Freud - Complete Works (548 page)

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   You will not be able to escape
the resemblance of this example to a joke; and it has in fact often
happened that a joke of the dreamer’s has been regarded as a
joke of the interpreter’s. There are other instances in which
it has been far from easy to decide whether what we are dealing
with is a joke or a dream. But you will recall that the same doubt
arose in the case of some parapraxes - slips of the tongue. A man
reported as a dream of his that his uncle had given him a kiss
while they were sitting in his
auto
(mobile). He himself very
quickly added the interpretation: it meant
‘
auto-erotism
’ (a term from the theory of the
libido, indicating satisfaction obtained without any outside
object). Had the man set out, then, to have some fun with us and
was he passing off a joke that had occurred to him as a dream? I
think not; I believe he really dreamt it. But what is the origin of
this puzzling similarity? This question once led me temporarily
aside from my path by compelling me to make jokes themselves the
subject of a detailed investigation. It was there shown how jokes
originate: a preconscious train of thought is abandoned for a
moment to be worked over in the unconscious, and from this it
emerges as a joke. Under the influence of the unconscious it is
subjected to the effects of the mechanisms that hold sway there -
condensation and displacement - the same processes that we have
found concerned in the dream-work; and it is to this common feature
that is to be ascribed the similarity, when it occurs, between
jokes and dreams. But the unintended ‘dream-joke’
brings none of the yield of pleasure of a true joke. You can learn
why if you go more deeply into the study of jokes. A
‘dream-joke’ strikes us as a bad joke; it does not make
us laugh, it leaves us cold.

   In this, however, we are treading
in the footsteps of the dream-interpretation of antiquity, which,
along with much that is unserviceable, has left us some good
examples of dream-interpretation, which we ourselves could not
better. I will re peat to you a dream which was of historic
importance and which is reported of Alexander the Great, with
slight variations, by Plutarch and Artemidorus of Daldis. When the
king was laying siege to the obstinately defended city of Tyre (322
B.C.), he once dreamt that he saw a dancing satyr. Aristander, the
dream-interpreter, who was present with the army, interpreted the
dream by dividing the word ‘
Satyros
’ into
σά
Τύgος
[sa Turos] (thine is
Tyre), and therefore promised that he would triumph over the city.
Alexander was led by this interpretation to continue the siege and
eventually captured Tyre. The interpretation, which has a
sufficiently artificial appearance, was undoubtedly the right
one.

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   (3) I can well imagine that you
will be especially impressed when you hear that objections to our
view of dreams have even been made by people who have themselves,
as psycho-analysts, been engaged for a considerable time in
interpreting dreams. It would have been too much to expect that
such an abundant encouragement to fresh errors as this theory
offers should have been neglected; and so, as a result of
conceptual confusions and unjustified generalizations, assertions
have been made which are not far behind the medical view of dreams
in their incorrectness. You know one of them already. It tells us
that dreams are concerned with attempts at adaptation to present
conditions and with attempts at solving future problems - that they
have a ‘prospective purpose’ (Maeder). We have already
shown that this assertion is based on a confusion between the dream
and the latent dream-thoughts and is therefore based on
disregarding the dream-work. As a characterization of the
unconscious intellectual activity of which the latent
dream-thoughts form part, it is on the one hand no novelty and on
the other not exhaustive, since unconscious intellectual activity
is occupied with many other things besides preparing for the
future. A far worse confusion seems to underlie the assurance that
the idea of death will be found behind every dream. I am not clear
exactly what is meant by this formula. But I suspect that it
conceals a confusion between the dream and the dreamer’s
whole personality.

   An unjustifiable generalization,
based on a few good examples, is involved in the statement that
every dream allows of two interpretations - one which agrees with
our account, a ‘psycho-analytic’ one, and another, an
‘anagogic’ one, which disregards the instinctual
impulses and aims at representing the higher functions of the mind
(Silberer). There are dreams of this kind, but you will try in vain
to extend this view even to a majority of dreams. Again, after all
that I have said to you, you will find quite incomprehensible an
assertion that all dreams are to be interpreted bisexually, as a
confluence of two currents described as a masculine and a feminine
one (Adler). There are, of course, a few dreams of this kind too;
and you may learn later that they are constructed like certain
hysterical symptoms. The reason why I have mentioned all these
discoveries of fresh universal characteristics of dreams is in
order to warn you against them or at least to leave you in no doubt
as to what I think of them.

