CHAPTER SEVEN (Continued...)
A. The Forgetting of Dreams
I propose, then, that we shall first of all turn our
attention to a subject which brings us to a hitherto disregarded
objection, which threatens to undermine the very foundation of our efforts
at dream-interpretation. The objection has been made from more than one
quarter that the dream which we wish to interpret is really unknown to us,
or, to be more precise, that we have no guarantee that we know it as it
really occurred.
What we recollect of the dream, and what we subject to
our methods of interpretation, is, in the first place, mutilated by the
unfaithfulness of our memory, which seems quite peculiarly incapable of
retaining dreams, and which may have omitted precisely the most
significant parts of their content. For when we try to consider our dreams
attentively, we often have reason to complain that we have dreamed much
than we remember; that unfortunately we know nothing more than this one
fragment, and that our recollection of even this fragment seems to us
strangely uncertain. Moreover, everything goes to prove that our memory
reproduces the dream not only incompletely but also untruthfully, in a
falsifying manner. As, on the one hand, we may doubt whether what we
dreamed was really as disconnected as it is in our recollections, so on
the other hand we may doubt whether a dream was really as coherent as our
account of it; whether in our attempted reproduction we have not filled in
the gaps which really existed, or those which are due to forgetfulness,
with new and arbitrarily chosen material; whether we have not embellished
the dream, rounded it off and corrected it, so that any conclusion as to
its real content becomes impossible. Indeed, one writer (Spitta) *
surmises that all that is orderly and coherent is really first put into
the dream during the attempt to recall it. Thus we are in danger of being
deprived of the very object whose value we have undertaken to determine.
* Similar views are expressed by Foucault and Tannery.
In all our dream-interpretations we have hitherto
ignored these warnings. On the contrary, indeed, we have found that the
smallest, most insignificant, and most uncertain components of the
dream-content invited interpretations no less emphatically than those
which were distinctly and certainly contained in the dream. In the dream
of Irma's injection we read: "I quickly called in Dr. M," and we assumed
that even this small addendum would not have got into the dream if it had
not been susceptible of a special derivation. In this way we arrived at
the history of that unfortunate patient to whose bedside I quickly called
my older colleague. In the seemingly absurd dream which treated the
difference between fifty-one and fifty-six as a quantity negligible the
number fifty-one was mentioned repeatedly. Instead of regarding this as a
matter of course, or a detail of indifferent value, we proceeded from this
to a second train of thought in the latent dream-content, which led to the
number fifty-one, and by following up this clue we arrived at the fears
which proposed fifty-one years as the term of life in the sharpest
opposition to a dominant train of thought which was boastfully lavish of
the years. In the dream Non vixit I found, as an insignificant
interpolation, that I had at first overlooked the sentence: As P does not
understand him, Fl asks me, etc. The interpretation then coming to a
standstill, I went back to these words, and I found through them the way
to the infantile phantasy which appeared in the dream-thoughts as an
intermediate point of junction. This came about by means of the poet's
verses:
Selten habt ihr mich verstanden,
Selten auch verstand ich Euch,
Nur wenn wir im Kot uns fanden
So verstanden wir uns gleich! *
* Seldom have you understood me,
Seldom have I understood you,
But when we found ourselves in the mire,
We at once understood each other!
Every analysis will afford evidence of the fact that
the most insignificant features of the dream are indispensable to
interpretation, and will show how the completion of the task is delayed if
we postpone our examination of them. We have given equal attention, in the
interpretation of dreams, to every nuance of verbal expression found in
them; indeed, whenever we are confronted by a senseless or insufficient
wording, as though we had failed to translate the dream into the proper
version, we have respected even these defects of expression. In brief,
what other writers have regarded as arbitrary improvisations, concocted
hastily to avoid confusion, we have treated like a sacred text. This
contradiction calls for explanation.
