Freud - Complete Works (666 page)

   During his second stay there he
painted the pictures which are copied in the
Trophaeum
. Then
he took a step which was in keeping with the demands of the ascetic
phase of his diary. He did not, it is true, go into the wilderness
to become an anchorite, but he joined the Order of the Brothers
Hospitallers:
religiosus factus est
.

   Reading the diary, we gain
insight into another part of the story. It will be remembered that
the painter signed a bond with the Devil because after his
father’s death, feeling depressed and unable to work, he was
worried about making a livelihood. These factors of depression,
inhibition in his work and mourning for his father are somehow
connected with one another, whether in a simple or a complicated
way. Perhaps the reason why the apparitions of the Devil were so
over-generously furnished with breasts was that the Evil One was
meant to become his foster father. This hope was not fulfilled, and
the painter continued to be in a bad state. He could not work
properly, or he was out of luck and could not find enough
employment. The village priest’s letter of introduction
speaks of him as ‘
hunc miserum omni auxilio
destitutum
’. He was thus not only in moral straits but
was suffering material want. In the account of his later visions,
we find remarks here and there indicating - as do the contents of
the scenes described - that even after the successful first
exorcism, nothing had been changed in his situation. We come to
know him as a man who fails in everything and who is therefore
trusted by no one. In his first vision the cavalier asked him
‘what he is going to do, since he has no one to stand by
him’. The first series of visions in Vienna tallied
completely with the wishful phantasies of a poor man, who had come
down in the world and who hungered for enjoyment: magnificent
halls, high living, a silver dinner-service and beautiful women.
Here we find what was missing in his relations with the Devil made
good. At that time he had been in a melancholia which made him
unable to enjoy anything and obliged him to reject the most
attractive offers. After the exorcism the melancholia seems to have
been overcome and all his worldly-minded desires had once more
become active.

A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis

4026

   In one of the ascetic visions he
complained to his guide (Christ) that nobody had any faith in him,
so that he was unable to carry out the commands laid upon him. The
reply he was given is, unfortunately, obscure to us:
‘Although they will not believe me, yet I know well what has
happened, but I am not able to declare it.’ Especially
illuminating, however, are the experiences which his heavenly Guide
made him have among the anchorites. He came to a cave in which an
old man had been sitting for the last sixty years, and in answer to
a question he learnt that this old man had been fed every day by
God’s angels. And then he saw for himself how an angel
brought the old man food: ‘Three dishes with food, a loaf, a
dumpling and some drink.’ After the anchorite had eaten, the
angel collected everything and carried it away. We can see what the
temptation was which the pious visions offered the painter: they
were meant to induce him to adopt a mode of existence in which he
need no longer worry about sustenance. The utterances of Christ in
the last vision are also worthy of note. After threatening that, if
he did not prove amenable, something would happen which would
oblige him and the people to believe [in it], Christ gave him a
direct warning that ‘I should not heed the people; even if
they were to persecute me or give me no help, God would not abandon
me’.

   Christoph Haizmann was enough of
an artist and a child of the world to find it difficult to renounce
this sinful world. Nevertheless, in view of his helpless position,
he did so in the end. He entered a Holy Order. With this, both his
internal struggle and his material need came to an end. In his
neurosis, this outcome was reflected in the fact of his seizures
and visions being brought to an end by the return of an alleged
first bond. Actually, both portions of his demonological illness
had the same meaning. He wanted all along simply to make his life
secure. He tried first to achieve this with the help of the Devil
at the cost of his salvation; and when this failed and had to be
given up, he tried to achieve it with the help of the clergy at the
cost of his freedom and most of the possibilities of enjoyment in
life. Perhaps he himself was only a poor devil who simply had no
luck; perhaps he was too ineffective or too untalented to make a
living, and was one of those types of people who are known as
‘eternal sucklings’ - who cannot tear themselves away
from the blissful situation at the mother’s breast, and who,
all through their lives, persist in a demand to be nourished by
someone else. - And so it was that, in this history of his illness,
he followed the path which led from his father, by way of the Devil
as a father substitute, to the pious Fathers of the Church.

