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The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter II. THE METHOD OF DREAM INTERPRETATION Psychology
III. THE DREAM AS WISH-FULFILMENT
WHEN, after passing through a narrow defile, one suddenly reaches a height beyond which the ways part and a rich prospect lies outspread in different directions, it is well to stop for a moment and consider whither one shall turn next. We are in somewhat the same position after we have mastered this first interpretation of a dream. We find ourselves standing in the light of a sudden discovery. The dream is not comparable to the irregular sounds of a musical instrument, which, instead of being played by the hand of a musician, is struck by some external force; the dream is not meaningless, not absurd, does not presuppose that one part of our store of ideas is dormant while another part begins to awake. It is a perfectly valid psychic phenomenon, actually a wish-fulfilment; it may be enrolled in the continuity of the intelligible psychic activities of the waking state; it is built up by a highly complicated intellectual activity. But at the very moment when we are about to rejoice in this discovery a host of problems besets us. If the dream, as this theory defines it, represents a fulfilled wish, what is the cause of the striking and unfamiliar manner in which this fulfilment is expressed? What transformation has occurred in our dream-thoughts before the manifest dream, as we remember it on waking, shapes itself out of them? How has this transformation taken place? Whence comes the material that is worked up into the dream? What causes many of the peculiarities which are to be observed in our dream-thoughts; for example, how is it that they are able to contradict one another? Is the dream capable of teaching us something new concerning our internal psychic processes and can its content correct opinions which we have held during the day? I suggest that for the present all these problems be laid aside, and that a single path be pursued. We have found that the dream represents a wish as fulfilled. Our next purpose should be to ascertain whether this is a general characteristic of dreams, or whether it is only the accidental content of the particular dream (the dream about Irma's injection) with which we have begun our analysis; for even if we conclude that every dream has a meaning and psychic value, we must nevertheless allow for the possibility that this meaning may not be the same in every dream. The first dream which we have considered was the fulfilment of a wish; another may turn out to be the realization of an apprehension; a third may have a reflection as its content; a fourth may simply reproduce a reminiscence. Are there, then dreams other than wish-dreams; or are there none but wish-dreams? -
It is easy to show that the wish-fulfilment in dreams is often undisguised and
easy to recognize, so that one may wonder why the language of dreams has not
long since been understood. There is, for example, a dream which I can evoke as
often as I please, experimentally, as it were. If, in the evening, I eat
anchovies, olives, or other strongly salted foods, I am thirsty at night, and
therefore I wake. The waking, however, is preceded by a dream, which has always
the same content, namely, that I am drinking. I am drinking long draughts of
water; it tastes as delicious as only a cool drink can taste when one's throat
is parched; and then I wake, and find that I have an actual desire to drink. The
cause of this dream is thirst, which I perceive when I wake. From this sensation
arises the wish to drink, and the dream shows me this wish as fulfilled. It
thereby serves a function, the nature of which I soon surmise. I sleep well, and
am not accustomed to being waked by a bodily need. If I succeed in appeasing my
thirst by means of the dream that I am drinking, I need not wake up in order to
satisfy that thirst. It is thus a dream of convenience. The dream takes the
place of action, as elsewhere in life. Unfortunately, the need of water to
quench the thirst cannot be satisfied by a dream, as can my thirst for revenge
upon Otto and Dr. M, but the intention is the same. Not long ago I had the same
dream in a somewhat modified form. On this occasion I felt thirsty before going
to bed, and emptied the glass of water which stood on the little chest beside my
bed. Some hours later, during the night, my thirst returned, with the consequent
discomfort. In order to obtain water, I should have had to get up and fetch the
glass which stood on my wife's bed- table. I thus quite appropriately dreamt
that my wife was giving me a drink from a vase; this vase was an Etruscan
cinerary urn, which I had brought home from Italy and had since given away. But
the water in it tasted so salt (apparently on account of the ashes) that I was
forced to wake. It may be observed how conveniently the dream is capable of
arranging matters. Since the fulfilment of a wish is its only purpose, it may be
perfectly egoistic. Love of comfort is really not compatible with consideration
for others. The introduction of the cinerary urn is probably once again the
fulfilment of a wish; I regret that I no longer possess this vase; it, like the
glass of water at my wife's side, is inaccessible to me. The cinerary urn is
appropriate also in connection with the sensation of an increasingly salty
taste, which I know will compel me to wake. * -
* The facts relating to dreams of thirst were known also to Weygandt, who speaks
of them as follows: "It is just this sensation of thirst which is registered
most accurately of all; it always causes a representation of quenching the
thirst. The manner in which the dream represents the act of quenching the thirst
is manifold, and is specified in accordance with some recent recollection. A
universal phenomenon noticeable here is the fact that the representation of
quenching the thirst is immediately followed by disappointment in the inefficacy
of the imagined refreshment." But he overlooks the universal character of the
reaction of the dream to the stimulus. If other persons who are troubled by
thirst at night awake without dreaming beforehand, this does not constitute an
objection to my experiment, but characterizes them as persons who sleep less
soundly. Cf. Isaiah, 29. 8.
