been trying to insinuate himself, but that the man ahead of him is already up. The whole matter becomes intelligible as soon as one learns that on the day of the dream the lady had received a visit from her husband’s superior. He was very polite to her, kissed her hand, and she was not afraid of him at all, although he is a “big bug” (German—Grosses Tier = “big animal”) and plays the part of a “social lion” in the capital of her country. This lion is, therefore, like the lion in the Midsummer Night’s Dream, who unmasks as Snug, the joiner, and of such stuff are all dream lions made when one is not afraid.
II. As my second example, I cite the dream of the girl who saw her sister’s little son lying dead in a coffin, but who, I may now add, felt no pain or sorrow thereat. We know from analysis why not. The dream only concealed her wish to see the man she loved again; the affect must be attuned to the wish, and not to its concealment. There was no occasion for sorrow at all.
In a number of dreams the emotion at least remains connected with that presentation content which has replaced the one really belonging to it. In others the breaking up of the complex is carried further. The affect seems to be entirely separated from the idea belonging to it, and finds a place somewhere else in the dream where it fits into the new arrangement of the dream elements. This is similar to what we have learned of acts of judgment of the dream. If there is a significant inference in the dream thoughts, the dream also contains one; but in the dream the inference may be shifted to entirely different material. Not infrequently this shifting takes place according to the principle of antithesis.
I illustrate the latter possibility by the following dream, which I have subjected to the most exhaustive analysis.
III. _A castle by the sea; afterwards it lies not directly on the sea, but on a narrow canal that leads to the sea. A certain Mr. P. is the governor of it. I stand with him in a large salon with three windows, in front of which rise the projections of a wall, like battlements of a fort. I belong to the garrison, perhaps as a volunteer marine officer. We fear the arrival of hostile warships, for we are in a state of war. Mr. P. has the intention of leaving; he gives me instructions as to what must be done in case the dreaded event happens. His sick wife is in the threatened castle with her children. As soon as the bombardment begins the large hall should be cleared. He breathes heavily, and tries to get away; I hold him back, and ask him in what way I should send him news in case of need. He says something else, and then all at once falls over dead. I have probably taxed him unnecessarily with my questions. After his death, which makes no further impression upon me, I think whether the widow is to remain in the castle, whether I should give notice of the death to the commander-in-chief, and whether I should take over the direction of the castle as the next in command. I now stand at the window, and muster the ships as they pass by; they are merchantmen that dart past upon the dark water, several of them with more than one smokestack, others with bulging decks (that are quite similar to the railway stations in the preliminary dream which has not been told). Then my brother stands next to me, and both of us look out of the window on to the canal. At the sight of a ship we are frightened, and call out: “Here comes the warship!” It turns out, however, that it is only the same ships which I have already known that are returning. Now comes a little ship, strangely cut off, so that it ends in the middle of its breadth; curious things like cups or salt-cellars are seen on the deck. We call as though with one voice: “That is the breakfast-ship.”_
The rapid motion of the ships, the deep blue of the water, the brown smoke of the funnels, all this together makes a highly tense, sombre impression.
The localities in this dream are put together from several journeys to the Adriatic Sea (Miramare, Duino, Venice, Aquileja). A short but enjoyable Easter trip to Aquileja with my brother, a few weeks before the dream, was still fresh in my memory. Besides, the naval war between America and Spain, and the worry connected with it about my relatives living in America, play a part. Manifestations of emotion appear at two places in this dream. In one place an emotion that would be expected is lacking—it is expressly emphasized that the death of the governor makes no impression upon me; at another point, where I see the warships I am frightened, and experience all the sensations of fright while I sleep. The distribution of affects in this well-constructed dream has been made in such a way that every obvious contradiction is avoided. For there is no reason why I should be frightened at the governor’s death, and it is fitting that as the commander of the castle I should be alarmed by the sight of the warship. Now analysis shows that Mr. P. is nothing but a substitute for my own Ego (in the dream I am his substitute). I am the governor who suddenly dies. The dream thoughts deal with the future of those dear to me after my premature death. No other disagreeable thought is to be found among the dream thoughts. The fright which is attached to the sight of the warship must be transferred from it to this disagreeable thought. Inversely, the analysis shows that the region of the dream thoughts from which the warship comes is filled with most joyous reminiscences. It was at Venice a year before, one charmingly beautiful day, that we stood at the windows of our room on the Riva Schiavoni and looked upon the blue lagoon, in which more activity could be seen that day than usually. English ships were being expected, they were to be festively received; and suddenly my wife called out, happy as a child: “There come the English warships!” In the dream I am frightened at the very same words; we see again that speeches in the dream originate from speeches in life. I shall soon show that even the element “English” in this speech has not been lost for the dream activity. I thus convert joy into fright on the way from the dream thoughts to the dream content, and I need only intimate that by means of this very transformation I give expression to a part of the latent dream content.
The example shows, however, that the dream activity is at liberty to detach the occasion for an affect from its context in the dream thoughts, and to insert it at any other place it chooses in the dream content.
I seize the opportunity which is incidentally offered, of subjecting to closer analysis the “breakfast ship,” whose appearance in the dream so nonsensically concludes a situation that has been rationally adhered to. If I take a closer view of this object in the dream, I am now struck by the fact that it was black, and that on account of its being cut off at its greatest breadth it closely resembled, at the end where it was cut off, an object which had aroused our interest in the museums of the Etruscan cities. This object was a rectangular cup of black clay with two handles, upon which stood things like coffee cups, or tea cups, very similar to our modern breakfast table service. Upon inquiring, we learned that this was the toilet set of an Etruscan lady, with little boxes for rouge and powder; and we said jokingly to each other that it would not be a bad idea to take a thing like that home to the lady of the house. The dream object, therefore, signifies “black toilet” (German, toilette—dress)—mourning—and has direct reference to a death. The other end of the dream object reminds us of the “boat” (German, Nachen), from the root νέχυς, as a philological friend has told me, upon which corpses were laid in prehistoric times and were left to be buried by the sea. With this circumstance is connected the reason for the return of the ships in the dream.
“Quietly the old man on his rescued boat drifts into the harbour.”
It is the return voyage after the shipwreck (German, schiffbruch; ship-breaking, i.e. shipwreck), the breakfast-ship looks as though it were broken off in the middle. But whence comes the name “breakfast”-ship? Here is where the “English” comes in, which we have left over from the warships. Breakfast—a breaking of the fast. Breaking again belongs to ship-wreck (Schiffbruch), and fasting is connected with the mourning dress.
The only thing about this breakfast-ship, which has been newly created by the dream, is its name. The thing has existed in reality, and recalls to me the merriest hours of my last journey. As we distrusted the fare in Aquileja, we took some food with us from Goerz, and bought a bottle of excellent Istrian wine in Aquileja, and while the little mail-steamer slowly travelled through the Canal delle Mee and into the lonely stretch of lagoon towards Grado, we took our breakfast on deck—we were the only passengers—and it tasted to us as few breakfasts have ever tasted. This, then, was the “breakfast-ship,” and it is behind this very recollection of great enjoyment that the dream hides the saddest thoughts about an unknown and ominous future.
The detachment of emotions from the groups of ideas which have been responsible for their development is the most striking thing that happens to them in the course of dream formation, but it is neither the only nor even the most essential change which they undergo on the way from the dream thoughts to the manifest dream. If the affects in the dream thoughts are compared with those in the dream, it at once becomes clear that wherever there is an emotion in the dream, this is also to be found in the dream thoughts; the converse, however, is not true. In general, the dream is less rich in affects than the psychic material from which it is elaborated. As soon as I have reconstructed the dream thoughts I see that the most intense psychic impulses are regularly striving in them for self-assertion, usually in conflict with others that are sharply opposed to them. If I turn back to the dream, I often find it colourless and without any of the more intense strains of feeling. Not only the content, but also the affective tone of my thoughts has been brought by the dream activity to the level of the indifferent. I might say that a suppression of the affects has taken place. Take, for example, the dream of the botanical monograph. It answers to a passionate plea for my freedom to act as I am acting and to arrange my life as seems right to me and to me alone. The dream which results from it sounds indifferent; I have written a monograph; it is lying before me; it is fitted with coloured plates, and dried plants are to be found with each copy. It is like the peacefulness of a battlefield; there is no trace left of the tumult of battle.
It may also turn out differently—vivid affective expressions may make their appearance in the dream; but we shall first dwell upon the unquestionable fact that many dreams appear indifferent, while it is never possible to go deeply into the dream thoughts without deep emotion.
A complete theoretical explanation of this suppression of emotions in the course of the dream activity cannot be given here; it would require a most careful investigation of the theory of the emotions and of the mechanism of suppression. I shall find a place here for two thoughts only. I am forced—on other grounds—to conceive the development of affects as a centrifugal process directed towards the interior of the body, analogous to the processes of motor and secretory innervation. Just as in the sleeping condition the omission of motor impulses towards the outside world seems to be suspended, so a centrifugal excitement of emotions through unconscious thought may be made more difficult during sleep. Thus the affective impulses aroused during the discharge of the dream thoughts would themselves be weak excitements, and therefore those getting into the dream would not be stronger. According to this line of argument the “suppression of the affects” would not be a result of the dream activity at all, but a result of the sleeping condition. This may be so, but this cannot possibly be all. We must also remember that all the more complex dreams have shown themselves to be a compromised result from the conflict of psychic forces. On the one hand, the thoughts that constitute the wish must fight the opposition of a censorship; on the other hand, we have often seen how, even in unconscious thinking, each train of thought is harnessed to its contradictory opposite. Since all of these trains of thought are capable of emotion, we shall hardly make a mistake, broadly speaking, if we regard the suppression of emotion as the result of the restraint which the contrasts impose upon one another and which the censor imposes upon the tendencies which it has suppressed. The restraint of affects would accordingly he the second result of the dream censor as the disfigurement of the dream was the first.
I shall insert an example of a dream in which the indifferent affective tone of the dream content may be explained by a contrast in the dream thoughts. I have the following short dream to relate, which every reader will read with disgust:
IV. _A bit of rising ground, and on it something like a toilet in the open; a very long bench, at the end of which is a large toilet aperture. All of the back edge is thickly covered with little heaps of excrement of all sizes and degrees of freshness. A shrub behind the bench. I urinate upon the bench; a long stream of urine rinses everything clean, the patches of excrement easily come off and fall into the opening. It seems as though something remained at the end nevertheless._
Why did I experience no disgust in this dream?
Because, as the analysis shows, the most pleasant and satisfying thoughts have co-operated in the formation of this dream. Upon analysing it I immediately think of the Augean stables cleansed by Hercules. I am this Hercules. The rising ground and the shrub belong to Aussee, where my children are now staying. I have discovered the infantile etiology of the neuroses and have thus guarded my own children from becoming ill. The bench (omitting the aperture, of course) is the faithful copy of a piece of furniture which an affectionate female patient has made me a present of. This recalls how my patients honour me. Even the museum of human excrement is susceptible of less disagreeable interpretation. However much I am disgusted with it, it is a souvenir of the beautiful land of Italy, where in little cities, as everyone knows, water-closets are not equipped in any other way. The stream of urine that washes everything clean is an unmistakable allusion to greatness. It is in this manner that Gulliver extinguishes the great fire in Lilliput; to be sure, he thereby incurs the displeasure of the tiniest of queens. In this way, too, Gargantua, the superman in Master Rabelais, takes vengeance upon the Parisians, straddling Notre Dame and training his stream of urine upon the city. Only yesterday I was turning over the leaves of Garnier’s illustrations of Rabelais before I went to bed. And, strangely enough, this is another proof that I am the superman! The platform of Notre Dame was my favourite nook in Paris; every free afternoon I was accustomed to go up into the towers of the church and climb about among the monsters and devil-masks there. The circumstances that all the excrement vanishes so rapidly before the stream correspond to the motto: Afflavit et dissipati sunt, which I shall some day make the title of a chapter on the therapeutics of hysteria.
And now as to the occasion giving rise to the dream. It had been a hot afternoon in summer; in the evening I had given a lecture on the relation between hysteria and the perversions, and everything which I had to say displeased me thoroughly, appeared to me stripped of all value. I was tired, found no trace of pleasure in my difficult task, and longed to get away from this rummaging in human filth, to see my children and then the beauties of Italy. In this mood I went from the auditorium to a café, to find some modest refreshment in the open air, for my appetite had left me. But one of my audience went with me; he begged for permission to sit with me while I drank my coffee and gulped down my roll, and began to say flattering things to me. He told me how much he had learned from me, and that he now looked at everything through different eyes, that I had cleansed the Augean stables, i.e. the theory of the neuroses, of its errors and prejudices—in short, that I was a very great man. My mood was ill-suited to his song of praise; I struggled with disgust, and went home earlier in order to extricate myself. Before I went to sleep I turned over the leaves of Rabelais, and read a short story by C. F. Meyer entitled Die Leiden eines Knaben (The Hardships of a Boy).
The dream had been drawn from these materials, and the novel by Meyer added the recollection of childish scenes (cf. the dream about Count Thun, last scene). The mood of the day, characterised by disgust and annoyance, is continued in the dream in the sense that it is permitted to furnish nearly the entire material for the dream content. But during the night the opposite mood of vigorous and even exaggerated self-assertion was awakened, and dissipated the earlier mood. The dream had to take such a form as to accommodate the expression of self-depreciation and exaggerated self-assertion in the same material. This compromise formation resulted in an ambiguous dream content, but likewise in an indifferent strain of feeling owing to the restraint of the contrasts upon each other.
According to the theory of wish-fulfilment this dream could not have happened had not the suppressed, but at the same time pleasurable, train of thought concerning personal aggrandisement been coupled with the opposing thoughts of disgust. For disagreeable things are not intended to be represented by the dream; painful thoughts that have occurred during the day can force their way into the dream only if they lend a cloak to the wish-fulfilment. The dream activity can dispose of the affects in the dream thoughts in still another way, besides admitting them or reducing them to zero. It can change them into their opposite. We have already become acquainted with the rule of interpretation that every element of the dream may be interpreted by its opposite, as well as by itself. One can never tell at the outset whether to set down the one or the other; only the connection can decide this point. A suspicion of this state of affairs has evidently got into popular consciousness; dream books very often proceed according to the principle of contraries in their interpretation. Such transformation into opposites is made possible by the intimate concatenation of associations, which in our thoughts finds the idea of a thing in that of its opposite. Like every other displacement this serves the purposes of the censor, but it is also often the work of the wish-fulfilment, for wish-fulfilment consists precisely in this substitution of an unwelcome thing by its opposite. The emotions of the dream thoughts may appear in the dream transformed into their opposites just as well as the ideas, and it is probable that this inversion of emotions is usually brought about by the dream censor. The suppression and inversion of affects are useful in social life, as the current analogy for the dream censor has shown us—above all, for purposes of dissimulation. If I converse with a person to whom I must show consideration while I am saying unpleasant things to him, it is almost more important that I should conceal the expression of my emotion from him, than that I modify the wording of my thoughts. If I speak to him in polite words, but accompany them by looks or gestures of hatred and disdain, the effect which I produce upon this person is not very different from what it would have been if I had recklessly thrown my contempt into his face. Above all, then, the censor bids me suppress my emotions, and if I am master of the art of dissimulation, I can hypocritically show the opposite emotion—smiling where I should like to be angry, and pretending affection where I should like to destroy.
We already know of an excellent example of such an inversion of emotion for the purposes of the dream censor. In the dream about my uncle’s beard I feel great affection for my friend R., at the same time that, and because, the dream thoughts berate him as a simpleton. We have drawn our first proof for the existence of the censor from this example of the inversion of emotions. Nor is it necessary here to assume that the dream activity creates a counter emotion of this kind out of nothing; it usually finds it lying ready in the material of the dream thoughts, and intensifies it solely with the psychic force of the resisting impulse until a point is reached where the emotion can be won over for the formation of the dream. In the dream of my uncle, just mentioned, the affectionate counter emotion has probably originated from an infantile source (as the continuation of the dream would suggest), for the relation between uncle and nephew has become the source of all my friendships and hatreds, owing to the peculiar nature of my childish experiences (cf. analysis on p. 334).
There is a class of dreams deserving the designation “hypocritical,” which puts the theory of wish-fulfilment to a severe test. My attention was called to them when Mrs. Dr. M. Hilferding brought up for discussion in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society the dream reported by Rosegger, which is reprinted below.
In Waldheimat, vol. xi., Rosegger writes as follows in his story, Fremd gemacht, p. 303:
“I have usually enjoyed healthful sleep, but I have lost the rest of many a night. With my modest existence as a student and literary man, I have for long years dragged along with me the shadow of a veritable tailor’s life, like a ghost from which I could not become separated. I cannot say that I have occupied myself so often and so vividly with thoughts of my past during the day. An assailer of heaven and earth arising from the skin of the Philistine has other things to think about. Nor did I, as a dashing young fellow, think about my nocturnal dreams; only later, when I got into the habit of thinking about everything or when the Philistine within me again asserted itself, it struck me that whenever I dreamed I was always the journeyman tailor, and was always working in my master’s shop for long hours without any remuneration. As I sat there and sewed and pressed I was quite aware that I no longer belonged there, and that as a burgess of a town I had other things to attend to; but I was for ever having vacations, and going out into the country, and it was then that I sat near my boss and assisted him. I often felt badly, and regretted the loss of time which I might spend for better and more useful purposes. If something did not come up to the measure and cut exactly, I had to submit to a reproach from the boss. Often, as I sat with my back bent in the dingy shop, I decided to give notice that I was going to quit. On one occasion I actually did so, but the boss took no notice of it, and the next time I was again sitting near him and sewing.
“How happy I was when I woke up after such weary hours! And I then resolved that, if this dream came intruding again, I would throw it off with energy and would cry aloud: ‘It is only a delusion, I am in bed, and I want to sleep.’... And the next night I would be sitting in the tailor shop again.
“Thus years passed with dismal regularity. While the boss and I were working at Alpelhofer’s, at the house of the peasant where I began my apprenticeship, it happened that he was particularly dissatisfied with my work. ‘I should like to know where in the world your thoughts are?’ cried he, and looked at me gloomily, I thought the most sensible thing for me to do would be to get up and explain to the boss that I was with him only as a favour, and then leave. But I did not do this. I submitted, however, when the boss engaged an apprentice, and ordered me to make room for him on the bench. I moved into the corner, and kept on sewing. On the same day another tailor was engaged; he was bigoted, as he was a Czech who had worked for us nineteen years before, and then had fallen into the lake on his way home from the public-house. When he tried to sit down there was no room for him. I looked at the boss inquiringly, and he said to me, ‘You have no talent for the tailoring business; you may go; you are free.’ My fright on that occasion was so overpowering that I awoke.
“The morning gray glimmered through the clear window of my beloved home. Objects of art surrounded me; in the tasteful bookcase stood the eternal Homer, the gigantic Dante, the incomparable Shakespeare, the glorious Goethe—all shining and immortal. From the adjoining room resounded the clear little voices of the children, who were waking and prattling with their mother. I felt as if I had found again that idyllically sweet, that peaceful, poetical, and spiritual life which I have so often and so deeply conceived as the contemplative fortune of mankind. And still I was vexed that I had not given my boss notice first, instead of allowing him to discharge me.
“And how remarkable it is; after the night when the boss ‘discharged me’ I enjoyed rest; I no longer dreamed of my tailoring—of this experience which lay in the remote past, which in its simplicity was really happy, and which, nevertheless, threw a long shadow over the later years of my life.”
I. In this dream, the series of the poet who, in his younger years, has been a journeyman tailor, it is hard to recognise the domination of the wish-fulfilment. All the delightful things occurred during the waking state, while the dream seemed to drag along the ghostlike shadow of an unhappy existence which had been long forgotten. My own dreams of a similar nature have put me in a position to give some explanation for such dreams. As a young doctor I for a long time worked in the chemical institute without being able to accomplish anything in that exacting science, and I therefore never think in my waking state about this unfruitful episode in my life, of which I am really ashamed. On the other hand, it has become a recurring dream with me that I am working in the laboratory, making analyses, and having experiences there, &c.; like the examination dreams, these dreams are disagreeable, and they are never very distinct. During the analysis of one of these dreams my attention was directed to the word “analysis,” which, gave me the key to an understanding of these dreams. For I had since become an “analyst.” I make analyses which are highly praised—to be sure, psychoanalyses. I then understood that when I grew proud of these analyses of the waking state, and wanted to boast how much I had accomplished thereby, the dream would hold up to me at night those other unsuccessful analyses of which I had no reason to be proud; they are the punitive dreams of the upstart, like those of the tailor who became a celebrated poet. But how is it possible for the dream to place itself at the service of self-criticism in its conflict with parvenu-pride, and to take as its content a rational warning instead of the fulfilment of a prohibitive wish? I have already mentioned that the answer to this question entails many difficulties. We may conclude that the foundation of the dream was at first formed by a phantasy of overweening ambition, but that only its suppression and its abashment reached the dream content in its stead. One should remember that there are masochistic tendencies in the psychic life to which such an inversion might be attributed. But a more thorough investigation of the individual dreams allows the recognition of still another element. In an indistinct subordinate portion of one of my laboratory dreams, I was just at the age which placed me in the most gloomy and most unsuccessful year of my professional career;
I still had no position and no means of support, when I suddenly found that I had the choice of many women whom I could marry! I was, therefore, young again, and, what is more, she was young again—the woman who has shared with me all these hard years. In this way one of the wishes which constantly frets the heart of the ageing man was revealed as the unconscious dream inciter. The struggle raging in the other psychic strata between vanity and self-criticism has certainly determined the dream content, but the more deeply-rooted wish of youth has alone made it possible as a dream. One may say to himself even in the waking state: To be sure it is very nice now, and times were once very hard; but it was nice, too, even then, you were still so young.
In considering dreams reported by a poet one may often assume that he has excluded from the report those details which he perceived as disturbing and which he considered unessential. His dreams, then, give us a riddle which could be readily solved if we had an exact reproduction of the dream content.
O. Rank has called my attention to the fact that in Grimm’s fairy tale of the valiant little tailor, or “Seven at one Stroke,” a very similar dream of an upstart is related. The tailor, who became the hero and married the king’s daughter, dreamed one night while with the princess, his wife, about his trade; the latter, becoming suspicious, ordered armed guards for the following night, who should listen to what was spoken in the dream, and who should do away with the dreamer. But the little tailor was warned, and knew enough to correct his dream.
The complex of processes—of suspension, subtraction, and
inversion—through which the affects of the dream thoughts finally become those of the dream, may well be observed in the suitable synthesis of completely analysed dreams. I shall here treat a few cases of emotional excitement in the dream which furnish examples of some of the cases discussed.
In the dream about the odd task which the elder Bruecke gives me to perform—of preparing my own pelvis—the appropriate horror is absent in the dream itself. Now this is a wish-fulfilment in various senses. Preparation signifies self-analysis, which I accomplish, as it were, by publishing my book on dreams, and which has been so disagreeable to me that I have already postponed printing the finished manuscript for more than a year. The wish is now actuated that I may disregard this feeling of opposition, and for that reason I feel no horror (Grauen, which also means to grow grey) in the dream. I should also like to escape the horror—in the other (German) sense—of growing grey; for I am already growing grey fast, and the grey in my hair warns me withal to hold back no longer. For we know that at the end of the dream the thought secures expression in that I should have to leave my children to get to the goal of their difficult journey.
In the two dreams that shift the expression of satisfaction to the moments immediately after awakening, this satisfaction is in the one case motivated by the expectation that I am now going to learn what is meant by “I have already dreamed of it,” and refers in reality to the birth of my first child, and in the other case it is motivated by the conviction that “that which has been announced by a sign” is now going to happen, and the latter satisfaction is the same which I felt at the arrival of my second son. Here the same emotions that dominated in the dream thoughts have remained in the dream, but the process is probably not so simple as this in every dream. If the two analyses are examined a little, it will be seen that this satisfaction which does not succumb to the censor receives an addition from a source which must fear the censor; and the emotion drawn from this source would certainly arouse opposition if it did not cloak itself in a similar emotion of satisfaction that is willingly admitted, if it did not, as it were, sneak in behind the other. Unfortunately, I am unable to show this in the case of the actual dream specimen, but an example from another province will make my meaning intelligible. I construct the following case: Let there be a person near me whom I hate so that a strong feeling arises in me that I should be glad if something were to happen to him. But the moral part of my nature does not yield to this sentiment; I do not dare to express this ill-wish, and when something happens to him which he does not deserve, I suppress my satisfaction at it, and force myself to expressions and thoughts of regret. Everyone will have found himself in such a position. But now let it happen that the hated person draws upon himself a well-deserved misfortune by some fault; now I may give free rein to my satisfaction that he has been visited by a just punishment, and I express opinion in the matter which coincides with that of many other people who are impartial. But I can see that my satisfaction turns out to be more intense than that of the others, for it has received an addition from another source—from my hatred, which has hitherto been prevented by the inner censor from releasing an emotion, but which is no longer prevented from doing so under the altered circumstances. This case is generally typical of society, where persons who have aroused antipathy or are adherents of an unpopular minority incur guilt.
Their punishment does not correspond to their transgression but to their transgression plus the ill-will directed against them that has hitherto been ineffective. Those who execute the punishment doubtless commit an injustice, but they are prevented from becoming aware of it by the satisfaction arising from the release within themselves of a suppression of long standing. In such cases the emotion is justified according to its quality, but not according to its quantity; and the self-criticism that has been appeased as to the one point is only too ready to neglect examination of the second point. Once you have opened the doors, more people get through than you originally intended to admit.
The striking feature of the neurotic character, that incitements capable of producing emotion bring about a result that is qualitatively justified but is quantitatively excessive, is to be explained in this manner, in so far as it admits of a psychological explanation at all. The excess is due to sources of emotion which have remained unconscious and have hitherto been suppressed, which can establish in the associations a connection with the actual incitement, and which can thus find release for its emotions through the vent which the unobjectionable and admitted source of emotion opens. Our attention is thus called to the fact that we may not consider the relation of mutual restraint as obtaining exclusively between the suppressed and the suppressing psychic judgment. The cases in which the two judgments bring about a pathological emotion by co-operation and mutual strengthening deserve just as much attention. The reader is requested to apply these hints regarding the psychic mechanism for the purpose of understanding the expressions of emotion in the dream. A satisfaction which makes its appearance in the dream, and which may readily be found at its proper place in the dream thoughts, may not always be fully explained by means of this reference. As a rule it will be necessary to search for a second source in the dream thoughts, upon which the pressure of the censor is exerted, and which under the pressure would have resulted not in satisfaction, but in the opposite emotion—which, however, is enabled by the presence of the first source to free its satisfaction affect from suppression and to reinforce the satisfaction springing from the other source. Hence emotions in the dream appear as though formed by the confluence of several tributaries, and as though over-determined in reference to the material of the dream thoughts; sources of affect which can furnish the same affect join each other in the dream activity in order to produce it.[FE]
Some insight into these tangled relations is gained from analysis of the admirable dream in which “Non vixit” constitutes the central point (cf. p. 333). The expressions of emotion in this dream, which are of different qualities, are forced together at two points in the manifest content. Hostile and painful feelings (in the dream itself we have the phrase, “seized by strange emotions”) overlap at the point where I destroy my antagonistic friend with the two words. At the end of the dream I am greatly pleased, and am quite ready to believe in a possibility which I recognise as absurd when I am awake, namely, that there are revenants who can be put out of the way by a mere wish.
I have not yet mentioned the occasion for this dream. It is an essential one, and goes a long way towards explaining it. I had received the news from my friend in Berlin (whom I have designated as F.) that he is about to undergo an operation and that relatives of his living in Vienna would give me information about his condition. The first few messages after the operation were not reassuring, and caused me anxiety. I should have liked best to go to him myself, but at that time I was affected with a painful disease which made every movement a torture for me. I learn from the dream thoughts that I feared for the life of my dear friend. I knew that his only sister, with whom I had not been acquainted, had died early after the shortest possible illness. (In the dream F. tells about his sister, and says: “In three-quarters of an hour she was dead.”) I must have imagined that his own constitution was not much stronger, and that I should soon be travelling, in spite of my health, in answer to far worse news—and that I should arrive too late, for which I should reproach myself for ever.[FF] This reproach about arriving too late has become the central point of the dream, but has been represented in a scene in which the honoured teacher of my student years—Bruecke—reproaches me for the same thing with a terrible look from his blue eyes. The cause of this deviation from the scene will soon be clear; the dream cannot reproduce the scene itself in the manner in which it occurred to me. To be sure, it leaves the blue eyes to the other man, but it gives me the part of the annihilator, an inversion which is obviously the result of the wish-fulfilment. My concern for the life of my friend, my self-reproach for not having gone to him, my shame (he had repeatedly come to me in Vienna), my desire to consider myself excused on account of my illness—all of this makes up a tempest of feeling which is distinctly felt in sleep, and which raged in every part of the dream thoughts.
But there was another thing about the occasion for the dream which had quite the opposite effect. With the unfavourable news during the first days of the operation, I also received the injunction to speak to no one about the whole affair, which hurt my feelings, for it betrayed an unnecessary distrust of my discretion. I knew, of course, that this request did not proceed from my friend, but that it was due to clumsiness or excessive timidity on the part of the messenger, but the concealed reproach made me feel very badly because it was not altogether unjustified. Only reproaches which “have something in them” have power to irritate, as everyone knows. For long before, in the case of two persons who were friendly to each other and who were willing to honour me with their friendship, I had quite needlessly tattled what the one had said about the other; to be sure this incident had nothing to do with the affairs of my friend F. Nor have I forgotten the reproaches which I had to listen to at that time. One of the two friends between whom I was the trouble-maker was Professor Fleischl; the other one I may name Joseph, a name which was also borne by my friend and antagonist P., who appears in the dream.
Two dream elements, first inconspicuously, and secondly the question of Fl. as to how much of his affairs I have mentioned to P., give evidence of the reproach that I am incapable of keeping anything to myself. But it is the admixture of these recollections which transposes the reproach for arriving too late from the present to the time when I was living in Bruecke’s laboratory; and by replacing the second person in the annihilation scene of the dream by a Joseph I succeed in representing not only the first reproach that I arrive too late, but also a second reproach, which is more rigorously suppressed, that I keep no secrets. The condensing and replacing activity of this dream, as well as the motives for it, are now obvious.
My anger at the injunction not to give anything away, originally quite insignificant, receives confirmation from sources that flow far below the surface, and so become a swollen stream of hostile feelings towards persons who are in reality dear to me. The source which furnishes the confirmation is to be found in childhood. I have already said that my friendships as well as my enmities with persons of my own age go back to my childish relations with my nephew, who was a year older than I. In these he had the upper hand, and I early learned how to defend myself; we lived together inseparably, loved each other, and at the same time, as statements of older persons testify, scuffled with and accused each other. In a certain sense all my friends are incarnations of this first figure, “which early appeared to my blurred sight”; they are all revenants. My nephew himself returned in the years of adolescence, and then we acted Cæsar and Brutus. An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable requirements for my emotional life; I have always been able to create them anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so closely approached that friend and enemy coincided in the same person, not simultaneously, of course, nor in repeated alterations, as had been the case in my first childhood years.
I do not here wish to trace the manner in which a recent occasion for emotion may reach back to one in childhood—through connections like these I have just described—in order to find a substitute for itself, in this earlier occasion for the sake of increased emotional effect. Such an investigation would belong to the psychology of the unconscious, and would find its place in a psychological explanation of neuroses. Let us assume for the purposes of dream interpretation that a childhood recollection makes its appearance or is formed by the fancy, say to the following effect: Two children get into a fight on account of some object—just what we shall leave undecided, although memory or an allusion of memory has a very definite one in mind—and each one claims that he got to it first, and that he, therefore, has first right to it. They come to blows, for might makes right; and, according to the intimation of the dream, I must have known that I was in the wrong (noticing the error myself), but this time I remain the stronger and take possession of the battlefield; the defeated combatant hurries to my father, his grandfather, and accuses me, and I defend myself with the words which I know from my father: “I hit him because he hit me.” Thus this recollection, or more probably fancy, which forces itself upon my attention in the course of the analysis—from my present knowledge I myself do not know how—becomes an intermediary of the dream thoughts that collects the emotional excitements obtaining in the dream thoughts, as the bowl of a fountain collects the streams of water flowing into it. From this point the dream thoughts flow along the following paths: “It serves you quite right if you had to vacate your place for me; why did you try to force me out of my place? I don’t need you; I’ll soon find someone else to play with,” &c. Then the ways are opened through which these thoughts again follow into the representation of the dream. For such an “ôte-toi que je m’y mette” I once had to reproach my deceased friend Joseph. He had been next to me in the line of promotion in Bruecke’s laboratory, but advancement there was very slow. Neither of the two assistants budged from his place, and youth became impatient. My friend, who knew that his time of life was limited, and who was bound by no tie to his superior, was a man seriously ill; the wish for his removal permitted an objectionable interpretation—he might be moved by something besides promotion.
Several years before, the same wish for freedom had naturally been more intense in my own case; wherever in the world there are gradations of rank and advancement, the doors are opened for wishes needing suppression. Shakespeare’s Prince Hal cannot get rid of the temptation to see how the crown fits even at the bed of his sick father. But, as may easily be understood, the dream punishes this ruthless wish not upon me but upon him.[FG]
“As he was ambitious, I slew him.” As he could not wait for the other man to make way for him, he himself has been put out of the way. I harbour these thoughts immediately after attending the unveiling of the statue to the other man at the university. A part of the satisfaction which I feel in the dream may therefore be interpreted: Just punishment; it served you right.
At the funeral of this friend a young man made the following remark, which seemed out of place: “The preacher talked as though the world couldn’t exist without this one human being.” The displeasure of the sincere man, whose sorrow has been marred by the exaggeration, begins to arise in him. But with this speech are connected the dream thoughts: “No one is really irreplaceable; how many men have I already escorted to the grave, but I am still living, I have survived them all, I claim the field.” Such a thought at the moment when I fear that when I travel to see him I shall find my friend no longer among the living, permits only of the further development that I am glad I am surviving someone, that it is not I who have died, but he—that I occupy the field as I once did in the fancied scene in childhood. This satisfaction, coming from sources in childhood, at the fact that I claim the field, covers the larger part of the emotion which appears in the dream. I am glad that I am the survivor—I express this sentiment with the naïve egotism of the husband who says to his wife: “If one of us dies, I shall move to Paris.” It is such a matter of course for my expectation that I am not to be the one.
It cannot be denied that great self-control is necessary to interpret one’s dreams and to report them. It is necessary for you to reveal yourself as the one scoundrel among all the noble souls with whom you share the breath of life. Thus, I consider it quite natural that revenants exist only as long as they are wanted, and that they can be obviated by a wish. This is the thing for which my friend Joseph has been punished. But the revenants are the successive incarnations of the friend of my childhood; I am also satisfied at the fact that I have replaced this person for myself again and again, and a substitute will doubtless soon be found even for the friend whom I am about to lose. No one is irreplaceable.
