Freud - Complete Works (180 page)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1013

   It is, I may say, a matter of
daily experience that sexual intercourse between adults strikes any
children who may observe it as something uncanny and that it
arouses anxiety in them. I have explained this anxiety by arguing
that what we are dealing with is a sexual excitation with which
their understanding is unable to cope and which they also, no
doubt, repudiate because their parents are involved in it, and
which is therefore transformed into anxiety. At a still earlier
period of life sexual excitations directed towards a parent of the
opposite sex have not yet met with repression and, as we have seen,
are freely expressed. (See
p. 735 ff.
)

   I should have no hesitation in
giving the same explanation of the attacks of night terrors
accompanied by hallucinations (
pavor nocturnus
) which are so
frequent in children. In this case too it can only be a question of
sexual impulses which have not been understood and which have been
repudiated. Investigation would probably show a periodicity in the
occurrence of the attacks, since an increase in sexual libido can
be brought about not only by accidental exciting impressions but
also by successive waves of spontaneous developmental
processes.

   I lack a sufficiency of material
based upon observation to enable me to confirm this
explanation.¹

   Paediatricians, on the other
hand, seem to lack the only line of approach which can make this
whole class of phenomena intelligible, whether from the somatic or
from the psychical aspect. I cannot resist quoting an amusing
instance of the way in which the blinkers of medical mythology can
cause an observer to miss an understanding of such cases by a
narrow margin. My instance is taken from a thesis on
pavor
nocturnus
by Debacker (1881, 66):

   A thirteen-year-old boy in
delicate health began to be apprehensive and dreamy. His sleep
became disturbed and was interrupted almost once a week by severe
attacks of anxiety accompanied by hallucinations. He always
retained a very clear recollection of these dreams. He said that
the Devil had shouted at him: ‘Now we’ve got you, now
we’ve got you!’ There was then a smell of pitch and
brimstone and his skin was burnt by flames. He woke up from the
dream in terror, and at first could not cry out. When he had found
his voice he was clearly heard to say: ‘No, no, not me;
I’ve not done anything!’ or ‘Please not! I
won’t do it again!’ or sometimes: ‘Albert never
did that!’ Later, he refused to undress ‘because the
flames only caught him when he was undressed.’ While he was
still having these devil-dreams, which were a threat to his health,
he was sent into the country. There he recovered in the course of
eighteen months, and once, when he was fifteen, he confessed:
‘Je n’osais pas l’avouer, mais
j’éprouvais continuellement des picotements et des
surexcitations aux
parties
; à la fin, cela
m’énervait tant que plusieurs fois j’ai
pensé me jeter par la fenêtre du
dortoir.’³

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1919:] Since I wrote
this a great quantity of such material has been brought forward in
psycho-analytic literature.

  
²
I have italicized this word, but it is
impossible to misunderstand it.

 
 
³
[‘I
didn’t dare admit it; but I was continually having prickly
feelings and overexcitement in my parts; in the end it got on my
nerves so much that I often thought of jumping out of the dormitory
window.’]

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1014

   There is really very little
difficulty in inferring: (1) that the boy had masturbated when he
was younger, that he had probably denied it, and that he had been
threatened with severe punishment for his bad habit (cf. his
admission: ‘Je ne le ferais plus’, and his denial:
‘Albert n’a jamais fait ça’); (2) that
with the onset of puberty the temptation to masturbate had revived
with the tickling in his genitals; but (3) that a struggle for
repression had broken out in him, which had suppressed his libido
and transformed it into anxiety, and that the anxiety had taken
over the punishments with which he had been threatened earlier.

   And now let us see the inferences
drawn by our author (ibid., 69): ‘The following conclusions
can be drawn from this observation:

    ‘(1) The influence of
puberty upon a boy in delicate health can lead to a condition of
great weakness and can result in a considerable degree of
cerebral anaemia
.¹

    ‘(2) This cerebral
anaemia produces character changes, demonomanic hallucinations and
very violent nocturnal (and perhaps also diurnal)
anxiety-states.

