PART II DREAMS (continued 4)

We have just subjected a series of dreams to interpretation, but without taking the question of wish-fulfilment into consideration at all. I feel certain that while we were talking about them the question repeatedly forced itself upon you: “What has become of the wish-fulfilment which is supposed 181to be the object of the dream-work?” Now this question is important, for it is the one which our lay critics are constantly asking. As you know, mankind has an instinctive antipathy to intellectual novelties; one of the ways in which this shows itself is that any such novelty is immediately reduced to its very smallest compass, and if possible embodied in some catch-word. “Wish-fulfilment” has become the catch-word for the new theory of dreams. Directly they hear that dreams are said to be wish-fulfilments, the laity asks: “Where does the wish-fulfilment come in?” and their asking the question amounts to a repudiation of the idea. They can immediately think of countless dreams of their own which were accompanied by feeling so unpleasant as sometimes to reach the point of agonizing dread; and so this statement of the psycho-analytical theory of dreams appears to them highly improbable. It is easy to reply that in distorted dreams the wish-fulfilment is not openly expressed, but has to be looked for, so that it cannot be shown until the dreams have been interpreted. We know too that the wishes underlying these distorted dreams are those which are prohibited and rejected by the censorship, and that it is just their existence which is the cause of distortion and the motive for the intervention of the censorship. But it is difficult to make the lay critic understand that we must not ask about the wish-fulfilment in a dream before it has been interpreted; he always forgets this. His reluctance to accept the theory of wish-fulfilment is really nothing but the effect of the dream-censorship, causing him to replace the real thought by a substitute, and following from his repudiation of these censored dream-wishes.

Of course we ourselves must feel the need to explain why so many dreams are painful in content; and in particular we shall want to know how we come to have ‘anxiety-dreams.’ Here for the first time we are confronted with the problem of the affects in dreams; a problem which deserves special study, but one which we cannot concern ourselves with just now, unfortunately. If the dream is a wish-fulfilment, it should be impossible for any painful emotions to come into it: on this point the lay critics seem to be right. But the matter is complicated by three considerations which they have overlooked.

First, it may happen that the dream-work is not wholly successful in creating a wish-fulfilment, so that part of the painful feeling in the latent thoughts is carried over into the manifest dream. Analysis would then have to show that these thoughts were a great deal more painful than the dream 182which is formed from them; this much can be proved in every instance. We admit then that the dream-work has failed in its purpose, just as a dream of drinking excited by the stimulus of thirst fails to quench that thirst. One is still thirsty after it and has to wake up and drink. Nevertheless, it is a proper dream: it has renounced nothing of its essential nature. We must say: “Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas.” The clearly recognizable intention remains a praiseworthy one, at any rate. Such instances of failure in the work are by no means rare, and one reason is that it is so much more difficult for the dream-work to produce the required change in the nature of the affect than to modify the content; affects are often very intractable. So it happens that in the process of the dream-work the painful content of the dream-thoughts is transformed into a wish-fulfilment while the painful affect persists unchanged. When this occurs the affect is quite out of harmony with the content, which gives our critics the opportunity of remarking that the dream is so far from being a wish-fulfilment that even a harmless content may be accompanied in it by painful feelings. Our answer to this rather unintelligent comment will be that it is just in dreams of this sort that the wish-fulfilling tendency of the dream-work is most apparent, because it is there seen in isolation. The mistake in this criticism arises because people who are not familiar with the neuroses imagine a more intimate connection between content and affect than actually exists, and so cannot understand that there may be an alteration in the content while the accompanying affect remains unchanged.

A second consideration, much more important and far-reaching but equally overlooked by the laity, is the following. A wish-fulfilment must certainly bring some pleasure; but we go on to ask: “To whom?” Of course to the person who has the wish. But we know that the attitude of the dreamer towards his wishes is a peculiar one: he rejects them, censors them, in short, he will have none of them. Their fulfilment then can afford him no pleasure, rather the opposite, and here experience shows that this “opposite,” which has still to be explained, takes the form of anxiety. The dreamer, where his wishes are concerned, is like two separate people closely linked together by some important thing in common. Instead of enlarging upon this I will remind you of a well-known fairy-tale in which you will see these relationships repeated. A good fairy promised a poor man and his wife to fulfil their first three wishes. They were delighted and made up their minds to choose the 183wishes carefully. But the woman was tempted by the smell of some sausages being cooked in the next cottage and wished for two like them. Lo! and behold, there they were—and the first wish was fulfilled. With that, the man lost his temper and in his resentment wished that the sausages might hang on the tip of his wife’s nose. This also came to pass, and the sausages could not be removed from their position; so the second wish was fulfilled, but it was the man’s wish and its fulfilment was most unpleasant for the woman. You know the rest of the story: as they were after all man and wife, the third wish had to be that the sausages should come off the end of the woman’s nose. We might make use of this fairy-tale many times over in other contexts, but here it need only serve to illustrate the fact that it is possible for the fulfilment of one person’s wish to be very disagreeable to someone else, unless the two people are entirely at one.

