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Title: On dreams
Author: Sigmund Freud
Author of introduction, etc.: W. Leslie Mackenzie
Translator: M. D. Eder
Release date: February 10, 2025 [eBook #75333]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Rebman Company, 1914
Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON DREAMS ***
ON DREAMS
BY
PROF. DR. SIGM. FREUD
ONLY AUTHORISED ENGLISH TRANSLATION
BY
M. D. EDER
FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
W. LESLIE MACKENZIE, M.A., M.D., LL.D.
MEDICAL MEMBER OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD FOR SCOTLAND; LATE FERGUSON
SCHOLAR IN PHILOSOPHY; LATE EXAMINER IN MENTAL PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF
ABERDEEN
[Illustration: AGE QUOD AGIS]
NEW YORK
REBMAN COMPANY
HERALD SQUARE BUILDING
141–145 WEST 36TH STREET
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE SCIENTIFIC AND POPULAR VIEWS OF DREAMS CONTRASTED 1
II. DREAMS HAVE A MEANING—ANALYSIS OF A DREAM—MANIFEST AND
LATENT CONTENT OF DREAMS 6
III. THE DREAM AS REALISATION OF UNFULFILLED DESIRES—INFANTILE
TYPE OF DREAMS 21
IV. THE DREAM-MECHANISM—CONDENSATION—DRAMATISATION 33
V. THE DREAM-MECHANISM CONTINUED—DISPLACEMENT—TRANSVALUATION OF
ALL PSYCHICAL VALUES 45
VI. THE DREAM-MECHANISM CONTINUED—THE EGO IN THE DREAM 54
VII. THE DREAM-MECHANISM CONTINUED—REGARD FOR INTELLIGIBILITY 68
VIII. RELATION OF DREAMS TO OTHER UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL
PROCESSES—REPRESSION 78
IX. THREE CLASSES OF DREAMS 84
X. WHY THE DREAM DISGUISES THE DESIRES—THE CENSORSHIP 88
XI. THE DREAM THE GUARDIAN OF SLEEP 92
XII. DREAM SYMBOLISM—MYTHS AND FOLKLORE 100
XIII. ELEMENTS COMMON TO NORMAL AND ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 107
INTRODUCTION
“The interpretation of dreams,” says Professor Freud in one place, “is
the royal road to a knowledge of the part the unconscious plays in the
mental life.”
Even standing alone this statement is sufficiently striking; it is at
once a theory and a challenge. But it does not stand alone. It comes at
the end of many years of research among every class of mental diseases.
It comes, therefore, with the authentication of experience. It is not to
be lightly set aside; it claims our study; and the study of it will not
go unrewarded. The short essay here translated by Dr. Eder is but an
introduction to the vast field opened up by Professor Sigm. Freud and
his colleagues. Already the journals of clinical psychology, normal or
morbid, are full of the discussions of Professor Freud’s methods and
results. There is a “Freud School.” That alone is a proof that the
method is novel if not new. There are, of course, violent opponents and
critical students. The opponents may provoke, but it is to the critical
students that Professor Freud will prefer to speak. “The condemnation,”
said Hegel, “that a great man lays upon the world is to force it to
explain him.” Of a new method, either of research or of treatment—and
the Freud method is both—the same may be said. It is certain that,
whatever our prejudice against details may be, the theory of
“psycho-analysis” and the treatment based upon it deserves, if only as a
mental exercise, our critical consideration. But Professor Freud is not
alone in the world of morbid psychology. Let me digress for a moment.
Over twenty years ago it was my special business to study and criticise
several textbooks on insanity. To the study of these textbooks I came
after many years of discipline in normal psychology and the related
sciences. When I came to insanity proper, I found that practically not a
single textbook made any systematic effort to show how the morbid
symptoms we classified as “mental diseases” had their roots in the
mental processes of the normal mind. In his small book, “Sanity and
Insanity,” Dr. Charles Mercier did make an effort to lay out, as it
were, the institutes of insanity, the normal groundwork out of which the
insanities grew, the groups of ideas that to-day serve to direct our
conduct and to-morrow lose their adjustment to any but a specially
adapted environment. In his later works, particularly in “Psychology,
Normal and Morbid,” Dr. Mercier has followed up the central ideas of the
early study. All the more recent textbooks in English contain efforts in
the same direction; but with a few striking exceptions they are studies
rather of physical symptoms associated with mental processes than of
morbid psychology proper. It was not until there came from across the
Channel Dr. Pierre Janet’s carefully elaborated studies on Hysteria that
I realised what a wealth of psychological material had remained hidden
in our asylums, in our nervous homes, even in our ordinary hospitals,
and in the multitudes of strange cases that occur in private practice.
Janet, a pupil of the Charcot School—Charcot, who made _la Salpetrière_
famous—pushed the minute analysis of morbid mental states into regions
practically hitherto untouched. He was not alone. His colleague,
Professor Raymond, and others in France and Germany, all work with the
same main ideas. Janet’s books read like romances. His studies on
Psychological Automatism, the Mental State of Hystericals, Neuroses and
Fixed Ideas, and many others on the part played by the unconscious, were
such rich mines of fact and suggestion that Professor William James, in
his “Principles of Psychology,” said of them: “All these facts taken
together, form unquestionably the beginning of an inquiry which is
destined to throw a new light into the very abysses of our nature.”
Curiously, not in this country—the country of great psychologists,
Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Hartley, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Adam Smith,
James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Bain, Spencer, among the dead, and whole
schools of distinguished psychologists among the living—not in this
country, but in America, was the value of the new material seriously
considered. Here and there, within recent years, in this country,
Janet’s elaborate studies have not been fruitless; but I could not
readily name any clinician in this country that has produced similar
studies. It is to the continents of Europe and America, which in this
field are in intimate touch, that we must go if we are to see the rich
outgrowths of morbid psychology. I do not say that the work done by our
English students of insanity is not, of its kind, as great and as
important as any done in the world, but it is none the less true that,
until a few years ago, the methods of Janet, Raymond, Bernheim, Beaunis,
not to speak of Moll, Forel, and Oppenheim, were practically unstudied
here. In America it has been entirely different. Even the names of the
men are now familiar in our English magazines—Muensterberg, Morton
Prince, Boris Sidis, Ernest Jones, J. Mark Baldwin, not to mention
William James and Stanley Hall. It looks as if every new idea unearthed
in the Old World is put to the test by someone in the new. Britain
remains curiously cold.
It would be interesting to ask the reason. Is it our metaphysical
training? Is it the failure of the philosophical schools to realize the
value of all this new raw material of study? Is it, perhaps, the fear
that “the unity of consciousness” may be endangered by the study of
Double Personality, Multiple Personality, Dissociation of Consciousness,
Dormant Complexes, Hysterias, Phobias, Obsessions, Psychoneuroses, Fixed
Ideas, Hysterical Amnesias, Hypermnesias, and the masses of other
notions correlated, roughly, under the term “unconscious”? The
suggestion of fear is not mere conjecture. Many years ago a
distinguished student of philosophy, a pupil and friend of Sir William
Hamilton, indicated to me, when I spoke to him of some recent work on
Double Personality, that he had difficulty in placing the new work,
feeling that, in admitting the possibility of multiple personality, he
was sacrificing the primary concept of philosophy, the unity of
consciousness. It did not perhaps occur to him that, when two so-called
“persons” speak together, there are, in popular language, “two
personalities”—each, no doubt, in a separate body, but each having his
own “unity of consciousness.”
If this be a fact, is there any greater difficulty in explaining the
other fact that two persons may be, as James put it, under the same hat?
The metaphysical difficulty, if there be a difficulty, is neither more
nor less in the one case than in the other. But it is needless to ask
why a whole field of study has been, relatively, neglected in this
country. For now we have begun to make up leeway.
This translation by Dr. Eder is an introduction to the latest phase of
the study of the unconscious. It brings us back to the point I began
with, the relation of the normal to the morbid. Dreams are a part of
everyone’s normal experience, yet they are shown here to be of the same
tissue, of the same mental nature, as other phenomena that are
undoubtedly morbid. Dreams therefore offer in the normal a budding-point
for the study of morbid growths. And the study of dreams by Freud came
long after his studies of such neuroses as the phobias, hysterias, and
the rest. To dreams he applied the same method of investigation and
treatment as to the others, and he found that dreams offered an
unlimited field for the same kind of study.
Perhaps, before going further, I should attempt to disarm criticism
about the term “unconscious.” We speak of subconsciousness,
co-consciousness, unconscious mind, unconscious cerebration; or what
other terms should we use? Here it is better to avoid discussion, for we
are concerned less with theory than with practice. And in Freud’s work,
whether we accept his theory or not, the practice is of primary
importance. He takes the view that no conscious experience is entirely
lost; what seems to have vanished from the current consciousness has
really passed into a subconsciousness, where it lives on in an organised
form as real as if it were still part of the conscious personality. This
view, with various modifications, is adopted by many students of morbid
psychology. But there is another view. Muensterberg, for instance,
maintains that it is unnecessary to speak of “subconsciousness,” for
every fact can be explained in terms of physiology. He would accept the
term “co-conscious” or “co-consciousness”; but in one chapter he ends
the discussion by saying: “But whether we prefer the physiological
account or insist on the co-conscious phenomena, in either case is there
any chance for the subconscious to slip in? That a content of
consciousness is to a high degree dissociated, or that the idea of the
personality is split off, is certainly a symptom of pathological
disturbance, but it has nothing to do with the constituting of two
different kinds of consciousness, or with breaking the continuous
sameness of consciousness itself. The most exceptional and most uncanny
occurrences of the hospital teach after all the same which our daily
experience ought to teach us: there is no subconsciousness”
(“Psychotherapy,” p. 157).
There are many refinements of distinction that we could make here, and
if any reader is anxious to consider them, he will find some of them in
a small volume on “Subconscious Phenomena,” by Muensterberg, Ribot, and
others (Rebman, London).
Here it is not of primary importance to come to any conclusion on the
best term to use or the complement theory of the facts. The discussion
is far from an end; but the harvest of facts need not wait for the end
of the discussion.
Meanwhile, let it be said that Professor Freud has been steeped in this
whole subject from his student days. It is, however, less important to
discuss his theory than to understand his method. The method is called
“psycho-analysis.” The name is not inviting, and it might apply to any
form of mental analysis; but it is at least consistently Greek in
etymology, and has taken on a technical meaning in the medical schools.
What is the method?
Let it be granted that a person has undergone a strongly emotional
experience—for example, a sudden shock or fright. If the person is
highly nervous, the shock may result in some degree of dissociation.
This may take the form of a loss of memory for certain parts of the
experience. Let it be so. The ultimate result may be an unreasonable
fear of some entirely harmless object or situation. The person is afraid
of a crowd, or afraid of a closed door, or has an intense fear of some
animal or person. For this fear he can give no reason; he cannot tell
when it began nor why it persists. He may more or less overcome it; but
he may not. All through his future life he will go about with a
helplessly unreasonable fear of a closed door (claustrophobia) or of a
crowd (agoraphobia). Minor varieties of such an affection are to be
found in every person’s experience. On investigation, however, the root
of the fear can be discovered: it is the product of the original
emotional shock. The intellectual details of the emotional experience
have completely vanished from the memory, but the emotion remains, and
it is attached to some accidental object or circumstance present in the
original experience. Thousands of illustrations could be given. They
are, unfortunately, only too numerous. In this essay on the
Interpretation of Dreams the reader will find many simple cases.
If, now, the person so affected is placed in a quiet room, if he is
requested to concentrate his mind on the disturbing object or idea
associated with his fear, if he is encouraged to observe passively the
chance ideas which float up to him when he thus concentrates himself, if
he utters, under the direction of his medical attendant, every such idea
as it comes into his mind, there is a strange result. These ideas,
coming apparently by chance from nowhere in particular, are, when
carefully studied, found to be linked up with some past experience,
dating, perhaps, from months or years away. If each idea as it emerges
is followed up, if the other ideas dragged into consciousness by it are
carefully recorded, it is found that sooner or later entirely forgotten
experiences come into clear consciousness. There are many ways of
helping this process. One of the ways is this: Let a series of words be
arranged; let the doctor speak one of them to the patient; let the
patient, in the shortest time possible to him, say right out whatever
idea is suggested to him by the word; let the time taken to make the
response be recorded in seconds and fractions of a second—a thing easy
enough to do with a stop-watch. Then, when the responses to a long
series of words are all recorded, and the time each response has taken,
it is found that some responses have taken much longer than others. This
prolongation of the response-time is always found whenever the test word
has stirred up a memory associated with emotion. By following up further
the ideas stirred by this word, more ideas of a related kind are
discovered, often to the patient’s surprise. Things long forgotten come
back to memory; circumstances that apparently had no relation to the
present consciousness are found to be linked in sequence with
it—emotions, unreasoning fears, anxieties, that apparently had no
relation to any particular experience, are found at last to be part and
parcel of things that happened long ago. Once the doctor has his cue, he
can range in many directions, and probe the mind again and again, until
he reveals multitudes of suppressed memories, forgotten ideas, forgotten
elements of experience. He can even get back into early childhood,
which, to the patient himself, leaves many and many a blank area in the
memory. But always the doctor lights, sooner or later, on some complex
experience in which the particular fear or anxiety arose.
