<center><h2><SPAN name="page_057"></SPAN>III<br/> WHY THE DREAM DISGUISES THE DESIRES</h2></center>
<p>In the foregoing exposition we have now learnt something of the dream
work; we must regard it as a quite special psychical process, which, so
far as we are aware, resembles nothing else. To the dream work has been
transferred that bewilderment which its product, the dream, has aroused
in us. In truth, the dream work is only the first recognition of a group
of psychical processes to which must be referred the origin of
hysterical symptoms, the ideas of morbid dread, obsession, and illusion.
Condensation, and especially displacement, are never-failing features in
these other processes. The regard for appearance remains, on the other
hand, peculiar to the dream work. If this explanation brings the dream
into line with the formation of psychical disease, it becomes the more
important to fathom the essential conditions of processes like dream
building. It will be probably a surprise to hear that neither the state
of sleep nor illness is among the indispensable conditions. A whole
number of phenomena of the everyday life of <SPAN name="page_058"></SPAN>
healthy persons, forgetfulness, slips in speaking and in holding things,
together with a certain class of mistakes, are due to a psychical
mechanism analogous to that of the dream and the other members of this
group.</p>
<p>Displacement is the core of the problem, and the most striking of all
the dream performances. A thorough investigation of the subject shows
that the essential condition of displacement is purely psychological; it
is in the nature of a motive. We get on the track by thrashing out
experiences which one cannot avoid in the analysis of dreams. I had to
break off the relations of my dream thoughts in the analysis of my dream
on <SPAN href="#page_008"></SPAN> because I found some experiences which I
do not wish strangers to know, and which I could not relate without
serious damage to important considerations. I added, it would be no use
were I to select another instead of that particular dream; in every
dream where the content is obscure or intricate, I should hit upon dream
thoughts which call for secrecy. If, however, I continue the analysis
for myself, without regard to those others, for whom, indeed, so
personal an event as my dream cannot matter, I arrive finally at ideas
which surprise me, which I have not known to be mine, which not only
appear <i>foreign</i> to me, but which are <i>unpleasant</i>, and which I would
like to <SPAN name="page_059"></SPAN> oppose vehemently, whilst the chain of
ideas running through the analysis intrudes upon me inexorably. I can
only take these circumstances into account by admitting that these
thoughts are actually part of my psychical life, possessing a certain
psychical intensity or energy. However, by virtue of a particular
psychological condition, the <i>thoughts could not become conscious to
me</i>. I call this particular condition "<i>Repression</i>." It is therefore
impossible for me not to recognize some casual relationship between the
obscurity of the dream content and this state of repression—this
<i>incapacity of consciousness</i>. Whence I conclude that the cause of the
obscurity is <i>the desire to conceal these thoughts</i>. Thus I arrive at
the conception of the <i>dream distortion</i> as the deed of the dream work,
and of <i>displacement</i> serving to disguise this object.</p>
<p>I will test this in my own dream, and ask myself, What is the thought
which, quite innocuous in its distorted form, provokes my liveliest
opposition in its real form? I remember that the free drive reminded me
of the last expensive drive with a member of my family, the
interpretation of the dream being: I should for once like to experience
affection for which I should not have to pay, and that shortly before
the dream I had to make a heavy disbursement for this very person. In
this connection, <SPAN name="page_060"></SPAN> I cannot get away from the
thought <i>that I regret this disbursement</i>. It is only when I acknowledge
this feeling that there is any sense in my wishing in the dream for an
affection that should entail no outlay. And yet I can state on my honor
that I did not hesitate for a moment when it became necessary to expend
that sum. The regret, the counter-current, was unconscious to me. Why it
was unconscious is quite another question which would lead us far away
from the answer which, though within my knowledge, belongs
elsewhere.</p>
<p>If I subject the dream of another person instead of one of my own to