It will not be difficult now to arrive at a still better understanding of anxiety-dreams. There is just one more observation to be made use of and then we may adopt an hypothesis which is supported by several considerations. The observation is that anxiety-dreams often have a content in which there is no distortion; it has, so to speak, escaped the censorship. This type of dream is frequently an undisguised wish-fulfilment, the wish being of course not one which the dreamer would accept but one which he has rejected; anxiety has developed in place of the working of the censorship. Whereas the infantile dream is an open fulfilment of a wish admitted by the dreamer, and the ordinary distorted dream is the disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish, the formula for the anxiety-dream is that it is the open fulfilment of a repressed wish. Anxiety is an indication that the repressed wish has proved too strong for the censorship and has accomplished or was about to accomplish its fulfilment in spite of it. We can understand that fulfilment of a repressed wish can only be, for us who are on the side of the censorship, an occasion for painful emotions and for setting up a defence. The anxiety then manifested in our dreams is, if you like to put it so, anxiety experienced because of the strength of wishes which at other times we manage to stifle. The study of dreams alone does not reveal to us why this defence takes the form of anxiety; obviously we must consider the latter in other connections.

The hypothesis which holds good for anxiety-dreams without any distortion may be adopted also for those which have undergone some degree of distortion, and for other kinds of unpleasant 184dreams in which the accompanying unpleasant feelings probably approximate to anxiety. Anxiety-dreams generally wake us; we usually break off our sleep before the repressed wish behind the dream overcomes the censorship and reaches complete fulfilment. In such a case the dream has failed to achieve its purpose, but its essential character is not thereby altered. We have compared the dream with a night-watchman, a guardian of sleep, whose purpose it is to protect sleep from interruption. Now night-watchmen also, just like dreams, have to rouse sleepers when they are not strong enough to ward off the cause of disturbance or danger alone. Nevertheless we do sometimes succeed in continuing to sleep even when our dreams begin to give us some uneasiness and to turn to anxiety. We say to ourselves in sleep: “It is only a dream after all,” and go on sleeping.

You may ask when it happens that the dream-wish is able to overcome the censorship. This may depend either on the wish or on the censorship: it may be that for unknown reasons the strength of the wish at times becomes excessive; but our impression is that it is more often the attitude of the censorship which is responsible for this shifting in the balance of power. We have already heard that the censorship works with varying intensity in each individual instance, treating the different elements with different degrees of strictness; now we may add that it is very variable in its general behaviour and does not show itself always equally severe towards the same element. If then it chances that the censorship feels itself for once powerless against some dream-wish which threatens to overthrow it, it then, instead of making use of distortion, employs the last weapon left to it and destroys sleep by bringing about an access of anxiety.

At this point it strikes us that we still have no idea why these evil, rejected wishes rise up just at night-time, so as to disturb us when we sleep. The answer can hardly be found except in another hypothesis which goes back to the nature of sleep itself. During the day the heavy pressure of a censorship is exercised upon these wishes and, as a rule, it is impossible for them to make themselves felt at all. But in the night it is probable that this censorship, like all the other interests of mental life, is suspended, or at least very much weakened, in favour of the single desire for sleep. So it is due to this partial abrogation of the censorship at night that the forbidden wishes can again become active. There are nervous people suffering from insomnia who confess that their sleeplessness was voluntary 185in the first instance; for they did not dare to go to sleep because they were afraid of their dreams—that is to say, they feared the consequences of the diminished vigilance of the censorship. You will have no difficulty in understanding that this curtailment of the censorship does not argue any flagrant carelessness: sleep impairs our motor functions; even if our evil intentions do begin to stir within us the utmost they can do is to produce a dream, which is for all practical purposes harmless; and it is this comforting circumstance which gives rise to the sleeper’s remark, made, it is true, in the night but yet not part of his dream-life: “It is only a dream.” So we let it have its way and continue to sleep.

Thirdly, if you call to mind our idea that the dreamer striving against his own wishes is like a combination of two persons, separate and yet somehow intimately united, you will be able to understand another possible way in which something that is highly unpleasant may be brought about through wish-fulfilment: I am speaking of punishment. Here again the fairy-tale of the three wishes may help to make things clear. The sausages on the plate were the direct fulfilment of the first person’s (the woman’s) wish; the sausages on the tip of her nose were the fulfilment of the second person’s (the husband’s) wish, but at the same time they were the punishment for the foolish wish of the wife. In the neuroses we shall meet with wishes corresponding in motivation to the third wish of the fairy-tale, the only one left. There are many such punishment tendencies in the mental life of man; they are very strong and we may well regard them as responsible for some of our painful dreams. Now you will probably think that with all this there is very little of the famous wish-fulfilment left; but on closer consideration you will admit that you are wrong. In comparison with the manifold possibilities (to be discussed later) of what dreams might be—according to some writers, what they actually are—the solution: wish-fulfilment, anxiety-fulfilment, punishment-fulfilment, is surely quite a narrow one. Add to this, that anxiety is the direct opposite of a wish and that opposites lie very near one another in association and, as we have learned, actually coincide in the unconscious. Moreover, punishment itself is the fulfilment of a wish, namely, the wish of the other, censoring person.

