dreamer nor to the dream work by means of which they become expressed.
We have learned that mythology and fairy-tales make use of the same
symbolism, as well as do the people in their sayings and songs, the
ordinary language of every day, and poetic phantasy. The field of
symbolism is an extraordinarily large one, and dream symbolism is but a
small part thereof. It is not even expedient to approach the whole
problem from the dream side. Many of the symbols that are used in other
places do not occur in the dream at all, or at best only very seldom.
Many of the dream symbols are to be found in other fields only very
rarely, as you have seen. One gets the impression that he is here
confronted with an ancient but no longer existent method of expression,
of which various phases, however, continue in different fields, one
here, one there, a third, perhaps in a slightly altered form, in several
fields. I am reminded of the phantasy of an interesting mental
defective, who had imagined a fundamental language, of which all these
symbolic representations were the remains.
Thirdly, you must have noticed that symbolism in these other fields is
by no means sex symbolism solely, while in the dream the symbols are
used almost entirely to express sexual objects and processes. Nor is
this easily explained. Is it possible that symbols originally sexual in
their meaning later came to have other uses, and that this was the
reason perhaps for the weakening of the symbolic representation to one
of another nature? These questions are admittedly unanswerable if one
has dealt only with dream-symbolism. One can only adhere to the
supposition that there is an especially intimate connection between true
symbols and things sexual.
An important indication of this has been given us recently. A
philologist, H. Sperber (Upsala) who works independently of
psychoanalysis, advanced the theory that sexual needs have played the
largest part in the origin and development of languages. The first
sounds served as means of communication, and called the sexual partner;
the further development of the roots of speech accompanied the
performance of the primitive man's work. This work was communal and
progressed to the accompaniment of rhythmically repeated word sounds. In
that way a sexual interest was transferred to the work. The primitive
man made work acceptable at the same time that he used it as an
equivalent and substitute for sex-activity. The word thus called forth
by the common labor had two meanings, designating the sex-act as well as
the equivalent labor-activity. In time the word became disassociated
from its sexual significance and became fixed on this work. Generations
later the same thing happened to a new word that once had sexual
significance and came to be used for a new type of work. In this manner
a number of word-roots were formed, all of sexual origin, and all of
which had lost their sexual significance. If the description sketched
here approximates the truth, it opens up the possibility for an
understanding of the dream symbolism. We can understand how it is that
in the dream, which preserves something of these most ancient
conditions, there are so extraordinarily many symbols for the sexual,
and why, in general, weapons and implements always stand for the male,
materials and things manufactured, for the female. Symbolic
relationships would be the remnants of the old word-identity; things
which once were called by the same names as the genitals can now appear
in the dream as symbols for them.
From our parallels to dream symbolization you may also learn to
appreciate what is the character of psychoanalysis which makes it a
subject of general interest, which is true of neither psychology nor
psychiatry. Psychoanalytic work connects with so many other scientific
subjects, the investigation of which promises the most pertinent
discoveries, with mythology, with folk-lore, with racial psychology and
with religion. You will understand how a journal can have grown on
psychoanalytic soil, the sole purpose of which is the furtherance of
these relationships. This is the _Imago_ founded in 1912 and edited by
Hanns Sachs and Otto Rank. In all of these relations, psychoanalysis is
first and foremost the giving, less often the receiving, part. Indeed it
derives benefit from the fact that its unusual teachings are
substantiated by their recurrence in other fields, but on the whole it
is psychoanalysis that provides the technical procedure and the point of
view, the use of which will prove fruitful in those other fields. The
psychic life of the human individual provides us, upon psychoanalytic
investigation, with explanations with which we are able to solve many
riddles in the life of humanity, or at least show these riddles in their
proper light.
Furthermore, I have not even told you under what conditions we are able
to get the deepest insight into that suppositious "fundamental
language," or from which field we gain the most information. So long as
you do not know this you cannot appreciate the entire significance of
the subject. This field is the neurotic, its materials, the symptoms and
other expressions of the nervous patient, for the explanation and
treatment of which psychoanalysis was devised.
My fourth point of view returns to our premise and connects up with our
prescribed course. We said, even if there were no such thing as dream
censorship, the dream would still be hard to understand, for we would
then be confronted with the task of translating the symbol-language of
the dream into the thought of our waking hours. Symbolism is a second
and independent item of dream distortion, in addition to dream
censorship. It is not a far cry to suppose that it is convenient for
the dream censorship to make use of symbolism since both lead to the
same end, to making the dream strange and incomprehensible.