But now, if the case is a suitable one, a still stranger thing happens.
When the forgotten experience has thus artfully been brought into the
full light of consciousness, the patient finds himself satisfied with
the explanation, and loses his particular fear. He can now go back over
the whole history of its genesis; he can link up the old experience to
the new, and so he attains once more satisfaction and peace of mind. Up
till now he could not be reasoned out of his anxiety; he had always an
answer for any explanation; he had always a fresh foolish reason for his
fear. Now all this vanishes. He finds his mind once more running
smoothly, and his “phobia” gone. The unreasoning dread has been tracked
back to its lair, and its lair has been destroyed in the process.
There are many other methods of achieving the same result; let this
generalised sketch suffice.
What now is the theory? The theory is that the mental experience or
“complex” had, for some reason and by some mechanism, been submerged, or
suppressed, or forgotten. Freud maintains that there is a fundamental
tendency in the mind to suppress every experience that is associated
with painful emotion. This doctrine is allied to Bain’s “Law of
Conservation”—that painful experiences depress the vitality and tend to
disappear, while pleasant experiences exalt the vitality and tend to
remain in memory. At any rate, by some process the painful experience
disappears from conscious memory, but it does not cease to exist. It may
lie dormant, or it may work subconsciously, and throw up the emotional
bubbles that continue, without a known reason, to excite the ordinary
consciousness. But the complex, though deep and partly dormant, never
gets beyond reach. By the method of concentration, by the use of “free
associations,” by the following up of all the clues offered by the ideas
“fished up,” the submerged complex can, element by element, be brought
back. When once it is brought back the patient is restored, the dormant
complexes once more resume their place in the total current of his
experience, and the mind flows at peace.
This is, roughly, the method of psycho-analysis. It has been applied in
various types of neurosis—hysterias, obsessions, phobias, etc. It has
not always succeeded in removing the morbid conditions, but it has
succeeded so often that it may legitimately be regarded as a method of
treatment. As a matter of discovery it is arduous, and demands the
highest skill and invention if it is to succeed. Incidentally it reveals
masses of unpleasant ideas, of painful ideas, even of disgusting ideas;
but, in the right hands, it leads to the healing of the mind.
MACBETH. How does your patient, doctor?
DOCTOR. Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest.
MACBETH. Cure her of that;
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff,
Which weighs upon the heart?
DOCTOR. Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.
And here, insensibly, we have passed into the World of Dreams. The
morbid and the normal have come together. Dreams are the awaking of
dormant complexes; they are transfigured experiences; they come into
consciousness trailing clouds of emotion, and fill the dreamer’s
imagination with mysterious images. It is here that the method of
psycho-analysis most fascinates the student. It looks as if once more
the “interpretation of dreams” had become a reality. The results of
psycho-analysis, even when the method is applied with a master hand and
the details are interpreted with a skill that comes only of a quick
imagination, are not entirely convincing; but they are certainly such as
to make more and more observation desirable. In the present short essay
Professor Freud gives a sketch of psycho-analysis as it is applied to
the interpretations of dreams. His examples, if they are enough to
illustrate the theory, are hardly enough to prove it, but they are
intended as an introduction to his more elaborate studies; and,
hitherto, observers as they have increased in experience have gained in
conviction. That the method goes a long way to prove that dreams are not
a chaotic sport of the brain, but are a manifestation of ordered mental
experience, is beyond doubt. It would be easy to show where the theory
does not cover facts, but it is equally easy to show many facts that it
does cover.
What, then, is the theory? Briefly this, that dreams are very largely
the expressions of unfulfilled desires. Where, as in children, the
waking experience and the sleeping experience differ from each other by
very little, the dream, or sleeping experience, readily takes the form
of the ungratified desires of the day. But as the mind grows older the
dream expression of a desire gets more intricate. By-and-by it is too
intricate to be deciphered from direct memory, and then there is a
chance for the method of psycho-analysis. What of the dream is
remembered gives the cue for the analysis. Take a remembered element of
a dream, track it back and back by free association or other method, and
you will find that, at one or two removes, the remembered element stirs
up forgotten elements, and ultimately brings coherence out of
incoherence.
This appears simple, but let the reader study the dreams analysed in
this essay, and he will find himself stirred by a thousand suggestions.
For Professor Freud has constructed empirical laws out of his masses of
material. The dream as it appears to the dreamer he calls the _manifest
dream ideas_. But as these are too absurd to form a coherent reality, he
gives ground for believing that they represent _latent dream ideas_. The
manifest dream is a mass of symbols representing elements in the latent
dream ideas. How the latent dream ideas generate the manifest dream is
discovered by psycho-analysis, the translation from the latent to the
manifest is the effect of the _dream work_. The dream work is the very
core of the difficulty. It is round this that Professor Freud’s greatest
subtleties of method are focussed. He shows that every dream is linked
to something that occurs on the previous day, some recent experience,
but the experience emerges in the dream as part of the current panorama
of the subjective life, and there is no date to the beginning of the
panorama—it may go back to any point in the individual’s history, even
into the preconscious days of early infancy. The day’s experience and
the life’s experience flow in a single stream, and the images that
appear in dreams are but the symbols of all the latent ideas of that
experience. How, by displacement of this element or that, compound
symbols are formed; how, by the foreshortening of experience and the
linking of the past with the present in a single idea, masses of old
memories are clotted into a single point; how, in the freedom of the
dream world, where the tension of the waking life is relaxed, where the
exacting stimulations of the day are reduced, where the consciousness of
duty to be done in the highly organised conditions of social conduct is
lowered, where, in a word, the _censor_ is drowsy or asleep, where the
dream symbols shape themselves into dramatic scenes of endless
variety—these it is that Professor Freud’s theory endeavours to set
forth. Displacement, condensation, dramatisation—these are the short
names for these long and complicated processes. In the course of his
expositions, Professor Freud uses these processes almost as if they were
demons, and he admits frankly their figurative character. But he pleads
that they represent real processes, and is ready to accept better names
when he finds them. To trace back the dream images to a definite meaning
in experience is the aim of the psycho-analysis of dreams. And the
successes in these must be tested by the facts. Sometimes the results
are highly persuasive, sometimes they look highly fanciful, always they
are full of suggestion and keep close to realities.
The dream symbolism, in particular, it is easy to criticise; but, after
all, dream symbolism is a reality. The point to investigate is, what
dream images are legitimately considered symbolic and what not. One has
only to remember that every word spoken or written is a symbol, and a
symbol in much the same sense as the symbolism of dreams, for every
written or spoken word is a complicated series of motions that express
meanings. The dream images are complicated series of images that express
meanings. The difficulty of symbolism is no greater in the one case than
in the other. But the variety of dream symbols is so immense that the
difficulties of tracing their meaning are enormous. It is here that the
method meets its greatest difficulties; but, equally, it is here that it
scores its greatest triumphs. Spoken or written language is a
technically organised system of symbols; dream language is as yet a
poorly organised system of symbols. The method of psycho-analysis aims
at organising them. Some test results are described in this essay;
multitudes of others are to be found in the literature that is flowing
from the application of the psycho-analytic method. Time alone will show
how far the organisation of dream symbols into a definite “language of
dreams” is, in any given society, actual or possible. But the effort of
organisation has led Professor Freud to another fine fetch of theory,
for his dream symbolism suggests many curious explanations for the
mythologies of all ages and all countries. Myth symbols, that seem to
defy explanation, he traces back to their roots in the “unconscious” of
primitive man.
That the emotions of sex should play an enormous part in the processes
of analysis is to be expected; for the sex emotions are among the
deepest, if not the deepest, of our nature, and colour every experience.
From their proximate beginning in infancy—and Freud’s theory here is of
immense significance—to their multiform derivatives in adult life, the
sex emotions exercise an influence on every phase of development, and,
in one form or another, are themselves a normal index of the stages of
development. It is therefore reasonable to expect that they should play
a great part in the formation of obsessions, of fixed ideas, of
perversions, of repressed complexes. In every civilisation, as Freud
indicates, the sex emotions are the most difficult to control, and have
demanded the greatest amount of restraint.
Restraints lead to repressions, repressions lead to dissociations,
dissociations lead to irregularities of action. When, therefore, as in
dreams, the restraints of the social day are withdrawn, naturally the
repressed ideas tend to emerge once more. How much these ideas account
for in the hysterias, how much “the shocks of despised love” affect even
the normal life, needs no emphasis, but Freud pushes his analysis
farther, and tracks the sex emotions, like many other fundamental
emotions, into a thousand by-paths of ordinary experience. But it would
be foolishness to say that sex emotions are everything in the ruins of
the “Buried Temple.” Far from it. What is true of the sex emotions is
true of all other emotions in their varying degrees, and often what
looks like predominant sex emotions may turn out to be accidental rather
than causative, a concomitant symptom rather than the initiatory centre
of disturbance. But these points are all controversial. It is the object
of Freud to put them to the test. If his general theory be true, the
dream-world will more and more become the revealer of our deepest and
oldest experience.
It would be easy to fill many pages with illustrative items and relative
criticisms, but that is not the purpose of an introduction. Here I am
concerned simply to recommend this essay to the careful study of all
those interested in the mental history of the individual, and in the
blotting out from the mind of needless fears and anxieties. And no one
need hesitate to enter on this study, whatever his metaphysical theories
may be. Even the “unity of consciousness” will not suffer, for, through
his unending efforts to link the experiences of the day with the whole
experience of the individual life, Professor Freud, by the union of
buried consciousness, restores to the mind a new unity of consciousness.
Dr. Eder, whose studies in this field have been long and varied, does
well to present to British readers this essay which serves as an
introduction to the more elaborate studies of FREUD and his school, and
I am glad to have the privilege of saying so.
W. LESLIE MACKENZIE.
I.
In what we may term “prescientific days” people were in no uncertainty
about the interpretation of dreams. When they were recalled after
awakening they were regarded as either the friendly or hostile
manifestation of some higher powers, demoniacal and Divine. With the
rise of scientific thought the whole of this expressive mythology was
transferred to psychology; to-day there is but a small minority among
educated persons who doubt that the dream is the dreamer’s own psychical
act.
But since the downfall of the mythological hypothesis an interpretation
of the dream has been wanting. The conditions of its origin; its
relationship to our psychical life when we are awake; its independence
of disturbances which, during the state of sleep, seem to compel notice;
its many peculiarities repugnant to our waking thought; the incongruence
between its images and the feelings they engender; then the dream’s
evanescence, the way in which, on awakening, our thoughts thrust it
aside as something bizarre, and our reminiscences mutilating or
rejecting it—all these and many other problems have for many hundred
years demanded answers which up till now could never have been
satisfactory. Before all there is the question as to the meaning of the
dream, a question which is in itself double-sided. There is, firstly,
the psychical significance of the dream, its position with regard to the
psychical processes, as to a possible biological function; secondly, has
the dream a meaning—can sense be made of each single dream as of other
mental syntheses?
Three tendencies can be observed in the estimation of dreams. Many
philosophers have given currency to one of these tendencies, one which
at the same time preserves something of the dream’s former
over-valuation. The foundation of dream life is for them a peculiar
state of psychical activity, which they even celebrate as elevation to
some higher state. Schubert, for instance, claims: “The dream is the
liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a
detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.” Not all go so far as
this, but many maintain that dreams have their origin in real spiritual
excitations, and are the outward manifestations of spiritual powers
whose free movements have been hampered during the day (“Dream
Phantasies,” Scherner, Volkelt). A large number of observers acknowledge
that dream life is capable of extraordinary achievements—at any rate, in
certain fields (“Memory”).
In striking contradiction with this the majority of medical writers
hardly admit that the dream is a psychical phenomenon at all. According
to them dreams are provoked and initiated exclusively by stimuli
proceeding from the senses or the body, which either reach the sleeper
from without or are accidental disturbances of his internal organs. The
dream has no greater claim to meaning and importance than the sound
called forth by the ten fingers of a person quite unacquainted with
music running his fingers over the keys of an instrument. The dream is
to be regarded, says Binz, “as a physical process always useless,
frequently morbid.” All the peculiarities of dream life are explicable
as the incoherent effort, due to some physiological stimulus, of certain
organs, or of the cortical elements of a brain otherwise asleep.
