Freud - Complete Works (417 page)

  
¹
In the paper already quoted.

  
²
[In French and German psychiatry the word
‘delirium’ is often used of delusional
states.]

Psycho-Analytic Notes On An Autobiographical Account Of A Case Of Paranoia

2443

   Our hypotheses as to the
dispositional fixations in paranoia and paraphrenia make it easy to
see that a case may begin with paranoic symptoms and may yet
develop into a dementia praecox, and that paranoid and
schizophrenic phenomena may be combined in any proportion. And we
can understand how a clinical picture such as Schreber’s can
come about, and merit the name of a paranoid dementia, from the
fact that in its production of a wishful phantasy and of
hallucinations it shows paraphrenic traits, while in its exciting
cause, in its use of the mechanism of projection, and in its
outcome it exhibits a paranoid character. For it is possible for
several fixations to be left behind in the course of development,
and each of these in succession may allow an irruption of the
libido that has been pushed off - beginning, perhaps, with the
later acquired fixations, and going on, as the illness develops, to
the original ones that lie nearer the starting-point. We should be
glad to know to what conditions the relatively favourable issue of
the present case is due; for we cannot willingly attribute the
whole responsibility for the outcome to anything so casual as the
‘improvement due to change in domicile’,¹ which
set in after the patient’s removal from Flechsig’s
clinic. But our insufficient acquaintance with the intimate
circumstances of the history of the case makes it impossible to
give an answer to this interesting question. It may be suspected,
however, that what enabled Schreber to reconcile himself to his
homosexual phantasy, and so made it possible for his illness to
terminate in something approximating to a recovery, may have been
the fact that his father-complex was in the main positively toned
and that in real life the later years of his relationship with an
excellent father had probably been unclouded.

  
¹
Cf. Riklin (1905).

Psycho-Analytic Notes On An Autobiographical Account Of A Case Of Paranoia

2444

   Since I neither fear the
criticism of others nor shrink from criticizing myself, I have no
motive for avoiding the mention of a similarity which may possibly
damage our libido theory in the estimation of many of my readers.
Schreber’s ‘rays of God’, which are made up of a
condensation of the sun’s rays, of nerve fibres, and of
spermatozoa, are in reality nothing else than a concrete
representation and projection outwards of libidinal cathexes; and
they thus lend his delusions a striking conformity with our theory.
His belief that the world must come to an end because his ego was
attracting all the rays to itself, his anxious concern at a later
period, during the process of reconstruction, lest God should sever
His ray-connection with him, - these and many other details of
Schreber’s delusional structure sound almost like endopsychic
perceptions of the processes whose existence I have assumed in
these page as the basis of our explanation of paranoia. I can
nevertheless call a friend and fellow-specialist to witness that I
had developed my theory of paranoia before I became acquainted with
the contents of Schreber’s book. It remains for the future to
decide whether there is more delusion in my theory than I should
like to admit, or whether there is more truth in Schreber’s
delusion than other people are as yet prepared to believe.

   Lastly, I cannot conclude the
present work, which is once again only a fragment of a larger
whole, without foreshadowing the two chief theses towards the
establishment of which the libido theory of the neuroses and
psychoses is advancing: namely, that the neuroses arise in the main
from a conflict between the ego and the sexual instinct, and that
the forms which the neuroses assume retain the imprint of the
course of development followed by the libido - and by the ego.

