neglected to draw an important conclusion from them. If the waking life
shows an unmistakable intention to forget the dream formed at night,
either as a whole, immediately after awakening, or in fragments during
the course of the day, and if we recognise as the chief participator in
this forgetting the psychic resistance against the dream which has
already performed its part in opposing the dream at night—then the
question arises, What has the dream formation actually accomplished
against this resistance? Let us consider the most striking case in which
the waking life has done away with the dream as though it had never
happened. If we take into consideration the play of the psychic forces,
we are forced to assert that the dream would have never come into
existence had the resistance held sway during the night as during the
day. We conclude then, that the resistance loses a part of its force
during the night; we know that it has not been extinguished, as we have
demonstrated its interest in the dream formation in the production of
the distortion. We have, then, forced upon us the possibility that it
abates at night, that the dream formation has become possible with this
diminution of the resistance, and we thus readily understand that,
having regained its full power with the awakening, it immediately sets
aside what it was forced to admit as long as it was in abeyance.
Descriptive psychology teaches us that the chief determinant in dream
formation is the dormant state of the mind. We may now add the following
elucidation: _The sleeping state makes dream formation possible by
diminishing the endopsychic censor._
We are certainly tempted to look upon this conclusion as the only one
possible from the facts of dream-forgetting, and to develop from it
further deductions concerning the proportions of energy in the sleeping
and waking states. But we shall stop here for the present. When we have
penetrated somewhat deeper into the psychology of the dream we shall
find that the origin of the dream formation may be differently
conceived. The resistance operating to prevent the dream thoughts coming
to consciousness may perhaps be eluded without suffering diminution _per
se_. It is also plausible that both the factors favourable to dream
formation, the diminution as well as the eluding of the resistance, may
be made possible simultaneously through the sleeping state. But we shall
pause here, and continue this line of thought later.
There is another series of objections against our procedure in the dream
interpretation which we must now consider. In this interpretation we
proceed by dropping all the end-presentations which otherwise control
reflection, we direct our attention to an individual element of the
dream, and then note the unwished-for thoughts that occur to us in this
connection. We then take up the next component of the dream content, and
repeat the operation with it; and, without caring in what direction the
thoughts take us, we allow ourselves to be led on by them until we end
by rambling from one subject to another. At the same time, we harbour
the confident hope that we may in the end, without effort, come upon the
dream thoughts from which our dream originated. Against this the critic
brings the following objection: That one can arrive somewhere, starting
from a single element in the dream is nothing wonderful. Something can
be associatively connected with every idea. It is remarkable only that
one should succeed in hitting the dream thoughts in this aimless and
arbitrary excursion of thought. It is probably a self-deception; the
investigator follows the chain of association from one element until for
some reason it is seen to break, when a second element is taken up; it
is thus but natural that the association, originally unbounded, should
now experience a narrowing. He keeps in mind the former chain of
associations, and he will therefore in analysis more easily hit upon
certain thoughts which have something in common with the thoughts from
the first chain. He then imagines that he has found a thought which
represents a point of junction between two elements of the dream. As he,
moreover, allows himself every freedom of thought connection, excepting
only the transitions from one idea to another which are made in normal
thinking, it is not finally difficult for him to concoct something which
he calls the dream thought out of a series of “intermediary thoughts”;
and without any guarantee, as they are otherwise unknown, he palms these
off as the psychic equivalent of the dream. But all this is accompanied
by arbitrary procedure and over-ingenious exploitation of coincidence.
Anyone who will go to this useless trouble can in this way work out any
desired interpretation for any dream whatever.
If such objections are really advanced against us, we may refer in our
defence to the agreement of our dream interpretations, to the surprising
connections with other dream elements which appear in following out the
different particular presentations, and to the improbability that
anything which so perfectly covers and explains the dream as our dream
interpretations do could be gained otherwise than by following psychic
connections previously established. We can also justify ourselves by the
fact that the method of dream analysis is identical with the method used
in the solution of hysterical symptoms, where the correctness of the
method is attested through the emergence and fading away of the
symptoms—that is, where the elucidation of the text by the interposed
illustrations finds corroboration. But we have no object in avoiding
this problem—how one can reach to a pre-established aim by following a
chain of thoughts spun out thus arbitrarily and aimlessly—for, though we
are unable to solve the problem, we can get rid of it entirely.
It is in fact demonstrably incorrect to state that we abandon ourselves
to an aimless course of thought when, as in the interpretation of
dreams, we relinquish our reflection and allow the unwished-for idea to
come to the surface. It can be shown that we can reject only those
end-presentations that are familiar to us, and that as soon as these
stop the unknown, or, as we say more precisely, the unconscious
end-presentations, immediately come into play, which now determined the
course of the unwished-for presentations. A mode of thinking without
end-idea can surely not be brought about through any influence we can
exert on our own mental life; nor do I know either of any state of
psychic derangement in which such mode of thought establishes itself.
