Freud - Complete Works (138 page)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

796

   I have asserted above that dreams
have no means of expressing the relation of a contradiction, a
contrary or a ‘no’. I shall now proceed to give a first
denial of this assertion One class of cases which can be comprised
under the heading of ‘contraries’ are, as we have seen,
simply represented by identification - cases, that is, in which the
idea of an exchange or substitution can be brought into connection
with the contrast. I have given a number of instances of this.
Another class of contraries in the dream-thoughts, falling into a
category which may be described as ‘contrariwise’ or
‘just the reverse’, find their way into dreams in the
following remarkable fashion, which almost deserves to be described
as a joke. The ‘just the reverse’ is not itself
represented in the dream-content, but reveals its presence in the
material through the fact that some piece of the dream-content,
which has already been constructed and happens (for some other
reason) to be adjacent to it, is - as it were by an afterthought -
turned round the other way. The process is more easily illustrated
than described. In the interesting ‘Up and Down’ dream
(
p. 759 ff.
) the representation
of the climbing in the dream was the reverse of what it was in its
prototype in the dream-thoughts - that is, in the introductory
scene from Daudet’s
Sappho
: in the dream the climbing
was difficult at first but easier later, while in the Daudet scene
it was easy at first but more and more difficult later. Further,
the ‘up above’ and ‘down below’ in the
dreamer’s relation to his brother were represented the other
way round in the dream. This pointed to the presence of a reversed
or contrary relation between two pieces of the material in the
dream-thoughts; and we found it in the dreamer’s childhood
phantasy of being carried by his wet-nurse, which was the reverse
of the situation in the novel, where the hero was carrying his
mistress. So too in my dream of Goethe’s attack on Herr M.
(see below,
p. 886 ff.
) there is
a similar ‘just the reverse’ which has to be put
straight before the dream can be successfully interpreted. In the
dream Goethe made an attack on a young man, Herr M.; in the real
situation contained in the dream-thoughts a man of importance, my
friend, had been attacked by an unknown young writer. In the dream
I based a calculation on the date of Goethe’s death; in
reality the calculation had been made from the year of the
paralytic patient’s birth. The thought which turned out to be
the decisive one in the dream-thoughts was a contradiction of the
idea that Goethe should be treated as though he were a lunatic.
‘Just the reverse’, said the dream, ‘if you
don’t understand the book, it’s
you
that are
feeble-minded, and not the author.’ I think, moreover, that
all these dreams of turning things round the other way include a
reference to the contemptuous implications of the idea of
‘turning one’s back on something.’ (E.g. the
dreamer’s turning round in relation to his brother in the
Sappho
dream.) It is remarkable to observe, moreover, how
frequently reversal is employed precisely in dreams arising from
repressed homosexual impulses.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

797

   Incidentally, reversal, or turning
a thing into its opposite, is one of the means of representation
most favoured by the dream-work and one which is capable of
employment in the most diverse directions. It serves in the first
place to give expression to the fulfilment of a wish in reference
to some particular element of the dream-thoughts. ‘If only it
had been the other way round!’ This is often the best way of
expressing the ego’s reaction to a disagreeable fragment of
memory. Again, reversal is of quite special use as a help to the
censorship, for it produces a mass of distortion in the material
which is to be represented, and this has a positively paralysing
effect, to begin with, on any attempt at understanding the dream.
For that reason, if a dream obstinately declines to reveal its
meaning, it is always worth while to see the effect of reversing
some particular elements in its manifest content, after which the
whole situation often becomes immediately clear.

