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Sigmund Freud, the Interpretation of Dreams (1899)1 1 Primary Source 12.5 SIGMUND FREUD, THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS (1899)1 Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was an Austrian psychologist and is the founder of the field of psychoanalysis. He is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. In the late nineteenth century, several discoveries in Europe revealed the power and importance of invisible aspects of reality, including radio waves, X-rays, subatomic particles, and germs. Around the same time, European thinkers began to realize that human thought is not completely straightforward, that it is not under our direct control. In particular, studies of hypnotism suggested the workings of apparently somewhat autonomous elements of mind. Freud began his psychoanalytic work using hypnosis, but gradually developed methods of free-associative thought and the interpretation of dreams. A single underlying factor united all these methods, the unconscious, which Freud emphasized as just as important as our conscious mind. In fact, he treated it as a both a motivating influence in all our behavior and a treasure trove of knowledge about each person’s individual identity, conduct, beliefs, and psychological problems. The most powerful key to unlocking its secrets, according to Freud, is the interpretation of dreams, a psychoanalytic approach developed most fully in his path- breaking book, The Interpretation of Dreams, which Freud considered his personal favorite. In the excerpt below, Freud presents his theory and practice of dream interpretation and then analyzes a sample dream—one of his own. For a link to the full text, click here. For a free audio file, click here. II METHOD OF DREAM INTERPRETATION THE ANALYSIS OF A SAMPLE DREAM The title which I have given my treatise indicates the tradition which I wish to make the starting-point in my discussion of dreams. I have made it my task to show that dreams are capable of interpretation, and contributions to the solution of the dream problems that have just been treated can only be yielded as possible by-products of the settlement of my own particular problem. With the hypothesis that dreams are interpretable, I at once come into contradiction with the prevailing dream science, in fact with all dream theories except that of Schemer,2 for to “interpret a dream” means to declare its meaning, to replace it by something which takes its place in the concatenation3 of our psychic activities as a link of full importance and value. But, as we have learnt, the scientific theories of the dream leave no room for a problem of dream interpretation, for, in the first place, according to these, the dream is no psychic action, but a somatic process which makes itself known to the psychic 1 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, ed. A.A. Brill (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913), 80– 102. 2 Karl Albert Schemer was a philosopher who published the Das Leben des Traums (The Life of the Dream) in 1861. 3 A series of interconnected items or events. 2 apparatus by means of signs. The opinion of the masses has always been quite different. It asserts its privilege of proceeding illogically, and although it admits the dream to be incomprehensible and absurd, it cannot summon the resolution to deny the dream all significance. Led by a dim intuition, it seems rather to assume that the dream has a meaning, albeit a hidden one; that it is intended as a substitute for some other thought process, and that it is only a question of revealing this substitute correctly in order to reach the hidden signification of the dream. The laity4 has, therefore, always endeavored to “interpret” the dream, and in doing so has tried two essentially different methods. The first of these procedures regards the dream content as a whole and seeks to replace it by another content which is intelligible and in certain respects analogous. This is symbolic dream interpretation; it naturally goes to pieces at the outset in the case of those dreams which appear not only unintelligible but confused. The construction which the biblical Joseph5 places upon the dream of Pharaoh furnishes an example of its procedure. The seven fat kine,6 after which came seven lean ones which devour the former, furnish a symbolic substitute for a prediction of seven years of famine in the land of Egypt, which will consume all the excess which seven fruitful years have created. Most of the artificial dreams contrived by poets are intended for such symbolic interpretation, for they reproduce the thought conceived by the poet in a disguise found to be in accordance with the characteristics of our dreaming, as we know these from experience. The idea that the dream concerns itself chiefly with future events whose course it surmises in advance—a relic of the prophetic significance with which dreams were once credited—now becomes the motive for transplanting the meaning of the dream, found by means of symbolic interpretation, into the future by means of an “it shall.” A demonstration of the way in which such symbolic interpretation is arrived at cannot, of course, be given. Success remains a matter of ingenious conjecture, of direct intuition, and for this reason dream interpretation has naturally been elevated to an art, which seems to depend upon extraordinary gifts. The other of the two popular methods of dream interpretation entirely abandons such claims. It might be designated as the “cipher method,” since it treats the dream as a kind of secret code, in which every sign is translated into another sign of known meaning, according to an established key. For example, I have dreamt of a letter, and also of a funeral or the like; I consult a “dream book,” and find that “letter” is to be translated by “vexation,” and “funeral” by “marriage, engagement.” It now remains to establish a connection, which I again am to assume pertains to the future, by means of the rigmarole which I have deciphered. An interesting variation of this cipher procedure, a variation by which its character of purely mechanical transference is to a certain extent corrected, is presented in the work on dream interpretation by Artemidoros of Daldis.7 Here not only the dream content, but also the personality and station in life of the dreamer, are taken into consideration, so that the same dream content has a significance for the rich man, the married man, or the orator, which is different from that for the poor man, the unmarried man, or, say, the merchant. The essential point, then, in 4 The members of a religious organization who are not part of the clergy; in this instance, the word means “non-experts.” 5 According to the Book of Genesis, Joseph was a son of Jacob, whose jealous brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt where he became an important political figure, in part because of his ability to interpret dreams. 6 An archaic term for a cow. 7 Artemidoros of Daldis was a second century Greek philosopher who studied dream interpretation. 3 this procedure is that the work of interpretation is not directed to the entirety of the dream, but to each portion of the dream content by itself, as though the dream were a conglomeration, in which each fragment demands a particular disposal. Incoherent and confused dreams are certainly the ones responsible for the invention of the cipher method. The worthlessness of both these popular interpretation procedures for the scientific treatment of the subject cannot be questioned for a moment. The symbolic method is limited in its application and is capable of no general demonstration. In the cipher method everything depends upon whether the key, the dream book, is reliable, and for that all guarantees are lacking. One might be tempted to grant the contention of the philosophers and psychiatrists and to dismiss the problem of dream interpretation as a fanciful one. I have come, however, to think differently. I have been forced to admit that here once more we have one of those not infrequent cases where an ancient and stubbornly retained popular belief seems to have come nearer to the truth of the matter than the judgment of the science which prevails to-day. I must insist that the dream actually has significance, and that a scientific procedure in dream interpretation is possible. I have come upon the knowledge of this procedure in the following manner:— For several years I have been occupied with the solution of certain psychopathological structures in hysterical phobias, compulsive ideas, and the like, for therapeutic purposes. I have been so occupied since becoming familiar with an important report of Joseph Breuer8 to the effect that in those structures, regarded as morbid symptoms, solution and treatment go hand in hand. Where it has been possible to trace such a pathological idea back to the elements in the psychic life of the patient to which it owes its origin, this idea has crumbled away, and the patient has been relieved of it. In view of the failure of our other therapeutic efforts, and in the face of the mysteriousness of these conditions, it seems to me tempting, in spite of all difficulties, to press forward on the path taken by Breuer until the subject has been fully understood. We shall have elsewhere to make a detailed report upon the form which the technique of this procedure has finally assumed, and the results of the efforts which have been made. In the course of these psychoanalytical studies, I happened upon dream interpretation. My patients, after I had obliged them to inform me of all the ideas and thoughts which came to them in connection with the given theme, related their dreams, and thus taught me that a dream may be linked into the psychic concatenation which must be followed backwards into the memory from the pathological idea as a starting-point.
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