Freud - Complete Works (502 page)

  
¹
[The German
‘
Augenverdreher
’ has the figurative meaning of
‘deceiver’.]

The Unconscious

3021

   These two observations, then,
argue in favour of what we have called hypochondriacal speech or
‘organ-speech’. But, what seems to us more important,
they also point to something else, of which we have innumerable
instances (for example, in the cases collected in Bleuler’s
monograph) and which may be reduced to a definite formula. In
schizophrenia
words
are subjected to the same process as
that which makes the dream images out of latent dream-thoughts - to
what we have called the primary psychical process. They undergo
condensation, and by means of displacement transfer their cathexes
to one another in their entirety. The process may go so far that a
single word, if it is specially suitable on account of its numerous
connections, takes over the representation of a whole train of
thought. The works of Bleuler, Jung and their pupils offer a
quantity of material which particularly supports this
assertion.¹

   Before we draw any conclusion
from impressions such as these, let us consider further the
distinctions between the formation of substitutes in schizophrenia
on the one hand, and in hysteria and obsessional neurosis on the
other - subtle distinctions which nevertheless make a strange
impression. A patient whom I have at present under observation has
allowed himself to be withdrawn from all the interests of life on
account of a bad condition of the skin of his face. He declares
that he has black heads and deep holes in his face which everyone
notices. Analysis shows that he is playing out his castration
complex upon his skin. At first he worked at these blackheads
remorselessly; and it gave him great satisfaction to squeeze them
out, because, as he said, something spurted out when be did so.
Then he began to think that a deep cavity appeared wherever he had
got rid of a blackhead, and he reproached himself most vehemently
with having ruined his skin for ever by ‘constantly fiddling
about with his hand’. Pressing out the content of the
blackheads is clearly to him a substitute for masturbation. The
cavity which then appears owing to his fault is the female genital,
i.e. the fulfilment of the threat of castration (or the phantasy
representing that threat) provoked by his masturbating. This
substitutive formation has, in spite of its hypochondriacal
character, considerable resemblance to a hysterical conversion; and
yet we have a feeling that something different must be going on
here, that a substitutive formation such as this cannot be
attributed to hysteria, even before we can say in what the
difference consists. A tiny little cavity such as a pore of the
skin would hardly be used by a hysteric as a symbol for the vagina,
which he is otherwise ready to compare with every imaginable object
that encloses a hollow space. Besides, we should expect the
multiplicity of these little cavities to prevent him from using
them as a substitute for the female genital. The same applies to
the case of a young patient reported by Tausk some years ago to the
Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society. This patient behaved in other
respects exactly as though he were suffering from an obsessional
neurosis; he took hours to wash and dress, and so on. It was
noticeable, however, that he was able to give the meaning of his
inhibitions without any resistance. In putting on his stockings,
for instance, he was disturbed by the idea that he must pull apart
the stitches in the knitting, i.e. the holes, and to him every hole
was a symbol of the female genital aperture. This again is a thing
which we cannot attribute to an obsessional neurotic. Reitler
observed a patient of the latter sort, who also suffered from
having to take a long time over putting on his stockings; this man,
after overcoming his resistances, found as the explanation that his
foot symbolized a penis, that putting on the stocking stood for a
masturbatory act, and that he had to keep on pulling the stocking
on and off, partly in order to complete the picture of
masturbation, and partly in order to undo that act.

  
¹
The dream-work, too, occasionally treats
words like things, and so creates very similar
‘schizophrenic’ utterances or neologisms.

The Unconscious

3022

   If we ask ourselves what it is
that gives the character of strangeness to the substitutive
formation and the symptom in schizophrenia, we eventually come to
realize that it is the predominance of what has to do with words
over what has to do with things. As far as the thing goes, there is
only a very slight similarity between squeezing out a blackhead and
an emission from the penis, and still less similarity between the
innumerable shallow pores of the skin and the vagina; but in the
former case there is, in both instances, a ‘spurting
out’, while in the latter the cynical saying, ‘a hole
is a hole’, is true verbally. What has dictated the
substitution is not the resemblance between the things denoted but
the sameness of the words used to express them. Where the two -
word and thing - do not coincide, the formation of substitutes in
schizophrenia deviates from that in the transference neuroses.

