D R E A M P SY C H O LO G Y

PS YCH OAN ALYSIS F OR BE GI N N E RS

BY

P RO F D R SI GM UN D FR E UD
.

WITH A N INTRODUCTION BY
A N D RE TRI DO N

Easy L sson in Psy hoanal ysis

P y h anal y sis it Hist y Th o y and

P a ti
Psy hoanal y is an d

Au t hor
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WYORK

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J AM E S A McCANN
.

1 92 1

Copyright Introduction,

THE J AM ES A

P RIN TE D IN

8LA 8 5 4 3 9 3

by

M ccAN N C O MPANY

THE U

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19 2 1 ,

I NT R ODUC TION

medi cal profes sion is j us t ly con servative

Human life should not b e considered as the p roper
material f or wild experimen t s
Conservatism however is too o ften a We lcome
excuse for lazy minds loath to adap t them selve s t o
fa st changing conditions
R emember the scornfu l reception which rst w as
accorded t o Freu d s di scoverie s in t he domain of the
un conscious
When after year s of patient observations he
nally de cided to appear before medica l bodies to
tell them mode st ly of some fact s which alway s ire
curred in his dream and his patients dream s he
was rst l aughed at and then avoide d as a crank

The words dream interpretation were and still

are indeed fraught with unplea sant unscientic
associations They remind one of all sorts of child
ish super stitious notion s whi ch make up the thread
and woof o f dream books r e ad by n one but the
ignorant and the primitive
The w ealt h of detail the inn ite care never t o le t
anything pass unexpl ained with wh ich he p re sente d
TH E

1 11

iv

INTRODUCTION

to the public t he result of his investigations are

impressing more and more serious minded scientists
but the examination of hl s evidential data demands
arduou s work and presuppose s an abs olutely open
mind
This is why we still encounter men totally nu
familiar with Freud s writings men who were not
even interested enough in the sub act to attempt an
interpretation of their dreams or th e ir p atients
dreams deriding Freud s theories and combatting
them with the help of statements which he neve r
made
Some of them like Profes sor Boris Sidis r each at
times conclusions which are stra ngely similar to
Freud s but in their ignorance of psychoanalytic
literature they fail t o credit Freud for observations
ante dating theirs
Besides those who sneer at dream study because
they have never looked into the sub ect there are
those who do not d are to face the f acts revealed by
dream study Dreams tell us many an unpleasant
biological truth about ourselves and only very free
minds can thrive on such a diet S e l f d e ce pt ion is
a plant which withers fast in the pellucid atmo sphere
of dream investigation
The weakling and the neurotic attached to his
neurosis are not anx ious to turn su ch a powerful
,

IN TRODUC TION
ear ch ligh t up on the dark corner s

chology

the ir

of

sy

F reu d s theories are anyt hing but theoreti cal

He w as moved by the fact that there alway s
seemed to be a cl ose connection between his patients
dreams and their mental abnormalities to collect
thou sand s of dream s and to c ompare them with the
case historie s in his posse ssion
He did not start out with a preconceive d bia s
hoping to nd evidence which might sup p ort his

views He l ooked at facts a thousand times until

they began to tell him somethi n

g
His attitude toward dream study was in other
words that of a statistician who does not know and
has no means of foreseeing what conclusions will be
forced on him by the information he is gathering
but w ho is fully prepared to accept t ho se u nav oid
able conclusion s
This was indeed a nove l way in p sycho logy
Psychologi sts had always been wont to build in

what Bleuler call s autistic way s that is through

methods in no wise supported by evidence some at
tractive hypothesis which sp rung from their brain
like Minerva from J ove s brain fully armed
After which they would stretch upon that nu
yielding frame the hide of a reality which they had
previously killed

INTRODUCTION

vi

It is only to minds sne ring from the same dis

tortious t o minds also autistically inclined that
those empty articial structures appear acceptable
molds f or philosop hic thinking

The pragmatic View that truth is what works

had not been as yet e xpressed when Freud published
his revolutionary views on the psychology of dreams
Five facts of rst magnitude were made O bvious
to the world by his interpretation of dreams
First of all Freud point ed out a constant con
n e ct ion between some part of every dream and some
detail of the dreamer s life during the previous wak
ing state This positively establishes a relation b e
tween sleeping states and waking states and dis
pos e s O f the widely prevalent view that dream s are
purely nonsensical phenomena coming from no
where and leading nowhere
Secondly Freud after studying the dreamer s
life and modes of thought after noting down all
his mannerism s and the apparently 1n31gmcant
details of his conduct which reveal his secret
thoughts came to the conclusion that there w a s in
every dre am the attempted or succ e ssful grat ica
tion of some wish conscious or unconscious
Thirdly he proved that many of our dream
visions are symbolical which cause s us to conside r
them as absurd and unintelligible ; t he un iversality
,

vii

INTRODUC TION

o f tho se symbol s however mak e s them very tran s

p arent to the traine d ob server
Fourth ly F reu d showe d tha t sex u al de sire s p l ay
an enormous part in our un co nscious a part which
p uritanica l hypo crisy has alw ay s t ried to minimize
i f no t t o ignore entire ly
F inally Freud e st ab li she d a dire ct conn ec tion b e
tween dream s and insanity between the symbolic
v isions of our sleep and the symb olic a ction s of the
mentally derange d
There w ere o f co u r se many o ther ob servat io n s
whi ch Fre u d made while dis secting the dre ams of his
pat ient s b ut not all of them pre sent as much inter
e st a s the foregoing nor wer e they as revo l utionary
or like ly to w ie ld as mu ch inuence on m o dern
p sychiat ry
O the r exp lorers have str u ck the p ath b laze d by
F reud and leading into man s unco nscious J ung
of ! urich Ad ler of Vienna and K empf of Wash
ingt on D C have made to the study of the un
con sciou s
con t ribu t i o ns w hich have brought that
stu dy into e l ds whi ch F re u d himself never d reamt
o f inva ding
One fa ct which cann o t be t o o emphati cally stated
h owever is tha t but for Freud s wishfulllme nt

theory of dream s neither J ung s energi c theory

nor Adler s the o ry of organ inferiority and com

,

INT R ODUCTION

nor K e mpf s dynamic mechanism

might have been formulated
Freud is the father o f modern abnormal psycho l
ogy and he established t he psychoanalytical point of
view N o one wh o is not well grounded in Freud
ian lore can hope to achieve any w ork of value in
the eld of psychoanaly si s
On the other hand le t no one re peat the absurd
assertion that Freudism is a sort of re ligion bounded
with dogmas and requirin g an act of faith Freud
ism as such was merely a stage in the development
of psychoanalysis a stage out of which all but a
few bigoted camp followers totally lacking in orig
inalit y have evolved
Thousands of stones have
been added to the structure erected by the Viennes e
physician and many more wi ll be added in t he cour se
of time
But the ne w a dditions to that structure would col
lapse like a ho u se of cards but for the original foun
dations which are as inde structib le as Harvey s
statement as to the circul ation of the blood
Regardless of whatever additions or changes have
been made t o the original structu re the analyt ic
point of view remains unchanged
That point of vi e w is not only r e volut ionl smg all
the methods of diagno sis and treatment of menta l
derangements but compelling the intel ligent up to
i
e
n
s
a
t
n
o
,
p

INTRODUC TION

ix

date physician to revi se entire ly his a t t itu de to al

most every kind of disease
The in sane are no longer absu r d and p itiab le p eo
to
be
herded
in
asylums
til
l
nat
u
re
either
cures
l
e
p
them o r r elieve s them through death of their mis
e ry
The in sane who have not been made so by
a ctual inj ury to their brain or nervous system are
the victims of unconscious forces which cause them
to do abnormally things which they might be helpe d
t o do normally
In sight into one s psychology is rep l acing vict o
riou sly sedatives and rest cures

Physicians dealing with purely physical cases

have begun to take into serious consideration the

mental fa ctors which have predisposed a pat ie nt

to certain ailments
Freud s views have also made a revision of all
ethica l and social values unavoidable and have
thrown an unexpected flood of light u pon literary
and a rtistic accompli shment
But the Freudian p oint of View or more broadly
speaking the p sychoanalytic point of View shall
ever remain a puzzle t o those who from laziness or
indi fferen ce refu se to surve y with t he great Vien
ne se the eld over which he care fully groped his
way We shall never be convinced until we repeat
under his guidance all his laboratory experiments
.

INTRODUCTION

We must follow him through the thickets of the

unconscious thr ough the land which had never been
charted because academic philosophers following
the line of least e ff ort had decided a priori that it
could not be charted
A n cient geographers when exhausting their store
O f information about distant lands yielded t o an
unscientic craving f or romance and without any
evidence to support their day dreams lled t he
blank spaces left on th e ir maps by unexplored tracts

with amusing inserts such as Here there are lions

Thanks to F reud s interpretation O f dreams the

royal road into the unconscious is now open to all

explorers They shall not n d lions they shall nd
man himself and the record O f all his life and O f his
struggle with reality
And it is only after seeing man as his un consci ous
revealed by his dreams presents him to us that we
shall understand him fully For as Freud said to

Putn am : We are what we are because we have

been what we have been

a
few
serious
minded students however have
N ot
been discouraged from atte mpting a study of
Freud s dr e am psych ology
The book in which he originally o ffered to the
world his interpretation of dreams was as circum
st ant ial as a legal record t o be pondered over by
,

IN TROD UC TION

xi

scienti st s at their leisure not to be a ss imilate d in a

few hour s by the average a lert reader In those
days Freud could not leave out any detail likely
to make his e x tremely nove l thesis evidentially ac
ce pt abl e to those willing to sift data
Freud himself however realize d the magnitude
of the task which the reading of his magnwm
hav e not been
opus imposed upo n those who
prepared for it by long psycho logica l and scientic
training and he abstracted from that giga ntic work
the parts which constitute the e ssentia l of his dis
,

cov e rie s

The pub lishers o f the present book e serve credi t

d
f or presenting to the reading pu b l the gist of
p
Freud s psychology in the master s own w ords and
in a form which shal l neither discourage beginners
nor appear too elementary to tho se who are more
advanced in psychoanalytic study
D ream psychology is the k ey t o Freu d s w orks
and to all modern psych o logy With a simple
compact manual such as D re am P sy cho logy there
shall be no longer any excu se for ignorance of the
most revolutionary psychological sy stem of modern
time s
AN DRE TRIDON
1 2 1 M adi son Avenu e N e w York
November 1 9 2 0

C ONTE NT S
PA E
H A P TER
I D RE A M S HA VE A M E A N N G I
II TH E D RE A M M E H A N IS M
24
I II WH Y T H E D R E A M D I GUI SE s TH E D E SI RE S
I V D R E A M A N A LY SIS
78
1 04
V S X I N D RE AM S
1 35
IS H rN D R M H
VI TH E W
1 64
VI I TH E F U N C T I N o T HE D R E A M x
M
H
D
o
III
P
R
I
A
R
Y
N
D
R
E
SS
V
N ARY
P OC
RE
T
S
G

~ ~

EA

Ec

1 86

G R E SSI O N

IX

TH E UN C O N S C I O U S

AN D

CO N S CI OUSN

E SS

RE A LI TY 2 2 0

D RE A M PSY C HO LO GY
I
DREA M S H A VE A

EA N I N G

may term pre scie nt ic day s p eop l e

w ere in no uncertainty about the interpretation o f
dreams When they were recalled after aw aken
ing they w ere regarded as either the friendly or
ho stile manifestati on of some higher power s de
ith the rise of scientic
moniacal and Divine
thought the whole of this expressiv e mythology was
transferred t o psychology ; to d ay there is but a
smal l minority among educate d persons who d oub t
that the dream is the dreamer s own psychical act
But since the downfall of the mythological hypo
thesis an interpreta t ion of the dream has been want
ing The conditions of its origin ; its re lationshi p
to our p sychical life when we are awake ; it s inde
e
n
e
c
d
n
e
e
of
disturbances
which
during
the
s
tat
p
of sl eep seem to compel notice ; its many pe cul
iarit ie s repugnant to our waking thought ; the in
congru ence between its images and the fee lings they
engen der ; then the dre am s evane scence t he way in
I N what we

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

which on awakening our t houghts thrust it as ide

as something bizarre and our r e minisc ences muti

lating or re J e ct ing it all these and many other

problem s have for many hundred years demanded
answers which up till now c ould never have been
satisfactory
Before all there I s the question as to
the meaning of the dream a question which is in
itself double sided There is rstly the psychi cal
signicance of the dr eam its position with regard
to the psychical processe s as to a possible bio logical

function ; secon dl y has the dream a meaning can

se nse he made of each single dre am as of o ther
?
mental syntheses
Three tendencie s can be observed in the e stima
tion of dreams Many p hilosophers have given
cu rrency to one of these tendenci e s one which a t
the same time preserves something of the dream s
former over valuation The foundation o f dream
life is for them a p ecul iar state of psychical activity
which they even cel ebr ate as elevation to some
higher state S chub ert for instance c laims :

The ,dream is the liberation of the spirit from the

pressure O f external nature a detachment of the
soul from the fetters of matter
Not all go so
far as this b ut many maintain that dr e ams have
their orIgI n In real spiritual excitations an d are the
out ward manife stations of spiritual powe rs who se
,

'

DR EAM P SYCH OLO G Y

ome way or other from its oft bizarre and e n

ig m
at ical content
The reading of dreams consist s
in replacing the events of the dream so far as re
membered by other events This is done either
s cene by scene a ccording t o so me rigid k e y or t he
d ream as a whole is replaced by something else O f
which it was a sy mbol S erious minde d person s

laugh at these e fforts

Dream s are but se a
foam !
One day I discovered to my amazement that the
popular view grounded in superstition a
medical one comes nearer to the truth ab o
I arrived at new conclusions
use of a new method of psych
one which had rendered me good
v e st igat ion of phobias obsessions

like and which under the name psycho analy sis

had found acceptance by a whole sch ool of investi
o
ators
The
manifold
analogies
dream
life
with
f
g
t he most di verse conditi ons of psychical disease in
the waking state have been rightly insisted upon by
a num ber of medic al O bservers It seeme d there
fore a priori hopefu l to apply to the inte rpretatio n
of dreams methods of investigation which had been
tested in psychopathological proce sses Obsessions
and those peculiar sensations of haunting dread re
main as strange t o normal consciou sness as d o

in

DREAM S HAVE A M E A N I N G

to our waking con sciou snes s ; their origin is

as unknown to consciousness as is that of dream s
It w a s practical e nds tha t i mpelled u s in these dis
eases t o fathom their origin and form ation Ex
e rie n ce had shown us that a cure and a consequent
p
mastery of the obsessing idea s did result when onc e
those thoughts the connecting link s between the
morbid ideas and the r e st of the psychica l content
were revealed which w ere heretofore veiled from
con sciou sness The procedure I employed for the
interpretati o n of dreams th us arose fr o m p s ych o
therapy
This pro cedure I s readi ly de scribe d although its
practice demand s instructi o n and experience
Suppose the patient is su ff ering from intense mor
bid dread He is request e d to direct his attention
t o the idea in question without h o wev e r a s he has
so frequently done medit ating upon it Every im
pressi on about it wit hout any exception which oc
cu rs t o him should be imp arted to the doct o r The
statement which will be perh aps then made th at
he cann ot concentrate his attention upon anything
at all is to be countered by assuring him most posi
t iv e ly that such a blan k state of mind is utterly im
possible As a matter of fact a great number o f
impres sions will so on occur with which others will
associate th e mselve s These wi ll be invar iably ac
dream s

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

ompa nied by the expression of the observer s opin

ion that they have n o meaning or are unimporta nt
It will be at once not iced that it is this selfcriticism
w hich prevented t he patient from imparting the
ideas which had indeed already excluded them from
consciousness If the patient can be induced to
abandon this self criticism and t o pursue the trains
of thought which ar e
l
i
e
e
by
concentrating
the
d
d
y
attention most signicant matter wi ll be obtained
matter which will be presently seen to be clearly
linked to the morbid ide a in question Its connec
tion with other ideas will be manifest and later on
w ill permit the replacement of the morbid ide a by
a fresh one which is perfectly adapted to p sychical
continuity
This is not the pl ace to examine thoroughly the
hypothesis upon which this experiment rests or the
deductions which follow from its invariable success
It must sufce to state that we obtain matter enough
f or the resolution of every morbid idea if we e s
t
t
o the u n bidd e n as
direct
our
at
ention
e
c
i
ll
a
y
p

socia t ions which dist urb ou r t ho ught s those which

are otherwise put aside by the critic as wort hless
refuse If the procedure is exercised on oneself
the best plan of helping the experiment is to write
down at once all one s rst indistin ct fancies
I will now point out where this method l eads when

'

'

D R EAM S

HAV E A M EAN IN G

I app ly it t o the examin ation of dream s Any

dream could be made use of in th is way F rom
certain motive s I however choose a dream of my
own which appear s confused and meaningless to
my memory and one which has the advantage of
brevity Probably my dream of las t night satises
the requirements Its content x ed imme diately
after awakening runs as follows :

S pin
C o mpany ; a t t a ble or t a ble d hct e
.

a ch is s e r ve d

me he r

M rs E L

such

sit t ing ne x t

The n she

u ndivide d a t t e nt i n,

familiarly upo n my k ne e
hand

be au t ifu l

B u t y ou ha ve a lways had
I t he n dist inct ly se e

s ays :

e
s
y

e
c
e
l
a
h
a
n
s
d
h
r
p
d e f e nce I re mo ve he r

a nd

In

t o me give s
j

o me t hing like t wo e ye s as a sk e t ch or as t he con

t o ur of a sp e ct acle le ns
Thl S is the wh ole dream or at al l event s all that
I can remember It appears to me not only oh
scure and meaningless but more especially odd
Mrs E L is a person with whom I am scarce ly on
visiting terms nor to my knowledge have I eve r
desired any more cordial relationship I have not
seen her for a long time and do not think there w as
any mention of her re cently No emot ion what
eve rac companied the dream proce ss
Reecting u pon this dream doe s not mak e it a
bit cl earer to my mind I will now however pre
s

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

en t the ideas without p remeditation and withou t

critici sm w hich in trospection yielded I soon no
tice that it is an advantage t o break up the dream
into its elements and t o search out the ideas which
link themselves to each fragment
The re col
C o mp any ; a t t a ble or t a ble d hot e
lection O f the slight event with which the evening
o f ye sterday ended is at on ce called up
I left a
small party In the company of a friend who o ffered

to drive me home in his cab

I prefer a t axi he

said ; that gives one such a pleasant occupation ;

there is always something to look at

When we
were in the cab and the cab driver turned the disc
so that the rst sixty hellers were visible I con

tinned the j est

We have hardly got l n and we
already owe sixty he llers The taxi always re
minds me of the table d hOt e It makes me avari
ciou s and selsh by continuously reminding me of
my debt It seems to me to mount up t oo quickly
and I am alw ays afraid that I shal l be at a d isadv an
tage j ust a s I cannot resist at table d hOt e the com
ical fear that I am getting t oo little that I must

l
look after myse f
In far fetched connection with
thi s I quote :
s

To

To

e a rth th is We a ry e a rth y e b ring u s

t
e l e t u s h ee dl e ss go
il
u
y
g
,

DR EAM S HAVE

M EANIN G

An o ther idea about the tab le d hOt e A fe w

w eeks ago I was very cros s with my dear wife at
the dinner table at a Tyrolese health resor t b e
cause she w as n o t s ufcient l y re se rve d w ith some
ne ighbor s with whom I wi she d to have abso lutely
nothing t o do I begged her to o ccup y herself
rather wi t h me than with the stranger s That is
j ust as if I had be e n a t a disadvant age a t t he t a ble
The contra st b e t we e n t he behavior of my
d hcit e
w ife at the tab le and that of M rs E L in the

A ddre sse s he rse lf e nt ire ly

d ream now st rike s me :

to

me

F urther I now notice that t he dream is t he re

production of a little scene which transpire d b e
e
t ween my wife and my self when I w as s re t ly court
ing her The car e ssing under cove rbf the table
cloth w as an an swer to a w ooer s pa ssionate l etter
I n the dream however my w ife is re p l a ce d b y the
unfami liar E L
M rs E L is t he d aughte r of a man to whom I
o we d mo ne y ! I cannot he lp notic ing th at here
there is reve a led an un suspected conne ction between
the dream co ntent and my t hought s If the chain
o f associa ons be fo llowe d up which p ro cee ds from

g
one e lement of t he dream one is so o n le d ba ck to
an other o f it s e lemen t s The thought s e voked b y
,

DREAM P SY C HOLO GY

10

the dream stir up a sso ciations which w ere not no

t ice ab le in the dream itself
Is it not cu stomary when some one expects
others t o look a fte r his interests without any ad
vantage to themselves to ask the innoc ent question

satirically :
Do you think this will be done for
t he s ake of y our be au t ifu l e y e s ?
Hence Mrs E

L s speech in the dream

You have alway s had

such beautiful
no t hing b ut peop le
always do everything to you for love of you ; y ou

have had e ve ryt hing for no t hing

The contrary
is O f course the truth ; I have always paid dearly
for whate ver kindness others have shown me Still
the fact that I had a ride for not hing yesterday
when my friend drove me home in his cab must have
made an impression upon me
In any case the friend who se gu e st s we were
yesterday has o ften made me his debtor Re cently
I allowed an opp ortunity of requiting him to go
by He has had only one present from me an an
tique shawl upon which eyes are painted all round
a so called Occhiale as a charm again st the M aloc
chio
Moreover he is an e y e spe cialist That
s ame evening I had asked him after a patient whom
I had sent to him for glasse s
As I remarked nearly all parts of the dream have
been bro ught into this new conne ction I stil l
.

DREAM P S Y CHOLO G Y

12

thi s relat ionship is so spe cial that I sh oul d neve r

have been able to have inferred the new discoverie s
directly from the dream itself The dream w as
passionless disconnected and unintelligible Dur
ing t he time that I am unfolding the thoughts at
the back of the dr eam I feel intense and well
grounde d emotions The thoughts themselves t
beautifully together into chains logically bound to
gether with certain central ideas which ever repeat
themselves Such ideas not represented in the
dre am itself are in thi s instance the antitheses se lf
.

ish

u nse l

sh,

t o be inde bt e d

or not hing

I could draw closer the threads of the web which

analysis has disclosed and would then be able to
Show how they all run together into a single knot ;
I am debarred from making this work public b y
considerations of a private not of a scientic na
ture After having cleared up many things which
I do not willingly acknowledge as mine I should
have much to reveal which had better remain my
secret Why then do not I choose another dream
whose analysis would be more suitable for publica
tion so that I could awaken a fairer conviction of
the sense and cohesion of the results disclosed by
?
analysis The answer is because every dream
which I investigate leads t o the same difcultie s
and place s me under the same need of di scretion ;
,

t o work

DREA M S H AVE A MEANIN G

13

ho ul d I forgo thi s difcul ty any the more were

I to analyze the dream of some one else That
could only be done when opportunity allo wed all
concealment to be dropped without inj ury to those
who trusted me
The conclusion which is now forced upon me is
tha t the dream is a so rt of su bst it u t io n for those
emotional and intell ectual trains of thought which
I attained after complete analysis I do not yet
know the process by which the dream aros e from
t hose thoughts but I perceive that it is wrong t o
a
regar d the dream a s psychically unimportant
purely physical process which has ar1 sen from the
activity of i so l a t ed cortical e lements awakened out
of sleep
I must further remark that the dr e am is far
shorter than the thoughts which I hold it replaces ;
whils t analysis discovered that the dream was pro
v ok e d by an un important oc currence the eve ning b e
fore t he dream
Naturally I woul d n o t draw su ch far reaching
conclusions if only one analysis were known to me
Experien ce has shown me that when the associations
o f any dream are hone stl y followed such a chain of
t hought is revealed the constituent p arts of the
dream r eappear correctly and sensib ly linke d t o
gether ; the slight suspICIon that this concatenation
nor

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

14

mere ly an a ccident of a single rst observation

mu st therefore be absolutely relinquished I re
gard it therefore as my right to establish this new
view by a prop e r nomenclature I contrast the
dream which my memory evokes with the dream
and other added matter revealed by analysis : the
former I call the dream s manife st con t e nt ; the lat
ter without at rst further subdivision its lat e nt
cont e nt
I arrive at two new problems hitherto
unformulated : ( 1 ) What is t he psychical process
which has transformed the latent content of the
?
2
dream into its manifest content
What
is
the
( )
motive or the motives which have made such trans
?
format ion exigent The process by which the
change from latent to manifest content is exe cuted
m
I name the dre a wo rk In contrast with this is
the wo rk of analysis which produce s the reverse
transformation The other problems of the dream
the inquiry as to its stimuli as to the source of its
materials as to it s po ssible p ur pose the function of

dreaming the forgetting of dr eams these I will

discus s in conne cti on with the latent dream con
tent
I Shall tak e every care t o avoid a confusion b e
tween the ma nife st and the lat e nt cont e nt for I
a scribe all the contradictory as well as the incor
rect a ccounts of dream life to the ignorance of thi s

w as

DREAM S HAVE A MEANI N G

15

la t ent content , now r st l aid bare thro ugh ana lysi s

The conversion o f the l atent d ream th ought s into

those manifes t de serve s our close study as the rst

known example of the transformation of psychica l
stu ff from one mode of ex p re ssion into another
From a mode of expre ssion which moreover is
readily inte lligib l e into another whi ch we can only
penetrate by e ff ort and with guidance although this
ne w mode must be equally reckon ed as an e ffort of
o u r own psychi ca l a ctivity From the standp oin t
of the relationsh ip of latent t o manife st dream con
tent dream s can be divided into three classes We
can in the r st p l ace d istinguish tho se dream s
which have a me aning and are at the same time
int e lligible ) w hich allow u s to penetrate into our
psychical life without further ado Such dream s
are numer ous ; they are usually short and as a gen
eral rule do not seem very noticeable be cause
every hing remarkable or excit ing surpri se is ah
t
sent
Their occurrence is moreover a strong argu
ment against the doctrine which de rives the dream
from the isolated activity of c e rtain cortical ele
ments All signs of a low ered or subdivided psy
chical a ctivity are wanting : Yet we never rai se
any ob eetion to charact e rizmg them as dream s nor
do we c on fo un d them w ith the pr o duct s o f our w ak
ing life
.

