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The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 6 - I. The Secondary Elaboration Psychology
CHAPTER 7 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM PROCESSES
Among the dreams which have been communicated to me by others, there is one
which is at this point especially worthy of our attention. It was told me by a
female patient who had heard it related in a lecture on dreams. Its original
source is unknown to me. This dream evidently made a deep impression upon the
lady, since she went so far as to imitate it, i.e., to repeat the elements of
this dream in a dream of her own; in order, by this transference, to express her
agreement with a certain point in the dream.
The preliminary conditions of this typical dream were as follows: A father had
been watching day and night beside the sick-bed of his child. After the child
died, he retired to rest in an adjoining room, but left the door ajar so that he
could look from his room into the next, where the child's body lay surrounded by
tall candles. An old man, who had been installed as a watcher, sat beside the
body, murmuring prayers. After sleeping for a few hours the father dreamed that
the child was standing by his bed, clasping his arm and crying reproachfully:
"Father, don't you see that I am burning?" The father woke up and noticed a
bright light coming from the adjoining room. Rushing in, he found that the old
man had fallen asleep, and the sheets and one arm of the beloved body were burnt
by a fallen candle.
The meaning of this affecting dream is simple enough, and the explanation given
by the lecturer, as my patient reported it, was correct. The bright light
shining through the open door on to the sleeper's eyes gave him the impression
which he would have received had he been awake: namely, that a fire had been
started near the corpse by a falling candle. It is quite possible that he had
taken into his sleep his anxiety lest the aged watcher should not be equal to
his task.
We can find nothing to change in this interpretation; we can only add that the
content of the dream must be overdetermined, and that the speech of the child
must have consisted of phrases which it had uttered while still alive, and which
were associated with important events for the father. Perhaps the complaint, "I
am burning," was associated with the fever from which the child died, and
"Father, don't you see?" to some other affective occurrence unknown to us.
Now, when we have come to recognize that the dream has meaning, and can be
fitted into the context of psychic events, it may be surprising that a dream
should have occurred in circumstances which called for such an immediate waking.
We shall then note that even this dream is not lacking in a wish-fulfilment. The
dead child behaves as though alive; he warns his father himself; he comes to his
father's bed and clasps his arm, as he probably did in the recollection from
which the dream obtained the first part of the child's speech. It was for the
sake of this wish- fulfilment that the father slept a moment longer. The dream
was given precedence over waking reflection because it was able to show the
child still living. If the father had waked first, and had then drawn the
conclusion which led him into the adjoining room, he would have shortened the
child's life by this one moment.
There can be no doubt about the peculiar features in this brief dream which
engage our particular interest. So far, we have endeavoured mainly to ascertain
wherein the secret meaning of the dream consists, how it is to be discovered,
and what means the dream-work uses to conceal it. In other words, our greatest
interest has hitherto been centered on the problems of interpretation. Now,
however, we encounter a dream which is easily explained, and the meaning of
which is without disguise; we note that nevertheless this dream preserves the
essential characteristics which conspicuously differentiate a dream from our
waking thoughts, and this difference demands an explanation. It is only when we
have disposed of all the problems of interpretation that we feel how incomplete
is our psychology of dreams.
But before we turn our attention to this new path of investigation, let us stop
and look back, and consider whether we have not overlooked something important
on our way hither. For we must understand that the easy and comfortable part of
our journey lies behind us. Hitherto, all the paths that we have followed have
led, if I mistake not, to light, to explanation, and to full understanding; but
from the moment when we seek to penetrate more deeply into the psychic processes
in dreaming, all paths lead into darkness. It is quite impossible to explain the
dream as a psychic process, for to explain means to trace back to the known, and
as yet we have no psychological knowledge to which we can refer such explanatory
fundamentals as may be inferred from the psychological investigation of dreams.
On the contrary, we shall be compelled to advance a number of new assumptions,
which do little more than conjecture the structure of the psychic apparatus and
the play of the energies active in it; and we shall have to be careful not to go
too far beyond the simplest logical construction, since otherwise its value will
be doubtful. And even if we should be unerring in our inferences, and take
cognizance of all the logical possibilities, we should still be in danger of
arriving at a completely mistaken result, owing to the probable incompleteness
of the preliminary statement of our elementary data. We shall not he able to
arrive at any conclusions as to the structure and function of the psychic
instrument from even the most careful investigation of dreams, or of any other
isolated activity; or, at all events, we shall not be able to confirm our
conclusions. To do this we shall have to collate such phenomena as the
comparative study of a whole series of psychic activities proves to be reliably
constant. So that the psychological assumptions which we base on the analysis of
the dream-processes will have to mark time, as it were, until they can join up
with the results of other investigations which, proceeding from another
starting-point, will seek to penetrate to the heart of the same problem.
A. The Forgetting of Dreams
B. Regression
Now that we have defended ourselves against the objections raised, or have at
least indicated our weapons of defence, we must no longer delay entering upon
the psychological investigations for which we have so long been preparing. Let
us summarize the main results of our recent investigations: The dream is a
psychic act full of import; its motive power is invariably a wish craving
fulfilment; the fact that it is unrecognizable as a wish, and its many
peculiarities and absurdities, are due to the influence of the psychic
censorship to which it has been subjected during its formation. Besides the
necessity of evading the censorship, the following factors have played a part in
its formation: first, a need for condensing the psychic material; second, regard
for representability in sensory images; and third (though not constantly),
regard for a rational and intelligible exterior of the dream-structure. From
each of these propositions a path leads onward to psychological postulates and
assumptions. Thus, the reciprocal relation of the wish-motives, and the four
conditions. as well as the mutual relations of these conditions, must now be
investigated; the dream must be inserted in the context of the psychic life.
At the beginning of this section we cited a certain dream in order that it might
remind us of the problems that are still unsolved. The interpretation of this
dream (of the burning child) presented no difficulties, although in the
analytical sense it was not given in full. We asked ourselves why, after all, it
was necessary that the father should dream instead of waking, and we recognized
the wish to represent the child as living as a motive of the dream. That there
was yet another wish operative in the dream we shall be able to show after
further discussion. For the present, however, we may say that for the sake of
the wish- fulfilment the thought-process of sleep was transformed into a dream.
If the wish-fulfilment is cancelled out, only one characteristic remains which
distinguishes the two kinds of psychic events. The dream-thought would have
been: "I see a glimmer coming from the room in which the body is lying. Perhaps
a candle has fallen over, and the child is burning!" The dream reproduces the
result of this reflection unchanged, but represents it in a situation which
exists in the present and is perceptible by the senses like an experience of the
waking state. This, however, is the most common and the most striking
psychological characteristic of the dream; a thought, usually the one wished
for, is objectified in the dream, and represented as a scene, or- as we think-
experienced.
But how are we now to explain this characteristic peculiarity of the dream-work,
or- to put it more modestly- how are we to bring it into relation with the
psychic processes?
On closer examination, it is plainly evident that the manifest form of the dream
is marked by two characteristics which are almost independent of each other. One
is its representation as a present situation with the omission of perhaps; the
other is the translation of the thought into visual images and speech.
The transformation to which the dream-thoughts are subjected because the
expectation is put into the present tense is, perhaps, in this particular dream
not so very striking. This is probably due to the special and really subsidiary
role of the wish-fulfilment in this dream. Let us take another dream, in which
the dream-wish does not break away from the continuation of the waking thoughts
in sleep; for example, the dream of Irma's injection. Here the dream-thought
achieving representation is in the conditional: "If only Otto could be blamed
for Irma's illness!" The dream suppresses the conditional, and replaces it by a
simple present tense: "Yes, Otto is to blame for Irma's illness." This, then, is
the first of the transformations which even the undistorted dream imposes on the
dream-thoughts. But we will not linger over this first peculiarity of the dream.
We dispose of it by a reference to the conscious phantasy, the day- dream, which
behaves in a similar fashion with its conceptual content. When Daudet's M.
Joyeuse wanders unemployed through the streets of Paris while his daughter is
led to believe that he has a post and is sitting in his office, he dreams, in
the present tense, of circumstances that might help him to obtain a
recommendation and employment. The dream, then, employs the present tense in the
same manner and with the same right as the day-dream. The present is the tense
in which the wish is represented as fulfilled.
The second quality peculiar to the dream alone, as distinguished from the
day-dream, is that the conceptual content is not thought, but is transformed
into visual images, to which we give credence, and which we believe that we
experience. Let us add. however, that not all dreams show this transformation of
ideas into visual images. There are dreams which consist solely of thoughts, but
we cannot on that account deny that they are substantially dreams. My dream
Autodidasker- the day-phantasy about Professor N is of this character; it is
almost as free of visual elements as though I had thought its content during the
day. Moreover, every long dream contains elements which have not undergone this
transformation into the visual, and which are simply thought or known as we are
wont to think or know in our waking state. And we must here reflect that this
transformation of ideas into visual images does not occur in dreams alone, but
also in hallucinations and visions, which may appear spontaneously in health, or
as symptoms in the psychoneuroses. In brief, the relation which we are here
investigating is by no means an exclusive one; the fact remains, however, that
this characteristic of the dream, whenever it occurs, seems to be its most
noteworthy characteristic, so that we cannot think of the dream-life without it.
To understand it, however, requires a very exhaustive discussion.
