Freud - Complete Works (137 page)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

790

   One and one only of these logical
relations is very highly favoured by the mechanism of
dream-formation; namely, the relation of similarity, consonance or
approximation - the relation of ‘just as’. This
relation, unlike any other, is capable of being represented in
dreams in a variety of ways.¹ Parallels or instances of
‘just as’ inherent in the material of the
dream-thoughts constitute the first foundations for the
construction of a dream; and no inconsiderable part of the
dream-work consists in creating fresh parallels where those which
are already present cannot find their way into the dream owing to
the censorship imposed by resistance. The representation of the
relation of similarity is assisted by the tendency of the
dream-work towards condensation.

   Similarity, consonance, the
possession of common attributes - all these are represented in
dreams by unification, which may either be present already in the
material of the dream-thoughts or may be freshly constructed. The
first of these possibilities may be described as
‘identification’ and the second as
‘composition.’ Identification is employed where
persons
are concerned; composition where
things
are
the material of the unification. Nevertheless composition may also
be applied to persons. Localities are often treated like
persons.

   In identification, only one of
the persons who are linked by a common element succeeds in being
represented in the manifest content of the dream, while the second
or remaining persons seem to be suppressed in it. But this single
covering figure appears in the dream in all the relations and
situations which apply either to him or to the figures which he
covers. In composition, where this is extended to persons, the
dream-image contains features which are peculiar to one or other of
the persons concerned but not common to them; so that the
combination of these features leads to the appearance of a new
unity, a composite figure. The actual process of composition can be
carried out in various ways. On the one hand, the dream-figure may
bear the name of one of the persons related to it - in which case
we simply know directly, in a manner analogous to our waking
knowledge, that this or that person is intended - while its visual
features may belong to the other person. Or, on the other hand, the
dream-image itself may be composed of visual features belonging in
reality partly to the one person and partly to the other. Or again
the second person’s share in the dream-image may lie, not in
its visual features, but in the gestures that we attribute to it,
the words that we make it speak, or the situation in which we place
it. In this last case the distinction between identification and
the construction of a composite figure begins to lose its
sharpness. But it may also happen that the formation of a composite
figure of this kind is unsuccessful. If so, the scene in the dream
is attributed to one of the persons concerned, while the other (and
usually the more important one) appears as an attendant figure
without any other function. The dreamer may describe the position
in such a phrase as: ‘My mother was there as well.’
(Stekel.) An element of this kind in the dream-content may be
compared to the ‘determinatives’ used in hieroglyphic
script, which are not meant to be pronounced but serve merely to
elucidate other signs.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1914:] Cf.
Aristotle’s remark on the qualifications of a
dream-interpreter quoted above on
p. 602 
n
. 2
.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

791

   The common element which
justifies, or rather causes, the combination of the two persons may
be represented in the dream or may be omitted from it. As a rule
the identification or construction of a composite person takes
place for the very purpose of avoiding the representation of the
common element. Instead of saying: ‘
A
has hostile
feelings towards me and so has
B
’, I make a composite
figure out of
A
and
B
in the dream, or I imagine
A
performing an act of some other kind which is
characteristic of
B
. The dream-figure thus constructed
appears in the dream in some quite new connection, and the
circumstance that it represents both
A
and
B
justifies me in inserting at the appropriate point in the dream the
element which is common to both of them, namely a hostile attitude
towards me. It is often possible in this way to achieve quite a
remarkable amount of condensation in the content of a dream; I can
save myself the need for giving a direct representation of very
complicated circumstances relating to one person, if I can find
another person to whom some of these circumstances apply equally.
It is easy to see, too, how well this method of representation by
means of identification can serve to evade the censorship due to
resistance, which imposes such severe conditions upon the
dream-work. What the censorship objects to may lie precisely in
certain ideas which, in the material of the dream-thoughts, are
attached to a particular person; so I proceed to find a second
person, who is also connected with the objectionable material, but
only with part of it. The contact between the two persons upon this
censorable point now justifies me in constructing a composite
figure characterized by indifferent features derived from both.
This figure, arrived at by identification or composition, is then
admissible to the dream-content without censorship, and thus, by
making use of dream-condensation, I have satisfied the claims of
the dream-censorship.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

792

   When a common element between two
persons is represented in a dream, it is usually a hint for us to
look for another, concealed common element whose representation has
been made impossible by the censorship. A displacement in regard to
the common element has been made in order, as it were, to
facilitate its representation. The fact that the composite figure
appears in the dream with an indifferent common element leads us to
conclude that there is another far from indifferent common element
present in the dream-thoughts.

   Accordingly, identification or
the construction of composite figures serves various purposes in
dreams: firstly to represent an element common to two persons,
secondly to represent a
displaced
common element, and
thirdly, too, to express a merely
wishful
common element.
Since wishing that two persons had a common element frequently
coincides with exchanging one for the other, this latter relation
is also expressed in dreams by means of identification. In the
dream of Irma’s injection, I wished to exchange her for
another patient: I wished, that is, that the other woman might be
my patient just as Irma was. The dream took this wish into account
by showing me a person who was called Irma, but who was examined in
a position in which I had only had occasion to see the other woman.
In the dream about my uncle an exchange of this kind became the
central point of the dream: I identified myself with the Minister
by treating and judging my colleagues no better than he did.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

793

   It is my experience, and one to
which I have found no exception, that every dream deals with the
dreamer himself. Dreams are completely egoistical.¹ Whenever
my own ego does not appear in the content of the dream, but only
some extraneous person, I may safely assume that my own ego lies
concealed, by identification, behind this other person; I can
insert my ego into the context. On other occasions, when my own ego
does appear in the dream, the situation in which it occurs may
teach me that some other person lies concealed, by identification
behind my ego. In that case the dream should warn me to transfer on
to myself, when I am interpreting the dream, the concealed common
element attached to this other person. There are also dreams in
which my ego appears along with other people who, when the
identification is resolved, are revealed once again as my ego.
These identifications should then make it possible for me to bring
into contact with my ego certain ideas whose acceptance has been
forbidden by the censorship. Thus my ego may be represented in a
dream several times over, now directly and now through
identification with extraneous persons. By means of a number of
such identifications it becomes possible to condense an
extraordinary amount of thought-material.² The fact that the
dreamer’s own ego appears several times, or in several forms,
in a dream is at bottom no more remarkable than that the ego should
be contained in a conscious thought several times or in different
places or connections - e.g. in the sentence ‘when
I
think what a healthy child
I
was’.

