408

VII

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM ACTIVITIES

AMONG the dreams which I have heard from others there is
one which at this point is especially worthy of our attention.
It was told to me by a female patient who in turn had heard
it in a lecture on dreams. Its original source is unknown to
me. This dream evidently made a deep impression upon the
lady, as she went so far as to imitate it, i.e. to repeat the
elements of this dream in a dream of her own in order to
express by this transference her agreement with it in a certain
point.

The essential facts of this illustrative dream are as follows:
For days and nights a father had watched at the sick-
bed of his child. After the child died, he retired to rest in an ad-
joining room, leaving the door ajar, however, so as to enable
him to look from his room into the other, where the corpse lay
surrounded by burning candles. An old man, who was left
as a watch, sat near the corpse murmuring prayers. After
sleeping a few hours the father dreamed that the child stood
near his bed clasping his arms and calling out reproachfully,
“Father, don’t you see that I am burning?” The father woke
and noticed a bright light coming from the adjoining room.
Rushing in, he found the old man asleep, and the covers and
one arm of the beloved body burned by the fallen candle.

The meaning of this affecting dream is simple enough, and
the explanation given by the lecturer, as my patient reported
it, was correct. The bright light coming through the open
door into the eyes of the sleeper produced the same impression
on him as if he had been awake ; namely, that a fire had been
started near the corpse by a falling candle. It is quite possible
that on going to sleep he feared that the aged guardian was
not equal to his task.

We can find nothing to change in this interpretation. We
can add only that the contents of the dream must be over-

404

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

determined, and that the talking of the child consisted of
phrases that it had uttered while still living, which recalled to
the father important events. Perhaps the complaint, “I am
burning,” recalled the fever from which the child died, and
the words quoted, “Father, don’t you see?” recalled an
emotional occurrence unknown to us.

But after we have recognised the dream as a senseful
occurrence which can be correlated with our psychic existence,
it may be surprising that a dream should have taken place
under circumstances which necessitated such immediate
awakening. We also notice that the dream does not lack the
wish-
fulfilment. The child acts as if living; it warns the
father itself; it comes to his bed and clasps his arms, as it
probably did on the occasion which gave origin to the first
part of the speech in the dream. It was for the sake of this
wish-
fulfilment that the father slept a moment longer. The
dream triumphed over the conscious reflection because it could
show the child once more alive. If the father had awakened
first, and had then drawn the conclusion which led him into
the adjoining room, he would have shortened the child’s life
by this one moment.

The peculiar feature in this brief dream which engages our
interest is quite plain. So far we have mainly endeavoured
to ascertain wherein the secret meaning of the dream consists,
and in what way this is to be discovered, and what means the
dream-
work uses to conceal it. In other words, our greatest
interest has hitherto centred on the problems of interpreta-
tion. We now encounter a dream, however, which can be
easily explained, the sense of which is plainly presented; and
we notice that in spite of this fact the dream still preserves
the essential features which plainly differentiate our dreaming
from our conscious thinking, and thus clearly demands an
explanation. After clearing up all the problems of interpreta-
tion, we can still feel how imperfect our psychology of the
dream is.

Before entering, however, into this new territory, let us
stop and reflect whether we have not missed something im-
portant on our way hither. For it must be frankly admitted
that we have been traversing the easy and comfortable part
of our journey. Hitherto all the paths we have followed

405

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

have led, if I mistake not, to light, to explication, and to full
understanding, but from the moment that we wish to pene-
trate deeper into the psychic processes of the dream all paths
lead into darkness. It is quite impossible to explain the
dream as a psychic process, for to explain means to trace to
the known, and as yet we do not possess any psychological
knowledge under which we can range what may be inferred
from our psychological investigation of dreams as their funda-
mental explanation. On the contrary, we shall be compelled
to build a series of new assumptions concerning the structure
of the psychic apparatus and its active forces; and this we
shall have to be careful not to carry beyond the simplest
logical concatenation, as its value may otherwise merge into
uncertainty. And, even if we should make no mistake in
our conclusions, and take cognisance of all the logical possi-
bilities involved, we shall still be threatened with complete
failure in our solution through the probable incompleteness
of our elemental data. It will also be impossible to gain,
or at least to establish, an explanation for the construction
and workings of the psychic instrument even through a most
careful investigation of the dream or any other single activity.
On the contrary, it will be necessary for this end to bring
together whatever appears decisively as constant after a
comparative study of a whole series of psychic activities. Thus
the psychological conceptions which we shall gain from an
analysis of the dream process will have to wait, as it were,
at the junction point until they can be connected with the
results of other investigations which may have advanced to the
nucleus of the same problem from another starting point.

(a) Forgetting in Dreams.

I propose, then, first, to turn to a subject which has given
rise to an objection hitherto unnoticed, threatening to under-
mine the foundation of our work in dream interpreta-tion. It
has been objected in more than one quarter that the dream
which we wish to interpret is really unknown to us, or, to be
more precise, that we have no assurance of knowing it as it
has really occurred (see p. 37). What we recollect of the dream,
and what we subject to our methods of interpretation, is in the
first place disfigured through our treacherous memory, which

406

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

seems particularly unfitted to retain the dream, and which
may have omitted precisely the most important part of the
dream content. For, when we pay attention to our dreams,
we often find cause to complain that we have dreamed much
more than we remember; that, unfortunately, we know nothing
more than this one fragment, and that even this seems to us
peculiarly uncertain. On the other hand, everything assures
us that our memory reproduces the dream not only fragmen-
tarily but also delusively and falsely. Just as on the one hand
we may doubt whether the material dreamt was really as dis-
connected and confused as we remember it, so on the other
hand may we doubt whether a dream was as connected as we
relate it; whether in the attempt at reproduction we have
not filled in the gaps existing or caused by forgetfulness with
new material arbitrarily chosen; whether we have not em-
bellished, rounded off, and prepared the dream so that all
judgment as to its real content becomes impossible. Indeed,
one author (Spitta⁶⁴⁾ has expressed his belief that all that is
orderly and connected is really first put into the dream during
our attempt to recall it. Thus we are in danger of having
wrested from our hands the very subject whose value we have
undertaken to determine.

In our dream interpretations we have thus far ignored
these warnings. Indeed, the demand for interpretation was,
on the contrary, found to be no less perceptible in the smallest,
most insignificant, and most uncertain ingredients of the
dream content than in those containing the distinct and de-
finite parts. In the dream of Irma’s injection we read, “I
quickly called in Dr. M.,” and we assumed that even this
small addendum would not have gotten into the dream if it
had not had a special derivation. Thus we reached the history
of that unfortunate patient to whose bed I “quickly” called
in the older colleague. In the apparently absurd dream
which treated the difference between 51 and 56 as quantité
négligé, the number 51 was repeatedly mentioned. Instead
of finding this self-evident or indifferent, we inferred from it
a second train of thought in the latent content of the dream
which led to the number 51. By following up this clue we
came to the fears which placed 51 years as a limit of life, this
being in most marked contrast to a dominant train of thought

407

which boastfully knew no limit to life. In the dream “Non
Vixit” I found, as an insignificant interposition that I at first
overlooked, the sentence, “As P. does not understand him,
Fl. asks me,” &c. The interpretation then coming to a
standstill, I returned to these words, and found through them
the way to the infantile phantasy, which appeared in the dream
thoughts as an intermediary point of junction. This came
about by means of the poet’s verses :

Seldom have you understood me,
Seldom have I understood you,
But when we got into the mire,
We at once understood each other.

Every analysis will demonstrate by examples how the most
insignificant features of the dream are indispensable to the
analysis, and how the finishing of the task is delayed by the
fact that attention is not at first directed to them. In the
same way we have in the interpretation of dreams respected
every nuance of verbal expression found in the dream ; indeed,
if we were confronted by a senseless or insufficient wording
betraying an unsuccessful effort to translate the dream in the
proper style, we have even respected these defects of expression.
In brief, what the authorities have considered arbitrary im-
provisation, concocted hastily to suit the occasion, we have
treated like a sacred text. This contradiction requires an
explanation.

It is in our favour, without disparagement to the authorities.
From the viewpoint of our newly-acquired understanding con-
cerning the origin of the dream, the contradictions fall into
perfect agreement. It is true that we distort the dream in
our attempt to reproduce it ; and herein we find another
instance of what we have designated as the often misunder-
stood secondary elaboration of the dream through the influ-
ence of normal thinking. But this distortion is itself only a
part of the elaboration to which the dream thoughts are
regularly subjected by virtue of the dream censor. The
authorities have here divined or observed that part of the
dream distortion most obviously at work ; to us this is of little
importance, for we know that a more prolific work of distortion,
not so easily comprehensible, has already chosen the dream

408

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

from among the concealed thoughts as its object. The
authorities err only in considering the modifications of the
dream while it is being recalled and put in words as arbitrary
and insoluble; and hence, as likely to mislead us in the inter-
pretation of the dream. We over-estimate the determination
of the psychic. There is nothing arbitrary in this field. It
can quite generally be shown that a second train of thought
immediately undertakes the determination of the elements
which have been left undetermined by the first. I wish,
e.g., to think quite voluntarily of a number. This, however,
is impossible. The number that occurs to me is definitely
and necessarily determined by thoughts within me which may
be far from my momentary intention.^* [Just as far from arbi-
trary are the modifications which the dream experiences
through the revision of the waking state. They remain in
associative connection with the content, the place of which
they take, and serve to show us the way to this content, which
may itself be the substitute for another.]

In the analysis of dreams with patients I am accustomed
to institute the following proof of this assertion, which has
never proved unsuccessful. If the report of a dream appears
to me at first difficult to understand, I request the dreamer
to repeat it. This he rarely does in the same words. The
passages wherein the expression is changed have become
known to me as the weak points of the dream’s disguise, which
are of the same service to me as the embroidered mark on
Siegfried’s raiment was to Hagen. The analysis may start
from these points. The narrator has been admonished by
my announcement that I mean to take special pains to solve
the dream, and immediately, under the impulse of resistance,
he protects the weak points of the dream’s disguise, replacing
the treacherous expressions by remoter ones. He thus calls
my attention to the expressions he has
dropped. From the
efforts made to guard against the solution of the dream, I can
also draw conclusions as to the care with which the dream’s
raiment was woven.
The authors are, however, less justified in giving so much
importance to the doubt which our judgment encounters in

^*See the Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 4th ed., 1912. (English
translation in preparation.)

409

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

relating the dream. It is true that this doubt betrays the lack
of an intellectual assurance, but our memory really knows no
guarantees, and yet, much more often than is objectively
justified, we yield to the pressure of lending credence to its
statements. [The doubt concerning the correct representa-
tion of the dream, or of its individual data, is again only an
offshoot of the dream censor—that is, of the resistance against
penetration to consciousness of the dream thoughts. This
resistance has not entirely exhausted itself in bringing about
the displacements and substitutions, and it therefore adheres
as doubt to what has been allowed to pass through. We can
recognise this doubt all the easier through the fact that it
takes care not to attack the intensive elements of the dream,
but only the weak and indistinct ones.] For we already know
that a transvaluation of all the psychic values has taken
place between the dream thoughts and the dream. The dis-
figurement has been made possible only by the alteration of
values; it regularly manifests itself in this way and occasion-
ally contents itself with this. [If doubt attaches to an indis-
tinct element of the dream content, we may, following the hint,
recognise in this element a direct offshoot of one of the out-
lawed dream thoughts.] It is here just as it was after a great
revolution in one of the republics of antiquity or of the Re-
naissance. The former noble and powerful ruling families
are now banished; all high positions are filled by upstarts;
in the city itself only the very poor and powerless citizens or
the distant followers of the vanquished party are tolerated.
Even they do not enjoy the full rights of citizenship. They
are suspiciously watched. Instead of the suspicion in the
comparison, we have in our case the doubt. I therefore insist
that in the analysis of dreams one should emancipate one’s self
from the entire conception of estimating trustworthiness, and
when there is the slightest possibility that this or that occurred
in the dream, it should be treated as a full certainty. Until
one has decided to reject these considerations in tracing the
dream elements, the analysis will remain at a standstill. An-
tipathy toward the element concerned shows its psychic effect
in the person analysed by the fact that the undesirable idea
will evoke no thought in his mind. Such effect is really not
self-evident. It would not be inconsistent if one would say :

410

“Whether this or that was contained in the dream I do not
know, but the following thoughts occur to me in this direction.”
But he never expresses himself thus; and it is just this dis-
turbing influence of doubt in the analysis that stamps it as
an offshoot and instrument of the psychic resistance. Psycho-
analysis is justly suspicious. One of its rules reads: [Whatever
disturbs the continuation of the work is a resistance.]

The forgetting of dreams, too, remains unfathomable as
long as we do not consider the force of the psychic censor in
its explanation. The feeling, indeed, that one has dreamt a
great deal during the night and has retained only a little of it
may have another meaning in a number of cases. It may
perhaps signify that the dream-work has continued percep-
tibly throughout the night, and has left behind only this short
dream. There is, however, no doubt of the fact that the dream
is progressively forgotten on awakening. One often forgets it
in spite of painful effort to remember. [I believe, however,
that just as one generally over-estimates the extent of one’s
forgetting, so one over-estimates the deficiencies in one’s
knowledge, judging them by the gaps occurring in the dream.
All that has been lost through forgetting in a dream content
can often be brought back through analysis.] At least, in a
whole series of cases, it is possible to discover from one single
remaining fragment, not the dream, to be sure, which is of little
importance, but all the thoughts of the dream. It requires a
greater expenditure of attention and self-control in the analysis;
that is all. But, at the same time, this suggests that the for-
getting of the dream does not lack a hostile intention.

A convincing proof of [the purposeful nature of dream-
forgetting, in the service of resistance,] is gained in analysis
through the investigation of a preliminary stage of forgetting.^*
It often happens that in the midst of interpretation work an
omitted fragment of the dream suddenly comes to the surface.
This part of the dream snatched from forgetfulness is always
the most important part. It lies on the shortest road toward
the solution of the dream, and for that very reason it was
most objectionable to the resistance. Among the examples of
dreams that I have collected in connection with this treatise,

^*Concerning the object of forgetting in general, see the Psychopathology
of Everyday Life.

411

it once happened that I had to interpose subsequently such a
piece of dream content. It was a travelling dream, which
took vengeance upon an unlovable female travelling com-
panion ; I have left it almost entirely uninterpreted on account
of its being in part coarse and nasty. The part omitted read :
“I said about a book by Schiller, ‘It is from —’ but cor-
rected myself, for I noticed the mistake myself, ‘It is by.’
Upon this the man remarked to his sister, ‘Indeed, he said it
correctly.’ ”

The self-correction in dreams, which seems so wonderful to
some authors, does not merit consideration by us. I shall rather
show from my own memory the model for the grammatical
error in the dream. I was nineteen years old when I visited
England for the first time, and spent a day on the shore of the
Irish Sea. I naturally amused myself by catching the sea
animals left by the waves, and occupied myself in particular
with a starfish (the dream begins with Hollthurn—Holothurian),
when a pretty little girl came over to me and asked me, “Is
it a starfish ? Is it alive ?” I answered, “Yes, he is alive,”
but was then ashamed of my mistake and repeated the sentence
correctly. For the grammatical mistake which I then made,
the dream substitutes another which is quite common with
Germans. “Das Buch ist von Schiller” should not be trans-
lated by the book is from, but the book is by. That the dream-
work produces this substitution because the word from makes
possible, through consonance, a remarkable condensation with
the German adjective fromm (pious, devout), no longer surprises
us after all that we have heard about the aims of the dream-
work and about its reckless selection of means of procedure.

But what is the meaning of the harmless recollection of the
seashore in relation to the dream ? It explains by means of a
very innocent example that I have used the wrong gender—
i.e. that I have put “he,” the word denoting the sex or the
sexual, where it does not belong. This is surely one of the
keys to the solution of dreams. Who ever has heard of the
origin of the book-title Matter and Motion (Molière in Malade
Imaginaire : La matière est-elle laudable ?—A motion of
the bowels) will readily be able to supply the missing
parts.

Moreover, I can prove conclusively by a demonstratio ad

412

oculos that [The forgetting in dreams is in great part due to the
activity of resistance.] A patient tells me that he has dreamed,
but that the dream has vanished without leaving a trace, as
if nothing had happened. We continue to work, however ; I
strike a resistance which I make plain to the patient ; by en-
couraging and urging I help him to become reconciled to some
disagreeable thought ; and as soon as I have succeeded he
exclaims, “Now, I can recall what I have dreamed.” The
same resistance which that day disturbed him in the work
caused him also to forget the dream. By overcoming this
resistance, I brought the dream to memory.

In the same way the patient may, on reaching a certain
part of the work, recall a dream which took place three, four,
or more days before, and which has rested in oblivion through
out all this time.

[Psychoanalytic experience has furnished us with another
proof of the fact that the forgetting of dreams depends more
on the resistance than on the strangeness existing between
the waking and sleeping states, as the authorities have be-
lieved.] It often happens to me, as well as to the other analysts
and to patients under treatment, that we are awakened from
sleep by a dream, as we would say, and immediately there
after, while in full possession of our mental activity, we begin
to interpret the dream. In such cases I have often not rested
until I gained a full understanding of the dream, and still it
would happen that after the awakening I have just as com-
pletely forgotten the interpretation work as the dream content
itself, though I was aware that I had dreamed and that I had
interpreted the dream. The dream has more frequently
taken along into forgetfulness the result of the interpretation
work than it was possible for the mental activity to retain the
dream in memory. But between this interpretation work and
the waking thoughts there is not that psychic gap through
which alone the authorities wish to explain the forgetting of
dreams. Morton Prince objects to my explanation of the
forgetting of dreams on the ground that it is only a particular
example of amnesia for dissociated states, and that the im-
possibility of harmonising my theory with other types of
amnesia makes it also valueless for other purposes. He thus
makes the reader suspect that in all his description of such

413

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

dissociated states he has never made the attempt to find
the dynamic explanation for these phenomena. For, had he
done so, he surely would have discovered that the repression
and the resistance produced thereby “is quite as well the
cause of this dissociation as of the amnesia for its psychic
content.”

That the dream is as little forgotten as the other psychic
acts, and that it clings to memory just as firmly as the other
psychic activities was demonstrated to me by an experiment
which I was able to make while compiling this manuscript.
I have kept in my notes many dreams of my own which, for
some reason at the time I could analyse. only imperfectly or
not at all. In order to get material to illustrate my assertions,
I attempted to subject some of them to analysis from one to
two years later. I succeeded in this attempt without any
exception. Indeed, I may even state that the interpretation
went more easily at this later time than at the time when the
dreams were recent occurrences. As a possible explanation
for this fact, I would say that I had gotten over some of the
resistances which disturbed me at the time of dreaming. In
such subsequent interpretations I have compared the past
results in dream thoughts with the present, which have
usually been more abundant, and have invariably found the
past results falling under the present without change. I have,
however, soon put an end to my surprise by recalling that I
have long been accustomed to interpret dreams from former
years which have occasionally been related to me by patients
as if they were dreams of the night before, with the same
method and the same success. I shall report two examples of
such delayed dream interpretations in the discussion of
anxiety dreams. When I instituted this experiment for the
first time, I justly expected that the dream would behave in
this respect like a neurotic symptom. For when I treat a
neurotic, perhaps an hysteric, by psychoanalysis, I am com-
pelled to find explanations for the first symptoms of the
disease which have long been forgotten, just as for those still
existing which have brought the patient to me; and I find
the former problem easier to solve than the more exigent one
of to-day. In the Studien über Hysterie, published as early
as 1895, I was able to report the explanation of a first

414

hysterical attack of anxiety which the patient, a woman over
forty years of age, had experienced in her fifteenth year.^*

I may now proceed in an informal way to some further
observations on the interpretation of dreams, which will perhaps
be of service to the reader who wishes to test my assertion by
the analysis of his own dreams.

No one must expect that the interpretations of his dreams
will come to him overnight without any exertion. Practice
is required even for the perception of endoptic phenomena
and other sensations usually withdrawn from attention,
although this group of perceptions is not opposed by any
psychic motive. It is considerably more difficult to become
master of the “undesirable presentations.” He who wishes
to do this will have to fulfil the requirements laid down in this
treatise. Obeying the rules here given, he will strive during the
work to curb in himself every critique, every prejudice, and
every affective or intellectual one-
sidedness. We will always
be mindful of the precept of Claude Bernard for the experi-
menter in the physiological laboratory— “Travailler comme
une bête”—meaning he should be just as persistent, but also
just as unconcerned about the results. He who will follow
these counsels will surely no longer find the task difficult. The
interpretation of a dream cannot always be accomplished in
one session ; you often feel, after following up a concatenation
of thoughts, that your working capacity is exhausted ; the
dream will not tell you anything more on that day ; it is then
best to break off, and return to the work the following day.
Another portion of the dream content then solicits your
attention, and you thus find an opening to a new stratum of
the dream thoughts. We may call this the “fractionary”
interpretation of dreams.

