Freud - Complete Works (130 page)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

749

(
g
)  EXAMINATION DREAMS

   Everyone who has passed the
matriculation examination at the end of his school studies
complains of the obstinacy with which he is pursued by
anxiety-dreams of having failed, or of being obliged to take the
examination again, etc. In the case of those who have obtained a
University degree this typical dream is replaced by another one
which represents them as having failed in their University Finals;
and it is in vain that they object, even while they are still
asleep, that for years they have been practising medicine or
working as University lecturers or heads of offices. The
ineradicable memories of the punishments that we suffered for our
evil deeds in childhood become active within us once more and
attach themselves to the two crucial points in our studies - the
‘
dies irae, dies illa
’ of our stiffest
examinations. The ‘examination anxiety’ of neurotics
owes its intensification to these same childhood fears. After we
have ceased to be school-children, our punishments are no longer
inflicted on us by our parents or by those who brought us up or
later by our schoolmasters. The relentless causal chains of real
life take charge of our further education, and now we dream of
Matriculation or Finals (and who has not trembled on those
occasions, even if he was well-prepared for the examination?)
whenever, having done something wrong or failed to do something
properly, we expect to be punished by the event - whenever, in
short, we feel the burden of responsibility.

   For a further explanation of
examination dreams I have to thank an experienced colleague, who
once declared at a scientific meeting that so far as he knew dreams
of Matriculation only occur in people who have successfully passed
it and never in people who have failed in it. It would seem, then,
that anxious examination dreams (which, as has been confirmed over
and over again, appear when the dreamer has some responsible
activity ahead of him next day and is afraid there may be a fiasco)
search for some occasion in the past in which great anxiety has
turned out to be unjustified and has been contradicted by the
event. This, then, would be a very striking instance of the content
of a dream being misunderstood by the waking agency. What is
regarded as an indignant protest against the dream: ‘But
I’m a doctor, etc., already!’ would in reality be the
consolation put forward by the dream, and would accordingly run:
‘Don’t be afraid of tomorrow! Just think how anxious
you were before your Matriculation, and yet nothing happened to
you. You’re a doctor, etc., already.’ And the
anxiety which is attributed to the dream would really have arisen
from the day’s residues.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

750

   Such tests as I have been able to
make of this explanation on myself and on other people, though they
have not been sufficiently numerous, have confirmed its validity.
For instance, I myself failed in Forensic Medicine in my Finals;
but I have never had to cope with this subject in dreams, whereas I
have quite often been examined in Botany, Zoology or Chemistry. I
went in for the examination in these subjects with well-founded
anxiety; but, whether by the grace of destiny or of the examiners,
I escaped punishment. In my dreams of school examinations, I am
invariably examined in History, in which I did brilliantly - though
only, it is true, because my kindly master (the one-eyed benefactor
of another dream, see
p. 531
) did not
fail to notice that on the paper of questions which I handed him
back I had run my finger-nail through the middle one of the three
questions included, to warn him not to insist upon that particular
one. One of my patients, who decided not to sit for his
Matriculation the first time but passed it later, and who
subsequently failed in his army examination and never got a
commission, has told me that he often dreams of the former of these
examinations but never of the latter.

   The interpretation of examination
dreams is faced by the difficulty which I have already referred to
as characteristic of the majority of typical dreams. It is but
rarely that the material with which the dreamer provides us in
associations is sufficient to interpret the dream. It is only by
collecting a considerable number of examples of such dreams that we
can arrive at a better understanding of them. Not long ago I came
to the conclusion that the objection, ‘You’re a doctor,
etc., already’, does not merely conceal a consolation but
also signifies a reproach. This would have run: ‘You’re
quite old now, quite far advanced in life, and yet you go on doing
these stupid, childish things.’ This mixture of
self-criticism and consolation would thus correspond to the latent
content of examination dreams. If so, it would not be surprising if
the self-reproaches for being ‘stupid’ and
‘childish’ in these last examples referred to the
repetition of reprehensible sexual acts.

   Wilhelm Stekel, who put forward
the first interpretation of dreams of Matriculation
[‘
Matura
’], was of the opinion that they
regularly related to sexual tests and sexual maturity. My
experience has often confirmed his view.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

751

CHAPTER VI

THE
DREAM-WORK

Every attempt that has hitherto been made to
solve the problem of dreams has dealt directly with their
manifest
content as it is presented in our memory. All such
attempts have endeavoured to arrive at an interpretation of dreams
from their manifest content or (if no interpretation was attempted)
to form a judgement as to their nature on the basis of that same
manifest content. We are alone in taking something else into
account. We have introduced a new class of psychical material
between the manifest content of dreams and the conclusions of our
enquiry: namely, their
latent
content, or (as we say) the
‘dream-thoughts’, arrived at by means of our procedure.
It is from these dream-thoughts and not from a dream’s
manifest content that we disentangle its meaning. We are thus
presented with a new task which had no previous existence: the
task, that is, of investigating the relations between the manifest
content of dreams and the latent dream-thoughts, and of tracing out
the processes by which the latter have been changed into the
former.

