Autobiographical note 25 страница

The different portions of this complicated structure stand, of course, in the most manifold logical relations to one another. They can represent foreground and background, digressions and illustrations, conditions, chains of evidence and counter-arguments. When the whole mass of these dream-thoughts is brought under the pressure of the dream-work, and its elements are turned about, broken into fragments and jammed together - almost like pack-ice - the question arises of what happens to the logical connections which have hitherto formed its framework. What representation do dreams provide for ‘if’, ‘because’, ‘just as’, ‘although’, ‘either-or’, and all the other conjunctions without which we cannot understand sentences or speeches?

In the first resort our answer must be that dreams have no means at their disposal for representing these logical relations between the dream-thoughts. For the most part dreams disregard all these conjunctions, and it is only the substantive content of the dream-thoughts that they take over and manipulate. The restoration of the connections which the dream-work has destroyed is a task which has to be performed by the interpretative process.

The incapacity of dreams to express these things must lie in the nature of the psychical material out of which dreams are made. The plastic arts of painting and sculpture labour, indeed, under a similar limitation as compared with poetry, which can make use of speech; and here once again the reason for their incapacity lies in the nature of the material which these two forms of art manipulate in their effort to express something. Before painting became acquainted with the laws of expression by which it is governed, it made attempts to get over this handicap. In ancient paintings small labels were hung from the mouths of the persons represented, containing in written characters the speeches which the artist despaired of representing pictorially.

At this point an objection may perhaps be raised in dispute of the idea that dreams are unable to represent logical relations. For there are dreams in which the most complicated intellectual operations take place, statements are contradicted or confirmed, ridiculed or compared, just as they are in waking thought. But here again appearances are deceitful. If we go into the interpretation of dreams such as these, we find that the whole of this is part of the material of the dream-thoughts and is not a representation of intellectual work performed during the dream itself. What is reproduced by the ostensible thinking in the dream is the subject-matter of the dream-thoughts and not the mutual relations between them, the assertion of which constitutes thinking. I shall bring forward some instances of this. But the easiest point to establish in this connection is that all spoken sentences which occur in dreams and are specifically described as such are unmodified or slightly modified reproductions of speeches which are also to be found among the recollections in the material of the dream-thoughts. A speech of this kind is often no more than an allusion to some event included among the dream-thoughts, and the meaning of the dream may be a totally different one.

Nevertheless, I will not deny that critical thought-activity which is not a mere repetition of material in the dream-thoughts does have a share in the formation of dreams. I shall have to elucidate the part played by this factor at the end of the present discussion. It will then become apparent that this thought-activity is not produced by the dream-thoughts but by the dream itself after it has already, in a certain sense, been completed.

Provisionally, then, it may be said that the logical relations between the dream-thoughts are not given any separate representation in dreams. For instance, if a contradiction occurs in a dream, it is either a contradiction of the dream itself or a contradiction derived from the subject-matter of one of the dream-thoughts. A contradiction in a dream can only correspond in an exceedingly indirect manner to a contradiction between the dream-thoughts. But just as the art of painting eventually found a way of expressing, by means other than the floating labels, at least the intention of the words of the personages represented - affection, threats, warnings, and so on - so too there is a possible means by which dreams can take account of some of the logical relations between their dream-thoughts, by making an appropriate modification in the method of representation characteristic of dreams. Experience shows that different dreams vary greatly in this respect. While some dreams completely disregard the logical sequence of their material, others attempt to give as full an indication of it as possible. In doing so dreams depart sometimes more and some times less widely from the text that is at their disposal for manipulation. Incidentally dreams vary similarly in their treatment of the chronological sequence of the dream-thoughts, if such a sequence has been established in the unconscious (as, for instance, in the dream of Irma’s injection).

What means does the dream-work possess for indicating these relations in the dream-thoughts which it is so hard to represent? I will attempt to enumerate them one by one.

In the first place, dreams take into account in a general way the connection which undeniably exists between all the portions of the dream-thoughts by combining the whole material into a single situation or event. They reproduce logical connection by simultaneity in time. Here they are acting like the painter who, in a picture of the School of Athens or of Parnassus, represents in one group all the philosophers or all the poets. It is true that they were never in fact assembled in a single hall or on a single mountain-top; but they certainly form a group in the conceptual sense.