It is most difficult to induce the beginner in the inter-
pretation of dreams to recognise the fact that his task is not
finished though he is in possession of a complete interpretation
of the dream which is ingenious and connected, and which
explains all the elements of the dream. Besides this another
superimposed interpretation of the same dream may be pos-
sible which has escaped him. It is really not simple to form

^*Translated by A. A. Brill, appearing under the title Selected Papers on
Hysteria.

415

an idea of the abundant unconscious streams of thought
striving for expression in our minds, and to believe in the
skilfulness displayed by the dream-
work in hitting, so to speak,
with its ambiguous manner of expression, seven flies with one
stroke, like the journeyman tailor in the fairy tale. The reader
will constantly be inclined to reproach the author for uselessly
squandering his ingenuity, but anyone who has had experience
of his own will learn to know better.

(The question whether every dream can be interpreted may
be answered in the negative.) One must not forget that in the
work of interpretation one must cope with the psychic forces
which are responsible for the distortion of the dream. Whether
one can become master of the inner resistances through his
intellectual interest, his capacity for self-
control, his psycho-
logical knowledge, and his practice in dream interpretation
becomes a question of the preponderance of forces. It is
always possible to make some progress. One can at least go
far enough to become convinced that the dream is an ingenious
construction, generally far enough to gain an idea of its mean-
ing. It happens very often that a second dream confirms
and continues the interpretation assumed for the first. A
whole series of dreams running for weeks or months rests on
a common basis, and is therefore to be interpreted in con-
nection. In dreams following each other, it may be often
observed how one takes as its central point what is indicated
only as the periphery of the next, or it is just the other way,
so that the two supplement each other in interpretation.
That the different dreams of the same night are quite regu-
larly in the interpretation to be treated as a whole I have
already shown by examples.

(In the best interpreted dreams we must often leave one
portion in obscurity because we observe in the interpretation
that it represents the beginning of a tangle of dream thoughts
which cannot be unravelled but which has furnished no new
contribution to the dream content. This, then, is the keystone
of the dream, the place at which it mounts into the unknown.
For the dream thoughts which we come upon in the interpre-
tation must generally remain without a termination, and merge
in all directions into the net-
like entanglement of our world
of thoughts. It is from some denser portion of this texture

416

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

that the dream-wish then arises like the mushroom from its
mycelium.)

Let us now return to the facts of dream-
forgetting, as we have really neglected to draw an important conclusion from
them. If the waking life shows an unmistakable intention to forget the dream
formed at night, either as a whole, immedi-
ately after awakening, or in fragments during the course of the day, and if
we recognise as the chief participator in this forgetting the psychic resistance
against the dream which has already performed its part in opposing the dream
at night—then the question arises, What has the dream formation actually
accomplished against this resistance? Let us consider the most striking case
in which the waking life has done away with the dream as though it had never
happened. If we take into consideration the play of the psychic forces, we
are forced to assert that the dream would have never come into existence had
the resistance held sway during the night as during the day. (We conclude
then, that the resistance loses a part of its force during the night; we know
that it has not been extinguished, as we have demonstrated its interest in the
dream formation in the production of the distortion. We have, then, forced
upon us the possibility that it abates at night, that the dream formation has
become possible with this diminution of the resistance, and we thus readily
understand that, having regained its full power with the awakening, it immedi-
ately sets aside what it was forced to admit as long as it was in abeyance.
Descriptive psychology teaches us that the chief determinant in dream formation
is the dormant state of the mind. We may now add the following eluci-
dation : The sleeping state makes dream formation possible by diminishing the
endopsychic censor.)

We are certainly tempted to look upon this conclusion as the only one
possible from the facts of dream-
forgetting, and to develop from it further deductions concerning the pro-
portions of energy in the sleeping and waking states. But we shall stop here
for the present. When we have penetrated somewhat deeper into the psychology
of the dream we shall find that the origin of the dream formation may be
differently conceived. The resistance operating to prevent the dream thoughts
coming to consciousness may perhaps be eluded

417

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

without suffering diminution per se. (It is also plausible that
both the factors favourable to dream formation, the diminution
as well as the eluding of the resistance, may be made possible
simultaneously through the sleeping state.) But we shall pause
here, and continue this line of thought later.

There is another series of objections against our procedure
in the dream interpretation which we must now consider.
In this interpretation we proceed by dropping all the end-
presentations which otherwise control reflection (we direct
our attention to an individual element of the dream, and then
note the unwished-for thoughts that occur to us in this con-
nection. We then take up the next component of the dream
content, and repeat the operation with it; and, without caring
in what direction the thoughts take us), we allow ourselves to
be led on by them until we end by rambling from one subject
to another. At the same time, we harbour the confident
hope that we may in the end, without effort, come upon the
dream thoughts from which our dream originated. Against
this the critic brings the following objection: That one can
arrive somewhere, starting from a single element in the
dream is nothing wonderful. Something can be associatively
connected with every idea. It is remarkable only that one
should succeed in hitting the dream thoughts in this aimless
and arbitrary excursion of thought. It is probably a self-
deception; the investigator follows the chain of association
from one element until for some reason it is seen to break,
when a second element is taken up; it is thus but natural that
the association, originally unbounded, should now experience
a narrowing. He keeps in mind the former chain of associa-
tions, and he will therefore in analysis more easily hit upon
certain thoughts which have something in common with the
thoughts from the first chain. He then imagines that he has
found a thought which represents a point of junction between
two elements of the dream. As he, moreover, allows himself
every freedom of thought connection, excepting only the tran-
sitions from one idea to another which are made in normal
thinking, it is not finally difficult for him to concoct something
which he calls the dream thought out of a series of “inter-
mediary thoughts”; and without any guarantee, as they
are otherwise unknown, he palms these off as the psychic
2 D

418

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

equivalent of the dream. But all this is accompanied by
arbitrary procedure and over-
ingenious exploitation of coin-
cidence. Anyone who will go to this useless trouble can in
this way work out any desired interpretation for any dream
whatever.

If such objections are really advanced against us, we may
refer in our defence to the agreement of our dream interpre-
tations, to the surprising connections with other dream
elements which appear in following out the different particular
presentations, and to the improbability that anything which so
perfectly covers and explains the dream as our dream interpre-
tations do could be gained otherwise than by following psychic
connections previously established. (We can also justify our
selves by the fact that the method of dream analysis is identical
with the method used in the solution of hysterical symptoms,
where the correctness of the method is attested through the
emergence and fading away of the symptoms—that is, where
the elucidation of the text by the interposed illustrations
finds corroboration.) But we have no object in avoiding this
problem—how one can reach to a pre-
established aim by
following a chain of thoughts spun out thus arbitrarily and
aimlessly—for, though we are unable to solve the problem,
we can get rid of it entirely.

It is in fact demonstrably incorrect to state that we
abandon ourselves to an aimless course of thought when, as
in the interpretation of dreams, we relinquish our reflection
and allow the unwished-
for idea to come to the surface. It can
be shown that we can reject only those end-
presentations that
are familiar to us, and that as soon as these stop the unknown,
or, as we say more precisely, the unconscious end-
presenta-
tions, immediately come into play, which now determined the
course of the unwished-
for presentations. A mode of think-
ing without end-
idea can surely not be brought about through
any influence we can exert on our own mental life; nor do I
know either of any state of psychic derangement in which
such mode of thought establishes itself. The psychiatrists
have in this field much too early rejected the solidity of the
psychic structure. (I have ascertained that an unregulated
stream of thoughts, devoid of the end-
presentation, occurs as
little in the realm of hysteria and paranoia as in the formation

419

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

or solution of dreams.) Perhaps it does not appear at all in
the endogenous psychic affections, but even the deliria of
confused states are senseful according to the ingenious theory
of Leuret and become incomprehensible to us only through
omissions. I have come to the same conviction wherever I
have found opportunity for observation. (The deliria are the
work of a censor which no longer makes any effort to conceal
its sway, which, instead of lending its support to a revision no
longer obnoxious to it, cancels regardlessly that which it raises
objections against, thus causing the remnant to appear dis-
connected.) This censor behaves analogously to the Russian
newspaper censor on the frontier, who allows to fall into the
hands of his protected readers only those foreign journals
that have passed under the black pencil.

The free play of the presentations following any associative
concatenation perhaps makes its appearance in destructive
organic brain lesions. What, however, is taken as such in
the psychoneuroses can always be explained as the influence
of the censor on a series of thoughts which have been pushed
into the foreground by the concealed end-presentation.^* It
has been considered an unmistakable sign of association free
from the end-presentations when the emerging presentations
or pictures) were connected with one another by means of
the so-called superficial associations—that is, by assonance,
word ambiguity, and causal connection without inner sense
relationship; in other words, when they were connected
through all those associations which we allow ourselves to
make use of in wit and play upon words. This distinguishing
mark proves true for the connections of thought which lead
us from the elements of the dream content to the collaterals,
and from these to the thoughts of the dream proper; of this
we have in our dream analysis found many surprising ex-
amples. No connection was there too loose and no wit too
objectionable to serve as a bridge from one thought to another.
But the correct understanding of such tolerance is not remote.
Whenever one psychic element is connected with another through
an obnoxious or superficial association, there also exists a correct

^* Jung has brilliantly corroborated this statement by analyses of
Dementia Praecox. (The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, translated by
F. Peterson and A. A. Brill.)

420

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

and more profound connection between the two which succumbs
to the resistance of the censor.
The correct explanation for the predominance of the
superficial associations is the pressure of the censor, and not
the suppression of the end-
presentation. The superficial
associations supplant the deep ones in the presentation when-
ever the censor renders the normal connective paths impassable.
It is as if in a mountainous region a general interruption of
traffic, e.g., an inundation, should render impassable the long
and broad thoroughfares; traffic would then have to be main-
tained through inconvenient and steep footpaths otherwise
used only by the hunter.

We can here distinguish two cases which, however, are
essentially one. In the first case the censor is directed only
against the connection of the two thoughts, which, having
been detached from each other, escape the opposition. The
two thoughts then enter successively into consciousness;
their connection remains concealed; but in its place there occurs
to us a superficial connection between the two which we would
not otherwise have thought of, and which as a rule connects
with another angle of the presentation complex instead of
with the one giving rise to the suppressed but essential con-
nection. Or, in the second case, both thoughts on account of
their content succumb to the censor; both then appear not
in their correct but in a modified substituted form; and both
substituted thoughts are so selected that they represent,
through a superficial association, the essential relation which
existed between those which have been replaced by them.
Under the pressure of the censor the displacement of a normal
and vital association by a superficial and apparently absurd
one has thus occurred in both cases.

Because we know of this displacement we unhesitatingly
place reliance even upon superficial associations in the dream-
analysis.^*

The psychoanalysis of neurotics makes prolific use of the
^*The same considerations naturally hold true also for the case where
superficial associations are exposed in the dream, as, e.g., in both dreams re-
ported by Maury (p. 50, pélérinage—pelletier—pelle, kilometer—kilogram—gilolo,
Lobelia—Lopez—Lotto). I know from my work with neurotics what kind of
reminiscence preferentially represents itself in this manner. It is the
consultation of encyclopædias by which most people pacify their desire for
explanation of the sexual riddle during the period of curiosity in puberty.

421

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

two axioms, first that with the abandonment of the conscious
end-
presentation the domination of the train of presenta-
tion is transferred to the concealed end-presentations ; and,
secondly, that superficial associations are only a substitutive
displacement for suppressed and more profound ones ; indeed,
psychoanalysis raises these two axioms to pillars of its
technique. When I request a patient to dismiss all reflection,
and to report to me whatever comes into his mind, I firmly
cling to the presupposition that he will not be able to drop
the end-idea of the treatment, and I feel justified in conclud-
ing that what he reports, even though seemingly most harm-
less and arbitrary, has connection with this morbid state. My
own personality is another end-presentation concerning which
the patient has no inkling. The full appreciation, as well as
the detailed proof of both these explanations, belongs accord-
ingly to the description of the psychoanalytic technique as
a therapeutic method. We have here reached one of the allied
subjects with which we propose to leave the subject of the
interpretation of dreams.^*

Of all the objections only one is correct, and still remains,
namely, that (we ought not to ascribe all mental occurrences
of the interpretation work to the nocturnal dream-work. In
the interpretation in the waking state we are making a road
running from the dream elements back to the dream thoughts.
The dream-work has made its way in the opposite direction,
and it is not at all probable that these roads are equally
passable in the opposite directions. It has, on the contrary,
been shown that during the day, by means of new thought
connections we make paths which strike the intermediate
thoughts and the dream thoughts in different places. We
can see how the recent thought material of the day takes its
place in the groups of the interpretation, and probably also
forces the additional resistance appearing through the night
to make new and further detours. But the number and form
of the collaterals which we thus spin during the day is psycho-
logically perfectly negligible if it only leads the way to the
desired dream thoughts.)

^*The above sentences, which when written sounded very improbable,
have since been justified experimentally by Jung and his pupils in the
Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien.

422

(b) Regression.

Now that we have guarded against objection, or at least
indicated where our weapons for defence rest, we need no longer
delay entering upon the psychological investigations for which
we have so long prepared. Let us bring together the main
results of our investigations up to this point. (The dream is
a momentous psychic act; its motive power is at all times to
fulfil a wish; its indiscernibleness as a wish and its many
peculiarities and absurdities are due to the influence of the
psychic censor to which it has been subjected during its for-
mation. Apart from the pressure to withdraw itself from this
censor, the following have played a part in its formation: a
strong tendency to the condensation of psychic material, a
consideration for dramatisation into mental pictures, and
(though not regularly) a consideration for a rational and in-
telligible exterior in the dream structure.) From every one
of these propositions the road leads further to psychological
postulates and assumptions. Thus the reciprocal relation of
the wish motives and the four conditions, as well as the
relations of these conditions to one another will have to be
investigated; and the dream will have to be brought into
association with the psychic life.

At the beginning of this chapter we cited a dream in order
to remind us of the riddles that are still unsolved. The in-
terpretation of this dream of the burning child afforded us no
difficulties, although it was not perfectly given in our present
sense. We asked ourselves why it was necessary, after all,
that the father should dream instead of awakening, and we
recognised the wish to represent the child as living as the
single motive of the dream. That there was still another wish
playing a part in this connection, we shall be able to show
after later discussions. For the present, therefore, we may say
that for the sake of the wish-fulfilment the mental process of
sleep was transformed into a dream.

If the wish realisation is made retrogressive, only one
quality still remains which separates the two forms of psychic
occurrences from each other. The dream thought might have
read: “I see a glimmer coming from the room in which the
corpse reposes. Perhaps a candle has been upset, and the child

423

is burning!” The dream reports the result of this reflection
unchanged, but represents it in a situation which takes place
in the present, and which is conceivable by the senses like an
experience in the waking state. This, however, is the most
common and the most striking psychological character of the
dream ; a thought, usually the one wished for, is in the dream
made objective and represented as a scene, or, according to our
belief, as experienced.

But how are we now to explain this characteristic
peculiarity of the dream-
work, or, to speak more modestly,
how are we to bring it into relation with the psychic
processes ?

On closer examination, it is plainly seen that there are
two pronounced characters in the manifestations of the dream
which are almost independent of each other. The one is the
representation as a present situation with the omission of the
“perhaps” ; the other is the transformation of the thought
into visual pictures and into speech.)

The transformation in the dream thoughts, which shifts
into the present the expectation expressed in them, is perhaps
in this particular dream not so very striking. This is probably
in consonance with the special or rather subsidiary rôle of the
wish-
fulfilment in this dream. Let us take another dream in
which the dream-
wish does not separate itself in sleep from a
continuation of the waking thoughts, e.g., the dream of Irma’s
injection. Here the dream thought reaching representation
is in the optative, “ If Otto could only be blamed for Irma’s
sickness ! ” The dream suppresses the optative, and replaces
it by a simple present, “ Yes, Otto is to blame for Irma’s
sickness.” This is therefore the first of the changes which even
the undistorted dream undertakes with the dream thought.
But we shall not stop long at this first peculiarity of the dream.
We elucidate it by a reference to the conscious phantasy,
the day dream, which behaves similarly with its presentation
content. When Daudet’s Mr. Joyeuse wanders through the
streets of Paris unemployed while his daughter is led to be-
lieve that he has a position and is in his office, he likewise
dreams in the present of circumstances that might help him
to obtain protection and a position. The dream therefore
employs the present in the same manner and with the same

424

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

right as the day dream. The present is the tense in which
the wish is represented as fulfilled.

(The second quality, however, is peculiar to the dream as
distinguished from the day dream, namely, that the presenta-
tion content is not thought, but changed into perceptible
images to which we give credence and which we believe we
experience. Let us add, however, that not all dreams show
this transformation of presentation into perceptible images.
There are dreams which consist solely of thoughts to which
we cannot, however, on that account deny the substantiality
of dreams. My dream “Autodidasker—the waking phantasy
with Professor N.”— is of that nature; it contains hardly more
perceptible elements than if I had thought its content during
the day. Moreover, every long dream contains elements
which have not experienced the transformation into the per-
ceptible, and which are simply thought or known as we are
wont to think or know in our waking state. We may also
recall here that such transformation of ideas into perceptible
images does not occur in dreams only but also in hallucina-
tions and visions which perhaps appear spontaneously in
health or as symptoms in the psychoneuroses. In brief, the
relation which we are investigating here is in no way an
exclusive one; the fact remains, however, that where this
character of the dream occurs, it appears to us as the most
noteworthy, so that we cannot think of it apart from the
dream life. Its explanation, however, requires a very detailed
discussion.

Among all the observations on the theory of dreams to be
found in authorities on the subject, I should like to lay stress
upon one as being worth mentioning. The great G. T.
Fechner³⁵ expresses his belief (Psychophysik, Part II., p. 520),
in connection with some discussion devoted to the dream,
that the seat of the dream is elsewhere than in the waking
ideation. No other theory enables us to conceive the special
qualities of the dream life.

The idea which is placed at our disposal is one of psychic
locality. We shall entirely ignore the fact that the
psychic apparatus with which we are here dealing is also
familiar to us as an anatomical specimen, and we shall care-
fully avoid the temptation to determine the psychic locality

425

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

in any way anatomically. We shall remain on psychological
ground, and we shall think ourselves called upon only to
conceive the instrument which serves the psychic activities
somewhat after the manner of a compound microscope, a
photographic or other similar apparatus. (The psychic locality,
then, corresponds to a place within such an apparatus in which
one of the primary elements of the picture comes into exist-
ence.) As is well known, there are in the microscope and tele-
scope partly fanciful locations or regions in which no tangible
portion of the apparatus is located. ‘I think it superfluous
to apologise for the imperfections of this and all similar figures.
These comparisons are designed only to assist us in our attempt
to make clear the complication of the psychic activity by
breaking up this activity and referring the single activities
to the single component parts of the apparatus. No one, so
far as I know, has ever ventured to attempt to discover the
composition of the psychic instrument through such analysis.
I see no harm in such an attempt. I believe that we may
give free rein to our assumptions provided we at the same
time preserve our cool judgment and do not take the scaffold-
ing for the building. As we need nothing except auxiliary
ideas for the first approach to any unknown subject, we
shall prefer the crudest and most tangible hypothesis to all
others.

(We therefore conceive the psychic apparatus as a compound
instrument, the component parts of which let us call in-
stances, or, for the sake of clearness, systems.) We then enter-
tain the expectation that these systems perhaps maintain a
constant spatial relationship to each other like the different
systems of lenses of the telescope, one behind another. Strictly
speaking, there is no need of assuming a real spatial arrange-
ment of the psychic system. It will serve our purpose if a
firm sequence be established through the fact that in certain
psychological occurrences the system will be traversed by the
excitement in a definite chronological order. This sequence
may experience an alteration in other processes; such possi-
bility may be left open. For the sake of brevity, we shall
henceforth speak of the component parts of the apparatus
as “Ψ-systems.”
The first thing that strikes us is the fact that the apparatus

426

composed of Y-systems has a direction. All our psychic
activities proceed from (inner or outer) stimuli and terminate
in innervations. We thus ascribe to the apparatus a sensible
and a motor end; at the sensible end we find a system which
receives the perceptions, and at the motor end another which
opens the locks of motility. The psychic process generally
takes its course from the perception end to the motility end.
The most common scheme of the psychic apparatus has there-
fore the following appearance:

FIG. 1.

