Part 29

The condensation uclamparia—wet is therefore the point of junction for the dream as well as for the neurosis.

III. In a somewhat long and wild dream of my own, the chief point of which is apparently a sea voyage, it happens that the next landing is called Hearsing and the one farther on Fliess. The latter is the name of my friend living in B., who has often been the objective point of my travels. But Hearsing is put together from the names of places in the local environment of Vienna, which so often end in ing: Hietzing, Liesing, Moedling (Medelitz, “meæ deliciæ,” my own name, “my joy”) (joy = German Freude), and the English hearsay, which points to libel and establishes the relation to the indifferent dream excitement of the day—a poem in the Fliegende Blaetter about a slanderous dwarf, “Saidhe Hashesaid.” By connecting the final syllable “ing” with the name Fliess, “Vlissingen” is obtained, which is a real port on the sea-voyage which my brother passes when he comes to visit us from England. But the English for Vlissingen is Flushing, which signifies blushing and recalls erythrophobia (fear of blushing), which I treat, and also reminds me of a recent publication by Bechterew about this neurosis, which has given occasion for angry feelings in me.

IV. Upon another occasion I had a dream which consisted of two parts. The first was the vividly remembered word “Autodidasker,” the second was truthfully covered by a short and harmless fancy which had been developed a few days before, and which was to the effect that I must tell Professor N., when I saw him next: “The patient about whose condition I last consulted you is really suffering from a neurosis, just as you suspected.” The coinage “Autodidasker” must, then, not only satisfy the requirement that it should contain or represent a compressed meaning, but also that this meaning should have a valid connection with my purpose, which is repeated from waking life, of giving Professor N. his due credit.

Now Autodidasker is easily separated into author (German Autor), autodidact, and Lasker, with whom is associated the name Lasalle. The first of these words leads to the occasion of the dream—which this time is significant. I had brought home to my wife several volumes by a well-known author, who is a friend of my brother’s, and who, as I have learned, comes from the same town as I (J. J. David). One evening she spoke to me about the profound impression which the touching sadness of a story in one of David’s novels, about a talented but degenerate person, had made upon her, and our conversation turned upon the indications of talent which we perceive in our own children. Under the influence of what she had just read, my wife expressed a concern relative to our children, and I comforted her with the remark that it is just such dangers that can be averted by education. During the night my train of thoughts proceeded further, took up the concern of my wife, and connected with it all sorts of other things. An opinion which the poet had expressed to my brother upon the subject of marriage showed my thoughts a by-path which might lead to a representation in the dream. This path led to Breslau, into which city a lady who was a very good friend of ours had married. I found in Breslau Lasker and Lasalle as examples realising our concern about being ruined at the hands of a woman, examples which enabled me to represent both manifestations of this influence for the bad at once. The “Cherchez la femme,” in which these thoughts may be summed up, when taken in another sense, brings me to my brother, who is still unmarried and whose name is Alexander. Now I see that Alex, as we abbreviate the name, sounds almost like inversion of Lasker and that this factor must have taken part in giving my thoughts their detour by way of Breslau.

But this playing with names and syllables in which I am here engaged contains still another meaning. The wish that my brother may have a happy family life is represented by it in the following manner. In the artistic romance L’Œuvre, the writer, as is well known, has incidentally given an episodic account of himself and of his own family happiness, and he appears under the name of Sandoz. Probably he has taken the following course in the name transformation. Zola when inverted (as children like so much to do) gives Aloz. But that was still too undisguised for him; therefore he replaced the syllable Al, which stands at the beginning of the name Alexander, by the third syllable of the same name, sand, and thus Sandoz came about. In a similar manner my autodidasker originated.

