less intensity or distinctness of individual elements of the dream—is
one which I should like to guard against being confused with another
problem, which has to do with the varying distinctness of whole dreams
or sections of dreams. In the first case, the opposite of distinctness
is blurredness; in the second, confusion. It is of course unmistakable
that the intensities rise and fall in the two scales in unison. A
portion of the dream which seems clear to us usually contains vivid
elements; an obscure dream is composed of less intense elements. But the
problem with which we are confronted by the scale, ranging from the
apparently clear to the indistinct or confused, is far more complicated
than that formed by variations in the vividness of the dream elements;
indeed the former will be dropped from the discussion for reasons which
will be given later. In isolated cases we are astonished to find that
the impression of clearness or indistinctness produced by the dream is
altogether without significance for its structure, and that it
originates in the dream material as one of its constituents. Thus I
remember a dream which seemed particularly well constructed, flawless,
and clear, so that I made up my mind, while I was still in the somnolent
state, to recognise a new class of dreams—those which had not been
subject to the mechanism of condensation and displacement, and which
might thus be designated “Fancies while asleep.” A closer examination
proved that this rare dream had the same breaches and flaws in its
construction as every other; for this reason I abandoned the category of
dream fancies. The content of the dream, reduced to its lowest terms,
was that I was reciting to a friend a difficult and long-sought theory
of bisexuality, and the wish-fulfilling power of the dream was
responsible for the fact that this theory (which, by the way, was not
stated in the dream) appeared so clear and flawless. What I considered a
judgment upon the finished dream was thus a part of the dream content,
and the essential one at that. The dream activity had extended its
operations, as it were, into waking thought, and had presented to me in
the form of a judgment that part of the dream material which it had not
succeeded in reproducing with exactness. The exact opposite of this once
came to my attention in the case of a female patient who was at first
altogether unwilling to tell a dream which was necessary for the
analysis, “because it was so obscure and confused,” and who declared,
after repeatedly denying the accuracy of her description, that several
persons, herself, her husband, and her father, had occurred in the
dream, and that it seemed as though she did not know whether her husband
was her father, or who her father was anyway, or something of that sort.
Upon considering this dream in connection with the ideas that occurred
to the dreamer in the course of the sitting, it was found unquestionably
to be concerned with the story of a servant girl who had to confess that
she was expecting a child, and who was now confronted with doubts as to
“who was really the father.”[DX] The obscurity manifested by the dream,
therefore, is again in this case a portion of the material which excited
it. A part of this material was represented in the form of the dream.
The form of the dream or of dreaming is used with astonishing frequency
to represent the concealed content.
Comments on the dream and seemingly harmless observations about it often
serve in the most subtle manner to conceal—although they usually
betray—a part of what is dreamed. Thus, for example, when the dreamer
says: _Here the dream is vague_, and the analysis gives an infantile
reminiscence of listening to a person cleaning himself after defecation.
Another example deserves to be recorded in detail. A young man has a
very distinct dream which recalls to him phantasies from his infancy
which have remained conscious to him: he was in a summer hotel one
evening, he mistook the number of his room, and entered a room in which
an elderly lady and her two daughters were undressing to go to bed. He
continues: “_Then there are some gaps in the dream; then something is
missing_; and at the end there was a man in the room who wished to throw
me out with whom I had to wrestle.” He endeavoured in vain to recall the
content and purpose of the boyish fancy to which the dream apparently
alludes. But we finally become aware that the required content had
already been given in his utterances concerning the indistinct part of
the dream. The “gaps” were the openings in the genitals of the women who
were retiring: “Here something is missing” described the chief character
of the female genitals. In those early years he burned with curiosity to
see a female genital, and was still inclined to adhere to the infantile
sexual theory which attributes a male genital to the woman.
All the dreams which have been dreamed in the same night belong to the
same whole when considered with respect to their content; their
separation into several portions, their grouping and number, all these
details are full of meaning, and may be considered as information coming
from the latent dream content. In the interpretation of dreams
consisting of many principal sections, or of dreams belonging to the
same night, one must not fail to think of the possibility that these
different and succeeding dreams bring to expression the same feelings in
different material. The one that comes first in time of these homologous
dreams is usually the most disfigured and most bashful, while the
succeeding is bolder and more distinct.