But this is only in compliance with the demand long familiar
to us, that the psychic apparatus must be constructed like a
reflex apparatus. The reflex act remains the model for every
psychic activity.

We have now reason to admit a first differentiation at the
sensible end. The perceptions that come to us leave a trace
in our psychic apparatus which we may call a “Memory
trace.” The function which relates to this memory trace we
call the memory. If we hold seriously to our resolution to
connect the psychic processes into systems, the memory trace
can then consist only of lasting changes in the elements of the
systems. But, as has already been shown in other places,
obvious difficulties arise if one and the same system faithfully
preserves changes in its elements and still remains fresh and
capable of admitting new motives for change. Following the
principle which directs our undertaking, we shall distribute
these two activities among two different systems. We assume
that a first system of the apparatus takes up the stimuli of
perception, but retains nothing from them–that is, it has no
memory; and that behind this there lies a second system
which transforms the momentary excitement of the first into

427

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

lasting traces.) This would then be a diagram of our psychic
apparatus :

FIG. 2.

It is known that from the perceptions that act on the P-
system we retain something else as lasting as the content
itself. Our perceptions prove to be connected with one
another in memory, and this is especially the case when they
have once fallen together in simultaneity. We call this the
fact of association. It is now clear that if the P-system is
entirely lacking in memory, it certainly cannot preserve
traces for the associations ; the individual P-elements would
be intolerably hindered in their function if a remnant of
former connection should make its influence felt against a new
perception. Hence we must, on the contrary, assume that
the memory system is the basis of the association. The fact
of the association, then, consists in this—that, in consequence
of the diminutions in resistance and a smoothing of the ways
from one of the Mem-elements, the excitement transmits
itself to a second rather than to a third Mem-system.

On further investigation we find it necessary to assume
not one but many such Mem-systems, in which the same
excitement propagated by the P-elements experiences a diver-
sified fixation. The first of these Mem-systems will contain in
any case the fixation of the association through simultaneity,
while in those lying further away the same exciting material
will be arranged according to other forms of concurrence ;
so that relationships of similarity, &c., might perhaps be
represented through these later systems.) It would naturally
be idle to attempt to report in words the psychic significance
of such a system. Its characteristic would lie in the intimacy

428

of its relations to elements of raw memory material—that is,
if we wish to point to a profounder theory in the gradations
of the resistances to conduction toward these elements.

We may insert here an observation of a general nature
which points perhaps to something of importance. (The P-
system, which possesses no capability of preserving changes
and hence no memory, furnishes for our consciousness the
entire manifoldness of the sensible qualities. Our memories,
on the other hand, are unconscious in themselves; those
that are most deeply impressed form no exception. They
can be made conscious, but there can be no doubt that they
develop all their influences in the unconscious state. What
we term our character is based, to be sure, on the memory
traces of our impressions, and indeed on these impressions
that have affected us most strongly, those of our early youth—
those that almost never become conscious. But when memories
become conscious again they show no sensible quality or a very
slight one in comparison to the perceptions. If, now, it can
be confirmed that memory and quality exclude each other, as far
as consciousness in the Y-systems is concerned, a most promising
insight reveals itself to us in the determinations of the neuron
excitement.)

What we have so far assumed concerning the composition
of the psychic apparatus at the sensible end follows regardless
of the dream and the psychological explanations derived from
it. (The dream, however, serves as a source of proof for the
knowledge of another part of the apparatus. We have seen
that it became impossible to explain the dream formation
unless we ventured to assume two psychic instances, one of
which subjected the activity of the other to a critique as
a consequence of which the exclusion from consciousness
resulted.

We have seen that the criticising instance entertains
closer relations with consciousness than the criticised. The
former stands between the latter and consciousness like a
screen. We have, moreover, found essential reasons for iden-
tifying the criticising instance with that which directs our
waking life and determines our voluntary conscious actions.
If we now replace these instances in the development of our
theory by systems, the criticising system is then to be ascribed

429

to the motor end because of the fact just mentioned. We now
enter both systems in our scheme, and express by the names
given them their relation to consciousness.

FIG. 3.

(The last of the systems at the motor end we call the fore-
conscious in order to denote that exciting processes in this
system can reach consciousness without any further detention
provided certain other conditions be fulfilled, e.g., the attain-
ment of a certain intensity, a certain distribution of that
function which must be called attention, and the like. This
is at the same time the system which possesses the keys to
voluntary motility. The system behind it we call the un-
conscious because it has no access to consciousness except
through the foreconscious, in the passage through which its
excitement must submit to certain changes.

(In which of these systems, now, do we localise the impulse
to the dream formation? For the sake of simplicity, let us
say in the system Unc. To be sure we shall find in later
discussions that this is not quite correct, that the dream
formation is forced to connect with dream thoughts which
belong to the system of the foreconscious. But we shall
learn later, when we come to deal with the dream-
wish, that the motive power for the dream is furnished by the Unc., and,
owing to this latter movement, we shall assume the uncon-
scious system as the starting-point of the dream formation.
This dream impulse, like all other thought structures, will
now strive to continue itself in the foreconscious, and thence
to gain admission to consciousness.

(Experience teaches us that the road leading from the fore-
conscious to consciousness is closed to the dream thoughts
during the day by the resistance of the censor. At night the

430

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

dream thoughts gain admission to consciousness, but the
question arises, in what way and because of what change. If
this admission was rendered possible to the dream thoughts
through the fact that the resistance watching on the boundary
between the unconscious and foreconscious sinks at night,
we should then get dreams in the material of our presentations
which did not show the hallucinatory character which just
now interests us.

The sinking of the censor between the two systems, Unc.
and Forec., can explain to us only such dreams as “Auto-
didasker,” but not dreams like the one of the burning child,
which we have taken as a problem at the outset in these
present investigations.

(What takes place in the hallucinatory dream we can de-
scribe in no other way than by saying that the excitement
takes a retrogressive course. It takes its station, not at the
motor end of the apparatus, but at the sensible end, and finally
reaches the system of the perceptions. If we call the direc-
tion towards which the psychic process continues from the
unconscious into the waking state the progressive, we may
then speak of the dream as having a regressive character.)

(This regression is surely one of the most important peculi-
arities of the dream process ; but we must not forget that it
does not belong to the dream alone. The intentional recol-
lection and other processes of our normal thinking also require
a regression in the psychic apparatus from any complex
presentation act to the raw material of the memory traces
lying at its basis. But during the waking state this turning
backward does not reach beyond the memory pictures ; it
is unable to produce the hallucinatory vividness of the per-
ception pictures. Why is this different in the dream ? When
we spoke of the condensation work of the dream we could not
avoid the assumption that the intensities adhering to the
presentations are fully transferred from one to another through
the dream-work. It is probably this modification of the former
psychic process which makes possible the occupation of the
system of P to its full sensual vividness in the opposite
direction from thought.)

I hope that we are far from deluding ourselves about the
importance of this present discussion. We have done nothing

431

more than give a name to an inexplicable phenomenon. (We
call it regression if the presentation in the dream is changed
back to the perceptible image from which it once originated.)
But even this step demands justification. Why this naming,
if it does not teach us anything new? I believe, however,
that the name “Regression” will serve us to the extent of
connecting a fact familiar to us with a scheme of the psychic
apparatus which is supplied with a direction. At this point,
for the first time, it is worth the trouble to construct such a
scheme. For, with the help of this scheme, any other peculi-
arity of the dream formation will become clear to us without
further reflection. (If we look upon the dream as a process
of regression in the assumed psychic apparatus, we can readily
understand the empirically proven fact that all mental relation-
of the dream thoughts either is lost in the dream-work or
can come to expression only with difficulty. According to our
scheme, these mental relations are contained not in the first
Mem-systems, but in those lying further to the front, and in
the regression they must forfeit their expression in favour of
the perception pictures. The structure of the dream thoughts is
in the regression broken up into its raw material.)
(But what change renders possible this regression which
is impossible during the day? Let us here be content with
assumption. There must evidently be some alterations in
the charge of energy belonging to the single systems causing
the latter to become accessible or inaccessible to the discharge
of the excitement; but in any such apparatus the same effect
upon the course of excitement might be brought about through
more than one form of such changes. This naturally reminds
us of the state of sleep and of the many changes of energy
this state produces at the sensible end of the apparatus.
During the day there is a continuous coursing stream from the
Y-system of the P toward the motility; this current ceases
at night, and no longer hinders a streaming of the current of
excitement in the opposite direction.) This would appear to
be that “seclusion from the outer world” which according to
the theory of some authors is supposed to explain the psycho-
logical character of the dream (vide p. 30). In the explanation
of the regression of the dream we shall, however, have to con-
sider those other regressions which originate during morbid

432

waking states. In these other forms the explanation just
given plainly leaves us in the lurch. Regression takes place
in spite of the uninterrupted sensible current in a progressive
direction.

(The hallucinations of hysteria and paranoia, as well as the
visions of mentally normal persons, I can explain as actually
corresponding to regressions, being in fact thoughts trans-
formed into images ; and only such thoughts are subjected
to this transformation as are in intimate connection with
suppressed or unconscious recollections.) As an example I
shall cite one of my youngest hysterical patients—a boy,
twelve years old, who was prevented from falling asleep by
“green faces with red eyes,” which terrified him. The source
of this manifestation was the suppressed, but once conscious,
memory of a boy whom he had often seen during four years,
and who offered him a deterring example of many childish
bad habits, including onanism, which now formed the subject
of his own reproach. His mother had noticed at the time
that the complexion of the ill-bred boy was greenish and that
he had red (i.e. red bordered) eyes. Hence the terrible vision
which constantly served to remind him of his mother’s warning
that such boys become demented, that they are unable to make
progress at school, and are doomed to an early death. A
part of this prediction came true in the case of the little patient ;
he could not successfully pursue his high school studies, and,
as appeared on examination of his involuntary fancies, he stood
in great dread of the remainder of the prophecy. However,
after a brief period of successful treatment, his sleep was re-
stored, he lost his fears, and finished his scholastic year with
an excellent record.

I may also add here the interpretation of a vision related
to me by an hysteric forty years of age, as having occurred in
her normal life. On opening her eyes one morning she beheld
in the room her brother, whom she knew to be confined in
an insane asylum. Her little son was asleep by her side.
Lest the child should be frightened on seeing his uncle, and
fall into convulsions, she pulled the sheet over the little
one ; this done, the phantom disappeared. This vision is
the re-casting of one of her infantile reminiscences which,
although conscious, is most intimately connected with all the

433

unconscious material in her mind. Her nursemaid told her that
her mother, who had died young (the patient was then only a
year and a half old), had suffered from epileptic or hysterical
convulsions, which dated back to a fright caused by her brother
(the patient’s uncle), who appeared to her disguised as a spectre
with a sheet over his head. The vision contains the same ele-
ments as the reminiscence, viz. the appearance of the brother,
the sheet, the fright, and its effect. These elements, however,
are ranged in different relations, and are transferred to other
persons. The obvious motive of the vision, which replaces
the idea, is her solicitude lest her little son, who bore a striking
resemblance to his uncle, should share the latter’s fate. Both
examples here cited are not entirely unrelated to sleep, and
may therefore be unsuitable as proof for my assertion. I
may therefore refer to my analysis of an hallucinatory
paranoia,^* and to the results of my hitherto unpublished
studies on the psychology of the psychoneuroses in order to
emphasize the fact that in these cases of regressive thought
transformation one must not overlook the influence of a
suppressed or unconscious reminiscence, this being in most
cases of an infantile character. This recollection, so to speak,
draws into the regression the thought with which it is connected,
which is prevented from expression by the censor–that is,
into that form of representation in which the recollection
itself exists psychically. I may here mention as a result of
my studies in hysteria that if we succeed in restoring infantile
scenes to consciousness (whether recollections or fancies) they
are seen as hallucinations, and are divested of this character
only after reproduction. It is also known that the earliest
infantile memories retain the character of perceptible vivid-
ness until late in life, even in persons who are otherwise not
visual in memory.

If, now, we keep in mind what part is played in the dream
thoughts by the infantile reminiscences or the phantasies
based upon them, how often fragments of these reminiscences
emerge in the dream content, and how often they even give
origin to dream wishes, we cannot deny the probability that
in the dream, too, the transformation of thoughts into visual

^* Selected Papers on Hysteria and Other Psychoneuroses, p. 165, translated
by A. A. Brill (Journal Mental and Nervous Disease Publishing Co.).

434

images may be the result of the attraction exerted by the
visually represented reminiscences, striving for reanimation,
upon the thoughts severed from consciousness and struggling
for expression. Following this conception, we may further
describe the dream as a modified substitute for the infan-
tile scene produced by transference to recent material. The
infantile cannot enforce its renewal, and must therefore be
satisfied to return as a dream)

(This reference to the significance of the infantile scenes
(or of their phantastic repetitions), as in a manner furnishing
the pattern for the dream content,) renders superfluous the
assumption made by Scherner and his pupils, of an inner
source of excitement. Scherner assumes a state of “visual
excitation” of internal excitement in the organ of sight when
the dreams manifest a particular vividness or a special
abundance of visual elements. We need not object to this
assumption, but may be satisfied with establishing such state
of excitation for the psychic perceptive system of the organs
of vision only; we shall, however, assert that this state of
excitation is formed through the memory, and is merely a
refreshing of the former actual visual excitation. I cannot,
from my own experience, give a good example showing
such an influence of infantile reminiscence; my own dreams
are surely less rich in perceptible elements than I must fancy
those of others; but in my most beautiful and most vivid
dream of late years I can easily trace the hallucinatory dis-
tinctness of the dream contents to the sensuous nature of
recently received impressions. On page 368 I mentioned a
dream in which the dark blue colour of the water, the brown
colour of the smoke issuing from the ship’s funnels, and the
sombre brown and red of the buildings which I had seen made
a profound and lasting impression on my mind. This dream,
if any, must be attributed to visual excitation. But what
has brought my visual organ into this excitable state ? It
was a recent impression uniting itself with a series of former
ones. The colours I beheld were those of the toy blocks with
which my children erected a grand structure for my admi-
ration on the day preceding the dream. The same sombre
red colour covered the large blocks and the same blue and
brown the small ones. Connected with these were the colour

435

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

impression of my last journey in Italy, the charming blue of
the Isonzo and the Lagoon, the brown hue of the Alpine region.
The beautiful colours seen in the dream were but a repetition
of those seen in the memory.

Let us review what we have learned about this peculiarity
which the dream has of transforming its content of ideas into
plastic images. We have neither explained this character of
the dream-
work nor traced it to known laws of psychology,
but we have singled it out as pointing to unknown connections,
and designated it by the name of the “regredient” character.

Wherever this regression has occurred, we have regarded it
as an effect of the resistance which opposes the progress of
the thought on its normal way to consciousness, as well as a
result of the simultaneous attraction exerted upon it by the
vivid memories present. Regression is perhaps facilitated in
the dream by the cessation of the progressive stream running
from the sense organs during the day. For this auxiliary
moment there must be compensation in the other forms of
regression through a fortifying of the other motives of re-
gression. We must also bear in mind that in pathological
cases of regression, as in the dream, the process of transference
of energy must be different from that of the regressions of
normal psychic life, as it renders possible a full hallucinatory
occupation of the perception systems.) What we have de-
scribed in the analysis of the dream-
work as “Regard for
Dramatic Fitness” may be referred to the selective attraction
of visually recollected scenes, touched by the dream thoughts.

It is quite possible that this first part of our psychological
utilisation of the dream does not entirely satisfy even us. We
must, however, console ourselves with the fact that we are
compelled to build in the dark. If we have not altogether
strayed from the right path, we shall be sure to reach about
the same ground from another starting-
point, and thereafter
perhaps be better able to see our way.

(c) The Wish-Fulfilment.

The dream of the burning child cited above affords us a
welcome opportunity for appreciating the difficulties con-
fronting the theory of wish-
fulfilment. That the dream
should be nothing but a wish-
fulfilment surely seemed strange

436

to us all—and that not alone because of the contradictions
offered by the anxiety dream.

After learning from the first analytical explanations that
the dream conceals sense and psychic validity, we could hardly
expect so simple a determination of this sense. According
to the correct but concise definition of Aristotle, the dream
is a continuation of thinking in sleep (in so far as one sleeps).
Considering that during the day our thoughts produce such a
diversity of psychic acts—judgments, conclusions, contradic-
tions, expectations, intentions, &c.—why should our sleeping
thoughts be forced to confine themselves to the production of
wishes ? Are there not, on the contrary, many dreams that
present a different psychic act in dream form, e.g., a solicitude,
and is not the very transparent father’s dream mentioned
above of just such a nature ? From the gleam of light falling
into his eyes while asleep the father draws the solicitous con-
clusion that a candle has been upset and may have set fire
to the corpse ; he transforms this conclusion into a dream by
investing it with a senseful situation enacted in the present
tense. What part is played in this dream by the wish-fulfil-
ment, and which are we to suspect—the predominance of the
thought continued from the waking state or of the thought
incited by the new sensory impression ?

All these considerations are just, and force us to enter more
deeply into the part played by the wish-fulfilment in the dream,
and into the significance of the waking thoughts continued
in sleep.

(It is in fact the wish-fulfilment that has already induced
us to separate dreams into two groups. We have found some
dreams that were plainly wish-fulfilments ; and others in
which wish-fulfilment could not be recognised, and was fre-
quently concealed by every available means. In this latter
class of dreams we recognised the influence of the dream censor.
The undisguised wish dreams were chiefly found in children,
yet fleeting open-hearted wish dreams seemed (I purposely
emphasize this word) to occur also in adults.)

(We may now ask whence the wish fulfilled in the dream
originates. But to what opposition or to what diversity do
we refer this “whence” ? I think it is to the opposition
between conscious daily life and a psychic activity remaining

437

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

unconscious which can only make itself noticeable during the
night. I thus find a threefold possibility for the origin of a
wish. Firstly, it may have been incited during the day, and
owing to external circumstances failed to find gratification,
there is thus left for the night an acknowledged but unfulfilled
wish. Secondly, it may come to the surface during the day
but be rejected, leaving an unfulfilled but suppressed wish.
Or, thirdly, it may have no relation to daily life, and belong to
those wishes that originate during the night from the suppres-
sion. If we now follow our scheme of the psychic apparatus,
we can localise a wish of the first order in the system Forec.
We may assume that a wish of the second order has been forced
back from the Forec. system into the Unc. system, where alone,
if anywhere, it can maintain itself ; while a wish-feeling of the
third order we consider altogether incapable of leaving the Unc.
system. This brings up the question whether wishes arising
from these different sources possess the same value for the
dream, and whether they have the same power to incite a
dream.

On reviewing the dreams which we have at our disposal
for answering this question, (we are at once moved to add as
a fourth source of the dream-
wish the actual wish incitements
arising during the night, such as thirst and sexual desire.) (It
then becomes evident that the source of the dream-wish does
not affect its capacity to incite a dream.) This view is supported
by the dream of the little girl who continued the sea trip
interrupted during the day, and by the other children’s dreams
referred to ; they are explained by an unfulfilled but not sup-
pressed wish from the day-
time. That a wish suppressed during
the day asserts itself in the dream can be shown by a great
many examples. I shall mention a very simple example of this
class. A somewhat sarcastic young lady, whose younger friend
has become engaged to be married, is asked throughout the day
by her acquaintances whether she knows and what she thinks
of the fiancé. She answers with unqualified praise, thereby
silencing her own judgment, as she would prefer to tell the
truth, namely, that he is an ordinary person (Dutzendmensch).^*

^*The German word “Dutzendmensch” (a man of dozens) which the
young lady wished to use in order to express her real opinion of her friend’s
fiancé, denotes a person with whom figures are everything. (Translator.)

488

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

The following night she dreams that the same question is put
to her, and that she replies with the formula : “ In case of
subsequent orders it will suffice to mention the number.”
(Finally, we have learned from numerous analyses that the
wish in all dreams that have been subject to distortion
has been derived from the unconscious, and has been unable
to come to perception in the waking state. Thus it would
appear that all wishes are of the same value and force for the
dream formation.

