wish-fulfilment theory; we are bound, however, to demonstrate its
presence in any and every distorted dream, and we have certainly no
desire to shirk this task. Let us go back to the dream we have already
interpreted, about the three bad theatre tickets for one florin and a
half, from which we have already learnt a good deal. I hope you still
remember it: A lady, whose husband told her one day about the engagement
of her friend Elise who was only three months younger than herself,
dreamt on the following night that she and her husband were at the
theatre and that one side of the stalls was almost empty. Her husband
told her that Elise and her fiancé had wanted to go to the theatre too;
but could not, because they could only get such bad seats, three tickets
for a florin and a half. His wife said that they had not lost much by
it. We discovered that the dream-thoughts had to do with her vexation at
having been in such a hurry to marry and her dissatisfaction with her
husband. We may well be curious how these gloomy thoughts can have been
transformed into a wish-fulfilment, and what trace of it can be found in
the manifest content. Now we know already that the element “too soon,
too great a hurry,” was eliminated by the censorship; the empty stalls
are an allusion to this element. The puzzling phrase _three for one and
a half florins_ is now more comprehensible to us than at first, through
the knowledge of symbolism that we have acquired since then.[42] The
number _three_ really stands for a man and we can easily translate the
manifest element to mean: “to buy a man (husband) with the dowry.” (“I
could have bought one ten times better for my dowry.”) _Going to the
theatre_ obviously stands for marriage. _Getting the tickets too soon_
is in fact a direct substitute for “marrying too soon.” Now this
substitution is the work of the wish-fulfilment. The dreamer had not
always felt so dissatisfied with her premature marriage as she was on
the day when she heard of her friend’s engagement. She had been proud of
her marriage at the time and considered herself more highly favoured
than her friend. One hears that naïve girls, on becoming engaged,
frequently express their delight at the idea that they will now soon be
able to go to all plays and see everything hitherto forbidden them.
The indication of curiosity and a desire to “look on” evinced here
comes, without doubt, originally from the sexual ‘_gazing-impulse_,’
especially regarding the parents, and this became a strong motive
impelling the girl to marry early; in this manner going to the theatre
became an obvious allusive substitute for getting married. In her
vexation at the present time on account of her premature marriage she
therefore reverted to the time when this same marriage fulfilled a wish,
by gratifying her _skoptophilia_; and so, guided by this old
wish-impulse, she replaced the idea of marriage by that of going to the
theatre.
We may say that the example we have chosen to demonstrate a hidden
wish-fulfilment is not the most convenient one, but in all other
distorted dreams we should have to proceed in a manner analogous to that
employed above. It is not possible for me to do this here and now, so I
will merely express my conviction that such procedure will invariably
meet with success. But I wish to dwell longer upon this point in our
theory: experience has taught me that it is one of the most perilous of
the whole theory of dreams, exposed to many contradictions and
misunderstandings. Besides, you are perhaps still under the impression
that I have already retracted part of my statement by saying that the
dream may be either a wish-fulfilment, or its opposite, an anxiety or a
punishment, brought to actuality; and you may think this a good
opportunity to force me to make further reservations. Also I have been
reproached with presenting facts that seem obvious to myself in a manner
too condensed to carry conviction.
When anyone has gone as far as this in dream-interpretation and has
accepted all our conclusions up to this point, it often happens that he
comes to a standstill at this question of wish-fulfilment and asks:
“Admitting that every dream means something and that this meaning may be
discovered by employing the technique of psycho-analysis, why must it
always, in face of all the evidence to the contrary, be forced into the
formula of wish-fulfilment? Why must our thoughts at night be any less
many-sided than our thoughts by day; so that at one time a dream might
be a fulfilment of some wish; at another time, as you say yourself, the
opposite, the actualization of a dread; or, again, the expression of a
resolution, a warning, a weighing of some problem with its pro’s and
con’s, or a reproof, some prick of conscience, or an attempt to prepare
oneself for something which has to be done—and so forth? Why this
perpetual insistence upon a wish or, at the most, its opposite?”
