<center><h2><SPAN name="page_078"></SPAN>IV<br/> DREAM ANALYSIS</h2></center>
<p>Perhaps we shall now begin to suspect that dream interpretation is
capable of giving us hints about the structure of our psychic apparatus
which we have thus far expected in vain from philosophy. We shall not,
however, follow this track, but return to our original problem as soon
as we have cleared up the subject of dream-disfigurement. The question
has arisen how dreams with disagreeable content can be analyzed as the
fulfillment of wishes. We see now that this is possible in case
dream-disfigurement has taken place, in case the disagreeable content
serves only as a disguise for what is wished. Keeping in mind our
assumptions in regard to the two psychic instances, we may now proceed
to say: disagreeable dreams, as a matter of fact, contain something
which is disagreeable to the second instance, but which at the same time
fulfills a wish of the first instance. They are wish dreams in the sense
that every dream originates in the first instance, while the second
instance acts towards the dream only in repelling, not in a creative
manner. <SPAN name="page_079"></SPAN> If we limit ourselves to a
consideration of what the second instance contributes to the dream, we
can never understand the dream. If we do so, all the riddles which the
authors have found in the dream remain unsolved.</p>
<p>That the dream actually has a secret meaning, which turns out to be
the fulfillment of a wish, must be proved afresh for every case by means
of an analysis. I therefore select several dreams which have painful
contents and attempt an analysis of them. They are partly dreams of
hysterical subjects, which require long preliminary statements, and now
and then also an examination of the psychic processes which occur in
hysteria. I cannot, however, avoid this added difficulty in the
exposition.</p>
<p>When I give a psychoneurotic patient analytical treatment, dreams are
always, as I have said, the subject of our discussion. It must,
therefore, give him all the psychological explanations through whose aid
I myself have come to an understanding of his symptoms, and here I
undergo an unsparing criticism, which is perhaps not less keen than that
I must expect from my colleagues. Contradiction of the thesis that all
dreams are the fulfillments of wishes is raised by my patients with
perfect regularity. Here are several examples of the dream <SPAN name="page_080"></SPAN> material which is offered me to refute this
position.</p>
<p>"You always tell me that the dream is a wish fulfilled," begins a
clever lady patient. "Now I shall tell you a dream in which the content
is quite the opposite, in which a wish of mine is <i>not</i> fulfilled. How
do you reconcile that with your theory? The dream is as
follows:—</p>
<p><i>"I want to give a supper, but having nothing at hand except some
smoked salmon, I think of going marketing, but I remember that it is
Sunday afternoon, when all the shops are closed. I next try to telephone
to some caterers, but the telephone is out of order.... Thus I must
resign my wish to give a supper."</i></p>
<p>I answer, of course, that only the analysis can decide the meaning of
this dream, although I admit that at first sight it seems sensible and
coherent, and looks like the opposite of a wish-fulfillment. "But what
occurrence has given rise to this dream?" I ask. "You know that the
stimulus for a dream always lies among the experiences of the preceding
day."</p>
<p><i>Analysis.</i>—The husband of the patient, an upright and
conscientious wholesale butcher, had told her the day before that he is
growing too fat, and that he must, therefore, begin treatment for
obesity. He was going to get up early, take exercise, keep <SPAN name="page_081"></SPAN> to a strict diet, and above all accept no more
invitations to suppers. She proceeds laughingly to relate how her
husband at an inn table had made the acquaintance of an artist, who
insisted upon painting his portrait because he, the painter, had never
found such an expressive head. But her husband had answered in his rough
way, that he was very thankful for the honor, but that he was quite
convinced that a portion of the backside of a pretty young girl would
please the artist better than his whole face<SPAN href="#page_081_note_1"><sup>1</sup></SPAN>. She said that she was at the
time very much in love with her husband, and teased him a good deal. She
had also asked him not to send her any caviare. What does that mean?</p>
<p>As a matter of fact, she had wanted for a long time to eat a caviare
sandwich every forenoon, but had grudged herself the expense. Of course,
she would at once get the caviare from her husband, as soon as she asked
him for it. But she had begged him, on the contrary, not to send her the
caviare, in order that she might tease him about it longer.</p>
<p>This explanation seems far-fetched to me. Unadmitted motives are in
the habit of hiding behind such unsatisfactory explanations. We are
reminded of subjects hypnotized by Bernheim, who <SPAN name="page_082"></SPAN>
carried out a posthypnotic order, and who, upon being asked for their
