Freud - Complete Works (177 page)

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1919:] In other
words, it becomes evident that there must be a means of
‘reality-testing’.

  
²
The wish-fulfilling activity of dreams is
justly extolled by Le Lorrain, who speaks of it as ‘sans
fatigue sérieuse, sans être obligé de recourir
à cette lutte opiniâtre et longue qui use et corrode
les jouissances poursuivies [incurring no serious fatigue and not
being obliged to embark upon the long and obstinate struggle that
wears away and spoils enjoyments that have to be
pursued].’

  
³
[
Footnote added
1914:] I have
elsewhere carried this train of thought further in a paper on the
two principles of mental functioning (Freud 1911
b
) - the
pleasure principle and the reality principle, as I have proposed
calling them.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

997

   The unconscious wishful impulses
clearly try to make themselves effective in daytime as well, and
the fact of transference, as well as the psychoses, show us that
they endeavour to force their way by way of the preconscious system
into consciousness and to obtain control of the power of movement.
Thus the censorship between the
Ucs
. and the
Pcs
.,
the assumption of whose existence is positively forced upon us by
dreams, deserves to be recognized and respected as the watchman of
our mental health. Must we not regard it, however, as an act of
carelessness on the part of that watchman that it relaxes its
activities during the night, allows the suppressed impulses in the
Ucs
. to find expression, and makes it possible for
hallucinatory regression to occur once more? I think not. For even
though this critical watchman goes to rest - and we have proof that
its slumbers are not deep - it also shuts the door upon the power
of movement. No matter what impulses from the normally inhibited
Ucs
. may prance upon the stage, we need feel no concern;
they remain harmless, since they are unable to set in motion the
motor apparatus by which alone they might modify the external
world. The state of sleep guarantees the security of the citadel
that must be guarded. The position is less harmless when what
brings about the displacement of forces is not the nightly
relaxation in the critical censorship’s output of force, but
a pathological reduction in that force or a pathological
intensification of the unconscious excitations while the
preconscious is still cathected and the gateway to the power of
movement stands open. When this is so, the watchman is overpowered,
the unconscious excitations overwhelm the
Pcs
., and thence
obtain control over our speech and actions; or they forcibly bring
about hallucinatory regression and direct the course of the
apparatus (which was not designed for their use) by virtue of the
attraction exercised by perceptions on the distribution of our
psychical energy. To this state of things we give the name of
psychosis.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

998

   We are now well on the way to
proceeding further with the erection of the psychological
scaffolding, which we stopped at the point at which we introduced
the two systems
Ucs
. and
Pcs
. But there are reasons
for continuing a little with our consideration of wishes as the
sole psychical motive force for the construction of dreams. We have
accepted the idea that the reason why dreams are invariably
wish-fulfilments is that they are products of the system
Ucs
., whose activity knows no other aim than the fulfilment
of wishes and which has at its command no other forces than wishful
impulses. If we insist, for even a moment longer, upon our right to
base such far-reaching psychological speculations upon the
interpretation of dreams, we are in duty found to prove that those
speculations have enabled us to insert dreams into a nexus which
can include other psychical structures as well. If such a thing as
a system
Ucs
. exists (or something analogous to it for the
purposes of our discussion), dreams cannot be its only
manifestation; every dream may be a wish-fulfilment, but apart from
dreams there must be other forms of abnormal wish-fulfilments. And
it is a fact that the theory governing all psychoneurotic symptoms
culminates in a single proposition, which asserts that
they too
are to be regarded as fulfilments of unconscious wishes
.¹
Our explanation makes the dream only the first member of a class
which is of the greatest significance to psychiatrists and an
understanding of which implies the solution of the purely
psychological side of the problem of psychiatry.²

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1914:] Or more
correctly, one portion of the symptom corresponds to the
unconscious wish-fulfilment and another portion to the mental
structure reacting against the wish.

  
²
[
Footnote added
1914:] As Hughlings
Jackson said: ‘Find out all about dreams and you will have
found out all about insanity.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