   Identifications in the case of
proper names of
localities
are resolved even more easily
than in the case of persons, since here there is no interference by
the ego, which occupies such a dominating place in dreams. In one
of my dreams about Rome (see
p. 680 f.
), the place in which I
found myself was called Rome, but I was astonished at the quantity
of German posters at a street-corner. This latter point was a
wish-fulfilment, which at once made me think of Prague; and the
wish itself may perhaps have dated from a German-nationalist phase
which I passed through during my youth, but have since got over. At
the time at which I had the dream there was a prospect of my
meeting my friend in Prague; so that the identification of Rome and
Prague can be explained as a wishful common element: I would rather
have met my friend in Rome than in Prague and I would have liked to
exchange Prague for Rome for the purpose of this meeting.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1925:] Cf. the
footnote on
p. 746
.

  
²
When I am in doubt behind which of the
figures appearing in the dream my ego is to be looked for, I
observe the following rule: the person who in the dream feels an
emotion which I myself experience in my sleep is the one who
conceals my ego.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

794

   The possibility of creating
composite structures stands foremost among the characteristics
which so often lend dreams a fantastic appearance, for it
introduces into the content of dreams elements which could never
have been objects of actual perception. The psychical process of
constructing composite images in dreams is evidently the same as
when we imagine or portray a centaur or a dragon in waking life.
The only difference is that what determines the production of the
imaginary figure in waking life is the impression which the new
structure itself is intended to make; whereas the formation of the
composite structure in a dream is determined by a factor extraneous
to its actual shape - namely the common element in the
dream-thoughts. Composite structures in dreams can be formed in a
great variety of ways. The most naïve of these procedures
merely represents the attributes of one thing to the accompaniment
of a knowledge that they also belong to something else. A more
painstaking technique combines the features of both objects into a
new image and in so doing makes clever use of any similarities that
the two objects may happen to possess in reality. The new structure
may seem entirely absurd or may strike us as an imaginative
success, according to the material and to the ingenuity with which
it is put together. If the objects which are to be condensed into a
single unity are much too incongruous, the dream-work is often
content with creating a composite structure with a comparatively
distinct nucleus, accompanied by a number of less distinct
features. In that case the process of unification into a single
image may be said to have failed. The two representations are
superimposed and produce something in the nature of a contest
between the two visual images. One might arrive at similar
representations in a drawing, if one tried to illustrate the way in
which a general concept is formed from a number of individual
perceptual images.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

795

   Dreams are, of course, a mass of
these composite structures. I have given some examples of them in
dreams that I have already analysed; and I will now add a few more.
In the dream reported below on
p. 816 ff.
, which describes the
course of the patient’s life ‘in the language of
flowers’ the dream-ego held a blossoming branch in her hand
which, as we have seen, stood both for innocence and for sexual
sinfulness. The branch, owing to the way in which the blossoms were
placed on it, also reminded the dreamer of
cherry
-blossom;
the blossoms themselves, regarded individually, were
camellias
, and moreover the general impression was of an
exotic
growth. The common factor among the elements of this
composite structure was shown by the dream-thoughts. The blossoming
branch was composed of allusions to gifts made to her in order to
win, or attempt to win, her favour. Thus she had been given
cherries
in her childhood and, later in life, a
camellia
-plant; while ‘
exotic
’ was an
allusion to a much-travelled naturalist who had tried to win her
favour with a flower-drawing. - Another of my women patients
produced in one of her dreams a thing that was intermediate between
a bathing-hut at the seaside, an outside closet in the country and
an attic in a town house. The first two elements have in common a
connection with people naked and undressed; and their combination
with the third element leads to the conclusion that (in her
childhood) an attic had also been a scene of undressing. - Another
dreamer, a man, produced a composite locality out of two places
where ‘treatments’ are carried out: one of them being
my consulting-room and the other the place of entertainment where
he had first made his wife’s acquaintance. -A girl dreamt,
after her elder brother had promised to give her a feast of
caviare, that this same brother’s legs were
covered all
over with black grains of caviare
. The element of
‘
contagion
’ (in the moral sense) and a
recollection of a
rash
in her childhood, which had covered
her legs all over with
red
spots, instead of black ones, had
been combined with the
grains of caviare
into a new concept
- namely the concept of ‘
what she had got from her
brother
.’ In this dream, as in others, parts of the human
body were treated like objects. - In a dream recorded by Ferenczi,
a composite image occurred was made up from the figure of a
doctor
and of a
horse
and was also dressed in a
nightshirt
. The element common to these three components was
arrived at in the analysis after the woman-patient had recognized
that the night-shirt was an allusion to her father in a scene from
her childhood. In all three cases it was a question of an object of
her sexual curiosity. When she was a child she had often been taken
by her nurse to a military stud-farm where she had ample
opportunities of gratifying what was at that time her still
uninhibited curiosity.