But slightly affected by scientific opinion and untroubled as to the
origin of dreams, the popular view holds firmly to the belief that
dreams really have got a meaning, in some way they do foretell the
future, whilst the meaning can be unravelled in some way or other from
its oft bizarre and enigmatical content. The reading of dreams consists
in replacing the events of the dream, so far as remembered, by other
events. This is done either scene by scene, _according to some rigid
key_, or the dream as a whole is replaced by something else of which it
was a _symbol_. Serious-minded persons laugh at these efforts—“Dreams
are but sea-foam!”
II.
One day I discovered to my amazement that the popular view grounded in
superstition, and not the medical one, comes nearer to the truth about
dreams. I arrived at new conclusions about dreams by the use of a new
method of psychological investigation, one which had rendered me good
service in the investigation of phobias, obsessions, illusions, and the
like, and which, under the name “psycho-analysis,” had found acceptance
by a whole school of investigators. The manifold analogies of dream life
with the most diverse conditions of psychical disease in the waking
state have been rightly insisted upon by a number of medical observers.
It seemed, therefore, _a priori_, hopeful to apply to the interpretation
of dreams methods of investigation which had been tested in
psychopathological processes. Obsessions and those peculiar sensations
of haunting dread remain as strange to normal consciousness as do dreams
to our waking consciousness; their origin is as unknown to consciousness
as is that of dreams. It was practical ends that impelled us, in these
diseases, to fathom their origin and formation. Experience had shown us
that a cure and a consequent mastery of the obsessing ideas did result
when once those thoughts, the connecting links between the morbid ideas
and the rest of the psychical content, were revealed which were
heretofore veiled from consciousness. The procedure I employed for the
interpretation of dreams thus arose from psychotherapy.
This procedure is readily described, although its practice demands
instruction and experience. Suppose the patient is suffering from
intense morbid dread. He is requested to direct his attention to the
idea in question, without, however, as he has so frequently done,
meditating upon it. Every impression about it, without any exception,
which occurs to him should be imparted to the doctor. The statement
which will be perhaps then made, that he cannot concentrate his
attention upon anything at all, is to be countered by assuring him most
positively that such a blank state of mind is utterly impossible. As a
matter of fact, a great number of impressions will soon occur, with
which others will associate themselves. These will be invariably
accompanied by the expression of the observer’s opinion that they have
no meaning or are unimportant. It will be at once noticed that it is
this self-criticism which prevented the patient from imparting the
ideas, which had indeed already excluded them from consciousness. If the
patient can be induced to abandon this self-criticism and to pursue the
trains of thought which are yielded by concentrating the attention, most
significant matter will be obtained, matter which will be presently seen
to be clearly linked to the morbid idea in question. Its connection with
other ideas will be manifest, and later on will permit the replacement
of the morbid idea by a fresh one, which is perfectly adapted to
psychical continuity.
This is not the place to examine thoroughly the hypothesis upon which
this experiment rests, or the deductions which follow from its
invariable success. It must suffice to state that we obtain matter
enough for the resolution of every morbid idea if we especially direct
our attention to the _unbidden_ associations _which disturb our
thoughts_—those which are otherwise put aside by the critic as worthless
refuse. If the procedure is exercised on oneself, the best plan of
helping the experiment is to write down at once all one’s first
indistinct fancies.
I will now point out where this method leads when I apply it to the
examination of dreams. Any dream could be made use of in this way. From
certain motives I, however, choose a dream of my own, which appears
confused and meaningless to my memory, and one which has the advantage
of brevity. Probably my dream of last night satisfies the requirements.
Its content, fixed immediately after awakening, runs as follows:
“_Company; at table or table d’hôte.... Spinach is served. Mrs. E. L.,
sitting next to me, gives me her undivided attention, and places her
hand familiarly upon my knee. In defence I remove her hand. Then she
says: ‘But you have always had such beautiful eyes.’... I then
distinctly see something like two eyes as a sketch or as the contour of
a spectacle lens._...”
This is the whole dream, or, at all events, all that I can remember. It
appears to me not only obscure and meaningless, but more especially odd.
Mrs. E. L. is a person with whom I am scarcely on visiting terms, nor to
my knowledge have I ever desired any more cordial relationship. I have
not seen her for a long time, and do not think there was any mention of
her recently. No emotion whatever accompanied the dream process.
Reflecting upon this dream does not make it a bit clearer to my mind. I
will now, however, present the ideas, without premeditation and without
criticism, which introspection yielded. I soon notice that it is an
advantage to break up the dream into its elements, and to search out the
ideas which link themselves to each fragment.
_Company; at table or table d’hôte._ The recollection of the slight
event with which the evening of yesterday ended is at once called up. I
left a small party in the company of a friend, who offered to drive me
home in his cab. “I prefer a taxi,” he said; “that gives one such a
pleasant occupation; there is always something to look at.” When we were
in the cab, and the cab-driver turned the disc so that the first sixty
hellers were visible, I continued the jest. “We have hardly got in and
we already owe sixty hellers. The taxi always reminds me of the table
d’hôte. It makes me avaricious and selfish by continuously reminding me
of my debt. It seems to me to mount up too quickly, and I am always
afraid that I shall be at a disadvantage, just as I cannot resist at
table d’hôte the comical fear that I am getting too little, that I must
look after myself.” In far-fetched connection with this I quote:
“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye let us heedless go.”
Another idea about the table d’hôte. A few weeks ago I was very cross
with my dear wife at the dinner-table at a Tyrolese health resort,
because she was not sufficiently reserved with some neighbours with whom
I wished to have absolutely nothing to do. I begged her to occupy
herself rather with me than with the strangers. That is just as if I had
_been at a disadvantage at the table d’hôte_. The contrast between the
behaviour of my wife at that table and that of Mrs. E. L. in the dream
now strikes me: “_Addresses herself entirely to me._”
Further, I now notice that the dream is the reproduction of a little
scene which transpired between my wife and myself when I was secretly
courting her. The caressing under cover of the tablecloth was an answer
to a wooer’s passionate letter. In the dream, however, my wife is
replaced by the unfamiliar E. L.
Mrs. E. L. is the daughter of a man to whom I _owed money_! I cannot
help noticing that here there is revealed an unsuspected connection
between the dream content and my thoughts. If the chain of associations
be followed up which proceeds from one element of the dream one is soon
led back to another of its elements. The thoughts evoked by the dream
stir up associations which were not noticeable in the dream itself.
Is it not customary, when someone expects others to look after his
interests without any advantage to themselves, to ask the innocent
question satirically: “Do you think this will be done _for the sake of
your beautiful eyes_?” Hence Mrs. E. L.’s speech in the dream. “You have
always had such beautiful eyes,” means nothing but “people always do
everything to you for love of you; you have had _everything for
nothing_.” The contrary is, of course, the truth; I have always paid
dearly for whatever kindness others have shown me. Still, the fact that
_I had a ride for nothing_ yesterday when my friend drove me home in his
cab must have made an impression upon me.
In any case, the friend whose guests we were yesterday has often made me
his debtor. Recently I allowed an opportunity of requiting him to go by.
He has had only one present from me, an antique shawl, upon which eyes
are painted all round, a so-called Occhiale, as a _charm_ against the
_Malocchio_. Moreover, he is an _eye specialist_. That same evening I
had asked him after a patient whom I had sent to him for _glasses_.
As I remarked, nearly all parts of the dream have been brought into this
new connection. I still might ask why in the dream it was _spinach_ that
was served up. Because spinach called up a little scene which recently
occurred at our table. A child, whose _beautiful eyes_ are really
deserving of praise, refused to eat _spinach_. As a child I was just the
same; for a long time I loathed _spinach_, until in later life my tastes
altered, and it became one of my favourite dishes. The mention of this
dish brings my own childhood and that of my child’s near together. “You
should be glad that you have some spinach,” his mother had said to the
little gourmet. “Some children would be very glad to get spinach.” Thus
I am reminded of the parents’ duties towards their children. Goethe’s
words—
“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye let us heedless go”—
take on another meaning in this connection.
Here I will stop in order that I may recapitulate the results of the
analysis of the dream. By following the associations which were linked
to the single elements of the dream torn from their context, I have been
led to a series of thoughts and reminiscences where I am bound to
recognise interesting expressions of my psychical life. The matter
yielded by an analysis of the dream stands in intimate relationship with
the dream content, but this relationship is so special that I should
never have been able to have inferred the new discoveries directly from
the dream itself. The dream was passionless, disconnected, and
unintelligible. During the time that I am unfolding the thoughts at the
back of the dream I feel intense and well-grounded emotions. The
thoughts themselves fit beautifully together into chains logically bound
together with certain central ideas which ever repeat themselves. Such
ideas not represented in the dream itself are in this instance the
antitheses _selfish, unselfish, to be indebted, to work for nothing_. I
could draw closer the threads of the web which analysis has disclosed,
and would then be able to show how they all run together into a single
knot; I am debarred from making this work public by considerations of a
private, not of a scientific, nature. After having cleared up many
things which I do not willingly acknowledge as mine, I should have much
to reveal which had better remain my secret. Why, then, do not I choose
another dream whose analysis would be more suitable for publication, so
that I could awaken a fairer conviction of the sense and cohesion of the
results disclosed by analysis? The answer is, because every dream which
I investigate leads to the same difficulties and places me under the
same need of discretion; nor should I forgo this difficulty any the more
were I to analyse the dream of someone else. That could only be done
when opportunity allowed all concealment to be dropped without injury to
those who trusted me.
The conclusion which is now forced upon me is that the dream is a _sort
of substitution_ for those emotional and intellectual trains of thought
which I attained after complete analysis. I do not yet know the process
by which the dream arose from those thoughts, but I perceive that it is
wrong to regard the dream as psychically unimportant, a purely physical
process which has arisen from the activity of isolated cortical elements
awakened out of sleep.
I must further remark that the dream is far shorter than the thoughts
which I hold it replaces; whilst analysis discovered that the dream was
provoked by an unimportant occurrence the evening before the dream.
Naturally, I would not draw such far-reaching conclusions if only one
analysis were known to me. Experience has shown me that when the
associations of any dream are honestly followed such a chain of thought
is revealed, the constituent parts of the dream reappear correctly and
sensibly linked together; the slight suspicion that this concatenation
was merely an accident of a single first observation must, therefore, be
absolutely relinquished. I regard it, therefore, as my right to
establish this new view by a proper nomenclature. I contrast the dream
which my memory evokes with the dream and other added matter revealed by
analysis: the former I call the dream’s _manifest content_; the latter,
without at first further subdivision, its _latent content_. I arrive at
two new problems hitherto unformulated: (1) What is the psychical
process which has transformed the latent content of the dream into its
manifest content? (2) What is the motive or the motives which have made
such transformation exigent. The process by which the change from latent
to manifest content is executed I name the _dream work_. In contrast
with this is the _work of analysis_, which produces the reverse
transformation. The other problems of the dream—the inquiry as to its
stimuli, as to the source of its materials, as to its possible purpose,
the function of dreaming, the forgetting of dreams—these I will discuss
in connection with the latent dream content.
I shall take every care to avoid a confusion between the _manifest_ and
the _latent content_, for I ascribe all the contradictory as well as the
incorrect accounts of dreamlife to the ignorance of this latent content,
now first laid bare through analysis.
III.
The conversion of the latent dream thoughts into those manifest deserves
our close study as the first known example of the transformation of
psychical stuff from one mode of expression into another. From a mode of
expression which, moreover, is readily intelligible into another which
we can only penetrate by effort and with guidance, although this new
mode must be equally reckoned as an effort of our own psychical
activity. From the standpoint of the relationship of latent to manifest
dream content, dreams can be divided into three classes. We can, in the
first place, distinguish those dreams which have a _meaning_ and are, at
the same time, _intelligible_, which allow us to penetrate into our
psychical life without further ado. Such dreams are numerous; they are
usually short, and, as a general rule, do not seem very noticeable,
because everything remarkable or exciting surprise is absent. Their
occurrence is, moreover, a strong argument against the doctrine which
derives the dream from the isolated activity of certain cortical
elements. All signs of a lowered or subdivided psychical activity are
wanting. Yet we never raise any objection to characterising them as
dreams, nor do we confound them with the products of our waking life.
A second group is formed by those dreams which are indeed self-coherent
and have a distinct meaning, but appear strange because we are unable to
reconcile their meaning with our mental life. That is the case when we
dream, for instance, that some dear relative has died of plague when we
know of no ground for expecting, apprehending, or assuming anything of
the sort; we can only ask ourself wonderingly: “What brought that into
my head?” To the third group those dreams belong which are void of both
meaning and intelligibility; they are _incoherent, complicated, and
meaningless_. The overwhelming number of our dreams partake of this
character, and this has given rise to the contemptuous attitude towards
dreams and the medical theory of their limited psychical activity. It is
especially in the longer and more complicated dream-plots that signs of
incoherence are seldom missing.
