in the investigation of the manifold determination of the dream content.
Perhaps many a reader has already passed his own judgment upon this
investigation by saying that the manifold determination of the elements
of the dream is not a significant discovery, because it is a
self-evident one. In the analysis one starts from the dream elements,
and registers all the notions which are connected with them; it is no
wonder, then, that these elements should occur with particular frequency
in the thought material which is obtained in this manner. I cannot
acknowledge the validity of this objection, but shall say something
myself which sounds like it. Among the thoughts which analysis brings to
light, many can be found which are far removed from the central idea of
the dream, and which appear distinguished from the rest as artificial
interpolations for a definite purpose. Their purpose may easily be
discovered; they are just the ones which establish a connection, often a
forced and far-fetched one, between the dream content and the dream
thoughts, and if these elements were to be weeded out, not only
over-determination but also a sufficient determination by means of the
dream thoughts would often be lacking for the dream content. We are thus
led to the conclusion that manifold determination, which decides the
selection made by the dream, is perhaps not always a primary factor in
dream formation, but is often the secondary manifestation of a psychic
power which is still unknown to us. But in spite of all this, manifold
determination must nevertheless control the entrance of individual
elements into the dream, for it is possible to observe that it is
established with considerable effort in cases where it does not result
from the dream material without assistance.
The assumption is not now far distant that a psychic force is expressed
in dream activity which on the one hand strips elements of high psychic
value of their intensity, and which on the other hand creates new
values, _by way of over-determination_, from elements of small value,
these new values subsequently getting into the dream content. If this is
the method of procedure, there has taken place in the formation of the
dream a transference and displacement of the psychic intensities of the
individual elements, of which the textual difference between the dream
and the thought content appears as a result. The process which we assume
here is nothing less than the essential part of the dream activity; it
merits the designation of _dream displacement_. _Dream displacement_ and
_dream condensation_ are the two craftsmen to whom we may chiefly
attribute the moulding of the dream.
I think we also have an easy task in recognising the psychic force which
makes itself felt in the circumstances of dream displacement. The result
of this displacement is that the dream content no longer resembles the
core of the dream thoughts at all, and that the dream reproduces only a
disfigured form of the dream-wish in the unconscious. But we are already
acquainted with dream disfigurement; we have traced it back to the
censorship which one psychic instance in the psychic life exercises upon
the other. Dream displacement is one of the chief means for achieving
this disfigurement. _Is fecit, cui profuit._ We may assume that dream
displacement is brought about by the influence of this censor, of the
endopsychic repulsion.[DS]
The manner in which the factors of displacement, condensation, and
over-determination play into one another in the formation of the dream,
which is the ruling factor and which the subordinate one, all this will
be reserved as the subject of later investigations. For the present we
may state, as a second condition which the elements must satisfy in
order to get into the dream, that _they must be withdrawn from the
censor of resistance_. From now on we shall take account of dream
displacement as an unquestionable fact in the interpretation of dreams.
(_c_) _Means of Representation in the Dream_
Besides the two factors of dream condensation and dream displacement
which we have found to be active in the transformation of the latent
dream material into the manifest content, we shall come in the course of
this investigation upon two other conditions which exercise an
unquestionable influence upon the selection of the material which gets
into the dream. Even at the risk of seeming to stop our progress, I
should like to glance at the processes by which the interpretation of
dreams is accomplished. I do not deny that I should succeed best in
making them clear, and in showing that they are sufficiently reliable to
insure them against attack, by taking a single dream as a paradigm and
developing its interpretation, as I have done in Chapter II. in the
dream of “Irma’s Injection,” and then putting together the dream
thoughts which I have discovered, and reconstructing the formation of
the dream from them—that is to say, by supplementing the analysis of
dreams by a synthesis of them. I have accomplished this with several
specimens for my own instruction; but I cannot undertake to do it here
because I am prevented by considerations, which every right-minded
person must approve of, relative to the psychic material necessary for
such a demonstration. In the analysis of dreams these considerations
present less difficulty, for an analysis may be incomplete and still
retain its value even if it leads only a short way into the thought
labyrinth of the dream. I do not see how a synthesis could be anything
short of complete in order to be convincing. I could give a complete
synthesis only of the dreams of such persons as are unknown to the
reading public. Since, however, only neurotic patients furnish me with
the means for doing this, this part of the description of the dream must
be postponed until I can carry the psychological explanation of neuroses
far enough—elsewhere—to be able to show their connection with the
subject matter under consideration.[DT]
From my attempts synthetically to construct dreams from the dream
thoughts, I know that the material which is obtained from interpretation
varies in value. For a part of it consists of the essential dream
thoughts which would, therefore, completely replace the dream, and which
would in themselves be sufficient for this replacement if there were no
censor for the dream. The other part may be summed up under the term
“collaterals”; taken as a whole they represent the means by which the
real wish that arises from the dream thoughts is transformed into the
dream-wish. A first part of these “collaterals” consists of allusions to
the actual dream thoughts, which, considered schematically, correspond
to displacements from the essential to the non-essential. A second part
comprises the thoughts which connect these non-essential elements, that
have become significant through displacement with one another, and which
reach from them into the dream content. Finally a third part contains
the ideas and thought connections which (in the work of interpretation)
conduct us from the dream content to the intermediary collaterals, _all
of which_ need not _necessarily_ have participated in the formation of
the dream.
