Page - 35 - in Dream Psychology
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thoughts are actually part of my psychical life, possessing a certain psychical
intensity or energy. However, by virtue of a particular psychological
condition, the thoughts could not become conscious to me. I call this
particular condition “Repression.” It is therefore impossible for me not to
recognize some casual relationship between the obscurity of the dream
content and this state of repression—this incapacity of consciousness.
Whence I conclude that the cause of the obscurity is the desire to conceal
these thoughts. Thus I arrive at the conception of the dream distortion as the
deed of the dream work, and of displacement serving to disguise this object.
I will test this in my own dream, and ask myself, What is the thought
which, quite innocuous in its distorted form, provokes my liveliest opposition
in its real form? I remember that the free drive reminded me of the last
expensive drive with a member of my family, the interpretation of the dream
being: I should for once like to experience affection for which I should not
have to pay, and that shortly before the dream I had to make a heavy
disbursement for this very person. In this connection, I cannot get away from
the thought that I regret this disbursement. It is only when I acknowledge this
feeling that there is any sense in my wishing in the dream for an affection that
should entail no outlay. And yet I can state on my honor that I did not hesitate
for a moment when it became necessary to expend that sum. The regret, the
counter-current, was unconscious to me. Why it was unconscious is quite
another question which would lead us far away from the answer which,
though within my knowledge, belongs elsewhere.
If I subject the dream of another person instead of one of my own to
analysis, the result is the same; the motives for convincing others is, however,
changed. In the dream of a healthy person the only way for me to enable him
to accept this repressed idea is the coherence of the dream thoughts. He is at
liberty to reject this explanation. But if we are dealing with a person suffering
from any neurosis—say from hysteria—the recognition of these repressed
ideas is compulsory by reason of their connection with the symptoms of his
illness and of the improvement resulting from exchanging the symptoms for
the repressed ideas. Take the patient from whom I got the last dream about the
three tickets for one florin fifty kreuzers. Analysis shows that she does not
think highly of her husband, that she regrets having married him, that she
would be glad to change him for some one else. It is true that she maintains
that she loves her husband, that her emotional life knows nothing about this
depreciation (a hundred times better!), but all her symptoms lead to the same
conclusion as this dream. When her repressed memories had rewakened a
certain period when she was conscious that she did not love her husband, her
symptoms disappeared, and therewith disappeared her resistance to the
interpretation of the dream.
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book Dream Psychology"
Table of contents
- Introduction 4
- Chapter 1: Dreams have a meaning 9
- Chapter 2: The Dream mechanism 20
- Chapter 3: Why the dream diguises the desire 34
- Chapter 4: Dream analysis 43
- Chapter 5: Sex in dreams 54
- Chapter 6: The Wish in dreams 67
- Chapter 7: The Function of the dream 79
- Chapter 8: The Primary and Secondary process - Regression 89
- Chapter 9: The Unconscious and Consciousness - Reality 104