a pointed paper cap on his head_. How are you going to understand that
without the help of the dreamer? It sounds quite nonsensical; but the
absurdity disappears when the lady says that as a little girl she used
to have a cap like that put on her head at table, because she wouldn’t
give up looking at the plates of her brothers and sisters to see whether
any of them had been given more than she. Evidently the cap was meant to
serve the purpose of blinkers; this piece of historical information was
given, by the way, without any difficulty. The interpretation of this
element and, with it, of the whole short dream becomes easy enough with
the help of a further association of the dreamer’s: “As I had been told
that God knew everything and saw everything, the dream could only mean
that I knew and saw everything as God did, even when they tried to
prevent me.” This example is perhaps too simple.
(_b_) A sceptical patient had a longer dream, in which certain people
were telling her about my book on _Wit_ and praising it very highly.
Then something else came in about a _canal; it might have been another
book in which the word canal occurred, or something else to do with a
canal ... she did not know ... it was quite vague_.
Now you will certainly be inclined to suppose that the _canal_ in the
dream will defy interpretation on account of its vagueness. You are
right in expecting difficulty, but the difficulty is not caused by the
vagueness; on the contrary, the difficulty in interpretation is caused
by something else, by the same thing that makes the element vague. The
dreamer had no association to the word “canal”; naturally I did not know
what to say either. Shortly afterwards, to be accurate, on the next day,
she told me that an association had occurred to her which _perhaps_ had
something to do with it. It was in fact a witty remark which some one
had told her. On board ship between Dover and Calais a well-known author
was talking to an Englishman who in some particular context quoted the
words: “Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.” The author answered:
“Oui, le Pas-de-Calais,” meaning that he regarded France as sublime and
England as ridiculous. Of course, the Pas-de-Calais is a _canal_—that is
to say, the Canal la Manche—the English Channel. Now, you ask, do I
think that this association had anything to do with the dream? Certainly
I think so: it gives the true meaning of the puzzling dream-element. Or
are you inclined to doubt that the joke already existed before the dream
and was the unconscious thought behind the element “canal,” and to
maintain that it was a subsequent invention? The association reveals the
scepticism disguised under the obtrusive admiration, and resistance was
no doubt the cause both of the association being so long in occurring to
her, and of the corresponding dream-element being so vague. Observe here
the relation between the dream-element and the unconscious thought
underlying it: it is, as it were, a fragment of the thought, an allusion
to it; by being isolated in that way it became quite incomprehensible.
(_c_) A patient had a fairly long dream, part of which was as follows:
_Several members of his family were seated at a table of a particular
shape_ ... etc. This table reminded the dreamer that he had seen one of
the same sort when he was visiting a certain family. From that his
thoughts ran on thus: in this family the relationship between father and
son was a peculiar one, and the patient presently added that his own
relationship to his father was, as a matter of fact, of the same nature.
So the table was introduced into the dream to indicate this parallelism.
It happened that this dreamer had long been familiar with the demands of
dream-interpretation; otherwise he might have taken exception to the
idea of investigating so trivial a detail as the shape of a table. We do
literally deny that anything in the dream is a matter of chance or of
indifference, and it is precisely by enquiring into such trivial and
(apparently) unmotivated details that we expect to arrive at our
conclusion. You may perhaps still be surprised that the dream-work
should happen to choose the table, in order to express the thought “Our
relationship is just like theirs.” But even this is explicable when you
learn that the family in question was named “_Tischler_.” (_Tisch_ =
table.) In making his relations sit at this table the dreamer’s meaning
was that they too were “Tischler.”[27] And notice another thing: that in
relating dream-interpretations of this sort one is forced into
indiscretion. There you have one of the difficulties I alluded to in the
matter of choosing examples. I could easily have given you another
example instead of this one, but probably I should have avoided this
indiscretion only to commit another in its place.
