Freud - Complete Works (650 page)

  
The Interpretation of
Dreams
. - A new approach to the depths of mental life was
opened when the technique of free association was applied to
dreams, whether one’s own or those of patients in analysis.
In fact, the greater and better part of what we know of the
processes in the unconscious levels of the mind is derived from the
interpretation of dreams. Psycho-analysis has restored to dreams
the importance which was generally ascribed to them in ancient
times, but it treats them differently. It does not rely upon the
cleverness of the dream-interpreter but for the most part hands the
task over to the dreamer himself by asking him for his associations
to the separate elements of the dream. By pursuing these
associations further we obtain knowledge of thoughts which coincide
entirely with the dream but which can be recognized - up to a
certain point - as genuine and completely intelligible portions of
waking mental activity. Thus the recollected dream emerges as the
manifest dream content
, in contrast to the
latent
dream-thoughts
discovered by interpretation. The process which
has transformed the latter into the former, that is to say into
‘the dream’, and which is undone by the work of
interpretation, may be called the
‘
dream-work
’.

Two Encyclopaedia Articles

3918

   We also describe the latent
dream-thoughts, on account of their connection with waking life, as
’
residues of the day
’. By the operation of the
dream-work (to which it would be quite incorrect to ascribe any
‘creative’ character ) the latent dream thoughts are
condensed
in a remarkable way, are
distorted
by the
displacement
of psychical intensities and are arranged with
a view to being
represented in visual pictures
; and, besides
all this, before the manifest dream is arrived at, they are
submitted to a process of
secondary revision
which seeks to
give the new product something in the nature of sense and
coherence. Strictly speaking, this last process does not form a
part of the dream-work.

  
The Dynamic Theory of
Dream-Formation.
The motive power for the formation of dreams
is not provided by the latent dream-thoughts or day’s
residues, but by an unconscious impulse, repressed during the day,
with which the day’s residues have been able to establish
contact and which contrives to make a
wish-fulfilment
for
itself out of the material of the latent thoughts. Thus every dream
is on the one hand the fulfilment of a wish on the part of the
unconscious and on the other hand (in so far as it succeeds in
guarding the state of sleep against being disturbed) the fulfilment
of the normal wish to sleep which set the sleep going. If we
disregard the unconscious contribution to the formation of the
dream and limit the dream to its latent thoughts, it can represent
anything with which waking life has been concerned - a reflection,
a warning, an intention, a preparation for the immediate future or,
once again, the satisfaction of an unfulfilled wish. The
unrecognizability, strangeness and absurdity of the manifest dream
are partly the result of the translation of the thoughts into a
different, so to say
archaic
, method of expression, but
partly the effect of a restrictive, critically disapproving agency
in the mind which does not entirely cease to function during sleep.
It is plausible to suppose that the
‘
dream-censorship
’, which we regard as being
responsible in the first instance for the distortion of the
dream-thoughts into the manifest dream, is an expression of the
same mental forces which during the day-time had held back or
repressed
the unconscious wishful impulse.

Two Encyclopaedia Articles

3919

   It has been worth while to enter
in some detail into the explanation of dreams, since analytic work
has shown that the dynamics of the formation of dreams are the same
as those of the formation of symptoms. In both cases we find a
struggle between two trends, of which one is unconscious and
ordinarily repressed and strives towards satisfaction - that is,
wish-fulfilment - while the other, belonging probably to the
conscious ego, is disapproving and repressive. The outcome of this
conflict is a
compromise-formation
(the dream or the
symptom) in which both trends have found an incomplete expression.
The theoretical importance of this conformity between dreams and
symptoms is illuminating. Since dreams are not pathological
phenomena, the fact shows that the mental mechanisms which produce
the symptoms of illness are equally present in normal mental life,
that the same uniform law embraces both the normal and the abnormal
and that the findings of research into neurotics or psychotics
cannot be without significance for our understanding of the healthy
mind.

  
Symbolism
. - In the course
of investigating the form of expression brought about by the
dream-work, the surprising fact emerged that certain objects,
arrangements and relations are represented, in a sense indirectly,
by ‘symbols’, which are used by the dreamer without his
understanding them and to which as a rule he offers no
associations. Their translation has to be provided by the analyst,
who can himself only discover it empirically by experimentally
fitting it into the context. It was later found that linguistic
usage, mythology and folklore afford the most ample analogies to
dream-symbols. Symbols, which raise the most interesting and
hitherto unsolved problems, seem to be a fragment of extremely
ancient inherited mental equipment. The use of a common symbolism
extends far beyond the use of a common language.

