had the connotation of deprivation as well as that of apportioning, is
apparent from the compounds: _withdraw_, _withhold_. The German
_wieder_, again, closely resembles this.
Another peculiarity of dream-work finds it prototype in the development
of language. It occurred in ancient Egyptian as well as in other later
languages that the sequence of sounds of the words was transposed to
denote the same fundamental idea. The following are examples from
English and German:
_Topf_--_pot_; _boat_--_tub_; _hurry_--_Ruhe_ (rest, quiet).
_Balken_ (beam)--_Kloben_ (mallet)--_club_.
From the Latin and the German:
_capere_ (to seize)--_packen_ (to seize, to grasp).
Inversions such as occur here in the single word are effected in a very
different way by the dream-work. We already know the inversion of the
sense, substitution by the opposite. Besides there are inversions of
situations, of relations between two people, and so in dreams we are in
a sort of topsy-turvy world. In a dream it is frequently the rabbit that
shoots the hunter. Further inversion occurs in the sequence of events,
so that in the dream the cause is placed after the effect. It is like a
performance in a third-rate theatre, where the hero falls before the
shot which kills him is fired from the wings. Or there are dreams in
which the whole sequence of the elements is inverted, so that in the
interpretation one must take the last first, and the first last, in
order to obtain a meaning. You will recall from our study of dream
symbolism that to go or fall into the water means the same as to come
out of it, namely, to give birth to, or to be born, and that mounting
stairs or a ladder means the same as going down. The advantage that
dream distortions may gain from such freedom of representation, is
unmistakable.
These features of the dream-work may be called _archaic_. They are
connected with ancient systems of expression, ancient languages and
literatures, and involve the same difficulties which we shall deal with
later in a critical connection.
Now for some other aspects of the matter. In the dream-work it is
plainly a question of translating the latent thoughts, expressed in
words, into psychic images, in the main, of a visual kind. Now our
thoughts were developed from such psychic images; their first material
and the steps which led up to them were psychic impressions, or to be
more exact, the memory images of these psychic impressions. Only later
were words attached to these and then combined into thoughts. The
dream-work therefore puts the thoughts through a _regressive_ treatment,
that is, one that retraces the steps in their development. In this
regression, all that has been added to the thoughts as a new
contribution in the course of the development of the memory pictures
must fall away.
This, then, is the dream-work. In view of the processes that we have
discovered about it, our interest in the manifest dream was forced into
the background. I shall, however, devote a few remarks to the latter,
since it is after all the only thing that is positively known to us.
It is natural that the manifest dream should lose its importance for us.
It must be a matter of indifference to us whether it is well composed or
resolved into a series of disconnected single images. Even when its
exterior seems to be significant, we know that it has been developed by
means of dream distortion and may have as little organic connection with
the inner content of the dream as the facade of an Italian church has
with its structure and ground plan. At other times this facade of the
dream, too, has its significance, in that it reproduces with little or
no distortion an important part of the latent dream thought. But we
cannot know this before we have put the dream through a process of
interpretation and reached a decision as to what amount of distortion
has taken place. A similar doubt prevails when two elements in the dream
seem to have been brought into close relations to one another. This may
be a valuable hint, suggesting that we may join together those manifest
thoughts which correspond to the elements in the latent dream; yet at
other times we are convinced that what belongs together in thought has
been torn apart in the dream.
As a general rule we must refrain from trying to explain one part of the
manifest dream by another, as if the dream were coherently conceived and
pragmatically represented. At the most it is comparable to a Breccian
stone, produced by the fusion of various minerals in such a way that the
markings it shows are entirely different from those of the original
mineral constituents. There is actually a part of the dream-work, the
so-called _secondary treatment_, whose function it is to develop
something unified, something approximately coherent from the final
products of the dream-work. In so doing the material is often arranged
in an entirely misleading sense and insertions are made wherever it
seems necessary.
On the other hand, we must not over-estimate the dream-work, nor
attribute too much to it. The processes which we have enumerated tell
the full tale of its functioning; beyond condensing, displacing,
representing plastically, and then subjecting the whole to a secondary
treatment, it can do nothing. Whatever of judgment, of criticism, of
surprise, and of deduction are to be found in the dream are not products
of the dream-work and are only very seldom signs of afterthoughts about
the dream, but are generally parts of the latent dream thought, which
have passed over into the manifest dream, more or less modified and
adapted to the context. In the matter of composing speeches, the
dream-work can also do nothing. Except for a few examples, the speeches
in the dream are imitations and combinations of speeches heard or made
by oneself during the day, and which have been introduced into the
latent thought, either as material or as stimuli for the dream. Neither
can the dream pose problems; when these are found in the dream, they are
in the main combinations of numbers, semblances of examples that are
quite absurd or merely copies of problems in the latent dream thought.