At this point we are interested exclusively in the essential dream
thoughts. These are usually found to be a complex of thoughts and
memories of the most intricate possible construction, and to possess all
the properties of the thought processes which are known to us from
waking life. Not infrequently they are trains of thought which proceed
from more than one centre, but which do not lack points of connection;
almost regularly a chain of thought stands next to its contradictory
correlative, being connected with it by contrast associations.
The individual parts of this complicated structure naturally stand in
the most manifold logical relations to one another. They constitute a
foreground or background, digressions, illustrations, conditions, chains
of argument, and objections. When the whole mass of these dream thoughts
is subjected to the pressure of the dream activity, during which the
parts are turned about, broken up, and pushed together, something like
drifting ice, there arises the question, what becomes of the logical
ties which until now had given form to the structure? What
representation do “if,” “because,” “as though,” “although,” “either—or,”
and all the other conjunctions, without which we cannot understand a
phrase or a sentence, receive in the dream?
At first we must answer that the dream has at its disposal no means for
representing these logical relations among the dream thoughts. In most
cases it disregards all these conjunctions, and undertakes the
elaboration only of the objective content of the dream thoughts. It is
left to the interpretation of the dream to restore the coherence which
the activity of the dream has destroyed.
If the dream lacks ability to express these relations, the psychic
material of which the dream is wrought must be responsible. The
descriptive arts are limited in the same manner—painting and the plastic
arts in comparison with poetry, which can employ speech; and here too
the reason for this impotence is to be found in the material in the
treatment of which the two arts strive to give expression to something.
Before the art of painting had arrived at an understanding of the laws
of expression by which it is bound, it attempted to escape this
disadvantage. In old paintings little tags were hung from the mouths of
the persons represented giving the speech, the expression of which in
the picture the artist despaired of.
Perhaps an objection will here be raised challenging the assertion that
the dream dispenses with the representation of logical relations. There
are dreams in which the most complicated intellectual operations take
place, in which proof and refutation are offered, puns and comparisons
made, just as in waking thoughts. But here, too, appearances are
deceitful; if the interpretation of such dreams is pursued, it is found
that all of this is _dream material, not the representation of
intellectual activity in the dream_. The _content_ of the dream thoughts
is reproduced by the apparent thinking of the dream, not _the relations
of the dream thoughts to one another_, in the determination of which
relations thinking consists. I shall give examples of this. But the
thesis which is most easily established is that all speeches which occur
in the dream, and which are expressly designated as such, are unchanged
or only slightly modified copies of speeches which are likewise to be
found in the recollections of the dream material. Often the speech is
only an allusion to an event contained in the dream thoughts; the
meaning of the dream is a quite different one.
I shall not deny, indeed, that there is also critical thought activity
which does not merely repeat material from the dream thoughts and which
takes part in the formation of the dream. I shall have to explain the
influence of this factor at the close of this discussion. It will then
become clear that this thought activity is evoked not by the dream
thoughts, but by the dream itself after it is already finished in a
certain sense.
We shall, therefore, consider it settled for the present that the
logical relations among the dream thoughts do not enjoy any particular
representation in the dream. For instance, where there is a
contradiction in the dream, this is either a contradiction directed
against the dream itself or a contradiction derived from the content of
one of the dream thoughts; a contradiction in the dream corresponds to a
contradiction _among_ the dream thoughts only in a highly indirect
manner.
But just as the art of painting finally succeeded in depicting in the
represented persons, at least their intention in speaking—their
tenderness, threatening attitude, warning mien, and the like—by other
means than the dangling tag, so also the dream has found it possible to
render account of a few of the logical relations among its dream
thoughts by means of an appropriate modification of the peculiar method
of dream representation. It will be found by experience that different
dreams go to different lengths in taking this into consideration; while
one dream entirely disregards the logical coherence of its material,
another attempts to indicate it as completely as possible. In so doing
the dream departs more or less widely from the subject-matter which it
is to elaborate. The dream also takes a similarly varying attitude
towards the temporal coherence of the dream thoughts, if such coherence
has been established in the unconscious (as for example in the dream of
Irma’s injection).