The contrast between manifest and latent dream content is clearly only
of value for the dreams of the second and more especially for those of
the third class. Here are problems which are only solved when the
manifest dream is replaced by its latent content; it was an example of
this kind, a complicated and unintelligible dream, that we subjected to
analysis. Against our expectation we, however, struck upon reasons which
prevented a complete cognizance of the latent dream thought. On the
repetition of this same experience we were forced to the supposition
that there is an _intimate bond, with laws of its own, between the
unintelligible and complicated nature of the dream and the difficulties
attending communication of the thoughts connected with the dream_.
Before investigating the nature of this bond, it will be advantageous to
turn our attention to the more readily intelligible dreams of the first
class where, the manifest and latent content being identical, the dream
work seems to be omitted.
The investigation of these dreams is also advisable from another
standpoint. The dreams of _children_ are of this nature; they have a
meaning, and are not bizarre. This, by the way, is a further objection
to reducing dreams to a dissociation of cerebral activity in sleep, for
why should such a lowering of psychical functions belong to the nature
of sleep in adults, but not in children? We are, however, fully
justified in expecting that the explanation of psychical processes in
children, essentially simplified as they may be, should serve as an
indispensable preparation towards the psychology of the adult.
I shall therefore cite some examples of dreams which I have gathered
from children. A girl of nineteen months was made to go without food for
a day because she had been sick in the morning, and, according to nurse,
had made herself ill through eating strawberries. During the night,
after her day of fasting, she was heard calling out her name during
sleep, and adding: “_Tawberry, eggs, pap._” She is dreaming that she is
eating, and selects out of her menu exactly what she supposes she will
not get much of just now.
The same kind of dream about a forbidden dish was that of a little boy
of twenty-two months. The day before he was told to offer his uncle a
present of a small basket of cherries, of which the child was, of
course, only allowed one to taste. He woke up with the joyful news:
“Hermann eaten up all the cherries.”
A girl of three and a half years had made during the day a sea trip
which was too short for her, and she cried when she had to get out of
the boat. The next morning her story was that during the night she had
been on the sea, thus continuing the interrupted trip.
A boy of five and a half years was not at all pleased with his party
during a walk in the Dachstein region. Whenever a new peak came into
sight he asked if that were the Dachstein, and, finally, refused to
accompany the party to the waterfall. His behaviour was ascribed to
fatigue; but a better explanation was forthcoming when the next morning
he told his dream: _he had ascended the Dachstein_. Obviously he
expected the ascent of the Dachstein to be the object of the excursion,
and was vexed by not getting a glimpse of the mountain. The dream gave
him what the day had withheld. The dream of a girl of six was similar;
her father had cut short the walk before reaching the promised objective
on account of the lateness of the hour. On the way back she noticed a
signpost giving the name of another place for excursions; her father
promised to take her there also some other day. She greeted her father
next day with the news that she had dreamt that _her father had been
with her to both places_.
What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy
wishes excited during the day which remain unrealised. They are simply
and undisguisedly realisations of wishes.
The following child-dream, not quite understandable at first sight, is
nothing else than a wish realised. On account of poliomyelitis a girl,
not quite four years of age, was brought from the country into town, and
remained over night with a childless aunt in a big—for her, naturally,
huge—bed. The next morning she stated that she had dreamt that _the bed
was much too small for her, so that she could find no place in it_. To
explain this dream as a wish is easy when we remember that to be “big”
is a frequently expressed wish of all children. The bigness of the bed
reminded Miss Little-Would-be-Big only too forcibly of her smallness.
This nasty situation became righted in her dream, and she grew so big
that the bed now became too small for her.
Even when children’s dreams are complicated and polished, their
comprehension as a realisation of desire is fairly evident. A boy of
eight dreamt that he was being driven with Achilles in a war-chariot,
guided by Diomedes. The day before he was assiduously reading about
great heroes. It is easy to show that he took these heroes as his
models, and regretted that he was not living in those days.
From this short collection a further characteristic of the dreams of
children is manifest—_their connection with the life of the day_. The
desires which are realised in these dreams are left over from the day
or, as a rule, the day previous, and the feeling has become intently
emphasised and fixed during the day thoughts. Accidental and indifferent
matters, or what must appear so to the child, find no acceptance in the
contents of the dream.
Innumerable instances of such dreams of the infantile type can be found
among adults also, but, as mentioned, these are mostly exactly like the
manifest content. Thus, a random selection of persons will generally
respond to thirst at night-time with a dream about drinking, thus
striving to get rid of the sensation and to let sleep continue. Many
persons frequently have these comforting _dreams_ before waking, just
when they are called. They then dream that they are already up, that
they are washing, or already in school, at the office, etc., where they
ought to be at a given time. The night before an intended journey one
not infrequently dreams that one has already arrived at the destination;
before going to a play or to a party the dream not infrequently
anticipates, in impatience, as it were, the expected pleasure. At other
times the dream expresses the realisation of the desire somewhat
indirectly; some connection, some sequel must be known—the first step
towards recognising the desire. Thus, when a husband related to me the
dream of his young wife, that her monthly period had begun, I had to
bethink myself that the young wife would have expected a pregnancy if
the period had been absent. The dream is then a sign of pregnancy. Its
meaning is that it shows the wish realised that pregnancy should not
occur just yet. Under unusual and extreme circumstances, these dreams of
the infantile type become very frequent. The leader of a polar
expedition tells us, for instance, that during the wintering amid the
ice the crew, with their monotonous diet and slight rations, dreamt
regularly, like children, of fine meals, of mountains of tobacco, and of
home.
It is not uncommon that out of some long, complicated and intricate
dream one specially lucid part stands out containing unmistakably the
realisation of a desire, but bound up with much unintelligible matter.
On more frequently analysing the seemingly more transparent dreams of
adults, it is astonishing to discover that these are rarely as simple as
the dreams of children, and that they cover another meaning beyond that
of the realisation of a wish.
It would certainly be a simple and convenient solution of the riddle if
the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the
meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type,
to the realisation of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But
there is no warrant for such an expectation. Their dreams are generally
full of the most indifferent and bizarre matter, and no trace of the
realisation of the wish is to be found in their content.
Before leaving these infantile dreams, which are obviously unrealised
desires, we must not fail to mention another chief characteristic of
dreams, one that has been long noticed, and one which stands out most
clearly in this class. I can replace any of these dreams by a phrase
expressing a desire. If the sea trip had only lasted longer; if I were
only washed and dressed; if I had only been allowed to keep the cherries
instead of giving them to my uncle. But the dream gives something more
than the choice, for here the desire is already realised; its
realisation is real and actual. The dream presentations consist chiefly,
if not wholly, of scenes and mainly of visual sense images. Hence a kind
of transformation is not entirely absent in this class of dreams, and
this may be fairly designated as the dream work. _An idea merely
existing in the region of possibility is replaced by a vision of its
accomplishment._
IV.
We are compelled to assume that such transformation of scene has also
taken place in intricate dreams, though we do not know whether it has
encountered any possible desire. The dream instanced at the
commencement, which we analysed somewhat thoroughly, did give us
occasion in two places to suspect something of the kind. Analysis
brought out that my wife was occupied with others at table, and that I
did not like it; in the dream itself _exactly the opposite_ occurs, for
the person who replaces my wife gives me her undivided attention. But
can one wish for anything pleasanter after a disagreeable incident than
that the exact contrary should have occurred, just as the dream has it?
The stinging thought in the analysis, that I have never had anything for
nothing, is similarly connected with the woman’s remark in the dream:
“You have always had such beautiful eyes.” Some portion of the
opposition between the latent and manifest content of the dream must be
therefore derived from the realisation of a wish.
Another manifestation of the dream work which all incoherent dreams have
in common is still more noticeable. Choose any instance, and compare the
number of separate elements in it, or the extent of the dream, if
written down, with the dream thoughts yielded by analysis, and of which
but a trace can be refound in the dream itself. There can be no doubt
that the dream working has resulted in an extraordinary compression or
_condensation_. It is not at first easy to form an opinion as to the
extent of the condensation; the more deeply you go into the analysis,
the more deeply you are impressed by it. There will be found no factor
in the dream whence the chains of associations do not lead in two or
more directions, no scene which has not been pieced together out of two
or more impressions and events. For instance, I once dreamt about a kind
of swimming-bath where the bathers suddenly separated in all directions;
at one place on the edge a person stood bending towards one of the
bathers as if to drag him out. The scene was a composite one, made up
out of an event that occurred at the time of puberty, and of two
pictures, one of which I had seen just shortly before the dream. The two
pictures were The Surprise in the Bath, from Schwind’s Cycle of the
Melusine (note the bathers suddenly separating), and a picture of The
Flood, by an Italian master. The little incident was that I once
witnessed a lady, who had tarried in the swimming-bath until the men’s
hour, being helped out of the water by the swimming-master. The scene in
the dream which was selected for analysis led to a whole group of
reminiscences, each one of which had contributed to the dream content.
First of all came the little episode from the time of my courting, of
which I have already spoken; the pressure of a hand under the table gave
rise in the dream to the “under the table,” which I had subsequently to
find a place for in my recollection. There was, of course, at the time
not a word about “undivided attention.” Analysis taught me that this
factor is the realisation of a desire through its contradictory and
related to the behaviour of my wife at the table d’hôte. An exactly
similar and much more important episode of our courtship, one which
separated us for an entire day, lies hidden behind this recent
recollection. The intimacy, the hand resting upon the knee, refers to a
quite different connection and to quite other persons. This element in
the dream becomes again the starting-point of two distinct series of
reminiscences, and so on.
The stuff of the dream thoughts which has been accumulated for the
formation of the dream scene must be naturally fit for this application.
There must be one or more common factors. The dream work proceeds like
Francis Galton with his family photographs. The different elements are
put one on top of the other; what is common to the composite picture
stands out clearly, the opposing details cancel each other. This process
of reproduction partly explains the wavering statements, of a peculiar
vagueness, in so many elements of the dream. For the interpretation of
dreams this rule holds good: When analysis discloses _uncertainty_ as to
_either_—_or_ read _and_, taking each section of the apparent
alternatives as a separate outlet for a series of impressions.
When there is nothing in common between the dream thoughts, the dream
work takes the trouble to create a something, in order to make a common
presentation feasible in the dream. The simplest way to approximate two
dream thoughts, which have as yet nothing in common, consists in making
such a change in the actual expression of one idea as will meet a slight
responsive recasting in the form of the other idea. The process is
analogous to that of rhyme, when consonance supplies the desired common
factor. A good deal of the dream work consists in the creation of those
frequently very witty, but often exaggerated, digressions. These vary
from the common presentation in the dream content to dream thoughts
which are as varied as are the causes in form and essence which give
rise to them. In the analysis of our example of a dream, I find a like
case of the transformation of a thought in order that it might agree
with another essentially foreign one. In following out the analysis I
struck upon the thought: _I should like to have something for nothing_.
But this formula is not serviceable to the dream. Hence it is replaced
by another one: “I should like to enjoy something free of cost.”[1] The
word “kost” (taste), with its double meaning, is appropriate to a table
d’hôte; it, moreover, is in place through the special sense in the
dream. At home if there is a dish which the children decline, their
mother first tries gentle persuasion, with a “Just taste it.” That the
dream work should unhesitatingly use the double meaning of the word is
certainly remarkable; ample experience has shown, however, that the
occurrence is quite usual.
Footnote 1:
“Ich möchte gerne etwas geniessen ohne ‘Kosten’ zu haben.” A pun upon
the word “kosten,” which has two meanings—“taste” and “cost.” In “Die
Traumdeutung,” third edition, p. 71 footnote, Professor Freud remarks
that “the finest example of dream interpretation left us by the
ancients is based upon a pun” (from “The Interpretation of Dreams,” by
Artemidorus Daldianus). “Moreover, dreams are so intimately bound up
with language that Ferenczi truly points out that every tongue has its
own language of dreams. A dream is as a rule untranslatable into other
languages.”—TRANSLATOR.
Through condensation of the dream certain constituent parts of its
content are explicable which are peculiar to the dream life alone, and
which are not found in the waking state. Such are the composite and
mixed persons, the extraordinary mixed figures, creations comparable
with the fantastic animal compositions of Orientals; a moment’s thought
and these are reduced to unity, whilst the fancies of the dream are ever
formed anew in an inexhaustible profusion. Everyone knows such images in
his own dreams; manifold are their origins. I can build up a person by
borrowing one feature from one person and one from another, or by giving
to the form of one the name of another in my dream. I can also visualise
one person, but place him in a position which has occurred to another.
