different, but I am strongly inclined to assume a more stringent
determination of the dream-wish. Children’s dreams leave no doubt that
an unfulfilled wish of the day may be the instigator of the dream. But
we must not forget that it is, after all, the wish of a child, that it
is a wish-feeling of infantile strength only. I have a strong doubt
whether an unfulfilled wish from the day would suffice to create a dream
in an adult. It would rather seem that as we learn to control our
impulses by intellectual activity, we more and more reject as vain the
formation or retention of such intense wishes as are natural to
childhood. In this, indeed, there may be individual variations; some
retain the infantile type of psychic processes longer than others. The
differences are here the same as those found in the gradual decline of
the originally distinct visual imagination.
In general, however, I am of the opinion that unfulfilled wishes of the
day are insufficient to produce a dream in adults. I readily admit that
the wish instigators originating in conscious life contribute towards
the incitement of dreams, but that is probably all. The dream would not
originate if the foreconscious wish were not reinforced from another
source.
That source is the unconscious. I believe that _the conscious wish is a
dream inciter only if it succeeds in arousing a similar unconscious wish
which reinforces it_. Following the suggestions obtained through the
psychoanalysis of the neuroses, I believe that these unconscious wishes
are always active and ready for expression whenever they find an
opportunity to unite themselves with an emotion from conscious life, and
that they transfer their greater intensity to the lesser intensity of
the latter.[FR] It may therefore seem that the conscious wish alone has
been realised in a dream; but a slight peculiarity in the formation of
this dream will put us on the track of the powerful helper from the
unconscious. These ever active and, as it were, immortal wishes from the
unconscious recall the legendary Titans who from time immemorial have
borne the ponderous mountains which were once rolled upon them by the
victorious gods, and which even now quiver from time to time from the
convulsions of their mighty limbs; I say that these wishes found in the
repression are of themselves of an infantile origin, as we have learned
from the psychological investigation of the neuroses. I should like,
therefore, to withdraw the opinion previously expressed that it is
unimportant whence the dream-wish originates, and replace it by another,
as follows: _The wish manifested in the dream must be an infantile one._
In the adult it originates in the Unc., while in the child, where no
separation and censor as yet exist between Forec. and Unc., or where
these are only in the process of formation, it is an unfulfilled and
unrepressed wish from the waking state. I am aware that this conception
cannot be generally demonstrated, but I maintain nevertheless that it
can be frequently demonstrated, even where it was not suspected, and
that it cannot be generally refuted.
The wish-feelings which remain from the conscious waking state are,
therefore, relegated to the background in the dream formation. In the
dream content I shall attribute to them only the part attributed to the
material of actual sensations during sleep (see p. 185). If I now take
into account those other psychic instigations remaining from the waking
state which are not wishes, I shall only adhere to the line mapped out
for me by this train of thought. We may succeed in provisionally
terminating the sum of energy of our waking thoughts by deciding to go
to sleep. He is a good sleeper who can do this; Napoleon I. is reputed
to have been a model of this sort. But we do not always succeed in
accomplishing it, or in accomplishing it perfectly. Unsolved problems,
harassing cares, overwhelming impressions continue the thinking activity
even during sleep, maintaining psychic processes in the system which we
have termed the foreconscious. These mental processes continuing into
sleep may be divided into the following groups: 1, That which has not
been terminated during the day owing to casual prevention; 2, that which
has been left unfinished by temporary paralysis of our mental power,
_i.e._ the unsolved; 3, that which has been rejected and suppressed
during the day. This unites with a powerful group (4) formed by that
which has been excited in our Unc. during the day by the work of the
foreconscious. Finally, we may add group (5) consisting of the
indifferent and hence unsettled impressions of the day.
We should not underrate the psychic intensities introduced into sleep by
these remnants of waking life, especially those emanating from the group
of the unsolved. These excitations surely continue to strive for
expression during the night, and we may assume with equal certainty that
the sleeping state renders impossible the usual continuation of the
excitement in the foreconscious and the termination of the excitement by
its becoming conscious. As far as we can normally become conscious of
our mental processes, even during the night, in so far we are not
asleep. I shall not venture to state what change is produced in the
Forec. system by the sleeping state, but there is no doubt that the
psychological character of sleep is essentially due to the change of
energy in this very system, which also dominates the approach to
motility, which is paralysed during sleep. In contradistinction to this,
there seems to be nothing in the psychology of the dream to warrant the
assumption that sleep produces any but secondary changes in the
conditions of the Unc. system. Hence, for the nocturnal excitation in
the Forec. there remains no other path than that followed by the wish
excitements from the Unc. This excitation must seek reinforcement from
the Unc., and follow the detours of the unconscious excitations. But
what is the relation of the foreconscious day remnants to the dream?
