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The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 7 - D. Waking Caused by Dreams -- The Function of Dreams -- The Anxiety Dream Psychology
VII. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM PROCESSES (continued)
E. The Primary and Secondary Processes. Repression
In attempting to penetrate more profoundly into the psychology of the
dream-processes, I have undertaken a difficult task, to which, indeed, my powers
of exposition are hardly adequate. To reproduce the simultaneity of so
complicated a scheme in terms of a successive description, and at the same time
to make each part appear free from all assumptions, goes fairly beyond my
powers. I have now to atone for the fact that in my exposition of the psychology
of dreams I have been unable to follow the historic development of my own
insight. The lines of approach to the comprehension of the dream were laid down
for me by previous investigations into the psychology of the neuroses, to which
I should not refer here, although I am constantly obliged to do so; whereas I
should like to work in the opposite direction, starting from the dream, and then
proceeding to establish its junction with the psychology of the neuroses. I am
conscious of all the difficulties which this involves for the reader, but I know
of no way to avoid them.
Since I am dissatisfied with this state of affairs, I am glad to dwell upon
another point of view, which would seem to enhance the value of my efforts. As
was shown in the introductory section, I found myself confronted with a theme
which had been marked by the sharpest contradictions on the part of those who
had written on it. In the course of our treatment of the problems of the dream,
room has been found for most of these contradictory views. We have been
compelled to take decided exception to two only of the views expressed: namely,
that the dream is a meaningless process, and that it is a somatic process. Apart
from these, we have been able to find a place for the truth of all the
contradictory opinions at one point or another of the complicated tissue of the
facts, and we have been able to show that each expressed something genuine and
correct. That our dreams continue the impulses and interests of waking life has
been generally confirmed by the discovery of the hidden dream-thoughts. These
concern themselves only with things that seem to us important and of great
interest. Dreams never occupy themselves with trifles. But we have accepted also
the opposite view, namely, that the dream gathers up the indifferent residues of
the day, and cannot seize upon any important interest of the day until it has in
some measure withdrawn itself from waking activity. We have found that this
holds true of the dream-content, which by means of distortion gives the
dream-thought an altered expression. We have said that the dream-process, owing
to the nature of the mechanism of association, finds it easier to obtain
possession of recent or indifferent material, which has not yet been put under
an embargo by our waking mental activity; and that, on account of the
censorship, it transfers the psychic intensity of the significant but also
objectionable material to the indifferent. The hypermnesia of the dream and its
ability to dispose of infantile material have become the main foundations of our
doctrine; in our theory of dreams we have assigned to a wish of infantile origin
the part of the indispensable motive-power of dream-formation. It has not, of
course, occurred to us to doubt the experimentally demonstrated significance of
external sensory stimuli during sleep; but we have placed this material in the
same relation to the dream-wish as the thought-residues left over from our
waking activity. We need not dispute the fact that the dream interprets
objective sensory stimuli after the manner of an illusion; but we have supplied
the motive for this interpretation, which has been left indeterminate by other
writers. The interpretation proceeds in such a way that the perceived object is
rendered harmless as a source of disturbance of sleep, whilst it is made usable
for the wish-fulfilment. Though we do not admit as a special source of dreams
the subjective state of excitation of the sensory organs during sleep (which
seems to have been demonstrated by Trumbull Ladd), we are, nevertheless, able to
explain this state of excitation by the regressive revival of the memories
active behind the dream. As to the internal organic sensations, which are wont
to be taken as the cardinal point of the explanation of dreams, these, too, find
a place in our conception, though indeed a more modest one. These sensations-
the sensations of falling, of soaring, or of being inhibited- represent an
ever-ready material, which the dream-work can employ to express the dream-
thought as often as need arises.
That the dream-process is a rapid and momentary one is, we believe, true as
regards the perception by consciousness of the preformed dream-content; but we
have found that the preceding portions of the dream-process probably follow a
slow, fluctuating course. As for the riddle of the superabundant dream-content
compressed into the briefest moment of time, we have been able to contribute the
explanation that the dream seizes upon ready-made formations of the psychic
life. We have found that it is true that dreams are distorted and mutilated by
the memory, but that this fact presents no difficulties, as it is only the last
manifest portion of a process of distortion which has been going on from the
very beginning of the dream-work. In the embittered controversy, which has
seemed irreconcilable, whether the psychic life is asleep at night, or can make
the same use of all its faculties as during the day, we have been able to
conclude that both sides are right, but that neither is entirely so. In the
dream-thoughts we found evidence of a highly complicated intellectual activity,
operating with almost all the resources of the psychic apparatus; yet it cannot
be denied that these dream- thoughts have originated during the day, and it is
indispensable to assume that there is a sleeping state of the psychic life.