motives, instead of answering: "I do not know why I did that," had to
invent a reason that was obviously inadequate. Something similar is
probably the case with the caviare of my patient. I see that she is
compelled to create an unfulfilled wish in life. Her dream also shows
the reproduction of the wish as accomplished. But why does she need an
unfulfilled wish?</p>
<p>The ideas so far produced are insufficient for the interpretation of
the dream. I beg for more. After a short pause, which corresponds to the
overcoming of a resistance, she reports further that the day before she
had made a visit to a friend, of whom she is really jealous, because her
husband is always praising this woman so much. Fortunately, this friend
is very lean and thin, and her husband likes well-rounded figures. Now
of what did this lean friend speak? Naturally of her wish to become
somewhat stouter. She also asked my patient: "When are you going to
invite us again? You always have such a good table."</p>
<p>Now the meaning of the dream is clear. I may say to the patient: "It
is just as though you had thought at the time of the request: 'Of
course, I'll invite you, so you can eat yourself fat at my <SPAN name="page_083"></SPAN> house and become still more pleasing to my
husband. I would rather give no more suppers.' The dream then tells you
that you cannot give a supper, thereby fulfilling your wish not to
contribute anything to the rounding out of your friend's figure. The
resolution of your husband to refuse invitations to supper for the sake
of getting thin teaches you that one grows fat on the things served in
company." Now only some conversation is necessary to confirm the
solution. The smoked salmon in the dream has not yet been traced. "How
did the salmon mentioned in the dream occur to you?" "Smoked salmon is
the favorite dish of this friend," she answered. I happen to know the
lady, and may corroborate this by saying that she grudges herself the
salmon just as much as my patient grudges herself the caviare.</p>
<p>The dream admits of still another and more exact interpretation,
which is necessitated only by a subordinate circumstance. The two
interpretations do not contradict one another, but rather cover each
other and furnish a neat example of the usual ambiguity of dreams as
well as of all other psychopathological formations. We have seen that at
the same time that she dreams of the denial of the wish, the patient is
in reality occupied in securing an unfulfilled wish (the caviare
sandwiches). Her <SPAN name="page_084"></SPAN> friend, too, had expressed a
wish, namely, to get fatter, and it would not surprise us if our lady
had dreamt that the wish of the friend was not being fulfilled. For it
is her own wish that a wish of her friend's—for increase in
weight—should not be fulfilled. Instead of this, however, she
dreams that one of her own wishes is not fulfilled. The dream becomes
capable of a new interpretation, if in the dream she does not intend
herself, but her friend, if she has put herself in the place of her
friend, or, as we may say, has identified herself with her friend.</p>
<p>I think she has actually done this, and as a sign of this
identification she has created an unfulfilled wish in reality. But what
is the meaning of this hysterical identification? To clear this up a
thorough exposition is necessary. Identification is a highly important
factor in the mechanism of hysterical symptoms; by this means patients
are enabled in their symptoms to represent not merely their own
experiences, but the experiences of a great number of other persons, and
can suffer, as it were, for a whole mass of people, and fill all the
parts of a drama by means of their own personalities alone. It will here
be objected that this is well-known hysterical imitation, the ability of
hysteric subjects to copy all the symptoms which impress <SPAN name="page_085"></SPAN> them when they occur in others, as though their
pity were stimulated to the point of reproduction. But this only
indicates the way in which the psychic process is discharged in
hysterical imitation; the way in which a psychic act proceeds and the
act itself are two different things. The latter is slightly more
complicated than one is apt to imagine the imitation of hysterical
subjects to be: it corresponds to an unconscious concluded process, as
an example will show. The physician who has a female patient with a
particular kind of twitching, lodged in the company of other patients in
the same room of the hospital, is not surprised when some morning he
learns that this peculiar hysterical attack has found imitations. He
simply says to himself: The others have seen her and have done likewise:
that is psychic infection. Yes, but psychic infection proceeds in
somewhat the following manner: As a rule, patients know more about one
another than the physician knows about each of them, and they are
concerned about each other when the visit of the doctor is over. Some of
them have an attack to-day: soon it is known among the rest that a
letter from home, a return of lovesickness or the like, is the cause of
it. Their sympathy is aroused, and the following syllogism, which does
