to this effect: The dreamer—an unmarried young man—is sitting in an inn,
which is seen correctly; several persons come to get him, among them
someone who wants to arrest him. He says to his table companions, “I
will pay later, I am coming back.” But they call to him, laughing
scornfully: “We know all about that; that’s what everybody says.” One
guest calls after him: “There goes another one.” He is then led to a
narrow hall, where he finds a woman with a child in her arms. One of his
escorts says: “That is Mr. Müller.” A commissioner or some other
official is running through a bundle of tickets or papers repeating
Müller, Müller, Müller. At last the commissioner asks him a question,
which he answers with “Yes.” He then takes a look at the woman, and
notices that she has grown a large beard.
The two component parts are here easily separated. What is superficial
is the _phantasy of being arrested_; it seems to be newly created by the
dream-work. But behind it appears the _phantasy of marriage_, and this
material, on the contrary, has undergone but slight change at the hands
of the dream activity. The features which are common to both phantasies
come into distinct prominence as in a Galton’s composite photograph. The
promise of the bachelor to come back to his place at the club table, the
scepticism of the drinking companions, sophisticated in their many
experiences, the calling after: “There goes (marries) another one,”—all
these features can easily be capable of the other interpretation.
Likewise the affirmative answer given to the official. Running through
the bundle of papers with the repetition of the name, corresponds to a
subordinate but well-recognised feature of the marriage ceremonies—the
reading aloud of the congratulatory telegrams which have arrived
irregularly, and which, of course, are all addressed to the same name.
In the matter of the bride’s personal appearance in this dream, the
marriage phantasy has even got the better of the arrest phantasy which
conceals it. The fact that this bride finally displays a beard, I can
explain from an inquiry—I had no chance to make an analysis. The dreamer
had on the previous day crossed the street with a friend who was just as
hostile to marriage as himself, and had called his friend’s attention to
a beautiful brunette who was coming towards them. The friend had
remarked: “Yes, if only these women wouldn’t get beards, as they grow
older, like their fathers.”
Of course there is no lack of elements in this dream, on which the dream
disfigurement has done more thorough work. Thus the speech: “I will pay
later,” may have reference to the conduct of the father-in-law in the
matter of dowry—which is uncertain. Obviously all kinds of scruples are
preventing the dreamer from surrendering himself with pleasure to the
phantasy of marrying. One of these apprehensions—lest one’s freedom be
lost when one marries—has embodied itself in the transformation to a
scene of arrest.
Let us return to the thesis that the dream activity likes to make use of
a phantasy which is finished and at hand, instead of creating one afresh
from the material of the dream thoughts; we shall perhaps solve one of
the most interesting riddles of the dream if we keep this fact in mind.
I have on page 21 related the dream of Maury,[48] who is struck on the
back of the neck with a stick, and who awakes in the possession of a
long dream—a complete romance from the time of the French Revolution.
Since the dream is represented as coherent and as explicable by
reference to the disturbing stimulus alone, about the occurrence of
which stimulus the sleeper could suspect nothing, only one assumption
seems to be left, namely, that the whole richly elaborated dream must
have been composed and must have taken place in the short space of time
between the falling of the stick on Maury’s cervical vertebra and the
awakening induced by the blow. We should not feel justified in ascribing
such rapidity to the waking mental activity, and so are inclined to
credit the dream activity with a remarkable acceleration of thought as
one of its characteristics.
Against this inference, which rapidly becomes popular, more recent
authors (Le Lorrain,[45] Egger,[20] and others) have made emphatic
objection. They partly doubt the correctness with which the dream was
reported by Maury, and partly try to show that the rapidity of our
waking mental capacity is quite as great as that which we may concede
without reservation to the dream activity. The discussion raises
fundamental questions, the settlement of which I do not think concerns
me closely. But I must admit that the argument, for instance, of Egger
has not impressed me as convincing against the guillotine dream of
Maury. I would suggest the following explanation of this dream: Would it
be very improbable that the dream of Maury exhibits a phantasy which had
been preserved in his memory in a finished state for years, and which
was awakened—I should rather say alluded to—at the moment when he became
aware of the disturbing stimulus? The difficulty of composing such a
long story with all its details in the exceedingly short space of time
which is here at the disposal of the dreamer then disappears; the story
is already composed. If the stick had struck Maury’s neck when he was
awake there would perhaps have been time for the thought: “Why, that’s
like being guillotined.” But as he is struck by the stick while asleep,
the dream activity quickly finds occasion in the incoming stimulus to
construct a wish-fulfilment, as though it thought (this is to be taken
entirely figuratively): “Here is a good opportunity to realise the wish
phantasy which I formed at such and such a time while I was reading.”
