Autobiographical note 22 страница

¹ [Footnote added 1911:] When Ernest Jones was giving a scientific lecture on the egoism of dreams before an American audience, a learned lady objected to this unscientific generalization, saying that the author of the present work could only judge of the dreams of Austrians and had no business to speak of the dreams of Americans. So far as she was concerned, she was certain that all her dreams were strictly altruistic.- [Added 1925:] By way of excuse for this patriotic lady, I may remark that the statement that dreams are entirely egoistic must not be misunderstood. Since anything whatever that occurs in preconscious thought can pass into a dream (whether into its actual content or into the latent dream-thoughts) that possibility is equally open to altruistic impulses. In the same way, an affectionate or erotic impulse towards someone else, if it is present in the unconscious, can appear in a dream. The truth in the assertion made in the text above is thus restricted to the fact that among the unconscious instigators of a dream we very frequently find egoistic impulses which seem to have been overcome in waking life.

I have no experience of my own of other kinds of typical dreams, in which the dreamer finds himself flying through the air to the accompaniment of agreeable feelings or falling with feelings of anxiety; and whatever I have to say on the subject is derived from psycho-analyses. The information provided by the latter forces me to conclude that these dreams, too, reproduce impressions of childhood; they relate, that is, to games involving movement, which are extraordinarily attractive to children. There cannot be a single uncle who has not shown a child how to fly by rushing across the room with him in his outstretched arms, or who has not played at letting him fall by riding him on his knee and then suddenly stretching out his leg, or by holding him up high and then suddenly pretending to drop him. Children are delighted by such experiences and never tire of asking to have them repeated, especially if there is something about them that causes a little fright or giddiness. In after years they repeat these experiences in dreams; but in the dreams they leave out the hands which held them up, so that they float or fall unsupported. The delight taken by young children in games of this kind (as well as in swings and see-saws) is well known; and when they come to see acrobatic feats in a circus their memory of such games is revived.¹ Hysterical attacks in boys sometimes consist merely in reproductions of feats of this kind, carried out with great skill. It not uncommonly happens that these games of movement, though innocent in themselves, give rise to sexual feelings.² Childish ‘romping’, if I may use a word which commonly describes all such activities, is what is being repeated in dreams of flying, falling, giddiness and so on; while the pleasurable feelings attached to these experiences are transformed into anxiety. But often enough, as every mother knows, romping among children actually ends in squabbling and tears.

Thus I have good grounds for rejecting the theory that what provokes dreams of flying and falling is the state of our tactile feelings during sleep or sensations of the movement of our lungs, and so on. In my view these sensations are themselves reproduced as part of the memory to which the dream goes back: that is to say, they are part of the content of the dream and not its source.

¹ [Footnote added 1925:] Analytic research has shown us that in addition to pleasure derived from the organs concerned, there is another factor which contributes to the delight taken by children in acrobatic performances and to their repetition in hysterical attacks. This other factor is a memory-image, often unconscious, of an observation of sexual intercourse, whether between human beings or animals.

² A young medical colleague, who is quite free from any kind of nervous trouble, has given me the following information on this point: ‘I know from my own experience that in my childhood I had a peculiar sensation in my genitals when I was on a swing and especially when the downward motion reached its greatest momentum. And though I cannot say I really enjoyed this sensation I must describe it as a pleasurable one.’ - Patients have often told me that the first pleasurable erections that they can remember occurred in their boyhood while they were climbing about. - Psycho-analysis makes it perfectly certain that the first sexual impulses frequently have their roots in games involving romping and wrestling played during childhood.

I cannot, however, disguise from myself that I am unable to produce any complete explanation of this class of typical dreams. My material has left me in the lurch precisely at this point. I must, however, insist upon the general assertion that all the tactile and motor sensations which occur in these typical dreams are called up immediately there is any psychical reason for making use of them and that they can be disregarded when no such need for them arises. I am also of the opinion that the relation of these dreams to infantile experiences has been established with certainty from the indications I have found in the analyses of psychoneurotics. I am not able to say, however, what other meanings may become attached to the recollection of such sensations in the course of later life - different meanings, perhaps, in every individual case, in spite of the typical appearance of the dreams; and I should be glad to be able to fill up the gap by a careful analysis of clear instances. If anyone feels surprised that, in spite of the frequency precisely of dreams of flying, falling and pulling out teeth, etc., I should be complaining of lack of material on this particular topic, I must explain that I myself have not experienced any dreams of the kind since I turned my attention to the subject of dream-interpretation. The dreams of neurotics, moreover, of which I might otherwise avail myself, cannot always be interpreted not, at least, in many cases, so as to reveal the whole of their concealed meaning; a particular psychical force, which was concerned with the original constructing of the neurosis and is brought into operation once again when attempts are made at resolving it, prevents us from interpreting such dreams down to their last secret.

