these remnants of waking life, especially those emanating from the group
of the unsolved. These excitations surely continue to strive for
expression during the night, and we may assume with equal certainty that
the sleeping state renders impossible the usual continuation of the
excitement in the foreconscious and the termination of the excitement by
its becoming conscious. As far as we can normally become conscious of
our mental processes, even during the night, in so far we are not
asleep. I shall not venture to state what change is produced in the
Forec. system by the sleeping state, but there is no doubt that the
psychological character of sleep is essentially due to the change of
energy in this very system, which also dominates the approach to
motility, which is paralyzed during sleep. In contradistinction to this,
there seems to be nothing in the psychology of the dream to warrant the
assumption that sleep produces any but secondary changes in the
conditions of the Unc. system. Hence, for the nocturnal excitation in
the Force, there remains no other path than that followed by the wish
excitements from the Unc. This excitation must seek reinforcement from
the Unc., and follow the detours of the unconscious excitations. But
what is the relation of the foreconscious day remnants to the dream?
There is no doubt that they penetrate abundantly into the dream, that
they utilize the dream content to obtrude themselves upon consciousness
even during the night; indeed, they occasionally even dominate the dream
content, and impel it to continue the work of the day; it is also
certain that the day remnants may just as well have any other character
as that of wishes; but it is highly instructive and even decisive for
the theory of wish-fulfillment to see what conditions they must comply
with in order to be received into the dream.
Let us pick out one of the dreams cited above as examples, _e.g._, the
dream in which my friend Otto seems to show the symptoms of Basedow's
disease. My friend Otto's appearance occasioned me some concern during
the day, and this worry, like everything else referring to this person,
affected me. I may also assume that these feelings followed me into
sleep. I was probably bent on finding out what was the matter with him.
In the night my worry found expression in the dream which I have
reported, the content of which was not only senseless, but failed to
show any wish-fulfillment. But I began to investigate for the source of
this incongruous expression of the solicitude felt during the day, and
analysis revealed the connection. I identified my friend Otto with a
certain Baron L. and myself with a Professor R. There was only one
explanation for my being impelled to select just this substitution for
the day thought. I must have always been prepared in the Unc. to
identify myself with Professor R., as it meant the realization of one of
the immortal infantile wishes, viz. that of becoming great. Repulsive
ideas respecting my friend, that would certainly have been repudiated
in a waking state, took advantage of the opportunity to creep into the
dream, but the worry of the day likewise found some form of expression
through a substitution in the dream content. The day thought, which was
no wish in itself but rather a worry, had in some way to find a
connection with the infantile now unconscious and suppressed wish, which
then allowed it, though already properly prepared, to "originate" for
consciousness. The more dominating this worry, the stronger must be the
connection to be established; between the contents of the wish and that
of the worry there need be no connection, nor was there one in any of
our examples.
We can now sharply define the significance of the unconscious wish for
the dream. It may be admitted that there is a whole class of dreams in
which the incitement originates preponderatingly or even exclusively
from the remnants of daily life; and I believe that even my cherished
desire to become at some future time a "professor extraordinarius" would
have allowed me to slumber undisturbed that night had not my worry about
my friend's health been still active. But this worry alone would not
have produced a dream; the motive power needed by the dream had to be
contributed by a wish, and it was the affair of the worriment to
procure for itself such wish as a motive power of the dream. To speak
figuratively, it is quite possible that a day thought plays the part of
the contractor (_entrepreneur_) in the dream. But it is known that no
matter what idea the contractor may have in mind, and how desirous he
may be of putting it into operation, he can do nothing without capital;
he must depend upon a capitalist to defray the necessary expenses, and
this capitalist, who supplies the psychic expenditure for the dream is
invariably and indisputably _a wish from the unconscious_, no matter
what the nature of the waking thought may be.
In other cases the capitalist himself is the contractor for the dream;
this, indeed, seems to be the more usual case. An unconscious wish is
produced by the day's work, which in turn creates the dream. The dream
processes, moreover, run parallel with all the other possibilities of
the economic relationship used here as an illustration. Thus, the
entrepreneur may contribute some capital himself, or several
entrepreneurs may seek the aid of the same capitalist, or several
capitalists may jointly supply the capital required by the entrepreneur.
Thus there are dreams produced by more than one dream-wish, and many
similar variations which may readily be passed over and are of no
further interest to us. What we have left unfinished in this discussion
of the dream-wish we shall be able to develop later.