Dreams carry this method of reproduction down to details. Whenever they show us two elements close together, this guarantees that there is some specially intimate connection between what correspond to them among the dream-thoughts. In the same way, in our system of writing, ‘ab’ means that the two letters are to be pronounced in a single syllable. If a gap is left between the ‘a’ and the ‘b’, it means that the ‘a’ is the last letter of one word and the ‘b’ is the first of the next one. So, too, collocations in dreams do not consist of any chance, disconnected portions of the dream-material, but of portions which are fairly closely connected in the dream-thoughts as well.

For representing causal relations dreams have two procedures which are in essence the same. Suppose the dream-thoughts run like this: ‘Since this was so and so, such and such was bound to happen.’ Then the commoner method of representation would be to introduce the dependent clause as an introductory dream and to add the principal clause as the main dream. If I have interpreted aright, the temporal sequence may be reversed. But the more extensive part of the dream always corresponds to the principal clause.

One of my women patients once produced an excellent instance of this way of representing causality in a dream which I shall later record fully. It consisted of a short prelude and a very diffuse piece of dream which was centred to a marked degree on a single theme and might be entitled ‘The Language of Flowers.’

The introductory dream was as follows: She went into the kitchen, where her two maids were, and found fault with them for not having got her ‘bite of food’ ready. At the same time she saw a very large quantity of common kitchen crockery standing upside down in the kitchen to drain; it was piled up in heaps. The two maids went to fetch some water and had to step into a kind of river which came right up to the house or into the yard. The main dream then followed, beginning thus: She was descending from a height over some strangely constructed palisades, and felt glad that her dress was not caught in them... etc.

The introductory dream related to the dreamer’s parents’ home. No doubt she had often heard her mother using the words that occurred in the dream. The heaps of common crockery were derived from a modest hardware shop which was located in the same building. The other part of the dream contained a reference to her father, who used always to run after the maids and who eventually contracted a fatal illness during a flood. (The house stood near a river-bank.) Thus the thought concealed behind the introductory dream ran as follows: ‘Because I was born in this house, in such mean and depressing circumstances... ’ The main dream took up the same thought and presented it in a form modified by wish-fulfilment: ‘I am of high descent.’ Thus the actual underlying thought was: ‘Because I am of such low descent, the course of my life has been so and so.’

The division of a dream into two unequal parts does not invariably, so far as I can see, signify that there is a causal relation between the thoughts behind the two parts. It often seems as though the same material were being represented in the two dreams from different points of view. (This is certainly the case where a series of dreams during one night end in an emission or orgasm - a series in which the somatic need finds its way to progressively clearer expression.) Or the two dreams may have sprung from separate centres in the dream-material, and their content may overlap, so that what is the centre in one dream is present as a mere hint in the other, and vice versa. But in a certain number of dreams a division into a shorter preliminary dream and a longer sequel does in fact signify that there is a causal relation between the two pieces.

The other method of representing a causal relation is adapted to less extensive material and consists in one image in the dream, whether of a person or thing, being transformed into another. The existence of a causal relation is only to be taken seriously if the transformation actually occurs before our eyes and not if we merely notice that one thing has appeared in the place of another.

I have said that the two methods of representing a causal relation were in essence the same. In both cases causation is represented by temporal sequence: in one instance by a sequence of dreams and in the other by the direct transformation of one image into another. In the great majority of cases, it must be confessed, the causal relation is not represented at all but is lost in the confusion of elements which inevitably occurs in the process of dreaming.

The alternative ‘either-or’ cannot be expressed in dreams in any way whatever. Both of the alternatives are usually inserted in the text of the dream as though they were equally valid. The dream of Irma’s injection contains a classic instance of this. Its latent thoughts clearly ran: ‘I am not responsible for the persistence of Irma’s pains; the responsibility lies either in her recalcitrance to accepting my solution, or in the unfavourable sexual conditions under which she lives and which I cannot alter, or in the fact that her pains are not hysterical at all but of an organic nature.’ The dream, on the other hand, fulfilled all of these possibilities (which were almost mutually exclusive), and did not hesitate to add a fourth solution, based on the dream-wish. After interpreting the dream, I proceeded to insert the ‘either-or’ into the context of the dream thoughts.

