Freud - Complete Works (192 page)

On Dreams

1085

   The heart of the problem lies in
displacement, which is by far the most striking of the special
achievements of the dream-work. If we enter deeply into the
subject, we come to realize that the essential determining
condition of displacement is a purely psychological one: something
in the nature of a
motive
. One comes upon its track if one
takes into consideration certain experiences which one cannot
escape in analysing dreams. In analysing my specimen dream I was
obliged to break off my report of the dream-thoughts on
p. 1059
, because, as I confessed, there
were some among them which I should prefer to conceal from
strangers and which I could not communicate to other people without
doing serious mischief in important directions. I added that
nothing would be gained if I were to choose another dream instead
of that particular one with a view to reporting its analysis: I
should come upon dream-thoughts which required to be kept secret in
the case of
every
dream with an obscure or confused content.
If, however, I were to continue the analysis on my own account,
without any reference to other people (whom, indeed, an experience
so personal as my dream cannot possibly have been intended to
reach), I should eventually arrive at thoughts which would surprise
me, whose presence in me I was unaware of, which were not only
alien
but also
disagreeable
to me, and which I should
therefore feel inclined to dispute energetically, although the
chain of thoughts running through the analysis insisted upon them
remorselessly. There is only one way of accounting for this state
of affairs, which is of quite universal occurrence; and that is to
suppose that these thoughts really were present in my mind, and in
possession of a certain amount of psychical intensity or energy,
but that they were in a peculiar psychological situation, as a
consequence of which they
could not become conscious
to me.
(I describe this particular condition as one of
‘repression.’) We cannot help concluding, then, that
there is a causal connection between the obscurity of the
dream-content and the state of repression (in admissibility to
consciousness) of certain of the dream-thoughts, and that the dream
had to be obscure so as not to betray the proscribed
dream-thoughts. Thus we are led to the concept of a
‘dream-distortion’, which is the product of the
dream-work and serves the purpose of dissimulation, that is, of
disguise.

On Dreams

1086

   I will test this on the specimen
dream which I chose for analysis, and enquire what the thought was
which made its way into that dream in a distorted form, and which I
should be inclined to repudiate if it were undistorted. I recall
that my free cab-drive reminded me of my recent expensive drive
with a member of my family, that the interpretation of the dream
was ‘I wish I might for once experience love that cost me
nothing’, and that a short time before the dream I had been
obliged to spend a considerable sum of money on this same
person’s account. Bearing this context in mind, I cannot
escape the conclusion that
I regret having made that
expenditure
. Not until I have recognized this impulse does my
wish in the dream for the love which would call for
no
expenditure acquire a meaning. Yet I can honestly say that when I
decided to spend this sum of money I did not hesitate for a moment.
My regret at having to do so - the contrary current of feeling -
did not become conscious to me.
Why
it did not, is another
and a far-reaching question, the answer to which is known to me but
belongs in another connection.

   If the dream that I analyse is
not my own, but someone else’s, the conclusion will be the
same, though the grounds for believing it will be different. If the
dreamer is a healthy person, there is no other means open to me of
obliging him to recognize the repressed ideas that have been
discovered than by pointing out the context of the dream-thoughts;
and I cannot help it if he refuses to recognize them. If, however,
I am dealing with a neurotic patient, with a hysteric for instance,
he will find the acceptance of the repressed thought forced upon
him, owing to its connection with the symptoms of his illness, and
owing to the improvement he experiences when he exchanges those
symptoms for the repressed ideas. In the case, for instance, of the
woman patient who had the dream I have just quoted about the three
theatre tickets which cost 1 florin 50 kreuzers, the analysis led
to the inevitable conclusion that she had a low estimate of her
husband (cf. her idea that she could have got one ‘a hundred
times better’), that she regretted having married him, and
that she would have liked to exchange him for another one. It is
true that she asserted that she loved her husband, and that her
emotional life knew nothing of any such low estimate of him, but
all her symptoms led to the same conclusion as the dream. And after
her repressed memories had been revived of a particular period
during which she had consciously not loved her husband, her
symptoms cleared up and her resistance against the interpretation
of the dream disappeared.

On Dreams

1087

IX

   Now that we have established the
concept of repression and have brought dream-distortion into
relation with repressed psychical material, we can express in
general terms the principal finding to which we have been led by
the analysis of dreams. In the case of dreams which are
intelligible and have a meaning, we have found that they are
undisguised wish-fulfilments; that is, that in their case the
dream-situation represents as fulfilled a wish which is known to
consciousness, which is left over from daytime life, and which is
deservedly of interest. Analysis has taught us something entirely
analogous in the case of obscure and confused dreams: once again
the dream-situation represents a wish as fulfilled - a wish which
invariably arises from the dream-thoughts, but one which is
represented in an unrecognizable form and can only be explained
when it has been traced back in analysis. The wish in such cases is
either itself a repressed one and alien to consciousness, or it is
intimately connected with repressed thoughts and is based upon
them. Thus the formula for such dreams is as follows:
they are
disguised fulfilments of repressed wishes
. It is interesting in
this connection to observe that the popular belief that dreams
always foretell the future is confirmed. Actually the future which
the dream shows us is not the one which
will
occur but the
one which we should
like
to occur. The popular mind is
behaving here as it usually does: what it wishes, it believes.

