Part 7

That such things should be must seem very strange to you. Perhaps you will be inclined to assume that the “indirect” counter-will is enough to characterize the incident as pathological. But I can assure you that it is also found within the boundaries of health and normality. And further, do not misunderstand me; this is in no sense a confession on my part that our analytic interpretations are not to be relied on. I have said that forgetting to execute a plan may bear many meanings, but this is so only in those cases where no analysis is undertaken and which we have to interpret according to our general principles. If an analysis of the person in the case is carried out it can always be established with sufficient certainty whether the antipathy is a direct one, or what its source is otherwise.

The following is a second point: when we find proof in a large majority of cases that the forgetting of an intention proceeds from a counter-will, we gain courage to extend this solution to another group of cases in which the person analysed does not confirm, but denies, the presence of the counter-will inferred by us. Take as an example of this such exceedingly frequent occurrences as forgetting to return borrowed books or to pay bills or debts. We will be so bold as to suggest, to the person in question, that there is an intention in his mind of keeping the books and not paying the debts, whereupon he will deny this intention but will not be able to give us any other explanation of his conduct. We then insist that he has this intention but is not aware of it; it is enough for us, though, that it betrays itself by the effect of the forgetting. He may then repeat that he had merely forgotten about it. You will recognize the situation as one in which we have already been placed once before. If we intend to carry through, to their logical conclusions, the interpretations of errors which have been proved justified in so many cases, we shall be unavoidably impelled to the assumption that tendencies exist in human beings which can effect results without their knowing of them. With this, however, we place ourselves in opposition to all views prevailing in life and in psychology.

Forgetting proper names, and foreign names and words, can be traced in the same way to a counter-tendency aiming either directly or indirectly against the name in question. I have already given you several examples of such direct antipathy. Indirect causation is particularly frequent here and careful analysis is generally required to elucidate it. Thus, for instance, in the present time of war which forces us to forego so many of our former pleasures, our ability to recall proper names suffers severely by connections of the most far-fetched kind. It happened to me lately to be unable to remember the name of the harmless Moravian town of Bisenz; and analysis showed that I was guilty of no direct antagonism in the matter, but that the resemblance to the name of the Palazzo Bisenzi in Orvieto, where I had spent many happy times in the past, was responsible. As a motive of the tendency opposing the recollection of this name, we here for the first time encounter a principle which will later on reveal itself to be of quite prodigious importance in the causation of neurotic symptoms: namely, the aversion on the part of memory against recalling anything connected with painful feelings that would revive the pain if it were recalled. In this tendency towards avoidance of pain from recollection or other mental processes, this flight of the mind from that which is unpleasant, we may perceive the ultimate purpose at work behind not merely the forgetting of names, but also many other errors, omissions, and mistakes.

The forgetting of names seems, however, to be especially facilitated psycho-physiologically, and therefore does occur on occasions where the intervention of an unpleasantness-motive cannot be established. When anyone has a tendency to forget names, it can be confirmed by analytic investigation that names escape, not merely because he does not like them or because they remind him of something disagreeable, but also because the particular name belongs to some other chain of associations of a more intimate nature. The name is anchored there, as it were, and is refused to the other associations activated at the moment. If you recall the devices of memory systems you will realize with some surprise that the same associations which are there artificially introduced, in order to save names from being forgotten, are also responsible for their being forgotten. The most conspicuous example of this is afforded by proper names of persons, which naturally possess quite different values for different people. For instance, take a first name, such as Theodore. For some of you it will have no particular significance; for others it will be the name of father, brother, friend, or your own name. Analytic experience will show you that the former among you will be in no danger of forgetting that some stranger bears this name; whereas the latter will be continually inclined to grudge to strangers a name which to them seems reserved for an intimate relationship. Now let us assume that this inhibition due to associations may coincide with the operation of the “pain”-principle, and in addition with an indirect mechanism; you will then be able to form a commensurate idea of the complexity, in causation, of such temporary forgetting of names. An adequate analysis that does justice to the facts will, however, completely disclose all these complications.