If, however, in reproducing a dream, its narrator feels inclined to make use of an ‘either-or’ - e.g. ‘it was either a garden or a sitting-room’ - what was present in the dream-thoughts was not an alternative but an ‘and’, a simple addition. An ‘either-or’ is mostly used to describe a dream-element that has a quality of vagueness - which, however, is capable of being resolved. In such cases the rule for interpretation is: treat the two apparent alternatives as of equal validity and link them together with an ‘and’.

For instance, on one occasion a friend of mine was stopping in Italy and I had been without his address for a considerable time. I then had a dream of receiving a telegram containing this address. I saw it printed in blue on the telegraph form. The first word was vague:

‘Via’, perhaps

or ‘Villa’; the second was clear: ‘Secerno’

or possibly even (‘Casa’)

The second word sounded like some Italian name and reminded me of discussions I had had with my friend on the subject of etymology. It also expressed my anger with him for having kept his address secret from me for so long. On the other hand, each of the three alternatives for the first word turned out on analysis to be an independent and equally valid starting point for a chain of thoughts.

During the night before my father’s funeral I had a dream of a printed notice, placard or poster - rather like the notices forbidding one to smoke in railway waiting-rooms - on which appeared either

‘You are requested to close the eyes’

or, ‘You are requested to close an eye.’

I usually write this in the form:

the

‘You are requested to close eye(s).’

an

Each of these two versions had a meaning of its own and led in a different direction when the dream was interpreted. I had chosen the simplest possible ritual for the funeral, for I knew my father’s own views on such ceremonies. But some other members of the family were not sympathetic to such puritanical simplicity and thought we should be disgraced in the eyes of those who attended the funeral. Hence one of the versions: ‘you are requested to close an eye’, i.e. to ‘wink at’ or ‘overlook.’ Here it is particularly easy to see the meaning of the vagueness expressed by the ‘either-or.’ The dream-work failed to establish a unified wording for the dream-thoughts which could at the same time be ambiguous, and the two main lines of thought consequently began to diverge even in the manifest content of the dream.

In a few instances the difficulty of representing an alternative is got over by dividing the dream into two pieces of equal length.

The way in which dreams treat the category of contraries and contradictories is highly remarkable. It is simply disregarded. ‘No’ seems not to exist so far as dreams are concerned. They show a particular preference for combining contraries into a unity or for representing them as one and the same thing. Dreams feel themselves at liberty, moreover, to represent any element by its wishful contrary; so that there is no way of deciding at a first glance whether any element that admits of a contrary is present in the dream-thoughts as a positive or as a negative.¹

¹ [Footnote added 1911:] I was astonished to learn from a pamphlet by K. Abel, The Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words (1884) (cf. my review of it, 1910e) - and the fact has been confirmed by other philologists - that the most ancient languages behave exactly like dreams in this respect. In the first instance they have only a single word to describe the two contraries at the extreme ends of a series of qualities or activities (e.g. ‘strong-weak’, ‘old-young’, ‘far-near’, ‘bind-sever’); they only form distinct terms for the two contraries by a secondary process of making small modifications in the common word. Abel demonstrates this particularly from Ancient Egyptian; but he shows that there are distinct traces of the same course of development in the Semitic and Indo-Germanic languages as well.

In one of the dreams recorded just above, the first clause of which has already been interpreted (‘because my descent was such and such’), the dreamer saw herself climbing down over some palisades holding a blossoming branch in her hand. In connection with this image she thought of the angel holding a spray of lilies in pictures of the Annunciation - her own name was Maria - and of girls in white robes walking in Corpus Christi processions, when the streets are decorated with green branches. Thus the blossoming branch in the dream without any doubt alluded to sexual innocence. However, the branch was covered with red flowers, each of which was like a camellia. By the end of her walk - so the dream went on - the blossoms were already a good deal faded. There then followed some unmistakable allusions to menstruation. Accordingly, the same branch which was carried like a lily and as though by an innocent girl was at the same time an allusion to the Dame aux camélias who, as we know, usually wore a white camellia, except during her periods, when she wore a red one. The same blossoming branch (cf. ‘des Mädchens Blüten’ [‘the maiden’s blossoms’] in Goethe’s poem ‘Der Müllerin Verrat’) represented both sexual innocence and its contrary. And the same dream which expressed her joy at having succeeded in passing through life immaculately gave one glimpses at certain points (e.g. in the fading of the blossoms) of the contrary train of ideas - of her having been guilty of various sins against sexual purity (in her childhood, that is). In analysing the dream it was possible clearly to distinguish the two trains of thought, of which the consoling one seemed the more superficial and the self-reproachful one the deeper-lying - trains of thought which were diametrically opposed to each other but whose similar though contrary elements were represented by the same elements in the manifest dream.