Under these conditions it is not surprising that the interest which has
attached itself to the dream-work is soon deflected from it to the
latent dream thoughts which are revealed in more or less distorted form
in the manifest dream. It is not justifiable, however, to have this
change go so far that in a theoretical consideration one regularly
substitutes the latent dream thought for the dream itself, and
maintains of the latter what can hold only for the former. It is odd
that the results of psychoanalysis should be misused for such an
exchange. "Dream" can mean nothing but the result of the dream-work,
that is, the _form_ into which the latent dream thoughts have been
translated by the dream-work.
Dream-work is a process of a very peculiar sort, the like of which has
hitherto not been discovered in psychic life. These condensations,
displacements, regressive translations of thoughts into pictures, are
new discoveries which richly repay our efforts in the field of
psychoanalysis. You will realize from the parallel to the dream-work,
what connections psychoanalytic studies will reveal with other fields,
especially with the development of speech and thought. You can only
surmise the further significance of these connections when you hear that
the mechanism of the dream structure is the model for the origin of
neurotic symptoms.
I know too that we cannot as yet estimate the entire contribution that
this work has made to psychology. We shall only indicate the new proofs
that have been given of the existence of unconscious psychic acts--for
such are the latent dream thoughts--and the unexpectedly wide approach
to the understanding of the unconscious psychic life that dream
interpretation opens up to us.
The time has probably come, however, to illustrate separately, by
various little examples of dreams, the connected facts for which you
have been prepared.
TWELFTH LECTURE
THE DREAM
_Analysis of Sample Dreams_
I hope you will not be disappointed if I again lay before you excerpts
from dream analyses instead of inviting you to participate in the
interpretation of a beautiful long dream. You will say that after so
much preparation you ought to have this right, and that after the
successful interpretation of so many thousands of dreams it should long
ago have become possible to assemble a collection of excellent dream
samples with which we could demonstrate all our assertions concerning
dream-work and dream thoughts. Yes, but the difficulties which stand in
the way of the fulfillment of your wish are too many.
First of all, I must confess to you that no one practices dream
interpretation as his main occupation. When does one interpret dreams?
Occasionally one can occupy himself with the dream of some friend,
without any special purpose, or else he may work with his own dreams for
a time in order to school himself in psychoanalytic method; most often,
however, one deals with the dreams of nervous individuals who are
undergoing analytic treatment. These latter dreams are excellent
material, and in no way inferior to those of normal persons, but one is
forced by the technique of the treatment to subordinate dream analysis
to therapeutic aims and to pass over a large number of dreams after
having derived something from them that is of use in the treatment. Many
dreams we meet with during the treatment are, as a matter of fact,
impossible of complete analysis. Since they spring from the total mass
of psychic material which is still unknown to us, their understanding
becomes possible only after the completion of the cure. Besides, to tell
you such dreams would necessitate the disclosure of all the secrets
concerning a neurosis. That will not do for us, since we have taken the
dream as preparation for the study of the neuroses.
I know you would gladly leave this material, and would prefer to hear
the dreams of healthy persons, or your own dreams explained. But that is
impossible because of the content of these dreams. One can expose
neither himself, nor another whose confidence he has won, so
inconsiderately as would result from a thorough interpretation of his
dreams--which, as you already know, refer to the most intimate things of
his personality. In addition to this difficulty, caused by the nature of
the material, there is another that must be considered when
communicating a dream. You know the dream seems strange even to the
dreamer himself, let alone to one who does not know the dreamer. Our
literature is not poor in good and detailed dream analyses. I myself
have published some in connection with case histories. Perhaps the best
example of a dream interpretation is the one published by O. Rank, being
two related dreams of a young girl, covering about two pages of print,
the analysis covering seventy-six pages. I would need about a whole
semester in order to take you through such a task. If we select a longer
or more markedly distorted dream, we have to make so many explanations,
we must make use of so many free associations and recollections, must go
into so many bypaths, that a lecture on the subject would be entirely
unsatisfactory and inconclusive. So I must ask you to be content with
what is more easily obtained, with the recital of small bits of dreams
of neurotic persons, in which we may be able to recognize this or that
isolated fact. Dream symbols are the most easily demonstrable, and after
them, certain peculiarities of regressive dream representations.[34] I
shall tell you why I considered each of the following dreams worthy of
communication.