() EXAMINATION DREAMS

Everyone who has passed the matriculation examination at the end of his school studies complains of the obstinacy with which he is pursued by anxiety-dreams of having failed, or of being obliged to take the examination again, etc. In the case of those who have obtained a University degree this typical dream is replaced by another one which represents them as having failed in their University Finals; and it is in vain that they object, even while they are still asleep, that for years they have been practising medicine or working as University lecturers or heads of offices. The ineradicable memories of the punishments that we suffered for our evil deeds in childhood become active within us once more and attach themselves to the two crucial points in our studies - the ‘dies irae, dies illa’ of our stiffest examinations. The ‘examination anxiety’ of neurotics owes its intensification to these same childhood fears. After we have ceased to be school-children, our punishments are no longer inflicted on us by our parents or by those who brought us up or later by our schoolmasters. The relentless causal chains of real life take charge of our further education, and now we dream of Matriculation or Finals (and who has not trembled on those occasions, even if he was well-prepared for the examination?) whenever, having done something wrong or failed to do something properly, we expect to be punished by the event - whenever, in short, we feel the burden of responsibility.

For a further explanation of examination dreams I have to thank an experienced colleague, who once declared at a scientific meeting that so far as he knew dreams of Matriculation only occur in people who have successfully passed it and never in people who have failed in it. It would seem, then, that anxious examination dreams (which, as has been confirmed over and over again, appear when the dreamer has some responsible activity ahead of him next day and is afraid there may be a fiasco) search for some occasion in the past in which great anxiety has turned out to be unjustified and has been contradicted by the event. This, then, would be a very striking instance of the content of a dream being misunderstood by the waking agency. What is regarded as an indignant protest against the dream: ‘But I’m a doctor, etc., already!’ would in reality be the consolation put forward by the dream, and would accordingly run: ‘Don’t be afraid of tomorrow! Just think how anxious you were before your Matriculation, and yet nothing happened to you. You’re a doctor, etc., already.’ And the anxiety which is attributed to the dream would really have arisen from the day’s residues.

Such tests as I have been able to make of this explanation on myself and on other people, though they have not been sufficiently numerous, have confirmed its validity. For instance, I myself failed in Forensic Medicine in my Finals; but I have never had to cope with this subject in dreams, whereas I have quite often been examined in Botany, Zoology or Chemistry. I went in for the examination in these subjects with well-founded anxiety; but, whether by the grace of destiny or of the examiners, I escaped punishment. In my dreams of school examinations, I am invariably examined in History, in which I did brilliantly - though only, it is true, because my kindly master (the one-eyed benefactor of another dream, see p. 531) did not fail to notice that on the paper of questions which I handed him back I had run my finger-nail through the middle one of the three questions included, to warn him not to insist upon that particular one. One of my patients, who decided not to sit for his Matriculation the first time but passed it later, and who subsequently failed in his army examination and never got a commission, has told me that he often dreams of the former of these examinations but never of the latter.

The interpretation of examination dreams is faced by the difficulty which I have already referred to as characteristic of the majority of typical dreams. It is but rarely that the material with which the dreamer provides us in associations is sufficient to interpret the dream. It is only by collecting a considerable number of examples of such dreams that we can arrive at a better understanding of them. Not long ago I came to the conclusion that the objection, ‘You’re a doctor, etc., already’, does not merely conceal a consolation but also signifies a reproach. This would have run: ‘You’re quite old now, quite far advanced in life, and yet you go on doing these stupid, childish things.’ This mixture of self-criticism and consolation would thus correspond to the latent content of examination dreams. If so, it would not be surprising if the self-reproaches for being ‘stupid’ and ‘childish’ in these last examples referred to the repetition of reprehensible sexual acts.

Wilhelm Stekel, who put forward the first interpretation of dreams of Matriculation [‘Matura’], was of the opinion that they regularly related to sexual tests and sexual maturity. My experience has often confirmed his view.

