Part 37

“Thus years passed with dismal regularity. While the boss and I were working at Alpelhofer’s, at the house of the peasant where I began my apprenticeship, it happened that he was particularly dissatisfied with my work. ‘I should like to know where in the world your thoughts are?’ cried he, and looked at me gloomily, I thought the most sensible thing for me to do would be to get up and explain to the boss that I was with him only as a favour, and then leave. But I did not do this. I submitted, however, when the boss engaged an apprentice, and ordered me to make room for him on the bench. I moved into the corner, and kept on sewing. On the same day another tailor was engaged; he was bigoted, as he was a Czech who had worked for us nineteen years before, and then had fallen into the lake on his way home from the public-house. When he tried to sit down there was no room for him. I looked at the boss inquiringly, and he said to me, ‘You have no talent for the tailoring business; you may go; you are free.’ My fright on that occasion was so overpowering that I awoke.

“The morning gray glimmered through the clear window of my beloved home. Objects of art surrounded me; in the tasteful bookcase stood the eternal Homer, the gigantic Dante, the incomparable Shakespeare, the glorious Goethe—all shining and immortal. From the adjoining room resounded the clear little voices of the children, who were waking and prattling with their mother. I felt as if I had found again that idyllically sweet, that peaceful, poetical, and spiritual life which I have so often and so deeply conceived as the contemplative fortune of mankind. And still I was vexed that I had not given my boss notice first, instead of allowing him to discharge me.

“And how remarkable it is; after the night when the boss ‘discharged me’ I enjoyed rest; I no longer dreamed of my tailoring—of this experience which lay in the remote past, which in its simplicity was really happy, and which, nevertheless, threw a long shadow over the later years of my life.”

I. In this dream, the series of the poet who, in his younger years, has been a journeyman tailor, it is hard to recognise the domination of the wish-fulfilment. All the delightful things occurred during the waking state, while the dream seemed to drag along the ghostlike shadow of an unhappy existence which had been long forgotten. My own dreams of a similar nature have put me in a position to give some explanation for such dreams. As a young doctor I for a long time worked in the chemical institute without being able to accomplish anything in that exacting science, and I therefore never think in my waking state about this unfruitful episode in my life, of which I am really ashamed. On the other hand, it has become a recurring dream with me that I am working in the laboratory, making analyses, and having experiences there, &c.; like the examination dreams, these dreams are disagreeable, and they are never very distinct. During the analysis of one of these dreams my attention was directed to the word “analysis,” which, gave me the key to an understanding of these dreams. For I had since become an “analyst.” I make analyses which are highly praised—to be sure, psychoanalyses. I then understood that when I grew proud of these analyses of the waking state, and wanted to boast how much I had accomplished thereby, the dream would hold up to me at night those other unsuccessful analyses of which I had no reason to be proud; they are the punitive dreams of the upstart, like those of the tailor who became a celebrated poet. But how is it possible for the dream to place itself at the service of self-criticism in its conflict with parvenu-pride, and to take as its content a rational warning instead of the fulfilment of a prohibitive wish? I have already mentioned that the answer to this question entails many difficulties. We may conclude that the foundation of the dream was at first formed by a phantasy of overweening ambition, but that only its suppression and its abashment reached the dream content in its stead. One should remember that there are masochistic tendencies in the psychic life to which such an inversion might be attributed. But a more thorough investigation of the individual dreams allows the recognition of still another element. In an indistinct subordinate portion of one of my laboratory dreams, I was just at the age which placed me in the most gloomy and most unsuccessful year of my professional career; I still had no position and no means of support, when I suddenly found that I had the choice of many women whom I could marry! I was, therefore, young again, and, what is more, she was young again—the woman who has shared with me all these hard years. In this way one of the wishes which constantly frets the heart of the ageing man was revealed as the unconscious dream inciter. The struggle raging in the other psychic strata between vanity and self-criticism has certainly determined the dream content, but the more deeply-rooted wish of youth has alone made it possible as a dream. One may say to himself even in the waking state: To be sure it is very nice now, and times were once very hard; but it was nice, too, even then, you were still so young.

