Читать книгу The Interpretation of Dreams - Sigmund Freud, Йоханнес Вильгельм Йенсен - Страница 4

The title which I have given my treatise indicates the tradition which I wish to make the starting-point in my discussion of dreams. I have made it my task to show that dreams are capable of interpretation, and contributions to the solution of the dream problems that have just been treated can only be yielded as possible by-products of the settlement of my own particular problem. With the hypothesis that dreams are interpretable, I at once come into contradiction with the prevailing dream science, in fact with all dream theories except that of Scherner, for to "interpret a dream" means to declare its meaning, to replace it by something which takes its place in the concatenation of our psychic activities as a link of full importance and value. But, as we have learnt, the scientific theories of the dream leave no room for a problem of dream interpretation, for, in the first place, according to these, the dream is no psychic action, but a somatic process which makes itself known to the psychic apparatus by means of signs. The opinion of the masses has always been quite different. It asserts its privilege of proceeding illogically, and although it admits the dream to be incomprehensible and absurd, it cannot summon the resolution to deny the dream all significance. Led by a dim intuition, it seems rather to assume that the dream has a meaning, albeit a hidden one; that it is intended as a substitute for some other thought process, and that it is only a question of revealing this substitute correctly in order to reach the hidden signification of the dream.

The laity has, therefore, always endeavoured to "interpret" the dream, and in doing so has tried two essentially different methods. The first of these procedures regards the dream content as a whole and seeks to replace it by another content which is intelligible and in certain respects analogous. This is symbolic dream interpretation; it naturally goes to pieces at the outset in the case of those dreams which appear not only unintelligible but confused. The construction which the biblical Joseph places upon the dream of Pharaoh furnishes an example of its procedure. The seven fat kine, after which came seven lean ones which devour the former, furnish a symbolic substitute for a prediction of seven years of famine in the land of Egypt, which will consume all the excess which seven fruitful years have created. Most of the artificial dreams contrived by poets are intended for such symbolic interpretation, for they reproduce the thought conceived by the poet in a disguise found to be in accordance with the characteristics of our dreaming, as we know these from experience. The idea that the dream concerns itself chiefly with future events whose course it surmises in advance—a relic of the prophetic significance with which dreams were once credited—now becomes the motive for transplanting the meaning of the dream, found by means of symbolic interpretation, into the future by means of an "it shall."

A demonstration of the way in which such symbolic interpretation is arrived at cannot, of course, be given. Success remains a matter of ingenious conjecture, of direct intuition, and for this reason dream interpretation has naturally been elevated to an art, which seems to depend upon extraordinary gifts. The other of the two popular methods of dream interpretation entirely abandons such claims. It might be designated as the "cipher method," since it treats the dream as a kind of secret code, in which every sign is translated into another sign of known meaning, according to an established key. For example, I have dreamt of a letter, and also of a funeral or the like; I consult a "dream book," and find that "letter" is to be translated by "vexation," and "funeral" by "marriage, engagement." It now remains to establish a connection, which I again am to assume pertains to the future, by means of the rigmarole which I have deciphered. An interesting variation of this cipher procedure, a variation by which its character of purely mechanical transference is to a certain extent corrected, is presented in the work on dream interpretation by Artemidoros of Daldis. Here not only the dream content, but also the personality and station in life of the dreamer, are taken into consideration, so that the same dream content has a significance for the rich man, the married man, or the orator, which is different from that for the poor man, the unmarried man, or, say, the merchant. The essential point, then, in this procedure is that the work of interpretation is not directed to the entirety of the dream, but to each portion of the dream content by itself, as though the dream were a conglomeration, in which each fragment demands a particular disposal. Incoherent and confused dreams are certainly the ones responsible for the invention of the cipher method. The worthlessness of both these popular interpretation procedures for the scientific treatment of the subject cannot be questioned for a moment. The symbolic method is limited in its application and is capable of no general demonstration. In the cipher method everything depends upon whether the key, the dream book, is reliable, and for that all guarantees are lacking. One might be tempted to grant the contention of the philosophers and psychiatrists and to dismiss the problem of dream interpretation as a fanciful one.

I have come, however, to think differently. I have been forced to admit that here once more we have one of those not infrequent cases where an ancient and stubbornly retained popular belief seems to have come nearer to the truth of the matter than the judgment of the science which prevails to-day. I must insist that the dream actually has significance, and that a scientific procedure in dream interpretation is possible. I have come upon the knowledge of this procedure in the following manner:—

