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The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 7 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM PROCESSES Psychology
CHAPTER 7 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM PROCESSES
A. The Forgetting of Dreams
I propose, then, that we shall first of all turn our attention to a subject
which brings us to a hitherto disregarded objection, which threatens to
undermine the very foundation of our efforts at dream-interpretation. The
objection has been made from more than one quarter that the dream which we wish
to interpret is really unknown to us, or, to be more precise, that we have no
guarantee that we know it as it really occurred.
What we recollect of the dream, and what we subject to our methods of
interpretation, is, in the first place, mutilated by the unfaithfulness of our
memory, which seems quite peculiarly incapable of retaining dreams, and which
may have omitted precisely the most significant parts of their content. For when
we try to consider our dreams attentively, we often have reason to complain that
we have dreamed much than we remember; that unfortunately we know nothing more
than this one fragment, and that our recollection of even this fragment seems to
us strangely uncertain. Moreover, everything goes to prove that our memory
reproduces the dream not only incompletely but also untruthfully, in a
falsifying manner. As, on the one hand, we may doubt whether what we dreamed was
really as disconnected as it is in our recollections, so on the other hand we
may doubt whether a dream was really as coherent as our account of it; whether
in our attempted reproduction we have not filled in the gaps which really
existed, or those which are due to forgetfulness, with new and arbitrarily
chosen material; whether we have not embellished the dream, rounded it off and
corrected it, so that any conclusion as to its real content becomes impossible.
Indeed, one writer (Spitta)[1] surmises that all that is orderly and coherent is
really first put into the dream during the attempt to recall it. Thus we are in
danger of being deprived of the very object whose value we have undertaken to
determine.
In all our dream-interpretations we have hitherto ignored these warnings. On the
contrary, indeed, we have found that the smallest, most insignificant, and most
uncertain components of the dream-content invited interpretations no less
emphatically than those which were distinctly and certainly contained in the
dream. In the dream of Irma's injection we read: "I quickly called in Dr. M,"
and we assumed that even this small addendum would not have got into the dream
if it had not been susceptible of a special derivation. In this way we arrived
at the history of that unfortunate patient to whose bedside I quickly called my
older colleague. In the seemingly absurd dream which treated the difference
between fifty-one and fifty-six as a quantity negligible the number fifty-one
was mentioned repeatedly. Instead of regarding this as a matter of course, or a
detail of indifferent value, we proceeded from this to a second train of thought
in the latent dream-content, which led to the number fifty-one, and by following
up this clue we arrived at the fears which proposed fifty-one years as the term
of life in the sharpest opposition to a dominant train of thought which was
boastfully lavish of the years. In the dream Non vixit I found, as an
insignificant interpolation, that I had at first overlooked the sentence: As P
does not understand him, Fl asks me, etc. The interpretation then coming to a
standstill, I went back to these words, and I found through them the way to the
infantile phantasy which appeared in the dream-thoughts as an intermediate point
of junction. This came about by means of the poet's verses:
Selten habt ihr mich verstanden,
Selten auch verstand ich Euch,
Nur wenn wir im Kot uns fanden
So verstanden wir uns gleich![2]
Every analysis will afford evidence of the fact that the most insignificant
features of the dream are indispensable to interpretation, and will show how the
completion of the task is delayed if we postpone our examination of them. We
have given equal attention, in the interpretation of dreams, to every nuance of
verbal expression found in them; indeed, whenever we are confronted by a
senseless or insufficient wording, as though we had failed to translate the
dream into the proper version, we have respected even these defects of
expression. In brief, what other writers have regarded as arbitrary
improvisations, concocted hastily to avoid confusion, we have treated like a
sacred text. This contradiction calls for explanation.
It would appear, without doing any injustice to the writers in question, that
the explanation is in our favour. From the standpoint of our newly-acquired
insight into the origin of dreams, all contradictions are completely reconciled.
