Freud - Complete Works (185 page)

  
²
[
Footnote added
1914:] Cf. my
remarks on the concept of the unconscious in psycho-analysis
(Freud, 1912
g
), first published in English in the
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 26, in which I
have distinguished the descriptive, dynamic and systematic meanings
of the highly ambiguous word ‘unconscious’.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1040

   We must avoid, too, the
distinction between ‘supraconscious’ and
‘subconscious’, which has become so popular in the more
recent literature of the psychoneuroses, for such a distinction
seems precisely calculated to stress the equivalence of what is
psychical to what is conscious.

   But what part is there left to be
played in our scheme by consciousness, which was once so omnipotent
and hid all else from view?
Only that of a sense-organ for the
perception of psychical qualities
. In accordance with the ideas
underlying our attempt at a schematic picture, we can only regard
conscious perception as the function proper to a particular system;
and for this the abbreviation
Cs
. seems appropriate. In its
mechanical properties we regard this system as resembling the
perceptual systems
Pcpt
.: as being susceptible to excitation
by qualities but incapable of retaining traces of alterations -
that is to say, as having no memory. The psychical apparatus, which
is turned towards the external world with its sense-organ of the
Pcpt
. systems, is itself the external world in relation to
the sense-organ of the
Cs
., whose teleological justification
resides in this circumstance. Here we once more meet the principle
of the hierarchy of agencies, which seems to govern the structure
of the apparatus. Excitatory material flows in to the
Cs
.
sense-organ from two directions: from the
Pcpt
. system,
whose excitation, determined by qualities, is probably submitted to
a fresh revision before it becomes a conscious sensation, and from
the interior of the apparatus itself, whose quantitative processes
are felt qualitatively in the pleasure-unpleasure series when,
subject to certain modifications, they make their way to
consciousness.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1041

   Those philosophers who have
become aware that rational and highly complex thought-structures
are possible without consciousness playing any part in them have
found difficulty in assigning any function to consciousness; it has
seemed to them that it can be no more than a superfluous reflected
picture of the completed psychical process. We, on the other hand,
are rescued from this embarrassment by the analogy between our
Cs
. system and the perceptual systems. We know that
perception by our sense-organs has the result of directing a
cathexis of attention to the paths along which the in-coming
sensory excitation is spreading: the qualitative excitation of the
Pcpt
. system acts as a regulator of the discharge of the
mobile quantity in the psychical apparatus. We can attribute the
same function to the overlying sense-organ of the
Cs
.
system. By perceiving new qualities, it makes a new contribution to
directing the mobile quantities of cathexis and distributing them
in an expedient fashion. By the help of its perception of pleasure
and unpleasure it influences the discharge of the cathexes within
what is otherwise an unconscious apparatus operating by means of
the displacement of quantities. It seems probable that in the first
instance the unpleasure principle regulates the displacement of
cathexes automatically. But it is quite possible that consciousness
of these qualities may introduce in addition a second and more
discriminating regulation, which is even able to oppose the former
one, and which perfects the efficiency of the apparatus by enabling
it, in contradiction to its original plan, to cathect and work over
even what is associated with the release of unpleasure. We learn
from the psychology of the neuroses that these processes of
regulation carried out by the qualitative excitation of the sense
organs play a great part in the functional activity of the
apparatus. The automatic domination of the primary unpleasure
principle and the consequent restriction imposed upon efficiency
are interrupted by the processes of sensory regulation, which are
themselves in turn automatic in action. We find that repression
(which, though it served a useful purpose to begin with, leads
ultimately to a damaging loss of inhibition and mental control)
affects memories so much more easily than perceptions because the
former can receive no extra cathexis from the excitation of the
psychical sense-organs. It is true on the one hand that a thought
which has to be warded off cannot become conscious, because it has
undergone repression; but on the other hand it sometimes happens
that a thought of this kind is only repressed because for other
reasons it has been withdrawn from conscious perception. Here are
some hints of which we take advantage in our therapeutic procedure
in order to undo repressions which have already been effected.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1042

   The value of the hypercathexis
which is set up in the mobile quantities by the regulating
influence of the sense organ of the
Cs
. cannot be better
illustrated in its teleological aspect than by the fact of its
creation of a new series of qualities and consequently of a new
process of regulation which constitutes the superiority of men over
animals. Thought-processes are in themselves without quality,
except for the pleasurable and unpleasurable excitations which
accompany them, and which, in view of their possible disturbing
effect upon thinking, must be kept within bounds. In order that
thought-processes may acquire quality, they are associated in human
beings with verbal memories, whose residues of quality are
sufficient to draw the attention of consciousness to them and to
endow the process of thinking with a new mobile cathexis from
consciousness.

   The whole multiplicity of the
problems of consciousness can only be grasped by an analysis of the
thought-processes in hysteria. These give one the impression that
the transition from a preconscious to a conscious cathexis is
marked by a censorship similar to that between the
Ucs
. and
the
Pcs
. This censorship, too, only comes into force above a
certain quantitative limit, so that thought-structures of low
intensity escape it. Examples of every possible variety of how a
thought can be withheld from consciousness or can force its way
into consciousness under certain limitations are to be found
included within the framework of psychoneurotic phenomena; and they
all point to the intimate and reciprocal relations between
censorship and consciousness. I will bring these psychological
reflections to an end with a report of two such examples.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1043