My fancy, that I am telling Professor N. that the patient whom we had both seen is suffering from a neurosis, got into the dream in the following manner. Shortly before the close of my working year I received a patient in whose case my diagnosis failed me. A serious organic affliction—perhaps some changes in the spine—was to be assumed, but could not be proved. It would have been tempting to diagnose the trouble as a neurosis, and this would have put an end to all difficulties, had it not been for the fact that the sexual anamnesis, without which I am unwilling to admit a neurosis, was so energetically denied by the patient. In my embarrassment I called to my assistance the physician whom I respect most of all men (as others do also), and to whose authority I surrender most completely. He listened to my doubts, told me he thought them justified, and then said: “Keep on observing the man, it is probably a neurosis.” Since I know that he does not share my opinions about the etiology of neuroses, I suppressed my disagreement, but I did not conceal my scepticism. A few days after I informed the patient that I did not know what to do with him, and advised him to go to some one else. Thereupon, to my great astonishment, he began to beg my pardon for having lied to me, saying that he had felt very much ashamed; and now he revealed to me just that piece of sexual etiology which I had expected, and which I found necessary for assuming the existence of a neurosis. This was a relief to me, but at the same time a humiliation; for I had to admit that my consultant, who was not disconcerted by the absence of anamnesis, had made a correct observation. I made up my mind to tell him about it when I saw him again, and to say to him that he had been in the right and I in the wrong.

This is just what I do in the dream. But what sort of a wish is supposed to be fulfilled if I acknowledge that I am in the wrong? This is exactly my wish; I wish to be in the wrong with my apprehensions—that is to say, I wish that my wife whose fears I have appropriated in the dream thoughts may remain in the wrong. The subject to which the matter of being in the right or in the wrong is related in the dream is not far distant from what is really interesting to the dream thoughts. It is the same pair of alternatives of either organic or functional impairment through a woman, more properly through the sexual life—either tabetic paralysis or a neurosis—with which the manner of Lasalle’s ruin is more or less loosely connected.

In this well-joined dream (which, however, is quite transparent with the help of careful analysis) Professor N. plays a part not merely on account of this analogy and of my wish to remain in the wrong, or on account of the associated references to Breslau and to the family of our friend who is married there—but also on account of the following little occurrence which was connected with our consultation. After he had attended to our medical task by giving the above mentioned suggestion, his interest was directed to personal matters. “How many children have you now?”—“Six.”—A gesture of respect and reflection.—“Girls, boys?”—“Three of each. They are my pride and my treasure.”—“Well, there is no difficulty about the girls, but the boys give trouble later on in their education.” I replied that until now they had been very tractable; this second diagnosis concerning the future of my boys of course pleased me as little as the one he had made earlier, namely, that my patient had only a neurosis. These two impressions, then, are bound together by contiguity, by being successively received, and if I incorporate the story of the neurosis into the dream, I substitute it for the conversation upon education which shows itself to be even more closely connected with the dream thoughts owing to the fact that it has such an intimate bearing upon the subsequently expressed concerns of my wife. Thus even my fear that N. may turn out to be right in his remarks on the educational difficulties in the case of boys is admitted into the dream content, in that it is concealed behind the representation of my wish that I may be wrong in such apprehensions. The same fancy serves without change to represent both conflicting alternatives.

The verbal compositions of the dream are very similar to those which are known to occur in paranoia, but which are also found in hysteria and in compulsive ideas. The linguistic habits of children, who at certain periods actually treat words as objects and invent new languages and artificial syntaxes, are in this case the common source for the dream as well as for psychoneuroses.

When speeches occur in the dream, which are expressly distinguished from thoughts as such, it is an invariable rule that the dream speech has originated from a remembered speech in the dream material. Either the wording has been preserved in its integrity, or it has been slightly changed in the course of expression; frequently the dream speech is pieced together from various recollections of speeches, while the wording has remained the same and the meaning has possibly been changed so as to have two or more significations. Not infrequently the dream speech serves merely as an allusion to an incident, at which the recollected speech occurred.