This seems to me a good point at which to introduce two new terms which
we might have used already. Let us call the dream as related _the
manifest dream-content_, and the hidden meaning, which we should come by
in following out the associations, _the latent dream-thoughts_. Then we
must consider the relation between the manifest content and the latent
thoughts, as shown in the above examples. There are many varieties of
these relations. In examples (_a_) and (_b_) the manifest dream-element
is also an integral part of the latent thoughts, but only a fragment of
them. A small piece of a great, composite, mental structure in the
unconscious dream-thoughts has made its way into the manifest dream
also, in the form of a fragment or in other cases as an allusion, like a
catch-word or an abbreviation in a telegraphic code. The interpretation
has to complete the whole to which this scrap or allusion belongs, which
it did most successfully in example (_b_). One method of the distorting
process in which the dream-work consists is therefore that of
substituting for something else a fragment or an allusion. In example
(_c_) we notice, moreover, another possible relation between manifest
content and latent thought, a relation which is even more plainly and
distinctly expressed in the following examples:—
(_d_) _The dreamer was pulling a certain lady of his acquaintance out of
a ditch._ He himself found the meaning of this dream-element by means of
the first association. It meant: he “picked her out,” preferred her.[28]
(_e_) Another man dreamt _that his brother was digging up his garden all
over again_. The first association was to deep-trenching for vegetables,
the second gave the meaning. The brother was _retrenching_. (Retrenching
his expenses).[29]
(_f_) _The dreamer was climbing a mountain from which he had a
remarkably wide view._ This sounds most reasonable; perhaps no
interpretation is called for and we have only to find out what
recollection is referred to in the dream, and what had aroused it. No,
you are mistaken; it comes out that this dream needed interpretation
just as much as any other, more confused. For the dreamer remembers
nothing about mountain-climbing himself; instead, it occurs to him that
an acquaintance is publishing a _Rundschau_ (Review), on the subject of
our relations with the most distant parts of the earth: hence, the
latent thought is one in which the dreamer identifies himself with the
“_reviewer_” (lit. one who takes a survey).
Here you come across a new type of relation between the manifest and the
latent element in dreams. The former is not so much a distortion of the
latter as a representation—a plastic, concrete piece of imagery,
originating in the sound of a word. It is true that this amounts in
effect to a distortion, for we have long forgotten from what concrete
image the word sprang, and hence fail to recognize it when that image is
substituted for it. When you consider that the manifest dream consists
of visual images in by far the greatest number of cases, and less
frequently of thoughts and words, you will easily realize that this kind
of relation between the manifest and the latent has a special
significance in the structure of dreams. You see too that in this way it
becomes possible for a long series of abstract thoughts to create
substitute-images in the manifest dream which do indeed serve the
purpose of concealment. This is how our picture-puzzles are made up. The
source of the semblance of wit which goes with this type of
representation is a special question which we need not touch on here.
There is a fourth kind of relation between the manifest and the latent
elements which I will say nothing about until the time comes for it in
my account of our technique. Even then I shall not have given you a full
list of these possible relations, but we shall have sufficient for our
purpose.
Now do you think you can summon up courage to venture on the
interpretation of a whole dream? Let us see whether we are adequately
equipped for the task. I shall not, of course, choose one of the most
obscure, but all the same it shall be one which shows the
characteristics of dreams in a well-marked form.
A young woman who had already been married for a number of years dreamt
as follows: _She was at the theatre with her husband, and one side of
the stalls was quite empty. Her husband told her that Elise L. and her
fiancé also wanted to come, but could only get bad seats, three for a
florin and a half, and of course they could not take those. She replied
that in her opinion they did not lose much by that._
The first thing stated by the dreamer is that the occasion giving rise
to the dream is alluded to in the manifest content: her husband had
really told her that Elise L., an acquaintance of about her own age, had
become engaged, and the dream is the reaction to this piece of news. We
know already that in many dreams it is easy to point to some such
occasion occurring on the day before, and that this is often traced by
the dreamer without any difficulty. This dreamer supplies us with
further information of the same sort about other elements in the
manifest dream. To what did she trace the detail of one side of the
stalls being empty? It was an allusion to a real occurrence of the week
before, when she had meant to go to a certain play and had therefore
booked seats _early_, so early that she had to pay extra for the
tickets. On entering the theatre it was evident that her anxiety had
been quite superfluous, for one side of the stalls was almost empty. It
would have been time enough if she had bought the tickets on the actual
day of the performance and her husband did not fail to tease her about
having been in _too great a hurry_. Next, what about the one florin and
a half (1 fl. 50)? This was traced to quite another context which had
nothing to do with the former, but it again refers to some news received
on the previous day. Her sister-in-law had had a present of 150 florins
from her husband and had rushed off _in a hurry_, like a silly goose, to
a jeweller’s shop and spent it all on a piece of jewellery. What about
the number three? She knew nothing about that unless this idea could be
counted an association, that the engaged girl, Elise L., was only three
months younger than she herself who had been married ten years. And the
absurdity of taking three tickets for two people? She had nothing to say
to this and refused to give any more associations or information
whatever.