Even Pharaoh’s dream in the Bible of the ears and the kine, which Joseph
interpreted, was of this kind. It is reported by Josephus (_Antiquities
of the Jews_, bk. ii. chap, iii.) in greater detail than in the Bible.
After relating the first dream, the King said: “When I had seen this
vision I awaked out of my sleep, and being in disorder, and considering
with myself what this appearance should be, I fell asleep again, and saw
another dream much more wonderful than the first, which did still more
affright and disturb me.” After listening to the report of the dream,
Joseph said, “This dream, O King, although seen under two forms,
signifies one and the same issue of things.”
Jung,[99] who, in his _Beitrag zur Psychologie des Gerüchtes_ relates
how the veiled erotic dream of a school-girl was understood by her
friends without interpretation and continued by them with variations,
remarks in connection with reports of this dream, “that the last of a
long series of dream pictures contained precisely the same thought whose
representation had been attempted in the first picture of the series.
The censor pushed the complex out of the way as long as possible,
through constantly renewed symbolic concealments, displacements,
deviations into the harmless, &c.” (_l.c._ p. 87). Scherner[58] was well
acquainted with the peculiarities of dream disfigurement and describes
them at the end of his theory of organic stimulation as a special law,
p. 166: “But, finally, the phantasy observes the general law in all
nerve stimuli emanating from symbolic dream formations, by representing
at the beginning of the dream only the remotest and freest allusions to
the stimulating object; but towards the end, when the power of
representation becomes exhausted, it presents the stimulus or its
concerned organ or its function in unconcealed form, and in the way this
dream designates its organic motive and reaches its end.”
A new confirmation of Scherner’s law has been furnished by Otto
Rank[106] in his work, _A Self Interpretation Dream_. This dream of a
girl reported by him consisted of two dreams, separated in time of the
same night, the second of which ended with pollution. This pollution
dream could be interpreted in all its details by disregarding a great
many of the ideas contributed by the dreamer, and the profuse relations
between the two dream contents indicated that the first dream expressed
in bashful language the same thing as the second, so that the latter—the
pollution dream—helped to a full explanation of the former. From this
example, Rank, with perfect justice, draws conclusions concerning the
significance of pollution dreams in general.
But in my experience it is only in rare cases that one is in a position
to interpret clearness or confusion in the dream as certainty or doubt
in the dream material. Later I shall try to discover the factor in the
formation of dreams upon whose influence this scale of qualities
essentially depends.
In some dreams, which adhere for a time to a certain situation and
scenery, there occur interruptions described in the following words:
“But then it seemed as though it were at the same time another place,
and there such and such a thing happened.” What thus interrupts the main
trend of the dream, which after a while may be continued again, turns
out to be a subordinate idea, an interpolated thought in the dream
material. A conditional relation in the dream-thoughts is represented by
simultaneousness in the dream (wenn—wann; if—when).
What is signified by the sensation of impeded movement, which so often
occurs in the dream, and which is so closely allied to anxiety? One
wants to move, and is unable to stir from the spot; or one wants to
accomplish something, and meets one obstacle after another. The train is
about to start, and one cannot reach it; one’s hand is raised to avenge
an insult, and its strength fails, &c. We have already encountered this
sensation in exhibition dreams, but have as yet made no serious attempt
to interpret it. It is convenient, but inadequate, to answer that there
is motor paralysis in sleep, which manifests itself by means of the
sensation alluded to. We may ask: “Why is it, then, that we do not dream
continually of these impeded motions?” And we are justified in supposing
that this sensation, constantly appearing in sleep, serves some purpose
or other in representation, and is brought about by a need occurring in
the dream material for this sort of representation.