not reach consciousness, is completed in them: "If <SPAN name="page_086"></SPAN> it is possible to have this kind of an attack from
such causes, I too may have this kind of an attack, for I have the same
reasons." If this were a cycle capable of becoming conscious, it would
perhaps express itself in <i>fear</i> of getting the same attack; but it
takes place in another psychic sphere, and, therefore, ends in the
realization of the dreaded symptom. Identification is therefore not a
simple imitation, but a sympathy based upon the same etiological claim;
it expresses an "as though," and refers to some common quality which has
remained in the unconscious.</p>
<p>Identification is most often used in hysteria to express sexual
community. An hysterical woman identifies herself most
readily—although not exclusively—with persons with whom she
has had sexual relations, or who have sexual intercourse with the same
persons as herself. Language takes such a conception into consideration:
two lovers are "one." In the hysterical phantasy, as well as in the
dream, it is sufficient for the identification if one thinks of sexual
relations, whether or not they become real. The patient, then, only
follows the rules of the hysterical thought processes when she gives
expression to her jealousy of her friend (which, moreover, she herself
admits to be unjustified, in that she puts herself in her place and
identifies herself with her <SPAN name="page_087"></SPAN> by creating a
symptom—the denied wish). I might further clarify the process
specifically as follows: She puts herself in the place of her friend in
the dream, because her friend has taken her own place relation to her
husband, and because she would like to take her friend's place in the
esteem of her husband<SPAN href="#page_087_note_2"><sup>2</sup></SPAN>.</p>
<p>The contradiction to my theory of dreams in the case of another
female patient, the most witty among all my dreamers, was solved in a
simpler manner, although according to the scheme that the
non-fulfillment of one wish signifies the fulfillment of another. I had
one day explained to her that the dream is a wish of fulfillment. The
next day she brought me a dream to the effect that she was traveling
with her mother-in-law to their common summer resort. Now I knew that
she had struggled violently against spending the summer in the
neighborhood of her mother-in-law. I also knew that she had luckily
avoided her mother-in-law by renting an estate in a far-distant country
resort. Now the <SPAN name="page_088"></SPAN> dream reversed this wished-for
solution; was not this in the flattest contradiction to my theory of
wish-fulfillment in the dream? Certainly, it was only necessary to draw
the inferences from this dream in order to get at its interpretation.
According to this dream, I was in the wrong. <i>It was thus her wish that
I should be in the wrong, and this wish the dream showed her as
fulfilled.</i> But the wish that I should be in the wrong, which was
fulfilled in the theme of the country home, referred to a more serious
matter. At that time I had made up my mind, from the material furnished
by her analysis, that something of significance for her illness must
have occurred at a certain time in her life. She had denied it because
it was not present in her memory. We soon came to see that I was in the
right. Her wish that I should be in the wrong, which is transformed into
the dream, thus corresponded to the justifiable wish that those things,
which at the time had only been suspected, had never occurred at
all.</p>
<p>Without an analysis, and merely by means of an assumption, I took the
liberty of interpreting a little occurrence in the case of a friend, who
had been my colleague through the eight classes of the Gymnasium. He
once heard a lecture of mine delivered <SPAN name="page_089"></SPAN> to a
small assemblage, on the novel subject of the dream as the fulfillment
of a wish. He went home, dreamt <i>that he had lost all his
suits</i>—he was a lawyer—and then complained to me about it. I
took refuge in the evasion: "One can't win all one's suits," but I
thought to myself: "If for eight years I sat as Primus on the first
bench, while he moved around somewhere in the middle of the class, may
he not naturally have had a wish from his boyhood days that I, too,
might for once completely disgrace myself?"</p>
<p>In the same way another dream of a more gloomy character was offered
me by a female patient as a contradiction to my theory of the
wish-dream. The patient, a young girl, began as follows: "You remember
that my sister has now only one boy, Charles: she lost the elder one,
Otto, while I was still at her house. Otto was my favorite; it was I who
really brought him up. I like the other little fellow, too, but of
course not nearly as much as the dead one. Now I dreamt last night that
<i>I saw Charles lying dead before me. He was lying in his little coffin,
his hands folded: there were candles all about, and, in short, it was
just like the time of little Otto's death, which shocked me so