But what has the dream censor been doing meanwhile? Why does it not raise the most emphatic objection to a train of thought characterised by such brutal selfishness, and change the satisfaction that adheres to it into profound repugnance? I think it is because other unobjectionable trains of thought likewise result in satisfaction and cover the emotion coming from forbidden infantile sources with their own. In another stratum of thought I said to myself at that festive unveiling: “I have lost so many dear friends, some through death, some through the dissolution of friendship—is it not beautiful that I have found substitutes for them, that I have gained one who means more to me than the others could, whom I shall from now on always retain, at the age when it is not easy to form new friendships?” The satisfaction that I have found this substitute for lost friends can be taken over into the dream without interference, but behind it there sneaks in the inimical satisfaction from the infantile source. Childish affection undoubtedly assists in strengthening the justifiable affection of to-day; but childish hatred has also found its way into the representation.
But besides this there is distinct reference in the dream to another chain of thoughts, which may manifest itself in the form of satisfaction. My friend had shortly before had a little daughter born, after long waiting. I knew how much he had grieved for the sister whom he lost at an early age, and I wrote to him that he would transfer to this child the love he had felt for her. This little girl would at last make him forget his irreparable loss.
Thus this chain also connects with the intermediary thoughts of the latent dream content, from which the ways spread out in opposite directions: No one is irreplaceable. You see, nothing but revenants; all that one has lost comes back. And now the bonds of association between the contradictory elements of the dream thoughts are more tightly drawn by the accidental circumstance that the little daughter of my friend bears the same name as the girl playmate of my own youth, who was just my own age and the sister of my oldest friend and antagonist. I have heard the name “Pauline” with satisfaction, and in order to allude to this coincidence I have replaced one Joseph in the dream by another Joseph, and have not overlooked the similarity in sound between the names Fleischl and F. From this point a train of thought runs to the naming of my own children. I insisted that the names should not be chosen according to the fashion of the day but should be determined by regard for the memory of beloved persons. The children’s names make them “revenants.” And, finally, is not the having of children the only access to immortality for us all?
I shall add only a few remarks about the emotions of the dream from another point of view. An emotional inclination—what we call a mood—may occur in the mind of a sleeping person as its dominating element, and may induce a corresponding mood in the dream. This mood may be the result of the experiences and thoughts of the day, or it may be of somatic origin; in either case it will be accompanied by the chains of thought that correspond to it. The fact that in the one case this presentation content conditions the emotional inclination primarily, and that in the other case it is brought about secondarily by a disposition of feeling of somatic origin remains without influence upon the formation of the dream. This formation is always subject to the restriction that it can represent only a wish-fulfilment, and that it may put its psychic motive force at the service only of the wish. The mood that is actually present will receive the same treatment as the sensation which actually comes to the surface during sleep (cf. p. 198), which is either neglected or reinterpreted so as to signify a wish-fulfilment. Disagreeable moods during sleep become a motive force of the dream by actuating energetic wishes, which the dream must fulfil. The material to which they are attached is worked over until it finally becomes suitable for the expression of the fulfilled wish. The more intense and the more dominating the element of the disagreeable mood in the dream thought, the more surely will the wish-impulses that have been most rigorously suppressed take advantage of the opportunity to secure representation, for they find that the difficult part of the work necessary in securing representation has already been accomplished in that the repugnance is already actually in existence, which they would otherwise have had to produce by their own effort. With this discussion we again touch upon the problem of anxiety dreams, which we may regard as bounding the province of the dream activity.
(h) Secondary Elaboration.
We may at last proceed to an exposition of the fourth of the factors which take part in the formation of the dream.
If we continue the examination of the dream content, in the manner already outlined—that is, by testing striking occurrences as to their origin in the dream thoughts—we encounter elements which can be explained only by making an entirely new assumption. I have in mind cases where one shows astonishment, anger, or resistance in a dream, and that, too, against a party of the dream content itself. Most of these exercises of the critical faculty in dreams are not directed against the dream content, but prove to be portions of dream material which have been taken over and suitably made use of, as I have shown by fitting examples. Some things of this sort, however, cannot be disposed of in such a way; their correlative cannot be found in the dream material. What, for instance, is meant by the criticism not infrequent in dreams: “Well, it’s only a dream”? This is a genuine criticism of the dream such as I might make if I were awake. Not at all infrequently it is the forerunner to waking; still oftener it is preceded by a painful feeling, which subsides when the certainty of the dream state has been established. The thought: “But it’s only a dream,” occurring during the dream, has the same object which is meant to be conveyed on the stage through the mouth of the beautiful Helen von Offenbach; it wants to minimise what has just occurred and secure indulgence for what is to follow. Its purpose is to reassure and, so to speak, put to sleep a certain instance which at the given moment has every reason to be active and to forbid the continuation of the dream—or the scene. It is pleasanter to go on sleeping and to tolerate the dream, “because it’s only a dream anyway.” I imagine that the disparaging criticism, “But it’s only a dream,” enters into the dream at the moment when the censor, which has never been quite asleep, feels that it has been surprised by the already admitted dream. It is too late to suppress the dream, and the instance therefore carries with it that note of fear or of painful feeling which presents itself in the dream. It is an expression of the esprit d’escalier on the part of the psychic censor.
In this example we have faultless proof that not everything which the dream contains comes from the dream thoughts, but that a psychic function which cannot be differentiated from our waking thoughts may make contributions to the dream content. The question now is, does this occur only in altogether exceptional cases, or does the psychic instance which is usually active only as censor take a regular part in the formation of dreams?
One must decide unhesitatingly for the latter view. It is indisputable that the censoring instance, whose influence we have so far recognised only in limitations and omissions in the dream content, is also responsible for interpolations and amplifications in this content. Often these interpolations are easily recognised; they are reported irresolutely, prefaced by an “as if,” they are not in themselves particularly vivid, and are regularly inserted at points where they may serve to connect two portions of the dream content or improve the sequence between two sections of the dream. They manifest less ability to stick in the memory than genuine products of the dream material; if the dream is subject to forgetting, they are the first to fall away, and I am strongly inclined to believe that our frequent complaint that we have dreamed so much, that we have forgotten most of this and have remembered only fragments of it, rests on the immediate falling away of just these cementing thoughts. In a complete analysis these interpolations are often betrayed by the fact that no material is to be found for them in the dream thoughts. But after careful examination I must designate this case as a rare one; usually interpolated thoughts can be traced to an element in the dream thoughts, which, however, can claim a place in the dream neither on account of its own merit nor on account of over-determination. The psychic function in dream formation, which we are now considering, aspires to the original creations only in the most extreme cases; whenever possible, it makes use of anything available it can find in the dream material.
The thing which distinguishes and reveals this part of the dream activity is its tendency. This function proceeds in a manner similar to that which the poet spitefully attributes to the philosopher; with its scraps and rags, it stops up the breaches in the structure of the dream. The result of its effort is that the dream loses the appearance of absurdity and incoherence, and approaches the pattern of an intelligible experience. But the effort is not always crowned with complete success. Thus dreams occur which may seem faultlessly logical and correct upon superficial examination; they start from a possible situation, continue it by means of consistent changes, and end up—although this is very rare—with a not unnatural conclusion. These dreams have been subjected to the most thorough elaboration at the hands of a psychic function similar to our waking thought; they seem to have a meaning, but this meaning is very far removed from the real signification of the dream. If they are analysed, one is convinced that the secondary elaboration has distorted the material very freely, and has preserved its proper relations as little as possible. These are the dreams which have, so to speak, already been interpreted before we subject them to waking interpretation. In other dreams this purposeful elaboration has been successful only to a certain point; up to this point consistency seems to be dominant, then the dream becomes nonsensical or confused, and perhaps finally it lifts itself for a second time in its course to an appearance of rationality. In still other dreams the elaboration has failed completely; we find ourselves helpless in the presence of a senseless mass of fragmentary contents.
I do not wish to deny to this fourth dream-moulding power, which will soon seem to us a familiar one—it is in reality the only one among the four dream-moulders with which we are familiar,—I do not wish to deny this fourth factor the capability of creatively furnishing the dream with new contributions. But surely its influence, like that of the others, manifests itself preponderatingly in the preferring and choosing of already created psychic material in the dream thoughts. Now there is a case where it is spared the work, for the most part, of building, as it were, a façade to the dream, by the fact that such a structure, waiting to be used, is already to be found complete in the material of the dream thoughts. The element of the dream thoughts which I have in mind, I am in the habit of designating as a “phantasy”; perhaps I shall avoid misunderstanding if I immediately adduce the day dream of waking life as an analogy.[FH] The part played by this element in our psychic life has not yet been fully recognised and investigated by the psychiatrists; in this study M. Benedikt has, it seems to me, made a highly promising beginning. The significance of the day dream has not yet escaped the unerring insight of poets; the description of the day dreams of one of his subordinate characters which A. Daudet gives us in Nabab is universally known. A study of the psychoneuroses discloses the astonishing fact that these phantasies or day dreams are the immediate predecessors of hysterical symptoms—at least of a great many of them; hysterical symptoms directly depend not upon the memories themselves, but upon phantasies built on the basis of memories. The frequent occurrence of conscious day phantasies brings these formations within the scope of our knowledge; but just as there are such conscious phantasies, so there are a great many unconscious ones, which must remain unconscious on account of their content and on account of their origin from repressed material. A more thorough examination into the character of these day phantasies shows with what good reason the same name has been given to these formations as to the products of our nocturnal thought,—dreams. They possess an essential part of their properties in common with nocturnal dreams; an examination of them would really have afforded the shortest and best approach to an understanding of night dreams.
Like dreams, they are fulfilments of wishes; like dreams a good part of them are based upon the impressions of childish experiences; like dreams their creations enjoy a certain amount of indulgence from the censor. If we trace their formation, we see how the wish motive, which is active in their production, has taken the material of which they are built, mixed it together, rearranged it, and composed it into a new unit. They bear the same relation to the childish memories, to which they go back, as some of the quaint palaces of Rome bear to the ancient ruins, whose freestones and pillars have furnished the material for the structure built in modern form.
In the “secondary elaboration” of the dream content which we have ascribed to our fourth dream-making factor, we again find the same activity which in the creation of day dreams is allowed to manifest itself unhampered by other influences. We may say without further preliminary that this fourth factor of ours seeks to form something like a day dream from the material at hand. Where, however, such a day dream has already been formed in connection with the dream thought, this factor of the dream-work will preferably get control of it, and strive to introduce it into the dream content. There are dreams which consist merely of the repetition of such a day fancy, a fancy which has perhaps remained unconscious—as, for instance, the dream of the boy that he is riding with the heroes of the Trojan war in a war chariot. In my dream “Autodidasker,” at least the second part of the dream is the faithful repetition of a day phantasy—harmless in itself—about my dealings with Professor N. The fact that the phantasy thus provided more often forms only one part of the dream, or that only one part of the phantasy that makes its way to the dream content, has its origin in the complexity of the conditions which the dream must satisfy at its genesis. On the whole, the phantasy is treated like any other component of the latent material; still it is often recognisable in the dream as a whole. In my dreams parts often occur which are emphasized by an impression different from that of the rest. They seem to me to be in a state of flux, to be more coherent and at the same time more transient than other pieces of the same dream. I know that these are unconscious phantasies which get into the dream by virtue of their association, but I have never succeeded in registering such a phantasy. For the rest these phantasies, like all other component parts of the dream thoughts, are jumbled together and condensed, one covered up by another, and the like; but there are all degrees, from the case where they may constitute the dream content or at least the dream façade unchanged to the opposite case, where they are represented in the dream content by only one of their elements or by a remote allusion to such an element. The extent to which the phantasies are able to withstand the demands of the censor and the tendency to condensation are, of course, also decisive of their fate among the dream thoughts.
In my choice of examples for dream analysis I have, wherever possible, avoided those dreams in which unconscious fancies play a somewhat important part, because the introduction of this psychic element would have necessitated extensive discussion of the psychology of unconscious thought. But I cannot entirely omit the “phantasy” even in this matter of examples, because it often gets fully into the dream and still more often distinctly pervades it. I may mention one more dream, which seems to be composed of two distinct and opposed phantasies, overlapping each other at certain places, of which the first is superficial, while the second becomes, as it were, the interpreter of the first.[FI]
The dream—it is the only one for which I have no careful notes—is about to this effect: The dreamer—an unmarried young man—is sitting in an inn, which is seen correctly; several persons come to get him, among them someone who wants to arrest him. He says to his table companions, “I will pay later, I am coming back.” But they call to him, laughing scornfully: “We know all about that; that’s what everybody says.” One guest calls after him: “There goes another one.” He is then led to a narrow hall, where he finds a woman with a child in her arms. One of his escorts says: “That is Mr. Müller.” A commissioner or some other official is running through a bundle of tickets or papers repeating Müller, Müller, Müller. At last the commissioner asks him a question, which he answers with “Yes.” He then takes a look at the woman, and notices that she has grown a large beard.
The two component parts are here easily separated. What is superficial is the phantasy of being arrested; it seems to be newly created by the dream-work. But behind it appears the phantasy of marriage, and this material, on the contrary, has undergone but slight change at the hands of the dream activity. The features which are common to both phantasies come into distinct prominence as in a Galton’s composite photograph. The promise of the bachelor to come back to his place at the club table, the scepticism of the drinking companions, sophisticated in their many experiences, the calling after: “There goes (marries) another one,”—all these features can easily be capable of the other interpretation. Likewise the affirmative answer given to the official. Running through the bundle of papers with the repetition of the name, corresponds to a subordinate but well-recognised feature of the marriage ceremonies—the reading aloud of the congratulatory telegrams which have arrived irregularly, and which, of course, are all addressed to the same name. In the matter of the bride’s personal appearance in this dream, the marriage phantasy has even got the better of the arrest phantasy which conceals it. The fact that this bride finally displays a beard, I can explain from an inquiry—I had no chance to make an analysis. The dreamer had on the previous day crossed the street with a friend who was just as hostile to marriage as himself, and had called his friend’s attention to a beautiful brunette who was coming towards them. The friend had remarked: “Yes, if only these women wouldn’t get beards, as they grow older, like their fathers.”
Of course there is no lack of elements in this dream, on which the dream disfigurement has done more thorough work. Thus the speech: “I will pay later,” may have reference to the conduct of the father-in-law in the matter of dowry—which is uncertain. Obviously all kinds of scruples are preventing the dreamer from surrendering himself with pleasure to the phantasy of marrying. One of these apprehensions—lest one’s freedom be lost when one marries—has embodied itself in the transformation to a scene of arrest.
Let us return to the thesis that the dream activity likes to make use of a phantasy which is finished and at hand, instead of creating one afresh from the material of the dream thoughts; we shall perhaps solve one of the most interesting riddles of the dream if we keep this fact in mind. I have on page 21 related the dream of Maury,[48] who is struck on the back of the neck with a stick, and who awakes in the possession of a long dream—a complete romance from the time of the French Revolution. Since the dream is represented as coherent and as explicable by reference to the disturbing stimulus alone, about the occurrence of which stimulus the sleeper could suspect nothing, only one assumption seems to be left, namely, that the whole richly elaborated dream must have been composed and must have taken place in the short space of time between the falling of the stick on Maury’s cervical vertebra and the awakening induced by the blow. We should not feel justified in ascribing such rapidity to the waking mental activity, and so are inclined to credit the dream activity with a remarkable acceleration of thought as one of its characteristics.
Against this inference, which rapidly becomes popular, more recent authors (Le Lorrain,[45] Egger,[20] and others) have made emphatic objection. They partly doubt the correctness with which the dream was reported by Maury, and partly try to show that the rapidity of our waking mental capacity is quite as great as that which we may concede without reservation to the dream activity. The discussion raises fundamental questions, the settlement of which I do not think concerns me closely. But I must admit that the argument, for instance, of Egger has not impressed me as convincing against the guillotine dream of Maury. I would suggest the following explanation of this dream: Would it be very improbable that the dream of Maury exhibits a phantasy which had been preserved in his memory in a finished state for years, and which was awakened—I should rather say alluded to—at the moment when he became aware of the disturbing stimulus? The difficulty of composing such a long story with all its details in the exceedingly short space of time which is here at the disposal of the dreamer then disappears; the story is already composed. If the stick had struck Maury’s neck when he was awake there would perhaps have been time for the thought: “Why, that’s like being guillotined.” But as he is struck by the stick while asleep, the dream activity quickly finds occasion in the incoming stimulus to construct a wish-fulfilment, as though it thought (this is to be taken entirely figuratively): “Here is a good opportunity to realise the wish phantasy which I formed at such and such a time while I was reading.” That this dream romance is just such a one as a youth would be likely to fashion under the influence of powerful impressions does not seem questionable to me. Who would not have been carried away—especially a Frenchman and a student of the history of civilisation—by descriptions of the Reign of Terror, in which the aristocracy, men and women, the flower of the nation, showed that it was possible to die with a light heart, and preserved their quick wit and refinement of life until the fatal summons? How tempting to fancy one’s self in the midst of all this as one of the young men who parts from his lady with a kiss of the hand to climb fearlessly upon the scaffold!
Or perhaps ambition is the ruling motive of the phantasy—the ambition to put one’s self in the place of one of those powerful individuals who merely, by the force of their thinking and their fiery eloquence, rule the city in which the heart of mankind is beating so convulsively, who are impelled by conviction to send thousands of human beings to their death, and who pave the way for the transformation of Europe; who, meanwhile, are not sure of their own heads, and may one day lay them under the knife of the guillotine, perhaps in the rôle of one of the Girondists or of the hero Danton? The feature, “accompanied by an innumerable multitude,” which is preserved in the memory, seems to show that Maury’s phantasy is an ambitious one of this sort.
But this phantasy, which has for a long time been ready, need not be experienced again in sleep; it suffices if it is, so to speak, “touched off.” What I mean is this: If a few notes are struck and someone says, as in Don Juan: “That is from Figaro’s Wedding by Mozart,” memories suddenly surge up within me, none of which I can in the next moment recall to consciousness. The characteristic phrase serves as an entrance station from which a complete whole is simultaneously put in motion. It need not be different in the case of unconscious thought. The psychic station which opens the way to the whole guillotine phantasy is set in motion by the waking stimulus. This phantasy, however, is not passed in review during sleep, but only afterwards in waking memory. Upon awakening one remembers the details of the phantasy, which in the dream was regarded as a whole. There is, withal, no means of making sure that one really has remembered anything which has been dreamed. The same explanation, namely, that one is dealing with finished phantasies which have been set in motion as wholes by the waking stimulus, may be applied to still other dreams which proceed from a waking stimulus—for instance to the battle dream of Napoleon at the explosion of the bomb. I do not mean to assert that all waking dreams admit of this explanation, or that the problem of the accelerated discharge of ideas in dreams is to be altogether solved in this manner.
We must not neglect the relation of this secondary elaboration of the dream content to the other factors in the dream activity. Might the procedure be as follows: the dream-creating factors, the impulse to condense, the necessity of evading the censor, and the regard for dramatic fitness in the psychic resources of the dream—these first of all create a provisional dream content, and this is then subsequently modified until it satisfies the exactions of a second instance? This is hardly probable. It is necessary rather to assume that the demands of this instance are from the very beginning lodged in one of the conditions which the dream must satisfy, and that this condition, just like those of condensation, of censorship, and of dramatic fitness, simultaneously affect the whole mass of material in the dream thoughts in an inductive and selective manner. But of the four conditions necessary for the dream formation, the one last recognised is the one whose exactions appear to be least binding upon the dream. That this psychic function, which undertakes the so-called secondary elaboration of the dream content is identical with the work of our waking thought may be inferred with great probability from the following consideration:—Our waking (foreconscious) thought behaves towards a given object of perception just exactly as the function in question behaves towards the dream content. It is natural for our waking thought to bring about order in the material of perception, to construct relationships, and to make it subject to the requirements of an intelligible coherence. Indeed, we go too far in doing this; the tricks of prestidigitators deceive us by taking advantage of this intellectual habit. In our effort to put together the sensory impressions which are offered to us in a comprehensible manner, we often commit the most bizarre errors and even distort the truth of the material we have before us. Proofs for this are too generally familiar to need more extended consideration here. We fail to see errors in a printed page because our imagination pictures the proper words. The editor of a widely-read French paper is said to have risked the wager that he could print the words “from in front” or “from behind” in every sentence of a long article without any of his readers noticing it. He won the wager. A curious example of incorrect associations years ago caught my attention in a newspaper. After the session of the French chamber, at which Dupuy quelled a panic caused by the explosion of a bomb thrown into the hall by an anarchist by saying calmly, “La séance continue,” the visitors in the gallery were asked to testify as to their impression of the attempted assassination. Among them were two provincials. One of these told that immediately after the conclusion of a speech he had heard a detonation, but had thought that it was the custom in parliament to fire a shot whenever a speaker had finished. The other, who had apparently already heard several speakers, had got the same idea, with the variation, however, that he supposed this shooting to be a sign of appreciation following an especially successful speech.
Thus the psychic instance which approaches the dream content with the demand that it must be intelligible, which subjects it to preliminary interpretation, and in doing so brings about a complete misunderstanding of it, is no other than our normal thought. In our interpretation the rule will be in every case to disregard the apparent coherence of the dream as being of suspicious origin, and, whether the elements are clear or confused, to follow the same regressive path to the dream material.
We now learn upon what the scale of quality in dreams from confusion to clearness—mentioned above, page 305—essentially depends. Those parts of the dream with which the secondary elaboration has been able to accomplish something seem to us clear; those where the power of this activity has failed seem confused. Since the confused parts of the dream are often also those which are less vividly imprinted, we may conclude that the secondary dream-work is also responsible for a contribution to the plastic intensity of the individual dream structures.
If I were to seek an object of comparison for the definitive formation of the dream as it manifests itself under the influence of normal thinking, none better offers itself than those mysterious inscriptions with which Die Fliegende Blaetter has so long amused its readers. The reader is supposed to find a Latin inscription concealed in a given sentence which, for the sake of contrast, is in dialect and as scurrilous as possible in significance. For this purpose the letters are taken from their groupings in syllables and are newly arranged. Now and then a genuine Latin word results, at other places we think that we have abbreviations of such words before us, and at still other places in the inscription we allow ourselves to be carried along over the senselessness of the disjointed letters by the semblance of disintegrated portions or by breaks in the inscription. If we do not wish to respond to the jest we must give up looking for an inscription, must take the letters as we see them, and must compose them into words of our mother tongue, unmindful of the arrangement which is offered.
I shall now undertake a résumé of this extended discussion of the dream activity. We were confronted by the question whether the mind exerts all its capabilities to the fullest development in dream formation, or only a fragment of its capabilities, and these restricted in their activity. Our investigation leads us to reject such a formulation of the question entirely as inadequate to our circumstances. But if we are to remain on the same ground when we answer as that on which the question is urged upon us, we must acquiesce in two conceptions which are apparently opposed and mutually exclusive. The psychic activity in dream formation resolves itself into two functions—the provision of the dream thoughts and the transformation of these into the dream content. The dream thoughts are entirely correct, and are formed with all the psychic expenditure of which we are capable; they belong to our thoughts which have not become conscious, from which our thoughts which have become conscious also result by means of a certain transposition. Much as there may be about them which is worth knowing and mysterious, these problems have no particular relation to the dream, and have no claim to be treated in connection with dream problems. On the other hand, there is that second portion of the activity which changes the unconscious thoughts into the dream content, an activity peculiar to dream life and characteristic of it. Now, this peculiar dream-work is much further removed from the model of waking thought than even the most decided depreciators of psychic activity in dream formation have thought. It is not, one might say, more negligent, more incorrect, more easily forgotten, more incomplete than waking thought; it is something qualitatively altogether different from waking thought, and therefore not in any way comparable to it. It does not in general think, calculate, or judge at all, but limits itself to transforming. It can be exhaustively described if the conditions which must be satisfied at its creation are kept in mind. This product, the dream, must at any cost be withdrawn from the censor, and for this purpose the dream activity makes use of the _displacement of psychic intensities_ up to the transvaluation of all psychic values; thoughts must exclusively or predominatingly be reproduced in the material of visual and acoustic traces of memory, and this requirement secures for the dream-work the regard for presentability, which meets the requirement by furnishing new displacements. Greater intensities are (probably) to be provided than are each night at the disposal of the dream thoughts, and this purpose is served by the prolific condensation which is undertaken with the component parts of the dream thoughts. Little attention is paid to the logical relations of the thought material; they ultimately find a veiled representation in the formal peculiarities of the dream. The affects of the dream thoughts undergo lesser changes than their presentation content. As a rule they are suppressed; where they are preserved they are freed from the presentations and put together according to their similarity. Only one part of the dream-work—the revision varying in amount, made by the partially roused conscious thought—at all agrees with the conception which the authors have tried to extend to the entire activity of dream formation.
Among the dreams which I have heard from others there is one which at this point is especially worthy of our attention. It was told to me by a female patient who in turn had heard it in a lecture on dreams. Its original source is unknown to me. This dream evidently made a deep impression upon the lady, as she went so far as to imitate it, i.e. to repeat the elements of this dream in a dream of her own in order to express by this transference her agreement with it in a certain point.
The essential facts of this illustrative dream are as follows: For days and nights a father had watched at the sick-bed of his child. After the child died, he retired to rest in an adjoining room, leaving the door ajar, however, so as to enable him to look from his room into the other, where the corpse lay surrounded by burning candles. An old man, who was left as a watch, sat near the corpse murmuring prayers. After sleeping a few hours the father dreamed that the child stood near his bed clasping his arms and calling out reproachfully, “Father, don’t you see that I am burning?” The father woke and noticed a bright light coming from the adjoining room. Rushing in, he found the old man asleep, and the covers and one arm of the beloved body burned by the fallen candle.
The meaning of this affecting dream is simple enough, and the explanation given by the lecturer, as my patient reported it, was correct. The bright light coming through the open door into the eyes of the sleeper produced the same impression on him as if he had been awake; namely, that a fire had been started near the corpse by a falling candle. It is quite possible that on going to sleep he feared that the aged guardian was not equal to his task.
We can find nothing to change in this interpretation. We can add only that the contents of the dream must be over-determined, and that the talking of the child consisted of phrases that it had uttered while still living, which recalled to the father important events. Perhaps the complaint, “I am burning,” recalled the fever from which the child died, and the words quoted, “Father, don’t you see?” recalled an emotional occurrence unknown to us.
But after we have recognised the dream as a senseful occurrence which can be correlated with our psychic existence, it may be surprising that a dream should have taken place under circumstances which necessitated such immediate awakening. We also notice that the dream does not lack the wish-fulfilment. The child acts as if living; it warns the father itself; it comes to his bed and clasps his arms, as it probably did on the occasion which gave origin to the first part of the speech in the dream. It was for the sake of this wish-fulfilment that the father slept a moment longer. The dream triumphed over the conscious reflection because it could show the child once more alive. If the father had awakened first, and had then drawn the conclusion which led him into the adjoining room, he would have shortened the child’s life by this one moment.
The peculiar feature in this brief dream which engages our interest is quite plain. So far we have mainly endeavoured to ascertain wherein the secret meaning of the dream consists, in what way this is to be discovered, and what means the dream-work uses to conceal it. In other words, our greatest interest has hitherto centred on the problems of interpretation. We now encounter a dream, however, which can be easily explained, the sense of which is plainly presented; and we notice that in spite of this fact the dream still preserves the essential features which plainly differentiate our dreaming from our conscious thinking, and thus clearly demands an explanation. After clearing up all the problems of interpretation, we can still feel how imperfect our psychology of the dream is.
Before entering, however, into this new territory, let us stop and reflect whether we have not missed something important on our way hither. For it must be frankly admitted that we have been traversing the easy and comfortable part of our journey. Hitherto all the paths we have followed have led, if I mistake not, to light, to explication, and to full understanding, but from the moment that we wish to penetrate deeper into the psychic processes of the dream all paths lead into darkness. It is quite impossible to explain the dream as a psychic process, for to explain means to trace to the known, and as yet we do not possess any psychological knowledge under which we can range what may be inferred from our psychological investigation of dreams as their fundamental explanation. On the contrary, we shall be compelled to build a series of new assumptions concerning the structure of the psychic apparatus and its active forces; and this we shall have to be careful not to carry beyond the simplest logical concatenation, as its value may otherwise merge into uncertainty. And, even if we should make no mistake in our conclusions, and take cognisance of all the logical possibilities involved, we shall still be threatened with complete failure in our solution through the probable incompleteness of our elemental data. It will also be impossible to gain, or at least to establish, an explanation for the construction and workings of the psychic instrument even through a most careful investigation of the dream or any other single activity. On the contrary, it will be necessary for this end to bring together whatever appears decisively as constant after a comparative study of a whole series of psychic activities. Thus the psychological conceptions which we shall gain from an analysis of the dream process will have to wait, as it were, at the junction point until they can be connected with the results of other investigations which may have advanced to the nucleus of the same problem from another starting point.
(a) Forgetting in Dreams.
I propose, then, first, to turn to a subject which has given rise to an objection hitherto unnoticed, threatening to undermine the foundation of our work in dream interpretation. It has been objected in more than one quarter that the dream which we wish to interpret is really unknown to us, or, to be more precise, that we have no assurance of knowing it as it has really occurred (see p. 37). What we recollect of the dream, and what we subject to our methods of interpretation, is in the first place disfigured through our treacherous memory, which seems particularly unfitted to retain the dream, and which may have omitted precisely the most important part of the dream content. For, when we pay attention to our dreams, we often find cause to complain that we have dreamed much more than we remember; that, unfortunately, we know nothing more than this one fragment, and that even this seems to us peculiarly uncertain. On the other hand, everything assures us that our memory reproduces the dream not only fragmentarily but also delusively and falsely. Just as on the one hand we may doubt whether the material dreamt was really as disconnected and confused as we remember it, so on the other hand may we doubt whether a dream was as connected as we relate it; whether in the attempt at reproduction we have not filled in the gaps existing or caused by forgetfulness with new material arbitrarily chosen; whether we have not embellished, rounded off, and prepared the dream so that all judgment as to its real content becomes impossible. Indeed, one author (Spitta[64]) has expressed his belief that all that is orderly and connected is really first put into the dream during our attempt to recall it. Thus we are in danger of having wrested from our hands the very subject whose value we have undertaken to determine.
In our dream interpretations we have thus far ignored these warnings. Indeed, the demand for interpretation was, on the contrary, found to be no less perceptible in the smallest, most insignificant, and most uncertain ingredients of the dream content than in those containing the distinct and definite parts. In the dream of Irma’s injection we read, “I quickly called in Dr. M.,” and we assumed that even this small addendum would not have gotten into the dream if it had not had a special derivation. Thus we reached the history of that unfortunate patient to whose bed I “quickly” called in the older colleague. In the apparently absurd dream which treated the difference between 51 and 56 as quantité négligé, the number 51 was repeatedly mentioned. Instead of finding this self-evident or indifferent, we inferred from it a second train of thought in the latent content of the dream which led to the number 51. By following up this clue we came to the fears which placed 51 years as a limit of life, this being in most marked contrast to a dominant train of thought which boastfully knew no limit to life. In the dream “Non Vixit” I found, as an insignificant interposition that I at first overlooked, the sentence, “As P. does not understand him, Fl. asks me,” &c. The interpretation then coming to a standstill, I returned to these words, and found through them the way to the infantile phantasy, which appeared in the dream thoughts as an intermediary point of junction. This came about by means of the poet’s verses:
Seldom have you understood me,
Seldom have I understood you,
But when we got into the mire,
We at once understood each other.
Every analysis will demonstrate by examples how the most insignificant features of the dream are indispensable to the analysis, and how the finishing of the task is delayed by the fact that attention is not at first directed to them. In the same way we have in the interpretation of dreams respected every nuance of verbal expression found in the dream; indeed, if we were confronted by a senseless or insufficient wording betraying an unsuccessful effort to translate the dream in the proper style, we have even respected these defects of expression. In brief, what the authorities have considered arbitrary improvisation, concocted hastily to suit the occasion, we have treated like a sacred text. This contradiction requires an explanation.
It is in our favour, without disparagement to the authorities. From the viewpoint of our newly-acquired understanding concerning the origin of the dream, the contradictions fall into perfect agreement. It is true that we distort the dream in our attempt to reproduce it; and herein we find another instance of what we have designated as the often misunderstood secondary elaboration of the dream through the influence of normal thinking. But this distortion is itself only a part of the elaboration to which the dream thoughts are regularly subjected by virtue of the dream censor. The authorities have here divined or observed that part of the dream distortion most obviously at work; to us this is of little importance, for we know that a more prolific work of distortion, not so easily comprehensible, has already chosen the dream from among the concealed thoughts as its object. The authorities err only in considering the modifications of the dream while it is being recalled and put in words as arbitrary and insoluble; and hence, as likely to mislead us in the interpretation of the dream. We over-estimate the determination of the psychic. There is nothing arbitrary in this field. It can quite generally be shown that a second train of thought immediately undertakes the determination of the elements which have been left undetermined by the first. I wish, e.g., to think quite voluntarily of a number. This, however, is impossible. The number that occurs to me is definitely and necessarily determined by thoughts within me which may be far from my momentary intention.[FJ] Just as far from arbitrary are the modifications which the dream experiences through the revision of the waking state. They remain in associative connection with the content, the place of which they take, and serve to show us the way to this content, which may itself be the substitute for another.
In the analysis of dreams with patients I am accustomed to institute the following proof of this assertion, which has never proved unsuccessful. If the report of a dream appears to me at first difficult to understand, I request the dreamer to repeat it. This he rarely does in the same words. The passages wherein the expression is changed have become known to me as the weak points of the dream’s disguise, which are of the same service to me as the embroidered mark on Siegfried’s raiment was to Hagen. The analysis may start from these points. The narrator has been admonished by my announcement that I mean to take special pains to solve the dream, and immediately, under the impulse of resistance, he protects the weak points of the dream’s disguise, replacing the treacherous expressions by remoter ones. He thus calls my attention to the expressions he has dropped. From the efforts made to guard against the solution of the dream, I can also draw conclusions as to the care with which the dream’s raiment was woven.
