The Interpretation of Dreams. Sigmund Freud
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thought material some painful memories, which correspond rather to the blame attributed to Otto than to the accusation against me. The material has the appearance of being impartial, but the connection between this broader material, upon which the dream depends, and the more limited theme of the dream which gives rise to the wish to be innocent of Irma's illness, is nevertheless unmistakable.
I do not wish to claim that I have revealed the meaning of the dream entirely, or that the interpretation is flawless.
I could still spend much time upon it; I could draw further explanations from it, and bring up new problems which it bids us consider. I even know the points from which further thought associations might be traced; but such considerations as are connected with every dream of one's own restrain me from the work of interpretation. Whoever is ready to condemn such reserve, may himself try to be more straightforward than I. I am content with the discovery which has been just made. If the method of dream interpretation here indicated is followed, it will be found that the dream really has meaning, and is by no means the expression of fragmentary brain activity, which the authors would have us believe. When the work of interpretation has been completed the dream may be recognised as the fulfilment of a wish.
1. In a novel, Gradiva, of the poet W. Jensen, I accidentally discovered several artificial dreams which were formed with perfect correctness and which could be interpreted as though they had not been invented, but had been dreamt by actual persons. The poet declared, upon my inquiry, that he was unacquainted with my theory of dreams. I have made use of this correspondence between my investigation and the creative work of the poet as a proof of the correctness of my method of dream analysis ("Der Wahn und die Träume," in W. Jensen's Gradiva, No. 1 of the Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, 1906, edited by me). Dr. Alfred Robitsek has since shown that the dream of the hero in Goethe's Egmont may be interpreted as correctly as an actually experienced dream ("Die Analyse von Egmont's Träume," Jahrbuch, edited by Bleuler-Freud, vol. ii., 1910.)
2. After the completion of my manuscript, a paper by Stumpf(63) came to my notice which agrees with my work in attempting to prove that the dream is full of meaning and capable of interpretation. But the interpretation is undertaken by means of an allegorising symbolism, without warrant for the universal applicability of the procedure.
3. Dr. Alfred Robitsek calls my attention to the fact that Oriental dream books, of which ours are pitiful plagiarisms, undertake the interpretation of dream elements, mostly according to the assonance and similarity of the words. Since these relationships must be lost by translation into our language, the incomprehensibility of the substitutions in our popular "dream books" may have its origin in this fact. Information as to the extraordinary significance of puns and punning in ancient Oriental systems of culture may be found in the writings of Hugo Winckler. The nicest example of a dream interpretation which has come down to us from antiquity is based on a play upon words. Artemidoros2 relates the following (p. 225): "It seems to me that Aristandros gives a happy interpretation to Alexander of Macedon. When the latter held Tyros shut in and in a state of siege, and was angry and depressed over the great loss of time, he dreamed that he saw a Satyros dancing on his shield. It happened that Aristandros was near Tyros and in the convoy of the king, who was waging war on the Syrians. By disjoining the word Satyros into σα and τύρος, he induced the king to become more aggressive in the siege, and thus he became master of the city. (Σα τύρος—thine is Tyros.) The dream, indeed, is so intimately connected with verbal expression that Ferenczi87 may justly remark that every tongue has its own dream language. Dreams are, as a rule, not translatable into other languages.
4. Breuer and Freud, Studien über Hysterie, Vienna, 1895; 2nd ed. 1909.
5. The complaint, as yet unexplained, of pains in the abdomen, may also be referred to this third person. It is my own wife, of course, who is in question; the abdominal pains remind me of one of the occasions upon which her shyness became evident to me. I must myself admit that I do not treat Irma and my wife very gallantly in this dream, but let it be said for my excuse that I am judging both of them by the standard of the courageous, docile, female patient.
6. I suspect that the interpretation of this portion has not been carried far enough to follow every hidden meaning. If I were to continue the comparison of the three women, I would go far afield. Every dream has at least one point at which it is unfathomable, a central point, as it were, connecting it with the unknown.
7. "Ananas," moreover, has a remarkable assonance to the family name of my patient Irma.
8. In this the dream did not turn out to be prophetic. But in another sense, it proved correct, for the "unsolved" stomach pains, for which I did not want to be to blame, were the forerunners of a serious illness caused by gall stones.
9. Even if I have not, as may be understood, given account of everything which occurred to me in connection with the work of interpretation.
III
THE DREAM IS THE FULFILMENT OF A WISH
When after passing a defile one has reached an eminence where the ways part and where the view opens out broadly in different directions, it is permissible to stop for a moment and to consider where one is to turn next. Something like this happens to us after we have mastered this first dream interpretation. We find ourselves in the open light of a sudden cognition. The dream is not comparable to the irregular sounds of a musical instrument, which, instead of being touched by the hand of the musician, is struck by some outside force; the dream is not senseless, not absurd, does not presuppose that a part of our store of ideas is dormant while another part begins to awaken. It is a psychic phenomenon of full value, and indeed the fulfilment of a wish; it takes its place in the concatenation of the waking psychic actions which are intelligible to us, and it has been built up by a highly complicated intellectual activity. But at the very moment when we are inclined to rejoice in this discovery, a crowd of questions overwhelms us. If the dream, according to the interpretation, represents a wish fulfilled, what is the cause of the peculiar and unfamiliar manner in which this fulfilment is expressed? What changes have occurred in the dream thoughts before they are transformed into the manifest dream which we remember upon awaking? In what manner has this transformation taken place? Whence comes the material which has been worked over into the dream? What causes the peculiarities which we observe in the dream thoughts, for example, that they may contradict one another? (The analogy of the kettle, p. 87). Is the dream capable of teaching us something new about our inner psychic processes, and can its content correct opinions which we have held during the day? I suggest that for the present all these questions be laid aside, and that a single path be pursued. We have found that the dream represents a wish as fulfilled. It will be our next interest to ascertain whether this is a universal characteristic of the dream, or only the accidental content of the dream ("of Irma's injection") with which we have begun our analysis, for even if we make up our minds that every dream has a meaning and psychic value, we must nevertheless allow for the possibility that this meaning is not the same in every dream. The first dream we have considered was the fulfilment of a wish; another may turn out to be a realised apprehension; a third may have a reflection as to its content; a fourth may simply reproduce a reminiscence. Are there then other wish dreams; or are there possibly nothing but wish dreams?
It is easy to show that the character of wish-fulfilment in dreams is often undisguised and recognisable,