999

   The other members of this class
of wish-fulfilments - hysterical symptoms, for instance - possess
one essential characteristic, however, which I cannot discover in
dreams. I have learnt from the researches which I have mentioned so
often in the course of this work that in order to bring about the
formation of a hysterical symptom
both
currents of our mind
must converge. A symptom is not merely the expression of a realized
unconscious wish; a wish from the preconscious which is fulfilled
by the same symptom must also be present. So that the symptom will
have of
at least
two determinants, one arising from each of
the systems involved in the conflict. As in the case of dreams,
there are no limits to the further determinants that may be present
- to the ‘overdetermination’ of the symptoms. The
determinant which does not arise from the
Ucs
. is
invariably, so far as I know, a train of thought reacting against
the unconscious wish - a self-punishment, for instance. I can
therefore make the quite general assertion that
a hysterical
symptom develops only where the fulfilments of two opposing wishes,
arising each from a different psychical system, are able to
converge in a single expression
. (Compare in this connection my
most recent formulations on the origin of hysterical symptoms in my
paper on hysterical phantasies and their relation to bisexuality.)
Examples would serve very little purpose here, since nothing but an
exhaustive elucidation of the complications involved could carry
conviction. I will therefore leave my assertion to stand for itself
and only quote an example in order to make the point clear, and not
to carry conviction. In one of my women patients, then, hysterical
vomiting turned out to be on the one hand the fulfilment of an
unconscious phantasy dating from her puberty - of a wish, that is,
that she might be continuously pregnant and have innumerable
children, with a further wish, added later, that she might have
them by as many men as possible. A powerful defensive impulse had
sprung up against this unbridled wish. And, since the patient might
lose her figure and her good looks as a result of her vomiting, and
so might cease to be attractive to anyone, the symptom was
acceptable to the punitive train of thought as well; and since it
was permitted by both sides it could become a reality. This was the
same method of treating a wish-fulfilment as was adopted by the
Parthian queen towards the Roman triumvir Crassus. Believing that
he had embarked on his expedition out of love of gold, she ordered
molten gold to be poured down his throat when he was dead:
‘Now’, she said, ‘you have what you
wanted.’ But all that we so far know about dreams is that
they express the fulfilment of a wish from the unconscious; it
seems as though the dominant, preconscious system acquiesces in
this after insisting upon a certain number of distortions. Nor is
it possible as a general rule to find a train of thought opposed to
the dream-wish and, like its counterpart, realized in the dream.
Only here and there in dream-analyses do we come upon signs of
reactive creations, like, for instance, my affectionate feelings
for my friend R. in the dream of my uncle (cf.
p. 637 ff.
). But we can find the
missing ingredient from the preconscious elsewhere. Whereas the
wish from the
Ucs
. is able to find expression in the dream
after undergoing distortions of every kind, the dominant system
withdraws into a
wish to sleep
, realizes that wish by
bringing about the modifications which it is able to produce in the
cathexes within the psychical apparatus, and persists in that wish
throughout the whole duration of sleep.¹

  
¹
I have borrowed this idea from the theory
of sleep put forward by Liébeault (1889), to whom is due the
revival in modern times of research into hypnotism.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1000

   This determined wish on the part
of the preconscious to sleep exercises a generally facilitating
effect on the formation of dreams. Let me recall the dream dreamt
by the man who was led to infer from the glare of light coming out
of the next room that his child’s body might be on fire. The
father drew this inference in a dream instead of allowing himself
to be woken up by the glare; and we have suggested that one of the
psychical forces responsible for this result was a wish which
prolonged by that one moment the life of the child whom he pictured
in the dream. Other wishes, originating from the repressed,
probably escape us, since we are unable to analyse the dream. But
we may assume that a further motive force in the production of the
dream was the father’s need to sleep; his sleep, like the
child’ s life, was prolonged by one moment by the dream.
‘Let the dream go on’ - such was his motive - ‘or
I shall have to wake up.’ In every other dream, just as in
this one, the wish to sleep lends its support to the unconscious
wish. On
p. 624 f.
I described
some dreams which appeared openly as dreams of convenience. But in
fact all dreams can claim a right to the same description. The
operation of the wish to continue sleeping is most easily to be
seen in arousal dreams, which modify external sensory stimuli in
such a way as to make them compatible with a continuance of sleep;
they weave them into a dream in order to deprive them of any
possibility of acting as reminders of the external world. That same
wish must, however, play an equal part in allowing the occurrence
of all other dreams, though it may only be from
within
that
they threaten to shake the subject out of his sleep. In some cases,
when a dream carries things too far, the
Ucs
. says to
consciousness: ‘Never mind! go on sleeping! after all
it’s only a dream!’ But this describes in general the
attitude of our dominant mental activity towards dreams, though it
may not be openly expressed. I am driven to conclude that
throughout our whole sleeping state we know just as certainly
that we are dreaming as we know that we are sleeping
. We must
not pay too much attention to the counter-argument that our
consciousness is never brought to bear on the latter piece of
knowledge and that it is only brought to bear on the former on
particular occasions when the censorship feels that it has, as it
were, been taken off its guard.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1001

   On the other hand, there are some
people who are quite clearly aware during the night that they are
asleep and dreaming and who thus seem to possess the faculty of
consciously directing their dreams. If, for instance, a dreamer of
this kind is dissatisfied with the turn taken by a dream, he can
break it off without waking up and start it again in another
direction - just as a popular dramatist may under pressure give his
play a happier ending. Or another time, if his dream has led him
into a sexually exciting situation, he can think to himself:
‘I won’t go on with this dream any further and exhaust
myself with an emission; I’II hold it back for a real
situation instead.’

   The Marquis d’Hervey de
Saint-Denys, quoted by Vaschide (1911, 139), claimed to have
acquired the power of accelerating the course of his dreams just as
he pleased, and of giving them any direction he chose. It seems as
though in his case the wish to sleep had given place to another
preconscious wish, namely to observe his dreams and enjoy them.
Sleep is just as compatible with a wish of this sort as it is with
a mental reservation to wake up if some particular condition is
fulfilled (e.g. in the case of a nursing mother or wet-nurse).
Moreover, it is a familiar fact that anyone who takes an interest
in dreams remembers a considerably greater number of them after
waking.

   Ferenczi (1911), in the course of
a discussion of some other observations upon the directing of
dreams, remarks: ‘Dreams work over the thoughts which are
occupying the mind at the moment from every angle; they will drop a
dream-image if it threatens the success of a wish-fulfilment and
will experiment with a fresh solution, till at last they succeed in
constructing a wish-fulfilment which satisfies both agencies of the
mind as a compromise.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1002

(B)

AROUSAL BY DREAMS - THE FUNCTION OF DREAMS
- ANXIETY-DREAMS