CHAPTER SEVEN (Continued...)
D. Waking Caused by Dreams -- The Function of Dreams
-- The Anxiety Dream
Now that we know that throughout the night the
preconscious is orientated to the wish to sleep, we can follow the
dream-process with proper understanding. But let us first summarize what
we already know about this process. We have seen that day-residues are
left over from the waking activity of the mind, residues from which it has
not been possible to withdraw all cathexis. Either one of the unconscious
wishes has been aroused through the waking activity during the day or it
so happens that the two coincide; we have already discussed the
multifarious possibilities. Either already during the day or only on the
establishment of the state of sleep the unconscious wish has made its way
to the day- residues, and has effected a transference to them. Thus there
arises a wish transferred to recent material; or the suppressed recent
wish is revived by a reinforcement from the unconscious. This wish now
endeavors to make its way to consciousness along the normal path of the
thought processes, through the preconscious, to which indeed it belongs by
virtue of one of its constituent elements. It is, however, confronted by
the censorship which still subsists, and to whose influence it soon
succumbs. It now takes on the distortion for which the way has already
been paved by the transference to recent material. So far it is on the way
to becoming something resembling an obsession, a delusion, or the like,
i.e., a thought reinforced by a transference, and distorted in expression
owing to the censorship. But its further progress is now checked by the
state of sleep of the preconscious; this system has presumably protected
itself against invasion by diminishing its excitations. The dream-process,
therefore, takes the regressive course, which is just opened up by the
peculiarity of the sleeping state, and in so doing follows the attraction
exerted on it by memory- groups, which are, in part only, themselves
present as visual cathexis, not as translations into the symbols of the
later systems. On its way to regression it acquires representability. The
subject of compression will be discussed later. The dream- process has by
this time covered the second part of its contorted course. The first part
threads its way progressively from the unconscious scenes or phantasies to
the preconscious, while the second part struggles back from the boundary
of the censorship to the tract of the perceptions. But when the
dream-process becomes a perception-content, it has, so to speak, eluded
the obstacle set up in the Pcs by the censorship and the sleeping state.
It succeeds in drawing attention to itself, and in being remarked by
consciousness. For consciousness, which for us means a sense- organ for
the apprehension of psychic qualities, can be excited in waking life from
two sources: firstly, from the periphery of the whole apparatus, the
perceptive system; and secondly, from the excitations of pleasure and pain
which emerge as the sole psychic qualities yielded by the transpositions
of energy in the interior of the apparatus. All other processes in the Psi-
systems, even those in the preconscious, are devoid of all psychic
quality, and are therefore not objects of consciousness, inasmuch as they
do not provide either pleasure or pain for its perception. We shall have
to assume that these releases of pleasure and pain automatically regulate
the course of the cathectic processes. But in order to make possible more
delicate performances, it subsequently proved necessary to render the flow
of ideas more independent of pain-signals. To accomplish this, the Pcs
system needed qualities of its own which could attract consciousness, and
most probably received them through the connection of the preconscious
processes with the memory-system of speech-symbols, which was not devoid
of quality. Through the qualities of this system, consciousness, hitherto
only a sense- organ for perceptions, now becomes also a sense-organ for a
part of our thought-processes. There are now, as it were, two sensory
surfaces, one turned toward perception and the other toward the
preconscious thought-processes.
I must assume that the sensory surface of consciousness
which is turned to the preconscious is rendered far more unexcitable by
sleep than the surface turned toward the P-system. The giving up of
interest in the nocturnal thought-process is, of course, an appropriate
procedure. Nothing is to happen in thought; the preconscious wants to
sleep. But once the dream becomes perception, it is capable of exciting
consciousness through the qualities now gained. The sensory excitation
performs what is in fact its function; namely, it directs a part of the
cathectic energy available in the Pcs to the exciting cause in the form of
attention. We must therefore admit that the dream always has a waking
effect- that is, it calls into activity part of the quiescent energy of
the Pcs. Under the influence of this energy, it now undergoes the process
which we have described as secondary elaboration with a view to coherence
and comprehensibility. This means that the dream is treated by this energy
like any other perception-content; it is subjected to the same
anticipatory ideas as far, at least, as the material allows. As far as
this third part of the dream-process has any direction, this is once more
progressive.