On the whole then, I have made no concession to your objections to the wish-fulfilment theory; we are bound, however, to demonstrate its presence in any and every distorted dream, and we have certainly no desire to shirk this task. Let us go back to the dream we have already interpreted, about the three 186bad theatre tickets for one florin and a half, from which we have already learnt a good deal. I hope you still remember it: A lady, whose husband told her one day about the engagement of her friend Elise who was only three months younger than herself, dreamt on the following night that she and her husband were at the theatre and that one side of the stalls was almost empty. Her husband told her that Elise and her fiancé had wanted to go to the theatre too; but could not, because they could only get such bad seats, three tickets for a florin and a half. His wife said that they had not lost much by it. We discovered that the dream-thoughts had to do with her vexation at having been in such a hurry to marry and her dissatisfaction with her husband. We may well be curious how these gloomy thoughts can have been transformed into a wish-fulfilment, and what trace of it can be found in the manifest content. Now we know already that the element “too soon, too great a hurry,” was eliminated by the censorship; the empty stalls are an allusion to this element. The puzzling phrase three for one and a half florins is now more comprehensible to us than at first, through the knowledge of symbolism that we have acquired since then.^[42] The number three really stands for a man and we can easily translate the manifest element to mean: “to buy a man (husband) with the dowry.” (“I could have bought one ten times better for my dowry.”) Going to the theatre obviously stands for marriage. Getting the tickets too soon is in fact a direct substitute for “marrying too soon.” Now this substitution is the work of the wish-fulfilment. The dreamer had not always felt so dissatisfied with her premature marriage as she was on the day when she heard of her friend’s engagement. She had been proud of her marriage at the time and considered herself more highly favoured than her friend. One hears that naïve girls, on becoming engaged, frequently express their delight at the idea that they will now soon be able to go to all plays and see everything hitherto forbidden them.

The indication of curiosity and a desire to “look on” evinced here comes, without doubt, originally from the sexual ‘gazing-impulse,’ especially regarding the parents, and this became a strong motive impelling the girl to marry early; in this manner going to the theatre became an obvious allusive substitute for getting married. In her vexation at the present time on account of her premature marriage she therefore reverted to the time 187when this same marriage fulfilled a wish, by gratifying her skoptophilia; and so, guided by this old wish-impulse, she replaced the idea of marriage by that of going to the theatre.

We may say that the example we have chosen to demonstrate a hidden wish-fulfilment is not the most convenient one, but in all other distorted dreams we should have to proceed in a manner analogous to that employed above. It is not possible for me to do this here and now, so I will merely express my conviction that such procedure will invariably meet with success. But I wish to dwell longer upon this point in our theory: experience has taught me that it is one of the most perilous of the whole theory of dreams, exposed to many contradictions and misunderstandings. Besides, you are perhaps still under the impression that I have already retracted part of my statement by saying that the dream may be either a wish-fulfilment, or its opposite, an anxiety or a punishment, brought to actuality; and you may think this a good opportunity to force me to make further reservations. Also I have been reproached with presenting facts that seem obvious to myself in a manner too condensed to carry conviction.

When anyone has gone as far as this in dream-interpretation and has accepted all our conclusions up to this point, it often happens that he comes to a standstill at this question of wish-fulfilment and asks: “Admitting that every dream means something and that this meaning may be discovered by employing the technique of psycho-analysis, why must it always, in face of all the evidence to the contrary, be forced into the formula of wish-fulfilment? Why must our thoughts at night be any less many-sided than our thoughts by day; so that at one time a dream might be a fulfilment of some wish; at another time, as you say yourself, the opposite, the actualization of a dread; or, again, the expression of a resolution, a warning, a weighing of some problem with its pro’s and con’s, or a reproof, some prick of conscience, or an attempt to prepare oneself for something which has to be done—and so forth? Why this perpetual insistence upon a wish or, at the most, its opposite?”

It might be supposed that a difference of opinion on this point is a matter of no great moment, if there is agreement on all others. Cannot we be satisfied with having discovered the meaning of dreams and the ways by which we can find out the meaning? We surely go back on the advance we have made if we try to limit this meaning too strictly. But this is not so. A misunderstanding on this head touches what is essential to our knowledge of dreams and imperils its value for the understanding 188of neuroses. Moreover, that readiness to “oblige the other party” which has its value in business life is not only out of place but actually harmful in scientific matters.

My first answer to the question why dreams should not be many-sided in their meaning is the usual one in such a case: I do not know why they should not be so, and should have no objection if they were. As far as I am concerned, they can be so! But there is just one trifling obstacle in the way of this wider and more convenient conception of dreams—that as a matter of fact they are not so. My second answer would emphasize the point that to assume that dreams represent manifold modes of thought and intellectual operations is by no means a novel idea to myself: once, in the history of a pathological case, I recorded a dream which occurred three nights running and never again; and gave it as my explanation that this dream corresponded to a resolution, the repetition of which became unnecessary as soon as that resolution was carried out. Later on, I published a dream which represented a confession. How is it possible for me then to contradict myself and assert that dreams are always and only wish-fulfilments?

I do it rather than permit a stupid misunderstanding which might cost us the fruit of all our labours on the subject of dreams; a misunderstanding that confounds the dream with the latent dream-thoughts, and makes statements with regard to the former which are applicable to the latter and to the latter only. For it is perfectly true that dreams can represent, and be themselves replaced by, all the modes of thought just enumerated: resolutions, warnings, reflections, preparations or attempts to solve some problem in regard to conduct, and so on. But when you look closely, you will recognize that all this is true only of the latent thoughts which have been transformed into the dream. You learn from interpretations of dreams that the unconscious thought-processes of mankind are occupied with such resolutions, preparations and reflections, out of which dreams are formed by means of the dream-work. If your interest at any given moment is not so much in the dream-work, but centres on the unconscious thought-processes in people, you will then eliminate the dream-formation and say of dreams themselves, what is for all practical purposes correct, that they represent a warning, a resolve, and so on. This is what is often done in psycho-analytic work: generally we endeavour simply to demolish the manifest form of dreams and to substitute for it the corresponding latent thoughts in which the dream originated.

189Thus it is that we learn quite incidentally from our attempt to assess the latent dream-thoughts that all the highly complicated mental acts we have enumerated can be performed unconsciously—a conclusion surely as tremendous as it is bewildering.