The authors are, however, less justified in giving so much importance to the doubt which our judgment encounters in relating the dream. It is true that this doubt betrays the lack of an intellectual assurance, but our memory really knows no guarantees, and yet, much more often than is objectively justified, we yield to the pressure of lending credence to its statements. The doubt concerning the correct representation of the dream, or of its individual data, is again only an offshoot of the dream censor—that is, of the resistance against penetration to consciousness of the dream thoughts. This resistance has not entirely exhausted itself in bringing about the displacements and substitutions, and it therefore adheres as doubt to what has been allowed to pass through. We can recognise this doubt all the easier through the fact that it takes care not to attack the intensive elements of the dream, but only the weak and indistinct ones. For we already know that a transvaluation of all the psychic values has taken place between the dream thoughts and the dream. The disfigurement has been made possible only by the alteration of values; it regularly manifests itself in this way and occasionally contents itself with this. If doubt attaches to an indistinct element of the dream content, we may, following the hint, recognise in this element a direct offshoot of one of the outlawed dream thoughts. It is here just as it was after a great revolution in one of the republics of antiquity or of the Renaissance. The former noble and powerful ruling families are now banished; all high positions are filled by upstarts; in the city itself only the very poor and powerless citizens or the distant followers of the vanquished party are tolerated. Even they do not enjoy the full rights of citizenship. They are suspiciously watched. Instead of the suspicion in the comparison, we have in our case the doubt. I therefore insist that in the analysis of dreams one should emancipate one’s self from the entire conception of estimating trustworthiness, and when there is the slightest possibility that this or that occurred in the dream, it should be treated as a full certainty. Until one has decided to reject these considerations in tracing the dream elements, the analysis will remain at a standstill. Antipathy toward the element concerned shows its psychic effect in the person analysed by the fact that the undesirable idea will evoke no thought in his mind. Such effect is really not self-evident. It would not be inconsistent if one would say: “Whether this or that was contained in the dream I do not know, but the following thoughts occur to me in this direction.”
But he never expresses himself thus; and it is just this disturbing influence of doubt in the analysis that stamps it as an offshoot and instrument of the psychic resistance. Psychoanalysis is justly suspicious. One of its rules reads: Whatever disturbs the continuation of the work is a resistance.
The forgetting of dreams, too, remains unfathomable as long as we do not consider the force of the psychic censor in its explanation. The feeling, indeed, that one has dreamt a great deal during the night and has retained only a little of it may have another meaning in a number of cases. It may perhaps signify that the dream-work has continued perceptibly throughout the night, and has left behind only this short dream. There is, however, no doubt of the fact that the dream is progressively forgotten on awakening. One often forgets it in spite of painful effort to remember. I believe, however, that just as one generally over-estimates the extent of one’s forgetting, so also one over-estimates the deficiencies in one’s knowledge, judging them by the gaps occurring in the dream. All that has been lost through forgetting in a dream content can often be brought back through analysis. At least, in a whole series of cases, it is possible to discover from one single remaining fragment, not the dream, to be sure, which is of little importance, but all the thoughts of the dream. It requires a greater expenditure of attention and self-control in the analysis; that is all. But, at the same time, this suggests that the forgetting of the dream does not lack a hostile intention.
A convincing proof of the purposeful nature of dream-forgetting, in the service of resistance, is gained in analysis through the investigation of a preliminary stage of forgetting.[FK] It often happens that in the midst of interpretation work an omitted fragment of the dream suddenly comes to the surface. This part of the dream snatched from forgetfulness is always the most important part. It lies on the shortest road toward the solution of the dream, and for that very reason it was most objectionable to the resistance. Among the examples of dreams that I have collected in connection with this treatise, it once happened that I had to interpose subsequently such a piece of dream content. It was a travelling dream, which took vengeance upon an unlovable female travelling companion; I have left it almost entirely uninterpreted on account of its being in part coarse and nasty. The part omitted read: “I said about a book by Schiller, ‘It is from ——’ but corrected myself, for I noticed the mistake myself, ‘It is by.’ Upon this the man remarked to his sister, ‘Indeed, he said it correctly.’”
The self-correction in dreams, which seems so wonderful to some authors, does not merit consideration by us. I shall rather show from my own memory the model for the grammatical error in the dream. I was nineteen years old when I visited England for the first time, and spent a day on the shore of the Irish Sea. I naturally amused myself by catching the sea animals left by the waves, and occupied myself in particular with a starfish (the dream begins with Hollthurn—Holothurian), when a pretty little girl came over to me and asked me, “Is it a starfish? Is it alive?” I answered, “Yes, he is alive,” but was then ashamed of my mistake and repeated the sentence correctly. For the grammatical mistake which I then made, the dream substitutes another which is quite common with Germans. “Das Buch ist von Schiller” should not be translated by the book is from, but the book is by. That the dream-work produces this substitution because the word from makes possible, through consonance, a remarkable condensation with the German adjective fromm (pious, devout), no longer surprises us after all that we have heard about the aims of the dream-work and about its reckless selection of means of procedure. But what is the meaning of the harmless recollection of the seashore in relation to the dream? It explains by means of a very innocent example that I have used the wrong gender—i.e. that I have put “he,” the word denoting the sex or the sexual, where it does not belong. This is surely one of the keys to the solution of dreams. Who ever has heard of the origin of the book-title Matter and Motion (Molière in Malade Imaginaire: La matière est-elle laudable?—A motion of the bowels) will readily be able to supply the missing parts.
Moreover, I can prove conclusively by a demonstratio ad oculos that the forgetting in dreams is in great part due to the activity of resistance. A patient tells me that he has dreamed, but that the dream has vanished without leaving a trace, as if nothing had happened. We continue to work, however; I strike a resistance which I make plain to the patient; by encouraging and urging I help him to become reconciled to some disagreeable thought; and as soon as I have succeeded he exclaims, “Now, I can recall what I have dreamed.” The same resistance which that day disturbed him in the work caused him also to forget the dream. By overcoming this resistance, I brought the dream to memory.
In the same way the patient may, on reaching a certain part of the work, recall a dream which took place three, four, or more days before, and which has rested in oblivion throughout all this time.
Psychoanalytic experience has furnished us with another proof of the fact that the forgetting of dreams depends more on the resistance than on the strangeness existing between the waking and sleeping states, as the authorities have believed. It often happens to me, as well as to the other analysts and to patients under treatment, that we are awakened from sleep by a dream, as we would say, and immediately thereafter, while in full possession of our mental activity, we begin to interpret the dream. In such cases I have often not rested until I gained a full understanding of the dream, and still it would happen that after the awakening I have just as completely forgotten the interpretation work as the dream content itself, though I was aware that I had dreamed and that I had interpreted the dream. The dream has more frequently taken along into forgetfulness the result of the interpretation work than it was possible for the mental activity to retain the dream in memory. But between this interpretation work and the waking thoughts there is not that psychic gap through which alone the authorities wish to explain the forgetting of dreams. Morton Prince objects to my explanation of the forgetting of dreams on the ground that it is only a particular example of amnesia for dissociated states, and that the impossibility of harmonising my theory with other types of amnesia makes it also valueless for other purposes. He thus makes the reader suspect that in all his description of such dissociated states he has never made the attempt to find the dynamic explanation for these phenomena. For, had he done so, he surely would have discovered that the repression and the resistance produced thereby “is quite as well the cause of this dissociation as of the amnesia for its psychic content.”
That the dream is as little forgotten as the other psychic acts, and that it clings to memory just as firmly as the other psychic activities was demonstrated to me by an experiment which I was able to make while compiling this manuscript. I have kept in my notes many dreams of my own which, for some reason at the time I could analyse only imperfectly or not at all. In order to get material to illustrate my assertions, I attempted to subject some of them to analysis from one to two years later. I succeeded in this attempt without any exception. Indeed, I may even state that the interpretation went more easily at this later time than at the time when the dreams were recent occurrences. As a possible explanation for this fact, I would say that I had gotten over some of the resistances which disturbed me at the time of dreaming. In such subsequent interpretations I have compared the past results in dream thoughts with the present, which have usually been more abundant, and have invariably found the past results falling under the present without change. I have, however, soon put an end to my surprise by recalling that I have long been accustomed to interpret dreams from former years which have occasionally been related to me by patients as if they were dreams of the night before, with the same method and the same success. I shall report two examples of such delayed dream interpretations in the discussion of anxiety dreams. When I instituted this experiment for the first time, I justly expected that the dream would behave in this respect like a neurotic symptom. For when I treat a neurotic, perhaps an hysteric, by psychoanalysis, I am compelled to find explanations for the first symptoms of the disease which have long been forgotten, just as for those still existing which have brought the patient to me; and I find the former problem easier to solve than the more exigent one of to-day. In the Studien über Hysterie, published as early as 1895, I was able to report the explanation of a first hysterical attack of anxiety which the patient, a woman over forty years of age, had experienced in her fifteenth year.[FL]
I may now proceed in an informal way to some further observations on the interpretation of dreams, which will perhaps be of service to the reader who wishes to test my assertion by the analysis of his own dreams.
No one must expect that the interpretations of his dreams will come to him overnight without any exertion. Practice is required even for the perception of endoptic phenomena and other sensations usually withdrawn from attention, although this group of perceptions is not opposed by any psychic motive. It is considerably more difficult to become master of the “undesirable presentations.” He who wishes to do this will have to fulfil the requirements laid down in this treatise. Obeying the rules here given, he will strive during the work to curb in himself every critique, every prejudice, and every affective or intellectual one-sidedness. We will always be mindful of the precept of Claude Bernard for the experimenter in the physiological laboratory—“Travailler comme une bête”—meaning he should be just as persistent, but also just as unconcerned about the results. He who will follow these counsels will surely no longer find the task difficult. The interpretation of a dream cannot always be accomplished in one session; you often feel, after following up a concatenation of thoughts, that your working capacity is exhausted; the dream will not tell you anything more on that day; it is then best to break off, and return to the work the following day. Another portion of the dream content then solicits your attention, and you thus find an opening to a new stratum of the dream thoughts. We may call this the “fractionary” interpretation of dreams.
It is most difficult to induce the beginner in the interpretation of dreams to recognise the fact that his task is not finished though he is in possession of a complete interpretation of the dream which is ingenious and connected, and which explains all the elements of the dream. Besides this another superimposed interpretation of the same dream may be possible which has escaped him. It is really not simple to form an idea of the abundant unconscious streams of thought striving for expression in our minds, and to believe in the skilfulness displayed by the dream-work in hitting, so to speak, with its ambiguous manner of expression, seven flies with one stroke, like the journeyman tailor in the fairy tale. The reader will constantly be inclined to reproach the author for uselessly squandering his ingenuity, but anyone who has had experience of his own will learn to know better.
The question whether every dream can be interpreted may be answered in the negative. One must not forget that in the work of interpretation one must cope with the psychic forces which are responsible for the distortion of the dream. Whether one can become master of the inner resistances through his intellectual interest, his capacity for self-control, his psychological knowledge, and his practice in dream interpretation becomes a question of the preponderance of forces. It is always possible to make some progress. One can at least go far enough to become convinced that the dream is an ingenious construction, generally far enough to gain an idea of its meaning. It happens very often that a second dream confirms and continues the interpretation assumed for the first. A whole series of dreams running for weeks or months rests on a common basis, and is therefore to be interpreted in connection. In dreams following each other, it may be often observed how one takes as its central point what is indicated only as the periphery of the next, or it is just the other way, so that the two supplement each other in interpretation. That the different dreams of the same night are quite regularly in the interpretation to be treated as a whole I have already shown by examples.
In the best interpreted dreams we must often leave one portion in obscurity because we observe in the interpretation that it represents the beginning of a tangle of dream thoughts which cannot be unravelled but which has furnished no new contribution to the dream content. This, then, is the keystone of the dream, the place at which it mounts into the unknown. For the dream thoughts which we come upon in the interpretation must generally remain without a termination, and merge in all directions into the net-like entanglement of our world of thoughts. It is from some denser portion of this texture that the dream-wish then arises like the mushroom from its mycelium.
Let us now return to the facts of dream-forgetting, as we have really neglected to draw an important conclusion from them. If the waking life shows an unmistakable intention to forget the dream formed at night, either as a whole, immediately after awakening, or in fragments during the course of the day, and if we recognise as the chief participator in this forgetting the psychic resistance against the dream which has already performed its part in opposing the dream at night—then the question arises, What has the dream formation actually accomplished against this resistance? Let us consider the most striking case in which the waking life has done away with the dream as though it had never happened. If we take into consideration the play of the psychic forces, we are forced to assert that the dream would have never come into existence had the resistance held sway during the night as during the day. We conclude then, that the resistance loses a part of its force during the night; we know that it has not been extinguished, as we have demonstrated its interest in the dream formation in the production of the distortion. We have, then, forced upon us the possibility that it abates at night, that the dream formation has become possible with this diminution of the resistance, and we thus readily understand that, having regained its full power with the awakening, it immediately sets aside what it was forced to admit as long as it was in abeyance. Descriptive psychology teaches us that the chief determinant in dream formation is the dormant state of the mind. We may now add the following elucidation: The sleeping state makes dream formation possible by diminishing the endopsychic censor.
We are certainly tempted to look upon this conclusion as the only one possible from the facts of dream-forgetting, and to develop from it further deductions concerning the proportions of energy in the sleeping and waking states. But we shall stop here for the present. When we have penetrated somewhat deeper into the psychology of the dream we shall find that the origin of the dream formation may be differently conceived. The resistance operating to prevent the dream thoughts coming to consciousness may perhaps be eluded without suffering diminution per se. It is also plausible that both the factors favourable to dream formation, the diminution as well as the eluding of the resistance, may be made possible simultaneously through the sleeping state. But we shall pause here, and continue this line of thought later.
There is another series of objections against our procedure in the dream interpretation which we must now consider. In this interpretation we proceed by dropping all the end-presentations which otherwise control reflection, we direct our attention to an individual element of the dream, and then note the unwished-for thoughts that occur to us in this connection. We then take up the next component of the dream content, and repeat the operation with it; and, without caring in what direction the thoughts take us, we allow ourselves to be led on by them until we end by rambling from one subject to another. At the same time, we harbour the confident hope that we may in the end, without effort, come upon the dream thoughts from which our dream originated. Against this the critic brings the following objection: That one can arrive somewhere, starting from a single element in the dream is nothing wonderful. Something can be associatively connected with every idea. It is remarkable only that one should succeed in hitting the dream thoughts in this aimless and arbitrary excursion of thought. It is probably a self-deception; the investigator follows the chain of association from one element until for some reason it is seen to break, when a second element is taken up; it is thus but natural that the association, originally unbounded, should now experience a narrowing. He keeps in mind the former chain of associations, and he will therefore in analysis more easily hit upon certain thoughts which have something in common with the thoughts from the first chain. He then imagines that he has found a thought which represents a point of junction between two elements of the dream. As he, moreover, allows himself every freedom of thought connection, excepting only the transitions from one idea to another which are made in normal thinking, it is not finally difficult for him to concoct something which he calls the dream thought out of a series of “intermediary thoughts”; and without any guarantee, as they are otherwise unknown, he palms these off as the psychic equivalent of the dream. But all this is accompanied by arbitrary procedure and over-ingenious exploitation of coincidence. Anyone who will go to this useless trouble can in this way work out any desired interpretation for any dream whatever.
If such objections are really advanced against us, we may refer in our defence to the agreement of our dream interpretations, to the surprising connections with other dream elements which appear in following out the different particular presentations, and to the improbability that anything which so perfectly covers and explains the dream as our dream interpretations do could be gained otherwise than by following psychic connections previously established. We can also justify ourselves by the fact that the method of dream analysis is identical with the method used in the solution of hysterical symptoms, where the correctness of the method is attested through the emergence and fading away of the symptoms—that is, where the elucidation of the text by the interposed illustrations finds corroboration. But we have no object in avoiding this problem—how one can reach to a pre-established aim by following a chain of thoughts spun out thus arbitrarily and aimlessly—for, though we are unable to solve the problem, we can get rid of it entirely.
It is in fact demonstrably incorrect to state that we abandon ourselves to an aimless course of thought when, as in the interpretation of dreams, we relinquish our reflection and allow the unwished-for idea to come to the surface. It can be shown that we can reject only those end-presentations that are familiar to us, and that as soon as these stop the unknown, or, as we say more precisely, the unconscious end-presentations, immediately come into play, which now determined the course of the unwished-for presentations. A mode of thinking without end-idea can surely not be brought about through any influence we can exert on our own mental life; nor do I know either of any state of psychic derangement in which such mode of thought establishes itself. The psychiatrists have in this field much too early rejected the solidity of the psychic structure. I have ascertained that an unregulated stream of thoughts, devoid of the end-presentation, occurs as little in the realm of hysteria and paranoia as in the formation or solution of dreams. Perhaps it does not appear at all in the endogenous psychic affections, but even the deliria of confused states are senseful according to the ingenious theory of Leuret and become incomprehensible to us only through omissions. I have come to the same conviction wherever I have found opportunity for observation. The deliria are the work of a censor which no longer makes any effort to conceal its sway, which, instead of lending its support to a revision no longer obnoxious to it, cancels regardlessly that which it raises objections against, thus causing the remnant to appear disconnected. This censor behaves analogously to the Russian newspaper censor on the frontier, who allows to fall into the hands of his protected readers only those foreign journals that have passed under the black pencil.
The free play of the presentations following any associative concatenation perhaps makes its appearance in destructive organic brain lesions. What, however, is taken as such in the psychoneuroses can always be explained as the influence of the censor on a series of thoughts which have been pushed into the foreground by the concealed end-presentation.[FM] It has been considered an unmistakable sign of association free from the end-presentations when the emerging presentations (or pictures) were connected with one another by means of the so-called superficial associations—that is, by assonance, word ambiguity, and causal connection without inner sense relationship; in other words, when they were connected through all those associations which we allow ourselves to make use of in wit and play upon words. This distinguishing mark proves true for the connections of thought which lead us from the elements of the dream content to the collaterals, and from these to the thoughts of the dream proper; of this we have in our dream analysis found many surprising examples. No connection was there too loose and no wit too objectionable to serve as a bridge from one thought to another. But the correct understanding of such tolerance is not remote. _Whenever one psychic element is connected with another through an obnoxious or superficial association, there also exists a correct and more profound connection between the two which succumbs to the resistance of the censor._
The correct explanation for the predominance of the superficial associations is the pressure of the censor, and not the suppression of the end-presentations. The superficial associations supplant the deep ones in the presentation whenever the censor renders the normal connective paths impassable. It is as if in a mountainous region a general interruption of traffic, e.g., an inundation, should render impassable the long and broad thoroughfares; traffic would then have to be maintained through inconvenient and steep footpaths otherwise used only by the hunter.
We can here distinguish two cases which, however, are essentially one. In the first case the censor is directed only against the connection of the two thoughts, which, having been detached from each other, escape the opposition. The two thoughts then enter successively into consciousness; their connection remains concealed; but in its place there occurs to us a superficial connection between the two which we would not otherwise have thought of, and which as a rule connects with another angle of the presentation complex instead of with the one giving rise to the suppressed but essential connection. Or, in the second case, both thoughts on account of their content succumb to the censor; both then appear not in their correct but in a modified substituted form; and both substituted thoughts are so selected that they represent, through a superficial association, the essential relation which existed between those which have been replaced by them. Under the pressure of the censor the displacement of a normal and vital association by a superficial and apparently absurd one has thus occurred in both cases.
Because we know of this displacement we unhesitatingly place reliance even upon superficial associations in the dream analysis.[FN]
The psychoanalysis of neurotics makes prolific use of the two axioms, first that with the abandonment of the conscious end-presentation the domination of the train of presentation is transferred to the concealed end-presentations; and, secondly, that superficial associations are only a substitutive displacement for suppressed and more profound ones; indeed, psychoanalysis raises these two axioms to pillars of its technique. When I request a patient to dismiss all reflection, and to report to me whatever comes into his mind, I firmly cling to the presupposition that he will not be able to drop the end-idea of the treatment, and I feel justified in concluding that what he reports, even though seemingly most harmless and arbitrary, has connection with this morbid state. My own personality is another end-presentation concerning which the patient has no inkling. The full appreciation, as well as the detailed proof of both these explanations, belongs accordingly to the description of the psychoanalytic technique as a therapeutic method. We have here reached one of the allied subjects with which we propose to leave the subject of the interpretation of dreams.[FO]
Of all the objections only one is correct, and still remains, namely, that we ought not to ascribe all mental occurrences of the interpretation work to the nocturnal dream-work. In the interpretation in the waking state we are making a road running from the dream elements back to the dream thoughts. The dream-work has made its way in the opposite direction, and it is not at all probable that these roads are equally passable in the opposite directions. It has, on the contrary, been shown that during the day, by means of new thought connections we make paths which strike the intermediate thoughts and the dream thoughts in different places. We can see how the recent thought material of the day takes its place in the groups of the interpretation, and probably also forces the additional resistance appearing through the night to make new and further detours. But the number and form of the collaterals which we thus spin during the day is psychologically perfectly negligible if it only leads the way to the desired dream thoughts.
(b) Regression.
Now that we have guarded against objection, or at least indicated where our weapons for defence rest, we need no longer delay entering upon the psychological investigations for which we have so long prepared. Let us bring together the main results of our investigations up to this point. The dream is a momentous psychic act; its motive power is at all times to fulfil a wish; its indiscernibleness as a wish and its many peculiarities and absurdities are due to the influence of the psychic censor to which it has been subjected during its formation. Apart from the pressure to withdraw itself from this censor, the following have played a part in its formation: a strong tendency to the condensation of psychic material, a consideration for dramatisation into mental pictures, and (though not regularly) a consideration for a rational and intelligible exterior in the dream structure. From every one of these propositions the road leads further to psychological postulates and assumptions. Thus the reciprocal relation of the wish motives and the four conditions, as well as the relations of these conditions to one another will have to be investigated; and the dream will have to be brought into association with the psychic life.
At the beginning of this chapter we cited a dream in order to remind us of the riddles that are still unsolved. The interpretation of this dream of the burning child afforded us no difficulties, although it was not perfectly given in our present sense. We asked ourselves why it was necessary, after all, that the father should dream instead of awakening, and we recognised the wish to represent the child as living as the single motive of the dream. That there was still another wish playing a part in this connection, we shall be able to show after later discussions. For the present, therefore, we may say that for the sake of the wish-fulfilment the mental process of sleep was transformed into a dream.
If the wish realisation is made retrogressive, only one quality still remains which separates the two forms of psychic occurrences from each other. The dream thought might have read: “I see a glimmer coming from the room in which the corpse reposes. Perhaps a candle has been upset, and the child is burning!” The dream reports the result of this reflection unchanged, but represents it in a situation which takes place in the present, and which is conceivable by the senses like an experience in the waking state. This, however, is the most common and the most striking psychological character of the dream; a thought, usually the one wished for, is in the dream made objective and represented as a scene, or, according to our belief, as experienced.
But how are we now to explain this characteristic peculiarity of the dream-work, or, to speak more modestly, how are we to bring it into relation with the psychic processes?
On closer examination, it is plainly seen that there are two pronounced characters in the manifestations of the dream which are almost independent of each other. The one is the representation as a present situation with the omission of the “perhaps”; the other is the transformation of the thought into visual pictures and into speech.
The transformation in the dream thoughts, which shifts into the present the expectation expressed in them, is perhaps in this particular dream not so very striking. This is probably in consonance with the special or rather subsidiary rôle of the wish-fulfilment in this dream. Let us take another dream in which the dream-wish does not separate itself in sleep from a continuation of the waking thoughts, e.g., the dream of Irma’s injection. Here the dream thought reaching representation is in the optative, “If Otto could only be blamed for Irma’s sickness!” The dream suppresses the optative, and replaces it by a simple present, “Yes, Otto is to blame for Irma’s sickness.” This is therefore the first of the changes which even the undistorted dream undertakes with the dream thought. But we shall not stop long at this first peculiarity of the dream. We elucidate it by a reference to the conscious phantasy, the day dream, which behaves similarly with its presentation content. When Daudet’s Mr. Joyeuse wanders through the streets of Paris unemployed while his daughter is led to believe that he has a position and is in his office, he likewise dreams in the present of circumstances that might help him to obtain protection and a position. The dream therefore employs the present in the same manner and with the same right as the day dream. The present is the tense in which the wish is represented as fulfilled.
The second quality, however, is peculiar to the dream as distinguished from the day dream, namely, that the presentation content is not thought, but changed into perceptible images to which we give credence and which we believe we experience. Let us add, however, that not all dreams show this transformation of presentation into perceptible images. There are dreams which consist solely of thoughts to which we cannot, however, on that account deny the substantiality of dreams. My dream “Autodidasker—the waking phantasy with Professor N.”—is of that nature; it contains hardly more perceptible elements than if I had thought its content during the day. Moreover, every long dream contains elements which have not experienced the transformation into the perceptible, and which are simply thought or known as we are wont to think or know in our waking state. We may also recall here that such transformation of ideas into perceptible images does not occur in dreams only but also in hallucinations and visions which perhaps appear spontaneously in health or as symptoms in the psychoneuroses. In brief, the relation which we are investigating here is in no way an exclusive one; the fact remains, however, that where this character of the dream occurs, it appears to us as the most noteworthy, so that we cannot think of it apart from the dream life. Its explanation, however, requires a very detailed discussion.
Among all the observations on the theory of dreams to be found in authorities on the subject, I should like to lay stress upon one as being worth mentioning. The great G. T. Fechner[35] expresses his belief (Psychophysik, Part II., p. 520), in connection with some discussion devoted to the dream, that the seat of the dream is elsewhere than in the waking ideation. No other theory enables us to conceive the special qualities of the dream life.
The idea which is placed at our disposal is one of psychic locality. We shall entirely ignore the fact that the psychic apparatus with which we are here dealing is also familiar to us as an anatomical specimen, and we shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine the psychic locality in any way anatomically. We shall remain on psychological ground, and we shall think ourselves called upon only to conceive the instrument which serves the psychic activities somewhat after the manner of a compound microscope, a photographic or other similar apparatus. The psychic locality, then, corresponds to a place within such an apparatus in which one of the primary elements of the picture comes into existence. As is well known, there are in the microscope and telescope partly fanciful locations or regions in which no tangible portion of the apparatus is located. I think it superfluous to apologise for the imperfections of this and all similar figures. These comparisons are designed only to assist us in our attempt to make clear the complication of the psychic activity by breaking up this activity and referring the single activities to the single component parts of the apparatus. No one, so far as I know, has ever ventured to attempt to discover the composition of the psychic instrument through such analysis. I see no harm in such an attempt. I believe that we may give free rein to our assumptions provided we at the same time preserve our cool judgment and do not take the scaffolding for the building. As we need nothing except auxiliary ideas for the first approach to any unknown subject, we shall prefer the crudest and most tangible hypothesis to all others.
We therefore conceive the psychic apparatus as a compound instrument, the component parts of which let us call instances, or, for the sake of clearness, systems. We then entertain the expectation that these systems perhaps maintain a constant spatial relationship to each other like the different systems of lenses of the telescope, one behind another. Strictly speaking, there is no need of assuming a real spatial arrangement of the psychic system. It will serve our purpose if a firm sequence be established through the fact that in certain psychological occurrences the system will be traversed by the excitement in a definite chronological order. This sequence may experience an alteration in other processes; such possibility may be left open. For the sake of brevity, we shall henceforth speak of the component parts of the apparatus as “Ψ-systems.”
The first thing that strikes us is the fact that the apparatus composed of Ψ-systems has a direction. All our psychic activities proceed from (inner or outer) stimuli and terminate in innervations. We thus ascribe to the apparatus a sensible and a motor end; at the sensible end we find a system which receives the perceptions, and at the motor end another which opens the locks of motility. The psychic process generally takes its course from the perception end to the motility end. The most common scheme of the psychic apparatus has therefore the following appearance:
But this is only in compliance with the demand long familiar to us, that the psychic apparatus must be constructed like a reflex apparatus. The reflex act remains the model for every psychic activity.
We have now reason to admit a first differentiation at the sensible end. The perceptions that come to us leave a trace in our psychic apparatus which we may call a “Memory trace.” The function which relates to this memory trace we call the memory. If we hold seriously to our resolution to connect the psychic processes into systems, the memory trace can then consist only of lasting changes in the elements of the systems. But, as has already been shown in other places, obvious difficulties arise if one and the same system faithfully preserves changes in its elements and still remains fresh and capable of admitting new motives for change. Following the principle which directs our undertaking, we shall distribute these two activities among two different systems. We assume that a first system of the apparatus takes up the stimuli of perception, but retains nothing from them—that is, it has no memory; and that behind this there lies a second system which transforms the momentary excitement of the first into lasting traces. This would then be a diagram of our psychic apparatus:
It is known that from the perceptions that act on the P-system we retain something else as lasting as the content itself. Our perceptions prove to be connected with one another in memory, and this is especially the case when they have once fallen together in simultaneity. We call this the fact of association. It is now clear that if the P-system is entirely lacking in memory, it certainly cannot preserve traces for the associations; the individual P-elements would be intolerably hindered in their function if a remnant of former connection should make its influence felt against a new perception. Hence we must, on the contrary, assume that the memory system is the basis of the association. The fact of the association, then, consists in this—that, in consequence of the diminutions in resistance and a smoothing of the ways from one of the Mem-elements, the excitement transmits itself to a second rather than to a third Mem-system.
On further investigation we find it necessary to assume not one but many such Mem-systems, in which the same excitement propagated by the P-elements experiences a diversified fixation. The first of these Mem-systems will contain in any case the fixation of the association through simultaneity, while in those lying further away the same exciting material will be arranged according to other forms of concurrence; so that relationships of similarity, &c., might perhaps be represented through these later systems. It would naturally be idle to attempt to report in words the psychic significance of such a system. Its characteristic would lie in the intimacy of its relations to elements of raw memory material—that is, if we wish to point to a profounder theory in the gradations of the resistances to conduction toward these elements.
We may insert here an observation of a general nature which points perhaps to something of importance. The P-system, which possesses no capability of preserving changes and hence no memory, furnishes for our consciousness the entire manifoldness of the sensible qualities. Our memories, on the other hand, are unconscious in themselves; those that are most deeply impressed form no exception. They can be made conscious, but there can be no doubt that they develop all their influences in the unconscious state. What we term our character is based, to be sure, on the memory traces of our impressions, and indeed on these impressions that have affected us most strongly, those of our early youth—those that almost never become conscious. But when memories become conscious again they show no sensible quality or a very slight one in comparison to the perceptions. If, now, it can be confirmed that memory and quality exclude each other, as far as consciousness in the Ψ-systems is concerned, a most promising insight reveals itself to us in the determinations of the neuron excitement.
What we have so far assumed concerning the composition of the psychic apparatus at the sensible end follows regardless of the dream and the psychological explanations derived from it. The dream, however, serves as a source of proof for the knowledge of another part of the apparatus. We have seen that it became impossible to explain the dream formation unless we ventured to assume two psychic instances, one of which subjected the activity of the other to a critique as a consequence of which the exclusion from consciousness resulted.
We have seen that the criticising instance entertains closer relations with consciousness than the criticised. The former stands between the latter and consciousness like a screen. We have, moreover, found essential reasons for identifying the criticising instance with that which directs our waking life and determines our voluntary conscious actions. If we now replace these instances in the development of our theory by systems, the criticising system is then to be ascribed to the motor end because of the fact just mentioned. We now enter both systems in our scheme, and express by the names given them their relation to consciousness.
The last of the systems at the motor end we call the foreconscious in order to denote that exciting processes in this system can reach consciousness without any further detention provided certain other conditions be fulfilled, e.g., the attainment of a certain intensity, a certain distribution of that function which must be called attention, and the like. This is at the same time the system which possesses the keys to voluntary motility. The system behind it we call the unconscious because it has no access to consciousness except through the foreconscious, in the passage through which its excitement must submit to certain changes.
In which of these systems, now, do we localise the impulse to the dream formation? For the Sake of simplicity, let us say in the system Unc. To be sure we shall find in later discussions that this is not quite correct, that the dream formation is forced to connect with dream thoughts which belong to the system of the foreconscious. But we shall learn later, when we come to deal with the dream-wish, that the motive power for the dream is furnished by the Unc., and, owing to this latter movement, we shall assume the unconscious system as the starting-point of the dream formation. This dream impulse, like all other thought structures, will now strive to continue itself in the foreconscious, and thence to gain admission to consciousness.
Experience teaches us that the road leading from the foreconscious to consciousness is closed to the dream thoughts during the day by the resistance of the censor. At night the dream thoughts gain admission to consciousness, but the question arises, in what way and because of what change. If this admission was rendered possible to the dream thoughts through the fact that the resistance watching on the boundary between the unconscious and foreconscious sinks at night, we should then get dreams in the material of our presentations which did not show the hallucinatory character which just now interests us.
The sinking of the censor between the two systems, Unc. and Forec., can explain to us only such dreams as “Autodidasker,” but not dreams like the one of the burning child, which we have taken as a problem at the outset in these present investigations.
What takes place in the hallucinatory dream we can describe in no other way than by saying that the excitement takes a retrogressive course. It takes its station, not at the motor end of the apparatus, but at the sensible end, and finally reaches the system of the perceptions. If we call the direction towards which the psychic process continues from the unconscious into the waking state the progressive, we may then speak of the dream as having a regressive character.
This regression is surely one of the most important peculiarities of the dream process; but we must not forget that it does not belong to the dream alone. The intentional recollection and other processes of our normal thinking also require a retrogression in the psychic apparatus from any complex presentation act to the raw material of the memory traces lying at its basis. But during the waking state this turning backward does not reach beyond the memory pictures; it is unable to produce the hallucinatory vividness of the perception pictures. Why is this different in the dream? When we spoke of the condensation work of the dream we could not avoid the assumption that the intensities adhering to the presentations are fully transferred from one to another through the dream-work. It is probably this modification of the former psychic process which makes possible the occupation of the system of P to its full sensual vividness in the opposite direction from thought.
I hope that we are far from deluding ourselves about the importance of this present discussion. We have done nothing more than give a name to an inexplicable phenomenon. We call it regression if the presentation in the dream is changed back to the perceptible image from which it once originated. But even this step demands justification. Why this naming, if it does not teach us anything new? I believe, however, that the name “Regression” will serve us to the extent of connecting a fact familiar to us with a scheme of the psychic apparatus which is supplied with a direction. At this point, for the first time, it is worth the trouble to construct such a scheme. For, with the help of this scheme, any other peculiarity of the dream formation will become clear to us without further reflection. If we look upon the dream as a process of regression in the assumed psychic apparatus, we can readily understand the empirically proven fact that all mental relation of the dream thoughts either is lost in the dream-work or can come to expression only with difficulty. According to our scheme, these mental relations are contained not in the first Mem-systems, but in those lying further to the front, and in the regression they must forfeit their expression in favour of the perception pictures. The structure of the dream thoughts is in the regression broken up into its raw material.
But what change renders possible this regression which is impossible during the day? Let us here be content with assumption. There must evidently be some alterations in the charge of energy belonging to the single systems causing the latter to become accessible or inaccessible to the discharge of the excitement; but in any such apparatus the same effect upon the course of excitement might be brought about through more than one form of such changes. This naturally reminds us of the state of sleep and of the many changes of energy this state produces at the sensible end of the apparatus. During the day there is a continuous coursing stream from the Ψ-system of the P toward the motility; this current ceases at night, and no longer hinders a streaming of the current of excitement in the opposite direction. This would appear to be that “seclusion from the outer world” which according to the theory of some authors is supposed to explain the psychological character of the dream (vide p. 30). In the explanation of the regression of the dream we shall, however, have to consider those other regressions which originate during morbid waking states. In these other forms the explanation just given plainly leaves us in the lurch. Regression takes place in spite of the uninterrupted sensible current in a progressive direction.