Whether or not in the further study of the dream we shall hit upon a new
item that influences dream distortion, remains to be seen. I should not
like to leave the subject of dream symbolism without once more touching
upon the curious fact that it arouses such strong opposition in the case
of educated persons, in spite of the fact that symbolism in myth,
religion, art and speech is undoubtedly so prevalent. Is not this again
because of its relationship to sexuality?
ELEVENTH LECTURE
THE DREAM
_The Dream-Work_
If you have mastered dream censorship and symbolic representation, you
are, to be sure, not yet adept in dream distortion, but you are
nevertheless in a position to understand most dreams. For this you
employ two mutually supplementary methods, call up the associations of
the dreamer until you have penetrated from the substitute to the actual,
and from your own knowledge supply the meaning for the symbol. Later we
shall discuss certain uncertainties which show themselves in this
process.
We are now in a position to resume work which we attempted, with very
insufficient means at an earlier stage, when we studied the relation
between the manifest dream elements and their latent actualities, and in
so doing established four such main relationships: that of a part of the
whole, that of approach or allusion, the symbolic relationship and
plastic word representation. We shall now attempt the same on a larger
scale, by comparing the manifest dream content as a whole, with the
latent dream which we found by interpretation.
I hope you will never again confuse these two. If you have achieved
this, you have probably accomplished more in the understanding of the
dream than the majority of the readers of my _Interpretation of Dreams_.
Let me remind you once more that this process, which changes the latent
into the manifest dream, is called _dream-work_. Work which proceeds in
the opposite direction, from the manifest dream to the latent, is our
_work of interpretation_. The work of interpretation attempts to undo
the dream-work. Infantile dreams that are recognized as evident wish
fulfillments nevertheless have undergone some dream-work, namely, the
transformation of the wish into reality, and generally, too, of thoughts
into visual pictures. Here we need no interpretation, but only a
retracing of these transformations. Whatever dream-work has been added
to other dreams, we call _dream distortion_, and this can be annulled by
our work of interpretation.
The comparison of many dream interpretations has rendered it possible
for me to give you a coherent representation of what the dream-work does
with the material of the latent dream. I beg of you, however, not to
expect to understand too much of this. It is a piece of description that
should be listened to with calm attention.
The first process of the dream-work is _condensation_. By this we
understand that the manifest dream has a smaller content than the latent
one, that is, it is a sort of abbreviated translation of the latter.
Condensation may occasionally be absent, but as a rule it is present,
often to a very high degree. The opposite is never true, that is, it
never occurs that the manifest dream is more extensive in scope and
content than the latent. Condensation occurs in the following ways: 1.
Certain latent elements are entirely omitted; 2. only a fragment of the
many complexes of the latent dream is carried over into the manifest
dream; 3. latent elements that have something in common are collected
for the manifest dream and are fused into a whole.
If you wish, you may reserve the term "condensation" for this last
process alone. Its effects are particularly easy to demonstrate. From
your own dreams you will doubtless recall the fusion of several persons
into one. Such a compound person probably looks like A., is dressed like
B., does something that one remembers of C., but in spite of this one is
conscious that he is really D. By means of this compound formation
something common to all four people is especially emphasized. One can
make a compound formation of events and of places in the same way as of
people, provided always that the single events and localities have
something in common which the latent dream emphasizes. It is a sort of
new and fleeting concept of formation, with the common element as its
kernel. This jumble of details that has been fused together regularly
results in a vague indistinct picture, as though you had taken several
pictures on the same film.
The shaping of such compound formations must be of great importance to
the dream-work, for we can prove, (by the choice of a verbal expression
for a thought, for instance) that the common elements mentioned above
are purposely manufactured where they originally do not exist. We have
already become acquainted with such condensation and compound
formations; they played an important part in the origin of certain cases
of slips of the tongue. You recall the young man who wished to _inscort_
a woman. Furthermore, there are jokes whose technique may be traced to
such a condensation. But entirely aside from this, one may maintain that
this appearance of something quite unknown in the dream finds its
counterpart in many of the creations of our imagination which fuse
together component parts that do not belong together in experience, as
for example the centaurs, and the fabulous animals of old mythology or
of Boecklin's pictures. For creative imagination can invent nothing new
whatsoever, it can only put together certain details normally alien to
one another. The peculiar thing, however, about the procedure of the
dream-work is the following: The material at the disposal of the
dream-work consists of thoughts, thoughts which may be offensive and
unacceptable, but which are nevertheless correctly formed and expressed.
