The Interpretation of Dreams. Sigmund Freud

have finally to mention two publications which show a near relation to my treatment of the dream problems. A younger philosopher, H. Swoboda, who has undertaken to extend W. Fliesse's discovery of biological periodicity (in groups of twenty-three and twenty-eight days) to the psychic field, has produced an imaginative work,¹³ in which, among other things, he has used this key to solve the riddle of the dream. The interpretation of dreams would herein have fared badly; the material contained in dreams would be explained through the coincidence of all those memories which during the night complete one of the biological periods for the first or the n-th time. A personal statement from the author led me to assume that he himself no longer wished to advocate this theory earnestly. But it seems I was mistaken in this conclusion; I shall report in another place some observations in reference to Swoboda's assertion, concerning the conclusions of which I am, however, not convinced. It gave me far greater pleasure to find accidentally, in an unexpected place, a conception of the dream in essentials fully agreeing with my own. The circumstances of time preclude the possibility that this conception was influenced by a reading of my book; I must therefore greet this as the only demonstrable concurrence in the literature with the essence of my dream theory. The book which contains the passage concerning the dream which I have in mind was published as a second edition in 1900 by Lynkus under the title Phantasien eines Realisten.

      

      1. To the first publication of this book, 1900.

      2. Compare, on the other hand, O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, p. 390. "Dreams were divided into two classes; the first were influenced only by the present (or past), and were unimportant for the future: they embraced the ένύπνια, insomnia, which immediately produces the given idea or its opposite, e.g. hunger or its satiation, and the φαντάσματα, which elaborates the given idea phantastically, as e.g. the nightmare, ephialtes. The second class was, on the other hand, determinant for the future. To this belong: (1) direct prophecies received in the dream (χρηματωμδς, oraculum); (2) the foretelling of a future event (ὅραμα); (3) the symbolic or the dream requiring interpretation (ὅνειρος, somnium). This theory has been preserved for many centuries."

      3. From subsequent experience I am able to state that it is not at all rare to find in dreams repetitions of harmless or unimportant occupations of the waking state, such as packing trunks, preparing food, work in the kitchen, &c., but in such dreams the dreamer himself emphasizes not the character but the reality of the memory, "I have really done all this in the day time."

4. Chauffeurs were bands of robbers in the Vendée who resorted to this form of torture.

      5. Gigantic persons in a dream justify the assumption that it deals with a scene from the dreamer's childhood.

      6. The first volume of this Norwegian author, containing a complete description of dreams, has recently appeared in German. See Index of Literature, No. 74 a.

      7. Periodically recurrent dreams have been observed repeatedly. Cf. the collection of Chabaneix.¹¹

      8. Silberer has shown by nice examples how in the state of sleepiness even abstract thoughts may be changed into illustrative plastic pictures which express the same thing (Jahrbuch von Bleuler-Freud, vol. i. 1900).

      9. Haffner³² made an attempt similar to Delb{{subst:oe}}uf's to explain the dream activity on the basis of an alteration which must result in an introduction of an abnormal condition in the otherwise correct function of the intact psychic apparatus, but he described this condition in somewhat different words. He states that the first distinguishing mark of the dream is the absence of time and space, i.e. the emancipation of the presentation from the position in the order of time and space which is common to the individual. Allied to this is the second fundamental character of the dream, the mistaking of the hallucinations, imaginations, and phantasy-combinations for objective perceptions. The sum total of the higher psychic forces, especially formation of ideas, judgment, and argumentation on the one hand, and the free self-determination on the other hand, connect themselves with the sensory phantasy pictures and at all times have them as a substratum. These activities too, therefore, participate in the irregularity of the dream presentation. We say they participate, for our faculties of judgment and will power are in themselves in no way altered during sleep. In reference to activity, we are just as keen and just as free as in the waking state. A man cannot act contrary to the laws of thought, even in the dream, i.e. he is unable to harmonise with that which represents itself as contrary to him, &c.; he can only desire in the dream that which he presents to himself as good (sub ratione boni). But in this application of the laws of thinking and willing the human mind is led astray in the dream through mistaking one presentation for another. It thus happens that we form and commit in the dream the greatest contradictions, while, on the other hand, we display the keenest judgments and the most consequential chains of reasoning, and can make the most virtuous and sacred resolutions. Lack of orientation is the whole secret of the flight by which our phantasy moves in the dream, and lack of critical reflection and mutual understanding with others is the main source of the reckless extravagances of our judgments, hopes, and wishes in the dream" (p. 18).

      10. Cf. Haffner³² and Spitta⁶⁴.

      11. Grundzüge des Systems der Anthropologie. Erlangen, 1850 (quoted by Spitta).

      12. Das Traumleben und seine Deutung, 1868 (cited by Spitta, p. 192).

      13. H. Swoboda, Die Perioden des Menschlichen Organismus, 1904.

      II

       METHOD OF DREAM INTERPRETATION

      THE ANALYSIS OF A SAMPLE DREAM

       Table of Contents

      The title which I have given my treatise indicates the tradition which I wish to make the starting-point in my discussion of dreams. I have made it my task to show that dreams are capable of interpretation, and contributions to the solution of the dream problems that have just been treated can only be yielded as possible by-products of the settlement of my own particular problem. With the hypothesis that dreams are interpretable, I at once come into contradiction with the prevailing dream science, in fact with all dream theories except that of Scherner, for to "interpret a dream" means to declare its meaning, to replace it by something which takes its place in the concatenation of our psychic activities as a link of full importance and value. But, as we have learnt, the scientific theories of the dream leave no room for a problem of dream interpretation, for, in the first place, according to these, the dream is no psychic action, but a somatic process which makes itself known to the psychic apparatus by means of signs. The opinion of the masses has always been quite different. It asserts its privilege of proceeding illogically, and although it admits the dream to be incomprehensible and absurd, it cannot summon the resolution to deny the dream all significance. Led by a dim intuition, it seems rather to assume that the dream has a meaning, albeit a hidden one; that it is intended as a substitute for some other thought process, and that it is only a question of revealing this substitute correctly in order to reach the hidden signification