The Collected Works of Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud
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seems to him unimportant or irrelevant to the subject, or another because it seems nonsensical. He must maintain impartiality towards his ideas; for it would be owing to just this critique if he were unsuccessful in finding the desired solution of the dream, the obsession, or the like.
I have noticed in the course of my psychoanalytic work that the state of mind of a man in contemplation is entirely different from that of a man who is observing his psychic processes. In contemplation there is a greater play of psychic action than in the most attentive self-observation; this is also shown by the tense attitude and wrinkled brow of contemplation, in contrast with the restful features of self-observation. In both cases, there must be concentration of attention, but, besides this, in contemplation one exercises a critique, in consequence of which he rejects some of the ideas which he has perceived, and cuts short others, so that he does not follow the trains of thought which they would open; toward still other thoughts he may act in such a manner that they do not become conscious at all—that is to say, they are suppressed before they are perceived. In self-observation, on the other hand, one has only the task of suppressing the critique; if he succeeds in this, an unlimited number of ideas, which otherwise would have been impossible for him to grasp, come to his consciousness. With the aid of this material, newly secured for the purpose of self-observation, the interpretation of pathological ideas, as well as of dream images, can be accomplished. As may be seen, the point is to bring about a psychic state to some extent analogous as regards the apportionment of psychic energy (transferable attention) to the state prior to falling asleep (and indeed also to the hypnotic state). In falling asleep, the "undesired ideas" come into prominence on account of the slackening of a certain arbitrary (and certainly also critical) action, which we allow to exert an influence upon the trend of our ideas; we are accustomed to assign "fatigue" as the reason for this slackening; the emerging undesired ideas as the reason are changed into visual and acoustic images. (Cf. the remarks of Schleiermacher61) and others, p. 40.) In the condition which is used for the analysis of dreams and pathological ideas, this activity is purposely and arbitrarily dispensed with, and the psychic energy thus saved, or a part of it, is used for the attentive following of the undesired thoughts now coming to the surface, which retain their identity as ideas (this is the difference from the condition of falling asleep). "Undesired ideas" are thus changed into "desired" ones.
The suspension thus required of the critique for these apparently "freely rising" ideas, which is here demanded and which is usually exercised on them, is not easy for some persons. The "undesired ideas" are in the habit of starting the most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent them from coming to the surface. But if we may credit our great poet-philosopher Friedrich Schiller, a very similar tolerance must be the condition of poetic production. At a point in his correspondence with Koerner, for the noting of which we are indebted to Mr. Otto Rank, Schiller answers a friend who complains of his lack of creativeness in the following words: "The reason for your complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intelligence imposes upon your imagination. I must here make an observation and illustrate it by an allegory. It does not seem beneficial, and it is harmful for the creative work of the mind, if the intelligence inspects too closely the ideas already pouring in, as it were, at the gates. Regarded by itself, an idea may be very trifling and very adventurous, but it perhaps becomes important on account of one which follows it; perhaps in a certain connection with others, which may seem equally absurd, it is capable of forming a very useful construction. The intelligence cannot judge all these things if it does not hold them steadily long enough to see them in connection with the others. In the case of a creative mind, however, the intelligence has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, the ideas rush in pell-mell, and it is only then that the great heap is looked over and critically examined. Messrs. Critics, or whatever else you may call yourselves, you are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and transitory madness which is found in all creators, and whose longer or shorter duration distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints about barrenness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely" (Letter of December 1, 1788).
And yet, "such a withdrawal of the watchers from the gates of intelligence," as Schiller calls it, such a shifting into the condition of uncritical self-observation, is in no way difficult.
Most of my patients accomplish it after the first instructions; I myself can do it very perfectly, if I assist the operation by writing down my notions. The amount, in terms of psychic energy, by which the critical activity is in this manner reduced, and by which the intensity of the self-observation may be increased, varies widely according to the subject matter upon which the attention is to be fixed.
The first step in the application of this procedure now teaches us that not the dream as a whole, but only the parts of its contents separately, may be made the object of our attention. If I ask a patient who is as yet unpractised: "What occurs to you in connection with this dream?" as a rule he is unable to fix upon anything in his psychic field of vision. I must present the dream to him piece by piece, then for every fragment he gives me a series of notions, which may be designated as the "background thoughts" of this part of the dream. In this first and important condition, then, the method of dream interpretation which I employ avoids the popular, traditional method of interpretation by symbolism famous in the legends, and approaches the second, the "cipher method." Like this one it is an interpretation in detail, not en masse; like this it treats the dream from the beginning as something put together—as a conglomeration of psychic images.
In the course of my psychoanalysis of neurotics, I have indeed already subjected many thousand dreams to interpretation, but I do not now wish to use this material in the introduction to the technique and theory of dream interpretation. Quite apart from the consideration that I should expose myself to the objection that these are dreams of neuropathic subjects, the conclusions drawn from which would not admit of reapplication to the dreams of healthy persons, another reason forces me to reject them. The theme which is naturally always the subject of these dreams, is the history of the disease which is responsible for the neurosis. For this purpose there would be required a very long introduction and an investigation into the nature and logical conditions of psychoneuroses, things which are in themselves novel and unfamiliar in the highest degree, and which would thus distract attention from the dream problem. My purpose lies much more in the direction of preparing the ground for a solution of difficult problems in the psychology of the neuroses by means of the solution of dreams. But if I eliminate the dreams of neurotics, I must not treat the remainder too discriminatingly. Only those dreams still remain which have been occasionally related to me by healthy persons of my acquaintance, or which I find as examples in the literature of dream life. Unfortunately in all these dreams the analysis is lacking, without which I cannot find the meaning of the dream. My procedure is, of course, not as easy as that of the popular cipher method, which translates the given dream content according to an established key; I am much more prepared to find that the same dream may cover a different meaning in the case of different persons, and in a different connection I must then resort to my own dreams, as an abundant and convenient material, furnished by a person who is about normal, and having reference to many incidents of everyday life. I shall certainly be with doubts as to the trustworthiness of these "self-analyses." Arbitrariness is here in no way avoided. In my opinion, conditions are more likely to be favourable in self-observation than in the observation of others; in any case, it is permissible to see how much can be accomplished by means of self-analysis. I must overcome further difficulties arising from inner self. One has a readily understood aversion to exposing so many intimate things from one's own psychic life, and one does not feel safe from the misinterpretation of strangers. But one must be able to put one's self beyond this. "Toute psychologiste," writes Delbœuf,26 "est obligé de faire l'aveu même de ses faiblesses s'il croit par là jeter du jour sur quelque problème obscure." And I may assume that in the case of the reader, the immediate interest in the indiscretions which I must commit will very soon give way to exclusive engrossment in the psychological problems which are illuminated by them.
I shall, therefore, select one of my own dreams and use it to elucidate my method of interpretation. Every such dream necessitates a preliminary statement. I must now beg the reader to make my interests his own for a considerable time, and to become absorbed with me in the most trifling details of my life, for an interest in the hidden significance of dreams imperatively demands such transference.
Preliminary