Freud - Complete Works (114 page)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

665

   Thus the fact that the content of
dreams includes remnants of trivial experiences is to be explained
as a manifestation of dream-distortion (by displacement); and it
will be recalled that we came to the conclusion that
dream-distortion was the product of a censorship operating in the
passage-way between two psychical agencies. It is to be expected
that the analysis of a dream will regularly reveal its true,
psychically significant source in waking life, though the emphasis
has been displaced from the recollection of that source on to that
of an indifferent one. This explanation brings us into complete
conflict with Robert’s theory, which ceases to be of any
service to us. For the fact which Robert sets out to explain is a
non-existent one. His acceptance of it rests on a misunderstanding,
on his failure to replace the
apparent
content of dreams by
their
real
meaning. And there is another objection that can
be raised to Robert’s theory. If it were really the business
of dreams to relieve our memory of the ‘dregs’ of
daytime recollections by a special psychical activity, our sleep
would be more tormented and harder worked than our mental life
while we are awake. For the number of indifferent impressions from
which our memory would need to be protected is clearly immensely
large: the night would not be long enough to cope with such a mass.
It is far more likely that the process of forgetting indifferent
impressions goes forward without the active intervention of our
psychical forces.

   Nevertheless we must not be in a
hurry to take leave of Robert’s ideas without further
consideration. We have still not explained the fact that one of the
indifferent impressions of waking life, one, moreover, dating from
the day preceding the dream, invariably contributes towards the
dream’s content. The connections between this impression and
the true source of the dream in the unconscious are not always
there ready-made; as we have seen, they may only be established
retrospectively, in the course of the dream-work, with a view, as
it were, to making the intended displacement feasible. There must
therefore be some compelling force in the direction of establishing
connections precisely with a recent, though indifferent,
impression; and the latter must possess some attribute which makes
it especially suitable for this purpose. For if that were not so,
it would be just as easy for the dream-thoughts to displace their
emphasis on to an unimportant component in their
own
circle
of ideas.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

666

   The following observations may
help us towards clearing up this point. If in the course of a
single day we have two or more experiences suitable for provoking a
dream, the dream will make a combined reference to them as a single
whole;
it is under a necessity to combine them into a unity
.
Here is an instance. One afternoon during the summer I entered a
railway compartment in which I found two acquaintances who were
strangers to each other. One of them was an eminent medical
colleague and the other was a member of a distinguished family with
which I had professional relations. I introduced the two gentlemen
to each other, but all through the long journey they conducted
their conversation with me as a go-between, so that I presently
found myself discussing various topics alternately, first with the
one and then with the other. I asked my doctor friend to use his
influence on behalf of a common acquaintance of ours who was just
starting a medical practice. The doctor replied that he was
convinced of the young man’s capacity, but that his homely
appearance would make it hard for him to make his way in families
of the better class; to which I replied that that was the very
reason why he needed influential assistance. Turning to my other
fellow-traveller, I enquired after the health of his aunt - the
mother of one of my patients - who was lying seriously ill at the
time. During the night following the journey I had a dream that the
young friend on whose behalf I had pleaded was sitting in a
fashionable drawing-room in a select company composed of all the
distinguished and wealthy people of my acquaintance and, with the
easy bearing of a man of the world, was delivering a funeral
oration on the old lady (who was already dead so far as my dream
was concerned), the aunt of my second fellow-traveller. (I must
confess that I had not been on good terms with that lady.) Thus my
dream had, once again, worked out connections between the two sets
of impressions of the previous day and had combined them into a
single situation.

   Many experiences such as this
lead me to assert that the dream-work is under some kind of
necessity to combine all the sources which have acted as stimuli
for the dream into a single unity in the dream itself.¹

  
¹
The tendency of the dream-work to fuse into
a single action all events of interest which occur simultaneously
has already been remarked on by several writers; e.g. Delage (1891,
41) and Delboeuf (1885, 237), who speaks of ‘
rapprochement
forcé
' [‘enforced
convergence’].

The Interpretation Of Dreams

667

   I will now proceed to the
question of whether the instigating source of a dream, revealed by
analysis, must invariably be a recent (and significant) event or
whether an internal experience, that is, the
recollection
of
a psychically important event - a train of thought - can assume the
role of a dream-instigator. The answer, based upon a large number
of analyses, is most definitely in favour of the latter
alternative. A dream can be instigated by an internal process which
has, as it were, become a recent event, owing to thought-activity
during the previous day. This seems to be the appropriate moment
for tabulating the different conditions to which we find that the
sources of dreams are subject. The source of a dream may be either
-

   (
a
) a recent and
psychically significant experience which is represented in the
dream directly,¹ or

   (
b
) several recent and
significant experiences which are combined into a single unity by
the dream,² or

   (
c
) one or more recent and
significant experiences which are represented in the content of the
dream by a mention of a contemporary but indifferent
experience,³ or

   (
d
) an internal
significant experience (e.g. a memory or a train of thought), which
is in that case
invariably
represented in the dream by a
mention of a recent but indifferent impression.
⁴

   It will be seen that in
interpreting dreams we find one condition always fulfilled: one
component of the content of the dream is a repetition of a recent
impression of the previous day. This impression that is to be
represented in the dream may either itself belong to the circle of
ideas surrounding the actual instigator of the dream - whether as
an essential or as a trivial portion of it - or it may be derived
from the field of an indifferent impression which has been brought
into connection with the ideas surrounding the dream-instigator by
more or less numerous links. The apparent multiplicity of governing
conditions is in fact merely dependent upon the two alternatives of
whether a displacement has or has not taken place; and it is worth
pointing out that we are enabled by these alternatives to explain
the range of contrast between different dreams just as easily as
the medical theory is enabled to do by its hypothesis of
brain-cells ranging from partial to total wakefulness. (See above,
p. 583 ff.
)

  
¹
As in the dream of Irma’s injection
and in the dream of my uncle with the yellow beard.

