Freud - Complete Works (164 page)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

929

   This instance, however, provides
us with convincing evidence that not everything contained in a
dream is derived from the dream-thoughts, but that contributions to
its content may be made by a psychical function which is
indistinguishable from on our waking thoughts. The question now
arises whether this only occurs in exceptional cases, or whether
the psychical agency which otherwise operates only as a censorship
plays a
habitual
part in the construction of dreams.

   We can have no hesitation in
deciding in favour of the second alternative. There can be no doubt
that the censoring agency, whose influence we have so far only
recognized in limitations and omissions in the dream-content, is
also responsible for interpolations and additions in it. The
interpolations are easy to recognize. They are often reported with
hesitation, and introduced by an ‘as though’; they are
not in themselves particularly vivid and are always introduced at
points at which they can serve as links between two portions of the
dream-content or to bridge a gap between two parts of the dream.
They are less easily retained in the memory than genuine
derivatives of the material of the dream-thoughts; if the dream is
to be forgotten they are the first part of it to disappear, and I
have a strong suspicion that the common complaint of having dreamt
a lot, but of having forgotten most of it and of having only
retained fragments, is based upon the rapid disappearance precisely
of these connecting thoughts. In a complete analysis these
interpolations are sometimes betrayed by the fact that no material
connected with them is to be found in the dream-thoughts. But
careful examination leads me to regard this as the less frequent
case; as a rule the connecting thoughts lead back nevertheless to
material in the dream-thoughts, but to material which could have no
claim to acceptance in the dream either on its own account or owing
to its being over-determined. Only in extreme cases, it seems, does
the psychical function in dream-formation which we are now
considering proceed to make new creations. So long as possible, it
employs anything appropriate that it can find in the material of
the dream-thoughts.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

930

   The thing that distinguishes and
at the same time reveals this part of the dream-work is its
purpose
. This function behaves in the manner which the poet
maliciously ascribes to philosophers: it fills up the gaps in the
dream-structure with shreds and patches. As a result of its
efforts, the dream loses its appearance of absurdity and
disconnectedness and approximates to the model of an intelligible
experience. But its efforts are not always crowned with success.
Dreams occur which, at a superficial view, may seem faultlessly
logical and reasonable; they start from a possible situation, carry
it on through a chain of consistent modifications and - though far
less frequently - bring it to a conclusion which causes no
surprise. Dreams which are of such a kind have been subjected to a
far-reaching revision by this psychical function that is akin to
waking thought; they appear to have a meaning, but that meaning is
as far removed as possible from their true significance. If we
analyse them, we can convince ourselves that it is in these dreams
that the secondary revision has played about with the material the
most freely, and has retained the relations present in that
material to the least extent. They are dreams which might be said
to have been already interpreted once, before being submitted to
waking interpretation. In other dreams this tendentious revision
has only partly succeeded; coherence seems to rule for a certain
distance, but the dream then becomes senseless or confused, while
perhaps later on in its course it may for a second time present an
appearance of rationality. In yet other dreams the revision has
failed altogether; we find ourselves hopelessly face to face with a
heap of fragmentary material.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