Psycho-Analytic Notes On An Autobiographical Account Of A Case Of Paranoia

2445

POSTSCRIPT

(1912)

   In dealing with the case history
of Senatspräsident Schreber I purposely restricted myself to a
minimum of interpretation and I feel confident that every reader
with a knowledge of psycho-analysis will have learned from the
material which I presented more than was explicitly stated by me,
and that he will have found no difficulty in drawing the threads
closer and in reaching conclusions at which I no more than hinted.
By a happy chance the same issue of this periodical as that in
which my own paper appeared showed that the attention of some other
contributors had been directed to Schreber’s autobiography,
and made it easy to guess how much more material remains to be
gathered from the symbolic content of the phantasies and delusions
of this gifted paranoic.¹

   Since I published my work upon
Schreber, a chance acquisition of knowledge has put me in a
position to appreciate one of his delusional beliefs more
adequately, and to recognize the wealth of its bearing upon
mythology
. I mentioned on
p. 2425
the patient’s peculiar
relation to the sun, and I was led to explain the sun as a
sublimated ‘father-symbol’. The sun used to speak to
him in human language and thus revealed itself to him as a living
being. Schreber was in the habit of abusing it and shouting threats
at it; he declares, moreover, that when he stood facing it and
spoke aloud, its rays would turn pale before him. After his
‘recovery’ he boasts that he can gaze at it without any
difficulty and without being more than slightly dazzled by it, a
thing which would naturally have been impossible for him
formerly.²

   It is to this delusional
privilege of being able to gaze at the sun without being dazzled
that the mythological interest attaches. We read in Reinach³
that the natural historians of antiquity attributed this power to
the eagle alone, who, as a dweller in the highest regions of the
air, was brought into especially intimate relation with the
heavens, with the sun, and with lightning.
⁴
We learn from the same sources,
moreover, that the eagle puts his young to a test before
recognizing them as his legitimate offspring. Unless they can
succeed in looking into the sun without blinking they are thrown
out of the eyrie.

  
¹
Cf. Jung (1911, 164 and 207); and Spielrein
(1911, 350).

  
²
See the footnote to page 139 of
Schreber’s book.

  
³
Reinach (1905-12, 3, 80), quoting Keller
(1887).

  
⁴
Representations of eagles were set up at
the highest points of temples, so as to serve as
‘magical’ lightning-conductors. (Cf. Reinach, loc.
cit.)

Psycho-Analytic Notes On An Autobiographical Account Of A Case Of Paranoia

2446

   There can be no doubt about the
meaning of this animal myth. It is certain that this is merely
ascribing to animals something that is a hallowed custom among men.
The procedure gone through by the eagle with his young is an
ordeal
, a test of lineage, such as is reported of the most
various races of antiquity. Thus the Celts living on the banks of
the Rhine used to entrust their new-born babies to the waters of
the river, in order to ascertain whether they were truly of their
own blood. The clan of Psylli, who inhabited what is now Tripoli,
boasted that they were descended from snakes, and used to expose
their infants to contact with them; those who were true-born
children of the clan were either not bitten or recovered rapidly
from the effects of the bite.¹ The assumption underlying these
trials leads us deep into the
totemic
habits of thought of
primitive peoples. The totem - an animal, or a natural force
animistically conceived, to which the tribe traces back its origin
- spares the members of the tribe as being its own children, just
as it itself is honoured by them as being their ancestor and is
spared by them. We have here arrived at the consideration of
matters which, as it seems to me, may make it possible to arrive at
a psycho-analytic explanation of the origins of religion.

   The eagle, then, who makes his
young look into the sun and requires of them that they shall not be
dazzled by its light, is behaving as though he were himself a
descendant of the sun and were submitting his children to a test of
their ancestry. And when Schreber boasts that he can look into the
sun unscathed and undazzled, he has rediscovered the mythological
method of expressing his filial relation to the sun, and has
confirmed us once again in our view that the sun is a symbol of the
father. It will be remembered that during his illness Schreber gave
free expression to his family pride,² and that we discovered
in the fact of his childlessness a human motive for his having
fallen ill with a feminine wishful phantasy. Thus the connection
between his delusional privilege and the basis of his illness
becomes evident.

  
¹
For lists of references see Reinach, loc.
cit. and ibid.,
1
, 74.

  
²
The Schrebers are ‘members of the
highest nobility of Heaven’ (24). - ‘
Adel
’
is the attribute of an ‘
Adler
’.
[‘
Adel
’ means ‘nobility’ or
‘noble’. ‘
Adler
’ means
‘eagle’ or ‘noble (person)’.]