It might be supposed that a difference of opinion on this point is a
matter of no great moment, if there is agreement on all others. Cannot
we be satisfied with having discovered the meaning of dreams and the
ways by which we can find out the meaning? We surely go back on the
advance we have made if we try to limit this meaning too strictly. But
this is not so. A misunderstanding on this head touches what is
essential to our knowledge of dreams and imperils its value for the
understanding of neuroses. Moreover, that readiness to “oblige the other
party” which has its value in business life is not only out of place but
actually harmful in scientific matters.
My first answer to the question why dreams should not be many-sided in
their meaning is the usual one in such a case: I do not know why they
should not be so, and should have no objection if they were. As far as I
am concerned, they can be so! But there is just one trifling obstacle in
the way of this wider and more convenient conception of dreams—that as a
matter of fact they are not so. My second answer would emphasize the
point that to assume that dreams represent manifold modes of thought and
intellectual operations is by no means a novel idea to myself: once, in
the history of a pathological case, I recorded a dream which occurred
three nights running and never again; and gave it as my explanation that
this dream corresponded to a resolution, the repetition of which became
unnecessary as soon as that resolution was carried out. Later on, I
published a dream which represented a confession. How is it possible for
me then to contradict myself and assert that dreams are always and only
wish-fulfilments?
I do it rather than permit a stupid misunderstanding which might cost us
the fruit of all our labours on the subject of dreams; a
misunderstanding that _confounds the dream with the latent
dream-thoughts_, and makes statements with regard to the former which
are applicable to the _latter and to the latter only_. For it is
perfectly true that dreams can represent, and be themselves replaced by,
all the modes of thought just enumerated: resolutions, warnings,
reflections, preparations or attempts to solve some problem in regard to
conduct, and so on. But when you look closely, you will recognize that
all this is true only of the latent thoughts which have been transformed
into the dream. You learn from interpretations of dreams that the
unconscious thought-processes of mankind are occupied with such
resolutions, preparations and reflections, out of which dreams are
formed by means of the dream-work. If your interest at any given moment
is not so much in the dream-work, but centres on the unconscious
thought-processes in people, you will then eliminate the dream-formation
and say of dreams themselves, what is for all practical purposes
correct, that they represent a warning, a resolve, and so on. This is
what is often done in psycho-analytic work: generally we endeavour
simply to demolish the manifest form of dreams and to substitute for it
the corresponding latent thoughts in which the dream originated.
Thus it is that we learn quite incidentally from our attempt to assess
the latent dream-thoughts that all the highly complicated mental acts we
have enumerated can be performed unconsciously—a conclusion surely as
tremendous as it is bewildering.
But to go back a little: you are quite right in speaking of dreams as
representing these various modes of thought, provided that you are quite
clear in your own minds that you are using an abbreviated form of
expression and do not imagine that the manifold variety of which you
speak is in itself part of the essential nature of _dreams_. When you
speak of “a dream” you must mean either the manifest dream, i.e. the
product of the dream-work, or at most that work itself, i.e. the mental
process which forms the latent dream-thoughts into the manifest dream.
To use the word in any other sense is a confusion of ideas which is
bound to be mischievous. If what you say is meant to apply to the latent
thoughts behind the dream, then say so plainly, and do not add to the
obscurity of the problem by your loose way of expressing yourselves. The
latent dream-thoughts are the material which is transformed by the
dream-work into the manifest dream. What makes you constantly confound
the material with the process which deals with it? If you do that, in
what way are you superior to those who know of the final product only,
without being able to explain where it comes from or how it is
constructed?
