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Page 9
It is not uncommon that out of some long, complicated and intricate
dream one specially lucid part stands out containing unmistakably the
realization of a desire, but bound up with much unintelligible matter.
On more frequently analyzing the seemingly more transparent dreams of
adults, it is astonishing to discover that these are rarely as simple as
the dreams of children, and that they cover another meaning beyond that
of the realization of a wish.
It would certainly be a simple and convenient solution of the riddle if
the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the
meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type,
to the realization of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But
there is no warrant for such an expectation. Their dreams are generally
full of the most indifferent and bizarre matter, and no trace of the
realization of the wish is to be found in their content.
Before leaving these infantile dreams, which are obviously unrealized
desires, we must not fail to mention another chief characteristic of
dreams, one that has been long noticed, and one which stands out most
clearly in this class. I can replace any of these dreams by a phrase
expressing a desire. If the sea trip had only lasted longer; if I were
only washed and dressed; if I had only been allowed to keep the cherries
instead of giving them to my uncle. But the dream gives something more
than the choice, for here the desire is already realized; its
realization is real and actual. The dream presentations consist chiefly,
if not wholly, of scenes and mainly of visual sense images. Hence a kind
of transformation is not entirely absent in this class of dreams, and
this may be fairly designated as the dream work. _An idea merely
existing in the region of possibility is replaced by a vision of its
accomplishment._
II
THE DREAM MECHANISM
We are compelled to assume that such transformation of scene has also
taken place in intricate dreams, though we do not know whether it has
encountered any possible desire. The dream instanced at the
commencement, which we analyzed somewhat thoroughly, did give us
occasion in two places to suspect something of the kind. Analysis
brought out that my wife was occupied with others at table, and that I
did not like it; in the dream itself _exactly the opposite_ occurs, for
the person who replaces my wife gives me her undivided attention. But
can one wish for anything pleasanter after a disagreeable incident than
that the exact contrary should have occurred, just as the dream has it?
The stinging thought in the analysis, that I have never had anything for
nothing, is similarly connected with the woman's remark in the dream:
"You have always had such beautiful eyes." Some portion of the
opposition between the latent and manifest content of the dream must be
therefore derived from the realization of a wish.
Another manifestation of the dream work which all incoherent dreams have
in common is still more noticeable. Choose any instance, and compare the
number of separate elements in it, or the extent of the dream, if
written down, with the dream thoughts yielded by analysis, and of which
but a trace can be refound in the dream itself. There can be no doubt
that the dream working has resulted in an extraordinary compression or
_condensation_. It is not at first easy to form an opinion as to the
extent of the condensation; the more deeply you go into the analysis,
the more deeply you are impressed by it. There will be found no factor
in the dream whence the chains of associations do not lead in two or
more directions, no scene which has not been pieced together out of two
or more impressions and events. For instance, I once dreamt about a kind
of swimming-bath where the bathers suddenly separated in all directions;
at one place on the edge a person stood bending towards one of the
bathers as if to drag him out. The scene was a composite one, made up
out of an event that occurred at the time of puberty, and of two
pictures, one of which I had seen just shortly before the dream. The two
pictures were The Surprise in the Bath, from Schwind's Cycle of the
Melusine (note the bathers suddenly separating), and The Flood, by an
Italian master. The little incident was that I once witnessed a lady,
who had tarried in the swimming-bath until the men's hour, being helped
out of the water by the swimming-master. The scene in the dream which
was selected for analysis led to a whole group of reminiscences, each
one of which had contributed to the dream content. First of all came the
little episode from the time of my courting, of which I have already
spoken; the pressure of a hand under the table gave rise in the dream to
the "under the table," which I had subsequently to find a place for in
my recollection. There was, of course, at the time not a word about
"undivided attention." Analysis taught me that this factor is the
realization of a desire through its contradictory and related to the
behavior of my wife at the table d'h�te. An exactly similar and much
more important episode of our courtship, one which separated us for an
entire day, lies hidden behind this recent recollection. The intimacy,
the hand resting upon the knee, refers to a quite different connection
and to quite other persons. This element in the dream becomes again the
starting-point of two distinct series of reminiscences, and so on.
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