Such convenience-dreams came very frequently to me in my youth. Accustomed as I
had always been to working until late at night, early waking was always a matter
of difficulty. I used then to dream that I was out of bed and standing at the
wash-stand. After a while I could no longer shut out the knowledge that I was
not yet up; but in the meantime I had continued to sleep. The same sort of
lethargy-dream was dreamed by a young colleague of mine, who appears to share my
propensity for sleep. With him it assumed a particularly amusing form. The
landlady with whom he was lodging in the neighbourhood of the hospital had
strict orders to wake him every morning at a given hour, but she found it by no
means easy to carry out his orders. One morning sleep was especially sweet to
him. The woman called into his room: "Herr Pepi, get up; you've got to go to the
hospital." Whereupon the sleeper dreamt of a room in the hospital, of a bed in
which he was lying, and of a chart pinned over his head, which read as follows:
"Pepi M, medical student, 22 years of age." He told himself in the dream: "If I
am already at the hospital, I don't have to go there," turned over, and slept
on. He had thus frankly admitted to himself his motive for dreaming.
Here is yet another dream of which the stimulus was active during sleep: One of
my women patients, who had been obliged to undergo an unsuccessful operation on
the jaw, was instructed by her physicians to wear by day and night a cooling
apparatus on the affected cheek; but she was in the habit of throwing it off as
soon as she had fallen asleep. One day I was asked to reprove her for doing so;
she had again thrown the apparatus on the floor. The patient defended herself as
follows: "This time I really couldn't help it; it was the result of a dream
which I had during the night. In the dream I was in a box at the opera, and was
taking a lively interest in the performance. But Herr Karl Meyer was lying in
the sanatorium and complaining pitifully on account of pains in his jaw. I said
to myself, 'Since I haven't the pains, I don't need the apparatus either';
that's why I threw it away." The dream of this poor sufferer reminds me of an
expression which comes to our lips when we are in a disagreeable situation:
"Well, I can imagine more amusing things!" The dream presents these "more
amusing things!" Herr Karl Meyer, to whom the dreamer attributed her pains, was
the most casual acquaintance of whom she could think.
It is quite as simple a matter to discover the wish-fulfilment in several other
dreams which I have collected from healthy persons. A friend who was acquainted
with my theory of dreams, and had explained it to his wife, said to me one day:
"My wife asked me to tell you that she dreamt yesterday that she was having her
menses. You will know what that means." Of course I know: if the young wife
dreams that she is having her menses, the menses have stopped. I can well
imagine that she would have liked to enjoy her freedom a little longer, before
the discomforts of maternity began. It was a clever way of giving notice of her
first pregnancy. Another friend writes that his wife had dreamt not long ago
that she noticed milk-stains on the front of her blouse. This also is an
indication of pregnancy, but not of the first one; the young mother hoped she
would have more nourishment for the second child than she had for the first.
A young woman who for weeks had been cut off from all society because she was
nursing a child who was suffering from an infectious disease dreamt, after the
child had recovered, of a company of people in which Alphonse Daudet, Paul
Bourget, Marcel Prevost and others were present; they were all very pleasant to
her and amused her enormously. In her dream these different authors had the
features which their portraits give them. M. Prevost, with whose portrait she is
not familiar, looked like the man who had disinfected the sickroom the day
before, the first outsider to enter it for a long time. Obviously the dream is
to be translated thus: "It is about time now for something more entertaining
than this eternal nursing."
