CHAPTER FIVE (Continued...)
A. Recent and Indifferent Impressions in the Dream
If I now consult my own experience with regard to the
origin of the elements appearing in the dream-content, I must in the first
place express the opinion that in every dream we may find some reference
to the experiences of the preceding day. Whatever dream I turn to, whether
my own or someone else's, this experience is always confirmed. Knowing
this, I may perhaps begin the work of interpretation by looking for the
experience of the preceding day which has stimulated the dream; in many
cases this is indeed the quickest way. With the two dreams which I
subjected to a close analysis in the last chapter (the dreams of Irma's
injection, and of the uncle with the yellow beard) the reference to the
preceding day is so evident that it needs no further elucidation. But in
order to show how constantly this reference may be demonstrated, I shall
examine a portion of my own dream- chronicle, I shall relate only so much
of the dreams as is necessary for the detection of the dream-source in
question.
1. I pay a call at a house to which I gain admittance
only with difficulty, etc., and meanwhile I am keeping a woman waiting for
me.
Source: A conversation during the evening with a female
relative to the effect that she would have to wait for a remittance for
which she had asked, until... etc.
2. I have written a monograph on a species (uncertain)
of plant.
Source: In the morning I had seen in a bookseller's
window a monograph on the genus Cyclamen.
3. I see two women in the street, mother and daughter,
the latter being a patient.
Source: A female patient who is under treatment had
told me in the evening what difficulties her mother puts in the way of her
continuing the treatment.
4. At S and R's bookshop I subscribe to a periodical
which costs 20 florins annually.
Source: During the day my wife has reminded me that I
still owe her 20 florins of her weekly allowance.
5. I receive a communication from the Social Democratic
Committee, in which I am addressed as a member.
Source: I have received simultaneous communications
from the Liberal Committee on Elections and from the president of the
Humanitarian Society, of which latter I am actually a member.
6. A man on a steep rock rising from the sea, in the
manner of Bocklin.
Source: Dreyfus on Devil's Island; also news from my
relatives in England, etc.
The question might be raised, whether a dream
invariably refers to the events of the preceding day only, or whether the
reference may be extended to include impressions from a longer period of
time in the immediate past. This question is probably not of the first
importance, but I am inclined to decide in favor of the exclusive
priority of the day before the dream (the dream-day). Whenever I thought I
had found a case where an impression two or three days old was the source
of the dream, I was able to convince myself after careful investigation
that this impression had been remembered the day before; that is, that a
demonstrable reproduction on the day before had been interpolated between
the day of the event and the time of the dream; and further, I was able to
point to the recent occasion which might have given rise to the
recollection of the older impression. On the other hand, I was unable to
convince myself that a regular interval of biological significance (H.
Swoboda gives the first interval of this kind as eighteen hours) elapses
between the dream-exciting daytime impression and its recurrence in the
dream.
I believe, therefore, that for every dream a
dream-stimulus may be found among these experiences "on which one has not
yet slept."
Havelock Ellis, who has likewise given attention to
this problem, states that he has not been able to find any such
periodicity of reproduction in his dreams, although he has looked for it.
He relates a dream in which he found himself in Spain; he wanted to travel
to a place called Daraus, Varaus, or Zaraus. On awaking he was unable to
recall any such place-names, and thought no more of the matter. A few
months later he actually found the name Zaraus; it was that of a
railway-station between San Sebastian and Bilbao, through which he had
passed in the train eight months (250 days) before the date of the dream.
Thus the impressions of the immediate past (with the
exception of the day before the night of the dream) stand in the same
relation to the dream-content as those of periods indefinitely remote. The
dream may select its material from any period of life, provided only that
a chain of thought leads back from the experiences of the day of the dream
(the recent impressions) of that earlier period.
But why this preference for recent impressions? We
shall arrive at some conjectures on this point if we subject one of the
dreams already mentioned to a more precise analysis. I select the
Dream of the Botanical Monograph
I have written a monograph on a certain plant. The book
lies before me; I am just turning over a folded colored plate. A dried
specimen of the plant, as though from a herbarium, is bound up with every
copy.
Analysis
In the morning I saw in a bookseller's window a volume
entitled The Genus Cyclamen, apparently a monograph on this plant.