It would appear, without doing any injustice to the
writers in question, that the explanation is in our favor. From the
standpoint of our newly-acquired insight into the origin of dreams, all
contradictions are completely reconciled. It is true that we distort the
dream in our attempt to reproduce it; we once more find therein what we
have called the secondary and often misunderstanding elaboration of the
dream by the agency of normal thinking. But this distortion is itself no
more than a part of the elaboration to which the dream-thoughts are
constantly subjected as a result of the dream-censorship. Other writers
have here suspected or observed that part of the dream-distortion whose
work is manifest; but for us this is of little consequence, as we know
that a far more extensive work of distortion, not so easily apprehended,
has already taken the dream for its object from among the hidden
dream-thoughts. The only mistake of these writers consists in believing
the modification effected in the dream by its recollection and verbal
expression to be arbitrary, incapable of further solution, and
consequently liable to lead us astray in our cognition of the dream. They
underestimate the determination of the dream in the psyche. Here there is
nothing arbitrary. It can be shown that in all cases a second train of
thought immediately takes over the determination of the elements which
have been left undetermined by the first. For example, I wish quite
arbitrarily to think of a number; but this is not possible; the number
that occurs to me is definitely and necessarily determined by thoughts
within me which may be quite foreign to my momentary purpose. * The
modifications which the dream undergoes in its revision by the waking mind
are just as little arbitrary. They preserve an associative connection with
the content, whose place they take, and serve to show us the way to this
content, which may itself be a substitute for yet another content.
* Cf. The Psycho-pathology of Everday Life.
In analyzing the dreams of patients I impose the
following test of this assertion, and never without success. If the first
report of a dream seems not very comprehensible, I request the dreamer to
repeat it. This he rarely does in the same words. But the passages in
which the expression is modified are thereby made known to me as the weak
points of the dream's disguise; they are what the embroidered emblem on
Siegfried's raiment was to Hagen. These are the points from which the
analysis may start. The narrator has been admonished by my announcement
that I intend to take special pains to solve the dream, and immediately,
obedient to the urge of resistance, he protects the weak points of the
dream's disguise, replacing a treacherous expression by a less relevant
one. He thus calls my attention to the expressions which he has discarded.
From the efforts made to guard against the solution of the dream, I can
also draw conclusions about the care with which the raiment of the dream
has been woven.
The writers whom I have mentioned are, however, less
justified when they attribute so much importance to the doubt with which
our judgment approaches the relation of the dream. For this doubt is not
intellectually warranted; our memory can give no guarantees, but
nevertheless we are compelled to credit its statements far more frequently
than is objectively justifiable. Doubt concerning the accurate
reproduction of the dream, or of individual data of the dream, is only
another offshoot of the dream-censorship, that is, of resistance to the
emergence of the dream-thoughts into consciousness. This resistance has
not yet exhausted itself by the displacements and substitutions which it
has effected, so that it still clings, in the form of doubt, to what has
been allowed to emerge. We can recognize this doubt all the more readily
in that it is careful never to attack the intensive elements of the dream,
but only the weak and indistinct ones. But we already know that a
transvaluation of all the psychic values has taken place between the
dream-thoughts and the dream. The distortion has been made possible only
by devaluation; it constantly manifests itself in this way and sometimes
contents itself therewith. If doubt is added to the indistinctness of an
element of the dream-content, we may, following this indication, recognize
in this element a direct offshoot of one of the outlawed dream-thoughts.
The state of affairs is like that obtaining after a great revolution in
one of the republics of antiquity or the Renaissance. The once powerful,
ruling families of the nobility are now banished; all high posts are
filled by upstarts; in the city itself only the poorer and most powerless
citizens, or the remoter followers of the vanquished party, are tolerated.
Even the latter do not enjoy the full rights of citizenship. They are
watched with suspicion. In our case, instead of suspicion we have doubt. I
must insist, therefore, that in the analysis of a dream one must
emancipate oneself from the whole scale of standards of reliability; and
if there is the slightest possibility that this or that may have occurred
in the dream, it should be treated as an absolute certainty. Until one has
decided to reject all respect for appearances in tracing the
dream-elements, the analysis will remain at a standstill. Disregard of the
element concerned has the psychic effect, in the person analyzed, that
nothing in connection with the unwished ideas behind this element will
occur to him. This effect is really not self-evident; it would be quite
reasonable to say, "Whether this or that was contained in the dream I do
not know for certain; but the following ideas happen to occur to me." But
no one ever does say so; it is precisely the disturbing effect of doubt in
the analysis that permits it to be unmasked as an offshoot and instrument