I am at present unable to prove that the state of affairs
is really different, but I am strongly inclined to assume a more
stringent determination of the dream-
wish. Children’s dreams leave no doubt that an unfulfilled wish of the day may be the
instigator of the dream. But we must not forget that it is,
after all, the wish of a child, that it is a wish-
feeling of infantile strength only. I have a strong doubt whether an unfulfilled
wish from the day would suffice to create a dream in an adult.
It would rather seem that as we learn to control our impulses
by intellectual activity, we more and more reject as vain the
formation or retention of such intense wishes as are natural
to childhood.) In this, indeed, there may be individual varia-
tions ; some retain the infantile type of psychic processes
longer than others. The differences are here the same as those
found in the gradual decline of the originally distinct visual
imagination.

In general, however, I am of the opinion that (unfulfilled
wishes of the day are insufficient to produce a dream in adults)
I readily admit that the wish instigators originating in
conscious life contribute towards the incitement of dreams,
but that is probably all. (The dream would not originate if
the foreconscious wish were not reinforced from another
source.

That source is the unconscious. I believe that the conscious
wish is a dream inciter only if it succeeds in arousing a similar
unconscious wish which reinforces it. Following the sugges-
tions obtained through the psychoanalysis of the neuroses, I
believe that these unconscious wishes are always active and
ready for expression whenever they find an opportunity to
unite themselves with an emotion from conscious life, and that
they transfer their greater intensity to the lesser intensity of

439

the latter.^* It may therefore seem that the conscious wish
alone has been realised in a dream; but a slight peculiarity
in the formation of this dream will put us on the track of the
powerful helper from the unconscious. These ever active and,
as it were, immortal wishes from the unconscious recall the
legendary Titans who from time immemorial have borne the
ponderous mountains which were once rolled upon them by the
victorious gods, and which even now quiver from time to time
from the convulsions of their mighty limbs; (I say that these
wishes found in the repression are of themselves of an infantile
origin, as we have learned from the psychological investigation
of the neuroses. I should like, therefore, to withdraw the
opinion previously expressed that it is unimportant whence
the dream-
wish originates, and replace it by another, as follows :

The wish manifested in the dream must be an infantile one.

In the adult it originates in the Unc., while in the child, where
no separation and censor as yet exist between Forec. and
Unc., or where these are only in the process of formation, it
is an unfulfilled and unrepressed wish from the waking state.
I am aware that this conception cannot be generally demon-
strated, but I maintain nevertheless that it can be frequently
demonstrated, even where it was not suspected, and that it
cannot be generally refuted.

(The wish-feelings which remain from the conscious waking
state are, therefore, relegated to the background in the dream
formation.) In the dream content I shall attribute to them
only the part attributed to the material of actual sensations
during sleep (see p. 185). If I now take into account those
other psychic instigations remaining from the waking state
which are not wishes, I shall only adhere to the line mapped
out for me by this train of thought. We may succeed in
provisionally terminating the sum of energy of our waking

^*They share this character of indestructibility with all psychic acts
that are really unconscious—that is, with psychic acts belonging to the
system of the unconscious only. These paths are constantly open and
never fall into disuse; they conduct the discharge of the exciting process
as often as it becomes endowed with unconscious excitement. To speak
metaphorically they suffer the same form of annihilation as the shades of
the lower region in the Odyssey, who awoke to new life the moment
they drank blood. The processes depending on the foreconscious system
are destructible in a different way. The psychotherapy of the neuroses is
based on this difference.

440

thoughts by deciding to go to sleep. He is a good sleeper
who can do this; Napoleon I. is reputed to have been a model
of this sort. But we do not always succeed in accomplish-
ing it, or in accomplishing it perfectly. Unsolved problems,
harassing cares, overwhelming impressions continue the think-
ing activity even during sleep, maintaining psychic processes
in the system which we have termed the foreconscious. These
mental processes continuing into sleep may be divided into
the-
following groups : 1, That which has not been terminated
during the day owing to casual prevention ; 2, that which has
been left unfinished by temporary paralysis of our mental
power, i.e. the unsolved ; 3, that which has been rejected and
suppressed during the day. This unites with a powerful
group (4) formed by that which has been excited in our Unc.
during the day by the work of the foreconscious. Finally,
we may add group (5) consisting of the indifferent and hence
unsettled impressions of the day.

(We should not underrate the psychic intensities introduced
into sleep by these remnants of waking life, especially those
emanating from the group of the unsolved. These excitations
surely continue to strive for expression during the night, and
we may assume with equal certainty that the sleeping state
renders impossible the usual continua-
tion of the excitement in the foreconscious and the termination
of the excitement by its becoming conscious. As far as we can
normally become conscious of our mental processes, even during
the night, in so far we are not asleep. I shall not venture to
state what change is produced in the Forec. system by the
sleeping state, but there is no doubt that the psychological
character of sleep is essentially due to the change of energy in
this very system, which also dominates the approach to motility,
which is paralysed during sleep. In contradistinction to this,
there seems to be nothing in the psychology of the dream to
warrant the assumption that sleep produces any but secondary
changes in the conditions of the Unc. system. Hence, for the noc-
turnal excitation in the Forec. there remains no other path
than that followed by the wish excitations from the Unc.
This excitation must seek reinforcement from the Unc., and
follow the detours of the unconscious excitations. But what
is the relation of the foreconscious day remnants to the dream ?

441

There is no doubt that they penetrate abundantly into the
dream, that they utilise the dream content to obtrude them-
selves upon consciousness even during the night; indeed,
they occasionally even dominate the dream content, and impel
it to continue the work of the day; it is also certain that the
day remnants may just as well have any other character as
that of wishes; but it is highly instructive and even decisive
for the theory of wish-
fulfilment to see what conditions they
must comply with in order to be received into the dream.

Let us pick out one of the dreams cited above as examples,
e.g., the dream in which my friend Otto seems to show the
symptoms of Basedow’s disease (p. 228). My friend Otto’s
appearance occasioned me some concern during the day, and
this worry, like everything else referring to this person, affected
me. I may also assume that these feelings followed me into
sleep. I was probably bent on finding out what was the matter
with him. In the night my worry found expression in the dream
which I have reported, the content of which was not only
senseless, but failed to show any wish-
fulfilment. But I began
to investigate for the source of this incongruous expression of
the solicitude felt during the day, and analysis revealed the
connection. I identified my friend Otto with a certain Baron L.
and myself with a Professor R. There was only one explana-
tion for my being impelled to select just this substitution for
the day thought. I must have always been prepared in the
Unc. to identify myself with Professor R., as it meant the
realisation of one of the immortal infantile wishes, viz. that
of becoming great. Repulsive ideas respecting my friend,
that would certainly have been repudiated in a waking state,
took advantage of the opportunity to creep into the dream,
but the worry of the day likewise found some form of expres-
sion through a substitution in the dream content. The day
thought, which was no wish in itself but rather a worry, had
in some way to find a connection with the infantile now un-
conscious and suppressed wish, which then allowed it, though
already properly prepared, to “originate” for consciousness.
The more dominating this worry, the stronger must be the
connection to be established; between the contents of the
wish and that of the worry there need be no connection, nor
was there one in any of our examples.

442

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

We can now sharply define (the significance of the un-
conscious wish for the dream. It may be admitted that
there is a whole class of dreams in which the incitement
originates preponderatingly or even exclusively from the rem-
nants of daily life;) and I believe that even my cherished
desire to become at some future time a “professor extra-
ordinarius” would have allowed me to slumber undisturbed
that night had not my worry about my friend’s health been
still active. But this worry alone would not have produced
a dream; (the motive power needed by the dream had to be
contributed by a wish, and it was the affair of the worriment
to procure for itself such wish as a motive power of the dream.
To speak figuratively, it is quite possible that a day thought
plays the part of the contractor (entrepreneur) in the dream.)
But it is known that no matter what idea the contractor may
have in mind, and how desirous he may be of putting it into
operation, he can do nothing without capital; he must depend
upon a capitalist to defray the necessary expenses, and this
capitalist, who supplies the psychic expenditure for the dream
is invariably and indisputably a wish from the unconscious;
no matter what the nature of the waking thought may be.
(In other cases the capitalist himself is the contractor for
the dream; this, indeed, seems to be the more usual case.
An unconscious wish is produced by the day’s work, which in
turn creates the dream.) The dream processes, moreover, run
parallel with all the other possibilities of the economic relation-
ship used here as an illustration. Thus, the entrepreneur
may contribute some capital himself, or several entrepreneurs
may seek the aid of the same capitalist, or several capitalists
may jointly supply the capital required by the entrepreneur.
(Thus there are dreams produced by more than one dream-wish,
and many similar variations) which may readily be passed over
and are of no further interest to us. What we have left un-
finished in this discussion of the dream-wish we shall be able
to develop later.
The “tertium comparationis” in the comparisons just
employed—i.e. the sum placed at our free disposal in proper
allotment—admits of still finer application for the illustra-
tion of the dream structure. As shown on p. 285 w-
(recognise in most dreams a centre especially supplied with

443

perceptible intensity. This is regularly the direct representa-
tion of the wish-
fulfilment; for, if we undo the displacements
of the dream-
work by a process of retrogression, we find that
the psychic intensity of the elements in the dream thoughts
is replaced by the perceptible intensity of the elements in
the dream content. The elements adjoining the wish-
fulfil-
ment have frequently nothing to do with its sense, but prove
to be descendants of painful thoughts which oppose the wish.
But, owing to their frequently artificial connection with the
central element, they have acquired sufficient intensity to
enable them to come to expression. Thus, the force of ex-
pression of the wish-
fulfilment is diffused over a certain sphere
of association, within which it raises to expression all elements,
including those that are in themselves impotent. In dreams
having several strong wishes we can readily separate from one
another the spheres of the individual wish-
fulfilments; the
gaps in the dream likewise can often be explained as boundary
zones.

Although the foregoing remarks have considerably limited
the (significance of the day remnants for the dream) it will
nevertheless be worth our while to give them some attention.
For they must be a necessary ingredient in the formation of
the dream, inasmuch as experience reveals the surprising fact
that (every dream shows in its content a connection with some
impression of a recent day, often of the most indifferent kind.)
So far we have failed to see any necessity for this addition to
the dream mixture (p. 153). This necessity appears only
when we follow closely the part played by the unconscious
wish, and then seek information in the psychology of the
neuroses. (We thus learn that the unconscious idea, as such,
is altogether incapable of entering into the foreconscious, and
that it can exert an influence there only by uniting with a
harmless idea already belonging to the foreconscious, to which
it transfers its intensity and under which it allows itself to be
concealed. This is the fact of transference which furnishes
an explanation for so many surprising occurrences in the
psychic life of neurotics.)

(The idea from the foreconscious which thus obtains an
unlimited abundance of intensity may be left unchanged by
the transference, or it may have forced upon it a modification

444

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

from the content of the transferring idea.) I trust the reader
will pardon my fondness for comparisons from daily life, but
I feel tempted to say that the relations existing for the re-
pressed idea are similar to the situations existing in Austria
for the American dentist, who is forbidden to practise unless
he gets permission from a regular physician to use his name on
the public signboard and thus cover the legal requirements.
Moreover, just as it is naturally not the busiest physicians
who form such alliances with dental practitioners, so in the
psychic life only such foreconscious or conscious ideas are
chosen to cover a repressed idea as have not themselves
attracted much of the attention which is operative in the
foreconscious. (The unconscious entangles with its connections
preferentially either those impressions and ideas of the fore-
conscious which have been left unnoticed as indifferent, or
those that have soon been deprived of this attention through
rejection.) It is a familiar fact from the association studies
confirmed by every experience, that ideas which have formed
intimate connections in one direction assume an almost negative
attitude to whole groups of new connections. I once tried from
this principle to develop a theory for hysterical paralysis.

(If we assume that the same need for the transference of the
repressed ideas which we have learned to know from the analysis
of the neuroses makes its influence felt in the dream as well,
we can at once explain two riddles of the dream, viz. that every
dream analysis shows an interweaving of a recent impression,
and that this recent element is frequently of the most indif-
ferent character. We may add what we have already learned
elsewhere, that these recent and indifferent elements come so
frequently into the dream content as a substitute for the most
deep-lying of the dream thoughts, for the further reason that
they have least to fear from the resisting censor. But
while this freedom from censorship explains only the prefer-
ence for trivial elements, the constant presence of recent ele-
ments points to the fact that there is a need for transference.
Both groups of impressions satisfy the demand of the repression
for material still free from associations, the indifferent ones
because they have offered no inducement for extensive associa-
tions, and the recent ones because they have had insufficient
time to form such associations.)

445

We thus see that the day remnants, among which we may
now include the indifferent impressions when they participate
in the dream formation, not only borrow from the Unc. the
motive power at the disposal of the repressed wish, but also
offer to the unconscious something indispensable, namely, the
attachment necessary to the transference. If we here at-
tempted to penetrate more deeply into the psychic processes,
we should first have to throw more light on the play of emo-
tions between the foreconscious and the unconscious, to which,
indeed, we are urged by the study of the psychoneuroses,
whereas the dream itself offers no assistance in this respect.
(Just one further remark about the day remnants. There
is no doubt that they are the actual disturbers of sleep, and
not the dream, which, on the contrary, strives to guard sleep)
But we shall return to this point later.

We have so far discussed the dream-wish, we have traced
it to the sphere of the Unc., and analysed its relations to the
day remnants, which in turn may be either wishes, psychic
emotions of any other kind, or simply recent impressions.
We have thus made room for any claims that may be made
for the importance of conscious thought activity in dream
formations in all its variations. Relying upon our thought
series, it would not be at all impossible for us to explain even
those extreme cases in which the dream as a continuer of the
day work brings to a happy conclusion an unsolved problem
of the waking state. We do not, however, possess an example,
the analysis of which might reveal the infantile or repressed
wish source furnishing such alliance and successful strength-
ening of the efforts of the foreconscious activity. But we
have not come one step nearer a solution of the riddle : (Why
can the unconscious furnish the motive power for the wish-
fulfilment only during sleep ?) The answer to this question
must throw light on the psychic nature of wishes ; and it will
be given with the aid of the diagram of (the psychic apparatus).

We do not doubt that even this apparatus attained its
present perfection through a long course of development.

Let us attempt to restore it as it existed in an early phase of
its activity. From assumptions, to be confirmed elsewhere,
we know that at first the apparatus strove to keep as free from
excitement as possible, and in its first formation, therefore,

446

the scheme took the form of a reflex apparatus, which enabled
it promptly to discharge through the motor tracts any sensible
stimulus reaching it from without. But this simple function
was disturbed by the wants of life, which likewise furnish the
impulse for the further development of the apparatus. The
wants of life first manifested themselves to it in the form of
the great physical needs. The excitement aroused by the
inner want seeks an outlet in motility, which may be designated
as “inner changes” or as an “expression of the emotions.”
The hungry child cries or fidgets helplessly, but its situation
remains unchanged; for the excitation proceeding from an
inner want requires, not a momentary outbreak, but a force
working continuously. A change can occur only if in some
way a feeling of gratification is experienced—which in the case
of the child must be through outside help—in order to remove
the inner excitement. An essential constituent of this ex-
perience is the appearance of a certain perception (of food
in our example), the memory picture of which thereafter
remains associated with the memory trace of the excitation of
want.

Thanks to the established connection, there results at the
next appearance of this want a (psychic feeling which revives
the memory picture of the former perception, and thus recalls
the former perception itself, i.e. it actually re-
establishes the
situation of the first gratification. We call such a feeling a
wish; the reappearance of the perception constitutes the wish-
fulfilment, and the full revival of the perception by the want
excitement constitutes the shortest road to the wish-fulfil-
ment.) We may assume a primitive condition of the psychic
apparatus in which this road is really followed, i.e. where the
wishing merges into an hallucination. This first psychic
activity therefore aims at an identity of perception, i.e. it aims
at a repetition of that perception which is connected with the
fulfilment of the want.)

This primitive mental activity must have been modified
by bitter practical experience into a more expedient secondary
activity. The establishment of the identity perception on
the short regressive road within the apparatus does not in
another respect carry with it the result which inevitably
follows the revival of the same perception from without. The

447

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

gratification does not take place, and the want continues. In
order to equalise the internal with the external sum of energy,
the former must be continually maintained, just as actually
happens in the hallucinatory psychoses and in the deliriums
of hunger which exhaust their psychic capacity in clinging
to the object desired. (In order to make more appropriate
use of the psychic force, it becomes necessary to inhibit the
full regression so as to prevent it from extending beyond the
image of memory, whence it can select other paths leading
ultimately to the establishment of the desired identity from
the outer world. This inhibition and consequent deviation
from the excitation becomes the task of a second system which
dominates the voluntary motility, i.e. through whose activity
the expenditure of motility is now devoted to previously re-
called purposes. But this entire complicated mental activity
which works its way from the memory picture to the establish-
ment of the perception identity from the outer world merely
represents a detour which has been forced upon the wish-fulfil-
ment by experience.^* Thinking is indeed nothing but the
equivalent of the hallucinatory wish; and if the dream be
called a wish-fulfilment this becomes self-evident, as nothing
but a wish can impel our psychic apparatus to activity. The
dream, which in fulfilling its wishes follows the short regressive
path, thereby preserves for us only an example of the primary
form of the psychic apparatus which has been abandoned as
inexpedient. What once ruled in the waking state when
the psychic life was still young and unfit seems to have been
banished into the sleeping state, just as we see again in the
nursery the bow and arrow, the discarded primitive weapons
of grown-up humanity. The dream is a fragment of the aban-
doned psychic life of the child. In the psychoses these modes
of operation of the psychic apparatus, which are normally
suppressed in the waking state, reassert themselves, and then
betray their inability to satisfy our wants in the outer world.)
The unconscious wish-feelings evidently strive to assert
themselves during the day also, and the fact of transference
and the psychoses teach us that they endeavour to penetrate

^* Le Lorraine justly extols the wish-fulfilment of the dream: “Sans
fatigue sérieuse, sans être obligé de recourir à cette lutte opiniâtre et
longue qui use et corrode les jouissances poursuivies.”