The only thing essential to the dream itself is the dream-work which has
operated upon the thought-material; and when we come to theory we have
no right to disregard this, even if in certain practical situations it
may be neglected. Further, analytic observation shows that the
dream-work never consists merely in translating the latent thoughts into
the archaic or regressive forms of expression described. On the
contrary, something is invariably added which does not belong to the
latent thoughts of the day-time, but which is the actual motive force in
dream-formation; this indispensable component being the equally
unconscious _wish_, to fulfil which the content of the dream is
transformed. In so far, then, as you are considering only the thoughts
represented in it, the dream may be any conceivable thing—a warning, a
resolve, a preparation, and so on; but besides this, it itself is always
the fulfilment of an unconscious wish, and, when you regard it as the
result of the dream-work, it is this alone. A dream then is never simply
the expression of a resolve or warning, and nothing more: in it the
resolve, or whatever it may be, is translated into the archaic form with
the assistance of an unconscious wish, and metamorphosed in such a way
as to be a fulfilment of that wish. This single characteristic, that of
fulfilling a wish, is the constant one: the other component varies; it
may indeed itself be a wish; in which event the dream represents the
fulfilment of a latent wish from our waking hours brought about by the
aid of an unconscious wish.
Now all this is quite clear to myself, but I do not know whether I have
succeeded in making it equally clear to you; and it is difficult to
prove it to you; for, on the one hand, proof requires the evidence
afforded by a careful analysis of many dreams and, on the other hand,
this, the crucial and most important point in our conception of dreams,
cannot be presented convincingly without reference to considerations
upon which we have not yet touched. Seeing how closely linked up all
phenomena are, you can hardly imagine that we can penetrate very far
into the nature of any one of them without troubling ourselves about
others of a similar nature. Since as yet we know nothing about those
phenomena which are so nearly akin to dreams—neurotic symptoms—we must
once more content ourselves with what we actually have achieved. I will
merely give you the explanation of one more example and adduce a new
consideration.
Let us take once more that dream to which we have already reverted
several times, the one about the three theatre tickets for one florin
and a half. I can assure you that I had no ulterior motive in selecting
it in the first instance for an illustration. You know what the latent
thoughts were: the vexation, after hearing that her friend had only just
become engaged, that she herself should have married so hastily;
depreciation of her husband and the idea that she could have found a
better one if only she had waited. We also know already that the wish
which made a dream out of these thoughts was the desire to “look on,” to
be able to go to the theatre—very probably an offshoot of an old
curiosity to find out at last what really does happen after marriage. It
is well known that in children this curiosity is regularly directed
towards the sexual life of the parents; that is to say, it is an
infantile impulse and, wherever it persists later in life, it has its
roots in the infantile period. But the news received on the day previous
to the dream gave no occasion for the awakening of this skoptophilia; it
only roused vexation and regret. This wish-impulse (of skoptophilia) was
not at first connected with the latent thoughts, and the results of the
dream-interpretation could have been used by the analysis without taking
it into consideration at all. But again, the vexation was not in itself
capable of producing a dream: no dream could be formed out of the
thought: “It was folly to be in such a hurry to marry” until that
thought had stirred up the early wish to see at last what happened after
marriage. Then this wish formed the dream-content, substituting for
marriage the going to the theatre; and the form was that of the
fulfilment of the earlier wish: “Now I may go to the theatre and look at
all that we have never been allowed to see; and you may not. I am
married and you have got to wait.” In this way the actual situation was
transformed into its opposite and an old triumph substituted for the
recent discomfiture; and incidentally, satisfaction both of a ‘gazing’
impulse and of one of egoistic rivalry was brought about. It is this
latter satisfaction which determines the manifest content of the dream;
for in it she is actually sitting in the theatre, while her friend
cannot get in. Those portions of the dream-content behind which the
latent thoughts still conceal themselves are to be found in the form of
inappropriate and incomprehensible modifications of the gratifying
situation. The business of _interpretation_ is to put aside those
features in the whole which merely represent a wish-fulfilment and to
reconstruct the painful latent dream-thoughts from these indications.
