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XI.

VIEWING the dream content as the repre-
sentation of a realised desire, and referring
its vagueness to 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 dream as the guardian
of sleep. So far as children’s dreams are
concerned, our view should find ready
acceptance.

The sleeping state or the psychical change
to sleep, whatsoever it be, is brought about
by the child being sent to sleep or com-
pelled 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

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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. Everyone knows the charming story
of the bad boy (Baldwin Groller’s) who
awoke at night bellowing out, “I want the
rhinoceros.” A really good boy, instead of
bellowing, would have dreamt that he was
playing with the rhinoceros. Because the
dream which realises 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 distin-
guish hallucinations or phan-
tasies from reality.

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The adult has learnt this differentiation;
he has also learnt the futility of desire, and
by continuous practice manages to post-
pone 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
realised during sleep in the short psychical
way. It is even possible that this never
happens, and that everything which ap-
pears 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 influ-
ence upon psychical emotions; by its rela-
tion to consciousness, and by its spon-
taneous mobility, it is endowed with the
greatest means of psychical power. A
portion of the infantile emotions has been

95

withheld from this procedure as useless to
life, and all the thoughts which flow from
these are found in the state of repression.

Whilst the procedure in which we recog-
nise 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, per-
chance, 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

96

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 atten-
tion, thus on the alert, makes use of the in-
ternal stimuli arising from repressed de-
sires, and fuses them into the dream, 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
realised. The other procedure is also satis-
fied, since the continuance of the sleep is
assured. Our ego here gladly behaves like
a child; it makes the dream pictures be-
lievable, 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 ap-
parent illogicality of the dream, is probably
nothing but the reasoning of our sleeping
ego on the feelings about what was re-

97

pressed; 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.

It is no objection to this view if there are
border-
lines for the dream where its func-
tion, 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 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.

This function of dreams becomes espe-
cially well marked when there arises some
incentive for the sense perception. That

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ON DREAMS

the senses aroused during sleep influence
the dream is well known, and can be experi-
mentally verified; it is one of the certain
but much overestimated results of the
medical investigation of dreams. Hitherto
there has been an insoluble riddle con-
nected with this discovery. The stimulus
to the sense by which the investigator
affects the sleeper is not properly recognised
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 ex-
ternal 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

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that he was on horseback, and 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 realisation, 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 motif; 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 someone must have been beat
ing 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.