Note 6 — Chapter II · THE PRIMITIVE EMOTIONS IN RELATION TO THE FAMILY

The dreams falling within this class (together with some others) appear to exhibit what is, at first sight at least, a puzzling exception to the general rule governing the formation of dreams which give expression to repressed tendencies, inasmuch as the obnoxious wish is gratified openly and undisguisedly instead of appearing in an indirect and symbolic form, as is usually the case. It would seem however, that this departure from the rule may to a large extent be explained and reconciled with the ordinary methods of repression by the following considerations:—(1) although the content of the wish appears directly in consciousness, it nevertheless fails (both during the dream and after waking) to be appreciated in its full significance for the mental life of the personality, i. e. there is no realisation of the fact that the dream represents in any way the fulfilment of a wish; there is present a sort of functional agnosia, in virtue of which the thought of the death is dissociated from its actual psychical concomitants, which alone can endow it with its full meaning; (2) in addition to this cognitive dissociation there is an emotional substitution, the emotion actually experienced being one of sorrow instead of one of joy, which the simple gratification of a wish would by itself most naturally occasion. This sorrow corresponds of course to the very genuine grief which would be felt at the conscious level in case of any real mishap to the relatives concerned and at the same time serves as an additional screen to hide the underlying hostile wish in the Unconscious; (3) on rarer occasions it would seem that the process of emotional substitution may be replaced by one of deëmotionalisation which prevents the cognitive elements from calling up any of the feelings which would normally accompany them; thus the death of a near relative will appear not as a sorrowful (or as it would be at certain levels of the Unconscious, a joyful) event, but as one devoid of all affective significance or as one that is absurd, ridiculous or unthinkable.