Among all the observations relating to the theory of dreams to be found in the
literature of the subject, I should like to lay stress upon one as being
particularly worthy of mention. The famous G. T. H. Fechner makes the
conjecture,[15] in a discussion as to the nature of the dreams, that the dream
is staged elsewhere than in the waking ideation. No other assumption enables us
to comprehend the special peculiarities of the dream- life.
The idea which is thus put before us is one of psychic locality. We shall wholly
ignore the fact that the psychic apparatus concerned is known to us also as an
anatomical preparation, and we shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine
the psychic locality in any anatomical sense. We shall remain on psychological
ground, and we shall do no more than accept the invitation to think of the
instrument which serves the psychic activities much as we think of a compound
microscope, a photographic camera, or other apparatus. The psychic locality,
then, corresponds to a place within such an apparatus in which one of the
preliminary phases of the image comes into existence. As is well known, there
are in the microscope and the telescope such ideal localities or planes, in
which no tangible portion of the apparatus is located. I think it superfluous to
apologize for the imperfections of this and all similar figures. These
comparisons are designed only to assist us in our attempt to make intelligible
the complication of the psychic performance by dissecting it and referring the
individual performances to the individual components of the apparatus. So far as
I am aware, no attempt has yet been made to divine the construction of the
psychic instrument by means of such dissection. I see no harm in such an
attempt; I think that we should give free rein to our conjectures, provided we
keep our heads and do not mistake the scaffolding for the building. Since for
the first approach to any unknown subject we need the help only of auxiliary
ideas, we shall prefer the crudest and most tangible hypothesis to all others.
Accordingly, we conceive the psychic apparatus as a compound instrument, the
component parts of which we shall call instances, or, for the sake of clearness,
systems. We shall then anticipate that these systems may perhaps maintain a
constant spatial orientation to one another, very much as do the different and
successive systems of lenses of a telescope. Strictly speaking, there is no need
to assume an actual spatial arrangement of the psychic system. It will be enough
for our purpose if a definite sequence is established, so that in certain
psychic events the system will be traversed by the excitation in a definite
temporal order. This order may be different in the case of other processes; such
a possibility is left open. For the sake of brevity, we shall henceforth speak
of the component parts of the apparatus as Psi-systems.
The first thing that strikes us is the fact that the apparatus composed of
Psi-systems has a direction. All our psychic activities proceed from (inner or
outer) stimuli and terminate in innervations. We thus ascribe to the apparatus a
sensory and a motor end; at the sensory end we find a system which receives the
perceptions, ind at the motor end another which opens the sluices of motility.
The psychic process generally runs from the perceptive end to the motor end. The
most general scheme of the psychic apparatus has therefore the following
appearance as shown in Fig. 1. (See illustration.) But this is only in
compliance with the requirement, long familiar to us, that the psychic apparatus
must be constructed like a reflex apparatus. The reflex act remains the type of
every psychic activity as well.
We now have reason to admit a first differentiation at the sensory end. The
percepts that come to us leave in our psychic apparatus a trace, which we may
call a memory-trace. The function related to this memory-trace we call the
memory. If we hold seriously to our resolution to connect the psychic processes
into systems, the memory-trace can consist only of lasting changes in the
elements of the systems. But, as has already been shown elsewhere, obvious
difficulties arise when one and the same system is faithfully to preserve
changes in its elements and still to remain fresh and receptive in respect of
new occasions of change. In accordance with the principle which is directing our
attempt, we shall therefore ascribe these two functions to two different
systems. We assume that an initial system of this apparatus receives the stimuli
of perception but retains nothing of them- that is, it has no memory; and that
behind this there lies a second system, which transforms the momentary
excitation of the first into lasting traces. The following would then be the
diagram of our psychic apparatus: (See illustration.)
We know that of the percepts which act upon the P-system, we retain permanently
something else as well as the content itself. Our percepts prove also to be
connected with one another in the memory, and this is especially so if they
originally occurred simultaneously. We call this the fact of association. It is
now clear that, if the P-system is entirely lacking in memory, it certainly
cannot preserve traces for the associations; the individual P-elements would be
intolerably hindered in their functioning if a residue of a former connection
should make its influence felt against a new perception. Hence we must rather
assume that the memory-system is the basis of association. The fact of
association, then, consists in this- that in consequence of a lessening of
resistance and a smoothing of the ways from one of the mem-elements, the
excitation transmits itself to a second rather than to a third mem-element.
On further investigation we find it necessary to assume not one but many such
mem-systems, in which the same excitation transmitted by the P-elements
undergoes a diversified fixation. The first of these mem-systems will in any
case contain the fixation of the association through simultaneity, while in
those lying farther away the same material of excitation will be arranged
according to other forms of combination; so that relationships of similarity,
etc., might perhaps be represented by these later systems. It would, of course,
be idle to attempt to express in words the psychic significance of such a
system. Its characteristic would lie in the intimacy of its relations to
elements of raw material of memory- that is (if we wish to hint at a more
comprehensive theory) in the gradations of the conductive resistance on the way
to these elements.
An observation of a general nature, which may possibly point to something of
importance, may here be interpolated. The P-system, which possesses no capacity
for preserving changes, and hence no memory, furnishes to consciousness the
complexity and variety of the sensory qualities. Our memories, on the other
hand, are unconscious in themselves; those that are most deeply impressed form
no exception. They can be made conscious, but there is no doubt that they unfold
all their activities in the unconscious state. What we term our character is
based, indeed, on the memory- traces of our impressions, and it is precisely
those impressions that have affected us most strongly, those of our early youth,
which hardly ever become conscious. But when memories become conscious again
they show no sensory quality, or a very negligible one in comparison with the
perceptions. If, now, it can be confirmed that for consciousness memory and
quality are mutually exclusive in the Psi-systems, we have gained a most
promising insight into the determinations of the neuron excitations.[16]
What we have so far assumed concerning the composition of the psychic apparatus
at the sensible end has been assumed regardless of dreams and of the
psychological explanations which we have hitherto derived from them. Dreams,
however, will serve as a source of evidence for our knowledge of another part of
the apparatus. We have seen that it was impossible to explain dream- formation
unless we ventured to assume two psychic instances, one of which subjected the
activities of the other to criticism, the result of which was exclusion from
consciousness.
We have concluded that the criticizing instance maintains closer relations with
the consciousness than the instance criticized. It stands between the latter and
the consciousness like a screen. Further, we have found that there is reason to
identify the criticizing instance with that which directs our waking life and
determines our voluntary conscious activities. If, in accordance with our
assumptions, we now replace these instances by systems, the criticizing system
will therefore be moved to the motor end. We now enter both systems in our
diagram, expressing, by the names given them, their relation to consciousness.
(See illustration.)
The last of the systems at the motor end we call the preconscious (Pcs.) to
denote that the exciting processes in this system can reach consciousness
without any further detention, provided certain other conditions are fulfilled,
e.g., the attainment of a definite degree of intensity, a certain apportionment
of that function which we must call attention, etc. This is at the same time the
system which holds the keys of voluntary motility. The system behind it we call
the unconscious (Ucs), because it has no access to consciousness except through
the preconscious, in the passage through which the excitation-process must
submit to certain changes.[17]
In which of these systems, then, do we localize the impetus to dream-formation?
For the sake of simplicity, let us say in the system Ucs. We shall find, it is
true, in subsequent discussions, that this is not altogether correct; that
dream-formation is obliged to make connection with dream-thoughts which belong
to the system of the preconscious. But we shall learn elsewhere, when we come to
deal with the dream-wish, that the motive-power of the dream is furnished by the
Ucs, and on account of this factor we shall assume the unconscious system as the
starting- point for dream-formation. This dream-excitation, like all the other
thought-structures, will now strive to continue itself in the Pcs, and thence to
gain admission to the consciousness.
Experience teaches us that the path leading through the preconscious to
consciousness is closed to the dream-thoughts during the day by the resisting
censorship. At night they gain admission to consciousness; the question arises:
In what way and because of what changes? If this admission were rendered
possible to the dream-thoughts by the weakening, during the night, of the
resistance watching on the boundary between the unconscious and the
preconscious, we should then have dreams in the material of our ideas, which
would not display the hallucinatory character that interests us at present.
The weakening of the censorship between the two systems, Ucs and Pcs, can
explain to us only such dreams as the Autodidasker dream but not dreams like
that of the burning child, which- as will be remembered- we stated as a problem
at the outset in our present investigations.
What takes place in the hallucinatory dream we can describe in no other way than
by saying that the excitation follows a retrogressive course. It communicates
itself not to the motor end of the apparatus, but to the sensory end, and
finally reaches the system of perception. If we call the direction which the
psychic process follows from the unconscious into the waking state progressive,
we may then speak of the dream as having a regressive character.[18]
This regression is therefore assuredly one of the most important psychological
peculiarities of the dream-process; but we must not forget that it is not
characteristic of the dream alone. Intentional recollection and other component
processes of our normal thinking likewise necessitate a retrogression in the
psychic apparatus from some complex act of ideation to the raw material of the
memory-traces which underlie it. But during the waking state this turning
backwards does not reach beyond the memory-images; it is incapable of producing
the hallucinatory revival of the perceptual images. Why is it otherwise in
dreams? When we spoke of the condensation-work of the dream we could not avoid
the assumption that by the dream-work the intensities adhering to the ideas are
completely transferred from one to another. It is probably this modification of
the usual psychic process which makes possible the cathexis[19] of the system of
P to its full sensory vividness in the reverse direction to thinking. -
I hope that we are not deluding ourselves as regards the importance of this
present discussion. We have done nothing more than give a name to an
inexplicable phenomenon. We call it regression if the idea in the dream is
changed back into the visual image from which it once originated. But even this
step requires justification. Why this definition if it does not teach us
anything new? Well, I believe that the word regression is of service to us,
inasmuch as it connects a fact familiar to us with the scheme of the psychic
apparatus endowed with direction. At this point, and for the first time, we
shall profit by the fact that we have constructed such a scheme. For with the
help of this scheme we shall perceive, without further reflection, another
peculiarity of dream-formation. If we look upon the dream as a process of
regression within the hypothetical psychic apparatus, we have at once an
explanation of the empirically proven fact that all thought-relations of the
dream-thoughts are either lost in the dream-work or have difficulty in achieving
expression. According to our scheme, these thought-relations are contained not
in the first mem-systems, but in those lying farther to the front, and in the
regression to the perceptual images they must forfeit expression. In regression,
the structure of the dream- thoughts breaks up into its raw material.