But what are the means by which the dream activity is enabled to
indicate these relations in the dream material which are so difficult to
represent? I shall attempt to enumerate these separately.
In the first place, the dream renders account of the connection which is
undeniably present between all the parts of the dream thoughts by
uniting this material in a single composition as a situation or process.
It reproduces _logical connection in the form of simultaneousness_; in
this case it acts something like the painter who groups together all the
philosophers or poets into a picture of the school of Athens or of
Parnassus, although these were never at once present in any hall or on
any mountain top—though they do, however, form a unity from the point of
view of reflective contemplation.
The dream carries out this method of representation in detail. Whenever
it shows two elements close together, it vouches for a particularly
intimate connection between those elements which correspond to them in
the dream thoughts. It is as in our method of writing: _to_ signifies
that the two letters are to be pronounced as one syllable, while _t_
with _o_ after a free space shows that _t_ is the last letter of one
word and _o_ the first letter of another. According to this, dream
combinations are not made of arbitrary, completely incongruent elements
of the dream material, but of elements that also have a somewhat
intimate relation to one another in the dream thoughts.
For representing causal relation the dream has two methods, which are
essentially reducible to one. The more frequent method, in cases, for
example, where the dream thoughts are to the effect: “Because this was
so and so, this and that must happen,” consists in making the premise an
introductory dream and joining the conclusion to it in the form of the
main dream. If my interpretation is correct, the sequence may also be
reversed. That part of the dream which is more completely worked out
always corresponds to the conclusion.
A female patient, whose dream I shall later give in full, once furnished
me with a neat example of such a representation of causal relationship.
The dream consisted of a short prologue and of a very elaborate but well
organised dream composition, which might be entitled: “A flower of
speech.” The prologue of the dream is as follows: _She goes to the two
maids in the kitchen and scolds them for taking so long to prepare “a
little bite of food.” She also sees a great many coarse dishes standing
in the kitchen, inverted so that the water may drop off them, and heaped
up in a pile. The two maids go to fetch water, and must, as it were,
step into a river, which reaches up to the house or into the yard._
Then follows the main dream, which begins as follows: _She is descending
from a high place, over balustrades that are curiously fashioned, and
she is glad that her dress doesn’t get caught anywhere_, &c. Now the
introductory dream refers to the house of the lady’s parents. Probably
she has often heard from her mother the words which are spoken in the
kitchen. The piles of unwashed dishes are taken from an unpretentious
earthenware shop which was located in the same house. The second part of
this dream contains an allusion to the dreamer’s father, who always had
a great deal to do with servant girls, and who later contracted a fatal
disease during a flood—the house stood near the bank of a river. The
thought which is concealed behind the introductory dream, then, is to
this effect: “Because I was born in this house, under such limited and
unlovely circumstances.” The main dream takes up the same thought, and
presents it in a form that has been altered by the tendency to
wish-fulfilment: “I am of exalted origin.” Properly then: “Because I was
born in such low circumstances, my career has been so and so.”
As far as I can see, the partition of a dream into two unequal portions
does not always signify a causal relation between the thoughts of the
two portions. It often appears as though the same material were being
presented in the two dreams from different points of view; or as though
the two dreams have proceeded from two separated centres in the dream
material and their contents overlap, so that the object which is the
centre of one dream has served in the other as an allusion, and _vice
versa_. But in a certain number of cases a division into shorter
fore-dreams and longer subsequent dreams actually signifies a causal
relation between the two portions. The other method of representing
causal relation is used with less abundant material and consists in the
change of one image in the dream, whether a person or a thing, into
another. It is only in cases where we witness this change taking place
in the dream that any causal relation is asserted to exist, not where we
merely notice that one thing has taken the place of another. I said that
both methods of representing causal relation are reducible to the same
thing; in both cases _causation_ is represented by a _succession_, now
by the sequence of the dreams, now by the immediate transformation of
one image into another. In the great majority of cases, of course,
causal relation is not expressed at all, but is obliterated by the
sequence of elements which is unavoidable in the dream process.
