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The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 6 - C. The Means of Representation in Dreams Psychology
VI. THE DREAM-WORK (continued)
D. Regard for Representability
We have hitherto been concerned with investigating the manner in which our
dreams represent the relations between the dream- thoughts, but we have often
extended our inquiry to the further question as to what alterations the
dream-material itself undergoes for the purposes of dream-formation. We now know
that the dream-material, after being stripped of a great many of its relations,
is subjected to compression, while at the same time displacements of the
intensity of its elements enforce a psychic transvaluation of this material. The
displacements which we have considered were shown to be substitutions of one
particular idea for another, in some way related to the original by its
associations, and the displacements were made to facilitate the condensation,
inasmuch as in this manner, instead of two elements, a common mean between them
found its way into the dream. So far, no mention has been made of any other kind
of displacement. But we learn from the analyses that displacement of another
kind does occur, and that it manifests itself in an exchange of the verbal
expression for the thought in question. In both cases we are dealing with a
displacement along a chain of associations, but the same process takes place in
different psychic spheres, and the result of this displacement in the one case
is that one element is replaced by another, while in the other case an element
exchanges its verbal shape for another.
This second kind of displacement occurring in dream-formation is not only of
great theoretical interest, but also peculiarly well- fitted to explain the
appearance of phantastic absurdity in which dreams disguise themselves.
Displacement usually occurs in such a way that a colourless and abstract
expression of the dream- thought is exchanged for one that is pictorial and
concrete. The advantage, and along with it the purpose, of this substitution is
obvious. Whatever is pictorial is capable of representation in dreams and can be
fitted into a situation in which abstract expression would confront the
dream-representation with difficulties not unlike those which would arise if a
political leading article had to be represented in an illustrated journal. Not
only the possibility of representation, but also the interests of condensation
and of the censorship, may be furthered by this exchange. Once the abstractly
expressed and unserviceable dream-thought is translated into pictorial language,
those contacts and identities between this new expression and the rest of the
dream-material which are required by the dream-work, and which it contrives
whenever they are not available, are more readily provided, since in every
language concrete terms, owing to their evolution, are richer in associations
than are abstract terms. It may be imagined that a good part of the intermediate
work in dream-formation, which seeks to reduce the separate dream- thoughts to
the tersest and most unified expression in the dream, is effected in this
manner, by fitting paraphrases of the various thoughts. The one thought whose
mode of expression has perhaps been determined by other factors will therewith
exert a distributive and selective influence on the expressions available for
the others, and it may even do this from the very start, just as it would in the
creative activity of a poet. When a poem is to be written in rhymed couplets,
the second rhyming line is bound by two conditions: it must express the meaning
allotted to it, and its expression must permit of a rhyme with the first line.
The best poems are, of course, those in which one does not detect the effort to
find a rhyme, and in which both thoughts have as a matter of course, by mutual
induction, selected the verbal expression which, with a little subsequent
adjustment, will permit of the rhyme.
In some cases the change of expression serves the purposes of dream-condensation
more directly, in that it provides an arrangement of words which, being
ambiguous, permits of the expression of more than one of the dream-thoughts. The
whole range of verbal wit is thus made to serve the purpose of the dream-work.
The part played by words in dream-formation ought not to surprise us. A word, as
the point of junction of a number of ideas, possesses, as it were, a predestined
ambiguity, and the neuroses (obsessions, phobias) take advantage of the
opportunities for condensation and disguise afforded by words quite as eagerly
as do dreams. * That dream-distortion also profits by this displacement of
expression may be readily demonstrated. It is indeed confusing if one ambiguous
word is substituted for two with single meanings, and the replacement of sober,
everyday language by a plastic mode of expression baffles our understanding,
especially since a dream never tells us whether the elements presented by it are
to be interpreted literally or metaphorically, whether they refer to the dream-
material directly, or only by means of interpolated expressions. Generally
speaking, in the interpretation of any element of a dream it is doubtful whether
it
(a) is to be accepted in the negative or the positive sense (contrast relation);
(b) is to be interpreted historically (as a memory);
(c) is symbolic; or whether
(d) its valuation is to be based upon its wording. - In spite of this
versatility, we may say that the representation effected by the dream-work,
which was never even intended to be understood, does not impose upon the
translator any greater difficulties than those that the ancient writers of
hieroglyphics imposed upon their readers.
* Compare Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious.