Nevertheless, her few associations have provided us with so much
material that it is possible to discover the latent dream-thoughts. We
are struck by the fact that in her statements references to time are
noticeable at several points, which form a common basis for the
different parts of this material. She had got the theatre tickets _too
soon_, taken them in _too great a hurry_, so that she had to pay extra
for them; in the same way her sister-in-law had _hurried_ off to the
jeweller’s with her money to buy an ornament with it, as though she
might _miss something_. If the strongly emphasized points: “_too
early_,” “_too great a hurry_,” are connected with the occasion for the
dream (namely, the news that her friend, only three months _younger_
than herself, had now found a good husband after all) and with the
criticism expressed in her asperity about her sister-in-law, that it was
_folly_ to be so precipitate, there occurs to us almost spontaneously
the following construction of the latent dream-thoughts, for which the
manifest dream is a highly-distorted substitute:
“It was really _foolish_ of me to be in such a hurry to marry! Elise’s
example shows me that I too could have found a husband later on.” (The
over-haste is represented by her own conduct in buying the tickets and
that of her sister-in-law in buying the jewellery. Going to the theatre
is substituted for getting married.) This would be the main thought;
perhaps we may go on, though with less certainty because the analysis in
these passages ought not to be unsupported by statements of the dreamer:
“And I might have had one a hundred times better for the money!” (150
florins is 100 times more than one florin and a half.) If we may
substitute the dowry for the money, it would mean that the husband is
bought with the dowry: both the jewellery and the bad seats would stand
for the husband. It would be still more desirable if we could see some
connection between the element “three tickets” and a husband; but our
knowledge does not as yet extend to this. We have only found out that
the dream expresses _depreciation_ of her own husband and regret at
having _married so early_.
In my opinion we shall be more surprised and confused by the result of
this our first attempt at dream-interpretation than satisfied with it.
Too many ideas force themselves upon us at once, more than as yet we can
master. We see already that we shall not come to the end of what the
interpretation of this dream can teach us. Let us immediately single out
those points in which we can definitely see some new knowledge.
In the first place: we note that in the latent thoughts the chief
emphasis falls upon the element of hurry; in the manifest dream that is
exactly a feature about which we find nothing. Without analysis we could
have had no suspicion that this thought entered in at all. It seems
possible, therefore, that precisely the main point round which the
unconscious thoughts centre does not appear in the manifest dream at
all. This fact must radically change the impression made upon us by the
whole dream. In the second place: in the dream there is a nonsensical
combination of ideas (three for one florin and a half); in the
dream-thoughts we detect the opinion: “It was folly (to marry so
early).” Can one reject the conclusion that this thought, “It was
_folly_,” is represented by the introduction into the manifest dream of
an _absurd_ element? In the third place: comparison shows us that the
relation between manifest and latent elements is no simple one,
certainly not of such a kind that a manifest always replaces a latent
element. The relation between the two is of the nature of a relation
between two different groups, so that a manifest element can represent
several latent thoughts or a latent thought be replaced by several
manifest elements.
As regards the meaning of the dream and the dreamer’s attitude towards
it, here again we might find many surprising things to say. The lady
certainly admitted the interpretation, but she wondered at it; she had
not been aware that she had such disparaging thoughts of her husband;
she did not even know why she should so disparage him. So there is still
much that is incomprehensible about it. I really think that as yet we
are not properly equipped for interpreting a dream and that we need
further instruction and preparation first.
EIGHTH LECTURE
CHILDREN’S DREAMS
We had the impression that we had advanced too rapidly; let us therefore
retrace our steps a little. Before we made our last experiment in which
we tried to overcome the difficulty of dream-distortion by means of our
technique, we said that it would be best to circumvent it by confining
our attention to dreams in which distortion is absent or occurs only to
a very slight extent, if there are any such dreams. In doing this, we
are again departing from the actual course of development of our
knowledge; for in reality it was only after consistently applying our
method of interpretation, and after exhaustive analysis of dreams in
which distortion occurred, that we became aware of the existence of
those in which it is lacking.
The dreams we are looking for are met with in children: short, clear,
coherent, and easy to understand, they are free from ambiguity and yet
are unmistakable dreams. You must not think, however, that all dreams in
children are of this type. Distortion in dreams begins to appear very
early in childhood, and there are on record dreams of children between
five and eight years old which already show all the characteristics of
the dreams of later life. But, if you confine yourselves to those
occurring in the period between the dawn of recognizable mental activity
and the fourth or fifth year of life, you will discover a series which
we should characterize as infantile, and, in the later years of
childhood, you may find single dreams of the same type; indeed, even in
grown-up people under certain conditions dreams appear which in no way
differ from the typically infantile.
Now from these children’s dreams it is possible to obtain without any
difficulty trustworthy information about the essential nature of dreams,
which we hope will prove to be decisive and universally valid.
