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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75810 ***





                         INTRODUCTORY LECTURES
                           ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS


[Illustration:

  _SCHWIND_, “THE PRISONER’S DREAM.”

  See p. 113 for analysis.
]




                INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
A COURSE OF TWENTY-EIGHT LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA

                                   BY
                     PROF. SIGM. FREUD, M.D., LL.D.
                                 VIENNA

                     AUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATION
                                   BY
                              JOAN RIVIERE

                             WITH A PREFACE
                                   BY
                           ERNEST JONES, M.D.
     _President of the International Psycho-Analytical Association_

[Illustration: [Logo]]

                   LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
                 RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1




               _First Published in Great Britain in 1922_


                        (_All rights reserved_)




                                PREFACE


Among the many difficulties confronting those who wish to acquire a
knowledge of psycho-analysis, not the least has been the absence of a
suitable text-book with which they could begin their studies. They have
hitherto had their choice among three classes of book, against each of
which some objection could be urged from the point of view of the
beginner. They could pick their way through the heterogeneous collection
of papers, such as those published by Freud, Brill, Ferenczi, and
myself, which were not arranged on any coherent plan and were also for
the greater part addressed to those already having some knowledge of the
subject. Or they could struggle with more systematic volumes, such as
those by Hitschmann and Barbara Low, which suffer from condensation
because of the difficulty of having to compress so much into a small
space. Or, finally, it might be their fate to come across one of the
numerous books, which need not be mentioned by name, that purport to
give an adequate account of psycho-analysis, but whose authors have
neglected the necessary preliminary of acquiring a proper knowledge of
the subject themselves. The gap in the literature of psycho-analysis has
now been filled by the writer most competent of all to do it—namely,
Professor Freud himself, and the world of clinical psychology must be
grateful to him for the effort it must have cost to write such a book in
the midst of his other multitudinous duties. In the future we can
unhesitatingly deal with the question so often asked, and say: This is
the book with which to begin a study of psycho-analysis.

Even here, however, the reader should be warned that it is necessary to
add a few modifications to the statement that the present volume is a
complete text-book of psycho-analysis. The circumstances of its
inception forbid its being so regarded. The book consists of three
separate courses of lectures delivered at the University of Vienna in
two winter sessions, 1915–1917. The first two of these presuppose
absolutely no knowledge of the subject, and the style in which they were
delivered constitute them an ideal introduction to the subject. But in
the third year Professor Freud, doubtless assuming that those of his
audience who had pursued their studies so far would by then have widened
their reading otherwise, decided to treat them no longer as mere
beginners, and so felt himself free to deal more technically with the
more difficult subject-matter of the third course—the psycho-analysis of
neurotic affections. The result is that the second half of the book is
of a much more advanced nature than the first, a fact which, it is true,
has the advantage that the author was able here and there to communicate
some of his latest conclusions on obscure points. Every student of
psycho-analysis, therefore, however advanced, will be able to learn much
from this volume.

One must also remark that the book does not convey an adequate
impression of the extensive bearing that psycho-analysis has on other
humanistic studies than those here dealt with. Apart from a few hints
scattered here and there, there is little indication of the extent to
which psycho-analysis has already been applied, to sociology, to the
study of racial development, and above all, to the psychology of the
normal man. The book is definitely confined to its three topics of
psychopathology of everyday life, dreams, and neuroses, these having
been chosen as constituting the most suitable subject-matter with which
to effect the author’s purpose—namely, to introduce students to
psycho-analysis.

An American translation of the book has already appeared, but, apart
from its deficiencies of style, it contained so many serious falsities
in translation—a passage, for instance, to the effect that _delusions_
cannot be influenced is translated in such a way as to commit Professor
Freud, of all people, to the statement that _obsessions_ cannot be
cured—that it was decided to issue a fresh translation. This has been
carried out with scrupulous care by Mrs. Riviere, aided by drafts
carried out by Miss Cecil M. Baines of the eleven lectures in Part II. I
have compared the whole book with the original, and have discussed
doubtful and difficult points with Professor Freud and Mrs. Riviere.
Mrs. Riviere’s English translation will be its own recommendation: I can
give the reader the assurance that it is a faithful and exact rendering.

                                                           ERNEST JONES.


  _December 1921._




                                CONTENTS


                                                                 PAGE
          PREFACE                                                   5


                               _PART I_

  LECTURE
       1. INTRODUCTION                                             11
       2. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS                                 19
       3. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS (_continuation_)                31
       4. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS (_conclusion_)                  47


                               _PART II_

                                DREAMS

       5. DIFFICULTIES AND PRELIMINARY APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT     67
       6. PRELIMINARY HYPOTHESES AND TECHNIQUE OF INTERPRETATION   82
       7. MANIFEST CONTENT AND LATENT THOUGHTS                     94
       8. CHILDREN’S DREAMS                                       105
       9. THE DREAM-CENSORSHIP                                    114
      10. SYMBOLISM IN DREAMS                                     125
      11. THE DREAM-WORK                                          143
      12. EXAMPLES OF DREAMS AND ANALYSIS OF THEM                 155
      13. ARCHAIC AND INFANTILE FEATURES IN DREAMS                168
      14. WISH-FULFILMENT                                         180
      15. DOUBTFUL POINTS AND CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS               193


                              _PART III_

                    GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

      16. PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND PSYCHIATRY                          207
      17. THE MEANING OF SYMPTOMS                                 218
      18. FIXATION UPON TRAUMATA: THE UNCONSCIOUS                 231
      19. RESISTANCE AND REPRESSION                               242
      20. THE SEXUAL LIFE OF MAN                                  255
      21. DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIBIDO AND SEXUAL ORGANIZATIONS      269
      22. ASPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT AND REGRESSION. ÆTIOLOGY         285
      23. THE PATHS OF SYMPTOM-FORMATION                          300
      24. ORDINARY NERVOUSNESS                                    316
      25. ANXIETY                                                 328
      26. THE THEORY OF THE LIBIDO: NARCISSISM                    344
      27. TRANSFERENCE                                            360
      28. THE ANALYTIC THERAPY                                    375
          INDEX                                                   389




                                _PART I_




                             FIRST LECTURE
                              INTRODUCTION


I do not know what knowledge any of you may already have of
psycho-analysis, either from reading or from hearsay. But having regard
to the title of my lectures—Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis—I
am bound to proceed as though you knew nothing of the subject and needed
instruction, even in its first elements.

One thing, at least, I may presuppose that you know—namely, that
psycho-analysis is a method of medical treatment for those suffering
from nervous disorders; and I can give you at once an illustration of
the way in which psycho-analytic procedure differs from, and often even
reverses, what is customary in other branches of medicine. Usually, when
we introduce a patient to a new form of treatment we minimize its
difficulties and give him confident assurances of its success. This is,
in my opinion, perfectly justifiable, for we thereby increase the
probability of success. But when we undertake to treat a neurotic
psycho-analytically we proceed otherwise. We explain to him the
difficulties of the method, its long duration, the trials and sacrifices
which will be required of him; and, as to the result, we tell him that
we can make no definite promises, that success depends upon his own
endeavours, upon his understanding, his adaptability and his
perseverance. We have, of course, good reasons, into which you will
perhaps gain some insight later on, for adopting this apparently
perverse attitude.

Now forgive me if I begin by treating you in the same way as I do my
neurotic patients, for I shall positively advise you against coming to
hear me a second time. And with this intention I shall explain to you
how of necessity you can obtain from me only an incomplete knowledge of
psycho-analysis and also what difficulties stand in the way of your
forming an independent judgement on the subject. For I shall show you
how the whole trend of your training and your accustomed modes of
thought must inevitably have made you hostile to psycho-analysis, and
also how much you would have to overcome in your own minds in order to
master this instinctive opposition. I naturally cannot foretell what
degree of understanding of psycho-analysis you may gain from my
lectures, but I can at least assure you that by attending them you will
not have learnt how to conduct a psycho-analytic investigation, nor how
to carry out a psycho-analytic treatment. And further, if anyone of you
should feel dissatisfied with a merely cursory acquaintance with
psycho-analysis and should wish to form a permanent connection with it,
I shall not merely discourage him, but I shall actually warn him against
it. For as things are at the present time, not only would the choice of
such a career put an end to all chances of academic success, but, upon
taking up work as a practitioner, such a man would find himself in a
community which misunderstood his aims and intentions, regarded him with
suspicion and hostility, and let loose upon him all the latent evil
impulses harboured within it. Perhaps you can infer from the
accompaniments of the war now raging in Europe what a countless host
that is to reckon with.

However, there are always some people to whom the possibility of a new
addition to knowledge will prove an attraction strong enough to survive
all such inconveniences. If there are any such among you who will appear
at my second lecture in spite of my words of warning, they will be
welcome. But all of you have a right to know what these inherent
difficulties of psycho-analysis are to which I have alluded.

First of all, there is the problem of the teaching and exposition of the
subject. In your medical studies you have been accustomed to use your
eyes. You see the anatomical specimen, the precipitate of the chemical
reaction, the contraction of the muscle as the result of the stimulation
of its nerves. Later you come into contact with the patients; you learn
the symptoms of disease by the evidence of your senses; the results of
pathological processes can be demonstrated to you, and in many cases
even the exciting cause of them in an isolated form. On the surgical
side you are witnesses of the measures by which the patient is helped,
and are permitted to attempt them yourselves. Even in psychiatry,
demonstration of patients, of their altered expression, speech and
behaviour, yields a series of observations which leave a deep impression
on your minds. Thus a teacher of medicine acts for the most part as an
exponent and guide, leading you as it were through a museum, while you
gain in this way a direct relationship to what is displayed to you and
believe yourselves to have been convinced by your own experience of the
existence of the new facts.

But in psycho-analysis, unfortunately, all this is different. In
psycho-analytic treatment nothing happens but an exchange of words
between the patient and the physician. The patient talks, tells of his
past experiences and present impressions, complains, and expresses his
wishes and his emotions. The physician listens, attempts to direct the
patient’s thought-processes, reminds him, forces his attention in
certain directions, gives him explanations and observes the reactions of
understanding or denial thus evoked. The patient’s unenlightened
relatives—people of a kind to be impressed only by something visible and
tangible, preferably by the sort of ‘action’ that may be seen at a
cinema—never omit to express their doubts of how “mere talk can possibly
cure anybody.” Their reasoning is of course as illogical as it is
inconsistent. For they are the same people who are always convinced that
the sufferings of neurotics are purely “in their own imagination.” Words
and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even to-day
words retain much of their magical power. By words one of us can give to
another the greatest happiness or bring about utter despair; by words
the teacher imparts his knowledge to the student; by words the orator
sweeps his audience with him and determines its judgements and
decisions. Words call forth emotions and are universally the means by
which we influence our fellow-creatures. Therefore let us not despise
the use of words in psycho-therapy and let us be content if we may
overhear the words which pass between the analyst and the patient.

But even that is impossible. The dialogue which constitutes the analysis
will admit of no audience; the process cannot be demonstrated. One
could, of course, exhibit a neurasthenic or hysterical patient to
students at a psychiatric lecture. He would relate his case and his
symptoms, but nothing more. He will make the communications necessary to
the analysis only under the conditions of a special affective
relationship to the physician; in the presence of a single person to
whom he was indifferent he would become mute. For these communications
relate to all his most private thoughts and feelings, all that which as
a socially independent person he must hide from others, all that which,
being foreign to his own conception of himself, he tries to conceal even
from himself.

It is impossible, therefore, for you to be actually present during a
psycho-analytic treatment; you can only be told about it, and can learn
psycho-analysis, in the strictest sense of the word, only by hearsay.
This tuition at second hand, so to say, puts you in a very unusual and
difficult position as regards forming your own judgement on the subject,
which will therefore largely depend on the reliance you can place on
your informant.

Now imagine for a moment that you were present at a lecture in history
instead of in psychiatry, and that the lecturer was dealing with the
life and conquests of Alexander the Great. What reason would you have to
believe what he told you? The situation would appear at first sight even
more unsatisfactory than in the case of psycho-analysis, for the
professor of history had no more part in Alexander’s campaigns than you
yourselves; the psycho-analyst at least informs you of matters in which
he himself has played a part. But then we come to the question of what
evidence there is to support the historian. He can refer you to the
accounts of early writers who were either contemporaries or who lived
not long after the events in question, such as Diodorus, Plutarch,
Arrian, and others; he can lay before you reproductions of the preserved
coins and statues of the king, and pass round a photograph of the mosaic
at Pompeii representing the battle at Issus. Yet, strictly speaking, all
these documents only prove that the existence of Alexander and the
reality of his deeds were already believed in by former generations of
men, and your criticism might begin anew at this point. And then you
would find that not everything reported of Alexander is worthy of belief
or sufficiently authenticated in detail, but I can hardly suppose that
you would leave the lecture-room in doubt altogether as to the reality
of Alexander the Great. Your conclusions would be principally determined
by two considerations: first, that the lecturer could have no
conceivable motive for attempting to persuade you of something which he
did not himself believe to be true, and secondly, that all the available
authorities agree more or less in their accounts of the facts. In
questioning the accuracy of the early writers you would apply these
tests again, the possible motives of the authors and the agreement to be
found between them. The result of such tests would certainly be
convincing in the case of Alexander, probably less so in regard to
figures like Moses and Nimrod. Later on you will perceive clearly enough
what doubts can be raised against the credibility of an exponent of
psycho-analysis.

Now you will have a right to ask the question: If no objective evidence
for psycho-analysis exists, and no possibility of demonstrating the
process, how is it possible to study it at all or to convince oneself of
its truth? The study of it is indeed not an easy matter, nor are there
many people who have thoroughly learned it; still, there is, of course,
some way of learning it. Psycho-Analysis is learnt first of all on
oneself, through the study of one’s own personality. This is not exactly
what is meant by introspection, but it may be so described for want of a
better word. There is a whole series of very common and well-known
mental phenomena which can be taken as material for self-analysis when
one has acquired some knowledge of the method. In this way one may
obtain the required conviction of the reality of the processes which
psycho-analysis describes, and of the truth of its conceptions, although
progress on these lines is not without its limitations. One gets much
further by submitting oneself to analysis by a skilled analyst,
undergoing the working of the analysis in one’s own person and using the
opportunity to observe the finer details of the technique which the
analyst employs. This, eminently the best way, is of course only
practicable for individuals and cannot be used in a class of students.

The second difficulty you will find in connection with psycho-analysis
is not, on the other hand, inherent in it, but is one for which I must
hold you yourselves responsible, at least in so far as your medical
studies have influenced you. Your training will have induced in you an
attitude of mind very far removed from the psycho-analytical one. You
have been trained to establish the functions and disturbances of the
organism on an anatomical basis, to explain them in terms of chemistry
and physics, and to regard them from a biological point of view; but no
part of your interest has ever been directed to the mental aspects of
life, in which, after all, the development of the marvellously
complicated organism culminates. For this reason a psychological
attitude of mind is still foreign to you, and you are accustomed to
regard it with suspicion, to deny it a scientific status, and to leave
it to the general public, poets, mystics, and philosophers. Now this
limitation in you is undoubtedly detrimental to your medical efficiency;
for on meeting a patient it is the mental aspects with which one first
comes into contact, as in most human relationships, and I am afraid you
will pay the penalty of having to yield a part of the curative influence
at which you aim to the quacks, mystics, and faith-healers whom you
despise.

I quite acknowledge that there is an excuse for this defect in your
previous training. There is no auxiliary philosophical science that
might be of service to you in your profession. Neither speculative
philosophy nor descriptive psychology, nor even the so-called
experimental psychology which is studied in connection with the
physiology of the sense-organs, as they are taught in the schools, can
tell you anything useful of the relations existing between mind and
body, or can give you a key to comprehension of a possible disorder of
the mental functions. It is true that the psychiatric branch of medicine
occupies itself with describing the different forms of recognizable
mental disturbances and grouping them in clinical pictures, but in their
best moments psychiatrists themselves are doubtful whether their purely
descriptive formulations deserve to be called science. The origin,
mechanism, and interrelation of the symptoms which make up these
clinical pictures are undiscovered: either they cannot be correlated
with any demonstrable changes in the brain, or only with such changes as
in no way explain them. These mental disturbances are open to
therapeutic influence only when they can be identified as secondary
effects of some organic disease.

This is the lacuna which psycho-analysis is striving to fill. It hopes
to provide psychiatry with the missing psychological foundation, to
discover the common ground on which a correlation of bodily and mental
disorder becomes comprehensible. To this end it must dissociate itself
from every foreign preconception, whether anatomical, chemical, or
physiological, and must work throughout with conceptions of a purely
psychological order, and for this very reason I fear that it will appear
strange to you at first.

For the next difficulty I shall not hold you, your training or your
mental attitude, responsible. There are two tenets of psycho-analysis
which offend the whole world and excite its resentment; the one
conflicts with intellectual, the other with moral and æsthetic,
prejudices. Let us not underestimate these prejudices; they are powerful
things, residues of valuable, even necessary, stages in human evolution.
They are maintained by emotional forces, and the fight against them is a
hard one.

The first of these displeasing propositions of psycho-analysis is this:
that mental processes are essentially unconscious, and that those which
are conscious are merely isolated acts and parts of the whole psychic
entity. Now I must ask you to remember that, on the contrary, we are
accustomed to identify the mental with the conscious. Consciousness
appears to us as positively the characteristic that defines mental life,
and we regard psychology as the study of the content of consciousness.
This even appears so evident that any contradiction of it seems obvious
nonsense to us, and yet it is impossible for psycho-analysis to avoid
this contradiction, or to accept the identity between the conscious and
the psychic. The psycho-analytical definition of the mind is that it
comprises processes of the nature of feeling, thinking, and wishing, and
it maintains that there are such things as unconscious thinking and
unconscious wishing. But in doing so psycho-analysis has forfeited at
the outset the sympathy of the sober and scientifically-minded, and
incurred the suspicion of being a fantastic cult occupied with dark and
unfathomable mysteries.[1] You yourselves must find it difficult to
understand why I should stigmatize an abstract proposition, such as “The
psychic is the conscious,” as a prejudice; nor can you guess yet what
evolutionary process could have led to the denial of the unconscious, if
it does indeed exist, nor what advantage could have been achieved by
this denial. It seems like an empty wrangle over words to argue whether
mental life is to be regarded as co-extensive with consciousness or
whether it may be said to stretch beyond this limit, and yet I can
assure you that the acceptance of unconscious mental processes
represents a decisive step towards a new orientation in the world and in
science.

As little can you suspect how close is the connection between this first
bold step on the part of psycho-analysis and the second to which I am
now coming. For this next proposition, which we put forward as one of
the discoveries of psycho-analysis, consists in the assertion that
impulses, which can only be described as sexual in both the narrower and
the wider sense, play a peculiarly large part, never before sufficiently
appreciated, in the causation of nervous and mental disorders. Nay,
more, that these sexual impulses have contributed invaluably to the
highest cultural, artistic, and social achievements of the human mind.

In my opinion, it is the aversion from this conclusion of
psycho-analytic investigation that is the most significant source of the
opposition it has encountered. Are you curious to know how we ourselves
account for this? We believe that civilization has been built up, under
the pressure of the struggle for existence, by sacrifices in
gratification of the primitive impulses, and that it is to a great
extent for ever being re-created, as each individual, successively
joining the community, repeats the sacrifice of his instinctive
pleasures for the common good. The sexual are amongst the most important
of the instinctive forces thus utilized: they are in this way
sublimated, that is to say, their energy is turned aside from its sexual
goal and diverted towards other ends, no longer sexual and socially more
valuable. But the structure thus built up is insecure, for the sexual
impulses are with difficulty controlled; in each individual who takes up
his part in the work of civilization there is a danger that a rebellion
of the sexual impulses may occur, against this diversion of their
energy. Society can conceive of no more powerful menace to its culture
than would arise from the liberation of the sexual impulses and a return
of them to their original goal. Therefore society dislikes this
sensitive place in its development being touched upon; that the power of
the sexual instinct should be recognized, and the significance of the
individual’s sexual life revealed, is very far from its interests; with
a view to discipline it has rather taken the course of diverting
attention away from this whole field. For this reason, the revelations
of psycho-analysis are not tolerated by it, and it would greatly prefer
to brand them as æsthetically offensive, morally reprehensible, or
dangerous. But since such objections are not valid arguments against
conclusions which claim to represent the objective results of scientific
investigation, the opposition must be translated into intellectual terms
before it can be expressed. It is a characteristic of human nature to be
inclined to regard anything which is disagreeable as untrue, and then
without much difficulty to find arguments against it. So society
pronounces the unacceptable to be untrue, disputes the results of
psycho-analysis with logical and concrete arguments, arising, however,
in affective sources, and clings to them with all the strength of
prejudice against every attempt at refutation.

But we, on the other hand, claim to have yielded to no tendency in
propounding this objectionable theory. Our intention has been solely to
give recognition to the facts as we found them in the course of
painstaking researches. And we now claim the right to reject
unconditionally any such introduction of practical considerations into
the field of scientific investigation, even before we have determined
whether the apprehension which attempts to force these considerations
upon us is justified or not.

These, now, are some of the difficulties which confront you at the
outset when you begin to take an interest in psycho-analysis. It is
probably more than enough for a beginning. If you can overcome their
discouraging effect, we will proceed further.




                             SECOND LECTURE
                        THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS


We shall now begin, not with postulates, but with an investigation. For
this purpose we shall select certain phenomena which are very frequent,
very familiar and much overlooked, and which have nothing to do with
illness, since they may be observed in every healthy person. I refer to
the errors that everyone commits: as when anyone wishes to say a certain
thing but uses the wrong word (‘slip of the tongue’);[2] or when the
same sort of mistake is made in writing (‘slip of the pen’),[3] in which
case one may or may not notice it; or when anyone reads in print or
writing something other than what is actually before him
(‘misreading’);[4] or when anyone mis-hears[5] what is said to him,
naturally when there is no question of any disease of the auditory
sense-organ. Another series of such phenomena are those based on
forgetting[6] something temporarily, though not permanently; as, for
instance, when anyone cannot think of a name which he knows quite well
and is always able to recognize whenever he sees it; or when anyone
forgets to carry out some intention, which he afterwards remembers, and
has therefore forgotten only for a certain time. This element of
transitoriness is lacking in a third class, of which mislaying[7] things
so that they cannot be found is an example. This is a kind of
forgetfulness which we regard differently from the usual kind; one is
amazed or annoyed at it, instead of finding it comprehensible. Allied to
this are certain _mistakes_, in which the temporary element is again
noticeable, as when one believes something for a time which both before
and afterwards one knows to be untrue, and a number of similar
manifestations which we know under various names.

Some inner relation between all these kinds of occurrences is indicated
in German, by the use of the prefix “_ver_” which is common to all the
words designating them.[8] These words almost all refer to acts of an
unimportant kind, generally temporary and without much significance in
life. It is only rarely that anything of the kind, such as the loss of
some object, attains any practical importance. For this reason little
attention is paid to such happenings and they arouse little feeling.

I am now going to ask you to consider these phenomena. But you will
object, with annoyance: “There are so many tremendous puzzles both in
the wide world and in the narrower life of the soul, so many mysteries
in the field of mental disorder which demand and deserve explanation,
that it really seems frivolous to waste labour and interest on these
trifles. If you could explain to us how it is possible for anyone with
sound sight and hearing, in broad daylight, to see and hear things which
do not exist, or how anyone can suddenly believe that his nearest and
dearest are persecuting him, or can justify with the most ingenious
arguments a delusion which would seem nonsensical to any child, then we
might be willing to take psycho-analysis seriously. But if
psycho-analysis cannot occupy us with anything more interesting than the
question why a speaker uses a wrong word or why a _Hausfrau_ mislays her
keys and similar trivialities, then we shall find something better to do
with our time and our interest.”

My reply is: Patience! Your criticism is not on the right track. It is
true that psycho-analysis cannot boast that it has never occupied itself
with trifles. On the contrary, the material of its observations is
usually those commonplace occurrences which have been cast aside as all
too insignificant by other sciences, the refuse, so to speak, of the
phenomenal world. But in your criticism are you not confounding the
magnitude of a problem with the conspicuous nature of its
manifestations? Is it not possible, under certain conditions and at
certain times, for very important things to betray themselves in very
slight indications? I could easily cite many instances of this. What
slight signs, for instance, convey to the young men in my audience that
they have gained a lady’s favour? Do they expect an explicit
declaration, a passionate embrace, or are they not content with a glance
which is almost imperceptible to others, a fleeting gesture, a handshake
prolonged by a second? Or suppose you are a detective engaged in the
investigation of a murder, do you actually expect to find that the
murderer will leave his photograph with name and address on the scene of
the crime? Are you not perforce content with slighter and less certain
traces of the person you seek? So let us not undervalue small signs:
perhaps from them it may be possible to come upon the tracks of greater
things. Besides, I think as you do that the larger problems of the world
and of science have the first claim on our interest. But on the whole it
avails little to form a definite resolution to devote oneself to the
investigation of this or that great problem. One is then often at a loss
how to set about the next step. In scientific work it is more profitable
to take up whatever lies before one whenever a path towards its
exploration presents itself. And then, if one carries it through
thoroughly, without prejudice or pre-conceptions, one may, with good
fortune and by virtue of the interrelationship linking each thing to
every other (hence, also, the small to the great), find, even in the
course of such humble labour, a road to the study of the great problems.

It is from this point of view that I hope to enlist your interest in
considering the apparently trivial errors made by normal people. I
propose now that we question someone who has no knowledge of
psycho-analysis as to how he explains these occurrences.

His first answer is sure to be: “Oh, they are not worth any explanation;
they are little accidents.” What does the man mean by this? Does he mean
to maintain that there are any occurrences so small that they fail to
come within the causal sequence of things, that they might as well be
other than they are? Anyone thus breaking away from the determination of
natural phenomena, at any single point, has thrown over the whole
scientific outlook on the world (_Weltanschauung_). One may point out to
him how much more consistent is the religious outlook on the world,
which emphatically assures us that “not one sparrow shall fall to the
ground” except God wills it. I think our friend would not be willing to
follow his first answer to its logical conclusion; he would give way and
say that if he were to study these things he would soon find some
explanation of them. It must be a matter of slight functional
disturbances, of inaccuracies of mental performance, the conditions of
which could be discovered. A man who otherwise speaks correctly may make
a slip of the tongue, (1) when he is tired or unwell, (2) when he is
excited, or (3) when his attention is concentrated on something else. It
is easy to confirm this. Slips of the tongue do indeed occur most
frequently when one is tired, or has a headache, or feels an attack of
migraine coming on. Forgetting proper names very often occurs in these
circumstances; many people are habitually warned of the onset of an
attack of migraine by the inability to recall proper names. In
excitement, too, one mixes up words or even things, one performs actions
erroneously[9]; and the forgetting of intentions, as well as a number of
other undesigned acts, comes to the fore when one is distracted, in
other words, when the attention is concentrated on other things. A
familiar instance of such distraction is the professor in _Fliegende
Blätter_ who forgets his umbrella and takes the wrong hat, because he is
thinking of the problems which are to be the subject of his next book.
We all know from our own experience how one can forget to carry out
intentions or promises when something has happened in the interval that
absorbs one very deeply.

This seems so entirely comprehensible and also irrefutable. It is
perhaps not very interesting or not so much so as we expected. Let us
look at this explanation of errors more closely. The various conditions
which have been cited as necessary for the occurrence of these phenomena
are not all similar in kind. Illness and disorders of the circulation
afford a physiological basis for an affection of the normal functions;
excitement, tiredness, and distraction are conditions of a different
kind which could be described as psycho-physiological. These last could
easily be converted into a theory. Fatigue, as well as distraction, and
perhaps also general excitement, cause a dissipation of the attention
from which it may follow that the act in question has insufficient
attention devoted to it. It can then very easily be disturbed and
inexactly performed. Slight illness or a change in the distribution of
blood in the central organ of the nervous system can have the same
effect, by these conditions affecting the determining factor, the
distribution of attention, in a similar way. In all cases it would be a
question of the effects of a disturbance of the attention from organic
or psychical causes.

But all this doesn’t seem to promise much of interest for a
psycho-analytic investigation. We might feel tempted to give up the
topic. To be sure, a closer inspection of the facts shows that they are
not all in accord with the ‘attention’ theory of errors of this sort, or
at least that not everything can be directly deduced from it. We find
that such errors and such forgetfulness also take place when people are
not fatigued or excited, but are in every way in their normal condition;
unless, just because of the errors, we were subsequently to attribute to
them a condition of excitement which they themselves did not
acknowledge. Nor can the matter be quite so simple as that the
successful performance of an act will be ensured by an intensification
of attention, or endangered by a diminution of it. For a great number of
actions may be carried out in a purely automatic way with very little
attention and yet quite successfully. In walking, a man may perhaps
scarcely know where he is going but keep to the right road and stop at
his destination without having gone astray. At least, this is what
usually happens. A practised pianist strikes the right notes without
thinking of them. He may of course also make an occasional mistake, but
if automatic playing increased the danger of errors the virtuoso, whose
constant practice has made his playing entirely automatic, would be the
most exposed to this danger. Yet we see, on the contrary, that many acts
are most successfully carried out when they are not the objects of
particularly concentrated attention, and that mistakes may occur just on
occasions when one is most eager to be accurate, that is, when a
distraction of the necessary attention is most certainly not present.
One could then say that this is the effect of the ‘excitement,’ but we
do not understand why the excitement does not rather intensify the
concentration on the end so much desired. So that if in an important
speech anyone says the opposite of what he intends, it can hardly be
explained according to the psycho-physiological or the attention theory.

There are also many other minor features in connection with these errors
which we do not understand and which are not rendered more
comprehensible by these explanations. For instance, when one has
temporarily forgotten a name one is annoyed, one is determined to recall
it and cannot desist from the attempt. Why is it that despite this
annoyance the person so often cannot succeed, as he wishes, in directing
his attention to the word which, as he says, is “on the tip of his
tongue,” and which he instantly recognizes when it is supplied to him?
Or, to take another example, there are cases in which the errors
multiply, link themselves together or act as substitutes for one
another. The first time, one forgets an appointment; the next time,
after having made a special resolution not to forget it, one discovers
that one has made a mistake in the day or hour. Or one tries by devious
ways to remember a forgotten word, and in the course of so doing loses
track of a second name which would have been of use in finding the
first. If one then pursues the second name, a third gets lost, and so
on. It is notorious that the same thing happens with misprints, which
are of course errors on the part of the compositor. A stubborn error of
this sort is said once to have crept into a Social-Democratic newspaper,
where, in the account of a festivity, the following words were printed:
“Amongst those present was His Highness, the Clown Prince.” The next day
a correction was attempted. The paper apologized and said: “The sentence
should of course have read, ‘the Crow-Prince.’” Again, in a
war-correspondent’s account of meeting a famous general whose
infirmities were pretty well known, a reference to the general was
printed as “this battle-scared veteran.” Next day an apology appeared
which read “the words of course should have been ‘the bottle-scarred
veteran!’”[10] We like to attribute these occurrences to a devil in the
type-setting machine or to some malevolent goblin—figurative expressions
which at least imply something more than a psycho-physiological theory
of the misprint.

I do not know if you are aware of the fact that slips of the tongue can
be provoked, called forth by suggestion, as it were. An anecdote will
serve to illustrate this. Once when a novice on the stage was entrusted
with the important part in _The Maid of Orleans_ of announcing to the
King: “The Constable sends back his sword,” the principal player, during
the rehearsal, played the joke of several times repeating to the timid
beginner, instead of the text, the following: “The _Komfortabel_ sends
back his steed.”[11] At the performance the unfortunate actor actually
made his début with this perverse announcement, though he had been amply
warned against so doing, or perhaps just because he had been.

All these little characteristics of errors are not much illuminated by
the theory of diverted attention. But that does not necessarily prove
the theory wrong. There may be something missing, a link, by the
addition of which the theory might be made completely satisfactory. But
many of the errors themselves can be considered from another aspect.

Let us select slips of the tongue, as the type of error best suited to
our purpose. We might equally well choose slips of the pen or of
reading. Now we must first remind ourselves that, so far, we have only
enquired when and under what conditions the wrong word is said, and have
received an answer on that point only. Interest may be directed
elsewhere, though, and the question raised why just this particular slip
is made and no other: one can consider the nature of the mistake. You
will see that so long as this question remains unanswered, and the
_effect_ of the mistake is not explained, the phenomenon remains a pure
accident on the psychological side, even if a physiological explanation
has been found for it. When it happens that I make a mistake in a word I
could obviously do this in an infinite number of ways, in place of the
right word substitute any one of a thousand others, or make innumerable
distortions of the right word. Now, is there anything which forces upon
me in a specific instance just this one special slip, out of all those
which are possible, or does that remain accidental and arbitrary, and
can nothing rational be found in answer to this question?

Two authors, Meringer and Mayer (a philologist and a psychiatrist) did
indeed in 1895 make an attempt to approach the problem of slips of the
tongue from this side. They collected examples and first treated them
from a purely descriptive standpoint. This of course does not yet
furnish any explanation, but it may lead the way to one. They
differentiated the distortions which the intended phrase suffered
through the slip into: interchanges (in the positions of words,
syllables or letters), anticipations, perseverations, compoundings
(contaminations), and substitutions. I will give you examples of these
authors’ main categories. As an instance of an interchange (in the
position of words) someone might say “The Milo of Venus” instead of “The
Venus of Milo.” The well-known slip of the hotel-boy who, knocking at
the bishop’s door, nervously replied to the question “Who is it?” “The
Lord, my boy!” is another example of such an interchange in the position
of words.[12] In the typical Spoonerism the position of certain letters
is interchanged, as when the preacher said: “How often do we feel a
half-warmed fish within us!”[12] It is a case of anticipation if anyone
says: “The thought lies heartily...” instead of: “The thought lies
heavily on my heart.” A perseveration is illustrated by the well-known
ill-fated toast, “Gentlemen, I call upon (_auf_) you

           _hiccough_ (= _auf_zustossen)
to (_auf_)                               to the health of our Chief.”
             (drink) (= _anz_ustossen)

And when a member of the House of Commons referred to another as the
“honourable member for Central _Hell_,” instead of “Hull,” it was a case
of perseveration; as also when a soldier said to a friend “I wish there
were a thousand of our men _mortified_ on that hill, Bill,” instead of
“fortified.” In one case the _ell_ sound has perseverated from the
previous words “m_e_mber for C_e_ntra_l_,” and in the other the _m_
sound in “_m_en” has perseverated to form “mortified.”[12] These three
types of slip are not very common. You will find those cases much more
frequent in which the slip happens by a compounding or contraction, as
for example when a gentleman asks a lady if he may _insort_ her on her
way (_begleit-digen_); this contraction is made up of _begleiten_ = to
escort, and _beleidigen_ = to insult. (And by the way, a young man
addressing a lady in this way will not have much success with her.) A
substitution takes place when a poor woman says she has an “incurable
_infernal_ disease,”[13] or in Mrs. Malaprop’s mind when she says, for
instance, “few gentlemen know how to value the _ineffectual_ qualities
in a woman.”[13]

The explanation which the two authors attempt to formulate as the basis
of their collection of examples is peculiarly inadequate. They hold that
the sounds and syllables of a word have different values and that the
innervation of the sounds of higher value can interfere with those of
lower value. They obviously base this conclusion on the cases of
anticipation and perseveration which are not at all frequent; in other
forms of slips of the tongue the question of such sound priorities, even
if they exist, does not enter at all; for the most frequent type of slip
is that in which instead of a certain word one says another which
resembles it, and this resemblance is considered by many people
sufficient explanation of it. For instance, a professor may say in his
opening lecture, “I am not inclined (_geneigt_ instead of _geeignet_ =
fitted) to estimate the merits of my predecessor.” Or another professor
says, “In the case of the female genital, in spite of the _tempting_ ...
I mean, the _attempted_ ...” (_Versuchungen_ instead of _Versuche_).

The commonest and also the most noticeable form of slip of the tongue,
however, is that of saying the exact opposite of what one meant to say.
These cases are quite outside the effect of any relations between sounds
or confusion due to similarity, and in default one may therefore turn to
the fact that opposites have a strong conceptual connection with one
another and are psychologically very closely associated. There are
well-known examples of this sort. For instance, the President of our
Parliament once opened the session with the words “Gentlemen, I declare
a quorum present and herewith declare the session _closed_.”

Any other common association may work in a way as insidious as the
association of opposites and may on occasion lead to results as
inopportune. So there is a story to the effect that, at a festivity in
honour of the marriage of a child of H. Helmholtz with a child of the
well-known inventor and captain of industry, W. Siemens, the famous
physiologist Dubois-Reymond was asked to speak. He concluded his
doubtless brilliant speech with the toast “Success to the new
partnership, Siemens and _Halske_!” which was of course the name of the
old firm. The association of the two names must have been as familiar to
a resident in Berlin as “Crosse & Blackwell” to a Londoner.

So the effect of word associations must be taken into account, as well
as that of sound-values and similarities between words. But even that is
not enough. In one type of case, before we can arrive at an adequate
explanation of the slip we must consider some phrase which had been
said, or perhaps only thought, previously. Again, that is, a case of
perseveration, as Meringer insists, but arising in a more distant
source.—I must confess that altogether I have the impression that we are
further than ever from comprehension of slips of the tongue.

However, I hope I am not mistaken in thinking that in the course of our
examination of the above examples an impression has formed itself in us
which may be of a kind to repay further attention. We were considering
the general conditions under which slips of the tongue occur and then
the influences which determine the kind of distortion effected in the
slip, but so far we have not examined at all the result of the slip
itself, as an object of interest without regard to its origin. If we
bring ourselves to do this we shall in the end have to assert
courageously that in some of the examples the slip itself makes sense.
Now what does it mean when we say “it makes sense”? Well, it means that
the result of the slip may perhaps have a right to be regarded in itself
as a valid mental process following out its own purpose, and as an
expression having content and meaning. Hitherto we have only spoken of
errors, but now it appears as if the error could sometimes be quite a
proper act, except that it has intruded itself in the place of one more
expected or intended.

In certain cases the sense belonging to the slip itself appears obvious
and unmistakable. When the President in his opening speech closes the
session of Parliament, a knowledge of the circumstances under which the
slip was made inclines us to see a meaning in it. He expects no good
result from the session and would be glad to be able to disperse
forthwith; there is no difficulty in discovering the meaning, or
interpreting the sense, of this slip. Or when a lady, appearing to
compliment another, says: “I am sure _you_ must have _thrown_ this
delightful hat together” instead of “sewn it together” (_aufgepatzt_
instead of _aufgeputzt_), no scientific theories in the world can
prevent us from seeing in her slip the thought that the hat is an
amateur production. Or when a lady who is well known for her determined
character says: “My husband asked his doctor what sort of diet ought to
be provided for him. But the doctor said he needed no special diet, he
could eat and drink whatever _I_ choose,” the slip appears clearly as
the unmistakable expression of a consistent scheme.

Now supposing it should turn out that not only a few cases of slips of
the tongue and errors in general, but the great majority of them, have a
meaning, then the meaning of the error, to which we have hitherto paid
no attention, would become the point of greatest interest to us and
would justifiably drive all other points of view into the background.
All physiological and psycho-physiological conditions could then be
ignored and attention could be devoted to the purely psychological
investigation of the _sense_, that is, the meaning, the intention, in
the errors. With this in view, therefore, we shall soon consider further
material.

Before undertaking this, however, I should like to invite you to follow
up another clue with me. It often happens that a poet makes use of a
slip of the tongue or some other error as a means of artistic
expression. This fact in itself proves that he thinks the error, for
instance, a slip of the tongue, has a meaning; for he constructs it
intentionally. It could hardly happen that a poet accidentally made a
slip of the pen and then allowed his slip of the pen to stand as a slip
of the tongue of the character. He wishes to reveal something by means
of the slip and we may well enquire what that may be—whether perhaps he
wishes to indicate that the person in question is distracted or
overtired, or is expecting a headache. Of course we should not
exaggerate the importance of it if poets do make use of slips to express
their meaning. Slips might be in reality without meaning, accidents in
the mental world, or only occasionally have a meaning, and poets would
still be entitled to refine them by infusing sense into them for their
own purposes. However, it would not be surprising if more were to be
learned from poets about slips of the tongue than from philologists and
psychiatrists.

There is an example of a slip of this kind in Schiller’s _Wallenstein_
(Piccolomini, Act I, Scene 5). In the foregoing scene, young Max
Piccolomini had taken up Duke Wallenstein’s cause ardently, and had been
passionately describing the blessings of peace, which he had become
aware of in the course of a journey accompanying Wallenstein’s beautiful
daughter to the camp. As he leaves the stage, his father (Octavio) and
the courtier Questenberg are plunged in consternation. The fifth scene
continues:—

      QUESTENBERG. Alas! and stands it so?
           Friend, do we let him go
           In this delusion? let him go from us?
           Not call him back at once, not
           Open his eyes here and now?

      OCTAVIO (_recovering himself out of deep thought_).
        He has now opened _mine_
        And I see more than pleases me.

      QUESTENBERG. What is it?

      OCTAVIO. A curse upon this journey!

      QUESTENBERG. But why so? What is it?

      OCTAVIO. Come, come, friend! I must up
        And follow the ill-omened clue at once
        And see with mine own eyes—come with me now!

      QUESTENBERG. What now? Where go you then?

      OCTAVIO (_hastily_). _To her, herself!_

      QUESTENBERG. _To_ ...

      OCTAVIO (_corrects himself_). To the Duke! Come, let us go!

Octavio meant to say: “To him, to the Duke,” but his tongue slips and he
betrays (to us, at least) by the words “_to her_” that he has clearly
recognized the influence at work behind the famous young warrior’s
rhapsodies in favour of peace.

A still more impressive example was found by O. Rank in Shakespeare. It
occurs in the _Merchant of Venice_, in the famous scene in which the
fortunate suitor makes his choice among the three caskets; and I can
perhaps not do better than read to you now Rank’s short account of it.

“A slip of the tongue which occurs in Shakespeare’s _Merchant of Venice_
(Act III, Sc. 2) is exceedingly fine in the poetic feeling it shows and
in the brilliant way in which it is applied technically. Like the slip
in Wallenstein quoted by Freud in his _Psychopathology of Everyday
Life_, it shows that the poets well understand the mechanism and meaning
of such slips and assume that the audience will also understand them.
Portia, who by her father’s wish has been bound to the choice of a
husband by lot, has so far escaped all the unwelcome suitors by the luck
of fortune. Having at last found in Bassanio the suitor to whom she is
inclined, she fears that he too will choose the wrong casket. She would
like to tell him that even so he may rest assured of her love, but she
is prevented by her oath. In this inner conflict the poet makes her say
to her chosen suitor:

           I pray you tarry; pause a day or two,
           Before you hazard: for, in choosing wrong,
           I lose your company; therefore, forbear awhile:
           There’s something tells me (but it is not love)
           I would not lose you ...
                                       ... I could teach you
           How to choose right, but then I am forsworn;
           So will I never be; so may you miss me;
           But if you do you’ll make me wish a sin,
           That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes,
           They have o’erlooked me, and divided me;
           _One half of me is yours, the other half yours,—
           Mine own, I would say_; but if mine, then yours,
           And so all yours.

Just that which she only meant to indicate subtly to him because she
should really have concealed it from him altogether, namely, that even
before the lot she was his and loved him, this the poet with exquisite
fineness of psychological feeling causes to come to expression in her
slip; and is able, by this artistic device, to relieve the unbearable
uncertainty of the lover as well as the suspense of the audience as to
the issue of the choice.”

And notice, at the end, how subtly Portia reconciles the two
declarations which are contained in the slip, how she resolves the
contradiction between them, and finally even justifies the slip.

                                 ... but if mine, then yours,
           And so all yours.

It has happened that other thinkers outside the field of medicine have
disclosed by an observation the meaning of some error and so anticipated
our efforts in this direction. You all know the witty satirist
Lichtenberg (1742–1799) of whom Goethe said: “Where he makes a joke, a
problem lies concealed.” And occasionally the solution of the problem is
revealed in the joke. Lichtenberg writes in his witty and satirical
_Notes_, “He always read ‘Agamemnon’ for ‘angenommen’ (verb meaning ‘to
take for granted’), so deeply versed was he in Homer.” This really
contains the whole theory of slips in reading.

At the next lecture we will see whether we can agree with the poets in
their conception of the meaning of psychological errors.




                             THIRD LECTURE
               THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS (_continuation_)


At the last lecture it occurred to us to consider the error by itself
alone, apart from its relation to the intended act with which it had
interfered, and we perceived that in certain cases it seemed to betray a
meaning of its own. We said to ourselves that if this conclusion, that
the error has its own meaning, could be established on a larger scale,
that meaning would soon prove more interesting to us than the
investigation of the conditions under which errors arise.

Let us once more agree upon what we understand by the “meaning” of a
mental process. This is nothing else but the intention which it serves
and its place in a mental sequence. In most of the cases we examined we
could substitute for the word “meaning” the words “intention” and
“tendency.” Now was it only a deceptive appearance, or a poetic
glorification of the error, that led us to believe that we could see an
intention in it?

Let us still keep to the examples of slips of the tongue and review a
larger number of such manifestations. We then find whole categories of
cases in which the intention, the meaning, of the slip is quite obvious,
particularly so in those instances in which the opposite of what was
intended is said. The President says in his opening speech: “I declare
the session _closed_.” That is surely not ambiguous. The meaning and
intention of this slip is that he wants to close the session. One might
well say, “he said so himself”; we only take him at his word. Please do
not interrupt me with the objection that this is impossible, that we
know quite well that he wished to open the session, not to close it, and
that he himself whom we have just recognized as the best judge of his
intention will affirm that he meant to open it. In doing so you forget
that we agreed to consider the error by itself; its relation to the
intention which it disturbs will be discussed later. _You_ would be
guilty of an error in logic, by which you would conveniently dispose of
the whole problem under discussion, which in English is called “begging
the question.”

In other cases, where the form of the slip is not exactly the opposite
of what is intended, a contradictory sense may still often come to
expression. “I am not _inclined_ (_geneigt_) to appreciate my
predecessor’s merits.” “Inclined” is not the opposite of “in a position
to” (_geeignet_), but it is an open confession of a thought in sharpest
contradiction to the speaker’s duty to meet the situation gracefully.

In still other cases the slip simply adds a second meaning to the one
intended. The sentence then sounds like a contraction, an abbreviation,
a condensation of several sentences into one. Thus the determined lady
who said: “He may eat and drink whatever _I_ choose.” That is as if she
had said: “He can eat and drink what he chooses, but what does it matter
what he chooses? It is for me to do the choosing!” Slips of the tongue
often give this impression of abbreviation; for instance, when a
professor of anatomy at the end of his lecture on the nasal cavities
asks whether his class has thoroughly understood it and, after a general
reply in the affirmative, goes on to say: “I can hardly believe that
that is so, since persons who can thoroughly understand the nasal
cavities can be counted, even in a city of millions, on _one finger_ ...
I mean, on the fingers of one hand.” The abbreviated sentence has its
own meaning: it says that there is only one person who understands the
subject.

In contrast to these types in which the slip plainly discloses its
meaning are others in which the slip of the tongue conveys nothing
intelligible, and therefore directly controverts our expectations. The
mis-pronunciation by mistake of proper names, or the enunciation of
meaningless sounds, is such a frequent occurrence that this alone would
appear to dispose at once of the question whether all errors have a
meaning. Yet closer inspection of such examples discloses the fact that
it is easily possible to understand such distortions; indeed, that the
difference between these unintelligible cases and the previous more
comprehensible ones is not so very great.

The owner of a horse, on being asked how it was, replied: “O, it may
_stad_—it may _take_ another month.”[14] Asked what he really meant to
say, he answered that he was thinking it was a _sad_ business, and the
words “sad” and “take” together gave rise to _stad_. (Meringer and
Mayer.)

Another man was relating some objectionable incidents and went on: “and
then certain facts were _refilled_.”[15] He explained that he meant to
say these facts were “filthy.” “Revealed” and “filthy” together combine
to form _refilled_. (Meringer and Mayer.)

You will recall the case of the young man who offered to “insort” an
unknown lady. We took the liberty of resolving this word into “insult”
and “escort,” and were quite convinced of this interpretation without
requiring proof of it.[16] From these examples you can see that even
these more obscure cases can be explained as the concurrence, or
_interference_, of two different intentions of speech with one another;
the differences arise only in that in the first type of slip the one
intention has entirely excluded the other, as when the opposite is said;
while in the second type the one intention only succeeds in distorting
or modifying the other, from which arise combinations of a more or less
senseless appearance.

We believe that we have now discovered the secret of a large number of
slips of the tongue. If we keep this clear in mind we shall be able to
comprehend still further groups hitherto entirely mysterious.
Although, for instance, in a case of distortion of a name we cannot
suppose that it is always a matter of a contest between two similar
but different names, yet the second intention is easily perceived.
Distortions of names are common enough apart from slips of the tongue;
they are attempts to liken the name to something derogatory or
degrading, a common form of abuse, which educated persons soon learn
to avoid but nevertheless do not willingly give up. It may be dressed
up as a joke, although one of a very low order. To quote one gross and
ugly example of such a distortion of a name, the name of the President
of the French Republic, _Poincaré_, has lately been transformed into
“_Schweinskarré_.” It is not going much further to assume that some
such abusive intention may also be behind distortions of names
produced by a slip of the tongue. In pursuing our idea, similar
explanations suggest themselves for cases of slips where the effect is
comic or absurd. In the case of the member of parliament who referred
to the “honourable member for Central Hell,” the sober atmosphere of
the House is unexpectedly disturbed by the intrusion of a word that
calls up a ludicrous and unflattering image; we are bound to conclude
from the analogy with certain offensive and abusive expressions that
an impulse has interposed here, to this effect: “You needn’t be taken
in. I don’t mean a word of this. To hell with the fellow!” The same
applies to slips of the tongue which transform quite harmless words
into obscene and indecent ones.[17]

We are familiar with this tendency in certain people intentionally to
convert harmless words into indecent ones for the sake of the amusement
obtained; it passes for wit, and in fact when one hears of a case one at
once asks whether it was intended as a joke or occurred unintentionally
as a slip of the tongue.

Well, we seem to have solved the riddle of errors with comparatively
little trouble! They are not accidents; they are serious mental acts;
they have their meaning; they arise through the concurrence—perhaps
better, the mutual interference—of two different intentions. But now I
can well understand that you want to overwhelm me with a flood of
questions and doubts, which must be answered and resolved before we can
enjoy this first result of our efforts. I certainly do not want to press
any hasty conclusions upon you. Let us coolly consider everything in
turn.

What would you like to say? Whether I think that this explanation
accounts for all cases of slips of the tongue or only for a certain
number? Whether this conception can be extended to the many other types
of errors, to misreading, slips of the pen, forgetting, wrongly
performed actions, mislaying things and so on? What part the factors of
fatigue, excitement, absent-mindedness and distraction of attention play
in regard to the mental nature of errors? Besides this, it is clearly
seen that of the two competing meanings in the slip one is always
manifest, but not always the other. How is one to arrive at the latter?
And if one believes that one has guessed it, how is one to find proof
that this is not merely a probability but the only true meaning? Is
there anything else you wish to ask? If not, then I myself will
continue. I will remind you that we are not really greatly concerned
with errors in themselves, but that we wished to learn from a study of
them something of value from the point of view of psycho-analysis.
Therefore I will put this question: What sort of purposes or tendencies
are these which thus interfere with other intentions, and what is the
relation between the interfering tendency and the other? Thus, as soon
as we have found the answer to the riddle, our efforts begin again.

Very well then; is this the explanation of all cases of slips of the
tongue? I am very much inclined to think so, and for this reason,
because whenever one examines an instance of it this type of solution
may be found. Still, one cannot prove that a slip of the tongue cannot
come to pass without the agency of this mechanism. It may be so: for our
purposes it is a matter of indifference, theoretically; for the
conclusions which we wish to draw by way of an introduction to
psycho-analysis remain valid, even if only a small proportion of the
total incidence of slips of the tongue comes under our explanation, and
this is certainly not so. The next question, whether this explanation
extends to other forms of errors, may be answered by way of anticipation
in the affirmative. You can convince yourselves of it when we turn to
consider examples of slips of the pen, of wrongly performed acts, and so
on. I propose, however, for technical reasons that we should postpone
doing this until we have investigated the slip of the tongue itself more
thoroughly.

The question what significance those factors, which some writers have
placed in the foreground, can now have for us—such factors as
disturbances of the circulation, fatigue, excitement, distraction,
disturbances of attention—demands a more exhaustive reply if we assume
the mental mechanism of slips described above. You will notice that we
do not deny these factors. Indeed, in general it doesn’t often happen
that psycho-analysis contests anything which is maintained in other
quarters; as a rule, psycho-analysis only adds something new to what has
been said; and it does certainly happen on occasion that what has
hitherto been overlooked, and is now supplied by psycho-analysis, is the
most essential part of the matter. The influence of such physiological
predispositions as arise in slight illness, circulatory disturbances and
conditions of fatigue, upon the occurrence of slips of the tongue is to
be admitted without more ado; everyday personal experience may convince
you of it. But how little is explained by this admission! Above all,
these are not necessary conditions of errors. Slips of the tongue may
just as well occur in perfect health and normal conditions. These bodily
factors, therefore, are merely contributory; they only favour and
facilitate the peculiar mental mechanism which produces slips of the
tongue. I once used an illustration for this state of things which I
will repeat here, as I know of no better. Just suppose that on some dark
night I am walking in a lonely neighbourhood and am assaulted by a rogue
who seizes my watch and money, whereupon, since I could not see the
robber’s face clearly, I make my complaint at the police-station in
these words: “Loneliness and darkness have just robbed me of my
valuables.” The police officer might reply to me: “You seem to carry
your support of the extreme mechanistic point of view too far for the
facts. Suppose we put the case thus: Under cover of darkness and
encouraged by the loneliness of the spot, some unknown thief has made
away with your valuables. It appears to me that the essential thing to
be done is to look about for the thief. Perhaps we shall then be able to
take the plunder from him again.”

