II. THE METHOD OF INTERPRETING DREAMS - AN ANALYSIS OF A SPECIMEN DREAM
Freud examines two methods employed by lay people in amateur interpretations of dreams. (1) 'Symbolic dream interpreting' which replaces the content of the dream as a whole with another, intelligible context, often analogous to the original one - e.g. Pharaoh's dreams of seven fat and seven thin cows in the bible. (2) 'Decoding dream interpreting', where each sign in a dream can be translated into another sign with a known meaning, in accordance with a fixed key (however the key varies in accordance with the dreamer and his circumstances) - a good example being the book by Artemidorus of Daldis.
Freud rejects both of these procedures, for his scientific treatment of dreams. He then describes one of his own dreams and subjects it to his methods of interpretation, the basis of which involved following and noting trains of thought leading from various events or items in the dream.
THE DREAM OF IRMA'S INJECTION
"I saw Irma and said to her 'if you still get pains, its really your own fault'. Yet she looked pale and puffy, so I thought I may be missing some organic trouble, on examination I saw extensive whitish grey scabs and at once called in Dr M who repeated and confirmed this. My frined Otto was now standing with us, along with my friend Leopold. M said 'there is no doubt it is an infection, but no matter; dysentry will supervene and the toxnl will be eliminated'. There was no doubt too, that this infection has\d originated from Otto giving Irma an injection of propyl, propyls….proprionic acid….trimetylamin (the formula for this in printed type). The syringe had probably not been clean.
He concludes from various themes which he is able to identify - i.e. Irma was a real patient, and the dream acquitted him of the responsibility for her condition by showing that it was due to other factors. Thus the dream was the fulfillment of a wish, and hence Freud concludes that far from being by products of nocturnal brain activity, dreams often represent the fulfillment of a wish.
III. THE DREAM AS WISH-FULFILMENT
Freud attempts to determine, whether dreams are only wish-fulfillment, or whether they can also be a fulfillment of fear, or other reflections such as simple memories. Freud cites numerous examples of dreams which can be seen to be wish-fulfillment. To investigate this further Freud uses the dreams of (his own) children as the simplest forms available, proposing that by addressing data in its crudest, most simple form it will be easier to analyse the frameworks behind them. He found that a large proportion of their dreams were pure wish-fulfillments, and at a later date added that children too were subjected to sexual instinctual forces, expressed in dreams, with the other of the two great vital instincts - for food (and water).
IV. DISTORTION IN DREAMS
Freud now addresses the issue that pain and disgust are more frequent in our dreams than pleasure (Weed & Hallam report 58% and 28.6% respectively) - therefore they cannot all be simple representations of wish-fulfillment. He contends that the thought-content behind the more obvious dream-content, of even the most painful and terrifying dreams can prove to be wish-fulfillment, and then addresses the further question as to why these dreams reveal their meaning in such a disguised manner - i.e. What is the origin of this distortion in dreams?
Freud then describes dreams of his own, and of acquaintances, all of which appear indifferent, or painful, yet can be seen to be wish-fulfillments also. However Freud acknowledges that anxiety dreams - as a sub-order of dreams with painful content, need to be considered separately.
V. THE MATERIAL AND SOURCES OF DREAMS
Freud introduces the idea of the 'latent' and 'manifest' content of dreams. Relating to manifest content, he identifies the following properties:
1) Dreams show a clear preference for the impressions of the immediately preceding days (Robert 1886, Strumpell 1877 Hildebrandt 1875 and Hallam and Weed 1896). 2) They make their selection upon different principles than our waking memory, since they do not recall what is essential and important, but what is subsidiary and unnoticed. 3) They have at their disposal the earliest impressions of our childhood and even bring up details from that period of our life which. Once again, strike us as trivial and which in our waking state we believe to have been long since forgotten.