To avoid misunderstanding, it will not be amiss to say
a few words as to the temporal characteristics of these dream- processes.
In a very interesting discussion, evidently suggested by Maury's puzzling
guillotine dream, Goblot tries to demonstrate that a dream takes up no
other time than the transition period between sleeping and waking. The
process of waking up requires time; during this time the dream occurs. It
is supposed that the final picture of the dream is so vivid that it forces
the dreamer to wake; in reality it is so vivid only because when it
appears the dreamer is already very near waking. "Un reve, c'est un reveil
qui commence." *
* A dream is the beginning of wakening.
It has already been pointed out by Dugas that Goblot,
in order to generalize his theory, was forced to ignore a great many
facts. There are also dreams from which we do not awaken; for example,
many dreams in which we dream that we dream. From our knowledge of the
dream-work, we can by no means admit that it extends only over the period
of waking. On the contrary, we must consider it probable that the first
part of the dream-work is already begun during the day, when we are still
under the domination of the preconscious. The second phase of the
dream-work, viz., the alteration by the censorship, the attraction
exercised by unconscious scenes, and the penetration to perception,
continues probably all through the night, and accordingly we may always be
correct when we report a feeling that we have been dreaming all night,
even although we cannot say what we have dreamed. I do not however, think
that it is necessary to assume that up to the time of becoming conscious
the dream-processes really follow the temporal sequence which we have
described; viz., that there is first the transferred dream-wish, then the
process of distortion due to the censorship, and then the change of
direction to regression, etc. We were obliged to construct such a sequence
for the sake of description; in reality, however, it is probably rather a
question of simultaneously trying this path and that, and of the
excitation fluctuating to and fro, until finally, because it has attained
the most apposite concentration, one particular grouping remains in the
field. Certain personal experiences even incline me to believe that the
dream-work often requires more than one day and one night to produce its
result, in which case the extraordinary art manifested in the construction
of the dream is shorn of its miraculous character. In my opinion, even the
regard for the comprehensibility of the dream as a perceptual event may
exert its influence before the dream attracts consciousness to itself.
From this point, however, the process is accelerated, since the dream is
henceforth subjected to the same treatment as any other perception. It is
like fire works, which require hours for their preparation and then flare
up in a moment.
Through the dream-work, the dream-process now either
gains sufficient intensity to attract consciousness to itself and to
arouse the preconscious (quite independently of the time or profundity of
sleep), or its intensity is insufficient, and it must wait in readiness
until attion, becoming more alert immediately before waking, meets it
half-way. Most dreams seem to operate with relatively slight psychic
intensities, for they wait for the process of waking. This, then, explains
the fact that as a rule we perceive something dreamed if we are suddenly
roused from a deep sleep. Here, as well as in spontaneous waking, our
first glance lights upon the perception-content created by the dream-work,
while the next falls on that provided by the outer world.
But of greater theoretical interest are those dreams
which are capable of waking us in the midst of our sleep. We may bear in
mind the purposefulness which can be demonstrated in all other cases, and
ask ourselves why the dream, that is, the unconscious wish, is granted the
power to disturb our sleep, i.e., the fulfillment of the preconscious wish.
The explanation is probably to be found in certain relations of energy
which we do not yet understand. If we did so, we should probably find that
the freedom given to the dream and the expenditure upon it of a certain
detached attention represent a saving of energy as against the alternative
case of the unconscious having to be held in check at night just as it is
during the day. As experience shows, dreaming, even if it interrupts our
sleep several times a night, still remains compatible with sleep. We wake
up for a moment, and immediately fall asleep again. It is like driving off
a fly in our sleep; we awake ad hoc. When we fall asleep again we have
removed the cause of disturbance. The familiar examples of the sleep of
wet-nurses, etc., show that the fulfillment of the wish to sleep is quite
compatible with the maintenance of a certain amount of attention in a
given direction.
But we must here take note of an objection which is
based on a greater knowledge of the unconscious processes. We have
ourselves described the unconscious wishes as always active, whilst
nevertheless asserting that in the daytime they are not strong enough to
make themselves perceptible. But when the state of sleep supervenes, and
the unconscious wish has shown its power to form a dream, and with it to
awaken the preconscious, why does this power lapse after cognizance has
been taken of the dream? Would it not seem more probable that the dream
should continually renew itself, like the disturbing fly which, when
driven away, takes pleasure in returning again and again? What
justification have we for our assertion that the dream removes the
disturbance to sleep?
