CHAPTER SIX (Continued...)
C. The Means of Representation in Dreams
Besides the two factors of condensation and
displacement in dreams, which we have found to be at work in the
transformation of the latent dream-material into the manifest
dream-content, we shall, in the course of this investigation, come upon
two further conditions which exercise an unquestionable influence over the
selection of the material that eventually appears in the dream. But first,
even at the risk of seeming to interrupt our progress, I shall take a
preliminary glance at the processes by which the interpretation of dreams
is accomplished. I do not deny that the best way of explaining them, and
of convincing the critic of their reliability, would be to take a single
dream as an example, to detail its interpretation, as I did (in Chapter
II) in the case of the dream of Irma's injection, but then to assemble the
dream-thoughts which I had discovered, and from them to reconstruct the
formation of the dream- that is to say, to supplement dream-analysis by
dream-synthesis. I have done this with several specimens for my own
instruction; but I cannot undertake to do it here, as I am prevented by a
number of considerations (relating to the psychic material necessary for
such a demonstration) such as any right-thinking person would approve. In
the analysis of dreams these considerations present less difficulty, for
an analysis may be incomplete and still retain its value, even if it leads
only a little way into the structure of the dream. I do not see how a
synthesis, to be convincing, could be anything short of complete. I could
give a complete synthesis only of the dreams of such persons as are
unknown to the reading public. Since, however, neurotic patients are the
only persons who furnish me with the means of making such a synthesis,
this part of the description of dreams must be postponed until I can carry
the psychological explanation of the neuroses far enough to demonstrate
their relation to our subject. * This will be done elsewhere.
* I have since given the complete analysis and
synthesis of two dreams in the Bruchstuck einer Hysterieanalyse, (1905) (Ges.
Schriften, Vol. VIII). "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,"
translated by Strachey, Collected Papers, Vol III, (Hogarth Press,
London). O. Rank's analysis, Ein Traum der sich selbst deutet, deserves
mention as the most complete interpretation of a comparatively long dream.
From my attempts to construct dreams synthetically from
their dream-thoughts, I know that the material which is yielded by
interpretation varies in value. Part of it consists of the essential
dream-thoughts, which would completely replace the dream and would in
themselves be a sufficient substitute for it, were there no
dream-censorship. To the other part, one is wont to ascribe slight
importance, nor does one set any value on the assertion that all these
thoughts have participated in the formation of the dream; on the contrary,
they may include notions which are associated with experiences that have
occurred subsequently to the dream, between the dream and the
interpretation. This part comprises not only all the connecting- paths
which have led from the manifest to the latent dream- content, but also
the intermediate and approximating associations by means of which one has
arrived at a knowledge of these connecting-paths during the work of
interpretation.
At this point we are interested exclusively in the
essential dream-thoughts. These commonly reveal themselves as a complex of
thoughts and memories of the most intricate possible construction, with
all the characteristics of the thought- processes known to us in waking
life. Not infrequently they are trains of thought which proceed from more
than one centre, but which are not without points of contact; and almost
invariably we find, along with a train of thought, its contradictory
counterpart, connected with it by the association of contrast.
The individual parts of this complicated structure
naturally stand in the most manifold logical relations to one another.
They constitute foreground and background, digressions, illustrations,
conditions, lines of argument and objections. When the whole mass of these
dream-thoughts is subjected to the pressure of the dream- work, during
which the fragments are turned about, broken up and compacted, somewhat
like drifting ice, the question arises: What becomes of the logical ties
which had hitherto provided the framework of the structure? What
representation do if, because, as though, although, either- or and all the
other conjunctions, without which we cannot understand a phrase or a
sentence, receive in our dreams?
To begin with, we must answer that the dream has at its
disposal no means of representing these logical relations between the
dream-thoughts. In most cases it disregards all these conjunctions, and
undertakes the elaboration only of the material content of the
dream-thoughts. It is left to the interpretation of the dream to restore
the coherence which the dream-work has destroyed.
If dreams lack the ability to express these relations,
the psychic material of which they are wrought must be responsible for
this defect. As a matter of fact, the representative arts- painting and
sculpture- are similarly restricted, as compared with poetry, which is
able to employ speech; and here again the reason for this limitation lies
in the material by the elaboration of which the two plastic arts endeavor
to express something. Before the art of painting arrived at an
understanding of the laws of expression by which it is bound, it attempted
to make up for this deficiency. In old paintings little labels hung out of
the mouths of the persons represented, giving in writing the speech which
the artist despaired of expressing in the picture.
Here, perhaps an objection will be raised, challenging
the assertion that our dreams dispense with the representation of logical
relations. There are dreams in which the most complicated intellectual
operations take place; arguments for and against are adduced, jokes and
comparisons are made, just as in our waking thoughts. But here again
appearances are deceptive; if the interpretation of such dreams is
continued it will be found that all these things are dream-material, not
the representation of intellectual activity in the dream. The content of
the dream- thoughts is reproduced by the apparent thinking in our dreams,
but not the relations of the dream-thoughts to one another, in the
determination of which relations thinking consists. I shall give some
examples of this. But the fact which is most easily established is that
all speeches which occur in dreams, and which are expressly designated as
such, are unchanged or only slightly modified replicas of speeches which
occur likewise among the memories in the dream-material. Often the speech
is only an allusion to an event contained in the dream-thoughts; the
meaning of the dream is quite different.
However, I shall not dispute the fact that even
critical thought- activity, which does not simply repeat material from the
dream- thoughts, plays a part in dream-formation. I shall have to explain
the influence of this factor at the close of this discussion. It will then
become clear that this thought activity is evoked not by the
dream-thoughts, but by the dream itself, after it is, in a certain sense,
already completed.
Provisionally, then, it is agreed that the logical
relations between the dream-thoughts do not obtain any particular
representation in the dream. For instance, where there is a contradiction
in the dream, this is either a contradiction directed against the dream
itself or a contradiction contained in one of the dream-thoughts; a
contradiction in the dream corresponds with a contradiction between the
dream-thoughts only in the most indirect and intermediate fashion.