I have already given several examples of dream-representations which are held
together only by ambiguity of expression (her mouth opens without difficulty, in
the dream of Irma's injection; I cannot go yet after all, in the last dream
related, etc.) I shall now cite a dream in the analysis of which plastic
representation of the abstract thoughts plays a greater part. The difference
between such dream-interpretation and the interpretation by means of symbols may
nevertheless be clearly defined; in the symbolic interpretation of dreams, the
key to the symbolism is selected arbitrarily by the interpreter, while in our
own cases of verbal disguise these keys are universally known and are taken from
established modes of speech. Provided one hits on the right idea on the right
occasion, one may solve dreams of this kind, either completely or in part,
independently of any statements made by the dreamer.
A lady friend of mine, dreams: She is at the opera. It is a Wagnerian
performance, which has lasted until 7.45 in the morning. In the stalls and pit
there are tables, at which people are eating and drinking. Her cousin and his
young wife, who have just returned from their honeymoon, are sitting at one of
these tables; beside them is a member of the aristocracy. The young wife is said
to have brought him back with her from the honeymoon quite openly, just as she
might have brought back a hat. In the middle of the stalls there is a high
tower, on the top of which there is a platform surrounded by an iron railing.
There, high overhead, stands the conductor, with the features of Hans Richter,
continually running round behind the railing, perspiring terribly; and from this
position he is conducting the orchestra, which is arranged round the base of the
tower. She herself is sitting in a box with a friend of her own sex (known to
me). Her younger sister tries to hand her up, from the stalls, a large lump of
coal, alleging that she had not known that it would be so long, and that she
must by this time be miserably cold. (As though the boxes ought to have been
heated during the long performance.)
Although in other respects the dream gives a good picture of the situation, it
is, of course, nonsensical enough: the tower in the middle of the stalls, from
which the conductor leads the orchestra, and above all the coal which her sister
hands up to her. I purposely asked for no analysis of this dream. With some
knowledge of the personal relations of the dreamer, I was able to interpret
parts of it independently of her. I knew that she had felt intense sympathy for
a musician whose career had been prematurely brought to an end by insanity. I
therefore decided to take the tower in the stalls verbally. It then emerged that
the man whom she wished to see in the place of Hans Richter towered above all
the other members of the orchestra. This tower must be described as a composite
formation by means of apposition; by its substructure it represents the
greatness of the man, but by the railing at the top, behind which he runs round
like a prisoner or an animal in a cage (an allusion to the name of the
unfortunate man), * it represents his later fate. Lunatic-tower is perhaps the
expression in which the two thoughts might have met.
* Hugo Wolf.
Now that we have discovered the dream's method of representation, we may try,
with the same key, to unlock the meaning of the second apparent absurdity, that
of the coal which her sister hands up to the dreamer. Coal should mean secret
love.
No fire, no coal so hotly glows
As the secret love of which no one knows.
She and her friend remain seated * while her younger sister, who still has a
prospect of marrying, hands her up the coal because she did not know that it
would be so long. What would be so long is not told in the dream. If it were an
anecdote, we should say the performance; but in the dream we may consider the
sentence as it is, declare it to be ambiguous, and add before she married. The
interpretation secret love is then confirmed by the mention of the cousin who is
sitting with his wife in the stalls, and by the open love-affair attributed to
the latter. The contrasts between secret and open love, between the dreamer's
fire and the coldness of the young wife, dominate the dream. Moreover, here once
again there is a person in a high position as a middle term between the
aristocrat and the musician who is justified in raising high hopes.
* The German sitzen geblieben is often applied to women who have not succeeded
in getting married.- TR.
In the above analysis we have at last brought to light a third factor, whose
part in the transformation of the dream-thoughts into the dream-content is by no
means trivial: namely, consideration of the suitability of the dream-thoughts
for representation in the particular psychic material of which the dream makes
use- that is, for the most part in visual images. Among the various subordinate
ideas associated with the essential dream-thoughts, those will be preferred
which permit of visual representation, and the dream-work does not hesitate to
recast the intractable thoughts into an: other verbal form, even though this is
a more unusual form provided it makes representation possible, and thus puts an
end to the psychological distress caused by strangulated thinking. This pouring
of the thought- content into another mould may at the same time serve the work
of condensation, and may establish relations with another thought which
otherwise would not have been established. It is even possible that this second
thought may itself have previously changed its original expression for the
purpose of meeting the first one halfway.
Herbert Silberer * has described a good method of directly observing the
transformation of thoughts into images which occurs in dream-formation, and has
thus made it possible to study in isolation this one factor of the dream-work.