The psychiatrists have in this field much too early rejected the
solidity of the psychic structure. I have ascertained that an
unregulated stream of thoughts, devoid of the end-presentation, occurs
as little in the realm of hysteria and paranoia as in the formation or
solution of dreams. Perhaps it does not appear at all in the endogenous
psychic affections, but even the deliria of confused states are senseful
according to the ingenious theory of Leuret and become incomprehensible
to us only through omissions. I have come to the same conviction
wherever I have found opportunity for observation. The deliria are the
work of a censor which no longer makes any effort to conceal its sway,
which, instead of lending its support to a revision no longer obnoxious
to it, cancels regardlessly that which it raises objections against,
thus causing the remnant to appear disconnected. This censor behaves
analogously to the Russian newspaper censor on the frontier, who allows
to fall into the hands of his protected readers only those foreign
journals that have passed under the black pencil.
The free play of the presentations following any associative
concatenation perhaps makes its appearance in destructive organic brain
lesions. What, however, is taken as such in the psychoneuroses can
always be explained as the influence of the censor on a series of
thoughts which have been pushed into the foreground by the concealed
end-presentation.[FM] It has been considered an unmistakable sign of
association free from the end-presentations when the emerging
presentations (or pictures) were connected with one another by means of
the so-called superficial associations—that is, by assonance, word
ambiguity, and causal connection without inner sense relationship; in
other words, when they were connected through all those associations
which we allow ourselves to make use of in wit and play upon words. This
distinguishing mark proves true for the connections of thought which
lead us from the elements of the dream content to the collaterals, and
from these to the thoughts of the dream proper; of this we have in our
dream analysis found many surprising examples. No connection was there
too loose and no wit too objectionable to serve as a bridge from one
thought to another. But the correct understanding of such tolerance is
not remote. _Whenever one psychic element is connected with another
through an obnoxious or superficial association, there also exists a
correct and more profound connection between the two which succumbs to
the resistance of the censor._
The correct explanation for the predominance of the superficial
associations is the pressure of the censor, and not the suppression of
the end-presentations. The superficial associations supplant the deep
ones in the presentation whenever the censor renders the normal
connective paths impassable. It is as if in a mountainous region a
general interruption of traffic, _e.g._, an inundation, should render
impassable the long and broad thoroughfares; traffic would then have to
be maintained through inconvenient and steep footpaths otherwise used
only by the hunter.
We can here distinguish two cases which, however, are essentially one.
In the first case the censor is directed only against the connection of
the two thoughts, which, having been detached from each other, escape
the opposition. The two thoughts then enter successively into
consciousness; their connection remains concealed; but in its place
there occurs to us a superficial connection between the two which we
would not otherwise have thought of, and which as a rule connects with
another angle of the presentation complex instead of with the one giving
rise to the suppressed but essential connection. Or, in the second case,
both thoughts on account of their content succumb to the censor; both
then appear not in their correct but in a modified substituted form; and
both substituted thoughts are so selected that they represent, through a
superficial association, the essential relation which existed between
those which have been replaced by them. Under the pressure of the censor
the displacement of a normal and vital association by a superficial and
apparently absurd one has thus occurred in both cases.
Because we know of this displacement we unhesitatingly place reliance
even upon superficial associations in the dream analysis.[FN]
The psychoanalysis of neurotics makes prolific use of the two axioms,
first that with the abandonment of the conscious end-presentation the
domination of the train of presentation is transferred to the concealed
end-presentations; and, secondly, that superficial associations are only
a substitutive displacement for suppressed and more profound ones;
indeed, psychoanalysis raises these two axioms to pillars of its
technique. When I request a patient to dismiss all reflection, and to
report to me whatever comes into his mind, I firmly cling to the
presupposition that he will not be able to drop the end-idea of the
treatment, and I feel justified in concluding that what he reports, even
though seemingly most harmless and arbitrary, has connection with this
morbid state. My own personality is another end-presentation concerning
which the patient has no inkling. The full appreciation, as well as the
detailed proof of both these explanations, belongs accordingly to the
description of the psychoanalytic technique as a therapeutic method. We
have here reached one of the allied subjects with which we propose to
leave the subject of the interpretation of dreams.[FO]
Of all the objections only one is correct, and still remains, namely,
that we ought not to ascribe all mental occurrences of the
interpretation work to the nocturnal dream-work. In the interpretation
in the waking state we are making a road running from the dream elements
back to the dream thoughts. The dream-work has made its way in the
opposite direction, and it is not at all probable that these roads are
equally passable in the opposite directions. It has, on the contrary,
been shown that during the day, by means of new thought connections we
make paths which strike the intermediate thoughts and the dream thoughts
in different places. We can see how the recent thought material of the
day takes its place in the groups of the interpretation, and probably
also forces the additional resistance appearing through the night to
make new and further detours. But the number and form of the collaterals
which we thus spin during the day is psychologically perfectly
negligible if it only leads the way to the desired dream thoughts.