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   (4) One day the objective value
of research into dreams seemed to be put in question by an
observation that patients under analytic treatment arrange the
content of their dreams in accordance with the favourite theories
of their physicians some dreaming predominantly of sexual
instinctual impulses, others of the struggle for power and yet
others even of rebirth (Stekel). The weight of this observation
was, however, diminished by the reflection that human beings had
dreams before there was any psycho-analytic treatment which could
give those dreams a direction, and that people who are now under
treatment used also to dream during the period before the treatment
started. What was true about this novelty could soon be seen to be
self-evident and of no relevance to the theory of dreams. The
day’s residues which instigate dreams are left over from
powerful interests in waking life. When the remarks made by the
physician and the hints he gives become of significance to the
patient, they enter the circle of the day’s residues and can
provide psychical stimuli for the construction of dreams like any
other emotionally coloured interests of the previous day which have
not been dealt with, and they then operate like somatic stimuli
which impinge on the sleeper during his sleep. The trains of
thought set going by the physician can, like these other
instigators of dreams, appear in the manifest content of a dream or
be discovered in its latent content. Indeed, we know that a dream
can be experimentally produced, or, to put it more correctly, a
part of the dream. material can be introduced into the dream. In
producing these effects on his patients, an analyst is thus playing
a part no different from an experimenter who, like Mourly Vold,
gives particular postures to the limbs of the subjects of his
experiments.

   It is often possible to influence
dreamers as to what they shall dream
about
, but never as to
what
they shall dream. The mechanism of the dream-work and
the unconscious dream wish are exempt from any outside influence.
In considering dreams with a somatic stimulus, we have already
found that the characteristic nature and independence of dream-life
are shown in the reaction with which dreams respond to the somatic
or mental stimuli that are brought to bear. The thesis which we
have been discussing, and which seeks to throw doubt on the
objectivity of research into dreams, is thus once again based on a
confusion - this time between the dream and the dream-material.

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   This then, Ladies and Gentlemen,
is what I wanted to tell you about the problems of dreams. As you
will guess, there is much that I have had to pass over, and you
will have been aware that on almost every point what I have said
has necessarily been incomplete. That, however, is due to the
connection between the phenomena of dreaming and those of the
neuroses. We have studied dreams as an introduction to the theory
of the neuroses, and this was certainly a more correct procedure
than if we had done the opposite. But just as dreams prepare the
way to an understanding of the neuroses, so, on the other hand, a
true appreciation of dreams can only be achieved after a knowledge
of neurotic phenomena.

   I cannot tell what you will think
of it, but I must assure you that I do not regret having claimed so
much of your interest and of the time available to us for the
problems of dreams. There is nothing else from which one can so
quickly arrive at a conviction of the correctness of the theses by
which psycho-analysis stands or falls. Exacting work over many
months and even years is called for to show that the symptoms of a
case of neurotic illness have a sense, serve a purpose and arise
out of the patient’s experiences in life. On the other hand,
only a few hours’ effort may be enough to prove that the same
thing is true of a dream which is, to start with, confused to the
point of being unintelligible, and thus to confirm all the
premisses of psycho-analysis - the unconscious nature of mental
processes, the peculiar mechanisms which they obey and the
instinctual forces which are expressed in them. And when we bear in
mind the sweeping analogy between the structure of dreams and that
of neurotic symptoms and at the same time consider the rapidity of
the transformation which makes a dreamer into a waking and
reasonable man, we arrive at a certainty that neuroses too are
based only on an alteration in the play of forces between the
powers of mental life.

