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The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 7 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM PROCESSES A. The Forgetting of Dreams Psychology
CHAPTER 7 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM PROCESSES
B. Regression
Now that we have defended ourselves against the objections raised, or have at
least indicated our weapons of defence, we must no longer delay entering upon
the psychological investigations for which we have so long been preparing. Let
us summarize the main results of our recent investigations: The dream is a
psychic act full of import; its motive power is invariably a wish craving
fulfilment; the fact that it is unrecognizable as a wish, and its many
peculiarities and absurdities, are due to the influence of the psychic
censorship to which it has been subjected during its formation. Besides the
necessity of evading the censorship, the following factors have played a part in
its formation: first, a need for condensing the psychic material; second, regard
for representability in sensory images; and third (though not constantly),
regard for a rational and intelligible exterior of the dream-structure. From
each of these propositions a path leads onward to psychological postulates and
assumptions. Thus, the reciprocal relation of the wish-motives, and the four
conditions. as well as the mutual relations of these conditions, must now be
investigated; the dream must be inserted in the context of the psychic life.
At the beginning of this section we cited a certain dream in order that it might
remind us of the problems that are still unsolved. The interpretation of this
dream (of the burning child) presented no difficulties, although in the
analytical sense it was not given in full. We asked ourselves why, after all, it
was necessary that the father should dream instead of waking, and we recognized
the wish to represent the child as living as a motive of the dream. That there
was yet another wish operative in the dream we shall be able to show after
further discussion. For the present, however, we may say that for the sake of
the wish- fulfilment the thought-process of sleep was transformed into a dream.
If the wish-fulfilment is cancelled out, only one characteristic remains which
distinguishes the two kinds of psychic events. The dream-thought would have
been: "I see a glimmer coming from the room in which the body is lying. Perhaps
a candle has fallen over, and the child is burning!" The dream reproduces the
result of this reflection unchanged, but represents it in a situation which
exists in the present and is perceptible by the senses like an experience of the
waking state. This, however, is the most common and the most striking
psychological characteristic of the dream; a thought, usually the one wished
for, is objectified in the dream, and represented as a scene, or- as we think-
experienced.
But how are we now to explain this characteristic peculiarity of the dream-work,
or- to put it more modestly- how are we to bring it into relation with the
psychic processes?
On closer examination, it is plainly evident that the manifest form of the dream
is marked by two characteristics which are almost independent of each other. One
is its representation as a present situation with the omission of perhaps; the
other is the translation of the thought into visual images and speech.
The transformation to which the dream-thoughts are subjected because the
expectation is put into the present tense is, perhaps, in this particular dream
not so very striking. This is probably due to the special and really subsidiary
role of the wish-fulfilment in this dream. Let us take another dream, in which
the dream-wish does not break away from the continuation of the waking thoughts
in sleep; for example, the dream of Irma's injection. Here the dream-thought
achieving representation is in the conditional: "If only Otto could be blamed
for Irma's illness!" The dream suppresses the conditional, and replaces it by a
simple present tense: "Yes, Otto is to blame for Irma's illness." This, then, is
the first of the transformations which even the undistorted dream imposes on the
dream-thoughts. But we will not linger over this first peculiarity of the dream.
We dispose of it by a reference to the conscious phantasy, the day- dream, which
behaves in a similar fashion with its conceptual content. When Daudet's M.
Joyeuse wanders unemployed through the streets of Paris while his daughter is
led to believe that he has a post and is sitting in his office, he dreams, in
the present tense, of circumstances that might help him to obtain a
recommendation and employment. The dream, then, employs the present tense in the
same manner and with the same right as the day-dream. The present is the tense
in which the wish is represented as fulfilled.