It is true that we distort the dream in our attempt to reproduce it; we once
more find therein what we have called the secondary and often misunderstanding
elaboration of the dream by the agency of normal thinking. But this distortion
is itself no more than a part of the elaboration to which the dream-thoughts are
constantly subjected as a result of the dream-censorship. Other writers have
here suspected or observed that part of the dream-distortion whose work is
manifest; but for us this is of little consequence, as we know that a far more
extensive work of distortion, not so easily apprehended, has already taken the
dream for its object from among the hidden dream-thoughts. The only mistake of
these writers consists in believing the modification effected in the dream by
its recollection and verbal expression to be arbitrary, incapable of further
solution, and consequently liable to lead us astray in our cognition of the
dream. They underestimate the determination of the dream in the psyche. Here
there is nothing arbitrary. It can be shown that in all cases a second train of
thought immediately takes over the determination of the elements which have been
left undetermined by the first. For example, I wish quite arbitrarily to think
of a number; but this is not possible; the number that occurs to me is
definitely and necessarily determined by thoughts within me which may be quite
foreign to my momentary purpose.[3] The modifications which the dream undergoes
in its revision by the waking mind are just as little arbitrary. They preserve
an associative connection with the content, whose place they take, and serve to
show us the way to this content, which may itself be a substitute for yet
another content.
In analysing the dreams of patients I impose the following test of this
assertion, and never without success. If the first report of a dream seems not
very comprehensible, I request the dreamer to repeat it. This he rarely does in
the same words. But the passages in which the expression is modified are thereby
made known to me as the weak points of the dream's disguise; they are what the
embroidered emblem on Siegfried's raiment was to Hagen. These are the points
from which the analysis may start. The narrator has been admonished by my
announcement that I intend to take special pains to solve the dream, and
immediately, obedient to the urge of resistance, he protects the weak points of
the dream's disguise, replacing a treacherous expression by a less relevant one.
He thus calls my attention to the expressions which he has discarded. From the
efforts made to guard against the solution of the dream, I can also draw
conclusions about the care with which the raiment of the dream has been woven.
The writers whom I have mentioned are, however, less justified when they
attribute so much importance to the doubt with which our judgment approaches the
relation of the dream. For this doubt is not intellectually warranted; our
memory can give no guarantees, but nevertheless we are compelled to credit its
statements far more frequently than is objectively justifiable. Doubt concerning
the accurate reproduction of the dream, or of individual data of the dream, is
only another offshoot of the dream-censorship, that is, of resistance to the
emergence of the dream-thoughts into consciousness. This resistance has not yet
exhausted itself by the displacements and substitutions which it has effected,
so that it still clings, in the form of doubt, to what has been allowed to
emerge. We can recognize this doubt all the more readily in that it is careful
never to attack the intensive elements of the dream, but only the weak and
indistinct ones. But we already know that a transvaluation of all the psychic
values has taken place between the dream-thoughts and the dream. The distortion
has been made possible only by devaluation; it constantly manifests itself in
this way and sometimes contents itself therewith. If doubt is added to the
indistinctness of an element of the dream-content, we may, following this
indication, recognize in this element a direct offshoot of one of the outlawed
dream-thoughts. The state of affairs is like that obtaining after a great
revolution in one of the republics of antiquity or the Renaissance. The once
powerful, ruling families of the nobility are now banished; all high posts are
filled by upstarts; in the city itself only the poorer and most powerless
citizens, or the remoter followers of the vanquished party, are tolerated. Even
the latter do not enjoy the full rights of citizenship. They are watched with
suspicion. In our case, instead of suspicion we have doubt. I must insist,
therefore, that in the analysis of a dream one must emancipate oneself from the
whole scale of standards of reliability; and if there is the slightest
possibility that this or that may have occurred in the dream, it should be
treated as an absolute certainty. Until one has decided to reject all respect
for appearances in tracing the dream-elements, the analysis will remain at a
standstill. Disregard of the element concerned has the psychic effect, in the
person analysed, that nothing in connection with the unwished ideas behind this
element will occur to him. This effect is really not self-evident; it would be
quite reasonable to say, "Whether this or that was contained in the dream I do
not know for certain; but the following ideas happen to occur to me." But no one
ever does say so; it is precisely the disturbing effect of doubt in the analysis
that permits it to be unmasked as an offshoot and instrument of the psychic
resistance. Psycho- analysis is justifiably suspicions. One of its rules runs:
Whatever disturbs the progress of the work is a resistance. [4] -
The forgetting of dreams, too, remains inexplicible until we seek to explain it
by the power of the psychic censorship. The feeling that one has dreamed a great
deal during the night and has retained only a little of it may have yet another
meaning in a number of cases: it may perhaps mean that the dream-work has
continued in a perceptible manner throughout the night, but has left behind it
only one brief dream. There is, however, no possible doubt that a dream is
progressively forgotten on waking. One often forgets it in spite of a painful
