CHAPTER SEVEN (Continued...)
E. The Primary and Secondary Processes. Repression
In attempting to penetrate more profoundly into the
psychology of the dream-processes, I have undertaken a difficult task, to
which, indeed, my powers of exposition are hardly adequate. To reproduce
the simultaneity of so complicated a scheme in terms of a successive
description, and at the same time to make each part appear free from all
assumptions, goes fairly beyond my powers. I have now to atone for the
fact that in my exposition of the psychology of dreams I have been unable
to follow the historic development of my own insight. The lines of
approach to the comprehension of the dream were laid down for me by
previous investigations into the psychology of the neuroses, to which I
should not refer here, although I am constantly obliged to do so; whereas
I should like to work in the opposite direction, starting from the dream,
and then proceeding to establish its junction with the psychology of the
neuroses. I am conscious of all the difficulties which this involves for
the reader, but I know of no way to avoid them.
Since I am dissatisfied with this state of affairs, I
am glad to dwell upon another point of view, which would seem to enhance
the value of my efforts. As was shown in the introductory section, I found
myself confronted with a theme which had been marked by the sharpest
contradictions on the part of those who had written on it. In the course
of our treatment of the problems of the dream, room has been found for
most of these contradictory views. We have been compelled to take decided
exception to two only of the views expressed: namely, that the dream is a
meaningless process, and that it is a somatic process. Apart from these,
we have been able to find a place for the truth of all the contradictory
opinions at one point or another of the complicated tissue of the facts,
and we have been able to show that each expressed something genuine and
correct. That our dreams continue the impulses and interests of waking
life has been generally confirmed by the discovery of the hidden
dream-thoughts. These concern themselves only with things that seem to us
important and of great interest. Dreams never occupy themselves with
trifles. But we have accepted also the opposite view, namely, that the
dream gathers up the indifferent residues of the day, and cannot seize
upon any important interest of the day until it has in some measure
withdrawn itself from waking activity. We have found that this holds true
of the dream-content, which by means of distortion gives the dream-thought
an altered expression. We have said that the dream-process, owing to the
nature of the mechanism of association, finds it easier to obtain
possession of recent or indifferent material, which has not yet been put
under an embargo by our waking mental activity; and that, on account of
the censorship, it transfers the psychic intensity of the significant but
also objectionable material to the indifferent. The hypermnesia of the
dream and its ability to dispose of infantile material have become the
main foundations of our doctrine; in our theory of dreams we have assigned
to a wish of infantile origin the part of the indispensable motive-power
of dream-formation. It has not, of course, occurred to us to doubt the
experimentally demonstrated significance of external sensory stimuli
during sleep; but we have placed this material in the same relation to the
dream-wish as the thought-residues left over from our waking activity. We
need not dispute the fact that the dream interprets objective sensory
stimuli after the manner of an illusion; but we have supplied the motive
for this interpretation, which has been left indeterminate by other
writers. The interpretation proceeds in such a way that the perceived
object is rendered harmless as a source of disturbance of sleep, whilst it
is made usable for the wish-fulfillment. Though we do not admit as a
special source of dreams the subjective state of excitation of the sensory
organs during sleep (which seems to have been demonstrated by Trumbull
Ladd), we are, nevertheless, able to explain this state of excitation by
the regressive revival of the memories active behind the dream. As to the
internal organic sensations, which are wont to be taken as the cardinal
point of the explanation of dreams, these, too, find a place in our
conception, though indeed a more modest one. These sensations- the
sensations of falling, of soaring, or of being inhibited- represent an
ever-ready material, which the dream-work can employ to express the dream-
thought as often as need arises.
