Freud - Complete Works (186 page)

   And the value of dreams for
giving us knowledge of the future? There is of course no question
of that. It would be truer to say instead that they give us
knowledge of the past. For dreams are derived from the past in
every sense. Nevertheless the ancient belief that dreams foretell
the future is not wholly devoid of truth. By picturing our wishes
as fulfilled, dreams are after all leading us into the future. But
this future, which the dreamer pictures as the present, has been
moulded by his indestructible wish into a perfect likeness of the
past.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1046

APPENDIX A

A PREMONITORY DREAM FULFILLED

Frau B., an estimable woman who moreover
possesses a critical sense, told me in another connection and
without the slightest
arrière pensée
that once
some years ago she dreamt she had met Dr. K., a friend and former
family doctor of hers, in the Kärntnerstrasse in front of
Hiess’s shop. The next morning, while she was walking along
the same street, she in fact met the person in question at the very
spot she had dreamt of. So much for my theme. I will only add that
no subsequent event proved the importance of this miraculous
coincidence, which cannot therefore be accounted for by what lay in
the future.

   Analysis of the dream was helped
by questioning, which established the fact that there was no
evidence of her having had any recollection at all of the dream on
the morning after she dreamt it, until after her walk - evidence
such as her having written the dream down or told it to someone
before it was fulfilled. On the contrary, she was obliged to accept
the following account of what happened, which seems to me more
plausible, without raising any objection to it. She was walking
along the Kärntnerstrasse one morning and met her old family
doctor in front of Hiess’s shop. On seeing him she felt
convinced that she had dreamt the night before of having this very
meeting at that precise spot. According to the rules that apply to
the interpretation of neurotic symptoms, her conviction must have
been justified; its content may, however, require to be
re-interpreted.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1047

   The following is an episode with
which Dr. K. is connected from Frau B.’s earlier life. When
she was young she was married, without her wholehearted consent, to
an elderly but wealthy man. A few years later he lost his money,
fell ill of tuberculosis and died. For many years the young woman
supported herself and her sick husband by giving music lessons.
Among her friends in misfortune was her family doctor, Dr. K., who
devoted himself to looking after her husband and helped her in
finding her first pupils. Another friend was a barrister, also a
Dr. K., who put the chaotic affairs of the ruined merchant in
order, while at the same time he made love to the young woman and -
for the first and last time - set her passion aflame. This love
affair brought her no real happiness, for the scruples created by
her upbringing and her cast of mind interfered with her complete
surrender while she was married and later when she was a widow. In
the same connection in which she told me the dream, she also told
me of a real occurrence dating from this unhappy period of her
life, an occurrence which in her opinion was a remarkable
coincidence. She was in her room, kneeling on the floor with her
head buried in a chair and sobbing in passionate longing for her
friend and helper the barrister, when at that very moment the door
opened and in he came to visit her. We shall find nothing at all
remarkable in this coincidence when we consider how often she
thought of him and how often he probably visited her. Moreover,
accidents which seem preconcerted like this are to be found in
every love story. Nevertheless this coincidence was probably the
true content of her dream and the sole basis of her conviction that
it had come true.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