   If now we put this finding
alongside the hypothesis that in schizophrenia object-cathexes are
given up, we shall be obliged to modify the hypothesis by adding
that the cathexis of the
word
-presentations of objects is
retained. What we have permissibly called the conscious
presentation of the object can now be split up into the
presentation of the
word
and the presentation of the
thing
; the latter consists in the cathexis, if not of the
direct memory-images of the thing, at least of remoter
memory-traces derived from these. We now seem to know all at once
what the difference is between a conscious and an unconscious
presentation. The two are not, as we supposed, different
registrations of the same content in different psychical
localities, nor yet different functional states of cathexis in the
same locality; but the conscious presentation comprises the
presentation of the thing plus the presentation of the word
belonging to it, while the unconscious presentation is the
presentation of the thing alone. The system
Ucs.
  
contains the thing-cathexes of the objects, the first and true
object-cathexes; the system
Pcs.
comes about by this
thing-presentation being hypercathected through being linked with
the word-presentations corresponding to it. It is these
hypercathexes, we may suppose, that bring about a higher psychical
organization and make it possible for the primary process to be
succeeded by the secondary process which is dominant in the
Pcs.
Now, too, we are in a position to state precisely what
it is that repression denies to the rejected presentation in the
transference neuroses: what it denies to the presentation is
translation into words which shall remain attached to the object. A
presentation which is not put into words, or a psychical act which
is not hypercathected, remains thereafter in the
Ucs.
in a
state of repression.

The Unconscious

3023

   I should like to point out at
what an early date we already possessed the insight which to-day
enables us to understand one of the most striking characteristics
of schizophrenia. In the last few pages of
The Interpretation of
Dreams
, which was published in 1900, the view was developed
that thought-processes, i.e. those acts of cathexis which are
comparatively remote from perception, are in themselves without
quality and unconscious, and that they attain their capacity to
become conscious only through being linked with the residues of
perceptions of
words
. But word-presentations, for their part
too, are derived from sense-perceptions, in the same way as
thing-presentations are; the question might therefore be raised why
presentations of objects cannot become conscious through the medium
of their
own
perceptual residues. Probably, however, thought
proceeds in systems so far remote from the original perceptual
residues that they have no longer retained anything of the
qualities of those residues, and, in order to become conscious,
need to be reinforced by new qualities. Moreover, by being linked
with words, cathexes can be provided with quality even when they
represent only
relations
between presentations of objects
and are thus unable to derive any quality from perceptions. Such
relations, which become comprehensible only through words, form a
major part of our thought-processes. As we can see, being linked
with word-presentations is not yet the same thing as becoming
conscious, but only makes it possible to become so; it is therefore
characteristic of the system
Pcs.
and of that system alone.
With these discussions, however, we have evidently departed from
our subject proper and find ourselves plunged into problems
concerning the preconscious and the conscious, which for good
reasons we are reserving for separate treatment.

The Unconscious

3024

   As regards schizophrenia, which
we only touch on here so far as seems indispensable for a general
understanding of the
Ucs.
, a doubt must occur to us whether
the process here termed repression has anything at all in common
with the repression which takes place in the transference neuroses.
The formula that repression is a process which occurs between the
systems
Ucs.
and
Pcs.
(or
Cs.
), and results in
keeping something at a distance from consciousness, must in any
event be modified, in order that it may also be able to include the
case of dementia praecox and other narcissistic affections. But the
ego’s attempt at flight, which expresses itself in the
withdrawal of the conscious cathexis, nevertheless remains a factor
common [to the two classes of neurosis]. The most superficial
reflection shows us how much more radically and profoundly this
attempt at flight, this flight of the ego, is put into operation in
the narcissistic neuroses.

   If, in schizophrenia, this flight
consists in withdrawal of instinctual cathexis from the points
which represent the
unconscious
presentation of the object,
it may seem strange that the part of the presentation of this
object which belongs to the system
Pcs.
- namely, the
word-presentations corresponding to it - should, on the contrary,
receive a more intense cathexis. We might rather expect that the
word-presentation, being the preconscious part, would have to
sustain the first impact of repression and that it would be totally
uncathectable after repression had proceeded as far as the
unconscious thing-presentations. This, it is true, is difficult to
understand. It turns out that the cathexis of the word-presentation
is not part of the act of repression, but represents the first of
the attempts at recovery or cure which so conspicuously dominate
the clinical picture of schizophrenia. These endeavours are
directed towards regaining the lost object, and it may well be that
to achieve this purpose they set off on a path that leads to the
object
via
the verbal part of it, but then find themselves
obliged to be content with words instead of things. It is a general
truth that our mental activity moves in two opposite directions:
either it starts from the instincts and passes through the system
Ucs.
to conscious thought-activity; or, beginning with an
instigation from outside, it passes through the system
Cs.
and
Pcs.
till it reaches the
Ucs.
cathexes of the ego
and objects. This second path must, in spite of the repression
which has taken place, remain traversable, and it lies open to some
extent to the endeavours made by the neurosis to regain its
objects. When we think in abstractions there is a danger that we
may neglect the relations of words to unconscious
thing-presentations, and it must be confessed that the expression
and content of our philosophizing then begins to acquire an
unwelcome resemblance to the mode of operation of schizophrenics.
We may, on the other hand, attempt a characterization of the
schizophrenic’s mode of thought by saying that he treats
concrete things as though they were abstract.

   If we have made a true assessment
of the nature of the
Ucs.
and have correctly defined the
difference between an unconscious and a preconscious presentation,
then our researches will inevitably bring us back from many other
points to this same piece of insight.

3025

A METAPSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPLEMENT TO THE THEORY OF DREAMS

(1917 [1915])

3026

Intentionally left blank

3027

A METAPSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPLEMENT TO THE THEORY OF DREAMS ¹

We shall discover in various connections how
much our enquiries benefit if certain states and phenomena which
may be regarded as
normal prototypes
of pathological
affections are brought up for purposes of comparison. Among these
we may include such affective states as grief and being in love, as
well as the state of sleep and the phenomenon of dreaming.

   We are not in the habit of
devoting much thought to the fact that every night human beings lay
aside the wrappings in which they have enveloped their skin, as
well as anything which they may use as a supplement to their bodily
organs (so far as they have succeeded in making good those
organs’ deficiencies by substitutes), for instance, their
spectacles, their false hair and teeth, and so on. We may add that
when they go to sleep they carry out an entirely analogous
undressing of their minds and lay aside most of their psychical
acquisitions. Thus on both counts they approach remarkably close to
the situation in which they began life. Somatically, sleep is a
reactivation of intrauterine existence, fulfilling as it does the
conditions of repose, warmth and exclusion of stimulus; indeed, in
sleep many people resume the foetal posture. The psychical state of
a sleeping person is characterized by an almost complete withdrawal
from the surrounding world and a cessation of all interest in
it.

   In investigating psychoneurotic
states, we find ourselves led to emphasize in each of them what are
known as
temporal regressions
, i.e. the amount of
developmental recession peculiar to it. We distinguish two such
regressions - one affecting the development of the ego and the
other that of the libido. In the state of sleep, the latter is
carried to the point of restoring primitive narcissism, while the
former goes back to the stage of hallucinatory satisfaction of
wishes.

  
¹
This paper and the following one are
derived from a collection which I originally intended to publish in
book form under the title ‘Zur Vorbereitung einer
Metapsychologie’ [‘Preliminaries to a
Metapsychology’]. They follow on some papers which were
printed in Volume III of the
Internationale Zeitschrift für
ärztliche Psychoanalyse
(‘Instincts and their
Vicissitudes’, ‘Repression’ and ‘The
Unconscious’). The intention of the series is to clarify and
carry deeper the theoretical assumptions on which a psycho-analytic
system could be founded.