That the dream-process is a rapid and momentary one is,
we believe, true as regards the perception by consciousness of the
preformed dream-content; but we have found that the preceding portions of
the dream-process probably follow a slow, fluctuating course. As for the
riddle of the superabundant dream-content compressed into the briefest
moment of time, we have been able to contribute the explanation that the
dream seizes upon ready-made formations of the psychic life. We have found
that it is true that dreams are distorted and mutilated by the memory, but
that this fact presents no difficulties, as it is only the last manifest
portion of a process of distortion which has been going on from the very
beginning of the dream-work. In the embittered controversy, which has
seemed irreconcilable, whether the psychic life is asleep at night, or can
make the same use of all its faculties as during the day, we have been
able to conclude that both sides are right, but that neither is entirely
so. In the dream-thoughts we found evidence of a highly complicated
intellectual activity, operating with almost all the resources of the
psychic apparatus; yet it cannot be denied that these dream- thoughts have
originated during the day, and it is indispensable to assume that there is
a sleeping state of the psychic life. Thus, even the doctrine of partial
sleep received its due, but we have found the characteristic feature of
the sleeping state not in the disintegration of the psychic system of
connections, but in the special attitude adopted by the psychic system
which is dominant during the day- the attitude of the wish to sleep. The
deflection from the outer world retains its significance for our view,
too; though not the only factor at work, it helps to make possible the
regressive course of the dream-representation. The abandonment of
voluntary guidance of the flow of ideas is incontestable; but psychic life
does not thereby become aimless, for we have seen that upon relinquishment
of the voluntary directing ideas, involuntary ones take charge. On the
other hand, we have not only recognized the loose associative connection
of the dream, but have brought a far greater area within the scope of this
kind of connection than could have been suspected; we have, however, found
it merely an enforced substitute for another, a correct and significant
type of association. To be sure, we too have called the dream absurd, but
examples have shown us how wise the dream is when it simulates absurdity.
As regards the functions that have been attributed to the dream, we are
able to accept them all. That the dream relieves the mind, like a
safety-valve, and that, as Robert has put it, all kinds of harmful
material are rendered harmless by representation in the dream, not only
coincides exactly with our own theory of the twofold wish-fulfillment in
the dream, but in its very wording becomes more intelligible for us than
it is for Robert himself. The free indulgence of the psyche in the play of
its faculties is reproduced in our theory as the non-interference of the
preconscious activity with the dream. The return of the embryonal
standpoint of psychic life in the dream, and Havelock Ellis's remark that
the dream is "an archaic world of vast emotions and imperfect thoughts,"
appear to us as happy anticipations of our own exposition, which asserts
that primitive modes of operations that are suppressed during the day play
a part in the formation of dreams. We can fully identify ourselves with
Sully's statement, that "our dreams bring back again our earlier and
successively developed personalities, our old ways of regarding things,
with impulses and modes of reaction which ruled us long ago"; and for us,
as for Delage, the suppressed material becomes the mainspring of the
dream.
We have fully accepted the role that Scherner ascribes
to the dream-phantasy, and his own interpretations, but we have been
obliged to transpose them, as it were, to another part of the problem. It
is not the dream that creates the phantasy, but the activity of
unconscious phantasy that plays the leading part in the formation of the
dream-thoughts. We remain indebted to Scherner for directing us to the
source of the dream-thoughts, but almost everything that he ascribes to
the dream-work is attributable to the activity of the unconscious during
the day, which instigates dreams no less than neurotic symptoms. The
dream- work we had to separate from this activity as something quite
different and far more closely controlled. Finally, we have by no means
renounced the relation of the dream to psychic disturbances, but have
given it, on new ground, a more solid foundation.
Held together by the new features in our theory as by a
superior unity, we find the most varied and most contradictory conclusions
of other writers fitting into our structure; many of them are given a
different turn, but only a few of them are wholly rejected. But our own
structure is still unfinished. For apart from the many obscure questions
in which we have involved ourselves by our advance into the dark regions
of psychology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new
contradiction. On the one hand, we have made it appear that the
dream-thoughts proceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on
the other hand we have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely
abnormal mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and
which we reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have
termed the dream-work seems to depart so completely from the psychic
processes which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest
judgments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of
psychic achievement of dreams must appear well founded.
Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide
an explanation and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed
attention one of the constellations which lead to dream- formation.
We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute
for a number of thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit
together with perfect logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these
thoughts have their own origin in our normal mental life. All the
qualities which we value in our thought-processes, and which mark them out
as complicated performances of a high order, we shall find repeated in the
dream-thoughts. There is, however, no need to assume that this mental work
is performed during sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the
conception of the psychic state of sleep to which we have hitherto
adhered. On the contrary, these thoughts may very well have their origin
in the daytime, and, unremarked by our consciousness, may have gone on
from their first stimulus until, at the onset of sleep, they have reached
completion. If we are to conclude anything from this state of affairs, it
can only be that it proves that the most complex mental operations are
possible without the cooperation of consciousness- a truth which we have
had to learn anyhow from every psycho-analysis of a patient suffering from
hysteria or obsessions. These dream-thoughts are certainly not in
themselves incapable of consciousness; if we have not become conscious of
them during the day, this may have been due to various reasons. The act of
becoming conscious depends upon a definite psychic function- attention-
being brought to bear. This seems to be available only in a determinate
quantity, which may have been diverted from the train of thought in
question by other aims. Another way in which such trains of thought may be
withheld from consciousness is the following: From our conscious
reflection we know that, when applying our attention, we follow a
particular course. But if that course leads us to an idea which cannot
withstand criticism, we break off and allow the cathexis of attention to
drop. Now, it would seem that the train of thought thus started and
abandoned may continue to develop without our attention returning to it,
unless at some point it attains a specially high intensity which compels
attention. An initial conscious rejection by our judgment, on the ground
of incorrectness or uselessness for the immediate purpose of the act of
thought, may, therefore, be the cause of a thought-process going on
unnoticed by consciousness until the onset of sleep.
