Freud - Complete Works (545 page)

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3305

   It will not be difficult for us
now to reach a still better understanding of anxiety-dreams. We
will bring up one more observation and then make up our minds to
adopt a hypothesis in favour of which there is much to be said. The
observation is that anxiety-dreams often have a content entirely
devoid of distortion, a content which has, so to speak, evaded the
censorship. An anxiety-dream is often the undisguised fulfilment of
a wish - not, of course, of an acceptable wish, but of a repudiated
one. The generation of anxiety has taken the place of the
censorship. Whereas we can say of an infantile dream that it is the
open fulfilment of a permitted wish, and of an ordinary distorted
dream that it is the disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish, the
only formula which fits an anxiety-dream is that it is the open
fulfilment of a repressed wish. The anxiety is a sign that the
repressed wish has shown itself stronger than the censorship, that
it has put through, or is on the point of putting through, its
wish-fulfilment in spite of the censorship. We perceive that what
is for it a wish-fulfilment can only be for us, who are on the side
of the censorship, an occasion for distressing feelings and for
fending the wish off. The anxiety that emerges in the dream is, if
you like, anxiety at the strength of these wishes which are
normally held down. Why this fending-off appears in the form of
anxiety cannot be discovered from the study of dreams alone;
anxiety must clearly be studied elsewhere.

   We may suppose that what is true
of undistorted anxiety dreams applies also to those which are
partly distorted as well as to other unpleasurable dreams, in which
the distressing feelings probably correspond to an approach to
anxiety. Anxiety-dreams are as a rule also arousal dreams; we
usually interrupt our sleep before the repressed wish in the dream
has put its fulfilment through completely in spite of the
censorship. In that case the function of the dream has failed, but
its essential nature is not altered by this. We have compared
dreams to the night-watchman or guardian of sleep, who tries to
protect our sleep from disturbance. The night-watchman, too, may
reach the point of waking the sleeper if he feels he is too weak
alone to drive off the disturbance or the danger. Nevertheless we
sometimes succeed in holding on to our sleep even when the dream
begins to be precarious and to be turning into anxiety. We say to
ourselves in our sleep ‘after all it’s only a
dream’, and sleep on.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3306

   When does it happen that a
dream-wish is in a position to overpower the censorship? The
condition necessary for this may be fulfilled equally well by the
dream-wish or by the dream censorship. The wish may for an unknown
reason be excessively strong on some occasion; but one gets an
impression that it is more often the behaviour of the
dream-censorship that is responsible for this displacement of their
relative strengths. We have already seen that the censorship acts
with varying intensity in each particular case, that it treats each
element of a dream with a different degree of severity. We can now
add a further hypothesis to the effect that it is in general very
variable and does not always employ equal severity to the same
objectionable element. If things turn out so that on some occasion
it feels itself powerless against a dream-wish which threatens to
take it by surprise, instead of distortion, it makes use of its
last remaining expedient and abandons the state of sleep, at the
same time generating anxiety.

   In this connection it strikes us
that we are still quite ignorant of why it is that these evil,
repudiated wishes become active precisely at night and disturb us
during our sleep. The answer is almost bound to lie in some
hypothesis going back to the nature of the state of sleep. In
day-time the heavy weight of censorship rests on them and as a rule
makes it impossible for them to manifest themselves in any
activity. At night this censorship, like all the other interests of
mental life, is probably withdrawn, or at least greatly reduced, in
favour of the single wish to sleep. It is this lowering of the
censorship at night that the forbidden wishes have to thank for
being able to become active once more. There are some neurotic
patients who are unable to sleep and who admit to us that their
insomnia was originally intentional. They did not dare to sleep
because they were afraid of their dreams - afraid, that is, of the
results of the weakening of the censorship. You will easily see,
however, that in spite of this the withdrawal of the censorship
implies no gross carelessness. The state of sleep paralyses our
motive powers. If our evil intentions begin to stir, they can,
after all, do nothing more than precisely cause a dream, which is
harmless from the practical point of view. It is this soothing
consideration that is the basis of the highly sensible remark made
by the sleeper-made at night, it is true, but not forming part of
dream-life: ‘After all it’s only a dream. So let us
leave it to take its course, and let us sleep on.’

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3307

   If, in the third place, you will
recall our idea that the dreamer fighting against his own wishes is
to be compared with a summation of two separate, though in some way
intimately connected, people, you will understand another
possibility. For there is a possibility that the fulfilment of a
wish may bring about something very far from pleasant - namely, a
punishment. Here we can once more use the fairy tale of the three
wishes as an illustration. The fried sausages on a plate were the
direct fulfilment of the wish of the first person, the woman, The
sausages on her nose were the fulfilment of the wish of the second
person, the man, but were at the same time a punishment for the
woman’s foolish wish. (We shall discover in neuroses the
motive for the third wish, the last remaining one in the fairy
tale.) There are many such punitive trends in the mental life of
human beings; they are very powerful, and we may hold them
responsible for some of the distressing dreams. Perhaps you will
now say that this leaves very little over of the famous
wish-fulfilment. But if you look more closely you will admit that
you are wrong. Compared with the multiplicity (which I shall
mention later) of the things that dreams might be and according to
many authorities actually are, our solution - wish-fulfilment,
anxiety-fulfilment, punishment-fulfilment - is a very restricted
one. We may add that the anxiety is the direct opposite of the
wish, that opposites are especially close to one another in
associations and that in the unconscious they coalesce; and
further, that the punishment is also the fulfilment of a wish - of
the wish of the other, censoring person.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3308