A. Recent and indifferent material in dreams
Freud proposes that in every dream it is possible to find a point of contact with the experiences of the previous day not days. Freud then analyses a dream in great detail
"I had written a monograph on a certain plant. The book lay before me and I was at the moment turning over a folded coloured plate. Bound up in each copy there was a dried specimen of the plant, as though it had been taken from a herbarium."
He found that he could continue at great lengths finding an event however subsidiary to relate to almost every feature of the dream. However Two impression of the 'dream day' were outstanding. An indifferent one concerning a sighting of a book in a shop window that day and a more important one - an hours conversation with a Dr.
Freud suggests various possible sources of the dream material: (a) A recent and psychically significant experience which is represented in the dream directly (b) Several recent and significant experiences which are combined into a single unity by the dream (c) One or more recent and significant experiences which are represented in the content of the dream by a mention of a contemporary but indifferent experience (d) An internal significant experience (e.g. a memory or a train of thought), which is in that case invariably represented in the dream by a mention of a recent but indifferent impression.
Freud accounts for the fundamental objection, namely that indifferent impressions from earlier period of life also appear in dreams. He proposes that these particular elements which were originally indifferent aren't anymore, since taking over (displacing) psychically important material at an early stage (see neurotics who attach irrational importance to indifferent impressions).
B. Infantile Material as a source of dreams
The motives which led a dreamer to reproduce one particular impression from their childhood and not another, cannot be discovered without analysis. - either confirmatory information from another person that what you have dreamt did indeed originate from a childhood event, or if the dream is 'recurrent' the recurrent item can normally be connected relatively easily with some childhood item. For example, Freud's dreams of going to Rome - until fulfilled, partially represented his high childhood esteem of and identification with the semitic leader Hannibal, who was fated to only see the city from afar. He also cites examples from women patients.
However Freud is cautious and admits that some of his examples where dreams could be traced to obscure childhood events from the first 3 years of life, are from neurotics, and as such may not be representative of the general population. However he overcomes this by relating to similar dreams that he can recollect, traceable to long-forgotten obscure early childhood events.
Since Freud found that even in dreams which seem to have been completely interpreted, trains of thought reaching back to earliest childhood can be found - therefore Freud suggests that this could be a further precondition - that every dream was linked in its manifest content with recent experiences and in its latent content with associated (source) the most ancient experiences. Whilst this point is harder to prove, it is more prominent in analysis of hysteria, as these ancient experiences have remained recent, in the true sense of the word. (see chapter 7 (C)).
Thus Freud concludes that the preference for non-essential material in the content of dreams can be accounted for in terms of dream-distortion, and the other two properties cited - namely emphasis on recent and infantile material, can be confirmed. One more important inference is that dreams often have more than one meaning. Either several wish-fulfillments alongside one another, or even the succession of meanings or wish- fulfillments may be superimposed on one another, the bottom one being the fulfillment of a wish dating from earliest childhood - does this 'invariably' or frequently' occur?
C. The somatic sources of dreams
Freud cites three types of somatic sources of stimulation (Chapter 1 (c)). (a) objective sensory stimuli arising from external objects (b) internal states of excitation of the sense organs having only a subjective basis and (c) somatic stimuli derived from the interior of the body.
Others Scherner (1861) and Volkelt (1875) formed an estimate of the gaps in somatic explanations of dreams. - seeking to regard dreaming as essentially mental. They argue that the imagination is free from the shackles of daytime and seeks to give symbolic representations of the nature of the organ from which the stimulus arises and of the nature of the stimulus itself. This prompts the question as to why should the mind do this, though?
A particular criticism of Scherner and his symbolization of stimuli, is that these stimuli are present at all times and it is generally held that the mind is more accessible to them during sleep than when awake. So, why doesn't the mind dream all through the night continuously and of all the organs. May such dream activity needs special excitations from the eyes, ears, teeth, intestines etc. However more likely is the idea that special motives for interpretations of these stimuli may be temporarily operative which direct the attention to visceral sensations that are uniformly present at all times - but this is beyond the scope of Scherner's theory.