Let us now recapitulate: We call such a train of
thought a preconscious train, and we believe it to be perfectly correct,
and that it may equally well be a merely neglected train or one that has
been interrupted and suppressed. Let us also state in plain terms how we
visualize the movement of our thought. We believe that a certain quantity
of excitation, which we call cathectic energy, is displaced from a
purposive idea along the association paths selected by this directing
idea. A neglected train of thought has received no such cathexis, and the
cathexis has been withdrawn from one that was suppressed or rejected; both
have thus been left to their own excitations. The train of thought
cathected by some aim becomes able under certain conditions to attract the
attention of consciousness, and by the mediation of consciousness it then
receives hyper-cathexis. We shall be obliged presently to elucidate our
assumptions as to the nature and function of consciousness.
A train of thought thus incited in the Pcs may either
disappear spontaneously, or it may continue. The former eventuality we
conceive as follows: it diffuses its energy through all the association
paths emanating from it, and throws the entire chain of thoughts into a
state of excitation, which continues for a while, and then subsides,
through the excitation which had called for discharge being transformed
into dormant cathexis. If this first eventuality occurs, the process has
no further significance for dream-formation. But other directing ideas are
lurking in our preconscious, which have their source in our unconscious
and ever- active wishes. These may gain control of the excitation in the
circle of thoughts thus left to itself, establish a connection between it
and the unconscious wish, and transfer to it the energy inherent in the
unconscious wish. Henceforth the neglected or suppressed train of thought
is in a position to maintain itself, although this reinforcement gives it
no claim to access to consciousness. We may say, then, that the hitherto
preconscious train of thought has been drawn into the unconscious.
Other constellations leading to dream-formation might
be as follows: The preconscious train of thought might have been connected
from the beginning with the unconscious wish, and for that reason might
have met with rejection by the dominating aim- cathexis. Or an unconscious
wish might become active for other (possibly somatic) reasons, and of its
own accord seek a transference to the psychic residues not cathected by
the Pcs. All three cases have the same result: there is established in the
preconscious a train of thought which, having been abandoned by the
preconscious cathexis, has acquired cathexis from the unconscious wish.
From this point onward the train of thought is
subjected to a series of transformations which we no longer recognize as
normal psychic processes, and which give a result that we find strange, a
psychopathological formation. Let us now emphasize and bring together
these transformations:
1. The intensities of the individual ideas become
capable of discharge in their entirety, and pass from one idea to another,
so that individual ideas are formed which are endowed with great
intensity. Through the repeated occurrence of this process, the intensity
of an entire train of thought may ultimately be concentrated in a single
conceptual unit. This is the fact of compression or condensation with
which we become acquainted when investigating the dream-work. It is
condensation that is mainly responsible for the strange impression
produced by dreams, for we know of nothing analogous to it in the normal
psychic life that is accessible to consciousness. We get here, too, ideas
which are of great psychic significance as nodal points or as end-results
of whole chains of thought, but this value is not expressed by any
character actually manifest for our internal perception; what is
represented in it is not in any way made more intensive. In the process of
condensation the whole set of psychic connections becomes transformed into
the intensity of the idea-content. The situation is the same as when, in
the case of a book, I italicize or print in heavy type any word to which I
attach outstanding value for the understanding of the text. In speech, I
should pronounce the same word loudly, and deliberately, and with
emphasis. The first simile points immediately to one of the examples which
were given of the dream-work (trimethylamine in the dream of Irma's
injection). Historians of art call our attention to the fact that the most
ancient sculptures known to history follow a similar principle, in
expressing the rank of the persons represented by the size of the statues.