1048

   Between the scene in which her
wish had been fulfilled and the time of the dream more than
twenty-five years elapsed. In the meantime Frau B. had become the
widow of a second husband who left her with a child and a fortune.
The old lady’s affection was still centred on Dr. K., who was
now her adviser and the administrator of her estate and whom she
saw frequently. Let us suppose that during the few days before the
dream she had been expecting a visit from him, but that this had
not taken place - he was no longer so pressing as he used to be.
She may then have quite well had a nostalgic dream one night which
took her back to the old days. Her dream was probably of a
rendez-vous
at the time of her love affair, and the chain of
her dream-thoughts carried her back to the occasion when, without
any pre-arrangement, he had come in at the very moment at which she
had been longing for him. She probably had dreams of this kind
quite often now; they were a part of the belated punishment with
which a woman pays for her youthful cruelty. But such dreams -
derivatives of a suppressed current of thought, filled with
memories of
rendez-vous
of which, since her second marriage,
she no longer liked to think - such dreams were put aside on
waking. And that was what happened to our ostensibly prophetic
dream. She then went out, and in the Kärntnerstrasse, at a
spot which was in itself indifferent, she met her old family
doctor, Dr. K. It was a very long time since she had seen him. He
was intimately associated with the excitements of that
happy-unhappy time. He too had been a helper, and we may suppose
that he had been used in her thoughts, and perhaps in her dreams as
well, as a screen figure behind which she concealed the
better-loved figure of the other Dr. K. This meeting now revived
her recollection of the dream. She must have thought: ‘Yes, I
had a dream last night of my
rendez-vous
with Dr. K.’
But this recollection had to undergo the distortion which the dream
escaped only because it had been completely forgotten. She inserted
the indifferent K. (who had reminded her of the dream) in place of
the beloved K. The content of the dream - the
rendez-vous
-
was transferred to a belief that she had dreamt of that particular
spot, for a
rendez-vous
consists in two people coming to the
same spot at the same time. And if she then had an impression that
a dream had been fulfilled, she was only giving effect in that way
to her memory of the scene in which she had longed in her misery
for him to come and her longing had at once been fulfilled.

   Thus the creation of a dream
after the event, which alone makes prophetic dreams possible, is
nothing other than a form of censoring, thanks to which the dream
is able to make its way through into consciousness.

10
Nov
. 99

1049

ON DREAMS

(1901)

1050

Intentionally left blank

1051

ON DREAMS

I

   During the epoch which may be
described as pre-scientific, men had no difficulty in finding an
explanation of dreams. When they remembered a dream after waking
up, they regarded it as either a favourable or a hostile
manifestation by higher powers, daemonic and divine. When modes of
thought belonging to natural science began to flourish, all this
ingenious mythology was transformed into psychology, and to-day
only a small minority of educated people doubt that dreams are a
product of the dreamer’s own mind.

   Since the rejection of the
mythological hypothesis, however, dreams have stood in need of
explanation. The conditions of their origin, their relation to
waking mental life, their dependence upon stimuli which force their
way upon perception during the state of sleep, the many
peculiarities of their content which are repugnant to waking
thought, the inconsistency between their ideational images and the
affects attaching to them, and lastly their transitory character,
the manner in which waking thought pushes them on one side as
something alien to it, and mutilates or extinguishes them in memory
- all of these and other problems besides have been awaiting
clarification for many hundreds of years, and till now no
satisfactory solution of them has been advanced. But what stands in
the foreground of our interest is the question of the
significance
of dreams, a question which bears a double
sense. It enquires in the first place as to the psychical
significance of dreaming, as to the relation of dreams to other
mental processes, and as to any biological function that they may
have; in the second place it seeks to discover whether dreams can
be interpreted, whether the content of individual dreams has a
‘meaning’, such as we are accustomed to find in other
psychical structures.

   In the assessment of the
significance of dreams three lines of thought can be distinguished.
One of these, which echoes, as it were, the ancient overvaluation
of dreams, is expressed in the writings of certain philosophers.
They consider that the basis of dream-life is a peculiar state of
mental activity, and even go so far as to acclaim that state as an
elevation to a higher level. For instance, Schubert declares that
dreams are a liberation of the spirit from the power of external
nature, and a freeing of the soul from the bonds of the senses.
Other thinkers, without going so far as this, insist nevertheless
that dreams arise essentially from mental impulses and represent
manifestations of mental forces which have been prevented from
expanding freely during the daytime. (Cf. the ‘dream
imagination’ of Scherner and Volkelt.) A large number of
observers agree in attributing to dream-life a capacity for
superior functioning in certain departments at least (e.g. in
memory).