Failure to accomplish does not always appear in the dream as a
sensation, but also simply as a part of the dream content. I believe
that a case of this sort is particularly well suited to enlighten us
about the significance of this characteristic of the dream. I shall give
an abridged report of a dream in which I seem to be accused of
dishonesty. _The scene is a mixture, consisting of a private sanatorium
and several other buildings. A lackey appears to call me to an
examination. I know in the dream that something has been missed, and
that the examination is taking place because I am suspected of having
appropriated the lost article. Analysis shows that examination is to be
taken in two senses, and also means medical examination. Being conscious
of my innocence, and of the fact that I have been called in for
consultation, I calmly follow the lackey. We are received at the door by
another lackey, who says, pointing to me, “Is that the person whom you
have brought? Why, he is a respectable man.” Thereupon, without any
lackey, I enter a great hall in which machines are standing, and which
reminds me of an Inferno with its hellish modes of punishment. I see a
colleague strapped on to one apparatus who has every reason to be
concerned about me; but he takes no notice of me. Then I am given to
understand that I may now go. Then I cannot find my hat, and cannot go
after all._
The wish which the dream fulfils is obviously that I may be acknowledged
to be an honest man, and may go; all kinds of subject-matter containing
a contradiction of this idea must therefore be present in the
dream-thoughts. The fact that I may go is the sign of my absolution; if,
then, the dream furnishes at its close an event which prevents me from
going, we may readily conclude that the suppressed subject-matter of the
contradiction asserts itself in this feature. The circumstance that I
cannot find my hat therefore means: “You are not an honest man after
all.” Failure to accomplish in the dream is the expression of a
contradiction, a “No”; and therefore the earlier assertion, to the
effect that the dream is not capable of expressing a negation, must be
revised accordingly.[DY]
In other dreams which involve failure to accomplish a thing not only as
a situation but also as a sensation, the same contradiction is more
emphatically expressed in the form of a volition, to which a counter
volition opposes itself. Thus the sensation of impeded motion represents
a _conflict of will_. We shall hear later that this very motor paralysis
belongs to the fundamental conditions of the psychic process in
dreaming. Now the impulse which is transferred to motor channels is
nothing else than the will, and the fact that we are sure to find this
impulse impeded in the dream makes the whole process extraordinarily
well suited to represent volition and the “No” which opposes itself
thereto. From my explanation of anxiety, it is easy to understand why
the sensation of thwarted will is so closely allied to anxiety, and why
it is so often connected with it in the dream. Anxiety is a libidinous
impulse which emanates from the unconscious, and is inhibited by the
foreconscious. Therefore, when a sensation of inhibition in the dream is
accompanied by anxiety, there must also be present a volition which has
at one time been capable of arousing a _libido_; there must be a sexual
impulse.
What significance and what psychic force is to be ascribed to such
manifestations of judgment as “For that is only a dream,” which
frequently comes to the surface in dreams, I shall discuss in another
place (_vide infra_, p. 390). For the present I shall merely say that
they serve to depreciate the value of the thing dreamed. An interesting
problem allied to this, namely, the meaning of the fact that sometimes a
certain content is designated in the dream itself as “dreamed”—the
riddle of the “dream within the dream”—has been solved in a similar
sense by W. Stekel[114] through the analysis of some convincing
examples. The part of the dream “dreamed” is again to be depreciated in
value and robbed of its reality; that which the dreamer continues to
dream after awakening from the dream within the dream, is what the
dream-wish desires to put in place of the extinguished reality. It may
therefore be assumed that the part “dreamed” contains the representation
of the reality and the real reminiscence, while, on the other hand, the
continued dream contains the representation of what the dreamer wished.
The inclusion of a certain content in a “dream within the dream” is
therefore equivalent to the wish that what has just been designated as a
dream should not have occurred. The dream-work utilises the dream itself
as a form of deflection.