In considering dreams reported by a poet one may often assume that he has excluded from the report those details which he perceived as disturbing and which he considered unessential. His dreams, then, give us a riddle which could be readily solved if we had an exact reproduction of the dream content.

O. Rank has called my attention to the fact that in Grimm’s fairy tale of the valiant little tailor, or “Seven at one Stroke,” a very similar dream of an upstart is related. The tailor, who became the hero and married the king’s daughter, dreamed one night while with the princess, his wife, about his trade; the latter, becoming suspicious, ordered armed guards for the following night, who should listen to what was spoken in the dream, and who should do away with the dreamer. But the little tailor was warned, and knew enough to correct his dream.

The complex of processes—of suspension, subtraction, and inversion—through which the affects of the dream thoughts finally become those of the dream, may well be observed in the suitable synthesis of completely analysed dreams. I shall here treat a few cases of emotional excitement in the dream which furnish examples of some of the cases discussed.

In the dream about the odd task which the elder Bruecke gives me to perform—of preparing my own pelvis—the appropriate horror is absent in the dream itself. Now this is a wish-fulfilment in various senses. Preparation signifies self-analysis, which I accomplish, as it were, by publishing my book on dreams, and which has been so disagreeable to me that I have already postponed printing the finished manuscript for more than a year. The wish is now actuated that I may disregard this feeling of opposition, and for that reason I feel no horror (Grauen, which also means to grow grey) in the dream. I should also like to escape the horror—in the other (German) sense—of growing grey; for I am already growing grey fast, and the grey in my hair warns me withal to hold back no longer. For we know that at the end of the dream the thought secures expression in that I should have to leave my children to get to the goal of their difficult journey.

In the two dreams that shift the expression of satisfaction to the moments immediately after awakening, this satisfaction is in the one case motivated by the expectation that I am now going to learn what is meant by “I have already dreamed of it,” and refers in reality to the birth of my first child, and in the other case it is motivated by the conviction that “that which has been announced by a sign” is now going to happen, and the latter satisfaction is the same which I felt at the arrival of my second son. Here the same emotions that dominated in the dream thoughts have remained in the dream, but the process is probably not so simple as this in every dream. If the two analyses are examined a little, it will be seen that this satisfaction which does not succumb to the censor receives an addition from a source which must fear the censor; and the emotion drawn from this source would certainly arouse opposition if it did not cloak itself in a similar emotion of satisfaction that is willingly admitted, if it did not, as it were, sneak in behind the other. Unfortunately, I am unable to show this in the case of the actual dream specimen, but an example from another province will make my meaning intelligible. I construct the following case: Let there be a person near me whom I hate so that a strong feeling arises in me that I should be glad if something were to happen to him. But the moral part of my nature does not yield to this sentiment; I do not dare to express this ill-wish, and when something happens to him which he does not deserve, I suppress my satisfaction at it, and force myself to expressions and thoughts of regret. Everyone will have found himself in such a position. But now let it happen that the hated person draws upon himself a well-deserved misfortune by some fault; now I may give free rein to my satisfaction that he has been visited by a just punishment, and I express opinion in the matter which coincides with that of many other people who are impartial. But I can see that my satisfaction turns out to be more intense than that of the others, for it has received an addition from another source—from my hatred, which has hitherto been prevented by the inner censor from releasing an emotion, but which is no longer prevented from doing so under the altered circumstances. This case is generally typical of society, where persons who have aroused antipathy or are adherents of an unpopular minority incur guilt. Their punishment does not correspond to their transgression but to their transgression plus the ill-will directed against them that has hitherto been ineffective. Those who execute the punishment doubtless commit an injustice, but they are prevented from becoming aware of it by the satisfaction arising from the release within themselves of a suppression of long standing. In such cases the emotion is justified according to its quality, but not according to its quantity; and the self-criticism that has been appeased as to the one point is only too ready to neglect examination of the second point. Once you have opened the doors, more people get through than you originally intended to admit.