On Dreams

1052

   In sharp contrast to this, the
majority of medical writers adopt a view according to which dreams
scarcely reach the level of being psychical phenomena at all. On
their theory, the sole instigators of dreams are the sensory and
somatic stimuli which either impinge upon the sleeper from outside
or become active accidentally in his internal organs. What is
dreamt, they contend, has no more claim to sense and meaning than,
for instance, the sounds which would be produced if ‘the ten
fingers of a man who knows nothing of music were wandering over the
keys of a piano.’ Dreams are described by Binz as being no
more than ‘somatic processes which are in every case useless
and in many cases positively pathological.’ All the
characteristics of dream-life would thus be explained as being due
to the disconnected activity of separate organs or groups of cells
in an otherwise sleeping brain, an activity forced upon them by
physiological stimuli.

   Popular opinion is but little
affected by this scientific judgement, and is not concerned as to
the sources of dreams; it seems to persist in the belief that
nevertheless dreams have a meaning, which relates to the prediction
of the future and which can be discovered by some process of
interpretation of a content which is often confused and puzzling.
The methods of interpretation employed consist in transforming the
content of the dream as it is remembered, either by replacing it
piecemeal in accordance with a fixed key, or by replacing the dream
as a whole by another whole to which it stands in a symbolic
relation. Serious-minded people smile at these efforts:
‘
Träume sind Schäume
’ - ‘dreams
are froth’.

On Dreams

1053

II

   One day I discovered to my great
astonishment that the view of dreams which came nearest to the
truth was not the medical but the popular one, half-involved though
it still was in superstition. For I had been led to fresh
conclusions on the subject of dreams by applying to them a new
method of psychological investigation which had done excellent
service in the solution of phobias, obsessions and delusions, etc.
Since then, under the name of ‘psycho-analysis’, it has
found acceptance by a whole school of research workers. The
numerous analogies that exist between dream-life and a great
variety of conditions of psychical illness in waking life have
indeed been correctly observed by many medical investigators. There
seemed, therefore, good ground for hoping that a method of
investigation which had given satisfactory results in the case of
psychopathic structures would also be of use in throwing light upon
dreams. Phobias and obsessions are as alien to normal consciousness
as dreams are to waking consciousness; their origin is as unknown
to consciousness as that of dreams. In the case of these
psychopathic structures practical considerations led to an
investigation of their origin and mode of development; for
experience had shown that the discovery of the trains of thought
which, concealed from consciousness, connect the pathological ideas
with the remaining contents of the mind is equivalent to a
resolution of the symptoms and has as its consequence the mastering
of ideas which till then could not be inhibited. Thus psychotherapy
was the starting-point of the procedure of which I made use for the
explanation of dreams.

   This procedure is easily
described, although instruction and practice would be necessary
before it could be put into effect.

On Dreams

1054

   If we make use of it on someone
else, let us say on a patient with a phobia, we require him to
direct his attention on to the idea in question, not, however, to
reflect upon it as he has done so often already, but to take notice
of
whatever occurs to his mind without any exception
and
report it to the physician. If he should then assert that his
attention is unable to grasp anything at all, we dismiss this with
an energetic assurance that a complete absence of any ideational
subject-matter is quite impossible. And in fact very soon numerous
ideas will occur to him and will lead on to others; but they will
invariably be prefaced by a judgement on the part of the
self-observer to the effect that they are senseless or unimportant,
that they are irrelevant, and that they occurred to him by chance
and without any connection with the topic under consideration. We
perceive at once that it was this critical attitude which prevented
the subject from reporting any of these ideas, and which indeed had
previously prevented them from becoming conscious. If we can induce
him to abandon his criticism of the ideas that occur to him, and to
continue pursuing the trains of thought which will emerge so long
as he keeps his attention turned upon them, we find ourselves in
possession of a quantity of psychical material, which we soon find
is clearly connected with the pathological idea which was our
starting-point; this material will soon reveal connections between
the pathological idea and other ideas, and will eventually enable
us to replace the pathological idea by a new one which fits into
the nexus of thought in an intelligible fashion.

   This is not the place in which to
give a detailed account of the premises upon which this experiment
was based, or the consequences which follow from its invariable
success. It will therefore be enough to say that we obtain material
that enables us to resolve any pathological idea if we turn our
attention precisely to those associations which are
‘involuntary’, which ‘interfere with our
reflection’, and which are normally dismissed by our critical
faculty as worthless rubbish.

