Freud - Complete Works (106 page)

  
¹
The same feat was accomplished shortly
afterwards by a dream produced by this little girl’s
grandmother - their combined ages came to some seventy years. She
had been obliged to go without food for a whole day on account of a
disturbance due to a floating kidney. During the following night,
no doubt imagining herself back in the heyday of her girlhood, she
dreamt that she had been ‘asked out’ to both of the
principal meals and been served at both with the most appetizing
delicacies.

  
²
[
Footnote added
in 1911:] A closer
study of the mental life of children has taught us, to be sure,
that sexual instinctual forces, in infantile form, play a large
enough part, and one that has been too long overlooked, in the
psychical activity of children. Closer study, too, has given us
grounds for feeling some doubt in regard to the happiness of
childhood as it has been constructed by adults in retrospect. Cf.
my
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
(1905
d
).

  
³
[
Footnote added
1911:] The fact
should be mentioned that children soon begin to have more
complicated and less transparent dreams, and that, on the other
hand, adults in certain circumstances often have dreams of a
similarly simple, infantile character. The wealth of unexpected
material that may occur in the dreams of children of four or five
is shown by examples in my ‘Analysis of a Phobia in a
Five-Year-Old Boy’ (1909
b
) and in Jung (1910
a
).
- [
Added
1914:] For analytical interpretations of
children’s dreams see also von Hug-Hellmuth (1911 and 1913),
Putnam (1912), van Raalte (1912), Spielrein (1913) and Tausk
(1913). Children’s dreams are also reported by Bianchieri
(1912), Busemann (1909 and 1910), Doglia and Bianchieri (1910-11)
and, in particular, Wiggam (1909), who laid stress on their trend
towards wish-fulfilment. - [
Added
1911:] On the other hand,
dreams of an infantile type seem to occur in adults with special
frequency when they find themselves in unusual external
circumstances. Thus Otto Nordenskjöld (1904, 1, 336 f.) writes
as follows of the members of his expedition while they were
wintering in the Antarctic: ‘The direction taken by our
innermost thoughts was very clearly shown by our dreams, which were
never more vivid or numerous than at this time. Even those of us
who otherwise dreamt but rarely had long stories to tell in the
morning when we exchanged our latest experiences in this world of
the imagination. They were all concerned with the outside world
which was now so remote from us, though they were often adapted to
our actual circumstances. One of my companions had a particularly
characteristic dream of being back in his school class-room, where
it was his task to skin miniature seals which had been specially
prepared for instructional purposes. Eating and drinking, however,
were the pivot round which our dreams most often revolved. One of
us, who had a special gift for attending large luncheon parties
during the night, was proud if he was able to report in the morning
that he had "got though a three-course dinner". Another
of us dreamt of tobacco, of whole mountains of tobacco; while a
third dreamt of a ship in full sail coming in across open water.
Yet another dream is worth repeating. The postman brought round the
mail and gave a long explanation of why we had had to wait so long
for it: he had delivered it at the wrong address and had only
succeeded in recovering it with great difficulty. We dreamt, of
course, of still more impossible things. But there was a most
striking lack of imaginativeness shown by almost all the dreams
that I dreamt myself or heard described. It would certainly be of
great psychological interest if all these dreams could be recorded.
And it will easily be understood how much we longed for sleep,
since it could offer each one of us everything that he most eagerly
desired.’. - [
Added
1914:] According to Du Prel (1885,
231), ’Mungo Park, when he was almost dying of thirst on one
of his African journeys, dreamt unceasingly of the well-watered
valleys and meadows of his home. Similarly, Baron Trenck suffering
torments of hunger while he was a prisoner in the fortress at
Magdeburg, dreamt of being surrounded by sumptuous meals; and
George Back, who took part in Franklin’s first expedition,
when he was almost dying of starvation as a result of his fearful
privations, dreamt constantly and regularly of copious
meals.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

630

   I do not myself know what animals
dream of. But a proverb, to which my attention was drawn by one of
my students, does claim to know. ‘What’, asks the
proverb, ‘do geese dream of?’ And it replies: ‘Of
maize.’¹ The whole theory that dreams are
wish-fulfilments is contained in these two phrases.²

   It will be seen that we might
have arrived at our theory of the hidden meaning of dreams most
rapidly merely by following linguistic usage. It is true that
common language sometimes speaks of dreams with contempt. (The
phrase ‘
Träume sind Schäume
[Dreams are
froth]’ seems intended to support the scientific estimate of
dreams.) But, on the whole, ordinary usage treats dreams above all
as the blessed fulfillers of wishes. If ever we find our
expectation surpassed by the event, we exclaim in our delight:
‘I should never have imagined such a thing even in my wildest
dreams.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1911:] A Hungarian
proverb quoted by Ferenczi goes further and declares that
‘pigs dream of acorns and geese dream of maize’. -
[
Added
1914:] A Jewish proverb runs: ‘What do hens
dream of? - of millet.’ (Bernstein and Segel, 1908,
116.)

  
²
[
Footnote added
1914:] I am far from
seeking to maintain that I am the first writer to have had the idea
of deriving dreams from wishes. (Cf. the opening sentence of my
next chapter.) Those who attach any importance to anticipations of
this kind may go back to classical antiquity and quote Herophilus,
a physician who lived under the first Ptolemy. According to
Büchsenschütz (1868, 33), he distinguished three sorts of
dreams: those which are sent by the gods, those which are natural
and arise when the mind forms a picture of something that is
agreeable to it and will come about, and those which are of a mixed
nature and which arise of their own accord from the emergence of
pictures in which we see what we wish for. J. Stärcke (1913, )
has drawn attention to a dream in Scherner’s collection which
that writer himself describes as the fulfilment of a wish. Scherner
(1861, 239) writes: ‘The dreamer’s imagination
fulfilled her waking wish so promptly, simply because that wish was
emotionally active in her.’ Scherner classes this dream among
‘dreams of mood’; alongside it he places ‘dreams
of erotic yearning’ in men and women, and ‘dreams of
ill-temper’. There is clearly no question of Scherner
attributing any more importance to wishes in the instigation of
dreams than to any other waking mental state: still less is there
any question of his having related wishes to the essential nature
of dreaming.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

631

CHAPTER IV

DISTORTION IN DREAMS

If I proceed to put forward the assertion that
the meaning of
every
dream is the fulfilment of a wish, that
is to say that there cannot be any dreams but wishful dreams, I
feel certain in advance that I shall meet with the most categorical
contradiction.