The second quality peculiar to the dream alone, as distinguished from the
day-dream, is that the conceptual content is not thought, but is transformed
into visual images, to which we give credence, and which we believe that we
experience. Let us add. however, that not all dreams show this transformation of
ideas into visual images. There are dreams which consist solely of thoughts, but
we cannot on that account deny that they are substantially dreams. My dream
Autodidasker- the day-phantasy about Professor N is of this character; it is
almost as free of visual elements as though I had thought its content during the
day. Moreover, every long dream contains elements which have not undergone this
transformation into the visual, and which are simply thought or known as we are
wont to think or know in our waking state. And we must here reflect that this
transformation of ideas into visual images does not occur in dreams alone, but
also in hallucinations and visions, which may appear spontaneously in health, or
as symptoms in the psychoneuroses. In brief, the relation which we are here
investigating is by no means an exclusive one; the fact remains, however, that
this characteristic of the dream, whenever it occurs, seems to be its most
noteworthy characteristic, so that we cannot think of the dream-life without it.
To understand it, however, requires a very exhaustive discussion.
Among all the observations relating to the theory of dreams to be found in the
literature of the subject, I should like to lay stress upon one as being
particularly worthy of mention. The famous G. T. H. Fechner makes the
conjecture,[15] in a discussion as to the nature of the dreams, that the dream
is staged elsewhere than in the waking ideation. No other assumption enables us
to comprehend the special peculiarities of the dream- life.
The idea which is thus put before us is one of psychic locality. We shall wholly
ignore the fact that the psychic apparatus concerned is known to us also as an
anatomical preparation, and we shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine
the psychic locality in any anatomical sense. We shall remain on psychological
ground, and we shall do no more than accept the invitation to think of the
instrument which serves the psychic activities much as we think of a compound
microscope, a photographic camera, or other apparatus. The psychic locality,
then, corresponds to a place within such an apparatus in which one of the
preliminary phases of the image comes into existence. As is well known, there
are in the microscope and the telescope such ideal localities or planes, in
which no tangible portion of the apparatus is located. I think it superfluous to
apologize for the imperfections of this and all similar figures. These
comparisons are designed only to assist us in our attempt to make intelligible
the complication of the psychic performance by dissecting it and referring the
individual performances to the individual components of the apparatus. So far as
I am aware, no attempt has yet been made to divine the construction of the
psychic instrument by means of such dissection. I see no harm in such an
attempt; I think that we should give free rein to our conjectures, provided we
keep our heads and do not mistake the scaffolding for the building. Since for
the first approach to any unknown subject we need the help only of auxiliary
ideas, we shall prefer the crudest and most tangible hypothesis to all others.
Accordingly, we conceive the psychic apparatus as a compound instrument, the
component parts of which we shall call instances, or, for the sake of clearness,
systems. We shall then anticipate that these systems may perhaps maintain a
constant spatial orientation to one another, very much as do the different and
successive systems of lenses of a telescope. Strictly speaking, there is no need
to assume an actual spatial arrangement of the psychic system. It will be enough
for our purpose if a definite sequence is established, so that in certain
psychic events the system will be traversed by the excitation in a definite
temporal order. This order may be different in the case of other processes; such
a possibility is left open. For the sake of brevity, we shall henceforth speak
of the component parts of the apparatus as Psi-systems.
The first thing that strikes us is the fact that the apparatus composed of
Psi-systems has a direction. All our psychic activities proceed from (inner or
outer) stimuli and terminate in innervations. We thus ascribe to the apparatus a
sensory and a motor end; at the sensory end we find a system which receives the
perceptions, ind at the motor end another which opens the sluices of motility.
The psychic process generally runs from the perceptive end to the motor end. The
most general scheme of the psychic apparatus has therefore the following
appearance as shown in Fig. 1. (See illustration.) But this is only in
compliance with the requirement, long familiar to us, that the psychic apparatus
must be constructed like a reflex apparatus. The reflex act remains the type of
every psychic activity as well.
We now have reason to admit a first differentiation at the sensory end. The
percepts that come to us leave in our psychic apparatus a trace, which we may
call a memory-trace. The function related to this memory-trace we call the
memory. If we hold seriously to our resolution to connect the psychic processes
into systems, the memory-trace can consist only of lasting changes in the
elements of the systems. But, as has already been shown elsewhere, obvious
difficulties arise when one and the same system is faithfully to preserve
changes in its elements and still to remain fresh and receptive in respect of
new occasions of change. In accordance with the principle which is directing our
attempt, we shall therefore ascribe these two functions to two different
systems. We assume that an initial system of this apparatus receives the stimuli
of perception but retains nothing of them- that is, it has no memory; and that
behind this there lies a second system, which transforms the momentary
excitation of the first into lasting traces. The following would then be the
diagram of our psychic apparatus: (See illustration.)