448

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

to consciousness and dominate motility by the road lead-
ing through the system of the foreconscious. It is, therefore,
the censor lying between the Unc. and the Forec., the assump-
tion of which is forced upon us by the dream, that we have to
recognise and honour as the guardian of our psychic health.
But is it not carelessness on the part of this guardian to
diminish its vigilance during the night and to allow the sup-
pressed emotions of the Unc. to come to expression, thus again
making possible the hallucinatory regression ? I think not,
for when the critical guardian goes to rest—and we have proof
that his slumber is not profound—he takes care to close the
gate to motility. No matter what feelings from the other-
wise inhibited Unc. may roam about on the scene, they need
not be interfered with ; they remain harmless because they are
unable to put in motion the motor apparatus which alone can
exert a modifying influence upon the outer world. Sleep
guarantees the security of the fortress which is under guard)
Conditions are less harmless when a displacement of forces
is produced, not through a nocturnal diminution in the opera-
tion of the critical censor, but through pathological enfeeble-
ment of the latter or through pathological reinforcement of
the unconscious excitations, and this while the foreconscious
is charged with energy and the avenues to motility are open)
The guardian is then overpowered, the unconscious excitations
subdue the Forec. ; through it they dominate our speech and
actions, or they enforce the hallucinatory regression, thus
governing an apparatus not designed for them by virtue of
the attraction exerted by the perceptions on the distribution
of our psychic energy. We call this condition a psychosis)

We are now in the best position to complete our psycho-
logical construction, which has been interrupted by the in-
troduction of the two systems, Unc. and Forec. We have
still, however, ample reason for giving further consideration
to the wish as the sole psychic motive power in the dream.
We have explained that the reason why the dream is in every
case a wish realisation is because it is a product of the Unc.,
which knows no other aim in its activity but the fulfilment
of wishes, and which has no other forces at its disposal but
wish-feelings. If we avail ourselves for a moment longer of
the right to elaborate from the dream interpretation such

449

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

far-reaching psychological speculations, we are in duty bound
to demonstrate that we are thereby bringing the dream into a
relationship which may also comprise other psychic structures.
(If there exists a system of the Unc.—or something sufficiently
analogous to it for the purpose of our discussion—the dream
cannot be its sole manifestation; every dream may be a
wish-
fulfilment, but there must be other forms of abnormal
wish-
fulfilment besides this of dreams. Indeed, the theory
of all psychoneurotic symptoms culminates in the proposition-
that they too must be taken as wish-fulfilments of the unconscious.)
Our explanation makes the dream only the first member of
a group most important for the psychiatrist, an understanding
of which means the solution of the purely psychological part
of the psychiatric problem. But other members of this group
of wish-
fulfilments, e.g., the hysterical symptoms, evince one
essential quality which I have so far failed to find in the dream.
Thus, from the investigations frequently referred to in this
treatise, I know that the formation of an hysterical symptom
necessitates the combination of both streams of our psychic
life. (The symptom is not merely the expression of a realised
unconscious wish, but it must be joined by another wish from
the foreconscious which is fulfilled by the same symptom;
so that the symptom is at least doubly determined, once by
each one of the conflicting systems. Just as in the dream,
there is no limit to further over-
determination. The deter-
mination not derived from the Unc. is, as far as I can see,
invariably a stream of thought in reaction against the un-
conscious wish, e.g., a self-
punishment. Hence I may say, in
general, that an hysterical symptom originates only where two
contrasting wish-fulfilments, having their source in different
psychic systems, are able to combine in one expression.) (Com-
pare my latest formulation of the origin of the hysterical
symptoms in a treatise published by the Zeitschrift für
Sexualwissenschaft, by Hirschfeld and others, 1908). Ex-
amples on this point would prove of little value, as nothing
but a complete unveiling of the complication in question
would carry conviction. I therefore content myself with the
mere assertion, and will cite an example, not for conviction
but for explication. The hysterical vomiting of a female
patient proved, on the one hand, to be the realisation of an

450

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

unconscious fancy from the time of puberty, that she might
be continuously pregnant and have a multitude of children,
and this was subsequently united with the wish that she might
have them from as many men as possible. Against this im-
moderate wish there arose a powerful defensive impulse. But
as the vomiting might spoil the patient’s figure and beauty, so
that she would not find favour in the eyes of mankind, the
symptom was therefore in keeping with her punitive trend of
thought, and, being thus admissible from both sides, it was
allowed to become a reality. This is the same manner
of consenting to a wish-fulfilment which the queen of the
Parthians chose for the triumvir Crassus. Believing that he
had undertaken the campaign out of greed for gold, she caused
molten gold to be poured into the throat of the corpse.
“Now hast thou what thou hast longed for.” (As yet we
know of the dream only that it expresses a wish-fulfilment of
the unconscious; and apparently the dominating forecon-
scious permits this only after it has subjected the wish to some
distortions. We are really in no position to demonstrate
regularly a stream of thought antagonistic to the dream-wish
which is realised in the dream as in its counterpart. Only
now and then have we found in the dream traces of reaction
formations, as, for instance, the tenderness toward friend R.
in the “uncle dream” (p. 116). But the contribution from
the foreconscious, which is missing here, may be found in
another place. While the dominating system has withdrawn
on the wish to sleep, the dream may bring to expression with
manifold distortions a wish from the Unc., and realise this
wish by producing the necessary changes of energy in the
psychic apparatus, and may finally retain it through the entire
duration of sleep.^*

This persistent wish to sleep on the part of the forecon-
scious in general facilitates the formation of the dream. Let
us refer to the dream of the father who, by the gleam of light
from the death chamber, was brought to the conclusion that
the body has been set on fire. We have shown that one of
the psychic forces decisive in causing the father to form this

^*This idea has been borrowed from The Theory of Sleep by Liébault, who
revived hypnotic investigation in our days. (Du Sommeil provoqué, etc.;
Paris, 1889.)

451

conclusion, instead of being awakened by the gleam of light,
was the wish to prolong the life of the child seen in the dream
by one moment. Other wishes proceeding from the repression
probably escape us, because we are unable to analyse this dream.
But as a second motive power of the dream we may mention
the father’s desire to sleep, for, like the life of the child, the
sleep of the father is prolonged for a moment by the dream.
The underlying motive is : “Let the dream go on, otherwise
I must wake up.” As in this dream so also in all other dreams,
the wish to sleep lends its support to the unconscious wish. On
page 104 we reported dreams which were apparently dreams of
convenience. But, properly speaking, all dreams may claim
this designation. The efficacy of the wish to continue to sleep
is the most easily recognised in the waking dreams, which so
transform the objective sensory stimulus as to render it com-
patible with the continuance of sleep ; they interweave this
stimulus with the dream in order to rob it of any claims it
might make as a warning to the outer world. But this wish
to continue to sleep must also participate in the formation of
all other dreams which may disturb the sleeping state from
within only. “Now, then, sleep on ; why, it’s but a dream ” ;
this is in many cases the suggestion of the Forec. to conscious-
ness when the dream goes too far ; and this also describes in
a general way the attitude of our dominating psychic activity
toward dreaming, though the thought remains tacit. (I must
draw the conclusion that throughout our entire sleeping state
we are just as certain that we are dreaming as we are certain that
we are sleeping.) We are compelled to disregard the objection
urged against this conclusion that our consciousness is never
directed to a knowledge of the former, and that it is directed
to a knowledge of the latter only on special occasions when the
censor is unexpectedly surprised. Against this objection we
may say that there are persons who are entirely conscious of
their sleeping and dreaming, and who are apparently endowed
with the conscious faculty of guiding their dream life. Such a
dreamer, when dissatisfied with the course taken by the dream,
breaks it off without awakening, and begins it anew in order
to continue it with a different turn, like the popular author
who, on request, gives a happier ending to his play. Or, at
another time, if placed by the dream in a sexually exciting

452

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

situation, he thinks in his sleep: “I do not care to continue
this dream and exhaust myself by a pollution; I prefer to
defer it in favour of a real situation.”

(d) Waking caused by the Dream—The Function of the
Dream—The Anxiety Dream.

Since we know that the foreconscious is suspended during
the night by the wish to sleep, we can proceed to an intelligent
investigation of the dream process. But let us first sum up
the knowledge of this process already gained. We have shown
that the waking activity leaves day remnants from which the
sum of energy cannot be entirely removed; or the waking
activity revives during the day one of the unconscious wishes;
or both conditions occur simultaneously; we have already
discovered the many variations that may take place. The un-
conscious wish has already made its way to the day remnants,
either during the day or at any rate with the beginning of sleep,
and has effected a transference to it. This produces a wish
transferred to the recent material, or the suppressed recent
wish comes to life again through a reinforcement from the
unconscious. This wish now endeavours to make its way to
consciousness on the normal path of the mental processes
through the foreconscious, to which indeed it belongs through
one of its constituent elements. It is confronted, however, by
the censor, which is still active, and to the influence of which
it now succumbs. It now takes on the distortion for which
the way has already been paved by its transference to the recent
material. Thus far it is in the way of becoming something
resembling an obsession, delusion, or the like, i.e. a thought
reinforced by a transference and distorted in expression by
the censor. But its further progress is now checked through
the dormant state of the foreconscious; this system has
apparently protected itself against invasion by diminishing
its excitements. The dream process, therefore, takes the re-
gressive course, which has just been opened by the peculiarity
of the sleeping state, and thereby follows the attraction
exerted on it by the memory groups, which themselves exist
in part only as visual energy not yet translated into terms of
the later systems. On its way to regression the dream takes

453

on the form of dramatisation. The subject of compression will
be discussed later. The dream process has now terminated
the second part of its repeatedly impeded course. The first
part expended itself progressively from the unconscious
scenes or phantasies to the foreconscious, while the second
part gravitates from the advent of the censor back to the per-
ceptions.

But when the dream process becomes a content of
perception it has, so to speak, eluded the obstacle set up in
the Forec. by the censor and by the sleeping state. It succeeds
in drawing attention to itself and in being noticed by conscious-
ness. For consciousness, which means to us a sensory organ
for the reception of psychic qualities, may receive stimuli
from two sources—first, from the periphery of the entire
apparatus, viz. from the perception system, and, secondly, from
the pleasure and pain stimuli, which constitute the sole psychic
quality produced in the transformation of energy within the
apparatus. All other processes in the Ψ-system, even those
in the foreconscious, are devoid of any psychic quality, and
are therefore not objects of consciousness inasmuch as they
do not furnish pleasure or pain for perception. We shall have
to assume that those liberations of pleasure and pain auto-
matically regulate the outlet of the occupation processes.
But in order to make possible more delicate functions, it was
later found necessary to render the course of the presentations
more independent of the manifestations of pain. To accom-
plish this the Forec. system needed some qualities of its own
which could attract consciousness, and most probably re-
ceived them through the connection of the foreconscious
processes with the memory system of the signs of speech,
which is not devoid of qualities. Through the qualities of
this system, consciousness, which had hitherto been a sensory
organ only for the perceptions, now becomes also a sensory
organ for a part of our mental processes. Thus we have now,
as it were, two sensory surfaces, one directed to perceptions
and the other to the foreconscious mental processes.

I must assume that the sensory surface of consciousness
devoted to the Forec. is rendered less excitable by sleep
than that directed to the P-systems. The giving up of in-
terest for the nocturnal mental processes is indeed purposeful.
Nothing is to disturb the mind; the Forec. wants to sleep.

454

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

But once the dream becomes a perception, it is then capable of
exciting consciousness through the qualities thus gained. The
sensory stimulus accomplishes what it was really destined for,
namely, it directs a part of the energy at the disposal of the
Forec. in the form of attention upon the stimulant. We must,
therefore, admit that [the dream invariably awakens us, that
is, it puts into activity a part of the dormant force of the Forec.
This force imparts to the dream that influence which we have
designated as secondary elaboration for the sake of connection
and comprehensibility. This means that the dream is treated
by it like any other content of perception; it is subjected to
the same ideas of expectation, as far at least as the material
admits. As far as the direction is concerned in this third part
of the dream, it may be said that here again the movement is
progressive.]
To avoid misunderstanding, it will not be amiss to say a
few words about the temporal peculiarities of these dream
processes. In a very interesting discussion, apparently sug-
gested by Maury’s puzzling guillotine dream, Goblot ²⁹ tries
to demonstrate that the dream requires no other time than
the transition period between sleeping and awakening. The
awakening requires time, as the dream takes place during that
period. One is inclined to believe that the final picture of
the dream is so strong that it forces the dreamer to awaken;
but, as a matter of fact, this picture is strong only because
the dreamer is already very near awakening when it appears.
“Un rêve c’est un réveil qui commence.”
It has already been emphasized by Dugas ¹⁸ that Goblot
was forced to repudiate many facts in order to generalise his
theory. There are, moreover, dreams from which we do not
awaken, e.g., some dreams in which we dream that we dream.
From our knowledge of the dream-work, we can by no means
admit that it extends only over the period of awakening. On
the contrary, [we must consider it probable that the first part
of the dream-work begins during the day when we are still
under the domination of the foreconscious. The second
phase of the dream-work, viz. the modification through the
censor, the attraction by the unconscious scenes, and the pene-
tration to perception must continue throughout the night.]
And we are probably always right when we assert that we feel

455

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

as though we had been dreaming the whole night, although we
cannot say what. [I do not, however, think it necessary to
assume that, up to the time of becoming conscious, the dream
processes really follow the temporal sequence which we have
described,] viz. that [there is first the transferred dream-
wish, then the distortion of the censor, and consequently the
change of direction to regression, and so on. We were forced
to form such a succession for the sake of description; in
reality, however, it is much rather a matter of simultaneously
trying this path and that, and of emotions fluctuating to and
fro, until finally, owing to the most expedient distribution, one
particular grouping is secured which remains.] From certain
personal experiences, I am myself inclined to believe that the
dream-work often requires more than one day and one night
to produce its result; if this be true, the extraordinary art
manifested in the construction of the dream loses all its marvels.
In my opinion, even the regard for comprehensibility as an
occurrence of perception may take effect before the dream
attracts consciousness to itself. To be sure, from now on the
process is accelerated, as the dream is henceforth subjected
to the same treatment as any other perception. It is like
fireworks, which require hours of preparation and only a
moment for ignition.

[Through the dream-
work the dream process now gains
either sufficient intensity to attract consciousness to itself and
arouse the foreconscious, which is quite independent of the
time or profundity of sleep, or, its intensity being insufficient
it must wait until it meets the attention which is set in motion
immediately before awakening. Most dreams seem to operate
with relatively slight psychic intensities, for they wait for the
awakening. This, however, explains the fact that we regu-
larly perceive something dreamt on being suddenly aroused
from a sound sleep.] Here, as well as in spontaneous awaken-
ing, the first glance strikes the perception content created by
the dream-work, while the next strikes the one produced
from without.

[But of greater theoretical interest are those dreams which
are capable of waking us in the midst of sleep. We must bear
in mind the expediency elsewhere universally demonstrated,
and ask ourselves why the dream or the unconscious wish has

456

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

the power to disturb sleep, i.e. the fulfilment of the forecon-
scious wish. This is probably due to certain relations of
energy into which we have no insight. If we possessed such
insight we should probably find that the freedom given to the
dream and the expenditure of a certain amount of detached
attention represent for the dream an economy in energy,
keeping in view the fact that the unconscious must be held in
check at night just as during the day. We know from ex-
perience that the dream, even if it interrupts sleep, repeatedly
during the same night, still remains compatible with sleep. We
wake up for an instant, and immediately resume our sleep. It
is like driving off a fly during sleep, we awake ad hoc, and
when we resume our sleep we have removed the disturbance.
As demonstrated by familiar examples from the sleep of wet
nurses, &c., the fulfilment of the wish to sleep is quite com-
patible with the retention of a certain amount of attention in
a given direction.

But we must here take cognisance of an objection that is
based on a better knowledge of the unconscious processes.
Although we have ourselves described them as always active,
we have, nevertheless, asserted that they are
not sufficiently strong during the day to make themselves
perceptible. But when we sleep, and the unconscious wish
has shown its power to form a dream, and with it to awaken
the foreconscious, why, then, does this power become ex-
hausted after the dream has been taken cognisance of? Would
it not seem more probable that the dream should continually
renew itself, like the troublesome fly which, when driven away,
takes pleasure in returning again and again? What justifies
our assertion that the dream removes the disturbance of sleep?

That the unconscious wishes always remain active is quite
true. They represent paths which are passable whenever a
sum of excitement makes use of them. Moreover, a remark-
able peculiarity of the unconscious processes is the fact that
they remain indestructible. Nothing can be brought to an end
in the unconscious; nothing can cease or be forgotten. This
impression is most strongly gained in the study of the neuroses,
especially of hysteria. The unconscious stream of thought
which leads to the discharge through an attack becomes
passable again as soon as there is an accumulation of a sufficient

457

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

amount of excitement.] The mortification brought on thirty
years ago, after having gained access to the unconscious
affective source, operates during all these thirty years like a
recent one. Whenever its memory is touched, it is revived
and shows itself to be supplied with the excitement which is
discharged in a motor attack. It is just here that the office
of psychotherapy begins, its task being to bring about adjust-
ment and forgetfulness for the unconscious processes. Indeed,
the fading of memories and the flagging of affects, which we
are apt to take as self-evident and to explain as a primary
influence of time on the psychic memories, are in reality
secondary changes brought about by painstaking work. It
is the foreconscious that accomplishes this work; and the
only course to be pursued by psychotherapy is to subjugate
the Unc. to the domination of the Forec.]

There are, therefore, two exits for the individual unconscious
emotional process. It is either left to itself, in which case it
ultimately breaks through somewhere and secures for once a
discharge for its excitation into motility; or it succumbs to
the influence of the foreconscious, and its excitation becomes
confined through this influence instead of being discharged.
It is the latter process that occurs in the dream. Owing to the
fact that it is directed by the conscious excite-
ment, the energy
from the Forec., which confronts the dream when grown to
perception, restricts the unconscious excitement of the dream
and renders it harmless as a disturbing factor. When the
dreamer wakes up for a moment, he has actually chased away
the fly that has threatened to disturb his sleep. We can now
understand that it is really more expedient and economical
to give full sway to the unconscious wish, and clear its way to
regression so that it may form a dream, and then restrict and
adjust this dream by means of a small expenditure of fore-
conscious labour, than to curb the unconscious throughout
the entire period of sleep. We should, indeed, expect that
the dream, even if it was not originally an expedient process,
would have acquired some function in the play of forces of
the psychic life. We now see what this function is. The dream
has taken it upon itself to bring the liberated excitement of the
Unc. back under the domination of the foreconscious; it thus
affords relief for the excitement of the Unc. and acts as a

458

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

safety-
valve for the latter, and at the same time it insures
the sleep of the foreconscious at a slight expenditure of the
waking state. Like the other psychic formations of its group-
the dream offers itself as a compromise serving simul-
taneously both systems by fulfilling both wishes in so far as
they are compatible with each other. A glance at Robert’s
“elimination theory,” referred to on page 66, will show that
we must agree with this author in his main point, viz. in the
determination of the function of the dream, though we differ
from him in our hypotheses and in our treatment of the dream
process.

The above qualification—in so far as the two wishes are
compatible with each other—contains a suggestion that there
may be cases in which the function of the dream suffers ship-
wreck. The dream process is in the first instance admitted
as a wish-fulfilment of the unconscious, but if this tentative
wish-fulfilment disturbs the foreconscious to such an extent
that the latter can no longer maintain its rest, the dream then
breaks the compromise and fails to perform the second part
of its task. It is then at once broken off, and replaced by
complete wakefulness. Here, too, it is not really the fault
of the dream, if, while ordinarily the guardian of sleep, it is
here compelled to appear as the disturber of sleep, nor should
this cause us to entertain any doubts as to its efficacy. This
is not the only case in the organism in which an otherwise
efficacious arrangement became inefficacious and disturbing
as soon as some element is changed in the conditions of its
origin; the disturbance then serves at least the new purpose
of announcing the change, and calling into play against it the
means of adjustment of the organism. In this connection,
I naturally bear in mind the case of the anxiety dream, and
in order not to have the appearance of trying to exclude this
testimony against the theory of wish-fulfilment wherever I
encounter it, I will attempt an explanation of the anxiety
dream, at least offering some suggestions.

That a psychic process developing anxiety may still be a
wish-fulfilment has long ceased to impress us as a contradic-
tion. We may explain this occurrence by the fact that the
wish belongs to one system (the Unc.), while by the other
system (the Forec.), this wish has been rejected and suppressed.

459

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

The subjection of the Unc. by the Forec. is not complete
even in perfect psychic health; the amount of this suppression
shows the degree of our psychic normality. Neurotic symptoms
show that there is a conflict between the two systems; the
symptoms are the results of a compromise of this conflict, and
they temporarily put an end to it. On the one hand, they
afford the Unc. an outlet for the discharge of its excitement,
and serve it as a sally port, while, on the other hand, they
give the Forec. the capability of dominating the Unc. to some
extent.] It is highly instructive to consider, e.g., the significance
of any hysterical phobia or of an agoraphobia. Suppose a
neurotic incapable of crossing the street alone, which we would
justly call a “symptom.” We attempt to remove this symptom
by urging him to the action which he deems himself incapable
of. The result will be an attack of anxiety, just as an attack of
anxiety in the street has often been the cause of establishing
an agoraphobia. We thus learn that the symptom has been
constituted in order to guard against the outbreak of the
anxiety. The phobia is thrown before the anxiety like a
fortress on the frontier.

Unless we enter into the part played by the affects in these
processes, which can be done here only imperfectly, we cannot
continue our discussion. Let us therefore advance the pro-
position that the reason why the suppression of the uncon-
scious becomes absolutely necessary is because, if the discharge
of presentation should be left to itself, it would develop an
affect in the Unc. which originally bore the character of
pleasure, but which, since the appearance of the repression,
bears the character of pain. The aim, as well as the result, of
the suppression is to stop the development of this pain. The
suppression extends over the unconscious ideation, because
the liberation of pain might emanate from the ideation. The
foundation is here laid for a very definite assumption concern-
ing the nature of the affective development. It is regarded
as a motor or secondary activity, the key to the innervation
of which is located in the presentations of the Unc. Through
the domination of the Forec. these presentations become, as
it were, throttled and inhibited at the exit of the emotion-
developing impulses. The danger, which is due to the fact
that the Forec. ceases to occupy the energy, therefore consists

460

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

in the fact that the unconscious excitations liberate such an
affect as—in consequence of the repression that has previously
taken place—can only be perceived as pain or anxiety.

This danger is released through the full sway of the dream
process. The determinations for its realisation consist in the
fact that repressions have taken place, and that the suppressed
emotional wishes shall become sufficiently strong. They thus
stand entirely without the psychological realm of the dream
structure.] Were it not for the fact that our subject is
connected through just one factor, namely, the freeing of the
Unc. during sleep, with the subject of the development of
anxiety, I could dispense with discussion of the anxiety dream,
and thus avoid all obscurities connected with it.