profoundly</i>. Now tell me, what does this mean? You know me: <SPAN name="page_090"></SPAN> am I really bad enough to wish my sister to lose
the only child she has left? Or does the dream mean that I wish Charles
to be dead rather than Otto, whom I like so much better?"</p>
<p>I assured her that this interpretation was impossible. After some
reflection I was able to give her the interpretation of the dream, which
I subsequently made her confirm.</p>
<p>Having become an orphan at an early age, the girl had been brought up
in the house of a much older sister, and had met among the friends and
visitors who came to the house, a man who made a lasting impression upon
her heart. It looked for a time as though these barely expressed
relations were to end in marriage, but this happy culmination was
frustrated by the sister, whose motives have never found a complete
explanation. After the break, the man who was loved by our patient
avoided the house: she herself became independent some time after little
Otto's death, to whom her affection had now turned. But she did not
succeed in freeing herself from the inclination for her sister's friend
in which she had become involved. Her pride commanded her to avoid him;
but it was impossible for her to transfer her love to the other suitors
who presented themselves in order. Whenever the man whom she loved, who
was a member <SPAN name="page_091"></SPAN> of the literary profession,
announced a lecture anywhere, she was sure to be found in the audience;
she also seized every other opportunity to see him from a distance
unobserved by him. I remembered that on the day before she had told me
that the Professor was going to a certain concert, and that she was also
going there, in order to enjoy the sight of him. This was on the day of
the dream; and the concert was to take place on the day on which she
told me the dream. I could now easily see the correct interpretation,
and I asked her whether she could think of any event which had happened
after the death of little Otto. She answered immediately: "Certainly; at
that time the Professor returned after a long absence, and I saw him
once more beside the coffin of little Otto." It was exactly as I had
expected. I interpreted the dream in the following manner: "If now the
other boy were to die, the same thing would be repeated. You would spend
the day with your sister, the Professor would surely come in order to
offer condolence, and you would see him again under the same
circumstances as at that time. The dream signifies nothing but this wish
of yours to see him again, against which you are fighting inwardly. I
know that you are carrying the ticket for to-day's concert in your bag.
Your dream is a dream of impatience; it has anticipated <SPAN name="page_092"></SPAN> the meeting which is to take place to-day by
several hours."</p>
<p>In order to disguise her wish she had obviously selected a situation
in which wishes of that sort are commonly suppressed—a situation
which is so filled with sorrow that love is not thought of. And yet, it
is very easily probable that even in the actual situation at the bier of
the second, more dearly loved boy, which the dream copied faithfully,
she had not been able to suppress her feelings of affection for the
visitor whom she had missed for so long a time.</p>
<p>A different explanation was found in the case of a similar dream of
another female patient, who was distinguished in her earlier years by
her quick wit and her cheerful demeanors and who still showed these
qualities at least in the notion, which occurred to her in the course of
treatment. In connection with a longer dream, it seemed to this lady
that she saw her fifteen-year-old daughter lying dead before her in a
box. She was strongly inclined to convert this dream-image into an
objection to the theory of wish-fulfillment, but herself suspected that
the detail of the box must lead to a different conception of the
dream.<SPAN href="#page_092_note_3"><sup>3</sup></SPAN> In the course of the
analysis it occurred to her that on the evening before, <SPAN name="page_093"></SPAN> the conversation of the company had turned upon the
English word "box," and upon the numerous translations of it into
German, such as box, theater box, chest, box on the ear, &c. From other
components of the same dream it is now possible to add that the lady had
guessed the relationship between the English word "box" and the German
<i>B�chse</i>, and had then been haunted by the memory that <i>B�chse</i> (as well
as "box") is used in vulgar speech to designate the female genital
organ. It was therefore possible, making a certain allowance for her
notions on the subject of topographical anatomy, to assume that the
child in the box signified a child in the womb of the mother. At this
stage of the explanation she no longer denied that the picture of the
dream really corresponded to one of her wishes. Like so many other young
women, she was by no means happy when she became pregnant, and admitted
to me more than once the wish that her child might die before its birth;
in a fit of anger following a violent scene with her husband she had
even struck her abdomen with her fists in order to hit the child within.