But to go back a little: you are quite right in speaking of dreams as representing these various modes of thought, provided that you are quite clear in your own minds that you are using an abbreviated form of expression and do not imagine that the manifold variety of which you speak is in itself part of the essential nature of dreams. When you speak of “a dream” you must mean either the manifest dream, i.e. the product of the dream-work, or at most that work itself, i.e. the mental process which forms the latent dream-thoughts into the manifest dream. To use the word in any other sense is a confusion of ideas which is bound to be mischievous. If what you say is meant to apply to the latent thoughts behind the dream, then say so plainly, and do not add to the obscurity of the problem by your loose way of expressing yourselves. The latent dream-thoughts are the material which is transformed by the dream-work into the manifest dream. What makes you constantly confound the material with the process which deals with it? If you do that, in what way are you superior to those who know of the final product only, without being able to explain where it comes from or how it is constructed?

The only thing essential to the dream itself is the dream-work which has operated upon the thought-material; and when we come to theory we have no right to disregard this, even if in certain practical situations it may be neglected. Further, analytic observation shows that the dream-work never consists merely in translating the latent thoughts into the archaic or regressive forms of expression described. On the contrary, something is invariably added which does not belong to the latent thoughts of the day-time, but which is the actual motive force in dream-formation; this indispensable component being the equally unconscious wish, to fulfil which the content of the dream is transformed. In so far, then, as you are considering only the thoughts represented in it, the dream may be any conceivable thing—a warning, a resolve, a preparation, and so on; but besides this, it itself is always the fulfilment of an unconscious wish, and, when you regard it as the result of the dream-work, it is this alone. A dream then is never simply the expression of a resolve or warning, and nothing more: in it the resolve, or whatever it may be, is translated 190into the archaic form with the assistance of an unconscious wish, and metamorphosed in such a way as to be a fulfilment of that wish. This single characteristic, that of fulfilling a wish, is the constant one: the other component varies; it may indeed itself be a wish; in which event the dream represents the fulfilment of a latent wish from our waking hours brought about by the aid of an unconscious wish.

Now all this is quite clear to myself, but I do not know whether I have succeeded in making it equally clear to you; and it is difficult to prove it to you; for, on the one hand, proof requires the evidence afforded by a careful analysis of many dreams and, on the other hand, this, the crucial and most important point in our conception of dreams, cannot be presented convincingly without reference to considerations upon which we have not yet touched. Seeing how closely linked up all phenomena are, you can hardly imagine that we can penetrate very far into the nature of any one of them without troubling ourselves about others of a similar nature. Since as yet we know nothing about those phenomena which are so nearly akin to dreams—neurotic symptoms—we must once more content ourselves with what we actually have achieved. I will merely give you the explanation of one more example and adduce a new consideration.

Let us take once more that dream to which we have already reverted several times, the one about the three theatre tickets for one florin and a half. I can assure you that I had no ulterior motive in selecting it in the first instance for an illustration. You know what the latent thoughts were: the vexation, after hearing that her friend had only just become engaged, that she herself should have married so hastily; depreciation of her husband and the idea that she could have found a better one if only she had waited. We also know already that the wish which made a dream out of these thoughts was the desire to “look on,” to be able to go to the theatre—very probably an offshoot of an old curiosity to find out at last what really does happen after marriage. It is well known that in children this curiosity is regularly directed towards the sexual life of the parents; that is to say, it is an infantile impulse and, wherever it persists later in life, it has its roots in the infantile period. But the news received on the day previous to the dream gave no occasion for the awakening of this skoptophilia; it only roused vexation and regret. This wish-impulse (of skoptophilia) was not at first connected with the latent thoughts, and the results of the dream-interpretation could have been used by the 191analysis without taking it into consideration at all. But again, the vexation was not in itself capable of producing a dream: no dream could be formed out of the thought: “It was folly to be in such a hurry to marry” until that thought had stirred up the early wish to see at last what happened after marriage. Then this wish formed the dream-content, substituting for marriage the going to the theatre; and the form was that of the fulfilment of the earlier wish: “Now I may go to the theatre and look at all that we have never been allowed to see; and you may not. I am married and you have got to wait.” In this way the actual situation was transformed into its opposite and an old triumph substituted for the recent discomfiture; and incidentally, satisfaction both of a ‘gazing’ impulse and of one of egoistic rivalry was brought about. It is this latter satisfaction which determines the manifest content of the dream; for in it she is actually sitting in the theatre, while her friend cannot get in. Those portions of the dream-content behind which the latent thoughts still conceal themselves are to be found in the form of inappropriate and incomprehensible modifications of the gratifying situation. The business of interpretation is to put aside those features in the whole which merely represent a wish-fulfilment and to reconstruct the painful latent dream-thoughts from these indications.

The consideration which I said I wished to call to your notice is intended to direct your attention to these latent dream-thoughts now brought into prominence. I must beg you not to forget that, first, the dreamer is unconscious of them; secondly that they are quite reasonable and coherent, so that we can understand them as comprehensible reactions to whatever stimulus has given rise to the dream; and, thirdly, that they may have the value of any mental impulse or intellectual operation. I will designate these thoughts more strictly now than hitherto as the residue from the previous day; the dreamer may acknowledge them or not. I then distinguish between this ‘residue’ and ‘latent dream-thoughts,’ so that, as we have been accustomed to do all along, I will call everything which we learn from the interpretation of the dream ‘the latent dream-thoughts,’ while ‘the residue from the previous day’ is only a part of the latent dream-thoughts. Then our conception of what happens is this: something has been added to the residue from the previous day, something which also belongs to the unconscious, a strong but repressed wish-impulse, and it is this alone which makes the formation of a dream possible. The wish-impulse, acting upon the ‘residue,’ creates the other 192part of the latent dream-thoughts, that part which no longer need appear rational or comprehensible from the point of view of our waking life.

