Freud - Complete Works (101 page)

  
¹
After I had completed my manuscript I came
across a work by Stumpf (1889) which agrees with my views in
seeking to prove that dreams have a meaning and can be interpreted.
He effects his interpretation, however, by means of a symbolism of
an allegorical character without any guarantee of the general
validity of his procedure.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

604

   This involves some psychological
preparation of the patient. In the attention he pays to his own
psychical perceptions and the elimination of the criticism by which
he normally sifts the thoughts that occur to him. In order that he
may be able to concentrate his attention on his self-observation it
is an advantage for him to lie in a restful attitude and shut his
eyes. It is necessary to insist explicitly on his renouncing all
criticism of the thoughts that he perceives. We therefore tell him
that the success of the psycho-analysis depends on his noticing and
reporting whatever comes into his head and not being misled, for
instance, into suppressing an idea because it strikes him as
unimportant or irrelevant or because it seems to him meaningless.
He must adopt a completely impartial attitude to what occurs to
him, since it is precisely his critical attitude which is
responsible for his being unable, in the ordinary course of things,
to achieve the desired unravelling of his dream or obsessional idea
or whatever it may be.

   I have noticed in my
psycho-analytical work that the whole frame of mind of a man who is
reflecting is totally different from that of a man who is observing
his own psychical processes. In reflection there is one more
psychical activity at work than in the most attentive
self-observation, and this is shown amongst other things by the
tense looks and wrinkled forehead of a person pursuing his
reflections as compared with the restful expression of a
self-observer. In both cases attention must be concentrated, but
the man who is reflecting is also exercising his
critical
faculty; this leads him to reject some of the ideas that occur to
him after perceiving them, to cut short others without following
the trains of thought which they would open up to him, and to
behave in such a way towards still others that they never become
conscious at all and are accordingly suppressed before being
perceived. The self-observer on the other hand need only take the
trouble to suppress his critical faculty. If he succeeds in doing
that, innumerable ideas come into his consciousness of which he
could otherwise never have got hold. The material which is in this
way freshly obtained for his self-perception makes it possible to
interpret both his pathological ideas and his dream-structures.
What is in question, evidently, is the establishment of a psychical
state which, in its distribution of psychical energy (that is, of
mobile attention), bears some analogy to the state before falling
asleep - and no doubt also to hypnosis. As we fall asleep,
‘involuntary ideas’ emerge, owing to the relaxation of
a certain deliberate (and no doubt also critical) activity which we
allow to influence the course of our ideas while we are awake. (We
usually attribute this relaxation to ‘fatigue’.) As the
involuntary ideas emerge they change into visual and acoustic
images. (Cf. the remarks by Schleiermacher and others quoted above
on
p. 559 f.
)¹ In the state
used for the analysis of dreams and pathological ideas, the patient
purposely and deliberately abandons this activity and employs the
psychical energy thus saved (or a portion of it) in attentively
following the involuntary thoughts which now emerge, and which -
and here the situation differs from that of falling asleep - retain
the character of ideas.
In this way the
‘involuntary’ ideas are transformed into voluntary
ones
.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1919:] Silberer
(1909, 1910 and 1912) has made important contributions to
dream-interpretation by directly observing this transformation of
ideas into visual images.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

605

   The adoption of the required
attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge ‘of their
own free will’ and the abandonment of the critical function
that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard of
achievement for some people. The ‘involuntary thoughts’
are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to
prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and
philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must
demand an exactly similar attitude. In a passage in his
correspondence with Körner - we have to thank Otto Rank for
unearthing it - Schiller (writing on December 1, 1788) replies to
his friend’s complaint of insufficient productivity:
‘The ground for your complaint seems to me to lie in the
constraint imposed by your reason upon your imagination. I will
make my idea more concrete by a simile. It seems a bad thing and
detrimental to the creative work of the mind if Reason makes too
close an examination of the ideas as they come pouring in - at the
very gateway, as it were. Looked at in isolation, a thought may
seem very trivial or very fantastic; but it may be made important
by another thought that comes after it, and, in conjunction with
other thoughts that may seem equally absurd, it may turn out to
form a most effective link. Reason cannot form any opinion upon all
this unless it retains the thought long enough to look at it in
connection with the others. On the other hand, where there is a
creative mind, Reason - so it seems to me - relaxes its watch upon
the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it
look them through and examine them in a mass. - You critics, or
whatever else you may call yourselves, are ashamed or frightened of
the momentary and transient extravagances which are to be found in
all truly creative minds and whose longer or shorter duration
distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. You complain of
your unfruitfulness because you reject too soon and discriminate
too severely.’

   Nevertheless, what Schiller
describes as a relaxation of the watch upon the gates of Reason,
the adoption of an attitude of uncritical self-observation, is by
no means difficult. Most of my patients achieve it after their
first instructions. I myself can do so very completely, by the help
of writing down my ideas as they occur to me. The amount of
psychical energy by which it is possible to reduce critical
activity and increase the intensity of self-observation varies
considerably according to the subject on which one is trying to fix
one’s attention.