But just as the art of painting finally succeeded in
depicting, in the persons represented, at least the intentions behind
their words- tenderness, menace, admonition, and the like- by other means
than by floating labels, so also the dream has found it possible to render
an account of certain of the logical relations between its dream-thoughts
by an appropriate modification of the peculiar method of
dream-representation. It will be found by experience that different dreams
go to different lengths in this respect; while one dream will entirely
disregard the logical structure of its material, another attempts to
indicate it as completely as possible. In so doing, the dream departs more
or less widely from the text which it has to elaborate; and its attitude
is equally variable in respect to the temporal articulation of the
dream-thoughts, if such has been established in the unconscious (as, for
example, in the dream of Irma's injection).
But what are the means by which the dream-work is
enabled to indicate those relations in the dream-material which are
difficult to represent? I shall attempt to enumerate these, one by one.
In the first place, the dream renders an account of the
connection which is undeniably present between all the portions of the
dream-thoughts by combining this material into a unity as a situation or a
proceeding. It reproduces logical connections in the form of simultaneity;
in this case it behaves rather like the painter who groups together all
the philosophers or poets in a picture of the School of Athens, or
Parnassus. They never were assembled in any hall or on any mountain-top,
although to the reflective mind they do constitute a community.
The dream carries out in detail this mode of
representation. Whenever it shows two elements close together, it vouches
for a particularly intimate connection between their corresponding
representatives in the dream-thoughts. It is as in our method of writing:
to signifies that the two letters are to be pronounced as one syllable;
while t with o following a blank space indicates that t is the last letter
of one word and o the first letter of another. Consequently,
dream-combinations are not made up of arbitrary, completely incongruous
elements of the dream-material, but of elements that are pretty intimately
related in the dream- thoughts also.
For representing causal relations our dreams employ two
methods, which are essentially reducible to one. The method of
representation more frequently employed- in cases, for example, where the
dream-thoughts are to the effect: "Because this was thus and thus, this
and that must happen"- consists in making the subordinate clause a
prefatory dream and joining the principal clause on to it in the form of
the main dream. If my interpretation is correct, the sequence may likewise
be reversed. The principal clause always corresponds to that part of the
dream which is elaborated in the greatest detail.
An excellent example of such a representation of
causality was once provided by a female patient, whose dream I shall
subsequently give in full. The dream consisted of a short prologue, and of
a very circumstantial and very definitely centered dream-composition. I
might entitle it "Flowery language." The preliminary dream is as follows:
She goes to the two maids in the kitchen and scolds them for taking so
long to prepare "a little bite of food." She also sees a very large number
of heavy kitchen utensils in the kitchen turned upside down in order to
drain, even heaped up in stacks. The two maids go to fetch water, and
have, as it were, to climb into a river, which reaches up to the house or
into the courtyard.
Then follows the main dream, which begins as follows:
She is climbing down from a height over a curiously shaped trellis, and
she is glad that her dress doesn't get caught anywhere, etc. Now the
preliminary dream refers to the house of the lady's parents. The words
which are spoken in the kitchen are words which she has probably often
heard spoken by her mother. The piles of clumsy pots and pans are taken
from an unpretentious hardware shop located in the same house. The second
part of this dream contains an allusion to the dreamer's father, who was
always pestering the maids, and who during a flood- for the house stood
close to the bank of the river- contracted a fatal illness. The thought
which is concealed behind the preliminary dream is something like this:
"Because I was born in this house, in such sordid and unpleasant
surroundings..." The main dream takes up the same thought, and presents it
in a form that has been altered by a wish-fulfillment: "I am of exalted
origin." Properly then: "Because I am of such humble origin, the course of
my life has been so and so."
As far as I can see, the division of a dream into two
unequal portions does not always signify a causal relation between the
thoughts of the two portions. It often seems as though in the two dreams
the same material were presented from different points of view; this is
certainly the case when a series of dreams, dreamed the same night, end in
a seminal emission, the somatic need enforcing a more and more definite
expression. Or the two dreams have proceeded from two separate centers in
the dream-material, and they overlap one another in the content, so that
the subject which in one dream constitutes the centre cooperates in the
other as an allusion, and vice versa. But in a certain number of dreams
the division into short preliminary dreams and long subsequent dreams
actually signifies a causal relation between the two portions. The other
method of representing the causal relation is employed with less
comprehensive material, and consists in the transformation of an image in
the dream into another image, whether it be of a person or a thing. Only
where this transformation is actually seen occurring in the dream shall we
seriously insist on the causal relation; not where we simply note that one
thing has taken the place of another. I said that both methods of
representing the causal relation are really reducible to the same method;
in both cases causation is represented by succession, sometimes by the
succession of dreams, sometimes by the immediate transformation of one
image into another. In the great majority of cases, of course, the causal
relation is not represented at all, but is effaced amidst the succession
of elements that is unavoidable even in the dream-process.
Dreams are quite incapable of expressing the
alternative either- or; it is their custom to take both members of this
alternative into the same context, as though they had an equal right to be
there. A classic example of this is contained in the dream of Irma's
injection. Its latent thoughts obviously mean: I am not responsible for
the persistence of Irma's pains; the responsibility rests either with her
resistance to accepting the solution or with the fact that she is living
under unfavorable sexual conditions, which I am unable to change, or her
pains are not hysterical at all, but organic. The dream, however, carries
out all these possibilities, which are almost mutually exclusive, and is
quite ready to add a fourth solution derived from the dream-wish. After
interpreting the dream, I then inserted the either- or in its context in
the dream-thoughts.
But when in narrating a dream the narrator is inclined
to employ the alternative either- or: "It was either a garden or a living-
room," etc., there is not really an alternative in the dream- thoughts,
but an and- a simple addition. When we use either- or we are as a rule
describing a quality of vagueness in some element of the dream, but a
vagueness which may still be cleared up. The rule to be applied in this
case is as follows: The individual members of the alternative are to be
treated as equal and connected by an and. For instance, after waiting long
and vainly for the address of a friend who is traveling in Italy, I dream
that I receive a telegram which gives me the address. On the telegraph
form I see printed in blue letters: the first word is blurred- perhaps via
or villa; the second is distinctly Sezerno, or even (Casa). The second
word, which reminds me of Italian names, and of our discussions on
etymology, also expresses my annoyance in respect of the fact that my
friend has kept his address a secret from me; but each of the possible
first three words may be recognized on analysis as an independent and
equally justifiable starting-point in the concatenation of ideas.