The "tertium comparationis" in the comparisons just employed--_i.e._ the
sum placed at our free disposal in proper allotment--admits of still
finer application for the illustration of the dream structure. We can
recognize in most dreams a center especially supplied with perceptible
intensity. This is regularly the direct representation of the
wish-fulfillment; for, if we undo the displacements of the dream-work by
a process of retrogression, we find that the psychic intensity of the
elements in the dream thoughts is replaced by the perceptible intensity
of the elements in the dream content. The elements adjoining the
wish-fulfillment have frequently nothing to do with its sense, but prove
to be descendants of painful thoughts which oppose the wish. But, owing
to their frequently artificial connection with the central element, they
have acquired sufficient intensity to enable them to come to expression.
Thus, the force of expression of the wish-fulfillment is diffused over a
certain sphere of association, within which it raises to expression all
elements, including those that are in themselves impotent. In dreams
having several strong wishes we can readily separate from one another
the spheres of the individual wish-fulfillments; the gaps in the dream
likewise can often be explained as boundary zones.
Although the foregoing remarks have considerably limited the
significance of the day remnants for the dream, it will nevertheless be
worth our while to give them some attention. For they must be a
necessary ingredient in the formation of the dream, inasmuch as
experience reveals the surprising fact that every dream shows in its
content a connection with some impression of a recent day, often of the
most indifferent kind. So far we have failed to see any necessity for
this addition to the dream mixture. This necessity appears only when we
follow closely the part played by the unconscious wish, and then seek
information in the psychology of the neuroses. We thus learn that the
unconscious idea, as such, is altogether incapable of entering into the
foreconscious, and that it can exert an influence there only by uniting
with a harmless idea already belonging to the foreconscious, to which it
transfers its intensity and under which it allows itself to be
concealed. This is the fact of transference which furnishes an
explanation for so many surprising occurrences in the psychic life of
neurotics.
The idea from the foreconscious which thus obtains an unmerited
abundance of intensity may be left unchanged by the transference, or it
may have forced upon it a modification from the content of the
transferring idea. I trust the reader will pardon my fondness for
comparisons from daily life, but I feel tempted to say that the
relations existing for the repressed idea are similar to the situations
existing in Austria for the American dentist, who is forbidden to
practise unless he gets permission from a regular physician to use his
name on the public signboard and thus cover the legal requirements.
Moreover, just as it is naturally not the busiest physicians who form
such alliances with dental practitioners, so in the psychic life only
such foreconscious or conscious ideas are chosen to cover a repressed
idea as have not themselves attracted much of the attention which is
operative in the foreconscious. The unconscious entangles with its
connections preferentially either those impressions and ideas of the
foreconscious which have been left unnoticed as indifferent, or those
that have soon been deprived of this attention through rejection. It is
a familiar fact from the association studies confirmed by every
experience, that ideas which have formed intimate connections in one
direction assume an almost negative attitude to whole groups of new
connections. I once tried from this principle to develop a theory for
hysterical paralysis.
If we assume that the same need for the transference of the repressed
ideas which we have learned to know from the analysis of the neuroses
makes its influence felt in the dream as well, we can at once explain
two riddles of the dream, viz. that every dream analysis shows an
interweaving of a recent impression, and that this recent element is
frequently of the most indifferent character. We may add what we have
already learned elsewhere, that these recent and indifferent elements
come so frequently into the dream content as a substitute for the most
deep-lying of the dream thoughts, for the further reason that they have
least to fear from the resisting censor. But while this freedom from
censorship explains only the preference for trivial elements, the
constant presence of recent elements points to the fact that there is a
need for transference. Both groups of impressions satisfy the demand of
the repression for material still free from associations, the
indifferent ones because they have offered no inducement for extensive
associations, and the recent ones because they have had insufficient
time to form such associations.
We thus see that the day remnants, among which we may now include the
indifferent impressions when they participate in the dream formation,
not only borrow from the Unc. the motive power at the disposal of the
repressed wish, but also offer to the unconscious something
indispensable, namely, the attachment necessary to the transference. If
we here attempted to penetrate more deeply into the psychic processes,
we should first have to throw more light on the play of emotions between
the foreconscious and the unconscious, to which, indeed, we are urged by
the study of the psychoneuroses, whereas the dream itself offers no
assistance in this respect.
Just one further remark about the day remnants. There is no doubt that
they are the actual disturbers of sleep, and not the dream, which, on
the contrary, strives to guard sleep. But we shall return to this point
later.
We have so far discussed the dream-wish, we have traced it to the sphere
of the Unc., and analyzed its relations to the day remnants, which in
turn may be either wishes, psychic emotions of any other kind, or simply
recent impressions. We have thus made room for any claims that may be
made for the importance of conscious thought activity in dream
formations in all its variations. Relying upon our thought series, it
would not be at all impossible for us to explain even those extreme
cases in which the dream as a continuer of the day work brings to a
happy conclusion and unsolved problem possess an example, the analysis
of which might reveal the infantile or repressed wish source furnishing
such alliance and successful strengthening of the efforts of the
foreconscious activity. But we have not come one step nearer a solution
of the riddle: Why can the unconscious furnish the motive power for the
wish-fulfillment only during sleep? The answer to this question must
throw light on the psychic nature of wishes; and it will be given with
the aid of the diagram of the psychic apparatus.
