Freud - Complete Works (159 page)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

902

   Analysis made it possible to find
another solution. The attempt at an explanation, which seemed so
striking when I was obliged to ascribe it to the dream-work, was
not an original one of my own, but was copied from the neurosis of
one of my patients. I have already spoken elsewhere of a highly
educated and, in real life, soft-hearted man who, shortly after the
death of his parents, began to reproach himself with having
murderous inclinations, and then fell a victim to the precautionary
measures which he was obliged to adopt as a safeguard. It was a
case of severe obsessions accompanied by complete insight. To begin
with, walking through the streets was made a burden to him by a
compulsion to make certain where every single person he met
disappeared to; if anyone suddenly escaped his watchful eye, he was
left with a distressing feeling and the idea that he might possibly
have got rid of him. What lay behind this was, among other things,
a ‘Cain’ phantasy - for ‘all men are
brothers.’ Owing to the impossibility of carrying out this
task, he gave up going for walks and spent his life incarcerated
between his own four walls. But reports of murders which had been
committed outside were constantly being brought into his room by
the newspapers, and his conscience suggested to him, in the form of
a doubt, that he might be the wanted murderer. The certainty that
he had in fact not left his house for weeks protected him from
these charges for a while, till one day the possibility came into
his head that
he might have left his house while he was in an
unconscious state
and have thus been able to commit the murder
without knowing anything about it. From that time onwards he locked
the front door of the house and gave the key to his old housekeeper
with strict instructions never to let it fall into his hands even
if he asked for it.

   This, then, was the origin of my
attempted explanation to the effect that I had changed carriages
while I was in an unconscious state; it had been carried over
ready-made into the dream from the material of the dream-thoughts,
and was evidently intended in the dream to serve the purpose of
identifying me with the figure of this patient. My recollection of
him had been aroused by an easy association. My last night-journey,
a few weeks earlier, had been made in the company of this very man.
He was cured, and was travelling with me into the provinces to
visit his relatives, who had sent for me. We had a compartment to
ourselves; we left all the windows open all through the night and
had a most entertaining time for as long as I stayed awake. I knew
that the root of his illness had been hostile impulses against his
father, dating from his childhood and involving a sexual situation.
In so far, therefore, as I was identifying myself with him, I was
seeking to confess to something analogous. And in fact the second
scene of the dream ended in a somewhat extravagant phantasy that my
two elderly travelling companions had treated me in such a
stand-offish way because my arrival had prevented the affectionate
exchanges which they had planned for the night. This phantasy went
back, however, to a scene of early childhood in which the child,
probably driven by sexual curiosity, had forced his way into his
parents’ bedroom and been turned out of it by his
father’s orders.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

903

   It is unnecessary, I think, to
accumulate further examples. They would merely serve to confirm
what we have gathered from those I have already quoted - that an
act of judgement in a dream is only a repetition of some prototype
in the dream-thoughts. As a rule, the repetition is ill-applied and
interpolated into an inappropriate context, but occasionally, as in
our last instances, it is so neatly employed that to begin with it
may give the impression of independent intellectual activity in the
dream. From this point we might turn our attention to the psychical
activity which, though it does not appear to accompany the
construction of dreams invariably, yet, whenever it does so, is
concerned to fuse together elements in a dream which are of
disparate origin into a whole which shall make sense and be without
contradiction. Before approaching that subject, however, we are
under an urgent necessity to consider the expressions of affect
which occur in dreams and to compare them with the affects which
analysis uncovers in the dream-thoughts.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

904

(H)

AFFECTS IN DREAMS

   A shrewd observation made by
Stricker has drawn our attention to the fact that the expression of
affect in dreams cannot be dealt with in the same contemptuous
fashion in which, after waking, we are accustomed to dismiss their
content
. ‘If I am afraid of robbers in a dream, the
robbers, it is true, are imaginary - but the fear is real.’
And this is equally true if I feel
glad
in a dream. Our
feeling tells us that an affect experienced in a dream is in no way
inferior to one of equal intensity experienced in waking life; and
dreams insist with greater energy upon their right to be included
among our real mental experiences in respect to their affective
than in respect to their ideational content. In our waking state,
however, we cannot in fact include them in this way, because we
cannot make any psychical assessment of an affect unless it is
linked to a piece of ideational material. If the affect and the
idea are incompatible in their character and intensity, our waking
judgement is at a loss.