Perhaps this collection will suffice to prove that frequently, and under the
most complex conditions, dreams may be noted which can be understood only as
wish-fulfilments, and which present their content without concealment. In most
cases these are short and simple dreams, and they stand in pleasant contrast to
the confused and overloaded dream-compositions which have almost exclusively
attracted the attention of the writers on the subject. But it will repay us if
we give some time to the examination of these simple dreams. The simplest dreams
of all are, I suppose, to be expected in the case of children whose psychic
activities are certainly less complicated than those of adults. Child
psychology, in my opinion, is destined to render the same services to the
psychology of adults as a study of the structure or development of the lower
animals renders to the investigation of the structure of the higher orders of
animals. Hitherto but few deliberate efforts have been made to make use of the
psychology of the child for such a purpose.
The dreams of little children are often simple fulfilments of wishes, and for
this reason are, as compared with the dreams of adults, by no means interesting.
They present no problem to be solved, but they are invaluable as affording proof
that the dream, in its inmost essence, is the fulfilment of a wish. I have been
able to collect several examples of such dreams from the material furnished by
my own children.
For two dreams, one that of a daughter of mine, at that time eight and a half
years of age, and the other that of a boy of five and a quarter, I am indebted
to an excursion to Hallstatt, in the summer of 1806. I must first explain that
we were living that summer on a hill near Aussee, from which, when the weather
was fine, we enjoyed a splendid view of the Dachstein. With a telescope we could
easily distinguish the Simony hut. The children often tried to see it through
the telescope- I do not know with what success. Before the excursion I had told
the children that Hallstatt lay at the foot of the Dachstein. They looked
forward to the outing with the greatest delight. From Hallstatt we entered the
valley of Eschern, which enchanted the children with its constantly changing
scenery. One of them, however, the boy of five, gradually became discontented.
As often as a mountain came into view, he would ask: "Is that the Dachstein?"
whereupon I had to reply: "No, only a foot-hill." After this question had been
repeated several times he fell quite silent, and did not wish to accompany us up
the steps leading to the waterfall. I thought he was tired. But the next morning
he came to me, perfectly happy, and said: "Last night I dreamt that we went to
the Simony hut." I understood him now; he had expected, when I spoke of the
Dachstein, that on our excursion to Hallstatt he would climb the mountain, and
would see at close quarters the hut which had been so often mentioned when the
telescope was used. When he learned that he was expected to content himself with
foot-hills and a waterfall he was disappointed, and became discontented. But the
dream compensated him for all this. I tried to learn some details of the dream;
they were scanty. "You go up steps for six hours," as he had been told.
On this excursion the girl of eight and a half had likewise cherished wishes
which had to be satisfied by a dream. We had taken with us to Hallstatt our
neighbour's twelve-year-old boy; quite a polished little gentleman, who, it
seemed to me, had already won the little woman's sympathies. Next morning she
related the following dream: "Just think, I dreamt that Emil was one of the
family, that he said 'papa' and 'mamma' to you, and slept at our house, in the
big room, like one of the boys. Then mamma came into the room and threw a
handful of big bars of chocolate, wrapped in blue and green paper, under our
beds." The girl's brothers, who evidently had not inherited an understanding of
dream-interpretation, declared, just as the writers we have quoted would have
done: "That dream is nonsense." The girl defended at least one part of the
dream, and from the standpoint of the theory of the neuroses it is interesting
to learn which part it was that she defended: "That Emil was one of the family
was nonsense, but that about the bars of chocolate wasn't." It was just this
latter part that was obscure to me, until my wife furnished the explanation. On
the way home from the railway- station the children had stopped in front of a
slot-machine, and had wanted exactly such bars of chocolate, wrapped in paper
with a metallic lustre, such as the machine, in their experience, provided. But
the mother thought, and rightly so, that the day had brought them enough wish-fulfilments,
and therefore left this wish to be satisfied in the dream. This little scene had
escaped me. That portion of the dream which had been condemned by my daughter I
understood without any difficulty. I myself had heard the well-behaved little
guest enjoining the children, as they were walking ahead of us, to wait until
"papa" or "mamma" had come up. For the little girl the dream turned this
temporary relationship into a permanent adoption. Her affection could not as yet
conceive of any other way of enjoying her friend's company permanently than the
adoption pictured in her dream, which was suggested by her brothers. Why the
bars of chocolate were thrown under the bed could not, of course, be explained
without questioning the child.