of the psychic resistance. Psycho- analysis is justifiably suspicions. One
of its rules runs: Whatever disturbs the progress of the work is a
resistance. * -
* This peremptory statement: "Whatever disturbs the
progress of the work is a resistance" might easily be misunderstood. It
has, of course, the significance merely of a technical rule, a warning for
the analyst. It is not denied that during an analysis events may occur
which cannot be ascribed to the intention of the person analyzed. The
patient's father may die in other ways than by being murdered by the
patient, or a war may break out and interrupt the analysis. But despite
the obvious exaggeration of the above statement there is still something
new and useful in it. Even if the disturbing event is real and independent
of the patient, the extent of the disturbing influence does often depend
only on him, and the resistance reveals itself unmistakably in the ready
and immoderate exploitation of such an opportunity. -
The forgetting of dreams, too, remains inexplicible
until we seek to explain it by the power of the psychic censorship. The
feeling that one has dreamed a great deal during the night and has
retained only a little of it may have yet another meaning in a number of
cases: it may perhaps mean that the dream-work has continued in a
perceptible manner throughout the night, but has left behind it only one
brief dream. There is, however, no possible doubt that a dream is
progressively forgotten on waking. One often forgets it in spite of a
painful effort to recover it. I believe, however, that just as one
generally overestimates the extent of this forgetting, so also one
overestimates the lacunae in our knowledge of the dream due to the gaps
occurring in it. All the dream-content that has been lost by forgetting
can often be recovered by analysis; in a number of cases, at all events,
it is possible to discover from a single remaining fragment, not the
dream, of course- which, after all, is of no importance- but the whole of
the dream-thoughts. It requires a greater expenditure of attention and
self-suppression in the analysis; that is all; but it shows that the
forgetting of the dream is not innocent of hostile intention. *
* As an example of the significance of doubt and
uncertainty in a dream with a simultaneous shrinking of the dream-content
to a single element, see my General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis the
dream of the skeptical lady patient, p. 492 below, the analysis of which
was successful, despite a short postponement. -
A convincing proof of the tendencious nature of
dream-forgetting- of the fact that it serves the resistance- is obtained
on analysis by investigating a preliminary stage of forgetting. * It often
happens that, in the midst of an interpretation, an omitted fragment of
the dream suddenly emerges which is described as having been previously
forgotten. This part of the dream that has been wrested from forgetfulness
is always the most important part. It lies on the shortest path to the
solution of the dream, and for that every reason it was most exposed to
the resistance. Among the examples of dreams that I have included in the
text of this treatise, it once happened that I had subsequently to
interpolate a fragment of dream-content. The dream is a dream of travel,
which revenges itself on two unamiable traveling companions; I have left
it almost entirely uninterpreted, as part of its content is obscene. The
part omitted reads: "I said, referring to a book of Schiller's: 'It is
from...' but corrected myself, as I realized my mistake: 'It is by...'
Whereupon the man remarked to his sister, 'Yes, he said it correctly.'"
*(2)
* Concerning the intention of forgetting in general,
see my The Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life.
*(2) Such corrections in the use of foreign languages
are not rare in dreams, but they are usually attributed to foreigners.
Maury (p. 143), while he was studying English, once dreamed that he
informed someone that he had called on him the day before in the following
words: "I called for you yesterday." The other answered correctly: "You
mean: I called on you yesterday."
Self-correction in dreams, which to some writers seems
so wonderful, does not really call for consideration. But I will draw from
my own memory an instance typical of verbal errors in dreams. I was
nineteen years of age when I visited England for the first time, and I
spent a day on the shore of the Irish Sea. Naturally enough, I amused
myself by picking up the marine animals left on the beach by the tide, and
I was just examining a starfish (the dream begins with Hollthurn-
Holothurian) when a pretty little girl came up to me and asked me: "Is it
a starfish? Is it alive?" I replied, "Yes, he is alive," but then felt
ashamed of my mistake, and repeated the sentence correctly. For the
grammatical mistake which I then made, the dream substitutes another which
is quite common among German people. "Das Buch ist von Schiller" is not to
be translated by "the book is from," but by "the book is by." That the
dream-work accomplishes this substitution, because the word from, owing to
its consonance with the German adjective fromm (pious, devout) makes a
remarkable condensation possible, should no longer surprise us after all
that we have heard of the intentions of the dream-work and its
unscrupulous selection of means. But what relation has this harmless
recollection of the seashore to my dream? It explains, by means of a very
innocent example, that I have used the word- the word denoting gender, or
sex or the sexual (he)- in the wrong place. This is surely one of the keys
to the solution of the dream. Those who have heard of the derivation of
the book-title Matter and Motion (Moliere in Le Malade Imaginaire: La
Matiere est-elle laudable?- A Motion of the bowels) will readily be able
to supply the missing parts.