The cyclamen is my wife's favorite flower. I reproach
myself for remembering so seldom to bring her flowers, as she would like
me to do. In connection with the theme of giving her flowers, I am
reminded of a story which I recently told some friends of mine in proof of
my assertion that we often forget in obedience to a purpose of the
unconscious, and that forgetfulness always enables us to form a deduction
about the secret disposition of the forgetful person. A young woman who
has been accustomed to receive a bouquet of flowers from her husband on
her birthday misses this token of affection on one of her birthdays, and
bursts into tears. The husband comes in, and cannot understand why she is
crying until she tells him: "Today is my birthday." He claps his hand to
his forehead, and exclaims: "Oh, forgive me, I had completely forgotten
it!" and proposes to go out immediately in order to get her flowers. But
she refuses to be consoled, for she sees in her husband's forgetfulness a
proof that she no longer plays the same part in his thoughts as she
formerly did. This Frau L met my wife two days ago, told her that she was
feeling well, and asked after me. Some years ago she was a patient of
mine.
Supplementary facts: I did once actually write
something like a monograph on a plant, namely, an essay on the coca plant,
which attracted the attention of K. Koller to the anesthetic properties
of cocaine. I had hinted that the alkaloid might be employed as an
anesthetic, but I was not thorough enough to pursue the matter farther.
It occurs to me, too, that on the morning of the day following the dream
(for the interpretation of which I did not find time until the evening) I
had thought of cocaine in a kind of day-dream. If I were ever afflicted
with glaucoma, I would go to Berlin, and there undergo an operation,
incognito, in the house of my Berlin friend, at the hands of a surgeon
whom he would recommend. The surgeon, who would not know the name of his
patient, would boast, as usual, how easy these operations had become since
the introduction of cocaine; and I should not betray the fact that I
myself had a share in this discovery. With this phantasy were connected
thoughts of how awkward it really is for a physician to claim the
professional services of a colleague. I should be able to pay the Berlin
eye specialist, who did not know me, like anyone else. Only after
recalling this day-dream do I realize that there is concealed behind it
the memory of a definite event. Shortly after Koller's discovery, my
father contracted glaucoma; he was operated on by my friend Dr.
Koenigstein, the eye specialist. Dr. Koller was in charge of the cocaine
anaesthetization, and he made the remark that on this occasion all the
three persons who had been responsible for the introduction of cocaine had
been brought together.
My thoughts now pass on to the time when I was last
reminded of the history of cocaine. This was a few days earlier, when I
received a Festschrift, a publication in which grateful pupils had
commemorated the jubilee of their teacher and laboratory director. Among
the titles to fame of persons connected with the laboratory I found a note
to the effect that the discovery of the anesthetic properties of cocaine
had been due to K. Koller. Now I suddenly become aware that the dream is
connected with an experience of the previous evening. I had just
accompanied Dr. Koenigstein to his home, and had entered into a discussion
of a subject which excites me greatly whenever it is mentioned. While I
was talking with him in the entrance-hall Professor Gartner and his young
wife came up. I could not refrain from congratulating them both upon their
blooming appearance. Now Professor Gartner is one of the authors of the
Festschrift of which I have just spoken, and he may well have reminded me
of it. And Frau L, of whose birthday disappointment I spoke a little way
back, had been mentioned, though of course in another connection, in my
conversation with Dr. Koenigstein.
I shall now try to elucidate the other determinants of
the dream- content. A dried specimen of the plant accompanies the
monograph, as though it were a herbarium. And herbarium reminds me of the
Gymnasium. The director of our Gymnasium once called the pupils of the
upper classes together, in order that they might examine and clean the
Gymnasium herbarium. Small insects had been found- book-worms. The
director seemed to have little confidence in my ability to assist, for he
entrusted me with only a few of the pages. I know to this day that there
were crucifers on them. My interest in botany was never very great. At my
preliminary examination in botany I was required to identify a crucifer,
and failed to recognize it; had not my theoretical knowledge come to my
aid, I should have fared badly indeed. Crucifers suggest composites. The
artichoke is really a composite, and in actual fact one which I might call
my favourite flower. My wife, more thoughtful than I, often brings this
favourite flower of mine home from the market.
I see the monograph which I have written lying before
me. Here again there is an association. My friend wrote to me yesterday
from Berlin: "I am thinking a great deal about your dream-book. I see it
lying before me, completed, and I turn the pages." How I envied him this
power of vision! If only I could see it lying before me, already
completed!