From a friend I have learned of a dream very much like that of my little boy. It
was dreamed by a little girl of eight. Her father, accompanied by several
children, had started on a walk to Dornbach, with the intention of visiting the
Rohrer hut, but had turned back, as it was growing late, promising the children
to take them some other time. On the way back they passed a signpost which
pointed to the Hameau. The children now asked him to take them to the Hameau,
but once more, and for the same reason, they had to be content with the promise
that they should go there some other day. Next morning the little girl went to
her father and told him, with a satisfied air: "Papa, I dreamed last night that
you were with us at the Rohrer hut, and on the Hameau." Thus, in the dream her
impatience had anticipated the fulfilment of the promise made by her father.
Another dream, with which the picturesque beauty of the Aussee inspired my
daughter, at that time three and a quarter years of age, is equally
straightforward. The little girl had crossed the lake for the first time, and
the trip had passed too quickly for her. She did not want to leave the boat at
the landing, and cried bitterly. The next morning she told us: "Last night I was
sailing on the lake." Let us hope that the duration of this dream-voyage was
more satisfactory to her.
My eldest boy, at that time eight years of age, was already dreaming of the
realization of his fancies. He had ridden in a chariot with Achilles, with
Diomedes as charioteer. On the previous day he had shown a lively interest in a
book on the myths of Greece which had been given to his elder sister.
If it can be admitted that the talking of children in their sleep belongs to the
sphere of dreams, I can relate the following as one of the earliest dreams in my
collection: My youngest daughter, at that time nineteen months old, vomited one
morning, and was therefore kept without food all day. During the night she was
heard to call excitedly in her sleep: "Anna F(r)eud, St'awbewy, wild st'awbewy,
om'lette, pap!" She used her name in this way in order to express the act of
appropriation; the menu presumably included everything that would seem to her a
desirable meal; the fact that two varieties of strawberry appeared in it was
demonstration against the sanitary regulations of the household, and was based
on the circumstance, which she had by no means overlooked, that the nurse had
ascribed her indisposition to an over-plentiful consumption of strawberries; so
in her dream she avenged herself for this opinion which met with her
disapproval. *
* The dream afterwards accomplished the same purpose in the case of the child's
grandmother, who is older than the child by about seventy years. After she had
been forced to go hungry for a day on account of the restlessness of her
floating kidney, she dreamed, being apparently translated into the happy years
of her girlhood, that she had been asked out, invited to lunch and dinner, and
had at each meal been served with the most delicious titbits.
When we call childhood happy because it does not yet know sexual desire, we must
not forget what a fruitful source of disappointment and renunciation, and
therefore of dream- stimulation, the other great vital impulse may be for the
child. * Here is a second example. My nephew, twenty-two months of age, had been
instructed to congratulate me on my birthday, and to give me a present of a
small basket of cherries, which at that time of the year were scarce, being
hardly in season. He seemed to find the task a difficult one, for he repeated
again and again: "Cherries in it," and could not be induced to let the little
basket go out of his hands. But he knew how to indemnify himself. He had, until
then, been in the habit of telling his mother every morning that he had dreamt
of the "white soldier," an officer of the guard in a white cloak, whom he had
once admired in the street. On the day after the sacrifice on my birthday he
woke up joyfully with the announcement, which could have referred only to a
dream: "He [r] man eaten all the cherries!" *(2)
* A more searching investigation into the psychic life of the child teaches us,
of course, that sexual motives, in infantile forms, play a very considerable
part, which has been too long overlooked, in the psychic activity of the child.
This permits us to doubt to some extent the happiness of the child, as imagined
later by adults. Cf. Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex.
*(2) It should be mentioned that young children often have more complex and
obscure dreams, while, on the other hand, adults, in certain circumstances,
often have dreams of a simple and infantile character. How rich in unsuspected
content the dreams of children no more than four or five years of age may be is
shown by the examples in my "Analysis of a Phobia in a five-year old Boy,"
Collected Papers, III, and Jung's "Experiences Concerning the Psychic Life of
the Child," translated by Brill, American Journal of Psychology. April, 1910.
For analytically interpreted dreams of children, see also von Hug-Hellmuth,
Putnam, Raalte, Spielrein, and Tausk; others by Banchieri, Busemann, Doglia, and
especially Wigam, who emphasizes the wish- fulfilling tendency of such dreams.