For several years I have been occupied with the solution of certain psychopathological structures in hysterical phobias, compulsive ideas, and the like, for therapeutic purposes. I have been so occupied since becoming familiar with an important report of Joseph Breuer to the effect that in those structures, regarded as morbid symptoms, solution and treatment go hand in hand. Where it has been possible to trace such a pathological idea back to the elements in the psychic life of the patient to which it owes its origin, this idea has crumbled away, and the patient has been relieved of it. In view of the failure of our other therapeutic efforts, and in the face of the mysteriousness of these conditions, it seems to me tempting, in spite of all difficulties, to press forward on the path taken by Breuer until the subject has been fully understood. We shall have elsewhere to make a detailed report upon the form which the technique of this procedure has finally assumed, and the results of the efforts which have been made. In the course of these psychoanalytical studies, I happened upon dream interpretation. My patients, after I had obliged them to inform me of all the ideas and thoughts which came to them in connection with the given theme, related their dreams, and thus taught me that a dream may be linked into the psychic concatenation which must be followed backwards into the memory from the pathological idea as a starting-point. The next step was to treat the dream as a symptom, and to apply to it the method of interpretation which had been worked out for such symptoms.

For this a certain psychic preparation of the patient is necessary. The double effort is made with him, to stimulate his attention for his psychic perceptions and to eliminate the critique with which he is ordinarily in the habit of viewing the thoughts which come to the surface in him. For the purpose of self-observation with concentrated attention, it is advantageous that the patient occupy a restful position and close his eyes; he must be explicitly commanded to resign the critique of the thought-formations which he perceives. He must be told further that the success of the psychoanalysis depends upon his noticing and telling everything that passes through his mind, and that he must not allow himself to suppress one idea because it seems to him unimportant or irrelevant to the subject, or another because it seems nonsensical. He must maintain impartiality towards his ideas; for it would be owing to just this critique if he were unsuccessful in finding the desired solution of the dream, the obsession, or the like.

I have noticed in the course of my psychoanalytic work that the state of mind of a man in contemplation is entirely different from that of a man who is observing his psychic processes. In contemplation there is a greater play of psychic action than in the most attentive self-observation; this is also shown by the tense attitude and wrinkled brow of contemplation, in contrast with the restful features of self-observation. In both cases, there must be concentration of attention, but, besides this, in contemplation one exercises a critique, in consequence of which he rejects some of the ideas which he has perceived, and cuts short others, so that he does not follow the trains of thought which they would open; toward still other thoughts he may act in such a manner that they do not become conscious at all—that is to say, they are suppressed before they are perceived. In self-observation, on the other hand, one has only the task of suppressing the critique; if he succeeds in this, an unlimited number of ideas, which otherwise would have been impossible for him to grasp, come to his consciousness. With the aid of this material, newly secured for the purpose of self-observation, the interpretation of pathological ideas, as well as of dream images, can be accomplished. As may be seen, the point is to bring about a psychic state to some extent analogous as regards the apportionment of psychic energy (transferable attention) to the state prior to falling asleep (and indeed also to the hypnotic state). In falling asleep, the "undesired ideas" come into prominence on account of the slackening of a certain arbitrary (and certainly also critical) action, which we allow to exert an influence upon the trend of our ideas; we are accustomed to assign "fatigue" as the reason for this slackening; the emerging undesired ideas as the reason are changed into visual and acoustic images. (Cf. the remarks of Schleiermacher) and others, p. 40.) In the condition which is used for the analysis of dreams and pathological ideas, this activity is purposely and arbitrarily dispensed with, and the psychic energy thus saved, or a part of it, is used for the attentive following of the undesired thoughts now coming to the surface, which retain their identity as ideas (this is the difference from the condition of falling asleep). "Undesired ideas" are thus changed into "desired" ones.

The suspension thus required of the critique for these apparently "freely rising" ideas, which is here demanded and which is usually exercised on them, is not easy for some persons. The "undesired ideas" are in the habit of starting the most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent them from coming to the surface. But if we may credit our great poet-philosopher Friedrich Schiller, a very similar tolerance must be the condition of poetic production. At a point in his correspondence with Koerner, for the noting of which we are indebted to Mr. Otto Rank, Schiller answers a friend who complains of his lack of creativeness in the following words: "The reason for your complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intelligence imposes upon your imagination. I must here make an observation and illustrate it by an allegory. It does not seem beneficial, and it is harmful for the creative work of the mind, if the intelligence inspects too closely the ideas already pouring in, as it were, at the gates. Regarded by itself, an idea may be very trifling and very adventurous, but it perhaps becomes important on account of one which follows it; perhaps in a certain connection with others, which may seem equally absurd, it is capable of forming a very useful construction. The intelligence cannot judge all these things if it does not hold them steadily long enough to see them in connection with the others. In the case of a creative mind, however, the intelligence has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, the ideas rush in pell-mell, and it is only then that the great heap is looked over and critically examined. Messrs. Critics, or whatever else you may call yourselves, you are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and transitory madness which is found in all creators, and whose longer or shorter duration distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints about barrenness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely" (Letter of December 1, 1788).

And yet, "such a withdrawal of the watchers from the gates of intelligence," as Schiller calls it, such a shifting into the condition of uncritical self-observation, is in no way difficult.