We know that of the percepts which act upon the P-system, we retain permanently
something else as well as the content itself. Our percepts prove also to be
connected with one another in the memory, and this is especially so if they
originally occurred simultaneously. We call this the fact of association. It is
now clear that, if the P-system is entirely lacking in memory, it certainly
cannot preserve traces for the associations; the individual P-elements would be
intolerably hindered in their functioning if a residue of a former connection
should make its influence felt against a new perception. Hence we must rather
assume that the memory-system is the basis of association. The fact of
association, then, consists in this- that in consequence of a lessening of
resistance and a smoothing of the ways from one of the mem-elements, the
excitation transmits itself to a second rather than to a third mem-element.
On further investigation we find it necessary to assume not one but many such
mem-systems, in which the same excitation transmitted by the P-elements
undergoes a diversified fixation. The first of these mem-systems will in any
case contain the fixation of the association through simultaneity, while in
those lying farther away the same material of excitation will be arranged
according to other forms of combination; so that relationships of similarity,
etc., might perhaps be represented by these later systems. It would, of course,
be idle to attempt to express in words the psychic significance of such a
system. Its characteristic would lie in the intimacy of its relations to
elements of raw material of memory- that is (if we wish to hint at a more
comprehensive theory) in the gradations of the conductive resistance on the way
to these elements.
An observation of a general nature, which may possibly point to something of
importance, may here be interpolated. The P-system, which possesses no capacity
for preserving changes, and hence no memory, furnishes to consciousness the
complexity and variety of the sensory qualities. Our memories, on the other
hand, are unconscious in themselves; those that are most deeply impressed form
no exception. They can be made conscious, but there is no doubt that they unfold
all their activities in the unconscious state. What we term our character is
based, indeed, on the memory- traces of our impressions, and it is precisely
those impressions that have affected us most strongly, those of our early youth,
which hardly ever become conscious. But when memories become conscious again
they show no sensory quality, or a very negligible one in comparison with the
perceptions. If, now, it can be confirmed that for consciousness memory and
quality are mutually exclusive in the Psi-systems, we have gained a most
promising insight into the determinations of the neuron excitations.[16]
What we have so far assumed concerning the composition of the psychic apparatus
at the sensible end has been assumed regardless of dreams and of the
psychological explanations which we have hitherto derived from them. Dreams,
however, will serve as a source of evidence for our knowledge of another part of
the apparatus. We have seen that it was impossible to explain dream- formation
unless we ventured to assume two psychic instances, one of which subjected the
activities of the other to criticism, the result of which was exclusion from
consciousness.
We have concluded that the criticizing instance maintains closer relations with
the consciousness than the instance criticized. It stands between the latter and
the consciousness like a screen. Further, we have found that there is reason to
identify the criticizing instance with that which directs our waking life and
determines our voluntary conscious activities. If, in accordance with our
assumptions, we now replace these instances by systems, the criticizing system
will therefore be moved to the motor end. We now enter both systems in our
diagram, expressing, by the names given them, their relation to consciousness.
(See illustration.)
The last of the systems at the motor end we call the preconscious (Pcs.) to
denote that the exciting processes in this system can reach consciousness
without any further detention, provided certain other conditions are fulfilled,
e.g., the attainment of a definite degree of intensity, a certain apportionment
of that function which we must call attention, etc. This is at the same time the
system which holds the keys of voluntary motility. The system behind it we call
the unconscious (Ucs), because it has no access to consciousness except through
the preconscious, in the passage through which the excitation-process must
submit to certain changes.[17]
In which of these systems, then, do we localize the impetus to dream-formation?