If, while in a state of fatigue and somnolence, he imposed upon himself a mental
effort, it frequently happened that the thought escaped him and in its place
there appeared a picture in which he could recognize the substitute for the
thought. Not quite appropriately, Silberer described this substitution as
auto-symbolic. I shall cite here a few examples from Silberer's work, and on
account of certain peculiarities of the phenomena observed I shall refer to the
subject later on.
* Bleuler-Freud Jahrbuch, i (1909).
"Example 1. I remember that I have to correct a halting passage in an essay.
"Symbol. I see myself planing a piece of wood.
"Example 5. I endeavour to call to mind the aim of certain metaphysical studies
which I am proposing to undertake.
"This aim, I reflect, consists in working one's way through, while seeking for
the basis of existence, to ever higher forms of consciousness or levels of
being.
"Symbol. I run a long knife under a cake as though to take a slice out of it.
"Interpretation. My movement with the knife signifies working one's way
through... The explanation of the basis of the symbolism is as follows: At table
it devolves upon me now and again to cut and distribute a cake, a business which
I perform with a long, flexible knife, and which necessitates a certain amount
of care. In particular, the neat extraction of the cut slices of cake presents a
certain amount of difficulty; the knife must be carefully pushed under the
slices in question (the slow working one's way through in order to get to the
bottom). But there is yet more symbolism in the picture. The cake of the symbol
was really a dobos-cake- that is, a cake in which the knife has to cut through
several layers (the levels of consciousness and thought).
"Example 9. I lost the thread in a train of thought. I make an effort to find it
again, but I have to recognize that the point of departure has completely
escaped me.
"Symbol. Part of a form of type, the last lines of which have fallen out."
In view of the part played by witticisms, puns, quotations, songs, and proverbs
in the intellectual life of educated persons, it would be entirely in accordance
with our expectations to find disguises of this sort used with extreme frequency
in the representation of the dream-thoughts. Only in the case of a few types of
material has a generally valid dream-symbolism established itself on the basis
of generally known allusions and verbal equivalents. A good part of this
symbolism, however, is common to the psychoneuroses, legends, and popular usages
as well as to dreams.
In fact, if we look more closely into the matter, we must recognize that in
employing this kind of substitution the dream- work is doing nothing at all
original. For the achievement of its purpose, which in this case is
representation without interference from the censorship, it simply follows the
paths which it finds already marked out in unconscious thinking, and gives the
preference to those transformations of the repressed material which are
permitted to become conscious also in the form of witticisms and allusions, and
with which all the phantasies of neurotics are replete. Here we suddenly begin
to understand the dream-interpretations of Scherner, whose essential correctness
I have vindicated elsewhere. The preoccupation of the imagination with one's own
body is by no means peculiar to or characteristic of the dream alone. My
analyses have shown me that it is constantly found in the unconscious thinking
of neurotics, and may be traced back to sexual curiosity, whose object, in the
adolescent youth or maiden, is the genitals of the opposite sex, or even of the
same sex. But, as Scherner and Volkelt very truly insist, the house does not
constitute the only group of ideas which is employed for the symbolization of
the body, either in dreams or in the unconscious phantasies of neurosis. To be
sure, I know patients who have steadily adhered to an architectural symbolism
for the body and the genitals (sexual interest, of course, extends far beyond
the region of the external genital organs)- patients for whom posts and pillars
signify legs (as in the Song of Songs), to whom every door suggests a bodily
aperture (hole), and every water-pipe the urinary system, and so on. But the
groups of ideas appertaining to plant-life. or to the kitchen, are just as often
chosen to conceal sexual images; * in respect of the former everyday language,
the sediment of imaginative comparisons dating from the remotest times, has
abundantly paved the way (the vineyard of the Lord, the seed of Abraham, the
garden of the maiden in the Song of Songs). The ugliest as well as the most
intimate details of sexual life may be thought or dreamed of in apparently
innocent allusions to culinary operations, and the symptoms of hysteria will
become absolutely unintelligible if we forget that sexual symbolism may conceal
itself behind the most commonplace and inconspicuous matters as its safest
hiding-place. That some neurotic children cannot look at blood and raw meat,
that they vomit at the sight of eggs and macaroni, and that the dread of snakes,
which is natural to mankind, is monstrously exaggerated in neurotics- all this
has a definite sexual meaning. Wherever the neurosis employs a disguise of this
sort, it treads the paths once trodden by the whole of humanity in the early
stages of civilization- paths to whose thinly veiled existence our idiomatic
expressions, proverbs, superstitions, and customs testify to this day.
