Freud - Complete Works (752 page)

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4648

   Of these conjectures no doubt the
most probable is that there is a real core of yet unrecognized
facts in occultism round which cheating and phantasy have spun a
veil which it is hard to pierce. But how can we even approach this
core? at what point can we attack the problem? It is here, I think,
that dreams come to our help, by giving us a hint that from out of
this chaos we should pick the subject of
telepathy
.

   What we call
‘telepathy’ is, as you know, the alleged fact that an
event which occurs at a particular time comes at about the same
moment to the consciousness of someone distant in space, without
the paths of communication that are familiar to us coming into
question. It is implicitly presupposed that this event concerns a
person in whom the other one (the receiver of the intelligence) has
a strong emotional interest. For instance, Person A may be the
victim of an accident or may die, and Person B, someone nearly
attached to him - his mother or daughter or fiancée - learns
the fact at about the same time through a visual or auditory
perception. In this latter case, then, it is as if she had been
informed by telephone, though such was not the case; it is a kind
of psychical counterpart to wireless telegraphy. I need not insist
to you on the improbability of such events, and there is good
reason for dismissing the majority of such reports. A few are left
over which cannot be so easily disposed of in this way. Permit me
now, for the purpose of what I have to tell you, to omit the
cautious little word ‘alleged’ and to proceed as though
I believed in the objective reality of the phenomenon of telepathy.
But bear firmly in mind that that is not the case and that I have
committed myself to no conviction.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

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   Actually I have little to tell
you - only a modest fact. I will also at once reduce your
expectations still further by saying that at bottom dreams have
little to do with telepathy. Telepathy does not throw any fresh
light on the nature of dreams nor do dreams give any direct
evidence of the reality of telepathy. Moreover the phenomenon of
telepathy is by no means bound up with dreams; it can occur as well
during the waking state. The only reason for discussing the
relation between dreams and telepathy is that the state of sleep
seems particularly suited for receiving telepathic messages. In
such cases one has what is called a telepathic dream and, when it
is analysed, one forms a conviction that the telepathic news has
played the same part as any other portion of the day’s
residues and that it has been changed in the same way by the
dream-work and made to serve its purpose.

   During the analysis of one such
telepathic dream, something occurred which seems to me of
sufficient interest in spite of its triviality to serve as the
starting-point of this lecture. When in 1922 I gave my first
account of this matter I had only a single observation at my
disposal. Since then I have made a number of similar ones, but I
will keep to the first example, because it is easiest to describe,
and I will take you straight away
in medias res
.

   An obviously intelligent man, who
from his own account was not in the least ‘inclined towards
occultism’, wrote to me about a dream he had had which seemed
to him remarkable. He began by informing me that his married
daughter, who lived at a distance from him, was expecting her first
confinement in the middle of December. This daughter meant a great
deal to him and he knew too that she was very much attached to him.
During the night of November 16-17, then, he dreamt that his wife
had given birth to twins. A number of details followed, which I may
here pass over, and all of which were never in fact explained. The
wife who in the dream had become the mother of twins was his
second
wife, his daughter’s stepmother. He did not
wish to have a child by his present wife who, he said, had no
aptitude for bringing up children sensibly; moreover, at the time
of the dream he had long ceased to have sexual relations with her.
What led him to write to me was not doubt about the theory of
dreams, though the manifest content of his dream would have
justified it, for why did the dream, in complete contradiction to
his wishes, make his wife give birth to children? Nor, according to
him, was there any reason to fear that this unwished-for event
might occur. What induced him to report this dream to me was the
circumstance that on the morning of November 18 he received a
telegram announcing that his daughter had given birth to twins. The
telegram had been handed in the day before and the birth had taken
place during the night of November 16-17, at about the same time at
which he had had the dream of his wife’s twin birth. The
dreamer asked me whether I thought the coincidence between dream
and event was accidental. He did not venture to call the dream a
telepathic one, since the difference between its content and the
event affected precisely what seemed to him essential in it - the
identity of the person who gave birth to the children. But one of
his comments shows that he would not have been astonished at an
actual telepathic dream: he believed his daughter would have
thought particularly of him during her labour.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4650

   I feel sure, Ladies and
Gentlemen, that you have been able to explain this dream already
and understand too why I have told it you. Here was a man who was
dissatisfied with his second wife and who would prefer his wife to
be like the daughter of his first marriage. This ‘like’
dropped out, of course, so far as the unconscious was concerned.
And now the telepathic message arrived during the night to say that
his daughter had given birth to twins. The dream-work took control
of the news, allowed the unconscious wish to operate on it - the
wish that he could put his daughter in the place of his second wife
- and thus arose the puzzling manifest dream, which disguised the
wish and distorted the message. We must admit that it is only the
interpretation
of the dream that has shown us that it was a
telepathic one: psycho-analysis has revealed a telepathic event
which we should not otherwise have discovered.

   But pray do not let yourselves be
misled! In spite of all this, dream-interpretation has told us
nothing about the objective reality of the telepathic event. It may
equally be an illusion which can be explained in another way. The
man’s latent dream-thoughts may have run: ‘To-day is
the day the confinement should take place if my daughter is really
out in her reckoning by a month, as I suspect. And when I saw her
last she looked just as though she was going to have twins. How my
dead wife who has so fond of children would have rejoiced over
twins!’ (I base this last factor on some associations of the
dreamer’s which I have not mentioned.) In that case the
instigation to the dream would have been well-grounded suspicions
on the dreamer’s part and not a telepathic message; but the
outcome would remain the same. You see then that even the
interpretation of this dream has told us nothing on the question of
whether we are to allow objective reality to telepathy. That could
only be decided by a thorough-going investigation of all the
circumstances of the case - which was unfortunately no more
possible in this instance than in any of the others in my
experience. Granted that the telepathy hypothesis offers by far the
simplest explanation, yet that does not help us much. The simplest
explanation is not always the correct one; the truth is often no
simple matter, and before deciding in favour of such a far-reaching
hypothesis we should like to have taken every precaution.