   It has always been a matter for
surprise that in dreams the ideational content is not accompanied
by the affective consequences that we should regard as inevitable
in waking thought. Strümpell declared that in dreams ideas are
denuded of their psychical values. But there is no lack in dreams
of instances of a contrary kind, where an intense expression of
affect appears in connection with subject-matter which seems to
provide no occasion for any such expression. In a dream I may be in
a horrible, dangerous and disgusting situation without feeling any
fear or repulsion; while another time, on the contrary, I may be
terrified at something harmless and delighted at something
childish.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

905

   This particular enigma of
dream-life vanishes more suddenly, perhaps, and more completely
than any other, as soon as we pass over from the manifest to the
latent content of the dream. We need not bother about the enigma,
since it no longer exists. Analysis shows us that
the ideational
content has undergone displacements and substitutions, whereas the
affects have remained unaltered
. It is small wonder that the
ideational material, which has been changed by dream-distortion,
should no longer be compatible with the affect, which is retained
unmodified; nor is there anything left to be surprised at after
analysis has put the right material back into its former
position.¹

   In the case of a psychical
complex which has come under the influence of the censorship
imposed by resistance, the
affects
are the constituent which
is least influenced and which alone can give us a pointer as to how
we should fill in the missing thoughts. This is seen even more
clearly in the psychoneuroses than in dreams. Their affects are
always appropriate, at least in their
quality
though we must
allow for their intensity being increased owing to displacements of
neurotic attention. If a hysteric is surprised at having to be so
frightened of something trivial or if a man suffering from
obsessions is surprised at such distressing self-reproaches arising
out of a mere nothing, they have both gone astray, because they
regard the ideational content - the triviality or the mere nothing
- as what is essential; and they put up an unsuccessful fight
because they take this ideational content as the starting-point of
their thought-activity. Psycho-analysis can put them upon the right
path by recognizing the affect as being, on the contrary, justified
and by seeking out the idea which belongs to it but has been
repressed and replaced by a substitute. A necessary premise to all
this is that the release of affect and the ideational content do
not constitute the indissoluble organic unity as which we are in
the habit of treating them, but that these two separate entities
may be merely
soldered
together and can thus be detached
from each other by analysis. Dream-interpretation shows that this
is in fact the case.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1919:] If I am not
greatly mistaken, the first dream that I was able to pick up from
my grandson, at the age of one year and eight months, revealed a
state of affairs in which the dream-work had succeeded in
transforming the
material
of the dream-thoughts into a
wish-fulfilment, whereas the
affect
belonging to them
persisted unchanged during the state of sleep. On the night before
the day on which his father was due to leave for the front, the
child cried out, sobbing violently: ‘Daddy! Daddy! -
baby!’ This can only have meant that Daddy and baby were
remaining together; whereas the tears recognized the approaching
farewell. At that time the child was already quite well able to
express the concept of separation. ‘
Fort
’
[‘gone’] (replaced by a long-drawn-out and peculiarly
stressed ‘o-o-o’) had been one of his first words, and
several months before this first dream he had played at
‘gone’ with all his toys. This game went back to a
successful piece of self-discipline which he had achieved at an
early age in allowing his mother to leave him and be
‘gone.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

906

   I shall begin by giving an
example in which analysis explained the apparent absence of affect
in a case where the ideational content should have necessitated its
release.

I

  
She saw three lions in a
desert, one of which was laughing; but she was not afraid of them.
Afterwards, however, she must have run away from them, for she was
trying to climb up a tree; but she found that her cousin, who was a
French mistress, was up there already
, etc.

   The analysis brought up the
following material. The indifferent precipitating cause of the
dream was a sentence in her English composition: ‘The mane is
the ornament of the lion.’ Her father wore a beard which
framed his face like a mane. Her English mistress was called Miss
Lyons. An acquaintance had sent her the ballads of Loewe. These,
then, were the three lions; why should she be afraid of them? - She
had read a story in which a negro, who had stirred up his
companions to revolt, was hunted with blood hounds and climbed up a
tree to save himself. She went on, in the highest spirits, to
produce a number of fragmentary recollections, such as the advice
on how to catch lions from
Fliegende Blätter
:
‘Take a desert and put it through a sieve and the lions will
be left over.’ And again, the highly amusing but not very
proper anecdote of an official who was asked why he did not take
more trouble to ingratiate himself with the head of his department
and replied that he had tried to make his way in, but his superior
was up there already
. The whole material became intelligible
when it turned out that the lady had had a visit on the dream-day
from her husband’s superior. He had been very polite to her
and had kissed her hand and
she had not been in the least bit
afraid of him
, although he was a very ‘big bug’,
and played the part of a ‘social
lion
’ in the
capital of the country she came from. So this lion was like the
lion in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
that concealed the
figure of Snug the joiner; and the same is true of all dream-lions
of which the dreamer is not afraid.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

907

II

   As my second example I may quote
the dream of the young girl who saw her sister’s little son
lying dead in his coffin, but who, as I may now add, felt neither
pain nor grief. We know from the analysis why this was. The dream
merely disguised her wish to see the man she was in love with once
more; and her affect had to be in tune with her wish and not with
its disguise. There was thus no occasion for grief.