(b) The Work of Displacement

Another sort of relation, which is no less significant, must have come to our notice while we were collecting examples of dream condensation. We have seen that those elements which obtrude themselves in the dream content as its essential components play a part in the dream thoughts which is by no means the same. As a correlative to this the converse of this thesis is also true. That which is clearly the essential thing in the dream thoughts need not be represented in the dream at all. The dream, as it were, is eccentric; its contents are grouped about other elements than the dream thoughts as a central point. Thus, for example, in the dream about the botanical monograph the central point of the dream content is apparently the element “botanical”; in the dream thoughts we are concerned with the complications and conflicts which result from services rendered among colleagues which put them under obligations to one another, subsequently with the reproach that I am in the habit of sacrificing too much to my hobbies, and the element “botanical” would in no case find a place in this nucleus of the dream thoughts if it were not loosely connected with it by an antithesis, for botany was never among my favourite studies. In the Sappho dream of my patient the ascending and descending, being upstairs and down, is made the central point; the dream, however, is concerned with the danger of sexual relations with persons of low degree, so that only one of the elements of the dream thoughts seems to have been taken over into the dream content, albeit with unseemly elaboration. Similarly in the dream about June bugs, whose subject is the relation of sexuality to cruelty, the factor of cruelty has indeed reappeared but in a different connection and without the mention of the sexual, that is to say, it has been torn from its context and transformed into something strange. Again, in the dream about my uncle, the blond beard, which seems to be its central point, appears to have no rational connection with the wishes for greatness which we have recognised as the nucleus of the dream thoughts. It is only to be expected if such dreams give a displaced impression. In complete contrast to these examples, the dream of Irma’s injection shows that individual elements can claim the same place in the formation of dreams which they occupy in the dream thoughts. The recognition of these new and entirely variable relations between the dream thoughts and the dream content is at first likely to excite our astonishment. If we find in a psychic process of normal life that an idea has been culled from among a number of others, and has acquired particular vividness in our consciousness, we are in the habit of regarding this result as a proof that the victorious idea is endowed with a peculiarly high degree of psychic value—a certain degree of interest. We now discover that this value of the individual elements in the dream thoughts is not preserved in the formation of the dream, or does not come into consideration. For there is no doubt as to the elements of the dream thoughts which are of the highest value; our judgment tells us immediately. In the formation of dreams those elements which are emphasized with intense interest may be treated as though they were inferior, and other elements are put in their place which certainly were inferior in the dream thoughts. We are at first given the impression that the psychic intensity of the individual ideas does not come into consideration at all for the selection made by the dream, but only their greater or smaller multiplicity of determination. Not what is important in the dream thoughts gets into the dream, but what is contained in them several times over, one might be inclined to think; but our understanding of the formation of dreams is not much furthered by this assumption, for at the outset it will be impossible to believe that the two factors of manifold determination and of integral value do not tend in the same direction in the influence they exert on the selection made by the dream. Those ideas in the dream thoughts which are most important are probably also those which recur most frequently, for the individual dream thoughts radiate from them as from central points. And still the dream may reject those elements which are especially emphasized and which receive manifold support, and may take up into its content elements which are endowed only with the latter property.

This difficulty may be solved by considering another impression received in the investigation of the manifold determination of the dream content. Perhaps many a reader has already passed his own judgment upon this investigation by saying that the manifold determination of the elements of the dream is not a significant discovery, because it is a self-evident one. In the analysis one starts from the dream elements, and registers all the notions which are connected with them; it is no wonder, then, that these elements should occur with particular frequency in the thought material which is obtained in this manner. I cannot acknowledge the validity of this objection, but shall say something myself which sounds like it. Among the thoughts which analysis brings to light, many can be found which are far removed from the central idea of the dream, and which appear distinguished from the rest as artificial interpolations for a definite purpose. Their purpose may easily be discovered; they are just the ones which establish a connection, often a forced and far-fetched one, between the dream content and the dream thoughts, and if these elements were to be weeded out, not only over-determination but also a sufficient determination by means of the dream thoughts would often be lacking for the dream content. We are thus led to the conclusion that manifold determination, which decides the selection made by the dream, is perhaps not always a primary factor in dream formation, but is often the secondary manifestation of a psychic power which is still unknown to us. But in spite of all this, manifold determination must nevertheless control the entrance of individual elements into the dream, for it is possible to observe that it is established with considerable effort in cases where it does not result from the dream material without assistance.