The hallucinations of hysteria and paranoia, as well as the visions of mentally normal persons, I can explain as actually corresponding to regressions, being in fact thoughts transformed into images; and only such thoughts are subjected to this transformation as are in intimate connection with suppressed or unconscious recollections. As an example I shall cite one of my youngest hysterical patients—a boy, twelve years old, who was prevented from falling asleep by “green faces with red eyes,” which terrified him. The source of this manifestation was the suppressed, but once conscious, memory of a boy whom he had often seen during four years, and who offered him a deterring example of many childish bad habits, including onanism, which now formed the subject of his own reproach. His mother had noticed at the time that the complexion of the ill-bred boy was greenish and that he had red (i.e. red bordered) eyes. Hence the terrible vision which constantly served to remind him of his mother’s warning that such boys become demented, that they are unable to make progress at school, and are doomed to an early death. A part of this prediction came true in the case of the little patient; he could not successfully pursue his high school studies, and, as appeared on examination of his involuntary fancies, he stood in great dread of the remainder of the prophecy. However, after a brief period of successful treatment, his sleep was restored, he lost his fears, and finished his scholastic year with an excellent record.
I may also add here the interpretation of a vision related to me by an hysteric forty years of age, as having occurred in her normal life. On opening her eyes one morning she beheld in the room her brother, whom she knew to be confined in an insane asylum. Her little son was asleep by her side. Lest the child should be frightened on seeing his uncle, and fall into convulsions, she pulled the sheet over the little one; this done, the phantom disappeared. This vision is the re-casting of one of her infantile reminiscences which, although conscious, is most intimately connected with all the unconscious material in her mind. Her nursemaid told her that her mother, who had died young (the patient was then only a year and a half old), had suffered from epileptic or hysterical convulsions, which dated back to a fright caused by her brother (the patient’s uncle), who appeared to her disguised as a spectre with a sheet over his head. The vision contains the same elements as the reminiscence, viz. the appearance of the brother, the sheet, the fright, and its effect. These elements, however, are ranged in different relations, and are transferred to other persons. The obvious motive of the vision, which replaces the idea, is her solicitude lest her little son, who bore a striking resemblance to his uncle, should share the latter’s fate. Both examples here cited are not entirely unrelated to sleep, and may therefore be unsuitable as proof for my assertion. I may therefore refer to my analysis of an hallucinatory paranoia,[FP] and to the results of my hitherto unpublished studies on the psychology of the psychoneuroses in order to emphasize the fact that in these cases of regressive thought transformation one must not overlook the influence of a suppressed or unconscious reminiscence, this being in most cases of an infantile character. This recollection, so to speak, draws into the regression the thought with which it is connected, which is prevented from expression by the censor—that is, into that form of representation in which the recollection itself exists psychically. I may here mention as a result of my studies in hysteria that if we succeed in restoring infantile scenes to consciousness (whether recollections or fancies) they are seen as hallucinations, and are divested of this character only after reproduction. It is also known that the earliest infantile memories retain the character of perceptible vividness until late in life, even in persons who are otherwise not visual in memory.
If, now, we keep in mind what part is played in the dream thoughts by the infantile reminiscences or the phantasies based upon them, how often fragments of these reminiscences emerge in the dream content, and how often they even give origin to dream wishes, we cannot deny the probability that in the dream, too, the transformation of thoughts into visual images may be the result of the attraction exerted by the visually represented reminiscences, striving for reanimation, upon the thoughts severed from consciousness and struggling for expression. Following this conception, we may further describe the dream as a modified substitute for the infantile scene produced by transference to recent material. The infantile cannot enforce its renewal, and must therefore be satisfied to return as a dream.
This reference to the significance of the infantile scenes (or of their phantastic repetitions), as in a manner furnishing the pattern for the dream content, renders superfluous the assumption made by Scherner and his pupils, of an inner source of excitement. Scherner assumes a state of “visual excitation” of internal excitement in the organ of sight when the dreams manifest a particular vividness or a special abundance of visual elements. We need not object to this assumption, but may be satisfied with establishing such state of excitation for the psychic perceptive system of the organs of vision only; we shall, however, assert that this state of excitation is formed through the memory, and is merely a refreshing of the former actual visual excitation. I cannot, from my own experience, give a good example showing such an influence of infantile reminiscence; my own dreams are surely less rich in perceptible elements than I must fancy those of others; but in my most beautiful and most vivid dream of late years I can easily trace the hallucinatory distinctness of the dream contents to the sensuous nature of recently received impressions. On page 368 I mentioned a dream in which the dark blue colour of the water, the brown colour of the smoke issuing from the ship’s funnels, and the sombre brown and red of the buildings which I had seen made a profound and lasting impression on my mind. This dream, if any, must be attributed to visual excitation. But what has brought my visual organ into this excitable state? It was a recent impression uniting itself with a series of former ones. The colours I beheld were those of the toy blocks with which my children erected a grand structure for my admiration on the day preceding the dream. The same sombre red colour covered the large blocks and the same blue and brown the small ones. Connected with these were the colour impression of my last journey in Italy, the charming blue of the Isonzo and the Lagoon, the brown hue of the Alpine region. The beautiful colours seen in the dream were but a repetition of those seen in the memory.
Let us review what we have learned about this peculiarity which the dream has of transforming its content of ideas into plastic images. We have neither explained this character of the dream-work nor traced it to known laws of psychology, but we have singled it out as pointing to unknown connections, and designated it by the name of the “regredient” character. Wherever this regression has occurred, we have regarded it as an effect of the resistance which opposes the progress of the thought on its normal way to consciousness, as well as a result of the simultaneous attraction exerted upon it by the vivid memories present. Regression is perhaps facilitated in the dream by the cessation of the progressive stream running from the sense organs during the day. For this auxiliary moment there must be compensation in the other forms of regression through a fortifying of the other motives of regression. We must also bear in mind that in pathological cases of regression, as in the dream, the process of transference of energy must be different from that of the regressions of normal psychic life, as it renders possible a full hallucinatory occupation of the perception systems. What we have described in the analysis of the dream-work as “Regard for Dramatic Fitness” may be referred to the selective attraction of visually recollected scenes, touched by the dream thoughts.
It is quite possible that this first part of our psychological utilisation of the dream does not entirely satisfy even us. We must, however, console ourselves with the fact that we are compelled to build in the dark. If we have not altogether strayed from the right path, we shall be sure to reach about the same ground from another starting-point, and thereafter perhaps be better able to see our way.
(c) The Wish-Fulfilment.
The dream of the burning child cited above affords us a welcome opportunity for appreciating the difficulties confronting the theory of wish-fulfilment. That the dream should be nothing but a wish-fulfilment surely seemed strange to us all—and that not alone because of the contradictions offered by the anxiety dream.
After learning from the first analytical explanations that the dream conceals sense and psychic validity, we could hardly expect so simple a determination of this sense. According to the correct but concise definition of Aristotle, the dream is a continuation of thinking in sleep (in so far as one sleeps). Considering that during the day our thoughts produce such a diversity of psychic acts—judgments, conclusions, contradictions, expectations, intentions, &c.—why should our sleeping thoughts be forced to confine themselves to the production of wishes? Are there not, on the contrary, many dreams that present a different psychic act in dream form, e.g., a solicitude, and is not the very transparent father’s dream mentioned above of just such a nature? From the gleam of light falling into his eyes while asleep the father draws the solicitous conclusion that a candle has been upset and may have set fire to the corpse; he transforms this conclusion into a dream by investing it with a senseful situation enacted in the present tense. What part is played in this dream by the wish-fulfilment, and which are we to suspect—the predominance of the thought continued from the waking state or of the thought incited by the new sensory impression?
All these considerations are just, and force us to enter more deeply into the part played by the wish-fulfilment in the dream, and into the significance of the waking thoughts continued in sleep.
It is in fact the wish-fulfilment that has already induced us to separate dreams into two groups. We have found some dreams that were plainly wish-fulfilments; and others in which wish-fulfilment could not be recognised, and was frequently concealed by every available means. In this latter class of dreams we recognised the influence of the dream censor. The undisguised wish dreams were chiefly found in children, yet fleeting open-hearted wish dreams seemed (I purposely emphasize this word) to occur also in adults.
We may now ask whence the wish fulfilled in the dream originates. But to what opposition or to what diversity do we refer this “whence”? I think it is to the opposition between conscious daily life and a psychic activity remaining unconscious which can only make itself noticeable during the night. I thus find a threefold possibility for the origin of a wish. Firstly, it may have been incited during the day, and owing to external circumstances failed to find gratification, there is thus left for the night an acknowledged but unfulfilled wish. Secondly, it may come to the surface during the day but be rejected, leaving an unfulfilled but suppressed wish. Or, thirdly, it may have no relation to daily life, and belong to those wishes that originate during the night from the suppression. If we now follow our scheme of the psychic apparatus, we can localise a wish of the first order in the system Forec. We may assume that a wish of the second order has been forced back from the Forec. system into the Unc. system, where alone, if anywhere, it can maintain itself; while a wish-feeling of the third order we consider altogether incapable of leaving the Unc. system. This brings up the question whether wishes arising from these different sources possess the same value for the dream, and whether they have the same power to incite a dream.
On reviewing the dreams which we have at our disposal for answering this question, we are at once moved to add as a fourth source of the dream-wish the actual wish incitements arising during the night, such as thirst and sexual desire. It then becomes evident that the source of the dream-wish does not affect its capacity to incite a dream. This view is supported by the dream of the little girl who continued the sea trip interrupted during the day, and by the other children’s dreams referred to; they are explained by an unfulfilled but not suppressed wish from the day-time. That a wish suppressed during the day asserts itself in the dream can be shown by a great many examples. I shall mention a very simple example of this class. A somewhat sarcastic young lady, whose younger friend has become engaged to be married, is asked throughout the day by her acquaintances whether she knows and what she thinks of the fiancé. She answers with unqualified praise, thereby silencing her own judgment, as she would prefer to tell the truth, namely, that he is an ordinary person (Dutzendmensch).[FQ] The following night she dreams that the same question is put to her, and that she replies with the formula: “In case of subsequent orders it will suffice to mention the number.” Finally, we have learned from numerous analyses that the wish in all dreams that have been subject to distortion has been derived from the unconscious, and has been unable to come to perception in the waking state. Thus it would appear that all wishes are of the same value and force for the dream formation.
I am at present unable to prove that the state of affairs is really different, but I am strongly inclined to assume a more stringent determination of the dream-wish. Children’s dreams leave no doubt that an unfulfilled wish of the day may be the instigator of the dream. But we must not forget that it is, after all, the wish of a child, that it is a wish-feeling of infantile strength only. I have a strong doubt whether an unfulfilled wish from the day would suffice to create a dream in an adult. It would rather seem that as we learn to control our impulses by intellectual activity, we more and more reject as vain the formation or retention of such intense wishes as are natural to childhood. In this, indeed, there may be individual variations; some retain the infantile type of psychic processes longer than others. The differences are here the same as those found in the gradual decline of the originally distinct visual imagination.
In general, however, I am of the opinion that unfulfilled wishes of the day are insufficient to produce a dream in adults. I readily admit that the wish instigators originating in conscious life contribute towards the incitement of dreams, but that is probably all. The dream would not originate if the foreconscious wish were not reinforced from another source.
That source is the unconscious. I believe that the conscious wish is a dream inciter only if it succeeds in arousing a similar unconscious wish which reinforces it. Following the suggestions obtained through the psychoanalysis of the neuroses, I believe that these unconscious wishes are always active and ready for expression whenever they find an opportunity to unite themselves with an emotion from conscious life, and that they transfer their greater intensity to the lesser intensity of the latter.[FR] It may therefore seem that the conscious wish alone has been realised in a dream; but a slight peculiarity in the formation of this dream will put us on the track of the powerful helper from the unconscious. These ever active and, as it were, immortal wishes from the unconscious recall the legendary Titans who from time immemorial have borne the ponderous mountains which were once rolled upon them by the victorious gods, and which even now quiver from time to time from the convulsions of their mighty limbs; I say that these wishes found in the repression are of themselves of an infantile origin, as we have learned from the psychological investigation of the neuroses. I should like, therefore, to withdraw the opinion previously expressed that it is unimportant whence the dream-wish originates, and replace it by another, as follows: The wish manifested in the dream must be an infantile one. In the adult it originates in the Unc., while in the child, where no separation and censor as yet exist between Forec. and Unc., or where these are only in the process of formation, it is an unfulfilled and unrepressed wish from the waking state. I am aware that this conception cannot be generally demonstrated, but I maintain nevertheless that it can be frequently demonstrated, even where it was not suspected, and that it cannot be generally refuted.
The wish-feelings which remain from the conscious waking state are, therefore, relegated to the background in the dream formation. In the dream content I shall attribute to them only the part attributed to the material of actual sensations during sleep (see p. 185). If I now take into account those other psychic instigations remaining from the waking state which are not wishes, I shall only adhere to the line mapped out for me by this train of thought. We may succeed in provisionally terminating the sum of energy of our waking thoughts by deciding to go to sleep. He is a good sleeper who can do this; Napoleon I. is reputed to have been a model of this sort. But we do not always succeed in accomplishing it, or in accomplishing it perfectly. Unsolved problems, harassing cares, overwhelming impressions continue the thinking activity even during sleep, maintaining psychic processes in the system which we have termed the foreconscious. These mental processes continuing into sleep may be divided into the following groups: 1, That which has not been terminated during the day owing to casual prevention; 2, that which has been left unfinished by temporary paralysis of our mental power, i.e. the unsolved; 3, that which has been rejected and suppressed during the day. This unites with a powerful group (4) formed by that which has been excited in our Unc. during the day by the work of the foreconscious. Finally, we may add group (5) consisting of the indifferent and hence unsettled impressions of the day.
We should not underrate the psychic intensities introduced into sleep by these remnants of waking life, especially those emanating from the group of the unsolved. These excitations surely continue to strive for expression during the night, and we may assume with equal certainty that the sleeping state renders impossible the usual continuation of the excitement in the foreconscious and the termination of the excitement by its becoming conscious. As far as we can normally become conscious of our mental processes, even during the night, in so far we are not asleep. I shall not venture to state what change is produced in the Forec. system by the sleeping state, but there is no doubt that the psychological character of sleep is essentially due to the change of energy in this very system, which also dominates the approach to motility, which is paralysed during sleep. In contradistinction to this, there seems to be nothing in the psychology of the dream to warrant the assumption that sleep produces any but secondary changes in the conditions of the Unc. system. Hence, for the nocturnal excitation in the Forec. there remains no other path than that followed by the wish excitements from the Unc. This excitation must seek reinforcement from the Unc., and follow the detours of the unconscious excitations. But what is the relation of the foreconscious day remnants to the dream? There is no doubt that they penetrate abundantly into the dream, that they utilise the dream content to obtrude themselves upon consciousness even during the night; indeed, they occasionally even dominate the dream content, and impel it to continue the work of the day; it is also certain that the day remnants may just as well have any other character as that of wishes; but it is highly instructive and even decisive for the theory of wish-fulfilment to see what conditions they must comply with in order to be received into the dream.
Let us pick out one of the dreams cited above as examples, e.g., the dream in which my friend Otto seems to show the symptoms of Basedow’s disease (p. 228). My friend Otto’s appearance occasioned me some concern during the day, and this worry, like everything else referring to this person, affected me. I may also assume that these feelings followed me into sleep. I was probably bent on finding out what was the matter with him. In the night my worry found expression in the dream which I have reported, the content of which was not only senseless, but failed to show any wish-fulfilment. But I began to investigate for the source of this incongruous expression of the solicitude felt during the day, and analysis revealed the connection. I identified my friend Otto with a certain Baron L. and myself with a Professor R. There was only one explanation for my being impelled to select just this substitution for the day thought. I must have always been prepared in the Unc. to identify myself with Professor R., as it meant the realisation of one of the immortal infantile wishes, viz. that of becoming great. Repulsive ideas respecting my friend, that would certainly have been repudiated in a waking state, took advantage of the opportunity to creep into the dream, but the worry of the day likewise found some form of expression through a substitution in the dream content. The day thought, which was no wish in itself but rather a worry, had in some way to find a connection with the infantile now unconscious and suppressed wish, which then allowed it, though already properly prepared, to “originate” for consciousness. The more dominating this worry, the stronger must be the connection to be established; between the contents of the wish and that of the worry there need be no connection, nor was there one in any of our examples.
We can now sharply define the significance of the unconscious wish for the dream. It may be admitted that there is a whole class of dreams in which the incitement originates preponderatingly or even exclusively from the remnants of daily life; and I believe that even my cherished desire to become at some future time a “professor extraordinarius” would have allowed me to slumber undisturbed that night had not my worry about my friend’s health been still active. But this worry alone would not have produced a dream; the motive power needed by the dream had to be contributed by a wish, and it was the affair of the worriment to procure for itself such wish as a motive power of the dream. To speak figuratively, it is quite possible that a day thought plays the part of the contractor (entrepreneur) in the dream. But it is known that no matter what idea the contractor may have in mind, and how desirous he may be of putting it into operation, he can do nothing without capital; he must depend upon a capitalist to defray the necessary expenses, and this capitalist, who supplies the psychic expenditure for the dream is invariably and indisputably a wish from the unconscious, no matter what the nature of the waking thought may be.
In other cases the capitalist himself is the contractor for the dream; this, indeed, seems to be the more usual case. An unconscious wish is produced by the day’s work, which in turn creates the dream. The dream processes, moreover, run parallel with all the other possibilities of the economic relationship used here as an illustration. Thus, the entrepreneur may contribute some capital himself, or several entrepreneurs may seek the aid of the same capitalist, or several capitalists may jointly supply the capital required by the entrepreneur. Thus there are dreams produced by more than one dream-wish, and many similar variations which may readily be passed over and are of no further interest to us. What we have left unfinished in this discussion of the dream-wish we shall be able to develop later.
The “tertium comparationis” in the comparisons just employed—i.e. the sum placed at our free disposal in proper allotment—admits of still finer application for the illustration of the dream structure. As shown on p. 285 we can recognise in most dreams a centre especially supplied with perceptible intensity. This is regularly the direct representation of the wish-fulfilment; for, if we undo the displacements of the dream-work by a process of retrogression, we find that the psychic intensity of the elements in the dream thoughts is replaced by the perceptible intensity of the elements in the dream content. The elements adjoining the wish-fulfilment have frequently nothing to do with its sense, but prove to be descendants of painful thoughts which oppose the wish. But, owing to their frequently artificial connection with the central element, they have acquired sufficient intensity to enable them to come to expression. Thus, the force of expression of the wish-fulfilment is diffused over a certain sphere of association, within which it raises to expression all elements, including those that are in themselves impotent. In dreams having several strong wishes we can readily separate from one another the spheres of the individual wish-fulfilments; the gaps in the dream likewise can often be explained as boundary zones.
Although the foregoing remarks have considerably limited the significance of the day remnants for the dream, it will nevertheless be worth our while to give them some attention. For they must be a necessary ingredient in the formation of the dream, inasmuch as experience reveals the surprising fact that every dream shows in its content a connection with some impression of a recent day, often of the most indifferent kind. So far we have failed to see any necessity for this addition to the dream mixture (p. 153). This necessity appears only when we follow closely the part played by the unconscious wish, and then seek information in the psychology of the neuroses. We thus learn that the unconscious idea, as such, is altogether incapable of entering into the foreconscious, and that it can exert an influence there only by uniting with a harmless idea already belonging to the foreconscious, to which it transfers its intensity and under which it allows itself to be concealed. This is the fact of transference which furnishes an explanation for so many surprising occurrences in the psychic life of neurotics.
The idea from the foreconscious which thus obtains an unmerited abundance of intensity may be left unchanged by the transference, or it may have forced upon it a modification from the content of the transferring idea. I trust the reader will pardon my fondness for comparisons from daily life, but I feel tempted to say that the relations existing for the repressed idea are similar to the situations existing in Austria for the American dentist, who is forbidden to practise unless he gets permission from a regular physician to use his name on the public signboard and thus cover the legal requirements. Moreover, just as it is naturally not the busiest physicians who form such alliances with dental practitioners, so in the psychic life only such foreconscious or conscious ideas are chosen to cover a repressed idea as have not themselves attracted much of the attention which is operative in the foreconscious. The unconscious entangles with its connections preferentially either those impressions and ideas of the foreconscious which have been left unnoticed as indifferent, or those that have soon been deprived of this attention through rejection. It is a familiar fact from the association studies confirmed by every experience, that ideas which have formed intimate connections in one direction assume an almost negative attitude to whole groups of new connections. I once tried from this principle to develop a theory for hysterical paralysis.
If we assume that the same need for the transference of the repressed ideas which we have learned to know from the analysis of the neuroses makes its influence felt in the dream as well, we can at once explain two riddles of the dream, viz. that every dream analysis shows an interweaving of a recent impression, and that this recent element is frequently of the most indifferent character. We may add what we have already learned elsewhere, that these recent and indifferent elements come so frequently into the dream content as a substitute for the most deep-lying of the dream thoughts, for the further reason that they have least to fear from the resisting censor. But while this freedom from censorship explains only the preference for trivial elements, the constant presence of recent elements points to the fact that there is a need for transference. Both groups of impressions satisfy the demand of the repression for material still free from associations, the indifferent ones because they have offered no inducement for extensive associations, and the recent ones because they have had insufficient time to form such associations.
We thus see that the day remnants, among which we may now include the indifferent impressions when they participate in the dream formation, not only borrow from the Unc. the motive power at the disposal of the repressed wish, but also offer to the unconscious something indispensable, namely, the attachment necessary to the transference. If we here attempted to penetrate more deeply into the psychic processes, we should first have to throw more light on the play of emotions between the foreconscious and the unconscious, to which, indeed, we are urged by the study of the psychoneuroses, whereas the dream itself offers no assistance in this respect.
Just one further remark about the day remnants. There is no doubt that they are the actual disturbers of sleep, and not the dream, which, on the contrary, strives to guard sleep. But we shall return to this point later.
We have so far discussed the dream-wish, we have traced it to the sphere of the Unc., and analysed its relations to the day remnants, which in turn may be either wishes, psychic emotions of any other kind, or simply recent impressions. We have thus made room for any claims that may be made for the importance of conscious thought activity in dream formations in all its variations. Relying upon our thought series, it would not be at all impossible for us to explain even those extreme cases in which the dream as a continuer of the day work brings to a happy conclusion an unsolved problem of the waking state. We do not, however, possess an example, the analysis of which might reveal the infantile or repressed wish source furnishing such alliance and successful strengthening of the efforts of the foreconscious activity. But we have not come one step nearer a solution of the riddle: Why can the unconscious furnish the motive power for the wish-fulfilment only during sleep? The answer to this question must throw light on the psychic nature of wishes; and it will be given with the aid of the diagram of the psychic apparatus.
We do not doubt that even this apparatus attained its present perfection through a long course of development. Let us attempt to restore it as it existed in an early phase of its activity. From assumptions, to be confirmed elsewhere, we know that at first the apparatus strove to keep as free from excitement as possible, and in its first formation, therefore, the scheme took the form of a reflex apparatus, which enabled it promptly to discharge through the motor tracts any sensible stimulus reaching it from without. But this simple function was disturbed by the wants of life, which likewise furnish the impulse for the further development of the apparatus. The wants of life first manifested themselves to it in the form of the great physical needs. The excitement aroused by the inner want seeks an outlet in motility, which may be designated as “inner changes” or as an “expression of the emotions.” The hungry child cries or fidgets helplessly, but its situation remains unchanged; for the excitation proceeding from an inner want requires, not a momentary outbreak, but a force working continuously. A change can occur only if in some way a feeling of gratification is experienced—which in the case of the child must be through outside help—in order to remove the inner excitement. An essential constituent of this experience is the appearance of a certain perception (of food in our example), the memory picture of which thereafter remains associated with the memory trace of the excitation of want.
Thanks to the established connection, there results at the next appearance of this want a psychic feeling which revives the memory picture of the former perception, and thus recalls the former perception itself, i.e. it actually re-establishes the situation of the first gratification. We call such a feeling a wish; the reappearance of the perception constitutes the wish-fulfilment, and the full revival of the perception by the want excitement constitutes the shortest road to the wish-fulfilment. We may assume a primitive condition of the psychic apparatus in which this road is really followed, i.e. where the wishing merges into an hallucination. This first psychic activity therefore aims at an identity of perception, i.e. it aims at a repetition of that perception which is connected with the fulfilment of the want.
This primitive mental activity must have been modified by bitter practical experience into a more expedient secondary activity. The establishment of the identity perception on the short regressive road within the apparatus does not in another respect carry with it the result which inevitably follows the revival of the same perception from without. The gratification does not take place, and the want continues. In order to equalise the internal with the external sum of energy, the former must be continually maintained, just as actually happens in the hallucinatory psychoses and in the deliriums of hunger which exhaust their psychic capacity in clinging to the object desired. In order to make more appropriate use of the psychic force, it becomes necessary to inhibit the full regression so as to prevent it from extending beyond the image of memory, whence it can select other paths leading ultimately to the establishment of the desired identity from the outer world. This inhibition and consequent deviation from the excitation becomes the task of a second system which dominates the voluntary motility, i.e. through whose activity the expenditure of motility is now devoted to previously recalled purposes. But this entire complicated mental activity which works its way from the memory picture to the establishment of the perception identity from the outer world merely represents a detour which has been forced upon the wish-fulfilment by experience.[FS] Thinking is indeed nothing but the equivalent of the hallucinatory wish; and if the dream be called a wish-fulfilment this becomes self-evident, as nothing but a wish can impel our psychic apparatus to activity. The dream, which in fulfilling its wishes follows the short regressive path, thereby preserves for us only an example of the primary form of the psychic apparatus which has been abandoned as inexpedient. What once ruled in the waking state when the psychic life was still young and unfit seems to have been banished into the sleeping state, just as we see again in the nursery the bow and arrow, the discarded primitive weapons of grown-up humanity. The dream is a fragment of the abandoned psychic life of the child. In the psychoses these modes of operation of the psychic apparatus, which are normally suppressed in the waking state, reassert themselves, and then betray their inability to satisfy our wants in the outer world.
The unconscious wish-feelings evidently strive to assert themselves during the day also, and the fact of transference and the psychoses teach us that they endeavour to penetrate to consciousness and dominate motility by the road leading through the system of the foreconscious. It is, therefore, the censor lying between the Unc. and the Forec., the assumption of which is forced upon us by the dream, that we have to recognise and honour as the guardian of our psychic health. But is it not carelessness on the part of this guardian to diminish its vigilance during the night and to allow the suppressed emotions of the Unc. to come to expression, thus again making possible the hallucinatory regression? I think not, for when the critical guardian goes to rest—and we have proof that his slumber is not profound—he takes care to close the gate to motility. No matter what feelings from the otherwise inhibited Unc. may roam about on the scene, they need not be interfered with; they remain harmless because they are unable to put in motion the motor apparatus which alone can exert a modifying influence upon the outer world. Sleep guarantees the security of the fortress which is under guard. Conditions are less harmless when a displacement of forces is produced, not through a nocturnal diminution in the operation of the critical censor, but through pathological enfeeblement of the latter or through pathological reinforcement of the unconscious excitations, and this while the foreconscious is charged with energy and the avenues to motility are open. The guardian is then overpowered, the unconscious excitations subdue the Forec.; through it they dominate our speech and actions, or they enforce the hallucinatory regression, thus governing an apparatus not designed for them by virtue of the attraction exerted by the perceptions on the distribution of our psychic energy. We call this condition a psychosis.
We are now in the best position to complete our psychological construction, which has been interrupted by the introduction of the two systems, Unc. and Forec. We have still, however, ample reason for giving further consideration to the wish as the sole psychic motive power in the dream. We have explained that the reason why the dream is in every case a wish realisation is because it is a product of the Unc., which knows no other aim in its activity but the fulfilment of wishes, and which has no other forces at its disposal but wish-feelings. If we avail ourselves for a moment longer of the right to elaborate from the dream interpretation such far-reaching psychological speculations, we are in duty bound to demonstrate that we are thereby bringing the dream into a relationship which may also comprise other psychic structures. If there exists a system of the Unc.—or something sufficiently analogous to it for the purpose of our discussion—the dream cannot be its sole manifestation; every dream may be a wish-fulfilment, but there must be other forms of abnormal wish-fulfilment besides this of dreams. Indeed, the theory of all psychoneurotic symptoms culminates in the proposition that they too must be taken as wish-fulfilments of the unconscious. Our explanation makes the dream only the first member of a group most important for the psychiatrist, an understanding of which means the solution of the purely psychological part of the psychiatric problem. But other members of this group of wish-fulfilments, e.g., the hysterical symptoms, evince one essential quality which I have so far failed to find in the dream. Thus, from the investigations frequently referred to in this treatise, I know that the formation of an hysterical symptom necessitates the combination of both streams of our psychic life. The symptom is not merely the expression of a realised unconscious wish, but it must be joined by another wish from the foreconscious which is fulfilled by the same symptom; so that the symptom is at least doubly determined, once by each one of the conflicting systems. Just as in the dream, there is no limit to further over-determination. The determination not derived from the Unc. is, as far as I can see, invariably a stream of thought in reaction against the unconscious wish, e.g., a self-punishment. Hence I may say, in general, that _an hysterical symptom originates only where two contrasting wish-fulfilments, having their source in different psychic systems, are able to combine in one expression. (Compare my latest formulation of the origin of the hysterical symptoms in a treatise published by the Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, by Hirschfeld and others, 1908). Examples on this point would prove of little value, as nothing but a complete unveiling of the complication in question would carry conviction. I therefore content myself with the mere assertion, and will cite an example, not for conviction but for explication. The hysterical vomiting of a female patient proved, on the one hand, to be the realisation of an unconscious fancy from the time of puberty, that she might be continuously pregnant and have a multitude of children, and this was subsequently united with the wish that she might have them from as many men as possible. Against this immoderate wish there arose a powerful defensive impulse. But as the vomiting might spoil the patient’s figure and beauty, so that she would not find favour in the eyes of mankind, the symptom was therefore in keeping with her punitive trend of thought, and, being thus admissible from both sides, it was allowed to become a reality. This is the same manner of consenting to a wish-fulfilment which the queen of the Parthians chose for the triumvir Crassus. Believing that he had undertaken the campaign out of greed for gold, she caused molten gold to be poured into the throat of the corpse. “Now hast thou what thou hast longed for.” As yet we know of the dream only that it expresses a wish-fulfilment of the unconscious; and apparently the dominating foreconscious permits this only after it has subjected the wish to some distortions. We are really in no position to demonstrate regularly a stream of thought antagonistic to the dream-wish which is realised in the dream as in its counterpart. Only now and then have we found in the dream traces of reaction formations, as, for instance, the tenderness toward friend R. in the “uncle dream” (p. 116). But the contribution from the foreconscious, which is missing here, may be found in another place. While the dominating system has withdrawn on the wish to sleep, the dream may bring to expression with manifold distortions a wish from the Unc., and realise this wish by producing the necessary changes of energy in the psychic apparatus, and may finally retain it through the entire duration of sleep.[FT]
This persistent wish to sleep on the part of the foreconscious in general facilitates the formation of the dream. Let us refer to the dream of the father who, by the gleam of light from the death chamber, was brought to the conclusion that the body has been set on fire. We have shown that one of the psychic forces decisive in causing the father to form this conclusion, instead of being awakened by the gleam of light, was the wish to prolong the life of the child seen in the dream by one moment. Other wishes proceeding from the repression probably escape us, because we are unable to analyse this dream. But as a second motive power of the dream we may mention the father’s desire to sleep, for, like the life of the child, the sleep of the father is prolonged for a moment by the dream. The underlying motive is: “Let the dream go on, otherwise I must wake up.” As in this dream so also in all other dreams, the wish to sleep lends its support to the unconscious wish. On page 104 we reported dreams which were apparently dreams of convenience. But, properly speaking, all dreams may claim this designation. The efficacy of the wish to continue to sleep is the most easily recognised in the waking dreams, which so transform the objective sensory stimulus as to render it compatible with the continuance of sleep; they interweave this stimulus with the dream in order to rob it of any claims it might make as a warning to the outer world. But this wish to continue to sleep must also participate in the formation of all other dreams which may disturb the sleeping state from within only. “Now, then, sleep on; why, it’s but a dream”; this is in many cases the suggestion of the Forec. to consciousness when the dream goes too far; and this also describes in a general way the attitude of our dominating psychic activity toward dreaming, though the thought remains tacit. I must draw the conclusion that throughout our entire sleeping state we are just as certain that we are dreaming as we are certain that we are sleeping. We are compelled to disregard the objection urged against this conclusion that our consciousness is never directed to a knowledge of the former, and that it is directed to a knowledge of the latter only on special occasions when the censor is unexpectedly surprised. Against this objection we may say that there are persons who are entirely conscious of their sleeping and dreaming, and who are apparently endowed with the conscious faculty of guiding their dream life.
Such a dreamer, when dissatisfied with the course taken by the dream, breaks it off without awakening, and begins it anew in order to continue it with a different turn, like the popular author who, on request, gives a happier ending to his play. Or, at another time, if placed by the dream in a sexually exciting situation, he thinks in his sleep: “I do not care to continue this dream and exhaust myself by a pollution; I prefer to defer it in favour of a real situation.”
(d) _Waking caused by the Dream—The Function of the Dream—The Anxiety
Dream._
Since we know that the foreconscious is suspended during the night by the wish to sleep, we can proceed to an intelligent investigation of the dream process. But let us first sum up the knowledge of this process already gained. We have shown that the waking activity leaves day remnants from which the sum of energy cannot be entirely removed; or the waking activity revives during the day one of the unconscious wishes; or both conditions occur simultaneously; we have already discovered the many variations that may take place. The unconscious wish has already made its way to the day remnants, either during the day or at any rate with the beginning of sleep, and has effected a transference to it. This produces a wish transferred to the recent material, or the suppressed recent wish comes to life again through a reinforcement from the unconscious. This wish now endeavours to make its way to consciousness on the normal path of the mental processes through the foreconscious, to which indeed it belongs through one of its constituent elements. It is confronted, however, by the censor, which is still active, and to the influence of which it now succumbs. It now takes on the distortion for which the way has already been paved by its transference to the recent material. Thus far it is in the way of becoming something resembling an obsession, delusion, or the like, i.e. a thought reinforced by a transference and distorted in expression by the censor. But its further progress is now checked through the dormant state of the foreconscious; this system has apparently protected itself against invasion by diminishing its excitements. The dream process, therefore, takes the regressive course, which has just been opened by the peculiarity of the sleeping state, and thereby follows the attraction exerted on it by the memory groups, which themselves exist in part only as visual energy not yet translated into terms of the later systems. On its way to regression the dream takes on the form of dramatisation. The subject of compression will be discussed later. The dream process has now terminated the second part of its repeatedly impeded course. The first part expended itself progressively from the unconscious scenes or phantasies to the foreconscious, while the second part gravitates from the advent of the censor back to the perceptions. But when the dream process becomes a content of perception it has, so to speak, eluded the obstacle set up in the Forec. by the censor and by the sleeping state. It succeeds in drawing attention to itself and in being noticed by consciousness.
