Part 10

Perhaps this would be a good moment to select a dream and try our technique upon it, to see whether the expectations we have entertained are realized. Very well, but what dream shall we choose? You do not know how difficult it is for me to decide, nor can I make it clear to you yet what the difficulties are. Obviously there must be dreams in which on the whole there is very little distortion, and one would think it would be best to begin with these. But which are the least distorted dreams? Those which make good sense and are not confused, of which I have already given you two examples? In assuming this, we should make a great mistake, for examination shows that these dreams have undergone an exceptionally high degree of distortion. Supposing then that I make no special condition but take any dream at random, you would probably be very much disappointed. We might have to observe and record such a vast number of associations to the single dream-elements that it would be quite impossible to gain any clear view of the work as a whole. If we write the dream down and compare with it all the associations which it produces, we are likely to find that they have multiplied the length of the text of the dream many times. So the most practical method would seem to be that of selecting for analysis several short dreams, each of which can at least convey some idea to us or confirm some supposition. This will be the course we shall decide to take, unless experience gives us a hint where we ought really to look for slightly distorted dreams.

But I can suggest another means of simplifying matters, one which lies right before us. Instead of attempting the interpretation of whole dreams, let us confine ourselves to single dream-elements and find out by taking a series of examples how the application of our technique explains them:—

(a) A lady related that as a child she very often dreamt that God had a pointed paper cap on his head. How are you going to understand that without the help of the dreamer? It sounds quite nonsensical; but the absurdity disappears when the lady says that as a little girl she used to have a cap like that put on her head at table, because she wouldn’t give up looking at the plates of her brothers and sisters to see whether any of them had been given more than she. Evidently the cap was meant to serve the purpose of blinkers; this piece of historical information was given, by the way, without any difficulty. The interpretation of this element and, with it, of the whole short dream becomes easy enough with the help of a further association of the dreamer’s: “As I had been told that God knew everything and saw everything, the dream could only mean that I knew and saw everything as God did, even when they tried to prevent me.” This example is perhaps too simple.

(b) A sceptical patient had a longer dream, in which certain people were telling her about my book on Wit and praising it very highly. Then something else came in about a canal; it might have been another book in which the word canal occurred, or something else to do with a canal ... she did not know ... it was quite vague.

Now you will certainly be inclined to suppose that the canal in the dream will defy interpretation on account of its vagueness. You are right in expecting difficulty, but the difficulty is not caused by the vagueness; on the contrary, the difficulty in interpretation is caused by something else, by the same thing that makes the element vague. The dreamer had no association to the word “canal”; naturally I did not know what to say either. Shortly afterwards, to be accurate, on the next day, she told me that an association had occurred to her which perhaps had something to do with it. It was in fact a witty remark which some one had told her. On board ship between Dover and Calais a well-known author was talking to an Englishman who in some particular context quoted the words: “Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.” The author answered: “Oui, le Pas-de-Calais,” meaning that he regarded France as sublime and England as ridiculous. Of course, the Pas-de-Calais is a canal—that is to say, the Canal la Manche—the English Channel. Now, you ask, do I think that this association had anything to do with the dream? Certainly I think so: it gives the true meaning of the puzzling dream-element. Or are you inclined to doubt that the joke already existed before the dream and was the unconscious thought behind the element “canal,” and to maintain that it was a subsequent invention? The association reveals the scepticism disguised under the obtrusive admiration, and resistance was no doubt the cause both of the association being so long in occurring to her, and of the corresponding dream-element being so vague. Observe here the relation between the dream-element and the unconscious thought underlying it: it is, as it were, a fragment of the thought, an allusion to it; by being isolated in that way it became quite incomprehensible.

(c) A patient had a fairly long dream, part of which was as follows: Several members of his family were seated at a table of a particular shape ... etc. This table reminded the dreamer that he had seen one of the same sort when he was visiting a certain family. From that his thoughts ran on thus: in this family the relationship between father and son was a peculiar one, and the patient presently added that his own relationship to his father was, as a matter of fact, of the same nature. So the table was introduced into the dream to indicate this parallelism.

It happened that this dreamer had long been familiar with the demands of dream-interpretation; otherwise he might have taken exception to the idea of investigating so trivial a detail as the shape of a table. We do literally deny that anything in the dream is a matter of chance or of indifference, and it is precisely by enquiring into such trivial and (apparently) unmotivated details that we expect to arrive at our conclusion. You may perhaps still be surprised that the dream-work should happen to choose the table, in order to express the thought “Our relationship is just like theirs.” But even this is explicable when you learn that the family in question was named “Tischler.” (Tisch = table.) In making his relations sit at this table the dreamer’s meaning was that they too were “Tischler.” And notice another thing: that in relating dream-interpretations of this sort one is forced into indiscretion. There you have one of the difficulties I alluded to in the matter of choosing examples. I could easily have given you another example instead of this one, but probably I should have avoided this indiscretion only to commit another in its place.