There is a meaning in all these cases when different persons are
amalgamated into one substitute. Such cases denote an “and,” a “just
like,” a comparison of the original person from a certain point of view,
a comparison which can be also realised in the dream itself. As a rule,
however, the identity of the blended persons is only discoverable by
analysis, and is only indicated in the dream content by the formation of
the “combined” person.
The same diversity in their ways of formation and the same rules for its
solution hold good also for the innumerable medley of dream contents,
examples of which I need scarcely adduce. Their strangeness quite
disappears when we resolve not to place them on a level with the objects
of perception as known to us when awake, but to remember that they
represent the art of dream condensation by an exclusion of unnecessary
detail. Prominence is given to the common character of the combination.
Analysis must also generally supply the common features. The dream says
simply: _All these things have an “x” in common._ The decomposition of
these mixed images by analysis is often the quickest way to an
interpretation of the dream. Thus I once dreamt that I was sitting with
one of my former university tutors on a bench, which was undergoing a
rapid continuous movement amidst other benches. This was a combination
of lecture-room and moving staircase. I will not pursue the further
result of the thought. Another time I was sitting in a carriage, and on
my lap an object in shape like a top-hat, which, however, was made of
transparent glass. The scene at once brought to my mind the proverb: “He
who keeps his hat in his hand will travel safely through the land.” By a
slight turn the _glass hat_ reminded me of _Auer’s light_, and I knew
that I was about to invent something which was to make me as rich and
independent as his invention had made my countryman, Dr. Auer, of
Welsbach; then I should be able to travel instead of remaining in
Vienna. In the dream I was travelling with my invention, with the, it is
true, rather awkward glass top-hat. The dream work is peculiarly adept
at representing two contradictory conceptions by means of the same mixed
image. Thus, for instance, a woman dreamt of herself carrying a tall
flower-stalk, as in the picture of the Annunciation (Chastity-Mary is
her own name), but the stalk was bedecked with thick white blossoms
resembling camellias (contrast with chastity: La dame aux Camelias).
A great deal of what we have called “dream condensation” can be thus
formulated. Each one of the elements of the dream content is
_overdetermined_ by the matter of the dream thoughts; it is not derived
from one element of these thoughts, but from a whole series. These are
not necessarily interconnected in any way, but may belong to the most
diverse spheres of thought. The dream element truly represents all this
disparate matter in the dream content. Analysis, moreover, discloses
another side of the relationship between dream content and dream
thoughts. Just as one element of the dream leads to associations with
several dream thoughts, so, as a rule, the _one dream thought represents
more than one dream element_. The threads of the association do not
simply converge from the dream thoughts to the dream content, but on the
way they overlap and interweave in every way.
Next to the transformation of one thought in the scene (its
“dramatisation”), condensation is the most important and most
characteristic feature of the dream work. We have as yet no clue as to
the motive calling for such compression of the content.
V.
In the complicated and intricate dreams with which we are now concerned,
condensation and dramatisation do not wholly account for the difference
between dream contents and dream thoughts. There is evidence of a third
factor, which deserves careful consideration.
When I have arrived at an understanding of the dream thoughts by my
analysis I notice, above all, that the matter of the manifest is very
different from that of the latent dream content. That is, I admit, only
an apparent difference which vanishes on closer investigation, for in
the end I find the whole dream content carried out in the dream
thoughts, nearly all the dream thoughts again represented in the dream
content. Nevertheless, there does remain a certain amount of difference.
The essential content which stood out clearly and broadly in the dream
must, after analysis, rest satisfied with a very subordinate rôle among
the dream thoughts. These very dream thoughts which, going by my
feelings, have a claim to the greatest importance are either not present
at all in the dream content, or are represented by some remote allusion
in some obscure region of the dream. I can thus describe these
phenomena: _During the dream work the psychical intensity of those
thoughts and conceptions to which it properly pertains flows to others
which, in my judgment, have no claim to such emphasis._ There is no
other process which contributes so much to concealment of the dream’s
meaning and to make the connection between the dream content and dream
ideas irrecognisable. During this process, which I will call _the dream
displacement_, I notice also the psychical intensity, significance, or
emotional nature of the thoughts become transposed in sensory vividness.
What was clearest in the dream seems to me, without further
consideration, the most important; but often in some obscure element of
the dream I can recognise the most direct offspring of the principal
dream thought.
I could only designate this dream displacement as the _transvaluation of
psychical values_. The phenomena will not have been considered in all
its bearings unless I add that this displacement or transvaluation is
shared by different dreams in extremely varying degrees. There are
dreams which take place almost without any displacement. These have the
same time, meaning, and intelligibility as we found in the dreams which
recorded a desire. In other dreams not a bit of the dream idea has
retained its own psychical value, or everything essential in these dream
ideas has been replaced by unessentials, whilst every kind of transition
between these conditions can be found. The more obscure and intricate a
dream is, the greater is the part to be ascribed to the impetus of
displacement in its formation.
The example that we chose for analysis shows, at least, this much of
displacement—that its content has a different centre of interest from
that of the dream ideas. In the forefront of the dream content the main
scene appears as if a woman wished to make advances to me; in the dream
idea the chief interest rests on the desire to enjoy disinterested love
which shall “cost nothing”; this idea lies at the back of the talk about
the beautiful eyes and the far-fetched allusion to “spinach.”
If we abolish the dream displacement, we attain through analysis quite
certain conclusions regarding two problems of the dream which are most
disputed—as to what provokes a dream at all, and as to the connection of
the dream with our waking life. There are dreams which at once expose
their links with the events of the day; in others no trace of such a
connection can be found. By the aid of analysis it can be shown that
every dream, without any exception, is linked up with our impression of
the day, or perhaps it would be more correct to say of the day previous
to the dream. The impressions which have incited the dream may be so
important that we are not surprised at our being occupied with them
whilst awake; in this case we are right in saying that the dream carries
on the chief interest of our waking life. More usually, however, when
the dream contains anything relating to the impressions of the day, it
is so trivial, unimportant, and so deserving of oblivion, that we can
only recall it with an effort. The dream content appears, then, even
when coherent and intelligible, to be concerned with those indifferent
trifles of thought undeserving of our waking interest. The depreciation
of dreams is largely due to the predominance of the indifferent and the
worthless in their content.
Analysis destroys the appearance upon which this derogatory judgment is
based. When the dream content discloses nothing but some indifferent
impression as instigating the dream, analysis ever indicates some
significant event, which has been replaced by something indifferent with
which it has entered into abundant associations. Where the dream is
concerned with uninteresting and unimportant conceptions, analysis
reveals the numerous associative paths which connect the trivial with
the momentous in the psychical estimation of the individual. _It is only
the action of displacement if what is indifferent obtains recognition in
the dream content instead of those impressions which are really the
stimulus, or instead of the things of real interest._ In answering the
question as to what provokes the dream, as to the connection of the
dream, in the daily troubles, we must say, in terms of the insight given
us by replacing the manifest latent dream content: _The dream does never
trouble itself about things which are not deserving of our concern
during the day, and trivialities which do not trouble us during the day
have no power to pursue us whilst asleep._
What provoked the dream in the example which we have analysed? The
really unimportant event, that a friend invited me to a _free ride in
his cab_. The table d’hôte scene in the dream contains an allusion to
this indifferent motive, for in conversation I had brought the taxi
parallel with the table d’hôte. But I can indicate the important event
which has as its substitute the trivial one. A few days before I had
disbursed a large sum of money for a member of my family who is very
dear to me. Small wonder, says the dream thought, if this person is
grateful to me for this—this love is not cost-free. But love that shall
cost nothing is one of the prime thoughts of the dream. The fact that
shortly before this I had had several _drives_ with the relative in
question puts the one drive with my friend in a position to recall the
connection with the other person. The indifferent impression which, by
such ramifications, provokes the dream is subservient to another
condition which is not true of the real source of the dream—the
impression must be a recent one, everything arising from the day of the
dream.
I cannot leave the question of dream displacement without the
consideration of a remarkable process in the formation of dreams in
which condensation and displacement work together towards one end. In
condensation we have already considered the case where two conceptions
in the dream having something in common, some point of contact, are
replaced in the dream content by a mixed image, where the distinct germ
corresponds to what is common, and the indistinct secondary
modifications to what is distinctive. If displacement is added to
condensation, there is no formation of a mixed image, but a _common
mean_ which bears the same relationship to the individual elements as
does the resultant in the parallelogram of forces to its components. In
one of my dreams, for instance, there is talk of an injection with
_propyl_. On first analysis I discovered an indifferent but true
incident where _amyl_ played a part as the excitant of the dream. I
cannot yet vindicate the exchange of amyl for propyl. To the round of
ideas of the same dream, however, there belongs the recollection of my
first visit to Munich, when the _Propylæa_ struck me. The attendant
circumstances of the analysis render it admissible that the influence of
this second group of conceptions caused the displacement of amyl to
propyl. _Propyl_ is, so to say, the mean idea between _amyl_ and
_propylæa_; it got into the dream as a kind of _compromise_ by
simultaneous condensation and displacement.
The need of discovering some motive for this bewildering work of the
dream is even more called for in the case of displacement than in
condensation.
VI.
Although the work of displacement must be held mainly responsible if the
dream thoughts are not refound or recognised in the dream content
(unless the motive of the changes be guessed), it is another and milder
kind of transformation which will be considered with the dream thoughts
which leads to the discovery of a new but readily understood act of the
dream work. The first dream thoughts which are unravelled by analysis
frequently strike one by their unusual wording. They do not appear to be
expressed in the sober form which our thinking prefers; rather are they
expressed symbolically by allegories and metaphors like the figurative
language of the poets. It is not difficult to find the motives for this
degree of constraint in the expression of dream ideas. The dream content
consists chiefly of visual scenes; hence the dream ideas must, in the
first place, be prepared to make use of these forms of presentation.
Conceive that a political leader’s or a barrister’s address had to be
transposed into pantomime, and it will be easy to understand the
transformations to which the dream work is constrained by regard for
this _dramatisation of the dream content_.
Around the psychical stuff of dream thoughts there are ever found
reminiscences of impressions, not infrequently of early childhood—scenes
which, as a rule, have been visually grasped. Whenever possible, this
portion of the dream ideas exercises a definite influence upon the
modelling of the dream content; it works like a centre of
crystallisation, by attracting and rearranging the stuff of the dream
thoughts. The scene of the dream is not infrequently nothing but a
modified repetition, complicated by interpolations of events that have
left such an impression; the dream but very seldom reproduces accurate
and unmixed reproductions of real scenes.
The dream content does not, however, consist exclusively of scenes, but
it also includes scattered fragments of visual images, conversations,
and even bits of unchanged thoughts. It will be perhaps to the point if
we instance in the briefest way the means of dramatisation which are at
the disposal of the dream work for the repetition of the dream thoughts
in the peculiar language of the dream.
The dream thoughts which we learn from the analysis exhibit themselves
as a psychical complex of the most complicated superstructure. Their
parts stand in the most diverse relationship to each other; they form
backgrounds and foregrounds, stipulations, digressions, illustrations,
demonstrations, and protestations. It may be said to be almost the rule
that one train of thought is followed by its contradictory. No feature
known to our reason whilst awake is absent. If a dream is to grow out of
all this, the psychical matter is submitted to a pressure which
condenses it extremely, to an inner shrinking and displacement, creating
at the same time fresh surfaces, to a selective interweaving among the
constituents best adapted for the construction of these scenes. Having
regard to the origin of this stuff, the term _regression_ can be fairly
applied to this process. The logical chains which hitherto held the
psychical stuff together become lost in this transformation to the dream
content. The dream work takes on, as it were, only the essential content
of the dream thoughts for elaboration. It is left to analysis to restore
the connection which the dream work has destroyed.
The dream’s means of expression must therefore be regarded as meagre in
comparison with those of our imagination, though the dream does not
renounce all claims to the restitution of logical relation to the dream
thoughts. It rather succeeds with tolerable frequency in replacing these
by formal characters of its own.
By reason of the undoubted connection existing between all the parts of
dream thoughts, the dream is able to embody this matter into a single
scene. It upholds a _logical connection_ as _approximation in time and
space_, just as the painter, who groups all the poets for his picture of
Parnassus who, though they have never been all together on a mountain
peak, yet form ideally a community. The dream continues this method of
presentation in individual dreams, and often when it displays two
elements close together in the dream content it warrants some special
inner connection between what they represent in the dream thoughts. It
should be, moreover, observed that all the dreams of one night prove on
analysis to originate from the same sphere of thought.