During the night before the funeral of my father I
dreamed of a printed placard, a card or poster rather like the notices in
the waiting-rooms of railway stations which announce that smoking is
prohibited. The sign reads either:
You are requested to shut the eyes
or
You are requested to shut one eye
an alternative which I am in the habit of representing
in the following form:
- the
You are requested to shut eye(s).
- one
Each of the two versions has its special meaning, and
leads along particular paths in the dream-interpretation. I had made the
simplest possible funeral arrangements, for I knew what the deceased
thought about such matters. Other members of the family, however, did not
approve of such puritanical simplicity; they thought we should feel
ashamed in the presence of the other mourners. Hence one of the wordings
of the dream asks for the shutting of one eye, that is to say, it asks
that people should show consideration. The significance of the vagueness,
which is here represented by an either- or, is plainly to be seen. The
dream-work has not succeeded in concocting a coherent and yet ambiguous
wording for the dream-thoughts. Thus the two principal trains of thought
are separated from each other, even in the dream-content.
In some few cases the division of a dream into two
equal parts expresses the alternative which the dream finds it so
difficult to present.
The attitude of dreams to the category of antithesis
and contradiction is very striking. This category is simply ignored; the
word No does not seem to exist for a dream. Dreams are particularly fond
of reducing antitheses to uniformity. or representing them as one and the
same thing. Dreams likewise take the liberty of representing any element
whatever by its desired opposite, so that it is at first impossible to
tell, in respect of any element which is capable of having an opposite,
whether it is contained in the dream-thoughts in the negative or the
positive sense. * In one of the recently cited dreams, whose introductory
portion we have already interpreted ("because my origin is so and so"),
the dreamer climbs down over a trellis, and holds a blossoming bough in
her hands. Since this picture suggests to her the angel in paintings of
the Annunciation (her own name is Mary) bearing a lily-stem in his hand,
and the white- robed girls walking in procession on Corpus Christi Day,
when the streets are decorated with green boughs, the blossoming bough in
the dream is quite clearly an allusion to sexual innocence. But the bough
is thickly studded with red blossoms, each of which resembles a camellia.
At the end of her walk (so the dream continues) the blossoms are already
beginning to fall; then follow unmistakable allusions to menstruation. But
this very bough, which is carried like a lily-stem and as though by an
innocent girl, is also an allusion to Camille, who, as we know, usually
wore a white camellia, but a red one during menstruation. The same
blossoming bough ("the flower of maidenhood" in Goethe's songs of the
miller's daughter) represents at once sexual innocence and its opposite.
Moreover, the same dream, which expresses the dreamer's joy at having
succeeded in passing through life unsullied, hints in several places (as
in the falling of the blossom) at the opposite train of thought, namely,
that she had been guilty of various sins against sexual purity (that is,
in her childhood). In the analysis of the dream we may clearly distinguish
the two trains of thought, of which the comforting one seems to be
superficial, and the reproachful one more profound. The two are
diametrically opposed to each other, and their similar yet contrasting
elements have been represented by identical dream-elements.
* From a work of K. Abel's, Der Gegensinn der Urworte,
(1884), see my review of it in the Bleuler-Freud Jahrbuch, ii (1910) (Ges.
Schriften Vol. X). I learned the surprising fact, which is confirmed by
other philologists, that the oldest languages behaved just as dreams do in
this regard. They had originally only one word for both extremes in a
series of qualities or activities (strong- weak, old- young, far- near,
bind- separate), and formed separate designations for the two opposites
only secondarily, by slight modifications of the common primitive word.
Abel demonstrates a very large number of those relationships in ancient
Egyptian, and points to distinct remnants of the same development in the
Semitic and Indo-Germanic languages.
The mechanism of dream-formation is favorable in the
highest degree to only one of the logical relations. This relation is that
of similarity, agreement, contiguity, just as; a relation which may be
represented in our dreams, as no other can be, by the most varied
expedients. The screening which occurs in the dream-material, or the cases
of just as are the chief points of support for dream-formation, and a not
inconsiderable part of the dream-work consists in creating new screenings
of this kind in cases where those that already exist are prevented by the
resistance of the censorship from making their way into the dream. The
effort towards condensation evinced by the dream-work facilitates the
representation of a relation of similarity.
Similarity, agreement, community, are quite generally
expressed in dreams by contraction into a unity, which is either already
found in the dream-material or is newly created. The first case may be
referred to as identification, the second as composition. Identification
is used where the dream is concerned with persons, composition where
things constitute the material to be unified; but compositions are also
made of persons. Localities are often treated as persons.
Identification consists in giving representation in the
dream- content to only one of two or more persons who are related by some
common feature, while the second person or other persons appear to be
suppressed as far as the dream is concerned. In the dream this one
"screening" person enters into all the relations and situations which
derive from the persons whom he screens. In cases of composition, however,
when persons are combined, there are already present in the dream-image
features which are characteristic of, but not common to, the persons in
question, so that a new unity, a composite person, appears as the result
of the union of these features. The combination itself may be effected in
various ways. Either the dream-person bears the name of one of the persons
to whom he refers- and in this case we simply know, in a manner that is
quite analogous to knowledge in waking life, that this or that person is
intended- while the visual features belong to another person; or the
dream-image itself is compounded of visual features which in reality are
derived from the two. Also, in place of the visual features, the part
played by the second person may be represented by the attitudes and
gestures which are usually ascribed to him by the words he speaks, or by
the situations in which he is placed. In this latter method of
characterization the sharp distinction between the identification and the
combination of persons begins to disappear. But it may also happen that
the formation of such a composite person is unsuccessful. The situations
or actions of the dream are then attributed to one person, and the other-
as a rule the more important- is introduced as an inactive spectator.
Perhaps the dreamer will say: "My mother was there too" (Stekel). Such an
element of the dream-content is then comparable to a determinative in
hieroglyphic script which is not meant to be expressed, but is intended
only to explain another sign.
