Freud - Complete Works (96 page)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

574

   Haffner (1884, 251): ‘With
rare exceptions . . . a virtuous man will be
virtuous in his dreams as well; he will resist temptations and will
keep himself aloof from hatred, envy, anger and all other vices.
But a sinful man will as a rule find in his dreams the same images
that he had before his eyes while he was awake.’

   Scholz: ‘In dreams is
truth: in dreams we learn to know ourselves as we are in spite of
all the disguises we wear to the world, . . . . The
honourable man cannot commit a crime in dreams, or if he does he is
horrified over it as over something contrary to his nature. The
Roman Emperor who put a man to death who had dreamt that he had
assassinated the ruler, was justified in so doing if he reasoned
that the thoughts one has in dreams, one has, too, when awake. The
common expression "I wouldn’t dream of such a
thing" has a doubly correct significance when it refers to
something which can have no lodgement in our hearts or mind.’
(Plato, on the contrary, thought that the best men are those who
only
dream
what other men
do
in their waking
life.)

   Pfaff (1868 ), quoted by Spitta
(1882, 192), alters the wording of a familiar saying: ‘Tell
me some of your dreams, and I will tell you about your inner
self.’

   The problem of morality in dreams
is taken as the centre of interest by Hildebrandt, from whose small
volume I have already quoted so much - for, of all the
contributions to the study of dreams which I have come across, it
is the most perfect in form and the richest in ideas. Hildebrandt
too lays it down as a rule that the purer the life the purer the
dream, and the more impure the one the more impure the other. He
believes that man’s moral nature persists in dreams.
‘Whereas’, he writes, ‘even the grossest mistake
in arithmetic, even the most romantic reversal of scientific laws,
even the most ridiculous anachronism fails to upset us or even to
arouse our suspicions, yet we never lose sight of the distinction
between good and evil, between right and wrong or between virtue
and vice. However much of what accompanies us in the daytime may
drop away in our sleeping hours, Kant’s categorical
imperative is a companion who follows so close at our heels that we
cannot be free of it even in sleep. . . . But this
can only be explained by the fact that what is fundamental in
man’s nature, his moral being, is too firmly fixed to be
affected by the kaleidoscopic shuffling to which the imagination,
the reason, the memory and other such faculties must submit in
dreams.’ (Ibid., 45 f.)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

575

   As the discussion of this subject
proceeds, however, both groups of writers begin to exhibit
remarkable shifts and inconsistencies in their opinions. Those who
maintain that the moral personality of man ceases to operate in
dreams should, in strict logic, lose all interest in immoral
dreams. They could rule out any attempt at holding a dreamer
responsible for his dreams, or at deducing from the wickedness of
his dreams that he had an evil streak in his character, just as
confidently as they would reject a similar attempt at deducing from
the absurdity of his dreams that his intellectual activities in
waking life were worthless. The other group, who believe that the
‘categorical imperative’ extends to dreams, should
logically accept unqualified responsibility for immoral dreams. We
could only hope for their sake that they would have no such
reprehensible dreams of their own to upset their firm belief in
their own moral character.

   It appears, however, that no one
is as confident as all that of how far he is good or bad, and that
no one can deny the recollection of immoral dreams of his own. For
writers in both groups, irrespective of the opposition between
their opinions on dream-morality, make efforts at explaining the
origin of immoral dreams; and a fresh difference of opinion
develops, according as their origin is sought in the functions of
the mind or in deleterious effects produced on the mind by somatic
causes. Thus the compelling logic of facts forces the supporters of
both the responsibility and the irresponsibility of dream-life to
unite in recognizing that the immorality of dreams has a specific
psychical source.