Moreover, I can prove conclusively, by a demonstratio
ad oculos, that the forgetting of the dream is in a large measure the work
of the resistance. A patient tells me that he has dreamed, but that the
dream has vanished without leaving a trace, as if nothing had happened. We
set to work, however; I come upon a resistance which I explain to the
patient; encouraging and urging him, I help him to become reconciled to
some disagreeable thought; and I have hardly succeeded in doing so when he
exclaims: "Now I can recall what I dreamed!" The same resistance which
that day disturbed him in the work of interpretation caused him also to
forget the dream. By overcoming this resistance I have brought back the
dream to his memory.
In the same way the patient, having reached a certain
part of the work, may recall a dream which occurred three, four, or more
days ago, and which has hitherto remained in oblivion. *
* Ernest Jones describes an analogous case of frequent
occurrence; during the analysis of one dream another dream of the same
night is often recalled which until then was not merely forgotten, but was
not even suspected.
Psycho-analytical experience has furnished us with yet
another proof of the fact that the forgetting of dreams depends far more
on the resistance than on the mutually alien character of the waking and
sleeping states, as some writers have believed it to depend. It often
happens to me, as well as to other analysts, and to patients under
treatment, that we are waked from sleep by a dream, as we say, and that
immediately thereafter, while in full possession of our mental faculties,
we begin to interpret the dream. Often in such cases I have not rested
until I have achieved a full understanding of the dream, and yet it has
happened that after waking I have forgotten the interpretation- work as
completely as I have forgotten the dream-content itself, though I have
been aware that I have dreamed and that I had interpreted the dream. The
dream has far more frequently taken the result of the interpretation with
it into forgetfulness than the intellectual faculty has succeeded in
retaining the dream in the memory. But between this work of interpretation
and the waking thoughts there is not that psychic abyss by which other
writers have sought to explain the forgetting of dreams. When Morton
Prince objects to my explanation of the forgetting of dreams on the ground
that it is only a special case of the amnesia of dissociated psychic
states, and that the impossibility of applying my explanation of this
special amnesia to other types of amnesia makes it valueless even for its
immediate purpose, he reminds the reader that in all his descriptions of
such dissociated states he has never attempted to discover the dynamic
explanation underlying these phenomena. For had he done so, he would
surely have discovered that repression (and the resistance produced
thereby) is the cause not of these dissociations merely, but also of the
amnesia of their psychic content.
That dreams are as little forgotten as other psychic
acts, that even in their power of impressing themselves on the memory they
may fairly be compared with the other psychic performances, was proved to
me by an experiment which I was able to make while preparing the
manuscript of this book. I had preserved in my notes a great many dreams
of my own which, for one reason or another, I could not interpret, or, at
the time of dreaming them, could interpret only very imperfectly. In order
to obtain material to illustrate my assertion, I attempted to interpret
some of them a year or two later. In this attempt I was invariably
successful; indeed, I may say that the interpretation was effected more
easily after all this time than when the dreams were of recent occurrence.
As a possible explanation of this fact, I would suggest that I had
overcome many of the internal resistances which had disturbed me at the
time of dreaming. In such subsequent interpretations I have compared the
old yield of dream-thoughts with the present result, which has usually
been more abundant, and I have invariably found the old dream-thoughts
unaltered among the present ones. However, I soon recovered from my
surprise when I reflected that I had long been accustomed to interpret
dreams of former years that had occasionally been related to me by my
patients as though they had been dreams of the night before; by the same
method, and with the same success. In the section on anxiety-dreams I
shall include two examples of such delayed dream-interpretations. When I
made this experiment for the first time I expected, not unreasonably, that
dreams would behave in this connection merely like neurotic symptoms. For
when I treat a psychoneurotic for instance, an hysterical patient, by
psychoanalysis, I am compelled to find explanations for the first symptoms
of the malady, which have long since disappeared, as well as for those
still existing symptoms which have brought the patient to me; and I find
the former problem easier to solve than the more exigent one of today. In
the Studies in Hysteria, * published as early as 1895, I was able to give
the explanation of a first hysterical attack which the patient, a woman
over forty years of age, had experienced in her fifteenth year. *(2)
* Studien uber Hysterie, Case II.
*(2) Dreams which have occurred during the first years
of childhood, and which have sometimes been retained in the memory for
decades with perfect sensorial freshness, are almost always of great
importance for the understanding of the development and the neurosis of
the dreamer. The analysis of them protects the physician from errors and
uncertainties which might confuse him even theoretically.
I will now make a few rather unsystematic remarks
relating to the interpretations of dreams, which will perhaps serve as a
guide to the reader who wishes to test my assertions by the analysis of
his own dreams.