That this dream romance is just such a one as a youth would be likely to
fashion under the influence of powerful impressions does not seem
questionable to me. Who would not have been carried away—especially a
Frenchman and a student of the history of civilisation—by descriptions
of the Reign of Terror, in which the aristocracy, men and women, the
flower of the nation, showed that it was possible to die with a light
heart, and preserved their quick wit and refinement of life until the
fatal summons? How tempting to fancy one’s self in the midst of all this
as one of the young men who parts from his lady with a kiss of the hand
to climb fearlessly upon the scaffold! Or perhaps ambition is the ruling
motive of the phantasy—the ambition to put one’s self in the place of
one of those powerful individuals who merely, by the force of their
thinking and their fiery eloquence, rule the city in which the heart of
mankind is beating so convulsively, who are impelled by conviction to
send thousands of human beings to their death, and who pave the way for
the transformation of Europe; who, meanwhile, are not sure of their own
heads, and may one day lay them under the knife of the guillotine,
perhaps in the rôle of one of the Girondists or of the hero Danton? The
feature, “accompanied by an innumerable multitude,” which is preserved
in the memory, seems to show that Maury’s phantasy is an ambitious one
of this sort.
But this phantasy, which has for a long time been ready, need not be
experienced again in sleep; it suffices if it is, so to speak, “touched
off.” What I mean is this: If a few notes are struck and someone says,
as in _Don Juan_: “That is from _Figaro’s Wedding_ by Mozart,” memories
suddenly surge up within me, none of which I can in the next moment
recall to consciousness. The characteristic phrase serves as an entrance
station from which a complete whole is simultaneously put in motion. It
need not be different in the case of unconscious thought. The psychic
station which opens the way to the whole guillotine phantasy is set in
motion by the waking stimulus. This phantasy, however, is not passed in
review during sleep, but only afterwards in waking memory. Upon
awakening one remembers the details of the phantasy, which in the dream
was regarded as a whole. There is, withal, no means of making sure that
one really has remembered anything which has been dreamed. The same
explanation, namely, that one is dealing with finished phantasies which
have been set in motion as wholes by the waking stimulus, may be applied
to still other dreams which proceed from a waking stimulus—for instance
to the battle dream of Napoleon at the explosion of the bomb. I do not
mean to assert that all waking dreams admit of this explanation, or that
the problem of the accelerated discharge of ideas in dreams is to be
altogether solved in this manner.
We must not neglect the relation of this secondary elaboration of the
dream content to the other factors in the dream activity. Might the
procedure be as follows: the dream-creating factors, the impulse to
condense, the necessity of evading the censor, and the regard for
dramatic fitness in the psychic resources of the dream—these first of
all create a provisional dream content, and this is then subsequently
modified until it satisfies the exactions of a second instance? This is
hardly probable. It is necessary rather to assume that the demands of
this instance are from the very beginning lodged in one of the
conditions which the dream must satisfy, and that this condition, just
like those of condensation, of censorship, and of dramatic fitness,
simultaneously affect the whole mass of material in the dream thoughts
in an inductive and selective manner. But of the four conditions
necessary for the dream formation, the one last recognised is the one
whose exactions appear to be least binding upon the dream. That this
psychic function, which undertakes the so-called secondary elaboration
of the dream content is identical with the work of our waking thought
may be inferred with great probability from the following
consideration:—Our waking (foreconscious) thought behaves towards a
given object of perception just exactly as the function in question
behaves towards the dream content. It is natural for our waking thought
to bring about order in the material of perception, to construct
relationships, and to make it subject to the requirements of an
intelligible coherence. Indeed, we go too far in doing this; the tricks
of prestidigitators deceive us by taking advantage of this intellectual
habit. In our effort to put together the sensory impressions which are
offered to us in a comprehensible manner, we often commit the most
bizarre errors and even distort the truth of the material we have before
us. Proofs for this are too generally familiar to need more extended
consideration here. We fail to see errors in a printed page because our
imagination pictures the proper words. The editor of a widely-read
French paper is said to have risked the wager that he could print the
words “from in front” or “from behind” in every sentence of a long
article without any of his readers noticing it. He won the wager. A
curious example of incorrect associations years ago caught my attention
in a newspaper. After the session of the French chamber, at which Dupuy
quelled a panic caused by the explosion of a bomb thrown into the hall
by an anarchist by saying calmly, “La séance continue,” the visitors in
the gallery were asked to testify as to their impression of the
attempted assassination. Among them were two provincials. One of these
told that immediately after the conclusion of a speech he had heard a
detonation, but had thought that it was the custom in parliament to fire
a shot whenever a speaker had finished. The other, who had apparently
already heard several speakers, had got the same idea, with the
variation, however, that he supposed this shooting to be a sign of
appreciation following an especially successful speech.