One and one only of these logical relations is very highly favoured by the mechanism of dream-formation; namely, the relation of similarity, consonance or approximation - the relation of ‘just as’. This relation, unlike any other, is capable of being represented in dreams in a variety of ways.¹ Parallels or instances of ‘just as’ inherent in the material of the dream-thoughts constitute the first foundations for the construction of a dream; and no inconsiderable part of the dream-work consists in creating fresh parallels where those which are already present cannot find their way into the dream owing to the censorship imposed by resistance. The representation of the relation of similarity is assisted by the tendency of the dream-work towards condensation.

Similarity, consonance, the possession of common attributes - all these are represented in dreams by unification, which may either be present already in the material of the dream-thoughts or may be freshly constructed. The first of these possibilities may be described as ‘identification’ and the second as ‘composition.’ Identification is employed where persons are concerned; composition where things are the material of the unification. Nevertheless composition may also be applied to persons. Localities are often treated like persons.

In identification, only one of the persons who are linked by a common element succeeds in being represented in the manifest content of the dream, while the second or remaining persons seem to be suppressed in it. But this single covering figure appears in the dream in all the relations and situations which apply either to him or to the figures which he covers. In composition, where this is extended to persons, the dream-image contains features which are peculiar to one or other of the persons concerned but not common to them; so that the combination of these features leads to the appearance of a new unity, a composite figure. The actual process of composition can be carried out in various ways. On the one hand, the dream-figure may bear the name of one of the persons related to it - in which case we simply know directly, in a manner analogous to our waking knowledge, that this or that person is intended - while its visual features may belong to the other person. Or, on the other hand, the dream-image itself may be composed of visual features belonging in reality partly to the one person and partly to the other. Or again the second person’s share in the dream-image may lie, not in its visual features, but in the gestures that we attribute to it, the words that we make it speak, or the situation in which we place it. In this last case the distinction between identification and the construction of a composite figure begins to lose its sharpness. But it may also happen that the formation of a composite figure of this kind is unsuccessful. If so, the scene in the dream is attributed to one of the persons concerned, while the other (and usually the more important one) appears as an attendant figure without any other function. The dreamer may describe the position in such a phrase as: ‘My mother was there as well.’ (Stekel.) An element of this kind in the dream-content may be compared to the ‘determinatives’ used in hieroglyphic script, which are not meant to be pronounced but serve merely to elucidate other signs.

¹ [Footnote added 1914:] Cf. Aristotle’s remark on the qualifications of a dream-interpreter quoted above on p. 602 n. 2.

The common element which justifies, or rather causes, the combination of the two persons may be represented in the dream or may be omitted from it. As a rule the identification or construction of a composite person takes place for the very purpose of avoiding the representation of the common element. Instead of saying: ‘A has hostile feelings towards me and so has B’, I make a composite figure out of A and B in the dream, or I imagine A performing an act of some other kind which is characteristic of B. The dream-figure thus constructed appears in the dream in some quite new connection, and the circumstance that it represents both A and B justifies me in inserting at the appropriate point in the dream the element which is common to both of them, namely a hostile attitude towards me. It is often possible in this way to achieve quite a remarkable amount of condensation in the content of a dream; I can save myself the need for giving a direct representation of very complicated circumstances relating to one person, if I can find another person to whom some of these circumstances apply equally. It is easy to see, too, how well this method of representation by means of identification can serve to evade the censorship due to resistance, which imposes such severe conditions upon the dream-work. What the censorship objects to may lie precisely in certain ideas which, in the material of the dream-thoughts, are attached to a particular person; so I proceed to find a second person, who is also connected with the objectionable material, but only with part of it. The contact between the two persons upon this censorable point now justifies me in constructing a composite figure characterized by indifferent features derived from both. This figure, arrived at by identification or composition, is then admissible to the dream-content without censorship, and thus, by making use of dream-condensation, I have satisfied the claims of the dream-censorship.

