Freud - Complete Works (531 page)

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3217

   (
e
) Another man dreamt
that
his brother was in a box
[
Kasten
]. In his first
response ‘
Kasten
’ was replaced by
‘
Schrank
[cupboard]’, and the second gave the
interpretation: his brother was restricting himself
[‘
schränkt sich ein
’].

   (
f
) The dreamer
climbed
to the top of a mountain, which commanded an unusually extensive
view
. This sounds quite rational and you might suppose that
there is nothing to interpret in it and that all we have to do is
to enquire what memory gave rise to the dream and the reason for
its being stirred up. But you would be wrong. It turned out that
this dream stood in need of interpreting just as much as any other,
more confused one. For none of his own mountain climbs occurred to
the dreamer, but he thought of the fact that an acquaintance of his
was the editor of a ‘Survey’, dealing with our
relations with the most remote parts of the earth. Thus the latent
dream-thought was an identification of the dreamer with the
‘surveyor’,

   Here we have a new type of
relation between the manifest and latent dream-elements. The former
is not so much a distortion of the latter as a representation of
it, a plastic, concrete, portrayal of it, taking its start from the
wording. But precisely on that account it is once more a
distortion, for we have long since forgotten from what concrete
image the word originated and consequently fail to recognize it
when it is replaced by the image. When you consider that the
manifest dream is made up predominantly of visual images and more
rarely of thoughts and words, you can imagine what importance
attaches to this kind of relation in the construction of dreams.
You will see, too, that in this way it becomes possible in regard
to a large number of abstract thoughts to create pictures to act as
substitutes for them in the manifest dream while at the same time
serving the purpose of concealment. This is the technique of the
familiar picture-puzzles. Why it is that these representations have
an appearance of being jokes is a special problem into which we
need not enter here.

   There is a fourth kind of
relation between the manifest and latent elements, which I must
continue to hold back from you until we come upon its key-word in
considering technique. Even so I shall not have given you a full
list; but it will serve our purpose.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   Do you feel bold enough now to
venture upon the interpretation of a
whole
dream? Let us
make the experiment, to see whether we are well enough equipped for
the task. I shall of course not select one of the most obscure
ones; nevertheless, it will be one that gives a well-marked picture
of the attributes of a dream.

   Very well then. A lady who,
though she was still young, had been married for many years had the
following dream:
She was at the theatre with her husband. One
side of the stalls was completely empty. Her husband had told her
that Elisa L. and her fiancé had wanted to go too, but had
only been able to get bad seats - three for 1 florin 50 kreuzers -
and of course they could not take those. She thought it would not
really have done any harm if they had
.

   The first thing the dreamer
reported to us was that the precipitating cause of the dream was
touched on in its manifest content. Her husband had in fact told
her that Elise L., who was approximately her contemporary, had just
become engaged. The dream was a reaction to this information. We
know already that it is easy in the case of many dreams to point to
a precipitating cause like this from the previous day, and that the
dreamer is often able to trace this for us without any difficulty.
The dreamer in the present case put similar information at our
disposal for other elements of the manifest dream as well. - Where
did the detail come from about one side of the stalls being empty?
It was an allusion to a real event of the previous week. She had
planned to go to a particular play and had therefore bought her
tickets
early
- so early that she had had to pay a booking
fee. When they got to the theatre it turned out that her anxiety
was quite uncalled-for, since
one side of the stalls was almost
empty
. It would have been early enough if she had bought the
tickets on the actual day of the performance. Her husband had kept
on teasing her for having been in too much of a hurry. - What was
the origin of the 1 florin 50 kreuzers? It arose in quite another
connection, which had nothing to do with the former one but also
alluded to some information from the previous day. Her
sister-in-law had been given a present of 150 florins by her
husband and had been in a great hurry - the silly goose - to rush
off to the jewellers’ and exchange the money for a piece of
jewellery. - Where did the ‘three’ come from? She could
think of nothing in connection with that, unless we counted the
idea that her newly-engaged friend, Elise L., was only three months
her junior, though she herself had been a married woman for nearly
ten years. - And the absurd notion of taking three tickets for only
two people? She had nothing to say to that, and refused to report
any further ideas or information.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3219

   But all the same, she had given
us so much material in these few associations that it was possible
to guess the latent dream-thoughts from them. We cannot help being
struck by the fact that periods of time occur at several points in
the information she gave us about the dream, and these provide a
common factor between the different parts of the material. She took
the theatre tickets
too early
, bought them
over-hurriedly
so that she had to pay more than was
necessary; so too her sister-in-law had been
in a hurry
to
take her money to the jewellers and buy some jewellery with it, as
though otherwise she would
miss it
. If, in addition to the
‘too early’ and ‘in a hurry’ which we have
stressed, we take into account the precipitating cause of the
dream-the news that her friend, though only three months
her
junior
, had nevertheless got an excellent husband - and the
criticism of her sister-in-law expressed in the idea that it was
absurd
of her to be in such a hurry, then we find ourselves
presented almost spontaneously with the following construction of
the latent dream-thoughts, for which the manifest dream is a
severely distorted substitute:

   ‘Really it was
absurd
of me to be in such a hurry to get married! I can see
from Elise’s example that
I
could have got a husband
later too.’ (Being in too great a hurry was represented by
her own behaviour in buying the tickets and by her sister-in-laws
in buying the jewellery. Going to the play appeared as a substitute
forgetting married.) This would seem to be the main thought. We may
perhaps proceed further, though with less certainty, since the
analysis ought not to have been without the dreamer’s
comments at these points: ‘And I could have got one a hundred
times better with the money!’ (150 florins is a hundred times
more than 1 florin 50.) If we were to put her dowry in place of the
money, it would mean that her husband was bought with her dowry:
the jewellery, and the bad tickets as well, would be substitutes
for her husband. It would be still more satisfactory if the actual
element ‘three tickets’ had something to do with a
husband. But we have not got so far as that in our understanding of
the dream. We have only discovered that the dream expresses the
low value
assigned by her to her own husband and her regret
at having
married so early
.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   We shall, I fancy, be more
surprised and confused than satisfied by the outcome of this first
dream-interpretation. We have been given too much in one dose -
more than we are yet able to cope with. We can already see that we
shall not exhaust the lessons of this interpretation of a dream.
Let us hasten to single out what we can recognize as established
new discoveries.

   In the first place, it is a
remarkable thing that the main emphasis in the latent thoughts lies
on the element of being in too great a hurry; nothing of the sort
is to be found in the manifest dream. Without the analysis, we
should have had no suspicion that that factor plays any part. It
seems, therefore, to be possible for what is in fact the main
thing, the centre of the unconscious thoughts, to be absent in the
manifest dream. This means that the impression made by the whole
dream must be fundamentally altered. In the second place, there is
an absurd combination in the dream: three for 1 florin 50. We
detected in the dream-thoughts the assertion that ‘it was
absurd (to marry so early)'. Can it be doubted that this
thought, ‘it was absurd’, is represented by the
inclusion of an absurd element in the manifest dream? And in the
third place, a glance of comparison shows us that the relation
between the manifest and latent elements is no simple one; it is
far from being the case that one manifest element always takes the
place of one latent one. It is rather that there is a
group-relation between the two layers, within which one manifest
element can replace several latent ones or one latent element can
be replaced by several manifest ones.

   As regards the meaning of the
dream and the dreamer’s attitude to it, we might point out
much that is similarly surprising. She agreed to the interpretation
indeed, but she was astonished at it. She was not aware that she
assigned such a low value to her husband; nor did she know
why
she should set such a low value on him. So there is
still much that is unintelligible about it. It really seems to me
that we are not yet equipped for interpreting a dream and that we
need first to be given some further instruction and
preparation.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3221

LECTURE VIII

CHILDREN’S DREAMS

LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN
, - I am under the impression that we have advanced
too quickly. Let us go back a little. Before we made our last
attempt at overcoming the difficulty of distortion in dreams by the
help of our technique, we were saying that our best plan would be
to get round the difficulty by keeping to dreams in which there was
no distortion or only a very little - if such dreams exist. This
will once more mean a divergence from the historical development of
our discoveries; for actually it was only after the technique of
interpretation had been consistently applied and distorted dreams
had been completely analysed that the existence of dreams that are
free from distortion came to our notice.

   The dreams we are in search of
occur in children. They are short, clear, coherent, easy to
understand and unambiguous; but they are nevertheless undoubtedly
dreams. You must not suppose, however, that all children’s
dreams are of this kind. Dream-distortion sets in very early in
childhood, and dreams dreamt by children of between five and eight
have been reported which bear all the characteristics of later
ones. But if you limit yourselves to ages between the beginning of
observable mental activity and the fourth or fifth year, you will
come upon a number of dreams which possess the characteristics that
can be described as ‘infantile’ and you will find a few
of the same kind in later years of childhood. Indeed, under certain
conditions even adults have dreams which are quite similar to the
typically infantile ones.

   From these children’s
dreams we can draw conclusions with great ease and certainty on the
essential nature of dreams in general, and we can hope that those
conclusions will prove decisive and universally valid.

   (1) No analysis, no application
of any technique is necessary in order to understand these dreams.
There is no need to question a child who tells us his dream. One
has, however, to add a piece of information to it from the events
of the child’s life. There is invariably some experience of
the previous day which explains the dream to us. The dream is the
reaction of the child’s mental life in his sleep to this
experience of the previous day.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3222

   We will take a few examples on
which to base our further conclusions.

   (
a
) A boy of 22 months was
told to hand over a basket of cherries to someone as a birthday
present. He was obviously very unwilling to do it, although he was
promised that he should have a few of them for himself. Next
morning he reported having dreamt: ‘
Hermann eaten all the
chewwies!
’

   (
b
) A girl of 3¼
years was taken across the lake for the first time. At the
landing-stage she did not want to leave the boat and wept bitterly.
The crossing had been too short for her. Next morning she
announced: ‘
Last night I went on the lake
.’ We
may safely add that this crossing had lasted longer.

  
(
c) A boy of 5¼
years was taken on an excursion up the Echerntal near Hallstatt. He
had been told that Hallstatt was at the foot of the Dachstein. He
had shown great interest in this mountain. There was a fine view of
it from where he was staying at Aussee, and the Simony Hut on it
could be made out through a telescope. The child had often tried to
see it through the telescope - with what success was not known. The
excursion began in an atmosphere of cheerful expectation. Whenever
a fresh mountain came into view the boy asked: ‘Is that the
Dachstein?’ and he became more and more depressed the more
often he was told it was not. Finally he fell completely silent and
refused to go with the rest of the party up the short ascent to the
waterfall, and it was thought that he must be overtired. But next
morning he said with a radiant face: ‘Last night I dreamt
we were at the Simony Hut
.’ So that had been what he
expected to do on the excursion. He gave no further details except
something he had heard before: ‘You have to climb up steps
for six hours.’