Thus, even the doctrine of partial sleep received its due, but we have found the
characteristic feature of the sleeping state not in the disintegration of the
psychic system of connections, but in the special attitude adopted by the
psychic system which is dominant during the day- the attitude of the wish to
sleep. The deflection from the outer world retains its significance for our
view, too; though not the only factor at work, it helps to make possible the
regressive course of the dream-representation. The abandonment of voluntary
guidance of the flow of ideas is incontestable; but psychic life does not
thereby become aimless, for we have seen that upon relinquishment of the
voluntary directing ideas, involuntary ones take charge. On the other hand, we
have not only recognized the loose associative connection of the dream, but have
brought a far greater area within the scope of this kind of connection than
could have been suspected; we have, however, found it merely an enforced
substitute for another, a correct and significant type of association. To be
sure, we too have called the dream absurd, but examples have shown us how wise
the dream is when it simulates absurdity. As regards the functions that have
been attributed to the dream, we are able to accept them all. That the dream
relieves the mind, like a safety-valve, and that, as Robert has put it, all
kinds of harmful material are rendered harmless by representation in the dream,
not only coincides exactly with our own theory of the twofold wish-fulfilment in
the dream, but in its very wording becomes more intelligible for us than it is
for Robert himself. The free indulgence of the psyche in the play of its
faculties is reproduced in our theory as the non-interference of the
preconscious activity with the dream. The return of the embryonal standpoint of
psychic life in the dream, and Havelock Ellis's remark that the dream is "an
archaic world of vast emotions and imperfect thoughts," appear to us as happy
anticipations of our own exposition, which asserts that primitive modes of
operations that are suppressed during the day play a part in the formation of
dreams. We can fully identify ourselves with Sully's statement, that "our dreams
bring back again our earlier and successively developed personalities, our old
ways of regarding things, with impulses and modes of reaction which ruled us
long ago"; and for us, as for Delage, the suppressed material becomes the
mainspring of the dream.
We have fully accepted the role that Scherner ascribes to the dream-phantasy,
and his own interpretations, but we have been obliged to transpose them, as it
were, to another part of the problem. It is not the dream that creates the
phantasy, but the activity of unconscious phantasy that plays the leading part
in the formation of the dream-thoughts. We remain indebted to Scherner for
directing us to the source of the dream-thoughts, but almost everything that he
ascribes to the dream-work is attributable to the activity of the unconscious
during the day, which instigates dreams no less than neurotic symptoms. The
dream- work we had to separate from this activity as something quite different
and far more closely controlled. Finally, we have by no means renounced the
relation of the dream to psychic disturbances, but have given it, on new ground,
a more solid foundation.
Held together by the new features in our theory as by a superior unity, we find
the most varied and most contradictory conclusions of other writers fitting into
our structure; many of them are given a different turn, but only a few of them
are wholly rejected. But our own structure is still unfinished. For apart from
the many obscure questions in which we have involved ourselves by our advance
into the dark regions of psychology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a
new contradiction. On the one hand, we have made it appear that the
dream-thoughts proceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the
other hand we have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we reproduce
in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the dream-work seems
to depart so completely from the psychic processes which we recognize as correct
and appropriate that the severest judgments expressed by the writers mentioned
as to the low level of psychic achievement of dreams must appear well founded.
Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation and set us
on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one of the
constellations which lead to dream- formation.
We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of thoughts
derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect logic. We
cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own origin in our normal
mental life. All the qualities which we value in our thought-processes, and
which mark them out as complicated performances of a high order, we shall find
repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is, however, no need to assume that this
mental work is performed during sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse
the conception of the psychic state of sleep to which we have hitherto adhered.