The king is made two or three times as tall as his retinue or his
vanquished enemies. But a work of art of the Roman period makes use of
more subtle means to accomplish the same end. The figure of the Emperor is
placed in the centre, erect and in his full height, and special care is
bestowed on the modeling of this figure; his enemies are seen cowering at
his feet; but he is no longer made to seem a giant among dwarfs. At the
same time, in the bowing of the subordinate to his superior, even in our
own day, we have an echo of this ancient principle of representation.
The direction followed by the condensations of the
dream is prescribed on the one hand by the true preconscious relations of
the dream-thoughts, and, on the other hand, by the attraction of the
visual memories in the unconscious. The success of the condensation-work
produces those intensities which are required for penetration to the
perception-system.
2. By the free transference of intensities, and in the
service of the condensation, intermediary ideas- compromises, as it were-
are formed (cf. the numerous examples). This, also, is something unheard
of in the normal movement of our ideas, where what is of most importance
is the selection and the retention of the right conceptual material. On
the other hand, composite and compromise formations occur with
extraordinary frequency when we are trying to find verbal expression for
preconscious thoughts; these are considered slips of the tongue.
3. The ideas which transfer their intensities to one
another are very loosely connected, and are joined together by such forms
of association as are disdained by our serious thinking, and left to be
exploited solely by wit. In particular, assonances and punning
associations are treated as equal in value to any other associations.
4. Contradictory thoughts do not try to eliminate one
another, but continue side by side, and often combine to form
condensation- products, as though no contradiction existed; or they form
compromises for which we should never forgive our thought, but which we
frequently sanction in our action.
These are some of the most conspicuous abnormal
processes to which the dream-thoughts which have previously been
rationally formed are subjected in the course of the dream-work. As the
main feature of these processes, we may see that the greatest importance
is attached to rendering the cathecting energy mobile and capable of
discharge; the content and the intrinsic significance of the psychic
elements to which these cathexes adhere become matters of secondary
importance. One might perhaps assume that condensation and
compromise-formation are effected only in the service of regression, when
the occasion arises for changing thoughts into images. But the analysis-
and still more plainly the synthesis- of such dreams as show no regression
towards images, e.g., the dream Autodidasker: Conversation with Professor
N, reveals the same processes of displacement and condensation as do the
rest.
We cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion that two
kinds of essentially different psychic processes participate in dream-
formation; one forms perfectly correct and fitting dream- thoughts,
equivalent to the results of normal thinking, while the other deals with
these thoughts in a most astonishing and, as it seems, incorrect way. The
latter process we have already set apart in chapter VI as the dream-work
proper. What can we say now as to the derivation of this psychic process?
It would be impossible to answer this question here if
we had not penetrated a considerable way into the psychology of the
neuroses, and especially of hysteria. From this, however, we learn that
the same "incorrect" psychic processes- as well as others not enumerated-
control the production of hysterical symptoms. In hysteria, too, we find
at first a series of perfectly correct and fitting thoughts, equivalent to
our conscious ones, of whose existence in this form we can, however, learn
nothing, i.e., which we can only subsequently reconstruct. If they have
forced their way anywhere to perception, we discover from the analysis of
the symptom formed that these normal thoughts have been subjected to
abnormal treatment, and that by means of condensation and
compromise-formation, through superficial associations which cover up
contradictions, and eventually along the path of regression, they have
been conveyed into the symptom. In view of the complete identity between
the peculiarities of the dream-work and those of the psychic activity
which issues in psychoneurotic symptoms, we shall feel justified in
transferring to the dream the conclusions urged upon us by hysteria.
From the theory of hysteria we borrow the proposition
that such an abnormal psychic elaboration of a normal train of thought
takes place only when the latter has been used for the transference of an
unconscious wish which dares from the infantile life and is in a state of
repression. Complying with this proposition, we have built up the theory
of the dream on the assumption that the actuating dream-wish invariably
originates in the unconscious; which, as we have ourselves admitted,
cannot be universally demonstrated, even though it cannot be refuted. But
in order to enable us to say just what repression is, after employing this
term so freely, we shall be obliged to make a further addition to our
psychological scaffolding.