To illustrate the relation between the residue and the unconscious wish I have elsewhere made use of a comparison which I cannot do better than repeat here. Every business undertaking requires a capitalist to defray the expenses and an entrepreneur who has the idea and understands how to carry it out. Now the part of the capitalist in dream-formation is always and only played by the unconscious wish; it supplies the necessary fund of mental energy for it: the entrepreneur is the residue from the previous day, determining the manner of the expenditure. It is, of course, quite possible for the capitalist himself to have the idea and the special knowledge needed, or for the entrepreneur himself to have capital. This simplifies the practical situation but makes the theory of it more difficult. In economics we discriminate between the man in his function of capitalist and the same man in his capacity as entrepreneur; and this distinction restores the fundamental situation upon which our comparison is based. The same variations are to be found in the formation of dreams: I leave you to follow them out for yourselves.

We cannot go any further at this point; for I think it likely that a disturbing thought has long since occurred to you and it deserves a hearing. You may ask: “Is the so-called ‘residue’ really unconscious in the sense in which the wish necessary for the formation of the dream is unconscious?” Your suspicion is justified: this is the salient point in the whole matter. They are not both unconscious in the same sense. The dream-wish belongs to a different type of UNCONSCIOUS, which, as we have seen, has its roots in the infantile period and is furnished with special mechanisms. It is very expedient to distinguish the two types of “unconscious” from one another by speaking of them in different terms. But, all the same, we will rather wait until we have familiarized ourselves with the phenomena of the neuroses. If our conception of the existence of any kind of unconscious be already regarded as fantastic, what will people say if we admit that to reach our solution we have had to assume two kinds?

Let us break off at this point. Once more you have heard only an incomplete statement; but is it not a hopeful thought that this knowledge will be carried further, either by ourselves or by those who come after us? And have not we ourselves learnt enough that is new and startling?

193

FIFTEENTH LECTURE DOUBTFUL POINTS AND CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS

We will not leave the subject of dreams without dealing with the most common doubts and uncertainties arising in connection with the novel ideas and conceptions we have been discussing: those of you who have followed these lectures attentively will have collected some material of the kind.

1. You may have received an impression that even with strict adherence to technique our work of dream-interpretation leaves so much room for uncertainty that reliable translation of manifest dreams into their latent dream-thoughts will be thereby frustrated. You will urge first that one never knows whether any particular element in a dream is to be understood literally or symbolically, since things employed as symbols do not thereby cease to be themselves. Where there is no objective evidence to decide the question the interpretation on that particular point will be left to be arbitrarily determined by the interpreter. Further, since in the dream-work opposites coincide, it is in every instance uncertain whether a specific dream-element is to be understood in a positive or a negative sense, as itself or as its opposite—another opportunity for the interpreter to exercise a choice. Thirdly, on account of the frequency with which inversion of every kind is employed in dreams, it is open to him to assume whenever he chooses that such an inversion has taken place. Finally you will point to having heard that one is seldom certain that the interpretation arrived at is the only possible one, and that there is danger of overlooking another perfectly admissible interpretation of the same dream. In these circumstances, you will conclude, the discretion of the interpreter has a latitude that seems incompatible with any objective certainty in the result. Or you may also assume that the fault does not lie in dreams themselves, but that something erroneous in our conceptions and premises produces the unsatisfactory character of our interpretations.

All that you say is undeniable and yet I do not think it 194justifies either of your conclusions: that dream-interpretation as practised by us is at the mercy of the interpreter’s arbitrary decisions or that the inadequacy of the results calls in question the correctness of our procedure. If for the “arbitrary decision” of the interpreter you will substitute his skill, his experience and his understanding, then I am with you. This kind of personal factor is of course indispensable, especially when interpretation is difficult; it is just the same in other scientific work, however; it can’t be helped that one man will use any given technique less well, or apply it better, than another. The impression of arbitrariness made, for example, by the interpretation of symbols is corrected by the reflection that as a rule the connection of the dream-thoughts with one another, and of the dream with the life of the dreamer and the whole mental situation at the time of the dream, points directly to one of all the possible interpretations and renders all the rest useless. The conclusion that the imperfect character of the interpretations proceeds from fallacious hypotheses loses its force when consideration shows that, on the contrary, the ambiguity or indefiniteness of dreams is a quality which we should necessarily expect in them.

Let us call to mind our statement that the dream-work undertakes a translation of the dream-thoughts into a primitive mode of expression, analogous to hieroglyphics. Now all such primitive systems of expression are necessarily accompanied by ambiguity and indefiniteness; but we should not on that account be justified in doubting their practicability. You know that the coincidence of opposites in the dream-work is analogous to what is called the antithetical sense of primal words in the oldest languages. The philologist, R. Abel, to whom we owe this information, writing in 1884, begs us not on any account to imagine that there was any ambiguity in what one person said to another by means of ambivalent words of this sort. On the contrary, intonation, gestures and the whole context can have left no doubt whatever which of the two opposites the speaker had in mind to convey. In writing where gestures are absent the addition of little pictorial signs, not meant to receive separate oral expression, replaced them: e.g. a drawing of a little man, either crouching or standing upright, according as the ambiguous ken of the hieroglyphic meant “weak” or “strong.” So that misunderstanding was avoided in spite of the ambiguity of sounds and signs.