On the contrary, these thoughts may very well have their origin in the daytime,
and, unremarked by our consciousness, may have gone on from their first stimulus
until, at the onset of sleep, they have reached completion. If we are to
conclude anything from this state of affairs, it can only be that it proves that
the most complex mental operations are possible without the cooperation of
consciousness- a truth which we have had to learn anyhow from every
psycho-analysis of a patient suffering from hysteria or obsessions. These
dream-thoughts are certainly not in themselves incapable of consciousness; if we
have not become conscious of them during the day, this may have been due to
various reasons. The act of becoming conscious depends upon a definite psychic
function- attention- being brought to bear. This seems to be available only in a
determinate quantity, which may have been diverted from the train of thought in
question by other aims. Another way in which such trains of thought may be
withheld from consciousness is the following: From our conscious reflection we
know that, when applying our attention, we follow a particular course. But if
that course leads us to an idea which cannot withstand criticism, we break off
and allow the cathexis of attention to drop. Now, it would seem that the train
of thought thus started and abandoned may continue to develop without our
attention returning to it, unless at some point it attains a specially high
intensity which compels attention. An initial conscious rejection by our
judgment, on the ground of incorrectness or uselessness for the immediate
purpose of the act of thought, may, therefore, be the cause of a thought-process
going on unnoticed by consciousness until the onset of sleep.
Let us now recapitulate: We call such a train of thought a preconscious train,
and we believe it to be perfectly correct, and that it may equally well be a
merely neglected train or one that has been interrupted and suppressed. Let us
also state in plain terms how we visualize the movement of our thought. We
believe that a certain quantity of excitation, which we call cathectic energy,
is displaced from a purposive idea along the association paths selected by this
directing idea. A neglected train of thought has received no such cathexis, and
the cathexis has been withdrawn from one that was suppressed or rejected; both
have thus been left to their own excitations. The train of thought cathected by
some aim becomes able under certain conditions to attract the attention of
consciousness, and by the mediation of consciousness it then receives hyper-cathexis.
We shall be obliged presently to elucidate our assumptions as to the nature and
function of consciousness.
A train of thought thus incited in the Pcs may either disappear spontaneously,
or it may continue. The former eventuality we conceive as follows: it diffuses
its energy through all the association paths emanating from it, and throws the
entire chain of thoughts into a state of excitation, which continues for a
while, and then subsides, through the excitation which had called for discharge
being transformed into dormant cathexis. If this first eventuality occurs, the
process has no further significance for dream-formation. But other directing
ideas are lurking in our preconscious, which have their source in our
unconscious and ever- active wishes. These may gain control of the excitation in
the circle of thoughts thus left to itself, establish a connection between it
and the unconscious wish, and transfer to it the energy inherent in the
unconscious wish. Henceforth the neglected or suppressed train of thought is in
a position to maintain itself, although this reinforcement gives it no claim to
access to consciousness. We may say, then, that the hitherto preconscious train
of thought has been drawn into the unconscious.
Other constellations leading to dream-formation might be as follows: The
preconscious train of thought might have been connected from the beginning with
the unconscious wish, and for that reason might have met with rejection by the
dominating aim- cathexis. Or an unconscious wish might become active for other
(possibly somatic) reasons, and of its own accord seek a transference to the
psychic residues not cathected by the Pcs. All three cases have the same result:
there is established in the preconscious a train of thought which, having been
abandoned by the preconscious cathexis, has acquired cathexis from the
unconscious wish.
From this point onward the train of thought is subjected to a series of
transformations which we no longer recognize as normal psychic processes, and
which give a result that we find strange, a psychopathological formation. Let us
now emphasize and bring together these transformations:
1. The intensities of the individual ideas become capable of discharge in their
entirety, and pass from one idea to another, so that individual ideas are formed
which are endowed with great intensity. Through the repeated occurrence of this
process, the intensity of an entire train of thought may ultimately be
concentrated in a single conceptual unit. This is the fact of compression or
condensation with which we become acquainted when investigating the dream-work.
It is condensation that is mainly responsible for the strange impression
produced by dreams, for we know of nothing analogous to it in the normal psychic
life that is accessible to consciousness. We get here, too, ideas which are of
great psychic significance as nodal points or as end-results of whole chains of
thought, but this value is not expressed by any character actually manifest for
our internal perception; what is represented in it is not in any way made more
intensive. In the process of condensation the whole set of psychic connections
becomes transformed into the intensity of the idea-content. The situation is the
same as when, in the case of a book, I italicize or print in heavy type any word
to which I attach outstanding value for the understanding of the text. In
speech, I should pronounce the same word loudly, and deliberately, and with
emphasis. The first simile points immediately to one of the examples which were
given of the dream-work (trimethylamine in the dream of Irma's injection).
Historians of art call our attention to the fact that the most ancient
sculptures known to history follow a similar principle, in expressing the rank
of the persons represented by the size of the statues. The king is made two or
three times as tall as his retinue or his vanquished enemies. But a work of art
of the Roman period makes use of more subtle means to accomplish the same end.