   To superficial observation
Haizmann’s neurosis appears to be a masquerade which overlays
a part of the serious, if commonplace, struggle for existence. This
is not always the case, but it is not infrequently so. Analysts
often discover how unprofitable it is to treat a business man who
‘though otherwise in good health, has for some time shown
signs of a neurosis’. The business catastrophe with which he
feels himself threatened throws up the neurosis as a by-product;
and this gives him the advantage of being able to conceal his
worries about his real life behind his symptoms. But apart from
this the neurosis serves no useful purpose whatever, since it uses
up forces which would have been more profitably employed in dealing
rationally with the dangerous situation.

A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis

4027

   In a far greater number of cases
the neurosis is more autonomous and more independent of the
interests of self-preservation and self-maintenance. In the
conflict which creates the neurosis, what are at stake are either
solely libidinal interests or libidinal interests in intimate
connections with self-preservative ones. In all three instances the
dynamics of the neurosis are the same. A dammed-up libido which
cannot be satisfied in reality succeeds, with the help of a
regression to old fixations, in finding discharge through the
repressed unconscious. The sick man’s ego, in so far as it
can extract a ‘gain from illness’ out of this process,
countenances the neurosis, although there can be no doubt of its
injuriousness in its economic aspect.

   Nor would our painter’s
wretched situation in life have provoked a demonological neurosis
in him if his material need had not intensified his longing for his
father. After his melancholia and the Devil had been disposed of,
however, he still had to face a struggle between his libidinal
enjoyment of life and his realization that the interests of
self-preservation called imperatively for renunciation and
asceticism. It is interesting to see that the painter was very well
aware of the unity of the two portions of his illness, for he
attributed both to the bonds which he had signed with the Devil. On
the other hand, he made no sharp distinction between the operations
of the Evil Spirit and those of the Divine Powers. He had only one
description for both: they were manifestations of the Devil.

4028

REMARKS ON THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DREAM-INTERPRETATION

(1923)

4029

Intentionally left blank

4030

REMARKS ON THE THEORY AND
PRACTICE OF DREAM-INTERPRETATION

The accidental circumstance that the last
editions of my
Interpretation of Dreams
(1900
a
) have
been printed from stereotype plates has led me to issue the
following remarks in an independent form, instead of introducing
them into the text as modifications or additions.

I

   In interpreting a dream during an
analysis a choice lies open to one between several technical
procedures.

   One can (
a
) proceed
chronologically and get the dreamer to bring up his associations to
the elements of the dream in the order in which those elements
occurred in his account of the dream. This is the original,
classical method, which I still regard as the best if one is
analysing one’s own dreams.

   Or one can (
b
) start the
work of interpretation from some one particular element of the
dream which one picks out from the middle of it. For instance, one
can choose the most striking piece of it, or the piece which shows
the greatest clarity or sensory intensity; or, again, one can start
off from some spoken words in the dream, in the expectation that
they will lead to the recollection of some spoken words in waking
life.

   Or one can (
c
) begin by
entirely disregarding the manifest content and instead ask the
dreamer what events of the previous day are associated in his mind
with the dream he has just described.

   Finally, one can (
d
), if
the dreamer is already familiar with the technique of
interpretation, avoid giving him any instructions and leave it to
him to decide with which associations to the dream he shall
begin.

   I cannot lay it down that one or
the other of these techniques is preferable or in general yields
better results.

Remarks On The Theory And Practice Of Dream-Interpretation

4031

II

   What is of far greater importance
is the question of whether the work of interpretation proceeds
under a
pressure of resistance
which is
high
or
low
- a point on which the analyst never remains long in
doubt. If the pressure is high, one may perhaps succeed in
discovering what the things are with which the dream is concerned,
but one cannot make out what it says about these things. It is as
though one were trying to listen to a conversation taking place at
a distance or in a very low voice. In that case, one can feel
confident that there is not much prospect of collaborating with the
dreamer, one decides not to bother too much about it and not to
give him much help, and one is content to put before him a few
translations of symbols that seem probable.

   The majority of dreams in a
difficult analysis are of this kind; so that one cannot learn much
from them about the nature and mechanism of dream-formation. Least
of all can one learn anything from them upon the recurring question
of where the dream’s wish-fulfilment may lie hidden. When the
pressure of resistance is quite extremely high, one meets with the
phenomenon of the dreamer’s associations broadening instead
of deepening. In place of the desired associations to the dream
that has already been narrated, there appear a constant succession
of new fragments of dream, which in their turn remain without
associations.