The common feature which justifies the union of two
persons- that is to say, which enables it to be made- may either be
represented in the dream or it may be absent. As a rule, identification or
composition of persons actually serves to avoid the necessity of
representing this common feature. Instead of repeating: "A is ill-
disposed towards me, and so is B," I make, in my dream, a composite person
of A and B; or I conceive A as doing something which is alien to his
character, but which is characteristic of B. The dream-person obtained in
this way appears in the dream in some new connection, and the fact that he
signifies both A and B justifies my inserting that which is common to both
persons- their hostility towards me- at the proper place in the dream-
interpretation. In this manner I often achieve a quite extraordinary
degree of condensation of the dream-content; I am able to dispense with
the direct representation of the very complicated relations belonging to
one person, if I can find a second person who has an equal claim to some
of these relations. It will be readily understood how far this
representation by means of identification may circumvent the censoring
resistance which sets up such harsh conditions for the dream-work. The
thing that offends the censorship may reside in those very ideas which are
connected in the dream-material with the one person; I now find a second
person, who likewise stands in some relation to the objectionable
material, but only to a part of it. Contact at that one point which
offends the censorship now justifies my formation of a composite person,
who is characterized by the indifferent features of each. This person, the
result of combination or identification, being free of the censorship, is
now suitable for incorporation in the dream-content. Thus, by the
application of dream-condensation, I have satisfied the demands of the
dream- censorship.
When a common feature of two persons is represented in
a dream, this is usually a hint to look for another concealed common
feature, the representation of which is made impossible by the censorship.
Here a displacement of the common feature has occurred, which in some
degree facilitates representation. From the circumstance that the
composite person is shown to me in the dream with an indifferent common
feature, I must infer that another common feature which is by no means
indifferent exists in the dream-thoughts.
Accordingly, the identification or combination of
persons serves various purposes in our dreams; in the first place, that of
representing a feature common to two persons; secondly, that of
representing a displaced common feature; and, thirdly, that of expressly a
community of features which is merely wished for. As the wish for a
community of features in two persons often coincides with the
interchanging of these persons, this relation also is expressed in dreams
by identification. In the dream of Irma's injection I wish to exchange one
patient for another- that is to say, I wish this other person to be my
patient, as the former person has been; the dream deals with this wish by
showing me a person who is called Irma, but who is examined in a position
such as I have had occasion to see only the other person occupy. In the
dream about my uncle this substitution is made the centre of the dream; I
identify myself with the minister by judging and treating my colleagues as
shabbily as lie does.
It has been my experience- and to this I have found no
exception- that every dream treats of oneself. Dreams are absolutely
egoistic. * In cases where not my ego but only a strange person occurs in
the dream-content, I may safely assume that by means of identification my
ego is concealed behind that person. I am permitted to supplement my ego.
On other occasions, when my ego appears in the dream, the situation in
which it is placed tells me that another person is concealing himself, by
means of identification, behind the ego. In this case I must be prepared
to find that in the interpretation I should transfer something which is
connected with this person- the hidden common feature- to myself. There
are also dreams in which my ego appears together with other persons who,
when the identification is resolved, once more show themselves to be my
ego. Through these identifications I shall then have to connect with my
ego certain ideas to which the censorship has objected. I may also give my
ego multiple representation in my dream, either directly or by means of
identification with other people. By means of several such identifications
an extraordinary amount of thought material may be condensed. *(2) That
one's ego should appear in the same dream several times or in different
forms is fundamentally no more surprising than that it should appear, in
conscious thinking, many times and in different places or in different
relations: as, for example, in the sentence: "When I think what a healthy
child I was."
* Cf. here the observations made in chapter V.
*(2) If I do not know behind which of the persons
appearing in the dream I am to look for my ego. I observe the following
rule: That person in the dream who is subject to an emotion which I am
aware of while asleep is the one that conceals my ego.
Still easier than in the case of persons is the
resolution of identifications in the case of localities designated by
their own names, as here the disturbing influence of the all-powerful ego
is lacking. In one of my dreams of Rome (chapter V., B.) the name of the
place in which I find myself is Rome: I am surprised, however, by a large
number of German placards at a street corner. This last is a wish-fulfillment,
which immediately suggests Prague; the wish itself probably originated at
a period of my youth when I was imbued with a German nationalistic spirit
which today is quite subdued. At the time of my dream I was looking
forward to meeting a friend in Prague; the identification of Rome with
Prague is therefore explained by a desired common feature; I would rather
meet my friend in Rome than in Prague; for the purpose of this meeting I
should like to exchange Prague for Rome.
The possibility of creating composite formations is one
of the chief causes of the fantastic character so common in dreams. in
that it introduces into the dream-content elements which could never have
been objects of perception. The psychic process which occurs in the
creation of composite formations is obviously the same as that which we
employ in conceiving or figuring a dragon or a centaur in our waking
senses. The only difference is that, in the fantastic creations of waking
life, the impression intended is itself the decisive factor, while the
composite formation in the dream is determined by a factor- the common
feature in the dream-thoughts- which is independent of its form. Composite
formations in dreams may be achieved in a great many different ways. In
the most artless of these methods, only the properties of the one thing
are represented, and this representation is accompanied by a knowledge
that they refer to another object also. A more careful technique combines
features of the one object with those of the other in a new image, while
it makes skillful use of any really existing resemblances between the two
objects. The new creation may prove to be wholly absurd, or even
successful as a phantasy, according as the material and the wit employed
in constructing it may permit. If the objects to be condensed into a unity
are too incongruous, the dream-work is content with creating a composite
formation with a comparatively distinct nucleus, to which are attached
more indefinite modifications. The unification into one image has here
been to some extent unsuccessful; the two representations overlap one
another, and give rise to something like a contest between the visual
images. Similar representations might be obtained in a drawing if one were
to attempt to give form to a unified abstraction of disparate perceptual
images.