We had elaborated the fiction of a primitive psychic
apparatus, the work of which is regulated by the effort to avoid
accumulation of excitation, and as far as possible to maintain itself free
from excitation. For this reason it was constructed after the plan of a
reflex apparatus; motility, in the first place as the path to changes
within the body, was the channel of discharge at its disposal. We then
discussed the psychic results of experiences of gratification, and were
able at this point to introduce a second assumption, namely, that the
accumulation of excitation- by processes that do not concern us here- is
felt as pain, and sets the apparatus in operation in order to bring about
again a state of gratification, in which the diminution of excitation is
perceived as pleasure. Such a current in the apparatus, issuing from pain
and striving for pleasure, we call a wish. We have said that nothing but a
wish is capable of setting the apparatus in motion and that the course of
any excitation in the apparatus is regulated automatically by the
perception of pleasure and pain. The first occurrence of wishing may well
have taken the form of a hallucinatory cathexis of the memory of
gratification. But this hallucination, unless it could be maintained to
the point of exhaustion, proved incapable of bringing about a cessation of
the need, and consequently of securing the pleasure connected with
gratification.
Thus, there was required a second activity- in our
terminology the activity of a second system- which would not allow the
memory- cathexis to force its way to perception and thence to bind the
psychic forces, but would lead the excitation emanating from the
need-stimulus by a detour, which by means of voluntary motility would
ultimately so change the outer world as to permit the real perception of
the gratifying object. Thus far we have already elaborated the scheme of
the psychic apparatus; these two systems are the germ of what we set up in
the fully developed apparatus as the Ucs and Pcs.
To change the outer world appropriately by means of
motility requires the accumulation of a large total of experiences in the
memory-systems, as well as a manifold consolidation of the relations which
are evoked in this memory-material by various directing ideas. We will now
proceed further with our assumptions. The activity of the second system,
groping in many directions, tentatively sending forth cathexes and
retracting them, needs on the one hand full command over all memory-
material, but on the other hand it would be a superfluous expenditure of
energy were it to send along the individual thought-paths large quantities
of cathexis, which would then flow away to no purpose and thus diminish
the quantity needed for changing the outer world. Out of a regard for
purposiveness, therefore, I postulate that the second system succeeds in
maintaining the greater part of the energic cathexes in a state of rest,
and in using only a small portion for its operations of displacement. The
mechanics of these processes is entirely unknown to me; anyone who
seriously wishes to follow up these ideas must address himself to the
physical analogies, and find some way of getting a picture of the sequence
of motions which ensues on the excitation of the neurones. Here I do no
more than hold fast to the idea that the activity of the first Psi-system
aims at the free outflow of the quantities of excitation, and that the
second system, by means of the cathexes emanating from it, effects an
inhibition of this outflow, a transformation into dormant cathexis,
probably with a rise of potential. I therefore assume that the course
taken by any excitation under the control of the second system is bound to
quite different mechanical conditions from those which obtain under the
control of the first system. After the second system has completed its
work of experimental thought, it removes the inhibition and damming up of
the excitations and allows them to flow off into motility.
An interesting train of thought now presents itself if
we consider the relations of this inhibition of discharge by the second
system to the process of regulation by the pain-principle. Let us now seek
out the counterpart of the primary experience of gratification, namely,
the objective experience of fear. Let a perception-stimulus act on the
primitive apparatus and be the source of a pain-excitation. There will
then ensue uncoordinated motor manifestations, which will go on until one
of these withdraws the apparatus from perception, and at the same time
from the pain. On the reappearance of the percept this manifestation will
immediately be repeated (perhaps as a movement of flight), until the
percept has again disappeared. But in this case no tendency will remain to
recathect the perception of the source of pain by hallucination or
otherwise. On the contrary, there will be a tendency in the primary
apparatus to turn away again from this painful memory-image immediately if
it is in any way awakened, since the overflow of its excitation into
perception would, of course, evoke (or more precisely, begin to evoke)
pain. This turning away from a recollection, which is merely a repetition
of the former flight from perception, is also facilitated by the fact
that, unlike the perception, the recollection has not enough quality to
arouse consciousness, and thereby to attract fresh cathexis. This
effortless and regular turning away of the psychic process from the memory
of anything that had once been painful gives us the prototype and the
first example of psychic repression. We all know how much of this turning
away from the painful, the tactics of the ostrich, may still be shown as
present even in the normal psychic life of adults.
