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Title: The Interpretation of Dreams
Author: Freud, Sigmund
Language: English
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DREAMS ***
THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
BY
PROF. DR. SIGMUND FREUD, LL.D.
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION OF THIRD EDITION WITH INTRODUCTION
BY
A. A. BRILL, PH.B., M.D.
CHIEF OF THE NEUROLOGICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE BRONX HOSPITAL AND
DISPENSARY CLINICAL ASSISTANT IN NEUROLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY, COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY FORMER ASSISTANT PHYSICIAN IN THE CENTRAL ISLIP STATE
HOSPITAL AND IN THE CLINIC OF PSYCHIATRY, ZÜRICH
“_Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo_”
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1913
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
In attempting a discussion of the Interpretation of Dreams, I do not
believe that I have overstepped the bounds of neuropathological
interest. For, on psychological investigation, the dream proves to be
the first link in a chain of abnormal psychic structures whose other
links, the hysterical phobia, the obsession, and the delusion must, for
practical reasons, claim the interest of the physician. The dream (as
will appear) can lay no claim to a corresponding practical significance;
its theoretical value as a paradigm is, however, all the greater, and
one who cannot explain the origin of the dream pictures will strive in
vain to understand the phobias, obsessive and delusional ideas, and
likewise their therapeutic importance.
But this relation, to which our subject owes its importance, is
responsible also for the deficiencies in the work before us. The
surfaces of fracture which will be found so frequently in this
discussion correspond to so many points of contact at which the problem
of the dream formation touches more comprehensive problems of
psychopathology, which cannot be discussed here, and which will be
subjected to future elaboration if there should be sufficient time and
energy, and if further material should be forthcoming.
Peculiarities in the material I have used to elucidate the
interpretation of dreams have rendered this publication difficult. From
the work itself it will appear why all dreams related in the literature
or collected by others had to remain useless for my purpose; for
examples I had to choose between my own dreams and those of my patients
who were under psychoanalytic treatment. I was restrained from utilising
the latter material by the fact that in it the dream processes were
subjected to an undesirable complication on account of the intermixture
of neurotic characters. On the other hand, inseparably connected with my
own dreams was the circumstance that I was obliged to expose more of the
intimacies of my psychic life than I should like and than generally
falls to the task of an author who is not a poet but an investigator of
nature. This was painful, but unavoidable; I had to put up with the
inevitable in order not to be obliged to forego altogether the
demonstration of the truth of my psychological results. To be sure, I
could not at best resist the temptation of disguising some of my
indiscretions through omissions and substitutions, and as often as this
happened it detracted materially from the value of the examples which I
employed. I can only express the hope that the reader of this work,
putting himself in my difficult position, will show forbearance, and
also that all persons who are inclined to take offence at any of the
dreams reported will concede freedom of thought at least to the dream
life.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
If there has arisen a demand for a second edition of this rather
difficult book before the end of the first decade, I owe no gratitude
to the interest of the professional circles to whom I appealed in the
preceding sentences. My colleagues in psychiatry, apparently, have
made no effort to shake off the first surprise which my new conception
of the dream evoked, and the professional philosophers, who are
accustomed to treat the problem of dream life as a part of the states
of consciousness, devoting to it a few—for the most part
identical—sentences, have apparently failed to observe that in this
field could be found all kinds of things which would inevitably lead
to a thorough transformation of our psychological theories. The
behaviour of the scientific critics could only justify the expectation
that this work of mine was destined to be buried in oblivion; and the
small troop of brave pupils who follow my leadership in the medical
application of psychoanalysis, and also follow my example in analysing
dreams in order to utilise these analyses in the treatment of
neurotics, would not have exhausted the first edition of the book. I
therefore feel indebted to that wider circle of intelligent seekers
after truth whose co-operation has procured for me the invitation to
take up anew, after nine years, the difficult and in so many respects
fundamental work.
I am glad to be able to say that I have found little to change. Here and
there I have inserted new material, added new views from my wider
experience, and attempted to revise certain points; but everything
essential concerning the dream and its interpretation, as well as the
psychological propositions derived from it, has remained unchanged: at
least, subjectively, it has stood the test of time. Those who are
acquainted with my other works on the Etiology and Mechanism of the
psychoneuroses, know that I have never offered anything unfinished as
finished, and that I have always striven to change my assertions in
accordance with my advancing views; but in the realm of the dream life I
have been able to stand by my first declarations. During the long years
of my work on the problems of the neuroses, I have been repeatedly
confronted with doubts, and have often made mistakes; but it was always
in the “interpretation of dreams” that I found my bearings. My numerous
scientific opponents, therefore, show an especially sure instinct when
they refuse to follow me into this territory of dream investigation.
Likewise, the material used in this book to illustrate the rules of
dream interpretation, drawn chiefly from dreams of my own which have
been depreciated and outstripped by events, have in the revision shown a
persistence which resisted substantial changes. For me, indeed, the book
has still another subjective meaning which I could comprehend only after
it had been completed. It proved to be for me a part of my
self-analysis, a reaction to the death of my father—that is, to the most
significant event, the deepest loss, in the life of a man. After I
recognised this I felt powerless to efface the traces of this influence.
For the reader, however, it makes no difference from what material he
learns to value and interpret dreams.
BERCHTESGADEN, Summer of 1908.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
Whereas a period of nine years elapsed between the first and second
editions of this book, the need for a third edition has appeared after
little more than a year. I have reason to be pleased with this change;
but, just as I have not considered the earlier neglect of my work on the
part of the reader as a proof of its unworthiness, I am unable to find
in the interest manifested at present a proof of its excellence.
The progress in scientific knowledge has shown its influence on the
_Interpretation of Dreams_. When I wrote it in 1899 the “Sexual
Theories” was not yet in existence, and the analysis of complicated
forms of psychoneuroses was still in its infancy. The interpretation of
dreams was destined to aid in the psychological analysis of the
neuroses, but since then the deeper understanding of the neuroses has
reacted on our conception of the dream. The study of dream
interpretation itself has continued to develop in a direction upon which
not enough stress was laid in the first edition of this book. From my
own experience, as well as from the works of W. Stekel and others, I
have since learned to attach a greater value to the extent and the
significance of symbolism in dreams (or rather in the unconscious
thinking). Thus much has accumulated in the course of this year which
requires consideration. I have endeavoured to do justice to this new
material by numerous insertions in the text and by the addition of
footnotes. If these supplements occasionally threaten to warp the
original discussion, or if, even with their aid, we have been
unsuccessful in raising the original text to the _niveau_ of our present
views, I must beg indulgence for the gaps in the book, as they are only
consequences and indications of the present rapid development of our
knowledge. I also venture to foretell in what other directions later
editions of the _Interpretation of Dreams_—in case any should be
demanded—will differ from the present one. They will have, on the one
hand, to include selections from the rich material of poetry, myth,
usage of language, and folk-lore, and, on the other hand, to treat more
profoundly the relations of the dream to the neuroses and to mental
diseases.
Mr. Otto Rank has rendered me valuable service in the selection of the
addenda and in reading the proof sheets. I am gratefully indebted to him
and to many others for their contributions and corrections.
VIENNA, Spring of 1911.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
Since the appearance of the author’s _Selected Papers on Hysteria and
other Psychoneuroses_, and _Three Contributions to the Sexual
Theory_,[A] much has been said and written about Freud’s works. Some of
our readers have made an honest endeavour to test and utilise the
author’s theories, but they have been handicapped by their inability to
read fluently very difficult German, for only two of Freud’s works have
hitherto been accessible to English readers. For them this work will be
of invaluable assistance. To be sure, numerous articles on the Freudian
psychology have of late made their appearance in our literature;[B] but
these scattered papers, read by those unacquainted with the original
work, often serve to confuse rather than enlighten. For Freud cannot be
mastered from the reading of a few pamphlets, or even one or two of his
original works. Let me repeat what I have so often said: No one is
really qualified to use or to judge Freud’s psychoanalytic method who
has not thoroughly mastered his theory of the neuroses—_The
Interpretation of Dreams_, _Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory_,
_The Psychopathology of Everyday Life_, and _Wit and its Relation to the
Unconscious_, and who has not had considerable experience in analysing
the dreams and psychopathological actions of himself and others. That
there is required also a thorough training in normal and abnormal
psychology goes without saying.
_The Interpretation of Dreams_ is the author’s greatest and most
important work; it is here that he develops his psychoanalytic
technique, a thorough knowledge of which is absolutely indispensable for
every worker in this field. The difficult task of making a translation
of this work has, therefore, been undertaken primarily for the purpose
of assisting those who are actively engaged in treating patients by
Freud’s psychoanalytic method. Considered apart from its practical aim,
the book presents much that is of interest to the psychologist and the
general reader. For, notwithstanding the fact that dreams have of late
years been the subject of investigation at the hands of many competent
observers, only few have contributed anything tangible towards their
solution; it was Freud who divested the dream of its mystery, and solved
its riddles. He not only showed us that the dream is full of meaning,
but amply demonstrated that it is intimately connected with normal and
abnormal mental life. It is in the treatment of the abnormal mental
states that we must recognise the most important value of dream
interpretation. The dream does not only reveal to us the cryptic
mechanisms of hallucinations, delusions, phobias, obsessions, and other
psychopathological conditions, but it is also the most potent instrument
in the removal of these.[C]
I take this opportunity of expressing my indebtedness to Professor F. C.
Prescott for reading the manuscript and for helping me overcome the
almost insurmountable difficulties in the translation.
A. A. BRILL.
NEW YORK CITY.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE ON THE PROBLEMS OF THE DREAM 1
II. METHOD OF DREAM INTERPRETATION: THE ANALYSIS OF A SAMPLE
DREAM 80
III. THE DREAM IS THE FULFILMENT OF A WISH 103
IV. DISTORTION IN DREAMS 113
V. THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS 138
VI. THE DREAM-WORK 260
VII. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM ACTIVITIES 403
VIII. LITERARY INDEX 494
INDEX 501
THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
I
THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE ON THE PROBLEMS OF THE DREAM[D]
In the following pages I shall prove that there exists a psychological
technique by which dreams may be interpreted, and that upon the
application of this method every dream will show itself to be a senseful
psychological structure which may be introduced into an assignable place
in the psychic activity of the waking state. I shall furthermore
endeavour to explain the processes which give rise to the strangeness
and obscurity of the dream, and to discover through them the nature of
the psychic forces which operate, whether in combination or in
opposition, to produce the dream. This accomplished, my investigation
will terminate, as it will have reached the point where the problem of
the dream meets with broader problems, the solution of which must be
attempted through other material.
I must presuppose that the reader is acquainted with the work done by
earlier authors as well as with the present status of the dream problem
in science, since in the course of this treatise I shall not often have
occasion to return to them. For, notwithstanding the effort of several
thousand years, little progress has been made in the scientific
understanding of dreams. This has been so universally acknowledged by
the authors that it seems unnecessary to quote individual opinions. One
will find in the writings indexed at the end of this book many
stimulating observations and plenty of interesting material for our
subject, but little or nothing that concerns the true nature of the
dream or that solves definitively any of its enigmas. Still less of
course has been transmitted to the knowledge of the educated laity.
The first book in which the dream is treated as an object of psychology
seems to be that of Aristotle[1] (_Concerning Dreams and their
Interpretation_). Aristotle asserts that the dream is of demoniacal,
though not of divine nature, which indeed contains deep meaning, if it
be correctly interpreted. He was also acquainted with some of the
characteristics of dream life, _e.g._, he knew that the dream turns
slight sensations perceived during sleep into great ones (“one imagines
that one walks through fire and feels hot, if this or that part of the
body becomes slightly warmed”), which led him to conclude that dreams
might easily betray to the physician the first indications of an
incipient change in the body passing unnoticed during the day. I have
been unable to go more deeply into the Aristotelian treatise, because of
insufficient preparation and lack of skilled assistance.
As every one knows, the ancients before Aristotle did not consider the
dream a product of the dreaming mind, but a divine inspiration, and in
ancient times the two antagonistic streams, which one finds throughout
in the estimates of dream life, were already noticeable. They
distinguished between true and valuable dreams, sent to the dreamer to
warn him or to foretell the future, and vain, fraudulent, and empty
dreams, the object of which was to misguide or lead him to
destruction.[E] This pre-scientific conception of the dream among the
ancients was certainly in perfect keeping with their general view of
life, which was wont to project as reality in the outer world that which
possessed reality only within the mind. It, moreover, accounted for the
main impression made upon the waking life by the memory left from the
dream in the morning, for in this memory the dream, as compared with the
rest of the psychic content, seems something strange, coming, as it
were, from another world. It would likewise be wrong to suppose that the
theory of the supernatural origin of dreams lacks followers in our own
day; for leaving out of consideration all bigoted and mystical
authors—who are perfectly justified in adhering to the remnants of the
once extensive realm of the supernatural until they have been swept away
by scientific explanation—one meets even sagacious men averse to
anything adventurous, who go so far as to base their religious belief in
the existence and co-operation of superhuman forces on the
inexplicableness of the dream manifestations (Haffner[32]). The validity
ascribed to the dream life by some schools of philosophy, _e.g._ the
school of Schelling, is a distinct echo of the undisputed divinity of
dreams in antiquity, nor is discussion closed on the subject of the
mantic or prophetic power of dreams. This is due to the fact that the
attempted psychological explanations are too inadequate to overcome the
accumulated material, however strongly all those who devote themselves
to a scientific mode of thought may feel that such assertions should be
repudiated.
To write a history of our scientific knowledge of dream problems is so
difficult because, however valuable some parts of this knowledge may
have been, no progress in definite directions has been discernible.
There has been no construction of a foundation of assured results upon
which future investigators could continue to build, but every new author
takes up the same problems afresh and from the very beginning. Were I to
follow the authors in chronological order, and give a review of the
opinions each has held concerning the problems of the dream, I should be
prevented from drawing a clear and complete picture of the present state
of knowledge on the subject. I have therefore preferred to base the
treatment upon themes rather than upon the authors, and I shall cite for
each problem of the dream the material found in the literature for its
solution.
But as I have not succeeded in mastering the entire literature, which is
widely disseminated and interwoven with that on other subjects, I must
ask my readers to rest content provided no fundamental fact or important
viewpoint be lost in my description.
Until recently most authors have been led to treat the subjects of sleep
and dream in the same connection, and with them they have also regularly
treated analogous states of psychopathology, and other dreamlike states
like hallucinations, visions, &c. In the more recent works, on the other
hand, there has been a tendency to keep more closely to the theme, and
to take as the subject one single question of the dream life. This
change, I believe, is an expression of the conviction that enlightenment
and agreement in such obscure matters can only be brought about by a
series of detailed investigations. It is such a detailed investigation
and one of a special psychological nature, that I would offer here. I
have little occasion to study the problem of sleep, as it is essentially
a psychological problem, although the change of functional
determinations for the mental apparatus must be included in the
character of sleep. The literature of sleep will therefore not be
considered here.
A scientific interest in the phenomena of dreams as such leads to the
following in part interdependent inquiries:
(_a_) _The Relation of the Dream to the Waking State._—The naïve
judgment of a person on awakening assumes that the dream—if indeed it
does not originate in another world—at any rate has taken the dreamer
into another world. The old physiologist, Burdach,[8] to whom we are
indebted for a careful and discriminating description of the phenomena
of dreams, expressed this conviction in an often-quoted passage, p. 474:
“The waking life never repeats itself with its trials and joys, its
pleasures and pains, but, on the contrary, the dream aims to relieve us
of these. Even when our whole mind is filled with one subject, when
profound sorrow has torn our hearts or when a task has claimed the whole
power of our mentality, the dream either gives us something entirely
strange, or it takes for its combinations only a few elements from
reality, or it only enters into the strain of our mood and symbolises
reality.”
L. Strümpell[66] expresses himself to the same effect in his _Nature and
Origin of Dreams_ (p. 16), a study which is everywhere justly held in
high respect: “He who dreams turns his back upon the world of waking
consciousness” (p. 17). “In the dream the memory of the orderly content
of the waking consciousness and its normal behaviour is as good as
entirely lost” (p. 19). “The almost complete isolation of the mind in
the dream from the regular normal content and course of the waking
state....”
But the overwhelming majority of the authors have assumed a contrary
view of the relation of the dream to waking life. Thus Haffner[32] (p.
19): “First of all the dream is the continuation of the waking state.
Our dreams always unite themselves with those ideas which have shortly
before been in our consciousness. Careful examination will nearly always
find a thread by which the dream has connected itself with the
experience of the previous day.” Weygandt[75] (p. 6), flatly contradicts
the above cited statement of Burdach: “For it may often be observed,
apparently in the great majority of dreams, that they lead us directly
back into everyday life, instead of releasing us from it.” Maury[48] (p.
56), says in a concise formula: “Nous rêvons de ce que nous avons vu,
dit, désiré ou fait.” Jessen,[36] in his _Psychology_, published in 1855
(p. 530), is somewhat more explicit: “The content of dreams is more or
less determined by the individual personality, by age, sex, station in
life, education, habits, and by events and experiences of the whole past
life.”
The ancients had the same idea about the dependence of the dream content
upon life. I cite Radestock[54] (p. 139): “When Xerxes, before his march
against Greece, was dissuaded from this resolution by good counsel, but
was again and again incited by dreams to undertake it, one of the old
rational dream-interpreters of the Persians, Artabanus, told him very
appropriately that dream pictures mostly contain that of which one has
been thinking while awake.”
In the didactic poem of Lucretius, _De Rerum Natura_ (IV, v. 959),
occurs this passage:—
“Et quo quisque fere studio devinctus adhaeret,
aut quibus in rebus multum sumus ante morati
atque in ea ratione fuit contenta magis mens,
in somnis eadem plerumque videmur obire;
causidici causas agere et componere leges,
induperatores pugnare ac proelia obire,” &c., &c.
Cicero (_De Divinatione_, II) says quite similarly, as does also Maury
much later:—
“Maximeque reliquiae earum rerum moventur in animis et agitantur, de
quibus vigilantes aut cogitavimus aut egimus.”
The contradiction expressed in these two views as to the relation
between dream life and waking life seems indeed insoluble. It will
therefore not be out of place to mention the description of F. W.
Hildebrandt[35] (1875), who believes that the peculiarities of the dream
can generally be described only by calling them a “series of contrasts
which apparently shade off into contradictions” (p. 8). “The first of
these contrasts is formed on the one hand by the strict isolation or
seclusion of the dream from true and actual life, and on the other hand
by the continuous encroachment of the one upon the other, and the
constant dependency of one upon the other. The dream is something
absolutely separated from the reality experienced during the waking
state; one may call it an existence hermetically sealed up and separated
from real life by an unsurmountable chasm. It frees us from reality,
extinguishes normal recollection of reality, and places us in another
world and in a totally different life, which at bottom has nothing in
common with reality....” Hildebrandt then asserts that in falling asleep
our whole being, with all its forms of existence, disappears “as through
an invisible trap door.” In the dream one is perhaps making a voyage to
St. Helena in order to offer the imprisoned Napoleon something exquisite
in the way of Moselle wine. One is most amicably received by the
ex-emperor, and feels almost sorry when the interesting illusion is
destroyed on awakening. But let us now compare the situation of the
dream with reality. The dreamer has never been a wine merchant, and has
no desire to become one. He has never made a sea voyage, and St. Helena
is the last place he would take as destination for such a voyage. The
dreamer entertains no sympathetic feeling for Napoleon, but on the
contrary a strong patriotic hatred. And finally the dreamer was not yet
among the living when Napoleon died on the island; so that it was beyond
the reach of possibility for him to have had any personal relations with
Napoleon. The dream experience thus appears as something strange,
inserted between two perfectly harmonising and succeeding periods.
“Nevertheless,” continues Hildebrandt, “the opposite is seemingly just
as true and correct. I believe that hand in hand with this seclusion and
isolation there can still exist the most intimate relation and
connection. We may justly say that no matter what the dream offers, it
finds its material in reality and in the psychic life arrayed around
this reality. However strange the dream may seem, it can never detach
itself from reality, and its most sublime as well as its most farcical
structures must always borrow their elementary material either from what
we have seen with our eyes in the outer world, or from what has
previously found a place somewhere in our waking thoughts; in other
words, it must be taken from what we had already experienced either
objectively or subjectively.”
(_b_) _The Material of the Dream.—Memory in the Dream._—That all the
material composing the content of the dream in some way originates in
experience, that it is reproduced in the dream, or recalled,—this at
least may be taken as an indisputable truth. Yet it would be wrong to
assume that such connection between dream content and reality will be
readily disclosed as an obvious product of the instituted comparison. On
the contrary, the connection must be carefully sought, and in many cases
it succeeds in eluding discovery for a long time. The reason for this is
to be found in a number of peculiarities evinced by the memory in
dreams, which, though universally known, have hitherto entirely eluded
explanation. It will be worth while to investigate exhaustively these
characteristics.
It often happens that matter appears in the dream content which one
cannot recognise later in the waking state as belonging to one’s
knowledge and experience. One remembers well enough having dreamed about
the subject in question, but cannot recall the fact or time of the
experience. The dreamer is therefore in the dark as to the source from
which the dream has been drawing, and is even tempted to believe an
independently productive activity on the part of the dream, until, often
long afterwards, a new episode brings back to recollection a former
experience given up as lost, and thus reveals the source of the dream.
One is thus forced to admit that something has been known and remembered
in the dream that has been withdrawn from memory during the waking
state.
Delbœuf[16] narrates from his own experience an especially impressive
example of this kind. He saw in his dream the courtyard of his house
covered with snow, and found two little lizards half-frozen and buried
in the snow. Being a lover of animals, he picked them up, warmed them,
and put them back into a crevice in the wall which was reserved for
them. He also gave them some small fern leaves that had been growing on
the wall, which he knew they were fond of. In the dream he knew the name
of the plant: _Asplenium ruta muralis_. The dream then continued,
returning after a digression to the lizards, and to his astonishment
Delbœuf saw two other little animals falling upon what was left of the
ferns. On turning his eyes to the open field he saw a fifth and a sixth
lizard running into the hole in the wall, and finally the street was
covered with a procession of lizards, all wandering in the same
direction, &c.
In his waking state Delbœuf knew only a few Latin names of plants, and
nothing of the Asplenium. To his great surprise he became convinced that
a fern of this name really existed and that the correct name was
_Asplenium ruta muraria_, which the dream had slightly disfigured. An
accidental coincidence could hardly be considered, but it remained a
mystery for Delbœuf whence he got his knowledge of the name Asplenium in
the dream.
The dream occurred in 1862. Sixteen years later, while at the house of
one of his friends, the philosopher noticed a small album containing
dried plants resembling the albums that are sold as souvenirs to
visitors in many parts of Switzerland. A sudden recollection occurred to
him; he opened the herbarium, and discovered therein the Asplenium of
his dream, and recognised his own handwriting in the accompanying Latin
name. The connection could now be traced. While on her wedding trip, a
sister of this friend visited Delbœuf in 1860—two years prior to the
lizard dream. She had with her at the time this album, which was
intended for her brother, and Delbœuf took the trouble to write, at the
dictation of a botanist, under each of the dried plants the Latin name.
The favourable accident which made possible the report of this valuable
example also permitted Delbœuf to trace another portion of this dream to
its forgotten source. One day in 1877 he came upon an old volume of an
illustrated journal, in which he found pictured the whole procession of
lizards just as he had dreamed it in 1862. The volume bore the date of
1861, and Delbœuf could recall that he had subscribed to the journal
from its first appearance.
That the dream has at its disposal recollections which are inaccessible
to the waking state is such a remarkable and theoretically important
fact that I should like to urge more attention to it by reporting
several other “Hypermnesic Dreams.” Maury[48] relates that for some time
the word Mussidan used to occur to his mind during the day. He knew it
to be the name of a French city, but nothing else. One night he dreamed
of a conversation with a certain person who told him that she came from
Mussidan, and, in answer to his question where the city was, she
replied: “Mussidan is a principal country town in the Département de La
Dordogne.” On waking, Maury put no faith in the information received in
his dream; the geographical lexicon, however, showed it to be perfectly
correct. In this case the superior knowledge of the dream is confirmed,
but the forgotten source of this knowledge has not been traced.
Jessen[36] tells (p. 55) of a quite similar dream occurrence, from more
remote times. Among others we may here mention the dream of the elder
Scaliger (Hennings, _l.c._, p. 300), who wrote a poem in praise of
celebrated men of Verona, and to whom a man, named Brugnolus, appeared
in a dream, complaining that he had been neglected. Though Scaliger did
not recall ever having heard of him, he wrote some verses in his honour,
and his son later discovered at Verona that a Brugnolus had formerly
been famous there as a critic.
Myers is said to have published a whole collection of such hypermnesic
dreams in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, which
are unfortunately inaccessible to me. I believe every one who occupies
himself with dreams will recognise as a very common phenomenon the fact
that the dream gives proof of knowing and recollecting matters unknown
to the waking person. In my psychoanalytic investigations of nervous
patients, of which I shall speak later, I am every week more than once
in position to convince my patients from their dreams that they are well
acquainted with quotations, obscene expressions, &c., and that they make
use of these in their dreams, although they have forgotten them in the
waking state. I shall cite here a simple case of dream hypermnesia
because it was easy to trace the source which made the knowledge
accessible to the dream.
A patient dreamed in a lengthy connection that he ordered a
“Kontuszówka” in a café, and after reporting this inquired what it might
mean, as he never heard the name before. I was able to answer that
Kontuszówka was a Polish liquor which he could not have invented in his
dream, as the name had long been familiar to me in advertisements. The
patient would not at first believe me, but some days later, after he had
realised his dream of the café, he noticed the name on a signboard at
the street corner, which he had been obliged to pass for months at least
twice a day.
I have learned from my own dreams how largely the discovery of the
origin of some of the dream elements depends on accident. Thus, for
years before writing this book, I was haunted by the picture of a very
simply formed church tower which I could not recall having seen. I then
suddenly recognised it with absolute certainty at a small station
between Salzburg and Reichenhall. This was in the later nineties, and I
had travelled over the road for the first time in the year 1886. In
later years, when I was already busily engaged in the study of dreams, I
was quite annoyed at the frequent recurrence of the dream picture of a
certain peculiar locality. I saw it in definite local relation to my
person—to my left, a dark space from which many grotesque sandstone
figures stood out. A glimmer of recollection, which I did not quite
credit, told me it was the entrance to a beer-cellar, but I could
explain neither the meaning nor the origin of this dream picture. In
1907 I came by chance to Padua, which, to my regret, I had been unable
to visit since 1895. My first visit to this beautiful university city
was unsatisfactory; I was unable to see Giotto’s frescoes in the church
of the Madonna dell’ Arena, and on my way there turned back on being
informed that the little church was closed on the day. On my second
visit, twelve years later, I thought of compensating myself for this,
and before everything else I started out for Madonna dell’ Arena. On the
street leading to it, on my left, probably at the place where I had
turned in 1895, I discovered the locality which I had so often seen in
the dream, with its sandstone figures. It was in fact the entrance to a
restaurant garden.
One of the sources from which the dream draws material for
reproduction—material which in part is not recalled or employed in
waking thought—is to be found in childhood. I shall merely cite some of
the authors who have observed and emphasized this.
Hildebrandt[35] (p. 23): “It has already been expressly admitted that
the dream sometimes brings back to the mind with wonderful reproductive
ability remote and even forgotten experiences from the earliest
periods.”
Strümpell[66] (p. 40): “The subject becomes more interesting when we
remember how the dream sometimes brings forth, as it were, from among
the deepest and heaviest strata which later years have piled upon the
earliest childhood experiences, the pictures of certain places, things,
and persons, quite uninjured and with their original freshness. This is
not limited merely to such impressions as have gained vivid
consciousness during their origin or have become impressed with strong
psychic validity, and then later return in the dream as actual
reminiscences, causing pleasure to the awakened consciousness. On the
contrary, the depths of the dream memory comprise also such pictures of
persons, things, places, and early experiences as either possessed but
little consciousness and no psychic value at all, or have long ago lost
both, and therefore appear totally strange and unknown both in the dream
and in the waking state, until their former origin is revealed.”
Volkelt[72] (p. 119): “It is essentially noteworthy how easily infantile
and youthful reminiscences enter into the dream. What we have long
ceased to think about, what has long since lost for us all importance,
is constantly recalled by the dream.”
The sway of the dream over the infantile material, which, as is well
known, mostly occupies the gaps in the conscious memory, causes the
origin of interesting hypermnestic dreams, a few of which I shall here
report.
Maury[48] relates (p. 92) that as a child he often went from his native
city, Meaux, to the neighbouring Trilport, where his father
superintended the construction of a bridge. On a certain night a dream
transported him to Trilport, and he was again playing in the city
streets. A man approached him wearing some sort of uniform. Maury asked
him his name, and he introduced himself, saying that his name was C——,
and that he was a bridge guard. On waking, Maury, who still doubted the
reality of the reminiscence, asked his old servant, who had been with
him in his childhood, whether she remembered a man of this name.
“Certainly,” was the answer, “he used to be watchman on the bridge which
your father was building at that time.”
Maury reports another example demonstrating just as nicely the
reliability of infantile reminiscences appearing in dreams. Mr. F——, who
had lived as a child in Montbrison, decided to visit his home and old
friends of his family after an absence of twenty-five years. The night
before his departure he dreamt that he had reached his destination, and
that he met near Montbrison a man, whom he did not know by sight, who
told him he was Mr. F., a friend of his father. The dreamer remembered
that as a child he had known a gentleman of this name, but on waking he
could no longer recall his features. Several days later, having really
arrived at Montbrison, he found the supposedly unknown locality of his
dream, and there met a man whom he at once recognised as the Mr. F. of
his dream. The real person was only older than the one in the dream
picture.
I may here relate one of my own dreams in which the remembered
impression is replaced by an association. In my dream I saw a person
whom I recognised, while dreaming, as the physician of my native town.
The features were indistinct and confused with the picture of one of my
colleague teachers, whom I still see occasionally. What association
there was between the two persons I could not discover on awakening. But
upon questioning my mother about the physician of my early childhood, I
discovered that he was a one-eyed man. My teacher, whose figure
concealed that of the physician in the dream, was also one-eyed. I have
not seen the physician for thirty-eight years, and I have not to my
knowledge thought of him in my waking state, although a scar on my chin
might have reminded me of his help.
As if to counterbalance the immense rôle ascribed to the infantile
impressions in the dream, many authors assert that the majority of
dreams show elements from the most recent time. Thus Robert[55] (p. 46)
declares that the normal dream generally occupies itself only with the
impressions of the recent days. We learn indeed that the theory of the
dream advanced by Robert imperatively demands that the old impressions
should be pushed back, and the recent ones brought to the front.
Nevertheless the fact claimed by Robert really exists; I can confirm
this from my own investigations. Nelson,[50] an American author, thinks
that the impressions most frequently found in the dream date from two or
three days before, as if the impressions of the day immediately
preceding the dream were not sufficiently weakened and remote.
Many authors who are convinced of the intimate connection between the
dream content and the waking state are impressed by the fact that
impressions which have intensely occupied the waking mind appear in the
dream only after they have been to some extent pushed aside from the
elaboration of the waking thought. Thus, as a rule, we do not dream of a
dead beloved person while we are still overwhelmed with sorrow. Still
Miss Hallam,[33] one of the latest observers, has collected examples
showing the very opposite behaviour, and claims for the point the right
of individual psychology.
The third and the most remarkable and incomprehensible peculiarity of
the memory in dreams, is shown in the selection of the reproduced
material, for stress is laid not only on the most significant, but also
on the most indifferent and superficial reminiscences. On this point I
shall quote those authors who have expressed their surprise in the most
emphatic manner.
Hildebrandt[35] (p. 11): “For it is a remarkable fact that dreams do
not, as a rule, take their elements from great and deep-rooted events or
from the powerful and urgent interests of the preceding day, but from
unimportant matters, from the most worthless fragments of recent
experience or of a more remote past. The most shocking death in our
family, the impressions of which keep us awake long into the night,
becomes obliterated from our memories, until the first moment of
awakening brings it back to us with depressing force. On the other hand,
the wart on the forehead of a passing stranger, of whom we did not think
for a second after he was out of sight, plays its part in our dreams.”
Strümpell[66] (p. 39): “... such cases where the analysis of a dream
brings to light elements which, although derived from events of the
previous day or the day before the last, yet prove to be so unimportant
and worthless for the waking state that they merge into forgetfulness
shortly after coming to light. Such occurrences may be statements of
others heard accidentally or actions superficially observed, or fleeting
perceptions of things or persons, or single phrases from books, &c.”
Havelock Ellis[23] (p. 727): “The profound emotions of waking life, the
questions and problems on which we spread our chief voluntary mental
energy, are not those which usually present themselves at once to
dream-consciousness. It is, so far as the immediate past is concerned,
mostly the trifling, the incidental, the “forgotten” impressions of
daily life which reappear in our dreams. The psychic activities that are
awake most intensely are those that sleep most profoundly.”
Binz[4] (p. 45) takes occasion from the above-mentioned characteristics
of the memory in dreams to express his dissatisfaction with explanations
of dreams which he himself has approved of: “And the normal dream raises
similar questions. Why do we not always dream of memory impressions from
the preceding days, instead of going back to the almost forgotten past
lying far behind us without any perceptible reason? Why in a dream does
consciousness so often revive the impression of indifferent memory
pictures while the cerebral cells bearing the most sensitive records of
experience remain for the most part inert and numb, unless an acute
revival during the waking state has shortly before excited them?”
We can readily understand how the strange preference of the dream memory
for the indifferent and hence the unnoticed details of daily experience
must usually lead us to overlook altogether the dependence of the dream
on the waking state, or at least make it difficult to prove this
dependence in any individual case. It thus happened that in the
statistical treatment of her own and her friend’s dreams, Miss Whiton
Calkins[12] found 11 per cent. of the entire number that showed no
relation to the waking state. Hildebrandt was certainly correct in his
assertion that all our dream pictures could be genetically explained if
we devoted enough time and material to the tracing of their origin. To
be sure, he calls this “a most tedious and thankless job.” For it would
at most lead us to ferret out all kinds of quite worthless psychic
material from the most remote corners of the memory chamber, and to
bring to light some very indifferent moments from the remote past which
were perhaps buried the next hour after their appearance. I must,
however, express my regret that this discerning author refrained from
following the road whose beginning looked so unpromising; it would have
led him directly to the centre of the dream problem.
The behaviour of the memory in dreams is surely most significant for
every theory of memory in general. It teaches us that “nothing which we
have once psychically possessed is ever entirely lost” (Scholz[59]); or
as Delbœuf puts it, “que toute impression même la plus insignifiante,
laisse une trace inaltérable, indéfiniment susceptible de reparaître au
jour,” a conclusion to which we are urged by so many of the other
pathological manifestations of the psychic life. Let us now bear in mind
this extraordinary capability of the memory in the dream, in order to
perceive vividly the contradictions which must be advanced in certain
dream theories to be mentioned later, when they endeavour to explain the
absurdities and incoherence of dreams through a partial forgetting of
what we have known during the day.
One might even think of reducing the phenomenon of dreaming to that of
memory, and of regarding the dream as the manifestation of an activity
of reproduction which does not rest even at night, and which is an end
in itself. Views like those expressed by Pilcz[51] would corroborate
this, according to which intimate relations are demonstrable between the
time of dreaming and the contents of the dream from the fact that the
impressions reproduced by the dream in sound sleep belong to the
remotest past while those reproduced towards morning are of recent
origin. But such a conception is rendered improbable from the outset by
the manner of the dream’s behaviour towards the material to be
remembered. Strümpell[66] justly calls our attention to the fact that
repetitions of experiences do not occur in the dream. To be sure the
dream makes an effort in that direction, but the next link is wanting,
or appears in changed form, or it is replaced by something entirely
novel. The dream shows only fragments of reproduction; this is so often
the rule that it admits of theoretical application. Still there are
exceptions in which the dream repeats an episode as thoroughly as our
memory would in its waking state. Delbœuf tells of one of his university
colleagues who in his dream repeated, with all its details, a dangerous
wagon ride in which he escaped accident as if by miracle. Miss
Calkins[12] mentions two dreams, the contents of which exactly
reproduced incidents from the day before, and I shall later take
occasion to report an example which came to my notice, showing a
childish experience which returned unchanged in a dream.[F]
(_c_) _Dream Stimuli and Dream Sources._—What is meant by dream stimuli
and dream sources may be explained by referring to the popular saying,
“Dreams come from the stomach.” This notion conceals a theory which
conceives the dream as a result of a disturbance of sleep. We should not
have dreamed if some disturbing element had not arisen in sleep, and the
dream is the reaction from this disturbance.
The discussion of the exciting causes of dreams takes up the most space
in the descriptions of the authors. That this problem could appear only
after the dream had become an object of biological investigation is
self-evident. The ancients who conceived the dream as a divine
inspiration had no need of looking for its exciting source; to them the
dream resulted from the will of the divine or demoniacal powers, and its
content was the product of their knowledge or intention. Science,
however, soon raised the question whether the stimulus to the dream is
always the same, or whether it might be manifold, and thus led to the
question whether the causal explanation of the dream belongs to
psychology or rather to physiology. Most authors seem to assume that the
causes of the disturbance of sleep, and hence the sources of the dream,
might be of various natures, and that physical as well as mental
irritations might assume the rôle of dream inciters. Opinions differ
greatly in preferring this or that one of the dream sources, in ranking
them, and indeed as to their importance for the origin of dreams.
Wherever the enumeration of dream sources is complete we ultimately find
four forms, which are also utilised for the division of dreams:—
I. External (objective) sensory stimuli.
II. Internal (subjective) sensory stimuli.
III. Internal (organic) physical excitations.
IV. Purely psychical exciting sources.
I. _The External Sensory Stimuli._—The younger Strümpell, son of the
philosopher whose writings on the subject have already more than once
served us as a guide in the problem of dreams, has, as is well known,
reported his observations on a patient who was afflicted with general
anæsthesia of the skin and with paralysis of several of the higher
sensory organs. This man merged into sleep when his few remaining
sensory paths from the outer world were shut off. When we wish to sleep
we are wont to strive for a situation resembling the one in Strümpell’s
experiment. We close the most important sensory paths, the eyes, and we
endeavour to keep away from the other senses every stimulus and every
change of the stimuli acting upon them. We then fall asleep, although we
are never perfectly successful in our preparations. We can neither keep
the stimuli away from the sensory organs altogether, nor can we fully
extinguish the irritability of the sensory organs. That we may at any
time be awakened by stronger stimuli should prove to us “that the mind
has remained in constant communication with the material world even
during sleep.” The sensory stimuli which reach us during sleep may
easily become the source of dreams.
There are a great many stimuli of such nature, ranging from those that
are unavoidable, being brought on by the sleeping state or at least
occasionally induced by it, to the accidental waking stimuli which are
adapted or calculated to put an end to sleep. Thus a strong light may
force itself into the eyes, a noise may become perceptible, or some
odoriferous matter may irritate the mucous membrane of the nose. In the
spontaneous movements of sleep we may lay bare parts of the body and
thus expose them to a sensation of cold, or through change of position
we may produce sensations of pressure and touch. A fly may bite us, or a
slight accident at night may simultaneously attack more than one sense.
Observers have called attention to a whole series of dreams in which the
stimulus verified on waking, and a part of the dream content
corresponded to such a degree that the stimulus could be recognised as
the source of the dream.
I shall here cite a number of such dreams collected by Jessen[36] (p.
527), traceable to more or less accidental objective sensory stimuli.
“Every indistinctly perceived noise gives rise to corresponding dream
pictures; the rolling of thunder takes us into the thick of battle, the
crowing of a cock may be transformed into human shrieks of terror, and
the creaking of a door may conjure up dreams of burglars breaking into
the house. When one of our blankets slips off at night we may dream that
we are walking about naked or falling into the water. If we lie
diagonally across the bed with our feet extending beyond the edge, we
may dream of standing on the brink of a terrifying precipice, or of
falling from a steep height. Should our head accidentally get under the
pillow we may then imagine a big rock hanging over us and about to crush
us under its weight. Accumulation of semen produces voluptuous dreams,
and local pain the idea of suffering ill treatment, of hostile attacks,
or of accidental bodily injuries.”
“Meier (_Versuch einer Erklärung des Nachtwandelns_, Halle, 1758, p.
33), once dreamed of being assaulted by several persons who threw him
flat on the ground and drove a stake into the ground between his big and
second toes. While imagining this in his dream he suddenly awoke and
felt a blade of straw sticking between his toes. The same author,
according to Hemmings (_Von den Traumen und Nachtwandeln_, Weimar, 1784,
p. 258) dreamed on another occasion that he was being hanged when his
shirt was pinned somewhat tight around his neck. Hauffbauer dreamed in
his youth of having fallen from a high wall and found upon waking that
the bedstead had come apart, and that he had actually fallen to the
floor.... Gregory relates that he once applied a hot-water bottle to his
feet, and dreamed of taking a trip to the summit of Mount Ætna, where he
found the heat on the ground almost unbearable. After having applied a
blistering plaster to his head, a second man dreamed of being scalped by
Indians; a third, whose shirt was damp, dreamed of being dragged through
a stream. An attack of gout caused the patient to believe that he was in
the hands of the Inquisition, and suffering pains of torture (Macnish).”
The argument based upon the resemblance between stimulus and dream
content is reinforced if through a systematic induction of stimuli we
succeed in producing dreams corresponding to the stimuli. According to
Macnish such experiments have already been made by Giron de
Buzareingues. “He left his knee exposed and dreamed of travelling in a
mail coach at night. He remarked in this connection that travellers
would well know how cold the knees become in a coach at night. Another
time he left the back of his head uncovered, and dreamed of taking part
in a religious ceremony in the open air. In the country where he lived
it was customary to keep the head always covered except on such
occasions.”
Maury[48] reports new observations on dreams produced in himself. (A
number of other attempts produced no results.)
1. He was tickled with a feather on his lips and on the tip of his nose.
He dreamed of awful torture, viz. that a mask of pitch was stuck to his
face and then forcibly torn off, taking the skin with it.
2. Scissors were sharpened on pincers. He heard bells ringing, then
sounds of alarm which took him back to the June days of 1848.
3. Cologne water was put on his nose. He found himself in Cairo in the
shop of John Maria Farina. This was followed by mad adventures which he
was unable to reproduce.
4. His neck was lightly pinched. He dreamed that a blistering plaster
was put on him, and thought of a doctor who treated him in his
childhood.
5. A hot iron was brought near his face. He dreamed that _chauffeurs_[G]
broke into the house and forced the occupants to give up their money by
sticking their feet into burning coals. The Duchess of Abrantés, whose
secretary he imagined himself in the dream, then entered.
6. A drop of water was let fall on his forehead. He imagined himself in
Italy perspiring heavily and drinking white wine of Orvieto.
7. When a burning candle was repeatedly focussed on him through red
paper, he dreamed of the weather, of heat, and of a storm at sea which
he once experienced in the English Channel.
D’Hervey,[34] Weygandt,[75] and others have made other attempts to
produce dreams experimentally.
Many have observed the striking skill of the dream in interweaving into
its structure sudden impressions from the outer world in such a manner
as to present a gradually prepared and initiated catastrophe
(Hildebrandt)[35]. “In former years,” this author relates, “I
occasionally made use of an alarm clock in order to wake regularly at a
certain hour in the morning. It probably happened hundreds of times that
the sound of this instrument fitted into an apparently very long and
connected dream, as if the entire dream had been especially designed for
it, as if it found in this sound its appropriate and logically
indispensable point, its inevitable issue.”
I shall cite three of these alarm-clock dreams for another purpose.
Volkelt (p. 68) relates: “A composer once dreamed that he was teaching
school, and was just explaining something to his pupils. He had almost
finished when he turned to one of the boys with the question: ‘Did you
understand me?’ The boy cried out like one possessed ‘Ya.’ Annoyed at
this, he reprimanded him for shouting. But now the entire class was
screaming ‘Orya,’ then ‘Euryo,’ and finally ‘Feueryo.’ He was now
aroused by an actual alarm of fire in the street.”
Garnier (_Traité des Facultés de l’Âme_, 1865), reported by
Radestock,[54] relates that Napoleon I., while sleeping in a carriage,
was awakened from a dream by an explosion which brought back to him the
crossing of the Tagliamento and the bombarding of the Austrians, so that
he started up crying, “We are undermined!”
The following dream of Maury[48] has become celebrated. He was sick, and
remained in bed; his mother sat beside him. He then dreamed of the reign
of terror at the time of the Revolution. He took part in terrible scenes
of murder, and finally he himself was summoned before the Tribunal.
There he saw Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier-Tinville, and all the sorry
heroes of that cruel epoch; he had to give an account of himself, and,
after all sort of incidents which did not fix themselves in his memory,
he was sentenced to death. Accompanied by an enormous crowd, he was led
to the place of execution. He mounted the scaffold, the executioner tied
him to the board, it tipped, and the knife of the guillotine fell. He
felt his head severed from the trunk, and awakened in terrible anxiety,
only to find that the top piece of the bed had fallen down, and had
actually struck his cervical vertebra in the same manner as the knife of
a guillotine.
This dream gave rise to an interesting discussion introduced by Le
Lorrain[45] and Egger[20] in the _Revue Philosophique_. The question was
whether, and how, it was possible for the dreamer to crowd together an
amount of dream content apparently so large in the short space of time
elapsing between the perception of the waking stimulus and the
awakening.
Examples of this nature make it appear that the objective stimuli during
sleep are the most firmly established of all the dream sources; indeed,
it is the only stimulus which plays any part in the layman’s knowledge.
If we ask an educated person, who is, however, unacquainted with the
literature of dreams, how dreams originate, he is sure to answer by
referring to a case familiar to him in which a dream has been explained
after waking by a recognised objective stimulus. Scientific
investigation cannot, however, stop here, but is incited to further
research by the observation that the stimulus influencing the senses
during sleep does not appear in the dream at all in its true form, but
is replaced by some other presentation which is in some way related to
it. But the relation existing between the stimulus and the result of the
dream is, according to Maury,[47] “une affinité quelconque mais qui
n’est pas unique et exclusive” (p. 72). If we read, _e.g._, three of
Hildebrandt’s “Alarm Clock Dreams,” we will then have to inquire why the
same stimulus evoked so many different results, and why just these
results and no others.
(P. 37). “I am taking a walk on a beautiful spring morning. I saunter
through the green fields to a neighbouring village, where I see the
natives going to church in great numbers, wearing their holiday attire
and carrying their hymn-books under their arms. I remember that it is
Sunday, and that the morning service will soon begin. I decide to attend
it, but as I am somewhat overheated I also decide to cool off in the
cemetery surrounding the church. While reading the various epitaphs, I
hear the sexton ascend the tower and see the small village bell in the
cupola which is about to give signal for the beginning of the devotions.
For another short while it hangs motionless, then it begins to swing,
and suddenly its notes resound so clearly and penetratingly that my
sleep comes to an end. But the sound of bells comes from the alarm
clock.”
“A second combination. It is a clear day, the streets are covered with
deep snow. I have promised to take part in a sleigh-ride, but have had
to wait for some time before it was announced that the sleigh is in
front of my house. The preparations for getting into the sleigh are now
made. I put on my furs and adjust my muff, and at last I am in my place.
But the departure is still delayed, until the reins give the impatient
horses the perceptible sign. They start, and the sleigh bells, now
forcibly shaken, begin their familiar janizary music with a force that
instantly tears the gossamer of my dream. Again it is only the shrill
sound of my alarm clock.”
Still a third example. “I see the kitchen-maid walk along the corridor
to the dining-room with several dozen plates piled up. The porcelain
column in her arms seems to me to be in danger of losing its
equilibrium. ‘Take care,’ I exclaim, ‘you will drop the whole pile.’ The
usual retort is naturally not wanting—that she is used to such things.
Meanwhile I continue to follow her with my worried glance, and behold!
at the door-step the fragile dishes fall, tumble, and roll across the
floor in hundreds of pieces. But I soon notice that the noise continuing
endlessly is not really a rattling but a true ringing, and with this
ringing the dreamer now becomes aware that the alarm clock has done its
duty.”
The question why the dreaming mind misjudges the nature of the objective
sensory stimulus has been answered by Strümpell,[66] and almost
identically by Wundt,[76] to the effect that the reaction of the mind to
the attacking stimuli in sleep is determined by the formation of
illusions. A sensory impression is recognised by us and correctly
interpreted, i.e. it is classed with the memory group to which it
belongs according to all previous experience, if the impression is
strong, clear, and long enough, and if we have the necessary time at our
disposal for this reflection. If these conditions are not fulfilled, we
mistake the objects which give rise to the impression, and on its basis
we form an illusion. “If one takes a walk in an open field and perceives
indistinctly a distant object, it may happen that he will at first take
it for a horse.” On closer inspection the image of a cow resting may
obtrude itself, and the presentation may finally resolve itself with
certainty into a group of people sitting. The impressions which the mind
receives during sleep through outer stimuli are of a similar indistinct
nature; they give rise to illusions because the impression evokes a
greater or lesser number of memory pictures through which the impression
receives its psychic value. In which of the many spheres of memory to be
taken into consideration the corresponding pictures are aroused, and
which of the possible association connections thereby come into force,
this, even according to Strümpell, remains indeterminable, and is left,
as it were, to the caprice of the psychic life.
We may here take our choice. We may admit that the laws of the dream
formation cannot really be traced any further, and therefore refrain
from asking whether or not the interpretation of the illusion evoked by
the sensory impression depends upon still other conditions; or we may
suppose that the objective sensory stimulus encroaching upon sleep plays
only a modest part as a dream source, and that other factors determine
the choice of the memory picture to be evoked. Indeed, on carefully
examining Maury’s experimentally produced dreams, which I have purposely
reported in detail, one is apt to think that the experiment really
explains the origin of only one of the dream elements, and that the rest
of the dream content appears in fact too independent, too much
determined in detail, to be explained by the one demand, viz. that it
must agree with the element experimentally introduced. Indeed one even
begins to doubt the illusion theory, and the power of the objective
impression to form the dream, when one learns that this impression at
times experiences the most peculiar and far-fetched interpretations
during the sleeping state. Thus B. M. Simon[63] tells of a dream in
which he saw persons of gigantic stature[H] seated at a table, and heard
distinctly the awful rattling produced by the impact of their jaws while
chewing. On waking he heard the clacking of the hoofs of a horse
galloping past his window. If the noise of the horse’s hoofs had
recalled ideas from the memory sphere of “Gulliver’s Travels,” the
sojourn with the giants of Brobdingnag and the virtuous
horse-creatures—as I should perhaps interpret it without any assistance
on the author’s part—should not the choice of a memory sphere so
uncommon for the stimulus have some further illumination from other
motives?
II. _Internal (Subjective) Sensory Stimuli._—Notwithstanding all
objections to the contrary, we must admit that the rôle of the objective
sensory stimuli as a producer of dreams has been indisputably
established, and if these stimuli seem perhaps insufficient in their
nature and frequency to explain all dream pictures, we are then directed
to look for other dream sources acting in an analogous manner. I do not
know where the idea originated that along with the outer sensory stimuli
the inner (subjective) stimuli should also be considered, but as a
matter of fact this is done more or less fully in all the more recent
descriptions of the etiology of dreams. “An important part is played in
dream illusions,” says Wundt[36] (p. 363), “by those subjective
sensations of seeing and hearing which are familiar to us in the waking
state as a luminous chaos in the dark field of vision, ringing, buzzing,
&c., of the ears, and especially irritation of the retina. This explains
the remarkable tendency of the dream to delude the eyes with numbers of
similar or identical objects. Thus we see spread before our eyes
numberless birds, butterflies, fishes, coloured beads, flowers, &c. Here
the luminous dust in the dark field of vision has taken on phantastic
figures, and the many luminous points of which it consists are embodied
by the dream in as many single pictures, which are looked upon as moving
objects owing to the mobility of the luminous chaos. This is also the
root of the great fondness of the dream for the most complex animal
figures, the multiplicity of forms readily following the form of the
subjective light pictures.”
The subjective sensory stimuli as a source of the dream have the obvious
advantage that unlike the objective stimuli they are independent of
external accidents. They are, so to speak, at the disposal of the
explanation as often as it needs them. They are, however, in so far
inferior to the objective sensory stimuli that the rôle of dream
inciter, which observation and experiment have proven for the latter,
can be verified in their case only with difficulty or not at all. The
main proof for the dream-inciting power of subjective sensory
excitements is offered by the so-called hypnogogic hallucinations, which
have been described by John Müller as “phantastic visual
manifestations.” They are those very vivid and changeable pictures which
occur regularly in many people during the period of falling asleep, and
which may remain for awhile even after the eyes have been opened.
Maury,[48] who was considerably troubled by them, subjected them to a
thorough study, and maintained that they are related to or rather
identical with dream pictures—this has already been asserted by John
Müller. Maury states that a certain psychic passivity is necessary for
their origin; it requires a relaxation of the tension of attention (p.
59). But in any ordinary disposition a hypnogogic hallucination may be
produced by merging for a second into such lethargy, after which one
perhaps awakens until this oft-repeated process terminates in sleep.
According to Maury, if one awakens shortly thereafter, it is often
possible to demonstrate the same pictures in the dream which one has
perceived as hypnogogic hallucinations before falling asleep (p. 134).
Thus it once happened to Maury with a group of pictures of grotesque
figures, with distorted features and strange headdresses, which obtruded
themselves upon him with incredible importunity during the period of
falling asleep, and which he recalled having dreamed upon awakening. On
another occasion, while suffering from hunger, because he kept himself
on a rather strict diet, he saw hypnogogically a plate and a hand armed
with a fork taking some food from the plate. In his dream he found
himself at a table abundantly supplied with food, and heard the rattle
made by the diners with their forks. On still another occasion, after
falling asleep with irritated and painful eyes, he had the hypnogogic
hallucination of seeing microscopically small characters which he was
forced to decipher one by one with great exertion; having been awakened
from his sleep an hour later, he recalled a dream in which there was an
open book with very small letters, which he was obliged to read through
with laborious effort.
Just as in the case of these pictures, auditory hallucinations of words,
names, &c., may also appear hypnogogically, and then repeat themselves
in the dream, like an overture announcing the principal motive of the
opera which is to follow.
A more recent observer of hypnogogic hallucinations, G. Trumbull
Ladd,[40] takes the same path pursued by John Müller and Maury. By dint
of practice he succeeded in acquiring the faculty of suddenly arousing
himself, without opening his eyes, two to five minutes after having
gradually fallen asleep, which gave him opportunity to compare the
sensations of the retina just vanishing with the dream pictures
remaining in his memory. He assures us that an intimate relation between
the two can always be recognised, in the sense that the luminous dots
and lines of the spontaneous light of the retina produced, so to speak,
the sketched outline or scheme for the psychically perceived dream
figures. A dream, _e.g._, in which he saw in front of him clearly
printed lines which he read and studied, corresponded to an arrangement
of the luminous dots and lines in the retina in parallel lines, or, to
express it in his own words: “The clearly printed page, which he was
reading in the dream, resolved itself into an object which appeared to
his waking perception like part of an actual printed sheet looked at
through a little hole in a piece of paper, from too great a distance to
be made out distinctly.” Without in any way under-estimating the central
part of the phenomenon, Ladd believes that hardly any visual dream
occurs in our minds that is not based on material furnished by this
inner condition of stimulation in the retina. This is particularly true
of dreams occurring shortly after falling asleep in a dark room, while
dreams occurring in the morning near the period of awakening receive
their stimulation from the objective light penetrating the eye from the
lightened room. The shifting and endlessly variable character of the
spontaneous luminous excitation of the retina corresponds exactly to the
fitful succession of pictures presented to us in our dreams. If we
attach any importance to Ladd’s observations, we cannot underrate the
productiveness of this subjective source of excitation for the dream;
for visual pictures apparently form the principal constituent of our
dreams. The share furnished from the spheres of the other senses, beside
the sense of hearing, is more insignificant and inconstant.
III. _Internal (Organic) Physical Excitation._—If we are disposed to
seek dream sources not outside, but inside, the organism, we must
remember that almost all our internal organs, which in their healthy
state hardly remind us of their existence, may, in states of
excitation—as we call them—or in disease, become for us a source of the
most painful sensations, which must be put on an equality with the
external excitants of the pain and sensory stimuli. It is on the
strength of very old experience that, _e.g._, Strümpell[66] declares
that “during sleep the mind becomes far more deeply and broadly
conscious of its connection with the body than in the waking state, and
it is compelled to receive and be influenced by stimulating impressions
originating in parts and changes of the body of which it is unconscious
in the waking state.” Even Aristotle[1] declares it quite possible that
the dream should draw our attention to incipient morbid conditions which
we have not noticed at all in the waking state owing to the exaggeration
given by the dream to the impressions; and some medical authors, who
were certainly far from believing in any prophetic power of the dream,
have admitted this significance of the dream at least for the
foretelling of disease. (Compare M. Simon, p. 31, and many older
authors.)
Even in our times there seems to be no lack of authenticated examples of
such diagnostic performances on the part of the dream. Thus Tissié[68]
cites from Artigues (_Essai sur la Valeur séméiologique des Réves_), the
history of a woman of forty-three years, who, during several years of
apparently perfect health, was troubled with anxiety dreams, and in whom
medical examination later disclosed an incipient affection of the heart
to which she soon succumbed.
Serious disturbances of the internal organs apparently act as inciters
of dreams in a considerable number of persons. Attention is quite
generally called to the frequency of anxiety dreams in the diseases of
the heart and lungs; indeed this relation of the dream life is placed so
conspicuously in the foreground by many authors that I shall here
content myself with a mere reference to the literature. (Radestock,[54]
Spitta,[64] Maury, M. Simon, Tissié.) Tissié even assumes that the
diseased organs impress upon the dream content their characteristic
features. The dreams of persons suffering from diseases of the heart are
generally very brief and terminate in a terrified awakening; the
situation of death under terrible circumstances almost always plays a
part in their content. Those suffering from diseases of the lungs dream
of suffocation, of being crowded, and of flight, and a great many of
them are subject to the well-known nightmare, which, by the way, Boerner
has succeeded in producing experimentally by lying on the face and
closing up the openings of the respiratory organs. In digestive
disturbances the dream contains ideas from the sphere of enjoyment and
disgust. Finally, the influence of sexual excitement on the dream
content is perceptible enough in every one’s experience, and lends the
strongest support to the entire theory of the dream excitation through
organic sensation.
Moreover, as we go through the literature of the dream, it becomes quite
obvious that some of the authors (Maury,[48] Weygandt[75]) have been led
to the study of dream problems by the influence of their own
pathological state on the content of their dreams.
The addition to dream sources from these undoubtedly established facts
is, however, not as important as one might be led to suppose; for the
dream is a phenomenon which occurs in healthy persons—perhaps in all
persons, and every night—and a pathological state of the organs is
apparently not one of its indispensable conditions. For us, however, the
question is not whence particular dreams originate, but what may be the
exciting source for the ordinary dreams of normal persons.
But we need go only a step further to find a dream source which is more
prolific than any of those mentioned above, which indeed promises to be
inexhaustible in every case. If it is established that the bodily organs
become in sickness an exciting source of dreams, and if we admit that
the mind, diverted during sleep from the outer world, can devote more
attention to the interior of the body, we may readily assume that the
organs need not necessarily become diseased in order to permit stimuli,
which in some way or other grow into dream pictures, to reach the
sleeping mind. What in the waking state we broadly perceive as general
sensation, distinguishable by its quality alone, to which, in the
opinion of the physicians, all the organic systems contribute their
shares—this general sensation at night attaining powerful efficiency and
becoming active with its individual components—would naturally furnish
the most powerful as well as the most common source for the production
of the dream presentations. It still remains, however, to examine
according to what rule the organic sensations become transformed into
dream presentations.
The theory of the origin of dreams just stated has been the favourite
with all medical authors. The obscurity which conceals the essence of
our being—the “_moi splanchnique_,” as Tissié terms it—from our
knowledge and the obscurity of the origin of the dream correspond too
well not to be brought into relation with each other. The train of
thought which makes organic sensation the inciter of the dream has
besides another attraction for the physician, inasmuch as it favours the
etiological union of the dream and mental diseases, which show so many
agreements in their manifestations, for alterations in the organic
sensations and excitations emanating from the inner organs are both of
wide significance in the origin of the psychoses. It is therefore not
surprising that the theory of bodily sensation can be traced to more
than one originator who has propounded it independently.
A number of authors have been influenced by the train of ideas developed
by the philosopher Schopenhauer in 1851. Our conception of the universe
originates through the fact that our intellect recasts the impressions
coming to it from without in the moulds of time, space, and causality.
The sensations from the interior of the organism, proceeding from the
sympathetic nervous system, exert in the day-time an influence on our
mood for the most part unconscious. At night, however, when the
overwhelming influence of the day’s impressions is no longer felt, the
impressions pressing upward from the interior are able to gain
attention—just as in the night we hear the rippling of the spring that
was rendered inaudible by the noise of the day. In what other way, then,
could the intellect react upon these stimuli than by performing its
characteristic function? It will transform the stimuli into figures,
filling space and time, which move at the beginning of causality; and
thus the dream originates. Scherner,[58] and after him Volkelt,[72]
attempted to penetrate into closer relations between physical sensations
and dream pictures; but we shall reserve the discussion of these
attempts for the chapter on the theory of the dream.
In a study particularly logical in its development, the psychiatrist
Krauss[39] found the origin of the dream as well as of deliria and
delusions in the same element, viz. the organically determined
sensation. According to this author there is hardly a place in the
organism which might not become the starting point of a dream or of a
delusion. Now organically determined sensations “may be divided into two
classes: (1) those of the total feeling (general sensations), (2)
specific sensations which are inherent in the principal systems of the
vegetative organism, which may be divided into five groups: (_a_) the
muscular, (_b_) the pneumatic, (_c_) the gastric, (_d_) the sexual,
(_e_) the peripheral sensations (p. 33 of the second article).”