Psycho-Analytic Notes On An Autobiographical Account Of A Case Of Paranoia

2447

   This short postscript to my
analysis of a paranoid patient may serve to show that Jung had
excellent grounds for his assertion that the mythopoeic forces of
mankind are not extinct, but that to this very day they give rise
in the neuroses to the same psychical products as in the remotest
past ages. I should like to take up a suggestion that I myself made
some time ago,
¹
and add
that the same holds good of the forces that construct religions.
And I am of opinion that the time will soon be ripe for us to make
an extension of a thesis which has long been asserted by
psycho-analysts, and to complete what has hitherto had only an
individual and ontogenetic application by the addition of its
anthropological counterpart, which is to be conceived
phylogenetically. ‘In dreams and in neuroses’, so our
thesis has run, ‘ we come once more upon the
child
and
the peculiarities which characterize his modes of thought and his
emotional life.’ ‘And we come upon the
savage
too,’ we may now add, ‘upon the
primitive
man,
as he stands revealed to us in the light of the researches of
archaeology and of ethnology.’

  
¹ ‘Obsessive Acts and Religious Practices’
(1907
b
).

2448

THE HANDLING OF DREAM-INTERPRETATION IN PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

(1911)

2449

Intentionally left blank

2450

THE HANDLING OF DREAM-INTERPRETATION IN PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

The
Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse
was not designed solely to keep its readers informed of the
advances made in psycho-analytic knowledge, and itself to publish
comparatively short contributions to the subject; it aims also at
accomplishing the further tasks of presenting to the student a
clear outline of what is already known, and of economizing the time
and effort of beginners in analytic practice by offering them
suitable instructions. Henceforward, therefore, articles of a
didactic nature and on technical subjects, not necessarily
containing new matter, will appear as well in this journal.

   The question with which I now
intend to deal is not that of the technique of
dream-interpretation: neither the methods by which dreams should be
interpreted nor the use of such interpretations when made will be
considered, but only the way in which the analyst should employ the
art of interpretation in the psycho-analytic treatment of patients.
There are undoubtedly different ways of going to work in the
matter, but then the answer to questions of technique in analysis
is never a matter of course. Although there may perhaps be more
than one good road to follow, still there are very many bad ones,
and a comparison of the various methods cannot fail to be
illuminating, even if it should not lead to a decision in favour of
any particular one.

   Anyone coming from
dream-interpretation to analytic practice will retain his interest
in the content of dreams, and his inclination will be to interpret
as fully as possible every dream related by the patient. But he
will soon remark that he is now working under quite different
conditions, and that if he attempts to carry out his intention he
will come into collision with the most immediate tasks of the
treatment. Even if a patient’s first dream proves to be
admirably suited for the introduction of the first explanations to
be given, other dreams will promptly appear, so long and so obscure
that the full meaning cannot be extracted from them in the limited
session of one day’s work. If the doctor continues the work
of interpretation during the following days, fresh dreams will be
produced in the meantime and these will have to be put aside until
he can regard the first dream as finally resolved. The production
of dreams is at times so copious, and the patient’s progress
towards comprehension of them so hesitant, that a suspicion will
force itself on the analyst that the appearance of the material in
this manner may be simply a manifestation of the patient’s
resistance taking advantage of the discovery that the method is
unable to master what is so presented. Moreover, the treatment will
meanwhile have fallen quite a distance behind the present and have
lost touch with actuality. In opposition to such a technique stands
the rule that it is of the greatest importance for the treatment
that the analyst should always be aware of the surface of the
patient’s mind at any given moment, that he should know what
complexes and resistances are active in him at the time and what
conscious reaction to them will govern his behaviour. It is
scarcely ever right to sacrifice this therapeutic aim to an
interest in dream-interpretation.