For the sake of simplicity, let us say in the system Ucs. We shall find, it is
true, in subsequent discussions, that this is not altogether correct; that
dream-formation is obliged to make connection with dream-thoughts which belong
to the system of the preconscious. But we shall learn elsewhere, when we come to
deal with the dream-wish, that the motive-power of the dream is furnished by the
Ucs, and on account of this factor we shall assume the unconscious system as the
starting- point for dream-formation. This dream-excitation, like all the other
thought-structures, will now strive to continue itself in the Pcs, and thence to
gain admission to the consciousness.
Experience teaches us that the path leading through the preconscious to
consciousness is closed to the dream-thoughts during the day by the resisting
censorship. At night they gain admission to consciousness; the question arises:
In what way and because of what changes? If this admission were rendered
possible to the dream-thoughts by the weakening, during the night, of the
resistance watching on the boundary between the unconscious and the
preconscious, we should then have dreams in the material of our ideas, which
would not display the hallucinatory character that interests us at present.
The weakening of the censorship between the two systems, Ucs and Pcs, can
explain to us only such dreams as the Autodidasker dream but not dreams like
that of the burning child, which- as will be remembered- we stated as a problem
at the outset in our present investigations.
What takes place in the hallucinatory dream we can describe in no other way than
by saying that the excitation follows a retrogressive course. It communicates
itself not to the motor end of the apparatus, but to the sensory end, and
finally reaches the system of perception. If we call the direction which the
psychic process follows from the unconscious into the waking state progressive,
we may then speak of the dream as having a regressive character.[18]
This regression is therefore assuredly one of the most important psychological
peculiarities of the dream-process; but we must not forget that it is not
characteristic of the dream alone. Intentional recollection and other component
processes of our normal thinking likewise necessitate a retrogression in the
psychic apparatus from some complex act of ideation to the raw material of the
memory-traces which underlie it. But during the waking state this turning
backwards does not reach beyond the memory-images; it is incapable of producing
the hallucinatory revival of the perceptual images. Why is it otherwise in
dreams? When we spoke of the condensation-work of the dream we could not avoid
the assumption that by the dream-work the intensities adhering to the ideas are
completely transferred from one to another. It is probably this modification of
the usual psychic process which makes possible the cathexis[19] of the system of
P to its full sensory vividness in the reverse direction to thinking. -
I hope that we are not deluding ourselves as regards the importance of this
present discussion. We have done nothing more than give a name to an
inexplicable phenomenon. We call it regression if the idea in the dream is
changed back into the visual image from which it once originated. But even this
step requires justification. Why this definition if it does not teach us
anything new? Well, I believe that the word regression is of service to us,
inasmuch as it connects a fact familiar to us with the scheme of the psychic
apparatus endowed with direction. At this point, and for the first time, we
shall profit by the fact that we have constructed such a scheme. For with the
help of this scheme we shall perceive, without further reflection, another
peculiarity of dream-formation. If we look upon the dream as a process of
regression within the hypothetical psychic apparatus, we have at once an
explanation of the empirically proven fact that all thought-relations of the
dream-thoughts are either lost in the dream-work or have difficulty in achieving
expression. According to our scheme, these thought-relations are contained not
in the first mem-systems, but in those lying farther to the front, and in the
regression to the perceptual images they must forfeit expression. In regression,
the structure of the dream- thoughts breaks up into its raw material.
But what change renders possible this regression which is impossible during the
day? Let us here be content with an assumption. There must evidently be changes
in the cathexis of the individual systems, causing the latter to become more
accessible or inaccessible to the discharge of the excitation; but in any such
apparatus the same effect upon the course of the excitation might be produced by
more than one kind of change. We naturally think of the. sleeping state, and of
the many cathectic changes which this evokes at the sensory end of the
apparatus. During the day there is a continuous stream flowing from the Psi-
system of the P toward the motility end; this current ceases at night, and can
no longer block the flow of the current of excitation in the opposite direction.
This would appear to be that seclusion from the outer world which, according to
the theory of some writers, is supposed to explain the psychological character
of the dream. In the explanation of the regression of the dream we shall,
however, have to take into account those other regressions which occur during
morbid waking states. In these other forms of regression the explanation just
given plainly leaves us in the lurch. Regression occurs in spite of the
uninterrupted sensory current in a progressive direction.