Two Encyclopaedia Articles

3920

  
The Aetiological Significance
of Sexual Life
. - The second novelty which emerged after the
hypnotic technique had been replaced by free associations was of a
clinical nature. It was discovered in the course of the prolonged
search for the traumatic experiences from which hysterical symptoms
appeared to be derived.The more carefully the search was pursued
the more extensive seemed to be the network of aetiologically
significant impressions involved, but the further back, too, did
they reach into the patient’s puberty or childhood. At the
same time they assumed a uniform character and eventually it became
inevitable to bow before the evidence and recognize that at the
root of the formation of every symptom there were to be found
traumatic experiences from early sexual life. Thus a sexual trauma
stepped into the place of an ordinary trauma and the latter was
seen to owe its aetiological significance to an associative or
symbolic connection with the former, which had preceded it. An
investigation of cases of common nervousness (falling into the two
classes of
neurasthenia
and
anxiety neurosis
) which
was simultaneously undertaken led to the conclusion that these
disorders could be traced to
contemporary
abuses in the
patients’ sexual life and could be removed if these were
brought to an end. It was thus easy to infer that neuroses in
general are an expression of disturbances in sexual life, the
so-called
actual-neuroses
being the consequences (by
chemical agency) of
contemporary
injuries and the
psycho-neuroses
the consequences (by psychical modification)
of
bygone
injuries to a biological function which had
hitherto been gravely neglected by science. None of the theses of
psycho-analysis has met with such tenacious scepticism or such
embittered resistance as this assertion of the preponderating
aetiological significance of sexual life in the neuroses. It
should, however, be expressly remarked that, in its development up
to the present day, psycho-analysis has found no reason to retreat
from this opinion.

  
Infantile Sexuality
. - As
a result of its aetiological researches, psycho-analysis found
itself in the position of dealing with a subject the very existence
of which had scarcely been suspected previously. Science had become
accustomed to consider sexual life as beginning with puberty and
regarded manifestations of sexuality in children as rare signs of
abnormal precocity and degeneracy. But now psycho-analysis revealed
a wealth of phenomena, remarkable, yet of regular occurrence, which
made it necessary to date back the beginning of the sexual function
in children almost to the commencement of extra-uterine existence;
and it was asked with astonishment how all this could have come to
be overlooked.The first glimpses of sexuality in children had
indeed been obtained through the analytic examination of adults and
were consequently saddled with all the doubts and sources of error
that could be attributed to such a belated retrospect; but
subsequently (from 1908 onwards) a beginning was made with the
analysis of children themselves and with the unembarrassed
observation of their behaviour, and in this way direct confirmation
was reached for the whole factual basis of the new view.

Two Encyclopaedia Articles

3921

   Sexuality in children showed a
different picture in many respects from that in adults, and,
surprisingly enough, it exhibited numerous traces of what, in
adults, were condemned as ‘
perversions
’. It
became necessary to enlarge the concept of what was sexual, till it
covered more than the impulsion towards the union of the two sexes
in the sexual act or towards provoking particular pleasurable
sensations in the genitals. But this enlargement was rewarded by
the new possibility of grasping infantile, normal and perverse
sexual life as a single whole.

   The analytic researches carried
out by the writer fell, to begin with, into the error of greatly
overestimating the importance of
seduction
as a source of
sexual manifestations in children and as a root for the formation
of neurotic symptoms. This misapprehension was corrected when it
became possible to appreciate the extraordinarily large part played
in the mental life of neurotics by the activities of
phantasy
, which clearly carried more weight in neurosis than
did external reality. Behind these phantasies there came to light
the material which allows us to draw the picture which follows of
the development of the sexual function.

  
The Development of the
Libido
. - The sexual instinct, the dynamic manifestation of
which in mental life we shall call ‘
libido
’, is
made up of component instincts into which it may once more break up
and which are only gradually united into well-defined
organizations. The sources of these component instincts are the
organs of the body and in particular certain specially marked
erotogenic zones
; but contributions are made to libido from
every important functional process in the body. At first the
individual component instincts strive for satisfaction
independently of one another, but in the course of development they
become more and more convergent and concentrated. The first
(pregenital) stage of organization to be discerned is the
oral
one, in which - in conformity with the suckling’s
predominant interest - the oral zone plays the leading part. This
is followed by the
sadistic-anal
organization, in which the
anal
zone and the component instinct of
sadism
are
particularly prominent; at this stage the difference between the
sexes is represented by the contrast between active and passive.
The third and final stage of organization is that in which the
majority of the component instincts converge under the
primacy
of the genital zones
. As a rule this development is passed
through swiftly and unobtrusively; but some individual portions of
the instincts remain behind at the prodromal stages of the process
and thus give rise to
fixations
of libido, which are
important as constituting predispositions for subsequent irruptions
of repressed impulses and which stand in a definite relation to the
later development of neuroses and perversions. (See the article on
‘The Libido Theory’.)

Two Encyclopaedia Articles

3922

  
The Process of Finding an
Object, and the Oedipus Complex
. - In the first instance the
oral component instinct finds satisfaction by attaching itself to
the sating of the desire for nourishment; and its object is the
mother’s breast. It then detaches itself, becomes independent
and at the same time
auto-erotic
, that is, it finds an
object in the child’s own body. Others of the component
instincts also start by being auto-erotic and are not until later
diverted on to an external object. It is a particularly important
fact that the component instincts belonging to the genital zone
habitually pass through a period of intense auto-erotic
satisfaction. The component instincts are not all equally
serviceable in the final genital organization of libido; some of
them (for instance, the anal components) are consequently left
aside and suppressed, or undergo complicated transformations.

   In the very earliest years of
childhood (approximately between the ages of two and five) a
convergence of the sexual impulses occurs of which, in the case of
boys, the object is the mother. This choice of an object, in
conjunction with a corresponding attitude of rivalry and hostility
towards the father, provides the content of what is known as the
Oedipus complex
, which in every human being is of the
greatest importance in determining the final shape of his erotic
life. It has been found to be characteristic of a normal individual
that he learns to master his Oedipus complex, whereas the neurotic
subject remains involved in it.