Freud - Complete Works (85 page)

   In the present revised edition of
the work I have again treated it essentially as an historic
document and I have only made such alterations in it as were
suggested by the clarification and deepening of my own opinions. In
accordance with this, I have finally given up the idea of including
a list of works on the problems of dreams published since the
book’s first appearance, and that section has now been
dropped. The two essays which Otto Rank contributed to earlier
editions, on ‘Dreams and Creative Writing’ and
‘Dreams and Myths’, have also been omitted.

VIENNA
,
December
1929

The Interpretation Of Dreams

515

Preface to the Third (Revised) English Edition

In 1909 G. Stanley Hall invited me to Clark
University, in Worcester, to give the first lectures on
psycho-analysis. In the same year Dr. Brill published the first of
his translations of my writings, which were soon followed by
further ones. If psycho-analysis now plays a role in American
intellectual life, or if it does so in the future, a large part of
this result will have to be attributed to this and other activities
of Dr. Brill’s.

   His first translation of
The
Interpretation of Dreams
appeared in 1913. Since then much has
taken place in the world, and much has been changed in our views
about the neuroses. This book, with the new contribution to
psychology which surprised the world when it was published (1900),
remains essentially unaltered. It contains, even according to my
present-day judgement, the most valuable of all the discoveries it
has been my good fortune to make. Insight such as this falls to
one’s lot but once in a lifetime.

VIENNA
,
March
15, 1931

The Interpretation Of Dreams

516

CHAPTER I

THE
SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE DEALING WITH THE PROBLEMS OF DREAMS

In the pages that follow I shall bring forward
proof that there is a psychological technique which makes it
possible to interpret dreams, and that, if that procedure is
employed, every dream reveals itself as a psychical structure which
has a meaning and which can be inserted at an assignable point in
the mental activities of waking life. I shall further endeavour to
elucidate the processes to which the strangeness and obscurity of
dreams are due and to deduce from those processes the nature of the
psychical forces by whose concurrent or mutually opposing action
dreams are generated. Having gone thus far, my description will
break off, for it will have reached a point at which the problem of
dreams merges into more comprehensive problems, the solution of
which must be approached upon the basis of material of another
kind.

   I shall give by way of preface a
review of the work done by earlier writers on the subject as well
as of the present position of the problems of dreams in the world
of science, since in the course of my discussion I shall not often
have occasion to revert to those topics. For, in spite of many
thousands of years of effort, the scientific understanding of
dreams has made very little advance - a fact so generally admitted
in the literature that it seems unnecessary to quote instances in
support of it. In these writings, of which a list appears at the
end of my work, many stimulating observations are to be found and a
quantity of interesting material bearing upon our theme, but little
or nothing that touches upon the essential nature of dreams or that
offers a final solution of any of their enigmas. And still less, of
course, has passed into the knowledge of educated laymen.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

 
517

   It may be asked what view was
taken of dreams in prehistoric times by primitive races of men and
what effect dreams may have had upon the formation of their
conceptions of the world and of the soul; and this is a subject of
such great interest that it is only with much reluctance that I
refrain from dealing with it in this connection. I must refer my
readers to the standard works of Sir John Lubbock, Herbert Spencer,
E. B. Tylor and others, and I will only add that we shall not be
able to appreciate the wide range of these problems and
speculations until we have dealt with the task that lies before us
here - the interpretation of dreams.

   The prehistoric view of dreams is
no doubt echoed in the attitude adopted towards dreams by the
peoples of classical antiquity.¹ They took it as axiomatic
that dreams were connected with the world of superhuman beings in
whom they believed and that they were revelations from gods and
daemons. There could be no question, moreover, that for the dreamer
dreams had an important purpose, which was as a rule to foretell
the future. The extraordinary variety in the content of dreams and
in the impression they produced made it difficult, however, to have
any uniform view of them and made it necessary to classify dreams
into numerous groups and subdivisions according to their importance
and trustworthiness. The position adopted towards dreams by
individual philosophers in antiquity was naturally dependent to
some extent upon their attitude towards divination in general.

   In the two works of Aristotle
which deal with dreams, they have already become a subject for
psychological study. We are told that dreams are not sent by the
gods and are not of a divine character, but that they are
‘daemonic’, since nature is ‘daemonic’ and
not divine. Dreams, that is, do not arise from supernatural
manifestations but follow the laws of the human spirit, though the
latter, it is true, is akin to the divine. Dreams are defined as
the mental activity of the sleeper in so far as he is asleep.

  
¹
  What follows is based on
Büchsenschütz’s scholarly study (1868).

The Interpretation Of Dreams

518

   Aristotle was aware of some of the
characteristics of dream life. He knew, for instance, that dreams
give a magnified construction to small stimuli arising during
sleep. ‘Men think that they are walking through fire and are
tremendously hot, when there is only a slight heating about certain
parts.’ And from this circumstance he draws the conclusion
that dreams may very well betray to a physician the first signs of
some bodily change which has not been observed in waking.¹

   Before the time of Aristotle, as
we know, the ancients regarded dreams not as a product of the
dreaming mind but as something introduced by a divine agency; and
already the two opposing currents, which we shall find influencing
opinions of dream-life at every period of history, were making
themselves felt. The distinction was drawn between truthful and
valuable dreams, sent to the sleeper to warn him or foretell the
future, and vain, deceitful and worthless dreams, whose purpose it
was to mislead or destroy him.