   In some dreams the affect does at
least remain in contact with the ideational material which has
replaced that to which the affect was originally attached. In
others, the dissolution of the complex has gone further. The affect
makes its appearance completely detached from the idea which
belongs to it and is introduced at some other point in the dream,
where it fits in with the new arrangement of the dream-elements.
The situation is then similar to the one we have found in the case
of acts of judgement in dreams. If an important conclusion is drawn
in the dream-thoughts, the dream also contains one; but the
conclusion in the dream may be displaced on to quite different
material. Such a displacement not infrequently follows the
principle of antithesis.

   This last possibility is
exemplified in the following dream, which I have submitted to a
most exhaustive analysis.

III

  
A castle by the sea; later it
was no longer immediately on the sea, but on a narrow canal leading
to the sea. The Governor was a Herr P. I was standing with him in a
big reception room - with three windows in front of which there
rose buttresses with what looked like crenellations. I had been
attached to the garrison as something in the nature of a volunteer
naval officer. We feared the arrival of enemy warships, since we
were in a state of war. Herr P. intended to leave, and gave me
instructions as to what was to be done if the event that we feared
took place. His invalid wife was with their children in the
threatened castle. If the bombardment began, the great hall was to
be evacuated. He breathed heavily and turned to go; I held him back
and asked him how I was to communicate with him in case of
necessity. He added something in reply, but immediately fell down
dead. No doubt I had put an unnecessary strain upon him with my
questions. After his death, which made no further impression on me,
I wondered whether his widow would remain in the castle, whether I
should report his death to the Higher Command and whether I should
take over command of the castle as being next in order of rank. I
was standing at the window, and observing the ships as they went
past. They were merchant vessels rushing past rapidly through the
dark water, some of them with several funnels and others with
bulging decks
(just like the station buildings in the
introductory dream - not reported here).
Then my brother was
standing beside me and we were both looking out of the window at
the canal. At the sight of one ship we were frightened and cried
out: ‘Here comes the warship!’ But it turned out that
it was only the same ships that I already knew returning. There now
came a small ship, cut off short, in a comic fashion, in the
middle. On its deck some curious cup-shaped or box-shaped objects
were visible. We called out with one voice: ‘That’s the
breakfast-ship!’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

908

   The rapid movements of the ships,
the deep dark blue of the water and the brown smoke from the
funnels - all of this combined to create a tense and sinister
impression.

   The localities in the dream were
brought together from several trips of mine to the Adriatic (to
Miramare, Duino, Venice and Aquileia). A short but enjoyable Easter
trip which I had made to Aquileia with my brother a few weeks
before the dream was still fresh in my memory. The dream also
contained allusions to the
maritime war
between America and
Spain and to anxieties to which it had given rise about the fate of
my relatives in America. At two points in the dream affects were in
question. At one point an affect that was to be anticipated was
absent: attention was expressly drawn to the fact that the
Governor’s death made no impression on me. At another point,
when I thought I saw the warship, I was
frightened
and felt
all the sensations of fright in my sleep. In this well-constructed
dream the affects were distributed in such a way that any striking
contradiction was avoided. There was no reason why I should be
frightened at the death of the Governor and it was quite reasonable
that as Commandant of the Castle I should be frightened at the
sight of the warship. The analysis showed, however, that Herr P.
was only a substitute for my own self. (In the dream
I
was
the substitute for
him
.)
I
was the Governor who
suddenly died. The dream-thoughts dealt with the future of my
family after my premature death. This was the only distressing one
among the dream-thoughts; and it must have been from it that the
fright was detached and brought into connection in the dream with
the sight of the warship. On the other hand, the analysis showed
that the region of the dream-thoughts from which the warship was
taken was filled with the most cheerful recollections. It was a
year earlier, in Venice, and we were standing one magically
beautiful day at the windows of our room on the Riva degli
Schiavoni and were looking across the blue lagoon on which that day
there was more movement than usual. English ships were expected and
were to be given a ceremonial reception. Suddenly my wife cried out
gaily as a child: ‘
Here comes the English
warship!
’ In the dream I was frightened at these same
words. (We see once again that speeches in a dream are derived from
speeches in real life; I shall show shortly that the element
‘English’ in my wife’s exclamation did not elude
the dream-work either.) Here, then, in the process of changing the
dream-thoughts into the manifest dream-content, I have transformed
cheerfulness into fear, and I need only hint that this
transformation was itself giving expression to a portion of the
latent dream-content. This example proves, however, that the
dream-work is at liberty to detach an affect from its connections
in the dream-thoughts and introduce it at any other point it
chooses in the manifest dream.