The dead child was, therefore, really the fulfillment of a wish, but a
wish which had been put aside for fifteen years, and it is not
surprising that the fulfillment of the wish was no longer recognized
after so long an interval. <SPAN name="page_094"></SPAN> For there had been
many changes meanwhile.</p>
<p>The group of dreams to which the two last mentioned belong, having as
content the death of beloved relatives, will be considered again under
the head of "Typical Dreams." I shall there be able to show by new
examples that in spite of their undesirable content, all these dreams
must be interpreted as wish-fulfillments. For the following dream, which
again was told me in order to deter me from a hasty generalization of
the theory of wishing in dreams, I am indebted, not to a patient, but to
an intelligent jurist of my acquaintance. "<i>I dream</i>," my informant
tells me, "<i>that I am walking in front of my house with a lady on my
arm. Here a closed wagon is waiting, a gentleman steps up to me, gives
his authority as an agent of the police, and demands that I should
follow him. I only ask for time in which to arrange my affairs.</i> Can you
possibly suppose this is a wish of mine to be arrested?" "Of course
not," I must admit. "Do you happen to know upon what charge you were
arrested?" "Yes; I believe for infanticide." "Infanticide? But you know
that only a mother can commit this crime upon her newly born child?"
"That is true."<SPAN href="#page_094_note_4"><sup>4</sup></SPAN> "And under
what circumstances <SPAN name="page_095"></SPAN> did you dream; what happened
on the evening before?" "I would rather not tell you that; it is a
delicate matter." "But I must have it, otherwise we must forgo the
interpretation of the dream." "Well, then, I will tell you. I spent the
night, not at home, but at the house of a lady who means very much to
me. When we awoke in the morning, something again passed between us.
Then I went to sleep again, and dreamt what I have told you." "The woman
is married?" "Yes." "And you do not wish her to conceive a child?" "No;
that might betray us." "Then you do not practice normal coitus?" "I take
the precaution to withdraw before ejaculation." "Am I permitted to
assume that you did this trick several times during the night, and that
in the morning you were not quite sure whether you had succeeded?" "That
might be the case." "Then your dream is the fulfillment of a wish. By
means of it you secure the assurance that you have not begotten a child,
or, what amounts to the same thing, that you have killed a child. I can
easily demonstrate the connecting links. Do you remember, a few days ago
we were talking about the distress of matrimony (Ehenot), and about the
inconsistency of permitting the practice of coitus as long <SPAN name="page_096"></SPAN> as no impregnation takes place, while every
delinquency after the ovum and the semen meet and a fœtus is
formed is punished as a crime? In connection with this, we also recalled
the medi�val controversy about the moment of time at which the soul is
really lodged in the fœtus, since the concept of murder becomes
admissible only from that point on. Doubtless you also know the gruesome
poem by Lenau, which puts infanticide and the prevention of children on
the same plane." "Strangely enough, I had happened to think of Lenau
during the afternoon." "Another echo of your dream. And now I shall
demonstrate to you another subordinate wish-fulfillment in your dream.
You walk in front of your house with the lady on your arm. So you take
her home, instead of spending the night at her house, as you do in
actuality. The fact that the wish-fulfillment, which is the essence of
the dream, disguises itself in such an unpleasant form, has perhaps more
than one reason. From my essay on the etiology of anxiety neuroses, you
will see that I note interrupted coitus as one of the factors which
cause the development of neurotic fear. It would be consistent with this
that if after repeated cohabitation of the kind mentioned you should be
left in an uncomfortable mood, which now becomes an element in the
composition of your <SPAN name="page_097"></SPAN> dream. You also make use of
this unpleasant state of mind to conceal the wish-fulfillment.