Material of dreams is a collection of psychical residues and memory traces (with a preference for recent and infantile material), so they use 'currently active' material (an indefinable quality). Therefore Freud argues that if fresh information in the form of bodily sensations (of the 3 three types) are added during sleep, they are united with the other currently active psychical material to furnish what is used for the wish-fulfillment construction of the dream. This combination need not occur - as there is more than one way of reacting to a stimulus during sleep. When it does occur, it suggests that it has been possible to find ideational material to serve as the content of the dream of such a sort as to be able to represent both kinds of source of the dream - the somatic and the psychical. However the essential nature of the dream remains the fulfillment of a wish, no matter in what way the expression of that wish-fulfillment is determined by the currently active material.
Freud therefore pictures a combination of individual factors, physiological and accidental, produced by the circumstances of the moment, determining the behaviour of a person in particular cases of comparatively intense objective stimulation during sleep. According to his habitual or accidental depth of his sleep he will either suppress the stimulus, so his sleep is not interrupted or it will compel him to wake up or encourage an attempt to overcome the stimulus by weaving it into a dream. Therefore it follows that external objective stimuli will find expression in dreams with greater or less frequency in on person than in another (Freud confesses that he is biased, being a very heavy sleeper himself).
He concludes with the statement that 'Dreams are the guardians of sleep and not its disturbers', i.e. all dreams serve the purpose of prolonging sleep instead of waking up.
In Freud's opinion therefore, somatic sources of stimulation during sleep (unless of unusual intensity) contribute similarly to the formation of the dreams as do recent but indifferent impressions. They are brought into help the formation of the dream if they fit appropriately with the ideational content derived from the dream's psychical sources, but otherwise not.
D. Typical dreams
Freud observes that, whilst each person is free to construct his dream-world according to his own idiosyncratic experiences, there are also a number of dreams that almost everyone has dreamt alike, and presumably arise from the same source in every case, so could illuminate the sources of dreams
(a) Embarrassing dreams of being naked
The embarrassment of the dreamer and the indifference of the onlookers, - such as the contradictions found commonly in dreams. The indifference of onlookers has been the result of wish- fulfillment, whereas some force has led to the retention of the other features. From analyses of neurotics, and the context in which these dreams appear, Freud is certain that they are based upon memories from earliest childhood. When we look back at this unashamed period of childhood (where nudity was indeed fun and liberating rather than shameful) it seems to us paradise. Thus dreams of being naked are dreams of exhibiting, the core lying in the dreamer himself, as he is at the present time, and the persons in front of whom the dreamer feels ashamed. Such feelings of being inhibited, representing a conflict of will, are addressed later (Chapter 6 (c)).
(b) Dreams of the death of persons of whom the dreamer is fond
There are two classes of these types of dreams. Those in which the dreamer is unaffected by grief, and awakens astonished at his lack of feeling, and those in which the dreamer feels deeply pained by the death and may even weep in his sleep. First type are by no means 'typical'.
However the second type of dream - the meaning of their content is a wish that the person in question may die. Freud then tries to defend this assertion in face of inevitable rebellion. He reserves that this wish may not be for that person's death at the present time.
He looks to childhood for more evidence for these claims. Since children are completely egotistic, he claims that they strive ruthlessly to satisfy their needs, especially against their prime rivals - their siblings. Therefore he argues that many people who love their siblings harbour ill wishes against them in their unconscious, dating from earlier times and these are capable of being realised in dreams. Furthermore, to children, he argues, 'dead' means little more than 'gone' so is not such an evil wish.
Dreams of death of a parent, often apply to the parent who is of the same sex as they dreamer, and in the context of infantile sexuality their same sex parent is therefore a rival in love, whose elimination could not fail to be to their advantage. This is immortalised in Oedipus rex and Freud's identification of this phenomenon as the "Oedipus Complex".