   It is only when the resistance is
kept within moderate limits that the familiar picture of the work
of interpretation comes into view: the dreamer’s associations
begin by
diverging
widely from the manifest elements, so
that a great number of subjects and ranges of ideas are touched on,
after which, a second series of associations quickly
converge
from these on to the dream-thoughts that are being
looked for. When this is so, collaboration between the analyst and
the dreamer becomes possible; whereas under a high pressure of
resistance it would not even be of any advantage.

   A number of dreams which occur
during analyses are untranslatable even though they do not actually
make much show of the resistance that is there. They represent free
renderings of the latent dream-thoughts behind them and are
comparable to successful creative writings which have been
artistically worked over and in which the basic themes are still
recognizable though they have been subjected to any amount of
re-arrangement and transformation. Dreams of this kind serve in the
treatment as an introduction to thoughts and memories of the
dreamer without their own actual content coming into account.

Remarks On The Theory And Practice Of Dream-Interpretation

4032

III

   It is possible to distinguish
between dreams
from above
and dreams
from below
,
provided the distinction is not made too sharply. Dreams from below
are those which are provoked by the strength of an unconscious
(repressed) wish which has found a means of being represented in
some of the day’s residues. They may be regarded as inroads
of the repressed into waking life. Dreams from above correspond to
thoughts or intentions of the day before which have contrived
during the night to obtain reinforcement from repressed material
that is debarred from the ego. When this is so, analysis as a rule
disregards this unconscious ally and succeeds in inserting the
latent dream-thoughts into the texture of waking thought. This
distinction calls for no modification in the theory of dreams.

IV

   In some analyses, or in some
periods of an analysis, a divorce may become apparent between
dream-life and waking life, like the divorce between the activity
of phantasy and waking life which is found in the ‘continued
story’ (a novel in day-dreams). In that case one dream leads
off from another, taking as its central point some element which
was lightly touched upon in its predecessor, and so on. But we find
far more frequently that dreams are not attached to one another but
are interpolated into a successive series of portions of waking
thought.

Remarks On The Theory And Practice Of Dream-Interpretation

4033

V

   The interpretation of a dream
falls into two phases: the phase in which it is translated and the
phase in which it is judged or has its value assessed. During the
first phase one must not allow oneself to be influenced by any
consideration whatever for the second phase. It is as though one
had before one a chapter from some work in a foreign language - by
Livy, for instance. The first thing one wants to know is what Livy
says in the chapter; and it is only after this that the discussion
arises of whether what one has read is a historical narrative or a
legend or a digression on the part of the author.

   What conclusions can one draw
from a correctly translated dream? I have an impression that
analytic practice has not always avoided errors and
over-estimations on this point, partly owing to an exaggerated
respect for the ‘mysterious unconscious’. It is only
too easy to forget that a dream is as a rule merely a thought like
any other, made possible by a relaxation of the censorship and by
unconscious reinforcement, and distorted by the operation of the
censorship and by unconscious revision.

   Let us take as an example the
so-called dreams of recovery. If a patient has had a dream of this
kind, in which he seems to abandon the restrictions of his neurosis
- if, for instance, he overcomes some phobia or gives up some
emotional attachment - we are inclined to think that he has made a
great step forward, that he is ready to take his place in a new
state of life, that he has begun to reckon on his recovery, etc.
This may often be true, but quite as often such dreams of recovery
only have the value of dreams of convenience: they signify a wish
to be well at last, in order to avoid another portion of the work
of analysis which is felt to lie ahead. In this sense, dreams of
recovery very frequently occur, for instance, when the patient is
about to enter upon a new and disagreeable phase of the
transference. He is behaving in this just like some neurotics who
after a few hours of analysis declare they have been cured -
because they want to escape all the unpleasantness that is bound to
come up for discussion in the analysis. Sufferers from war
neuroses, too, who gave up their symptoms because the therapy
adopted by the army doctors succeeded in making being ill even more
uncomfortable than serving at the front - these sufferers, too,
were following the same economic laws and in both cases alike the
cures have proved to be only temporary.