The origin of the dream picture on the basis of the physical sensations
is conceived by Krauss as follows: The awakened sensation evokes a
presentation related to it in accordance with some law of association,
and combines with this, thus forming an organic structure, towards
which, however, consciousness does not maintain its normal attitude. For
it does not bestow any attention on the sensation itself, but concerns
itself entirely with the accompanying presentation; this is likewise the
reason why the state of affairs in question should have been so long
misunderstood (p. 11, &c.). Krauss finds for this process the specific
term of “transubstantiation of the feeling into dream pictures” (p. 24).
That the organic bodily sensations exert some influence on the formation
of the dream is nowadays almost universally acknowledged, but the
question as to the law underlying the relation between the two is
answered in various ways and often in obscure terms. On the basis of the
theory of bodily excitation the special task of dream interpretation is
to trace back the content of a dream to the causative organic stimulus,
and if we do not recognise the rules of interpretation advanced by
Scherner,[58] we frequently find ourselves confronted with the awkward
fact that the organic exciting source reveals itself in the content of
the dream only.
A certain agreement, however, is manifested in the interpretation of the
various forms of dreams which have been designated as “typical” because
they recur in so many persons with almost the same contents. Among these
are the well-known dreams of falling from heights, of the falling out of
teeth, of flying, and of embarrassment because of being naked or barely
clad. This last dream is said to be caused simply by the perception felt
in sleep that one has thrown off the bedcover and is exposed. The dream
of the falling out of teeth is explained by “dental irritation,” which
does not, however, of necessity imply a morbid state of excitation in
the teeth. According to Strümpell,[66] the flying dream is the adequate
picture used by the mind to interpret the sum of excitation emanating
from the rising and sinking of the pulmonary lobes after the cutaneous
sensation of the thorax has been reduced to insensibility. It is this
latter circumstance that causes a sensation related to the conception of
flying. Falling from a height in a dream is said to have its cause in
the fact that when unconsciousness of the sensation of cutaneous
pressure has set in, either an arm falls away from the body or a flexed
knee is suddenly stretched out, causing the feeling of cutaneous
pressure to return to consciousness, and the transition to consciousness
embodies itself psychically as a dream of falling. (Strümpell, p. 118).
The weakness of these plausible attempts at explanation evidently lies
in the fact that without any further elucidation they allow this or that
group of organic sensations to disappear from psychic perception or to
obtrude themselves upon it until the constellation favourable for the
explanation has been established. I shall, however, later have occasion
to recur to typical dreams and to their origin.
From comparison of a series of similar dreams, M. Simon[63] endeavoured
to formulate certain rules for the influence of the organic sensations
on the determination of the resulting dream. He says (p. 34): “If any
organic apparatus, which during sleep normally participates in the
expression of an affect, for any reason merges into the state of
excitation to which it is usually aroused by that affect, the dream thus
produced will contain presentations which fit the affect.”
Another rule reads as follows (p. 35): “If an organic apparatus is in a
state of activity, excitation, or disturbance during sleep, the dream
will bring ideas which are related to the exercise of the organic
function which is performed by that apparatus.”
Mourly Vold[73] has undertaken to prove experimentally the influence
assumed by the theory of bodily sensation for a single territory. He has
made experiments in altering the positions of the sleeper’s limbs, and
has compared the resulting dream with his alterations. As a result he
reports the following theories:—
1. The position of a limb in a dream corresponds approximately to that
of reality, _i.e._ we dream of a static condition of the limb which
corresponds to the real condition.
2. When one dreams of a moving limb it always happens that one of the
positions occurring in the execution of this movement corresponds to the
real position.
3. The position of one’s own limb may be attributed in the dream to
another person.
4. One may dream further that the movement in question is impeded.
5. The limb in any particular position may appear in the dream as an
animal or monster, in which case a certain analogy between the two is
established.
6. The position of a limb may incite in the dream ideas which bear some
relation or other to this limb. Thus, _e.g._, if we are employed with
the fingers we dream of numerals.
Such results would lead me to conclude that even the theory of bodily
sensation cannot fully extinguish the apparent freedom in the
determination of the dream picture to be awakened.[I]
IV. _Psychic Exciting Sources._—In treating the relations of the dream
to the waking life and the origin of the dream material, we learned that
the earliest as well as the latest investigators agreed that men dream
of what they are doing in the day-time, and of what they are interested
in during the waking state. This interest continuing from waking life
into sleep, besides being a psychic tie joining the dream to life, also
furnishes us a dream source not to be under-estimated, which, taken with
those stimuli which become interesting and active during sleep, suffices
to explain the origin of all dream pictures. But we have also heard the
opposite of the above assertion, viz. that the dream takes the sleeper
away from the interests of the day, and that in most cases we do not
dream of things that have occupied our attention during the day until
after they have lost for the waking life the stimulus of actuality.
Hence in the analysis of the dream life we are reminded at every step
that it is inadmissible to frame general rules without making provision
for qualifications expressed by such terms as “frequently,” “as a rule,”
“in most cases,” and without preparing for the validity of the
exceptions.
If the conscious interest, together with the inner and outer sleep
stimuli, sufficed to cover the etiology of the dreams, we ought to be in
a position to give a satisfactory account of the origin of all the
elements of a dream; the riddle of the dream sources would thus be
solved, leaving only the task of separating the part played by the
psychic and the somatic dream stimuli in individual dreams. But as a
matter of fact no such complete solution of a dream has ever been
accomplished in any case, and, what is more, every one attempting such
solution has found that in most cases there have remained a great many
components of the dream, the source of which he was unable to explain.
The daily interest as a psychic source of dreams is evidently not
far-reaching enough to justify the confident assertions to the effect
that we all continue our waking affairs in the dream.
Other psychic sources of dreams are unknown. Hence, with the exception
perhaps of the explanation of dreams given by Scherner,[58] which will
be referred to later, all explanations found in the literature show a
large gap when we come to the derivation of the material for the
presentation pictures, which is most characteristic for the dream. In
this dilemma the majority of authors have developed a tendency to
depreciate as much as possible the psychic factor in the excitations of
dreams which is so difficult to approach. To be sure, they distinguish
as a main division of dreams the nerve-exciting and the association
dreams, and assert that the latter has its source exclusively in
reproduction (Wundt,[76] p. 365), but they cannot yet dismiss the doubt
whether “they do not appear without being impelled by the psychical
stimulus” (Volkelt,[72] p. 127). The characteristic quality of the pure
association dream is also found wanting. To quote Volkelt (p. 118): “In
the association dreams proper we can no longer speak of such a firm
nucleus. Here the loose grouping penetrates also into the centre of the
dream. The ideation which is already set free from reason and intellect
is here no longer held together by the more important psychical and
mental stimuli, but is left to its own aimless shifting and complete
confusion.” Wundt, too, attempts to depreciate the psychic factor in the
stimulation of dreams by declaring that the “phantasms of the dream
certainly are unjustly regarded as pure hallucinations, and that
probably most dream presentations are really illusions, inasmuch as they
emanate from slight sensory impressions which are never extinguished
during sleep” (p. 338, &c.). Weygandt[75] agrees with this view, but
generalises it. He asserts that “the first source of all dream
presentations is a sensory stimulus to which reproductive associations
are then joined” (p. 17). Tissié[68] goes still further in repressing
the psychic exciting sources (p. 183): “Les rêves d’origine absolument
psychique n’existent pas”; and elsewhere (p. 6), “Les pensées de nos
rêves nous viennent de dehors....”
Those authors who, like the influential philosopher Wundt, adopt a
middle course do not fail to remark that in most dreams there is a
co-operation of the somatic stimuli with the psychic instigators of the
dream, the latter being either unknown or recognised as day interests.
We shall learn later that the riddle of the dream formation can be
solved by the disclosure of an unsuspected psychic source of excitement.
For the present we shall not be surprised at the over-estimation of
those stimuli for the formation of the dream which do not originate from
psychic life. It is not merely because they alone can easily be found
and even confirmed by experiment, but the somatic conception of the
origin of dreams thoroughly corresponds to the mode of thinking in vogue
nowadays in psychiatry. Indeed, the mastery of the brain over the
organism is particularly emphasized; but everything that might prove an
independence of the psychic life from the demonstrable organic changes,
or a spontaneity in its manifestations, is alarming to the psychiatrist
nowadays, as if an acknowledgment of the same were bound to bring back
the times of natural philosophy and the metaphysical conception of the
psychic essence. The distrust of the psychiatrist has placed the psyche
under a guardian, so to speak, and now demands that none of its feelings
shall divulge any of its own faculties; but this attitude shows slight
confidence in the stability of the causal concatenation which extends
between the material and the psychic. Even where on investigation the
psychic can be recognised as the primary course of a phenomenon, a more
profound penetration will some day succeed in finding a continuation of
the path to the organic determination of the psychic. But where the
psychic must be taken as the terminus for our present knowledge, it
should not be denied on that account.
(_d_) _Why the Dream is Forgotten after Awakening._—That the dream
“fades away” in the morning is proverbial. To be sure, it is capable of
recollection. For we know the dream only by recalling it after
awakening; but very often we believe that we remember it only
incompletely, and that during the night there was more of it; we can
observe how the memory of a dream which has been still vivid in the
morning vanishes in the course of the day, leaving only a few small
fragments; we often know that we have been dreaming, but we do not know
what; and we are so well used to the fact that the dream is liable to be
forgotten that we do not reject as absurd the possibility that one may
have been dreaming even when one knows nothing in the morning of either
the contents or the fact of dreaming. On the other hand, it happens that
dreams manifest an extraordinary retentiveness in the memory. I have had
occasion to analyse with my patients dreams which had occurred to them
twenty-five years or more previously, and I can remember a dream of my
own which is separated from the present day by at least thirty-seven
years, and yet has lost nothing of its freshness in my memory. All this
is very remarkable, and for the present incomprehensible.
The forgetting of dreams is treated in the most detailed manner by
Strümpell.[66] This forgetting is evidently a complex phenomenon; for
Strümpell does not explain it by a single reason, but by a considerable
number of reasons.
In the first place, all those factors which produce forgetfulness in the
waking state are also determinant for the forgetting of dreams. When
awake we are wont soon to forget a large number of sensations and
perceptions because they are too feeble, and because they are connected
with a slight amount of emotional feeling. This is also the case with
many dream pictures; they are forgotten because they are too weak, while
stronger pictures in proximity will be remembered. Moreover, the factor
of intensity in itself is not the only determinant for the preservation
of the dream pictures; Strümpell, as well as other authors (Calkins),
admits that dream pictures are often rapidly forgotten, although they
are known to have been vivid, whereas among those that are retained in
memory there are many that are very shadowy and hazy. Besides, in the
waking state one is wont to forget easily what happened only once, and
to note more easily things of repeated occurrence. But most dream
pictures are single experiences,[J] and this peculiarity equally
contributes towards the forgetting of all dreams. Of greater
significance is a third motive for forgetting. In order that feelings,
presentations, thoughts and the like, should attain a certain degree of
memory, it is important that they should not remain isolated, but that
they should enter into connections and associations of a suitable kind.
If the words of a short verse are taken and mixed together, it will be
very difficult to remember them. “When well arranged in suitable
sequence one word will help another, and the whole remains as sense
easily and firmly in the memory for a long time. Contradictions we
usually retain with just as much difficulty and rarity as things
confused and disarranged.” Now dreams in most cases lack sense and
order. Dream compositions are by their very nature incapable of being
remembered, and they are forgotten because they usually crumble together
the very next moment. To be sure, these conclusions are not in full
accord with the observation of Radestock[54] (p. 168), that we retain
best just those dreams which are most peculiar.
According to Strümpell, there are still other factors effective in the
forgetting of dreams which are derived from the relation of the dream to
the waking state. The forgetfulness of the waking consciousness for
dreams is evidently only the counterpart of the fact already mentioned,
that the dream (almost) never takes over successive memories from the
waking state, but only certain details of these memories which it tears
away from the habitual psychic connections in which they are recalled
while we are awake. The dream composition, therefore, has no place in
the company of psychic successions which fill the mind. It lacks all the
aids of memory. “In this manner the dream structure rises, as it were,
from the soil of our psychic life, and floats in psychic space like a
cloud in the sky, which the next breath of air soon dispels” (p. 87).
This is also aided by the fact that, upon awakening, the attention is
immediately seized by the inrushing sensory world, and only very few
dream pictures can withstand this power. They fade away before the
impressions of the new day like the glow of the stars before the
sunlight.
As a last factor favouring the forgetting of dreams, we may mention the
fact that most people generally take little interest in their dreams.
One who investigates dreams for a time, and takes a special interest in
them, usually dreams more during that time than at any other; that is,
he remembers his dreams more easily and more frequently.
Two other reasons for the forgetting of dreams added by Bonatelli (given
by Benini[3]) to those of Strümpell have already been included in the
latter; namely, (1) that the change of the general feeling between the
sleeping and waking states is unfavourable to the mutual reproductions,
and (2) that the different arrangement of the presentation material in
the dream makes the dream untranslatable, so to speak, for the waking
consciousness.
It is the more remarkable, as Strümpell observes, that, in spite of all
these reasons for forgetting the dream, so many dreams are retained in
memory. The continued efforts of the authors to formulate laws for the
remembering of dreams amounts to an admission that here too there is
something puzzling and unsolved. Certain peculiarities relating to the
memory of dreams have been particularly noticed of late, _e.g._, that a
dream which is considered forgotten in the morning may be recalled in
the course of the day through a perception which accidentally touches
the forgotten content of the dream (Radestock,[54] Tissié[68]). The
entire memory of the dream is open to an objection calculated to
depreciate its value very markedly in critical eyes. One may doubt
whether our memory, which omits so much from the dream, does not falsify
what it retained.
Such doubts relating to the exactness of the reproduction of the dream
are expressed by Strümpell when he says: “It therefore easily happens
that the active consciousness involuntarily inserts much in recollection
of the dream; one imagines one has dreamt all sorts of things which the
actual dream did not contain.”
Jessen[36] (p. 547) expresses himself very decidedly: “Moreover we must
not lose sight of the fact, hitherto little heeded, that in the
investigation and interpretation of orderly and logical dreams we almost
always play with the truth when we recall a dream to memory.
Unconsciously and unwittingly we fill up the gaps and supplement the
dream pictures. Rarely, and perhaps never, has a connected dream been as
connected as it appears to us in memory. Even the most truth-loving
person can hardly relate a dream without exaggerating and embellishing
it. The tendency of the human mind to conceive everything in connection
is so great that it unwittingly supplies the deficiencies of connection
if the dream is recalled somewhat disconnectedly.”
The observations of V. Eggers,[20] though surely independently
conceived, sound almost like a translation of Jessen’s words: “...
L’observation des rêves a ses difficultés spéciales et le seul moyen
d’éviter toute erreur en pareille matière est de confier au papier sans
le moindre retard ce que l’on vient d’éprouver et de remarquer; sinon,
l’oubli vient vite ou total ou partiel; l’oubli total est sans gravité;
mais l’oubli partiel est perfide; car si l’on se met ensuite à raconter
ce que l’on n’a pas oublié, on est exposé à compléter par imagination
les fragments incohérents et disjoints fourni par la mémoire ...; on
devient artiste à son insu, et le récit, périodiquement répété s’impose
à la créance de son auteur, qui, de bonne foi, le présente comme un fait
authentique, dûment établi selon les bonnes méthodes....”
Similarly Spitta,[64] who seems to think that it is only in our attempt
to reproduce the dream that we put in order the loosely associated dream
elements: “To make connection out of disconnection, that is, to add the
process of logical connection which is absent in the dream.”
As we do not at present possess any other objective control for the
reliability of our memory, and as indeed such a control is impossible in
examining the dream which is our own experience, and for which our
memory is the only source, it is a question what value we may attach to
our recollections of dreams.
(_e_) _The Psychological Peculiarities of Dreams._—In the scientific
investigation of the dream we start with the assumption that the dream
is an occurrence of our own psychic activity; nevertheless the finished
dream appears to us as something strange, the authorship of which we are
so little forced to recognise that we can just as easily say “a dream
appeared to me,” as “I have dreamt.” Whence this “psychic strangeness”
of the dream? According to our discussion of the sources of dreams we
may suppose that it does not depend on the material reaching the dream
content; because this is for the most part common to the dream life and
waking life. One may ask whether in the dream it is not changes in the
psychic processes which call forth this impression, and may so put to
test a psychological characteristic of the dream.
No one has more strongly emphasized the essential difference between
dream and waking life, and utilised this difference for more
far-reaching conclusions, than G. Th. Fechner[25] in some observations
in his _Elements of Psychophysic_ (p. 520, part 11). He believes that
“neither the simple depression of conscious psychic life under the main
threshold,” nor the distraction of attention from the influences of the
outer world, suffices to explain the peculiarities of the dream life as
compared with the waking life. He rather believes that the scene of
dreams is laid elsewhere than in the waking presentation life. “If the
scene of the psychophysical activity were the same during the sleeping
and the waking states, the dream, in my opinion, could only be a
continuation of the waking ideation maintaining itself at a lower degree
of intensity, and must moreover share with the latter its material and
form. But the state of affairs is quite different.”
What Fechner really meant has never been made clear, nor has anybody
else, to my knowledge, followed further the road, the clue to which he
indicated in this remark. An anatomical interpretation in the sense of
physiological brain localisations, or even in reference to histological
sections of the cerebral cortex, will surely have to be excluded. The
thought may, however, prove ingenious and fruitful if it can be referred
to a psychic apparatus which is constructed out of many instances placed
one behind another.
Other authors have been content to render prominent one or another of
the tangible psychological peculiarities of the dream life, and perhaps
to take these as a starting point for more far-reaching attempts at
explanation.
It has been justly remarked that one of the main peculiarities of the
dream life appears even in the state of falling asleep, and is to be
designated as the phenomenon inducing sleep. According to
Schleiermacher[61] (p. 351), the characteristic part of the waking state
is the fact that the psychic activity occurs in ideas rather than in
pictures. But the dream thinks in pictures, and one may observe that
with the approach of sleep the voluntary activities become difficult in
the same measure as the involuntary appear, the latter belonging wholly
to the class of pictures. The inability for such presentation work as we
perceive to be intentionally desired, and the appearance of pictures
which is regularly connected with this distraction, these are two
qualities which are constant in the dream, and which in its
psychological analysis we must recognise as essential characters of the
dream life. Concerning the pictures—the hypnogogic hallucinations—we
have discovered that even in their content they are identical with the
dream pictures.
The dream therefore thinks preponderately, but not exclusively, in
visual pictures. It also makes use of auditory pictures, and to a lesser
extent of the impressions of the other senses. Much is also simply
thought or imagined (probably represented by remnants of word
presentations), just as in the waking state. But still what is
characteristic for the dream is only those elements of the content which
act like pictures, _i.e._ which resemble more the perceptions than the
memory presentations. Disregarding all the discussions concerning the
nature of hallucinations, familiar to every psychiatrist, we can say,
with all well-versed authors, that the dream hallucinates, that is,
replaces thoughts through hallucinations. In this respect there is no
difference between visual and acoustic presentations; it has been
noticed that the memory of a succession of sounds with which one falls
asleep becomes transformed while sinking into sleep into an
hallucination of the same melody, so as to make room again on awakening,
which may repeatedly alternate with falling into a slumber, for the
softer memory presentations which are differently formed in quality.
The transformation of an idea into an hallucination is not the only
deviation of the dream from a waking thought which perhaps corresponds
to it. From these pictures the dream forms a situation, it presents
something in the present, it dramatises an idea, as Spitta[64] (p. 145)
puts it.[K] But the characteristic of this side of the dream life
becomes complete only when it is remembered that while dreaming we do
not—as a rule; the exceptions require a special explanation—imagine that
we are thinking, but that we are living through an experience, _i.e._,
we accept the hallucination with full belief. The criticism that this
has not been experienced but only thought in a peculiar
manner—dreamt—comes to us only on awakening. This character
distinguishes the genuine sleeping dream from day dreaming, which is
never confused with reality.
The characteristics of the dream life thus far considered have been
summed up by Burdach[8] (p. 476) in the following sentences: “As
characteristic features of the dream we may add (_a_) that the
subjective activity of our mind appears as objective, inasmuch as our
faculty of perception perceives the products of phantasy as if they were
sensory activities ... (_b_) sleep abrogates one’s self-command, hence
falling asleep necessitates a certain amount of passivity.... The
slumber pictures are conditioned by the relaxation of one’s
self-command.”
It is a question now of attempting to explain the credulity of the mind
in reference to the dream hallucinations, which can only appear after
the suspension of a certain arbitrary activity. Strümpell[66] asserts
that the mind behaves in this respect correctly, and in conformity with
its mechanism. The dream elements are by no means mere presentations,
but true and real experiences of the mind, similar to those that appear
in the waking state as a result of the senses (p. 34). Whereas in the
waking state the mind represents and thinks in word pictures and
language, in the dream it represents and thinks in real tangible
pictures (p. 35). Besides, the dream manifests a consciousness of space
by transferring the sensations and pictures, just as in the waking
state, into an outer space (p. 36). It must therefore be admitted that
the mind in the dream is in the same relation to its pictures and
perceptions as in the waking state (p. 43). If, however, it is thereby
led astray, this is due to the fact that it lacks in sleep the criticism
which alone can distinguish between the sensory perceptions emanating
from within or from without. It cannot subject its pictures to the tests
which alone can prove their objective reality. It furthermore neglects
to differentiate between pictures that are arbitrarily interchanged and
others where there is no free choice. It errs because it cannot apply to
its content the law of causality (p. 58). In brief, its alienation from
the outer world contains also the reason for its belief in the
subjective dream world.
Delbœuf[16] reaches the same conclusion through a somewhat different
line of argument. We give to the dream pictures the credence of reality
because in sleep we have no other impressions to compare them with,
because we are cut off from the outer world. But it is not perhaps
because we are unable to make tests in our sleep, that we believe in the
truth of our hallucinations. The dream may delude us with all these
tests, it may make us believe that we may touch the rose that we see in
the dream, and still we only dream. According to Delbœuf there is no
valid criterion to show whether something is a dream or a conscious
reality, except—and that only in practical generality—the fact of
awakening. “I declare delusional everything that is experienced between
the period of falling asleep and awakening, if I notice on awakening
that I lie in my bed undressed” (p. 84). “I have considered the dream
pictures real during sleep in consequence of the mental habit, which
cannot be put to sleep, of perceiving an outer world with which I can
contrast my ego.”[L]
As the deviation from the outer world is taken as the stamp for the most
striking characteristics of the dream, it will be worth while mentioning
some ingenious observations of old Burdach[8] which will throw light on
the relation of the sleeping mind to the outer world and at the same
time serve to prevent us from over-estimating the above deductions.
“Sleep results only under the condition,” says Burdach, “that the mind
is not excited by sensory stimuli ... but it is not the lack of sensory
stimuli that conditions sleep, but rather a lack of interest for the
same; some sensory impressions are even necessary in so far as they
serve to calm the mind; thus the miller can fall asleep only when he
hears the rattling of his mill, and he who finds it necessary to burn a
light at night, as a matter of precaution, cannot fall asleep in the
dark” (p. 457).
“The psyche isolates itself during sleep from the outer world, and
withdraws from the periphery.... Nevertheless, the connection is not
entirely interrupted; if one did not hear and feel even during sleep,
but only after awakening, he would certainly never awake. The
continuance of sensation is even more plainly shown by the fact that we
are not always awakened by the mere sensory force of the impression, but
by the psychic relation of the same; an indifferent word does not arouse
the sleeper, but if called by name he awakens ...: hence the psyche
differentiates sensations during sleep.... It is for this reason that we
may be awakened by the lack of a sensory stimulus if it relates to the
presentation of an important thing; thus one awakens when the light is
extinguished, and the miller when the mill comes to a standstill; that
is, the awakening is due to the cessation of a sensory activity, which
presupposes that it has been perceived, and that it has not disturbed
the mind, being indifferent or rather gratifying” (p. 460, &c.).
If we are willing to disregard these objections, which are not to be
taken lightly, we still must admit that the qualities of the dream life
thus far considered, which originate by withdrawing from the outer
world, cannot fully explain the strangeness of the dream. For otherwise
it would be possible to change back the hallucinations of the dream into
presentations and the situations of the dream into thoughts, and thus to
perform the task of dream interpretation. Now this is what we do when we
reproduce the dream from memory after awakening, and whether we are
fully or only partially successful in this back translation the dream
still retains its mysteriousness undiminished.
Furthermore all the authors assume unhesitatingly that still other more
far-reaching alterations take place in the presentation material of
waking life. One of them, Strümpell,[66] expresses himself as follows
(p. 17): “With the cessation of the objectively active outlook and of
the normal consciousness, the psyche loses the foundation in which were
rooted the feelings, desires, interests, and actions. Those psychic
states, feelings, interests, estimates which cling in the waking state
to the memory pictures also succumb to ... an obscure pressure, in
consequence of which their connection with the pictures becomes severed;
the perception pictures of things, persons, localities, events, and
actions of the waking state are singly very abundantly reproduced, but
none of these brings along its psychic value. The latter is removed from
them, and hence they float about in the mind dependent upon their own
resources....”
This deprivation the picture suffers of its psychic value, which again
goes back to the derivation from the outer world, is according to
Strümpell mainly responsible for the impression of strangeness with
which the dream is confronted in our memory.
We have heard that even falling asleep carries with it the abandonment
of one of the psychic activities—namely, the voluntary conduct of the
presentation course. Thus the supposition, suggested also by other
grounds, obtrudes itself, that the sleeping state may extend its
influence also over the psychic functions. One or the other of these
functions is perhaps entirely suspended; whether the remaining ones
continue to work undisturbed, whether they can furnish normal work under
the circumstances, is the next question. The idea occurs to us that the
peculiarities of the dream may be explained through the inferior psychic
activity during the sleeping state, but now comes the impression made by
the dream upon our waking judgment which is contrary to such a
conception. The dream is disconnected, it unites without hesitation the
worst contradictions, it allows impossibilities, it disregards our
authoritative knowledge from the day, and evinces ethical and moral
dulness. He who would behave in the waking state as the dream does in
its situations would be considered insane. He who in the waking state
would speak in such manner or report such things as occur in the dream
content, would impress us as confused and weak-minded. Thus we believe
that we are only finding words for the fact when we place but little
value on the psychic activity in the dream, and especially when we
declare that the higher intellectual activities are suspended or at
least much impaired in the dream.
With unusual unanimity—the exceptions will be dealt with elsewhere—the
authors have pronounced their judgments on the dream—such judgments as
lead immediately to a definite theory or explanation of the dream life.
It is time that I should supplement the _résumé_ which I have just given
with a collection of the utterances of different authors—philosophers
and physicians—on the psychological character of the dream.
According to Lemoine,[42] the incoherence of the dream picture is the
only essential character of the dream.
Maury[48] agrees with him; he says (p. 163): “Il n’y a pas des rêves
absolument raisonnables et qui ne contiennent quelque incohérence,
quelque anachronisme, quelque absurdité.”
According to Hegel, quoted by Spitta,[64] the dream lacks all objective
and comprehensible connection.
Dugas[19] says: “Le rêve, c’est l’anarchie psychique, affective et
mentale, c’est le jeu des fonctions livrées à elles-mêmes et s’exerçant
sans contrôle et sans but; dans le rêve l’esprit est un automate
spirituel.”
“The relaxation, solution, and confusion of the presentation life which
is held together through the logical force of the central ego” is
conceded even by Volkelt[72] (p. 14), according to whose theory the
psychic activity during sleep seems in no way aimless.
The absurdity of the presentation connections appearing in the dream can
hardly be more strongly condemned than it was by Cicero (_De Divin._
II.): “Nihil tam praepostere, tam incondite, tam monstruose cogitari
potest, quod non possimus somniare.”
Fechner[52] says (p. 522): “It is as if the psychological activity were
transferred from the brain of a reasonable being into the brain of a
fool.”
Radestock[35] (p. 145) says: “It seems indeed impossible to recognise in
this absurd action any firm law. Having withdrawn itself from the strict
police of the rational will guiding the waking presentation life, and of
the attention, the dream whirls everything about kaleidoscopically in
mad play.”
Hildebrandt[35] (p. 45) says: “What wonderful jumps the dreamer allows
himself, _e.g._, in his chain of reasoning! With what unconcern he sees
the most familiar laws of experience turned upside down! What ridiculous
contradictions he can tolerate in the orders of nature and society
before things go too far, as we say, and the overstraining of the
nonsense brings an awakening! We often multiply quite unconcernedly:
three times three make twenty; we are not at all surprised when a dog
recites poetry for us, when a dead person walks to his grave, and when a
rock swims on the water; we go in all earnestness by high command to the
duchy of Bernburg or the principality of Lichtenstein in order to
observe the navy of the country, or we allow ourselves to be recruited
as a volunteer by Charles XII. shortly before the battle of Poltawa.”
Binz[4] (p. 33) points to a dream theory resulting from the impressions.
“Among ten dreams nine at least have an absurd content. We unite in them
persons or things which do not bear the slightest relation to one
another. In the next moment, as in a kaleidoscope, the grouping changes,
if possible to one more nonsensical and irrational than before; thus the
changing play of the imperfectly sleeping brain continues until we
awaken, and put our hand to our forehead and ask ourselves whether we
really still possess the faculty of rational imagination and thought.”
Maury[48] (p. 50) finds for the relation of the dream picture to the
waking thoughts, a comparison most impressive for the physician: “La
production de ces images que chez l’homme éveillé fait le plus souvent
naître la volonté, correspond, pour l’intelligence, à ce que cont pour
la motilité certains mouvements que nous offrent la chorée et les
affections paralytiques....” For the rest, he considers the dream “toute
une série de dégradation de la faculté pensant et raisonant” (p. 27).
It is hardly necessary to mention the utterances of the authors which
repeat Maury’s assertion for the individual higher psychic activities.
According to Strümpell,[66] some logical mental operations based on
relations and connections disappear in the dream—naturally also at
points where the nonsense is not obvious (p. 26). According to
Spitta,[64] (p. 148) the presentations in the dream are entirely
withdrawn from the laws of causality. Radestock[54] and others emphasize
the weakness of judgment and decision in the dream. According to
Jodl[37] (p. 123), there is no critique in the dream, and no correcting
of a series of perceptions through the content of the sum of
consciousness. The same author states that “all forms of conscious
activity occur in the dream, but they are imperfect, inhibited, and
isolated from one another.” The contradictions manifested in the dream
towards our conscious knowledge are explained by Stricker[77][78] (and
many others), on the ground that facts are forgotten in the dream and
logical relations between presentations are lost (p. 98), &c., &c.
The authors who in general speak thus unfavourably about the psychic
capacities in the dream, nevertheless admit that the dream retains a
certain remnant of psychic activity. Wundt,[76] whose teaching has
influenced so many other workers in the dream problems, positively
admits this. One might inquire as to the kind and behaviour of the
remnants of the psychic life which manifest themselves in the dream. It
is now quite universally acknowledged that the reproductive capacity,
the memory in the dream, seems to have been least affected; indeed it
may show a certain superiority over the same function in the waking life
(_vid. supra_, p. 10), although a part of the absurdities of the dream
are to be explained by just this forgetfulness of the dream life.
According to Spitta,[64] it is the emotional life of the psyche that is
not overtaken by sleep and that then directs the dream. “By emotion
[“Gemüth”] we understand the constant comprehension of the feelings as
the inmost subjective essence of man” (p. 84).
Scholz[59] (p. 37) sees a psychic activity manifested in the dream in
the “allegorising interpretation” to which the dream material is
subjected. Siebeck[62] verifies also in the dream the “supplementary
interpretative activity” (p. 11) which the mind exerts on all that is
perceived and viewed. The judgment of the apparently highest psychic
function, the consciousness, presents for the dream a special
difficulty. As we can know anything only through consciousness, there
can be no doubt as to its retention; Spitta, however, believes that only
consciousness is retained in the dream, and not self-consciousness.
Delbœuf[16] confesses that he is unable to conceive this
differentiation.
The laws of association which govern the connection of ideas hold true
also for the dream pictures; indeed, their domination evinces itself in
a purer and stronger expression in the dream than elsewhere.
Strümpell[62] (p. 70) says: “The dream follows either the laws of
undisguised presentations as it seems exclusively or organic stimuli
along with such presentations, that is, without being influenced by
reflection and reason, æsthetic sense, and moral judgment.” The authors
whose views I reproduce here conceive the formation of the dream in
about the following manner: The sum of sensation stimuli affecting sleep
from the various sources, discussed elsewhere, at first awaken in the
mind a sum of presentations which represent themselves as hallucinations
(according to Wundt, it is more correct to say as illusions, because of
their origin from outer and inner stimuli). These unite with one another
according to the known laws of association, and, following the same
rules, in turn evoke a new series of presentations (pictures). This
entire material is then elaborated as well as possible by the still
active remnant of the organising and thinking mental faculties (_cf._
Wundt[76] and Weygandt[75]). But thus far no one has been successful in
finding the motive which would decide that the awakening of pictures
which do not originate objectively follow this or that law of
association.
But it has been repeatedly observed that the associations which connect
the dream presentations with one another are of a particular kind, and
different from those found in the waking mental activity. Thus
Volkelt[72] says: “In the dream, the ideas chase and hunt each other on
the strength of accidental similarities and barely perceptible
connections. All dreams are pervaded by such loose and free
associations.” Maury[48] attaches great value to this characteristic of
connection between presentations, which allows him to bring the dream
life in closer analogy to certain mental disturbances. He recognises two
main characters of the _délire_: “(1) une action spontanée et comme
automatique de l’esprit; (2) une association vicieuse et irregulière des
idées” (p. 126). Maury gives us two excellent examples from his own
dreams, in which the mere similarity of sound forms the connection of
the dream presentations. He dreamed once that he undertook a pilgrimage
(_pélerinage_) to Jerusalem or Mecca. After many adventures he was with
the chemist Pelletier; the latter after some talk gave him a zinc shovel
(_pelle_) which became his long battle sword in the dream fragment which
followed (p. 137). On another occasion he walked in a dream on the
highway and read the kilometres on the milestones; presently he was with
a spice merchant who had large scales with which to weigh Maury; the
spice merchant then said to him: “You are not in Paris; but on the
island Gilolo.” This was followed by many pictures, in which he saw the
flower Lobelia, then the General Lopez, of whose demise he had read
shortly before. He finally awoke while playing a game of lotto.
We are, however, quite prepared to hear that this depreciation of the
psychic activities of the dream has not remained without contradiction
from the other side. To be sure, contradiction seems difficult here. Nor
is it of much significance that one of the depreciators of dream life,
Spitta[64] (p. 118), assures us that the same psychological laws which
govern the waking state rule the dream also, or that another (Dugas[19])
states: “Le rêve n’est pas déraison ni même irraison pure,” as long as
neither of them has made any effort to bring this estimation into
harmony with the psychic anarchy and dissolution of all functions in the
dream described by them. Upon others, however, the possibility seems to
have dawned that the madness of the dream is perhaps not without its
method—that it is perhaps only a sham, like that of the Danish prince,
to whose madness the intelligent judgment here cited refers. These
authors must have refrained from judging by appearances, or the
appearance which the dream showed to them was quite different.
Without wishing to linger at its apparent absurdity, Havelock Ellis[23]
considers the dream as “an archaic world of vast emotions and imperfect
thoughts,” the study of which may make us acquainted with primitive
stages of development of the psychic life. A thinker like Delbœuf[16]
asserts—to be sure without adducing proof against the contradictory
material, and hence indeed unjustly: “Dans le sommeil, hormis la
perception, toutes les facultés de l’esprit, intelligence, imagination,
mémoire, volonté, moralité, restant intactes dans leur essence;
seulement, elles s’appliquent à des objets imaginaires et mobiles. Le
songeur est un acteur qui joue à volonté les fous et les sages, les
bourreaux et les victimes, les nains et les géants, les démons et les
anges” (p. 222). The Marquis of Hervey, who is sharply controverted by
Maury,[48] and whose work I could not obtain despite all effort, seems
to combat most energetically the under-estimation of the psychic
capacity in the dream. Maury speaks of him as follows (p. 19): “M. le
Marquis d’Hervey prête à l’intelligence, durant le sommeil toute sa
liberté d’action et d’attention et il ne semble faire consister le
sommeil que dans l’occlusion des sens, dans leur fermeture au monde
extérieur; en sorte que l’homme qui dort ne se distingué guère, selon sa
manière de voir, de l’homme qui laisse vaguer sa pensée en se bouchant
les sens; toute la différence qui séparé alors la pensée ordinaire du
celle du dormeur c’est que, chez celui-ci, l’idée prend une forme
visible, objective et ressemble, à s’y méprendre, à la sensation
déterminée par les objets extérieurs; le souvenir revêt l’apparence du
fait présent.”
Maury adds, however; “Qu’il y a une différence de plus et capitale à
savoir que les facultés intellectuelles de l’homme endormi n’offrent pas
l’équilibre qu’elles gardent chez l’homme l’éveillé.”
The scale of the estimation of the dream as a psychic product has a
great range in the literature; it reaches from the lowest
under-estimation, the expression of which we have come to know, through
the idea of a value not yet revealed to the over-estimation which places
the dream far above the capacities of the waking life. Hildebrandt,[35]
who, as we know, sketches the psychological characteristics into three
antinomies, sums up in the third of these contradistinctions the extreme
points of this series as follows (p. 19): “It is between a climax, often
an involution which raises itself to virtuosity, and on the other hand a
decided diminution and weakening of the psychic life often leading below
the human niveau.”
“As for the first, who could not confirm from his own experience that,
in the creations and weavings of the genius of the dream, there
sometimes comes to light a profundity and sincerity of emotion, a
tenderness of feeling, a clearness of view, a fineness of observation,
and a readiness of wit, all which we should modestly have to deny that
we possess as a constant property during the waking life? The dream has
a wonderful poetry, an excellent allegory, an incomparable humour, and a
charming irony. It views the world under the guise of a peculiar
idealisation, and often raises the effect of its manifestations into the
most ingenious understanding of the essence lying at its basis. It
represents for us earthly beauty in true heavenly radiance, the sublime
in the highest majesty, the actually frightful in the most gruesome
figure, and the ridiculous in the indescribably drastic comical; and at
times we are so full of one of these impressions after awakening that we
imagine that such a thing has never been offered to us by the real
world.”
One may ask, is it really the same object that the depreciating remarks
and these inspired praises are meant for? Have the latter overlooked the
stupid dreams and the former the thoughtful and ingenious dreams? And if
both kinds do occur—that is, dreams that merit to be judged in this or
that manner—does it not seem idle to seek the psychological character of
the dream? Would it not suffice to state that everything is possible in
the dream, from the lowest depreciation of the psychic life to a raising
of the same which is unusual in the waking state? As convenient as this
solution would be it has this against it, that behind the efforts of all
dream investigators, it seems to be presupposed that there is such a
definable character of the dream, which is universally valid in its
essential features and which must eliminate these contradictions.
It is unquestionable that the psychic capacities of the dream have found
quicker and warmer recognition in that intellectual period which now
lies behind us, when philosophy rather than exact natural science ruled
intelligent minds. Utterances like those of Schubert, that the dream
frees the mind from the power of outer nature, that it liberates the
soul from the chains of the sensual, and similar opinions expressed by
the younger Fichte,[M] and others, who represent the dream as a soaring
up of the psychic life to a higher stage, hardly seem conceivable to us
to-day; they are only repeated at present by mystics and devotees. With
the advance of the scientific mode of thinking, a reaction took place in
the estimation of the dream. It is really the medical authors who are
most prone to underrate the psychic activity in the dream, as being
insignificant and invaluable, whereas, philosophers and unprofessional
observers—amateur psychologists—whose contributions in this realm can
surely not be overlooked, in better agreement with the popular ideas,
have mostly adhered to the psychic value of the dream. He who is
inclined to underrate the psychic capacity in the dream prefers, as a
matter of course, the somatic exciting sources in the etiology of the
dream; he who leaves to the dreaming mind the greater part of its
capacities, naturally has no reason for not also admitting independent
stimuli for dreaming.
Among the superior activities which, even on sober comparison, one is
tempted to ascribe to the dream life, memory is the most striking; we
have fully discussed the frequent experiences which prove this fact.
Another superiority of the dream life, frequently extolled by the old
authors, viz. that it can regard itself supreme in reference to distance
of time and space, can be readily recognised as an illusion. This
superiority, as observed by Hildebrandt,[35] is only illusional; the
dream takes as much heed of time and space as the waking thought, and
this because it is only a form of thinking. The dream is supposed to
enjoy still another advantage in reference to time; that is, it is
independent in still another sense of the passage of time. Dreams like
the guillotine dream of Maury,[48] reported above, seem to show that the
dream can crowd together more perception content in a very short space
of time than can be controlled by our psychic activity in the waking
mind. These conclusions have been controverted, however, by many
arguments; the essays of Le Lorrain[45] and Egger[20] “Concerning the
apparent duration of dreams” gave rise to a long and interesting
discussion which has probably not said the last word upon this delicate
and far-reaching question.
That the dream has the ability to take up the intellectual work of the
day and bring to a conclusion what has not been settled during the day,
that it can solve doubt and problems, and that it may become the source
of new inspiration in poets and composers, seems to be indisputable, as
is shown by many reports and by the collection compiled by
Chabaneix.[11] But even if there be no dispute as to the facts,
nevertheless their interpretation is open in principle to a great many
doubts.
Finally the asserted divinatory power of the dream forms an object of
contention in which hard unsurmountable reflection encounters obstinate
and continued faith. It is indeed just that we should refrain from
denying all that is based on fact in this subject, as there is a
possibility that a number of such cases may perhaps be explained on a
natural psychological basis.
(_f_) _The Ethical Feelings in the Dream._—For reasons which will be
understood only after cognisance has been taken of my own investigations
of the dream, I have separated from the psychology of the dream the
partial problem whether and to what extent the moral dispositions and
feelings of the waking life extend into the dreams. The same
contradictions which we were surprised to observe in the authors’
descriptions of all the other psychic capacities strike us again here.
Some affirm decidedly that the dream knows nothing of moral obligations;
others as decidedly that the moral nature of man remains even in his
dream life.
A reference to our dream experience of every night seems to raise the
correctness of the first assertion beyond doubt. Jessen[36] says (p.
553): “Nor does one become better or more virtuous in the dream; on the
contrary, it seems that conscience is silent in the dream, inasmuch as
one feels no compassion and can commit the worst crimes, such as theft,
murder, and assassination, with perfect indifference and without
subsequent remorse.”
Radestock[54] (p. 146) says: “It is to be noticed that in the dream the
associations terminate and the ideas unite without being influenced by
reflection and reason, æsthetic taste, and moral judgment; the judgment
is extremely weak, and ethical indifference reigns supreme.”
Volkelt[72] (p. 23) expresses himself as follows: “As every one knows,
the sexual relationship in the dream is especially unbridled. Just as
the dreamer himself is shameless in the extreme, and wholly lacking
moral feeling and judgment, so also he sees others, even the most
honoured persons, engaged in actions which even in thought he would
blush to associate with them in his waking state.”
Utterances like those of Schopenhauer, that in the dream every person
acts and talks in accordance with his character, form the sharpest
contrast to those mentioned above. R. P. Fischer[N] maintains that the
subjective feelings and desires or affects and passions manifest
themselves in the wilfulness of the dream life, and that the moral
characteristics of a person are mirrored in his dream.
Haffner[32] (p. 25): “With rare exceptions ... a virtuous person will be
virtuous also in his dreams; he will resist temptation, and show no
sympathy for hatred, envy, anger, and all other vices; while the sinful
person will, as a rule, also find in his dreams the pictures which he
has before him while awake.”
Scholz[59] (p. 36): “In the dream there is truth; despite all masking in
pride or humility, we still recognise our own self.... The honest man
does not commit any dishonourable offence even in the dream, or, if this
does occur, he is terrified over it as if over something foreign to his
nature. The Roman emperor who ordered one of his subjects to be executed
because he dreamed that he cut off the emperor’s head, was not wrong in
justifying his action on the ground that he who has such dreams must
have similar thoughts while awake. About a thing that can have no place
in our mind we therefore say significantly: ‘I would never dream of such
a thing.’”
Pfaff,[O] varying a familiar proverb, says: “Tell me for a time your
dreams, and I will tell you what you are within.”
The short work of Hildebrandt,[35] from which I have already taken so
many quotations, a contribution to the dream problem as complete and as
rich in thought as I found in the literature, places the problem of
morality in the dream as the central point of its interest. For
Hildebrandt, too, it is a strict rule that the purer the life, the purer
the dream; the impurer the former, the impurer the latter.
The moral nature of man remains even in the dream: “But while we are not
offended nor made suspicious by an arithmetical error no matter how
obvious, by a reversal of science no matter how romantic, or by an
anachronism no matter how witty, we nevertheless do not lose sight of
the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice.
No matter how much of what follows us during the day may vanish in our
hours of sleep—Kant’s categorical imperative sticks to our heels as an
inseparable companion from whom we cannot rid ourselves even in
slumber.... This can be explained, however, only by the fact that the
fundamental in human nature, the moral essence, is too firmly fixed to
take part in the activity of the kaleidoscopic shaking up to which
phantasy, reason, memory, and other faculties of the same rank succumb
in the dream” (p. 45, &c.).
In the further discussion of the subject we find remarkable distortion
and inconsequence in both groups of authors. Strictly speaking, interest
in immoral dreams would cease for all those who assert that the moral
personality of the person crumbles away in the dream. They could just as
calmly reject the attempt to hold the dreamer responsible for his
dreams, and to draw inferences from the badness of his dreams as to an
evil strain in his nature, as they rejected the apparently similar
attempt to demonstrate the insignificance of his intellectual life in
the waking state from the absurdity of his dreams. The others for whom
“the categorical imperative” extends also into the dream, would have to
accept full responsibility for the immoral dreams; it would only be
desirable for their own sake that their own objectionable dreams should
not lead them to abandon the otherwise firmly held estimation of their
own morality.
Still it seems that no one knows exactly about himself how good or how
bad he is, and that no one can deny the recollection of his own immoral
dreams. For besides the opposition already mentioned in the criticism of
the morality of the dream, both groups of authors display an effort to
explain the origin of the immoral dream and a new opposition is
developed, depending on whether their origin is sought in the functions
of the psychic life or in the somatically determined injuries to this
life. The urgent force of the facts then permits the representatives of
the responsibility, as well as of the irresponsibility of the dream
life, to agree in the recognition of a special psychic source for the
immorality of dreams.
All those who allow the continuance of the morality in the dream
nevertheless guard against accepting full responsibility for their
dreams. Haffner[32] says (p. 24): “We are not responsible for dreams
because the basis upon which alone our life has truth and reality is
removed from our thoughts.... Hence there can be no dream wishing and
dream acting, no virtue or sin.” Still the person is responsible for the
sinful dream in so far as he brings it about indirectly. Just as in the
waking state, it is his duty to cleanse his moral mind, particularly so
before retiring to sleep.
The analysis of this mixture of rejection and recognition of
responsibility for the moral content of the dream is followed much
further by Hildebrandt. After specifying that the dramatic manner of
representation in the dream, the crowding together of the most
complicated processes of deliberation in the briefest period of time,
and the depreciation and the confusion of the presentation elements in
the dream admitted by him must be recognised as unfavourable to the
immoral aspect of dreams; he nevertheless confesses that, yielding to
the most earnest reflection, he is inclined simply to deny all
responsibility for faults and dream sins.
(P. 49): “If we wish to reject very decisively any unjust accusation,
especially one that has reference to our intentions and convictions, we
naturally make use of the expression: I should never have dreamed of
such a thing. By this we mean to say, of course, that we consider the
realm of the dream the last and remotest place in which we are to be
held responsible for our thoughts, because there these thoughts are only
loosely and incoherently connected with our real being, so that we
should hardly still consider them as our own; but as we feel impelled
expressly to deny the existence of such thoughts, even in this realm, we
thus at the same time indirectly admit that our justification will not
be complete if it does not reach to that point. And I believe that,
though unconsciously, we here speak the language of truth.”
(P. 52): “No dream thought can be imagined whose first motive has not
already moved through the mind while awake as some wish, desire, or
impulse.” Concerning this original impulse we must say that the dream
has not discovered it—it has only imitated and extended it, it has only
elaborated a bit of historical material which it has found in us, into
dramatic form; it enacts the words of the apostle: He who hates his
brother is a murderer. And whereas, after we awaken and become conscious
of our moral strength, we may smile at the boldly executed structure of
the depraved dream, the original formative material, nevertheless, has
no ridiculous side. One feels responsible for the transgressions of the
dreamer, not for the whole sum, but still for a certain percentage. “In
this sense, which is difficult to impugn, we understand the words of
Christ: Out of the heart come evil thoughts—for we can hardly help being
convinced that every sin committed in the dream brings with it at least
a vague minimum of guilt.”
Hildebrandt thus finds the source of the immorality of dreams in the
germs and indications of evil impulses which pass through our minds
during the day as tempting thoughts, and he sees fit to add these
immoral elements to the moral estimation of the personality. It is the
same thoughts and the same estimation of these thoughts, which, as we
know, have caused devout and holy men of all times to lament that they
are evil sinners.
There is certainly no reason to doubt the general occurrence of these
contrasting presentations—in most men and even also in other than
ethical spheres. The judgment of these at times has not been very
earnest. In Spitta[64] we find the following relevant expression from A.
Zeller (Article “Irre” in the _Allgemeinen Encyklopädie der
Wissenschaften_ of Ersch and Grüber, p. 144): “The mind is rarely so
happily organised as to possess at all times power enough not to be
disturbed, not only by unessential but also by perfectly ridiculous
ideas running counter to the usual clear trend of thought; indeed, the
greatest thinkers have had cause to complain of this dreamlike
disturbing and painful rabble of ideas, as it destroys their profoundest
reflection and their most sacred and earnest mental work.”
A clearer light is thrown on the psychological status of this idea of
contrast by another observation of Hildebrandt, that the dream at times
allows us to glance into the deep and inmost recesses of our being,
which are generally closed to us in our waking state (p. 55). The same
knowledge is revealed by Kant in his _Anthropology_, when he states that
the dream exists in order to lay bare for us our hidden dispositions and
to reveal to us not what we are, but what we might have been if we had a
different education. Radestock[54] (p. 84) says that the dream often
only reveals to us what we do not wish to admit to ourselves, and that
we therefore unjustly condemn it as a liar and deceiver. That the
appearance of impulses which are foreign to our consciousness is merely
analogous to the already familiar disposition which the dream makes of
other material of the presentation, which is either absent or plays only
an insignificant part in the waking state, has been called to our
attention by observations like those of Benini,[3] who says: “Certe
nostre inclinazione che si credevano soffocate a spente da un pezzo, si
ridestano; passioni vecchie e sepolte rivivono; cose e persone a cui non
pensiamo mai, ci vengono dinanzi” (p. 149). Volkelt[72] expresses
himself in a similar way: “Even presentations which have entered into
our consciousness almost unnoticed, and have never perhaps been brought
out from oblivion, often announce through the dream their presence in
the mind” (p. 105). Finally, it is not out of place to mention here
that, according to Schleiermacher,[61] the state of falling asleep is
accompanied by the appearance of undesirable presentations (pictures).
We may comprise under “undesirable presentations” this entire material
of presentations, the occurrence of which excites our wonder in immoral
as well as in absurd dreams. The only important difference consists in
the fact that our undesirable presentations in the moral sphere exhibit
an opposition to our other feelings, whereas the others simply appear
strange to us. Nothing has been done so far to enable us to remove this
difference through a more penetrating knowledge.
But what is the significance of the appearance of undesirable
presentations in the dream? What inferences may be drawn for the
psychology of the waking and dreaming mind from these nocturnal
manifestations of contrasting ethical impulses? We may here note a new
diversity of opinion, and once more a different grouping of the authors.
The stream of thought followed by Hildebrandt, and by others who
represent his fundamental view, cannot be continued in any other way
than by ascribing to the immoral impulses a certain force even in the
waking state, which, to be sure, is inhibited from advancing to action,
and asserting that something falls off during sleep, which, having the
effect of an inhibition, has kept us from noticing the existence of such
an impulse. The dream thus shows the real, if not the entire nature of
man, and is a means of making the hidden psychic life accessible to our
understanding. It is only on such assumption that Hildebrandt can
attribute to the dream the rôle of monitor who calls our attention to
the moral ravages in the soul, just as in the opinion of physicians it
can announce a hitherto unobserved physical ailment. Spitta,[64] too,
cannot be guided by any other conception when he refers to the stream of
excitement which, _e.g._, flows in upon the psyche during puberty, and
consoles the dreamer by saying that he has done everything in his power
when he has led a strictly virtuous life during his waking state, when
he has made an effort to suppress the sinful thoughts as often as they
arise, and has kept them from maturing and becoming actions. According
to this conception, we might designate the “undesirable” presentations
as those that are “suppressed” during the day, and must recognise in
their appearance a real psychic phenomenon.
If we followed other authors we would have no right to the last
inference. For Jessen[36] the undesirable presentations in the dream as
in the waking state, in fever and other deliria, merely have “the
character of a voluntary activity put to rest and a somewhat mechanical
process of pictures and presentations produced by inner impulses” (p.
360). An immoral dream proves nothing for the psychic life of the
dreamer except that he has in some way become cognizant of the ideas in
question; it is surely not a psychic impulse of his own. Another author,
Maury,[48] makes us question whether he, too, does not attribute to the
dream state the capacity for dividing the psychic activity into its
components instead of destroying it aimlessly. He speaks as follows
about dreams in which one goes beyond the bounds of morality: “Ce sont
nos penchants qui parlent et qui nous font agir, sans que la conscience
nous retienne, bien que parfois elle nous avertisse. J’ai mes défauts et
mes penchants vicieux; à l’état de veille, je tache de lutter contre
eux, et il m’arrive assez souvent de n’y pas succomber. Mais dans mes
songes j’y succombe toujours ou pour mieux dire j’agis, par leur
impulsion, sans crainte et sans remords.... Évidemment les visions qui
se déroulent devant ma pensée et qui constituent le rêve, me sont
suggérées par les incitations que je ressens et que ma volonté absente
ne cherche pas à refouler” (p. 113).
If one believes in the capacity of the dream to reveal an actually
existing but repressed or concealed immoral disposition of the dreamer,
he could not emphasize his opinion more strongly than with the words of
Maury (p. 115): “En rêve l’homme se révèle donc tout entier à soi-même
dans sa nudité et sa misère natives. Dès qu’il suspend l’exercice de sa
volonté, il dévient le jouet de toutes les passions contre lesquelles, à
l’état de veille, la conscience, le sentiment d’honneur, la crainte nous
défendent.” In another place he finds the following striking words (p.
462): “Dans le rêve, c’est surtout l’homme instinctif que se révèle....
L’homme revient pour ainsi dire à l’état de nature quand il rêve; mais
moins les idées acquises ont pénétré dans son esprit, plus les penchants
en désaccord avec elles conservent encore sur lui d’influence dans le
rêve.” He then mentions as an example that his dreams often show him as
a victim of just those superstitions which he most violently combats in
his writing.
The value of all these ingenious observations for a psychological
knowledge of the dream life, however, is marred by Maury through the
fact that he refuses to recognise in the phenomena so correctly observed
by him any proof of the “automatisme psychologique” which in his opinion
dominates the dream life. He conceives this automatism as a perfect
contrast to the psychic activity.
A passage in the studies on consciousness by Stricker[77] reads: “The
dream does not consist of delusions merely; if, _e.g._, one is afraid of
robbers in the dream, the robbers are, of course, imaginary, but the
fear is real. One’s attention is thus called to the fact that the
effective development in the dream does not admit of the judgment which
one bestows upon the rest of the dream content, and the problem arises
what part of the psychic processes in the dream may be real, _i.e._ what
part of them may demand to be enrolled among the psychic processes of
the waking state?”
(_g_) _Dream Theories and Functions of the Dream._—A statement
concerning the dream which as far as possible attempts to explain from
one point of view many of its noted characters, and which at the same
time determines the relation of the dream to a more comprehensive sphere
of manifestations, may be called a theory of dreams. Individual theories
of the dream will be distinguished from one another through the fact
that they raise to prominence this or that characteristic of the dream,
and connect explanations and relations with it. It will not be
absolutely necessary to derive from the theory a function, _i.e._ a use
or any such activity of the dream, but our expectation, which is usually
adjusted to teleology, will nevertheless welcome those theories which
promise an understanding of the function of the dream.
We have already become acquainted with many conceptions of the dream
which, more or less, merit the name of dream theories in this sense. The
belief of the ancients that the dream was sent by the gods in order to
guide the actions of man was a complete theory of the dream giving
information concerning everything in the dream worth knowing. Since the
dream has become an object of biological investigation we have a greater
number of theories, of which, however, some are very incomplete.
If we waive completeness, we may attempt the following loose grouping of
dream theories based on their fundamental conception of the degree and
mode of the psychic activity in the dream:—
1. Theories, like those of Delbœuf,[16] which allow the full psychic
activity of the waking state to continue into the dream. Here the mind
does not sleep; its apparatus remains intact, and, being placed under
the conditions different from the waking state, it must in normal
activity furnish results different from those of the waking state. In
these theories it is a question whether they are in position to derive
the distinctions between dreaming and waking thought altogether from the
determinations of the sleeping state. They moreover lack a possible
access to a function of the dream; one cannot understand why one dreams,
why the complicated mechanism of the psychic apparatus continues to play
even when it is placed under conditions for which it is not apparently
adapted. There remain only two expedient reactions—to sleep dreamlessly
or to awake when approached by disturbing stimuli—instead of the third,
that of dreaming.
2. Theories which, on the contrary, assume for the dream a diminution
for the psychic activity, a loosening of the connections, and an
impoverishment in available material. In accordance with these theories,
one must assume for sleep a psychological character entirely different
from the one given by Delbœuf. Sleep extends far beyond the mind—it does
not consist merely in a shutting off of the mind from the outer world;
on the contrary, it penetrates into its mechanism, causing it at times
to become useless. If I may draw a comparison from psychiatrical
material, I may say that the first theories construct the dream like a
paranoia, while the second make it after the model of a dementia or an
amentia.
The theory that only a fragment of the psychic activity paralysed by
sleep comes to expression is by far the favourite among the medical
writers and in the scientific world. As far as one may presuppose a more
general interest in dream interpretation, it may well be designated as
the ruling theory of the dream. It is to be emphasized with what
facility this particular theory escapes the worst rock threatening every
dream interpretation, that is to say, being shipwrecked upon one of the
contrasts embodied in the dream. As this theory considers the dream the
result of a partial waking (or as Herbart’s _Psychology_ of the dream
says, “a gradual, partial, and at the same time very anomalous waking”),
it succeeds in covering the entire series of inferior activities in the
dream which reveal themselves in its absurdities, up to the full
concentration of mental activity, by following a series of states which
become more and more awake until they reach full awakening.
One who finds the psychological mode of expression indispensable, or who
thinks more scientifically, will find this theory of the dream expressed
in the discussion of Binz[4] (p. 43):—
“This state [of numbness], however, gradually approaches its end in the
early morning hours. The accumulated material of fatigue in the albumen
of the brain gradually becomes less. It is gradually decomposed or
carried away by the constantly flowing circulation. Here and there some
masses of cells can be distinguished as awake, while all around
everything still remains in a state of torpidity. _The isolated work of
the individual groups_ now appears before our clouded consciousness,
which lacks the control of other parts of the brain governing the
associations. Hence the pictures created, which mostly correspond to the
objective impressions of the recent past, fit with each other in a wild
and irregular manner. The number of the brain cells set free becomes
constantly greater, the irrationality of the dream constantly less.”
The conception of the dream as an incomplete, partial waking state, or
traces of its influence, can surely be found among all modern
physiologists and philosophers. It is most completely represented by
Maury.[48] It often seems as if this author represented to himself the
state of being awake or asleep in anatomical regions; at any rate it
appears to him that an anatomical province is connected with a definite
psychic function. I may here merely mention that if the theory of
partial waking could be confirmed, there would remain much to be
accomplished in its elaboration.
Naturally a function of the dream cannot be found in this conception of
the dream life. On the contrary, the criticism of the status and
importance of the dream is consistently uttered in this statement of
Binz (p. 357): “All the facts, as we see, urge us to characterise the
dream as a physical process in all cases useless, in many cases even
morbid.”
The expression “physical” in reference to the dream, which owes its
prominence to this author, points in more than one direction. In the
first place, it refers to the etiology of the dream, which was
especially clear to Binz, as he studied the experimental production of
dreams by the administration of poisons. It is certainly in keeping with
this kind of dream theory to ascribe the incitement of the dream
exclusively to somatic origin whenever possible. Presented in the most
extreme form, it reads as follows: After we have put ourselves to sleep
by removing the stimuli, there would be no need and no occasion for
dreaming until morning, when the gradual awakening through the incoming
stimuli would be reflected in the phenomenon of dreaming. But as a
matter of fact, it is not possible to keep sleep free from stimuli; just
as Mephisto complains about the germs of life, so stimuli reach the
sleeper from every side—from without, from within, and even from certain
bodily regions which never give us any concern during the waking state.
Thus sleep is disturbed; the mind is aroused, now by this, now by that
little thing, and functionates for a while with the awakened part only
to be glad to fall asleep again. The dream is a reaction to the stimulus
causing a disturbance of sleep—to be sure, it is a purely superfluous
reaction.
To designate the dream as a physical process, which for all that remains
an activity of the mental organ, has still another sense. It is meant to
dispute the dignity of a psychic process for the dream. The application
to the dream of the very old comparison of the “ten fingers of a
musically ignorant person running over the keyboard of an instrument,”
perhaps best illustrates in what estimation the dream activity has been
held by the representatives of exact science. In this sense it becomes
something entirely untranslatable, for how could the ten fingers of an
unmusical player produce any music?
The theory of partial wakefulness has not passed without objection even
in early times. Thus Burdach,[8] in 1830, says: “If we say that the
dream is a partial wakefulness, in the first place, we explain thereby
neither the waking nor the sleeping state; secondly, this expresses
nothing more than that certain forces of the mind are active in the
dream while others are at rest. But such irregularities take place
throughout life....” (p. 483).