Dreams naturally abound in such composite formations; I
have given several examples of these in the dreams already analyzed, and
will now cite more such examples. In the dream earlier in this chapter
which describes the career of my patient in flowery language, the
dream-ego carries a spray of blossoms in her hand which, as we have seen,
signifies at once sexual innocence and sexual transgression. Moreover,
from the manner in which the blossoms are set on, they recall
cherry-blossom; the blossoms themselves, considered singly, are camellias,
and finally the whole spray gives the dreamer the impression of an exotic
plant. The common feature in the elements of this composite formation is
revealed by the dream-thoughts. The blossoming spray is made up of
allusions to presents by which she was induced or was to have been induced
to behave in a manner agreeable to the giver. So it was with cherries in
her childhood, and with a camellia-tree in her later years; the exotic
character is an allusion to a much- travelled naturalist, who sought to
win her favour by means of a drawing of a flower. Another female patient
contrives a composite mean out of bathing machines at a seaside resort,
country privies, and the attics of our city dwelling-houses. A reference
to human nakedness and exposure is common to the first two elements; and
we may infer from their connection with the third element that (in her
childhood) the garret was likewise the scene of bodily exposure. A dreamer
of the male sex makes a composite locality out of two places in which
"treatment" is given- my office and the assembly rooms in which he first
became acquainted with his wife. Another, a female patient, after her
elder brother has promised to regale her with caviar, dreams that his legs
are covered all over with black beads of caviar. The two elements, taint
in a moral sense and the recollection of a cutaneous eruption in childhood
which made her legs look as though studded over with red instead of black
spots, have here combined with the beads of caviar to form a new idea- the
idea of what she gets from her brother. In this dream parts of the human
body are treated as objects, as is usually the case in dreams. In one of
the dreams recorded by Ferenczi there occurs a composite formation made up
of the person of a physician and a horse, and this composite being wears a
night-shirt. The common feature in these three components was revealed in
the analysis, after the nightshirt had been recognized as an allusion to
the father of the dreamer in a scene of childhood. In each of the three
cases there was some object of her sexual curiosity. As a child she had
often been taken by her nurse to the army stud, where she had the amplest
opportunity to satisfy her curiosity, at that time still uninhibited.
I have already stated that the dream has no means of
expressing the relation of contradiction, contrast, negation. I shall now
contradict this assertion for the first time. A certain number of cases of
what may be summed up under the word contrast obtain representation, as we
have seen, simply by means of identification- that is when an exchange, a
substitution, can be bound up with the contrast. Of this we have cited
repeated examples. Certain other of the contrasts in the dream-thoughts,
which perhaps come under the category of inverted, united into the
opposite, are represented in dreams in the following remarkable manner,
which may almost be described as witty. The inversion does not itself make
its way into the dream-content, but manifests its presence in the material
by the fact that a part of the already formed dream-content which is, for
other reasons, closely connected in context is- as it were subsequently-
inverted. It is easier to illustrate this process than to describe it. In
the beautiful "Up and Down" dream (this chapter, A.), the
dream-representation of ascending is an inversion of its prototype in the
dream-thoughts: that is, of the introductory scene of Daudet's Sappho; in
the dream, climbing is difficult at first and easy later on, whereas, in
the novel, it is easy at first, and later becomes more and more difficult.
Again, above and below, with reference to the dreamer's brother, are
reversed in the dream. This points to a relation of inversion or contrast
between two parts of the material in the dream-thoughts, which indeed we
found in them, for in the childish phantasy of the dreamer he is carried
by his nurse, while in the novel, on the contrary, the hero carries his
beloved. My dream of Goethe's attack on Herr M (to be cited later)
likewise contains an inversion of this sort, which must be set right
before the dream can be interpreted. In this dream, Goethe attacks a young
man, Herr M; the reality, as contained in the dream-thoughts, is that an
eminent man, a friend of mine, has been attacked by an unknown young
author. In the dream I reckon time from the date of Goethe's death; in
reality the reckoning was made from the year in which the paralytic was
born. The thought which influences the dream-material reveals itself as my
opposition to the treatment of Goethe as though he were a lunatic. "It is
the other way about," says the dream; "if you don't understand the book it
is you who are feeble-minded, not the author." All these dreams of
inversion, moreover, seem to me to imply an allusion to the contemptuous
phrase, "to turn one's back upon a person" (German: einem die Kehrseite
zeigen, lit. to show a person one's backside): cf. the inversion in
respect of the dreamer's brother in the Sappho dream. It is further worth
noting how frequently inversion is employed in precisely those dreams
which are inspired by repressed homosexual impulses.
Moreover, inversion, or transformation into the
opposite, is one of the most favored and most versatile methods of
representation which the dream-work has at its disposal. It serves, in the
first place, to enable the wish-fulfillment to prevail against a definite
element of the dream-thoughts. "If only it were the other way about!" is
often the best expression for the reaction of the ego against a
disagreeable recollection. But inversion becomes extraordinarily useful in
the service of the censorship, for it effects, in the material to be
represented, a degree of distortion which at first simply paralyses our
understanding of the dream. It is therefore always permissible, if a dream
stubbornly refuses to surrender its meaning, to venture on the
experimental inversion of definite portions of its manifest content. Then,
not infrequently, everything becomes clear.
Besides the inversion of content, the temporal
inversion must not be overlooked. A frequent device of dream-distortion
consists in presenting the final issue of the event or the conclusion of
the train of thought at the beginning of the dream, and appending at the
end of the dream the premises of the conclusion, or the causes of the
event. Anyone who forgets this technical device of dream-distortion stands
helpless before the problem of dream- interpretation. *
* The hysterical attack often employs the same device
of temporal inversion in order to conceal its meaning from the observer.
The attack of a hysterical girl, for example, consists in enacting a
little romance, which she has imagined in the unconscious in connection
with an encounter in a tram. A man, attracted by the beauty of her foot,
addresses her while she is reading, whereupon she goes with him and a
passionate love-scene ensues. Her attack begins with the representation of
this scene by writhing movements of the body (accompanied by movements of
the lips and folding of the arms to signify kisses and embraces),
whereupon she hurries into the next room, sits down on a chair, lifts her
skirt in order to show her foot, acts as though she were about to read a
book, and speaks to me (answers me). Cf. the observation of Artemidorus:
"In interpreting dream-stories, one must consider them the first time from
the beginning to the end, and the second time from the end to the
beginning."