The assumption is not now far distant that a psychic force is expressed in dream activity which on the one hand strips elements of high psychic value of their intensity, and which on the other hand creates new values, by way of over-determination, from elements of small value, these new values subsequently getting into the dream content. If this is the method of procedure, there has taken place in the formation of the dream a transference and displacement of the psychic intensities of the individual elements, of which the textual difference between the dream and the thought content appears as a result. The process which we assume here is nothing less than the essential part of the dream activity; it merits the designation of dream displacement. Dream displacement and dream condensation are the two craftsmen to whom we may chiefly attribute the moulding of the dream.

I think we also have an easy task in recognising the psychic force which makes itself felt in the circumstances of dream displacement. The result of this displacement is that the dream content no longer resembles the core of the dream thoughts at all, and that the dream reproduces only a disfigured form of the dream-wish in the unconscious. But we are already acquainted with dream disfigurement; we have traced it back to the censorship which one psychic instance in the psychic life exercises upon the other. Dream displacement is one of the chief means for achieving this disfigurement. Is fecit, cui profuit. We may assume that dream displacement is brought about by the influence of this censor, of the endopsychic repulsion.

The manner in which the factors of displacement, condensation, and over-determination play into one another in the formation of the dream, which is the ruling factor and which the subordinate one, all this will be reserved as the subject of later investigations. For the present we may state, as a second condition which the elements must satisfy in order to get into the dream, that they must be withdrawn from the censor of resistance. From now on we shall take account of dream displacement as an unquestionable fact in the interpretation of dreams.

(c) Means of Representation in the Dream

Besides the two factors of dream condensation and dream displacement which we have found to be active in the transformation of the latent dream material into the manifest content, we shall come in the course of this investigation upon two other conditions which exercise an unquestionable influence upon the selection of the material which gets into the dream. Even at the risk of seeming to stop our progress, I should like to glance at the processes by which the interpretation of dreams is accomplished. I do not deny that I should succeed best in making them clear, and in showing that they are sufficiently reliable to insure them against attack, by taking a single dream as a paradigm and developing its interpretation, as I have done in Chapter II. in the dream of “Irma’s Injection,” and then putting together the dream thoughts which I have discovered, and reconstructing the formation of the dream from them—that is to say, by supplementing the analysis of dreams by a synthesis of them. I have accomplished this with several specimens for my own instruction; but I cannot undertake to do it here because I am prevented by considerations, which every right-minded person must approve of, relative to the psychic material necessary for such a demonstration. In the analysis of dreams these considerations present less difficulty, for an analysis may be incomplete and still retain its value even if it leads only a short way into the thought labyrinth of the dream. I do not see how a synthesis could be anything short of complete in order to be convincing. I could give a complete synthesis only of the dreams of such persons as are unknown to the reading public. Since, however, only neurotic patients furnish me with the means for doing this, this part of the description of the dream must be postponed until I can carry the psychological explanation of neuroses far enough—elsewhere—to be able to show their connection with the subject matter under consideration.

From my attempts synthetically to construct dreams from the dream thoughts, I know that the material which is obtained from interpretation varies in value. For a part of it consists of the essential dream thoughts which would, therefore, completely replace the dream, and which would in themselves be sufficient for this replacement if there were no censor for the dream. The other part may be summed up under the term “collaterals”; taken as a whole they represent the means by which the real wish that arises from the dream thoughts is transformed into the dream-wish. A first part of these “collaterals” consists of allusions to the actual dream thoughts, which, considered schematically, correspond to displacements from the essential to the non-essential. A second part comprises the thoughts which connect these non-essential elements, that have become significant through displacement with one another, and which reach from them into the dream content. Finally a third part contains the ideas and thought connections which (in the work of interpretation) conduct us from the dream content to the intermediary collaterals, all of which need not necessarily have participated in the formation of the dream.