It is quite true that the unconscious wishes are always
active. They represent paths which are always practicable, whenever a
quantum of excitation makes use of them. It is indeed an outstanding
peculiarity of the unconscious processes that they are indestructible.
Nothing can be brought to an end in the unconscious; nothing is past or
forgotten. This is impressed upon us emphatically in the study of the
neuroses, and especially of hysteria. The unconscious path of thought
which leads to the discharge through an attack is forthwith passable again
when there is a sufficient accumulation of excitation. The mortification
suffered thirty years ago operates, after having gained access to the
unconscious sources of affect, during all these thirty years as though it
were a recent experience. Whenever its memory is touched, it revives, and
shows itself to be cathected with excitation which procures a motor
discharge for itself in an attack. It is precisely here that psychotherapy
must intervene, its task being to ensure that the unconscious processes
are settled and forgotten. Indeed, the fading of memories and the weak
affect of impressions which are no longer recent, which we are apt to take
as self-evident, and to explain as a primary effect of time on our psychic
memory-residues, are in reality secondary changes brought about by
laborious work. It is the preconscious that accomplishes this work; and
the only course which psychotherapy can pursue is to bring the Ucs under
the dominion of the Pcs.
There are, therefore, two possible issues for any
single unconscious excitation-process. Either it is left to itself, in
which case it ultimately breaks through somewhere and secures, on this one
occasion, a discharge for its excitation into motility, or it succumbs to
the influence of the preconscious, and through this its excitation becomes
bound instead of being discharged. It is the latter case that occurs in
the dream-process. The cathexis from the Pcs which goes to meet the dream
once this has attained to perception, because it has been drawn thither by
the excitation of consciousness, binds the unconscious excitation of the
dream and renders it harmless as a disturber of sleep. When the dreamer
wakes up for a moment, he has really chased away the fly that threatened
to disturb his sleep. We may now begin to suspect that it is really more
expedient and economical to give way to the unconscious wish, to leave
clear its path to regression so that and it may form a dream, and then to
bind and dispose of this dream by means of a small outlay of preconscious
work, than to hold the unconscious in check throughout the whole period of
sleep. It was, indeed, to be expected that the dream, even if originally
it was not a purposeful process, would have seized upon some definite
function in the play of forces of the psychic life. We now see what this
function is. The dream has taken over the task of bringing the excitation
of the Ucs, which had been left free, back under the domination of the
preconscious; it thus discharges the excitation of the Ucs, acts as a
safety-valve for the latter, and at the same time, by a slight outlay of
waking activity, secures the sleep of the preconscious. Thus, like the
other psychic formations of its group, the dream offers itself as a
compromise, serving both systems simultaneously, by fulfilling the wishes
of both, in so far as they are mutually compatible. A glance at Robert's
"elimination theory" will show that we must agree with this author on his
main point, namely, the determination of the function of dreams, though we
differ from him in our general presuppositions and in our estimation of
the dream-process. * -
* Is this the only function which we can attribute to
dreams? I know of no other. A. Maeder, to be sure, has endeavored to
claim for the dream yet other secondary functions. He started from the
just observation that many dreams contain attempts to provide solutions of
conflicts, which are afterwards actually carried through. They thus behave
like preparatory practice for waking activities. He therefore drew a
parallel between dreaming and the play of animals and children, which is
to be conceived as a training of the inherited instincts, and a
preparation for their later serious activity, thus setting up a fonction
ludique for the dream. A little while before Maeder, Alfred Adler likewise
emphasized the function of thinking ahead in the dream. (An analysis which
I published in 1905 contained a dream which may be conceived as a
resolution-dream, which was repeated night after night until it was
realized.)
