Freud - Complete Works (533 page)

   Anyone who has eaten some
highly-spiced dish at dinner and develops a thirst during the night
is very likely to dream that he is drinking. It is of course
impossible to get rid of a fairly strong need for food or drink by
means of a dream. One wakes up from a dream of this sort still
feeling thirsty, and has to have a drink of real water. The effect
produced by the dream is in this instance trivial from the
practical point of view; but it is none the less clear that it was
produced with the aim of protecting one’s sleep against a
stimulus that was urging one to wake up and take action. When the
need is of less intensity dreams of satisfaction often help one to
get over it.

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   In the same way, dreams create
satisfactions under the influence of sexual stimuli, but these show
peculiarities which deserve mention. Since it is characteristic of
the sexual instinct to be a degree less dependent on its object
than hunger and thirst, the satisfaction in dreams of emission can
be a real one; and in consequence of certain difficulties (which I
shall have to mention later) in its relation to its object, it
happens with special frequency that the real satisfaction is
nevertheless attached to a dream-content which is obscure or
distorted. This characteristic of dreams of emission (as Otto Rank
has pointed out) makes them particularly favourable subjects for
the study of dream-distortion. Furthermore, all adult dreams
arising from bodily needs usually contain, in addition to the
satisfaction, other material which is derived from purely psychical
sources of stimulation and requires interpretation before it can be
understood.

   Moreover I do not mean to assert
that the wish-fulfilment dreams of adults which are constructed on
infantile lines only appear as reactions to the imperative needs
that I have mentioned. We are acquainted as well with short, clear
dreams of this sort which, under the influence of some dominant
situation, arise out of what are unquestionably psychical sources
of stimulation. There are, for instance, dreams of impatience: if
someone has made preparations for a journey, for a theatrical
performance that is important to him, for going to a lecture or
paying a visit, he may dream of a premature fulfilment of his
expectation; he may, during the night before the event, see himself
arrived at his destination, present at the theatre, in conversation
with the person he is going to visit. Or there are what are justly
known as dreams of convenience, in which a person who would like to
sleep longer dreams that he is already up and is washing, or is
already at school, whereas he is really still sleeping and would
rather get up in a dream than in reality. The wish to sleep, which
we have recognized as regularly playing a part in the construction
of dreams, comes into the open in these dreams and reveals itself
in them as the essential dream-constructor. There is good reason
for ranking the need to sleep alongside of the other great bodily
needs.

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   Here is a reproduction of a
picture by Schwind in the Schack Gallery in Munich, which shows how
correctly the artist grasped the way in which dreams arise from the
dominant situation. Its title is ‘The Prisoner’s
Dream’, a dream whose content is bound to be his escape. It
is a happy point that he is to escape through the window, for it is
the stimulus of the light pouring in by the window that is putting
an end to the prisoner’s sleep. The gnomes who are clambering
up on one another no doubt represent the successive positions which
he himself would have had to take as he climbed up to the level of
the window; and, if I am not mistaken and am not attributing too
much deliberation to the artist, the topmost of the gnomes, who is
sawing through the bars - that is, who is doing what the prisoner
would like to do - has the same features as himself.

THE PRISONERS DREAM

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   In all dreams other than
children’s dreams and those of an infantile type our path is,
as I have said, obstructed by dream distortion. We cannot tell, to
begin with, whether these other dreams too are wish-fulfilments as
we suspect, we cannot guess from their manifest content to what
psychical stimulus they owe their origin, and we cannot prove that
they too are endeavouring to get rid of that stimulus or in some
way deal with it. They must be interpreted - that is, translated -,
their distortion must be undone, and their manifest content
replaced by their latent one, before we can form a judgement as to
whether what we have found in infantile dreams can claim to be
valid for all dreams.

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LECTURE IX

THE
CENSORSHIP OF DREAMS

LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN
, - The study of the dreams of children has taught
us the origin, the essential nature and the function of dreams.
Dreams are things which get rid of (psychical) stimuli
disturbing to sleep, by the method of hallucinatory
satisfaction
. We have, however, only been able to explain one
group of the dreams of adults - those which we have described as
dreams of an infantile type. What the facts are about the others we
cannot yet say, but we do not understand them. We have arrived at a
provisional finding, however, whose importance we must not
under-estimate. Whenever a dream has been completely intelligible
to us, it has turned out to be the hallucinated fulfilment of a
wish. This coincidence cannot be a chance one nor a matter of
indifference.

   We have assumed of dreams of
another sort, on the basis of various considerations and on the
analogy of our views on parapraxes, that they are a distorted
substitute for an unknown content, and that the first thing is to
trace them back to it. Our immediate task, then, is an enquiry
which will lead to an understanding of this
distortion in
dreams
.

   Dream-distortion is what makes a
dream seem strange and unintelligible to us. We want to know a
number of things about it: firstly, where it comes from - its
dynamics -, secondly, what it does and, lastly, how it does it. We
can also say that dream distortion is carried out by the
dream-work; and we want to describe the dream-work and trace it
back to the forces operating in it.

