objection hitherto unnoticed, threatening to undermine the foundation of
our work in dream interpretation. It has been objected in more than one
quarter that the dream which we wish to interpret is really unknown to
us, or, to be more precise, that we have no assurance of knowing it as
it has really occurred (see p. 37). What we recollect of the dream, and
what we subject to our methods of interpretation, is in the first place
disfigured through our treacherous memory, which seems particularly
unfitted to retain the dream, and which may have omitted precisely the
most important part of the dream content. For, when we pay attention to
our dreams, we often find cause to complain that we have dreamed much
more than we remember; that, unfortunately, we know nothing more than
this one fragment, and that even this seems to us peculiarly uncertain.
On the other hand, everything assures us that our memory reproduces the
dream not only fragmentarily but also delusively and falsely. Just as on
the one hand we may doubt whether the material dreamt was really as
disconnected and confused as we remember it, so on the other hand may we
doubt whether a dream was as connected as we relate it; whether in the
attempt at reproduction we have not filled in the gaps existing or
caused by forgetfulness with new material arbitrarily chosen; whether we
have not embellished, rounded off, and prepared the dream so that all
judgment as to its real content becomes impossible. Indeed, one author
(Spitta[64]) has expressed his belief that all that is orderly and
connected is really first put into the dream during our attempt to
recall it. Thus we are in danger of having wrested from our hands the
very subject whose value we have undertaken to determine.
In our dream interpretations we have thus far ignored these warnings.
Indeed, the demand for interpretation was, on the contrary, found to be
no less perceptible in the smallest, most insignificant, and most
uncertain ingredients of the dream content than in those containing the
distinct and definite parts. In the dream of Irma’s injection we read,
“I quickly called in Dr. M.,” and we assumed that even this small
addendum would not have gotten into the dream if it had not had a
special derivation. Thus we reached the history of that unfortunate
patient to whose bed I “quickly” called in the older colleague. In the
apparently absurd dream which treated the difference between 51 and 56
as _quantité négligé_, the number 51 was repeatedly mentioned. Instead
of finding this self-evident or indifferent, we inferred from it a
second train of thought in the latent content of the dream which led to
the number 51. By following up this clue we came to the fears which
placed 51 years as a limit of life, this being in most marked contrast
to a dominant train of thought which boastfully knew no limit to life.
In the dream “Non Vixit” I found, as an insignificant interposition that
I at first overlooked, the sentence, “As P. does not understand him, Fl.
asks me,” &c. The interpretation then coming to a standstill, I returned
to these words, and found through them the way to the infantile
phantasy, which appeared in the dream thoughts as an intermediary point
of junction. This came about by means of the poet’s verses:
Seldom have you understood me,
Seldom have I understood you,
But when we got into the mire,
We at once understood each other.
Every analysis will demonstrate by examples how the most insignificant
features of the dream are indispensable to the analysis, and how the
finishing of the task is delayed by the fact that attention is not at
first directed to them. In the same way we have in the interpretation of
dreams respected every nuance of verbal expression found in the dream;
indeed, if we were confronted by a senseless or insufficient wording
betraying an unsuccessful effort to translate the dream in the proper
style, we have even respected these defects of expression. In brief,
what the authorities have considered arbitrary improvisation, concocted
hastily to suit the occasion, we have treated like a sacred text. This
contradiction requires an explanation.
It is in our favour, without disparagement to the authorities. From the
viewpoint of our newly-acquired understanding concerning the origin of
the dream, the contradictions fall into perfect agreement. It is true
that we distort the dream in our attempt to reproduce it; and herein we
find another instance of what we have designated as the often
misunderstood secondary elaboration of the dream through the influence
of normal thinking. But this distortion is itself only a part of the
elaboration to which the dream thoughts are regularly subjected by
virtue of the dream censor. The authorities have here divined or
observed that part of the dream distortion most obviously at work; to us
this is of little importance, for we know that a more prolific work of
distortion, not so easily comprehensible, has already chosen the dream
from among the concealed thoughts as its object. The authorities err
only in considering the modifications of the dream while it is being
recalled and put in words as arbitrary and insoluble; and hence, as
likely to mislead us in the interpretation of the dream. We
over-estimate the determination of the psychic. There is nothing
arbitrary in this field. It can quite generally be shown that a second
train of thought immediately undertakes the determination of the
elements which have been left undetermined by the first. I wish, _e.g._,
to think quite voluntarily of a number. This, however, is impossible.
The number that occurs to me is definitely and necessarily determined by
thoughts within me which may be far from my momentary intention.[FJ]
Just as far from arbitrary are the modifications which the dream
experiences through the revision of the waking state. They remain in
associative connection with the content, the place of which they take,
and serve to show us the way to this content, which may itself be the
substitute for another.