The figure of the Emperor is placed in the centre, erect and in his full height,
and special care is bestowed on the modelling of this figure; his enemies are
seen cowering at his feet; but he is no longer made to seem a giant among
dwarfs. At the same time, in the bowing of the subordinate to his superior, even
in our own day, we have an echo of this ancient principle of representation.
The direction followed by the condensations of the dream is prescribed on the
one hand by the true preconscious relations of the dream-thoughts, and, on the
other hand, by the attraction of the visual memories in the unconscious. The
success of the condensation-work produces those intensities which are required
for penetration to the perception-system.
2. By the free transference of intensities, and in the service of the
condensation, intermediary ideas- compromises, as it were- are formed (cf. the
numerous examples). This, also, is something unheard of in the normal movement
of our ideas, where what is of most importance is the selection and the
retention of the right conceptual material. On the other hand, composite and
compromise formations occur with extraordinary frequency when we are trying to
find verbal expression for preconscious thoughts; these are considered slips of
the tongue.
3. The ideas which transfer their intensities to one another are very loosely
connected, and are joined together by such forms of association as are disdained
by our serious thinking, and left to be exploited solely by wit. In particular,
assonances and punning associations are treated as equal in value to any other
associations.
4. Contradictory thoughts do not try to eliminate one another, but continue side
by side, and often combine to form condensation- products, as though no
contradiction existed; or they form compromises for which we should never
forgive our thought, but which we frequently sanction in our action.
These are some of the most conspicuous abnormal processes to which the
dream-thoughts which have previously been rationally formed are subjected in the
course of the dream-work. As the main feature of these processes, we may see
that the greatest importance is attached to rendering the cathecting energy
mobile and capable of discharge; the content and the intrinsic significance of
the psychic elements to which these cathexes adhere become matters of secondary
importance. One might perhaps assume that condensation and compromise-formation
are effected only in the service of regression, when the occasion arises for
changing thoughts into images. But the analysis- and still more plainly the
synthesis- of such dreams as show no regression towards images, e.g., the dream
Autodidasker: Conversation with Professor N, reveals the same processes of
displacement and condensation as do the rest.
We cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion that two kinds of essentially
different psychic processes participate in dream- formation; one forms perfectly
correct and fitting dream- thoughts, equivalent to the results of normal
thinking, while the other deals with these thoughts in a most astonishing and,
as it seems, incorrect way. The latter process we have already set apart in
chapter VI as the dream-work proper. What can we say now as to the derivation of
this psychic process?
It would be impossible to answer this question here if we had not penetrated a
considerable way into the psychology of the neuroses, and especially of
hysteria. From this, however, we learn that the same "incorrect" psychic
processes- as well as others not enumerated- control the production of
hysterical symptoms. In hysteria, too, we find at first a series of perfectly
correct and fitting thoughts, equivalent to our conscious ones, of whose
existence in this form we can, however, learn nothing, i.e., which we can only
subsequently reconstruct. If they have forced their way anywhere to perception,
we discover from the analysis of the symptom formed that these normal thoughts
have been subjected to abnormal treatment, and that by means of condensation and
compromise-formation, through superficial associations which cover up
contradictions, and eventually along the path of regression, they have been
conveyed into the symptom. In view of the complete identity between the
peculiarities of the dream-work and those of the psychic activity which issues
in psychoneurotic symptoms, we shall feel justified in transferring to the dream
the conclusions urged upon us by hysteria.
From the theory of hysteria we borrow the proposition that such an abnormal
psychic elaboration of a normal train of thought takes place only when the
latter has been used for the transference of an unconscious wish which dares
from the infantile life and is in a state of repression. Complying with this
proposition, we have built up the theory of the dream on the assumption that the
actuating dream-wish invariably originates in the unconscious; which, as we have
ourselves admitted, cannot be universally demonstrated, even though it cannot be
refuted. But in order to enable us to say just what repression is, after
employing this term so freely, we shall be obliged to make a further addition to
our psychological scaffolding.