He must not expect that it will be a simple and easy
matter to interpret his own dreams. Even the observation of endoptic
phenomena, and other sensations which are commonly immune from attention,
calls for practice, although this group of observations is not opposed by
any psychic motive. It is very much more difficult to get hold of the
unwished ideas. He who seeks to do so must fulfill the requirements laid
down in this treatise, and while following the rules here given, he must
endeavor to restrain all criticism, all preconceptions, and all affective
or intellectual bias in himself during the work of analysis. He must be
ever mindful of the precept which Claude Bernard held up to the
experimenter in the physiological laboratory: "Travailler comme une bete"-
that is, he must be as enduring as an animal, and also as disinterested in
the results of his work. He who will follow this advice will no longer
find the task a difficult one. The interpretation of a dream cannot always
be accomplished in one session; after following up a chain of associations
you will often feel that your working capacity is exhausted; the dream
will not tell you anything more that day; it is then best to break off,
and to resume the work the following day. Another portion of the
dream-content then solicits your attention, and you thus obtain access to
a fresh stratum of the dream-thoughts. One might call this the fractional
interpretation of dreams.
It is most difficult to induce the beginner in dream-
interpretation to recognize the fact that his task is not finished when he
is in possession of a complete interpretation of the dream which is both
ingenious and coherent, and which gives particulars of all the elements of
the dream-content. Besides this, another interpretation, an
over-interpretation of the same dream, one which has escaped him, may be
possible. It is really not easy to form an idea of the wealth of trains of
unconscious thought striving for expression in our minds, or to credit the
adroitness displayed by the dream-work in killing- so to speak- seven
flies at one stroke, like the journeyman tailor in the fairy-tale, by
means of its ambiguous modes of expression. The reader will constantly be
inclined to reproach the author for a superfluous display of ingenuity,
but anyone who has had personal experience of dream-interpretation will
know better than to do so.
On the other hand, I cannot accept the opinion, first
expressed by H. Silberer, that every dream- or even that many dreams, and
certain groups of dreams- calls for two different interpretations, between
which there is even supposed to be a fixed relation. One of these, which
Silberer calls the psycho- analytic interpretation, attributes to the
dream any meaning you please, but in the main an infantile sexual one. The
other, the more important interpretation, which he calls the anagogic
interpretation, reveals the more serious and often profound thoughts which
the dream-work has used as its material. Silberer does not prove this
assertion by citing a number of dreams which he has analyzed in these two
directions. I am obliged to object to this opinion on the ground that it
is contrary to facts. The majority of dreams require no
over-interpretation, and are especially insusceptible of an anagogic
interpretation. The influence of a tendency which seeks to veil the
fundamental conditions of dream-formation and divert our interest from its
instinctual roots is as evident in Silberer's theory as in other
theoretical efforts of the last few years. In a number of cases I can
confirm Silberer's assertions; but in these the analysis shows me that the
dream-work was confronted with the task of transforming a series of highly
abstract thoughts, incapable of direct representation, from waking life
into a dream. The dream- work attempted to accomplish this task by seizing
upon another thought-material which stood in loose and often allegorical
relation to the abstract thoughts, and thereby diminished the difficulty
of representing them. The abstract interpretation of a dream originating
in this manner will be given by the dreamer immediately, but the correct
interpretation of the substituted material can be obtained only by means
of the familiar technique.
The question whether every dream can be interpreted is
to be answered in the negative. One should not forget that in the work of
interpretation one is opposed by the psychic forces that are responsible
for the distortion of the dream. Whether one can master the inner
resistances by one's intellectual interest, one's capacity for
self-control, one's psychological knowledge, and one's experience in
dream-interpretation depends on the relative strength of the opposing
forces. It is always possible to make some progress; one can at all events
go far enough to become convinced that a dream has meaning, and generally
far enough to gain some idea of its meaning. It very often happens that a
second dream enables us to confirm and continue the interpretation assumed
for the first. A whole series of dreams, continuing for weeks or months,
may have a common basis, and should therefore be interpreted as a
continuity. In dreams that follow one another, we often observe that one
dream takes as its central point something that is only alluded to in the
periphery of the next dream, and conversely, so that even in their
interpretations the two supplement each other. That different dreams of
the same night are always to be treated, in the work of interpretation, as
a whole, I have already shown by examples.
In the best interpreted dreams we often have to leave
one passage in obscurity because we observe during the interpretation that
we have here a tangle of dream-thoughts which cannot be unraveled, and
which furnishes no fresh contribution to the dream-content. This, then, is
the keystone of the dream, the point at which it ascends into the unknown.