Furthermore, the mention of infanticide has not yet been explained. Why
does this crime, which is peculiar to females, occur to you?" "I shall
confess to you that I was involved in such an affair years ago. Through
my fault a girl tried to protect herself from the consequences of a
<i>liaison</i> with me by securing an abortion. I had nothing to do with
carrying out the plan, but I was naturally for a long time worried lest
the affair might be discovered." "I understand; this recollection
furnished a second reason why the supposition that you had done your
trick badly must have been painful to you."</p>
<p>A young physician, who had heard this dream of my colleague when it
was told, must have felt implicated by it, for he hastened to imitate it
in a dream of his own, applying its mode of thinking to another subject.
The day before he had handed in a declaration of his income, which was
perfectly honest, because he had little to declare. He dreamt that an
acquaintance of his came from a meeting of the tax commission and
informed him that all the other declarations of income had passed
uncontested, but that his own had awakened general suspicion, and that
he would be punished with a heavy fine. The dream is a poorly-concealed
fulfillment <SPAN name="page_098"></SPAN> of the wish to be known as a
physician with a large income. It likewise recalls the story of the
young girl who was advised against accepting her suitor because he was a
man of quick temper who would surely treat her to blows after they were
married.</p>
<p>The answer of the girl was: "I wish he <i>would</i> strike me!" Her wish
to be married is so strong that she takes into the bargain the
discomfort which is said to be connected with matrimony, and which is
predicted for her, and even raises it to a wish.</p>
<p>If I group the very frequently occurring dreams of this sort, which
seem flatly to contradict my theory, in that they contain the denial of
a wish or some occurrence decidedly unwished for, under the head of
"counter wish-dreams," I observe that they may all be referred to two
principles, of which one has not yet been mentioned, although it plays a
large part in the dreams of human beings. One of the motives inspiring
these dreams is the wish that I should appear in the wrong. These dreams
regularly occur in the course of my treatment if the patient shows a
resistance against me, and I can count with a large degree of certainty
upon causing such a dream after I have once explained to the patient my
theory that the dream is a wish-fulfillment.<SPAN href="#page_098_note_5"><sup>5</sup></SPAN> I <SPAN name="page_099"></SPAN> may
even expect this to be the case in a dream merely in order to fulfill
the wish that I may appear in the wrong. The last dream which I shall
tell from those occurring in the course of treatment again shows this
very thing. A young girl who has struggled hard to continue my
treatment, against the will of her relatives and the authorities whom
she had consulted, dreams as follows: <i>She is forbidden at home to come
to me any more. She then reminds me of the promise I made her to treat
her for nothing if necessary, and I say to her: "I can show no
consideration in money matters."</i></p>
<p>It is not at all easy in this case to demonstrate the fulfillment of
a wish, but in all cases of this kind there is a second problem, the
solution of which helps also to solve the first. Where does she get the
words which she puts into my mouth? Of course I have never told her
anything like that, but one of her brothers, the very one who has the
greatest influence over her, has been kind enough to make this remark
about me. It is then the purpose of the dream that this brother should
remain in the right; and she does not try to justify this brother merely
in the dream; it is her purpose in life and the motive for her being
ill.</p>
<p>The other motive for counter wish-dreams is so <SPAN name="page_100"></SPAN> clear that there is danger of overlooking it, as
for some time happened in my own case. In the sexual make-up of many
people there is a masochistic component, which has arisen through the
conversion of the aggressive, sadistic component into its opposite. Such
people are called "ideal" masochists, if they seek pleasure not in the
bodily pain which may be inflicted upon them, but in humiliation and in
chastisement of the soul. It is obvious that such persons can have
counter wish-dreams and disagreeable dreams, which, however, for them
are nothing but wish-fulfillment, affording satisfaction for their
masochistic inclinations. Here is such a dream. A young man, who has in
earlier years tormented his elder brother, towards whom he was
homosexually inclined, but who had undergone a complete change of
character, has the following dream, which consists of three parts: (1)
<i>He is "insulted" by his brother.</i> (2) <i>Two adults are caressing each