(
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

16

A sec ond group is f orme d by those dream s which

are indeed self coherent and have a distinct mean
ing but appear strange b ecause we are unable to
reconcile their meaning with our mental life ) That
is the case when we dream for instance that some
dear relative has died of plague when we know of
no ground f or expecting apprehending or assum
ing anything of the sort ; we can only ask o urself

?
wonderingly :
What brought that into my head
To the third group those dreams belong which are
void of both meaning and int e lligibilit y g
t he y are
incohe re nt
me aningl e ss
The
complica t e d
a nd
overwhelming number of our dreams partake of
this character and this has given I I SC to the con
t e mpt uou s attitude towards dream s and the medical
theory of the ir limited psychical activity It is e s
d
c
i
ll
in
the
longer
n
more
complicated
ream
e
a
d
a
p
y
plots that signs of incoherence are seldom missing
The contrast between manifest and latent dream
content is clearly only of value for the dreams of
the second and more esp e cially f or those of the third
cl ass Here are problems which are only solved
when the manifest dream is repl aced by its latent
content ; it w as a n example of this kind a compli
ca t e d and u nintelligible dream that we sub e ct e d to
analysis Against our expec tation we however
struck upon reasons which prevented a complete
,

'

DREAM S HAVE A MEANIN G

17

c ognizance of the l atent drea m thought On the

re p etition of this same experien ce we were f or ced
to the supposition that there is an int imat e bo nd
.

wit h l aws

t
s
i
of

own,

be t we e n t he

u nin t e lligible and

o mplicat e d nat ure of t he dre am and t he difficult ie s

a t t e nding co mmunica t io n of t he t ho ught s co nne ct e d
wit h t he dre am
Before investigating the nature
of this bond it will be advantageous to turn our
att ention to the more readily intelligib l e dreams of
the rst class where the manifest and latent con
tent being identi cal the dream work seem s t o be
omitted
The inve stigation of the se dreams is a ls o advisa
ble from another standpoint The dreams of chil
dre n are of this nature ; they have a me aning and
are not bizarre This by the way is a further oh
i
c
t
o
to
reducing
dreams
to
a
dissociation
of
cere
n
e
j
bra l activity in sleep for why should such a lower
ing of psychical functions be long to the nature of
?
sleep in adults but not I n children
We are how
ever fully j ustied in expecting that the explana
tion of psychical processes in children essentially
simplied as they may be should serve as an indis
pensab le preparati o n towards the p sycho logy of the
adul t
I shall therefore cite some e x amp le s o f dream s
which I have gathered from children A girl of
c

DREAM P S YCHOLO G Y

18

nineteen month s was made to go without food for

a day because she had been sick in the morning
and according to nurse had made herself ill
through eating st rawb e rrl e s During the night
after her day of fasting she was heard calling ou t

her name during sleep and adding :

T awbe rry
e ggs pap
She is dreaming that she is eating
and S
elects out o f her menu exactly what she sup
poses she will not get much of j ust now
The same kind of dream about a forbidden dish
was that of a little boy of twenty two months The
day before he was told to o ff er his uncle a present
of a small basket of cherries of which the child
was of cour se only allowed one to taste He

woke up with the j o yful news :

Hermann eaten

up all the cherries

A girl of three and a half year s had made during
the day a sea trip which was t oo short for her and
she cried when she had to get out of the boat The
next morning her story w as that during the night
she had been on the se a t hu s continuing the inter
ru pt e d trip
A boy of ve and a hal f ye ar s was not at all
pleased with his party during a w alk in the Dach
Whenever a ne w peak came into
stein region
s ight he asked if that were t he Dachstein and
nally refused to accompany the party to the water
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

2O

that t he be d was much t oo small for he r so t hat she

co u ld
nd no place in it
To explain this dream as

a wi sh is easy when we remember that to be big

is a frequently expressed wish of all children The
bigness of the bed reminded Miss Little Would
b e Big only too forcibly of her smallness
This
nasty situation became righted in her dream and
she grew so big that the bed now be came too small
f her
Even when children s dream s are complicated
and polished their comp rehension as a realization
o f desire is fairly evident
A
boy
of eight dreamt
)
/
that he was being drive n with Achilles in a war
chariot guided by Diomedes The day before he
was assiduously reading about great heroes It is
easy to show that he took these heroes as his models
and regretted that he w as not living in those day s
From this short collection of further character

ist ic of the dreams of children is manifest t he ir

The desires
conne ct ion wit h t he life of t he d ay
which are realized in these dreams are left over
from the day or as a rule the day previous and
the feeling has become intently emphasized and
xed during the day thoughts Accidental and in
di fferent matters or what must appear so to the
child nd no acceptance in the contents of the
dream
,

'

DREAM S HAVE A M EANIN G

21

Innumerable instances of such dreams of the in

f ant ile typ e can be found among adults also but
as mentioned these are mostly exactly like the man
Thus a random selection of per
ife st conte nt
sons will generally respond to thirst at night time
with a dream about drinking thus striving to get
rid of the sen sation and to let sleep continue
Many per sons frequently have the se comforting
dre ams before waking j ust when they are called
They then dream that they are already up that they
are washing or already in school at the ofce etc
The night
w here they ought to be at a given time
before an intended j ourney one not infrequently
dream s that one has already arrived at the destina
tion ; before going to a play or to a party the dream
not infrequently anticipates in impatience as it
were the expected pleasure At other time s the
dream expresses the realization of the desire some
what indirectly ; some connection some sequel must

be kno wn the rst step towards recognizing the

desire Thus when a husband related to me the
dream of his young wife that her monthly period
had begun I had to bethink myself th at the young
wife w oul d have expected a pregnan cy if the perio d
had been ab sent The dream is then a sign of
pregnancy Its meaning is that it shows the wi sh
realized that pregnancy should not o ccur j ust y e t
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

22

Under unu sual and extreme circumstance s these

dreams of the infantile type become very frequent
The leader of a polar expedition tells us for in
stance that during the wintering amid the ice the
crew with their monotonous diet and slight rations
dreamt regularly like children of ne meal s of
mountains of tobacco and of home
It is not uncommon that out of some long com
p l i cated and intricate dream one specially lucid part
stands out containing unmistakably the realization
of a desire but bound up with much unintelligible
matter On more frequently analyzing the seem
ingly more transparent dreams of adul ts it is as
t onishing to discover that these are rarely as simple
as the dreams of children and that they cover an
other meaning beyond that of the realization of a
w ish
I t would certainly be a simple and convenient
solution of the riddle if t he work of analysis made
it at all possible for us to t race the meaningless and
intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile typ e
to the realization of some intensely experienced de
sire of the d ay But there is no warrant for such
an expectation Their dreams are generally ful l
of the most indi fferent and bizarre matter and no
trace of the realization of the wi sh is t o be foun d in
t heir content
,

DREAM S HAVE A MEANIN G

23

Before leaving these infantile dreams which are

obviously unrealized desires we mlist not fail to
mention another chief characteristic of dreams one
that has been long noticed and one which stands
ou t most clear l y I n this class
I can replace any of
these dreams by a phrase expressing a desire I f
the sea trip had only lasted longer ; if I were onl y
washed and dresse d ; if I had only been allowed to
keep the cherrie s instead of giving them to my uncle
But the dream gl v e s something more than the
choice for here the desire is already realized ; it s
realization is rea l and actua l The dream present a
tions consist chiey if not wholly of scenes and
mainly of visual sens e image s Hence a kind of
transf ormation is not entirely ab sent in this cl as s of
dreams and this may be fairly designated as the
dream w ork A n id e a me re ly e x ist ing in t he re gion
l
s
s
b
i
i
it y is re place d by a vision of it s ae co m
o
of p
,

h
n
l
s
t
m
e
i
p

II

THE DR A M

E C H A N I SM

WE are compelled to assume that such transforma

tion O f scene has also taken place in intricate
dreams though we do not know whether it has e n
countered any possible desire The dream in
st ance d at the commencement which we analyzed
somewhat thoroughly did give us occasion in two
places to suspect something of the kind Analysis
brought out that my wife was occupied with others
at table and that I did not like it ; in the dream it
self e a act ly t he oppo sit e occurs for the person who
replace s my wife gives me her undivided attention
But can one wish for anything pleasanter after a
disagreeable incident than that the exact contrary
?
should have occurred j ust as the dream has it
The stinging thought in the analysis that I have
never had anything for no thing is similarly con
n e ct e d with the woman s remark in the dream :

You have always had such b eautiful eyes

S ome
p ortion of the opposition betw een the latent and
manife st content of the dream must be therefore
derived from the re alization of a wish
,

'

24

THE DREAM ME CHANI SM

25

Another manife station of the dream work which

all incoherent dreams have in common is still more
noticeab l e Choo se any in st an ce and compar e the
number of separate elements in it or the extent of
the dream if written down w ith the dream t hought s
yie lded by analysis and of which but a trace can
be refound in the dream itself There can be no
doubt that the dream working has r esulted in an
extraordinary compres sion or conde nsa t io n I t I s
not at rst easy t o form an opl mon as to the extent
of the condensati on ; the more deeply you go into
the analysis the more deeply you are iInpre sse d by
it There will be foun d no factor in the dream
whence the chains of as sociations do not lead in two
or more dir e ctions no scene which has not been
piec ed together ou t of two or more impression s and
event s For instance I once dre amt about a kin d
of swimm i ng bath where the bathers sudden l y sep
arat e d In all direction s ; at one place on the edge a
per son stood bending towards one o f the bathers as
if to drag him out The scene w as a c omposite one
made up o u t of an event that occur re d at t he time
of puberty and of t wo picture s one of which I had
seen j ust sh o rtly before the dream
The t wo p ic
ture s were The S urprise in the Bath from
S chwind s Cycle of the Melusine ( note the bathers
suddenly separating ) and The F loo d by an
.

'

DREAM P S Y C HOLO G Y

26

Italian master The little incident was that I

once witnessed a lady w ho had tarried in the swim
ming bath until the men s hour being helped ou t
O f the water by the Sw Imm ing master The scene
in the dr eam whi ch was selected for analysis l e d t o
a whole group of reminiscences each one of which
had contributed to the dream content First of all
came the little epis ode from the time of my court
ing of which I have already spoken ; the pressure
of a hand under the table gave rise in the dream t o

the under the table which I had subsequently to

n d a place for in my recollection
There was of

course at the time not a word about undivided at

tention
A n alysis taught me that this factor is
the realiz ation of a d esire through its contr adictory
and rel ated to the behavior O f my wife at the table
d hOt e
An e xactly sim ilar and much more im
portant epis ode of ou r courtship one which sepa
rated u s f or an entire day lies hidden behind this
recent recollect ion The intimacy the hand rest
ing upon the kn ee re fers t o a quite different con
n e ct ion and t o q uite oth e r persons
This element
in the dream becomes again the starting point of
t w o distinct series of re miniscences and so on
The st u of the dream thoughts which has b e en
accumulated for the formation O f t he dream scene
mus t be nat ur ally t f or this app lication Th e re
.

"

'

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

28

content to dream thoughts which are as varied as

are the causes in form and ess e nce which give ris e
to them In the analysi s of our example of a
dream I nd a like case of the transformation of a
thought in order th a t it might agree w ith another
essentially foreign one In foll owing out the an
alysis I struck upon the thought : I shou ld like t o
hav e some t hing for not hing
But this formula is
not serviceable to the dream Henc e it is replaced

by ano t her one :

I should like t o enj oy something

free of cost
The word kost ( tast e) with its
double meaning is appropriate t o a t able d h ote ; it
moreove r is in place through the special sense in t he
dream At home if there is a dish which the chil
dren decline their mother rst tries gentle pe r sua

sion with a J ust t as te it

That the dream work
should unh esitatingly use the double meaning of
the word is certainly remarkable ; ample experience
has shown however th a t the occurrence is quite
usual
Through condensation of the dre am certain con
I ch mocht e ger n e etwas gen iess n ohn e K o sten
habe n A

a pu n up on the wo rd k o ste n which has two meani n gs taste an d

c ost I n D ie Traumdeutun g third editi n p 7 1 foo tnote Pr o
f
F reud remarks that the n est example o f dream i nt erpret a
tion left us b y the an cie n ts is based up on a pu n ( fr o m The I n te r
di
M
a
l
n
D
o
f
D
reams
A
rtemid
o
r
s
o re over
t
i
b
t
n
)
y
p
i t r ul y
dreams are s o i ntimately b ou n d up with lan guage that F
p oi n t out that every t n gu h its ow n language o f dreams A
dream is as a rule u ntran slatabl e i nt o o ther l an gu ges T

zu

e ss or

re

us

e re ncz

as

RA N SLA TO R

THE DRE AM ME CHANI SM

29

parts of its content are explicable which

are peculiar to the dream life alone and which are
not found in the waking state Such are the com
t
o
s
i
e and mixed persons the extraordinary mixed
p
gures creations comparable with the fantastic
animal compositions of Orientals ; a moment s
thought and these are reduced t o unity whilst the
fancies of the dream are ever formed anew in an
inexhaustible p ro fu sion Every one know s su ch
images in his own dr eams ; manifold are their or
igins
I can build up a person by borrowing one
feature from one person and one from another or
by giving to the form of one the name of another in
my dream I can also visualize one person but
place him in a position which has occurred t o an
other There is a meaning in all these cases wh en
different persons are amalgamated into one sub st i

tute Such cases denote an and a j ust like a

comparison of the original person from a certain
point of V i ew a comparison which can be also re
As a rule however the
al iz e d in the dream itself
identity of the bl e nded persons is only di scoverable
by analysis and is only indicated in the dream con

tent by the formation of the combined person

The same div e rsIt y in their ways of formation
and t he same rules for its solution hold good also
for the innumerable medley of dream content s ex
st it u e n t

'

'

D REAM P SYCHOLO G Y

30

amples of which I need scarcely add uce Their

strangeness quite disappe ars when we resolve not
to place them on a level with the obj ects of percep
tion as known to us when awake but to remember
that they represent the art of dream condensation
by an e xc lusion of unnecessary detail Promin
ence is given t o the common charac t er of the com
bination An alysis must al so generally supply the
common features The dream says simply : A ll

t he s e t hings ha ve an m in common
The d e com
position of these m ixed images by analysis is often
the quickest way to an interpretation of the dream
Thus I once dreamt that I was sitting with one of
my former univ e rsity tutors on a b ench which was
undergoing a rapid continuous movement amidst
other benches This was a combination of lecture
room and moving staircase I will not pursue the
further result of the thought Another time I was
sitting in a carriage and on my lap an obj ect in
shape like a top hat which however was made of
transp arent glass The scene at once brought t o

my mind the proverb :

He who keeps his hat in
his hand will t ravel safely through the land
By
S
a slight turn the glas s hat reminded me of A
light and I knew that I was about t o invent some
thing which was t o make me as rich and independent
as his invention had made my countryman Dr
'

THE DREAM MEC HANI S M

31

Auer of
elsbach ; then I sho uld be able to tr avel
instead of remaining in Vi e nn a In the dream I
was traveling with my invention with the it is true
rather awkwar d glass top hat The dream work is
peculiarly adept at representing two contrad ictory
conceptions b y means of t he same mixed image
Thus for instance a woman dreamt of her self
carrying a t all ow e r stalk as in the picture of the
Annunciation ( Chastity Mary is her own name )
but the stalk was bedecked with thick white blos
soms re sembling camellias ( contrast with chastity :
La dame aux Camelias )

A gr e at deal of what we have called dream con

can be thus formulated E ach one of
t he eleme nts of the dre am content is ove rd e t e r
mine d by the matter of the dream t houghts ; it is not
derived from one element of these thoughts but
fr om a whole series These are not necessarily in
te rconnected in any way but may belong t o the
most diverse spheres of thought The dream ele
ment truly represents all this disparate matter in
the dr eam content Analysis moreover discloses
another side of the relationship b etween dream con
tent and dream thoughts J ust as one element of
t he dream leads to associations with several dream
thoug hts so a s a rule the one dre am t hou ght re pre
s e nt s more t han one d re am e le me nt
The threa ds
,

DREAM P S YCHOLOGY

32

of the association do not simply converge from the

dream thoughts to the dream content but on the
way they overlap and interw eave in every way
Next t o the transformation of one thought in the

scene ( its dramatization ) condensation is the

most important and m ost characteristic feature of
the dream work We ha ve as yet no clue as t o
the motive calling for such compression of the con
tent
In the complicated and intricate dre ams with
which we are now concerned condensation and
dramatization do not who lly account for the differ
ence between dream contents and dream thoughts
There is evidence of a third factor which deserves
careful considerat ion
When I have arrived at an understan ding of t he
dream thoughts by my an alysis I notice above all
that the matter of the m anifest is very diff erent
from that of t he latent dream content That is I
admit only an apparent diffe r e nce which vanishes
on closer investigation, for in t he end I nd the
whole dream content carrl e d out in the dream
thoughts ne arly al l the dream thoughts again re pre
Neverthele ss there
sented in the dream content
d oes re main a certain amount of di ff erence
The essential content which stood out clearly and
b roadly in the dream must after analysis rest satis
,

HE D R E A M ME CHANI SM

33

a very subordinate rle among the dream

thoughts These very dream thoughts which go
ing by my feelings have a claim to the greatest
importance are either not present at all in the dream
content or are represented by some remote allusion
in some obscure region of the dream I can thus
describ e these phenomena : D uring t he dre am
e d

work t he psychical int e ns it y of t hose t hought s and

conce p t ions t o which it prope rly pe rt ains ows t o
which in my j ud gme nt ha v e no claim t o
There is no other process which
such e mphasis

ot he rs

contributes so much to concealment of the d ream s

meaning and to make the connection between the
dream content and dream ideas irrecognizable
During this process which I will call t he dre am
displace me nt I notice also the psychical intensity
signicance or emotional nature of the thoughts
become transposed in sensory vividness W at
was clearest in the dream seems to me without fur
ther consideration the most important ; but often
in some obscure element of the dream I can rec
ogniz e the most direct o ff sp r in g of the princ1pal
dream thought
I could only designate this dre am displacement
The
sychica l v a lu e s
as the t ransv a lu a tion of
p
phenomena will not have been considered in all its
bearings unless I add that this displacement or

DREAM P SYCHOLOGY

34

transvaluation is shared by different dreams in ex

t re me ly varying degrees
There are dreams which
take pla ce almost without any displacement
These have t he same time meaning and int e ll igibil
ity as we found in the dr eams which recorded a
desire In other dreams not a bit of the dream
idea has retained its own psychical value or every
thing essential in these dream id eas has been r e
placed by unessentials whilst every kind of transi
tion between these conditions can be found The
more obscure and intric ate a dream is the greater
is the part to be ascribed to the impetu s of displac e
ment in its formation
The example that we chose for analysis shows at

least this much of displac e ment that its content

has a di ff erent center of int erest from that of the
dream ideas In the forefront of the dream con
tent the m ain scene appears as if a woman wished
t o make advances to me ; in the dr eam idea the chief
interest rests on the desire to enj oy disinterested

love which shall cost nothing ; this idea lies at the

back of the talk about the beautiful eyes and the

far fetched allusion to spinach

If we abolish the dream displacement we attain
through analysis quite certain conclusions regard
ing two problems of the dream which are most dis

as
t
o
what
pr
ovokes a dream at all and as
t
e
d
u
p
.

DREAM P S YCHOLO GY

36

placed by something in different with which it has

entered into abundant associat ions Where the
dream is concerned with uninteresting and unim
portant conceptions an alysis reveals the numerous
associative paths which connect the trivial with the
m omentous in the psychical estimat ion of the in di
vidual I t is only t he a ct ion of displace me nt! if
.

what is indie re nt
ins t e ad

con t e nt
r e a lly

t he

ob t ains re cognit ion

t hose

mulus

st i

or

in t he dre am

impre ssions which

a re

t he t hings of

re a l

ins t e ad

In answering the question as to what pro

vokes the dream as to the con ne ction of the dre am
in the daily troubles we must say in terms of the
insight given us by replacing the manifest latent
dream content : T he dre am d oe s n e v e r t rou ble it
se lf a bou t t hings which ar e n ot d e se rv ing of ou r

int e re st

conce rn

t rou ble
us

during t he d ay and t rivialit ie s which d o not

u s du ring t he d ay hav e no powe r t o pursue

whilst

as l e e p

What provoked the dream in the example which

?
we have analyzed The really unimportant event
that a friend invited me to a fre e rid e in his cab
The table d ht e scene in the dre am contains an
allusion to this indifferent motive for in conversa
tion I had brought the taxi parallel with the table
d h ote But I can indicate the important event
which has as its substitute the trivial one A few
,

THE DREAM ME CHANI SM

37

days before I had disbursed a large sum of money

for a member of my family who is very dear to
me Small wonder says the dream thought if this

person is grateful to me for this this love is not

cost free But love that shall cost nothin g is one
of the prime thoughts of the dream The fact that
shortly before this I had had several drive s with
the relative in question puts the one drive with my
friend in a position to recall the connection with the
The indi fferent impression which
other person
by such ramications provokes the dr eam 18 sub
servient t o another condition which is not true of

the real source of the dream the impression must

be a recent one everything arising from the day of
the dream
I cannot leave the question of dream displace
ment without the consideration of a remarkable
process in the formation of dreams in which con
densation and displacement work together towards
one end In condensation we have already con
side r e d the case wher e two conc eptions in the dream
having something in common some point of con
tact are replaced in the dream conten t by a mixed
image where the distinct germ corresponds to what
is common and the indistinct secondary modica
tions t o what is distin ctive If displacement is
added to c ondensation there is no formation of a
.

38

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

mixed im age but a common me an which bears the

same relationship to the individual elements as does
the resultant in the parallelogram of forces to its
components In one of my dreams for instance
there is talk of an inj ection with propyl On rst
analysis I discovered an indi ff erent but true inci
dent where amy l played a part as the excitant of
the dream I cann ot yet vindicate the exchange
of amyl for propyl To the round of ideas of the
same dream however there belongs the recollection
when the P ropylce a
o f my rst visit to Munich
struck me The attendant c ircumstance s of the
analysis render it admissible that the inuence of
this second group of conceptions caused the dis
placement of amyl to propyl P ropyl is so t o say
the mean idea between a myl and p ropylaza; it got
into the dre am as a kind of compromise by simul tan
eon s condensation and displacement
The need of dis covering some motive for this be
wildering work of the dream is even more called for
in the case of displacement than in condensation
Although the work of displace ment must be held
mainly res ponsible if t he dream thoughts are not
refound or recognized in the dream c ontent ( unless
the motive of the changes b e guessed ) it 1s another
and milder kind of transformation which will be
considered with the dream thoughts which leads to
,

THE DREAM ME CHAN I SM

39

the discovery of a new b u t readily understood act

of the dream work The rst dream thoughts
which are unravelled by analysis frequently strike
one by their unusual wording They do not ap
pear t o be expressed in the sober form which our
thinking prefer s ; rather are they expressed sym
b olical ly by allegories and metaphors like the g
It is not difcult
u rat ive language of the poets
to nd the motives for this degree of constraint in
the expression of dream ideas The dream content
consists chiey of visual scenes ; hence the dream
ideas must in the rst place be prepared t o make
u se of these forms of presentation
Conceive that
a political leader s or a barrister s address had to be
transposed into pantomime and it will be easy to
understand the transformations to which the dream
work is constrained by regard for this dramat izat ion
.

t he d re am

con t e nt

Arou nd the psychical stu ff of dream thoughts

there are ever found remini scences of impressions

not infrequently of early childhood scenes which

as a rule have been visually grasped
henever
possible this portion of the dream ideas exercises
a denite in uence upon the modelling of the dream
content ; it works like a center of crystallization by
attracting and rearrangi ng the stu ff of the dream
thou ghts The scene of the dream is not infre
,

DREAM P SYCH O LO GY

40

quently nothing but a modied repetition compli

cat e d by interpolatio ns of events that have left such
an impression ; the dream but very seldom repro
duces ac curate and unmixed reproductions of real
scenes
The dream content does not however consist
ex clusively of scenes but it also includes sc attered
fragments of visual images conversations and even
bits of unchanged thoughts It will be perhaps t o
the p oint if we instance in the briefest way the
means of dramatization which are at the disposal
of the dream work for the repet ition of the dream
thoughts in the peculiar language of the dre am
The dream thoughts which we learn from the
analysis exhibit themselves as a psychical comple x
of the most complicated superstru cture
Their
part s sta nd in the most diverse relationship to each
other ; they form backgroun ds and foregr ounds
stipulations
digressions illustrations demonstra
tions and protestations It may be s aid to be al
most the rule that one train of thought is f ollow e d
by its contradictory No feature known to our
reason whilst awake is absent If a dream is to
grow out of all this the psychical atter is sub
mit t e d to a pressure which condenses it extremely
t o an in ner shrink ing and displacement creating at
the same time fresh surfaces to a selective inter
,

'

THE DRE AM ME CHANI S M

41

weaving among the constituents best adapted for

the construction of these scenes Having regard
to the origin of this stu ff the term re gre ssion can be
fairly applied to this process The logical chains
which hitherto held the psychical stu ff together b e
come lost in this transformation to the dream con
tent The dr eam work takes on as it were only
the ess e ntial content of the dream thoughts for
elab oration It is left t o analysis to restore the
connection which the dream work has destroyed
The dream s means of expression must therefore
b e regarded as meager in comparison with thos e of
our imagination though the dream does not r e
nounce all claims to the restitution of logical r e
lation to the dream thoughts It rather succeed s
with tolerable frequency in replacing these by
formal characters of its own
By reason of the u ndoubted connection existing
b etween all the parts of dream thoughts the dream
is ab le to emb ody this matter into a single scene It
upholds a logi cal conne ct ion as approa ima t ion in
t ime and sp ace j ust as the painter who groups all
the poets for his picture of Parnassus w ho though
they have never been all together on a mountain
peak yet form ideally a community The dream
continues this method of presentation in individual
dreams and often when it displays two elements
.

D REAM P SYCHOLO GY

42

close together in the dream cont ent it warrants

some special inner connection between what they
represent in the dream thoughts It should be
moreover observed that all the dreams of one night
prove on analysis t o originate from the same sphere
of thought
The causal comi e ct ion between two i deas is either
left without presentation or replaced by two diff er
ent long portions of dreams one after the ot her
This presentation is frequently a reversed one the
beginning of the dream being the deduction and its
end the hypothesis The direct t ransformat ion of
one thing into another in the dr eam seems to serve
the relationship of caus e and e e ct
The dream never utters the alt e rna t iv e

e it he r or
but accepts both as having equal rights

in the same connection When either or is used

in the reproduction of dreams it is as I have al

ready mentioned t o be replaced by and

Conceptio ns which stand in oppo sition to one an
other are preferably expressed in dreams by the

same element
There seems no not in dreams
.

'

I t is w orthy o f r emark that emin e nt phil ol o gists m i n tai n that

the oldest l an guages used the same wo rd fo r expressi n g q uite gen eral
antitheses I n C A be l s essay Ueber de n G ege n sinn der U w t
l an d are give n
f
o
o
wi
n
g
examples
o
f
such
w
o
rds
i
n
E
n
g
8
4
h
ll
1
8
t
(

gleam gloom ; t o l o ck l och ; dow n The Dow n s ; t o step

sto p I n his essay on The O rigin o f Lan guage ( Li n guisti c
t
E ssays p
Abel says Whe n the E n gl ishman says with o ut is
a

or e r

DRE A M P SYCHOLOGY

44

will have been taken more or less into consideration

In the latter case they appear obscur e intr icate
incoherent When the dream appears openly ab
surd when it contains an obvious paradox in its
content it is so of purpose Through it s apparent
disregard of all logical claims it expresses a part
of the intellectual content of the dream ideas A b
surdity in the dream de no t es disagre e me nt s corn
disda in in the dream thoughts
As this explanation
is in entire disagreement with the view that the
dream owes its origin t o dissociated uncrit ical cere
bral activity I will emphasize my view by an ex
ample :
.

m
f y

O ne

a t t a ck e d

wit h

by

n o le ss a

a ll

we

1
M r 1V

He

n e r p a rt y

n
e
r
s
o
p

maint ain

Mr M

na t u r ally

t ha n G oe t he in

be e n

mplains v e ry bit t e rly

or

v iole nce

by t his at
t his at a din

G oe t he has

re spe ct

an e ssay

ruine d

co

bu t his

has be e n

u nwarrant a ble

has

t ack

a cq u ain t an ce s,

n ot

dimin

I now at
ishe d t hrough t his p e rsona l e x p e rie nce
t e mp t t o cle ar up t he chronol ogica l re la t ions which
.

s t rike

me

as

improba ble

G oe t he die d in 1 8 3 2

A s his at t ack up on M r M

mus t

t ake n place b e fore

a

v e ry

he was
e
ar
y

n
o
u
y
g

we

are

It

se e

ly in

a ct u a l

cou rs e ,

ha v e

mu st ha v e be e n t he n

man

e ight e e n

Mr M

ms

to

me pla us ible t hat

n ot ce rt ain,
a nd

howe v e r what

t he whole

calcul a t ion

T HE

DREAM M E CHANI SM

falls int o

obscu rit y

con t ain e d

in G oe t he

t ure

The

a t t a ck

was

we ll known

45

ore o e r,

e ssay

on

Na

3)

The absurdity of the dream becomes the more

is a young
glaring when I state that Mr M
business man without any poetical or literary in
My analysis of the d ream will show wh at
t e re st s
method there is In this madness The dream has
derived its material from three sources :
t o whom I was introduced at a
1 Mr M
dinner party b egged me one day t o examine his
elder brother who showed signs of mental tro uble
In conversation with the patient an unplea sa nt
episode occurred Without the slighte st occas ion
he disclosed one of his brother s y ou t hful e scapad e s
I had asked t he patient the y e ar of his birt h ( ye ar
and led him to v ariou s cal cula
of d e a t h in dream )
tions which might show up his want of memory
2 A medical j ournal which displayed my name
among others on the cover had published a ruinous
review of a book by my friend F
of B erlin
from the pe n of a very j u v e ni le reviewer I com
municat e d wi t h the editor w ho indeed expressed
his regret but would not promise any redress
Thereupon I br oke off my connection with the pa
per ; in my letter of resignation I expressed the
hope that our pe rsonal re lat ions would not suff e r
.

DREAM P SYCH OLO GY

46

from t his

Here is the real source of the dream

The derogatory rec eption of my friend s work had
made a deep impression upon me In my j udg
ment it contained a fundamental biological discov
ery which only now several years later commences
t o nd favor among the professors
3 A little while before a patient gave me the
medical history of her brother who exclaiming

The
N at ure N a t u re ! had gone out of his mind
doctors considered that the exclamation arose from
a study of G oe t he s beautiful essay and indicated
that the patient had been overworking I ex
pressed the opinion that it se e med more plaus ible

to me that the exclamation Nature ! was to be

taken in that sexual meaning known also t o t he less
educated in our country It seemed t o me th at this
view had s omething in it because the unfortunate
youth afterwards mutilated his genital organs
The patient was eighteen years ol d when the attack
occurred
The rst person in the dre am thoughts b ehind the
ego was my friend who had be en so scandalously

treated
up t he chrono
I now a t t e mpt e d t o
logical re lat ion
My friend s book deals with the
chronological relations of life and a ongst other
things corr elates G oe t he s duration of life with a
numbe r of days in many ways important to biology
.