In ancient systems of expression, for instance, in the scripts of the oldest languages, indefiniteness of various kinds is found with a frequency which we should not tolerate in our writings 195to-day. Thus in many Semitic writings only the consonants of the words appear: the omitted vowels have to be supplied by the reader from his knowledge and from the context. Hieroglyphic writing follows a similar principle, although not exactly the same; and this is the reason why nothing is known of the pronunciation of ancient Egyptian. There are besides other kinds of indefiniteness in the sacred writings of the Egyptians: for example, it is left to the writer’s choice to inscribe the pictures from right to left or from left to right. To be able to read them, we have to remember that we must be guided by the direction of the faces of the figures, birds, and so forth. But it was also open to the writer to set the pictures in vertical columns and, in the case of inscriptions on smaller objects, he was led by considerations of what was pleasing to the eye, and of the space at his disposal, to introduce still further alterations in the arrangement of the signs. The most confusing feature in hieroglyphic script is that there is no spacing between the words. The pictures are all placed at equal intervals on the page, and it is generally impossible to know whether any given sign goes with the preceding one or forms the beginning of a new word. In Persian cuneiform writing, on the other hand, a slanting sign is used to separate the words.

The Chinese language, both spoken and written, is exceedingly ancient but is still used to-day by four hundred million people. Don’t suppose that I understand it at all; I only obtained some information about it because I hoped to find in it analogies to the kinds of indefiniteness occurring in dreams; nor was I disappointed in my expectation, for Chinese is so full of uncertainties as positively to terrify one. As is well known, it consists of a number of syllabic sounds which are pronounced singly or doubled in combination. One of the chief dialects has about four hundred of these sounds, and since the vocabulary of this dialect is estimated at somewhere about four thousand words it is evident that every sound has an average of ten different meanings—some fewer, but some all the more. For this reason there are a whole series of devices to escape ambiguity, for the context alone will not show which of the ten possible meanings of the syllable the speaker wishes to convey to the hearer. Amongst these devices is the combining of two sounds into a single word and the use of four different “tones” in which these syllables may be spoken. For purposes of our comparison a still more interesting fact is that this language is practically without grammar: it is impossible to say of any of the one-syllabled words whether it is a noun, a verb or an adjective; 196and, further, there are no inflections to show gender, number, case, tense or mood. The language consists, as we may say, of the raw material only; just as our thought-language is resolved into its raw material by the dream-work omitting to express the relations in it. Wherever there is any uncertainty in Chinese the decision is left to the intelligence of the listener, who is guided by the context. I made a note of a Chinese saying, which literally translated runs thus: “Little what see, much what wonderful.” This is simple enough to understand. It may mean: “The less a man has seen, the more he finds to wonder at,” or “There is much to wonder at for the man who has seen little.” Naturally there is no occasion to choose between these two translations which differ only in grammatical construction. We are assured that in spite of these uncertainties the Chinese language is a quite exceptionally good medium of expression; so it is clear that indefiniteness does not necessarily lead to ambiguity.

Now we must certainly admit that the position of affairs is far less favourable in regard to the mode of expression in dreams than it is with these ancient tongues and scripts; for these latter were originally designed as a means of communication; that is, they were intended to be understood, no matter what ways or means they had to employ. But just this character is lacking to dreams: their object is not to tell anyone anything; they are not a means of communication; on the contrary, it is important to them not to be understood. So we ought not to be surprised or misled if the result is that a number of the ambiguities and uncertainties in dreams cannot be determined. The only certain piece of knowledge gained from our comparison is that this indefiniteness (which people would like to make use of as an argument against the accuracy of our dream-interpretations) is rather to be recognized as a regular characteristic of all primitive systems of expression.

Practice and experience alone can determine the extent to which dreams can in actual fact be understood. My own opinion is that this is possible to a very great extent; and a comparison of the results obtained by properly-trained analysts confirms my view. It is well known that the lay public, even in scientific circles, delights to make a parade of superior scepticism in the face of the difficulties and uncertainties which beset a scientific achievement; I think they are wrong in so doing. You may possibly not at all know that the same thing happened at the time when the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions were being deciphered. There was a point at which public opinion 197was active in declaring that the men deciphering the cuneiform writing were victims of a chimera and that the whole business of investigation was a fraud. But in the year 1857 the Royal Asiatic Society made a conclusive test. They challenged four of the most distinguished men engaged in this branch of research—Rawlinson, Hincks, Fox Talbot and Oppert—to send to the Society in sealed envelopes independent translations of a newly-discovered inscription, and, after comparing the four versions, they were able to announce that there was sufficient agreement between the four to justify belief in what had been achieved and confidence in further progress. The mockery of the learned laity then gradually came to an end, and certainty in the reading of cuneiform documents has advanced enormously since then.

2. A second series of objections is closely connected with an impression which you also have probably not escaped; namely, that a number of the solutions achieved by our method of dream-interpretation seem strained, specious, “dragged in,”—in other words, forced, or even comical or joking. These criticisms are so frequent that I will take at random the last that has come to my ears. Now listen: a head-master in Switzerland—that free country—was recently asked to resign his post on account of his interest in psycho-analysis. He protested and a Berne paper published the decision of the school authorities on his case. I shall quote a few sentences from the article which refer to psycho-analysis: “Further, we are amazed at the far-fetched and factitious character of many of the examples given in the said book by Dr. Pfister of Zurich.... It is indeed a matter for surprise that the head-master of a Training College should accept so credulously all these assertions and such specious evidence.” These sentences purport to be the final opinion of “One who judges calmly.” I am much more inclined to think this “calm” factitious. Let us examine these remarks more closely in the expectation that a certain amount of reflection and knowledge of the subject will do no harm, even to a “calm judgement.”