But what change renders possible this regression which is impossible during the
day? Let us here be content with an assumption. There must evidently be changes
in the cathexis of the individual systems, causing the latter to become more
accessible or inaccessible to the discharge of the excitation; but in any such
apparatus the same effect upon the course of the excitation might be produced by
more than one kind of change. We naturally think of the. sleeping state, and of
the many cathectic changes which this evokes at the sensory end of the
apparatus. During the day there is a continuous stream flowing from the Psi-
system of the P toward the motility end; this current ceases at night, and can
no longer block the flow of the current of excitation in the opposite direction.
This would appear to be that seclusion from the outer world which, according to
the theory of some writers, is supposed to explain the psychological character
of the dream. In the explanation of the regression of the dream we shall,
however, have to take into account those other regressions which occur during
morbid waking states. In these other forms of regression the explanation just
given plainly leaves us in the lurch. Regression occurs in spite of the
uninterrupted sensory current in a progressive direction.
The hallucinations of hysteria and paranoia, as well as the visions of mentally
normal persons, I would explain as corresponding, in fact, to regressions, i.e.,
to thoughts transformed into images; and would assert that only such thoughts
undergo this transformation as are in intimate connection with suppressed
memories, or with memories which have remained unconscious. As an example, I
will cite the case of one of my youngest hysterical patients- a boy of twelve,
who was prevented from falling asleep by "green faces with red eyes," which
terrified him. The source of this manifestation was the suppressed, but once
conscious memory of a boy whom he had often seen four years earlier, and who
offered a warning example of many bad habits, including masturbation, for which
he was now reproaching himself. At that time his mother had noticed that the
complexion of this ill-mannered boy was greenish and that he had red (i.e.,
red-rimmed) eyes. Hence his terrifying vision, which merely determined his
recollection of another saying of his mother's, to the effect that such boys
become demented, are unable to learn anything at school, and are doomed to an
early death. A part of this prediction came true in the case of my little
patient; he could not get on at school, and, as appeared from his involuntary
associations, he was in terrible dread of the remainder of the prophecy.
However, after a brief period of successful treatment his sleep was restored,
his anxiety removed, and he finished his scholastic year with an excellent
record.
Here I may add the interpretation of a vision described to me by an hysterical
woman of forty, as having occurred when she was in normal health. One morning
she opened her eyes and saw her brother in the room, although she knew him to be
confined in an insane asylum. Her little son was asleep by her side. Lest the
child should be frightened on seeing his uncle, and fall into convulsions, she
pulled the sheet over his face. This done, the phantom disappeared. This
apparition was the revision of one of her childish memories, which, although
conscious, was most intimately connected with all the unconscious material in
her mind. Her nurserymaid had told her that her mother, who had died young (my
patient was then only eighteen months old), had suffered from epileptic or
hysterical convulsions, which dated back to a fright caused by her brother (the
patient's uncle) who appeared to her disguised as a spectre with a sheet over
his head. The vision contains the same elements as the reminiscence, viz., the
appearance of the brother, the sheet, the fright, and its effect. These
elements, however, are arranged in a fresh context, and are transferred to other
persons. The obvious motive of the vision, and the thought which it replaced,
was her solicitude lest her little son, who bore a striking resemblance to his
uncle, should share the latter's fate.
Both examples here cited are not entirely unrelated to the state of sleep, and
may for that reason be unfitted to afford the evidence for the sake of which I
have cited them. I will, therefore, refer to my analysis of an hallucinatory
paranoic woman patient[20] and to the results of my hitherto unpublished studies
on the psychology of the psychoneuroses, in order to emphasize the fact that in
these cases of regressive thought- transformation one must not overlook the
influence of a suppressed memory, or one that has remained unconscious, this
being usually of an infantile character. This memory draws into the regression,
as it were, the thoughts with which it is connected, and which are kept from
expression by the censorship- that is, into that form of representation in which
the memory itself is psychically existent. And here I may add, as a result of my
studies of hysteria, that if one succeeds in bringing to consciousness infantile
scenes (whether they are recollections or phantasies) they appear as
hallucinations, and are divested of this character only when they are
communicated. It is known also that even in persons whose memories are not
otherwise visual, the earliest infantile memories remain vividly visual until
late in life.
If, now, we bear in mind the part played in the dream-thoughts by the infantile
experiences, or by the phantasies based upon them, and recollect how often
fragments of these re-emerge in the dream- content, and how even the
dream-wishes often proceed from them, we cannot deny the probability that in
dreams, too, the transformation of thoughts into visual images may be the result
of the attraction exercised by the visually represented memory, striving for
resuscitation, upon the thoughts severed from the consciousness and struggling
for expression. Pursuing this conception. we may further describe the dream as
the substitute for the infantile scene modified by transference to recent
material. The infantile scene cannot enforce its own revival, and must therefore
be satisfied to return as a dream.
This reference to the significance of the infantile scenes (or of their
phantastic repetitions) as in a certain degree furnishing the pattern for the
dream-content renders superfluous the assumption made by Scherner and his pupils
concerning inner sources of stimuli. Scherner assumes a state of visual
excitation, of internal excitation in the organ of sight, when the dreams
manifest a special vividness or an extraordinary abundance of visual elements.
We need raise no objection to this assumption; we may perhaps content ourselves
with assuming such a state of excitation only for the psychic perceptive system
of the organ of vision; we shall, however, insist that this state of excitation
is a reanimation by the memory of a former actual visual excitation. I cannot,
from my own experience, give a good example showing such an influence of an
infantile memory; my own dreams are altogether less rich in perceptual elements
than I imagine those of others to be; but in my most beautiful and most vivid
dream of late years I can easily trace the hallucinatory distinctness of the
dream-contents to the visual qualities of recently received impressions. In
chapter VI., H, I mentioned a dream in which the dark blue of the water, the
brown of the smoke issuing from the ship's funnels, and the sombre brown and red
of the buildings which I saw made a profound and lasting impression upon my
mind. This dream, if any, must be attributed to visual excitation, but what was
it that had brought my organ of vision into this excitable state? It was a
recent impression which had joined itself to a series of former impressions. The
colours I beheld were in the first place those of the toy blocks with which my
children had erected a magnificent building for my admiration, on the day
preceding the dream. There was the sombre red on the large blocks, the blue and
brown on the small ones. Joined to these were the colour impressions of my last
journey in Italy: the beautiful blue of the Isonzo and the lagoons, the brown
hue of the Alps. The beautiful colours seen in the dream were but a repetition
of those seen in memory.
Let us summarize what we have learned about this peculiarity of dreams: their
power of recasting their idea-content in visual images. We may not have
explained this character of the dream- work by referring it to the known laws of
psychology, but we have singled it out as pointing to unknown relations, and
have given it the name of the regressive character. Wherever such regression has
occurred, we have regarded it as an effect of the resistance which opposes the
progress of thought on its normal way to consciousness, and of the simultaneous
attraction exerted upon it by vivid memories.[21] The regression in dreams is
perhaps facilitated by the cessation of the progressive stream flowing from the
sense-organs during the day; for which auxiliary factor there must be some
compensation, in the other forms of regression, by the strengthening of the
other regressive motives. We must also bear in mind that in pathological cases
of regression, just as in dreams, the process of energy-transference must be
different from that occurring in the regressions of normal psychic life, since
it renders possible a full hallucinatory cathexis of the perceptive system. What
we have described in the analysis of the dream-work as regard for
representability may be referred to the selective attraction of visually
remembered scenes touched by the dream-thoughts.
As to the regression, we may further observe that it plays a no less important
part in the theory of neurotic symptom-formation than in the theory of dreams.
We may therefore distinguish a threefold species of regression: (a) a topical
one, in the sense of the scheme of the Psi-systems here exponded; (b) a temporal
one, in so far as it is a regression to older psychic formations; and (c) a
formal one, when primitive modes of expression and representation take the place
of the customary modes. These three forms of regression are, however, basically
one, and in the majority of cases they coincide, for that which is older in
point of time is at the same time formally primitive and, in the psychic
topography, nearer to the perception-end.
