Freud - Complete Works (503 page)

A Metapsychological Supplement To The Theory Of Dreams

3033

   We have already in
The
Interpretation of Dreams
described the way in which the
regression of the preconscious day’s residues takes place in
dream-formation. In this process thoughts are transformed into
images, mainly of a visual sort; that is to say, word-presentations
are taken back to the thing-presentations which correspond to them,
as if, in general, the process were dominated by considerations of
representability
. When regression has been completed, a
number of cathexes are left over in the system
Ucs.
-
cathexes of memories of
things
. The primary psychical
process is brought to bear on these memories, till, by condensation
of them and displacement between their respective cathexes, it has
shaped the manifest dream-content. Only where the
word-presentations occurring in the day’s residues are recent
and current residues of
perceptions
, and not the expression
of
thoughts
, are they themselves treated like
thing-presentations, and subjected to the influence of condensation
and displacement. Hence the rule laid down in
The Interpretation
of Dreams
, and since confirmed beyond all doubt, that words and
speeches in the dream-content are not freshly formed, but are
modelled on speeches from the day preceding the dream (or on some
other recent impressions, such as something that has been read). It
is very noteworthy how little the dream-work keeps to the
word-presentations; it is always ready to exchange one word for
another till it finds the expression which is most handy for
plastic representation.¹

  
¹
I also ascribe to considerations of
representability the fact which is insisted on and perhaps
over-estimated by Silberer that some dreams admit of two
simultaneous, and yet essentially different interpretations, one of
which he calls the ‘analytic’ and the other the
‘anagogic’. When this happens, we are invariably
concerned with thoughts of a very abstract nature, which must have
made their representation in the dream very difficult. We might
compare it with the problem of representing in pictures a leading
article from a political newspaper. In such cases, the dream-work
must first replace the text that consists of abstract thoughts by
one more concrete, connected with the former in some way - by
comparison, symbolism, allegorical allusion, or best of all,
genetically - so that the more concrete text then takes the place
of the abstract one as material for the dream-work. The abstract
thoughts yield the so-called anagogic interpretation, which, in our
interpretative work, we discover more easily than the true analytic
one. Otto Rank has justly remarked that certain dreams about their
treatment, dreamt by patients in analysis, are the best models on
which to form a view of these dreams which admit of more than one
interpretation.

A Metapsychological Supplement To The Theory Of Dreams

3034

   Now it is in this respect that
the essential difference between the dream-work and schizophrenia
becomes clear. In the latter, what becomes the subject of
modification by the primary process are the words themselves in
which the preconscious thought was expressed; in dreams, what are
subject to this modification are not the words, but the
thing-presentations to which the words have been taken back. In
dreams there is a topographical regression; in schizophrenia there
is not. In dreams there is free communication between (
Pcs.
)
word-cathexes and (
Ucs.
) thing-cathexes, while it is
characteristic of schizophrenia that this communication is cut off.
The impression this difference makes on one is lessened precisely
by the dream-interpretations we carry out in psycho-analytic
practice. For, owing to the fact that dream-interpretation traces
the course taken by the dream-work, follows the paths which lead
from the latent thoughts to the dream-elements, reveals the way in
which verbal ambiguities have been exploited, and points out the
verbal bridges between different groups of material - owing to all
this, we get an impression now of a joke, now of schizophrenia, and
are apt to forget that for a dream all operations with words are no
more than a preparation for a regression to things.

   The completion of the
dream-process consists in the thought-content - regressively
transformed and worked over into a wishful phantasy - becoming
conscious as a sense-perception; while this is happening it
undergoes secondary revision, to which every perceptual concept is
subject. The dream-wish, as we say, is
hallucinated
, and, as
a hallucination, meets with belief in the reality of its
fulfilment. It is precisely round this concluding piece in the
formation of dreams that the gravest uncertainties centre, and it
is in order to clear them up that we are proposing to compare
dreams with pathological states akin to them.

   The formation of the wishful
phantasy and its regression to hallucination are the most essential
parts of the dream-work, but they do not belong exclusively to
dreams. They are also found in two morbid states: in acute
hallucinatory confusion (Meynert’s ‘amentia’),
and in the hallucinatory phase of schizophrenia. The hallucinatory
delirium of amentia is a clearly recognizable wishful phantasy,
often completely well ordered like a perfect day-dream. One might
speak quite generally of a ‘hallucinatory wishful
psychosis’, and attribute it equally to dreams and amentia.
There are even dreams which consist of nothing but undistorted
wishful phantasies with a very rich content. The hallucinatory
phase of schizophrenia has been less thoroughly studied; it seems
as a rule to be of a composite nature, but in its essence it might
well correspond to a fresh attempt at restitution, designed to
restore a libidinal cathexis to the ideas of objects.¹ I
cannot extend the comparison to the other hallucinatory states in
various pathological disorders, because in their case I have no
experience of my own upon which to draw, and cannot utilize that of
other observers.

  
¹
In the paper on ‘The
Unconscious’ we recognized the hypercathexis of
word-presentations as a first attempt of this kind.