   If we make use of this procedure
upon
ourselves
, we can best assist the investigation by at
once writing down what are at first unintelligible
associations.

   I will now show what results
follow if I apply this method of investigation to dreams. Any
example of a dream should in fact be equally appropriate for the
purpose; but for particular reasons I will choose some dream of my
own, one which seems obscure and meaningless as I remember it, and
one which has the advantage of brevity. A dream which I actually
had last night will perhaps meet these requirements. Its content,
as I noted it down immediately after waking up, was as follows:

On Dreams

1055

  
Company at table or table
d’hôte . . . spinach was being
eaten . . . Frau E. L. was sitting beside me; she
was turning her whole attention to me and laid her hand on my knee
in an intimate manner. I removed her hand unresponsively. She then
said: "But you’ve always had such beautiful
eyes." . . . I then had an indistinct picture
of two eyes, as though it were a drawing or like the outline of a
pair of spectacles
 . . . .’

   This was the whole of the dream,
or at least all that I could remember of it. It seemed to me
obscure and meaningless, but above all surprising. Frau E. L. is a
person with whom I have hardly at any time been on friendly terms,
nor, so far as I know, have I ever wished to have any closer
relations with her. I have not seen her for a long time, and her
name has not, I believe, been mentioned during the last few days.
The dream-process was not accompanied by affects of any kind.

   Reflecting over this dream
brought me no nearer to understanding it. I determined, however, to
set down without any premeditation or criticism the associations
which presented themselves to my self-observation. As I have found,
it is advisable for this purpose to divide a dream-into its
elements and to find the associations attaching to each of these
fragments separately.

  
Company at table or table
d’hôte
. This at once reminded me of an episode
which occurred late yesterday evening. I came away from a small
party in the company of a friend who offered to take a cab and
drive me home in it. ‘I prefer taking a cab with a
taximeter’, he said, ‘it occupies one’s mind so
agreeably; one always has something to look at.’ When we had
taken our places in the cab and the driver had set the dial, so
that the first charge of sixty hellers became visible, I carried
the joke further. ‘We’ve only just got in’, I
said, ‘and already we owe him sixty hellers. A cab with a
taximeter always reminds me of a table d’hôte. It makes
me avaricious and selfish, because it keeps on reminding me of what
I owe. My debt seems to be growing too fast, and I’m afraid
of getting the worst of the bargain; and in just the same way at a
table d’hôte I can’t avoid feeling in a comic way
that I’m getting too little, and must keep an eye on my own
interests.’ I went on to quote, somewhat discursively:

                                                               
‘Ihr führt ins Leben uns hinein,

                                                               
Ihr lasst den Armen schuldig werden.’
¹

  
¹
[These lines are from one of the
Harp-player’s songs in Goethe’s
Wilhelm Meister
.
In the original the words are addressed to the Heavenly Powers and
may be translated literally: ‘You lead us into life, you make
the poor creature guilty.’ But the words
‘
Armen
’ and ‘
schuldig
’ are
both capable of bearing another meaning. ‘
Armen
’
might mean ‘poor’ in the financial sense and
‘
schulding
’ might mean ‘in debt.’ So
in the present context the last line could be rendered: ‘You
make the poor man fall into debt.’]

On Dreams

1056

   And now a second association to
‘table d’hôte.’ A few weeks ago, while
we were at table in a hotel at a mountain resort in the Tyrol, I
was very much annoyed because I thought my wife was not being
sufficiently reserved towards some people sitting near us whose
acquaintance I had no desire at all to make. I asked her to concern
herself more with me than with these strangers. This was again
as though I were getting the worst of the bargain at the
table
. I was struck too by the contrast between my wife’s
behaviour at table and that of Frau E. L. in the dream, who
‘turned her whole attention to me.’

   To proceed. I now saw that the
events in the dream were a reproduction of a small episode of a
precisely similar kind which occurred between my wife and me at the
time at which I was secretly courting her. The caress which she
gave me under the table-cloth was her reply to a pressing love
letter. In the dream, however, my wife was replaced by a
comparative stranger - E. L.