Freud - Complete Works (182 page)

   It would not be possible for us
to answer this question if we had not made some headway in the
study of the psychology of the neuroses, and particularly of
hysteria. We have found from this that the same irrational
psychical processes, and others that we have not specified,
dominate the production of hysterical symptoms. In hysteria, too,
we come across a series of perfectly rational thoughts, equal in
validity to our conscious thoughts; but to begin with we know
nothing of their existence in this form and we can only reconstruct
them subsequently. If they force themselves upon our notice at any
point, we discover by analysing the symptom which has been produced
that these normal thoughts have been submitted to abnormal
treatment:
they have been transformed into the symptom by means
of condensation and the formation of compromises, by way of
superficial associations and in disregard of contradictions, and
also, it may be, along the path of regression
. In view of the
complete identity between the characteristic features of the
dream-work and those of the psychical activity which issues in
psychoneurotic symptoms, we feel justified in carrying over to
dreams the conclusions we have been led to by hysteria.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1025

   We accordingly borrow the
following thesis from the theory of hysteria:
a normal train of
thought is only submitted to abnormal psychical treatment of the
sort we have been describing if an unconscious wish, derived from
infancy and in a state of repression has been transferred on to
it
. In accordance with this thesis we have constructed our
theory of dreams on the assumption that the dream-wish which
provides the motive power invariably originates from the
unconscious - an assumption which, as I myself am ready to
admit, cannot be proved to hold generally, though neither can it be
disproved. But in order to explain what is meant by
‘repression’, a term with which we have already made
play so many times, it is necessary to proceed a stage further with
our psychological scaffolding.

   We have already explored the
fiction of a primitive psychical apparatus whose activities are
regulated by an effort to avoid an accumulation of excitation and
to maintain itself so far as possible without excitation. For that
reason it is built upon the plan of a reflex apparatus. The power
of movement, which is in the first instance a means of bringing
about internal alterations in its body, is at its disposal as the
path to discharge. We went on to discuss the psychical consequences
of an ‘experience of satisfaction’; and in that
connection we were already able to add a second hypothesis, to the
effect that the accumulation of excitation (brought about in
various ways that need not concern us) is felt as unpleasure and
that it sets the apparatus in action with a view to repeating the
experience of satisfaction, which involved a diminution of
excitation and was felt as pleasure. A current of this kind in the
apparatus, starting from unpleasure and aiming at pleasure, we have
termed a ‘wish’; and we have asserted that only a wish
is able to set the apparatus in motion and that the course of the
excitation in it is automatically regulated by feelings of pleasure
and unpleasure. The first wishing seems to have been a
hallucinatory cathecting of the memory of satisfaction. Such
hallucinations, however, if they were not to be maintained to the
point of exhaustion, proved to be inadequate to bring about the
cessation of the need or, accordingly, the pleasure attaching to
satisfaction.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1026

   A second activity - or, as we put
it, the activity of a second system - became necessary, which would
not allow the mnemic cathexis to proceed as far as perception and
from there to bind the psychical forces; instead, it diverted the
excitation arising from the need along a roundabout path which
ultimately, by means of voluntary movement, altered the external
world in such a way that it became possible to arrive at a real
perception of the object of satisfaction. We have already outlined
our schematic picture of the psychical apparatus up to this point;
the two systems are the germ of what, in the fully developed
apparatus, we have described as the
Ucs.
and
Pcs
.

   In order to be able to employ the
power of movement to make alterations in the external world that
shall be effective, it is necessary to accumulate a great number of
experiences in the mnemic systems and a multiplicity of permanent
records of the associations called up in this mnemic material by
different purposive ideas. We can now carry our hypotheses a step
further. The activity of this second system, constantly feeling its
way, and alternately sending out and withdrawing cathexes, needs on
the one hand to have the whole of the material of memory freely at
its command; but on the other hand it would be an unnecessary
expenditure of energy if it sent out large quantities of cathexis
along the various paths of thought and thus caused them to drain
away to no useful purpose and diminish the quantity available for
altering the external world. I therefore postulate that for the
sake of efficiency the second system succeeds in retaining the
major part of its cathexes of energy in a state of quiescence and
in employing only a small part on displacement. The mechanics of
these processes are quite unknown to me; anyone who wished to take
these ideas seriously would have to look for physical analogies to
them and find a means of picturing the movements that accompany
excitation of neurones. All that I insist upon is the idea that the
activity of the
first
Ψ
-
system
is directed towards securing the
free discharge
of the
quantities of excitation, while the
second
system, by means
of the cathexes emanating from it, succeeds in
inhibiting
this discharge and in transforming the cathexis into a quiescent
one, no doubt with a simultaneous raising of its level. I presume,
therefore, that under the dominion of the second system the
discharge of excitation is governed by quite different mechanical
conditions from those in force under the dominion of the first
system. When once the second system has concluded its exploratory
thought-activity, it releases the inhibition and damming-up of the
excitations and allows them to discharge themselves in
movement.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1027