    ‘(3) The boy’s
demonomania and self-reproaches go back to the influences of his
religious education, which affected him as a child.

    ‘(4) All the symptoms
disappeared in the course of a somewhat protracted visit to the
country, as the result of physical exercise and the regaining of
strength with the passage of puberty.

    ‘(5) A predisposing
influence upon the origin of the child’s brain condition may
perhaps be attributed to heredity and to a past syphilitic
infection in his father.’

   And here is the final conclusion:
‘Nous avons fait entrer cette observation dans le cadre des
délires apyrétiques d’inanition, car
c’est à l’ischémie
cérébrale que nous rattachons cet état
particulier.’²

  
¹
The italics are mine.

  
²
[‘We have classified this case among
the apyretic deliria of inanition, for we attribute this particular
state to cerebral ischaemia.’]

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1015

(E)

THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY PROCESSES -
REPRESSION

   In venturing on an attempt to
penetrate more deeply into the psychology of dream-processes, I
have set myself a hard task and one to which my powers of
exposition are scarcely equal. Elements in this complicated whole
which are in fact simultaneous can only be represented successively
in my description of them, while, in putting forward each point, I
must avoid appearing to anticipate the grounds on which it is
based: difficulties such as these it is beyond my strength to
master. In all this I am paying the penalty for the fact that in my
account of dream-psychology I have been unable to follow the
historical development of my own views. Though my own line of
approach to the subject of dreams was determined by my previous
work on the psychology of the neuroses, I had not intended to make
use of the latter as a basis of reference in the present work.
Nevertheless I am constantly being driven to do so, instead of
proceeding, as I should have wished, in the contrary direction and
using dreams as a means of approach to the psychology of the
neuroses. I am conscious of all the trouble in which my readers are
thus involved, but I can see no means of avoiding it.

   In my dissatisfaction at this
state of things, I am glad to pause for a little over another
consideration which seems to put a higher value on my efforts. I
found myself faced by a topic on which, as has been shown in my
first chapter, the opinions of the authorities were characterized
by the sharpest contradictions. My treatment of the problems of
dreams has found room for the majority of these contradictory
views. I have only found it necessary to give a categorical denial
of two of them - the view that dreaming is a meaningless process
and the view that it is a somatic one. Apart from this, I have been
able to find a justification for all these mutually contradictory
opinions at one point or other of my complicated thesis and to show
that they had lighted upon some portion of the truth.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1016

   The view that dreams carry on the
occupations and interests of waking life has been entirely
confirmed by the discovery of the concealed
dream-thoughts
.
These are only concerned with what seems important to us and
interests us greatly. Dreams are never occupied with minor details.
But we have also found reason for accepting the contrary view, that
dreams pick up indifferent refuse left over from the previous day
and that they cannot get control of any major day time interest
until it has been to some extent withdrawn from waking activity. We
have found that this holds good of the dream’s
content
, which gives expression to the dream-thoughts in a
form modified by distortion. For reasons connected with the
mechanism of association, as we have seen, the dream-process finds
it easier to get control of recent or indifferent ideational
material which has not yet been requisitioned by waking
thought-activity; and for reasons of censorship it transfers
psychical intensity from what is important but objectionable on to
what is indifferent.

   The fact that dreams are
hypermnesic and have access to material from childhood has become
one of the corner-stones of our teaching. Our theory of dreams
regards wishes originating in infancy as the indispensable motive
force for the formation of dreams.