   Dreams fall into three classes
according to their attitude to wish-fulfilment. The first class
consists of those which represent an unrepressed wish
undisguisedly; these are the dreams of an infantile type which
become ever rarer in adults. Secondly there are the dreams which
express a repressed wish disguisedly; these no doubt form the
overwhelming majority of all our dreams, and require analysis
before they can be understood. In the third place there are the
dreams which represent a repressed wish, but do so with
insufficient or no disguise. These last dreams are invariably
accompanied by anxiety, which interrupts them. In their case
anxiety takes the place of dream distortion; and in dreams of the
second class anxiety is only avoided owing to the dream-work. There
is no great difficulty in proving that the ideational content which
produces anxiety in us in dreams was once a wish but has since
undergone repression.

On Dreams

1088

   There are also clear dreams with
a distressing content, which, however, is not felt[/experienced] as
distressing in the dream itself. For this reason they cannot be
counted as anxiety-dreams; but they have always been taken as
evidence of the fact that dreams are without meaning and have no
psychical value. An analysis of a dream of this kind will show that
we are dealing with well-disguised fulfilments of repressed wishes,
that is to say with a dream of the second class; it will also show
how admirably the process of displacement is adapted for disguising
wishes.

   A girl had a dream of seeing her
sister’s only surviving child lying dead in the same
surroundings in which a few years earlier she had in fact seen the
dead body of her sister’s
first
child. She felt no
pain over this; but she naturally rejected the idea that this
situation represented any wish of hers. Nor was there any need to
suppose this. It had been beside the first child’s coffin,
however, that, years before, she had seen and spoken to the man she
was in love with; if the second child died, she would no doubt meet
the man again in her sister’s house. She longed for such a
meeting, but fought against the feeling. On the dream-day she had
bought a ticket for a lecture which was to be given by this same
man, to whom she was still devoted. Her dream was a simple dream of
impatience of the kind that often occurs before journeys, visits to
the theatre, and similar enjoyments that lie ahead. But in order to
disguise this longing from her, the situation was displaced on to
an event of a kind most unsuitable for producing a feeling of
enjoyment, though it had in fact done so in the past. It is to be
observed that the emotional behaviour in the dream was appropriate
to the real content which lay in the background and not to what was
pushed into the foreground. The dream-situation anticipated the
meeting she had so long desired; it offered no basis for any
painful feelings.

On Dreams

1089

X

   Hitherto philosophers have had no
occasion to concern themselves with a psychology of repression. We
may therefore be permitted to make a first approach to this
hitherto unknown topic by constructing a pictorial image of the
course of events in dream-formation. It is true that the schematic
picture we have arrived at - not only from the study of dreams - is
a fairly complicated one; but we cannot manage with anything
simpler. Our hypothesis is that in our mental apparatus there are
two thought-constructing agencies, of which the second enjoys the
privilege of having free access to consciousness for its products
whereas the activity of the first is in itself unconscious and can
only reach consciousness by way of the second. On the frontier
between the two agencies, where the first passes over to the
second, there is a censorship, which only allows what is agreeable
to it to pass through and holds back everything else. According to
our definition, then, what is rejected by the censorship is in a
state of repression. Under certain conditions, of which the state
of sleep is one, the relation between the strength of the two
agencies is modified in such a way that what is repressed can no
longer be held back. In the state of sleep this probably occurs
owing to a relaxation of the censorship; when this happens it
becomes possible for what has hitherto been repressed to make a
path for itself to consciousness. Since, however, the censorship is
never completely eliminated but merely reduced, the repressed
material must submit to certain alterations which mitigate its
offensive features. What becomes conscious in such cases is a
compromise between the intentions of one agency and the demands of
the other.
Repression - relaxation of the censorship - the
formation of a compromise
, this is the fundamental pattern for
the generation not only of dreams but of many other
psychopathological structures; and in the latter cases too we may
observe that the formation of compromises is accompanied by
processes of condensation and displacement and by the employment of
superficial associations, which we have become familiar with in the
dream-work.

On Dreams

1090

   We have no reason to disguise the
fact that in the hypothesis which we have set up in order to
explain the dream-work a part is played by what might be described
as a ‘ daemonic’ element. We have gathered an
impression that the formation of obscure dreams occurs
as
though
one person who was dependent upon a second person had to
make a remark which was bound to be disagreeable in the ears of
this second one; and it is on the basis of this simile that we have
arrived at the concepts of dream-distortion and censorship, and
have endeavoured to translate our impression into a psychological
theory which is no doubt crude but is at least lucid. Whatever it
may be with which a further investigation of the subject may enable
us to identify our first and second agencies, we may safely expect
to find a confirmation of some correlate of our hypothesis that the
second agency controls access to consciousness and can bar the
first agency from such access.

   When the state of sleep is over,
the censorship quickly recovers its full strength; and it can now
wipe out all that was won from it during the period of its
weakness. This must be one part at least of the explanation of the
forgetting of dreams, as is shown by an observation which has been
confirmed on countless occasions. It not infrequently happens that
during the narration of a dream or during its analysis a fragment
of the dream-content which had seemed to be forgotten re-emerges.
This fragment which has been rescued from oblivion invariably
affords us the best and most direct access to the meaning of the
dream. And that, in all probability, must have been the only reason
for its having been forgotten, that is, for its having been once
more suppressed.