II.
One day I discovered to my amazement that the popular view grounded in superstition, and not the medical one, comes nearer to the truth about dreams. I arrived at new conclusions about dreams by the use of a new method of psychological investigation, one which had rendered me good service in the investigation of phobias, obsessions, illusions, and the like, and which, under the name “psycho-analysis,” had found acceptance by a whole school of investigators. The manifold analogies of dream life with the most diverse conditions of psychical disease in the waking state have been rightly insisted upon by a number of medical observers. It seemed, therefore,a priori, hopeful to apply to the interpretation of dreams methods of investigation which had been tested in psychopathologicalprocesses. Obsessions and those peculiar sensations of haunting dread remain as strange to normal consciousness as do dreams to our waking consciousness; their origin is as unknown to consciousness as is that of dreams. It was practical ends that impelled us, in these diseases, to fathom their origin and formation. Experience had shown us that a cure and a consequent mastery of the obsessing ideas did result when once those thoughts, the connecting links between the morbid ideas and the rest of the psychical content, were revealed which were heretofore veiled from consciousness. The procedure I employed for the interpretation of dreams thus arose from psychotherapy.
This procedure is readily described, although its practice demands instruction and experience. Suppose the patient is suffering from intense morbid dread. He is requested to direct his attention to the idea in question, without, however, as he has so frequently done, meditating upon it.Every impression about it, without any exception, which occurs to him should be imparted to the doctor. The statement which will be perhaps then made, that he cannot concentrate his attention upon anything at all, is to be countered by assuring him most positively that such a blank state of mind is utterly impossible. As a matter of fact, a great number of impressions will soon occur, with which others will associate themselves. These will be invariably accompanied by the expression of the observer’s opinion that they have no meaning or are unimportant. It will be at once noticed that it is this self-criticism which prevented the patient from imparting the ideas, which had indeed already excluded them from consciousness. If the patient can be induced to abandon this self-criticism and to pursue the trains of thought which are yielded by concentrating the attention, most significant matter will be obtained, matter which will be presently seen to be clearly linked to the morbid ideain question. Its connection with other ideas will be manifest, and later on will permit the replacement of the morbid idea by a fresh one, which is perfectly adapted to psychical continuity.
This is not the place to examine thoroughly the hypothesis upon which this experiment rests, or the deductions which follow from its invariable success. It must suffice to state that we obtain matter enough for the resolution of every morbid idea if we especially direct our attention to theunbiddenassociationswhich disturb our thoughts—those which are otherwise put aside by the critic as worthless refuse. If the procedure is exercised on oneself, the best plan of helping the experiment is to write down at once all one’s first indistinct fancies.
I will now point out where this method leads when I apply it to the examination of dreams. Any dream could be made use of in this way. From certain motives I, however, choose a dream of my own, whichappears confused and meaningless to my memory, and one which has the advantage of brevity. Probably my dream of last night satisfies the requirements. Its content, fixed immediately after awakening, runs as follows:
“Company; at table or table d’hôte.... Spinach is served. Mrs. E. L., sitting next to me, gives me her undivided attention, and places her hand familiarly upon my knee. In defence I remove her hand. Then she says: ‘But you have always had such beautiful eyes.’... I then distinctly see something like two eyes as a sketch or as the contour of a spectacle lens....”
This is the whole dream, or, at all events, all that I can remember. It appears to me not only obscure and meaningless, but more especially odd. Mrs. E. L. is a person with whom I am scarcely on visiting terms, nor to my knowledge have I ever desired any more cordial relationship. I have not seen her for a long time, and do not think there was any mention of her recently. Noemotion whatever accompanied the dream process.
Reflecting upon this dream does not make it a bit clearer to my mind. I will now, however, present the ideas, without premeditation and without criticism, which introspection yielded. I soon notice that it is an advantage to break up the dream into its elements, and to search out the ideas which link themselves to each fragment.
Company; at table or table d’hôte.The recollection of the slight event with which the evening of yesterday ended is at once called up. I left a small party in the company of a friend, who offered to drive me home in his cab. “I prefer a taxi,” he said; “that gives one such a pleasant occupation; there is always something to look at.” When we were in the cab, and the cab-driver turned the disc so that the first sixty hellers were visible, I continued the jest. “We have hardly got in and we already owe sixty hellers. The taxi alwaysreminds me of the table d’hôte. It makes me avaricious and selfish by continuously reminding me of my debt. It seems to me to mount up too quickly, and I am always afraid that I shall be at a disadvantage, just as I cannot resist at table d’hôte the comical fear that I am getting too little, that I must look after myself.” In far-fetched connection with this I quote:
“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,To guilt ye let us heedless go.”
“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,To guilt ye let us heedless go.”
“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,To guilt ye let us heedless go.”
“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye let us heedless go.”
Another idea about the table d’hôte. A few weeks ago I was very cross with my dear wife at the dinner-table at a Tyrolese health resort, because she was not sufficiently reserved with some neighbours with whom I wished to have absolutely nothing to do. I begged her to occupy herself rather with me than with the strangers. That is just as if I hadbeen at a disadvantage at the table d’hôte. The contrast between the behaviour of my wife at that table and that of Mrs. E. L. inthe dream now strikes me: “Addresses herself entirely to me.”