analysis, the result is the same; the motives for convincing others is,
however, changed. In the dream of a healthy person the only way for me
to enable him to accept this repressed idea is the coherence of the
dream thoughts. He is at liberty to reject this explanation. But if we
are dealing with a person suffering from any neurosis—say from
hysteria—the recognition of these repressed ideas is compulsory by
reason of their connection with the symptoms of his illness and of the
improvement resulting from exchanging the symptoms for the repressed
ideas. Take the patient from whom I got the last dream about the three
tickets for one florin fifty kreuzers. Analysis shows that she does not
think highly of her husband, <SPAN name="page_061"></SPAN> 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 depreciation (a hundred times
better!), but all her symptoms lead to the same conclusion as this
dream. When her repressed memories had rewakened a certain period when
she was conscious that she did not love her husband, her symptoms
disappeared, and therewith disappeared her resistance to the
interpretation of the dream.</p>
<p>This conception of repression once fixed, together with the
distortion of the dream in relation to repressed psychical matter, we
are in a position to give a general exposition of the principal results
which the analysis of dreams supplies. We learnt that the most
intelligible and meaningful dreams are unrealized desires; the desires
they pictured as realized are known to consciousness, have been held
over from the daytime, and are of absorbing interest. The analysis of
obscure and intricate dreams discloses something very similar; the dream
scene again pictures as realized some desire which regularly proceeds
from the dream ideas, but the picture is unrecognizable, and is only
cleared up in the analysis. The desire itself is either one repressed,
foreign to consciousness, or it is closely bound up <SPAN name="page_062"></SPAN> with repressed ideas. The formula for these dreams
may be thus stated: <i>They are concealed realizations of repressed
desires</i>. It is interesting to note that they are right who regard the
dream as foretelling the future. Although the future which the dream
shows us is not that which will occur, but that which we would like to
occur. Folk psychology proceeds here according to its wont; it believes
what it wishes to believe.</p>
<p>Dreams can be divided into three classes according to their relation
towards the realization of desire. Firstly come those which exhibit a
<i>non-repressed, non-concealed desire</i>; these are dreams of the infantile
type, becoming ever rarer among adults. Secondly, dreams which express
in <i>veiled</i> form some <i>repressed desire</i>; these constitute by far the
larger number of our dreams, and they require analysis for their
understanding. Thirdly, these dreams where repression exists, but
<i>without</i> or with but slight concealment. These dreams are invariably
accompanied by a feeling of dread which brings the dream 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 difficult to prove that what is now present as intense dread in
the dream <SPAN name="page_063"></SPAN> was once desire, and is now secondary
to the repression.</p>
<p>There are also definite dreams with a painful content, without the
presence of any anxiety in the dream. These cannot be reckoned 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 belongs to our second class of
dreams—a <i>perfectly concealed</i> realization of repressed desires.
Analysis will demonstrate at the same time how excellently adapted is
the work of displacement to the concealment of desires.</p>
<p>A girl dreamt that she saw lying dead before her the only surviving
child of her sister amid the same surroundings as a few years before she
saw the first child lying dead. She was not sensible of any pain, but
naturally combatted the view that the scene represented a desire of
hers. Nor was that view necessary. Years ago it was at the funeral of
the child that she had last seen and spoken to the man she loved. Were
the second child to die, she would be sure to meet this man again in her
sister's house. She is longing to meet him, but struggles against this
feeling. The day of the dream she had taken a ticket for a lecture,
which announced the presence <SPAN name="page_064"></SPAN> of the man she
always loved. The dream is simply a dream of impatience common to those
which happen before a journey, theater, or simply anticipated pleasures.