1. A dream, consisting of only two brief pictures: "_The dreamer's uncle
is smoking a cigarette, although it is Saturday. A woman caresses him as
though he were her child._"
In commenting on the first picture, the dreamer (a Jew) remarks that his
uncle is a pious man who never did, and never would do, anything so
sinful as smoking on the Sabbath. As to the woman of the second picture,
he has no free associations other than his mother. These two pictures or
thoughts should obviously be brought into connection with each other,
but how? Since he expressly rules out the reality of his uncle's action,
then it is natural to interpolate an "if." "_If_ my uncle, that pious
man, should smoke a cigarette on Saturday, then I could also permit my
mother's caresses." This obviously means that the mother's caresses are
prohibited, in the same manner as is smoking on Saturday, to a pious
Jew. You will recall, I told you that all relations between the dream
thoughts disappear in the dream-work, that these relations are broken up
into their raw material, and that it is the task of interpretation to
re-interpolate the omitted connections.
2. Through my publications on dreams I have become, in certain respects,
the public consultant on matters pertaining to dreams, and for many
years I have been receiving communications from the most varied sources,
in which dreams are related to me or presented to me for my judgment. I
am of course grateful to all those persons who include with the story of
the dream, enough material to make an interpretation possible, or who
give such an interpretation themselves. It is in this category that the
following dream belongs, the dream of a Munich physician in the year
1910. I select it because it goes to show how impossible of
understanding a dream generally is before the dreamer has given us what
information he has about it. I suspect that at bottom you consider the
ideal dream interpretation that in which one simply inserts the meaning
of the symbols, and would like to lay aside the technique of free
association to the dream elements. I wish to disabuse your minds of this
harmful error.
"On July 13, 1910, toward morning, I dreamed _that I was bicycling down
a street in Tuebingen, when a brown Dachshund tore after me and caught me
by the heel. A bit further on I get off, seat myself on a step, and
begin to beat the beast, which has clenched its teeth tight._ (_I feel
no discomfort from the biting or the whole scene._) _Two elderly ladies
are sitting opposite me and watching me with grins on their faces. Then
I wake up and, as so often happens to me, the whole dream becomes
perfectly clear to me in this moment of transition to the waking
state._"
Symbols are of little use in this case. The dreamer, however, informs
us, "I lately fell in love with a girl, just from seeing her on the
street, but had no means of becoming acquainted with her. The most
pleasant means might have been the Dachshund, since I am a great lover
of animals, and also felt that the girl was in sympathy with this
characteristic." He also adds that he repeatedly interfered in the
fights of scuffling dogs with great dexterity and frequently to the
great amazement of the spectators. Thus we learn that the girl, who
pleased him, was always accompanied by this particular dog. This girl,
however, was disregarded in the manifest dream, and there remained only
the dog which he associates with her. Perhaps the elderly ladies who
simpered at him took the place of the girl. The remainder of what he
tells us is not enough to explain this point. Riding a bicycle in the
dream is a direct repetition of the remembered situation. He had never
met the girl with the dog except when he was on his bicycle.
3. When anyone has lost a loved one, he produces dreams of a special
sort for a long time afterward, dreams in which the knowledge of death
enters into the most remarkable compromises with the desire to have the
deceased alive again. At one time the deceased is dead and yet continues
to live on because he does not know that he is dead, and would die
completely only if he knew it; at another time he is half dead and half
alive, and each of these conditions has its particular signs. One cannot
simply label these dreams nonsense, for to come to life again is no more
impossible in the dream than, for example, it is in the fairy story, in
which it occurs as a very frequent fate. As far as I have been able to
analyze such dreams, I have always found them to be capable of a
sensible solution, but that the pious wish to recall the deceased to
life goes about expressing itself by the oddest methods. Let me tell you
such a dream, which seems queer and senseless enough, and analysis of
which will show you many of the points for which you have been prepared
by our theoretical discussions. The dream is that of a man who had lost
his father many years previously.
"_Father is dead, but has been exhumed and looks badly. He goes on
living, and the dreamer does everything to prevent him from noticing
that fact._" Then the dream goes on to other things, apparently
irrelevant.
The father is dead, that we know. That he was exhumed is not really
true, nor is the truth of the rest of the dream important. But the
dreamer tells us that when he came back from his father's funeral, one
of his teeth began to ache. He wanted to treat this tooth according to
the Jewish precept, "If thy tooth offend thee, pluck it out," and betook
himself to the dentist. But the latter said, "One does not simply pull a
tooth out, one must have patience with it. I shall inject something to
kill the nerve. Come again in three days and then I will take it out."
"This 'taking it out'," says the dreamer suddenly, "is the exhuming."
Is the dreamer right? It does not correspond exactly, only
approximately, for the tooth is not taken out, but something that has
died off is taken out of it. But after our other experiences we are
probably safe in believing that the dream work is capable of such
inaccuracies. It appears that the dreamer condensed, fused into one, his
dead father and the tooth that was killed but retained. No wonder then,
that in the manifest dream something senseless results, for it is
impossible for everything that is said of the tooth to fit the father.
What is it that serves as something intermediate between tooth and
father and makes this condensation possible?