When a common element between two persons is represented in a dream, it is usually a hint for us to look for another, concealed common element whose representation has been made impossible by the censorship. A displacement in regard to the common element has been made in order, as it were, to facilitate its representation. The fact that the composite figure appears in the dream with an indifferent common element leads us to conclude that there is another far from indifferent common element present in the dream-thoughts.

Accordingly, identification or the construction of composite figures serves various purposes in dreams: firstly to represent an element common to two persons, secondly to represent a displaced common element, and thirdly, too, to express a merely wishful common element. Since wishing that two persons had a common element frequently coincides with exchanging one for the other, this latter relation is also expressed in dreams by means of identification. In the dream of Irma’s injection, I wished to exchange her for another patient: I wished, that is, that the other woman might be my patient just as Irma was. The dream took this wish into account by showing me a person who was called Irma, but who was examined in a position in which I had only had occasion to see the other woman. In the dream about my uncle an exchange of this kind became the central point of the dream: I identified myself with the Minister by treating and judging my colleagues no better than he did.

It is my experience, and one to which I have found no exception, that every dream deals with the dreamer himself. Dreams are completely egoistical.¹ Whenever my own ego does not appear in the content of the dream, but only some extraneous person, I may safely assume that my own ego lies concealed, by identification, behind this other person; I can insert my ego into the context. On other occasions, when my own ego does appear in the dream, the situation in which it occurs may teach me that some other person lies concealed, by identification behind my ego. In that case the dream should warn me to transfer on to myself, when I am interpreting the dream, the concealed common element attached to this other person. There are also dreams in which my ego appears along with other people who, when the identification is resolved, are revealed once again as my ego. These identifications should then make it possible for me to bring into contact with my ego certain ideas whose acceptance has been forbidden by the censorship. Thus my ego may be represented in a dream several times over, now directly and now through identification with extraneous persons. By means of a number of such identifications it becomes possible to condense an extraordinary amount of thought-material.² The fact that the dreamer’s own ego appears several times, or in several forms, in a dream is at bottom no more remarkable than that the ego should be contained in a conscious thought several times or in different places or connections - e.g. in the sentence ‘when I think what a healthy child I was’.

Identifications in the case of proper names of localities are resolved even more easily than in the case of persons, since here there is no interference by the ego, which occupies such a dominating place in dreams. In one of my dreams about Rome (see p. 680 f.), the place in which I found myself was called Rome, but I was astonished at the quantity of German posters at a street-corner. This latter point was a wish-fulfilment, which at once made me think of Prague; and the wish itself may perhaps have dated from a German-nationalist phase which I passed through during my youth, but have since got over. At the time at which I had the dream there was a prospect of my meeting my friend in Prague; so that the identification of Rome and Prague can be explained as a wishful common element: I would rather have met my friend in Rome than in Prague and I would have liked to exchange Prague for Rome for the purpose of this meeting.

¹ [Footnote added 1925:] Cf. the footnote on p. 746.

² When I am in doubt behind which of the figures appearing in the dream my ego is to be looked for, I observe the following rule: the person who in the dream feels an emotion which I myself experience in my sleep is the one who conceals my ego.

The possibility of creating composite structures stands foremost among the characteristics which so often lend dreams a fantastic appearance, for it introduces into the content of dreams elements which could never have been objects of actual perception. The psychical process of constructing composite images in dreams is evidently the same as when we imagine or portray a centaur or a dragon in waking life. The only difference is that what determines the production of the imaginary figure in waking life is the impression which the new structure itself is intended to make; whereas the formation of the composite structure in a dream is determined by a factor extraneous to its actual shape - namely the common element in the dream-thoughts. Composite structures in dreams can be formed in a great variety of ways. The most naïve of these procedures merely represents the attributes of one thing to the accompaniment of a knowledge that they also belong to something else. A more painstaking technique combines the features of both objects into a new image and in so doing makes clever use of any similarities that the two objects may happen to possess in reality. The new structure may seem entirely absurd or may strike us as an imaginative success, according to the material and to the ingenuity with which it is put together. If the objects which are to be condensed into a single unity are much too incongruous, the dream-work is often content with creating a composite structure with a comparatively distinct nucleus, accompanied by a number of less distinct features. In that case the process of unification into a single image may be said to have failed. The two representations are superimposed and produce something in the nature of a contest between the two visual images. One might arrive at similar representations in a drawing, if one tried to illustrate the way in which a general concept is formed from a number of individual perceptual images.

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