A Metapsychological Supplement To The Theory Of Dreams

3035

   Let us be clear that the
hallucinatory wishful psychosis - in dreams or elsewhere - achieves
two by no means identical results. It not only brings hidden or
repressed wishes into consciousness; it also represents them, with
the subject’s entire belief, as fulfilled. The concurrence of
these two results calls for explanation. It is quite impossible to
maintain that unconscious wishes must necessarily be taken for
realities when once they have become conscious; for, as we know,
our judgement is very well able to distinguish realities from ideas
and wishes, however intense they may be. On the other hand, it
seems justifiable to assume that belief in reality is bound up with
perception through the senses. When once a thought has followed the
path to regression as far back as to the unconscious memory-traces
of objects and thence to perception, we accept the perception of it
as real. So hallucination brings belief in reality with it. We now
have to ask ourselves what determines the coming into being of a
hallucination. The first answer would be regression, and this would
replace the problem of the origin of hallucination by that of the
mechanism of regression. As regards dreams, this latter problem
need not remain long unanswered. Regression of
Pcs.
dream-thoughts to mnemic images of things is clearly the result of
the attraction which the
Ucs.
instinctual representatives -
e.g. repressed memories of experiences - exercise upon the thoughts
which have been put into words. But we soon perceive that we are on
a false scent. If the secret of hallucination is nothing else than
that of regression, every regression of sufficient intensity would
produce hallucination with belief in its reality. But we are quite
familiar with situations in which a process of regressive
reflection brings to consciousness very clear visual mnemic images,
though we do not on that account for a single moment take them for
real perceptions. Again, we could very well imagine the dream-work
penetrating to mnemic images of this kind, making conscious to us
that was previously unconscious, and holding up to us a wishful
phantasy which rouses our longing, but which we should not regard
as a real fulfilment of the wish. Hallucination must therefore be
something more than the regressive revival of mnemic images that
are in themselves
Ucs.

A Metapsychological Supplement To The Theory Of Dreams

3036

   Let us, furthermore, bear in mind
the great practical importance of distinguishing perceptions from
ideas, however intensely recalled. Our whole relation to the
external world, to reality, depends on our ability to do so. We
have put forward the fiction that we did not always possess this
ability and that at the beginning of our mental life we did in fact
hallucinate the satisfying object when we felt the need for it. But
in such a situation satisfaction did not occur, and this failure
must very soon have moved us to create some contrivance with the
help of which it was possible to distinguish such wishful
perceptions from a real fulfilment and to avoid them for the
future. In other words, we gave up hallucinatory satisfaction of
our wishes at a very early period and set up a kind of
‘reality-testing’. The question now arises in what this
reality-testing consisted, and how the hallucinatory wishful
psychosis of dreams and amentia and similar conditions succeeds in
abolishing it and in re-establishing the old mode of
satisfaction.

   The answer can be given if we now
proceed to define more precisely the third of our psychical
systems, the system
Cs.
, which hitherto we have not sharply
distinguished from the
Pcs.
In
The Interpretation of
Dreams
we were already led to a decision to regard conscious
perception as the function of a special system, to which we
ascribed certain curious properties, and to which we shall now have
good grounds for attributing other characteristics as well. We may
regard this system, which is there called the
Pcpt.
, as
coinciding with the system
Cs.
, on whose activity becoming
conscious usually depends. Nevertheless, even so, the fact of a
thing’s becoming conscious still does not wholly coincide
with its belonging to a system, for we have learnt that it is
possible to be aware of sensory mnemic images to which we cannot
possibly allow a psychical location in the systems
Cs.
or
Pcpt.

   We must, however, put off
discussing this difficulty till we can focus our interest upon the
system
Cs.
itself. In the present connection we may be
allowed to assume that hallucination consists in a cathexis of the
system
Cs.
(
Pcpt.
), which, however, is not effected -
as normally - from without, but from within, and that a necessary
condition for the occurrence of hallucination is that regression
shall be carried far enough to reach this system itself and in so
doing be able to pass over reality-testing.¹

   In an earlier passage² we
ascribed to the still helpless organism a capacity for making a
first orientation in the world by means of its perceptions,
distinguishing ‘external’ and ‘internal’
according to their relation to its muscular action. A perception
which is made to disappear by an action is recognized as external,
as reality; where such an action makes no difference, the
perception originates within the subject’s own body - it is
not real. It is of value to the individual to possess a means such
as this of recognizing reality, which at the same time helps him to
deal with it, and he would be glad to be equipped with a similar
power against the often merciless claims of his instincts. That is
why he takes such pains to transpose outwards what becomes
troublesome to him from within - that is, to
project
it.

  
¹
I may add by way of supplement that any
attempt to explain hallucination would have to start out from
negative
rather than positive hallucination.

  
²
‘Instincts and their
Vicissitudes’.

A Metapsychological Supplement To The Theory Of Dreams

3037

   This function of orientating the
individual in the world by discrimination between what is internal
and what is external must now, after detailed dissection of the
mental apparatus, be ascribed to the system
Cs.
(
Pcpt.
) alone. The
Cs.
must have at its disposal a
motor innervation which determines whether the perception can be
made to disappear or whether it proves resistant. Reality-testing
need be nothing more than this contrivance.¹ We can say
nothing more precise on this point, for we know too little as yet
of the nature and mode of operation of the system
Cs.
We
shall place reality-testing among the major
institutions of the
ego
, alongside the
censorships
which we have come to
recognize between the psychical systems, and we shall expect that
the analysis of the narcissistic disorders will help to bring other
similar institutions to light.

   On the other hand, we can already
learn from pathology the way in which reality-testing may be done
away with or put out of action. We shall see this more clearly in
the wishful psychosis of amentia than in that of dreams. Amentia is
the reaction to a loss which reality affirms, but which the ego has
to deny, since it finds it insupportable. Thereupon the ego breaks
off its relation to reality; it withdraws the cathexis from the
system of perceptions,
Cs.
- or rather, perhaps, it
withdraws
a
cathexis, the special nature of which may be the
subject of further enquiry. With this turning away from reality,
reality-testing is got rid of, the (unrepressed, completely
conscious) wishful phantasies are able to press forward into the
system, and they are there regarded as a better reality. Such a
withdrawal may be put on a par with the processes of repression.
Amentia presents the interesting spectacle of a breach between the
ego and one of its organs - one which had perhaps been its most
faithful servant and had been bound up with it the most
intimately.²