The Handling Of Dream-Interpretation In Psycho-Analysis

2451

   What then, if we bear this rule
in mind, is to be our attitude to interpreting dreams in analysis?
More or less as follows: The amount of interpretation which can be
achieved in one session should be taken as sufficient and it is not
to be regarded as a loss if the content of the dream is not fully
discovered. On the following day, the interpretation of the dream
is not to be taken up again as a matter of course, until it has
become evident that nothing else has meanwhile forced its way into
the foreground of the patient’s thoughts. Thus no exception
in favour of an interrupted dream-interpretation is to be made to
the rule that the first thing that comes into the patient’s
head is the first thing to be dealt with. If fresh dreams occur
before the earlier ones have been disposed of, the more recent
productions are to be attended to, and no uneasiness need be felt
about neglecting the older ones. If the dreams become altogether
too diffuse and voluminous, all hope of completely unravelling them
should tacitly be given up from the start. One must in general
guard against displaying very special interest in the
interpretation of dreams, or arousing an idea in the patient that
the work would come to a standstill if he were to bring up no
dreams; otherwise there is a danger of the resistance being
directed to the production of dreams, with a consequent cessation
of them. The patient must be brought to believe, on the contrary,
that the analysis invariably finds material for its continuation,
regardless of whether or no he brings up dreams or what amount of
attention is devoted to them.

   It will now be asked whether we
shall not be giving up too much valuable material which might throw
light on the unconscious if dream-interpretation is only to be
carried out subject to such restrictions of method. The answer to
this is that the loss is by no means so great as might appear from
a superficial view of the matter. To begin with, it must be
recognized that in cases of severe neurosis any elaborate
dream-productions must from the nature of things be regarded as
incapable of complete solution. A dream of this kind is often based
on the entire pathogenic material of the case, as yet unknown to
both doctor and patient (so called ‘programme-dreams’
and biographical dreams), and is sometimes equivalent to a
translation into dream-Ianguage of the whole content of the
neurosis. In the attempt to interpret such a dream all the latent,
as yet untouched, resistances will be roused to activity and soon
set a limit to its understanding. The full interpretation of such a
dream will coincide with the completion of the whole analysis; if a
note is made of it at the beginning, it may be possible to
understand it at the end, many months later. It is the same as with
the elucidation of a single symptom (the main symptom, perhaps).
The whole analysis is needed to explain it; in the course of the
treatment one must endeavour to lay hold first of this, then of
that, fragment of the symptom’s meaning, one after another,
until they can all be pieced together. Similarly, no more can be
expected of a dream occurring in the early stages of the analysis;
one must be content if the attempt at interpretation brings a
single pathogenic wishful impulse to light.

The Handling Of Dream-Interpretation In Psycho-Analysis

2452

   Thus nothing attainable is
renounced if one gives up the idea of a complete
dream-interpretation; nor is anything lost as a rule if one breaks
off the interpretation of a comparatively old dream and turns to a
more recent one. We have found from fine examples of fully analysed
dreams that several successive scenes of one dream may have the
same content, which may find expression in them with increasing
clarity; and we have learnt, too, that several dreams occurring in
the same night need be nothing more than attempts, expressed in
various forms, to represent one meaning. In general, we may rest
assured that every wishful impulse which creates a dream to-day
will re-appear in other dreams as long as it has not been
understood and withdrawn from the domination of the unconscious. It
often happens, therefore, that the best way to complete the
interpretation of a dream is to leave it and to devote one’s
attention to a new dream, which may contain the same material in a
possibly more accessible form. I know that it is asking a great
deal, not only of the patient but also of the doctor, to expect
them to give up their conscious purposive aims during the
treatment, and to abandon themselves to a guidance which, in spite
of everything, still seems to us ‘accidental’. But I
can answer for it that one is rewarded every time one resolves to
have faith in one’s own theoretical principles, and prevails
upon oneself not to dispute the guidance of the unconscious in
establishing connecting links.

