Freud - Complete Works (546 page)

   I do it because I will not allow
a foolish misunderstanding to pass which may rob us of the fruit of
our efforts with dreams - a misunderstanding which confuses the
dream with the latent dream-thoughts, and asserts of the former
something that applies solely to the latter. For it is quite
correct to say that a dream can represent and be replaced by
everything you have just enumerated - an intention, a warning, a
reflection, a preparation, an attempt at solving a problem, and so
on. But if you look properly, you will see that all this only
applies to the latent dream-thoughts, which have been transformed
into the dream. You learn from interpretations of dreams that
people’s unconscious thinking is concerned with these
intentions, preparations, reflections, and so on, out of which the
dream-work then makes the dreams. If at the moment you are not
interested in the dream-work, but are greatly interested in
people’s unconscious thought-activity, you then eliminate the
dream-work and say of the dream what is in practice quite correct
that it corresponds to a warning, an intention, and so on. what
often happens in psycho-analytic activity is that our efforts are
chiefly directed only to doing away with the dream-form and
inserting in the context instead of it the latent thoughts out of
which the dream was made.

   Thus, quite incidentally, we
learn from our examination of the latent dream-thoughts that all
these highly complicated mental acts that we have named can take
place unconsciously - a discovery as imposing as it is
perplexing!

   But to go back, you are only
correct so long as you are clearly aware that you have used an
abbreviated form of expression and so long as you do not believe
that the multiplicity you have been describing is to be related to
the essential nature of dreams. When you speak of a
‘dream’, you must mean either the manifest dream - that
is, the product of the dream-work or, at most, the dream-work
itself as well - that is, the psychical process which forms the
manifest dream out of the latent dream-thoughts. Any other use of
the word is a confusion of ideas and can only lead to mischief. If
you are making statements about the latent thoughts behind the
dream, do so directly and do not obscure the problem of dreams by
the loose manner in which you speak. The latent dream-thoughts are
the material which the dream-work transforms into the manifest
dream. Why should you want to confuse the material with the
activity which forms it? If you do, what advantage have you over
those who only knew the product of the activity and could not
explain where it came from or how it was made?

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   The only essential thing about
dreams is the dream-work that has influenced the thought-material.
We have no right to ignore it in our theory, even though we may
disregard it in certain practical situations. Analytic observation
shows further that the dream-work never restricts itself to
translating these thoughts into the archaic or regressive mode of
expression that is familiar to you. In addition, it regularly takes
possession of something else, which is not part of the latent
thoughts of the previous day, but which is the true motive force
for the construction of the dream. This indispensable addition is
the equally unconscious wish for the fulfilment of which the
content of the dream is given its new form. A dream may thus be any
sort of thing in so far as you are only taking into account the
thoughts it represents - a warning, an intention, a preparation,
and so on; but it is always also the fulfilment of an unconscious
wish and, if you are considering it as a product of the dream-work,
it is only that. A dream is therefore never simply an intention, or
a warning, but always an intention, etc., translated into the
archaic mode of thought by the help of an unconscious wish and
transformed to fulfil that wish. The one characteristic, the
wish-fulfilment, is the invariable one; the other may vary. It may
for its part once more be a wish, in which case the dream will,
with the help of an unconscious wish, represent as fulfilled a
latent wish of the previous day.

   I can understand all this very
clearly; but I cannot tell whether I have succeeded in making it
intelligible to you as well. And I also have difficulty in proving
it to you. That cannot be done without carefully analysing a great
many dreams, and on the other hand this most critical and important
point in our view of dreams cannot be convincingly represented
without referring to what is coming later. It is impossible to
suppose that, since everything is intimately interrelated, one can
penetrate deeply into the nature of one thing without having
concerned oneself with other things of a similar nature. Since we
still know nothing of the dream’s nearest relatives, neurotic
symptoms, we must once more rest content at this point with what we
have achieved. I will only give you one more illustrative example
and lay before you one fresh consideration.

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   Let us once again take up the
dream we have already so often returned to: the dream of the three
theatre-tickets for 1 florin 50. (I can assure you that I
originally chose out this example without any special purpose in
view.) You know the latent dream thoughts: anger at having been in
such a hurry to get married which arose when she heard the news
that her friend had only just become engaged, putting a low value
on her husband and the idea that she might have got a better one if
only she had waited. We already know the wish which made a dream
out of these thoughts: it was the desire to look, to be able to go
to the theatre, most probably an offshoot of her old curiosity to
discover at long last what really happens when one is married. This
curiosity is, as we know, regularly directed by children towards
their parents’ sexual life,: it is an infantile curiosity,
and, so far as it still persists later, an instinctual impulse with
roots reaching back into infancy. But the news the dreamer had
received during the day gave no occasion for awakening this desire
to look, but only for awakening anger and regret. This wishful
impulse was not in the first instance connected with the latent
dream-thoughts; and we were able to include the out come of the
dream-interpretation in the analysis without taking any account of
that impulse. But the anger in itself was not capable of creating a
dream. A dream could not arise out of the thoughts that ‘it
was absurd to marry so early’ until they had awakened the old
wish to see at long last what happens in marriage. This wish then
gave the dream-content its form by replacing marriage by going to
the theatre, and the form was that of an earlier wish-fulfilment:
‘There! now I may go to the theatre and look at everything
that’s forbidden, and you mayn’t! I’m married and
you must wait!’ In this way the dreamer’s present
situation was transformed into its opposite, an old triumph was put
in the place of her recent defeat. And, incidentally, a
satisfaction of her scopophilia was mixed with a satisfaction of
her egoistic competitive sense. This satisfaction then determined
the manifest content of the dream, in which the position actually
was that she was sitting in the theatre while her friend could not
gain admission to it. The portions of the content of the dream
behind which the latent dream-thoughts still lay concealed were
superimposed on this situation of satisfaction as a misplaced and
unintelligible modification of it. The dream’s interpretation
had to disregard everything that served to represent the
wish-fulfilment and to re-establish the distressing latent
dream-thoughts from these obscure remaining hints.