But an obvious reflection must show us that this
secondary function of the dream has no claim to recognition within the
framework of any dream-interpretation. Thinking ahead, making resolutions,
sketching out attempted solutions which can then perhaps be realized in
waking life- these and many more performances are functions of the
unconscious and preconscious activities of the mind which continue as
day-residues in the sleeping state, and can then combine with an
unconscious wish to form a dream (chapter VII., C.). The function of
thinking ahead in the dream is thus rather a function of preconscious
waking thought, the result of which may be disclosed to us by the analysis
of dreams or other phenomena. After the dream has so long been fused with
its manifest content, one must now guard against confusing it with the
latent dream-thoughts.
The above qualification- in so far as the two wishes
are mutually compatible- contains a suggestion that there may be cases in
which the function of the dream fails. The dream-process is, to begin
with, admitted as a wish-fulfillment of the unconscious, but if this
attempted wish-fulfillment disturbs the preconscious so profoundly that the
latter can no longer maintain its state of rest, the dream has broken the
compromise, and has failed to perform the second part of its task. It is
then at once broken off, and replaced by complete awakening. But even here
it is not really the fault of the dream if, though at other times the
guardian, it has now to appear as the disturber of sleep, nor need this
prejudice us against its averred purposive character. This is not the only
instance in the organism in which a contrivance that is usually to the
purpose becomes inappropriate and disturbing so soon as something is
altered in the conditions which engender it; the disturbance, then, at all
events serves the new purpose of indicating the change, and of bringing
into play against it the means of adjustment of the organism. Here, of
course, I am thinking of the anxiety-dream, and lest it should seem that I
try to evade this witness against the theory of wish- fulfillment whenever
I encounter it, I will at least give some indications as to the
explanation of the anxiety-dream.
That a psychic process which develops anxiety may still
be a wish- fulfillment has long ceased to imply any contradiction for us.
We may explain this occurrence by the fact that the wish belongs to one
system (the Ucs), whereas the other system (the Pcs) has rejected and
suppressed it. * The subjection of the Ucs by the Pcs is not thoroughgoing
even in perfect psychic health; the extent of this suppression indicates
the degree of our psychic normality. Neurotic symptoms indicate to us that
the two systems are in mutual conflict; the symptoms are the result of a
compromise in this conflict, and they temporarily put an end to it. On the
one hand, they afford the Ucs a way out for the discharge of its
excitation- they serve it as a kind of sally- gate- while, on the other
hand, they give the Pcs the possibility of dominating the Ucs in some
degree. It is instructive to consider, for example, the significance of a
hysterical phobia, or of agoraphobia. A neurotic is said to be incapable
of crossing the street alone, and this we should rightly call a symptom.
Let someone now remove this symptom by constraining him to this action
which he deems himself incapable of performing. The result will be an
attack of anxiety, just as an attack of anxiety in the street has often
been the exciting cause of the establishment of an agoraphobia. We thus
learn that the symptom has been constituted in order to prevent the
anxiety from breaking out. The phobia is thrown up before the anxiety like
a frontier fortress.
* General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis, p. 534
below.
We cannot enlarge further on this subject unless we
examine the role of the affects in these processes, which can only be done
here imperfectly. We will therefore affirm the proposition that the
principal reason why the suppression of the Ucs becomes necessary is that,
if the movement of ideas in the Ucs were allowed to run its course, it
would develop an affect which originally had the character of pleasure,
but which, since the process of repression, bears the character of pain.
The aim, as well as the result, of the suppression is to prevent the
development of this pain. The suppression extends to the idea- content of
the Ucs, because the liberation of pain might emanate from this
idea-content. We here take as our basis a quite definite assumption as to
the nature of the development of affect. This is regarded as a motor or
secretory function, the key to the innervation of which is to be found in
the ideas of the Ucs. Through the domination of the Pcs these ideas are as
it were strangled, that is, inhibited from sending out the impulse that
would develop the affect. The danger which arises, if cathexis by the Pcs
ceases, thus consists in the fact that the unconscious excitations would
liberate an affect that- in consequence of the repression that has
previously occurred- could only be felt as pain or anxiety.
This danger is released if the dream-process is allowed
to have its own way. The conditions for its realization are that
repressions shall have occurred, and that the suppressed wish- impulses
can become sufficiently strong. They, therefore, fall entirely outside the
psychological framework of dream-formation. Were it not for the fact that
our theme is connected by just one factor with the theme of the
development of anxiety, namely, by the setting free of the Ucs during
sleep, I could refrain from the discussion of the anxiety-dream
altogether, and thus avoid all the obscurities involved in it.
