Freud - Complete Works (166 page)

   Secondary revision is the one
factor in the dream-work which has been observed by the majority of
writers on the subject and of which the significance has been
appreciated. Havelock Ellis (1911, 10-11) has given an amusing
account of its functioning: ‘Sleeping consciousness we may
even imagine as saying to itself in effect: "Here comes our
master, Waking Consciousness, who attaches such mighty importance
to reason and logic and so forth. Quick! gather things up, put them
in order - any order will do - before he enters to take
possession."'

   The identity of its method of
working with that of waking thought has been stated with particular
clarity by Delacroix (1904, 926): ‘Cette fonction
d’interprétation n’est pas particulère au
rêve; c’est le même travail de coordination
logique que nous faisons sur nos sensations pendant la
veille.’¹ James Sully is of the same opinion. So, too,
is Tobowolska (1900, 93): ‘Sur ces successions
incohérentes d’hallucinations, l’esprit
s’efforce de faire le même travail de coordination
logique qu’il fait pendant la veille sur les sensations. Il
relie entre elles par un lien imaginaire toutes ces images
décousues et bouche les écarts trop grands qui se
trouvaient entre elles.’²

  
¹
[‘This interpretative function is not
peculiar to dreams. It is the same work of logical co-ordination
which we carry out upon our sensations while we are
awake.’]

  
²
[‘The mind endeavours to carry out
upon these incoherent trains of hallucinations the same work of
logical co-ordination that it carries out upon sensations during
the daytime. It connects up all these detached images by an
imaginary link and stops up any excessively wide gaps between
them.’]

The Interpretation Of Dreams

940

   According to some writers, this
process of arranging and interpreting begins during the dream
itself and is continued after waking. Thus Paulhan (1894, 546):
‘Cependant j’ai souvent pensé qu’il
pouvait y avoir une certaine déformation, ou plutôt
reformation, du rêve dans le souvenir. . . .
La tendence systématisante de l’imagination pourrait
fort bien achever après le réveil ce qu’elle a
ébauché pendant le sommeil. De la sorte, la
rapidité réelle de la pensée serait
augmentée en apparence par les perfectionnements dus
à l’imagination éveillée.’¹
Bernard-Leroy and Tobowolska (1901, 592): ‘Dans le
rêve, au contraire, l’interprétation et la
coordination se font non selllement à l’aide des
données du rêve, mais encore à l’aide de
celles de la veille. . . .’²

   Inevitably, therefore, this one
recognized factor in the formation of dreams has had its importance
over-estimated, so that it has been credited with the whole
achievement of the creation of dreams. This act of creation, as
Goblot (1896, 280 f.) and still more Foucault (1906) suppose, is
performed at the moment of waking; for these two writers attribute
to waking thought an ability to construct a dream out of the
thoughts that emerge during sleep. Bernard-Leroy and Tobowolska
(1901) comment on this view: ‘On a cru pouvoir placer le
rêve au moment du réveil, et ils ont attribué
à la pensée de la veille la fonction de construire le
rêve avec les images présentes dans li pensée
du sommeil.’³

  
¹
[‘I have often thought, however, that
dreams may be to some extent misshaped, or rather reshaped, in
memory. . . . The tendency of the imagination
towards systematization might very well complete after waking what
it had started upon in sleep. In that way the real speed of thought
would be given an apparent increase by the improvements due to the
waking imagination.’]

  
²
[‘In a dream, on the contrary,
interpretation and co-ordination are carried out by the help not
only of the data presented in the dream, but of the data available
in waking life. . . .’]

  
³
[‘It has been thought possible to
locate dreams at the moment of waking, and have ascribed to waking
thought the function of constructing dreams out of the images
present in sleeping thought.’]

