II.

One day I discovered to my amazement that the popular view grounded in

superstition, and not the medical one, comes nearer to the truth about

dreams. I arrived at new conclusions about dreams by the use of a new

method of psychological investigation, one which had rendered me good

service in the investigation of phobias, obsessions, illusions, and the

like, and which, under the name “psycho-analysis,” had found acceptance

by a whole school of investigators. The manifold analogies of dream life

with the most diverse conditions of psychical disease in the waking

state have been rightly insisted upon by a number of medical observers.

It seemed, therefore, _a priori_, hopeful to apply to the interpretation

of dreams methods of investigation which had been tested in

psychopathological processes. Obsessions and those peculiar sensations

of haunting dread remain as strange to normal consciousness as do dreams

to our waking consciousness; their origin is as unknown to consciousness

as is that of dreams. It was practical ends that impelled us, in these

diseases, to fathom their origin and formation. Experience had shown us

that a cure and a consequent mastery of the obsessing ideas did result

when once those thoughts, the connecting links between the morbid ideas

and the rest of the psychical content, were revealed which were

heretofore veiled from consciousness. The procedure I employed for the

interpretation of dreams thus arose from psychotherapy.

This procedure is readily described, although its practice demands

instruction and experience. Suppose the patient is suffering from

intense morbid dread. He is requested to direct his attention to the

idea in question, without, however, as he has so frequently done,

meditating upon it. Every impression about it, without any exception,

which occurs to him should be imparted to the doctor. The statement

which will be perhaps then made, that he cannot concentrate his

attention upon anything at all, is to be countered by assuring him most

positively that such a blank state of mind is utterly impossible. As a

matter of fact, a great number of impressions will soon occur, with

which others will associate themselves. These will be invariably

accompanied by the expression of the observer’s opinion that they have

no meaning or are unimportant. It will be at once noticed that it is

this self-criticism which prevented the patient from imparting the

ideas, which had indeed already excluded them from consciousness. If the

patient can be induced to abandon this self-criticism and to pursue the

trains of thought which are yielded by concentrating the attention, most

significant matter will be obtained, matter which will be presently seen

to be clearly linked to the morbid idea in question. Its connection with

other ideas will be manifest, and later on will permit the replacement

of the morbid idea by a fresh one, which is perfectly adapted to

psychical continuity.

This is not the place to examine thoroughly the hypothesis upon which

this experiment rests, or the deductions which follow from its

invariable success. It must suffice to state that we obtain matter

enough for the resolution of every morbid idea if we especially direct

our attention to the _unbidden_ associations _which disturb our

thoughts_—those which are otherwise put aside by the critic as worthless

refuse. If the procedure is exercised on oneself, the best plan of

helping the experiment is to write down at once all one’s first

indistinct fancies.

I will now point out where this method leads when I apply it to the

examination of dreams. Any dream could be made use of in this way. From

certain motives I, however, choose a dream of my own, which appears

confused and meaningless to my memory, and one which has the advantage

of brevity. Probably my dream of last night satisfies the requirements.

Its content, fixed immediately after awakening, runs as follows:

“_Company; at table or table d’hôte.... Spinach is served. Mrs. E. L.,

sitting next to me, gives me her undivided attention, and places her

hand familiarly upon my knee. In defence I remove her hand. Then she

says: ‘But you have always had such beautiful eyes.’... I then

distinctly see something like two eyes as a sketch or as the contour of

a spectacle lens._...”

This is the whole dream, or, at all events, all that I can remember. It

appears to me not only obscure and meaningless, but more especially odd.

Mrs. E. L. is a person with whom I am scarcely on visiting terms, nor to

my knowledge have I ever desired any more cordial relationship. I have

not seen her for a long time, and do not think there was any mention of

her recently. No emotion whatever accompanied the dream process.

Reflecting upon this dream does not make it a bit clearer to my mind. I

will now, however, present the ideas, without premeditation and without

criticism, which introspection yielded. I soon notice that it is an

advantage to break up the dream into its elements, and to search out the

ideas which link themselves to each fragment.

_Company; at table or table d’hôte._ The recollection of the slight

event with which the evening of yesterday ended is at once called up. I

left a small party in the company of a friend, who offered to drive me

home in his cab. “I prefer a taxi,” he said; “that gives one such a

pleasant occupation; there is always something to look at.” When we were

in the cab, and the cab-driver turned the disc so that the first sixty

hellers were visible, I continued the jest. “We have hardly got in and

we already owe sixty hellers. The taxi always reminds me of the table

d’hôte. It makes me avaricious and selfish by continuously reminding me

of my debt. It seems to me to mount up too quickly, and I am always

afraid that I shall be at a disadvantage, just as I cannot resist at

table d’hôte the comical fear that I am getting too little, that I must

look after myself.” In far-fetched connection with this I quote:

“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,

To guilt ye let us heedless go.”

Another idea about the table d’hôte. A few weeks ago I was very cross

with my dear wife at the dinner-table at a Tyrolese health resort,

because she was not sufficiently reserved with some neighbours with whom

I wished to have absolutely nothing to do. I begged her to occupy

herself rather with me than with the strangers. That is just as if I had

_been at a disadvantage at the table d’hôte_. The contrast between the

behaviour of my wife at that table and that of Mrs. E. L. in the dream

now strikes me: “_Addresses herself entirely to me._”

Further, I now notice that the dream is the reproduction of a little

scene which transpired between my wife and myself when I was secretly

courting her. The caressing under cover of the tablecloth was an answer

to a wooer’s passionate letter. In the dream, however, my wife is

replaced by the unfamiliar E. L.