At this point we are interested exclusively in the essential dream thoughts. These are usually found to be a complex of thoughts and memories of the most intricate possible construction, and to possess all the properties of the thought processes which are known to us from waking life. Not infrequently they are trains of thought which proceed from more than one centre, but which do not lack points of connection; almost regularly a chain of thought stands next to its contradictory correlative, being connected with it by contrast associations.

The individual parts of this complicated structure naturally stand in the most manifold logical relations to one another. They constitute a foreground or background, digressions, illustrations, conditions, chains of argument, and objections. When the whole mass of these dream thoughts is subjected to the pressure of the dream activity, during which the parts are turned about, broken up, and pushed together, something like drifting ice, there arises the question, what becomes of the logical ties which until now had given form to the structure? What representation do “if,” “because,” “as though,” “although,” “either—or,” and all the other conjunctions, without which we cannot understand a phrase or a sentence, receive in the dream?

At first we must answer that the dream has at its disposal no means for representing these logical relations among the dream thoughts. In most cases it disregards all these conjunctions, and undertakes the elaboration only of the objective content of the dream thoughts. It is left to the interpretation of the dream to restore the coherence which the activity of the dream has destroyed.

If the dream lacks ability to express these relations, the psychic material of which the dream is wrought must be responsible. The descriptive arts are limited in the same manner—painting and the plastic arts in comparison with poetry, which can employ speech; and here too the reason for this impotence is to be found in the material in the treatment of which the two arts strive to give expression to something. Before the art of painting had arrived at an understanding of the laws of expression by which it is bound, it attempted to escape this disadvantage. In old paintings little tags were hung from the mouths of the persons represented giving the speech, the expression of which in the picture the artist despaired of.

Perhaps an objection will here be raised challenging the assertion that the dream dispenses with the representation of logical relations. There are dreams in which the most complicated intellectual operations take place, in which proof and refutation are offered, puns and comparisons made, just as in waking thoughts. But here, too, appearances are deceitful; if the interpretation of such dreams is pursued, it is found that all of this is dream material, not the representation of intellectual activity in the dream. The content of the dream thoughts is reproduced by the apparent thinking of the dream, not the relations of the dream thoughts to one another, in the determination of which relations thinking consists. I shall give examples of this. But the thesis which is most easily established is that all speeches which occur in the dream, and which are expressly designated as such, are unchanged or only slightly modified copies of speeches which are likewise to be found in the recollections of the dream material. Often the speech is only an allusion to an event contained in the dream thoughts; the meaning of the dream is a quite different one.

I shall not deny, indeed, that there is also critical thought activity which does not merely repeat material from the dream thoughts and which takes part in the formation of the dream. I shall have to explain the influence of this factor at the close of this discussion. It will then become clear that this thought activity is evoked not by the dream thoughts, but by the dream itself after it is already finished in a certain sense.

We shall, therefore, consider it settled for the present that the logical relations among the dream thoughts do not enjoy any particular representation in the dream. For instance, where there is a contradiction in the dream, this is either a contradiction directed against the dream itself or a contradiction derived from the content of one of the dream thoughts; a contradiction in the dream corresponds to a contradiction among the dream thoughts only in a highly indirect manner.

But just as the art of painting finally succeeded in depicting in the represented persons, at least their intention in speaking—their tenderness, threatening attitude, warning mien, and the like—by other means than the dangling tag, so also the dream has found it possible to render account of a few of the logical relations among its dream thoughts by means of an appropriate modification of the peculiar method of dream representation. It will be found by experience that different dreams go to different lengths in taking this into consideration; while one dream entirely disregards the logical coherence of its material, another attempts to indicate it as completely as possible. In so doing the dream departs more or less widely from the subject-matter which it is to elaborate. The dream also takes a similarly varying attitude towards the temporal coherence of the dream thoughts, if such coherence has been established in the unconscious (as for example in the dream of Irma’s injection).

But what are the means by which the dream activity is enabled to indicate these relations in the dream material which are so difficult to represent? I shall attempt to enumerate these separately.