The Interpretation Of Dreams

941

   From this discussion of secondary
revision I will go on to consider a further factor in the
dream-work which has recently been brought to light by some finely
perceptive observations carried out by Herbert Silberer. As I have
mentioned earlier (
p. 814 ff.
),
Silberer has, as it were, caught in the very act the process of
transforming thoughts into images, by forcing himself into
intellectual activity while he was in a state of fatigue and
drowsiness. At such moments the thought with which he was dealing
vanished and was replaced by a vision which turned out to be a
substitute for what were as a rule abstract thoughts, (Cf. the
examples in the passage just referred to.) Now it happened during
these experiments that the image which arose, and which might be
compared to an element of a dream, sometimes represented something
other than the thought that was being dealt with - namely, the
fatigue itself, the difficulty and unpleasure involved in the work.
It represented, that is to say, the subjective state and mode of
functioning of the person making the effort instead of the object
of his efforts. Silberer described occurrences of this kind, which
were very frequent in his case, as a ‘functional
phenomenon’ in contrast to the ‘material
phenomenon’ which would have been expected.

   For instance: ‘One
afternoon I was lying on my sofa feeling extremely sleepy;
nevertheless I forced myself to think over a philosophical problem.
I wanted to compare the views of Kant and Schopenhauer upon Time.
As a result of my drowsiness I was unable to keep the arguments of
both of them before my mind at once, which was necessary in order
to make the comparison. After a number of vain attempts, I once
more impressed Kant’s deductions upon my mind with all the
strength of my will, so that I might apply them to
Schopenhauer’s statement of the problem. I then directed my
attention to the latter; but when I tried to turn back again to
Kant, I found that his argument had once more escaped me and I
tried vainly to pick it up once more. This vain effort at
recovering the Kant
dossier
which was stored away somewhere
in my head was suddenly represented before my closed eyes as a
concrete and plastic symbol, as though it were a dream-picture:
I was asking for information from a disobliging secretary who
was bent over his writing-table and refused to put himself out at
my insistent demand. He half straightened himself and gave me a
disagreeable and uncomplying look
’. (Silberer, 1909, 513
f.)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

942

   Here are some other instances,
which relate to the oscillation between sleeping and waking:

   ‘Example No. 2. -
Circumstances: In the morning, at waking. While I was at a certain
depth of sleep (a twilight state) and reflecting over a previous
dream and in a sort of way continuing to dream it, I felt myself
approaching nearer to waking consciousness but wanted to remain in
the twilight state.

   ‘Scene:
I was stepping
across a brook with one foot but drew it back again at once with
the intention of remaining on this side
.’ (Silberer,
1912, 625.)

   ‘Example No. 6. -
Conditions as in example No. 4' (in which he had wanted to lie
in bed a little longer, though without oversleeping). ‘I
wanted to give way to sleep for a little longer.

   ‘Scene:
I was saying
good-bye to someone and was arranging with him (or her) to meet him
(or her) again soon
.’ (Ibid., 627.)

   The ‘functional’
phenomenon, ‘the representation of a state instead of an
object’, was observed by Silberer principally in the two
conditions of falling asleep and waking up. It is obvious that
dream-interpretation is only concerned with the latter case.
Silberer has given examples which show convincingly that in many
dreams the last pieces of the manifest content, which are
immediately followed by waking, represent nothing more nor less
than an intention to wake or the process of waking. The
representation may be in terms of such images as crossing a
threshold (‘threshold symbolism’), leaving one room and
entering another, departure, home-coming, parting with a companion,
diving into water, etc. I cannot, however, refrain from remarking
that I have come across dream-elements which can be related to
threshold symbolism, whether in my own dreams or in those of
subjects whom I have analysed, far less frequently than
Silberer’s communications would have led one to expect.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

943

   It is by no means inconceivable
or improbable that this threshold symbolism might throw light upon
some elements in the middle of the texture of dreams - in places,
for instance, where there is a question of oscillations in the
depth of sleep and of an inclination to break off the dream.
Convincing instances of this, however, have not been produced. What
seem to occur more frequently are cases of overdetermination, in
which a part of a dream which has derived its material content from
the nexus of dream-thoughts is employed to represent
in
addition
some state of mental activity.