(c) Other Typical Dreams
For example the dreamer finds himself flying through the air to the accompaniment of agreeable feelings or falling with feelings of anxiety. Freud concludes that these dreams too, reproduce impressions of childhood, i.e. relating to games of movement, which are extraordinarily attractive to children.
He rejects the theory that these dreams are provoked by our tactile feelings during sleep or sensations of the movement of our lungs and so on. Conversely Freud argues that these sensations themselves are produced as part of the memory to which the dream goes back, i.e. they are part of the content of the dream rather than its source.
(d) Examination Dreams
Most people have at some stage, had anxiety-dreams of failing an exam or being obliged to take an exam again, turning up late, missing the day etc. Freud proposes that these represent intensifications of the same childhood fears that we recall for punishments suffered for our evil deeds in childhood. So, once out of the discipline of parents, or teachers, we feel the burden of responsibility ourselves so whenever we have done something poorly, or insufficiently, we expect to be punished by the event. Furthermore, Freud found, interestingly that we only dream of failing exams which we have successfully passed, and never ones which we have failed. Freud also suggests that the dreams' latent content could be of self-criticism and consolation, and returning to a psychosexual view, Freud points out that the has a lot of material conforming the view of Wilhelm Stekel who suggested that examination dreams relate to sexual tests and sexual maturity.
VI. THE DREAM-WORK
Freud, individual, in distinguishing between the dream as we experience it - the 'manifest dream contents' - and the stimuli which act together to produce the dream, the 'latent dream thoughts'. The process by which the latent thoughts are transformed into to manifest dream content is known as the 'dream-work'. Freud found that there were four dream-work processes : Condensation, displacement, representation by symbols and reversal. Therefore this chapter is best summarised accordingly.
(1)The work of Condensation
This is the process by which two or more associations to the latent dream thought are compressed into one image. An example from his own dreams:
The Botanical Monograph dream
I had written a monograph on an (unspecified genus of plant. The book lay before me and I was at the moment turning over a folded coloured plate. Bound up in the copy there was a dried specimen of the plant.
The botanical monograph, related to the work upon cocaine that Freud had once written. The coloured plate led to a new topic - Freud's fascination, especially as a medical student with the coloured plates in journals, and also to an occasion when as a child he had pulled to pieces a book with coloured plates. The dried specimen of the plant touched upon an episode of the herbarium as Freud's secondary school. Thus dreams, in their manifest content condense several latent (indifferent, but recent and/or infantile impressions) into a single dream.
(2)The Work of Displacement
Freud saw this as a process of censorship, that is we don't want to admit to the real object of the latent thought and so the desire is displaced onto another object which alludes to it. Freud saw this process also working in the waking life of neurotics with perversions whi displace their object of sexual desire onto something else that alludes to it, such as cross- dressing or ejaculating while kissing. These sort of displacements can also occur in dreams.
(3)Representation by Symbols
This occurs when complex or abstract thoughts are converted into an image. Freud cites the examples of the concept of `possession' (in German `besitzen') being represented by sitting (`sitzen') on the object, or of the concept of `adultery' (`ehenbruch') being represented by a broken leg (`beinbruch'). So in trying to interpret a rather vague concept into an image the mind can often use a linguistically similar word that is more concrete and readily converted into images as a symbol for the desired concept.
(4)Reversal
Freud held that the mind often treats opposites as the same thing and will often replace one for the other in a dream, for example `weakness' can become `strength' or `small' `large' in dreams. To support this belief he uses examples of this occurring in language. In ancient Egyptian for example `ken' meant both `strong' and `weak'. The two meanings were only differentiated by inflection in speech and in writing by the addition of a pictograph of a man either standing or squatting. It was only later that the two distinct words `ken' (`strong') and `kan' (`weak') were developed. Or, to take an example from English, the word `with' once had meanings of both `combining' and `separating' which can still be seen in words such as `withdraw' and `withhold'. The mind then has no problem with using interchangeably opposites such as `strong-weak', `light-dark' or `big- small'