(_b_) _Regression._
Now that we have guarded against objection, or at least indicated where
our weapons for defence rest, we need no longer delay entering upon the
psychological investigations for which we have so long prepared. Let us
bring together the main results of our investigations up to this point.
The dream is a momentous psychic act; its motive power is at all times
to fulfil a wish; its indiscernibleness as a wish and its many
peculiarities and absurdities are due to the influence of the psychic
censor to which it has been subjected during its formation. Apart from
the pressure to withdraw itself from this censor, the following have
played a part in its formation: a strong tendency to the condensation of
psychic material, a consideration for dramatisation into mental
pictures, and (though not regularly) a consideration for a rational and
intelligible exterior in the dream structure. From every one of these
propositions the road leads further to psychological postulates and
assumptions. Thus the reciprocal relation of the wish motives and the
four conditions, as well as the relations of these conditions to one
another will have to be investigated; and the dream will have to be
brought into association with the psychic life.
At the beginning of this chapter we cited a dream in order to remind us
of the riddles that are still unsolved. The interpretation of this dream
of the burning child afforded us no difficulties, although it was not
perfectly given in our present sense. We asked ourselves why it was
necessary, after all, that the father should dream instead of awakening,
and we recognised the wish to represent the child as living as the
single motive of the dream. That there was still another wish playing a
part in this connection, we shall be able to show after later
discussions. For the present, therefore, we may say that for the sake of
the wish-fulfilment the mental process of sleep was transformed into a
dream.
If the wish realisation is made retrogressive, only one quality still
remains which separates the two forms of psychic occurrences from each
other. The dream thought might have read: “I see a glimmer coming from
the room in which the corpse reposes. Perhaps a candle has been upset,
and the child is burning!” The dream reports the result of this
reflection unchanged, but represents it in a situation which takes place
in the present, and which is conceivable by the senses like an
experience in the waking state. This, however, is the most common and
the most striking psychological character of the dream; a thought,
usually the one wished for, is in the dream made objective and
represented as a scene, or, according to our belief, as experienced.
But how are we now to explain this characteristic peculiarity of the
dream-work, or, to speak more modestly, how are we to bring it into
relation with the psychic processes?
On closer examination, it is plainly seen that there are two pronounced
characters in the manifestations of the dream which are almost
independent of each other. The one is the representation as a present
situation with the omission of the “perhaps”; the other is the
transformation of the thought into visual pictures and into speech.
The transformation in the dream thoughts, which shifts into the present
the expectation expressed in them, is perhaps in this particular dream
not so very striking. This is probably in consonance with the special or
rather subsidiary rôle of the wish-fulfilment in this dream. Let us take
another dream in which the dream-wish does not separate itself in sleep
from a continuation of the waking thoughts, _e.g._, the dream of Irma’s
injection. Here the dream thought reaching representation is in the
optative, “If Otto could only be blamed for Irma’s sickness!” The dream
suppresses the optative, and replaces it by a simple present, “Yes, Otto
is to blame for Irma’s sickness.” This is therefore the first of the
changes which even the undistorted dream undertakes with the dream
thought. But we shall not stop long at this first peculiarity of the
dream. We elucidate it by a reference to the conscious phantasy, the day
dream, which behaves similarly with its presentation content. When
Daudet’s Mr. Joyeuse wanders through the streets of Paris unemployed
while his daughter is led to believe that he has a position and is in
his office, he likewise dreams in the present of circumstances that
might help him to obtain protection and a position. The dream therefore
employs the present in the same manner and with the same right as the
day dream. The present is the tense in which the wish is represented as
fulfilled.
The second quality, however, is peculiar to the dream as distinguished
from the day dream, namely, that the presentation content is not
thought, but changed into perceptible images to which we give credence
and which we believe we experience. Let us add, however, that not all
dreams show this transformation of presentation into perceptible images.
There are dreams which consist solely of thoughts to which we cannot,
however, on that account deny the substantiality of dreams. My dream
“Autodidasker—the waking phantasy with Professor N.”—is of that nature;
it contains hardly more perceptible elements than if I had thought its
content during the day. Moreover, every long dream contains elements
which have not experienced the transformation into the perceptible, and
which are simply thought or known as we are wont to think or know in our
waking state. We may also recall here that such transformation of ideas
into perceptible images does not occur in dreams only but also in
hallucinations and visions which perhaps appear spontaneously in health
or as symptoms in the psychoneuroses. In brief, the relation which we
are investigating here is in no way an exclusive one; the fact remains,
however, that where this character of the dream occurs, it appears to us
as the most noteworthy, so that we cannot think of it apart from the
dream life. Its explanation, however, requires a very detailed
discussion.