The theory of the anxiety-dream belongs, as I have
already repeatedly stated, to the psychology of the neuroses. I might
further add that anxiety in dreams is an anxiety-problem and not a
dream-problem. Having once exhibited the point of contact of the
psychology of the neuroses with the theme of the dream- process, we have
nothing further to do with it. There is only one thing left which I can
do. Since I have asserted that neurotic anxiety has its origin in sexual
sources, I can subject anxiety- dreams to analysis in order to demonstrate
the sexual material in their dream-thoughts.
For good reasons, I refrain from citing any of the
examples so abundantly placed at my disposal by neurotic patients, and
prefer to give some anxiety-dreams of children.
Personally, I have had no real anxiety-dream for
decades, but I do recall one from my seventh or eighth year which I
subjected to interpretation some thirty years later. The dream was very
vivid, and showed me my beloved mother, with a peculiarly calm, sleeping
countenance, carried into the room and laid on the bed by two (or three)
persons with birds' beaks. I awoke crying and screaming, and disturbed my
parents' sleep. The peculiarly draped, excessively tall figures with beaks
I had taken from the illustrations of Philippson's Bible; I believe they
represented deities with the heads of sparrowhawks from an Egyptian tomb-
relief. The analysis yielded, however, also the recollection of a
house-porter's boy, who used to play with us children on a meadow in front
of the house; I might add that his name was Philip. It seemed to me then
that I first heard from this boy the vulgar word signifying sexual
intercourse, which is replaced among educated persons by the Latin word
coitus, but which the dream plainly enough indicates by the choice of the
birds' heads. I must have guessed the sexual significance of the word from
the look of my worldly-wise teacher. My mother's expression in the dream
was copied from the countenance of my grandfather, whom I had seen a few
days before his death snoring in a state of coma. The interpretation of
the secondary elaboration in the dream must therefore have been that my
mother was dying; the tomb-relief, too, agrees with this. I awoke with
this anxiety, and could not calm myself until I had waked my parents. I
remember that I suddenly became calm when I saw my mother; it was as
though I had needed the assurance: then she was not dead. But this
secondary interpretation of the dream had only taken place when the
influence of the developed anxiety was already at work. I was not in a
state of anxiety because I had dreamt that my mother was dying; I
interpreted the dream in this manner in the preconscious elaboration
because I was already under the domination of the anxiety. The latter,
however, could be traced back, through the repression to a dark, plainly
sexual craving, which had found appropriate expression in the visual
content of the dream.
A man twenty-seven years of age, who had been seriously
ill for a year, had repeatedly dreamed, between the ages of eleven and
thirteen, dreams attended with great anxiety, to the effect that a man
with a hatchet was running after him; he wanted to run away, but seemed to
be paralyzed, and could not move from the spot. This may be taken as a
good and typical example of a very common anxiety-dream, free from any
suspicion of a sexual meaning. In the analysis, the dreamer first thought
of a story told him by his uncle (chronologically later than the dream),
viz., that he was attacked at night in the street by a suspicious- looking
individual; and he concluded from this association that he might have
heard of a similar episode at the time of the dream. In association with
the hatchet, he recalled that during this period of his life he once hurt
his hand with a hatchet while chopping wood. This immediately reminded him
of his relations with his younger brother, whom he used to maltreat and
knock down. He recalled, in particular, one occasion when he hit his
brother's head with his boot and made it bleed, and his mother said: "I'm
afraid he will kill him one day." While he seemed to be thus held by the
theme of violence, a memory from his ninth year suddenly emerged. His
parents had come home late and had gone to bed, whilst he was pretending
to be asleep. He soon heard panting, and other sounds that seemed to him
mysterious, and he could also guess the position of his parents in bed.
His further thoughts showed that he had established an analogy between
this relation between his parents and his own relation to his younger
brother. He subsumed what was happening between his parents under the
notion of "an act of violence and a fight." The fact that he had
frequently noticed blood in his mother's bed corroborated this conception.