This interpretation must be correct, however, for the dreamer says that
he is acquainted with the saying that when one dreams of losing a tooth
it means that one is going to lose a member of his family.
We know that this popular interpretation is incorrect, or at least is
correct only in a scurrilous sense. For that reason it is all the more
surprising to find this theme thus touched upon in the background of
other portions of the dream content.
Without any further urging, the dreamer now begins to tell of his
father's illness and death as well as of his relations with him. The
father was sick a long time, and his care and treatment cost him, the
son, much money. And yet it was never too much for him, he never grew
impatient, never wished it might end soon. He boasts of his true Jewish
piety toward his father, of rigid adherence to the Jewish precepts. But
are you not struck by a contradiction in the thoughts of the dream? He
had identified tooth with father. As to the tooth he wanted to follow
the Jewish precept that carries out its own judgment, "pull it out if it
causes pain and annoyance." He had also been anxious to follow the
precept of the law with regard to his father, which in this case,
however, tells him to disregard trouble and expense, to take all the
burdens upon himself and to let no hostile intent arise toward the
object which causes the pain. Would not the agreement be far more
compelling if he had really developed feelings toward his father similar
to those about his sick tooth; that is, had he wished that a speedy
death should put an end to that superfluous, painful and expensive
existence?
I do not doubt that this was really his attitude toward his father
during the latter's extended illness, and that his boastful assurances
of filial piety were intended to distract his attention from these
recollections. Under such circumstances, the death-wish directed toward
the parent generally becomes active, and disguises itself in phrases of
sympathetic consideration such as, "It would really be a blessed release
for him." But note well that we have here overcome an obstacle in the
latent dream thoughts themselves. The first part of these thoughts was
surely unconscious only temporarily, that is to say, during the
dream-work, while the inimical feelings toward the father might have
been permanently unconscious, dating perhaps from childhood,
occasionally slipping into consciousness, shyly and in disguise, during
his father's illness. We can assert this with even greater certainty of
other latent thoughts which have made unmistakable contributions to the
dream content. To be sure, none of these inimical feelings toward the
father can be discovered in the dream. But when we search a childhood
history for the root of such enmity toward the father, we recollect that
fear of the father arises because the latter, even in the earliest
years, opposes the boy's sex activities, just as he is ordinarily forced
to oppose them again, after puberty, for social motives. This relation
to the father applies also to our dreamer; there had been mixed with his
love for him much respect and fear, having its source in early sex
intimidation.
From the onanism complex we can now explain the other parts of the
manifest dream. "_He looks badly_" does, to be sure, allude to another
remark of the dentist, that it looks badly to have a tooth missing in
that place; but at the same time it refers to the "looking badly" by
which the young man betrayed, or feared to betray, his excessive sexual
activity during puberty. It was not without lightening his own heart
that the dreamer transposed the bad looks from himself to his father in
the manifest content, an inversion of the dream work with which you are
familiar. "_He goes on living since then_," disguises itself with the
wish to have him alive again as well as with the promise of the dentist
that the tooth will be preserved. A very subtle phrase, however, is the
following: "The dreamer does everything _to prevent him_ (_the father_)
_from noticing the fact_," a phrase calculated to lead us to conclude
that he is dead. Yet the only meaningful conclusion is again drawn from
the onanism complex, where it is a matter of course for the young man to
do everything in order to hide his sex life from his father. Remember,
in conclusion, that we were constantly forced to interpret the so-called
tooth-ache dreams as dreams dealing with the subject of onanism and the
punishment that is feared.
You now see how this incomprehensible dream came into being, by the
creation of a remarkable and misleading condensation, by the fact that
all the ideas emerge from the midst of the latent thought process, and
by the creation of ambiguous substitute formations for the most hidden
and, at the time, most remote of these thoughts.
4. We have tried repeatedly to understand those prosaic and banal dreams
which have nothing foolish or repulsive about them, but which cause us
to ask: "Why do we dream such unimportant stuff?" So I shall give you a
new example of this kind, three dreams belonging together, all of which
were dreamed in the same night by a young woman.
(_a_). "_She it going through the hall of her house and strikes her head
against the low-hanging chandelier, so that her head bleeds._"
She has no reminiscence to contribute, nothing that really happened. The
information she gives leads in quite another direction. "You know how
badly my hair is falling out. Mother said to me yesterday, 'My child, if
it goes on like this, you will have a head like the cheek of a
buttock.'" Thus the head here stands for the other part of the body. We
can understand the chandelier symbolically without other help; all
objects that can be lengthened are symbols of the male organ. Thus the
dream deals with a bleeding at the lower end of the body, which results
from its collision with the male organ. This might still be ambiguous;
her further associations show that it has to do with her belief that
menstrual bleeding results from sexual intercourse with a man, a bit of
sexual theory believed by many immature girls.