In many cases, indeed, we discover the meaning of the
dream only when we have subjected the dream-content to a multiple
inversion, in accordance with the different relations. For example, in the
dream of a young patient who is suffering from obsessional neurosis, the
memory of the childish death-wish directed against a dreaded father
concealed itself behind the following words: His father scolds him because
he comes home so late, but the context of the psycho-analytic treatment
and the impressions of the dreamer show that the sentence must be read as
follows: He is angry with his father, and further, that his father always
came home too early (i.e., too soon). He would have preferred that his
father should not come home at all, which is identical with the wish (see
chapter V., D.) that his father would die. As a little boy, during the
prolonged absence of his father, the dreamer was guilty of a sexual
aggression against another child, and was punished by the threat: "Just
you wait until your father comes home!"
If we should seek to trace the relations between the
dream- content and the dream-thoughts a little farther, we shall do this
best by making the dream itself our point of departure, and asking
ourselves: What do certain formal characteristics of the
dream-presentation signify in relation to the dream-thoughts? First and
foremost among the formal characteristics which are bound to impress us in
dreams are the differences in the sensory intensity of the single
dream-images, and in the distinctness of various parts of the dream, or of
whole dreams as compared with one another. The differences in the
intensity of individual dream- images cover the whole gamut, from a
sharpness of definition which one is inclined- although without warrant-
to rate more highly than that of reality, to a provoking indistinctness
which we declare to be characteristic of dreams, because it really is not
wholly comparable to any of the degrees of indistinctness which we
occasionally perceive in real objects. Moreover, we usually describe the
impression which we receive of an indistinct object in a dream as
fleeting, while we think of the more distinct dream-images as having been
perceptible also for a longer period of time. We must now ask ourselves by
what conditions in the dream-material these differences in the
distinctness of the individual portions of the dream-content are brought
about.
Before proceeding farther, it is necessary to deal with
certain expectations which seem to be almost inevitable. Since actual
sensations experienced during sleep may constitute part of the
dream-material, it will probably be assumed that these sensations, or the
dream-elements resulting from them, are emphasized by a special intensity,
or conversely, that anything which is particularly vivid in the dream can
probably be traced to such real sensations during sleep. My experience,
however, has never confirmed this. It is not true that those elements of a
dream which are derivatives of real impressions perceived in sleep (nerve
stimuli) are distinguished by their special vividness from others which
are based on memories. The factor of reality is inoperative in determining
the intensity of dream- images.
Further, it might be expected that the sensory
intensity (vividness) of single dream-images is in proportion to the
psychic intensity of the elements corresponding to them in the
dream-thoughts. In the latter, intensity is identical with psychic value;
the most intense elements are in fact the most significant, and these
constitute the central point of the dream- thoughts. We know, however,
that it is precisely these elements which are usually not admitted to the
dream-content, owing to the vigilance of the censorship. Still, it might
be possible for their most immediate derivatives, which represent them in
the dream, to reach a higher degree of intensity without, however, for
that reason constituting the central point of the dream- representation.
This assumption also vanishes as soon as we compare the dream and the
dream-material. The intensity of the elements in the one has nothing to do
with the intensity of the elements in the other; as a matter of fact, a
complete transvaluation of all psychic values takes place between the
dream-material and the dream. The very element of the dream which is
transient and hazy, and screened by more vigorous images, is often
discovered to be the one and only direct derivative of the topic that
completely dominates the dream-thoughts.
The intensity of the dream-elements proves to be
determined in a different manner: that is, by two factors which are
mutually independent. It will readily be understood that, those elements
by means of which the wish-fulfillment expresses itself are those which are
intensely represented. But analysis tells us that from the most vivid
elements of the dream the greatest number of trains of thought proceed,
and that those which are most vivid are at the same time those which are
best determined. No change of meaning is involved if we express this
latter empirical proposition in the following formula: The greatest
intensity is shown by those elements of the dream for whose formation the
most extensive condensation-work was required. We may, therefore, expect
that it will be possible to express this condition, as well as the other
condition of the wish-fulfillment, in a single formula.
I must utter a warning that the problem which I have
just been considering- the causes of the greater or lesser intensity or
distinctness of single elements in dreams- is not to be confounded with
the other problem- that of variations in the distinctness of whole dreams
or sections of dreams. In the former case the opposite of distinctness is
haziness; in the latter, confusion. It is, of course, undeniable that in
both scales the two kinds of intensities rise and fall in unison. A
portion of the dream which seems clear to us usually contains vivid
elements; an obscure dream, on the contrary, is composed of less vivid
elements. But the problem offered by the scale of definition, which ranges
from the apparently clear to the indistinct or confused, is far more
complicated than the problem of fluctuations in vividness of the
dream-elements. For reasons which will be given later, the former cannot
at this stage be further discussed. In isolated cases one observes, not
without surprise, that the impression of distinctness or indistinctness
produced by a dream has nothing to do with the dream-structure, but
proceeds from the dream-material, as one of its ingredients. Thus, for
example, I remember a dream which on waking seemed so particularly
well-constructed, flawless and clear that I made up my mind, while I was
still in a somnolent state, to admit a new category of dreams- those which
had not been subject to the mechanism of condensation and distortion, and
which might thus be described as phantasies during sleep. A closer
examination, however, proved that this unusual dream suffered from the
same structural flaws and breaches as exist in all other dreams; so I
abandoned the idea of a category of dream-phantasies. * The content of the
dream, reduced to its lowest terms, was that I was expounding to a friend
a difficult and long-sought theory of bisexuality, and the wish-fulfilling
power of the dream was responsible for the fact that this theory (which,
by the way, was not communicated in the dream) appeared to be so lucid and
flawless. Thus, what I believed to be a judgment as regards the finished
dream was a part, and indeed the most essential part, of the
dream-content. Here the dream-work reached out, as it were, into my first
waking thoughts, and presented to me, in the form of a judgment of the
dream, that part of the dream-material which it had failed to represent
with precision in the dream. I was once confronted with the exact
counterpart of this case by a female patient who at first absolutely
declined to relate a dream which was necessary for the analysis "because
it was so hazy and confused," and who finally declared, after repeatedly
protesting the inaccuracy of her description, that it seemed to her that
several persons- herself, her husband, and her father- had occurred in the
dream, and that she had not known whether her husband was her father, or
who really was her father, or something of that sort. Comparison of this
dream with the ideas which occurred to the dreamer in the course of the
sitting showed beyond a doubt that it dealt with the rather commonplace
story of a maidservant who has to confess that she is expecting a child,
and hears doubts expressed as to "who the father really is." *(2) The
obscurity manifested by this dream, therefore, was once more a portion of
the dream-exciting material. A fragment of this material was represented
in the form of the dream. The form of the dream or of dreaming is employed
with astonishing frequency to represent the concealed content.