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   The fresh consideration I wish to
bring before you is to draw your attention to the latent
dream-thoughts which have now been put in the foreground. I beg you
not to forget that in the first place they are unconscious to the
dreamer, and secondly that they are completely rational and
coherent so that they can be understood as natural reactions to the
precipitating cause of the dream, and thirdly that they can be the
equivalent of any mental impulse or intellectual operation. I shall
now describe these thoughts more strictly than before as the
‘day’s residues’, whether the dreamer confesses
to them or not. I shall now distinguish between the day’s
residues and the latent dream-thoughts, and, in conformity with our
earlier usage, I shall designate as latent dream-thoughts
everything we learn in interpreting the dream, whereas the
day’s residues are only a portion of the latent
dream-thoughts. Our view is then that something is added to the
day’s residues, something that was also part of the
unconscious, a powerful but repressed wishful impulse; and it is
this alone that makes the construction of the dream possible. The
influence of this wishful impulse on the day’s residues
creates the further portion of the latent dream-thoughts - that
which need no longer appear rational and intelligible as being
derived from waking life.

   I have made use of an analogy for
the relation of the day’s residues to the unconscious wish,
and I can only repeat it here. In every undertaking there must be a
capitalist who covers the required outlay and an
entrepreneur
who has the idea and knows how to carry it out.
In the construction of dreams, the part of the capitalist is always
played by the unconscious wish alone; it provides the psychical
energy for the construction of the dream. The
entrepreneur
is the day’s residues, which decide how this outlay is to be
employed. It is possible, of course, for the capitalist himself to
have the idea and the expert knowledge or for the
entrepreneur
himself to possess capital. This simplifies the
practical situation but makes its theoretical understanding more
difficult. In economics the same person is constantly divided into
his two aspects of capitalist and
entrepreneur
and this
restores the fundamental situation on which our analogy was based.
In dream-construction the same variations occur and I will leave
them for you to follow out.

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   We cannot advance any further
here, for you have probably long been disturbed by a doubt which
deserves to be given a hearing. ‘Are the day’s
residues,’ you will ask, ‘really unconscious in the
same sense as the unconscious wish which must be added to them in
order to make them capable of producing a dream?’ Your
suspicion is correct. This is the salient point of the whole
business. They are
not
unconscious in the same sense. The
dream-wish belongs to a different unconscious - to the one which we
have already recognized as being of infantile origin and equipped
with peculiar mechanisms. It would be highly opportune to
distinguish these two kinds of unconscious by different names. But
we would prefer to wait till we have become familiar with the field
of phenomena of the neuroses. People consider a single unconscious
as something fantastic. What will they say when we confess that we
cannot make shift without two of them?

   Let us break off here. Once again
you have only heard something incomplete. But is it not hopeful to
reflect that this knowledge has a continuation, which either we
ourselves or other people will bring to light? And have not we
ourselves learnt enough that is new and surprising?

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LECTURE XV

UNCERTAINTIES AND CRITICISMS

LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN
, - We will nevertheless not leave the field of
dreams without dealing with the commonest doubts and uncertainties
which our novelties and our theories have given rise to so far.
Attentive listeners among you will themselves have collected some
of the relevant material.

   (1) You may have formed an
impression that, even though the technique is correctly carried
out, the findings of our interpretative work on dreams admit of so
many uncertainties as to defeat any secure translation of the
manifest dream-into the latent dream-thoughts. You will argue in
support of this that in the first place one never knows whether a
particular element of the dream is to be understood in its actual
sense or as a symbol, since the things employed as symbols do not
cease on that account to be themselves. If, however, one has no
objective clue for deciding this, the interpretation must at that
point be left to the arbitrary choice of the interpreter.
Furthermore, as a result of the fact that in the dream-work
contraries coalesce, it is always left undetermined whether a
particular element is to be understood in a positive or negative
sense - as itself or as its contrary. Here is a fresh opportunity
for the interpreter to exercise an arbitrary choice. Thirdly, in
consequence of the reversals of every kind of which dreams are so
fond, it is open to the interpreter to carry out a reversal like
this in connection with any passage in the dream he chooses. And
lastly, you will mention having heard that one is never certain
whether the interpretation one has found for a dream is the only
possible one. We run the risk of overlooking a perfectly admissible
‘over-interpretation’ of the same dream. In these
circumstances, you will conclude, so much room is left to the
interpreter’s arbitrary decision as to be incompatible with
objective certainty in the findings. Or alternatively you may
suppose that the fault does not lie with dreams but that the
inadequacies of our dream-interpretation are to be attributed to
errors in our views and premisses.