Psycho-physiological factors such as excitement, absent-mindedness,
distraction of attention, obviously provide very little in the way of
explanation. They are mere phrases; they are screens, and we should not
be deterred from looking behind them. The question is rather what has
here called forth the excitement or the particular diversion of
attention. The influence of sound-values, resemblances between words,
and common associations connecting certain words, must also be
recognized as important. They facilitate the slip by pointing out a path
for it to take. But if there is a path before me does it necessarily
follow that I must go along it? I also require a motive to determining
my choice and, further, some force to propel me forward. These
sound-values and word associations are, therefore, just like the bodily
conditions, the facilitating causes of slips of the tongue, and cannot
provide the real explanation of them. Consider for a moment the enormous
majority of cases in which the words I am using in my speech are not
deranged on account of sound-resemblance to other words, intimate
associations with opposite meanings, or with expressions in common use.
It yet remains to suppose, with the philosopher Wundt, that a slip of
the tongue arises when the tendency to associations gains an ascendance
over the original intention owing to bodily fatigue. This would be quite
plausible if experience did not controvert it by the fact that in a
number of cases the bodily, and in another large group the associative,
predisposing causes are absent.

Particularly interesting to me, however, is your next question, namely,
by what means the two mutually disturbing tendencies may be ascertained.
You probably do not suspect how portentous this question is. You will
agree that one of these tendencies, the one which is interfered with, is
always unmistakable; the person who commits the slip knows it and
acknowledges it. Doubt and hesitation only arise in regard to the other,
what we have called the interfering, tendency. Now we have already
heard, and you will certainly not have forgotten, that in a certain
number of cases this other tendency is equally plain. It is evident in
the result of the slip if only we have the courage to let the slip speak
for itself. The President who said the opposite of what he meant—it is
clear that he wishes to open the session, but equally clear that he
would also like to close it. That is so plain that it needs no
interpreting. But in the other cases, in which the interfering tendency
merely distorts the original without itself coming to full
expression,—how can the interfering tendency be detected in the
distortion?

In one group of cases by a very safe and simple method, by the same
method, that is, by which we establish the tendency that is interfered
with. We enquire of the speaker, who tells us then and there; after
making the slip he restores the word he originally intended. “O, it may
_stad_—no, it may _take_ another month.” Well, the interfering tendency
may be likewise supplied by him. We say, “Now why did you first say
stad?” He replies, “I meant to say it was a sad business”; and in the
other case in which “refilled” was said, the speaker informs you that he
first meant to say it was a filthy business, but controlled himself and
substituted another expression. The discovery of the disturbing tendency
is here as definitely established as that of the disturbed tendency. It
is not without intention that I have selected as examples cases which
owe neither their origin nor their explanation to me or to any supporter
of mine. Still, in both these cases, a certain intervention was
necessary in order to produce the explanation. One had to ask the
speaker why he made the slip, what explanation he could give. Without
that he might have passed it by without seeking to explain it. Being
asked, however, he gave as his answer the first idea that occurred to
him. And see now, this little intervention and the result of it
constitute already a psycho-analysis, a prototype of every
psycho-analytic investigation that we may undertake further.

Now, should I be too suspicious if I were to surmise that, at the very
moment at which psycho-analysis begins to dawn upon you, a resistance to
it instantly raises itself within your mind? Are you not eager to object
that information supplied by the person enquired of, who committed the
slip, is not completely reliable evidence. He naturally wishes, you
think, to meet your request to explain his slip, and so he says the
first thing that he can think of, if it will do at all. There is no
proof that that is actually how the slip arose. It may have been so, but
it may just as well have been otherwise. Something else also might have
occurred to him that would have met the case as well or even better.

It is remarkable how little respect you have, in your hearts, for a
mental fact! Imagine that someone had undertaken a chemical analysis of
a certain substance and had ascertained that one ingredient of it is of
a certain weight, so and so many milligrams. From this weight, thus
arrived at, certain conclusions may be drawn. Do you think now it would
ever occur to a chemist to discredit these conclusions on the ground
that the isolated substance might as well have had some other weight?
Everyone recognizes the fact that it actually had this weight and no
other, and builds further conclusions confidently on that fact. But when
it is a question of a mental fact, that it _was_ such an idea and no
other that occurred to the person when questioned, you will not accept
that as valid, but say that something else might as well have occurred
to him! The truth is that you have an illusion of a psychic freedom
within you which you do not want to give up. I regret to say that on
this point I find myself in sharpest opposition to your views.

Now you will break off here only to take up your resistance at another
point. You will continue: “We understand that it lies in the peculiar
technique of psycho-analysis to bring the person analysed to give the
solution of its problems. Let us take another example, that in which the
after-dinner speaker calls upon the company to _hiccough_ to the health
of their guest. The interfering tendency is, you say, in this case to
ridicule; this it is which opposes the intention to do honour. But this
is a mere interpretation on your part, based on observations made
independently of the slip. If in this case you were to question the
perpetrator of the slip he would not confirm your view that he intended
an insult; on the contrary, he would vehemently deny it. Why do you not
abandon your undemonstrable interpretation in the face of this flat
denial?”

Yes, this time you have lighted upon something formidable. I can picture
to myself that unknown speaker; he is probably an assistant of the guest
of honour, perhaps already a junior lecturer himself, a young man with
the brightest prospects. I will press him and ask whether he is sure he
did not perceive some feeling in himself antagonistic to the demand that
he should pay honour to his chief. A nice fuss there is! He becomes
impatient and suddenly bursts out at me: “Look here, enough of this
cross-examination, or I’ll make myself disagreeable! You will ruin my
career with your suspicions. I simply said “_aufstossen_” instead of
“_anstossen_,” because I’d already said “_auf_” twice before it. It’s
the thing that Meringer calls a perseveration, and there’s nothing else
to be read into it. Do you understand me? That’s enough.” H’m, this is a
startling reaction, a truly energetic repudiation. I see that there is
nothing more to be done with the young man, but I think to myself that
he betrays a strong personal interest in making out that his slip has no
meaning. You will perhaps agree too that he has no right to become so
uncivil over a purely theoretical investigation, but after all, you will
think, he must know what he wanted to say and what not.

O, so he must? That is perhaps still open to question.

Now you think you have me in a trap. “So that is your technique,” I hear
you say. “When the person who commits a slip gives an explanation which
fits your views then you declare him to be the final authority on the
subject. He says so himself! But if what he says does not suit your
book, then you suddenly assert that what he says does not count, one
need not believe it.”

Certainly that is so. But I can give you another instance of a similarly
monstrous procedure. When an accused man confesses to a deed the judge
believes him, but when he denies it the judge does not believe him. Were
it otherwise the law could not be administered, and in spite of
occasional miscarriages you will admit that the system, on the whole,
works well.

“Well, but are you a judge, and is the person who commits a slip to be
accused before you? Is a slip of the tongue a crime?”

Perhaps we need not reject even this comparison. But see now to what
deep-seated differences our attempt to investigate the apparently
harmless problems of errors has brought us, differences which at this
stage we do not know in the least how to reconcile. I suggest that we
should make a temporary compromise on the basis of the analogy with the
judge and the prisoner. You shall grant me that the meaning of an error
admits of no doubt when the subject of the analysis acknowledges it
himself. I, in turn, will admit that a direct proof for the suspected
meaning cannot be obtained if the subject refuses us the information,
and, of course, this applies also when the subject is not present to
give us the information. As also in legal proceedings, we are then
thrown back upon indications in order to form a decision, the truth of
which is sometimes more and sometimes less probable. At law, for
practical reasons, guilt has to be declared also on circumstantial
evidence. There is no such necessity here; but neither are we bound to
refrain from considering such evidence. It is a mistake to believe that
a science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and
it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand only made by those
who feel a craving for authority in some form and a need to replace the
religious catechism by something else, even if it be a scientific one.
Science in its catechism has but few apodictic precepts; it consists
mainly of statements which it has developed to varying degrees of
probability. The capacity to be content with these approximations to
certainty and the ability to carry on constructive work despite the lack
of final confirmation are actually a mark of the scientific habit of
mind.

But where shall we find a starting-point for our interpretations, and
the indications for our proof, in cases where the subject under analysis
says nothing to explain the meaning of the error? From various sources.
First, by analogy with similar phenomena not produced by error, as when
we maintain that the distortion of a name by mistake has the same
intention to ridicule behind it as intentional distortion of names. And
then, from the mental situation in which the error arose, from our
knowledge of the character of the person who commits it, and of the
feelings active in him before the error, to which it may be a response.
As a rule what happens is that we find the meaning of the error
according to general principles; and this, to begin with, is only a
conjecture, a tentative solution, proof being discovered later by an
examination of the mental situation. Sometimes it is necessary to await
further developments, which have been, so to speak, foreshadowed by the
error, before we can find confirmation of our conjecture.

I cannot easily give you evidence of this if I have to limit myself to
the field of slips of the tongue, although even here I have a few good
examples. The young man who offered to “insort” the lady is in fact very
shy; the lady whose husband may eat and drink what _she_ likes I know to
be one of those managing women who rule the household with a rod of
iron. Or take the following case: At a general meeting of a club a young
member made a violent attack in a speech, in the course of which he
spoke of the officers of the society as “_Lenders_ of the Committee,”
which appears to be a substitute for _Members_ of the Committee.[18] We
should conjecture that against his attack some interfering tendency was
active which was itself in some way connected with the idea of
_lending_. As a matter of fact an informant tells us that the speaker is
in constant money difficulties and was actually attempting to raise
money at the time. So the interfering tendency really is to be
translated into the thought: “Be more moderate in your opposition: these
are the people whom you want to lend you money.”

If I diverge into the field of other kinds of errors I can give you a
wide selection of examples of such circumstantial evidence.

If anyone forgets an otherwise familiar proper name and has difficulty
in retaining it in his memory—even with an effort—it is not hard to
guess that he has something against the owner of the name and does not
like to think of him; consider in the light of this the following notes
on the mental situation in which an error of this kind was made.

A Mr. Y. fell in love with a lady, who did not return the feeling and
shortly after married a Mr. X. Although Mr. Y. had already known Mr. X.
for some time, and even had business relations with him, he forgets his
name over and over again, so that he frequently has to ask someone the
man’s name when it is necessary to write to him.[19] Obviously Mr. Y.
wants to obliterate all knowledge of his fortunate rival. “Never thought
of shall he be.”

Another example: a lady inquires of a doctor about a common
acquaintance, calling her by her maiden name. She has forgotten the
married name. She admits that she strongly objected to the marriage and
dislikes the husband intensely.[20]

Later we shall have much to say in other connections in regard to the
forgetting of names; at the moment we are chiefly interested in the
‘mental situation’ in which the lapse of memory occurs.

The forgetting of resolutions can in general be referred to an opposing
current of feeling which is against carrying out the intention. It is
not only we psycho-analysts who hold this view, however; it is the
ordinary attitude of everyone in their daily affairs, which they only
deny in theory. The protégé whose patron apologizes for having forgotten
his request is not pacified by such an apology. He thinks immediately:
“It’s evidently nothing to him; he promised, but he doesn’t mean to do
it.” Forgetting is therefore criticized even in life, in certain
connections, and the difference between the popular and the
psycho-analytic conception of these errors seems to be dispelled.
Imagine a hostess receiving a guest with the words: “What, is it to-day
you were coming? I quite forgot that I had asked you for to-day”; or a
young man confessing to his beloved that he had forgotten all about the
appointment they had arranged on the last occasion. He will never admit
it; he will rather invent on the spur of the moment the most wildly
improbable hindrances which prevented his coming and made it impossible
for him to communicate with her from that day to this. We all know that
in military service the excuse of having forgotten is worthless and
saves no one from punishment; the system is recognized as justifiable.
Here everyone is suddenly agreed that a certain mistake has a meaning
and what that meaning is. Why are they not consistent enough to extend
their insight to other errors and then openly acknowledge it? There is
naturally also an answer to this.

If the meaning of forgetting resolutions is so little open to doubt in
the minds of people in general you will be the less surprised to find
that writers employ such mistakes in a similar sense. Those of you who
have seen or read Shaw’s _Cæsar and Cleopatra_ will recall that Cæsar,
when departing in the last scene, is pursued by the feeling that there
was something else he intended to do which he had now forgotten. At last
it turns out what it is: to say farewell to Cleopatra. By this small
device the author attempts to ascribe to the great Cæsar a feeling of
superiority which he did not possess and to which he did not at all
aspire. You can learn from historical sources that Cæsar arranged for
Cleopatra to follow him to Rome and that she was living there with her
little Cæsarion when Cæsar was murdered, whereupon she fled the city.

The cases of forgetting resolutions are as a rule so clear that they are
of little use for our purpose, which is to discover in the mental
situation indications of the meaning of the error. Let us turn,
therefore, to a particularly ambiguous and obscure form of error, that
of losing and mislaying objects. It will certainly seem incredible to
you that the person himself could have any purpose in losing things,
which is often such a painful accident. But there are innumerable
instances of this kind: A young man loses a pencil to which he was much
attached. A few days before he had had a letter from his brother-in-law
which concluded with these words: “I have neither time nor inclination
at present to encourage you in your frivolity and idleness.”[21] Now the
pencil was a present from this brother-in-law. Had it not been for this
coincidence we could not of course have maintained that the loss
involved any intention to get rid of the gift. Similar cases are very
numerous. One loses objects when one has quarrelled with the giver and
no longer wants to be reminded of him, or again, when one has tired of
them and wants an excuse to provide oneself with something different and
better. Dropping, breaking, and destroying things of course serves a
similar purpose in regard to the object. Can it be considered accidental
when, just before his birthday, a child loses and damages his
possessions, for instance, his watch and his schoolbag?

Anyone who has experienced often enough the annoyance of not being able
to find something which he has himself put away will certainly be
unwilling to believe that he could have had any intention in so doing.
And yet cases are not at all rare in which the circumstances attendant
on the act of mislaying point to a tendency to put the object aside
temporarily or permanently. Perhaps the best example of this kind is the
following.

A young man told me this story: “A few years ago there were
misunderstandings between me and my wife; I thought her too cold, and
though I willingly acknowledged her excellent qualities we lived
together without affection. One day, on coming in from a walk, she
brought me a book which she had bought me because she thought it would
interest me. I thanked her for her little attention, promised to read
the book, put it among my things and never could find it again. Months
passed by and occasionally I thought of this derelict book and tried in
vain to find it. About six months later my dear mother, who lived some
distance away, fell ill. My wife left our house to go and nurse her
mother-in-law, who became seriously ill, giving my wife an opportunity
of showing her best qualities. One evening I came home full of
enthusiasm and gratitude towards my wife. I walked up to my writing desk
and opened a certain drawer in it, without a definite intention but with
a kind of somnambulistic sureness, and there before me lay the lost book
which I had so often looked for.”

With the disappearance of the motive the inability to find the mislaid
object also came to an end.

I could multiply this collection of examples indefinitely; but I will
not do so now. In my _Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life_ (first
published in 1901) you will find plenty of examples for the study of
errors.[22] All these examples demonstrate the same thing over and over
again; they make it probable to you that mistakes have a meaning and
they show you how the meaning can be guessed or confirmed from the
attendant circumstances. I restrict myself rather to-day, because our
intention here was limited to studying these phenomena with a view to
obtaining an introduction to psycho-analysis. There are only two groups
of occurrences into which I must still go, the accumulated and combined
errors, and the confirmation of our interpretations by subsequent
events.

Accumulated and combined errors are certainly the finest flowers of the
species. If we were only concerned to prove that errors had a meaning,
we should have limited ourselves to them at the outset, for the meaning
in them is unmistakable, even to the dullest intelligence, and strong
enough to impress the most critical judgement. The repetition of the
occurrences betrays a persistence which is hardly ever an attribute of
chance, but which fits well with the idea of design. Further, the
exchanging of one kind of mistake for another shows us what is the most
important and essential element in the error; and that is, not its form,
or the means of which it makes use, but the _tendency_ which makes use
of it and can achieve its end in the most various ways. Thus I will give
you a case of repeated forgetting: Ernest Jones relates that he once
allowed a letter to lie on his writing desk for several days for some
unknown reason. At last he decided to post it, but received it back from
the dead-letter office, for he had forgotten to address it. After he had
addressed it he took it to post but this time without a stamp. At this
point he finally had to admit to himself his objection to sending the
letter at all.

In another case, taking up a thing by mistake is combined with mislaying
it. A lady travelled to Rome with her brother-in-law, a famous artist.
The visitor was much fêted by the Germans living in Rome and received,
among other things, a present of an antique gold medal. The lady was
vexed because her brother-in-law did not appreciate the fine specimen
highly enough. After her sister had arrived she returned home and
discovered, upon unpacking, that she had brought the medal with her—how,
she did not know. She wrote at once to her brother-in-law telling him
that she would send the stolen property back to him the next day. But
the next day the medal was so cleverly mislaid that it could not be
discovered and could not be returned, and then it began to dawn upon the
lady what her “absent-mindedness” had meant, namely, that she wanted to
keep the work of art for herself.[23]

I have already given you an example of a combination of forgetfulness
with an error, in the case in which someone forgets an appointment, and
a second time, with the firm intention of not forgetting it again,
appears at an hour which is not the appointed one. A quite analogous
case was told me from his own experience by a friend who pursues
literary as well as scientific interests. He said: “Some years ago I
accepted election to the Council of a certain literary society because I
hoped that the society might at some time be useful to me in getting a
play of mine produced; and, although not much interested, I attended the
meetings regularly every Friday. A few months ago I received an
assurance that my play would be produced at a theatre in F. and since
then it has invariably happened that I _forget_ to attend the meetings
of the society. When I read your writings on this subject, I reproached
myself with my meanness in staying away now that these people can no
longer be of use to me and determined on no account to forget on the
following Friday. I kept reminding myself of my resolution until I
carried it out and stood at the door of the meeting-room. To my
amazement it was closed and the meeting was already over! I had made a
mistake in the day of the week and it was then Saturday!”

It would be tempting to collect more of these examples, but I will pass
on and, instead, let you glance at those cases in which interpretation
has to wait for confirmation in the future.

The main condition in these cases is, as we might expect, that the
mental situation at the time is unknown or cannot be ascertained. At the
moment, therefore, our interpretation is no more than a supposition to
which we ourselves would not ascribe too much weight. Later, however,
something happens which shows us how well justified our previous
interpretation was. I was once the guest of a young married couple and
heard the young wife laughingly describe her latest experience, how the
day after the return from the honeymoon she had called for her sister
and gone shopping with her as in former times, while her husband went to
his business. Suddenly she noticed a man on the other side of the street
and, nudging her sister, said, “Look, there goes Mr. K.” She had
forgotten that this man had been her husband for some weeks. A shudder
went over me as I heard the story, but I dared not draw the inference.
Several years later the little incident came back to my mind after this
marriage had come to a most unhappy end.

Maeder tells a story of a lady who had forgotten to try on her
wedding-dress the day before the wedding, to the despair of the
dressmaker, and remembered it only late in the evening. He connects it
with the fact that soon after the marriage she was divorced by her
husband. I know a woman now divorced from her husband who, in managing
her money-affairs, frequently signed documents with her maiden name,
many years before she really resumed it. I know of other women who lost
their wedding-rings on the honeymoon and know, too, that the course of
the marriage lent meaning to this accident. And now one striking example
more, with a better ending. It is told of a famous German chemist that
his marriage never took place because he forgot the hour of the ceremony
and went to the laboratory instead of to the church. He was wise enough
to let the matter rest with one attempt, and died unmarried at a ripe
age.

Perhaps the idea has also come to you that in these examples mistakes
seem to have replaced the omens or portents of the ancients. And indeed,
certain kinds of portents were nothing but errors, for instance, when
anyone stumbled or fell down. It is true that another group of omens
bore the character of objective events rather than of subjective acts.
But you would not believe how difficult it is sometimes to decide
whether a specific instance belongs to the first category or to the
second. The act knows so often how to disguise itself as a passive
experience.

Everyone of us who can look back over a fairly long experience of life
would probably say that he might have spared himself many
disappointments and painful surprises, if he had had the courage and
resolution to interpret as omens the little mistakes which he noticed in
his intercourse with others, and to regard them as signs of tendencies
still in the background. For the most part one does not dare to do this;
one has an impression that one would become superstitious again by a
circuitous scientific path. And then, not all omens come true, and our
theories will show you how it is that they need not all come true.




                             FOURTH LECTURE
                THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS (_conclusion_)


That errors have a meaning we may certainly set down as established by
our efforts up to this point, and may take this conclusion as a basis
for our further investigations. Let me once more emphasize the fact that
we do not maintain—and for our purposes do not need to maintain—that
every single mistake which occurs has a meaning, although I think that
probable. It is enough for us to prove that such a meaning is relatively
frequent in the various forms of errors. In this respect, by the way,
the various forms show certain differences. Some cases of slips of the
tongue, slips of the pen, and so on, may be the effect of a purely
physiological cause, though I cannot believe this possible of those
errors which depend upon forgetfulness (forgetting of names or
intentions, mislaying, and so on); losing possessions is in all
probability to be recognized as unintentional in some cases; altogether
our conceptions are only to a certain extent applicable to the mistakes
which occur in daily life. These limitations should be borne in mind by
you when we proceed on the assumption that errors are mental acts
arising from the mutual interference of two intentions.

This is the first result of our psycho-analysis. Hitherto psychology has
known nothing of such interferences or of the possibility that they
could occasion manifestations of this kind. We have widened the domain
of mental phenomena to a very considerable extent and have won for
psychology phenomena which were never before accredited to it.

Let us dwell for a moment on the proposition that errors are “mental
acts.” Does this mean any more than our former statement, that they have
a meaning? I do not think so; on the contrary, it is a more indefinite
statement and one more open to misunderstanding. Everything that can be
observed in mental life will be designated at one time or another as a
mental phenomenon. It depends, however, whether the particular mental
phenomenon is directly due to bodily, organic or material agencies, in
which case it does not fall to psychology for investigation; or whether
it arose directly from other mental processes, behind which at some
point the succession of organic agencies then begins. We have in mind
the latter state of things when we describe a phenomenon as a mental
process, and it is therefore more expedient to put our statement in this
form: The phenomenon has meaning; and by meaning we understand
significance, intention, tendency and a position in a sequence of mental
concatenations.

There is another group of occurrences which is very closely related to
errors but for which this name is not suitable. We call them
‘accidental’ and symptomatic acts. They also appear to be unmotivated,
insignificant and unimportant but, in addition to this, they have very
clearly the feature of superfluity. They are, on the one hand,
distinguishable from errors by the absence of any second intention to
which they are opposed and which they disturb; on the other hand, they
merge without any definite line of demarcation into the gestures and
movements which we regard as expressions of the emotions. To this class
of accidental performances belong all those apparently purposeless acts
which we carry out, as though in play, with clothing, parts of the body,
objects within reach; also the omission of such acts; and again the
tunes which we hum to ourselves. I maintain that all such performances
have meaning and are explicable in the same way as are errors, that they
are slight indications of other more important mental processes, and are
genuine mental acts. I propose, however, not to linger over this further
extension of the field of mental phenomena, but to return to the errors;
for by a consideration of them problems of importance in the enquiry
into psycho-analysis can be worked out much more clearly.

Undoubtedly, the most interesting questions which we formulated while
considering errors, and have not yet answered, are the following: We
said that errors result from the mutual interference of two different
intentions, of which one may be called the intention interfered with,
and the other the interfering tendency. The intentions interfered with
give rise to no further questions, but concerning the others we wish to
know, first, what kind of intentions these are that arise as disturbers
of others, and secondly, what are the relations between the interfering
tendencies and those which suffer the interference?

Allow me to take slips of the tongue again as representative of the
whole series, and to answer the second question before the first.

The interfering tendency in the slip of the tongue may be connected in
meaning with the intention interfered with, in which case the former
contains a contradiction of the latter, or corrects, or supplements it.
Or, in other more obscure and more interesting cases, the interfering
tendency may have no connection whatever in meaning with the intention
interfered with.

Evidence for the first of these two relationships can be found without
difficulty in the examples already studied and in others similar to
them. In almost all cases of slips of the tongue where the opposite of
what is meant is said the interfering tendency expresses the opposite
meaning to that of the intention interfered with, and the slip is the
expression of the conflict between two incompatible impulses. “I declare
the meeting open, but would prefer to have closed it” is the meaning of
the President’s slip. A political paper which had been accused of
corruption defends itself in an article meant to culminate with the
words: “Our readers will testify that we have always laboured for the
public benefit in the most _disinterested_ manner.” But the editor
entrusted with the composition of the defence wrote “in the most
_interested_ manner.” That is to say, he thinks, “I have to write this
stuff, but I know better.” A representative of the people, urging that
the Kaiser should be told the truth “_rückhaltslos_” (unreservedly),
hears an inner voice terrified at his boldness, and by a slip of the
tongue transforms _rückhaltslos_ into “_rückgratslos_” (without
backbone, ineffectually).

In the examples already given, which produce an impression of
contraction and abbreviation, the process represents a correction,
addition, or continuation, in which a second tendency manifests itself
alongside the first. “Things were then revealed, but better say it
straight out, they were filthy, therefore,—things were then _refilled_.”
“The people who understand this subject may be counted on the fingers of
one hand, but no, there is really only one person who understands it,
very well then,—can be counted on _one finger_.” Or, “my husband can eat
and drink what he likes, but, you know, _I_ don’t permit him to like
this and that; so then,—he may eat and drink what _I_ like.” In all
these cases the slip arises from the content of the intention interfered
with, or is directly connected with it.

The other kind of relationship between the two interfering tendencies
seems strange. If the interfering tendency has nothing to do with the
content of the one interfered with, whence comes it then, and how does
it happen to make itself manifest just at that point? Observation, which
alone can supply the answer to this, shows that the interfering tendency
proceeds from a train of thought which has occupied the person shortly
before and then reveals itself in this way as an after-effect,
irrespective of whether or not it has already been expressed in speech.
It is really therefore to be described as a perseveration, though not
necessarily a perseveration of spoken words. An associative connection
between the interfering tendency and that interfered with is not lacking
here either, though it is not found in the content but is artificially
established, sometimes with considerable “forcing” of the connections.

Here is a simple example of this which I observed myself. Once in the
beautiful Dolomites I met two Viennese ladies who were starting for a
walking-tour. I accompanied them part of the way and we discussed the
pleasures, but also the trials, of this way of life. One of the ladies
admitted that spending the day like this entailed much discomfort. “It
certainly is very unpleasant to tramp all day in the sun till one’s
blouse ... and things are soaked through.” In this sentence she had to
overcome a slight hesitation at one point. Then she continued: “But
then, when one gets _nach Hose_ and can change....” (_Hose_ means
drawers: the lady meant to say _nach Hause_ which means _home_). We did
not analyse this slip, but I am sure you will easily understand it. The
lady’s intention had been to enumerate a more complete list of her
clothes, “blouse, chemise and drawers.” From motives of propriety,
mention of the drawers (_Hose_) was omitted; but in the next sentence,
the content of which is quite independent, the unuttered word came to
light as a distortion of the word it resembled in sound, _home_
(_Hause_).

Now we can turn at last to the main question which has been so long
postponed, namely, what kind of tendencies these are which bring
themselves to expression in this unusual way by interfering with other
intentions. They are evidently very various, yet our aim is to find some
element common to them all. If we examine a series of examples for this
purpose we shall soon find that they fall into three groups. To the
_first_ group belong the cases in which the interfering tendency is
known to the speaker and, moreover, was felt by him before the slip.
Thus, in the case of the slip “refilled,” the speaker not only admitted
that he had criticized the events in question as “filthy,” but further,
that he had had the intention, which he subsequently reversed, of
expressing this opinion in words. A _second_ group is formed by other
cases in which the interfering tendency is likewise recognized by the
speaker as his own, but he is not aware that it was active in him before
the slip. He therefore accepts our interpretation, but remains to some
extent surprised by it. Examples of this attitude are probably more
easily found in other errors than in slips of the tongue. In the _third_
group the interpretation of the interfering tendency is energetically
repudiated by the speaker; not only does he dispute that it was active
in him before the slip, but he will maintain that it is altogether
entirely alien to him. Recall the case about hiccoughing and the
positively discourteous rebuff which I brought upon myself by detecting
the interfering tendency. You know that in our attitude towards these
cases you and I are still far from an agreement. I should make nothing
of the after-dinner speaker’s denial and hold fast to my interpretation
unwaveringly, while you, I imagine, are still impressed by his vehemence
and are wondering whether one should not forego the interpretation of
such errors and let them pass for purely physiological acts, as in the
days before analysis. I can imagine what it is that alarms you. My
interpretation includes the assumption that tendencies of which a
speaker knows nothing can express themselves through him and that I can
deduce them from various indications. You hesitate before a conclusion
so novel and so pregnant with consequences. I understand that, and admit
that up to a point you are justified. But let one thing be clear: if you
intend to carry to its logical conclusion the conception of errors which
has been confirmed by so many examples, you must decide to make this
startling assumption. If you cannot do this, you will have to abandon
again the understanding of errors which you had only just begun to
obtain.

Let us pause a moment on that which unites the three groups and is
common to the three mechanisms of a slip of the tongue. Fortunately this
common element is unmistakable. In the first two groups the interfering
tendency is admitted by the speaker; in the first, there is the
additional fact that it showed itself immediately before the slip. But
in both cases _it has been forced back.[24] The speaker had determined
not to convert the idea into speech and then it happens that he makes a
slip of the tongue; that is to say, the tendency which is debarred from
expression asserts itself against his will and gains utterance, either
by altering the expression of the intention permitted by him, or by
mingling with it, or actually by setting itself in place of it._ This
then is the mechanism of a slip of the tongue.

For my own part I can bring the process in the third group also into
perfect harmony with the mechanism here described. I need only assume
that these three groups are differentiated by the varying degrees to
which the forcing back of an intention is effective. In the first group,
the intention is present and makes itself perceptible before the words
are spoken; not until then does it suffer the rejection for which it
indemnifies itself in the slip. In the second group the rejection
reaches further back; the intention is no longer perceptible even before
the speech. It is remarkable that this does not hinder it in the least
from being the active cause of the slip! But this state of things
simplifies the explanation of the process in the third group. I shall be
bold enough to assume that a tendency can still express itself by an
error though it has been debarred from expression for a long time,
perhaps for a very long time, has not made itself perceptible at all,
and can therefore be directly repudiated by the speaker. But leaving
aside the problem of the third group, you must conclude from the other
cases that _a suppression (Unterdrückung) of a previous intention to say
something is the indispensable condition for the occurrence of a slip of
the tongue_.

We may now claim to have made further progress in the understanding of
errors. We not only know them to be mental phenomena in which meaning
and purpose are recognizable, not only know that they arise from the
mutual interference of two different intentions, but in addition we know
that, for one of these intentions to be able to express itself by
interfering with another, it must itself have been subject to some
hindrance against its operation. It must first be itself interfered
with, before it can interfere with others. Naturally this does not give
us a complete explanation of the phenomena which we call errors. We see
at once further questions arising, and in general we suspect that as we
progress towards comprehension the more numerous will be the occasions
for new questions. We might ask, for instance, why the matter does not
proceed much more simply. If the intention to restrain a certain
tendency instead of carrying it into effect is present in the mind, then
this restraint ought to succeed, so that nothing whatever of the
tendency gains expression, or else it might fail so that the
restrained tendency achieves full expression. But errors are
_compromise_-formations; they express part-success and part-failure for
each of the two intentions; the threatened intention is neither entirely
suppressed nor, apart from some instances, does it force itself through
intact. We can imagine that special conditions must be present for the
occurrence of such interference (or compromise)-formations, but we
cannot even conjecture of what kind they may be. Nor do I think that we
could discover these unknown circumstances by penetrating further into
the study of errors. It will be necessary first to examine thoroughly
yet other obscure fields of mental life: only the analogies to be met
with there can give us courage to form those assumptions which are
requisite for a more searching elucidation of errors. And one other
point! To work from slight indications, as we constantly do in this
field, is not without its dangers. There is a mental disorder called
combinatory paranoia in which the practice of utilizing such small
indications is carried beyond all limits, and I naturally do not contend
that the conclusions which are built up on such a basis are throughout
correct. Only by the breadth of our observations, by the accumulation of
similar impressions from the most varied forms of mental life, can we
guard against this danger.

So now we will leave the analysis of errors. But there is one thing more
which I might impress upon you: to keep in mind, as a model, the method
by which we have studied these phenomena. You can perceive from these
examples what the aim of our psychology is. Our purpose is not merely to
describe and classify the phenomena, but to conceive them as brought
about by the play of forces in the mind, as expressions of tendencies
striving towards a goal, which work together or against one another. We
are endeavouring to attain a _dynamic conception_ of mental phenomena.
In this conception, the trends we merely infer are more prominent than
the phenomena we perceive.

So we will probe no further into errors; but we may still take a
fleeting glimpse over the breadth of this whole field, in the course of
which we shall both meet with things already known and come upon the
tracks of others that are new. In so doing, we will keep to the division
into three groups of slips of the tongue, made at the beginning of our
study, together with the co-ordinate forms of slips of the pen,
misreading, mis-hearing; of forgetting with its subdivisions according
to the object forgotten (proper names, foreign words, resolutions,
impressions); and of mislaying, mistaking, and losing, objects.
Mistakes, in so far as they concern us, are to be grouped partly under
the head of forgetting, partly under acts erroneously performed (picking
up the wrong objects, etc.).

We have already treated slips of the tongue in great detail, yet there
is still something to add. There are certain small affective
manifestations related to slips of the tongue which are not entirely
without interest. No one likes to think he has made a slip of the
tongue; one often fails to hear it when made by oneself, but never when
made by someone else. Slips of the tongue are in a certain sense
infectious; it is not at all easy to speak of them without making them
oneself. It is not hard to detect the motivation of even the most
trifling forms of them, although these do not throw any particular light
on hidden mental processes. If, for instance, anyone pronounces a long
vowel as a short one, in consequence of a disturbance over the word, no
matter how motivated, he will as a result soon after lengthen a short
vowel and commit a new slip in compensation for the first. The same
thing occurs if anyone pronounces a diphthong indistinctly and
carelessly, for instance, “ew” or “oy” as “i”; he tries to correct it by
changing a subsequent “i” into “ew” or “oy.” Some consideration relating
to the hearer seems to be behind this behaviour, as though he were not
to be allowed to think that the speaker is indifferent how he treats his
mother-tongue. The second, compensating distortion actually has the
purpose of drawing the hearer’s attention to the first and assuring him
that it has not escaped the speaker either. The most frequent,
insignificant, and simple forms of slips consist in contractions and
anticipations in inconspicuous parts of the speech. In a long sentence,
for instance, slips of the tongue would be of the kind in which the last
word intended influences the sound of an earlier word. This gives an
impression of a certain impatience to be done with the sentence, and in
general it points to a certain resistance against the communication of
this sentence, or the speech altogether. From this we come to
border-line cases, in which the differences between the
psycho-analytical and the ordinary physiological conception of slips of
the tongue become merged. We assume that in these cases a disturbing
tendency is opposing the intended speech; but it can only betray its
presence and not what its own purpose is. The interference which it
causes follows some sound-influence or associative connection and may be
regarded as a distraction of attention away from the intended speech.
But neither in this distraction of attention, nor in the associative
tendency which has been activated, lies the essence of the occurrence;
the essence lies rather in the hint the occurrence gives of the presence
of some other intention interfering with the intended speech, the nature
of which cannot in this case be discovered from its effects, as is
possible in all the more pronounced cases of slips of the tongue.

Slips of the pen, to which I now turn, are so like slips of the tongue
in their mechanism that no new points of view are to be expected from
them. Perhaps a small addition to our knowledge from this group will
content us. Those very common little slips of the pen, contractions,
anticipations of later words, particularly of the last words, point to a
general distaste for writing and to an impatience to be done; more
pronounced effects in slips of the pen allow the nature and intention of
the interference to be recognized. In general, if one finds a slip of
the pen in a letter one knows that the writer’s mind was not working
smoothly at the moment; what was the matter one cannot always establish.
Slips of the pen are frequently as little noticed by those who make them
as slips of the tongue. The following observation is striking in this
connection. There are, of course, some persons who have the habit of
always re-reading every letter they write before sending it. Others do
not do this; but if the latter make an exception and re-read a letter
they then always have an opportunity of finding and correcting a
striking slip of the pen. How is this to be explained? It almost looks
as if such people knew that they had made a slip in writing the letter.
Are we really to believe that this is so?

There is an interesting problem connected with the practical
significance of slips of the pen. You may recall the case of the
murderer H. who managed, by asserting himself to be a bacteriologist, to
obtain cultures of highly dangerous disease-germs from scientific
institutions, but used them for the purpose of doing away in this most
modern fashion with people connected with him. This man once complained
to the authorities of one of these institutions about the
ineffectiveness of the cultures sent him, but committed a slip of the
pen and, instead of the words “in my experiments on mice and guinea-pigs
(_Mäusen und Meerschweinchen_)”, the words “in my experiments on people
(_Menschen_)” were plainly legible. This slip even attracted the
attention of the doctors at the institute but, so far as I know, they
drew no conclusion from it. Now, what do you think? Would it not have
been better if the doctors had taken the slip of the pen as a confession
and started an investigation so that the murderer’s proceedings might
have been arrested in time? In this case, does not ignorance of our
conception of errors result in neglect which, in actuality, may be very
important? Well, I know that such a slip of the pen would certainly
rouse great suspicion in me; but there is an important objection against
regarding it as a confession. The matter is not so simple. The slip of
the pen is certainly an indication but, alone, it would not have
justified an enquiry. It does indeed betray that the man is occupied
with the thought of infecting human beings; but it does not show with
certainty whether this thought is a definite plan to do harm or a mere
phantasy of no practical importance. It is even possible that a person
making such a slip will deny, with the soundest subjective
justification, the existence of such a phantasy in himself, and will
reject the idea as a thing utterly alien to him. Later, when we come to
consider the difference between psychical reality and material reality
you will be better able to appreciate these possibilities. But this
again is a case in which an error was found subsequently to have
unsuspected significance.

Misreading brings us to a mental situation which is clearly different
from that of slips of the tongue or the pen. One of the two conflicting
tendencies is here replaced by a sensory excitation and is perhaps
therefore less tenacious. What one is reading is not a product of one’s
own mind, as is that which one is going to write. In the large majority
of cases, therefore, misreading consists in complete substitution. A
different word is substituted for the word to be read, without there
necessarily being any connection in the content between the text and the
effect of the mistake, and usually by means of a resemblance between the
words. Lichtenberg’s example of this, “_Agamemnon_” instead of
“_angenommen_,” is the best of this group. To discover the interfering
tendency which causes the mistake one may put aside the original text
altogether; the analytic investigation may begin with two questions:
What is the first idea occurring in free association to the effect of
the misreading (the substitute), and in what circumstances did the
misreading occur? Occasionally a knowledge of the latter is sufficient
in itself to explain the misreading, as, for instance, when someone
wandering about a strange town, driven by urgent needs, reads the word
“_Closethaus_” on a large sign on the first storey. He has just time to
wonder that the board has been fixed at that height when he discovers
that the word on it is actually “_Corsethaus_.” In other cases where
there is a lack of connection in content between the text and the slip a
thorough analysis is necessary, which cannot be accomplished without
practice in psycho-analytic technique and confidence in it. But it is
not usually so difficult to come by the explanation of a case of
misreading. In the example “_Agamemnon_,” the substituted word betrays
without further difficulty the line of thought from which the
disturbance arose. In this time of war, for instance, it is very common
for one to read everywhere names of towns, generals, and military
expressions, which are continually in one’s ears, wherever one sees a
word at all resembling them. Whatever interests and occupies the mind
takes the place of what is alien and as yet uninteresting. The shadows
of thoughts in the mind dim the new perceptions.

Another kind of misreading is possible, in which the text itself arouses
the disturbing tendency, whereupon it is usually changed into its
opposite. Someone is required to read something which he dislikes, and
analysis convinces him that a strong wish to reject what is read is
responsible for the alteration.

In the first-mentioned, more frequent cases of misreading two factors to
which we ascribed great importance in the mechanism of errors are
inconspicuous; these are, the conflict between two tendencies and the
forcing back of one of them which compensates itself by producing the
error. Not that anything contradictory of this occurs in misreading, but
nevertheless the importunity of the train of thought tending to the
mistake is far more conspicuous than the restraint which it may have
previously undergone. Just these two factors are most clearly observable
in the different situations in which errors occur through forgetfulness.

The forgetting of resolutions has positively but one meaning; the
interpretation of it, as we have heard, is not denied even by the
layman. The tendency interfering with the resolution is always an
opposing one, an unwillingness, concerning which it only remains to
enquire why it does not come to expression in a different and less
disguised form; for the existence of this opposing tendency is beyond
doubt. Sometimes it is possible, too, to infer something of the motives
which necessitate the concealment of this antipathy; one sees that it
would certainly have been condemned if it declared its opposition
openly, whereas by craft, in the error, it always achieves its end. When
an important change in the mental situation occurs between the formation
of the resolution and its execution, in consequence of which the
execution would no longer be required, then if it were forgotten the
occurrence could no longer come within the category of errors. There
would be nothing to wonder at in the error, for one recognizes that it
would have been superfluous to remember the resolution; it had been
either permanently or temporarily cancelled. Forgetting to carry out a
resolution can only be called an error when there is no reason to
believe that any such cancellation has occurred.

Cases of forgetting to carry out resolutions are usually so uniform and
transparent, that they are of no interest for our researches. There are
two points, nevertheless, at which something new can be learnt by
studying this type of error. We have said that forgetting and not
executing a resolution indicates an antagonistic tendency in opposition
to it. This is certainly true, but our own investigations show that this
‘counter-will’ may be of two kinds, either immediate or mediate. What is
meant by the latter is best explained by one or two examples. When the
patron forgets to say a good word for his protégé to some third person,
it may happen because he is actually not much interested in the protégé
and therefore has no great inclination to do it. This, in any case, will
be the protégé’s view of the patron’s omission. But the matter may be
more complicated. The antipathy against executing the resolution may
come from some other source in the patron and be directed to some other
point. It need have nothing at all to do with the protégé, but is
perhaps directed against the third person to whom the recommendation was
to be made. Here again, you see, what objections there are against
applying our interpretations practically. In spite of having correctly
interpreted the error, the protégé is in danger of becoming too
suspicious and of doing his patron a grave injustice. Again, if someone
forgets an appointment which he had promised and was resolved to attend,
the commonest cause is certainly a direct disinclination to meet the
other person. But analysis might produce evidence that the interfering
tendency was concerned, not with the person, but with the place of
meeting, which was avoided on account of some painful memory associated
with it. Or if one forgets to post a letter the opposing tendency may be
concerned with the contents of the letter; but this does not exclude the
possibility that the letter in itself is harmless and becomes the
subject of a counter-tendency only because something in it reminds the
writer of another letter, written previously, which did in fact afford a
direct basis for antipathy. It may then be said that the antipathy has
been _transferred_ from the earlier letter, where it was justified, to
the present one where it actually has no object. So you see that
restraint and caution must be exercised in applying our quite
well-founded interpretations; that which is psychologically equivalent
may in actuality have many meanings.

That such things should be must seem very strange to you. Perhaps you
will be inclined to assume that the “indirect” counter-will is enough to
characterize the incident as pathological. But I can assure you that it
is also found within the boundaries of health and normality. And
further, do not misunderstand me; this is in no sense a confession on my
part that our analytic interpretations are not to be relied on. I have
said that forgetting to execute a plan may bear many meanings, but this
is so only in those cases where no analysis is undertaken and which we
have to interpret according to our general principles. If an analysis of
the person in the case is carried out it can always be established with
sufficient certainty whether the antipathy is a direct one, or what its
source is otherwise.

The following is a second point: when we find proof in a large majority
of cases that the forgetting of an intention proceeds from a
counter-will, we gain courage to extend this solution to another group
of cases in which the person analysed does not confirm, but denies, the
presence of the counter-will inferred by us. Take as an example of this
such exceedingly frequent occurrences as forgetting to return borrowed
books or to pay bills or debts. We will be so bold as to suggest, to the
person in question, that there is an intention in his mind of keeping
the books and not paying the debts, whereupon he will deny this
intention but will not be able to give us any other explanation of his
conduct. We then insist that he has this intention but is not aware of
it; it is enough for us, though, that it betrays itself by the effect of
the forgetting. He may then repeat that he had merely forgotten about
it. You will recognize the situation as one in which we have already
been placed once before. If we intend to carry through, to their logical
conclusions, the interpretations of errors which have been proved
justified in so many cases, we shall be unavoidably impelled to the
assumption that tendencies exist in human beings which can effect
results without their knowing of them. With this, however, we place
ourselves in opposition to all views prevailing in life and in
psychology.

Forgetting proper names, and foreign names and words, can be traced in
the same way to a counter-tendency aiming either directly or indirectly
against the name in question. I have already given you several examples
of such direct antipathy. Indirect causation is particularly frequent
here and careful analysis is generally required to elucidate it. Thus,
for instance, in the present time of war which forces us to forego so
many of our former pleasures, our ability to recall proper names suffers
severely by connections of the most far-fetched kind. It happened to me
lately to be unable to remember the name of the harmless Moravian town
of Bisenz; and analysis showed that I was guilty of no direct antagonism
in the matter, but that the resemblance to the name of the Palazzo
Bisenzi in Orvieto, where I had spent many happy times in the past, was
responsible. As a motive of the tendency opposing the recollection of
this name, we here for the first time encounter a principle which will
later on reveal itself to be of quite prodigious importance in the
causation of neurotic symptoms: namely, the aversion on the part of
memory against recalling anything connected with painful feelings that
would revive the pain if it were recalled. In this tendency towards
_avoidance of pain_ from recollection or other mental processes, this
flight of the mind from that which is unpleasant, we may perceive the
ultimate purpose at work behind not merely the forgetting of names, but
also many other errors, omissions, and mistakes.

The forgetting of names seems, however, to be especially facilitated
psycho-physiologically, and therefore does occur on occasions where the
intervention of an unpleasantness-motive cannot be established. When
anyone has a tendency to forget names, it can be confirmed by analytic
investigation that names escape, not merely because he does not like
them or because they remind him of something disagreeable, but also
because the particular name belongs to some other chain of associations
of a more intimate nature. The name is anchored there, as it were, and
is refused to the other associations activated at the moment. If you
recall the devices of memory systems you will realize with some surprise
that the same associations which are there artificially introduced, in
order to save names from being forgotten, are also responsible for their
being forgotten. The most conspicuous example of this is afforded by
proper names of persons, which naturally possess quite different values
for different people. For instance, take a first name, such as Theodore.
For some of you it will have no particular significance; for others it
will be the name of father, brother, friend, or your own name. Analytic
experience will show you that the former among you will be in no danger
of forgetting that some stranger bears this name; whereas the latter
will be continually inclined to grudge to strangers a name which to them
seems reserved for an intimate relationship. Now let us assume that this
inhibition due to associations may coincide with the operation of the
“pain”-principle, and in addition with an indirect mechanism; you will
then be able to form a commensurate idea of the complexity, in
causation, of such temporary forgetting of names. An adequate analysis
that does justice to the facts will, however, completely disclose all
these complications.

The forgetting of impressions and experiences shows the working of the
tendency to ward off from memory that which is unpleasant much more
clearly and invariably than the forgetting of names. It does not of
course belong in its entirety to the category of errors, but only in so
far as it appears to us remarkable and unjustified, judged by the
standard of general experience; as, for instance, where recent or
important impressions are forgotten, or where one memory is forgotten
out of an otherwise well-remembered sequence. How and why we have the
capacity of forgetting in general, particularly how we are able to
forget experiences which have certainly left the deepest impression on
us, such as the events of our childhood, is quite a different problem,
in which the defence against painful associations plays a certain part
but is far from explaining everything. That unwelcome impressions are
easily forgotten is an indubitable fact. Various psychologists have
remarked it; and the great Darwin was so well aware of it that he made a
golden rule for himself of writing down with particular care
observations which seemed unfavourable to his theory, having become
convinced that just these would be inclined to slip out of recollection.

Those who bear for the first time of this principle of defence against
unpleasant memory by forgetfulness seldom fail to raise the objection
that, on the contrary, in their experience it is just that which is
painful which it is hard to forget, since it always comes back to mind
to torture the person against his will—as, for example, the recollection
of grievances or humiliations. This fact is quite correct, but the
objection is not sound. It is important to begin early to reckon with
the fact that the mind is an arena, a sort of tumbling-ground, for the
struggles of antagonistic impulses; or, to express it in non-dynamic
terms, that the mind is made up of contradictions and pairs of
opposites. Evidence of one particular tendency does not in the least
preclude its opposite; there is room for both of them. The material
questions are: How do these opposites stand to one another and what
effects proceed from one of them and what from the other?

Losing and mislaying objects is of especial interest on account of the
numerous meanings it may have, and the multiplicity of the tendencies in
the service of which these errors may be employed. What is common to all
the cases is the wish to lose something; what varies in them is the
reason for the wish and the aim of it. One loses something if it has
become damaged; if one has an impulse to replace it with a better; if
one has ceased to care for it; if it came from someone with whom
unpleasantness has arisen; or if it was acquired in circumstances that
one no longer wishes to think of. Letting things fall, spoiling, or
breaking things, serves the same tendency. In social life it is said
that unwelcome and illegitimate children are found to be far more often
weakly than those conceived in happier circumstances. This result does
not imply that the crude methods of the so-called baby-farmer have been
employed; some degree of carelessness in the supervision of the child
should be quite enough. The preservation, or otherwise, of objects may
well follow the same lines as that of children.

Then too it may happen that a thing will become destined to be lost
without its having shed any of its value—that is, when there is an
impulse to sacrifice something to fate in order to avert some other
dreaded loss. According to the findings of analysis, such conjurings of
fate are still very common among us, so that our losses are often
voluntary sacrifices. Losing may equally well serve the impulses of
spite or of self-punishment; in short, the more remote forms of
motivation behind the impulse to do away with something by losing cannot
easily be exhausted.

Mistaking of objects, or erroneous performance of actions, like other
errors, is often made use of to fulfil a wish which should be denied;
the intention masquerades as a lucky chance. Thus, as once happened to
one of our friends, one has to take a train, most unwillingly, in order
to pay a visit in the suburbs and then, in changing trains at a
connection, one gets by mistake into one which is returning to town; or,
on a journey one would greatly like to make a halt at some
stopping-place, which cannot be done owing to fixed engagements
elsewhere, whereupon one mistakes or misses the connection, so that the
desired delay is forced upon one. Or, as happened to one of my patients
whom I had forbidden to telephone to the lady he was in love with, he
“by mistake” and “thoughtlessly” gave the wrong number when he meant to
telephone to me, so that he was suddenly connected with her. The
following account by an engineer is a pretty example of the conditions
under which damage to material objects may be done, and also
demonstrates the practical significance of directly faulty actions.

“Some time ago I worked with several colleagues in the laboratory of a
High School on a series of complicated experiments in elasticity, a
piece of work we had undertaken voluntarily; it was beginning to take up
more time, however, than we had anticipated. One day, as I went into the
laboratory with my friend F., he remarked how annoying it was to him to
lose so much time to-day as he had so much to do at home; I could not
help agreeing with him and said half-jokingly, referring to an occasion
the week before: ‘Let us hope the machine will break down again so that
we can stop work and go home early.’ In arranging the work it happened
that F. was given the regulation of the valve of the press; that is to
say, he was, by cautiously opening the valve, to let the liquid pressure
out of the accumulator slowly into the cylinder of the hydraulic press.
The man who was conducting the experiment stood by the pressure gauge,
and, when the right pressure was reached, called out loudly, ‘Stop.’ At
this command F. seized the valve and turned with all his might—to the
left! (All valves without exception close to the right.) Thereby the
whole pressure in the accumulator suddenly came into the press, a strain
for which the connecting-pipes are not designed, so that one of them
instantly burst—quite a harmless accident, but one which forced us,
nevertheless, to cease work for the day and go home. It is
characteristic, by the way, that not long after, when we were discussing
the affair, my friend F. had no recollection whatever of my remark,
which I recalled with certainty.”

So with this in mind you may begin to suspect that it is not always a
mere chance which makes the hands of your servants such dangerous
enemies to your household effects. And you may also raise the question
whether it is always an accident when one injures oneself or exposes
oneself to danger—ideas which you may put to the test by analysis when
you have an opportunity.

This is far from being all that could be said about errors. There is
still much to be enquired into and discussed. But I shall be satisfied
if you have been shaken somewhat in your previous beliefs by our
investigations, so far as they have gone, and if you have gained a
certain readiness to accept new ones. For the rest, I must be content to
leave you with certain problems still unsolved. We cannot prove all our
principles by the study of errors, nor are we indeed by any means solely
dependent on this material. The great value of errors for our purpose
lies in this, that they are such common occurrences, may easily be
observed in oneself, and are not at all contingent upon illness. I
should like to mention one more of your unanswered questions before
concluding: “If, as we see from so many examples, people come so close
to understanding errors and so often act as if they perceived their
meaning, how is it possible that they should so generally consider them
accidental, senseless, and meaningless, and so energetically oppose the
psycho-analytic explanation of them?”

You are right: this is indeed striking and requires an explanation. But
I will not give it to you; I will rather guide you slowly towards the
connections by which the explanation will be forced upon you without any
aid from me.




                               _PART II_
                                 DREAMS




                             FIFTH LECTURE
          DIFFICULTIES AND PRELIMINARY APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT


One day the discovery was made that the symptoms of disease in certain
nervous patients have meaning.[25] It was upon this discovery that the
psycho-analytic method of treatment was based. In this treatment it
happened that patients in speaking of their symptoms also mentioned
their dreams, whereupon the suspicion arose that these dreams too had
meaning.

However, we will not pursue this historical path, but will strike off in
the opposite direction. Our aim is to demonstrate the meaning of dreams,
in preparation for the study of the neuroses. There are good grounds for
this reversal of procedure, since the study of dreams is not merely the
best preparation for that of the neuroses, but a dream is itself a
neurotic symptom and, moreover, one which possesses for us the
incalculable advantage of occurring in all healthy people. Indeed, if
all human beings were healthy and would only dream, we could gather
almost all the knowledge from their dreams which we have gained from
studying the neuroses.