It is really quite refreshing to see how swiftly and unerringly anyone relying merely on his first impressions can arrive at an opinion on some critical question of psychology in its more abstruse aspects. The interpretations seem to him far-fetched and strained, and do not commend themselves to him; consequently, they are wrong and the whole business is rubbish. Such critics never give even a passing thought to the possibility that there may be good reasons why the interpretations are 198bound to convey this very impression—a thought which would lead to the further question what these good reasons are.

The circumstance which calls forth this criticism is essentially related to the effect of displacement, which you have learnt to know as the most powerful instrument in the service of the dream-censorship. With its aid the substitute-formations which we call allusions are created; but these allusions are of a kind not easy to recognize as such; nor is it easy to discover the thought proper by working back from them, for they are connected with it by the most extraordinary and unusual extrinsic associations. But the whole matter throughout concerns things which are meant to be hidden, intended to be concealed: that is exactly the object of the dream-censorship. We must not expect, though, to find something that has been hidden by looking in the very place where it ordinarily belongs. The frontier surveillance authorities nowadays are a good deal more cunning in this respect than the Swiss school authorities; for they are not content with examining portfolios and letter-cases when hunting for documents and plans; but consider the possibility that spies and smugglers may conceal anything compromising about their persons, in places where it is most difficult to detect and where such things certainly do not belong, for example, between the double soles of their boots. If the concealed articles are found there, it is certainly true that they have been “dragged” to light, but they are none the less a very good “find.”

In admitting the possibility that the connection between a latent dream-element and its manifest substitute may appear most remote and extraordinary, sometimes even comical or joking, we are guided by our wide experience of instances in which we did not as a rule find the meaning ourselves. It is often impossible to arrive at such interpretations by our own efforts: no sane person could guess the bridge connecting the two. The dreamer either solves the riddle straightaway by a direct association (he can do it because it is in his mind that the substitute-formation originated); or else he provides so much material that there is no longer any need for special penetration in order to solve it—the solution thrusts itself upon us as inevitable. If the dreamer does not help us in either of these two ways the manifest element in question will remain for ever incomprehensible. Let me give you one more instance of this kind which happened recently. A patient of mine lost her father during the course of the treatment, after which she seized every opportunity to bring him back to life in her dreams. In 199one of these her father appeared in a certain connection otherwise not applicable and said: “It is quarter past eleven, it is half past eleven, it is quarter to twelve.” For the interpretation of this curious detail she could only provide the association that her father was pleased when his older children were punctual at the midday meal. This certainly fitted in with the dream-element, but it threw no light on its origin. The situation which had just been reached in the treatment gave good grounds for the suspicion that a carefully-suppressed critical antagonism to her much loved and honoured father had played a part in this dream. Following out her further associations, apparently quite remote from the dream, she told how she had heard a long discussion of psychological questions on the day before and a relative had said: “Primitive man (Urmensch) survives in all of us.” Now a light dawns on us. Here was again a splendid opportunity for her to imagine that her dead father survived, and so in the dream she made him a “clock-man” (Uhrmensch), telling the quarters up to the time of the midday meal.

The likeness to a pun in this cannot be ignored, and as a matter of fact it has often happened that a dreamer’s pun has been ascribed to the interpreter; there are yet other examples in which it is not at all easy to decide whether we are dealing with a joke or a dream. But you will remember that the same sort of doubt arose with some slips of the tongue. A man related as a dream that he and his uncle were sitting in the latter’s auto (automobile) and his uncle kissed him. The dreamer himself instantly volunteered the interpretation: it meant “auto-erotism” (a term used in our theory of the libido, signifying gratification obtained without any external love-object). Now was this man allowing himself a joke at our expense and pretending that a pun which occurred to him was part of a dream? I do not think so: he really did dream it. But where does this bewildering resemblance between dreams and jokes come from? At one time this question took me somewhat out of my way, for it necessitated my making a thorough investigation into the question of wit itself. This led to the conclusion that wit originates as follows: a preconscious train of thought is for a moment left to a process of unconscious elaboration, from which it emerges in the form of a witticism. While under the influence of the unconscious it is subject to the mechanisms there operative—to condensation and displacement; that is to say, to the same processes as we found at work in the dream-work; and the similarity sometimes found between dreams and wit is to be ascribed to this character common to both. But the unintentional 200“dream joke” does not amuse us as does an ordinary witticism; a deeper study of wit may show you why this is so. The “dream joke” strikes us as a poor form of wit; it does not make us laugh, it leaves us cold.

Now in this we are following the path of the ancient method of dream-interpretation, which has given us, besides much that is useless, many a valuable example of interpretation upon which we ourselves could not improve. I will tell you a dream of historic importance which is related in slightly different versions by Plutarch and Artemidorus of Daldis, the dreamer being Alexander the Great. When he was laying siege to the city of Tyre, which was putting up an obstinate resistance (B.C. 322), he dreamt one night that he saw a dancing satyr. The dream-interpreter Aristandros, who accompanied the army on its campaigns, interpreted this dream by dividing the word “satyros” into σὰ Τύρος (“Tyre is thine”), and prophesied from this the king’s victory over the city. This interpretation decided Alexander to continue the siege and eventually the city fell. The interpretation, factitious as it seems, was undoubtedly the right one.