The longing is concealed by the shifting of the scene to the occasion
when any joyous 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 dream
ideas. The scene anticipates the long-hoped-for meeting; there is here
no call for painful emotions.</p>
<p>There has hitherto been no occasion for philosophers to bestir
themselves with a psychology of repression. We must be allowed to
construct some clear conception as to the origin of dreams as the first
steps in this unknown territory. The scheme which we have formulated not
only from a study of dreams is, it is true, already somewhat
complicated, but we cannot find any simpler one that will suffice. We
hold that our psychical apparatus contains two procedures for the
construction of thoughts. The second one has the advantage that its
products find an open path to consciousness, whilst the activity of the
first procedure is unknown to itself, and can only arrive at
consciousness through the second one. At the borderland of these two
procedures, where the first passes over into the second, a censorship <SPAN name="page_065"></SPAN> is established which only passes what pleases it,
keeping back everything else. That which is rejected by the censorship
is, according to our definition, in a state of repression. Under certain
conditions, one of which is the sleeping state, the balance of power
between the two procedures is so changed that what is repressed can no
longer be kept back. In the sleeping state this may possibly occur
through the negligence of the censor; what has been hitherto repressed
will now succeed in finding its way to consciousness. But as the
censorship is never absent, but merely off guard, certain alterations
must be conceded so as to placate it. It is a compromise which becomes
conscious in this case—a compromise between what one procedure has
in view and the demands of the other. <i>Repression, laxity of the censor,
compromise</i>—this is the foundation for the origin of many another
psychological process, just as it is for the dream. In such compromises
we can observe the processes of condensation, of displacement, the
acceptance of superficial associations, which we have found in the dream
work.</p>
<p>It is not for us to deny the demonic element which has played a part
in constructing our explanation of dream work. The impression left is
that the formation of obscure dreams proceeds as <SPAN name="page_066"></SPAN> if a person had something to say which must be
agreeable for another person upon whom he is dependent to hear. It is by
the use of this image that we figure to ourselves the conception of the
<i>dream distortion</i> and of the censorship, and ventured to crystallize
our impression in a rather crude, but at least definite, psychological
theory. Whatever explanation the future may offer of these first and
second procedures, we shall expect a confirmation of our correlate that
the second procedure commands the entrance to consciousness, and can
exclude the first from consciousness.</p>
<p>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 <i>forgetting</i> of dreams explains this in part, at
least, we are convinced by our experience, confirmed 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 suddenly
forgotten. This fragment so forgotten invariably contains the best and
readiest approach to an understanding of the dream. Probably that is why
it sinks into oblivion—<i>i.e.</i>, into a renewed suppression.</p>
<p>Viewing the dream content as the representation of a realized desire,
and referring its vagueness to <SPAN name="page_067"></SPAN> the changes made
by the censor in the repressed matter, it is no longer difficult to
grasp the function of dreams. In fundamental contrast with those saws
which assume that sleep is disturbed by dreams, we hold the <i>dream as
the guardian of sleep</i>. So far as children's dreams are concerned, our
view should find ready acceptance.</p>
<p>The sleeping state or the psychical change to sleep, whatsoever it
be, is brought about by the child being sent to sleep or compelled
thereto by fatigue, only assisted by the removal of all stimuli which
might open other objects to the psychical apparatus. The means which
serve to keep external stimuli distant are known; but what are the means
we can employ to depress the internal psychical stimuli which frustrate
sleep? Look at a mother getting her child to sleep. The child is full of
beseeching; he wants another kiss; he wants to play yet awhile. His
requirements are in part met, in part drastically put off till the
following day. Clearly these desires and needs, which agitate him, are
hindrances to sleep. Every one knows the charming story of the bad boy
(Baldwin Groller's) who awoke at night bellowing out, "<i>I want the
rhinoceros</i>." A really good boy, instead of bellowing, would have
<i>dreamt</i> that he was playing with the rhinoceros. Because the dream
which realizes <SPAN name="page_068"></SPAN> his desire is believed during
sleep, it removes the desire and makes sleep possible. It cannot be
denied that this belief accords with the dream image, because 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.</p>
<p>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 to
us like a child's dream demands a much more elaborate explanation. Thus
it is that for adults—for every sane person without
exception—a differentiation of the psychical matter has been
fashioned which the child knew not. A psychical procedure has been
reached which, informed by the experience of life, exercises with
jealous power a dominating and restraining influence upon psychical
emotions; by its relation to consciousness, and by its spontaneous
mobility, it is endowed with the greatest means of psychical power. A
portion of the infantile emotions has <SPAN name="page_069"></SPAN> been
withheld from this procedure as useless to life, and all the thoughts
which flow from these are found in the state of repression.</p>
<p>Whilst the procedure in which we recognize our normal ego reposes
upon the desire for sleep, it appears compelled by the
psycho-physiological conditions of sleep to abandon some of the energy
with which it was wont during the day to keep down what was repressed.