So dreams become the object of psycho-analytic research—another of these
ordinary, under-rated occurrences, apparently of no practical value,
like “errors,” and sharing with them the characteristic of occurring in
healthy persons. But in other respects the conditions of work are rather
less favourable. Errors had only been neglected by science, people had
not troubled their heads much about them, but at least it was no
disgrace to occupy oneself with them. True, people said, there are
things more important but still something may possibly come of it. To
occupy oneself with dreams, however, is not merely unpractical and
superfluous, but positively scandalous: it carries with it the taint of
the unscientific and arouses the suspicion of personal leanings towards
mysticism. The idea of a medical student troubling himself about dreams
when there is so much in neuropathology and psychiatry itself that is
more serious, tumours as large as apples compressing the organ of the
mind, hæmorrhages, chronic inflammatory conditions in which the
alterations in the tissues can be demonstrated under the microscope! No,
dreams are far too unworthy and trivial to be objects of scientific
research.

There is yet another factor involved which, in itself, sets at defiance
all the requirements of exact investigation. In investigating dreams
even the object of research, the dream itself, is indefinite. A
delusion, for example, presents clear and definite outlines. “I am the
Emperor of China,” says your patient plainly. But a dream? For the most
part it cannot be related at all. When a man tells a dream, has he any
guarantee that he has told it correctly, and not perhaps altered it in
the telling or been forced to invent part of it on account of the
vagueness of his recollection? Most dreams cannot be remembered at all
and are forgotten except for some tiny fragments. And is a scientific
psychology or a method of treatment for the sick to be founded upon
material such as this?

A certain element of exaggeration in a criticism may arouse our
suspicions. The arguments brought against the dream as an object of
scientific research are clearly extreme. We have met with the objection
of triviality already in “errors,” and have told ourselves that great
things may be revealed even by small indications. As to the
indistinctness of dreams, that is a characteristic like any other—we
cannot dictate to things their characteristics; besides, there are also
dreams which are clear and well defined. Further, there are other
objects of psychiatric investigation which suffer in the same way from
the quality of indefiniteness, e.g. the obsessive ideas of many cases,
with which nevertheless many psychiatrists of repute and standing have
occupied themselves. I will recall the last case of the kind which came
before me in medical practice. The patient, a woman, presented her case
in these words: “I have a certain feeling, as if I had injured, or had
meant to injure, some living creature—perhaps a child—no, no, a dog
rather, as if perhaps I had pushed it off a bridge—or done something
else.” Any disadvantage resulting from the uncertain recollection of
dreams may be remedied by deciding that exactly what the dreamer tells
is to count as the dream, and by ignoring all that he may have forgotten
or altered in the process of recollection. Finally, one cannot maintain
in so sweeping a fashion that dreams are unimportant things. We know
from our own experience that the mood in which we awake from a dream may
last throughout the day, and cases have been observed by medical men in
which mental disorder began with a dream, the delusion which had its
source in this dream persisting; further, it is told of historical
persons that impulses to momentous deeds sprang from their dreams. We
may therefore ask: what is the real cause of the disdain in which dreams
are held in scientific circles? In my opinion it is the reaction from
the overestimation of them in earlier times. It is well known that it is
no easy matter to reconstruct the past, but we may assume with certainty
(you will forgive my jest) that as early as three thousand years ago and
more our ancestors dreamt in the same way as we do. So far as we know,
all ancient peoples attached great significance to dreams and regarded
them as of practical value; they obtained from them auguries of the
future and looked for portents in them. For the Greeks and other
Orientals, it was at times as unthinkable to undertake a campaign
without a dream-interpreter as it would be to-day without air-scouts for
intelligence. When Alexander the Great set out on his campaign of
conquest the most famous interpreters of dreams were in his following.
The city of Tyre, still at that time on an island, offered so stout a
resistance to the king that he entertained the idea of abandoning the
siege; then one night he dreamed of a satyr dancing in triumph, and when
he related this dream to his interpreters they informed him that it
foretold his victory over the city; he gave the order to attack and took
Tyre by storm. Among the Etruscans and Romans other methods of
foretelling the future were employed, but during the whole of the
Græco-Roman period the interpretation of dreams was practised and held
in high esteem. Of the literature on this subject the principal work at
any rate has come down to us, namely, the book of Artemidorus of Daldis,
who is said to have lived at the time of the Emperor Hadrian. How it
happened that the art of dream-interpretation declined later and dreams
fell into disrepute, I cannot tell you. The progress of learning cannot
have had very much to do with it, for in the darkness of the middle ages
things far more absurd than the ancient practice of the interpretation
of dreams were faithfully retained. The fact remains that the interest
in dreams gradually sank to the level of superstition and could hold its
own only amongst the uneducated. In our day, there survive, as a final
degradation of the art of dream-interpretation, the attempts to find out
from dreams numbers destined to draw prizes in games of chance. On the
other hand, exact science of the present day has repeatedly concerned
itself with the dream, but always with the sole object of illustrating
_physiological_ theories. By medical men, naturally, a dream was never
regarded as a mental process but as the mental expression of physical
stimuli. Binz in 1876 pronounced the dream to be “a physical process,
always useless and in many cases actually morbid, a process above which
the conception of the world-soul and of immortality stands as high as
does the blue sky above the most low-lying, weed-grown stretch of sand.”
Maury compares dreams with the spasmodic jerkings of St. Vitus’ dance,
contrasted with the co-ordinated movements of the normal human being; in
an old comparison a parallel is drawn between the content of a dream and
the sounds which would be produced if “someone ignorant of music let his
ten fingers wander over the keys of an instrument.”

‘Interpretation’ means discovering a hidden meaning, but there can be no
question of attempting this while such an attitude is maintained towards
the dream-performance. Look up the description of dreams given in the
writings of Wundt, Jodl and other recent philosophers: they are content
with the bare enumeration of the divergences of the dream-life from
waking thought with a view to depreciating the dreams; they emphasize
the lack of connection in the associations, the suspended exercise of
the critical faculty, the elimination of all knowledge, and other
indications of diminished functioning. The single valuable contribution
to our knowledge about dreams for which we are indebted to exact science
relates to the influence upon the dream-content of physical stimuli
operating during sleep. We have the work of a Norwegian author who died
recently—J. Mourly Vold—two large volumes on experimental investigation
of dreams (translated into German in 1910 and 1912), which are concerned
almost entirely with the results obtained by change in the position of
the limbs. These investigations have been held up to us as models of
exact research in the subject of dreams. Now can you imagine what would
be the comment of exact science on learning that we intend to try to
find out the _meaning_ of dreams? The comment that has perhaps been made
already! However, we will not allow ourselves to be appalled at the
thought. If it was possible for errors to have an underlying meaning, it
is possible that dreams have one too; and errors have, in very many
cases, a meaning which has eluded the researches of exact science. Let
us adopt the assumption of the ancients and of simple folk, and follow
in the footsteps of the dream-interpreters of old.

First of all, we must take our bearings in this enterprise, and make a
survey of the field of dreams. What exactly is a dream? It is difficult
to define it in a single phrase. Yet we need not seek after a
definition, when all we need is to refer to something familiar to
everyone. Still we ought to pick out the essential features in dreams.
How are we to discover these features? The boundaries of the region we
are entering comprise such vast differences, differences whichever way
we turn. That which we can show to be common to all dreams is probably
what is essential.

Well then—the first common characteristic of all dreams would be that we
are asleep at the time. Obviously, the dream is the life of the mind
during sleep, a life bearing certain resemblances to our waking life
and, at the same time, differing from it widely. That, indeed, was
Aristotle’s definition. Perhaps dream and sleep stand in yet closer
relationship to each other. We can be waked by a dream; we often have a
dream when we wake spontaneously or when we are forcibly roused from
sleep. Dreams seem thus to be an intermediate condition between sleeping
and waking. Hence, our attention is directed to sleep itself: what then
is sleep?

That is a physiological or biological problem concerning which much is
still in dispute. We can come to no decisive answer, but I think we may
attempt to define one psychological characteristic of sleep. Sleep is a
condition in which I refuse to have anything to do with the outer world
and have withdrawn my interest from it. I go to sleep by retreating from
the outside world and warding off the stimuli proceeding from it. Again,
when I am tired by that world I go to sleep. I say to it as I fall
asleep: “Leave me in peace, for I want to sleep.” The child says just
the opposite: “I won’t go to sleep yet; I’m not tired, I want more
things to happen to me!” Thus the biological object of sleep seems to be
recuperation, its psychological characteristic the suspension of
interest in the outer world. Our relationship with the world which we
entered so unwillingly seems to be endurable only with intermission;
hence we withdraw again periodically into the condition prior to our
entrance into the world: that is to say, into intra-uterine existence.
At any rate, we try to bring about quite similar conditions—warmth,
darkness and absence of stimulus—characteristic of that state. Some of
us still roll ourselves tightly up into a ball resembling the
intra-uterine position. It looks as if we grown-ups do not belong wholly
to the world, but only by two-thirds; one-third of us has never yet been
born at all. Every time we wake in the morning it is as if we were newly
born. We do, in fact, speak of the condition of waking from sleep in
these very words: we feel “as if we were newly born,”—and in this we are
probably quite mistaken in our idea of the general sensations of the
new-born infant; it may be assumed on the contrary that it feels
extremely uncomfortable. Again, in speaking of birth we speak of “seeing
the light of day.”

If this is the nature of sleep, then dreams do not come into its scheme
at all, but seem rather to be an unwelcome supplement to it; and we do
indeed believe that dreamless sleep is the best, the only proper sleep.
There should be no mental activity during sleep; if any such activity
bestirs itself, then in so far have we failed to reach the true
pre-natal condition of peace; we have not been able to avoid altogether
some remnants of mental activity, and the act of dreaming would
represent these remnants. In that event it really does seem that dreams
do not need to have meaning. With errors it was different, for they were
at least activities manifested in waking life; but if I sleep and have
altogether suspended mental activity, with the exception of certain
remnants which I have not been able to suppress, there is no necessity
whatever that they should have any meaning. In fact, I cannot even make
use of any such meaning, seeing that the rest of my mind is asleep. It
can really then be a matter of spasmodic reactions only, of such mental
phenomena only as have their origin in physical stimulation. Hence,
dreams must be remnants of the mental activity of waking life disturbing
sleep, and we might as well make up our minds forthwith to abandon a
theme so unsuited to the purposes of psycho-analysis.

Superfluous as dreams may be, however, they do exist nevertheless, and
we can try to account for their existence to ourselves. Why does not
mental life go off to sleep? Probably because there is something that
will not leave the mind in peace; stimuli are acting upon it and to
these it is bound to react. Dreams therefore are the mode of reaction of
the mind to stimuli acting upon it during sleep. We note here a
possibility of access to comprehension of dreams. We can now endeavour
to find out, in various dreams, what are the stimuli seeking to disturb
sleep, the reaction to which takes the form of dreams. By doing this we
should have worked out the first characteristic common to all dreams.

Is there any other common characteristic? Yes, there is another,
unmistakable, and yet much harder to lay hold of and describe. The
character of mental processes during sleep is quite different from that
of waking processes. In dreams we go through many experiences, which we
fully believe in, whereas in reality we are perhaps only experiencing
the single disturbing stimulus. For the most part our experiences take
the form of visual images; there may be feeling as well, thoughts, too,
mixed up with them, and the other senses may be drawn in; but for the
most part dreams consist of visual images. Part of the difficulty of
reciting a dream comes from the fact that we have to translate these
images into words. “I could draw it,” the dreamer often says to us, “but
I do not know how to put it into words.” Now this is not exactly a
diminution in the mental capacity, as seen in a contrast between a
feeble-minded person and a man of genius. The difference is rather a
qualitative one, but it is difficult to say precisely wherein it lies.
G. T. Fechner once suggested that the stage whereon the drama of the
dream (within the mind) is played out is other than that of the life of
waking ideas. That is a saying which we really do not understand, nor do
we know what it is meant to convey to us, but it does actually reproduce
the impression of strangeness which most dreams make upon us. Again, the
comparison of the act of dreaming with the performances of an unskilled
hand in music breaks down here, for the piano will certainly respond
with the same notes, though not with melodies, to a chance touch on its
keys. We will keep this second common characteristic of dreams carefully
in view, even though we may not understand it.

Are there any other qualities common to all dreams? I can think of none,
but can see differences only, whichever way I look, differences too in
every respect—in apparent duration, definiteness, the part played by
affects, persistence in the mind, and so forth. This is really not what
we should naturally expect in the case of a compulsive attempt, at once
meagre and convulsive, to ward off a stimulus. As regards the length of
dreams, some are very short, containing only one image, or very few, or
a single thought, possibly even a single word; others are peculiarly
rich in content, enact entire romances and seem to last a very long
time. There are dreams as distinct as actual experiences, so distinct
that for some time after waking we do not realize that they were dreams
at all; others, which are ineffably faint, shadowy and blurred; in one
and the same dream, even, there may be some parts of extraordinary
vividness alternating with others so indistinct as to be almost wholly
elusive. Again, dreams may be quite consistent or at any rate coherent,
or even witty or fantastically beautiful; others again are confused,
apparently imbecile, absurd or often absolutely mad. There are dreams
which leave us quite cold, others in which every affect makes itself
felt, pain to the point of tears, terror so intense as to wake us,
amazement, delight, and so on. Most dreams are forgotten soon after
waking; or they persist throughout the day, the recollection becoming
fainter and more imperfect as the day goes on; others remain so vivid
(as, for example, the dreams of childhood) that thirty years later we
remember them as clearly as though they were part of a recent
experience. Dreams, like people, may make their appearance once and
never come back; or the same person may dream the same thing repeatedly,
either in the same form or with slight alterations. In short, these
scraps of mental activity at night-time have at command an immense
repertory, can in fact create everything that by day the mind is capable
of—only, it is never the same.

One might attempt to account for these diversities in dreams by assuming
that they correspond to different intermediate states between sleeping
and waking, different levels of imperfect sleep. Very well; but then in
proportion as the mind approached the waking state there should be not
merely an increase in the value, content, and distinctness of the
dream-performance, but also a growing perception that it _is_ a dream;
and it ought not to happen that side by side with a clear and sensible
element in the dream there is one which is nonsensical or indistinct,
followed again by a good piece of work. It is certain that the mind
could not vary its depth of sleep so rapidly as that. This explanation
therefore does not help; there is in fact no short cut to an answer.

For the present we will leave the ‘meaning’ of the dream out of
question, and try instead, by starting from the common element in
dreams, to clear a path to a better understanding of their nature. From
the relationship of dreams to sleep we have drawn the conclusion that
dreams are the reaction to a stimulus disturbing sleep. As we have
heard, this is also the single point at which exact experimental
psychology can come to our aid; it affords proof of the fact that
stimuli brought to bear during sleep make their appearance in dreams.
Many investigations have been made on these lines, culminating in those
of Mourly Vold whom I mentioned earlier; we have all, too, been in a
position to confirm their results by occasional observations of our own.
I will choose some of the earlier experiments to tell you. Maury had
tests of this kind carried out upon himself. Whilst dreaming, he was
made to smell some eau de Cologne, whereupon he dreamt he was in Cairo,
in the shop of Johann Maria Farina, and this was followed by further
crazy adventures. Again, someone gave his neck a gentle pinch, and he
dreamt of the application of a blister and of a doctor who had treated
him when he was a child. Again, they let a drop of water fall on his
forehead and he was immediately in Italy, perspiring freely and drinking
the white wine of Orvieto.

The striking feature about these dreams produced under experimental
conditions will perhaps become still clearer to us in another series of
“stimulus”-dreams. These are three dreams of which we have an account by
a clever observer, Hildebrandt, and all three are reactions to the sound
of an alarum-clock:

“I am going for a walk on a spring morning, and I saunter through fields
just beginning to grow green, till I come to a neighbouring village,
where I see the inhabitants in holiday attire making their way in large
numbers to the church, their hymn-books in their hands. Of course! it is
Sunday and the morning service is just about to begin. I decide to take
part in it, but first as I am rather overheated I think I will cool down
in the churchyard which surrounds the church. Whilst reading some of the
epitaphs there I hear the bell-ringer go up into the tower, where I now
notice, high up, the little village bell which will give the signal for
the beginning of the service. For some time yet it remains motionless,
then it begins to swing, and suddenly the strokes ring out, clear and
piercing—so clear and piercing that they put an end to my sleep. But the
sound of the bell comes from the alarum-clock.”

Here is another combination of images. “It is a bright winter day, and
the roads are deep in snow. I have promised to take part in a sleighing
expedition, but I have to wait a long time before I am told that the
sleigh is at the door. Now follow the preparations for getting in, the
fur rug is spread out and the foot-muff fetched and finally I am in my
place. But there is still a delay while the horses wait for the signal
to start. Then the reins are jerked and the little bells, shaken
violently, begin their familiar janizary music, so loudly that in a
moment the web of the dream is rent. Again it is nothing but the shrill
sound of the alarum-clock.”

Now for the third example! “I see a kitchen-maid with dozens of piled-up
plates going along the passage to the dining-room. It seems to me that
the pyramid of china in her arms is in danger of overbalancing. I call
out a warning: ‘Take care, your whole load will fall to the ground.’ Of
course I receive the usual answer: that they are accustomed to carrying
china in that way, and so on; meanwhile I follow her as she goes with
anxious looks. I thought so—the next thing is a stumble on the
threshold, the crockery falls, crashing and clattering in a hundred
pieces on the ground. But—I soon become aware that that interminably
prolonged sound is no real crash, but a regular ringing—and this ringing
is due merely to the alarum-clock, as I realize at last on awakening.”

These dreams are very pretty, perfectly sensible, and by no means so
incoherent as dreams usually are. We have no quarrel with them on those
grounds. The thing common to them all is that in each case the situation
arises from a noise, which the dreamer on waking recognizes as that of
the alarum-clock. Hence we see here how a dream is produced, but we find
out something more. In the dream there is no recognition of the clock,
which does not even appear in it, but for the noise of the clock another
noise is substituted; the stimulus which disturbs sleep is interpreted,
but interpreted differently in each instance. Now why is this? There is
no answer; it appears to be mere caprice. But to understand the dream we
should be able to account for its choice of just this noise and no other
to interpret the stimulus given by the alarum-clock. In analogous
fashion we must object to Maury’s experiments that, although it is clear
that the stimulus brought to bear on the sleeper does appear in the
dream, yet his experiments don’t explain why it appears exactly in that
form, which is one that does not seem explicable by the nature of the
stimulus disturbing sleep. And further, in Maury’s experiments there was
mostly a mass of other dream-material attached to the direct result of
the stimulus, for example, the crazy adventures in the eau de Cologne
dream, for which we are at a loss to account.

Now will you reflect that the class of dreams which wake one up affords
the best opportunity for establishing the influence of external
disturbing stimuli. In most other cases it will be more difficult. We do
not wake up out of all dreams, and if in the morning we remember a dream
of the night before, how are we to assign it to a disturbing stimulus
operating perhaps during the night? I once succeeded in subsequently
establishing the occurrence of a sound-stimulus of this sort, but only,
of course, because of peculiar circumstances. I woke up one morning at a
place in the Tyrolese mountains knowing that I had dreamt that the Pope
was dead. I could not explain the dream to myself, but later my wife
asked me: “Did you hear quite early this morning the dreadful noise of
bells breaking out in all the churches and chapels?” No, I had heard
nothing, my sleep is too sound, but thanks to her telling me this I
understood my dream. How often may such causes of stimulus as this
induce dreams in the sleeper without his ever hearing of them
afterwards? Possibly very often: and possibly not. If we can get no
information of any stimulus we cannot be convinced on the point. And
apart from this we have given up trying to arrive at an estimation of
the sleep-disturbing external stimuli, since we know that they only
explain a fragment of the dream and not the whole dream-reaction.

We need not on that account give up this theory altogether; there is
still another possible way of following it out. Obviously it is a matter
of indifference what disturbs sleep and causes the mind to dream. If it
cannot always be something external acting as a stimulus to one of the
senses, it is possible that, instead, a stimulus operates from the
internal organs—a so-called somatic stimulus. This supposition lies very
close, and moreover it corresponds to the view popularly held with
regard to the origin of dreams, for it is a common saying that they come
from the stomach. Unfortunately, here again we must suppose that in very
many cases information respecting a somatic stimulus operating during
the night would no longer be forthcoming after waking, so that it would
be incapable of proof. But we will not overlook the fact that many
trustworthy experiences support the idea that dreams may be derived from
somatic stimuli; on the whole it is indubitable that the condition of
the internal organs can influence dreams. The relation of the content of
many dreams to distention of the bladder or to a condition of excitation
of the sex-organs is so plain that it cannot be mistaken. From these
obvious cases we pass to others, in which, to judge by the content of
the dream, we are at least justified in suspecting that some such
somatic stimuli have been at work, since there is something in this
content which can be regarded as elaboration, representation, or
interpretation of these stimuli. Scherner, the investigator of dreams
(1861), emphatically supported the view which traces the origin of
dreams to organic stimuli, and contributed some excellent examples
towards it. For instance, he sees in a dream “two rows of beautiful
boys, with fair hair and delicate complexions, confronting each other
pugnaciously, joining in combat, seizing hold of one another, and again
letting go their hold, only to take up the former position and go
through the whole process again”; his interpretation of the two rows of
boys as the teeth is in itself plausible and seems to receive full
confirmation when after this scene the dreamer “pulls a long tooth from
his jaw.” Again, the interpretation of “long, narrow, winding passages”
as being suggested by a stimulus originating in the intestine seems
sound and corroborates Scherner’s assertion that dreams primarily
endeavour to represent, by like objects, the organ from which the
stimulus proceeds.

We must therefore be prepared to admit that internal stimuli can play
the same rôle in dreams as external ones. Unfortunately, evaluation of
this factor is open to the same objections. In a great number of
instances the attribution of dreams to somatic stimuli must remain
uncertain or incapable of proof; not all dreams, but only a certain
number of them, rouse the suspicion that stimuli from internal organs
have something to do with their origin; and lastly, the internal somatic
stimulus will suffice no more than the external sensory stimulus to
explain any other part of the dream than the direct reaction to it. The
origin of all the rest of the dream remains obscure.

Now, however, let us direct our attention to a certain peculiarity of
the dream-life which appears when we study the operation of these
stimuli. The dream does not merely reproduce the stimulus, but
elaborates it, plays upon it, fits it into a context, or replaces it by
something else. This is a side of the dream-work which is bound to be of
interest to us because possibly it may lead us nearer to the true nature
of dreams. The scope of a man’s production is not necessarily limited to
the circumstance which immediately gives rise to it. For instance,
Shakespeare’s _Macbeth_ was written as an occasional drama on the
accession of the king who first united in his person the crowns of the
three kingdoms. But does this historical occasion cover the whole
content of the drama, or explain its grandeur and its mystery? Perhaps
in the same way the external and internal stimuli operating upon the
sleeper are merely the occasion of the dream and afford us no insight
into its true nature.

The other element common to all dreams, their peculiarity in mental
life, is on the one hand very difficult to grasp and on the other seems
to afford no clue for further inquiry. Our experiences in dreams for the
most part take the form of visual images. Can these be explained by the
stimuli? Is it really the stimulus that we experience? If so, why is the
experience visual, when it can only be in the very rarest instance that
any stimulus has operated upon our eyesight? Or, can it be shown that
when we dream of speech any conversation or sounds resembling
conversation reached our ears during sleep? I venture to discard such a
possibility without any hesitation whatever.

If we cannot get any further with the common characteristics of dreams
as a starting-point, let us try beginning with their differences. Dreams
are often meaningless, confused, and absurd, yet there are some which
are sensible, sober, and reasonable. Let us see whether these latter
sensible dreams can help to elucidate those which are meaningless. I
will tell you the latest reasonable dream which was told to me, the
dream of a young man: “I went for a walk in the Kärntnerstrasse and
there I met Mr. X.; after accompanying him for a short time I went into
a restaurant. Two ladies and a gentleman came and sat down at my table.
At first I was annoyed and refused to look at them, but presently I
glanced across at them and found that they were quite nice.” The
dreamer’s comment on this was that the evening before he had actually
been walking in the Kärntnerstrasse, which is the way he usually goes,
and that he had met Mr. X. there. The other part of the dream was not a
direct reminiscence, but only bore a certain resemblance to an
occurrence of some time previously. Or here we have another prosaic
dream, that of a lady. “Her husband says to her: ‘Don’t you think we
ought to have the piano tuned?’ and she replies: ‘It is not worth it,
for the hammers need fresh leather anyhow.’” This dream repeats a
conversation which took place in almost the same words between herself
and her husband the day before the dream. What then do we learn from
these two prosaic dreams? Merely that there occur in them recollections
of daily life or of matters connected with it. Even that would be
something if it could be asserted of all dreams without exception. But
that is out of the question; this characteristic too belongs only to a
minority of dreams. In most dreams we find no connection with the day
before, and no light is thrown from this quarter upon meaningless and
absurd dreams. All we know is that we have met with a new problem. Not
only do we want to know what a dream is saying, but if as in our
examples that is quite plain, we want to know further from what cause
and to what end we repeat in dreams this which is known to us and has
recently happened to us.

I think you would be as tired as I of continuing the kind of attempts we
have made up to this point. It only shows that all the interest in the
world will not help us with a problem unless we have also an idea of
some path to adopt in order to arrive at a solution. Till now we have
not found this path. Experimental psychology has contributed nothing but
some (certainly very valuable) information about the significance of
stimuli in the production of dreams. Of philosophy we have nothing to
expect, unless it be a lofty repetition of the reproach that our object
is intellectually contemptible; while from the occult sciences we surely
do not choose to borrow. History and the verdict of the people tell us
that dreams are full of meaning and importance, and of prophetic
significance; but that is hard to accept and certainly does not lend
itself to proof. So then our first endeavours are completely baffled.

But unexpectedly there comes a hint from a direction in which we have
not hitherto looked. Colloquial speech, which is certainly no matter of
chance but the deposit, as it were, of ancient knowledge—a thing which
must not indeed be made too much of—our speech, I say, recognizes the
existence of something to which, strangely enough, it gives the name of
“day-dreams.” Day-dreams are phantasies (products of phantasy); they are
very common phenomena, are observable in healthy as well as in sick
persons, and they also can easily be studied by the subject himself. The
most striking thing about these ‘phantastic’ creations is that they have
received the name of “day-dreams,” for they have nothing in common with
the two universal characteristics of dreams. Their name contradicts any
relationship to the condition of sleep and, as regards the second
universal characteristic, no experience or hallucination takes place in
them, we simply imagine something; we recognize that they are the work
of phantasy, that we are not seeing but thinking. These day-dreams
appear before puberty, often indeed in late childhood, and persist until
maturity is reached when they are either given up or retained as long as
life lasts. The content of these phantasies is dictated by a very
transparent motivation. They are scenes and events which gratify either
the egoistic cravings of ambition or thirst for power, or the erotic
desires of the subject. In young men, ambitious phantasies predominate;
in women, whose ambition centres on success in love, erotic phantasies;
but the erotic requirement can often enough in men too be detected in
the background, all their heroic deeds and successes are really only
intended to win the admiration and favour of women. In other respects
these day-dreams show great diversity and their fate varies. All of them
are either given up after a short time and replaced by a new one, or
retained, spun out into long stories, and adapted to changing
circumstances in life. They march with the times, receiving as it were
“date-stamps” upon them which show the influence of new situations. They
form the raw material of poetic production; for the writer by
transforming, disguising, or curtailing them creates out of his
day-dreams the situations which he embodies in his stories, novels, and
dramas. The hero of a day-dream is, however, always the subject himself,
either directly imagined in the part or transparently identified with
someone else.

Perhaps day-dreams are so called on account of their similar relation to
reality, as an indication that their content is no more to be accepted
as real than is that of dreams. But it is possible that they share the
name of dreams because of some mental characteristic of the dream which
we do not yet know but after which we are seeking. On the other hand, it
is possible that we are altogether wrong in regarding this similarity of
name as significant. That is a question which can only be answered
later.




                             SIXTH LECTURE
         PRELIMINARY HYPOTHESES AND TECHNIQUE OF INTERPRETATION


We thus realize our need of a new way of approach, a definite method, if
we are to make any advance in our researches into dreams. I will now
offer an obvious suggestion: let us accept as the basis of the whole of
our further enquiry the following hypothesis—that dreams are not a
somatic, but a mental, phenomenon. You know what this means; but what is
our justification in making this assumption? We have none, but on the
other hand there is nothing to prevent us. The position is this: if the
dream is a somatic phenomenon it does not concern us; it can only be of
interest to us on the hypothesis that it is a mental phenomenon. So we
will assume that this hypothesis is true, in order to see what happens
if we do so. The results of our work will determine whether we may
adhere to the assumption, and uphold it in its turn as an inference
fairly drawn. Now what exactly is the object of this enquiry of ours, or
to what are we directing our efforts? Our object is that of all
scientific endeavour—namely, to achieve an understanding of the
phenomena, to establish a connection between them, and, in the last
resort, wherever it is possible to increase our power over them.

So we continue our work on the assumption that dreams are a mental
phenomenon. In that event, they are a performance and an utterance on
the part of the dreamer, but of a kind that conveys nothing to us, and
which we do not understand. Now supposing that I give utterance to
something that you do not understand, what do you do? You ask me to
explain, do you not? Why may not we do the same—_ask the dreamer the
meaning of the dream_?

Remember, we have already found ourselves in a similar position. It
was when we were enquiring into certain errors, and the instance we
took was a slip of the tongue. Someone had said: “Then certain things
were _refilled_,” and thereupon we asked—no, fortunately it was not
_we_ who asked, but other people who had nothing to do with
psycho-analysis—_they_ asked what he meant by this enigmatic
expression. He answered at once that what he had intended to say was:
“That was a filthy business,” but had checked himself and substituted
the milder words: “Things were revealed there.” I explained to you
then that this enquiry was the model for every psycho-analytic
investigation, and you understand now that psycho-analytic technique
endeavours as far as possible to let the persons being analysed give
the answer to their own problems. The dreamer himself then should
interpret his dream for us.

That is not so simple with dreams, however, as we all know. Where errors
were concerned, this method proved possible in many cases; there were
others where the person questioned refused to say anything and even
indignantly repudiated the answer suggested to him. With dreams,
instances of the first type are entirely lacking; the dreamer always
says he knows nothing about it. He cannot very well repudiate our
interpretation, since we have none to offer him. Shall we have to give
up our attempt then? Since _he_ knows nothing, and _we_ know nothing,
and a third person can surely know nothing either, there cannot be any
prospect of finding the answer. Well, if you like, give up the attempt.
But if you are not so minded, you can accompany me. For I assure you
that it is not only quite possible, but highly probable, that the
dreamer really does know the meaning of his dream; _only he does not
know that he knows, and therefore thinks that he does not_.

At this point you will probably call my attention to the fact that I am
again introducing an assumption, the second in quite a short context,
and that by so doing I greatly detract from the force of my claim to a
trustworthy method of procedure. Given the hypothesis that dreams are a
mental phenomenon, and given further the hypothesis that there are in
the minds of men certain things which they know without knowing that
they know them—and so forth! You have only to keep in view the intrinsic
improbability of both these hypotheses, and you may with an easy mind
abandon all interest in the conclusions to be drawn from them.

Well, I have not brought you here either to delude you or to conceal
anything from you. True, I announced that I would give a course of
lectures entitled Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis; but it was
no part of my purpose to play the oracle, professing to show you an easy
sequence of facts, whilst carefully concealing all difficulties, filling
up gaps, and glossing over doubtful points, so that you might
comfortably enjoy the belief that you have learnt something new. No, it
is the very fact that you are beginners that makes me anxious to show
you our science as it is, with all its excrescences and crudities, the
claims that it makes and the criticism to which it may give rise. I know
indeed that it is the same in every science and that, especially in the
beginnings, it cannot be otherwise. I know too that, in teaching other
sciences, an effort is made at first to hide these difficulties and
imperfections from the learner. But that cannot be done in
psycho-analysis. So I really have set up two hypotheses, the one within
the other; and anyone who finds it all too laborious, or too uncertain,
or who is used to higher degrees of certainty, or to more refined
deductions, need go no further with me. Only I should advise him to
leave psychological problems altogether alone, for it is to be feared
that this is a field in which he will find no access to such exact and
sure paths as he is prepared to tread. And, further, it is quite
superfluous for any science which can offer a real contribution to
knowledge to strive to make itself heard and to win adherents. Its
reception must depend upon its results, and it can afford to wait until
these have compelled attention.

But I may warn those of you who are not to be deterred in this way that
my two assumptions are not of equal importance. The first, that dreams
are a mental phenomenon, is the hypothesis which we hope to prove by the
results of our work. The second has already been proved in a different
field, and I am merely taking the liberty of transferring it thence to
our problems.

Where, and in what connection, is it supposed to have been proved that a
man can possess knowledge without knowing that he does so, which is the
assumption we are making of the dreamer? Surely that would be a
remarkable and surprising fact, which would change our conception of
mental life and would have no need of concealment. Incidentally, it
would be a fact belied in the very statement of it, which yet attempts
to be literally true—a contradiction in terms. There is not, however,
any attempt at concealment. We cannot blame the fact for people’s
ignorance of it, or lack of interest in it, any more than we ourselves
are to blame because all these psychological problems have been passed
in judgement by persons who have held aloof from all the observations
and experiments which alone can be conclusive.

The proof to which I refer was found in the sphere of hypnotic
phenomena. In the year 1889 I was present at the remarkably impressive
demonstrations by Liébault and Bernheim, in Nancy, and there I witnessed
the following experiment. A man was placed in a condition of
somnambulism, and then made to go through all sorts of hallucinatory
experiences. On being wakened, he seemed at first to know nothing at all
of what had taken place during his hypnotic sleep. Bernheim then asked
him in so many words to tell him what had happened while he was under
hypnosis. The man declared that he could not remember anything.
Bernheim, however, insisted upon it, pressed him, and assured him that
he did know and that he must remember, and lo and behold! the man
wavered, began to reflect, and remembered in a shadowy fashion first one
of the occurrences which had been suggested to him, then something else,
his recollection growing increasingly clear and complete until finally
it was brought to light without a single gap. Now, since in the end he
had the knowledge without having learnt anything from any other quarter
in the meantime, we are justified in concluding that these recollections
were in his mind from the outset. They were merely inaccessible to him;
he did not know that he knew them but believed that he did not know. In
fact, his case was exactly similar to what we assume the dreamer’s to
be.

I hope you are duly surprised that this fact is already established and
that you will ask me: “Why did you not refer to this proof before, when
we were considering errors and came to the point of ascribing to a man
who had made a slip of the tongue intentions behind his speech, of which
he knew nothing, and which he denied? If it is possible for a man to
believe that he knows nothing of experiences of which nevertheless he
does possess the recollection, it seems no longer improbable that there
should be other mental processes going on within him about which also he
knows nothing. We should certainly have been impressed by this argument
and should have been in a better position to understand about errors.”
Certainly, I might have brought forward this proof then, but I reserved
it for a later occasion when there would be more need for it. Some of
the errors explained themselves, others suggested to us that in order to
understand the connection between the phenomena it would be advisable to
postulate the existence of mental processes of which the person is
entirely ignorant. With dreams we are compelled to seek our explanations
elsewhere, and besides, I am counting on your being more ready to accept
in this connection a proof from the field of hypnosis. The condition in
which we perform errors must seem to you normal and, as such, to bear no
similarity to that of hypnosis. On the other hand there exists a clear
relationship between the hypnotic state and sleep, the essential
condition of dreaming. Hypnosis is actually called artificial sleep; we
say to the people whom we hypnotize: “Sleep,” and the suggestions made
to them are comparable to the dreams of natural sleep. The mental
situation is really analogous in the two cases. In natural sleep we
withdraw our interest from the whole outer world; so also in hypnotic
sleep, with the exception of the one person who has hypnotized us and
with whom we remain in rapport. Again, the so-called “nurse’s sleep” in
which the nurse remains in rapport with the child and can be wakened
only by him is a normal counterpart of hypnotic sleep. So it does not
seem so very audacious to carry over to natural sleep something which is
a condition in hypnosis. The assumption that some knowledge about his
dream exists in the dreamer and that this knowledge is merely
inaccessible to him, so that he himself does not believe he has it, is
not a wild invention. Incidentally, we observe here that a third way of
approaching the study of dreams is thus opened out for us; we may
approach it by the avenue of sleep-disturbing stimuli, by that of
day-dreams, and now by that of the dreams suggested during hypnosis.

Now perhaps we shall return to our task with greater confidence. We see
it is very probable that the dreamer knows something about his dream;
the problem is how to make it possible for him to get at his knowledge
and impart it to us. We do not expect him immediately to tell us what
his dream means, but we do think he will be able to discover its source,
from what circle of thoughts and interests it is derived. With errors,
you will remember the man was asked how the slip of the tongue
“refilled” had come about, and his first association gave us the
explanation. The technique we employ in the case of dreams is very
simple and is modelled on this example. Here again we shall ask the
dreamer how he came to have the dream, and his next words must be
regarded as giving the explanation in this case also. It makes no
difference to us therefore, whether he thinks that he does or does not
know anything about it, and we treat both cases alike.

This technique is certainly very simple, nevertheless I am afraid it
will provoke most strenuous opposition in you. You will say: “Another
assumption, the third! And the most improbable of all! When I ask the
dreamer what ideas come to him about the dream, do you mean to say that
his very first association will give the desired explanation? But surely
he might have no association at all, or heaven only knows what the
association might be. We cannot imagine upon what grounds such an
expectation is based. It really implies too much trust in Providence,
and this at a point where rather more exercise of the critical faculty
would better meet the case. Besides, a dream is not like a single slip
of the tongue but is made up of many elements. That being so, upon which
association is one to rely?”

You are right in all the unessentials. It is true that a dream differs
from a slip of the tongue in the matter of its many elements as well as
in other points. We must take account of that in our technique. So I
suggest to you that we divide the dream up into its various elements,
and examine each element separately; then we shall have re-established
the analogy with a slip of the tongue. Again, you are right in saying
that the dreamer when questioned on the single elements of the dream may
reply that he has no ideas about them. There are cases in which we
accept this answer, and later I will tell you which these are; curiously
enough, they are cases about which we ourselves may have certain
definite ideas. But in general, when the dreamer declares that he has no
ideas, we shall contradict him, press him to answer, assure him that he
must have some idea and—shall find we are right. He will produce an
association, any one, it does not matter to us what it is. He will be
especially ready with information which we may term historical. He will
say: “That is something which happened yesterday” (as in the instance of
the two “prosaic” dreams quoted above) or: “That reminds me of something
which happened recently,” and in this way we shall come to notice that
dreams are much more often connected with impressions of the day before
than we thought at first. Finally, with the dream as his starting-point,
he will recall events which happened less recently, and at last even
some which lie very far back in the past.

In regard to the main issue, however, you are wrong. When you think it
arbitrary to assume that the first association of the dreamer must give
us just what we are looking for, or at any rate lead to it, and further,
that the association is much more likely to be quite capricious and to
have no connection with what we are looking for, and that it only shows
my blind trust in Providence if I expect anything else—then you make a
very great mistake. I have already taken the liberty of pointing out to
you that there is within you a deeply-rooted belief in psychic freedom
and choice, that this belief is quite unscientific, and that it must
give ground before the claims of a determinism which governs even mental
life. I ask you to have some respect for the _fact_ that that one
association, and nothing else, occurs to the dreamer when he is
questioned. Nor am I setting up one belief against another. It can be
proved that the association thus given is not a matter of choice, not
indeterminate, and that it is not unconnected with what we are looking
for. Indeed, I have recently learnt—not that I attach too much
importance to the fact—that experimental psychology itself has brought
forward similar proofs.

Because of the importance of the matter I ask you to pay special
attention to this. When I ask a man to say what comes to his mind about
any given element in a dream, I require him to give himself up to the
process of FREE ASSOCIATION _which follows when he keeps in mind the
original idea_. This necessitates a peculiar attitude of the attention,
something quite different from reflection, indeed, precluding it. Many
people adopt this attitude without any difficulty, but others when they
attempt to do so display an incredible inaptitude. There is a still
higher degree of freedom in association which appears when I dispense
with any particular stimulus-idea and perhaps only describe the kind and
species of association that I want; for example, ask someone to let a
proper name or a number occur to him. An association of this sort
should, one would say, be even more subject to choice and unaccountable
than the kind used in our technique. Nevertheless, it can be shown that
in every instance it will be strictly determined by important inner
attitudes of mind, which are unknown to us at the moment when they
operate, just as much unknown as are the disturbing tendencies which
cause errors, and those tendencies which bring about so-called “chance”
actions.

I myself and many after me have repeatedly made an examination of names
and numbers called up without any particular idea as a starting-point;
some of these experiments have been published. The method is this: a
train of associations is stirred up by the name which occurred, and
these associations, as you see, are no longer quite free, but are
attached just so far as the associations to the different elements of
the dream are attached; this train of associations is then kept up until
the thoughts arising from the impulse have been exhausted. By that time,
however, you will have explained the motivation and significance of the
free association with a name. The experiments yield the same result
again and again; the information they give us often includes a wealth of
material and necessitates going far afield into its ramifications. The
associations to numbers that arise spontaneously are perhaps the most
demonstrative; they follow upon one another so swiftly and make for a
hidden goal with such astounding certainty that one is really quite
taken aback. I will give you just one example of a name-analysis of this
sort, because it happens to be one which does not involve the handling
of a great mass of material.

Once, when I was treating a young man, I happened to say something on
this subject and to assert that in spite of our apparent freedom of
choice in such matters we cannot, in point of fact, think of any name
which cannot be shown to be narrowly determined by the immediate
circumstances, the idiosyncrasies, of the person experimented with and
his situation at the moment. As he was inclined to be sceptical, I
proposed that he should make the experiment himself then and there. I
knew that he had unusually numerous relationships of all sorts with
women and girls, so I told him that I thought he would have an
exceptionally large number to choose from if he were to let the name of
a woman occur to him. He agreed. To my surprise, or rather perhaps to
his own, he did not overwhelm me with an avalanche of women’s names, but
remained silent for a time, and then confessed that the only name which
came into his mind at all was “Albine.” “How curious! What do you
connect with this name? How many Albines do you know?” Strangely enough,
he knew no one of the name of Albine, and he found no associations to
the name. One might infer that the analysis had failed; but no, it was
already complete, and no further association was required. The man
himself was unusually fair in colouring, and whilst talking to him in
analysis I had often jokingly called him an _albino_; moreover, we were
just in the midst of tracing the _feminine_ element in his nature. So it
was he himself who was this female albino, the “woman” who interested
him most at the moment.

In the same way, the tunes which suddenly come into a man’s head can be
shown to be conditioned by some train of thought to which they belong,
and which for some reason is occupying his mind without his knowing
anything about it. It is easy to show that the connection with the tune
is to be sought either in the words which belong to it or in the source
from which it comes: I must, however, make this reservation, that I do
not maintain this in the case of really musical people of whom I happen
to have had no experience; in them the musical value of the tune may
account for its suddenly emerging into consciousness. The first case is
certainly much more common; I know of a young man who for some time was
absolutely haunted by the tune (a charming one, I admit) of the song of
Paris in _Helen of Troy_, until his attention was drawn in analysis to
the fact that at that time an “Ida” and a “Helen” were rivals in his
interest.

If then the associations which arise quite freely are determined in this
way and belong to some definite context, we are surely justified in
concluding that associations attached to one single stimulus-idea must
be equally narrowly conditioned. Examination shows as a fact that they
are not only attached in the first place to the stimulus-idea which we
have provided for them, but that they are also dependent, in the second
place, on circles of thoughts and interests of strong affective value
(_complexes_, as we call them) of whose influence at the time nothing is
known, that is to say, on unconscious activities.

Associations attached in this way have been made the subject of very
instructive experiments, which have played a notable part in the history
of psycho-analysis. Wundt’s school originated the so-called
‘association-experiment,’ in which the subject of the experiment is
bidden to reply to a given ‘stimulus-word’ as quickly as possible with
whatever ‘reaction-word’ occurs to him. The following points may then be
noted: the interval which elapses between the sounding of the
stimulus-word and of the reaction-word, the nature of the latter, and
possibly any mistake which comes in when the same experiment is repeated
later, and so on. The Zurich School, under the leadership of Bleuler and
Jung, arrived at the explanation of the reactions to the
association-experiment by asking the person experimented upon to throw
light upon any associations which seemed at all remarkable, by means of
subsequent associations. In this way it became clear that these unusual
reactions were most strictly determined by the complexes of the person
concerned. By this discovery Bleuler and Jung built the first bridge
between experimental psychology and psycho-analysis.

Having heard this you may possibly say: “We admit now that free
associations are subject to determination and not a matter of choice, as
we thought at first, and we admit this also in the case of associations
to the elements of dreams. But it is not this that we are bothering
about. You maintain that the association to each element in the dream is
determined by some mental background to this particular element, a
background of which we know nothing. We cannot see that there is any
proof of this. Naturally we expect that the association to the
dream-element will be shown to be conditioned by one of the complexes of
the dreamer, but what good is that to us? That does not help us to
understand the dream; it merely leads to some knowledge of these
so-called complexes, as did the association-experiment; but what have
these to do with the dream?”

You are right, but you are overlooking an important point, the very
thing which deterred me from choosing the association-experiment as a
starting-point for this discussion. In this experiment the
stimulus-word, the single thing which determines the reaction, is chosen
by us at will, and the reaction stands as intermediary between this
stimulus-word and the complex aroused in the person experimented upon.
In the dream, the stimulus-word is replaced by something derived from
the mental life of the dreamer, from sources unknown to him, and hence
may very probably be itself a ‘derivative of a complex.’ It is not,
therefore, altogether fantastic to suppose that the further associations
connected with the elements of the dream are determined by no other
complex than that which has produced the particular element itself, and
that they will lead to the discovery of that complex.

Let me give you another instance which may serve to show that, in the
case of dreams, the facts bear out our expectations. The forgetting of
proper names is really an excellent prototype of what happens in
dream-analysis, only that in the former case one person alone is
concerned, while in the interpretation of dreams there are two. When I
forget a name temporarily, I am still certain that I know it, and by way
of a détour through Bernheim’s experiment, we are now in a position to
achieve a similar certainty in the case of the dreamer. Now this name
which I have forgotten, and yet really know, eludes me. Experience soon
teaches me that no amount of thinking about it, even with effort, is any
use. I can, however, always think of another or of several other names
instead of the forgotten one. When such a substitute name occurs to me
spontaneously, only then is the similarity between this situation and
that of dream-analysis evident. The dream-element also is not what I am
really looking for; it is only a substitute for something else, for the
real thing which I do not know and am trying to discover by means of
dream-analysis. Again the difference is that when I forget a name I know
perfectly well that the substitute is not the right one, whereas we only
arrived at this conception of the dream-element by a laborious process
of investigation. Now there also is a way in which, when we forget a
name, we can by starting from the substitute, arrive at the real thing
eluding our consciousness at the moment, i.e. the forgotten name. If I
turn my attention to these substitute names and let further associations
to them come into my mind, I arrive after a short or a long way round at
the name I have forgotten, and in so doing I discover that the
substitutes I have spontaneously produced had a definite connection
with, and were determined by, the forgotten name.

I will give you an instance of an analysis of this sort: one day I found
that I could not call to mind the name of the small country on the
Riviera, of which Monte Carlo is the capital. It was most annoying, but
so it was. I delved into all my knowledge about the country; I thought
of Prince Albert of the House of Lusignan, of his marriages, of his
passion for deep-sea exploration—in fact of everything I could summon
up, but all to no purpose. So I gave up trying to think and, instead of
the name I had lost, let substitute names come into my mind. They came
quickly: Monte Carlo itself, then Piedmont, Albania, Montevideo, Colico.
Albania was the first to attract my attention; it was immediately
replaced by Montenegro, probably because of the contrast between black
and white. Then I noticed that four of the substitute names have the
same syllable “mon,” and immediately I recalled the forgotten word and
cried out “Monaco.” You see the substitutes really originated in the
forgotten name; the four first came from the first syllable and the last
gave the sequence of the syllables and the whole of the final syllable.
Incidentally, I could quite easily find out what had made me forget the
name for the time being. Monaco is the Italian name for Munich, and it
was some thoughts connected with this town which had acted as an
inhibition.

Now that is a very pretty example, but it is too simple. In other cases
you might have to take a longer succession of associations to the
substitute name, and then the analogy to dream-analysis would be
clearer. I have had experiences of that sort, too. A stranger once
invited me to drink some Italian wine with him, and in the inn he found
he had forgotten the name of the wine which he had meant to order on
account of his very pleasant recollections of it. A number of dissimilar
substitute names occurred to him, and from these I was able to infer
that the thought of someone called Hedwig had made him forget the name
of the wine. Sure enough, not only did he tell me that there had been a
Hedwig with him on the occasion when he first tasted the wine, but this
discovery brought back to him the name he wanted. He was now happily
married, and “Hedwig” belonged to earlier days which he did not care to
recall.

What is possible in the case of forgotten names must be also possible in
the interpretation of dreams: starting from the substitute, we must be
able to arrive at the real object of our search by means of a train of
associations; and further, arguing from what happens with forgotten
names, we may assume that the associations to the dream-element will
have been determined not only by that element but also by the real
thought which is not in consciousness. If we could do this, we should
have gone some way towards justifying our technique.




                            SEVENTH LECTURE
                  MANIFEST CONTENT AND LATENT THOUGHTS


You see that our study of errors has not been fruitless. Thanks to our
exertions in that direction, we have—reasoning from the hypotheses with
which you are familiar—secured two results: a conception of the nature
of the dream-element and a technique of dream-interpretation. The
conception of the dream-element is as follows: it is not in itself a
primary and essential thing, a ‘thought proper,’ but a substitute for
something else unknown to the person concerned, just as is the
underlying intention of the error, a substitute for something the
knowledge of which is indeed possessed by the dreamer but is
inaccessible to him. We hope to be able to carry over the same
conception on to the dream as a whole, which consists of a number of
such elements. Our method is to allow other substitute-ideas, from which
we are able to divine that which lies hidden, to emerge into
consciousness by means of free association to the said elements.

I am now going to propose that we introduce an alteration in our
nomenclature in order to make our terminology more flexible. Instead of
using the words “hidden,” “inaccessible,” or “proper,” let us give a
more precise description and say “inaccessible to the consciousness of
the dreamer” or “unconscious.” By that we mean nothing more than was
implied in the case of the forgotten word, or the underlying intention
responsible for the error; that is to say, _unconscious at the moment_.
It follows that in contradistinction we may call the dream-elements
themselves, and those substitute-ideas arrived at by the process of
association, _conscious_. No theoretical implication is so far contained
in these terms; no exception can be taken to the use of the word
“unconscious” as a description at once applicable and easy to
understand.[26]

Now, transferring our conception from the single element to the dream as
a whole, it follows that the latter is the distorted substitute for
something else, something unconscious, and that the task of
dream-interpretation is to discover these unconscious thoughts. Hence
are derived three important rules which should be observed in the work
of dream-interpretation:

1. We are not to trouble about the surface meaning of the dream, whether
it be reasonable or absurd, clear or confused; in no case does it
constitute the unconscious thoughts we are seeking. (An obvious
limitation of this rule will force itself upon us later.)

2. We are to confine our work to calling up substitute-ideas for every
element and not to ponder over them and try to see whether they contain
something which fits in, nor to trouble ourselves about how far they are
taking us from the dream-element.

3. We must wait until the hidden unconscious thoughts which we are
seeking appear of their own accord, just as in the case of the missing
word “Monaco” in the experiment which I described.

Now we understand also how entirely indifferent it is whether we
remember much or little of our dreams, above all whether we remember
them accurately or not. The dream as remembered is not the real thing at
all, but _a distorted substitute_ which, by calling up other
substitute-ideas, provides us with a means of approaching the thought
proper, of bringing into consciousness the unconscious thoughts
underlying the dream. If our recollection was at fault, all that has
happened is that a further distortion of the substitute has taken place,
and this distortion itself cannot be without motivation.

We can interpret our own dreams as well as those of others; indeed, we
learn more from our own and the process carries more conviction. Now if
we experiment in this direction, we notice that something is working
against us. Associations come, it is true, but we do not admit them all;
we are moved to criticize and to select. We say to ourselves of one
association: “No, that does not fit in—it is irrelevant,” and of
another: “That is too absurd,” and of a third: “That is quite beside the
point”; and then we can observe further that in making such objections
we stifle, and in the end actually banish, the associations before they
have become quite clear. So on the one hand we tend to hold too closely
to the initial idea, that is, the dream-element itself, and on the
other, by allowing ourselves to select, we vitiate the results of the
process of free association. If we are not attempting the interpretation
by ourselves, but are allowing someone else to interpret, we shall
clearly perceive another motive impelling us to this selection,
forbidden as we know it to be. We find ourselves thinking at times: “No,
this association is too unpleasant; I cannot, or will not, tell it to
him.”

Clearly these objections threaten to spoil the success of our work. We
must guard against them when we are interpreting our own dreams by
resolving firmly not to yield to them, and, in interpreting those of
someone else, by laying down the hard and fast rule that he must not
withhold any association, even if one of the four objections I have
named rises up against it, namely, that it is too unimportant, too
absurd, too irrelevant or too unpleasant to speak of. He promises to
keep this rule, and we may well feel annoyed when we find how badly he
fulfils his promise later on. At first we account for this by imagining
that in spite of our authoritative assurance he is not convinced that
the process of free association will be justified by its results; and
perhaps our next idea will be to win him over first to our theory, by
giving him books to read or sending him to lectures so that he may be
converted to our views on the subject. But we shall be saved from any
such false steps by observing that the same critical objections against
certain associations arise even in ourselves, whom we surely cannot
suspect of doubt, and can only subsequently, on second thoughts as it
were, be overcome.

