solution hold good also for the innumerable medley of dream contents,
examples of which I need scarcely adduce. Their strangeness quite
disappears when we resolve not to place them on a level with the objects
of perception as known to us when awake, but to remember that they
represent the art of dream condensation by an exclusion of unnecessary
detail. Prominence is given to the common character of the combination.
Analysis must also generally supply the common features. The dream says
simply: _All these things have an "x" in common_. The decomposition of
these mixed images by analysis is often the quickest way to an
interpretation of the dream. Thus I once dreamt that I was sitting with
one of my former university tutors on a bench, which was undergoing a
rapid continuous movement amidst other benches. This was a combination
of lecture-room and moving staircase. I will not pursue the further
result of the thought. Another time I was sitting in a carriage, and on
my lap an object in shape like a top-hat, which, however, was made of
transparent glass. The scene at once brought to my mind the proverb: "He
who keeps his hat in his hand will travel safely through the land." By a
slight turn the _glass hat_ reminded me of _Auer's light_, and I knew
that I was about to invent something which was to make me as rich and
independent as his invention had made my countryman, Dr. Auer, of
Welsbach; then I should be able to travel instead of remaining in
Vienna. In the dream I was traveling with my invention, with the, it is
true, rather awkward glass top-hat. The dream work is peculiarly adept
at representing two contradictory conceptions by means of the same mixed
image. Thus, for instance, a woman dreamt of herself carrying a tall
flower-stalk, as in the picture of the Annunciation (Chastity-Mary is
her own name), but the stalk was bedecked with thick white blossoms
resembling camellias (contrast with chastity: La dame aux Camelias).
A great deal of what we have called "dream condensation" can be thus
formulated. Each one of the elements of the dream content is
_overdetermined_ by the matter of the dream thoughts; it is not derived
from one element of these thoughts, but from a whole series. These are
not necessarily interconnected in any way, but may belong to the most
diverse spheres of thought. The dream element truly represents all this
disparate matter in the dream content. Analysis, moreover, discloses
another side of the relationship between dream content and dream
thoughts. Just as one element of the dream leads to associations with
several dream thoughts, so, as a rule, the _one dream thought represents
more than one dream element_. The threads of the association do not
simply converge from the dream thoughts to the dream content, but on the
way they overlap and interweave in every way.
Next to the transformation of one thought in the scene (its
"dramatization"), condensation is the most important and most
characteristic feature of the dream work. We have as yet no clue as to
the motive calling for such compression of the content.
In the complicated and intricate dreams with which we are now concerned,
condensation and dramatization do not wholly account for the difference
between dream contents and dream thoughts. There is evidence of a third
factor, which deserves careful consideration.
When I have arrived at an understanding of the dream thoughts by my
analysis I notice, above all, that the matter of the manifest is very
different from that of the latent dream content. That is, I admit, only
an apparent difference which vanishes on closer investigation, for in
the end I find the whole dream content carried out in the dream
thoughts, nearly all the dream thoughts again represented in the dream
content. Nevertheless, there does remain a certain amount of difference.
The essential content which stood out clearly and broadly in the dream
must, after analysis, rest satisfied with a very subordinate rôle among
the dream thoughts. These very dream thoughts which, going by my
feelings, have a claim to the greatest importance are either not present
at all in the dream content, or are represented by some remote allusion
in some obscure region of the dream. I can thus describe these
phenomena: _During the dream work the psychical intensity of those
thoughts and conceptions to which it properly pertains flows to others
which, in my judgment, have no claim to such emphasis_. There is no
other process which contributes so much to concealment of the dream's
meaning and to make the connection between the dream content and dream
ideas irrecognizable. During this process, which I will call _the dream
displacement_, I notice also the psychical intensity, significance, or
emotional nature of the thoughts become transposed in sensory vividness.
What was clearest in the dream seems to me, without further
consideration, the most important; but often in some obscure element of
the dream I can recognize the most direct offspring of the principal
dream thought.
I could only designate this dream displacement as the _transvaluation of
psychical values_. The phenomena will not have been considered in all
its bearings unless I add that this displacement or transvaluation is
shared by different dreams in extremely varying degrees. There are
dreams which take place almost without any displacement. These have the
same time, meaning, and intelligibility as we found in the dreams which
recorded a desire. In other dreams not a bit of the dream idea has
retained its own psychical value, or everything essential in these dream
ideas has been replaced by unessentials, whilst every kind of transition
between these conditions can be found. The more obscure and intricate a
dream is, the greater is the part to be ascribed to the impetus of
displacement in its formation.
The example that we chose for analysis shows, at least, this much of
displacement--that its content has a different center of interest from
that of the dream ideas. In the forefront of the dream content the main
scene appears as if a woman wished to make advances to me; in the dream
idea the chief interest rests on the desire to enjoy disinterested love
which shall "cost nothing"; this idea lies at the back of the talk about
the beautiful eyes and the far-fetched allusion to "spinach."
If we abolish the dream displacement, we attain through analysis quite
certain conclusions regarding two problems of the dream which are most
disputed--as to what provokes a dream at all, and as to the connection
of the dream with our waking life. There are dreams which at once expose
their links with the events of the day; in others no trace of such a
connection can be found. By the aid of analysis it can be shown that
every dream, without any exception, is linked up with our impression of
the day, or perhaps it would be more correct to say of the day previous
to the dream. The impressions which have incited the dream may be so
important that we are not surprised at our being occupied with them
whilst awake; in this case we are right in saying that the dream carries
on the chief interest of our waking life. More usually, however, when
the dream contains anything relating to the impressions of the day, it
is so trivial, unimportant, and so deserving of oblivion, that we can
only recall it with an effort. The dream content appears, then, even
when coherent and intelligible, to be concerned with those indifferent
trifles of thought undeserving of our waking interest. The depreciation
of dreams is largely due to the predominance of the indifferent and the
worthless in their content.
Analysis destroys the appearance upon which this derogatory judgment is
based. When the dream content discloses nothing but some indifferent
impression as instigating the dream, analysis ever indicates some
significant event, which has been replaced by something indifferent
with which it has entered into abundant associations. Where the dream is
concerned with uninteresting and unimportant conceptions, analysis
reveals the numerous associative paths which connect the trivial with
the momentous in the psychical estimation of the individual. _It is only
the action of displacement if what is indifferent obtains recognition in
the dream content instead of those impressions which are really the
stimulus, or instead of the things of real interest_. In answering the
question as to what provokes the dream, as to the connection of the
dream, in the daily troubles, we must say, in terms of the insight given
us by replacing the manifest latent dream content: _The dream does never
trouble itself about things which are not deserving of our concern
during the day, and trivialities which do not trouble us during the day
have no power to pursue us whilst asleep_.
What provoked the dream in the example which we have analyzed? The
really unimportant event, that a friend invited me to a _free ride in
his cab_. The table d'hôte scene in the dream contains an allusion to
this indifferent motive, for in conversation I had brought the taxi
parallel with the table d'hôte. But I can indicate the important event
which has as its substitute the trivial one. A few days before I had
disbursed a large sum of money for a member of my family who is very
dear to me. Small wonder, says the dream thought, if this person is
grateful to me for this--this love is not cost-free. But love that shall
cost nothing is one of the prime thoughts of the dream. The fact that
shortly before this I had had several _drives_ with the relative in
question puts the one drive with my friend in a position to recall the
connection with the other person. The indifferent impression which, by
such ramifications, provokes the dream is subservient to another
condition which is not true of the real source of the dream--the
impression must be a recent one, everything arising from the day of the
dream.
I cannot leave the question of dream displacement without the
consideration of a remarkable process in the formation of dreams in
which condensation and displacement work together towards one end. In
condensation we have already considered the case where two conceptions
in the dream having something in common, some point of contact, are
replaced in the dream content by a mixed image, where the distinct germ
corresponds to what is common, and the indistinct secondary
modifications to what is distinctive. If displacement is added to
condensation, there is no formation of a mixed image, but a _common
mean_ which bears the same relationship to the individual elements as
does the resultant in the parallelogram of forces to its components. In
one of my dreams, for instance, there is talk of an injection with
_propyl_. On first analysis I discovered an indifferent but true
incident where _amyl_ played a part as the excitant of the dream. I
cannot yet vindicate the exchange of amyl for propyl. To the round of
ideas of the same dream, however, there belongs the recollection of my
first visit to Munich, when the _Propyloea_ struck me. The attendant
circumstances of the analysis render it admissible that the influence of
this second group of conceptions caused the displacement of amyl to
propyl. _Propyl_ is, so to say, the mean idea between _amyl_ and
_propyloea_; it got into the dream as a kind of _compromise_ by
simultaneous condensation and displacement.
The need of discovering some motive for this bewildering work of the
dream is even more called for in the case of displacement than in
condensation.
Although the work of displacement must be held mainly responsible if the
dream thoughts are not refound or recognized in the dream content
(unless the motive of the changes be guessed), it is another and milder
kind of transformation which will be considered with the dream thoughts
which leads to the discovery of a new but readily understood act of the
dream work. The first dream thoughts which are unravelled by analysis
frequently strike one by their unusual wording. They do not appear to be
expressed in the sober form which our thinking prefers; rather are they
expressed symbolically by allegories and metaphors like the figurative
language of the poets. It is not difficult to find the motives for this
degree of constraint in the expression of dream ideas. The dream content
consists chiefly of visual scenes; hence the dream ideas must, in the
first place, be prepared to make use of these forms of presentation.
Conceive that a political leader's or a barrister's address had to be
transposed into pantomime, and it will be easy to understand the
transformations to which the dream work is constrained by regard for
this _dramatization of the dream content_.
Around the psychical stuff of dream thoughts there are ever found
reminiscences of impressions, not infrequently of early
childhood--scenes which, as a rule, have been visually grasped. Whenever
possible, this portion of the dream ideas exercises a definite influence
upon the modelling of the dream content; it works like a center of
crystallization, by attracting and rearranging the stuff of the dream
thoughts. The scene of the dream is not infrequently nothing but a
modified repetition, complicated by interpolations of events that have
left such an impression; the dream but very seldom reproduces accurate
and unmixed reproductions of real scenes.
The dream content does not, however, consist exclusively of scenes, but
it also includes scattered fragments of visual images, conversations,
and even bits of unchanged thoughts. It will be perhaps to the point if
we instance in the briefest way the means of dramatization which are at
the disposal of the dream work for the repetition of the dream thoughts
in the peculiar language of the dream.
The dream thoughts which we learn from the analysis exhibit themselves
as a psychical complex of the most complicated superstructure. Their
parts stand in the most diverse relationship to each other; they form
backgrounds and foregrounds, stipulations, digressions, illustrations,
demonstrations, and protestations. It may be said to be almost the rule
that one train of thought is followed by its contradictory. No feature
known to our reason whilst awake is absent. If a dream is to grow out of
all this, the psychical matter is submitted to a pressure which
condenses it extremely, to an inner shrinking and displacement, creating
at the same time fresh surfaces, to a selective interweaving among the
constituents best adapted for the construction of these scenes. Having
regard to the origin of this stuff, the term _regression_ can be fairly
applied to this process. The logical chains which hitherto held the
psychical stuff together become lost in this transformation to the dream
content. The dream work takes on, as it were, only the essential content
of the dream thoughts for elaboration. It is left to analysis to restore
the connection which the dream work has destroyed.
The dream's means of expression must therefore be regarded as meager in
comparison with those of our imagination, though the dream does not
renounce all claims to the restitution of logical relation to the dream
thoughts. It rather succeeds with tolerable frequency in replacing these
by formal characters of its own.
By reason of the undoubted connection existing between all the parts of
dream thoughts, the dream is able to embody this matter into a single
scene. It upholds a _logical connection_ as _approximation in time and
space_, just as the painter, who groups all the poets for his picture of
Parnassus who, though they have never been all together on a mountain
peak, yet form ideally a community. The dream continues this method of
presentation in individual dreams, and often when it displays two
elements close together in the dream content it warrants some special
inner connection between what they represent in the dream thoughts. It
should be, moreover, observed that all the dreams of one night prove on
analysis to originate from the same sphere of thought.
The causal connection between two ideas is either left without
presentation, or replaced by two different long portions of dreams one
after the other. This presentation is frequently a reversed one, the
beginning of the dream being the deduction, and its end the hypothesis.
The direct _transformation_ of one thing into another in the dream seems
to serve the relationship of _cause_ and _effect_.
The dream never utters the _alternative "either-or,"_ but accepts both
as having equal rights in the same connection. When "either-or" is used
in the reproduction of dreams, it is, as I have already mentioned, to be
replaced by "_and_."
Conceptions which stand in opposition to one another are preferably
expressed in dreams by the same element.[2] There seems no "not" in
dreams. Opposition between two ideas, the relation of conversion, is
represented in dreams in a very remarkable way. It is expressed by the
reversal of another part of the dream content just as if by way of
appendix. We shall later on deal with another form of expressing
disagreement. The common dream sensation of _movement checked_ serves
the purpose of representing disagreement of impulses--a _conflict of the
will_.
Only one of the logical relationships--that of _similarity, identity,
agreement_--is found highly developed in the mechanism of dream
formation. Dream work makes use of these cases as a starting-point for
condensation, drawing together everything which shows such agreement to
a _fresh unity_.
These short, crude observations naturally do not suffice as an estimate
of the abundance of the dream's formal means of presenting the logical
relationships of the dream thoughts. In this respect, individual dreams
are worked up more nicely or more carelessly, our text will have been
followed more or less closely, auxiliaries of the dream work will have
been taken more or less into consideration. In the latter case they
appear obscure, intricate, incoherent. When the dream appears openly
absurd, when it contains an obvious paradox in its content, it is so of
purpose. Through its apparent disregard of all logical claims, it
expresses a part of the intellectual content of the dream ideas.
Absurdity in the dream denotes _disagreement, scorn, disdain_ in the
dream thoughts. As this explanation is in entire disagreement with the
view that the dream owes its origin to dissociated, uncritical cerebral
activity, I will emphasize my view by an example:
_"One of my acquaintances, Mr. M----, has been attacked by no less a
person than Goethe in an essay with, we all maintain, unwarrantable
violence. Mr. M---- has naturally been ruined by this attack. He
complains very bitterly of this at a dinner-party, but his respect for
Goethe has not diminished through this personal experience. I now
attempt to clear up the chronological relations which strike me as
improbable. Goethe died in 1832. As his attack upon Mr. M---- must, of
course, have taken place before, Mr. M---- must have been then a very
young man. It seems to me plausible that he was eighteen. I am not
certain, however, what year we are actually in, and the whole
calculation falls into obscurity. The attack was, moreover, contained
in Goethe's well-known essay on 'Nature.'"_
The absurdity of the dream becomes the more glaring when I state that
Mr. M---- is a young business man without any poetical or literary
interests. My analysis of the dream will show what method there is in
this madness. The dream has derived its material from three sources:
1. Mr. M----, to whom I was introduced at a dinner-party, begged me one
day to examine his elder brother, who showed signs of mental trouble. In
conversation with the patient, an unpleasant episode occurred. Without
the slightest occasion he disclosed one of his brother's _youthful
escapades_. I had asked the patient the _year of his birth_ (_year of
death_ in dream), and led him to various calculations which might show
up his want of memory.
2. A medical journal which displayed my name among others on the cover
had published a _ruinous_ review of a book by my friend F---- of Berlin,
from the pen of a very _juvenile_ reviewer. I communicated with the
editor, who, indeed, expressed his regret, but would not promise any
redress. Thereupon I broke off my connection with the paper; in my
letter of resignation I expressed the hope that our _personal relations
would not suffer from this_. Here is the real source of the dream. The
derogatory reception of my friend's work had made a deep impression upon
me. In my judgment, it contained a fundamental biological discovery
which only now, several years later, commences to find favor among the
professors.
3. A little while before, a patient gave me the medical history of her
brother, who, exclaiming "_Nature, Nature!_" had gone out of his mind.
The doctors considered that the exclamation arose from a study of
_Goethe's_ beautiful essay, and indicated that the patient had been
overworking. I expressed the opinion that it seemed more _plausible_ to
me that the exclamation "Nature!" was to be taken in that sexual meaning
known also to the less educated in our country. It seemed to me that
this view had something in it, because the unfortunate youth afterwards
mutilated his genital organs. The patient was eighteen years old when
the attack occurred.
The first person in the dream-thoughts behind the ego was my friend who
had been so scandalously treated. _"I now attempted to clear up the
chronological relation."_ My friend's book deals with the chronological
relations of life, and, amongst other things, correlates _Goethe's_
duration of life with a number of days in many ways important to
biology. The ego is, however, represented as a general paralytic (_"I
am not certain what year we are actually in"_). The dream exhibits my
friend as behaving like a general paralytic, and thus riots in
absurdity. But the dream thoughts run ironically. "Of course he is a
madman, a fool, and you are the genius who understands all about it. But
shouldn't it be the _other way round_?" This inversion obviously took
place in the dream when Goethe attacked the young man, which is absurd,
whilst any one, however young, can to-day easily attack the great
Goethe.
I am prepared to maintain that no dream is inspired by other than
egoistic emotions. The ego in the dream does not, indeed, represent only
my friend, but stands for myself also. I identify myself with him
because the fate of his discovery appears to me typical of the
acceptance of _my own_. If I were to publish my own theory, which gives
sexuality predominance in the ætiology of psychoneurotic disorders (see
the allusion to the eighteen-year-old patient--_"Nature, Nature!"_), the
same criticism would be leveled at me, and it would even now meet with
the same contempt.
When I follow out the dream thoughts closely, I ever find only _scorn_
and _contempt_ as _correlated with the dream's absurdity_. It is well
known that the discovery of a cracked sheep's skull on the Lido in
Venice gave Goethe the hint for the so-called vertebral theory of the
skull. My friend plumes himself on having as a student raised a hubbub
for the resignation of an aged professor who had done good work
(including some in this very subject of comparative anatomy), but who,
on account of _decrepitude_, had become quite incapable of teaching. The
agitation my friend inspired was so successful because in the German
Universities an _age limit_ is not demanded for academic work. _Age is
no protection against folly._ In the hospital here I had for years the
honor to serve under a chief who, long fossilized, was for decades
notoriously _feebleminded_, and was yet permitted to continue in his
responsible office. A trait, after the manner of the find in the Lido,
forces itself upon me here. It was to this man that some youthful
colleagues in the hospital adapted the then popular slang of that day:
"No Goethe has written that," "No Schiller composed that," etc.