thesis that the dream activity is under a compulsion to elaborate all
the dream stimuli which are simultaneously present into a unified whole
(p. 151). We have seen that when two or more experiences capable of
making an impression have been left over from the previous day, the
wishes which result from them are united into one dream; similarly, that
an impression possessing psychic value and the indifferent experiences
of the previous day are united in the dream material, provided there are
available connecting ideas between the two. Thus the dream appears to be
a reaction to everything which is simultaneously present as actual in
the sleeping mind. As far as we have hitherto analysed the dream
material, we have discovered it to be a collection of psychic remnants
and memory traces, which we were obliged to credit (on account of the
preference shown for recent and infantile material) with a character of
actuality, though the nature of this was not at the time determinable.
Now it will not be difficult to foretell what will happen when new
material in the form of sensations is added to these actualities of
memory. These stimuli likewise derive importance for the dream because
they are actual; they are united with the other psychic actualities in
order to make up the material for dream formation. To express it
differently, the stimuli which appear during sleep are worked over into
the fulfilment of a wish, the other component parts of which are the
remnants of daily experience with which we are familiar. This union,
however, is not inevitable; we have heard that more than one sort of
attitude towards bodily stimuli is possible during sleep. Wherever this
union has been brought about, it has simply been possible to find for
the dream content that kind of presentation material which will give
representation to both classes of dream sources, the somatic as well as
the psychic.
The essential nature of the dream is not changed by this addition of
somatic material to the psychic sources of the dream; it remains the
fulfilment of a wish without reference to the way in which its
expression is determined by the actual material.
I shall gladly find room here for a number of peculiarities, which serve
to put a different face on the significance of external stimuli for the
dream. I imagine that a co-operation of individual, physiological, and
accidental factors, conditioned by momentary circumstances, determines
how one will act in each particular case of intensive objective
stimulation during sleep; the degree of the profoundness of sleep
whether habitual or accidental in connection with the intensity of the
stimulus, will in one case make it possible to suppress the stimulus, so
that it will not disturb sleep; in another case they will force an
awakening or will support the attempt to overcome the stimulus by
weaving it into the texture of the dream. In correspondence with the
multiplicity of these combinations, external objective stimuli will
receive expression more frequently in the case of one person than in
that of another. In the case of myself, who am an excellent sleeper, and
who stubbornly resists any kind of disturbance in sleep, this
intermixture of external causes of irritation into my dreams is very
rare, while psychic motives apparently cause me to dream very easily. I
have indeed noted only a single dream in which an objective, painful
source of stimulation is demonstrable, and it will be highly instructive
to see what effect the external stimulus had in this very dream.
_I am riding on a grey horse, at first timidly and awkwardly, as though
I were only leaning against something. I meet a colleague P., who is
mounted on a horse and is wearing a heavy woollen suit; he calls my
attention to something (probably to the fact that my riding position is
bad). Now I become more and more expert on the horse, which is most
intelligent; I sit comfortably, and I notice that I am already quite at
home in the saddle. For a saddle I have a kind of padding, which
completely fills the space between the neck and the rump of the horse.
In this manner I ride with difficulty between two lumber-wagons. After
having ridden up the street for some distance, I turn around and want to
dismount, at first in front of a little open chapel, which is situated
close to the street. Then I actually dismount in front of a chapel which
stands near the first; the hotel is in the same street, I could let the
horse go there by itself, but I prefer to lead it there. It seems as if
I should be ashamed to arrive there on horseback. In front of the hotel
is standing a hall-boy who shows me a card of mine which has been found,
and who ridicules me on account of it. On the card is written, doubly
underlined, “Eat nothing,” and then a second sentence (indistinct)
something like “Do not work”; at the same time a hazy idea that I am in
a strange city, in which I do no work._
It will not be apparent at once that this dream originated under the
influence, or rather under the compulsion, of a stimulus of pain. The
day before I had suffered from furuncles, which made every movement a
torture, and at last a furuncle had grown to the size of an apple at the
root of the scrotum, and had caused me the most intolerable pains that
accompanied every step; a feverish lassitude, lack of appetite, and the
hard work to which I had nevertheless kept myself during the day, had
conspired with the pain to make me lose my temper. I was not altogether
in a condition to discharge my duties as a physician, but in view of the
nature and the location of the malady, one might have expected some
performance other than riding, for which I was very especially unfitted.