For the dream-thoughts which we encounter during the interpretation
commonly have no termination, but run in all directions into the net-like
entanglement of our intellectual world. It is from some denser part of
this fabric that the dream-wish then arises, like the mushroom from its
mycelium.
Let us now return to the facts of dream-forgetting. So
far, of course, we have failed to draw any important conclusion from them.
When our waking life shows an unmistakable intention to forget the dream
which has been formed during the night, either as a whole, immediately
after waking, or little by little in the course of the day, and when we
recognize as the chief factor in this process of forgetting the psychic
resistance against the dream which has already done its best to oppose the
dream at night, the question then arises: What actually has made the
dream- formation possible against this resistance? Let us consider the
most striking case, in which the waking life has thrust the dream aside as
though it had never happened. If we take into consideration the play of
the psychic forces, we are compelled to assert that the dream would never
have come into existence had the resistance prevailed at night as it did
by day. We conclude, then, that the resistance loses some part of its
force during the night; we know that it has not been discontinued, as we
have demonstrated its share in the formation of dreams- namely, the work
of distortion. We have therefore to consider the possibility that at night
the resistance is merely diminished, and that dream- formation becomes
possible because of this slackening of the resistance; and we shall
readily understand that as it regains its full power on waking it
immediately thrusts aside what it was forced to admit while it was feeble.
Descriptive psychology teaches us that the chief determinant of
dream-formation is the dormant state of the psyche; and we may now add the
following explanation: The state of sleep makes dream-formation possible
by reducing the endopsychic censorship.
We are certainly tempted to look upon this as the only
possible conclusion to be drawn from the facts of dream-forgetting, and to
develop from this conclusion further deductions as to the comparative
energy operative in the sleeping and waking states. But we shall stop here
for the present. When we have penetrated a little farther into the
psychology of dreams we shall find that the origin of dream-formation may
be differently conceived. The resistance which tends to prevent the
dream-thoughts from becoming conscious may perhaps be evaded without
suffering reduction. It is also plausible that both the factors which
favor dream-formation, the reduction as well as the evasion of the
resistance, may be simultaneously made possible by the sleeping state. But
we shall pause here, and resume the subject a little later.
We must now consider another series of objections
against our procedure in dream-interpretation. For we proceed by dropping
all the directing ideas which at other times control reflection, directing
our attention to a single element of the dream, noting the involuntary
thoughts that associate themselves with this element. We then take up the
next component of the dream-content, and repeat the operation with this;
and, regardless of the direction taken by the thoughts, we allow ourselves
to be led onwards by them, rambling from one subject to another. At the
same time, we harbor the confident hope that we may in the end, and
without intervention on our part, come upon the dream- thoughts from which
the dream originated. To this the critic may make the following objection:
That we arrive somewhere if we start from a single element of the dream is
not remarkable. Something can be associatively connected with every idea.
The only thing that is remarkable is that one should succeed in hitting
upon the dream-thoughts in this arbitrary and aimless excursion. It is
probably a self-deception; the investigator follows the chain of
associations from the one element which is taken up until he finds the
chain breaking off, whereupon he takes up a second element; it is thus
only natural that the originally unconfined associations should now become
narrowed down. He has the former chain of associations still in mind, and
will therefore in the analysis of the second dream-idea hit all the more
readily upon single associations which have something in common with the
associations of the first chain. He then imagines that he has found a
thought which represents a point of junction between two of the
dream-elements. As he allows himself all possible freedom of
thought-connection, excepting only the transitions from one idea to
another which occur in normal thinking, it is not difficult for him
finally to concoct out of a series of intermediary thoughts, something
which he calls the dream-thoughts; and without any guarantee, since they
are otherwise unknown, he palms these off as the psychic equivalent of the
dream. But all this is a purely arbitrary procedure, an ingenious-looking
exploitation of chance, and anyone who will go to this useless trouble can
in this way work out any desired interpretation for any dream whatever.
If such objections are really advanced against us, we
may in defense refer to the impression produced by our dream-
interpretations, the surprising connections with other dream- elements
which appear while we are following up the individual ideas, and the
improbability that anything which so perfectly covers and explains the
dream as do our dream-interpretations could be achieved otherwise than by
following previously established psychic connections. We might also point
to the fact that the procedure in dream-interpretation is identical with
the procedure followed in the resolution of hysterical symptoms, where the
correctness of the method is attested by the emergence and disappearance
of the symptoms- that is, where the interpretation of the text is
confirmed by the interpolated illustrations. But we have no reason to
avoid this problem- namely, how one can arrive at a pre-existent aim by
following an arbitrarily and aimlessly maundering chain of thoughts- since
we shall be able not to solve the problem, it is true, but to get rid of
it entirely.
