Freud - Complete Works (547 page)

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3316

   All your material is
unimpeachable, but it does not, I think, justify your conclusions,
and in two respects: namely that the interpretation of dreams is,
as you insist, at the mercy of arbitrary choice and that the lack
of results throws doubts on the correctness of our procedure. If
instead of the interpreter’s arbitrary choice you would speak
of his skill, his experience and his understanding, I should agree
with you. We cannot, of course, do without a personal factor of
that kind, especially in the more difficult problems of
dream-interpretation. But the position is no different in other
scientific occupations. There is no means of preventing one person
from handling a particular technique worse than another, or one
person from making better use of it than another. What in other
ways gives an impression of arbitrariness - in, for instance, the
interpretation of symbols - is done away with by the fact that as a
rule the interconnection between the dream-thoughts, or the
connection between the dream and the dreamer’s life, or the
whole psychical situation in which the dream occurs, selects a
single one from among the possible determinations presented and
dismisses the rest as unserviceable. The conclusion that because of
the imperfections of dream-interpretation our hypotheses are
incorrect is invalidated by pointing out that on the contrary
ambiguity or indefiniteness is a characteristic of dreams which was
necessarily to be anticipated.

   Let us recall that we have said
that the dream-work makes a translation of the dream-thoughts into
a primitive mode of expression similar to picture-writing. All such
primitive systems of expression, however, are characterized by
indefiniteness and ambiguity of this sort, without justifying us in
casting doubts on their serviceability. The coalescence of
contraries in the dream-work is, as you know, analogous to the
so-called ‘antithetical meaning of primal words’ in the
most ancient languages. Indeed, Abel (1884), the philologist to
whom we owe this line of thought, implores us not to suppose that
communications made by one person to another with the help of such
ambivalent words were on that account ambiguous. On the contrary,
intonation and gesture must have made it quite certain in the
context of the speech which of the two contraries the speaker
intended to convey. In writing, where gesture is absent, its place
was taken by an additional pictograph which was not intended to be
spoken - for instance by a picture of a little man, limply
squatting or stiffly erect, according to whether the ambiguous
hieroglyph ‘
ken
’ was to mean ‘weak’
or ‘strong’. In this way, in spite of the ambiguity of
the sounds and signs, misunderstanding was avoided.

   The old systems of expression -
for instance, the scripts of the most ancient languages - betray
vagueness in a variety of ways which we would not tolerate in our
writing to-day. Thus in some Semitic scripts only the consonants in
the words are indicated. The reader has to insert the omitted
vowels according to his knowledge and the context. The hieroglyphic
script behaves very similarly, though not precisely in the same
way; and for that reason the pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian
remains unknown to us. The sacred script of the Egyptians is
indefinite in yet other ways. For instance, it is left to the
arbitrary decision of the scribe whether he arranges the pictures
from right to left or from left to right. In order to be able to
read it one must obey the rule of reading towards the faces of the
figures, birds, and so on. But the scribe might also arrange the
pictographs in
vertical
columns, and in making inscriptions
on comparatively small objects he allowed considerations of
decorativeness and space to influence him in altering the sequence
of the signs in yet other ways. The most disturbing thing about the
hieroglyphic script is, no doubt, that it makes no separation
between words. The pictures are placed across the page at equal
distances apart; and in general it is impossible to tell whether a
sign is still part of the preceding word or forms the beginning of
a new word. In Persian cuneiform script, on the other hand, an
oblique wedge serves to separate words.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3317

