only sexual wish-feelings from the infantile life experience repression
(emotional transformation) during the developmental period of childhood.
These are capable of returning to activity at a later period of
development, and then have the faculty of being revived, either as a
consequence of the sexual constitution, which is really formed from the
original bisexuality, or in consequence of unfavorable influences of the
sexual life; and they thus supply the motive power for all
psychoneurotic symptom formations. It is only by the introduction of
these sexual forces that the gaps still demonstrable in the theory of
repression can be filled. I will leave it undecided whether the
postulate of the sexual and infantile may also be asserted for the
theory of the dream; I leave this here unfinished because I have already
passed a step beyond the demonstrable in assuming that the dream-wish
invariably originates from the unconscious.[2] Nor will I further
investigate the difference in the play of the psychic forces in the
dream formation and in the formation of the hysterical symptoms, for to
do this we ought to possess a more explicit knowledge of one of the
members to be compared. But I regard another point as important, and
will here confess that it was on account of this very point that I have
just undertaken this entire discussion concerning the two psychic
systems, their modes of operation, and the repression. For it is now
immaterial whether I have conceived the psychological relations in
question with approximate correctness, or, as is easily possible in such
a difficult matter, in an erroneous and fragmentary manner. Whatever
changes may be made in the interpretation of the psychic censor and of
the correct and of the abnormal elaboration of the dream content, the
fact nevertheless remains that such processes are active in dream
formation, and that essentially they show the closest analogy to the
processes observed in the formation of the hysterical symptoms. The
dream is not a pathological phenomenon, and it does not leave behind an
enfeeblement of the mental faculties. The objection that no deduction
can be drawn regarding the dreams of healthy persons from my own dreams
and from those of neurotic patients may be rejected without comment.
Hence, when we draw conclusions from the phenomena as to their motive
forces, we recognize that the psychic mechanism made use of by the
neuroses is not created by a morbid disturbance of the psychic life, but
is found ready in the normal structure of the psychic apparatus. The two
psychic systems, the censor crossing between them, the inhibition and
the covering of the one activity by the other, the relations of both to
consciousness--or whatever may offer a more correct interpretation of
the actual conditions in their stead--all these belong to the normal
structure of our psychic instrument, and the dream points out for us one
of the roads leading to a knowledge of this structure. If, in addition
to our knowledge, we wish to be contented with a minimum perfectly
established, we shall say that the dream gives us proof that the
_suppressed, material continues to exist even in the normal person and
remains capable of psychic activity_. The dream itself is one of the
manifestations of this suppressed material; theoretically, this is true
in _all_ cases; according to substantial experience it is true in at
least a great number of such as most conspicuously display the prominent
characteristics of dream life. The suppressed psychic material, which in
the waking state has been prevented from expression and cut off from
internal perception _by the antagonistic adjustment of the
contradictions_, finds ways and means of obtruding itself on
consciousness during the night under the domination of the compromise
formations.
_"Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo."_
At any rate the interpretation of dreams is the _via regia_ to a
knowledge of the unconscious in the psychic life.
In following the analysis of the dream we have made some progress toward
an understanding of the composition of this most marvelous and most
mysterious of instruments; to be sure, we have not gone very far, but
enough of a beginning has been made to allow us to advance from other
so-called pathological formations further into the analysis of the
unconscious. Disease--at least that which is justly termed
functional--is not due to the destruction of this apparatus, and the
establishment of new splittings in its interior; it is rather to be
explained dynamically through the strengthening and weakening of the
components in the play of forces by which so many activities are
concealed during the normal function. We have been able to show in
another place how the composition of the apparatus from the two systems
permits a subtilization even of the normal activity which would be
impossible for a single system.
[1] _Cf._ the significant observations by J. Bueuer in our _Studies on
Hysteria_, 1895, and 2nd ed. 1909.
[2] Here, as in other places, there are gaps in the treatment of the
subject, which I have left intentionally, because to fill them up would
require on the one hand too great effort, and on the other hand an
extensive reference to material that is foreign to the dream. Thus I
have avoided stating whether I connect with the word "suppressed"
another sense than with the word "repressed." It has been made clear
only that the latter emphasizes more than the former the relation to the
unconscious. I have not entered into the cognate problem why the dream
thoughts also experience distortion by the censor when they abandon the
progressive continuation to consciousness and choose the path of
regression. I have been above all anxious to awaken an interest in the
problems to which the further analysis of the dreamwork leads and to
indicate the other themes which meet these on the way. It was not always
easy to decide just where the pursuit should be discontinued. That I
have not treated exhaustively the part played in the dream by the
psychosexual life and have avoided the interpretation of dreams of an
obvious sexual content is due to a special reason which may not come up
to the reader's expectation. To be sure, it is very far from my ideas
and the principles expressed by me in neuropathology to regard the
sexual life as a "pudendum" which should be left unconsidered by the
physician and the scientific investigator. I also consider ludicrous the
moral indignation which prompted the translator of Artemidoros of Daldis
to keep from the reader's knowledge the chapter on sexual dreams
contained in the _Symbolism of the Dreams_. As for myself, I have been
actuated solely by the conviction that in the explanation of sexual
dreams I should be bound to entangle myself deeply in the still
unexplained problems of perversion and bisexuality; and for that reason
I have reserved this material for another connection.