For consciousness, which means to us a sensory organ for the reception of psychic qualities, may receive stimuli from two sources—first, from the periphery of the entire apparatus, viz. from the perception system, and, secondly, from the pleasure and pain stimuli, which constitute the sole psychic quality produced in the transformation of energy within the apparatus. All other processes in the Ψ-system, even those in the foreconscious, are devoid of any psychic quality, and are therefore not objects of consciousness inasmuch as they do not furnish pleasure or pain for perception. We shall have to assume that those liberations of pleasure and pain automatically regulate the outlet of the occupation processes. But in order to make possible more delicate functions, it was later found necessary to render the course of the presentations more independent of the manifestations of pain. To accomplish this the Forec. system needed some qualities of its own which could attract consciousness, and most probably received them through the connection of the foreconscious processes with the memory system of the signs of speech, which is not devoid of qualities. Through the qualities of this system, consciousness, which had hitherto been a sensory organ only for the perceptions, now becomes also a sensory organ for a part of our mental processes. Thus we have now, as it were, two sensory surfaces, one directed to perceptions and the other to the foreconscious mental processes.
I must assume that the sensory surface of consciousness devoted to the Forec. is rendered less excitable by sleep than that directed to the P-systems. The giving up of interest for the nocturnal mental processes is indeed purposeful. Nothing is to disturb the mind; the Forec. wants to sleep. But once the dream becomes a perception, it is then capable of exciting consciousness through the qualities thus gained. The sensory stimulus accomplishes what it was really destined for, namely, it directs a part of the energy at the disposal of the Forec. in the form of attention upon the stimulant. We must, therefore, admit that the dream invariably awakens us, that is, it puts into activity a part of the dormant force of the Forec. This force imparts to the dream that influence which we have designated as secondary elaboration for the sake of connection and comprehensibility. This means that the dream is treated by it like any other content of perception; it is subjected to the same ideas of expectation, as far at least as the material admits. As far as the direction is concerned in this third part of the dream, it may be said that here again the movement is progressive.
To avoid misunderstanding, it will not be amiss to say a few words about the temporal peculiarities of these dream processes. In a very interesting discussion, apparently suggested by Maury’s puzzling guillotine dream, Goblot[29] tries to demonstrate that the dream requires no other time than the transition period between sleeping and awakening. The awakening requires time, as the dream takes place during that period. One is inclined to believe that the final picture of the dream is so strong that it forces the dreamer to awaken; but, as a matter of fact, this picture is strong only because the dreamer is already very near awakening when it appears. “Un rêve c’est un réveil qui commence.”
It has already been emphasized by Dugas[18] that Goblot was forced to repudiate many facts in order to generalise his theory. There are, moreover, dreams from which we do not awaken, e.g., some dreams in which we dream that we dream. From our knowledge of the dream-work, we can by no means admit that it extends only over the period of awakening. On the contrary, we must consider it probable that the first part of the dream-work begins during the day when we are still under the domination of the foreconscious. The second phase of the dream-work, viz. the modification through the censor, the attraction by the unconscious scenes, and the penetration to perception must continue throughout the night. And we are probably always right when we assert that we feel as though we had been dreaming the whole night, although we cannot say what. I do not, however, think it necessary to assume that, up to the time of becoming conscious, the dream processes really follow the temporal sequence which we have described, viz. that there is first the transferred dream-wish, then the distortion of the censor, and consequently the change of direction to regression, and so on. We were forced to form such a succession for the sake of description; in reality, however, it is much rather a matter of simultaneously trying this path and that, and of emotions fluctuating to and fro, until finally, owing to the most expedient distribution, one particular grouping is secured which remains. From certain personal experiences, I am myself inclined to believe that the dream-work often requires more than one day and one night to produce its result; if this be true, the extraordinary art manifested in the construction of the dream loses all its marvels. In my opinion, even the regard for comprehensibility as an occurrence of perception may take effect before the dream attracts consciousness to itself. To be sure, from now on the process is accelerated, as the dream is henceforth subjected to the same treatment as any other perception. It is like fireworks, which require hours of preparation and only a moment for ignition.
Through the dream-work the dream process now gains either sufficient intensity to attract consciousness to itself and arouse the foreconscious, which is quite independent of the time or profundity of sleep, or, its intensity being insufficient it must wait until it meets the attention which is set in motion immediately before awakening. Most dreams seem to operate with relatively slight psychic intensities, for they wait for the awakening. This, however, explains the fact that we regularly perceive something dreamt on being suddenly aroused from a sound sleep. Here, as well as in spontaneous awakening, the first glance strikes the perception content created by the dream-work, while the next strikes the one produced from without.
But of greater theoretical interest are those dreams which are capable of waking us in the midst of sleep. We must bear in mind the expediency elsewhere universally demonstrated, and ask ourselves why the dream or the unconscious wish has the power to disturb sleep, i.e. the fulfilment of the foreconscious wish. This is probably due to certain relations of energy into which we have no insight. If we possessed such insight we should probably find that the freedom given to the dream and the expenditure of a certain amount of detached attention represent for the dream an economy in energy, keeping in view the fact that the unconscious must be held in check at night just as during the day. We know from experience that the dream, even if it interrupts sleep, repeatedly during the same night, still remains compatible with sleep. We wake up for an instant, and immediately resume our sleep. It is like driving off a fly during sleep, we awake ad hoc, and when we resume our sleep we have removed the disturbance. As demonstrated by familiar examples from the sleep of wet nurses, &c., the fulfilment of the wish to sleep is quite compatible with the retention of a certain amount of attention in a given direction.
But we must here take cognisance of an objection that is based on a better knowledge of the unconscious processes. Although we have ourselves described the unconscious wishes as always active, we have, nevertheless, asserted that they are not sufficiently strong during the day to make themselves perceptible. But when we sleep, and the unconscious wish has shown its power to form a dream, and with it to awaken the foreconscious, why, then, does this power become exhausted after the dream has been taken cognisance of? Would it not seem more probable that the dream should continually renew itself, like the troublesome fly which, when driven away, takes pleasure in returning again and again? What justifies our assertion that the dream removes the disturbance of sleep?
That the unconscious wishes always remain active is quite true. They represent paths which are passable whenever a sum of excitement makes use of them. Moreover, a remarkable peculiarity of the unconscious processes is the fact that they remain indestructible. Nothing can be brought to an end in the unconscious; nothing can cease or be forgotten. This impression is most strongly gained in the study of the neuroses, especially of hysteria. The unconscious stream of thought which leads to the discharge through an attack becomes passable again as soon as there is an accumulation of a sufficient amount of excitement. The mortification brought on thirty years ago, after having gained access to the unconscious affective source, operates during all these thirty years like a recent one. Whenever its memory is touched, it is revived and shows itself to be supplied with the excitement which is discharged in a motor attack. It is just here that the office of psychotherapy begins, its task being to bring about adjustment and forgetfulness for the unconscious processes. Indeed, the fading of memories and the flagging of affects, which we are apt to take as self-evident and to explain as a primary influence of time on the psychic memories, are in reality secondary changes brought about by painstaking work. It is the foreconscious that accomplishes this work; and the only course to be pursued by psychotherapy is to subjugate the Unc. to the domination of the Forec.
There are, therefore, two exits for the individual unconscious emotional process. It is either left to itself, in which case it ultimately breaks through somewhere and secures for once a discharge for its excitation into motility; or it succumbs to the influence of the foreconscious, and its excitation becomes confined through this influence instead of being discharged. It is the latter process that occurs in the dream. Owing to the fact that it is directed by the conscious excitement, the energy from the Forec., which confronts the dream when grown to perception, restricts the unconscious excitement of the dream and renders it harmless as a disturbing factor. When the dreamer wakes up for a moment, he has actually chased away the fly that has threatened to disturb his sleep. We can now understand that it is really more expedient and economical to give full sway to the unconscious wish, and clear its way to regression so that it may form a dream, and then restrict and adjust this dream by means of a small expenditure of foreconscious labour, than to curb the unconscious throughout the entire period of sleep. We should, indeed, expect that the dream, even if it was not originally an expedient process, would have acquired some function in the play of forces of the psychic life. We now see what this function is. The dream has taken it upon itself to bring the liberated excitement of the Unc. back under the domination of the foreconscious; it thus affords relief for the excitement of the Unc. and acts as a safety-valve for the latter, and at the same time it insures the sleep of the foreconscious at a slight expenditure of the waking state. Like the other psychic formations of its group, the dream offers itself as a compromise serving simultaneously both systems by fulfilling both wishes in so far as they are compatible with each other. A glance at Robert’s “elimination theory,” referred to on page 66, will show that we must agree with this author in his main point, viz. in the determination of the function of the dream, though we differ from him in our hypotheses and in our treatment of the dream process.
The above qualification—in so far as the two wishes are compatible with each other—contains a suggestion that there may be cases in which the function of the dream suffers shipwreck. The dream process is in the first instance admitted as a wish-fulfilment of the unconscious, but if this tentative wish-fulfilment disturbs the foreconscious to such an extent that the latter can no longer maintain its rest, the dream then breaks the compromise and fails to perform the second part of its task. It is then at once broken off, and replaced by complete wakefulness. Here, too, it is not really the fault of the dream, if, while ordinarily the guardian of sleep, it is here compelled to appear as the disturber of sleep, nor should this cause us to entertain any doubts as to its efficacy. This is not the only case in the organism in which an otherwise efficacious arrangement became inefficacious and disturbing as soon as some element is changed in the conditions of its origin; the disturbance then serves at least the new purpose of announcing the change, and calling into play against it the means of adjustment of the organism. In this connection, I naturally bear in mind the case of the anxiety dream, and in order not to have the appearance of trying to exclude this testimony against the theory of wish-fulfilment wherever I encounter it, I will attempt an explanation of the anxiety dream, at least offering some suggestions.
That a psychic process developing anxiety may still be a wish-fulfilment has long ceased to impress us as a contradiction. We may explain this occurrence by the fact that the wish belongs to one system (the Unc.), while by the other system (the Forec.), this wish has been rejected and suppressed. The subjection of the Unc. by the Forec. is not complete even in perfect psychic health; the amount of this suppression shows the degree of our psychic normality. Neurotic symptoms show that there is a conflict between the two systems; the symptoms are the results of a compromise of this conflict, and they temporarily put an end to it. On the one hand, they afford the Unc. an outlet for the discharge of its excitement, and serve it as a sally port, while, on the other hand, they give the Forec. the capability of dominating the Unc. to some extent. It is highly instructive to consider, e.g., the significance of any hysterical phobia or of an agoraphobia. Suppose a neurotic incapable of crossing the street alone, which we would justly call a “symptom.” We attempt to remove this symptom by urging him to the action which he deems himself incapable of. The result will be an attack of anxiety, just as an attack of anxiety in the street has often been the cause of establishing an agoraphobia. We thus learn that the symptom has been constituted in order to guard against the outbreak of the anxiety. The phobia is thrown before the anxiety like a fortress on the frontier.
Unless we enter into the part played by the affects in these processes, which can be done here only imperfectly, we cannot continue our discussion. Let us therefore advance the proposition that the reason why the suppression of the unconscious becomes absolutely necessary is because, if the discharge of presentation should be left to itself, it would develop an affect in the Unc. which originally bore the character of pleasure, but which, since the appearance of the repression, bears the character of pain. The aim, as well as the result, of the suppression is to stop the development of this pain. The suppression extends over the unconscious ideation, because the liberation of pain might emanate from the ideation. The foundation is here laid for a very definite assumption concerning the nature of the affective development. It is regarded as a motor or secondary activity, the key to the innervation of which is located in the presentations of the Unc. Through the domination of the Forec. these presentations become, as it were, throttled and inhibited at the exit of the emotion-developing impulses. The danger, which is due to the fact that the Forec. ceases to occupy the energy, therefore consists in the fact that the unconscious excitations liberate such an affect as—in consequence of the repression that has previously taken place—can only be perceived as pain or anxiety.
This danger is released through the full sway of the dream process. The determinations for its realisation consist in the fact that repressions have taken place, and that the suppressed emotional wishes shall become sufficiently strong. They thus stand entirely without the psychological realm of the dream structure. Were it not for the fact that our subject is connected through just one factor, namely, the freeing of the Unc. during sleep, with the subject of the development of anxiety, I could dispense with discussion of the anxiety dream, and thus avoid all obscurities connected with it.
As I have often repeated, the theory of the anxiety belongs to the psychology of the neuroses. I would say that the anxiety in the dream is an anxiety problem and not a dream problem. We have nothing further to do with it after having once demonstrated its point of contact with the subject of the dream process. There is only one thing left for me to do. As I have asserted that the neurotic anxiety originates from sexual sources, I can subject anxiety dreams to analysis in order to demonstrate the sexual material in their dream thoughts.
For good reasons I refrain from citing here any of the numerous examples placed at my disposal by neurotic patients, but prefer to give anxiety dreams from young persons.
Personally, I have had no real anxiety dream for decades, but I recall one from my seventh or eighth year which I subjected to interpretation about thirty years later. The dream was very vivid, and showed me my beloved mother, with peculiarly calm sleeping countenance, carried into the room and laid on the bed by two (or three) persons with bird’s beaks. I awoke crying and screaming, and disturbed my parents. The very tall figures—draped in a peculiar manner—with beaks, I had taken from the illustrations of Philippson’s bible; I believe they represented deities with heads of sparrowhawks from an Egyptian tomb relief. The analysis also introduced the reminiscence of a naughty janitor’s boy, who used to play with us children on the meadow in front of the house; I would add that his name was Philip. I feel that I first heard from this boy the vulgar word signifying sexual intercourse, which is replaced among the educated by the Latin “coitus,” but to which the dream distinctly alludes by the selection of the bird’s heads.[FU] I must have suspected the sexual significance of the word from the facial expression of my worldly-wise teacher. My mother’s features in the dream were copied from the countenance of my grandfather, whom I had seen a few days before his death snoring in the state of coma. The interpretation of the secondary elaboration in the dream must therefore have been that my mother was dying; the tomb relief, too, agrees with this. In this anxiety I awoke, and could not calm myself until I had awakened my parents. I remember that I suddenly became calm on coming face to face with my mother, as if I needed the assurance that my mother was not dead. But this secondary interpretation of the dream had been effected only under the influence of the developed anxiety. I was not frightened because I dreamed that my mother was dying, but I interpreted the dream in this manner in the foreconscious elaboration because I was already under the domination of the anxiety. The latter, however, could be traced by means of the repression to an obscure obviously sexual desire, which had found its satisfying expression in the visual content of the dream.
A man twenty-seven years old who had been severely ill for a year had had many terrifying dreams between the ages of eleven and thirteen. He thought that a man with an axe was running after him; he wished to run, but felt paralysed and could not move from the spot. This may be taken as a good example of a very common, and apparently sexually indifferent, anxiety dream. In the analysis the dreamer first thought of a story told him by his uncle, which chronologically was later than the dream, viz. that he was attacked at night by a suspicious-looking individual. This occurrence led him to believe that he himself might have already heard of a similar episode at the time of the dream. In connection with the axe he recalled that during that period of his life he once hurt his hand with an axe while chopping wood. This immediately led to his relations with his younger brother, whom he used to maltreat and knock down. In particular, he recalled an occasion when he struck his brother on the head with his boot until he bled, whereupon his mother remarked: “I fear he will kill him some day.” While he was seemingly thinking of the subject of violence, a reminiscence from his ninth year suddenly occurred to him. His parents came home late and went to bed while he was feigning sleep. He soon heard panting and other noises that appeared strange to him, and he could also make out the position of his parents in bed. His further associations showed that he had established an analogy between this relation between his parents and his own relation toward his younger brother. He subsumed what occurred between his parents under the conception “violence and wrestling,” and thus reached a sadistic conception of the coitus act, as often happens among children. The fact that he often noticed blood on his mother’s bed corroborated his conception.
That the sexual intercourse of adults appears strange to children who observe it, and arouses fear in them, I dare say is a fact of daily experience. I have explained this fear by the fact that sexual excitement is not mastered by their understanding, and is probably also inacceptable to them because their parents are involved in it. For the same reason this excitement is converted into fear. At a still earlier period of life sexual emotion directed toward the parent of opposite sex does not meet with repression but finds free expression, as we have seen above (pp. 209–215).
For the night terrors with hallucinations (pavor nocturnus) frequently found in children, I would unhesitatingly give the same explanation. Here, too, we are certainly dealing with the incomprehensible and rejected sexual feelings, which, if noted, would probably show a temporal periodicity, for an enhancement of the sexual libido may just as well be produced accidentally through emotional impressions as through the spontaneous and gradual processes of development.
I lack the necessary material to sustain these explanations from observation. On the other hand, the pediatrists seem to lack the point of view which alone makes comprehensible the whole series of phenomena, on the somatic as well as on the psychic side. To illustrate by a comical example how one wearing the blinders of medical mythology may miss the understanding of such cases, I will relate a case which I found in a thesis on pavor nocturnus by Debacker,[17] 1881 (p. 66). A thirteen-year-old boy of delicate health began to become anxious and dreamy; his sleep became restless, and about once a week it was interrupted by an acute attack of anxiety with hallucinations. The memory of these dreams was invariably very distinct. Thus, he related that the devil shouted at him: “Now we have you, now we have you,” and this was followed by an odour of sulphur; the fire burned his skin. This dream aroused him, terror-stricken. He was unable to scream at first; then his voice returned, and he was heard to say distinctly: “No, no, not me; why, I have done nothing,” or, “Please don’t, I shall never do it again.” Occasionally, also, he said: “Albert has not done that.” Later he avoided undressing, because, as he said, the fire attacked him only when he was undressed. From amid these evil dreams, which menaced his health, he was sent into the country, where he recovered within a year and a half, but at the age of fifteen he once confessed: “Je n’osais pas l’avouer, mais j’éprouvais continuellement des picotements et des surexcitations aux parties;[FV] à la fin, cela m’énervait tant que plusieurs fois, j’ai pensé me jeter par la fenêtre au dortoir.”
It is certainly not difficult to suspect: 1, that the boy had practised masturbation in former years, that he probably denied it, and was threatened with severe punishment for his wrongdoing (his confession: Je ne le ferai plus; his denial: Albert n’a jamais fait ça). 2, That under the pressure of puberty the temptation to self-abuse through the tickling of the genitals was reawakened. 3, That now, however, a struggle of repression arose in him, suppressing the libido and changing it into fear, which subsequently took the form of the punishments with which he was then threatened.
Let us, however, quote the conclusions drawn by our author (p. 69). This observation shows: 1, That the influence of puberty may produce in a boy of delicate health a condition of extreme weakness, and that it may lead to a very marked cerebral anæmia.[FW]
2. This cerebral anæmia produces a transformation of character, demonomaniacal hallucinations, and very violent nocturnal, perhaps also diurnal, states of anxiety.
3. Demonomania and the self-reproaches of the day can be traced to the influences of religious education which the subject underwent as a child.
4. All manifestations disappeared as a result of a lengthy sojourn in the country, bodily exercise, and the return of physical strength after the termination of the period of puberty.
5. A predisposing influence for the origin of the cerebral condition of the boy may be attributed to heredity and to the father’s chronic syphilitic state.
The concluding remarks of the author read: “Nous avons fait entrer cette observation dans le cadre des délires apyrétiques d’inanition, car c’est à l’ischémie cérébrale que nous rattachons cet état particulier.”
(e) The Primary and Secondary Processes—Regression.
In venturing to attempt to penetrate more deeply into the psychology of the dream processes, I have undertaken a difficult task, to which, indeed, my power of description is hardly equal. To reproduce in description by a succession of words the simultaneousness of so complex a chain of events, and in doing so to appear unbiassed throughout the exposition, goes fairly beyond my powers. I have now to atone for the fact that I have been unable in my description of the dream psychology to follow the historic development of my views. The view-points for my conception of the dream were reached through earlier investigations in the psychology of the neuroses, to which I am not supposed to refer here, but to which I am repeatedly forced to refer, whereas I should prefer to proceed in the opposite direction, and, starting from the dream, to establish a connection with the psychology of the neuroses. I am well aware of all the inconveniences arising for the reader from this difficulty, but I know of no way to avoid them.
As I am dissatisfied with this state of affairs, I am glad to dwell upon another viewpoint which seems to raise the value of my efforts. As has been shown in the introduction to the first chapter, I found myself confronted with a theme which had been marked by the sharpest contradictions on the part of the authorities. After our elaboration of the dream problems we found room for most of these contradictions. We have been forced, however, to take decided exception to two of the views pronounced, viz. that the dream is a senseless and that it is a somatic process; apart from these cases we have had to accept all the contradictory views in one place or another of the complicated argument, and we have been able to demonstrate that they had discovered something that was correct. That the dream continues the impulses and interests of the waking state has been quite generally confirmed through the discovery of the latent thoughts of the dream. These thoughts concern themselves only with things that seem important and of momentous interest to us. The dream never occupies itself with trifles. But we have also concurred with the contrary view, viz. that the dream gathers up the indifferent remnants from the day, and that not until it has in some measure withdrawn itself from the waking activity can an important event of the day be taken up by the dream. We found this holding true for the dream content, which gives the dream thought its changed expression by means of disfigurement. We have said that from the nature of the association mechanism the dream process more easily takes possession of recent or indifferent material which has not yet been seized by the waking mental activity; and by reason of the censor it transfers the psychic intensity from the important but also disagreeable to the indifferent material. The hypermnesia of the dream and the resort to infantile material have become main supports in our theory. In our theory of the dream we have attributed to the wish originating from the infantile the part of an indispensable motor for the formation of the dream. We naturally could not think of doubting the experimentally demonstrated significance of the objective sensory stimuli during sleep; but we have brought this material into the same relation to the dream-wish as the thought remnants from the waking activity. There was no need of disputing the fact that the dream interprets the objective sensory stimuli after the manner of an illusion; but we have supplied the motive for this interpretation which has been left undecided by the authorities.
The interpretation follows in such a manner that the perceived object is rendered harmless as a sleep disturber and becomes available for the wish-fulfilment. Though we do not admit as special sources of the dream the subjective state of excitement of the sensory organs during sleep, which seems to have been demonstrated by Trumbull Ladd,[40] we are nevertheless able to explain this excitement through the regressive revival of active memories behind the dream. A modest part in our conception has also been assigned to the inner organic sensations which are wont to be taken as the cardinal point in the explanation of the dream. These—the sensation of falling, flying, or inhibition—stand as an ever ready material to be used by the dream-work to express the dream thought as often as need arises.
That the dream process is a rapid and momentary one seems to be true for the perception through consciousness of the already prepared dream content; the preceding parts of the dream process probably take a slow, fluctuating course. We have solved the riddle of the superabundant dream content compressed within the briefest moment by explaining that this is due to the appropriation of almost fully formed structures from the psychic life. That the dream is disfigured and distorted by memory we found to be correct, but not troublesome, as this is only the last manifest operation in the work of disfigurement which has been active from the beginning of the dream-work. In the bitter and seemingly irreconcilable controversy as to whether the psychic life sleeps at night or can make the same use of all its capabilities as during the day, we have been able to agree with both sides, though not fully with either. We have found proof that the dream thoughts represent a most complicated intellectual activity, employing almost every means furnished by the psychic apparatus; still it cannot be denied that these dream thoughts have originated during the day, and it is indispensable to assume that there is a sleeping state of the psychic life. Thus, even the theory of partial sleep has come into play; but the characteristics of the sleeping state have been found not in the dilapidation of the psychic connections but in the cessation of the psychic system dominating the day, arising from its desire to sleep. The withdrawal from the outer world retains its significance also for our conception; though not the only factor, it nevertheless helps the regression to make possible the representation of the dream. That we should reject the voluntary guidance of the presentation course is uncontestable; but the psychic life does not thereby become aimless, for we have seen that after the abandonment of the desired end-presentation undesired ones gain the mastery. The loose associative connection in the dream we have not only recognised, but we have placed under its control a far greater territory than could have been supposed; we have, however, found it merely the feigned substitute for another correct and senseful one. To be sure we, too, have called the dream absurd; but we have been able to learn from examples how wise the dream really is when it simulates absurdity. We do not deny any of the functions that have been attributed to the dream.
That the dream relieves the mind like a valve, and that, according to Robert’s assertion, all kinds of harmful material are rendered harmless through representation in the dream, not only exactly coincides with our theory of the two-fold wish-fulfilment in the dream, but, in his own wording, becomes even more comprehensible for us than for Robert himself. The free indulgence of the psychic in the play of its faculties finds expression with us in the non-interference with the dream on the part of the foreconscious activity. The “return to the embryonal state of psychic life in the dream” and the observation of Havelock Ellis,[23] “an archaic world of vast emotions and imperfect thoughts,” appear to us as happy anticipations of our deductions to the effect that primitive modes of work suppressed during the day participate in the formation of the dream; and with us, as with Delage,[15] the suppressed material becomes the mainspring of the dreaming.
We have fully recognised the rôle which Scherner ascribes to the dream phantasy, and even his interpretation; but we have been obliged, so to speak, to conduct them to another department in the problem. It is not the dream that produces the phantasy but the unconscious phantasy that takes the greatest part in the formation of the dream thoughts. We are indebted to Scherner for his clue to the source of the dream thoughts, but almost everything that he ascribes to the dream-work is attributable to the activity of the unconscious, which is at work during the day, and which supplies incitements not only for dreams but for neurotic symptoms as well. We have had to separate the dream-work from this activity as being something entirely different and far more restricted. Finally, we have by no means abandoned the relation of the dream to mental disturbances, but, on the contrary, we have given it a more solid foundation on new ground.
Thus held together by the new material of our theory as by a superior unity, we find the most varied and most contradictory conclusions of the authorities fitting into our structure; some of them are differently disposed, only a few of them are entirely rejected. But our own structure is still unfinished. For, disregarding the many obscurities which we have necessarily encountered in our advance into the darkness of psychology, we are now apparently embarrassed by a new contradiction. On the one hand, we have allowed the dream thoughts to proceed from perfectly normal mental operations, while, on the other hand, we have found among the dream thoughts a number of entirely abnormal mental processes which extend likewise to the dream contents. These, consequently, we have repeated in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the “dream-work” seems so remote from the psychic processes recognised by us as correct, that the severest judgments of the authors as to the low psychic activity of dreaming seem to us well founded.
Perhaps only through still further advance can enlightenment and improvement be brought about. I shall pick out one of the constellations leading to the formation of dreams.
We have learned that the dream replaces a number of thoughts derived from daily life which are perfectly formed logically. We cannot therefore doubt that these thoughts originate from our normal mental life. All the qualities which we esteem in our mental operations, and which distinguish these as complicated activities of a high order, we find repeated in the dream thoughts. There is, however, no need of assuming that this mental work is performed during sleep, as this would materially impair the conception of the psychic state of sleep we have hitherto adhered to. These thoughts may just as well have originated from the day, and, unnoticed by our consciousness from their inception, they may have continued to develop until they stood complete at the onset of sleep. If we are to conclude anything from this state of affairs, it will at most prove that the most complex mental operations are possible without the co-operation of consciousness, which we have already learned independently from every psychoanalysis of persons suffering from hysteria or obsessions. These dream thoughts are in themselves surely not incapable of consciousness; if they have not become conscious to us during the day, this may have various reasons. The state of becoming conscious depends on the exercise of a certain psychic function, viz. attention, which seems to be extended only in a definite quantity, and which may have been withdrawn from the stream of thought in question by other aims. Another way in which such mental streams are kept from consciousness is the following:—Our conscious reflection teaches us that when exercising attention we pursue a definite course. But if that course leads us to an idea which does not hold its own with the critic, we discontinue and cease to apply our attention. Now, apparently, the stream of thought thus started and abandoned may spin on without regaining attention unless it reaches a spot of especially marked intensity which forces the return of attention. An initial rejection, perhaps consciously brought about by the judgment on the ground of incorrectness or unfitness for the actual purpose of the mental act, may therefore account for the fact that a mental process continues until the onset of sleep unnoticed by consciousness.
Let us recapitulate by saying that we call such a stream of thought a foreconscious one, that we believe it to be perfectly correct, and that it may just as well be a more neglected one or an interrupted and suppressed one. Let us also state frankly in what manner we conceive this presentation course. We believe that a certain sum of excitement, which we call occupation energy, is displaced from an end-presentation along the association paths selected by that end-presentation. A “neglected” stream of thought has received no such occupation, and from a “suppressed” or “rejected” one this occupation has been withdrawn; both have thus been left to their own emotions. The end-stream of thought stocked with energy is under certain conditions able to draw to itself the attention of consciousness, through which means it then receives a “surplus of energy.” We shall be obliged somewhat later to elucidate our assumption concerning the nature and activity of consciousness.
A train of thought thus incited in the Forec. may either disappear spontaneously or continue. The former issue we conceive as follows: It diffuses its energy through all the association paths emanating from it, and throws the entire chain of ideas into a state of excitement which, after lasting for a while, subsides through the transformation of the excitement requiring an outlet into dormant energy.[FX] If this first issue is brought about the process has no further significance for the dream formation. But other end-presentations are lurking in our foreconscious that originate from the sources of our unconscious and from the ever active wishes. These may take possession of the excitations in the circle of thought thus left to itself, establish a connection between it and the unconscious wish, and transfer to it the energy inherent in the unconscious wish. Henceforth the neglected or suppressed train of thought is in a position to maintain itself, although this reinforcement does not help it to gain access to consciousness. We may say that the hitherto foreconscious train of thought has been drawn into the unconscious.
Other constellations for the dream formation would result if the foreconscious train of thought had from the beginning been connected with the unconscious wish, and for that reason met with rejection by the dominating end-occupation; or if an unconscious wish were made active for other—possibly somatic—reasons and of its own accord sought a transference to the psychic remnants not occupied by the Forec. All three cases finally combine in one issue, so that there is established in the foreconscious a stream of thought which, having been abandoned by the foreconscious occupation, receives occupation from the unconscious wish.
The stream of thought is henceforth subjected to a series of transformations which we no longer recognise as normal psychic processes and which give us a surprising result, viz. a psychopathological formation. Let us emphasize and group the same.
1. The intensities of the individual ideas become capable of discharge in their entirety, and, proceeding from one conception to the other, they thus form single presentations endowed with marked intensity. Through the repeated recurrence of this process the intensity of an entire train of ideas may ultimately be gathered in a single presentation element. This is the principle of compression or condensation with which we became acquainted in the chapter on “The Dream-Work.” It is condensation that is mainly responsible for the strange impression of the dream, for we know of nothing analogous to it in the normal psychic life accessible to consciousness. We find here, also, presentations which possess great psychic significance as junctions or as end-results of whole chains of thought; but this validity does not manifest itself in any character conspicuous enough for internal perception; hence, what has been presented in it does not become in any way more intensive. In the process of condensation the entire psychic connection becomes transformed into the intensity of the presentation content. It is the same as in a book where we space or print in heavy type any word upon which particular stress is laid for the understanding of the text. In speech the same word would be pronounced loudly and deliberately and with emphasis. The first comparison leads us at once to an example taken from the chapter on “The Dream-Work” (trimethylamine in the dream of Irma’s injection). Historians of art call our attention to the fact that the most ancient historical sculptures follow a similar principle in expressing the rank of the persons represented by the size of the statue. The king is made two or three times as large as his retinue or the vanquished enemy. A piece of art, however, from the Roman period makes use of more subtle means to accomplish the same purpose. The figure of the emperor is placed in the centre in a firmly erect posture; special care is bestowed on the proper modelling of his figure; his enemies are seen cowering at his feet; but he is no longer represented a giant among dwarfs. However, the bowing of the subordinate to his superior in our own days is only an echo of that ancient principle of representation.
The direction taken by the condensations of the dream is prescribed on the one hand by the true foreconscious relations of the dream thoughts, on the other hand by the attraction of the visual reminiscences in the unconscious. The success of the condensation work produces those intensities which are required for penetration into the perception systems.
2. Through this free transferability of the intensities,
moreover, and in the service of condensation, intermediary presentations—compromises, as it were—are formed (cf. the numerous examples). This, likewise, is something unheard of in the normal presentation course, where it is above all a question of selection and retention of the “proper” presentation element. On the other hand, composite and compromise formations occur with extraordinary frequency when we are trying to find the linguistic expression for foreconscious thoughts; these are considered “slips of the tongue.”
3. The presentations which transfer their intensities to one another are very loosely connected, and are joined together by such forms of association as are spurned in our serious thought and are utilised in the production of the effect of wit only. Among these we particularly find associations of the sound and consonance types.
4. Contradictory thoughts do not strive to eliminate one another, but remain side by side. They often unite to produce condensation as if no contradiction existed, or they form compromises for which we should never forgive our thoughts, but which we frequently approve of in our actions.
These are some of the most conspicuous abnormal processes to which the thoughts which have previously been rationally formed are subjected in the course of the dream-work. As the main feature of these processes we recognise the high importance attached to the fact of rendering the occupation energy mobile and capable of discharge; the content and the actual significance of the psychic elements, to which these energies adhere, become a matter of secondary importance. One might possibly think that the condensation and compromise formation is effected only in the service of regression, when occasion arises for changing thoughts into pictures. But the analysis and—still more distinctly—the synthesis of dreams which lack regression toward pictures, e.g. the dream “Autodidasker—Conversation with Court-Councillor N.,” present the same processes of displacement and condensation as the others.
Hence we cannot refuse to acknowledge that the two kinds of essentially different psychic processes participate in the formation of the dream; one forms perfectly correct dream thoughts which are equivalent to normal thoughts, while the other treats these ideas in a highly surprising and incorrect manner. The latter process we have already set apart in Chapter VI as the dream-work proper. What have we now to advance concerning this latter psychic process?
We should be unable to answer this question here if we had not penetrated considerably into the psychology of the neuroses and especially of hysteria. From this we learn that the same incorrect psychic processes—as well as others that have not been enumerated—control the formation of hysterical symptoms. In hysteria, too, we at once find a series of perfectly correct thoughts equivalent to our conscious thoughts, of whose existence, however, in this form we can learn nothing and which we can only subsequently reconstruct. If they have forced their way anywhere to our perception, we discover from the analysis of the symptom formed that these normal thoughts have been subjected to abnormal treatment and have been transformed into the symptom by means of condensation and compromise formation, through superficial associations, under cover of contradictions, and eventually over the road of regression. In view of the complete identity found between the peculiarities of the dream-work and of the psychic activity forming the psychoneurotic symptoms, we shall feel justified in transferring to the dream the conclusions urged upon us by hysteria.