   Our first step in the employment
of this procedure teaches us that what we must take as the object
of our attention is not the dream as a whole but the separate
portions of its content. If I say to a patient who is still a
novice: ‘What occurs to you in connection with this
dream?’, as a rule his mental horizon becomes a blank. If,
however, I put the dream before him cut up into pieces, he will
give me a series of associations to each piece, which might be
described as the ‘background thoughts’ of that
particular part of the dream. Thus the method of dream
interpretation which I practise already differs in this first
important respect from the popular, historic and legendary method
of interpretation by means of symbolism and approximates to the
second or ‘decoding’ method. Like the latter, it
employs interpretation
en détail
and not
en
masse
; like the latter, it regards dreams from the very first
as being of a composite character, as being conglomerates of
psychical formations.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

606

   In the course of my
psycho-analyses of neurotics I must already have analysed over a
thousand dreams; but I do not propose to make use of this material
in my present introduction to the technique and theory of
dream-interpretation. Apart from the fact that such a course would
be open to the objection that these are the dreams of neuropaths,
from which no valid inferences could be made as to the dreams of
normal people, there is quite another reason which forces this
decision upon me. The subject to which these dreams of my patients
lead up is always, of course, the case history which underlies
their neurosis. Each dream would therefore necessitate a lengthy
introduction and an investigation of the nature and aetiological
determinants of the psychoneuroses. But these questions are in
themselves novelties and highly bewildering and would distract
attention from the problem of dreams. On the contrary, it is my
intention to make use of my present elucidation of dreams as a
preliminary step towards solving the more difficult problems of the
psychology of the neuroses. If, however, I forego my principal
material, the dreams of my neurotic patients, I must not be too
particular about what is left to me. All that remains are such
dreams as have been reported to me from time to time by normal
persons of my acquaintance, and such others as have been quoted as
instances in the literature dealing with dream-life. Unluckily,
however, none of these dreams are accompanied by the analysis
without which I cannot discover a dream’s meaning. My
procedure is not so convenient as the popular decoding method which
translates any given piece of a dream’s content by a fixed
key. I, on the contrary, am prepared to find that the same piece of
content may conceal a different meaning when it occurs in various
people or in various contexts. Thus it comes about that I am led to
my own dreams, which offer a copious and convenient material,
derived from an approximately normal person and relating to
multifarious occasions of daily life. No doubt I shall be met by
doubts of the trustworthiness of ‘self-analyses’ of
this kind; and I shall be told that they leave the door open to
arbitrary conclusions. In my judgement the situation is in fact
more favourable in the case of
self
-observation than in that
of other people; at all events we may make the experiment and see
how far self-analysis takes us with the interpretation of dreams.
But I have other difficulties to overcome, which lie within myself.
There is some natural hesitation about revealing so many intimate
facts about one’s mental life; nor can there be any guarantee
against misinterpretation by strangers. But it must be possible to
overcome such hesitations. ‘Tout psychologiste’, writes
Delboeuf, ‘est obligé de faire l’aveu même
de ses faiblesses s’il croit par là jeter du jour sur
quelque problème obscur.’¹ And it is safe to
assume that my readers too will very soon find their initial
interest in the indiscretions which I am bound to make replaced by
an absorbing immersion in the psychological problems upon which
they throw light.²

  
¹ [‘Every psychologist is under
an obligation to confess even his own weaknesses, if he thinks that
it may throw light upon some obscure problem.’]

  
²
I am obliged to add, however, by way of
qualification of what I have said above, that in scarcely any
instance have I brought forward the
complete
interpretation
of one of my own dreams, as it is known to me. I have probably been
wise in not putting too much faith in my readers’
discretion.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

607

   Accordingly I shall proceed to
choose out one of my own dreams and demonstrate upon it my method
of interpretation. In the case of every such dream some remarks by
way of preamble will be necessary. - And now I must ask the reader
to make my interests his own for quite a while, and to plunge,
along with me, into the minutest details of my life; for a
transference of this kind is peremptorily demanded by our interest
in the hidden meaning of dreams.

PREAMBLE

   During the summer of 1895 I had
been giving psycho-analytic treatment to a young lady who was on
very friendly terms with me and my family. It will be readily
understood that a mixed relationship such as this may be a source
of many disturbed feelings in a physician and particularly in a
psychotherapist. While the physician’s personal interest is
greater, his authority is less; any failure would bring a threat to
the old-established friendship with the patient’s family.
This treatment had ended in a partial success; the patient was
relieved of her hysterical anxiety but did not lose all her somatic
symptoms. At that time I was not yet quite clear in my mind as to
the criteria indicating that a hysterical case history was finally
closed, and I proposed a solution to the patient which she seemed
unwilling to accept. While we were thus at variance, we had broken
off the treatment for the summer vacation. - One day I had a visit
from a junior colleague, one of my oldest friends, who had been
staying with my patient, Irma, and her family at their country
resort. I asked him how he had found her and he answered:
‘She’s better, but not quite well.’ I was
conscious that my friend Otto’s words, or the tone in which
he spoke them, annoyed me. I fancied I detected a reproof in them,
such as to the effect that I had promised the patient too much;
and, whether rightly or wrongly, I attributed the supposed fact of
Otto’s siding against me to the influence of my
patient’s relatives, who, as it seemed to me, had never
looked with favour on the treatment. However, my disagreeable
impression was not clear to me and I gave no outward sign of it.
The same evening I wrote out Irma’s case history, with the
idea of giving it to Dr. M. (a common friend who was at that time
the leading figure in our circle) in order to justify myself. That
night (or more probably the next morning) I had the following
dream, which I noted down immediately after waking.¹