As I have often repeated, [the theory of the anxiety
belongs to the psychology of the neuroses.] I would say
that the anxiety in the dream is an anxiety problem and not
a dream problem. We have nothing further to do with it
after having once demonstrated its point of contact with the
subject of the dream process. There is only one thing left
for me to do. As I have asserted that the neurotic anxiety
originates from sexual sources, I can subject anxiety dreams
to analysis in order to demonstrate the sexual material in their
dream thoughts.

For good reasons I refrain from citing here any of the
numerous examples placed at my disposal by neurotic patients,
but prefer to give anxiety dreams from young persons.

Personally, I have had no real anxiety dream for decades,
but I recall one from my seventh or eighth year which I sub-
jected to interpretation about thirty years later. The dream
was very vivid, and showed me my beloved mother, with pecu-
liarly
calm sleeping counte-
nance, carried into the room and laid on the
bed by two (or three) persons with bird’s beaks. I awoke crying
and screaming, and disturbed my parents. The very tall
figures—draped in a peculiar manner—with beaks, I had taken
from the illustrations of Philippson’s bible ; I believe they
represented deities with heads of sparrowhawks from an
Egyptian tomb relief. The analysis also introduced the remi-
niscence of a naughty janitor’s boy, who used to play with
us children on the meadow in front of the house ; I would
add that his name was Philip. I feel that I first heard from

461

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

this boy the vulgar word signifying sexual intercourse, which is
replaced among the educated by the Latin “coitus,” but to
which the dream distinctly alludes by the selection of the bird’s
heads.^* I must have suspected the sexual significance of the
word from the facial expression of my worldly-
wise teacher.
My mother’s features in the dream were copied from the
countenance of my grandfather, whom I had seen a few days
before his death snoring in the state of coma. The interpre-
tation of the secondary elaboration in the dream must there-
fore have been that my mother was dying; the tomb relief,
too, agrees with this. In this anxiety I awoke, and could not
calm myself until I had awakened my parents. I remember
that I suddenly became calm on coming face to face with my
mother, as if I needed the assurance that my mother was not
dead. But this secondary interpretation of the dream had
been effected only under the influence of the developed anxiety.
I was not frightened because I dreamed that my mother was
dying, but I interpreted the dream in this manner in the fore-
conscious elaboration because I was already under the domina-
tion of the anxiety. The latter, however, could be traced by
means of the repression to an obscure obviously sexual desire,
which had found its satisfying expression in the visual content
of the dream.

A man twenty-
seven years old who had been severely ill
for a year had had many terrifying dreams between the ages
of eleven and thirteen. He thought that a man with an axe
was running after him; he wished to run, but felt paralysed
and could not move from the spot. This may be taken as a
good example of a very common, and apparently sexually
indifferent, anxiety dream. In the analysis the dreamer first
thought of a story told him by his uncle, which chronologically
was later than the dream, viz. that he was attacked at
night by a suspicious-
looking individual. This occurrence led
him to believe that he himself might have already heard of a
similar episode at the time of the dream. In connection with
the axe he recalled that during that period of his life he once
hurt his hand with an axe while chopping wood. This
immediately led to his relations with his younger brother,

^* The German of the word bird is “Vogel,” which gives origin to the
vulgar expression “vöglen,” denoting sexual intercourse. (Trans. note.)

462

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

whom he used to maltreat and knock down. In particular, he
recalled an occasion when he struck his brother on the head
with his boot until he bled, whereupon his mother remarked :
“I fear he will kill him some day.” While he was seemingly
thinking of the subject of violence, a reminiscence from his
ninth year suddenly occurred to him. His parents came home
late and went to bed while he was feigning sleep. He soon
heard panting and other noises that appeared strange to him,
and he could also make out the position of his parents in bed.
His further associations showed that he had established an
analogy between this relation between his parents and his
own relation toward his younger brother. He subsumed
what occurred between his parents under the conception
“violence and wrestling,” and thus reached a sadistic con-
ception of the coitus act, as often happens among children.
The fact that he often noticed blood on his mother’s bed
corroborated his conception.

That the sexual intercourse of adults appears strange to
children who observe it, and arouses fear in them, I dare say is
a fact of daily experience. I have explained this fear by the
fact that sexual excitement is not mastered by their under-
standing, and is probably also unacceptable to them because
their parents are involved in it. For the same reason this
excitement is converted into fear. At a still earlier period of
life sexual emotion directed toward the parent of opposite sex
does not meet with repression but finds free expression, as we
have seen above (pp. 209–215).

For the night terrors with hallucinations (pavor nocturnus)
frequently found in children, I would unhesitatingly give the
same explanation. Here, too, we are certainly dealing with
the incomprehensible and rejected sexual feelings, which, if
noted, would probably show a temporal periodicity, for an
enhancement of the sexual libido may just as well be produced
accidentally through emotional impressions as through the
spontaneous and gradual processes of development.

I lack the necessary material to sustain these explanations
from observation. On the other hand, the pediatrists seem
to lack the point of view which alone makes comprehensible
the whole series of phenomena, on the somatic as well as on
the psychic side. To illustrate by a comical example how one

463

wearing the blinders of medical mythology may miss the under-
standing of such cases I will relate a case which I found in a
thesis on pavor nocturnus by Debacker¹⁷ 1881 (p. 66). A
thirteen-
year-old boy of delicate health began to become
anxious and dreamy ; his sleep became restless, and about
once a week it was interrupted by an acute attack of anxiety
with hallucinations. The memory of these dreams was in-
variably very distinct. Thus, he related that the devil shouted
at him : “Now we have you, now we have you,” and this was
followed by an odour of sulphur ; the fire burned his skin.
This dream aroused him, terror-stricken. He was unable to
scream at first ; then his voice returned, and he was heard to
say distinctly : “No, no, not me ; why, I have done nothing,”
or, “Please don’t, I shall never do it again.” Occasionally,
also, he said : “Albert has not done that.” Later he avoided
undressing, because, as he said, the fire attacked him only
when he was undressed. From amid these evil dreams, which
menaced his health, he was sent into the country, where he
recovered within a year and a half, but at the age of fifteen
he once confessed : “Je n’osais pas l’avouer, mais j’éprouvais
continuellement des picotements et des surexcitations aux
parties ; * à la fin, cela m’énervait tant que plusieurs fois,
j’ai pensé me jeter par la fenêtre au dortoir.”

It is certainly not difficult to suspect : ¹, that the boy had
practised masturbation in former years, that he probably
denied it, and was threatened with severe punishment for his
wrongdoing (his confession : Je ne le ferai plus ; his denial :
Albert n’a jamais fait ça). ², That under the pressure of
puberty the temptation to self-abuse through the tickling of
the genitals was reawakened. ³, That now, however, a struggle
of repression arose in him, suppressing the libido and changing
it into fear, which subsequently took the form of the punish-
ments with which he was then threatened.

Let us, however, quote the conclusions drawn by our author
(p. 69). This observation shows : ¹, That the influence of
puberty may produce in a boy of delicate health a condition
of extreme weakness, and that it may lead to a very marked
cerebral anæmia.†

^* The italics are my own, though the meaning is plain enough without
them.

^† The italics are mine.

464

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

2. This cerebral anæmia produces a transformation of
character, demonomaniacal hallucinations, and very violent
nocturnal, perhaps also diurnal, states of anxiety.

3. Demonomania and the self-reproaches of the day can
be traced to the influences of religious education which the
subject underwent as a child.

4. All manifestations disappeared as a result of a lengthy
sojourn in the country, bodily exercise, and the return of
physical strength after the termination of the period of puberty.

5. A predisposing influence for the origin of the cerebral
condition of the boy may be attributed to heredity and to
the father’s chronic syphilitic state.

The concluding remarks of the author read : “Nous
avons fait entrer cette observation dans le cadre des délires
apyrétiques d’inanition, car c’est à l’ischémie cérébrale que nous
rattachons cet état particulier.”

(e) The Primary and Secondary Processes—Regression.

In venturing to attempt to penetrate more deeply into the
psychology of the dream processes, I have undertaken a diffi-
cult task, to which, indeed, my power of description is hardly
equal. To reproduce in description by a succession of words
the simultaneousness of so complex a chain of events, and in
doing so to appear unbiased throughout the exposition, goes
fairly beyond my powers. I have now to atone for the fact
that I have been unable in my description of the dream
psychology to follow the historic development of my views.
The view-points for my conception of the dream were reached
through earlier investigations in the psychology of the neu-
roses, to which I am not supposed to refer here, but to which
I am repeatedly forced to refer, whereas I should prefer to
proceed in the opposite direction, and, starting from the
dream, to establish a connection with the psychology of the
neuroses. I am well aware of all the inconveniences arising
for the reader from this difficulty, but I know of no way to
avoid them.

As I am dissatisfied with this state of affairs, I am glad to
dwell upon another view-point which seems to raise the value
of my efforts. As has been shown in the introduction to the

465

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

first chapter, I found myself confronted with a theme which
had been marked by the sharpest contradictions on the part
of the authorities. After our elaboration of the dream pro-
blems we found room for most of these contradictions. We
have been forced, however, to take decided exception to two
of the views pronounced, viz. that the dream is a senseless
and that it is a somatic process; apart from these cases we
have had to accept all the contradictory views in one place or
another of the complicated argument, and we have been able
to demonstrate that they had discovered something that was
correct. [That the dream continues the impulses and interests
of the waking state has been quite generally confirmed
through the discovery of the latent thoughts of the dream.
These thoughts concern themselves only with things that
seem important and of momentous interest to us.] The
dream never occupies itself with trifles. But we have also
concurred with the [contrary view, viz. that the dream
gathers up the indifferent remnants from the day, and that
not until it has in some measure withdrawn itself from the
waking activity can an important event of the day be taken
up by the dream. [We found this holding true for the dream
content, which gives the dream thought its changed expres-
sion by means of disfigurement. We have said that from the
nature of the association mechanism the dream process more
easily takes possession of recent or indifferent material which
has not yet been seized by the waking mental activity; and
by reason of the censor it transfers the psychic intensity
from the important but also disagreeable to the indifferent
material. The hypermnesia of the dream and the resort to
infantile material have become main supports in our theory.
In our theory of the dream we have attributed to the wish
originating from the infantile the part of an indispensable
motor for the formation of the dream. We naturally could
not think of doubting the experimentally demonstrated
significance of the objective sensory stimuli during sleep;
but we have brought this material into the same relation
to the dream-wish as the thought remnants from the
waking activity. There was no need of disputing the fact
that the dream interprets the objective sensory stimuli after
the manner of an illusion; but we have supplied the motive
2 G

466

for this interpretation which has been left undecided by the
authorities. The interpretation follows in such a manner that
[the perceived object is rendered harmless as a sleep disturber
and becomes available for the wish-
fulfilment.] Though we
do not admit as special sources of the dream the subjective
state of excitement of the sensory organs during sleep, which
seems to have been demonstrated by Trumbull Ladd,⁴⁰ we
are nevertheless able to[explain this excitement through the
regressive revival of active memories behind the dream.] A
modest part in our conception has also been assigned to the
inner organic sensations which are wont to be taken as the
cardinal point in the explanation of the dream. These–the
sensation of falling, flying, or inhibition—stand as an ever
ready material to be used by the dream-
work to express the
dream thought as often as need arises.
[That the dream process is a rapid and momentary one
seems to be true for the perception through consciousness of
the already prepared dream content; the preceding parts of
the dream process probably take a slow, fluctuating course.

We have solved the riddle of the superabundant dream con-
tent compressed within the briefest moment by explaining
that this is due to the appropriation of almost fully formed
structures from the psychic life. That the dream is disfigured
and distorted by memory we found to be correct, but not
troublesome, as this is only the last manifest operation in the
work of disfigurement which has been active from the begin-
ning of the dream-
work. In the bitter and seemingly irrècon-
cilable controversy as to whether the psychic life sleeps at
night or can make the same use of all its capabilities as during
the day, we have been able to agree with both sides, though
not fully with either. We have found proof that the dream
thoughts represent a most complicated intellectual activity,
employing almost every means furnished by the psychic ap-
paratus ; still it cannot be denied that these dream thoughts
have originated during the day, and it is indispensable to
assume that there is a sleeping state of the psychic life. Thus,
even the theory of partial sleep has come into play ; but the
characteristics of the sleeping state have been found not in the
dilapidation of the psychic connections but in the cessation
of the psychic system dominating the day, arising from its

467

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

desire to sleep. The withdrawal from the outer world retains
its significance also for our conception; though not the only
factor, it nevertheless helps the regression to make possible
the representation of the dream. That we should reject the
voluntary guidance of the presentation course is uncontest-
able; but the psychic life does not thereby become aimless,
for we have seen that after the abandonment of the desired
end-presentation undesired ones gain the mastery. The loose
associative connection in the dream we have not only recog-
nised, but we have placed under its control a far greater
territory than could have been supposed; we have, however,
found it merely the feigned substitute for another correct
and senseful one. To be sure we, too, have called the dream
absurd; but we have been able to learn from examples how
wise the dream really is when it simulates absurdity. We
do not deny any of the functions that have been attributed
to the dream. That the dream relieves the mind like a valve,
and that, according to Robert’s assertion, all kinds of harmful
material are rendered harmless through representation in the
dream, not only exactly coincides with our theory of the two-
fold wish-fulfilment in the dream, but, in his own wording,
becomes even more comprehensible for us than for Robert
himself. The free indulgence of the psychic in the play of
its faculties finds expression with us in the non-interfer-
ence with the dream on the part of the foreconscious activity.
The “return to the embryonal state of psychic life in the
dream” and the observation of Havelock Ellis,²³ “an archaic
world of vast emotions and imperfect thoughts,” appear to us as
happy anticipations of our deductions to the effect that primi-
tive modes of work suppressed during the day participate in
the formation of the dream; and with us, as with Delage,¹⁵ the
suppressed material becomes the mainspring of the dreaming.

We have fully recognised the rôle which Scherner ascribes
to the dream phantasy, and even his interpretation; but we
have been obliged, so to speak, to conduct the dream to another
department in the problem. [It is not the dream that pro-
duces the phantasy but the unconscious phantasy that takes
the greatest part in the formation of the dream thoughts.] We
are indebted to Scherner for his clue to the source of the dream
thoughts, but almost everything that he ascribes to the dream-
 

468

work is attributable to the activity of the unconscious, which
is at work during the day, and which supplies incitements
not only for dreams but for neurotic symptoms as well. We
have had to separate the dream-
work from this activity as
being something entirely different and far more restricted.
Finally, we have by no means abandoned the relation of the
dream to mental disturbances, but, on the contrary, we have
given it a more solid foundation on new ground.
Thus held together by the new material of our theory as
by a superior unity, we find the most varied and most contra-
dictory conclusions of the authorities fitting into our structure;
some of them are differently disposed, only a few of them are
entirely rejected. But our own structure is still unfinished.
For, disregarding the many obscurities which we have neces-
sarily encountered in our advance into the darkness of
psychology, we are now apparently embarrassed by a new
contradiction. On the one hand, we have allowed the dream
thoughts to proceed from perfectly normal mental operations,
while, on the other hand, we have found among the dream
thoughts a number of entirely abnormal mental processes
which extend likewise to the dream contents. These, con-
sequently, we have repeated in the interpretation of the dream.
All that we have termed the “dream-
work” seems so remote
from the psychic processes recognised by us as correct, that
the severest judgments of the authors as to the low psychic
activity of dreaming seem to us well founded.
Perhaps only through still further advance can enlighten-
ment and improvement be brought about. I shall pick out
one of the constellations leading to the formation of dreams.
We have learned that the dream replaces a number of
thoughts derived from daily life which are perfectly formed
logically. We cannot therefore doubt that these thoughts
originate from our normal mental life. All the qualities which
we esteem in our mental operations, and which distinguish
these as complicated activities of a high order, we find repeated
in the dream thoughts. There is, however, no need of assum-
ing that this mental work is performed during sleep, as this
would materially impair the conception of the psychic state
of sleep we have hitherto adhered to. These thoughts may
just as well have originated from the day, and, unnoticed by

469

our consciousness from their inception, they may have con-
tinued to develop until they stood complete at the onset of
sleep. If we are to conclude anything from this state of
affairs, it will at most prove that the most complex mental opera-
tions are possible without the co-operation of consciousness,
which we have already learned independently from every
psychoanalysis of persons suffering from hysteria or obsessions.
These dream thoughts are in themselves surely not incapable
of consciousness; if they have not become conscious to us
during the day, this may have various reasons. The state of
becoming conscious depends on the exercise of a certain
psychic function, viz. attention, which seems to be extended
only in a definite quantity, and which may have been with-
drawn from the stream of thought in question by other aims.
Another way in which such mental streams are kept from
consciousness is the following:—Our conscious reflection
teaches us that when exercising attention we pursue a definite
course. But if that course leads us to an idea which does not
hold its own with the critic, we discontinue and cease to apply
our attention. Now, apparently, the stream of thought thus
started and abandoned may spin on without regaining atten-
tion unless it reaches a spot of especially marked intensity
which forces the return of attention. An initial rejection,
perhaps consciously brought about by the judgment on the
ground of incorrectness or unfitness for the actual purpose of
the mental act, may therefore account for the fact that a
mental process continues until the onset of sleep unnoticed
by consciousness.

Let us recapitulate by saying that we call such a stream of
thought a foreconscious one, that we believe it to be perfectly
correct, and that it may just as well be a more neglected one
or an interrupted and suppressed one. Let us also state
frankly in what manner we conceive this presentation course.
We believe that a certain sum of excitement, which we call
occupation energy, is displaced from an end-presentation
along the association paths selected by that end-presentation.
A “neglected” stream of thought has received no such occu-
pation, and from a “suppressed” or “rejected” one this
occupation has been withdrawn; both have thus been left
to their own emotions. The end-stream of thought stocked

470

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

with energy is under certain conditions able to draw to itself
the attention of consciousness, through which means it then
receives a “surplus of energy.”] We shall be obliged some-
what later to elucidate our assumption concerning the nature
and activity of consciousness.

[A train of thought thus incited in the Forec. may either
disappear spontaneously or continue. The former issue we
conceive as follows: It diffuses its energy through all the
association paths emanating from it, and throws the entire
chain of ideas into a state of excitement which, after lasting
for a while, subsides through the transformation of the ex-
citement requiring an outlet into dormant energy.* If this
first issue is brought about the process has no further signifi-
cance for the dream formation. But other end-presentations
are lurking in our foreconscious that originate from the sources
of our unconscious and from the ever active wishes. These
may take possession of the excitations in the circle of thought
thus left to itself, establish a connection between it and the
unconscious wish, and transfer to it the energy inherent in
the unconscious wish. Henceforth the neglected or suppressed
train of thought is in a position to maintain itself, although
this reinforcement does not help it to gain access to conscious-
ness. We may say that the hitherto foreconscious train of
thought has been drawn into the unconscious.]
[Other constellations for the dream formation would result
if the foreconscious train of thought had from the beginning
been connected with the unconscious wish, and for that
reason met with rejection by the dominating end-occupa-
tion; or if an unconscious wish were made active for other
—possibly somatic—reasons and of its own accord sought a
transference to the psychic remnants not occupied by the
Forec. All three cases finally combine in one issue, so that
there is established in the foreconscious a stream of thought
which, having been abandoned by the foreconscious occu-
pation, receives occupation from the unconscious wish.

The stream of thought is henceforth subjected to a series
of transformations which we no longer recognise as normal
psychic processes and which give us a surprising result, viz.

* ^* Cf. the significant observations by J. Breuer in our Studies on Hysteria;
1895, and 2nd ed. 1909.

471

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

a psychopathological formation. Let us emphasize and group
the same.