From the theory of hysteria we borrow the proposition that _such an abnormal psychic elaboration of a normal train of thought takes place only when the latter has been used for the transference of an unconscious wish which dates from the infantile life and is in a state of repression_. In accordance with this proposition we have construed the theory of the dream on the assumption that the actuating dream-wish invariably originates in the unconscious, which, as we ourselves have admitted, cannot be universally demonstrated though it cannot be refuted. But in order to explain the real meaning of the term repression, which we have employed so freely, we shall be obliged to make some further addition to our psychological construction.
We have above elaborated the fiction of a primitive psychic apparatus, whose work is regulated by the efforts to avoid accumulation of excitement and as far as possible to maintain itself free from excitement. For this reason it was constructed after the plan of a reflex apparatus; the motility, originally the path for the inner bodily change, formed a discharging path standing at its disposal. We subsequently discussed the psychic results of a feeling of gratification, and we might at the same time have introduced the second assumption, viz. that accumulation of excitement—following certain modalities that do not concern us—is perceived as pain and sets the apparatus in motion in order to reproduce a feeling of gratification in which the diminution of the excitement is perceived as pleasure. Such a current in the apparatus which emanates from pain and strives for pleasure we call a wish. We have said that nothing but a wish is capable of setting the apparatus in motion, and that the discharge of excitement in the apparatus is regulated automatically by the perception of pleasure and pain. The first wish must have been an hallucinatory occupation of the memory for gratification. But this hallucination, unless it were maintained to the point of exhaustion, proved incapable of bringing about a cessation of the desire and consequently of securing the pleasure connected with gratification.
Thus there was required a second activity—in our terminology the activity of a second system—which should not permit the memory occupation to advance to perception and therefrom to restrict the psychic forces, but should lead the excitement emanating from the craving stimulus by a devious path over the spontaneous motility which ultimately should so change the outer world as to allow the real perception of the object of gratification to take place. Thus far we have elaborated the plan of the psychic apparatus; these two systems are the germ of the Unc. and Forec. which we include in the fully developed apparatus.
In order to be in a position successfully to change the outer world through the motility, there is required the accumulation of a large sum of experiences in the memory systems as well as a manifold fixation of the relations which are evoked in this memory material by different end-presentations. We now proceed further with our assumption. The manifold activity of the second system, tentatively sending forth and retracting energy, must on the one hand have full command over all memory material, but on the other hand it would be a superfluous expenditure for it to send to the individual mental paths large quantities of energy which would thus flow off to no purpose, diminishing the quantity available for the transformation of the outer world. In the interests of expediency I therefore postulate that the second system succeeds in maintaining the greater part of the occupation energy in a dormant state and in using but a small portion for the purposes of displacement. The mechanism of these processes is entirely unknown to me; anyone who wishes to follow up these ideas must try to find the physical analogies and prepare the way for a demonstration of the process of motion in the stimulation of the neuron. I merely hold to the idea that the activity of the first Ψ-system is directed to the free outflow of the quantities of excitement, and that the second system brings about an inhibition of this outflow through the energies emanating from it, i.e. it produces a transformation into dormant energy, probably by raising the level. I therefore assume that under the control of the second system as compared with the first, the course of the excitement is bound to entirely different mechanical conditions. After the second system has finished its tentative mental work, it removes the inhibition and congestion of the excitements and allows these excitements to flow off to the motility.
An interesting train of thought now presents itself if we consider the relations of this inhibition of discharge by the second system to the regulation through the principle of pain. Let us now seek the counterpart of the primary feeling of gratification, namely, the objective feeling of fear. A perceptive stimulus acts on the primitive apparatus, becoming the source of a painful emotion. This will then be followed by irregular motor manifestations until one of these withdraws the apparatus from perception and at the same time from pain, but on the reappearance of the perception this manifestation will immediately repeat itself (perhaps as a movement of flight) until the perception has again disappeared. But there will here remain no tendency again to occupy the perception of the source of pain in the form of an hallucination or in any other form. On the contrary, there will be a tendency in the primary apparatus to abandon the painful memory picture as soon as it is in any way awakened, as the overflow of its excitement would surely produce (more precisely, begin to produce) pain. The deviation from memory, which is but a repetition of the former flight from perception, is facilitated also by the fact that, unlike perception, memory does not possess sufficient quality to excite consciousness and thereby to attract to itself new energy. This easy and regularly occurring deviation of the psychic process from the former painful memory presents to us the model and the first example of psychic repression. As is generally known, much of this deviation from the painful, much of the behaviour of the ostrich, can be readily demonstrated even in the normal psychic life of adults.
By virtue of the principle of pain the first system is therefore altogether incapable of introducing anything unpleasant into the mental associations. The system cannot do anything but wish. If this remained so the mental activity of the second system, which should have at its disposal all the memories stored up by experiences, would be hindered. But two ways are now opened: the work of the second system either frees itself completely from the principle of pain and continues its course, paying no heed to the painful reminiscence, or it contrives to occupy the painful memory in such a manner as to preclude the liberation of pain. We may reject the first possibility, as the principle of pain also manifests itself as a regulator for the emotional discharge of the second system; we are, therefore, directed to the second possibility, namely, that this system occupies a reminiscence in such a manner as to inhibit its discharge and hence, also, to inhibit the discharge comparable to a motor innervation for the development of pain. Thus from two starting points we are led to the hypothesis that occupation through the second system is at the same time an inhibition for the emotional discharge, viz. from a consideration of the principle of pain and from the principle of the smallest expenditure of innervation. Let us, however, keep to the fact—this is the key to the theory of repression—that the second system is capable of occupying an idea only when it is in position to check the development of pain emanating from it. Whatever withdraws itself from this inhibition also remains inaccessible for the second system and would soon be abandoned by virtue of the principle of pain. The inhibition of pain, however, need not be complete; it must be permitted to begin, as it indicates to the second system the nature of the memory and possibly its defective adaptation for the purpose sought by the mind.
The psychic process which is admitted by the first system only I shall now call the primary process; and the one resulting from the inhibition of the second system I shall call the secondary process. I show by another point for what purpose the second system is obliged to correct the primary process. The primary process strives for a discharge of the excitement in order to establish a perception identity with the sum of excitement thus gathered; the secondary process has abandoned this intention and undertaken instead the task of bringing about a thought identity. All thinking is only a circuitous path from the memory of gratification taken as an end-presentation to the identical occupation of the same memory, which is again to be attained on the track of the motor experiences. The state of thinking must take an interest in the connecting paths between the presentations without allowing itself to be misled by their intensities. But it is obvious that condensations and intermediate or compromise formations occurring in the presentations impede the attainment of this end-identity; by substituting one idea for the other they deviate from the path which otherwise would have been continued from the original idea. Such processes are therefore carefully avoided in the secondary thinking. Nor is it difficult to understand that the principle of pain also impedes the progress of the mental stream in its pursuit of the thought identity, though, indeed, it offers to the mental stream the most important points of departure. Hence the tendency of the thinking process must be to free itself more and more from exclusive adjustment by the principle of pain, and through the working of the mind to restrict the affective development to that minimum which is necessary as a signal. This refinement of the activity must have been attained through a recent over-occupation of energy brought about by consciousness. But we are aware that this refinement is seldom completely successful even in the most normal psychic life and that our thoughts ever remain accessible to falsification through the interference of the principle of pain.
This, however, is not the breach in the functional efficiency of our psychic apparatus through which the thoughts forming the material of the secondary mental work are enabled to make their way into the primary psychic process—with which formula we may now describe the work leading to the dream and to the hysterical symptoms. This case of insufficiency results from the union of the two factors from the history of our evolution; one of which belongs solely to the psychic apparatus and has exerted a determining influence on the relation of the two systems, while the other operates fluctuatingly and introduces motive forces of organic origin into the psychic life. Both originate in the infantile life and result from the transformation which our psychic and somatic organism has undergone since the infantile period.
When I termed one of the psychic processes in the psychic apparatus the primary process, I did so not only in consideration of the order of precedence and capability, but also as admitting the temporal relations to a share in the nomenclature. As far as our knowledge goes there is no psychic apparatus possessing only the primary process, and in so far it is a theoretic fiction; but so much is based on fact that the primary processes are present in the apparatus from the beginning, while the secondary processes develop gradually in the course of life, inhibiting and covering the primary ones, and gaining complete mastery over them perhaps only at the height of life. Owing to this retarded appearance of the secondary processes, the essence of our being, consisting in unconscious wish feelings, can neither be seized nor inhibited by the foreconscious, whose part is once for all restricted to the indication of the most suitable paths for the wish feelings originating in the unconscious. These unconscious wishes establish for all subsequent psychic efforts a compulsion to which they have to submit and which they must strive if possible to divert from its course and direct to higher aims. In consequence of this retardation of the foreconscious occupation a large sphere of the memory material remains inaccessible.
Among these indestructible and unincumbered wish feelings originating from the infantile life, there are also some, the fulfilments of which have entered into a relation of contradiction to the end-presentation of the secondary thinking. The fulfilment of these wishes would no longer produce an affect of pleasure but one of pain; _and it is just this transformation of affect that constitutes the nature of what we designate as “repression,” in which we recognise the infantile first step of passing adverse sentence or of rejecting through reason_. To investigate in what way and through what motive forces such a transformation can be produced constitutes the problem of repression, which we need here only skim over. It will suffice to remark that such a transformation of affect occurs in the course of development (one may think of the appearance in infantile life of disgust which was originally absent), and that it is connected with the activity of the secondary system. The memories from which the unconscious wish brings about the emotional discharge have never been accessible to the Forec., and for that reason their emotional discharge cannot be inhibited. It is just on account of this affective development that these ideas are not even now accessible to the foreconscious thoughts to which they have transferred their wishing power. On the contrary, the principle of pain comes into play, and causes the Forec. to deviate from these thoughts of transference. The latter, left to themselves, are “repressed,” and thus the existence of a store of infantile memories, from the very beginning withdrawn from the Forec., becomes the preliminary condition of repression.
In the most favourable case the development of pain terminates as soon as the energy has been withdrawn from the thoughts of transference in the Forec., and this effect characterises the intervention of the principle of pain as expedient. It is different, however, if the repressed unconscious wish receives an organic enforcement which it can lend to its thoughts of transference and through which it can enable them to make an effort towards penetration with their excitement, even after they have been abandoned by the occupation of the Forec. A defensive struggle then ensues, inasmuch as the Forec. reinforces the antagonism against the repressed ideas, and subsequently this leads to a penetration by the thoughts of transference (the carriers of the unconscious wish) in some form of compromise through symptom formation. But from the moment that the suppressed thoughts are powerfully occupied by the unconscious wish-feeling and abandoned by the foreconscious occupation, they succumb to the primary psychic process and strive only for motor discharge; or, if the path be free, for hallucinatory revival of the desired perception identity. We have previously found, empirically, that the incorrect processes described are enacted only with thoughts that exist in the repression. We now grasp another part of the connection. These incorrect processes are those that are primary in the psychic apparatus; they appear wherever thoughts abandoned by the foreconscious occupation are left to themselves, and can fill themselves with the uninhibited energy, striving for discharge from the unconscious. We may add a few further observations to support the view that these processes designated “incorrect” are really not falsifications of the normal defective thinking, but the modes of activity of the psychic apparatus when freed from inhibition. Thus we see that the transference of the foreconscious excitement to the motility takes place according to the same processes, and that the connection of the foreconscious presentations with words readily manifest the same displacements and mixtures which are described to inattention. Finally, I should like to adduce proof that an increase of work necessarily results from the inhibition of these primary courses from the fact that we gain a comical effect, a surplus to be discharged through laughter, if we allow these streams of thought to come to consciousness.
The theory of the psychoneuroses asserts with complete certainty that only sexual wish-feelings from the infantile life experience repression (emotional transformation) during the developmental period of childhood. These are capable of returning to activity at a later period of development, and then have the faculty of being revived, either as a consequence of the sexual constitution, which is really formed from the original bisexuality, or in consequence of unfavourable influences of the sexual life; and they thus supply the motive power for all psychoneurotic symptom formations. It is only by the introduction of these sexual forces that the gaps still demonstrable in the theory of repression can be filled. I will leave it undecided whether the postulate of the sexual and infantile may also be asserted for the theory of the dream; I leave this here unfinished because I have already passed a step beyond the demonstrable in assuming that the dream-wish invariably originates from the unconscious.[FY] Nor will I further investigate the difference in the play of the psychic forces in the dream formation and in the formation of the hysterical symptoms, for to do this we ought to possess a more explicit knowledge of one of the members to be compared. But I regard another point as important, and will here confess that it was on account of this very point that I have just undertaken this entire discussion concerning the two psychic systems, their modes of operation, and the repression. For it is now immaterial whether I have conceived the psychological relations in question with approximate correctness, or, as is easily possible in such a difficult matter, in an erroneous and fragmentary manner. Whatever changes may be made in the interpretation of the psychic censor and of the correct and of the abnormal elaboration of the dream content, the fact nevertheless remains that such processes are active in dream formation, and that essentially they show the closest analogy to the processes observed in the formation of the hysterical symptoms. The dream is not a pathological phenomenon, and it does not leave behind an enfeeblement of the mental faculties. The objection that no deduction can be drawn regarding the dreams of healthy persons from my own dreams and from those of neurotic patients may be rejected without comment. Hence, when we draw conclusions from the phenomena as to their motive forces, we recognise that the psychic mechanism made use of by the neuroses is not created by a morbid disturbance of the psychic life, but is found ready in the normal structure of the psychic apparatus.
The two psychic systems, the censor crossing between them, the inhibition and the covering of the one activity by the other, the relations of both to consciousness—or whatever may offer a more correct interpretation of the actual conditions in their stead—all these belong to the normal structure of our psychic instrument, and the dream points out for us one of the roads leading to a knowledge of this structure. If, in addition to our knowledge, we wish to be contented with a minimum perfectly established, we shall say that the dream gives us proof that the suppressed material continues to exist even in the normal person and remains capable of psychic activity. The dream itself is one of the manifestations of this suppressed material; theoretically, this is true in all cases; according to substantial experience it is true in at least a great number of such as most conspicuously display the prominent characteristics of dream life. The suppressed psychic material, which in the waking state has been prevented from expression and cut off from internal perception _by the antagonistic adjustment of the contradictions_, finds ways and means of obtruding itself on consciousness during the night under the domination of the compromise formations.
“Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.”
At any rate the interpretation of dreams is the via regia to a knowledge of the unconscious in the psychic life.
In following the analysis of the dream we have made some progress toward an understanding of the composition of this most marvellous and most mysterious of instruments; to be sure, we have not gone very far, but enough of a beginning has been made to allow us to advance from other so-called pathological formations further into the analysis of the unconscious. Disease—at least that which is justly termed functional—is not due to the destruction of this apparatus, and the establishment of new splittings in its interior; it is rather to be explained dynamically through the strengthening and weakening of the components in the play of forces by which so many activities are concealed during the normal function. We have been able to show in another place how the composition of the apparatus from the two systems permits a subtilisation even of the normal activity which would be impossible for a single system.[FZ]
(f) The Unconscious and Consciousness—Reality.
On closer inspection we find that it is not the existence of two systems near the motor end of the apparatus but of two kinds of processes or modes of emotional discharge, the assumption of which was explained in the psychological discussions of the previous chapter. This can make no difference for us, for we must always be ready to drop our auxiliary ideas whenever we deem ourselves in position to replace them by something else approaching more closely to the unknown reality. Let us now try to correct some views which might be erroneously formed as long as we regarded the two systems in the crudest and most obvious sense as two localities within the psychic apparatus, views which have left their traces in the terms “repression” and “penetration.” Thus, when we say that an unconscious idea strives for transference into the foreconscious in order later to penetrate consciousness, we do not mean that a second idea is to be formed situated in a new locality like an interlineation near which the original continues to remain; also, when we speak of penetration into consciousness, we wish carefully to avoid any idea of change of locality. When we say that a foreconscious idea is repressed and subsequently taken up by the unconscious, we might be tempted by these figures, borrowed from the idea of a struggle over a territory, to assume that an arrangement is really broken up in one psychic locality and replaced by a new one in the other locality. For these comparisons we substitute what would seem to correspond better with the real state of affairs by saying that an energy occupation is displaced to or withdrawn from a certain arrangement so that the psychic formation falls under the domination of a system or is withdrawn from the same. Here again we replace a topical mode of presentation by a dynamic; it is not the psychic formation that appears to us as the moving factor but the innervation of the same.
I deem it appropriate and justifiable, however, to apply ourselves still further to the illustrative conception of the two systems. We shall avoid any misapplication of this manner of representation if we remember that presentations, thoughts, and psychic formations should generally not be localised in the organic elements of the nervous system, but, so to speak, between them, where resistances and paths form the correlate corresponding to them. Everything that can become an object of our internal perception is virtual, like the image in the telescope produced by the passage of the rays of light. But we are justified in assuming the existence of the systems, which have nothing psychic in themselves and which never become accessible to our psychic perception, corresponding to the lenses of the telescope which design the image. If we continue this comparison, we may say that the censor between two systems corresponds to the refraction of rays during their passage into a new medium.
Thus far we have made psychology on our own responsibility; it is now time to examine the theoretical opinions governing present-day psychology and to test their relation to our theories. The question of the unconscious in psychology is, according to the authoritative words of Lipps,[GA] less a psychological question than the question of psychology. As long as psychology settled this question with the verbal explanation that the “psychic” is the “conscious” and that “unconscious psychic occurrences” are an obvious contradiction, a psychological estimate of the observations gained by the physician from abnormal mental states was precluded. The physician and the philosopher agree only when both acknowledge that unconscious psychic processes are “the appropriate and well-justified expression for an established fact.” The physician cannot but reject with a shrug of his shoulders the assertion that “consciousness is the indispensable quality of the psychic”; he may assume, if his respect for the utterings of the philosophers still be strong enough, that he and they do not treat the same subject and do not pursue the same science. For a single intelligent observation of the psychic life of a neurotic, a single analysis of a dream must force upon him the unalterable conviction that the most complicated and correct mental operations, to which no one will refuse the name of psychic occurrences, may take place without exciting the consciousness of the person. It is true that the physician does not learn of these unconscious processes until they have exerted such an effect on consciousness as to admit communication or observation. But this effect of consciousness may show a psychic character widely differing from the unconscious process, so that the internal perception cannot possibly recognise the one as a substitute for the other. The physician must reserve for himself the right to penetrate, by a process of deduction, from the effect on consciousness to the unconscious psychic process; he learns in this way that the effect on consciousness is only a remote psychic product of the unconscious process and that the latter has not become conscious as such; that it has been in existence and operative without betraying itself in any way to consciousness.
A reaction from the over-estimation of the quality of consciousness becomes the indispensable preliminary condition for any correct insight into the behaviour of the psychic. In the words of Lipps, the unconscious must be accepted as the general basis of the psychic life. The unconscious is the larger circle which includes within itself the smaller circle of the conscious; everything conscious has its preliminary step in the unconscious, whereas the unconscious may stop with this step and still claim full value as a psychic activity. Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; _its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs_.
A series of dream problems which have intensely occupied older authors will be laid aside when the old opposition between conscious life and dream life is abandoned and the unconscious psychic assigned to its proper place. Thus many of the activities whose performances in the dream have excited our admiration are now no longer to be attributed to the dream but to unconscious thinking, which is also active during the day. If, according to Scherner, the dream seems to play with a symbolising representation of the body, we know that this is the work of certain unconscious phantasies which have probably given in to sexual emotions, and that these phantasies come to expression not only in dreams but also in hysterical phobias and in other symptoms. If the dream continues and settles activities of the day and even brings to light valuable inspirations, we have only to subtract from it the dream disguise as a feat of dream-work and a mark of assistance from obscure forces in the depth of the mind (cf. the devil in Tartini’s sonata dream). The intellectual task as such must be attributed to the same psychic forces which perform all such tasks during the day. We are probably far too much inclined to over-estimate the conscious character even of intellectual and artistic productions. From the communications of some of the most highly productive persons, such as Goethe and Helmholtz, we learn, indeed, that the most essential and original parts in their creations came to them in the form of inspirations and reached their perceptions almost finished. There is nothing strange about the assistance of the conscious activity in other cases where there was a concerted effort of all the psychic forces. But it is a much abused privilege of the conscious activity that it is allowed to hide from us all other activities wherever it participates.
It will hardly be worth while to take up the historical significance of dreams as a special subject. Where, for instance, a chieftain has been urged through a dream to engage in a bold undertaking the success of which has had the effect of changing history, a new problem results only so long as the dream, regarded as a strange power, is contrasted with other more familiar psychic forces; the problem, however, disappears when we regard the dream as a form of expression for feelings which are burdened with resistance during the day and which can receive reinforcements at night from deep emotional sources.[GB] But the great respect shown by the ancients for the dream is based on a correct psychological surmise. It is a homage paid to the unsubdued and indestructible in the human mind, and to the demoniacal which furnishes the dream-wish and which we find again in our unconscious.
Not inadvisedly do I use the expression “in our unconscious,” for what we so designate does not coincide with the unconscious of the philosophers, nor with the unconscious of Lipps. In the latter uses it is intended to designate only the opposite of conscious. That there are also unconscious psychic processes beside the conscious ones is the hotly contested and energetically defended issue. Lipps gives us the more far-reaching theory that everything psychic exists as unconscious, but that some of it may exist also as conscious. But it was not to prove this theory that we have adduced the phenomena of the dream and of the hysterical symptom formation; the observation of normal life alone suffices to establish its correctness beyond any doubt. The new fact that we have learned from the analysis of the psychopathological formations, and indeed from their first member, viz. dreams, is that the unconscious—hence the psychic—occurs as a function of two separate systems and that it occurs as such even in normal psychic life. Consequently there are two kinds of unconscious, which we do not as yet find distinguished by the psychologists. Both are unconscious in the psychological sense; but in our sense the first, which we call Unc., is likewise incapable of consciousness, whereas the second we term “Forec.” because its emotions, after the observance of certain rules, can reach consciousness, perhaps not before they have again undergone censorship, but still regardless of the Unc. system. The fact that in order to attain consciousness the emotions must traverse an unalterable series of events or succession of instances, as is betrayed through their alteration by the censor, has helped us to draw a comparison from spatiality. We described the relations of the two systems to each other and to consciousness by saying that the system Forec. is like a screen between the system Unc. and consciousness. The system Forec. not only bars access to consciousness, but also controls the entrance to voluntary motility and is capable of sending out a sum of mobile energy, a portion of which is familiar to us as attention.
We must also steer clear of the distinctions superconscious and subconscious which have found so much favour in the more recent literature on the psychoneuroses, for just such a distinction seems to emphasize the equivalence of the psychic and the conscious.
What part now remains in our description of the once all-powerful and all-overshadowing consciousness? None other than that of a sensory organ for the perception of psychic qualities. According to the fundamental idea of schematic undertaking we can conceive the conscious perception only as the particular activity of an independent system for which the abbreviated designation “Cons.” commends itself. This system we conceive to be similar in its mechanical characteristics to the perception system P, hence excitable by qualities and incapable of retaining the trace of changes, i.e. it is devoid of memory. The psychic apparatus which, with the sensory organs of the P-systems, is turned to the outer world, is itself the outer world for the sensory organ of Cons.; the teleological justification of which rests on this relationship. We are here once more confronted with the principle of the succession of instances which seems to dominate the structure of the apparatus. The material under excitement flows to the Cons. sensory organ from two sides, firstly from the P-system whose excitement, qualitatively determined, probably experiences a new elaboration until it comes to conscious perception; and, secondly, from the interior of the apparatus itself, the quantitative processes of which are perceived as a qualitative series of pleasure and pain as soon as they have undergone certain changes.
The philosophers, who have learned that correct and highly complicated thought structures are possible even without the co-operation of consciousness, have found it difficult to attribute any function to consciousness; it has appeared to them a superfluous mirroring of the perfected psychic process. The analogy of our Cons. system with the systems of perception relieves us of this embarrassment. We see that perception through our sensory organs results in directing the occupation of attention to those paths on which the incoming sensory excitement is diffused; the qualitative excitement of the P-system serves the mobile quantity of the psychic apparatus as a regulator for its discharge. We may claim the same function for the overlying sensory organ of the Cons. system. By assuming new qualities, it furnishes a new contribution toward the guidance and suitable distribution of the mobile occupation quantities. By means of the perceptions of pleasure and pain, it influences the course of the occupations within the psychic apparatus, which normally operates unconsciously and through the displacement of quantities. It is probable that the principle of pain first regulates the displacements of occupation automatically, but it is quite possible that the consciousness of these qualities adds a second and more subtle regulation which may even oppose the first and perfect the working capacity of the apparatus by placing it in a position contrary to its original design for occupying and developing even that which is connected with the liberation of pain. We learn from neuropsychology that an important part in the functional activity of the apparatus is attributed to such regulations through the qualitative excitation of the sensory organs. The automatic control of the primary principle of pain and the restriction of mental capacity connected with it are broken by the sensible regulations, which in their turn are again automatisms. We learn that the repression which, though originally expedient, terminates nevertheless in a harmful rejection of inhibition and of psychic domination, is so much more easily accomplished with reminiscences than with perceptions, because in the former there is no increase in occupation through the excitement of the psychic sensory organs. When an idea to be rejected has once failed to become conscious because it has succumbed to repression, it can be repressed on other occasions only because it has been withdrawn from conscious perception on other grounds. These are hints employed by therapy in order to bring about a retrogression of accomplished repressions.
The value of the over-occupation which is produced by the regulating influence of the Cons. sensory organ on the mobile quantity, is demonstrated in the teleological connection by nothing more clearly than by the creation of a new series of qualities and consequently a new regulation which constitutes the precedence of man over the animals. For the mental processes are in themselves devoid of quality except for the excitements of pleasure and pain accompanying them, which, as we know, are to be held in check as possible disturbances of thought. In order to endow them with a quality, they are associated in man with verbal memories, the qualitative remnants of which suffice to draw upon them the attention of consciousness which in turn endows thought with a new mobile energy.
The manifold problems of consciousness in their entirety can be examined only through an analysis of the hysterical mental process. From this analysis we receive the impression that the transition from the foreconscious to the occupation of consciousness is also connected with a censorship similar to the one between the Unc. and the Forec. This censorship, too, begins to act only with the reaching of a certain quantitative degree, so that few intense thought formations escape it. Every possible case of detention from consciousness, as well as of penetration to consciousness, under restriction is found included within the picture of the psychoneurotic phenomena; every case points to the intimate and two-fold connection between the censor and consciousness. I shall conclude these psychological discussions with the report of two such occurrences.
On the occasion of a consultation a few years ago the subject was an intelligent and innocent-looking girl. Her attire was strange; whereas a woman’s garb is usually groomed to the last fold, she had one of her stockings hanging down and two of her waist buttons opened. She complained of pains in one of her legs, and exposed her leg unrequested. Her chief complaint, however, was in her own words as follows: She had a feeling in her body as if something was stuck into it which moved to and fro and made her tremble through and through. This sometimes made her whole body stiff. On hearing this, my colleague in consultation looked at me; the complaint was quite plain to him. To both of us it seemed peculiar that the patient’s mother thought nothing of the matter; of course she herself must have been repeatedly in the situation described by her child. As for the girl, she had no idea of the import of her words or she would never have allowed them to pass her lips. Here the censor had been deceived so successfully that under the mask of an innocent complaint a phantasy was admitted to consciousness which otherwise would have remained in the foreconscious.
Another example: I began the psychoanalytic treatment of a boy of fourteen years who was suffering from tic convulsif, hysterical vomiting, headache, &c., by assuring him that, after closing his eyes, he would see pictures or have ideas, which I requested him to communicate to me. He answered by describing pictures. The last impression he had received before coming to me was visually revived in his memory. He had played a game of checkers with his uncle, and now saw the checker-board before him. He commented on various positions that were favourable or unfavourable, on moves that were not safe to make. He then saw a dagger lying on the checker-board, an object belonging to his father, but transferred to the checker-board by his phantasy. Then a sickle was lying on the board; next a scythe was added; and, finally, he beheld the likeness of an old peasant mowing the grass in front of the boy’s distant parental home. A few days later I discovered the meaning of this series of pictures. Disagreeable family relations had made the boy nervous. It was the case of a strict and crabbed father who lived unhappily with his mother, and whose educational methods consisted in threats; of the separation of his father from his tender and delicate mother, and the remarrying of his father, who one day brought home a young woman as his new mamma. The illness of the fourteen-year-old boy broke out a few days later. It was the suppressed anger against his father that had composed these pictures into intelligible allusions. The material was furnished by a reminiscence from mythology. The sickle was the one with which Zeus castrated his father; the scythe and the likeness of the peasant represented Kronos, the violent old man who eats his children and upon whom Zeus wreaks vengeance in so unfilial a manner. The marriage of the father gave the boy an opportunity to return the reproaches and threats of his father—which had previously been made because the child played with his genitals (the checker-board; the prohibitive moves; the dagger with which a person may be killed). We have here long repressed memories and their unconscious remnants which, under the guise of senseless pictures have slipped into consciousness by devious paths left open to them.
I should then expect to find the theoretical value of the study of dreams in its contribution to psychological knowledge and in its preparation for an understanding of neuroses. Who can foresee the importance of a thorough knowledge of the structure and activities of the psychic apparatus when even our present state of knowledge produces a happy therapeutic influence in the curable forms of the psychoneuroses? What about the practical value of such study someone may ask, for psychic knowledge and for the discovering of the secret peculiarities of individual character? Have not the unconscious feelings revealed by the dream the value of real forces in the psychic life? Should we take lightly the ethical significance of the suppressed wishes which, as they now create dreams, may some day create other things?
I do not feel justified in answering these questions. I have not thought further upon this side of the dream problem. I believe, however, that at all events the Roman Emperor was in the wrong who ordered one of his subjects executed because the latter dreamt that he had killed the Emperor. He should first have endeavoured to discover the significance of the dream; most probably it was not what it seemed to be. And even if a dream of different content had the significance of this offence against majesty, it would still have been in place to remember the words of Plato, that the virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life. I am therefore of the opinion that it is best to accord freedom to dreams. Whether any reality is to be attributed to the unconscious wishes, and in what sense, I am not prepared to say offhand. Reality must naturally be denied to all transition—and intermediate thoughts. If we had before us the unconscious wishes, brought to their last and truest expression, we should still do well to remember that more than one single form of existence must be ascribed to the psychic reality. Action and the conscious expression of thought mostly suffice for the practical need of judging a man’s character. Action, above all, merits to be placed in the first rank; for many of the impulses penetrating consciousness are neutralised by real forces of the psychic life before they are converted into action; indeed, the reason why they frequently do not encounter any psychic obstacle on their way is because the unconscious is certain of their meeting with resistances later. In any case it is instructive to become familiar with the much raked-up soil from which our virtues proudly arise. For the complication of human character moving dynamically in all directions very rarely accommodates itself to adjustment through a simple alternative, as our antiquated moral philosophy would have it.
And how about the value of the dream for a knowledge of the future? That, of course, we cannot consider.[GC] One feels inclined to substitute: “for a knowledge of the past.” For the dream originates from the past in every sense. To be sure the ancient belief that the dream reveals the future is not entirely devoid of truth. By representing to us a wish as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future; but this future, taken by the dreamer as present, has been formed into the likeness of that past by the indestructible wish.
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Schleiermacher, Fr. Psychologie. Edited by L. George. Berlin, 1862.
Footnote 62:
Siebek, A. Das Traumleben der Seele. 1877. _Sammlung
Virchow-Holtzendorf._ Nr. 279.
Footnote 63:
Simon, M. “Le Monde des Rêves.” Paris, 1888. Bibliothèque scientifique contemporaine.
Footnote 64:
Spitta, W. Die Schlaf- und Traumzustände der menschlichen Seele. 2.
Aufl. Freiburg, I. B., 1892.
Footnote 65:
Stumpf, E. J. G. Der Traum und seine Deutung. Leipzig, 1899.
Footnote 66:
Strümpell, L. Die Natur und Entstehung der Träume. Leipzig, 1877.
Footnote 67:
Tannery. “Sur la Mémoire dans le Rêve.” Revue philosophique, XLV.,
1898.
Footnote 68:
Tissié, Ph. “Les Rêves, Physiologie et Pathologie.” 1898.
Bibliothèque de Philosophie contemporaine.
Footnote 69:
Titchener. “Taste Dreams.” Amer. Jour. of Psychology, VI., 1893.
Footnote 70:
Thomayer. “Sur la Signification de quelques Rêves.” Revue neurologique. Nr. 4, 1897.
Footnote 71:
Vignoli. “Von den Träumen, Illusionen und Halluzinationen.”
Internationale wissenschaftliche Bibliothek, Bd. 47.
Footnote 72:
Volkelt, J. Die Traumphantasie. Stuttgart, 1875.
Footnote 73:
Vold, J. Mourly. “Expériences sur les Rêves et en particulier sur ceux d’Origine musculaire et optique.” Christiania, 1896. Abstract in the Revue philosophique, XLII., 1896.
Footnote 74:
Vold, J. Mourly. “Einige Experimente über Gesichtsbilder im Träume.”
Dritter internationaler Kongress für Psychologie in München. 1897.
Footnote 74a:
(Vold, J. Mourly. “Über den Traum.” _Experimentell-psychologische
Untersuchungen._ Herausgegeben von O. Klemm. Erster Band. Leipzig,
1910.)
Footnote 75:
Weygandt, W. Entstehung der Träume. Leipzig, 1893.
Footnote 76:
Wundt. Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie. II. Bd., 2 Aufl.
1880.
Footnote 77:
Stricker. Studien über das Bewusstsein. Wien, 1879.
Footnote 78:
Stricker. Studien über die Assoziation der Vorstellungen. Wien,
1883.
Footnote 79:
Abraham, Karl (Berlin): _Traum und Mythos: Eine Studie zur
Volker-psychologie_. Schriften z. angew. Seelenkunde, Heft 4, Wien und
Leipzig, 1909.
Footnote 80:
Abraham, Karl (Berlin): “Über hysterische Traumzustände.” (Jahrbuch f. psychoanalyt. und psychopatholog. Forschungen, Vol. II., 1910.)
Footnote 81:
Adler, Alfred (Wien): “Zwei Träume einer Prostituierten.”
(Zeitschrift f. Sexualwissenschaft, 1908, Nr. 2.)
Footnote 82:
Adler, Alfred (Wien): “Ein erlogener Traum.” (_Zentralbl. f.
Psychoanalyse_, 1. Jahrg. 1910, Heft 3.)
Footnote 83:
Bleuler, E. (Zürich): “Die Psychoanalyse Freuds.” (Jahrb. f. psychoanalyt. u. psychopatholog. Forschungen, Bd. II., 1910.)