There is no doubt that they penetrate abundantly into the dream, that
they utilise the dream content to obtrude themselves upon consciousness
even during the night; indeed, they occasionally even dominate the dream
content, and impel it to continue the work of the day; it is also
certain that the day remnants may just as well have any other character
as that of wishes; but it is highly instructive and even decisive for
the theory of wish-fulfilment to see what conditions they must comply
with in order to be received into the dream.
Let us pick out one of the dreams cited above as examples, _e.g._, the
dream in which my friend Otto seems to show the symptoms of Basedow’s
disease (p. 228). My friend Otto’s appearance occasioned me some concern
during the day, and this worry, like everything else referring to this
person, affected me. I may also assume that these feelings followed me
into sleep. I was probably bent on finding out what was the matter with
him. In the night my worry found expression in the dream which I have
reported, the content of which was not only senseless, but failed to
show any wish-fulfilment. But I began to investigate for the source of
this incongruous expression of the solicitude felt during the day, and
analysis revealed the connection. I identified my friend Otto with a
certain Baron L. and myself with a Professor R. There was only one
explanation for my being impelled to select just this substitution for
the day thought. I must have always been prepared in the Unc. to
identify myself with Professor R., as it meant the realisation of one of
the immortal infantile wishes, viz. that of becoming great. Repulsive
ideas respecting my friend, that would certainly have been repudiated in
a waking state, took advantage of the opportunity to creep into the
dream, but the worry of the day likewise found some form of expression
through a substitution in the dream content. The day thought, which was
no wish in itself but rather a worry, had in some way to find a
connection with the infantile now unconscious and suppressed wish, which
then allowed it, though already properly prepared, to “originate” for
consciousness. The more dominating this worry, the stronger must be the
connection to be established; between the contents of the wish and that
of the worry there need be no connection, nor was there one in any of
our examples.
We can now sharply define the significance of the unconscious wish for
the dream. It may be admitted that there is a whole class of dreams in
which the incitement originates preponderatingly or even exclusively
from the remnants of daily life; and I believe that even my cherished
desire to become at some future time a “professor extraordinarius” would
have allowed me to slumber undisturbed that night had not my worry about
my friend’s health been still active. But this worry alone would not
have produced a dream; the motive power needed by the dream had to be
contributed by a wish, and it was the affair of the worriment to procure
for itself such wish as a motive power of the dream. To speak
figuratively, it is quite possible that a day thought plays the part of
the contractor (_entrepreneur_) in the dream. But it is known that no
matter what idea the contractor may have in mind, and how desirous he
may be of putting it into operation, he can do nothing without capital;
he must depend upon a capitalist to defray the necessary expenses, and
this capitalist, who supplies the psychic expenditure for the dream is
invariably and indisputably _a wish from the unconscious_, no matter
what the nature of the waking thought may be.
In other cases the capitalist himself is the contractor for the dream;
this, indeed, seems to be the more usual case. An unconscious wish is
produced by the day’s work, which in turn creates the dream. The dream
processes, moreover, run parallel with all the other possibilities of
the economic relationship used here as an illustration. Thus, the
entrepreneur may contribute some capital himself, or several
entrepreneurs may seek the aid of the same capitalist, or several
capitalists may jointly supply the capital required by the entrepreneur.
Thus there are dreams produced by more than one dream-wish, and many
similar variations which may readily be passed over and are of no
further interest to us. What we have left unfinished in this discussion
of the dream-wish we shall be able to develop later.
The “tertium comparationis” in the comparisons just employed—_i.e._ the
sum placed at our free disposal in proper allotment—admits of still
finer application for the illustration of the dream structure. As shown
on p. 285 we can recognise in most dreams a centre especially supplied
with perceptible intensity. This is regularly the direct representation
of the wish-fulfilment; for, if we undo the displacements of the
dream-work by a process of retrogression, we find that the psychic
intensity of the elements in the dream thoughts is replaced by the
perceptible intensity of the elements in the dream content. The elements
adjoining the wish-fulfilment have frequently nothing to do with its
sense, but prove to be descendants of painful thoughts which oppose the
wish. But, owing to their frequently artificial connection with the
central element, they have acquired sufficient intensity to enable them
to come to expression. Thus, the force of expression of the
wish-fulfilment is diffused over a certain sphere of association, within
which it raises to expression all elements, including those that are in
themselves impotent. In dreams having several strong wishes we can
readily separate from one another the spheres of the individual
wish-fulfilments; the gaps in the dream likewise can often be explained
as boundary zones.