In obedience to the pain-principle, therefore, the
first Psi- system is quite incapable of introducing anything unpleasant
into the thought-nexus. The system cannot do anything but wish. If this
were to remain so, the activity of thought of the second system, which
needs to have at its disposal all the memories stored up by experience,
would be obstructed. But two paths are now open: either the work of the
second system frees itself completely from the pain-principle, and
continues its course, paying no heed to the pain attached to given
memories, or it contrives to cathect the memory of the pain in such a
manner as to preclude the liberation of pain. We can reject the first
possibility, as the pain-principle also proves to act as a regulator of
the cycle of excitation in the second system; we are therefore thrown back
upon the second possibility, namely, that this system cathects a memory in
such a manner as to inhibit any outflow of excitation from it, and hence,
also, the outflow, comparable to a motor-innervation, needed for the
development of pain. And thus, setting out from two different
starting-points, i.e., from regard for the pain-principle, and from the
principle of the least expenditure of innervation, we are led to the
hypothesis that cathexis through the second system is at the same time an
inhibition of the discharge of excitation. Let us, however, keep a close
hold on the fact- for this is the key to the theory of repression- that
the second system can only cathect an idea when it is in a position to
inhibit any pain emanating from this idea. Anything that withdrew itself
from this inhibition would also remain inaccessible for the second system,
i.e., would immediately be given up by virtue of the pain- principle. The
inhibition of pain, however, need not be complete; it must be permitted to
begin, since this indicates to the second system the nature of the memory,
and possibly its lack of fitness for the purpose sought by the process of
thought.
The psychic process which is alone tolerated by the
first system I shall now call the primary process; and that which results
under the inhibiting action of the second system I shall call the
secondary process. I can also show at another point for what purpose the
second system is obliged to correct the primary process. The primary
process strives for discharge of the excitation in order to establish with
the quantity of excitation thus collected an identity of perception; the
secondary process has abandoned this intention, and has adopted instead
the aim of an identity of thought. All thinking is merely a detour from
the memory of gratification (taken as a purposive idea) to the identical
cathexis of the same memory, which is to be reached once more by the path
of motor experiences. Thought must concern itself with the
connecting-paths between ideas without allowing itself to be misled by
their intensities. But it is obvious that condensations of ideas and
intermediate or compromise-formations are obstacles to the attainment of
the identity which is aimed at; by substituting one idea for another they
swerve away from the path which would have led onward from the first idea.
Such procedures are, therefore, carefully avoided in our secondary
thinking. It will readily be seen, moreover, that the pain- principle,
although at other times it provides the thought- process with its most
important clues, may also put difficulties in its way in the pursuit of
identity of thought. Hence, the tendency of the thinking process must
always be to free itself more and more from exclusive regulation by the
pain-principle, and to restrict the development of affect through the work
of thought to the very minimum which remains effective as a signal. This
refinement in functioning is to be achieved by a fresh hyper- cathexis,
effected with the help of consciousness. But we are aware that this
refinement is seldom successful, even in normal psychic life, and that our
thinking always remains liable to falsification by the intervention of the
pain-principle.
This, however, is not the breach in the functional
efficiency of our psychic apparatus which makes it possible for thoughts
representing the result of the secondary thought-work to fall into the
power of the primary psychic process; by which formula we may now describe
the operations resulting in dreams and the symptoms of hysteria. This
inadequacy results from the converging of two factors in our development,
one of which pertains solely to the psychic apparatus, and has exercised a
determining influence on the relation of the two systems, while the other
operates fluctuatingly, and introduces motive forces of organic origin
into the psychic life. Both originate in the infantile life, and are a
precipitate of the alteration which our psychic and somatic organism has
undergone since our infantile years.
When I termed one of the psychic processes in the
psychic apparatus the primary process, I did so not only in consideration
of its status and function, but was also able to take account of the
temporal relationship actually involved. So far as we know, a psychic
apparatus possessing only the primary process does not exist, and is to
that extent a theoretical fiction but this at least is a fact: that the
primary processes are present in the apparatus from the beginning, while
the secondary processes only take shape gradually during the course of
life, inhibiting and overlaying the primary, whilst gaining complete
control over them perhaps only in the prime of life. Owing to this belated
arrival of the secondary processes, the essence of our being, consisting
of unconscious wish-impulses, remains something which cannot be grasped or
inhibited by the preconscious; and its part is once and for all restricted
to indicating the most appropriate paths for the wish-impulses originating
in the unconscious. These unconscious wishes represent for all subsequent
psychic strivings a compulsion to which they Must submit themselves,
although they may perhaps endeavor to divert them and to guide them to
superior aims. In consequence of this retardation, an extensive region of
the memory-material remains in fact inaccessible to preconscious cathexis.