It is this very activity, of riding into which I am plunged by the
dream; it is the most energetic denial of the suffering which is capable
of being conceived. In the first place, I do not know how to ride, I do
not usually dream of it, and I never sat on a horse but once—without a
saddle—and then I did not feel comfortable. But in this dream I ride as
though I had no furuncle on the perineum, and why? _just because I don’t
want any_. According to the description my saddle is the poultice which
has made it possible for me to go to sleep. Probably I did not feel
anything of my pain—as I was thus taken care of—during the first few
hours of sleeping. Then the painful sensations announced themselves and
tried to wake me up, whereupon the dream came and said soothingly: “Keep
on sleeping, you won’t wake up anyway! You have no furuncle at all, for
you are riding on a horse, and with a furuncle where you have it riding
is impossible!” And the dream was successful; the pain was stifled, and
I went on sleeping.
But the dream was not satisfied with “suggesting away” the furuncle by
means of tenaciously adhering to an idea incompatible with that of the
malady, in doing which it behaved like the hallucinatory insanity of the
mother who has lost her child, or like the merchant who has been
deprived of his fortune by losses.[BP] In addition the details of the
denied sensation and of the image which is used to displace it are
employed by the dream as a means to connect the material ordinarily
actually present in the mind with the dream situation, and to give this
material representation. I am riding on a _grey_ horse—the colour of the
horse corresponds exactly to the _pepper-and-salt_ costume in which I
last met my colleague P. in the country. I have been warned that highly
seasoned food is the cause of furunculosis, but in any case it is
preferable as an etiological explanation to sugar which ordinarily
suggests furunculosis. My friend P. has been pleased to “ride the high
horse” with regard to me, ever since he superseded me in the treatment
of a female patient, with whom I had performed great feats (in the dream
I first sit on the horse side-saddle fashion, like a circus rider), but
who really led me wherever she wished, like the horse in the anecdote
about the Sunday equestrian. Thus the horse came to be a symbolic
representation of a lady patient (in the dream it is most intelligent).
“I feel quite at home up here,” refers to the position which I occupied
in the patient’s household until I was replaced by my colleague P. “I
thought you were securely seated in the saddle,” one of my few
well-wishers among the great physicians of this city recently said to me
with reference to the same household. And it was a feat to practise
psychotherapy for ten hours a day with such pains, but I know that I
cannot continue my particularly difficult work for any length of time
without complete physical health, and the dream is full of gloomy
allusions to the situation which must in that case result (the card such
as neurasthenics have and present to doctors): _No work and no food_.
With further interpretation I see that the dream activity has succeeded
in finding the way from the wish-situation of riding to very early
infantile scenes of quarrelling, which must have taken place between me
and my nephew, who is now living in England, and who, moreover, is a
year older than I. Besides it has taken up elements from my journeys to
Italy; the street in the dream is composed of impressions of Verona and
Siena. Still more exhaustive interpretation leads to sexual
dream-thoughts, and I recall what significance dream allusions to that
beautiful country had in the case of a female patient who had never been
in Italy (Itlay—German _gen Italien_—_Genitalien_—genitals). At the same
time there are references to the house in which I was physician before
my friend P., and to the place where the furuncle is located.
Among the dreams mentioned in the previous chapter there are several
which might serve as examples for the elaboration of so-called nerve
stimuli. The dream about drinking in full draughts is one of this sort;
the somatic excitement in it seems to be the only source of the dream,
and the wish resulting from the sensation—thirst—the only motive for
dreaming. Something similar is true of the other simple dreams, if the
somatic excitement alone is capable of forming a wish. The dream of the
sick woman who throws the cooling apparatus from her cheek at night is
an instance of a peculiar way of reacting to painful excitements with a
wish-fulfilment; it seems as though the patient had temporarily
succeeded in making herself analgesic by ascribing her pains to a
stranger.