Although the foregoing remarks have considerably limited the
significance of the day remnants for the dream, it will nevertheless be
worth our while to give them some attention. For they must be a
necessary ingredient in the formation of the dream, inasmuch as
experience reveals the surprising fact that every dream shows in its
content a connection with some impression of a recent day, often of the
most indifferent kind. So far we have failed to see any necessity for
this addition to the dream mixture (p. 153). This necessity appears only
when we follow closely the part played by the unconscious wish, and then
seek information in the psychology of the neuroses. We thus learn that
the unconscious idea, as such, is altogether incapable of entering into
the foreconscious, and that it can exert an influence there only by
uniting with a harmless idea already belonging to the foreconscious, to
which it transfers its intensity and under which it allows itself to be
concealed. This is the fact of transference which furnishes an
explanation for so many surprising occurrences in the psychic life of
neurotics.
The idea from the foreconscious which thus obtains an unmerited
abundance of intensity may be left unchanged by the transference, or it
may have forced upon it a modification from the content of the
transferring idea. I trust the reader will pardon my fondness for
comparisons from daily life, but I feel tempted to say that the
relations existing for the repressed idea are similar to the situations
existing in Austria for the American dentist, who is forbidden to
practise unless he gets permission from a regular physician to use his
name on the public signboard and thus cover the legal requirements.
Moreover, just as it is naturally not the busiest physicians who form
such alliances with dental practitioners, so in the psychic life only
such foreconscious or conscious ideas are chosen to cover a repressed
idea as have not themselves attracted much of the attention which is
operative in the foreconscious. The unconscious entangles with its
connections preferentially either those impressions and ideas of the
foreconscious which have been left unnoticed as indifferent, or those
that have soon been deprived of this attention through rejection. It is
a familiar fact from the association studies confirmed by every
experience, that ideas which have formed intimate connections in one
direction assume an almost negative attitude to whole groups of new
connections. I once tried from this principle to develop a theory for
hysterical paralysis.
If we assume that the same need for the transference of the repressed
ideas which we have learned to know from the analysis of the neuroses
makes its influence felt in the dream as well, we can at once explain
two riddles of the dream, viz. that every dream analysis shows an
interweaving of a recent impression, and that this recent element is
frequently of the most indifferent character. We may add what we have
already learned elsewhere, that these recent and indifferent elements
come so frequently into the dream content as a substitute for the most
deep-lying of the dream thoughts, for the further reason that they have
least to fear from the resisting censor. But while this freedom from
censorship explains only the preference for trivial elements, the
constant presence of recent elements points to the fact that there is a
need for transference. Both groups of impressions satisfy the demand of
the repression for material still free from associations, the
indifferent ones because they have offered no inducement for extensive
associations, and the recent ones because they have had insufficient
time to form such associations.
We thus see that the day remnants, among which we may now include the
indifferent impressions when they participate in the dream formation,
not only borrow from the Unc. the motive power at the disposal of the
repressed wish, but also offer to the unconscious something
indispensable, namely, the attachment necessary to the transference. If
we here attempted to penetrate more deeply into the psychic processes,
we should first have to throw more light on the play of emotions between
the foreconscious and the unconscious, to which, indeed, we are urged by
the study of the psychoneuroses, whereas the dream itself offers no
assistance in this respect.
Just one further remark about the day remnants. There is no doubt that
they are the actual disturbers of sleep, and not the dream, which, on
the contrary, strives to guard sleep. But we shall return to this point
later.
We have so far discussed the dream-wish, we have traced it to the sphere
of the Unc., and analysed its relations to the day remnants, which in
turn may be either wishes, psychic emotions of any other kind, or simply
recent impressions. We have thus made room for any claims that may be
made for the importance of conscious thought activity in dream
formations in all its variations. Relying upon our thought series, it
would not be at all impossible for us to explain even those extreme
cases in which the dream as a continuer of the day work brings to a
happy conclusion an unsolved problem of the waking state. We do not,
however, possess an example, the analysis of which might reveal the
infantile or repressed wish source furnishing such alliance and
successful strengthening of the efforts of the foreconscious activity.
But we have not come one step nearer a solution of the riddle: Why can
the unconscious furnish the motive power for the wish-fulfilment only
during sleep? The answer to this question must throw light on the
psychic nature of wishes; and it will be given with the aid of the
diagram of the psychic apparatus.