Among extant dream theories which consider the dream a “physical”
process, there is one very interesting conception of the dream, first
propounded by Robert[55] in 1866, which is attractive because it assigns
to the dream a function or a useful end. As a basis for this theory,
Robert takes from observation two facts which we have already discussed
in our consideration of the dream material (see p. 13). These facts are:
that one very often dreams about the insignificant impressions of the
day, and that one rarely carries over into the dream the absorbing
interests of the day. Robert asserts as exclusively correct, that things
which have been fully settled never become dream inciters, but only such
things as are incomplete in the mind or touch it fleetingly (p. 11). “We
cannot usually explain our dreams because their causes are to be found
_in sensory impressions of the preceding day which have not attained
sufficient recognition by the dreamer_.” The conditions allowing an
impression to reach the dream are therefore, either that this impression
has been disturbed in its elaboration, or that being too insignificant
it has no claim to such elaboration.
Robert therefore conceives the dream “as a physical process of
elimination which has reached to cognition in the psychic manifestation
of its reaction.” _Dreams are eliminations of thoughts nipped in the
bud._ “A man deprived of the capacity for dreaming would surely in time
become mentally unbalanced, because an immense number of unfinished and
unsolved thoughts and superficial impressions would accumulate in his
brain, under the pressure of which there would be crushed all that
should be incorporated as a finished whole into memory.” The dream acts
as a safety-valve for the overburdened brain. _Dreams possess healing
and unburdening properties_ (p. 32).
It would be a mistake to ask Robert how representation in the dream can
bring about an unburdening of the mind. The author apparently concluded
from those two peculiarities of the dream material that during sleep
such ejection of worthless impressions is effected as a somatic process,
and that dreaming is not a special psychic process but only the
knowledge that we receive of such elimination. To be sure an elimination
is not the only thing that takes place in the mind during sleep. Robert
himself adds that the incitements of the day are also elaborated, and
“what cannot be eliminated from the undigested thought material lying in
the mind becomes connected _by threads of thought borrowed from the
phantasy into a finished whole_, and thus enrolled in the memory as a
harmless phantasy picture” (p. 23).
But it is in his criticism of the dream sources that Robert appears most
bluntly opposed to the ruling theory. Whereas according to the existing
theory there would be no dream if the outer and inner sensory stimuli
did not repeatedly wake the mind, according to Robert the impulse to
dream lies in the mind itself. It lies in the overcharging which demands
discharge, and Robert judges with perfect consistency when he maintains
that the causes determining the dream which depend on the physical state
assume a subordinate rank, and could not incite dreams in a mind
containing no material for dream formation taken from waking
consciousness. It is admitted, however, that the phantasy pictures
originating in the depths of the mind can be influenced by the nervous
stimuli (p. 48). Thus, according to Robert, the dream is not quite so
dependent on the somatic element. To be sure, it is not a psychic
process, and has no place among the psychic processes of the waking
state; it is a nocturnal somatic process in the apparatus devoted to
mental activity, and has a function to perform, viz. to guard this
apparatus against overstraining, or, if the comparison may be changed,
to cleanse the mind.
Another author, Yves Delage,[15] bases his theory on the same
characteristics of the dream, which become clear in the selection of the
dream material, and it is instructive to observe how a slight turn in
the conception of the same things gives a final result of quite
different bearing.
Delage, after having lost through death a person very dear to him, found
from his own experience that we do not dream of what occupies us
intently during the day, or that we begin to dream of it only after it
is overshadowed by other interests of the day. His investigations among
other persons corroborated the universality of this state of affairs.
Delage makes a nice observation of this kind, if it turns out to be
generally true, about the dreaming of newly married people: “S’ils ont
été fortement épris, presque jamais ils n’ont rêve l’un de l’autre avant
le mariage ou pendant la lune de miel; et s’ils ont rêve d’amour c’est
pour être infidèles avec quelque personne indifférente ou odieuse.” But
what does one dream of? Delage recognises that the material occurring in
our dreams consists of fragments and remnants of impressions from the
days preceding and former times. All that appears in our dreams, what at
first we may be inclined to consider creations of the dream life, proves
on more thorough investigation to be unrecognised reproductions,
“souvenir inconscient.” But this presentation material shows a common
character; it originates from impressions which have probably affected
our senses more forcibly than our mind, or from which the attention has
been deflected soon after their appearance. The less conscious, and at
the same time the stronger the impression, the more prospect it has of
playing a part in the next dream.
These are essentially the same two categories of impressions, the
insignificant and the unadjusted, which were emphasized by Robert,[55]
but Delage changes the connection by assuming that these impressions
become the subject of dreams, not because they are indifferent, but
because they are unadjusted. The insignificant impressions, too, are in
a way not fully adjusted; they, too, are from their nature as new
impressions “autant de ressorts tendus,” which will be relaxed during
sleep. Still more entitled to a rôle in the dream than the weak and
almost unnoticed impression is a strong impression which has been
accidentally detained in its elaboration or intentionally repressed. The
psychic energy accumulated during the day through inhibition or
suppression becomes the mainspring of the dream at night.
Unfortunately Delage stops here in his train of thought; he can ascribe
only the smallest part to an independent psychic activity in the dream,
and thus in his dream theory reverts to the ruling doctrine of a partial
sleep of the brain: “En somme le rêve est le produit de la pensée
errante, sans but et sans direction, se fixant successivement sur les
souvenirs, qui ont gardé assez d’intensité pour se placer sur sa route
et l’arrêter au passage, établissant entre eux un lien tantôt faible et
indécis, tantôt plus fort et plus serré, selon que l’activité actuelle
du cerveau est plus ou moins abolie par le sommeil.”
In a third group we may include those dream theories which ascribe to
the dreaming mind the capacity and propensity for a special psychic
activity, which in the waking state it can accomplish either not at all
or only in an imperfect manner. From the activity of these capacities
there usually results a useful function of the dream. The dignity
bestowed upon the dream by older psychological authors falls chiefly in
this category. I shall content myself, however, with quoting, in their
place, the assertions of Burdach,[8] by virtue of which the dream “is
the natural activity of the mind, which is not limited by the force of
the individuality, not disturbed by self-consciousness and not directed
by self-determination, but is the state of life of the sensible central
point indulging in free play” (p. 486).
Burdach and others apparently consider this revelling in the free use of
one’s own powers as a state in which the mind refreshes itself and takes
on new strength for the day work, something after the manner of a
vacation holiday. Burdach, therefore, cites with approval the admirable
words in which the poet Novalis lauds the sway of the dream: “The dream
is a bulwark against the regularity and commonness of life, a free
recreation of the fettered phantasy, in which it mixes together all the
pictures of life and interrupts the continued earnestness of grown-up
men with a joyous children’s play. Without the dream we should surely
age earlier, and thus the dream may be considered perhaps not a gift
directly from above, but a delightful task, a friendly companion, on our
pilgrimage to the grave.”
The refreshing and curative activity of the dream is even more
impressively depicted by Purkinje.[53] “The productive dreams in
particular would perform these functions. They are easy plays of the
imagination, which have no connection with the events of the day. The
mind does not wish to continue the tension of the waking life, but to
release it and recuperate from it. It produces, in the first place,
conditions opposed to those of the waking state. It cures sadness
through joy, worry through hope and cheerfully distracting pictures,
hatred through love and friendliness, and fear through courage and
confidence; it calms doubt through conviction and firm belief, and vain
expectations through realisation. Many sore spots in the mind, which the
day keeps continually open, sleep heals by covering them and guarding
against fresh excitement. Upon this the curative effect of time is
partially based.” We all feel that sleep is beneficial to the psychic
life, and the vague surmise of the popular consciousness apparently
cannot be robbed of the notion that the dream is one of the ways in
which sleep distributes its benefits.
The most original and most far-reaching attempt to explain the dream as
a special activity of the mind, which can freely display itself only in
the sleeping state, was the one undertaken by Scherner[58] in 1861.
Scherner’s book, written in a heavy and bombastic style, inspired by an
almost intoxicated enthusiasm for the subject, which must repel us
unless it can carry us away with it, places so many difficulties in the
way of an analysis that we gladly resort to the clearer and shorter
description in which the philosopher Volkelt[72] presents Scherner’s
theories: “From the mystic conglomerations and from all the gorgeous and
magnificent billows there indeed flashes and irradiates an ominous light
of sense, but the path of the philosopher does not thereby become
clearer.” Such is the criticism of Scherner’s description from one of
his own adherents.
Scherner does not belong to those authors who allow the mind to take
along its undiminished capacities into the dream life. He indeed
explains how in the dream the centrality and the spontaneous energy of
the ego are enervated, how cognition, feeling, will, and imagination
become changed through this decentralisation, and how no true mental
character, but only the nature of a mechanism, belongs to the remnants
of these psychic forces. But instead, the activity of the mind
designated as phantasy, freed from all rational domination and hence
completely uncontrolled, rises in the dream to absolute supremacy. To be
sure, it takes the last building stones from the memory of the waking
state, but it builds with them constructions as different from the
structures of the waking state as day and night. It shows itself in the
dream not only reproductive, but productive. Its peculiarities give to
the dream life its strange character. It shows a preference for the
unlimited, exaggerated, and prodigious, but because freed from the
impeding thought categories, it gains a greater flexibility and agility
and new pleasure; it is extremely sensitive to the delicate emotional
stimuli of the mind and to the agitating affects, and it rapidly recasts
the inner life into the outer plastic clearness. The dream phantasy
lacks the language of ideas; what it wishes to say, it must clearly
depict; and as the idea now acts strongly, it depicts it with the
richness, force, and immensity of the mode in question. Its language,
however simple it may be, thus becomes circumstantial, cumbersome, and
heavy. Clearness of language is rendered especially difficult by the
fact that it shows a dislike for expressing an object by its own
picture, but prefers a strange picture, if the latter can only express
that moment of the object which it wishes to describe. This is the
symbolising activity of the phantasy.... It is, moreover, of great
significance that the dream phantasy copies objects not in detail, but
only in outline and even this in the broadest manner. Its paintings,
therefore, appear ingeniously light and graceful. The dream phantasy,
however, does not stop at the mere representation of the object, but is
impelled from within to mingle with the object more or less of the dream
ego, and in this way to produce an action. The visual dream, _e.g._,
depicts gold coins in the street; the dreamer picks them up, rejoices,
and carries them away.
According to Scherner, the material upon which the dream phantasy exerts
its artistic activity is preponderately that of the organic sensory
stimuli which are so obscure during the day (comp. p. 29); hence the
phantastic theory of Scherner, and the perhaps over-sober theories of
Wundt and other physiologists, though otherwise diametrically opposed,
agree perfectly in their assumption of the dream sources and dream
excitants. But whereas, according to the physiological theory, the
psychic reaction to the inner physical stimuli becomes exhausted with
the awakening of any ideas suitable to these stimuli, these ideas then
by way of association calling to their aid other ideas, and with this
stage the chain of psychic processes seeming to terminate according to
Scherner, the physical stimuli only supply the psychic force with a
material which it may render subservient to its phantastic intentions.
For Scherner the formation of the dream only commences where in the
conception of others it comes to an end.
The treatment of the physical stimuli by the dream phantasy surely
cannot be considered purposeful. The phantasy plays a tantalising game
with them, and represents the organic source which gives origin to the
stimuli in the correspondent dream, in any plastic symbolism. Indeed
Scherner holds the opinion, not shared by Volkelt and others, that the
dream phantasy has a certain favourite representation for the entire
organism; this representation would be the _house_. Fortunately,
however, it does not seem to limit itself in its presentation to this
material; it may also conversely employ a whole series of houses to
designate a single organ, _e.g._, very long rows of houses for the
intestinal excitation. On other occasions particular parts of the house
actually represent particular parts of the body, as _e.g._, in the
headache-dream, the ceiling of the room (which the dream sees covered
with disgusting reptile-like spiders) represents the head.
Quite irrespective of the house symbolism, any other suitable object may
be employed for the representation of these parts of the body which
excite the dream. “Thus the breathing lungs find their symbol in the
flaming stove with its gaseous roaring, the heart in hollow boxes and
baskets, the bladder in round, bag-shaped, or simply hollowed objects.
The male dream of sexual excitement makes the dreamer find in the street
the upper portion of a clarinette, next to it the same part of a tobacco
pipe, and next to that a piece of fur. The clarinette and tobacco pipe
represent the approximate shape of the male sexual organ, while the fur
represents the pubic hair. In the female sexual dream the tightness of
the closely approximated thighs may be symbolised by a narrow courtyard
surrounded by houses, and the vagina by a very narrow, slippery and soft
footpath, leading through the courtyard, upon which the dreamer is
obliged to walk, in order perhaps to carry a letter to a gentleman”
(Volkelt, p. 39). It is particularly noteworthy that at the end of such
a physically exciting dream, the phantasy, as it were, unmasks by
representing the exciting organ or its function unconcealed. Thus the
“tooth-exciting dream” usually ends with the dreamer taking a tooth out
of his mouth.
The dream phantasy may, however, not only direct its attention to the
shape of the exciting organ, but it may also make the substance
contained therein the object of the symbolisation. Thus the dream of
intestinal excitement, _e.g._, may lead us through muddy streets, the
bladder-exciting dream to foaming water. Or the stimulus itself, the
manner of its excitation, and the object it covets, are represented
symbolically, or the dream ego enters into a concrete combination with
the symbolisation of its own state, as _e.g._, when, in the case of
painful stimuli, we struggle desperately with vicious dogs or raging
bulls, or when in the sexual dream the dreamer sees herself pursued by a
naked man. Disregarding all the possible prolixity of elaboration, a
symbolising phantastic activity remains as the central force of every
dream. Volkelt,[72] in his finely and fervently written book, next
attempted to penetrate further into the character of this phantasy and
to assign to the psychical activity thus recognised, its position in a
system of philosophical ideas, which, however, remains altogether too
difficult of comprehension for any one who is not prepared by previous
schooling for the sympathetic comprehension of philosophical modes of
thinking.
Scherner connects no useful function with the activity of the
symbolising phantasy in dreams. In the dream the psyche plays with the
stimuli at its disposal. One might presume that it plays in an improper
manner. One might also ask us whether our thorough study of Scherner’s
dream theory, the arbitrariness and deviation of which from the rules of
all investigation are only too obvious, can lead to any useful results.
It would then be proper for us to forestall the rejection of Scherner’s
theory without examination by saying that this would be too arrogant.
This theory is built up on the impression received from his dreams by a
man who paid great attention to them, and who would appear to be
personally very well fitted to trace obscure psychic occurrences.
Furthermore it treats a subject which, for thousands of years, has
appeared mysterious to humanity though rich in its contents and
relations; and for the elucidation of which stern science, as it
confesses itself, has contributed nothing beyond attempting, in entire
opposition to popular sentiment, to deny the substance and significance
of the object. Finally, let us frankly admit that apparently we cannot
avoid the phantastical in our attempts to elucidate the dream. There are
also phantastic ganglia cells; the passage cited on p. 63 from a sober
and exact investigator like Binz,[4] which depicts how the aurora of
awakening flows along the dormant cell masses of the cerebrum, is not
inferior in fancifulness and in improbability to Scherner’s attempts at
interpretation. I hope to be able to demonstrate that there is something
actual underlying the latter, though it has only been indistinctly
observed and does not possess the character of universality entitling it
to the claim of a dream theory. For the present, Scherner’s theory of
the dream, in its contrast to the medical theory, may perhaps lead us to
realise between what extremes the explanation of dream life is still
unsteadily vacillating.
(_h_) _Relations between the Dream and Mental Diseases._—When we speak
of the relation of the dream to mental disturbances, we may think of
three different things: (1) Etiological and clinical relations, as when
a dream represents or initiates a psychotic condition, or when it leaves
such a condition behind it. (2) Changes to which the dream life is
subjected in mental diseases. (3) Inner relations between the dream and
the psychoses, analogies indicating an intimate relationship. These
manifold relations between the two series of phenomena have been a
favourite theme of medical authors in the earlier periods of medical
science—and again in recent times—as we learn from the literature on the
subject gathered from Spitta,[64] Radestock,[54] Maury,[48] and
Tissié.[68] Sante de Sanctis has lately directed his attention to this
relationship. For the purposes of our discussion it will suffice merely
to glance at this important subject.
In regard to the clinical and etiological relations between the dream
and the psychoses, I will report the following observations as
paradigms. Hohnbaum asserts (see Krauss, p. 39), that the first attack
of insanity frequently originates in an anxious and terrifying dream,
and that the ruling idea has connection with this dream. Sante de
Sanctis adduces similar observations in paranoiacs, and declares the
dream to be, in some of them, the “vraie cause déterminante de la
folie.” The psychosis may come to life all of a sudden with the dream
causing and containing the explanation for the mental disturbances, or
it may slowly develop through further dreams that have yet to struggle
against doubt. In one of de Sanctis’s cases, the affecting dream was
accompanied by light hysterical attacks, which in their turn were
followed by an anxious, melancholic state. Féré (cited by Tissié) refers
to a dream which caused an hysterical paralysis. Here the dream is
offered us as an etiology of mental disturbance, though we equally
consider the prevailing conditions when we declare that the mental
disturbance shows its first manifestation in dream life, that it has its
first outbreak in the dream. In other instances the dream life contained
the morbid symptoms, or the psychosis was limited to the dream life.
Thus Thomayer[70] calls attention to anxiety dreams which must be
conceived as equivalent to epileptic attacks. Allison has described
nocturnal insanity (cited by Radestock), in which the subjects are
apparently perfectly well in the day-time, while hallucinations, fits of
frenzy, and the like regularly appear at night. De Sanctis and Tissié
report similar observations (paranoiac dream-equivalent in an alcoholic,
voices accusing a wife of infidelity). Tissié reports abundant
observations from recent times in which actions of a pathological
character (based on delusions, obsessive impulses) had their origin in
dreams. Guislain describes a case in which sleep was replaced by an
intermittent insanity.
There is hardly any doubt that along with the psychology of the dream,
the physician will one day occupy himself with the psychopathology of
the dream.
In cases of convalescence from insanity, it is often especially obvious
that, while the functions of the day are normal, the dream life may
still belong to the psychosis. Gregory is said first to have called
attention to such cases (cited by Krauss[39]). Macario (reported by
Tissié) gives account of a maniac who, a week after his complete
recovery again experienced in dreams the flight of ideas and the
passionate impulses of his disease.
Concerning the changes to which the dream life is subjected in chronic
psychotic persons, very few investigations have so far been made. On the
other hand, timely attention has been called to the inner relationship
between the dream and mental disturbance, which shows itself in an
extensive agreement of the manifestations occurring to both. According
to Maury,[47] Cubanis, in his _Rapports du physique et du moral_, first
called attention to this; following him came Lelut, J. Moreau, and more
particularly the philosopher Maine de Biran. To be sure, the comparison
is still older. Radestock[54] begins the chapter dealing with this
comparison, by giving a collection of expressions showing the analogy
between the dream and insanity. Kant somewhere says: “The lunatic is a
dreamer in the waking state.” According to Krauss “Insanity is a dream
with the senses awake.” Schopenhauer terms the dream a short insanity,
and insanity a long dream. Hagen describes the delirium as dream life
which has not been caused by sleep but by disease. Wundt, in the
_Physiological Psychology_, declares: “As a matter of fact we may in the
dream ourselves live through almost all symptoms which we meet in the
insane asylums.”
The specific agreements, on the basis of which such an identification
commends itself to the understanding, are enumerated by Spitta.[64] And
indeed, very similarly, by Maury in the following grouping: “(1)
Suspension or at least retardation, of self-consciousness, consequent
ignorance of the condition as such, and hence incapability of
astonishment and lack of moral consciousness. (2) Modified perception of
the sensory organs; that is, perception is diminished in the dream and
generally enhanced in insanity. (3) Combination of ideas with each other
exclusively in accordance with the laws of association and of
reproduction, hence automatic formation of groups and for this reason
disproportion in the relations between ideas (exaggerations, phantasms).
And as a result of all this: (4) Changing or transformation of the
personality and at times of the peculiarities of character
(perversities).”
Radestock gives some additional features or analogies in the material:
“Most hallucinations and illusions are found in the sphere of the senses
of sight and hearing and general sensation. As in the dream, the
smallest number of elements is supplied by the senses of smell and
taste. The fever patient, like the dreamer, is assaulted by
reminiscences from the remote past; what the waking and healthy man
seems to have forgotten is recollected in sleep and in disease.” The
analogy between the dream and the psychosis receives its full value only
when, like a family resemblance, it is extended to the finer mimicry and
to the individual peculiarities of facial expression.
“To him who is tortured by physical and mental sufferings the dream
accords what has been denied him by reality, to wit, physical well-being
and happiness; so the insane, too, see the bright pictures of happiness,
greatness, sublimity, and riches. The supposed possession of estates and
the imaginary fulfilment of wishes, the denial or destruction of which
have just served as a psychic cause of the insanity, often form the main
content of the delirium. The woman who has lost a dearly beloved child,
in her delirium experiences maternal joys; the man who has suffered
reverses of fortune deems himself immensely wealthy; and the jilted girl
pictures herself in the bliss of tender love.”
The above passage from Radestock, an abstract of a keen discussion of
Griesinger[31] (p. 111), reveals with the greatest clearness the wish
fulfilment as a characteristic of the imagination, common to the dream
and the psychosis. (My own investigations have taught me that here the
key to a psychological theory of the dream and of the psychosis is to be
found.)
“Absurd combinations of ideas and weakness of judgment are the main
characteristics of the dream and of insanity.” The over-estimation of
one’s own mental capacity, which appears absurd to sober judgment, is
found alike both in one and the other, and the rapid course of ideas in
the dream corresponds to the flight of ideas in the psychosis. Both are
devoid of any measure of time. The dissociation of personality in the
dream, which, for instance, distributes one’s own knowledge between two
persons, one of whom, the strange one, corrects in the dream one’s own
ego, fully corresponds to the well-known splitting of personality in
hallucinatory paranoia; the dreamer, too, hears his own thoughts
expressed by strange voices. Even the constant delusions find their
analogy in the stereotyped recurring pathological dreams (_rêve
obsédant_). After recovering from a delirium, patients not infrequently
declare that the disease appeared to them like an uncomfortable dream;
indeed, they inform us that occasionally, even during the course of
their sickness, they have felt that they were only dreaming, just as it
frequently happens in the sleeping dream.
Considering all this, it is not surprising that Radestock condenses his
own opinion and that of many others into the following: “Insanity, an
abnormal phenomenon of disease, is to be regarded as an enhancement of
the periodically recurring normal dream states” (p. 228).
Krauss[39] attempted to base the relationship between the dream and
insanity upon the etiology (or rather upon the exciting sources),
perhaps making the relationship even more intimate than was possible
through the analogy of the phenomena they manifest. According to him,
the fundamental element common to both is, as we have learned, the
organically determined sensation, the sensation of physical stimuli, the
general feeling produced by contributions from all the organs. _Cf._
Peise, cited by Maury[48] (p. 60).
The incontestable agreement between the dream and mental disturbance,
extending into characteristic details, constitutes one of the strongest
supports of the medical theory of dream life, according to which the
dream is represented as a useless and disturbing process and as the
expression of a reduced psychic activity. One cannot expect, however, to
derive the final explanation of the dream from the mental disturbances,
as it is generally known in what unsatisfactory state our understanding
of the origin of the latter remains. It is very probably, however, that
a modified conception of the dream must also influence our views in
regard to the inner mechanism of mental disturbances, and hence we may
say that we are engaged in the elucidation of the psychosis when we
endeavour to clear up the mystery of the dream.
I shall have to justify myself for not extending my summary of the
literature of the dream problems over the period between the first
appearance of this book and its second edition. If this justification
may not seem very satisfactory to the reader, I was nevertheless
influenced by it. The motives which mainly induced me to summarise the
treatment of the dream in the literature have been exhausted with the
foregoing introduction; to have continued with this work would have cost
me extraordinary effort and would have afforded little advantage or
knowledge. For the period of nine years referred to has yielded nothing
new or valuable either for the conception of the dream in actual
material or in points of view. In most of the publications that have
since appeared my work has remained unmentioned and unregarded;
naturally least attention has been bestowed upon it by the so-called
“investigators of dreams,” who have thus afforded a splendid example of
the aversion characteristic of scientific men to learning something new.
“Les savants ne sont pas curieux,” said the scoffer Anatole France. If
there were such a thing in science as right to revenge, I in turn should
be justified in ignoring the literature since the appearance of this
book. The few accounts that have appeared in scientific journals are so
full of folly and misconception that my only possible answer to my
critics would be to request them to read this book over again. Perhaps
also the request should be that they read it as a whole.
In the works of those physicians who make use of the psychoanalytic
method of treatment (Jung, Abraham, Riklin, Muthmann, Stekel, Rank, and
others), an abundance of dreams have been reported and interpreted in
accordance with my instructions. In so far as these works go beyond the
confirmation of my assertions I have noted their results in the context
of my discussion. A supplement to the literary index at the end of this
book brings together the most important of these new publications. The
voluminous book on the dream by Sante de Sanctis, of which a German
translation appeared soon after its publication, has, so to speak,
crossed with mine, so that I could take as little notice of him as the
Italian author could of me. Unfortunately, I am further obliged to
declare that this laborious work is exceedingly poor in ideas, so poor
that one could never divine from it the existence of the problems
treated by me.
I have finally to mention two publications which show a near relation to
my treatment of the dream problems. A younger philosopher, H. Swoboda,
who has undertaken to extend W. Fliesse’s discovery of biological
periodicity (in groups of twenty-three and twenty-eight days) to the
psychic field, has produced an imaginative work,[P] in which, among
other things, he has used this key to solve the riddle of the dream. The
interpretation of dreams would herein have fared badly; the material
contained in dreams would be explained through the coincidence of all
those memories which during the night complete one of the biological
periods for the first or the n-th time. A personal statement from the
author led me to assume that he himself no longer wished to advocate
this theory earnestly. But it seems I was mistaken in this conclusion; I
shall report in another place some observations in reference to
Swoboda’s assertion, concerning the conclusions of which I am, however,
not convinced. It gave me far greater pleasure to find accidentally, in
an unexpected place, a conception of the dream in essentials fully
agreeing with my own. The circumstances of time preclude the possibility
that this conception was influenced by a reading of my book; I must
therefore greet this as the only demonstrable concurrence in the
literature with the essence of my dream theory. The book which contains
the passage concerning the dream which I have in mind was published as a
second edition in 1900 by Lynkus under the title _Phantasien eines
Realisten_.
II
METHOD OF DREAM INTERPRETATION
THE ANALYSIS OF A SAMPLE DREAM
The title which I have given my treatise indicates the tradition which I
wish to make the starting-point in my discussion of dreams. I have made
it my task to show that dreams are capable of interpretation, and
contributions to the solution of the dream problems that have just been
treated can only be yielded as possible by-products of the settlement of
my own particular problem. With the hypothesis that dreams are
interpretable, I at once come into contradiction with the prevailing
dream science, in fact with all dream theories except that of Scherner,
for to “interpret a dream” means to declare its meaning, to replace it
by something which takes its place in the concatenation of our psychic
activities as a link of full importance and value. But, as we have
learnt, the scientific theories of the dream leave no room for a problem
of dream interpretation, for, in the first place, according to these,
the dream is no psychic action, but a somatic process which makes itself
known to the psychic apparatus by means of signs. The opinion of the
masses has always been quite different. It asserts its privilege of
proceeding illogically, and although it admits the dream to be
incomprehensible and absurd, it cannot summon the resolution to deny the
dream all significance. Led by a dim intuition, it seems rather to
assume that the dream has a meaning, albeit a hidden one; that it is
intended as a substitute for some other thought process, and that it is
only a question of revealing this substitute correctly in order to reach
the hidden signification of the dream.
The laity has, therefore, always endeavoured to “interpret” the dream,
and in doing so has tried two essentially different methods. The first
of these procedures regards the dream content as a whole and seeks to
replace it by another content which is intelligible and in certain
respects analogous. This is symbolic dream interpretation; it naturally
goes to pieces at the outset in the case of those dreams which appear
not only unintelligible but confused. The construction which the
biblical Joseph places upon the dream of Pharaoh furnishes an example of
its procedure. The seven fat kine, after which came seven lean ones
which devour the former, furnish a symbolic substitute for a prediction
of seven years of famine in the land of Egypt, which will consume all
the excess which seven fruitful years have created. Most of the
artificial dreams contrived by poets are intended for such symbolic
interpretation, for they reproduce the thought conceived by the poet in
a disguise found to be in accordance with the characteristics of our
dreaming, as we know these from experience.[Q] The idea that the dream
concerns itself chiefly with future events whose course it surmises in
advance—a relic of the prophetic significance with which dreams were
once credited—now becomes the motive for transplanting the meaning of
the dream, found by means of symbolic interpretation, into the future by
means of an “it shall.”
A demonstration of the way in which such symbolic interpretation is
arrived at cannot, of course, be given. Success remains a matter of
ingenious conjecture, of direct intuition, and for this reason dream
interpretation has naturally been elevated to an art, which seems to
depend upon extraordinary gifts.[R] The other of the two popular methods
of dream interpretation entirely abandons such claims. It might be
designated as the “cipher method,” since it treats the dream as a kind
of secret code, in which every sign is translated into another sign of
known meaning, according to an established key. For example, I have
dreamt of a letter, and also of a funeral or the like; I consult a
“dream book,” and find that “letter” is to be translated by “vexation,”
and “funeral” by “marriage, engagement.” It now remains to establish a
connection, which I again am to assume pertains to the future, by means
of the rigmarole which I have deciphered. An interesting variation of
this cipher procedure, a variation by which its character of purely
mechanical transference is to a certain extent corrected, is presented
in the work on dream interpretation by Artemidoros of Daldis.[2] Here
not only the dream content, but also the personality and station in life
of the dreamer, are taken into consideration, so that the same dream
content has a significance for the rich man, the married man, or the
orator, which is different from that for the poor man, the unmarried
man, or, say, the merchant. The essential point, then, in this procedure
is that the work of interpretation is not directed to the entirety of
the dream, but to each portion of the dream content by itself, as though
the dream were a conglomeration, in which each fragment demands a
particular disposal. Incoherent and confused dreams are certainly the
ones responsible for the invention of the cipher method.[S]
The worthlessness of both these popular interpretation procedures for
the scientific treatment of the subject cannot be questioned for a
moment. The symbolic method is limited in its application and is capable
of no general demonstration. In the cipher method everything depends
upon whether the key, the dream book, is reliable, and for that all
guarantees are lacking. One might be tempted to grant the contention of
the philosophers and psychiatrists and to dismiss the problem of dream
interpretation as a fanciful one.
I have come, however, to think differently. I have been forced to admit
that here once more we have one of those not infrequent cases where an
ancient and stubbornly retained popular belief seems to have come nearer
to the truth of the matter than the judgment of the science which
prevails to-day. I must insist that the dream actually has significance,
and that a scientific procedure in dream interpretation is possible. I
have come upon the knowledge of this procedure in the following manner:—
For several years I have been occupied with the solution of certain
psychopathological structures in hysterical phobias, compulsive ideas,
and the like, for therapeutic purposes. I have been so occupied since
becoming familiar with an important report of Joseph Breuer to the
effect that in those structures, regarded as morbid symptoms, solution
and treatment go hand in hand.[T] Where it has been possible to trace
such a pathological idea back to the elements in the psychic life of the
patient to which it owes its origin, this idea has crumbled away, and
the patient has been relieved of it. In view of the failure of our other
therapeutic efforts, and in the face of the mysteriousness of these
conditions, it seems to me tempting, in spite of all difficulties, to
press forward on the path taken by Breuer until the subject has been
fully understood. We shall have elsewhere to make a detailed report upon
the form which the technique of this procedure has finally assumed, and
the results of the efforts which have been made. In the course of these
psychoanalytical studies, I happened upon dream interpretation. My
patients, after I had obliged them to inform me of all the ideas and
thoughts which came to them in connection with the given theme, related
their dreams, and thus taught me that a dream may be linked into the
psychic concatenation which must be followed backwards into the memory
from the pathological idea as a starting-point. The next step was to
treat the dream as a symptom, and to apply to it the method of
interpretation which had been worked out for such symptoms.
For this a certain psychic preparation of the patient is necessary. The
double effort is made with him, to stimulate his attention for his
psychic perceptions and to eliminate the critique with which he is
ordinarily in the habit of viewing the thoughts which come to the
surface in him. For the purpose of self-observation with concentrated
attention, it is advantageous that the patient occupy a restful position
and close his eyes; he must be explicitly commanded to resign the
critique of the thought-formations which he perceives. He must be told
further that the success of the psychoanalysis depends upon his noticing
and telling everything that passes through his mind, and that he must
not allow himself to suppress one idea because it seems to him
unimportant or irrelevant to the subject, or another because it seems
nonsensical. He must maintain impartiality towards his ideas; for it
would be owing to just this critique if he were unsuccessful in finding
the desired solution of the dream, the obsession, or the like.
I have noticed in the course of my psychoanalytic work that the state of
mind of a man in contemplation is entirely different from that of a man
who is observing his psychic processes. In contemplation there is a
greater play of psychic action than in the most attentive
self-observation; this is also shown by the tense attitude and wrinkled
brow of contemplation, in contrast with the restful features of
self-observation. In both cases, there must be concentration of
attention, but, besides this, in contemplation one exercises a critique,
in consequence of which he rejects some of the ideas which he has
perceived, and cuts short others, so that he does not follow the trains
of thought which they would open; toward still other thoughts he may act
in such a manner that they do not become conscious at all—that is to
say, they are suppressed before they are perceived. In self-observation,
on the other hand, one has only the task of suppressing the critique; if
he succeeds in this, an unlimited number of ideas, which otherwise would
have been impossible for him to grasp, come to his consciousness. With
the aid of this material, newly secured for the purpose of
self-observation, the interpretation of pathological ideas, as well as
of dream images, can be accomplished. As may be seen, the point is to
bring about a psychic state to some extent analogous as regards the
apportionment of psychic energy (transferable attention) to the state
prior to falling asleep (and indeed also to the hypnotic state). In
falling asleep, the “undesired ideas” come into prominence on account of
the slackening of a certain arbitrary (and certainly also critical)
action, which we allow to exert an influence upon the trend of our
ideas; we are accustomed to assign “fatigue” as the reason for this
slackening; the emerging undesired ideas as the reason are changed into
visual and acoustic images. (_Cf._ the remarks of Schleiermacher[61] and
others, p. 40.) In the condition which is used for the analysis of
dreams and pathological ideas, this activity is purposely and
arbitrarily dispensed with, and the psychic energy thus saved, or a part
of it, is used for the attentive following of the undesired thoughts now
coming to the surface, which retain their identity as ideas (this is the
difference from the condition of falling asleep). “Undesired ideas” are
thus changed into “desired” ones.
The suspension thus required of the critique for these apparently
“freely rising” ideas, which is here demanded and which is usually
exercised on them, is not easy for some persons. The “undesired ideas”
are in the habit of starting the most violent resistance, which seeks to
prevent them from coming to the surface. But if we may credit our great
poet-philosopher Friedrich Schiller, a very similar tolerance must be
the condition of poetic production. At a point in his correspondence
with Koerner, for the noting of which we are indebted to Mr. Otto Rank,
Schiller answers a friend who complains of his lack of creativeness in
the following words: “The reason for your complaint lies, it seems to
me, in the constraint which your intelligence imposes upon your
imagination. I must here make an observation and illustrate it by an
allegory. It does not seem beneficial, and it is harmful for the
creative work of the mind, if the intelligence inspects too closely the
ideas already pouring in, as it were, at the gates. Regarded by itself,
an idea may be very trifling and very adventurous, but it perhaps
becomes important on account of one which follows it; perhaps in a
certain connection with others, which may seem equally absurd, it is
capable of forming a very useful construction. The intelligence cannot
judge all these things if it does not hold them steadily long enough to
see them in connection with the others. In the case of a creative mind,
however, the intelligence has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, the
ideas rush in pell-mell, and it is only then that the great heap is
looked over and critically examined. Messrs. Critics, or whatever else
you may call yourselves, you are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and
transitory madness which is found in all creators, and whose longer or
shorter duration distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer.
Hence your complaints about barrenness, for you reject too soon and
discriminate too severely” (Letter of December 1, 1788).
And yet, “such a withdrawal of the watchers from the gates of
intelligence,” as Schiller calls it, such a shifting into the condition
of uncritical self-observation, is in no way difficult.
Most of my patients accomplish it after the first instructions; I myself
can do it very perfectly, if I assist the operation by writing down my
notions. The amount, in terms of psychic energy, by which the critical
activity is in this manner reduced, and by which the intensity of the
self-observation may be increased, varies widely according to the
subject matter upon which the attention is to be fixed.
The first step in the application of this procedure now teaches us that
not the dream as a whole, but only the parts of its contents separately,
may be made the object of our attention. If I ask a patient who is as
yet unpractised: “What occurs to you in connection with this dream?” as
a rule he is unable to fix upon anything in his psychic field of vision.
I must present the dream to him piece by piece, then for every fragment
he gives me a series of notions, which may be designated as the
“background thoughts” of this part of the dream. In this first and
important condition, then, the method of dream interpretation which I
employ avoids the popular, traditional method of interpretation by
symbolism famous in the legends, and approaches the second, the “cipher
method.” Like this one it is an interpretation in detail, not _en
masse_; like this it treats the dream from the beginning as something
put together—as a conglomeration of psychic images.
In the course of my psychoanalysis of neurotics, I have indeed already
subjected many thousand dreams to interpretation, but I do not now wish
to use this material in the introduction to the technique and theory of
dream interpretation. Quite apart from the consideration that I should
expose myself to the objection that these are dreams of neuropathic
subjects, the conclusions drawn from which would not admit of
reapplication to the dreams of healthy persons, another reason forces me
to reject them. The theme which is naturally always the subject of these
dreams, is the history of the disease which is responsible for the
neurosis. For this purpose there would be required a very long
introduction and an investigation into the nature and logical conditions
of psychoneuroses, things which are in themselves novel and unfamiliar
in the highest degree, and which would thus distract attention from the
dream problem. My purpose lies much more in the direction of preparing
the ground for a solution of difficult problems in the psychology of the
neuroses by means of the solution of dreams. But if I eliminate the
dreams of neurotics, I must not treat the remainder too
discriminatingly. Only those dreams still remain which have been
occasionally related to me by healthy persons of my acquaintance, or
which I find as examples in the literature of dream life. Unfortunately
in all these dreams the analysis is lacking, without which I cannot find
the meaning of the dream. My procedure is, of course, not as easy as
that of the popular cipher method, which translates the given dream
content according to an established key; I am much more prepared to find
that the same dream may cover a different meaning in the case of
different persons, and in a different connection I must then resort to
my own dreams, as an abundant and convenient material, furnished by a
person who is about normal, and having reference to many incidents of
everyday life. I shall certainly be with doubts as to the
trustworthiness of these “self-analyses.” Arbitrariness is here in no
way avoided. In my opinion, conditions are more likely to be favourable
in self-observation than in the observation of others; in any case, it
is permissible to see how much can be accomplished by means of
self-analysis. I must overcome further difficulties arising from inner
self. One has a readily understood aversion to exposing so many intimate
things from one’s own psychic life, and one does not feel safe from the
misinterpretation of strangers. But one must be able to put one’s self
beyond this. “Toute psychologiste,” writes Delbœuf,[26] “est obligé de
faire l’aveu même de ses faiblesses s’il croit par là jeter du jour sur
quelque problème obscure.” And I may assume that in the case of the
reader, the immediate interest in the indiscretions which I must commit
will very soon give way to exclusive engrossment in the psychological
problems which are illuminated by them.
I shall, therefore, select one of my own dreams and use it to elucidate
my method of interpretation. Every such dream necessitates a preliminary
statement. I must now beg the reader to make my interests his own for a
considerable time, and to become absorbed with me in the most trifling
details of my life, for an interest in the hidden significance of dreams
imperatively demands such transference.
Preliminary statement: In the summer of 1895 I had psychoanalytically
treated a young lady who stood in close friendship to me and those near
to me. It is to be understood that such a complication of relations may
be the source of manifold feelings for the physician, especially for the
psychotherapist. The personal interest of the physician is greater, his
authority is less. A failure threatens to undermine the friendship with
the relatives of the patient. The cure ended with partial success, the
patient got rid of her hysterical fear, but not of all her somatic
symptoms. I was at that time not yet sure of the criteria marking the
final settlement of a hysterical case, and expected her to accept a
solution which did not seem acceptable to her. In this disagreement, we
cut short the treatment on account of the summer season. One day a
younger colleague, one of my best friends, who had visited the
patient—Irma—and her family in their country resort, came to see me. I
asked him how he found her, and received the answer: “She is better, but
not altogether well.” I realise that those words of my friend Otto, or
the tone of voice in which they were spoken, made me angry. I thought I
heard a reproach in the words, perhaps to the effect that I had promised
the patient too much, and rightly or wrongly I traced Otto’s supposed
siding against me to the influence of the relatives of the patient, who,
I assume, had never approved of my treatment. Moreover, my disagreeable
impression did not become clear to me, nor did I give it expression. The
very same evening, I wrote down the history of Irma’s case, in order to
hand it, as though for my justification, to Dr. M., a mutual friend, who
was at that time a leading figure in our circle. During the night
following this evening (perhaps rather in the morning) I had the
following dream, which was registered immediately after waking:—
DREAM OF JULY 23–24, 1895
_A great hall—many guests whom we are receiving—among them Irma, whom I
immediately take aside, as though to answer her letter, to reproach her
for not yet accepting the “solution.” I say to her: “If you still have
pains, it is really only your own fault.” She answers: “If you only knew
what pains I now have in the neck, stomach, and abdomen; I am drawn
together.” I am frightened and look at her. She looks pale and bloated;
I think that after all I must be overlooking some organic affection. I
take her to the window and look into her throat. She shows some
resistance to this, like a woman who has a false set of teeth. I think
anyway she does not need them. The mouth then really opens without
difficulty and I find a large white spot to the right, and at another
place I see extended grayish-white scabs attached to curious curling
formations, which have obviously been formed like the turbinated bone—I
quickly call Dr. M., who repeats the examination and confirms it.... Dr.
M.’s looks are altogether unusual; he is very pale, limps, and has no
beard on his chin.... My friend Otto is now also standing next to her,
and my friend Leopold percusses her small body and says: “She has some
dulness on the left below,” and also calls attention to an infiltrated
portion of the skin on the left shoulder (something which I feel as he
does, in spite of the dress).... M. says: “No doubt it is an infection,
but it does not matter; dysentery will develop too, and the poison will
be excreted.... We also have immediate knowledge of the origin of the
infection. My friend Otto has recently given her an injection with a
propyl preparation when she felt ill, propyls.... Propionic acid ...
Trimethylamine (the formula of which I see printed before me in heavy
type).... Such injections are not made so rashly.... Probably also the
syringe was not clean.”_
This dream has an advantage over many others. It is at once clear with
what events of the preceding day it is connected, and what subject it
treats. The preliminary statement gives information on these points. The
news about Irma’s health which I have received from Otto, the history of
the illness upon which I have written until late at night, have occupied
my psychic activity even during sleep. In spite of all this, no one, who
has read the preliminary report and has knowledge of the content of the
dream, has been able to guess what the dream signifies. Nor do I myself
know. I wonder about the morbid symptoms, of which Irma complains in the
dream, for they are not the same ones for which I have treated her. I
smile about the consultation with Dr. M. I smile at the nonsensical idea
of an injection with propionic acid, and at the consolation attempted by
Dr. M. Towards the end the dream seems more obscure and more terse than
at the beginning. In order to learn the significance of all this, I am
compelled to undertake a thorough analysis.
ANALYSIS
_The hall—many guests, whom we are receiving._
We were living this summer at the Bellevue, in an isolated house on one
of the hills which lie close to the Kahlenberg. This house was once
intended as a place of amusement, and on this account has unusually
high, hall-like rooms. The dream also occurred at the Bellevue, a few
days before the birthday of my wife. During the day, my wife had
expressed the expectation that several friends, among them Irma, would
come to us as guests for her birthday. My dream, then, anticipates this
situation: It is the birthday of my wife, and many people, among them
Irma, are received by us as guests in the great hall of the Bellevue.
_I reproach Irma for not having accepted the solution. I say: “If you
still have pains, it is your own fault.”_
I might have said this also, or did say it, while awake. At that time I
had the opinion (recognised later to be incorrect) that my task was
limited to informing patients of the hidden meaning of their symptoms.
Whether they then accepted or did not accept the solution upon which
success depended—for that I was not responsible. I am thankful to this
error, which fortunately has now been overcome, for making life easier
for me at a time when, with all my unavoidable ignorance, I was to
produce successful cures. But I see in the speech which I make to Irma
in the dream, that above all things I do not want to be to blame for the
pains which she still feels. If it is Irma’s own fault, it cannot be
mine. Should the purpose of the dream be looked for in this quarter?
_Irma’s complaints; pains in the neck, abdomen, and stomach; she is
drawn together._
Pains in the stomach belonged to the symptom-complex of my patient, but
they were not very prominent; she complained rather of sensations of
nausea and disgust. Pains in the neck and abdomen and constriction of
the throat hardly played a part in her case. I wonder why I decided upon
this choice of symptoms, nor can I for the moment find the reason.
_She looks pale and bloated._
My patient was always ruddy. I suspect that another person is here being
substituted for her.
_I am frightened at the thought that I must have overlooked some organic
affection._
This, as the reader will readily believe, is a constant fear with the
specialist, who sees neurotics almost exclusively, and who is accustomed
to ascribe so many manifestations, which other physicians treat as
organic, to hysteria. On the other hand, I am haunted by a faint doubt—I
know not whence it comes—as to whether my fear is altogether honest. If
Irma’s pains are indeed of organic origin, I am not bound to cure them.
My treatment, of course, removes only hysterical pains. It seems to me,
in fact, that I wish to find an error in the diagnosis; in that case the
reproach of being unsuccessful would be removed.
_I take her to the window in order to look into her throat. She resists
a little, like a woman who has false teeth. I think she does not need
them anyway._
I had never had occasion to inspect Irma’s aural cavity. The incident in
the dream reminds me of an examination, made some time before, of a
governess who at first gave an impression of youthful beauty, but who
upon opening her mouth took certain measures for concealing her teeth.
Other memories of medical examinations and of little secrets which are
discovered by them, unpleasantly for both examiner and examined, connect
themselves with this case. “She does not need them anyway,” is at first
perhaps a compliment for Irma; but I suspect a different meaning. In
careful analysis one feels whether or not the “background thoughts”
which are to be expected have been exhausted. The way in which Irma
stands at the window suddenly reminds me of another experience. Irma
possesses an intimate woman friend, of whom I think very highly. One
evening on paying her a visit I found her in the position at the window
reproduced in the dream, and her physician, the same Dr. M., declared
that she had a diphtheritic membrane. The person of Dr. M. and the
membrane return in the course of the dream. Now it occurs to me that
during the last few months, I have been given every reason to suppose
that this lady is also hysterical. Yes, Irma herself has betrayed this
to me. But what do I know about her condition? Only the one thing, that
like Irma she suffers from hysterical choking in dreams. Thus in the
dream I have replaced my patient by her friend. Now I remember that I
have often trifled with the expectation that this lady might likewise
engage me to relieve her of her symptoms. But even at the time I thought
it improbable, for she is of a very shy nature. _She resists_, as the
dream shows. Another explanation might be that _she does not need it_;
in fact, until now she has shown herself strong enough to master her
condition without outside help. Now only a few features remain, which I
can assign neither to Irma nor to her friend: _Pale, bloated, false
teeth_. The false teeth lead me to the governess; I now feel inclined to
be satisfied with bad teeth. Then another person, to whom these features
may allude, occurs to me. She is not my patient, and I do not wish her
to be my patient, for I have noticed that she is not at her ease with
me, and I do not consider her a docile patient. She is generally pale,
and once, when she had a particularly good spell, she was bloated.[U] I
have thus compared my patient Irma with two others, who would likewise
resist treatment. What can it mean that I have exchanged her for her
friend in the dream? Perhaps that I wish to exchange her; either the
other one arouses in me stronger sympathies or I have a higher opinion
of her intelligence. For I consider Irma foolish because she does not
accept my solution. The other one would be more sensible, and would thus
be more likely to yield. _The mouth then really opens without
difficulty_; she would tell more than Irma.[V]
_What I see in the throat; a white spot and scabby nostrils._
The white spot recalls diphtheria, and thus Irma’s friend, but besides
this it recalls the grave illness of my eldest daughter two years before
and all the anxiety of that unfortunate time. The scab on the nostrils
reminds me of a concern about my own health. At that time I often used
cocaine in order to suppress annoying swellings in the nose, and had
heard a few days before that a lady patient who did likewise had
contracted an extensive necrosis of the nasal mucous membrane. The
recommendation of cocaine, which I had made in 1885, had also brought
grave reproaches upon me. A dear friend, already dead in 1895, had
hastened his end through the misuse of this remedy.
_I quickly call Dr. M., who repeats the examination._
This would simply correspond to the position which M. occupied among us.
But the word “quickly” is striking enough to demand a special
explanation. It reminds me of a sad medical experience. By the continued
prescription of a remedy (sulfonal) which was still at that time
considered harmless, I had once caused the severe intoxication of a
woman patient, and I had turned in great haste to an older, more
experienced colleague for assistance. The fact that I really had this
case in mind is confirmed by an accessory circumstance. The patient, who
succumbed to the intoxication, bore the same name as my eldest daughter.
I had never thought of this until now; now it seems to me almost like a
retribution of fate—as though I ought to continue the replacement of the
persons here in another sense; this Matilda for that Matilda; an eye for
an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It is as though I were seeking every
opportunity to reproach myself with lack of medical conscientiousness.
_Dr. M. is pale, without a beard on his chin, and he limps._
Of this so much is correct, that his unhealthy appearance often awakens
the concern of his friends. The other two characteristics must belong to
another person. A brother living abroad occurs to me, who wears his chin
clean-shaven, and to whom, if I remember aright, M. of the dream on the
whole bears some resemblance. About him the news arrived some days
before that he was lame on account of an arthritic disease in the hip.
There must be a reason why I fuse the two persons into one in the dream.
I remember that in fact I was on bad terms with both of them for similar
reasons. Both of them had rejected a certain proposal which I had
recently made to them.
_My friend Otto is now standing next to the sick woman, and my friend
Leopold examines her and calls attention to a dulness on the left
below._
My friend Leopold is also a physician, a relative of Otto. Since the two
practise the same specialty, fate has made them competitors, who are
continually being compared with each other. Both of them assisted me for
years, while I was still directing a public dispensary for nervous
children. Scenes like the one reproduced in the dream have often taken
place there. While I was debating with Otto about the diagnosis of a
case, Leopold had examined the child anew and had made an unexpected
contribution towards the decision. For there was a difference of
character between the two similar to that between Inspector Brassig and
his friend Charles. The one was distinguished for his brightness, the
other was slow, thoughtful, but thorough. If I contrast Otto and the
careful Leopold in the dream, I do it, apparently, in order to extol
Leopold. It is a comparison similar to the one above between the
disobedient patient Irma and her friend who is thought to be more
sensible. I now become aware of one of the tracks along which the
thought association of the dream progresses; from the sick child to the
children’s asylum. The dulness to the left, below, recalls a certain
case corresponding to it, in every detail in which Leopold astonished me
by his thoroughness. Besides this, I have a notion of something like a
metastatic affection, but it might rather be a reference to the lady
patient whom I should like to have instead of Irma. For this lady, as
far as I can gather, resembles a woman suffering from tuberculosis.
_An infiltrated portion of skin on the left shoulder._
I see at once that this is my own rheumatism of the shoulder, which I
always feel when I have remained awake until late at night. The turn of
phrase in the dream also sounds ambiguous; something which I feel ... in
spite of the dress. “Feel on my own body” is intended. Moreover, I am
struck with the unusual sound of the term “infiltrated portion of skin.”
“An infiltration behind on the upper left” is what we are accustomed to;
this would refer to the lung, and thus again to tuberculosis patients.
_In spite of the dress._
This, to be sure, is only an interpolation. We, of course, examine the
children in the clinic undressed; it is some sort of contradiction to
the manner in which grown-up female patients must be examined. The story
used to be told of a prominent clinician that he always examined his
patients physically only through the clothes. The rest is obscure to me;
I have, frankly, no inclination to follow the matter further.
_Dr. M. says: “It is an infection, but it does not matter. Dysentery
will develop, and the poison will he excreted._”
This at first seems ridiculous to me; still it must be carefully
analysed like everything else. Observed more closely, it seems, however,
to have a kind of meaning. What I had found in the patient was local
diphtheritis. I remember the discussion about diphtheritis and
diphtheria at the time of my daughter’s illness. The latter is the
general infection which proceeds from local diphtheritis. Leopold proves
the existence of such general infection by means of the dulness, which
thus suggests a metastatic lesion. I believe, however, that just this
kind of metastasis does not occur in the case of diphtheria. It rather
recalls pyæmia.
_It does not matter_, is a consolation. I believe it fits in as follows:
The last part of the dream has yielded a content to the effect that the
pains of the patient are the result of a serious organic affection. I
begin to suspect that with this I am only trying to shift the blame from
myself. Psychic treatment cannot be held responsible for the continued
presence of diphtheritic affection. But now, in turn, I am disturbed at
inventing such serious suffering for Irma for the sole purpose of
exculpating myself. It seems cruel. I need (accordingly) the assurance
that the result will be happy, and it does not seem ill-advised that I
should put the words of consolation into the mouth of Dr. M. But here I
consider myself superior to the dream, a fact which needs explanation.
But why is this consolation so nonsensical?
_Dysentery_:
Some sort of far-fetched theoretical notion that pathological material
may be removed through the intestines. Am I in this way trying to make
fun of Dr. M.’s great store of far-fetched explanations, his habit of
finding curious pathological relationships? Dysentery suggests something
else. A few months ago I had in charge a young man suffering from
remarkable pains during evacuation of the bowels, a case which
colleagues had treated as “anæmia with malnutrition.” I realised that it
was a question of hysteria; I was unwilling to use my psychotherapy on
him, and sent him off on a sea voyage. Now a few days before I had
received a despairing letter from him from Egypt, saying that while
there he had suffered a new attack, which the physician had declared to
be dysentery. I suspect, indeed, that the diagnosis was only an error of
my ignorant colleague, who allows hysteria to make a fool of him; but
still I cannot avoid reproaching myself for putting the invalid in a
position where he might contract an organic affection of the bowels in
addition to his hysteria. Furthermore, dysentery sounds like diphtheria,
a word which does not occur in the dream.
Indeed it must be that, with the consoling prognosis: “Dysentery will
develop, &c.,” I am making fun of Dr. M., for I recollect that years ago
he once jokingly told a very similar story of another colleague. He had
been called to consult with this colleague in the case of a woman who
was very seriously ill and had felt obliged to confront the other
physician, who seemed very hopeful, with the fact that he found albumen
in the patient’s urine. The colleague, however, did not let this worry
him, but answered calmly: “That does not matter, doctor; the albumen
will without doubt be excreted.” Thus I can no longer doubt that
derision for those colleagues who are ignorant of hysteria is contained
in this part of the dream. As though in confirmation, this question now
arises in my mind: “Does Dr. M. know that the symptoms of his patient,
of our friend Irma, which give cause for fearing tuberculosis, are also
based on hysteria? Has he recognised this hysteria, or has he stupidly
ignored it?”
But what can be my motive in treating this friend so badly? This is very
simple: Dr. M. agrees with my solution as little as Irma herself. I have
thus already in this dream taken revenge on two persons, on Irma in the
words, “If you still have pains, it is your own fault,” and on Dr. M. in
the wording of the nonsensical consolation which has been put into his
mouth.
_We have immediate knowledge of the origin of the infection._
This immediate knowledge in the dream is very remarkable. Just before we
did not know it, since the infection was first demonstrated by Leopold.
_My friend Otto has recently given her an injection when she felt ill._
Otto had actually related that in the short time of his visit to Irma’s
family, he had been called to a neighbouring hotel in order to give an
injection to some one who fell suddenly ill. Injections again recall the
unfortunate friend who has poisoned himself with cocaine. I had
recommended the remedy to him merely for internal use during the
withdrawal of morphine, but he once gave himself injections of cocaine.
_With a propyl preparation ... propyls ... propionic acid._ How did this
ever occur to me? On the same evening on which I had written part of the
history of the disease before having the dream, my wife opened a bottle
of cordial labelled “Ananas,”[W] (which was a present from our friend
Otto. For he had a habit of making presents on every possible occasion;
I hope he will some day be cured of this by a wife).[X] Such a smell of
fusel oil arose from this cordial that I refused to taste it. My wife
observed: “We will give this bottle to the servants,” and I, still more
prudent, forbade it, with the philanthropic remark: “They mustn’t be
poisoned either.” The smell of fusel oil (amyl ...) has now apparently
awakened in my memory the whole series, propyl, methyl, &c., which has
furnished the propyl preparation of the dream. In this, it is true, I
have employed a substitution; I have dreamt of propyl, after smelling
amyl, but substitutions of this kind are perhaps permissible, especially
in organic chemistry.
_Trimethylamin._ I see the chemical formula of this substance in the
dream, a fact which probably gives evidence of a great effort on the
part of my memory, and, moreover, the formula is printed in heavy type,
as if to lay special stress upon something of particular importance, as
distinguished from the context. To what does this trimethylamin lead,
which has been so forcibly called to my attention? It leads to a
conversation with another friend who for years has known all my
germinating activities, as I have his. At that time he had just informed
me of some of his ideas about sexual chemistry, and had mentioned, among
others, that he thought he recognised in trimethylamin one of the
products of sexual metabolism. This substance thus leads me to
sexuality, to that factor which I credit with the greatest significance
for the origin of the nervous affections which I attempt to cure. My
patient Irma is a young widow; if I am anxious to excuse the failure of
her cure, I suppose I shall best do so by referring to this condition,
which her admirers would be glad to change. How remarkably, too, such a
dream is fashioned! The other woman, whom I take as my patient in the
dream instead of Irma, is also a young widow.
I suspect why the formula of trimethylamin has made itself so prominent
in the dream. So many important things are gathered up in this one word:
Trimethylamin is not only an allusion to the overpowering factor of
sexuality, but also to a person whose sympathy I remember with
satisfaction when I feel myself forsaken in my opinions. Should not this
friend, who plays such a large part in my life, occur again in the chain
of thoughts of the dream? Of course, he must; he is particularly
acquainted with the results which proceed from affections of the nose
and its adjacent cavities, and has revealed to science several highly
remarkable relations of the turbinated bones to the female sexual organs
(the three curly formations in Irma’s throat). I have had Irma examined
by him to see whether the pains in her stomach might be of nasal origin.
But he himself suffers from suppurative rhinitis, which worries him, and
to this perhaps there is an allusion in pyæmia, which hovers before me
in the metastases of the dream.
_Such injections are not made so rashly._ Here the reproach of
carelessness is hurled directly at my friend Otto. I am under the
impression that I had some thought of this sort in the afternoon, when
he seemed to indicate his siding against me by word and look. It was
perhaps: “How easily he can be influenced; how carelessly he pronounces
judgment.” Furthermore, the above sentence again points to my deceased
friend, who so lightly took refuge in cocaine injections. As I have
said, I had not intended injections of the remedy at all. I see that in
reproaching Otto I again touch upon the story of the unfortunate
Matilda, from which arises the same reproach against me. Obviously I am
here collecting examples of my own conscientiousness, but also of the
opposite.
_Probably also the syringe was not clean._ Another reproach directed at
Otto, but originating elsewhere. The day before I happened to meet the
son of a lady eighty-two years of age whom I am obliged to give daily
two injections of morphine. At present she is in the country, and I have
heard that she is suffering from an inflammation of the veins. I
immediately thought that it was a case of infection due to contamination
from the syringe. It is my pride that in two years I have not given her
a single infection; I am constantly concerned, of course, to see that
the syringe is perfectly clean. For I am conscientious. From the
inflammation of the veins, I return to my wife, who had suffered from
emboli during a period of pregnancy, and now three related situations
come to the surface in my memory, involving my wife, Irma, and the
deceased Matilda, the identity of which three persons plainly justifies
my putting them in one another’s place.
I have now completed the interpretation of the dream.[Y] In the course
of this interpretation I have taken great pains to get possession of all
the notions to which a comparison between the dream content and the
dream thoughts hidden behind it must have given rise. Meanwhile, the
“meaning” of the dream has dawned upon me. I have become conscious of a
purpose which is realised by means of the dream, and which must have
been the motive for dreaming. The dream fulfils several wishes, which
have been actuated in me by the events of the preceding evening (Otto’s
news, and the writing down of the history of the disease). For the
result of the dream is that I am not to blame for the suffering which
Irma still has, and that Otto is to blame for it. Now Otto has made me
angry by his remark about Irma’s imperfect cure; the dream avenges me
upon him by turning the reproach back upon himself. The dream acquits me
of responsibility for Irma’s condition by referring it to other causes,
which indeed furnish a great number of explanations. The dream
represents a certain condition of affairs as I should wish it to be;
_the content of the dream is thus the fulfilment of a wish; its motive
is a wish_.
This much is apparent at first sight. But many things in the details of
the dream become intelligible when regarded from the point of view of
wish-fulfilment. I take revenge on Otto, not only for hastily taking
part against me, in that I accuse him of a careless medical operation
(the injection), but I am also avenged on him for the bad cordial which
smells like fusel oil, and I find an expression in the dream which
unites both reproaches; the injection with a preparation of propyl.
Still I am not satisfied, but continue my revenge by comparing him to
his more reliable competitor. I seem to say by this: “I like him better
than you.” But Otto is not the only one who must feel the force of my
anger. I take revenge on the disobedient patient by exchanging her for a
more sensible, more docile one. Nor do I leave the contradiction of Dr.
M. unnoticed, but express my opinion of him in an obvious allusion, to
the effect that his relation to the question is that of _an ignoramus_
(“_dysentery will develop_,” _&c._).