These thoughts are transformed into something else by the dream-work,
and it is remarkable and incomprehensible that this translation, this
rendering, as it were, into another script or language, employs the
methods of condensation and combination. For a translation usually
strives to respect the discriminations expressed in the text, and to
differentiate similar things. The dream-work, on the contrary, tries to
fuse two different thoughts by looking, just as the joke does, for an
ambiguous word which shall act as a connecting link between the two
thoughts. One need not attempt to understand this feature of the case at
once, but it may become significant for the conception of the
dream-work.
Although condensation renders the dream opaque, one does not get the
impression that it is an effect of dream censorship. One prefers to
trace it back to mechanical or economic conditions; but censorship
undoubtedly has a share in the process.
The results of condensation may be quite extraordinary. With its help,
it becomes possible at times to collect quite unrelated latent thought
processes into one manifest dream, so that one can arrive at an
apparently adequate interpretation, and at the same time conceive a
possible further interpretation.
The consequence of condensation for the relation between latent and
manifest dreams is the fact that no simple relations can exist between
the elements of the one and the other. A manifest element corresponds
simultaneously to several latent ones, and vice versa, a latent element
may partake of several manifest ones, an interlacing, as it were. In the
interpretation of the dream it also becomes evident that the
associations to a single element do not necessarily follow one another
in orderly sequence. Often we must wait until the entire dream is
interpreted.
Dream-work therefore accomplishes a very unusual sort of transcription
of dream thoughts, not a translation word for word, or sign for sign,
not a selection according to a set rule, as if all the consonants of a
word were given and the vowels omitted; nor is it what we might call
substitution, namely, the choice of one element to take the place of
several others. It is something very different and much more
complicated.
The second process of the dream-work is _displacement_. Fortunately we
are already prepared for this, since we know that it is entirely the
work of dream censorship. The two evidences of this are firstly, that a
latent element is not replaced by one of its constituent parts but by
something further removed from it, that is, by a sort of allusion;
secondly, that the psychic accent is transferred from an important
element to another that is unimportant, so that the dream centers
elsewhere and seems strange.
Substitution by allusion is known to our conscious thinking also, but
with a difference. In conscious thinking the allusion must be easily
intelligible, and the substitute must bear a relation to the actual
content. Jokes, too, often make use of allusion; they let the condition
of content associations slide and replace it by unusual external
associations, such as resemblances in sound, ambiguity of words, etc.
They retain, however, the condition of intelligibility; the joke would
lose all its effect if the allusion could not be traced back to the
actual without any effort whatsoever. The allusion of displacement has
freed itself of both these limitations. Its connection with the element
which it replaces is most external and remote, is unintelligible for
this reason, and if it is retraced, its interpretation gives the
impression of an unsuccessful joke or of a forced, far-fetched
explanation. For the dream censor has only then accomplished its
purpose, when it has made the path of return from the allusion to the
original undiscoverable.
The displacement of emphasis is unheard of as a means of expressing
thoughts. In conscious thinking we occasionally admit it to gain a comic
effect. I can probably give you an idea of the confusion which this
produces by reminding you of the story of the blacksmith who had
committed a capital crime. The court decided that the penalty for the
crime must be paid, but since he was the only blacksmith in the village
and therefore indispensable, while there were three tailors, one of the
latter was hung in his stead.
The third process of the dream-work is the most interesting from a
psychological point of view. It consists of the _translation_ of
thoughts into visual images. Let us bear in mind that by no means all
dream thoughts undergo this translation; many of them retain their form
and appear in the manifest dream also as thought or consciousness;
moreover, visual images are not the only form into which thoughts are
translated. They are, however, the foundation of the dream fabric; this
part of the dream work is, as we already know, the second most constant,
and for single dream elements we have already learned to know "plastic
word representation."
It is evident that this process is not simple. In order to get an idea
of its difficulties you must pretend that you have undertaken the task
of replacing a political editorial in a newspaper by a series of
illustrations, that you have suffered an atavistic return from the use
of the alphabet to ideographic writing. Whatever persons or concrete
events occur in this article you will be able to replace easily by
pictures, perhaps to your advantage, but you will meet with difficulties
in the representation of all abstract words and all parts of speech
denoting thought relationships, such as particles, conjunctions, etc.
With the abstract words you could use all sorts of artifices. You will,
for instance, try to change the text of the article into different words
which may sound unusual, but whose components will be more concrete and
more adapted to representation. You will then recall that most abstract
words were concrete before their meaning paled, and will therefore go
back to the original concrete significance of these words as often as
possible, and so you will be glad to learn that you can represent the
"possession" of an object by the actual physical straddling of it.[32]
The dream work does the same thing. Under such circumstances you can
hardly demand accuracy of representation. You will also have to allow
the dream-work to replace an element that is as hard to depict as for
instance, broken faith, by another kind of rupture, a broken leg.[33] In
this way you will be able to smooth away to some extent the crudity of
imagery when the latter is endeavoring to replace word expression.