   Those who believe that morality
extends to dreams are, however, all careful to avoid assuming
complete
responsibility for their dreams. Thus Haffner
(1887, 250) writes: ‘We are not responsible for our dreams,
since our thought and will have been deprived in them of the basis
upon which alone our life possesses truth and
reality . . . For that reason no dream-wishes or
dream-actions can be virtuous or sinful.’ Nevertheless, he
goes on, men are responsible for their sinful dreams in so far as
they cause them indirectly. They have the duty of morally cleansing
their minds not only in their waking life but more especially
before going to sleep.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

576

   Hildebrandt presents us with a
far deeper analysis of this mingled rejection and acceptance of
responsibility for the moral content of dreams. He argues that in
considering the immoral appearance of dreams allowance must be made
for the dramatic form in which they are couched, for their
compression of the most complicated processes of reflection into
the briefest periods of time, as well as for the way in which, as
even he admits, the ideational elements of dreams become confused
and deprived of their significance. He confesses that he has the
greatest hesitation, nevertheless, in thinking that all
responsibility for sins and faults in dreams can be repudiated.

   ‘When we are anxious to
disown some unjust accusation, especially one that relates to our
aims and intentions, we often use the phrase "I should never
dream of such a thing", we are in that way expressing, on the
one hand, our feeling that the region of dreams is the most remote
and furthest in which we are answerable for our thoughts, since
thoughts in that region are so loosely connected with our essential
self that they are scarcely to be regarded as ours; but
nevertheless, since we feel obliged expressly to deny the existence
of these thoughts in this region, we are at the same time admitting
indirectly that our self-justification would not be complete unless
it extended so far. And I think that in this we are speaking,
although unconsciously, the language of truth.’ ( Ibid.,
49.)

   ‘It is impossible to think
of any action in a dream for which the original motive has not in
some way or other - whether as a wish, or desire or impulse -
passed through the waking mind.’ We must admit, Hildebrandt
proceeds, that this original impulse was not invented by the dream;
the dream merely copied it and spun it out, it merely elaborated in
dramatic form a scrap of historical material which it had found in
us; it merely dramatized the Apostle’s words:
‘Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer’. And
although after we have awoken, conscious of our moral strength, we
may smile at the whole elaborate structure of the sinful dream, yet
the original material from which the structure was derived will
fail to raise a smile. We feel responsible for the dreamer’s
errors - not for the whole amount of them, but for a certain
percentage. ‘In short, if we understand in this scarcely
disputable sense Christ’s saying that "out of the heart
proceed evil thoughts", we can hardly escape the conviction
that a sin committed in a dream bears with it at least an obscure
minimum of guilt.’ (Hildebrandt, 1875, 51 ff.)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

577

   Thus Hildebrandt finds the source
of immorality in dreams in the germs and hints of evil impulses
which, in the form of temptations, pass through our minds during
the day; and he does not hesitate to include these immoral elements
in his estimate of a person’s moral value. These same
thoughts, as we know, and this same estimate of them, are what have
led the pious and saintly in every age to confess themselves
miserable sinners.¹

   There can of course be no doubt
as to the general existence of such incompatible ideas; they occur
in most people and in spheres other than that of ethics. Sometimes,
however, they have been judged less seriously. Spitta (1882, 194)
quotes some remarks by Zeller, which are relevant in this
connection: ‘A mind is seldom so happily organized as to
possess complete power at every moment and not to have the regular
and clear course of its thoughts constantly interrupted not only by
inessential but by positively grotesque and nonsensical ideas.
Indeed, the greatest thinkers have had to complain of this
dreamlike, teasing and tormenting rabble of ideas, which have
disturbed their deepest reflections and their most solemn and
earnest thoughts.’