The hallucinations of hysteria and paranoia, as well as the visions of mentally
normal persons, I would explain as corresponding, in fact, to regressions, i.e.,
to thoughts transformed into images; and would assert that only such thoughts
undergo this transformation as are in intimate connection with suppressed
memories, or with memories which have remained unconscious. As an example, I
will cite the case of one of my youngest hysterical patients- a boy of twelve,
who was prevented from falling asleep by "green faces with red eyes," which
terrified him. The source of this manifestation was the suppressed, but once
conscious memory of a boy whom he had often seen four years earlier, and who
offered a warning example of many bad habits, including masturbation, for which
he was now reproaching himself. At that time his mother had noticed that the
complexion of this ill-mannered boy was greenish and that he had red (i.e.,
red-rimmed) eyes. Hence his terrifying vision, which merely determined his
recollection of another saying of his mother's, to the effect that such boys
become demented, are unable to learn anything at school, and are doomed to an
early death. A part of this prediction came true in the case of my little
patient; he could not get on at school, and, as appeared from his involuntary
associations, he was in terrible dread of the remainder of the prophecy.
However, after a brief period of successful treatment his sleep was restored,
his anxiety removed, and he finished his scholastic year with an excellent
record.
Here I may add the interpretation of a vision described to me by an hysterical
woman of forty, as having occurred when she was in normal health. One morning
she opened her eyes and saw her brother in the room, although she knew him to be
confined in an insane asylum. Her little son was asleep by her side. Lest the
child should be frightened on seeing his uncle, and fall into convulsions, she
pulled the sheet over his face. This done, the phantom disappeared. This
apparition was the revision of one of her childish memories, which, although
conscious, was most intimately connected with all the unconscious material in
her mind. Her nurserymaid had told her that her mother, who had died young (my
patient was then only eighteen months old), had suffered from epileptic or
hysterical convulsions, which dated back to a fright caused by her brother (the
patient's uncle) who appeared to her disguised as a spectre with a sheet over
his head. The vision contains the same elements as the reminiscence, viz., the
appearance of the brother, the sheet, the fright, and its effect. These
elements, however, are arranged in a fresh context, and are transferred to other
persons. The obvious motive of the vision, and the thought which it replaced,
was her solicitude lest her little son, who bore a striking resemblance to his
uncle, should share the latter's fate.
Both examples here cited are not entirely unrelated to the state of sleep, and
may for that reason be unfitted to afford the evidence for the sake of which I
have cited them. I will, therefore, refer to my analysis of an hallucinatory
paranoic woman patient[20] and to the results of my hitherto unpublished studies
on the psychology of the psychoneuroses, in order to emphasize the fact that in
these cases of regressive thought- transformation one must not overlook the
influence of a suppressed memory, or one that has remained unconscious, this
being usually of an infantile character. This memory draws into the regression,
as it were, the thoughts with which it is connected, and which are kept from
expression by the censorship- that is, into that form of representation in which
the memory itself is psychically existent. And here I may add, as a result of my
studies of hysteria, that if one succeeds in bringing to consciousness infantile
scenes (whether they are recollections or phantasies) they appear as
hallucinations, and are divested of this character only when they are
communicated. It is known also that even in persons whose memories are not
otherwise visual, the earliest infantile memories remain vividly visual until
late in life.
If, now, we bear in mind the part played in the dream-thoughts by the infantile
experiences, or by the phantasies based upon them, and recollect how often
fragments of these re-emerge in the dream- content, and how even the
dream-wishes often proceed from them, we cannot deny the probability that in
dreams, too, the transformation of thoughts into visual images may be the result
of the attraction exercised by the visually represented memory, striving for
resuscitation, upon the thoughts severed from the consciousness and struggling
for expression. Pursuing this conception. we may further describe the dream as
the substitute for the infantile scene modified by transference to recent
material. The infantile scene cannot enforce its own revival, and must therefore
be satisfied to return as a dream.