We cannot leave the theme of regression in dreams without giving utterance to an
impression which has already and repeatedly forced itself upon us, and which
will return to us reinforced after a deeper study of the psychoneuroses: namely,
that dreaming is on the whole an act of regression to the earliest relationships
of the dreamer, a resuscitation of his childhood, of the impulses which were
then dominant and the modes of expression which were then available. Behind this
childhood of the individual we are then promised an insight into the
phylogenetic childhood, into the evolution of the human race, of which the
development of the individual is only an abridged repetition influenced by the
fortuitous circumstances of life. We begin to suspect that Friedrich Nietzsche
was right when he said that in a dream "there persists a primordial part of
humanity which we can no longer reach by a direct path," and we are encouraged
to expect, from the analysis of dreams, a knowledge of the archaic inheritance
of man, a knowledge of psychical things in him that are innate. It would seem
that dreams and neuroses have preserved for us more of the psychical antiquities
than we suspected; so that psycho-analysis may claim a high rank among those
sciences which endeavour to reconstruct the oldest and darkest phases of the
beginnings of mankind.
It is quite possible that we shall not find this first part of our psychological
evaluation of dreams particularly satisfying. We must, however, console
ourselves with the thought that we are, after all, compelled to build out into
the dark. If we have not gone altogether astray, we shall surely reach
approximately the same place from another starting-point, and then, perhaps, we
shall be better able to find our bearings.
C. The Wish-Fulfilment
The dream of the burning child (cited above) affords us a welcome opportunity
for appreciating the difficulties confronting the theory of wish-fulfilment.
That a dream should be nothing but a wish-fulfilment must undoubtedly seem
strange to us all- and not only because of the contradiction offered by the
anxiety-dream. Once our first analyses had given us the enlightenment that
meaning and psychic value are concealed behind our dreams, we could hardly have
expected so unitary a determination of this meaning. According to the correct
but summary definition of Aristotle, the dream is a continuation of thinking in
sleep. Now if, during the day, our thoughts perform such a diversity of psychic
acts- judgments, conclusions, the answering of objections, expectations,
intentions, etc.- why should they be forced at night to confine themselves to
the production of wishes only? Are there not, on the contrary, many dreams that
present an altogether different psychic act in dream-form- for example, anxious
care- and is not the father's unusually transparent dream of the burning child
such a dream? From the gleam of light that falls upon his eyes while he is
asleep the father draws the apprehensive conclusion that a candle has fallen
over and may be burning the body; he transforms this conclusion into a dream by
embodying it in an obvious situation enacted in the present tense. What part is
played in this dream by the wish-fulfilment? And how can we possibly mistake the
predominance of the thought continued from the waking state or evoked by the new
sensory impression?
All these considerations are justified, and force us to look more closely into
the role of the wish-fulfilment in dreams, and the significance of the waking
thoughts continued in sleep.
It is precisely the wish-fulfilment that has already caused us to divide all
dreams into two groups. We have found dreams which were plainly
wish-fulfilments; and others in which the wish- fulfilment was unrecognizable
and was often concealed by every available means. In this latter class of dreams
we recognized the influence of the dream-censorship. The undisguised wish-dreams
were found chiefly in children; short, frank wish-dreams seemed (I purposely
emphasize this word) to occur also in adults.
We may now ask whence in each case does the wish that is realized in the dream
originate? But to what opposition or to what diversity do we relate this whence?
I think to the opposition between conscious daily life and an unconscious
psychic activity which is able to make itself perceptible only at night. I thus,
find a threefold possibility for the origin of a wish. Firstly, it may have been
excited during the day, and owing to external circumstances may have remained
unsatisfied; there is thus left for the night an acknowledged and unsatisfied
wish. Secondly, it may have emerged during the day, only to be rejected; there
is thus left for the night an unsatisfied but suppressed wish. Thirdly, it may
have no relation to daily life, but may belong to those wishes which awake only
at night out of the suppressed material in us. If we turn to our scheme of the
psychic apparatus, we can localize a wish of the first order in the system Pcs.
We may assume that a wish of the second order has been forced back from the Pcs
system into the Ucs system, where alone, if anywhere, can it maintain itself; as
for the wish- impulse of the third order, we believe that it is wholly incapable
of leaving the Ucs system. Now, have the wishes arising from these different
sources the same value for the dream, the same power to incite a dream?
On surveying the dreams at our disposal with a view to answering this question,
we are at once moved to add as a fourth source of the dream-wish the actual
wish-impetus which arises during the night (for example, the stimulus of thirst,
and sexual desire). It then seems to us probable that the source of the
dream-wish does not affect its capacity to incite a dream. I have in mind the
dream of the child who continued the voyage that had been interrupted during the
day, and the other children's dreams cited in the same chapter; they are
explained by an unfulfilled but unsuppressed wish of the daytime. That wishes
suppressed during the day assert themselves in dreams is shown by a great many
examples. I will mention a very simple dream of this kind. A rather sarcastic
lady, whose younger friend has become engaged to be married, is asked in the
daytime by her acquaintances whether she knows her friend's fiance, and what she
thinks of him. She replies with unqualified praise, imposing silence on her own
judgment, although she would have liked to tell the truth, namely, that he is a
commonplace fellow- one meets such by the dozen (Dutzendmensch). The following
night she dreams that the same question is put to her, and that she replies with
the formula: "In case of subsequent orders, it will suffice to mention the
reference number." Finally, as the result of numerous analyses, we learn that
the wish in all dreams that have been subject to distortion has its origin in
the unconscious, and could not become perceptible by day. At first sight, then,
it seems that in respect of dream-formation all wishes are of equal value and
equal power.
I cannot prove here that this is not really the true state of affairs, but I am
strongly inclined to assume a stricter determination of the dream-wish.
Children's dreams leave us in no doubt that a wish unfulfilled during the day
may instigate a dream. But we must not forget that this is, after all, the wish
of a child; that it is a wish-impulse of the strength peculiar to childhood. I
very much doubt whether a wish unfulfilled in the daytime would suffice to
create a dream in an adult. It would rather seem that, as we learn to control
our instinctual life by intellection, we more and more renounce as unprofitable
the formation or retention of such intense wishes as are natural to childhood.
In this, indeed, there may be individual variations; some retain the infantile
type of the psychic processes longer than others; just as we find such
differences in the gradual decline of the originally vivid visual imagination.
In general, however, I am of the opinion that unfulfilled wishes of the day are
insufficient to produce a dream in adults. I will readily admit that the
wish-impulses originating in consciousness contribute to the instigation of
dreams, but they probably do no more. The dream would not occur if the
preconscious wish were not reinforced from another source.
That source is the unconscious. I believe that the conscious wish becomes
effective in exciting a dream only when it succeeds in arousing a similar
unconscious wish which reinforces it. From the indications obtained in the
psychoanalysis of the neuroses, I believe that these unconscious wishes are
always active and ready to express themselves whenever they find an opportunity
of allying themselves with an impulse from consciousness, and transferring their
own greater intensity to the lesser intensity of the latter.[22] It must,
therefore, seem that the conscious wish alone has been realized in the dream;
but a slight peculiarity in the form of the dream will put us on the track of
the powerful ally from the unconscious. These ever-active and, as it were,
immortal wishes of our unconscious recall the legendary Titans who, from time
immemorial, have been buried under the mountains which were once hurled upon
them by the victorious gods, and even now quiver from time to time at the
convulsions of their mighty limbs. These wishes, existing in repression, are
themselves of infantile origin, as we learn from the psychological investigation
of the neuroses. Let me, therefore, set aside the view previously expressed,
that it matters little whence the dream-wish originates, and replace it by
another, namely: the wish manifested in the dream must be an infantile wish. In
the adult it originates in the Ucs, while in the child, in whom no division and
censorship exist as yet between the Pcs and Ucs, or in whom these are only in
process of formation, it is an unfulfilled and unrepressed wish from the waking
state. I am aware that this conception cannot be generally demonstrated, but I
maintain that it can often be demonstrated even where one would not have
suspected it, and that it cannot be generally refuted. -
In dream-formation, the wish-impulses which are left over from the conscious
waking life are, therefore, to be relegated to the background. I cannot admit
that they play any part except that attributed to the material of actual
sensations during sleep in relation to the dream-content. If I now take into
account those other psychic instigations left over from the waking life of the
day, which are not wishes, I shall merely be adhering to the course mapped out
for me by this line of thought. We may succeed in provisionally disposing of the
energetic cathexis of our waking thoughts by deciding to go to sleep. He is a
good sleeper who can do this; Napoleon I is reputed to have been a model of this
kind. But we do not always succeed in doing it, or in doing it completely.
Unsolved problems, harassing cares, overwhelming impressions, continue the
activity of our thought even during sleep, maintaining psychic processes in the
system which we have termed the preconscious. The thought-impulses continued
into sleep may be divided into the following groups:
1. Those which have not been completed during the day, owing to some accidental
cause.
2. Those which have been left uncompleted because our mental powers have failed
us, i.e., unsolved problems.
3. Those which have been turned back and suppressed during the day. This is
reinforced by a powerful fourth group:
4. Those which have been excited in our Ucs during the day by the workings of
the Pcs; and finally we may add a fifth, consisting of:
5. The indifferent impressions of the day, which have therefore been left
unsettled.