The causal connection between two ideas is either left without
presentation, or replaced by two different long portions of dreams one
after the other. This presentation is frequently a reversed one, the
beginning of the dream being the deduction, and its end the hypothesis.
The direct _transformation_ of one thing into another in the dream seems
to serve the relationship of _cause_ and _effect_.
The dream never utters the _alternative_ “_either-or_,” but accepts both
as having equal rights in the same connection. When “either-or” is used
in the reproduction of dreams, it is, as I have already mentioned, to be
replaced by “_and_.”
Conceptions which stand in opposition to one another are preferably
expressed in dreams by the same element.[2] There seems no “not” in
dreams. Opposition between two ideas, the relation of conversion, is
represented in dreams in a very remarkable way. It is expressed by the
reversal of another part of the dream content just as if by way of
appendix. We shall later on deal with another form of expressing
disagreement. The common dream sensation of _movement checked_ serves
the purpose of representing disagreement of impulses—a _conflict of the
will_.
Footnote 2:
It is worthy of remark that eminent philologists maintain that the
oldest languages used the same word for expressing quite general
antitheses. In C. Abel’s essay, “Ueber den Gegensinn der Urworter”
(1884), the following examples of such words in English are given:
“gleam—gloom”; “to lock—loch”; “down—The Downs”; “to step—to stop.” In
his essay on “The Origin of Language” (“Linguistic Essays,” p. 240),
Abel says: “When the Englishman says ‘without,’ is not his judgment
based upon the comparative juxtaposition of two opposites, ‘with’ and
‘out’; ‘with’ itself originally meant ‘without,’ as may still be seen
in ‘withdraw.’ ‘Bid’ includes the opposite sense of giving and of
proffering” (Abel, “The English Verbs of Command,” “Linguistic
Essays,” p. 104; see also Freud, “Ueber den Gegensinn der Urworte”:
_Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen_,
Band ii., part i., p. 179).—TRANSLATOR.
Only one of the logical relationships—that of _similarity_, _identity_,
_agreement_—is found highly developed in the mechanism of dream
formation. Dream work makes use of these cases as a starting-point for
condensation, drawing together everything which shows such agreement to
a _fresh unity_.
These short, crude observations naturally do not suffice as an estimate
of the abundance of the dream’s formal means of presenting the logical
relationships of the dream thoughts. In this respect, individual dreams
are worked up more nicely or more carelessly, our text will have been
followed more or less closely, auxiliaries of the dream work will have
been taken more or less into consideration. In the latter case they
appear obscure, intricate, incoherent. When the dream appears openly
absurd, when it contains an obvious paradox in its content, it is so of
purpose. Through its apparent disregard of all logical claims, it
expresses a part of the intellectual content of the dream ideas.
Absurdity in the dream denotes _disagreement_, _scorn_, _disdain_ in the
dream thoughts. As this explanation is in entire disagreement with the
view that the dream owes its origin to dissociated, uncritical cerebral
activity, I will emphasise my view by an example:
“_One of my acquaintances, Mr. M——, has been attacked by no less a
person than Goethe in an essay with, we all maintain, unwarrantable
violence. Mr. M—— has naturally been ruined by this attack. He complains
very bitterly of this at a dinner-party, but his respect for Goethe has
not diminished through this personal experience. I now attempt to clear
up the chronological relations which strike me as improbable. Goethe
died in 1832. As his attack upon Mr. M—— must, of course, have taken
place before, Mr. M—— must have been then a very young man. It seems to
me plausible that he was eighteen. I am not certain, however, what year
we are actually in, and the whole calculation falls into obscurity. The
attack was, moreover, contained in Goethe’s well-known essay on
‘Nature.’_”
The absurdity of the dream becomes the more glaring when I state that
Mr. M—— is a young business man without any poetical or literary
interests. My analysis of the dream will show what method there is in
this madness. The dream has derived its material from three sources:
1. Mr. M——, to whom I was introduced at a dinner-party, begged me one
day to examine his elder brother, who showed signs of mental trouble. In
conversation with the patient, an unpleasant episode occurred. Without
the slightest occasion he disclosed one of his brother’s _youthful
escapades_. I had asked the patient the _year of his birth_ (_year of
death_ in dream), and led him to various calculations which might show
up his want of memory.
2. A medical journal which displayed my name among others on the cover
had published a _ruinous_ review of a book by my friend F—— of Berlin,
from the pen of a very _juvenile_ reviewer. I communicated with the
editor, who, indeed, expressed his regret, but would not promise any
redress. Thereupon I broke off my connection with the paper; in my
letter of resignation I expressed the hope that our _personal relations
would not suffer from this_. Here is the real source of the dream. The
derogatory reception of my friend’s work had made a deep impression upon
me. In my judgment, it contained a fundamental biological discovery
which only now, several years later, commences to find favour among the
professors.
3. A little while before, a patient gave me the medical history of her
brother, who, exclaiming “_Nature, Nature!_” had gone out of his mind.
The doctors considered that the exclamation arose from a study of
_Goethe’s_ beautiful essay, and indicated that the patient had been
overworking. I expressed the opinion that it seemed more _plausible_ to
me that the exclamation “Nature!” was to be taken in that sexual meaning
known also to the less educated in our country. It seemed to me that
this view had something in it, because the unfortunate youth afterwards
mutilated his genital organs. The patient was eighteen years old when
the attack occurred.
The first person in the dream thoughts behind the ego was my friend who
had been so scandalously treated. “_I now attempted to clear up the
chronological relations._” My friend’s book deals with the chronological
relations of life, and, amongst other things, correlates _Goethe’s_
duration of life with a number of days in many ways important to
biology. The ego is, however, represented as a general paralytic (“_I am
not certain what year we are actually in_”). The dream exhibits my
friend as behaving like a general paralytic, and thus riots in
absurdity. But the dream thoughts run ironically. “Of course he is a
madman, a fool, and you are the genius who understands all about it. But
shouldn’t it be the _other way round_?” This inversion obviously took
place in the dream when Goethe attacked the young man, which is absurd,
whilst anyone, however young, can to-day easily attack the great Goethe.
I am prepared to maintain that no dream is inspired by other than
egoistic emotions. The ego in the dream does not, indeed, represent only
my friend, but stands for myself also. I identify myself with him
because the fate of his discovery appears to me typical of the
acceptance _of my own_. If I were to publish my own theory, which gives
sexuality predominance in the ætiology of psycho-neurotic disorders (see
the allusion to the eighteen-year-old patient—“_Nature, Nature!_”), the
same criticism would be levelled at me, and it would even now meet with
the same contempt.
When I follow out the dream thoughts closely, I ever find only _scorn_
and _contempt_ as _correlated with the dream’s absurdity_. It is well
known that the discovery of a cracked sheep’s skull on the Lido in
Venice gave Goethe the hint for the so-called vertebral theory of the
skull. My friend plumes himself on having as a student raised a hubbub
for the resignation of an aged professor who had done good work
(including some in this very subject of comparative anatomy), but who,
on account of _decrepitude_, had become quite incapable of teaching. The
agitation my friend inspired was so successful because in the German
Universities an _age limit_ is not demanded for academic work. _Age is
no protection against folly._ In the hospital here I had for years the
honour to serve under a chief who, long fossilised, was for decades
notoriously _feeble-minded_, and was yet permitted to continue in his
responsible office. A trait, after the manner of the find in the Lido,
forces itself upon me here. It was to this man that some youthful
colleagues in the hospital adapted the then popular slang of that day:
“No Goethe has written that,” “No Schiller composed that,” etc.
VII.
We have not exhausted our valuation of the dream work. In addition to
condensation, displacement, and definite arrangement of the psychical
matter, we must ascribe to it yet another activity—one which is, indeed,
not shared by every dream. I shall not treat this position of the dream
work exhaustively; I will only point out that the readiest way to arrive
at a conception of it is to take for granted, probably unfairly, that it
_only subsequently influences the dream content which has already been
built up_. Its mode of action thus consists in so co-ordinating the
parts of the dream that these coalesce to a coherent whole, to a dream
composition. The dream gets a kind of façade which, it is true, does not
conceal the whole of its content. There is a sort of preliminary
explanation to be strengthened by interpolations and slight alterations.
Such elaboration of the dream content must not be too pronounced; the
misconception of the dream thoughts to which it gives rise is merely
superficial, and our first piece of work in analysing a dream is to get
rid of these early attempts at interpretation.
The motives for this part of the dream work are easily gauged.
This final elaboration of the dream is due to a _regard for
intelligibility_—a fact at once betraying the origin of an action which
behaves towards the actual dream content just as our normal psychical
action behaves towards some proffered perception that is to our liking.
The dream content is thus secured under the pretence of certain
expectations, is perceptually classified by the supposition of its
intelligibility, thereby risking its falsification, whilst, in fact, the
most extraordinary misconceptions arise if the dream can be correlated
with nothing familiar. Everyone is aware that we are unable to look at
any series of unfamiliar signs, or to listen to a discussion of unknown
words, without at once making perpetual changes through _our regard for
intelligibility_, through our falling back upon what is familiar.
We can call those dreams _properly made up_ which are the result of an
elaboration in every way analogous to the psychical action of our waking
life. In other dreams there is no such action; not even an attempt is
made to bring about order and meaning. We regard the dream as “quite
mad,” because on awaking it is with this last-named part of the dream
work, the dream elaboration, that we identify ourselves. So far,
however, as our analysis is concerned, the dream, which resembles a
medley of disconnected fragments, is of as much value as the one with a
smooth and beautifully polished surface. In the former case we are
spared, to some extent, the trouble of breaking down the
super-elaboration of the dream content.
All the same, it would be an error to see in the dream façade nothing
but the misunderstood and somewhat arbitrary elaboration of the dream
carried out at the instance of our psychical life. Wishes and phantasies
are not infrequently employed in the erection of this façade, which were
already fashioned in the dream thoughts; they are akin to those of our
waking life—“day-dreams,” as they are very properly called. These wishes
and phantasies, which analysis discloses in our dreams at night, often
present themselves as repetitions and refashionings of the scenes of
infancy. Thus the dream façade may show us directly the true core of the
dream, distorted through admixture with other matter.
Beyond these four activities there is nothing else to be discovered in
the dream work. If we keep closely to the definition that dream work
denotes the transference of dream thoughts to dream content, we are
compelled to say that the dream work is not creative; it develops no
fancies of its own, it judges nothing, decides nothing. It does nothing
but prepare the matter for condensation and displacement, and refashions
it for dramatisation, to which must be added the inconstant last-named
mechanism—that of explanatory elaboration. It is true that a good deal
is found in the dream content which might be understood as the result of
another and more intellectual performance; but analysis shows
conclusively every time that these _intellectual operations were already
present in the dream thoughts, and have only been taken over by the
dream content_. A syllogism in the dream is nothing other than the
repetition of a syllogism in the dream thoughts; it seems inoffensive if
it has been transferred to the dream without alteration; it becomes
absurd if in the dream work it has been transferred to other matter. A
calculation in the dream content simply means that there was a
calculation in the dream thoughts; whilst this is always correct, the
calculation in the dream can furnish the silliest results by the
condensation of its factors and the displacement of the same operations
to other things. Even speeches which are found in the dream content are
not new compositions; they prove to be pieced together out of speeches
which have been made or heard or read; the words are faithfully copied,
but the occasion of their utterance is quite overlooked, and their
meaning is most violently changed.
It is, perhaps, not superfluous to support these assertions by examples:
1. _A seemingly inoffensive, well-made dream of a patient. She was going
to market with her cook, who carried the basket. The butcher said to her
when she asked him for something: “That is all gone,” and wished to give
her something else, remarking: “That’s very good.” She declines, and
goes to the greengrocer, who wants to sell her a peculiar vegetable
which is bound up in bundles and of a black colour. She says: “I don’t
know that; I won’t take it.”_
The remark “That is all gone” arose from the treatment. A few days
before I said myself to the patient that the earliest reminiscences of
childhood _are all gone_ as such, but are replaced by transferences and
dreams. Thus I am the butcher.
The second remark, “_I don’t know that_,” arose in a very different
connection. The day before she had herself called out in rebuke to the
cook (who, moreover, also appears in the dream): “_Behave yourself
properly_; I don’t know _that_”—that is, “I don’t know this kind of
behaviour; I won’t have it.” The more harmless portion of this speech
was arrived at by a displacement of the dream content; in the dream
thoughts only the other portion of the speech played a part, because the
dream work changed an imaginary situation into utter irrecognisability
and complete inoffensiveness (while in a certain sense I behave in an
unseemly way to the lady). The situation resulting in this phantasy is,
however, nothing but a new edition of one that actually took place.