   And now listen to this dream. It
was recorded by a lady belonging to our group,¹ and, as she
tells us, was derived from a highly-esteemed and cultivated elderly
lady. No analysis was made of the dream; our informant remarks that
for a psycho-analyst it needs no interpreting. Nor did the dreamer
herself interpret it, but she judged it and condemned it as though
she understood how to interpret it; for she said of it: ‘And
disgusting, stupid stuff like this was dreamt by a woman of fifty,
who has no other thoughts day and night but worry about her
child!’

  
¹
Frau Dr. von Hug-Hellmuth.

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   Here, then, is the dream - which
deals with ‘love services’ in war-time.¹
‘
She went to Garrison Hospital No. I and informed the
sentry at the gate that she must speak to the Chief Medical Officer
(mentioning a name that was unknown to her) as she wanted to
volunteer for service at the hospital. She pronounced the word
"service" in such a way that the N.C.O. at once
understood that she meant "love service". Since she was
an elderly lady, after some hesitation he allowed her to pass.
Instead of finding the Chief Medical Officer, however, she reached
a large and gloomy apartment in which a number of officers and army
doctors were standing and sitting round a long table. She
approached a staff surgeon with her request, and he understood her
meaning after she had said only a few words. The actual wording of
her speech in the dream was: "I and many other women and girls
in Vienna are ready to . . ." at this point in
the dream her words turned into a mumble ". . . for
the troops - officers and other ranks without distinction."
She could tell from the expressions on the officers’ faces,
partly embarrassed and partly sly, that everyone had understood her
meaning correctly. The lady went on: "I’m aware that our
decision must sound surprising, but we mean it in bitter earnest.
No one asks a soldier in the field whether he wishes to die or
not." There followed an awkward silence of some minutes. The
staff surgeon then put his arm round her waist and said
"Suppose, madam, it actually came to . . .
(mumble)." She drew away from him, thinking to herself:
"He’s like all the rest of them", and replied:
"Good gracious, I’m an old woman and I might never come
to that. Besides, there’s one condition that must be
observed: age must be respected. It must never happen that an
elderly woman . . . (mumble) . . . a mere boy. That
would be terrible." "I understand perfectly,"
replied the staff surgeon. Some of the officers, and among them one
who had been a suitor of hers in her youth, laughed out loud. The
lady then asked to be taken to the Chief Medical Officer, with whom
she was acquainted, so that the whole matter could be thrashed out;
but she found, to her consternation, that she could not recall his
name. Nevertheless, the staff surgeon, most politely and
respectfully, showed her the way up to the second floor by a very
narrow, iron, spiral staircase, which led directly from the room to
the upper storeys of the building. As she went up she heard an
officer say: "That’s a tremendous decision to make - no
matter whether a woman’s young or old! Splendid of her!"
Feeling simply that she was doing her duty, she walked up an
interminable staircase.

   ‘The dream was repeated
twice in the course of a few weeks, with, as the lady remarked,
some quite unimportant and meaningless modifications.’

  
¹
[‘
Liebesdienste
’ means
in the first instance ‘services performed for love’,
i.e. ‘unremunerated services’; but it could bear
another, less respectable, meaning.]

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   From its continuous nature, the
dream resembles a daytime phantasy: there are few breaks in it, and
some of the details of its content could have been explained if
they had been enquired into, but that, as you know, was not done.
But what is remarkable and interesting from our point of view is
that the dream shows several gaps - gaps not in the dreamer’s
memory of the dream but in the content of the dream itself. At
three points the content was, as it were, extinguished; the
speeches in which these gaps occurred were interrupted by a mumble.
As no analysis was carried out, we have, strictly speaking, no
right to say anything about the sense of the dream. Nevertheless
there are hints on which conclusions can be based (for instance, in
the phrase ‘love services’); but above all, the
portions of the speeches immediately preceding the mumbles call for
the gaps to be filled in, and in an unambiguous manner. If we make
the insertions, the content of the phantasy turns out to be that
the dreamer is prepared, by way of fulfilling a patriotic duty, to
put herself at the disposal of the troops, both officers and other
ranks, for the satisfaction of their erotic needs. This is, of
course, highly objectionable, the model of a shameless libidinal
phantasy - but it does not appear in the dream at all. Precisely at
the points at which the context would call for this admission, the
manifest dream-contains an indistinct mumble: something has been
lost or suppressed.

   You will, I hope, think it
plausible to suppose that it was precisely the objectionable nature
of these passages that was the motive for their suppression. Where
shall we find a parallel to such an event? You need not look far in
these days. Take up any political newspaper and you will find that
here and there the, text is absent and in its place nothing except
the white paper is to be seen. This, as you know, is the work of
the press censorship. In these empty places there was something
that displeased the higher censorship authorities and for that
reason it was removed - a pity, you feel, since no doubt it was the
most interesting thing in the paper - the ‘best
bit’.

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   On other occasions the censorship
has not gone to work on a passage
after
it has already been
completed. The author has seen in advance which passages might
expect to give rise to objections from the censorship and has on
that account toned them down in advance, modified them slightly, or
has contented himself with approximations and allusions to what
would genuinely have come from his pen. In that case there are no
blank places in the paper, but circumlocutions and obscurities of
expression appearing at certain points will enable you to guess
where regard has been paid to the censorship in advance.