Thus the psychic instance which approaches the dream content with the
demand that it must be intelligible, which subjects it to preliminary
interpretation, and in doing so brings about a complete misunderstanding
of it, is no other than our normal thought. In our interpretation the
rule will be in every case to disregard the apparent coherence of the
dream as being of suspicious origin, and, whether the elements are clear
or confused, to follow the same regressive path to the dream material.
We now learn upon what the scale of quality in dreams from confusion to
clearness—mentioned above, page 305—essentially depends. Those parts of
the dream with which the secondary elaboration has been able to
accomplish something seem to us clear; those where the power of this
activity has failed seem confused. Since the confused parts of the dream
are often also those which are less vividly imprinted, we may conclude
that the secondary dream-work is also responsible for a contribution to
the plastic intensity of the individual dream structures.
If I were to seek an object of comparison for the definitive formation
of the dream as it manifests itself under the influence of normal
thinking, none better offers itself than those mysterious inscriptions
with which _Die Fliegende Blaetter_ has so long amused its readers. The
reader is supposed to find a Latin inscription concealed in a given
sentence which, for the sake of contrast, is in dialect and as
scurrilous as possible in significance. For this purpose the letters are
taken from their groupings in syllables and are newly arranged. Now and
then a genuine Latin word results, at other places we think that we have
abbreviations of such words before us, and at still other places in the
inscription we allow ourselves to be carried along over the
senselessness of the disjointed letters by the semblance of
disintegrated portions or by breaks in the inscription. If we do not
wish to respond to the jest we must give up looking for an inscription,
must take the letters as we see them, and must compose them into words
of our mother tongue, unmindful of the arrangement which is offered.
I shall now undertake a résumé of this extended discussion of the dream
activity. We were confronted by the question whether the mind exerts all
its capabilities to the fullest development in dream formation, or only
a fragment of its capabilities, and these restricted in their activity.
Our investigation leads us to reject such a formulation of the question
entirely as inadequate to our circumstances. But if we are to remain on
the same ground when we answer as that on which the question is urged
upon us, we must acquiesce in two conceptions which are apparently
opposed and mutually exclusive. The psychic activity in dream formation
resolves itself into two functions—the provision of the dream thoughts
and the transformation of these into the dream content. The dream
thoughts are entirely correct, and are formed with all the psychic
expenditure of which we are capable; they belong to our thoughts which
have not become conscious, from which our thoughts which have become
conscious also result by means of a certain transposition. Much as there
may be about them which is worth knowing and mysterious, these problems
have no particular relation to the dream, and have no claim to be
treated in connection with dream problems. On the other hand, there is
that second portion of the activity which changes the unconscious
thoughts into the dream content, an activity peculiar to dream life and
characteristic of it. Now, this peculiar dream-work is much further
removed from the model of waking thought than even the most decided
depreciators of psychic activity in dream formation have thought. It is
not, one might say, more negligent, more incorrect, more easily
forgotten, more incomplete than waking thought; it is something
qualitatively altogether different from waking thought, and therefore
not in any way comparable to it. It does not in general think,
calculate, or judge at all, but limits itself to transforming. It can be
exhaustively described if the conditions which must be satisfied at its
creation are kept in mind. This product, the dream, must at any cost be
withdrawn from the censor, and for this purpose the dream activity makes
use of the _displacement of psychic intensities_ up to the
transvaluation of all psychic values; thoughts must exclusively or
predominatingly be reproduced in the material of visual and acoustic
traces of memory, and this requirement secures for the dream-work the
_regard for presentability_, which meets the requirement by furnishing
new displacements. Greater intensities are (probably) to be provided
than are each night at the disposal of the dream thoughts, and this
purpose is served by the prolific _condensation_ which is undertaken
with the component parts of the dream thoughts. Little attention is paid
to the logical relations of the thought material; they ultimately find a
veiled representation in the _formal_ peculiarities of the dream. The
affects of the dream thoughts undergo lesser changes than their
presentation content. As a rule they are suppressed; where they are
preserved they are freed from the presentations and put together
according to their similarity. Only one part of the dream-work—the
revision varying in amount, made by the partially roused conscious
thought—at all agrees with the conception which the authors have tried
to extend to the entire activity of dream formation.