The forgetting of impressions and experiences shows the working of the tendency to ward off from memory that which is unpleasant much more clearly and invariably than the forgetting of names. It does not of course belong in its entirety to the category of errors, but only in so far as it appears to us remarkable and unjustified, judged by the standard of general experience; as, for instance, where recent or important impressions are forgotten, or where one memory is forgotten out of an otherwise well-remembered sequence. How and why we have the capacity of forgetting in general, particularly how we are able to forget experiences which have certainly left the deepest impression on us, such as the events of our childhood, is quite a different problem, in which the defence against painful associations plays a certain part but is far from explaining everything. That unwelcome impressions are easily forgotten is an indubitable fact. Various psychologists have remarked it; and the great Darwin was so well aware of it that he made a golden rule for himself of writing down with particular care observations which seemed unfavourable to his theory, having become convinced that just these would be inclined to slip out of recollection.

Those who bear for the first time of this principle of defence against unpleasant memory by forgetfulness seldom fail to raise the objection that, on the contrary, in their experience it is just that which is painful which it is hard to forget, since it always comes back to mind to torture the person against his will—as, for example, the recollection of grievances or humiliations. This fact is quite correct, but the objection is not sound. It is important to begin early to reckon with the fact that the mind is an arena, a sort of tumbling-ground, for the struggles of antagonistic impulses; or, to express it in non-dynamic terms, that the mind is made up of contradictions and pairs of opposites. Evidence of one particular tendency does not in the least preclude its opposite; there is room for both of them. The material questions are: How do these opposites stand to one another and what effects proceed from one of them and what from the other?

Losing and mislaying objects is of especial interest on account of the numerous meanings it may have, and the multiplicity of the tendencies in the service of which these errors may be employed. What is common to all the cases is the wish to lose something; what varies in them is the reason for the wish and the aim of it. One loses something if it has become damaged; if one has an impulse to replace it with a better; if one has ceased to care for it; if it came from someone with whom unpleasantness has arisen; or if it was acquired in circumstances that one no longer wishes to think of. Letting things fall, spoiling, or breaking things, serves the same tendency. In social life it is said that unwelcome and illegitimate children are found to be far more often weakly than those conceived in happier circumstances. This result does not imply that the crude methods of the so-called baby-farmer have been employed; some degree of carelessness in the supervision of the child should be quite enough. The preservation, or otherwise, of objects may well follow the same lines as that of children.

Then too it may happen that a thing will become destined to be lost without its having shed any of its value—that is, when there is an impulse to sacrifice something to fate in order to avert some other dreaded loss. According to the findings of analysis, such conjurings of fate are still very common among us, so that our losses are often voluntary sacrifices. Losing may equally well serve the impulses of spite or of self-punishment; in short, the more remote forms of motivation behind the impulse to do away with something by losing cannot easily be exhausted.

Mistaking of objects, or erroneous performance of actions, like other errors, is often made use of to fulfil a wish which should be denied; the intention masquerades as a lucky chance. Thus, as once happened to one of our friends, one has to take a train, most unwillingly, in order to pay a visit in the suburbs and then, in changing trains at a connection, one gets by mistake into one which is returning to town; or, on a journey one would greatly like to make a halt at some stopping-place, which cannot be done owing to fixed engagements elsewhere, whereupon one mistakes or misses the connection, so that the desired delay is forced upon one. Or, as happened to one of my patients whom I had forbidden to telephone to the lady he was in love with, he “by mistake” and “thoughtlessly” gave the wrong number when he meant to telephone to me, so that he was suddenly connected with her. The following account by an engineer is a pretty example of the conditions under which damage to material objects may be done, and also demonstrates the practical significance of directly faulty actions.