My dream about the three Parcæ is obviously a dream of hunger, but it
has found means to refer the need for food back to the longing of the
child for its mother’s breast, and to make the harmless desire a cloak
for a more serious one, which is not permitted to express itself so
openly. In the dream about Count Thun we have seen how an accidental
bodily desire is brought into connection with the strongest, and
likewise the most strongly suppressed emotions of the psychic life. And
when the First Consul incorporates the sound of an exploding bomb into a
dream of battle before it causes him to wake, as in the case reported by
Garnier, the purpose for which psychic activity generally concerns
itself with sensations occurring during sleep is revealed with
extraordinary clearness. A young lawyer, who has been deeply preoccupied
with his first great bankruptcy proceeding, and who goes to sleep during
the afternoon following, acts just like the great Napoleon. He dreams
about a certain G. Reich in _Hussiatyn_ (German _husten_—to cough), whom
he knows in connection with the bankruptcy proceeding, but _Hussiatyn_
forces itself upon his attention still further, with the result that he
is obliged to awaken, and hears his wife—who is suffering from bronchial
catarrh—coughing violently.
Let us compare the dream of Napoleon I., who, incidentally, was an
excellent sleeper, with that of the sleepy student, who was awakened by
his landlady with the admonition that he must go to the hospital, who
thereupon dreams himself into a bed in the hospital, and then sleeps on,
with the following account of his motives: If I am already in the
hospital, I shan’t have to get up in order to go there. The latter is
obviously a dream of convenience; the sleeper frankly admits to himself
the motive for his dreaming; but he thereby reveals one of the secrets
of dreaming in general. In a certain sense all dreams are dreams of
convenience; they serve the purpose of continuing sleep instead of
awakening. _The dream is the guardian of sleep, not the disturber of
it._ We shall justify this conception with respect to the psychic
factors of awakening elsewhere; it is possible, however, at this point
to prove its applicability to the influence exerted by objective
external excitements. Either the mind does not concern itself at all
with the causes of sensations, if it is able to do this in spite of
their intensity and of their significance, which is well understood by
it; or it employs the dream to deny these stimuli; or thirdly, if it is
forced to recognise the stimulus, it seeks to find that interpretation
of the stimulus which shall represent the actual sensation as a
component part of a situation which is desired and which is compatible
with sleep. The actual sensation is woven into the dream _in order to
deprive it of its reality_. Napoleon is permitted to go on sleeping; it
is only a dream recollection of the thunder of the cannon at Arcole
which is trying to disturb him.[BQ]
_The wish to sleep, by which the conscious ego has been suspended and
which along with the dream-censor contributes its share to the dream,
must thus always be taken into account as a motive for the formation of
dreams, and every successful dream is a fulfilment of this wish._ The
relation of this general, regularly present, and invariable sleep-wish
to the other wishes, of which now the one, now the other is fulfilled,
will be the subject of a further explanation. In the wish to sleep we
have discovered a factor capable of supplying the deficiency in the
theory of Strümpell and Wundt, and of explaining the perversity and
capriciousness in the interpretation of the outer stimulus. The correct
interpretation, of which the sleeping mind is quite capable, would imply
an active interest and would require that sleep be terminated; hence, of
those interpretations which are possible at all, only those are admitted
which are agreeable to the absolute censorship of the somatic wish. It
is something like this: It’s the nightingale and not the lark. For if
it’s the lark, love’s night is at an end. From among the interpretations
of the excitement which are at the moment possible, that one is selected
which can secure the best connection with the wish-possibilities that
are lying in wait in the mind. Thus everything is definitely determined,
and nothing is left to caprice. The misinterpretation is not an
illusion, but—if you will—an excuse. Here again, however, there is
admitted an action which is a modification of the normal psychic
procedure, as in the case where substitution by means of displacement is
effected for the purposes of the dream-censor.
If the outer nerve stimuli and inner bodily stimuli are sufficiently
intense to compel psychic attention, they represent—that is, in case
they result in dreaming and not in awakening—a definite point in the
formation of dreams, a nucleus in the dream material, for which an
appropriate wish-fulfilment is sought, in a way similar (see above) to
the search for connecting ideas between two dream stimuli. To this
extent it is true for a number of dreams that the somatic determines
what their content is to be. In this extreme case a wish which is not
exactly actual is aroused for the purpose of dream formation. But the
dream can do nothing but represent a wish in a situation as fulfilled;
it is, as it were, confronted by the task of seeking what wish may be
represented and fulfilled by means of the situation which is now actual.