In the representation of parts of speech that denote thought relations,
such as _because_, _therefore_, _but_, etc., you have no such aids;
these constituent parts of the text will therefore be lost in your
translation into images. In the same way, the dream-work resolves the
content of the dream thought into its raw material of objects and
activities. You may be satisfied if the possibility is vouchsafed you to
suggest certain relations, not representable in themselves, in a more
detailed elaboration of the image. In quite the same way the dream-work
succeeds in expressing much of the content of the latent dream thought
in the formal peculiarities of the manifest dream, in its clearness or
vagueness, in its division into several parts, etc. The number of
fragmentary dreams into which the dream is divided corresponds as a rule
to the number of main themes, of thought sequences in the latent dream;
a short preliminary dream often stands as an introduction or a
motivation to the complementary dream which follows; a subordinate
clause in dream thought is represented in the manifest dream as an
interpolated change of scene, etc. The form of the dream is itself,
therefore, by no means without significance and challenges
interpretation. Different dreams of the same night often have the same
meaning, and testify to an increasing effort to control a stimulus of
growing urgency. In a single dream a particularly troublesome element
may be represented by "duplicates," that is, by numerous symbols.
By continually comparing dream thought with the manifest dream that
replaces it, we learn all sorts of things for which we were not
prepared, as for instance, the fact that even the nonsense and absurdity
of the dream have meaning. Yes, on this point the opposition between the
medical and psychoanalytic conception of the dream reaches a climax not
previously achieved. According to the former, the dream is senseless
because the dreaming psychic activity has lost all power of critical
judgment; according to our theory, on the other hand, the dream becomes
senseless, whenever a critical judgment, contained in the dream thought,
wishes to express the opinion: "It is nonsense." The dream which you all
know, about the visit to the theatre (three tickets 1 Fl. 50 Kr.) is a
good example of this. The opinion expressed here is: "It was _nonsense_
to marry so early."
In the same way, we discover in interpretation what is the significance
of the doubts and uncertainties so often expressed by the dreamer as to
whether a certain element really occurred in the dream; whether it was
this or something else. As a rule these doubts and uncertainties
correspond to nothing in the latent dream thought; they are occasioned
throughout by the working of the dream censor and are equivalent to an
unsuccessful attempt at suppression.
One of the most surprising discoveries is the manner in which the
dream-work deals with those things which are opposed to one another in
the latent dream. We already know that agreements in the latent material
are expressed in the manifest dream by condensations. Now oppositions
are treated in exactly the same way as agreements and are, with special
preference, expressed by the same manifest element. An element in a
manifest dream, capable of having an opposite, may therefore represent
itself as well as its opposite, or may do both simultaneously; only the
context can determine which translation is to be chosen. It must follow
from this that the particle "no" cannot be represented in the dream, at
least not unambiguously.
The development of languages furnishes us with a welcome analogy for
this surprising behavior on the part of the dream work. Many scholars
who do research work in languages have maintained that in the oldest
languages opposites--such as strong, weak; light, dark; big,
little--were expressed by the same root word. (_The Contradictory Sense
of Primitive Words._) In old Egyptian, _ken_ originally meant both
strong and weak. In conversation, misunderstanding in the use of such
ambiguous words was avoided by the tone of voice and by accompanying
gestures, in writing by the addition of so-called determinatives, that
is, by a picture that was itself not meant to be expressed. Accordingly,
if ken meant strong, the picture of an erect little man was placed after
the alphabetical signs, if _ken_, _weak_, was meant, the picture of a
cowering man followed. Only later, by slight modifications of the
original word, were two designations developed for the opposites which
it denoted. In this way, from _ken_ meaning both strong and weak, there
was derived a _ken_, strong, and a _ken_, weak. It is said that not only
the most primitive languages in their last developmental stage, but also
the more recent ones, even the living tongues of to-day have retained
abundant remains of this primitive opposite meaning. Let me give you a
few illustrations of this taken from C. Abel (1884).
In Latin there are still such words of double meaning:
_altus_--high, deep, and _sacer_, sacred, accursed.
As examples of modifications of the same root, I cite:
_clamare_--to scream, _clam_--quiet, still, secret;
_siccus_--dry, _succus_--juice.
And from the German:
_Stimme_--voice, _stumm_--dumb.
The comparison of related tongues yields a wealth of examples:
English: _lock_; German: _Loch_--hole, _Luecke_--gap.
English: _cleave_; German: _kleben_--to stick, to adhere.