“Some time ago I worked with several colleagues in the laboratory of a High School on a series of complicated experiments in elasticity, a piece of work we had undertaken voluntarily; it was beginning to take up more time, however, than we had anticipated. One day, as I went into the laboratory with my friend F., he remarked how annoying it was to him to lose so much time to-day as he had so much to do at home; I could not help agreeing with him and said half-jokingly, referring to an occasion the week before: ‘Let us hope the machine will break down again so that we can stop work and go home early.’ In arranging the work it happened that F. was given the regulation of the valve of the press; that is to say, he was, by cautiously opening the valve, to let the liquid pressure out of the accumulator slowly into the cylinder of the hydraulic press. The man who was conducting the experiment stood by the pressure gauge, and, when the right pressure was reached, called out loudly, ‘Stop.’ At this command F. seized the valve and turned with all his might—to the left! (All valves without exception close to the right.) Thereby the whole pressure in the accumulator suddenly came into the press, a strain for which the connecting-pipes are not designed, so that one of them instantly burst—quite a harmless accident, but one which forced us, nevertheless, to cease work for the day and go home. It is characteristic, by the way, that not long after, when we were discussing the affair, my friend F. had no recollection whatever of my remark, which I recalled with certainty.”

So with this in mind you may begin to suspect that it is not always a mere chance which makes the hands of your servants such dangerous enemies to your household effects. And you may also raise the question whether it is always an accident when one injures oneself or exposes oneself to danger—ideas which you may put to the test by analysis when you have an opportunity.

This is far from being all that could be said about errors. There is still much to be enquired into and discussed. But I shall be satisfied if you have been shaken somewhat in your previous beliefs by our investigations, so far as they have gone, and if you have gained a certain readiness to accept new ones. For the rest, I must be content to leave you with certain problems still unsolved. We cannot prove all our principles by the study of errors, nor are we indeed by any means solely dependent on this material. The great value of errors for our purpose lies in this, that they are such common occurrences, may easily be observed in oneself, and are not at all contingent upon illness. I should like to mention one more of your unanswered questions before concluding: “If, as we see from so many examples, people come so close to understanding errors and so often act as if they perceived their meaning, how is it possible that they should so generally consider them accidental, senseless, and meaningless, and so energetically oppose the psycho-analytic explanation of them?”

You are right: this is indeed striking and requires an explanation. But I will not give it to you; I will rather guide you slowly towards the connections by which the explanation will be forced upon you without any aid from me.

PART II DREAMS

FIFTH LECTURE DIFFICULTIES AND PRELIMINARY APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT

One day the discovery was made that the symptoms of disease in certain nervous patients have meaning. It was upon this discovery that the psycho-analytic method of treatment was based. In this treatment it happened that patients in speaking of their symptoms also mentioned their dreams, whereupon the suspicion arose that these dreams too had meaning.

However, we will not pursue this historical path, but will strike off in the opposite direction. Our aim is to demonstrate the meaning of dreams, in preparation for the study of the neuroses. There are good grounds for this reversal of procedure, since the study of dreams is not merely the best preparation for that of the neuroses, but a dream is itself a neurotic symptom and, moreover, one which possesses for us the incalculable advantage of occurring in all healthy people. Indeed, if all human beings were healthy and would only dream, we could gather almost all the knowledge from their dreams which we have gained from studying the neuroses.

So dreams become the object of psycho-analytic research—another of these ordinary, under-rated occurrences, apparently of no practical value, like “errors,” and sharing with them the characteristic of occurring in healthy persons. But in other respects the conditions of work are rather less favourable. Errors had only been neglected by science, people had not troubled their heads much about them, but at least it was no disgrace to occupy oneself with them. True, people said, there are things more important but still something may possibly come of it. To occupy oneself with dreams, however, is not merely unpractical and superfluous, but positively scandalous: it carries with it the taint of the unscientific and arouses the suspicion of personal leanings towards mysticism. The idea of a medical student troubling himself about dreams when there is so much in neuropathology and psychiatry itself that is more serious, tumours as large as apples compressing the organ of the mind, hæmorrhages, chronic inflammatory conditions in which the alterations in the tissues can be demonstrated under the microscope! No, dreams are far too unworthy and trivial to be objects of scientific research.

There is yet another factor involved which, in itself, sets at defiance all the requirements of exact investigation. In investigating dreams even the object of research, the dream itself, is indefinite. A delusion, for example, presents clear and definite outlines. “I am the Emperor of China,” says your patient plainly. But a dream? For the most part it cannot be related at all. When a man tells a dream, has he any guarantee that he has told it correctly, and not perhaps altered it in the telling or been forced to invent part of it on account of the vagueness of his recollection? Most dreams cannot be remembered at all and are forgotten except for some tiny fragments. And is a scientific psychology or a method of treatment for the sick to be founded upon material such as this?