We do not doubt that even this apparatus attained its present perfection
through a long course of development. Let us attempt to restore it as it
existed in an early phase of its activity. From assumptions, to be
confirmed elsewhere, we know that at first the apparatus strove to keep
as free from excitement as possible, and in its first formation,
therefore, the scheme took the form of a reflex apparatus, which enabled
it promptly to discharge through the motor tracts any sensible stimulus
reaching it from without. But this simple function was disturbed by the
wants of life, which likewise furnish the impulse for the further
development of the apparatus. The wants of life first manifested
themselves to it in the form of the great physical needs. The excitement
aroused by the inner want seeks an outlet in motility, which may be
designated as “inner changes” or as an “expression of the emotions.” The
hungry child cries or fidgets helplessly, but its situation remains
unchanged; for the excitation proceeding from an inner want requires,
not a momentary outbreak, but a force working continuously. A change can
occur only if in some way a feeling of gratification is
experienced—which in the case of the child must be through outside
help—in order to remove the inner excitement. An essential constituent
of this experience is the appearance of a certain perception (of food in
our example), the memory picture of which thereafter remains associated
with the memory trace of the excitation of want.
Thanks to the established connection, there results at the next
appearance of this want a psychic feeling which revives the memory
picture of the former perception, and thus recalls the former perception
itself, _i.e._ it actually re-establishes the situation of the first
gratification. We call such a feeling a wish; the reappearance of the
perception constitutes the wish-fulfilment, and the full revival of the
perception by the want excitement constitutes the shortest road to the
wish-fulfilment. We may assume a primitive condition of the psychic
apparatus in which this road is really followed, _i.e._ where the
wishing merges into an hallucination. This first psychic activity
therefore aims at an identity of perception, _i.e._ it aims at a
repetition of that perception which is connected with the fulfilment of
the want.
This primitive mental activity must have been modified by bitter
practical experience into a more expedient secondary activity. The
establishment of the identity perception on the short regressive road
within the apparatus does not in another respect carry with it the
result which inevitably follows the revival of the same perception from
without. The gratification does not take place, and the want continues.
In order to equalise the internal with the external sum of energy, the
former must be continually maintained, just as actually happens in the
hallucinatory psychoses and in the deliriums of hunger which exhaust
their psychic capacity in clinging to the object desired. In order to
make more appropriate use of the psychic force, it becomes necessary to
inhibit the full regression so as to prevent it from extending beyond
the image of memory, whence it can select other paths leading ultimately
to the establishment of the desired identity from the outer world. This
inhibition and consequent deviation from the excitation becomes the task
of a second system which dominates the voluntary motility, _i.e._
through whose activity the expenditure of motility is now devoted to
previously recalled purposes. But this entire complicated mental
activity which works its way from the memory picture to the
establishment of the perception identity from the outer world merely
represents a detour which has been forced upon the wish-fulfilment by
experience.[FS] Thinking is indeed nothing but the equivalent of the
hallucinatory wish; and if the dream be called a wish-fulfilment this
becomes self-evident, as nothing but a wish can impel our psychic
apparatus to activity. The dream, which in fulfilling its wishes follows
the short regressive path, thereby preserves for us only an example of
the primary form of the psychic apparatus which has been abandoned as
inexpedient. What once ruled in the waking state when the psychic life
was still young and unfit seems to have been banished into the sleeping
state, just as we see again in the nursery the bow and arrow, the
discarded primitive weapons of grown-up humanity. _The dream is a
fragment of the abandoned psychic life of the child._ In the psychoses
these modes of operation of the psychic apparatus, which are normally
suppressed in the waking state, reassert themselves, and then betray
their inability to satisfy our wants in the outer world.
The unconscious wish-feelings evidently strive to assert themselves
during the day also, and the fact of transference and the psychoses
teach us that they endeavour to penetrate to consciousness and dominate
motility by the road leading through the system of the foreconscious. It
is, therefore, the censor lying between the Unc. and the Forec., the
assumption of which is forced upon us by the dream, that we have to
recognise and honour as the guardian of our psychic health. But is it
not carelessness on the part of this guardian to diminish its vigilance
during the night and to allow the suppressed emotions of the Unc. to
come to expression, thus again making possible the hallucinatory
regression? I think not, for when the critical guardian goes to rest—and
we have proof that his slumber is not profound—he takes care to close
the gate to motility. No matter what feelings from the otherwise
inhibited Unc. may roam about on the scene, they need not be interfered
with; they remain harmless because they are unable to put in motion the
motor apparatus which alone can exert a modifying influence upon the
outer world. Sleep guarantees the security of the fortress which is
under guard. Conditions are less harmless when a displacement of forces
is produced, not through a nocturnal diminution in the operation of the
critical censor, but through pathological enfeeblement of the latter or
through pathological reinforcement of the unconscious excitations, and
this while the foreconscious is charged with energy and the avenues to
motility are open. The guardian is then overpowered, the unconscious
excitations subdue the Forec.; through it they dominate our speech and
actions, or they enforce the hallucinatory regression, thus governing an
apparatus not designed for them by virtue of the attraction exerted by
the perceptions on the distribution of our psychic energy. We call this
condition a psychosis.