This seems to me a good point at which to introduce two new terms which we might have used already. Let us call the dream as related the manifest dream-content, and the hidden meaning, which we should come by in following out the associations, the latent dream-thoughts. Then we must consider the relation between the manifest content and the latent thoughts, as shown in the above examples. There are many varieties of these relations. In examples (a) and (b) the manifest dream-element is also an integral part of the latent thoughts, but only a fragment of them. A small piece of a great, composite, mental structure in the unconscious dream-thoughts has made its way into the manifest dream also, in the form of a fragment or in other cases as an allusion, like a catch-word or an abbreviation in a telegraphic code. The interpretation has to complete the whole to which this scrap or allusion belongs, which it did most successfully in example (b). One method of the distorting process in which the dream-work consists is therefore that of substituting for something else a fragment or an allusion. In example (c) we notice, moreover, another possible relation between manifest content and latent thought, a relation which is even more plainly and distinctly expressed in the following examples:—

(d) The dreamer was pulling a certain lady of his acquaintance out of a ditch. He himself found the meaning of this dream-element by means of the first association. It meant: he “picked her out,” preferred her.

(e) Another man dreamt that his brother was digging up his garden all over again. The first association was to deep-trenching for vegetables, the second gave the meaning. The brother was retrenching. (Retrenching his expenses).

(f) The dreamer was climbing a mountain from which he had a remarkably wide view. This sounds most reasonable; perhaps no interpretation is called for and we have only to find out what recollection is referred to in the dream, and what had aroused it. No, you are mistaken; it comes out that this dream needed interpretation just as much as any other, more confused. For the dreamer remembers nothing about mountain-climbing himself; instead, it occurs to him that an acquaintance is publishing a Rundschau (Review), on the subject of our relations with the most distant parts of the earth: hence, the latent thought is one in which the dreamer identifies himself with the “reviewer” (lit. one who takes a survey).

Here you come across a new type of relation between the manifest and the latent element in dreams. The former is not so much a distortion of the latter as a representation—a plastic, concrete piece of imagery, originating in the sound of a word. It is true that this amounts in effect to a distortion, for we have long forgotten from what concrete image the word sprang, and hence fail to recognize it when that image is substituted for it. When you consider that the manifest dream consists of visual images in by far the greatest number of cases, and less frequently of thoughts and words, you will easily realize that this kind of relation between the manifest and the latent has a special significance in the structure of dreams. You see too that in this way it becomes possible for a long series of abstract thoughts to create substitute-images in the manifest dream which do indeed serve the purpose of concealment. This is how our picture-puzzles are made up. The source of the semblance of wit which goes with this type of representation is a special question which we need not touch on here.

There is a fourth kind of relation between the manifest and the latent elements which I will say nothing about until the time comes for it in my account of our technique. Even then I shall not have given you a full list of these possible relations, but we shall have sufficient for our purpose.

Now do you think you can summon up courage to venture on the interpretation of a whole dream? Let us see whether we are adequately equipped for the task. I shall not, of course, choose one of the most obscure, but all the same it shall be one which shows the characteristics of dreams in a well-marked form.

A young woman who had already been married for a number of years dreamt as follows: She was at the theatre with her husband, and one side of the stalls was quite empty. Her husband told her that Elise L. and her fiancé also wanted to come, but could only get bad seats, three for a florin and a half, and of course they could not take those. She replied that in her opinion they did not lose much by that.

The first thing stated by the dreamer is that the occasion giving rise to the dream is alluded to in the manifest content: her husband had really told her that Elise L., an acquaintance of about her own age, had become engaged, and the dream is the reaction to this piece of news. We know already that in many dreams it is easy to point to some such occasion occurring on the day before, and that this is often traced by the dreamer without any difficulty. This dreamer supplies us with further information of the same sort about other elements in the manifest dream. To what did she trace the detail of one side of the stalls being empty? It was an allusion to a real occurrence of the week before, when she had meant to go to a certain play and had therefore booked seats early, so early that she had to pay extra for the tickets. On entering the theatre it was evident that her anxiety had been quite superfluous, for one side of the stalls was almost empty. It would have been time enough if she had bought the tickets on the actual day of the performance and her husband did not fail to tease her about having been in too great a hurry. Next, what about the one florin and a half (1 fl. 50)? This was traced to quite another context which had nothing to do with the former, but it again refers to some news received on the previous day. Her sister-in-law had had a present of 150 florins from her husband and had rushed off in a hurry, like a silly goose, to a jeweller’s shop and spent it all on a piece of jewellery. What about the number three? She knew nothing about that unless this idea could be counted an association, that the engaged girl, Elise L., was only three months younger than she herself who had been married ten years. And the absurdity of taking three tickets for two people? She had nothing to say to this and refused to give any more associations or information whatever.