   ‘There is nothing
new,’ I shall be told, ‘in the idea that
some
dreams are to be regarded as wish-fulfilments; the authorities
noticed that fact long ago. Cf. Radestock (1879, 137 f.), Volkelt
(1875, 110 f.), Purkinje (1846, 456), Tissié (1898, 70),
Simon (1888, 42, on the hunger dreams of Baron Trenck while he was
a prisoner), and a passage in Griesinger (1845, 89).¹ But to
assert that there are no dreams other than wish-fulfilment dreams
is only one more unjustifiable generalization, though fortunately
one which it is easy to disprove. After all, plenty of dreams occur
which contain the most distressing subject matter but never a sign
of any wish-fulfilment. Eduard von Hartmann, the philosopher of
pessimism, is probably furthest removed from the wish-fulfilment
theory. In his
Philosophie des Unbewussten
(1890, 2, 344) he
writes: "When it comes to dreams, we find all the annoyances
of waking life carried over into the state of sleep; the only thing
we do
not
find is what can to some extent reconcile an
educated man to life - scientific and artistic
enjoyment. . . ." But even less disgruntled
observers have insisted that pain and unpleasure are more common in
dreams than pleasure: for instance, Scholz (1893, 57), Volkelt
(1875, 80), and others. Indeed two ladies, Florence Hallam and
Sarah Weed (1896, 499), have actually given statistical expression,
based on a study of their own dreams, to the preponderance of
unpleasure in dreaming. They find that 57.2 per cent of dreams are
"disagreeable" and only 28.6 percent positively
"pleasant". And apart from these dreams, which carry over
into sleep the various distressing emotions of life, there are
anxiety-dreams, in which that most dreadful of all unpleasurable
feelings holds us in its grasp till we awaken. And the commonest
victims of these anxiety-dreams are precisely children,² whose
dreams you have described as undisguised
wish-fulfilments.’

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1914:] A writer as
early as Plotinus, the Neoplatonist, is quoted by Du Prel (1885,
276) as saying: ‘When our desires are aroused, imagination
comes along and, as it were, presents us with the objects of those
desires.’

  
²
Cf. Debacker (1881) on pavor
nocturnus.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

632

   It does in fact look as though
anxiety-dreams make it impossible to assert as a general
proposition (based on the examples quoted in my last chapter) that
dreams are wish-fulfilments; indeed they seem to stamp any such
proposition as an absurdity.

   Nevertheless, there is no great
difficulty in meeting these apparently conclusive objections. It is
only necessary to take notice of the fact that my theory is not
based on a consideration of the manifest content of dreams but
refers to the thoughts which are shown by the work of
interpretation to lie behind dreams. We must make a contrast
between the
manifest
and the
latent
content of
dreams. There is no question that there are dreams whose manifest
content is of the most distressing kind. But has anyone tried to
interpret such dreams? to reveal the latent thoughts behind them?
If not, then the two objections raised against my theory will not
hold water: it still remains possible that distressing dreams and
anxiety-dreams, when they have been interpreted, may turn out to be
fulfilments of wishes.¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1909:] It is hard to
credit the obstinacy with which readers and critics of this book
shut their eyes to this consideration and overlook the fundamental
distinction between the manifest and latent content of dreams. - On
the other hand, nothing in the literature of the subject comes so
near to my hypothesis as a passage in James Sully’s essay
‘The Dream as a Revelation’ (1893, 364). The fact that
I am only now quoting it for the first time is no sign of
disparagement: ‘It would seem then, after all, that dreams
are not the utter nonsense they have been said to be by such
authorities as Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton. The chaotic
aggregations of our night-fancy have a significance and communicate
new knowledge. Like some letter in cypher, the dream-inscription
when scrutinized closely loses its first look of balderdash and
takes on the aspect of a serious, intelligible message. Or, to vary
the figure slightly, we may say that, like some palimpsest, the
dream discloses beneath its worthless surface-characters traces of
an old and precious communication.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

633

   When in the course of a piece of
scientific work we come upon a problem which is difficult to solve,
it is often a good plan to take up a second problem along with the
original one - just as it is easier to crack two nuts together than
each separately. Thus we are not only faced by the question
‘How can distressing dreams and anxiety-dreams be
wish-fulfilments?’; our reflections enable us to add a second
question: ‘Why is it that dreams with an indifferent content,
which turn out to be wish-fulfilments, do not express their meaning
undisguised?’ Take, for instance, the dream which I treated
at such length of Irma’s injection. It was not by any means
of a distressing nature and interpretation showed it as a striking
example of the fulfilment of a wish. But why should it have needed
any interpretation at all? Why did it not say what it meant
straight out? At first sight the dream of Irma’s injection
gave no impression that it represented a wish of the
dreamer’s as fulfilled. My readers will have had no such
impression; but neither did I myself before I carried out the
analysis. Let us describe this behaviour of dreams, which stands in
so much need of explanation, as ‘the phenomenon of distortion
in dreams’. Thus our second problem is: what is the origin of
dream-distortion?