   We may now leave the subject of
dreams and telepathy: I have nothing more to say to you on it. But
kindly observe that what seemed to us to teach us something about
telepathy was not the dream but the interpretation of the dream,
its psycho-analytic working-over. Accordingly, in what follows we
may leave dreams entirely on one side and may follow an expectation
that the employment of psycho-analysis may throw a little light on
other events described as occult. There is, for instance, the
phenomenon of thought-transference, which is so close to telepathy
and can indeed without much violence be regarded as the same thing.
It claims that mental processes in one person - ideas, emotional
states, conative impulses - can be transferred to another person
through empty space without employing the familiar methods of
communication by means of words and signs. You will realize how
remarkable, and perhaps even of what great practical importance, it
would be if something of the kind really happened. It may be noted,
incidentally, that strangely enough precisely this phenomenon is
referred to least frequently in the miraculous stories of the
past.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4651

   I have formed an impression in
the course of the psycho-analytic treatment of patients that the
activities of professional fortune-tellers conceal an opportunity
for making particularly unobjectionable observations on
thought-transference. These are insignificant and even inferior
people, who immerse themselves in some sort of performance - lay
out cards, study writing or lines upon the palm of the hand, or
make astrological calculations - and at the same time, after having
shown themselves familiar with portions of their visitor’s
past or present circumstances, go on to prophesy their future. As a
rule their clients exhibit great satisfaction over these
achievements and feel no resentment if later on these prophecies
are not fulfilled. I have come across several such cases and have
been able to study them analytically, and in a moment I will tell
you the most remarkable of these instances. Their convincingness is
unfortunately impaired by the numerous reticences to which I am
compelled by the obligation of medical discretion. I have, however,
of set purpose avoided distortions. So listen now to the story of
one of my women patients, who had an experience of this kind with a
fortune-teller.

   She had been the eldest of a
numerous family and had grown up with an extremely strong
attachment to her father. She had married young and had found
entire satisfaction in her marriage. Only one thing was wanting to
her happiness: she had remained childless, so she could not bring
her beloved husband completely into the place of her father. When,
after long years of disappointment, she decided to undergo a
gynaecological operation, her husband revealed to her that the
blame was his: an illness before their marriage had made him
incapable of procreating children. She took the disappointment
badly, became neurotic and clearly suffered from fears of being
tempted. To cheer her up, he took her with him on a business trip
to Paris. They were sitting there one day in the hall of their
hotel when she noticed a stir among the hotel servants. She asked
what was going on and was told that Monsieur le Professeur had
arrived and was giving consultations in a little room over there.
She expressed a wish to have a try. Her husband rejected the idea,
but while he was not watching she slipped into the consulting-room
and faced the fortune-teller. She was 27 years old, but looked much
younger and had taken off her wedding-ring. Monsieur le Professeur
made her lay her hand on a tray filled with ashes and carefully
studied the imprint; he then told her all kinds of things about
hard struggles that lay before her, and ended with the comforting
assurance that all the same she would still get married and would
have two children by the time she was 32. When she told me this
story she was 43 years old, seriously ill and without any prospect
of ever having a child. Thus the prophecy had not come true; yet
she spoke of it without any sort of bitterness but with an
unmistakable expression of satisfaction, as though she were
recalling a cheerful event. It was easy to establish that she had
not the slightest notion of what the two numbers in the prophecy
might mean or whether they meant anything at all.

New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

4652

   You will say that this is a
stupid and incomprehensible story and ask why I have told it you. I
should be entirely of your opinion if - and this is the salient
point - analysis had not made it possible to arrive at an
interpretation of the prophecy which is convincing precisely from
the explanation it affords of the details. For the two numbers find
their place in the life of my patient’s
mother
. She
had married late - not till she was over thirty, and in the family
they had often dwelt on the fact of the success with which she had
hastened to make up for lost time. Her two first children (with our
patient the elder) had been born with the shortest possible
interval between them, in a single calendar year; and she had in
fact two children by the time she was 32. What Monsieur le
Professeur had said to my patient meant therefore: ‘Take
comfort from the fact of being so young. You’ll have the same
destiny as your mother, who also had to wait a long time for
children, and you’ll have two children by the time
you’re 32.’ But to have the same destiny as her mother,
to put herself in her mother’s place, to take her place with
her father - that had been the strongest wish of her youth, the
wish on account of whose non-fulfilment she was just beginning to
fall ill. The prophecy promised her that the wish would still be
fulfilled in spite of everything; how could she fail to feel
friendly to the prophet? Do you regard it as possible, however,
that Monsieur le Professeur was familiar with the facts of the
intimate family history of his chance client? Out of the question!
How, then, did he arrive at the knowledge which enabled him to give
expression to my patient’s strongest and most secret wish by
including the two numbers in his prophecy? I can see only two
possible explanations. Either the story as it was told me is untrue
and the events occurred otherwise, or thought-transference exists
as a real phenomenon. One can suppose, no doubt, that after an
interval of 16 years the patient had introduced the two numbers
concerned into her recollection from her unconscious. I have no
basis for this suspicion, but I cannot exclude it, and I imagine
that you will be readier to believe in a way out of that kind than
in the reality of thought-transference. If you do decide on the
latter course, do not forget that it was only analysis that created
the occult fact - uncovered it when it lay distorted to the point
of being unrecognizable.