   And, apart from the reversal of
subject-matter,
chronological
reversal must not be
overlooked. Quite a common technique of dream-distortion consists
in representing the outcome of an event or the conclusion of a
train of thought at the beginning of a dream and of placing at its
end the premises on which the conclusion was based or the causes
which led to the event. Anyone who fails to bear in mind this
technical method adopted by dream-distortion will be quite at a
loss when confronted with the task of interpreting a
dream.¹

   In some instances, indeed, it is
only possible to arrive at the meaning of a dream after one has
carried out quite a number of reversals of its content in various
respects. For instance, in the case of a young obsessional
neurotic, there lay concealed behind one of his dreams the memory
of a death-wish dating from his childhood and directed against his
father, of whom he had been afraid. Here is the text of the dream:
His father was scolding him for coming home so late
. The
context in which the dream occurred in the psycho-analytic
treatment and the dreamer’s associations showed, however,
that the original wording must have been that
he
was angry
with his
father
, and that in his view his father always came
home too
early
(i.e. too soon). He would have preferred it
if his father had not come home
at all
, and this was the
same thing as a death-wish against his father. (See
p. 733 f.
)  For as a small boy,
during his father’s temporary absence, he had been guilty of
an act of sexual aggression against someone, and as a punishment
had been threatened in these words: ‘Just you wait till your
father comes back!’

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1909:] Hysterical
attacks sometimes make use of the same kind of chronological
reversal in order to disguise their meaning from observers. For
instance, a hysterical girl needed to represent something in the
nature of a brief romance in one of her attacks - a romance of
which she had had a phantasy in her unconscious after an encounter
with someone on the suburban railway. She imagined how the man had
been attracted by the beauty of her foot and had spoken to her
while she was reading; whereupon she had gone off with him and had
had a passionate love-scene. Her attack
began
with a
representation of this love-scene by convulsive twitching of her
body, accompanied by movements of her lips to represent kissing and
tightening of her arms to represent embracing. She then hurried
into the next room, sat down on a chair, raised her skirt so as to
show her foot, pretended to be reading a book and spoke to me (that
is, answered me). - [
Added
1914:] Cf. in this connection
what Artemidorus says: ‘In interpreting the images seen in
dreams one must sometimes follow them from the beginning to the end
and sometimes from the end to the beginning . . .’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

798

   If we wish to pursue our study of
the relations between dream-content and dream-thoughts further, the
best plan will be to take dreams themselves as our point of
departure and consider what certain
formal
characteristics
of the method of representation in dreams signify in relation to
the thoughts underlying them. Most prominent among these formal
characteristics, which cannot fail to impress us in dreams, are the
differences in sensory intensity between particular dream-images
and in the distinctness of particular parts of dreams or of whole
dreams as compared with one another.

   The differences in intensity
between particular dream-images cover the whole range extending
between a sharpness of definition which we feel inclined, no doubt
unjustifiably, to regard as greater than that of reality and an
irritating vagueness which we declare characteristic of dreams
because it is not completely comparable to any degree of
indistinctness which we ever perceive in real objects. Furthermore
we usually describe an impression which we have of an indistinct
object in a dream as ‘fleeting’, while we feel that
those dream-images which are more distinct have been perceived for
a considerable length of time. The question now arises what it is
in the material of the dream-thoughts that determines these
differences in the vividness of particular pieces of the content of
a dream.

   We must begin by countering
certain expectations which almost inevitably present themselves.
Since the material of a dream may include real sensations
experienced during sleep, it will probably be presumed that these,
or the elements in the dream derived from them, are given
prominence in the dream content by appearing with special
intensity; or, conversely, that whatever is very specially vivid in
a dream can be traced back to real sensations during sleep. In my
experience, however, this has never been confirmed. It is not the
case that the elements of a dream which are derivatives of real
impressions during sleep (i.e. of nervous stimuli) are
distinguished by their vividness from other elements which arise
from memories. The factor of reality counts for nothing in
determining the intensity of dream images.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

799

   Again, it might be expected that
the
sensory
intensity (that is, the vividness) of particular
dream-images would be related to the
psychical
intensity of
the elements in the dream-thoughts corresponding to them. In the
latter, psychical intensity coincides with psychical
value
:
the most intense elements are also the most important ones - those
which form the centre-point of the dream-thoughts. We know, it is
true, that these are precisely elements which, on account of the
censorship, cannot as a rule make their way into the content of the
dream; nevertheless, it might well be that their immediate
derivatives which represent them in the dream might bear a higher
degree of intensity, without necessarily on that account forming
the centre of the dream. But this expectation too is disappointed
by a comparative study of dreams and the material from which they
are derived. The intensity of the elements in the one has no
relation to the intensity of the elements in the other: the fact is
that a complete ‘transvaluation of all psychical
values’ takes place between the material of the
dream-thoughts and the dream. A direct derivative of what occupies
a dominating position in the dream-thoughts can often only be
discovered precisely in some transitory element of the dream which
is quite overshadowed by more powerful images.