931

   I do not wish to deny
categorically that this fourth power in dream-construction - which
we shall soon recognize as all old acquaintance, since in fact it
is the only one of the four with which we are familiar in other
connections - I do not wish to deny that this fourth factor has the
capacity to create new contributions to dreams. It is certain,
however, that, like the others, it exerts its influence principally
by its preferences and selections from psychical material in the
dream-thoughts that has already been formed. Now there is one case
in which it is to a great extent spared the labour of, as it were,
building up a façade for the dream - the case, namely, in
which a formation of that kind already exists, available for use in
the material of the dream-thoughts. I am in the habit of describing
the element in the dream-thoughts which I have in mind as a
‘phantasy.’ I shall perhaps avoid misunderstanding if I
mention the ‘day-dream’ as something analogous to it in
waking life.¹ The part played in our mental life by these
structures has not yet been fully recognized and elucidated by
psychiatrists, though M. Benedikt has made what seems to me a very
promising start in that direction. The importance of day-dreams has
not escaped the unerring vision of imaginative writers; there is,
for instance, a well-known account by Alphonse Daudet in
Le
Nabab
of the day-dreams of one of the minor characters in that
story. The study of the psychoneuroses leads to the surprising
discovery that these phantasies or day-dreams are the immediate
forerunners of hysterical symptoms, or at least of a whole number
of them. Hysterical symptoms are not attached to actual memories,
but to phantasies erected on the basis of the basis of memories.
The frequent occurrence of conscious daytime phantasies brings
these structures to our knowledge; but just as there are phantasies
of this kind which are conscious, so, too, there are unconscious
ones in great numbers, which have to remain unconscious on account
of their content and of their origin from repressed material.
Closer investigation of the characteristics of these day-time
phantasies shows us how right it is that these formations should
bear the same name as we give to the products of our thought during
the night - the name, that is, of ‘dreams.’ They share
a large number of their properties with night-dreams, and their
investigation might, in fact, have served as the shortest and best
approach to an understanding of night-dreams.

  
¹
‘
Rêve
’,
‘
petit roman
’, - ‘day-dream’,
‘[continuous] story’.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

932

   Like dreams, they are
wish-fulfilments; like dreams, they are based to a great extent on
impressions of infantile experiences; like dreams, they benefit by
a certain degree of relaxation of censorship. If we examine their
structure, we shall perceive the way in which the wishful purpose
that is at work in their production has mixed up the material of
which they are built, has rearranged it and has formed it into a
new whole. They stand in much the same relation to the childhood
memories from which they are derived as do some of the Baroque
palaces of Rome to the ancient ruins whose pavements and columns
have provided the material for the more recent structures.

   The function of ‘secondary
revision’, which we have attributed to the fourth of the
factors concerned in shaping the content of dreams, shows us in
operation once more the activity which is able to find free vent in
the creation of day-dreams without being inhibited by any other
influences. We might put it simply by saying that this fourth
factor of ours seeks to mould the material offered to it into
something like a day-dream. If, however, a day-dream of this kind
has already been formed within the nexus of the dream-thoughts,
this fourth factor in the dream-work will prefer to take possession
of the ready-made day-dream and seek to introduce it into the
content of the dream. There are some dreams which consist merely in
the repetition of a day-time phantasy which may perhaps have
remained unconscious: such, for instance, as the boy’s dream
of driving in a war-chariot with the heroes of the Trojan War. In
my ‘Autodidasker’ dream the second part at all events
was a faithful reproduction of a daytime phantasy, innocent in
itself, of a conversation with Professor N. In view of the
complicated conditions which a dream has to satisfy when it comes
into existence, it happens more frequently that the ready-made
phantasy forms only a portion of the dream, or that only a portion
of the phantasy forces its way into the dream. Thereafter, the
phantasy is treated in general like any other portion of the latent
material, though it often remains recognizable as an entity in the
dream. There are often parts of my dreams which stand out as
producing a different impression from the rest. They strike me as
being, as it were, more fluent, more connected and at the same time
more fleeting than other parts of the same dream. These, I know,
are unconscious phantasies which have found their way into the
fabric of the dream, but I have never succeeded in pinning down a
phantasy of this kind. Apart from this, these phantasies, like any
other component of the dream-thoughts, are compressed, condensed,
superimposed on one another, and so on. There are, however,
transitional cases, between the case in which they constitute the
content (or at least the façade) of the dream unaltered and
the extreme opposite in which they are represented in the content
of the dream only by one of their elements or by a distant
allusion. What happens to phantasies present in the dream-thoughts
is evidently also determined by any advantages they may have to
offer the requirements of the censorship and of the urge towards
condensation.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