A Metapsychological Supplement To The Theory Of Dreams

3028

   It is, of course, the study of
dreams which has taught us what we know of the psychical
characteristics of the state of sleep. It is true that dreams only
show us the dreamer in so far as he is
not
sleeping;
nevertheless they are bound to reveal at the same time
characteristics of sleep itself. We have come to know from
observation some peculiarities of dreams which we could not at
first understand, but which we can now fit into the picture without
difficulty. Thus, we know that dreams are completely egoistic and
that the person who plays the chief part in their scenes is always
to be recognized as the dreamer. This is now easily to be accounted
for by the narcissism of the state of sleep. Narcissism and egoism,
indeed, coincide; the word ‘narcissism’ is only
intended to emphasize the fact that egoism is a libidinal
phenomenon as well; or, to put it in another way, narcissism may be
described as the libidinal complement of egoism. The
‘diagnostic’ capacity of dreams - a phenomenon which is
generally acknowledged, but regarded as puzzling - becomes equally
comprehensible, too. In dreams, incipient physical disease is often
detected earlier and more clearly than in waking life, and all the
current bodily sensations assume gigantic proportions. This
magnification is hypochondriacal in character; it is conditional
upon the withdrawal of all psychical cathexes from the external
world back on to the ego, and it makes possible early recognition
of bodily changes which in waking life would still for a time have
remained unobserved.

   A dream tells us that something
was going on which tended to interrupt sleep, and it enables us to
understand in what way it has been possible to fend off this
interruption. The final outcome is that the sleeper has dreamt and
is able to go on sleeping; the internal demand which was striving
to occupy him has been replaced by an external experience, whose
demand has been disposed of. A dream is, therefore, among other
things, a
projection
: an externalization of an internal
process. We may recall that we have already met with projection
elsewhere among the means adopted for defence. The mechanism of a
hysterical phobia, too, culminates in the fact that the subject is
able to protect himself by attempts at flight against an external
danger which has taken the place of an internal instinctual claim.
We will, however, defer the full treatment of projection till we
come to analyse the narcissistic disorder in which this mechanism
plays the most striking part.

A Metapsychological Supplement To The Theory Of Dreams

3029

   In what way, however, can a case
arise in which the intention to sleep meets with an interruption?
The interruption may proceed from an internal excitation or from an
external stimulus. Let us first consider the more obscure and more
interesting case of interruption from within. Observation shows
that dreams are instigated by residues from the previous day -
thought-cathexes which have not submitted to the general withdrawal
of cathexes, but have retained in spite of it a certain amount of
libidinal or other interest. Thus the narcissism of sleep has from
the outset had to admit an exception at this point, and it is here
that the formation of dreams takes its start. In analysis we make
the acquaintance of these ‘day’s residues’ in the
shape of latent dream-thoughts; and, both by reason of their nature
and of the whole situation, we must regard them as preconscious
ideas, as belonging to the system
Pcs.

   We cannot proceed any further in
explaining the formation of dreams till we have overcome certain
difficulties. The narcissism of the state of sleep implies a
withdrawal of cathexis from all ideas of objects, from both the
unconscious and the preconscious portions of those ideas. If, then,
certain day’s residues have retained their cathexis, we
hesitate to suppose that they have acquired at night so much energy
as to compel notice on the part of consciousness; we should be more
inclined to suppose that the cathexis they have retained is far
weaker than that which they possessed during the day. Here analysis
saves us further speculation, for it shows that these day’s
residues must receive a reinforcement which has its source in
unconscious instinctual impulses if they are to figure as
constructors of dreams. This hypothesis presents no immediate
difficulties, for we have every reason to suppose that in sleep the
censorship between the
Pcs.
and the
Ucs.
is greatly
reduced, so that communication between the two systems is made
easier.

A Metapsychological Supplement To The Theory Of Dreams

3030

   But there is another doubt, which
we must not pass over in silence. If the narcissistic state of
sleep has resulted in a drawing in of all the cathexes of the
systems
Ucs.
and
Pcs.
, then there can no longer be
any possibility of the preconscious day’s residues being
reinforced by unconscious instinctual impulses, seeing that these
themselves have surrendered their cathexes to the ego. Here the
theory of dream-formation ends up in a contradiction, unless we can
rescue it by introducing a modification into our assumption about
the narcissism of sleep.

