Freud - Complete Works (108 page)

                                               
Das Beste, was du wissen kannst,

                                               
Darfst du den Buben doch nicht sagen.
¹

   A similar difficulty confronts
the political writer who has disagreeable truths to tell to those
in authority. If he presents them undisguised, the authorities will
suppress his words - after they have been spoken, if his
pronouncement was an oral one, but beforehand, if he had intended
to make it in print. A writer must beware of the censorship, and on
its account he must soften and distort the expression of his
opinion. According to the strength and sensitiveness of the
censorship he finds himself compelled either merely to refrain from
certain forms of attack, or to speak in allusions in place of
direct references, or he must conceal his objectionable
pronouncement beneath some apparently innocent disguise: for
instance, he may describe a dispute between two Mandarins in the
Middle Kingdom, when the people he really has in mind are officials
in his own country. The stricter the censorship, the more
far-reaching will be the disguise and the more ingenious too may be
the means employed for putting the reader on the scent of the true
meaning.²

  
¹
[‘After all, the best of what you
know may not be told to boys.’]

  
²
[
Footnote added
1919:] Frau Dr. H.
von Hug-Hellmuth (1915) has recorded a dream which is perhaps
better fitted than any to justify my choice of nomenclature. In
this example the dream-distortion adopted the same methods as the
postal censorship for expunging passages which were objectionable
to it. The postal censorship makes such passages unreadable by
blacking them out; the dream-censorship replaced them by an
incomprehensible mumble.

   In
order to make the dream intelligible, I must explain that the
dreamer, a cultivated and highly esteemed lady, was fifty years of
age. She was the widow of an officer of high rank who had died some
twelve years previously and was the mother of grown sons, one of
whom was in the field at the time of the dream.

  
Here then is the dream - which deals with ‘love
services’ in war-time. ‘The patient went to Garrison
Hospital No. 1 and informed the sentry at the gate that she must
speak to the Chief Medical Officer (mentioning a name that was
unknown to her) as she wanted to volunteer for service at the
hospital. She pronounced the word "service" in such a way
that the N.C.O. at once understood that she meant "love
service". Since she was an elderly lady, after some hesitation
he allowed her to pass. Instead of finding the Chief Medical
Officer, however, she reached a large and gloomy apartment in which
a number of officers and army doctors were standing and sitting
round a long table. She approached a staff surgeon with her
request, and he understood her meaning after she had said only a
few words. The actual wording of her speech in the dream was:
"I and many other women and girls in Vienna are ready to . .
." at this point in the dream her words turned into a mumble
" . . . for the troops - officers and other
ranks without distinction." She could tell from the
expressions on the officers’ faces, partly embarrassed and
partly sly, that everyone had understood her meaning correctly. The
lady went on: "I’m aware that our decision must sound
surprising, but we mean it in bitter earnest. No one asks a soldier
in the field whether he wishes to die or not." There followed
an awkward silence of some minutes. The staff surgeon then put his
arm round her waist and said: "Suppose, madam, it actually
came to . . . (mumble)." She drew away from
him, thinking to herself: "He’s like all the rest of
them", and replied: "Good gracious, I’m an old
woman and I might never come to that. Besides, there’s one
condition that must be observed: age must be respected. It must
never happen that an elderly woman . . .
(mumble) . . . a mere boy. That would be
terrible." "I understand perfectly," replied the
staff surgeon. Some of the officers, and among them one who had
been a suitor of hers in her youth, laughed out loud. The lady then
asked to be taken to the Chief Medical Officer, with whom she was
acquainted, so that the whole matter could be thrashed out; but she
found, to her consternation, that she could not recall his name.
Nevertheless, the staff surgeon, most politely and respectfully,
showed her the way up to the second floor by a very narrow, iron,
spiral staircase, which led directly from the room to the upper
storeys of the building. As she went up she heard an officer say:
"That’s a tremendous decision to make - no matter
whether a woman’s young or old! Splendid of her!"
Feeling simply that she was doing her duty, she walked up an
interminable staircase. The dream was repeated twice in the course
of a few weeks, with, as the lady remarked, some quite unimportant
and meaningless modifications.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

639

   The fact that the phenomena of
censorship and of dream-distortion correspond down to their
smallest details justifies us in presuming that they are similarly
determined. We may therefore suppose that dreams are given their
shape in individual human beings by the operation of two psychical
forces (or we may describe them as currents or systems); and that
one of these forces constructs the wish which is expressed by the
dream, while the other exercises a censorship upon this dream-wish
and, by the use of that censorship, forcibly brings about a
distortion in the expression of the wish. It remains to enquire as
to the nature of the power enjoyed by this second agency which
enables it to exercise its censorship. When we bear in mind that
the latent dream-thoughts are not conscious before an analysis has
been carried out, whereas the manifest content of the dream is
consciously remembered, it seems plausible to suppose that the
privilege enjoyed by the second agency is that of permitting
thoughts to enter consciousness. Nothing, it would seem, can reach
consciousness from the first system without passing the second
agency; and the second agency allows nothing to pass without
exercising its rights and making such modifications as it thinks
fit in the thought which is seeking admission to consciousness.
Incidentally, this enables us to form a quite definite view of the
‘essential nature’ of consciousness: we see the process
of a thing becoming conscious as a specific psychical act, distinct
from and independent of the process of the formation of a
presentation or idea; and we regard consciousness as a sense organ
which perceives data that arise elsewhere. It can be demonstrated
that these basic assumptions are absolutely indispensable to
psychopathology. We must, however, postpone our further
consideration of them to a later stage.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