A certain element of exaggeration in a criticism may arouse our suspicions. The arguments brought against the dream as an object of scientific research are clearly extreme. We have met with the objection of triviality already in “errors,” and have told ourselves that great things may be revealed even by small indications. As to the indistinctness of dreams, that is a characteristic like any other—we cannot dictate to things their characteristics; besides, there are also dreams which are clear and well defined. Further, there are other objects of psychiatric investigation which suffer in the same way from the quality of indefiniteness, e.g. the obsessive ideas of many cases, with which nevertheless many psychiatrists of repute and standing have occupied themselves. I will recall the last case of the kind which came before me in medical practice. The patient, a woman, presented her case in these words: “I have a certain feeling, as if I had injured, or had meant to injure, some living creature—perhaps a child—no, no, a dog rather, as if perhaps I had pushed it off a bridge—or done something else.” Any disadvantage resulting from the uncertain recollection of dreams may be remedied by deciding that exactly what the dreamer tells is to count as the dream, and by ignoring all that he may have forgotten or altered in the process of recollection. Finally, one cannot maintain in so sweeping a fashion that dreams are unimportant things. We know from our own experience that the mood in which we awake from a dream may last throughout the day, and cases have been observed by medical men in which mental disorder began with a dream, the delusion which had its source in this dream persisting; further, it is told of historical persons that impulses to momentous deeds sprang from their dreams. We may therefore ask: what is the real cause of the disdain in which dreams are held in scientific circles? In my opinion it is the reaction from the overestimation of them in earlier times. It is well known that it is no easy matter to reconstruct the past, but we may assume with certainty (you will forgive my jest) that as early as three thousand years ago and more our ancestors dreamt in the same way as we do. So far as we know, all ancient peoples attached great significance to dreams and regarded them as of practical value; they obtained from them auguries of the future and looked for portents in them. For the Greeks and other Orientals, it was at times as unthinkable to undertake a campaign without a dream-interpreter as it would be to-day without air-scouts for intelligence. When Alexander the Great set out on his campaign of conquest the most famous interpreters of dreams were in his following. The city of Tyre, still at that time on an island, offered so stout a resistance to the king that he entertained the idea of abandoning the siege; then one night he dreamed of a satyr dancing in triumph, and when he related this dream to his interpreters they informed him that it foretold his victory over the city; he gave the order to attack and took Tyre by storm. Among the Etruscans and Romans other methods of foretelling the future were employed, but during the whole of the Græco-Roman period the interpretation of dreams was practised and held in high esteem. Of the literature on this subject the principal work at any rate has come down to us, namely, the book of Artemidorus of Daldis, who is said to have lived at the time of the Emperor Hadrian. How it happened that the art of dream-interpretation declined later and dreams fell into disrepute, I cannot tell you. The progress of learning cannot have had very much to do with it, for in the darkness of the middle ages things far more absurd than the ancient practice of the interpretation of dreams were faithfully retained. The fact remains that the interest in dreams gradually sank to the level of superstition and could hold its own only amongst the uneducated. In our day, there survive, as a final degradation of the art of dream-interpretation, the attempts to find out from dreams numbers destined to draw prizes in games of chance. On the other hand, exact science of the present day has repeatedly concerned itself with the dream, but always with the sole object of illustrating physiological theories. By medical men, naturally, a dream was never regarded as a mental process but as the mental expression of physical stimuli. Binz in 1876 pronounced the dream to be “a physical process, always useless and in many cases actually morbid, a process above which the conception of the world-soul and of immortality stands as high as does the blue sky above the most low-lying, weed-grown stretch of sand.” Maury compares dreams with the spasmodic jerkings of St. Vitus’ dance, contrasted with the co-ordinated movements of the normal human being; in an old comparison a parallel is drawn between the content of a dream and the sounds which would be produced if “someone ignorant of music let his ten fingers wander over the keys of an instrument.”