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PART
III

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

(1917)

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LECTURE XVI

PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND PSYCHIATRY

LADIES AND
GENTLEMEN
, - I am delighted to see you again, at the
beginning of a new academic year, for a resumption of our
discussions. Last year I spoke to you of the way in which
psycho-analysis deals with parapraxes and dreams. This year I
should like to introduce you to an understanding of the phenomena
of neurosis, which, as you will soon learn, have a great deal in
common with both of the others. But I must warn you in advance that
I shall not be able to offer you the same position in relation to
me this year as I did last year. At that time I set great store on
never taking a step without remaining in agreement with your
judgement; I discussed a great deal with you and gave way to your
objections - in fact I recognized you and your ‘common
sense’ as a deciding factor. But this is no longer possible
and for a simple reason. Parapraxes and dreams were not unfamiliar
to you as phenomena; we might say that you had as much experience
or could easily obtain as much experience of them as I had. The
region of the phenomena of neurosis is, however, strange to you; in
so far as you are not doctors yourselves, you have no other access
to them than through what I have to tell you; and of what help is
the best judgement if it is not accompanied by familiarity with the
material that is to be judged?

   But you must not take this
warning of mine to mean that I propose to give you dogmatic
lectures and to insist on your unqualified belief. Such a
misunderstanding would do me a grave injustice. I do not wish to
arouse conviction; I wish to stimulate thought and to upset
prejudices. If as a result of lack of knowledge of the material you
are not in a position to form a judgement, you should neither
believe nor reject. You should listen and allow what I tell you to
work on you. It is not so easy to arrive at convictions, or, if
they are reached easily, they soon turn out to be worthless and
incapable of resistance. The only person who has a right to a
conviction is someone who, like me, has worked for many years at
the same material and who, in doing so, has himself had the same
new and surprising experiences. What is the good, then, in the
sphere of the intellect, of these sudden convictions, these
lightning-like conversions, these instantaneous rejections? Is it
not clear that the ‘
coup de foudre
’, love at
first sight, is derived from quite another sphere, from that of the
emotions? We do not even require of our
patients
that they
should bring a conviction of the truth of psycho-analysis into the
treatment or be adherents of it. Such an attitude often raises our
suspicions. The attitude that we find the most desirable in them is
a benevolent scepticism. So you too should endeavour to allow the
psycho-analytic view to grow up quietly in you alongside of the
popular or psychiatric one, till opportunities arise for the two to
influence each other, to compete with each other and to unite in
leading to a conclusion.

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   On the other hand, you should not
for a moment suppose that what I put before you as the
psycho-analytic view is a speculative system. It is on the contrary
empirical - either a direct expression of observations or the
outcome of a process of working them over. Whether this
working-over has been carried out in an adequate and justifiable
manner will appear in the course of the further advance of the
science, and indeed I may assert without boasting, after a lapse of
nearly twenty-five years, and having reached a fairly advanced age,
that these observations are the result of particularly hard,
concentrated and deep going work. I have often had an impression
that our opponents were unwilling to take any account of this
origin of our theses, as though they thought what was in question
were merely subjectively determined notions to which someone else
might oppose others of his own choice. This behaviour of our
opponents is not entirely intelligible to me. It may perhaps be due
to the fact that, as a doctor, one usually makes so little contact
with neurotic patients and pays so little attention to what they
say that one cannot imagine the possibility that anything valuable
could be derived from their communications - the possibility, that
is, of carrying out any thorough observations upon them. I take
this opportunity of assuring you that in the course of these
lectures I shall indulge in very little controversy, especially
with individuals. I have never been able to convince myself of the
truth of the maxim that strife is the father of all things. I
believe it is derived from the Greek sophists and is at fault, like
them, through overvaluing dialectics. It seems to me, on the
contrary, that what is known as scientific controversy is on the
whole quite unproductive, apart from the fact that it is almost
always conducted on highly personal lines. Up to a few years ago I
was able to boast that I had only once engaged in a regular
scientific dispute - with one single worker (Löwenfeld of
Munich). It ended in our becoming friends and we have remained so
to this day. But I did not repeat the experiment for a long time,
as I did not feel sure that the outcome would be the same.