The folded colored plate. When I was a medical student
I suffered a sort of craze for studying monographs exclusively. In spite
of my limited means, I subscribed to a number of the medical periodicals,
whose colored plates afforded me much delight. I was rather proud of this
inclination to thoroughness. When I subsequently began to publish books
myself, I had to draw the plates for my own treatises, and I remember one
of them turned out so badly that a well-meaning colleague ridiculed me for
it. With this is associated, I do not exactly know how, a very early
memory of my childhood. My father, by the way of a jest, once gave my
elder sister and myself a book containing colored plates (the book was a
narrative of a journey through Persia) in order that we might destroy it.
From an educational point of view this was hardly to be commended. I was
at the time five years old, and my sister less than three, and the picture
of us two children blissfully tearing the book to pieces (I should add,
like an artichoke, leaf by leaf), is almost the only one from this period
of my life which has remained vivid in my memory. When I afterwards became
a student, I developed a conspicuous fondness for collecting and
possessing books (an analogy to the inclination for studying from
monographs, a hobby alluded to in my dream-thoughts, in connection with
cyclamen and artichoke). I became a book-worm (cf. herbarium). Ever since
I have been engaged in introspection I have always traced this earliest
passion of my life to this impression of my childhood: or rather, I have
recognized in this childish scene a screen or concealing memory for my
subsequent bibliophilia. * And of course I learned at an early age that
our passions often become our misfortunes. When I was seventeen, I ran up
a very considerable account at the bookseller's, with no means with which
to settle it, and my father would hardly accept it as an excuse that my
passion was at least a respectable one. But the mention of this experience
of my youth brings me back to my conversation with my friend Dr.
Koenigstein on the evening preceding the dream; for one of the themes of
this conversation was the same old reproach- that I am much too absorbed
in my hobbies.
* Cf. The Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life.
For reasons which are not relevant here I shall not
continue the interpretation of this dream, but will merely indicate the
path which leads to it. In the course of the interpretation I was reminded
of my conversation with Dr. Koenigstein, and, indeed, of more than one
portion of it. When I consider the subjects touched upon in this
conversation, the meaning of the dream immediately becomes clear to me.
All the trains of thought which have been started- my own inclinations,
and those of my wife, the cocaine, the awkwardness of securing medical
treatment from one's own colleagues, my preference for monographical
studies, and my neglect of certain subjects, such as botany- all these are
continued in and lead up to one branch or another of this widely- ramified
conversation. The dream once more assumes the character of a
justification, of a plea for my rights (like the dream of Irma's
injection, the first to be analyzed); it even continues the theme which
that dream introduced, and discusses it in association with the new
subject-matter which has been added in the interval between the two
dreams. Even the dream's apparently indifferent form of expression at once
acquires a meaning. Now it means: "I am indeed the man who has written
that valuable and successful treatise (on cocaine)," just as previously I
declared in self-justification: "I am after all a thorough and industrious
student"; and in both instances I find the meaning: "I can allow myself
this." But I may dispense with the further interpretation of the dream,
because my only purpose in recording it was to examine the relation of the
dream-content to the experience of the previous day which arouses it. As
long as I know only the manifest content of this dream, only one relation
to any impression of the day is obvious; but after I have completed the
interpretation, a second source of the dream becomes apparent in another
experience of the same day. The first of these impressions to which the
dream refers is an indifferent one, a subordinate circumstance. I see a
book in a shop window whose title holds me for a moment, but whose
contents would hardly interest me. The second experience was of great
psychic value; I talked earnestly with my friend, the eye specialist, for
about an hour; I made allusions in this conversation which must have
ruffled the feelings of both of us, and which in me awakened memories in
connection with which I was aware of a great variety of inner stimuli.
Further, this conversation was broken off unfinished, because some
acquaintances joined us. What, now, is the relation of these two
impressions of the day to one another, and to the dream which followed
during the night?
In the manifest dream-content I find merely an allusion
to the indifferent impression, and I am thus able to reaffirm that the
dream prefers to take up into its content experiences of a non- essential
character. In the dream-interpretation, on the contrary, everything
converges upon the important and justifiably disturbing event. If I judge
the sense of the dream in the only correct way, according to the latent
content which is brought to light in the analysis, I find that I have
unwittingly lighted upon a new and important discovery. I see that the
puzzling theory that the dream deals only with the worthless odds and ends
of the day's experiences has no justification; I am also compelled to
contradict the assertion that the psychic life of the waking state is not
continued in the dream, and that hence, the dream wastes our psychic
energy on trivial material. The very opposite is true; what has claimed
our attention during the day dominates our dream-thoughts also, and we
take pains to dream only in connection with such matters as have given us
food for thought during the day.