We had elaborated the fiction of a primitive psychic apparatus, the work of
which is regulated by the effort to avoid accumulation of excitation, and as far
as possible to maintain itself free from excitation. For this reason it was
constructed after the plan of a reflex apparatus; motility, in the first place
as the path to changes within the body, was the channel of discharge at its
disposal. We then discussed the psychic results of experiences of gratification,
and were able at this point to introduce a second assumption, namely, that the
accumulation of excitation- by processes that do not concern us here- is felt as
pain, and sets the apparatus in operation in order to bring about again a state
of gratification, in which the diminution of excitation is perceived as
pleasure. Such a current in the apparatus, issuing from pain and striving for
pleasure, we call a wish. We have said that nothing but a wish is capable of
setting the apparatus in motion and that the course of any excitation in the
apparatus is regulated automatically by the perception of pleasure and pain. The
first occurrence of wishing may well have taken the form of a hallucinatory
cathexis of the memory of gratification. But this hallucination, unless it could
be maintained to the point of exhaustion, proved incapable of bringing about a
cessation of the need, and consequently of securing the pleasure connected with
gratification.
Thus, there was required a second activity- in our terminology the activity of a
second system- which would not allow the memory- cathexis to force its way to
perception and thence to bind the psychic forces, but would lead the excitation
emanating from the need-stimulus by a detour, which by means of voluntary
motility would ultimately so change the outer world as to permit the real
perception of the gratifying object. Thus far we have already elaborated the
scheme of the psychic apparatus; these two systems are the germ of what we set
up in the fully developed apparatus as the Ucs and Pcs.
To change the outer world appropriately by means of motility requires the
accumulation of a large total of experiences in the memory-systems, as well as a
manifold consolidation of the relations which are evoked in this memory-material
by various directing ideas. We will now proceed further with our assumptions.
The activity of the second system, groping in many directions, tentatively
sending forth cathexes and retracting them, needs on the one hand full command
over all memory- material, but on the other hand it would be a superfluous
expenditure of energy were it to send along the individual thought-paths large
quantities of cathexis, which would then flow away to no purpose and thus
diminish the quantity needed for changing the outer world. Out of a regard for
purposiveness, therefore, I postulate that the second system succeeds in
maintaining the greater part of the energic cathexes in a state of rest, and in
using only a small portion for its operations of displacement. The mechanics of
these processes is entirely unknown to me; anyone who seriously wishes to follow
up these ideas must address himself to the physical analogies, and find some way
of getting a picture of the sequence of motions which ensues on the excitation
of the neurones. Here I do no more than hold fast to the idea that the activity
of the first Psi-system aims at the free outflow of the quantities of
excitation, and that the second system, by means of the cathexes emanating from
it, effects an inhibition of this outflow, a transformation into dormant
cathexis, probably with a rise of potential. I therefore assume that the course
taken by any excitation under the control of the second system is bound to quite
different mechanical conditions from those which obtain under the control of the
first system. After the second system has completed its work of experimental
thought, it removes the inhibition and damming up of the excitations and allows
them to flow off into motility.
An interesting train of thought now presents itself if we consider the relations
of this inhibition of discharge by the second system to the process of
regulation by the pain-principle. Let us now seek out the counterpart of the
primary experience of gratification, namely, the objective experience of fear.
Let a perception-stimulus act on the primitive apparatus and be the source of a
pain-excitation. There will then ensue uncoordinated motor manifestations, which
will go on until one of these withdraws the apparatus from perception, and at
the same time from the pain. On the reappearance of the percept this
manifestation will immediately be repeated (perhaps as a movement of flight),
until the percept has again disappeared. But in this case no tendency will
remain to recathect the perception of the source of pain by hallucination or
otherwise. On the contrary, there will be a tendency in the primary apparatus to
turn away again from this painful memory-image immediately if it is in any way
awakened, since the overflow of its excitation into perception would, of course,
evoke (or more precisely, begin to evoke) pain. This turning away from a
recollection, which is merely a repetition of the former flight from perception,
is also facilitated by the fact that, unlike the perception, the recollection
has not enough quality to arouse consciousness, and thereby to attract fresh
cathexis. This effortless and regular turning away of the psychic process from
the memory of anything that had once been painful gives us the prototype and the
first example of psychic repression. We all know how much of this turning away
from the painful, the tactics of the ostrich, may still be shown as present even
in the normal psychic life of adults.