Instead of being annoyed at the dreamer’s disobedience, we can turn this
experience to good account as a means of learning something new,
something which is the more important the more unprepared we were for
it. We realize that the work of dream-interpretation is encountering
opposition by a _resistance_ which expresses itself in this very form of
critical objections. This resistance is independent of the theoretical
conviction of the dreamer. We learn even more than this. Experience
shows that a critical objection of this nature is never justified. On
the contrary, the associations which people wish to suppress in this way
prove _without exception_ to be the most important, to be decisive for
the discovery of the unconscious thought. When an association is
accompanied by an objection of this sort it positively calls for special
notice.

This resistance is something entirely new; a phenomenon which we have
found by following out our hypotheses, although it was not included in
them. We are not altogether agreeably surprised by this new factor which
we have to reckon with, for we suspect already that it will not make our
work any easier: it might almost tempt us to give up the effort with
dreams altogether. To take such a trivial subject and then to have so
much trouble, instead of spinning along smoothly with our technique! But
we might on the other hand find these difficulties fascinating and be
led to suspect that the work will be worth the trouble. Resistances
invariably confront us when we try to penetrate to the hidden
unconscious thought from the substitute offered by the dream-element. We
may suppose, therefore, that something very significant must be
concealed behind the substitute; for, if not, why should we meet with
such difficulties, the purpose of which is to keep up the concealment?
When a child will not open his clenched fist to show what is in it, we
may be quite certain that it is something which he ought not to have.

As soon as we introduce into our subject the dynamic conception of
resistance, we must bear in mind that this factor is something
quantitatively variable. There are greater and lesser resistances, and
we are prepared to find these differences showing themselves in the
course of our work. Perhaps we can connect with this another experience
also met with in the process of dream-interpretation. I mean that
sometimes only a few associations—perhaps not more than one—suffice to
lead us from the dream-element to the unconscious thought behind it,
whilst on other occasions long chains of associations are necessary and
many critical objections have to be overcome. We shall probably think
that the number of associations necessary varies with the varying
strength of the resistances, and very likely we shall be right. If there
is only a slight resistance, the substitute is not far removed from the
unconscious thought; a strong resistance on the other hand causes great
distortions of the latter, and thereby entails a long journey back from
the substitute to the unconscious thought itself.

Perhaps this would be a good moment to select a dream and try our
technique upon it, to see whether the expectations we have entertained
are realized. Very well, but what dream shall we choose? You do not know
how difficult it is for me to decide, nor can I make it clear to you yet
what the difficulties are. Obviously there must be dreams in which on
the whole there is very little distortion, and one would think it would
be best to begin with these. But which are the least distorted dreams?
Those which make good sense and are not confused, of which I have
already given you two examples? In assuming this, we should make a great
mistake, for examination shows that these dreams have undergone an
exceptionally high degree of distortion. Supposing then that I make no
special condition but take any dream at random, you would probably be
very much disappointed. We might have to observe and record such a vast
number of associations to the single dream-elements that it would be
quite impossible to gain any clear view of the work as a whole. If we
write the dream down and compare with it all the associations which it
produces, we are likely to find that they have multiplied the length of
the text of the dream many times. So the most practical method would
seem to be that of selecting for analysis several short dreams, each of
which can at least convey some idea to us or confirm some supposition.
This will be the course we shall decide to take, unless experience gives
us a hint where we ought really to look for slightly distorted dreams.

But I can suggest another means of simplifying matters, one which lies
right before us. Instead of attempting the interpretation of whole
dreams, let us confine ourselves to single dream-elements and find out
by taking a series of examples how the application of our technique
explains them:—

(_a_) A lady related that as a child she very often dreamt that _God had
a pointed paper cap on his head_. How are you going to understand that
without the help of the dreamer? It sounds quite nonsensical; but the
absurdity disappears when the lady says that as a little girl she used
to have a cap like that put on her head at table, because she wouldn’t
give up looking at the plates of her brothers and sisters to see whether
any of them had been given more than she. Evidently the cap was meant to
serve the purpose of blinkers; this piece of historical information was
given, by the way, without any difficulty. The interpretation of this
element and, with it, of the whole short dream becomes easy enough with
the help of a further association of the dreamer’s: “As I had been told
that God knew everything and saw everything, the dream could only mean
that I knew and saw everything as God did, even when they tried to
prevent me.” This example is perhaps too simple.

(_b_) A sceptical patient had a longer dream, in which certain people
were telling her about my book on _Wit_ and praising it very highly.
Then something else came in about a _canal; it might have been another
book in which the word canal occurred, or something else to do with a
canal ... she did not know ... it was quite vague_.

Now you will certainly be inclined to suppose that the _canal_ in the
dream will defy interpretation on account of its vagueness. You are
right in expecting difficulty, but the difficulty is not caused by the
vagueness; on the contrary, the difficulty in interpretation is caused
by something else, by the same thing that makes the element vague. The
dreamer had no association to the word “canal”; naturally I did not know
what to say either. Shortly afterwards, to be accurate, on the next day,
she told me that an association had occurred to her which _perhaps_ had
something to do with it. It was in fact a witty remark which some one
had told her. On board ship between Dover and Calais a well-known author
was talking to an Englishman who in some particular context quoted the
words: “Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.” The author answered:
“Oui, le Pas-de-Calais,” meaning that he regarded France as sublime and
England as ridiculous. Of course, the Pas-de-Calais is a _canal_—that is
to say, the Canal la Manche—the English Channel. Now, you ask, do I
think that this association had anything to do with the dream? Certainly
I think so: it gives the true meaning of the puzzling dream-element. Or
are you inclined to doubt that the joke already existed before the dream
and was the unconscious thought behind the element “canal,” and to
maintain that it was a subsequent invention? The association reveals the
scepticism disguised under the obtrusive admiration, and resistance was
no doubt the cause both of the association being so long in occurring to
her, and of the corresponding dream-element being so vague. Observe here
the relation between the dream-element and the unconscious thought
underlying it: it is, as it were, a fragment of the thought, an allusion
to it; by being isolated in that way it became quite incomprehensible.

(_c_) A patient had a fairly long dream, part of which was as follows:
_Several members of his family were seated at a table of a particular
shape_ ... etc. This table reminded the dreamer that he had seen one of
the same sort when he was visiting a certain family. From that his
thoughts ran on thus: in this family the relationship between father and
son was a peculiar one, and the patient presently added that his own
relationship to his father was, as a matter of fact, of the same nature.
So the table was introduced into the dream to indicate this parallelism.

It happened that this dreamer had long been familiar with the demands of
dream-interpretation; otherwise he might have taken exception to the
idea of investigating so trivial a detail as the shape of a table. We do
literally deny that anything in the dream is a matter of chance or of
indifference, and it is precisely by enquiring into such trivial and
(apparently) unmotivated details that we expect to arrive at our
conclusion. You may perhaps still be surprised that the dream-work
should happen to choose the table, in order to express the thought “Our
relationship is just like theirs.” But even this is explicable when you
learn that the family in question was named “_Tischler_.” (_Tisch_ =
table.) In making his relations sit at this table the dreamer’s meaning
was that they too were “Tischler.”[27] And notice another thing: that in
relating dream-interpretations of this sort one is forced into
indiscretion. There you have one of the difficulties I alluded to in the
matter of choosing examples. I could easily have given you another
example instead of this one, but probably I should have avoided this
indiscretion only to commit another in its place.

This seems to me a good point at which to introduce two new terms which
we might have used already. Let us call the dream as related _the
manifest dream-content_, and the hidden meaning, which we should come by
in following out the associations, _the latent dream-thoughts_. Then we
must consider the relation between the manifest content and the latent
thoughts, as shown in the above examples. There are many varieties of
these relations. In examples (_a_) and (_b_) the manifest dream-element
is also an integral part of the latent thoughts, but only a fragment of
them. A small piece of a great, composite, mental structure in the
unconscious dream-thoughts has made its way into the manifest dream
also, in the form of a fragment or in other cases as an allusion, like a
catch-word or an abbreviation in a telegraphic code. The interpretation
has to complete the whole to which this scrap or allusion belongs, which
it did most successfully in example (_b_). One method of the distorting
process in which the dream-work consists is therefore that of
substituting for something else a fragment or an allusion. In example
(_c_) we notice, moreover, another possible relation between manifest
content and latent thought, a relation which is even more plainly and
distinctly expressed in the following examples:—

(_d_) _The dreamer was pulling a certain lady of his acquaintance out of
a ditch._ He himself found the meaning of this dream-element by means of
the first association. It meant: he “picked her out,” preferred her.[28]

(_e_) Another man dreamt _that his brother was digging up his garden all
over again_. The first association was to deep-trenching for vegetables,
the second gave the meaning. The brother was _retrenching_. (Retrenching
his expenses).[29]

(_f_) _The dreamer was climbing a mountain from which he had a
remarkably wide view._ This sounds most reasonable; perhaps no
interpretation is called for and we have only to find out what
recollection is referred to in the dream, and what had aroused it. No,
you are mistaken; it comes out that this dream needed interpretation
just as much as any other, more confused. For the dreamer remembers
nothing about mountain-climbing himself; instead, it occurs to him that
an acquaintance is publishing a _Rundschau_ (Review), on the subject of
our relations with the most distant parts of the earth: hence, the
latent thought is one in which the dreamer identifies himself with the
“_reviewer_” (lit. one who takes a survey).

Here you come across a new type of relation between the manifest and the
latent element in dreams. The former is not so much a distortion of the
latter as a representation—a plastic, concrete piece of imagery,
originating in the sound of a word. It is true that this amounts in
effect to a distortion, for we have long forgotten from what concrete
image the word sprang, and hence fail to recognize it when that image is
substituted for it. When you consider that the manifest dream consists
of visual images in by far the greatest number of cases, and less
frequently of thoughts and words, you will easily realize that this kind
of relation between the manifest and the latent has a special
significance in the structure of dreams. You see too that in this way it
becomes possible for a long series of abstract thoughts to create
substitute-images in the manifest dream which do indeed serve the
purpose of concealment. This is how our picture-puzzles are made up. The
source of the semblance of wit which goes with this type of
representation is a special question which we need not touch on here.

There is a fourth kind of relation between the manifest and the latent
elements which I will say nothing about until the time comes for it in
my account of our technique. Even then I shall not have given you a full
list of these possible relations, but we shall have sufficient for our
purpose.

Now do you think you can summon up courage to venture on the
interpretation of a whole dream? Let us see whether we are adequately
equipped for the task. I shall not, of course, choose one of the most
obscure, but all the same it shall be one which shows the
characteristics of dreams in a well-marked form.

A young woman who had already been married for a number of years dreamt
as follows: _She was at the theatre with her husband, and one side of
the stalls was quite empty. Her husband told her that Elise L. and her
fiancé also wanted to come, but could only get bad seats, three for a
florin and a half, and of course they could not take those. She replied
that in her opinion they did not lose much by that._

The first thing stated by the dreamer is that the occasion giving rise
to the dream is alluded to in the manifest content: her husband had
really told her that Elise L., an acquaintance of about her own age, had
become engaged, and the dream is the reaction to this piece of news. We
know already that in many dreams it is easy to point to some such
occasion occurring on the day before, and that this is often traced by
the dreamer without any difficulty. This dreamer supplies us with
further information of the same sort about other elements in the
manifest dream. To what did she trace the detail of one side of the
stalls being empty? It was an allusion to a real occurrence of the week
before, when she had meant to go to a certain play and had therefore
booked seats _early_, so early that she had to pay extra for the
tickets. On entering the theatre it was evident that her anxiety had
been quite superfluous, for one side of the stalls was almost empty. It
would have been time enough if she had bought the tickets on the actual
day of the performance and her husband did not fail to tease her about
having been in _too great a hurry_. Next, what about the one florin and
a half (1 fl. 50)? This was traced to quite another context which had
nothing to do with the former, but it again refers to some news received
on the previous day. Her sister-in-law had had a present of 150 florins
from her husband and had rushed off _in a hurry_, like a silly goose, to
a jeweller’s shop and spent it all on a piece of jewellery. What about
the number three? She knew nothing about that unless this idea could be
counted an association, that the engaged girl, Elise L., was only three
months younger than she herself who had been married ten years. And the
absurdity of taking three tickets for two people? She had nothing to say
to this and refused to give any more associations or information
whatever.

Nevertheless, her few associations have provided us with so much
material that it is possible to discover the latent dream-thoughts. We
are struck by the fact that in her statements references to time are
noticeable at several points, which form a common basis for the
different parts of this material. She had got the theatre tickets _too
soon_, taken them in _too great a hurry_, so that she had to pay extra
for them; in the same way her sister-in-law had _hurried_ off to the
jeweller’s with her money to buy an ornament with it, as though she
might _miss something_. If the strongly emphasized points: “_too
early_,” “_too great a hurry_,” are connected with the occasion for the
dream (namely, the news that her friend, only three months _younger_
than herself, had now found a good husband after all) and with the
criticism expressed in her asperity about her sister-in-law, that it was
_folly_ to be so precipitate, there occurs to us almost spontaneously
the following construction of the latent dream-thoughts, for which the
manifest dream is a highly-distorted substitute:

“It was really _foolish_ of me to be in such a hurry to marry! Elise’s
example shows me that I too could have found a husband later on.” (The
over-haste is represented by her own conduct in buying the tickets and
that of her sister-in-law in buying the jewellery. Going to the theatre
is substituted for getting married.) This would be the main thought;
perhaps we may go on, though with less certainty because the analysis in
these passages ought not to be unsupported by statements of the dreamer:
“And I might have had one a hundred times better for the money!” (150
florins is 100 times more than one florin and a half.) If we may
substitute the dowry for the money, it would mean that the husband is
bought with the dowry: both the jewellery and the bad seats would stand
for the husband. It would be still more desirable if we could see some
connection between the element “three tickets” and a husband; but our
knowledge does not as yet extend to this. We have only found out that
the dream expresses _depreciation_ of her own husband and regret at
having _married so early_.

In my opinion we shall be more surprised and confused by the result of
this our first attempt at dream-interpretation than satisfied with it.
Too many ideas force themselves upon us at once, more than as yet we can
master. We see already that we shall not come to the end of what the
interpretation of this dream can teach us. Let us immediately single out
those points in which we can definitely see some new knowledge.

In the first place: we note that in the latent thoughts the chief
emphasis falls upon the element of hurry; in the manifest dream that is
exactly a feature about which we find nothing. Without analysis we could
have had no suspicion that this thought entered in at all. It seems
possible, therefore, that precisely the main point round which the
unconscious thoughts centre does not appear in the manifest dream at
all. This fact must radically change the impression made upon us by the
whole dream. In the second place: in the dream there is a nonsensical
combination of ideas (three for one florin and a half); in the
dream-thoughts we detect the opinion: “It was folly (to marry so
early).” Can one reject the conclusion that this thought, “It was
_folly_,” is represented by the introduction into the manifest dream of
an _absurd_ element? In the third place: comparison shows us that the
relation between manifest and latent elements is no simple one,
certainly not of such a kind that a manifest always replaces a latent
element. The relation between the two is of the nature of a relation
between two different groups, so that a manifest element can represent
several latent thoughts or a latent thought be replaced by several
manifest elements.

As regards the meaning of the dream and the dreamer’s attitude towards
it, here again we might find many surprising things to say. The lady
certainly admitted the interpretation, but she wondered at it; she had
not been aware that she had such disparaging thoughts of her husband;
she did not even know why she should so disparage him. So there is still
much that is incomprehensible about it. I really think that as yet we
are not properly equipped for interpreting a dream and that we need
further instruction and preparation first.




                             EIGHTH LECTURE
                           CHILDREN’S DREAMS


We had the impression that we had advanced too rapidly; let us therefore
retrace our steps a little. Before we made our last experiment in which
we tried to overcome the difficulty of dream-distortion by means of our
technique, we said that it would be best to circumvent it by confining
our attention to dreams in which distortion is absent or occurs only to
a very slight extent, if there are any such dreams. In doing this, we
are again departing from the actual course of development of our
knowledge; for in reality it was only after consistently applying our
method of interpretation, and after exhaustive analysis of dreams in
which distortion occurred, that we became aware of the existence of
those in which it is lacking.

The dreams we are looking for are met with in children: short, clear,
coherent, and easy to understand, they are free from ambiguity and yet
are unmistakable dreams. You must not think, however, that all dreams in
children are of this type. Distortion in dreams begins to appear very
early in childhood, and there are on record dreams of children between
five and eight years old which already show all the characteristics of
the dreams of later life. But, if you confine yourselves to those
occurring in the period between the dawn of recognizable mental activity
and the fourth or fifth year of life, you will discover a series which
we should characterize as infantile, and, in the later years of
childhood, you may find single dreams of the same type; indeed, even in
grown-up people under certain conditions dreams appear which in no way
differ from the typically infantile.

Now from these children’s dreams it is possible to obtain without any
difficulty trustworthy information about the essential nature of dreams,
which we hope will prove to be decisive and universally valid.

1. In order to understand these dreams there is no need for any analysis
nor for the employment of any technique. It is not necessary to question
the child who relates his dream. But we must know something about his
life; in every instance there is some experience from the previous day
which explains the dream. The dream is the mind’s reaction in sleep to
the experience of the previous day.

Let us consider some examples in order to base our further conclusions
upon them:

(_a_) A boy of a year and ten months old had to present someone with a
basket of cherries as a birthday gift. He plainly did it very
unwillingly, although he had been promised some of them for himself. The
next morning he told his dream: “Hermann eaten all the cherries.”

(_b_) A little girl of three and a quarter years went for the first time
for a trip on the lake. When they came to land, she did not wish to
leave the boat and cried bitterly; the time on the water had evidently
gone too quickly for her. Next morning she said: “Last night I was
sailing on the lake.” We may probably infer that this trip lasted
longer.

(_c_) A boy five and a quarter years old was taken on an excursion to
the Escherntal near Hallstatt. He had heard that Hallstatt lay at the
foot of the Dachstein and had shown great interest in that mountain.
From the lodgings in Aussee there was a fine view of the Dachstein, and
with a telescope it was possible to make out the Simony Hut on top. The
child had repeatedly endeavoured to see the hut through the telescope,
but nobody knew whether he had succeeded. The excursion began in a mood
of joyful expectation. Whenever a new mountain came into sight, the
little boy asked: “Is that the Dachstein?” Every time his question was
answered in the negative he grew more out of spirits and presently
became silent and refused to climb a little way up to the waterfall with
the others. He was thought to be overtired, but the next morning he said
quite happily: “Last night I dreamt that we were in the Simony Hut.” So
it was with this expectation that he had taken part in the excursion.
The only detail he gave was one he had heard before: “You have to climb
up steps for six hours.”

These three dreams will be enough to give us all the information we need
at this point.

2. We see that these childhood dreams are not meaningless; they are
complete, comprehensible mental acts. Remember the medical verdict about
dreams, which I told you, and the comparison with unskilled fingers
wandering over the keys of the piano. You cannot fail to notice how
sharply this conception is contradicted by the children’s dreams I have
quoted. Now it would surely be most extraordinary if a child were able
to achieve the performance of complete mental acts during sleep, and the
grown-up person in the same situation contented himself with spasmodic
reactions. Besides, we have every reason for attributing better and
deeper sleep to a child.

3. In these dreams there is no distortion and therefore they need no
interpretation: the manifest and the latent content is here identical.
From this we conclude that _distortion is not essential to the nature of
the dream_. I expect that this statement will take a weight off your
minds. Nevertheless, closer consideration forces us to admit that even
in these dreams distortion is present, though in a very slight degree,
that there is a certain difference between the manifest content and the
latent dream-thought.

4. The child’s dream is a reaction to an experience of the previous day,
which has left behind a regret, a longing, or an unsatisfied wish. _In
the dream we have the direct, undisguised fulfilment of this wish._ Now
consider our discussion as to the part played by the external or
internal somatic stimuli as disturbers of sleep and begetters of dreams.
We learnt certain quite definite facts on this point, but this
explanation only held good in a small number of dreams. In these
children’s dreams there is nothing to indicate the influence of such
somatic stimuli; we can make no mistake about it, for the dreams are
perfectly comprehensible and each can easily be grasped as a whole. But
we need not on that account give up our notion of the stimulus as
causing the dream. We can only ask why we forget from the outset that
there are _mental_ as well as bodily sleep-disturbing stimuli; surely we
know that it is these which are mainly responsible for disturbing the
sleep of the grown-up person, in that they hinder him from bringing
about in himself the mental condition essential for sleep, i.e. the
withdrawal of interest from the outside world. He wishes not to have any
interruption in his life; he would prefer to continue working at
whatever occupies him, and that is the reason why he does not sleep. The
mental stimulus which disturbs sleep is therefore for a child the
unsatisfied wish, and his reaction to this is a dream.

5. This takes us by a very short step to a conclusion about the function
of dreams. If dreams are the reaction to a mental stimulus their value
must lie in effecting a discharge of the excitation so that the stimulus
is removed and sleep can continue. We do not yet know how this discharge
through the dream is effected dynamically, but we notice already that
dreams are not disturbers of sleep (the accusation commonly brought
against them), but are guardians and deliverers of it from disturbing
influences. True, we are apt to think we should have slept better if we
had not dreamed, but there we are wrong: the truth is that without the
help of the dream we should not have slept at all, and we owe it to the
dream that we slept as well as we did. It could not help disturbing us a
little, just as a policeman often cannot avoid making a noise when
driving off disturbers of the peace who would wake us.

6. That dreams are brought about by a wish and that the content of the
dream expresses this wish is one main characteristic of dreams. The
other equally constant feature is that the dream does not merely give
expression to a thought, but represents this wish as fulfilled, in the
form of an hallucinatory experience. “I should like to sail on the
lake,” runs the wish which gives rise to the dream; the content of the
dream itself is: “I am sailing on the lake.” So that even in these
simple dreams belonging to childhood there is still a difference between
the latent and the manifest dream, and still a distortion of the latent
dream-thought, _in the translation of the thought into an experience_.
In interpreting a dream, we must first of all undo this process of
alteration. If this is to be regarded as one of the most universal
characteristics of all dreams, we then know how to translate the
dream-fragment I quoted before: “I see my brother digging” does not mean
“my brother _is_ retrenching,” but “I wish my brother would retrench, he
_is to_ retrench.” Of the two universal characteristics here mentioned
the second is obviously more likely to be acknowledged without
opposition than the first. It is only by extensive investigations that
we can make sure that what produces the dream must always be a _wish_
and cannot sometimes be a preoccupation, a purpose, or reproach; but the
other characteristic remains unaffected, namely, that the dream does not
merely reproduce this stimulus, but, by a kind of living it through,
removes it, sets it aside, relieves it.

7. In connection with these characteristics of dreams we may take up
again our comparison between dreams and errors. In the latter we
distinguished between a disturbing tendency and one which is disturbed,
the error being a compromise between the two. Dreams fall into the same
category; the disturbed tendency can only, of course, be the tendency to
sleep, while the disturbing tendency resolves itself into the mental
stimulus which we may call the wish (clamouring for gratification),
since at present we know of no other mental stimulus disturbing sleep.
Here again the dream is the result of a compromise; we sleep, and yet we
experience the satisfaction of a wish; we gratify a wish and at the same
time continue to sleep. Each achieves part-success and part-failure.

8. You will remember that at one point we hoped to find a path to an
understanding of the problems presented by dreams in the fact that
certain very transparent phantasy-formations are called “day-dreams.”
Now these day-dreams are literally wish-fulfilments, fulfilments of
ambitious or erotic wishes, which we recognize as such; they are,
however, carried out in thought, and, however vividly imagined, they
never take the form of hallucinatory experiences. Here, therefore, the
less certain of the two main characteristics of the dream is retained,
whereas the other, to which the condition of sleep is essential and
which cannot be realized in waking life, is entirely lacking. So in
language we find a hint that a wish-fulfilment is a main characteristic
of dreams. And further, if the experience we have in dreams is only
another form of imaginative representation, a form which becomes
possible under the peculiar conditions of the sleeping state—“a
nocturnal day-dream,” as we might call it—we understand at once how it
is that the process of dream-formation can abrogate the stimulus
operating at night and can bring gratification; for day-dreaming also is
a mode of activity closely linked up with gratification, which is in
fact the only reason why people practise it.

Again, there are other linguistic expressions, besides this, which imply
the same thing. We are familiar with the proverbs: “The pig dreams of
acorns and the goose of maize.” “What do chickens dream of? Of millet.”
The proverb, you see, goes even lower in the scale than we do, beyond
the child to the animal, and asserts that the content of dreams is the
satisfaction of a want. And there are many phrases which seem to point
to the same thing: we say “as beautiful as a dream.” “I should never
have dreamt of such a thing.” “I never imagined that in my wildest
dreams.” Here colloquial speech is clearly partial in its judgement. Of
course there are also anxiety-dreams, and dreams the content of which is
painful or indifferent, but these have not given rise to any special
phrases. We do indeed speak of “bad” dreams, but by a “dream” pure and
simple common usage always understands some sort of exquisite
wish-fulfilment. Nor is there any proverb which attempts to assert that
pigs or geese dream of being slaughtered!

It is, of course, inconceivable that this wish-fulfilling character of
dreams should have escaped the notice of writers on the subject. On the
contrary, they have very often remarked upon it; but it has not occurred
to any of them to recognize this characteristic as universal, and to
take it as the key to the explanation of dreams. We can easily imagine
what may have deterred them, and later we will discuss the question.

Now see how much information we have gained, and that with hardly any
trouble, from our study of children’s dreams! We have learnt that the
function of dreams is to protect sleep; that they arise out of two
conflicting tendencies, of which the one, the desire for sleep, remains
constant, whilst the other endeavours to satisfy some mental stimulus;
that dreams are proved to be mental acts, rich in meaning; that they
have two main characteristics, i.e., they are wish-fulfilments and
hallucinatory experiences. And meanwhile we could almost have forgotten
that we were studying psycho-analysis. Apart from the connection we have
made between dreams and errors our work has not borne any specific
stamp. Any psychologist knowing nothing of the assumptions of
psycho-analysis could have given this explanation of children’s dreams.
Why has no one done so?

If only all dreams were of the infantile type the problem would be
solved and our task already achieved, and that without questioning the
dreamer, referring to the unconscious or having recourse to the process
of free association. Clearly it is in this direction that we must
continue our work. We have already repeatedly found that characteristics
alleged to be universally valid have afterwards proved to hold good only
for a certain kind and a limited number of dreams. So the question we
now have to decide is whether the common characteristics revealed by
children’s dreams are any more stable than these, and whether they hold
also for those dreams whose meaning is not obvious and in whose manifest
content we can recognize no reference to a wish remaining from the day
before. Our idea is that these other dreams have undergone a good deal
of distortion and on that account we must refrain from immediate
judgement. We suspect too that to unravel this distortion we shall need
the help of psycho-analytic technique, which we could dispense with
while learning, as we have just now done, the meaning of children’s
dreams.

There is yet one other class of dreams at least in which no distortion
is present and which, like children’s dreams, we easily recognize to be
wish-fulfilments. These are dreams which are occasioned all through life
by imperative physical needs—hunger, thirst, sexual desire—and are
wish-fulfilments in the sense of being reactions to internal somatic
stimuli. Thus I have on record the dream of a little girl, one year and
seven months old, which consisted of a kind of menu, together with her
name (Anna F ..., strawberries, bilberries, egg, pap), the dream being a
reaction to a day of fasting, enforced on account of indigestion due to
eating the fruit which appeared twice in the dream. At the same time her
grandmother—their combined ages totalled seventy—was obliged, owing to a
floating kidney, to go without food for a day and dreamt that night that
she had been invited out and had had the most tempting delicacies set
before her. Observations on prisoners who are left to go hungry, and on
people who suffer privations whilst travelling or on expeditions, show
that in these circumstances they regularly dream about the satisfaction
of their wants. Thus Otto Nordenskjöld in his book on the Antarctic
(1904) tells us of the band of men in whose company he spent the winter
(Vol. I, p. 336): “Our dreams showed very clearly the direction our
thoughts were taking. Never had we dreamt so frequently and so vividly
as at that time. Even those of our comrades who usually dreamt but
rarely had now long stories to tell in the mornings when we exchanged
our latest experiences in this realm of phantasy. All the dreams were
about that outside world now so far away, but often they included a
reference to our condition at the time ... eating and drinking were,
incidentally, the pivot on which our dreams most often turned. One of
us, who was particularly good at going out to large dinners in his
sleep, was delighted when he could tell us in the morning that he had
had a three-course dinner. Another dreamt of tobacco, whole mountains of
tobacco; another of a ship which came full sail over the water, at last
clear of ice. Yet another dream deserves mention: the postman came with
the letters and gave a long explanation of why they were so late; he
said he had made a mistake in delivering them, and had had great trouble
in getting them back again. Of course, things even more impossible
occupied our minds in sleep, but the lack of imagination in almost all
the dreams which I dreamt myself or heard the others tell was quite
striking. It would certainly be of great psychological interest if we
had a record of all these dreams. You can imagine how we longed for
sleep, when it offered each one of us all that he most eagerly desired.”
Another quotation, this time from Du Prel: “Mungo Park, when nearly
dying of thirst on a journey in Africa, dreamt continually of the
well-watered hills and valleys of his home. So Trenck, tormented with
hunger in the redoubt at Magdebourg, saw himself in his dreams
surrounded by sumptuous meals; and George Back, who took part in
Franklin’s first expedition, when on the point of dying of hunger owing
to their terrible privations, dreamt regularly of abundant food to eat.”

Anyone who has made himself thirsty at night by eating highly-seasoned
dishes at supper is likely to dream of drinking. Of course it is not
possible to relieve acute hunger or thirst by dreaming; in that case we
awake thirsty and are obliged to drink real water. The service of the
dream is here of little practical account, but it is none the less clear
that it was called up for the purpose of protecting sleep from the
stimulus impelling us to wake up and act. Where the intensity of the
desire is less, ‘satisfaction’-dreams do often answer the purpose.

In the same way, when the stimulus is that of sexual desire the dream
provides satisfaction, but of a kind which shows peculiarities worthy of
mention. Since it is a characteristic of the sexual impulse that it is a
degree less dependent on its object than are hunger and thirst, the
satisfaction in a pollution-dream can be real; and, in consequence of
certain difficulties in the relation to the object (which will be
discussed later), it particularly often happens that the real
satisfaction is yet connected with a vague or distorted dream-content.
This peculiarity of pollution-dreams makes them, as O. Rank has
observed, suitable objects for the study of dream-distortion. Moreover,
with adults, dreams of desire usually contain besides the satisfaction
something else, springing from a purely mental source and requiring
interpretation if it is to be understood.

We do not maintain, by the way, that wish-fulfilment dreams of the
infantile type occur in adults solely as reactions to the imperative
desires I have mentioned. We are equally familiar with short clear
dreams of this type, occasioned by certain dominating situations and
unquestionably produced by mental stimuli. For example, there are
‘impatience’-dreams in which someone making preparations for a journey,
for a theatrical performance in which he is specially interested, or for
a lecture or a visit, has his expectations prematurely realized in a
dream, and finds himself the night before the actual experience already
at his journey’s end, at the theatre, or talking to the friend he is
going to visit. Or again, there is the ‘comfort’-dream, rightly
so-called, in which someone who wants to go on sleeping dreams that he
has already got up, that he is washing, or is at school, while all the
time he is really continuing his sleep, meaning that he would rather
dream of getting up than do so in reality. In these dreams the desire
for sleep, which we have recognized as regularly participating in
dream-formation, expresses itself plainly and appears as their actual
originator. The need for sleep ranks itself quite rightly with the other
great physical needs.

I would refer you at this point to the reproduction of a picture by
Schwind in the Schack Gallery at Munich[30] and would ask you to notice
how correctly the artist has realized the way in which a dream arises
out of a dominating situation. The picture is called _The Prisoner’s
Dream_, and the subject of the dream must undoubtedly be his escape. It
is a happy thought that the prisoner is to escape by the window, for it
is through the window that the ray of light has entered and roused him
from sleep. The gnomes standing one above the other no doubt represent
the successive positions he would have to assume in climbing up to the
window; and, if I am not mistaken and do not attribute too much
intentional design to the artist, the features of the gnome at the top,
who is filing the grating through (the very thing the prisoner himself
would like to do), resemble the man’s own.

I have said that in all dreams, other than those of children and such as
conform to the infantile type, we encounter the obstacle of distortion.
We cannot immediately say whether they too are wish-fulfilments, as we
are inclined to suppose, nor can we guess from their manifest content in
what mental stimulus they originate, or prove that they, like the
others, endeavour to remove or relieve the stimulus. They must, in fact,
be interpreted, i.e. translated; the process of distortion must be
reversed, and the manifest content replaced by the latent thought,
before we can make any definite pronouncement whether what we have found
out about infantile dreams may claim to hold good for all dreams alike.




                             NINTH LECTURE
                          THE DREAM-CENSORSHIP


Our study of children’s dreams has taught us how dreams originate, what
their essential character is, and what their function. Dreams are the
means of removing, by hallucinatory satisfaction, mental stimuli that
disturb sleep. It is true that with the dreams of adults we have been
able to explain one group only, those which we termed dreams of the
infantile type. We do not yet know how it may be with the others,
neither do we understand them. The result we have arrived at already is
one, however, of which the significance is not to be under-estimated.
Every time that we fully understand a dream it proves to be a
wish-fulfilment; and this coincidence cannot be accidental or
unimportant.

Dreams of another type are assumed by us to be distorted substitutes for
an unknown content, which first of all has to be traced; we have various
grounds for this assumption, amongst others the analogy to our
conception of errors. Our next task is to investigate and understand
this _dream-distortion_.

It is dream-distortion which makes dreams seem strange and
incomprehensible. There are several things we want to know about it:
first, whence it comes (its dynamics), secondly, what it does, and
finally, how it does it. Further, we can say that distortion is the
production of the _dream-work_. Let us describe the dream-work and trace
out the forces in it.

Now let me tell you a dream recorded by a lady well-known in
psycho-analytical circles[31], who said that the dreamer was an elderly
woman, highly cultivated and held in great esteem. The dream was not
analysed and our informant observed that for psycho-analysts it needed
no interpreting. Nor did the dreamer herself interpret it, but she
criticized it and condemned it in such a way as though she knew what it
meant. “Imagine,” she said, “such abominable nonsense being dreamt by a
woman of fifty, whose only thought day and night is concern for her
child.”

I will now tell you the dream, which is about “love service in
war-time.”[32] ‘She went to the First Military Hospital and said to the
sentinel at the gate that she must speak to the physician-in-chief
(giving a name which she did not know), as she wished to offer herself
for service in the hospital. In saying this, she emphasized the word
service in such a way that the sergeant at once perceived that she was
speaking of “love service.” As she was an old lady, he let her pass
after some hesitation, but instead of finding the chief physician, she
came to a large gloomy room, where a number of officers and army doctors
were standing or sitting around a long table. She turned to a staff
doctor and told him her proposal; he soon understood her meaning. The
words she said in her dream were: “I and countless other women and girls
of Vienna are ready for the soldiers, officers or men, to....” This
ended in a murmur. She saw, however, by the half-embarrassed,
half-malicious expressions of the officers that all of them grasped her
meaning. The lady continued: “I know our decision sounds odd, but we are
in bitter earnest. The soldier on the battlefield is not asked whether
he wishes to die or not.” There followed a minute of painful silence;
then the staff doctor put his arm round her waist and said: “Madam,
supposing it really came to this, that ... (murmur.)” She withdrew
herself from his arm, thinking: “They are all alike,” and replied: “Good
heavens, I am an old woman and perhaps it won’t happen to me. And one
condition must be observed: age must be taken into account, so that an
old woman and a young lad may not ... (murmur); that would be horrible.”
The staff doctor said: “I quite understand”; but some of the officers,
amongst them one who as a young man had made love to her, laughed
loudly, and the lady asked to be taken to the physician-in-chief, whom
she knew, so that everything might be put straight. It then struck her,
to her great consternation, that she did not know his name. The staff
doctor, however, with the utmost respect and courtesy, showed her the
way to the second floor, up a very narrow iron spiral staircase leading
direct from the room where they were to the upper storeys. As she went
up, she heard an officer say: “That is a tremendous decision, no matter
whether she is young or old; all honour to her!” With the feeling that
she was simply doing her duty, she went up an endless staircase.’

This dream was repeated twice within a few weeks, with alterations here
and there which, as the lady remarked, were quite unimportant and
entirely meaningless.

The way in which this dream progresses corresponds to the course of a
day-dream; there are only a few places where an interruption occurs, and
many individual points in its content might have been cleared up by
enquiry: this, however, as you know, was not undertaken. But the most
striking and to us the most interesting thing about it is the occurrence
of many gaps, not in the recollection, but in the content. In three
places the latter is, as it were, blotted out; where these gaps occur
the speeches are interrupted by a _murmur_. As we did not analyse the
dream, we have, strictly speaking, no right to say anything about its
meaning; but there are certain indications from which we may draw
conclusions, e.g. the words “love service”; and, above all, the broken
speeches immediately preceding the murmurs require completion of a kind
which admits of only one construction. If we do so complete them a
phantasy results, in which the content is that the dreamer is ready at
the call of duty to offer herself to gratify the sexual needs of the
troops, irrespective of rank. This is certainly shocking, a model of a
shamelessly libidinous phantasy, but—the dream says nothing about this.
Just where the context demands this confession, there is in the manifest
dream an indistinct murmur: something has been lost or suppressed.

I hope you recognize how obvious is the inference that it is just the
shocking nature of these passages which has led to their suppression.
Now where will you find a parallel to what has taken place here? In
these times you have not far to seek. Take up any political paper and
you will find that here and there in the text something is omitted and
in its place the blank white of the paper meets your eye: you know that
this is the work of the press censor. Where these blank spaces occur,
there originally stood something of which the authorities at the
censorship disapproved and which has been deleted on that account. You
probably think it a pity, for that must have been the most interesting
part, the “cream” of the news.

On other occasions the censorship has not dealt with the sentence in its
completed form; for the writer, foreseeing which passages were likely to
be objected to by the censor, has forestalled him by softening them
down, making some slight modification or contenting himself with hints
and allusions to what he really wants to write. In this case there are
no blanks, but from the roundabout and obscure mode of expression you
can detect the fact that, at the time of writing, the author had the
censorship in mind.

Now keeping to this parallel we say that those speeches in the dream
which were omitted or disguised by a murmur have also been sacrificed to
some form of censorship. We actually use the term DREAM-CENSORSHIP, and
ascribe part of the distortion to its agency. Wherever there are gaps in
the manifest dream we know that the censorship is responsible; and
indeed we should go further and recognize that wherever, amongst other
more clearly-defined elements, one appears which is fainter, more
indefinite or more dubious in recollection, it is evidence of the work
of the censorship. It is, however, seldom that it takes a form so
undisguised, so naïve, as we might say, as it does in the case of the
dream about “love service;” far more often the censorship makes itself
felt in the second way I mentioned: by effecting modifications, hints,
and allusions in place of the true meaning.

There is a third way in which the dream-censorship works, to which the
ordinances of the Press censorship supply no parallel; but it happens
that I can demonstrate to you this particular mode of activity on the
part of the dream-censorship in the only dream hitherto analysed by us.
You will remember the dream of the “three bad theatre tickets, costing
one florin and a half.” In the latent thoughts underlying this dream,
the element “too great a hurry, too early” was in the foreground; the
meaning was: “It was folly to marry so _early_, it was foolish also to
take the tickets so _early_, it was ridiculous of the sister-in-law to
spend her money so _hurriedly_ on a piece of jewellery.” Nothing of this
central element of the dream-thoughts appeared in the manifest content,
where everything was focussed on going to the theatre and taking
tickets. By this displacement of the accent and regrouping of the
dream-elements, the manifest content was made so unlike the latent
thoughts that nobody would suspect the presence of the latter behind the
former. This _displacement of accent_ is one of the principal means
employed in distortion, and it is this which gives the dream that
character of strangeness which makes the dreamer himself reluctant to
recognize it as the product of his own mind.

Omission, modification, regrouping of material—these then are the modes
of the dream-censorship’s activity and the means employed in distortion.
The censorship itself is the originator, or one of the originators, of
distortion, the subject of our present enquiry. Modification and
alteration in arrangement are commonly included under the term
‘_displacement_.’

After these remarks on the activities of the dream-censorship, let us
turn our attention to its dynamics. I hope you are not taking the
expression “censorship” in too anthropomorphic a sense, picturing to
yourselves the censor as a stern little manikin or a spirit, who lives
in a little chamber of the brain and there discharges the duties of his
office; and neither must you localize it too exactly, so that you
imagine a “brain-centre” whence there emanates a censorial influence,
liable to cease with the injury or disappearance of that centre. For the
present we may regard it merely as a useful term by which to express a
dynamic relationship. This need not hinder us from asking what sort of
tendencies exercise this influence and is it exercised upon; and
further, we must not be surprised to discover that we have already come
across the censorship, perhaps without recognizing it.

Indeed this has actually happened. Remember a surprising experience we
had when we began to apply our method of free association: we discovered
that our efforts to penetrate from the dream-element to the unconscious
thought proper for which the former is a substitute encountered a
certain _resistance_. The strength of this resistance, we said, varies,
being sometimes enormous and at other times very slight. In the latter
case we need only a few connecting-links for the work of interpretation;
but where there is great resistance we are compelled to go through long
chains of associations, which carry us far from the initial idea, and on
the way we have to overcome all the difficulties of professedly critical
objections to associations arising. That which we encountered as
resistance in the work of interpretation we now meet again as the
censorship in the dream-work: the resistance is simply the censorship
objectified; it proves to us that the power of the censorship is not
exhausted in effecting distortion, being thereby extinguished, but that
the censorship remains as a permanent institution, the object of which
is to maintain the distortion when once it has been achieved. Moreover,
just as the strength of the resistance encountered during interpretation
varies with each element, so too the degree of distortion effected by
the censorship is different for each element of a whole dream. A
comparison of the manifest and the latent dream shows that certain
latent elements are completely eliminated, others more or less modified,
and others again appear in the manifest dream-content unaltered or
perhaps even intensified.

Our purpose, however, was to find out which are the tendencies
exercising the censorship and upon which tendencies it is exercised. Now
this question, which is fundamental for the understanding of dreams and
perhaps of human life altogether, is easy to answer when we survey the
series of dreams which we have succeeded in interpreting. The tendencies
which exercise the censorship are those which are acknowledged by the
waking judgement of the dreamer and with which he feels himself to be at
one. You may be sure that when you repudiate any correctly-found
interpretation of a dream of your own, you do so from the same motives
as cause the censorship to be exercised and distortion effected, and
make interpretation necessary. Consider the dream of our lady of fifty:
her dream, although it had not been interpreted, struck her as shocking
and she would have been even more outraged if Dr. von Hug-Hellmuth had
told her something of its unmistakable meaning; it was just this
attitude of condemnation which caused the offensive passages in the
dream to be replaced by a murmur.

Those tendencies against which the dream-censorship is directed must
next be described from the point of view of this inner critical
standard. When we do this, we can only say that they are invariably of
an objectionable nature, offensive from the ethical, æsthetic or social
point of view, things about which we do not dare to think at all, or
think of only with abhorrence. Above all are these censored wishes,
which in dreams are expressed in a distorted fashion, manifestations of
a boundless and ruthless egoism; for the dreamer’s own ego makes its
appearance in every dream, and plays the principal part, even if it
knows how to disguise itself completely as far as the manifest content
is concerned. This _sacro egoismo_ of dreams is certainly not
unconnected with the attitude of mind essential to sleep: the withdrawal
of interest from the whole outside world.

The ego which has discarded all ethical bonds feels itself at one with
all the demands of the sexual impulse, those which have long been
condemned by our æsthetic training and those which are contrary to all
the restraints imposed by morality. The striving for pleasure—the
libido, as we say,—chooses its objects unchecked by any inhibition,
preferring indeed those which are forbidden: not merely the wife of
another man, but, above all, the incestuous objects of choice which by
common consent humanity holds sacred—the mother and the sister of men,
the father and the brother of women. (Even the dream of our
fifty-year-old lady is an incestuous one, the libido being unmistakably
directed towards the son.) Desires which we believe alien to human
nature show themselves powerful enough to give rise to dreams. Hate,
too, rages unrestrainedly; wishes for revenge, and death-wishes, against
those who in life are nearest and dearest—parents, brothers and sisters,
husband or wife, the dreamer’s own children—are by no means uncommon.
These censored wishes seem to rise up from a veritable hell; when we
know their meaning, it seems to us in our waking moments as if no
censorship of them could be severe enough. Dreams themselves, however,
are not to blame for this evil content; you surely have not forgotten
that their harmless, nay, useful, function is to protect sleep from
disturbance. Depravity does not lie in the nature of dreams; in fact,
you know that there are dreams which can be recognized as gratifying
justifiable desires and urgent bodily needs. It is true that there is no
distortion in these dreams, but then there is no need for it, they can
perform their function without offending the ethical and æsthetic
tendencies of the ego. Remember, too, that the degree of distortion is
proportionate to two factors: on the one hand, the more shocking the
wish that must be censored, the greater will be the distortion; but it
is also great in proportion as the demands of the censorship are severe.
Hence in a strictly brought up and prudish young girl, a rigid
censorship will distort dream-excitations which we medical men would
have recognized as permissible and harmless libidinous desires, and
which the dreamer herself would judge in the same way ten years later.

Besides, we are still not nearly far enough advanced to allow ourselves
to be outraged at the result of our work of interpretation. I think we
still do not understand it properly; but first of all it is incumbent
upon us to secure it against certain possible attacks. It is not at all
difficult to detect weak points in it. Our interpretations were based on
hypotheses which we adopted earlier: that there really is some meaning
in dreams; that the idea of mental processes being unconscious for a
time, which was first arrived at through hypnotic sleep, may be applied
also to normal sleep; and that all associations are subject to
determination. Now if, reasoning from these hypotheses, we had obtained
plausible results in our dream-interpretation we should have been
justified in concluding that these hypotheses were correct. But what if
these discoveries are of the kind I have described? In that case, surely
it seems natural to say: “These results are impossible, absurd, at the
very least highly improbable, so there must have been something wrong
about the hypotheses. Either the dream is after all not a mental
phenomenon, or there is nothing which is unconscious in our normal
condition, or there is a flaw somewhere in our technique. Is it not
simpler and more satisfactory to assume this than to accept all the
abominable conclusions which we profess to have deduced from our
hypotheses?”

Both! it is both simpler and more satisfactory, but not on that account
necessarily more correct. Let us give ourselves time: the matter is not
yet ripe for judgement. First of all, we can make the case against our
interpretations even stronger. The fact that our results are so
unpleasant and repellent would not perhaps weigh so very heavily with
us; a stronger argument is the emphatic and well-grounded repudiation by
dreamers of the wish-tendencies which we try to foist upon them after
interpretating their dreams. “What?” says one, “You want to prove to me
from my dream that I grudge the money I have spent on my sister’s dowry
and my brother’s education? But it is out of the question; I spend my
whole time working for my brothers and sisters and my only interest in
life is to do my duty by them, as, being the eldest, I promised our dead
mother I would.” Or a woman says: “I am supposed to wish that my husband
were dead? Really that is outrageous nonsense! Not only is our married
life very happy, though perhaps you won’t believe that, but if he died I
should lose everything I possess in the world.” Or someone else will
reply: “Do you mean to suggest that I entertain sexual desires towards
my sister? The thing is ludicrous; she is nothing to me; we get on badly
with one another, and for years I have not exchanged a word with her.”
We still might not be much impressed if these dreamers neither admitted
nor denied the tendencies attributed to them; we might say that these
are just the things of which they are quite unconscious. But when they
detect in their own minds the exact opposite of such a wish as is
interpreted to them, and when they can prove to us by their whole
conduct in life that the contrary desire predominates, surely we must be
nonplussed. Is it not about time now for us to discard our whole work of
dream-interpretation as something which has led to a _reductio ad
absurdum_?

No, not even now. Even this stronger argument falls to pieces when
subjected to a critical attack. Assuming that unconscious tendencies do
exist in mental life, the fact that the opposite tendencies predominate
in conscious life goes to prove nothing. Perhaps there is room in the
mind for opposite tendencies, for contradictions, existing side by side;
indeed, possibly the very predominance of the one tendency conditions
the unconscious nature of the opposite. So the first objections raised
only amount to the statement that the results of dream-interpretation
are not simple and are very disagreeable. To the first charge we may
reply that, however much enamoured of simplicity you may be, you cannot
thereby solve one of the problems of dreams; you have to make up your
mind at the outset to accept the fact of complicated relations. And, as
regards the second point, you are manifestly wrong in taking the fact
that something pleases or repels yourself as the motive for a scientific
judgement. What does it matter if you do find the results of
dream-interpretation unpleasant, or even mortifying and repulsive? _Ça
n’empêche pas d’exister_—as I, when a young doctor, heard my chief,
Charcot, say in a similar case. We must be humble and put sympathies and
antipathies honourably in the background if we would learn to know
reality in this world. If a physicist could prove to you that organic
life on the earth was bound to become extinct before long, would you
venture to say to him also: “That cannot be so; I dislike the prospect
too much.” I think you would say nothing, until another physicist came
along and convicted the first of a mistake in his premises or his
calculations. If you repudiate whatever is distasteful to you, you are
repeating the mechanism of a dream structure rather than understanding
and mastering it.

Perhaps, then, you will undertake to overlook the offensive nature of
the censored dream-wishes and will fall back upon the argument that it
is surely very improbable that we ought to concede so large a part in
the human constitution to what is evil. But do your own experiences
justify you in this statement? I will say nothing of how you may appear
in your own eyes, but have you met with so much goodwill in your
superiors and rivals, so much chivalry in your enemies and so little
envy amongst your acquaintances, that you feel it incumbent on you to
protest against the idea of the part played by egoistic baseness in
human nature? Do you not know how uncontrolled and unreliable the
average human being is in all that concerns sexual life? Or are you
ignorant of the fact that all the excesses and aberrations of which we
dream at night are crimes actually committed every day by men who are
wide awake? What does psycho-analysis do in this connection but confirm
the old saying of Plato that the good are those who content themselves
with dreaming of what others, the wicked, actually do?

And now look away from individuals to the great war still devastating
Europe: think of the colossal brutality, cruelty and mendacity which is
now allowed to spread itself over the civilized world. Do you really
believe that a handful of unprincipled place-hunters and corrupters of
men would have succeeded in letting loose all this latent evil, if the
millions of their followers were not also guilty? Will you venture, even
in these circumstances, to break a lance for the exclusion of evil from
the mental constitution of humanity?

You will accuse me of taking a one-sided view of war, and tell me that
it has also called out all that is finest and most noble in mankind,
heroism, self-sacrifice, and public spirit. That is true; but do not now
commit the injustice, from which psycho-analysis has so often suffered,
of reproaching it that it denies one thing because it affirms another.
It is no part of our intention to deny the nobility in human nature, nor
have we ever done anything to disparage its value. On the contrary, I
show you not only the evil wishes which are censored but also the
censorship which suppresses them and makes them unrecognizable. We dwell
upon the evil in human beings with the greater emphasis only because
others deny it, thereby making the mental life of mankind not indeed
better, but incomprehensible. If we give up the one-sided ethical
valuation then, we are sure to find the truer formula for the relation
of evil to good in human nature.

Here the matter rests. We need not give up the results of our work of
dream-interpretation, even though we cannot fail to find them strange.
Perhaps later we shall be able to come nearer to understanding them by
another path. For the present let us hold fast to this: dream-distortion
is due to the censorship exercised, by certain recognized tendencies of
the ego, over desires of an offensive character which stir in us at
night during sleep. Obviously, when we ask ourselves why it is just at
night that they appear and what is the origin of these reprehensible
wishes, we find that there is still much to investigate and many
questions to answer.

It would, however, be wrong if we neglected to give due prominence at
this point to another result of these investigations. The dream-wishes
which would disturb our sleep are unknown to us; we first learn about
them by dream-interpretation; they are therefore to be designated
“unconscious at the moment” in the sense in which we have used the term.
But we must recognize that they are also more than unconscious at the
moment; for the dreamer denies them, as we have so frequently found,
even after he has learnt of them through the interpretation of his
dream. Here we have a repetition of the case which we first met with
when interpreting the slip of the tongue “hiccough,” where the
after-dinner speaker indignantly assured us that neither then nor at any
time had he been conscious of any feeling of disrespect towards his
chief. We ventured even then to doubt the value of this assertion and
assumed instead that the speaker was permanently ignorant of the
existence of this feeling within him. We meet with the same situation
every time we interpret a dream in which there is a high degree of
distortion, and this lends an added significance to our conception. We
are now prepared to assume that there are processes and tendencies in
mental life, of which we know nothing; have known nothing; have, for a
very long time, perhaps even never, known anything about at all. This
gives the term _unconscious_ a fresh meaning for us: the qualification
“at the moment” or “temporary” is seen to be no essential attribute, the
term may also mean _permanently unconscious_, not merely “latent at the
moment.” You see that later on we shall have to discuss this point
further.




                             TENTH LECTURE
                          SYMBOLISM IN DREAMS


We have found out that the distortion in dreams which hinders our
understanding of them is due to the activities of a censorship, directed
against the unacceptable, unconscious wish-impulses. But of course we
have not asserted that the censorship is the only factor responsible for
the distortion, and as a matter of fact a further study of dreams leads
to the discovery that there are yet other causes contributing to this
effect; that is as much as to say, if the censorship were eliminated we
should nevertheless be unable to understand dreams, nor would the
manifest dream be identical with the latent dream-thoughts.

This other cause of the obscurity of dreams, this additional
contribution to distortion, is revealed by our becoming aware of a gap
in our technique. I have already admitted to you that there are
occasions when persons being analysed really have no associations to
single elements in their dreams. To be sure, this does not happen as
often as they declare that it does; in very many instances the
association may yet be elicited by perseverance; but still there remain
a certain number of cases where association fails altogether or, if
something is finally extorted, it is not what we need. If this happens
during psycho-analytic treatment it has a certain significance which
does not concern us here; but it also occurs in the course of
interpretation of dreams in normal people, or when we are interpreting
our own. When we are convinced in such circumstances that no amount of
pressing is of any use, we finally discover that this unwelcome
contingency regularly presents itself where special dream-elements are
in question; and we begin to recognize the operation of some new
principle, whereas at first we thought we had only come across an
exceptional case in which our technique had failed.