This reference to the significance of the infantile scenes (or of their
phantastic repetitions) as in a certain degree furnishing the pattern for the
dream-content renders superfluous the assumption made by Scherner and his pupils
concerning inner sources of stimuli. Scherner assumes a state of visual
excitation, of internal excitation in the organ of sight, when the dreams
manifest a special vividness or an extraordinary abundance of visual elements.
We need raise no objection to this assumption; we may perhaps content ourselves
with assuming such a state of excitation only for the psychic perceptive system
of the organ of vision; we shall, however, insist that this state of excitation
is a reanimation by the memory of a former actual visual excitation. I cannot,
from my own experience, give a good example showing such an influence of an
infantile memory; my own dreams are altogether less rich in perceptual elements
than I imagine those of others to be; but in my most beautiful and most vivid
dream of late years I can easily trace the hallucinatory distinctness of the
dream-contents to the visual qualities of recently received impressions. In
chapter VI., H, I mentioned a dream in which the dark blue of the water, the
brown of the smoke issuing from the ship's funnels, and the sombre brown and red
of the buildings which I saw made a profound and lasting impression upon my
mind. This dream, if any, must be attributed to visual excitation, but what was
it that had brought my organ of vision into this excitable state? It was a
recent impression which had joined itself to a series of former impressions. The
colours I beheld were in the first place those of the toy blocks with which my
children had erected a magnificent building for my admiration, on the day
preceding the dream. There was the sombre red on the large blocks, the blue and
brown on the small ones. Joined to these were the colour impressions of my last
journey in Italy: the beautiful blue of the Isonzo and the lagoons, the brown
hue of the Alps. The beautiful colours seen in the dream were but a repetition
of those seen in memory.
Let us summarize what we have learned about this peculiarity of dreams: their
power of recasting their idea-content in visual images. We may not have
explained this character of the dream- work by referring it to the known laws of
psychology, but we have singled it out as pointing to unknown relations, and
have given it the name of the regressive character. Wherever such regression has
occurred, we have regarded it as an effect of the resistance which opposes the
progress of thought on its normal way to consciousness, and of the simultaneous
attraction exerted upon it by vivid memories.[21] The regression in dreams is
perhaps facilitated by the cessation of the progressive stream flowing from the
sense-organs during the day; for which auxiliary factor there must be some
compensation, in the other forms of regression, by the strengthening of the
other regressive motives. We must also bear in mind that in pathological cases
of regression, just as in dreams, the process of energy-transference must be
different from that occurring in the regressions of normal psychic life, since
it renders possible a full hallucinatory cathexis of the perceptive system. What
we have described in the analysis of the dream-work as regard for
representability may be referred to the selective attraction of visually
remembered scenes touched by the dream-thoughts.
As to the regression, we may further observe that it plays a no less important
part in the theory of neurotic symptom-formation than in the theory of dreams.
We may therefore distinguish a threefold species of regression: (a) a topical
one, in the sense of the scheme of the Psi-systems here exponded; (b) a temporal
one, in so far as it is a regression to older psychic formations; and (c) a
formal one, when primitive modes of expression and representation take the place
of the customary modes. These three forms of regression are, however, basically
one, and in the majority of cases they coincide, for that which is older in
point of time is at the same time formally primitive and, in the psychic
topography, nearer to the perception-end.
We cannot leave the theme of regression in dreams without giving utterance to an
impression which has already and repeatedly forced itself upon us, and which
will return to us reinforced after a deeper study of the psychoneuroses: namely,
that dreaming is on the whole an act of regression to the earliest relationships
of the dreamer, a resuscitation of his childhood, of the impulses which were
then dominant and the modes of expression which were then available. Behind this
childhood of the individual we are then promised an insight into the
phylogenetic childhood, into the evolution of the human race, of which the
development of the individual is only an abridged repetition influenced by the
fortuitous circumstances of life. We begin to suspect that Friedrich Nietzsche
was right when he said that in a dream "there persists a primordial part of
humanity which we can no longer reach by a direct path," and we are encouraged
to expect, from the analysis of dreams, a knowledge of the archaic inheritance
of man, a knowledge of psychical things in him that are innate. It would seem
that dreams and neuroses have preserved for us more of the psychical antiquities
than we suspected; so that psycho-analysis may claim a high rank among those
sciences which endeavour to reconstruct the oldest and darkest phases of the
beginnings of mankind.