Most of my patients accomplish it after the first instructions; I myself can do it very perfectly, if I assist the operation by writing down my notions. The amount, in terms of psychic energy, by which the critical activity is in this manner reduced, and by which the intensity of the self-observation may be increased, varies widely according to the subject matter upon which the attention is to be fixed.

The first step in the application of this procedure now teaches us that not the dream as a whole, but only the parts of its contents separately, may be made the object of our attention. If I ask a patient who is as yet unpractised: "What occurs to you in connection with this dream?" as a rule he is unable to fix upon anything in his psychic field of vision. I must present the dream to him piece by piece, then for every fragment he gives me a series of notions, which may be designated as the "background thoughts" of this part of the dream. In this first and important condition, then, the method of dream interpretation which I employ avoids the popular, traditional method of interpretation by symbolism famous in the legends, and approaches the second, the "cipher method." Like this one it is an interpretation in detail, not en masse; like this it treats the dream from the beginning as something put together—as a conglomeration of psychic images.

In the course of my psychoanalysis of neurotics, I have indeed already subjected many thousand dreams to interpretation, but I do not now wish to use this material in the introduction to the technique and theory of dream interpretation. Quite apart from the consideration that I should expose myself to the objection that these are dreams of neuropathic subjects, the conclusions drawn from which would not admit of reapplication to the dreams of healthy persons, another reason forces me to reject them. The theme which is naturally always the subject of these dreams, is the history of the disease which is responsible for the neurosis. For this purpose there would be required a very long introduction and an investigation into the nature and logical conditions of psychoneuroses, things which are in themselves novel and unfamiliar in the highest degree, and which would thus distract attention from the dream problem. My purpose lies much more in the direction of preparing the ground for a solution of difficult problems in the psychology of the neuroses by means of the solution of dreams. But if I eliminate the dreams of neurotics, I must not treat the remainder too discriminatingly. Only those dreams still remain which have been occasionally related to me by healthy persons of my acquaintance, or which I find as examples in the literature of dream life. Unfortunately in all these dreams the analysis is lacking, without which I cannot find the meaning of the dream. My procedure is, of course, not as easy as that of the popular cipher method, which translates the given dream content according to an established key; I am much more prepared to find that the same dream may cover a different meaning in the case of different persons, and in a different connection I must then resort to my own dreams, as an abundant and convenient material, furnished by a person who is about normal, and having reference to many incidents of everyday life. I shall certainly be with doubts as to the trustworthiness of these "self-analyses." Arbitrariness is here in no way avoided. In my opinion, conditions are more likely to be favourable in self-observation than in the observation of others; in any case, it is permissible to see how much can be accomplished by means of self-analysis. I must overcome further difficulties arising from inner self. One has a readily understood aversion to exposing so many intimate things from one's own psychic life, and one does not feel safe from the misinterpretation of strangers. But one must be able to put one's self beyond this. "Toute psychologiste," writes Delbœuf, "est obligé de faire l'aveu même de ses faiblesses s'il croit par là jeter du jour sur quelque problème obscure." And I may assume that in the case of the reader, the immediate interest in the indiscretions which I must commit will very soon give way to exclusive engrossment in the psychological problems which are illuminated by them.

I shall, therefore, select one of my own dreams and use it to elucidate my method of interpretation. Every such dream necessitates a preliminary statement. I must now beg the reader to make my interests his own for a considerable time, and to become absorbed with me in the most trifling details of my life, for an interest in the hidden significance of dreams imperatively demands such transference.

Preliminary statement: In the summer of 1895 I had psychoanalytically treated a young lady who stood in close friendship to me and those near to me. It is to be understood that such a complication of relations may be the source of manifold feelings for the physician, especially for the psychotherapist. The personal interest of the physician is greater, his authority is less. A failure threatens to undermine the friendship with the relatives of the patient. The cure ended with partial success, the patient got rid of her hysterical fear, but not of all her somatic symptoms. I was at that time not yet sure of the criteria marking the final settlement of a hysterical case, and expected her to accept a solution which did not seem acceptable to her. In this disagreement, we cut short the treatment on account of the summer season. One day a younger colleague, one of my best friends, who had visited the patient—Irma—and her family in their country resort, came to see me. I asked him how he found her, and received the answer: "She is better, but not altogether well." I realise that those words of my friend Otto, or the tone of voice in which they were spoken, made me angry. I thought I heard a reproach in the words, perhaps to the effect that I had promised the patient too much, and rightly or wrongly I traced Otto's supposed siding against me to the influence of the relatives of the patient, who, I assume, had never approved of my treatment. Moreover, my disagreeable impression did not become clear to me, nor did I give it expression. The very same evening, I wrote down the history of Irma's case, in order to hand it, as though for my justification, to Dr. M., a mutual friend, who was at that time a leading figure in our circle. During the night following this evening (perhaps rather in the morning) I had the following dream, which was registered immediately after waking:—