In obedience to the pain-principle, therefore, the first Psi- system is quite
incapable of introducing anything unpleasant into the thought-nexus. The system
cannot do anything but wish. If this were to remain so, the activity of thought
of the second system, which needs to have at its disposal all the memories
stored up by experience, would be obstructed. But two paths are now open: either
the work of the second system frees itself completely from the pain-principle,
and continues its course, paying no heed to the pain attached to given memories,
or it contrives to cathect the memory of the pain in such a manner as to
preclude the liberation of pain. We can reject the first possibility, as the
pain-principle also proves to act as a regulator of the cycle of excitation in
the second system; we are therefore thrown back upon the second possibility,
namely, that this system cathects a memory in such a manner as to inhibit any
outflow of excitation from it, and hence, also, the outflow, comparable to a
motor-innervation, needed for the development of pain. And thus, setting out
from two different starting-points, i.e., from regard for the pain-principle,
and from the principle of the least expenditure of innervation, we are led to
the hypothesis that cathexis through the second system is at the same time an
inhibition of the discharge of excitation. Let us, however, keep a close hold on
the fact- for this is the key to the theory of repression- that the second
system can only cathect an idea when it is in a position to inhibit any pain
emanating from this idea. Anything that withdrew itself from this inhibition
would also remain inaccessible for the second system, i.e., would immediately be
given up by virtue of the pain- principle. The inhibition of pain, however, need
not be complete; it must be permitted to begin, since this indicates to the
second system the nature of the memory, and possibly its lack of fitness for the
purpose sought by the process of thought.
The psychic process which is alone tolerated by the first system I shall now
call the primary process; and that which results under the inhibiting action of
the second system I shall call the secondary process. I can also show at another
point for what purpose the second system is obliged to correct the primary
process. The primary process strives for discharge of the excitation in order to
establish with the quantity of excitation thus collected an identity of
perception; the secondary process has abandoned this intention, and has adopted
instead the aim of an identity of thought. All thinking is merely a detour from
the memory of gratification (taken as a purposive idea) to the identical
cathexis of the same memory, which is to be reached once more by the path of
motor experiences. Thought must concern itself with the connecting-paths between
ideas without allowing itself to be misled by their intensities. But it is
obvious that condensations of ideas and intermediate or compromise-formations
are obstacles to the attainment of the identity which is aimed at; by
substituting one idea for another they swerve away from the path which would
have led onward from the first idea. Such procedures are, therefore, carefully
avoided in our secondary thinking. It will readily be seen, moreover, that the
pain- principle, although at other times it provides the thought- process with
its most important clues, may also put difficulties in its way in the pursuit of
identity of thought. Hence, the tendency of the thinking process must always be
to free itself more and more from exclusive regulation by the pain-principle,
and to restrict the development of affect through the work of thought to the
very minimum which remains effective as a signal. This refinement in functioning
is to be achieved by a fresh hyper- cathexis, effected with the help of
consciousness. But we are aware that this refinement is seldom successful, even
in normal psychic life, and that our thinking always remains liable to
falsification by the intervention of the pain-principle.
This, however, is not the breach in the functional efficiency of our psychic
apparatus which makes it possible for thoughts representing the result of the
secondary thought-work to fall into the power of the primary psychic process; by
which formula we may now describe the operations resulting in dreams and the
symptoms of hysteria. This inadequacy results from the converging of two factors
in our development, one of which pertains solely to the psychic apparatus, and
has exercised a determining influence on the relation of the two systems, while
the other operates fluctuatingly, and introduces motive forces of organic origin
into the psychic life. Both originate in the infantile life, and are a
precipitate of the alteration which our psychic and somatic organism has
undergone since our infantile years.
When I termed one of the psychic processes in the psychic apparatus the primary
process, I did so not only in consideration of its status and function, but was
also able to take account of the temporal relationship actually involved. So far
as we know, a psychic apparatus possessing only the primary process does not
exist, and is to that extent a theoretical fiction but this at least is a fact:
that the primary processes are present in the apparatus from the beginning,
while the secondary processes only take shape gradually during the course of
life, inhibiting and overlaying the primary, whilst gaining complete control
over them perhaps only in the prime of life. Owing to this belated arrival of
the secondary processes, the essence of our being, consisting of unconscious
wish-impulses, remains something which cannot be grasped or inhibited by the
preconscious; and its part is once and for all restricted to indicating the most
appropriate paths for the wish-impulses originating in the unconscious. These
unconscious wishes represent for all subsequent psychic strivings a compulsion
to which they Must submit themselves, although they may perhaps endeavour to
divert them and to guide them to superior aims. In consequence of this
retardation, an extensive region of the memory-material remains in fact
inaccessible to preconscious cathexis.