CHAPTER VI THE DREAM-WORK

Every attempt that has hitherto been made to solve the problem of dreams has dealt directly with their manifest content as it is presented in our memory. All such attempts have endeavoured to arrive at an interpretation of dreams from their manifest content or (if no interpretation was attempted) to form a judgement as to their nature on the basis of that same manifest content. We are alone in taking something else into account. We have introduced a new class of psychical material between the manifest content of dreams and the conclusions of our enquiry: namely, their latent content, or (as we say) the ‘dream-thoughts’, arrived at by means of our procedure. It is from these dream-thoughts and not from a dream’s manifest content that we disentangle its meaning. We are thus presented with a new task which had no previous existence: the task, that is, of investigating the relations between the manifest content of dreams and the latent dream-thoughts, and of tracing out the processes by which the latter have been changed into the former.

The dream-thoughts and the dream-content are presented to us like two versions of the same subject-matter in two different languages. Or, more properly, the dream-content seems like a transcript of the dream-thoughts into another mode of expression, whose characters and syntactic laws it is our business to discover by comparing the original and the translation. The dream-thoughts are immediately comprehensible, as soon as we have learnt them. The dream-content, on the other hand, is expressed as it were in a pictographic script, the characters of which have to be transposed individually into the language of the dream-thoughts. If we attempted to read these characters according to their pictorial value instead of according to their symbolic relation, we should clearly be led into error. Suppose I have a picture-puzzle, a rebus, in front of me. It depicts a house with a boat on its roof, a single letter of the alphabet, the figure of a running man whose head has been conjured away, and so on. Now I might be misled into raising objections and declaring that the picture as a whole and its component parts are nonsensical. A boat has no business to be on the roof of a house, and a headless man cannot run. Moreover, the man is bigger than the house; and if the whole picture is intended to represent a landscape, letters of the alphabet are out of place in it since such objects do not occur in nature. But obviously we can only form a proper judgement of the rebus if we put aside criticisms such as these of the whole composition and its parts and if, instead, we try to replace each separate element by a syllable or word that can be represented by that element in some way or other. The words which are put together in this way are no longer nonsensical but may form a poetical phrase of the greatest beauty and significance. A dream is a picture puzzle of this sort and our predecessors in the field of dream interpretation have made the mistake of treating the rebus as a pictorial composition: and as such it has seemed to them nonsensical and worthless.

(A)THE WORK OF CONDENSATION

The first thing that becomes clear to anyone who compares the dream-content with the dream-thoughts is that a work of condensation on a large scale has been carried out. Dreams are brief, meagre and laconic in comparison with the range and wealth of the dream-thoughts. If a dream is written out it may perhaps fill half a page. The analysis setting out the dream-thoughts underlying it may occupy six, eight or a dozen times as much space. This relation varies with different dreams; but so far as my experience goes its direction never varies. As a rule one underestimates the amount of compression that has taken place, since one is inclined to regard the dream-thoughts that have been brought to light as the complete material, whereas if the work of interpretation is carried further it may reveal still more thoughts concealed behind the dream. I have already had occasion to point out that it is in fact never possible to be sure that a dream has been completely interpreted. Even if the solution seems satisfactory and without gaps, the possibility always remains that the dream may have yet another meaning. Strictly speaking, then, it is impossible to determine the amount of condensation.

There is an answer, which at first sight seems most plausible, to the argument that the great lack of proportion between the dream-content and the dream-thoughts implies that the psychical material has undergone an extensive process of condensation in the course of the formation of the dream. We very often have an impression that we have dreamt a great deal all through the night and have since forgotten most of what we dreamt. On this view, the dream which we remember when we wake up would only be a fragmentary remnant of the total dream-work; and this, if we could recollect it in its entirety, might well be as extensive as the dream-thoughts. There is undoubtedly some truth in this: there can be no question that dreams can be reproduced most accurately if we try to recall them as soon as we wake up and that our memory of them becomes more and more incomplete towards evening.But on the other hand it can be shown that the impression that we have dreamt a great deal more than we can reproduce is very often based on an illusion, the origin of which I shall discuss later. Moreover the hypothesis that condensation occurs during the dream-work is not affected by the possibility of dreams being forgotten, since this hypothesis is proved to be correct by the quantities of ideas which are related to each individual piece of the dream which has been retained. Even supposing that a large piece of the dream has escaped recollection, this may merely have prevented our having access to another group of dream-thoughts. There is no justification for supposing that the lost pieces of the dream would have related to the same thoughts which we have already reached from the pieces of the dream that have survived.¹

¹ [Footnote added 1914:] The occurrence of condensation in dreams has been hinted at by many writers. Du Prel (1885, 85) has a passage in which he says it is absolutely certain that there has been a process of condensation of the groups of ideas in dreams.