* A mass of corroborative material may be found in the three supplementary
volumes of Edward Fuchs's Illustrierte Sittengeschichte; privately printed by A.
Lange, Munich.
I here insert the promised flower-dream of a female patient, in which I shall
print in Roman type everything which is to be sexually interpreted. This
beautiful dream lost all its charm for the dreamer once it had been interpreted.
(a) Preliminary dream: She goes to the two maids in the kitchen and scolds them
for taking so long to prepare a little bite of food. She also sees a very large
number of heavy kitchen utensils in the kitchen, heaped into piles and turned
upside down in order to drain. Later addition: The two maids go to fetch water,
and have, as it were, to climb into a river which reaches up to the house or
into the courtyard. *
* For the interpretation of this preliminary dream, which is to be regarded as
casual, see earlier in this chapter, C.
(b) Main dream: * She is descending from a height *(2) over curiously
constructed railings, or a fence which is composed of large square trellis-work
hurdles with small square apertures. *(3) It is really not adapted for climbing;
she is constantly afraid that she cannot find a place for her foot, and she is
glad that her dress doesn't get caught anywhere, and that she is able to climb
it so respectably. *(4) As she climbs she is carrying a big branch in her hand,
*(5) really like a tree, which is thickly studded with red flowers; a spreading
branch, with many twigs. *(6) With this is connected the idea of cherry-blossoms
(Bluten = flowers), but they look like fully opened camellias, which of course
do not grow on trees. As she is descending, she first has one, then suddenly
two, and then again only one. *(7) When she has reached the ground the lower
flowers have already begun to fall. Now that she has reached the bottom she sees
an "odd man" who is combing- as she would like to put it- just such a tree, that
is, with a piece of wood he is scraping thick bunches of hair from it, which
hang from it like moss. Other men have chopped off such branches in a garden,
and have flung them into the road, where they are lying about, so that a number
of people take some of them. But she asks whether this is right, whether she may
take one, too. *(8) In the garden there stands a young man (he is a foreigner,
and known to her) toward whom she goes in order to ask him how it is possible to
transplant such branches in her own garden. *(9) He embraces her, whereupon she
struggles and asks him what he is thinking of, whether it is permissible to
embrace her in such a manner. He says there is nothing wrong in it, that it is
permitted. *(10) He then declares himself willing to go with her into the other
garden, in order to show her how to put them in, and he says something to her
which she does not quite understand: "Besides this I need three metres (later
she says: square metres) or three fathoms of ground." It seems as though he were
asking her for something in return for his willingness, as though he had the
intention of indemnifying (reimbursing) himself in her garden, as though he
wanted to evade some law or other, to derive some advantage from it without
causing her an injury. She does not know whether or not he really shows her
anything.
* Her career.
*(2) Exalted origin, the wish-contrast to the preliminary dream.
*(3) A composite formation, which unites two localities, the so- called garret
(German: Boden = "floor," "garret") of her father's house, in which she used to
play with her brother, the object of her later phantasies, and the farm of a
malicious uncle, who used to tease her.
*(4) Wish-contrast to an actual memory of her uncle's farm, to the effect that
she used to expose herself while she was asleep.
*(5) Just as the angel bears a lily-stem in the Annunciation.
*(6) For the explanation of this composite formation, see earlier in this
chapter, C.; innocence, menstruation, La Dame aux Camelias.
*(7) Referring to the plurality of the persons who serve her phantasies.
*(8) Whether it is permissible to masturbate. [Sich einem herunterreissen means
"to pull off" and colloquially "to masturbate."- TR.]
*(9) The branch (Ast) has long been used to represent the male organ, and,
moreover, contains a very distinct allusion to the family name of the dreamer.
*(10) Refers to the matrimonial precautions, as does that which immediately
follows.
The above dream, which has been given prominence on account of its symbolic
elements, may be described as a biographical dream. Such dreams occur frequently
in psychoanalysis, but perhaps only rarely outside it. *
* An analogous biographical dream is recorded later in this chapter, among the
examples of dream symbolism.
I have, of course, an abundance of such material, but to reproduce it here would
lead us too far into the consideration of neurotic conditions. Everything points
to the same conclusion, namely, that we need not assume that any special
symbolizing activity of the psyche is operative in dream-formation; that, on the
contrary, the dream makes use of such symbolizations as are to be found
ready-made in unconscious thinking, since these, by reason of their case of
representation, and for the most part by reason of their being exempt from the
censorship, satisfy more effectively the requirements of dream-formation.
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