IX
THE UNCONSCIOUS AND CONSCIOUSNESS--REALITY
On closer inspection we find that it is not the existence of two systems
near the motor end of the apparatus but of two kinds of processes or
modes of emotional discharge, the assumption of which was explained in
the psychological discussions of the previous chapter. This can make no
difference for us, for we must always be ready to drop our auxiliary
ideas whenever we deem ourselves in position to replace them by
something else approaching more closely to the unknown reality. Let us
now try to correct some views which might be erroneously formed as long
as we regarded the two systems in the crudest and most obvious sense as
two localities within the psychic apparatus, views which have left their
traces in the terms "repression" and "penetration." Thus, when we say
that an unconscious idea strives for transference into the foreconscious
in order later to penetrate consciousness, we do not mean that a second
idea is to be formed situated in a new locality like an interlineation
near which the original continues to remain; also, when we speak of
penetration into consciousness, we wish carefully to avoid any idea of
change of locality. When we say that a foreconscious idea is repressed
and subsequently taken up by the unconscious, we might be tempted by
these figures, borrowed from the idea of a struggle over a territory, to
assume that an arrangement is really broken up in one psychic locality
and replaced by a new one in the other locality. For these comparisons
we substitute what would seem to correspond better with the real state
of affairs by saying that an energy occupation is displaced to or
withdrawn from a certain arrangement so that the psychic formation falls
under the domination of a system or is withdrawn from the same. Here
again we replace a topical mode of presentation by a dynamic; it is not
the psychic formation that appears to us as the moving factor but the
innervation of the same.
I deem it appropriate and justifiable, however, to apply ourselves still
further to the illustrative conception of the two systems. We shall
avoid any misapplication of this manner of representation if we remember
that presentations, thoughts, and psychic formations should generally
not be localized in the organic elements of the nervous system, but, so
to speak, between them, where resistances and paths form the correlate
corresponding to them. Everything that can become an object of our
internal perception is virtual, like the image in the telescope produced
by the passage of the rays of light. But we are justified in assuming
the existence of the systems, which have nothing psychic in themselves
and which never become accessible to our psychic perception,
corresponding to the lenses of the telescope which design the image. If
we continue this comparison, we may say that the censor between two
systems corresponds to the refraction of rays during their passage into
a new medium.
Thus far we have made psychology on our own responsibility; it is now
time to examine the theoretical opinions governing present-day
psychology and to test their relation to our theories. The question of
the unconscious, in psychology is, according to the authoritative words
of Lipps, less a psychological question than the question of psychology.
As long as psychology settled this question with the verbal explanation
that the "psychic" is the "conscious" and that "unconscious psychic
occurrences" are an obvious contradiction, a psychological estimate of
the observations gained by the physician from abnormal mental states was
precluded. The physician and the philosopher agree only when both
acknowledge that unconscious psychic processes are "the appropriate and
well-justified expression for an established fact." The physician cannot
but reject with a shrug of his shoulders the assertion that
"consciousness is the indispensable quality of the psychic"; he may
assume, if his respect for the utterings of the philosophers still be
strong enough, that he and they do not treat the same subject and do not
pursue the same science. For a single intelligent observation of the
psychic life of a neurotic, a single analysis of a dream must force upon
him the unalterable conviction that the most complicated and correct
mental operations, to which no one will refuse the name of psychic
occurrences, may take place without exciting the consciousness of the
person. It is true that the physician does not learn of these
unconscious processes until they have exerted such an effect on
consciousness as to admit communication or observation. But this effect
of consciousness may show a psychic character widely differing from the
unconscious process, so that the internal perception cannot possibly
recognize the one as a substitute for the other. The physician must
reserve for himself the right to penetrate, by a process of deduction,
from the effect on consciousness to the unconscious psychic process; he
learns in this way that the effect on consciousness is only a remote
psychic product of the unconscious process and that the latter has not
become conscious as such; that it has been in existence and operative
without betraying itself in any way to consciousness.