‘Interpretation’ means discovering a hidden meaning, but there can be no question of attempting this while such an attitude is maintained towards the dream-performance. Look up the description of dreams given in the writings of Wundt, Jodl and other recent philosophers: they are content with the bare enumeration of the divergences of the dream-life from waking thought with a view to depreciating the dreams; they emphasize the lack of connection in the associations, the suspended exercise of the critical faculty, the elimination of all knowledge, and other indications of diminished functioning. The single valuable contribution to our knowledge about dreams for which we are indebted to exact science relates to the influence upon the dream-content of physical stimuli operating during sleep. We have the work of a Norwegian author who died recently—J. Mourly Vold—two large volumes on experimental investigation of dreams (translated into German in 1910 and 1912), which are concerned almost entirely with the results obtained by change in the position of the limbs. These investigations have been held up to us as models of exact research in the subject of dreams. Now can you imagine what would be the comment of exact science on learning that we intend to try to find out the meaning of dreams? The comment that has perhaps been made already! However, we will not allow ourselves to be appalled at the thought. If it was possible for errors to have an underlying meaning, it is possible that dreams have one too; and errors have, in very many cases, a meaning which has eluded the researches of exact science. Let us adopt the assumption of the ancients and of simple folk, and follow in the footsteps of the dream-interpreters of old.

First of all, we must take our bearings in this enterprise, and make a survey of the field of dreams. What exactly is a dream? It is difficult to define it in a single phrase. Yet we need not seek after a definition, when all we need is to refer to something familiar to everyone. Still we ought to pick out the essential features in dreams. How are we to discover these features? The boundaries of the region we are entering comprise such vast differences, differences whichever way we turn. That which we can show to be common to all dreams is probably what is essential.

Well then—the first common characteristic of all dreams would be that we are asleep at the time. Obviously, the dream is the life of the mind during sleep, a life bearing certain resemblances to our waking life and, at the same time, differing from it widely. That, indeed, was Aristotle’s definition. Perhaps dream and sleep stand in yet closer relationship to each other. We can be waked by a dream; we often have a dream when we wake spontaneously or when we are forcibly roused from sleep. Dreams seem thus to be an intermediate condition between sleeping and waking. Hence, our attention is directed to sleep itself: what then is sleep?

That is a physiological or biological problem concerning which much is still in dispute. We can come to no decisive answer, but I think we may attempt to define one psychological characteristic of sleep. Sleep is a condition in which I refuse to have anything to do with the outer world and have withdrawn my interest from it. I go to sleep by retreating from the outside world and warding off the stimuli proceeding from it. Again, when I am tired by that world I go to sleep. I say to it as I fall asleep: “Leave me in peace, for I want to sleep.” The child says just the opposite: “I won’t go to sleep yet; I’m not tired, I want more things to happen to me!” Thus the biological object of sleep seems to be recuperation, its psychological characteristic the suspension of interest in the outer world. Our relationship with the world which we entered so unwillingly seems to be endurable only with intermission; hence we withdraw again periodically into the condition prior to our entrance into the world: that is to say, into intra-uterine existence. At any rate, we try to bring about quite similar conditions—warmth, darkness and absence of stimulus—characteristic of that state. Some of us still roll ourselves tightly up into a ball resembling the intra-uterine position. It looks as if we grown-ups do not belong wholly to the world, but only by two-thirds; one-third of us has never yet been born at all. Every time we wake in the morning it is as if we were newly born. We do, in fact, speak of the condition of waking from sleep in these very words: we feel “as if we were newly born,”—and in this we are probably quite mistaken in our idea of the general sensations of the new-born infant; it may be assumed on the contrary that it feels extremely uncomfortable. Again, in speaking of birth we speak of “seeing the light of day.”