Further, I now notice that the dream is the reproduction of a little scene which transpired between my wife and myself when I was secretly courting her. The caressing under cover of the tablecloth was an answer to a wooer’s passionate letter. In the dream, however, my wife is replaced by the unfamiliar E. L.
Mrs. E. L. is the daughter of a man to whom Iowed money! I cannot help noticing that here there is revealed an unsuspected connection between the dream content and my thoughts. If the chain of associations be followed up which proceeds from one element of the dream one is soon led back to another of its elements. The thoughts evoked by the dream stir up associations which were not noticeable in the dream itself.
Is it not customary, when someone expects others to look after his interests without any advantage to themselves, to askthe innocent question satirically: “Do you think this will be donefor the sake of your beautiful eyes?” Hence Mrs. E. L.’s speech in the dream. “You have always had such beautiful eyes,” means nothing but “people always do everything to you for love of you; you have hadeverything for nothing.” The contrary is, of course, the truth; I have always paid dearly for whatever kindness others have shown me. Still, the fact thatI had a ride for nothingyesterday when my friend drove me home in his cab must have made an impression upon me.
In any case, the friend whose guests we were yesterday has often made me his debtor. Recently I allowed an opportunity of requiting him to go by. He has had only one present from me, an antique shawl, upon which eyes are painted all round, a so-called Occhiale, as acharmagainst theMalocchio. Moreover, he is aneye specialist. That same evening I had asked him after a patient whom I had sent to him forglasses.
As I remarked, nearly all parts of thedream have been brought into this new connection. I still might ask why in the dream it wasspinachthat was served up. Because spinach called up a little scene which recently occurred at our table. A child, whosebeautiful eyesare really deserving of praise, refused to eatspinach. As a child I was just the same; for a long time I loathedspinach, until in later life my tastes altered, and it became one of my favourite dishes. The mention of this dish brings my own childhood and that of my child’s near together. “You should be glad that you have some spinach,” his mother had said to the little gourmet. “Some children would be very glad to get spinach.” Thus I am reminded of the parents’ duties towards their children. Goethe’s words—
“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,To guilt ye let us heedless go”—
“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,To guilt ye let us heedless go”—
“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,To guilt ye let us heedless go”—
“To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye let us heedless go”—
take on another meaning in this connection.
Here I will stop in order that I mayrecapitulate the results of the analysis of the dream. By following the associations which were linked to the single elements of the dream torn from their context, I have been led to a series of thoughts and reminiscences where I am bound to recognise interesting expressions of my psychical life. The matter yielded by an analysis of the dream stands in intimate relationship with the dream content, but this relationship is so special that I should never have been able to have inferred the new discoveries directly from the dream itself. The dream was passionless, disconnected, and unintelligible. During the time that I am unfolding the thoughts at the back of the dream I feel intense and well-grounded emotions. The thoughts themselves fit beautifully together into chains logically bound together with certain central ideas which ever repeat themselves. Such ideas not represented in the dream itself are in this instance the antithesesselfish, unselfish, to be indebted, to work for nothing. I coulddraw closer the threads of the web which analysis has disclosed, and would then be able to show how they all run together into a single knot; I am debarred from making this work public by considerations of a private, not of a scientific, nature. After having cleared up many things which I do not willingly acknowledge as mine, I should have much to reveal which had better remain my secret. Why, then, do not I choose another dream whose analysis would be more suitable for publication, so that I could awaken a fairer conviction of the sense and cohesion of the results disclosed by analysis? The answer is, because every dream which I investigate leads to the same difficulties and places me under the same need of discretion; nor should I forgo this difficulty any the more were I to analyse the dream of someone else. That could only be done when opportunity allowed all concealment to be dropped without injury to those who trusted me.
The conclusion which is now forced uponme is that the dream is asort of substitutionfor those emotional and intellectual trains of thought which I attained after complete analysis. I do not yet know the process by which the dream arose from those thoughts, but I perceive that it is wrong to regard the dream as psychically unimportant, a purely physical process which has arisen from the activity of isolated cortical elements awakened out of sleep.
I must further remark that the dream is far shorter than the thoughts which I hold it replaces; whilst analysis discovered that the dream was provoked by an unimportant occurrence the evening before the dream.
Naturally, I would not draw such far-reaching conclusions if only one analysis were known to me. Experience has shown me that when the associations of any dream are honestly followed such a chain of thought is revealed, the constituent parts of the dream reappear correctly and sensibly linked together; the slight suspicion that this concatenation was merely an accidentof a single first observation must, therefore, be absolutely relinquished. I regard it, therefore, as my right to establish this new view by a proper nomenclature. I contrast the dream which my memory evokes with the dream and other added matter revealed by analysis: the former I call the dream’smanifest content; the latter, without at first further subdivision, itslatent content. I arrive at two new problems hitherto unformulated: (1) What is the psychical process which has transformed the latent content of the dream into its manifest content? (2) What is the motive or the motives which have made such transformation exigent. The process by which the change from latent to manifest content is executed I name thedream work. In contrast with this is thework of analysis, which produces the reverse transformation. The other problems of the dream—the inquiry as to its stimuli, as to the source of its materials, as to its possible purpose, the function of dreaming, the forgetting ofdreams—these I will discuss in connection with the latent dream content.
I shall take every care to avoid a confusion between themanifestand thelatent content, for I ascribe all the contradictory as well as the incorrect accounts of dreamlife to the ignorance of this latent content, now first laid bare through analysis.