Perhaps the most immediate explanation of the fact that
I dream of the indifferent impression of the day, while the impression
which has with good reason excited me causes me to dream, is that here
again we are dealing with the phenomenon of dream- distortion, which we
have referred to as a psychic force playing the part of a censorship. The
recollection of the monograph on the genus cyclamen is utilized as though
it were an allusion to the conversation with my friend, just as the
mention of my patient's friend in the dream of the deferred supper is
represented by the allusion smoked salmon. The only question is: by what
intermediate links can the impression of the monograph come to assume the
relation of allusion to the conversation with the eye specialist, since
such a relation is not at first perceptible? In the example of the
deferred supper, the relation is evident at the outset; smoked salmon, as
the favourite dish of the patient's friend, belongs to the circle of ideas
which the friend's personality would naturally evoke in the mind of the
dreamer. In our new example we are dealing with two entirely separate
impressions, which at first glance seem to have nothing in common, except
indeed that they occur on the same day. The monograph attracts my
attention in the morning: in the evening I take part in the conversation.
The answer furnished by the analysis is as follows: Such relations between
the two impressions as do not exist from the first are established
subsequently between the idea-content of the one impression and the
idea-content of the other. I have already picked out the intermediate
links emphasized in the course of writing the analysis. Only under some
outside influence, perhaps the recollection of the flowers missed by Frau
L, would the idea of the monograph on the cyclamen have attached itself to
the idea that the cyclamen is my wife's favorite flower. I do not believe
that these inconspicuous thoughts would have sufficed to evoke a dream.
There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
To tell us this,
as we read in Hamlet. But behold! in the analysis I am
reminded that the name of the man who interrupted our conversation was
Gartner (gardener), and that I thought his wife looked blooming; indeed,
now I even remember that one of my female patients, who bears the pretty
name of Flora, was for a time the main subject of our conversation. It
must have happened that by means of these intermediate links from the
sphere of botanical ideas the association was effected between the two
events of the day, the indifferent one and the stimulating one. Other
relations were then established, that of cocaine for example, which can
with perfect appropriateness form a link between the person of Dr.
Koenigstein and the botanical monograph which I have written, and thus
secure the fusion of the two circles of ideas, so that now a portion of
the first experience may be used as an allusion to the second.
I am prepared to find this explanation attacked as
either arbitrary or artificial. What would have happened if Professor
Gartner and his blooming wife had not appeared, and if the patient who was
under discussion had been called, not Flora, but Anna? And yet the answer
is not hard to find. If these thought- relations had not been available,
others would probably have been selected. It is easy to establish
relations of this sort, as the jocular questions and conundrums with which
we amuse ourselves suffice to show. The range of wit is unlimited. To go a
step farther: if no sufficiently fertile associations between the two
impressions of the day could have been established, the dream would simply
have followed a different course; another of the indifferent impressions
of the day, such as come to us in multitudes and are forgotten, would have
taken the place of the monograph in the dream, would have formed an
association with the content of the conversation, and would have
represented this in the dream. Since it was the impression of the
monograph and no other that was fated to perform this function, this
impression was probably that most suitable for the purpose. One need not,
like Lessing's Hanschen Schlau, be astonished that "only the rich people
of the world possess the most money."
Still the psychological process by which, according to
our exposition, the indifferent experience substitutes itself for the
psychologically important one seems to us odd and open to question. In a
later chapter we shall undertake the task of making the peculiarities of
this seemingly incorrect operation more intelligible. Here we are
concerned only with the result of this process, which we were compelled to
accept by constantly recurring experiences in the analysis of dreams. In
this process it is as though, in the course of the intermediate steps, a
displacement occurs- let us say, of the psychic accent- until ideas of
feeble potential, by taking over the charge from ideas which have a
stronger initial potential, reach a degree of intensity which enables them
to force their way into consciousness. Such displacements do not in the
least surprise us when it is a question of the transference of affective
magnitudes or of motor activities. That the lonely spinster transfers her
affection to animals, that the bachelor becomes a passionate collector,
that the soldier defends a scrap of colored cloth- his flag- with his
life-blood, that in a love-affair a clasp of the hands a moment longer
than usual evokes a sensation of bliss, or that in Othello a lost
handkerchief causes an outburst of rage- all these are examples of psychic
displacements which to us seem incontestable. But if, by the same means,
and in accordance with the same fundamental principles, a decision is made
as to what is to reach our consciousness and what is to be withheld from
it- that is to say, what we are to think- this gives us the impression of
morbidity, and if it occurs in waking life we call it an error of thought.