It seems to me, indeed, as though I were appealing from him to some one
better informed (my friend, who has told me about trimethylamin); just
as I have turned from Irma to her friend, I turn from Otto to Leopold.
Rid me of these three persons, replace them by three others of my own
choice, and I shall be released from the reproaches which I do not wish
to have deserved! The unreasonableness itself of these reproaches is
proved to me in the dream in the most elaborate way. Irma’s pains are
not charged to me, because she herself is to blame for them, in that she
refuses to accept my solution. Irma’s pains are none of my business, for
they are of an organic nature, quite impossible to be healed by a
psychic cure. Irma’s sufferings are satisfactorily explained by her
widowhood (trimethylamin!); a fact which, of course, I cannot alter.
Irma’s illness has been caused by an incautious injection on the part of
Otto, with an ill-suited substance—in a way I should never have made an
injection. Irma’s suffering is the result of an injection made with an
unclean syringe, just like the inflammation of the veins in my old lady,
while I never do any such mischief with my injections. I am aware,
indeed, that these explanations of Irma’s illness, which unite in
acquitting me, do not agree with one another; they even exclude one
another. The whole pleading—this dream is nothing else—recalls vividly
the defensive argument of a man who was accused by his neighbour of
having returned a kettle to him in a damaged condition. In the first
place, he said, he had returned the kettle undamaged; in the second, it
already had holes in it when he borrowed it; and thirdly, he had never
borrowed the kettle from his neighbour at all. But so much the better;
if even one of these three methods of defence is recognised as valid,
the man must be acquitted.
Still other subjects mingle in the dream, whose relation to my release
from responsibility for Irma’s illness is not so transparent: the
illness of my daughter and that of a patient of the same name, the
harmfulness of cocaine, the illness of my patient travelling in Egypt,
concern about the health of my wife, my brother, of Dr. M., my own
bodily troubles, and concern about the absent friend who is suffering
from suppurative rhinitis. But if I keep all these things in view, they
combine into a single train of thought, labelled perhaps: Concern for
the health of myself and others—professional conscientiousness. I recall
an undefined disagreeable sensation as Otto brought me the news of
Irma’s condition. I should like to note finally the expression of this
fleeting sensation, which is part of the train of thought that is
mingled into the dream. It is as though Otto had said to me: “You do not
take your physician’s duties seriously enough, you are not
conscientious, do not keep your promises.” Thereupon this train of
thought placed itself at my service in order that I might exhibit proof
of the high degree in which I am conscientious, how intimately I am
concerned with the health of my relatives, friends, and patients.
Curiously enough, there are also in this thought material some painful
memories, which correspond rather to the blame attributed to Otto than
to the accusation against me. The material has the appearance of being
impartial, but the connection between this broader material, upon which
the dream depends, and the more limited theme of the dream which gives
rise to the wish to be innocent of Irma’s illness, is nevertheless
unmistakable.
I do not wish to claim that I have revealed the meaning of the dream
entirely, or that the interpretation is flawless.
I could still spend much time upon it; I could draw further explanations
from it, and bring up new problems which it bids us consider. I even
know the points from which further thought associations might be traced;
but such considerations as are connected with every dream of one’s own
restrain me from the work of interpretation. Whoever is ready to condemn
such reserve, may himself try to be more straightforward than I. I am
content with the discovery which has been just made. If the method of
dream interpretation here indicated is followed, it will be found that
the dream really has meaning, and is by no means the expression of
fragmentary brain activity, which the authors would have us believe.
_When the work of interpretation has been completed the dream may be
recognised as the fulfilment of a wish._
III
THE DREAM IS THE FULFILMENT OF A WISH
When after passing a defile one has reached an eminence where the ways
part and where the view opens out broadly in different directions, it is
permissible to stop for a moment and to consider where one is to turn
next. Something like this happens to us after we have mastered this
first dream interpretation. We find ourselves in the open light of a
sudden cognition. The dream is not comparable to the irregular sounds of
a musical instrument, which, instead of being touched by the hand of the
musician, is struck by some outside force; the dream is not senseless,
not absurd, does not presuppose that a part of our store of ideas is
dormant while another part begins to awaken. It is a psychic phenomenon
of full value, and indeed the fulfilment of a wish; it takes its place
in the concatenation of the waking psychic actions which are
intelligible to us, and it has been built up by a highly complicated
intellectual activity. But at the very moment when we are inclined to
rejoice in this discovery, a crowd of questions overwhelms us. If the
dream, according to the interpretation, represents a wish fulfilled,
what is the cause of the peculiar and unfamiliar manner in which this
fulfilment is expressed? What changes have occurred in the dream
thoughts before they are transformed into the manifest dream which we
remember upon awaking? In what manner has this transformation taken
place? Whence comes the material which has been worked over into the
dream? What causes the peculiarities which we observe in the dream
thoughts, for example, that they may contradict one another? (The
analogy of the kettle, p. 87). Is the dream capable of teaching us
something new about our inner psychic processes, and can its content
correct opinions which we have held during the day? I suggest that for
the present all these questions be laid aside, and that a single path be
pursued. We have found that the dream represents a wish as fulfilled. It
will be our next interest to ascertain whether this is a universal
characteristic of the dream, or only the accidental content of the dream
(“of Irma’s injection”) with which we have begun our analysis, for even
if we make up our minds that every dream has a meaning and psychic
value, we must nevertheless allow for the possibility that this meaning
is not the same in every dream. The first dream we have considered was
the fulfilment of a wish; another may turn out to be a realised
apprehension; a third may have a reflection as to its content; a fourth
may simply reproduce a reminiscence. Are there then other wish dreams;
or are there possibly nothing but wish dreams?
It is easy to show that the character of wish-fulfilment in dreams is
often undisguised and recognisable, so that one may wonder why the
language of dreams has not long since been understood. There is, for
example, a dream which I can cause as often as I like, as it were
experimentally. If in the evening I eat anchovies, olives, or other
strongly salted foods, I become thirsty at night, whereupon I waken. The
awakening, however, is preceded by a dream, which each time has the same
content, namely, that I am drinking. I quaff water in long draughts, it
tastes as sweet as only a cool drink can taste when one’s throat is
parched, and then I awake and have an actual desire to drink. The
occasion for this dream is thirst, which I perceive when I awake. The
wish to drink originates from this sensation, and the dream shows me
this wish as fulfilled. It thereby serves a function the nature of which
I soon guess. I sleep well, and am not accustomed to be awakened by a
bodily need. If I succeed in assuaging my thirst by means of the dream
that I am drinking, I need not wake up in order to satisfy it. It is
thus a dream of convenience. The dream substitutes itself for action, as
elsewhere in life. Unfortunately the need of water for quenching thirst
cannot be satisfied with a dream, like my thirst for revenge upon Otto
and Dr. M., but the intention is the same. This same dream recently
appeared in modified form. On this occasion I became thirsty before
going to bed, and emptied the glass of water which stood on the little
chest next to my bed. Several hours later in the night came a new attack
of thirst, accompanied by discomfort. In order to obtain water, I should
have had to get up and fetch the glass which stood on the night-chest of
my wife. I thus quite appropriately dreamt that my wife was giving me a
drink from a vase; this vase was an Etruscan cinerary urn which I had
brought home from an Italian journey and had since given away. But the
water in it tasted so salty (apparently from the ashes) that I had to
wake. It may be seen how conveniently the dream is capable of arranging
matters; since the fulfilment of a wish is its only purpose, it may be
perfectly egotistic. Love of comfort is really not compatible with
consideration for others. The introduction of the cinerary urn is
probably again the fulfilment of a wish; I am sorry that I no longer
possess this vase; it, like the glass of water at my wife’s side, is
inaccessible to me. The cinerary urn is also appropriate to the
sensation of a salty taste which has now grown stronger, and which I
know will force me to wake up.[Z]
Such convenience dreams were very frequent with me in the years of my
youth. Accustomed as I had always been to work until late at night,
early awakening was always a matter of difficulty for me. I used then to
dream that I was out of bed and was standing at the wash-stand. After a
while I could not make myself admit that I have not yet got up, but
meanwhile I had slept for a time. I am acquainted with the same dream of
laziness as dreamt by a young colleague of mine, who seems to share my
propensity for sleep. The lodging-house keeper with whom he was living
in the neighbourhood of the hospital had strict orders to wake him on
time every morning, but she certainly had a lot of trouble when she
tried to carry out his orders. One morning sleep was particularly sweet.
The woman called into the room: “Mr. Joe, get up; you must go to the
hospital.” Whereupon the sleeper dreamt of a room in the hospital, a bed
in which he was lying, and a chart pinned over his head reading: “Joe
H.... cand. med. 22 years old.” He said to himself in the dream: “If I
am already at the hospital, I don’t have to go there,” turned over and
slept on. He had thus frankly admitted to himself his motive for
dreaming.
Here is another dream, the stimulus for which acts during sleep itself:
One of my women patients, who had had to undergo an unsuccessful
operation on the jaw, was to wear a cooling apparatus on the affected
cheek, according to the orders of the physicians. But she was in the
habit of throwing it off as soon as she had got to sleep. One day I was
asked to reprove her for doing so; for she had again thrown the
apparatus on the floor. The patient defended herself as follows: “This
time I really couldn’t help it; it was the result of a dream which I had
in the night. In the dream, I was in a box at the opera and was taking a
lively interest in the performance. But Mr. Karl Meyer was lying in the
sanatorium and complaining pitifully on account of pains in his jaw. I
said to myself, ‘Since I haven’t the pains, I don’t need the apparatus
either,’ that’s why I threw it away.” This dream of the poor sufferer is
similar to the idea in the expression which comes to our lips when we
are in a disagreeable situation: “I know something that’s a great deal
more fun.” The dream presents this great deal more fun. Mr. Karl Meyer,
to whom the dreamer attributed her pains, was the most indifferent young
man of her acquaintance whom she could recall.
It is no more difficult to discover the fulfilment of wishes in several
dreams which I have collected from healthy persons. A friend who knew my
theory of dreams and had imparted it to his wife, said to me one day:
“My wife asked me to tell you that she dreamt yesterday that she was
having her menses. You will know what that means.” Of course I know: if
the young wife dreams that she is having her menses, the menses have
stopped. I can understand that she would have liked to enjoy her freedom
for a time longer before the discomforts of motherhood began. It was a
clever way of giving notice of her first pregnancy. Another friend
writes that his wife had recently dreamt that she noticed milk stains on
the bosom of her waist. This is also an indication of pregnancy, but
this time not of the first one; the young mother wishes to have more
nourishment for the second child than she had for the first.
A young woman, who for weeks had been cut off from company because she
was nursing a child that was suffering from an infectious disease,
dreams, after its safe termination, of a company of people in which A.
Daudet, Bourget, M. Prevost, and others are present, all of whom are
very pleasant to her and entertain her admirably. The different authors
in the dream also have the features which their pictures give them. M.
Prevost, with whose picture she is not familiar, looks like—the
disinfecting man who on the previous day had cleaned the sick rooms and
had entered them as the first visitor after a long period. Apparently
the dream might be perfectly translated thus: “It is about time now for
something more entertaining than this eternal nursing.”
Perhaps this selection will suffice to prove that often and under the
most complex conditions dreams are found which can be understood only as
fulfilments of wishes, and which present their contents without
concealment. In most cases these are short and simple dreams, which
stand in pleasant contrast to the confused and teeming dream
compositions which have mainly attracted the attention of the authors.
But it will pay to spend some time upon these simple dreams. The most
simple dreams of all, I suppose, are to be expected in the case of
children, whose psychic activities are certainly less complicated than
those of adults. The psychology of children, in my opinion, is to be
called upon for services similar to those which a study of the anatomy
and development of the lower animals renders to the investigation of the
structure of the highest classes of animals. Until now only a few
conscious efforts have been made to take advantage of the psychology of
children for such a purpose.
The dreams of little children are simple fulfilments of wishes, and as
compared, therefore, with the dreams of adults, are not at all
interesting. They present no problem to be solved, but are naturally
invaluable as affording proof that the dream in its essence signifies
the fulfilment of a wish. I have been able to collect several examples
of such dreams from the material furnished by my own children.
For two dreams, one of my daughters, at that time eight and a half years
old, the other of a boy five and a quarter years of age, I am indebted
to an excursion to the beautiful Hallstatt in the summer of 1896. I must
make the preliminary statement that during this summer we were living on
a hill near Aussee, from which, when the weather was good, we enjoyed a
splendid view of the Dachstein from the roof of our house. The Simony
Hut could easily be recognised with a telescope. The little ones often
tried to see it through the telescope—I do not know with what success.
Before the excursion I had told the children that Hallstatt lay at the
foot of the Dachstein. They looked forward to the day with great joy.
From Hallstatt we entered the valley of Eschern, which highly pleased
the children with its varying aspects. One of them, however, the boy of
five, gradually became discontented. As often as a mountain came in
view, he would ask: “Is that the Dachstein?” whereupon I would have to
answer: “No, only a foot-hill.” After this question had been repeated
several times, he became altogether silent; and he was quite unwilling
to come along on the flight of steps to the waterfall. I thought he was
tired out. But the next morning, he approached me radiant with joy, and
said: “Last night I dreamt that we were at Simony Hut.” I understood him
now; he had expected, as I was speaking of the Dachstein, that on the
excursion to Hallstatt, he would ascend the mountain and would come face
to face with the hut, about which there had been so much discussion at
the telescope. When he learned that he was expected to be regaled with
foot-hills and a waterfall, he was disappointed and became discontented.
The dream compensated him for this. I tried to learn some details of the
dream; they were scanty. “Steps must be climbed for six hours,” as he
had heard.
On this excursion wishes, destined to be satisfied only in dreams, had
arisen also in the mind of the girl of eight and a half years. We had
taken with us to Hallstatt the twelve-year-old boy of our neighbour—an
accomplished cavalier, who, it seems to me, already enjoyed the full
sympathy of the little woman. The next morning, then, she related the
following dream: “Just think, I dreamt that Emil was one of us, that he
said papa and mamma to you, and slept at our house in the big room like
our boys. Then mamma came into the room and threw a large handful of
chocolate bars under our beds.” The brothers of the girl, who evidently
had not inherited a familiarity with dream interpretation, declared just
like the authors: “That dream is nonsense.” The girl defended at least a
part of the dream, and it is worth while, from the point of view of the
theory of neuroses, to know which part: “That about Emil belonging to us
is nonsense, but that about the bars of chocolate is not.” It was just
this latter part that was obscure to me. For this mamma furnished me the
explanation. On the way home from the railway station the children had
stopped in front of a slot machine, and had desired exactly such
chocolate bars wrapped in paper with a metallic lustre, as the machine,
according to their experience, had for sale. But the mother had rightly
thought that the day had brought enough wish-fulfilment, and had left
this wish to be satisfied in dreams. This little scene had escaped me. I
at once understood that portion of the dream which had been condemned by
my daughter. I had myself heard the well-behaved guest enjoining the
children to wait until papa or mamma had come up. For the little one the
dream made a lasting adoption based on this temporary relation of the
boy to us. Her tender nature was as yet unacquainted with any form of
being together except those mentioned in the dream, which are taken from
her brothers. Why the chocolate bars were thrown under the bed could
not, of course, be explained without questioning the child.
From a friend I have learnt of a dream very similar to that of my boy.
It concerned an eight-year-old girl. The father had undertaken a walk to
Dornbach with the children, intending to visit the Rohrerhütte, but
turned back because it had grown too late, and promised the children to
make up for their disappointment some other time. On the way back, they
passed a sign which showed the way to the Hameau. The children now asked
to be taken to that place also, but had to be content, for the same
reason, with a postponement to another day. The next morning, the
eight-year-old girl came to the father, satisfied, saying: “Papa, I
dreamt last night that you were with us at the Rohrerhütte and on the
Hameau.” Her impatience had thus in the dream anticipated the fulfilment
of the promise made by her father.
Another dream, which the picturesque beauty of the Aussee inspired in my
daughter, at that time three and a quarter years old, is equally
straightforward. The little one had crossed the lake for the first time,
and the trip had passed too quickly for her. She did not want to leave
the boat at the landing, and cried bitterly. The next morning she told
us: “Last night I was sailing on the lake.” Let us hope that the
duration of this dream ride was more satisfactory to her.
My eldest boy, at that time eight years of age, was already dreaming of
the realisation of his fancies. He had been riding in a chariot with
Achilles, with Diomed as charioteer. He had, of course, on the previous
day shown a lively interest in the _Myths of Greece_, which had been
given to his elder sister.
If it be granted that the talking of children in sleep likewise belongs
to the category of dreaming, I may report the following as one of the
most recent dreams in my collection. My youngest girl, at that time
nineteen months old, had vomited one morning, and had therefore been
kept without food throughout the day. During the night which followed
upon this day of hunger, she was heard to call excitedly in her sleep:
“Anna Feud, strawberry, huckleberry, omelette, pap!” She used her name
in this way in order to express her idea of property; the menu must have
included about everything which would seem to her a desirable meal; the
fact that berries appeared in it twice was a demonstration against the
domestic sanitary regulations, and was based on the circumstance, by no
means overlooked by her, that the nurse ascribed her indisposition to an
over-plentiful consumption of strawberries; she thus in the dream took
revenge for this opinion which was distasteful to her.[AA]
If we call childhood happy because it does not yet know sexual desire,
we must not forget how abundant a source of disappointment and
self-denial, and thus of dream stimulation, the other of the great
life-impulses may become for it.[AB] Here is a second example showing
this. My nephew of twenty-two months had been given the task of
congratulating me upon my birthday, and of handing me, as a present, a
little basket of cherries, which at that time of the year were not yet
in season. It seemed difficult for him, for he repeated again and again:
“Cherries in it,” and could not be induced to let the little basket go
out of his hands. But he knew how to secure his compensation. He had,
until now, been in the habit of telling his mother every morning that he
had dreamt of the “white soldier,” an officer of the guard in a white
cloak, whom he had once admired on the street. On the day after the
birthday, he awakened joyfully with the information which could have had
its origin only in a dream: “He(r)man eat up all the cherries!”[AC]
What animals dream of I do not know. A proverb for which I am indebted
to one of my readers claims to know, for it raises the question: “What
does the goose dream of?” the answer being: “Of maize!” The whole theory
that the dream is the fulfilment of a wish is contained in these
sentences.[AD]
We now perceive that we should have reached our theory of the hidden
meaning of the dream by the shortest road if we had merely consulted
colloquial usage. The wisdom of proverbs, it is true, sometimes speaks
contemptuously enough of the dream—it apparently tries to justify
science in expressing the opinion that “Dreams are mere bubbles;” but
still for colloquial usage the dream is the gracious fulfiller of
wishes. “I should never have fancied that in the wildest dream,”
exclaims one who finds his expectations surpassed in reality.
IV
DISTORTION IN DREAMS
If I make the assertion that wish fulfilment is the meaning of every
dream, that, accordingly, there can be no dreams except wish dreams, I
am sure at the outset to meet with the most emphatic contradiction.
Objections will be made to this effect: “The fact that there are dreams
which must be understood as fulfilments of wishes is not new, but, on
the contrary, has long since been recognised by the authors. _Cf._
Radestock[54] (pp. 137–138), Volkelt[72] (pp. 110–111), Tissié[68] (p.
70), M. Simon[63] (p. 42) on the hunger dreams of the imprisoned Baron
Trenck, and the passage in Griesinger[31] (p. 11). The assumption that
there can be nothing but dreams of wish fulfilment, however, is another
of those unjustified generalisations by which you have been pleased to
distinguish yourself of late. Indeed dreams which exhibit the most
painful content, but not a trace of wish fulfilment, occur plentifully
enough. The pessimistic philosopher, Edward von Hartman, perhaps stands
furthest from the theory of wish fulfilment. He expresses himself in his
_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, Part II. (stereotyped edition, p. 34),
to the following effect:—
“‘As regards the dream, all the troubles of waking life are transferred
by it to the sleeping state; only the one thing, which can in some
measure reconcile a cultured person to life-scientific and artistic
enjoyment is not transferred....’ But even less discontented observers
have laid emphasis on the fact that in dreams pain and disgust are more
frequent than pleasure; so Scholz[59] (p. 39), Volkelt[72] (p. 80), and
others. Indeed two ladies, Sarah Weed and Florence Hallam,[33] have
found from the elaboration of their dreams a mathematical expression for
the preponderance of displeasure in dreams. They designate 58 per cent.
of the dreams as disagreeable, and only 28·6 per cent. as positively
pleasant. Besides those dreams which continue the painful sensations of
life during sleep, there are also dreams of fear, in which this most
terrible of all disagreeable sensations tortures us until we awake, and
it is with just these dreams of fear that children are so often
persecuted (_Cf._ Debacker [17] concerning the Pavor Nocturnus), though
it is in the case of children that you have found dreams of wishing
undisguised.”
Indeed it is the anxiety dreams which seem to prevent a generalisation
of the thesis that the dream is a wish-fulfilment, which we have
established by means of the examples in the last section; they seem even
to brand this thesis as an absurdity.
It is not difficult, however, to escape these apparently conclusive
objections. Please observe that our doctrine does not rest upon an
acceptance of the manifest dream content, but has reference to the
thought content which is found to lie behind the dream by the process of
interpretation. Let us contrast the _manifest_ and the _latent dream
content_. It is true that there are dreams whose content is of the most
painful nature. But has anyone ever tried to interpret these dreams, to
disclose their latent thought content? If not, the two objections are no
longer valid against us; there always remains the possibility that even
painful and fearful dreams may be discovered to be wish fulfilments upon
interpretation.[AE]
In scientific work it is often advantageous, when the solution of one
problem presents difficulties, to take up a second problem, just as it
is easier to crack two nuts together instead of separately. Accordingly
we are confronted not merely with the problem: How can painful and
fearful dreams be the fulfilments of wishes? but we may also, from our
discussion so far, raise the question: Why do not the dreams which show
an indifferent content, but turn out to be wish-fulfilments, show this
meaning undisguised? Take the fully reported dream of Irma’s injection;
it is in no way painful in its nature, and can be recognised, upon
interpretation, as a striking wish-fulfilment. Why, in the first place,
is an interpretation necessary? Why does not the dream say directly what
it means? As a matter of fact, even the dream of Irma’s injection does
not at first impress us as representing a wish of the dreamer as
fulfilled. The reader will not have received this impression, and even I
myself did not know it until I had undertaken the analysis. If we call
this peculiarity of the dream of needing an explanation _the fact of the
distortion_ of dreams, then a second question arises: What is the origin
of this disfigurement of dreams?
If one’s first impressions on this subject were consulted, one might
happen upon several possible solutions; for example, that there is an
inability during sleep to find an adequate expression for the dream
thoughts. The analysis of certain dreams, however, compels us to give
the disfigurement of dreams another explanation. I shall show this by
employing a second dream of my own, which again involves numerous
indiscretions, but which compensates for this personal sacrifice by
affording a thorough elucidation of the problem.
_Preliminary Statement._—In the spring of 1897 I learnt that two
professors of our university had proposed me for appointment as
Professor extraord. (assistant professor). This news reached me
unexpectedly and pleased me considerably as an expression of
appreciation on the part of two eminent men which could not be explained
by personal interest. But, I immediately thought, I must not permit
myself to attach any expectation to this event. The university
government had during the last few years left proposals of this kind
unconsidered, and several colleagues, who were ahead of me in years, and
who were at least my equals in merit, had been waiting in vain during
this time for their appointment. I had no reason to suppose I should
fare better. I resolved then to comfort myself. I am not, so far as I
know, ambitious, and I engage in medical practice with satisfying
results even without the recommendation of a title. Moreover, it was not
a question whether I considered the grapes sweet or sour, for they
undoubtedly hung much too high for me.
One evening I was visited by a friend of mine, one of those colleagues
whose fate I had taken as a warning for myself. As he had long been a
candidate for promotion to the position of professor, which in our
society raises the physician to a demigod among his patients, and as he
was less resigned than I, he was in the habit of making representations
from time to time, at the offices of the university government, for the
purpose of advancing his interests. He came to me from a visit of that
kind. He said that this time he had driven the exalted gentleman into a
corner, and had asked him directly whether considerations of creed were
not really responsible for the deferment of his appointment. The answer
had been that to be sure—in the present state of public opinion—His
Excellency was not in a position, &c. “Now I at least know what I am
at,” said my friend in closing his narrative, which told me nothing new,
but which was calculated to confirm me in my resignation. For the same
considerations of creed applied to my own case.
On the morning after this visit, I had the following dream, which was
notable on account of its form. It consisted of two thoughts and two
images, so that a thought and an image alternated. But I here record
only the first half of the dream, because the other half has nothing to
do with the purpose which the citation of the dream should serve.
I. _Friend R. is my uncle—I feel great affection for him._
II. _I see before me his face somewhat altered._
_It seems to be elongated; a yellow beard, which surrounds it, is
emphasised with peculiar distinctness._
Then follow the other two portions, again a thought and an image, which
I omit.
The interpretation of this dream was accomplished in the following
manner:
As the dream occurred to me in the course of the forenoon, I laughed
outright and said: “The dream is nonsense.” But I could not get it out
of my mind, and the whole day it pursued me, until, at last, in the
evening I reproached myself with the words: “If in the course of dream
interpretation one of your patients had nothing better to say than ‘That
is nonsense,’ you would reprove him, and would suspect that behind the
dream there was hidden some disagreeable affair, the exposure of which
he wanted to spare himself. Apply the same thing in your own case; your
opinion that the dream is nonsense probably signifies merely an inner
resistance to its interpretation. Do not let yourself be deterred.” I
then proceeded to the interpretation.
“R. is my uncle.” What does that mean. I have had only one uncle, my
uncle Joseph.[AF] His story, to be sure, was a sad one. He had yielded
to the temptation, more than thirty years before, of engaging in
dealings which the law punishes severely, and which on that occasion
also it had visited with punishment. My father, who thereupon became
grey from grief in a few days, always used to say that Uncle Joseph was
never a wicked man, but that he was indeed a simpleton; so he expressed
himself. If, then, friend R. is my uncle Joseph, that is equivalent to
saying: “R. is a simpleton.” Hardly credible and very unpleasant! But
there is that face which I see in the dream, with its long features and
its yellow beard. My uncle actually had such a face—long and surrounded
by a handsome blond beard. My friend R. was quite dark, but when
dark-haired persons begin to grow grey, they pay for the glory of their
youthful years. Their black beard undergoes an unpleasant change of
color, each hair separately; first it becomes reddish brown, then
yellowish brown, and then at last definitely grey. The beard of my
friend R. is now in this stage, as is my own moreover, a fact which I
notice with regret. The face which I see in the dream is at once that of
my friend R. and that of my uncle. It is like a composite photograph of
Galton, who, in order to emphasise family resemblances, had several
faces photographed on the same plate. No doubt is thus possible, I am
really of the opinion that my friend R. is a simpleton—like my uncle
Joseph.
I have still no idea for what purpose I have constructed this
relationship, to which I must unconditionally object. But it is not a
very far-reaching one, for my uncle was a criminal, my friend R. is
innocent—perhaps with the exception of having been punished for knocking
down an apprentice with his bicycle. Could I mean this offence? That
would be making ridiculous comparisons. Here I recollect another
conversation which I had with another colleague, N., and indeed upon the
same subject. I met N. on the street. He likewise has been nominated for
a professorship, and having heard of my being honoured, congratulated me
upon it. I declined emphatically, saying, “You are the last man to make
a joke like this, because you have experienced what the nomination is
worth in your own case.” Thereupon he said, though probably not in
earnest, “You cannot be sure about that. Against me there is a very
particular objection. Don’t you know that a woman once entered a legal
complaint against me? I need not assure you that an inquiry was made; it
was a mean attempt at blackmail, and it was all I could do to save the
plaintiff herself from punishment. But perhaps the affair will be
pressed against me at the office in order that I may not be appointed.
You, however, are above reproach.” Here I have come upon a criminal, and
at the same time upon the interpretation and trend of the dream. My
uncle Joseph represents for me both colleagues who have not been
appointed to the professorship, the one as a simpleton, the other as a
criminal. I also know now for what purpose I need this representation.
If considerations of creed are a determining factor in the postponement
of the appointment of my friends, then my own appointment is also put in
question: but if I can refer the rejection of the two friends to other
causes, which do not apply to my case, my hope remains undisturbed. This
is the procedure of my dream; it makes the one, R., a simpleton, the
other, N., a criminal; since, however, I am neither the one nor the
other, our community of interest is destroyed, I have a right to enjoy
the expectation of being appointed a professor, and have escaped the
painful application to my own case of the information which the high
official has given to R.
I must occupy myself still further with the interpretation of this
dream. For my feelings it is not yet sufficiently cleared up. I am still
disquieted by the ease with which I degrade two respected colleagues for
the purpose of clearing the way to the professorship for myself. My
dissatisfaction with my procedure has indeed diminished since I have
learnt to evaluate statements made in dreams. I would argue against
anyone who urged that I really consider R. a simpleton, and that I do
not credit N.’s account of the blackmail affair. I do not believe either
that Irma has been made seriously ill by an injection given her by Otto
with a preparation of propyl. Here, as before, it is only the _wish that
the case may be as the dream expresses it_. The statement in which my
wish is realised sounds less absurd in the second dream than in the
first; it is made here with a more skilful utilisation of facts as
points of attachment, something like a well-constructed slander, where
“there is something in it.” For my friend R. had at that time the vote
of a professor from the department against him, and my friend N. had
himself unsuspectingly furnished me with the material for slander.
Nevertheless, I repeat, the dream seems to me to require further
elucidation.
I remember now that the dream contains still another portion which so
far our interpretation has not taken into account. After it occurs to me
that my friend R. is my uncle, I feel great affection for him. To whom
does this feeling belong? For my uncle Joseph, of course, I have never
had any feelings of affection. For years my friend R. has been beloved
and dear to me; but if I were to go to him and express my feelings for
him in terms which came anywhere near corresponding to the degree of
affection in the dream, he would doubtless be surprised. My affection
for him seems untrue and exaggerated, something like my opinion of his
psychic qualities, which I express by fusing his personality with that
of my uncle; but it is exaggerated in an opposite sense. But now a new
state of affairs becomes evident to me. The affection in the dream does
not belong to the hidden content, to the thoughts behind the dream; it
stands in opposition to this content; it is calculated to hide the
information which interpretation may bring. Probably this is its very
purpose. I recall with what resistance I applied myself to the work of
interpretation, how long I tried to postpone it, and how I declared the
dream to be sheer nonsense. I know from my psychoanalytical treatments
how such condemnation is to be interpreted. It has no value as affording
information, but only as the registration of an affect. If my little
daughter does not like an apple which is offered her, she asserts that
the apple has a bitter taste, without even having tasted it. If my
patients act like the little girl, I know that it is a question of a
notion which they want to _suppress_. The same applies to my dream. I do
not want to interpret it because it contains something to which I
object. After the interpretation of the dream has been completed, I find
out what it was I objected to; it was the assertion that R. is a
simpleton. I may refer the affection which I feel for R. not to the
hidden dream thoughts, but rather to this unwillingness of mine. If my
dream as compared with its hidden content is disfigured at this point,
and is disfigured, moreover, into something opposite, then the apparent
affection in the dream serves the purpose of disfigurement; or, in other
words, the disfigurement is here shown to be intended: it is a means of
dissimulation. My dream thoughts contain an unfavourable reference to
R.; in order that I may not become aware of it, its opposite, a feeling
of affection for him, makes its way into the dream.
The fact here recognised might be of universal applicability. As the
examples in Section III. have shown, there are dreams which are
undisguised wish-fulfilments. Wherever a wish-fulfilment is
unrecognisable and concealed, there must be present a feeling of
repulsion towards this wish, and in consequence of this repulsion the
wish is unable to gain expression except in a disfigured state. I shall
try to find a case in social life which is parallel to this occurrence
in the inner psychic life. Where in social life can a similar
disfigurement of a psychic act be found? Only where two persons are in
question, one of whom possesses a certain power, while the other must
have a certain consideration for this power. This second person will
then disfigure his psychic actions, or, as we may say, he will
dissimulate. The politeness which I practise every day is largely
dissimulation of this kind. If I interpret my dreams for the benefit of
the reader I am forced to make such distortions. The poet also complains
about such disfigurement:
“You may not tell the best that you know to the youngsters.”
The political writer who has unpleasant truths to tell to the government
finds himself in the same position. If he tells them without reserve,
the government will suppress them—subsequently in case of a verbal
expression of opinion, preventatively, if they are to be published in
print. The writer must fear _censure_; he therefore modifies and
disfigures the expression of his opinion. He finds himself compelled,
according to the sensitiveness of this censure, either to restrain
himself from certain particular forms of attack or to speak in allusion
instead of direct designations. Or he must disguise his objectionable
statement in a garb that seems harmless. He may, for instance, tell of
an occurrence between two mandarins in the Orient, while he has the
officials of his own country in view. The stricter the domination of the
censor, the more extensive becomes the disguise, and often the more
humorous the means employed to put the reader back on the track of the
real meaning.
The correspondence between the phenomena of the censor and those of
dream distortion, which may be traced in detail, justifies us in
assuming similar conditions for both. We should then assume in each
human being, as the primary cause of dream formation, two psychic forces
(streams, systems), of which one constitutes the wish expressed by the
dream, while the other acts as a censor upon this dream wish, and by
means of this censoring forces a distortion of its expression. The only
question is as to the basis of the authority of this second instance[AG]
by virtue of which it may exercise its censorship. If we remember that
the hidden dream thoughts are not conscious before analysis, but that
the apparent dream content is remembered as conscious, we easily reach
the assumption that admittance to consciousness is the privilege of the
second instance. Nothing can reach consciousness from the first system
which has not first passed the second instance, and the second instance
lets nothing pass without exercising its rights and forcing such
alterations upon the candidate for admission to consciousness as are
pleasant to itself. We are here forming a very definite conception of
the “essence” of consciousness; for us the state of becoming conscious
is a particular psychic act, different from and independent of becoming
fixed or of being conceived, and consciousness appears to us as an organ
of sense, which perceives a content presented from another source. It
may be shown that psychopathology cannot possibly dispense with these
fundamental assumptions. We may reserve a more thorough examination of
these for a later time.
If I keep in mind the idea of the two psychic instances and their
relations to consciousness, I find in the sphere of politics a very
exact analogy for the extraordinary affection which I feel for my friend
R., who suffers such degradation in the course of the dream
interpretation. I turn my attention to a political state in which a
ruler, jealous of his rights, and a live public opinion are in conflict
with each other. The people are indignant against an official whom they
hate, and demand his dismissal; and in order not to show that he is
compelled to respect the public wish, the autocrat will expressly confer
upon the official some great honour, for which there would otherwise
have been no occasion. Thus the second instance referred to, which
controls access to consciousness, honours my friend R. with a profusion
of extraordinary tenderness, because the wish activities of the first
system, in accordance with a particular interest which they happen to be
pursuing, are inclined to put him down as a simpleton.[AH]
Perhaps we shall now begin to suspect that dream interpretation is
capable of giving us hints about the structure of our psychic apparatus
which we have thus far expected in vain from philosophy. We shall not,
however, follow this track, but return to our original problem as soon
as we have cleared up the subject of dream-disfigurement. The question
has arisen how dreams with disagreeable content can be analysed as the
fulfilments of wishes. We see now that this is possible in case
dream-disfigurement has taken place, in case the disagreeable content
serves only as a disguise for what is wished. Keeping in mind our
assumptions in regard to the two psychic instances, we may now proceed
to say: disagreeable dreams, as a matter of fact, contain something
which is disagreeable to the second instance, but which at the same time
fulfils a wish of the first instance. They are wish dreams in the sense
that every dream originates in the first instance, while the second
instance acts towards the dream only in a repelling, not in a creative
manner. If we limit ourselves to a consideration of what the second
instance contributes to the dream, we can never understand the dream. If
we do so, all the riddles which the authors have found in the dream
remain unsolved.
That the dream actually has a secret meaning, which turns out to be the
fulfilment of a wish, must be proved afresh for every case by means of
an analysis. I therefore select several dreams which have painful
contents and attempt an analysis of them. They are partly dreams of
hysterical subjects, which require long preliminary statements, and now
and then also an examination of the psychic processes which occur in
hysteria. I cannot, however, avoid this added difficulty in the
exposition.
When I give a psychoneurotic patient analytical treatment, dreams are
always, as I have said, the subject of our discussion. It must,
therefore, give him all the psychological explanations through whose aid
I myself have come to an understanding of his symptoms, and here I
undergo an unsparing criticism, which is perhaps not less keen than that
I must expect from my colleagues. Contradiction of the thesis that all
dreams are the fulfilments of wishes is raised by my patients with
perfect regularity. Here are several examples of the dream material
which is offered me to refute this position.
“You always tell me that the dream is a wish fulfilled,” begins a clever
lady patient. “Now I shall tell you a dream in which the content is
quite the opposite, in which a wish of mine is _not_ fulfilled. How do
you reconcile that with your theory? The dream is as follows:—
“_I want to give a supper, but having nothing at hand except some smoked
salmon, I think of going marketing, but I remember that it is Sunday
afternoon, when all the shops are closed. I next try to telephone to
some caterers, but the telephone is out of order. Thus I must resign my
wish to give a supper._”
I answer, of course, that only the analysis can decide the meaning of
this dream, although I admit that at first sight it seems sensible and
coherent, and looks like the opposite of a wish-fulfilment. “But what
occurrence has given rise to this dream?” I ask. “You know that the
stimulus for a dream always lies among the experiences of the preceding
day.”
_Analysis._—The husband of the patient, an upright and conscientious
wholesale butcher, had told her the day before that he is growing too
fat, and that he must, therefore, begin treatment for obesity. He was
going to get up early, take exercise, keep to a strict diet, and above
all accept no more invitations to suppers. She proceeds laughingly to
relate how her husband at an inn table had made the acquaintance of an
artist, who insisted upon painting his portrait because he, the painter,
had never found such an expressive head. But her husband had answered in
his rough way, that he was very thankful for the honour, but that he was
quite convinced that a portion of the backside of a pretty young girl
would please the artist better than his whole face.[AI] She said that
she was at the time very much in love with her husband, and teased him a
good deal. She had also asked him not to send her any caviare. What does
that mean?
As a matter of fact, she had wanted for a long time to eat a caviare
sandwich every forenoon, but had grudged herself the expense. Of course,
she would at once get the caviare from her husband, as soon as she asked
him for it. But she had begged him, on the contrary, not to send her the
caviare, in order that she might tease him about it longer.
This explanation seems far-fetched to me. Unadmitted motives are in the
habit of hiding behind such unsatisfactory explanations. We are reminded
of subjects hypnotised by Bernheim, who carried out a posthypnotic
order, and who, upon being asked for their motives, instead of
answering: “I do not know why I did that,” had to invent a reason that
was obviously inadequate. Something similar is probably the case with
the caviare of my patient. I see that she is compelled to create an
unfulfilled wish in life. Her dream also shows the reproduction of the
wish as accomplished. But why does she need an unfulfilled wish?
The ideas so far produced are insufficient for the interpretation of the
dream. I beg for more. After a short pause, which corresponds to the
overcoming of a resistance, she reports further that the day before she
had made a visit to a friend, of whom she is really jealous, because her
husband is always praising this woman so much. Fortunately, this friend
is very lean and thin, and her husband likes well-rounded figures. Now
of what did this lean friend speak? Naturally of her wish to become
somewhat stouter. She also asked my patient: “When are you going to
invite us again? You always have such a good table.”
Now the meaning of the dream is clear. I may say to the patient: “It is
just as though you had thought at the time of the request: ‘Of course,
I’ll invite you, so you can eat yourself fat at my house and become
still more pleasing to my husband. I would rather give no more suppers.’
The dream then tells you that you cannot give a supper, thereby
fulfilling your wish not to contribute anything to the rounding out of
your friend’s figure. The resolution of your husband to refuse
invitations to supper for the sake of getting thin teaches you that one
grows fat on the things served in company.” Now only some conversation
is necessary to confirm the solution. The smoked salmon in the dream has
not yet been traced. “How did the salmon mentioned in the dream occur to
you?” “Smoked salmon is the favourite dish of this friend,” she
answered. I happen to know the lady, and may corroborate this by saying
that she grudges herself the salmon just as much as my patient grudges
herself the caviare.
The dream admits of still another and more exact interpretation, which
is necessitated only by a subordinate circumstance. The two
interpretations do not contradict one another, but rather cover each
other and furnish a neat example of the usual ambiguity of dreams as
well as of all other psychopathological formations. We have seen that at
the same time that she dreams of the denial of the wish, the patient is
in reality occupied in securing an unfulfilled wish (the caviare
sandwiches). Her friend, too, had expressed a wish, namely, to get
fatter, and it would not surprise us if our lady had dreamt that the
wish of the friend was not being fulfilled. For it is her own wish that
a wish of her friend’s—for increase in weight—should not be fulfilled.
Instead of this, however, she dreams that one of her own wishes is not
fulfilled. The dream becomes capable of a new interpretation, if in the
dream she does not intend herself, but her friend, if she has put
herself in the place of her friend, or, as we may say, has identified
herself with her friend.
I think she has actually done this, and as a sign of this identification
she has created an unfulfilled wish in reality. But what is the meaning
of this hysterical identification? To clear this up a thorough
exposition is necessary. Identification is a highly important factor in
the mechanism of hysterical symptoms; by this means patients are enabled
in their symptoms to represent not merely their own experiences, but the
experiences of a great number of other persons, and can suffer, as it
were, for a whole mass of people, and fill all the parts of a drama by
means of their own personalities alone. It will here be objected that
this is well-known hysterical imitation, the ability of hysteric
subjects to copy all the symptoms which impress them when they occur in
others, as though their pity were stimulated to the point of
reproduction. But this only indicates the way in which the psychic
process is discharged in hysterical imitation; the way in which a
psychic act proceeds and the act itself are two different things. The
latter is slightly more complicated than one is apt to imagine the
imitation of hysterical subjects to be: it corresponds to an unconscious
concluded process, as an example will show. The physician who has a
female patient with a particular kind of twitching, lodged in the
company of other patients in the same room of the hospital, is not
surprised when some morning he learns that this peculiar hysterical
attack has found imitations. He simply says to himself: The others have
seen her and have done likewise: that is psychic infection. Yes, but
psychic infection proceeds in somewhat the following manner: As a rule,
patients know more about one another than the physician knows about each
of them, and they are concerned about each other when the visit of the
doctor is over. Some of them have an attack to-day: soon it is known
among the rest that a letter from home, a return of love-sickness or the
like, is the cause of it. Their sympathy is aroused, and the following
syllogism, which does not reach consciousness, is completed in them: “If
it is possible to have this kind of an attack from such causes, I too
may have this kind of an attack, for I have the same reasons.” If this
were a cycle capable of becoming conscious, it would perhaps express
itself in _fear_ of getting the same attack; but it takes place in
another psychic sphere, and, therefore, ends in the realisation of the
dreaded symptom. Identification is therefore not a simple imitation, but
a sympathy based upon the same etiological claim; it expresses an “as
though,” and refers to some common quality which has remained in the
unconscious.
Identification is most often used in hysteria to express sexual
community. An hysterical woman identifies herself most readily—although
not exclusively—with persons with whom she has had sexual relations, or
who have sexual intercourse with the same persons as herself. Language
takes such a conception into consideration: two lovers are “one.” In the
hysterical phantasy, as well as in the dream, it is sufficient for the
identification if one thinks of sexual relations, whether or not they
become real. The patient, then, only follows the rules of the hysterical
thought processes when she gives expression to her jealousy of her
friend (which, moreover, she herself admits to be unjustified, in that
she puts herself in her place and identifies herself with her by
creating a symptom—the denied wish). I might further clarify the process
specifically as follows: She puts herself in the place of her friend in
the dream, because her friend has taken her own place in relation to her
husband, and because she would like to take her friend’s place in the
esteem of her husband.[AJ]
The contradiction to my theory of dreams in the case of another female
patient, the most witty among all my dreamers, was solved in a simpler
manner, although according to the scheme that the non-fulfilment of one
wish signifies the fulfilment of another. I had one day explained to her
that the dream is a wish-fulfilment. The next day she brought me a dream
to the effect that she was travelling with her mother-inlaw to their
common summer resort. Now I knew that she had struggled violently
against spending the summer in the neighbourhood of her mother-in-law. I
also knew that she had luckily avoided her mother-in-law by renting an
estate in a far-distant country resort. Now the dream reversed this
wished-for solution; was not this in the flattest contradiction to my
theory of wish-fulfilment in the dream? Certainly, it was only necessary
to draw the inferences from this dream in order to get at its
interpretation. According to this dream, I was in the wrong. _It was
thus her wish that I should be in the wrong, and this wish the dream
showed her as fulfilled._ But the wish that I should be in the wrong,
which was fulfilled in the theme of the country home, referred to a more
serious matter. At that time I had made up my mind, from the material
furnished by her analysis, that something of significance for her
illness must have occurred at a certain time in her life. She had denied
it because it was not present in her memory. We soon came to see that I
was in the right. Her wish that I should be in the wrong, which is
transformed into the dream, thus corresponded to the justifiable wish
that those things, which at the time had only been suspected, had never
occurred at all.
Without an analysis, and merely by means of an assumption, I took the
liberty of interpreting a little occurrence in the case of a friend, who
had been my colleague through the eight classes of the Gymnasium. He
once heard a lecture of mine delivered to a small assemblage, on the
novel subject of the dream as the fulfilment of a wish. He went home,
dreamt _that he had lost all his suits_—he was a lawyer—and then
complained to me about it. I took refuge in the evasion: “One can’t win
all one’s suits,” but I thought to myself: “If for eight years I sat as
Primus on the first bench, while he moved around somewhere in the middle
of the class, may he not naturally have had a wish from his boyhood days
that I, too, might for once completely disgrace myself?”
In the same way another dream of a more gloomy character was offered me
by a female patient as a contradiction to my theory of the wish-dream.
The patient, a young girl, began as follows: “You remember that my
sister has now only one boy, Charles: she lost the elder one, Otto,
while I was still at her house. Otto was my favourite; it was I who
really brought him up. I like the other little fellow, too, but of
course not nearly as much as the dead one. Now I dreamt last night that
_I saw Charles lying dead before me_. _He was lying in his little
coffin, his hands folded: there were candles all about, and, in short,
it was just like the time of little Otto’s death, which shocked me so
profoundly._ Now tell me, what does this mean? You know me: am I really
bad enough to wish my sister to lose the only child she has left? Or
does the dream mean that I wish Charles to be dead rather than Otto,
whom I like so much better?”
I assured her that this interpretation was impossible. After some
reflection I was able to give her the interpretation of the dream, which
I subsequently made her confirm.
Having become an orphan at an early age, the girl had been brought up in
the house of a much older sister, and had met among the friends and
visitors who came to the house, a man who made a lasting impression upon
her heart. It looked for a time as though these barely expressed
relations were to end in marriage, but this happy culmination was
frustrated by the sister, whose motives have never found a complete
explanation. After the break, the man who was loved by our patient
avoided the house: she herself became independent some time after little
Otto’s death, to whom her affection had now turned. But she did not
succeed in freeing herself from the inclination for her sister’s friend
in which she had become involved. Her pride commanded her to avoid him;
but it was impossible for her to transfer her love to the other suitors
who presented themselves in order. Whenever the man whom she loved, who
was a member of the literary profession, announced a lecture anywhere,
she was sure to be found in the audience; she also seized every other
opportunity to see him from a distance unobserved by him. I remembered
that on the day before she had told me that the Professor was going to a
certain concert, and that she was also going there, in order to enjoy
the sight of him. This was on the day of the dream; and the concert was
to take place on the day on which she told me the dream. I could now
easily see the correct interpretation, and I asked her whether she could
think of any event which had happened after the death of little Otto.
She answered immediately: “Certainly; at that time the Professor
returned after a long absence, and I saw him once more beside the coffin
of little Otto.” It was exactly as I had expected. I interpreted the
dream in the following manner: If now the other boy were to die, the
same thing would be repeated. You would spend the day with your sister,
the Professor would surely come in order to offer condolence, and you
would see him again under the same circumstances as at that time. The
dream signifies nothing but this wish of yours to see him again, against
which you are fighting inwardly. I know that you are carrying the ticket
for to-day’s concert in your bag. Your dream is a dream of impatience;
it has anticipated the meeting which is to take place to-day by several
hours.
In order to disguise her wish she had obviously selected a situation in
which wishes of that sort are commonly suppressed—a situation which is
so filled with sorrow that love is not thought of. And yet, it is very
easily probable that even in the actual situation at the bier of the
second, more dearly loved boy, which the dream copied faithfully, she
had not been able to suppress her feelings of affection for the visitor
whom she had missed for so long a time.
A different explanation was found in the case of a similar dream of
another female patient, who was distinguished in her earlier years by
her quick wit and her cheerful demeanour, and who still showed these
qualities at least in the notions which occurred to her in the course of
treatment. In connection with a longer dream, it seemed to this lady
that she saw her fifteen-year-old daughter lying dead before her in a
box. She was strongly inclined to convert this dream-image into an
objection to the theory of wish-fulfilment, but herself suspected that
the detail of the box must lead to a different conception of the
dream.[AK] In the course of the analysis it occurred to her that on the
evening before, the conversation of the company had turned upon the
English word “box,” and upon the numerous translations of it into
German, such as box, theatre box, chest, box on the ear, &c. From other
components of the same dream it is now possible to add that the lady had
guessed the relationship between the English word “box” and the German
_Büchse_, and had then been haunted by the memory that _Büchse_ (as well
as “box”) is used in vulgar speech to designate the female genital
organ. It was therefore possible, making a certain allowance for her
notions on the subject of topographical anatomy, to assume that the
child in the box signified a child in the womb of the mother. At this
stage of the explanation she no longer denied that the picture of the
dream really corresponded to one of her wishes. Like so many other young
women, she was by no means happy when she became pregnant, and admitted
to me more than once the wish that her child might die before its birth;
in a fit of anger following a violent scene with her husband she had
even struck her abdomen with her fists in order to hit the child within.
The dead child was, therefore, really the fulfilment of a wish, but a
wish which had been put aside for fifteen years, and it is not
surprising that the fulfilment of the wish was no longer recognised
after so long an interval. For there had been many changes meanwhile.
The group of dreams to which the two last mentioned belong, having as
content the death of beloved relatives, will be considered again under
the head of “Typical Dreams.” I shall there be able to show by new
examples that in spite of their undesirable content, all these dreams
must be interpreted as wish-fulfilments. For the following dream, which
again was told me in order to deter me from a hasty generalisation of
the theory of wishing in dreams, I am indebted, not to a patient, but to
an intelligent jurist of my acquaintance. “_I dream_,” my informant
tells me, “_that I am walking in front of my house with a lady on my
arm_. _Here a closed wagon is waiting, a gentleman steps up to me, gives
his authority as an agent of the police, and demands that I should
follow him. I only ask for time in which to arrange my affairs._ Can you
possibly suppose this is a wish of mine to be arrested?” “Of course
not,” I must admit. “Do you happen to know upon what charge you were
arrested?” “Yes; I believe for infanticide.” “Infanticide? But you know
that only a mother can commit this crime upon her newly born child?”
“That is true.”[AL] “And under what circumstances did you dream; what
happened on the evening before?” “I would rather not tell you that; it
is a delicate matter.” “But I must have it, otherwise we must forgo the
interpretation of the dream.” “Well, then, I will tell you. I spent the
night, not at home, but at the house of a lady who means very much to
me. When we awoke in the morning, something again passed between us.
Then I went to sleep again, and dreamt what I have told you.” “The woman
is married?” “Yes.” “And you do not wish her to conceive a child?” “No;
that might betray us.” “Then you do not practise normal coitus?” “I take
the precaution to withdraw before ejaculation.” “Am I permitted to
assume that you did this trick several times during the night, and that
in the morning you were not quite sure whether you had succeeded?” “That
might be the case.” “Then your dream is the fulfilment of a wish. By
means of it you secure the assurance that you have not begotten a child,
or, what amounts to the same thing, that you have killed a child. I can
easily demonstrate the connecting links. Do you remember, a few days ago
we were talking about the distress of matrimony (Ehenot), and about the
inconsistency of permitting the practice of coitus as long as no
impregnation takes place, while every delinquency after the ovum and the
semen meet and a fœtus is formed is punished as a crime? In connection
with this, we also recalled the mediæval controversy about the moment of
time at which the soul is really lodged in the fœtus, since the concept
of murder becomes admissible only from that point on. Doubtless you also
know the gruesome poem by Lenau, which puts infanticide and the
prevention of children on the same plane.” “Strangely enough, I had
happened to think of Lenau during the afternoon.” “Another echo of your
dream. And now I shall demonstrate to you another subordinate
wish-fulfilment in your dream. You walk in front of your house with the
lady on your arm. So you take her home, instead of spending the night at
her house, as you do in actuality. The fact that the wish-fulfilment,
which is the essence of the dream, disguises itself in such an
unpleasant form, has perhaps more than one reason. From my essay on the
etiology of anxiety neuroses, you will see that I note interrupted
coitus as one of the factors which cause the development of neurotic
fear. It would be consistent with this that if after repeated
cohabitation of the kind mentioned you should be left in an
uncomfortable mood, which now becomes an element in the composition of
your dream. You also make use of this unpleasant state of mind to
conceal the wish-fulfilment. Furthermore, the mention of infanticide has
not yet been explained. Why does this crime, which is peculiar to
females, occur to you?” “I shall confess to you that I was involved in
such an affair years ago. Through my fault a girl tried to protect
herself from the consequences of a _liaison_ with me by securing an
abortion. I had nothing to do with carrying out the plan, but I was
naturally for a long time worried lest the affair might be discovered.”
“I understand; this recollection furnished a second reason why the
supposition that you had done your trick badly must have been painful to
you.”
A young physician, who had heard this dream of my colleague when it was
told, must have felt implicated by it, for he hastened to imitate it in
a dream of his own, applying its mode of thinking to another subject.
The day before he had handed in a declaration of his income, which was
perfectly honest, because he had little to declare. He dreamt that an
acquaintance of his came from a meeting of the tax commission and
informed him that all the other declarations of income had passed
uncontested, but that his own had awakened general suspicion, and that
he would be punished with a heavy fine. The dream is a poorly-concealed
fulfilment of the wish to be known as a physician with a large income.
It likewise recalls the story of the young girl who was advised against
accepting her suitor because he was a man of quick temper who would
surely treat her to blows after they were married. The answer of the
girl was: “I wish he _would_ strike me!” Her wish to be married is so
strong that she takes into the bargain the discomfort which is said to
be connected with matrimony, and which is predicted for her, and even
raises it to a wish.
If I group the very frequently occurring dreams of this sort, which seem
flatly to contradict my theory, in that they contain the denial of a
wish or some occurrence decidedly unwished for, under the head of
“counter wish-dreams,” I observe that they may all be referred to two
principles, of which one has not yet been mentioned, although it plays a
large part in the dreams of human beings. One of the motives inspiring
these dreams is the wish that I should appear in the wrong. These dreams
regularly occur in the course of my treatment if the patient shows a
resistance against me, and I can count with a large degree of certainty
upon causing such a dream after I have once explained to the patient my
theory that the dream is a wish-fulfilment.[AM] I may even expect this
to be the case in a dream merely in order to fulfil the wish that I may
appear in the wrong. The last dream which I shall tell from those
occurring in the course of treatment again shows this very thing. A
young girl who has struggled hard to continue my treatment, against the
will of her relatives and the authorities whom she has consulted, dreams
as follows: _She is forbidden at home to come to me any more. She then
reminds me of the promise I made her to treat her for nothing if
necessary, and I say to her: “I can show no consideration in money
matters.”_
It is not at all easy in this case to demonstrate the fulfilment of a
wish, but in all cases of this kind there is a second problem, the
solution of which helps also to solve the first. Where does she get the
words which she puts into my mouth? Of course I have never told her
anything like that, but one of her brothers, the very one who has the
greatest influence over her, has been kind enough to make this remark
about me. It is then the purpose of the dream that this brother should
remain in the right; and she does not try to justify this brother merely
in the dream; it is her purpose in life and the motive for her being
ill.
The other motive for counter wish-dreams is so clear that there is
danger of overlooking it, as for some time happened in my own case. In
the sexual make-up of many people there is a masochistic component,
which has arisen through the conversion of the aggressive, sadistic
component into its opposite. Such people are called “ideal” masochists,
if they seek pleasure not in the bodily pain which may be inflicted upon
them, but in humiliation and in chastisement of the soul. It is obvious
that such persons can have counter wish-dreams and disagreeable dreams,
which, however, for them are nothing but wish-fulfilments, affording
satisfaction for their masochistic inclinations. Here is such a dream. A
young man, who has in earlier years tormented his elder brother, towards
whom he was homosexually inclined, but who has undergone a complete
change of character, has the following dream, which consists of three
parts: (1) _He is “insulted” by his brother._ (2) _Two adults are
caressing each other with homosexual intentions._ (3) _His brother has
sold the enterprise whose management the young man reserved for his own
future._ He awakens from the last-mentioned dream with the most
unpleasant feelings, and yet it is a masochistic wish-dream, which might
be translated: It would serve me quite right if my brother were to make
that sale against my interest, as a punishment for all the torments
which he has suffered at my hands.
I hope that the above discussion and examples will suffice—until further
objection can be raised—to make it seem credible that even dreams with a
painful content are to be analysed as the fulfilments of wishes. Nor
will it seem a matter of chance that in the course of interpretation one
always happens upon subjects of which one does not like to speak or
think. The disagreeable sensation which such dreams arouse is simply
identical with the antipathy which endeavours—usually with success—to
restrain us from the treatment or discussion of such subjects, and which
must be overcome by all of us, if, in spite of its unpleasantness, we
find it necessary to take the matter in hand. But this disagreeable
sensation, which occurs also in dreams, does not preclude the existence
of a wish; everyone has wishes which he would not like to tell to
others, which he does not want to admit even to himself. We are, on
other grounds, justified in connecting the disagreeable character of all
these dreams with the fact of dream disfigurement, and in concluding
that these dreams are distorted, and that the wish-fulfilment in them is
disguised until recognition is impossible for no other reason than that
a repugnance, a will to suppress, exists in relation to the
subject-matter of the dream or in relation to the wish which the dream
creates. Dream disfigurement, then, turns out in reality to be an act of
the censor. We shall take into consideration everything which the
analysis of disagreeable dreams has brought to light if we reword our
formula as follows: _The dream is the (disguised) fulfilment of a
(suppressed, repressed) wish._[AN]
Now there still remain as a particular species of dreams with painful
content, dreams of anxiety, the inclusion of which under dreams of
wishing will find least acceptance with the uninitiated. But I can
settle the problem of anxiety dreams in very short order; for what they
may reveal is not a new aspect of the dream problem; it is a question in
their case of understanding neurotic anxiety in general. The fear which
we experience in the dream is only seemingly explained by the dream
content. If we subject the content of the dream to analysis, we become
aware that the dream fear is no more justified by the dream content than
the fear in a phobia is justified by the idea upon which the phobia
depends. For example, it is true that it is possible to fall out of a
window, and that some care must be exercised when one is near a window,
but it is inexplicable why the anxiety in the corresponding phobia is so
great, and why it follows its victims to an extent so much greater than
is warranted by its origin. The same explanation, then, which applies to
the phobia applies also to the dream of anxiety. In both cases the
anxiety is only superficially attached to the idea which accompanies it
and comes from another source.
On account of the intimate relation of dream fear to neurotic fear,
discussion of the former obliges me to refer to the latter. In a little
essay on “The Anxiety Neurosis,”[AO] I maintained that neurotic fear has
its origin in the sexual life, and corresponds to a libido which has
been turned away from its object and has not succeeded in being applied.
From this formula, which has since proved its validity more and more
clearly, we may deduce the conclusion that the content of anxiety dreams
is of a sexual nature, the libido belonging to which content has been
transformed into fear. Later on I shall have opportunity to support this
assertion by the analysis of several dreams of neurotics. I shall have
occasion to revert to the determinations in anxiety dreams and their
compatibility with the theory of wish-fulfilment when I again attempt to
approach the theory of dreams.
V
THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS
After coming to realise from the analysis of the dream of Irma’s
injection that the dream is the fulfilment of a wish, our interest was
next directed to ascertaining whether we had thus discovered a universal
characteristic of the dream, and for the time being we put aside every
other question which may have been aroused in the course of that
interpretation. Now that we have reached the goal upon one of these
paths, we may turn back and select a new starting-point for our
excursions among the problems of the dream, even though we may lose
sight for a time of the theme of wish-fulfilment, which has been as yet
by no means exhaustively treated.
Now that we are able, by applying our process of interpretation, to
discover a _latent_ dream content which far surpasses the _manifest_
dream content in point of significance, we are impelled to take up the
individual dream problems afresh, in order to see whether the riddles
and contradictions which seemed, when we had only the manifest content,
beyond our reach may not be solved for us satisfactorily.
The statements of the authors concerning the relation of the dream to
waking life, as well as concerning the source of the dream material,
have been given at length in the introductory chapter. We may recall
that there are three peculiarities of recollection in the dreams, which
have been often remarked but never explained:
1. That the dream distinctly prefers impressions of the few days
preceding; (Robert,[55] Strümpell,[66] Hildebrandt,[35] also Weed-Hallam
[33]).
2. That it makes its selection according to principles other than those
of our waking memory, in that it recalls not what is essential and
important, but what is subordinate and disregarded (_cf._ p. 13).
3. That it has at its disposal the earliest impressions of our
childhood, and brings to light details from this period of life which
again seem trivial to us, and which in waking life were considered long
ago forgotten.[AP]
These peculiarities in the selection of the dream material have of
course been observed by the authors in connection with the manifest
dream content.
(_a_) _Recent and Indifferent Impressions in the Dream_
If I now consult my own experience concerning the source of the elements
which appear in the dream, I must at once express the opinion that some
reference to the experiences of _the day which has most recently passed_
is to be found in every dream. Whatever dream I take up, whether my own
or another’s, this experience is always reaffirmed. Knowing this fact, I
can usually begin the work of interpretation by trying to learn the
experience of the previous day which has stimulated the dream; for many
cases, indeed, this is the quickest way. In the case of the two dreams
which I have subjected to close analysis in the preceding chapter (of
Irma’s injection, and of my uncle with the yellow beard) the reference
to the previous day is so obvious that it needs no further elucidation.