In the analysis of dreams with patients I am accustomed to institute the
following proof of this assertion, which has never proved unsuccessful.
If the report of a dream appears to me at first difficult to understand,
I request the dreamer to repeat it. This he rarely does in the same
words. The passages wherein the expression is changed have become known
to me as the weak points of the dream’s disguise, which are of the same
service to me as the embroidered mark on Siegfried’s raiment was to
Hagen. The analysis may start from these points. The narrator has been
admonished by my announcement that I mean to take special pains to solve
the dream, and immediately, under the impulse of resistance, he protects
the weak points of the dream’s disguise, replacing the treacherous
expressions by remoter ones. He thus calls my attention to the
expressions he has dropped. From the efforts made to guard against the
solution of the dream, I can also draw conclusions as to the care with
which the dream’s raiment was woven.
The authors are, however, less justified in giving so much importance to
the doubt which our judgment encounters in relating the dream. It is
true that this doubt betrays the lack of an intellectual assurance, but
our memory really knows no guarantees, and yet, much more often than is
objectively justified, we yield to the pressure of lending credence to
its statements. The doubt concerning the correct representation of the
dream, or of its individual data, is again only an offshoot of the dream
censor—that is, of the resistance against penetration to consciousness
of the dream thoughts. This resistance has not entirely exhausted itself
in bringing about the displacements and substitutions, and it therefore
adheres as doubt to what has been allowed to pass through. We can
recognise this doubt all the easier through the fact that it takes care
not to attack the intensive elements of the dream, but only the weak and
indistinct ones. For we already know that a transvaluation of all the
psychic values has taken place between the dream thoughts and the dream.
The disfigurement has been made possible only by the alteration of
values; it regularly manifests itself in this way and occasionally
contents itself with this. If doubt attaches to an indistinct element of
the dream content, we may, following the hint, recognise in this element
a direct offshoot of one of the outlawed dream thoughts. It is here just
as it was after a great revolution in one of the republics of antiquity
or of the Renaissance. The former noble and powerful ruling families are
now banished; all high positions are filled by upstarts; in the city
itself only the very poor and powerless citizens or the distant
followers of the vanquished party are tolerated. Even they do not enjoy
the full rights of citizenship. They are suspiciously watched. Instead
of the suspicion in the comparison, we have in our case the doubt. I
therefore insist that in the analysis of dreams one should emancipate
one’s self from the entire conception of estimating trustworthiness, and
when there is the slightest possibility that this or that occurred in
the dream, it should be treated as a full certainty. Until one has
decided to reject these considerations in tracing the dream elements,
the analysis will remain at a standstill. Antipathy toward the element
concerned shows its psychic effect in the person analysed by the fact
that the undesirable idea will evoke no thought in his mind. Such effect
is really not self-evident. It would not be inconsistent if one would
say: “Whether this or that was contained in the dream I do not know, but
the following thoughts occur to me in this direction.” But he never
expresses himself thus; and it is just this disturbing influence of
doubt in the analysis that stamps it as an offshoot and instrument of
the psychic resistance. Psychoanalysis is justly suspicious. One of its
rules reads: _Whatever disturbs the continuation of the work is a
resistance._
The forgetting of dreams, too, remains unfathomable as long as we do not
consider the force of the psychic censor in its explanation. The
feeling, indeed, that one has dreamt a great deal during the night and
has retained only a little of it may have another meaning in a number of
cases. It may perhaps signify that the dream-work has continued
perceptibly throughout the night, and has left behind only this short
dream. There is, however, no doubt of the fact that the dream is
progressively forgotten on awakening. One often forgets it in spite of
painful effort to remember. I believe, however, that just as one
generally over-estimates the extent of one’s forgetting, so also one
over-estimates the deficiencies in one’s knowledge, judging them by the
gaps occurring in the dream. All that has been lost through forgetting
in a dream content can often be brought back through analysis. At least,
in a whole series of cases, it is possible to discover from one single
remaining fragment, not the dream, to be sure, which is of little
importance, but all the thoughts of the dream. It requires a greater
expenditure of attention and self-control in the analysis; that is all.
But, at the same time, this suggests that the forgetting of the dream
does not lack a hostile intention.
