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Page 57
The value of the over-occupation which is produced by the regulating
influence of the Cons. sensory organ on the mobile quantity, is
demonstrated in the teleological connection by nothing more clearly than
by the creation of a new series of qualities and consequently a new
regulation which constitutes the precedence of man over the animals. For
the mental processes are in themselves devoid of quality except for the
excitements of pleasure and pain accompanying them, which, as we know,
are to be held in check as possible disturbances of thought. In order to
endow them with a quality, they are associated in man with verbal
memories, the qualitative remnants of which suffice to draw upon them
the attention of consciousness which in turn endows thought with a new
mobile energy.
The manifold problems of consciousness in their entirety can be examined
only through an analysis of the hysterical mental process. From this
analysis we receive the impression that the transition from the
foreconscious to the occupation of consciousness is also connected with
a censorship similar to the one between the Unc. and the Forec. This
censorship, too, begins to act only with the reaching of a certain
quantitative degree, so that few intense thought formations escape it.
Every possible case of detention from consciousness, as well as of
penetration to consciousness, under restriction is found included within
the picture of the psychoneurotic phenomena; every case points to the
intimate and twofold connection between the censor and consciousness. I
shall conclude these psychological discussions with the report of two
such occurrences.
On the occasion of a consultation a few years ago the subject was an
intelligent and innocent-looking girl. Her attire was strange; whereas a
woman's garb is usually groomed to the last fold, she had one of her
stockings hanging down and two of her waist buttons opened. She
complained of pains in one of her legs, and exposed her leg unrequested.
Her chief complaint, however, was in her own words as follows: She had a
feeling in her body as if something was stuck into it which moved to and
fro and made her tremble through and through. This sometimes made her
whole body stiff. On hearing this, my colleague in consultation looked
at me; the complaint was quite plain to him. To both of us it seemed
peculiar that the patient's mother thought nothing of the matter; of
course she herself must have been repeatedly in the situation described
by her child. As for the girl, she had no idea of the import of her
words or she would never have allowed them to pass her lips. Here the
censor had been deceived so successfully that under the mask of an
innocent complaint a phantasy was admitted to consciousness which
otherwise would have remained in the foreconscious.
Another example: I began the psychoanalytic treatment of a boy of
fourteen years who was suffering from _tic convulsif_, hysterical
vomiting, headache, &c., by assuring him that, after closing his eyes,
he would see pictures or have ideas, which I requested him to
communicate to me. He answered by describing pictures. The last
impression he had received before coming to me was visually revived in
his memory. He had played a game of checkers with his uncle, and now saw
the checkerboard before him. He commented on various positions that were
favorable or unfavorable, on moves that were not safe to make. He then
saw a dagger lying on the checker-board, an object belonging to his
father, but transferred to the checker-board by his phantasy. Then a
sickle was lying on the board; next a scythe was added; and, finally, he
beheld the likeness of an old peasant mowing the grass in front of the
boy's distant parental home. A few days later I discovered the meaning
of this series of pictures. Disagreeable family relations had made the
boy nervous. It was the case of a strict and crabbed father who lived
unhappily with his mother, and whose educational methods consisted in
threats; of the separation of his father from his tender and delicate
mother, and the remarrying of his father, who one day brought home a
young woman as his new mamma. The illness of the fourteen-year-old boy
broke out a few days later. It was the suppressed anger against his
father that had composed these pictures into intelligible allusions. The
material was furnished by a reminiscence from mythology, The sickle was
the one with which Zeus castrated his father; the scythe and the
likeness of the peasant represented Kronos, the violent old man who eats
his children and upon whom Zeus wreaks vengeance in so unfilial a
manner. The marriage of the father gave the boy an opportunity to return
the reproaches and threats of his father--which had previously been made
because the child played with his genitals (the checkerboard; the
prohibitive moves; the dagger with which a person may be killed). We
have here long repressed memories and their unconscious remnants which,
under the guise of senseless pictures have slipped into consciousness by
devious paths left open to them.
I should then expect to find the theoretical value of the study of
dreams in its contribution to psychological knowledge and in its
preparation for an understanding of neuroses. Who can foresee the
importance of a thorough knowledge of the structure and activities of
the psychic apparatus when even our present state of knowledge produces
a happy therapeutic influence in the curable forms of the
psychoneuroses? What about the practical value of such study some one
may ask, for psychic knowledge and for the discovering of the secret
peculiarities of individual character? Have not the unconscious feelings
revealed by the dream the value of real forces in the psychic life?
Should we take lightly the ethical significance of the suppressed wishes
which, as they now create dreams, may some day create other things?
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