   I was called in to a consultation
last year to examine an intelligent and unembarrassed-looking girl.
She was most surprisingly dressed. For though as a rule a
woman’s clothes are carefully considered down to the last
detail, she was wearing one of her stockings hanging down and two
of the buttons on her blouse were undone. She complained of having
pains in her leg and, without being asked, exposed her calf. But
what she principally complained of was, to use her own words, that
she had a feeling in her body as though there was something
‘stuck into it’ which was ‘moving backwards and
forwards’ and was ‘shaking’ her through and
through: sometimes it made her whole body feel ‘stiff.’
My medical colleague, who was present at the examination, looked at
me; he found no difficulty in understanding the meaning of her
complaint. But what struck both of us as extraordinary was the fact
that it meant nothing to the patient’s mother - though she
must often have found herself in the situation which her child was
describing. The girl herself had no notion of the bearing of her
remarks; for if she had, she would never have given voice to them.
In this case it had been possible to hoodwink the censorship into
allowing a phantasy which would normally have been kept in the
preconscious to emerge into consciousness under the innocent
disguise of making a complaint.

   Here is another example. A
fourteen-year-old boy came to me for psycho-analytic treatment
suffering from
tic convulsif
, hysterical vomiting,
headaches, etc. I began the treatment by assuring him that if he
shut his eyes he would see pictures or have ideas, which he was
then to communicate to me. He replied in pictures. His last
impression before coming to me was revived visually in his memory.
He had been playing at draughts with his uncle and saw the board in
front of him. He thought of various positions, favourable or
unfavourable, and of moves that one must not make. He then saw a
dagger lying on the board - an object that belonged to his father
but which his imagination placed on the board. Then there was a
sickle lying on the board and next a scythe. And there now appeared
a picture of an old peasant mowing the grass in front of the
patient’s distant home with a scythe. After a few days I
discovered the meaning of this series of pictures. The boy had been
upset by an unhappy family situation. He had a father who was a
hard man, liable to fits of rage, who had been unhappily married to
the patient’s mother, and whose educational methods had
consisted of threats. His father had been divorced from his mother,
a tender and affectionate woman, had married again and had one day
brought a young woman home with him who was to be the boy’s
new mother. It was during the first few days after this that the
fourteen-year-old boy’s illness had come on. His suppressed
rage against his father was what had constructed this series of
pictures with their understandable allusions. The material for them
was provided by a recollection from mythology. The sickle was the
one with which Zeus castrated his father; the scythe and the
picture of the old peasant represented Kronos, the violent old man
who devoured his children and on whom Zeus took such unfilial
vengeance. His father’s marriage gave the boy an opportunity
of repaying the reproaches and threats which he had heard from his
father long before because he had played with his genitals. (Cf.
the playing at draughts; the forbidden moves; the dagger which
could be used to kill.) In this case long-repressed memories and
derivatives from them which had remained unconscious slipped into
consciousness by a roundabout path in the form of
apparently
meaningless
pictures.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1044

   Thus I would look for the
theoretical
value of the study of dreams in the
contributions it makes to psychological knowledge and in the
preliminary light it throws on the problems of the psychoneuroses.
Who can guess the importance of the results which might be obtained
from a thorough understanding of the structure and functions of the
mental apparatus, since even the present state of our knowledge
allows us to exert a favourable therapeutic influence on the
curable forms of psychoneurosis? But what of the
practical
value of this study - I hear the question raised - as a means
towards an understanding of the mind, towards a revelation of the
hidden characteristics of individual men? Have not the unconscious
impulses brought out by dreams the importance of real forces in
mental life? Is the ethical significance of suppressed wishes to
be made light of - wishes which, just as they lead to dreams, may
some day lead to other things?

   I do not feel justified in
answering these questions. I have not considered this side of the
problem of dreams further. I think however, that the Roman emperor
was in the wrong when he had one of his subjects executed because
he had dreamt of murdering the emperor. He should have begun by
trying to find out what the dream meant; most probably its meaning
was not what it appeared to be. And even if a dream with another
content had had this act of
lèse majesté
as
its meaning, would it not be right to bear in mind Plato’s
dictum that the virtuous man is content to
dream
what a
wicked man really
does
? I think it is best, therefore, to
acquit dreams. Whether we are to attribute
reality
to
unconscious wishes, I cannot say. It must be denied, of course, to
any transitional or intermediate thoughts. If we look at
unconscious wishes reduced to their most fundamental and truest
shape, we shall have to conclude, no doubt, that
psychical
reality is a particular form of existence not to be confused with
material
reality. Thus there seems to be no justification
for people’s reluctance in accepting responsibility for the
immorality of their dreams. When the mode of functioning of the
mental apparatus is rightly appreciated and the relation between
the conscious and the unconscious understood, the greater part of
what is ethically objectionable in our dream and phantasy lives
will be found to disappear. In the words of Hanns Sachs: ‘If
we look in our consciousness at something that has been told up by
a dream about a contemporary (real) situation, we ought not to be
surprised to find that the monster which we saw under the
magnifying glass of analysis turns out to be a tiny
infusorian.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1045

   Actions and consciously expressed
opinions are as a rule enough for practical purposes in judging
men’s characters. Actions deserve to be considered first and
foremost; for many impulses which force their way through to
consciousness are then brought to nothing by the real forces of
mental life before they can mature into deeds. In fact, such
impulses often meet with no psychical obstacles to their progress,
for the very reason that the unconscious is certain that they will
be stopped at some other stage. It is in any case instructive to
get to know the much trampled soil from which our virtues proudly
spring. Very rarely does the complexity of a human character,
driven hither and thither by dynamic forces, submit to a choice
between simple alternatives, as our antiquated morality would have
us believe.