But in order to show that this reference may be regularly demonstrated,
I shall examine a portion of my own dream chronicle. I shall report the
dreams only so far as is necessary for the discovery of the dream
stimulus in question.
1. I make a visit at a house where I am admitted only with difficulty,
&c., and meanwhile I keep a woman _waiting_ for me.
_Source._—A conversation in the evening with a female relative to the
effect that she would have to _wait_ for some aid which she demanded
until, &c.
2. I have written a _monograph_ about a certain (obscure) species of
plant.
_Source._—I have seen in the show-window of a book store a _monograph_
upon the genus cyclamen.
3. I see two women on the street, _mother and daughter_, the latter of
whom is my patient.
_Source._—A female patient who is under treatment has told me what
difficulties her _mother_ puts in the way of her continuing the
treatment.
4. At the book store of S. and R. I subscribe to a periodical which
costs _20 florins_ annually.
_Source._—During the day my wife has reminded me that I still owe her
_20 florins_ of her weekly allowance.
5. I receive a _communication_, in which I am treated as a member, from
the Social Democratic Committee.
_Source._—I have received _communications_ simultaneously from the
Liberal Committee on Elections and from the president of the
Humanitarian Society, of which I am really a member.
6. A man on _a steep rock in the middle of the ocean_, after the manner
of Boecklin.
_Source._—_Dreyfus on Devil’s Island_; at the same time news from my
relatives in _England_, &c.
The question might be raised, whether the dream is invariably connected
with the events of the previous day, or whether the reference may be
extended to impressions from a longer space of time in the immediate
past. Probably this matter cannot claim primary importance, but I should
like to decide in favour of the exclusive priority of the day before the
dream (the dream-day). As often as I thought I had found a case where an
impression of two or three days before had been the source of the dream,
I could convince myself, after careful investigation, that this
impression had been remembered the day before, that a demonstrable
reproduction had been interpolated between the day of the event and the
time of the dream, and, furthermore, I was able to point out the recent
occasion upon which the recollection of the old impression might have
occurred. On the other hand, I was unable to convince myself that a
regular interval (H. Swoboda calls the first one of this kind eighteen
hours) of biological significance occurs between the stimulating
impression of the day and its repetition in the dream.[AQ]
I am, therefore, of the opinion that the stimulus for every dream is to
be found among those experiences “upon which one has not yet slept” for
a night.
Thus the impressions of the immediate past (with the exception of the
day before the night of the dream) stand in no different relation to the
dream content from those of times which are as far removed in the past
as you please. The dream may select its material from all times of life,
provided only, that a chain of thought starting from one of the
experiences of the day of the dream (one of the “recent” impressions)
reaches back to these earlier ones.
But why this preference for recent impressions? We shall reach some
conjectures on this point if we subject one of the dreams already
mentioned to a more exact analysis. I select the dream about the
monograph.
_Content of the dream.—I have written a monograph upon a certain plant.
The book lies before me, I am just turning over a folded coloured plate.
A dried specimen of the plant is bound with every copy, as though from a
herbarium._
_Analysis._—In the forenoon I saw in the show-window of a book store a
book entitled, _The Genus Cyclamen_, apparently a monograph on this
plant.
The cyclamen is the favourite flower of my wife. I reproach myself for
so seldom thinking to bring her flowers, as she wishes. In connection
with the theme “bringing flowers,” I am reminded of a story which I
recently told in a circle of friends to prove my assertion that
forgetting is very often the purpose of the unconscious, and that in any
case it warrants a conclusion as to the secret disposition of the person
who forgets. A young woman who is accustomed to receive a bunch of
flowers from her husband on her birthday, misses this token of affection
on a festive occasion of this sort, and thereupon bursts into tears. The
husband comes up, and is unable to account for her tears until she tells
him, “To-day is my birthday.” He strikes his forehead and cries, “Why, I
had completely forgotten it,” and wants to go out to get her some
flowers. But she is not to be consoled, for she sees in the
forgetfulness of her husband a proof that she does not play the same
part in his thoughts as formerly. This Mrs. L. met my wife two days
before, and told her that she was feeling well, and asked about me. She
was under my treatment years ago.
Supplementary facts: I once actually wrote something like a monograph on
a plant, namely, an essay on the coca plant, which drew the attention of
K. Koller to the anæsthetic properties of cocaine. I had hinted at this
use of the alkaloid in my publication, but I was not sufficiently
thorough to pursue the matter further. This suggests that on the
forenoon of the day after the dream (for the interpretation of which I
did not find time until the evening) I had thought of cocaine in a kind
of day phantasy. In case I should ever be afflicted with glaucoma, I was
going to go to Berlin, and there have myself operated upon, incognito,
at the house of my Berlin friend, by a physician whom he would recommend
to me. The surgeon, who would not know upon whom he was operating, would
boast as usual how easy these operations had become since the
introduction of cocaine; I would not betray by a single sign that I had
had a share in making this discovery. With this phantasy were connected
thoughts of how difficult it really is for a doctor to claim the medical
services of a colleague for his own person. I should be able to pay the
Berlin eye specialist, who did not know me, like anyone else. Only after
recalling this day-dream do I realise that the recollection of a
definite experience is concealed behind it. Shortly after Koller’s
discovery my father had, in fact, become ill with glaucoma; he was
operated upon by my friend, the eye specialist, Dr. Koenigstein. Dr.
Koller attended to the cocaine anæsthetisation, and thereupon made the
remark that all three of the persons who had shared in the introduction
of cocaine had been brought together on one case.
I now proceed to think of the time when I was last reminded of this
affair about the cocaine. This was a few days before, when I received a
_Festschrift_, with whose publication grateful scholars had commemorated
the anniversary of their teacher and laboratory director. Among the
honours ascribed to persons connected with the laboratory, I found a
notice to the effect that the discovery of the anæsthetic properties of
cocaine had been made there by K. Koller. Now I suddenly become aware
that the dream is connected with an experience of the previous evening.
I had just accompanied Dr. Koenigstein to his home, and had spoken to
him about a matter which strongly arouses my interest whenever it is
mentioned. While I was talking with him in the vestibule, Professor
Gärtner and his young wife came up. I could not refrain from
congratulating them both upon their healthy appearance. Now Professor
Gärtner is one of the authors of the _Festschrift_ of which I have just
spoken, and may well have recalled it to me. Likewise Mrs. L., whose
birthday disappointment I have referred to, had been mentioned, in
another connection, to be sure, in the conversation with Dr.
Koenigstein.
I shall now try to explain the other determinations of the dream
content. _A dried specimen_ of the plant accompanies the monograph as
though it were a _herbarium_. A recollection of the _gymnasium_ (school)
is connected with the herbarium. The director of our _gymnasium_ once
called the scholars of the higher classes together in order to have them
inspect and clean the herbarium. Small worms had been found—bookworms.
The director did not seem to have much confidence in my help, for he
left only a few leaves for me. I know to this day that there were
crucifers on them. My interest in botany was never very great. At my
preliminary examination in botany, I was required to identify a
crucifer, and did not recognise it. I would have fared badly if my
theoretical knowledge had not helped me out. Crucifers suggest
composites. The artichoke is really a composite, and the one which I
might call my favourite flower. My wife, who is more thoughtful than I,
often brings this favourite flower of mine home from the market.
I see the monograph which I have written lying before me. This, too, is
not without its reference. The friend whom I pictured wrote to me
yesterday from Berlin: “I think a great deal about your dream book. _I
see it lying before me finished, and am turning over its leaves._” How I
envied him this prophetic power! If I could only see it lying already
finished before me!
_The folded Coloured Plate._—While I was a student of medicine, I
suffered much from a fondness for studying in _monographs_ exclusively.
In spite of my limited means, I subscribed to a number of the medical
archives, in which the coloured plates gave me much delight. I was proud
of this inclination for thoroughness. So, when I began to publish on my
own account, I had to draw the plates for my own treatises, and I
remember one of them turned out so badly that a kindly-disposed
colleague ridiculed me for it. This suggests, I don’t know exactly how,
a very early memory from my youth. My father once thought it would be a
joke to hand over a book with _coloured plates_ (_Description of a
Journey in Persia_) to me and my eldest sister for destruction. This was
hardly to be justified from an educational point of view. I was at the
time five years old, and my sister three, and the picture of our
blissfully tearing this book to pieces (like an artichoke, I must add,
leaf by leaf) is almost the only one from this time of life which has
remained fresh in my memory. When I afterwards became a student, I
developed a distinct fondness for collecting and possessing books (an
analogy to the inclination for studying from monographs, a hobby which
occurs in the dream thoughts with reference to cyclamen and artichoke).
I became a book-worm (_cf._ herbarium). I have always referred this
first passion of my life—since I am engaging in retrospect—to this
childhood impression, or rather I have recognised in this childish scene
a “concealing recollection” for my subsequent love of books.[AR] Of
course I also learned at an early age that our passions are often our
sorrows. When I was seventeen years old I had a very respectable bill at
the book store, and no means with which to pay it, and my father would
hardly accept the excuse that my inclination had not been fixed on
something worse. But the mention of this later youthful experience
immediately brings me back to my conversation that evening with my
friend Dr. Koenigstein. For the talk on the evening of the dream-day
brought up the same old reproach that I am too fond of my hobbies.
For reasons which do not belong here, I shall not continue the
interpretation of this dream, but shall simply indicate the path which
leads to it. In the course of the interpretation, I was reminded of my
conversation with Dr. Koenigstein, and indeed of more than one portion
of it. If I consider the subjects touched upon in this conversation, the
meaning of the dream becomes clear to me. All the thought associations
which have been started, about the hobbies of my wife and of myself,
about the cocaine, about the difficulty of securing medical treatment
from one’s colleagues, my preference for monographic studies, and my
neglect of certain subjects such as botany—all this continues and
connects with some branch of this widely ramified conversation. The
dream again takes on the character of a justification, of a pleading for
my rights, like the first analysed dream of Irma’s injection; it even
continues the theme which that dream started, and discusses it with the
new subject matter which has accrued in the interval between the two
dreams. Even the apparently indifferent manner of expression of the
dream receives new importance. The meaning is now: “I am indeed the man
who has written that valuable and successful treatise (on cocaine),”
just as at that time I asserted for my justification: “I am a thorough
and industrious student;” in both cases, then: “I can afford to do
that.” But I may dispense with the further interpretation of the dream,
because my only purpose in reporting it was to examine the relation of
the dream content to the experience of the previous day which arouses
it. As long as I know only the manifest content of this dream, but one
relation to a day impression becomes obvious; after I have made the
interpretation, a second source of the dream becomes evident in another
experience of the same day. The first of these impressions to which the
dream refers is an indifferent one, a subordinate circumstance. I see a
book in a shop window whose title holds me for a moment, and whose
contents could hardly interest me. The second experience has great
psychic value; I have talked earnestly with my friend, the eye
specialist, for about an hour, I have made allusions in this
conversation which must have touched both of us closely, and which
awakened memories revealing the most diverse feelings of my inner self.
Furthermore, this conversation was broken off unfinished because some
friends joined us. What, now, is the relation of these two impressions
of the day to each other and to the dream which followed during the next
night?
I find in the manifest content merely an allusion to the indifferent
impression, and may thus reaffirm that the dream preferably takes up
into its content non-essential experiences. In the dream interpretation,
on the contrary, everything converges upon an important event which is
justified in demanding attention. If I judge the dream in the only
correct way, according to the latent content which is brought to light
in the analysis, I have unawares come upon a new and important fact. I
see the notion that the dream deals only with the worthless fragments of
daily experience shattered; I am compelled also to contradict the
assertion that our waking psychic life is not continued in the dream,
and that the dream instead wastes psychic activity upon a trifling
subject matter. The opposite is true; what has occupied our minds during
the day also dominates our dream thoughts, and we take pains to dream
only of such matters as have given us food for thought during the day.
Perhaps the most obvious explanation for the fact that I dream about
some indifferent impression of the day, while the impression which is
justifiably stirring furnishes the occasion for dreaming, is that this
again is a phenomenon of the dream-disfigurement, which we have above
traced to a psychic power acting as a censor. The recollection of the
monograph on the genus cyclamen is employed as though it were an
allusion to the conversation with my friend, very much as mention of the
friend in the dream of the deferred supper is represented by the
allusion “smoked salmon.” The only question is, by what intermediate
steps does the impression of the monograph come to assume the relation
of an allusion to the conversation with the eye specialist, since such a
relation is not immediately evident. In the example of the deferred
supper, the relation is set forth at the outset; “smoked salmon,” as the
favourite dish of the friend, belongs at once to the series of
associations which the person of the friend would call up in the lady
who is dreaming. In our new example we have two separated impressions,
which seem at first glance to have nothing in common except that they
occur on the same day. The monograph catches my attention in the
forenoon; I take part in the conversation in the evening. The answer
supplied by the analysis is as follows: Such relations between the two
impressions do not at first exist, but are established subsequently
between the presentation content of the one impression and the
presentation content of the other. I have recently emphasised the
components in this relation in the course of recording the analysis.
With the notion of the monograph on cyclamen I should probably associate
the idea that cyclamen is my wife’s favourite flower only under some
outside influence, and this is perhaps the further recollection of the
bunch of flowers missed by Mrs. L. I do not believe that these
underlying thoughts would have been sufficient to call forth a dream.
“There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this,”
as we read in _Hamlet_. But behold! I am reminded in the analysis that
the name of the man who interrupted our conversation was Gärtner
(Gardener), and that I found his wife in blooming health;[AS] I even
remember now that one of my female patients, who bears the pretty name
of Flora, was for a time the main subject of our conversation. It must
have happened that I completed the connection between the two events of
the day, the indifferent and the exciting one, by means of these links
from the series of associations belonging to the idea of botany. Other
relations are then established, that of cocaine, which can with perfect
correctness form a go-between connecting the person of Dr. Koenigstein
with the botanical monograph which I have written, and strengthen the
fusion of the two series of associations into one, so that now a portion
of the first experience may be used as an allusion to the second.
I am prepared to find this explanation attacked as arbitrary or
artificial. What would have happened if Professor Gärtner and his
blooming wife had not come up, and if the patient who was talked about
had been called, not Flora, but Anna? The answer is easy, however. If
these thought-relations had not been present, others would probably have
been selected. It is so easy to establish relations of this sort, as the
joking questions and conundrums with which we amuse ourselves daily
suffice to show. The range of wit is unlimited. To go a step further: if
it had been impossible to establish interrelations of sufficient
abundance between the two impressions of the day, the dream would simply
have resulted differently; another of the indifferent impressions of the
day, such as come to us in multitudes and are forgotten, would have
taken the place of the monograph in the dream, would have secured a
connection with the content of the talk, and would have represented it
in the dream. Since it was the impression of the monograph and no other
that had this fate, this impression was probably the most suitable for
the establishment of the connection. One need not be astonished, like
Lessing’s Hänschen Schlau, because “it is the rich people of the world
who possess the most money.”
Still the psychological process by which, according to our conception,
the indifferent experience is substituted for the psychologically
important one, seems odd to us and open to question. In a later chapter
we shall undertake the task of making this seemingly incorrect operation
more intelligible. We are here concerned only with consequences of this
procedure, whose assumption we have been forced to make by the regularly
recurring experiences of dream analysis. But the process seems to be
that, in the course of those intermediate steps, a displacement—let us
say of the psychic accent—has taken place, until ideas that are at first
weakly charged with intensity, by taking over the charge from ideas
which have a stronger initial intensity, reach a degree of strength,
which enables them to force their way into consciousness. Such
displacements do not at all surprise us when it is a question of the
bestowal of affects or of the motor actions in general. The fact that
the woman who has remained single transfers her affection to animals,
that the bachelor becomes a passionate collector, that the soldier
defends a scrap of coloured cloth, his flag, with his life-blood, that
in a love affair a momentary clasping of hands brings bliss, or that in
_Othello_ a lost handkerchief causes a burst of rage—all these are
examples of psychic displacement which seem unquestionable to us. But
if, in the same manner and according to the same fundamental principles,
a decision is made as to what is to reach our consciousness and what is
to be withheld from it, that is to say, what we are to think—this
produces an impression of morbidity, and we call it an error of thought
if it occurs in waking life. We may here anticipate the result of a
discussion which will be undertaken later—namely, to the effect that the
psychic process which we have recognised as dream displacement proves to
be not a process morbidly disturbed, but a process differing from the
normal merely in being of a more primitive nature.
We thus find in the fact that the dream content takes up remnants of
trivial experiences a manifestation of dream disfigurement (by means of
displacement), and we may recall that we have recognised this dream
disfigurement as the work of a censor which controls the passage between
two psychic instances. We accordingly expect that dream analysis will
regularly reveal to us the genuine, significant source of the dream in
the life of the day, the recollection of which has transferred its
accent to some indifferent recollection. This conception brings us into
complete opposition to Robert’s[55] theory, which thus becomes valueless
for us. The fact which Robert was trying to explain simply doesn’t
exist; its assumption is based upon a misunderstanding, upon the failure
to substitute the real meaning of the dream for its apparent content.
Further objection may be made to Robert’s doctrine: If it were really
the duty of the dream, by means of a special psychic activity, to rid
our memory of the “slag” of the recollections of the day, our sleep
would have to be more troubled and employed in a more strained effort
than we may suppose it to be from our waking life. For the number of
indifferent impressions received during the day, against which we should
have to protect our memory, is obviously infinitely large; the night
would not be long enough to accomplish the task. It is very much more
probable that the forgetting of indifferent impressions takes place
without any active interference on the part of our psychic powers.
Still something cautions us against taking leave of Robert’s idea
without further consideration. We have left unexplained the fact that
one of the indifferent day-impressions—one from the previous day
indeed—regularly furnished a contribution to the dream-content.
Relations between this impression and the real source of the dream do
not always exist from the beginning; as we have seen, they are
established only subsequently, in the course of the dream-work, as
though in order to serve the purpose of the intended displacement. There
must, therefore, be some necessity to form connections in this
particular direction, of the recent, although indifferent impression;
the latter must have special fitness for this purpose because of some
property. Otherwise it would be just as easy for the dream thoughts to
transfer their accent to some inessential member of their own series of
associations.
The following experiences will lead us to an explanation. If a day has
brought two or more experiences which are fitted to stimulate a dream,
then the dream fuses the mention of both into a single whole; it obeys
an _impulse to fashion a whole out of them_; for instance: One summer
afternoon I entered a railroad compartment, in which I met two friends
who were unknown to each other. One of them was an influential
colleague, the other a member of a distinguished family, whose physician
I was; I made the two gentlemen acquainted with each other; but during
the long ride I was the go-between in the conversation, so that I had to
treat a subject of conversation now with the one, now with the other. I
asked my colleague to recommend a common friend who had just begun his
medical practice. He answered that he was convinced of the young man’s
thoroughness, but that his plain appearance would make his entrance into
households of rank difficult. I answered: “That is just why he needs
recommendation.” Soon afterwards I asked the other fellow-traveller
about the health of his aunt—the mother of one of my patients—who was at
the time prostrated by a serious illness. During the night after this
journey I dreamt that the young friend, for whom I had asked assistance,
was in a splendid salon, and was making a funeral oration to a select
company with the air of a man of the world—the oration being upon the
old lady (now dead for the purposes of the dream) who was the aunt of
the second fellow-traveller. (I confess frankly that I had not been on
good terms with this lady.) My dream had thus found connections between
the two impressions of the day, and by means of them composed a unified
situation.
In view of many similar experiences, I am driven to conclude that a kind
of compulsion exists for the dream function, forcing it to bring
together in the dream all the available sources of dream stimulation
into a unified whole.[AT] In a subsequent chapter (on the dream
function) we shall become acquainted with this impulse for putting
together as a part of condensation another primary psychic process.
I shall now discuss the question whether the source from which the dream
originates, and to which our analysis leads, must always be a recent
(and significant) event, or whether a subjective experience, that is to
say, the recollection of a psychologically valuable experience—a chain
of thought—can take the part of a dream stimulus. The answer, which
results most unequivocally from numerous analyses, is to the following
effect. The stimulus for the dream may be a subjective occurrence, which
has been made recent, as it were, by the mental activity during the day.
It will probably not be out of place here to give a synopsis of various
conditions which may be recognised as sources of dreams.
The source of a dream may be:
(_a_) A recent and psychologically significant experience which is
directly represented in the dream.[AU]
(_b_) Several recent, significant experiences, which are united by the
dream into a whole.[AV]
(_c_) One or more recent and significant experiences, which are
represented in the dream by the mention of a contemporary but
indifferent experience.[AW]
(_d_) A subjective significant experience (a recollection, train of
thought), which is _regularly_ represented in the dream by the mention
of a recent but indifferent impression.[AX]
As may be seen, in dream interpretation the condition is firmly adhered
to throughout that each component of the dream repeats a recent
impression of the day. The element which is destined to representation
in the dream may either belong to the presentations surrounding the
actual dream stimulus itself—and, furthermore, either as an essential or
an inessential element of the same—or it may originate in the
neighbourhood of an indifferent impression, which, through associations
more or less rich, has been brought into relation with the thoughts
surrounding the dream stimulus. The apparent multiplicity of the
conditions here is produced by _the alternative according to whether
displacement has or has not taken place_, and we may note that this
alternative serves to explain the contrasts of the dream just as readily
as the ascending series from partially awake to fully awake brain cells
in the medical theory of the dream (_cf._ p. 64).
Concerning this series, it is further notable that the element which is
psychologically valuable, but not recent (a train of thought, a
recollection) may be replaced, for the purposes of dream formation, by a
recent, but psychologically indifferent, element, if only these two
conditions be observed: 1. That the dream shall contain a reference to
something which has been recently experienced; 2. That the dream
stimulus shall remain a psychologically valuable train of thought. In a
single case (_a_) both conditions are fulfilled by the same impression.
If it be added that the same indifferent impressions which are used for
the dream, as long as they are recent, lose this availability as soon as
they become a day (or at most several days) older, the assumption must
be made that the very freshness of an impression gives it a certain
psychological value for dream formation, which is somewhat equivalent to
the value of emotionally accentuated memories or trains of thought. We
shall be able to see the basis of this value of _recent_ impressions for
dream formation only with the help of certain psychological
considerations which will appear later.[AY]
Incidentally our attention is called to the fact that important changes
in the material comprised by our ideas and our memory may be brought
about unconsciously and at night. The injunction that one should sleep
for a night upon any affair before making a final decision about it is
obviously fully justified. But we see that at this point we have
proceeded from the psychology of dreaming to that of sleep, a step for
which there will often be occasion.
Now there arises an objection threatening to invalidate the conclusions
we have just reached. If indifferent impressions can get into the dream
only in case they are recent, how does it happen that we find also in
the dream content elements from earlier periods in our lives, which at
the time when they were recent possessed, as Strümpell expresses it, no
psychic value, which, therefore, ought to have been forgotten long ago,
and which, therefore, are neither fresh nor psychologically significant?
This objection can be fully met if we rely upon the results furnished by
psychoanalysis of neurotics. The solution is as follows: The process of
displacement which substitutes indifferent material for that having
psychic significance (for dreaming as well as for thinking) has already
taken place in those earlier periods of life, and has since become fixed
in the memory. Those elements which were originally indifferent are in
fact no longer so, since they have acquired the value of psychologically
significant material. That which has actually remained indifferent can
never be reproduced in the dream.
It will be correct to suppose from the foregoing discussion that I
maintain that there are no indifferent dream stimuli, and that,
accordingly, there are no harmless dreams. This I believe to be the
case, thoroughly and exclusively, allowance being made for the dreams of
children and perhaps for short dream reactions to nocturnal sensations.
Whatever one may dream, it is either manifestly recognisable as
psychically significant or it is disfigured, and can be judged correctly
only after a complete interpretation, when, as before, it may be
recognised as possessing psychic significance. The dream never concerns
itself with trifles; we do not allow ourselves to be disturbed in our
sleep by matters of slight importance. Dreams which are apparently
harmless turn out to be sinister if one takes pains to interpret them;
if I may be permitted the expression, they all have “the mark of the
beast.” As this is another point on which I may expect opposition, and
as I am glad of an opportunity to show dream-disfigurement at work, I
shall here subject a number of dreams from my collection to analysis.
1. An intelligent and refined young lady, who, however, in conduct,
belongs to the class we call reserved, to the “still waters,” relates
the following dream:—
_Her husband asks: “Should not the piano be tuned?” She answers: “It
won’t pay; the hammers would have to be newly buffed too.”_ This repeats
an actual event of the previous day. Her husband had asked such a
question, and she had answered something similar. But what is the
significance of her dreaming it? She tells of the piano, indeed, that it
is a _disgusting old box_ which has a bad tone; it is one of the things
which her husband had before they were married,[AZ] &c., but the key to
the true solution lies in the phrase: _It won’t pay._ This originated in
a visit made the day before to a lady friend. Here she was asked to take
off her coat, but she declined, saying, “_It won’t pay._ I must go in a
moment.” At this point, I recall that during yesterday’s analysis she
suddenly took hold of her coat, a button of which had opened. It is,
therefore, as if she had said, “Please don’t look in this direction; it
won’t pay.” Thus “_box_” develops into “_chest_,” or breast-box
(“bust”), and the interpretation of the dream leads directly to a time
in her bodily development when she was dissatisfied with her shape. It
also leads to earlier periods, if we take into consideration
“_disgusting_” and “_bad tone_,” and remember how often in allusions and
in dreams the two small hemispheres of the feminine body take the
place—as a substitute and as an antithesis—of the large ones.
II. I may interrupt this dream to insert a brief harmless dream of a
young man. He dreamt that _he was putting on his winter overcoat again,
which was terrible_. The occasion for this dream is apparently the cold
weather, which has recently set in again. On more careful examination we
note that the two short portions of the dream do not fit together well,
for what is there “terrible” about wearing a heavy or thick coat in the
cold? Unfortunately for the harmlessness of this dream, the first idea
educed in analysis is the recollection that on the previous day a lady
had secretly admitted to him that her last child owed its existence to
the bursting of a condom. He now reconstructs his thoughts in accordance
with this suggestion: A thin condom is dangerous, a thick one is bad.
The condom is an “overcoat” (_Überzieher_), for it is put over
something; _Ueberzieher_ is also the name given in German to a thin
overcoat. An experience like the one related by the lady would indeed be
“terrible” for an unmarried man.—We may now return to our other harmless
dreamer.
III. _She puts a candle into a candlestick; but the candle is broken, so
that it does not stand straight. The girls at school say she is clumsy;
the young lady replies that it is not her fault._
Here, too, there is an actual occasion for the dream; the day before she
had actually put a candle into a candlestick; but this one was not
broken. A transparent symbolism has been employed here. The candle is an
object which excites the feminine genitals; its being broken, so that it
does not stand straight, signifies impotence on the man’s part (“it is
not her fault”). But does this young woman, carefully brought up, and a
stranger to all obscenity, know of this application of the candle? She
happens to be able to tell how she came by this information. While
riding in a boat on the Rhine, another boat passes containing students
who are singing or rather yelling, with great delight: “When the Queen
of Sweden with closed shutters and the candles of Apollo....”
She does not hear or understand the last word. Her husband is asked to
give her the required explanation. These verses are then replaced in the
dream content by the harmless recollection of a command which she once
executed clumsily at a girls’ boarding school, this occurring by means
of the common features _closed shutters_. The connection between the
theme of onanism and that of impotence is clear enough. “Apollo” in the
latent dream content connects this dream with an earlier one in which
the virgin Pallas figured. All this is obviously not harmless.
IV. Lest it may seem too easy a matter to draw conclusions from dreams
concerning the dreamer’s real circumstances, I add another dream coming
from the same person which likewise appears harmless. “_I dreamt of
doing something_,” she relates, “_which I actually did during the day,
that is to say, I filled a little trunk so full of hooks that I had
difficulty in closing it. My dream was just like the actual
occurrence._” Here the person relating the dream herself attaches chief
importance to the correspondence between the dream and reality. All such
criticisms upon the dream and remarks about it, although they have
secured a place in waking thought, regularly belong to the latent dream
content, as later examples will further demonstrate. We are told, then,
that what the dream relates has actually taken place during the day. It
would take us too far afield to tell how we reach the idea of using the
English language to help us in the interpretation of this dream. Suffice
it to say that it is again a question of a little box (_cf._ p. 130, the
dream of the dead child in the box) which has been filled so full that
nothing more can go into it. Nothing in the least sinister this time.
In all these “harmless” dreams the sexual factor as a motive for the
exercise of the censor receives striking prominence. But this is a
matter of primary importance, which we must postpone.
(_b_) _Infantile Experiences as the Source of Dreams_
As the third of the peculiarities of the dream content, we have cited
from all the authors (except Robert) the fact that impressions from the
earliest times of our lives, which seem not to be at the disposal of the
waking memory, may appear in the dream. It is, of course, difficult to
judge how often or how seldom this occurs, because the respective
elements of the dream are not recognised according to their origin after
waking. The proof that we are dealing with childhood impressions must
thus be reached objectively, and the conditions necessary for this
happen to coincide only in rare instances. The story is told by A.
Maury,[48] as being particularly conclusive, of a man who decided to
visit his birthplace after twenty years’ absence. During the night
before his departure, he dreams that he is in an altogether strange
district, and that he there meets a strange man with whom he has a
conversation. Having afterward returned to his home, he was able to
convince himself that this strange district really existed in the
neighbourhood of his home town, and the strange man in the dream turned
out to be a friend of his dead father who lived there. Doubtless, a
conclusive proof that he had seen both the man and the district in his
childhood. The dream, moreover, is to be interpreted as a dream of
impatience, like that of the girl who carries her ticket for the concert
of the evening in her pocket (p. 110), of the child whose father had
promised him an excursion to the Hameau, and the like. The motives
explaining why just this impression of childhood is reproduced for the
dreamer cannot, of course, be discovered without an analysis.
One of the attendants at my lectures, who boasted that his dreams were
very rarely subject to disfigurement, told me that he had sometime
before in a dream seen _his former tutor in bed with his nurse_, who had
been in the household until he was eleven years old. The location of
this scene does not occur to him in the dream. As he was much
interested, he told the dream to his elder brother, who laughingly
confirmed its reality. The brother said he remembered the affair very
well, for he was at the time six years old. The lovers were in the habit
of making him, the elder boy, drunk with beer, whenever circumstances
were favourable for nocturnal relations. The smaller child, at that time
three years old—our dreamer—who slept in the same room as the nurse, was
not considered an obstacle.
In still another case it may be definitely ascertained, without the aid
of dream interpretation, that the dream contains elements from
childhood; that is, if it be a so-called _perennial_ dream, which being
first dreamt in childhood, later appears again and again after adult age
has been reached. I may add a few examples of this sort to those already
familiar, although I have never made the acquaintance of such a
perennial dream in my own case. A physician in the thirties tells me
that a yellow lion, about which he can give the most detailed
information, has often appeared in his dream-life from the earliest
period of his childhood to the present day. This lion, known to him from
his dreams, was one day discovered _in natura_ as a long-forgotten
object made of porcelain, and on that occasion the young man learned
from his mother that this object had been his favourite toy in early
childhood, a fact which he himself could no longer remember.
If we now turn from the manifest dream content to the dream thoughts
which are revealed only upon analysis, the co-operation of childhood
experiences may be found to exist even in dreams whose content would not
have led us to suspect anything of the sort. I owe a particularly
delightful and instructive example of such a dream to my honoured
colleague of the “yellow lion.” After reading Nansen’s account of his
polar expedition, he dreamt that he was giving the bold explorer
electrical treatment in an ice field for an ischæmia of which the latter
complained! In the analysis of this dream, he remembered a story of his
childhood, without which the dream remains entirely unintelligible. When
he was a child, three or four years old, he was listening attentively to
a conversation of older people about trips of exploration, and presently
asked papa whether exploration was a severe illness. He had apparently
confused “trips” with “rips,” and the ridicule of his brothers and
sisters prevented his ever forgetting the humiliating experience.
The case is quite similar when, in the analysis of the dream of the
monograph on the genus cyclamen, I happen upon the recollection,
retained from childhood, that my father allowed me to destroy a book
embellished with coloured plates when I was a little boy five years old.
It will perhaps be doubted whether this recollection actually took part
in the composition of the dream content, and it will be intimated that
the process of analysis has subsequently established the connection. But
the abundance and intricacy of the ties of association vouch for the
truth of my explanation: cyclamen—favourite flower—favourite
dish—artichoke; to pick to pieces like an artichoke, leaf by leaf (a
phrase which at that time rang in our ears à propos of the dividing up
of the Chinese Empire)—herbarium-bookworm, whose favourite dish is
books. I may state further that the final meaning of the dream, which I
have not given here, has the most intimate connection with the content
of the childhood scene.
In another series of dreams we learn from analysis that the wish itself,
which has given rise to the dream, and whose fulfilment the dream turns
out to be, has originated in childhood—until one is astonished to find
that the child with all its impulses lives on in the dream.
I shall now continue the interpretation of a dream which has already
proved instructive—I refer to the dream in which friend R. is my uncle
(p. 116). We have carried its interpretation far enough for the
wish-motive, of being appointed professor, to assert itself tangibly;
and we have explained the affection displayed in the dream for friend R.
as a fiction of opposition and spite against the aspersion of the two
colleagues, who appear in the dream thoughts. The dream was my own; I
may, therefore, continue the analysis by stating that my feelings were
not quite satisfied by the solution reached. I know that my opinion of
these colleagues who are so badly treated in the dream thoughts would
have been expressed in quite different terms in waking life; the potency
of the wish not to share their fate in the matter of appointment seemed
to me too slight to account for the discrepancy between my estimate in
the dream and that of waking. If my desire to be addressed by a new
title proves so strong it gives proof of a morbid ambition, which I did
not know to exist in me, and which I believe is far from my thoughts. I
do not know how others, who think they know me, would judge me, for
perhaps I have really been ambitious; but if this be true, my ambition
has long since transferred itself to other objects than the title and
rank of assistant-professor.
Whence, then, the ambition which the dream has ascribed to me? Here I
remember a story which I heard often in my childhood, that at my birth
an old peasant’s wife had prophesied to my happy mother (I was her
first-born) that she had given to the world a great man. Such prophecies
must occur very frequently; there are so many mothers happy in
expectation, and so many old peasant wives whose influence on earth has
waned, and who have therefore turned their eyes towards the future. The
prophetess was not likely to suffer for it either. Might my hunger for
greatness have originated from this source? But here I recollect an
impression from the later years of my childhood, which would serve still
better as an explanation. It was of an evening at an inn on the
Prater,[BA] where my parents were accustomed to take me when I was
eleven or twelve years old. We noticed a man who went from table to
table and improvised verses upon any subject that was given to him. I
was sent to bring the poet to our table and he showed himself thankful
for the message. Before asking for his subject he threw off a few rhymes
about me, and declared it probable, if he could trust his inspiration,
that I would one day become a “minister.” I can still distinctly
remember the impression made by this second prophecy. It was at the time
of the election for the municipal ministry; my father had recently
brought home pictures of those elected to the ministry—Herbst, Giskra,
Unger, Berger, and others—and we had illuminated them in honour of these
gentlemen. There were even some Jews among them; every industrious
Jewish schoolboy therefore had the making of a minister in him. Even the
fact that until shortly before my enrolment in the University I wanted
to study jurisprudence, and changed my plans only at the last moment,
must be connected with the impressions of that time. A minister’s career
is under no circumstances open to a medical man. And now for my dream! I
begin to see that it transplants me from the sombre present to the
hopeful time of the municipal election, and fulfils my wish of that time
to the fullest extent. In treating my two estimable and learned
colleagues so badly, because they are Jews, the one as a simpleton and
the other as a criminal—in doing this I act as though I were the
minister of education, I put myself in his place. What thorough revenge
I take upon his Excellency! He refuses to appoint me professor
extraordinarius, and in return I put myself in his place in the dream.
Another case establishes the fact that although the wish which actuates
the dream is a present one, it nevertheless draws great intensification
from childhood memories. I refer to a series of dreams which are based
upon the longing to go to Rome. I suppose I shall still have to satisfy
this longing by means of dreams for a long time to come, because, at the
time of year which is at my disposal for travelling, a stay at Rome is
to be avoided on account of considerations of health.[BB] Thus I once
dreamt of seeing the Tiber and the bridge of St. Angelo from the window
of a railroad compartment; then the train starts, and it occurs to me
that I have never entered the city at all. The view which I saw in the
dream was modelled after an engraving which I had noticed in passing the
day before in the parlour of one of my patients. On another occasion
some one is leading me upon a hill and showing me Rome half enveloped in
mist, and so far in the distance that I am astonished at the
distinctness of the view. The content of this dream is too rich to be
fully reported here. The motive, “to see the promised land from afar,”
is easily recognisable in it. The city is Lübeck, which I first saw in
the mist; the original of the hill is the Gleichenberg. In a third
dream, I am at last in Rome, as the dream tells me. To my
disappointment, the scenery which I see is anything but urban. _A little
river with black water, on one side of which are black rocks, on the
other large white flowers. I notice a certain Mr. Zucker_ (with whom I
am superficially acquainted), _and make up my mind to ask him to show me
the way into the city._ It is apparent that I am trying in vain to see a
city in the dream which I have never seen in waking life. If I resolve
the landscape into its elements, the white flowers indicate Ravenna,
which is known to me, and which, for a time at least, deprived Rome of
its leading place as capital of Italy. In the swamps around Ravenna we
had seen the most beautiful water-lilies in the middle of black pools of
water; the dream makes them grow on meadows, like the narcissi of our
own Aussee, because at Ravenna it was such tedious work to fetch them
out of the water. The black rock, so close to the water, vividly recalls
the valley of the Tepl at Karlsbad. “Karlsbad” now enables me to account
for the peculiar circumstance that I ask Mr. Zucker the way. In the
material of which the dream is composed appear also two of those amusing
Jewish anecdotes, which conceal so much profound and often bitter
worldly wisdom, and which we are so fond of quoting in our conversation
and letters. One is the story of the “constitution,” and tells how a
poor Jew sneaks into the express train for Karlsbad without a ticket,
how he is caught and is treated more and more unkindly at each call for
tickets by the conductor, and how he tells a friend, whom he meets at
one of the stations during his miserable journey, and who asks him where
he is travelling: “To Karlsbad, if my constitution will stand it.”
Associated with this in memory is another story about a Jew who is
ignorant of French, and who has express instructions to ask in Paris for
the way to the Rue Richelieu. Paris was for many years the object of my
own longing, and I took the great satisfaction with which I first set
foot on the pavement in Paris as a warrant that I should also attain the
fulfilment of other wishes. Asking for the way is again a direct
allusion to Rome, for of course all roads lead to Rome. Moreover, the
name Zucker (English, sugar) again points to _Karlsbad_, whither we send
all persons afflicted with the _constitutional_ disease, diabetes
(_Zuckerkrankheit_, sugar-disease). The occasion for this dream was the
proposal of my Berlin friend that we should meet in Prague at Easter. A
further allusion to sugar and diabetes was to be found in the matters
which I had to talk over with him.
A fourth dream, occurring shortly after the last one mentioned, brings
me back to Rome. I see a street-corner before me and am astonished to
see so many German placards posted there. On the day before I had
written my friend with prophetic vision that Prague would probably not
be a comfortable resort for German travellers. The dream, therefore,
simultaneously expressed the wish to meet him at Rome instead of at the
Bohemian city, and a desire, which probably originated during my student
days, that the German language might be accorded more tolerance in
Prague. Besides I must have understood the Czech language in the first
three years of my childhood, because I was born in a small village of
Moravia, inhabited by Slavs. A Czech nursery rhyme, which I heard in my
seventeenth year, became, without effort on my part, so imprinted upon
my memory that I can repeat it to this day, although I have no idea of
its meaning. There is then no lack in these dreams also of manifold
relations to impressions from the first years of my life.
It was during my last journey to Italy, which, among other places, took
me past Lake Trasimenus, that I at last found what re-enforcement my
longing for the Eternal City had received from the impressions of my
youth; this was after I had seen the Tiber, and had turned back with
painful emotions when I was within eighty kilometers of Rome. I was just
broaching the plan of travelling to Naples via Rome the next year, when
this sentence, which I must have read in one of our classical authors,
occurred to me: “It is a question which of the two paced up and down in
his room the more impatiently after he had made the plan to go to
Rome—Assistant-Headmaster Winckelman or the great general Hannibal.” I
myself had walked in Hannibal’s footsteps; like him I was destined never
to see Rome, and he too had gone to Campania after the whole world had
expected him in Rome. Hannibal, with whom I had reached this point of
similarity, had been my favourite hero during my years at the Gymnasium;
like so many boys of my age, I bestowed my sympathies during the Punic
war, not on the Romans, but on the Carthaginians. Then, when I came
finally to understand the consequences of belonging to an alien race,
and was forced by the anti-semitic sentiment among my class-mates to
assume a definite attitude, the figure of the semitic commander assumed
still greater proportions in my eyes. Hannibal and Rome symbolised for
me as a youth the antithesis between the tenaciousness of the Jews and
the organisation of the Catholic Church. The significance for our
emotional life which the anti-semitic movement has since assumed helped
to fix the thoughts and impressions of that earlier time. Thus the wish
to get to Rome has become the cover and symbol in my dream-life for
several warmly cherished wishes, for the realisation of which one might
work with the perseverance and single-mindedness of the Punic general,
and whose fulfilment sometimes seems as little favoured by fortune as
the wish of Hannibal’s life to enter Rome.
And now for the first time I happen upon the youthful experience which,
even to-day, still manifests its power in all these emotions and dreams.
I may have been ten or twelve years old when my father began to take me
with him on his walks, and to reveal to me his views about the things of
this world in his conversation. In this way he once told me, in order to
show into how much better times I had been born than he, the following:
“While I was a young man, I was walking one Saturday on a street in the
village where you were born; I was handsomely dressed and wore a new fur
cap. Along comes a Christian, who knocks my cap into the mud with one
blow and shouts: “Jew, get off the sidewalk.” “And what did you do?” “I
went into the street and picked up the cap,” was the calm answer. That
did not seem heroic on the part of the big strong man, who was leading
me, a little fellow, by the hand. I contrasted this situation, which did
not please me, with another more in harmony with my feelings—the scene
in which Hannibal’s father, Hamilcar[BC] Barka made his boy swear at the
domestic altar to take vengeance on the Romans. Since that time Hannibal
has had a place in my phantasies.”
I think I can follow my enthusiasm for the Carthaginian general still
further back into my childhood, so that possibly we have here the
transference of an already formed emotional relation to a new vehicle.
One of the first books which fell into my childish hands, after I
learned to read, was Thiers’ _Konsulat und Kaiserreich_ (Consulship and
Empire); I remember I pasted on the flat backs of my wooden soldiers
little labels with the names of the Imperial marshals, and that at that
time Masséna (as a Jew Menasse) was already my avowed favourite.
Napoleon himself follows Hannibal in crossing the Alps. And perhaps the
development of this martial ideal can be traced still further back into
my childhood, to the wish which the now friendly, now hostile,
intercourse during my first three years with a boy a year older than
myself must have actuated in the weaker of the two playmates.
The deeper one goes in the analysis of dreams, the more often one is put
on the track of childish experiences which play the part of dream
sources in the latent dream content.
We have learned (p. 16) that the dream very rarely reproduces
experiences in such a manner that they constitute the sole manifest
dream content, unabridged and unchanged. Still some authentic examples
showing this process have been reported, and I can add some new ones
which again refer to infantile scenes. In the case of one of my
patients, a dream once gave a barely disfigured reproduction of a sexual
occurrence, which was immediately recognised as an accurate
recollection. The memory of it indeed had never been lost in waking
life, but it had been greatly obscured, and its revivification was a
result of the preceding work of analysis. The dreamer had at the age of
twelve visited a bed-ridden schoolmate, who had exposed himself by a
movement in bed, probably only by chance. At the sight of the genitals,
he was seized by a kind of compulsion, exposed himself and took hold of
the member belonging to the other boy, who, however, looked at him with
surprise and indignation, whereupon he became embarrassed and let go. A
dream repeated this scene twenty-three years later, with all the details
of the emotions occurring in it, changing it, however, in this respect,
that the dreamer took the passive part instead of the active one, while
the person of the schoolmate was replaced by one belonging to the
present.
As a rule, of course, a childhood scene is represented in the manifest
dream content only by an allusion, and must be extricated from the dream
by means of interpretation. The citation of examples of this kind cannot
have a very convincing effect, because every guarantee that they are
experiences of childhood is lacking; if they belong to an earlier time
of life, they are no longer recognised by our memory. Justification for
the conclusion that such childish experiences generally exist in dreams
is based upon a great number of factors which become apparent in
psychoanalytical work, and which seem reliable enough when regarded as a
whole. But when, for the purposes of dream interpretation, such
references of dreams to childish experiences are torn from their
context, they will perhaps not make much impression, especially since I
never give all the material upon which the interpretation depends.
However, I shall not let this prevent me from giving some examples.
I. The following dream is from another female patient: _She is in a
large room, in which there are all kinds of machines, perhaps, as she
imagines, an orthopædic institute. She hears that I have no time, and
that she must take the treatment along with five others. But she
resists, and is unwilling to lie down on the bed—or whatever it is—which
is intended for her. She stands in a corner and waits for me to say “It
is not true.” The others, meanwhile, laugh at her, saying it is all
foolishness on her part. At the same time it is as if she were called
upon to make many small squares._
The first part of the content of this dream is an allusion to the
treatment and a transference on me. The second contains an allusion to a
childhood scene; the two portions are connected by the mention of the
bed. The orthopædic institute refers to one of my talks in which I
compared the treatment as to its duration and nature with an orthopædic
treatment. At the beginning of the treatment I had to tell her that _for
the present_ I had little time for her, but that later on I would devote
a whole hour to her daily. This aroused in her the old sensitiveness,
which is the chief characteristic of children who are to be hysterical.
Their desire for love is insatiable. My patient was the youngest of six
brothers and sisters (hence, “_with five others_”), and as such the
favourite of her father, but in spite of that she seems to have found
that her beloved father devoted too little time and attention to her.
The detail of her waiting for me to say “It is not true,” has the
following explanation: A tailor’s apprentice had brought her a dress,
and she had given him the money for it. Then she asked her husband
whether she would have to pay the money again if the boy were to lose
it. To tease her, her husband answered “Yes” (the teasing in the dream),
and she asked again and again, and _waited for him to say_ “_It is not
true._” The thought of the latent dream-content may now be construed as
follows: Will she have to pay me the double amount if I devote twice the
time to her? a thought which is stingy or filthy. (The uncleanliness of
childhood is often replaced in the dream by greediness for money; the
word filthy here supplies the bridge.) If all that about waiting until I
should say, &c., serves as a dream circumlocution for the word “filthy,”
the standing-in-a-corner and not lying down-on-the-bed are in keeping;
for these two features are component parts of a scene of childhood, in
which she had soiled her bed, and for punishment was put into a corner,
with the warning that papa would not love her any more, and her brothers
and sisters laughed at her, &c. The little squares refer to her young
niece, who has shown her the arithmetical trick of writing figures in
nine squares, I believe it is, in such a way that upon being added
together in any direction they make fifteen.
II. Here is the dream of a man: _He sees two boys tussling with each
other, and they are cooper’s boys, as he concludes from the implements
which are lying about; one of the boys has thrown the other down, the
prostrate one wears ear-rings with blue stones. He hurries after the
wrongdoer with lifted cane, in order to chastise him. The latter takes
refuge with a woman who is standing against a wooden fence, as though it
were his mother. She is the wife of a day labourer, and she turns her
back to the man who is dreaming. At last she faces about and stares at
him with a horrible look, so that he runs away in fright; in her eyes
the red flesh of the lower lid seems to stand out._
The dream has made abundant use of trivial occurrences of the previous
day. The day before he actually saw two boys on the street, one of whom
threw the other one down. When he hurried up to them in order to settle
the quarrel, both of them took flight. Coopers’ boys: this is explained
only by a subsequent dream, in the analysis of which he used the
expression, “_To knock the bottom out of the barrel._” Ear-rings with
blue stones, according to his observation, are chiefly worn by
prostitutes. Furthermore, a familiar doggerel rhyme about two boys comes
up: “The other boy, his name was Mary” (that is, he was a girl). The
woman standing up: after the scene with the two boys, he took a walk on
the bank of the Danube, and took advantage of being alone to urinate
_against a wooden fence_. A little later during his walk, a decently
dressed elderly lady smiled at him very pleasantly, and wanted to hand
him her card with her address.
Since in the dream the woman stood as he had while urinating, it is a
question of a woman urinating, and this explains the “horrible look,”
and the prominence of the red flesh, which can only refer to the
genitals which gap in squatting. He had seen genitals in his childhood,
and they had appeared in later recollection as “proud flesh” and as
“wound.” The dream unites two occasions upon which, as a young boy, the
dreamer had had opportunity to see the genitals of little girls, in
throwing one down, and while another was urinating; and, as is shown by
another association, he had kept in memory a punishment or threat of his
father’s, called forth by the sexual curiosity which the boy manifested
on these occasions.
III. A great mass of childish memories, which have been hastily united
in a phantasy, is to be found behind the following dream of a young
lady.
_She goes out in trepidation, in order to do some shopping. On the
Graben[BD] she sinks to her knees as though broken down. Many people
collect around her, especially the hackney-coach drivers; but no one
helps her to get up. She makes many unavailing attempts; finally she
must have succeeded, for she is put into a hackney-coach which is to
take her home. A large, heavily laden basket (something like a
market-basket) is thrown after her through the window._
This is the same woman who is always harassed in her dreams as she was
harassed when a child. The first situation of the dream is apparently
taken from seeing a horse that had fallen, just as “broken down” points
to horse-racing. She was a rider in her early years, still earlier she
was probably also a horse. Her first childish memory of the
seventeen-year-old son of the porter, who, being seized on the street by
an epileptic fit, was brought home in a coach, is connected with the
idea of falling down. Of this, of course, she has only heard, but the
idea of epileptic fits and of falling down has obtained great power over
her phantasies, and has later influenced the form of her own hysterical
attacks. When a person of the female sex dreams of falling, this almost
regularly has a sexual significance; she becomes a “fallen woman,” and
for the purpose of the dream under consideration this interpretation is
probably the least doubtful, for she falls on the Graben, the place in
Vienna which is known as the concourse of prostitutes. The market-basket
admits of more than one interpretation; in the sense of refusal (German,
_Korb_ = basket—snub, refusal), she remembers the many snubs which she
first gave her suitors, and which she later, as she thinks, received
herself. Here belongs also the detail that _no one will help her up_,
which she herself interprets as being disdained. Furthermore, the
market-basket recalls phantasies that have already appeared in the
course of analysis, in which she imagines she has married far beneath
her station, and now goes marketing herself. But lastly the
market-basket might be interpreted as the mark of a servant. This
suggests further childhood memories—of a cook who was sent away because
she stole; she, too, sank to her knees and begged for mercy. The dreamer
was at that time twelve years old. Then there is a recollection of a
chamber-maid, who was dismissed because she had an affair with the
coachman of the household, who, incidentally, married her afterwards.
This recollection, therefore, gives us a clue to the coachman in the
dream (who do not, in contrast with what is actually the case, take the
part of the fallen woman). But there still remains to be explained the
throwing of the basket, and the throwing of it through the window. This
takes her to the transference of baggage on the railroad, to the
_Fensterln_,[BE] in the country, and to minor impressions received at a
country resort, of a gentleman throwing some blue plums to a lady
through her window, and of the dreamer’s little sister being frightened
because a cretin who was passing looked in at the window. And now from
behind this there emerges an obscure recollection, from her tenth year,
of a nurse who made love at the country resort with a servant of the
household, of which the child had opportunity to see something, and who
was “fired” (thrown out) (in the dream the opposite: “thrown into”), a
story which we had also approached by several other paths. The baggage,
moreover, or the trunk of a servant, is disparagingly referred to in
Vienna as “seven plums.” “Pack up your seven plums and get out.”
My collection, of course, contains an abundant supply of such patients’
dreams, whose analysis leads to childish impressions that are remembered
obscurely or not at all, and that often date back to the first three
years of life. But it is a mistake to draw conclusions from them which
are to apply to the dream in general; we are in every case dealing with
neurotic, particularly with hysterical persons; and the part played by
childhood scenes in these dreams might be conditioned by the nature of
the neurosis, and not by that of the dream. However, I am struck quite
as often in the course of interpreting my own dreams, which I do not do
on account of obvious symptoms of disease, by the fact that I
unsuspectingly come upon a scene of childhood in the latent dream
content, and that a whole series of dreams suddenly falls into line with
conclusions drawn from childish experiences. I have already given
examples of this, and shall give still more upon various occasions.
Perhaps I cannot close the whole chapter more fittingly than by citing
several of my own dreams, in which recent happenings and long-forgotten
experiences of childhood appear together as sources of dreams.
I. After I have been travelling and have gone to bed hungry and tired,
the great necessities of life begin to assert their claims in sleep, and
I dream as follows: _I go into a kitchen to order some pastry. Here
three women are standing, one of whom is the hostess, and is turning
something in her hand as though she were making dumplings. She answers
that I must wait until she has finished_ (not distinctly as a speech).
_I become impatient and go away insulted. I put on an overcoat; but the
first one which I try is too long. I take it off, and am somewhat
astonished to find that it has fur trimming. A second one has sewn into
it a long strip of cloth with Turkish drawings. A stranger with a long
face and a short pointed beard comes up and prevents me from putting it
on, declaring that it belongs to him. I now show him that it is
embroidered all over in Turkish fashion. He asks, “What business are the
Turkish (drawings, strips of cloth ...) of yours?” But we then become
quite friendly with each other._
In the analysis of this dream there occurs to me quite unexpectedly the
novel which I read, that is to say, which I began with the end of the
first volume, when I was perhaps thirteen years old. I have never known
the name of the novel or of its author, but the conclusion remains
vividly in my memory. The hero succumbs to insanity, and continually
calls the names of the three women that have signified the greatest good
and ill fortune for him during life. Pélagie is one of these names. I
still do not know what to make of this name in the analysis. À propos of
the three women there now come to the surface the three Parcæ who spin
the fate of man, and I know that one of the three women, the hostess in
the dream, is the mother who gives life, and who, moreover, as in my
case, gives the first nourishment to the living creature. Love and
hunger meet at the mother’s breast. A young man—so runs an anecdote—who
became a great admirer of womanly beauty, once when the conversation
turned upon a beautiful wet nurse who had nourished him as a child,
expressed himself to the effect that he was sorry that he had not taken
better advantage of his opportunity at the time. I am in the habit of
using the anecdote to illustrate the factor of subsequence in the
mechanism of psychoneuroses.... One of the Parcæ, then, is rubbing the
palms of her hands together as though she were making dumplings. A
strange occupation for one of the Fates, which is urgently in need of an
explanation! This is now found in another and earlier childhood memory.
When I was six years old, and was receiving my first instructions from
my mother, I was asked to believe that we are made of earth, and that
therefore we must return to earth. But this did not suit me, and I
doubted her teaching. Thereupon my mother rubbed the palms of her hands
together—just as in making dumplings, except that there was no dough
between them—and showed me the blackish scales of epidermis which were
thus rubbed off as a proof that it is earth of which we are made. My
astonishment at this demonstration _ad oculos_ was without limit, and I
acquiesced in the idea which I was later to hear expressed in words:
“Thou owest nature a death.”[BF] Thus the women are really Parcæ whom I
visit in the kitchen, as I have done so often in my childhood years when
I was hungry, and when my mother used to order me to wait until lunch
was ready. And now for the dumplings! At least one of my teachers at the
University, the very one to whom I am indebted for my histological
knowledge (epidermis), might be reminded by the name Knoedl (German,
_Knoedel_ = dumplings) of a person whom he had to prosecute for
committing a plagiarism of his writings. To commit plagiarism, to
appropriate anything one can get, even though it belongs to another,
obviously leads to the second part of the dream, in which I am treated
like a certain overcoat thief, who for a time plied his trade in the
auditoria. I wrote down the expression plagiarism—without any
reason—because it presented itself to me, and now I perceive that it
must belong to the latent dream-content, because it will serve as a
bridge between different parts of the manifest dream-content. The chain
of associations—Pélagie—plagiarism—plagiostomi[BG] (sharks)—fish
bladder—connects the old novel with the affair of Knoedl and with the
overcoats (German, _Überzieher_ = thing drawn over—overcoat or condom),
which obviously refer to an object belonging to the technique of sexual
life.[BH] This, it is true, is a very forced and irrational connection,
but it is nevertheless one which I could not establish in waking life if
it had not been already established by the activity of the dream.
Indeed, as though nothing were sacred for this impulse to force
connections, the beloved name, Bruecke (bridge of words, see above), now
serves to remind me of the institution in which I spent my happiest
hours as a student, quite without any cares (“So you will ever find more
pleasure at the breasts of knowledge without measure”), in the most
complete contrast to the urgent desires which vex me while I dream. And
finally there comes to the surface the recollection of another dear
teacher, whose name again sounds like something to eat (Fleischl—German,
_Fleisch_ = meat—like Knoedl), and of a pathetic scene, in which the
scales of epidermis play a part (mother—hostess), and insanity (the
novel), and a remedy from the Latin kitchen which numbs the sensation of
hunger, to wit, cocaine.
In this manner I could follow the intricate trains of thought still
further, and could fully explain the part of the dream which is missing
in the analysis; but I must refrain, because the personal sacrifices
which it would require are too great. I shall merely take up one of the
threads, which will serve to lead us directly to the dream thoughts that
lie at the bottom of the confusion. The stranger, with the long face and
pointed beard, who wants to prevent me from putting on the overcoat, has
the features of a tradesman at Spalato, of whom my wife made ample
purchases of Turkish cloths. His name was Popovic̓, a suspicious name,
which, by the way, has given the humorist Stettenheim a chance to make a
significant remark: “He told me his name, and blushingly shook my
hand.”[BI] Moreover, there is the same abuse of names as above with
Pélagie, Knoedl, Bruecke, Fleischl. That such playing with names is
childish nonsense can be asserted without fear of contradiction; if I
indulge in it, this indulgence amounts to an act of retribution, for my
own name has numberless times fallen a victim to such weak-minded
attempts at humour. Goethe once remarked how sensitive a man is about
his name with which, as with his skin, he feels that he has grown up,
whereupon Herder composed the following on his name:
“Thou who art born of _gods_, of _Goths_, or of _Kot_ (mud)—
Thy _god_like images, too, are dust.”
I perceive that this digression about the abuse of names was only
intended to prepare for this complaint. But let us stop here.... The
purchase at Spalato reminds me of another one at Cattaro, where I was
too cautious, and missed an opportunity for making some desirable
acquisitions. (Missing an opportunity at the breast of the nurse, see
above.) Another dream thought, occasioned in the dreamer by the
sensation of hunger, is as follows: _One should let nothing which one
can have escape, even if a little wrong is done; no opportunity should
be missed, life is so short, death inevitable._ Owing to the fact that
this also has a sexual significance, and that desire is unwilling to
stop at a wrong, this philosophy of _carpe diem_ must fear the censor
and must hide behind a dream. This now makes articulate counter-thoughts
of all kinds, recollections of a time when spiritual food alone was
sufficient for the dreamer; it suggests repressions of every kind, and
even threats of disgusting sexual punishments.
II. A second dream requires a longer preliminary statement:
I have taken a car to the West Station in order to begin a vacation
journey to the Aussee, and I reach the station in time for the train to
Ischl, which leaves earlier. Here I see Count Thun, who is again going
to see the Emperor at Ischl. In spite of the rain, he has come in an
open carriage, has passed out at once through the door for local trains,
and has motioned back the gate-keeper, who does not know him and who
wants to take his ticket, with a little wave of his hand. After the
train to Ischl has left, I am told to leave the platform and go back
into the hot waiting-room; but with difficulty I secure permission to
remain. I pass the time in watching the people who make use of bribes to
secure a compartment; I make up my mind to insist on my rights—that is,
to demand the same privilege. Meanwhile I sing something to myself,
which I afterwards recognise to be the aria from Figaro’s Wedding:
“If my lord Count wishes to try a dance,
Try a dance,
Let him but say so,
I’ll play him a tune.”
(Possibly another person would not have recognised the song.)
During the whole afternoon I have been in an insolent, combative mood;
I have spoken roughly to the waiter and the cabman, I hope without
hurting their feelings; now all kinds of bold and revolutionary
thoughts come into my head, of a kind suited to the words of Figaro
and the comedy of Beaumarchais, which I had seen at the Comédie
Française. The speech about great men who had taken the trouble to be
born; the aristocratic prerogative, which Count Almaviva wants to
apply in the case of Susan; the jokes which our malicious journalists
of the Opposition make upon the name of Count Thun (German, _thun_ =
doing) by calling him Count Do-Nothing. I really do not envy him; he
has now a difficult mission with the Emperor, and I am the real Count
Do-Nothing, for I am taking a vacation. With this, all kinds of
cheerful plans for the vacation. A gentleman now arrives who is known
to me as a representative of the Government at the medical
examinations, and who has won the flattering nickname of “Governmental
bed-fellow” by his activities in this capacity. By insisting on his
official station he secures half of a first-class compartment, and I
hear one guard say to the other: “Where are we going to put the
gentleman with the first-class half-compartment?” A pretty
favouritism; I am paying for a whole first-class compartment. Now I
get a whole compartment for myself, but not in a through coach, so
that there is no toilet at my disposal during the night. My complaints
to the guard are without result; I get even by proposing that at least
there be a hole made in the floor of this compartment for the possible
needs of the travellers. I really awake at a quarter of three in the
morning with a desire to urinate, having had the following dream:
Crowd of people, meeting of students.... _A certain Count (Thun or
Taafe) is making a speech. Upon being asked to say something about the
Germans, he declares with contemptuous mien that their favourite flower
is Colt’s-foot, and then puts something like a torn leaf, really the
crumpled skeleton of a leaf, into his buttonhole. I make a start, I make
a start then,[BJ] but I am surprised at this idea of mine._ Then more
indistinctly: _It seems as though it were the vestibule (Aula), the
exits are jammed, as though it were necessary to flee. I make my way
through a suite of handsomely furnished rooms, apparently governmental
chambers, with furniture of a colour which is between brown and violet,
and at last I come to a passage where a housekeeper, an elderly, fat
woman (Frauenzimmer), is seated. I try to avoid talking to her, but
apparently she thinks I have a right to pass because she asks whether
she shall accompany me with the lamp. I signify to her to tell her that
she is to remain standing on the stairs, and in this I appear to myself
very clever, for avoiding being watched at last. I am downstairs now,
and I find a narrow, steep way along which I go._
Again indistinctly.... _It is as if my second task were to get away out
of the city, as my earlier was to get out of the house. I am riding in a
one-horse carriage, and tell the driver to take me to a railway station.