   I submit, therefore, that
dream-interpretation should not be pursued in analytic treatment as
an art for its own sake, but that its handling should be subject to
those technical rules that govern the conduct of the treatment as a
whole. Occasionally, of course, one can act otherwise and allow a
little free play to one’s theoretical interest; but one
should always be aware of what one is doing. Another situation to
be considered is one which has arisen since we have acquired more
confidence in our understanding of dream-symbolism, and know
ourselves to be more independent of the patient’s
associations. An unusually skilful dream-interpreter will sometimes
find himself in the position of being able to see through every one
of a patient’s dreams without requiring him to go through the
tedious and time-absorbing process of working over them. Such an
analyst is thus exempt from any conflict between the demands of
dream-interpretation and those of the treatment. Moreover he
will(be tempted to make full use of dream-interpretation on every
occasion, by telling the patient everything he has detected in his
dreams. In doing so, however, he will have adopted a method of
treatment which departs considerably from the established one, as I
shall point out in another connection. Beginners in psycho-analytic
practice, at any rate, are advised not to take this exceptional
case as a model.

The Handling Of Dream-Interpretation In Psycho-Analysis

2453

   Every analyst is in the position
of the superior dream-interpreter, whom we have been imagining, in
regard to the very first dreams that his patients bring, before
they have learnt anything of the technique of translating dreams.
These initial dreams may be described as unsophisticated: they
betray a great deal to the listener, like the dreams of so-called
healthy people. The question then arises whether the analyst is at
once to translate to the patient all that he himself reads from
them. This, however, is not the place for answering this question,
for it evidently forms part of a wider one: at what stage in the
treatment and how rapidly should the analyst introduce the patient
to the knowledge of what lies veiled in his mind?  The more
the patient has learnt of the practice of dream-interpretation, the
more obscure do his later dreams as a rule become. All the
knowledge acquired about dreams serves also to put the
dream-constructing process on its guard.

   In the ‘scientific’
works about dreams, which in spite of their repudiation of
dream-interpretation have received a new stimulus from
psycho-analysis, one constantly finds that scrupulous care is most
unnecessarily attached to the accurate preservation of the text of
the dream. This is supposed to need protection from distortions and
attritions in the hours immediately after waking. Some
psycho-analysts, even, in giving the patient instructions to write
down every dream immediately upon waking, seem not to rely
consistently enough upon their knowledge of the conditions of
dream-formation. In therapeutic work this rule is superfluous; and
patients are glad to make use of it to disturb their sleep and to
display great zeal where it can serve no useful purpose. For even
if the text of a dream is in this way laboriously rescued from
oblivion, it is easy enough to convince oneself that nothing has
been achieved for the patient. Associations will not come to the
text, and the result is the same as if the dream had not been
preserved. No doubt the doctor has acquired some knowledge which he
would not have done otherwise. But it is not the same thing whether
the analyst knows something or the patient knows it; the importance
of this distinction for the technique of psycho-analysis will be
more fully considered elsewhere.

The Handling Of Dream-Interpretation In Psycho-Analysis

2454

   In conclusion, I will mention a
particular type of dream which, in the nature of the case, occurs
only in the course of psycho-analytic treatment, and may bewilder
or mislead beginners. These are the corroborative dreams which, as
it were ‘tag along behind’; they are easily accessible
to analysis, and their translation merely presents what the
treatment has inferred during the last new days from the material
of the daily associations. When this happens, it looks as though
the patient has been amiable enough to bring us in dream-form
exactly what we had been ‘suggesting’ to him
immediately before. The more experienced analyst will no doubt have
some difficulty in attributing any such amiability to the patient;
he accepts such dreams as hoped-for confirmations, and recognizes
that they are only observed under certain conditions brought about
by the influence of the treatment. The great majority of dreams
forge ahead of the analysis; so that, after subtraction of
everything in them which is already known and understood, there
still remains a more or less clear hint at something which has
hitherto been hidden.