For it is demonstrably incorrect to state that we
abandon ourselves to an aimless excursion of thought when, as in the
interpretation of dreams, we renounce reflection and allow the involuntary
ideas to come to the surface. It can be shown that we are able to reject
only those directing ideas which are known to us, and that with the
cessation of these the unknown- or, as we inexactly say, unconscious-
directing ideas immediately exert their influence, and henceforth
determine the flow of the involuntary ideas. Thinking without directing
ideas cannot be ensured by any influence we ourselves exert on our own
psychic life; neither do I know of any state of psychic derangement in
which such a mode of thought establishes itself. * The psychiatrists have
here far too prematurely relinquished the idea of the solidity of the
psychic structure. I know that an unregulated stream of thoughts, devoid
of directing ideas, can occur as little in the realm of hysteria and
paranoia as in the formation or solution of dreams. Perhaps it does not
occur at all in the endogenous psychic affections, and, according to the
ingenious hypothesis of Lauret, even the deliria observed in confused
psychic states have meaning and are incomprehensible to us only because of
omissions. I have had the same conviction whenever I have had an
opportunity of observing such states. The deliria are the work of a
censorship which no longer makes any effort to conceal its sway, which,
instead of lending its support to a revision that is no longer obnoxious
to it, cancels regardlessly anything to which it objects, thus causing the
remnant to appear disconnected. This censorship proceeds like the Russian
censorship on the frontier, which allows only those foreign journals which
have had certain passages blacked out to fall into the bands of the
readers to be protected.
* Only recently has my attention been called to the
fact that Ed. von Hartmann took the same view with regard to this
psychologically important point: Incidental to the discussion of the role
of the unconscious in artistic creation (Philos. d. Unbew., Vol. i, Sect.
B., Chap. V) Eduard von Hartmann clearly enunciated the law of association
of ideas which is directed by unconscious directing ideas, without however
realizing the scope of this law. With him it was a question of
demonstrating that "every combination of a sensuous idea when it is not
left entirely to chance, but is directed to a definite end, is in need of
help from the unconscious," and that the conscious interest in any
particular thought-association is a stimulus for the unconscious to
discover from among the numberless possible ideas the one which
corresponds to the directing idea. "It is the unconscious that selects,
and appropriately, in accordance with the aims of the interest: and this
holds true for the associations in abstract thinking (as sensible
representations and artistic combinations as well as for flashes of wit)."
Hence, a limiting of the association of ideas to ideas that evoke and are
evoked in the sense of pure association-psychology is untenable. Such a
restriction "would be justified only if there were states in human life in
which man was free not only from any conscious purpose, but also from the
domination or cooperation of any unconscious interest, any passing mood.
But such a state hardly ever comes to pass, for even if one leaves one's
train of thought seemingly altogether to chance, or if one surrenders
oneself entirely to the involuntary dreams of phantasy, yet always other
leading interests, dominant feelings and moods prevail at one time rather
than another, and these will always exert an influence on the association
of ideas." (Philos. d. Unbew., IIe, Aufl. i. 246). In semi-conscious
dreams there always appear only such ideas as correspond to the
(unconscious) momentary main interest. By rendering prominent the feelings
and moods over the free thought-series, the methodical procedure of
psycho-analysis is thoroughly justified even from the standpoint of
Hartmann's Psychology (N. E. Pohorilles, Internat. Zeitschrift. f. Ps. A.,
I, [1913], p. 605). Du Prel concludes from the fact that a name which we
vainly try to recall suddenly occurs to the mind that there is an
unconscious but none the less purposeful thinking, whose result then
appears in consciousness (Philos. d. Mystik, p. 107).
The free play of ideas following any chain of
associations may perhaps occur in cases of destructive organic affections
of the brain. What, however, is taken to be such in the psychoneuroses may
always be explained as the influence of the censorship on a series of
thoughts which have been pushed into the foreground by the concealed
directing ideas. * It has been considered an unmistakable sign of free
association unencumbered by directing ideas if the emerging ideas (or
images) appear to be connected by means of the so-called superficial
associations- that is, by assonance, verbal ambiguity, and temporal
coincidence, without inner relationship of meaning; in other words, if
they are connected by all those associations which we allow ourselves to
exploit in wit and playing upon words. This distinguishing mark holds good
with associations which lead us from the elements of the dream-content to
the intermediary thoughts, and from these to the dream-thoughts proper; in
many analyses of dreams we have found surprising examples of this. In
these no connection was too loose and no witticism too objectionable to
serve as a bridge from one thought to another. But the correct
understanding of such surprising tolerance is not far to seek. Whenever
one psychic element is connected with another by an obnoxious and
superficial association, there exists also a correct and more profound
connection between the two, which succumbs to the resistance of the
censorship.