Mrs. E. L. is the daughter of a man to whom I _owed money_! I cannot

help noticing that here there is revealed an unsuspected connection

between the dream content and my thoughts. If the chain of associations

be followed up which proceeds from one element of the dream one is soon

led back to another of its elements. The thoughts evoked by the dream

stir up associations which were not noticeable in the dream itself.

Is it not customary, when someone expects others to look after his

interests without any advantage to themselves, to ask the innocent

question satirically: “Do you think this will be done _for the sake of

your beautiful eyes_?” Hence Mrs. E. L.’s speech in the dream. “You have

always had such beautiful eyes,” means nothing but “people always do

everything to you for love of you; you have had _everything for

nothing_.” The contrary is, of course, the truth; I have always paid

dearly for whatever kindness others have shown me. Still, the fact that

_I had a ride for nothing_ yesterday when my friend drove me home in his

cab must have made an impression upon me.

In any case, the friend whose guests we were yesterday has often made me

his debtor. Recently I allowed an opportunity of requiting him to go by.

He has had only one present from me, an antique shawl, upon which eyes

are painted all round, a so-called Occhiale, as a _charm_ against the

_Malocchio_. Moreover, he is an _eye specialist_. That same evening I

had asked him after a patient whom I had sent to him for _glasses_.

As I remarked, nearly all parts of the dream have been brought into this

new connection. I still might ask why in the dream it was _spinach_ that

was served up. Because spinach called up a little scene which recently

occurred at our table. A child, whose _beautiful eyes_ are really

deserving of praise, refused to eat _spinach_. As a child I was just the

same; for a long time I loathed _spinach_, until in later life my tastes

altered, and it became one of my favourite dishes. The mention of this

dish brings my own childhood and that of my child’s near together. “You

should be glad that you have some spinach,” his mother had said to the

little gourmet. “Some children would be very glad to get spinach.” Thus

I am reminded of the parents’ duties towards their children. Goethe’s

words—

“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,

To guilt ye let us heedless go”—

take on another meaning in this connection.

Here I will stop in order that I may recapitulate the results of the

analysis of the dream. By following the associations which were linked

to the single elements of the dream torn from their context, I have been

led to a series of thoughts and reminiscences where I am bound to

recognise interesting expressions of my psychical life. The matter

yielded by an analysis of the dream stands in intimate relationship with

the dream content, but this relationship is so special that I should

never have been able to have inferred the new discoveries directly from

the dream itself. The dream was passionless, disconnected, and

unintelligible. During the time that I am unfolding the thoughts at the

back of the dream I feel intense and well-grounded emotions. The

thoughts themselves fit beautifully together into chains logically bound

together with certain central ideas which ever repeat themselves. Such

ideas not represented in the dream itself are in this instance the

antitheses _selfish, unselfish, to be indebted, to work for nothing_. I

could draw closer the threads of the web which analysis has disclosed,

and would then be able to show how they all run together into a single

knot; I am debarred from making this work public by considerations of a

private, not of a scientific, nature. After having cleared up many

things which I do not willingly acknowledge as mine, I should have much

to reveal which had better remain my secret. Why, then, do not I choose

another dream whose analysis would be more suitable for publication, so

that I could awaken a fairer conviction of the sense and cohesion of the

results disclosed by analysis? The answer is, because every dream which

I investigate leads to the same difficulties and places me under the

same need of discretion; nor should I forgo this difficulty any the more

were I to analyse the dream of someone else. That could only be done

when opportunity allowed all concealment to be dropped without injury to

those who trusted me.

The conclusion which is now forced upon me is that the dream is a _sort

of substitution_ for those emotional and intellectual trains of thought

which I attained after complete analysis. I do not yet know the process

by which the dream arose from those thoughts, but I perceive that it is

wrong to regard the dream as psychically unimportant, a purely physical

process which has arisen from the activity of isolated cortical elements

awakened out of sleep.

I must further remark that the dream is far shorter than the thoughts

which I hold it replaces; whilst analysis discovered that the dream was

provoked by an unimportant occurrence the evening before the dream.

Naturally, I would not draw such far-reaching conclusions if only one

analysis were known to me. Experience has shown me that when the

associations of any dream are honestly followed such a chain of thought

is revealed, the constituent parts of the dream reappear correctly and

sensibly linked together; the slight suspicion that this concatenation

was merely an accident of a single first observation must, therefore, be

absolutely relinquished. I regard it, therefore, as my right to

establish this new view by a proper nomenclature. I contrast the dream

which my memory evokes with the dream and other added matter revealed by

analysis: the former I call the dream’s _manifest content_; the latter,

without at first further subdivision, its _latent content_. I arrive at

two new problems hitherto unformulated: (1) What is the psychical

process which has transformed the latent content of the dream into its

manifest content? (2) What is the motive or the motives which have made

such transformation exigent. The process by which the change from latent

to manifest content is executed I name the _dream work_. In contrast

with this is the _work of analysis_, which produces the reverse

transformation. The other problems of the dream—the inquiry as to its

stimuli, as to the source of its materials, as to its possible purpose,

the function of dreaming, the forgetting of dreams—these I will discuss

in connection with the latent dream content.

I shall take every care to avoid a confusion between the _manifest_ and

the _latent content_, for I ascribe all the contradictory as well as the

incorrect accounts of dreamlife to the ignorance of this latent content,

now first laid bare through analysis.