“I cannot ride with you on the tracks,” I say, after he has made the
objection that I have tired him out. Here it seems as though I had
already driven with him along a course which is ordinarily traversed on
the railroad. The stations are crowded; I consider whether I shall go to
Krems or to Znaim, but I think that the court will be there, and I
decide in favour of Graz or something of the sort. Now I am seated in
the coach, which is something like a street-car, and I have in my
buttonhole a long braided thing, on which are violet-brown violets of
stiff material, which attracts the attention of many people. Here the
scene breaks off._
_I am again in front of the railroad station, but I am with a elderly
gentleman. I invent a scheme for remaining unrecognised, but I also see
this plan already carried out. Thinking and experiencing are here, as it
were, the same thing. He pretends to be blind, at least in one eye, and
I hold a male urinal in front of him (which we have had to buy in the
city or did buy), I am thus a sick attendant, and have to give him the
urinal because he is blind. If the conductor sees us in this position,
he must pass us by without drawing attention. At the same time the
attitude of the person mentioned is visually observed._ Then I awake
with a desire to urinate.
The whole dream seems a sort of phantasy, which takes the dreamer back
to the revolutionary year 1848, the memory of which had been renewed by
the anniversary year 1898, as well as by a little excursion to Wachau,
where I had become acquainted with Emmersdorf, a town which I wrongly
supposed to be the resting-place of the student leader Fischof, to whom
several features of the dream content might refer. The thought
associations then lead me to England, to the house of my brother, who
was accustomed jokingly to tell his wife of “Fifty years ago,” according
to the title of a poem by Lord Tennyson, whereupon the children were in
the habit of correcting: “Fifteen years ago.” This phantasy, however,
which subtilely attaches itself to the thoughts which the sight of the
Count Thun has given rise to, is only like the façade of Italian
churches which is superimposed without being organically connected with
the building behind it; unlike these façades, however, the phantasy is
filled with gaps and confused, and the parts from within break through
at many places. The first situation of the dream is concocted from
several scenes, into which I am able to separate it. The arrogant
attitude of the Count in the dream is copied from a scene at the
Gymnasium which took place in my fifteenth year. We had contrived a
conspiracy against an unpopular and ignorant teacher, the leading spirit
in which was a schoolmate who seems to have taken Henry VIII. of England
as his model. It fell to me to carry out the _coup-d’état_, and a
discussion of the importance of the Danube (German _Donau_) for Austria
(Wachau!) was the occasion upon which matters came to open indignation.
A fellow-conspirator was the only aristocratic schoolmate whom we had—he
was called the “giraffe” on account of his conspicuous longitudinal
development—and he stood just like the Count in the dream, while he was
being reprimanded by the tyrant of the school, the Professor of the
German language. The explanation of the favourite flower and the putting
into the buttonhole of something which again must have been a flower
(which recalls the orchids, which I had brought to a lady friend on the
same day, and besides that the rose of Jericho) prominently recalls the
scene in Shakespeare’s historical plays which opens the civil wars of
the Red and the White Roses; the mention of Henry VIII. has opened the
way to this reminiscence. It is not very far now from roses to red and
white carnations. Meanwhile two little rhymes, the one German, the other
Spanish, insinuate themselves into the analysis: “Roses, tulips,
carnations, all flowers fade,” and “Isabelita, no llores que se
marchitan las flores.” The Spanish is taken from _Figaro_. Here in
Vienna white carnations have become the insignia of the Anti-Semites,
the red ones of the Social Democrats. Behind this is the recollection of
an anti-Semitic challenge during a railway trip in beautiful Saxony
(Anglo-Saxon). The third scene contributing to the formation of the
first situation in the dream takes place in my early student life. There
was a discussion in the German students’ club about the relation of
philosophy to the general sciences. A green youth, full of the
materialistic doctrine, I thrust myself forward and defended a very
one-sided view. Thereupon a sagacious older school-fellow, who has since
shown his capacity for leading men and organising the masses, and who,
moreover, bears a name belonging to the animal kingdom, arose and called
us down thoroughly; he too, he said, had herded swine in his youth, and
had come back repentant to the house of his father. I started up (as in
the dream), became very uncivil, and answered that since I knew he had
herded swine, I was not surprised at the tone of his discourse. (In the
dream I am surprised at my national German sentiment.) There was great
commotion; and the demand came from all sides that I take back what I
had said, but I remained steadfast. The man who had been insulted was
too sensible to take the advice, which was given him, to send a
challenge, and let the matter drop.
The remaining elements of this scene of the dream are of more remote
origin. What is the meaning of the Count’s proclaiming the colt’s foot?
Here I must consult my train of associations. Colt’s-foot (German:
_Huflattich_)—lattice—lettuce—salad-dog (the dog that grudges others
what he cannot eat himself). Here plenty of opprobrious epithets may be
discerned: Gir-affe (German _Affe_ = monkey, ape), pig, sow, dog; I
might even find means to arrive at donkey, on a detour by way of a name,
and thus again at contempt for an academic teacher. Furthermore I
translate colt’s-foot (_Huflattich_)—I do not know how correctly—by
“pisse-en-lit.” I got this idea from Zola’s _Germinal_, in which
children are ordered to bring salad of this kind. The dog—_chien_—has a
name sounding like the major function (_chier_, as _pisser_ stands for
the minor one). Now we shall soon have before us the indecent in all
three of its categories; for in the same _Germinal_, which has a lot to
do with the future revolution there is described a very peculiar
contest, depending upon the production of gaseous excretions, called
flatus.[BK] And now I must remark how the way to this flatus has been
for a long while preparing, beginning with the flowers, and proceeding
to the Spanish rhyme of Isabelita to Ferdinand and Isabella, and, by way
of Henry VIII., to English history at the time of the expedition of the
Armada against England, after the victorious termination of which the
English struck a medal with the inscription: “_Afflavit_ et dissipati
sunt,” for the storm had scattered the Spanish fleet. I had thought of
taking this phrase for the title of a chapter on “Therapeutics”—to be
meant half jokingly—if I should ever have occasion to give a detailed
account of my conception and treatment of hysteria.
I cannot give such a detailed solution of the second scene of the dream,
out of regard for the censor. For at this point I put myself in the
place of a certain eminent gentleman of that revolutionary period, who
also had an adventure with an eagle, who is said to have suffered from
incontinence of the bowels, and the like; and I believe I _should not be
justified at this point in passing_ the censor, although it was an aulic
councillor (_aula_, _consilarius aulicus_) who told me the greater part
of these stories. The allusion to the suite of rooms in the dream
relates to the private car of his Excellency, into which I had
opportunity to look for a moment; but it signifies, as so often in
dreams, a woman (Frauenzimmer; German _Zimmer_—room is appended to
_Frauen_—woman, in order to imply a slight amount of contempt).[BL] In
the person of the housekeeper I give scant recognition to an intelligent
elderly lady for the entertainment and the many good stories which I
have enjoyed at her house.... The feature of the lamp goes back to
Grillparzer, who notes a charming experience of a similar nature, which
he afterwards made use of in “Hero and Leander” (the billows of the
ocean and of love—the Armada and the storm).[BM]
I must also forgo detailed analysis of the two remaining portions of the
dream; I shall select only those elements which lead to two childhood
scenes, for the sake of which alone I have taken up the dream. The
reader will guess that it is sexual matter which forces me to this
suppression; but he need not be content with this explanation. Many
things which must be treated as secrets in the presence of others are
not treated as such with one’s self, and here it is not a question of
considerations inducing me to hide the solution, but of motives of the
inner censor concealing the real content of the dream from myself. I may
say, then, that the analysis shows these three portions of the dream to
be impertinent boasting, the exuberance of an absurd grandiose idea
which has long since been suppressed in my waking life, which, however,
dares show itself in the manifest dream content by one or two
projections (_I seem clever to myself_), and which makes the arrogant
mood of the evening before the dream perfectly intelligible. It is
boasting, indeed, in all departments; thus the mention of Graz refers to
the phrase: What is the price of Graz? which we are fond of using when
we feel over-supplied with money. Whoever will recall Master Rabelais’s
unexcelled description of the “Life and Deeds of Gargantua and his Son
Pantagruel,” will be able to supply the boastful content intimated in
the first portion of the dream. The following belongs to the two
childhood scenes which have been promised. I had bought a new trunk for
this journey, whose colour, a brownish violet, appears in the dream
several times. (Violet-brown violets made of stiff material, next to a
thing which is called “girl-catcher”—the furniture in the governmental
chambers). That something new attracts people’s attention is a
well-known belief of children. Now I have been told the following story
of my childhood; I remember hearing the story rather than the occurrence
itself. I am told that at the age of two I still occasionally wetted my
bed, that I was often reproached on this subject, and that I consoled my
father by promising to buy him a beautiful new red bed in N. (the
nearest large city). (Hence the detail inserted in the dream that _we
bought the urinal in the city or had to buy it_; one must keep one’s
promises. Attention is further called to the identity of the male urinal
and the feminine trunk, box). All the megalomania of the child is
contained in this promise. The significance of the dream of difficulty
in urinating in the case of the child has been already considered in the
interpretation of an earlier dream (_cf._ the dream on p. 145).
Now there was another domestic occurrence, when I was seven or eight
years old, which I remember very well. One evening, before going to bed
I had disregarded the dictates of discretion not to satisfy my wants in
the bedroom of my parents and in their presence, and in his reprimand
for this delinquency my father made the remark: “That boy will never
amount to anything.” It must have terribly mortified my ambition, for
allusions to this scene return again and again in my dreams, and are
regularly coupled with enumerations of my accomplishments and successes,
as though I wanted to say: “You see, I have amounted to something after
all.” Now this childhood scene furnishes the elements for the last image
of the dream, in which of course, the rôles are interchanged for the
sake of revenge. The elderly man, obviously my father, for the blindness
in one eye signifies his glaucoma[BN] on one side is now urinating
before me as I once urinated before him. In glaucoma I refer to cocaine,
which stood my father in good stead in his operation, as though I had
thereby fulfilled my promises. Besides that I make sport of him; since
he is blind I must hold the urinal in front of him, and I gloat over
allusions to my discoveries in the theory of hysteria, of which I am so
proud.[BO]
If the two childhood scenes of urinating are otherwise closely connected
with the desire for greatness, their rehabilitation on the trip to the
Aussee was further favoured by the accidental circumstance that my
compartment had no water-closet, and that I had to expect embarrassment
on the ride as actually happened in the morning. I awoke with the
sensation of a bodily need. I suppose one might be inclined to credit
these sensations with being the actual stimulus of the dream; I should,
however, prefer a different conception—namely, that it was the dream
thoughts which gave rise to the desire to urinate. It is quite unusual
for me to be disturbed in sleep by any need, at least at the time of
this awakening, a quarter of four in the morning. I may forestall
further objection by remarking that I have hardly ever felt a desire to
urinate after awakening early on other journeys made under more
comfortable circumstances. Moreover, I can leave this point undecided
without hurting my argument.
Since I have learned, further, from experience in dream analysis that
there always remain important trains of thought proceeding from dreams
whose interpretation at first seems complete (because the sources of the
dream and the actuation of the wish are easily demonstrable), trains of
thought reaching back into earliest childhood, I have been forced to ask
myself whether this feature does not constitute an essential condition
of dreaming. If I were to generalise this thesis, a connection with what
has been recently experienced would form a part of the manifest content
of every dream and a connection with what has been most remotely
experienced, of its latent content; and I can actually show in the
analysis of hysteria that in a true sense these remote experiences have
remained recent up to the present time. But this conjecture seems still
very difficult to prove; I shall probably have to return to the part
played by the earliest childhood experiences, in another connection
(Chapter VII.).
Of the three peculiarities of dream memory considered at the beginning,
one—the preference for the unimportant in the dream content—has been
satisfactorily explained by tracing it back to dream disfigurement. We
have been able to establish the existence of the other two—the selection
of recent and of infantile material—but we have found it impossible to
explain them by the motive of dream. Let us keep in mind these two
characteristics, which still remain to be explained or evaluated; a
place for them will have to be found elsewhere, either in the psychology
of the sleeping state, or in the discussion of the structure of the
psychic apparatus which we shall undertake later, after we have learned
that the inner nature of the apparatus may be observed through dream
interpretation as though through a window.
Just here I may emphasize another result of the last few dream analyses.
The dream often appears ambiguous; not only may several
wish-fulfilments, as the examples show, be united in it, but one meaning
or one wish-fulfilment may also conceal another, until at the bottom one
comes upon the fulfilment of a wish from the earliest period of
childhood; and here too, it may be questioned whether “often” in this
sentence may not more correctly be replaced by “regularly.”
(_c_) _Somatic Sources of Dreams_
If the attempt be made to interest the cultured layman in the problems
of dreaming, and if, with this end in view, he be asked the question
from what source dreams originate according to his opinion, it is
generally found that the person thus interrogated thinks himself in
assured possession of a part of the solution. He immediately thinks of
the influence which a disturbed or impeded digestion (“Dreams come from
the stomach”), accidental bodily position, and little occurrences during
sleep, exercise upon the formation of dreams, and he seems not to
suspect that even after the consideration of all these factors there
still remains something unexplained.
We have explained at length in the introductory chapter (p. 16), what a
rôle in the formation of dreams the scientific literature credits to the
account of somatic exciting sources, so that we need here only recall
the results of this investigation. We have seen that three kinds of
somatic exciting sources are distinguished, objective sensory stimuli
which proceed from external objects, the inner states of excitation of
the sensory organs having only a subjective basis, and the bodily
stimuli which originate internally; and we have noticed the inclination
on the part of the authors to force the psychic sources of the dream
into the background or to disregard them altogether in favour of these
somatic sources of stimulation (p. 32).
In testing the claims which are made on behalf of these classes of
somatic sources of stimulation, we have discovered that the significance
of the objective stimuli of the sensory organs—whether accidental
stimuli during sleep or those stimuli which cannot be excluded from our
dormant psychic life—has been definitely established by numerous
observations and is confirmed by experiments (p. 18); we have seen that
the part played by subjective sensory stimuli appears to be demonstrated
by the return of hypnogogic sensory images in dreams, and that although
the referring of these dream images and ideas, in the broadest sense, to
internal bodily stimulation is not demonstrable in every detail, it can
be supported by the well-known influence which an exciting state of the
digestive, urinary, and sexual organs exercise upon the contents of our
dreams.
“Nerve stimulus” and “bodily stimulus,” then, would be the somatic
sources of the dream—that is, the only sources whatever of the dream,
according to several authors.
But we have already found a number of doubts, which seem to attack not
so much the correctness of the somatic theory of stimulation as its
adequacy.
However certain all the representatives of this theory may have felt
about the actual facts on which it is based—especially in case of the
accidental and external nerve stimuli, which may be recognised in the
content of the dream without any trouble—nevertheless none of them has
been able to avoid the admission that the abundant ideal content of
dreams does not admit of explanation by external nerve-stimuli alone.
Miss Mary Whiton Calkins[12] has tested her own dreams and those of
another person for a period of six weeks with this idea in mind, and has
found only from 13·2 per cent. to 6·7 per cent. in which the element of
external sensory perception was demonstrable; only two cases in the
collection could be referred to organic sensations. Statistics here
confirm what a hasty glance at our own experience might have led us to
suspect.
The decision has been made repeatedly to distinguish the “dream of nerve
stimulus” from the other forms of the dream as a well-established
sub-species. Spitta[64] divided dreams into dreams of nerve stimulus and
association dreams. But the solution clearly remained unsatisfactory as
long as the link between the somatic sources of dreams and their ideal
content could not be demonstrated.
Besides the first objection, of the inadequate frequency of external
exciting sources, there arises as a second objection the inadequate
explanation of dreams offered by the introduction of this sort of dream
sources. The representatives of the theory accordingly must explain two
things, in the first place, why the external stimulus in the dream is
never recognised according to its real nature, but is regularly mistaken
for something else (_cf._ the alarm-clock dreams, p. 22), and secondly,
why the reaction of the receiving mind to this misrecognised stimulus
should result so indeterminately and changefully. As an answer to these
questions, we have heard from Strümpell[66] that the mind, as a result
of its being turned away from the outer world during sleep, is not
capable of giving correct interpretation to the objective sensory
stimulus, but is forced to form illusions on the basis of the indefinite
incitements from many directions. As expressed in his own words (p.
108):
“As soon as a sensation, a sensational complex, a feeling, or a psychic
process in general, arises in the mind during sleep from an outer or
inner nerve-stimulus, and is perceived by the mind, this process calls
up sensory images, that is to say, earlier perceptions, either
unembellished or with the psychic values belonging to them, from the
range of waking experiences, of which the mind has remained in
possession. It seems to collect about itself, as it were, a greater or
less number of such images, from which the impression which originates
from the nerve-stimulus receives its psychic value. It is usually said
here, as the idiom does of waking thought, that the mind _interprets_
impressions of nerve-stimuli in sleep. The result of this interpretation
is the so-called nerve-stimulus dream—that is to say, a dream whose
composition is conditioned by the fact that a nerve-stimulus brings
about its effect in psychic life according to the laws of reproduction.”
The opinion of Wundt[76] agrees in all essentials with this theory. He
says that the ideas in the dream are probably the result, for the most
part, of sensory stimuli, especially of those of general sensation, and
are therefore mostly phantastic illusions—probably memory presentations
which are only partly pure, and which have been raised to
hallucinations. Strümpell has found an excellent simile (p. 84). It is
as “if the ten fingers of a person ignorant of music should stray over
the keyboard of an instrument”—to illustrate the relation between dream
content and dream stimuli, which follows from this theory. The
implication is that the dream does not appear as a psychic phenomenon,
originating from psychic motives, but as the result of a physiological
stimulus, which is expressed in psychic symptomology, because the
apparatus which is affected by the stimulus is not capable of any other
expression. Upon a similar assumption is based, for example, the
explanation of compulsive ideas which Meynert tried to give by means of
the famous simile of the dial on which individual figures are prominent
because they are in more marked relief.
However popular this theory of somatic dream stimuli may have become,
and however seductive it may seem, it is nevertheless easy to show the
weak point in it. Every somatic dream stimulus which provokes the
psychic apparatus to interpretation through the formation of illusions,
is capable of giving rise to an incalculable number of such attempts at
interpretation; it can thus attain representation in the dream content
by means of an extraordinary number of different ideas. But the theory
of Strümpell and Wundt is incapable of instancing any motive which has
control over the relation between the external stimulus and the dream
idea which has been selected to interpret it, and therefore of
explaining the “peculiar choice” which the stimuli “often enough make in
the course of their reproductive activity” (Lipps, _Grundtatsachen des
Seelenlebens_, p. 170). Other objections may be directed against the
fundamental assumption of the whole theory of illusions—the assumption
that during sleep the mind is not in a condition to recognise the real
nature of the objective sensory stimuli. The old physiologist Burdach[8]
proves to us that the mind is quite capable even during sleep of
interpreting correctly the sensory impressions which reach it, and of
reacting in accordance with the correct interpretation. He establishes
this by showing that it is possible to exempt certain impressions which
seem important to the individuals, from the neglect of sleeping (nurse
and child), and that one is more surely awakened by one’s own name than
by an indifferent auditory impression, all of which presupposes, of
course, that the mind distinguishes among sensations, even in sleep
(Chapter I., p. 41). Burdach infers from these observations that it is
not an incapability of interpreting sensory stimuli in the sleeping
state which must be assumed, but a lack of interest in them. The same
arguments which Burdach used in 1830, later reappear unchanged in the
works of Lipps in the year 1883, where they are employed for the purpose
of attacking the theory of somatic stimuli. According to this the mind
seems to be like the sleeper in the anecdote, who, upon being asked,
“Are you asleep?” answers “No,” and upon being again addressed with the
words, “Then lend me ten florins,” takes refuge in the excuse: “I am
asleep.”
The inadequacy of the theory of somatic dream stimuli may also be
demonstrated in another manner. Observations show that I am not urged to
dream by external stimulations, even if these stimulations appear in the
dream as soon as, and in case that, I dream. In response to the tactile
or pressure stimulus which I get while sleeping, various reactions are
at my disposal. I can overlook it and discover only upon awakening that
my leg has been uncovered or my arm under pressure; pathology shows the
most numerous examples where powerfully acting sensory and motor stimuli
of different sorts remain without effect during sleep. I can perceive a
sensation during sleep through and through sleep, as it were, which
happens as a rule with painful stimuli, but without weaving the pain
into the texture of the dream; thirdly, I can awaken on account of the
stimulus in order to obviate it. Only as a fourth possible reaction, I
may be impelled to dream by a nerve stimulus; but the other
possibilities are realised at least as often as that of dream formation.
This could not be the case if the _motive for dreaming did not lie
outside of the somatic sources of dreams_.
Taking proper account of the defect in the explanation of dreams by
somatic stimuli which has just been shown, other authors—Scherner,[58]
who was joined by the philosopher Volkelt[72]—have tried to determine
more exactly the psychic activities which cause the variegated dream
images to arise from the somatic stimuli, and have thus transferred the
essential nature of dreams back to the province of the mind, and to that
of psychic activity. Scherner not only gave a poetically appreciative,
glowing and vivid description of the psychic peculiarities which develop
in the course of dream formation; he also thought he had guessed the
principle according to which the mind proceeds with the stimuli that are
at its disposal. The dream activity, according to Scherner—after
phantasy has been freed from the shackles imposed upon it during the
day, and has been given free rein—strives to represent symbolically the
nature of the organ from which the stimulus proceeds. Thus we have a
kind of dream-book as a guide for the interpretation of dreams, by means
of which bodily sensations, the conditions of the organs and of the
stimuli may be inferred from dream images. “Thus the image of a cat
expresses an angry discontented mood, the image of a light-coloured bit
of smooth pastry the nudity of the body. The human body as a whole is
pictured as a house by the phantasy of the dream, and each individual
organ of the body as a part of the house. In ‘toothache-dreams’ a high
vaulted vestibule corresponds to the mouth and a stair to the descent of
the gullet to the alimentary canal; in the ‘headache-dream’ the ceiling
of a room which is covered with disgusting reptile-like spiders is
chosen to denote the upper part of the head” (Volkelt, p. 39). “Several
different symbols are used by the dream for the same organ, thus the
breathing lungs find their symbol in an oven filled with flames and with
a roaring draught, the heart in hollow chests and baskets, and the
bladder in round, bag-shaped objects or anything else hollow. It is
especially important that at the end of a dream the stimulating organ or
its function be represented undisguised and usually on the dreamer’s own
body. Thus the ‘toothache-dream’ usually ends by the dreamer drawing a
tooth from his own mouth” (p. 35). It cannot be said that this theory
has found much favour with the authors. Above all, it seems extravagant;
there has been no inclination even to discover the small amount of
justification to which it may, in my opinion, lay claim. As may be seen,
it leads to a revival of the dream interpretation by means of symbolism,
which the ancients used, except that the source from which the
interpretation is to be taken is limited to the human body. The lack of
a technique of interpretation which is scientifically comprehensible
must seriously limit the applicability of Scherner’s theory.
Arbitrariness in dream interpretation seems in no wise excluded,
especially since a stimulus may be expressed by several representations
in the content of the dream; thus Scherner’s associate, Volkelt, has
already found it impossible to confirm the representation of the body as
a house. Another objection is that here again dream activity is
attributed to the mind as a useless and aimless activity, since
according to the theory in question the mind is content with forming
phantasies about the stimulus with which it is concerned, without even
remotely contemplating anything like a discharge of the stimulus.
But Scherner’s theory of the symbolisation of bodily stimuli by the
dream receives a heavy blow from another objection. These bodily stimuli
are present at all times, and according to general assumption the mind
is more accessible to them during sleep than in waking. It is thus
incomprehensible why the mind does not dream continually throughout the
night, and why it does not dream every night and about all the organs.
If one attempts to avoid this objection by making the condition that
especial stimuli must proceed from the eye, the ear, the teeth, the
intestines in order to arouse dream activity, one is confronted by the
difficulty of proving that this increase of stimulation is objective,
which is possible only in a small number of cases. If the dream of
flying is a symbolisation of the upward and downward motion of the
pulmonary lobes, either this dream, as has already been remarked by
Strümpell, would be dreamt much oftener, or an accentuation of the
function of breathing during the dream would have to be demonstrable.
Still another case is possible—the most probable of all—that now and
then special motives directing attention to the visceral sensations
which are universally present are active, but this case takes us beyond
the range of Scherner’s theory.
The value of Scherner’s and Volkelt’s discussions lies in the fact that
they call attention to a number of characteristics of the dream content
which are in need of explanation, and which seem to promise new
knowledge. It is quite true that symbolisations of organs of the body
and of their functions are contained in dreams, that water in a dream
often signifies a desire to urinate, that the male genital may often be
represented by a staff standing erect or by a pillar, &c. In dreams
which show a very animated field of vision and brilliant colours, in
contrast to the dimness of other dreams, the interpretation may hardly
be dismissed that they are “dreams of visual stimulation,” any more than
it may be disputed that there is a contribution of illusory formations
in dreams which contain noise and confusion of voices. A dream like that
of Scherner, of two rows of fair handsome boys standing opposite to each
other on a bridge, attacking each other and then taking their places
again, until finally the dreamer himself sits down on the bridge and
pulls a long tooth out of his jaw; or a similar one of Volkelt’s, in
which two rows of drawers play a part, and which again ends in the
extraction of a tooth; dream formations of this sort, which are related
in great numbers by the authors, prevent our discarding Scherner’s
theory as an idle fabrication without seeking to find its kernel of
truth. We are now confronted by the task of giving the supposed
symbolisation of the dental stimulus an explanation of a different kind.
Throughout our consideration of the theory of the somatic sources of
dreams, I have refrained from urging the argument which is inferred from
our dream analyses. If we have succeeded in proving, by a procedure
which other authors have not applied in their investigation of dreams,
that the dream as a psychic action possesses value peculiar to itself,
that a wish supplies the motive for its formation, and that the
experiences of the previous day furnish the immediate material for its
content, any other theory of dreams neglecting such an important method
of investigation, and accordingly causing the dream to appear a useless
and problematic psychic reaction to somatic stimuli, is dismissible
without any particular comment. Otherwise there must be—which is highly
improbable—two entirely different kinds of dreams, of which only one has
come under our observation, while only the other has been observed by
the earlier connoisseurs of the dream. It still remains to provide a
place for the facts which are used to support the prevailing theory of
somatic dream-stimuli, within our own theory of dreams.
We have already taken the first step in this direction in setting up the
thesis that the dream activity is under a compulsion to elaborate all
the dream stimuli which are simultaneously present into a unified whole
(p. 151). We have seen that when two or more experiences capable of
making an impression have been left over from the previous day, the
wishes which result from them are united into one dream; similarly, that
an impression possessing psychic value and the indifferent experiences
of the previous day are united in the dream material, provided there are
available connecting ideas between the two. Thus the dream appears to be
a reaction to everything which is simultaneously present as actual in
the sleeping mind. As far as we have hitherto analysed the dream
material, we have discovered it to be a collection of psychic remnants
and memory traces, which we were obliged to credit (on account of the
preference shown for recent and infantile material) with a character of
actuality, though the nature of this was not at the time determinable.
Now it will not be difficult to foretell what will happen when new
material in the form of sensations is added to these actualities of
memory. These stimuli likewise derive importance for the dream because
they are actual; they are united with the other psychic actualities in
order to make up the material for dream formation. To express it
differently, the stimuli which appear during sleep are worked over into
the fulfilment of a wish, the other component parts of which are the
remnants of daily experience with which we are familiar. This union,
however, is not inevitable; we have heard that more than one sort of
attitude towards bodily stimuli is possible during sleep. Wherever this
union has been brought about, it has simply been possible to find for
the dream content that kind of presentation material which will give
representation to both classes of dream sources, the somatic as well as
the psychic.
The essential nature of the dream is not changed by this addition of
somatic material to the psychic sources of the dream; it remains the
fulfilment of a wish without reference to the way in which its
expression is determined by the actual material.
I shall gladly find room here for a number of peculiarities, which serve
to put a different face on the significance of external stimuli for the
dream. I imagine that a co-operation of individual, physiological, and
accidental factors, conditioned by momentary circumstances, determines
how one will act in each particular case of intensive objective
stimulation during sleep; the degree of the profoundness of sleep
whether habitual or accidental in connection with the intensity of the
stimulus, will in one case make it possible to suppress the stimulus, so
that it will not disturb sleep; in another case they will force an
awakening or will support the attempt to overcome the stimulus by
weaving it into the texture of the dream. In correspondence with the
multiplicity of these combinations, external objective stimuli will
receive expression more frequently in the case of one person than in
that of another. In the case of myself, who am an excellent sleeper, and
who stubbornly resists any kind of disturbance in sleep, this
intermixture of external causes of irritation into my dreams is very
rare, while psychic motives apparently cause me to dream very easily. I
have indeed noted only a single dream in which an objective, painful
source of stimulation is demonstrable, and it will be highly instructive
to see what effect the external stimulus had in this very dream.
_I am riding on a grey horse, at first timidly and awkwardly, as though
I were only leaning against something. I meet a colleague P., who is
mounted on a horse and is wearing a heavy woollen suit; he calls my
attention to something (probably to the fact that my riding position is
bad). Now I become more and more expert on the horse, which is most
intelligent; I sit comfortably, and I notice that I am already quite at
home in the saddle. For a saddle I have a kind of padding, which
completely fills the space between the neck and the rump of the horse.
In this manner I ride with difficulty between two lumber-wagons. After
having ridden up the street for some distance, I turn around and want to
dismount, at first in front of a little open chapel, which is situated
close to the street. Then I actually dismount in front of a chapel which
stands near the first; the hotel is in the same street, I could let the
horse go there by itself, but I prefer to lead it there. It seems as if
I should be ashamed to arrive there on horseback. In front of the hotel
is standing a hall-boy who shows me a card of mine which has been found,
and who ridicules me on account of it. On the card is written, doubly
underlined, “Eat nothing,” and then a second sentence (indistinct)
something like “Do not work”; at the same time a hazy idea that I am in
a strange city, in which I do no work._
It will not be apparent at once that this dream originated under the
influence, or rather under the compulsion, of a stimulus of pain. The
day before I had suffered from furuncles, which made every movement a
torture, and at last a furuncle had grown to the size of an apple at the
root of the scrotum, and had caused me the most intolerable pains that
accompanied every step; a feverish lassitude, lack of appetite, and the
hard work to which I had nevertheless kept myself during the day, had
conspired with the pain to make me lose my temper. I was not altogether
in a condition to discharge my duties as a physician, but in view of the
nature and the location of the malady, one might have expected some
performance other than riding, for which I was very especially unfitted.
It is this very activity, of riding into which I am plunged by the
dream; it is the most energetic denial of the suffering which is capable
of being conceived. In the first place, I do not know how to ride, I do
not usually dream of it, and I never sat on a horse but once—without a
saddle—and then I did not feel comfortable. But in this dream I ride as
though I had no furuncle on the perineum, and why? _just because I don’t
want any_. According to the description my saddle is the poultice which
has made it possible for me to go to sleep. Probably I did not feel
anything of my pain—as I was thus taken care of—during the first few
hours of sleeping. Then the painful sensations announced themselves and
tried to wake me up, whereupon the dream came and said soothingly: “Keep
on sleeping, you won’t wake up anyway! You have no furuncle at all, for
you are riding on a horse, and with a furuncle where you have it riding
is impossible!” And the dream was successful; the pain was stifled, and
I went on sleeping.
But the dream was not satisfied with “suggesting away” the furuncle by
means of tenaciously adhering to an idea incompatible with that of the
malady, in doing which it behaved like the hallucinatory insanity of the
mother who has lost her child, or like the merchant who has been
deprived of his fortune by losses.[BP] In addition the details of the
denied sensation and of the image which is used to displace it are
employed by the dream as a means to connect the material ordinarily
actually present in the mind with the dream situation, and to give this
material representation. I am riding on a _grey_ horse—the colour of the
horse corresponds exactly to the _pepper-and-salt_ costume in which I
last met my colleague P. in the country. I have been warned that highly
seasoned food is the cause of furunculosis, but in any case it is
preferable as an etiological explanation to sugar which ordinarily
suggests furunculosis. My friend P. has been pleased to “ride the high
horse” with regard to me, ever since he superseded me in the treatment
of a female patient, with whom I had performed great feats (in the dream
I first sit on the horse side-saddle fashion, like a circus rider), but
who really led me wherever she wished, like the horse in the anecdote
about the Sunday equestrian. Thus the horse came to be a symbolic
representation of a lady patient (in the dream it is most intelligent).
“I feel quite at home up here,” refers to the position which I occupied
in the patient’s household until I was replaced by my colleague P. “I
thought you were securely seated in the saddle,” one of my few
well-wishers among the great physicians of this city recently said to me
with reference to the same household. And it was a feat to practise
psychotherapy for ten hours a day with such pains, but I know that I
cannot continue my particularly difficult work for any length of time
without complete physical health, and the dream is full of gloomy
allusions to the situation which must in that case result (the card such
as neurasthenics have and present to doctors): _No work and no food_.
With further interpretation I see that the dream activity has succeeded
in finding the way from the wish-situation of riding to very early
infantile scenes of quarrelling, which must have taken place between me
and my nephew, who is now living in England, and who, moreover, is a
year older than I. Besides it has taken up elements from my journeys to
Italy; the street in the dream is composed of impressions of Verona and
Siena. Still more exhaustive interpretation leads to sexual
dream-thoughts, and I recall what significance dream allusions to that
beautiful country had in the case of a female patient who had never been
in Italy (Itlay—German _gen Italien_—_Genitalien_—genitals). At the same
time there are references to the house in which I was physician before
my friend P., and to the place where the furuncle is located.
Among the dreams mentioned in the previous chapter there are several
which might serve as examples for the elaboration of so-called nerve
stimuli. The dream about drinking in full draughts is one of this sort;
the somatic excitement in it seems to be the only source of the dream,
and the wish resulting from the sensation—thirst—the only motive for
dreaming. Something similar is true of the other simple dreams, if the
somatic excitement alone is capable of forming a wish. The dream of the
sick woman who throws the cooling apparatus from her cheek at night is
an instance of a peculiar way of reacting to painful excitements with a
wish-fulfilment; it seems as though the patient had temporarily
succeeded in making herself analgesic by ascribing her pains to a
stranger.
My dream about the three Parcæ is obviously a dream of hunger, but it
has found means to refer the need for food back to the longing of the
child for its mother’s breast, and to make the harmless desire a cloak
for a more serious one, which is not permitted to express itself so
openly. In the dream about Count Thun we have seen how an accidental
bodily desire is brought into connection with the strongest, and
likewise the most strongly suppressed emotions of the psychic life. And
when the First Consul incorporates the sound of an exploding bomb into a
dream of battle before it causes him to wake, as in the case reported by
Garnier, the purpose for which psychic activity generally concerns
itself with sensations occurring during sleep is revealed with
extraordinary clearness. A young lawyer, who has been deeply preoccupied
with his first great bankruptcy proceeding, and who goes to sleep during
the afternoon following, acts just like the great Napoleon. He dreams
about a certain G. Reich in _Hussiatyn_ (German _husten_—to cough), whom
he knows in connection with the bankruptcy proceeding, but _Hussiatyn_
forces itself upon his attention still further, with the result that he
is obliged to awaken, and hears his wife—who is suffering from bronchial
catarrh—coughing violently.
Let us compare the dream of Napoleon I., who, incidentally, was an
excellent sleeper, with that of the sleepy student, who was awakened by
his landlady with the admonition that he must go to the hospital, who
thereupon dreams himself into a bed in the hospital, and then sleeps on,
with the following account of his motives: If I am already in the
hospital, I shan’t have to get up in order to go there. The latter is
obviously a dream of convenience; the sleeper frankly admits to himself
the motive for his dreaming; but he thereby reveals one of the secrets
of dreaming in general. In a certain sense all dreams are dreams of
convenience; they serve the purpose of continuing sleep instead of
awakening. _The dream is the guardian of sleep, not the disturber of
it._ We shall justify this conception with respect to the psychic
factors of awakening elsewhere; it is possible, however, at this point
to prove its applicability to the influence exerted by objective
external excitements. Either the mind does not concern itself at all
with the causes of sensations, if it is able to do this in spite of
their intensity and of their significance, which is well understood by
it; or it employs the dream to deny these stimuli; or thirdly, if it is
forced to recognise the stimulus, it seeks to find that interpretation
of the stimulus which shall represent the actual sensation as a
component part of a situation which is desired and which is compatible
with sleep. The actual sensation is woven into the dream _in order to
deprive it of its reality_. Napoleon is permitted to go on sleeping; it
is only a dream recollection of the thunder of the cannon at Arcole
which is trying to disturb him.[BQ]
_The wish to sleep, by which the conscious ego has been suspended and
which along with the dream-censor contributes its share to the dream,
must thus always be taken into account as a motive for the formation of
dreams, and every successful dream is a fulfilment of this wish._ The
relation of this general, regularly present, and invariable sleep-wish
to the other wishes, of which now the one, now the other is fulfilled,
will be the subject of a further explanation. In the wish to sleep we
have discovered a factor capable of supplying the deficiency in the
theory of Strümpell and Wundt, and of explaining the perversity and
capriciousness in the interpretation of the outer stimulus. The correct
interpretation, of which the sleeping mind is quite capable, would imply
an active interest and would require that sleep be terminated; hence, of
those interpretations which are possible at all, only those are admitted
which are agreeable to the absolute censorship of the somatic wish. It
is something like this: It’s the nightingale and not the lark. For if
it’s the lark, love’s night is at an end. From among the interpretations
of the excitement which are at the moment possible, that one is selected
which can secure the best connection with the wish-possibilities that
are lying in wait in the mind. Thus everything is definitely determined,
and nothing is left to caprice. The misinterpretation is not an
illusion, but—if you will—an excuse. Here again, however, there is
admitted an action which is a modification of the normal psychic
procedure, as in the case where substitution by means of displacement is
effected for the purposes of the dream-censor.
If the outer nerve stimuli and inner bodily stimuli are sufficiently
intense to compel psychic attention, they represent—that is, in case
they result in dreaming and not in awakening—a definite point in the
formation of dreams, a nucleus in the dream material, for which an
appropriate wish-fulfilment is sought, in a way similar (see above) to
the search for connecting ideas between two dream stimuli. To this
extent it is true for a number of dreams that the somatic determines
what their content is to be. In this extreme case a wish which is not
exactly actual is aroused for the purpose of dream formation. But the
dream can do nothing but represent a wish in a situation as fulfilled;
it is, as it were, confronted by the task of seeking what wish may be
represented and fulfilled by means of the situation which is now actual.
Even if this actual material is of a painful or disagreeable character,
still it is not useless for the purposes of dream formation. The psychic
life has control even over wishes the fulfilment of which brings forth
pleasure—a statement which seems contradictory, but which becomes
intelligible if one takes into account the presence of two psychic
instances and the censor existing between them.
There are in the psychic life, as we have heard, _repressed_ wishes
which belong to the first system, and to whose fulfilment the second
system is opposed. There are wishes of this kind—and we do not mean this
in an historic sense, that there have been such wishes and that these
have then been destroyed—but the theory of repression, which is
essential to the study of psychoneurosis, asserts that such repressed
wishes still exist, contemporaneously with an inhibition weighing them
down. Language has hit upon the truth when it speaks of the
“suppression” of such impulses. The psychic contrivance for bringing
such wishes to realisation remains preserved and in a condition to be
used. But if it happens that such a suppressed wish is fulfilled, the
vanquished inhibition of the second system (which is capable of becoming
conscious) is then expressed as a painful feeling. To close this
discussion; if sensations of a disagreeable character which originate
from somatic sources are presented during sleep, this constellation is
taken advantage of by the dream activity to represent the
fulfilment—with more or less retention of the censor—of an otherwise
suppressed wish.
This condition of affairs makes possible a number of anxiety dreams,
while another series of the dream formations which are unfavourable to
the wish theory exhibits a different mechanism. For anxiety in dreams
may be of a psychoneurotic nature, or it may originate in psychosexual
excitements, in which case the anxiety corresponds to a repressed
_libido_. Then this anxiety as well as the whole anxiety dream has the
significance of a neurotic symptom, and we are at the dividing-line
where the wish-fulfilling tendency of dreams disappears. But in other
anxiety-dreams the feeling of anxiety comes from somatic sources (for
instance in the case of persons suffering from pulmonary or heart
trouble, where there is occasional difficulty in getting breath), and
then it is used to aid those energetically suppressed wishes in
attaining fulfilment in the form of a dream, the dreaming of which from
psychic motives would have resulted in the same release of fear. It is
not difficult to unite these two apparently discrepant cases. Of two
psychic formations, an emotional inclination and an ideal content, which
are intimately connected, the one, which is presented as actual,
supports the other in the dream; now anxiety of somatic origin supports
the suppressed presentation content, now the ideal content, which is
freed from suppression, and which proceeds with the impetus given by
sexual emotion, assists the discharge of anxiety. Of the one case it may
be said that an emotion of somatic origin is psychically interpreted; in
the other case everything is of psychic origin but the content which has
been suppressed is easily replaced by a somatic interpretation which is
suited to anxiety. The difficulties which lie in the way of
understanding all this have little to do with the dream; they are due to
the fact that in discussing these points we are touching upon the
problems of the development of anxiety and of repression.
Undoubtedly the aggregate of bodily feelings is to be included among the
commanding dream stimuli which originate internally. Not that it is able
to furnish the dream content, but it forces the dream thoughts to make a
choice from the material destined to serve the purpose of representation
in the dream content; it does this by putting within easy reach that
part of the material which is suited to its own character, while
withholding the other. Moreover this general feeling, which is left over
from the day, is probably connected with the psychic remnants which are
significant for the dream.
If somatic sources of excitement occurring during sleep—that is, the
sensations of sleep—are not of unusual intensity, they play a part in
the formation of dreams similar, in my judgment, to that of the
impressions of the day which have remained recent but indifferent. I
mean that they are drawn into the dream formation, if they are qualified
for being united with the presentation content of the psychic
dream-source, but in no other case. They are treated as a cheap
ever-ready material, which is utilised as often as it is needed, instead
of prescribing, as a precious material does, the manner in which it is
to be utilised. The case is similar to that where a patron of art brings
to an artist a rare stone, a fragment of onyx, in order that a work of
art may be made of it. The size of the stone, its colour, and its
marking help to decide what bust or what scene shall be represented in
it, while in the case where there is a uniform and abundant supply of
marble or sandstone the artist follows only the idea which takes shape
in his mind. Only in this manner, it seems to me, is the fact explicable
that the dream content resulting from bodily excitements that have not
been accentuated to a usual degree, does not appear in all dreams and
during every night.
Perhaps an example, which takes us back to the interpretation of dreams,
will best illustrate my meaning. One day I was trying to understand the
meaning of the sensations of being impeded, of not being able to move
from the spot, of not being able to get finished, &c., which are dreamt
about so often, and which are so closely allied to anxiety. That night I
had the following dream: _I am very incompletely dressed, and I go from
a dwelling on the ground floor up a flight of stairs to an upper story.
In doing this I jump over three steps at a time, and I am glad to find I
can mount the steps so quickly. Suddenly I see that a servant girl is
coming down the stairs, that is, towards me. I am ashamed and try to
hurry away, and now there appears that sensation of being impeded; I am
glued to the steps and cannot move from the spot._
Analysis: The situation of the dream is taken from everyday reality. In
a house in Vienna I have two apartments, which are connected only by a
flight of stairs outside. My consultation-rooms and my study are on an
elevated portion of the ground floor, and one story higher are my
living-rooms. When I have finished my work downstairs late at night, I
go up the steps into my bedroom. On the evening before the dream I had
actually gone this short distance in a somewhat disorderly attire—that
is to say, I had taken off my collar, cravat, and cuffs; but in the
dream this has changed into a somewhat more advanced degree of undress,
which as usual is indefinite. Jumping over the steps is my usual method
of mounting stairs; moreover it is the fulfilment of a wish that has
been recognised in the dream, for I have reassured myself about the
condition of my heart action by the ease of this accomplishment.
Moreover the manner in which I climb the stairs is an effective contrast
to the sensation of being impeded which occurs in the second half of the
dream. It shows me—something which needed no proof—that the dream has no
difficulty in representing motor actions as carried out fully and
completely; think of flying in dreams!
But the stairs which I go up are not those of my house; at first I do
not recognise them; only the person coming toward me reveals to me the
location which they are intended to signify. This woman is the maid of
the old lady whom I visit twice daily to give hypodermic injections; the
stairs, too, are quite similar to those which I must mount there twice
daily.
How do this flight of stairs and this woman get into my dream? Being
ashamed because one is not fully dressed, is undoubtedly of a sexual
character; the servant of whom I dream is older than I, sulky, and not
in the least attractive. These questions call up exactly the following
occurrences: When I make my morning visit at this house I am usually
seized with a desire to clear my throat; the product of the
expectoration falls upon the steps. For there is no spittoon on either
of these floors, and I take the view that the stairs should not be kept
clean at my expense, but by the provision of a spittoon. The
housekeeper, likewise an elderly and sulky person, with instincts for
cleanliness, takes another view of the matter. She lies in wait for me
to see whether I take the liberty referred to, and when she has made
sure of it, I hear her growl distinctly. For days thereafter she refuses
to show me her customary regard when we meet. On the day before the
dream the position of the housekeeper had been strengthened by the
servant girl. I had just finished my usual hurried visit to the patient
when the servant confronted me in the ante-room and observed: “You might
as well have wiped your shoes to-day, doctor, before you came into the
room. The red carpet is all dirty again from your feet.” This is the
whole claim which the flight of stairs and the servant-girl can make for
appearing in my dream.
An intimate connection exists between my flying over the stairs and my
spitting on the stairs. Pharyngitis and diseases of the heart are both
said to be punishments for the vice of smoking, on account of which
vice, of course, I do not enjoy a reputation for great neatness with my
housekeeper in the one house any more than in the other, both of which
the dream fuses into a single image.
I must postpone the further interpretation of this dream until I can
give an account of the origin of the typical dream of incomplete dress.
I only note as a preliminary result from the dream which has just been
cited that the dream sensation of inhibited action is always aroused at
a point where a certain connection requires it. A peculiar condition of
my motility during sleep cannot be the cause of this dream content, for
a moment before I saw myself hurrying over the steps with ease, as
though in confirmation of this fact.
(_d_) _Typical Dreams_
In general we are not in a position to interpret the dream of another
person if he is unwilling to furnish us with the unconscious thoughts
which lie behind the dream content, and for this reason the practical
applicability of our method of dream interpretation is seriously
curtailed.[BR] But there are a certain number of dreams—in contrast with
the usual freedom displayed by the individual in fashioning his dream
world with characteristic peculiarity, and thereby making it
unintelligible—which almost every one has dreamed in the same manner,
and of which we are accustomed to assume that they have the same
significance in the case of every dreamer. A peculiar interest belongs
to these typical dreams for the reason that they probably all come from
the same sources with every person, that they are thus particularly
suited to give us information upon the sources of dreams.
Typical dreams are worthy of the most exhaustive investigation. I shall,
however, only give a somewhat detailed consideration to examples of this
species, and for this purpose I shall first select the so-called
embarrassment dream of nakedness, and the dream of the death of dear
relatives.
The dream of being naked or scantily clad in the presence of strangers
occurs with the further addition that one is not at all ashamed of it,
&c. But the dream of nakedness is worthy of our interest only when shame
and embarrassment are felt in it, when one wishes to flee or to hide,
and when one feels the strange inhibition that it is impossible to move
from the spot and that one is incapable of altering the disagreeable
situation. It is only in this connection that the dream is typical; the
nucleus of its content may otherwise be brought into all kinds of
relations or may be replaced by individual amplifications. It is
essentially a question of a disagreeable sensation of the nature of
shame, the wish to be able to hide one’s nakedness, chiefly by means of
locomotion, without being able to accomplish this. I believe that the
great majority of my readers will at some time have found themselves in
this situation in a dream.
Usually the nature and manner of the experience is indistinct. It is
usually reported, “I was in my shirt,” but this is rarely a clear image;
in most cases the lack of clothing is so indeterminate that it is
designated in the report of the dream by a set of alternatives: “I was
in my chemise or in my petticoat.” As a rule the deficiency in the
toilet is not serious enough to justify the feeling of shame attached to
it. For a person who has served in the army, nakedness is often replaced
by a mode of adjustment that is contrary to regulations. “I am on the
street without my sabre and I see officers coming,” or “I am without my
necktie,” or “I am wearing checkered civilian’s trousers,” &c.
The persons before whom one is ashamed are almost always strangers with
faces that have been left undetermined. It never occurs in the typical
dream that one is reproved or even noticed on account of the dress which
causes the embarrassment to one’s self. Quite on the contrary, the
people have an air of indifference, or, as I had opportunity to observe
in a particularly clear dream, they look stiffly solemn. This is worth
thinking about.
The shamed embarrassment of the dreamer and the indifference of the
spectators form a contradiction which often occurs in the dream. It
would better accord with the feelings of the dreamer if the strangers
looked at him in astonishment and laughed at him, or if they grew
indignant. I think, however, that the latter unpleasant feature has been
obviated by the tendency to wish-fulfilment, while the embarrassment,
being retained on some account or other, has been left standing, and
thus the two parts fail to agree. We have interesting evidence to show
that the dream, whose appearance has been partially disfigured by the
tendency to wish-fulfilment, has not been properly understood. For it
has become the basis of a fairy tale familiar to us all in Andersen’s
version,[BS] and it has recently received poetic treatment by L. Fulda
in the _Talisman_. In Andersen’s fairy tale we are told of two impostors
who weave a costly garment for the Emperor, which, however, shall be
visible only to the good and true. The Emperor goes forth clad in this
invisible garment, and, the fabric serving as a sort of touchstone, all
the people are frightened into acting as though they did not notice the
nakedness of the Emperor.
But such is the situation in our dream. It does not require great
boldness to assume that the unintelligible dream content has suggested
the invention of a state of undress in which the situation that is being
remembered becomes significant. This situation has then been deprived of
its original meaning, and placed at the service of other purposes. But
we shall see that such misunderstanding of the dream content often
occurs on account of the conscious activity of the second psychic
system, and is to be recognised as a factor in the ultimate formation of
the dream; furthermore, that in the development of the obsessions and
phobias similar misunderstandings, likewise within the same psychic
personality, play a leading part. The source from which in our dream the
material for this transformation is taken can also be explained. The
impostor is the dream, the Emperor is the dreamer himself, and the
moralising tendency betrays a hazy knowledge of the fact that the latent
dream content is occupied with forbidden wishes which have become the
victims of repression. The connection in which such dreams appear during
my analysis of neurotics leaves no room for doubting that the dream is
based upon a recollection from earliest childhood. Only in our childhood
was there a time when we were seen by our relatives as well as by
strange nurses, servant girls, and visitors, in scanty clothing, and at
that time we were not ashamed of our nakedness.[BT]
It may be observed in the case of children who are a little older that
being undressed has a kind of intoxicating effect upon them, instead of
making them ashamed. They laugh, jump about, and strike their bodies;
the mother, or whoever is present, forbids them to do this, and says:
“Fie, that is shameful—you mustn’t do that.” Children often show
exhibitional cravings; it is hardly possible to go through a village in
our part of the country without meeting a two or three-year-old tot who
lifts up his or her shirt before the traveller, perhaps in his honour.
One of my patients has reserved in his conscious memory a scene from the
eighth year of his life in which he had just undressed previous to going
to bed, and was about to dance into the room of his little sister in his
undershirt when the servant prevented his doing it. In the childhood
history of neurotics, denudation in the presence of children of the
opposite sex plays a great part; in paranoia the desire to be observed
while dressing and undressing may be directly traced to these
experiences; among those remaining perverted there is a class which has
accentuated the childish impulse to a compulsion—they are the
exhibitionists.
This age of childhood in which the sense of shame is lacking seems to
our later recollections a Paradise, and Paradise itself is nothing but a
composite phantasy from the childhood of the individual. It is for this
reason, too, that in Paradise human beings are naked and are not ashamed
until the moment arrives when the sense of shame and of fear are
aroused; expulsion follows, and sexual life and cultural development
begin. Into this Paradise the dream can take us back every night; we
have already ventured the conjecture that the impressions from earliest
childhood (from the prehistoric period until about the end of the fourth
year) in themselves, and independently of everything else, crave
reproduction, perhaps without further reference to their content, and
that the repetition of them is the fulfilment of a wish. Dreams of
nakedness, then, are exhibition dreams.[BU]
One’s own person, which is seen not as that of a child, but as belonging
to the present, and the idea of scanty clothing, which became buried
beneath so many later _négligée_ recollections or because of the censor,
turns out to be obscure—these two things constitute the nucleus of the
exhibition dream. Next come the persons before whom one is ashamed. I
know of no example where the actual spectators at those infantile
exhibitions reappear in the dream. For the dream is hardly ever a simple
recollection. Strangely enough, those persons who are the objects of our
sexual interest during childhood are omitted from all the reproductions
of the dream, of hysteria, and of the compulsion neurosis; paranoia
alone puts the spectators back into their places, and is fanatically
convinced of their presence, although they remain invisible. What the
dream substitutes for these, the “many strange people,” who take no
notice of the spectacle which is presented, is exactly the wish-opposite
of that single, intimate person for whom the exposure was intended.
“Many strange people,” moreover, are often found in the dream in any
other favourable connection; as a wish-opposite they always signify “a
secret.”[BV] It may be seen how the restoration of the old condition of
affairs, as it occurs in paranoia, is subject to this antithesis. One is
no longer alone. One is certainly being watched, but the spectators are
“many strange, curiously indeterminate people.”
Furthermore, repression has a place in the exhibition dream. For the
disagreeable sensation of the dream is the reaction of the second
psychic instance to the fact that the exhibition scene which has been
rejected by it has in spite of this succeeded in securing
representation. The only way to avoid this sensation would be not to
revive the scene.
Later on we shall again deal with the sensation of being inhibited. It
serves the dream excellently in representing the conflict of the will,
the negation. According to our unconscious purpose exhibition is to be
continued; according to the demands of the censor, it is to be stopped.
The relation of our typical dreams to fairy tales and to other poetic
material is neither a sporadic nor an accidental one. Occasionally the
keen insight of a poet has analytically recognised the transforming
process—of which the poet is usually the tool—and has followed it
backwards, that is to say, traced it to the dream. A friend has called
my attention to the following passage in G. Keller’s _Der Grüne
Heinrich_: “I do not wish, dear Lee, that you should ever come to
realise from experience the peculiar piquant truth contained in the
situation of Odysseus, when he appears before Nausikaa and her
playmates, naked and covered with mud! Would you like to know what it
means? Let us consider the incident closely. If you are ever separated
from your home, and from everything that is dear to you, and wander
about in a strange country, when you have seen and experienced much,
when you have cares and sorrows, and are, perhaps, even miserable and
forlorn, you will some night inevitably dream that you are approaching
your home; you will see it shining and beaming in the most beautiful
colours; charming, delicate and lovely figures will come to meet you;
and you will suddenly discover that you are going about in rags, naked
and covered with dust. A nameless feeling of shame and fear seizes you,
you try to cover yourself and to hide, and you awaken bathed in sweat.
As long as men exist, this will be the dream of the care-laden,
fortune-battered man, and thus Homer has taken his situation from the
profoundest depths of the eternal character of humanity.”
This profound and eternal character of humanity, upon the touching of
which in his listeners the poet usually calculates, is made up of the
stirrings of the spirit which are rooted in childhood, in the period
which later becomes prehistoric. Suppressed and forbidden wishes of
childhood break forth under cover of those wishes of the homeless man
which are unobjectionable and capable of becoming conscious, and for
that reason the dream which is made objective in the legend of Nausikaa
regularly assumes the form of a dream of anxiety.
My own dream, mentioned on p. 201, of hurrying up the stairs, which is
soon afterward changed into that of being glued to the steps, is
likewise an exhibition dream, because it shows the essential components
of such a dream. It must thus permit of being referred to childish
experiences, and the possession of these ought to tell us how far the
behaviour of the servant girl towards me—her reproach that I had soiled
the carpet—helped her to secure the position which she occupies in the
dream. I am now able to furnish the desired explanation. One learns in
psychoanalysis to interpret temporal proximity by objective connection;
two thoughts, apparently without connection, which immediately follow
one another, belong to a unity which can be inferred; just as an _a_ and
a _t_, which I write down together, should be pronounced as one
syllable, _at_. The same is true of the relation of dreams to one
another. The dream just cited, of the stairs, has been taken from a
series of dreams, whose other members I am familiar with on account of
having interpreted them. The dream which is included in this series must
belong to the same connection. Now the other dreams of the series are
based upon the recollection of a nurse to whom I was entrusted from some
time in the period when I was suckling to the age of two and a half
years, and of whom a hazy recollection has remained in my consciousness.
According to information which I have recently obtained from my mother,
she was old and ugly, but very intelligent and thorough; according to
inferences which I may draw from my dreams, she did not always give me
the kindest treatment, and said hard words to me when I showed
insufficient aptitude for education in cleanliness. Thus by attempting
to continue this educational work the servant girl develops a claim to
be treated by me, in the dream, as an incarnation of the prehistoric old
woman. It is to be assumed that the child bestowed his love upon this
governess in spite of her bad treatment of him.[BW]
Another series of dreams which might be called typical are those which
have the content that a dear relative, parent, brother, or sister, child
or the like, has died. Two classes of these dreams must immediately be
distinguished—those in which the dreamer remains unaffected by sorrow
while dreaming, and those in which he feels profound grief on account of
the death, in which he even expresses this grief during sleep by fervid
tears.
We may ignore the dreams of the first group; they have no claim to be
reckoned as typical. If they are analysed, it is found that they signify
something else than what they contain, that they are intended to cover
up some other wish. Thus it is with the dream of the aunt who sees the
only son of her sister lying on a bier before her (p 129). This does not
signify that she wishes the death of her little nephew; it only
conceals, as we have learned, a wish to see a beloved person once more
after long separation—the same person whom she had seen again after a
similar long intermission at the funeral of another nephew. This wish,
which is the real content of the dream, gives no cause for sorrow, and
for that reason no sorrow is felt in the dream. It may be seen in this
case that the emotion which is contained in the dream does not belong to
the manifest content of the dream, but to the latent one, and that the
emotional content has remained free from the disfigurement which has
befallen the presentation content.
It is a different story with the dreams in which the death of a beloved
relative is imagined and where sorrowful emotion is felt. These signify,
as their content says, the wish that the person in question may die, and
as I may here expect that the feelings of all readers and of all persons
who have dreamt anything similar will object to my interpretation, I
must strive to present my proof on the broadest possible basis.
We have already had one example to show that the wishes represented in
the dream as fulfilled are not always actual wishes. They may also be
dead, discarded, covered, and repressed wishes, which we must
nevertheless credit with a sort of continuous existence on account of
their reappearance in the dream. They are not dead like persons who have
died in our sense, but they resemble the shades in the _Odyssey_ which
awaken a certain kind of life as soon as they have drunk blood. In the
dream of the dead child in the box (p. 130) we were concerned with a
wish that had been actual fifteen years before, and which had been
frankly admitted from that time. It is, perhaps, not unimportant from
the point of view of dream theory if I add that a recollection from
earliest childhood is at the basis even of this dream. While the dreamer
was a little child—it cannot be definitely determined at what time—she
had heard that during pregnancy of which she was the fruit her mother
had fallen into a profound depression of spirits and had passionately
wished for the death of her child before birth. Having grown up herself
and become pregnant, she now follows the example of her mother.
If some one dreams with expressions of grief that his father or mother,
his brother or sister, has died, I shall not use the dream as a proof
that he wishes them dead _now_. The theory of the dreams does not
require so much; it is satisfied with concluding that the dreamer has
wished them dead—at some one time in childhood. I fear, however, that
this limitation will not contribute much to quiet the objectors; they
might just as energetically contest the possibility that they have ever
had such thoughts as they are sure that they do not cherish such wishes
at present. I must, therefore, reconstruct a part of the submerged
infantile psychology on the basis of the testimony which the present
still furnishes.[BX]
Let us at first consider the relation of children to their brothers and
sisters. I do not know why we presuppose that it must be a loving one,
since examples of brotherly and sisterly enmity among adults force
themselves upon every one’s experience, and since we so often know that
this estrangement originated even during childhood or has always
existed. But many grown-up people, who to-day are tenderly attached to
their brothers and sisters and stand by them, have lived with them
during childhood in almost uninterrupted hostility. The older child has
ill-treated the younger, slandered it, and deprived it of its toys; the
younger has been consumed by helpless fury against the elder, has envied
it and feared it, or its first impulse toward liberty and first feelings
of injustice have been directed against the oppressor. The parents say
that the children do not agree, and cannot find the reason for it. It is
not difficult to see that the character even of a well-behaved child is
not what we wish to find in a grown-up person. The child is absolutely
egotistical; it feels its wants acutely and strives remorselessly to
satisfy them, especially with its competitors, other children, and in
the first instance with its brothers and sisters. For doing this we do
not call the child wicked—we call it naughty; it is not responsible for
its evil deeds either in our judgment or in the eyes of the penal law.