* Jung has brilliantly corroborated this statement by
analyses of dementia praecox. (Cf. The Psychology of Dementia Praecox,
translated by A. A. Brill. Monograph Series, [Journal of Nervous and
Mental Diseases Publishing Co., New York].)
The correct explanation for the predominance of the
superficial associations is the pressure of the censorship, and not the
suppression of the directing ideas. Whenever the censorship renders the
normal connective paths impassable, the superficial associations will
replace the deeper ones in the representation. It is as though in a
mountainous region a general interruption of traffic, for example an
inundation, should render the broad highways impassable: traffic would
then have to be maintained by steep and inconvenient tracks used at other
times only by the hunter.
We can here distinguish two cases which, however, are
essentially one. In the first case, the censorship is directed only
against the connection of two thoughts which, being detached from one
another, escape its opposition. The two thoughts then enter successively
into consciousness; their connection remains concealed; but in its place
there occurs to us a superficial connection between the two which would
not otherwise have occurred to us, and which as a rule connects with
another angle of the conceptual complex instead of that from which the
suppressed but essential connection proceeds. Or, in the second case, both
thoughts, owing to their content, succumb to the censorship; both then
appear not in their correct form but in a modified, substituted form; and
both substituted thoughts are so selected as to represent, by a
superficial association, the essential relation which existed between
those that they have replaced. Under the pressure of the censorship, the
displacement of a normal and vital association by one superficial and
apparently absurd has thus occurred in both cases.
Because we know of these displacements, we
unhesitatingly rely upon even the superficial associations which occur in
the course of dream-interpretation. *
* The same considerations naturally hold good of the
case in which superficial associations are exposed in the dream-content,
as, for example, in both the dreams reported by Maury (p. 50, pelerinage-
pelletier- pelle, kilometer- kilograms- gilolo, Lobelia- Lopez- Lotto). I
know from my work with neurotics what kind of reminiscence is prone to
represent itself in this manner. It is the consultation of encyclopedias
by which most people have satisfied their need of an explanation of the
sexual mystery when obsessed by the curiosity of puberty.
The psycho-analysis of neurotics makes abundant use of
the two principles: that with the abandonment of the conscious directing
ideas the control over the flow of ideas is transferred to the concealed
directing ideas; and that superficial associations are only a
displacement-substitute for suppressed and more profound ones. Indeed,
psycho-analysis makes these two principles the foundation-stones of its
technique. When I request a patient to dismiss all reflection, and to
report to me whatever comes into his mind, I firmly cling to the
assumption that he will not be able to drop the directing idea of the
treatment, and I feel justified in concluding that what he reports, even
though it may seem to be quite ingenuous and arbitrary, has some
connection with his morbid state. Another directing idea of which the
patient has no suspicion is my own personality. The full appreciation, as
well as the detailed proof of both these explanations, belongs to the
description of the psycho-analytic technique as a therapeutic method. We
have here reached one of the junctions, so to speak, at which we purposely
drop the subject of dream-interpretation. *
* The above statements, which when written sounded very
improbable, have since been corroborated and applied experimentally by
Jung and his pupils in the Diagnostiche Assoziationsstudien.
Of all the objections raised, only one is justified and
still remains to be met; namely, that we ought not to ascribe all the
associations of the interpretation-work to the nocturnal dream- work. By
interpretation in the waking state we are actually opening a path running
back from the dream-elements to the dream- thoughts. The dream-work has
followed the contrary direction, and it is not at all probable that these
paths are equally passable in opposite directions. On the contrary, it
appears that during the day, by means of new thought-connections, we sink
shafts that strike the intermediary thoughts and the dream-thoughts now in
this place, now in that. We can see how the recent thought- material of
the day forces its way into the interpretation- series, and how the
additional resistance which has appeared since the night probably compels
it to make new and further detours. But the number and form of the
collaterals which we thus contrive during the day are, psychologically
speaking, indifferent, so long as they point the way to the dream-thoughts
which we are seeking. |