THE DRE AM M E CHANI S M

47

The ego is however represented as a general para

lyt ic ( I am not ce r t ain what ye ar we are ac t ua lly

The dream exhibits my friend as behaving
like a general paralytic and thus riots in absurdity

But the d ream thoughts run ironically

Of course
he is a madman a fool and you are the genius who
understands all about it But shouldn t it be the

?
t
h
w
o
ay round
This inversion o bviously took
er
place in the dream when G oethe attacked the young
man which is absurd whilst any one however
young can to day easily attack the great G oethe
I am prepared to maintain that no dream is in
spired by other than egoistic emotions The ego in
the dream does not i ndeed represent only my
friend b ut stands for myself also I identify my
self with him because the fate of his disc overy ap
pears to me typical of the acceptance of my own
If I were t o publish my own theory which gives
sexuality predominance in the aetiology of psycho
neurotic disorders ( see the allu smn t o the eighteen

year old patient

N at u re N at ure l ) the same
criticism would be leveled at me and it would even
now meet with the s ame contempt
h e n I follow out the dream thoughts closely I
ever nd only scorn and cont e mpt as corre lat e d wit h
t he dre am s absu rdit y
I t is well known that the
discovery of a cracked sheep s skul l on the Lido in
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

48

so ca l led ver

V enice

gave G oethe the hint for the

My friend plumes him
t e b r al th e ory of the skull
self on having as a student raised a hubbub for the
resignation of an aged professor who had done good
work ( including some in this very sub ect of com
t
r
a
i
v
e
r
e
anatomy
but
who
on
account
of
i
a
e
d
c
)
p
p
The
t u d e had become quite incapable of teach ing
agitation my friend inspired was so successful b e
cause in the German Universities an age limit is not
demand ed for academi c work A ge is no prot e c
t ion agains t folly
In the hos pital here I had for
years the honor t o serve under a chief who long
fossilized was for decades notoriou sly fe e ble
mind e d and was yet permitted to c ontinue in his
responsible office A trait after the mann er of the
nd in the Lido forces itself upon me here It was
t o this man that some yout hful colleagues l n the
hospital adapted the then popular slang of that d ay :

No G oethe has writt e n that
No S chiller com
posed that etc
We have not exhausted our v alhat ion of the
dream work In addition t o condensation dis
plac e ment and den ite arrangement of the psychi
cal matter we must ascribe t o it yet another activity
one which is indeed not shared by ever y dream
I shall not treat t his position of the dream work ca
hau st iv e ly ; I will o nl y point out that the readie st
.

THE DREAM ME CHANI SM

49

way to arrive at a conception of it is to take for

grant e d probably unfairly that it only su bse
,

u
n
t
l
e
y
q

inu e nce s t he dre am

cont e nt

which has

al

Its mode of action thus con

sists in so cobrdinat ing the parts of the dream that
these coalesce to a coherent whole to a dream com
position The dream gets a kind of fa c ade which
it is true do es not conceal the whole of its content
There is a sort of preliminary explanation to be
strengthened by interpolations and slight altera
tions Such elaboration of the dream c ontent must
not be t oo pronounced ; the misconception of the
dream thoughts to which it gives rise is merely su
l
i
and
our
rst
piece
of
work
i
analyzing
e
r

c
a
n
p
a dream is t o get rid of these early attempts at in
re ady

be e n buil t

up

t e rpre t at ion

The motives for this part of the dream work are

easily gauged This nal elaboration of the dream

r
is due t o a re ga d for int e lligibilit y a fact at once
b etraying the origin of an action which behaves t o
ward s the actual dr eam content j ust as our normal
psychical action behaves towards some pro ff ered
perception that is t o our liking The dream con
tent is thus s e cured under the pretense of certain
e x p e ctations is percep t ually classi e d by the sup
position of its intelligibility thereby risking its
falsication whilst in fact the most extraordinary
.

D R EAM P SYCHOLO GY

50

misconceptions arise if the dream can be correlated

with noth ing familiar Every one is aware that we
are unable to look at any series of unfamiliar signs
or to listen t o a discussion of unknown words with
out at once making perpetual changes through our
re ga rd for int e lligibilit y through our falling back
upon what is familiar
e
can call those dr eams prope rly made up
which are the result of an elaboration in every way
analogous to the psychical action of ou r waking life
In other dreams there is no such action ; not even an
attempt is made to bring about order and meaning

We regard the dream as quite mad because on

awakin g it is with this last named part of the dream
work the dream elaboration that we identify our
selves S o far however as our analysis is con
cerned the dr e am which resembles a medley of dis
connected fragments is of as much value as the one
with a smooth and beautifully polished surface In
the former case we are spared t o some extent the
trouble of breaking down the super elaboration of
the dream content
All the same it would be an error to see in the
dream fac ade nothing but the misunderstood and
somewhat arbit rary elaborat ion of the dream car
ried out at the instance of our psychical life
Wishes and phant a8 1e s are not infrequently em
.

I
D R E A lV

52

t he d re am

P SYCHOLO GY

A syll ogism in t he dream is

nothing other than the repetition of a syllogism in
the dream thoughts ; it seems ino ffensive if it has
been transferred t o the dream without alteration ; it
bec omes ab surd if in the dream work it has be en
transferred to ot her matter A calculation in the
dream content simp ly means that there was a cal
culation in the dream thoughts ; whils t this is always
correct the calculation in the dr eam can furnish the
silliest resul ts by the condensation of its factors and
the displacement of the same op eration s t o other
thin gs Even speeches which are found in the
dream content are n ot new compositions ; they prove
to be pi e ced together out of speeches which have
been made or heard or read ; the w ords are faith
fully copied but the occasion o f their utt erance is
quite overlooked and their meaning is most vio
l e nt l y changed
It is perhaps not superuous to support these
asserti ons by examples :
1 A se e mingly inolf e nsive we ll mad e dre am of
cont e nt

S he was going t o mark e t wit h he r cook

The bu t che r said t o he r
ca rrie d t he b as ke t

t
t
a
n
i
e
p

who

whe n
n
e
o
,
g

she

as k e d

and

marking :
es
o
g

him

me t hing :

or s o

wishe d t o giv e he r

T hat s v e ry good

That is

me t hing e lse

so

S he de cline s

t o t he gre e ngroce r, who wa nt s t o

se ll

a ll

re
and

her

THE DREAM ME C HANI SM

u
l
e
c
i
a
r
p

v e ge t a ble

black

color

S he

won t t ake it

which is b ou nd
says :

up in

53

bundle s

and

I don t know t hat ; I

The remark That is all go n e arose from the

treatment A few days before I said myself to the
patient that the earliest reminiscences of childhood
are a ll gone as such b u t are replaced by transfer
e nce s and dreams
Thus I am the butcher

The second r e mark I don t know t hat arose

in a very di fferent connection The day before she
had herself called out in re buke t o the cook ( w ho

B e hav e
moreover also appears in the dream ) :

e
e
h
u
r
l
r
r
l
t
f
I
do
n
t
n
w
that
is
I
o
s
o
k
o
t
a
;
y
p p
y

don t know this kind of behavior ; I won t hav e it

The more harmless portion of thi s speech was ar
rived at by a displacement of t he dre am content ; in
the dream thoughts only the other portion of t he
speech played a part becaus e t he dream work
changed an imaginary situation into utter irre cog
n iz ab ilit y and comple te ino ff e n
siveness ( while in
a certain sense I b ehave in an unseemly way t o the
lady ) The situation resulting in this phantasy is
however nothing but a new editio n of one that
actually took place
2 A dream apparen tly meaningless rel ate s t o

gures
S he want s t o pay some t hing; he r daugh
.

t e r t ak e s t hre e

orins

six t y
ve kre uze rs out

he r

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

54

she

bu t

u
r
e
s
;
p

only cos t

s ay s :

t we n t y one

l Vhat

kre u z e rs

are

u
o
y

doing

It

The dreamer was a stranger who had placed her

child at school in Vienna and w ho was able t o con
tinne under my treatment so long as her daughter
remained at Vienna The day before the dream
the directress of the school had re commended her
t o keep the child another year at school In this
case she would have been able to prolong her treat
ment by one year The gures in the dream b e
come important if it be remembered that time is
money One year equals 3 6 5 days or expressed
in kreuzers 3 65 kreuzers which is three orins
sixty v e kreuzers The twenty one kreuzers cor
respond with the three weeks which re mame d from
the day of the dream to the end of the school term
and thus t o the end of the treatment It was oh
v iou sly nancial considerations which had moved
the lady to refuse the p roposal of the directress
and which were answerable for the triviality of the
amount in the dream
3 A lady young but already ten years married
heard that a friend of hers Miss Elise L
of
about the same age had becom e engaged This
gave rise t o the following dream :
,

S he was sit t ing wit h he r hu sband in t he t he at e r;

t he one

sid e

t he

s t a l ls

was q uit e

mpt y

H er

THE DREAM ME CHANI SM

hus band t e lls he r E lise L

and

int e nde d
s e a t s,

ming bu t

co

t hre e

cou ld

or one

orin

t he y wou ld not t a ke

only

t
e
g

ance
me

opinion,

had

che ap

so

ze
t
k
r
u
r
e
s
,
f y

I n he r

he r

55

a nd

t he s e

t hat wou ld

v e ry mu ch
The origin of the gure s from the matter of the
dream thoughts and the changes the gures under
went are of interest Whence came the one or in
?
fty kreuzers From a triing occurrence of the
previous day Her sister in law had r e ceived 1 5 0
orins as a present from her husband and had
quickly got rid of it by buying some ornament
Note that 1 50 orins is one hundred times one orin
fty kreuzers For the t hre e concerned with the
tickets the only link is that Elise L
is exactly
three months younger than the dreamer The
scene in the dream is the repetition of a litt l e ad
venture for which she has often been teased by her

husband She w as once in a great hurry to get

tickets m time for a piece and when she came to the
theater one side of t he st alls was a lmost e mpt y
It was therefore quite unnecessary for her t o have
been in su ch a hurry Nor must we overlook the
absurdity of the dream that two persons should take
three tickets for the theater
Now for the dream ideas It was st upid t o have
married so early ; I ne e d not have been in so gre a t a
not

hav e ma t t e re d

DREA M P S Y CHOLO GY

56

s example Shows me that I

Elise L
should have been able t o get a husband later ; indeed
one a hu ndre d t ime s be t t e r if I had but waited I
could have bought t hre e such men with the money
dowr
(
y)

hurry

I II

WH Y

TH E DRE A M

D SGU I SE S TH E DESIRE S

IN

the foregoing e x position we have now le arnt

something of the dream work ; w e must regard it as
a q uite special psychical proces s which so f ar as
we are aware resembles nothing else To the
dream work has b een transferred that bewilderment
which its product the dream has aroused in us
In truth the dream work is o nl y the rst re cogni
tion of a group of psychical processes t o which mus t
be referred the origin of hyst e rical symptoms the
ideas of morb id dr e ad obsession and illusion
Condensation and especially displacem
ent are
n e ver failing feature s in these other processes
The regard for appearance remains on the other
hand peculiar to the dream work If this explana
tion b rings the dre am into line with the formation
of psychical disease it b ecomes the more important
to fathom the essential condit i ons of processes like
It will b e prob ab ly a surprise to
d ream b uilding
hear that neither the state of sleep nor illness is
among t he I ndispensab le conditions A whole
numb er of phenomena of the everyday life of
,

'

57

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

58

healthy persons forgetfulness slips in speaking

and in holding things together with a certain class
of mistakes are due to a p sychical mechanism an
a l ogou s t o th a t of the dream and the other mem
bers of this group
Displacement is the core of the problem and the
most strikin g of all the dream performances A
thorough investigation of the sub ect shows that the
essential con dition of displacement is p urely psy
We get
chol ogical ; it is in the nature of a motive
on the track by thrashing out experiences which one
cannot avoid in the analysis of dr eams I had t o
break off the relations of my dream thoughts in the
analysis of my dream on p 8 because I foun d some
experiences which I do not wish strangers t o know
and which I could not relate without serious damage
t o important considerations I added it would be
no use were I to select another instead of that par
t icul ar dream ; in every dream where the content is
obscure or intricate I should hit upon dr eam
thoughts which call for secrecy If however I con
tinne the analysis for myself without regard t o
those others for whom indeed so personal an event
as my dream cannot matter I arrive nally at ideas
which surprise me which I have not known t o be
mine which not only appear fore ign t o me but
which are u nple asant and which I would like to
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

60

tion I cannot get away from the thought t hat I re

r
h
b
u
e
t
s
i
m
t
i
d
s
rs
e
n
t
It
is
o
y
when
I
e
n
l
w
c
k
n
l
a
o
g
edge this feeling th at there is any sense in my wi sh
ing in the dream for an affection th at shoul d entail
no outlay And yet I can state on my honor that
I did not hesitate for a moment when it b e came ne c
essary t o expend that sum The regret the coun
ter current was unconscious to me Why it was
unconscious is quite another question which woul d
lead us far away from the answer which thou gh
within my knowledge belongs elsewhere
If I subj ect the dream of another person ins tead
of one of my own to analysis the result is the same ;
the motives for convincing others is however
changed
In the dr eam of a healthy person the
onl y way for me to enable him to accept this re
pressed idea is the coherence of the dream thoughts
H e is at liberty t o rej ect this expla nation But if
we are dealing with a person su ff ering from any

neurosis say from hysteria the recognition of

these repressed ideas is compul sory by reason of
their conn e ction with the symptoms of his illness
and of the improvement resulting from exch anging
the symptoms for the repressed ideas Take the
patient from whom I got the last dream about t he
three tickets for one orin fty kreuzers An alysis
shows that she does not think highly of her husband
,

D R EAM DI S G UI S E S DE S I R E S

61

that she regrets having married him that she would

be glad to change him for some one else It is true
that she maintains that she loves her husband that
her emotional life knows nothing about this depre
ciat ion ( a hundred times better ! )
but all her symp
toms lead to the same conclusion as this dream
hen her repressed memories had rewakened a
certain period when she w as conscious that she did
not love her husband he r symptoms disappeared
and therewith disappeared her resistance to the in
t e rpr e t at ion of the dream
This conception of repression once xe d together
with the distortion of the dream in relation to re
pressed psychical matter we are in a position to
give a general exposition of the principal results
which the analysis of dreams supplie s
e learnt
that the most intelligible and mean ingful dreams
are unrealized desire s ; the des i res they pictured as
realized are known to consciousness have b een held
over from the dayt ime and are of absorbing inter
est The ana lysis of obscure and intricate dreams
discloses something very similar ; the dream scen e
again pictures as realized some desire which regu
ceed s from the dream ideas b ut the pic
l arly pr o
ture is unrecognizable and is only cleared up in the
analysis The desire itself is either one repressed
foreign to consciousness or it is closely b ound up
,

D R E A LI

62

P SYCHOLO GY

with repressed ideas The formula for these

dreams may be thus stated : The y are conce ale d
re aliza t ions of re pre s se d de sire s
It is interesting
t o note that they are right who regard the dre am as
foretelling the fut ure Although the future which
the dream shows us is not that which will occur but
that which we would like t o occur Folk psychol
ogy proceeds here according t o its wont ; it believes
what it wishes to believe
Dreams can be divid e d into three classes accord
ing t o their relation towards the realization of de
Firstly c ome those which e xhibit a non re
s ire

e
r
r
ss
n
n
n
e
these
are
d
r
eams
of
e
d
c
o
c
a
l
s
i
e
e
e
d
d
o
;
p
the i nfantile type becoming ever rarer among
a dult s
S econdly dreams which express in v eile d
form some re pre sse d de sire ; these constitute by far
the larger number of our dreams and they require
analysis for their understanding Thirdly these
dr eams where repression exists but wit hou t or with
b ut slight concea lment
These dreams are inv aria
b ly accompanied by a feeling of dread which brings
t he dr eam to an end
This feeling of dread here
replaces dream displacement ; I regarded the dream
work as having prevented this in the dream of the
second class It is not very diffic ul t to prove that
what is now present as intens e dread in the dre am
.

D R EAM DI S GUI S E S DE SIRE S

63

was once desire and is now secondary to t he re pre s

sion
There are also denite dreams with a painful con
tent without the presence of any anxiety in the
dream These cannot be recko ned among dreams
of dread ; they have however always been used to
prove the unimportance and the psychical futility
of dreams An analysis of such an example will
show that it b elongs to our second class of dreams
a pe rfe ct ly conce ale d realization of repressed de
sires
Analysis will demonstrate at the same time
how excellently adapted is the work of displacement
t o the concealment of desires
A girl dreamt that she saw lying dead b efore her
the only surviving child of her sister amid the same
surroundings as a few years before she saw the rst
child lying dead She was n ot sensible of any pain
but naturally combatted the view that the scene rep
resented a desire of hers Nor was that view nec
essary Years ago it w as at the funeral of the child
that she had last seen and spoken to the man she
loved Were the second child t o die she would be
sure t o meet this man again in her sister s house
She is longing t o meet him b ut struggles against
this feel ing The day of the dream she had taken a
ticket for a lecture which announced the p resence
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

64

of the man she always loved The dream is simply

a dream of impatience common t o those which hap
pen before a j ourney theater or simply anticipated
pleasures The longing is concealed by the shifting
of t he scene t o the occasion when any j oyous feeling
were out of place and yet where it did once exist
Note further that the emotional behavior in the
dream is adapted not to the displaced but to the
real but suppressed dr eam ideas The scene an
t icipat e s the long hoped for meeting ; there is here
no call for painful emotions
There has hitherto been no occasion for philoso
h
e
r
s
to
bestir
themselves
with
a
psychology
of
e
r
p
pression We must be allowed to construct some
clear conception as to the origin of dreams as the
rst steps in this unknown t e rritory
The scheme
which we have formul ated not only from a study of
dreams 1 8 it is true already somewhat complicated
but we cannot nd any simpler one that will sui ce
We hold that our psychical apparatus contains two
procedures for the const ruction of thoughts The
second one has the advantage that its products n d
an open path t o c
whilst the activity
of the rst proce
its elf and can
only arrive at consc1ou
the second one
At the borderland of these two procedures where
the rst passes over into the second a censorship
.

DREAM DI S G UI S E S D E SIRE S

65

is established which only passes what pleases it

keeping back everything else That which is re

n
i
e
c
t
e
e
b
the
censorship
is
according
t
o
our
d
d
j
y
tion in a state of repression Under certain con
dit ions one of which is the sleeping state the bal
ance of power between the two procedures is so
changed that what is repressed can no longer be
kept b ack In the sleeping state this may possibly
occur through the negligence of the censor ; what
has been hitherto repressed will now succeed in
n ding its way to consciousness But as the cen
sor ship is never ab sent but merely off guard ce r
t ain alterations must be conceded so as to placate
it It is a compromise which becomes conscious in

this case a c ompromise between what o ne pro

ce du re has in view and the deman ds of the other

R e pre ssion laai t y of t he ce nsor compromise thi s

is the foundation for the or i g i n of many another
c
sy
hological
p
ocess
j
ust
as
it
is
for
the
dream
r
p
In such compromises we can ob serve t he processes
of condensation of displacement the acceptance of
supercial associations which we have found in the
dream work
I t is not for us to deny the d e monl c element
which has played a part in constru cting our e x
planation of dream w ork The impression left is
that the formation of obscure dr eams proceeds as
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

66

if a person had something to say which must be dis

agreeable for another person upon whom he is de
pendent to hear It is by the use of this image
that we gure to ourselves the conception of the
dre am dist ort ion and of the censorship and ven
t u r e d to cry st al liz e our impression in a rather crude
but at least denite psychological theory What
ever explanation the future may o ffer of these rst
and second procedures we shall expect a conrma
tion of our correlate that the second procedure com
mands the entrance to cons ciousness and can ex
e lude the rst from consciousness
Once the sleeping state overcome the censorship
resumes complete sway and is now able to revoke
that which was granted in a moment of weakness
That the forge t t ing of dreams explains this in part
at least we are convinced by our experience con
rmed again and again During the relation of a
dream or during analysis of one it not infrequently
happens that some fragment of the dream is sud
This fragment so forgotten in
d e nl y forgotten
variably contains the best and readiest approach to
Probably that is
an understanding of the dream
why it sinks into oblivion
into a renewed sup
pression
Viewing the dream content as the representation
of a realized desire and referr ing its vagueness to
.

DREAM P SYCHOLOGY

68

his desire is believed during sleep it r e moves the de

sire and makes sleep possible It cannot be denied
t h at this belief accords with the dream image b e
cause it is arrayed in the psychical appearance of
probability ; the child is without the capacity which
it will acquire later to distinguish hallucinations or
phantasies from reality
The adult has learnt this differentiation ; he has
also learnt the futility of desire and by continuous
practice manages to postpone his aspirations
until they can be granted in some roundabout
method by a change in the external world For
this reason it is rare for him to have his wishes
realized during sleep in the short psychical way
It is even possible that this never happens and that
everything which appears t o us like a child s dream
demands a much more elaborate expla nation

Thus it is that for adults for every sane person

without exception a di fferentiation of the psy

chic al matter has been fashioned which the child
knew not A psychical procedure has been reached
which informed by the experience of life exercise s
with j ealous power a dominating and restraini ng
inuence upon psychical emotions ; by its relation
to consciousness and by its spontaneous mobility
it is endowed with the greatest m eans of
power A portion of the infantile emo
,

DREAM DI S G UI S E S DE S IRE S

69

been withheld from this procedure as useless to life

and all the thoughts which ow from these are
found in the state of repression
Whilst the procedure in which w e recognize our
normal ego reposes upon the desire for sleep it ap
pears compell ed by the psycho physiological con
dit ions of sleep to abandon some of t he energy with
which it was wont during the day to keep down
what was repressed This neglect is really harm
less ; however much the emotions of the child s spirit
may b e stirred they nd the approach to conscious
ness rendered difcult and that to movement
b lock e d in consequence of the state of sleep
The
danger of their disturbing sleep must however be
avoided Moreover we must a dm it that even in
deep sleep some amount of free attention is exerted
as a protection against sense stimuli which might
perchance m ake an awakening seem wiser t han the
continuance of sleep Otherwise w e could not e X
plain the fact of our b eing a lways awakened by
stimuli of certain quality As the old physiologist
Burdach pointed out the mother is awakened by
the whimpering of her child the miller b y the cessa
tion of his mill most people by gently calling out
their names This attention thus on the alert
makes use of the internal stimuli arising from re
presse d des i res and fuses them into the dream

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

70

which as a compromise satises both procedures at

the same time The dream creates a form of psy
chical release for the Wi sh which is either suppressed
or formed by the aid of repression inasmuch as it
presents it as realized The other procedure is also
satised since the continuance of the sleep is as
sured Our ego here gladly behaves like a child ;
it makes the dream pictures believable saying as it

were ! uite right but let me sleep

The con
tempt which once awakened we bear the dr eam
and which rests upon the absurdity and apparent
illogicality of the dream is prob ably nothing but
the reasoning of our sleeping ego on the feelings
about what was repressed ; with greater right it
should rest upon the incompetency of this dis
turber of our sleep In sleep we are now and then
aware of this contempt ; the dream c onte nt trans
ce n ds the censorship rather too much
we think

It s onl y a dream and sleep on

It is no ob eetion to this view if there are b order
lines for t he dream where its function to preserve
sleep from interruption can no longer be main

t aine d
as in the dreams of impendin g dread It

is here changed for another function to suspend

the sleep at the proper time It acts like a con
u
night
watchman who rst d oes his duty
scie nt io s
by quell ing disturbances so as not to waken the
.

D REAM DI S G U I S E S D E SIRE S

71

citizen but equally does his duty quite properly

when he awakens the street should the causes of
the troub le seem to him serious and himself un
a ble to cope with them alone
This function of dreams becomes especially well
marked when there arises some incentive for the
sense perception That the senses aroused during
sleep inuence the dream is well known and can
be ex perimentally veried ; it is one of t he certain
but much overestimated results of the medical in
v e st igat ion of dreams
Hitherto there has been
an insoluble riddle connected with this discovery
The stimulus to the sense by which the investigator
a ff ects the sleeper is not properly recognized in the
dream but is intermingled with a number of in
de nite interpretations whose determination ap
pears left to psychical free will There is of
course no such psychical free will To an external
sense stimulus the sleeper can react in many ways
Either he awakens or he suc ceeds in sleeping on
In the latter case he can make use of the dream to
dismiss the external stimulus and this aga i n l n
For instance he can stay
m ore ways than one
the stimulus by dreaming of a scene which is ab so
This was the means used
lu t e ly intolerable to him
by one who w as troubled by a painful perineal ab
He dreamt that he w as on horseb ack and
sce ss
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

72

'

made use of the poultice which w as intended to

alleviate his pain as a saddle and thus got away
from the cause of the trouble Or as is more fre
quently the case the external stimulus undergoes
a new rendering which leads him to connect it
with a repressed desire seeking its realiz ation and
robs him of its reality and is treated as if it were a
part of the psychical matter Thus some one
dreamt that he had written a comedy which em
bodied a denite mot if; it was being performed ;
the rst act was over amid enthusiastic applause ;
there was great clapping A t this moment the
dreamer must have succeeded in prolonging his
sleep despite the disturbance for when he woke he
no longer heard the noi se ; he concluded rightly that
some one must have been beating a carpet or bed
The dreams which come with a loud noise j ust
before waking have all attempted to cover the stim
ulus to waking by some other explanation and thus
to prolong the sleep for a little while
Whosoever has rmly accepted this ce nsorship as
the chief motive for the distortion of dreams will
not be sur pris e d to learn as the result of dream in
t e rpre t at ion that most of t he dreams of adults are
traced by analysis to erotic desires This assertion
is not drawn from dreams obviously of a sexual
nature which are kn own to all dreamers from their
,

D REAM DI S G UI SE S DE S I R E S

73

experience and are the only ones usually de

scribed as sexual dreams

These dreams are ever
su fciently mysterious by reason of the choice of
persons who are made the obj ects of sex the re
moval of all the b arriers which cry halt to t he
dreamer s se x ual needs in his waking st at e t he
many strange reminders as to details of what are
called perversions But analysis discovers that in
many other dreams in whose mamfe st content noth
ing erotic can be found the work of interpretation
shows them up as in reality realization of sex ual
desires ; whilst on the other hand that much of the
thought making when awake the thoughts save d
us as surplus from the day only reaches presenta
tion in dreams with the help of repressed erotic de
sires
Towards the ex planation of this statement which
is no theoretical postulate it must b e rememb ered
that no other class of instincts has required so vast
a suppression at the b ehest of civilization as the
sexual whilst their mastery b y the highest psy ch
ical processes are in most persons so onest of all
relinquished Since we have learnt to understand
infant ile se wuality often so vague in its expression
so invariably overlooked and misunderstood we are
usti
ed
in
saying
that
early
every
civilized
person

n
J
has retained at some point or other the infantile
own

DREAM P S YCHOLO GY

74

type of sex life ; thus we unde rstand that repressed

infantile sex desires furnish the most frequent and
most
powerful
impulses
for
the
formation
of
\
dreams
If the dream which is the expression of s ome
erotic desire succeeds in making its manifest con
tent appear innocently asexual it is onl y possible
in one way The matter of these sexual presenta
tions cann ot be exhibited as such but must be re
placed by allusions suggestions and similar indi
rect means ; di ff ering from other cases of indirect
presentation those used in dreams must be deprived
of direct understa nd ing The means of presenta
tion which answer these requirements are commonl y

term e d symbols
A special interest has been di
rected towards these since it has been observed that
the dreamers of the same language use the like sym

b ols inde e d that in certain cases community of

symb ol is greater than community of speech
Since the dreamers do not themselves k now the
meaning of the symbols they use it remains a puz
zle whence arises their relationship with what they
replace and denote The fact itself is undoubted
and becomes of importance for the technique of the

reud Three C on tributi on s t o Sexual The ory tran l ated b y

l
t
i
D
Pub
ishi ng
n
n
d
M
l
N
l
A A Brill ( J
f
C o mpan y N w Y o rk )
1

ou r na

e r v ou s

s e a se

DREAM P S Y CHOLO GY

76

there are others of the narrowest individual signi

cance which an individual has built up out of his
own material In the rst class those can be differ
e nt iat e d whose claim can be at once re cognized b y
the replacement of sexual things in comm on speech
those
for
instance
arising
from
agriculture
as
(
rep r oduction seed ) from others whose sexual refer
e n ce s appear to reac h back to the earliest times
and to the obscurest depths of our image buildin g
The power of building symbols in both these special
forms of symbols has not died out Recently dis
covered things like the airship are at once brought
into universal use as sex symbols
It would be quite an error to suppose that a pro

founder knowledge of dream symbolism ( the Lan

guage of Dreams ) woul d make us independent of
questioning the dr ea mer regarding his impressions
about the dream a n d would give us b ack the whole
technique of ancient dream interpreters Apart
from in dividual symbols and the variations in the
use of what is general one never knows whether
an el e ment in the dr eam is to be understood sym
b olically or in its proper meaning ; the whole con
tent of the dream is certainly not to be interpreted
symbolically The knowledge of dream symbols
will on ly help us in understanding portions of the
dream content and does not render the use of the
.