A reaction from the over-estimation of the quality of consciousness
becomes the indispensable preliminary condition for any correct insight
into the behavior of the psychic. In the words of Lipps, the unconscious
must be accepted as the general basis of the psychic life. The
unconscious is the larger circle which includes within itself the
smaller circle of the conscious; everything conscious has its
preliminary step in the unconscious, whereas the unconscious may stop
with this step and still claim full value as a psychic activity.
Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; _its inner
nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world,
and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of
consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our
sensory organs_.
A series of dream problems which have intensely occupied older authors
will be laid aside when the old opposition between conscious life and
dream life is abandoned and the unconscious psychic assigned to its
proper place. Thus many of the activities whose performances in the
dream have excited our admiration are now no longer to be attributed to
the dream but to unconscious thinking, which is also active during the
day. If, according to Scherner, the dream seems to play with a symboling
representation of the body, we know that this is the work of certain
unconscious phantasies which have probably given in to sexual emotions,
and that these phantasies come to expression not only in dreams but also
in hysterical phobias and in other symptoms. If the dream continues and
settles activities of the day and even brings to light valuable
inspirations, we have only to subtract from it the dream disguise as a
feat of dream-work and a mark of assistance from obscure forces in the
depth of the mind (_cf._ the devil in Tartini's sonata dream). The
intellectual task as such must be attributed to the same psychic forces
which perform all such tasks during the day. We are probably far too
much inclined to over-estimate the conscious character even of
intellectual and artistic productions. From the communications of some
of the most highly productive persons, such as Goethe and Helmholtz, we
learn, indeed, that the most essential and original parts in their
creations came to them in the form of inspirations and reached their
perceptions almost finished. There is nothing strange about the
assistance of the conscious activity in other cases where there was a
concerted effort of all the psychic forces. But it is a much abused
privilege of the conscious activity that it is allowed to hide from us
all other activities wherever it participates.
It will hardly be worth while to take up the historical significance of
dreams as a special subject. Where, for instance, a chieftain has been
urged through a dream to engage in a bold undertaking the success of
which has had the effect of changing history, a new problem results only
so long as the dream, regarded as a strange power, is contrasted with
other more familiar psychic forces; the problem, however, disappears
when we regard the dream as a form of expression for feelings which are
burdened with resistance during the day and which can receive
reinforcements at night from deep emotional sources. But the great
respect shown by the ancients for the dream is based on a correct
psychological surmise. It is a homage paid to the unsubdued and
indestructible in the human mind, and to the demoniacal which furnishes
the dream-wish and which we find again in our unconscious.
Not inadvisedly do I use the expression "in our unconscious," for what
we so designate does not coincide with the unconscious of the
philosophers, nor with the unconscious of Lipps. In the latter uses it
is intended to designate only the opposite of conscious. That there are
also unconscious psychic processes beside the conscious ones is the
hotly contested and energetically defended issue. Lipps gives us the
more far-reaching theory that everything psychic exists as unconscious,
but that some of it may exist also as conscious. But it was not to prove
this theory that we have adduced the phenomena of the dream and of the
hysterical symptom formation; the observation of normal life alone
suffices to establish its correctness beyond any doubt. The new fact
that we have learned from the analysis of the psychopathological
formations, and indeed from their first member, viz. dreams, is that the
unconscious--hence the psychic--occurs as a function of two separate
systems and that it occurs as such even in normal psychic life.
Consequently there are two kinds of unconscious, which we do not as yet
find distinguished by the psychologists. Both are unconscious in the
psychological sense; but in our sense the first, which we call Unc., is
likewise incapable of consciousness, whereas the second we term "Forec."
because its emotions, after the observance of certain rules, can reach
consciousness, perhaps not before they have again undergone censorship,
but still regardless of the Unc. system. The fact that in order to
attain consciousness the emotions must traverse an unalterable series of
events or succession of instances, as is betrayed through their
alteration by the censor, has helped us to draw a comparison from
spatiality. We described the relations of the two systems to each other
and to consciousness by saying that the system Forec. is like a screen
between the system Unc. and consciousness. The system Forec. not only
bars access to consciousness, but also controls the entrance to
voluntary motility and is capable of sending out a sum of mobile energy,
a portion of which is familiar to us as attention.
We must also steer clear of the distinctions superconscious and
subconscious which have found so much favor in the more recent
literature on the psychoneuroses, for just such a distinction seems to
emphasize the equivalence of the psychic and the conscious.