In view of the very great number of associations produced in analysis to each individual element of the content of a dream, some readers may be led to doubt whether, as a matter of principle, we are justified in regarding as part of the dream-thoughts all the associations that occur to us during the subsequent analysis - whether we are justified, that is, in supposing that all these thoughts were already active during the state of sleep and played a part in the formation of the dream. Is it not more probable that new trains of thought have arisen in the course of the analysis which had no share in forming the dream? I can only give limited assent to this argument. It is no doubt true that some trains of thought arise for the first time during the analysis. But one can convince oneself in all such cases that these new connections are only set up between thoughts which were already linked in some other way in the dream-thoughts. The new connections are, as it were, loop-lines or short-circuits, made possible by the existence of other and deeper-lying connecting paths. It must be allowed that the great bulk of the thoughts which are revealed in analysis were already active during the process of forming the dream; for, after working through a string of thoughts which seem to have no connection with the formation of a dream, one suddenly comes upon one which is represented in its content and is indispensable for its interpretation, but which could not have been reached except by this particular line of approach. I may here recall the dream of the botanical monograph, which strikes one as the product of an astonishing amount of condensation, even though I have not reported its analysis in full.

How, then, are we to picture psychical conditions during the period of sleep which precedes dreams? Are all the dream-thoughts present alongside one another? or do they occur in sequence? or do a number of trains of thought start out simultaneously from different centres and afterwards unite? There is no need for the present, in my opinion, to form any plastic idea of psychical conditions during the formation of dreams. It must not be forgotten, however, that we are dealing with an unconscious process of thought, which may easily be different from what we perceive during purposive reflection accompanied by consciousness.

The unquestionable fact remains, however, that the formation of dreams is based on a process of condensation. How is that condensation brought about?

When we reflect that only a small minority of all the dream-thoughts revealed are represented in the dream by one of their ideational elements, we might conclude that condensation is brought about by omission: that is, that the dream is not a faithful translation or a point-for-point projection of the dream thoughts, but a highly incomplete and fragmentary version of them. This view, as we shall soon discover, is a most inadequate one. But we may take it as a provisional starting-point and go on to a further question. If only a few elements from the dream-thoughts find their way into the dream-content, what are the conditions which determine their selection?

In order to get some light on this question we must turn our attention to those elements of the dream-content which must have fulfilled these conditions. And the most favourable material for such an investigation will be a dream to the construction of which a particularly intense process of condensation has contributed. I shall accordingly begin by choosing for the purpose the dream which I have already recorded on p. 657 ff..

I THE DREAM OF THE BOTANICAL MONOGRAPH

CONTENT OF THE DREAM. - I had written a monograph on an (unspecified) genus of plants. The book lay before me and I was at the moment turning over a folded coloured plate. Bound up in the copy there was a dried specimen of the plant.

The element in this dream which stood out most was the botanical monograph. This arose from the impressions of the dream day: I had in fact seen a monograph on the genus Cyclamen in the window of a book-shop. There was no mention of this genus in the content of the dream; all that was left in it was the monograph and its relation to botany. The ‘botanical monograph’ immediately revealed its connection with the work upon cocaine which I had once written. From ‘cocaine’ the chains of thought led on the one hand to the Festschrift and to certain events in a University laboratory, and on the other hand to my friend Dr. Königstein, the eye surgeon, who had had a share in the introduction of cocaine. The figure of Dr. Königstein further reminded me of the interrupted conversation which I had had with him the evening before and of my various reflections upon the payment for medical services among colleagues. This conversation was the actual currently active instigator of the dream; the monograph on the cyclamen was also a currently active impression, but one of an indifferent nature. As I perceived, the ‘botanical monograph’ in the dream turned out to be an ‘intermediate common entity’ between the two experiences of the previous day: it was taken over unaltered from the indifferent impression and was linked with the psychically significant event by copious associative connections.