  
²
As in the young doctor’s funeral
oration.

  
³
As in the dream of the botanical
monograph.

  
⁴
Most
of my patient’s dreams during analysis are of this
kind.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

668

   It will further be observed, if
we consider these four possible cases, that a psychical element
which is significant but not recent (e.g. a train of thought or a
memory)  can be replaced, for the purpose of forming a dream,
by an element which is recent but indifferent, provided only that
two conditions are fulfilled: (1) the content of the dream must be
connected with a recent experience, and (2) the instigator of the
dream must remain a psychically significant process. Only in one
case - case (
a
) - are both of these conditions fulfilled by
one and the same impression. It is to be noticed, moreover, that
indifferent impressions which are capable of being used for
constructing a dream so long as they are recent lose that capacity
as soon as they are a day (or at the most a few days) older. From
this we must conclude that the freshness of an impression gives it
some kind of psychical value for purposes of dream-construction
equivalent in some way to the value of emotionally coloured
memories or trains of thought. The basis of the value which thus
attaches to recent impressions in connection with the construction
of dreams will only become evident in the course of our subsequent
psychological discussions.¹

   In this connection it will be
noticed, incidentally, that modifications in our mnemic and
ideational material may take place during the night unobserved by
our consciousness. We are often advised that before coming to a
final decision on some subject we should ‘sleep on it’,
and this advice is evidently justified. But here we have passed
from the psychology of dreams to that of sleep, and this is not the
last occasion on which we shall be tempted to do so.²

 
 
¹
See the passage
on ‘transference’ in Chapter VII.

  
²
[
Footnote added
1919:] An important
contribution to the part played by recent material in the
construction of dreams has been made by Pötzl (1917) in a
paper which carries a wealth of implications. In a series of
experiments Pötzl required the subjects to make a drawing of
what they had consciously noted of a picture exposed to their view
in a tachistoscope. He then turned his attention to the dreams
dreamt by the subjects during the following night and required them
once more to make drawings of appropriate portions of these dreams.
It was shown unmistakably that those details of the exposed picture
which had not been noted by the subject provided material for the
construction of the dream, whereas those details which had been
consciously perceived and recorded in the drawing made after the
exposure did not recur in the manifest content of the dream
manifest content of the dream. The material that was taken over by
the dream-work was modified by it for the purposes of
dream-construction in its familiar ‘arbitrary’ (or,
more properly, ‘autocratic’) manner. The questions
raised by Pötzl’s experiment go far beyond the sphere of
dream-interpretation as dealt with in the present volume. In
passing, it is worth remarking on the contrast between this new
method of studying the formation of dreams experimentally and the
earlier, crude technique for introducing into the dream stimuli
which interrupted the subject’s sleep.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

669

   An objection, however, may be
raised which threatens to upset these last conclusions. If
indifferent impressions can only find their way into a dream
provided they are recent, how does it happen that the content of
dreams also includes elements from an earlier period of life which
at the time when they were recent possessed, to use
Strümpell’s words, no psychical value, and should
therefore have been long since forgotten - elements, that is to
say, which are neither fresh nor psychically significant?

   This objection can be completely
dealt with by a reference to the findings of the psycho-analysis of
neurotics. The explanation is that the displacement which replaces
psychically important by indifferent material (alike in dreaming
and in thinking) has in these cases already taken place at the
early period of life in question and since then become fixed in the
memory. These particular elements which were originally indifferent
are indifferent no longer, since taking over (by means of
displacement) the value of psychically significant material.
Nothing that has
really
remained indifferent can be
reproduced in a dream.

   The reader will rightly conclude
from the foregoing arguments that I am asserting that there are no
indifferent dream-instigators - and consequently no
‘innocent’ dreams. Those are, in the strictest and most
absolute sense, my opinions - if I leave on one side the dreams of
children and perhaps brief reactions in dreams to sensations felt
during the night. Apart from this, what we dream is either
manifestly recognizable as psychically significant, or it is
distorted and cannot be judged till the dream has been interpreted,
after which it will once more be found to be significant. Dreams
are never concerned with trivialities; we do not allow our sleep to
be disturbed by trifles.¹ The apparently innocent dreams turn
out to be quite the reverse when we take the trouble to analyse
them. They are, if I may say so, wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Since this is another point upon which I may expect to be
contradicted, and since I am glad of an opportunity of showing
dream-distortion at work, I will select a number of
‘innocent’ dreams from my records and submit them to
analysis.