effort to recover it. I believe, however, that just as one generally
overestimates the extent of this forgetting, so also one overestimates the
lacunae in our knowledge of the dream due to the gaps occurring in it. All the
dream-content that has been lost by forgetting can often be recovered by
analysis; in a number of cases, at all events, it is possible to discover from a
single remaining fragment, not the dream, of course- which, after all, is of no
importance- but the whole of the dream-thoughts. It requires a greater
expenditure of attention and self-suppression in the analysis; that is all; but
it shows that the forgetting of the dream is not innocent of hostile
intention.[5]
A convincing proof of the tendencious nature of dream-forgetting- of the fact
that it serves the resistance- is obtained on analysis by investigating a
preliminary stage of forgetting.[6] It often happens that, in the midst of an
interpretation, an omitted fragment of the dream suddenly emerges which is
described as having been previously forgotten. This part of the dream that has
been wrested from forgetfulness is always the most important part. It lies on
the shortest path to the solution of the dream, and for that every reason it was
most exposed to the resistance. Among the examples of dreams that I have
included in the text of this treatise, it once happened that I had subsequently
to interpolate a fragment of dream-content. The dream is a dream of travel,
which revenges itself on two unamiable traveling companions; I have left it
almost entirely uninterpreted, as part of its content is obscene. The part
omitted reads: "I said, referring to a book of Schiller's: 'It is from...' but
corrected myself, as I realized my mistake: 'It is by...' Whereupon the man
remarked to his sister, 'Yes, he said it correctly.'"[7]
Self-correction in dreams, which to some writers seems so wonderful, does not
really call for consideration. But I will draw from my own memory an instance
typical of verbal errors in dreams. I was nineteen years of age when I visited
England for the first time, and I spent a day on the shore of the Irish Sea.
Naturally enough, I amused myself by picking up the marine animals left on the
beach by the tide, and I was just examining a starfish (the dream begins with
Hollthurn- Holothurian) when a pretty little girl came up to me and asked me:
"Is it a starfish? Is it alive?" I replied, "Yes, he is alive," but then felt
ashamed of my mistake, and repeated the sentence correctly. For the grammatical
mistake which I then made, the dream substitutes another which is quite common
among German people. "Das Buch ist von Schiller" is not to be translated by "the
book is from," but by "the book is by." That the dream-work accomplishes this
substitution, because the word from, owing to its consonance with the German
adjective fromm (pious, devout) makes a remarkable condensation possible, should
no longer surprise us after all that we have heard of the intentions of the
dream-work and its unscrupulous selection of means. But what relation has this
harmless recollection of the seashore to my dream? It explains, by means of a
very innocent example, that I have used the word- the word denoting gender, or
sex or the sexual (he)- in the wrong place. This is surely one of the keys to
the solution of the dream. Those who have heard of the derivation of the
book-title Matter and Motion (Moliere in Le Malade Imaginaire: La Matiere
est-elle laudable?- A Motion of the bowels) will readily be able to supply the
missing parts.
Moreover, I can prove conclusively, by a demonstratio ad oculos, that the
forgetting of the dream is in a large measure the work of the resistance. A
patient tells me that he has dreamed, but that the dream has vanished without
leaving a trace, as if nothing had happened. We set to work, however; I come
upon a resistance which I explain to the patient; encouraging and urging him, I
help him to become reconciled to some disagreeable thought; and I have hardly
succeeded in doing so when he exclaims: "Now I can recall what I dreamed!" The
same resistance which that day disturbed him in the work of interpretation
caused him also to forget the dream. By overcoming this resistance I have
brought back the dream to his memory.
In the same way the patient, having reached a certain part of the work, may
recall a dream which occurred three, four, or more days ago, and which has
hitherto remained in oblivion.[8]
Psycho-analytical experience has furnished us with yet another proof of the fact
that the forgetting of dreams depends far more on the resistance than on the
mutually alien character of the waking and sleeping states, as some writers have
believed it to depend. It often happens to me, as well as to other analysts, and
to patients under treatment, that we are waked from sleep by a dream, as we say,
and that immediately thereafter, while in full possession of our mental
faculties, we begin to interpret the dream. Often in such cases I have not
rested until I have achieved a full understanding of the dream, and yet it has
happened that after waking I have forgotten the interpretation- work as
completely as I have forgotten the dream-content itself, though I have been
aware that I have dreamed and that I had interpreted the dream. The dream has
far more frequently taken the result of the interpretation with it into
forgetfulness than the intellectual faculty has succeeded in retaining the dream
in the memory. But between this work of interpretation and the waking thoughts
there is not that psychic abyss by which other writers have sought to explain
the forgetting of dreams. When Morton Prince objects to my explanation of the
forgetting of dreams on the ground that it is only a special case of the amnesia
of dissociated psychic states, and that the impossibility of applying my
explanation of this special amnesia to other types of amnesia makes it valueless
even for its immediate purpose, he reminds the reader that in all his
descriptions of such dissociated states he has never attempted to discover the
dynamic explanation underlying these phenomena. For had he done so, he would
surely have discovered that repression (and the resistance produced thereby) is
the cause not of these dissociations merely, but also of the amnesia of their
psychic content.