Now among these wish-impulses originating in the
infantile life. indestructible and incapable of inhibition, there are some
the fulfillments of which have come to be in contradiction with the
purposive ideas of our secondary thinking. The fulfillment of these wishes
would no longer produce an affect of pleasure, but one of pain; and it is
just this conversion of affect that constitutes the essence of what we
call repression. In what manner and by what motive forces such a
conversion can take place constitutes the problem of repression, which we
need here only to touch upon in passing. It will suffice to note the fact
that such a conversion of affect occurs in the course of development (one
need only think of the emergence of disgust, originally absent in
infantile life), and that it is connected with the activity of the
secondary system. The memories from which the unconscious wish evokes a
liberation of affect have never been accessible to the Pcs, and for that
reason this liberation cannot be inhibited. It is precisely on account of
this generation of affect that these ideas are not now accessible even by
way of the preconscious thoughts to which they have transferred the energy
of the wishes connected with them. On the contrary, the pain- principle
comes into play, and causes the Pcs to turn away from these
transference-thoughts. These latter are left to themselves, are repressed,
and thus, the existence of a store of infantile memories, withdrawn from
the beginning from the Pcs, becomes the preliminary condition of
repression.
In the most favorable case, the generation of pain
terminates so soon as the cathexis is withdrawn from the
transference-thoughts in the Pcs, and this result shows that the
intervention of the pain-principle is appropriate. It is otherwise,
however, if the repressed unconscious wish receives an organic
reinforcement which it can put at the service of its
transference-thoughts, and by which it can enable them to attempt to break
through with their excitation, even if the cathexis of the Pcs has been
taken away from them. A defensive struggle then ensues, inasmuch as the
Pcs reinforces the opposite to the repressed thoughts (counter- cathexis),
and the eventual outcome is that the transference- thoughts (the carriers
of the unconscious wish) break through in some form of compromise through
symptom-formation. But from the moment that the repressed thoughts are
powerfully cathected by the unconscious wish-impulse, but forsaken by the
preconscious cathexis, they succumb to the primary psychic process, and
aim only at motor discharge; or, if the way is clear, at hallucinatory
revival of the desired identity of perception. We have already found,
empirically, that the incorrect processes described are enacted only with
thoughts which are in a state of repression. We are now in a position to
grasp yet another part of the total scheme of the facts. These incorrect
Processes are the primary processes of the psychic apparatus; they occur
wherever ideas abandoned by the preconscious cathexis are left to
themselves and can become filled with the uninhibited energy which flows
from the unconscious and strives for discharge. There are further facts
which go to show that the processes described as incorrect are not really
falsifications of our normal procedure, or defective thinking. but the
modes of operation of the psychic apparatus when freed from inhibition.
Thus we see that the process of the conveyance of the preconscious
excitation to motility occurs in accordance with the same procedure, and
that in the linkage of preconscious ideas with words we may easily find
manifested the same displacements and confusions (which we ascribe to
inattention). Finally, a proof of the increased work made necessary by the
inhibition of these primary modes of procedure might be found in the fact
that we achieve a comical effect, a surplus to be discharged through
laughter, if we allow these modes of thought to come to consciousness.
The theory of the psychoneuroses asserts with absolute
certainty that it can only be sexual wish-impulses from the infantile
life, which have undergone repression (affect-conversion) during the
developmental period of childhood, which are capable of renewal at later
periods of development (whether as a result of our sexual constitution,
which has, of course, grown out of an original bi-sexuality, or in
consequence of unfavorable influences in our sexual life); and which
therefore supply the motive-power for all psychoneurotic
symptom-formation. It is only by the introduction of these sexual forces
that the gaps still demonstrable in the theory of repression can be
filled. Here, I will leave it undecided whether the postulate of the
sexual and infantile holds good for the theory of dreams as well; I am not
completing the latter, because in assuming that the dream-wish invariably
originates in the unconscious I have already gone a step beyond the
demonstrable. * Nor will I inquire further into the nature of the
difference between the play of psychic forces in dream-formation and in
the formation of hysterical symptoms, since there is missing here the
needed fuller knowledge of one of the two things to be compared. But there
is another point which I regard as important, and I will confess at once
that it was only on account of this point that I entered upon all the
discussions concerning the two psychic systems, their modes of operation,
and the fact of repression. It does not greatly matter whether I have
conceived the psychological relations at issue with approximate
correctness, or, as is easily possible in such a difficult matter, wrongly
and imperfectly. However our views may change about the interpretation of
the psychic censorship or the correct and the abnormal elaboration of the