7 7!

DREAM DI S G UI S E S DE S IRE S

technic al rules previously given at all superuous

But it must b e of the greatest se rV1ce l n Interpret
ing a dream j ust when the impressions of the
dreamer are withheld or are insufcient
Dream symb o lism proves also indis pensable for

underst anding the so called typical dreams and

the dreams that repeat themselves

Dream sym
holism leads us far b eyond the dream ; it does not
b elong o nl y to d reams but is likewise dominant in
legend myth and saga in wit and in folklore It
ursue the inner meaning of the
compels us to p
dream in these productions But w e must ao
knowledge that symb olism is not a r esult of the
dream work but is a peculiarity prob ably of our
unconscious thinking which furnishes to the d re am
work the matter for con densation displa ce ment
and dr amati zation
.

REAM

PE RH A PS we shall

A N A LY S S

begin to suspect that dream

interpretation is capable of givin g us hints ab out
the struct ure o f our psychic apparatus which we
have thus far expected in va m from philosophy
We shall not however follow this track bu t re
turn to our original problem as soon as we have
l
d
c e ared up the subj ect of ream disgure me nt
The question has arisen how dreams with disagree
able content can be analyzed as t he ful llment of
wishes We see now that this is possible in case
dream disgure me nt has taken place in case the
disagreeable content serve s only as a d isguise for
what is wished K eeping l n mind our assumpti ons
in regard to the two psychic instances we may now
proceed to say : disagreeable dr eams asa matter of
fact contain somethin g which is disagreeable to the
second instance but which at the same time full l s
They are wish dreams
a wish of the r st instan ce
in the sense that every dream origina tes in the rst
instance while the second ins tance ac ts towar ds the
dream o nl y in repelling not in a creative ma nner
n ow

'

78

D REAM ANA LYS I S

79

If we limit ourselves to a consideration of what t he

second instance contributes to the dream we can
never und erst and the dream If we do so all the
riddles which the authors have found in the dream
remain unsolved
That the dream actually has a secret meaning
which turns out to be the fulllment of a Wish must
b e proved a fresh for every case by means of an
analysis I therefore select several dreams which
have painful contents and a ttempt an analysis of
them They are partly dreams of hysterical sub
e
c
t
s
which
re
uire
long
preliminary
statements
j
q
and now and then also an examination of the
psychic processes which occur in hysteria I can
n ot howe ver avoid this added di fculty in the e x
ositio
n
p
Wh e n I give a psychoneurotic p atient analytical
treatment dr e ams are always as I have said the
subj ect of our discussion It must therefore give
him all t he psychological explanati ons through
whose aid I myself have come to an understanding
of his symptoms and here I undergo an unsparing
critici sm which 1 s perhaps not less keen than that I
must expect from my col leagues Contradiction
of the thesis that all dreams are the fulllme nt s of
wishes is r ais ed b y my patients with perfect regu
l arit y
H ere are several e x amples of the dream
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

80

material which is o ffered me to refute this position

You always tell me that the dr eam is a wish ful

lled begins a clever lady patient

Now I shall
tell you a dream in which the content is quite the
opposite in which a wish of mine is not fullled
?
H ow do you reconcile that with your theory
The
d ream is as follows
I want t o give a s uppe r bu t hav ing not hing a t
,

ha nd

me smoke d

e xce pt s o

marke t ing b u t I
,

whe n

noon,

a ll

t e le p hone t o

ord e r

re

t he

me

so

s al

mon I t hink of going

,

me mbe r t hat it is S u nday aft e r

shop s ar e cl os e d

ca t e re rs,

T hus I mus t

ne wt t ry t o

bu t t he t e le phone is

my wish

re sign

ou t

t o giv e

I answer of cou rse that onl y the analysis can de

cide the meaning of this dr eam although I admit
that at rst sight it seems sens ible and c oherent
and looks like the opposite of a wish ful l lme nt

?
But what occurrence has given rise to this dream

I ask
You know that the stimulus for a dre am
always lies among the experiences of the preceding

day

A na lysis
The husband of the patient an u p
right and conscientious wholesale butcher had told
her the day before that he is growing too fat and
that he must therefore begin treatment f or obesity
H e w as going to get up early take ex ercise keep
,

DREA M ANALYS I S

81

to a strict diet and above all accept no more invita

tions to suppers She proceeds laughingly to r e
late how her husb and at an inn ta ble had made the
acquaintance of an artist who insisted upon p a int
ing his portrait b ecause he the painter had never
found such an expressive head But her husb and
had answered in his rough way that he was very
thankful for the honor but that he was quite con
Vince d that a porti on of the backside of a pretty
young girl woul d please the artist better than his

whole face
She said that she wa s at the time very
much in lov e with her husband and teased him a
good deal She had also asked him not to send
?
her any caviare What does that mean
As a matter of fact she had w anted for a long
time to eat a caviare sandwich every forenoon but
had grudged herself the expense Of course she
would at once get the caviare from her husband as
soon as she asked him for it But she had begged
him on the contrary not t o s e nd her the caviare
in order that she might tease him about it longer
This explanation seems far fetched to me U n
admitted motives are in the ha bit of hiding behind
such unsatisfactory explanati ons We are re
minded of subj ects hypnotized by Bernheim who

A nd i f h h
no backside ho w
G o ethe
T si t fo r the pai n te r
n t h no b l ema n sit
,

ca

as

DREAM P SYCHOLOG Y

82

arried out a posthypnotic order and who upon

being asked for their motives instead of ans wer

ing :
I do not know why I did t hat had t o in
ven t a reason that was obviously inadequate
S omething similar is probably the case wit h the
caviare of my patient I se e that she is compell ed
to cre ate an unfulll ed wish in life Her dream
also shows the reproduction of the Wish as aecom
h
l
i
s
e
d
But
why
does
she
need
an
unfullled
p
?
wish
The ideas so far produced are insufcient for the
interpretation of the dream I beg for more
After a short pause which corresponds to the over
coming of a resistan ce she reports further that the
day before she had made a visit t o a friend of
whom she is really j e alous b e cause her husband is
always praising this woman so much Fortunately
this friend is very le an and thin and her husb and
likes well rounded gures Now of what did this
?
lean friend speak Naturally of her wish to b e
come somewhat stouter She also asked my pa

tient :
When are you going to invite us again ?

Y ou always have such a good table

Now the meaning of the dr eam is clear I may

say to the patient

It is j ust as though you had
thought at the time of the request : Of cour se
I ll invite you so you can eat yourself fat a t my
c

'

DREA M P SYCHOLO GY

84

friend too had expressed a wish namely to get

fatter and it would not surprise us if our lady had
dreamt that the wish of the friend was not being
fullled For it is her own wish that a wi sh of her

friend s for increase in weight should not be ful

l led
Instead of this however she dreams that
one of her own wishes is not full led The dream
becomes capable of a new interpretation if in the
dream she does not int e nd herself but her friend
if she has put herself in the pl ace of her friend
or as we may say has identied herself with her
friend
I think she has actually done this and as a sign
of this identication she has created an unful l led
wish in reality But what is the meaning of this
?
hysterical identication To clear this up a
thorough exposition is necessary Identication is
a highly important factor in the mechanism of hys
t e rical sympt oms ; by this means patients are e u
abled in their symptoms to represent not merely
their own experiences but the experiences of a
great number of other persons and can su e r as it
were for a whole mass of people and ll all the
parts of a drama by means of their own person ali
ties alone I t will here be obj ected that this is
well known hysterical imitation the ability of hys
t e ric subj ects to c opy all the symptoms which im
,

DRE AM ANALY S I S

85

press them when they occur in others as though

their pity were stimulated to the point of repro
duction But this only in dicates the way in which
the psychic process is discharged in hysterical
t at ion ; the w ay in which a psychic act proceeds and
the act itself are two di fferent t hings The latter
is slightly more complicated than on e is apt to im
agine the imitation of hysterical subj ects to be : it
corresponds to an unconscious conclud ed process as
an example will show The physician w ho has a
female patient with a particular kind of twitching
lodged in the company of other patientsin the same
room of the hospital is n ot surprised when some
morning he learns that this peculiar hysterical at
tack has found imitations He simply says to him
self : The others have seen her and have done like
wise : t hat is psychic infection Yes but psychic
infection proceeds in somewh at the following man
n e r:
As a rule patients kn ow more about one
another than the physician knows about each of
them and they are concerned about each other when
the visit of the doctor is over S ome of them have
an att ack to day : soon it is know n among the rest
that a letter from home a return of lovesickness or
the like is the cause of it Their sympathy is
aroused and the fo llowing syllogism which does

not reach cons ciousne ss is completed in them :

If
,

DREA M P S Y C HOLO G Y ;

86

it is possible to have this kind of an attack from

such causes I too may have this kind of an attack
for I have the same reasons
If this were a cycle
capable of bec oming conscious it would perhaps
express itself in fe ar of getting the sam e att ack ;
but it takes place in anothe r psychic sphere and
therefore ends in the realization of the dreaded
Es m t om
Identication
i
s
the
efore
not
a
simple
r
y p
imitation but a sympathy based upon the same

etiological claim ; it expresses an as though and

refers to some comm on quality which has remained
in the unconscious
Identica tion is most often used in hysteria to
express sexual community An hysterical woman

identies herself most readily although not exclu

with persons with whom she has had sexual

siv e ly
relations or who have sexual intercourse with the
same persons a s herself Language takes such a

conception into conside ration : tw o lovers are one

In the hysterical phantasy as well as in the dream
it is sufc ient for the id e nti cation if one thinks of
sexual relations whether or not they become real
The pat ient then only follows the ru les of the hys
t e rical thought pro cesses when she gives e x pression
to her j ealousy of her friend ( which more over she
herself admits to be unj ustied in that she puts
herself in her place and identies hers e lf with her
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

88

dream reversed this wished for solution ; was not

this in the at t e st contradiction to my theory of

?
wish fu ll lme nt in the dream Certainly it was
only necessary to draw the inferences from this
dream in order to get at its interpretation A c
cording to this dream I w as in the wrong I t was
,

t hus he r wish t ha t I
t his wish t he dre am

shou ld

b e in t he wr ong

fu l lle d

a nd

But
the wish that I should be in the wrong which was
fullled in the theme of the country home referred
to a more serious matter At that time I had made
up my mind from the material furnished by her
analysis that something of signicance for her ill
ness must have occurred at a certain t ime in her life
She had denied it because it was not present in her
memory We soon c ame to see that I was in the
right Her wish that I should be in the wrong
which is transformed into the dream thus corre
spond e d to the j ustiable wish that those things
which at the time had only been suspected had never
occurred at all
Without an an alysis and merely by means of an
assumption I took the liberty of interpretin g a
litt le occurrence in the case of a friend who had
been my colleague through the eight classes of the
Gymnasium He once heard a lecture of mine de
s howe d

he r

as

DREAM ANA LY S I S

39

livered to a small assemblage on the novel subj ect

of the dream as the fulllment of a wish He went

home dreamt t hat he had lost all his suit s he was

a lawyer and then complained to me about it I

took refuge in the evasion :

One can t w in all

one s suits b ut I thought to myself :

If for eight
years I sat as Primus on the rst b ench while he
moved around somewhere in the middle of the class
may he not naturally have had a wish from his boy
hood days that I too might for once completely

?
disgrace myself
In the same way another dream of a more gloomy
chara ct er w as o ffered me by a fe male patient as a
contradiction to my theory of the wish dream The

patient a young girl began as follows :

You r e
member that my sister has now only one boy
Charles : she lost the elder one Otto while I was
sti ll at her house Otto was my favorite ; it was I
I like the other little
who really b rought him up
fellow too but of course not nearly as much as the
dead one Now I dreamt last night that I saw
,

C ha rle s lying d e ad be fore me

lit t le

n
h
s
n
d
i
h
a
s
i

co

a bou t , and,

O t t o s de a t h

which

H e was lying in his

folde d : t he re we re

in short it was
,

us t

shocke d

like t he t ime

me

Now tell me wh at doe s this mean

,

candle s a l l

so

l
t
t
e
l
i
f

n
d
l
u
r
o
o
y
p

Y ou

know me :

DREAM

90

SYCHO LO GY

am I really bad enough to wish my sister to lose t he

?
only child she has left Or does the dream mean
that I wish Charles to b e dead rather than Otto

?
whom I like so much better
I assured her that t his in terpretation was impos
sible After some reection I was able to give her
the interpretation of the dream which I sub se
quently made her conrm
Having become an orphan at an early age the
girl had been brought up in the house of a mu ch
older sister and had met among the friends a nd
visitors who came to the house a man who made a
lasting impression upon her heart I t looked forl a
time as though these barely expressed relations
were to end in marriage b ut this happy culmination
was frustrated by the sister whose motives have
never found a complete explanation After the
break the man w ho was loved by our patient
avoided the house : she herself became independent
some time after little Ott o s death to whom her
a ffection had now turned But she did not succeed
in freeing herself from the inclination for her sister s
friend in which she had become involved Her
pride commanded her to avoid him ; but it was im
possible for her to transfer her love t o the other
suitors who presented themselves l n order When
e ver the man whom she loved who was a memb er
,

DREAM

92

P SYCHOLO G Y

pated the meeting which is to take place to d ay by

several hours
In order to disguise her wish she had obviously
selected a situation in which wishes of that sort are

commonly suppressed a situation which is so lled

with sorrow that love is not thought of And yet
it is very easily probable that even in the actu al
situation at the bier of the second more dearly loved
boy which the dream copied faithfully she had not
been able to suppress her feelings of a ffection for
the visitor whom she had missed for so long a time
A diff erent explanation was found in t he case of
a similar dream of another female patient who was
distinguished in her earlier years by her quick wit
and her cheerful demeanors and who still showed
these qu alities at least in the notion which occurred
to her in the course of treatment In connection
with a longer dream it seemed to this lady that she
saw her f t e e n year old daughter lying dead b e
fore her in a box She was strongly inclined to
conv e rt t his dream image into an ob eetion to the
theory of wish fulllme nt but herself suspected
that the detail of the b ox must lead to a di ff erent
conception of the dream
In the course of t he
analysis it occurred to her that on the evening b e

o methin g like the smoked sal m on i n

s upper

t he

dream o f

t he

d fe rr d
e

DREA M ANALY S I S

98

fore the conversation of the company had turned

upon the English word box and upon the numer

ous translations of it into G erman such as box
theater box chest box on the ear & c From other
components of the same dream it is now possible
to add that the lad y had gu essed t he relationship

between the English word box and the G erman

B iichse and had then been haunted by the memory

that B it chs e ( as well as box ) is used in vulgar

speech to designate the female genital organ It
was therefore po ssible making a certain allowance
for her notions on the subj ect of topographical an
atomy to assume that the child in the box signied
a child in the womb of the mother At this stage
of the expl a
nation she no longer denied that the
picture of the dream really corresponded to one of
her wishes Like so many other young women
she was by n o means happy when she became preg
nant and adm itted to me more than once the wish
that her child might die befor e its birth ; in a t of
anger following a violent scene with her husb and
she had even st r uck her abdomen with her sts i n
order to hit the child within The dead child was
therefore really the fulllment of a wish but a
wish which had been put aside for fteen years and
it is not surprising that the fulllment of the wish
was no longer rec ognized after so long an interval
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

94

For there had been many changes meanwhil e

The group of dreams to which the two last men
t ion e d belong having as content the death of b e
loved relatives will be considered again under the

h e ad of Typical Dreams
I shall there be able
to show by new examples that in spite of their u m
desirab le content all these dreams must b e inter
eted
r
u
as
wish
l
l
t
For
the
following
f
n
l
m
e
s
p
d ream which again was told me in order to deter
me from a hasty generalization of the theory of
wishin g in dreams I am indebted not to a patient

I
but to an intelligent j urist of my acquaintance

dre am my informant tells me t hat I am walking

.

in front
a clos e d

w
s
i
h
m
h
u
t
l
a
d
e
o
a
f y
y

wagon is wait ing

on

n
t
l
e
e
g

H e re

my arm

man

st e ps up

to

me giv e s his aut horit y a s an age nt of t he police

I only ask
and de mands t ha t I shou ld fol low him
,

t ime in which t o

my

r
s
a
i
f
f

Can
you
f
possibly suppose this is a wish of mine to be ar

?
rested
Of course not I must admit
Do
you happen to know upon what charge you were

?
arrested
Yes ; I believe for infanticide
In
?
But you know that onl y a mother can
f ant icide

?
commit this crime upon her newly born child

A nd under what cir cumstances

That is true
or

arrange

I t o fte n happen s that d ream is tol d in co mpl etely nd that

r c oll ecti on o f t h omitted p o rtion appear only in t h co urs o f t h
1

DREAM PS YCHOLO GY

96

as no impregnation takes place while every de

l inq u e ncy after the ovum and the semen meet and
?
o
e
a f tus is formed is punished as a crime In con
ne ct ion with this we also recalled the mediae val con
t rov e r sy a b out the moment of time at which the soul
is really lodged in the foe tus since t he concept of
murder becomes admissible only from that point
on Doubtless you also know the gruesome poem
by Lenau which puts infanticide and the preven

tion of children on the same plane

Strangely
enough I had happened to think of Lenau during

the afternoon
Another echo of your dream
And now I shall demonstrate to you another sub
ordinate wish fulllme nt in your dream You
walk in front of your house with the lady on your
arm So you take her home instead of spending
the night at her house as you do in actuality The
fact that the w ish fu lllme nt which is the essence
of the dream disguises itself in such an unpleasant
form has perhaps more than one reason From
my essay on the etiology of anxiety neuroses you
will see that I note interrupted coitus as one of the
factors which cause the development of neur otic
fear It would be consistent with this that if after
repeated cohabitation of the kind mentioned you
should be left in an uncomfortable mood which now
becomes an element in the composition of your
,

DREA M ANALY S I S

97

dream You also make use of this unpleasant st a e

of mind to conceal the wish fulllme nt Furth e r
more the mention of infanticide has not yet been
explained Why does this crime which is pe e i iar

?
to females occur to you
I sh all confess to you
that I w as involved in such an a ffair years ago
Through my fault a girl tried to protect herself
from the consequences of a liaison with me by se cur
ing an ab ortion I had nothing to do with carry
ing out the plan but I was naturally for a long

time worried lest t he a ff air might be discovered

I understand ; this recollection furnished a secon d

reas on why the supposition that you had done your

trick badly must have been painful to you

A young physician who had heard this dream of
my colleague when it was told must have felt im
plicated by it for he hastened to imitate it in a
d ream of his own applying its mode of thinking to
another subj ect The day before he had handed
in a declaration of his income which was perfectly
honest b ecause he had little to declare He d re amt
that an acq uaintance of his came from a meeting
of the tax commission and informed him that all
the other declarations of income had passe d u ncon
tested but that his ow n had awakened general sus
and
that
he
would
be
punished
with
a
heavy
i
n
i
c
o
p
ne The dream is a poorly concealed ful llment

DREAM PS YCHOLO GY

98

of the wish to be known as a physician with a large

income
It likewise recalls the story of the young
girl who was advised against accepting her suitor
because he was a man of quick t e mper who would
surely treat her to blows after they were mar
ried

The answer of t he girl was :

I wish he would

strike me !
Her wish to be married is so strong
that she takes into t he bargain the discomfort which
is said to be connected with matrimony and which
is predicted for her and even ral se s it to a wish
If I group the very frequently occur ring dreams
of this sort which seem atly to contradict my
theory in that they contain the denial of a wish or
s ome occurrence decidedly unwished for under the

head of counter wish dreams I observe that they

may all be referred to two principles of which one
has not yet been mentioned although it p lays a
large part in the dreams of human beings One of
the motives inspiring these dreams is the wish that
I should appear in the wrong These dreams regu
l arly occ ur in t he course of my treatment if the pa
tient shows a resistance again st me and I can count
with a large degree of certainty upon causing such
a dr eam after I h ave once explained to the patient
my theory that the dream is a wish fu lllme nt
I
ou nter wishd reams ha e bee n repeatedl y rep ort ed t o
S imil ar
me withi n the l st few years b y my pup il who thus reacted t o thei r
wish the or y o f the dream
rst e n c o un ter wit h the
.

'

'

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 00

clear that there is danger of overlooking it as for

some time happened in my own case In the sexual
make up of many people there is a masochistic com
ponent which has arise n through the conversion of
the aggressive sa distic component int o its opposite

Such people are called ideal masochists if they

seek pleasure not in the bodily pain which may be
inicted upon them but in humiliation and in
chastisement of the soul It is obvious that such
persons can have co unter wish dr eams and disagree
able dreams which however for themare nothing
but wish fulll me nt a ff ording sat isfaction for their
masochistic inclinations Here is such a dream
A young man who has in earlier years tormented
his elder brother towards whom he was homose x u
ally inclined but who had undergone a complete
change of character has the following dream which

consists of three p arts : ( 1 ) H e is insult e d by

,

his brot he r

2
( )

ot he r

wit h

b rot he r has

T wo

adult s

homose a u al
'

sold

man

t he

are

care ssing

e ach

3
( )

H is

int e nt ions

e nt e rpri se

whose manage me nt

v for his own fu t ure He

awakens from the last m e ntio ned dream with the
most unpleasant feelings and yet it is a masochis
tic wish dream which might be trans lated : It
would serve me quite right if my b rother were to
make that sale against my interest as a punishment
t he you ng

re se r e d

DREAM ANALY S I S

1 01

for all the t orments which he has su ffere d at my

hands
I hope that the ab ove discussion and e xample s

will su fce until further ob eetion can be raised

to make it seem credible that even dreams with a
i
E
painful content are to be analyzed as the fu lll
ments of wishes Nor will it seem a matter of
chance that in the course of interpretation one al
ways happens upon su bj ects of which one does not
like to speak or think The disagreeable sensation
which such dreams arouse is siln ply identical with

the antipathy which e nde av ors u su ally with suc

\

cess to restrain us from the treatment or discus

sion of such subj ects and which mu st b e overcome
b y all of us if in spite of its unpleasantness we
nd it necessary to take the matter in hand But
this disagreeable sensation which occurs al so in
dreams does n ot preclude the existence of a wish ;
every one has wishes which he would not like to tell
to others w hich he does not want to admit even to
himself We are on other ground s j ustied in
connecting the disagreeable character of all these
dreams with the fact of dream dis gurement and
in concluding that these d reams are distorted and
that the wish ful llme nt in them is disguised until
recognition is impossible for no other reason than
that a repugnance a will to suppress e x ists in rela
.

D R E A LM P SYCHOLO GY

1 02

tion to the subj e ct matter of the dream or in rela

tion to the wish which the dream creates Dream

disgur ement then turns out in reality to be an act
o f the censor
We shall take into consideration
everything which the analysis of d isagreeable
dreams has brought to light if we reword our
formula as follows : The dre a m is t he ( disguise d )
ful llme n t of a ( suppre sse d re pre sse d ) wish
Now there still remain as a particular species of
dreams with painful content dreams of anx iety
the inclusion of which under dreams of wishing will
nd least acceptance with the uninitiated But I
can settle the problem of anxiety dreams in very
short order ; for wha t they may reveal is not a ne w
aspect of the dr eam problem ; it is a question in
their case of understanding neurotic anx ie t y in gen
eral The fear which we experience in the dream
is only seemingly explained by the dream content
If we sub ect the content of the dream to analysis
we become aware that the dream fear is no more
j us t ied by the dream content than the fear in a
phobia is j ustied by the idea upon which the phobia
depends For example it is true that it is possible
to fall out of a window and that some care must be
exercised when one is near a window but it is ine x
plicable why the anx iety in the corresponding
phobia is so great and why it follows its victims to
.

V
SE X I N

REA M S

TH E

more one is occupied with the solution of

dreams the more will ing one must become to ao
knowledge that the ma orit y of the dr eams of adults
treat of sexual material and give expression to ero
tic wishes Only one who reall y analyzes dreams
that is to say who pushes forward from their mam
fest content to the latent dr eam thoughts can form

an opl mon on this sub e ct never the person who is

satised with registering the manifest content ( as
for example N acke in his works on sexual dreams )
Let us recognize at once that this fact is not to be
wondered at but that it is in complete harmony
the fundamental assumptions of dream e x pla
No o ther impulse has had to undergo so
n
uppr e ssion from the time of childhood as the
se x impulse in its numerous components from no
other impulse have survived so many and such in
tense u nconscious wishes which now act in the
sleeping state in such a manner as to produce
dreams In dre am interpretation this signicance
of sexual comple x es must never be forgotten nor
,

1 04

S E X IN D REAM S

1 05

must they of course be e x aggerated to the point

of b eing considered e x clusive
Of many dr eams it can b e ascertained by a care
ful interpretation that they are even to be taken
b isex ually inasmuch as they result in an irrefutable
secondary interpretation in which t hey realize hom

that is feelings t hat are c ommon

ose x u al fee lings
to the normal sexual activity of the dreaming per
But that all dreams are to b e inte
son
b ise x ually seems to me to be a generalization a
demonstrab le as it is improbable which I sh
not like to s upport Ab ove all I should not kn ow
how to dispose of the apparent fact that there are

many dreams satis fying other than in the w idest

sense erotic needs as dreams of -hunger thirst

convenience &c Likewise the similar assertions

that b ehind every dream one nds the death sen

tence ( S t e k e l ) and that every dream shows a

continuation from the feminine to the m asculine

line ( Adler ) seem t o me to proceed far beyond

what is admissible in the interpretation of dreams
e have already asserted elsewhere that dreams
which are conspicuously innocent invari ably em
b ody coarse erotic wishes an d we m i ght c onrm
this by means of numerous fresh examples But
many dreams which appear indi fferent and which
wou ld never b e suspected of any particular signi
,

( C

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 06

cance can be traced back after analysis to u nmis

t ak ab ly sexual wish feelings which are often of an
unexpected nature For example who would sus
peet a sexual wish in the following dream until the
?
interpretation had been worked out The dreamer
relates : B e twe e n t wo st a t e ly palace s st ands a lit
.

house

t le

close d

re ce ding

me what

so

M y wife le ads me

s t re e t up
and

t o t he lit t le hous e

t he n I

slip

a cour t y ard

whose

are

lit t le way along t he

and pu she s in t he door
a

u
k
l
n
i
c
l
a
d
e
a
s
i
y
q
y

t hat

doors

int o t he int e rior

s la nt s oblique ly upwards

Any one who has had experience iri the t ransl at

ing of dreams will of cou rse immediately perc eive
that penetrating into narrow spaces and opening
locked doors belong to the commonest sexual sym
b olism and will easily nd in t his dre am a re pre se n
t at ion of attempted coition from behi nd ( between
the two stately buttocks of the female b ody )
The
narrow slanting passage is of course the vagina ; t he
assistance attributed to the wife of the dreamer re
quires the interpretation that in reality it is only
consideration for the w ife which is responsible for
the detention from such an attempt Moreover
inquiry shows that on the previous day a young girl
had enter ed the household of the dreamer who b adL
pleased him and who had given him t he impression
that she would not be altogether opposed to an ap
,

'

DREAM

1 08

P SYCHOLO G Y

The following is the d ream of a young man who in

his fancy has already while m embryo taken ad
vantage of his opportunity to spy upon an act of
coition between his parents
.