Footnote 84:
Brill, A. A. (New York): “Dreams and their Relation to the Neuroses.”
(New York Medical Journal, April 23, 1910.)
Brill. Hysterical Dreamy States. Ebenda, May 25, 1912.
Footnote 85:
Ellis, Havelock: “The Symbolism of Dreams.” (_The Popular Science
Monthly_, July 1910.)
Footnote 86:
Ellis, Havelock: The World of Dreams. London, 1911.
Footnote 87:
Ferenczi, S. (Budapest): “Die psychologische Analyse der Träume.”
(Psychiatrisch-neurologische Wochenschrift, XII., Jahrg., Nr. 11–13,
Juni 1910. English translation under the title: _The Psychological
Analysis of Dreams in the American Journal of Psychology_, April
1910.)
Footnote 88:
Freud, S. (Wien): “Über den Traum.” (_Grenzfragen des Nerven- und
Seelenlebens._ Edited by Löwenfeld und Kurella, Heft 8. Wiesbaden,
Bergmann, 1901, 2. Aufl. 1911.)
Footnote 89:
Freud, S. (Wien): “Bruchstück einer Hysterieanalyse.” (_Monatsschr. f.
Psychiatrie und Neurologie_, Bd. 18, Heft 4 und 5, 1905. Reprinted in
Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, 2. Folge. Leipzig u.
Wien, 1909.)
Footnote 90:
Freud, S. (Wien): “Der Wahn und die Träume in W. Jensen’s Gradiva.”
(Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, Heft 1, Wien und Leipzig,
1907.)
Footnote 91:
Freud, S. (Wien): “Über den Gegensinn der Urworte.” A review of the brochure of the same name by Karl Abel, 1884. (Jahrbuch für psychoanalyt. und psychopatholog. Forschungen, Bd. II., 1910.)
Footnote 92:
“Typisches Beispiel eines verkappten Ödipustraumes.” (_Zentralbl. für
Psychoanalyse_, I. Jahrg. 1910, Heft 1.)
Footnote 93:
Freud, S. (Wien): Nachträge zur Traumdeutung. (Ebenda, Heft 5.)
Footnote 94:
Hitschmann, Ed. (Wien): Freud’s Neurosenlehre. Nach ihrem gegenwärtigen Stande zusammenfassend dargestellt. Wien und Leipzig, 1911. (Kap. V., “Der Traum.”)
Footnote 95:
Jones, Ernest (Toronto): “Freud’s Theory of Dreams.” (_American
Journal of Psychology_, April 1910.)
Footnote 96:
Jones, Ernest (Toronto): “Some Instances of the Influence of Dreams on
Waking Life.” (The Journ. of Abnormal Psychology, April-May 1911.)
Footnote 97:
Jung, C. G. (Zürich): “L’Analyse des Rêves.” (L’Année psychologique, tome XV.)
Footnote 98:
Jung, C. G. (Zürich): “Assoziation, Traum und hysterisches Symptom.”
(Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien. Beiträge zur experimentellen
Psychopathologie, hrg. von Doz. C. G. Jung, II. Bd., Leipzig 1910. Nr.
VIII., S. 31–66.)
Footnote 99:
Jung, C. G. (Zürich): “Ein Beitrag zur Psychologie des Gerüchtes.”
(Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, I. Jahrg. 1910, Heft 3.)
Footnote 100:
Maeder, Alphonse (Zürich): “Essai d’Interprétation de quelques Rêves.”
(Archives de Psychologie, t. VI., Nr. 24, April 1907.)
Footnote 101:
Maeder, Alphonse (Zürich): “Die Symbolik in den Legenden, Märchen,
Gebrauchen und Träumen.” (Psychiatrisch-Neurolog. Wochenschr. X.
Jahrg.)
Footnote 102:
Meisl, Alfred (Wien): _Der Traum. Analytische Studien über die
Elemente der Psychischen Funktion_ V. (Wr. klin. Rdsch., 1907, Nr.
3–6.)
Footnote 103:
Onuf, B. (New York): “Dreams and their Interpretations as Diagnostic and Therapeutic Aids in Psychology.” (The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Feb.-Mar. 1910.)
Footnote 104:
Pfister, Oskar (Zürich): _Wahnvorstellung und Schülerselbstmord. Auf
Grund einer Traumanalyse beleuchtet_. (Schweiz. Blätter für
Schulgesundheitspflege, 1909, Nr. 1.)
Footnote 105:
Prince, Morton (Boston): “The Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams.”
(The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Oct.-Nov. 1910.)
Footnote 106:
Rank, Otto (Wien): “Ein Traum, der sich selbst deutet.” (Jahrbuch für psychoanalyt. und psychopatholog. Forschungen, Bd. II., 1910.)
Footnote 107:
Rank, Otto (Wien): Ein Beitrag zum Narzissismus. (Ebenda, Bd. III.,
1.).
Footnote 108:
Rank, Otto (Wien): “Beispiel eines verkappten Ödipustraumes.”
(Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, I. Jahrg., 1910.)
Footnote 109:
Rank, Otto (Wien): Zum Thema der Zahnreiztraume. (Ebenda.)
Footnote 110:
Rank, Otto (Wien): _Das Verlieren als Symptomhandlung. Zugleich ein
Beitrag zum Verständnis der Beziehungen des Traumlebens zu den
Fehlleistungen des Alltagslebens_. (Ebenda.)
Footnote 111:
Robitsek, Alfred (Wien): “Die Analyse von Egmonts Traum.” (Jahrb. f. psychoanalyt. u. psychopathol. Forschungen, Bd. II. 1910.)
Footnote 112:
Silberer, Herbert (Wien): “Bericht über eine Methode, gewisse symbolische Halluzinationserscheinungen hervorzurufen und zu beobachten.” (Jahr. Bleuler-Freud, Bd. I., 1909.)
Footnote 113:
Silberer, Herbert (Wien): Phantasie und Mythos. (Ebenda, Bd. II.,
1910.)
Footnote 114:
Stekel, Wilhelm (Wien): “Beiträge zur Traumdeutung.” (Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopatholog. Forschungen, Bd. I., 1909.)
Footnote 115:
Stekel, Wilhelm (Wien): Nervöse Angstzustände und ihre Behandlung.
(Wien und Berlin, 1908.)
Footnote 116:
Stekel, Wilhelm (Wien): Die Sprache des Traumes. A description of the symbolism and interpretation of the Dream and its relation to the normal and abnormal mind for physicians and psychologists. (Wiesbaden, 1911.)
Footnote 117:
Swoboda, Hermann. Die Perioden des menschlichen Organismus. (Wien und Leipzig, 1904.)
Footnote 118:
Waterman, George A. (Boston): “Dreams as a Cause of Symptoms.” (_The
Journal of Abnormal Psychol._, Oct.-Nov. 1910.)
Footnote A:
Translated by A. A. Brill (Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
Publishing Company).
Footnote B:
Cf. the works of Ernest Jones, James J. Putnam, the present writer, and others.
Footnote C:
For examples demonstrating these facts, cf. my work,
Psychoanalysis; its Theories and Practical Application, W. B.
Saunders’ Publishing Company, Philadelphia & London.
Footnote D:
To the first publication of this book, 1900.
Footnote E:
Compare, on the other hand, O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, p. 390. “Dreams were divided into two classes; the first were influenced only by the present (or past), and were unimportant for the future: they embraced the ἐνύπνια, insomnia, which immediately produces the given idea or its opposite, e.g. hunger or its satiation, and the φαντάσματα, which elaborates the given idea phantastically, as e.g. the nightmare, ephialtes. The second class was, on the other hand, determinant for the future. To this belong:
(1) direct prophecies received in the dream (χρηματισμός, oraculum); (2) the foretelling of a future event (ὅραμα); (3) the symbolic or the dream requiring interpretation (ὄνειρος, somnium). This theory has been preserved for many centuries.”
Footnote F:
From subsequent experience I am able to state that it is not at all rare to find in dreams repetitions of harmless or unimportant occupations of the waking state, such as packing trunks, preparing food, work in the kitchen, &c., but in such dreams the dreamer himself emphasizes not the character but the reality of the memory, “I have really done all this in the day time.”
Footnote G:
Chauffeurs were bands of robbers in the Vendée who resorted to this form of torture.
Footnote H:
Gigantic persons in a dream justify the assumption that it deals with a scene from the dreamer’s childhood.
Footnote I:
The first volume of this Norwegian author, containing a complete description of dreams, has recently appeared in German. See Index of Literature, No. [74a].
Footnote J:
Periodically recurrent dreams have been observed repeatedly. Cf. the collection of Chabaneix.[11]
Footnote K:
Silberer has shown by nice examples how in the state of sleepiness even abstract thoughts may be changed into illustrative plastic pictures which express the same thing (Jahrbuch von Bleuler-Freud, vol. i. 1900).
Footnote L:
Haffner[32] made an attempt similar to Delbœuf’s to explain the dream activity on the basis of an alteration which must result in an introduction of an abnormal condition in the otherwise correct function of the intact psychic apparatus, but he described this condition in somewhat different words. He states that the first distinguishing mark of the dream is the absence of time and space, i.e. the emancipation of the presentation from the position in the order of time and space which is common to the individual. Allied to this is the second fundamental character of the dream, the mistaking of the hallucinations, imaginations, and phantasy-combinations for objective perceptions. The sum total of the higher psychic forces, especially formation of ideas, judgment, and argumentation on the one hand, and the free self-determination on the other hand, connect themselves with the sensory phantasy pictures and at all times have them as a substratum. These activities too, therefore, participate in the irregularity of the dream presentation. We say they participate, for our faculties of judgment and will power are in themselves in no way altered during sleep. In reference to activity, we are just as keen and just as free as in the waking state. A man cannot act contrary to the laws of thought, even in the dream, i.e. he is unable to harmonise with that which represents itself as contrary to him, &c.; he can only desire in the dream that which he presents to himself as good (sub ratione boni). But in this application of the laws of thinking and willing the human mind is led astray in the dream through mistaking one presentation for another. It thus happens that we form and commit in the dream the greatest contradictions, while, on the other hand, we display the keenest judgments and the most consequential chains of reasoning, and can make the most virtuous and sacred resolutions. Lack of orientation is the whole secret of the flight by which our phantasy moves in the dream, and lack of critical reflection and mutual understanding with others is the main source of the reckless extravagances of our judgments, hopes, and wishes in the dream (p. 18).
Footnote M:
Cf. Haffner[32] and Spitta[64].
Footnote N:
Grundzüge des Systems der Anthropologie. Erlangen, 1850 (quoted by
Spitta).
Footnote O:
Das Traumleben und seine Deutung, 1868 (cited by Spitta, p. 192).
Footnote P:
H. Swoboda, Die Perioden des Menschlichen Organismus, 1904.
Footnote Q:
In a novel, Gradiva, of the poet W. Jensen, I accidentally discovered several artificial dreams which were formed with perfect correctness and which could be interpreted as though they had not been invented, but had been dreamt by actual persons. The poet declared, upon my inquiry, that he was unacquainted with my theory of dreams. I have made use of this correspondence between my investigation and the creative work of the poet as a proof of the correctness of my method of dream analysis (“Der Wahn und die Träume,” in W. Jensen’s Gradiva, No. 1 of the Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, 1906, edited by me). Dr. Alfred Robitsek has since shown that the dream of the hero in Goethe’s Egmont may be interpreted as correctly as an actually experienced dream (“Die Analyse von Egmont’s Träume,” Jahrbuch, edited by Bleuler-Freud, vol. ii., 1910.)
Footnote R:
After the completion of my manuscript, a paper by Stumpf[65] came to my notice which agrees with my work in attempting to prove that the dream is full of meaning and capable of interpretation. But the interpretation is undertaken by means of an allegorising symbolism, without warrant for the universal applicability of the procedure.
Footnote S:
Dr. Alfred Robitsek calls my attention to the fact that Oriental dream books, of which ours are pitiful plagiarisms, undertake the interpretation of dream elements, mostly according to the assonance and similarity of the words. Since these relationships must be lost by translation into our language, the incomprehensibility of the substitutions in our popular “dream books” may have its origin in this fact. Information as to the extraordinary significance of puns and punning in ancient Oriental systems of culture may be found in the writings of Hugo Winckler. The nicest example of a dream interpretation which has come down to us from antiquity is based on a play upon words. Artemidoros[2] relates the following (p. 225): “It seems to me that Aristandros gives a happy interpretation to Alexander of Macedon. When the latter held Tyros shut in and in a state of siege, and was angry and depressed over the great loss of time, he dreamed that he saw a Satyros dancing on his shield. It happened that Aristandros was near Tyros and in the convoy of the king, who was waging war on the Syrians. By disjoining the word Satyros into σα and τύρος, he induced the king to become more aggressive in the siege, and thus he became master of the city. (Σα τύρος—thine is Tyros.) The dream, indeed, is so intimately connected with verbal expression that Ferenczi[87] may justly remark that every tongue has its own dream language. Dreams are, as a rule, not translatable into other languages.”
Footnote T:
Breuer and Freud, Studien über Hysterie, Vienna, 1895; 2nd ed. 1909.
Footnote U:
The complaint, as yet unexplained, of pains in the abdomen, may also be referred to this third person. It is my own wife, of course, who is in question; the abdominal pains remind me of one of the occasions upon which her shyness became evident to me. I must myself admit that I do not treat Irma and my wife very gallantly in this dream, but let it be said for my excuse that I am judging both of them by the standard of the courageous, docile, female patient.
Footnote V:
I suspect that the interpretation of this portion has not been carried far enough to follow every hidden meaning. If I were to continue the comparison of the three women, I would go far afield. Every dream has at least one point at which it is unfathomable, a central point, as it were, connecting it with the unknown.
Footnote W:
“Ananas,” moreover, has a remarkable assonance to the family name of my patient Irma.
Footnote X:
In this the dream did not turn out to be prophetic. But in another sense, it proved correct, for the “unsolved” stomach pains, for which I did not want to be to blame, were the forerunners of a serious illness caused by gall stones.
Footnote Y:
Even if I have not, as may be understood, given account of everything which occurred to me in connection with the work of interpretation.
Footnote Z:
The facts about dreams of thirst were known also to Weygandt,[75] who expresses himself about them (p. 11) as follows: “It is just the sensation of thirst which is most accurately registered of all; it always causes a representation of thirst quenching. The manner in which the dream pictures the act of thirst quenching is manifold, and is especially apt to be formed according to a recent reminiscence. Here also a universal phenomenon is that disappointment in the slight efficacy of the supposed refreshments sets in immediately after the idea that thirst has been quenched.” But he overlooks the fact that the reaction of the dream to the stimulus is universal. If other persons who are troubled by thirst at night awake without dreaming beforehand, this does not constitute an objection to my experiment, but characterises those others as persons who sleep poorly.
Footnote AA:
The dream afterwards accomplished the same purpose in the case of the grandmother, who is older than the child by about seventy years, as it did in the case of the granddaughter. After she had been forced to go hungry for several days on account of the restlessness of her floating kidney, she dreamed, apparently with a transference into the happy time of her flowering maidenhood, that she had been “asked out,” invited as a guest for both the important meals, and each time had been served with the most delicious morsels.
Footnote AB:
A more searching investigation into the psychic life of the child teaches us, to be sure, that sexual motive powers in infantile forms, which have been too long overlooked, play a sufficiently great part in the psychic activity of the child. This raises some doubt as to the happiness of the child, as imagined later by the adults. Cf. the
author’s “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory,” translated by A.
A. Brill, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Publishing Company.
Footnote AC:
It should not be left unmentioned that children sometimes show complex and more obscure dreams, while, on the other hand, adults will often under certain conditions show dreams of an infantile character. How rich in unsuspected material the dreams of children of from four to five years might be is shown by examples in my “Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben” (Jahrbuch, ed. by Bleuler & Freud, 1909), and in Jung’s “Ueber Konflikte der kindlichen Seele” (ebda. ii. vol., 1910). On the other hand, it seems that dreams of an infantile type reappear especially often in adults if they are transferred to unusual conditions of life. Thus Otto Nordenskjold, in his book Antarctic (1904), writes as follows about the crew who passed the winter with him. “Very characteristic for the trend of our inmost thoughts were our dreams, which were never more vivid and numerous than at present. Even those of our comrades with whom dreaming had formerly been an exception had long stories to tell in the morning when we exchanged our experiences in the world of phantasies. They all referred to that outer world which was now so far from us, but they often fitted into our present relations. An especially characteristic dream was the one in which one of our comrades believed himself back on the bench at school, where the task was assigned him of skinning miniature seals which were especially made for the purposes of instruction. Eating and drinking formed the central point around which most of our dreams were grouped. One of us, who was fond of going to big dinner parties at night, was exceedingly glad if he could report in the morning ‘that he had had a dinner consisting of three courses.’ Another dreamed of tobacco—of whole mountains of tobacco; still another dreamed of a ship approaching on the open sea under full sail. Still another dream deserves to be mentioned. The letter carrier brought the mail, and gave a long explanation of why he had had to wait so long for it; he had delivered it at the wrong place, and only after great effort had been able to get it back. To be sure, we occupied ourselves in sleep with still more impossible things, but the lack of phantasy in almost all the dreams which I myself dreamed or heard others relate was quite striking. It would surely have been of great psychological interest if all the dreams could have been noted. But one can readily understand how we longed for sleep. It alone could afford us everything that we all most ardently desired.”
Footnote AD:
A Hungarian proverb referred to by Ferenczi[87] states more explicitly that “the pig dreams of acorns, the goose of maize.”
Footnote AE:
It is quite incredible with what stubbornness readers and critics exclude this consideration, and leave unheeded the fundamental differentiation between the manifest and the latent dream content.
Footnote AF:
It is remarkable how my memory narrows here for the purposes of analysis—while I am awake. I have known five of my uncles, and have loved and honoured one of them. But at the moment when I overcame my resistance to the interpretation of the dream I said to myself, “I have only one uncle, the one who is intended in the dream.”
Footnote AG:
The word is here used in the original Latin sense instantia, meaning energy, continuance or persistence in doing. (Translator.)
Footnote AH:
Such hypocritical dreams are not unusual occurrences with me or with others. While I am working up a certain scientific problem, I am visited for many nights in rapid succession by a somewhat confusing dream which has as its content reconciliation with a friend long ago dropped. After three or four attempts, I finally succeeded in grasping the meaning of this dream. It was in the nature of an encouragement to give up the little consideration still left for the person in question, to drop him completely, but it disguised itself shamefacedly in the opposite feeling. I have reported a “hypocritical Oedipus dream” of a person, in which the hostile feelings and the wishes of death of the dream thoughts were replaced by manifest tenderness. (“Typisches Beispiel eines verkappten Oedipustraumes,” Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, Bd. 1, Heft 1–11, 1910.) Another class of hypocritical dreams will be reported in another place.
Footnote AI:
To sit for the painter. Goethe: “And if he has no backside, how can the nobleman sit?”
Footnote AJ:
I myself regret the introduction of such passages from the psychopathology of hysteria, which, because of their fragmentary representation and of being torn from all connection with the subject, cannot have a very enlightening influence. If these passages are capable of throwing light upon the intimate relations between the dream and the psychoneuroses, they have served the purpose for which I have taken them up.
Footnote AK:
Something like the smoked salmon in the dream of the deferred supper.
Footnote AL:
It often happens that a dream is told incompletely, and that a recollection of the omitted portions appears only in the course of the analysis. These portions subsequently fitted in, regularly furnish the key to the interpretation. Cf. below, about forgetting in dreams.
Footnote AM:
Similar “counter wish-dreams” have been repeatedly reported to me within the last few years by my pupils who thus reacted to their first encounter with the “wish theory of the dream.”
Footnote AN:
We may mention here the simplification and modification of this fundamental formula, propounded by Otto Rank: “On the basis and with the help of repressed infantile sexual material, the dream regularly represents as fulfilled actual, and as a rule also erotic, wishes, in a disguised and symbolic form.” (“Ein Traum, der sich selbst deutet,” Jahrbuch, v., Bleuler-Freud, II. B., p. 519, 1910.)
Footnote AO:
See Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses, p. 133, translated by A. A. Brill, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Monograph Series.
Footnote AP:
It is clear that the conception of Robert, that the dream is intended to rid our memory of the useless impressions which it has received during the day, is no longer tenable, if indifferent memories of childhood appear in the dream with some degree of frequency. The conclusion would have to be drawn that the dream ordinarily performs very inadequately the duty which is prescribed for it.
Footnote AQ:
As mentioned in the first chapter, p. 67, H. Swoboda applies broadly to the psychic activity, the biological intervals of twenty-three and twenty-eight days discovered by W. Fliess, and lays especial emphasis upon the fact that these periods are determinant for the appearance of the dream elements in dreams. There would be no material change in dream interpretation if this could be proven, but it would result in a new source for the origin of the dream material. I have recently undertaken some examination of my own dreams in order to test the applicability of the “Period Theory” to the dream material, and I have selected for this purpose especially striking elements of the dream content, whose origin could be definitely ascertained:—
I.—Dream from October 1–2, 1910
(Fragment).... Somewhere in Italy. Three daughters show me small costly objects, as if in an antiquity shop. At the same time they sit down on my lap. Of one of the pieces I remark: “Why, you got this from me.” I also see distinctly a small profile mask with the angular features of Savonarola.
When have I last seen a picture of Savonarola? According to my travelling diary, I was in Florence on the fourth and fifth of September, and while there thought of showing my travelling companion the plaster medallion of the features of the fanatical monk in the Piazza Signoria, the same place where he met his death by burning. I believe that I called his attention to it at 3 A.M. To be sure, from this impression, until its return in the dream, there was an interval of twenty-seven and one days—a “feminine period,” according to Fliess. But, unfortunately for the demonstrative force of this example, I must add that on the very day of the dream I was visited (the first time after my return) by the able but melancholy-looking colleague whom I had already years before nicknamed “Rabbi Savonarola.” He brought me a patient who had met with an accident on the Pottebba railroad, on which I had myself travelled eight days before, and my thoughts were thus turned to my last Italian journey. The appearance in the dream content of the striking element of Savonarola is explained by the visit of my colleague on the day of the dream; the twenty-eight day interval had no significance in its origin.
II.—Dream from October 10–11
I am again studying chemistry in the University laboratory. Court Councillor L. invites me to come to another place, and walks before me in the corridor carrying in front of him in his uplifted hand a lamp or some other instrument, and assuming a peculiar attitude, his head stretched forward. We then come to an open space ... (rest forgotten).
In this dream content, the most striking part is the manner in which Court Councillor L. carries the lamp (or lupe) in front of him, his gaze directed into the distance. I have not seen L. for many years, but I now know that he is only a substitute for another greater person—for Archimedes near the Arethusa fountain in Syracuse, who stands there exactly like L. in the dream, holding the burning mirror and gazing at the besieging army of the Romans. When had I first (and last) seen this monument? According to my notes, it was on the seventeenth day of September, in the evening, and from this date to the dream there really passed 13 and 10, equals 23, days-according to Fliess, a “masculine period.”
But I regret to say that here, too, this connection seems somewhat less inevitable when we enter into the interpretation of this dream. The dream was occasioned by the information, received on the day of the dream, that the lecture-room in the clinic in which I was invited to deliver my lectures had been changed to some other place. I took it for granted that the new room was very inconveniently situated, and said to myself, it is as bad as not having any lecture-room at my disposal. My thoughts must have then taken me back to the time when I first became a docent, when I really had no lecture-room, and when, in my efforts to get one, I met with little encouragement from the very influential gentlemen councillors and professors. In my distress at that time, I appealed to L., who then had the title of dean, and whom I considered kindly disposed. He promised to help me, but that was all I ever heard from him. In the dream he is the Archimedes, who gives me the πήστω and leads me into the other room. That neither the desire for revenge nor the consciousness of one’s own importance is absent in this dream will be readily divined by those familiar with dream interpretation. I must conclude, however, that without this motive for the dream, Archimedes would hardly have got into the dream that night. I am not certain whether the strong and still recent impression of the statue in Syracuse did not also come to the surface at a different interval of time.
III.—Dream from October 2–3, 1910.
(Fragment) ... Something about Professor Oser, who himself prepared the menu for me, which served to restore me to great peace of mind (rest forgotten).
The dream was a reaction to the digestive disturbances of this day, which made me consider asking one of my colleagues to arrange a diet for me. That in the dream I selected for this purpose Professor Oser, who had died in the summer, is based on the recent death (October 1)
of another university teacher, whom I highly revered. But when did Oser die, and when did I hear of his death? According to the newspaper notice, he died on the 22nd of August, but as I was at the time in Holland, whither my Vienna newspapers were regularly sent me, I must have read the obituary notice on the 24th or 25th of August. This interval no longer corresponds to any period. It takes in 7 and 30 and 2, equals 39, days, or perhaps 38 days. I cannot recall having spoken or thought of Oser during this interval.
Such intervals as were not available for the “period theory” without further elaboration, were shown from my dreams to be far more frequent than the regular ones. As maintained in the text, the only thing constantly found is the relation to an impression of the day of the dream itself.
Footnote AR:
Cf. my essay, “Ueber Deckerinnerungen,” in the _Monatsschrift für
Psychiatrie und Neurologie_, 1899.
Footnote AS:
Ger., blühend.
Footnote AT:
The tendency of the dream function to fuse everything of interest which is present into simultaneous treatment has already been noticed by several authors, for instance, by Delage,[15] p. 41, Delbœuf,[16] Rapprochement Forcé, p. 236.
Footnote AU:
The dream of Irma’s injection; the dream of the friend who is my uncle.
Footnote AV:
The dream of the funeral oration of the young physician.
Footnote AW:
The dream of the botanical monograph.
Footnote AX:
The dreams of my patients during analysis are mostly of this kind.
Footnote AY:
Cf. Chap. VII. upon “Transference.”
Footnote AZ:
Substitution of the opposite, as will become clear to us after interpretation.
Footnote BA:
The Prater is the principal drive of Vienna. (Transl.)
Footnote BB:
I have long since learned that it only requires a little courage to fulfil even such unattainable wishes.
Footnote BC:
In the first edition there was printed here the name Hasdrubal, a confusing error, the explanation of which I have given in my Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens.
Footnote BD:
A street in Vienna.
Footnote BE:
Fensterln is the practice, now falling into disuse, found in rural districts of the German Schwarzwald, of lovers wooing at the windows of their sweethearts, bringing ladders with them, and becoming so intimate that they practically enjoy a system of trial marriages. The reputation of the young woman never suffers on account of fensterln, unless she becomes intimate with too many suitors. (Translator.)
Footnote BF:
Both the emotions which belong to these childish scenes—astonishment and resignation to the inevitable—had appeared in a dream shortly before, which was the first thing that brought back the memory of this childhood experience.
Footnote BG:
I do not elaborate plagiostomi purposely; they recall an occasion of angry disgrace before the same teacher.
Footnote BH:
Cf. Maury’s dream about kilo-lotto, p. 50.
Footnote BI:
Popo = backside in German nursery language.
Footnote BJ:
This repetition has insinuated itself into the text of the dream apparently through my absent-mindedness, and I allow it to remain because the analysis shows that it has its significance.
Footnote BK:
Not in Germinal, but in La Terre—a mistake of which I became aware only in the analysis. I may call attention also to the identity of the letters in Huflattich and Flatus.
Footnote BL:
Translator’s note.
Footnote BM:
In his significant work (“Phantasie und Mythos,” Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse, Bd. ii., 1910), H. Silberer has endeavoured to show from this part of the dream that the dream-work is able to reproduce not only the latent dream thoughts, but also the psychic processes in the dream formation (“Das functionale Phänomen”).
Footnote BN:
Another interpretation: He is one-eyed like Odin, the father of the gods ... Odin’s consolation. The consolation in the childish scene, that I will buy him a new bed.
Footnote BO:
I here add some material for interpretation. Holding the urinal recalls the story of a peasant who tries one glass after another at the opticians, but still cannot read (peasant-catcher, like girl-catcher in a portion of the dream). The treatment among the peasants of the father who has become weak-minded in Zola’s La Terre. The pathetic atonement that in his last days the father soils his bed like a child; hence, also, I am his sick-attendant in the dream. Thinking and experiencing are here, as it were; the same thing recalls a highly revolutionary closet drama by Oscar Panizza, in which the Godhead is treated quite contemptuously, as though he were a paralytic old man. There occurs a passage: “Will and deed are the same thing with him, and he must be prevented by his archangel, a kind of Ganymede, from scolding and swearing, because these curses would immediately be fulfilled.” Making plans is a reproach against my father, dating from a later period in the development of my critical faculty; just as the whole rebellious, sovereign-offending dream, with its scoff at high authority, originates in a revolt against my father. The sovereign is called father of the land (Landesvater), and the father is the oldest, first and only authority for the child, from the absolutism of which the other social authorities have developed in the course of the history of human civilisation (in so far as the “mother’s right” does not force a qualification of this thesis). The idea in the dream, “thinking and experiencing are the same thing,” refers to the explanation of hysterical symptoms, to which the male urinal (glass) also has a relation. I need not explain the principle of the “Gschnas” to a Viennese; it consists in constructing objects of rare and costly appearance out of trifles, and preferably out of comical and worthless material—for example, making suits of armour out of cooking utensils, sticks and “salzstangeln” (elongated rolls), as our artists like to do at their jolly parties. I had now learned that hysterical subjects do the same thing; besides what has actually occurred to them, they unconsciously conceive horrible or extravagant fantastic images, which they construct from the most harmless and commonplace things they have experienced. The symptoms depend solely upon these phantasies, not upon the memory of their real experiences, be they serious or harmless. This explanation helped me to overcome many difficulties and gave me much pleasure. I was able to allude to it in the dream element “male urinal” (glass) because I had been told that at the last “Gschnas” evening a poison chalice of Lucretia Borgia had been exhibited, the chief constituent of which had consisted of a glass urinal for men, such as is used in hospitals.
Footnote BP:
Cf. the passage in Griesinger[31] and the remarks in my second essay on the “defence-neuropsychoses”—Selected Papers on Hysteria, translated by A. A. Brill.
Footnote BQ:
In the two sources from which I am acquainted with this dream, the report of its contents do not agree.
Footnote BR:
An exception is furnished by those cases in which the dreamer utilises in the expression of his latent dream thoughts the symbols which are familiar to us.
Footnote BS:
“The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
Footnote BT:
The child also appears in the fairy tale, for there a child suddenly calls: “Why, he hasn’t anything on at all.”
Footnote BU:
Ferenczi has reported a number of interesting dreams of nakedness in women which could be traced to an infantile desire to exhibit, but which differ in some features from the “typical” dream of nakedness discussed above.
Footnote BV:
For obvious reasons the presence of the “whole family” in the dream has the same significance.
Footnote BW:
A supplementary interpretation of this dream: To spit on the stairs, led me to “esprit d’escalier” by a free translation, owing to the fact that “Spucken” (English: spit, and also to act like a spook, to haunt) is an occupation of ghosts. “Stair-wit” is equivalent to lack of quickness at repartee (German: Schlagfertigkeit—readiness to hit back, to strike), with which I must really reproach myself. Is it a question, however, whether the nurse was lacking in “readiness to hit”?
Footnote BX:
Cf. “Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben” in the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, vol. i., 1909, and “Ueber infantile Sexualtheorien,” in Sexualprobleme, vol. i., 1908.
Footnote BY:
The three-and-a-half-year-old Hans, whose phobia is the subject of analysis in the above-mentioned publication, cries during fever shortly after the birth of his sister: “I don’t want a little sister.” In his neurosis, one and a half years later, he frankly confesses the wish that the mother should drop the little one into the bath-tub while bathing it, in order that it may die. With all this, Hans is a good-natured, affectionate child, who soon becomes fond of his sister, and likes especially to take her under his protection.
Footnote BZ:
The three-and-a-half-year old Hans embodies his crushing criticism of his little sister in the identical word (see previous notes). He assumes that she is unable to speak on account of her lack of teeth.
Footnote CA:
I heard the following idea expressed by a gifted boy of ten, after the sudden death of his father: “I understand that father is dead, but I cannot see why he does not come home for supper.”
Footnote CB:
At least a certain number of mythological representations. According to others, emasculation is only practised by Kronos on his father.
With regard to mythological significance of this motive, cf. Otto
Rank’s “Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden,” fifth number of
Schriften zur angew. Seelenkunde, 1909.
Footnote CC:
Act. i. sc. 2. Translated by George Somers Clark
Footnote CD:
Another of the great creations of tragic poetry, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is founded on the same basis as the Oedipus. But the whole difference in the psychic life of the two widely separated periods of civilisation—the age-long progress of repression in the emotional life of humanity—is made manifest in the changed treatment of the identical material. In Oedipus the basic wish-phantasy of the child is brought to light and realised as it is in the dream; in Hamlet it remains repressed, and we learn of its existence—somewhat as in the case of a neurosis—only by the inhibition which results from it. The fact that it is possible to remain in complete darkness concerning the character of the hero, has curiously shown itself to be consistent with the overpowering effect of the modern drama. The play is based upon Hamlet’s hesitation to accomplish the avenging task which has been assigned to him; the text does not avow the reasons or motives of this hesitation, nor have the numerous attempts at interpretation succeeded in giving them. According to the conception which is still current to-day, and which goes back to Goethe, Hamlet represents the type of man whose prime energy is paralysed by over-development of thought activity. (“Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”) According to others the poet has attempted to portray a morbid, vacillating character who is subject to neurasthenia. The plot of the story, however, teaches us that Hamlet is by no means intended to appear as a person altogether incapable of action. Twice we see him asserting himself actively, once in headlong passion, where he stabs the eavesdropper behind the arras, and on another occasion where he sends the two courtiers to the death which has been intended for himself—doing this deliberately, even craftily, and with all the lack of compunction of a prince of the Renaissance. What is it, then, that restrains him in the accomplishment of the task which his father’s ghost has set before him? Here the explanation offers itself that it is the peculiar nature of this task. Hamlet can do everything but take vengeance upon the man who has put his father out of the way, and has taken his father’s place with his mother—upon the man who shows him the realisation of his repressed childhood wishes. The loathing which ought to drive him to revenge is thus replaced in him by self-reproaches, by conscientious scruples, which represent to him that he himself is no better than the murderer whom he is to punish. I have thus translated into consciousness what had to remain unconscious in the mind of the hero; if some one wishes to call Hamlet a hysteric subject I cannot but recognise it as an inference from my interpretation. The sexual disinclination which Hamlet expresses in conversation with Ophelia, coincides very well with this view—it is the same sexual disinclination which was to take possession of the poet more and more during the next few years of his life, until the climax of it is expressed in Timon of Athens. Of course it can only be the poet’s own psychology with which we are confronted in Hamlet; from a work on Shakespeare by George Brandes (1896), I take the fact that the drama was composed immediately after the death of Shakespeare’s father—that is to say, in the midst of recent mourning for him—during the revival, we may assume, of his childhood emotion towards his father. It is also known that a son of Shakespeare’s, who died early, bore the name of Hamnet (identical with Hamlet). Just as Hamlet treats of the relation of the son to his parents, Macbeth, which appears subsequently, is based upon the theme of childlessness. Just as every neurotic symptom, just as the dream itself, is capable of re-interpretation, and even requires it in order to be perfectly intelligible, so every genuine poetical creation must have proceeded from more than one motive, more than one impulse in the mind of the poet, and must admit of more than one interpretation. I have here attempted to interpret only the most profound group of impulses in the mind of the creative poet. The conception of the Hamlet problem contained in these remarks has been later confirmed in a detailed work based on many new arguments by Dr. Ernest Jones, of Toronto (Canada). The connection of the Hamlet material with the “Mythus von der Geburt des Helden” has also been demonstrated by O. Rank.—“The Oedipus Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet’s Mystery: a Study in Motive” (American Journal of Psychology, January 1910, vol. xxi.).