This neglect is really harmless; however much the emotions of the
child's spirit may be stirred, they find the approach to consciousness
rendered difficult, and that to movement blocked in consequence of the
state of sleep. The danger of their disturbing sleep must, however, be
avoided. Moreover, we must admit that even in deep sleep some amount of
free attention is exerted as a protection against sense-stimuli which
might, perchance, make an awakening seem wiser than the continuance of
sleep. Otherwise we could not explain the fact of our being always
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 by the cessation 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 repressed desires, and fuses them into the
dream, <SPAN name="page_070"></SPAN> which as a compromise satisfies both
procedures at the same time. The dream creates a form of psychical
release for the wish which is either suppressed or formed by the aid of
repression, inasmuch as it presents it as realized. The other procedure
is also satisfied, since the continuance of the sleep is assured. Our
ego here gladly behaves like a child; it makes the dream pictures
believable, saying, as it were, "Quite right, but let me sleep." The
contempt which, once awakened, we bear the dream, and which rests upon
the absurdity and apparent illogicality of the dream, is probably
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 disturber of our sleep. In sleep we are now and then aware of
this contempt; the dream content transcends the censorship rather too
much, we think, "It's only a dream," and sleep on.</p>
<p>It is no objection to this view if there are borderlines for the
dream where its function, to preserve sleep from interruption, can no
longer be maintained—as in the dreams of impending dread. It is
here changed for another function—to suspend the sleep at the
proper time. It acts like a conscientious night-watchman, who first does
his duty by quelling disturbances so as not to waken the <SPAN name="page_071"></SPAN> citizen, but equally does his duty quite properly
when he awakens the street should the causes of the trouble seem to him
serious and himself unable to cope with them alone.</p>
<p>This function of dreams becomes especially well marked when there
arises some incentive for the sense perception. That the senses aroused
during sleep influence the dream is well known, and can be
experimentally verified; it is one of the certain but much overestimated
results of the medical investigation of dreams. Hitherto there has been
an insoluble riddle connected with this discovery. The stimulus to the
sense by which the investigator affects the sleeper is not properly
recognized in the dream, but is intermingled with a number of indefinite
interpretations, whose determination appears 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 succeeds in sleeping on. In the latter case he can make
use of the dream to dismiss the external stimulus, and this, again, in
more ways than one. For instance, he can stay the stimulus by dreaming
of a scene which is absolutely intolerable to him. This was the means
used by one who was troubled by a painful perineal abscess. He dreamt
that he was on horseback, and <SPAN name="page_072"></SPAN> made use of the
poultice, which was intended to alleviate his pain, as a saddle, and
thus got away from the cause of the trouble. Or, as is more frequently
the case, the external stimulus undergoes a new rendering, which leads
him to connect it with a repressed desire seeking its realization, 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 embodied a definite <i>motif</i>; it was being performed; the first act
was over amid enthusiastic applause; there was great clapping. At this
moment the dreamer must have succeeded in prolonging his sleep despite
the disturbance, for when he woke he no longer heard the noise; he
concluded rightly that some one must have been beating a carpet or bed.
The dreams which come with a loud noise just before waking have all
attempted to cover the stimulus to waking by some other explanation, and
thus to prolong the sleep for a little while.</p>
<p>Whosoever has firmly accepted this <i>censorship</i> as the chief motive
for the distortion of dreams will not be surprised to learn as the
result of dream interpretation that most of the dreams of adults are
traced by analysis to erotic desires. This assertion is not drawn from
dreams obviously of a sexual nature, which are known to all dreamers
from their <SPAN name="page_073"></SPAN> own experience, and are the only
ones usually described as "sexual dreams." These dreams are ever
sufficiently mysterious by reason of the choice of persons who are made
the objects of sex, the removal of all the barriers which cry halt to
the dreamer's sexual needs in his waking state, the many strange
reminders as to details of what are called perversions. But analysis
discovers that, in many other dreams in whose manifest content nothing
erotic can be found, the work of interpretation shows them up as, in
reality, realization of sexual desires; whilst, on the other hand, that
much of the thought-making when awake, the thoughts saved us as surplus
from the day only, reaches presentation in dreams with the help of
repressed erotic desires.</p>
<p>Towards the explanation of this statement, which is no theoretical
postulate, it must be remembered that no other class of instincts has
required so vast a suppression at the behest of civilization as the
sexual, whilst their mastery by the highest psychical processes are in