The striking feature of the neurotic character, that incitements capable of producing emotion bring about a result that is qualitatively justified but is quantitatively excessive, is to be explained in this manner, in so far as it admits of a psychological explanation at all. The excess is due to sources of emotion which have remained unconscious and have hitherto been suppressed, which can establish in the associations a connection with the actual incitement, and which can thus find release for its emotions through the vent which the unobjectionable and admitted source of emotion opens. Our attention is thus called to the fact that we may not consider the relation of mutual restraint as obtaining exclusively between the suppressed and the suppressing psychic judgment. The cases in which the two judgments bring about a pathological emotion by co-operation and mutual strengthening deserve just as much attention. The reader is requested to apply these hints regarding the psychic mechanism for the purpose of understanding the expressions of emotion in the dream. A satisfaction which makes its appearance in the dream, and which may readily be found at its proper place in the dream thoughts, may not always be fully explained by means of this reference. As a rule it will be necessary to search for a second source in the dream thoughts, upon which the pressure of the censor is exerted, and which under the pressure would have resulted not in satisfaction, but in the opposite emotion—which, however, is enabled by the presence of the first source to free its satisfaction affect from suppression and to reinforce the satisfaction springing from the other source. Hence emotions in the dream appear as though formed by the confluence of several tributaries, and as though over-determined in reference to the material of the dream thoughts; sources of affect which can furnish the same affect join each other in the dream activity in order to produce it.

Some insight into these tangled relations is gained from analysis of the admirable dream in which “Non vixit” constitutes the central point (cf. p. 333). The expressions of emotion in this dream, which are of different qualities, are forced together at two points in the manifest content. Hostile and painful feelings (in the dream itself we have the phrase, “seized by strange emotions”) overlap at the point where I destroy my antagonistic friend with the two words. At the end of the dream I am greatly pleased, and am quite ready to believe in a possibility which I recognise as absurd when I am awake, namely, that there are revenants who can be put out of the way by a mere wish.

I have not yet mentioned the occasion for this dream. It is an essential one, and goes a long way towards explaining it. I had received the news from my friend in Berlin (whom I have designated as F.) that he is about to undergo an operation and that relatives of his living in Vienna would give me information about his condition. The first few messages after the operation were not reassuring, and caused me anxiety. I should have liked best to go to him myself, but at that time I was affected with a painful disease which made every movement a torture for me. I learn from the dream thoughts that I feared for the life of my dear friend. I knew that his only sister, with whom I had not been acquainted, had died early after the shortest possible illness. (In the dream F. tells about his sister, and says: “In three-quarters of an hour she was dead.”) I must have imagined that his own constitution was not much stronger, and that I should soon be travelling, in spite of my health, in answer to far worse news—and that I should arrive too late, for which I should reproach myself for ever. This reproach about arriving too late has become the central point of the dream, but has been represented in a scene in which the honoured teacher of my student years—Bruecke—reproaches me for the same thing with a terrible look from his blue eyes. The cause of this deviation from the scene will soon be clear; the dream cannot reproduce the scene itself in the manner in which it occurred to me. To be sure, it leaves the blue eyes to the other man, but it gives me the part of the annihilator, an inversion which is obviously the result of the wish-fulfilment. My concern for the life of my friend, my self-reproach for not having gone to him, my shame (he had repeatedly come to me in Vienna), my desire to consider myself excused on account of my illness—all of this makes up a tempest of feeling which is distinctly felt in sleep, and which raged in every part of the dream thoughts.

But there was another thing about the occasion for the dream which had quite the opposite effect. With the unfavourable news during the first days of the operation, I also received the injunction to speak to no one about the whole affair, which hurt my feelings, for it betrayed an unnecessary distrust of my discretion. I knew, of course, that this request did not proceed from my friend, but that it was due to clumsiness or excessive timidity on the part of the messenger, but the concealed reproach made me feel very badly because it was not altogether unjustified. Only reproaches which “have something in them” have power to irritate, as everyone knows. For long before, in the case of two persons who were friendly to each other and who were willing to honour me with their friendship, I had quite needlessly tattled what the one had said about the other; to be sure this incident had nothing to do with the affairs of my friend F. Nor have I forgotten the reproaches which I had to listen to at that time. One of the two friends between whom I was the trouble-maker was Professor Fleischl; the other one I may name Joseph, a name which was also borne by my friend and antagonist P., who appears in the dream.

