The Collected Works of Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud

cure must necessarily be kept secret as well. The strongest hindrance, however, lay in the knowledge that men behave most irrationally in matters of therapy, and that we have no prospect of attaining anything by an appeal to reason. A therapeutic novelty is received either with frenzied enthusiasm, as was the case when Koch first made public his tuberculin against tuberculosis, or it is treated with abysmal distrust, as was the really blessed vaccination of Jenner, which even today retains implacable opponents. There was a very obvious prejudice against psychoanalysis. When we had cured a very difficult case we would hear it said: “That is no proof, he would have become well by himself in all this time.” Yet when a patient who had already gone through four cycles of depression and mania came into my care during a temporary cessation in the melancholia, and three weeks later found herself in the beginnings of a new attack, all the members of the family as well as the high medical authorities called into consultation, were convinced that the new attack could only be the result of the attempted analysis. Against prejudice we are powerless; you see it again in the prejudices that one group of warring nations has developed against the other. The most sensible thing for us to do is to wait and allow time to wear it away. Some day the same persons think quite differently about the same things than before. Why they formerly thought otherwise remains the dark secret.

      It may be possible that the prejudice against psychoanalysis is already on the wane. The continual spread of psychoanalytic doctrine, the increase of the number of physicians in many lands who treat analytically, seems to vouch for it. When I was a young physician I was caught in just such a storm of outraged feeling of the medical profession toward hypnosis, treatment by suggestion, which today is contrasted with psychoanalysis by “sober” men. Hypnotism did not, however, as a therapeutic agent, live up to its promises; we psychoanalysts may call ourselves its rightful heirs, and we have not forgotten the large amount of encouragement and theoretical explanation we owe to it. The injuries blamed upon psychoanalysis are limited essentially to temporary aggravation of the conflict when the analysis is clumsily handled, or when it is broken off unfinished. You have heard our justification for our form of treatment, and you can form your own opinion as to whether or not our endeavors are likely to lead to lasting injury. Misuse of psychoanalysis is possible in various ways; above all, transference is a dangerous remedy in the hands of an unconscientious physician. But no professional method of procedure is protected from misuse; a knife that is not sharp is of no use in effecting a cure.

      I have thus reached the end, ladies and gentlemen. It is more than the customary formal speech when I admit that I am myself keenly depressed over the many faults in the lectures I have just delivered. First of all, I am sorry that I have so often promised to return to a subject only slightly touched upon at the time, and then found that the context has not made it possible to keep my word. I have undertaken to inform you concerning an unfinished thing, still in the process of development, and my brief exposition itself was an incomplete thing. Often I presented the evidence and then did not myself draw the conclusion. But I could not endeavor to make you masters of the subject. I tried only to give you some explanation and stimulation.

      THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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       "Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo"

Table of Contents

       INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

       PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

       PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

       TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

       I. THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE ON THE PROBLEMS OF THE DREAM

       II. METHOD OF DREAM INTERPRETATION: THE ANALYSIS OF A SAMPLE DREAM

       III. THE DREAM IS THE FULFILMENT OF A WISH

       IV. DISTORTION IN DREAMS

       V. THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS

       VI. THE DREAM-WORK

       VII. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM ACTIVITIES

      INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

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       In attempting a discussion of the Interpretation of Dreams, I do not believe that I have overstepped the bounds of neuropathological interest. For, on psychological investigation, the dream proves to be the first link in a chain of abnormal psychic structures whose other links, the hysterical phobia, the obsession, and the delusion must, for practical reasons, claim the interest of the physician. The dream (as will appear) can lay no claim to a corresponding practical significance; its theoretical value as a paradigm is, however, all the greater, and one who cannot explain the origin of the dream pictures will strive in vain to understand the phobias, obsessive and delusional ideas, and likewise their therapeutic importance.

      But this relation, to which our subject owes its importance, is responsible also for the deficiencies in the work before us. The surfaces of fracture which will be found so frequently in this discussion correspond to so many points of contact at which the problem of the dream formation touches more comprehensive problems of psychopathology, which cannot be discussed here, and which will be subjected to future elaboration if there should be sufficient time and energy, and if further material should be forthcoming.

      Peculiarities in the material I have used to elucidate the interpretation of dreams have rendered this publication difficult. From the work itself it will appear why all dreams related in the literature or collected by others had to remain useless for my purpose; for examples I had to choose between my own dreams and those of my patients who were under psychoanalytic treatment. I was restrained from utilising the latter material by the fact that in it the dream processes were subjected to an undesirable complication on account of the intermixture of neurotic characters. On the other hand, inseparably connected with my own dreams was the circumstance that I was obliged to expose more of the intimacies of my psychic life than I should like and than generally falls to the task of an author who is not a poet but an investigator of nature. This was painful, but unavoidable; I had to put up with the inevitable in order not to be obliged to forego altogether the demonstration of the truth of my psychological results. To be sure, I could not at best resist the temptation of disguising some of my indiscretions through omissions and substitutions, and as often as this happened it detracted materially from the value of the examples which I employed. I can only express the hope that the reader of this work, putting himself in my difficult position, will show forbearance, and also that all persons who are inclined to take offence at any of the dreams reported will concede freedom of thought at least to the dream life.

      PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

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       If there has arisen a demand for a second edition of this rather difficult