Part 14

Pulling off a branch to symbolize onanism is not only in agreement with vulgar descriptions of that act, but also has far-reaching parallels in mythology. But especially remarkable is the representation of onanism, or rather of castration as the punishment for onanism, by the falling out or extraction of teeth; for we find in folk-lore a counterpart to this which could only be known to very few dreamers. I think that there can be no doubt that circumcision, a practice common to so many peoples, is an equivalent and replacement of castration. And recently we have learnt that certain aboriginal tribes in Australia practise circumcision as a rite to mark the attaining of puberty (at the celebration of the boy’s coming of age), whilst other tribes living quite near have substituted for this practice that of knocking out a tooth.

I will end my account with these examples. They are only examples; we know more about this subject and you can imagine how much richer and more interesting a collection of this sort might be made, not by dilettanti like ourselves, but by real experts in mythology, anthropology, philology and folk-lore. We are forced to certain conclusions, which cannot be exhaustive, but nevertheless will give us plenty to think about.

In the first place, we are confronted with the fact that the dreamer has at his command a symbolic mode of expression of which he knows nothing, and does not even recognize, in his waking life. This is as amazing as if you made the discovery that your housemaid understood Sanscrit, though you know that she was born in a Bohemian village and had never learnt that language. It is not easy to bring this fact into line with our views on psychology. We can only say that the dreamer’s knowledge of symbolism is unconscious and belongs to his unconscious mental life, but even this assumption does not help us much. Up till now we have only had to assume the existence of unconscious tendencies which are temporarily or permanently unknown to us; but now the question is a bigger one and we have actually to believe in unconscious knowledge, thought-relations, and comparisons between different objects, in virtue of which one idea can constantly be substituted for another. These comparisons are not instituted afresh every time, but are ready to hand, perfect for all time; this we infer from their unanimity in different persons, even probably in spite of linguistic differences.

Whence is our knowledge of this symbolism derived? The usages of speech cover only a small part of it, whilst the manifold parallels in other fields are for the most part unknown to the dreamer; we ourselves had to collate them laboriously in the first instance.

In the second place, these symbolic relations are not peculiar to the dreamer or to the dream-work by which they are expressed; for we have discovered that the same symbolism is employed in myths and fairy tales, in popular sayings and songs, in colloquial speech and poetic phantasy. The province of symbolism is extraordinarily wide: dream-symbolism is only a small part of it; it would not even be expedient to attack the whole problem from the side of dreams. Many of the symbols commonly occurring elsewhere either do not appear in dreams at all or appear very seldom; on the other hand, many of the dream-symbols are not met with in every other department, but, as you have seen, only here and there. We get the impression that here we have to do with an ancient but obsolete mode of expression, of which different fragments have survived in different fields, one here only, another there only, a third in various spheres perhaps in slightly different forms. At this point I am reminded of the phantasy of a very interesting insane patient, who had imagined a “primordial language” (Grundsprache) of which all these symbols were survivals.

In the third place, it must strike you that the symbolism occurring in the other fields I have named is by no means confined to sexual themes, whereas in dreams the symbols are almost exclusively used to represent sexual objects and relations. This again is hard to account for. Are we to suppose that symbols originally of sexual significance were later employed differently and that perhaps the decline from symbolic to other modes of representation is connected with this? It is obviously impossible to answer these questions by dealing only with dream-symbolism; all we can do is to hold fast to the supposition that there is a specially close relation between true symbols and sexuality.

An important clue in this connection has recently been given to us in the view expressed by a philologist (H. Sperber, of Upsala, who works independently of psycho-analysis), that sexual needs have had the largest share in the origin and development of language. He says that the first sounds uttered were a means of communication, and of summoning the sexual partner, and that in the later development the elements of speech were used as an accompaniment to the different kinds of work carried on by primitive man. This work was performed by associated efforts, to the sound of rhythmically repeated utterances, the effect of which was to transfer a sexual interest to the work. Primitive man thus made his work agreeable, so to speak, by treating it as the equivalent of and substitute for sexual activities. The word uttered during the communal work had therefore two meanings, the one referring to the sexual act, the other to the labour which had come to be equivalent to it. In time the word was dissociated from its sexual significance and its application confined to the work. Generations later the same thing happened to a new word with a sexual signification, which was then applied to a new form of work. In this way a number of root-words arose which were all of sexual origin but had all lost their sexual meaning. If the statement here outlined be correct, a possibility at least of understanding dream-symbolism opens out before us. We should comprehend why it is that in dreams, which retain something of these primitive conditions, there is such an extraordinarily large number of sexual symbols; and why weapons and tools in general stand for the male, and materials and things worked on for the female. The symbolic relation would then be the survival of the old identity in words; things which once had the same name as the genitalia could now appear in dreams as symbolizing them.