That dreams are as little forgotten as other psychic acts, that even in their
power of impressing themselves on the memory they may fairly be compared with
the other psychic performances, was proved to me by an experiment which I was
able to make while preparing the manuscript of this book. I had preserved in my
notes a great many dreams of my own which, for one reason or another, I could
not interpret, or, at the time of dreaming them, could interpret only very
imperfectly. In order to obtain material to illustrate my assertion, I attempted
to interpret some of them a year or two later. In this attempt I was invariably
successful; indeed, I may say that the interpretation was effected more easily
after all this time than when the dreams were of recent occurrence. As a
possible explanation of this fact, I would suggest that I had overcome many of
the internal resistances which had disturbed me at the time of dreaming. In such
subsequent interpretations I have compared the old yield of dream-thoughts with
the present result, which has usually been more abundant, and I have invariably
found the old dream-thoughts unaltered among the present ones. However, I soon
recovered from my surprise when I reflected that I had long been accustomed to
interpret dreams of former years that had occasionally been related to me by my
patients as though they had been dreams of the night before; by the same method,
and with the same success. In the section on anxiety-dreams I shall include two
examples of such delayed dream-interpretations. When I made this experiment for
the first time I expected, not unreasonably, that dreams would behave in this
connection merely like neurotic symptoms. For when I treat a psychoneurotic for
instance, an hysterical patient, by psychoanalysis, I am compelled to find
explanations for the first symptoms of the malady, which have long since
disappeared, as well as for those still existing symptoms which have brought the
patient to me; and I find the former problem easier to solve than the more
exigent one of today. In the Studies in Hysteria,[9] published as early as 1895,
I was able to give the explanation of a first hysterical attack which the
patient, a woman over forty years of age, had experienced in her fifteenth
year.[10]
I will now make a few rather unsystematic remarks relating to the
interpretations of dreams, which will perhaps serve as a guide to the reader who
wishes to test my assertions by the analysis of his own dreams.
He must not expect that it will be a simple and easy matter to interpret his own
dreams. Even the observation of endoptic phenomena, and other sensations which
are commonly immune from attention, calls for practice, although this group of
observations is not opposed by any psychic motive. It is very much more
difficult to get hold of the unwished ideas. He who seeks to do so must fulfil
the requirements laid down in this treatise, and while following the rules here
given, he must endeavour to restrain all criticism, all preconceptions, and all
affective or intellectual bias in himself during the work of analysis. He must
be ever mindful of the precept which Claude Bernard held up to the experimenter
in the physiological laboratory: "Travailler comme une bete"- that is, he must
be as enduring as an animal, and also as disinterested in the results of his
work. He who will follow this advice will no longer find the task a difficult
one. The interpretation of a dream cannot always be accomplished in one session;
after following up a chain of associations you will often feel that your working
capacity is exhausted; the dream will not tell you anything more that day; it is
then best to break off, and to resume the work the following day. Another
portion of the dream-content then solicits your attention, and you thus obtain
access to a fresh stratum of the dream-thoughts. One might call this the
fractional interpretation of dreams.
It is most difficult to induce the beginner in dream- interpretation to
recognize the fact that his task is not finished when he is in possession of a
complete interpretation of the dream which is both ingenious and coherent, and
which gives particulars of all the elements of the dream-content. Besides this,
another interpretation, an over-interpretation of the same dream, one which has
escaped him, may be possible. It is really not easy to form an idea of the
wealth of trains of unconscious thought striving for expression in our minds, or
to credit the adroitness displayed by the dream-work in killing- so to speak-
seven flies at one stroke, like the journeyman tailor in the fairy-tale, by
means of its ambiguous modes of expression. The reader will constantly be
inclined to reproach the author for a superfluous display of ingenuity, but
anyone who has had personal experience of dream-interpretation will know better
than to do so.