   It has naturally not occurred to
us to throw any doubt on the significance, which has been
experimentally demonstrated, of external sensory stimuli during
sleep; but we have shown that such material stands in the same
relation to the dream-wish as do the residues of thought left over
from day time activity. Nor have we seen any reason to dispute the
view that dreams interpret objective sensory stimuli just as
illusions do; but we have found the motive which provides the
reason for that interpretation, a reason which has been left
unspecified by other writers. Interpretation is carried out in such
a way that the object perceived shall not interrupt sleep and shall
be usable for purposes of wish-fulfilment. As regards subjective
states of excitation in the sense organs during sleep, the
occurrence of which seems to have been proved by Trumbull Ladd, it
is true that we have not accepted them as a particular source of
dreams; but we have been able to explain them as resulting from the
regressive revival of memories that are in operation behind the
dream.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1017

  
Internal
organic
sensations, which have commonly been taken as a cardinal point in
explanations of dreaming, have retained a place, though a humbler
one, in our theory. Such sensations - sensations of falling, for
instance, or floating, or being inhibited - provide a material
which is accessible at any time and of which the dream-work makes
use, whenever it has need of it, for expressing the
dream-thoughts.

   The view that the dream-process
is a rapid or instantaneous one is in our opinion correct as
regards the perception by consciousness of the preconstructed
dream-content; it seems probable that the preceding portions of the
dream-process run a slow and fluctuating course. We have been able
to contribute towards the solution of the riddle of dreams which
contain a great amount of material compressed into the briefest
moment of time; we have suggested that it is a question in such
cases of getting hold of ready-made structures already present in
the mind.

   The fact that dreams are
distorted and mutilated by memory is accepted by us but in our
opinion constitutes no obstacle; for it is no more than the last
and manifest portion of a distorting activity which has been in
operation from the very start of the dream’s formation.

   As regards the embittered and
apparently irreconcilable dispute as to whether the mind sleeps at
night or is as much in command of all its faculties as it is by
day, we have found that both parties are right but that neither is
wholly right. We have found evidence in the dream-thoughts of a
highly complex intellectual function, operating with almost the
whole resources of the mental apparatus. Nevertheless it cannot be
disputed that these dream-thoughts originated during the day, and
it is imperative to assume that there is such a thing as a sleeping
state of the mind. Thus even the theory of partial sleep has shown
its value, though we have found that what characterizes the state
of sleep is not the disintegration of mental bonds but the
concentration of the psychical system which is in command during
the day upon the wish to sleep. The factor of withdrawal from the
external world retains its significance in our scheme; it helps,
though not as the sole determinant, to make possible the regressive
character of representation in dreams. The renunciation of
voluntary direction of the flow of ideas cannot be disputed; but
this does not deprive mental life of all purpose, for we have seen
how, after voluntary purposive ideas have been abandoned,
involuntary ones assume command. We have not merely accepted the
fact of the looseness of associative connections in dreams, but we
have shown that it extends far further than had been suspected; we
have found, however, that these loose connections are merely
obligatory substitutes for others which are valid and significant.
It is quite true that we have described dreams as absurd; but
examples have taught us how sensible a dream can be even when it
appears to be absurd.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1018

   We have no difference of opinion
over the functions that are to be assigned to dreams. The view that
dreams act as a safety valve to the mind and that, in the words of
Robert, all kinds of harmful things are made harmless by being
presented in a dream - not only does this view coincide exactly
with our theory of the double wish-fulfilment brought about by
dreams, but the way in which it is phrased is more intelligible to
us than to Robert himself. The view that the mind has free play in
its functioning in dreams is represented in our theory by the fact
of the preconscious activity allowing dreams to take their course.
Such phrases as ‘the return of the mind in dreams to an
embryonic point of view’ or the words used by Havelock Ellis
to describe dreams - ‘an archaic world of vast emotions and
imperfect thoughts’ - strike us as happy anticipations of our
own assertions that primitive modes of activity which are
suppressed during the day are concerned in the construction of
dreams. We have been able to accept entirely as our own what Sully
has written: ‘Our dreams are a means of conserving these
successive personalities. When asleep we go back to the old ways of
looking at things and of feeling about them, to impulses and
activities which long ago dominated us’. For us no less than
for Delage what has been ‘suppressed’ has become
‘the motive force of dreams.’