Further, our parallels to dream-symbolism may assist you to appreciate what it is in psycho-analysis which makes it a subject of general interest, in a way that was not possible to either psychology or psychiatry; psycho-analytic work is so closely intertwined with so many other branches of science, the investigation of which gives promise of the most valuable conclusions: with mythology, philology, folk-lore, folk psychology and the study of religion. You will not be surprised to hear that a publication has sprung from psycho-analytic soil, of which the exclusive object is to foster these relations. I refer to Imago, first published in 1912 and edited by Hanns Sachs and Otto Rank. In its relation to all these other subjects, psycho-analysis has in the first instance given rather than received. True, analysis reaps the advantage of receiving confirmation of its own results, seemingly so strange, again in other fields; but on the whole it is psycho-analysis which supplies the technical methods and the points of view, the application of which is to prove fruitful in these other provinces. The mental life of the human individual yields, under psycho-analytic investigation, explanations which solve many a riddle in the life of the masses of mankind or at any rate can show these problems in their true light.

I have still given you no idea of the circumstances in which we may arrive at the deepest insight into that hypothetical “primordial language,” or of the province in which it is for the most part retained. As long as you do not know this you cannot appreciate the true significance of the whole subject. I refer to the province of neurosis; the material is found in the symptoms and other modes of expression of nervous patients, for the explanation and treatment of which psycho-analysis was indeed devised.

My fourth point of view takes us back to the place from which we started and leads into the track we have already marked out. We said that even if there were no dream-censorship we should still find it difficult to interpret dreams, for we should then be confronted with the task of translating the symbolic language of dreams into the language of waking life. SYMBOLISM, then, is a second and independent factor in dream-distortion, existing side by side with the censorship. But the conclusion is obvious that it suits the censorship to make use of symbolism, in that both serve the same purpose: that of making the dream strange and incomprehensible.

Whether a further study of the dream will not introduce us to yet another contributing factor in the distortion, we shall soon see. But I must not leave the subject of dream-symbolism without once more touching on the puzzling fact that it has succeeded in rousing such strenuous opposition amongst educated persons, although the prevalence of symbolism in myth, religion, art and language is beyond all doubt. Is it not probable that, here again, the reason is to be found in its relation to sexuality?

ELEVENTH LECTURE THE DREAM-WORK

When you have successfully grasped the dream-censorship and symbolic representation, you will not, it is true, have mastered dream-distortion in its entirety, but you will nevertheless be in a position to understand most dreams. To do so, you will make use of the two complementary methods: you will call up the dreamer’s associations till you have penetrated from the substitute to the thought proper for which it stands, and you will supply the meaning of the symbols from your own knowledge of the subject. We will speak later of certain doubtful points which may arise in the process.

We can now return to a task which we attempted earlier with inadequate equipment, when we were studying the relations between dream-elements and the thoughts proper underlying them. We then determined the existence of four such main relations: substitution of the part for the whole, hints or allusions, symbolic connection, and plastic word-representation (images). We will now try to deal with this subject on a larger scale, by a comparison of the manifest dream-content as a whole with the latent dream as laid bare by our interpretation.

I hope you will never again confuse these two things. If you succeed in distinguishing between them, you will have advanced further towards an understanding of dreams than in all probability most of the readers of my Interpretation of Dreams have done. Let me again remind you that the process by which the latent dream is transformed into the manifest dream is called THE DREAM-WORK; while the reverse process, which seeks to progress from the manifest to the latent thoughts, is our work of interpretation; the work of interpretation therefore aims at demolishing the dream-work. In dreams of the infantile type in which the obvious wish-fulfilments are easily recognized, the process of dream-work has nevertheless been operative to some extent, for the wish has been transformed into a reality and, usually, the thoughts also into visual images. Here no interpretation is necessary; we only have to retrace both these transformations. The further operations of the dream-work, as seen in the other types of dreams, we call dream-distortion, and here the original ideas have to be restored by our interpretative work.