Two dream elements, first inconspicuously, and secondly the question of Fl. as to how much of his affairs I have mentioned to P., give evidence of the reproach that I am incapable of keeping anything to myself. But it is the admixture of these recollections which transposes the reproach for arriving too late from the present to the time when I was living in Bruecke’s laboratory; and by replacing the second person in the annihilation scene of the dream by a Joseph I succeed in representing not only the first reproach that I arrive too late, but also a second reproach, which is more rigorously suppressed, that I keep no secrets. The condensing and replacing activity of this dream, as well as the motives for it, are now obvious.

My anger at the injunction not to give anything away, originally quite insignificant, receives confirmation from sources that flow far below the surface, and so become a swollen stream of hostile feelings towards persons who are in reality dear to me. The source which furnishes the confirmation is to be found in childhood. I have already said that my friendships as well as my enmities with persons of my own age go back to my childish relations with my nephew, who was a year older than I. In these he had the upper hand, and I early learned how to defend myself; we lived together inseparably, loved each other, and at the same time, as statements of older persons testify, scuffled with and accused each other. In a certain sense all my friends are incarnations of this first figure, “which early appeared to my blurred sight”; they are all revenants. My nephew himself returned in the years of adolescence, and then we acted Cæsar and Brutus. An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable requirements for my emotional life; I have always been able to create them anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so closely approached that friend and enemy coincided in the same person, not simultaneously, of course, nor in repeated alterations, as had been the case in my first childhood years.

I do not here wish to trace the manner in which a recent occasion for emotion may reach back to one in childhood—through connections like these I have just described—in order to find a substitute for itself, in this earlier occasion for the sake of increased emotional effect. Such an investigation would belong to the psychology of the unconscious, and would find its place in a psychological explanation of neuroses. Let us assume for the purposes of dream interpretation that a childhood recollection makes its appearance or is formed by the fancy, say to the following effect: Two children get into a fight on account of some object—just what we shall leave undecided, although memory or an allusion of memory has a very definite one in mind—and each one claims that he got to it first, and that he, therefore, has first right to it. They come to blows, for might makes right; and, according to the intimation of the dream, I must have known that I was in the wrong (noticing the error myself), but this time I remain the stronger and take possession of the battlefield; the defeated combatant hurries to my father, his grandfather, and accuses me, and I defend myself with the words which I know from my father: “I hit him because he hit me.” Thus this recollection, or more probably fancy, which forces itself upon my attention in the course of the analysis—from my present knowledge I myself do not know how—becomes an intermediary of the dream thoughts that collects the emotional excitements obtaining in the dream thoughts, as the bowl of a fountain collects the streams of water flowing into it. From this point the dream thoughts flow along the following paths: “It serves you quite right if you had to vacate your place for me; why did you try to force me out of my place? I don’t need you; I’ll soon find someone else to play with,” &c. Then the ways are opened through which these thoughts again follow into the representation of the dream. For such an “ôte-toi que je m’y mette” I once had to reproach my deceased friend Joseph. He had been next to me in the line of promotion in Bruecke’s laboratory, but advancement there was very slow. Neither of the two assistants budged from his place, and youth became impatient. My friend, who knew that his time of life was limited, and who was bound by no tie to his superior, was a man seriously ill; the wish for his removal permitted an objectionable interpretation—he might be moved by something besides promotion. Several years before, the same wish for freedom had naturally been more intense in my own case; wherever in the world there are gradations of rank and advancement, the doors are opened for wishes needing suppression. Shakespeare’s Prince Hal cannot get rid of the temptation to see how the crown fits even at the bed of his sick father. But, as may easily be understood, the dream punishes this ruthless wish not upon me but upon him.

“As he was ambitious, I slew him.” As he could not wait for the other man to make way for him, he himself has been put out of the way. I harbour these thoughts immediately after attending the unveiling of the statue to the other man at the university. A part of the satisfaction which I feel in the dream may therefore be interpreted: Just punishment; it served you right.