   Some interesting reflections
follow if we consider the relations between this inhibition upon
discharge exercised by the second system and the regulation
effected by the unpleasure principle. Let us examine the antithesis
to the primary experience of satisfaction - namely, the experience
of an external fright. Let us suppose that the primitive apparatus
is impinged upon by a perceptual stimulus which is a source of
painful excitation. Unco-ordinated motor manifestations will follow
until one of them withdraws the apparatus from the perception and
at the same time from the pain. If the perception reappears, the
movement will at once be repeated (a movement of flight, it may be)
till the perception has disappeared once more. In this case, no
inclination will remain to recathect the perception of the source
of pain, either hallucinatorily or in any other way. On the
contrary, there will be an inclination in the primitive apparatus
to drop the distressing mnemic image immediately, if anything
happens to revive it, for the very reason that if its excitation
were to overflow into perception it would provoke unpleasure (or,
more precisely, would
begin
to provoke it). The avoidance of
the memory, which is no more than a repetition of the previous
flight from the perception, is also facilitated by the fact that
the memory, unlike the perception, does not possess enough quality
to excite consciousness and thus to attract fresh cathexis to
itself. This effortless and regular avoidance by the psychical
process of the memory of anything that had once been distressing
affords us the prototype and first example of
psychical
repression
. It is a familiar fact that much of this avoidance
of what is distressing - this ostrich policy - is still to be seen
in the normal mental life of adults.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1028

   As a result of the unpleasure
principle, then, the first
Ψ
-system
is totally incapable of bringing anything disagreeable into the
context of its thought. It is unable to do anything but wish. If
things remained at that point, the thought-activity of the second
system would be obstructed, since it requires free access to
all
the memories laid down by experience. Two possibilities
now present themselves. Either the activity of the second system
might set itself entirely free from the unpleasure principle and
proceed without troubling about unpleasure of memories; or it might
find a method of cathecting unpleasurable memories which would
enable it to avoid releasing the unpleasure. We may dismiss the
first of these possibilities, for the unpleasure principle clearly
regulates the course of excitation in the second system as much as
in the first. We are consequently left with the remaining
possibility that the second system cathects memories in such a way
that there is an inhibition of their discharge, including,
therefore, an inhibition of discharge (comparable to that of a
motor innervation) in the direction of the development of
unpleasure. We have therefore been led from two directions to the
hypothesis that cathexis by the second system implies a
simultaneous inhibition of the discharge of excitation: we have
been led to it by regard for the unpleasure principle and also by
the principle of the least expenditure of innervation. Let us bear
this firmly in mind, for it is the key to the whole theory of
repression:
the second system can only cathect an idea if it is
a position to inhibit any development of unpleasure that may
proceed from it
. Anything that could evade that inhibition
would be inaccessible to the second system as well as to the first;
for it would promptly be dropped in obedience to the unpleasure
principle. The inhibition of unpleasure need not, however, be a
complete one: a beginning of it must be allowed, since that is what
informs the second system of the nature of the memory concerned and
of its possible unsuitability for the purpose which the
thought-process has in view.

   I propose to describe the
psychical process of which the first system alone admits as the
‘primary process’, and the process which results from
the inhibition imposed by the second system as the ‘secondary
process’.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1029

   There is yet another reason for
which, as I can show, the second system is obliged to correct the
primary process. The primary process endeavours to bring about a
discharge of excitation in order that, with the help of the amount
of excitation thus accumulated, it may establish a
‘perceptual identity’. The secondary process, however,
has abandoned this intention and taken on another in its place
- the establishment of a ‘
thought
identity’. All thinking is no more than a circuitous path
from the memory of a satisfaction (a memory which has been adopted
as a purposive idea) to an identical cathexis of the same memory
which it is hoped to attain once more through an intermediate stage
of motor experiences. Thinking must concern itself with the
connecting paths between ideas, without being led astray by the
intensities
of those ideas. But it is obvious that
condensations of ideas, as well as intermediate and compromise
structures, must obstruct the attainment of the identity aimed at.
Since they substitute one idea for another, they cause a deviation
from the path which would have led on from the first idea.
Processes of this kind are therefore scrupulously avoided in
secondary thinking. It is easy to see, too, that the unpleasure
principle, which in other respects supplies the thought-process
with its most important signposts, puts difficulties in its path
towards establishing ‘thought identity’. Accordingly,
thinking must aim at freeing itself more and more from exclusive
regulation by the unpleasure principle and at restricting the
development of affect in thought-activity to the minimum required
for acting as a signal. The achievement of this greater delicacy in
functioning is aimed at by means of a further hypercathexis,
brought about by consciousness. As we well know, however, that aim
is seldom attained completely, even in normal mental life, and our
thinking always remains exposed to falsification by interference
from the unpleasure principle.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1030

   This, however, is not the gap in
the functional efficiency of our mental apparatus which makes it
possible for thoughts, which represent themselves as products of
the secondary thought activity, to become subject to the primary
psychical process - for such is the formula in which we can now
describe the activity which leads to dreams and to hysterical
symptoms. Inefficiency arises from the convergence of two factors
derived from our developmental history. One of these factors
devolves entirely upon the mental apparatus and has had a decisive
influence on the relation between the two systems, while the other
makes itself felt to a variable degree and introduces instinctual
forces of organic origin into mental life. Both of them originate
in childhood and are a precipitate of the modifications undergone
by our mental and somatic organism since our infancy.