We need not underrate the psychic intensities introduced into sleep by these
residues of the day's waking life, especially those emanating from the group of
the unsolved issues. It is certain that these excitations continue to strive for
expression during the night, and we may assume with equal certainty that the
state of sleep renders impossible the usual continuance of the process of
excitation in the preconscious and its termination in becoming conscious. In so
far as we can become conscious of our mental processes in the ordinary way, even
during the night, to that extent we are simply not asleep. I cannot say what
change is produced in the Pcs system by the state of sleep,[23] but there is no
doubt that the psychological characteristics of sleep are to be sought mainly in
the cathectic changes occurring just in this system, which dominates, moreover,
the approach to motility, paralysed during sleep. On the other hand, I have
found nothing in the psychology of dreams to warrant the assumption that sleep
produces any but secondary changes in the conditions of the Ucs system. Hence,
for the nocturnal excitations in the Pcs there remains no other path than that
taken by the wish-excitations from the Ucs; they must seek reinforcement from
the Ucs, and follow the detours of the unconscious excitations. But what is the
relation of the preconscious day-residues to the dream? There is no doubt that
they penetrate abundantly into the dream; that they utilize the dream-content to
obtrude themselves upon consciousness even during the night; indeed, they
sometimes even dominate the dream-content, and impel it to continue the work of
the day; it is also certain that the day-residues may just as well have any
other character as that of wishes. But it is highly instructive, and for the
theory of wish-fulfilment of quite decisive importance, to see what conditions
they must comply with in order to be received into the dream.
Let us pick out one of the dreams cited above, e.g., the dream in which my
friend Otto seems to show the symptoms of Basedow's disease (chapter V., D).
Otto's appearance gave me some concern during the day, and this worry, like
everything else relating to him, greatly affected me. I may assume that this
concern followed me into sleep. I was probably bent on finding out what was the
matter with him. During the night my concern found expression in the dream which
I have recorded. Not only was its content senseless, but it failed to show any
wish-fulfilment. But I began to search for the source of this incongruous
expression of the solicitude felt during the day, and analysis revealed a
connection. I identified my friend Otto with a certain Baron L and myself with a
Professor R. There was only one explanation of my being impelled to select just
this substitute for the day- thought. I must always have been ready in the Ucs
to identify myself with Professor R, as this meant the realization of one of the
immortal infantile wishes, viz., the wish to become great. Repulsive ideas
respecting my friend, ideas that would certainly have been repudiated in a
waking state, took advantage of the opportunity to creep into the dream; but the
worry of the day had likewise found some sort of expression by means of a
substitute in the dream-content. The day-thought, which was in itself not a
wish, but on the contrary a worry, had in some way to find a connection with
some infantile wish, now unconscious and suppressed, which then allowed it- duly
dressed up- to arise for consciousness. The more domineering the worry the more
forced could be the connection to be established; between the content of the
wish and that of the worry there need be no connection, nor was there one in our
example.
It would perhaps be appropriate, in dealing with this problem, to inquire how a
dream behaves when material is offered to it in the dream-thoughts which flatly
opposes a wish-fulfilment; such as justified worries, painful reflections and
distressing realizations. The many possible results may be classified as
follows: (a) The dream-work succeeds in replacing all painful ideas by contrary
ideas. and suppressing the painful affect belonging to them. This, then, results
in a pure and simple satisfaction-dream, a palpable wish-fulfilment, concerning
which there is nothing more to be said. (b) The painful ideas find their way
into the manifest dream-content, more or less modified, but nevertheless quite
recognizable. This is the case which raises doughts about the wish-theory of
dreams, and thus calls for further investigation. Such dreams with a painful
content may either be indifferent in feeling, or they may convey the whole
painful affect, which the ideas contained in them seem to justify, or they may
even lead to the development of anxiety to the point of waking.
Analysis then shows that even these painful dreams are wish- fulfilments. An
unconscious and repressed wish, whose fulfilment could only be felt as painful
by the dreamer's ego, has seized the opportunity offered by the continued
cathexis of painful day- residues, has lent them its support, and has thus made
them capable of being dreamed. But whereas in case (a) the unconscious wish
coincided with the conscious one, in case (b) the discord between the
unconscious and the conscious- the repressed material and the ego- is revealed,
and the situation in the fairy-tale, of the three wishes which the fairy offers
to the married couple, is realized (see p. 534 below). The gratification in
respect of the fulfilment of the repressed wish may prove to be so great that it
balances the painful affects adhering to the day-residues; the dream is then
indifferent in its affective tone, although it is on the one hand the fulfilment
of a wish, and on the other the fulfilment of a fear. Or it may happen that the
sleeper's ego plays an even more extensive part in the dream-formation, that it
reacts with violent resentment to the accomplished satisfaction of the repressed
wish, and even goes so far as to make an end of the dream by means of anxiety.
It is thus not difficult to recognize that dreams of pain and anxiety are, in
accordance with our theory, just as much wish-fulfilments as are the
straightforward dreams of gratification.
Painful dreams may also be punishment dreams. It must be admitted that the
recognition of these dreams adds something that is, in a certain sense, new to
the theory of dreams. What is fulfilled by them is once more an unconscious
wish- the wish for the punishment of the dreamer for a repressed, prohibited
wish- impulse. To this extent, these dreams comply with the requirement here
laid down: that the motive-power behind the dream-formation must be furnished by
a wish belonging to the unconscious. But a finer psychological dissection allows
us to recognize the difference between this and the other wish-dreams. In the
dreams of group (b) the unconscious dream-forming wish belonged to the repressed
material. In the punishment-dreams it is likewise an unconscious wish, but one
which we must attribute not to the repressed material but to the ego.
Punishment-dreams point, therefore, to the possibility of a still more extensive
participation of the ego in dream-formation. The mechanism of dream-formation
becomes indeed in every way more transparent if in place of the antithesis
conscious and unconscious, we put the antithesis: ego and repressed. This,
however, cannot be done without taking into account what happens in the
psychoneuroses, and for this reason it has not been done in this book. Here I
need only remark that the occurrence of punishment-dreams is not generally
subject to the presence of painful day-residues. They originate, indeed, most
readily if the contrary is true, if the thoughts which are day-residues are of a
gratifying nature, but express illicit gratifications. Of these thoughts
nothing, then, finds its way into the manifest dream except their contrary, just
as was the case in the dreams of group (a). Thus it would be the essential
characteristic of punishment-dreams that in them it is not the unconscious wish
from the repressed material (from the system Ucs) that is responsible for
dream-formation but the punitive wish reacting against it, a wish pertaining to
the ego, even though it is unconscious (i.e., preconscious).[24]
I will elucidate some of the foregoing observations by means of a dream of my
own, and above all I will try to show how the dream- work deals with a
day-residue involving painful expectation:
Indistinct beginning. I tell my wife I have some news for her, something very
special. She becomes frightened, and does not wish to hear it. I assure her that
on the contrary it is something which will please her greatly, and I begin to
tell her that our son's Officers' Corps has sent a sum of money (5,000 k.?)...
something about honourable mention... distribution... at the same time I have
gone with her into a sitting room, like a store-room, in order to fetch
something from it. Suddenly I see my son appear; he is not in uniform but rather
in a tight-fitting sports suit (like a seal?) with a small cap. He climbs on to
a basket which stands to one side near a chest, in order to put something on
this chest. I address him; no answer. It seems to me that his face or forehead
is bandaged, he arranges something in his mouth, pushing something into it. Also
his hair shows a glint of grey. I reflect: Can he be so exhausted? And has he
false teeth? Before I can address him again I awake without anxiety, but with
palpitations. My clock points to 2.30 a.m.
To give a full analysis is once more impossible. I shall therefore confine
myself to emphasizing some decisive points. Painful expectations of the day had
given occasion for this dream; once again there had been no news for over a week
from my son, who was fighting at the Front. It is easy to see that in the
dream-content the conviction that he has been killed or wounded finds
expression. At the beginning of the dream one can observe an energetic effort to
replace the painful thoughts by their contrary. I have to impart something very
pleasing, something about sending money, honourable mention, and distribution.
(The sum of money originates in a gratifying incident of my medical practice; it
is therefore trying to lead the dream away altogether from its theme.) But this
effort fails. The boy's mother has a presentiment of something terrible and does
not wish to listen. The disguises are too thin; the reference to the material to
be suppressed shows through everywhere. If my son is killed, then his comrades
will send back his property; I shall have to distribute whatever he has left
among his sisters, brothers and other people. Honourable mention is frequently
awarded to an officer after he has died the "hero's death." The dream thus
strives to give direct expression to what it at first wished to deny, whilst at
the same time the wish-fulfilling tendency reveals itself by distortion. (The
change of locality in the dream is no doubt to be understood as threshold
symbolism, in line with Silberer's view.) We have indeed no idea what lends it
the requisite motive-power. But my son does not appear as failing (on the field
of battle) but climbing.- He was, in fact, a daring mountaineer.- He is not in
uniform, but in a sports suit; that is, the place of the fatality now dreaded
has been taken by an accident which happened to him at one time when he was ski-
running, when he fell and fractured his thigh. But the nature of his costume,
which makes him look like a seal, recalls immediately a younger person, our
comical little grandson; the grey hair recalls his father, our son-in-law, who
has had a bad time in the War. What does this signify? But let us leave this:
the locality, a pantry, the chest, from which he wants to take something (in the
dream, to put something on it), are unmistakable allusions to an accident of my
own, brought upon myself when I was between two and three years of age. I
climbed on a foot-stool in the pantry, in order to get something nice which was
on a chest or table. The footstool tumbled over and its edge struck me behind
the lower jaw. I might very well have knocked all my teeth out. At this point,
an admonition presents itself: it serves you right- like a hostile impulse
against the valiant warrior. A profounder analysis enables me to detect the
hidden impulse, which would be able to find satisfaction in the dreaded mishap
to my son. It is the envy of youth which the elderly man believes that he has
thoroughly stifled in actual life. There is no mistaking the fact that it was
the very intensity of the painful apprehension lest such a misfortune should
really happen that searched out for its alleviation such a repressed
wish-fulfilment.