We may here anticipate the result of a discussion which will be undertaken
later, namely, that the psychic process which we have recognized in
dream-displacement proves to be not a morbidly deranged process, but one
merely differing from the normal, one of a more primary nature.
Thus we interpret the fact that the dream-content takes
up remnants of trivial experiences as a manifestation of dream- distortion
(by displacement), and we thereupon remember that we have recognized this
dream-distortion as the work of a censorship operating between the two
psychic instances. We may therefore expect that dream-analysis will
constantly show us the real and psychically significant source of the
dream in the events of the day, the memory of which has transferred its
accentuation to some indifferent memory. This conception is in complete
opposition to Robert's theory, which consequently has no further value for
us. The fact which Robert was trying to explain simply does not exist; its
assumption is based on a misunderstanding, on a failure to substitute the
real meaning of the dream for its apparent meaning. A further objection to
Robert's doctrine is as follows: If the task of the dream were really to
rid our memory, by means of a special psychic activity, of the slag of the
day's recollections, our sleep would perforce be more troubled, engaged in
more strenuous work, than we can suppose it to be, judging by our waking
thoughts. For the number of the indifferent impressions of the day against
which we should have to protect our memory is obviously immeasurably
large; the whole night would not be long enough to dispose of them all. It
is far more probable that the forgetting of the indifferent impressions
takes place without any active interference on the part of our psychic
powers.
Still, something cautions us against taking leave of
Robert's theory without further consideration. We have left unexplained
the fact that one of the indifferent impressions of the day- indeed, even
of the previous day- constantly makes a contribution to the dream-content.
The relations between this impression and the real source of the dream in
the unconscious do not always exist from the outset; as we have seen, they
are established subsequently, while the dream is actually at work, as
though to serve the purpose of the intended displacement. Something,
therefore, must necessitate the opening up of connections in the direction
of the recent but indifferent impression; this impression must possess
some quality that gives it a special fitness. Otherwise it would be just
as easy for the dream- thoughts to shift their accentuation to some
inessential component of their own sphere of ideas.
Experiences such as the following show us the way to an
explanation: If the day has brought us two or more experiences which are
worthy to evoke a dream, the dream will blend the allusion of both into a
single whole: it obeys a compulsion to make them into a single whole. For
example: One summer afternoon I entered a railway carriage in which I
found two acquaintances of mine who were unknown to one another. One of
them was an influential colleague, the other a member of a distinguished
family which I had been attending in my professional capacity. I
introduced the two gentlemen to each other; but during the long journey
they conversed with each other through me, so that I had to discuss this
or that topic now with one, now with the other. I asked my colleague to
recommend a mutual acquaintance who had just begun to practise as a
physician. He replied that he was convinced of the young man's ability,
but that his undistinguished appearance would make it difficult for him to
obtain patients in the upper ranks of society. To this I rejoined: "That
is precisely why he needs recommendation." A little later, turning to my
other fellow-traveler, I inquired after the health of his aunt- the
mother of one of my patients- who was at this time prostrated by a serious
illness. On the night following this journey I dreamt that the young
friend whom I had asked one of my companions to recommend was in a
fashionable drawing-room, and with all the bearing of a man of the world
was making- before a distinguished company, in which I recognized all the
rich and aristocratic persons of my acquaintance- a funeral oration over
the old lady (who in my dream had already died) who was the aunt of my
second fellow- traveler. (I confess frankly that I had not been on good
terms with this lady.) Thus my dream had once more found the connection
between the two impressions of the day, and by means of the two had
constructed a unified situation.
In view of many similar experiences, I am persuaded to
advance the proposition that a dream works under a kind of compulsion
which forces it to combine into a unified whole all the sources of
dream-stimulation which are offered to it. * In a subsequent chapter (on
the function of dreams) we shall consider this impulse of combination as
part of the process of condensation, another primary psychic process.
* The tendency of the dream at work to blend everything
present of interest into a single transaction has already been noticed by
several authors, for instance, by Delage and Delboeuf.