In this way it comes about that we try to interpret these “silent”
elements, and attempt to translate them by drawing upon our own
resources. It cannot fail to strike us that we arrive at a satisfactory
meaning in every instance in which we venture on this substitution,
whereas the dream remains meaningless and disconnected as long as we do
not resolve to use this method. The accumulation of many exactly similar
instances then affords us the required certainty, our experiment having
been tried at first with considerable diffidence.

I am presenting all this somewhat in outline, but that is surely
allowable for purposes of instruction, nor is it falsified by so doing,
but merely made simpler.

We arrive in this way at constant translations for a series of
dream-elements, just as in popular books on dreams we find such
translations for everything that occurs in dreams. You will not have
forgotten that when we employ the method of free association such
constant substitutions for dream-elements never make their appearance.

Now you will at once say that this mode of interpretation seems to you
far more uncertain and open to criticism than even the former method of
free association. But there is still something more to be said: when we
have collected from actual experience a sufficient number of such
constant translations, we eventually realize that we could actually have
filled in these portions of the interpretation from our own knowledge,
and that they really could have been understood without using the
dreamer’s associations. How it is that we are bound to know their
meaning is a matter which will be dealt with in the second half of our
discussion.

We call a constant relation of this kind between a dream-element and its
translation a _symbolic_ one, and the dream-element itself a _symbol_ of
the unconscious dream-thought. You will remember that some time ago,
when we were examining the different relations which may exist between
dream-elements and the thoughts proper underlying them, I distinguished
three relations: substitution of the part for the whole, allusion, and
imagery. I told you then that there was a fourth possible relation, but
I did not tell you what it was. This fourth relation is the symbolic,
which I am now introducing; there are connected with it certain very
interesting points for discussion, to which we will turn attention
before setting forth our special observations on this subject. Symbolism
is perhaps the most remarkable part of our theory of dreams.

First of all: since the relation between a symbol and the idea
symbolized is an invariable one, the latter being as it were a
translation of the former, symbolism does in some measure realize the
ideal of both ancient and popular dream-interpretation, one from which
we have moved very far in our technique. Symbols make it possible for us
in certain circumstances to interpret a dream without questioning the
dreamer, who indeed in any case can tell us nothing about the symbols.
If the symbols commonly appearing in dreams are known, and also the
personality of the dreamer, the conditions under which he lives, and the
impressions in his mind after which his dream occurred, we are often in
a position to interpret it straightaway; to translate it at sight, as it
were. Such a feat flatters the vanity of the interpreter and impresses
the dreamer; it is in pleasing contrast to the laborious method of
questioning the latter. But do not let this lead you away: it is no part
of our task to perform tricks nor is that method of interpretation which
is based on a knowledge of symbolism one which can replace, or even
compare with, that of free association. It is complementary to this
latter, and the results it yields are only useful when applied in
connection with the latter. As regards our knowledge of the dreamer’s
mental situation, moreover, you must reflect that you have not only to
interpret dreams of people whom you know well; that, as a rule, you know
nothing of the events of the previous day which stimulated the dream;
and that the associations of the person analysed are the very source
from which we obtain our knowledge of what we call the mental situation.

Further, it is especially remarkable, particularly with reference to
certain considerations upon which we shall touch later, that the most
strenuous opposition has manifested itself again here, over this
question of the existence of a symbolic relation between the dream and
the unconscious. Even persons of judgement and standing, who in other
respects have gone a long way with psycho-analysis, have renounced their
adherence at this point. This behaviour is the more remarkable when we
remember two things: first, that symbolism is not peculiar to dreams,
nor exclusively characteristic of them; and, in the second place, that
the use of symbolism in dreams was not one of the discoveries of
psycho-analysis, although this science has certainly not been wanting in
surprising discoveries. If we must ascribe priority in this field to
anyone in modern times, the discoverer must be recognized in the
philosopher K. A. Scherner (1861); psycho-analysis has confirmed his
discovery, although modifying it in certain important respects.

Now you will wish to hear something about the nature of dream-symbolism
and will want some examples. I will gladly tell you what I know, but I
confess that our knowledge is less full than we could wish.

The symbolic relation is essentially that of a comparison, but not any
kind of comparison. We must suspect that this comparison is subject to
particular conditions, although we cannot say what these conditions are.
Not everything with which an object or an occurrence can be compared
appears in dreams as symbolic of it, and, on the other hand, dreams do
not employ symbolism for anything and everything, but only for
particular elements of latent dream-thoughts; there are thus limitations
in both directions. We must admit also that we cannot at present assign
quite definite limits to our conception of a symbol; for it tends to
merge into substitution, representation, etc., and even approaches
closely to allusion. In one set of symbols the underlying comparison may
be easily apparent, but there are others in which we have to look about
for the common factor, the _tertium comparationis_ contained in the
supposed comparison. Further reflection may then reveal it to us, or on
the other hand it may remain definitely hidden from us. Again, if the
symbol is really a comparison, it is remarkable that this comparison is
not exposed by the process of free association, and also that the
dreamer knows nothing about it, but makes use of it unawares; nay, more,
that he is actually unwilling to recognize it when it is brought to his
notice. So you see that the symbolic relation is a comparison of a quite
peculiar kind, the nature of which is as yet not fully clear to us.
Perhaps some indication will be found later which will throw some light
upon this unknown quantity.

The number of things which are represented symbolically in dreams is not
great. The human body as a whole, parents, children, brothers and
sisters, birth, death, nakedness—and one thing more. The only typical,
that is to say, regularly occurring, representation of the human form as
a whole is that of a _house_, as was recognized by Scherner, who even
wanted to attribute to this symbol an overwhelming significance which is
not really due to it. People have dreams of climbing down the front of a
house, with feelings sometimes of pleasure and sometimes of dread. When
the walls are quite smooth, the house means a man; when there are ledges
and balconies which can be caught hold of, a woman. Parents appear in
dreams as _emperor_ and _empress_, _king_ and _queen_ or other exalted
personages; in this respect the dream attitude is highly dutiful.
Children and brothers and sisters are less tenderly treated, being
symbolized by _little animals_ or _vermin_. Birth is almost invariably
represented by some reference to _water_: either we are falling into
water or clambering out of it, saving someone from it or being saved by
them, i.e. the relation between mother and child is symbolized. For
dying we have setting out upon a _journey_ or _travelling_ by train,
while the state of death is indicated by various obscure and, as it
were, timid allusions; _clothes_ and _uniforms_ stand for nakedness. You
see that here the dividing line between the symbolic and the allusive
kinds of representation tends to disappear.

In comparison with the poverty of this enumeration, it cannot fail to
strike us that objects and matters belonging to another range of ideas
are represented by a remarkably rich symbolism. I am speaking of what
pertains to the sexual life—the genitals, sexual processes and
intercourse. An overwhelming majority of symbols in dreams are sexual
symbols. A curious disproportion arises thus, for the matters dealt with
are few in number, whereas the symbols for them are extraordinarily
numerous, so that each of these few things can be expressed by many
symbols practically equivalent. When they are interpreted, therefore,
the result of this peculiarity gives universal offence, for, in contrast
to the multifarious forms of its representation in dreams, the
interpretation of the symbols is very monotonous. This is displeasing to
everyone who comes to know of it: but how can we help it?

As this is the first time in the course of these lectures that I have
touched upon the sexual life, I owe you some explanation of the manner
in which I propose to treat this subject. Psycho-Analysis sees no
occasion for concealments or indirect allusions, and does not think it
necessary to be ashamed of concerning itself with material so important;
it is of opinion that it is right and proper to call everything by its
true name, hoping in this way the more easily to avoid disturbing
suggestions. The fact that I am speaking to a mixed audience can make no
difference in this. No science can be treated as an oracular mystery, or
in a manner adapted to school-girls; the women present, by appearing in
this lecture-room, have tacitly expressed their desire to be regarded on
the same footing as the men.

The male genital organ is symbolically represented in dreams in many
different ways, with most of which the common idea underlying the
comparison is easily apparent. In the first place, the sacred number
_three_ is symbolic of the whole male genitalia. Its more conspicuous
and, to both sexes, more interesting part, the penis, is symbolized
primarily by objects which resemble it in form, being long and
upstanding, such as _sticks_, _umbrellas_, _poles_, _trees_ and the
like; also by objects which, like the thing symbolized, have the
property of penetrating, and consequently of injuring, the body,—that is
to say, pointed weapons of all sorts: _knives_, _daggers_, _lances_,
_sabres_; fire-arms are similarly used: _guns_, _pistols_ and
_revolvers_, these last being a very appropriate symbol on account of
their shape. In the anxiety-dreams of young girls, pursuit by a man
armed with a knife or rifle plays a great part. This is perhaps the most
frequently occurring dream-symbol: you can now easily translate it for
yourselves. The substitution of the male organ by objects from which
water flows is again easily comprehensible: _taps_, _watering-cans_, or
_springs_; and by other objects which are capable of elongation, such as
_pulley lamps_, _pencils which slide in and out of a sheath_, and so on.
_Pencils_, _penholders_, _nail-files_, _hammers_ and other _implements_
are undoubtedly male sexual symbols, based on an idea of the male organ
which is equally easily perceived.

The peculiar property of this member of being able to raise itself
upright in defiance of the law of gravity, part of the phenomena of
erection, leads to symbolic representation by means of _balloons_,
_aeroplanes_, and, just recently, _Zeppelins_. But dreams have another,
much more impressive, way of symbolizing erection; they make the organ
of sex into the essential part of the whole person, so that the _dreamer
himself flies_. Do not be upset by hearing that dreams of flying, which
we all know and which are often so beautiful, must be interpreted as
dreams of general sexual excitement, dreams of erection. One
psycho-analytic investigator, P. Federn, has established the truth of
this interpretation beyond doubt; but, besides this, Mourly Vold, a man
highly praised for his sober judgement, who carried out the experiments
with artificial postures of the arms and legs, and whose theories were
really widely removed from those of psycho-analysis (indeed he may have
known nothing about it), was led by his own investigations to the same
conclusion. Nor must you think to object to this on the ground that
women can also have dreams of flying; you should rather remind
yourselves that the purpose of dreams is wish-fulfilment, and that the
wish to be a man is frequently met with in women, whether they are
conscious of it or not. Further, no one familiar with anatomy will be
misled by supposing that it is impossible for a woman to realize this
wish by sensations similar to those of a man, for the woman’s sexual
organs include a small one which resembles the penis, and this little
organ, the clitoris, does actually play during childhood and in the
years before sexual intercourse the same part as the large male organ.

Male sexual symbols less easy to understand are certain _reptiles and
fishes_: above all, the famous symbol of the _serpent_. Why _hats and
cloaks_ are used in the same way is certainly difficult to divine, but
their symbolic meaning is quite unquestionable. Finally, it may be asked
whether the representation of the male organ by some other member, such
as the _hand_ or the _foot_, may be termed symbolic. I think the context
in which this is wont to occur, and the female counterparts with which
we meet, force this conclusion upon us.

The female genitalia are symbolically represented by all such objects as
share with them the property of enclosing a space or are capable of
acting as receptacles: such as _pits_, _hollows and caves_, and also
_jars and bottles_, and _boxes_ of all sorts and sizes, _chests_,
_coffers_, _pockets_, and so forth. _Ships_ too come into this category.
Many symbols refer rather to the uterus than to the other genital
organs: thus _cupboards_, _stoves_ and, above all, _rooms_. Room
symbolism here links up with that of houses, whilst _doors and gates_
represent the genital opening. Moreover, material of different kinds is
a symbol of woman,—_wood_, _paper_, and objects made of these, such as
_tables_ and _books_. From the animal world, _snails and mussels_ at any
rate must be cited as unmistakable female symbols; of the parts of the
body, the _mouth_ as a representation of the genital opening, and,
amongst buildings, _churches and chapels_ are symbols of a woman. You
see that all these symbols are not equally easy to understand.

The breasts must be included amongst the organs of sex; these, as well
as the larger hemispheres of the female body, are represented by
_apples, peaches and fruit_ in general. The pubic hair in both sexes is
indicated in dreams by _woods and thickets_. The complicated topography
of the female sexual organs accounts for their often being represented
by a _landscape_ with rocks, woods and water, whilst the imposing
mechanism of the male sexual apparatus lends it to symbolization by all
kinds of complicated and indescribable _machinery_.

Yet another noteworthy symbol of the female genital organ is a
_jewel-case_, whilst “jewel” and “treasure” are used also in dreams to
represent the beloved person,[33] and _sweetmeats_ frequently stand for
sexual pleasures. Gratification derived from a person’s own genitals is
indicated by any kind of _play_, including playing the piano. The
symbolic representation of onanism by _sliding or gliding_ and also by
_pulling off a branch_ is very typical. A particularly remarkable
dream-symbol is the _falling out_ or _extraction of teeth_; the primary
significance of this is certainly castration as a punishment for
onanism. Special representations of sexual intercourse are less frequent
in dreams than we should expect after all this, but we may mention in
this connection rhythmical activities such as _dancing_, _riding_ and
_climbing_, and also _experiencing some violence_, e.g. being run over.
To these may be added certain manual occupations, and of course being
threatened with weapons.

You must not imagine that these symbols are either employed or
translated quite simply: on all sides we meet with what we do not
expect. For instance, it seems hardly credible that there is often no
sharp discrimination of the different sexes in these symbolic
representations. Many symbols stand for sexual organs in general,
whether male or female: for instance, a _little_ child, or a _little_
son or daughter. At another time a symbol which is generally a male one
may be used to denote the female sexual organ, or vice versa. This is
incomprehensible until we have acquired some knowledge of the
development of conceptions about sexuality amongst human beings. In many
cases this ambiguity of the symbols may be apparent rather than real;
and moreover, the most striking amongst them, such as weapons, pockets
and chests, are never used bisexually in this way.

I will now give a brief account, beginning with the symbols themselves
instead of with the objects symbolized, to show you from what spheres
the sexual symbols have for the most part been derived, and I will add a
few remarks relating particularly to those in which the attribute in
common with the thing symbolized is hard to detect. An instance of an
obscure symbol of this kind is the _hat_, or perhaps head-coverings in
general; this usually has a masculine significance, though occasionally
a feminine one. In the same way a _cloak_ betokens a man, though perhaps
sometimes without special reference to the organs of sex. It is open to
you to ask why this should be so. A _tie_, being an object which hangs
down and is not worn by women, is clearly a male symbol, whilst
_underlinen_ and _linen_ in general stands for the female. _Clothes and
uniforms_, as we have heard, represent nakedness or the human form;
_shoes and slippers_ symbolize the female genital organs. _Tables and
wood_ we have mentioned as being puzzling, but nevertheless certain,
female symbols; the _act of mounting_ ladders, steep places or stairs is
indubitably symbolic of sexual intercourse. On closer reflection we
shall notice that the rhythmic character of this climbing is the point
in common between the two, and perhaps also the accompanying increase in
excitation—the shortening of the breath as the climber ascends.

We have already recognized that _landscapes_ represent the female sexual
organs; mountains and rocks are symbols of the male organ; _gardens_, a
frequently occurring symbol of the female genitalia. _Fruit_ stands for
the breasts, not for a child. _Wild animals_ denote human beings whose
senses are excited, and, hence, evil impulses or passions. _Blossoms and
flowers_ represent the female sexual organs, more particularly, in
virginity. In this connection you will recollect that the blossoms are
really the sexual organs of plants.

We already know how rooms are used symbolically. This representation may
be extended, so that _windows and doors_ (entrances and exits from
rooms) come to mean the openings of the body; the fact of rooms being
_open or closed_ also accords with this symbolism: the _key_, which
opens them, is certainly a male symbol.

This is some material for a study of dream-symbolism. It is not
complete, and could be both extended and made deeper. However, I think
it will seem to you more than enough; perhaps you may dislike it. You
will ask: “Do I then really live in the midst of sexual symbols? Are all
the objects round me, all the clothes I wear, all the things I handle,
always sexual symbols and nothing else?” There really is good reason for
surprised questions, and the first of these would be: How do we profess
to arrive at the meaning of these dream-symbols, about which the dreamer
himself can give us little or no information?

My answer is that we derive our knowledge from widely different sources:
from fairy tales and myths, jokes and witticisms, from folk-lore, i.e.
from what we know of the manners and customs, sayings and songs, of
different peoples, and from poetic and colloquial usage of language.
Everywhere in these various fields the same symbolism occurs, and in
many of them we can understand it without being taught anything about
it. If we consider these various sources individually, we shall find so
many parallels to dream-symbolism that we are bound to be convinced of
the correctness of our interpretations.

The human body is, we said, according to Scherner frequently symbolized
in dreams by a house; by an extension of this symbolism, windows, doors
and gates stand for the entrances to cavities in the body, and the
façades may either be smooth or may have balconies and ledges to hold on
to. The same symbolism is met with in colloquialisms; for instance, we
speak of “a thatch of hair,” or a “tile hat,” or say of someone that he
is not right “in the upper storey.”[34] In anatomy, too, we speak of the
openings of the body as its “portals.”[35]

We may at first find it surprising that parents appear in our dreams as
kings and emperors and their consorts, but we have a parallel to this in
fairy tales. Does it not begin to dawn upon us that the many fairy tales
which begin with the words “Once upon a time there were a king and
queen” simply mean: “Once upon a time there were a father and mother?”
In family life the children are sometimes spoken of jestingly as
princes, and the eldest son as the crown prince. The king himself is
called the father of his people.[36] Again, in some parts, little
children are often playfully spoken of as little animals, e.g. in
Cornwall, as “little toad,” or in Germany as “little worm,” and, in
sympathizing with a child, Germans say “poor little worm.”

Now let us return to the house symbolism. When in our dreams we make use
of the projections of houses as supports, does that not suggest a
well-known, popular German saying, with reference to a woman with a
markedly developed bust: “She has something for one to hold on to” (_Die
hat etwas zum Anhalten_), whilst another colloquialism in the same
connection is: “She has plenty of wood in front of her house” (_Die hat
viel Holz vor dem Hause_), as though our interpretation were to be borne
out by this when we say that wood is a female maternal symbol.

There is still something to be said on the subject of wood. It is not
easy to see why wood should have come to represent a woman or mother,
but here a comparison of different languages may be useful to us. The
German word _Holz_ (wood) is said to be derived from the same root as
the Greek ὔλη, which means stuff, raw material. This would be an
instance of a process which is by no means rare, in that a general name
for material has come finally to be applied to a particular material
only. Now, in the Atlantic Ocean, there is an island named Madeira, and
this name was given to it by the Portuguese when they discovered it,
because at that time it was covered with dense forests; for in
Portuguese the word for wood is _madeira_. But you cannot fail to notice
that this _madeira_ is merely a modified form of the Latin _materia_,
which again signifies material in general. Now _materia_ is derived from
_mater_ = mother, and the material out of which anything is made may be
conceived of as giving birth to it. So, in the symbolic use of wood to
represent woman or mother, we have a survival of this old idea.

Birth is regularly expressed by some connection with water: we are
plunging into or emerging from water, that is to say, we give birth or
are being born. Now let us not forget that this symbol has a twofold
reference to the actual facts of evolution. Not only are all land
mammals, from which the human race itself has sprung, descended from
creatures inhabiting the water—this is the more remote of the two
considerations—but also every single mammal, every human being, has
passed the first phase of existence in water—that is to say, as an
embryo in the amniotic fluid of the mother’s womb—and thus, at birth,
emerged from water. I do not maintain that the dreamer knows this; on
the other hand, I contend that there is no need for him to know it. He
probably knows something else from having been told it as a child, but
even this, I will maintain, has contributed nothing to symbol-formation.
The child is told in the nursery that the stork brings the babies, but
then where does it get them? Out of a pond or a well—again, out of the
water. One of my patients who had been told this as a child (a little
count, as he was then) afterwards disappeared for a whole afternoon, and
was at last found lying at the edge of the castle lake, with his little
face bent over the clear water, eagerly gazing to see whether he could
catch sight of the babies at the bottom of the water.

In the myths of the births of heroes, a comparative study of which has
been made by O. Rank—the earliest is that of King Sargon of Akkad, about
2800 B.C.—exposure in water and rescue from it play a major part. Rank
perceived that this symbolizes birth in a manner analogous to that
employed in dreams. When anyone in his dream rescues somebody from the
water, he makes that person into his mother, or at any rate _a_ mother;
and in mythology, whoever rescues a child from water confesses herself
to be its real mother. There is a well-known joke in which an
intelligent Jewish boy, when asked who was the mother of Moses, answers
immediately: “The Princess.” He is told: “No, she only took him out of
the water.” “That’s what _she_ said,” he replies, showing that he had
hit upon the right interpretation of the myth.

Going away on a journey stands in dreams for dying; similarly, it is the
custom in the nursery, when a child asks questions as to the whereabouts
of someone who has died and whom he misses, to tell him that that person
has “gone away.” Here again, I deprecate the idea that the dream-symbol
has its origin in this evasive reply to the child. The poet uses the
same symbol when he speaks of the other side as “the undiscovered
country from whose bourne _no traveller_ returns.” Again, in everyday
speech it is quite usual to speak of the “last journey,” and everyone
who is acquainted with ancient rites knows how seriously the idea of a
journey into the land of the dead was taken, for instance, in ancient
Egyptian belief. In many cases the “Book of the Dead” survives, which
was given to the mummy, like a Baedeker, to take with him on the last
journey. Since burial-grounds have been placed at a distance from the
houses of the living, the last journey of the dead has indeed become a
reality.

Nor does sexual symbolism belong only to dreams. You will all know the
expression “a baggage” as applied contemptuously to a woman, but perhaps
people do not know that they are using a genital symbol. In the New
Testament we read: “The woman is the weaker _vessel_.” The sacred
writings of the Jews, the style of which so closely approaches that of
poetry, are full of expressions symbolic of sex, which have not always
been correctly interpreted and the exegesis of which, e.g. in the Song
of Solomon, has led to many misunderstandings.[37] In later Hebrew
literature the woman is very frequently represented by a house, the door
standing for the genital opening; thus a man complains, when he finds a
woman no longer a virgin, that “he has found the door open.” The symbol
“table” for a woman also occurs in this literature; the woman says of
her husband “I spread the table for him, but he overturned it.” Lame
children are said to owe their infirmity to the fact that the man
“overturned the table.” I quote here from a treatise by L. Levy in
Brünn: _Sexual Symbolism in the Bible and the Talmud_.

That ships in dreams signify women is a belief in which we are supported
by the etymologists, who assert that “ship” (_Schiff_) was originally
the name of an earthen vessel and is the same word as _Schaff_
(_schaffen_ = to make or produce). That an oven stands for a woman or
the mother’s womb is an interpretation confirmed by the Greek story of
Periander of Corinth and his wife Melissa. According to the version of
Herodotus, the tyrant adjured the shade of his wife, whom he had loved
passionately but had murdered out of jealousy, to tell him something
about herself, whereupon the dead woman identified herself by reminding
him that he, Periander, “had put his bread into a cold oven,” thus
expressing in a disguised form a circumstance of which everyone else was
ignorant. In the _Anthropophyteia_, edited by F. S. Kraus, a work which
is an indispensable text-book on everything concerning the sexual life
of different peoples, we read that in a certain part of Germany people
say of a woman who is delivered of a child that “her oven has fallen to
pieces.” The kindling of fire and everything connected with this is
permeated through and through with sexual symbolism, the flame always
standing for the male organ, and the fireplace or the hearth for the
womb of the woman.

If you have chanced to wonder at the frequency with which landscapes are
used in dreams to symbolize the female sexual organs, you may learn from
mythologists how large a part has been played in the ideas and cults of
ancient times by “Mother Earth” and how the whole conception of
agriculture was determined by this symbolism. The fact that in dreams a
room represents a woman you may be inclined to trace to the German
colloquialism by which _Frauenzimmer_ (_lit._ “woman’s room”) is used
for _Frau_, that is to say, the human person is represented by the place
assigned for her occupation. Similarly we speak of the Porte, meaning
thereby the Sultan and his government, and the name of the ancient
Egyptian ruler, Pharaoh, merely means “great court.” (In the ancient
Orient the courts between the double gates of the city were places of
assembly, like the market-place in classical times.) But I think this
derivation is too superficial, and it strikes me as more probable that
the room came to symbolize woman on account of its property of enclosing
within it the human being. We have already met with the house in this
sense; from mythology and poetry we may take towns, citadels, castles
and fortresses to be further symbols for women. It would be easy to
decide the point by reference to the dreams of people who neither speak
nor understand German. Of late years I have mainly treated foreign
patients, and I think I recollect that in their dreams rooms stand in
the same way for women, even though there is no word analogous to our
_Frauenzimmer_ in their language. There are other indications that
symbolism may transcend the boundaries of language, a fact already
maintained by the old dream-investigator, Schubert, in 1862.
Nevertheless, none of my patients were wholly ignorant of German, so
that I must leave this question to be decided by those analysts who can
collect instances in other countries from persons who speak only one
language.[38]

Amongst the symbols for the male sexual organ, there is scarcely one
which does not appear in jests, or in vulgar or poetic phrases,
especially in the old classical poets. Here, however, we meet not only
with such symbols as occur in dreams but also with new ones, e.g. the
_implements_ employed in various kinds of work, first and foremost, the
_plough_. Moreover, when we come to male symbols, we trench on very
extensive and much-contested ground, which, in order not to waste time,
we will avoid. I should just like to devote a few remarks to the one
symbol which stands, as it were, by itself; I refer to the number
_three_. Whether this number does not in all probability owe its sacred
character to its symbolic significance is a question which we must leave
undecided, but it seems certain that many tripartite natural objects,
e.g. the clover-leaf, are used in coats-of-arms and as emblems on
account of their symbolism. The so-called “French” lily with its three
parts and, again, the “trisceles,” that curious coat-of-arms of two such
widely separated islands as Sicily and the Isle of Man (a figure
consisting of three bent legs projecting from a central point), are
supposed to be merely disguised forms of the male sexual organ, images
of which were believed in ancient times to be the most powerful means of
warding off evil influences (_apotropaea_); connected with this is the
fact that the lucky “charms” of our own time may all be easily
recognized as genital or sexual symbols. Let us consider a collection of
such charms in the form of tiny silver pendants: a four-leaved clover, a
pig, a mushroom, a horseshoe, a ladder and a chimney-sweep. The
four-leaved clover has taken the place of that with three leaves, which
was really more appropriate for the purposes of symbolism; the pig is an
ancient symbol of fruitfulness; the mushroom undoubtedly symbolizes the
penis, there are mushrooms which derive their name from their
unmistakable resemblance to that organ (_Phallus impudicus_); the
horseshoe reproduces the contour of the female genital opening; while
the chimney-sweep with his ladder belongs to this company because his
occupation is one which is vulgarly compared with sexual intercourse.
(Cf. _Anthropophyteia_.) We have learnt to recognize his ladder in
dreams as a sexual symbol: expressions in language show what a
completely sexual significance the word _steigen_, to mount, has, as in
the phrases: _Den Frauen nachsteigen_ (to run after women) and _ein
alter Steiger_ (an old roué). So, in French, where the word for “step”
is _la marche_, we find the quite analogous expression for an old rake:
_un vieux marcheur_. Probably the fact that with many of the larger
animals sexual intercourse necessitates a mounting or “climbing upon”
the female has something to do with this association of ideas.

Pulling off a branch to symbolize onanism is not only in agreement with
vulgar descriptions of that act, but also has far-reaching parallels in
mythology. But especially remarkable is the representation of onanism,
or rather of castration as the punishment for onanism, by the falling
out or extraction of teeth; for we find in folk-lore a counterpart to
this which could only be known to very few dreamers. I think that there
can be no doubt that circumcision, a practice common to so many peoples,
is an equivalent and replacement of castration. And recently we have
learnt that certain aboriginal tribes in Australia practise circumcision
as a rite to mark the attaining of puberty (at the celebration of the
boy’s coming of age), whilst other tribes living quite near have
substituted for this practice that of knocking out a tooth.

I will end my account with these examples. They are only examples; we
know more about this subject and you can imagine how much richer and
more interesting a collection of this sort might be made, not by
dilettanti like ourselves, but by real experts in mythology,
anthropology, philology and folk-lore. We are forced to certain
conclusions, which cannot be exhaustive, but nevertheless will give us
plenty to think about.

In the first place, we are confronted with the fact that the dreamer has
at his command a symbolic mode of expression of which he knows nothing,
and does not even recognize, in his waking life. This is as amazing as
if you made the discovery that your housemaid understood Sanscrit,
though you know that she was born in a Bohemian village and had never
learnt that language. It is not easy to bring this fact into line with
our views on psychology. We can only say that the dreamer’s knowledge of
symbolism is unconscious and belongs to his unconscious mental life, but
even this assumption does not help us much. Up till now we have only had
to assume the existence of unconscious tendencies which are temporarily
or permanently unknown to us; but now the question is a bigger one and
we have actually to believe in unconscious knowledge, thought-relations,
and comparisons between different objects, in virtue of which one idea
can constantly be substituted for another. These comparisons are not
instituted afresh every time, but are ready to hand, perfect for all
time; this we infer from their unanimity in different persons, even
probably in spite of linguistic differences.

Whence is our knowledge of this symbolism derived? The usages of speech
cover only a small part of it, whilst the manifold parallels in other
fields are for the most part unknown to the dreamer; we ourselves had to
collate them laboriously in the first instance.

In the second place, these symbolic relations are not peculiar to the
dreamer or to the dream-work by which they are expressed; for we have
discovered that the same symbolism is employed in myths and fairy tales,
in popular sayings and songs, in colloquial speech and poetic phantasy.
The province of symbolism is extraordinarily wide: dream-symbolism is
only a small part of it; it would not even be expedient to attack the
whole problem from the side of dreams. Many of the symbols commonly
occurring elsewhere either do not appear in dreams at all or appear very
seldom; on the other hand, many of the dream-symbols are not met with in
every other department, but, as you have seen, only here and there. We
get the impression that here we have to do with an ancient but obsolete
mode of expression, of which different fragments have survived in
different fields, one here only, another there only, a third in various
spheres perhaps in slightly different forms. At this point I am reminded
of the phantasy of a very interesting insane patient, who had imagined a
“primordial language” (_Grundsprache_) of which all these symbols were
survivals.

In the third place, it must strike you that the symbolism occurring in
the other fields I have named is by no means confined to sexual themes,
whereas in dreams the symbols are almost exclusively used to represent
sexual objects and relations. This again is hard to account for. Are we
to suppose that symbols originally of sexual significance were later
employed differently and that perhaps the decline from symbolic to other
modes of representation is connected with this? It is obviously
impossible to answer these questions by dealing only with
dream-symbolism; all we can do is to hold fast to the supposition that
there is a specially close relation between true symbols and sexuality.

An important clue in this connection has recently been given to us in
the view expressed by a philologist (H. Sperber, of Upsala, who works
independently of psycho-analysis), that sexual needs have had the
largest share in the origin and development of language. He says that
the first sounds uttered were a means of communication, and of summoning
the sexual partner, and that in the later development the elements of
speech were used as an accompaniment to the different kinds of work
carried on by primitive man. This work was performed by associated
efforts, to the sound of rhythmically repeated utterances, the effect of
which was to transfer a sexual interest to the work. Primitive man thus
made his work agreeable, so to speak, by treating it as the equivalent
of and substitute for sexual activities. The word uttered during the
communal work had therefore two meanings, the one referring to the
sexual act, the other to the labour which had come to be equivalent to
it. In time the word was dissociated from its sexual significance and
its application confined to the work. Generations later the same thing
happened to a new word with a sexual signification, which was then
applied to a new form of work. In this way a number of root-words arose
which were all of sexual origin but had all lost their sexual meaning.
If the statement here outlined be correct, a possibility at least of
understanding dream-symbolism opens out before us. We should comprehend
why it is that in dreams, which retain something of these primitive
conditions, there is such an extraordinarily large number of sexual
symbols; and why weapons and tools in general stand for the male, and
materials and things worked on for the female. The symbolic relation
would then be the survival of the old identity in words; things which
once had the same name as the genitalia could now appear in dreams as
symbolizing them.

Further, our parallels to dream-symbolism may assist you to appreciate
what it is in psycho-analysis which makes it a subject of general
interest, in a way that was not possible to either psychology or
psychiatry; psycho-analytic work is so closely intertwined with so many
other branches of science, the investigation of which gives promise of
the most valuable conclusions: with mythology, philology, folk-lore,
folk psychology and the study of religion. You will not be surprised to
hear that a publication has sprung from psycho-analytic soil, of which
the exclusive object is to foster these relations. I refer to _Imago_,
first published in 1912 and edited by Hanns Sachs and Otto Rank. In its
relation to all these other subjects, psycho-analysis has in the first
instance given rather than received. True, analysis reaps the advantage
of receiving confirmation of its own results, seemingly so strange,
again in other fields; but on the whole it is psycho-analysis which
supplies the technical methods and the points of view, the application
of which is to prove fruitful in these other provinces. The mental life
of the human individual yields, under psycho-analytic investigation,
explanations which solve many a riddle in the life of the masses of
mankind or at any rate can show these problems in their true light.

I have still given you no idea of the circumstances in which we may
arrive at the deepest insight into that hypothetical “primordial
language,” or of the province in which it is for the most part retained.
As long as you do not know this you cannot appreciate the true
significance of the whole subject. I refer to the province of neurosis;
the material is found in the symptoms and other modes of expression of
nervous patients, for the explanation and treatment of which
psycho-analysis was indeed devised.

My fourth point of view takes us back to the place from which we started
and leads into the track we have already marked out. We said that even
if there were no dream-censorship we should still find it difficult to
interpret dreams, for we should then be confronted with the task of
translating the symbolic language of dreams into the language of waking
life. SYMBOLISM, then, is a second and independent factor in
dream-distortion, existing side by side with the censorship. But the
conclusion is obvious that it suits the censorship to make use of
symbolism, in that both serve the same purpose: that of making the dream
strange and incomprehensible.

Whether a further study of the dream will not introduce us to yet
another contributing factor in the distortion, we shall soon see. But I
must not leave the subject of dream-symbolism without once more touching
on the puzzling fact that it has succeeded in rousing such strenuous
opposition amongst educated persons, although the prevalence of
symbolism in myth, religion, art and language is beyond all doubt. Is it
not probable that, here again, the reason is to be found in its relation
to sexuality?




                            ELEVENTH LECTURE
                             THE DREAM-WORK


When you have successfully grasped the dream-censorship and symbolic
representation, you will not, it is true, have mastered dream-distortion
in its entirety, but you will nevertheless be in a position to
understand most dreams. To do so, you will make use of the two
complementary methods: you will call up the dreamer’s associations till
you have penetrated from the substitute to the thought proper for which
it stands, and you will supply the meaning of the symbols from your own
knowledge of the subject. We will speak later of certain doubtful points
which may arise in the process.

We can now return to a task which we attempted earlier with inadequate
equipment, when we were studying the relations between dream-elements
and the thoughts proper underlying them. We then determined the
existence of four such main relations: substitution of the part for the
whole, hints or allusions, symbolic connection, and plastic
word-representation (images). We will now try to deal with this subject
on a larger scale, by a comparison of the _manifest_ dream-content as a
whole with the _latent_ dream as laid bare by our interpretation.

I hope you will never again confuse these two things. If you succeed in
distinguishing between them, you will have advanced further towards an
understanding of dreams than in all probability most of the readers of
my _Interpretation of Dreams_ have done. Let me again remind you that
_the process by which the latent dream is transformed into the manifest
dream is called_ THE DREAM-WORK; while the reverse process, which seeks
to progress from the manifest to the latent thoughts, is our work of
interpretation; the work of interpretation therefore aims at demolishing
the dream-work. In dreams of the infantile type in which the obvious
wish-fulfilments are easily recognized, the process of dream-work has
nevertheless been operative to some extent, for the wish has been
transformed into a reality and, usually, the thoughts also into visual
images. Here no interpretation is necessary; we only have to retrace
both these transformations. The further operations of the dream-work, as
seen in the other types of dreams, we call _dream-distortion_, and here
the original ideas have to be restored by our interpretative work.

Having had the opportunity of comparing many dream-interpretations, I am
in a position to give you a comprehensive account of the manner in which
the dream-work deals with the material of the latent dream-thoughts. But
please do not expect to understand too much: it is a piece of
description which should be listened to quietly and attentively.

The first achievement of the dream-work is CONDENSATION; by this term we
mean to convey the fact that the content of the manifest dream is less
rich than that of the latent thoughts, is, as it were, a kind of
abbreviated translation of the latter. Now and again condensation may be
lacking, but it is present as a rule and is often carried to a very high
degree. It never works in the opposite manner, i.e. it never happens
that the manifest dream is wider in range or richer in content than is
the latent dream. Condensation is accomplished in the following ways:
(1) certain latent elements are altogether omitted; (2) of many
complexes in the latent dream only a fragment passes over into the
manifest content; (3) latent elements sharing some common characteristic
are in the manifest dream put together, blended into a single whole.

If you prefer to do so, you can reserve the term ‘condensation’ for this
last process, the effects of which are particularly easy to demonstrate.
Taking your own dreams, you will be able without any trouble to recall
instances of the condensation of different persons into a single figure.
Such a composite figure resembles A. in appearance, but is dressed like
B., pursues some occupation which recalls C., and yet all the time you
know that it is really D. The composite picture serves, of course, to
lay special emphasis upon some characteristic common to the four people.
And it is possible also for a composite picture to be formed with
objects or places, as with persons, provided only that the single
objects or places have some common attribute upon which the latent dream
lays stress. It is as though a new and fugitive concept were formed, of
which the common attribute is the kernel. From the superimposing of the
separate parts which undergo condensation there usually results a
blurred and indistinct picture, as if several photographs had been taken
on the same plate.

The formation of such composite figures must be of great importance in
the dream-work, for we can prove that the common properties necessary to
their formation are purposely manufactured where at first sight they
would seem to be lacking, as, for example, by the choice of some
particular verbal expression for a thought. We have already met with
instances of condensation and composite-formation of this sort; they
played an important part in originating many slips of the tongue. You
will remember the case of the young man who wished to “insort” a lady
(_beleidigen_ = insult, _begleiten_ = escort, composite word
_begleitdigen_). Besides, there are jokes in which the technique is
traceable to condensation of this sort. Apart from this, however, we may
venture to assert that this process is something quite unusual and
strange. It is true that in many a creation of phantasy we meet with
counterparts to the formation of the composite persons of our dreams,
component parts which do not belong to one another in reality being
readily united into a single whole by phantasy, as, for instance, in the
centaurs and fabulous animals of ancient mythology or of Boecklin’s
pictures. “Creative” phantasy can, in fact, invent nothing new, but can
only regroup elements from different sources. But the peculiar thing
about the way in which the dream-work proceeds is this: its material
consists of thoughts, some of which may be objectionable and
disagreeable, but which nevertheless are correctly formed and expressed.
The dream-work transmutes these thoughts into another form, and it is
curious and incomprehensible that in this process of translation—of
rendering them, as it were, into another script or language—the means of
blending and combining are employed. The translator’s endeavour in other
cases must surely be to respect the distinctions observed in the text,
and especially to differentiate between things which are similar but not
the same; the dream-work, on the contrary, strives to condense two
different thoughts by selecting, after the manner of wit, an ambiguous
word which can suggest both thoughts. We must not expect to understand
this characteristic straight away, but it may assume great significance
for our conception of the dream-work.

Although condensation renders the dream obscure, yet it does not give
the impression of being an effect of the dream-censorship. Rather we
should be inclined to trace it to mechanical or economic factors;
nevertheless the censorship’s interests are served by it.

What condensation can achieve is sometimes quite extraordinary: by this
device it is at times possible for two completely different latent
trains of thought to be united in a single manifest dream, so that we
arrive at an apparently adequate interpretation of a dream and yet
overlook a second possible meaning.

Moreover, one of the effects of condensation upon the relationship
between the manifest and the latent dream is that the connection between
the elements of the one and of the other nowhere remains a simple one;
for by a kind of interlacing a manifest element represents
simultaneously several latent ones and, conversely, a latent thought may
enter into several manifest elements. Again, when we come to interpret
dreams, we see that the associations to a single manifest element do not
commonly make their appearance in orderly succession; we often have to
wait until we have the interpretation of the whole dream.

The dream-work, then, follows a very unusual mode of transcription for
the dream-thoughts; not a translation, word for word, or sign for sign;
nor yet a process of selection according to some definite rule, for
instance, as though the consonants only of the words were reproduced and
the vowels omitted; nor again what one might call a process of
representation, one element being always picked out to represent several
others. It works by a different and much more complicated method.

The second achievement of the dream-work is DISPLACEMENT. Fortunately
here we are not breaking perfectly fresh ground; indeed, we know that it
is entirely the work of the dream-censorship. Displacement takes two
forms: first, a latent element may be _replaced_, not by a part of
itself, but by something more remote, something of the nature of an
allusion; and, secondly, the _accent_ may be transferred from an
important element to another which is unimportant, so that the centre of
the dream is shifted as it were, giving the dream a foreign appearance.

Substitution by allusion is familiar to us in our waking thoughts also,
but with a difference; for it is essential in the latter that the
allusion should be easily comprehensible, and that the content of the
substitute should be associated to that of the thought proper. Allusion
is also frequently employed in wit, where the condition of association
in content is dispensed with and replaced by unfamiliar external
associations, such as similarity of sound, ambiguity of meaning, etc.
The condition of comprehensibility, however, is observed: the joke would
lose all its point if we could not recognize without any effort what is
the actual thing to which the allusion is made. But in dreams allusion
by displacement is unrestricted by either limitation. It is connected
most superficially and most remotely with the element for which it
stands, and for that reason is not readily comprehensible; and, when the
connection is traced, the interpretation gives the impression of an
unsuccessful joke or of a “forced,” far-fetched and “dragged in”
explanation. The object of the dream-censorship is only attained when it
has succeeded in making it impossible to trace the thought proper back
from the allusion.

Displacement of accent is not a legitimate device if our object be the
expression of thought; though we do sometimes admit it in waking life in
order to produce a comic effect. I can to some extent convey to you the
impression of confusion which then results, by reminding you of an
anecdote, according to which there was in a certain village a smith who
had committed a capital offence. The court decided that the smith was
guilty; but, since he was the only one of his trade in the village and
therefore indispensable, whereas there were three tailors living there,
one of these three was hanged in his place!

The third achievement of the dream-work is the most interesting from the
psychological point of view. It consists in the transformation of
thoughts into _visual images_. Let us be quite clear that not everything
in the dream-thoughts is thus transformed; much keeps its original form
and appears also in the manifest dream as thought or knowledge, on the
part of the dreamer; again, translation of them into visual images is
not the only possible transformation of thoughts. But it is nevertheless
the essential feature in the formation of dreams, and, as we know, this
part of the dream-work is, if we except one other case, the least
subject to variation; for single dream-elements, moreover, _plastic
word-representation_ is a process already familiar to us.

Obviously this achievement is by no means an easy one. In order to get
some idea of its difficulty, imagine that you had undertaken to replace
a political leading article in a newspaper by a series of illustrations;
you would have to abandon alphabetic characters in favour of
hieroglyphics. The people and concrete objects mentioned in the article
could be easily represented, perhaps even more satisfactorily, in
pictorial form; but you would expect to meet with difficulties when you
came to the portrayal of all the abstract words and all those parts of
speech which indicate relations between the various thoughts, e.g.
particles, conjunctions, and so forth. With the abstract words you would
employ all manner of devices: for instance, you would try to render the
text of the article into other words, more unfamiliar perhaps, but made
up of parts more concrete and therefore more capable of such
representation. This will remind you of the fact that most abstract
words were originally concrete, their original significance having
faded; and therefore you will fall back on the original concrete meaning
of these words wherever possible. So you will be glad that you can
represent the “possessing” of an object as a literal, physical “sitting
upon” it (possess = _potis_ + _sedeo_). This is just how the dream-work
proceeds. In such circumstances you can hardly demand great accuracy of
representation, neither will you quarrel with the dream-work for
replacing an element which is difficult to reduce to pictorial form,
such as the idea of breaking marriage vows, by some other kind of
breaking, e.g. that of an arm or leg.[39] In this way you will to some
extent succeed in overcoming the awkwardness of rendering alphabetic
characters into hieroglyphs.

When you come to represent those parts of speech which indicate
thought-relations, e.g. “because,” “therefore,” “but,” and so on, you
have no such means as those described to assist you; so that these parts
of the text must be lost, so far as your translation into pictorial form
is concerned. Similarly, the content of the dream-thoughts is resolved
by the dream-work into its ‘raw material,’ consisting of objects and
activities. You may be satisfied if there is any possibility of
indicating somehow, by a more minute elaboration of the images, certain
relations which cannot be represented in themselves. In a precisely
similar manner the dream-work succeeds in expressing much of the content
of the latent thoughts by means of peculiarities in the _form_ of the
manifest dream, by its distinctness or obscurity, its division into
various parts, etc. The number of parts into which a dream is divided
corresponds as a rule with the number of its main themes, the successive
trains of thought in the latent dream; a short preliminary dream often
stands in an introductory or causal relation to the subsequent detailed
main dream; whilst a subordinate dream-thought is represented by the
interpolation into the manifest dream of a change of scene, and so on.
The form of dreams, then, is by no means unimportant in itself, and
itself demands interpretation. Several dreams in the same night often
have the same meaning, and indicate an endeavour to control more and
more completely a stimulus of increasing urgency. In a single dream, a
specially difficult element may be represented by “doubling” it, i.e. by
more than one symbol.

If we continue the comparison of dream-thoughts with the manifest dreams
representing them, we discover in all directions things we should never
have expected, e.g. that even nonsense and absurdity in dreams have
their meaning; in fact, at this point the contrast between the medical
and the psycho-analytic view of dreams becomes more marked than ever
before. According to the medical view, the dream is absurd because while
dreaming our mental activity has renounced its functions; according to
our view, on the other hand, the dream becomes absurd when it has to
represent a criticism implicit in the latent thoughts—the opinion: “It
is absurd.” The dream I told you, about the visit to the theatre (“three
tickets for one florin and a half”) is a good example of this: the
opinion thus expressed was as follows: “It was _absurd_ to marry so
early.”

Similarly, we find out when we interpret dreams what is the real meaning
of the doubts and uncertainties, so frequently mentioned by dreamers,
whether a certain element did actually appear in the dream, whether it
was really this and not rather something else. As a rule, there is
nothing in the latent thoughts corresponding with these doubts and
uncertainties; they originate wholly through the operation of the
censorship and are comparable to a not entirely successful attempt at
erasure.

One of our most surprising discoveries is the manner in which
_opposites_ in the latent dream are dealt with by the dream-work. We
know already that points of agreement in the latent material are
replaced by condensation in the manifest dream. Now contraries are
treated in just the same way as similarities, with a marked preference
for expression by means of the _same_ manifest element. An element in
the manifest dream which admits of an opposite may stand simply for
itself, or for its opposite, or for both together; only the sense can
decide which translation is to be chosen. It accords with this that
there is no representation of a “No” in dreams, or at least none which
is not ambiguous.

A welcome analogy to this strange behaviour of the dream-work is
furnished in the development of language. Many philologists have
maintained that in the oldest languages opposites such as: strong—weak,
light—dark, large—small, were expressed by the same root word
(_antithetical sense of primal words_). Thus, in old Egyptian “_ken_”
stood originally for both “strong” and “weak.” In speaking,
misunderstanding was guarded against in the use of such ambivalent words
by the intonation and accompanying gestures; in writing, by the addition
of a so-called “determinative,” that is to say, of a picture which was
not meant to be expressed orally. Thus, “_ken_” = “strong” was written
in such a way that after the letters there was a picture of a little man
standing upright; when “_ken_” meant “weak,” there was added the picture
of a man in a slack, crouching attitude. Only at a later period did the
two opposite meanings of the same primal word come to be designated in
two different ways by slight modifications of the original. Thus, from
“_ken_” meaning “strong—weak” were derived two words: “_ken_” = “strong”
and “_kan_” = “weak.” Nor is it only the oldest languages, in the last
stages of their development, which have retained many survivals of these
early words capable of meaning either of two opposites, but the same is
true of much younger languages, even those which are to-day still
living. I will quote some illustrations of this taken from the work of
C. Abel (1884):

In Latin, such ambivalent words are:

      _altus_ = high or deep. _sacer_ = sacred or accursed.

As examples of modifications of the original root, I quote:

      _clamare_ = to shout. _clam_ = quietly, silently, secretly.
      _siccus_ = dry. _succus_ = juice.

and, in German, _Stimme_ = voice. _stumm_ = dumb.

A comparison of kindred languages yields a large number of examples:

      English: lock = to shut. German: _Loch_ = hole. _Lücke_ = gap.
      English: cleave.[40] German: _kleben_ = to stick, adhere.

The English word “without,” originally carrying with it both a positive
and a negative connotation, is to-day used in the negative sense only,
but it is clear that “with” has the signification, not merely of “adding
to,” but of “depriving of,” from the compounds “withdraw,” “withhold”
(cf. the German _wieder_).

Yet another peculiarity of the dream-work has its counterpart in the
development of language. In ancient Egyptian, as well as in other later
languages, the sequence of sounds was transposed so as to result in
different words for the same fundamental idea. Examples of this kind of
parallels between English and German words may be quoted:

      _Topf_ (pot)—pot. Boat—tub. Hurry—_Ruhe_ (rest). _Balken_
      (beam)—_Kloben_ (club). wait—_täuwen_ (to wait).

Parallels between Latin and German:—

      _capere_—_packen_ (to seize). _ren_—_Niere_ (kidney).

Such transpositions as have taken place here in the case of single words
are made by the dream-work in a variety of ways. The inversion of the
meaning, i.e. substitution by the opposite, is a device with which we
are already familiar; but, besides this, we find in dreams inversion of
situations or of the relations existing between two persons, as though
the scene were laid in a “topsy-turvy” world. In dreams often enough the
hare shoots the hunter. Again, inversion is met with in the sequence of
events, so that in dreams cause follows effect, which reminds us of what
sometimes happens in a third-rate theatrical performance, when first the
hero falls and then the shot which kills him is fired from the wings. Or
there are dreams in which the whole arrangement of the elements is
inverted, so that in interpreting them the last must be taken first, and
the first last, in order to make sense at all. You remember that we also
found this in our study of dream-symbolism, in which the act of plunging
or falling into water has the same meaning as that of emerging from
water, namely, giving birth or being born, and going up steps or a
ladder means the same as coming down them. We cannot fail to recognize
the advantage reaped for dream-distortion by this freedom from
restrictions in representing the dream-thoughts.

These features of the dream-work may be termed _archaic_. They cling to
the primitive modes of expression of languages or scripts, and yield the
same difficulties, which we shall touch upon later in the course of some
critical observations on this topic.

Now let us consider some other aspects of the subject. Clearly what has
to be accomplished by the dream-work is the transformation of the latent
thoughts, as expressed in words, into perceptual forms, most commonly
into visual images. Now our thoughts originated in such perceptual
forms; their earliest material and the first stages in their development
consisted of sense-impressions, or, more accurately, of memory-pictures
of these. It was later that words were attached to these pictures and
then connected so as to form thoughts. So that the dream-work subjects
our thoughts to a _regressive_ process and retraces the steps in their
development; in the course of this REGRESSION all new acquisitions won
during this development of memory-pictures into thoughts must
necessarily fall away.

This then is what we mean by the dream-work. Beside what we have learnt
of its processes our interest in the manifest dream is bound to recede
far into the background; I will, however, devote still a few more
remarks to the manifest dream, for, after all, that is the only part of
the dream with which we have any direct acquaintance.

It is natural that the manifest dream should lose some of its importance
in our eyes. It must strike us as a matter of indifference whether it is
carefully composed or split up into a succession of disconnected
pictures. Even when the outward form of the dream is apparently full of
meaning, we know that this appearance has been arrived at by the process
of dream-distortion, and can have as little organic connection with the
inner content of the dream as exists between the _façade_ of an Italian
church and its general structure and ground-plan. At times, however,
this _façade_ of the dream has a meaning too, reproducing an important
part of the latent thoughts with little or no distortion. But we cannot
know this until we have interpreted the dream and thus arrived at an
opinion with regard to the degree of distortion present. A similar doubt
obtains where two elements seem to be closely connected; such connection
may contain a valuable hint that the corresponding elements in the
latent dream are similarly related, but at other times we can convince
ourselves that what is connected in thought has become widely separated
in the dream.

In general we must refrain from attempting to explain one part of the
manifest dream by another part, as though the dream were a coherent
conception and a pragmatic representation. It is in most cases
comparable rather to a piece of Breccia stone, composed of fragments of
different kinds of stone cemented together in such a way that the
markings upon it are not those of the original pieces contained in it.
There is, as a matter of fact, one mechanism in the dream-work, known as
SECONDARY ELABORATION, the object of which is to combine the immediate
results of the work into a single and fairly coherent whole; during this
process the material is often so arranged as to give rise to total
misunderstanding, and for this purpose any necessary interpolations are
made.

On the other hand, we should not overrate the dream-work or attribute to
it more than is its due. Its activity is limited to the achievements
here enumerated; condensation, displacement, plastic representation and
secondary elaboration of the whole dream; these are all that it can
effect. Such manifestations of judgement, criticism, surprise, or
deductive reasoning, as are met with in dreams are not brought about by
the dream-work and are only very rarely the expression of subsequent
reflection about the dream; but are for the most part fragments of the
latent thoughts introduced into the manifest dream with more or less
modification and in a form suited to the context. Again, the dream-work
cannot create conversation in dreams; save in a few exceptional cases,
it is imitated from, and made up of, things heard or even said by the
dreamer himself on the previous day, which have entered into the latent
thoughts as the material or incitement of his dream. Neither do
mathematical calculations come into the province of the dream-work;
anything of the sort appearing in the manifest dream is generally a mere
combination of numbers, a pseudo-calculation, quite absurd as such, and
again only a copy of some calculation comprised in the latent thoughts.
In these circumstances it is not surprising that the interest which was
felt in the dream-work soon becomes directed instead towards the latent
thoughts which disclose themselves in a more or less distorted form
through the manifest dream. We are not justified, however, in a
theoretical consideration of the subject, in letting our interest stray
so far that we altogether substitute the latent thoughts for the dream
as a whole, and make some pronouncement on the latter which is only true
of the former. It is strange that the findings of psycho-analysis could
be so misused as to result in confusion between the two. The term
“dream” can only be applied to the _results of the dream-work_, i.e. to
the _form_ into which the latent thoughts have been rendered by the
dream-work.