That the sexual intercourse of adults appears strange
and alarming to children who observe it, and arouses anxiety in them, is,
I may say, a fact established by everyday experience. I have explained
this anxiety on the ground that we have here a sexual excitation which is
not mastered by the child's understanding, and which probably also
encounters repulsion because their parents are involved, and is therefore
transformed into anxiety. At a still earlier period of life the sexual
impulse towards the parent of opposite sex does not yet suffer repression,
but as we have seen (chapter V., D.) expresses itself freely.
For the night terrors with hallucinations (pavor
nocturnus) so frequent in children I should without hesitation offer the
same explanation. These, too, can only be due to misunderstood and
rejected sexual impulses which, if recorded, would probably show a
temporal periodicity, since an intensification of sexual libido may
equally be produced by accidentally exciting impressions and by
spontaneous periodic processes of development.
I have not the necessary observational material for the
full demonstration of this explanation. * On the other hand, pediatrists
seem to lack the point of view which alone makes intelligible the whole
series of phenomena, both from the somatic and from the psychic side. To
illustrate by a comical example how closely, if one is made blind by the
blinkers of medical mythology, one may pass by the understanding of such
cases, I will cite a case which I found in a thesis on pavor nocturnus
(Debacker, 1881, p. 66).
* This material has since been provided in abundance by
the literature of psycho-analysis.
A boy of thirteen, in delicate health, began to be
anxious and dreamy; his sleep became uneasy, and once almost every week it
was interrupted by an acute attack of anxiety with hallucinations. The
memory of these dreams was always very distinct. Thus he was able to
relate that the devil had shouted at him: "Now we have you, now we have
you!" and then there was a smell of pitch and brimstone, and the fire
burned his skin. From this dream he woke in terror; at first he could not
cry out; then his voice came back to him, and he was distinctly heard to
say: "No, no, not me; I haven't done anything," or: "Please, don't; I will
never do it again!" At other times he said: "Albert has never done that!"
Later he avoided undressing, "because the fire attacked him only when he
was undressed." In the midst of these evil dreams, which were endangering
his health, he was sent into the country, where he recovered in the course
of eighteen months. At the age of fifteen he confessed one day: "Je
n'osais pas l'avouer, mais j'eprouvais continuellement des picotements et
des surexcitations aux parties; * a la fin, cela m'enervait tant que
plusieurs fois j'ai pense me jeter par la fenetre du dortoir." *(2)
* The emphasis [on 'parties'] is my own, though the
meaning is plain enough without it.
*(2) I did not dare admit it, but I continually felt
tinglings and overexcitements of the parts; at the end, it wearied me so
much that several times I thought to throw myself from the dormitory
window.
It is, of course, not difficult to guess: 1. That the
boy had practiced masturbation in former years, that he had probably
denied it, and was threatened with severe punishment for his bad habit
(His confession: Je ne le ferai plus; * his denial: Albert n'a jamais fait
ca.) *(2) 2. That, under the advancing pressure of puberty, the temptation
to masturbate was re-awakened through the titillation of the genitals. 3.
That now, however, there arose within him a struggle for repression, which
suppressed the libido and transformed it into anxiety, and that this
anxiety now gathered up the punishments with which he was originally
threatened.
* I will not do it again.
*(2) Albert never did that.
Let us, on the other hand, see what conclusions were
drawn by the author (p. 69):
"1. It is clear from this observation that the
influence of puberty may produce in a boy of delicate health a condition
of extreme weakness, and that this may lead to a very marked cerebral
anemia. *
* The italics ['very marked cerebral anemia.'] are
mine.
"2. This cerebral anemia produces an alteration of
character, demono-maniacal hallucinations, and very violent nocturnal, and
perhaps also diurnal, states of anxiety.
"3. The demonomania and the self-reproaches of the boy
can be traced to the influences of a religious education which had acted
upon him as a child.
"4. All manifestations disappeared as a result of a
lengthy sojourn in the country, bodily exercise, and the return of
physical strength after the termination of puberty.
"5. Possibly an influence predisposing to the
development of the boy's cerebral state may be attributed to heredity and
to the father's former syphilis."
Then finally come the concluding remarks: "Nous avons
fait entrer cette observation dans le cadre delires apyretiques
d'inanition, car c'est a l'ischemie cerebrale que nous rattachons cet etat
particulier." *
* We put this case in the file of apyretic delirias of
inanition, for it is to cerebral anemia that we attach this particular
state. |