1. In order to understand these dreams there is no need for any analysis
nor for the employment of any technique. It is not necessary to question
the child who relates his dream. But we must know something about his
life; in every instance there is some experience from the previous day
which explains the dream. The dream is the mind’s reaction in sleep to
the experience of the previous day.
Let us consider some examples in order to base our further conclusions
upon them:
(_a_) A boy of a year and ten months old had to present someone with a
basket of cherries as a birthday gift. He plainly did it very
unwillingly, although he had been promised some of them for himself. The
next morning he told his dream: “Hermann eaten all the cherries.”
(_b_) A little girl of three and a quarter years went for the first time
for a trip on the lake. When they came to land, she did not wish to
leave the boat and cried bitterly; the time on the water had evidently
gone too quickly for her. Next morning she said: “Last night I was
sailing on the lake.” We may probably infer that this trip lasted
longer.
(_c_) A boy five and a quarter years old was taken on an excursion to
the Escherntal near Hallstatt. He had heard that Hallstatt lay at the
foot of the Dachstein and had shown great interest in that mountain.
From the lodgings in Aussee there was a fine view of the Dachstein, and
with a telescope it was possible to make out the Simony Hut on top. The
child had repeatedly endeavoured to see the hut through the telescope,
but nobody knew whether he had succeeded. The excursion began in a mood
of joyful expectation. Whenever a new mountain came into sight, the
little boy asked: “Is that the Dachstein?” Every time his question was
answered in the negative he grew more out of spirits and presently
became silent and refused to climb a little way up to the waterfall with
the others. He was thought to be overtired, but the next morning he said
quite happily: “Last night I dreamt that we were in the Simony Hut.” So
it was with this expectation that he had taken part in the excursion.
The only detail he gave was one he had heard before: “You have to climb
up steps for six hours.”
These three dreams will be enough to give us all the information we need
at this point.
2. We see that these childhood dreams are not meaningless; they are
complete, comprehensible mental acts. Remember the medical verdict about
dreams, which I told you, and the comparison with unskilled fingers
wandering over the keys of the piano. You cannot fail to notice how
sharply this conception is contradicted by the children’s dreams I have
quoted. Now it would surely be most extraordinary if a child were able
to achieve the performance of complete mental acts during sleep, and the
grown-up person in the same situation contented himself with spasmodic
reactions. Besides, we have every reason for attributing better and
deeper sleep to a child.
3. In these dreams there is no distortion and therefore they need no
interpretation: the manifest and the latent content is here identical.
From this we conclude that _distortion is not essential to the nature of
the dream_. I expect that this statement will take a weight off your
minds. Nevertheless, closer consideration forces us to admit that even
in these dreams distortion is present, though in a very slight degree,
that there is a certain difference between the manifest content and the
latent dream-thought.
4. The child’s dream is a reaction to an experience of the previous day,
which has left behind a regret, a longing, or an unsatisfied wish. _In
the dream we have the direct, undisguised fulfilment of this wish._ Now
consider our discussion as to the part played by the external or
internal somatic stimuli as disturbers of sleep and begetters of dreams.
We learnt certain quite definite facts on this point, but this
explanation only held good in a small number of dreams. In these
children’s dreams there is nothing to indicate the influence of such
somatic stimuli; we can make no mistake about it, for the dreams are
perfectly comprehensible and each can easily be grasped as a whole. But
we need not on that account give up our notion of the stimulus as
causing the dream. We can only ask why we forget from the outset that
there are _mental_ as well as bodily sleep-disturbing stimuli; surely we
know that it is these which are mainly responsible for disturbing the
sleep of the grown-up person, in that they hinder him from bringing
about in himself the mental condition essential for sleep, i.e. the
withdrawal of interest from the outside world. He wishes not to have any
interruption in his life; he would prefer to continue working at
whatever occupies him, and that is the reason why he does not sleep. The
mental stimulus which disturbs sleep is therefore for a child the
unsatisfied wish, and his reaction to this is a dream.
5. This takes us by a very short step to a conclusion about the function
of dreams. If dreams are the reaction to a mental stimulus their value
must lie in effecting a discharge of the excitation so that the stimulus
is removed and sleep can continue. We do not yet know how this discharge
through the dream is effected dynamically, but we notice already that
dreams are not disturbers of sleep (the accusation commonly brought
against them), but are guardians and deliverers of it from disturbing
influences. True, we are apt to think we should have slept better if we
had not dreamed, but there we are wrong: the truth is that without the
help of the dream we should not have slept at all, and we owe it to the
dream that we slept as well as we did. It could not help disturbing us a
little, just as a policeman often cannot avoid making a noise when
driving off disturbers of the peace who would wake us.