This work is a process of a quite peculiar type; nothing like it has
hitherto been known in mental life. This kind of condensation,
displacement, and regressive translation of thoughts into images, is a
novelty, the recognition of which in itself richly rewards our efforts
in the field of psycho-analysis. You will again perceive, from the
parallels to dream-work, the connections revealed between
psycho-analytic and other research, especially in the fields of the
development of speech and thought. You will only realize the further
significance of the insight so acquired when you learn that the
mechanism of the dream-work is a kind of model for the formation of
neurotic symptoms.

I know too that it is not possible for us yet to grasp the full extent
of the fresh gain accruing to psychology from these labours. We will
only hint at the new proofs thereby afforded of the existence of
unconscious mental activities—for this indeed is the nature of the
latent dream-thoughts—and at the promise dream-interpretation gives of
an approach, wider than we ever guessed at, to the knowledge of the
unconscious life of the mind.

Now, however, I think the time has come to give you individual examples
of various short dreams, which will illustrate the points for which I
have already prepared you.




                            TWELFTH LECTURE
                EXAMPLES OF DREAMS AND ANALYSIS OF THEM


You must not be disappointed if I present you once more with fragments
of dream-interpretations, instead of inviting you to participate in the
interpretation of one fine long dream. You will say that after so much
preparation you surely have a right to expect that; and you will express
your conviction that, after successful interpretations of so many
thousands of dreams, it should long ago have been possible to collect a
number of striking examples by which the truth of all our assertions
about the dream-work and dream-thoughts could be demonstrated. Yes, but
there are too many difficulties in the way of fulfilling this wish of
yours.

In the first place, I must confess that there is nobody who makes the
interpretation of dreams his main business. In what circumstances, then,
do we come to interpret them? At times we may occupy ourselves, for no
particular purpose, with the dreams of a friend, or we may work out our
own dreams over a period of time in order to train ourselves for
psycho-analytic work; but chiefly we have to do with the dreams of
nervous patients who are undergoing psycho-analytic treatment. These
last dreams provide splendid material and are in no respect inferior to
those of healthy persons, but the technique of the treatment obliges us
to subordinate dream-interpretation to therapeutic purposes and to
desist from the attempt to interpret a large number of the dreams as
soon as we have extracted from them something of use for the treatment.
Again, many dreams which occur during the treatment elude full
interpretation altogether; since they have their origin in the whole
mass of material in the mind which is as yet unknown to us, it is not
possible to understand them until the completion of the cure. To relate
such dreams would necessarily involve revealing all the secrets of a
neurosis; this will not do for us, since we have taken up the problem of
dreams in preparation for the study of the neuroses.

Now I expect you would willingly dispense with this material and would
prefer to listen to the explanation of dreams of healthy persons or
perhaps of your own. But the content of these dreams makes that
impossible. One cannot expose oneself, nor anyone whose confidence has
been placed in one, so ruthlessly as a thorough interpretation of a
dream would necessitate; for, as you already know, they touch upon all
that is most intimate in the personality. Apart from the difficulty
arising out of the nature of the material, there is another difficulty
as regards relating the dreams. You are aware that the dream seems
foreign and strange to the dreamer himself; how much more so to an
outsider to whom his personality is unknown. The literature of
psycho-analysis shows no lack of good and detailed dream-analyses; I
myself have published some which formed part of the history of certain
pathological cases. Perhaps the best example of a dream-interpretation
is that published by O. Rank, consisting of the analysis of two
mutually-related dreams of a young girl. These cover about two pages of
print, while the analysis of them runs into 76 pages. It would need
almost a whole term’s lectures in order to take you through a work of
this magnitude. If we selected some fairly long and considerably
distorted dream we should have to enter into so many explanations, to
adduce so much material in the shape of associations and recollections,
and to go down so many sidetracks, that a single lecture would be quite
unsatisfying and would give no clear idea of it as a whole. So I must
ask you to be content if I pursue a less difficult course, and relate
some fragments from dreams of neurotic patients, in which this or that
isolated feature may be recognized. Symbols are the easiest features to
demonstrate and, after them, certain peculiarities of the regressive
character of dream-representation. I will tell you why I regard each of
the following dreams as worth relating.

1. A dream consisted only of two short pictures: _The dreamer’s uncle
was smoking a cigarette, although it was Saturday.—A woman was fondling
and caressing the dreamer as though he were her child._

With reference to the first picture, the dreamer (a Jew) remarked that
his uncle was a very pious man who never had done, and never would do,
anything so sinful as smoking on the Sabbath. The only association to
the woman in the second picture was that of the dreamer’s mother. These
two pictures or thoughts must obviously be related to one another; but
in what way? Since he expressly denied that his uncle would in reality
perform the action of the dream, the insertion of the conditional “if”
will at once suggest itself. “If my uncle, that deeply religious man,
were to smoke a cigarette on the Sabbath, then I myself might be allowed
to let my mother fondle me.” Clearly, that is as much as to say that
being fondled by the mother was something as strictly forbidden as
smoking on the Sabbath is to the pious Jew. You will remember my telling
you that in the dream-work all relations among the dream-thoughts
disappear; the thoughts are broken up into their raw material, and our
task in interpreting is to re-insert these connections which have been
omitted.

2. My writings on the subject of dreams have placed me to some extent in
the position of public consultant on the question, and for many years
now I have received letters from the most diverse quarters communicating
dreams to me or asking for my opinion. Naturally I am grateful to all
those who have given me sufficient material with their dreams to make an
interpretation possible, or have themselves volunteered one. The
following dream of a medical student in Munich dating from 1910, belongs
to this category; and I quote it because it may prove to you how hard it
is, generally speaking, to understand a dream until the dreamer has
given us what information he can about it. For I have a suspicion that
in the bottom of your hearts you think that the translating of the
symbols is the ideal method of interpretation and that you would like to
discard that of free association; I want, therefore, to clear your minds
of so pernicious an error.

July 18th, 1910. Towards morning I had the following dream: _I was
bicycling down a street in Tübingen, when a brown dachshund came rushing
after me and caught hold of one of my heels. I rode a little further and
then dismounted, sat down on a step and began to beat the creature off,
for it had set its teeth fast in my heel._ (The dog’s biting me and the
whole scene roused no unpleasant sensations.) _Two elderly ladies were
sitting opposite, watching me with grinning faces. Then I woke up and,
as has frequently happened before, with the transition to waking
consciousness the whole dream was clear to me._

In this instance symbolism cannot help us much, but the dreamer goes on
to tell us: “I recently fell in love with a girl, just from seeing her
in the street; but I had no means of introduction to her. I should have
liked best to make her acquaintance through her dachshund, for I am a
great animal-lover myself and was attracted by seeing that she was one
too.” He adds that several times he had separated fighting dogs very
skilfully, often to the amazement of the onlookers. Now we learn that
the girl who had taken his fancy was always seen walking with this
particular dog. She, however, has been eliminated from the manifest
dream; only the dog associated with her has remained. Possibly the
elderly ladies who grinned at him represented her, but the rest of what
he tells us does not clear up this point. The fact that he was riding a
bicycle in the dream was a direct repetition of the situation as he
remembered it, for he had not met the girl with the dog except when he
was bicycling.

3. When a man has lost someone dear to him, for a considerable period
afterwards he produces a special type of dream, in which the most
remarkable compromises are effected between his knowledge that that
person is dead and his desire to call him back to life. Sometimes the
deceased is dreamt of as being dead, and yet still alive because he does
not know that he is dead, as if he would only really die if he did know
it; at other times he is half dead and half alive, and each of these
conditions has its distinguishing marks. We must not call these dreams
merely nonsensical, for to come to life again is no more inadmissible in
dreams than in fairy tales, in which it is quite a common fate. As far
as I have been able to analyse such dreams, it appeared that they were
capable of a reasonable explanation, but that the pious wish to recall
the departed is apt to manifest itself in the strangest ways. I will
submit a dream of this sort to you, which certainly sounds strange and
absurd enough, and the analysis of which will demonstrate many points
already indicated in our theoretical discussions. The dreamer was a man
who had lost his father some years previously:—

_My father was dead but had been exhumed and looked ill. He went on
living, and I did all I could to prevent his noticing it._ Then the
dream goes on to other matters, apparently very remote.

That the father was dead we know to be a fact; but the exhumation had
not taken place in reality: indeed, the question of real fact has
nothing to do with anything that follows. But the dreamer went on to say
that after he returned from his father’s funeral one of his teeth began
to ache. He wanted to treat it according to the Jewish precept: “If thy
tooth offend thee, pluck it out,” and accordingly went to the dentist.
The latter, however, said that that was not the way to treat a tooth;
one must have patience with it. “I will put something in it,” he said,
“to kill the nerve, and you must come back in three days’ time, when I
will take it out again.” “This ‘taking out,’” said the dreamer suddenly,
“is the exhuming.”

Now was he right? True, the parallel is not exact, for it was not the
tooth which was taken out, but only a dead part of it. As a result of
experience, however, we can well credit the dream-work with inaccuracies
of this sort. We must suppose that the dreamer had, by a process of
condensation, combined the dead father with the tooth, which was dead
and which he yet retained. No wonder then that an absurdity was the
result in the manifest dream, for obviously not all that was said about
the tooth could apply to the father. What then are we to regard as the
_tertium comparationis_ between the father and the tooth,—what common
factor makes the comparison possible?

Such a factor must have existed, for the dreamer went on to observe that
he knew the saying that if one dreams of losing a tooth it means that
one is about to lose a member of his family.

We know that this popular interpretation is incorrect or at least
correct only in a very distorted sense. We shall therefore be the more
surprised actually to discover the subject thus touched upon behind the
other elements of the dream-content.

Without being pressed further, the dreamer then began to talk of his
father’s illness and death, and of the relations which had existed
between father and son. The illness had been a long one, and the care
and treatment of the invalid had cost the son a large sum of money. Yet
it never seemed too much to him, nor did his patience ever fail or the
wish occur to him that the end should come. He prided himself on his
true Jewish filial piety and on his strict observance of the Jewish law.
Does not a certain contradiction strike us here in the thoughts relating
to the dream? He had identified the tooth with the father. He wanted to
treat the former according to the Jewish law which commanded that a
tooth which causes pain and annoyance should be plucked out. His father
he also wanted to treat according to the precepts of the law, but here
the command was that he must pay no heed to expense and annoyance, must
take the whole burden upon himself, and not allow any hostile intention
to arise against the cause of the trouble. Would not the agreement
between the two situations be much more convincing if he had really
gradually come to have the same feelings towards his sick father as he
had towards his diseased tooth, that is to say, if he had wished for
death to put a speedy end to his father’s superfluous, painful and
costly existence?

I have no doubt that this was, in reality, his attitude towards his
father during the protracted illness and that his boastful assertions of
filial piety were designed to divert his mind from any recollections of
the sort. Under conditions such as these it is no uncommon thing for the
death-wish against the father to be roused, and to mask itself with some
ostensibly compassionate reflection, such as: “It would be a blessed
release for him.” But I want you particularly to notice that here in the
latent thoughts themselves a barrier has been broken down. The first
part of the thoughts was, we may be sure, only temporarily unconscious,
that is, during the actual process of the dream-work; the hostile
feelings towards the father, on the other hand, had probably been
permanently so, possibly dating from childhood and having at times,
during the father’s illness, crept as it were timidly and in a disguised
form into consciousness. We can maintain this with even greater
certainty of other latent thoughts which have unmistakably contributed
to the content of the dream. There are, it is true, no indications in it
of hostile feelings towards the father; but when we enquire into the
origin of such hostility in the life of the child we remember that fear
of the father arises from the fact that in the earliest years of life it
is he who opposes the sexual activity of the boy, as he is usually
compelled to do again, after puberty, from motives of social expediency.
This was the relation in which our dreamer stood to his father; his
affection for him had been tinged with a good deal of respect and dread,
the source of which was early sexual intimidation.

We can now explain the further phrases in the dream from the onanism
complex. “_He looked ill_” was an allusion to another remark of the
dentist’s—that it did not look well for a tooth to be missing just
there—but it also refers at the same time to the “looking ill” by which
the young man, during the period of puberty, betrays, or fears lest he
might betray, his excessive sexual activity. It was with a lightening of
his own heart that in the manifest dream the dreamer transferred the
look of illness from himself to his father, an inversion with which you
are familiar as a device of the dream-work. “_He went on living_”
accords both with the wish to recall the father to life and the promise
of the dentist to save the tooth. The phrase “_I did everything I could
to prevent his noticing_” is extremely subtly designed to lead us to
complete it with the words “that he was dead.” The only completion of
them that really makes sense, however, is again to be traced to the
onanism complex, where it is a matter of course that the young man
should do all he can to conceal his sexual life from his father.
Finally, I would remind you that the so-called “toothache dreams” always
refer to onanism, and the punishment for it that is feared.

You see how this incomprehensible dream is built up by a piece of
remarkable and misleading condensation, by omitting from it all the
thoughts that belong to the core of the latent train of thought, and by
the creation of ambiguous substitute-formations to represent those
thoughts which were deepest and most remote in time.

4. We have already tried repeatedly to get to the bottom of those
prosaic and banal dreams which have nothing absurd or strange in them,
but which suggest the question: Why should we dream about such
trivialities at all? I will therefore quote a fresh example of this sort
in the shape of three dreams connected with one another and dreamt by a
young lady in the course of a single night.

(_a_) _She was going through the hall in her house and struck her head
on a low-hanging chandelier with such force as to draw blood._ This
episode did not remind her of anything that had actually happened; her
remarks led in quite another direction: “You know how terribly my hair
is coming out. Well, yesterday my mother said to me: ‘My dear child, if
it goes on like this, your head will soon be as bald as your buttocks.’”
We see here that the head stands for the other end of the body. No
further assistance is required to understand the symbolism of the
chandelier: all objects capable of elongation are symbols of the male
organ. The real subject of the dream then is a bleeding at the lower end
of the body, caused by contact with the penis. This might still have
other meanings; the dreamer’s further associations show that the dream
has to do with the belief that menstruation results from sexual
intercourse with a man, a notion about sexual matters which is by no
means uncommon amongst immature girls.

(_b_) _The dreamer saw in a vineyard a deep hole which she knew had been
caused by the uprooting of a tree._ Her remark on this point was that
“the tree was _missing_,” meaning that she did not see the tree in the
dream; but the same phrase serves to express another thought, which
leaves us in no doubt as to the symbolic interpretation. The dream
refers to another infantile notion on the subject of sex, to the belief
that girls originally had the same genital organ as boys and that the
later conformation of this organ has been brought about by castration
(uprooting the tree).

(_c_) _The dreamer was standing in front of her writing-table drawer
which she knows so well that, if anyone touched it, she would
immediately be aware of it._ The writing-table drawer, like all drawers,
chests and boxes, is a symbol of the female genital. She knew that when
sexual intercourse (or, as she thought, any contact at all) has taken
place the genital shows certain indications of the fact, and she had
long had a fear of being convicted of this. I think that in all three
dreams the main emphasis lies on the idea of _knowing_. She had in mind
the time of childish investigations into sexual matters, of the results
of which she had been very proud at the time.

5. Here is another example of symbolism. But this time I must preface it
with a short account of the mental situation in which the dream
occurred. A man and a woman who were in love had spent a night together;
he described her nature as maternal, she was one of those women whose
desire to have a child comes out irresistibly during caresses. The
conditions of their meeting, however, made it necessary to take
precautions to prevent the semen from entering the womb. On waking the
next morning, the woman related the following dream:—

_An officer with a red cap was pursuing her in the street. She fled from
him and ran up the staircase, with him after her. Breathless, she
reached her rooms and slammed and locked the door behind her. The man
remained outside and, peeping through the keyhole in the door, she saw
him sitting on a bench outside, weeping._

In the pursuit by the officer with the red cap and the breathless
climbing of the stairs you will recognize the representation of the
sexual act. That the dreamer shuts her pursuer out may serve as an
example of the device of inversion so frequently employed in dreams, for
in reality it was the man who withdrew before the completion of the
sexual act. In the same way, she has projected her own feeling of grief
on to her partner, for it is he, who weeps in the dream, his tears at
the same time alluding to the seminal fluid.

You will certainly have heard it said at some time or other that
psycho-analysis maintains that all dreams have a sexual meaning. You are
now in a position yourselves to form an opinion as to the falseness of
this reproach. You have learnt of wish-fulfilment dreams, dealing with
the gratification of the most obvious needs—hunger, thirst, and the
longing for liberty—comfort-dreams and impatience-dreams, as well as
those which are frankly avaricious and egoistical. You may, however,
certainly bear it in mind that, according to the results of
psycho-analysis, dreams in which a marked degree of distortion is
present _mainly_ (but here again not exclusively) give expression to
sexual desires.

6. I have a special motive in giving many instances of the use of
symbols in dreams. In our first lecture I complained of the difficulty
of demonstrating my statements in such a way as to carry conviction with
regard to the findings of psycho-analysis, and since then you have
doubtless agreed with me. Now the separate propositions of
psycho-analysis are nevertheless so intimately related that conviction
on a single point easily leads to acceptance of the greater part of the
whole theory. It might be said of psycho-analysis that if you give it
your little finger it will soon have your whole hand. If you accept the
explanation of errors as satisfactory, you cannot logically stop short
of belief in all the rest. Now dream-symbolism provides another, equally
good, approach to such acceptance. I will recount to you a dream, which
has already been published, of a woman of the poorer classes, whose
husband was a watchman and of whom we may be sure that she had never
heard of dream-symbolism and psycho-analysis. You can then judge for
yourselves whether the interpretation arrived at with the help of sexual
symbols can justly be called arbitrary or forced.

“_... Then someone broke into the house and in terror she cried for a
watchman. But the watchman, accompanied by two tramps, had gone into a
church, which had several steps leading up to it. Behind the church
there was a mountain and, up above, a thick wood. The watchman wore a
helmet, gorget and cloak, and had a full brown beard. The two tramps,
who had gone along peaceably with him, had aprons twisted round their
hips like sacks. A path led from the church to the mountain and was
overgrown on both sides with grass and bushes which grew denser and
denser, and at the top of the mountain there was a regular wood._”

You will recognize without any trouble the symbols here employed: the
male organ is represented by the trinity of _three_ persons appearing,
whilst the female sexual organs are symbolized by a landscape with a
chapel, a mountain and a wood, and once more you have the act of going
up steps as symbolic of the sexual act. The part of the body called in
the dream “a mountain” is similarly termed in anatomy the mons veneris.

7. I will tell you another dream which is to be explained in the light
of symbolism, a dream, moreover, which is noteworthy and convincing from
the fact that the dreamer himself translated all the symbols, though he
brought no previous theoretical knowledge to the interpretation. This is
a very unusual circumstance and we have no accurate idea of the
conditions which give rise to it.

_He was walking with his father in a place which must have been the
Prater,[41] for they saw the Rotunda with a little building in front of
it, to which was made fast a captive balloon which looked rather slack.
His father asked him what it was all for; the son wondered at his
asking, but explained it nevertheless. Then they came to a court-yard,
where a large sheet of metal lay spread out. His father wanted to break
off a big piece, but looked round first in case anyone should notice
him. He said to his son that all the same he need only tell the overseer
and then he could take it straightaway. Some steps led down from this
court to a shaft, the sides of which were upholstered with some soft
stuff, something like a leather armchair. At the bottom of this shift
was a rather long platform and, beyond it, another shaft._

The following is the dreamer’s own interpretation:—“The Rotunda stands
for my genitals and the captive balloon in front of it for the penis,
which I have had to complain of for being limp.” A more detailed
translation would then run thus: the rotunda stands for the buttocks
(regularly included by children amongst the genitals), the smaller
structure in front is the scrotum. In the dream, his father asks him
what all this is, i.e. what are the purpose and function of the
genitals. To invert this situation so that the son asks the questions is
an obvious idea, and, since these questions were never asked in reality,
we must construe the dream-thoughts as a wish or take them in a
conditional sense: “If I had asked my father to explain....” The sequel
to this thought we shall find presently.

The court-yard where the sheet-metal lay is not in the first place to be
explained symbolically, but is a reference to the father’s place of
business. From motives of discretion I have substituted “sheet-metal”
for the actual material dealt with by him, but otherwise I have made no
alteration in the words of the dream. The dreamer had entered his
father’s business and had been much scandalized by the extremely
questionable practices upon which the high profits largely depended.
Hence the sequel to the dream-thought mentioned above would run: “(If I
had asked him), he would have deceived me as he deceives his customers.”
The dreamer himself gives a second explanation for the pulling off the
piece of metal which serves to represent commercial dishonesty: it
means, he says, the practice of masturbation. Not only is this an
explanation with which we have long been familiar, but it is well in
accordance with this interpretation that the secret practice of
masturbation should be expressed by the opposite idea (“_We may do it
openly_”). So the fact that this practice is imputed to the father, as
was the questioning in the first scene of the dream, is exactly what we
should expect. The dreamer immediately interpreted the shaft, on account
of the soft upholstering of the walls, as the vagina, and I, on my own
account, offer the remark that going-down as well as going-up stands for
sexual intercourse.

The details of the long platform at the bottom of the first shaft, and
beyond that the second shaft, were explained by the dreamer himself from
his own history. He had practised intercourse for some time and then
given it up on account of inhibitions, but hoped to be able to resume it
by the help of the treatment.

8. I quote the two following dreams, dreamt by a foreigner with marked
polygamous tendencies, because they may serve to illustrate the
statement that the dreamer’s own person is present in every dream, even
when it is disguised in the manifest content. The trunks in the dreams
are female symbols.

(_a_) _The dreamer was going on a journey and his luggage was being
taken to the station on a carriage. There were a number of trunks piled
one on the top of the other, and amongst them two large black boxes like
those of a commercial traveller. He said consolingly to someone: “You
see those are only going as far as the station.”_

He does, as a matter of fact, travel with a great deal of luggage, and
he also brings many stories about women to the treatment. The two black
trunks stand for two dark women who at the moment are playing the
principal part in his life. One of them wanted to follow him to Vienna,
but on my advice he had telegraphed to put her off.

(_b_) A scene at a customs house:—_A fellow-traveller opened his trunk
and said nonchalantly, smoking a cigarette: “There is nothing to declare
in that.” The customs official seemed to believe him, but felt in the
trunk again and found a strictly prohibited article. The traveller then
said in a resigned way: “Well, it can’t be helped.”_ The dreamer himself
is the traveller and I am the official. He is generally very
straightforward with me, but had made up his mind to conceal from me a
relation which he had recently formed with a lady, for he assumed quite
correctly that I knew her. He displaces on to a stranger the
embarrassing situation of being detected, so that he himself does not
seem to come into the dream at all.

9. Here we have an example of a symbol which I have not yet mentioned:—

_The dreamer met his sister with two friends who were themselves
sisters. He shook hands with these two, but not with his sister._

There was no real episode connected with this in his mind. Instead, his
thoughts went back to a time when his observations led him to wonder why
a girl’s breasts are so late in developing. The two sisters, therefore,
stand for the breasts; he would have liked to grasp them with his hand,
if only it had not been his sister.

10. Here is an example of death symbolism in dreams:—_The dreamer was
crossing a very high, steep, iron bridge, with two people whose names he
knew, but forgot on waking. Suddenly both of them had vanished and he
saw a ghostly man in a cap and an overall. He asked him whether he were
the telegraph messenger.... “No.” Or the coachman?... “No.” He then went
on_, and in the dream, had a feeling of great dread; on waking, he
followed it up with the phantasy that the iron bridge suddenly broke and
that he fell into the abyss.

When stress is laid upon the fact that people in a dream are unknown to
the dreamer, or that he has forgotten their names, they are, as a rule,
persons with whom he is intimately connected. The dreamer was one of a
family of three children; if he had ever wished for the death of the
other two, it would be only just that he should be visited with the fear
of death. With reference to the telegraph messenger, he remarked that
they always bring bad news. From his uniform, the man in the dream might
have been a lamp-lighter, who also puts out the lights, as the spirit of
death extinguishes the torch of life. With the coachman he associated
Uhland’s poem of the voyage of King Karl, and recalled a dangerous sail
on a lake with two companions, when he played the part of the king in
the poem. The iron bridge suggested to him a recent accident, also the
stupid saying: “Life is a suspension bridge.”

11. The following may be regarded as another example of a death-dream:—

_An unknown gentleman was leaving a black-edged visiting card on the
dreamer._

12. I give another dream which will interest you from several points of
view; it is to be traced partly, however, to a neurotic condition in the
dreamer:—

_He was in a train which stopped in the open country. He thought there
was going to be an accident and that he must make his escape, so he went
through all the compartments, killing everyone he met,—driver, guard,
and so on._

This dream recalls a story told him by a friend. On a certain Italian
line, an insane man was being conveyed in a small compartment, but by
some mistake a passenger was allowed to get in with him. The madman
murdered the other traveller. Thus the dreamer identified himself with
this insane man, his reason being that he was at times tormented by an
obsession that he must make away with “everyone who shared his
knowledge.” Then he himself found a better motivation for the dream. The
day before, he had seen at the theatre a girl he had meant to marry but
had given up because she gave him cause for jealousy. Knowing the
intensity which jealousy could assume in him, he would really have been
mad to want to marry her. That is to say, he thought her so unreliable
that his jealousy would have led him to murder everyone who got in his
way. The going through a number of rooms, or, as here, compartments, we
have already learnt to know as a symbol of marriage (the expression of
monogamy according to the rule of opposites).

With reference to the train’s stopping in the open country and the fear
of an accident, he told the following story:—

Once when such a sudden halt occurred on the line outside a station, a
young lady who was in the carriage said that perhaps there was going to
be a collision, and that the best thing to do was to raise the legs
high. This phrase “raise the legs” had associations with many walks and
excursions into the country, which he had shared with the girl mentioned
above in the happy early days of their love. Here was a new argument for
the contention that he would be mad to marry her now; nevertheless, my
knowledge of the situation led me to regard it as certain that there
existed in him all the same the desire to fall a victim to this form of
madness.




                           THIRTEENTH LECTURE
                ARCHAIC AND INFANTILE FEATURES IN DREAMS


Let us start afresh from our conclusion that, under the influence of the
censorship, the dream-work translates the latent dream-thoughts into
another form. These thoughts are of the same nature as the familiar,
conscious thoughts of waking life; the new form in which they are
expressed is, owing to many peculiar characteristics, incomprehensible
to us. We have said that it goes back to phases in our intellectual
development which we have long outgrown—to hieroglyphic writing, to
symbolic-connections, possibly to conditions which existed before the
language of thought was evolved. On this account we called the form of
expression employed by the dream-work _archaic_ or _regressive_.

From this you may draw the inference that a more profound study of the
dream-work must lead to valuable conclusions about the initial stages of
our intellectual development, of which at present little is known. I
hope it will be so, but so far this task has not been attempted. The era
to which the dream-work takes us back is “primitive” in a twofold sense:
in the first place, it means the early days of the _individual_—his
childhood—and, secondly, in so far as each individual repeats in some
abbreviated fashion during childhood the whole course of the development
of the human race, the reference is _phylogenetic_. I believe it not
impossible that we may be able to discriminate between that part of the
latent mental processes which belongs to the early days of the
individual and that which has its roots in the infancy of the race. It
seems to me, for instance, that symbolism, a mode of expression which
has never been individually acquired, may claim to be regarded as a
racial heritage.

This, however, is not the only archaic feature in dreams. You are all
familiar from actual experience with the peculiar _amnesia of childhood_
to which we are subject. I mean that the first years of life, up to the
age of five, six, or eight, have not left the same traces in memory as
our later experiences. True, we come across individuals who can boast of
continuous recollection from early infancy to the present time, but it
is incomparably more common for the opposite, a blank in memory, to be
found. In my opinion, this has not aroused sufficient surprise. At two
years old the child can speak well and soon shows his capacity for
adapting himself to complicated mental situations, and, moreover, says
things which he himself has forgotten when they are repeated to him
years later. And yet memory is more efficient in early years, being less
overburdened than it is later. Again, there is no reason to regard the
function of memory as an especially high or difficult form of mental
activity; on the contrary, excellent memory may be found in people who
are yet on a very low plane intellectually.

But I must draw your attention to a second peculiarity, based upon the
first—namely, that from the oblivion in which the first years of
childhood are shrouded certain clearly retained recollections emerge,
mostly in the form of plastic images, for the retention of which there
seems no adequate ground. Memory deals with the mass of impressions
received in later life by a process of selection, retaining what is
important and omitting what is not; but with the recollections retained
from childhood this is not so. They do not necessarily reflect important
experiences in childhood, not even such as must have seemed important
from the child’s standpoint, but are often so banal and meaningless in
themselves that we can only ask ourselves in amazement why just this
particular detail has escaped oblivion. I have tried, with the help of
analysis, to attack the problem of childhood amnesia and of the
fragments of recollection which break through it, and have come to the
conclusion that, whatever may appear to the contrary, the child no less
than the adult only retains in memory what is important; but that what
is important is represented (by the processes of condensation and, more
especially, of displacement, already familiar to you) in the memory by
something apparently trivial. For this reason I have called these
childhood recollections _screen-memories_; a thorough analysis can
evolve from them all that has been forgotten.

It is a regular task in psycho-analytic treatment to fill in the blank
in infantile memories, and, in so far as the treatment is successful to
any extent at all (very frequently, therefore) we are enabled to bring
to light the content of those early years long buried in oblivion. These
impressions have never really been forgotten, but were only inaccessible
and latent, having become part of the unconscious. But sometimes it
happens that they emerge spontaneously from the unconscious, and it is
in connection with dreams that this happens. It is clear that the
dream-life knows the way back to these latent, infantile experiences.
Many good illustrations of this are to be found in psycho-analytical
literature, and I myself have been able to furnish a contribution of the
sort. I once dreamt in a particular connection of someone who had
evidently done me a service and whom I saw plainly. He was a one-eyed
man, short, fat and high-shouldered; from the context I gathered that he
was a doctor. Fortunately I was able to ask my mother, who was still
living, what was the personal appearance of the doctor who attended us
at the place where I was born and which I left at the age of three; she
told me that he had only one eye and was short, fat and high-shouldered;
I learnt also of the accident which was the occasion of this doctor’s
being called in and which I had forgotten. This command of the forgotten
material of the earliest years of childhood is thus a further ‘archaic’
feature of dreams.

This knowledge has a bearing on another of the problems which up to the
present have proved insoluble. You will remember the astonishment caused
by our discovery that dreams have their origin in actively evil or in
excessive sexual desires, which have made both the dream-censorship and
dream-distortion necessary. Supposing now that we have interpreted a
dream of this sort, and the circumstances are specially favourable in
that the dreamer does not quarrel with the interpretation itself, he
does nevertheless invariably ask how any such wish could come into his
mind, since it seems quite foreign to him and he is conscious of
desiring the exact opposite. We need have no hesitation in pointing out
to him the origin of the wish he repudiates: these evil impulses may be
traced to the past, often indeed to a past which is not so very far
away. It may be demonstrated that he once knew and was conscious of
them, even if this is no longer so. A woman who had a dream meaning that
she wished to see her only daughter (then seventeen years old) lying
dead found, with our help, that at one time she actually had cherished
this death-wish. The child was the offspring of an unhappy marriage,
which ended in the speedy separation of husband and wife. Once when the
child was as yet unborn the mother, in an access of rage after a violent
scene with her husband, beat her body with her clenched fists in order
to kill the baby in her womb. How many mothers who to-day love their
children tenderly, perhaps with excessive tenderness, yet conceived them
unwillingly and wished that the life within them might not develop
further; and have indeed turned this wish into various actions,
fortunately of a harmless kind. The later death-wish against beloved
persons, which appears so puzzling, thus dates from the early days of
the relationship to them.

A father, whose dream when interpreted shows that he wished for the
death of his eldest and favourite child, is in the same way obliged to
recall that there was a time when this wish was not unknown to him. The
man, whose marriage had proved a disappointment, often thought when the
child was still an infant that if the little creature who meant nothing
to him were to die he would again be free and would make better use of
his freedom. A large number of similar impulses of hate are to be traced
to a similar source; they are recollections of something belonging to
the past, something which was once in consciousness and played its part
in mental life. From this you will be inclined to draw the conclusion
that such dreams and such wishes would not occur in cases where there
have been no changes of this sort in the relations between two persons,
that is to say, where the relation has been of the same character from
the beginning. I am prepared to grant you this conclusion, only I must
warn you that you have to consider, not the literal meaning of the
dream, but what it signifies on interpretation. It may be that the
manifest dream of the death of some beloved person was only using this
as a terrible mask, whilst really meaning something totally different,
or it is possible that the beloved person is an illusory substitute for
someone else.

This situation will, however, raise in you another and much more serious
question. You will say: “Even though this death-wish did at one time
actually exist and this is confirmed by recollection, that is still no
true explanation; for the desire has long since been overcome and surely
at the present time can exist in the unconscious merely as a
recollection, of no affective value, and not as a powerful exciting
agent. For this later assumption we have no evidence. Why is the wish
recollected at all in dreams?” This is a question which you are really
justified in asking; the attempt to answer it would take us far afield
and would oblige us to define our position with regard to one of the
most important points in the theory of dreams. But I must keep within
the limits of our discussion and must forbear to follow up this
question; so you must be reconciled to leaving it for the present. Let
us content ourselves with the actual evidence that this wish, long since
subdued, can be proved to have given rise to the dream, and let us
continue our enquiry whether other evil wishes also can be traced in the
same way to the past.

Let us keep to the death-wishes, which we shall certainly find mostly
derived from the unbounded egoism of the dreamer. Wishes of this sort
are very often found to be the underlying agents of dreams. Whenever
anyone gets in our way in life—and how often must this happen when our
relations to one another are so complicated!—a dream is immediately
prepared to make away with that person, even if it be father, mother,
brother or sister, husband or wife. It appeared to us amazing that such
wickedness should be innate in humanity, and certainly we were not
inclined to admit without further evidence that this result of our
interpretation of dreams was correct. But, when once we had seen that
the origin of wishes of this sort must be looked for in the past, we had
little difficulty in finding the period in the past of the individual in
which there is nothing strange in such egoism and such wishes, even when
directed against the nearest and dearest. A child in his earliest years
(which later are veiled in oblivion) is just the person who frequently
displays such egoism in boldest relief; invariably, unmistakable
tendencies of this kind, or, more accurately, surviving traces of them,
are plainly visible in him. For a child loves himself first and only
later learns to love others and to sacrifice something of his own ego to
them. Even the people whom he seems to love from the outset are loved in
the first instance because he needs them and cannot do without
them—again therefore, from motives of egoism. Only later does the
impulse of love detach itself from egoism: it is a literal fact that the
child learns how to love through his own egoism.

In this connection it will be instructive to compare a child’s attitude
towards his brothers and sisters with his attitude towards his parents.
The little child does not necessarily love his brothers and sisters, and
often he is quite frank about it. It is unquestionable that in them he
sees and hates his rivals, and it is well known how commonly this
attitude persists without interruption for many years, till the child
reaches maturity and even later. Of course it often gives place to a
more tender feeling, or perhaps we should say it is overlaid by this,
but the hostile attitude seems very generally to be the earlier. We can
most easily observe it in children of two and a half to four years old
when a new baby arrives, which generally meets with a very unfriendly
reception; remarks such as “I don’t like it. The stork is to take it
away again” are very common. Subsequently every opportunity is seized to
disparage the new-comer; attempts are even made to injure it and actual
attacks upon it are by no means unheard-of. If the difference in age is
less, by the time the child’s mental activity is more fully developed
the rival is already in existence and he adapts himself to the
situation; if on the other hand there is a greater difference between
their ages, the new baby may rouse certain kindly feelings from the
first, as an object of interest, a sort of living doll; and when there
is as much as eight years or more between them, especially if the elder
child is a girl, protective, motherly impulses may at once come into
play. But, speaking honestly, when we find a wish for the death of a
brother or a sister latent in a dream we need seldom be puzzled, for we
find its origin in early childhood without much trouble, or indeed,
quite often in the later years when they still lived together.

There is probably no nursery without violent conflicts between the
inhabitants, actuated by rivalry for the love of the parents,
competition for possessions shared by them all, even for the actual
space in the room they occupy. Such hostility is directed against older
as well as younger brothers and sisters. I think it was Bernard Shaw who
said: “If there is anyone whom a young English lady hates more than her
mother it is her elder sister.” Now there is something in this dictum
which jars upon us; it is hard enough to bring ourselves to understand
hatred and rivalry between brothers and sisters, but how can feelings of
hate force themselves into the relation between mother and daughter,
parents and children?

This relationship is no doubt a more favourable one, also from the
children’s point of view; and this too is what our expectations require:
we find it far more offensive for love to be lacking between parents and
children than between brothers and sisters. We have, so to speak,
sanctified the former love while allowing the latter to remain profane.
Yet everyday observation may show us how frequently the sentiments
entertained towards each other by parents and grown-up children fall
short of the ideal set up by society, and how much hostility lies
smouldering, ready to burst into flame if it were not stifled by
considerations of filial or parental duty and by other, tender impulses.
The motives for this hostility are well known, and we recognize a
tendency for those of the same sex to become alienated, daughter from
mother and father from son. The daughter sees in her mother the
authority which imposes limits to her will, whose task it is to bring
her to that renunciation of sexual freedom which society demands; in
certain cases, too, the mother is still a rival, who objects to being
set aside. The same thing is repeated still more blatantly between
father and son. To the son the father is the embodiment of the social
compulsion to which he so unwillingly submits, the person who stands in
the way of his following his own will, of his early sexual pleasures
and, when there is family property, of his enjoyment of it. When a
throne is involved this impatience for the death of the father may
approach tragic intensity. The relation between father and daughter or
mother and son would seem less liable to disaster; the latter relation
furnishes the purest examples of unchanging tenderness, undisturbed by
any egoistic considerations.

Why, you ask, do I speak of things so banal and so well-known to
everybody? Because there exists an unmistakable tendency in people’s
minds to deny the significance of these things in real life and to
pretend that the social ideal is much more frequently realized than it
actually is. But it is better that psychology should tell the truth than
that it should be left to cynics to do so. This general denial is only
applied to real life, it is true; for fiction and drama are free to make
use of the motives laid bare when these ideals are rudely disturbed.

There is nothing to wonder at therefore if the dreams of a great number
of people bring to light the wish for the removal of their parents,
especially of the parent whose sex is the same as the dreamer’s. We may
assume that the wish exists in waking life as well, sometimes even in
consciousness if it can disguise itself behind another motive, as the
dreamer in our third example disguised his real thought by pity for his
father’s useless suffering. It is but rarely that hostility reigns
alone,—far more often it yields to more tender feelings which finally
suppress it, when it has to wait in abeyance till a dream shows it, as
it were, in isolation. That which the dream shows in a form magnified by
this very isolation resumes its true proportions when our interpretation
has assigned to it its proper place in relation to the rest of the
dreamer’s life. (H. Sachs.) But we also find this death-wish where there
is no basis for it in real life and where the adult would never have to
confess to entertaining it in his waking life. The reason for this is
that the deepest and most common motive for estrangement, especially
between parent and child of the same sex, came into play in the earliest
years of childhood.

I refer to that rivalry of affections in which sexual elements are
plainly emphasized. The son, when quite a little child, already begins
to develop a peculiar tenderness towards his mother, whom he looks upon
as his own property, regarding his father in the light of a rival who
disputes this sole possession of his; similarly the little daughter sees
in her mother someone who disturbs her tender relation to her father and
occupies a place which she feels she herself could very well fill.
Observation shows us how far back these sentiments date, sentiments
which we describe by the term _Oedipus complex_, because in the Oedipus
myth the two extreme forms of the wishes arising from the situation of
the son—the wish to kill the father and to marry the mother—are realized
in an only slightly modified form. I do not assert that the Oedipus
complex exhausts all the possible relations which may exist between
parents and children; these relations may well be a great deal more
complicated. Again, this complex may be more or less strongly developed,
or it may even become inverted, but it is a regular and very important
factor in the mental life of the child; we are more in danger of
underestimating than of overestimating its influence and that of the
developments which may follow from it. Moreover, the parents themselves
frequently stimulate the children to react with an Oedipus complex, for
parents are often guided in their preferences by the difference in sex
of their children, so that the father favours the daughter and the
mother the son; or else, where conjugal love has grown cold, the child
may be taken as a substitute for the love-object which has ceased to
attract.

It cannot be said that the world has shown great gratitude to
psycho-analytic research for the discovery of the Oedipus complex; on
the contrary, the idea has excited the most violent opposition in
grown-up people; and those who omitted to join in denying the existence
of sentiments so universally reprehended and tabooed have later made up
for this by proffering interpretations so wide of the mark as to rob the
complex of its value. My own unchanged conviction is that there is
nothing in it to deny or to gloss over. We ought to reconcile ourselves
to facts in which the Greek myth itself saw the hand of inexorable
destiny. Again, it is interesting to find that the Oedipus complex,
repudiated in actual life and relegated to fiction, has there come to
its own. O. Rank in a careful study of this theme has shown how this
very complex has supplied dramatic poetry with an abundance of motives
in countless variations, modifications and disguises, in short, subject
to just the distortion familiar to us in the work of the
dream-censorship. So we may look for the Oedipus complex even in those
dreamers who have been fortunate enough to escape conflicts with their
parents in later life; and closely connected with this we shall find
what is termed the _castration complex_, the reaction to that
intimidation in the field of sex or to that restraint of early infantile
sexual activity which is ascribed to the father.

What we have already ascertained has guided us to the study of the
child’s mental life, and we may now hope to find in a similar way an
explanation of the source of the other kind of prohibited wishes in
dreams, i.e. the excessive sexual desires. We are impelled therefore to
study the development of the sexual life of the child, and here from
various sources we learn the following facts. In the first place, it is
an untenable fallacy to suppose that the child has no sexual life and to
assume that sexuality first makes its appearance at puberty, when the
genital organs come to maturity. On the contrary he has from the very
beginning a sexual life rich in content, though it differs in many
points from that which later is regarded as normal. What in adult life
are termed “perversions” depart from the normal in the following
respects: (1) in a disregard for the barriers of species (the gulf
between man and beast), (2) in the insensibility to barriers imposed by
disgust, (3) in the transgression of the incest-barrier (the prohibition
against seeking sexual gratification with close blood-relations), (4) in
homosexuality and, (5) in the transferring of the part played by the
genital organs to other organs and different areas of the body. All
these barriers are not in existence from the outset, but are only
gradually built up in the course of development and education. The
little child is free from them: he does not perceive any immense gulf
between man and beast, the arrogance with which man separates himself
from the other animals only dawns in him at a later period. He shows at
the beginning of life no disgust for excrement, but only learns this
feeling slowly under the influence of education; he attaches no
particular importance to the difference between the sexes, in fact he
thinks that both have the same formation of the genital organs; he
directs his earliest sexual desires and his curiosity to those nearest
to him or to those who for other reasons are specially beloved—his
parents, brothers and sisters or nurses; and finally we see in him a
characteristic which manifests itself again later at the height of some
love-relationship—namely, he does not look for gratification in the
sexual organs only, but discovers that many other parts of the body
possess the same sort of sensibility and can yield analogous pleasurable
sensations, playing thereby the part of genital organs. The child may be
said then to be _polymorphously perverse_, and even if mere traces of
all these impulses are found in him, this is due on the one hand to
their lesser intensity as compared with that which they assume in later
life and, on the other hand, to the fact that education immediately and
energetically suppresses all sexual manifestations in the child. This
suppression may be said to be embodied in a theory; for grown-up people
endeavour to overlook some of these manifestations, and, by
misinterpretation, to rob others of their sexual nature, until in the
end the whole thing can be altogether denied. It is often the same
people who first inveigh against the sexual “naughtiness” of children in
the nursery and then sit down to their writing-tables to defend the
sexual purity of the same children. When they are left to themselves or
when they are seduced children often display perverse sexual activity to
a really remarkable extent. Of course grown-up people are right in not
taking this too seriously and in regarding it, as they say, as “childish
tricks” and “play,” for the child cannot be judged either by a moral or
legal code as if he were mature and fully responsible; nevertheless
these things do exist, and they have their significance both as evidence
of innate constitutional tendencies and inasmuch as they cause and
foster later developments: they give us an insight into the child’s
sexual life and so into that of humanity as a whole. If then we find all
these perverse wishes behind the distortions of our dreams, it only
means that dreams in _this respect also_ have regressed completely to
the infantile condition.

Amongst these forbidden wishes special prominence must still be given to
the incestuous desires, i.e. those directed towards sexual intercourse
with parents or brothers and sisters. You know in what abhorrence human
society holds, or at least professes to hold, such intercourse, and what
emphasis is laid upon the prohibitions of it. The most preposterous
attempts have been made to account for this horror of incest: some
people have assumed that it is a provision of nature for the
preservation of the species, manifesting itself in the mind by these
prohibitions because in-breeding would result in racial degeneration;
others have asserted that propinquity from early childhood has deflected
sexual desire from the persons concerned. In both these cases, however,
the avoidance of incest would have been automatically secured and we
should be at a loss to understand the necessity for stern prohibitions,
which would seem rather to point to a strong desire. Psycho-analytic
investigations have shown beyond the possibility of doubt that _an
incestuous love-choice_ is in fact the first and the regular one, and
that it is only later that any opposition is manifested towards it, the
causes of which are not to be sought in the psychology of the
individual.

Let us sum up the results which our excursion into child-psychology has
brought to the understanding of dreams. We have learnt not only that the
material of the forgotten childish experiences is accessible to the
dream, but also that the child’s mental life, with all its
peculiarities, its egoism, its incestuous object-choice, persists in it
and therefore in the unconscious, and that our dreams take us back every
night to this infantile stage. This corroborates the belief that _the
Unconscious is the infantile mental life_, and, with this, the
objectionable impression that so much evil lurks in human nature grows
somewhat less. For this terrible evil is simply what is original,
primitive and infantile in mental life, what we find in operation in the
child, but in part overlook in him because it is on so small a scale,
and in part do not take greatly to heart because we do not demand a high
ethical standard in a child. By regressing to this infantile stage our
dreams appear to have brought the evil in us to light, but the
appearance is deceptive, though we have let ourselves be dismayed by it;
we are not so evil as the interpretation of our dreams would lead us to
suppose.

If the evil impulses of our dreams are merely infantile, a reversion to
the beginnings of our ethical development, the dream simply making us
children again in thought and feeling, it is surely not reasonable to be
ashamed of these evil dreams. But the reasoning faculty is only part of
our mental life; there is much in it besides which is not reasonable,
and so it happens that, although it is unreasonable, we nevertheless are
ashamed of such dreams. We subject them to the dream-censorship and are
ashamed and indignant when one of these wishes by way of exception
penetrates our consciousness in a form so undisguised that we cannot
fail to recognize it; yes, we even at times feel just as much ashamed of
a distorted dream as if we really understood it. Just think of the
outraged comment of the respectable elderly lady upon her dream about
“love service,” although it was not interpreted to her. So the problem
is not yet solved, and it is still possible that if we pursue this
question of the evil in dreams we may arrive at another conclusion and
another estimate of human nature.

Our whole enquiry has led to two results which, however, merely indicate
the beginning of new problems and new doubts. In the first place: the
regression in dreams is one not only of form but of substance. Not only
does it translate our thoughts into a primitive form of expression, but
it also re-awakens the peculiarities of our primitive mental life—the
old supremacy of the ego, the initial impulses of our sexual life, even
restores to us our old intellectual possession if we may conceive of
symbolism in this way. And secondly: all these old infantile
characteristics, which were once dominant and solely dominant, must
to-day be accounted to the unconscious and must alter and extend our
views about it. “Unconscious” is no longer a term for what is
temporarily latent: the unconscious is a special realm, with its own
desires and modes of expression and peculiar mental mechanisms not
elsewhere operative. Yet the latent dream-thoughts disclosed by our
interpretation do not belong to this realm; rather they correspond to
the kind of thoughts we have in waking life also. And yet they are
unconscious: how is the paradox to be resolved? We begin to realize that
here we must discriminate. Something which has its origin in our
conscious life and shares its characteristics—we call it the “residue”
from the previous day—meets together with something from the realm of
the unconscious in the formation of a dream, and it is with these two
contributing elements that the dream-work is accomplished. The influence
of the unconscious impinging upon this residue probably constitutes the
condition for regression. This is the deepest insight into the nature of
dreams possible to us until we have explored further fields in the mind;
but soon it will be time to give another name to the unconscious
character of the latent dream-thoughts, in order to distinguish it from
that unconscious material which has its origin in the province of the
infantile.

We can of course also ask: What is it that forces our mental activity
during sleep to such regression? Why cannot the mental stimuli that
disturb sleep be dealt with without it? And if on account of the
dream-censorship the mental activity has to disguise itself in the old,
and now incomprehensible, form of expression, what is the object of
re-animating the old impulses, desires and characteristics, now
surmounted; what, in short, is the use of _regression in substance_ as
well as in _form_? The only satisfactory answer would be that this is
the one possible way in which dreams can be formed, that, dynamically
considered, the relief from the stimulus giving rise to the dream cannot
otherwise be accomplished. But this is an answer for which, at present,
we have no justification.




                           FOURTEENTH LECTURE
                            WISH-FULFILMENT


Shall I remind you once more of the steps by which we have arrived at
our present position? When in applying our technique we came upon the
distortion in dreams, we made up our minds to avoid it for the moment
and turned to the study of infantile dreams for some definite
information about the nature of dreams in general. Next, equipped with
the results of this investigation, we attacked the question of
dream-distortion directly, and I hope that bit by bit we have also
mastered that. Now, however, we are bound to admit that our findings in
these two directions do not exactly tally, and it behoves us to combine
and correlate our results.

Both enquiries have made it plain that the essential feature in the
dream-work is the transformation of thoughts into hallucinatory
experience. It is puzzling enough to see how this process is
accomplished, but this is a problem for general psychology, and we have
not to deal with it here. We have learnt from children’s dreams that the
object of the dream-work is to remove, by means of the fulfilment of
some wish, a mental stimulus which is disturbing sleep. We could make no
similar pronouncement with regard to distorted dreams until we
understood how to interpret them, but from the outset we expected to be
able to bring our ideas about them into line with our views on infantile
dreams. This expectation was for the first time fulfilled when we
recognized that all dreams are really children’s dreams; that they make
use of infantile material and are characterized by impulses and
mechanisms which belong to the childish mind. When we feel we have
mastered the distortion in dreams we must go on to find out whether the
notion that dreams are WISH-FULFILMENTS holds good of distorted dreams
also.

We have just subjected a series of dreams to interpretation, but without
taking the question of wish-fulfilment into consideration at all. I feel
certain that while we were talking about them the question repeatedly
forced itself upon you: “What has become of the wish-fulfilment which is
supposed to be the object of the dream-work?” Now this question is
important, for it is the one which our lay critics are constantly
asking. As you know, mankind has an instinctive antipathy to
intellectual novelties; one of the ways in which this shows itself is
that any such novelty is immediately reduced to its very smallest
compass, and if possible embodied in some catch-word. “Wish-fulfilment”
has become the catch-word for the new theory of dreams. Directly they
hear that dreams are said to be wish-fulfilments, the laity asks: “Where
does the wish-fulfilment come in?” and their asking the question amounts
to a repudiation of the idea. They can immediately think of countless
dreams of their own which were accompanied by feeling so unpleasant as
sometimes to reach the point of agonizing dread; and so this statement
of the psycho-analytical theory of dreams appears to them highly
improbable. It is easy to reply that in distorted dreams the
wish-fulfilment is not openly expressed, but has to be looked for, so
that it cannot be shown until the dreams have been interpreted. We know
too that the wishes underlying these distorted dreams are those which
are prohibited and rejected by the censorship, and that it is just their
existence which is the cause of distortion and the motive for the
intervention of the censorship. But it is difficult to make the lay
critic understand that we must not ask about the wish-fulfilment in a
dream before it has been interpreted; he always forgets this. His
reluctance to accept the theory of wish-fulfilment is really nothing but
the effect of the dream-censorship, causing him to replace the real
thought by a substitute, and following from his repudiation of these
censored dream-wishes.

Of course we ourselves must feel the need to explain why so many dreams
are painful in content; and in particular we shall want to know how we
come to have ‘anxiety-dreams.’ Here for the first time we are confronted
with the problem of the affects in dreams; a problem which deserves
special study, but one which we cannot concern ourselves with just now,
unfortunately. If the dream is a wish-fulfilment, it should be
impossible for any painful emotions to come into it: on this point the
lay critics seem to be right. But the matter is complicated by three
considerations which they have overlooked.

First, it may happen that the dream-work is not wholly successful in
creating a wish-fulfilment, so that part of the painful feeling in the
latent thoughts is carried over into the manifest dream. Analysis would
then have to show that these thoughts were a great deal more painful
than the dream which is formed from them; this much can be proved in
every instance. We admit then that the dream-work has failed in its
purpose, just as a dream of drinking excited by the stimulus of thirst
fails to quench that thirst. One is still thirsty after it and has to
wake up and drink. Nevertheless, it is a proper dream: it has renounced
nothing of its essential nature. We must say: “Ut desint vires, tamen
est laudanda voluntas.” The clearly recognizable intention remains a
praiseworthy one, at any rate. Such instances of failure in the work are
by no means rare, and one reason is that it is so much more difficult
for the dream-work to produce the required change in the nature of the
affect than to modify the content; affects are often very intractable.
So it happens that in the process of the dream-work the painful
_content_ of the dream-thoughts is transformed into a wish-fulfilment
while the painful _affect_ persists unchanged. When this occurs the
affect is quite out of harmony with the content, which gives our critics
the opportunity of remarking that the dream is so far from being a
wish-fulfilment that even a harmless content may be accompanied in it by
painful feelings. Our answer to this rather unintelligent comment will
be that it is just in dreams of this sort that the wish-fulfilling
tendency of the dream-work is most apparent, because it is there seen in
isolation. The mistake in this criticism arises because people who are
not familiar with the neuroses imagine a more intimate connection
between content and affect than actually exists, and so cannot
understand that there may be an alteration in the content while the
accompanying affect remains unchanged.