I shall now consider the question whether the
dream-exciting source to which our analysis leads us must always be a
recent (and significant) event, or whether a subjective experience- that
is to say, the recollection of a psychologically significant event, a
train of thought- may assume the role of a dream- stimulus. The very
definite answer, derived from numerous analyses, is as follows: The
stimulus of the dream may be a subjective transaction, which has been made
recent, as it were, by the mental activity of the day.
And this is perhaps the best time to summarize in
schematic form the different conditions under which the dream-sources are
operative.
The source of a dream may be:
(a) A recent and psychologically significant event
which is directly represented in the dream. *
(b) Several recent and significant events, which are
combined by the dream in a single whole. *(2)
(c) One or more recent and significant events, which
are represented in the dream-content by allusion to a contemporary but
indifferent event. *(3)
(d) A subjectively significant experience
(recollection, train of thought), which is constantly represented in the
dream by allusion to a recent but indifferent impression. *(4)
* The dream of Irma's injection; the dream of the
friend who is my uncle.
*(2) The dream of the funeral oration delivered by the
young physician.
*(3) The dream of the botanical monograph.
*(4) The dreams of my patients during analysis are
mostly of this kind.
As may be seen, in dream-interpretation the condition
is always fulfilled that one component of the dream-content repeats a
recent impression of the day of the dream. The component which is destined
to be represented in the dream may either belong to the same circle of
ideas as the dream-stimulus itself (as an essential or even an inessential
element of the same); or it may originate in the neighbourhood of an
indifferent impression, which has been brought by more or less abundant
associations into relation with the sphere of the dream-stimulus. The
apparent multiplicity of these conditions results merely from the
alternative, that a displacement has or has not occurred, and it may here
be noted that this alternative enables us to explain the contrasts of the
dream quite as readily as the medical theory of the dream explains the
series of states from the partial to the complete waking of the brain
cells.
In considering this series of sources we note further
that the psychologically significant but not recent element (a train of
thought, a recollection) may be replaced for the purposes of
dream-formation by a recent but psychologically indifferent element,
provided the two following conditions are fulfilled: (1) the dream-content
preserves a connection with things recently experienced; (2) the
dream-stimulus is still a psychologically significant event. In one single
case (a) both these conditions are fulfilled by the same impression. If we
now consider that these same indifferent impressions, which are utilized
for the dream as long as they are recent, lose this qualification as soon
as they are a day (or at most several days) older, we are obliged to
assume that the very freshness of an impression gives it a certain
psychological value for dream-formation, somewhat equivalent to the value
of emotionally accentuated memories or trains of thought. Later on, in the
light of certain Psychological considerations, we shall be able to divine
the explanation of this importance of recent impressions in dream
formation. *
* Cf. Chap. VII on "transference."
Incidentally our attention is here called to the fact
that at night, and unnoticed by our consciousness, important changes may
occur in the material comprised by our ideas and memories. The injunction
that before making a final decision in any matter one should sleep on it
for a night is obviously fully justified. But at this point we find that
we have passed from the psychology of dreaming to the psychology of sleep,
a step which there will often be occasion to take.
At this point there arises an objection which threatens
to invalidate the conclusions at which we have just arrived. If
indifferent impressions can find their way into the dream only so long as
they are of recent origin, how does it happen that in the dream-content we
find elements also from earlier periods of our lives, which, at the time
when they were still recent, possessed, as Strumpell puts it, no psychic
value, and which, therefore, ought to have been forgotten long ago;
elements, that is, which are neither fresh nor psychologically
significant?
This objection can be disposed of completely if we have
recourse to the results of the psychoanalysis of neurotics. The solution
is as follows: The process of shifting and rearrangement which replaces
material of psychic significance by material which is indifferent (whether
one is dreaming or thinking) has already taken place in these earlier
periods of life, and has since become fixed in the memory. Those elements
which were originally indifferent are in fact no longer so, since they
have acquired the value of psychologically significant material. That
which has actually remained indifferent can never be reproduced in the
dream.
From the foregoing exposition the reader may rightly
conclude that I assert that there are no indifferent dream-stimuli, and
therefore no guileless dreams. This I absolutely and unconditionally
believe to be the case, apart from the dreams of children, and perhaps the
brief dream-reactions to nocturnal sensations. Apart from these
exceptions, whatever one dreams is either plainly recognizable as being
psychically significant, or it is distorted and can be judged correctly
only after complete interpretation, when it proves, after all, to be of
psychic significance. The dream never concerns itself with trifles; we do
not allow sleep to be disturbed by trivialities. * Dreams which are
apparently guileless turn out to be the reverse of innocent, if one takes
the trouble to interpret them; if I may be permitted the expression, they
ail show "the mark of the beast." Since this is another point on which I
may expect contradiction, and since I am glad of an opportunity to show
dream-distortion at work, I shall here subject to analysis a number of
guileless dreams from my collection.
