Freud - Complete Works (183 page)

   When I described one of the
psychical processes occurring in the mental apparatus as the
‘primary’ one, what I had in mind was not merely
considerations of relative importance and efficiency; I intended
also to choose a name which would give an indication of its
chronological priority. It is true that, so far as we know, no
psychical apparatus exists which possesses a primary process only
and that such an apparatus is to that extent a theoretical fiction.
But this much is a fact: the primary processes are present in the
mental apparatus from the first, while it is only during the course
of life that the secondary processes unfold, and come to inhibit
and overlay the primary ones; it may even be that their complete
domination is not attained until the prime of life. In consequence
of the belated appearance of the secondary processes, the core of
our being, consisting of unconscious wishful impulses, remains
inaccessible to the understanding and inhibition of the
preconscious; the part played by the latter is restricted once and
for all to directing along the most expedient paths the wishful
impulses that arise from the unconscious. These unconscious wishes
exercise a compelling force upon all later mental trends, a force
which those trends are obliged to fall in with or which they may
perhaps endeavour to divert and direct to higher aims. A further
result of the belated appearance of the secondary process is that a
wide sphere of mnemic material is inaccessible to preconscious
cathexis.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1031

   Among these wishful impulses
derived from infancy, which can neither be destroyed nor inhibited,
there are some whose fulfilment would be a contradiction of the
purposive ideas of secondary thinking. The fulfilment of these
wishes would no longer generate an affect of pleasure but of
unpleasure; and
it is precisely this transformation of affect
which constitutes the essence of what we term
‘repression
’
.
The problem of repression lies
in the question of how it is and owing to what motive forces that
this transformation occurs; but it is a problem that we need only
touch upon here. It is enough for us to be clear that a
transformation of this kind does occur in the course of development
- we have only to recall the way in which disgust emerges in
childhood after having been absent to begin with - and that it is
related to the activity of the secondary system. The memories on
the basis of which the unconscious wish brings about the release of
affect were never accessible to the
Pcs
., and consequently
the release of the affect attaching to those memories cannot be
inhibited either. It is for the very reason of this generation of
affect that these ideas are now inaccessible even by way of the
preconscious thoughts on to which they have transferred their
wishful force. On the contrary, the unpleasure principle takes
control and causes the
Pcs
. to turn away from the
transference thoughts. They are left to themselves -
‘repressed’ - and thus it is that the presence of a
store of infantile memories, which has from the first been held
back from the
Pcs
., becomes a
sine qua non
for
repression.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1032

   In the most favourable cases the
generation of unpleasure ceases along with the withdrawal of
cathexis from the transference thoughts in the
Pcs
.; and
this outcome signifies that the intervention of the unpleasure
principle has served a useful purpose. But it is another matter
when the repressed unconscious wish receives an organic
reinforcement, which it passes on to its transference thoughts; in
that way it may place them in a position to make an attempt at
forcing their way through with their excitation, even if they have
lost their cathexis from the
Pcs
. There then follows a
defensive struggle - for the
Pcs
. in turn reinforces its
opposition to the repressed thoughts (i.e. produces an
‘anticathexis’) - and thereafter the transference
thoughts, which are the vehicles of the unconscious wish, force
their way through in some form of compromise which is reached by
the production of a symptom. But from the moment at which the
repressed thoughts are strongly cathected by the unconscious
wishful impulse and, on the other hand, abandoned by the
preconscious cathexis, they become subject to the primary psychical
process and their one aim is motor discharge or, if the path is
open, hallucinatory revival of the desired perceptual identity. We
have already found empirically that the irrational processes we
have described are only carried out with thoughts that are under
repression. We can now see our way a little further into the whole
position. The irrational processes which occur in the psychical
apparatus are the
primary
ones. They appear wherever ideas
are abandoned by the preconscious cathexis, are left to themselves
and can become charged with the uninhibited energy from the
unconscious which is striving to find an outlet. Some other
observations lend support to the view that these processes which
are described as irrational are not in fact falsifications of
normal processes - intellectual errors - but are modes of activity
of the psychical apparatus that have been freed from an inhibition.
Thus we find that the transition from preconscious excitation to
movement is governed by the same processes, and that the linking of
preconscious ideas to words may easily exhibit the same
displacements and confusions, which are then attributed to
inattention. Evidence, finally, of the increase in activity which
becomes necessary when these primary modes of functioning are
inhibited is to be found in the fact that we produce a
comic
effect, that is, a surplus of energy which has to be discharged in
laughter, if we allow these modes of thinking to force their way
through into consciousness
.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1033

   The theory of the psychoneuroses
asserts as an indisputable and invariable fact that only sexual
wishful impulses from infancy, which have undergone repression
(i.e. a transformation of their affect) during the developmental
period of childhood, are capable of being revived during
later
developmental periods (whether as a result of the
subject’s sexual constitution, which is derived from an
initial bisexuality, or as a result of unfavourable influences
acting upon the course of his sexual life) and are thus able to
furnish the motive force for the formation of psychoneurotic
symptoms of every kind. It is only by reference to these sexual
forces that we can close the gaps that are still patent in the
theory of repression. I will leave it an open question whether
these sexual and infantile factors are equally required in the
theory of dreams: I will leave that theory incomplete at this
point, since I have already gone a step beyond what can be
demonstrated in assuming that dream-wishes are invariably derived
from the unconscious.¹ Nor do I propose to enquire further
into the nature of the distinction between the play of psychical
forces in the formation of dreams and in that of hysterical
symptoms: we are still without a sufficiently accurate knowledge of
one of the two objects of the comparison.