What part now remains in our description of the once all-powerful and
all-overshadowing consciousness? None other than that of a sensory organ
for the perception of psychic qualities. According to the fundamental
idea of schematic undertaking we can conceive the conscious perception
only as the particular activity of an independent system for which the
abbreviated designation "Cons." commends itself. This system we conceive
to be similar in its mechanical characteristics to the perception system
P, hence excitable by qualities and incapable of retaining the trace of
changes, _i.e._ it is devoid of memory. The psychic apparatus which,
with the sensory organs of the P-system, is turned to the outer world,
is itself the outer world for the sensory organ of Cons.; the
teleological justification of which rests on this relationship. We are
here once more confronted with the principle of the succession of
instances which seems to dominate the structure of the apparatus. The
material under excitement flows to the Cons, sensory organ from two
sides, firstly from the P-system whose excitement, qualitatively
determined, probably experiences a new elaboration until it comes to
conscious perception; and, secondly, from the interior of the apparatus
itself, the quantitative processes of which are perceived as a
qualitative series of pleasure and pain as soon as they have undergone
certain changes.
The philosophers, who have learned that correct and highly complicated
thought structures are possible even without the coöperation of
consciousness, have found it difficult to attribute any function to
consciousness; it has appeared to them a superfluous mirroring of the
perfected psychic process. The analogy of our Cons. system with the
systems of perception relieves us of this embarrassment. We see that
perception through our sensory organs results in directing the
occupation of attention to those paths on which the incoming sensory
excitement is diffused; the qualitative excitement of the P-system
serves the mobile quantity of the psychic apparatus as a regulator for
its discharge. We may claim the same function for the overlying sensory
organ of the Cons. system. By assuming new qualities, it furnishes a new
contribution toward the guidance and suitable distribution of the mobile
occupation quantities. By means of the perceptions of pleasure and pain,
it influences the course of the occupations within the psychic
apparatus, which normally operates unconsciously and through the
displacement of quantities. It is probable that the principle of pain
first regulates the displacements of occupation automatically, but it is
quite possible that the consciousness of these qualities adds a second
and more subtle regulation which may even oppose the first and perfect
the working capacity of the apparatus by placing it in a position
contrary to its original design for occupying and developing even that
which is connected with the liberation of pain. We learn from
neuropsychology that an important part in the functional activity of the
apparatus is attributed to such regulations through the qualitative
excitation of the sensory organs. The automatic control of the primary
principle of pain and the restriction of mental capacity connected with
it are broken by the sensible regulations, which in their turn are again
automatisms. We learn that the repression which, though originally
expedient, terminates nevertheless in a harmful rejection of inhibition
and of psychic domination, is so much more easily accomplished with
reminiscences than with perceptions, because in the former there is no
increase in occupation through the excitement of the psychic sensory
organs. When an idea to be rejected has once failed to become conscious
because it has succumbed to repression, it can be repressed on other
occasions only because it has been withdrawn from conscious perception
on other grounds. These are hints employed by therapy in order to bring
about a retrogression of accomplished repressions.
The value of the over-occupation which is produced by the regulating
influence of the Cons. sensory organ on the mobile quantity, is
demonstrated in the teleological connection by nothing more clearly than
by the creation of a new series of qualities and consequently a new
regulation which constitutes the precedence of man over the animals. For
the mental processes are in themselves devoid of quality except for the
excitements of pleasure and pain accompanying them, which, as we know,
are to be held in check as possible disturbances of thought. In order to
endow them with a quality, they are associated in man with verbal
memories, the qualitative remnants of which suffice to draw upon them
the attention of consciousness which in turn endows thought with a new
mobile energy.
The manifold problems of consciousness in their entirety can be examined
only through an analysis of the hysterical mental process. From this
analysis we receive the impression that the transition from the
foreconscious to the occupation of consciousness is also connected with
a censorship similar to the one between the Unc. and the Forec. This
censorship, too, begins to act only with the reaching of a certain
quantitative degree, so that few intense thought formations escape it.
Every possible case of detention from consciousness, as well as of
penetration to consciousness, under restriction is found included within
the picture of the psychoneurotic phenomena; every case points to the
intimate and twofold connection between the censor and consciousness. I
shall conclude these psychological discussions with the report of two
such occurrences.
On the occasion of a consultation a few years ago the subject was an
intelligent and innocent-looking girl. Her attire was strange; whereas a
woman's garb is usually groomed to the last fold, she had one of her
stockings hanging down and two of her waist buttons opened. She
complained of pains in one of her legs, and exposed her leg unrequested.
Her chief complaint, however, was in her own words as follows: She had a
feeling in her body as if something was stuck into it which moved to and
fro and made her tremble through and through. This sometimes made her
whole body stiff. On hearing this, my colleague in consultation looked
at me; the complaint was quite plain to him. To both of us it seemed
peculiar that the patient's mother thought nothing of the matter; of
course she herself must have been repeatedly in the situation described
by her child. As for the girl, she had no idea of the import of her
words or she would never have allowed them to pass her lips. Here the
censor had been deceived so successfully that under the mask of an
innocent complaint a phantasy was admitted to consciousness which
otherwise would have remained in the foreconscious.