Even if this actual material is of a painful or disagreeable character,
still it is not useless for the purposes of dream formation. The psychic
life has control even over wishes the fulfilment of which brings forth
pleasure—a statement which seems contradictory, but which becomes
intelligible if one takes into account the presence of two psychic
instances and the censor existing between them.
There are in the psychic life, as we have heard, _repressed_ wishes
which belong to the first system, and to whose fulfilment the second
system is opposed. There are wishes of this kind—and we do not mean this
in an historic sense, that there have been such wishes and that these
have then been destroyed—but the theory of repression, which is
essential to the study of psychoneurosis, asserts that such repressed
wishes still exist, contemporaneously with an inhibition weighing them
down. Language has hit upon the truth when it speaks of the
“suppression” of such impulses. The psychic contrivance for bringing
such wishes to realisation remains preserved and in a condition to be
used. But if it happens that such a suppressed wish is fulfilled, the
vanquished inhibition of the second system (which is capable of becoming
conscious) is then expressed as a painful feeling. To close this
discussion; if sensations of a disagreeable character which originate
from somatic sources are presented during sleep, this constellation is
taken advantage of by the dream activity to represent the
fulfilment—with more or less retention of the censor—of an otherwise
suppressed wish.
This condition of affairs makes possible a number of anxiety dreams,
while another series of the dream formations which are unfavourable to
the wish theory exhibits a different mechanism. For anxiety in dreams
may be of a psychoneurotic nature, or it may originate in psychosexual
excitements, in which case the anxiety corresponds to a repressed
_libido_. Then this anxiety as well as the whole anxiety dream has the
significance of a neurotic symptom, and we are at the dividing-line
where the wish-fulfilling tendency of dreams disappears. But in other
anxiety-dreams the feeling of anxiety comes from somatic sources (for
instance in the case of persons suffering from pulmonary or heart
trouble, where there is occasional difficulty in getting breath), and
then it is used to aid those energetically suppressed wishes in
attaining fulfilment in the form of a dream, the dreaming of which from
psychic motives would have resulted in the same release of fear. It is
not difficult to unite these two apparently discrepant cases. Of two
psychic formations, an emotional inclination and an ideal content, which
are intimately connected, the one, which is presented as actual,
supports the other in the dream; now anxiety of somatic origin supports
the suppressed presentation content, now the ideal content, which is
freed from suppression, and which proceeds with the impetus given by
sexual emotion, assists the discharge of anxiety. Of the one case it may
be said that an emotion of somatic origin is psychically interpreted; in
the other case everything is of psychic origin but the content which has
been suppressed is easily replaced by a somatic interpretation which is
suited to anxiety. The difficulties which lie in the way of
understanding all this have little to do with the dream; they are due to
the fact that in discussing these points we are touching upon the
problems of the development of anxiety and of repression.
Undoubtedly the aggregate of bodily feelings is to be included among the
commanding dream stimuli which originate internally. Not that it is able
to furnish the dream content, but it forces the dream thoughts to make a
choice from the material destined to serve the purpose of representation
in the dream content; it does this by putting within easy reach that
part of the material which is suited to its own character, while
withholding the other. Moreover this general feeling, which is left over
from the day, is probably connected with the psychic remnants which are
significant for the dream.
If somatic sources of excitement occurring during sleep—that is, the
sensations of sleep—are not of unusual intensity, they play a part in
the formation of dreams similar, in my judgment, to that of the
impressions of the day which have remained recent but indifferent. I
mean that they are drawn into the dream formation, if they are qualified
for being united with the presentation content of the psychic
dream-source, but in no other case. They are treated as a cheap
ever-ready material, which is utilised as often as it is needed, instead
of prescribing, as a precious material does, the manner in which it is
to be utilised. The case is similar to that where a patron of art brings
to an artist a rare stone, a fragment of onyx, in order that a work of
art may be made of it. The size of the stone, its colour, and its
marking help to decide what bust or what scene shall be represented in
it, while in the case where there is a uniform and abundant supply of
marble or sandstone the artist follows only the idea which takes shape
in his mind. Only in this manner, it seems to me, is the fact explicable
that the dream content resulting from bodily excitements that have not
been accentuated to a usual degree, does not appear in all dreams and
during every night.