3. I can well imagine that you will be especially impressed on being told that even people who have long studied the interpretation of dreams in the course of their work as psycho-analysts have raised objections to our conception of dreams. It would indeed have been exceptional if so excellent an opportunity for new mistakes had been let slip; and so assertions have been made, due to confusion of ideas and based on unjustifiable generalizations, which are hardly less incorrect than the medical conception of dreams. One of these statements you know already: that dreams deal with attempts at adaptation to the situation at the moment and with the solution of future problems; in other words, that they pursue a “prospective tendency” or aim (A. Maeder). We have already demonstrated that this statement rests upon a confusion between dreams and the latent dream-thoughts and ignores the process of dream-work. If those who speak of this “prospective tendency” mean thereby to characterize the unconscious mental activity to which the latent thoughts belong, then, on the one hand, they tell us nothing new and, on the other hand, the description is not exhaustive; for unconscious mental activity occupies itself with many other things besides preparation for the future. There seems to be a much worse confusion behind the assurance that the “death clause” may be found underlying every dream; I am not quite clear what this formula is intended 201to mean, but I suspect that behind it the dream is confounded with the whole personality of the dreamer.

An unjustifiable generalization, based on a few striking examples, is contained in the statement that every dream admits of two kinds of interpretation: one of the kind we have described, the so-called “psycho-analytic” interpretation, and the other the so-called “anagogic,” which disregards the instinctive tendencies and aims at a representation of the higher mental functions (H. Silberer); there are dreams of this kind, but you will seek in vain to extend this conception to include even a majority of dreams. After all you have heard, the statement that all dreams are to be interpreted bisexually, as a combination of two tendencies which may be called male and female (A. Adler), will seem to you quite incomprehensible. Here again, single dreams of this sort do of course occur and later on you may learn that their structure is similar to that of certain hysterical symptoms. I mention all these discoveries of new general characteristics of dreams in order to warn you against them, or at least to leave you in no doubt about my own opinion of them.

4. At one time the objective value of research into dreams seemed to be discredited by the fact that patients treated analytically appeared to suit the content of their dreams to the favourite theories of their doctors, one class dreaming mainly of sexual impulses, and another of impulses for mastery, others again even of rebirth (W. Stekel). The force of this observation is weakened by the reflection that people dreamed dreams before there was any such thing as psycho-analytic treatment to influence their dreams and that the patients undergoing treatment nowadays also used to dream before they began it. The actual fact in this supposedly new observation is soon shown to be self-evident and of no consequence for the theory of dreams. The residue from the previous day which gives rise to dreams is a residue from the great interests of waking life. If the physician’s words and the stimuli which he gives have become of importance to the patient they then enter into whatever constitutes the residue and can act as mental stimuli for dream-formation, just like other interests of affective value roused on the preceding day which have not subsided; they operate in the same way as bodily stimuli which affect the sleeper during sleep. Like these other factors inciting dreams, the trains of thought roused by the physician can appear in the manifest dream-content or be revealed in the latent thoughts. We know indeed that dreams can be experimentally produced, or, to speak more 202accurately, a part of the dream-material can be thus introduced into the dream. In influencing his patients thus the analyst plays a part no different from that of an experimenter, like Mourly Void, who placed in certain positions the limbs of the person upon whom he experimented.

We can often influence what a man shall dream about, but never what he will dream; for the mechanism of the dream-work and the unconscious dream-wish are inaccessible to external influence of any sort. We realized, when we were considering dreams arising out of bodily stimuli, that in the reaction to the bodily or mental stimuli brought to bear upon the dreamer the peculiarity and independence of dream-life is clearly seen. The criticism I have just discussed which tends to cast a doubt upon the objectivity of dream investigation is again an assertion based upon confounding, this time confounding dreams with—their material.

I wanted to tell you as much as this about the problems of dreams. You will guess that I have passed over a great deal and will have discovered for yourselves that my treatment of nearly every point has necessarily been incomplete; but this is due to the phenomena of dreams being so closely connected with those of the neuroses. Our plan was to study dreams as an introduction to the study of the neuroses and it was certainly a better one than beginning the other way about; but since dreams prepare us for comprehension of the neuroses, so also can a correctly-formed estimate of dreams be acquired only after some knowledge of neurotic manifestations has been gained.

I do not know how you may think about it, but I can assure you that I do not regret having taken up so much of your interest and of the time at our disposal in the consideration of problems connected with dreams. I know no other way by which one can so speedily arrive at conviction of the correctness of those statements by which psycho-analysis stands or falls. It requires strenuous work for many months, and even years, to demonstrate that the symptoms in a case of neurotic illness have a meaning, serve a purpose, and arise from the patient’s experiences in life. On the other hand, a few hours’ effort may be enough to show these things in some dream which at first seemed utterly confused and incomprehensible, and in this way to confirm all the premises upon which psycho-analysis rests—the existence of unconscious mental processes, the special mechanisms which they obey, and the instinctive propelling forces which are expressed by them. And when we remember how far-reaching is the analogy in the 203structure of dreams to that of neurotic symptoms and, with that, reflect how rapid is the transformation of a dreamer into a wide-awake, reasonable human being, we acquire an assurance that the neuroses too depend only upon an alteration in the balance of the forces at work in mental life.

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