   The dream-thoughts and the
dream-content are presented to us like two versions of the same
subject-matter in two different languages. Or, more properly, the
dream-content seems like a transcript of the dream-thoughts into
another mode of expression, whose characters and syntactic laws it
is our business to discover by comparing the original and the
translation. The dream-thoughts are immediately comprehensible, as
soon as we have learnt them. The dream-content, on the other hand,
is expressed as it were in a pictographic script, the characters of
which have to be transposed individually into the language of the
dream-thoughts. If we attempted to read these characters according
to their pictorial value instead of according to their symbolic
relation, we should clearly be led into error. Suppose I have a
picture-puzzle, a rebus, in front of me. It depicts a house with a
boat on its roof, a single letter of the alphabet, the figure of a
running man whose head has been conjured away, and so on. Now I
might be misled into raising objections and declaring that the
picture as a whole and its component parts are nonsensical. A boat
has no business to be on the roof of a house, and a headless man
cannot run. Moreover, the man is bigger than the house; and if the
whole picture is intended to represent a landscape, letters of the
alphabet are out of place in it since such objects do not occur in
nature. But obviously we can only form a proper judgement of the
rebus if we put aside criticisms such as these of the whole
composition and its parts and if, instead, we try to replace each
separate element by a syllable or word that can be represented by
that element in some way or other. The words which are put together
in this way are no longer nonsensical but may form a poetical
phrase of the greatest beauty and significance. A dream is a
picture puzzle of this sort and our predecessors in the field of
dream interpretation have made the mistake of treating the rebus as
a pictorial composition: and as such it has seemed to them
nonsensical and worthless.

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752

(A)

THE WORK OF CONDENSATION

   The first thing that becomes
clear to anyone who compares the dream-content with the
dream-thoughts is that a work of
condensation
on a large
scale has been carried out. Dreams are brief, meagre and laconic in
comparison with the range and wealth of the dream-thoughts. If a
dream is written out it may perhaps fill half a page. The analysis
setting out the dream-thoughts underlying it may occupy six, eight
or a dozen times as much space. This relation varies with different
dreams; but so far as my experience goes its direction never
varies. As a rule one underestimates the amount of compression that
has taken place, since one is inclined to regard the dream-thoughts
that have been brought to light as the complete material, whereas
if the work of interpretation is carried further it may reveal
still more thoughts concealed behind the dream. I have already had
occasion to point out that it is in fact never possible to be sure
that a dream has been completely interpreted. Even if the solution
seems satisfactory and without gaps, the possibility always remains
that the dream may have yet another meaning. Strictly speaking,
then, it is impossible to determine the amount of condensation.

   There is an answer, which at
first sight seems most plausible, to the argument that the great
lack of proportion between the dream-content and the dream-thoughts
implies that the psychical material has undergone an extensive
process of condensation in the course of the formation of the
dream. We very often have an impression that we have dreamt a great
deal all through the night and have since forgotten most of what we
dreamt. On this view, the dream which we remember when we wake up
would only be a fragmentary remnant of the total dream-work; and
this, if we could recollect it in its entirety, might well be as
extensive as the dream-thoughts. There is undoubtedly some truth in
this: there can be no question that dreams can be reproduced most
accurately if we try to recall them as soon as we wake up and that
our memory of them becomes more and more incomplete towards
evening.But on the other hand it can be shown that the impression
that we have dreamt a great deal more than we can reproduce is very
often based on an illusion, the origin of which I shall discuss
later. Moreover the hypothesis that condensation occurs during the
dream-work is not affected by the possibility of dreams being
forgotten, since this hypothesis is proved to be correct by the
quantities of ideas which are related to each individual piece of
the dream which has been retained. Even supposing that a large
piece of the dream has escaped recollection, this may merely have
prevented our having access to another group of dream-thoughts.
There is no justification for supposing that the lost pieces of the
dream would have related to the same thoughts which we have already
reached from the pieces of the dream that have survived.¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1914:] The
occurrence of condensation in dreams has been hinted at by many
writers. Du Prel (1885, 85) has a passage in which he says it is
absolutely certain that there has been a process of condensation of
the groups of ideas in dreams.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

753

   In view of the very great number
of associations produced in analysis to each individual element of
the content of a dream, some readers may be led to doubt whether,
as a matter of principle, we are justified in regarding as part of
the dream-thoughts all the associations that occur to us during the
subsequent analysis - whether we are justified, that is, in
supposing that all these thoughts were already active during the
state of sleep and played a part in the formation of the dream. Is
it not more probable that new trains of thought have arisen in the
course of the analysis which had no share in forming the dream? I
can only give limited assent to this argument. It is no doubt true
that some trains of thought arise for the first time during the
analysis. But one can convince oneself in all such cases that these
new connections are only set up between thoughts which were already
linked in some other way in the dream-thoughts. The new connections
are, as it were, loop-lines or short-circuits, made possible by the
existence of other and deeper-lying connecting paths. It must be
allowed that the great bulk of the thoughts which are revealed in
analysis were already active during the process of forming the
dream; for, after working through a string of thoughts which seem
to have no connection with the formation of a dream, one suddenly
comes upon one which is represented in its content and is
indispensable for its interpretation, but which could not have been
reached except by this particular line of approach. I may here
recall the dream of the botanical monograph, which strikes one as
the product of an astonishing amount of condensation, even though I
have not reported its analysis in full.