If this is the nature of sleep, then dreams do not come into its scheme at all, but seem rather to be an unwelcome supplement to it; and we do indeed believe that dreamless sleep is the best, the only proper sleep. There should be no mental activity during sleep; if any such activity bestirs itself, then in so far have we failed to reach the true pre-natal condition of peace; we have not been able to avoid altogether some remnants of mental activity, and the act of dreaming would represent these remnants. In that event it really does seem that dreams do not need to have meaning. With errors it was different, for they were at least activities manifested in waking life; but if I sleep and have altogether suspended mental activity, with the exception of certain remnants which I have not been able to suppress, there is no necessity whatever that they should have any meaning. In fact, I cannot even make use of any such meaning, seeing that the rest of my mind is asleep. It can really then be a matter of spasmodic reactions only, of such mental phenomena only as have their origin in physical stimulation. Hence, dreams must be remnants of the mental activity of waking life disturbing sleep, and we might as well make up our minds forthwith to abandon a theme so unsuited to the purposes of psycho-analysis.

Superfluous as dreams may be, however, they do exist nevertheless, and we can try to account for their existence to ourselves. Why does not mental life go off to sleep? Probably because there is something that will not leave the mind in peace; stimuli are acting upon it and to these it is bound to react. Dreams therefore are the mode of reaction of the mind to stimuli acting upon it during sleep. We note here a possibility of access to comprehension of dreams. We can now endeavour to find out, in various dreams, what are the stimuli seeking to disturb sleep, the reaction to which takes the form of dreams. By doing this we should have worked out the first characteristic common to all dreams.

Is there any other common characteristic? Yes, there is another, unmistakable, and yet much harder to lay hold of and describe. The character of mental processes during sleep is quite different from that of waking processes. In dreams we go through many experiences, which we fully believe in, whereas in reality we are perhaps only experiencing the single disturbing stimulus. For the most part our experiences take the form of visual images; there may be feeling as well, thoughts, too, mixed up with them, and the other senses may be drawn in; but for the most part dreams consist of visual images. Part of the difficulty of reciting a dream comes from the fact that we have to translate these images into words. “I could draw it,” the dreamer often says to us, “but I do not know how to put it into words.” Now this is not exactly a diminution in the mental capacity, as seen in a contrast between a feeble-minded person and a man of genius. The difference is rather a qualitative one, but it is difficult to say precisely wherein it lies. G. T. Fechner once suggested that the stage whereon the drama of the dream (within the mind) is played out is other than that of the life of waking ideas. That is a saying which we really do not understand, nor do we know what it is meant to convey to us, but it does actually reproduce the impression of strangeness which most dreams make upon us. Again, the comparison of the act of dreaming with the performances of an unskilled hand in music breaks down here, for the piano will certainly respond with the same notes, though not with melodies, to a chance touch on its keys. We will keep this second common characteristic of dreams carefully in view, even though we may not understand it.

Are there any other qualities common to all dreams? I can think of none, but can see differences only, whichever way I look, differences too in every respect—in apparent duration, definiteness, the part played by affects, persistence in the mind, and so forth. This is really not what we should naturally expect in the case of a compulsive attempt, at once meagre and convulsive, to ward off a stimulus. As regards the length of dreams, some are very short, containing only one image, or very few, or a single thought, possibly even a single word; others are peculiarly rich in content, enact entire romances and seem to last a very long time. There are dreams as distinct as actual experiences, so distinct that for some time after waking we do not realize that they were dreams at all; others, which are ineffably faint, shadowy and blurred; in one and the same dream, even, there may be some parts of extraordinary vividness alternating with others so indistinct as to be almost wholly elusive. Again, dreams may be quite consistent or at any rate coherent, or even witty or fantastically beautiful; others again are confused, apparently imbecile, absurd or often absolutely mad. There are dreams which leave us quite cold, others in which every affect makes itself felt, pain to the point of tears, terror so intense as to wake us, amazement, delight, and so on. Most dreams are forgotten soon after waking; or they persist throughout the day, the recollection becoming fainter and more imperfect as the day goes on; others remain so vivid (as, for example, the dreams of childhood) that thirty years later we remember them as clearly as though they were part of a recent experience. Dreams, like people, may make their appearance once and never come back; or the same person may dream the same thing repeatedly, either in the same form or with slight alterations. In short, these scraps of mental activity at night-time have at command an immense repertory, can in fact create everything that by day the mind is capable of—only, it is never the same.