   An extremely ancient language and
script, which however is still used by four hundred million people,
is the Chinese. You must not suppose that I at all understand it; I
only obtained some information about it because I hoped to find
analogies in it to the indefiniteness of dreams. Nor has my
expectation been disappointed. The Chinese language is full of
instances of indefiniteness which might fill us with alarm. As is
well known, it consists of a number of syllabic sounds, which are
spoken either singly or combined into pairs. One of the principal
dialects has some four hundred such sounds. Since, however, the
vocabulary of this dialect is reckoned at about four thousand
words, it follows that each sound has on an average ten different
meanings - some fewer but some correspondingly more. There are
quite a number of methods of avoiding ambiguity, since one cannot
infer from the context alone which of the ten meanings of the
syllabic sound the speaker intends to evoke in the hearer. Among
these methods are those of combining two sounds into a compound
word and of using four different ‘tones’ in the
pronunciation of the syllables. It is even more interesting from
the point of view of our comparison to learn that this language has
practically no grammar. It is impossible to tell of any of the
monosyllabic words whether it is a noun or a verb or an adjective;
and there are no verbal inflections by which one could recognize
gender, number, termination, tense or mood. Thus the language
consists, one might say, solely of the raw material, just as our
thought-language is resolved by the dream-work into its raw
material, and any expression of relations is omitted. In Chinese
the decision in all cases of indefiniteness is left to the
hearer’s understanding and this is guided by the context. I
have made a note of an example of a Chinese proverb which,
literally translated, runs:

‘Little what see much what wonderful.’

This is not hard to understand. It may mean:
‘The less someone has seen, the more he finds to wonder
at’; or: ‘There is much to wonder at for him who has
seen little.’ There is, of course, no question of
distinguishing between these two translations, which only differ
grammatically. In spite of this indefiniteness, we have been
assured that the Chinese language is a quite excellent vehicle for
the expression of thought. So indefiniteness need not necessarily
lead to ambiguity.

   It must, of course, be admitted
that the system of expression by dreams occupies a far more
unfavourable position than any of these ancient languages and
scripts. For after all they are fundamentally intended for
communication: that is to say, they are always, by whatever method
and with whatever assistance, meant to be understood. But precisely
this characteristic is absent in dreams. A dream does not want to
say anything to anyone. It is not a vehicle for communication; on
the contrary, it is meant to remain ununderstood. For that reason
we must not be surprised or at a loss if it turns out that a number
of ambiguities and obscurities in dreams remain undecided. The one
certain gain we have derived from our comparison is the discovery
that these points of uncertainty which people have tried to use as
objections to the soundness of our dream-interpretations are on the
contrary regular characteristics of all primitive systems of
expression.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3318

   The question of how far the
intelligibility of dreams in fact extends can only be answered by
practice and experience. Very far, I believe; and my view is
confirmed if we compare the results produced by correctly trained
analysts. The lay public, including the scientific lay public, are
well known to enjoy making a parade of scepticism when faced by the
difficulties and uncertainties of a scientific achievement. I think
they are wrong in this. You are perhaps not all aware that a
similar situation arose in the history of the deciphering of the
Babylonian-Assyrian inscriptions. There was a time when public
opinion was very much inclined to regard the decipherers of
cuneiform as visionaries and the whole of their researches as a
‘swindle’. But in 1857 the Royal Asiatic Society made a
decisive experiment. It requested four of the most highly respected
experts in cuneiform, Rawlinson, Hincks, Fox Talbot and Oppert, to
send it, in sealed envelopes, independent translations of a newly
discovered inscription; and, after a comparison between the four
productions, it was able to announce that the agreement between
these experts went far enough to justify a belief in what had so
far been achieved and confidence in further advances. The derision
on the part of the learned lay world gradually diminished after
this, and since then certainty in reading cuneiform documents has
increased enormously.