The consideration which I said I wished to call to your notice is
intended to direct your attention to these latent dream-thoughts now
brought into prominence. I must beg you not to forget that, first, the
dreamer is unconscious of them; secondly that they are quite reasonable
and coherent, so that we can understand them as comprehensible reactions
to whatever stimulus has given rise to the dream; and, thirdly, that
they may have the value of any mental impulse or intellectual operation.
I will designate these thoughts more strictly now than hitherto as _the
residue from the previous day_; the dreamer may acknowledge them or not.
I then distinguish between this ‘residue’ and ‘latent dream-thoughts,’
so that, as we have been accustomed to do all along, I will call
everything which we learn from the interpretation of the dream ‘the
latent dream-thoughts,’ while ‘the residue from the previous day’ is
only a part of the latent dream-thoughts. Then our conception of what
happens is this: something has been added to the residue from the
previous day, something which also belongs to the unconscious, a strong
but repressed wish-impulse, and it is this alone which makes the
formation of a dream possible. The wish-impulse, acting upon the
‘residue,’ creates the other part of the latent dream-thoughts, that
part which no longer need appear rational or comprehensible from the
point of view of our waking life.
To illustrate the relation between the residue and the unconscious wish
I have elsewhere made use of a comparison which I cannot do better than
repeat here. Every business undertaking requires a capitalist to defray
the expenses and an entrepreneur who has the idea and understands how to
carry it out. Now the part of the capitalist in dream-formation is
always and only played by the unconscious wish; it supplies the
necessary fund of mental energy for it: the entrepreneur is the residue
from the previous day, determining the manner of the expenditure. It is,
of course, quite possible for the capitalist himself to have the idea
and the special knowledge needed, or for the entrepreneur himself to
have capital. This simplifies the practical situation but makes the
theory of it more difficult. In economics we discriminate between the
man in his function of capitalist and the same man in his capacity as
entrepreneur; and this distinction restores the fundamental situation
upon which our comparison is based. The same variations are to be found
in the formation of dreams: I leave you to follow them out for
yourselves.
We cannot go any further at this point; for I think it likely that a
disturbing thought has long since occurred to you and it deserves a
hearing. You may ask: “Is the so-called ‘residue’ really unconscious in
the sense in which the wish necessary for the formation of the dream is
unconscious?” Your suspicion is justified: this is the salient point in
the whole matter. They are not both unconscious in the same sense. The
dream-wish belongs to a different type of UNCONSCIOUS, which, as we have
seen, has its roots in the infantile period and is furnished with
special mechanisms. It is very expedient to distinguish the two types of
“unconscious” from one another by speaking of them in different terms.
But, all the same, we will rather wait until we have familiarized
ourselves with the phenomena of the neuroses. If our conception of the
existence of any kind of unconscious be already regarded as fantastic,
what will people say if we admit that to reach our solution we have had
to assume two kinds?
Let us break off at this point. Once more you have heard only an
incomplete statement; but is it not a hopeful thought that this
knowledge will be carried further, either by ourselves or by those who
come after us? And have not we ourselves learnt enough that is new and
startling?
FIFTEENTH LECTURE
DOUBTFUL POINTS AND CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS
We will not leave the subject of dreams without dealing with the most
common doubts and uncertainties arising in connection with the novel
ideas and conceptions we have been discussing: those of you who have
followed these lectures attentively will have collected some material of
the kind.
1. You may have received an impression that even with strict adherence
to technique our work of dream-interpretation leaves so much room for
uncertainty that reliable translation of manifest dreams into their
latent dream-thoughts will be thereby frustrated. You will urge first
that one never knows whether any particular element in a dream is to be
understood literally or symbolically, since things employed as symbols
do not thereby cease to be themselves. Where there is no objective
evidence to decide the question the interpretation on that particular
point will be left to be arbitrarily determined by the interpreter.