H e is in a de e p shaft in which t he re is a window

A t rst he se e s an
in t he S e mme ring Tun ne l
,

as

mpt y landscape t hrough t his window

a nd

mpose s

co

t he n he

t
c
u
n
t
h
c
h
a
l
i
re
t
w
mm
e
d
t
e
i
i
i
i
i
s
o
i
p
y
,

at

lls ou t t he e mpt y space The

i
t
r
u
e
n
t
r
l
c
re
s
e
s

e
l
h
c
h
b
n
t
h
u
h
e
r
a
d
w
i
e
o
i
s
i
o
p
p
g y
g
harrowe d by an imple me nt and t he d e light fu l air
and

hand

which

t he

mpanying ide a of hard work

acco

black

clod s o

H e t he n goe s
and

e ar t h

make

on and se es a

he is

su rprise d

d e v ot e d in it t o t he

and

t he bluish

i
l
a
n
m
n
e
a
s
t
e
s
s
i
r
o
p
p
r
r
m
a
sc
h
o
l
n
i
e
e
d
o
o
p
y
p

t hat

so

m
e
f

much

fe e lings

su al
se n

which make s him t hink

a t t e nt ion

t he

is

child,

Here is a pretty water dream of a f e male patient

which was turned to extraordin ary account in the
course of treatment
,

A t he r

su

mme r re sort at t he

he rse lf int o t he dark wa t e r at

Lak e

she

hurls

e
w
r
l
l
a
c
h
t
h
a
e
e
e
e
p
p

moon is re e ct e d in t he wa t e r

Dreams of t his sort are parturition dreams ; their

interpretation is accomplished by reversing the fact
reported in the manifest dream content ; thus in

stead of throwing one s self into the water read

,

S E X IN DREAM S

1 09

c oming out of the water that is b eing b orn

The place from which one is born is recognized if

one thinks of the b ad sense of the French la lune

The ( pal e moon thus becomes the white bott om

Popo
which
the
child
soon
recognizes
as
the
place
(
)
from which it came Now what can be the mean
ing of the patient s wishing to be born at her sum
?
m e r resort
I asked the dreamer this and she an

sw e re d without hesitation :
H asn t the treatment
?
made me as though I were born again
Thus the
dream b ecomes an invitation to continue the cure
at this summer resort that is to visit he r there ;
perhaps it also contains a very bashful allusion to
P
the wish to become a mother herself
Another dr eam of parturition with it s int e rpre
t at ion I t ake from the work of E J ones
S he
,

'

s t ood
se e

at

me d

t he

se ashore

co e re d

his he ad bobbing

The

mall boy who

,

t o be he rs, wading int o t he wat e r

did t ill t he wat e r

se e

wat ching

t he n

him

up and

cha nge d

and she

d own

t o t he

This he

cou ld only

ne ar t he sur ace

crowd e d

hall

f
I t is o nly o f l at e tha t I have l ear ne d t value the sign ican c e o f
fan cies an d u nc on sci ou s tho ughts ab out l ife i n the w o mb They
c on tai n the expl an ati on o f the c uri o us fea felt by s o many pe ople
o f bei ng buried al ive as well as the pr o foun dest u n con sci ous reas on
fo r t h belief in a l i fe after death which represe n ts no thi n g but a
pr oj ecti on i n t o t h future o f this mysteri o us l ife befo re birth Th
sce ne

a ct

t he

rs t e x pe rie n ce wit h f e ar
e mo t ion of f e a r

bir t h, mor e ov e r, is t he

s our ce a n d

mod e l of t he

a nd

is

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

110

hot e l

H e r husband le ft he r

and she

e nt e re d

int o

wit h a st range r
v
The second half
of the dream was discovered in the analysis to re pre
sent a ight from her husband and the entering
into intimate relations with a third person behind
whom w as plainly indicated Mr X s brother men
t ione d in a former dream
The rst part of the
dream w as a fairly evident birth phantasy In
dreams as in mythology the delivery of a child from
the uterine waters is commonly presented by dis
t ort ion as the entry of the child int o water ; among
many others the births of Adonis Osiris Moses
and B acchus are well known illustrations of this
The bobbing up and down of the head in the water
at once recalled to the patient the sensation of quick
e ning she had experienced in her only pregnancy
Thinking of the boy going into the water induced
a reverie in which she saw herself taking him out of
the water carrying him into the nursery washing
him and dressing him and installing him in her
household
The second half of the dream therefore r e pre
sents thoughts concerning the elopement which b e
longed to the rst half of the underlying latent con
tent ; the rst half of the dream corresponded with
the second half of the latent content the birth
phantasy B esides this inversion in order further
con e rsa t ion

DR E AM PS YCHOLO GY

112

n ightly visitors who have awakened the child to set

it on the chamber so that it may not wet the bed or
have lifted the cover in order to see clearly how the
child is holding its hands while sleepin g I have
been able to induce an exact recollection of the
noctur nal visitor in the analysis of some of these
anxiety dr eams The robbers were always the f a
ther the ghosts more probab l y corresponded to
feminin e persons with white nigh t gowns
When one has become familiar with the ab un
dant use of symboli sm for the representation of
sexual material in dreams one n aturally raises the
question whether there are not m any of these sym
bols which appear once and for all with a rmly e s
t ab lishe d s ignicance lik e the Sl gn s in stenography ;
and one is tempted to compile a new dr eam book
according to the cipher method In this connection
it may be remarked that this symbolism d oes not
belong peculiarly to the dre am but rather to un
cons cious thinking particul arly that of the mas ses
and it is to be found in greater perfection in
the folklore in the myths legends and man
ners of speech in the proverbial sayings and in
the current witticisms of a nation than in its
,

di e ams

The dr eam takes advantage of this symbolism in

order to give a dis guised representation to its lat ent

S E X IN DREAM S

113

thoughts Among the symbols which are used in

this manner there are of course many which regu
l arly or almost regularly mean the same thing
Only it is necessary to keep in mind the curious
plasticity of psychic material Now and then a
symbol in the dream content may have to b e in
t e rpre t e d not symbolically but according to its real
meaning ; at another time the d reamer owmg to a
peculiar set of recollections may create for himself
the right to use anything whatever as a se x ual sym
b ol though it is not ord i nari ly used in that way
Nor are the most frequently used sex ual symb ols
unambiguous every time
After these lim itations and reservations I may
call attention to the following : E mperor and Em
press ( K ing and ! ueen ) in most cases really re pre
sent the parents of the dreamer ; the dreamer him
self or herself is the princ e or princess ! A ll elon
gated obj ects sticks tr ee trunks and umb rellas
on account of the stretching up which might be
compared t o an erection ! all elongated and sharp
weapons knives daggers and pikes are intended
to represent the male member A fre quent not
very int elligible symbol for the same is a nail le
?
e
b
on
acco
nt
of
the
ru
b
ing
and
scraping
Littl
u
)
(
cases boxes caskets closets and stoves corre spond
to t he female p art The symb olism of lock and
.

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

114

key has b een very gracefully employed b y Uhland

in his song about the Grafen Eberstein to make

a common smutty j oke The dream of walking
through a row of rooms is a brothel or harem dream
Staircases ladders and ights of stairs or climbing
on these e ither upwards or downwards are sym
bolie representations of the sexual act Smooth
walls over which one is climbin g fac ades of houses
upon which one is letting o neself down frequently
under great anxiety correspond to the erect hu
man body and probably repeat in the dream remi
nisce nce s of the upward climbing of little children

on their parents or foster parents

Smooth :
walls are men Often in a dre am of anx iety one
is hol ding on rmly to some proj ection from a
house Tables set tabl e s and bo ards are women
perhaps on account of the opposition which does

away with the bodily contours Since bed and

board ( me nsa e t t horns ) constitute marr iage the

former are often put for the l atter in the dream
and as far as pr acticable the sexual presentation
complex is transposed to the eating c omplex Of
articles of dress the wom an s hat may frequently be
denitely interpreted as the male genital In
dreams of men one often nds the cravat as a sym
bol for the peni s ; thi s indeed is not onl y be caus e
cravats hang down l ong and are characteristic of
,

DREAM

1 16

P SYCHOLOGY

The right way always signies the road to right

e ou sne ss the left the one to crime
Thus the left
may signify homosexuality incest and perversion
while the right signies marriage relations with a
prostitute &c The meaning is always determined

by the individual moral Vl e w point of the dreamer

Relatives in the dre am generall y play the rl e of
genitals Not to be able to catch up with a wagon
is interpreted by St e ke l as regret not to be able to
come up to a difference in age B aggage with
which one travels is the burden of sin by which one
is oppressed Also num bers which frequently
occur in the dream are assi gned by St e k el a xed
symbolical meaning but these interpretations seem
neither suicie nt ly veried nor of general validity
a lthough the interpretation in individual cases can
generally be recogni zed as p robable I n a recently
published book by W S t e k e l D ie S prache de s
Trau me s which I was unable to util ize there is a list
o f the most common sexual symbols t he obj e ct of
which is to prove that all sexual symbols can be

bisexually used He states :

Is there a symbol
which ( if in any way permitted by the phantasy )
may not be used simultaneously in the masculine
and the feminine sense !
To be sure the clause in
parenthese s takes away much of the ab soluteness
of this as se rtion for this is not at all permitted by
,

SE X IN DREAM S

1 17

the phantasy I do not however think it super

u ou s t o state that in my experience S t e k e l s gen
eral statement has to give way to t he recognition of
a greater manifoldness B esides those symbols
which are j ust as frequent for the male as for the
female genitals there are others wh ich preponder
ately or almost exclusively designate one of the
sexes and there are still others of which only the
male or o
nly the female signication is known To
use long rm obj ects and weapons as symbols of
the female genitals or hollow ob ects ( chests
pouches
as symbols of the male genitals is
indeed not allowed by the fancy
It is true that the tendency of the dream and the
uncon scious fancy to utilize the sexual symbol
bisexually be trays an archaic trend for l n child
hood a di ff erence in the genitals is unknown and
the same ge nitals are attrib ut e d to both sex es
These very inc omplete suggestions may suffice
to stimulate others to make a more careful colle e
tion
I shall now add a fe w examples of the application
of such symb olisms in dreams which will serve to
show how imposs ib le it becomes to interpret a
dream without taking into account the s ymb olism
of dreams and how imperatively it ob trude s itself
in many cases
.

DREAM

118

P SYCHOL O GY

The hat as a symbol of the man ( of the male

genital )
( a fragment from the dream of a young
woman who su ffered from agoraphobia on account
of a fear of temptation )

I am walking in the street in summer I wear a

straw hat of peculiar shape the middle piece of
which is bent upwards and the side pieces of which
hang downwards ( the des cription became here ob
structed ) and in such a fashion that one is lower
than the other I am cheerful and in a e g nde nt ial
mood and as I pass a troop of young ofcers I
think to mys e lf : None of you can have any de

signs upon me
As she c ould produce no associations to the hat

I said to her :
The hat is really a male genital
with its raised middle piece and the two downward
hanging side pieces
I intentionally refrained
from interpreting those details concerning the u n
equal downward hanging of the two side pieces al
though j ust such individualities in the determina
tions lead the way to the interpretation I
continued by saying that if she only had a man with
such a virile genital she would not have to fear the

that is she would have nothing to wish

ofce rs
from them for she is mainly kept from going with
out protection and company by he r f ancies of temp
This last explanation of her fear I h ad al
t at ion
l

DREAM P SYCHOL O GY

120

but no real horror ) She then looks out through

the car window to see whether the parts cannot be
seen behind She then reproaches her mother for
allowing the little one to go out alone
An alysis
It is not an easy matter to give here a complete in
It forms part of a cycle
t e rpre t a t ion of the dream
of dreams and can be fully understood only in con
ne ct ion w it h the others
For it is not easy to get
the necessary material sufciently isolated to prove
the symbolism The patient at rst nds that the
railroad j ourney is to be interpreted historically as
an allusion to a departu re from a sanatori um for
nervous diseases with the superintendent of which
she naturally was in love Her mother took her
away from this place and the physician came to the
railroad station and handed her a bouquet of ow
ers on leaving ; she felt unc omfortable because her
mother witnessed this homage Here the mothe r
therefore app e ars as a disturber of her love affairs
which is the rdle actually play e d b y this stric t
woman during her daughter s girlhood The next

thought referre d to the sentence :

She then looks

In
to see whethe r the parts can be seen behind
the dream fa c ade one would naturally be compelled
to think of the part s of the little daughter run over
The thought however turns in
and ground up
uite
di
erent
di
She
recalls
that
she
r ection
f
f
a
q
.

S E X IN DREAM S

121

once saw her father in the b ath room nak e d from

behind ; she

then b egins to talk ab out the sex di ff er

e nt iat ion and asserts that in the man the genitals
can be seen from behind b ut in the woman they can
not In this connection she now herself o ffers the
interpretation that the little one is the genital her
little one ( she has a four y ear old daughter ) her
own genital
She reproaches her mother for want
ing her t live as though she had no genital and
o
rec ognizes this reproach in the intro ductory sen
tence of the dream ; the mother sends away her lit
tle one so that she mu st go alone In her phantas y
going alone on the stre et signi es to have no man
and no sexual relations ( coire
to go together )
and this she does not like According to all her
statements she really su ff ered as a girl on account
of the j ealousy of he r mot her b e cause she showe d
a preference for her father

The little one has b e e n n oted as a symb ol for

the male or the fema le genitals by S t e k e l who can
refer in this connection to a very widespread usage
of langu age
The deeper interpretation of this dream depends
upon another dream o f the sam e night iii which the
dreamer identie s herself with her b rother She

was a tomb oy and was always b eing told that she

should have b een born a boy Th is identication
,

DREAM P SYCHOLOGY

1 22

with the brother shows with special clearness that

the little one signies the genital The mother

threatened him ( her ) with castration which could
only be understood as a punishment for playing
with the parts and the identication therefore
shows that she herself had masturbated as a child
though this f act she now retained only in memory
con ce rn m
her
brother
An
early
knowledge
of
g
the male genital which she later lost she must have
acquire d at that time according to the assertions
of this second dream Moreover the second dr eam
points to the infantile sexual theory that girls origi
nate from boys thro ugh cast ration After I had
told her of this childish belief she at once conrme d
it with an anecdote l n which the boy asks the girl :

?
Was it cut off to which the girl repl ied N o it s

always been so
The sendin g away of t he little one of the ge nl t al
in the rst dr eam therefore also refers to the threat
ened castration Finally she blames her mother
for not having been born a boy

That being run over symbolizes se xual inter

course would not be evident from this dream if we
were not sure of it from many other sources
3 Represe ntati on of the ge nit al by structures
stairways and shafts ( Dream of a young man in
hibit e d b y a father complex )

DREAM P SYCH OLOGY

1 24

interpret in greater detail ; the Rotunda is the b ut

tock which is regularly associated by the child with
the genital the smaller front structure is t he
scrotum In the dream his father asks him what

this is all for that is he asks him about the pur

pose and arrangement of the genitals It is q uit e
evident that this state of a ffairs should be turned
around and that he should be the questioner A s
such a questioning on the side of the father has
never taken plac e in reality we must conceive t he
dream thought as a wish or take it conditionally

as follows :
If I had only aske d my father for

sexual e nl ightenment
The continuation of this
thought we shall soon nd in another pla ce
The court in which the tin sheet is spread out is
not to b e conceived symb olically in t he rst instance
bu t originates from his father s place of business
For discre tionary reasons I have inserted the tin
for another material in which the father deals with
out however ch anging anything in the verbal ex
pression of the dream The dreamer had entered
his father s business and had taken a terrible dislike
to the questionable practices upon which prot
m ainly depends Hence t he continuation of the

abov e dream thought ( if I had onl y asked him )

would b e
He would have deceived me j ust as
he does his cust omers
For the pulling off which
,

SEX IN D R EAM S

1 25

serves to represent commercial dishonesty the

dreamer himself gives a second explanation
namely onanism This is not only entirely f a
miliar to us but agrees very well with the fact
that the secrecy of onanism is expressed by its

opposite ( Why one can do it quite

It
moreover agrees entirely with our expectations that
the onanistic activity is again put off on the father
j ust as was the questioning in the rst scene of
the dream The shaft he at once interprets as the
vagina by referring to the soft upholstering of the
walls That the act of coition in the vagina is de
scrib ed as a go i ng down instead of in the usual way
as a going up I have also found true in other in
1
stances
The details that at the end of the rs t shaft there
is a longer platform and then a new shaft he him
self e xplains biographically He had for some
time consorted with women sexually but had then
given it up b ecause of inhibitions and now hopes
to be able to tak e it up again wi th the aid of the
treatment The dream howeve r becomes indis
tinct toward the end and to the experienced in
t e rpre t e r it b ecomes evident that in the second sce ne
of the dream the inuence of another subj e ct has
b egun to assert itself ; in this his father s bu sme ss
,

Cf

e n t r a lb la t t

fur

l
s
c
h
o
a
a
n
p y
ys e ,

DREAM P SYCHOLOGY

126

and his dishones t practices signify the rst vagina

represented as a shaft so that one might think of
a reference to the mother
4 The m ale genital symbolized by persons and
the female by a landscape
Dream
of
a
woman
of
the
lower
class
whose
(
husband is a policeman reported by B D at t ne r )
.

Then some one broke into the house and

anxiously called for a policeman But he went
with two tramps by mutual c onsent into a church
to which le d a great many s t airs ; behind the
church there w as a mountain on top of which a
dense forest ! The policeman w a s furnished with
a helmet a gorget and a cloak
The two vag
rants who went along with the policeman quite
peaceab ly had ti e d to their loins sack like aprons
A road led from the church to the mountain This
road was overgrown on each side with grass and
brushwood which became thicker and thicker as it
reached the height of the mountain where it spread
out into quite a forest
.

5 A st airway dream
Reported
and
int
e rpreted by Otto Rank )
(
hapelvagin a
O
C ri n es p ub i
M on ve n ris
f c o itu
S ymb ol
D emon s in cl o aks and c apucin es are acc ordin g to t h exp l an ati on
o f a ma n versed i n the subject o f a phall i n ature
The two hal ves o f the scr o tum
.

r c

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

128

book store on the evening of the day of the dream

where while he was waiting he examined some pic

tures which were e xhibited which represented mo
t iv e s similar t o the dream pictures
He stepped
nearer to a small p icture which particularly took
his fancy in order to see the name of the artist
which however was quite unknown to him
Later l n the s ame evening in company he heard
about a Bohemian servant girl who boasted that

her illegitimate child was mad e on the stairs

The dreamer inquired about the details of this u n
usual occurrence and learned that the servant girl
went with her lover to the home of her parents
where there was no opportunity for sexual rela
tions and that t he excited man performed the act
on the stairs
In witty allusion to the mischievous
expression used about wine adulterers the dreamer

remarked The chil d really grew on the cellar

steps
These experiences of the d ay which are quite
prominent in the dream content were readily re
produced by the dreamer But he j ust as readily
reproduced an old fragment of infantile recollection
which was also utilized by the dream The stair
house was the house in which he had spent the
greatest part of his childhood and in which he had
rst b ecome acquainted with sexual problems
,

SE X IN DREAM S

129

this house he used among other things to slide

down the banister astride which caused him to b e
come sexually excited In the dream he also comes

down the stairs very rapidly so rapidly that ac

cording to his own distinct assertions he hardly

touched the individual stairs but rather ew or

slid down as we used to say Upon reference to

this infantile experience the beginning of the dream
seems to represent the factor of sexual excitement
In the same house and in the adj acent residence
the dreamer used to play pugnacious gam e s with
the neighboring children in which he satis ed him
self j ust as he did in the dream
If one recalls from Freud s investigation of sex
ual symbolism that in the dream stairs or climb ing
stairs almost regu larly symbolizes coitus the dream
becomes clear Its motive power as well as its e f
feet as is shown b y the pollution is of a purely
libidinous nature S exual excitement became
aroused during the sleeping state ( in the d ream
this is represented by t he rapid running or sliding
down the stairs ) and the sadistic thread in this is
on the basis of the pugnacious pl aying indicated in
the pursuing and ove rc oming of the child The
libidinous excitement becomes enhanced and urges
to sexual action ( represe nted in the dream by t he
l i p 2
S
! nt lb l t t fit P y h n ly
,

ee

ra

/r

oa

se ,

vo

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 30

grasping of the child and the conveyance of it to the

middle of the stairway )
Up to this point the
dream would be one of pure sexual symbolism and
obscure for the unpracticed dream interpreter
But this symbolic gratication which woul d have
insured undisturbed sleep w as not sufcient for
the powerful libidinou s excitement The excite
ment leads to an orgasm and thus the whole stair
way symbolism is unm as ked as a substitut e f or
coitus Freud lays stress on the rhythmical char
acter of both actions as one of the reason s for the
sexual utilization of the stairway sym bo lism and
this dream especially seems t o corrob orate this for
according to the express a ssertion of the dr e amer
the rhythm of a sexual act w as the most pronounced
feature in the whole dre am
Still another remark concerning the two pic
tures which aside from their real si gnicanc e al so

have the value of Weibsbilder ( literally woman

r
u
c
t
but
idiomatically
m
e
n
Thi
s
i
s
at
i
e
s
w
o
)
p
once shown by the fact that the dream deals with
a big and a little picture j us t as the dream content
presents a big ( grown up ) and a little girl That
cheap pictures coul d also be obtain e d points to the
prostitution complex j ust as the dreamer s sur
name ou the little picture and the thought that it
w as intended for his birthday point to t he parent
.

DREAM P SYCH O LOGY

1 32

trying to give up his habit of masturbation by re

pl acing it with intercourse with women

P re liminary st at e me nt
O u the day before the
r e am he had given a student instruction concern
G rign ar s reaction in which magnesiu m is to
b e dissolved in absolutely pure ether under the cat
a l t ic i n ue nce of iodine
Two
days
before
there
y
had been an explosion in the course of the same re
action m which the investigator had burned his
hand
Dream I H e is t o make p he nylmagne siu m
.

bromid ; he

se e s

t he

H e is

ne siu m

H e ke e ps

now

r e p e a t ing

ve

a nd

re ache s

not
an

be

again

ar e

he

his

right

be ginning t o d is

fe e t

ft

so
,

an

The n he

d me anwhil e

t ake s his le gs ou t of t he
s ays

Y e s it mu st be

This is t he

t
t
n
e
i
g
g

ar e

a nd

d t he n

cru cib le ,

t o himse lf

fe e ls for
know how ) he

down

e
d
h
e
s
o
(

cannot

my kne e s

mag

t he

or

a cu riou s s waying a t t it u d e

my fe e t

t hing it is working,
sol

in

wit h part icu lar cle ar

hims e lf

su bst it u t e d

bu t he has

n e ss,

app ara t u s

t o himse lf

s o,

T hat

it has be e n d one

The n he part ially awak e ns and re

re am t o hims e lf b e ca use he wa nt s t o t e ll
h
d
a
t
t
e
e
s
p
corre c t ly

H e is dist inc t ly afraid of t he ana lysis

H e is mu ch e x cit e d d uring t his
dre a m

it t o me

t he

se mi sle e ping

st at e ,

P he nyl phe nyl

,

and

re pe a t s

cont inual ly,

SE X IN D REAM S
II H e is in
ha lf past e le v e n

ing wit h his whole

wak e

se l

be

u p unt il

H e is

or a re nd e z ou s

wit h a

t o be

ce r t ain

half pas t

I t is t oo la t e

half pas t

e le

family gat he re d abou t

and t he s e rv ant girl wit h t he
if we
a way

are

T he n he

e at ing

t he S chot t e nt hor

lad y but he doe s

,

v en

at

He

says

not

t o him

whe n y ou ge t t he re it will
T he ne x t inst ant he s e e s t he

t we lv e

cle arne ss

at

family ;

now;

whole

t icu lar

1 33

his mot he r
t he t a ble

soup t u re e n

says

alre ady,

wit h par

t o hims e lf,

ce rt ainly

can

Wll
e

e
t
g

An alysis : H e feels sure th at even the rst

dream contain s a reference to the lady whom he is
to meet at the rende zvous ( the dream w as dreamed
during the night b efore the expected meeting )
The student to whom he gave the instru ction is a
particularly unpleasant fellow ; he had said to the

chemist :
That isn t right because t he magnes
ium was still una ffecte d and the latt er answer ed as

though he did not c are anything about it :

It ce r
t ainly isn t right
H e hims e lf must be this stu
dent ; he is as indi ff erent towards his analysis as
the student is toward s his synthesis ; the H e in the
dream however who accomplishes the operation
is myself H ow unpl easant he must seem to me
with his indi ff erence towards the success achieved !
Moreover he is the material with which the an
'

'

'

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

I 34:

alysis ( synthesis ) is made For it is a question of

the success of the treatment The legs in the
dream recall an impression of the previous evening
He met a lady at a dancing lesson whom he wished
to conquer ; he pressed her to him so closely that
she once cried out After he had stopped pressing
agai ns t her legs he felt her rm responding pres
sure against his lower thighs as far as j ust above
his knees at the place mentioned in the dream In
this sit uation then the woman is the magnesium in
the retort which is at last working He is femi
nine towards me as he is masculine towards the
woman If it will work with the woman the treat
m e nt will also work Feeling and b ecomin g aware
of himse lf in the region of his knees refers to mas
t u rb at ion a n d corresponds to his fatigue of the
previous day
The r e ndezv ous had actually
been set for half past eleven His wish to over
sleep and to remain with his usual sexual obj ects
d
that
is
with
masturbation
correspon
s
with
his
)
(
resistance
.

1 36

D RE A M

P SYCHOLO G Y

solicitous conclusion that a candle has b ee n upset

and may have set re to t he corpse ; he transforms
this c onclusio n into a dream by investing it with a
senseful situation enacted in the present tense
hat part is played in this dre am b y the wish

fu ll lme nt and which are we to suspect the pre

dominance of t he thought continued from the wak
ing state or of the thought incited by the new sen
?
sory impression
All these considerations are j ust and force us t o
enter more deeply into the p art played by the wish
fu lllm e nt in the dream and into the signi cance
of the waking thoughts continued in sleep
It is in fact the wish fu lllme nt that has already
induced us to separate dr eams into two groups
We have fo und some dre ams that were plainly
wish fulfillments ; and others in which wish ful ll
ment c ould not be rec ogni zed and was frequently
concealed by every available means In this latt er
class of dreams we recognized the inuence of the
dr eam censor The undis guised wish dream s were
chiey found in chil dren yet e eting open hearted
wi sh dreams se e me d ( I purposely emphasize this
word ) to occur al so in adults
We may now ask whence the wish ful l led in the
But to what opposition or to
dr eam originates
?
what diversity do we refer this whence
I think

'

TH E

WI S H IN DREAM S

1 37

it is to the oppo sition between con scious daily life

and a psychic activity remaining unconscious which
can only make itself noticeable during the night
I thus nd a threefold possibility for the or1g1n of
a wish Firstly it may have b een incited during
the day and owing to external circumstances failed
to nd gratication there is thus left for the night
an ackn owledged but unfullled wish Secondly
it may come to the surface during the day b ut be
rej ected leaving an unfullled but suppressed
wish O r thirdly it may have no rela tion to daily
life and belong to those wishes that originate dur
ing the night from the suppression If w e now
follow our scheme of the psychic apparatus we can
localize a wish of the rst order in the system F ore c
We may assume that a wish of the sec ond order
has been forced back from the F Ore c system into
the Unc system where alone if anywhere it can
maintain itself ; while a wish feeling of the third
order we consider altogether incapab le of leaving
the Unc system This b rings up the question
Whe t he r wishe s arl smg from these di fferent sources
possess the same value for the dream and whether
t hey have the same power to incite a dream
On reviewing the dreams which w e have at our
disposal for answering this question w e are at once
moved to add as a four th source of the dream wish
.