VII
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM ACTIVITIES
Among the dreams which I have heard from others there is one which at
this point is especially worthy of our attention. It was told to me by a
female patient who in turn had heard it in a lecture on dreams. Its
original source is unknown to me. This dream evidently made a deep
impression upon the lady, as she went so far as to imitate it, _i.e._ to
repeat the elements of this dream in a dream of her own in order to
express by this transference her agreement with it in a certain point.
The essential facts of this illustrative dream are as follows: For days
and nights a father had watched at the sick-bed of his child. After the
child died, he retired to rest in an adjoining room, leaving the door
ajar, however, so as to enable him to look from his room into the other,
where the corpse lay surrounded by burning candles. An old man, who was
left as a watch, sat near the corpse murmuring prayers. After sleeping a
few hours the father dreamed that _the child stood near his bed clasping
his arms and calling out reproachfully, “Father, don’t you see that I am
burning?”_ The father woke and noticed a bright light coming from the
adjoining room. Rushing in, he found the old man asleep, and the covers
and one arm of the beloved body burned by the fallen candle.
The meaning of this affecting dream is simple enough, and the
explanation given by the lecturer, as my patient reported it, was
correct. The bright light coming through the open door into the eyes of
the sleeper produced the same impression on him as if he had been awake;
namely, that a fire had been started near the corpse by a falling
candle. It is quite possible that on going to sleep he feared that the
aged guardian was not equal to his task.
We can find nothing to change in this interpretation. We can add only
that the contents of the dream must be over-determined, and that the
talking of the child consisted of phrases that it had uttered while
still living, which recalled to the father important events. Perhaps the
complaint, “I am burning,” recalled the fever from which the child died,
and the words quoted, “Father, don’t you see?” recalled an emotional
occurrence unknown to us.
But after we have recognised the dream as a senseful occurrence which
can be correlated with our psychic existence, it may be surprising that
a dream should have taken place under circumstances which necessitated
such immediate awakening. We also notice that the dream does not lack
the wish-fulfilment. The child acts as if living; it warns the father
itself; it comes to his bed and clasps his arms, as it probably did on
the occasion which gave origin to the first part of the speech in the
dream. It was for the sake of this wish-fulfilment that the father slept
a moment longer. The dream triumphed over the conscious reflection
because it could show the child once more alive. If the father had
awakened first, and had then drawn the conclusion which led him into the
adjoining room, he would have shortened the child’s life by this one
moment.
The peculiar feature in this brief dream which engages our interest is
quite plain. So far we have mainly endeavoured to ascertain wherein the
secret meaning of the dream consists, in what way this is to be
discovered, and what means the dream-work uses to conceal it. In other
words, our greatest interest has hitherto centred on the problems of
interpretation. We now encounter a dream, however, which can be easily
explained, the sense of which is plainly presented; and we notice that
in spite of this fact the dream still preserves the essential features
which plainly differentiate our dreaming from our conscious thinking,
and thus clearly demands an explanation. After clearing up all the
problems of interpretation, we can still feel how imperfect our
psychology of the dream is.
Before entering, however, into this new territory, let us stop and
reflect whether we have not missed something important on our way
hither. For it must be frankly admitted that we have been traversing the
easy and comfortable part of our journey. Hitherto all the paths we have
followed have led, if I mistake not, to light, to explication, and to
full understanding, but from the moment that we wish to penetrate deeper
into the psychic processes of the dream all paths lead into darkness. It
is quite impossible to explain the dream as a psychic process, for to
explain means to trace to the known, and as yet we do not possess any
psychological knowledge under which we can range what may be inferred
from our psychological investigation of dreams as their fundamental
explanation. On the contrary, we shall be compelled to build a series of
new assumptions concerning the structure of the psychic apparatus and
its active forces; and this we shall have to be careful not to carry
beyond the simplest logical concatenation, as its value may otherwise
merge into uncertainty. And, even if we should make no mistake in our
conclusions, and take cognisance of all the logical possibilities
involved, we shall still be threatened with complete failure in our
solution through the probable incompleteness of our elemental data. It
will also be impossible to gain, or at least to establish, an
explanation for the construction and workings of the psychic instrument
even through a most careful investigation of the dream or any other
_single_ activity. On the contrary, it will be necessary for this end to
bring together whatever appears decisively as constant after a
comparative study of a whole series of psychic activities. Thus the
psychological conceptions which we shall gain from an analysis of the
dream process will have to wait, as it were, at the junction point until
they can be connected with the results of other investigations which may
have advanced to the nucleus of the same problem from another starting
point.
(_a_) _Forgetting in Dreams._