Footnote CE:
Likewise, anything large, over-abundant, enormous, and exaggerated, may be a childish characteristic. The child knows no more intense wish than to become big, and to receive as much of everything as grown-ups; the child is hard to satisfy; it knows no enough, and insatiably demands the repetition of whatever has pleased it or tasted good to it. It learns to practise moderation, to be modest and resigned, only through culture and education. As is well known, the neurotic is also inclined toward immoderation and excess.
Footnote CF:
While Dr. Jones was delivering a lecture before an American scientific society, and speaking of egotism in dreams, a learned lady took exception to this unscientific generalisation. She thought that the lecturer could only pronounce such judgment on the dreams of Austrians, and had no right to include the dreams of Americans. As for herself she was sure that all her dreams were strictly altruistic.
Footnote CG:
According to C. G. Jung, dreams of dental irritation in the case of women have the significance of parturition dreams.
Footnote CH:
Cf. the “biographic” dream on p. 235.
Footnote CI:
As the dreams of pulling teeth, and teeth falling out, are interpreted in popular belief to mean the death of a close friend, and as psychoanalysis can at most only admit of such a meaning in the above indicated parodical sense, I insert here a dream of dental irritation placed at my disposal by Otto Rank[109].
Upon the subject of dreams of dental irritation I have received the following report from a colleague who has for some time taken a lively interest in the problems of dream interpretation:
I recently dreamed that I went to the dentist who drilled out one of my back teeth in the lower jaw. He worked so long at it that the tooth became useless. He then grasped it with the forceps, and pulled it out with such perfect ease that it astonished me. He said that I should not care about it, as this was not really the tooth that had been treated; and he put it on the table where the tooth (as it seems to me now an upper incisor) fell apart into many strata. I arose from the operating chair, stepped inquisitively nearer, and, full of interest, put a medical question. While the doctor separated the individual pieces of the strikingly white tooth and ground them up (pulverised them) with an instrument, he explained to me that this had some connection with puberty, and that the teeth come out so easily only before puberty; the decisive moment for this in women is the birth of a child. I then noticed (as I believe half awake) that this dream was accompanied by a pollution which I cannot however definitely place at a particular point in the dream; I am inclined to think that it began with the pulling out of the tooth.
I then continued to dream something which I can no longer remember, which ended with the fact that I had left my hat and coat somewhere (perhaps at the dentist’s), hoping that they would be brought after me, and dressed only in my overcoat I hastened to catch a departing train. I succeeded at the last moment in jumping upon the last car, where someone was already standing. I could not, however, get inside the car, but was compelled to make the journey in an uncomfortable position, from which I attempted to escape with final success. We journeyed through a long tunnel, in which two trains from the opposite direction passed through our own train as if it were a tunnel. I looked in as from the outside through a car window.
As material for the interpretation of this dream, we obtained the following experiences and thoughts of the dreamer:—
I. For a short time I had actually been under dental treatment, and at the time of the dream I was suffering from continual pains in the tooth of my lower jaw, which was drilled out in the dream, and on which the dentist had in fact worked longer than I liked. On the forenoon of the day of the dream I had again gone to the doctor’s on account of the pain, and he had suggested that I should allow him to pull out another tooth than the one treated in the same jaw, from which the pain probably came. It was a ‘wisdom tooth’ which was just breaking through. On this occasion, and in this connection, I had put a question to his conscience as a physician.
II. On the afternoon of the same day I was obliged to excuse myself to a lady for my irritable disposition on account of the toothache, upon which she told me that she was afraid to have one of her roots pulled, though the crown was almost completely gone. She thought that the pulling out of eye teeth was especially painful and dangerous, although some acquaintance had told her that this was much easier when it was a tooth of the lower jaw. It was such a tooth in her case. The same acquaintance also told her that while under an anæsthetic one of her false teeth had been pulled—a statement which increased her fear of the necessary operation. She then asked me whether by eye teeth one was to understand molars or canines, and what was known about them. I then called her attention to the vein of superstitions in all these meanings, without however, emphasising the real significance of some of the popular views. She knew from her own experience, a very old and general popular belief, according to which if a pregnant woman has toothache she will give birth to a boy.
III. This saying interested me in its relation to the typical significance of dreams of dental irritation as a substitute for onanism as maintained by Freud in his Traumdeutung (2nd edition, p. 193), for the teeth and the male genital (Bub-boy) are brought in certain relations even in the popular saying. On the evening of the same day I therefore read the passage in question in the Traumdeutung, and found there among other things the statements which will be quoted in a moment, the influence of which on my dream is as plainly recognisable as the influence of the two above-mentioned experiences. Freud writes concerning dreams of dental irritation that ‘in the case of men nothing else than cravings for masturbation from the time of puberty furnishes the motive power for these dreams,’ p. 193. Further, ‘I am of the opinion that the frequent modifications of the typical dream of dental irritation—that e.g. of another person drawing the tooth from the dreamer’s mouth—are made intelligible by means of the same explanation. It may seem problematic, however, how “dental irritation” can arrive at this significance. I here call attention to the transference from below to above (in the dream in question from the lower to the upper jaw), which occurs so frequently, which is at the service of sexual repression, and by means of which all kinds of sensations and intentions occurring in hysteria which ought to be enacted in the genitals can be realised upon less objectionable parts of the body,’ p. 194. ‘But I must also refer to another connection contained in an idiomatic expression. In our country there is in use an indelicate designation for the act of masturbation, namely: To pull one out, or to pull one down,’ p. 195, 2nd edition. This expression had been familiar to me in early youth as a designation for onanism, and from here on it will not be difficult for the experienced dream interpreter to get access to the infantile material which may lie at the basis of this dream. I only wish to add that the facility with which the tooth in the dream came out, and the fact that it became transformed after coming out into an upper incisor, recalls to me an experience of childhood when I myself easily and painlessly pulled out one of my wobbling front teeth. This episode, which I can still to this day distinctly remember with all its details, happened at the same early period in which my first conscious attempts at onanism began—(Concealing Memory). The reference of Freud to an assertion of C. G. Jung that dreams of dental irritation in women signify parturition (footnote p. 194), together with the popular belief in the significance of toothache in pregnant women, has established an opposition between the feminine significance and the masculine (puberty). In this connection I recall an earlier dream which I dreamed soon after I was discharged by the dentist after the treatment, that the gold crowns which had just been put in fell out, whereupon I was greatly chagrined in the dream on account of the considerable expense, concerning which I had not yet stopped worrying. In view of a certain experience this dream now becomes comprehensible as a commendation of the material advantages of masturbation when contrasted with every form of the economically less advantageous object-love (gold crowns are also Austrian gold coins).
Theoretically this case seems to show a double interest. First it verifies the connection revealed by Freud, inasmuch as the ejaculation in the dream takes place during the act of tooth-pulling. For no matter in what form a pollution may appear, we are obliged to look upon it as a masturbatic gratification which takes place without the help of mechanical excitation. Moreover the gratification by pollution in this case does not take place, as is usually the case, through an imaginary object, but it is without an object; and, if one may be allowed to say so, it is purely autoerotic, or at most it perhaps shows a slight homosexual thread (the dentist).
The second point which seems to be worth mentioning is the following: The objection is quite obvious that we are seeking here to validate the Freudian conception in a quite superfluous manner, for the experiences of the reading itself are perfectly sufficient to explain to us the content of the dream. The visit to the dentist, the conversation with the lady, and the reading of the Traumdeutung are sufficient to explain why the sleeper, who was also disturbed during the night by toothache, should dream this dream, it may even explain the removal of the sleep-disturbing pain (by means of the presentation of the removal of the painful tooth and simultaneous over-accentuation of the dreaded painful sensation through libido). But no matter how much of this assumption we may admit, we cannot earnestly maintain that the readings of Freud’s explanations have produced in the dreamer the connection of the tooth-pulling with the act of masturbation; it could not even have been made effective had it not been for the fact, as the dreamer himself admitted (‘to pull one off’) that this association had already been formed long ago. What may have still more stimulated this association in connection with the conversation with the lady is shown by a later assertion of the dreamer that while reading the Traumdeutung he could not, for obvious reasons, believe in this typical meaning of dreams of dental irritation, and entertained the wish to know whether it held true for all dreams of this nature. The dream now confirms this at least for his own person, and shows him why he had to doubt it. The dream is therefore also in this respect the fulfilment of a wish; namely, to be convinced of the importance and stability of this conception of Freud.
Footnote CJ:
A young colleague, who is entirely free from nervousness, tells me in this connection: “I know from my own experience that while swinging, and at the moment at which the downward movement had the greatest impetus, I used to get a curious feeling in my genitals, which I must designate, although it was not really pleasant to me, as a voluptuous feeling.” I have often heard from patients that their first erections accompanied by voluptuous sensations had occurred in boyhood while they were climbing. It is established with complete certainty by psychoanalyses that the first sexual impulses have often originated in the scufflings and wrestlings of childhood.
Footnote CK:
This naturally holds true only for German-speaking dreamers who are acquainted with the vulgarism “vögeln.”
Footnote CL:
Sammlung kl. Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, zweite Folge, 1909.
Footnote CM:
Cf. the author’s Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, translated by A. A. Brill.
Footnote CN:
W. Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes, 1911.
Footnote CO:
Alf. Adler, “Der Psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der
Neurose,” Fortschritte der Medizin, 1910, No. 16, and later works in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, 1, 1910–1911.
Footnote CP:
I have published a typical example of such a veiled Oedipus dream in No. 1 of the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse; another with a detailed analysis was reported in the same journal, No. IV., by Otto Rank. Indeed the ancients were not unfamiliar with the symbolic interpretation of the open Oedipus dream (see O. Rank,[108] p. 534); thus a dream of sexual relations with the mother has been transmitted to us by Julius Cæsar which the oneiroscopists interpreted as a favourable omen for taking possession of the earth (Mother-earth). It is also known that the oracle declared to the Tarquinii that that one of them would become ruler of Rome who should first kiss the mother (osculum, matri tulerit), which Brutus conceived as referring to the mother-earth (terram osculo contigit, scilicet quod ea communia mater omnium mortalium esset, Livius, I., lxi.). These myths and interpretations point to a correct psychological knowledge. I have found that persons who consider themselves preferred or favoured by their mothers manifest in life that confidence in themselves and that firm optimism which often seems heroic and brings about real success by force.
Footnote CQ:
It is only of late that I have learned to value the significance of fancies and unconscious thoughts about life in the womb. They contain the explanation of the curious fear felt by so many people of being buried alive, as well as the profoundest unconscious reason for the belief in a life after death which represents nothing but a projection into the future of this mysterious life before birth. The act of birth, moreover, is the first experience with fear, and is thus the source and model of the emotion of fear.
Footnote CR:
For such a dream see Pfister: “Ein Fall von Psychoanalytischer
Seelensorge und Seelenheilung,” Evangelische Freiheit, 1909.
Concerning the symbol of “saving” see my lecture, “Die Zukünftigen
Chancen der psychoanalytischen Therapie,” _Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse_, No. I., 1910. Also “Beiträge zur Psychologie des
Liebeslebens, I. Ueber einen besonderen Typus der objektwahl beim
Manne,” Jahrbuch, Bleuler-Freud, vol. ii., 1910.
Footnote CS:
Cf. the works of Bleuler and of his pupils Maeder, Abraham, and others of the Zürich school upon symbolism, and of those authors who are not physicians (Kleinpaul and others), to which they refer.
Footnote CT:
In this country the President, the Governor, and the Mayor often represent the father in the dream. (Translator.)
Footnote CU:
I may here repeat what I have said in another place (“Die Zukünftigen Chancen der psychoanalytischen Therapie,” Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, I., No. 1 and 2, 1910): “Some time ago I learned that a psychologist who is unfamiliar with our work remarked to one of my friends that we are surely over-estimating the secret sexual significance of dreams. He stated that his most frequent dream was of climbing a stairway, and that there was surely nothing sexual behind this. Our attention having been called to this objection, we directed our investigations to the occurrence of stairways, stairs, and ladders in the dream, and we soon ascertained that stairs (or anything analogous to them) represent a definite symbol of coitus. The basis for this comparison is not difficult to find; under rhythmic intervals and with increasing difficulty in breathing one reaches to a height, and may come down again in a few rapid jumps. Thus the rhythm of coitus is recognisable in climbing stairs. Let us not forget to consider the usage of language. It shows us that the “climbing” or “mounting” is, without further addition, used as a substitutive designation of the sexual act. In French the step of the stairway is called “la marche”; “un vieux marcheur” corresponds exactly to our “an old climber.””
Footnote CV:
In this country where the word “necktie” is almost exclusively used, the translator has also found it to be a symbol of a burdensome woman from whom the dreamer longs to be freed—“necktie—something tied to my neck like a heavy weight—my fiancée,” are the associations from the dream of a man who eventually broke his marriage engagement.
Footnote CW:
In spite of all the differences between Scherner’s conception of dream symbolism and the one developed here, I must still assert that Scherner[58] should be recognised as the true discoverer of symbolism in dreams, and that the experience of psychoanalysis has brought his book into honourable repute after it had been considered fantastic for about fifty years.
Footnote CX:
From “Nachträge zur Traumdeutung,” Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse,
I., No. 5 and 6, 1911.
Footnote CY:
“Beiträge zur Traumdeutung,” Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyt. und psychop. Forsch., Bd. I., 1909, p. 473. Here also (p. 475) a dream is reported in which a hat with a feather standing obliquely in the middle symbolises the (impotent) man.
Footnote CZ:
Cf. Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, I.
Footnote DA:
Or chapel-vagina.
Footnote DB:
Symbol of coitus.
Footnote DC:
Mons veneris.
Footnote DD:
Crines pubis.
Footnote DE:
Demons in cloaks and capucines are, according to the explanation of a man versed in the subject, of a phallic nature.
Footnote DF:
The two halves of the scrotum.
Footnote DG:
See Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, vol. i., p. 2.
Footnote DH:
This Hebrew word is well known in German-speaking countries, even among non-Jews, and signifies an unlucky, awkward person. (Translator.)
Footnote DI:
In estimating this description of the author one may recall the significance of stairway dreams, referred to on p. 246.
Footnote DJ:
The fantastic nature of the situation relating to the nurse of the dreamer is shown by the objectively ascertained circumstance that the nurse in this case was his mother. Furthermore, I may call attention to the regret of the young man in the anecdote (p. 172), that he had not taken better advantage of his opportunity with the nurse as probably the source of the present dream.
Footnote DK:
This is the real inciter of the dream.
Footnote DL:
By way of supplement. Such books are poison to a young girl. She herself in youth had drawn much information from forbidden books.
Footnote DM:
A further train of thought leads to Penthesileia by the same author: cruelty towards her lover.
Footnote DN:
Given by translator as author’s example could not be translated.
Footnote DO:
The same analysis and synthesis of syllables—a veritable chemistry of syllables—serves us for many a jest in waking life. “What is the cheapest method of obtaining silver? You go to a field where silver-berries are growing and pick them; then the berries are eliminated and the silver remains in a free state.” The first person who read and criticised this book made the objection to me—which other readers will probably repeat—“that the dreamer often appears too witty.” That is true, as long as it applies to the dreamer; it involves a condemnation only when its application is extended to the interpreter of the dream. In waking reality I can make very little claim to the predicate “witty”; if my dreams appear witty, this is not the fault of my individuality, but of the peculiar psychological conditions under which the dream is fabricated, and is intimately connected with the theory of wit and the comical. The dream becomes witty because the shortest and most direct way to the expression of its thoughts is barred for it: the dream is under constraint. My readers may convince themselves that the dreams of my patients give the impression of being witty (attempting to be witty), in the same degree and in a greater than my own. Nevertheless this reproach impelled me to compare the technique of wit with the dream activity, which I have done in a book published in 1905, on Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious. (Author.)
Footnote DP:
Lasker died of progressive paralysis, that is of the consequences of an infection caught from a woman (lues); Lasalle, as is well known, was killed in a duel on account of a lady.
Footnote DQ:
In the case of a young man who was suffering from obsessions, but whose intellectual functions were intact and highly developed, I recently found the only exception to this rule. The speeches which occurred in his dreams did not originate in speeches which he had heard or had made himself, but corresponded to the undisfigured wording of his obsessive thoughts, which only came to his consciousness in a changed state while he was awake.
Footnote DR:
Psychic intensity, value, and emphasis due to the interest of an idea are, of course, to be kept distinct from sensational intensity, and from intensity of that which is conceived.
Footnote DS:
Since I consider this reference of dream disfigurement to the censor as the essence of my dream theory, I here insert the latter portion of a story “Traumen wie Wachen” from Phantasien eines Realisten, by Lynkus, Vienna, (second edition, 1900), in which I find this chief feature of my theory reproduced:—
“Concerning a man who possesses the remarkable quality of never dreaming nonsense....”
“Your marvellous characteristic of dreaming as you wake is based upon your virtues, upon your goodness, your justice, and your love for truth; it is the moral clearness of your nature which makes everything about you intelligible.”
“But if you think the matter over carefully,” replied the other, “I almost believe that all people are created as I am, and that no human being ever dreams nonsense! A dream which is so distinctly remembered that it can be reproduced, which is therefore no dream of delirium, always has a meaning; why, it cannot be otherwise! For that which is in contradiction with itself can never be grouped together as a whole. The fact that time and space are often thoroughly shaken up detracts nothing from the real meaning of the dream, because neither of them has had any significance whatever for its essential contents. We often do the same thing in waking life; think of the fairy-tale, of many daring and profound phantastic creations, about which only an ignorant person would say: ‘That is nonsense! For it is impossible.’”
“If it were only always possible to interpret dreams correctly, as you have just done with mine!” said the friend.
“That is certainly not an easy task, but the dreamer himself ought always to succeed in doing it with a little concentration of attention.... You ask why it is generally impossible? Your dreams seem to conceal something secret, something unchaste of a peculiar and higher nature, a certain mystery in your nature which cannot easily be revealed by thought; and it is for that reason that your dreaming seems so often to be without meaning, or even to be a contradiction. But in the profoundest sense this is by no means the case; indeed it cannot be true at all, for it is always the same person, whether he is asleep or awake.”
Footnote DT:
I have since given the complete analysis and synthesis of two dreams in the Bruchstueck einer Hysterieanalyse, 1905.
Footnote DU:
From a work of K. Abel, Der Gegensinn der Urworte, 1884 (see my review of it in the Bleuler-Freud Jahrbuch, II., 1910), I learned with surprise a fact which is confirmed by other philologists, that the oldest languages behaved in this regard quite like the dream. They originally had only one word for both extremes in a series of qualities or activities (strong—weak, old—young, far—near, to tie—to separate), and formed separate designations for the two extremes only secondarily through slight modifications of the common primitive word. Abel demonstrated these relationships with rare exceptions in the old Egyptian, and he was able to show distinct remnants of the same development in the Semitic and Indo-Germanic languages.
Footnote DV:
If I do not know behind which of the persons which occur in the dream I am to look for my ego, I observe the following rule: That person in the dream who is subject to an emotion which I experience while asleep, is the one that conceals my ego.
Footnote DW:
The hysterical attack sometimes uses the same device—the inversion of time-relations—for the purpose of concealing its meaning from the spectator. The attack of a hysterical girl, for example, consists in enacting a little romance, which she has unconsciously fancied in connection with an encounter in the street car. A man, attracted by the beauty of her foot, addresses her while she is reading, whereupon she goes with him and experiences a stormy love scene. Her attack begins with the representation of this scene in writhing movements of the body (accompanied by motions of the lips to signify kissing, entwining of the arms for embraces), whereupon she hurries into another room, sits down in a chair, lifts her skirt in order to show her foot, acts as though she were about to read a book, and speaks to me (answers me).
Footnote DX:
Accompanying hysterical symptoms: Failure to menstruate and profound depression, which was the chief ailment of the patient.
Footnote DY:
A reference to a childhood experience is after complete analysis shown to exist by the following intermediaries: “The Moor has done his duty, the Moor may go.” And then follows the waggish question: “How old is the Moor when he has done his duty? One year. Then he may go.” (It is said that I came into the world with so much black curly hair that my young mother declared me to be a Moor.) The circumstance that I do not find my hat is an experience of the day which has been turned to account with various significations. Our servant, who is a genius at stowing away things, had hidden the hat. A suppression of sad thoughts about death is also concealed behind the conclusion of the dream: “I have not nearly done my duty yet; I may not go yet.” Birth and death, as in the dream that occurred shortly before about Goethe and the paralytic (p. 345).
Footnote DZ:
Cf. Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, 2nd edit. 1912, and “word-bridges,” in the solutions of neurotic symptoms.
Footnote EA:
In general it is doubtful in the interpretation of every element of the dream whether it—
(a) is to be regarded as having a negative or a positive sense (relation of opposition);
(b) is to be interpreted historically (as a reminiscence);
(c) is symbolic; or whether
(d) its valuation is to be based upon the sound of its verbal expression.
In spite of this manifold signification, it may be said that the representation of the dream activity does not impose upon the translator any greater difficulties than the ancient writers of hieroglyphics imposed upon their readers.
Footnote EB:
For the interpretation of this preliminary dream, which is to be regarded as “casual,” see p. 292.
Footnote EC:
Her career.
Footnote ED:
High birth, the wish contrast to the preliminary dream.
Footnote EE:
A composite image, which unites two localities, the so-called garret (German Boden—floor, garret) of her father’s house, in which she played with her brother, the object of her later fancies, and the garden of a malicious uncle, who used to tease her.
Footnote EF:
Wish contrast to an actual memory of her uncle’s garden, to the effect that she used to expose herself while she was asleep.
Footnote EG:
Just as the angel bears a lily stem in the Annunciation.
Footnote EH:
For the explanation of this composite image, see p. 296; innocence, menstruation, Camille.
Footnote EI:
Referring to the plurality of the persons who serve the purpose of her fancy.
Footnote EJ:
Whether it is permitted to “pull one off,” i.e. to masturbate.
Footnote EK:
The bough has long since been used to represent the male genital, and besides that it contains a very distinct allusion to the family name of the dreamer.
Footnote EL:
Refers to matrimonial precautions, as does that which follows.
Footnote EM:
An analogous “biographical” dream was reported on p. 252, as the third of the examples of dream symbolism; a second example is the one fully reported by Rank[106] under the title “Traum der sich selbst deutet”; for another one which must be read in the “opposite direction,” see Stekel[114], p. 486.
Footnote EN:
Given by translator as author’s example could not be translated.
Footnote EO:
The neurosis also proceeds in the same manner. I know a patient who involuntarily—contrary to her own wishes—hears (hallucinatory) songs or fragments of songs without being able to understand their meaning to her psychic life. She is surely not a paranoiac. Analysis showed that she wrongly utilised the text of these songs by means of a certain license. “Oh thou blissful one, Oh thou happy one,” is the beginning of a Christmas song. By not continuing it to the word “Christmas time” she makes a bridal song out of it, &c. The same mechanism of disfigurement may take place also without hallucinations as a mere mental occurrence.
Footnote EP:
As a contribution to the over-determination: My excuse for coming late was that after working late at night I had in the morning to make the long journey from Kaiser Josef Street to Waehringer Street.
Footnote EQ:
In addition Cæsar—Kaiser.
Footnote ER:
I have forgotten in what author I found a dream mentioned that was overrun with unusually small figures, the source of which turned out to be one of the engravings of Jacques Callot, which the dreamer had looked at during the day. These engravings contained an enormous number of very small figures; a series of them treats of the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War.
Footnote ES:
The frequency with which in the dream dead persons appear as living, act, and deal with us, has called forth undue astonishment and given rise to strange explanations, from which our ignorance of the dream becomes strikingly evident. And yet the explanation for these dreams lies very close at hand. How often we have occasion to think: “If father were still alive, what would he say to it?” The dream can express this if in no other way than by present time in a definite situation. Thus, for instance, a young man, whose grandfather has left him a great inheritance, dreams that his grandfather is alive and demands an accounting of him, upon an occasion when the young man had been reproached for making too great an expenditure of money. What we consider a resistance to the dream—the objection made by our better knowledge, that after all the man is already dead—is in reality a consolation, because the dead person did not have this or that experience, or satisfaction at the knowledge that he has nothing more to say.
Another form of absurdity found in dreams of deceased relatives does not express folly and absurdity, but serves to represent the most extreme rejection; as the representation of a repressed thought which one would gladly have appear as something least thought of. Dreams of this kind are only solvable if one recalls that the dream makes no distinction between things desired and realities. Thus, for example, a man who nursed his father during his sickness, and who felt his death very keenly, sometime afterward dreamed the following senseless dream: The father was again living, and conversed with him as usual, but (the remarkable thing about it) he had nevertheless died, though he did not know it. This dream can be understood if after “he had nevertheless died,” one inserts in consequence of the dreamer’s wish, and if after “but he did not know it” one adds that the dreamer has entertained this wish. While nursing his father, the son often wishes his father’s death; i.e. he entertained the really compassionate desire that death finally put an end to his suffering. While mourning after his death, this very wish of compassion became an unconscious reproach, as if it had really contributed to shorten the life of the sick man. Through the awakening of early infantile feelings against the father, it became possible to express this reproach as a dream; and it was just because of the world-wide contrast between the dream inciter and day thought that this dream had to come out so absurdly (cf. with this, “Formulierungen über die zwei Prinzipien des seelischen Geschehens,” Jahrbuch, Bleuler-Freud, III, 1, 1911).
Footnote ET:
Here the dream activity parodies the thought which it designates as ridiculous, in that it creates something ridiculous in relation to it. Heine does something similar when he tries to mock the bad rhymes of the King of Bavaria. He does it in still worse rhymes:
“Herr Ludwig ist ein grosser Poet
Und singt er, so stuerzt Apollo
Vor ihm auf die Knie und bittet und fleht,
‘Halt ein, ich werde sonst toll oh!’”
Footnote EU:
Note the resemblance of Geseres and Ungeseres to the German words for salted and unsalted—gesalzen and ungesalzen; also to the
German words for soured and unsoured—gesauert and ungesauert.
(Translator.)
Footnote EV:
This dream also furnishes a good example for the general thesis that dreams of the same night, even though they be separated in memory, spring from the same thought material. The dream situation in which I am rescuing my children from the city of Rome, moreover, is disfigured by a reference to an episode belonging to my childhood. The meaning is that I envy certain relatives who years ago had occasion to transplant their children to another soil.
Footnote EW:
This German expression is equivalent to our saying “You are not responsible for that,” or “That has not been acquired through your own efforts.” (Translator.)
Footnote EX:
The injunction or purpose contained in the dream, “I must tell that to the doctor,” which occurs in dreams that are dreamed in the course of psychoanalytical treatment, regularly corresponds to a great resistance to the confession involved in the dream, and is not infrequently followed by forgetting of the dream.
Footnote EY:
A subject about which an extensive discussion has taken place in the volumes of the Revue Philosophique—(Paramnesia in the Dream).
Footnote EZ:
These results correct in several respects my earlier statements concerning the representation of logical relations (p. 290). The latter described the general conditions of dream activity, but they did not take into consideration its finest and most careful performances.
Footnote FA:
Stanniol, allusion to Stannius, the nervous system of fishes; cf. p. 325.
Footnote FB:
The place in the corridor of my apartment house where the baby carriages of the other tenants stand; it is also otherwise several times over-determined.
Footnote FC:
This description is not intelligible even to myself, but I follow the principle of reproducing the dream in those words which occur to me while I am writing it down. The wording itself is a part of the dream representation.
Footnote FD:
Schiller was not born in one of the Marburgs, but in Marbach, as every graduate of a Gymnasium knows, and as I also knew. This again is one of those errors (cf. p. 165) which are included as substitutes for an intended deception at another place—an explanation of which I have attempted in the Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens.
Footnote FE:
As analogy to this, I have since explained the extraordinary effect of pleasure produced by “tendency” wit.
Footnote FF:
It is this fancy from the unconscious dream thoughts which peremptorily demands non vivit instead of non vixit. “You have come too late, he is no longer alive.” The fact that the manifest situation also tends towards “non vivit” has been mentioned on page 334.
Footnote FG:
It is striking that the name Joseph plays such a large part in my dreams (see the dream about my uncle). I can hide my ego in the dream behind persons of this name with particular ease, for Joseph was the name of the dream interpreter in the Bible.
Footnote FH:
Rêve, petit roman—day-dream, story.
Footnote FI:
I have analysed a good example of a dream of this kind having its origin in the stratification of several phantasies, in the Bruchstück einer Hysterie Analyse, 1905. Moreover I undervalued the significance of such phantasies for dream formation, as long as I was working chiefly with my own dreams, which were based rarely upon day dreams, most frequently upon discussions and mental conflicts. With other persons it is often much easier to prove the full analogy between the nocturnal dream and the day dream. It is often possible in an hysterical patient to replace an attack by a dream; it is then obvious that the phantasy of day dreams is the first step for both psychic formations.
Footnote FJ:
See the Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 4th ed., 1912. (English translation in preparation.)
Footnote FK:
Concerning the object of forgetting in general, see the
Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
Footnote FL:
Translated by A. A. Brill, appearing under the title Selected Papers on Hysteria.
Footnote FM:
Jung has brilliantly corroborated this statement by analyses of
Dementia Praecox. (The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, translated by
F. Peterson and A. A. Brill.)
Footnote FN:
The same considerations naturally hold true also for the case where superficial associations are exposed in the dream, as, e.g., in both dreams reported by Maury (p. 50, pélerinage—pelletier—pelle, kilometer—kilogram—gilolo, Lobelia—Lopez—Lotto). I know from my work with neurotics what kind of reminiscence preferentially represents itself in this manner. It is the consultation of encyclopædias by which most people pacify their desire for explanation of the sexual riddle during the period of curiosity in puberty.
Footnote FO:
The above sentences, which when written sounded very improbable, have since been justified experimentally by Jung and his pupils in the Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien.
Footnote FP:
Selected Papers on Hysteria and Other Psychoneuroses, p. 165, translated by A. A. Brill (Journal Mental and Nervous Disease Publishing Co.).
Footnote FQ:
The German word “Dutzendmensch” (a man of dozens) which the young lady wished to use in order to express her real opinion of her friend’s fiancé, denotes a person with whom figures are everything. (Translator.)
Footnote FR:
They share this character of indestructibility with all psychic acts that are really unconscious—that is, with psychic acts belonging to the system of the unconscious only. These paths are constantly open and never fall into disuse; they conduct the discharge of the exciting process as often as it becomes endowed with unconscious excitement. To speak metaphorically they suffer the same form of annihilation as the shades of the lower region in the Odyssey, who awoke to new life the moment they drank blood. The processes depending on the foreconscious system are destructible in a different way. The psychotherapy of the neuroses is based on this difference.
Footnote FS:
Le Lorrain justly extols the wish-fulfilment of the dream: “Sans fatigue sérieuse, sans être obligé de recourir à cette lutte opiniâtre et longue qui use et corrode les jouissances poursuivies.”
Footnote FT:
This idea has been borrowed from The Theory of Sleep by Liébault, who revived hypnotic investigation in our days. (Du Sommeil provoqué, etc.; Paris, 1889.)
Footnote FU:
The German of the word bird is “Vogel,” which gives origin to the vulgar expression “vöglen,” denoting sexual intercourse. (Trans. note.)
Footnote FV:
The italics are my own, though the meaning is plain enough without them.
Footnote FW:
The italics are mine.
Footnote FX:
Cf. the significant observations by J. Breuer in our _Studies on
Hysteria_, 1895, and 2nd ed. 1909.
Footnote FY:
Here, as in other places, there are gaps in the treatment of the subject, which I have left intentionally, because to fill them up would require on the one hand too great effort, and on the other hand an extensive reference to material that is foreign to the dream. Thus I have avoided stating whether I connect with the word “suppressed” another sense than with the word “repressed.” It has been made clear only that the latter emphasizes more than the former the relation to the unconscious. I have not entered into the cognate problem why the dream thoughts also experience distortion by the censor when they abandon the progressive continuation to consciousness and choose the path of regression. I have been above all anxious to awaken an interest in the problems to which the further analysis of the dream-work leads and to indicate the other themes which meet these on the way. It was not always easy to decide just where the pursuit should be discontinued. That I have not treated exhaustively the part played in the dream by the psychosexual life and have avoided the interpretation of dreams of an obvious sexual content is due to a special reason which may not come up to the reader’s expectation. To be sure, it is very far from my ideas and the principles expressed by me in neuropathology to regard the sexual life as a “pudendum” which should be left unconsidered by the physician and the scientific investigator. I also consider ludicrous the moral indignation which prompted the translator of Artemidoros of Daldis to keep from the reader’s knowledge the chapter on sexual dreams contained in the Symbolism of the Dreams. As for myself, I have been actuated solely by the conviction that in the explanation of sexual dreams I should be bound to entangle myself deeply in the still unexplained problems of perversion and bisexuality; and for that reason I have reserved this material for another connection.
Footnote FZ:
The dream is not the only phenomenon tending to base psychopathology on psychology. In a short series of unfinished articles (“Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie” entitled Über den psychischen Mechanismus der Vergesslichkeit, 1898, and Über Deckerinnerungen, 1899) I attempt to interpret a number of psychic manifestations from everyday life in support of the same conception. These and other articles on “Forgetting,” “Lapse of Speech,” &c., have since been published collectively under the title of Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1904 and 1907, of which an English translation will shortly appear.
Footnote GA:
“The Conception of the Unconscious in Psychology”: Lecture delivered at the Third International Congress of Psychology at Munich, 1897.
Footnote GB:
Cf. here (p. 82) the dream (Σα-τυρος) of Alexander the Great at the siege of Tyrus.
Footnote GC:
Professor Ernst Oppenheim (Vienna) has shown me from folk-lore material that there is a class of dreams for which even the people drop the expectation of future interpretation, and which they trace in a perfectly correct manner to wish feelings and wants arising during sleep. He will in the near future fully report upon these dreams, which for the most part are in the form of “funny stories.”