On the other hand, it seems that dreams of an infantile type reappear with
especial frequency in adults who are transferred into the midst of unfamiliar
conditions. Thus Otto Nordenskjold, in his book, Antarctic (1904, vol. i, p.
336), writes as follows of the crew who spent the winter with him: "Very
characteristic of the trend of our inmost thoughts were our dreams, which were
never more vivid and more numerous. Even those of our comrades with whom
dreaming was formerly exceptional had long stories to tell in the morning, when
we exchanged our experiences in the world of phantasy. They all had reference to
that outside world which was now so far removed from us, but they often fitted
into our immediate circumstances. An especially characteristic dream was that in
which one of our comrades believed himself back at school, where the task was
assigned to him of skinning miniature seals, which were manufactured especially
for purposes of instruction. Eating and drinking constituted the pivot around
which most of our dreams revolved. One of us, who was especially fond of going
to big dinner-parties, was delighted if he could report in the morning 'that he
had had a three-course dinner.' Another dreamed of tobacco, whole mountains of
tobacco; yet another dreamed of a ship approaching on the open sea under full
sail. Still another dream deserves to be mentioned: The postman brought the post
and gave a long explanation of why it was so long delayed; he had delivered it
at the wrong address, and only with great trouble was he able to get it back. To
be sure, we were often occupied in our sleep with still more impossible things,
but the lack of phantasy in almost all the dreams which I myself dreamed, or
heard others relate, was quite striking. It would certainly have been of great
psychological interest if all these dreams could have been recorded. But one can
readily understand how we longed for sleep. That alone could afford us
everything that we all most ardently desired." I will continue by a quotation
from Du Prel (p. 231): "Mungo Park, nearly dying of thirst on one of his African
expeditions, dreamed constantly of the well-watered valleys and meadows of his
home. Similarly Trenck, tortured by hunger in the fortress of Magdeburg, saw
himself surrounded by copious meals. And George Back, a member of Franklin's
first expedition, when he was on the point of death by starvation, dreamed
continually and invariably of plenteous meals."
What animals dream of I do not know. A proverb, for which I am indebted to one
of my pupils, professes to tell us, for it asks the question: "What does the
goose dream of?" and answers: "Of maize." * The whole theory that the dream is
the fulfilment of a wish is contained in these two sentences. *(2)
* A Hungarian proverb cited by Ferenczi states more explicitly that "the pig
dreams of acorns, the goose of maize." A Jewish proverb asks: "Of what does the
hen dream?"- "Of millet" (Sammlung jud. Sprichw. u. Redensarten., edit. by
Bernstein, 2nd ed., p. 116).
*(2) I am far from wishing to assert that no previous writer has ever thought of
tracing a dream to a wish. (Cf. the first passages of the next chapter.) Those
interested in the subject will find that even in antiquity the physician
Herophilos, who lived under the First Ptolemy, distinguished between three kinds
of dreams: dreams sent by the gods; natural dreams- those which come about
whenever the soul creates for itself an image of that which is beneficial to it,
and will come to pass; and mixed dreams- those which originate spontaneously
from the juxtaposition of images, when we see that which we desire. From the
examples collected by Scherner, J. Starcke cites a dream which was described by
the author himself as a wish-fulfilment (p. 239). Scherner says: "The phantasy
immediately fulfills the dreamer's wish, simply because this existed vividly in
the mind." This dream belongs to the "emotional dreams." Akin to it are dreams
due to "masculine and feminine erotic longing," and to "irritable moods." As
will readily be seen, Scherner does not ascribe to the wish any further
significance for the dream than to any other psychic condition of the waking
state; least of all does he insist on the connection between the wish and the
essential nature of the dream.
We now perceive that we should have reached our theory of the hidden meaning of
dreams by the shortest route had we merely consulted the vernacular. Proverbial
wisdom, it is true, often speaks contemptuously enough of dreams- it apparently
seeks to justify the scientists when it says that "dreams are bubbles"; but in
colloquial language the dream is predominantly the gracious fulfiller of wishes.
"I should never have imagined that in my wildest dreams," we exclaim in delight
if we find that the reality surpasses our expectations.
The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter IV. DISTORTION IN DREAMS
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