  
¹
Here and elsewhere I have intentionally
left gaps in the treatment of my theme because to fill them would
on the one hand require too great an effort and on the other would
involve my basing myself on material that is alien to the subject
of dreams. For instance, I have omitted to state whether I
attribute different meanings to the words ‘suppressed’
and ‘repressed.’ It should have been clear, however,
that the latter lays more stress than the former upon the fact of
attachment to the unconscious. Nor have I entered into the obvious
problem of why the dream-thoughts are subjected to distortion by
the censorship even in cases where they have abandoned the
progressive path towards consciousness and have chosen the
regressive one. And there are many similar omissions. What I was
above all anxious to do was to create an impression of the problems
to which a further analysis of the dream-work must lead and to give
a hint of the other topics with which that further analysis would
come into contact. It has not always been easy for me to decide the
point at which to break off my pursuit of this line of exposition.
There are special reasons, which may not be what my readers expect,
why I have not given any exhaustive treatment to the part played in
dreams by the world of sexual ideas and why I have avoided
analysing dreams of obviously sexual content. Nothing could be
further from my own views or from the theoretical opinions which I
hold in neuropathology than to regard sexual life as something
shameful, with which neither a physician nor a scientific research
worker has any concern. Moreover, the moral indignation by which
the translator of the
Oneirocritica
of Artemidorus of Daldis
allowed himself to be led into withholding the chapter on sexual
dreams from the knowledge a his readers strikes me as laughable.
What governed my decision was simply my seeing that an explanation
of sexual dreams would involve me deeply in the still unsolved
problems of perversion and bisexuality; and I accordingly reserved
this material for another occasion.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1034

   There is, however, another point
to which I attach importance; and I must confess that it is solely
on its account that I have embarked here upon all these discussions
of the two psychical systems and their modes of activity and of
repression. It is not now a question of whether I have formed an
approximately correct opinion of the psychological factors with
which we are concerned, or whether, which is quite possible in such
difficult matters, my picture of them is distorted and incomplete.
However many changes may be made in our reading of the psychical
censorship and of the rational and abnormal revisions made of the
dream-content, it remains true that processes of this sort are at
work in the formation of dreams and that they show the closest
analogy in their essentials to the processes observable in the
formation of hysterical symptoms. A dream, however, is no
pathological phenomenon; it presupposes no disturbance of psychical
equilibrium; it leaves behind it no loss of efficiency. The
suggestion may be made that no conclusions as to the dreams of
normal people can be drawn from my dreams or those of my patients;
but this, I think, is an objection which can be safely disregarded.
If, then, we may argue back from the phenomena to their motive
forces, we must recognize that the psychical mechanism employed by
neuroses is not created by the impact of a pathological disturbance
upon the mind but is present already in the normal structure of the
mental apparatus. The two psychical systems, the censorship upon
the passage from one of them to the other, the inhibition and
overlaying of one activity by the other, the relations of both of
them to consciousness - or whatever more correct interpretations of
the observed facts may take their place - all of these form part of
the normal structure of our mental instrument, and dreams show us
one of the paths leading to an understanding of its structure. If
we restrict ourselves to the minimum of new knowledge which has
been established with certainty, we can still say this of dreams:
they have proved that
what is suppressed continues to exist in
normal people as well as abnormal, and remains capable of psychical
functioning
. Dreams themselves are among the manifestations of
this suppressed material; this is so theoretically in every case,
and it can be observed empirically in a great number of cases at
least, and precisely in cases which exhibit most clearly the
striking peculiarities of dream-life. In waking life the suppressed
material in the mind is prevented from finding expression and is
cut off from internal perception owing to the fact that the
contradictions present in it are eliminated - one side being
disposed of in favour of the other; but during the night, under the
sway of an impetus towards the construction of compromises, this
suppressed material finds methods and means of forcing its way into
consciousness.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1035

Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta
movebo
.¹

  
The interpretation of dreams
is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of
the mind
.

   By analysing dreams we can take a
step forward in our understanding of the composition of that most
marvellous and most mysterious of all instruments. Only a small
step, no doubt; but a beginning. And this beginning will enable us
to proceed further with its analysis, on the basis of other
structures which must be termed pathological. For illnesses -
those, at least, which are rightly named ‘functional’ -
do not presuppose the disintegration of the apparatus or the
production of fresh splits in its interior. They are to be
explained on a
dynamic
basis - by the strengthening and
weakening of the various components in the interplay of forces, so
many of whose effects are hidden from view while functions are
normal. I hope to be able to show elsewhere how the compounding of
the apparatus out of two agencies makes it possible for the normal
mind too to function with greater delicacy than would be possible
with only one of them.²

  
¹
[‘If I cannot bend the Higher Powers,
I will move the Infernal Regions.’]