* Havelock Ellis, a kindly critic of The Interpretation
of Dreams, writes in The World of Dreams (p. 169): "From this point on,
not many of us will be able to follow F." But Mr. Ellis has not undertaken
any analyses of dreams, and will not believe how unjustifiable it is to
judge them by the manifest dream-content. -
I.
An intelligent and refined young woman, who in real
life is distinctly reserved, one of those people of whom one says that
"still waters run deep," relates the following dream: "I dreamt that I
arrived at the market too late, and could get nothing from either the
butcher or the greengrocer woman." Surely a guileless dream, but as it has
not the appearance of a real dream I induce her to relate it in detail.
Her report then runs as follows: She goes to the market with her cook, who
carries the basket. The butcher tells her, after she has asked him for
something: "That is no longer to be obtained," and waits to give her
something else, with the remark: "That is good, too." She refuses, and
goes to the greengrocer woman. The latter tries to sell her a peculiar
vegetable, which is bound up in bundles, and is black in color. She says:
"I don't know that, I won't take it."
The connection of the dream with the preceding day is
simple enough. She had really gone to the market too late, and had been
unable to buy anything. The meatshop was already closed, comes into one's
mind as a description of the experience. But wait, is not that a very
vulgar phrase which- or rather, the opposite of which- denotes a certain
neglect with regard to man's clothing? The dreamer has not used these
words; she has perhaps avoided them: but let us look for the
interpretation of the details contained in the dream.
When in a dream something has the character of a spoken
utterance- that is, when it is said or heard, not merely thought, and the
distinction can usually be made with certainty- then it originates in the
utterances of waking life, which have, of course, been treated as raw
material, dismembered, and slightly altered, and above all removed from
their context. * In the work of interpretation we may take such utterances
as our starting- point. Where, then, does the butcher's statement, That is
no longer to be obtained, come from? From myself; I had explained to her
some days previously "that the oldest experiences of childhood are no
longer to be obtained as such, but will be replaced in the analysis by
transferences and dreams." Thus, I am the butcher, and she refuses to
accept these transferences to the present of old ways of thinking and
feeling. Where does her dream utterance, I don't know that, I won't take
it, come from? For the purposes of the analysis this has to be dissected.
I don't know that she herself had said to her cook, with whom she had a
dispute on the previous day, but she had then added: Behave yourself
decently. Here a displacement is palpable; of the two sentences which she
spoke to her cook, she included the insignificant one in her dream; but
the suppressed sentence, Behave yourself decently! alone fits in with the
rest of the dream-content. One might use the words to a man who was making
indecent overtures, and had neglected "to close his meat-shop." That we
have really hit upon the trail of the interpretation is proved by its
agreement with the allusions made by the incident with the greengrocer
woman. A vegetable which is sold tied up in bundles (a longish vegetable,
as she subsequently adds), and is also black: what can this be but a
dream-combination of asparagus and black radish? I need not interpret
asparagus to the initiated; and the other vegetable, too (think of the
exclamation: "Blacky, save yourself!"), seems to me to point to the sexual
theme at which we guessed in the beginning, when we wanted to replace the
story of the dream by "the meat-shop is closed." We are not here concerned
with the full meaning of the dream; so much is certain, that it is full of
meaning and by no means guileless. *(2)
* Cf. what is said of speech in dreams in the chapter
on "The Dream-Work." Only one of the writers on the subject- Delboeuf-
seems to have recognized the origin of the speeches heard in dreams; he
compares them with clichés.
*(2) For the curious, I may remark that behind the
dream there is hidden a phantasy of indecent, sexually provoking conduct
on my part, and of repulsion on the part of the lady. If this
interpretation should seem preposterous, I would remind the reader of the
numerous cases in which physicians have been made the object of such
charges by hysterical women, with whom the same phantasy has not appeared
in a distorted form as a dream, but has become undisguisedly conscious and
delusional. With this dream the patient began her psycho-analytical
treatment. It was only later that I learned that with this dream she
repeated the initial trauma in which her neurosis originated, and since
then I have noticed the same behaviour in other persons who in their
childhood were victims of sexual attacks, and now, as it were, wish in
their dreams for them to be repeated.