Not only the compound idea, ‘botanical monograph’, however, but each of its components, ‘botanical’ and ‘monograph’ separately, led by numerous connecting paths deeper and deeper into the tangle of dream-thoughts. ‘Botanical’ was related to the figure of Professor Gärtner [Gardener], the blooming looks of his wife, to my patient Flora and to the lady of whom I had told the story of the forgotten flowers. Gärtner led in turn to the laboratory and to my conversation with Königstein. My two patients had been mentioned in the course of this conversation. A train of thought joined the lady with the flowers to my wife’s favourite flowers and thence to the title of the monograph which I had seen for a moment during the day. In addition to these, ‘botanical’ recalled an episode at my secondary school and an examination while I was at the University. A fresh topic touched upon in my conversation with Dr. Königstein - my favourite hobbies - was joined, through the intermediate link of what I jokingly called my favourite flower, the artichoke, with the train of thought proceeding from the forgotten flowers. Behind ‘artichokes’ lay, on the one hand, my thoughts about Italy and, on the other hand, a scene from my childhood which was the opening of what have since become my intimate relations with books. Thus ‘botanical’ was a regular nodal point in the dream. Numerous trains of thought converged upon it, which, as I can guarantee, had appropriately entered into the context of the conversation with Dr. Königstein. Here we find ourselves in a factory of thoughts where, as in the ‘weaver’s masterpiece’ -

Ein Tritt tausend Fäden regt,

Die Schifflein herüber hinüber schiessen,

Die Fäden ungesehen fliessen,

Ein Schlag tausend Verbindungen schlägt.¹

So, too, ‘monograph’ in the dream touches upon two subjects: the one-sidedness of my studies and the costliness of my favourite hobbies.

This first investigation leads us to conclude that the elements ‘botanical’ and ‘monograph’ found their way into the content of the dream because they possessed copious contacts with the majority of the dream-thoughts, because, that is to say, they constituted ‘nodal points’ upon which a great number of the dream-thoughts converged, and because they had several meanings in connection with the interpretation of the dream. The explanation of this fundamental fact can also be put in another way: each of the elements of the dream’s content turns out to have been ‘overdetermined’ - to have been represented in the dream-thoughts many times over.

¹ [... a thousand threads one treadle throws,

Where fly the shuttles hither and thither,

Unseen the threads are knit together,

And an infinite combination grows.]

We discover still more when we come to examine the remaining constituents of the dream in relation to their appearance in the dream-thoughts. The coloured plate which I was unfolding led (see the analysis, p. 660 f.) to a new topic, my colleagues’ criticisms of my activities, and to one which was already represented in the dream, my favourite hobbies; and it led, in addition, to the childhood memory in which I was pulling to pieces a book with coloured plates. The dried specimen of the plant touched upon the episode of the herbarium at my secondary school and specially stressed that memory.

The nature of the relation between dream-content and dream thoughts thus becomes visible. Not only are the elements of a dream determined by the dream-thoughts many times over, but the individual dream-thoughts are represented in the dream by several elements. Associative paths lead from one element of the dream to several dream-thoughts, and from one dream thought to several elements of the dream. Thus a dream is not constructed by each individual dream-thought, or group of dream-thoughts, finding (in abbreviated form) separate representation in the content of the dream - in the kind of way in which an electorate chooses parliamentary representatives; a dream is constructed, rather, by the whole mass of dream-thoughts being submitted to a sort of manipulative process in which those elements which have the most numerous and strongest supports acquire the right of entry into the dream-content - in a manner analogous to election by scrutin de liste. In the case of every dream which I have submitted to an analysis of this kind I have invariably found these same fundamental principles confirmed: the elements of the dream are constructed out of the whole mass of dream-thoughts and each one of those elements is shown to have been determined many times over in relation to the dream-thoughts.

It will certainly not be out of place to illustrate the connection between dream-content and dream-thoughts by a further example, which is distinguished by the specially ingenious interweaving of their reciprocal relations. It is a dream produced by one of my patients - a man whom I was treating for claustrophobia. It will soon become clear why I have chosen to give this exceptionally clever dream-production the title of

II ‘A LOVELY DREAM’

He was driving with a large party to X Street, in which there was an unpretentious inn. (This is not the case.) There was a play being acted inside it. At one moment he was audience, at another actor. When it was over, they had to change their clothes so as to get back to town. Some of the company were shown into rooms on the ground floor and others into rooms on the first floor. Then a dispute broke out. The ones up above were angry because the ones down below were not ready, and they could not come downstairs. His brother was up above and he was down below and he was angry with his brother because they were so much pressed. (This part was obscure.) Moreover it had been decided and arranged even when they first arrived who was to be up above and who was to be down below. Then he was walking by himself up the rise made by X Street in the direction of town. He walked with such difficulty and so laboriously that he seemed glued to the spot. An elderly gentleman came up to him and began abusing the King of Italy. At the top of the rise he was able to walk much more easily.

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