* I do not know today whether I was justified in doing
so.
*(2) Accompanying hysterical symptoms; amenorrhea and
profound depression were the chief troubles of this patient.
Glosses on the dream, and seemingly harmless comments
on it, often serve in the most subtle manner to conceal- although, of
course, they really betray- a part of what is dreamed. As, for example,
when the dreamer says: Here the dream was wiped out, and the analysis
gives an infantile reminiscence of listening to someone cleaning himself
after defecation. Or another example, which deserves to be recorded in
detail: A young man has a very distinct dream, reminding him of phantasies
of his boyhood which have remained conscious. He found himself in a hotel
at a seasonal resort; it was night; he mistook the number of his room, and
entered a room in which an elderly lady and her two daughters were
undressing to go to bed. He continues: "Then there are some gaps in the
dream; something is missing; and at the end there was a man in the room,
who wanted to throw me out, and with whom I had to struggle." He tries in
vain to recall the content and intention of the boyish phantasy to which
the dream obviously alluded. But we finally become aware that the required
content had already been given in his remarks concerning the indistinct
part of the dream. The gaps are the genital apertures of the women who are
going to bed: Here something is missing describes the principal
characteristic of the female genitals. In his young days he burned with
curiosity to see the female genitals, and was still inclined to adhere to
the infantile sexual theory which attributes a male organ to women.
A very similar form was assumed in an analogous
reminiscence of another dreamer. He dreamed: I go with Fraulein K into the
restaurant of the Volksgarten... then comes a dark place, an
interruption... then I find myself in the salon of a brothel, where I see
two or three women, one in a chemise and drawers.
Analysis. Fraulein K is the daughter of his former
employer; as he himself admits, she was a sister-substitute. He rarely had
the opportunity of talking to her, but they once had a conversation in
which "one recognized one's sexuality, so to speak, as though one were to
say: I am a man and you are a woman." He had been only once to the
above-mentioned restaurant, when he was accompanied by the sister of his
brother-in-law, a girl to whom he was quite indifferent. On another
occasion he accompanied three ladies to the door of the restaurant. The
ladies were his sister, his sister-in-law, and the girl already mentioned.
He was perfectly indifferent to all three of them, but they all belonged
to the sister category. He had visited a brothel but rarely, perhaps two
or three times in his life.
The interpretation is based on the dark place, the
interruption in the dream, and informs us that on occasion, but in fact
only rarely, obsessed by his boyish curiosity, he had inspected the
genitals of his sister, a few years his junior. A few days later the
misdemeanor indicated in the dream recurred to his conscious memory.
All dreams of the same night belong, in respect of
their content, to the same whole; their division into several parts, their
grouping and number, are all full of meaning and may be regarded as pieces
of information about the latent dream-thoughts. In the interpretation of
dreams consisting of several main sections, or of dreams belonging to the
same night, we must not overlook the possibility that these different and
successive dreams mean the same thing, expressing the same impulses in
different material. That one of these homologous dreams which comes first
in time is usually the most distorted and most bashful, while the next
dream is bolder and more distinct.
Even Pharaoh's dream of the ears and the kine, which
Joseph interpreted, was of this kind. It is given by Josephus in greater
detail than in the Bible. After relating the first dream, the King said:
"After I had seen this vision I awaked out of my sleep, and, being in
disorder, and considering with myself what this appearance should be, I
fell asleep again, and saw another dream much more wonderful than the
foregoing, which still did more affright and disturb me." After listening
to the relation of the dream, Joseph said: "This dream, O King, although
seen under two forms, signifies one and the same event of things." *
* Josephus; Antiquities of the Jews, book II, chap. V,
trans. by Wm. Whitson (David McKay, Philadelphia).
Jung, in his Beitrag zur Psychologie des Geruchtes,
relates how a veiled erotic dream of a schoolgirl was understood by her
friends without interpretation, and continued by them with variations, and
he remarks, with reference to one of these narrated dreams, that "the
concluding idea of a long series of dream-images had precisely the same
content as the first image of the series had endeavored to represent. The
censorship thrust the complex out of the way as long as possible by a
constant renewal of symbolic screenings, displacements, transformations
into something harmless, etc." Scherner was well acquainted with this
peculiarity of dream-representation, and describes it in his Leben des
Traumes (p. 166) in terms of a special law in the Appendix to his doctrine
of organic stimulation: "But finally, in all symbolic dream-formations
emanating from definite nerve stimuli, the phantasy observes the general
law that at the beginning of the dream it depicts the stimulating object
only by the remotest and freest allusions, but towards the end, when the
graphic impulse becomes exhausted, the stimulus itself is nakedly
represented by its appropriate organ or its function; whereupon the dream,
itself describing its organic motive, achieves its end...."
A pretty confirmation of this law of Scherner's has
been furnished by Otto Rank in his essay: Ein Traum, der sich selbst
deutet. This dream, related to him by a girl, consisted of two dreams of
the same night, separated by an interval of time, the second of which
ended with an orgasm. It was possible to interpret this orgastic dream in
detail in spite of the few ideas contributed by the dreamer, and the
wealth of relations between the two dream-contents made it possible to
recognize that the first dream expressed in modest language the same thing
as the second, so that the latter- the orgastic dream- facilitated a full
explanation of the former. From this example, Rank very justifiably argues
the significance of orgastic dreams for the theory of dreams in general.