At the funeral of this friend a young man made the following remark, which seemed out of place: “The preacher talked as though the world couldn’t exist without this one human being.” The displeasure of the sincere man, whose sorrow has been marred by the exaggeration, begins to arise in him. But with this speech are connected the dream thoughts: “No one is really irreplaceable; how many men have I already escorted to the grave, but I am still living, I have survived them all, I claim the field.” Such a thought at the moment when I fear that when I travel to see him I shall find my friend no longer among the living, permits only of the further development that I am glad I am surviving someone, that it is not I who have died, but he—that I occupy the field as I once did in the fancied scene in childhood. This satisfaction, coming from sources in childhood, at the fact that I claim the field, covers the larger part of the emotion which appears in the dream. I am glad that I am the survivor—I express this sentiment with the naïve egotism of the husband who says to his wife: “If one of us dies, I shall move to Paris.” It is such a matter of course for my expectation that I am not to be the one.

It cannot be denied that great self-control is necessary to interpret one’s dreams and to report them. It is necessary for you to reveal yourself as the one scoundrel among all the noble souls with whom you share the breath of life. Thus, I consider it quite natural that revenants exist only as long as they are wanted, and that they can be obviated by a wish. This is the thing for which my friend Joseph has been punished. But the revenants are the successive incarnations of the friend of my childhood; I am also satisfied at the fact that I have replaced this person for myself again and again, and a substitute will doubtless soon be found even for the friend whom I am about to lose. No one is irreplaceable.

But what has the dream censor been doing meanwhile? Why does it not raise the most emphatic objection to a train of thought characterised by such brutal selfishness, and change the satisfaction that adheres to it into profound repugnance? I think it is because other unobjectionable trains of thought likewise result in satisfaction and cover the emotion coming from forbidden infantile sources with their own. In another stratum of thought I said to myself at that festive unveiling: “I have lost so many dear friends, some through death, some through the dissolution of friendship—is it not beautiful that I have found substitutes for them, that I have gained one who means more to me than the others could, whom I shall from now on always retain, at the age when it is not easy to form new friendships?” The satisfaction that I have found this substitute for lost friends can be taken over into the dream without interference, but behind it there sneaks in the inimical satisfaction from the infantile source. Childish affection undoubtedly assists in strengthening the justifiable affection of to-day; but childish hatred has also found its way into the representation.

But besides this there is distinct reference in the dream to another chain of thoughts, which may manifest itself in the form of satisfaction. My friend had shortly before had a little daughter born, after long waiting. I knew how much he had grieved for the sister whom he lost at an early age, and I wrote to him that he would transfer to this child the love he had felt for her. This little girl would at last make him forget his irreparable loss.

Thus this chain also connects with the intermediary thoughts of the latent dream content, from which the ways spread out in opposite directions: No one is irreplaceable. You see, nothing but revenants; all that one has lost comes back. And now the bonds of association between the contradictory elements of the dream thoughts are more tightly drawn by the accidental circumstance that the little daughter of my friend bears the same name as the girl playmate of my own youth, who was just my own age and the sister of my oldest friend and antagonist. I have heard the name “Pauline” with satisfaction, and in order to allude to this coincidence I have replaced one Joseph in the dream by another Joseph, and have not overlooked the similarity in sound between the names Fleischl and F. From this point a train of thought runs to the naming of my own children. I insisted that the names should not be chosen according to the fashion of the day but should be determined by regard for the memory of beloved persons. The children’s names make them “revenants.” And, finally, is not the having of children the only access to immortality for us all?