Further, since in the dream-work opposites coincide, it is in every
instance uncertain whether a specific dream-element is to be understood
in a positive or a negative sense, as itself or as its opposite—another
opportunity for the interpreter to exercise a choice. Thirdly, on
account of the frequency with which inversion of every kind is employed
in dreams, it is open to him to assume whenever he chooses that such an
inversion has taken place. Finally you will point to having heard that
one is seldom certain that the interpretation arrived at is the only
possible one, and that there is danger of overlooking another perfectly
admissible interpretation of the same dream. In these circumstances, you
will conclude, the discretion of the interpreter has a latitude that
seems incompatible with any objective certainty in the result. Or you
may also assume that the fault does not lie in dreams themselves, but
that something erroneous in our conceptions and premises produces the
unsatisfactory character of our interpretations.
All that you say is undeniable and yet I do not think it justifies
either of your conclusions: that dream-interpretation as practised by us
is at the mercy of the interpreter’s arbitrary decisions or that the
inadequacy of the results calls in question the correctness of our
procedure. If for the “arbitrary decision” of the interpreter you will
substitute his skill, his experience and his understanding, then I am
with you. This kind of personal factor is of course indispensable,
especially when interpretation is difficult; it is just the same in
other scientific work, however; it can’t be helped that one man will use
any given technique less well, or apply it better, than another. The
impression of arbitrariness made, for example, by the interpretation of
symbols is corrected by the reflection that as a rule the connection of
the dream-thoughts with one another, and of the dream with the life of
the dreamer and the whole mental situation at the time of the dream,
points directly to one of all the possible interpretations and renders
all the rest useless. The conclusion that the imperfect character of the
interpretations proceeds from fallacious hypotheses loses its force when
consideration shows that, on the contrary, the ambiguity or
indefiniteness of dreams is a quality which we should necessarily expect
in them.
Let us call to mind our statement that the dream-work undertakes a
translation of the dream-thoughts into a primitive mode of expression,
analogous to hieroglyphics. Now all such primitive systems of expression
are necessarily accompanied by ambiguity and indefiniteness; but we
should not on that account be justified in doubting their
practicability. You know that the coincidence of opposites in the
dream-work is analogous to what is called the antithetical sense of
primal words in the oldest languages. The philologist, R. Abel, to whom
we owe this information, writing in 1884, begs us not on any account to
imagine that there was any ambiguity in what one person said to another
by means of ambivalent words of this sort. On the contrary, intonation,
gestures and the whole context can have left no doubt whatever which of
the two opposites the speaker had in mind to convey. In writing where
gestures are absent the addition of little pictorial signs, not meant to
receive separate oral expression, replaced them: e.g. a drawing of a
little man, either crouching or standing upright, according as the
ambiguous _ken_ of the hieroglyphic meant “weak” or “strong.” So that
misunderstanding was avoided in spite of the ambiguity of sounds and
signs.
In ancient systems of expression, for instance, in the scripts of the
oldest languages, indefiniteness of various kinds is found with a
frequency which we should not tolerate in our writings to-day. Thus in
many Semitic writings only the consonants of the words appear: the
omitted vowels have to be supplied by the reader from his knowledge and
from the context. Hieroglyphic writing follows a similar principle,
although not exactly the same; and this is the reason why nothing is
known of the pronunciation of ancient Egyptian. There are besides other
kinds of indefiniteness in the sacred writings of the Egyptians: for
example, it is left to the writer’s choice to inscribe the pictures from
right to left or from left to right. To be able to read them, we have to
remember that we must be guided by the direction of the faces of the
figures, birds, and so forth. But it was also open to the writer to set
the pictures in vertical columns and, in the case of inscriptions on
smaller objects, he was led by considerations of what was pleasing to
the eye, and of the space at his disposal, to introduce still further
alterations in the arrangement of the signs. The most confusing feature
in hieroglyphic script is that there is no spacing between the words.
The pictures are all placed at equal intervals on the page, and it is
generally impossible to know whether any given sign goes with the
preceding one or forms the beginning of a new word. In Persian cuneiform
writing, on the other hand, a slanting sign is used to separate the
words.