(_d_) _Regard for Presentability_
So far we have been attempting to ascertain how the dream represents the
relations among the dream-thoughts, but we have several times extended
our consideration to the further question of what alterations the dream
material undergoes for the purposes of dream formation. We now know that
the dream material, after being stripped of the greater parts of its
relations, is subjected to compression, while at the same time
displacements of intensity among its elements force a psychic
revaluation of this material. The displacements which we have considered
were shown to be substitutions of one idea for another, the substitute
being in some way connected with the original by associations, and the
displacements were put to the service of condensation by virtue of the
fact that in this manner a common mean between two elements took the
place of these two elements in the formation of the dream. We have not
yet mentioned any other kind of displacement. But we learn from the
analyses that another exists, and that it manifests itself in a change
of the verbal expression employed for the thought in question. In both
cases we have displacement following a chain of associations, but the
same process takes place in different psychic spheres, and the result of
this displacement in the one case is that one element is substituted for
another, while in the other case an element exchanges its verbal
expression for another.
This second kind of displacement occurring in dream formation not only
possesses great theoretical interest, but is also peculiarly well fitted
to explain the semblance of phantastic absurdity in which the dream
disguises itself. Displacement usually occurs in such a way that a
colourless and abstract expression in the dream-thought is exchanged for
one that is visual and concrete. The advantage, and consequently the
purpose, of this substitution is obvious. Whatever is visual is _capable
of representation_ in the dream, and can be wrought into situations
where the abstract expression would confront dream representation with
difficulties similar to those which would arise if a political editorial
were to be represented in an illustrated journal. But not only the
possibility of representation, but also the interests of condensation
and of the censor, can be furthered by this change. If the abstractly
expressed and unwieldy dream-thought is recast into figurative language,
this new expression and the rest of the dream material are more easily
furnished with those identities and cross references, which are
essential to the dream activity and which it creates whenever they are
not at hand, for the reason that in every language concrete terms, owing
to their evolution, are more abundant in associations than conceptual
ones. It may be imagined that in dream formation a good part of the
intermediary activity, which tries to reduce the separate dream-thoughts
to the tersest and simplest possible expression in the dream, takes
place in the manner above described—that is to say, in providing
suitable paraphrase for the individual thoughts. One thought whose
expression has already been determined on other grounds will thus exert
a separating and selective influence upon the means available for
expressing the other, and perhaps it will do this constantly throughout,
somewhat after the manner of the poet. If a poem in rhyme is to be
composed, the second rhyming line is bound by two conditions; it must
express the proper meaning, and it must express it in such a way as to
secure the rhyme. The best poems are probably those in which the poet’s
effort to find a rhyme is unconscious, and in which both thoughts have
from the beginning exercised a mutual influence in the selection of
their verbal expressions, which can then be made to rhyme by a means of
slight remodification.
In some cases change of expression serves the purposes of dream
condensation more directly, in making possible the invention of a verbal
construction which is ambiguous and therefore suited to the expression
of more than one dream-thought. The whole range of word-play is thus put
at the service of the dream activity. The part played by words in the
formation of dreams ought not to surprise us. A word being a point of
junction for a number of conceptions, it possesses, so to speak, a
predestined ambiguity, and neuroses (obsessions, phobias) take advantage
of the conveniences which words offer for the purposes of condensation
and disguise quite as readily as the dream.[DZ] That dream conception
also profits by this displacement of expression is easily demonstrated.
It is naturally confusing if an ambiguous word is put in the place of
two ambiguous ones; and the employment of a figurative expression
instead of the sober everyday one thwarts our understanding, especially
since the dream never tells us whether the elements which it shows are
to be interpreted literally or figuratively, or whether they refer to
the dream material directly or only through the agency of interpolated
forms of speech.[EA] Several examples of representations in the dream
which are held together only by ambiguity have already been cited (“her
mouth opens without difficulty,” in the dream of Irma’s injection; “I
cannot go yet,” in the last dream reported, p. 312), &c. I shall now
cite a dream in the analysis of which the figurative expression of
abstract thought plays a greater part. The difference between such dream
interpretation and interpretation by symbolism may again be sharply
distinguished; in the symbolic interpretation of dreams the key to the
symbolism is arbitrarily chosen by the interpreter, while in our own
cases of verbal disguise all these keys are universally known and are
taken from established customs of speech. If the correct notion occurs
at the right opportunity, it is possible to solve dreams of this sort
completely or in part, independently of any statements made by the
dreamer.