2. A dream apparently meaningless relates to figures. “_She wants to pay
something; her daughter takes three florins sixty-five kreuzers out of
her purse; but she says: ‘What are you doing? It only costs twenty-one
kreuzers.’_”
The dreamer was a stranger who had placed her child at school in Vienna,
and who was able to continue under my treatment so long as her daughter
remained at Vienna. The day before the dream the directress of the
school had recommended her to keep the child another year at school. In
this case she would have been able to prolong her treatment by one year.
The figures in the dream become important if it be remembered that time
is money. One year equals 365 days, or, expressed in kreuzers, 365
kreuzers, which is three florins sixty-five kreuzers. The twenty-one
kreuzers correspond with the three weeks which remained from the day of
the dream to the end of the school term, and thus to the end of the
treatment. It was obviously financial considerations which had moved the
lady to refuse the proposal of the directress, and which were answerable
for the triviality of the amount in the dream.
3. A lady, young, but already ten years married, heard that a friend of
hers, Miss Elise L——, of about the same age, had become engaged. This
gave rise to the following dream:
_She was sitting with her husband in the theatre; the one side of the
stalls was quite empty. Her husband tells her, Elise L—— and her fiancé
had intended coming, but could only get some cheap seats, three for one
florin fifty kreuzers, and these they would not take. In her opinion,
that would not have mattered very much._
The origin of the figures from the matter of the dream thoughts and the
changes the figures underwent are of interest. Whence came the one
florin fifty kreuzers? From a trifling occurrence of the previous day.
Her sister-in-law had received 150 florins as a present from her
husband, and had quickly got rid of it by buying some ornament. Note
that 150 florins is one hundred times one florin fifty kreuzers. For the
_three_ concerned with the tickets, the only link is that Elise L—— is
exactly three months younger than the dreamer. The scene in the dream is
the repetition of a little adventure for which she has often been teased
by her husband. She was once in a great hurry to get tickets in time for
a piece, and when she came to the theatre _one side of the stalls was
almost empty_. It was therefore quite unnecessary for her to have been
in _such a hurry_. Nor must we overlook the absurdity of the dream that
two persons should take three tickets for the theatre.
Now for the dream ideas. It was _stupid_ to have married so early; _I
need not_ have been _in so great a hurry_. Elise L——’s example shows me
that I should have been able to get a husband later; indeed, one a
_hundred times better_ if I had but waited. I could have bought _three_
such men with the money (dowry).
VIII.
In the foregoing exposition we have now learnt something of the dream
work; we must regard it as a quite special psychical process, which, so
far as we are aware, resembles nothing else. To the dream work has been
transferred that bewilderment which its product, the dream, has aroused
in us. In truth, the dream work is only the first recognition of a group
of psychical processes to which must be referred the origin of
hysterical symptoms, the ideas of morbid dread, obsession, and illusion.
Condensation, and especially displacement, are never-failing features in
these other processes. The regard for appearance remains, on the other
hand, peculiar to the dream work. If this explanation brings the dream
into line with the formation of psychical disease, it becomes the more
important to fathom the essential conditions of processes like dream
building. It will be probably a surprise to hear that neither the state
of sleep nor illness is among the indispensable conditions. A whole
number of phenomena of the everyday life of healthy persons,
forgetfulness, slips in speaking and in holding things, together with a
certain class of mistakes, are due to a psychical mechanism analogous to
that of the dream and the other members of this group.
Displacement is the core of the problem, and the most striking of all
the dream performances. A thorough investigation of the subject shows
that the essential condition of displacement is purely psychological; it
is in the nature of a motive. We get on the track by thrashing out
experiences which one cannot avoid in the analysis of dreams. I had to
break off the relations of my dream thoughts in the analysis of my dream
on p. 11 because I found some experiences which I do not wish strangers
to know, and which I could not relate without serious damage to
important considerations. I added, it would be no use were I to select
another instead of that particular dream; in every dream where the
content is obscure or intricate, I should hit upon dream thoughts which
call for secrecy. If, however, I continue the analysis for myself,
without regard to those others, for whom, indeed, so personal an event
as my dream cannot matter, I arrive finally at ideas which surprise me,
which I have not known to be mine, which not only appear _foreign_ to
me, but which are _unpleasant_, and which I would like to oppose
vehemently, whilst the chain of ideas running through the analysis
intrudes upon me inexorably. I can only take these circumstances into
account by admitting that these thoughts are actually part of my
psychical life, possessing a certain psychical intensity or energy.
However, by virtue of a particular psychological condition, the
_thoughts could not become conscious to me_. I call this particular
condition “_Repression_.” It is therefore impossible for me not to
recognise some causal relationship between the obscurity of the dream
content and this state of repression—this _incapacity of consciousness_.
Whence I conclude that the cause of the obscurity is _the desire to
conceal these thoughts_. Thus I arrive at the conception of the _dream
distortion_ as the deed of the dream work, and of _displacement_ serving
to disguise this object.
I will test this in my own dream, and ask myself, What is the thought
which, quite innocuous in its distorted form, provokes my liveliest
opposition in its real form? I remember that the free drive reminded me
of the last expensive drive with a member of my family, the
interpretation of the dream being: I should for once like to experience
affection for which I should not have to pay, and that shortly before
the dream I had to make a heavy disbursement for this very person. In
this connection, I cannot get away from the thought _that I regret this
disbursement_. It is only when I acknowledge this feeling that there is
any sense in my wishing in the dream for an affection that should entail
no outlay. And yet I can state on my honour that I did not hesitate for
a moment when it became necessary to expend that sum. The regret, the
counter-current, was unconscious to me. Why it was unconscious is quite
another question which would lead us far away from the answer which,
though within my knowledge, belongs elsewhere.
If I subject the dream of another person instead of one of my own to
analysis, the result is the same; the motives for convincing others is,
however, changed. In the dream of a healthy person the only way for me
to enable him to accept this repressed idea is the coherence of the
dream thoughts. He is at liberty to reject this explanation. But if we
are dealing with a person suffering from any neurosis—say from
hysteria—the recognition of these repressed ideas is compulsory by
reason of their connection with the symptoms of his illness and of the
improvement resulting from exchanging the symptoms for the repressed
ideas. Take the patient from whom I got the last dream about the three
tickets for one florin fifty kreuzers. Analysis shows that she does not
think highly of her husband, that she regrets having married him, that
she would be glad to change him for someone else. It is true that she
maintains that she loves her husband, that her emotional life knows
nothing about this depreciation (a hundred times better!), but all her
symptoms lead to the same conclusion as this dream. When her repressed
memories had rewakened a certain period when she was conscious that she
did not love her husband, her symptoms disappeared, and therewith
disappeared her resistance to the interpretation of the dream.
IX.
This conception of repression once fixed, together with the distortion
of the dream in relation to repressed psychical matter, we are in a
position to give a general exposition of the principal results which the
analysis of dreams supplies. We learnt that the most intelligible and
meaningful dreams are unrealised desires; the desires they pictured as
realised are known to consciousness, have been held over from the
daytime, and are of absorbing interest. The analysis of obscure and
intricate dreams discloses something very similar; the dream scene again
pictures as realised some desire which regularly proceeds from the dream
ideas, but the picture is unrecognisable, and is only cleared up in the
analysis. The desire itself is either one repressed, foreign to
consciousness, or it is closely bound up with repressed ideas. The
formula for these dreams may be thus stated: _They are concealed
realisations of repressed desires._ It is interesting to note that they
are right who regard the dream as foretelling the future. Although the
future which the dream shows us is not that which will occur, but that
which we would like to occur. Folk psychology proceeds here according to
its wont; it believes what it wishes to believe.
Dreams can be divided into three classes according to their relation
towards the realisation of desire. Firstly come those which exhibit a
_non-repressed, non-concealed desire_; these are dreams of the infantile
type, becoming ever rarer among adults. Secondly, dreams which express
in _veiled_ form some _repressed desire_; these constitute by far the
larger number of our dreams, and they require analysis for their
understanding. Thirdly, these dreams where repression exists, but
_without_ or with but slight concealment. These dreams are invariably
accompanied by a feeling of dread which brings the dream to an end. This
feeling of dread here replaces dream displacement; I regarded the dream
work as having prevented this in the dream of the second class. It is
not very difficult to prove that what is now present as intense dread in
the dream was once desire, and is now secondary to the repression.
There are also definite dreams with a painful content, without the
presence of any anxiety in the dream. These cannot be reckoned among
dreams of dread; they have, however, always been used to prove the
unimportance and the psychical futility of dreams. An analysis of such
an example will show that it belongs to our second class of dreams—a
_perfectly concealed_ realisation of repressed desires. Analysis will
demonstrate at the same time how excellently adapted is the work of
displacement to the concealment of desires.
A girl dreamt that she saw lying dead before her the only surviving
child of her sister amid the same surroundings as a few years before she
saw the first child lying dead. She was not sensible of any pain, but
naturally combated the view that the scene represented a desire of hers.
Nor was that view necessary. Years ago it was at the funeral of the
child that she had last seen and spoken to the man she loved. Were the
second child to die, she would be sure to meet this man again in her
sister’s house. She is longing to meet him, but struggles against this
feeling. The day of the dream she had taken a ticket for a lecture,
which announced the presence of the man she always loved. The dream is
simply a dream of impatience common to those which happen before a
journey, theatre, or simply anticipated pleasures. The longing is
concealed by the shifting of the scene to the occasion when any joyous
feeling were out of place, and yet where it did once exist. Note,
further, that the emotional behaviour in the dream is adapted, not to
the displaced, but to the real but suppressed dream ideas. The scene
anticipates the long-hoped-for meeting; there is here no call for
painful emotions.
X.
There has hitherto been no occasion for philosophers to bestir
themselves with a psychology of repression. We must be allowed to
construct some clear conception as to the origin of dreams as the first
steps in this unknown territory. The scheme which we have formulated not
only from a study of dreams is, it is true, already somewhat
complicated, but we cannot find any simpler one that will suffice. We
hold that our psychical apparatus contains two procedures for the
construction of thoughts. The second one has the advantage that its
products find an open path to consciousness, whilst the activity of the
first procedure is unknown to itself, and can only arrive at
consciousness through the second one. At the borderland of these two
procedures, where the first passes over into the second, a censorship is
established which only passes what pleases it, keeping back everything
else. That which is rejected by the censorship is, according to our
definition, in a state of repression. Under certain conditions, one of
which is the sleeping state, the balance of power between the two
procedures is so changed that what is repressed can no longer be kept
back. In the sleeping state this may possibly occur through the
negligence of the censor; what has been hitherto repressed will now
succeed in finding its way to consciousness. But as the censorship is
never absent, but merely off guard, certain alterations must be conceded
so as to placate it. It is a compromise which becomes conscious in this
case—a compromise between what one procedure has in view and the demands
of the other. _Repression_, _laxity of the censor_, _compromise_—this is
the foundation for the origin of many another psychological process,
just as it is for the dream. In such compromises we can observe the
processes of condensation, of displacement, the acceptance of
superficial associations, which we have found in the dream work.
It is not for us to deny the demonic element which has played a part in
constructing our explanation of dream work. The impression left is that
the formation of obscure dreams proceeds as if a person had something to
say which must be disagreeable for another person upon whom he is
dependent to hear. It is by the use of this image that we figure to
ourselves the conception of the _dream distortion_ and of the
censorship, and ventured to crystallise our impression in a rather
crude, but at least definite, psychological theory. Whatever explanation
the future may offer of these first and second procedures, we shall
expect a confirmation of our correlate that the second procedure
commands the entrance to consciousness, and can exclude the first from
consciousness.
Once the sleeping state overcome, the censorship resumes complete sway,
and is now able to revoke that which was granted in a moment of
weakness. That the _forgetting_ of dreams explains this in part, at
least, we are convinced by our experience, confirmed again and again.
During the relation of a dream, or during analysis of one, it not
infrequently happens that some fragment of the dream is suddenly
forgotten. This fragment so forgotten invariably contains the best and
readiest approach to an understanding of the dream. Probably that is why
it sinks into oblivion—_i.e._, into a renewed suppression.
XI.
Viewing the dream content as the representation of a realised desire,
and referring its vagueness to the changes made by the censor in the
repressed matter, it is no longer difficult to grasp the function of
dreams. In fundamental contrast with those saws which assume that sleep
is disturbed by dreams, we hold the _dream as the guardian of sleep_. So
far as children’s dreams are concerned, our view should find ready
acceptance.
The sleeping state or the psychical change to sleep, whatsoever it be,
is brought about by the child being sent to sleep or compelled thereto
by fatigue, only assisted by the removal of all stimuli which might open
other objects to the psychical apparatus. The means which serve to keep
external stimuli distant are known; but what are the means we can employ
to depress the internal psychical stimuli which frustrate sleep? Look at
a mother getting her child to sleep. The child is full of beseeching; he
wants another kiss; he wants to play yet awhile. His requirements are in
part met, in part drastically put off till the following day. Clearly
these desires and needs, which agitate him, are hindrances to sleep.