'

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 38

the actual wish incitements arising during the night

such as t hirst and sexual desire It then becomes
evident that t he source of the dream wish doe s not
af fect its capacity to incite a dream That a wish
suppressed during the day as serts itself in the
dream can be shown by a great many examples I
sha ll mention a very simple example of this class
A somewhat sarcastic young lady whose younger
friend has become engaged to be married is asked
throughout the day by her a cquaintances whether
she knows and what she thinks of the anc She
ans wers with u nqualied praise thereby silencing
her own j udgment as she would prefer to t ell the
truth namely that he is an ordinary person The
following night she dreams that the same question
i s put to her and that she replies with the formula :

In case of subsequent orders it will sufce to men

tion the number
Finally we have learned from
numerous analyses that the wish in all dreams that
have been subj ect to distortion has been derived
from the unconscious and has been unable to come
to perception in the waking state Thus it would
appear that all wishes are of the s ame value and
force for the dream formation
I am at present un able to prove that t he state
of affairs is really di ff erent but I am strongly in
i
o
t
n
i
a
f
t
e
rr
d
e
to
assume
a
more
stringent
of
l
n
d
c i e
in
,

) 9

D REAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 40

re in orce s

it

Following the suggestions ob tained

through the psychoanalysis of the neuroses I be
lieve that these unconscious wishes are always ac
tive and rea dy for expression whenever they nd
an opportunity to unite th emselves with an emo
tion from conscious life and that they transfer their
greater intensity to the lesser intensity of the lat
t er
It may therefore seem that the conscious
wish alone has been realized in a dream ; but a slight
peculiarity in the formation of this dream will put
us on the track of the powerful helper from the un
conscious The se ever active and as it were im
mortal wishes from the unconscious recall the legend
ary Titans who fr oni time immemorial have borne
the ponder ous mounta i ns which were once rolled
upon them by the victorious gods and which even
now quiver from time to time from the convulsions
of their mighty limbs ; I say that these wishes found
in the repression are of themselves of an infantile
or i g i n a s we have learned from the psychol ogical
.

ll

They share this character o f in destructibil ity with ll psychic acts

that are really u n con sci o us that is with psychic acts bel on gi n g t the
t ly o pe n a n d
system o f the unc n sci ous only: These paths
n t
never f ll i nto disuse ; they conduct the discharge o f the excitin g pr o c
ess o fte n as it bec o mes e n d owed with un c on sci ous exciteme nt T o
peak metaphorically they su ff er the same fo rm o f an n ihilati on as t h
shades o f the lo wer region i n the O d y y wh o awoke t o n ew life the
n
m ome n t they drank bloo d The pr o cesses depe n din g on the f
scio us system are destructibl e i n a di ff eren t w y Th psycho therapy
o f the n eur o ses is based on this di ff ere nc e
1

ar a co

s an

as

ss e

ore co

THE WI S H IN DRE AM S

1 41

investigation of the neuroses I should like there

fore to withdraw the opi nion previously expressed
that it is unimpor t ant whence the dream wish or
iginat e s and replace it by another as follows : The
.

wish manife st e d in t he dre am mus t he

an

infant ile

In the adult it originates in the Unc while

in the child where no separation and ce sor as yet
exist between Fo ree and Unc or Where these are
only in the process of formation it is an unfullled
and unrepressed wish from the waking state I
am aware that this conception cannot be generally
demonstrated b ut I maintain nevertheless that it
can be frequently demonstrated even when it w as
not suspected and that it cannot be generally re
one

fu t e d

The wish feelings which remain from the con

scious waking state are therefore relegated to the
b ackground in the dream formation
In the dream
content I shall attribute to them only the part a t
tributed to the material of actual sensations during
sleep If I now take into account those other
psychic instigations remaining from the wakin g
state which are not wishes I shall only a d
here to the line mapped out for me by this train of
thought We m ay succeed in prOV1 s1onally termi
nating the sum of energy of our waking thoughts
by deciding to go to slee p He is a good sleeper
,

'

DREAM P S Y CHOLO GY

1 42

who

can do this ; Napoleon I is reputed to have

been a model of this sort But we do not always
succeed in accomplishing it or in accomplishing it
perfectly Unsolved problems harassing cares
overwhelming impressions continue the thinking ac
t ivit y even during sleep maintaining psychic pro
cesses in the system which w e have termed the fore
conscious Thes e mental processes continuing into
sleep may be divided into the following group s :
1 That which has not been terminated during the
day owing to casual prevention ; 2 that which has
been left unnished by temporary paralys i s of our
mental power i e the unsolved ; 3 that which has
been re e ct e d and suppressed during the day This
unites with a powerful group
formed by that
which has been excited in our Unc dur i ng the day
by the work of the foreconscious Finally we may
add group ( 5 ) consisting of the indi fferent and
hence unsettled impressions of the day
We should not underrate the psychic intensities
introduced into sleep by these remnants of waking
life especially those emanating from the group of
the unsolved These excitation s surely continue
to str i ve for expression during the night and we
may assume with equal certainty that the sleep ing
state renders impossible the usual continuation of
the excitement in the foreconscious and t he termina
.

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 44

have any other character as that of wishes ; b u t it is

highly instructive and even decisive for the theory
of wish fulllme nt to see what conditions they must
comply with in order to be received into the dream
Let us pick out one of the dreams cited above as
the dream in which my friend Otto
seems to show the symptoms of Based ow s disease
M y friend Otto s appearance occasioned me some
concern during the day and this worry like
everything else referring to this person aff ected
me I may also assume that these feelings fol
lowed me into sleep I was probably bent on
nding out what was t he matter with him
In the night my worry found expre ss i on in the
dream which I have reported the content of which
was not only senseless but failed to show any wish
But I began to investigate for the
f u lllme nt
source of this incongruous expression of the solici
tude felt during the day and anal ysis revealed the
conn ection I identied my friend Otto with a cer
ta i n B aron L and myself with a Profes sor R
There was only one explanation for my being im
l
l
e d to select j ust this substitution for the day
e
p
thought I must have always been prepared in the
Unc to identify myself with Profe ssor R as it
meant the realization of one of the immortal in
Re
fant ile wishes viz that of becoming great
.

'

THE WI S H IN DREAM S

1 45

pulsive ideas respecting my friend that would cer

t ainly h av e been repudiated in a waking state took
advantage of the opportunity to creep into the
dream b ut the worry of the day likewise found
some form of e x pre ssmn through a substitution in
the dream content The day thought which w as
no Wish in itself but rather a worry had in some
way to nd a connection with the infantile now un
conscious and suppressed wish which then allowed

it though already properly prepared to origi

nate for consciousnes s The more dominating
this worry the stronger must be the connection to
b e established ; between the contents of the wish and
that of the worry there need be no connection nor
was there one in any of our examples
e can now sharply dene the signi cance of
the unconscious wish for the dream It may be
admitted that there is a whole class of dreams in
which the incitement originates preponderatingly
or even exclusively from the r emnants of daily life ;
and I believe that even my cherished desire to b e

come at some future time a professor e x t raordin

arius would have allowed me to slumber undis

t urb e d that night had not my worry about my
friend s health been still active But this worry
alone would not have produced a dream ; the motive
power needed by the d ream had to be contrib uted
,

3,

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 46

by a wish and it was the a ffair of the w orriine nt to

pro cure for itself such wish as a motive power of
the dream To speak guratively it is quite pos
sible that a day thought plays the part of the con
tractor ( e nt re pre neur ) in t he dr e am But it is
known that no matter what idea the contractor may
have in mind and how des irous he may be of put
ting it into operation he can do nothing w ithout
capital ; he must depend upon a capitalist to defray
the necessary expenses and this capitalist who sup
plies the psychic expenditure for the dream is in
variably and indisputably a wish from t he uacon
s cious no matter what the nature of the waking
thought may be
In other cases the capitalist himself is the con
tracto r for the dr eam ; this indeed seems to be the
more usual case A n unconscious wish is produced
by the day s work which in turn creates the dream
The dream processes moreover run parallel with
all the other possibilities of the economic relation
Thus the entre
ship used here as an illustration
preneur may contribute some capital himself or
s everal entrepreneurs may seek the aid of the same
c apitalist or several capitalists may j ointly supply
the capital r e qu l re d by the entrepreneur Thus
there are dreams produced by more th an one dream
wish and many similar variations which may
,

"

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 48

having several strong wishes we can readily sepa

rate from one another the spheres of the individual
wish fulllme nt s ; the gaps in the dream likewise
can often be expla i ned as boundary zones
Although the foregoing remarks have consider
ably limited the signicance of the day remn ants
for the dream it will nevertheless be worth our
while to give them some attention For they must
be a necessary ingredient in the formation of the
dream ina smuch as exper ience reveals the surpris
ing fact that every dream shows in its content a
conn ection with some impression of a recent day
often of the most indi fferent kind S o far we have
failed to see any necessity for this ad dition to the
dream mixture This necessity appear s o nl y when
we follow closely the part played by the uncon
scious wish and then seek information in the
psychology of the neuroses We thus learn that
the unconscious idea as such is altogether incapa
ble of entering into t he foreconscious and that it
can ex ert an inuence there onl y by uniting with a
harmless ide a already belonging to the f ore con
scious to which it transfers its intensity and under
which it allows itself to be conceal e d This is the
fact of transference which furnishes an explana
tion for so many surprising occurrences in the
psychic life of neurotics
.

THE WI S H IN DRE A M S

1 49

The idea from the foreconscious which thus oh

tains an unm erited abundance of intensity may be
left unchanged by the transference or it may have
forced upon it a modication from the content of
the transferring idea I trust the reader will par
don my fondness for comparisons from daily life
but I feel tempted to say that the relations existing
fo r the repressed idea are similar to the situations
existing in Austria for the American dentist who
is forbidde n to practise unless he get s permission
from a regular physician to use his name on the
public signboard and thus cover the legal require
ments Moreover j ust as it is nat urally not the
busiest physicians who form such alliances with
dental practitioners so in the psychic life only such
foreconscious or conscious ideas are chosen to cover
a repressed ide a as have not themselves attracted
much of the attention which is operative inthe fore
conscious The unconscious entangle s with its con
n e ct ion s pr e ferentially either those impressions and
ideas of the foreconscious which have been left u n
n oticed as indi fferent or those that have soon been
deprived of this attention through rej e ct ion It is
a familiar fact from the association st udies con
rmed by every exper i ence that ideas which have
formed intimate connections in one direction as
sume an a lmost negative attitude to whole group s
,

'

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 50

of new conn ections I once tried from this prin

cipl e to develop a theory for hysterical paralysis
If we assume that the same need for the transfer
ence of the repressed ideas which we have learned
to know from the analysis of the neur oses makes
its inuence felt in the dream as well we can at once
explain two riddles of the dream VI ! that every
dream analysis shows an interweaving of a recent
impression and that this recent element is fre
quently of the most indi fferent character We
may add what w e have already learned elsewhere
that these recent and indi ff erent elements come so
frequently into the dream content as a substitute
for the most deep lying of the dr eam thoughts for
the further reason that they have least to fear from
the resisting censor But while this freedom from
censorship explains only the preference for trivial
elements the constant presence of rece nt elements
points to the fact that there is a need for transfer
ence Both groups of impressions satisfy the de
mand of the repression for material still free from
associations the in di fferent ones bec ause they have
o ffered no inducement for ext ensive associations
and the recent ones be cause they have had insuffi
cient time to form such associations
We thus see that the day remnants among which
we may now include the indi fferent impr e s sions
.

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 52

in which the dream as a continuer of the day work

brings to a happy conclusion and unsolved prob
lem of the waking state We do not however
possess an example the analysis of which might r e
veal the infantile or repressed wish source furnish
ing such alliance and successful strengthening of
the e fforts of the foreconscious activity But we
have not come one step nearer a solution of the
riddle :
hy can the unconscious furnish the mo
tive power for the wish fu lllme nt only during
?
sleep
The answer to this question must throw
light on the psychic nature of wishes ; and it will
be given with the aid of the diagram of the psychic
apparatus
We do not doubt that even this apparatus at
t ain e d its present perfection through a long course
of development Let us att e mpt to restore it as
it existed in an early phase of its activity From
assumptions to be conrmed elsewhere we know
that at rst the apparatus strove to keep a s fre e
from excitement as possible and in its rst forma
tion therefore the scheme took the form of a re
ex apparatus which enabled it promptly to dis
charge through the motor tracts any sensible
stimulus reaching it from without But this S i mple
fun ction w as disturbed by the wants of life which
likewise fur nish the impulse for the further de
.

'

THE WI S H IN D R E AM S
me nt of the apparatus

v e l op

1 53

The wants of life

rst manifested themselves to it in the form of t he
great physical needs The excitement aroused by
the inner want seeks an outlet in motility which

may b e designated as inner changes or as an ex

pression of the emotions
The hungry child cries
or dge t s helplessly but its situation remains u n
changed ; for the excitation proceeding from an in
ner want requires not a momentary outbreak but
a force working continuously A change can oc
cur only if in some w ay a feeling of gratication

L
is experienced Which in the case of the child must

be through outside help 1n order to remove the

in ner excitement
An essential constituent of this
experience is the appearance of a certain perception
x
of
food
in
our
e
ample
the
memory
picture
of
(
)
which thereafter remains associated with the mem
ory trace of the excitation of want
Thanks to the estab lished connection there re
su lt s at the next appearance of this want a psychi c
feeling which revives the memory picture of the
former perception and thus recalls the former per
ce pt ion itself i e it actually re esta b lishes the situa
tion of the rst gratication We call such a feel
in
a
wish
t
h
e
reappearance
of
the
perception
;
g
constitutes the wish fulllme nt and the full revival
of t he perception by the w ant excitement consti
.

1 54

DREAM P SYCHOLOGY

the shortest road to the wish We

fulll me nt
may assume a primitive condition of the psychic
apparatus in which this road is really followed i e
where the wishing merges into an hallucination
This rst psychic activity therefore aims at an
identity of perception i e it aims at a repetition of
that perception which is conn ected with t he fulll
ment of the want
This primitive mental activity must have been
modied by bitter practical experience into a more
expedient secondary activity The estab lishment
of the identity perception on the short regressive
road within the apparatus does not in another re
spect carry with it the result which inevitably fol
lows the revival of the same perception from with
out The gratication does not take place and the
want continues In order to equalize the internal
with the external sum of energy the former must
b e continually maintained j ust as actua lly hap
pens in the hallucinatory psychoses and in the de
liriu ms of hunger which exhaust their psychic ca
e sn e d
d
in
clinging
to
the
obj
ect
In
order
c
i
t
a
p
y
to make more appropriate use of the psychic force
it becomes necessary to inhibit the full regr ession
so as to prevent it from extending beyond the im
age of memory whence it can select other paths
lea ding ultimately to the establishment of the de
t ut e s

D REAM P SYCHOLO GY

156
c
h
i
s
c
p y

life

In
the
psy
hoses
t
ese
c
h
f
modes of operation of the psychic apparatus which
are normally suppressed in the waking state reas
sert themselves and then betray their inability to
satisfy our wants in the outer world
n
The unco scious wish feelings evidently strive to
assert themselves during the day als o and the fact
of transference and the psychoses teach us that they
end eavor to penetrate to consciousness and domi
nate motility by the road lea ding through the sys
tem of the foreconscious It is therefore the
censor lying between the Unc and the F ore c the
assumption of which is forced upon us by the
dream that we have to recognize and honor as the
guardian of our psychic health But is it not care
lessness on the part of t his guardian to diminish its
vigilance during the night and to allow the sup
pressed emotions of the Unc to come to expression
thus again making possible the hallucinatory re
?
I
think
not
for
when
the
critical
guard
e
n
r
ss
i
o
g

ian goes to rest and we have proof that his slumber

is not profound he takes care to close the gate to

motility No matter what feelin gs from the other
wise inhibited Unc may roam about on the scene
they need not be interfered with ; they remain harm
less because they are unable to put in motion t he
motor apparatus which alone can exert a modifying
t he

child

THE WI S H IN DREAM S

1 57

inuence upon the outer world Sleep guarantees

the security of the for tress which is under gu ard
Conditions are less harmless when a displacement
of forces is produced not through a nocturnal
diminution in the operation of the critical censor
b u t through pathological enfeeblement of the lat
ter or through pathological rein forcement of the
unconscious excitations and this while the f ore con
scious is charged with energy and the avenues to
motility are open The guardian is then ov e rpow
ered the unconscious excitations subdue the F ore c ;
through it they dominate our speech and actions
or they enforce the hallucinatory regression thus
governing an apparatus not designed for them by
virtue of the attraction exerted by the perceptions
on the distribution of our psychic energy We call
this condition a psychosis
We are now in the best position to complete our
psychological construction which has been inter
r u pt e d by the introduction of the two systems Unc
and Foree We have still however ample reason
for giving further consideration to the wish as the
sole psychic motive power l n the dream We have
explained that the reason why the dream is in every
case a Wish realization is b ecause it is a product of
the Unc whi ch knows no other aim in its activit y
but the fulllment of wishes and which has no other
.

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY
forces at its disposal but wish feelings If we avail
ourselves for a moment longer of the right to elab
orate from the dream interpretation such far reach
ing psychologic al speculations we are in duty
bound to demonstrate that we are thereby bringing
the dream in to a relationship which may also com
prise other psychic stru
ctur es I f t here exists a

system of the Unc or something sufficiently an

al ogou s to it for the purpose of our discussion
the dr ea cannot be its sole manifestation ; every
dream may be a wish fu lll me nt but there must
be other forms of abnormal wish fu lllme nt b e
side this of dreams Indeed the theory of all
psychoneurotic symptoms culminates in the prop
ll
osit ion t ha t t he y t oo mu st b e t ak e n as wish fu l
1 58

explanation makes
the dream only the rst member of a group most
important for the psychiatrist an understanding
of which means the solution of the purely psycho
logical part of the psychiatric problem But other
members of this group of wish fu l ll me nt s
the hysterical symptoms evince one essential qual
ity which I have so far failed to nd in the dream
Thus from the investigations frequently referred
to in this treatise I know that the formation of an
hysterical symptom necessitates the combination of
both streams of our psychic life The symptom is
me nt s of t he

u ncons cious

O ur

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 60

have a multitude of children and this was sub se

quently united with the wish that she might have
them from as many men as possible Against this
immoderate wish there arose a powerful defensive
impulse But as the vomiting might spoil the pa
t ie nt s gure and beauty so that she would not nd
favor in the eyes of mankind t he symptom w as
therefore in keeping with her punitive trend of
thought and being thus admissible from both
sides it w as allowed to become a reality This is
the same manner of consenting to a wish fulllme nt
which the queen of the Parthians chose for the
triumvir Crassus Believing that he had under
taken the campaign out of greed for gold she
caused molten gold to be poured into the throat of

N ow hast thou what thou hast longed

the corpse
As yet we know of the dream only that it
for
expresses a wish fu lllme nt of the uncons cious ; and
apparently the dominating f ore consciou s permits
this onl y after it has subj ected the wish to some
distortions We are really l n no position to
demonstrate regularly a stream of thought ant ag
onist ic to the dream wish which is realized in the
dream as in its counterpart O nl y now and then
have we found in the dream traces of reaction for
mations as for instance the tenderness toward

friend R in the uncle dream

But the cont ribu
,

THE WI S H IN DREAM S

1 61

tion from the foreconscious which is missing here

may be found in another place VVhile the domi
nating system has withdrawn on the w ish to sleep
the dream may bring to expression with manifold
distortions a wish from the Unc and realize this
wish by producing the necessary ch anges of energy
in the psychic apparatus and may nally retain
it through the entire duration of sleep
This persistent wish to sleep on the part of the
f oreconscious in general facilitates the formation
of the dream Let us refer to the dr e am of the fa
ther who by the gleam of light from the death
chamber was brought to the conclusion that the
body has bee n set on re We have shown that
one of the psychic forces decisive in causing the fa
ther to form this conclusion instead of being awak
ened by the gleam of light w as the wish to prolong
the life of the child seen in the dream b y one mo
ment Other wishes proceeding from the re pre s
sion probably escape us because w e are unab le to
analyze this dream But as a second motive power
of the dr eam we may mention the father s desire to
sleep for like the life of the child the sleep of the
father is prolonged for a moment by the dream

The underlying motive is

Le t the dream go on
This idea has bee n b o rr owe d fr o m Th Th o y of S l p b y
Lib lt wh o revived hyp no tic i n vestigati on i n o ur day s
(D S m
m il p
etc
Paris

;
q
,

au

r ovo u

ee

DREAM P SYC HOLOGY

1 62

otherwise I must wake up

As in this dream so
also in all other dreams the wish to sleep len ds its
support to the unconsci ous wish We reported
dreams which were apparently dreams of con
v e n ie nce
But properly speaking all dreams
may cla im this designation The efficacy of the
wish to continue to sleep is t he most easily rec
ogniz e d in the waking dreams which so transform
the obj ective sensory stimulus as to render it com
patible with the continuance of sleep ; they inter
weave this stimulus with the dream in or der to rob it
of any claims it might make as a w armn g to the
outer world But this wish to continue to sleep
must also participate in the formation of all other
dreams which may disturb the sleeping state from

with in only
Now t hen sleep on ; why it s but
a dream ; this is in many cases the suggestion of
the F ore c to consciousness when the dream goes
too far ; and this al so describes in a general way the
a t titude of our dominating psych i c activity toward
dre am ing though the thou ght remains tacit I
must draw the conclusion that t hroughou t our e n

t ire

s le e ping st at e

dre aming

as

we

we
are

ar e

ust as ce rt ain t hat

ce rt ain

t hat we

are

we

are

s le e ping

We are compelled to disregard the ob eetion urged

against t his conclusion that our consciousness is
never dire cted to a knowledge of the former and
,

VI I

TH E

F UN C

T I ON

TH E

OF

REAM

S IN CE we kn ow that the foreconscious is suspended

during the night by the wish to sleep we can pro
ce e d to an intelligent investigation of the dream
process But let us rst sum up the k nowledge
of this process already gained We have shown
that the waking activity leaves day remnants from
which the sum of energy cannot be entirely re
moved ; or the waking activit y revives during the
day one of the unconscious wishes ; or both condi
tions occur simultaneously ; we have already dis
covered the many variations that may take place
The unconscious wish has already m ade its way to
the day remnants eith e r during the day or at any
rate with the beginning of sleep and has eff ected a
transference to it This produces a wish trans
ferred to the recent material or the suppres sed re
cent wish c omes to life again through a reinforce
ment from the unconscious This wish now
endeavors to make its way to consciousness on the
normal path of the mental processes thr ough the
foreconscious to which indeed it belongs through
,

1 64

FUN C TIO N OF THE DREAM

1 65

one of its constituent elements It is confronted

however by the ce n sor which is still active and to
the inuence of which it now succumbs It now
t akes on the distortion for which the way has al
ready been pave d by its transfer e nce to the re cent
material Thu s far it is in the way of becoming
something resembling an ob se ssI on delusion or the
like i e a thought reinforced by a transference and
distorted in e x pression by the censor But its fur
ther prog ress is now checked through the d ormant
state of the foreconscious ; this system has appar
ently protected itself aga i nst invasion by diminish
ing its excitements The dream process theref ore
takes the r e gre ssiv e course which has j ust been
opened by the peculiarity of the sleeping state and
thereby follows the attraction exerted on it by the
memory g
roups which themselv e s exist in part only
visual energy not yet translated into terms o
f
( as
the lat er systems On its way to regression the
dream takes on the form of dramatization The
subj ect of compression will be discussed later
The dr eam process has now terminated the second
part of its repe atedly impeded course The r st
part e xpended itself progressively from the u ncon
sciods scenes or phantasies to the foreconscious
while the second part gravitates from the advent of
the censor back to the perceptions But when the
,

'

DREAM P SYC HOLO GY

1 66

dream process becomes a content of perception it

has so to speak eluded the obstacle set up in the
Force by the censor and by the sleeping state It
succeeds in drawing attention to itself and in being
noticed by consciousness For consciousness which
means to us a sensory organ for the reception of
psychic qualities may receive stimul i from two

sources rst from the periphery of the entire ap

paratus viz from the percep t ion system and sec
ondly from the pleasure and pain stimuli which
constitute the sole psychic quality produced in the
transformation of energy within the apparatus
All other processes in the system even those in
the foreconscious are devoid of any psychic quality
and are therefore not ob ects of consciousness inas
much as they do not furnish pleasure or pain for
perception We shall have to assum e that those
liberations of pleasure and pain automatically regu
late the outlet of the occupation processes But in
order to make possible more delicate fun ctions it
was later found necessary to render the course of
the presentations more independent of the mani
To accomplish this the Foree
f e st at ions of pain
system needed some qualities of its own which
could attract consciousness and most probab ly re
ce iv e d them through the connection of the for e con
scious processes with the memory system of the
,

DREAM

1 68

P SYC HOLO GY

tent of perception ; it is subj ected to the same ideas

of expectation as far at least as the material adm its
As far as the direction is concerned in this third
part of the dream it may be said that here again
the movement is progressive
To avoid misunderstandin g it wil l not be amiss
to say a few words about the temporal peculiarities
of these dream processes In a very interesting
discussion apparently suggested by M aury s puz
z lin
g
i
l
lotine
dream
oblet
tries
to
demonstrate
u
G
g
that the dream requires no other time than the
transition period between sleeping and awakenin g
The awakening requires time as the dream takes
place during that period One is inclined to b e
lieve that the nal picture of the dream is so strong
that it forces the dreamer to awaken ; but as a mat
ter of fact this picture is strong only because the
dreamer is already very near awakening when it

U n r eve c est u n r veil q ui commence

appears
It has already b e en emphas ized by Dugas that
Goblet was forced to repu diate many facts in order
to generalize his theory There are moreover
dr eams from which we do not awaken e g some
From
dreams in which we dr eam that we dream
our knowledge of the dream work we can by no
means admit that it extends onl y over the period of
awakening On the contrary w e must consider it
,

FUN CTION OF THE D REAM

prob ab le that the rst part of the d ream work

1 69

be

gins during the day when we are still under the

domination of the foreconscious The second
phase of the dream work viz the modication
through the censor the attraction by the uncon
scious scenes and the penetration t o perception
must continue throughout the night A n d we are
prob ab ly always right when we assert that we feel
as though we had b een dreaming the whole night
although we cannot say what I do not however
think it necessary to assume that up to the time of
becoming conscmu s the dream processes really fol
low the temporal sequence which we have described
viz that there is rst the transferred dream wish
then the disto
rtion of the censor and c ons e q uently
the change of direction to regression and so on
e were forced to form such a succession for the
sake of de scrip t ion; in reality however it is much
rather a matter of simultaneously trying this path
and that and of emotions uctuating to and fro
until nall y owing to the most ex pedient dist ribu
tion one particular grouping is secured which re
mains From certain personal experiences I am
myself inclined to b elieve that the dream work often
requires more than one day and one n ight to p
duce its result ; if this b e tru e the extraordinary art
manifested in the c onstruction of the dream loses
.

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 70

all its marvels In my opinion even the regard for

comprehensibility as an occurrence of perception
may take e e ct before the dream attracts conscious
ness to itself To be sure from now on the proces s
is accelerated as the dream is henceforth sub e ct e d
to the same treatment as any other perception It
is like reworks which re quir e hours of preparation
and o nl y a m oment for i gnition
Through the dream work the dream proce ss now
gains either suicie nt in tensity to attract conscious
ness to itself and arouse the foreconscious which is
quite in dependent of the time or profundity of
sleep or its intensity being insufcient it must wait
until it meets the attention which is set in motion
immediately before awakening Most dreams
seem to operate with relatively slight psychic in
tensities for they wait for the awakening This
however explains the fact that we regularly per
ce iv e something dreamt on being suddenly aroused
from a sound sleep Here as well as in spontane
ous awakening the rst glance strikes the pre ce p
tion content created by the dream work whil e the
next strikes the one produced from without
Bu
t of greater theoretical interest are those
dreams which are capable of waking us in the midst
of sleep We must bear in mind the expediency
elsewhere universally demonstrated and a sk our
,

D R E Al V
I

1 72

P SYC HOLO GY

perceptible But when we sleep and the uncon

scious wish has shown its power to form a dream
and with it to awaken the foreconscious why then
does this power become exhausted after the dream
?
has been taken cognizance of Wgu l d it not seem
more probable that the dream sh ould continually
renew itself like the troublesome y which when
driven away takes pleasure in returning again and
?
again What j usties our assertion that the dream
?
removes the distur bance of sleep
That the unconsciou s wishes always remain ac
tive is quite true They represent paths which are
passable whenever a sum of excitement makes use
of them Moreover a remarkable peculiarity of
the unconscious processes is the fact that they re
main indestructible Nothing can be brought to
an end in the unconscious ; nothing can cease or be
forgotten This impression is most strongly gained
in the study of the neuroses especially of hysteria
The unconscious stream of thought which leads to
the discharge through an attack becomes passabl e
again as soon as there is an accumulation of a sui
cient amount of excitement The mort icat ion
brought on thirty years ago after having gained ac
cess to the unconscious a ffective source operates
during all these thirty years like a recent one
h enever its memory is touched it is revived and
.

FUNCTION OF THE D REAM

1 73

sho ws itself to be supplied w ith the excitement

which is discharged in a moto r attack It is j ust
here that the o fce of psychotherapy begins its task
b eing to bring about adj ustm ent and forgetfulness
for the unconscious processes Indeed the fading
of memories and the agging of a ffects which w e
are apt to take as self evident and to explain as a
primary i n uence of time on the psychic m
emories
are in reality secondary changes brought about by
painstaking work It is the foreconscious that ao
complishes this work ; and the Only course to be
pursued by psychoth e rapy is the subj ugate the
Unc to the dominationof the Foree
There are therefore two exits for the individual
unconscious emotion al process It is either left to
itself in which case 1 t ultimately breaks through
somewhere and secur es for once a dis charge for its
excitation into motility ; or it succumbs to the ih
u e nce of the foreconscious and its excitation b e
comes conned through this inuence instead of
being discharged It is the latter process that oc
curs in the dream Owing to the fact that it is
directed by the conscious e x citement the energy
from the Fore e which confronts the dream when
grown to perception restricts the unconscious ex
cit e me nt of the dream and renders it harmless as a
disturbing factor When the dreamer wakes up
.