A convincing proof of the purposeful nature of dream-forgetting, in the
service of resistance, is gained in analysis through the investigation
of a preliminary stage of forgetting.[FK] It often happens that in the
midst of interpretation work an omitted fragment of the dream suddenly
comes to the surface. This part of the dream snatched from forgetfulness
is always the most important part. It lies on the shortest road toward
the solution of the dream, and for that very reason it was most
objectionable to the resistance. Among the examples of dreams that I
have collected in connection with this treatise, it once happened that I
had to interpose subsequently such a piece of dream content. It was a
travelling dream, which took vengeance upon an unlovable female
travelling companion; I have left it almost entirely uninterpreted on
account of its being in part coarse and nasty. The part omitted read: “I
said about a book by Schiller, ‘It is from ——’ but corrected myself, for
I noticed the mistake myself, ‘It is by.’ Upon this the man remarked to
his sister, ‘Indeed, he said it correctly.’”
The self-correction in dreams, which seems so wonderful to some authors,
does not merit consideration by us. I shall rather show from my own
memory the model for the grammatical error in the dream. I was nineteen
years old when I visited England for the first time, and spent a day on
the shore of the Irish Sea. I naturally amused myself by catching the
sea animals left by the waves, and occupied myself in particular with a
starfish (the dream begins with Hollthurn—Holothurian), when a pretty
little girl came over to me and asked me, “Is it a starfish? Is it
alive?” I answered, “Yes, he is alive,” but was then ashamed of my
mistake and repeated the sentence correctly. For the grammatical mistake
which I then made, the dream substitutes another which is quite common
with Germans. “Das Buch ist von Schiller” should not be translated by
_the book is from_, but _the book is by_. That the dream-work produces
this substitution because the word _from_ makes possible, through
consonance, a remarkable condensation with the German adjective _fromm_
(pious, devout), no longer surprises us after all that we have heard
about the aims of the dream-work and about its reckless selection of
means of procedure. But what is the meaning of the harmless recollection
of the seashore in relation to the dream? It explains by means of a very
innocent example that I have used the wrong gender—_i.e._ that I have
put “he,” the word denoting the sex or the sexual, where it does not
belong. This is surely one of the keys to the solution of dreams. Who
ever has heard of the origin of the book-title _Matter and Motion_
(Molière in _Malade Imaginaire_: La matière est-elle laudable?—A motion
of the bowels) will readily be able to supply the missing parts.
Moreover, I can prove conclusively by a _demonstratio ad oculos_ that
the forgetting in dreams is in great part due to the activity of
resistance. A patient tells me that he has dreamed, but that the dream
has vanished without leaving a trace, as if nothing had happened. We
continue to work, however; I strike a resistance which I make plain to
the patient; by encouraging and urging I help him to become reconciled
to some disagreeable thought; and as soon as I have succeeded he
exclaims, “Now, I can recall what I have dreamed.” The same resistance
which that day disturbed him in the work caused him also to forget the
dream. By overcoming this resistance, I brought the dream to memory.
In the same way the patient may, on reaching a certain part of the work,
recall a dream which took place three, four, or more days before, and
which has rested in oblivion throughout all this time.
Psychoanalytic experience has furnished us with another proof of the
fact that the forgetting of dreams depends more on the resistance than
on the strangeness existing between the waking and sleeping states, as
the authorities have believed. It often happens to me, as well as to the
other analysts and to patients under treatment, that we are awakened
from sleep by a dream, as we would say, and immediately thereafter,
while in full possession of our mental activity, we begin to interpret
the dream. In such cases I have often not rested until I gained a full
understanding of the dream, and still it would happen that after the
awakening I have just as completely forgotten the interpretation work as
the dream content itself, though I was aware that I had dreamed and that
I had interpreted the dream. The dream has more frequently taken along
into forgetfulness the result of the interpretation work than it was
possible for the mental activity to retain the dream in memory. But
between this interpretation work and the waking thoughts there is not
that psychic gap through which alone the authorities wish to explain the
forgetting of dreams. Morton Prince objects to my explanation of the
forgetting of dreams on the ground that it is only a particular example
of amnesia for dissociated states, and that the impossibility of
harmonising my theory with other types of amnesia makes it also
valueless for other purposes. He thus makes the reader suspect that in
all his description of such dissociated states he has never made the
attempt to find the dynamic explanation for these phenomena. For, had he
done so, he surely would have discovered that the repression and the
resistance produced thereby “is quite as well the cause of this
dissociation as of the amnesia for its psychic content.”