Now among these wish-impulses originating in the infantile life. indestructible
and incapable of inhibition, there are some the fulfilments of which have come
to be in contradiction with the purposive ideas of our secondary thinking. The
fulfilment of these wishes would no longer produce an affect of pleasure, but
one of pain; and it is just this conversion of affect that constitutes the
essence of what we call repression. In what manner and by what motive forces
such a conversion can take place constitutes the problem of repression, which we
need here only to touch upon in passing. It will suffice to note the fact that
such a conversion of affect occurs in the course of development (one need only
think of the emergence of disgust, originally absent in infantile life), and
that it is connected with the activity of the secondary system. The memories
from which the unconscious wish evokes a liberation of affect have never been
accessible to the Pcs, and for that reason this liberation cannot be inhibited.
It is precisely on account of this generation of affect that these ideas are not
now accessible even by way of the preconscious thoughts to which they have
transferred the energy of the wishes connected with them. On the contrary, the
pain- principle comes into play, and causes the Pcs to turn away from these
transference-thoughts. These latter are left to themselves, are repressed, and
thus, the existence of a store of infantile memories, withdrawn from the
beginning from the Pcs, becomes the preliminary condition of repression.
In the most favourable case, the generation of pain terminates so soon as the
cathexis is withdrawn from the transference-thoughts in the Pcs, and this result
shows that the intervention of the pain-principle is appropriate. It is
otherwise, however, if the repressed unconscious wish receives an organic
reinforcement which it can put at the service of its transference-thoughts, and
by which it can enable them to attempt to break through with their excitation,
even if the cathexis of the Pcs has been taken away from them. A defensive
struggle then ensues, inasmuch as the Pcs reinforces the opposite to the
repressed thoughts (counter- cathexis), and the eventual outcome is that the
transference- thoughts (the carriers of the unconscious wish) break through in
some form of compromise through symptom-formation. But from the moment that the
repressed thoughts are powerfully cathected by the unconscious wish-impulse, but
forsaken by the preconscious cathexis, they succumb to the primary psychic
process, and aim only at motor discharge; or, if the way is clear, at
hallucinatory revival of the desired identity of perception. We have already
found, empirically, that the incorrect processes described are enacted only with
thoughts which are in a state of repression. We are now in a position to grasp
yet another part of the total scheme of the facts. These incorrect Processes are
the primary processes of the psychic apparatus; they occur wherever ideas
abandoned by the preconscious cathexis are left to themselves and can become
filled with the uninhibited energy which flows from the unconscious and strives
for discharge. There are further facts which go to show that the processes
described as incorrect are not really falsifications of our normal procedure, or
defective thinking. but the modes of operation of the psychic apparatus when
freed from inhibition. Thus we see that the process of the conveyance of the
preconscious excitation to motility occurs in accordance with the same
procedure, and that in the linkage of preconscious ideas with words we may
easily find manifested the same displacements and confusions (which we ascribe
to inattention). Finally, a proof of the increased work made necessary by the
inhibition of these primary modes of procedure might be found in the fact that
we achieve a comical effect, a surplus to be discharged through laughter, if we
allow these modes of thought to come to consciousness.
The theory of the psychoneuroses asserts with absolute certainty that it can
only be sexual wish-impulses from the infantile life, which have undergone
repression (affect-conversion) during the developmental period of childhood,
which are capable of renewal at later periods of development (whether as a
result of our sexual constitution, which has, of course, grown out of an
original bi-sexuality, or in consequence of unfavourable influences in our
sexual life); and which therefore supply the motive-power for all psychoneurotic
symptom-formation. It is only by the introduction of these sexual forces that
the gaps still demonstrable in the theory of repression can be filled. Here, I
will leave it undecided whether the postulate of the sexual and infantile holds
good for the theory of dreams as well; I am not completing the latter, because
in assuming that the dream-wish invariably originates in the unconscious I have
already gone a step beyond the demonstrable. * Nor will I inquire further into
the nature of the difference between the play of psychic forces in
dream-formation and in the formation of hysterical symptoms, since there is
missing here the needed fuller knowledge of one of the two things to be
compared. But there is another point which I regard as important, and I will
confess at once that it was only on account of this point that I entered upon
all the discussions concerning the two psychic systems, their modes of
operation, and the fact of repression. It does not greatly matter whether I have
conceived the psychological relations at issue with approximate correctness, or,
as is easily possible in such a difficult matter, wrongly and imperfectly.
However our views may change about the interpretation of the psychic censorship
or the correct and the abnormal elaboration of the dream-content. it remains
certain that such processes are active in dream-formation, and that in their
essentials they reveal the closest analogy with the processes observed in the
formation of hysterical symptoms. Now the dream is not a pathological
phenomenon; it does not presuppose any disturbance of our psychic equilibrium;
and it does not leave behind it any weakening of our efficiency or capacities.