Everyone knows the charming story of the bad boy (Baldwin Groller’s) who
awoke at night bellowing out, “_I want the rhinoceros_.” A really good
boy, instead of bellowing, would have _dreamt_ that he was playing with
the rhinoceros. Because the dream which realises his desire is believed
during sleep, it removes the desire and makes sleep possible. It cannot
be denied that this belief accords with the dream image, because it is
arrayed in the psychical appearance of probability; the child is without
the capacity which it will acquire later to distinguish hallucinations
or phantasies from reality.
The adult has learnt this differentiation; he has also learnt the
futility of desire, and by continuous practice manages to postpone his
aspirations, until they can be granted in some roundabout method by a
change in the external world. For this reason it is rare for him to have
his wishes realised during sleep in the short psychical way. It is even
possible that this never happens, and that everything which appears to
us like a child’s dream demands a much more elaborate explanation. Thus
it is that for adults—for every sane person without exception—a
differentiation of the psychical matter has been fashioned which the
child knew not. A psychical procedure has been reached which, informed
by the experience of life, exercises with jealous power a dominating and
restraining influence upon psychical emotions; by its relation to
consciousness, and by its spontaneous mobility, it is endowed with the
greatest means of psychical power. A portion of the infantile emotions
has been withheld from this procedure as useless to life, and all the
thoughts which flow from these are found in the state of repression.
Whilst the procedure in which we recognise our normal ego reposes upon
the desire for sleep, it appears compelled by the psycho-physiological
conditions of sleep to abandon some of the energy with which it was wont
during the day to keep down what was repressed. This neglect is really
harmless; however much the emotions of the child’s spirit may be
stirred, they find the approach to consciousness rendered difficult, and
that to movement blocked in consequence of the state of sleep. The
danger of their disturbing sleep must, however, be avoided. Moreover, we
must admit that even in deep sleep some amount of free attention is
exerted as a protection against sense-stimuli which might, perchance,
make an awakening seem wiser than the continuance of sleep. Otherwise we
could not explain the fact of our being always awakened by stimuli of
certain quality. As the old physiologist Burdach pointed out, the mother
is awakened by the whimpering of her child, the miller by the cessation
of his mill, most people by gently calling out their names. This
attention, thus on the alert, makes use of the internal stimuli arising
from repressed desires, and fuses them into the dream, which as a
compromise satisfies both procedures at the same time. The dream creates
a form of psychical release for the wish which is either suppressed or
formed by the aid of repression, inasmuch as it presents it as realised.
The other procedure is also satisfied, since the continuance of the
sleep is assured. Our ego here gladly behaves like a child; it makes the
dream pictures believable, saying, as it were, “Quite right, but let me
sleep.” The contempt which, once awakened, we bear the dream, and which
rests upon the absurdity and apparent illogicality of the dream, is
probably nothing but the reasoning of our sleeping ego on the feelings
about what was repressed; with greater right it should rest upon the
incompetency of this disturber of our sleep. In sleep we are now and
then aware of this contempt; the dream content transcends the censorship
rather too much, we think, “It’s only a dream,” and sleep on.
It is no objection to this view if there are border-lines for the dream
where its function, to preserve sleep from interruption, can no longer
be maintained—as in the dreams of impending dread. It is here changed
for another function—to suspend the sleep at the proper time. It acts
like a conscientious night-watchman, who first does his duty by quelling
disturbances so as not to waken the citizen, but equally does his duty
quite properly when he awakens the street should the causes of the
trouble seem to him serious and himself unable to cope with them alone.
This function of dreams becomes especially well marked when there arises
some incentive for the sense perception. That the senses aroused during
sleep influence the dream is well known, and can be experimentally
verified; it is one of the certain but much overestimated results of the
medical investigation of dreams. Hitherto there has been an insoluble
riddle connected with this discovery. The stimulus to the sense by which
the investigator affects the sleeper is not properly recognised in the
dream, but is intermingled with a number of indefinite interpretations,
whose determination appears left to psychical free-will. There is, of
course, no such psychical free-will. To an external sense-stimulus the
sleeper can react in many ways. Either he awakens or he succeeds in
sleeping on. In the latter case he can make use of the dream to dismiss
the external stimulus, and this, again, in more ways than one. For
instance, he can stay the stimulus by dreaming of a scene which is
absolutely intolerable to him. This was the means used by one who was
troubled by a painful perineal abscess. He dreamt that he was on
horseback, and made use of the poultice, which was intended to alleviate
his pain, as a saddle, and thus got away from the cause of the trouble.
Or, as is more frequently the case, the external stimulus undergoes a
new rendering, which leads him to connect it with a repressed desire
seeking its realisation, and robs him of its reality, and is treated as
if it were a part of the psychical matter. Thus, someone dreamt that he
had written a comedy which embodied a definite _motif_; it was being
performed; the first act was over amid enthusiastic applause; there was
great clapping. At this moment the dreamer must have succeeded in
prolonging his sleep despite the disturbance, for when he woke he no
longer heard the noise; he concluded rightly that someone must have been
beating a carpet or bed. The dreams which come with a loud noise just
before waking have all attempted to cover the stimulus to waking by some
other explanation, and thus to prolong the sleep for a little while.
XII.
Whosoever has firmly accepted this _censorship_ as the chief motive for
the distortion of dreams will not be surprised to learn as the result of
dream interpretation that most of the dreams of adults are traced by
analysis to erotic desires. This assertion is not drawn from dreams
obviously of a sexual nature, which are known to all dreamers from their
own experience, and are the only ones usually described as “sexual
dreams.” These dreams are ever sufficiently mysterious by reason of the
choice of persons who are made the objects of sex, the removal of all
the barriers which cry halt to the dreamer’s sexual needs in his waking
state, the many strange reminders as to details of what are called
perversions. But analysis discovers that, in many other dreams in whose
manifest content nothing erotic can be found, the work of interpretation
shows them up as, in reality, realisation of sexual desires; whilst, on
the other hand, that much of the thought-making when awake, the thoughts
saved us as surplus from the day only, reaches presentation in dreams
with the help of repressed erotic desires.
Towards the explanation of this statement, which is no theoretical
postulate, it must be remembered that no other class of instincts has
required so vast a suppression at the behest of civilisation as the
sexual, whilst their mastery by the highest psychical processes are in
most persons soonest of all relinquished. Since we have learnt to
understand _infantile sexuality_, often so vague in its expression, so
invariably overlooked and misunderstood, we are justified in saying that
nearly every civilised person has retained at some point or other the
infantile type of sex life; thus we understand that repressed infantile
sex desires furnish the most frequent and most powerful impulses for the
formation of dreams.[3]
Footnote 3:
Freud, “Three Contributions to Sexual Theory,” translated by A. A.
Brill (_Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease_ Publishing Company, New
York).
If the dream, which is the expression of some erotic desire, succeeds in
making its manifest content appear innocently asexual, it is only
possible in one way. The matter of these sexual presentations cannot be
exhibited as such, but must be replaced by allusions, suggestions, and
similar indirect means; differing from other cases of indirect
presentation, those used in dreams must be deprived of direct
understanding. The means of presentation which answer these requirements
are commonly termed “symbols.” A special interest has been directed
towards these, since it has been observed that the dreamers of the same
language use the like symbols—indeed, that in certain cases community of
symbol is greater than community of speech. Since the dreamers do not
themselves know the meaning of the symbols they use, it remains a puzzle
whence arises their relationship with what they replace and denote. The
fact itself is undoubted, and becomes of importance for the technique of
the interpretation of dreams, since by the aid of a knowledge of this
symbolism it is possible to understand the meaning of the elements of a
dream, or parts of a dream, occasionally even the whole dream itself,
without having to question the dreamer as to his own ideas. We thus come
near to the popular idea of an interpretation of dreams, and, on the
other hand, possess again the technique of the ancients, among whom the
interpretation of dreams was identical with their explanation through
symbolism.
Though the study of dream symbolism is far removed from finality, we now
possess a series of general statements and of particular observations
which are quite certain. There are symbols which practically always have
the same meaning: Emperor and Empress (King and Queen) always mean the
parents; room, a woman,[4] and so on. The sexes are represented by a
great variety of symbols, many of which would be at first quite
incomprehensible had not the clues to the meaning been often obtained
through other channels.
Footnote 4:
The words from “and” to “channels” in the next sentence is a short
summary of the passage in the original. As this book will be read by
other than professional people the passage has not been translated, in
deference to English opinion.—TRANSLATOR.
There are symbols of universal circulation, found in all dreamers, of
one range of speech and culture; there are others of the narrowest
individual significance which an individual has built up out of his own
material. In the first class those can be differentiated whose claim can
be at once recognised by the replacement of sexual things in common
speech (those, for instance, arising from agriculture, as reproduction,
seed) from others whose sexual references appear to reach back to the
earliest times and to the obscurest depths of our image-building. The
power of building symbols in both these special forms of symbols has not
died out. Recently discovered things, like the airship, are at once
brought into universal use as sex symbols.
It would be quite an error to suppose that a profounder knowledge of
dream symbolism (the “Language of Dreams”) would make us independent of
questioning the dreamer regarding his impressions about the dream, and
would give us back the whole technique of ancient dream interpreters.
Apart from individual symbols and the variations in the use of what is
general, one never knows whether an element in the dream is to be
understood symbolically or in its proper meaning; the whole content of
the dream is certainly not to be interpreted symbolically. The knowledge
of dream symbols will only help us in understanding portions of the
dream content, and does not render the use of the technical rules
previously given at all superfluous. But it must be of the greatest
service in interpreting a dream just when the impressions of the dreamer
are withheld or are insufficient.
Dream symbolism proves also indispensable for understanding the
so-called “typical” dreams and the dreams that “repeat themselves.” If
the value of the symbolism of dreams has been so incompletely set out in
this brief portrayal, this attempt will be corrected by reference to a
point of view which is of the highest import in this connection. Dream
symbolism leads us far beyond the dream; it does not belong only to
dreams, but is likewise dominant in legend, myth, and saga, in wit and
in folklore. It compels us to pursue the inner meaning of the dream in
these productions. But we must acknowledge that symbolism is not a
result of the dream work, but is a peculiarity probably of our
unconscious thinking, which furnishes to the dream work the matter for
condensation, displacement, and dramatisation.
XIII.
I disclaim all pretension to have thrown light here upon all the
problems of the dream, or to have dealt convincingly with everything
here touched upon. If anyone is interested in the whole of dream
literature, I refer him to the works of Sante de Sanctis (I sogni,
Turin, 1899). For a more complete investigation of my conception of the
dream, my work should be consulted: “Die Traumdeutung,” Leipzig and
Vienna, third edition, 1911.[5] I will only point out in what direction
my exposition on dream work should be followed up.
Footnote 5:
Freud, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” third edition, translated by A.
A. Brill. London: George Allen and Company, Ltd.
If I posit as the problem of dream interpretation the replacement of the
dream by its latent ideas—that is, the resolution of that which the
dream work has woven—I raise a series of new psychological problems
which refer to the mechanism of this dream work as well as to the nature
and the conditions of this so-called repression. On the other hand, I
claim the existence of dream thoughts as a very valuable foundation for
psychical construction of the highest order, provided with all the signs
of normal intellectual performance. This matter is, however, removed
from consciousness until it is rendered in the distorted form of the
dream content. I am compelled to believe that all persons have such
ideas, since nearly all, even the most normal, can have dreams. To the
unconsciousness of dream ideas, or their relationship to consciousness
and to repression, are linked questions of the greatest psychological
importance. Their solution must be postponed until the analysis of the
origin of other psychopathic growths, such as the symptoms of hysteria
and of obsessions, has been made clear.
LITERATURE
For a completer study of Dream Symbolism, consult the work of
Artemidorus Daldianus: The Interpretation of Dreams. Rendered into
English by “R. W.”—_i.e._, Robert Wood. The fourth edition, newly
written. B. L., London, 1644. The last edition was published in 1786.
SCHERNER, R. A. Das Leben des Traumes. Berlin, 1861.
FREUD. The Interpretation of Dreams.
For the symbolism of legend, myth, and saga compared with dreams, see—
ABRAHAM, KARL. Traum und Mythus.
RANK, OTTO. Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden.
RIKLIN, F. Wunscherfüllung und Symbolik im Märchen.
These three works are published by Franz Deuticke, Vienna.
English translations are ready, or are in preparation.
Recent literature will be found in—
Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen:
Franz Deuticke.
Internationale Zeitschrift für Ärztliche Psychoanalyse; and Imago
(both published by Hugo Heller and Co., Vienna).
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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