It is quite possible that we shall not find this first part of our psychological
evaluation of dreams particularly satisfying. We must, however, console
ourselves with the thought that we are, after all, compelled to build out into
the dark. If we have not gone altogether astray, we shall surely reach
approximately the same place from another starting-point, and then, perhaps, we
shall be better able to find our bearings.
Footnotes
[15] Psychophysik, Part. II, p. 520.
[16] Since writing this, I have thought that consciousness occurs actually in
the locality of the memory-trace.
[17] The further elaboration of this linear diagram will have to reckon with the
assumption that the system following the Pcs represents the one to which we must
attribute consciousness (Cs), so that P = Cs.
[18] The first indication of the element of regression is already encountered in
the writings of Albertus Magnus. According to him the imaginatio constructs the
dream out of the tangible objects which it has retained. The process is the
converse of that operating in the waking state. Hobbes states (Leviathan, ch.
2): "In sum our dreams are the reverse of our imagination, the motion, when we
are awake, beginning at one end, and when we dream at another" (quoted by
Havelock Ellis, loc. cit., p. 112). -
[19] From the Greek Kathexo, to occupy, used here in place of the author's term
Besetzung, to signify a charge or investment of energy.- TR.
[20] Selected Papers on Hysteria, "Further Observations on the
Defence-Neuro-Psychoses," p. 97 above.
[21] In a statement of the theory of repression it should be explained that a
thought passes into repression owing to the co- operation of two of the factors
which influence it. On the one side (the censorship of Cs) it is pushed, and
from the other side (the Ucs) it is pulled, much as one is helped to the top of
the Great Pyramid. (Compare the paper Repression, p. 422 below.)
[22] They share this character of indestructibility with all other psychic acts
that are really unconscious- that is, with psychic acts belonging solely to the
system Ucs. These paths are opened once and for all; they never fall into
disease; they conduct the excitation process to discharge as often as they are
charged again with unconscious excitation. To speak metaphorically, they suffer
no other form of annihilation than did the shades of the lower regions in the
Odyssey, who awoke to new life the moment they drank blood. The processes
depending on the preconscious system are destructible in quite another sense.
The psychotherapy of the neuroses is based on this difference.
[23] I have endeavoured to penetrate farther into the relations of the sleeping
state and the conditions of hallucination in my essay, "Metapsychological
Supplement to the Theory of Dreams," Collected Papers, IV, p. 137.
[24] Here one may consider the idea of the super-ego which was later recognized
by psycho-analysis.
[25] In other words: the introduction of a test of reality is recognized as
necessary.
[26] Le Lorrain justly extols the wish-fulfilments of dreams: "Sans fatigue
serieuse, sans etre oblige de recourir a cette lutte opiniatre et longue qui use
et corrode les jouissances poursuivies." [Without serious fatigue, without being
obliged to have recourse to that long and stubborn struggle which exhausts and
wears away pleasures sought.]
[27] I have further elaborated this train of thought elsewhere, where I have
distinguished the two principles involved as the pleasure-principle and the
reality-principle. Formulations regarding the Two Principles in Mental
Functioning, in Collected Papers, Vol. iv. p. 13.
[28] Expressed more exactly: One portion of the symptom corresponds to the
unconscious wish-fulfilment, while the other corresponds to the
reaction-formation opposed to it.
[29] Hughlings Jackson has expressed himself as follows: "Find out all about
dreams, and you will have found out all about insanity."
[30] Cf. my latest formulation (in Zeitschrift fur Sexual- wissenschaft, Bd. I)
of the origin of hysterical symptoms in the treatise on "Hysterical Phantasies
and their Relation to Bisexuality," Collected Papers, II, p. 51. This forms
chapter X of Selected Papers on Hysteria, p. 115 above.
[31] This idea has been borrowed from the theory of sleep of Liebault, who
revived hypnotic research in modern times (Du Sommeil provoque, etc., Paris
[1889]).
The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 7 - C. The Wish-Fulfilment
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