   The intensity of the elements of
a dream turns out to be determined otherwise - and by two
independent factors. In the first place, it is easy to see that the
elements by which the wish-fulfilment is expressed are represented
with special intensity. And in the second place, analysis shows
that the most vivid elements of a dream are the starting-point of
the most numerous trains of thought - that the most vivid elements
are also those with the most numerous determinants. We shall not be
altering the sense of this empirically based assertion if we put it
in these terms: the greatest intensity is shown by those elements
of a dream on whose formation the greatest amount of condensation
has been expended. We may expect that it will eventually turn out
to be possible to express this determinant and the other (namely
relation to the wish-fulfilment) in a single formula.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

800

   The problem with which I have
just dealt - the causes of the greater or less intensity or clarity
of particular elements of a dream - is not to be confounded with
another problem, which relates to the varying clarity of whole
dreams or sections of dreams. In the former case clarity is
contrasted with vagueness, but in the latter case it is contrasted
with confusion. Nevertheless it cannot be doubted that the increase
and decrease of the qualities in the two scales run parallel. A
section of a dream which strikes us as perspicuous usually contains
intense elements; a dream which is obscure, on the other hand, is
composed of elements of small intensity. Yet the problem presented
by the scale which runs from what is apparently clear to what is
obscure and confused is far more complicated than that of the
varying degrees of vividness of dream-elements. Indeed, for reasons
which will appear later, the former problem cannot yet be
discussed.

   In a few cases we find to our
surprise that the impression of clarity or indistinctness given by
a dream has no connection at all with the make-up of the dream
itself but arises from the material of the dream-thoughts and is a
constituent of it . Thus I remember a dream of mine which struck me
when I woke up as being so particularly well-constructed, flawless
and clear that, while I was still half-dazed with sleep, I thought
of introducing a new category of dreams which were not subject to
the mechanisms of condensation and displacement but were to be
described as ‘phantasies during sleep.’ Closer
examination proved that this rarity among dreams showed the same
gaps and flaws in its structure as any other; and for that reason I
dropped the category of ‘dream-phantasies.’ ¹ The
content of the dream, when it was arrived at, represented me as
laying before my friend a difficult and long-sought theory of
bisexuality; and the wish-fulfilling power of the dream was
responsible for our regarding this theory (which, incidentally, was
not given in the dream) as clear and flawless. Thus what I had
taken to be a judgement on the completed dream was actually a part,
and indeed the essential part, of the dream-content. The dream-work
had in this case encroached, as it were, upon my first waking
thoughts and had conveyed to me as a
judgement
upon the
dream the part of the material of the dream-thoughts which it had
not succeeded in representing accurately in the dream. I once came
across a precise counterpart to this in a woman patient’s
dream during analysis. To begin with she refused altogether to tell
it me, ‘because it was so indistinct and muddled’. At
length, protesting repeatedly that she felt no certainty that her
account was correct, she informed me that several people had come
into the dream - she herself, her husband and her father - and that
it was as though she had not known whether her husband was her
father, or who her father was, or something of that sort. This
dream, taken in conjunction with her associations during the
analytic session, showed beyond a doubt that it was a question of
the somewhat commonplace story of a servant-girl who was obliged to
confess that she was expecting a baby but was in doubts as to
‘who the (baby’s) father really was’. ² Thus
here again the lack of clarity shown by the dream was a part of the
material which instigated the dream: part of this material, that
is, was represented in the
form
of the dream.
The form of
a dream, or the form in which it is dreamt is used with quite
surprising frequency for representing its concealed
subject-matter
.