dream-content. it remains certain that such processes are active in
dream-formation, and that in their essentials they reveal the closest
analogy with the processes observed in the formation of hysterical
symptoms. Now the dream is not a pathological phenomenon; it does not
presuppose any disturbance of our psychic equilibrium; and it does not
leave behind it any weakening of our efficiency or capacities. The
objection that no conclusions can be drawn about the dreams of healthy
persons from my own dreams and from those of my neurotic patients may be
rejected without comment. If, then, from the nature of the given phenomena
we infer the nature of their motive forces, we find that the psychic
mechanism utilized by the neuroses is not newly-created by a morbid
disturbance that lays hold of the psychic life, but lies in readiness in
the normal structure of our psychic apparatus. The two psychic systems,
the frontier-censorship between them, the inhibition and overlaying of the
one activity by the other, the relations of both to consciousness- or
whatever may take place of these concepts on a juster interpretation of
the actual relations- all these belong to the normal structure of our
psychic instrument, and the dream shows us one of the paths which lead to
a knowledge of this structure. If we wish to be content with a minimum of
perfectly assured additions to our knowledge, we shall say that the dream
affords proof that the suppressed material continues to exist even in the
normal person and remains capable of psychic activity. Dreams are one of
the manifestations of this suppressed material; theoretically, this is
true in all cases; and in tangible experience, it has been found true in
at least a great number of cases, which happen to display most plainly the
more striking features of the dream-life. The suppressed psychic material,
which in the waking state has been prevented from expression and cut off
from internal perception by the mutual neutralization of contradictory
attitudes, finds ways and means, under the sway of compromise-formations,
of obtruding itself on consciousness during the night.
Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo. *(2)
At any rate, the interpretation of dreams is the via
regia to a knowledge of the unconscious element in our psychic life.
* Here, as elsewhere, there are gaps in the treatment
of the subject, which I have deliberately left, because to fill them up
would, on the one hand, require excessive labor, and, on the other hand,
I should have to depend on material which is foreign to the dream. Thus,
for example, I have avoided stating whether I give the word suppressed a
different meaning from that of the word repressed. No doubt, however, it
will have become clear that the latter emphasizes more than the former the
relation to the unconscious. I have not gone into the problem, which
obviously arises, of why the dream-thoughts undergo distortion by the
censorship even when they abandon the progressive path to consciousness,
and choose the path of regression. And so with other similar omissions. I
have, above all, sought to give some idea of the problems to which the
further dissection of the dream- work leads, and to indicate the other
themes with which these are connected. It was, however, not always easy to
decide just where the pursuit should be discontinued. That I have not
treated exhaustively the part which the psycho-sexual life plays in the
dream, and have avoided the interpretation of dreams of an obviously
sexual content, is due to a special reason- which may not perhaps be that
which the reader would expect. It is absolutely alien to my views and my
neuropathological doctrines to regard the sexual life as a pudendum with
which neither the physician nor the scientific investigator should concern
himself. To me, the moral indignation which prompted the translator of
Artemidorus of Daldis to keep from the reader's knowledge the chapter on
sexual dreams contained in the Symbolism of Dreams is merely ludicrous.
For my own part, what decided my procedure was solely the knowledge that
in the explanation of sexual dreams I should be bound to get deeply
involved in the still unexplained problems of perversion and bisexuality;
it was for this reason that I reserved this material for treatment
elsewhere.
*(2) If I cannot influence the gods, I will stir up
Acheron.
By the analysis of dreams we obtain some insight into
the composition of this most marvelous and most mysterious of
instruments; it is true that this only takes us a little way, but it gives
us a start which enables us, setting out from the angle of other (properly
pathological) formations, to penetrate further in our disjoining of the
instrument. For disease- at all events that which is rightly called
functional- does not necessarily presuppose the destruction of this
apparatus, or the establishment of new cleavages in its interior: it can
be explained dynamically by the strengthening and weakening of the
components of the play of forces, so many of the activities of which are
covered up in normal functioning. It might be shown elsewhere how the fact
that the apparatus is a combination of two instances also permits of a
refinement of its normal functioning which would have been impossible to a
single system. *
* The dream is not the only phenomenon that permits us
to base our psycho-pathology on psychology. In a short unfinished series
of articles in the Monatsschrift fur Psychiatrie und Neurologie ("uber den
psychischen Mechanismus der Vergesslichkeit," 1898, and "uber
Deckerinnerungen," 1899) I attempted to interpret a number of psychic
manifestations from everyday life in support of the same conception.
(These and other articles on "Forgetting," "Lapses of Speech," etc., have
now been published in the Psycho- pathology of Everyday Life.) |