On the other hand, I cannot accept the opinion, first expressed by H. Silberer,
that every dream- or even that many dreams, and certain groups of dreams- calls
for two different interpretations, between which there is even supposed to be a
fixed relation. One of these, which Silberer calls the psycho- analytic
interpretation, attributes to the dream any meaning you please, but in the main
an infantile sexual one. The other, the more important interpretation, which he
calls the anagogic interpretation, reveals the more serious and often profound
thoughts which the dream-work has used as its material. Silberer does not prove
this assertion by citing a number of dreams which he has analysed in these two
directions. I am obliged to object to this opinion on the ground that it is
contrary to facts. The majority of dreams require no over-interpretation, and
are especially insusceptible of an anagogic interpretation. The influence of a
tendency which seeks to veil the fundamental conditions of dream-formation and
divert our interest from its instinctual roots is as evident in Silberer's
theory as in other theoretical efforts of the last few years. In a number of
cases I can confirm Silberer's assertions; but in these the analysis shows me
that the dream-work was confronted with the task of transforming a series of
highly abstract thoughts, incapable of direct representation, from waking life
into a dream. The dream- work attempted to accomplish this task by seizing upon
another thought-material which stood in loose and often allegorical relation to
the abstract thoughts, and thereby diminished the difficulty of representing
them. The abstract interpretation of a dream originating in this manner will be
given by the dreamer immediately, but the correct interpretation of the
substituted material can be obtained only by means of the familiar technique.
The question whether every dream can be interpreted is to be answered in the
negative. One should not forget that in the work of interpretation one is
opposed by the psychic forces that are responsible for the distortion of the
dream. Whether one can master the inner resistances by one's intellectual
interest, one's capacity for self-control, one's psychological knowledge, and
one's experience in dream-interpretation depends on the relative strength of the
opposing forces. It is always possible to make some progress; one can at all
events go far enough to become convinced that a dream has meaning, and generally
far enough to gain some idea of its meaning. It very often happens that a second
dream enables us to confirm and continue the interpretation assumed for the
first. A whole series of dreams, continuing for weeks or months, may have a
common basis, and should therefore be interpreted as a continuity. In dreams
that follow one another, we often observe that one dream takes as its central
point something that is only alluded to in the periphery of the next dream, and
conversely, so that even in their interpretations the two supplement each other.
That different dreams of the same night are always to be treated, in the work of
interpretation, as a whole, I have already shown by examples.
In the best interpreted dreams we often have to leave one passage in obscurity
because we observe during the interpretation that we have here a tangle of
dream-thoughts which cannot be unravelled, and which furnishes no fresh
contribution to the dream-content. This, then, is the keystone of the dream, the
point at which it ascends into the unknown. For the dream-thoughts which we
encounter during the interpretation commonly have no termination, but run in all
directions into the net-like entanglement of our intellectual world. It is from
some denser part of this fabric that the dream-wish then arises, like the
mushroom from its mycelium.
Let us now return to the facts of dream-forgetting. So far, of course, we have
failed to draw any important conclusion from them. When our waking life shows an
unmistakable intention to forget the dream which has been formed during the
night, either as a whole, immediately after waking, or little by little in the
course of the day, and when we recognize as the chief factor in this process of
forgetting the psychic resistance against the dream which has already done its
best to oppose the dream at night, the question then arises: What actually has
made the dream- formation possible against this resistance? Let us consider the
most striking case, in which the waking life has thrust the dream aside as
though it had never happened. If we take into consideration the play of the
psychic forces, we are compelled to assert that the dream would never have come
into existence had the resistance prevailed at night as it did by day. We
conclude, then, that the resistance loses some part of its force during the
night; we know that it has not been discontinued, as we have demonstrated its
share in the formation of dreams- namely, the work of distortion. We have
therefore to consider the possibility that at night the resistance is merely
diminished, and that dream- formation becomes possible because of this
slackening of the resistance; and we shall readily understand that as it regains
its full power on waking it immediately thrusts aside what it was forced to
admit while it was feeble. Descriptive psychology teaches us that the chief
determinant of dream-formation is the dormant state of the psyche; and we may
now add the following explanation: The state of sleep makes dream-formation
possible by reducing the endopsychic censorship.