933

   In selecting examples of
dream-interpretation I have so far as possible avoided dreams in
which unconscious phantasies play any considerable part, because
the introduction of this particular psychical element would have
necessitated lengthy discussions on the psychology of unconscious
thinking. Nevertheless, I cannot completely escape a consideration
of phantasies in this connection, since they often make their way
complete into dreams and since still more often clear glimpses of
them can be seen behind the dream. I will therefore quote one more
dream, which seems to be composed of two different and opposing
phantasies which coincide with each other at a few points and of
which one is superficial while the second is, as it were, an
interpretation of the first.¹

   The dream - it is the only one of
which I possess no careful notes - ran roughly as follows. The
dreamer, a young unmarried man, was sitting in the restaurant at
which he usually ate and which was presented realistically in the
dream. Several people then appeared, in order to fetch him away,
and one of them wanted to arrest him. He said to his companions at
table: ‘I’ll pay later; I’ll come back.’
But they exclaimed with derisive smiles: ‘We know all about
that; that’s what they all say!’ One of the guests
called out after him: ‘There goes another one!’ He was
then led into a narrow room in which he found a female figure
carrying a child. One of the people accompanying him said:
‘This is Herr Müller.’ A police inspector, or some
such official, was turning over a bundle of cards or papers and as
he did so repeated ‘Müller, Müller,
Müller.’ Finally he asked the dreamer a question, which
he answered with an ‘I will.’ He then turned round to
look at the female figure and observed that she was now wearing a
big beard.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1909:] In my
‘Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria’
(1905
e
), I have analysed a good specimen of a dream of this
sort, made up of a number of superimposed phantasies. Incidentally,
I underestimated the importance of the part played by these
phantasies in the formation of dreams so long as I was principally
working on my own dreams, which are usually based on discussions
and conflict of thought and comparatively rarely on day-dreams. In
the case of other people it is often much easier to demonstrate the
complete analogy between night-dreams and day-dreams. With
hysterical patients, a hysterical attack can often be replaced by a
dream; and it is then easy to convince oneself that the immediate
forerunner of
both
these psychical structures was a
day-dream phantasy.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

934

   Here there is no difficulty in
separating the two components. The superficial one was a
phantasy of arrest
which appears as though it had been
freshly constructed by the dream-work. But behind it some material
is visible which had been only slightly re-shaped by the
dream-work: a
phantasy of marriage
. Those features which
were common to both phantasies emerge with special clarity, in the
same way as in one of Galton’s composite photographs. The
promise made by the young man (who up till then had been a
bachelor) that he would come back and join his fellow-diners at
their table, the scepticism of his boon-companions (whom experience
had taught better), the exclamation ‘there goes another one
'- all of these features fitted in easily with the alternative
interpretation. So, too, did the ‘I will’ with which he
replied to the official’s question. The turning over the
bundle of papers, with the constant repetition of the same name
corresponded to a less important but recognizable feature of
wedding festivities, namely the reading out of a bundle of
telegrams of congratulation, all of them with addresses bearing the
same names. The phantasy of marriage actually scored a victory over
the covering phantasy of arrest in the fact of the bride’s
making a personal appearance in the dream. I was able to discover
from an enquiry - the dream was not analysed - why it was that at
the end of it the bride wore a beard. On the previous day the
dreamer had been walking in the street with a friend who was as shy
of marrying as he was himself, and he had drawn his friend’s
attention to a darkhaired beauty who had passed them.
‘Yes’, his friend had remarked, ‘if only women
like that didn’t grow beards like their fathers’ in a
few years’ time.’ This dream did not, of course, lack
elements in which dream-distortion had been carried deeper. It may
well be, for instance, that the words ‘I’ll pay
later’ referred to what he feared might be his
father-in-law’s attitude on the subject of a dowry. In fact,
all kinds of qualms were evidently preventing the dreamer from
throwing himself into the phantasy of marriage with any enjoyment.
One of these qualms, a fear that marriage might cost him his
freedom, was embodied in the transformation into a scene of
arrest.