I can now clearly define what the unconscious wish means for the dream. I will
admit that there is a whole class of dreams in which the incitement originates
mainly or even exclusively from the residues of the day; and returning to the
dream about my friend Otto, I believe that even my desire to become at last a
professor extraordinarius would have allowed me to sleep in peace that night,
had not the day's concern for my friend's health continued active. But this
worry alone would not have produced a dream; the motive-power needed by the
dream had to be contributed by a wish, and it was the business of my concern to
find such a wish for itself, as the motive power of the dream. To put it
figuratively, it is quite possible that a day-thought plays the part of the
entrepreneur in the dream; but the entrepreneur, who, as we say, has the idea,
and feels impelled to realize it, can do nothing without capital; he needs a
capitalist who will defray the expense, and this capitalist, who contributes the
psychic expenditure for the dream, is invariably and indisputably, whatever the
nature of the waking thoughts, a wish from the unconscious.
In other cases the capitalist himself is the entrepreneur; this, indeed, seems
to be the more usual case. An unconscious wish is excited by the day's work, and
this now creates the dream. And the dream-processes provide a parallel for all
the other possibilities of the economic relationship here used as an
illustration. Thus the entrepreneur may himself contribute a little of the
capital, or several entrepreneurs may seek the aid of the same capitalist, or
several capitalists may jointly supply the capital required by the
entrepreneurs. Thus there are dreams sustained by more than one dream-wish, and
many similar variations, which may be readily imagined, and which are of no
further interest to us. What is still lacking to our discussion of the
dream-wish we shall only be able to complete later on.
The tertium comparationis in the analogies here employed, the quantitative
element of which an allotted amount is placed at the free disposal of the dream,
admits of a still closer application to the elucidation of the dream-structure.
As shown in chapter VI., B., we can recognize in most dreams a centre supplied
with a special sensory intensity. This is, as a rule, the direct representation
of the wish-fulfilment; for, if we reverse the displacements of the dream-work,
we find that the psychic intensity of the elements in the dream-thoughts is
replaced by the sensory intensity of the elements in the dream-content. The
elements in the neighbourhood of the wish-fulfilment have often nothing to do
with its meaning, but prove to be the offshoots of painful thoughts which are
opposed to the wish. But owing to their connection with the central element,
often artificially established, they secure so large a share of its intensity as
to become capable of representation. Thus, the representative energy of the
wish-fulfilment diffuses itself over a certain sphere of association, within
which all elements are raised to representation, including even those that are
in themselves without resources. In dreams containing several dynamic wishes we
can easily separate and delimit the spheres of the individual wish-fulfilments,
and we shall find that the gaps in the dream are often of the nature of
boundary-zones.
Although the foregoing remarks have restricted the significance of the
day-residues for the dream, they are none the less deserving of some further
attention. For they must be a necessary ingredient in dream-formation, inasmuch
as experience reveals the surprising fact that every dream shows in its content
a connection with a recent waking impression, often of the most indifferent
kind. So far we have failed to understand the necessity for this addition to the
dream-mixture (chapter V., A.). This necessity becomes apparent only when we
bear in mind the part played by the unconscious wish, and seek further
information in the psychology of the neuroses. We shall then learn that an
unconscious idea, as such, is quite incapable of entering into the preconscious,
and that it can exert an influence there only by establishing touch with a
harmless idea already belonging to the preconscious, to which it transfers its
intensity, and by which it allows itself to be screened. This is the fact of
transference, which furnishes the explanation of so many surprising occurrences
in the psychic life of neurotics. The transference may leave the idea from the
preconscious unaltered, though the latter will thus acquire an unmerited
intensity, or it may force upon this some modification derived from the content
of the transferred idea. I trust the reader will pardon my fondness for
comparisons with daily life, but I feel tempted to say that the situation for
the repressed idea is like that of the American dentist in Austria, who may not
carry on his practice unless he can get a duly installed doctor of medicine to
serve him as a signboard and legal "cover." Further, just as it is not exactly
the busiest physicians who form such alliances with dental practitioners, so in
the psychic life the choice as regards covers for repressed ideas does not fall
upon such preconscious or conscious ideas as have themselves attracted enough of
the attention active in the preconscious. The unconscious prefers to entangle
with its connections either those impressions and ideas of the preconscious
which have remained unnoticed as being indifferent or those which have
immediately had attention withdrawn from them again (by rejection). it is a
well-known proposition of the theory of associations, confirmed by all
experience, that ideas which have formed a very intimate connection in one
direction assume a negative type of attitude towards whole groups of new
connections. I have even attempted at one time to base a theory of hysterical
paralysis on this principle.
If we assume that the same need of transference on the part of the repressed
ideas, of which we have become aware through the analysis of the neurosis, makes
itself felt in dreams also, we can at once explain two of the problems of the
dream: namely, that every dream-analysis reveals an interweaving of a recent
impression, and that this recent element is often of the most indifferent
character. We may add what we have already learned elsewhere, that the reason
why these recent and indifferent elements so frequently find their way into the
dream-content as substitutes for the very oldest elements of the dream-thoughts
is that they have the least to fear from the resisting censorship. But while
this freedom from censorship explains only the preference shown to the trivial
elements, the constant presence of recent elements points to the necessity for
transference. Both groups of impressions satisfy the demand of the repressed
ideas for material still free from associations, the indifferent ones because
they have offered no occasion for extensive associations, and the recent ones
because they have not had sufficient time to form such associations.
We thus see that the day-residues, among which we may now include the
indifferent impressions, not only borrow something from the Ucs when they secure
a share in dream-formation- namely, the motive-power at the disposal of the
repressed wish- but they also offer to the unconscious something that is
indispensable to it, namely, the points of attachment necessary for
transference. If we wished to penetrate more deeply into the psychic processes,
we should have to throw a clearer light on the play of excitations between the
preconscious and the unconscious, and indeed the study of the psychoneuroses
would impel us to do so; but dreams, as it happens, give us no help in this
respect.
Just one further remark as to the day-residues. There is no doubt that it is
really these that disturb our sleep, and not our dreams which, on the contrary,
strive to guard our sleep. But we shall return to this point later.
So far we have discussed the dream-wish; we have traced it back to the sphere of
the Ucs, and have analysed its relation to the day-residues, which, in their
turn, may be either wishes, or psychic impulses of any other kind, or simply
recent impressions. We have thus found room for the claims that can be made for
the dream-forming significance of our waking mental activity in all its
multifariousness. It might even prove possible to explain, on the basis of our
train of thought, those extreme cases in which the dream, continuing the work of
the day, brings to a happy issue an unsolved problem of waking life. We merely
lack a suitable example to analyse, in order to uncover the infantile or
repressed source of wishes, the tapping of which has so successfully reinforced
the efforts of the preconscious activity. But we are not a step nearer to
answering the question: Why is it that the unconscious can furnish in sleep
nothing more than the motive-power for a wish-fulfilment? The answer to this
question must elucidate the psychic nature of the state of wishing: and it will
be given with the aid of the notion of the psychic apparatus.
We do not doubt that this apparatus, too, has only arrived at its present
perfection by a long process of evolution. Let us attempt to restore it as it
existed in an earlier stage of capacity. From postulates to be confirmed in
other ways, we know that at first the apparatus strove to keep itself as free
from stimulation as possible, and therefore, in its early structure, adopted the
arrangement of a reflex apparatus, which enabled it promptly to discharge by the
motor paths any sensory excitation reaching it from without. But this simple
function was disturbed by the exigencies of life, to which the apparatus owes
the impetus toward further development. The exigencies of life first confronted
it in the form of the great physical needs. The excitation aroused by the inner
need seeks an outlet in motility, which we may describe as internal change or
expression of the emotions. The hungry child cries or struggles helplessly. But
its situation remains unchanged; for the excitation proceeding from the inner
need has not the character of a momentary impact, but of a continuing pressure.
A change can occur only if, in some way (in the case of the child by external
assistance), there is an experience of satisfaction, which puts an end to the
internal excitation. An essential constituent of this experience is the
appearance of a certain percept (of food in our example), the memory-image of
which is henceforth associated with the memory- trace of the excitation arising
from the need. Thanks to the established connection, there results, at the next
occurrence of this need, a psychic impulse which seeks to revive the memory-
image of the former percept, and to re-evoke the former percept itself; that is,
it actually seeks to re-establish the situation of the first satisfaction. Such
an impulse is what we call a wish; the reappearance of the perception
constitutes the wish- fulfilment, and the full cathexis of the perception, by
the excitation springing from the need, constitutes the shortest path to the
wish-fulfilment. We may assume a primitive state of the psychic apparatus in
which this path is actually followed, i.e., in which the wish ends in
hallucination. This first psychic activity therefore aims at an identity of
perception: that is, at a repetition of that perception which is connected with
the satisfaction of the need.