   A restrictive modification of
this kind is, as we shall discover later, necessary in the theory
of dementia praecox as well. This must be to the effect that the
repressed portion of the system
Ucs.
does not comply with
the wish to sleep that comes from the ego, that it retains its
cathexis in whole or in part, and that in general, in consequence
of repression, it has acquired a certain measure of independence of
the ego. Accordingly, too, some amount of the expenditure on
repression (anticathexis) would have to be maintained throughout
the night, in order to meet the instinctual danger - though the
inaccessibility of all paths leading to a release of affect and to
motility may considerably diminish the height of the anticathexis
that is necessary. Thus we should picture the situation which leads
to the formation of dreams as follows. The wish to sleep endeavours
to draw in all the cathexes sent out by the ego and to establish an
absolute narcissism. This can only partly succeed, for what is
repressed in the system
Ucs.
does not obey the wish to
sleep. A part of the anticathexes has therefore to be maintained,
and the censorship between the
Ucs.
and the
Pcs.
must
remain, even if not at its full strength. So far as the dominance
of the ego extends, all the systems are emptied of cathexes. The
stronger the
Ucs.
instinctual cathexes are, the more
unstable is sleep. We are acquainted, too, with the extreme case
where the ego gives up the wish to sleep, because it feels unable
to inhibit the repressed impulses set free during sleep - in other
words, where it renounces sleep because of its fear of its
dreams.

A Metapsychological Supplement To The Theory Of Dreams

3031

   Later on we shall learn to
recognize the momentous nature of this hypothesis regarding the
unruliness of repressed impulses. For the present let us follow out
the situation which occurs in dream-formation.

   The possibility mentioned above -
that some of the preconscious thoughts of the day may also prove
resistant and retain a part of their cathexis - must be recognized
as a second breach in narcissism. At bottom, the two cases may be
identical. The resistance of the day’s residues may originate
in a link with unconscious impulses which is already in existence
during waking life; or the process may be somewhat less simple, and
the day’s residues which have not been wholly emptied of
cathexis may establish a connection with the repressed material
only after the state of sleep has set in, thanks to the easing of
communication between the
Pcs.
and the
Ucs.
In both
cases there follows the same decisive step in dream-formation: the
preconscious dream-wish is formed, which
gives expression to the
unconscious impulse in the material of the preconscious day’s
residues
. This dream-wish must be sharply distinguished from
the day’s residues; it need not have existed in waking life
and it may already display the irrational character possessed by
everything that is unconscious when we translate it into the
conscious. Again, the dream-wish must not be confused with the
wishful impulses which may have been present, though they certainly
need not necessarily be present, amongst the preconscious (latent)
dream-thoughts. If, however, there
were
any such
preconscious wishes, the dream-wish associates itself with them, as
a most effective reinforcement of them.

A Metapsychological Supplement To The Theory Of Dreams

3032

   We have now to consider the
further vicissitudes undergone by this wishful impulse, which in
its essence represents an unconscious instinctual demand and which
has been formed in the
Pcs.
as a dream-wish (a
wish-fulfilling phantasy). Reflection tells us that this wishful
impulse may be dealt with along three different paths. It may
follow the path that would be normal in waking life, by pressing
from the
Pcs.
to consciousness; or it may bypass the
Cs.
and find direct motor discharge; or it may take the
unexpected path which observation enables us in fact to trace. In
the first case, it would become a
delusion
having as content
the fulfilment of the wish; but in the state of sleep this never
happens. With our scanty knowledge of the metapsychological
conditions of mental processes, we may perhaps take this fact as a
hint that a complete emptying of a system renders it little
susceptible to instigation. The second case, that of direct motor
discharge, should be excluded by the same principle; for access to
motility normally lies yet another step beyond the censorship of
consciousness. But we do meet with exceptional instances in which
this happens, in the form of somnambulism. We do not know what
conditions make this possible, or why it does not happen more
often. What actually happens in dream-formation is a very
remarkable and quite unforeseen turn of events. The process, begun
in the
Pcs.
and reinforced by the
Ucs.
, pursues a
backward course, through the
Ucs.
   to perception,
which is pressing upon consciousness. This
regression
is the
third phase of dream-formation. For the sake of clarity, we will
repeat the two earlier ones: the reinforcement of the
Pcs.
by the
Ucs.
, and the setting up of the dream-wish.

   We call this kind of regression a
topographical
one, to distinguish it from the previously
mentioned
temporal
or developmental regression. The two do
not necessarily always coincide, but they do so in the particular
example before us. The reversal of the course of the excitation
from the
Pcs.
through the
Ucs.
to perception is at
the same time a return to the early stage of hallucinatory
wish-fulfilment.