1. The intensities of the individual ideas become capable
of discharge in their entirety, and, proceeding from one con-
ception to the other, they thus form single presentations
endowed with marked intensity. Through the repeated re-
currence of this process the intensity of an entire train of ideas
may ultimately be gathered in a single presentation element.
This is the principle of compression or condensation with which
we became acquainted in the chapter on “The Dream-Work.”
It is condensation that is mainly responsible for the strange
impression of the dream, for we know of nothing analogous
to it in the normal psychic life accessible to consciousness.
We find here, also, presentations which possess great psychic
significance as junctions or as end-results of whole chains of
thought; but this validity does not manifest itself in any
character conspicuous enough for internal perception; hence,
what has been presented in it does not become in any way
more intensive. In the process of condensation the entire
psychic connection becomes transformed into the intensity of
the presentation content. It is the same as in a book where
we space or print in heavy type any word upon which particular
stress is laid for the understanding of the text. In speech the
same word would be pronounced loudly and deliberately and
with emphasis. The first comparison leads us at once to an
example taken from the chapter on “The Dream-Work”
(trimethylamine in the dream of Irma’s injection). His-
torians of art call our attention to the fact that the most
ancient historical sculptures follow a similar principle in ex-
pressing the rank of the persons represented by the size of
the statue. The king is made two or three times as large as
his retinue or the vanquished enemy. A piece of art, however,
from the Roman period makes use of more subtle means to
accomplish the same purpose. The figure of the emperor is
placed in the centre in a firmly erect posture; special care is
bestowed on the proper modelling of his figure; his enemies
are seen cowering at his feet; but he is no longer represented
a giant among dwarfs. However, the bowing of the subor-
dinate to his superior in our own days is only an echo of that
ancient principle of representation.

472

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

[The direction taken by the condensations of the dream is
prescribed on the one hand by the true foreconscious relations
of the dream thoughts, on the other hand by the attraction of
the visual reminiscences in the unconscious. The success of
the condensation work produces those intensities which are
required for penetration into the perception systems.]

[2. Through this free transferability of the intensities,
moreover, and in the service of condensation, intermediary
presentations—compromises, as it were—are formed (cf. the
numerous examples). This, likewise, is something unheard
of in the normal presentation course, where it is above all a
question of selection and retention of the “proper” presenta-
tion element. On the other hand, composite and compromise
formations occur with extraordinary frequency when we are
trying to find the linguistic expression for foreconscious
thoughts; these are considered “slips of the tongue.”]

[3. The presentations which transfer their intensities to
one another are very loosely connected, and are joined together
by such forms of association as are spurned in our serious
thought and are utilised in the production of the effect of wit
only.]

Among these we particularly find associations of the
sound and consonance types.

[4. Contradictory thoughts do not strive to eliminate one
another, but remain side by side. They often unite to produce
condensation as if no contradiction existed, or they form com-
promises for which we should never forgive our thoughts, but
which we frequently approve of in our actions.]

These are some of the [most conspicuous abnormal pro-
cesses to which the thoughts which have previously been
rationally formed are subjected in the course of the dream-
work. As the main feature of these processes we recognise
the high importance attached to the fact of rendering the occu-
pation energy mobile and capable of discharge; the content
and the actual significance of the psychic elements, to which
these energies adhere, become a matter of secondary im-
portance. One might possibly think that the condensation
and compromise formation is effected only in the service of
regression, when occasion arises for changing thoughts into
pictures. But the analysis and—still more distinctly—the
synthesis of dreams which lack regression toward pictures,

473

e.g. the dream “Autodidasker—Conversation with Court-
Councillor N.,” present the same processes of displacement
and condensation as the others.]

Hence we cannot refuse to acknowledge that [the two kinds
of essentially different psychic processes participate in the
formation of the dream; one forms perfectly correct dream
thoughts which are equivalent to normal thoughts, while the
other treats these ideas in a highly surprising and incorrect
manner. The latter process we have already set apart in
Chapter VI as the dream-work proper. What have we now
to advance concerning this latter psychic process ?]

We should be unable to answer this question here if we
had not penetrated considerably into the psychology of the
neuroses and especially of hysteria. From this we learn that
the [same incorrect psychic processes—as well as others that
have not been enumerated—control the formation of hysterical
symptoms. In hysteria, too, we at once find a series of per-
fectly correct thoughts equivalent to our conscious thoughts,
of whose existence, however, in this form we can learn nothing
and which we can only subsequently reconstruct. If they have
forced their way anywhere to our perception, we discover from
the analysis of the symptom formed that these normal
thoughts have been subjected to abnormal treatment and
have been transformed into the symptom by means of conden-
sation and compromise formation, through superficial associa-
tions, under cover of contradictions, and eventually over the road
of regression. In view of the complete identity found be-
tween the peculiarities of the dream-work and of the psychic
activity forming the psychoneurotic symptoms, we shall feel
justified in transferring to the dream the conclusions urged
upon us by hysteria.]

[From the theory of hysteria we borrow the proposition
that such an abnormal psychic elaboration of a normal train of
thought takes place only when the latter has been used for the
transference of an unconscious wish which dates from the in-
fantile life and is in a state of repression. In accordance with
this proposition we have construed the theory of the dream
on the assumption that the actuating dream-wish invariably
originates in the unconscious,] which, as we ourselves have ad-
mitted, cannot be universally demonstrated though it cannot

474

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

be refuted. But in order to explain the real meaning of the
term repression, which we have employed so freely, we shall
be obliged to make some further addition to our psychological
construction.

We have above elaborated[the fiction of a primitive psychic
apparatus, whose work is regulated by the efforts to avoid
accumulation of excitement and as far as possible to maintain
itself free from excitement. For this reason it was constructed
after the plan of a reflex apparatus; the motility, originally
the path for the inner bodily change, formed a discharging
path standing at its disposal. We subsequently discussed
the psychic results of a feeling of gratification, and we might
at the same time have introduced the second assumption, viz.
that accumulation of excitement—following certain modalities
that do not concern us—is perceived as pain and sets the
apparatus in motion in order to reproduce a feeling of gratifi-
cation in which the diminution of the excitement is perceived
as pleasure. Such a current in the apparatus which emanates
from pain and strives for pleasure we call a wish. We have
said that nothing but a wish is capable of setting the apparatus
in motion, and that the discharge of excitement in the apparatus
is regulated automatically by the perception of pleasure and
pain. The first wish must have been an hallucinatory occu-
pation of the memory for gratification, But this hallucina-
tion, unless it were maintained to the point of exhaustion,
proved incapable of bringing about a cessation of the desire
and consequently of securing the pleasure connected with
gratification.

Thus there was required a second activity—in our ter-
minology the activity of a second system—which should not
permit the memory occupation to advance to perception and
therefrom to restrict the psychic forces, but should lead the
excitement emanating from the craving stimulus by a devious
path over the spontaneous motility which ultimately should
so change the outer world as to allow the real perception of
the object of gratification to take place. Thus far we have
elaborated the plan of the psychic apparatus; these two
systems are the germ of the Unc. and Forec. which we include
in the fully developed apparatus.]

[In order to be in a position successfully to change the outer

475

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

world through the motility, there is required the accumula-
tion of a large sum of experiences in the memory systems as
well as a manifold fixation of the relations which are evoked
in this memory material by different end-presentations. We
now proceed further with our assumption. The manifold
activity of the second system, tentatively sending forth and
retracting energy, must on the one hand have full command
over all memory material, but on the other hand it would be
a superfluous expenditure for it to send to the individual
mental paths large quantities of energy which would thus
flow off to no purpose, diminishing the quantity available for
the transformation of the outer world. In the interests of
expediency I therefore postulate that the second system suc-
ceeds in maintaining the greater part of the occupation energy
in a dormant state and in using but a small portion for the
purposes of displacement. The mechanism of these processes
is entirely unknown to me; anyone who wishes to follow up
these ideas must try to find the physical analogies and prepare
the way for a demonstration of the process of motion in the
stimulation of the neuron. I merely hold to the idea that
the activity of the first ψ-system is directed to the free outflow
of the quantities of excitement, and that the second system
brings about an inhibition of this outflow through the energies
emanating from it, i.e. it produces a transformation into dor-
mant energy, probably by raising the level. I therefore assume
that under the control of the second system as compared with
the first, the course of the excitement is bound to entirely
different mechanical conditions. After the second system
has finished its tentative mental work, it removes the inhibi-
tion and congestion of the excitements and allows these
excitements to flow off to the motility.]

An interesting train of thought now presents itself if we
consider the relations of this inhibition of discharge by the
second system to the regulation through the principle of pain.
Let us now seek the counterpart of the primary feeling of
gratification, namely, the objective feeling of fear. A per-
ceptive stimulus acts on the primitive apparatus, becoming
the source of a painful emotion. This will then be followed
by irregular motor manifestations until one of these with-
draws the apparatus from perception and at the same time

476

from pain, but on the reappearance of the perception this mani-
festation will immediately repeat itself (perhaps as a move-
ment of flight) until the perception has again disappeared.
But there will here remain no tendency again to occupy the
perception of the source of pain in the form of an hallucina-
tion or in any other form. On the contrary, there will be a
tendency in the primary apparatus to abandon the painful
memory picture as soon as it is in any way awakened, as the
overflow of its excitement would surely produce (more pre-
cisely, begin to produce) pain. The deviation from memory,
which is but a repetition of the former flight from perception,
is facilitated also by the fact that, unlike perception, memory
does not possess sufficient quality to excite consciousness and
thereby to attract to itself new energy. This easy and regu-
larly occurring deviation of the psychic process from the former
painful memory presents to us the model and the first example
of psychic repression.) As is generally known, much of this
deviation from the painful, much of the behaviour of the
ostrich, can be readily demonstrated even in the normal psychic
life of adults.

By virtue of the principle of pain the first system is there-
fore altogether incapable of introducing anything unpleasant
into the mental associations. The system cannot do any-
thing but wish. If this remained so the mental activity of
the second system, which should have at its disposal all the
memories stored up by experiences, would be hindered. But
two ways are now opened: the work of the second system
either frees itself completely from the principle of pain and
continues its course, paying no heed to the painful reminiscence,
or it contrives to occupy the painful memory in such a manner
as to preclude the liberation of pain. We may reject the first
possibility, as the principle of pain also manifests itself as a
regulator for the emotional discharge of the second system;
we are, therefore, directed to the second possibility, namely,
that this system occupies a reminiscence in such a manner
as to inhibit its discharge and hence, also, to inhibit the
discharge comparable to a motor innervation for the de-
velopment of pain. Thus from two starting points we are
led to the hypothesis that occupation through the second
system is at the same time an inhibition for the emotional

477

discharge, viz. from a consideration of the principle of
pain and from the principle of the smallest expenditure of
innervation. Let us, however, keep to the fact—this is the
key to the theory of repression—that the second system is
capable of occupying an idea only when it is in position to
check the development of pain emanating from it. Whatever
withdraws itself from this inhibition also remains inaccessible
for the second system and would soon be abandoned by virtue
of the principle of pain. The inhibition of pain, however,
need not be complete; it must be permitted to begin, as it
indicates to the second system the nature of the memory and
possibly its defective adaptation for the purpose sought by the
mind.

The psychic process which is admitted by the first system
only I shall now call the primary process; and the one re-
sulting from the inhibition of the second system I shall call
the secondary process. I show by another point for what
purpose the second system is obliged to correct the primary
process. The primary process strives for a discharge of the
excitement in order to establish a perception identity with the
sum of excitement thus gathered; the secondary process has
abandoned this intention and undertaken instead the task
of bringing about a thought identity. All thinking is only a
circuitous path from the memory of gratification taken as an
end-
presentation to the identical occupation of the same
memory, which is again to be attained on the track of the
motor experiences. The state of thinking must take an
interest in the connecting paths between the presentations
without allowing itself to be misled by their intensities. But
it is obvious that condensations and intermediate or compro-
mise formations occurring in the presentations impede the
attainment of this end-
identity; by substituting one idea for
the other they deviate from the path which otherwise would
have been continued from the original idea. Such processes
are therefore carefully avoided in the secondary thinking.
Nor is it difficult to understand that the principle of pain
also impedes the progress of the mental stream in its pursuit
of the thought identity, though, indeed, it offers to the mental
stream the most important points of departure. Hence the
tendency of the thinking process must be to free itself more

478

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

and more from exclusive adjustment by the principle of pain,
and through the working of the mind to restrict the affective
development to that minimum which is necessary as a signal.
This refinement of the activity must have been attained
through a recent over-
occupation of energy brought about
by consciousness. But we are aware that this refinement
is seldom completely successful even in the most normal
psychic life and that our thoughts ever remain accessible to
falsification through the interference of the principle of pain.
[This, however, is not the breach in the functional effi-
ciency of our psychic apparatus through which the thoughts
forming the material of the secondary mental work are en-
abled to make their way into the primary psychic process—
with which formula we may now describe the work leading
to the dream and to the hysterical symptoms. This case of
insufficiency results from the union of the two factors from
the history of our evolution; one of which belongs solely to
the psychic apparatus and has exerted a determining influence
on the relation of the two systems, while the other operates
fluctuatingly and introduces motive forces of organic origin
into the psychic life. Both originate in the infantile life and
result from the transformation which our psychic and somatic
organism has undergone since the infantile period.]
[When I termed one of the psychic processes in the psychic
apparatus the primary process, I did so not only in considera-
tion of the order of precedence and capability, but also as
admitting the temporal relations to a share in the nomen-
clature. As far as our knowledge goes there is no psychic
apparatus possessing only the primary process, and in so far
it is a theoretic fiction; but so much is based on fact that
the primary processes are present in the apparatus from the
beginning, while the secondary processes develop gradually in
the course of life, inhibiting and covering the primary ones,
and gaining complete mastery over them perhaps only at the
height of life. Owing to this retarded appearance of the
secondary processes, the essence of our being, consisting in
unconscious wish feelings, can neither be seized nor inhibited
by the foreconscious, whose part is once for all restricted to
the indication of the most suitable paths for the wish feelings
originating in the unconscious. These unconscious wishes

479

establish for all subsequent psychicefforts a compulsion to which
they have to submit and which they must strive if possible to
divert from its course and direct to higher aims. In conse-
quence of this retardation of the foreconscious occupation a
large sphere of the memory material remains inaccessible.

Among these indestructible and unincumbered wish feel-
ings originating from the infantile life, there are also some, the
fulfilments of which have entered into a relation of contradic-
tion to the end-presentation of the secondary thinking. The
fulfilment of these wishes would no longer produce an affect
of pleasure but one of pain ; and it is just this transformation
of affect that constitutes the nature of what we designate as “re-
pression,” in which we recognise the infantile first step of passing
adverse sentence or of rejecting through reason.

To investigate
in what way and through what motive forces such a trans-
formation can be produced constitutes the problem of repression,
which we need here only skim over. It will suffice to remark
that such a transformation of affect occurs in the course of
development (one may think of the appearance in infantile
life of disgust which was originally absent), and that it is
connected with the activity of the secondary system. The
memories from which the unconscious wish brings about the
emotional discharge have never been accessible to the Forec.,
and for that reason their emotional discharge cannot be in-
hibited. It is just on account of this affective development
that these ideas are not even now accessible to the forecon-
scious thoughts to which they have transferred their wishing
power.

On the contrary, the principle of pain comes into
play, and causes the Forec. to deviate from these thoughts of
transference. The latter, left to themselves, are “repressed,”
and thus the existence of a store of infantile memories, from
the very beginning withdrawn from the Forec., becomes the
preliminary condition of repression.

In the most favourable case the development of pain termi-
nates as soon as the energy has been withdrawn from the
thoughts of transference in the Forec., and this effect charac-
terises the intervention of the principle of pain as expedient.

It
is different, however, if the repressed unconscious wish receives
an organic enforcement which it can lend to its thoughts of
transference and through which it can enable them to make

480

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

an effort towards penetration with their excitement, even after
they have been abandoned by the occupation of the Forec.
A defensive struggle then ensues, inasmuch as the Forec.
reinforces the antagonism against the repressed ideas, and
subsequently this leads to a penetration by the thoughts of
transference (the carriers of the unconscious wish) in some form
of compromise through symptom formation. But from the
moment that the suppressed thoughts are powerfully occupied
by the unconscious wish-feeling and abandoned by the fore-
conscious occupation, they succumb to the primary psychic
process and strive only for motor discharge; or, if the path
be free, for hallucinatory revival of the desired perception
identity. We have previously found, empirically, that the
incorrect processes described are enacted only with thoughts
that exist in the repression. We now grasp another part of
the connection. These incorrect processes are those that are
primary in the psychic apparatus; they appear wherever
thoughts abandoned by the foreconscious occupation are left to
themselves, and can fill themselves with the uninhibited energy,
striving for discharge from the unconscious. We may add a
few further observations to support the view that these pro-
cesses designated “incorrect” are really not falsifications of
the normal defective thinking, but the modes of activity of
the psychic apparatus when freed from inhibition. Thus we
see that the transference of the foreconscious excitement to
the motility takes place according to the same processes, and
that the connection of the foreconscious presentations with
words readily manifest the same displacements and mixtures
which are described to inattention. Finally, I should like
to adduce proof that an increase of work necessarily results
from the inhibition of these primary courses from the fact
that we gain a comical effect, a surplus to be discharged
through laughter, if we allow these streams of thought to come to
consciousness.
The theory of the psychoneuroses asserts with complete
certainty that only sexual wish-feelings from the infantile life
experience repression (emotional transformation) during the
developmental period of childhood. These are capable of
returning to activity at a later period of development, and then
have the faculty of being revived, either as a consequence of

481

the sexual constitution, which is really formed from the
original bisexuality, or in consequence of unfavourable in-
fluences of the sexual life ; and they thus supply the motive
power for all psychoneurotic symptom formations. It is
only by the introduction of these sexual forces that the gaps
still demonstrable in the theory of repression can be filled.
I will leave it undecided whether the postulate of the sexual
and infantile may also be asserted for the theory of the dream ;
I leave this here unfinished because I have already passed a
step beyond the demonstrable in assuming that the dream-
wish invariably originates from the unconscious.^* Nor will
I further investigate the difference in the play of the psychic
forces in the dream formation and in the formation of the
hysterical symptoms, for to do this we ought to possess a
more explicit knowledge of one of the members to be com-
pared. But I regard another point as important, and will
here confess that it was on account of this very point that I
have just undertaken this entire discussion concerning the two
psychic systems, their modes of operation, and the repression.
For it is now immaterial whether I have conceived the psycho-
 

^* Here, as in other places, there are gaps in the treatment of the
subject, which I have left intentionally, because to fill them up would
require on the one hand too great effort, and on the other hand an
extensive reference to material that is foreign to the dream. Thus I have
avoided stating whether I connect with the word “suppressed” another
sense than with the word “repressed.” It has been made clear only that
the latter emphasizes more than the former the relation to the uncon-
scious. I have not entered into the cognate problem why the dream
thoughts also experience distortion by the censor when they abandon the
progressive continuation to consciousness and choose the path of regression.
I have been above all anxious to awaken an interest in the problems to
which the further analysis of the dream-work leads and to indicate the
other themes which meet these on the way. It was not always easy to
decide just where the pursuit should be discontinued. That I have not
treated exhaustively the part played in the dream by the psychosexual life
and have avoided the interpretation of dreams of an obvious sexual content
is due to a special reason which may not come up to the reader’s expectation.
To be sure, it is very far from my ideas and the principles expressed by
me in neuropathology to regard the sexual life as a “pudendum” which
should be left unconsidered by the physician and the scientific investigator.
I also consider ludicrous the moral indignation which prompted the
translator of Artemidoros of Daldis to keep from the reader’s knowledge
the chapter on sexual dreams contained in the Symbolism of the Dreams. As
for myself, I have been actuated solely by the conviction that in the
explanation of sexual dreams I should be bound to entangle myself deeply
in the still unexplained problems of perversion and bisexuality ; and for
that reason I have reserved this material for another connection.

482

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

logical relations in question with approximate correctness, or,
as is easily possible in such a difficult matter, in an erroneous
and fragmentary manner. Whatever changes may be made in
the interpretation of the psychic censor and of the correct
and of the abnormal elaboration of the dream content, the
fact nevertheless remains that such processes are active in
dream formation, and that essentially they show the closest
analogy to the processes observed in the formation of the
hysterical symptoms. The dream is not a pathological
phenomenon, and it does not leave behind an enfeeblement
of the mental faculties. The objection that no deduction
can be drawn regarding the dreams of healthy persons from
my own dreams and from those of neurotic patients may be
rejected without comment. Hence, when we draw conclu-
sions from the phenomena as to their motive forces, we recog-
nise that the psychic mechanism made use of by the neuroses
is not created by a morbid disturbance of the psychic life, but
is found ready in the normal structure of the psychic apparatus.
The two psychic systems, the censor crossing between them,
the inhibition and the covering of the one activity by the
other, the relations of both to consciousness—or whatever
may offer a more correct interpretation of the actual condi-
tions in their stead—all these belong to the normal structure
of our psychic instrument, and the dream points out for us
one of the roads leading to a knowledge of this structure. If,
in addition to our knowledge, we wish to be contented with a
minimum perfectly established, we shall say that the dream
gives us proof that the suppressed material continues to exist
even in the normal person and remains capable of psychic activity.
The dream itself is one of the manifestations of this suppressed
material; theoretically, this is true in all cases; according
to substantial experience it is true in at least a great number
of such as most conspicuously display the prominent character-
istics of dream life. The suppressed psychic material, which
in the waking state has been prevented from expression and
cut off from internal perception by the antagonistic adjustment
of the contradictions, finds ways and means of obtruding itself
on consciousness during the night under the domination of
the compromise formations.

“ Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.”

483

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

At any rate the interpretation of dreams is the via regia to a
knowledge of the unconscious in the psychic life.]

In following the analysis of the dream we have made some
progress toward an understanding of the composition of this
most marvellous and most mysterious of instruments; to be
sure, we have not gone very far, but enough of a beginning has
been made to allow us to advance from other so-called patho-
logical formations further into the analysis of the unconscious.
[Disease—at least that which is justly termed functional—is
not due to the destruction of this apparatus, and the estab-
lishment of new splittings in its interior; it is rather to be
explained dynamically through the strengthening and weaken-
ing of the components in the play of forces by which so many
activities are concealed during the normal function. We
have been able to show in another place how the composition
of the apparatus from the two systems permits a subtilisa-
tion even of the normal activity which would be impossible for a
single system.^*]

(f) The Unconscious and Consciousness—Reality.

On closer inspection we find that[it is not the existence of
two systems near the motor end of the apparatus but of
two kinds of processes or modes of emotional discharge,] the
assumption of which was explained in the psychological dis-
cussions of the previous chapter. This can make no difference
for us, for we must always be ready to drop our auxiliary ideas
whenever we deem ourselves in position to replace them by
something else approaching more closely to the unknown
reality. Let us now try to correct some views which might
be erroneously formed as long as we regarded the two systems
in the crudest and most obvious sense as two localities within
the psychic apparatus, views which have left their traces in

^*The dream is not the only phenomenon tending to base psycho-
pathology on psychology. In a short series of unfinished articles
(“Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie” entitled Über den
psychischen Mechanismus der Vergeßlichkeit, 1898, and Über Deckerinnerungen,
1899) I attempt to interpret a number of psychic manifestations from
everyday life in support of the same conception. These and other articles
on “Forgetting,” “Lapse of Speech,” &c., have since been published collec-
tively under the title of Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1904 and 1907, of
which an English translation will shortly appear.

484

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

the terms “repression” and “penetration.” [Thus, when we
say that an unconscious idea strives for transference into the
foreconscious in order later to penetrate consciousness, we
do not mean that a second idea is to be formed situated in a
new locality like an interlineation near which the original
continues to remain; also, when we speak of penetration into
consciousness, we wish carefully to avoid any idea of change
of locality.] When we say that a foreconscious idea is repressed
and subsequently taken up by the unconscious, we might be
tempted by these figures, borrowed from the idea of a struggle
over a territory, to assume that an arrangement is really
broken up in one psychic locality and replaced by a new one
in the other locality. [For these comparisons we substitute
what would seem to correspond better with the real state of
affairs by saying that an energy occupation is displaced to or
withdrawn from a certain arrangement so that the psychic
formation falls under the domination of a system or is with
-
drawn from the same. Here again we replace a topical mode
of presentation by a dynamic; it is not the psychic formation
that appears to us as the moving factor but the innervation
of the same.]

I deem it appropriate and justifiable, however, to apply
ourselves still further to the illustrative conception of the two
systems. We shall avoid any misapplication of this manner
of representation if we [remember that presentations, thoughts,
and psychic formations should generally not be localised in
the organic elements of the nervous system, but, so to speak,
between them, where resistances and paths form the correlate
corresponding to them.] Everything that can become an
object of our internal perception is virtual, like the image in
the telescope produced by the passage of the rays of light.
But [we are justified in assuming the existence of the systems,
which have nothing psychic in themselves and which never
become accessible to our psychic perception, corresponding to
the lenses of the telescope which design the image. If we
continue this comparison, we may say that the censor between
two systems corresponds to the refraction of rays during their
passage into a new medium.

Thus far we have made psychology on our own responsi
-
bility; it is now time to examine the theoretical opinions

485

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

governing present-day psychology and to test their relation
to our theories. The question of the unconscious in psycho-
logy is, according to the authoritative words of Lipps,^* less
a psychological question than the question of psychology.
As long as psychology settled this question with the verbal
explanation that the “psychic” is the “conscious” and that
“unconscious psychic occurrences” are an obvious contradic-
tion, a psychological estimate of the observations gained by
the physician from abnormal mental states was precluded.
The physician and the philosopher agree only when both
acknowledge that unconscious psychic processes are “the
appropriate and well-justified expression for an established
fact.” The physician cannot but reject with a shrug of his
shoulders the assertion that “consciousness is the indispen-
sable quality of the psychic”; he may assume, if his respect
for the utterings of the philosophers still be strong enough,
that he and they do not treat the same subject and do not
pursue the same science. For a single intelligent observation
of the psychic life of a neurotic, a single analysis of a dream
must force upon him the unalterable conviction that the most
complicated and correct mental operations, to which no one
will refuse the name of psychic occurrences, may take place
without exciting the consciousness of the person. It is
true that the physician does not learn of these unconscious
processes until they have exerted such an effect on con-
sciousness as to admit communication or observation. But
this effect of consciousness may show a psychic character
widely differing from the unconscious process, so that the
internal perception cannot possibly recognise the one as a
substitute for the other. The physician must reserve for
himself the right to penetrate, by a process of deduction,
from the effect on consciousness to the unconscious psychic
process; he learns in this way that the effect on conscious-
ness is only a remote psychic product of the unconscious
process and that the latter has not become conscious as such;
that it has been in existence and operative without betray-
ing itself in any way to consciousness.

^*“The Conception of the Unconscious in Psychology”: Lecture
delivered at the Third International Congress of Psychology at Munich,
1897.

486

*

A reaction from the over-estimation of the quality of
consciousness becomes the indispensable preliminary condition
for any correct insight into the behaviour of the psychic.
In the words of Lipps, the unconscious must be accepted as
the general basis of the psychic life. The unconscious is the
larger circle which includes within itself the smaller circle
of the conscious ; everything conscious has its preliminary
step in the unconscious, whereas the unconscious may stop
with this step and still claim full value as a psychic activity.
Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic ; its
inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external
world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data
of consciousness as is the external world through the indications
of our sensory organs.]

✓

A series of dream-problems which have intensely occupied
older authors will be laid aside when the old opposition be-
tween conscious life and dream life is abandoned and the
unconscious psychic assigned to its proper place. Thus many
of the activities whose performances in the dream have ex-
cited our admiration are now no longer to be attributed to the
dream but to unconscious thinking, which is also active during
the day. If, according to Scherner, the dream seems to play
with a symbolising representation of the body, we know that
this is the work of certain unconscious phantasies which have
probably given in to sexual emotions, and that these phan-
tasies come to expression not only in dreams but also in
hysterical phobias and in other symptoms. If the dream
continues and settles activities of the day and even brings to
light valuable inspirations, we have only to subtract from it
the dream disguise as a feat of dream-work and a mark of
assistance from obscure forces in the depth of the mind (cf. the
devil in Tartini’s sonata dream). The intellectual task as
such must be attributed to the same psychic forces which
perform all such tasks during the day. We are probably far
too much inclined to over-estimate the conscious character
even of intellectual and artistic productions. From the com-
munications of some of the most highly productive persons,
such as Goethe and Helmholtz, we learn, indeed, that the most
essential and original parts in their creations came to them in
the form of inspirations and reached their perceptions almost

487

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

finished. There is nothing strange about the assistance of
the conscious activity in other cases where there was a con-
certed effort of all the psychic forces. But it is a much abused
privilege of the conscious activity that it is allowed to hide
from us all other activities wherever it participates.

It will hardly be worth while to take up the historical
significance of dreams as a special subject. Where, for in-
stance, a chieftain has been urged through a dream to engage
in a bold undertaking the success of which has had the effect
of changing history, a new problem results only so long as the
dream, regarded as a strange power, is contrasted with other
more familiar psychic forces; the problem, however, disappears
when we regard the dream as a form of expression for feelings
which are burdened with resistance during the day and which
can receive reinforcements at night from deep emotional
sources.^* But the great respect shown by the ancients for
the dream is based on a correct psychological surmise. It
is a homage paid to the unsubdued and indestructible in the
human mind, and to the demoniacal which furnishes the dream-
wish and which we find again in our unconscious.

Not inadvisdely do I use the expression “in our uncon-
scious,” for what we so designate does not coincide with the
unconscious of the philosophers, nor with the unconscious
of Lipps. In the latter uses it is intended to designate
only the opposite of conscious. That there are also uncon-
scious psychic processes beside the conscious ones is the hotly
contested and energetically defended issue. Lipps gives us
the more far-reaching theory that everything psychic exists
as unconscious, but that some of it may exist also as conscious.
But it was not to prove this theory that we have adduced the
phenomena of the dream and of the hysterical symptom
formation; the observation of normal life alone suffices to
establish its correctness beyond any doubt. The new fact
that we have learned from the analysis of the psychopatho-
logical formations, and indeed from their first member,
viz. dreams, is that the unconscious—hence the psychic
—occurs as a function of two separate systems and that it
occurs as such even in normal psychic life. Consequently

^* Cf. here (p. 82) the dream (Σα-τυρος) of Alexander the Great at the
siege of Tyrus.

488

there are two kinds of unconscious, which we do not as yet
find distinguished by the psychologists. Both are uncon-
scious in the psychological sense; but in our sense the first,
which we call Unc., is likewise incapable of consciousness,
whereas the second we term “Forec.” because its emotions,
after the observance of certain rules, can reach consciousness,
perhaps not before they have again undergone censorship,
but still regardless of the Unc. system. The fact that in
order to attain consciousness the emotions must traverse an
unalterable series of events or succession of instances, as is
betrayed through their alteration by the censor, has helped
us to draw a comparison from spatiality. We described the
relations of the two systems to each other and to consciousness
by saying that the system Forec. is like a screen between the
system Unc. and consciousness. The system Forec. not only
bars access to consciousness, but also controls the entrance to
voluntary motility and is capable of sending out a sum of mobile
energy, a portion of which is familiar to us as attention.
We must also steer clear of the distinctions superconscious
and subconscious which have found so much favour in the
more recent literature on the psychoneuroses, for just such a
distinction seems to emphasize the equivalence of the psychic
and the conscious.
What part now remains in our description of the once all-
powerful and all-overshadowing consciousness? None other
than that of a sensory organ for the perception of psychic
qualities. According to the fundamental idea of schematic
undertaking we can conceive the conscious perception only
as the particular activity of an independent system for which
the abbreviated designation “Cons.” commends itself. This
system we conceive to be similar in its mechanical character-
istics to the perception system P, hence excitable by qualities
and incapable of retaining the trace of changes, i.e. it is devoid
of memory. The psychic apparatus which, with the sensory
organs of the P-systems, is turned to the outer world, is itself
the outer world for the sensory organ of Cons.; the teleo-
logical justification of which rests on this relationship. We are
here once more confronted with the principle of the succession
of instances which seems to dominate the structure of the
apparatus. The material under excitement flows to the Cons.

489

sensory organ from two sides, firstly from the P-system whose
excitement, qualitatively determined, probably experiences a
new elaboration until it comes to conscious perception; and,
secondly, from the interior of the apparatus itself, the quanti-
tative processes of which are perceived as a qualitative series
of pleasure and pain as soon as they have undergone certain
changes.

The philosophers, who have learned that correct and highly
complicated thought structures are possible even without the
co-operation of consciousness, have found it difficult to attri-
bute any function to consciousness; it has appeared to them
a superfluous mirroring of the perfected psychic process. The
analogy of our Cons. system with the systems of perception
relieves us of this embarrassment. We see that perception
through our sensory organs results in directing the occupation
of attention to those paths on which the incoming sensory
excitement is diffused; the qualitative excitement of the P-
system serves the mobile quantity of the psychic apparatus
as a regulator for its discharge. We may claim the same
function for the overlying sensory organ of the Cons. system.
By assuming new qualities, it furnishes a new contribution
toward the guidance and suitable distribution of the mobile
occupation quantities. By means of the perceptions of
pleasure and pain, it influences the course of the occupations
within the psychic apparatus, which normally operates un-
consciously and through the displacement of quantities. It
is probable that the principle of pain first regulates the dis-
placements of occupation automatically, but it is quite possible
that the consciousness of these qualities adds a second and
more subtle regulation which may even oppose the first and
perfect the working capacity of the apparatus by placing it
in a position contrary to its original design for occupying
and developing even that which is connected with the libera-
tion of pain. We learn from neuropsychology that an im-
portant part in the functional activity of the apparatus is
attributed to such regulations through the qualitative exci-
tation of the sensory organs. The automatic control of the
primary principle of pain and the restriction of mental capacity
connected with it are broken by the sensible regulations,
which in their turn are again automatisms. We learn that

490

the repression which, though originally expedient, terminates
nevertheless in a harmful rejection of inhibition and of psychic
domination, is so much more easily accomplished with re-
miniscences than with perceptions, because in the former
there is no increase in occupation through the excitement of
the psychic sensory organs. When an idea to be rejected has
once failed to become conscious because it has succumbed to
repression, it can be repressed on other occasions only because
it has been withdrawn from conscious perception on other
grounds. These are hints employed by therapy in order to
bring about a retrogression of accomplished repressions.

The value of the over-occupation which is produced by
the regulating influence of the Cons. sensory organ on the
mobile quantity, is demonstrated in the teleological connec-
tion by nothing more clearly than by the creation of a new
series of qualities and consequently a new regulation which
constitutes the precedence of man over the animals. For

the mental processes are in themselves devoid of quality
except for the excitements of pleasure and pain accompany-
ing them, which, as we know, are to be held in check as possible
disturbances of thought. In order to endow them with a
quality, they are associated in man with verbal memories, the
qualitative remnants of which suffice to draw upon them the
attention of consciousness which in turn endows thought
with a new mobile energy.

The manifold problems of consciousness in their entirety
can be examined only through an analysis of the hysterical
mental process. From this analysis we receive the impression
that the transition from the foreconscious to the occupation
of consciousness is also connected with a censorship similar
to the one between the Unc. and the Forec. This censorship,
too, begins to act only with the reaching of a certain quanti-
tative degree, so that few intense thought formations escape
it. Every possible case of detention from consciousness, as
well as of penetration to consciousness, under restriction is
found included within the picture of the psychoneurotic
phenomena; every case points to the intimate and twofold
connection between the censor and consciousness. I shall
conclude these psychological discussions with the report of
two such occurrences.

491

On the occasion of a consultation a few years ago the
subject was an intelligent and innocent-looking girl. Her
attire was strange ; whereas a woman’s garb is usually groomed
to the last fold, she had one of her stockings hanging down
and two of her waist buttons opened. She complained of
pains in one of her legs, and exposed her leg unrequested.
Her chief complaint, however, was in her own words as
follows : She had a feeling in her body as if something was
stuck into it which moved to and fro and made her tremble
through and through. This sometimes made her whole body
stiff. On hearing this, my colleague in consultation looked
at me ; the complaint was quite plain to him. To both of
us it seemed peculiar that the patient’s mother thought
nothing of the matter ; of course she herself must have been
repeatedly in the situation described by her child. As for the
girl, she had no idea of the import of her words or she would
never have allowed them to pass her lips. Here the censor
had been deceived so successfully that under the mask of
an innocent complaint a phantasy was admitted to con-
sciousness which otherwise would have remained in the
foreconscious.

Another example : I began the psychoanalytic treatment
of a boy of fourteen years who was suffering from tic con-
vulsif, hysterical vomiting, headache, &c., by assuring him
that, after closing his eyes, he would see pictures or have ideas,
which I requested him to communicate to me. He answered
by describing pictures. The last impression he had received
before coming to me was visually revived in his memory.
He had played a game of checkers with his uncle, and now saw
the checker-board before him. He commented on various posi-
tions that were favourable or unfavourable, on moves that were
not safe to make. He then saw a dagger lying on the checker-
board, an object belonging to his father, but transferred to
the checker-board by his phantasy. Then a sickle was lying on
the board ; next a scythe was added ; and, finally, he beheld
the likeness of an old peasant mowing the grass in front of
the boy’s distant parental home. A few days later I discovered
the meaning of this series of pictures. Disagreeable family
relations had made the boy nervous. It was the case of a
strict and crabbed father who lived unhappily with his mother,

492

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

and whose educational methods consisted in threats; of the
separation of his father from his tender and delicate mother,
and the remarrying of his father, who one day brought home
a young woman as his new mamma. The illness of the fourteen-
year-old boy broke out a few days later. It was the suppressed
anger against his father that had composed these pictures into
intelligible allusions. The material was furnished by a re-
miniscence from mythology. The sickle was the one with which
Zeus castrated his father; the scythe and the likeness of the
peasant represented Kronos, the violent old man who eats his
children and upon whom Zeus wreaks vengeance in so unfilial
a manner. The marriage of the father gave the boy an oppor-
tunity to return the reproaches and threats of his father—
which had previously been made because the child played
with his genitals (the checker-board; the prohibitive moves;
the dagger with which a person may be killed). We have
here long repressed memories and their unconscious remnants
which, under the guise of senseless pictures have slipped into
consciousness by devious paths left open to them.

¶ I should then expect to find the theoretical value of the
study of dreams in its contribution to psychological knowledge
and in its preparation for an understanding of neuroses.¶ Who
can foresee the importance of a thorough knowledge of the
structure and activities of the psychic apparatus when even
our present state of knowledge produces a happy therapeutic
influence in the curable forms of the psychoneuroses? What
about the practical value of such study someone may ask,
for psychic knowledge and for the discovering of the secret
peculiarities of individual character? Have not the un-
conscious feelings revealed by the dream the value of real
forces in the psychic life? Should we take lightly the ethical
significance of the suppressed wishes which, as they now
create dreams, may some day create other things?

I do not feel justified in answering these questions. I
have not thought further upon this side of the dream problem.
I believe, however, that at all events the Roman Emperor was
in the wrong who ordered one of his subjects executed because
the latter dreamt that he had killed the Emperor. He should
first have endeavoured to discover the significance of the
dream; most probably it was not what it seemed to be. And

493

PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAM ACTIVITIES

even if a dream of different content had the signifi-
cance of this offence against majesty, it would still have been in place
to remember the words of Plato, that the virtu-
ous man con-
tents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does
in actual life. I am there-
fore of the opinion that it is best to
accord freedom to dreams. Whether any reality is to be
attributed to the uncon-
scious wishes, and in what sense, I am
not prepared to say offhand. Reality must natu-
rally be
denied to all transi-
tion—and interme-
diate thoughts. If
we had before us the uncon-
scious wishes, brought to their
last and truest expres-
sion, we should still do well to remember
that more than one single form of existence must be ascribed
to the psychic reality. Action and the conscious expression
of thought mostly suffice for the prac-
tical need of judging a
man’s character. Action, above all, merits to be placed in
the first rank; for many of the impulses penetra-
ting con-
sciousness are neutralised by real forces of the psychic life
before they are converted into action; indeed, the reason
why they frequently do not encounter any psychic obstacle
on their way is because the uncon-
scious is certain of their
meeting with resistances later. In any case it is instruc-
tive
to become familiar with the much raked-up soil from which
our virtues proudly arise. For the compli-
cation of human
character moving dynami-
cally in all direc-
tions very rarely
accommodates itself to adjust-
ment through a simple alter-
native, as our antiquated moral philosophy would have it.
And how about the value of the dream for a knowledge
of the future? That, of course, we cannot consider.^* One
feels inclined to substi-
tute: “for a know-
ledge of the past.”
For the dream origin-
ates from the past in every sense. To
be sure the ancient belief that the dream reveals the future
is not entirely devoid of truth. By repre-
senting to us a wish
as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future; but
this future, taken by the dreamer as present, has been formed
into the likeness of that past by the indestructi-
ble wish.

^*Professor Ernst Oppenheim (Vienna) has shown me from folk-
lore
material that there is a class of dreams for which even the people drop the
expectation of future inter-
pretation, and which they trace in a per-
fectly
correct manner to wish feelings and wants arising during sleep. He will
in the near future fully report upon these dreams, which for the most part
are in the form of “funny stories.”