We are certainly tempted to look upon this as the only possible conclusion to be
drawn from the facts of dream-forgetting, and to develop from this conclusion
further deductions as to the comparative energy operative in the sleeping and
waking states. But we shall stop here for the present. When we have penetrated a
little farther into the psychology of dreams we shall find that the origin of
dream-formation may be differently conceived. The resistance which tends to
prevent the dream-thoughts from becoming conscious may perhaps be evaded without
suffering reduction. It is also plausible that both the factors which favour
dream-formation, the reduction as well as the evasion of the resistance, may be
simultaneously made possible by the sleeping state. But we shall pause here, and
resume the subject a little later.
We must now consider another series of objections against our procedure in
dream-interpretation. For we proceed by dropping all the directing ideas which
at other times control reflection, directing our attention to a single element
of the dream, noting the involuntary thoughts that associate themselves with
this element. We then take up the next component of the dream-content, and
repeat the operation with this; and, regardless of the direction taken by the
thoughts, we allow ourselves to be led onwards by them, rambling from one
subject to another. At the same time, we harbour the confident hope that we may
in the end, and without intervention on our part, come upon the dream- thoughts
from which the dream originated. To this the critic may make the following
objection: That we arrive somewhere if we start from a single element of the
dream is not remarkable. Something can be associatively connected with every
idea. The only thing that is remarkable is that one should succeed in hitting
upon the dream-thoughts in this arbitrary and aimless excursion. It is probably
a self-deception; the investigator follows the chain of associations from the
one element which is taken up until he finds the chain breaking off, whereupon
he takes up a second element; it is thus only natural that the originally
unconfined associations should now become narrowed down. He has the former chain
of associations still in mind, and will therefore in the analysis of the second
dream-idea hit all the more readily upon single associations which have
something in common with the associations of the first chain. He then imagines
that he has found a thought which represents a point of junction between two of
the dream-elements. As he allows himself all possible freedom of
thought-connection, excepting only the transitions from one idea to another
which occur in normal thinking, it is not difficult for him finally to concoct
out of a series of intermediary thoughts, something which he calls the
dream-thoughts; and without any guarantee, since they are otherwise unknown, he
palms these off as the psychic equivalent of the dream. But all this is a purely
arbitrary procedure, an ingenious-looking exploitation of chance, and anyone who
will go to this useless trouble can in this way work out any desired
interpretation for any dream whatever.
If such objections are really advanced against us, we may in defence refer to
the impression produced by our dream- interpretations, the surprising
connections with other dream- elements which appear while we are following up
the individual ideas, and the improbability that anything which so perfectly
covers and explains the dream as do our dream-interpretations could be achieved
otherwise than by following previously established psychic connections. We might
also point to the fact that the procedure in dream-interpretation is identical
with the procedure followed in the resolution of hysterical symptoms, where the
correctness of the method is attested by the emergence and disappearance of the
symptoms- that is, where the interpretation of the text is confirmed by the
interpolated illustrations. But we have no reason to avoid this problem- namely,
how one can arrive at a pre-existent aim by following an arbitrarily and
aimlessly maundering chain of thoughts- since we shall be able not to solve the
problem, it is true, but to get rid of it entirely.
For it is demonstrably incorrect to state that we abandon ourselves to an
aimless excursion of thought when, as in the interpretation of dreams, we
renounce reflection and allow the involuntary ideas to come to the surface. It
can be shown that we are able to reject only those directing ideas which are
known to us, and that with the cessation of these the unknown- or, as we
inexactly say, unconscious- directing ideas immediately exert their influence,
and henceforth determine the flow of the involuntary ideas. Thinking without
directing ideas cannot be ensured by any influence we ourselves exert on our own
psychic life; neither do I know of any state of psychic derangement in which
such a mode of thought establishes itself.[11] The psychiatrists have here far
too prematurely relinquished the idea of the solidity of the psychic structure.
I know that an unregulated stream of thoughts, devoid of directing ideas, can
occur as little in the realm of hysteria and paranoia as in the formation or
solution of dreams. Perhaps it does not occur at all in the endogenous psychic
affections, and, according to the ingenious hypothesis of Lauret, even the
deliria observed in confused psychic states have meaning and are
incomprehensible to us only because of omissions. I have had the same conviction
whenever I have had an opportunity of observing such states. The deliria are the
work of a censorship which no longer makes any effort to conceal its sway,
which, instead of lending its support to a revision that is no longer obnoxious
to it, cancels regardlessly anything to which it objects, thus causing the
remnant to appear disconnected. This censorship proceeds like the Russian
censorship on the frontier, which allows only those foreign journals which have
had certain passages blacked out to fall into the bands of the readers to be
protected.
