that are really unconscious—that is, with psychic acts belonging to
the system of the unconscious only. These paths are constantly open
and never fall into disuse; they conduct the discharge of the exciting
process as often as it becomes endowed with unconscious excitement. To
speak metaphorically they suffer the same form of annihilation as the
shades of the lower region in the _Odyssey_, who awoke to new life the
moment they drank blood. The processes depending on the foreconscious
system are destructible in a different way. The psychotherapy of the
neuroses is based on this difference.
Footnote FS:
Le Lorrain justly extols the wish-fulfilment of the dream: “Sans
fatigue sérieuse, sans être obligé de recourir à cette lutte opiniâtre
et longue qui use et corrode les jouissances poursuivies.”
Footnote FT:
This idea has been borrowed from _The Theory of Sleep_ by Liébault,
who revived hypnotic investigation in our days. (_Du Sommeil
provoqué_, etc.; Paris, 1889.)
Footnote FU:
The German of the word _bird_ is “Vogel,” which gives origin to the
vulgar expression “vöglen,” denoting sexual intercourse. (Trans.
note.)
Footnote FV:
The italics are my own, though the meaning is plain enough without
them.
Footnote FW:
The italics are mine.
Footnote FX:
_Cf._ the significant observations by J. Breuer in our _Studies on
Hysteria_, 1895, and 2nd ed. 1909.
Footnote FY:
Here, as in other places, there are gaps in the treatment of the
subject, which I have left intentionally, because to fill them up
would require on the one hand too great effort, and on the other hand
an extensive reference to material that is foreign to the dream. Thus
I have avoided stating whether I connect with the word “suppressed”
another sense than with the word “repressed.” It has been made clear
only that the latter emphasizes more than the former the relation to
the unconscious. I have not entered into the cognate problem why the
dream thoughts also experience distortion by the censor when they
abandon the progressive continuation to consciousness and choose the
path of regression. I have been above all anxious to awaken an
interest in the problems to which the further analysis of the
dream-work leads and to indicate the other themes which meet these on
the way. It was not always easy to decide just where the pursuit
should be discontinued. That I have not treated exhaustively the part
played in the dream by the psychosexual life and have avoided the
interpretation of dreams of an obvious sexual content is due to a
special reason which may not come up to the reader’s expectation. To
be sure, it is very far from my ideas and the principles expressed by
me in neuropathology to regard the sexual life as a “pudendum” which
should be left unconsidered by the physician and the scientific
investigator. I also consider ludicrous the moral indignation which
prompted the translator of Artemidoros of Daldis to keep from the
reader’s knowledge the chapter on sexual dreams contained in the
_Symbolism of the Dreams_. As for myself, I have been actuated solely
by the conviction that in the explanation of sexual dreams I should be
bound to entangle myself deeply in the still unexplained problems of
perversion and bisexuality; and for that reason I have reserved this
material for another connection.
Footnote FZ:
The dream is not the only phenomenon tending to base psychopathology
on psychology. In a short series of unfinished articles
(“Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie” entitled _Über den
psychischen Mechanismus der Vergesslichkeit_, 1898, and _Über
Deckerinnerungen_, 1899) I attempt to interpret a number of psychic
manifestations from everyday life in support of the same conception.
These and other articles on “Forgetting,” “Lapse of Speech,” &c., have
since been published collectively under the title of _Psychopathology
of Everyday Life_, 1904 and 1907, of which an English translation will
shortly appear.
Footnote GA:
“The Conception of the Unconscious in Psychology”: Lecture delivered
at the Third International Congress of Psychology at Munich, 1897.
Footnote GB:
_Cf._ here (p. 82) the dream (Σα-τυρος) of Alexander the Great at the
siege of Tyrus.
Footnote GC:
Professor Ernst Oppenheim (Vienna) has shown me from folk-lore
material that there is a class of dreams for which even the people
drop the expectation of future interpretation, and which they trace in
a perfectly correct manner to wish feelings and wants arising during
sleep. He will in the near future fully report upon these dreams,
which for the most part are in the form of “funny stories.”
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Not all numbered items in the Literary Index have corresponding
crossreferences in the text.
4. Footnotes were re-indexed using letters and collected together at
the end of the last chapter.
5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.