   A more revealing light is thrown
upon the psychological position of these incompatible thoughts by
another remark of Hildebrandt’s (1875, 55), to the effect
that dreams give us an occasional glimpse into depths and recesses
of our nature to which we usually have no access in our waking
state. Kant expresses the same idea in a passage in his
Anthropologie
in which he declares that dreams seem to exist
in order to show us our hidden natures and to reveal to us, not
what we are, but what we might have been if we had been brought up
differently. Radestock (1879, 84), too, says that dreams often do
no more than reveal to us what we would not admit to ourselves and
that it is therefore unfair of us to stigmatize them as liars and
deceivers. Erdmann writes: ‘Dreams have never shown me what I
ought to think of a man; but I have occasionally learnt from a
dream, greatly to my own astonishment, what I
do
think of a
man and how I feel towards him.’ Similarly I. H. Fichte
(1864, I, 539) remarks: ‘The nature of our dreams gives a far
more truthful reflection of our whole disposition than we are able
to learn of it from self-observation in waking life.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1914:] It is of some
interest to learn the attitude of the Inquisition to our problem.
In Caesar Carena’s
Tractatus de Officio sanctissimae
Inquisitionis
, 1659, the following passage occurs: ‘If
anyone speaks heresies in a dream, the inquisitors should take
occasion to enquire into his way of life, for what occupies a man
during the day is wont to come again in his sleep.’
(Communicated by Dr. Ehniger, St. Urban, Switzerland.)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

578

   It will be seen that the
emergence of impulses which are foreign to our moral consciousness
is merely analogous to what we have already learnt - the fact that
dreams have access to ideational material which is absent in our
waking state or plays but a small part in it. Thus Benini (1898)
writes: ‘ Certe nostre inclinazioni che si credevano
soffocate e spente da un pezzo, si ridestano; passioni vecchie e
sepolte rivivono; cose e persone a cui non pensiamo mai, ci vengono
dinanzi.’ ¹ And Volkelt (1875, 105): ‘Ideas, too,
which have entered waking consciousness almost unnoticed and have
perhaps never again been called to memory, very frequently announce
their presence in the mind through dreams.’ At this point,
finally, we may recall Schleiermacher’s assertion that the
act of falling asleep is accompanied by the appearance of
‘involuntary ideas’ or images.

   We may, then, class together
under the heading of  ‘involuntary ideas’ the
whole of the ideational material the emergence of which, alike in
immoral and in absurd dreams, causes us so much bewilderment. There
is, however, one important point of difference: involuntary ideas
in the moral sphere contradict our usual attitude of mind, whereas
the others merely strike us as strange. No step has yet been taken
towards a deeper knowledge which would resolve this
distinction.

  
¹
[`Certain of our desires which have seemed
for a time to be stifled and extinguished are re-awakened; old and
buried passions come to life again; things and persons of whom we
never think appear before us.’]

The Interpretation Of Dreams

579

   The question next arises as to
the
significance
of the appearance of involuntary ideas in
dreams, as to the light which the emergence during the night of
these morally incompatible impulses throws upon the psychology of
the waking and dreaming mind. And here we find a fresh division of
opinion and yet another different grouping of the authorities. The
line of thought adopted by Hildebrandt and others who share his
fundamental position inevitably leads to the view that immoral
impulses possess a certain degree of power even in waking life,
though it is an inhibited power, unable to force its way into
action, and that in sleep something is put out of action which acts
like an inhibition in the daytime and has prevented us from being
aware of the existence of such impulses. Thus dreams would reveal
the true nature of man, though not his
whole
nature, and
they would constitute one means of rendering the hidden interior of
the mind accessible to our knowledge. Only upon some such premises
as these can Hildebrandt base his attribution to dreams of warning
powers, which draw our attention to moral infirmities in our mind,
just as physicians admit that dreams can bring unobserved physical
illnesses to our conscious notice. So, too, Spitta must be adopting
this view when, in speaking of the sources of excitation which
impinge upon the mind (at puberty, for instance), he consoles the
dreamer with the assurance that he will have done all that lies
within his power if he leads a strictly virtuous life in his waking
hours, and if he takes care to suppress sinful thoughts whenever
they arise and to prevent their maturing and turning into acts.
According to this view we might define the ‘involuntary
ideas’ as ideas which had been ‘suppressed’
during the day, and we should have to regard their emergence as a
genuine mental phenomenon.