A second consideration, much more important and far-reaching but equally
overlooked by the laity, is the following. A wish-fulfilment must
certainly bring some pleasure; but we go on to ask: “To whom?” Of course
to the person who has the wish. But we know that the attitude of the
dreamer towards his wishes is a peculiar one: he rejects them, censors
them, in short, he will have none of them. Their fulfilment then can
afford him no pleasure, rather the opposite, and here experience shows
that this “opposite,” which has still to be explained, takes the form of
_anxiety_. The dreamer, where his wishes are concerned, is like two
separate people closely linked together by some important thing in
common. Instead of enlarging upon this I will remind you of a well-known
fairy-tale in which you will see these relationships repeated. A good
fairy promised a poor man and his wife to fulfil their first three
wishes. They were delighted and made up their minds to choose the wishes
carefully. But the woman was tempted by the smell of some sausages being
cooked in the next cottage and wished for two like them. Lo! and behold,
there they were—and the first wish was fulfilled. With that, the man
lost his temper and in his resentment wished that the sausages might
hang on the tip of his wife’s nose. This also came to pass, and the
sausages could not be removed from their position; so the second wish
was fulfilled, but it was the man’s wish and its fulfilment was most
unpleasant for the woman. You know the rest of the story: as they were
after all man and wife, the third wish had to be that the sausages
should come off the end of the woman’s nose. We might make use of this
fairy-tale many times over in other contexts, but here it need only
serve to illustrate the fact that it is possible for the fulfilment of
one person’s wish to be very disagreeable to someone else, unless the
two people are entirely at one.

It will not be difficult now to arrive at a still better understanding
of anxiety-dreams. There is just one more observation to be made use of
and then we may adopt an hypothesis which is supported by several
considerations. The observation is that anxiety-dreams often have a
content in which there is no distortion; it has, so to speak, escaped
the censorship. This type of dream is frequently an undisguised
wish-fulfilment, the wish being of course not one which the dreamer
would accept but one which he has rejected; anxiety has developed in
place of the working of the censorship. Whereas the infantile dream is
an open fulfilment of a wish admitted by the dreamer, and the ordinary
distorted dream is the disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish, the
formula for the anxiety-dream is that it is the open fulfilment of a
repressed wish. Anxiety is an indication that the repressed wish has
proved too strong for the censorship and has accomplished or was about
to accomplish its fulfilment in spite of it. We can understand that
fulfilment of a repressed wish can only be, for us who are on the side
of the censorship, an occasion for painful emotions and for setting up a
defence. The anxiety then manifested in our dreams is, if you like to
put it so, anxiety experienced because of the strength of wishes which
at other times we manage to stifle. The study of dreams alone does not
reveal to us why this defence takes the form of anxiety; obviously we
must consider the latter in other connections.

The hypothesis which holds good for anxiety-dreams without any
distortion may be adopted also for those which have undergone some
degree of distortion, and for other kinds of unpleasant dreams in which
the accompanying unpleasant feelings probably approximate to anxiety.
Anxiety-dreams generally wake us; we usually break off our sleep before
the repressed wish behind the dream overcomes the censorship and reaches
complete fulfilment. In such a case the dream has failed to achieve its
purpose, but its essential character is not thereby altered. We have
compared the dream with a night-watchman, a guardian of sleep, whose
purpose it is to protect sleep from interruption. Now night-watchmen
also, just like dreams, have to rouse sleepers when they are not strong
enough to ward off the cause of disturbance or danger alone.
Nevertheless we do sometimes succeed in continuing to sleep even when
our dreams begin to give us some uneasiness and to turn to anxiety. We
say to ourselves in sleep: “It is only a dream after all,” and go on
sleeping.

You may ask _when_ it happens that the dream-wish is able to overcome
the censorship. This may depend either on the wish or on the censorship:
it may be that for unknown reasons the strength of the wish at times
becomes excessive; but our impression is that it is more often the
attitude of the censorship which is responsible for this shifting in the
balance of power. We have already heard that the censorship works with
varying intensity in each individual instance, treating the different
elements with different degrees of strictness; now we may add that it is
very variable in its general behaviour and does not show itself always
equally severe towards the same element. If then it chances that the
censorship feels itself for once powerless against some dream-wish which
threatens to overthrow it, it then, instead of making use of distortion,
employs the last weapon left to it and destroys sleep by bringing about
an access of anxiety.

At this point it strikes us that we still have no idea why these evil,
rejected wishes rise up just at night-time, so as to disturb us when we
sleep. The answer can hardly be found except in another hypothesis which
goes back to the nature of sleep itself. During the day the heavy
pressure of a censorship is exercised upon these wishes and, as a rule,
it is impossible for them to make themselves felt at all. But in the
night it is probable that this censorship, like all the other interests
of mental life, is suspended, or at least very much weakened, in favour
of the single desire for sleep. So it is due to this partial abrogation
of the censorship at night that the forbidden wishes can again become
active. There are nervous people suffering from insomnia who confess
that their sleeplessness was voluntary in the first instance; for they
did not dare to go to sleep because they were afraid of their
dreams—that is to say, they feared the consequences of the diminished
vigilance of the censorship. You will have no difficulty in
understanding that this curtailment of the censorship does not argue any
flagrant carelessness: sleep impairs our motor functions; even if our
evil intentions do begin to stir within us the utmost they can do is to
produce a dream, which is for all practical purposes harmless; and it is
this comforting circumstance which gives rise to the sleeper’s remark,
made, it is true, in the night but yet not part of his dream-life: “It
is only a dream.” So we let it have its way and continue to sleep.

Thirdly, if you call to mind our idea that the dreamer striving against
his own wishes is like a combination of two persons, separate and yet
somehow intimately united, you will be able to understand another
possible way in which something that is highly unpleasant may be brought
about through wish-fulfilment: I am speaking of punishment. Here again
the fairy-tale of the three wishes may help to make things clear. The
sausages on the plate were the direct fulfilment of the first person’s
(the woman’s) wish; the sausages on the tip of her nose were the
fulfilment of the second person’s (the husband’s) wish, but at the same
time they were the punishment for the foolish wish of the wife. In the
neuroses we shall meet with wishes corresponding in motivation to the
third wish of the fairy-tale, the only one left. There are many such
punishment tendencies in the mental life of man; they are very strong
and we may well regard them as responsible for some of our painful
dreams. Now you will probably think that with all this there is very
little of the famous wish-fulfilment left; but on closer consideration
you will admit that you are wrong. In comparison with the manifold
possibilities (to be discussed later) of what dreams might be—according
to some writers, what they actually are—the solution: wish-fulfilment,
anxiety-fulfilment, punishment-fulfilment, is surely quite a narrow one.
Add to this, that anxiety is the direct opposite of a wish and that
opposites lie very near one another in association and, as we have
learned, actually coincide in the unconscious. Moreover, punishment
itself is the fulfilment of a wish, namely, the wish of the other,
censoring person.

On the whole then, I have made no concession to your objections to the
wish-fulfilment theory; we are bound, however, to demonstrate its
presence in any and every distorted dream, and we have certainly no
desire to shirk this task. Let us go back to the dream we have already
interpreted, about the three bad theatre tickets for one florin and a
half, from which we have already learnt a good deal. I hope you still
remember it: A lady, whose husband told her one day about the engagement
of her friend Elise who was only three months younger than herself,
dreamt on the following night that she and her husband were at the
theatre and that one side of the stalls was almost empty. Her husband
told her that Elise and her fiancé had wanted to go to the theatre too;
but could not, because they could only get such bad seats, three tickets
for a florin and a half. His wife said that they had not lost much by
it. We discovered that the dream-thoughts had to do with her vexation at
having been in such a hurry to marry and her dissatisfaction with her
husband. We may well be curious how these gloomy thoughts can have been
transformed into a wish-fulfilment, and what trace of it can be found in
the manifest content. Now we know already that the element “too soon,
too great a hurry,” was eliminated by the censorship; the empty stalls
are an allusion to this element. The puzzling phrase _three for one and
a half florins_ is now more comprehensible to us than at first, through
the knowledge of symbolism that we have acquired since then.[42] The
number _three_ really stands for a man and we can easily translate the
manifest element to mean: “to buy a man (husband) with the dowry.” (“I
could have bought one ten times better for my dowry.”) _Going to the
theatre_ obviously stands for marriage. _Getting the tickets too soon_
is in fact a direct substitute for “marrying too soon.” Now this
substitution is the work of the wish-fulfilment. The dreamer had not
always felt so dissatisfied with her premature marriage as she was on
the day when she heard of her friend’s engagement. She had been proud of
her marriage at the time and considered herself more highly favoured
than her friend. One hears that naïve girls, on becoming engaged,
frequently express their delight at the idea that they will now soon be
able to go to all plays and see everything hitherto forbidden them.

The indication of curiosity and a desire to “look on” evinced here
comes, without doubt, originally from the sexual ‘_gazing-impulse_,’
especially regarding the parents, and this became a strong motive
impelling the girl to marry early; in this manner going to the theatre
became an obvious allusive substitute for getting married. In her
vexation at the present time on account of her premature marriage she
therefore reverted to the time when this same marriage fulfilled a wish,
by gratifying her _skoptophilia_; and so, guided by this old
wish-impulse, she replaced the idea of marriage by that of going to the
theatre.

We may say that the example we have chosen to demonstrate a hidden
wish-fulfilment is not the most convenient one, but in all other
distorted dreams we should have to proceed in a manner analogous to that
employed above. It is not possible for me to do this here and now, so I
will merely express my conviction that such procedure will invariably
meet with success. But I wish to dwell longer upon this point in our
theory: experience has taught me that it is one of the most perilous of
the whole theory of dreams, exposed to many contradictions and
misunderstandings. Besides, you are perhaps still under the impression
that I have already retracted part of my statement by saying that the
dream may be either a wish-fulfilment, or its opposite, an anxiety or a
punishment, brought to actuality; and you may think this a good
opportunity to force me to make further reservations. Also I have been
reproached with presenting facts that seem obvious to myself in a manner
too condensed to carry conviction.

When anyone has gone as far as this in dream-interpretation and has
accepted all our conclusions up to this point, it often happens that he
comes to a standstill at this question of wish-fulfilment and asks:
“Admitting that every dream means something and that this meaning may be
discovered by employing the technique of psycho-analysis, why must it
always, in face of all the evidence to the contrary, be forced into the
formula of wish-fulfilment? Why must our thoughts at night be any less
many-sided than our thoughts by day; so that at one time a dream might
be a fulfilment of some wish; at another time, as you say yourself, the
opposite, the actualization of a dread; or, again, the expression of a
resolution, a warning, a weighing of some problem with its pro’s and
con’s, or a reproof, some prick of conscience, or an attempt to prepare
oneself for something which has to be done—and so forth? Why this
perpetual insistence upon a wish or, at the most, its opposite?”

It might be supposed that a difference of opinion on this point is a
matter of no great moment, if there is agreement on all others. Cannot
we be satisfied with having discovered the meaning of dreams and the
ways by which we can find out the meaning? We surely go back on the
advance we have made if we try to limit this meaning too strictly. But
this is not so. A misunderstanding on this head touches what is
essential to our knowledge of dreams and imperils its value for the
understanding of neuroses. Moreover, that readiness to “oblige the other
party” which has its value in business life is not only out of place but
actually harmful in scientific matters.

My first answer to the question why dreams should not be many-sided in
their meaning is the usual one in such a case: I do not know why they
should not be so, and should have no objection if they were. As far as I
am concerned, they can be so! But there is just one trifling obstacle in
the way of this wider and more convenient conception of dreams—that as a
matter of fact they are not so. My second answer would emphasize the
point that to assume that dreams represent manifold modes of thought and
intellectual operations is by no means a novel idea to myself: once, in
the history of a pathological case, I recorded a dream which occurred
three nights running and never again; and gave it as my explanation that
this dream corresponded to a resolution, the repetition of which became
unnecessary as soon as that resolution was carried out. Later on, I
published a dream which represented a confession. How is it possible for
me then to contradict myself and assert that dreams are always and only
wish-fulfilments?

I do it rather than permit a stupid misunderstanding which might cost us
the fruit of all our labours on the subject of dreams; a
misunderstanding that _confounds the dream with the latent
dream-thoughts_, and makes statements with regard to the former which
are applicable to the _latter and to the latter only_. For it is
perfectly true that dreams can represent, and be themselves replaced by,
all the modes of thought just enumerated: resolutions, warnings,
reflections, preparations or attempts to solve some problem in regard to
conduct, and so on. But when you look closely, you will recognize that
all this is true only of the latent thoughts which have been transformed
into the dream. You learn from interpretations of dreams that the
unconscious thought-processes of mankind are occupied with such
resolutions, preparations and reflections, out of which dreams are
formed by means of the dream-work. If your interest at any given moment
is not so much in the dream-work, but centres on the unconscious
thought-processes in people, you will then eliminate the dream-formation
and say of dreams themselves, what is for all practical purposes
correct, that they represent a warning, a resolve, and so on. This is
what is often done in psycho-analytic work: generally we endeavour
simply to demolish the manifest form of dreams and to substitute for it
the corresponding latent thoughts in which the dream originated.

Thus it is that we learn quite incidentally from our attempt to assess
the latent dream-thoughts that all the highly complicated mental acts we
have enumerated can be performed unconsciously—a conclusion surely as
tremendous as it is bewildering.

But to go back a little: you are quite right in speaking of dreams as
representing these various modes of thought, provided that you are quite
clear in your own minds that you are using an abbreviated form of
expression and do not imagine that the manifold variety of which you
speak is in itself part of the essential nature of _dreams_. When you
speak of “a dream” you must mean either the manifest dream, i.e. the
product of the dream-work, or at most that work itself, i.e. the mental
process which forms the latent dream-thoughts into the manifest dream.
To use the word in any other sense is a confusion of ideas which is
bound to be mischievous. If what you say is meant to apply to the latent
thoughts behind the dream, then say so plainly, and do not add to the
obscurity of the problem by your loose way of expressing yourselves. The
latent dream-thoughts are the material which is transformed by the
dream-work into the manifest dream. What makes you constantly confound
the material with the process which deals with it? If you do that, in
what way are you superior to those who know of the final product only,
without being able to explain where it comes from or how it is
constructed?

The only thing essential to the dream itself is the dream-work which has
operated upon the thought-material; and when we come to theory we have
no right to disregard this, even if in certain practical situations it
may be neglected. Further, analytic observation shows that the
dream-work never consists merely in translating the latent thoughts into
the archaic or regressive forms of expression described. On the
contrary, something is invariably added which does not belong to the
latent thoughts of the day-time, but which is the actual motive force in
dream-formation; this indispensable component being the equally
unconscious _wish_, to fulfil which the content of the dream is
transformed. In so far, then, as you are considering only the thoughts
represented in it, the dream may be any conceivable thing—a warning, a
resolve, a preparation, and so on; but besides this, it itself is always
the fulfilment of an unconscious wish, and, when you regard it as the
result of the dream-work, it is this alone. A dream then is never simply
the expression of a resolve or warning, and nothing more: in it the
resolve, or whatever it may be, is translated into the archaic form with
the assistance of an unconscious wish, and metamorphosed in such a way
as to be a fulfilment of that wish. This single characteristic, that of
fulfilling a wish, is the constant one: the other component varies; it
may indeed itself be a wish; in which event the dream represents the
fulfilment of a latent wish from our waking hours brought about by the
aid of an unconscious wish.

Now all this is quite clear to myself, but I do not know whether I have
succeeded in making it equally clear to you; and it is difficult to
prove it to you; for, on the one hand, proof requires the evidence
afforded by a careful analysis of many dreams and, on the other hand,
this, the crucial and most important point in our conception of dreams,
cannot be presented convincingly without reference to considerations
upon which we have not yet touched. Seeing how closely linked up all
phenomena are, you can hardly imagine that we can penetrate very far
into the nature of any one of them without troubling ourselves about
others of a similar nature. Since as yet we know nothing about those
phenomena which are so nearly akin to dreams—neurotic symptoms—we must
once more content ourselves with what we actually have achieved. I will
merely give you the explanation of one more example and adduce a new
consideration.

Let us take once more that dream to which we have already reverted
several times, the one about the three theatre tickets for one florin
and a half. I can assure you that I had no ulterior motive in selecting
it in the first instance for an illustration. You know what the latent
thoughts were: the vexation, after hearing that her friend had only just
become engaged, that she herself should have married so hastily;
depreciation of her husband and the idea that she could have found a
better one if only she had waited. We also know already that the wish
which made a dream out of these thoughts was the desire to “look on,” to
be able to go to the theatre—very probably an offshoot of an old
curiosity to find out at last what really does happen after marriage. It
is well known that in children this curiosity is regularly directed
towards the sexual life of the parents; that is to say, it is an
infantile impulse and, wherever it persists later in life, it has its
roots in the infantile period. But the news received on the day previous
to the dream gave no occasion for the awakening of this skoptophilia; it
only roused vexation and regret. This wish-impulse (of skoptophilia) was
not at first connected with the latent thoughts, and the results of the
dream-interpretation could have been used by the analysis without taking
it into consideration at all. But again, the vexation was not in itself
capable of producing a dream: no dream could be formed out of the
thought: “It was folly to be in such a hurry to marry” until that
thought had stirred up the early wish to see at last what happened after
marriage. Then this wish formed the dream-content, substituting for
marriage the going to the theatre; and the form was that of the
fulfilment of the earlier wish: “Now I may go to the theatre and look at
all that we have never been allowed to see; and you may not. I am
married and you have got to wait.” In this way the actual situation was
transformed into its opposite and an old triumph substituted for the
recent discomfiture; and incidentally, satisfaction both of a ‘gazing’
impulse and of one of egoistic rivalry was brought about. It is this
latter satisfaction which determines the manifest content of the dream;
for in it she is actually sitting in the theatre, while her friend
cannot get in. Those portions of the dream-content behind which the
latent thoughts still conceal themselves are to be found in the form of
inappropriate and incomprehensible modifications of the gratifying
situation. The business of _interpretation_ is to put aside those
features in the whole which merely represent a wish-fulfilment and to
reconstruct the painful latent dream-thoughts from these indications.

The consideration which I said I wished to call to your notice is
intended to direct your attention to these latent dream-thoughts now
brought into prominence. I must beg you not to forget that, first, the
dreamer is unconscious of them; secondly that they are quite reasonable
and coherent, so that we can understand them as comprehensible reactions
to whatever stimulus has given rise to the dream; and, thirdly, that
they may have the value of any mental impulse or intellectual operation.
I will designate these thoughts more strictly now than hitherto as _the
residue from the previous day_; the dreamer may acknowledge them or not.
I then distinguish between this ‘residue’ and ‘latent dream-thoughts,’
so that, as we have been accustomed to do all along, I will call
everything which we learn from the interpretation of the dream ‘the
latent dream-thoughts,’ while ‘the residue from the previous day’ is
only a part of the latent dream-thoughts. Then our conception of what
happens is this: something has been added to the residue from the
previous day, something which also belongs to the unconscious, a strong
but repressed wish-impulse, and it is this alone which makes the
formation of a dream possible. The wish-impulse, acting upon the
‘residue,’ creates the other part of the latent dream-thoughts, that
part which no longer need appear rational or comprehensible from the
point of view of our waking life.

To illustrate the relation between the residue and the unconscious wish
I have elsewhere made use of a comparison which I cannot do better than
repeat here. Every business undertaking requires a capitalist to defray
the expenses and an entrepreneur who has the idea and understands how to
carry it out. Now the part of the capitalist in dream-formation is
always and only played by the unconscious wish; it supplies the
necessary fund of mental energy for it: the entrepreneur is the residue
from the previous day, determining the manner of the expenditure. It is,
of course, quite possible for the capitalist himself to have the idea
and the special knowledge needed, or for the entrepreneur himself to
have capital. This simplifies the practical situation but makes the
theory of it more difficult. In economics we discriminate between the
man in his function of capitalist and the same man in his capacity as
entrepreneur; and this distinction restores the fundamental situation
upon which our comparison is based. The same variations are to be found
in the formation of dreams: I leave you to follow them out for
yourselves.

We cannot go any further at this point; for I think it likely that a
disturbing thought has long since occurred to you and it deserves a
hearing. You may ask: “Is the so-called ‘residue’ really unconscious in
the sense in which the wish necessary for the formation of the dream is
unconscious?” Your suspicion is justified: this is the salient point in
the whole matter. They are not both unconscious in the same sense. The
dream-wish belongs to a different type of UNCONSCIOUS, which, as we have
seen, has its roots in the infantile period and is furnished with
special mechanisms. It is very expedient to distinguish the two types of
“unconscious” from one another by speaking of them in different terms.
But, all the same, we will rather wait until we have familiarized
ourselves with the phenomena of the neuroses. If our conception of the
existence of any kind of unconscious be already regarded as fantastic,
what will people say if we admit that to reach our solution we have had
to assume two kinds?

Let us break off at this point. Once more you have heard only an
incomplete statement; but is it not a hopeful thought that this
knowledge will be carried further, either by ourselves or by those who
come after us? And have not we ourselves learnt enough that is new and
startling?




                           FIFTEENTH LECTURE
               DOUBTFUL POINTS AND CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS


We will not leave the subject of dreams without dealing with the most
common doubts and uncertainties arising in connection with the novel
ideas and conceptions we have been discussing: those of you who have
followed these lectures attentively will have collected some material of
the kind.

1. You may have received an impression that even with strict adherence
to technique our work of dream-interpretation leaves so much room for
uncertainty that reliable translation of manifest dreams into their
latent dream-thoughts will be thereby frustrated. You will urge first
that one never knows whether any particular element in a dream is to be
understood literally or symbolically, since things employed as symbols
do not thereby cease to be themselves. Where there is no objective
evidence to decide the question the interpretation on that particular
point will be left to be arbitrarily determined by the interpreter.
Further, since in the dream-work opposites coincide, it is in every
instance uncertain whether a specific dream-element is to be understood
in a positive or a negative sense, as itself or as its opposite—another
opportunity for the interpreter to exercise a choice. Thirdly, on
account of the frequency with which inversion of every kind is employed
in dreams, it is open to him to assume whenever he chooses that such an
inversion has taken place. Finally you will point to having heard that
one is seldom certain that the interpretation arrived at is the only
possible one, and that there is danger of overlooking another perfectly
admissible interpretation of the same dream. In these circumstances, you
will conclude, the discretion of the interpreter has a latitude that
seems incompatible with any objective certainty in the result. Or you
may also assume that the fault does not lie in dreams themselves, but
that something erroneous in our conceptions and premises produces the
unsatisfactory character of our interpretations.

All that you say is undeniable and yet I do not think it justifies
either of your conclusions: that dream-interpretation as practised by us
is at the mercy of the interpreter’s arbitrary decisions or that the
inadequacy of the results calls in question the correctness of our
procedure. If for the “arbitrary decision” of the interpreter you will
substitute his skill, his experience and his understanding, then I am
with you. This kind of personal factor is of course indispensable,
especially when interpretation is difficult; it is just the same in
other scientific work, however; it can’t be helped that one man will use
any given technique less well, or apply it better, than another. The
impression of arbitrariness made, for example, by the interpretation of
symbols is corrected by the reflection that as a rule the connection of
the dream-thoughts with one another, and of the dream with the life of
the dreamer and the whole mental situation at the time of the dream,
points directly to one of all the possible interpretations and renders
all the rest useless. The conclusion that the imperfect character of the
interpretations proceeds from fallacious hypotheses loses its force when
consideration shows that, on the contrary, the ambiguity or
indefiniteness of dreams is a quality which we should necessarily expect
in them.

Let us call to mind our statement that the dream-work undertakes a
translation of the dream-thoughts into a primitive mode of expression,
analogous to hieroglyphics. Now all such primitive systems of expression
are necessarily accompanied by ambiguity and indefiniteness; but we
should not on that account be justified in doubting their
practicability. You know that the coincidence of opposites in the
dream-work is analogous to what is called the antithetical sense of
primal words in the oldest languages. The philologist, R. Abel, to whom
we owe this information, writing in 1884, begs us not on any account to
imagine that there was any ambiguity in what one person said to another
by means of ambivalent words of this sort. On the contrary, intonation,
gestures and the whole context can have left no doubt whatever which of
the two opposites the speaker had in mind to convey. In writing where
gestures are absent the addition of little pictorial signs, not meant to
receive separate oral expression, replaced them: e.g. a drawing of a
little man, either crouching or standing upright, according as the
ambiguous _ken_ of the hieroglyphic meant “weak” or “strong.” So that
misunderstanding was avoided in spite of the ambiguity of sounds and
signs.

In ancient systems of expression, for instance, in the scripts of the
oldest languages, indefiniteness of various kinds is found with a
frequency which we should not tolerate in our writings to-day. Thus in
many Semitic writings only the consonants of the words appear: the
omitted vowels have to be supplied by the reader from his knowledge and
from the context. Hieroglyphic writing follows a similar principle,
although not exactly the same; and this is the reason why nothing is
known of the pronunciation of ancient Egyptian. There are besides other
kinds of indefiniteness in the sacred writings of the Egyptians: for
example, it is left to the writer’s choice to inscribe the pictures from
right to left or from left to right. To be able to read them, we have to
remember that we must be guided by the direction of the faces of the
figures, birds, and so forth. But it was also open to the writer to set
the pictures in vertical columns and, in the case of inscriptions on
smaller objects, he was led by considerations of what was pleasing to
the eye, and of the space at his disposal, to introduce still further
alterations in the arrangement of the signs. The most confusing feature
in hieroglyphic script is that there is no spacing between the words.
The pictures are all placed at equal intervals on the page, and it is
generally impossible to know whether any given sign goes with the
preceding one or forms the beginning of a new word. In Persian cuneiform
writing, on the other hand, a slanting sign is used to separate the
words.

The Chinese language, both spoken and written, is exceedingly ancient
but is still used to-day by four hundred million people. Don’t suppose
that I understand it at all; I only obtained some information about it
because I hoped to find in it analogies to the kinds of indefiniteness
occurring in dreams; nor was I disappointed in my expectation, for
Chinese is so full of uncertainties as positively to terrify one. As is
well known, it consists of a number of syllabic sounds which are
pronounced singly or doubled in combination. One of the chief dialects
has about four hundred of these sounds, and since the vocabulary of this
dialect is estimated at somewhere about four thousand words it is
evident that every sound has an average of ten different meanings—some
fewer, but some all the more. For this reason there are a whole series
of devices to escape ambiguity, for the context alone will not show
which of the ten possible meanings of the syllable the speaker wishes to
convey to the hearer. Amongst these devices is the combining of two
sounds into a single word and the use of four different “tones” in which
these syllables may be spoken. For purposes of our comparison a still
more interesting fact is that this language is practically without
grammar: it is impossible to say of any of the one-syllabled words
whether it is a noun, a verb or an adjective; and, further, there are no
inflections to show gender, number, case, tense or mood. The language
consists, as we may say, of the raw material only; just as our
thought-language is resolved into its raw material by the dream-work
omitting to express the relations in it. Wherever there is any
uncertainty in Chinese the decision is left to the intelligence of the
listener, who is guided by the context. I made a note of a Chinese
saying, which literally translated runs thus: “Little what see, much
what wonderful.” This is simple enough to understand. It may mean: “The
less a man has seen, the more he finds to wonder at,” or “There is much
to wonder at for the man who has seen little.” Naturally there is no
occasion to choose between these two translations which differ only in
grammatical construction. We are assured that in spite of these
uncertainties the Chinese language is a quite exceptionally good medium
of expression; so it is clear that indefiniteness does not necessarily
lead to ambiguity.

Now we must certainly admit that the position of affairs is far less
favourable in regard to the mode of expression in dreams than it is with
these ancient tongues and scripts; for these latter were originally
designed as a means of communication; that is, they were intended to be
understood, no matter what ways or means they had to employ. But just
this character is lacking to dreams: their object is not to tell anyone
anything; they are not a means of communication; on the contrary, it is
important to them not to be understood. So we ought not to be surprised
or misled if the result is that a number of the ambiguities and
uncertainties in dreams cannot be determined. The only certain piece of
knowledge gained from our comparison is that this indefiniteness (which
people would like to make use of as an argument against the accuracy of
our dream-interpretations) is rather to be recognized as a regular
characteristic of all primitive systems of expression.

Practice and experience alone can determine the extent to which dreams
can in actual fact be understood. My own opinion is that this is
possible to a very great extent; and a comparison of the results
obtained by properly-trained analysts confirms my view. It is well known
that the lay public, even in scientific circles, delights to make a
parade of superior scepticism in the face of the difficulties and
uncertainties which beset a scientific achievement; I think they are
wrong in so doing. You may possibly not at all know that the same thing
happened at the time when the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions were
being deciphered. There was a point at which public opinion was active
in declaring that the men deciphering the cuneiform writing were victims
of a chimera and that the whole business of investigation was a fraud.
But in the year 1857 the Royal Asiatic Society made a conclusive test.
They challenged four of the most distinguished men engaged in this
branch of research—Rawlinson, Hincks, Fox Talbot and Oppert—to send to
the Society in sealed envelopes independent translations of a
newly-discovered inscription, and, after comparing the four versions,
they were able to announce that there was sufficient agreement between
the four to justify belief in what had been achieved and confidence in
further progress. The mockery of the learned laity then gradually came
to an end, and certainty in the reading of cuneiform documents has
advanced enormously since then.

2. A second series of objections is closely connected with an impression
which you also have probably not escaped; namely, that a number of the
solutions achieved by our method of dream-interpretation seem strained,
specious, “dragged in,”—in other words, forced, or even comical or
joking. These criticisms are so frequent that I will take at random the
last that has come to my ears. Now listen: a head-master in
Switzerland—that free country—was recently asked to resign his post on
account of his interest in psycho-analysis. He protested and a Berne
paper published the decision of the school authorities on his case. I
shall quote a few sentences from the article which refer to
psycho-analysis: “Further, we are amazed at the far-fetched and
factitious character of many of the examples given in the said book by
Dr. Pfister of Zurich.... It is indeed a matter for surprise that the
head-master of a Training College should accept so credulously all these
assertions and such specious evidence.” These sentences purport to be
the final opinion of “One who judges calmly.” I am much more inclined to
think this “calm” factitious. Let us examine these remarks more closely
in the expectation that a certain amount of reflection and knowledge of
the subject will do no harm, even to a “calm judgement.”

It is really quite refreshing to see how swiftly and unerringly anyone
relying merely on his first impressions can arrive at an opinion on some
critical question of psychology in its more abstruse aspects. The
interpretations seem to him far-fetched and strained, and do not commend
themselves to him; consequently, they are wrong and the whole business
is rubbish. Such critics never give even a passing thought to the
possibility that there may be good reasons why the interpretations are
bound to convey this very impression—a thought which would lead to the
further question what these good reasons are.

The circumstance which calls forth this criticism is essentially related
to the effect of displacement, which you have learnt to know as the most
powerful instrument in the service of the dream-censorship. With its aid
the substitute-formations which we call allusions are created; but these
allusions are of a kind not easy to recognize as such; nor is it easy to
discover the thought proper by working back from them, for they are
connected with it by the most extraordinary and unusual extrinsic
associations. But the whole matter throughout concerns things which are
meant to be hidden, intended to be concealed: that is exactly the object
of the dream-censorship. We must not expect, though, to find something
that has been hidden by looking in the very place where it ordinarily
belongs. The frontier surveillance authorities nowadays are a good deal
more cunning in this respect than the Swiss school authorities; for they
are not content with examining portfolios and letter-cases when hunting
for documents and plans; but consider the possibility that spies and
smugglers may conceal anything compromising about their persons, in
places where it is most difficult to detect and where such things
certainly do not belong, for example, between the double soles of their
boots. If the concealed articles are found there, it is certainly true
that they have been “dragged” to light, but they are none the less a
very good “find.”

In admitting the possibility that the connection between a latent
dream-element and its manifest substitute may appear most remote and
extraordinary, sometimes even comical or joking, we are guided by our
wide experience of instances in which we did not as a rule find the
meaning ourselves. It is often impossible to arrive at such
interpretations by our own efforts: no sane person could guess the
bridge connecting the two. The dreamer either solves the riddle
straightaway by a direct association (_he_ can do it because it is in
his mind that the substitute-formation originated); or else he
provides so much material that there is no longer any need for special
penetration in order to solve it—the solution thrusts itself upon us
as inevitable. If the dreamer does not help us in either of these two
ways the manifest element in question will remain for ever
incomprehensible. Let me give you one more instance of this kind which
happened recently. A patient of mine lost her father during the course
of the treatment, after which she seized every opportunity to bring
him back to life in her dreams. In one of these her father appeared in
a certain connection otherwise not applicable and said: “_It is
quarter past eleven, it is half past eleven, it is quarter to
twelve_.” For the interpretation of this curious detail she could only
provide the association that her father was pleased when his older
children were punctual at the midday meal. This certainly fitted in
with the dream-element, but it threw no light on its origin. The
situation which had just been reached in the treatment gave good
grounds for the suspicion that a carefully-suppressed critical
antagonism to her much loved and honoured father had played a part in
this dream. Following out her further associations, apparently quite
remote from the dream, she told how she had heard a long discussion of
psychological questions on the day before and a relative had said:
“Primitive man (_Urmensch_) survives in all of us.” Now a light dawns
on us. Here was again a splendid opportunity for her to imagine that
her dead father survived, and so in the dream she made him a
“clock-man” (_Uhrmensch_), telling the quarters up to the time of the
midday meal.

The likeness to a pun in this cannot be ignored, and as a matter of fact
it has often happened that a dreamer’s pun has been ascribed to the
interpreter; there are yet other examples in which it is not at all easy
to decide whether we are dealing with a joke or a dream. But you will
remember that the same sort of doubt arose with some slips of the
tongue. A man related as a dream that he and his uncle were sitting in
the latter’s _auto_ (automobile) and his uncle kissed him. The dreamer
himself instantly volunteered the interpretation: it meant
“_auto-erotism_” (a term used in our theory of the libido, signifying
gratification obtained without any external love-object). Now was this
man allowing himself a joke at our expense and pretending that a pun
which occurred to him was part of a dream? I do not think so: he really
did dream it. But where does this bewildering resemblance between dreams
and jokes come from? At one time this question took me somewhat out of
my way, for it necessitated my making a thorough investigation into the
question of wit itself. This led to the conclusion that wit originates
as follows: a preconscious train of thought is for a moment left to a
process of unconscious elaboration, from which it emerges in the form of
a witticism. While under the influence of the unconscious it is subject
to the mechanisms there operative—to condensation and displacement; that
is to say, to the same processes as we found at work in the dream-work;
and the similarity sometimes found between dreams and wit is to be
ascribed to this character common to both. But the unintentional “dream
joke” does not amuse us as does an ordinary witticism; a deeper study of
wit may show you why this is so. The “dream joke” strikes us as a poor
form of wit; it does not make us laugh, it leaves us cold.

Now in this we are following the path of the ancient method of
dream-interpretation, which has given us, besides much that is useless,
many a valuable example of interpretation upon which we ourselves could
not improve. I will tell you a dream of historic importance which is
related in slightly different versions by Plutarch and Artemidorus of
Daldis, the dreamer being Alexander the Great. When he was laying siege
to the city of Tyre, which was putting up an obstinate resistance (B.C.
322), he dreamt one night that he saw a dancing satyr. The
dream-interpreter Aristandros, who accompanied the army on its
campaigns, interpreted this dream by dividing the word “satyros” into σὰ
Τύρος (“Tyre is thine”), and prophesied from this the king’s victory
over the city. This interpretation decided Alexander to continue the
siege and eventually the city fell. The interpretation, factitious as it
seems, was undoubtedly the right one.

3. I can well imagine that you will be especially impressed on being
told that even people who have long studied the interpretation of dreams
in the course of their work as psycho-analysts have raised objections to
our conception of dreams. It would indeed have been exceptional if so
excellent an opportunity for new mistakes had been let slip; and so
assertions have been made, due to confusion of ideas and based on
unjustifiable generalizations, which are hardly less incorrect than the
medical conception of dreams. One of these statements you know already:
that dreams deal with attempts at adaptation to the situation at the
moment and with the solution of future problems; in other words, that
they pursue a “prospective tendency” or aim (A. Maeder). We have already
demonstrated that this statement rests upon a confusion between dreams
and the latent dream-thoughts and ignores the process of dream-work. If
those who speak of this “prospective tendency” mean thereby to
characterize the unconscious mental activity to which the latent
thoughts belong, then, on the one hand, they tell us nothing new and, on
the other hand, the description is not exhaustive; for unconscious
mental activity occupies itself with many other things besides
preparation for the future. There seems to be a much worse confusion
behind the assurance that the “death clause” may be found underlying
every dream; I am not quite clear what this formula is intended to mean,
but I suspect that behind it the dream is confounded with the whole
personality of the dreamer.

An unjustifiable generalization, based on a few striking examples, is
contained in the statement that every dream admits of two kinds of
interpretation: one of the kind we have described, the so-called
“psycho-analytic” interpretation, and the other the so-called
“anagogic,” which disregards the instinctive tendencies and aims at a
representation of the higher mental functions (H. Silberer); there are
dreams of this kind, but you will seek in vain to extend this conception
to include even a majority of dreams. After all you have heard, the
statement that all dreams are to be interpreted bisexually, as a
combination of two tendencies which may be called male and female (A.
Adler), will seem to you quite incomprehensible. Here again, single
dreams of this sort do of course occur and later on you may learn that
their structure is similar to that of certain hysterical symptoms. I
mention all these discoveries of new general characteristics of dreams
in order to warn you against them, or at least to leave you in no doubt
about my own opinion of them.

4. At one time the objective value of research into dreams seemed to be
discredited by the fact that patients treated analytically appeared to
suit the content of their dreams to the favourite theories of their
doctors, one class dreaming mainly of sexual impulses, and another of
impulses for mastery, others again even of rebirth (W. Stekel). The
force of this observation is weakened by the reflection that people
dreamed dreams before there was any such thing as psycho-analytic
treatment to influence their dreams and that the patients undergoing
treatment nowadays also used to dream before they began it. The actual
fact in this supposedly new observation is soon shown to be self-evident
and of no consequence for the theory of dreams. The residue from the
previous day which gives rise to dreams is a residue from the great
interests of waking life. If the physician’s words and the stimuli which
he gives have become of importance to the patient they then enter into
whatever constitutes the residue and can act as mental stimuli for
dream-formation, just like other interests of affective value roused on
the preceding day which have not subsided; they operate in the same way
as bodily stimuli which affect the sleeper during sleep. Like these
other factors inciting dreams, the trains of thought roused by the
physician can appear in the manifest dream-content or be revealed in the
latent thoughts. We know indeed that dreams can be experimentally
produced, or, to speak more accurately, a part of the dream-material can
be thus introduced into the dream. In influencing his patients thus the
analyst plays a part no different from that of an experimenter, like
Mourly Void, who placed in certain positions the limbs of the person
upon whom he experimented.

We can often influence what a man shall dream _about_, but never _what_
he will dream; for the mechanism of the dream-work and the unconscious
dream-wish are inaccessible to external influence of any sort. We
realized, when we were considering dreams arising out of bodily stimuli,
that in the reaction to the bodily or mental stimuli brought to bear
upon the dreamer the peculiarity and independence of dream-life is
clearly seen. The criticism I have just discussed which tends to cast a
doubt upon the objectivity of dream investigation is again an assertion
based upon confounding, this time confounding dreams with—their
material.

I wanted to tell you as much as this about the problems of dreams. You
will guess that I have passed over a great deal and will have discovered
for yourselves that my treatment of nearly every point has necessarily
been incomplete; but this is due to the phenomena of dreams being so
closely connected with those of the neuroses. Our plan was to study
dreams as an introduction to the study of the neuroses and it was
certainly a better one than beginning the other way about; but since
dreams prepare us for comprehension of the neuroses, so also can a
correctly-formed estimate of dreams be acquired only after some
knowledge of neurotic manifestations has been gained.

I do not know how you may think about it, but I can assure you that I do
not regret having taken up so much of your interest and of the time at
our disposal in the consideration of problems connected with dreams. I
know no other way by which one can so speedily arrive at conviction of
the correctness of those statements by which psycho-analysis stands or
falls. It requires strenuous work for many months, and even years, to
demonstrate that the symptoms in a case of neurotic illness have a
meaning, serve a purpose, and arise from the patient’s experiences in
life. On the other hand, a few hours’ effort may be enough to show these
things in some dream which at first seemed utterly confused and
incomprehensible, and in this way to confirm all the premises upon which
psycho-analysis rests—the existence of unconscious mental processes, the
special mechanisms which they obey, and the instinctive propelling
forces which are expressed by them. And when we remember how
far-reaching is the analogy in the structure of dreams to that of
neurotic symptoms and, with that, reflect how rapid is the
transformation of a dreamer into a wide-awake, reasonable human being,
we acquire an assurance that the neuroses too depend only upon an
alteration in the balance of the forces at work in mental life.




                               _PART III_
                     GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES




                           SIXTEENTH LECTURE
                     PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND PSYCHIATRY


It pleases me greatly to see you here again to continue our discussions
after a year has passed. Last year the subject of my lectures was the
application of psycho-analysis to errors and to dreams; I hope this year
to lead you to some comprehension of neurotic phenomena which, as you
will soon discover, have much in common with both our former subjects. I
must tell you before I begin, however, that I cannot concede you the
same attitude towards me now as I did last year. Then I endeavoured to
make no step without being in agreement with your judgement; I debated a
great deal with you, submitted to your objections, in fact, recognized
you and your “healthy common-sense” as the deciding factor. That is no
longer possible and for a very simple reason. Errors and dreams are
phenomena which were familiar to you; one might say you had as much
experience of them as I, or could easily have obtained it. The
manifestations of neurosis, however, are an unknown region to you; those
of you who are not yourselves medical men have no access there except
through the accounts I give you; and of what use is the most excellent
judgement where there is no knowledge of the subject under debate?

However, do not receive this announcement as though I were going to give
these lectures _ex cathedra_ or to demand unconditional acceptance from
you. Any such misconception would do me a gross injustice. I do not aim
at producing conviction,—my aim is to stimulate enquiry and to destroy
prejudices. If owing to ignorance of the subject you are not in a
position to adjudicate, then you should neither believe nor reject. You
should only listen and allow what I tell you to make its own effect upon
you. Convictions are not so easily acquired, or, when they are achieved
without much trouble, they soon prove worthless and unstable. No one has
a right to conviction on these matters who has not worked at this
subject for many years, as I have, and has not himself experienced the
same new and astonishing discoveries. Then why these sudden convictions
in intellectual matters, lightning conversions, and instantaneous
repudiations? Do you not see that the _coup de foudre_, “love at first
sight,” proceeds from a very different mental sphere, from the affective
one? We do not require even our patients to bring with them any
conviction in favour of psycho-analysis or any devotion to it. It would
make us suspicious of them. Benevolent scepticism is the attitude in
them which we like best. Therefore will you also try to let
psycho-analytical conceptions develop quietly in your minds alongside
the popular or the psychiatric view, until opportunities arise for them
to influence each other and be united into a decisive opinion.

On the other hand, you are not for a moment to suppose that the
psycho-analytic point of view which I shall lay before you is a
speculative system of ideas. On the contrary, it is the result of
experience, being founded either on direct observations or on
conclusions drawn from observation. Whether these have been drawn in an
adequate or a justifiable manner future advances in science will show;
after nearly two and a half decades and now that I am fairly well
advanced in years I may say, without boasting, that it was particularly
difficult, intense, and all-absorbing work that yielded these
observations. I have often had the impression that our opponents were
unwilling to consider this source of our statements, as if they looked
upon them as ideas derived subjectively which anyone could dispute at
his own sweet will. This attitude on the part of my opponents is not
quite comprehensible to me. Perhaps it comes from the circumstance that
physicians pay so little attention to neurotics and listen so carelessly
to what they say that it has become impossible for them to perceive
anything in the patients’ communications or to make detailed
observations from them. I will take this opportunity of assuring you
that in these lectures I shall make few controversial references, least
of all to individuals. I have never been able to convince myself of the
truth of the saying that “strife is the father of all things.” I think
the source of it was the philosophy of the Greek sophists and that it
errs, as does the latter, through the over estimation of dialectics. It
seems to me, on the contrary, that scientific controversy, so-called, is
on the whole quite unfruitful, apart from the fact that it is almost
always conducted in a highly personal manner. Until a few years ago I
could boast that I had only once been engaged in a regular scientific
dispute, and that with one single investigator, Löwenfeld of Munich. The
end of it was that we became friends and have remained so to this day.
But I did not repeat the experiment for a very long time because I was
not certain that the outcome would be the same.

Now you will surely judge that a refusal of this kind to discuss matters
publicly points to a high degree of inaccessibility to criticism, to
obstinacy, or, in the polite colloquialism of the scientific world, to
“pig-headedness.”[43] My reply to you would be that, should you have
arrived at a conviction by means of such hard work, you would also
thereby derive a certain right to maintain it with some tenacity.
Further, on my own behalf, I can say that in the course of my work I
have modified my views on important points, changed them or replaced
them by others, and have of course in each case published the fact. What
has been the result of this frankness? Some people have ignored my
corrections of myself altogether and still to-day criticize me in
respect of views which no longer mean the same to me. Others positively
reproach me for these changes and declare me to be unreliable on that
account. No one who changes his views once or twice deserves to be
believed, for it is only too likely that he will be mistaken again in
his latest assertions; but anyone who sticks to anything he has once
said, or refuses to give way upon it easily enough, is obstinate or
pig-headed; is it not so? What is to be done in the face of these
self-contradictory criticisms except to remain as one is and behave as
seems best to one? This is what I decided to do; and I am not deterred
from remodelling and improving my theories in accordance with later
experience. I have so far found nothing to alter in my fundamental
standpoint and I hope this will never be necessary.

So now I have to lay before you the psycho-analytic theory of neurotic
manifestations. For this purpose it will be simplest, on account of both
the analogy and the contrast, to take an example which links up with the
phenomena we have already considered. I will take a ‘symptomatic act’
which I see many people commit in my own consulting-room. The analyst
has little to offer to the people who come to a physician’s
consulting-room for half-an-hour to recount the lifelong misery of their
fate. His deeper comprehension makes it difficult for him to give, as
another might, the opinion that there is nothing wrong with them and
that they had better take a light course of hydrotherapy. One of our
colleagues once replied, with a shrug, when asked how he dealt with
consultation patients, that he “fined them so many crowns for ‘wasting
the time of the court.’” You will therefore not be surprised to hear
that even the busiest psycho-analysts are not much sought after for
consultations. I have had the ordinary door between the waiting-room and
my consulting-room supplemented by another door and covered with felt.
The reason for this is obvious. Now it constantly happens when I admit
people from the waiting-room that they omit to close these doors,
leaving even both doors open behind them. When I see this happen, I at
once, with some stiffness, request him or her to go back and make good
the omission, no matter how fine a gentleman he may be nor how many
hours she had spent on her toilet. My action gives the impression of
being uncalled-for and pedantic; occasionally too I have found myself in
the wrong, when the person turned out to be one of those who cannot
themselves grasp a door-handle and are glad when those with them avoid
it. But in the majority of cases I was right, for anyone who behaves in
this way and leaves the door of a physician’s consulting-room open into
the waiting-room belongs to the rabble and deserves to be received with
coldness. Now don’t allow yourselves to be biassed before you have heard
the rest. This omission on the part of a patient occurs only when he has
been waiting alone in the outer room and thus leaves an empty room
behind him, never when others, strangers to him, have also been waiting
there. In the latter case he knows very well that it is to his own
interest not to be overheard while he talks to the physician and he
never neglects to close both doors carefully.

Occurring in this way, the patient’s omission is neither accidental nor
meaningless, and not even unimportant, for it betrays the visitor’s
attitude to the physician. He belongs to that large class who seek those
in high places, and wish to be dazzled and intimidated. Perhaps he had
made enquiries by telephone at what time he would be most likely to gain
admittance and had been expecting to find a crowd of applicants in a
queue, as if at the grocer’s in war-time. Then he is shown into an empty
room which, moreover, is most modestly furnished, and he is dumbfounded.
He must somehow make the physician atone for the superfluous respect he
had been prepared to show him; and so he omits to close the doors
between the waiting- and the consulting-rooms. He intends this to mean:
“Pooh! there is no one here and I daresay there won’t be, however long I
stay!” He would behave during the interview in an uncivil and
supercilious manner, too, if his presumption were not curbed at the
outset by a sharp reminder.

In the analysis of this little symptomatic act you find nothing that is
not already known to you; namely, the conclusion that it is no accident
but has in it motive, meaning, and intention; that it belongs to a
mental context which can be specified; and that it provides a small
indication of a more important mental process. But above all it implies
that the process thus indicated is not known to the consciousness of the
person who carries it out; for not one of the patients who left the two
doors open would have admitted that he wished to show any depreciation
of me by his neglect. Many of them could probably recall a sense of
disappointment on entering the empty waiting-room, but the connection
between this impression and the succeeding symptomatic act certainly
remained outside their consciousness.

Now let us place this little analysis of a symptomatic act by the side
of an observation made on a patient. I will choose one which is fresh in
my memory, and also because it can be described in comparatively few
words. A certain amount of detail is indispensable for any such account.

A young officer, home on short leave of absence, asked me to treat his
mother-in-law, who was living in the happiest surroundings and yet was
embittering her own and her family’s lives by a nonsensical idea. I
found her a well-preserved lady, fifty-three years of age, of a
friendly, simple disposition, who gave without hesitation the following
account of herself. She is most happily married, and lives in the
country with her husband who manages a large factory. She cannot say
enough of her husband’s kindness and consideration; theirs had been a
love-marriage thirty years ago, since when they had never had a cloud, a
quarrel, or a moment’s jealousy. Her two children have both married
well, but her husband’s sense of duty keeps him still at work. A year
before, an incredible and, to her, incomprehensible thing happened. She
received an anonymous letter telling her that her excellent husband was
carrying on an intrigue with a young girl, and believed it on the
spot—since then her happiness has been destroyed. The details were more
or less as follows: she had a housemaid with whom she discussed
confidential matters, perhaps rather too freely. This young woman
cherished a positively venomous hatred for another girl who had
succeeded better in life than herself, although of no better origin.
Instead of going into service, the other young woman had had a
commercial training, been taken into the factory and, owing to vacancies
caused by the absence of staff on service in the field, had been
promoted to a good position. She lived in the factory, knew all the
gentlemen, and was even addressed as “Miss.” The other one who had been
left behind in life was only too ready to accuse her former schoolmate
of all possible evil. One day our patient and her housemaid were
discussing an elderly gentleman who had visited the house and of whom it
was said that he did not live with his wife but kept a mistress. Why,
she did not know, but she suddenly said: “I cannot imagine anything more
awful than to hear that my husband had a mistress.” The next day she
received by post an anonymous letter in disguised handwriting which
informed her of the very thing she had just imagined. She
concluded—probably correctly—that the letter was the handiwork of her
malicious housemaid, for the woman who was named as the mistress of her
husband was the very girl who was the object of this housemaid’s hatred.
Although she at once saw through the plot and had seen enough of such
cowardly accusations in her own surroundings to place little credence in
them, our patient was nevertheless prostrated by this letter. She became
terribly excited and at once sent for her husband to overwhelm him with
reproaches. The husband laughingly denied the accusation and did the
best thing he could. He sent for the family physician (who also attended
the factory), and he did his best to calm the unhappy lady. The next
thing they did was also most reasonable. The housemaid was dismissed,
but not the supposed mistress. From that time on the patient claims to
have repeatedly brought herself to a calm view of the matter, so that
she no longer believes the contents of the letter; but it has never gone
very deep nor lasted very long. It was enough to hear the young woman’s
name mentioned, or to meet her in the street, for a new attack of
suspicion, agony, and reproaches to break out.

This is the clinical picture of this excellent woman’s case. It did not
require much experience of psychiatry to perceive that, in contrast to
other neurotics, she described her symptoms too mildly—as we say,
dissimulated them—and that she had never really overcome her belief in
the anonymous letter.

Now what attitude does a psychiatrist take up to such a case? We know
already what he would say to the symptomatic act of a patient who does
not close the waiting-room doors. He explains it as an accident, without
interest psychologically, and no concern of his. But he cannot continue
to take up this attitude in regard to the case of the jealous lady. The
symptomatic action appears to be unimportant; the symptom calls for
notice as a grave matter. Subjectively it involves intense suffering,
and objectively it threatens to break up a family; its claim to
psychiatric interest is therefore indisputable. First the psychiatrist
tries to characterize the symptom by some essential attribute. The idea
with which this lady torments herself cannot be called nonsensical in
itself; it does happen that elderly husbands contract relationships with
young women. But there is something else about it that is nonsensical
and incomprehensible. The patient has absolutely no grounds, except the
anonymous letter, for supposing that her loving and faithful husband
belongs to this category of men, otherwise not so uncommon. She knows
that this communication carries no proof, she can explain its origin
satisfactorily; she ought therefore to be able to say to herself that
she has no grounds for her jealousy and she does even say so, but she
suffers just as much as if she regarded her jealousy as well-founded.
Ideas of this kind that are inaccessible to logic and the arguments of
reality are unanimously described as _delusions_. The good lady suffers
therefore, from a _delusion of jealousy_. That is evidently the
essential characteristic of the case.