This primitive mental activity must have been modified by bitter practical
experience into a secondary and more appropriate activity. The establishment of
identity of perception by the short regressive path within the apparatus does
not produce the same result in another respect as follows upon cathexis of the
same perception coming from without. The satisfaction does not occur, and the
need continues. In order to make the internal cathexis equivalent to the
external one, the former would have to be continuously sustained, just as
actually happens in the hallucinatory psychoses and in hunger-phantasies, which
exhaust their performance in maintaining their hold on the object desired. In
order to attain to more appropriate use of the psychic energy, it becomes
necessary to suspend the full regression, so that it does not proceed beyond the
memory-image, and thence can seek other paths, leading ultimately to the
production of the desired identity from the side of the outer world.[25] This
inhibition, as well as the subsequent deflection of the excitation, becomes the
task of a second system, which controls voluntary motility, i.e., a system whose
activity first leads on to the use of motility for purposes remembered in
advance. But all this complicated mental activity, which works its way from the
memory-image to the production of identity of perception via the outer world,
merely represents a roundabout way to wish-fulfilment made necessary by
experience.[26] Thinking is indeed nothing but a substitute for the
hallucinatory wish; and if the dream is called a wish-fulfilment, this becomes
something self-evident, since nothing but a wish can impel our psychic apparatus
to activity. The dream, which fulfils its wishes by following the short
regressive path, has thereby simply preserved for us a specimen of the primary
method of operation of the psychic apparatus, which has been abandoned as
inappropriate. What once prevailed in the waking state, when our psychic life
was still young and inefficient, seems to have been banished into our nocturnal
life; just as we still find in the nursery those discarded primitive weapons of
adult humanity, the bow and arrow. Dreaming is a fragment of the superseded
psychic life of the child. In the psychoses, those modes of operation of the
psychic apparatus which are normally suppressed in the waking state reassert
themselves, and thereupon betray their inability to satisfy our demands in the
outer world.[27]
The unconscious wish-impulses evidently strive to assert themselves even during
the day, and the fact of transference, as well as the psychoses, tells us that
they endeavour to force their way through the preconscious system to
consciousness and the command of motility. Thus, in the censorship between Ucs
and Pcs, which the dream forces us to assume, we must recognize and respect the
guardian of our psychic health. But is it not carelessness on the part of this
guardian to diminish his vigilance at night, and to allow the suppressed
impulses of the Ucs to achieve expression, thus again making possible the
process of hallucinatory regression? I think not, for when the critical guardian
goes to rest- and we have proof that his slumber is not profound- he takes care
to close the gate to motility. No matter what impulses from the usually
inhibited Ucs may bustle about the stage, there is no need to interfere with
them; they remain harmless, because they are not in a position to set in motion
the motor apparatus which alone can operate to produce any change in the outer
world. Sleep guarantees the security of the fortress which has to be guarded.
The state of affairs is less harmless when a displacement of energies is
produced, not by the decline at night in the energy put forth by the critical
censorship, but by the pathological enfeeblement of the latter, or the
pathological reinforcement of the unconscious excitations, and this while the
preconscious is cathected and the gates of motility are open. The guardian is
then overpowered; the unconscious excitations subdue the Pcs, and from the Pcs
they dominate our speech and action, or they enforce hallucinatory regressions,
thus directing an apparatus not designed for them by virtue of the attraction
exerted by perceptions on the distribution of our psychic energy. We call this
condition psychosis.
We now find ourselves in the most favourable position for continuing the
construction of our psychological scaffolding, which we left after inserting the
two systems, Ucs and Pcs. However, we still have reason to give further
consideration to the wish as the sole psychic motive-power in the dream. We have
accepted the explanation that the reason why the dream is in every case a
wish-fulfilment is that it is a function of the system Ucs, which knows no other
aim than wish-fulfilment, and which has at its disposal no forces other than the
wish-impulses. Now if we want to continue for a single moment longer to maintain
our right to develop such far-reaching psychological speculations from the facts
of dream-interpretation, we are in duty bound to show that they insert the dream
into a context which can also embrace other psychic structures. If there exists
a system of the Ucs- or something sufficiently analogous for the purposes of our
discussion- the dream cannot be its sole manifestation; every dream may be a
wish-fulfilment, but there must be other forms of abnormal wish-fulfilment as
well as dreams. And in fact the theory of all psychoneurotic symptoms culminates
in the one proposition that they, too, must be conceived as wish-fulfilments of
the unconscious.[28] Our explanation makes the dream only the first member of a
series of the greatest importance for the psychiatrist, the understanding of
which means the solution of the purely psychological part of the psychiatric
problem.[29] But in other members of this group of wish-fulfilments- for
example, in the hysterical symptoms- I know of one essential characteristic
which I have so far failed to find in the dream. Thus, from the investigations
often alluded to in this treatise, I know that the formation of an hysterical
symptom needs a junction of both the currents of our psychic life. The symptom
is not merely the expression of a realized unconscious wish; the latter must be
joined by another wish from the preconscious, which is fulfilled by the same
symptom; so that the symptom is at least doubly determined, once by each of the
conflicting systems. Just as in dreams, there is no limit to further over-
determination. The determination which does not derive from the Ucs is, as far
as I can see, invariably a thought-stream of reaction against the unconscious
wish; for example, a self- punishment. Hence I can say, quite generally, that an
hysterical symptom originates only where two contrary wish-fulfilments, having
their source in different psychic systems, are able to meet in a single
expression.[30] Examples would help us but little here, as nothing but a
complete unveiling of the complications in question can carry conviction. I will
therefore content myself with the bare assertion, and will cite one example, not
because it proves anything, but simply as an illustration. The hysterical
vomiting of a female patient proved, on the one hand, to be the fulfilment of an
unconscious phantasy from the years of puberty- namely, the wish that she might
be continually pregnant, and have a multitude of children; and this was
subsequently supplemented by the wish that she might have them by as many
fathers as possible. Against this immoderate wish there arose a powerful
defensive reaction. But as by the vomiting the patient might have spoilt her
figure and her beauty, so that she would no longer find favour in any man's
eyes, the symptom was also in keeping with the punitive trend of thought, and
so, being admissible on both sides, it was allowed to become a reality. This is
the same way of acceding to a wish-fulfilment as the queen of the Parthians was
pleased to adopt in the case of the triumvir Crassus. Believing that he had
undertaken his campaign out of greed for gold, she caused molten gold to be
poured into the throat of the corpse. "Here thou hast what thou hast longed
for!"
Of the dream we know as yet only that it expresses a wish- fulfilment of the
unconscious; and apparently the dominant preconscious system permits this
fulfilment when it has compelled the wish to undergo certain distortions. We
are, moreover, not in fact in a position to demonstrate regularly the presence
of a train of thought opposed to the dream-wish, which is realized in the dream
as well as its antagonist. Only now and then have we found in dream-analyses
signs of reaction-products as, for instance, my affection for my friend R in the
dream of my uncle (chapter IV.). But the contribution from the preconscious
which is missing here may be found in another place. The dream can provide
expression for a wish from the Ucs by means of all sorts of distortions, once
the dominant system has withdrawn itself into the wish to sleep, and has
realized this wish by producing the changes of cathexis within the psychic
apparatus which are within its power; thereupon holding on to the wish in
question for the whole duration of sleep.[31]
Now this persistent wish to sleep on the part of the preconscious has a quite
general facilitating effect on the formation of dreams. Let us recall the dream
of the father who, by the gleam of light from the death-chamber, was led to
conclude that his child's body might have caught fire. We have shown that one of
the psychic forces decisive in causing the father to draw this conclusion in the
dream instead of allowing himself to be awakened by the gleam of light was the
wish to prolong the life of the child seen in the dream by one moment. Other
wishes originating in the repressed have probably escaped us, for we are unable
to analyse this dream. But as a second source of motive- power in this dream we
may add the father's desire to sleep, for, like the life of the child, the
father's sleep is prolonged for a moment by the dream. The underlying motive is:
"Let the dream go on, or I must wake up." As in this dream, so in all others,
the wish to sleep lends its support to the unconscious wish. In chapter III. we
cited dreams which were manifestly dreams of convenience. But in truth all
dreams may claim this designation. The efficacy of the wish to go on sleeping is
most easily recognized in the awakening dreams, which so elaborate the external
sensory stimulus that it becomes compatible with the continuance of sleep; they
weave it into a dream in order to rob it of any claims it might make as a
reminder of the outer world. But this wish to go on sleeping must also play its
part in permitting all other dreams, which can only act as disturbers of the
state of sleep from within. "Don't worry; sleep on; it's only a dream," is in
many cases the suggestion of the Pcs to consciousness when the dream gets too
bad; and this describes in a quite general way the attitude of our dominant
psychic activity towards dreaming, even though the thought remains unuttered. I
must draw the conclusion that throughout the whole of our sleep we are just as
certain that we are dreaming as we are certain that we are sleeping. It is
imperative to disregard the objection that our consciousness is never directed
to the latter knowledge, and that it is directed to the former knowledge only on
special occasions, when the censorship feels, as it were, taken by surprise. On
the contrary, there are persons in whom the retention at night of the knowledge
that they are sleeping and dreaming becomes quite manifest, and who are thus
apparently endowed with the conscious faculty of guiding their dream-life. Such
a dreamer, for example, is dissatisfied with the turn taken by a dream; he
breaks it off without waking, and begins it afresh, in order to continue it
along different lines, just like a popular author who, upon request, gives a
happier ending to his play. Or on another occasion, when the dream places him in
a sexually exciting situation, he thinks in his sleep: "I don't want to continue
this dream and exhaust myself by an emission; I would rather save it for a real
situation."