A lady, a friend of mine, dreams: _She is in the opera-house. It is a
Wagnerian performance which has lasted till 7.45 in the morning. In the
parquette and parterre there are tables, around which people dine and
drink. Her cousin and his young wife, who have just returned from their
honeymoon, sit next to her at one of these tables, and next to them sits
one of the aristocracy. Concerning the latter the idea is that the young
wife has brought him back with her from the wedding journey. It is quite
above board, just as if she were bringing back a hat from her trip. In
the midst of the parquette there is a high tower, on the top of which is
a platform surrounded by an iron grating. There, high up, stands the
conductor with the features of Hans Richter; he is continually running
around behind the grating, perspiring awfully, and from this position
conducting the orchestra, which is arranged around the base of the
tower. She herself sits in a box with a lady friend (known to me). Her
youngest sister tries to hand her from the parquette a big piece of coal
with the idea that she did not know that it would last so long and that
she must by this time be terribly cold. (It was a little as if the boxes
had to be heated during the long performance.)_
The dream is senseless enough, though the situation is well developed
too—the tower in the midst of the parquette from which the conductor
leads the orchestra; but, above all, the coal which her sister hands
her! I purposely asked for no analysis of this dream. With the knowledge
I have of the personal relations of the dreamer, I was able to interpret
parts of it independently. I knew that she had entertained warm feelings
for a musician whose career had been prematurely blasted by insanity. I
therefore decided to take the tower in the parquette verbally. It was
apparent, then, that the man whom she wished to see in the place of Hans
Richter _towered_ above all the other members of the orchestra. This
tower must, therefore, be designated as a composite picture formed by an
apposition; with its pedestal it represents the greatness of the man,
but with its gratings on top, behind which he runs around like a
prisoner or an animal in a cage (an allusion to the name of the
unfortunate man), it represents his later fate. “Lunatic-tower” is
perhaps the word in which both thoughts might have met.
Now that we have discovered the dream’s method of representation, we may
try with the same key to open the second apparent absurdity,—that of the
coal which her sister hands her. “Coal” must mean “secret love.”
“No _coal_, no _fire_ so hotly glows
As the _secret love_ which no one knows.”
She and her friend remain seated while her younger sister, who still has
opportunities to marry, hands her up the coal “because she did not know
it would last so long.” What would last so long is not told in the
dream. In relating it we would supply “the performance”; but in the
dream we must take the sentence as it is, declare it ambiguous, and add
“until she marries.” The interpretation “secret love” is then confirmed
by the mention of the cousin who sits with his wife in the parquette,
and by the open love-affair attributed to the latter. The contrasts
between secret and open love, between her fire and the coldness of the
young wife, dominate the dream. Moreover, here again there is a person
“in high position” as a middle term between the aristocrat and the
musician entitled to high hopes.
By means of the above discussion we have at last brought to light a
third factor, whose part in the transformation of the dream thoughts
into the dream content is not to be considered trivial; _it is the
regard for presentability_ (_German: Darstellbarkeit_) _in the peculiar
psychic material which the dream makes use of_,—that is fitness for
representation, for the most part by means of visual images. Among the
various subordinate ideas associated with the essential dream thoughts,
that one will be preferred which permits of a visual representation, and
the dream-activity does not hesitate promptly to recast the inflexible
thought into another verbal form, even if it is the more unusual one, as
long as this form makes dramatisation possible, and thus puts an end to
the psychological distress caused by cramped thinking. This pouring of
the thought content into another mould may at the same time be put at
the service of the condensation work, and may establish relations with
another thought which would otherwise not be present. This other thought
itself may perhaps have previously changed its original expression for
the purpose of meeting these relations half-way.
In view of the part played by puns, quotations, songs, and proverbs in
the intellectual life of educated persons, it would be entirely in
accordance with our expectation to find disguises of this sort used with
extraordinary frequency. For a few kinds of material a universally
applicable dream symbolism has been established on a basis of generally
known allusions and equivalents. A good part of this symbolism,
moreover, is possessed by the dream in common with the psychoneuroses,
and with legends and popular customs.