And this is justifiably so; for we may expect that within this very
period of life which we call childhood, altruistic impulses and morality
will come to life in the little egotist, and that, in the words of
Meynert, a secondary ego will overlay and restrain the primary one. It
is true that morality does not develop simultaneously in all
departments, and furthermore, the duration of the unmoral period of
childhood is of different length in different individuals. In cases
where the development of this morality fails to appear, we are pleased
to talk about “degeneration”; they are obviously cases of arrested
development. Where the primary character has already been covered up by
later development, it may be at least partially uncovered again by an
attack of hysteria. The correspondence between the so-called hysterical
character and that of a naughty child is strikingly evident. A
compulsion neurosis, on the other hand, corresponds to a super-morality,
imposed upon the primary character that is again asserting itself, as an
increased check.
Many persons, then, who love their brothers and sisters, and who would
feel bereaved by their decease, have evil wishes towards them from
earlier times in their unconscious wishes, which are capable of being
realised in the dream. It is particularly interesting to observe little
children up to three years old in their attitude towards their brothers
and sisters. So far the child has been the only one; he is now informed
that the stork has brought a new child. The younger surveys the arrival,
and then expresses his opinion decidedly: “The stork had better take it
back again.”[BY]
I subscribe in all seriousness to the opinion that the child knows
enough to calculate the disadvantage it has to expect on account of the
new-comer. I know in the case of a lady of my acquaintance who agrees
very well with a sister four years younger than herself, that she
responded to the news of her younger sister’s arrival with the following
words: “But I shan’t give her my red cap, anyway.” If the child comes to
this realisation only at a later time, its enmity will be aroused at
that point. I know of a case where a girl, not yet three years old,
tried to strangle a suckling in the cradle, because its continued
presence, she suspected, boded her no good. Children are capable of envy
at this time of life in all its intensity and distinctness. Again,
perhaps, the little brother or sister has really soon disappeared; the
child has again drawn the entire affection of the household to itself,
and then a new child is sent by the stork; is it then unnatural for the
favourite to wish that the new competitor may have the same fate as the
earlier one, in order that he may be treated as well as he was before
during the interval? Of course this attitude of the child towards the
younger infant is under normal circumstances a simple function of the
difference of age. After a certain time the maternal instincts of the
girl will be excited towards the helpless new-born child.
Feelings of enmity towards brothers and sisters must occur far more
frequently during the age of childhood than is noted by the dull
observation of adults.
In case of my own children, who followed one another rapidly, I missed
the opportunity to make such observations; I am now retrieving it
through my little nephew, whose complete domination was disturbed after
fifteen months by the arrival of a female competitor. I hear, it is
true, that the young man acts very chivalrously towards his little
sister, that he kisses her hand and pets her; but in spite of this I
have convinced myself that even before the completion of his second year
he is using his new facility in language to criticise this person who
seems superfluous to him. Whenever the conversation turns upon her, he
chimes in and cries angrily: “Too (l)ittle, too (l)ittle.” During the
last few months, since the child has outgrown this unfavourable
criticism, owing to its splendid development, he has found another way
of justifying his insistence that she does not deserve so much
attention. On all suitable occasions he reminds us, “She hasn’t any
teeth.”[BZ] We have all preserved the recollection of the eldest
daughter of another sister of mine—how the child which was at that time
six years old sought assurance from one aunt after another for an hour
and a half with the question: “Lucy can’t understand that yet, can she?”
Lucy was the competitor, two and a half years younger.
I have never failed in any of my female patients to find this dream of
the death of brothers and sisters denoting exaggerated hostility. I have
met with only one exception, which could easily be reinterpreted into a
confirmation of the rule. Once in the course of a sitting while I was
explaining this condition of affairs to a lady, as it seemed to have a
bearing upon the symptoms under consideration, she answered, to my
astonishment, that she had never had such dreams. However, she thought
of another dream which supposedly had nothing to do with the matter—a
dream which she had first dreamed at the age of four, when she was the
youngest child, and had since dreamed repeatedly. “A great number of
children, all of them the dreamer’s brothers and sisters, and male and
female cousins, were romping about in a meadow. Suddenly they all got
wings, flew up, and were gone.” She had no idea of the significance of
the dream; but it will not be difficult for us to recognise it as a
dream of the death of all the brothers and sisters, in its original
form, and little influenced by the censor. I venture to insert the
following interpretation: At the death of one out of a large number of
children—in this case the children of two brothers were brought up in
common as brothers and sisters—is it not probable that our dreamer, at
that time not yet four years old, asked a wise, grown-up person: “What
becomes of children when they are dead?” The answer probably was: “They
get wings and become angels.” According to this explanation all the
brothers and sisters and cousins in the dream now have wings like angels
and—this is the important thing—they fly away. Our little angel-maker
remains alone, think of it, the only one after such a multitude! The
feature that the children are romping about on a meadow points with
little ambiguity to butterflies, as though the child had been led by the
same association which induced the ancients to conceive Psyche as having
the wings of a butterfly.
Perhaps some one will now object that, although the inimical impulses of
children towards their brothers and sisters may well enough be admitted,
how does the childish disposition arrive at such a height of wickedness
as to wish death to a competitor or stronger playmate, as though all
transgressions could be atoned for only by the death-punishment? Whoever
talks in this manner forgets that the childish idea of “being dead” has
little else but the words in common with our own. The child knows
nothing of the horrors of decay, of shivering in the cold grave, of the
terror of the infinite Nothing, which the grown-up person, as all the
myths concerning the Great Beyond testify, finds it so hard to bear in
his conception. Fear of death is strange to the child; therefore it
plays with the horrible word and threatens another child: “If you do
that again you will die, as Francis died,” whereat the poor mother
shudders, for perhaps she cannot forget that the great majority of
mortals do not succeed in living beyond the years of childhood. It is
still possible, even for a child eight years old, on returning from a
museum of natural history, to say to its mother: “Mamma, I love you so;
if you ever die, I am going to have you stuffed and set you up here in
the room so I can always, always see you!” So little does the childish
conception of being dead resemble our own.[CA]
Being dead means for the child, which has been spared the scenes of
suffering previous to dying, the same as “being gone,” not disturbing
the survivors any more. The child does not distinguish the manner and
means by which this absence is brought about, whether by travelling,
estrangement, or death. If, during the prehistoric years of a child, a
nurse has been sent away and its mother has died a short while after,
the two experiences, as is revealed by analysis, overlap in his memory.
The fact that the child does not miss very intensely those who are
absent has been realised by many a mother to her sorrow, after she has
returned home after a summer journey of several weeks, and has been told
upon inquiry: “The children have not asked for their mother a single
time.” But if she really goes to that “undiscovered country from whose
bourn no traveller returns,” the children seem at first to have
forgotten her, and begin only _subsequently_ to remember the dead
mother.
If, then, the child has motives for wishing the absence of another
child, every restraint is lacking which would prevent it from clothing
this wish in the form that the child may die, and the psychic reaction
to the dream of wishing death proves that, in spite of all the
differences in content, the wish in the case of the child is somehow or
other the same as it is with adults.
If now the death-wish of the child towards its brothers and sisters has
been explained by the childish egotism, which causes the child to regard
its brothers and sisters as competitors, how may we account for the same
wish towards parents, who bestow love on the child and satisfy its
wants, and whose preservation it ought to desire from these very
egotistical motives?
In the solution of this difficulty we are aided by the experience that
dreams of the death of parents predominantly refer to that member of the
parental couple which shares the sex of the dreamer, so that the man
mostly dreams of the death of his father, the woman of the death of her
mother. I cannot claim that this happens regularly, but the
predominating occurrence of this dream in the manner indicated is so
evident that it must be explained through some factor that is
universally operative. To express the matter boldly, it is as though a
sexual preference becomes active at an early period, as though the boy
regards his father as a rival in love, and as though the girl takes the
same attitude toward her mother—a rival by getting rid of whom he or she
cannot but profit.
Before rejecting this idea as monstrous, let the reader consider the
actual relations between parents and children. What the requirements of
culture and piety demand of this relation must be distinguished from
what daily observation shows us to be the fact. More than one cause for
hostile feeling is concealed within the relations between parents and
children; the conditions necessary for the actuation of wishes which
cannot exist in the presence of the censor are most abundantly provided.
Let us dwell at first upon the relation between father and son. I
believe that the sanctity which we have ascribed to the injunction of
the decalogue dulls our perception of reality. Perhaps we hardly dare to
notice that the greater part of humanity neglects to obey the fifth
commandment. In the lowest as well as in the highest strata of human
society, piety towards parents is in the habit of receding before other
interests. The obscure reports which have come to us in mythology and
legend from the primeval ages of human society give us an unpleasant
idea of the power of the father and the ruthlessness with which it was
used. Kronos devours his children, as the wild boar devours the brood of
the sow; Zeus emasculates his father[CB] and takes his place as a ruler.
The more despotically the father ruled in the ancient family, the more
must the son have taken the position of an enemy, and the greater must
have been his impatience, as designated successor, to obtain the mastery
himself after his father’s death. Even in our own middle-class family
the father is accustomed to aid the development of the germ of hatred
which naturally belongs to the paternal relation by refusing the son the
disposal of his own destiny, or the means necessary for this. A
physician often has occasion to notice that the son’s grief at the loss
of his father cannot suppress his satisfaction at the liberty which he
has at last obtained. Every father frantically holds on to whatever of
the sadly antiquated _potestas patris_ still remains in the society of
to-day, and every poet who, like Ibsen, puts the ancient strife between
father and son in the foreground of his fiction is sure of his effect.
The causes of conflict between mother and daughter arise when the
daughter grows up and finds a guardian in her mother, while she desires
sexual freedom, and when, on the other hand, the mother has been warned
by the budding beauty of her daughter that the time has come for her to
renounce sexual claims.
All these conditions are notorious and open to everyone’s inspection.
But they do not serve to explain dreams of the death of parents found in
the case of persons to whom piety towards their parents has long since
come to be inviolable. We are furthermore prepared by the preceding
discussion to find that the death-wish towards parents is to be
explained by reference to earliest childhood.
This conjecture is reaffirmed with a certainty that makes doubt
impossible in its application to psychoneurotics through the analyses
that have been undertaken with them. It is here found that the sexual
wishes of the child—in so far as they deserve this designation in their
embryonic state—awaken at a very early period, and that the first
inclinations of the girl are directed towards the father, and the first
childish cravings of the boy towards the mother. The father thus becomes
an annoying competitor for the boy, as the mother does for the girl, and
we have already shown in the case of brothers and sisters how little it
takes for this feeling to lead the child to the death-wish. Sexual
selection, as a rule, early becomes evident in the parents; it is a
natural tendency for the father to indulge the little daughter, and for
the mother to take the part of the sons, while both work earnestly for
the education of the little ones when the magic of sex does not
prejudice their judgment. The child is very well aware of any
partiality, and resists that member of the parental couple who
discourages it. To find love in a grown-up person is for the child not
only the satisfaction of a particular craving, but also means that the
child’s will is to be yielded to in other respects. Thus the child obeys
its own sexual impulse, and at the same time re-enforces the feeling
which proceeds from the parents, if it makes a selection among the
parents that corresponds to theirs.
Most of the signs of these infantile inclinations are usually
overlooked; some of them may be observed even after the first years of
childhood. An eight-year-old girl of my acquaintance, when her mother is
called from the table, takes advantage of the opportunity to proclaim
herself her successor. “Now I shall be Mamma; Charles, do you want some
more vegetables? Have some, I beg you,” &c. A particularly gifted and
vivacious girl, not yet four years old, with whom this bit of child
psychology is unusually transparent, says outright: “Now mother can go
away; then father must marry me and I shall be his wife.” Nor does this
wish by any means exclude from child life the possibility that the child
may love his mother affectionately. If the little boy is allowed to
sleep at his mother’s side whenever his father goes on a journey, and if
after his father’s return he must go back to the nursery to a person
whom he likes far less, the wish may be easily actuated that his father
may always be absent, in order that he may keep his place next to his
dear, beautiful mamma; and the father’s death is obviously a means for
the attainment of this wish; for the child’s experience has taught him
that “dead” folks, like grandpa, for example, are always absent; they
never return.
Although observations upon little children lend themselves, without
being forced, to the proposed interpretation, they do not carry the full
conviction which psychoanalyses of adult neurotics obtrude upon the
physician. The dreams in question are here cited with introductions of
such a nature that their interpretation as wish-dreams becomes
unavoidable. One day I find a lady sad and weeping. She says: “I do not
want to see my relatives any more; they must shudder at me.” Thereupon,
almost without any transition, she tells that she remembers a dream,
whose significance, of course, she does not know. She dreamed it four
years before, and it is as follows: _A fox or a lynx is taking a walk on
the roof; then something falls down, or she falls down, and after that
her mother is carried out of the house dead_—whereat the dreamer cries
bitterly. No sooner had I informed her that this dream must signify a
wish from her childhood to see her mother dead, and that it is because
of this dream that she thinks that her relatives must shudder at her,
than she furnished some material for explaining the dream. “Lynx-eye” is
an opprobrious epithet which a street boy once bestowed on her when she
was a very small child; when she was three years old a brick had fallen
on her mother’s head so that she bled severely.
I once had opportunity to make a thorough study of a young girl who
underwent several psychic states. In the state of frenzied excitement
with which the illness started, the patient showed a very strong
aversion to her mother; she struck and scolded her as soon as she
approached the bed, while at the same time she remained loving and
obedient to a much older sister. Then there followed a clear but
somewhat apathetic state with very much disturbed sleep. It was in this
phase that I began to treat her and to analyse her dreams. An enormous
number of these dealt in a more or less abstruse manner with the death
of the mother; now she was present at the funeral of an old woman, now
she saw her sisters sitting at the table dressed in mourning; the
meaning of the dreams could not be doubted. During the further progress
of the convalescence hysterical phobias appeared; the most torturing of
these was the idea that something happened to her mother. She was always
having to hurry home from wherever she happened to be in order to
convince herself that her mother was still alive. Now this case, in view
of my other experiences, was very instructive; it showed in polyglot
translations, as it were, the different ways in which the psychic
apparatus reacts to the same exciting idea. In the state of excitement
which I conceive as the overpowering of the second psychic instance, the
unconscious enmity towards the mother became potent as a motor impulse;
then, after calmness set in, following the suppression of the tumult,
and after the domination of the censor had been restored, this feeling
of enmity had access only to the province of dreams in order to realise
the wish that the mother might die; and after the normal condition had
been still further strengthened, it created the excessive concern for
the mother as a hysterical counter-reaction and manifestation of
defence. In the light of these considerations it is no longer
inexplicable why hysterical girls are so often extravagantly attached to
their mothers.
On another occasion I had opportunity to get a profound insight into the
unconscious psychic life of a young man for whom a compulsion-neurosis
made life almost unendurable, so that he could not go on the street,
because he was harassed by the obsession that he would kill every one he
met. He spent his days in arranging evidence for an alibi in case he
should be charged with any murder that might have occurred in the city.
It is superfluous to remark that this man was as moral as he was highly
cultured. The analysis—which, moreover, led to a cure—discovered
murderous impulses toward the young man’s somewhat over-strict father as
the basis of these disagreeable ideas of compulsion—impulses which, to
his great surprise, had received conscious expression when he was seven
years old, but which, of course, had originated in much earlier years of
childhood. After the painful illness and death of the father, the
obsessive reproach transferred to strangers in the form of the
afore-mentioned phobia, appeared when the young man was thirty-one years
old. Anyone capable of wishing to push his own father from a
mountain-top into an abyss is certainly not to be trusted to spare the
lives of those who are not so closely bound to him; he does well to lock
himself into his room.
According to my experience, which is now large, parents play a leading
part in the infantile psychology of all later neurotics, and falling in
love with one member of the parental couple and hatred of the other help
to make up that fateful sum of material furnished by the psychic
impulses, which has been formed during the infantile period, and which
is of such great importance for the symptoms appearing in the later
neurosis. But I do not think that psychoneurotics are here sharply
distinguished from normal human beings, in that they are capable of
creating something absolutely new and peculiar to themselves. It is far
more probable, as is shown also by occasional observation upon normal
children, that in their loving or hostile wishes towards their parents
psychoneurotics only show in exaggerated form feelings which are present
less distinctly and less intensely in the minds of most children.
Antiquity has furnished us with legendary material to confirm this fact,
and the deep and universal effectiveness of these legends can only be
explained by granting a similar universal applicability to the
above-mentioned assumption in infantile psychology.
I refer to the legend of King Oedipus and the drama of the same name by
Sophocles. Oedipus, the son of Laius, king of Thebes, and of Jocasta, is
exposed while a suckling, because an oracle has informed the father that
his son, who is still unborn, will be his murderer. He is rescued, and
grows up as the king’s son at a foreign court, until, being uncertain
about his origin, he also consults the oracle, and is advised to avoid
his native place, for he is destined to become the murderer of his
father and the husband of his mother. On the road leading away from his
supposed home he meets King Laius and strikes him dead in a sudden
quarrel. Then he comes to the gates of Thebes, where he solves the
riddle of the Sphynx who is barring the way, and he is elected king by
the Thebans in gratitude, and is presented with the hand of Jocasta. He
reigns in peace and honour for a long time, and begets two sons and two
daughters upon his unknown mother, until at last a plague breaks out
which causes the Thebans to consult the oracle anew. Here Sophocles’
tragedy begins. The messengers bring the advice that the plague will
stop as soon as the murderer of Laius is driven from the country. But
where is he hidden?
“Where are they to be found? How shall we trace the perpetrators of so
old a crime where no conjecture leads to discovery?”[CC]
The action of the play now consists merely in a revelation, which is
gradually completed and artfully delayed—resembling the work of a
psychoanalysis—of the fact that Oedipus himself is the murderer of
Laius, and the son of the dead man and of Jocasta. Oedipus, profoundly
shocked at the monstrosities which he has unknowingly committed, blinds
himself and leaves his native place. The oracle has been fulfilled.
The _Oedipus Tyrannus_ is a so-called tragedy of fate; its tragic effect
is said to be found in the opposition between the powerful will of the
gods and the vain resistance of the human beings who are threatened with
destruction; resignation to the will of God and confession of one’s own
helplessness is the lesson which the deeply-moved spectator is to learn
from the tragedy. Consequently modern authors have tried to obtain a
similar tragic effect by embodying the same opposition in a story of
their own invention. But spectators have sat unmoved while a curse or an
oracular sentence has been fulfilled on blameless human beings in spite
of all their struggles; later tragedies of fate have all remained
without effect.
If the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ is capable of moving modern men no less than
it moved the contemporary Greeks, the explanation of this fact cannot
lie merely in the assumption that the effect of the Greek tragedy is
based upon the opposition between fate and human will, but is to be
sought in the peculiar nature of the material by which the opposition is
shown. There must be a voice within us which is prepared to recognise
the compelling power of fate in _Oedipus_, while we justly condemn the
situations occurring in _Die Ahnfrau_ or in other tragedies of later
date as arbitrary inventions. And there must be a factor corresponding
to this inner voice in the story of King Oedipus. His fate moves us only
for the reason that it might have been ours, for the oracle has put the
same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. Perhaps we are all
destined to direct our first sexual impulses towards our mothers, and
our first hatred and violent washes towards our fathers; our dreams
convince us of it. King Oedipus, who has struck his father Laius dead
and has married his mother Jocasta, is nothing but the realised wish of
our childhood. But more fortunate than he, we have since succeeded,
unless we have become psychoneurotics, in withdrawing our sexual
impulses from our mothers and in forgetting our jealousy of our fathers.
We recoil from the person for whom this primitive wish has been
fulfilled with all the force of the repression which these wishes have
suffered within us. By his analysis, showing us the guilt of Oedipus,
the poet urges us to recognise our own inner self, in which these
impulses, even if suppressed, are still present. The comparison with
which the chorus leaves us—
“... Behold! this Oedipus, who unravelled the famous riddle and who
was a man of eminent virtue; a man who trusted neither to popularity
nor to the fortune of his citizens; see how great a storm of adversity
hath at last overtaken him” (Act v. sc. 4).
This warning applies to ourselves and to our pride, to us, who have
grown so wise and so powerful in our own estimation since the years of
our childhood. Like Oedipus, we live in ignorance of the wishes that
offend morality, wishes which nature has forced upon us, and after the
revelation of which we want to avert every glance from the scenes of our
childhood.
In the very text of Sophocles’ tragedy there is an unmistakable
reference to the fact that the Oedipus legend originates in an extremely
old dream material, which consists of the painful disturbance of the
relation towards one’s parents by means of the first impulses of
sexuality. Jocasta comforts Oedipus—who is not yet enlightened, but who
has become worried on account of the oracle—by mentioning to him the
dream which is dreamt by so many people, though she attaches no
significance to it—
“For it hath already been the lot of many men in dreams to think
themselves partners of their mother’s bed. But he passes most easily
through life to whom these circumstances are trifles” (Act iv. sc. 3).
The dream of having sexual intercourse with one’s mother occurred at
that time, as it does to-day, to many people, who tell it with
indignation and astonishment. As may be understood, it is the key to the
tragedy and the complement to the dream of the death of the father. The
story of Oedipus is the reaction of the imagination to these two typical
dreams, and just as the dream when occurring to an adult is experienced
with feelings of resistance, so the legend must contain terror and
self-chastisement. The appearance which it further assumes is the result
of an uncomprehending secondary elaboration which tries to make it serve
theological purposes (_cf._ the dream material of exhibitionism, p.
206). The attempt to reconcile divine omnipotence with human
responsibility must, of course, fail with this material as with every
other.[CD]
I must not leave the typical dream of the death of dear relatives
without somewhat further elucidating the subject of their significance
for the theory of the dream in general. These dreams show us a
realisation of the very unusual case where the dream thought, which has
been created by the repressed wish, completely escapes the censor, and
is transferred to the dream without alteration. There must be present
peculiar conditions making possible such an outcome. I find
circumstances favourable to these dreams in the two following factors:
First, there is no wish which we believe further from us; we believe
such a wish “would never occur to us in a dream”; the dream censor is
therefore not prepared for this monstrosity, just as the legislation of
Solon was incapable of establishing a punishment for patricide.
Secondly, the repressed and unsuspected wish is in just this case
particularly often met by a fragment of the day’s experience in the
shape of a concern about the life of the beloved person. This concern
cannot be registered in the dream by any other means than by taking
advantage of the wish that has the same content; but it is possible for
the wish to mask itself behind the concern which has been awakened
during the day. If one is inclined to think all this a more simple
process, and that one merely continues during the night and in dreams
what one has been concerned with during the day, the dream of the death
of beloved persons is removed from all connection with dream
explanation, and an easily reducible problem is uselessly retained.
It is also instructive to trace the relation of these dreams to anxiety
dreams. In the dream of the death of dear persons the repressed wish has
found a way of avoiding the censor, and the distortion which it causes.
In this case the inevitable concomitant manifestation is that
disagreeable sensations are felt in the dream. Thus the dream of fear is
brought about only when the censor is entirely or partially overpowered,
and, on the other hand, the overpowering of the censor is made easier
when fear has already been furnished by somatic sources. Thus it becomes
obvious for what purpose the censor performs its office and practises
dream distortion; it does this _in order to prevent the development of
fear or other forms of disagreeable emotion_.
I have spoken above of the egotism of the infantile mind, and I may now
resume this subject in order to suggest that dreams preserve this
characteristic—thus showing their connection with infantile life. Every
dream is absolutely egotistical; in every dream the beloved ego appears,
even though it may be in a disguised form. The wishes that are realised
in dreams are regularly the wishes of this ego; it is only a deceptive
appearance if interest in another person is thought to have caused the
dream. I shall subject to analysis several examples which appear to
contradict this assertion.
I. A boy not yet four years old relates the following: _He saw a large
dish garnished, and upon it a large piece of roast meat, and the meat
was all of a sudden—not cut to pieces—but eaten up. He did not see the
person who ate it._[CE]
Who may this strange person be of whose luxurious repast this little
fellow dreams? The experiences of the day must give us the explanation
of this. For a few days the boy had been living on a diet of milk
according to the doctor’s prescription; but on the evening of the day
before the dream he had been naughty, and as a punishment he had been
deprived of his evening meal. He had already undergone one such
hunger-cure, and had acted very bravely. He knew that he would get
nothing to eat, but he did not dare to indicate by a word that he was
hungry. Education was beginning to have its influence upon him; this is
expressed even in the dream which shows the beginnings of dream
disfigurement. There is no doubt that he himself is the person whose
wishes are directed toward this abundant meal, and a meal of roast meat
at that. But since he knows that this is forbidden him, he does not
dare, as children do in the dream (_cf._ the dream about strawberries of
my little Anna, p. 110), to sit down to the meal himself. The person
remains anonymous.
II. Once I dream that I see on the show-table of a book store a new
number in the Book-lovers’ Collection—the collection which I am in the
habit of buying (art monographs, monographs on the history of the world,
famous art centres, &c.). _The new collection is called Famous Orators
(or Orations), and the first number bears the name of Doctor Lecher._
In the course of analysis it appears improbable that the fame of Dr.
Lecher, the long-winded orator of the German Opposition, should occupy
my thoughts while I am dreaming. The fact is that, a few days before, I
undertook the psychic cure of some new patients, and was now forced to
talk for from ten to twelve hours a day. Thus I myself am the
long-winded orator.
III. Upon another occasion I dream that a teacher of my acquaintance at
the university says: _My son, the Myopic_. Then there follows a dialogue
consisting of short speeches and replies. A third portion of the dream
follows in which I and my sons appear, and as far as the latent dream
content is concerned, father, son, and Professor M. are alike only lay
figures to represent me and my eldest son. I shall consider this dream
again further on because of another peculiarity.
IV. The following dream gives an example of really base egotistical
feelings, which are concealed behind affectionate concern:
_My friend Otto looks ill, his face is brown and his eyes bulge._
Otto is my family physician, to whom I owe a debt greater than I can
ever hope to repay, since he has guarded the health of my children for
years. He has treated them successfully when they were taken sick, and
besides that he has given them presents on all occasions which gave him
any excuse for doing so. He came for a visit on the day of the dream,
and my wife noticed that he looked tired and exhausted. Then comes my
dream at night, and attributes to him a few of the symptoms of Basedow’s
disease. Any one disregarding my rules for dream interpretation would
understand this dream to mean that I am concerned about the health of my
friend, and that this concern is realised in the dream. It would thus be
a contradiction not only of the assertion that the dream is a
wish-fulfilment, but also of the assertion that it is accessible only to
egotistic impulses. But let the person who interprets the dream in this
manner explain to me why I fear that Otto has Basedow’s disease, for
which diagnosis his appearance does not give the slightest
justification? As opposed to this, my analysis furnishes the following
material, taken from an occurrence which happened six years ago. A small
party of us, including Professor R., were driving in profound darkness
through the forest of N., which is several hours distant from our
country home. The coachman, who was not quite sober, threw us and the
wagon down a bank, and it was only by a lucky accident that we all
escaped unhurt. But we were forced to spend the night at the nearest
inn, where the news of our accident awakened great sympathy. A
gentleman, who showed unmistakable signs of the morbus Basedowii—nothing
but a brownish colour of the skin of the face and bulging eyes, no
goitre—placed himself entirely at our disposal and asked what he could
do for us. Professor R. answered in his decided way: “Nothing but lend
me a night-shirt.” Whereupon our generous friend replied: “I am sorry
but I cannot do that,” and went away.
In continuing the analysis, it occurs to me that Basedow is the name not
only of a physician, but also of a famous educator. (Now that I am awake
I do not feel quite sure of this fact.) My friend Otto is the person
whom I have asked to take charge of the physical education of my
children—especially during the age of puberty (hence the night-shirt)—in
case anything should happen to me. By seeing Otto in the dream with the
morbid symptoms of our above-mentioned generous benefactor, I apparently
mean to say, “If anything happens to me, just as little is to be
expected for my children from him as was to be expected then from Baron
L., in spite of his well-meaning offers.” The egotistical turn of this
dream ought now to be clear.[CF]
But where is the wish-fulfilment to be found? It is not in the vengeance
secured upon my friend Otto, whose fate it seems to be to receive
ill-treatment in my dreams, but in the following circumstances: In
representing Otto in the dream as Baron L., I have at the same time
identified myself with some one else, that is to say, with Professor R.,
for I have asked something of Otto, just as R. asked something of Baron
L. at the time of the occurrence which has been mentioned. And that is
the point. For Professor R. has pursued his way independently outside
the schools, somewhat as I have done, and has only in later years
received the title which he earned long ago. I am therefore again
wishing to be a professor! The very phrase “in later years” is the
fulfilment of wish, for it signifies that I shall live long enough to
pilot my boy through the age of puberty myself.
I gave only a brief account of the other forms of typical dreams in the
first edition of this book, because an insufficient amount of good
material was at my disposal. My experience, which has since been
increased, now makes it possible for me to divide these dreams into two
broad classes—first, those which really have the same meaning every
time, and secondly, those which must be subjected to the most widely
different interpretations in spite of their identical or similar
content. Among the typical dreams of the first sort I shall closely
consider the examination dream and the so-called dream of dental
irritation.
Every one who has received his degree after having passed the final
college examination, complains of the ruthlessness with which he is
pursued by the anxiety dream that he will fail, that he must repeat his
work, &c. For the holder of the university degree this typical dream is
replaced by another, which represents to him that he has to pass the
examination for the doctor’s degree, and against which he vainly raises
the objection in his sleep that he has already been practising for
years—that he is already a university instructor or the head of a law
firm. These are the ineradicable memories of the punishments which we
suffered when we were children for misdeeds which we had
committed—memories which were revived in us on that _dies irae, dies
illa_ of the severe examination at the two critical junctures in our
studies. The “examination-phobia” of neurotics is also strengthened by
this childish fear. After we have ceased to be schoolboys it is no
longer our parents and guardians as at first, or our teachers as later
on, who see to our punishment; the inexorable chain of causes and
effects in life has taken over our further education. Now we dream of
examinations for graduation or for the doctor’s degree—and who has not
been faint-hearted in these tests, even though he belonged to the
righteous?—whenever we fear that an outcome will punish us because we
have not done something, or because we have not accomplished something
as we should—in short whenever we feel the weight of responsibility.
I owe the actual explanation of examination dreams to a remark made by a
well-informed colleague, who once asserted in a scientific discussion
that in his experience the examination dream occurs only to persons who
have passed the examination, never to those who have gone to pieces on
it. The anxiety dream of the examination, which occurs, as is being more
and more corroborated, when the dreamer is looking forward to a
responsible action on his part the next day and the possibility of
disgrace, has therefore probably selected an occasion in the past where
the great anxiety has shown itself to have been without justification
and has been contradicted by the result. This would be a very striking
example of a misconception of the dream content on the part of the
waking instance. The objection to the dream, which is conceived as the
indignant protest, “But I am already a doctor,” &c., would be in reality
a consolation which the dreams offer, and which would therefore be to
the following effect: “Do not be afraid of the morrow; think of the fear
which you had before the final examination, and yet nothing came of it.
You are a doctor this minute,” &c. The fear, however, which we attribute
to the dream, originates in the remnants of daily experience.
The tests of this explanation which I was able to make in my own case
and in that of others, although they were not sufficiently numerous,
have been altogether successful. I failed, for example, in the
examination for the doctor’s degree in legal medicine; never once have I
been concerned about this matter in my dreams, while I have often enough
been examined in botany, zoology, or chemistry, in which subjects I took
the examinations with well-founded anxiety, but escaped punishment
through the clemency of fortune or of the examiner. In my dreams of
college examination, I am regularly examined in history, a subject which
I passed brilliantly at the time, but only, I must admit, because my
good-natured professor—my one-eyed benefactor in another dream (_cf._ p.
12)—did not overlook the fact that on the list of questions I had
crossed out the second of three questions as an indication that he
should not insist on it. One of my patients, who withdrew before the
final college examinations and made them up later, but who failed in the
officer’s examination and did not become an officer, tells me that he
dreams about the former examination often enough, but never about the
latter.
The above-mentioned colleague (Dr. Stekel of Vienna) calls attention to
the double meaning of the word “Matura” (_Matura_—examination for
college degree: mature, ripe), and claims that he has observed that
examination dreams occur very frequently when a sexual test is set for
the following day, in which, therefore, the disgrace which is feared
might consist in the manifestation of slight potency. A German colleague
takes exception to this, as it appears, justly, on the ground that this
examination is denominated in Germany the Abiturium and hence lacks this
double meaning.
On account of their similar affective impression dreams of missing a
train deserve to be placed next to examination dreams. Their explanation
also justifies this relationship. They are consolation dreams directed
against another feeling of fear perceived in the dream, the fear of
dying. “To depart” is one of the most frequent and one of the most
easily reached symbols of death. The dream thus says consolingly:
“Compose yourself, you are not going to die (to depart),” just as the
examination dream calms us by saying “Fear not, nothing will happen to
you even this time.” The difficulty in understanding both kinds of
dreams is due to the fact that the feeling of anxiety is directly
connected with the expression of consolation. Stekel treats fully the
symbolisms of death in his recently published book _Die Sprache des
Traumes_.
The meaning of the “dreams of dental irritation,” which I have had to
analyse often enough with my patients, escaped me for a long time,
because, much to my astonishment, resistances that were altogether too
great obstructed their interpretation.
At last overwhelming evidence convinced me that, in the case of men,
nothing else than cravings for masturbation from the time of puberty
furnishes the motive power for these dreams. I shall analyse two such
dreams, one of which is likewise “a dream of flight.” The two dreams are
of the same person—a young man with a strong homosexuality, which,
however, has been repressed in life.
_He is witnessing a performance of_ Fidelio _from the parquette of the
opera house; he is sitting next to L., whose personality is congenial to
him, and whose friendship he would like to have. He suddenly flies
diagonally clear across the parquette; he then puts his hand in his
mouth and draws out two of his teeth._
He himself describes the flight by saying it was as if he were “thrown”
into the air. As it was a performance of _Fidelio_ he recalls the poet’s
words:
“He who a charming wife acquired——”
But even the acquisition of a charming wife is not among the wishes of
the dreamer. Two other verses would be more appropriate:
_“He who succeeds in the lucky (big) throw,
A friend of a friend to be....”_
The dream thus contains the “lucky (big) throw,” which is not, however,
a wish-fulfilment only. It also conceals the painful reflection that in
his striving after friendship he has often had the misfortune to be
“thrown down,” and the fear lest this fate may be repeated in the case
of the young man next whom he has enjoyed the performance of _Fidelio_.
This is now followed by a confession which quite puts this refined
dreamer to shame, to the effect that once, after such a rejection on the
part of a friend, out of burning desire he merged into sexual excitement
and masturbated twice in succession.
The other dream is as follows: _Two professors of the university who are
known to him are treating him in my stead. One of them does something
with his penis; he fears an operation. The other one thrusts an iron bar
at his mouth so that he loses two teeth. He is bound with four silken
cloths._
The sexual significance of this dream can hardly be doubted. The silken
cloths are equivalent to an identification with a homosexual of his
acquaintance. The dreamer, who has never achieved coition, but who has
never actually sought sexual intercourse with men, conceives sexual
intercourse after the model of the masturbation which he was once taught
during the time of puberty.
I believe that the frequent modifications of the typical dream of dental
irritation—that, for example, of another person drawing the tooth from
the dreamer’s mouth, are made intelligible by means of the same
explanation. It may, however, be difficult to see how “dental
irritation” can come to have this significance. I may then call
attention to a transference from below to above which occurs very
frequently. This transference is at the service of sexual repression,
and by means of it 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. It is also a case of such
transference when the genitals are replaced by the face in the symbolism
of unconscious thought. This is assisted by the fact that the buttocks
resemble the cheeks, and also by the usage of language which calls the
nymphæ “lips,” as resembling those that enclose the opening of the
mouth. The nose is compared to the penis in numerous allusions, and in
one place as in the other the presence of hair completes the
resemblance. Only one part of the anatomy—the teeth—are beyond all
possibility of being compared with anything, and it is just this
coincidence of agreement and disagreement which makes the teeth suitable
for representation under pressure of sexual repression.
I do not wish to claim that the interpretation of the dream of dental
irritation as a dream of masturbation, the justification of which I
cannot doubt, has been freed of all obscurity.[CG] I carry the
explanation as far as I am able, and must leave the rest unsolved. But I
must also refer to another connection revealed by 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.[CH] I am unable to say whence these colloquialisms originate, and
on what symbolisms they are based, but the teeth would well fit in with
the first of the two.[CI]
Dreams in which one is flying or hovering, falling, swimming, or the
like, belong to the second group of typical dreams. What do these dreams
signify? A general statement on this point cannot be made. They signify
something different in each case, as we shall hear: only the sensational
material which they contain always comes from the same source.
It is necessary to conclude, from the material obtained in
psychoanalysis, that these dreams repeat impressions from childhood—that
is, that they refer to the movement games which have such extraordinary
attractions for the child. What uncle has never made a child fly by
running across the room with it with arms outstretched, or has never
played falling with it by rocking it on his knee and then suddenly
stretching out his leg, or by lifting it up high and then pretending to
withdraw support. At this the children shout with joy, and demand more
untiringly, especially if there is a little fright and dizziness
attached to it; in after years they create a repetition of this in the
dream, but in the dream they omit the hands which have held them, so
that they now freely float and fall. The fondness of all small children
for games like rocking and see-sawing is well known; and if they see
gymnastic tricks at the circus their recollection of this rocking is
refreshed. With some boys the hysterical attack consists simply in the
reproduction of such tricks, which they accomplish with great skill. Not
infrequently sexual sensations are excited by these movement games,
harmless as they are in themselves.[CJ] To express the idea by a word
which is current among us, and which covers all of these matters: It is
the wild playing (“Hetzen”) of childhood which dreams about flying,
falling, vertigo, and the like repeat, and the voluptuous feelings of
which have now been turned into fear. But as every mother knows, the
wild playing of children has often enough culminated in quarrelling and
tears.
I therefore have good reason for rejecting the explanation that the
condition of our dermal sensations during sleep, the sensations caused
by the movements of the lungs, and the like, give rise to dreams of
flying and falling. I see that these very sensations have been
reproduced from the memory with which the dream is concerned—that they
are, therefore, a part of the dream content and not of the dream
sources.
This material, similar in its character and origin consisting of
sensations of motion, is now used for the representation of the most
manifold dream thoughts. Dreams of flying, for the most part
characterised by delight, require the most widely different
interpretations—altogether special interpretations in the case of some
persons, and even interpretations of a typical nature in that of others.
One of my patients was in the habit of dreaming very often that she was
suspended above the street at a certain height, without touching the
ground. She had grown only to a very small stature, and shunned every
kind of contamination which accompanies intercourse with human beings.
Her dream of suspension fulfilled both of her wishes, by raising her
feet from the ground and by allowing her head to tower in the upper
regions. In the case of other female dreamers the dream of flying had
the significance of a longing: If I were a little bird; others thus
become angels at night because they have missed being called that by
day. The intimate connection between flying and the idea of a bird makes
it comprehensible that the dream of flying in the case of men usually
has a significance of coarse sensuality.[CK] We shall also not be
surprised to hear that this or that dreamer is always very proud of his
ability to fly.
Dr. Paul Federn (Vienna) has propounded the fascinating theory that a
great many flying dreams are erection dreams, since the remarkable
phenomena of erection which so constantly occupy the human phantasy must
strongly impress upon it a notion of the suspension of gravity (_cf._
the winged phalli of the ancients).
Dreams of falling are most frequently characterised by fear. Their
interpretation, when they occur in women, is subject to no difficulty
because women always accept the symbolic sense of falling, which is a
circumlocution for the indulgence of an erotic temptation. We have not
yet exhausted the infantile sources of the dream of falling; nearly all
children have fallen occasionally, and then been picked up and fondled;
if they fell out of bed at night, they were picked up by their nurse and
taken into her bed.
People who dream often of swimming, of cleaving the waves, with great
enjoyment, &c., have usually been persons who wetted their beds, and
they now repeat in the dream a pleasure which they have long since
learned to forgo. We shall soon learn from one example or another to
what representation the dreams of swimming easily lend themselves.
The interpretation of dreams about fire justifies a prohibition of the
nursery which forbids children to burn matches in order that they may
not wet the bed at night. They too are based on the reminiscence of
_enuresis nocturnus_ of childhood. In the _Bruchstück einer
Hysterieanalyse_, 1905,[CL] I have given the complete analysis and
synthesis of such a fire-dream in connection with the infantile history
of the dreamer, and have shown to the representation of what emotions
this infantile material has been utilised in maturer years.
It would be possible to cite a considerable number of other “typical”
dreams, if these are understood to refer to the frequent recurrence of
the same manifest dream content in the case of different dreamers, as,
for example: dreams of passing through narrow alleys, of walking through
a whole suite of rooms; dreams of the nocturnal burglar against whom
nervous people direct precautionary measures before going to sleep;
dreams of being chased by wild animals (bulls, horses), or of being
threatened with knives, daggers, and lances. The last two are
characteristic as the manifest dream content of persons suffering from
anxiety, &c. An investigation dealing especially with this material
would be well worth while. In lieu of this I have two remarks to offer,
which, however, do not apply exclusively to typical dreams.
I. The more one is occupied with the solution of dreams, the more
willing one must become to acknowledge that the majority of the dreams
of adults treat of sexual material and give expression to erotic wishes.
Only one who really analyses dreams, that is to say, who pushes forward
from their manifest content to the latent dream thoughts, can form an
opinion on this subject—never the person who is satisfied with
registering the manifest content (as, for example, Näcke in his works on
sexual dreams). Let us recognise at once that this fact is not to be
wondered at, but that it is in complete harmony with the fundamental
assumptions of dream explanation. No other impulse has had to undergo so
much suppression from the time of childhood as the sex impulse in its
numerous components,[CM] from no other impulse have survived so many and
such intense unconscious wishes, which now act in the sleeping state in
such a manner as to produce dreams. In dream interpretation, this
significance of sexual complexes must never be forgotten, nor must they,
of course, be exaggerated to the point of being considered exclusive.
Of many dreams it can be ascertained by a careful interpretation that
they are even to be taken bisexually, inasmuch as they result in an
irrefutable secondary interpretation in which they realise homosexual
feelings—that is, feelings that are common to the normal sexual activity
of the dreaming person. But that all dreams are to be interpreted
bisexually, as maintained by W. Stekel,[CN] and Alf. Adler,[CO] seems to
me to be a generalisation as indemonstrable as it is improbable, which I
should not like to support. Above all I should not know how to dispose
of the apparent fact that there are many dreams satisfying other than—in
the widest sense—erotic needs, as dreams of hunger, thirst, convenience,
&c. Likewise the similar assertions “that behind every dream one finds
the death sentence” (Stekel), and that every dream shows “a continuation
from the feminine to the masculine line” (Adler), seem to me to proceed
far beyond what is admissible in the interpretation of dreams.
We have already asserted elsewhere that dreams which are conspicuously
innocent invariably embody coarse erotic wishes, and we might confirm
this by means of numerous fresh examples. But many dreams which appear
indifferent, and which would never be suspected of any particular
significance, can be traced back, after analysis, to unmistakably sexual
wish-feelings, which are often of an unexpected nature. For example, who
would suspect a sexual wish in the following dream until the
interpretation had been worked out? The dreamer relates: _Between two
stately palaces stands a little house, receding somewhat, whose doors
are closed. My wife leads me a little way along the street up to the
little house, and pushes in the door, and then I slip quickly and easily
into the interior of a courtyard that slants obliquely upwards._
Anyone who has had experience in the translating of dreams will, of
course, immediately perceive that penetrating into narrow spaces, and
opening locked doors, belong to the commonest sexual symbolism, and will
easily find in this dream a representation of attempted coition from
behind (between the two stately buttocks of the female body). The narrow
slanting passage is of course the vagina; the assistance attributed to
the wife of the dreamer requires the interpretation that in reality it
is only consideration for the wife which is responsible for the
detention from such an attempt. Moreover, inquiry shows that on the
previous day a young girl had entered the household of the dreamer who
had pleased him, and who had given him the impression that she would not
be altogether opposed to an approach of this sort. The little house
between the two palaces is taken from a reminiscence of the Hradschin in
Prague, and thus points again to the girl who is a native of that city.
If with my patients I emphasise the frequency of the Oedipus dream—of
having sexual intercourse with one’s mother—I get the answer: “I cannot
remember such a dream.” Immediately afterwards, however, there arises
the recollection of another disguised and indifferent dream, which has
been dreamed repeatedly by the patient, and the analysis shows it to be
a dream of this same content—that is, another Oedipus dream. I can
assure the reader that veiled dreams of sexual intercourse with the
mother are a great deal more frequent than open ones to the same
effect.[CP]
There are dreams about landscapes and localities in which emphasis is
always laid upon the assurance: “I have been there before.” In this case
the locality is always the genital organ of the mother; it can indeed be
asserted with such certainty of no other locality that one “has been
there before.”
A large number of dreams, often full of fear, which are concerned with
passing through narrow spaces or with staying in the water, are based
upon fancies about the embryonic life, about the sojourn in the mother’s
womb, and about the act of birth. The following is the dream of a young
man who in his fancy has already while in embryo taken advantage of his
opportunity to spy upon an act of coition between his parents.
“_He is in a deep shaft, in which there is a window, as in the Semmering
Tunnel. At first he sees an empty landscape through this window, and
then he composes a picture into it, which is immediately at hand and
which fills out the empty space. The picture represents a field which is
being thoroughly harrowed by an implement, and the delightful air, the
accompanying idea of hard work, and the bluish-black clods of earth make
a pleasant impression. He then goes on and sees a primary school
opened ... and he is surprised that so much attention is devoted in it
to the sexual feelings of the child, which makes him think of me._”
Here is a pretty water-dream of a female patient, which was turned to
extraordinary account in the course of treatment.
_At her summer resort at the ... Lake, she hurls herself into the dark
water at a place where the pale moon is reflected in the water._
Dreams of this sort are parturition dreams; their interpretation is
accomplished by reversing the fact reported in the manifest dream
content; thus, instead of “throwing one’s self into the water,” read
“coming out of the water,” that is, “being born.” The place from which
one is born is recognised if one thinks of the bad sense of the French
“la lune.” The pale moon thus becomes the white “bottom” (Popo), which
the child soon recognises as the place from which it came. Now what can
be the meaning of the patient’s wishing to be born at her summer resort?
I asked the dreamer this, and she answered without hesitation: “Hasn’t
the treatment made me as though I were born again?” Thus the dream
becomes an invitation to continue the cure at this summer resort, that
is, to visit her there; perhaps it also contains a very bashful allusion
to the wish to become a mother herself.[CQ]
Another dream of parturition, with its interpretation, I take from the
work of E. Jones.[95] “_She stood at the seashore watching a small boy,
who seemed to be hers, wading into the water. This he did till the water
covered him, and she could only see his head bobbing up and down near
the surface. The scene then changed to the crowded hall of a hotel. Her
husband left her, and she ‘entered into conversation with’ a stranger._”
The second half of the dream was discovered in the analysis to represent
a flight from her husband, and the entering into intimate relations with
a third person, behind whom was plainly indicated Mr. X.’s brother
mentioned in a former dream. The first part of the dream was a fairly
evident birth phantasy. In dreams as in mythology, the delivery of a
child _from_ the uterine waters is commonly presented by distortion as
the entry of the child _into_ water; among many others, the births of
Adonis, Osiris, Moses, and Bacchus are well-known illustrations of this.
The bobbing up and down of the head in the water at once recalled to the
patient the sensation of quickening she had experienced in her only
pregnancy. Thinking of the boy going into the water induced a reverie in
which she saw herself taking him out of the water, carrying him into the
nursery, washing him and dressing him, and installing him in her
household.
The second half of the dream, therefore, represents thoughts concerning
the elopement, which belonged to the first half of the underlying latent
content; the first half of the dream corresponded with the second half
of the latent content, the birth phantasy. Besides this inversion in
order, further inversions took place in each half of the dream. In the
first half the child _entered_ the water, and then his head bobbed; in
the underlying dream thoughts first the quickening occurred, and then
the child left the water (a double inversion). In the second half her
husband left her; in the dream thoughts she left her husband.
Another parturition dream is related by Abraham[79] of a young woman
looking forward to her first confinement (p. 22): From a place in the
floor of the house a subterranean canal leads directly into the water
(parturition path, amniotic liquor). She lifts up a trap in the floor,
and there immediately appears a creature dressed in a brownish fur,
which almost resembles a seal. This creature changes into the younger
brother of the dreamer, to whom she has always stood in maternal
relationship.
Dreams of “saving” are connected with parturition dreams. To save,
especially to save from the water, is equivalent to giving birth when
dreamed by a woman; this sense is, however, modified when the dreamer is
a man.[CR]
Robbers, burglars at night, and ghosts, of which we are afraid before
going to bed, and which occasionally even disturb our sleep, originate
in one and the same childish reminiscence. They are the nightly visitors
who have awakened the child to set it on the chamber so that it may not
wet the bed, or have lifted the cover in order to see clearly how the
child is holding its hands while sleeping. I have been able to induce an
exact recollection of the nocturnal visitor in the analysis of some of
these anxiety dreams. The robbers were always the father, the ghosts
more probably corresponded to feminine persons with white night-gowns.
II. When one has become familiar with the abundant use of symbolism for
the representation of sexual material in dreams, one naturally raises
the question whether there are not many of these symbols which appear
once and for all with a firmly established significance like the signs
in stenography; and one is tempted to compile a new dream-book according
to the cipher method. In this connection it may be remarked that this
symbolism does not belong peculiarly to the dream, but rather to
unconscious thinking, particularly that of the masses, and it is to be
found in greater perfection in the folk-lore, in the myths, legends, and
manners of speech, in the proverbial sayings, and in the current
witticisms of a nation than in its dreams.[CS]
The dream takes advantage of this symbolism in order to give a disguised
representation to its latent thoughts. Among the symbols which are used
in this manner there are of course many which regularly, or almost
regularly, mean the same thing. Only it is necessary to keep in mind the
curious plasticity of psychic material. Now and then a symbol in the
dream content may have to be interpreted not symbolically, but according
to its real meaning; at another time the dreamer, owing to a peculiar
set of recollections, may create for himself the right to use anything
whatever as a sexual symbol, though it is not ordinarily used in that
way. Nor are the most frequently used sexual symbols unambiguous every
time.
After these limitations and reservations I may call attention to the
following: Emperor and Empress (King and Queen) in most cases really
represent the parents of the dreamer;[CT] the dreamer himself or herself
is the prince or princess. All elongated objects, sticks, tree-trunks,
and umbrellas (on account of the stretching-up which might be compared
to an erection), all elongated and sharp weapons, knives, daggers, and
pikes, are intended to represent the male member. A frequent, not very
intelligible, symbol for the same is a nail-file (on account of the
rubbing and scraping?). Little cases, boxes, caskets, closets, and
stoves correspond to the female part. The symbolism of lock and key has
been very gracefully employed by Uhland in his song about the “Grafen
Eberstein,” to make a common smutty joke. The dream of walking through a
row of rooms is a brothel or harem dream. Staircases, ladders, and
flights of stairs, or climbing on these, either upwards or downwards,
are symbolic representations of the sexual act.[CU] Smooth walls over
which one is climbing, façades of houses upon which one is letting
oneself down, frequently under great anxiety, correspond to the erect
human body, and probably repeat in the dream reminiscences of the upward
climbing of little children on their parents or foster parents. “Smooth”
walls are men. Often in a dream of anxiety one is holding on firmly to
some projection from a house. Tables, set tables, and boards are women,
perhaps on account of the opposition which does away with the bodily
contours. Since “bed and board” (_mensa et thorus_) constitute marriage,
the former are often put for the latter in the dream, and as far as
practicable the sexual presentation complex is transposed to the eating
complex. Of articles of dress the woman’s hat may frequently be
definitely interpreted as the male genital. In dreams of men one often
finds the cravat as a symbol for the penis; this indeed is not only
because cravats hang down long, and are characteristic of the man, but
also because one can select them at pleasure, a freedom which is
prohibited by nature in the original of the symbol. Persons who make use
of this symbol in the dream are very extravagant with cravats, and
possess regular collections of them.[CV] All complicated machines and
apparatus in dream are very probably genitals, in the description of
which dream symbolism shows itself to be as tireless as the activity of
wit. Likewise many landscapes in dreams, especially with bridges or with
wooded mountains, can be readily recognised as descriptions of the
genitals. Finally where one finds incomprehensible neologisms one may
think of combinations made up of components having a sexual
significance. Children also in the dream often signify the genitals, as
men and women are in the habit of fondly referring to their genital
organ as their “little one.” As a very recent symbol of the male genital
may be mentioned the flying machine, utilisation of which is justified
by its relation to flying as well as occasionally by its form. To play
with a little child or to beat a little one is often the dream’s
representation of onanism. A number of other symbols, in part not
sufficiently verified, are given by Stekel,[114] who illustrates them
with examples. Right and left, according to him, are to be conceived in
the dream in an ethical sense. “The right way always signifies the road
to righteousness, the left the one to crime. Thus the left may signify
homosexuality, incest, and perversion, while the right signifies
marriage, relations with a prostitute, &c. The meaning is always
determined by the individual moral viewpoint of the dreamer” (_l.c._, p.
466). Relatives in the dream generally play the rôle of genitals (p.
473). Not to be able to catch up with a wagon is interpreted by Stekel
as regret not to be able to come up to a difference in age (p. 479).
Baggage with which one travels is the burden of sin by which one is
oppressed (_ibid._). Also numbers, which frequently occur in the dream,
are assigned by Stekel a fixed symbolical meaning, but these
interpretations seem neither sufficiently verified nor of general
validity, although the interpretation in individual cases can generally
be recognised as probable. In a recently published book by W. Stekel,
_Die Sprache des Traumes_, which I was unable to utilise, there is a
list (p. 72) of the most common sexual symbols, the object of which is
to prove that all sexual symbols can be bisexually used. He states: “Is
there a symbol which (if in any way permitted by the phantasy) may not
be used simultaneously in the masculine and the feminine sense!” To be
sure the clause in parentheses takes away much of the absoluteness of
this assertion, for this is not at all permitted by the phantasy. I do
not, however, think it superfluous to state that in my experience
Stekel’s general statement has to give way to the recognition of a
greater manifoldness. Besides those symbols, which are just as frequent
for the male as for the female genitals, there are others which
preponderately, or almost exclusively, designate one of the sexes, and
there are still others of which only the male or only the female
signification is known. To use long, firm objects and weapons as symbols
of the female genitals, or hollow objects (chests, boxes, pouches, &c.),
as symbols of the male genitals, is indeed not allowed by the fancy.
It is true that the tendency of the dream and the unconscious fancy to
utilise the sexual symbol bisexually betrays an archaic trend, for in
childhood a difference in the genitals is unknown, and the same genitals
are attributed to both sexes.
These very incomplete suggestions may suffice to stimulate others to
make a more careful collection.[CW]
I shall now add a few examples of the application of such symbolisms in
dreams, which will serve to show how impossible it becomes to interpret
a dream without taking into account the symbolism of dreams, and how
imperatively it obtrudes itself in many cases.
1. The hat as a symbol of the man (of the male genital):[CX] (a fragment
from the dream of a young woman who suffered from agoraphobia on account
of a fear of temptation).
“I am walking in the street in summer, I wear a straw hat of peculiar
shape, the middle piece of which is bent upwards and the side pieces of
which hang downwards (the description became here obstructed), and in
such a fashion that one is lower than the other. I am cheerful and in a
confidential mood, and as I pass a troop of young officers I think to
myself: None of you can have any designs upon me.”
As she could produce no associations to the hat, I said to her: “The hat
is really a male genital, with its raised middle piece and the two
downward hanging side pieces.” I intentionally refrained from
interpreting those details concerning the unequal downward hanging of
the two side pieces, although just such individualities in the
determinations lead the way to the interpretation. I continued by saying
that if she only had a man with such a virile genital she would not have
to fear the officers—that is, she would have nothing to wish from them,
for she is mainly kept from going without protection and company by her
fancies of temptation. This last explanation of her fear I had already
been able to give her repeatedly on the basis of other material.
It is quite remarkable how the dreamer behaved after this
interpretation. She withdrew her description of the hat, and claimed not
to have said that the two side pieces were hanging downwards. I was,
however, too sure of what I had heard to allow myself to be misled, and
I persisted in it. She was quiet for a while, and then found the courage
to ask why it was that one of her husband’s testicles was lower than the
other, and whether it was the same in all men. With this the peculiar
detail of the hat was explained, and the whole interpretation was
accepted by her. The hat symbol was familiar to me long before the
patient related this dream. From other but less transparent cases I
believe that the hat may also be taken as a female genital.
2. The little one as the genital—to be run over as a symbol of sexual
intercourse (another dream of the same agoraphobic patient).
“Her mother sends away her little daughter so that she must go alone.
She rides with her mother to the railroad and sees her little one
walking directly upon the tracks, so that she cannot avoid being run
over. She hears the bones crackle. (From this she experiences a feeling
of discomfort but no real horror.) She then looks out through the car
window to see whether the parts cannot be seen behind. She then
reproaches her mother for allowing the little one to go out alone.”
Analysis. It is not an easy matter to give here a complete
interpretation of the dream. It forms part of a cycle of dreams, and can
be fully understood only in connection with the others. For it is not
easy to get the necessary material sufficiently isolated to prove the
symbolism. The patient at first finds that the railroad journey is to be
interpreted historically as an allusion to a departure from a sanatorium
for nervous diseases, with the superintendent of which she naturally was
in love. Her mother took her away from this place, and the physician
came to the railroad station and handed her a bouquet of flowers on
leaving; she felt uncomfortable because her mother witnessed this
homage. Here the mother, therefore, appears as a disturber of her love
affairs, which is the rôle actually played by this strict woman during
her daughter’s girlhood. The next thought referred to the sentence: “She
then looks to see whether the parts can be seen behind.” In the dream
façade one would naturally be compelled to think of the parts of the
little daughter run over and ground up. The thought, however, turns in
quite a different direction. She recalls that she once saw her father in
the bath-room naked from behind; she then begins to talk about the sex
differentiation, and asserts that in the man the genitals can be seen
from behind, but in the woman they cannot. In this connection she now
herself offers the interpretation that the little one is the genital,
her little one (she has a four-year-old daughter) her own genital. She
reproaches her mother for wanting her to live as though she had no
genital, and recognises this reproach in the introductory sentence of
the dream; the mother sends away her little one so that she must go
alone. In her phantasy going alone on the street signifies to have no
man and no sexual relations (coire = to go together), and this she does
not like. According to all her statements she really suffered as a girl
on account of the jealousy of her mother, because she showed a
preference for her father.
The “little one” has been noted[CY] as a symbol for the male or the
female genitals by Stekel, who can refer in this connection to a very
widespread usage of language.
The deeper interpretation of this dream depends upon another dream of
the same night in which the dreamer identifies herself with her brother.
She was a “tomboy,” and was always being told that she should have been
born a boy. This identification with the brother shows with special
clearness that “the little one” signifies the genital. The mother
threatened him (her) with castration, which could only be understood as
a punishment for playing with the parts, and the identification,
therefore, shows that she herself had masturbated as a child, though
this fact she now retained only in a memory concerning her brother. An
early knowledge of the male genital which she later lost she must have
acquired at that time according to the assertions of this second dream.
Moreover the second dream points to the infantile sexual theory that
girls originate from boys through castration. After I had told her of
this childish belief, she at once confirmed it with an anecdote in which
the boy asks the girl: “Was it cut off?” to which the girl replied, “No,
it’s always been so.”
The sending away of the little one, of the genital, in the first dream
therefore also refers to the threatened castration. Finally she blames
her mother for not having been born a boy.
That “being run over” symbolises sexual intercourse would not be evident
from this dream if we were not sure of it from many other sources.
3. Representation of the genital by structures, stairways, and shafts.
(Dream of a young man inhibited by a father complex.)
“He is taking a walk with his father in a place which is surely the
Prater, for the _Rotunda_ may be seen in front of which there is a small
front structure to which is attached a captive balloon; the balloon,
however, seems quite collapsed. His father asks him what this is all
for; he is surprised at it, but he explains it to his father. They come
into a court in which lies a large sheet of tin. His father wants to
pull off a big piece of this, but first looks around to see if anyone is
watching. He tells his father that all he needs to do is to speak to the
watchman, and then he can take without any further difficulty as much as
he wants to. From this court a stairway leads down into a shaft, the
walls of which are softly upholstered something like a leather
pocket-book. At the end of this shaft there is a longer platform, and
then a new shaft begins....”
Analysis. This dream belongs to a type of patient which is not
favourable from a therapeutic point of view. They follow in the analysis
without offering any resistances whatever up to a certain point, but
from that point on they remain almost inaccessible. This dream he almost
analysed himself. “The Rotunda,” he said, “is my genital, the captive
balloon in front is my penis, about the weakness of which I have
worried.” We must, however, interpret in greater detail; the Rotunda is
the buttock which is regularly associated by the child with the genital,
the smaller front structure is the scrotum. In the dream his father asks
him what this is all for—that is, he asks him about the purpose and
arrangement of the genitals. It is quite evident that this state of
affairs should be turned around, and that he should be the questioner.
As such a questioning on the side of the father has never taken place in
reality, we must conceive the dream thought as a wish, or take it
conditionally, as follows: “If I had only asked my father for sexual
enlightenment.” The continuation of this thought we shall soon find in
another place.
The court in which the tin sheet is spread out is not to be conceived
symbolically in the first instance, but originates from his father’s
place of business. For discretionary reasons I have inserted the tin for
another material in which the father deals, without, however, changing
anything in the verbal expression of the dream. The dreamer had entered
his father’s business, and had taken a terrible dislike to the
questionable practices upon which profit mainly depends. Hence the
continuation of the above dream thought (“if I had only asked him”)
would be: “He would have deceived me just as he does his customers.” For
the pulling off, which serves to represent commercial dishonesty, the
dreamer himself gives a second explanation—namely, onanism. This is not
only entirely familiar to us (see above, p. 234), but agrees very well
with the fact that the secrecy of onanism is expressed by its opposite
(“Why one can do it quite openly”). It, moreover, agrees entirely with
our expectations that the onanistic activity is again put off on the
father, just as was the questioning in the first scene of the dream. The
shaft he at once interprets as the vagina by referring to the soft
upholstering of the walls. That the act of coition in the vagina is
described as a going down instead of in the usual way as a going up, I
have also found true in other instances.[CZ]
The details that at the end of the first shaft there is a longer
platform and then a new shaft, he himself explains biographically. He
had for some time consorted with women sexually, but had then given it
up because of inhibitions and now hopes to be able to take it up again
with the aid of the treatment. The dream, however, becomes indistinct
toward the end, and to the experienced interpreter it becomes evident
that in the second scene of the dream the influence of another subject
has begun to assert itself; in this his father’s business and his
dishonest practices signify the first vagina represented as a shaft so
that one might think of a reference to the mother.