We do not doubt that even this apparatus attained its present perfection
through a long course of development. Let us attempt to restore it as it
existed in an early phase of its activity. From assumptions, to be
confirmed elsewhere, we know that at first the apparatus strove to keep
as free from excitement as possible, and in its first formation,
therefore, the scheme took the form of a reflex apparatus, which enabled
it promptly to discharge through the motor tracts any sensible stimulus
reaching it from without. But this simple function was disturbed by the
wants of life, which likewise furnish the impulse for the further
development of the apparatus. The wants of life first manifested
themselves to it in the form of the great physical needs. The excitement
aroused by the inner want seeks an outlet in motility, which may be
designated as "inner changes" or as an "expression of the emotions." The
hungry child cries or fidgets helplessly, but its situation remains
unchanged; for the excitation proceeding from an inner want requires,
not a momentary outbreak, but a force working continuously. A change can
occur only if in some way a feeling of gratification is
experienced--which in the case of the child must be through outside
help--in order to remove the inner excitement. An essential constituent
of this experience is the appearance of a certain perception (of food in
our example), the memory picture of which thereafter remains associated
with the memory trace of the excitation of want.
Thanks to the established connection, there results at the next
appearance of this want a psychic feeling which revives the memory
picture of the former perception, and thus recalls the former perception
itself, _i.e._ it actually re-establishes the situation of the first
gratification. We call such a feeling a wish; the reappearance of the
perception constitutes the wish-fulfillment, and the full revival of the
perception by the want excitement constitutes the shortest road to the
wish-fulfillment. We may assume a primitive condition of the psychic
apparatus in which this road is really followed, _i.e._ where the
wishing merges into an hallucination, This first psychic activity
therefore aims at an identity of perception, _i.e._ it aims at a
repetition of that perception which is connected with the fulfillment of
the want.
This primitive mental activity must have been modified by bitter
practical experience into a more expedient secondary activity. The
establishment of the identity perception on the short regressive road
within the apparatus does not in another respect carry with it the
result which inevitably follows the revival of the same perception from
without. The gratification does not take place, and the want continues.
In order to equalize the internal with the external sum of energy, the
former must be continually maintained, just as actually happens in the
hallucinatory psychoses and in the deliriums of hunger which exhaust
their psychic capacity in clinging to the object desired. In order to
make more appropriate use of the psychic force, it becomes necessary to
inhibit the full regression so as to prevent it from extending beyond
the image of memory, whence it can select other paths leading ultimately
to the establishment of the desired identity from the outer world. This
inhibition and consequent deviation from the excitation becomes the
task of a second system which dominates the voluntary motility, _i.e._
through whose activity the expenditure of motility is now devoted to
previously recalled purposes. But this entire complicated mental
activity which works its way from the memory picture to the
establishment of the perception identity from the outer world merely
represents a detour which has been forced upon the wish-fulfillment by
experience.[2] Thinking is indeed nothing but the equivalent of the
hallucinatory wish; and if the dream be called a wish-fulfillment this
becomes self-evident, as nothing but a wish can impel our psychic
apparatus to activity. The dream, which in fulfilling its wishes follows
the short regressive path, thereby preserves for us only an example of
the primary form of the psychic apparatus which has been abandoned as
inexpedient. What once ruled in the waking state when the psychic life
was still young and unfit seems to have been banished into the sleeping
state, just as we see again in the nursery the bow and arrow, the
discarded primitive weapons of grown-up humanity. _The dream is a
fragment of the abandoned psychic life of the child._ In the psychoses
these modes of operation of the psychic apparatus, which are normally
suppressed in the waking state, reassert themselves, and then betray
their inability to satisfy our wants in the outer world.