But, in my experience, it is only in rare cases that
one is in a position to translate the lucidity or confusion of a dream,
respectively, into a certainty or doubt in the dream-material. Later on I
shall have to disclose a hitherto unmentioned factor in dream-formation,
upon whose operation this qualitative scale in dreams is essentially
dependent.
In many dreams in which a certain situation and
environment are preserved for some time, there occur interruptions which
may be described in the following words: "But then it seemed as though it
were, at the same time, another place, and there such and such a thing
happened." In these cases, what interrupts the main action of the dream,
which after a while may be continued again, reveals itself in the
dream-material as a subordinate clause, an interpolated thought.
Conditionality in the dream-thoughts is represented by simultaneity in the
dream-content (wenn or wann = if or when, while).
We may now ask: What is the meaning of the sensation of
inhibited movement which so often occurs in dreams, and is so closely
allied to anxiety? One wants to move, and is unable to stir from the spot;
or wants to accomplish something, and encounters obstacle after obstacle.
The train is about to start. and one cannot reach it; one's hand is raised
to avenge an insult, and its strength fails, etc. We have already met with
this sensation in exhibition-dreams, but have as yet made no serious
attempt to interpret it. It is convenient, but inadequate, to answer that
there is motor paralysis in sleep, which manifests itself by means of the
sensation alluded to. We may ask: Why is it, then, that we do not dream
continually of such inhibited movements? And we may permissibly suspect
that this sensation, which may at any time occur during sleep, serves some
sort of purpose for representation, and is evoked only when the need of
this representation is present in the dream-material.
Inability to do a thing does not always appear in the
dream as a sensation; it may appear simply as part of the dream-content. I
think one case of this kind is especially fitted to enlighten us as to the
meaning of this peculiarity. I shall give an abridged version of a dream
in which I seem to be accused of dishonesty. The scene is a mixture made
up of a private sanatorium and several other places. A manservant appears,
to summon me to an inquiry. I know in the dream that something has been
missed, and that the inquiry is taking place because I am suspected of
having appropriated the lost article. Analysis shows that inquiry is to be
taken in two senses; it includes the meaning of medical examination. Being
conscious of my innocence, and my position as consultant in this
sanatorium, I calmly follow the manservant. We are received at the door by
another manservant, who says, pointing at me, "Have you brought him? Why,
he is a respectable man." Thereupon, and unattended, I enter a great hall
where there are many machines, which reminds me of an inferno with its
hellish instruments of punishment. I see a colleague strapped to an
appliance; he has every reason to be interested in my appearance, but he
takes no notice of me. I understand that I may now go. Then I cannot find
my hat, and cannot go after all.
The wish that the dream fulfils is obviously the wish
that my honesty shall be acknowledged, and that I may be permitted to go;
there must therefore be all sorts of material in the dream- thoughts which
comprise a contradiction of this wish. The fact that I may go is the sign
of my absolution; if, then, the dream provides at its close an event which
prevents me from going, we may readily conclude that the suppressed
material of the contradiction is asserting itself in this feature. The
fact that I cannot find my hat therefore means: "You are not after all an
honest man." The inability to do something in the dream is the expression
of a contradiction, a No; so that our earlier assertion, to the effect
that the dream is not capable of expressing a negation, must be revised
accordingly. *
* A reference to an experience of childhood emerges, in
the complete analysis, through the following connecting-links: "The Moor
has done his duty, the Moor can go." And then follows the waggish
question: "How old is the Moor when he has done his duty?"- "A year, then
he can go (walk)." (It is said that I came into the world with so much
black curly hair that my young mother declared that I was a little Moor.)
The fact that I cannot find my hat is an experience of the day which has
been exploited in various senses. Our servant, who is a genius at stowing
things away, had hidden the hat. A rejection of melancholy thoughts of
death is concealed behind the conclusion of the dream: "I have not nearly
done my duty yet; I cannot go yet." Birth and death together- as in the
dream of Goethe and the paralytic, which was a little earlier in date.
In other dreams in which the inability to do something
occurs, not merely as a situation, but also as a sensation, the same
contradiction is more emphatically expressed by the sensation of inhibited
movement, or a will to which a counter-will is opposed. Thus the sensation
of inhibited movement represents a conflict of will. We shall see later on
that this very motor paralysis during sleep is one of the fundamental
conditions of the psychic process which functions during dreaming. Now an
impulse which is conveyed to the motor system is none other than the will,
and the fact that we are certain that the impulse will be inhibited in
sleep makes the whole process extraordinarily well-adapted to the
representation of a will towards something and of a No which opposes
itself thereto. From my explanation of anxiety, it is easy to understand
why the sensation of the inhibited will is so closely allied to anxiety,
and why it is so often connected with it in dreams. Anxiety is a libidinal
impulse which emanates from the unconscious and is inhibited by the
preconscious. * Therefore, when a sensation of inhibition in the dream is
accompanied by anxiety, the dream must be concerned with a volition which
was at one time capable of arousing libido; there must be a sexual
impulse.
* This theory is not in accordance with more recent
views.
As for the judgment which is often expressed during a
dream: "Of course, it is only a dream," and the psychic force to which it
may be ascribed, I shall discuss these questions later on. For the present
I will merely say that they are intended to depreciate the importance of
what is being dreamed. The interesting problem allied to this, as to what
is meant if a certain content in the dream is characterized in the dream
itself as having been dreamed- the riddle of a dream within a dream- has
been solved in a similar sense by W. Stekel, by the analysis of some
convincing examples. Here again the part of the dream dreamed is to be
depreciated in value and robbed of its reality; that which the dreamer
continues to dream after waking from the dream within a dream is what the
dream-wish desires to put in place of the obliterated reality. It may
therefore be assumed that the part dreamed contains the representation of
the reality, the real memory, while, on the other hand, the continued
dream contains the representation of what the dreamer merely wishes. The
inclusion of a certain content in a dream within a dream is, therefore,
equivalent to the wish that what has been characterized as a dream had
never occurred. In other words: when a particular incident is represented
by the dream-work in a dream, it signifies the strongest confirmation of
the reality of this incident, the most emphatic affirmation of it. The
dream- work utilizes the dream itself as a form of repudiation, and
thereby confirms the theory that a dream is a wish-fulfillment. |