DREA M P SYCHOLO GY

1 74

for a moment he has actually chased away the y

that has threatened to disturb his sleep We can
now understand that it is really more expedient and
economical to give full sway to the unconscious
wish and clear its way to regressi on so that it may
form a dream and then restrict and adj ust this
dream by means of a small expenditure of fore con
scious labor than to curb t he unconscious through
out the entire period of sleep We should indeed
expect that the dream even if it was not originally
an expedient process would have acquir ed some
function in the play of for ces of the psychic life
We now see what this function is The dream has
taken it upon itself to bring the liberated excitement
of the Unc back under the domination of the fore
conscious ; it thus a ffords relief for the excitement
of the Unc and acts as a safety valve for the latter
and at the same time it insure s the sleep of the
foreconscious at a s light expenditure of the waking
state Like the other psychic formations of its
group the dream o ffers itself as a compromise serv
ing simultaneously both systems by fullling both
wishes in so far as they are compatible with each

other A glance at Robert s elimination theory

will show that we must agree with this author in
his main point viz in the determination of t he func
tion of the dream though we di ff er from him in
,

1 76

DRE A M P SYCHOLOG Y

trying t o exclude this test imony against the the ory

of wish f u lllme nt wherever I encounter it I will
attempt an explanation of the anxiety dream at
least o ffering some suggestions
That a p sychic process developing anxiety may
still b e a wish fulllme nt has long ceased to impress
us as a contradiction VVe may explain this oc
curr ence by the fact that the wish belongs to one
system ( the Unc ) while by the other system ( the
F or e c ) this wish has been re e ct e d and suppressed
The subj ection of the Unc by the Force is not
c omplete even in perfect psychic health ; the amount
of this suppression shows the degree of our psychic
normality Neurotic symptoms show that there is
a conict between the t w o systems ; the symptoms
are the results of a compromise of this conict and
they temporarily put an end to it On the one
hand they a fford the Unc an outle t for the dis
charge of its excitement and serve it as a sally
port while on the other hand they give the F ore c
the capability of dominatin g the Unc to some ex
tent I t is highly instructive to consider e g the
signicance of any hysterical phobia or o f an ago
Suppose a neurotic incapable of cross
r aphob ia
ing the street alone which we would j ustly call a

symptom
We attempt to remove this symp
tom by urging him to the action which he deems
,

FUN C TION OF THE DREAM

1 77

himself incapable of The result will be an attack

of anxiety j ust as an attack of anxiety in the street
has often been the cause of establishing an ago
We thus learn that the symptom has
r aphob ia
been constituted in order to guard against the out
break of the anxiety The phobia is thrown before
the anxiety like a fortress on the frontier
Unless we enter into the part played by the af
feets in these processes which can be done here only
imperfectly we cannot continue our discussion
Let us therefore advance the proposit ion that the
reason why the suppression of the unconscious b e
comes absolutely neces sary is because if the dis
charge of presentation should be left to itself it
would develop an a ffect in the Unc which originally
bore the character of pleasure but which since the
appearance of the repression bears the character
of pain The aim as well as the result of the sup
pression is to stop the development of this pain
The suppression extends over the unconscious idea
tion because the liberation of pain might emanate
from the ideation The found ation is here laid for
a very denite assumption concerning the nature
of the a ffective development It is regarded as a
motor or secondary activity the key to the innerva
tion of which is located in the presentations of the
Unc Through the domination of the F ore c
,

DREAM P SYC HOLO GY

1 78

these presentations become as it were throttled

and in hibited at the exit of the emotion developing
impulses The danger which is due to the fact
that the Foree ceases to occupy the energy there
fore consists in the fact that the unconscious excita

tions liberate such an a ff ect as in consequence of

the repression that has previously taken plac e can

only be perceived as pain or anxiety
This danger is released through the full sway of
the dream process The determinations for its re
aliz at ion consist in the fact that repressions have
taken place and that the suppressed emotional
wishes shall become suicie nt ly strong They thus
stand entir ely without the psychological realm of
the dream structure Were it not for the fact that
our subj ect is connected through j ust one factor
namely the freeing of the Unc during sleep with
the subj ect of the development of anxiety I could
dispense with discussion of the anxiety dream and
thus avoid all obscurities connected with it
As I have often repeated the theory of the aux
I
ie t y belongs to the psychology of the neuroses
would say that the anxiety in the dream is an anx
We have
ie t y problem and not a dream problem
nothing further to do with it after having once
demonstrated its point of contact with the sub ect
of the dream process There is only one thing left
,

DREAM P S Y C H O L O G Y

1 80

by the Latin coitus but to which the

dream distinctly alludes by the selection of the
birds heads I must have suspected the sex ual
signicance of the word from the facial expression
of my worldly wise teacher M y mother s fea
tures in the dream were copied from the count e
nance of my grandfather whom I had seen a f ew
days before his death snoring in the stat e of coma
The interpretation of the secondary elaborat i on i n
the dream must therefore have been that my mother
w as dying ; the tomb relief too agrees with this
In this anxiety I awoke and could not calm myself
until I had awakened my parents I remember
that I suddenl y became calm on coming face to
face with my mother as if I needed the assur ance
that my mother was not dead But this secondary
interpretation of the dream had been e ff ected onl y
under the inuence of the developed anx iety I
was not frightened because I dreamed that my
mother was dying but I interpreted the dream in
this manner in the forecons cious e laboration because
I was already under the domination of the anxiety
The latter however could be traced by means of
the repression to an obscur e obvious ly sexual de
sire which had found its satisfying expression in
the visual content of the dream
A man t wenty seven years old who had been se
u cat e d

FUN C TION OF THE DREAM

1 81

ill for a year had had many terrifying dreams

between the ages of eleven and thirteen He
thought that a man with an ax was running after
him ; he w ished to run but felt paralyzed and could
not move from the spot This may be taken as a
good example of a very common and apparently
sexually indi fferent anxie t y dream In the an
alysis the dreamer rst thought of a story told him
by his uncle which chronologically was later than
the dream viz that he was attacked at night b y a
suspicious looking individual Thi s occurrence
led him to b e lie v e t hat he himself might have al
ready heard of a similar episode at the t iine of the
dream In connection with the ax he recalled that
during that period of his life he once hurt his hand
with an ax while choppin g wood This imme di
ately led to his relations -with his younger brother
whom he used to maltreat and knock down In
particular he recalled an occasion when he st ru bk
his brother on the head with his boot until he bled

whereupon his mother remarked :

I fear he will
k ill him some day
While he was seemingly
thinking of the subj ect of violence a remin iscence
from his ninth year suddenly occurred to him His
parents came home late and went to bed while he
was feigning sleep He soon heard panting and
other noises that appe ared strange to him and he
v e re ly

'

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

182

could also make out the position of his parents in

bed His further associations showed that he had
established an analogy between this relation b e
tween his parents and his own relation toward his
younger brother He subsumed what occurred b e

tween his parents under the conception violence

and wrestling and thus reached a sadistic conce p
tion of the coitus act as often happen s among chil
dren The fact that he often noticed blood on his
mother s bed corroborated his conception
That the sexual intercourse of adults appears
strange to children who observe it and arouses fear
in them I dare say is a fact of daily experience I
have explained this fear by the fact that sexual ex
cit e m e nt is not mastered b y their understanding
and is probably also inacceptable to th e m because
their parents are i nvolved in it For the same rea
son this excitement is c onverted into fear At a
still earlier period of life sexual emotion directed
toward the parent of opposite sex does not meet
with repression but nds free expres sion as we
have seen before
For the night terrors with hallucinations ( pavor
n oct u rnu s ) frequently found in children I would
unhesitatingly give the same explanation Here
too we are certainl y dealing with the incompre he n
sible and rej ected sexual feelings which if noted
.

DRE A M P S YC HOLO GY

1 84

I shall never do it again

Occasionally also he

said :
Albert has not done that
Later he
avoided u dressing because as he said the re at
tacked him o nl y when he was un dr essed From
amid these evil dreams which menaced his health
he was sent into the country where he recovered
within a year and a half but at the age of fteen

J e n osais pas l av ou e r mais

he once c onfessed :

r
o
u
v
i
continuellement
des
picote
ents
des
a
s
m
e
t
j p
s urexcitations aux part ie s; a la n cel a m ne rv ait
tant que plusieurs fois j ai pens me j eter par la

fen etre au dortoir

It i s certainly not difcult to suspect : 1 that
the boy had practiced masturbation in former
years that he probably denied it and was threat
ened with Severe punishment for his wrongdoing
Al
his
confession
:
J
e
e
1
ferai
plus
his
denial
:
n
e
;
(
bert n a j amais fait c a ) 2 That un der the pres
sure oi puberty the temptation to self abuse
through the tickling of the genitals w as r e aw ak
ened 3 That now however a struggle of re pre s
sion arose in him suppressing the libido and chang
ing it into fear which subsequently took t he form
of the punishments with which he was then threat
e ned
Let us however quote the conclusions drawn by
our author T his observation shows : 1 That

FUN C TION OF

TH E

D R EAM

1 85

the inuence of puberty may produ ce in a boy

of de licate health a condition of extreme weaknes s
and that it may lead to a v e ry marke d ce re bral
,

mia

anae

This cerebral anae mia produces a transforma

tion of character d e monomaniacal hallucinations,
and very violent nocturnal perhap s also diurnal
states of anx iety
3 Demonomania and the s elf re proaches of t he
day can be traced to the inuences of religious e d
u cat ion which the sub ect u nderwent as a child
4 A l l manifestations disappe ared as a result of
a lengthy so ourn in the country b odily exercise
and the retu rn of physical strength afte r the termi
nation of the period of pub erty
5 A pre disposmg i nuence for the origin of the
c ere b ral condition of the b oy may b e attri buted to
heredity and to the father s chronic syphilitic st ate
The conclud ing remarks of the author read :

Nous avons fait entrer cette ob serv ation dans l e

cadre des dli res apyrt iqu e s d inanit ion car c est
a l ischmie c rb rale que nou s rattachons cet tat

particulier
2

VIII
TH E P

RI M ARY

ARY

A N D S CON D

P ROC E SS
REGRE SSI ON

venturing to attempt to penetrate more deeply

into the psycholo gy of the dream processes I have
un dertaken a di fcult task to which indeed my
power of description is hardly equal To repro
duce in d escription by a succession of words the
simultaneousness of so complex a chain of events
and in doing so to appear unbiassed throughout the
exposition goes fairly beyond my powers I have
now to atone for the fact that I have been unable
in my description of the dream psychology to fol
low the historic development of my views The

view points for my conception of the dream were

reached through earlier investigations in the psy
chol ogy of the neuroses to which I am not supposed
to refer here but to which I am repeatedly forced
to refer wher eas I should prefer to proceed in the
opposite direction and starting from the dream to
establish a connection with the psychology of the
neuroses I am well aware of all the inconv e n
ie nce s arising for the reader from this difculty
b ut I know of no way to avoid them
IN

1 86

DRE AM P SYCHOLO GY

1 88

event of the day be taken up by the dream We

found this holding true for the dream content
which g i ves the dream thought its changed expres
sion by means of disgurement We have said
that from the nature of the association mechan ism
the dream process more easily takes possession of
recent or indi ff erent material which has not yet
been seized by the waking mental activity ; and by
reason of the censor it transfers the psychic intens
ity from the important but also disagreeable to the
indi fferent material The hypermnesia Of the
dream and the resort t o infantile material h ave b e
come main supports in our theory I n our theory
of the dream we have attributed to the wish origi
n ating from the infantile the part of an indispe nsa
ble motor for the formation of the dream
e
naturally coul d not think of doubting the e xpe ri
mentally demonstrated signicance of the ob e ct iv e
sensory stim uli during sleep ; but we have brought
this material into the same relation to the dream
wish as the thought remnants from the waking ac
There was no need of disputing the fact
t iv it y
that the dream interprets the obj ective sensory
stimuli after the manner of an illusion ; but we have
supplied the motive for this interpretati on which
has been left undecided by the authorities The
interpretation follows in such a manner that the
.

THE

PRO CE S S

RE GRE S S I O N

1 89

perceived ob ect is rendered harmless as a sleep dis

turber and becomes available for the wish fu lll
ment Though we do not admit as special sources
of the dream the subj ective state of excitement of
the sensory organs during sleep which seems to
have been demonstrated by Trumbull Ladd we
ar e
nevertheless able to explain this excitement
through the regressive revival of active memories
behind the dream A modest part in our conce p
tion has also been assigned to the inner organic
sensations which are wont to be taken as the cardi
nal point in the explanation of the dream These
the sensation of falling ing or inhibition
y
stand as an ever ready material to be used by the
dream work to express the dream thought as often
as n e ed arises
That the dream process is a rapid and moment ary
one seems to be true for the perception through con
sciou sne ss of the already prepared dre am content ;
the preceding parts of the dream proc ess probably
take a slow u ct uating course We have solved
the riddle of the superabundant dream content com
pressed within the briefest moment by explaining
that this is due to t he appropriation of alm ost fully
formed structures from the psychic life That the
dream is disgured and distorted b y memory we
found to be correct b u t not troublesome as this is
.

DREAM P SYC HOLO GY

190

'

only the last manifest operation in the work of dis

gur e me nt which has been active from the begin
ning of the dream work In the bitter and seem
ingly irreconcilable controversy as to whether the
psychic life sleeps at night or can make the same
use of all its capabilities as during the day we have
been able to agree with both sides though not fully
with either We have found proof that the dream
thoughts represent a most complicated intellectual
activity e mploying a lm ost every means furnished
by the psychic apparatus ; still it cannot be denied
that these d ream thoughts have originated during
the day and it is indispensable to assume that there
is a sleeping state of the psychic life Thus ev en
the theory of partial sleep has come into play ; but
the characteristics of the sleeping state have been
found not in the dilapidation of the psychic connec
tions but in the cessation of the psychic system
dominating the day arising from its desire to sleep
The withdrawal from the outer world retains its
signicance also for our con ception ; though not the
onl y factor it nevertheless helps the regression to
make possible the representation of the dream
That we should re ect the voluntary guidance of the
presentation course is uncontestable ; but the psy
for we
chic life doe s not thereby become a imless
have seen that after the aban donment of the desired
.

D R E Al VI P SYCHOLO GY

1 92

the day participate in the formation of the dr eam ;

and with us as with D elage the suppre sse d ma
t e rial becomes the main spring of the dreaming
We have fully recogniz ed the r i e which S che rn e r
ascribes to the dream phantasy and even his inter
e t at ion ; but we have been obliged so to speak to
r
p
conduct th e m to another department in the prob
lem It is not the dr eam that produces the phan
t asy but the unconscious phantasy that takes the
greatest part in the formation of the dr eam
thoughts We are in debted to S che rne r for his
clew to the sour ce of the dream thoughts but almost
everything that he ascribes to the dr eam work is
attributable to the activity of the unconscious
which is at work durin g the day and which sup
plies in citements not onl y for dreams but for neu
We have had to separate
r ot ic symptoms as well
the dream work from this activity as being some
thing entirely di e re nt and far more restricted
Finall y we have by no means abandoned the rela
tion of the dr eam to mental distur bances but on
the contrary we have given it a more solid founda
tion on new ground
Thus held together by the new material of our
theory as by a superior unity we nd the most
varied and most contradictory conclusions of the
authorities tting into our structur e ; some of them
,


THE PRO CE S S RE GRE S S I O N

1 93

are di fferently disposed only a few of them are

entirely rej ected But our own structure is still
unnished For disregarding the many ob scu ri
ties which we have necessarily encountered in our
advance into the dark ness of psychology we are
now apparently embarrassed by a new cont radic
tion On the one hand we have allowed the dream
thoughts to proceed from perfectly normal mental
operations while on the other hand w e have found
among the dream thoughts a numb er of entirely
abnormal mental processes which extend likewise
to the dream contents These conse quently w e
have repeated in the interpretat ion of the dream

All that w e have terme d the dream work seems

so remote from the psychic processes recognized by
us as correct that the severest j udgments of the
author s as to the low psychi c activity of dreaming
seem to u s well founded
Perhaps only through still further advance can
enlightenment and improvement be brought about
I shall pick out one of the constellations leading to
the formati on of dreams
We have learned that the dream replaces a num
ber of thoughts derived from daily life which are
perfectly formed logically We cannot therefore
doubt that these thoughts originate from our nor
mal mental life All the qualities which w e esteem
,

DREAM P SYCHOLOGY

194

in our mental operations and which distinguish

these as complicated activities of a high order we
nd repeated in the dream thoughts There is
however no need of assuming that this mental work
is performed dur in g sleep as this would materially
impair the conception of the psychic state of sleep
w e have hitherto adhered to
These thoughts may
j ust as well have ori gi nated from the day and nu
noticed by our consciousness from their inception
they may have continued to develop until they stood
complete at the onset of sleep If we are to con
elude anything from this state of a ffairs it will at
most prove t hat t he most comple x me nt al op e ra
,

t ions

are

l
ib
s
o
s
e
p

wit hou t t he

coo
e
r
a
t
i
n
o
o
p

con

which we have already learned inde pe nd

ently from every psychoanalysis of persons su ffer
ing from hysteria or obsessions These dr eam
thoughts are in themselves surely not incapable of
consciousn e ss ; if they have not become conscious to
us during the day this may have various reasons
The state of becoming conscious depends on the ex
e rcise of a certain psychic function viz attention
which seems to b e ext ended o nl y in a denite quan
tity and which may have been withdrawn from the
Ah
stream of thought in question by other aims
other way in which such mental streams are kept

from consciousness is the following Our conscious

s ciou sne ss,

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

1 96

their own emotions The end stream of thought

stocked with energy is under certain conditions able
to draw to itself the attention of consciousness

through which means it then receives a surplus of

energy
We shall b e oblige d somewhat later to
elucidate our assumption concerning the nature and
act ivity of consciousness
A train of thought thus incited in the Foree may
either disappear spontan e ously or continue The
former issue we conceive as follows : It diffuse s
its energy through all the association paths e manat
ing from it and throws the entire chain of ideas into
a state of excitement which after last ing for a
while subsides through the transformation of the
excitement requiring an outlet into dormant e u
If this rst issue is brought about the pro
e rgy
cess has no further signicance for the dream forma
tion But other end presentations are lurking in
ou r foreconscious that origin ate from the sources
of our unconscious and from the ever a ctive wishes
These may take possession of the excitations in the
circle of thought thus left to itself establish a con
ne ct ion between it and the u ncon scmu s wish and
transfer to it the energy inherent in the unconscious
wish Henceforth the neglected or suppressed
i n o ur S t d i n
0 f t h sign i can t o bservati ons b y J B
H y t i 1 895 a nd 2 nd ed 1 9 09
.

s e r a,

ue ue r

es


THE PRO CE S S RE GR E S S I O N

197

train of thought is in a position to mainta i n i tself

although this reinforcement does not help it to gain
access to consciousness We may say t hat the
hitherto foreconscious train of thought has been
drawn into the unconscious
Other constellations for the dream formation
would result if the forec onscious train of thought
had from the beginning been connected with the
unconscious wish and for that reason met with r e
t
i
o
c
n
e
by
the
dominating
end
occupation
or
if
an
;
j

unconscious wish were made active for other pos

sib ly somatic
r e a son s and of its own accord sought
a transference to the psychic remnants not occupied
by the F ore c All three cases nally combine in
one issue so that there is established in the fore con
scious a stream of thought which having b e e n aban
d one d by the foreconscious occupation receives oc
cu pat ion from the unconsc i ous wish
The stream of thought is henceforth subj ected
to a ser i es of transformations which we no longer
recognize as normal psychic processes and which
give us a surpri smg result Vi z a psychopathological
formation Let us emphas i ze and group the same
1 The intensities of the individual ideas become
capable of discharge in their entirety and proceed
i ng from one conception to the other , they thus
form single presentations endowed with marked in
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

1 98

tens ity Through the repeated recurrence of this

e
t
h
n
e
roc
ss
i
tensit
of
an
ntir
t
i
of
id
as
e
r
a
n
e
m
a
e
p
y
y
ult imate ly be gathe re d in a single pre sentation ele
ment This is the p ri nciple of compre ssion or con
d e nsa t ion
It is conde nsation that is mainly re
Sponsible f or the strange impre ssion of t he dr e am
fOr we know of nothing analo gous t o it in t he nor
mal psychic li f e accessible t o consciou sne ss We
nd here also p re s e ntations W
hi ch !pos se ss great
h
s
i
c
n
n
r
e
i
ica
c
j
u
c
t
ions
or
end
s
lts
s
n
e
s
s
e
u
a
a
py
g
of W
hole chains of thought ; but this validity doe s
not manifest i t self in any character con spicu ous
e nough f or inte rnal percept i on ; he nce what has
been presented in it does not b e come in any way
more int e nsive I n t he pro ces s of condens ation t he
entire psychic c onn e ction b e come s t rans fo rmed into
the intensity of the pre sent ation cont e nt It is the
s ame as in a book whe re we sp ace or print in he avy
type any word Upon whi ch parti cular st re ss is l aid
for the und e rstanding of the t e xt I n speech the
s ame word would b e pronounce d l oudly and de
l ib e r at e ly and with emphasis
The rs t r ompari
son l e ads us at on ce to a n example t aken fr om t he

i
n
e
i
n
i
e t hyl am
Ork
c h ap t er on
The D r eam
t
r
(
.

'

call our at t e nt ion to the fact t hat t he most ah

cient historical sculptur es foll ow a similar principle
art

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

2 00

question of selection and retention of the proper

presentation element On the other hand com
sit e and compromise formations occur with ex
o
p
t raor dinary frequency when we are trying to nd
the linguistic expression for foreconscious thoughts ;

these are considered slips of the tongue

3 The presentations which transfer their intensi
ties to one another are v e ry loose ly conne ct e d and
are j oined together by such forms of association as
are spurned in our serious thought and are utilized
in the production of the e ff ect of wit only Among
these we particu larly nd associations of the sound
and consonance types
4 Contradictory thoughts do not strive to e limi
nate one another but remain side by side They
often unite to produce condensation as if no con
t radict ion existed or they form compromises for
which we should never forgive our thoughts but
which we frequently approve of in our actions
These are some of the most conspicuous abnor
mal processes to which the thoughts which have
previously been rationally formed are subj ected in
the cour se of the dream work As the main feature
o f these processes we rec ognize the high importance
attache d to the fact of rendering the occupation
e nergy mobile and capable of discharge ; the content
and the actual si gnicance of t he psychic elements
.


THE P R O CE S S R E G RE S S I O N

201

to which these energies adhere become a matter of

secondary importance One might possibly think
that the condensation and compromise formation is
e ff ected only in the service of regression when oc
casion arises for changing thoughts into pictures

But the analysis and still more distinctly the

synthesis of dreams which lack regression toward

pictures e g t he dream A ut odidask e r Conversa

tion with Court Councilor
present the same
processes of displacement and condensation as the
others
Hence we cannot refuse to acknowledge that the
t w o kinds of essentially di ff erent psychic processes
participate in the formation of the dream ; one
forms perfectly correct dream thoughts which are
equivalent to normal thoughts while the other
treats these ideas in a highly surprising and incor
rect manner The latter process we have already
set apart as the dream work proper
hat have
we now to advance concerning this latter psychic
?
process
e shoul d b e unab le to answer this q ue stion here
if we had not penetr a
ted considerab ly into the psy
cholo
of
the
euroses
and
especially
of
hysteria
n
gy
From this we learn that the same i ncorrect psychic

processes as well as others that have not b e en

enumerate d contr ol the formation of hysterical

,

DREAM PSYC HOLO G Y

2 02

symptoms In hysteria too we at once nd a

series of perfectly correct thoughts equivalent to
our conscious thoughts of whose existence how
ever in this form we can learn nothing and which
w e can only subsequently reconstru ct
If they
have forced their way anywhere to our perce ption
we discover from the analysis of the symptom
formed that these norm al thoughts have b e en sub
d
to
abnormal
treatment
and
v
e
e
c
e
b
t
h
a
e
e
n
t
r
n
s
a
j
,

forme d
t ion

int o t he

an

mp t om by me ans

mpromise format ion

co

iat ions

assoc

sy

unde r

co e r

conde nsa

t hrough supe r cial

cont radict ions,

and

v e nt u ally ov e r t he road of re gre ssion I n Vie w of

the complete ident ity found be tween the peculiari
ties of the dream work and of the psychic activity
forming the psychoneurotic symptoms w e shall
feel j ustied in transferring to the dream the con
e lusions urged upon us by h ysteria
From the theory of hysteria we borrow the prop
osit ion that su ch an abnormal psychic e la borat ion
e

mal

a nor

t rain

t hought t ake s pla ce only whe n

t he la t t e r has be e n use d
u ncons cious

or t he t rans e re nce o

an

from t he infant ile life

wish which dat e s

In
accordance
with
f
this proposition we have construed the theory of
the dream on the assumption that the actuating
d ream wish invariably originates in the unconscious
and

is in

a st at e o

re pre ssion

2 04

DREAM P SYC HOLO GY

is regulated automatically by the perception of

pleasure and pain The r st wish must have been
an hallucinatory occupation of the memory for
gratication But this hallucination unless it were
main tained to the point of e x haustion proved in
capable of bringing about a cessation of the desire
and consequently of securing the pleasure conn ected
with gratication

Thus there was required a second activity in

our terminology the activity of a second system
which should not permit the memory occupation to
advance to perception and therefrom to restrict the
psychic forces but should lead the excitement
emanating from the craving stimul us by a devious
path over the spontaneous motility which ultimately
should so change the outer world as to all ow the
real perception of the obj ect of grat ication to
take place Thus far we have elaborated the plan
of the psychic apparatus ; these two systems are the
germ of the Unc and F ore c which we include in
the fully developed apparatus
In order to be in a position successfully to change
the outer world through the motility there is r e
quired the accumulation of a large sum of e x pe ri
e n ce s in the memory systems as well as a manifold
xation of the relations which are evoked in this
memory material by different end presentations
.


PRO CE S S

THE

RE GRE S S I ON

2 05

We now proceed further with our assumption

The manifold activity of the second system tenta
t iv e ly sending forth and retracting energy must
on the one hand have full command over all mem
ory material but on the other hand it would be a
superuous expenditure for it to send to the in
dividual mental paths large quantities of energy
which would thus ow off to no purpose diminish
ing the quantity available for the transformation
of the outer world In the interests of expediency
I therefore postulate that the second system suc
ce e d s in maintaining the greater part of the occupa
tion energy in a dormant state and in using but a
small portion for the purposes of displacement
The mechanism of these processes is entirely u n
known to me ; any one who wishes to follow up
these ideas must try to nd the physical analogies
and prepare the way for a demonstration of the
process of motion in the stimulation of the neuron
I merely hold to the idea that the ac tivity of the
P
rst system is directed t o t he fre e ou t ow of t he
t
x
t
e
m
e
n
d
that
the
second
sys
c
i
an
n
t
e
u
t
s
o
e
a
i
i
f
q
tem b rings about an inhibition of this outow
through the energies emanating from it i e it pro
duces a t ransformat ion int o dorman t e ne rgy prob
I therefore assume that
a bly by raising t he le v e l
under the c ontrol of the second system as compared
.

D R EA M P SYC HOLO GY

2 06

with the rst the course of the excitement is bound

to entirely di fferent mechanical conditions After
t he second system has n ished its tentative mental
W ork it removes t he inhibition and congestion of
the excitements and allows these excitements to ow
off to the motility
A n interesting train of thought now presents
itself if we consider the relations of this inhibition
of discharge by the second system to the regulation
thr ough the principle of pain Let us now seek
the counterpart of the primary feeling of gr at ica
tion namely the obj ective feeling of fear A per
ce pt iv e stimulus acts on the primitive apparatus
becoming the source of a painful emotion This
will then be followed by irregular motor manifesta
t ions until one of these with dr aws the apparatus
from perception and at the same time from pain
but on the reappearance of the perception this mani
f e st at ion will immediately repeat itself ( perhaps
as a m ovement of ight ) until the perception has
again disappeared But there will here remain no
tendency again to occupy the perception of the
sour ce of pain in the form of an hallucination or in
any other form O n the contrary there will b e a
ten dency in the primary apparatus to abandon the
painful memory picture as soon as it is in any way
awakened as the overow of its excite ment would
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

2 08

the rst possibility as the principle of pain also

manifests itself as a regulator for the emotional dis
ch arge of the second system ; we are therefore di
that
this
r e ct e d to the second possibil ty namely
i
system occupies a r e miniscence in such a m anner as
to inhibit its discharge and hence also to inhibit
the discharge comparable to a motor innervation
for the development of pain Thus from two start
ing points we are led t o the hypothesis that occupa
tion through the second system is at the same time
an inhibition for the emotional discharge viz from
a consideration of the principle of pain and from
the principle of the smallest expen diture of inner

vation Let us however keep to the fact t his is

the key to the theory of repression that the second

system i s capable of occupying an idea only when
it is in position to check the development of pain
emanating from it Whatever withdr aws itself
from this inhibition also remains inaccessible for the
second system and would soon be abandoned by
virtue of the principle of pain The inhibition of
pain howeve r need not be complete ; it must be
permitted to begin as it in dicates to the second
system the nature of the memory and possibly it s
defective adaptation for the purpose sought by the
mind
The psychic process which is a dm itted by the
,


PRO CE S S

THE

RE GRE S S I O N

2 09

rst system only I shall now call the primary pro

cess ; and the one resultin g from the inhibition of
the second system I shall call the se condary pro
cess I show by another point for what purpose
the second system is obliged to correct the primary
process The primary process strives for a dis
charge of the e x cit e me ht in order to establish a
r
identity
with
the
sum
of
excitement
thus
e
n
ce
t
o
i
p
p
gathered ; the secon
dary process has abandone d this
intention and undertaken instead the task of bring
ing about a t hought ide nt it y All thinking is only
a circuitous path from the memory of gratication
taken as an end presentation to the identical oc
cupat ion of the same memory which is again to b e
attained on the track of the motor experiences
The state of thinking must take an interest in the
c onnecting paths between the presentations without
allowing itself to be misled by their intensities
But it is ob vious that condensations and intermedi
ate or compromise formations occurring l n the
presentations impede the attainment of this end
identity ; by substituting one idea for the other they
deviate from the path which otherwise would have
been continued from the original idea Such pro
cesses are therefore carefully avoided in the second
ary thinking Nor is it difcult to understand that
the principle of pain also impedes the progress of
.