Among all the observations on the theory of dreams to be found in
authorities on the subject, I should like to lay stress upon one as
being worth mentioning. The great G. T. Fechner[35] expresses his belief
(_Psychophysik_, Part II., p. 520), in connection with some discussion
devoted to the dream, that the seat of the dream is elsewhere than in
the waking ideation. No other theory enables us to conceive the special
qualities of the dream life.
The idea which is placed at our disposal is one of psychic locality. We
shall entirely ignore the fact that the psychic apparatus with which we
are here dealing is also familiar to us as an anatomical specimen, and
we shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine the psychic
locality in any way anatomically. We shall remain on psychological
ground, and we shall think ourselves called upon only to conceive the
instrument which serves the psychic activities somewhat after the manner
of a compound microscope, a photographic or other similar apparatus. The
psychic locality, then, corresponds to a place within such an apparatus
in which one of the primary elements of the picture comes into
existence. As is well known, there are in the microscope and telescope
partly fanciful locations or regions in which no tangible portion of the
apparatus is located. I think it superfluous to apologise for the
imperfections of this and all similar figures. These comparisons are
designed only to assist us in our attempt to make clear the complication
of the psychic activity by breaking up this activity and referring the
single activities to the single component parts of the apparatus. No
one, so far as I know, has ever ventured to attempt to discover the
composition of the psychic instrument through such analysis. I see no
harm in such an attempt. I believe that we may give free rein to our
assumptions provided we at the same time preserve our cool judgment and
do not take the scaffolding for the building. As we need nothing except
auxiliary ideas for the first approach to any unknown subject, we shall
prefer the crudest and most tangible hypothesis to all others.
We therefore conceive the psychic apparatus as a compound instrument,
the component parts of which let us call instances, or, for the sake of
clearness, systems. We then entertain the expectation that these systems
perhaps maintain a constant spatial relationship to each other like the
different systems of lenses of the telescope, one behind another.
Strictly speaking, there is no need of assuming a real spatial
arrangement of the psychic system. It will serve our purpose if a firm
sequence be established through the fact that in certain psychological
occurrences the system will be traversed by the excitement in a definite
chronological order. This sequence may experience an alteration in other
processes; such possibility may be left open. For the sake of brevity,
we shall henceforth speak of the component parts of the apparatus as
“Ψ-systems.”
The first thing that strikes us is the fact that the apparatus composed
of Ψ-systems has a direction. All our psychic activities proceed from
(inner or outer) stimuli and terminate in innervations. We thus ascribe
to the apparatus a sensible and a motor end; at the sensible end we find
a system which receives the perceptions, and at the motor end another
which opens the locks of motility. The psychic process generally takes
its course from the perception end to the motility end. The most common
scheme of the psychic apparatus has therefore the following appearance:
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
But this is only in compliance with the demand long familiar to us, that
the psychic apparatus must be constructed like a reflex apparatus. The
reflex act remains the model for every psychic activity.
We have now reason to admit a first differentiation at the sensible end.
The perceptions that come to us leave a trace in our psychic apparatus
which we may call a “Memory trace.” The function which relates to this
memory trace we call the memory. If we hold seriously to our resolution
to connect the psychic processes into systems, the memory trace can then
consist only of lasting changes in the elements of the systems. But, as
has already been shown in other places, obvious difficulties arise if
one and the same system faithfully preserves changes in its elements and
still remains fresh and capable of admitting new motives for change.
Following the principle which directs our undertaking, we shall
distribute these two activities among two different systems. We assume
that a first system of the apparatus takes up the stimuli of perception,
but retains nothing from them—that is, it has no memory; and that behind
this there lies a second system which transforms the momentary
excitement of the first into lasting traces. This would then be a
diagram of our psychic apparatus:
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
It is known that from the perceptions that act on the P-system we retain
something else as lasting as the content itself. Our perceptions prove
to be connected with one another in memory, and this is especially the
case when they have once fallen together in simultaneity. We call this
the fact of association. It is now clear that if the P-system is
entirely lacking in memory, it certainly cannot preserve traces for the
associations; the individual P-elements would be intolerably hindered in
their function if a remnant of former connection should make its
influence felt against a new perception. Hence we must, on the contrary,
assume that the memory system is the basis of the association. The fact
of the association, then, consists in this—that, in consequence of the
diminutions in resistance and a smoothing of the ways from one of the
Mem-elements, the excitement transmits itself to a second rather than to
a third Mem-system.