   Gruppe (1906,
2
, 930)
quotes a classification of dreams on these lines made by Macrobius
and Artemidorus: ‘Dreams were divided into two classes. One
class was supposed to be influenced by the present or past, but to
have no future significance. It included the
έυύπυια
or insomnia, which gave a direct representation of a given idea or
of its opposite - e.g. of hunger or of its satiation -, and the
φαυτάσματα
,
which lent a fantastic extension to the given idea - e.g. the
nightmare or
ephialtes
. The other class, on the contrary,
was supposed to determine the future. It included (1) direct
prophecies received in a dream (the
χρηματισμός
or
oraculum
), (2) previsions of some future event (the
όραμα
or
visio
) and (3) symbolic dreams, which needed
interpretation (the
όυειρος
or
somnium
). This theory persisted for many
centuries.’

  
¹
The Greek physician Hippocrates deals with
the relation of dreams to illnesses in one of the chapters of his
famous work.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

519

   This variation in the value that
was to be assigned to dreams was closely related to the problem of
‘interpreting’ them. Important consequences were in
general to be expected from dreams. But dreams were not all
immediately comprehensible and it was impossible to tell whether a
particular unintelligible dream might not be making some important
announcement. This provided an incentive for elaborating a method
by which the unintelligible content of a dream might be replaced by
one that was comprehensible and significant. In the later years of
antiquity Artemidorus of Daldis was regarded as the greatest
authority on the interpretation of dreams, and the survival of his
exhaustive work must compensate us for the loss of the other
writings on the same subject.¹

   The pre-scientific view of dreams
adopted by the peoples of antiquity was certainly in complete
harmony with their view of the universe in general, which led them
to project into the external world as realities things which in
fact enjoyed reality only within their own minds. Moreover, their
view of dreams took into account the principal impression produced
upon the waking mind in the morning by what is left of a dream in
the memory: an impression of something alien, arising from another
world and contrasting with the remaining contents of the mind.
Incidentally, it would be a mistake to suppose that the theory of
the supernatural origin of dreams is without its supporters in our
own days. We may leave on one side pietistic and mystical writers,
who, indeed, are perfectly justified in remaining in occupation of
what is left of the once wide domain of the supernatural so long as
that field is not conquered by scientific explanation. But apart
from them, one comes across clear-headed men, without any
extravagant ideas, who seek to support their religious faith in the
existence and activity of superhuman spiritual forces precisely by
the inexplicable nature of the phenomena of dreaming. (Cf. Haffner,
1887.) The high esteem in which dream-life is held by some schools
of philosophy (by the followers of Schelling, for instance) is
clearly an echo of the divine nature of dreams which was undisputed
in antiquity. Nor are discussions of the premonitory character of
dreams and their power to foretell the future at an end. For
attempts at giving a psychological explanation have been inadequate
to cover the material collected, however decidedly the sympathies
of those of a scientific cast of mind may incline against accepting
any such beliefs.

  
¹
For the further history of
dream-interpretation in the Middle Ages see Diepgen (1912) and the
monographs of Förster (1910 and 1911), Gotthard (1912), etc.
Dream-interpretation among the Jews has been discussed by Almoli
(1848), Amram (1901), and Löwinger (1908); also, quite
recently and taking account of psycho-analytic findings, by Lauer
(1913). Information upon dream-interpretation among the Arabs has
been given by Drexl (1909), Schwarz (1913) and the missionary
Tfinkdji (1913); among the Japanese by Miura (1906) and Iwaya
(1902); among the Chinese by Secker (1909-10); and among the people
of India by Negelein (1912).

The Interpretation Of Dreams

520

   It is difficult to write a
history of the scientific study of the problems of dreams because,
however valuable that study may have been at a few points, no line
of advance in any particular direction can be traced. No foundation
has been laid of secure findings upon which a later investigator
might build; but each new writer examines the same problems afresh
and begins again, as it were, from the beginning. If I attempted to
take those who have written on the question in chronological order
and to give a summary of their views upon the problems of dreams, I
should have to abandon any hope of giving a comprehensive general
picture of the present state of knowledge of the subject. I have
therefore chosen to frame my account according to topics rather
than authors and, as I raise each dream problem in turn, I shall
bring forward whatever material the literature contains for its
solution.

   Since, however, it has been
impossible for me to cover the whole of the literature of the
subject, widely scattered as it is and trenching upon many other
fields, I must ask my readers to be satisfied so long as no
fundamental fact and no important point of view is overlooked in my
description.

   Until recently most writers on
the subject have felt obliged to treat sleep and dreams as a single
topic, and as a rule they have dealt in addition with analogous
conditions on the fringe of pathology, and dream-like states, such
as hallucinations, visions and so on. The latest works, on the
contrary, show a preference for a restricted theme and take as
their subject, perhaps, some isolated question in the field of
dream-life. I should be glad to see in this change of attitude the
expression of a conviction that in such obscure matters it will
only be possible to arrive at explanations and agreed results by a
series of detailed investigations. A piece of detailed research of
that kind, predominantly psychological in character, is all I have
to offer in these pages. I have had little occasion to deal with
the problem of sleep, for that is essentially a problem of
physiology, even though one of the characteristics of the state of
sleep must be that it brings about modifications in the conditions
of functioning of the mental apparatus. The literature on the
subject of sleep is accordingly disregarded in what follows.