D R EAM P S YCHOLOGY

2 10

the mental stream in its pursuit of the thought

identity though indeed it o ffers to the mental
stream the most important points of departure
Hence the tendency of the t h inking proc ess must
be to free itself more and more from exclusive ad
j ustment by the principle of pain and through the
workin g of the mind to r e strict the a ff e ctive de
v e lopme nt to that minimum which is necessary as
a signal This rene ment of the ac tivity must have
been attained through a r ecent overoccupation of
ener gy brought about by con sciou sness But we
a re awa re that this ren ement is seldom completely
suc cessful even in t he most normal psychic life and
that our t houghts ever remain acce ssible to falsica
t ion through the interference of t he principle of
pain
This h owever is not the breach in the functional
e fciency of our psychic appar atus thr ough which
the thoughts f or ming the mate rial of the se c ondary
mental work are ena bled to make t heir w ay into

the primary psychic proces s w ith which formula

we may now describe the work leading to the dream
This case of in
and to the hysterical symptoms
su cie ncy resul ts from the union of t he two fa ctors
from the history of our evolution ; one of whi ch be
longs sol ely to the psychic apparatus and has e x
e rt e d a determining inuence on the relation of the
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

212

a compulsion t o which they have to submit and

w hich they must strive if possible to divert from its
course and direct to higher aims In consequence
of this retardation of the foreconscious occupation
a large sphere of the m
emory material remains in
accessible
Among these indestru ct ible and unincumbered
wish feelings originating from the infantil e life
there are also some the fu lllme nt s of which have
entered into a relation of contradiction to t he end
presentation of the secondary thinkin g The ful
llm e nt of these wishes would no longe r produce an
a ffect of pleasure but one of pain ; and it is
t his
.

t ransforma t ion of

e ct

what we d e signat e

as

t he infant ile

t hat

const it u t e s

re pre ssion,

t he nat ure

in which we

e
r
v
e
s
f
To in
s e nt e nce or of re j e ct ing t hrou gh re as on
v e st igat e in what way and through what motive
forces s uch a transformation can be produced con
st it u t e s the problem of repression which w e need
here onl y skim over It will suffice to remark t hat
such a transformation of a ff ect occurs in the course
of developm e nt ( one may think of the appearance
in infantile life of disgust which w as origin ally ab
sent ) and that it is connected with the activity of
the secondary system The memories from which
the uncon scious wish brings about the e motional dis
re cogniz e

rst

n
as
s
i
a
d
p
g

st e p o


THE P R O CE S S RE GRE S S I O N

2 13

charge have never been accessible t o the F ore c and

for that reason their emotion al discharge cannot b e
inhibited It is j ust on account of this a ff ective
development that these ideas are not even now ao
cessible to the foreconscious thoughts to which they
have transferred their wishing power On the con
t rary the prmmpl e of p ain c omes into play and
causes the Force to deviate from t hese thoughts of
tran sference The latter, left to themselves are

repressed and thus t he existence of a store of in

f ant ile memories from the ve ry beginning with
drawn from the F ore c becomes the preliminary
con dition of repression
In the most favorable case the development of
pain terminates as soon as the energy has been with
drawn from the thoughts of transference in the
F ore c and this e ff ect characteriz es the intervention
of t he principle of pain as expedient It is di ff er
ent however if the repressed unconscious wish re
ce iv e s an organic enforcement which it can lend to
its thoughts of transference and t hrough which it
can enable them to make an e ffort towards pene
t rat ion with their excitement even after they have
b een aban doned by the occupation of the P orec
A defensive struggle then ensues inasmu ch as t he
Forc e r einforces the antagonism against the re
pressed ideas and sub sequently this leads to a pen
.

'

DREAM P SYCHOLO G Y

2 14

by the thoughts of transference ( the car

rie r s of the unconscious wish ) in some form of com
promise through symptom formation But from
the moment that the suppressed thoughts are po w
e r fu ll
occupied
by
the
unconscious
wish
feeling
y
and abandoned by the foreconscious occupation
they succumb to the primary ps y chic process and
strive only for motor discharge ; or if the path be
free for hallucinatory revival of the desired percep
tion identity We have previously found e mpiri
cally that the incorrect processes described are e n
acted onl y with thoughts that exist in the r e pre s
sion We now grasp another part of the conn ec
tion These incorrect processes are those that are
primary in the psychic apparatus ; t he y appe ar
e t rat ion

whe re ve r t hought s
occupa t ion are

a b and one d

le f t t o

by t he
t he mse l v e s and
,

ore consciou s

can

e
m
l
h
l
t

ving for dis

We may add a f e w
charge from t he u n cons ciou s
further observations to support t he view that these

processes designated incorrect are really not

f al sicat ion s of the normal defective thinking but
the modes of activity of the psychic apparatus when
freed from i nhibition Thus we se e that the trans
ference of the forecon scious excitem e nt to the motil
it y takes place according to the same processes and
that the connection of the foreconscious presenta

s e lve s

wit h t he

u ninhibit e d e ne rgy, s t ri
.

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

2 16

d eam wish invariably originates from the

r

u ncon

scious
N or will I further investigate the di ffer
ence in the play of t he psychic forces in the dream
formatio n and in the formation of the hysterical
symptoms for to do this we ought to possess a more
explicit knowledge of one of t he membe rs to be
compared But I regard an other point as impor
tant and will here confess that it was on account
H ere as i n o ther p l a c es there are gaps i n the t reatme n t o f the
s ubject which I have l eft i nten ti on ally because t o ll them up w oul d
req uire on the on e han d t oo great ff t an d on the other han d an
exte n sive refere n ce t o material that is foreign t o the d eam Thus I
have av o ided stati n g whether I c onn ect with the w o rd suppre sed
another s n se than with t h w o rd repressed I t has bee n made
clear onl y that the l atte emphasi es m o r than the former the rel ation
t o the un c on s c i o us I have no t e n tered in to the c o gnate pr oblem why
the dream thoughts als o experie n ce disto rti on b y the ce n s o r whe n
they ab n d on the pr o gressive c on ti n uati on to c on sci ous nes an d choo se
the path o f r egression I have bee n ab o ve all anxi ous t o awake n an
in terest i n t h pr o blems t o which the further a n aly sis o f the d eam
w o rk l eads an d t o i ndicate the o ther themes wh h meet the se on t h
I t was no t alw ys easy t o decide just where the pursuit shoul d
w y
be discontinued That I have no t tr eate d exhaustively the part
pl ayed i n the dream b y the psycho sexual life an d have av oided the
sexual c on te n t is due t o a
in terpretation o f dream o f
n o b vi o u
p ial r eas on which m y n t c ome up to t h reader s expectati on
T o be su re it is ve ry far fr o m my ideas an d t h pri n ciple expressed
b y me in n eur o path o l o gy t o regard the sexual life as a pude n dum
whi ch sh oul d be left un c on sidered b y the physician and the scie ntic
i nvestigat o r I al s o con sider ludicr ous the m o ral i n dign ati on which
pr ompted the tr n slato r o f A t mid
o f D l d i to keep fr om the
r eader k no wl edge the chapter on sexual dreams ontai ned i n the
A s fo r myself I have bee n ac tuated
m
S y mb o li m f t h D
l ly b y t h c on victi o n that i n t h expl n ati on o f sexual dreams
I shoul d be b o un d t o e ntan gl myself deeply i n the still u n explai n ed
pr oblems o f perversi on an d bisexuality ; and fo r that reas on I have
r r e d thi mat erial fo r ano ther c onn cti on
1

or

'

s ec

r e

rea

ese

so e

or os


THE P R O C E S S R E G R E S S IO N

217

of this very point th a t I have j ust und ertaken this

entire discussion concerning the two psy chic sys
tems their modes of operation and the repression
F or it is now immaterial whether I have conceived
the psychological relations in questi on with ap
pro x imate correct ness or as is easily possible in
such a difcult mat t e r in an erroneous and frag
mentary manner Whatever changes may be made
in the interpret ation of t he ps y chic cens or and of
the correct and of the abnorma l el abor ation of the
dre am cont e nt the fact nevertheless r e mains that
such processes are active in dr e am f ormation and
that es sentiall y they sho w the closest anal ogy t o
the process es observed in the form ation of the
hysterical symptoms The dream is not a patho
logic al ph enomenon and it does not leave behind
an enfeeblement of the mental faculties
The ob
t
i
o
e
c
n
that
n
deduction
can
be
dra
w
rega
r
ing
o
n
d
J
the dreams of healthy persons from my own dreams
and from those of neurotic patients may be re e ct e d
without co ment Hence when w e draw conclu
sions from the phenomena as to their motive forces
we recogniz e that t h e ps y chic mech anism made use
of by the neuro ses is not created b y a morbid dis
t urb ance of the psy chic life but is found ready
the normal structure of the ps y chic apparatus
The two psychic systems the censor crossing b e
.

DREAM

218

P S Y C HOLO G Y

tween them the inhibition and the covering of the

one activity by the other the relations of both t o

consciousness or whatever may o ffer a more cor

rect interpretation of the actual conditions in their

stead all these belong t o the normal structure of

our psychic instrum ent and the dream points out
for us one of the roads leading t o a knowledge of
this structure If in ad dition to our knowledge
we wish t o be contented with a minimum perfectly
established we shall say that the dream gives us
proof that the suppre sse d mat e rial con t inu e s t o
,

e x is t e ve n in

t he n orma l pe rson

i
t
t
s
c
h
c
i
a
c
v
i
p y
y

and re

mains cap able

The
dream
itself
is
one
of
the
f
manifestations of this suppressed material ; theor
e t ically this is true in al l cases ; according t o sub
st ant ial experience it is true in at le as t a great num
ber of such as most conspicuously display the
prominent characteristics of dream life The sup
pressed psychic mat e rial which in the waking state
has been prevent e d from expression and cut off
from internal perception by t he ant agonist ic ad
nds
ways
and
n
n
t
h
c
t
r
i
c
t
i
t
m
n
a
d
o
s
u
s
e
t
e
o
o
f
j
means of obtruding itself on cons ciousness during
the night under the domination of the compromi se
formations
o

Fle c t e re

si nagna o sn pe r os,

A che ront a

move bo

IX
T H E U N CON SC I O U S A N D

C O N SC IO U SN E SS
RE A LI TY

ON c loser inspection we nd that it is not the e x

ist e nce of two syste ms near the motor end of the

apparatus but of two kinds of processes or modes

of emotional discharge the assum ption of which
was explained in the ps ychological discussions of
the previous chapter This can make no di fference
for us for we must always be read y to drop our
auxiliary ideas whenever we deem ourselves in posi
tion to replace them by something else approaching
more closely to the unknown reality Let us now
t r y t o correct some views which might be e rrone
ou sly formed as long as we regarded the two sys
tems in the cru dest and most obvious sense as two
localities within the psychic apparatus views which

have left their traces in the terms repression and

"

penetration
Thus when we say that an u ncon
scious idea strives for transference into the fore
conscious in order later t o penetrate consciousness
we do not mean that a second idea is to be formed
situated in a new locality like an interlineation near
\

2 20

'

THE UN C O N S C IO U S R EALI T Y

221

which the original c ontinues to rem ain ; als o whe n

w e speak of penetration into consciousness w e w ish
carefully to avoid any idea of change of locality
When we say that a foreconsciou s idea is repre ssed
a nd subsequently taken up by the unconsciou s we
might be tempted by thes e gures borrowed from
the idea of a struggle over a territory to assu me
that an arrangeme nt is reall y broken up in one
psychic locality and replaced by a new one in the
other loca lity F or the s e comparis on s we sub st i
tute what would seem to correspond better with the
real state of a ffairs by saying that an e nergy occupa
tion is dis pl ac e d to or w ithdrawn from a certai n
a rra ngement so that the p syc hic formation f al l s
under the domination of a syste m or is withdrawn
from the same Here again we replace a topic al
mode of presentation b y a dy namic ; it is not the
psychi c formati on that appears to u s as t h e moving
factor but the innervation of the same
I deem it appropriate and j u sti able however to
apply ourselves still further t o the illu strative con
We shall avoid any
ce pt ion of the two s y stems
misapplica tion of t his manne r of repre sentation if
w e remember that presentations thought s and psy
chic formations should generally not be localiz ed
t
in the organic ele ment s of the ne rvous system bu
so to speak betwee n them where resistances and
,

D R EA M P S Y C HOLO G Y

222

paths form the correlate corresponding to them

Everything that can become an obj ect of our in
ternal perception is v irt ual like the image in the
telescope produced by t he passage of the rays of
light But we are j ustied in assuming the ex
ist e nce of the systems which have nothing psychic
i n themselves and which never become accessible t o
our psychic perception correspond ing t o the lenses
of the telescope which design the image If we
cont inue this comparison we may say that the cen
sor between two systems corresponds to the r e fr ac
tion of r ays during their passage into a new me
.

Thus far w e have made psychology on our own

responsibility ; it is now time t o examine the the
ore t ical opinions governing present day psychology
and t o test their relation t o our th eories The ques
tion of the unconscious in psychology is according
to the authoritative w ords of Lipps less a psycho
logical question than the question of psychology
As long as psychology settled this question with the

verbal explanation that the psychic is the con

scious and that unconscious psychic occurrences

are an obvious contradi ction a psychological esti
mate of the observations gained by the phy sician
from abnormal mental states was precluded The
physician and the philosopher agree only when both

DREAM P SYCHOLOGY

2 2 4s

a remote ps y chic pr oduct of the unconscious pro cess

and that the latter has not b ecome cons cious as such ;
that it has been in existence and operative without
betraying itself in any way t o consciousness
e
A reaction from the ov r estimation of the qual
ity of consciousness becomes the in dis pensable pre
liminary condition for any correct insight into the
behavior of the psychic In t he words of Lipps
the unconscious must be accepted as the general
b sis of the psychic life
The unc onscious is the
larger circle which includes wit hin its e lf the smaller
circle of the conscious ; every thing conscious has its
preliminary step in the un conscious Whereas the
unconscious may stop with this step and still claim
full value as a psychic activity P roperly speak
ing the unconscious is the real psychic ; it s inne r
.

n at u r e

is

e xt e rnal

t
r
o
e
d
p

t he

us t as u nknown

world

and

it is

t o us

u st

t o u s t hr ough t he d at a

e x t e rnal

as
as

t he

re al it y o

impe rfe ct ly

t he
re

cons ciou sne ss as

wor ld t hrough t he indicat ions

is

our

se nsory organs .

series o f dre am probl ems w hich have int e nsely

occupied older authors will be laid aside when the
old opposition between conscious life and dream life
is abandoned and the unconscious psy chic assigned
to its proper place Thus many of the activities
wh ose performances in the dream have excited our
A


THE UN C O N S C I O U S REAL I T Y

225

admiration are now no longer t o be attributed t o the

dream but to unc onscious thinking which is also
active during the day If according to Sche rne r
the dream seems to play with a s ymboling re pre se n
t at ion of the bod y we kn ow that this is the w ork of
certain unconscious phantasies which have probably
given in t o sexual emotions and that these phan
t asie s come to expression not only in dr eams but
also in hysterical phobias and in other symptoms
If the dream continues and settles activit ies of the
day and even bri ngs to light valuable in sp irations
w e h ave only t o subtract from it the dre am disgui se
as a feat of dream work and a mark of assistance
from obscure forces in the depth of the m in d ( cf
the devil in Tartini s sonata dream )
The intel
lectual task as such must be at tributed t o the same
sychic
forces
which
perform
all
such
tasks
duri
n
g
p
the day We are probably far too much inclined
to over estimate the conscious character even of in
t e lle ct u al and artistic pr oductions
F rom t he com
municat ions of some of the most highly productive
persons such as G oeth e and Helmholtz w e le arn
indeed t hat the most es sential and original p arts
in their creations came to them in the form of in
spirati ons and reached their percep tions alm ost fin
ishe d
There is nothing st range about the a ssist
ance o f t he consci ous activi t y in ot her case s whe re
,

DREAM P SY C HOLOGY

226

there w as a concerted e ffort of all the psychic forces

But it is a much abused privilege of the conscious
activity that it is allowed to hide from us all other
activities wherever it participates
It will hardly be worth while t o take up the his
t orical sign icance of d reams as a special subj ect
Where for instance a Chieftain has been urged
through a dream to engage in a bold undertaking
the success of which has had the e ffect of changing
history a new problem results only s o long as the
dream regarded as a strange power is contrasted
with other more familiar psychic forces ; the prob
lem however disappears when we regard the dream
as a form of expression for fe elings which are bur
de ne d with resistance during the day and which can
receive reinforcements at night from d eep emotional
sour ces But the great resp e ct shown by the an
cie nt s for the dream is based on a correct psycho
logical surmise I t is a homage paid to the un
subdued and indestructible in the human mind and
to the demoniacal which furnishes the dream wish
and which we nd again in our unconscious

N ot inadvisedly do I use the expression in our

uncon scious for what we s o designate doe s not

comcide with the unconscious of the philosophers
nor with the unconscious of Lipps In the latter
uses it is intended t o designate onl y the op posite of
.

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

228

events or succession of instances as is betraye d

through their alteration by the censor has helped
us to draw a comparison from spatiality We de
scribed the relations of the two systems to e ach
other and to cons cious ness by saying that the sys
tem F ore c is like a s creen between the system Unc
and consciousness The system F ore c not only
bars access to consciousness but also controls the
entrance to voluntary motility and is capable of
sending out a sum of mobil e energy a portion of
which is familiar to us a s attention
We must also steer clear of the distinctions super
conscious and subconscious which have found so
much favor in the more recent literat ure on the
psychoneur oses for j ust such a distinction seems to
emphasiz e the equivalence of the psychic and the
cons cious
What part now remains in our description of the
once all powerful and all overshadowing conscious
?
ness N one other than that of a sensory organ for
the perception of psychic qualities According t o
the fun damental idea of schematic undertaking we
can conceive the conscious perception onl y as the
particul ar activity of an independent s y stem for

which the abbreviated designation C ons com

mends itself This syst e m we conceive to be simil ar
in it s mechanical characteristics to the perception
,


THE UN C O N S C I O U S R EAL I TY

229

system P hence excitable by qualities and incapa

ble of retaining the trace of changes i e it is devoid
of memory The psychic apparatus which with
the sensory organs of the P system is turned t o
the outer world is itself the outer world for the
sensory organ of C ons ; the teleological j u st ica
tion of which rests on this relationship We are
here once more confronted with the principle of the
succession of instances which seems t o dominate the
structure of the apparatus The material under
excitement flows to the C ons sensory organ from
t w o sides rst ly from the P system whose excite
ment qualitatively determined probably e x pe ri
emees a new elaboration until it comes t o conscious
perception ; and secondly from the interior of the
app aratus itself the quantitative processes of which
are perceived as a qualitative series of pl easure and
pain as soon as they have undergone certain
changes
The philosophers w ho have learne d th at co rrect
and highly compli cated thought structures are pos
sible even without the co operation of consciousness
have found it difcult t o attribute any function t o
consciousness ; it has appeared to them a superuous
mirroring of the perfected ps y chic process The
analogy of our C ons system with the s y stems of
perception relieves us of this embarr a ssment We
,

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

2 30

see that perception through our sensory organs re

sul t s in directing the occupation of attention to
those paths on which the incoming sensory excite
ment is di ffused ; the qualitative excitement of the
P system serves the mobile quantity of the psychic
apparatus as a regulator for its discharge We
may claim the same function for the overlying
sensory organ of the C ons system By assuming
new qualities it furnishes a new contribution to
ward the guidance and s uitable distribution of the
mobile occupation quantities By means of the
perceptions of pleasure and pain it in uences the
course of the occupations within the ps ychic ap
paratus which normally operates unconsciously
and through the displacement of quantities It is
probable that the principle of pain rst regul ates
the displacements of occupation automatically but
it is quite possible that the consciousness of these
qualities adds a second and more subtle regulation
which may even oppose the rst and perfect the
working capacity of the apparatus by placing it in
a position contrary t o its original design for oc
cu pying and developing even th at which is con
We learn from
n e ct e d with the liberation of pain
neuropsychology that an important part in the
functional activity of the apparatus is attributed t o
such regulations through the qualitative excitation
.

DREAM P SYCHOLO GY

2 32

pain accompanying them which as we know

are t o be h eld in check a s possible disturbances of
thought In order to endow them with a quality
they are associated in man w ith verbal memories
the qualitative remnants of which sufc e t o draw
upon them the attention of consciousness which in
turn endows thought with a new mobile energy
The manifold problems of consciousness in their
entire ty can be examined only thr ough an analysis
of the hysterical mental proc e ss F rom this an
alysis we receive the impression that the transition
from the f ore consciou s t o the occupation of con
sciou sne ss is also connected with a censorship similar
to the one between the Unc and the F oree This
censorship too begins to act only with the reaching
of a certain quantitative de gree sb that few intense
t hought f ormat ion s escape it
Every possible case
of detention from consciousness as well as of pene
t rat ion to consciousness under restriction is found
included within the picture of the psychoneur otic
phenomena ; every case points to the intimate and
twofold connection between the censor and con
I shall conclude these psychological
sciou sne ss
di scussions with the report of two such occurrences
On the occasi on of a consultation a few years ago
the subj e ct was an intelligent and innocent looking
girl Her attire w as strange ; whereas a woman s
and


THE UN C O N S C I O U S R EAL I T Y

2 33

garb is usually gro omed t o the last fold s he had one

o f her stockings hanging down and tw o of her waist
buttons ope ned S he complained of pai ns in one
of her legs and exposed her leg unrequested Her
chief complaint however was in her ow n w ords as
follows : She had a feeling in her body as if s ome
thing was stuck into it which moved to and fro and
made her tremble through and thr ough This
sometimes made her whole body sti ff O n hearing
this m y colleague in consultation looked at me ; the
compla int w as quite plain to him To b oth of us
it seemed peculiar that the patient s m other thought
nothing of the matter ; of course she herself must
have been repeatedly in t he situatio n de scribed b y
her child As for the girl she had no ide a of the
import of her words or she w ould never have al
lowed them to pass her lips Here the cens or had
been deceived so successfully th a t under the mask
of an innocent complaint a phantasy w as admitted
t o consciousness which otherw ise w ould have re
mained in the f oreconsci ous
Another example : I began the psych oanalyt ic
treatment of a boy of fourteen y ears who w as su ffer
ing from t ic convulsif hysterical v omiting head
ache &c by assuri ng him that after closing his
ey e s he w ould s ee pictures or have ideas which I
requested him t o commu nicate to me He an
,

DREAM P S Y CHO LO GY

2 34

by describing pict ures The last impres

sion he had received before coming to me was visu
ally revived in his memory He had played a game
of checkers with his uncle and now saw the checker
board before him He comm ent e d on various posi
tions th at were favorable or unfavorable on moves
that were not safe to make He then saw a dagger
lying on the checker board an obj ect belonging to
his father but transferred to the checker board b y
his phantas y Then a sickle was lying on the
board ; next a scythe w as added ; and n ally he b e
held the lik eness of an old peas ant mowing the
grass in front of the boy s distant p arental home
A few days later I discovered the meaning of this
series of pictures D isagreeable family relations
h ad made the boy nervous It was the case of a
strict and crabbed father who lived unhappily with
his m other and whose educational methods con
sisted in threats ; of the separation of his father
from his tender and delicate mother and the re
marrying of his father who one day brought home
a y oung woman a s his ne w mamma The illn ess
of the fourteen year old boy broke out a few days
later It was the suppressed anger against his f a
ther th at had composed these pictures into intel
ligible allusions The material was furnished by a
reminiscence from mythology The sickle was the
sw e re d

D REAM P SYCHOLO GY

2 36

value of real forces in the psychic life Should we

take lightly the ethical signicance of the sup
pressed wishes which as they now create dre ams
?
may some day create other things
I do not feel j ustied in answering these qu e s
tions I have not thought further upon this side of
the dream problem I believe however that at all
events t he R oman Emperor was in the wrong who
ordered one of his subj ects executed because the
latter dreamt that he had killed t he Emperor He
sh ould rst have endeavored t o discover the signi
cance of t he dream ; most probably it was not what
it seemed t o be And even if a dream of di ff erent
content had the signicance of this o ffense against
maj esty it would still have been in place to remem
ber the words of P lato that the virtuous man con
tents himself with dreaming that which the wicked
man does in actual life I am therefore of the
opinion that it is best t o accord freedom t o dreams
hether any reality is t o be attributed to the nu
cons cious wishes and l n what sens e I am not pre
pared to say o ffhand R eality must naturall y be

denied t o all transition and intermediate thoughts

If w e had before us the unconscious wishes brought
t o their last and truest expression we should still
do well to remember that more than one single form
of e x istence must be ascribed to the psychic realit y
?


THE UN CO N S C I O U S REAL I T Y

2 37

Act ion and the conscious expression o f thought

mostly sufce for the practical need of j udging a
man s character Action above all merits t o be
placed in the rst rank ; for many of the impulses
penetrating consciousness are neutrali z ed by real
forces of the psychic life before they are converted
into action ; i ndeed the rea son why they frequently
do not encounter any psychl c obstacle on their wa y
is because the unconscious is certain of their meet
ing with r esistances later In any case it is inst ru c
t
W
1
h
tive to become familiar
the much raked up soil
from which our virtues proudly arise F or the
complication of human character moving dynami
cally in all directions very rare ly accommodates
itself to ad u st me nt through a simple alternative as
our antiquated moral philosophy would have it
And how about the value of the dream for a
?
knowledge of the fut ure
That of course we can
not consider One feel s inclined to substitute :

F or the dream or
for a knowledge of the past
To be sure
iginat e s from the past in every sense
the ancient belief that the dream rev eals the future
is not entirely devoid of truth B y representing t o
us a wish as fullled the dream certainl y leads us
into the future ; but this future taken by the
dreamer a s present h as bee n formed into t he like
ness of that past by the indestructible wish

Psy choana ly sis for Beginne rs

by

PRO F

DR

A ut hor

of

SI G M U N D F R E U D

Int e rpre t at ion

Wi h
t

an

A N D R
Aut hor

of

sy L ss n s in Psy

Ea

an d

int r oduct ion by

T R I D oN

cho

e or

"

Dre ams

anal ysis Psy h analysi

y d P a ti
Th
d B h i
Psy h anal ysis
d D
Psy h a nal ysis Sl p
ms

"

of

"

an

ce

an

it s

s,

av or

an

ee

Hist ory,

re a

He re is pre se nt e d
of

in

Fre u d s
a form

t o t he re ad ing pub l ic t he gist

o
r
c
h
o
i
n
h
m
s
e
w
r
l
w
s
t
a
s
o
n
o
e
t
d
s
a
n
d
y
gy
p
w hi ch s hall ne i t he r d i s cou rage b e ginne rs ,
,

nor appe ar t oo e e me nt ary t o t hose

v an ce d

in psy choanaly t i c

st

udy

D re am ps y chol ogy is
and t o all

mode rn ps y

manu al s u ch

w ho

m ore

are

ad

ud

s w orks
t he k e y t o Fre
t h a s imp e com
cho ogy

Wi

D re am P sy chol ogy t he re shall

no l onge r b e any e x cu se for i gnoran ce of t he mos t
re v ol ut ionary psy cholo ical s st e m of mode rn t ime s
g
y

c
a
p t

as

- W4th ST

IHE J AMES A MccANN COMPANY, 188 196

'

WYORK

NE