   (2) A second group of doubts is
closely connected with the impression, which no doubt you
yourselves have not escaped, that a number of the solutions to
which we find ourselves driven in interpreting dreams seem to be
forced, artificial, dragged in by the hair of their head -
arbitrary, that is, or even comic and facetious. Remarks to this
effect are so frequent that I will choose at random the last that
has been reported to me. So listen to this. In free Switzerland the
head of a training college was recently removed from his post on
account of his interest in psycho-analysis. He entered a protest,
and a Berne newspaper published the report of the school
authorities on his appeal. I will select a few sentences dealing
with psycho-analysis from this document: ‘Moreover we are
surprised at the far-fetched and artificial character of many of
the examples, which are also to be found in the volume by Dr.
Pfister of Zurich which is quoted. . . . It is
really surprising, therefore, that the head of a training-college
should accept all these assertions and pretended proofs without
criticism.’ These sentences are represented as a decision
reached by someone ‘making a calm judgement’. It is
rather this calmness, I think, which is ‘artificial’.
Let us examine these remarks more closely, in the expectation that
a little reflection and a little expert knowledge can be of no
disadvantage even to a calm judgement.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3319

   It is truly refreshing to see how
swiftly and unerringly a person can arrive at a judgement on some
delicate problem of depth-psychology after his first impression of
it. The interpretations seem to him far-fetched and forced and he
does not like them; so they are false and all this business of
interpretation is worthless. Not even a fleeting thought is given
to the other possibility - that there are good reasons why these
interpretations are bound to have this appearance; after which the
further question would follow of what these good reasons are.

   The matter under consideration
relates in essence to the results of displacement, which you have
become acquainted with as the most powerful instrument of the
dream-censorship. With the help of displacement the
dream-censorship creates substitutive structures which we have
described as allusions. But they are allusions which are not easily
recognizable as such, from which the path back to the genuine thing
is not easily traced, and which are connected with the genuine
thing by the strangest, most unusual, external associations. In all
these cases it is a question, however, of things which are
meant
to be hidden, which are condemned to concealment, for
that is what the dream-censorship is aiming at. But we must not
expect that a thing which has been hidden will be found in its own
place, in its proper position. The frontier-control commissions
which are operating to-day are more cunning in this respect than
the Swiss school authorities. In their search for documents and
plans they are not content with examining brief-cases and
portfolios, but they consider the possibility that spies and
smugglers may have these forbidden things in the most secret
portions of their clothing where they decidedly do not belong - for
instance, between the double soles of their boots. If the hidden
things are there, it will certainly be possible to call them
‘far-fetched’, but it is also true that a great deal
will have been found.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3320

   If we recognize that the links
between a latent dream-element and its manifest substitute can be
of the most out-of-the-way and peculiar nature, sometimes appearing
comic and sometimes resembling a joke, we are basing ourselves on
copious experience of examples which, as a rule, we have not solved
ourselves. It is often impossible to give such interpretations on
our own account: no sensible person could guess at the connection.
The dreamer gives us the translation either all at once by a direct
association -
he
is able to, since it was he who produced
the substitute - or else he brings up so much material that the
solution no longer calls for any particular acumen, but presents
itself, so to speak, as a matter of course. If the dreamer fails to
assist in one or other of these two ways, the manifest element in
question will for ever remain unintelligible to us. I will, if I
may, give you an example which occurred to me recently. One of my
women patients lost her father in the course of the treatment.
Since then she has taken every opportunity of bringing him to life
in her dreams. In one of these her father appeared (in a particular
connection of no further relevance) and said: ‘
It’s
a quarter past eleven, it’s half-past eleven, it’s a
quarter to twelve
.’ By way of interpretation of this
oddity all that occurred to her was that her father liked his
grown-up children to appear punctually at the family meals. No
doubt this was connected with the dream-element, but it threw no
light on its origin. There was a suspicion, based on the immediate
situation in the treatment, that a carefully suppressed critical
revolt against her beloved and honoured father played some part in
the dream. In the further course of her associations, apparently
remote from the dream, she told how the day before there had been a
lot of talk about psychology in her presence, and a relative of
hers had remarked: ‘The
Urmensch
[primal man] survives
in all of us.’ This seemed to provide us with the
explanation. It had given her an excellent opportunity of bringing
her dead father to life once again. She made him in the dream-into
an ‘
Uhrmensch
’ [‘clock-man’] by
making him announce the quarter hours at midday.