Remarks On The Theory And Practice Of Dream-Interpretation

4034

VI

   It is by no means easy to arrive
at general conclusions upon the value of correctly translated
dreams. If a conflict due to ambivalence is taking place in a
patient, then the emergence in him of a hostile thought certainly
does not imply a permanent overcoming of his affectionate impulse -
that is to say, a resolution of the conflict: neither does any such
implication follow from a
dream
with a similarly hostile
content. During a conflict such as this arising from ambivalence,
there are often two dreams every night, each of them representing
an opposite attitude. In that case the progress lies in the fact
that a complete isolation of the two contrasted impulses has been
achieved and that each of them, with the help of its unconscious
reinforcements, can be followed and understood to its extreme
limits. And if it sometimes happens that one of the two ambivalent
dreams has been forgotten, one must not be deceived into assuming
that a decision has been made in favour of the one side. The fact
that one of the dreams has been forgotten shows, it is true, that
for the moment one tendency is in the ascendant, but that is true
only of the one day, and may be changed. The next night may perhaps
bring the opposite expression into the foreground. The true state
of the conflict can only be determined by taking into account all
the other indications, including those of waking life.

Remarks On The Theory And Practice Of Dream-Interpretation

4035

VII

   The question of the value to be
assigned to dreams is intimately related to the other question of
their susceptibility to influence from ‘suggestion’ by
the physician. Analysts may at first be alarmed at the mention of
this possibility. But on further reflection this alarm will give
place to the realization that the influencing of the
patient’s dreams is no more a blunder on the part of the
analyst or disgrace to him than the guiding of the patient’s
conscious thoughts.

   The fact that the manifest
content of dreams is influenced by the analytic treatment stands in
no need of proof. It follows from our knowledge that dreams take
their start from waking life and work over material derived from
it. Occurrences during analytic treatment are of course among the
impressions of waking life and soon become some of the most
powerful of these. So it is not to be wondered at that patients
should dream of things which the analyst has discussed with them
and of which he has aroused expectations in them. At least it is no
more to be wondered at than what is implied in the familiar fact of
‘experimental’ dreams.

   But from here our interest
proceeds to the question whether the latent dream-thoughts that
have to be arrived at by interpretation can also be influenced or
suggested by the analyst. And to this the answer must once more be
that they obviously can be. For a portion of these latent
dream-thoughts correspond to preconscious thought-formations,
perfectly capable of being conscious, with which the dreamer might
quite well have reacted to the physician’s remarks in his
waking state too - whether the patient’s reactions were in
harmony with those remarks or in opposition to them. In fact, if we
replace the dream by the dream-thoughts which it contains, the
question of how far one can suggest dreams coincides with the more
general question of how far a patient in analysis is accessible to
suggestion.

   On the mechanism of
dream-formation itself, on the dream-work in the strict sense of
the word, one never exercises any influence: of that one may be
quite sure.

   Besides that portion of the dream
which we have already discussed - the preconscious dream-thoughts -
every true dream contains indications of the repressed wishful
impulses to which it owes the possibility of its formation. The
doubter will reply that they appear in the dream because the
dreamer knows that he ought to produce them - that they are
expected by the analyst. The analyst himself will rightly think
otherwise.

Remarks On The Theory And Practice Of Dream-Interpretation

4036

   If a dream brings up situations
that can be interpreted as referring to scenes from the
dreamer’s past, it seems especially important to ask whether
the physician’s influence can also play a part in such
contents of the dream as these. And this question is most urgent of
all in the case of what are called ‘corroborative’
dreams, dreams which, as it were, ‘tag along behind’
the analysis. With some patients these are the only dreams that one
obtains. Such patients reproduce the forgotten experiences of their
childhood only after one has constructed them from their symptoms,
associations and other signs and has propounded these constructions
to them. Then follow the corroborative dreams, concerning which,
however, the doubt arises whether they may not be entirely without
evidential value, since they may have been imagined in compliance
with the physician’s words instead of having been brought to
light from the dreamer’s unconscious. This ambiguous position
cannot be escaped in the analysis, since with these patients unless
one interprets, constructs and propounds, one never obtains access
to what is repressed in them.