Freud - Complete Works (176 page)

   Sometimes the capitalist is
himself the
entrepreneur
, and indeed in the case of dreams
this is the commoner event: an unconscious wish is stirred up by
daytime activity and proceeds to construct a dream. So, too, the
other possible variations in the economic situation that I have
taken as an analogy have their parallel in dream-processes. The
entrepreneur
may himself make a small contribution to the
capital; several
entrepreneurs
may apply to the same
capitalist; several capitalists may combine to put up what is
necessary for the
entrepreneur
. In the same way, we come
across dreams that are supported by more than one dream-wish; and
so too with other similar variations, which could easily be run
through, but which would be of no further interest to us. We must
reserve until later what remains to be said of the dream-wish.

   The
tertium comparationis
in the analogy that I have just used - the quantity put at the
disposal of the
entrepreneur
in an appropriate amount - is
capable of being applied in still greater detail to the purpose of
elucidating the structure of dreams. In most dreams it is possible
to detect a central point which is marked by peculiar sensory
intensity, as I have shown on
p. 778
.
This central point is as a rule the direct representation of the
wish-fulfilment, for, if we undo the displacements brought about by
the dream-work, we find that the
psychical
intensity of the
elements in the dream-thoughts has been replaced by the
sensory
intensity of the elements in the content of the
actual dream. The elements in the
neighbourhood
of the
wish-fulfilment often have nothing to do with its meaning, but turn
out to be derivatives of distressing thoughts that run contrary to
the wish. But owing to their being in what is often an artificially
established connection with the central element, they have acquired
enough intensity to become capable of being represented in the
dream. Thus the wish-fulfilment’s power of bringing about
representation is diffused over a certain sphere surrounding it,
within which all the elements - including even those possessing no
means of their own - become empowered to obtain representation. In
the case of dreams that are actuated by
several
wishes, it
is easy to delimit the spheres of the different wish-fulfilments,
and gaps in the dream may often be understood as frontier zones
between those spheres.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

993

   Though the preceding
considerations have reduced the importance of the part played by
the day’s residues in dreams, it is worth while devoting a
little more attention to them. It must be that they are essential
ingredients in the formation of dreams, since experience has
revealed the surprising fact that in the content of every dream
some link with a recent daytime impression - often of the most
insignificant sort - is to be detected. We have not hitherto been
able to explain the necessity for this addition to the mixture that
constitutes a dream (see
p. 669
). And
it is only possible to do so if we bear firmly in mind the part
played by the unconscious wish and then seek for information from
the psychology of the neuroses. We learn from the latter that an
unconscious idea is as such quite incapable of entering the
preconscious and that it can only exercise any effect there by
establishing a connection with an idea which already belongs to the
preconscious, by transferring its intensity on to it and by getting
itself ‘covered’ by it. Here we have the fact of
‘transference’, which provides an explanation of so
many striking phenomena in the mental life of neurotics. The
preconscious idea, which thus acquires an undeserved degree of
intensity may either be left unaltered by the transference, or it
may have a modification forced upon it, derived from the content of
the idea which effects the transference. I hope I may be forgiven
for drawing analogies from everyday life, but I am tempted to say
that the position of a repressed idea resembles that of an American
dentist in this country: he is not allowed to set up in practice
unless he can make use of a legally qualified medical practitioner
to serve as a stalking-horse and to act as a ‘cover’ in
the eyes of the law. And just as it is not exactly the physicians
with the largest practices who form alliances of this kind with
dentists, so in the same way preconscious or conscious ideas which
have already attracted a sufficient amount of the attention that is
operating in the preconscious will not be the ones to be chosen to
act as covers for a repressed idea. The unconscious prefers to
weave its connections round preconscious impressions and ideas
which are either indifferent and have thus had no attention paid to
them, or have been rejected and have thus had attention promptly
withdrawn from them. It is a familiar article in the doctrine of
association, and one that is entirely confirmed by experience, that
an idea which is bound by a very intimate tie in one direction,
tends, as it were, to repel whole groups of new ties. I once
attempted to base a theory of hysterical paralyses on this
proposition.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

994

   If we assume that the same need
for transference on the part of repressed ideas which we have
discovered in analysing the neuroses is also at work in dreams, two
of the riddles of the dream are solved at a blow: the fact, namely,
that every analysis of a dream shows some recent impression woven
into its texture and that this recent element is often of the most
trivial kind. I may add that (as we have already found elsewhere)
the reason why these recent and indifferent elements so frequently
find their way into dreams as substitutes for the most ancient of
all the dream-thoughts is that they have least to fear from the
censorship imposed by resistance. But while the fact that
trivial
elements are preferred is explained by their freedom
from censorship, the fact that
recent
elements occur with
such regularity points to the existence of a need for transference.
Both groups of impressions satisfy the demand of the repressed for
material that is still clear of associations - the indifferent ones
because they have given no occasion for the formation of many ties,
and the recent ones because they have not yet had time to form
them.

   It will be seen, then, that the
day’s residues, among which we may now class the indifferent
impressions, not only
borrow
something from the
Ucs
.
when they succeed in taking a share in the formation of a dream -
namely the instinctual force which is at the disposal of the
repressed wish - but that they also
offer
the unconscious
something indispensable - namely the necessary point of attachment
for a transference. If we wished to penetrate more deeply at this
point into the processes of the mind, we should have to throw more
light upon the interplay of excitations between the preconscious
and the unconscious a subject towards which the study of the
psychoneuroses draws us, but upon which, as it happens, dreams have
no help to offer.