Perhaps an example, which takes us back to the interpretation of dreams,
will best illustrate my meaning. One day I was trying to understand the
meaning of the sensations of being impeded, of not being able to move
from the spot, of not being able to get finished, &c., which are dreamt
about so often, and which are so closely allied to anxiety. That night I
had the following dream: _I am very incompletely dressed, and I go from
a dwelling on the ground floor up a flight of stairs to an upper story.
In doing this I jump over three steps at a time, and I am glad to find I
can mount the steps so quickly. Suddenly I see that a servant girl is
coming down the stairs, that is, towards me. I am ashamed and try to
hurry away, and now there appears that sensation of being impeded; I am
glued to the steps and cannot move from the spot._
Analysis: The situation of the dream is taken from everyday reality. In
a house in Vienna I have two apartments, which are connected only by a
flight of stairs outside. My consultation-rooms and my study are on an
elevated portion of the ground floor, and one story higher are my
living-rooms. When I have finished my work downstairs late at night, I
go up the steps into my bedroom. On the evening before the dream I had
actually gone this short distance in a somewhat disorderly attire—that
is to say, I had taken off my collar, cravat, and cuffs; but in the
dream this has changed into a somewhat more advanced degree of undress,
which as usual is indefinite. Jumping over the steps is my usual method
of mounting stairs; moreover it is the fulfilment of a wish that has
been recognised in the dream, for I have reassured myself about the
condition of my heart action by the ease of this accomplishment.
Moreover the manner in which I climb the stairs is an effective contrast
to the sensation of being impeded which occurs in the second half of the
dream. It shows me—something which needed no proof—that the dream has no
difficulty in representing motor actions as carried out fully and
completely; think of flying in dreams!
But the stairs which I go up are not those of my house; at first I do
not recognise them; only the person coming toward me reveals to me the
location which they are intended to signify. This woman is the maid of
the old lady whom I visit twice daily to give hypodermic injections; the
stairs, too, are quite similar to those which I must mount there twice
daily.
How do this flight of stairs and this woman get into my dream? Being
ashamed because one is not fully dressed, is undoubtedly of a sexual
character; the servant of whom I dream is older than I, sulky, and not
in the least attractive. These questions call up exactly the following
occurrences: When I make my morning visit at this house I am usually
seized with a desire to clear my throat; the product of the
expectoration falls upon the steps. For there is no spittoon on either
of these floors, and I take the view that the stairs should not be kept
clean at my expense, but by the provision of a spittoon. The
housekeeper, likewise an elderly and sulky person, with instincts for
cleanliness, takes another view of the matter. She lies in wait for me
to see whether I take the liberty referred to, and when she has made
sure of it, I hear her growl distinctly. For days thereafter she refuses
to show me her customary regard when we meet. On the day before the
dream the position of the housekeeper had been strengthened by the
servant girl. I had just finished my usual hurried visit to the patient
when the servant confronted me in the ante-room and observed: “You might
as well have wiped your shoes to-day, doctor, before you came into the
room. The red carpet is all dirty again from your feet.” This is the
whole claim which the flight of stairs and the servant-girl can make for
appearing in my dream.
An intimate connection exists between my flying over the stairs and my
spitting on the stairs. Pharyngitis and diseases of the heart are both
said to be punishments for the vice of smoking, on account of which
vice, of course, I do not enjoy a reputation for great neatness with my
housekeeper in the one house any more than in the other, both of which
the dream fuses into a single image.
I must postpone the further interpretation of this dream until I can
give an account of the origin of the typical dream of incomplete dress.
I only note as a preliminary result from the dream which has just been
cited that the dream sensation of inhibited action is always aroused at
a point where a certain connection requires it. A peculiar condition of
my motility during sleep cannot be the cause of this dream content, for
a moment before I saw myself hurrying over the steps with ease, as
though in confirmation of this fact.
(_d_) _Typical Dreams_