   On the whole, therefore, I have
made no concession to your objection to the theory of
wish-fulfilment. It is our duty, however, to be able to indicate
the wish-fulfilment in any distorted dream we may come across, and
we shall certainly not evade the task. Let us go back to the dream
we have already interpreted of the three bad theatre-tickets for 1
florin 50, from which we have already learnt so much. I hope you
still recollect it. A lady, whose husband had told her during the
day that her friend Elise, who was only three months her junior,
had become engaged, dreamt that she was at the theatre with her
husband. One side of the stalls was almost empty. Her husband said
to her that Elise and her fiancé had wanted to go to the
theatre too but had not been able to, since they had only got bad
seats - three for 1 florin 50. She thought it would not really have
done any harm if they had. We found that the dream-thoughts related
to her anger at having married so early and to her dissatisfaction
with her husband. We may be curious to discover how these gloomy
thoughts were transformed into the fulfilment of a wish and where
any trace of it is to be found in the manifest content of the
dream. We already know that the element ‘too early, in a
hurry’ was eliminated from the dream by the censorship. The
empty stalls were an allusion to it. The mysterious ‘three
for 1 florin 50' now becomes more intelligible to us with the
help of the symbolism with which we have meanwhile become
acquainted. The ‘3'¹ really means a man and the
manifest element is easy to translate: buying a husband with her
dowry. (‘I could have got one ten times better with my
dowry.’) ‘Marrying’ is clearly replaced by
‘going to the theatre’. ‘Taking the theatre
tickets too early’ is, indeed, an immediate substitute for
‘marrying too early’. This substitution is, however,
the work of a wish-fulfilment. Our dreamer was not always so
dissatisfied with her early marriage as she was on the day when she
received the news of her friend’s engagement. She had been
proud of it at one time and regarded herself as at an advantage
over her friend. Simple-minded girls, after becoming engaged, are
reputed often to express their joy that they will soon be able to
go to the theatre, to all the plays which have hitherto been
prohibited, and will be allowed to see everything. The pleasure in
looking, or curiosity, which is revealed in this was no doubt
originally a sexual desire to look, directed towards sexual
happenings and especially on to the girls’ parents, and hence
it became a powerful motive for urging them to an early marriage.
In this way a visit to the theatre became an obvious substitute, by
way of allusion, for being married. Thus the dreamer, in her
present anger at her early marriage, harked back to the time at
which early marriage was the fulfilment of a wish because it
satisfied her scopophilia, and, under the lead of this old wishful
impulse, she replaced marriage by going to the theatre.

  
¹
I have not mentioned another plausible
interpretation of this ‘3' in a childless woman, since
this analysis brought up no material in support of it.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3309

   I cannot be accused of having
specially chosen out the most convenient example as evidence of a
concealed wish-fulfilment. The procedure would have had to be the
same in the case of other distorted dreams. I cannot demonstrate
this to you now, and I will only express my conviction that it
could always be successfully accomplished. I will, however, dwell a
little longer on this theoretical point. Experience has taught me
that it is one of those most exposed to attack in the whole theory
of dreams, and that many contradictions and misunderstandings arise
from it. Apart from this, you may perhaps still be under the
impression that I have already withdrawn part of my assertion in
saying that a dream is a fulfilled wish or the opposite of one, or
a realized anxiety or punishment; and you may think this is an
opportunity of forcing further qualifications out of me. I have
also been reproached for putting forward things that seem to me
obvious in a manner that is too concise and consequently
unconvincing.

   When someone has accompanied us
so far in the interpretation of dreams and has accepted everything
that has been brought forward up to this point, it often happens
that he comes to a halt at wish-fulfilment and says: ‘Granted
that dreams always have a sense, and that that sense can be
discovered by the technique of psycho-analysis, why must that
sense, all evidence to the contrary, be invariably pushed into the
formula of wish-fulfilment? Why should not the sense of this
nightly thinking be of as many kinds as that of daytime thinking?
Why, that is, should not a dream correspond sometimes to a
fulfilled wish, sometimes, as you yourself say, to the opposite of
that or to a realized fear, but sometimes express an intention, a
warning, a reflection with its "pros" and
"cons", or a reproach, a scruple of conscience, an
attempt at preparing for a coming task, and so on? Why must it
always be only a wish, or at most its opposite?’

   It might be thought that a
difference of opinion on this point is unimportant, if one is
agreed on the rest. It is enough, it might be said, that we have
discovered the sense of dreams and the way of recognizing it; it is
of less importance if we seem to have defined that sense too
narrowly. But that is not so. A misunderstanding on this point
affects the essence of our discoveries about dreams and endangers
their value for the understanding of the neuroses. Moreover, a
compromise of this sort - what is highly thought of in commercial
life as being ‘accommodating’ - is not in place, but
detrimental rather, in scientific affairs.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3310

   My first answer to the question
why dreams should not have a variety of meanings in the sense
indicated is as usual in such cases: ‘I don’t know why
they shouldn’t. I should have no objection. As far as
I’m concerned it could be so. There’s only one detail
in the way of this broader and more convenient view of dreams -
that it isn’t so in reality.’ My second answer would be
that the hypothesis that dreams correspond to a variety of forms of
thinking and intellectual operations is not unfamiliar to me
myself. I once reported a dream in one of my case histories which
appeared on three nights in succession and then no more, and I
explained this behaviour by the fact that the dream corresponded to
an
intention
, and did not need to be repeated after the
intention had been carried out. Later on I published a dream which
corresponded to an
admission
. How, then, can I contradict
myself and assert that dreams are never anything but a fulfilled
wish?