The free play of ideas following any chain of associations may perhaps occur in
cases of destructive organic affections of the brain. What, however, is taken to
be such in the psychoneuroses may always be explained as the influence of the
censorship on a series of thoughts which have been pushed into the foreground by
the concealed directing ideas.[12] It has been considered an unmistakable sign
of free association unencumbered by directing ideas if the emerging ideas (or
images) appear to be connected by means of the so-called superficial
associations- that is, by assonance, verbal ambiguity, and temporal coincidence,
without inner relationship of meaning; in other words, if they are connected by
all those associations which we allow ourselves to exploit in wit and playing
upon words. This distinguishing mark holds good with associations which lead us
from the elements of the dream-content to the intermediary thoughts, and from
these to the dream-thoughts proper; in many analyses of dreams we have found
surprising examples of this. In these no connection was too loose and no
witticism too objectionable to serve as a bridge from one thought to another.
But the correct understanding of such surprising tolerance is not far to seek.
Whenever one psychic element is connected with another by an obnoxious and
superficial association, there exists also a correct and more profound
connection between the two, which succumbs to the resistance of the censorship.
The correct explanation for the predominance of the superficial associations is
the pressure of the censorship, and not the suppression of the directing ideas.
Whenever the censorship renders the normal connective paths impassable, the
superficial associations will replace the deeper ones in the representation. It
is as though in a mountainous region a general interruption of traffic, for
example an inundation, should render the broad highways impassable: traffic
would then have to be maintained by steep and inconvenient tracks used at other
times only by the hunter.
We can here distinguish two cases which, however, are essentially one. In the
first case, the censorship is directed only against the connection of two
thoughts which, being detached from one another, escape its opposition. The two
thoughts then enter successively into consciousness; their connection remains
concealed; but in its place there occurs to us a superficial connection between
the two which would not otherwise have occurred to us, and which as a rule
connects with another angle of the conceptual complex instead of that from which
the suppressed but essential connection proceeds. Or, in the second case, both
thoughts, owing to their content, succumb to the censorship; both then appear
not in their correct form but in a modified, substituted form; and both
substituted thoughts are so selected as to represent, by a superficial
association, the essential relation which existed between those that they have
replaced. Under the pressure of the censorship, the displacement of a normal and
vital association by one superficial and apparently absurd has thus occurred in
both cases.
Because we know of these displacements, we unhesitatingly rely upon even the
superficial associations which occur in the course of dream-interpretation.[13]
The psycho-analysis of neurotics makes abundant use of the two principles: that
with the abandonment of the conscious directing ideas the control over the flow
of ideas is transferred to the concealed directing ideas; and that superficial
associations are only a displacement-substitute for suppressed and more profound
ones. Indeed, psycho-analysis makes these two principles the foundation-stones
of its technique. When I request a patient to dismiss all reflection, and to
report to me whatever comes into his mind, I firmly cling to the assumption that
he will not be able to drop the directing idea of the treatment, and I feel
justified in concluding that what he reports, even though it may seem to be
quite ingenuous and arbitrary, has some connection with his morbid state.
Another directing idea of which the patient has no suspicion is my own
personality. The full appreciation, as well as the detailed proof of both these
explanations, belongs to the description of the psycho-analytic technique as a
therapeutic method. We have here reached one of the junctions, so to speak, at
which we purposely drop the subject of dream-interpretation.[14]
Of all the objections raised, only one is justified and still remains to be met;
namely, that we ought not to ascribe all the associations of the
interpretation-work to the nocturnal dream- work. By interpretation in the
waking state we are actually opening a path running back from the dream-elements
to the dream- thoughts. The dream-work has followed the contrary direction, and
it is not at all probable that these paths are equally passable in opposite
directions. On the contrary, it appears that during the day, by means of new
thought-connections, we sink shafts that strike the intermediary thoughts and
the dream-thoughts now in this place, now in that. We can see how the recent
thought- material of the day forces its way into the interpretation- series, and
how the additional resistance which has appeared since the night probably
compels it to make new and further detours. But the number and form of the
collaterals which we thus contrive during the day are, psychologically speaking,
indifferent, so long as they point the way to the dream-thoughts which we are
seeking.
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.
The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 7 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM PROCESSES B. Regression
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