The Unconscious - H. W. Chase

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account of the intimate relation of dream fear to neurotic fear, discussion of the former obliges me to refer to the latter. In a little essay on "The Anxiety Neurosis,"11 I maintained that neurotic fear has its origin in the sexual life, and corresponds to a libido which has been turned away from its object and has not succeeded in being applied. From this formula, which has since proved its validity more and more clearly, we may deduce the conclusion that the content of anxiety dreams is of a sexual nature, the libido belonging to which content has been transformed into fear. Later on I shall have opportunity to support this assertion by the analysis of several dreams of neurotics. I shall have occasion to revert to the determinations in anxiety dreams and their compatibility with the theory of wish-fulfilment when I again attempt to approach the theory of dreams.

      1. It is quite incredible with what stubbornness readers and critics exclude this consideration, and leave unheeded the fundamental differentiation between the manifest and the latent dream content.

      2. It is remarkable how my memory narrows here for the purposes of analysis—while I am awake. I have known five of my uncles, and have loved and honoured one of them. But at the moment when I overcame my resistance to the interpretation of the dream I said to myself, "I have only one uncle, the one who is intended in the dream."

      3. The word is here used in the original Latin sense instantia, meaning energy, continuance or persistence in doing. (Translator.)

      4. Such hypocritical dreams are not unusual occurrences with me or with others. While I am working up a certain scientific problem, I am visited for many nights in rapid succession by a somewhat confusing dream which has as its content reconciliation with a friend long ago dropped. After three or four attempts, I finally succeeded in grasping the meaning of this dream. It was in the nature of an encouragement to give up the little consideration still left for the person in question, to drop him completely, but it disguised itself shamefacedly in the opposite feeling. I have reported a "hypocritical oedipus dream" of a person, in which the hostile feelings and the wishes of death of the dream thoughts were replaced by manifest tenderness. ("Typisches Beispiel eines verkappten Oedipustraumes," Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, Bd. 1, Heft 1-11, 1910.) Another class of hypocritical dreams will be reported in another place.

      5. To sit for the painter. Goethe: "And if he has no backside, how can the nobleman sit?"

      6. I myself regret the introduction of such passages from the psychopathology of hysteria, which, because of their fragmentary representation and of being torn from all connection with the subject, cannot have a very enlightening influence. If these passages are capable of throwing light upon the intimate relations between the dream and the psychoneuroses, they have served the purpose for which I have taken them up.

      7. Something like the smoked salmon in the dream of the deferred supper.

      8. It often happens that a dream is told incompletely, and that a recollection of the omitted portions appears only in the course of the analysis. These portions subsequently fitted in, regularly furnish the key to the interpretation. Cf. below, about forgetting in dreams.

      9. Similar "counter wish-dreams" have been repeatedly reported to me within the last few years by my pupils who thus reacted to their first encounter with the "wish theory of the dream."

      10. We may mention here the simplification and modification of this fundamental formula, propounded by Otto Rank: "On the basis and with the help of repressed infantile sexual material, the dream regularly represents as fulfilled actual, and as a rule also erotic, wishes, in a disguised and symbolic form." ("Ein Traum, der sich selbst deutet," Jahrbuch, v., Bleuler- Freud, II. B., p. 519, 1910.)

      11. See Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses, p. 133, translated by A. A. Brill, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Monograph Series.

      V

       THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

       Table of Contents

      After coming to realise from the analysis of the dream of Irma's injection that the dream is the fulfilment of a wish, our interest was next directed to ascertaining whether we had thus discovered a universal characteristic of the dream, and for the time being we put aside every other question which may have been aroused in the course of that interpretation. Now that we have reached the goal upon one of these paths, we may turn back and select a new starting-point for our excursions among the problems of the dream, even though we may lose sight for a time of the theme of wish-fulfilment, which has been as yet by no means exhaustively treated.

      Now that we are able, by applying our process of interpretation, to discover a latent dream content which far surpasses the manifest dream content in point of significance, we are impelled to take up the individual dream problems afresh, in order to see whether the riddles and contradictions which seemed, when we had only the manifest content, beyond our reach may not be solved for us satisfactorily.

      The statements of the authors concerning the relation of the dream to waking life, as well as concerning the source of the dream material, have been given at length in the introductory chapter. We may recall that there are three peculiarities of recollection in the dreams, which have been often remarked but never explained:

      1 That the dream distinctly prefers impressions of the few days preceding (Robert,55 Strümpell,66 Hildebrandt,35 also Weed-Hallam33).

      2 That it makes its selection according to principles other than those of our waking memory, in that it recalls not what is essential and important, but what is subordinate and disregarded (cf. p. 13).

      3 That it has at its disposal the earliest impressions of our childhood, and brings to light details from this period of life which again seem trivial to us, and which in waking life were considered long ago forgotten.1

      These peculiarities in the selection of the dream material have of course been observed by the authors in connection with the manifest dream content.

      (a) Recent and Indifferent Impressions in the Dream

      If I now consult my own experience concerning the source of the elements which appear in the dream, I must at once express the opinion that some reference to the experiences of the day which has most recently passed is to be found in every dream. Whatever dream I take up, whether my own or another's, this experience is always re-affirmed. Knowing this fact, I can usually begin the work of interpretation by trying to learn the experience of the previous day which has stimulated the dream; for many cases, indeed, this is the quickest way. In the case of the two dreams which I have subjected to close analysis in the preceding chapter (of Irma's injection, and of my uncle with the yellow beard) the reference to the previous day is so obvious that it needs no further elucidation. But in order to show that this reference may be regularly demonstrated, I shall examine a portion of my own dream chronicle. I shall report the dreams only so far as is necessary for the discovery of the dream stimulus in question.

      1 I make a visit at a house where I am admitted only with difficulty, &c., and meanwhile I keep a woman waiting for me. Source.—A conversation in the evening with a female relative to the effect that she would have to wait for some aid which she demanded until, &c.

      2 I

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