most persons soonest of all relinquished. Since we have learnt to
understand <i>infantile sexuality</i>, often so vague in its expression, so
invariably overlooked and misunderstood, we are justified in saying that
nearly every civilized person has retained at some point or other the
infantile <SPAN name="page_074"></SPAN> type of sex life; thus we understand
that repressed infantile sex desires furnish the most frequent and most
powerful impulses for the formation of dreams.<SPAN href="#page_074_note_1"><sup>1</sup></SPAN></p>
<p>If the dream, which is the expression of some erotic desire, succeeds
in making its manifest content appear innocently asexual, it is only
possible in one way. The matter of these sexual presentations cannot be
exhibited as such, but must be replaced by allusions, suggestions, and
similar indirect means; differing from other cases of indirect
presentation, those used in dreams must be deprived of direct
understanding. The means of presentation which answer these requirements
are commonly termed "symbols." A special interest has been directed
towards these, since it has been observed that the dreamers of the same
language use the like symbols—indeed, that in certain cases
community of symbol is greater than community of speech. Since the
dreamers do not themselves know the meaning of the symbols they use, it
remains a puzzle whence arises their relationship with what they replace
and denote. The fact itself is undoubted, and becomes of importance for
the technique of the <SPAN name="page_075"></SPAN> interpretation of dreams,
since by the aid of a knowledge of this symbolism it is possible to
understand the meaning of the elements of a dream, or parts of a dream,
occasionally even the whole dream itself, without having to question the
dreamer as to his own ideas. We thus come near to the popular idea of an
interpretation of dreams, and, on the other hand, possess again the
technique of the ancients, among whom the interpretation of dreams was
identical with their explanation through symbolism.</p>
<p>Though the study of dream symbolism is far removed from finality, we
now possess a series of general statements and of particular
observations which are quite certain. There are symbols which
practically always have the same meaning: Emperor and Empress (King and
Queen) always mean the parents; room, a woman<SPAN href="#page_075_note_2"><sup>2</sup></SPAN>, and so on. The sexes are
represented by a great variety of symbols, many of which would be at
first quite incomprehensible had not the clews to the meaning been often
obtained through other channels.</p>
<p>There are symbols of universal circulation, found in all dreamers, of
one range of speech and culture; <SPAN name="page_076"></SPAN> there are
others of the narrowest individual significance which an individual has
built up out of his own material. In the first class those can be
differentiated whose claim can be at once recognized by the replacement
of sexual things in common speech (those, for instance, arising from
agriculture, as reproduction, seed) from others whose sexual references
appear to reach back to the earliest times and to the obscurest depths
of our image-building. The power of building symbols in both these
special forms of symbols has not died out. Recently discovered things,
like the airship, are at once brought into universal use as sex
symbols.</p>
<p>It would be quite an error to suppose that a profounder knowledge of
dream symbolism (the "Language of Dreams") would make us independent of
questioning the dreamer regarding his impressions about the dream, and
would give us back the whole technique of ancient dream interpreters.
Apart from individual symbols and the variations in the use of what is
general, one never knows whether an element in the dream is to be
understood symbolically or in its proper meaning; the whole content of
the dream is certainly not to be interpreted symbolically. The knowledge
of dream symbols will only help us in understanding portions of the
dream content, and does not render the use of the <SPAN name="page_077"></SPAN> technical rules previously given at all
superfluous. But it must be of the greatest service in interpreting a
dream just when the impressions of the dreamer are withheld or are
insufficient.</p>
<p>Dream symbolism proves also indispensable for understanding the
so-called "typical" dreams and the dreams that "repeat themselves."
Dream symbolism leads us far beyond the dream; it does not belong only
to dreams, but is likewise dominant in legend, myth, and saga, in wit
and in folklore. It compels us to pursue the inner meaning of the dream
in these productions. But we must acknowledge that symbolism is not a
result of the dream work, but is a peculiarity probably of our
unconscious thinking, which furnishes to the dream work the matter for
condensation, displacement, and dramatization.</p>
<p><small><SPAN name="page_074_note_1"></SPAN><SPAN href="#page_074">Footnote
1</SPAN>: Freud, "Three Contributions to Sexual Theory," translated by A.A.
Brill (<i>Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease</i> Publishing Company, New
York).</small></p>
<p><small><SPAN name="page_075_note_2"></SPAN><SPAN href="#page_075">Footnote
2</SPAN>: The words from "and" to "channels" in the next sentence is a
short summary of the passage in the original. As this book will be read
by other than professional people the passage has not been translated,
in deference to English opinion.—TRANSLATOR.</small></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />