Part 21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_PART III_ GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

SIXTEENTH LECTURE PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND PSYCHIATRY

It pleases me greatly to see you here again to continue our discussions after a year has passed. Last year the subject of my lectures was the application of psycho-analysis to errors and to dreams; I hope this year to lead you to some comprehension of neurotic phenomena which, as you will soon discover, have much in common with both our former subjects. I must tell you before I begin, however, that I cannot concede you the same attitude towards me now as I did last year. Then I endeavoured to make no step without being in agreement with your judgement; I debated a great deal with you, submitted to your objections, in fact, recognized you and your “healthy common-sense” as the deciding factor. That is no longer possible and for a very simple reason. Errors and dreams are phenomena which were familiar to you; one might say you had as much experience of them as I, or could easily have obtained it. The manifestations of neurosis, however, are an unknown region to you; those of you who are not yourselves medical men have no access there except through the accounts I give you; and of what use is the most excellent judgement where there is no knowledge of the subject under debate?

However, do not receive this announcement as though I were going to give these lectures _ex cathedra_ or to demand unconditional acceptance from you. Any such misconception would do me a gross injustice. I do not aim at producing conviction,—my aim is to stimulate enquiry and to destroy prejudices. If owing to ignorance of the subject you are not in a position to adjudicate, then you should neither believe nor reject. You should only listen and allow what I tell you to make its own effect upon you. Convictions are not so easily acquired, or, when they are achieved without much trouble, they soon prove worthless and unstable. No one has a right to conviction on these matters who has not worked at this subject for many years, as I have, and has not himself experienced the same new and astonishing discoveries. Then why these sudden convictions in intellectual matters, lightning conversions, and instantaneous repudiations? Do you not see that the _coup de foudre_, “love at first sight,” proceeds from a very different mental sphere, from the affective one? We do not require even our patients to bring with them any conviction in favour of psycho-analysis or any devotion to it. It would make us suspicious of them. Benevolent scepticism is the attitude in them which we like best. Therefore will you also try to let psycho-analytical conceptions develop quietly in your minds alongside the popular or the psychiatric view, until opportunities arise for them to influence each other and be united into a decisive opinion.

On the other hand, you are not for a moment to suppose that the psycho-analytic point of view which I shall lay before you is a speculative system of ideas. On the contrary, it is the result of experience, being founded either on direct observations or on conclusions drawn from observation. Whether these have been drawn in an adequate or a justifiable manner future advances in science will show; after nearly two and a half decades and now that I am fairly well advanced in years I may say, without boasting, that it was particularly difficult, intense, and all-absorbing work that yielded these observations. I have often had the impression that our opponents were unwilling to consider this source of our statements, as if they looked upon them as ideas derived subjectively which anyone could dispute at his own sweet will. This attitude on the part of my opponents is not quite comprehensible to me. Perhaps it comes from the circumstance that physicians pay so little attention to neurotics and listen so carelessly to what they say that it has become impossible for them to perceive anything in the patients’ communications or to make detailed observations from them. I will take this opportunity of assuring you that in these lectures I shall make few controversial references, least of all to individuals. I have never been able to convince myself of the truth of the saying that “strife is the father of all things.” I think the source of it was the philosophy of the Greek sophists and that it errs, as does the latter, through the over estimation of dialectics. It seems to me, on the contrary, that scientific controversy, so-called, is on the whole quite unfruitful, apart from the fact that it is almost always conducted in a highly personal manner. Until a few years ago I could boast that I had only once been engaged in a regular scientific dispute, and that with one single investigator, Löwenfeld of Munich. The end of it was that we became friends and have remained so to this day. But I did not repeat the experiment for a very long time because I was not certain that the outcome would be the same.

Now you will surely judge that a refusal of this kind to discuss matters publicly points to a high degree of inaccessibility to criticism, to obstinacy, or, in the polite colloquialism of the scientific world, to “pig-headedness.”[43] My reply to you would be that, should you have arrived at a conviction by means of such hard work, you would also thereby derive a certain right to maintain it with some tenacity. Further, on my own behalf, I can say that in the course of my work I have modified my views on important points, changed them or replaced them by others, and have of course in each case published the fact. What has been the result of this frankness? Some people have ignored my corrections of myself altogether and still to-day criticize me in respect of views which no longer mean the same to me. Others positively reproach me for these changes and declare me to be unreliable on that account. No one who changes his views once or twice deserves to be believed, for it is only too likely that he will be mistaken again in his latest assertions; but anyone who sticks to anything he has once said, or refuses to give way upon it easily enough, is obstinate or pig-headed; is it not so? What is to be done in the face of these self-contradictory criticisms except to remain as one is and behave as seems best to one? This is what I decided to do; and I am not deterred from remodelling and improving my theories in accordance with later experience. I have so far found nothing to alter in my fundamental standpoint and I hope this will never be necessary.

So now I have to lay before you the psycho-analytic theory of neurotic manifestations. For this purpose it will be simplest, on account of both the analogy and the contrast, to take an example which links up with the phenomena we have already considered. I will take a ‘symptomatic act’ which I see many people commit in my own consulting-room. The analyst has little to offer to the people who come to a physician’s consulting-room for half-an-hour to recount the lifelong misery of their fate. His deeper comprehension makes it difficult for him to give, as another might, the opinion that there is nothing wrong with them and that they had better take a light course of hydrotherapy. One of our colleagues once replied, with a shrug, when asked how he dealt with consultation patients, that he “fined them so many crowns for ‘wasting the time of the court.’” You will therefore not be surprised to hear that even the busiest psycho-analysts are not much sought after for consultations. I have had the ordinary door between the waiting-room and my consulting-room supplemented by another door and covered with felt. The reason for this is obvious. Now it constantly happens when I admit people from the waiting-room that they omit to close these doors, leaving even both doors open behind them. When I see this happen, I at once, with some stiffness, request him or her to go back and make good the omission, no matter how fine a gentleman he may be nor how many hours she had spent on her toilet. My action gives the impression of being uncalled-for and pedantic; occasionally too I have found myself in the wrong, when the person turned out to be one of those who cannot themselves grasp a door-handle and are glad when those with them avoid it. But in the majority of cases I was right, for anyone who behaves in this way and leaves the door of a physician’s consulting-room open into the waiting-room belongs to the rabble and deserves to be received with coldness. Now don’t allow yourselves to be biassed before you have heard the rest. This omission on the part of a patient occurs only when he has been waiting alone in the outer room and thus leaves an empty room behind him, never when others, strangers to him, have also been waiting there. In the latter case he knows very well that it is to his own interest not to be overheard while he talks to the physician and he never neglects to close both doors carefully.

Occurring in this way, the patient’s omission is neither accidental nor meaningless, and not even unimportant, for it betrays the visitor’s attitude to the physician. He belongs to that large class who seek those in high places, and wish to be dazzled and intimidated. Perhaps he had made enquiries by telephone at what time he would be most likely to gain admittance and had been expecting to find a crowd of applicants in a queue, as if at the grocer’s in war-time. Then he is shown into an empty room which, moreover, is most modestly furnished, and he is dumbfounded. He must somehow make the physician atone for the superfluous respect he had been prepared to show him; and so he omits to close the doors between the waiting- and the consulting-rooms. He intends this to mean: “Pooh! there is no one here and I daresay there won’t be, however long I stay!” He would behave during the interview in an uncivil and supercilious manner, too, if his presumption were not curbed at the outset by a sharp reminder.