   I have only one thing more to add
about the day’s residues. There can be no doubt that it is
they that are the true disturbers of sleep and not dreams, which,
on the contrary are concerned to guard it. I shall return to this
point later.

   We have so far been studying
dream-wishes: we have traced them from their origin in the region
of the
Ucs
. and have analysed their relations to the
day’s residues, which in their turn may either be wishes or
psychical impulses of some other kind or simply recent impressions.
In this way we have allowed room for every claim that may be raised
by any of the multifarious waking thought-activities on behalf of
the importance of the part played by them in the process of
constructing dreams. It is not impossible, even, that our account
may have provided an explanation of the extreme cases in which a
dream, pursuing the activities of daytime, arrives at a happy
solution of some unsolved problem of waking life. All we need is an
example of this kind, so that we might analyse it and trace the
source of the infantile or repressed wishes whose help has been
enlisted and has reinforced the efforts of preconscious activity
with such success. But all this has not brought us a step nearer to
solving the riddle of why it is that the unconscious has nothing
else to offer during sleep but the motive force for the fulfilment
of a
wish
. The answer to this question must throw light upon
the psychical nature of wishes, and I propose to give the answer by
reference to our schematic picture of the psychical apparatus.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

995

   There can be no doubt that that
apparatus has only reached its present perfection after a long
period of development. Let us attempt to carry it back to an
earlier stage of its functioning capacity. Hypotheses, whose
justification must be looked for in other directions, tell us that
at first the apparatus’s efforts were directed towards
keeping itself so far as possible free from stimuli; consequently
its first structure followed the plan of a reflex apparatus, so
that any sensory excitation impinging on it could be promptly
discharged along a motor path. But the exigencies of life interfere
with this simple function, and it is to them, too, that the
apparatus owes the impetus to further development. The exigencies
of life confront it first in the form of the major somatic needs.
The excitations produced by internal needs seek discharge in
movement, which may be described as an ‘internal
change’ or an ‘expression of emotion.’ A hungry
baby screams or kicks helplessly. But the situation remains
unaltered, for the excitation arising from an internal need is not
due to a force producing a
momentary
impact but to one which
is in continuous operation. A change can only come about if in some
way or other (in the case of the baby, through outside help) an
‘experience of satisfaction’ can be achieved which puts
an end to the internal stimulus. An essential component of this
experience of satisfaction is a particular perception (that of
nourishment, in our example) the mnemic image of which remains
associated thenceforward with the memory trace of the excitation
produced by the need. As a result of the link that has thus been
established, next time this need arises a psychical impulse will at
once emerge which will seek to re-cathect the mnemic image of the
perception and to re-evoke the perception itself, that is to say,
to re-establish the situation of the original satisfaction. An
impulse of this kind is what we call a wish; the reappearance of
the perception is the fulfilment of the wish; and the shortest path
to the fulfilment of the wish is a path leading direct from the
excitation produced by the need to a complete cathexis of the
perception. Nothing prevents us from assuming that there was a
primitive state of the psychical apparatus in which this path was
actually traversed, that is, in which wishing ended in
hallucinating. Thus the aim of this first psychical activity was to
produce a ‘perceptual identity’ - a repetition of the
perception which was linked with the satisfaction of the need.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

996

   The bitter experience of life
must have changed this primitive thought-activity into a more
expedient secondary one. The establishment of a perceptual identity
along the short path of regression within the apparatus does not
have the same result elsewhere in the mind as does the cathexis of
the same perception from without. Satisfaction does not follow; the
need persists. An internal cathexis could only have the same value
as an external one if it were maintained unceasingly, as in fact
occurs in hallucinatory psychoses and hunger phantasies, which
exhaust their whole psychical activity in clinging to the object of
their wish. In order to arrive at a more efficient expenditure of
psychical force, it is necessary to bring the regression to a halt
before it becomes complete, so that it does not proceed beyond the
mnemic image, and is able to seek out other paths which lead
eventually to the desired perceptual identity being established
from the direction of the external world.¹ This inhibition of
the regression and the subsequent diversion of the excitation
become the business of a second system, which is in control of
voluntary movement - which for the first time, that is, makes use
of movement for purposes remembered in advance. But all the
complicated thought-activity which is spun out from the mnemic
image to the moment at which the perceptual identity is established
by the external world - all this activity of thought merely
constitutes a roundabout path to wish-fulfilment which has been
made necessary by experience.² Thought is after all nothing
but a substitute for a hallucinatory wish; and it is self-evident
that dreams must be wish-fulfilments, since nothing but a wish can
set our mental apparatus at work. Dreams, which fulfil their wishes
along the short path of regression, have merely preserved for us in
that respect a sample of the psychical apparatus’s primary
method of working, a method which was abandoned as being
inefficient. What once dominated waking life, while the mind was
still young and incompetent, seems now to have been banished into
the night - just as the primitive weapons, the bows and arrows,
that have been abandoned by adult men, turn up once more in the
nursery.
Dreaming is a piece of infantile mental life that has
been superseded
. These methods of working on the part of the
psychical apparatus, which are normally suppressed in waking hours,
become current once more in psychosis and then reveal their
incapacity for satisfying our needs in relation to the external
world.³