   This very interesting functional
phenomenon of Silberer’s has, through no fault of its
discoverer’s, led to many abuses; for it has been regarded as
lending support to the old inclination to give abstract and
symbolic interpretations to dreams. The preference for the
‘functional category’ is carried so far by some people
that they speak of the functional phenomenon wherever intellectual
activities or emotional processes occur in the dream-thoughts,
although such material has neither more nor less right than any
other kind to find its way into a dream as residues of the previous
day.

   We are ready to recognize the
fact that Silberer’s phenomena constitute a second
contribution on the part of waking thought to the construction of
dreams; though it is less regularly present and less significant
than the first one, which has already been introduced under the
name of ‘secondary revision.’ It has been shown that a
part of the attention which operates during the day continues to be
directed towards dreams during the state of sleep, that it keeps a
check on them and criticizes them and reserves the power to
interrupt them. It has seemed plausible to recognize in the mental
agency which thus remains awake the censor to whom we have had to
attribute such a powerful restricting influence upon the form taken
by dreams. What Silberer’s observations have added to this is
the fact that in certain circumstances a species of
self-observation plays a part in this and makes a contribution to
the content of the dream. The probable relations of this
self-observing agency, which may be particularly prominent in
philosophical minds, to endopsychic perception, to delusions of
observation, to conscience and to the censor of dreams can be more
appropriately treated elsewhere.¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1914:] ‘On
Narcissism’ (Freud, 1914
c
).

The Interpretation Of Dreams

944

   I will now try to sum up this
lengthy disquisition on the dream-work. We were faced by the
question whether the mind employs the whole of its faculties
without reserve in constructing dreams or only a functionally
restricted fragment of them. Our investigations led us to reject
entirely the form in which the question was framed as being
inadequate to the circumstances. If, however, we had to reply to
the question on the basis of the terms in which it was stated, we
should be obliged to reply in the affirmative to
both
the
alternatives, mutually exclusive though they appear to be. Two
separate functions may be distinguished in mental activity during
the construction of a dream: the production of the dream-thoughts,
and their transformation into the content of the dream. The
dream-thoughts are entirely rational and are constructed with an
expenditure of all the psychical energy of which we are capable.
They have their place among thought-processes that have not become
conscious - processes from which, after some modification, our
conscious thoughts, too, arise. However many interesting and
puzzling questions the dream-thoughts may involve, such questions
have, after all, no special relation to dreams and do not call for
treatment among the problems of dreams.¹On the other hand, the
second function of mental activity during dream-construction, the
transformation of the unconscious thoughts into the content of the
dream, is peculiar to dream-life and characteristic of it. This
dream-work proper diverges further from our picture of waking
thought than has been supposed even by the most determined
depreciator of psychical functioning during the formation of
dreams. The dream-work is not simply more careless, more
irrational, more forgetful and more incomplete than waking thought;
it is completely different from it qualitatively and for that
reason not immediately comparable with it. It does not think,
calculate or judge in any way at all; it restricts itself to giving
things a new form. It is exhaustively described by an enumeration
of the conditions which it has to satisfy in producing its result.
That product, the dream, has above all to evade the censorship, and
with that end in view the dream-work makes use of a
displacement
of psychical intensities
to the point of a transvaluation of
all psychical values. The thoughts have to be reproduced
exclusively or predominantly in the material of visual and acoustic
memory-traces, and this necessity imposes upon the dream-work
considerations of representability
which it meets by
carrying out fresh displacements. Greater intensities have probably
to be produced than are available in the dream-thoughts at night,
and this purpose is served by the extensive
condensation
which is carried out with the constituents of the dream-thoughts.
Little attention is paid to the logical relations between the
thoughts; those relations are ultimately given a disguised
representation in certain
formal
characteristics of dreams.
Any affect attached to the dream-thoughts undergoes less
modification than their ideational content. Such affects are as a
rule suppressed; when they are retained, they are detached from the
ideas that properly belong to them, affects of a similar character
being brought together. Only a single portion of the dream-work and
one which operates to an irregular degree, the working over of the
material by partly aroused waking thought, tallies to some extent
with the view which other writers have sought to apply to the
entire activity of dream-construction.