640

   If this picture of the two
psychical agencies and their relation to consciousness is accepted,
there is a complete analogy in political life to the extraordinary
affection which I felt in my dream for my friend R., who was
treated with such contumely during the dream’s
interpretation. Let us imagine a society in which a struggle is in
process between a ruler who is jealous of his power and an alert
public opinion. The people are in revolt against an unpopular
official and demand his dismissal. But the autocrat, to show that
he need take no heed of the popular wish, chooses that moment for
bestowing a high distinction upon the official, though there is no
other reason for doing so. In just the same way my second agency,
which commands the approaches to consciousness, distinguished my
friend R. by a display of excessive affection simply because the
wishful impulses belonging to the first system, for particular
reasons of their own on which they were intent at the moment, chose
to condemn him as a simpleton.¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1911:] Hypocritical
dreams of this description are not uncommon events in my own case
or in that of other people. While I was engaged in working out a
certain scientific problem, I was troubled for several nights in
close succession by a somewhat confusing dream which had as its
subject a reconciliation with a friend whom I had dropped many
years before. On the fourth or fifth occasion I at last succeeded
in understanding the meaning of the dream. It was an incitement to
abandon my last remnants of consideration for the person in
question and to free myself from him completely, and it had been
hypocritically disguised as its opposite. I have reported elsewhere
a ‘hypocritical Oedipus dream’, dreamt by a man, in
which the hostile impulses and death-wishes contained in the
dream-thoughts were replaced by manifest affection. Another kind of
hypocritical dream will be mentioned below in Chapter
VI.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

641

  These considerations may lead us to
feel that the interpretation of dreams may enable us to draw
conclusions as to the structure of our mental apparatus which we
have hoped for in vain from philosophy. I do not propose, however,
to follow this line of thought; but, having cleared up the matter
of distortion in dreams, I shall go back to the problem from which
we started. The question raised was how dreams with a distressing
content can be resolved into wish-fulfilments. We now see that this
is possible if dream-distortion has occurred and if the distressing
content serves only to disguise something that is wished for.
Bearing in mind our assumption of the existence of two psychical
agencies, we can further say that distressing dreams do in fact
contain something which is distressing to the
second
agency,
but something which at the same time fulfils a wish on the part of
the
first
agency. They are wishful dreams in so far as every
dream arises from the first agency; the relation of the second
agency towards dreams is of a
defensive
and not of a
creative
kind.¹ If we were to restrict ourselves to
considering what the second agency contributes to dreams, we could
never arrive at an understanding of them: all the conundrums which
the authorities have observed in dreams would remain unsolved.

   The fact that dreams really have
a secret meaning which represents the fulfilment of a wish must be
proved afresh in each particular case by analysis. I shall
therefore select a few dreams with a distressing content and
attempt to analyse them. Some of them are the dreams of hysterical
patients which require lengthy preambles and an occasional excursus
into the psychical processes characteristic of hysteria. But I
cannot escape this aggravation of the difficulties of presenting my
argument.

   As I have already explained, when
I undertake the analytic treatment of a psycho-neurotic patient his
dreams are invariably discussed between us. In the course of these
discussions I am obliged to give him all the psychological
explanations which have enabled me myself to reach an understanding
of his symptoms. I am thereupon subjected to a remorseless
criticism, certainly no less severe than I have to expect from the
members of my own profession. And my patients invariably contradict
my assertion that all dreams are fulfilments of wishes. Here, then,
are some instances from the material of dreams that have been
brought up against me as evidence to the contrary.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1930:] Later we
shall also come across instance in which, on the contrary, a dream
expresses a wish on the part of the
second
agency.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

642

   ‘You’re always saying
to me’, began a clever woman patient of mine, ‘that a
dream is a fulfilled wish. Well, I’ll tell you a dream whose
subject was the exact opposite - a dream in which one of my wishes
was
not
fulfilled. How do you fit that in with your theory?
This was the dream:

   ‘
I wanted to give a
supper-party, but I had nothing in the house but a little smoked
salmon. I thought I would go out and buy something, but remembered
then that it was Sunday afternoon and all the shops would be shut.
Next I tried to ring up some caterers, but the telephone was out of
order. So I had to abandon my wish to give a
supper-party
.’

   I answered, of course, that
analysis was the only way of deciding on the meaning of the dream;
though I admitted that at first sight it seemed sensible and
coherent and looked like the reverse of a wish-fulfilment.
‘But what material did the dream arise from? As you know, the
instigation to a dream is always to be found in the events of the
previous day.’

  
ANALYSIS
. - My patient’s
husband, an honest and capable wholesale butcher, had remarked to
her the day before that he was getting too stout and therefore
intended to start on a course of weight-reduction. He proposed to
rise early, do physical exercises, keep to a strict diet, and above
all accept no more invitations to supper. -She laughingly added
that her husband, at the place where he regularly lunched, had made
the acquaintance of a painter, who had pressed him to be allowed to
paint his portrait, as he had never seen such expressive features.
Her husband however had replied in his blunt manner that he was
much obliged, but he was sure the painter would prefer a piece of a
pretty young girl’s behind to the whole of his face.¹
She was very much in love with her husband now and teased him a
lot. She had begged him, too, not to give her any caviare.