Nevertheless, her few associations have provided us with so much material that it is possible to discover the latent dream-thoughts. We are struck by the fact that in her statements references to time are noticeable at several points, which form a common basis for the different parts of this material. She had got the theatre tickets too soon, taken them in too great a hurry, so that she had to pay extra for them; in the same way her sister-in-law had hurried off to the jeweller’s with her money to buy an ornament with it, as though she might miss something. If the strongly emphasized points: “too early,” “too great a hurry,” are connected with the occasion for the dream (namely, the news that her friend, only three months younger than herself, had now found a good husband after all) and with the criticism expressed in her asperity about her sister-in-law, that it was folly to be so precipitate, there occurs to us almost spontaneously the following construction of the latent dream-thoughts, for which the manifest dream is a highly-distorted substitute:

“It was really foolish of me to be in such a hurry to marry! Elise’s example shows me that I too could have found a husband later on.” (The over-haste is represented by her own conduct in buying the tickets and that of her sister-in-law in buying the jewellery. Going to the theatre is substituted for getting married.) This would be the main thought; perhaps we may go on, though with less certainty because the analysis in these passages ought not to be unsupported by statements of the dreamer: “And I might have had one a hundred times better for the money!” (150 florins is 100 times more than one florin and a half.) If we may substitute the dowry for the money, it would mean that the husband is bought with the dowry: both the jewellery and the bad seats would stand for the husband. It would be still more desirable if we could see some connection between the element “three tickets” and a husband; but our knowledge does not as yet extend to this. We have only found out that the dream expresses depreciation of her own husband and regret at having married so early.

In my opinion we shall be more surprised and confused by the result of this our first attempt at dream-interpretation than satisfied with it. Too many ideas force themselves upon us at once, more than as yet we can master. We see already that we shall not come to the end of what the interpretation of this dream can teach us. Let us immediately single out those points in which we can definitely see some new knowledge.

In the first place: we note that in the latent thoughts the chief emphasis falls upon the element of hurry; in the manifest dream that is exactly a feature about which we find nothing. Without analysis we could have had no suspicion that this thought entered in at all. It seems possible, therefore, that precisely the main point round which the unconscious thoughts centre does not appear in the manifest dream at all. This fact must radically change the impression made upon us by the whole dream. In the second place: in the dream there is a nonsensical combination of ideas (three for one florin and a half); in the dream-thoughts we detect the opinion: “It was folly (to marry so early).” Can one reject the conclusion that this thought, “It was folly,” is represented by the introduction into the manifest dream of an absurd element? In the third place: comparison shows us that the relation between manifest and latent elements is no simple one, certainly not of such a kind that a manifest always replaces a latent element. The relation between the two is of the nature of a relation between two different groups, so that a manifest element can represent several latent thoughts or a latent thought be replaced by several manifest elements.

As regards the meaning of the dream and the dreamer’s attitude towards it, here again we might find many surprising things to say. The lady certainly admitted the interpretation, but she wondered at it; she had not been aware that she had such disparaging thoughts of her husband; she did not even know why she should so disparage him. So there is still much that is incomprehensible about it. I really think that as yet we are not properly equipped for interpreting a dream and that we need further instruction and preparation first.

EIGHTH LECTURE CHILDREN’S DREAMS

We had the impression that we had advanced too rapidly; let us therefore retrace our steps a little. Before we made our last experiment in which we tried to overcome the difficulty of dream-distortion by means of our technique, we said that it would be best to circumvent it by confining our attention to dreams in which distortion is absent or occurs only to a very slight extent, if there are any such dreams. In doing this, we are again departing from the actual course of development of our knowledge; for in reality it was only after consistently applying our method of interpretation, and after exhaustive analysis of dreams in which distortion occurred, that we became aware of the existence of those in which it is lacking.

The dreams we are looking for are met with in children: short, clear, coherent, and easy to understand, they are free from ambiguity and yet are unmistakable dreams. You must not think, however, that all dreams in children are of this type. Distortion in dreams begins to appear very early in childhood, and there are on record dreams of children between five and eight years old which already show all the characteristics of the dreams of later life. But, if you confine yourselves to those occurring in the period between the dawn of recognizable mental activity and the fourth or fifth year of life, you will discover a series which we should characterize as infantile, and, in the later years of childhood, you may find single dreams of the same type; indeed, even in grown-up people under certain conditions dreams appear which in no way differ from the typically infantile.

Now from these children’s dreams it is possible to obtain without any difficulty trustworthy information about the essential nature of dreams, which we hope will prove to be decisive and universally valid.

1. In order to understand these dreams there is no need for any analysis nor for the employment of any technique. It is not necessary to question the child who relates his dream. But we must know something about his life; in every instance there is some experience from the previous day which explains the dream. The dream is the mind’s reaction in sleep to the experience of the previous day.

Let us consider some examples in order to base our further conclusions upon them:

(a) A boy of a year and ten months old had to present someone with a basket of cherries as a birthday gift. He plainly did it very unwillingly, although he had been promised some of them for himself. The next morning he told his dream: “Hermann eaten all the cherries.”