I shall add only a few remarks about the emotions of the dream from another point of view. An emotional inclination—what we call a mood—may occur in the mind of a sleeping person as its dominating element, and may induce a corresponding mood in the dream. This mood may be the result of the experiences and thoughts of the day, or it may be of somatic origin; in either case it will be accompanied by the chains of thought that correspond to it. The fact that in the one case this presentation content conditions the emotional inclination primarily, and that in the other case it is brought about secondarily by a disposition of feeling of somatic origin remains without influence upon the formation of the dream. This formation is always subject to the restriction that it can represent only a wish-fulfilment, and that it may put its psychic motive force at the service only of the wish. The mood that is actually present will receive the same treatment as the sensation which actually comes to the surface during sleep (cf. p. 198), which is either neglected or reinterpreted so as to signify a wish-fulfilment. Disagreeable moods during sleep become a motive force of the dream by actuating energetic wishes, which the dream must fulfil. The material to which they are attached is worked over until it finally becomes suitable for the expression of the fulfilled wish. The more intense and the more dominating the element of the disagreeable mood in the dream thought, the more surely will the wish-impulses that have been most rigorously suppressed take advantage of the opportunity to secure representation, for they find that the difficult part of the work necessary in securing representation has already been accomplished in that the repugnance is already actually in existence, which they would otherwise have had to produce by their own effort. With this discussion we again touch upon the problem of anxiety dreams, which we may regard as bounding the province of the dream activity.

(h) Secondary Elaboration.

We may at last proceed to an exposition of the fourth of the factors which take part in the formation of the dream.

If we continue the examination of the dream content, in the manner already outlined—that is, by testing striking occurrences as to their origin in the dream thoughts—we encounter elements which can be explained only by making an entirely new assumption. I have in mind cases where one shows astonishment, anger, or resistance in a dream, and that, too, against a party of the dream content itself. Most of these exercises of the critical faculty in dreams are not directed against the dream content, but prove to be portions of dream material which have been taken over and suitably made use of, as I have shown by fitting examples. Some things of this sort, however, cannot be disposed of in such a way; their correlative cannot be found in the dream material. What, for instance, is meant by the criticism not infrequent in dreams: “Well, it’s only a dream”? This is a genuine criticism of the dream such as I might make if I were awake. Not at all infrequently it is the forerunner to waking; still oftener it is preceded by a painful feeling, which subsides when the certainty of the dream state has been established. The thought: “But it’s only a dream,” occurring during the dream, has the same object which is meant to be conveyed on the stage through the mouth of the beautiful Helen von Offenbach; it wants to minimise what has just occurred and secure indulgence for what is to follow. Its purpose is to reassure and, so to speak, put to sleep a certain instance which at the given moment has every reason to be active and to forbid the continuation of the dream—or the scene. It is pleasanter to go on sleeping and to tolerate the dream, “because it’s only a dream anyway.” I imagine that the disparaging criticism, “But it’s only a dream,” enters into the dream at the moment when the censor, which has never been quite asleep, feels that it has been surprised by the already admitted dream. It is too late to suppress the dream, and the instance therefore carries with it that note of fear or of painful feeling which presents itself in the dream. It is an expression of the esprit d’escalier on the part of the psychic censor.

In this example we have faultless proof that not everything which the dream contains comes from the dream thoughts, but that a psychic function which cannot be differentiated from our waking thoughts may make contributions to the dream content. The question now is, does this occur only in altogether exceptional cases, or does the psychic instance which is usually active only as censor take a regular part in the formation of dreams?

One must decide unhesitatingly for the latter view. It is indisputable that the censoring instance, whose influence we have so far recognised only in limitations and omissions in the dream content, is also responsible for interpolations and amplifications in this content. Often these interpolations are easily recognised; they are reported irresolutely, prefaced by an “as if,” they are not in themselves particularly vivid, and are regularly inserted at points where they may serve to connect two portions of the dream content or improve the sequence between two sections of the dream. They manifest less ability to stick in the memory than genuine products of the dream material; if the dream is subject to forgetting, they are the first to fall away, and I am strongly inclined to believe that our frequent complaint that we have dreamed so much, that we have forgotten most of this and have remembered only fragments of it, rests on the immediate falling away of just these cementing thoughts. In a complete analysis these interpolations are often betrayed by the fact that no material is to be found for them in the dream thoughts. But after careful examination I must designate this case as a rare one; usually interpolated thoughts can be traced to an element in the dream thoughts, which, however, can claim a place in the dream neither on account of its own merit nor on account of over-determination. The psychic function in dream formation, which we are now considering, aspires to the original creations only in the most extreme cases; whenever possible, it makes use of anything available it can find in the dream material.