The objection that no conclusions can be drawn about the dreams of healthy
persons from my own dreams and from those of my neurotic patients may be
rejected without comment. If, then, from the nature of the given phenomena we
infer the nature of their motive forces, we find that the psychic mechanism
utilized by the neuroses is not newly-created by a morbid disturbance that lays
hold of the psychic life, but lies in readiness in the normal structure of our
psychic apparatus. The two psychic systems, the frontier-censorship between
them, the inhibition and overlaying of the one activity by the other, the
relations of both to consciousness- or whatever may take place of these concepts
on a juster interpretation of the actual relations- all these belong to the
normal structure of our psychic instrument, and the dream shows us one of the
paths which lead to a knowledge of this structure. If we wish to be content with
a minimum of perfectly assured additions to our knowledge, we shall say that the
dream affords proof that the suppressed material continues to exist even in the
normal person and remains capable of psychic activity. Dreams are one of the
manifestations of this suppressed material; theoretically, this is true in all
cases; and in tangible experience, it has been found true in at least a great
number of cases, which happen to display most plainly the more striking features
of the dream-life. The suppressed psychic material, which in the waking state
has been prevented from expression and cut off from internal perception by the
mutual neutralization of contradictory attitudes, finds ways and means, under
the sway of compromise-formations, of obtruding itself on consciousness during
the night.
Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo. *(2)
At any rate, the interpretation of dreams is the via regia to a knowledge of the
unconscious element in our psychic life.
* Here, as elsewhere, there are gaps in the treatment of the subject, which I
have deliberately left, because to fill them up would, on the one hand, require
excessive labour, and, on the other hand, I should have to depend on material
which is foreign to the dream. Thus, for example, I have avoided stating whether
I give the word suppressed a different meaning from that of the word repressed.
No doubt, however, it will have become clear that the latter emphasizes more
than the former the relation to the unconscious. I have not gone into the
problem, which obviously arises, of why the dream-thoughts undergo distortion by
the censorship even when they abandon the progressive path to consciousness, and
choose the path of regression. And so with other similar omissions. I have,
above all, sought to give some idea of the problems to which the further
dissection of the dream- work leads, and to indicate the other themes with which
these are connected. It was, however, not always easy to decide just where the
pursuit should be discontinued. That I have not treated exhaustively the part
which the psycho-sexual life plays in the dream, and have avoided the
interpretation of dreams of an obviously sexual content, is due to a special
reason- which may not perhaps be that which the reader would expect. It is
absolutely alien to my views and my neuropathological doctrines to regard the
sexual life as a pudendum with which neither the physician nor the scientific
investigator should concern himself. To me, the moral indignation which prompted
the translator of Artemidorus of Daldis to keep from the reader's knowledge the
chapter on sexual dreams contained in the Symbolism of Dreams is merely
ludicrous. For my own part, what decided my procedure was solely the knowledge
that in the explanation of sexual dreams I should be bound to get deeply
involved in the still unexplained problems of perversion and bisexuality; it was
for this reason that I reserved this material for treatment elsewhere.
*(2) If I cannot influence the gods, I will stir up Acheron.
By the analysis of dreams we obtain some insight into the composition of this
most marvellous and most mysterious of instruments; it is true that this only
takes us a little way, but it gives us a start which enables us, setting out
from the angle of other (properly pathological) formations, to penetrate further
in our disjoining of the instrument. For disease- at all events that which is
rightly called functional- does not necessarily presuppose the destruction of
this apparatus, or the establishment of new cleavages in its interior: it can be
explained dynamically by the strengthening and weakening of the components of
the play of forces, so many of the activities of which are covered up in normal
functioning. It might be shown elsewhere how the fact that the apparatus is a
combination of two instances also permits of a refinement of its normal
functioning which would have been impossible to a single system. *
* The dream is not the only phenomenon that permits us to base our
psycho-pathology on psychology. In a short unfinished series of articles in the
Monatsschrift fur Psychiatrie und Neurologie ("uber den psychischen Mechanismus
der Vergesslichkeit," 1898, and "uber Deckerinnerungen," 1899) I attempted to
interpret a number of psychic manifestations from everyday life in support of
the same conception. (These and other articles on "Forgetting," "Lapses of
Speech," etc., have now been published in the Psycho- pathology of Everyday
Life.)
The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 7 - F. The Unconscious and Consciousness. Reality
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