The dream is altogether unable to express the alternative, “either—or”;
it is in the habit of taking both members of this alternative into one
context, as though they were equally privileged. A classic example of
this is contained in the dream of Irma’s injection. Its latent thoughts
obviously mean: I am innocent of the continued presence of Irma’s pains;
the fault rests either with her resistance to accepting the solution,
_or_ with the fact that she is living under unfavourable sexual
conditions, which I am unable to change, _or_ her pains are not of a
hysteric nature at all, but organic. The dream, however, fulfils all
these possibilities, which are almost exclusive, and is quite ready to
extract from the dream-wish an additional fourth solution of this kind.
After interpreting the dream I have therefore inserted the _either—or_
in the sequence of the dream thoughts.
In the case where the dreamer finds occasion in telling the dream to use
_either—or_: “It was either a garden or a living-room,” &c., it is not
really an alternative which occurs in the dream thoughts, but an “and,”
a simple addition. When we use _either—or_ we are usually describing a
characteristic of indistinctness belonging to an element of the dream
which is still capable of being cleared up. The rule of interpretation
for this case is as follows: The separate members of the alternative are
to be treated as equals and connected by “and.” For instance, after
waiting for a long time in vain for the address of my friend who is
living in Italy, I dream that I receive a telegram which tells me this
address. Upon the strip of telegraph paper I see printed in blue the
following; the first word is blurred:
perhaps _via_,
or _villa_, the second is distinctly: _Sezerno_ or perhaps (_Casa_).
The second word, which sounds like an Italian name and which reminds me
of our etymological discussions, also expresses my displeasure on
account of the fact that my friend has kept his place of residence
secret from me for so long a time; every member of the triple suggestion
for the first word may be recognised in the course of analysis as a
self-sufficient and equally well-justified starting point in the
concatenation of ideas.
During the night before the funeral of my father I dreamed of a printed
placard, a card or poster—perhaps something like signs in railway
waiting-rooms which announce the prohibition of smoking—which reads
either:
_It is requested to shut the eyes_
or
_It is requested to shut an eye_
which I am in the habit of representing in the following form:
_the_
_It is requested to shut_ _eye(s)._
_an_
Each of the two variations has its own particular meaning, and leads us
along particular paths in the interpretation of the dream. I had made
the simplest kind of funeral arrangements, for I knew how the deceased
thought about such matters. Other members of the family, however, did
not approve of such puritanic simplicity; they thought we would have to
be ashamed before the mourners. Hence one of the wordings of the dream
requests the “shutting of one eye,” that is to say, that people should
show consideration. The significance of the blurring, which we describe
with an _either—or_, may here be seen with particular ease. The dream
activity has not succeeded in constructing a unified but at the same
time ambiguous wording for the dream thoughts. Thus the two main trains
of thought are already distinguished even in the dream content.
In a few cases the division of the dream into two equal parts expresses
the alternative which the dream finds it so difficult to represent.
The attitude of the dream towards the category of antithesis and
contradiction is most striking. This category is unceremoniously
neglected; the word “No” does not seem to exist for the dream.
Antitheses are with peculiar preference reduced to unity or represented
as one. The dream also takes the liberty of representing any element
whatever by its desired opposite, so that it is at first impossible to
tell about any element capable of having an opposite, whether it is to
be taken negatively or positively, in the dream thoughts.[DU] In one of
the last-mentioned dreams, whose introductory portion we have already
interpreted (“because my parentage is such”), the dreamer descends over
a balustrade and holds a blossoming twig in her hands. Since this
picture suggests to her the angel in paintings of the Annunciation (her
own name is Mary) carrying a lily stem in his hand, and the white-robed
girls marching in the procession on Corpus Christi Day when the streets
are decorated with green bows, the blossoming twig in the dream is very
certainly an allusion to sexual innocence. But the twig is thickly
studded with red blossoms, each one of which resembles a camelia. At the
end of her walk, so the dream continues, the blossoms have already
fallen considerably apart; then unmistakable allusions to menstruation
follow. But this very twig which is carried like a lily and as though by
an innocent girl, is also an allusion to Camille, who, as is known,
always wore a white camelia, but a red one at the time of her
menstruation. The same blossoming twig (“the flower of maidenhood” in
the songs about the miller’s daughter by Goethe) represents at once
sexual innocence and its opposite. The same dream, also, which expresses
the dreamer’s joy at having succeeded in passing through life unsullied,
hints in several places (as at the falling-off of the blossom), at the
opposite train of thought—namely, that she had been guilty of various
sins against sexual purity (that is in her childhood). In the analysis
of the dream we may clearly distinguish the two trains of thought, of
which the comforting one seems to be superficial, the reproachful one
more profound. The two are diametrically opposed to each other, and
their like but contrasting elements have been represented by the
identical dream elements.