Having had the opportunity of comparing many dream-interpretations, I am in a position to give you a comprehensive account of the manner in which the dream-work deals with the material of the latent dream-thoughts. But please do not expect to understand too much: it is a piece of description which should be listened to quietly and attentively.

The first achievement of the dream-work is CONDENSATION; by this term we mean to convey the fact that the content of the manifest dream is less rich than that of the latent thoughts, is, as it were, a kind of abbreviated translation of the latter. Now and again condensation may be lacking, but it is present as a rule and is often carried to a very high degree. It never works in the opposite manner, i.e. it never happens that the manifest dream is wider in range or richer in content than is the latent dream. Condensation is accomplished in the following ways: (1) certain latent elements are altogether omitted; (2) of many complexes in the latent dream only a fragment passes over into the manifest content; (3) latent elements sharing some common characteristic are in the manifest dream put together, blended into a single whole.

If you prefer to do so, you can reserve the term ‘condensation’ for this last process, the effects of which are particularly easy to demonstrate. Taking your own dreams, you will be able without any trouble to recall instances of the condensation of different persons into a single figure. Such a composite figure resembles A. in appearance, but is dressed like B., pursues some occupation which recalls C., and yet all the time you know that it is really D. The composite picture serves, of course, to lay special emphasis upon some characteristic common to the four people. And it is possible also for a composite picture to be formed with objects or places, as with persons, provided only that the single objects or places have some common attribute upon which the latent dream lays stress. It is as though a new and fugitive concept were formed, of which the common attribute is the kernel. From the superimposing of the separate parts which undergo condensation there usually results a blurred and indistinct picture, as if several photographs had been taken on the same plate.

The formation of such composite figures must be of great importance in the dream-work, for we can prove that the common properties necessary to their formation are purposely manufactured where at first sight they would seem to be lacking, as, for example, by the choice of some particular verbal expression for a thought. We have already met with instances of condensation and composite-formation of this sort; they played an important part in originating many slips of the tongue. You will remember the case of the young man who wished to “insort” a lady (beleidigen = insult, begleiten = escort, composite word begleitdigen). Besides, there are jokes in which the technique is traceable to condensation of this sort. Apart from this, however, we may venture to assert that this process is something quite unusual and strange. It is true that in many a creation of phantasy we meet with counterparts to the formation of the composite persons of our dreams, component parts which do not belong to one another in reality being readily united into a single whole by phantasy, as, for instance, in the centaurs and fabulous animals of ancient mythology or of Boecklin’s pictures. “Creative” phantasy can, in fact, invent nothing new, but can only regroup elements from different sources. But the peculiar thing about the way in which the dream-work proceeds is this: its material consists of thoughts, some of which may be objectionable and disagreeable, but which nevertheless are correctly formed and expressed. The dream-work transmutes these thoughts into another form, and it is curious and incomprehensible that in this process of translation—of rendering them, as it were, into another script or language—the means of blending and combining are employed. The translator’s endeavour in other cases must surely be to respect the distinctions observed in the text, and especially to differentiate between things which are similar but not the same; the dream-work, on the contrary, strives to condense two different thoughts by selecting, after the manner of wit, an ambiguous word which can suggest both thoughts. We must not expect to understand this characteristic straight away, but it may assume great significance for our conception of the dream-work.

Although condensation renders the dream obscure, yet it does not give the impression of being an effect of the dream-censorship. Rather we should be inclined to trace it to mechanical or economic factors; nevertheless the censorship’s interests are served by it.

What condensation can achieve is sometimes quite extraordinary: by this device it is at times possible for two completely different latent trains of thought to be united in a single manifest dream, so that we arrive at an apparently adequate interpretation of a dream and yet overlook a second possible meaning.