II.
Another guileless dream of the same patient, which in
some respects is a pendant to the above. Her husband asks her: "Oughtn't
we to have the piano tuned?" She replies: "It's not worth while, the
hammers would have to be rebuffed as well." Again we have the reproduction
of an actual event of the preceding day. Her husband had asked her such a
question, and she had answered it in such words. But what is the meaning
of her dreaming it? She says of the piano that it is a disgusting old box
which has a bad tone; it belonged to her husband before they were married,
* etc., but the key to the true solution lies in the phrase: It isn't
worth while. This has its origin in a call paid yesterday to a woman
friend. She was asked to take off her coat, but declined, saying: "Thanks,
it isn't worth while, I must go in a moment." At this point I recall that
yesterday, during the analysis, she suddenly took hold of her coat, of
which a button had come undone. It was as though she meant to say: "Please
don't look in, it isn't worth while." Thus box becomes chest, and the
interpretation of the dream leads to the years when she was growing out of
her childhood, when she began to be dissatisfied with her figure. It leads
us back, indeed, to earlier periods, if we take into consideration the
disgusting and the bad tone, and remember how often in allusions and in
dreams the two small hemispheres of the female body take the place- as a
substitute and an antithesis- of the large ones.
* A substitution by the opposite, as will be clear
after analysis.
III.
I will interrupt the analysis of this dreamer in order
to insert a short, innocent dream which was dreamed by a young man. He
dreamt that he was putting on his winter overcoat again; this was
terrible. The occasion for this dream is apparently the sudden advent of
cold weather. On more careful examination we note that the two brief
fragments of the dream do not fit together very well, for what could be
terrible about wearing a thick or heavy coat in cold weather?
Unfortunately for the innocence of this dream, the first association,
under analysis, yields the recollection that yesterday a lady had
confidentially confessed to him that her last child owed its existence to
the splitting of a condom. He now reconstructs his thoughts in accordance
with this suggestion: A thin condom is dangerous, a thick one is bad. The
condom is a "pullover" (Ueberzieher = literally pullover), for it is
pulled over something: and Uebersieher is the German term for a light
overcoat. An experience like that related by the lady would indeed be
terrible for an unmarried man.
We will now return to our other innocent dreamer.
IV.
She puts a candle into a candlestick; but the candle is
broken, so that it does not stand up. The girls at school say she is
clumsy; but she replies that it is not her fault.
Here, too, there is an actual occasion for the dream;
the day before she had actually put a candle into a candlestick; but this
one was not broken. An obvious symbolism has here been employed. The
candle is an object which excites the female genitals; its being broken,
so that it does not stand upright, signifies impotence on the man's part
(it is not her fault). But does this young woman, carefully brought up,
and a stranger to all obscenity, know of such an application of the
candle? By chance she is able to tell how she came by this information.
While paddling a canoe on the Rhine, a boat passed her which contained
some students, who were singing rapturously, or rather yelling: "When the
Queen of Sweden, behind closed shutters, with the candles of Apollo..."
She does not hear or else understand the last word. Her
husband was asked to give her the required explanation. These verses are
then replaced in the dream-content by the innocent recollection of a task
which she once performed clumsily at her boarding- school, because of the
closed shutters. The connection between the theme of masturbation and that
of impotence is clear enough. Apollo in the latent dream-content connects
this dream with an earlier one in which the virgin Pallas figured. All
this is obviously not innocent.
V.
Lest it may seem too easy a matter to draw conclusions
from dreams concerning the dreamer's real circumstances, I add another
dream originating with the same person, which once more appears innocent.
"I dreamt of doing something," she relates, "which I actually did during
the day, that is to say, I filled a little trunk so full of books that I
had difficulty in closing it. My dream was just like the actual
occurrence." Here the dreamer herself emphasizes the correspondence
between the dream and the reality. All such criticisms of the dream, and
comments on the dream, although they have found a place in the waking
thoughts, properly belong to the latent dream-content, as further examples
will confirm. We are told, then, that what the dream relates has actually
occurred during the day. It would take us too far afield to show how we
arrive at the idea of making use of the English language to help us in the
interpretation of this dream. Suffice it to say that it is again a
question of a little box (cf. chap. IV, the dream of the dead child in the
box) which has been filled so full that nothing can go into it.
In all these "innocent" dreams the sexual factor as the
motive of the censorship is very prominent. But this is a subject of
primary significance, which we must consider later. |