The Marquis Hervey (Vaschide) declared that he had gained such power over his
dreams that he could accelerate their course at will, and turn them in any
direction he wished. It seems that in him the wish to sleep had accorded a place
to another, a preconscious wish, the wish to observe his dreams and to derive
pleasure from them. Sleep is just as compatible with such a wish- resolve as it
is with some proviso as a condition of waking up (wet-nurse's sleep), We know,
too, that in all persons an interest in dreams greatly increases the number of
dreams remembered after waking.
Concerning other observations as to the guidance of dreams, Ferenczi states:
"The dream takes the thought that happens to occupy our psychic life at the
moment, and elaborates it from all sides. It lets any given dream-picture drop
when there is a danger that the wish-fulfilment will miscarry, and attempts a
new kind of solution, until it finally succeeds in creating a wish- fulfilment
that satisfies in one compromise both instances of the psychic life."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes
[1] Similar views are expressed by Foucault and Tannery.
[2] Seldom have you understood me,
Seldom have I understood you,
But when we found ourselves in the mire,
We at once understood each other!
[3] Cf. The Psycho-pathology of Everday Life.
[4] This peremptory statement: "Whatever disturbs the progress of the work is a
resistance" might easily be misunderstood. It has, of course, the significance
merely of a technical rule, a warning for the analyst. It is not denied that
during an analysis events may occur which cannot be ascribed to the intention of
the person analysed. The patient's father may die in other ways than by being
murdered by the patient, or a war may break out and interrupt the analysis. But
despite the obvious exaggeration of the above statement there is still something
new and useful in it. Even if the disturbing event is real and independent of
the patient, the extent of the disturbing influence does often depend only on
him, and the resistance reveals itself unmistakably in the ready and immoderate
exploitation of such an opportunity. -
[5] As an example of the significance of doubt and uncertainty in a dream with a
simultaneous shrinking of the dream-content to a single element, see my General
Introduction to Psycho-Analysis the dream of the sceptical lady patient, p. 492
below, the analysis of which was successful, despite a short postponement. -
[6] Concerning the intention of forgetting in general, see my The
Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life.
[7] Such corrections in the use of foreign languages are not rare in dreams, but
they are usually attributed to foreigners. Maury (p. 143), while he was studying
English, once dreamed that he informed someone that he had called on him the day
before in the following words: "I called for you yesterday." The other answered
correctly: "You mean: I called on you yesterday."
[8] Ernest Jones describes an analogous case of frequent occurrence; during the
analysis of one dream another dream of the same night is often recalled which
until then was not merely forgotten, but was not even suspected.
[9] Studien uber Hysterie, Case II.
[10] Dreams which have occurred during the first years of childhood, and which
have sometimes been retained in the memory for decades with perfect sensorial
freshness, are almost always of great importance for the understanding of the
development and the neurosis of the dreamer. The analysis of them protects the
physician from errors and uncertainties which might confuse him even
theoretically.
[11] Only recently has my attention been called to the fact that Ed. von
Hartmann took the same view with regard to this psychologically important point:
Incidental to the discussion of the role of the unconscious in artistic creation
(Philos. d. Unbew., Vol. i, Sect. B., Chap. V) Eduard von Hartmann clearly
enunciated the law of association of ideas which is directed by unconscious
directing ideas, without however realizing the scope of this law. With him it
was a question of demonstrating that "every combination of a sensuous idea when
it is not left entirely to chance, but is directed to a definite end, is in need
of help from the unconscious," and that the conscious interest in any particular
thought-association is a stimulus for the unconscious to discover from among the
numberless possible ideas the one which corresponds to the directing idea. "It
is the unconscious that selects, and appropriately, in accordance with the aims
of the interest: and this holds true for the associations in abstract thinking
(as sensible representations and artistic combinations as well as for flashes of
wit)." Hence, a limiting of the association of ideas to ideas that evoke and are
evoked in the sense of pure association-psychology is untenable. Such a
restriction "would be justified only if there were states in human life in which
man was free not only from any conscious purpose, but also from the domination
or cooperation of any unconscious interest, any passing mood. But such a state
hardly ever comes to pass, for even if one leaves one's train of thought
seemingly altogether to chance, or if one surrenders oneself entirely to the
involuntary dreams of phantasy, yet always other leading interests, dominant
feelings and moods prevail at one time rather than another, and these will
always exert an influence on the association of ideas." (Philos. d. Unbew., IIe,
Aufl. i. 246). In semi-conscious dreams there always appear only such ideas as
correspond to the (unconscious) momentary main interest. By rendering prominent
the feelings and moods over the free thought-series, the methodical procedure of
psycho-analysis is thoroughly justified even from the standpoint of Hartmann's
Psychology (N. E. Pohorilles, Internat. Zeitschrift. f. Ps. A., I, [1913], p.
605). Du Prel concludes from the fact that a name which we vainly try to recall
suddenly occurs to the mind that there is an unconscious but none the less
purposeful thinking, whose result then appears in consciousness (Philos. d.
Mystik, p. 107).
[12] Jung has brilliantly corroborated this statement by analyses of dementia
praecox. (Cf. The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, translated by A. A. Brill.
Monograph Series, [Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Publishing Co., New
York].)
[13] The same considerations naturally hold good of the case in which
superficial associations are exposed in the dream-content, as, for example, in
both the dreams reported by Maury (p. 50, pelerinage- pelletier- pelle,
kilometer- kilograms- gilolo, Lobelia- Lopez- Lotto). I know from my work with
neurotics what kind of reminiscence is prone to represent itself in this manner.
It is the consultation of encyclopedias by which most people have satisfied
their need of an explanation of the sexual mystery when obsessed by the
curiosity of puberty.
[14] The above statements, which when written sounded very improbable, have
since been corroborated and applied experimentally by Jung and his pupils in the
Diagnostiche Assoziationsstudien.
[15] Psychophysik, Part. II, p. 520.
[16] Since writing this, I have thought that consciousness occurs actually in
the locality of the memory-trace.
[17] The further elaboration of this linear diagram will have to reckon with the
assumption that the system following the Pcs represents the one to which we must
attribute consciousness (Cs), so that P = Cs.
[18] The first indication of the element of regression is already encountered in
the writings of Albertus Magnus. According to him the imaginatio constructs the
dream out of the tangible objects which it has retained. The process is the
converse of that operating in the waking state. Hobbes states (Leviathan, ch.
2): "In sum our dreams are the reverse of our imagination, the motion, when we
are awake, beginning at one end, and when we dream at another" (quoted by
Havelock Ellis, loc. cit., p. 112). -
[19] From the Greek Kathexo, to occupy, used here in place of the author's term
Besetzung, to signify a charge or investment of energy.- TR.
[20] Selected Papers on Hysteria, "Further Observations on the
Defence-Neuro-Psychoses," p. 97 above.
[21] In a statement of the theory of repression it should be explained that a
thought passes into repression owing to the co- operation of two of the factors
which influence it. On the one side (the censorship of Cs) it is pushed, and
from the other side (the Ucs) it is pulled, much as one is helped to the top of
the Great Pyramid. (Compare the paper Repression, p. 422 below.)
[22] They share this character of indestructibility with all other psychic acts
that are really unconscious- that is, with psychic acts belonging solely to the
system Ucs. These paths are opened once and for all; they never fall into
disease; they conduct the excitation process to discharge as often as they are
charged again with unconscious excitation. To speak metaphorically, they suffer
no other form of annihilation than did the shades of the lower regions in the
Odyssey, who awoke to new life the moment they drank blood. The processes
depending on the preconscious system are destructible in quite another sense.
The psychotherapy of the neuroses is based on this difference.
[23] I have endeavoured to penetrate farther into the relations of the sleeping
state and the conditions of hallucination in my essay, "Metapsychological
Supplement to the Theory of Dreams," Collected Papers, IV, p. 137.
[24] Here one may consider the idea of the super-ego which was later recognized
by psycho-analysis.
[25] In other words: the introduction of a test of reality is recognized as
necessary.
[26] Le Lorrain justly extols the wish-fulfilments of dreams: "Sans fatigue
serieuse, sans etre oblige de recourir a cette lutte opiniatre et longue qui use
et corrode les jouissances poursuivies." [Without serious fatigue, without being
obliged to have recourse to that long and stubborn struggle which exhausts and
wears away pleasures sought.]
[27] I have further elaborated this train of thought elsewhere, where I have
distinguished the two principles involved as the pleasure-principle and the
reality-principle. Formulations regarding the Two Principles in Mental
Functioning, in Collected Papers, Vol. iv. p. 13.
[28] Expressed more exactly: One portion of the symptom corresponds to the
unconscious wish-fulfilment, while the other corresponds to the
reaction-formation opposed to it.
[29] Hughlings Jackson has expressed himself as follows: "Find out all about
dreams, and you will have found out all about insanity."
[30] Cf. my latest formulation (in Zeitschrift fur Sexual- wissenschaft, Bd. I)
of the origin of hysterical symptoms in the treatise on "Hysterical Phantasies
and their Relation to Bisexuality," Collected Papers, II, p. 51. This forms
chapter X of Selected Papers on Hysteria, p. 115 above.
[31] This idea has been borrowed from the theory of sleep of Liebault, who
revived hypnotic research in modern times (Du Sommeil provoque, etc., Paris
[1889]).
F. The Unconscious and
Consciousness. Reality
E. The Primary and Secondary Processes. Repression
D. Waking Caused by Dreams -- The Function of Dreams -- The Anxiety Dream
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