Moreover, one of the effects of condensation upon the relationship between the manifest and the latent dream is that the connection between the elements of the one and of the other nowhere remains a simple one; for by a kind of interlacing a manifest element represents simultaneously several latent ones and, conversely, a latent thought may enter into several manifest elements. Again, when we come to interpret dreams, we see that the associations to a single manifest element do not commonly make their appearance in orderly succession; we often have to wait until we have the interpretation of the whole dream.

The dream-work, then, follows a very unusual mode of transcription for the dream-thoughts; not a translation, word for word, or sign for sign; nor yet a process of selection according to some definite rule, for instance, as though the consonants only of the words were reproduced and the vowels omitted; nor again what one might call a process of representation, one element being always picked out to represent several others. It works by a different and much more complicated method.

The second achievement of the dream-work is DISPLACEMENT. Fortunately here we are not breaking perfectly fresh ground; indeed, we know that it is entirely the work of the dream-censorship. Displacement takes two forms: first, a latent element may be replaced, not by a part of itself, but by something more remote, something of the nature of an allusion; and, secondly, the accent may be transferred from an important element to another which is unimportant, so that the centre of the dream is shifted as it were, giving the dream a foreign appearance.

Substitution by allusion is familiar to us in our waking thoughts also, but with a difference; for it is essential in the latter that the allusion should be easily comprehensible, and that the content of the substitute should be associated to that of the thought proper. Allusion is also frequently employed in wit, where the condition of association in content is dispensed with and replaced by unfamiliar external associations, such as similarity of sound, ambiguity of meaning, etc. The condition of comprehensibility, however, is observed: the joke would lose all its point if we could not recognize without any effort what is the actual thing to which the allusion is made. But in dreams allusion by displacement is unrestricted by either limitation. It is connected most superficially and most remotely with the element for which it stands, and for that reason is not readily comprehensible; and, when the connection is traced, the interpretation gives the impression of an unsuccessful joke or of a “forced,” far-fetched and “dragged in” explanation. The object of the dream-censorship is only attained when it has succeeded in making it impossible to trace the thought proper back from the allusion.

Displacement of accent is not a legitimate device if our object be the expression of thought; though we do sometimes admit it in waking life in order to produce a comic effect. I can to some extent convey to you the impression of confusion which then results, by reminding you of an anecdote, according to which there was in a certain village a smith who had committed a capital offence. The court decided that the smith was guilty; but, since he was the only one of his trade in the village and therefore indispensable, whereas there were three tailors living there, one of these three was hanged in his place!

The third achievement of the dream-work is the most interesting from the psychological point of view. It consists in the transformation of thoughts into visual images. Let us be quite clear that not everything in the dream-thoughts is thus transformed; much keeps its original form and appears also in the manifest dream as thought or knowledge, on the part of the dreamer; again, translation of them into visual images is not the only possible transformation of thoughts. But it is nevertheless the essential feature in the formation of dreams, and, as we know, this part of the dream-work is, if we except one other case, the least subject to variation; for single dream-elements, moreover, plastic word-representation is a process already familiar to us.

Obviously this achievement is by no means an easy one. In order to get some idea of its difficulty, imagine that you had undertaken to replace a political leading article in a newspaper by a series of illustrations; you would have to abandon alphabetic characters in favour of hieroglyphics. The people and concrete objects mentioned in the article could be easily represented, perhaps even more satisfactorily, in pictorial form; but you would expect to meet with difficulties when you came to the portrayal of all the abstract words and all those parts of speech which indicate relations between the various thoughts, e.g. particles, conjunctions, and so forth. With the abstract words you would employ all manner of devices: for instance, you would try to render the text of the article into other words, more unfamiliar perhaps, but made up of parts more concrete and therefore more capable of such representation. This will remind you of the fact that most abstract words were originally concrete, their original significance having faded; and therefore you will fall back on the original concrete meaning of these words wherever possible. So you will be glad that you can represent the “possessing” of an object as a literal, physical “sitting upon” it (possess = potis + sedeo). This is just how the dream-work proceeds. In such circumstances you can hardly demand great accuracy of representation, neither will you quarrel with the dream-work for replacing an element which is difficult to reduce to pictorial form, such as the idea of breaking marriage vows, by some other kind of breaking, e.g. that of an arm or leg. In this way you will to some extent succeed in overcoming the awkwardness of rendering alphabetic characters into hieroglyphs.