The unconscious wish-feelings evidently strive to assert themselves
during the day also, and the fact of transference and the psychoses
teach us that they endeavor to penetrate to consciousness and dominate
motility by the road leading through the system of the foreconscious. It
is, therefore, the censor lying between the Unc. and the Forec., the
assumption of which is forced upon us by the dream, that we have to
recognize and honor as the guardian of our psychic health. But is it not
carelessness on the part of this guardian to diminish its vigilance
during the night and to allow the suppressed emotions of the Unc. to
come to expression, thus again making possible the hallucinatory
regression? I think not, for when the critical guardian goes to
rest--and we have proof that his slumber is not profound--he takes care
to close the gate to motility. No matter what feelings from the
otherwise inhibited Unc. may roam about on the scene, they need not be
interfered with; they remain harmless because they are unable to put in
motion the motor apparatus which alone can exert a modifying influence
upon the outer world. Sleep guarantees the security of the fortress
which is under guard. Conditions are less harmless when a displacement
of forces is produced, not through a nocturnal diminution in the
operation of the critical censor, but through pathological enfeeblement
of the latter or through pathological reinforcement of the unconscious
excitations, and this while the foreconscious is charged with energy and
the avenues to motility are open. The guardian is then overpowered, the
unconscious excitations subdue the Forec.; through it they dominate our
speech and actions, or they enforce the hallucinatory regression, thus
governing an apparatus not designed for them by virtue of the attraction
exerted by the perceptions on the distribution of our psychic energy. We
call this condition a psychosis.
We are now in the best position to complete our psychological
construction, which has been interrupted by the introduction of the two
systems, Unc. and Forec. We have still, however, ample reason for giving
further consideration to the wish as the sole psychic motive power in
the dream. We have explained that the reason why the dream is in every
case a wish realization is because it is a product of the Unc., which
knows no other aim in its activity but the fulfillment of wishes, and
which has no other forces at its disposal but wish-feelings. If we
avail ourselves for a moment longer of the right to elaborate from the
dream interpretation such far-reaching psychological speculations, we
are in duty bound to demonstrate that we are thereby bringing the dream
into a relationship which may also comprise other psychic structures. If
there exists a system of the Unc.--or something sufficiently analogous
to it for the purpose of our discussion--the dream cannot be its sole
manifestation; every dream may be a wish-fulfillment, but there must be
other forms of abnormal wish-fulfillment beside this of dreams. Indeed,
the theory of all psychoneurotic symptoms culminates in the proposition
_that they too must be taken as wish-fulfillments of the unconscious_.
Our explanation makes the dream only the first member of a group most
important for the psychiatrist, an understanding of which means the
solution of the purely psychological part of the psychiatric problem.
But other members of this group of wish-fulfillments, _e.g._, the
hysterical symptoms, evince one essential quality which I have so far
failed to find in the dream. Thus, from the investigations frequently
referred to in this treatise, I know that the formation of an hysterical
symptom necessitates the combination of both streams of our psychic
life. The symptom is not merely the expression of a realized
unconscious wish, but it must be joined by another wish from the
foreconscious which is fulfilled by the same symptom; so that the
symptom is at least doubly determined, once by each one of the
conflicting systems. Just as in the dream, there is no limit to further
over-determination. The determination not derived from the Unc. is, as
far as I can see, invariably a stream of thought in reaction against the
unconscious wish, _e.g._, a self-punishment. Hence I may say, in
general, that _an hysterical symptom originates only where two
contrasting wish-fulfillments, having their source in different psychic
systems, are able to combine in one expression_. (Compare my latest
formulation of the origin of the hysterical symptoms in a treatise
published by the _Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, by Hirschfeld and
others, 1908). Examples on this point would prove of little value, as
nothing but a complete unveiling of the complication in question would
carry conviction. I therefore content myself with the mere assertion,
and will cite an example, not for conviction but for explication. The
hysterical vomiting of a female patient proved, on the one hand, to be
the realization of an unconscious fancy from the time of puberty, that
she might be continuously pregnant and have a multitude of children,
and this was subsequently united with the wish that she might have them
from as many men as possible. Against this immoderate wish there arose a
powerful defensive impulse. But as the vomiting might spoil the
patient's figure and beauty, so that she would not find favor in the
eyes of mankind, the symptom was therefore in keeping with her punitive
trend of thought, and, being thus admissible from both sides, it was
allowed to become a reality. This is the same manner of consenting to a
wish-fulfillment which the queen of the Parthians chose for the triumvir
Crassus. Believing that he had undertaken the campaign out of greed for
gold, she caused molten gold to be poured into the throat of the corpse.
"Now hast thou what thou hast longed for." As yet we know of the dream
only that it expresses a wish-fulfillment of the unconscious; and
apparently the dominating foreconscious permits this only after it has
subjected the wish to some distortions. We are really in no position to
demonstrate regularly a stream of thought antagonistic to the dream-wish
which is realized in the dream as in its counterpart. Only now and then
have we found in the dream traces of reaction formations, as, for
instance, the tenderness toward friend R. in the "uncle dream." But the
contribution from the foreconscious, which is missing here, may be
found in another place. While the dominating system has withdrawn on
the wish to sleep, the dream may bring to expression with manifold
distortions a wish from the Unc., and realize this wish by producing the
necessary changes of energy in the psychic apparatus, and may finally
retain it through the entire duration of sleep.[3]