That the dream is as little forgotten as the other psychic acts, and
that it clings to memory just as firmly as the other psychic activities
was demonstrated to me by an experiment which I was able to make while
compiling this manuscript. I have kept in my notes many dreams of my own
which, for some reason at the time I could analyse only imperfectly or
not at all. In order to get material to illustrate my assertions, I
attempted to subject some of them to analysis from one to two years
later. I succeeded in this attempt without any exception. Indeed, I may
even state that the interpretation went more easily at this later time
than at the time when the dreams were recent occurrences. As a possible
explanation for this fact, I would say that I had gotten over some of
the resistances which disturbed me at the time of dreaming. In such
subsequent interpretations I have compared the past results in dream
thoughts with the present, which have usually been more abundant, and
have invariably found the past results falling under the present without
change. I have, however, soon put an end to my surprise by recalling
that I have long been accustomed to interpret dreams from former years
which have occasionally been related to me by patients as if they were
dreams of the night before, with the same method and the same success. I
shall report two examples of such delayed dream interpretations in the
discussion of anxiety dreams. When I instituted this experiment for the
first time, I justly expected that the dream would behave in this
respect like a neurotic symptom. For when I treat a neurotic, perhaps an
hysteric, by psychoanalysis, I am compelled to find explanations for the
first symptoms of the disease which have long been forgotten, just as
for those still existing which have brought the patient to me; and I
find the former problem easier to solve than the more exigent one of
to-day. In the _Studien über Hysterie_, published as early as 1895, I
was able to report the explanation of a first hysterical attack of
anxiety which the patient, a woman over forty years of age, had
experienced in her fifteenth year.[FL]
I may now proceed in an informal way to some further observations on the
interpretation of dreams, which will perhaps be of service to the reader
who wishes to test my assertion by the analysis of his own dreams.
No one must expect that the interpretations of his dreams will come to
him overnight without any exertion. Practice is required even for the
perception of endoptic phenomena and other sensations usually withdrawn
from attention, although this group of perceptions is not opposed by any
psychic motive. It is considerably more difficult to become master of
the “undesirable presentations.” He who wishes to do this will have to
fulfil the requirements laid down in this treatise. Obeying the rules
here given, he will strive during the work to curb in himself every
critique, every prejudice, and every affective or intellectual
one-sidedness. We will always be mindful of the precept of Claude
Bernard for the experimenter in the physiological laboratory—“Travailler
comme une bête”—meaning he should be just as persistent, but also just
as unconcerned about the results. He who will follow these counsels will
surely no longer find the task difficult. The interpretation of a dream
cannot always be accomplished in one session; you often feel, after
following up a concatenation of thoughts, that your working capacity is
exhausted; the dream will not tell you anything more on that day; it is
then best to break off, and return to the work the following day.
Another portion of the dream content then solicits your attention, and
you thus find an opening to a new stratum of the dream thoughts. We may
call this the “fractionary” interpretation of dreams.
It is most difficult to induce the beginner in the interpretation of
dreams to recognise the fact that his task is not finished though he is
in possession of a complete interpretation of the dream which is
ingenious and connected, and which explains all the elements of the
dream. Besides this another superimposed interpretation of the same
dream may be possible which has escaped him. It is really not simple to
form an idea of the abundant unconscious streams of thought striving for
expression in our minds, and to believe in the skilfulness displayed by
the dream-work in hitting, so to speak, with its ambiguous manner of
expression, seven flies with one stroke, like the journeyman tailor in
the fairy tale. The reader will constantly be inclined to reproach the
author for uselessly squandering his ingenuity, but anyone who has had
experience of his own will learn to know better.
The question whether every dream can be interpreted may be answered in
the negative. One must not forget that in the work of interpretation one
must cope with the psychic forces which are responsible for the
distortion of the dream. Whether one can become master of the inner
resistances through his intellectual interest, his capacity for
self-control, his psychological knowledge, and his practice in dream
interpretation becomes a question of the preponderance of forces. It is
always possible to make some progress. One can at least go far enough to
become convinced that the dream is an ingenious construction, generally
far enough to gain an idea of its meaning. It happens very often that a
second dream confirms and continues the interpretation assumed for the
first. A whole series of dreams running for weeks or months rests on a
common basis, and is therefore to be interpreted in connection. In
dreams following each other, it may be often observed how one takes as
its central point what is indicated only as the periphery of the next,
or it is just the other way, so that the two supplement each other in
interpretation. That the different dreams of the same night are quite
regularly in the interpretation to be treated as a whole I have already
shown by examples.
In the best interpreted dreams we must often leave one portion in
obscurity because we observe in the interpretation that it represents
the beginning of a tangle of dream thoughts which cannot be unravelled
but which has furnished no new contribution to the dream content. This,
then, is the keystone of the dream, the place at which it mounts into
the unknown. For the dream thoughts which we come upon in the
interpretation must generally remain without a termination, and merge in
all directions into the net-like entanglement of our world of thoughts.
It is from some denser portion of this texture that the dream-wish then
arises like the mushroom from its mycelium.