4. The male genital symbolised by persons and the female by a landscape.
(Dream of a woman of the lower class, whose husband is a policeman,
reported by B. Dattner.)
... Then someone broke into the house and anxiously called for a
policeman. But he went with two tramps by mutual consent into a
church,[DA] to which led a great many stairs;[DB] behind the church
there was a mountain,[DC] on top of which a dense forest.[DD] The
policeman was furnished with a helmet, a gorget, and a cloak.[DE] The
two vagrants, who went along with the policeman quite peaceably, had
tied to their loins sack-like aprons.[DF] A road led from the church to
the mountain. This road was overgrown on each side with grass and
brushwood, which became thicker and thicker as it reached the height of
the mountain, where it spread out into quite a forest.
5. A stairway dream.
(Reported and interpreted by Otto Rank.)
For the following transparent pollution dream, I am indebted to the same
colleague who furnished us with the dental-irritation dream reported on
p. 235.
“I am running down the stairway in the stair-house after a little girl,
whom I wish to punish because she has done something to me. At the
bottom of the stairs some one held the child for me. (A grown-up woman?)
I grasp it, but do not know whether I have hit it, for I suddenly find
myself in the middle of the stairway where I practise coitus with the
child (in the air as it were). It is really no coitus, I only rub my
genital on her external genital, and in doing this I see it very
distinctly, as distinctly as I see her head which is lying sideways.
During the sexual act I see hanging to the left and above me (also as if
in the air) two small pictures, landscapes, representing a house on a
green. On the smaller one my surname stood in the place where the
painter’s signature should be; it seemed to be intended for my birthday
present. A small sign hung in front of the pictures to the effect that
cheaper pictures could also be obtained. I then see myself very
indistinctly lying in bed, just as I had seen myself at the foot of the
stairs, and I am awakened by a feeling of dampness which came from the
pollution.”
Interpretation. The dreamer had been in a book-store on the evening of
the day of the dream, where, while he was waiting, he examined some
pictures which were exhibited, which represented motives similar to the
dream pictures. He stepped nearer to a small picture which particularly
took his fancy in order to see the name of the artist, which, however,
was quite unknown to him.
Later in the same evening, in company, he heard about a Bohemian
servant-girl who boasted that her illegitimate child “was made on the
stairs.” The dreamer inquired about the details of this unusual
occurrence, and learned that the servant-girl went with her lover to the
home of her parents, where there was no opportunity for sexual
relations, and that the excited man performed the act on the stairs. In
witty allusion to the mischievous expression used about wine-adulterers,
the dreamer remarked, “The child really grew on the cellar steps.”
These experiences of the day, which are quite prominent in the dream
content, were readily reproduced by the dreamer. But he just as readily
reproduced an old fragment of infantile recollection which was also
utilised by the dream. The stair-house was the house in which he had
spent the greatest part of his childhood, and in which he had first
become acquainted with sexual problems. In this house he used, among
other things, to slide down the banister astride which caused him to
become sexually excited. In the dream he also comes down the stairs very
rapidly—so rapidly that, according to his own distinct assertions, he
hardly touched the individual stairs, but rather “flew” or “slid down,”
as we used to say. Upon reference to this infantile experience, the
beginning of the dream seems to represent the factor of sexual
excitement. In the same house and in the adjacent residence the dreamer
used to play pugnacious games with the neighbouring children, in which
he satisfied himself just as he did in the dream.
If one recalls from Freud’s investigation of sexual symbolism[DG] that
in the dream stairs or climbing stairs almost regularly symbolises
coitus, the dream becomes clear. Its motive power as well as its effect,
as is shown by the pollution, is of a purely libidinous nature. Sexual
excitement became aroused during the sleeping state (in the dream this
is represented by the rapid running or sliding down the stairs) and the
sadistic thread in this is, on the basis of the pugnacious playing,
indicated in the pursuing and overcoming of the child. The libidinous
excitement becomes enhanced and urges to sexual action (represented in
the dream by the grasping of the child and the conveyance of it to the
middle of the stairway). Up to this point the dream would be one of pure
sexual symbolism, and obscure for the unpractised dream interpreter. But
this symbolic gratification, which would have insured undisturbed sleep,
was not sufficient for the powerful libidinous excitement. The
excitement leads to an orgasm, and thus the whole stairway symbolism is
unmasked as a substitute for coitus. Freud lays stress on the rhythmical
character of both actions as one of the reasons for the sexual
utilisation of the stairway symbolism, and this dream especially seems
to corroborate this, for, according to the express assertion of the
dreamer, the rhythm of a sexual act was the most pronounced feature in
the whole dream.
Still another remark concerning the two pictures, which, aside from
their real significance, also have the value of “Weibsbilder” (literally
_woman-pictures_, but idiomatically _women_). This is at once shown by
the fact that the dream deals with a big and a little picture, just as
the dream content presents a big (grown up) and a little girl. That
cheap pictures could also be obtained points to the prostitution
complex, just as the dreamer’s surname on the little picture and the
thought that it was intended for his birthday, point to the parent
complex (to be born on the stairway—to be conceived in coitus).
The indistinct final scene, in which the dreamer sees himself on the
staircase landing lying in bed and feeling wet, seems to go back into
childhood even beyond the infantile onanism, and manifestly has its
prototype in similarly pleasurable scenes of bed-wetting.
6. A modified stair-dream.
To one of my very nervous patients, who was an abstainer, whose fancy
was fixed on his mother, and who repeatedly dreamed of climbing stairs
accompanied by his mother, I once remarked that moderate masturbation
would be less harmful to him than enforced abstinence. This influence
provoked the following dream:
“His piano teacher reproaches him for neglecting his piano-playing, and
for not practising the _Études_ of Moscheles and Clementi’s _Gradus ad
Parnassum_.” In relation to this he remarked that the _Gradus_ is only a
stairway, and that the piano itself is only a stairway as it has a
scale.
It is correct to say that there is no series of associations which
cannot be adapted to the representation of sexual facts. I conclude with
the dream of a chemist, a young man, who has been trying to give up his
habit of masturbation by replacing it with intercourse with women.
_Preliminary statement._—On the day before the dream he had given a
student instruction concerning Grignard’s reaction, in which magnesium
is to be dissolved in absolutely pure ether under the catalytic
influence of iodine. Two days before, there had been an explosion in the
course of the same reaction, in which the investigator had burned his
hand.
Dream I. _He is to make phenylmagnesiumbromid; he sees the apparatus
with particular clearness, but he has substituted himself for the
magnesium. He is now in a curious swaying attitude. He keeps repeating
to himself, “This is the right thing, it is working, my feet are
beginning to dissolve and my knees are getting soft.” Then he reaches
down and feels for his feet, and meanwhile (he does not know how) he
takes his legs out of the crucible, and then again he says to himself,
“That cannot be.... Yes, it must be so, it has been done correctly.”
Then he partially awakens, and repeats the dream to himself, because he
wants to tell it to me. He is distinctly afraid of the analysis of the
dream. He is much excited during this semi-sleeping state, and repeats
continually, “Phenyl, phenyl.”_
II. _He is in ... ing with his whole family; at half-past eleven. He is
to be at the Schottenthor for a rendezvous with a certain lady, but he
does not wake up until half-past eleven. He says to himself, “It is too
late now; when you get there it will be half-past twelve.” The next
instant he sees the whole family gathered about the table—his mother and
the servant girl with the soup-tureen with particular clearness. Then he
says to himself, “Well, if we are eating already, I certainly can’t get
away.”_
Analysis: He feels sure that even the first dream contains a reference
to the lady whom he is to meet at the rendezvous (the dream was dreamed
during the night before the expected meeting). The student to whom he
gave the instruction is a particularly unpleasant fellow; he had said to
the chemist: “That isn’t right,” because the magnesium was still
unaffected, and the latter answered as though he did not care anything
about it: “It certainly isn’t right.” He himself must be this student;
he is as indifferent towards his analysis as the student is towards his
synthesis; the _He_ in the dream, however, who accomplishes the
operation, is myself. How unpleasant he must seem to me with his
indifference towards the success achieved!
Moreover, he is the material with which the analysis (synthesis) is
made. For it is a question of the success of the treatment. The legs in
the dream recall an impression of the previous evening. He met a lady at
a dancing lesson whom he wished to conquer; he pressed her to him so
closely that she once cried out. After he had stopped pressing against
her legs, he felt her firm responding pressure against his lower thighs
as far as just above his knees, at the place mentioned in the dream. In
this situation, then, the woman is the magnesium in the retort, which is
at last working. He is feminine towards me, as he is masculine towards
the woman. If it will work with the woman, the treatment will also work.
Feeling and becoming aware of himself in the region of his knees refers
to masturbation, and corresponds to his fatigue of the previous day....
The rendezvous had actually been set for half-past eleven. His wish to
over-sleep and to remain with his usual sexual objects (that is, with
masturbation) corresponds with his resistance.
In relation to the repetition of the name phenyl, he gives the following
thoughts: All these radicals ending in _yl_ have always been pleasing to
him; they are very convenient to use: benzyl, azetyl, &c. That, however,
explained nothing. But when I proposed the radical Schlemihl[DH] he
laughed heartily, and related that during the summer he had read a book
by Prévost which contained a chapter: “Les exclus de l’amour,” the
description in which made him think of the Schlemihls, and he added,
“That is my case.” He would have again acted the Schlemihl if he had
missed the rendezvous.
VI
THE DREAM-WORK
All previous attempts to solve the problems of the dream have been based
directly upon the manifest dream content as it is retained in the
memory, and have undertaken to obtain an interpretation of the dream
from this content, or, if interpretation was dispensed with, to base a
judgment of the dream upon the evidence furnished by this content. We
alone are in possession of new data; for us a new psychic material
intervenes between the dream content and the results of our
investigations: and this is the _latent_ dream content or the dream
thoughts which are obtained by our method. We develop a solution of the
dream from this latter, and not from the manifest dream content. We are
also confronted for the first time with a problem which has not before
existed, that of examining and tracing the relations between the latent
dream thoughts and the manifest dream content, and the processes through
which the former have grown into the latter.
We regard the dream thoughts and the dream content as two
representations of the same meaning in two different languages; or to
express it better, the dream content appears to us as a translation of
the dream thoughts into another form of expression, whose signs and laws
of composition we are to learn by comparing the original with the
translation. The dream thoughts are at once intelligible to us as soon
as we have ascertained them. The dream content is, as it were, presented
in a picture-writing, whose signs are to be translated one by one into
the language of the dream thoughts. It would of course be incorrect to
try to read these signs according to their values as pictures instead of
according to their significance as signs. For instance, I have before me
a picture-puzzle (rebus): a house, upon whose roof there is a boat; then
a running figure whose head has been apostrophised away, and the like. I
might now be tempted as a critic to consider this composition and its
elements nonsensical. A boat does not belong on the roof of a house and
a person without a head cannot run; the person, too, is larger than the
house, and if the whole thing is to represent a landscape, the single
letters of the alphabet do not fit into it, for of course they do not
occur in pure nature. A correct judgment of the picture-puzzle results
only if I make no such objections to the whole and its parts, but if, on
the contrary, I take pains to replace each picture by the syllable or
word which it is capable of representing by means of any sort of
reference, the words which are thus brought together are no longer
meaningless, but may constitute a most beautiful and sensible
expression. Now the dream is a picture-puzzle of this sort, and our
predecessors in the field of dream interpretation have made the mistake
of judging the rebus as an artistic composition. As such it appears
nonsensical and worthless.
(_a_) _The Condensation Work_
The first thing which becomes clear to the investigator in the
comparison of the dream content with the dream thoughts is that a
tremendous work of condensation has taken place. The dream is reserved,
paltry, and laconic when compared with the range and copiousness of the
dream thoughts. The dream when written down fills half a page; the
analysis, in which the dream thoughts are contained, requires six,
eight, twelve times as much space. The ratio varies with different
dreams; it never changes its essential meaning, as far as I have been
able to observe. As a rule the extent of the compression which has taken
place is under-estimated, owing to the fact that the dream thoughts
which are brought to light are considered the complete material, while
continued work of interpretation may reveal new thoughts which are
concealed behind the dream. We have already mentioned that one is really
never sure of having interpreted a dream completely; even if the
solution seems satisfying and flawless, it still always remains possible
that there is a further meaning which is manifested by the same dream.
Thus the _amount of condensation_ is—strictly speaking—indeterminable.
An objection, which at first sight seems very plausible, might be raised
against the assertion that the disproportion between dream content and
dream thought justifies the conclusion that an abundant condensation of
psychic material has taken place in the formation of dreams. For we so
often have the impression that we have dreamed a great deal throughout
the night and then have forgotten the greater part. The dream which we
recollect upon awakening would thus be only a remnant of the total
dream-work, which would probably equal the dream thoughts in range if we
were able to remember the former completely. In part this is certainly
true; there can be no mistake about the observation that the dream is
most accurately reproduced if one tries to remember it immediately after
awakening, and that the recollection of it becomes more and more
defective towards evening. On the other hand, it must be admitted that
the impression that we have dreamed a good deal more than we are able to
reproduce is often based upon an illusion, the cause of which will be
explained later. Moreover, the assumption of condensation in the dream
activity is not affected by the possibility of forgetting in dreams, for
it is proved by groups of ideas belonging to those particular parts of
the dream which have remained in the memory. If a large part of the
dream has actually been lost to memory, we are probably deprived of
access to a new series of dream thoughts. It is altogether unjustifiable
to expect that those portions of the dream which have been lost also
relate to the thoughts with which we are already acquainted from the
analysis of the portions which have been preserved.
In view of the great number of ideas which analysis furnishes for each
individual element of the dream content, the chief doubt with many
readers will be whether it is permissible to count everything that
subsequently comes to mind during analysis as a part of the dream
thoughts—to assume, in other words, that all these thoughts have been
active in the sleeping state and have taken part in the formation of the
dream. Is it not more probable that thought connections are developed in
the course of analysis which did not participate in the formation of the
dream? I can meet this doubt only conditionally. It is true, of course,
that particular thought connections first arise only during analysis;
but one may always be sure that such new connections have been
established only between thoughts which have already been connected in
the dream thoughts by other means; the new connections are, so to speak,
corollaries, short circuits, which are made possible by the existence of
other more fundamental means of connection. It must be admitted that the
huge number of trains of thought revealed by analysis have already been
active in the formation of the dream, for if a chain of thoughts has
been worked out, which seems to be without connection with the formation
of the dream, a thought is suddenly encountered which, being represented
in the dream, is indispensable to its interpretation—which nevertheless
is inaccessible except through that chain of thoughts. The reader may
here turn to the dream of the botanical monograph, which is obviously
the result of an astonishing condensation activity, even though I have
not given the analysis of it completely.
But how, then, is the psychic condition during sleep which precedes
dreaming to be imagined? Do all the dream thoughts exist side by side,
or do they occur one after another, or are many simultaneous trains of
thought constructed from different centres, which meet later on? I am of
the opinion that it is not yet necessary to form a plastic conception of
the psychic condition of dream formation. Only let us not forget that we
are concerned with unconscious thought, and that the process may easily
be a different one from that which we perceive in ourselves in
intentional contemplation accompanied by consciousness.
The fact, however, that dream formation is based on a process of
condensation, stands indubitable. How, then, is this condensation
brought about?
If it be considered that of those dream thoughts which are found only
the smallest number are represented in the dream by means of one of its
ideal elements, it might be concluded that condensation is accomplished
by means of ellipsis, in that the dream is not an accurate translation
or a projection point by point of the dream thoughts, but a very
incomplete and defective reproduction of them. This view, as we shall
soon find, is a very inadequate one. But let us take it as a starting
point for the present, and ask ourselves: If only a few of the elements
of the dream thoughts get into the dream content, what conditions
determine their choice?
In order to gain enlightenment on this subject let us turn our attention
to those elements of the dream content which must have fulfilled the
conditions we are seeking. A dream to the formation of which an
especially strong condensation has contributed will be the most suitable
material for this investigation. I select the dream, cited on page 142,
of the botanical monograph.
Dream content: _I have written a monograph upon a (obscure) certain
plant. The book lies before me, I am just turning over a folded coloured
plate. A dried specimen of the plant is bound with every copy as though
from a herbarium._
The most prominent element of this dream is the botanical monograph.
This comes from the impressions received on the day of the dream; I had
actually _seen a monograph on the genus “cyclamen”_ in the show-window
of a book-store. The mention of this genus is lacking in the dream
content, in which only the monograph and its relation to botany have
remained. The “botanical monograph” immediately shows its relation to
the work on cocaine which I had once written; thought connections
proceed from cocaine on the one hand to a “Festschrift,” and on the
other to my friend, the eye specialist, Dr. Koenigstein, who has had a
share in the utilisation of cocaine. Moreover, with the person of this
Dr. Koenigstein is connected the recollection of the interrupted
conversation which I had had with him on the previous evening and of the
manifold thoughts about remuneration for medical services among
colleagues. This conversation, then, is properly the actual stimulus of
the dream; the monograph about cyclamen is likewise an actuality but of
an indifferent nature; as I soon see, the “botanical monograph” of the
dream turns out to be a common mean between the two experiences of the
day, and to have been taken over unchanged from an indifferent
impression and bound up with the psychologically significant experience
by means of the most abundant associations.
Not only the combined idea, “botanical monograph,” however, but also
each of the separate elements, “botanical” and “monograph,” penetrates
deeper and deeper into the confused tangle of the dream thoughts. To
“botanical” belong the recollections of the person of Professor
_Gartner_ (German: Gärtner = gardener), of his _blooming_ wife, of my
patient whose name is _Flora_, and of a lady about whom I told the story
of the forgotten _flowers_. _Gartner_, again, is connected with the
laboratory and the conversation with _Koenigstein_; the mention of the
two female patients also belongs to the same conversation. A chain of
thoughts, one end of which is formed by the title of the hastily seen
monograph, leads off in the other direction from the lady with the
flowers to the _favourite flowers_ of my wife. Besides this, “botanical”
recalls not only an episode at the Gymnasium, but an examination taken
while I was at the university; and a new subject matter—my hobbies—which
was broached in the conversation already mentioned, is connected by
means of my humorously so-called _favourite flower_, the artichoke, with
the chain of thoughts proceeding from the forgotten flowers; behind
“artichoke” there is concealed on the one hand a recollection of Italy,
and on the other a reminiscence of a childhood scene in which I first
formed my connection with books which has since grown so intimate.
“Botanical,” then, is a veritable nucleus, the centre for the dream of
many trains of thought, which, I may assure the reader, were correctly
and justly brought into relation to one another in the conversation
referred to. Here we find ourselves in a thought factory, in which, as
in the “Weaver’s Masterpiece”:
“One tread moves thousands of threads,
The little shuttles fly back and forth,
The threads flow on unseen,
One stroke ties thousands of knots.”
“_Monograph_” in the dream, again, has a bearing upon two subjects, the
one-sidedness of my studies and the costliness of my hobbies.
The impression is gained from this first investigation that the elements
“botanical” and “monograph” have been accepted in the dream content
because they were able to show the most extensive connections with the
dream thoughts, and thus represent nuclei in which a great number of
dream thoughts come together, and because they have manifold
significance for the dream interpretation. The fact upon which this
explanation is based may be expressed in another form: Every element of
the dream content turns out to be _over-determined_—that is, it enjoys a
manifold representation in the dream thoughts.
We shall learn more by testing the remaining component parts of the
dream as to their occurrence in the dream thoughts. _The coloured plate_
refers (_cf._ the analysis on p. 145) to a new subject, the criticism
passed upon my work by colleagues, and to a subject already represented
in the dream—my hobbies—and also to a childish recollection in which I
pull to pieces the book with the coloured plates; the dried specimen of
the plant relates to an experience at the Gymnasium centering about and
particularly emphasizing the herbarium. Thus I see what sort of relation
exists between the dream content and dream thoughts: Not only do the
elements of the dream have a manifold determination in the dream
thoughts, but the individual dream thoughts are represented in the dream
by many elements. Starting from an element of the dream the path of
associations leads to a number of dream thoughts; and from a dream
thought to several elements of the dream. The formation of the dream
does not, therefore, take place in such fashion that a single one of the
dream thoughts or a group of them furnishes the dream content with an
abridgment as its representative therein, and that then another dream
thought furnishes another abridgment as its representative—somewhat as
popular representatives are elected from among the people—but the whole
mass of the dream thoughts is subjected to a certain elaboration, in the
course of which those elements that receive the greatest and completest
support stand out in relief, analogous, perhaps, to election by
_scrutins des listes_. Whatever dream I may subject to such
dismemberment, I always find the same fundamental principle
confirmed—that the dream elements are constructed from the entire mass
of the dream thoughts and that every one of them appears in relation to
the dream thoughts to have a multiple determination.
It is certainly not out of place to demonstrate this relation of the
dream content to the dream thoughts by means of a fresh example, which
is distinguished by a particularly artful intertwining of reciprocal
relations. The dream is that of a patient whom I am treating for
claustrophobia (fear in enclosed spaces). It will soon become evident
why I feel myself called upon to entitle this exceptionally intellectual
piece of dream activity in the following manner:
II. “_A Beautiful Dream_”
_The dreamer is riding with much company to X-street, where there is a
modest road-house_ (which is not the fact). _A theatrical performance is
being given in its rooms. He is first audience, then actor. Finally the
company is told to change their clothes, in order to get back into the
city. Some of the people are assigned to the rooms on the ground floor,
others to the first floor. Then a dispute arises. Those above are angry
because those below have not yet finished, so that they cannot come
down. His brother is upstairs, he is below, and he is angry at his
brother because there is such crowding._ (This part obscure.) _Besides
it has already been decided upon their arrival who is to be upstairs and
who down. Then he goes alone over the rising ground, across which
X-street leads toward the city, and he has such difficulty and hardship
in walking that he cannot move from the spot. An elderly gentleman joins
him and scolds about the King of Italy. Finally, towards the end of the
rising ground walking becomes much easier._
The difficulties experienced in walking were so distinct that for some
time after waking he was in doubt whether they were dream or reality.
According to the manifest content, this dream can hardly be praised.
Contrary to the rules, I shall begin with that portion which the dreamer
referred to as the most distinct.
The difficulties which were dreamed of, and which were probably
experienced during the dream—difficult climbing accompanied by
dyspnœa—is one of the symptoms which the patient had actually shown
years before, and which, in conjunction with other symptoms, was at that
time attributed to tuberculosis (probably hysterically simulated). We
are already from exhibition dreams acquainted with this sensation of
being hindered, peculiar to the dream, and here again we find it used
for the purpose of any kind of representation, as an ever-ready
material. That part of the dream content which ascribes the climbing as
difficult at first, and as becoming easier at the end of the hill, made
me think while it was being told of the well-known masterful
introduction to _Sappho_ by A. Daudet. Here a young man carries the girl
whom he loves upstairs—she is at first as light as a feather; but the
higher he mounts the more heavily she weighs upon his arm, and this
scene symbolises a course of events by recounting which Daudet tries to
warn young men not to waste serious affection upon girls of humble
origin or of questionable past.[DI] Although I knew that my patient had
recently had a love affair with a lady of the theatre, and had broken it
off, I did not expect to find that the interpretation which had occurred
to me was correct. Moreover, the situation in _Sappho_ was the _reverse_
of that in the dream; in the latter the climbing was difficult at the
beginning and easy later on; in the novel the symbolism serves only if
what was at first regarded as easy finally turns out to be a heavy load.
To my astonishment, the patient remarked that the interpretation
corresponded closely to the plot of a play which he had seen on the
evening before at the theatre. The play was called _Round about Vienna_,
and treated of the career of a girl who is respectable at first but
later goes over to the _demi-monde_, who has affairs with persons in
high places, thus “climbing,” but finally “goes down” faster and faster.
This play had reminded him of another entitled _From Step to Step_, in
the advertisement of which had appeared a _stairway_ consisting of
several steps.
Now to continue the interpretation. The actress with whom he had had his
most recent affair, a complicated one, had lived in X-street. There is
no inn in this street. However, while he was spending a part of the
summer in Vienna for the sake of the lady, he had lodged (German
_abgestiegen_ = stopped, literally _stepped off_) at a little hotel in
the neighbourhood. As he was leaving the hotel he said to the
cab-driver, “I am glad I didn’t get any vermin anyway” (which
incidentally is one of his phobias). Whereupon the cab-driver answered:
“How could anybody stop there! It isn’t a hotel at all, it’s really
nothing but a _road-house_!”
The road-house immediately suggests to the dreamer’s recollection a
quotation:
“Of that marvellous host
I was once a guest.”
But the host in the poem by Uhland is an apple tree. Now a second
quotation continues the train of thought:
FAUST (_dancing with the young witch_).
“A lovely dream once came to me;
I then beheld an apple tree,
And there two fairest apples shone:
They lured me so, I climbed thereon.”
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 ship_wreck_ (German, schiff_bruch_;
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_ (Schiff_bruch_), 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.
VII
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM ACTIVITIES
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:
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
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:
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
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.
VIII
LITERARY INDEX
Footnote 1:
Aristoteles. _Über Träume und Traumdeutungen._ Translated by Bender.
Footnote 2:
Artemidoros aus Daldis. _Symbolik der Träume._ Translated by
Friedrich. S. Krauss. Wien, 1881.
Footnote 3:
Benini, V. “La Memoria e la Durata dei Sogni.” _Rivista Italiana de
Filosofia_, Marz-April 1898.
Footnote 4:
Binz, C. _Über den Traum._ Bonn, 1878.
Footnote 5:
Borner, J. _Das Alpdrücken, seine Begründung und Verhütung._ Würzburg,
1855.
Footnote 6:
Bradley, J. H. “On the Failure of Movement in Dream.” _Mind_, July
1894.
Footnote 7:
Brander, R. _Der Schlaf und das Traumleben._ 1884.
Footnote 8:
Burdach. _Die Physiologie als Erfahrungswissenschaft_, 3 Bd. 1830.
Footnote 9:
Büchsenschütz, B. _Traum und Traumdeutung in Altertum._ Berlin, 1868.
Footnote 10:
Chaslin, Ph. _Du Rôle du Rêve dans l’Evolution du Délire._ Thèse de
Paris. 1887.
Footnote 11:
Chabaneix. _Le Subconscient chez les Artistes, les Savants et les
Ecrivains._ Paris, 1897.
Footnote 12:
Calkins, Mary Whiton. “Statistics of Dreams.” _Amer. J. of
Psychology_, V., 1893.
Footnote 13:
Clavière. “La Rapidité de la Pensée dans le Rêve.” _Revue
philosophique_, XLIII., 1897.
Footnote 14:
Dandolo, G. _La Coscienza nel Sonno._ Padova, 1889.
Footnote 15:
Delage, Yves. “Une Théorie de Rêve.” _Revue scientifique_, II, Juli
1891.
Footnote 16:
Delbœuf, J. _Le Sommeil et les Rêves._ Paris, 1885.
Footnote 17:
Debacker. _Terreurs nocturnes des Enfants._ Thèses de Paris. 1881.
Footnote 18:
Dugas. “Le Souvenir du Rêve.” _Revue philosophique_, XLIV., 1897.
Footnote 19:
Dugas. “Le Sommeil et la Cérébration inconsciente durant le Sommeil.”
_Revue philosophique_, XLIII., 1897.
Footnote 20:
Egger, V. “La Durée apparente des Rêves.” _Revue philosophique_, Juli
1895.
Footnote 21:
Egger. “Le Souvenir dans le Rêve.” _Revue philosophique_, XLVI., 1898.
Footnote 22:
Ellis Havelock. “On Dreaming of the Dead.” _The Psychological Review_,
II., Nr. 5, September 1895.
Footnote 23:
Ellis Havelock. “The Stuff that Dreams are made of.” _Appleton’s
Popular Science Monthly_, April 1899.
Footnote 24:
Ellis Havelock. “A Note on Hypnogogic Paramnesia.” _Mind_, April 1897.
Footnote 25:
Fechner, G. Th. _Elemente der Psychophysik._ 2 Aufl., 1889.
Footnote 26:
Fichte, J. H. “Psychologie.” _Die Lehre vom bewussten Geiste des
Menschen._ I. Teil. Leipzig, 1864.
Footnote 27:
Giessler, M. _Aus den Tiefen des Traumlebens._ Halle, 1890.
Footnote 28:
Giessler, M. _Die physiologischen Beziehungen der Traumvorgänge._
Halle, 1896.
Footnote 29:
Goblot. “Sur le Souvenir des Rêves.” _Revue philosophique_, XLII.,
1896.
Footnote 30:
Graffunder. _Traum und Traumdeutung._ 1894.
Footnote 31:
Griesinger. _Pathologie und Therapie der psychischen Krankheiten._ 3
Aufl. 1871.
Footnote 32:
Haffner, P. “Schlafen und Träumen. 1884.” _Frankfurter zeitgemässe
Broschüren_, 5 Bd., Heft. 10.
Footnote 33:
Hallam, Fl., and Sarah Weed. “A Study of the Dream Consciousness.”
_Amer. J. of Psychology_, VII., Nr. 3, April 1896.
Footnote 34:
D’Hervey. _Les Rêves et les Moyens de les Diriger._ Paris, 1867
(anonym.).
Footnote 35:
Hildebrandt, F. W. _Der Traum und seine Verwertung für Leben._
Leipzig, 1875.
Footnote 36:
Jessen. _Versuch einer Wissenschaftlichen Begründung der Psychologie._
Berlin, 1856.
Footnote 37:
Jodl. _Lehrbuch der Psychologie._ Stuttgart, 1896.
Footnote 38:
Kant, J. _Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht._ Kirchmannsche
Ausgabe. Leipzig, 1880.
Footnote 39:
Krauss, A. “Der Sinn im Wahnsinn.” _Allgemeine Zeitschrift für
Psychologie_, XV. u. XVI., 1858–1859.
Footnote 40:
Ladd. “Contribution to the Psychology of Visual Dreams.” _Mind_, April
1892.
Footnote 41:
Leidesdorf, M. _Das Traumleben._ Wien, 1880. Sammlung der “Alma
Mater.”
Footnote 42:
Lémoine. _Du Sommeil au Point de Vue physiologique et psychologique._
Paris, 1885.
Footnote 43:
Lièbeault, A. _Le Sommeil provoqué et les Etats analogues._ Paris,
1889.
Footnote 44:
Lipps, Th. _Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens._ Bonn, 1883.
Footnote 45:
Le Lorrain. “Le Rêve.” _Revue philosophique._ Juli 1895.
Footnote 46:
Maudsley. _The Pathology of Mind._ 1879.
Footnote 47:
Maury, A. “Analogies des Phénomènes du Rêve et de l’Aliènation
Mentale.” _Annales med. psych._, 1854, p. 404.
Footnote 48:
Maury, A. _Le Sommeil et les Rêves._ Paris, 1878.
Footnote 49:
Moreau, J. “De l’Identité de l’Etat de Rêve et de Folie.” _Annales
med. psych._, 1855, p. 361.
Footnote 50:
Nelson, J. “A Study of Dreams.” _Amer. J. of Psychology_, I., 1888.
Footnote 51:
Pilcz. “Über eine gewisse Gesetzmässigkeit in den Träumen.”
Autorreferat in _Monatsschrift für Psychologie und Neurologie_. März
1899.
Footnote 52:
Pfaff, E. R. _Das Traumleben und seine Deutung nach den Prinzipien der
Araber, Perser, Griechen, Indier und Ägypter._ Leipzig, 1868.
Footnote 53:
Purkinje. Artikel: _Wachen, Schlaf, Traum und verwandte Zustände in
Wagners Handwörterbuch der Physiologie_. 1846.
Footnote 54:
Radestock, P. _Schlaf und Traum._ Leipzig, 1878.
Footnote 55:
Robert, W. _Der Traum als Naturnotwendigkeit erklärt._ 1886.
Footnote 56:
Sante de Sanctis. _Les Maladies mentales et les Rêves._ 1897. Extrait
des _Annales de la Société de Médecine de Gand_.
Footnote 57:
Sante de Sanctis. “Sui rapporti d’Identità, di Somiglianza, di
Analogia e di Equivalenza fra Sogno e Pazzia.” _Rivista quindicinale
di Psicologia, Psichiatria, Neuropatologia._ 15, Nov. 1897.
Footnote 58:
Scherner, R. A. _Das Leben des Traumes._ Berlin, 1861.
Footnote 59:
Scholz, Fr. _Schlaf und Traum._ Leipzig, 1887.
Footnote 60:
Schopenhauer. “Versuch über das Geistersehen und was damit
zusammenhängt.” _Parerga und Paralipomena_, 1. Bd., 1857.
Footnote 61:
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.
PSYCHOANALYTIC LITERATURE OF DREAMS
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.)
INDEX
Abraham, K., 78, 245
Absurd dreams, 59, 327, 334–364
Absurdity of dreams, 327
Acceleration of thought in dreams, 397
Accidental stimuli, 185, 186
Adler, Alf., 241
Affects, flagging of, 457
— in the dream, 364–389
— inversion of, 375
— restraint of, 372
— sources of, 382
— suppression of, 371, 372, 375
— transformation of, 479
Agoraphobia, 249, 259
Alarm clock dreams, 21, 22, 186
Allegorising interpretation of dreams, 48
— symbolisms, 81
Altruistic impulses, 212
Ambiguity of dreams, 125
Amnesia, 412, 413
Analyses of dreams, 90–102, 116–120, 124–128, 131, 143–146, 155–157,
160–166, 167–183, 193–196, 201–203, 219–221, 227–230, 232–259,
264–283, 308, 309, 312, 317, 318, 320–364, 366–376, 378–389, 397,
398, 460–462
— self, 87
Analysis of dream life, 33
— of psychological formations, 487
Anamnesis, 281
Anxiety dreams, 27, 28, 74, 114, 136, 137, 199, 200, 226, 231, 245,
247, 413, 436, 458–464
Apparent duration of dreams, 53
Arbitrariness in dream interpretation, 190
Aristotle, 2, 27
Arithmetic speeches in dreams, 322–334
Artemidoros of Daldis, 82, 481
Artificial dreams, 81
Artigues, 27
Association dreams, 186
Auditory hallucinations, 26
— pictures, 41
Automatisms, 489
Benedikt, M., 392
Benini, V., 37;
quoted, 59
Bernard, Claude, 414
Binz, C., 63;
quoted, 14, 47
Bisexuality, 481
Bladder-exciting dreams, 72
Bleuler and Freud, 41, 81, 111
Bodily stimuli, 185, 193
— — symbolisation of, 190
Boerner, 28
Brandes, G., 225
Breuer, J., 83, 470
Brill, A. A., 111, 136, 195, 240, 419
Bruecke, 325, 357
Burdach quoted, 4, 5, 41–43, 65, 68, 188
Buzareingues, Giron de, 19
Calkins, Miss Whiton, 15, 16, 36, 186
Causality, law of, 42
Causal relations, 292, 293
Censor of resistance, 287
Cerebral anæmia, 463, 464
Chabaneix, 36, 53
Characteristics of the sleeping state, 466
Chemistry of the sexual processes, 276
Childish impressions, 323
Children’s dreams, 107–112, 155, 438
Chronic psychotic persons, 75
Cicero quoted, 6, 46
Cipher method of interpreting dreams, 82, 83, 87, 245
Clark, G. S., 222
Claustrophobia, 267
Coinage of words in dreams, 279
Complications of the human character, 493
Compositions in dreams, 300, 301
Compression, principle of, 471
Compulsion neurosis, 207, 212, 221
Compulsive ideas, 83, 283
Condensation, principle of, 471
— work of the dream, 261, 283, 288, 315, 358, 430, 472
Condensing activity of the dream, 277
Conflict of psychic forces, 372
— of the will, 208, 312
Connection between dream content and reality, 7
Conscious day phantasies, 393
— end-presentations, 421
— thought activity in dream formations, 445
— wishes, 438, 439
Consciousness, problems of, 490
Consolation dreams, 232
Content of perception, 453, 454
Convenience dreams, 105
Correspondence between dreams and reality, 157
Counter volition, 312
— wish dreams, 133, 135
Curative activity of the dream, 69
Dattner, B., 254
Daudet, A., 268, 392
David, J. J., 280
Day phantasies, 393, 394
Death-wish towards parents, 218
Debacker, 114, 463
De Biran, Maine, 75
Defence-neuropsychoses, 195
Degeneration, 212
D’Hervey, Marquis, 20, 51
Delage, Yves, 152, 467;
quoted, 67, 68
Delbœuf, J., 8, 9, 16, 42, 48, 152;
quoted, 15, 43, 88
— theory of, 62, 63
Deliriums of hunger, 447
Delusions, 75, 452
Demonomania, 464
Demonomaniacal hallucinations, 464
Dental irritation, dreams of, 230, 234, 235
— stimulus, 191
De Sanctis, Sante, 74, 79
“Desired” ideas, 85
Digestive disturbances and dreams, 28, 185
Disagreeable dreams, 112, 135
Disfigurement of dreams, 115, 184, 305, 365
Disfiguring activity of dreams, 327
Displacement in dream formation, 314
Displacement of psychic intensities, 402
Distortion in dreams, 113–137, 415
Disturbing stimuli, 62
Divinatory power of the dream, 53
Dream activity, 329, 401
— affects in the, 364–389
— censor, 198, 387, 407, 409
— condensation, 261, 283, 286, 288, 315, 358, 430, 472
— curative activity of the, 69
— digestive disturbances and the, 28, 185
— disfigurement, 115, 184, 304, 365
— displacement, 150, 286–288
— divinatory power of the dream, 53
— enigma of the, 365
— ethical feelings in the, 54
— etiology of the, 53
— fear, 136
— formation, 185, 198–200, 262, 263, 273, 276, 277, 285, 287, 322, 389,
390, 400, 429, 450, 465, 481
— — displacement in, 314
— — laws of the, 23
— — mechanism of, 297
— — origin of the, 416
— — psychic activity in, 401
— formation, requirements of, 322
— functions of the, 61–73, 458
— hallucinations, 42
— hypermnesia, 10, 465
— images, variegated, 189
— interpretation, cipher method of, 82, 83, 87, 245
— — method of, 80–102
— — problem of, 80
— — symbolic, 81
— illusions, 24
— influence of sexual excitement on the, 28
— keystone of the, 415
— life, theory of, 46, 78
— material of the, 7–16
— means of representation in the, 288
— memory in the, 7–16, 14, 48, 184
— of nerve stimulus, 186
— obscurity of the, 1
— origin of the, 407
— paramnesia in the, 352
— peculiarity of the, 45
— phantasy, 70–72
— phenomena of the, 487
— pre-scientific conception of the, 2
— problem, present status of the, 1
Dream, problems of the, 3
— processes, primary, 464–474
— — psychology of the, 464
— — secondary, 474–479
— prophetic power of the, 27
— psychic activity in the, 46, 68
— — capacities in the, 48
— — resources of the, 399
— psychological character of the, 52, 423, 431
— psychology of the, 416
— psychotherapy of the, 75
— reactions, 155
— regression of the, 431
— relation of the, to the waking state, 4–7
— riddles of the, 444
— scientific theories of the, 80
— sources, 16–35
— stimuli, 16–35, 139, 155
— strangeness of the, 1
— sway of the, 11
— symbolism, 249
— the guardian of sleep, 197
— theories, 61–73
— thoughts, elements of the, 284, 285
— — emotions of the, 375
— — logical relations among the, 291
— — revealed upon analysis, 159
— — structure of, 431
— verbal compositions of the, 283
— waking caused by the, 452–458
— wishes, 429, 437, 438
— — transferred, 455
— wish-fulfilment of the, 76
— within the dream, 313
— work, the, 260–402
Dreams about fire, 239
— absurd, 59, 327, 334–364
— acceleration of thought in, 397
— alarm clock, 21, 22, 186
— ambiguity of, 125
— analyses of, 90–102, 116–120, 124–128, 131, 143–146, 155–157,
160–166, 167–183, 193–196, 201–203, 219–221, 227–230, 232–259,
264–283, 308, 309, 312, 317, 318, 320–364, 366–376, 378–389, 397,
398, 460–462
— and mental diseases, 73–79
— — disturbance, 77
— anxiety, 27, 28, 74, 114, 136, 137, 199, 200, 226, 231, 245, 247,
413, 436, 458–464
Dreams, apparent duration of, 53
— arithmetic speeches in, 322–334
— artificial, 81
— as picture puzzles, 261
— as psychic products, 51
— association, 186
— bladder-exciting, 72
— children’s dreams, 107–112, 155, 438
— composition in, 300, 301
— consolation, 232
— counter-wish, 133, 135
— digestive organs and, 185
— disagreeable, 122, 135
— disfigurement of, 115, 135
— disfiguring activity of, 327
— distortion in, 113–137, 415
— egotism in, 229
— etiology of, 24, 33, 64
— examination, 230, 231, 378
— exhibition, 207, 267, 311
— experimentally produced, 23
— forgetting in, 262, 405–421
— formation of, 185, 198–200, 262, 263, 273, 277, 285, 287
— “fractionary” interpretation of, 414
— hallucinatory, 430
— harmless, 155, 157
— headache, 71, 189
— healing properties of, 66
— historical significance of, 487
— hunger, 113, 241
— hypermnesia, 9, 11
— hypocritical, 122, 376
— illusory formations in, 191
— immoral, 59
— impression, 232
— language of, 104
— mantic power of, 3
— material of, 138–259
— memory of, 38
— nerve-exciting, 34
— of convenience, 105, 241, 451
— of death, 216, 218
— of dental irritation, 230, 234, 235
— of falling, 239
— of fear, 114, 226
— of flying, 239
— of intestinal excitement, 72
— of inversion, 303
— of nakedness, 207
— of neurotics, 87
— of swimming, 239
— of the dead, 338
— of thirst, 105, 241
— of visual stimulation, 191
— partition of, 293
— parturition, 243–245
— perennial, 159
— pollution, 310
— prophetic power of, 3
— psychic source of, 33
— psychological investigation in, 405
— — peculiarity of, 39, 40
— punitive, 378
— scientific literature on, 1–79
— self-correction in, 411
— sexual, 240
— — organs and, 185
— somatic origin of, 64
— sources of, 138–259
— supernatural origin of, 3
— symbolic interpretation of, 316
— symbolism in, 249–259
— the fulfilment of wishes, 103–112, 123, 128, 134, 393
— theoretical value of the study of, 492
— theory of the origin of, 29, 127
— the result of egotistical motives, 346
— toothache, 189, 190
— tooth exciting, 72
— transforming activity of, 327
— typical, 131–137, 203–259
— unburdening properties of, 66
— urinary organs and, 185
— why forgotten after awakening, 35
— wish, 113, 123, 128, 219
— wish-fulfilment in, 104
— word coinage in, 279–281
Dreaming, psychology of, 154
Dugas, 454;
quoted, 46, 50
Duration of dreams, 53
Dyspnœa, 267
Egger, V., 21, 53, 397;
quoted, 38
Egotism in dreams, 229
— of the infantile mind, 226
Elements of dream thoughts, 284, 285
Elimination theory, 458
Ellis, Havelock, quoted, 14, 50, 467
Emotions of the dream thoughts, 375
— of the psychic life, 197
— theory of the, 371
Endogenous psychic affections, 419
Endopsychic censor, 416
Endoptic phenomena, 414
End-presentations, 419, 421, 470
Enigma of the dream, 365
Enuresis nocturna of children, 240
Ephialtes, 2
Essence of consciousness, 121
Ethical feelings in the dream, 54
Etiology of dreams, 24, 33, 53, 64, 132
— of neuroses, 281
Examination dreams, 230, 231, 378
Examination-phobia, 230
Excitation of want, 446
Excitations, unconscious, 440, 448, 460
Exhibitional cravings, 206
Exhibition dreams, 207, 267, 311
External nerve stimuli, 186
— (objective) sensory stimuli, 17–27, 193
Fading of memories, 457
Falling in dreams, 239
Fancies while asleep, 307
Fechner, G. Th., quoted, 39, 40, 46, 424
Federn, Dr. Paul, 239
_Fensterln_, 170
Féré, 75
Ferenczi, S., 82, 207
_Festschrift_, 264
Figaro quoted, 175
Fischer, R. P., 55
Flagging of affects, 457
Fliess, W., 140
Fliesse, W., 79
Flying in dreams, 239
Forbidden wishes, 209
Foreconscious wishes, 456
Forgetting in dreams, 35–37, 262, 405–421
Formation of dreams, 185, 198–200, 262, 263, 273, 276, 277, 285, 287,
322, 389, 390, 400, 429, 450, 465, 481
— of hysterical symptoms, 481, 482
— of illusions, 187
“Fractionary” interpretation of dreams, 414
France, Anatole, quoted, 78
Freud, Dr., 236, 237, 256, 279
Functions of the dream, 61, 458
Furuncles, 194
Furunculosis, 185
Garnier, 20
Gastric sensations, 30
General and specific sensations, 30
Goblot quoted, 454
Goethe, 486
Gregory, 19
Griesinger, 76, 113
Gruppe, O., quoted, 2
_Gschnas_, 183
Guislain, 75
Hagen, 75
Hallam, Miss Florence, 13, 113
Hallucinations, 4, 43, 44, 49, 74, 76, 187, 424, 446
— auditory, 26
— hypnogogic, 25, 40
— ideas transformed into, 41
— of hysteria, 432
— of paranoia, 432, 433
Hallucinatory dreams, 430
— paranoia, 77
— psychoses, 447
— regression, 448
Harmless dreams, 155, 157
Hartman, Edward von, 113
Hauffbauer, 18
Headache dreams, 71, 189
Healing properties of dreams, 66
Helmholtz, 486
Herbart quoted, 63
Hildebrandt, F. W., 53, 55, 59, 60, 138;
quoted, 6, 7, 11, 13, 15, 20, 21, 47, 51, 57, 58
Hilferding, Mrs. M., 376
Historical significance of dreams, 487
Hohnbaum, 74
Homer, 208
Homosexuality, 233, 248, 304
Human character, complication of, 493
Hunger dreams, 113
Hypermnesia of the dream, 465
Hypermnesic dreams, 9, 11
Hypnogogic hallucinations, 25, 40
— sensory images, 185
Hypocritical dreams, 122, 376
Hysteria, 283, 418
— hallucinations of, 432
— study of, 456
— theory of, 473
Hysterical counter-reaction, 220
— identification, 126, 127
— imitation, 126
— paralysis, theory for, 444
— phantasy, 127
— phobias, 83, 220, 486
Hysterical symptoms, theory of, 449
— — formation of, 481, 482, 487
— vomiting, 449
“Ideal” masochists, 134
Ideas, concatenation of, 295
— “desired” 85
— transformation of, 424
— transformed into hallucinations, 41
— “undesired,” 85
Ideation, unconscious, 459
Illusions, 24, 49, 76
— formation of, 23, 187
Illusory formations in dreams, 191
Imaginations, 43
Immoral dreams, 59
Impression dreams, 139, 232
Incest, 248
Incomprehensible neologisms, 247
Independent psychic activity in the dream, 68
Individual dream images, 306
— psychology, 13
Infantile psychology, 211, 221
— etiology of the neuroses, 373
— experiences as the source of dreams, 157–184
— phantasies, 407
— reminiscences, 12, 13
Influence of sexual excitement on the dream, 28
Inner nerve stimuli, 66, 198
— sensory stimuli, 66
Insomnia, 2
Intensive objective stimulation, 193
Intermediary presentations, 472
— thoughts, 417
Internal bodily stimulation, 185
— (subjective) sensory stimuli, 24
Interpretation of pathological ideas, 85
Intestinal excitement dreams, 72
Inversion of affects, 375
Irma’s dream, 88–90
— — analysis of, 90–102
Jensen, W., 81
Jessen quoted, 5, 9, 18, 38, 54, 60
Jodl, 48
Jones, Dr., 229
Josephus quoted, 309
Jung, C. G., 78, 234, 309, 419, 421
Kant, 58;
quoted, 75
Keller, G., quoted, 208
Keys to voluntary mobility, 429
Keystone of the dream, 415
Kleinpaul, 246
Koenigstein, Dr., 264
Koerner, 85
_Kontuszówka_, 10
Krauss, A., 30, 77;
quoted, 75
Ladd, T., 26, 27, 466
Language of dreams, 104
Lasalle, 280
Lasker, 280
Latent dream content, 114, 138, 157, 167, 171, 173, 206, 228, 240, 260,
352
Law of causality, 42
Laws of Association, 49
— of the dream formation, 23
Legend of King Oedipus, 222–224
— of Nausikaa, 208, 209
Le Lorrain, 21, 53, 397, 447
Lelut, 75
Lemoine, 46
Leuret, theory of, 419
Liébault, A., 450
Lipps, Th., 485, 486;
quoted, 188
Literature on dreams, 1–97
Logical relations among the dream thoughts, 291
Lucretius quoted, 5
Lynkus, 79
Macnish quoted, 19
Maeder, A., 246
Manifestations of pain, 453
Manifest dream content, 114, 138, 159, 166, 173, 181, 240, 243
Manifold determination of the dream content, 285
Mantic power of dreams, 3
Masochistic wish-dreams, 135
Material of the dream, 7–16, 138–259
Maury, A., 19–21, 25, 28, 49, 53, 64, 74, 75, 158, 396, 397, 420, 454;
quoted, 5, 9, 12, 46, 51, 60, 61
Means of representation in the dream, 288
Mechanism of dream formation, 297
— of psychoneuroses, 172
Medical theory of dream life, 77
Meier, 18
Memory, fading, 457
— in the dream, 7–16, 38, 48
— traces, 426, 430, 446
Mental diseases, relations between dreams and, 73–79
Mental disturbance and dreams, 77
— stimuli, 34
Method of dream interpretation, 80–102, 203
Meyer, C. F., 374
Meynert, 187, 212
Misunderstanding of the dream content, 205
Moral nature of man, 55
Moreau, J., 75
Motor impulses, 220
— paralysis in sleep, 311, 312
— stimuli, 189
Müller, J., 25
Muscular sensations, 30
Muthmann, 78
Myers, 9
Näcke, 240
Names and syllables, play on, 280, 281
Nelson, J., 13
Nerve-exciting dreams, 34
Nerve stimuli, 185, 186, 196
Nervous excitements, 306
Neuron excitement, 428
Neuropathology, 481
Neuropsychology, 489
Neuroses, 315
— etiology of, 281
— infantile etiology of the, 373
— psychoanalysis of the, 438
— psychological explanation of the, 385
— — investigation of the, 439
— psychology of the, 443, 460
— psychotherapy of the, 439
— study of the, 456
Neuroses, theory of the, 374
Neurotic fear, 136
Neurotics, psychoanalysis of, 420
Nightmare, 2
Night terrors, 462, 463
Nocturnal excitations, 440
— sensations, 155
Nordenskjold, O., 111
Novalis quoted, 69
Objective external excitements, 197
Objective sensory stimuli, 17–24, 185, 186, 451, 465
Obscurity of the dream, 1
Obsessions, 315, 452
Obsessive impulses, 75
Oppenheim, Prof. E., 493
Organic sensory stimuli, 71
Origin of the dream, 407, 416
Origin of dreams, theory of the, 29
— of hysterical symptoms, 449
— of the psychoses, 29
Outer nerve stimuli, 180, 198
— sensory stimuli, 66
Painful stimuli, 189, 194, 453
Paramnesia in the dream, 352
Paranoia, 63, 206, 207, 418
— hallucinatory, 77, 432, 433
Partition of dreams, 293
Parturition dreams, 243–245
Pathological cases of regression, 435
Pavor nocturnus, 462, 463
Peculiarities of the dream, 45
Penetration into consciousness, 484
Perception content, 453
— identity, 477
— stimuli, 426
Peripheral sensations, 30
Perennial dreams, 159
Perversion, 248
Peterson, F., 419
Pfaff, E. R., quoted, 55
Pfister, O., 245
Phantasies, infantile, 407
Phantastic ganglia cells, 73
— illusions, 187
— visual manifestations, 25
Phantasy combinations, 43
— of being arrested, 395
— of marriage, 395
Phenomena of the dream, 487
Phobias, 315
Physical sensations, 30
— stimuli, 71, 77, 187
Pilcz, 15
Plasticity of the psychic material, 246
Plato, 493
Pleasure stimulus, 453
Pneumatic sensations, 30
Pollution dreams, 310
Pre-scientific conception of the dream, 2
Presentation content, 210, 365, 367, 389, 424
Present status of the dream problem, 1
Pressure stimulus, 188
Primary psychic process, 152
Prince, Morton, 412
Problems of consciousness, 490
— of dream interpretation, 80
— of repression, 479
— of sleep, 4
Problems of the dream, 3, 260
Prophetic power of dreams, 3, 27
Psi-systems, 425, 428, 431, 453, 475
Psychic activity in the dream, 46, 62, 401
— apparatus, 426–428, 430, 431, 437, 445, 482, 483;
diagrams of, 426, 427, 429
— capacity of the dream, 48, 52, 53
— censor, 422
— complexes, 365
— condition of dream formation, 263
— dream stimuli, 33
— emotions, 445
— exciting sources, 33–35
— function in dream formation, 391
— impulses, 221
— infection, 126
— intensity, 285
— repression, 476
— resources of the, 399
— sensory organs, 490
— source of dreams, 33
— state of sleep, 468
— stimuli, 34
— symptomology, 187
Psychoanalysis, 84, 209, 235, 236, 366, 469, 413
— of adult neurotics, 219
— of neurotics, 87, 154, 420
— of the neuroses, 438
Psychoanalytic investigations, 9
— method of treatment, 78, 491
Psychological character of the dream, 52, 423, 431
— explanation of the neuroses, 385
— formations, 471
— — analysis of, 487
— investigation in dreams, 405, 422
— — of the neuroses, 439
— peculiarity of dreams, 39, 40
Psychology of children, 107
— of dream activities, 403–493
— of dreaming, 154
— of the dream, 416, 464
— of the neuroses, 87, 433, 460
— of the psychoneuroses, 433
— of the sleeping state, 184
— of the unconscious, 385
Psychoneuroses, 87, 127, 199, 283, 318, 365, 393, 480, 492
— mechanism of the, 172
— psychology of the, 433
— sexual etiology for, 347
Psychoneurotic symptom formations, 481
Psychoneurotic symptoms, 473
Psychoneurotics, 221, 223
Psychopathology, 4, 121
— of the dream, 75
Psychoses, origin of the, 29
Psychosexual excitements, 200
Psychotherapy, 457
— of the neuroses, 439
Punitive dreams, 378
Purkinje quoted, 69
Purpose served by condensation, 277
Purposeful nature of dream-forgetting, 410
Radestock, P., 20, 28, 37, 38, 48, 74, 113;
quoted, 5, 46, 54, 59, 76, 77
Rank, O., 78, 85, 242, 379;
quoted, 136
Regard for presentability, 313–322
Regression, 422–435
— of the dream, 431
Relation between dream content and dream stimuli, 187
— between dreams and mental diseases, 73–79
— between dreams and the psychoses, 74
— of sexuality to cruelty, 284
— of the dream to the waking state, 4–7, 138
Repressed wishes, 199
Repression, 478, 479, 484
Requirements of dream formation, 322
Restraint of affects, 372
Riddles of the dream, 33, 34, 444
Riklin, 78
Robert, W., 13, 138, 139, 467;
quoted, 65, 66
— elimination theory of, 458
Robitsek, Dr. R., 81, 82
Rosegger quoted, 376, 377, 378
_Salzstangeln_, 183
Scaliger’s dream, 9
Scherner, R. A., 30, 31, 33, 69–71, 80, 189–191, 310, 434, 467, 486
Scherner’s method of dream interpretation, 319
Schelling, school of, 3
Schiller, Fr., quoted, 85, 86, 361
Schleiermacher, Fr., 40, 59, 85
Scholz, Fr., 48, 112;
quoted, 15, 55
Schopenhauer, 29, 54, 75
Scientific literature on dreams, 1–79
— theories of the dream, 80
Secondary elaboration, 355, 389–402, 454, 461
Self-analyses, 87, 380
Self-correction in dreams, 411
Sensational intensity, 285
Sensations, gastric, 30
— muscular, 30
— nocturnal, 155
— of falling, 466
— of flying, 466
— of impeded movement, 311
— peripheral, 30
— physical, 30
— pneumatic, 30
— sexual, 30
Senseful psychological structures, 1
Sensory images, 186
— — hypnogogic, 185
— intensity, 306
— organs, psychic, 491
— stimuli, 17–27, 187, 189, 454
— — (objective), 185
— — (organic), 71
— — (outer and inner), 66
— — (subjective), 185
Sexual anamnesis, 281
— dreams, 240
— etiology, 281
— — for psychoneuroses, 347
— organs and dreams, 185
— sensations, 30
— symbolism, 319
— symbols, 246, 248
— wish feelings, 480
Shakespeare quoted, 333
Siebeck, A., quoted, 48
Silberer, H., 41
Simon, B. M., 24, 27, 28, 31, 32, 112
Sleep, problems of, 4
— psychic state of, 468
Sources of affects, 382
— of dreams, 138–259
Somatic dream stimuli, 33
— exciting sources, 53
— origin of dreams, 64
— sources of dreams, 184
— theory of stimulation, 185
Spitta, W., 28, 41, 47, 50, 55, 75, 406;
quoted, 39, 46, 48, 58
Stekel, W., 78, 232, 241, 248, 251, 298, 313
— accidental stimuli, 185, 186
Stimuli of dreams, 16–35
— of perception, 426
— pain, 453
— physical, 71, 77
Stimuli, pleasure, 453
— psychic, 34
Strangeness of the dream, 1
Stricker, 364;
quoted, 48, 61
Structure of dream thoughts, 431
Strümpell, L., 16, 31, 36, 42, 47, 138, 154, 186, 188, 191;
quoted, 4, 5, 11, 14, 23, 27, 37, 45, 49
Study of the neuroses, 456
Stumpf, E. J. G., 81
Subjective sensory stimuli, 24–27, 185
Supernatural dream content, 466
— origin of dreams, 3
Suppressed wishes, 199, 209
Suppression of the affects, 371, 372, 375
Sway of the dream, 11
Swimming in dreams, 239
Swoboda, H., 79, 140–142
Symbolic concealment, 310
— dream formations, 310
— — interpretation, 81, 316
— methods of interpreting dreams, 83
Symbolisation of bodily stimuli, 190
— of the body, 319
Symbolism in dreams, application of, 249–259
— sexual, 319
Symbols in the dream content, 246
— sexual, 246, 248
Synthesis of syllables, 278
Tabetic paralysis, 282
Tactile stimulus, 188
“Tannhauser,” quotation from, 272
Taylor, B., 269
Temporal relations of life, 346
Theoretical value of the study of dreams, 492
Theories of the dream, 61–73
Theory of dream life, 46
— of dreams, 127
— of hysteria, 473
— of hysterical paralysis, 444
— of Leuret, 419
— of organic stimulation, 310
— of partial waking, 24
— of psychoneurotic symptoms, 449
— of somatic stimuli, 188
— of the psychoneuroses, 480
— of wish-fulfilment, 374, 376, 435, 458
— of the emotions, 371
Theory of the neuroses, 374
Thirst dreams, 105
Thomayer, 74
Thought identity, 477
Tissié, Ph., 28, 29, 38, 74, 113;
quoted, 27, 34
Toothache dreams, 189, 190
Tooth-exciting dreams, 72
Trains of thought revealed by analysis, 263
Transferred dream-wishes, 455
Transformation of affects, 479
— of ideas, 424
Transforming activity of dreams, 327
— ideas into plastic images, 435
Transvaluation of psychic values, 306, 402, 409
Trenck, Baron, 113
Typical dreams, 31, 131, 203–259
Unburdening properties of dreams, 66
Unconscious end-presentations, 418
— excitations, 440, 448, 460
— ideation, 459
— phantasies, 486
— psychic life, 220
— — process, 485
— wishes, 438, 443, 457, 479–493
“Undesired” ideas, 85
Undesirable presentations, 59, 60, 414
Unmoral period of childhood, 212
Unwished-for presentations, 418
Urinary organs and dreams, 185
Variegated dream images, 189
Verbal compositions of the dream, 283
Visceral sensations, 191
Visions, 4, 424
Visual excitation, 434
— pictures, 41
Vold, J. Mourly, 32
Volition, 312
Volkelt, J., 30, 71, 113, 189, 191, 319;
quoted, 11, 20, 34, 49, 54, 59, 69, 70, 72, 190
Waking caused by the dream, 452–458
“Weaver’s Masterpiece,” quotation from, 265
Weed, Sarah, 113
Weed-Hallam, 138
Weygandt, W., 5, 20, 28, 34, 49;
quoted, 105
Why dreams are forgotten, 35
Winckler, Hugo, 82
Wish-dreams, 113, 123, 128, 219
— — masochistic, 135
Wishes, forbidden, 209
— foreconscious, 456
— repressed, 199
— suppressed, 199, 209
— unconscious, 438, 443, 457, 479, 493
Wish-fulfilment of the dream, 76, 104, 205, 229, 233, 389, 423, 435–452
— theory of, 374, 376, 458
Word-play and dream activity, 315
Work of displacement, 283–288
Wundt, 23, 34, 48, 49, 71, 187, 188;
quoted, 75
— theory of, 198
Zola, E., 182
-----
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.”
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Not all numbered items in the Literary Index have corresponding
crossreferences in the text.
4. Footnotes were re-indexed using letters and collected together at
the end of the last chapter.
5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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