other with homosexual intentions.</i> (3) <i>His brother has sold the
enterprise whose management the young man reserved for his own future.</i>
He awakens from the last-mentioned dream with the most unpleasant
feelings, and yet it is a masochistic wish-dream, which might be
translated: It would serve me quite right if my brother were to make
that sale against my interest, as a punishment <SPAN name="page_101"></SPAN>
for all the torments which he has suffered at my hands.</p>
<p>I hope that the above discussion and examples will
suffice—until further objection can be raised—to make it
seem credible that even dreams with a painful content are to be analyzed
as the fulfillments of wishes. Nor will it seem a matter of chance that
in the course of interpretation one always happens upon subjects of
which one does not like to speak or think. The disagreeable sensation
which such dreams arouse is simply identical with the antipathy which
endeavors—usually with success—to restrain us from the
treatment or discussion of such subjects, and which must be overcome by
all of us, if, in spite of its unpleasantness, we find it necessary to
take the matter in hand. But this disagreeable sensation, which occurs
also in dreams, does not preclude the existence of a wish; every one has
wishes which he would not like to tell to others, which he does not want
to admit even to himself. We are, on other grounds, justified in
connecting the disagreeable character of all these dreams with the fact
of dream disfigurement, and in concluding that these dreams are
distorted, and that the wish-fulfillment in them is disguised until
recognition is impossible for no other reason than that a repugnance, a
will to suppress, exists in relation <SPAN name="page_102"></SPAN> to the
subject-matter of the dream or in relation to the wish which the dream
creates. Dream disfigurement, then, turns out in reality to be an act of
the censor. We shall take into consideration everything which the
analysis of disagreeable dreams has brought to light if we reword our
formula as follows: <i>The dream is the (disguised) fulfillment of a
(suppressed, repressed) wish</i>.</p>
<p>Now there still remain as a particular species of dreams with painful
content, dreams of anxiety, the inclusion of which under dreams of
wishing will find least acceptance with the uninitiated. But I can
settle the problem of anxiety dreams in very short order; for what they
may reveal is not a new aspect of the dream problem; it is a question in
their case of understanding neurotic anxiety in general. The fear which
we experience in the dream is only seemingly explained by the dream
content. If we subject the content of the dream to analysis, we become
aware that the dream fear is no more justified by the dream content than
the fear in a phobia is justified by the idea upon which the phobia
depends. For example, it is true that it is possible to fall out of a
window, and that some care must be exercised when one is near a window,
but it is inexplicable why the anxiety in the corresponding phobia is so
great, and why it follows its victims to <SPAN name="page_103"></SPAN> an
extent so much greater than is warranted by its origin. The same
explanation, then, which applies to the phobia applies also to the dream
of anxiety. In both cases the anxiety is only superficially attached to
the idea which accompanies it and comes from another source.</p>
<p>On 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,"<SPAN href="#page_103_note_6"><sup>6</sup></SPAN> 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.</p>
<p><small><SPAN name="page_081_note_1"></SPAN><SPAN href="#page_081">Footnote
1</SPAN>: To sit for the painter. Goethe: "And if he has no backside, how
can the nobleman sit?"</small></p>
<p><small><SPAN name="page_087_note_2"></SPAN><SPAN href="#page_087">Footnote
2</SPAN>: 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.</small></p>
<p><small><SPAN name="page_092_note_3"></SPAN><SPAN href="#page_092">Footnote
3</SPAN>: Something like the smoked salmon in the dream of the deferred
supper.</small></p>
<p><small><SPAN name="page_094_note_4"></SPAN><SPAN href="#page_094">Footnote
4</SPAN>: It often happens that a dream is told incompletely, and that a
recollection of the omitted portions appear only in the course of the
analysis. These portions subsequently fitted in, regularly furnish the
key to the interpretation. <i>Cf.</i> below, about forgetting in
dreams.</small></p>
<p><small><SPAN name="page_098_note_5"></SPAN><SPAN href="#page_098">Footnote
5</SPAN>: 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."</small></p>
<p><small><SPAN name="page_103_note_6"></SPAN><SPAN href="#page_103">Footnote
6</SPAN>: See <i>Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses</i>, p.
133, translated by A.A. Brill, <i>Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases</i>,
Monograph Series.</small></p>
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