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754

   How, then, are we to picture
psychical conditions during the period of sleep which precedes
dreams? Are all the dream-thoughts present alongside one another?
or do they occur in sequence? or do a number of trains of thought
start out simultaneously from different centres and afterwards
unite? There is no need for the present, in my opinion, to form
any plastic idea of psychical conditions during the formation of
dreams. It must not be forgotten, however, that we are dealing with
an
unconscious
process of thought, which may easily be
different from what we perceive during purposive reflection
accompanied by consciousness.

   The unquestionable fact remains,
however, that the formation of dreams is based on a process of
condensation. How is that condensation brought about?

   When we reflect that only a small
minority of all the dream-thoughts revealed are represented in the
dream by one of their ideational elements, we might conclude that
condensation is brought about by
omission
: that is, that the
dream is not a faithful translation or a point-for-point projection
of the dream thoughts, but a highly incomplete and fragmentary
version of them. This view, as we shall soon discover, is a most
inadequate one. But we may take it as a provisional starting-point
and go on to a further question. If only a few elements from the
dream-thoughts find their way into the dream-content, what are the
conditions which determine their selection?

   In order to get some light on
this question we must turn our attention to those elements of the
dream-content which must have fulfilled these conditions. And the
most favourable material for such an investigation will be a dream
to the construction of which a particularly intense process of
condensation has contributed. I shall accordingly begin by choosing
for the purpose the dream which I have already recorded on
p. 657 ff.
.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

755

I

THE DREAM OF THE BOTANICAL
MONOGRAPH

  
CONTENT OF THE DREAM
. -
I had
written a monograph on an (unspecified) genus of plants. The book
lay before me and I was at the moment turning over a folded
coloured plate. Bound up in the copy there was a dried specimen of
the plant
.

   The element in this dream which
stood out most was the
botanical monograph
. This arose from
the impressions of the dream day: I had in fact seen a monograph on
the genus Cyclamen in the window of a book-shop. There was no
mention of this genus in the content of the dream; all that was
left in it was the monograph and its relation to botany. The
‘botanical monograph’ immediately revealed its
connection with the
work upon cocaine
which I had once
written. From ‘cocaine’ the chains of thought led on
the one hand to the
Festschrift
and to certain events in a
University laboratory, and on the other hand to my friend Dr.
Königstein, the eye surgeon, who had had a share in the
introduction of cocaine. The figure of Dr. Königstein further
reminded me of the interrupted conversation which I had had with
him the evening before and of my various reflections upon the
payment for medical services among colleagues. This conversation
was the actual currently active instigator of the dream; the
monograph on the cyclamen was also a currently active impression,
but one of an indifferent nature. As I perceived, the
‘botanical monograph’ in the dream turned out to be an
‘intermediate common entity’ between the two
experiences of the previous day: it was taken over unaltered from
the indifferent impression and was linked with the psychically
significant event by copious associative connections.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

756

   Not only the compound idea,
‘botanical monograph’, however, but each of its
components, ‘botanical’ and ‘monograph’
separately, led by numerous connecting paths deeper and deeper into
the tangle of dream-thoughts. ‘Botanical’ was related
to the figure of Professor
Gärtner
[Gardener], the
blooming
looks of his wife, to my patient
Flora
and
to the lady of whom I had told the story of the forgotten
flowers
. Gärtner led in turn to the laboratory and to
my conversation with Königstein. My two patients had been
mentioned in the course of this conversation. A train of thought
joined the lady with the flowers to my wife’s
favourite
flowers
and thence to the title of the monograph which I had
seen for a moment during the day. In addition to these,
‘botanical’ recalled an episode at my secondary school
and an examination while I was at the University. A fresh topic
touched upon in my conversation with Dr. Königstein - my
favourite
hobbies - was joined, through the intermediate
link of what I jokingly called my
favourite flower
, the
artichoke, with the train of thought proceeding from the forgotten
flowers. Behind ‘artichokes’ lay, on the one hand, my
thoughts about Italy and, on the other hand, a scene from my
childhood which was the opening of what have since become my
intimate relations with books. Thus ‘botanical’ was a
regular nodal point in the dream. Numerous trains of thought
converged upon it, which, as I can guarantee, had appropriately
entered into the context of the conversation with Dr.
Königstein. Here we find ourselves in a factory of thoughts
where, as in the ‘weaver’s masterpiece’ -