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VIII.

IN the foregoing exposition we have now
learnt something of the dream work; we
must regard it as a quite special psychical
process, which, so far as we are aware, re-
sembles nothing else. To the dream work
has been transferred that bewilderment
which its product, the dream, has aroused
in us. In truth, the dream work is only the
first recognition of a group of psychical pro-
cesses to which must be referred the origin
of hysterical symptoms, the ideas of morbid
dread, obsession, and illusion. Condensa-
tion, and especially displacement, are never-
failing features in these other processes.
The regard for appearance remains, on the
other hand, peculiar to the dream work.
If this explanation brings the dream into
line with the formation of psychical disease,
it becomes the more important to fathom

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ON DREAMS

the essential conditions of processes like
dream building. It will be probably a sur-
prise to hear that neither the state of sleep
nor illness is among the indispensable con-
ditions. A whole number of phenomena of
the everyday life of healthy persons, forget-
fulness, slips in speaking and in holding
things, together with a certain class of mis-
takes, are due to a psychical mechanism
analogous to that of the dream and the other
members of this group.

Displacement is the core of the problem,
and the most striking of all the dream per-
formances. A thorough investigation of
the subject shows that the essential condi-
tion of displacement is purely psychological;
it is in the nature of a motive. We get on
the track by thrashing out experiences
which one cannot avoid in the analysis of
dreams. I had to break off the relations
of my dream thoughts in the analysis of my
dream on p. 11 because I found some ex-
periences which I do not wish strangers to
know, and which I could not relate without

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ON DREAMS

serious damage to important considerations.
I added, it would be no use were I to select
another instead of that particular dream;
in every dream where the content is obscure
or intricate, I should hit upon dream
thoughts which call for secrecy. If, how-
ever, I continue the analysis for myself,
without regard to those others, for whom,
indeed, so personal an event as my dream
cannot matter, I arrive finally at ideas
which surprise me, which I have not known
to be mine, which not only appear foreign
to me, but which are unpleasant, and which
I would like to oppose vehemently, whilst
the chain of ideas running through the an-
alysis intrudes upon me inexorably. I can
only take these circumstances into account
by admitting that these thoughts are actu-
ally part of my psychical life, possessing
a certain psychical intensity or energy.
However, by virtue of a particular psycho-
logical condition, the thoughts could not be-
come conscious to me. I call this particular
condition “Repression.” It is therefore

81

impossible for me not to recognise some
causal relationship between the obscurity
of the dream content and this state of re-
pression—this incapacity of consciousness.
Whence I conclude that the cause of the
obscurity is the desire to conceal these
thoughts. Thus I arrive at the conception
of the dream distortion as the deed of the
dream work, and of displacement serving to
disguise this object.

I will test this in my own dream, and ask
myself, What is the thought which, quite
innocuous in its distorted form, provokes
my liveliest opposition in its real form? I
remember that the free drive reminded me
of the last expensive drive with a member
of my family, the interpretation of the
dream being: I should for once like to ex-
perience affection for which I should not
have to pay, and that shortly before the
dream I had to make a heavy disbursement
for this very person. In this connection,
I cannot get away from the thought that I
regret this disbursement. It is only when I

82

acknowledge this feeling that there is any
sense in my wishing in the dream for an
affection that should entail no outlay. And
yet I can state on my honour that I did
not hesitate for a moment when it became
necessary to expend that sum. The regret,
the counter-
current, was unconscious to me.
Why it was unconscious is quite another
question which would lead us far away
from the answer which, though within my
knowledge, belongs elsewhere.
If I subject the dream of another person
instead of one of my own to analysis, the
result is the same; the motives for con-
vincing others is, however, changed. In
the dream of a healthy person the only way
for me to enable him to accept this re-
pressed idea is the coherence of the dream
thoughts. He is at liberty to reject this
explanation. But if we are dealing with a
person suffering from any neurosis—say
from hysteria—the recognition of these re-
pressed ideas is compulsory by reason of
their connection with the symptoms of his

83

illness and of the improvement resulting
from exchanging the symptoms for the re-
pressed ideas. Take the patient from whom
I got the last dream about the three tickets
for one florin fifty kreuzers. Analysis shows
that she does not think highly of her
husband, that she regrets having married
him, that she would be glad to change him
for someone else. It is true that she main-
tains that she loves her husband, that her
emotional life knows nothing about this
depreciation (a hundred times better !), but
all her symptoms lead to the same conclu-
sion as this dream. When her repressed
memories had reawakened a certain period
when she was conscious that she did not
love her husband, her symptoms disap-
peared, and therewith disappeared her re-
sistance to the interpretation of the dream.