Having established this first point, our psychiatric interest increases.
When a delusion cannot be dissipated by the facts of reality, it
probably does not spring from reality. Where else then does it spring
from? Delusions can have the most various contents; why is the content
of it in this case jealousy? What kind of people have delusions, and
particularly delusions of jealousy? Now we should like to listen to the
psychiatrist, but he leaves us in the lurch here. He considers only one
of our questions. He will examine the family history of this woman and
will _perhaps_ bring us the answer that the kind of people who suffer
from delusions are those in whose families similar or different
disorders have occurred repeatedly. In other words, this lady has
developed a delusion because she had an hereditary predisposition to do
so. That is certainly something; but is it all that we want to know? Is
it the sole cause of her disease? Does it satisfy us to assume that it
is unimportant, arbitrary, or inexplicable that one kind of delusion
should have been developed instead of another? And are we to understand
the proposition—that the hereditary predisposition is decisive—also in a
negative sense; that is, that no matter what experiences and emotions
life had brought her she was destined some time or other to produce a
delusion? You will want to know why scientific psychiatry gives no
further explanation. And I reply: “Only a rogue gives more than he has.”
The psychiatrist knows of no path leading to any further explanation in
such a case. He has to content himself with a diagnosis and, in spite of
wide experience, with a very uncertain prognosis of its future course.

Now can psycho-analysis do better than this? Yes, certainly I hope to
show you that even in such an obscure case as this it is possible to
discover something which makes closer comprehension possible. First, I
shall ask you to notice this incomprehensible detail; that the anonymous
letter on which her delusion is founded was positively provoked by the
patient herself, by her saying to the scheming housemaid the day before
that nothing could be more awful than to hear that her husband had an
intrigue with a young woman. She first put the idea of sending the
letter into the servant’s mind by this. So the delusion acquires a
certain independence of the letter; it existed beforehand as a fear—or,
as a wish?—in her mind. Besides this, the further small indications
revealed in the bare two hours of analysis are noteworthy. The patient
responded very coldly, it is true, to the request to tell me her further
thoughts, ideas, and recollections, after she had finished her story.
She declared that nothing came to her mind, she had told me everything;
and after two hours the attempt had to be given up, because she
announced that she felt quite well already and was certain that the
morbid idea would not return. Her saying this was naturally due to
resistance and to the fear of further analysis, In these two hours she
had let fall some remarks, nevertheless, which made a certain
interpretation not only possible but inevitable, and this interpretation
threw a sharp light on the origin of the delusion of jealousy. There
actually existed in her an infatuation for a young man, for the very
son-in-law who had urged her to seek my assistance. Of this infatuation
she herself knew nothing or only perhaps very little; in the
circumstances of their relationship it was easily possible for it to
disguise itself as harmless tenderness on her part. After what we have
already learnt it is not difficult to see into the mind of this good
woman and excellent mother. Such an infatuation, such a monstrous,
impossible thing, could not come into her conscious mind; it persisted,
nevertheless, and unconsciously exerted a heavy pressure. Something had
to happen, some sort of relief had to be found; and the simplest
alleviation lay in that mechanism of displacement which so regularly
plays its part in the formation of delusional jealousy. If not merely
she, old woman that she was, were in love with a young man, but if only
her old husband too were in love with a young mistress, then her
torturing conscience would be absolved from the infidelity. The phantasy
of her husband’s infidelity was thus a cooling balm on her burning
wound. Of her own love she never became conscious; but its reflection in
the delusion, which brought such advantages, thus became compulsive,
delusional and conscious. All arguments against it could naturally avail
nothing; for they were directed only against the reflection, and not
against the original to which its strength was due and which lay buried
out of reach in the Unconscious.

Let us now piece together the results of this short, obstructed
psycho-analytic attempt to understand this case. It is assumed of course
that the information acquired was correct, a point which I cannot submit
to your judgement here. First of all, the delusion is no longer
senseless and incomprehensible; it is sensible, logically motivated, and
has its place in connection with an affective experience of the
patient’s. Secondly, it has arisen as a necessary reaction to another
mental process which has itself been revealed by other indications; and
it owes its delusional character, its quality of resisting real and
logical objections, to this relation with this other mental process. It
is something desired in itself, a kind of consolation. Thirdly, the fact
that the delusion is one of jealousy and no other is unmistakably
determined by the experience underlying the disease. You will also
recognize the two important analogies with the symptomatic act we
analysed; namely, the discovery of the sense or intention behind the
symptom and the relation of it to something in the given situation which
is unconscious.

This does not, of course, answer all the questions arising out of this
case. On the contrary, it bristles with further problems, some of which
have not yet proved soluble at all, while others cannot be solved owing
to the unfavourable circumstances met with in this case. For instance,
why does this happily-married lady fall in love with her son-in-law, and
why does relief come to her in the form of this kind of reflection, this
projection of her own state of mind on to her husband, when other forms
of relief were also possible? Do not think that it is idle and
uncalled-for to propound these questions. We have already a good deal of
material at hand to provide possible answers. The patient had come to
that critical time of life which brings a sudden and unwelcome increase
of sexual desire to a woman; that may have been sufficient in itself. Or
there may have been an additional reason, in that the sexual capacity of
her excellent and faithful husband may have been for some years
insufficient for the still vigorous woman’s needs. Observation has
taught us that it is just such men, whose fidelity is thus a matter of
course, who treat their wives with particular tenderness and are
unusually considerate of their nervous ailments. Neither is it
unimportant, moreover, that the object of this abnormal infatuation
should be her daughter’s young husband. A strong erotic attachment to
the daughter, with its roots in the individual sexual constitution of
the mother, often manages to maintain itself in such a transformation. I
may perhaps remind you in this connection that the relation between
mother-in-law and son-in-law has from time immemorial been regarded by
mankind as a particularly sensitive one, which among primitive races has
given rise to very powerful taboos and precautions.[44] On the positive
as well as on the negative side it frequently exceeds the limits
regarded as desirable in civilized society. Of these three possible
factors, whether one of them has been at work in the case before us, or
two of them, or whether all three together have taken part, I cannot
tell you; though only because the analysis of the case could not be
continued beyond the second hour.

I perceive now that I have been speaking entirely of things which you
were not yet prepared to understand. I did so in order to carry out the
comparison between psychiatry and psycho-analysis. But I may ask you one
thing at this point: Have you observed anything in the nature of a
contradiction between the two? Psychiatry does not employ the technical
methods of psycho-analysis, neglects any consideration of the content of
the delusion, and in pointing to heredity gives us but a general and
remote ætiology instead of first disclosing the more specific and
immediate one. But is any contradiction or opposition contained in this?
Is not the one rather a supplement to the other? Is the hereditary
factor inconsistent with the importance of experience and would they not
both work together most effectively? You will admit that there is
nothing essential in the work of psychiatry which could oppose
psycho-analytic researches. It is therefore the psychiatrists who oppose
it, and not psychiatry itself. Psycho-Analysis stands to psychiatry more
or less as histology does to anatomy; in one, the outer forms of organs
are studied, in the other, the construction of these out of the tissues
and constituent elements. It is not easy to conceive of any
contradiction between these two fields of study, in which the work of
the one is continued in the other. You know that nowadays anatomy is the
basis of the scientific study of medicine; but time was when dissecting
human corpses in order to discover the internal structure of the body
was as much a matter for severe prohibition as practising
psycho-analysis in order to discover the internal workings of the human
mind seems to-day to be a matter for condemnation. And, presumably at a
not too distant date, we shall have perceived that there can be no
psychiatry which is scientifically radical without a thorough knowledge
of the deep-seated unconscious processes in mental life.

There may be some of you who perhaps are friendly enough towards
psycho-analysis, often attacked as it is, to wish that it would justify
itself in another direction also, that is, therapeutically. You know
that psychiatric therapy has hitherto been unable to influence
delusions. Can psycho-analysis do so perhaps, by reason of its insight
into the mechanism of these symptoms? No, I have to tell you that it
cannot; for the present, at any rate, it is just as powerless as any
other therapy to heal these sufferers. It is true that we can understand
what has happened to the patient; but we have no means by which we can
make him understand it himself. You have heard that I could not continue
the analysis of this delusion beyond the first preliminaries. Would you
then maintain that analysis of such cases is undesirable because it
remains fruitless? I do not think so. It is our right, yes, and our
duty, to pursue our researches without respect to the immediate gain
effected. The day will come, where and when we know not, when every
little piece of knowledge will be converted into power, and into
therapeutic power. Even if psycho-analysis showed itself as unsuccessful
with all other forms of nervous and mental diseases as with delusions,
it would still remain justified as an irreplaceable instrument of
scientific research. It is true that we should not be in a position to
practise it; the human material on which we learn lives, and has its own
will, and must have its own motives in order to participate in the work;
and it would then refuse to do so. I will therefore close my lecture for
to-day by telling you that there are large groups of nervous
disturbances for which this conversion of our own advance in knowledge
into therapeutic power has actually been carried out; and that with
these diseases, otherwise so refractory, our measures yield, under
certain conditions, results which give place to none in the domain of
medical therapy.




                          SEVENTEENTH LECTURE
                        THE MEANING OF SYMPTOMS


In the last lecture I explained to you that clinical psychiatry troubles
itself little about the actual form of the individual symptom or the
content of it; but that psycho-analysis has made this its
starting-point, and has ascertained that the symptom itself has a
meaning and is connected with experiences in the life of the patient.
The meaning of neurotic symptoms was first discovered by J. Breuer in
the study and successful cure of a case of hysteria (1880–82), which has
since then become famous. It is true that P. Janet independently reached
the same result; in fact, priority in publication must be granted to the
French investigator, for Breuer did not publish his observations until
more than a decade later (1893–95), during the period of our work
together. Incidentally, it is of no great importance to us who made the
discovery, for you know that every discovery is made more than once, and
none is made all at once, nor is success meted out according to deserts.
America is not called after Columbus. Before Breuer and Janet, the great
psychiatrist Leuret expressed the opinion that even the delusions of the
insane would prove to have some meaning, if only we knew how to
translate them. I confess that for a long time I was willing to accord
Janet very high recognition for his explanation of neurotic symptoms,
because he regarded them as expressions of “_idées inconscientes_”
possessing the patient’s mind. Since then, however, Janet has taken up
an attitude of undue reserve, as if he meant to imply that the
Unconscious had been nothing more to him than a manner of speaking, a
makeshift, _une façon de parler_, and that he had nothing “real” in
mind. Since then I have not understood Janet’s views, but I believe that
he has gratuitously deprived himself of great credit.

Neurotic symptoms then, just like errors and dreams, have their meaning
and, like these, are related to the life of the person in whom they
appear. This is an important matter which I should like to demonstrate
to you by some examples. I can merely assert, I cannot prove, that it is
so in every case; anyone observing for himself will be convinced of it.
For certain reasons though, I shall not take these examples from cases
of hysteria, but from another very remarkable form of neurosis, closely
allied in origin to the latter, about which I must say a few preliminary
words. This, which we call _the obsessional neurosis_, is not so popular
as the widely-known _hysteria_; it is, if I may so express myself, not
so noisily ostentatious, behaves more as if it were a private affair of
the patient’s, dispenses almost entirely with bodily manifestations and
creates all its symptoms in the mental sphere. The obsessional neurosis
and hysteria are the two forms of neurotic disease upon the study of
which psycho-analysis was first built up, and in the treatment of which
also our therapy celebrates its triumphs. In the obsessional neurosis,
however, that mysterious leap from the mental to the physical is absent,
and it has really become more intimately comprehensible and transparent
to us through psycho-analytic research than hysteria; we have come to
understand that it displays far more markedly certain extreme features
of the neurotic constitution.

The obsessional neurosis[45] takes this form: the patient’s mind is
occupied with thoughts that do not really interest him, he feels
impulses which seem alien to him, and he is impelled to perform actions
which not only afford him no pleasure but from which he is powerless to
desist. The thoughts (obsessions) may be meaningless in themselves or
only of no interest to the patient; they are often absolutely silly; in
every case they are the starting-point of a strained concentration of
thought which exhausts the patient and to which he yields most
unwillingly. Against his will he has to worry and speculate as if it
were a matter of life or death to him. The impulses which he perceives
within him may seem to be of an equally childish and meaningless
character; mostly, however, they consist of something terrifying, such
as temptations to commit serious crimes, so that the patient not only
repudiates them as alien, but flees from them in horror, and guards
himself by prohibitions, precautions, and restrictions against the
possibility of carrying them out. As a matter of fact he never,
literally not even once, carries these impulses into effect; flight and
precautions invariably win. What he does really commit are very
harmless, certainly trivial acts—what are termed the obsessive
actions—which are mostly repetitions and ceremonial elaborations of
ordinary everyday performances, making these common necessary
actions—going to bed, washing, dressing, going for walks, etc.—into
highly laborious tasks of almost insuperable difficulty. The morbid
ideas, impulses, and actions are not by any means combined in the same
proportions in individual types and cases of the obsessional neurosis;
on the contrary, the rule is that one or another of these manifestations
dominates the picture and gives the disease its name; but what is common
to all forms of it is unmistakable enough.

This is a mad disease, surely. I don’t think the wildest psychiatric
phantasy could have invented anything like it, and if we did not see it
every day with our own eyes we could hardly bring ourselves to believe
in it. Now do not imagine that you can do anything for such a patient by
advising him to distract himself, to pay no attention to these silly
ideas, and to do something sensible instead of his nonsensical
practices. This is what he would like himself; for he is perfectly aware
of his condition, he shares your opinion about his obsessional symptoms,
he even volunteers it quite readily. Only he simply cannot help himself;
the actions performed in an obsessional condition are supported by a
kind of energy which probably has no counterpart in normal mental life.
Only one thing is open to him—he can displace and he can exchange;
instead of one silly idea he can adopt another of a slightly milder
character, from one precaution or prohibition he can proceed to another,
instead of one ceremonial rite he can perform another. He can displace
his sense of compulsion, but he cannot dispel it. This capacity for
displacing all the symptoms, involving radical alteration of their
original forms, is a main characteristic of the disease; it is,
moreover, striking that in this condition the ‘_opposite-values_’
(_polarities_) pervading mental life appear to be exceptionally sharply
differentiated. In addition to compulsions of both positive and negative
character, doubt appears in the intellectual sphere, gradually spreading
until it gnaws even at what is usually held to be certain. All these
things combine to bring about an ever-increasing indecisiveness, loss of
energy, and curtailment of freedom; and that although the obsessional
neurotic is originally always a person of a very energetic disposition,
often highly opinionated, and as a rule intellectually gifted above the
average. He has usually attained to an agreeably high standard of
ethical development, is over-conscientious, and more than usually
correct. You may imagine that it is a sufficiently arduous task to find
one’s bearings in this maze of contradictory character-traits and morbid
manifestations. At the moment our aim is merely to interpret some
symptoms of this disease.

Perhaps in view of our previous discussions you would like to know what
present-day psychiatry has to offer concerning the obsessional neurosis;
it is but a miserable contribution, however. Psychiatry has given names
to the various compulsions; and has nothing more to say about them. It
asserts instead that persons exhibiting these symptoms are “degenerate.”
That is not much satisfaction to us; it is no more than an estimate of
their value, a condemnation instead of an explanation. We are intended,
I suppose, to conclude that deterioration from type would naturally
produce all kinds of oddities in people. Now, we do believe that people
who develop such symptoms must be somewhat different in type from other
human beings; but we should like to know whether they are more
“degenerate” than other nervous patients, than hysterical or insane
people. The characterization is clearly again much too general. One may
even doubt whether it is justified at all when one learns that such
symptoms occur in men and women of exceptional ability who have left
their mark on their generation. Thanks to their own discretion and the
untruthfulness of biographers we usually learn very little of an
intimate nature about our exemplary great men; but it does happen
occasionally that one of them is a fanatic about truth like Émile
Zola,[46] and then we hear of the many extraordinary obsessive habits
from which he suffered throughout life.

Psychiatry has got out of this difficulty by dubbing these people
“_dégénerés superieurs_.” Very well; but psycho-analysis has shown that
these extraordinary obsessional symptoms can be removed permanently,
like the symptoms of other diseases, and as in other people who are not
degenerate. I myself have frequently succeeded in doing so.

I shall only give you two examples of analysis of obsessional symptoms;
one is an old one, but I have never found a better; and one is a recent
one. I shall limit myself to these two because an account of this kind
must be very explicit and go into great detail.

A lady of nearly thirty years of age suffered from very severe
obsessional symptoms. I might perhaps have been able to help her if my
work had not been destroyed by the caprice of fate—perhaps I shall tell
you about it later. In the course of a day she would perform the
following peculiar obsessive act, among others, several times over. She
would run out of her room into the adjoining one, there take up a
certain position at the table in the centre of the room, ring for her
maid, give her a trivial order or send her away without, and then run
back again. There was certainly nothing very dreadful about this, but it
might well arouse curiosity. The explanation presented itself in the
simplest and most unexceptionable manner, without any assistance on the
part of the analyst. I cannot imagine how I could even have suspected
the meaning of this obsession or could possibly have suggested an
interpretation for it. Every time I had asked the patient, “Why do you
do this? What is the meaning of it?” she had answered, “I don’t know.”
But one day, after I had succeeded in overcoming a great hesitation on
her part, involving a matter of principle, she suddenly did know, for
she related the history of the obsessive act. More than ten years
previously she had married a man very much older than herself, who had
proved impotent on the wedding-night. Innumerable times on that night he
had run out of his room into hers in order to make the attempt, but had
failed every time. In the morning he had said angrily: “It’s enough to
disgrace one in the eyes of the maid who does the beds,” and seizing a
bottle of red ink which happened to be at hand he poured it on the
sheet, but not exactly in the place where such a mark might have been.
At first I did not understand what this recollection could have to do
with the obsessive act in question; for I could see no similarity
between the two situations, except in the running from one room into the
other, and perhaps also in the appearance of the servant on the scene.
The patient then led me to the table in the adjoining room, where I
found a great mark on the table-cover. She explained further that she
stood by the table in such a way that when the maid came in she could
not miss seeing this mark. After this, there could no longer be any
doubt about the connection between the current obsessive act and the
scene of the wedding-night, though there was still a great deal to learn
about it.

It was clear, first of all, that the patient identified herself with her
husband; in imitating his running from one room into another she acted
his part. To keep up the similarity we must assume that she has
substituted the table and table-cover for the bed and sheet. This might
seem too arbitrary; but then we have not studied dream-symbolism in
vain. In dreams a table is very often found to represent a bed. “Bed and
board” together mean marriage, so that the one easily stands for the
other.

All this would be proof enough that the obsessive act is full of
meaning; it _seems_ to be a representation, a repetition of that
all-important scene. But we are not bound to stop at this semblance; if
we investigate more closely the relation between the two situations we
shall probably find out something more, the purpose of the obsessive
act. The kernel of it evidently lies in the calling of the maid, to whom
she displays the mark, in contrast to her husband’s words: “It’s enough
to disgrace one before the servant.” In this way he, whose part she is
playing, is _not_ ashamed before the servant, the stain is where it
ought to be. We see therefore that she has not simply repeated the
scene, she has continued it and corrected it, transformed it into what
it ought to have been. This implies something else, too, a correction of
the circumstance which made that night so distressing, and which made
the red ink necessary: namely, the husband’s impotence. The obsessive
act thus says: “No, it is not true, he was not disgraced before the
servant, he was not impotent.” As in a dream she represents this wish as
fulfilled, in a current obsessive act, which serves the purpose of
restoring her husband’s credit after that unfortunate incident.

Everything else which I could tell you about this lady fits in with
this, or, more correctly stated, everything else that we know about her
points to this interpretation of the obsessive act, in itself so
incomprehensible. She had been separated from her husband for years and
was trying to make up her mind to divorce him legally. But there would
have been no prospect of being free from him in her mind; she forced
herself to be true to him. She withdrew from the world and from everyone
so that she might not be tempted, and in her phantasies she excused and
idealized him. The deepest secret of her illness was that it enabled her
to shield him from malicious gossip, to justify her separation from him,
and to make a comfortable existence apart from her possible for him. The
analysis of a harmless obsessive act thus leads straight to the inmost
core of the patient’s disease, and at the same time betrays a great deal
of the secret of the obsessional neurosis in general. I am quite willing
that you should spend some time over this example, for it unites
conditions which cannot reasonably be expected in all cases. The
interpretation of the symptom was discovered by the patient herself in a
flash, without guidance or interference from the analyst, and it had
arisen in connection with an event which did not belong, as it commonly
does, to a forgotten period in childhood, but which had occurred in the
patient’s adult life and was clear in her memory. All those objections
which critics habitually raise against our interpretations of symptoms
are quite out of place here. To be sure, we cannot always be so
fortunate.

And one thing more! Has it not struck you that this innocent obsessive
act leads directly to this lady’s most private affairs? A woman can
hardly have anything more intimate to relate than the story of her
wedding-night; and is it by chance and without special significance that
we are led straight to the innermost secrets of her sexual life? It
might certainly be due to the choice I made of this example. Let us not
decide this point too quickly; but let us turn to the second example,
which is of a totally different nature, and belongs to a very common
type, that of rituals preparatory to sleep.

A well-grown clever girl of 19, the only child of her parents, superior
to them in education and intellectual activity, was a wild,
high-spirited child, but of late years had become very nervous without
any apparent cause. She was very irritable, particularly with her
mother, was discontented and depressed, inclined to indecision and
doubt, finally confessing that she could no longer walk alone through
squares and wide streets. We will not go very closely into her
complicated condition, which requires at least two diagnoses:
agoraphobia and obsessional neurosis; but will turn our attention to the
ritual elaborated by this young girl preparatory to going to bed, as a
result of which she caused her parents great distress. In a certain
sense, every normal person may be said to carry out a ritual before
going to sleep, or at least, he requires certain conditions without
which he is hindered in going to sleep; the transition from waking life
to sleep has been made into a regular formula which is repeated every
night in the same manner. But everything that a healthy person requires
as a condition of sleep can be rationally explained, and if the external
circumstances make any alteration necessary he adapts himself easily to
it without waste of time. The morbid ritual on the other hand is
inexorable, it will be maintained at the greatest sacrifices; it is
disguised, too, under rational motives and appears superficially to
differ from the normal only in a certain exaggerated carefulness of
execution. On a closer examination, however, it is clear that the
disguise is insufficient, that the ritual includes observances which go
far beyond what reason can justify and even some which directly
contravene this. As the motive of her nightly precautions, our patient
declares that she must have silence at night and must exclude all
possibility of noise. She does two things for this purpose; she stops
the large clock in her room and removes all other clocks out of the
room, including even the tiny wrist-watch on her bed-table. Flower-pots
and vases are placed carefully together on the writing-table, so that
they cannot fall down in the night and break, and so disturb her sleep.
She knows that these precautions have only an illusory justification in
the demand for quiet; the ticking of the little watch could not be
heard, even if it lay on the table by the bed; and we all know that the
regular ticking of a pendulum-clock never disturbs sleep, but is more
likely to induce it. She also admits that her fear that the flower-pots
and vases, if left in their places at night, might fall down of
themselves and break is utterly improbable. For some other practices in
her ritual this insistence upon silence as a motive is dropped; indeed,
by ordaining that the door between her bedroom and that of her parents
shall remain half-open (a condition which she ensures by placing various
objects in the doorway) she seems, on the contrary, to open the way to
sources of noise. The most important observances are concerned with the
bed itself, however. The bolster at the head of the bed must not touch
the back of the wooden bedstead. The pillow must lie across the bolster
exactly in a diagonal position and in no other; she then places her head
exactly in the middle of this diamond, lengthways. The eiderdown must be
shaken before she puts it over her, so that all the feathers sink to the
foot-end; she never fails, however, to press this out and redistribute
them all over it again.

I will pass over other trivial details of her ritual; they would teach
us nothing new and lead us too far from our purpose. Do not suppose,
though, that all this is carried out with perfect smoothness. Everything
is accompanied by the anxiety that it has not all been done properly; it
must be tested and repeated; her doubts fix first upon one, then
another, of the precautions; and the result is that one or two hours
elapse before the girl herself can sleep, or lets the intimidated
parents sleep.

The analysis of these torments did not proceed so simply as that of the
former patient’s obsessive act. I had to offer hints and suggestions of
its interpretation which were invariably received by her with a positive
denial or with scornful doubt. After this first reaction of rejection,
however, there followed a period in which she herself took up the
possibilities suggested to her, noted the associations they aroused,
produced memories, and established connections until she herself had
accepted all the interpretations in working them out for herself. In
proportion as she did this she began to relax the performance of her
obsessive precautions and before the end of the treatment she had given
up the whole ritual. I must also tell you that analytic work, as we
conduct it nowadays, definitely excludes any uninterrupted concentration
on a single symptom until its meaning becomes fully clear. It is
necessary, on the contrary, to abandon a given theme again and again, in
the assurance that one will come upon it anew in another context. The
interpretation of the symptom, which I am now going to tell you, is
therefore a synthesis of the results which, amid the interruptions of
work on other points, took weeks and months to procure.

The patient gradually learnt to understand that she banished clocks and
watches from her room at night because they were symbols of the female
genitals. Clocks, which we know may have other symbolic meanings besides
this, acquire this significance of a genital organ by their relation to
periodical processes and regular intervals. A woman may be heard to
boast that menstruation occurs in her as regularly as clockwork. Now
this patient’s special fear was that the ticking of the clocks would
disturb her during sleep. The ticking of a clock is comparable to the
throbbing of the clitoris in sexual excitation. This sensation, which
was distressing to her, had actually on several occasions wakened her
from sleep; and now her fear of an erection of the clitoris expressed
itself by the imposition of a rule to remove all going clocks and
watches far away from her during the night. Flower-pots and vases are,
like all receptacles, also symbols of the female genitals. Precautions
to prevent them from falling and breaking during the night are therefore
not lacking in meaning. We know the very widespread custom of breaking a
vessel or a plate on the occasion of a betrothal; everyone present
possesses himself of a fragment in symbolic acceptance of the fact that
he may no longer put forward any claims to the bride, presumably a
custom which arose with monogamy. The patient also contributed a
recollection and several associations to this part of her ritual. Once
as a child she had fallen while carrying a glass or porcelain vessel,
and had cut her finger which had bled badly. As she grew up and learnt
the facts about sexual intercourse, she developed the apprehension that
on her wedding-night she would not bleed and so would prove not to be a
virgin. Her precautions against the vases breaking signified a rejection
of the whole complex concerned with virginity and with the question of
bleeding during the first act of intercourse; a rejection of the anxiety
both that she would bleed and that she would not bleed. These
precautions were in fact only remotely connected with the prevention of
noise.

One day she divined the central idea of her ritual when she suddenly
understood her rule not to let the bolster touch the back of the bed.
The bolster had always seemed a woman to her, she said, and the upright
back of the bedstead a man. She wished therefore, by a magic ceremony,
as it were, to keep man and woman apart; that is to say, to separate the
parents and prevent intercourse from occurring. Years before the
institution of her ritual, she had attempted to achieve this end by a
more direct method. She had simulated fear, or had exploited a tendency
to fear, so that the door between her bedroom and that of her parents
should not be closed. This regulation was still actually included in her
present ritual; in this way she managed to make it possible to overhear
her parents; a proceeding which at one time had caused her months of
sleeplessness. Not content with disturbing her parents in this way, she
at that time even succeeded occasionally in sleeping between the father
and mother in their bed. “Bolster” and “bedstead” were then really
prevented from coming together. As she finally grew too big to be
comfortable in the same bed with the parents, she achieved the same
thing by consciously simulating fear and getting her mother to change
places with her and to give up to her her place by the father. This
incident was undoubtedly the starting-point of phantasies, the effect of
which was evident in the ritual.

If the bolster was a woman, then the shaking of the eiderdown till all
the feathers were at the bottom, making a protuberance there, also had a
meaning. It meant impregnating a woman; she did not neglect, though, to
obliterate the pregnancy again, for she had for years been terrified
that intercourse between her parents might result in another child and
present her with a rival. On the other hand, if the large bolster meant
the mother then the small pillow could only represent the daughter. Why
had this pillow to be placed diamond-wise upon the bolster and her head
be laid exactly in its middle lengthways? She was easily reminded that a
diamond is repeatedly used in drawings on walls to signify the open
female genitals. The part of the man (the father) she thus played
herself and replaced the male organ by her own head. (Cf. Symbolism of
beheading for castration.)

Horrible thoughts, you will say, to run in the mind of a virgin girl. I
admit that; but do not forget that I have not invented these ideas, only
exposed them. A ritual of this kind before sleep is also peculiar
enough, and you cannot deny the correspondence, revealed by the
interpretation, between the ceremonies and the phantasies. It is more
important to me, however, that you should notice that the ritual was the
outcome, not of one single phantasy, but of several together which of
course must have had a nodal point somewhere. Note, too, that the
details of the ritual reflect the sexual wishes both positively and
negatively, and serve in part as expressions of them, in part as
defences against them.

It would be possible to obtain much more out of the analysis of this
ritual by bringing it into its place in connection with the patient’s
other symptoms. But that is not our purpose at the moment. You must be
content with a reference to an erotic attachment to the father,
originating very early in childhood, which had enslaved this girl. It
was perhaps for this reason that she was so unfriendly towards her
mother. Also we cannot overlook the fact that the analysis of this
symptom has again led to the patient’s sexual life. The more insight we
gain into the meaning and purpose of neurotic symptoms, the less
surprising will this seem.

From two selected examples I have now shown you that neurotic symptoms
have meaning, like errors and like dreams, and that they are closely
connected with the events of the patient’s life. Can I expect you to
believe this exceptionally significant statement on the strength of two
examples? No. But can you expect me to go on quoting examples to you
until you declare yourselves convinced? Again, no; for in view of the
explicit treatment given to each individual case I should have to devote
five hours a week for a whole term to the consideration of this one
point in the theory of the neuroses. I will content myself therefore
with the samples given, as evidence of my statement; and will refer you
for more to the literature on the subject, to the classical
interpretation of symptoms in Breuer’s first case (hysteria), to the
striking elucidations of very obscure symptoms in dementia præcox,
so-called, made by C. G. Jung at a time when this investigator was a
mere psycho-analyst and did not yet aspire to be a prophet, and to all
the subsequent contributions with which our periodicals have been filled
since then. Precisely this type of investigation is plentiful. Analysis,
interpretation, and translation of neurotic symptoms has proved so
attractive to psycho-analysts that in comparison they have temporarily
neglected the other problems of the neuroses.

Anyone of you who makes the necessary effort to look up this question
will certainly be strongly impressed by the wealth of evidential
material. But he will also meet with a difficulty. The meaning of a
symptom lies, as we have seen, in its connection with the life of the
patient. The more individually the symptom has been formed, the more
clearly may we expect to establish this connection. Then the task
resolves itself specifically into a discovery, for every nonsensical
idea and every useless action, of the past situation in which the idea
was justified and the action served a useful purpose. The obsessive act
of the patient who ran to the table and rang for the maid is a perfect
model of this kind of symptom. But symptoms of quite a different type
are very frequently seen. They are what we call _typical_ symptoms of a
disease, in each case they are practically identical, the individual
differences in them vanish or at least fade away, so that it is
difficult to connect them with the patient’s life or to relate them to
special situations in his past. Let us consider the obsessional neurosis
again. The second patient’s ceremonies preparatory to sleep are in many
ways quite typical, although showing enough individual features as well
to make an “historical” interpretation, so to speak, possible. But all
obsessional patients are given to repetitions, to isolating certain of
their actions and to rhythmic performances. Most of them wash too much.
Those patients who suffer from agoraphobia (topophobia, fear of space),
no longer reckoned as an obsessional neurosis but now classified as
anxiety-hysteria, reproduce the same features of the pathological
picture often with fatiguing monotony. They fear enclosed spaces, wide,
open squares, long stretches of road, and avenues; they feel protected
if accompanied, or if a vehicle drives behind them, and so on.
Nevertheless, on this groundwork of similarity the various patients
construct individual conditions of their own, moods, one might call
them, which directly contrast with other cases. One fears narrow streets
only, another wide streets only, one can walk only when few people are
about, others only when surrounded with people. Similarly in hysteria,
beside the wealth of individual features there are always plenty of
common typical symptoms which appear to resist an easy interpretation on
historical lines. Do not let us forget that it is these typical symptoms
which enable us to take our bearings in forming a diagnosis. Supposing
we do trace back a typical symptom in a case of hysteria to an
experience or to a chain of similar experiences (for instance, an
hysterical vomiting to a series of impressions of a disgusting nature),
it will be confusing to discover in another case of vomiting an entirely
dissimilar series of apparently causative experiences. It almost looks
as though hysterical patients must vomit, for some unknown reason, and
as though the historical factors revealed by analysis were but pretexts,
seized upon by an inner necessity, when opportunity offered, to serve
its purpose.

This brings us to the discouraging conclusion that although individual
forms of neurotic symptoms can certainly be satisfactorily explained by
their relation to the patient’s experiences, yet our science fails us
for the far more frequent typical symptoms in the same cases. In
addition to this, I have not nearly explained to you all the
difficulties that arise during a resolute pursuit of the historical
meaning of a symptom. Nor shall I do so; for although my intention is to
conceal nothing from you and to gloss over nothing, I do not need to
confuse you and stupefy you at the outset of our studies together. It is
true that our understanding of symptom-interpretation has only just
begun, but we will hold fast to the knowledge gained and proceed to
overcome step by step the difficulties of the unknown. I will try to
cheer you with the thought that it is hardly possible to presume a
fundamental difference between the one kind of symptom and the other. If
the individual form of symptom is so unmistakably connected with the
patient’s experiences, it is possible that the typical symptom relates
to an experience which is itself typical and common to all humanity.
Other regularly recurring features of a neurosis, such as the repetition
and doubt of the obsessional neurosis, may be universal reactions which
the patient is compelled to exaggerate by the nature of the morbid
change. In short, there is no reason to give up hastily in despair; let
us see what more we can find out.

There is a very similar difficulty met with in the theory of dreams, one
which I could not deal with in the course of our previous discussions of
dreams. The manifest content of dreams is multifarious and highly
differentiated individually, and we have shown exhaustively what can be
obtained by analysis from this content. But there are also dreams which
may in the same way be called _typical_ and occur in everybody, dreams
with an identical content, which present the same difficulties to
analysis. These are the dreams of falling, flying, floating, swimming,
of being hindered, of being naked, and certain other anxiety-dreams;
which yield first this, then that, interpretation, according to the
person concerned, without any explanation of their monotonous and
typical recurrence. But we notice that in these dreams also the common
groundwork is embroidered with additions of an individually varying
character. Most probably they too will prove to fit in with other
knowledge about the dream-life, gained from a study of other kinds of
dreams—not by any forcible twist, but by a gradual widening of our
comprehension of these things.




                           EIGHTEENTH LECTURE
                FIXATION UPON TRAUMATA: THE UNCONSCIOUS


I said last time that we would take, as a starting-point for further
work, the knowledge we have gained already, and not the doubts which it
has roused in us. We have not yet even begun to discuss two of the most
interesting conclusions arising from the analysis of the two examples.

First: both the patients give the impression that they are “_fixed_” to
a particular point in their past, that they do not know how to release
themselves from it, and are consequently alienated from both present and
future. They are marooned in their illness, as it were; just as in
former times people used to withdraw to the cloister to live out their
unhappy fate there. In the case of the first patient, it was the
marriage to the husband, which in reality had long ago come to an end,
that had settled this doom upon her. Her symptoms enabled her to
continue her relationship with him; we could perceive in them the voices
which pleaded for him, excused him, exalted him, lamented his loss.
Although she is young and could attract other men, she has seized upon
every possible real and imaginary (magical) precaution that will
preserve her fidelity to him. She will not meet strangers, she neglects
her appearance; moreover, she cannot readily rise from any chair which
she sits upon, and she refuses to sign her name and can give no
presents, because no one must have anything which is hers.

With the second patient, the young girl, it is the erotic attachment to
the father established in the years before puberty that plays this part
in her life. She also has herself perceived that she cannot marry as
long as she is so ill. We may suspect that she became so ill in order to
be unable to marry and so to remain with her father.

We cannot avoid asking the question how, by what means, and impelled by
what motives, anyone can take up such an extraordinary and unprofitable
attitude towards life. Provided, that is, that this attitude is a
universal character of neurosis and is not a special peculiarity of
these two patients. As a matter of fact, this is so; it is a universal
trait common to every neurosis, and one of great practical significance.
Breuer’s first hysterical patient was _fixated_, in the same way, to the
time when her father was seriously ill and she nursed him. In spite of
her recovery, she has remained to some extent cut off from life since
that time; for although she has remained healthy and active, she did not
take up the normal career of a woman. In every one of our patients we
learn through analysis that the symptoms and their effects have set the
sufferer back into some past period of his life. In the majority of
cases it is actually a very early phase of the life-history which has
been thus selected, a period in childhood, even, absurd as it may sound,
the period of existence as a suckling infant.

The closest analogy to this behaviour in our nervous patients is
provided by the forms of illness recently made so common by the war—the
so-called _traumatic neuroses_. Of course similar cases had occurred
before the war, after railway accidents and other terrifying experiences
involving danger to life. The traumatic neuroses are not fundamentally
the same as those which occur spontaneously, which we investigate
analytically and are accustomed to treat; neither have we been
successful so far in correlating them with our views on other subjects;
later on I hope to show you where this limitation lies. Yet there is a
complete agreement between them on one point which may be emphasized.
The traumatic neuroses demonstrate very clearly that a fixation to the
moment of the traumatic occurrence lies at their root. These patients
regularly reproduce the traumatic situation in their dreams; in cases
showing attacks of an hysterical type in which analysis is possible, it
appears that the attack constitutes a complete reproduction of this
situation. It is as though these persons had not yet been able to deal
adequately with the situation, as if this task were still actually
before them unaccomplished. We take this attitude of theirs in all
seriousness; it points the way to what we may call an _economic_
conception of the mental processes. The term ‘_traumatic_’ has actually
no other meaning but this _economic_ one. An experience which we call
traumatic is one which within a very short space of time subjects the
mind to such a very high increase of stimulation that assimilation or
elaboration of it can no longer be effected by normal means, so that
lasting disturbances must result in the distribution of the available
energy in the mind.

This analogy tempts us also to classify as traumatic those experiences
to which our nervous patients seem to be fixated. In this way we should
be provided with a simple condition for a neurotic illness; it would be
comparable to a traumatic illness and would result from an incapacity to
deal with an overpowering affective experience. Indeed, the first
formula in which Breuer and I, in 1893–95, reduced our new observations
to a theory was expressed very similarly. A case like that of the first
patient described, the young woman separated from her husband, fits very
well into this description; she had not been able to “get over” the
impracticability of her marriage and was still attached to her trauma.
But the second case of the young girl who was tied to her father shows
us at once that the formula is not comprehensive enough. On the one
hand, an infantile adoration of her father by a little girl is such a
common experience and so frequently grown out of that the term
‘traumatic’ would lose all its meaning if applied to it; on the other
hand, the history of the case shows that this first erotic fixation was
gone through by the patient quite harmlessly at the time, to all
appearances, and only several years later came to expression in the
obsessional neurosis. So we see that there are complications ahead, a
considerable variety and number of determining factors in neurosis; but
we divine that the traumatic view will not necessarily be abandoned as
false, and that it will fit in and have to be co-ordinated properly
elsewhere.

Here again we must leave the path we have been following. At the moment
it will take us no further, and we have much more to learn before we can
find a satisfactory continuation of it. But before leaving the subject
of fixation to traumata it should be noted that it is a phenomenon
manifested extensively outside the neuroses; every neurosis contains
such a fixation, but not every fixation leads to a neurosis, or is
necessarily combined with a neurosis, or arises in the course of a
neurosis. Grief is a prototype and perfect example of an affective
fixation upon something that is past, and, like the neuroses, it also
involves a state of complete alienation from the present and the future.
But even the lay public distinguishes clearly between grief and
neurosis. On the other hand, there are neuroses which may be described
as morbid forms of grief.

It does also happen that persons may be brought to a complete standstill
in life by a traumatic experience which has shaken the whole structure
of their lives to the foundations, so that they give up all interest in
the present and the future, and live permanently absorbed in their
retrospections; but these unhappy persons do not necessarily become
neurotic. Therefore this single feature must not be overestimated as a
characteristic of neurosis, however invariable and significant it may be
otherwise.

Now let us turn to the second conclusion to be drawn from our analyses;
it is one upon which we shall not need to impose any subsequent
limitation. With the first patient we have heard of the senseless
obsessive act she performed and of the intimate memories she recalled in
connection with it; we also considered the relation between the two, and
deduced the purpose of the obsessive act from its connection with the
memory. But there is one factor which we have entirely neglected, and
yet it is one which deserves our fullest attention. As long as the
patient continued this performance she did not know that it was in any
way connected with the previous experience; the connection between the
two things was hidden; she could quite truly answer that she did not
know what impulse led her to do it. Then it happened suddenly that,
under the influence of the treatment, she found this connection and was
able to tell it. But even then she knew nothing of the purpose she had
in performing the action, the purpose that was to correct a painful
event of the past and to raise the husband she loved in her own
estimation. It took a long time and much effort for her to grasp, and
admit to me, that such a motive as this alone could have been the
driving force behind the obsessive act.

The connection with the scene on the morning after the unhappy
bridal-night, and the patient’s own tender feeling for her husband,
together, make up what we have called the “meaning” of the obsessive
act. But both sides of this meaning were hidden from her, she understood
neither the _whence_ nor the _whither_ of her act, as long as she
carried it on. Mental processes had been at work in her, therefore, of
which the obsessive act was the effect; she was aware in a normal manner
of their effect; but nothing of the mental antecedents of this effect
had come to the knowledge of her consciousness. She was behaving exactly
like a subject under hypnotism whom Bernheim had ordered to open an
umbrella in the ward five minutes after he awoke, but who had no idea
why he was doing it. This is the kind of occurrence we have in mind when
we speak of the existence of _unconscious mental processes_; we may
challenge anyone in the world to give a more correctly scientific
explanation of this matter, and will then gladly withdraw our inference
that unconscious mental processes exist. Until they do, however, we will
adhere to this inference and, when anyone objects that in a scientific
sense the Unconscious has no reality, that it is a mere makeshift, _une
façon de parler_, we must resign ourselves with a shrug to rejecting his
statement as incomprehensible. Something unreal, which can nevertheless
produce something so real and palpable as an obsessive action!

In the second patient fundamentally the same thing is found. She has
instituted a rule that the bolster must not touch the back of the
bedstead, and she had to carry out this rule, but she does not know
whence it comes, what it means, or to what it owes its strength. Whether
she regards it indifferently, or struggles against it, or rages against
it, or determines to overcome it, matters not; it will be followed. It
must be followed; in vain she asks herself why. It is undeniable that
these symptoms of the obsessional neurosis, these ideas and these
impulses which arise no man knows where and which oppose such a powerful
resistance against all the influences to which an otherwise normal
mental life is susceptible, give the impression, even to the patients
themselves, of being all-powerful visitants from another world, immortal
beings mingling in the whirlpool of mortal things. In these symptoms
lies the clearest indication of a special sphere of mental activity cut
off from all the rest. They show the way unmistakably to conviction on
the question of the unconscious in the mind; and for that very reason
clinical psychiatry, which only recognizes a psychology of
consciousness, can do nothing with these symptoms except to stigmatize
them as signs of a special kind of degeneration. Naturally, the
obsessive ideas and impulses are not themselves unconscious, any more
than is the performance of the obsessive acts. They would not have
become symptoms if they had not penetrated into consciousness. But the
mental antecedents of them disclosed by analysis, the connections into
which they fit after interpretation, are unconscious, at least until the
time when we make the patient conscious of them by the work of the
analysis.

Consider now, in addition, that the facts established in these two cases
are confirmed in every symptom of every neurotic disease; that always
and everywhere the meaning of the symptoms is unknown to the sufferer;
that analysis invariably shows that these symptoms are derived from
unconscious mental processes which can, however, under various
favourable conditions, become conscious. You will then understand that
we cannot dispense with the unconscious part of the mind in
psycho-analysis, and that we are accustomed to deal with it as with
something actual and tangible. Perhaps you will also be able to realize
how unfitted all those who only know the Unconscious as a phrase, who
have never analysed, never interpreted dreams, or translated neurotic
symptoms into their meaning and intention, are to form an opinion on
this matter. I will repeat the substance of it again in order to impress
it upon you: The fact that it is possible to find meaning in neurotic
symptoms by means of analytic interpretation is an irrefutable proof of
the existence—or, if you prefer it, of the necessity for assuming the
existence—of unconscious mental processes.

But that is not all. Thanks to a second discovery of Breuer’s, for which
he alone deserves credit and which seems to me even more far-reaching in
its significance than the first, more still has been learnt about the
relation between the Unconscious and the symptoms of neurotics. Not
merely is the meaning of the symptom invariably unconscious; there
exists also a connection of a substitutive nature between the two; the
existence of the symptom is only possible by reason of this unconscious
activity. You will soon understand what I mean. With Breuer, I maintain
the following: Every time we meet with a symptom we may conclude that
definite unconscious activities which contain the meaning of the symptom
are present in the patient’s mind. Conversely, this meaning must be
unconscious before a symptom can arise from it. Symptoms are not
produced by conscious processes; as soon as the unconscious processes
involved are made conscious the symptom must vanish. You will perceive
at once that here is an opening for therapy, a way by which symptoms can
be made to disappear. It was by this means that Breuer actually achieved
the recovery of his patient, that is, freed her from her symptoms; he
found a method of bringing into her consciousness the unconscious
processes which contained the meaning of her symptoms and the symptoms
vanished.

This discovery of Breuer’s was not the result of any speculation but of
a fortunate observation made possible by the co-operation of the
patient. Now you must not rack your brains to try and understand this by
seeking to compare it with something similar that is already familiar to
you; but you must recognize in it a fundamentally new fact, by means of
which much else becomes explicable. Allow me therefore to express it
again to you in other words.

The symptom is formed as a substitute for something else which remains
submerged. Certain mental processes would, under normal conditions,
develop until the person became aware of them consciously. This has not
happened; and, instead, the symptom has arisen out of these processes
which have been interrupted and interfered with in some way and have had
to remain unconscious. Thus something in the nature of an exchange has
occurred; if we can succeed in reversing this process by our therapy we
shall have performed our task of dispersing the symptom.

Breuer’s discovery still remains the foundation of psycho-analytic
therapy. The proposition that symptoms vanish when their unconscious
antecedents have been made conscious has been borne out by all
subsequent research; although the most extraordinary and unexpected
complications are met with in attempting to carry this proposition out
in practice. Our therapy does its work by transforming something
unconscious into something conscious, and only succeeds in its work in
so far as it is able to effect this transformation.

Now for a rapid digression, lest you should run the risk of imagining
that this therapeutic effect is achieved too easily. According to the
conclusions we have reached so far, neurosis would be the result of a
kind of ignorance, a not-knowing of mental processes which should be
known. This would approach very closely to the well-known Socratic
doctrine according to which even vice is the result of ignorance. Now it
happens in analysis that an experienced practitioner can usually surmise
very easily what those feelings are which have remained unconscious in
each individual patient. It should not therefore be a matter of great
difficulty to cure the patient by imparting this knowledge to him and so
relieving his ignorance. At least, one side of the unconscious meaning
of the symptom would be easily dealt with in this way, although it is
true that the other side of it, the connection between the symptom and
the previous experiences in the patient’s life, can hardly be divined
thus; for the analyst does not know what the experiences have been, he
has to wait till the patient remembers them and tells him. But one might
find a substitute even for this in many cases. One might ask for
information about his past life from the friends and relations; they are
often in a position to know what events have been of a traumatic nature,
perhaps they can even relate some of which the patient is ignorant
because they took place at some very early period of childhood. By a
combination of these two means it would seem that the pathogenic
ignorance of the patients might be overcome in a short time without much
trouble.

If only it were so! But we have made discoveries that we were quite
unprepared for at first. There is knowing and knowing; they are not
always the same thing. There are various kinds of knowing, which
psychologically are not by any means of equal value. _Il y a fagots et
fagots_, as Molière says. Knowing on the part of the physician is not
the same thing as knowing on the part of the patient and does not have
the same effect. When the physician conveys his knowledge to the patient
by telling him what he knows, it has no effect. No, it would be
incorrect to say that. It does not have the effect of dispersing the
symptoms; but it has a different one, it sets the analysis in motion,
and the first result of this is often an energetic denial. The patient
has learned something that he did not know before—the meaning of his
symptom—and yet he knows it as little as ever. Thus we discover that
there is more than one kind of ignorance. It requires a considerable
degree of insight and understanding of psychological matters in order to
see in what the difference consists. But the proposition that symptoms
vanish with the acquisition of knowledge of their meaning remains true,
nevertheless. The necessary condition is that the knowledge must be
founded upon an inner change in the patient which can only come about by
a mental operation directed to that end. We are here confronted by
problems which to us will soon develop into the _dynamics_ of
symptom-formation.

Now I must really stop and ask you whether all that I have been saying
is not too obscure and complicated? Am I confusing you by so often
qualifying and restricting, spinning out trains of thought and then
letting them drop? I should be sorry if it were so. But I have a strong
dislike of simplification at the expense of truth, I am not averse from
giving you a full impression of the many-sidedness and intricacy of the
subject, and also I believe that it does no harm to tell you more about
each point than you can assimilate at the moment. I know that every
listener and every reader arranges what is offered him as suits him in
his own mind, shortens it, simplifies it, and extracts from it what he
will retain. Within certain limits it is true that the more we begin
with the more we shall have at the end. So let me hope that, in spite of
the elaboration, you will have grasped the essential substance of my
remarks concerning the meaning of symptoms, the Unconscious, and the
connection between the two. You have probably understood also that our
further efforts will proceed in two directions; first, towards
discovering how people become ill, how they come to take up the
characteristic neurotic attitude towards life, which is a clinical
problem; and secondly, how they develop the morbid symptoms out of the
conditions of a neurosis, which remains a problem of mental dynamics.
The two problems must somewhere have a point of contact.

I shall not go further into this to-day; but as our time is not yet up I
propose to draw your attention to another characteristic of our two
analyses; namely, _the memory gaps or amnesias_, again a point which
only later will appear in its full significance. You have heard that the
task of the psycho-analytic treatment can be summed up in this formula:
everything pathogenic in the Unconscious must be transferred into
consciousness. Now you will be perhaps astonished to hear that another
formula may be substituted for that one: all gaps in the patient’s
memory must be filled in, his amnesias removed. It amounts to the same
thing; which means that an important connection is to be recognized
between the development of the symptoms and the amnesias. If you
consider the case of the first patient analysed you will, however, not
find this view of amnesia justified; the patient had not forgotten the
scene from which the obsessive act is derived; on the contrary, it was
vivid in her memory, nor is there any other forgotten factor involved in
the formation of her symptom. The situation is quite analogous, although
less clear, in the second case, the girl with the obsessional
ceremonies. She, too, had not really forgotten her behaviour in former
years, the fact that she had insisted upon the open door between her
parents’ bedroom and her own, and that she had turned her mother out of
her place in the parents’ bed; she remembered it quite clearly, although
with hesitation and unwillingness. What is remarkable about it is that
the first patient, although she had carried out her obsessive act such a
countless number of times, had not _once_ been reminded of its
similarity to the scene after the wedding-night, nor did this
recollection ever occur to her when she was directly asked to search for
the origin of her obsessive act. The same thing is true in the case of
the girl, where not merely the ritual, but the situation which gave rise
to it, was repeated identically every evening. In neither case was there
really an amnesia, a lapse of memory; but a connection, which should
have existed intact and have led to the reproduction, the recollection,
of the memory, had been broken. This kind of disturbance of memory
suffices for the obsessional neurosis; in hysteria it is different. This
latter neurosis is usually characterized by amnesias on a grand scale.
As a rule the analysis of each single hysterical symptom leads to a
whole chain of former impressions, which upon their return may be
literally described as having been hitherto forgotten. This chain
reaches, on the one hand, back to the earliest years of childhood, so
that the hysterical amnesia is seen to be a direct continuation of the
infantile amnesia which hides the earliest impressions of our mental
life from all of us. On the other hand, we are astonished to find that
the most recent experiences of the patient are liable to be forgotten
also, and that in particular the provocations which induced the outbreak
of the disease or aggravated it are at least partially obliterated, if
not entirely wiped out, by amnesia. From the complete picture of any
such recent recollection important details have invariably disappeared
or been replaced by falsifications. It happens again and again, almost
invariably, that not until shortly before the completion of an analysis
do certain recollections of recent experiences come to the surface,
which had managed to be withheld throughout it and had left noticeable
gaps in the context.

These derangements in the capacity to recall memories are, as I have
said, characteristic of hysteria, in which disease it also happens even
that states occur as symptoms (the hysterical attacks) without
necessarily leaving a trace of recollection behind them. Since it is
otherwise in the obsessional neurosis, you may infer that these amnesias
are part of the psychological character of the hysterical change and are
not a universal trait of neurosis in general. The importance of this
difference will be diminished by the following consideration. Two things
are combined to constitute the meaning of a symptom; its _whence_ and
its _whither_ or _why_; that is, the impressions and experiences from
which it sprang, and the purpose which it serves. The _whence_ of a
symptom is resolved into impressions which have been received from
without, which were necessarily at one time conscious, and which may
have become unconscious by being forgotten since that time. The _why_ of
the symptom, its tendency, is however always an endo-psychic process,
which may possibly have been conscious at first, but just as possibly
may never have been conscious and may have remained in the Unconscious
from its inception. Therefore it is not very important whether the
amnesia has also infringed upon the _whence_, the impressions upon which
the symptom is supported, as happens in hysteria; the _whither_, the
tendency of the symptom, which may have been unconscious from the
beginning, is what maintains the symptom’s dependence upon the
Unconscious, in the obsessional neurosis no less strictly than in
hysteria.

By thus emphasizing the unconscious in mental life we have called forth
all the malevolence in humanity in opposition to psycho-analysis. Do not
be astonished at this and do not suppose that this opposition relates to
the obvious difficulty of conceiving the Unconscious or to the relative
inaccessibility of the evidence which supports its existence. I believe
it has a deeper source. Humanity has in the course of time had to endure
from the hands of science two great outrages upon its naïve self-love.
The first was when it realized that our earth was not the centre of the
universe, but only a tiny speck in a world-system of a magnitude hardly
conceivable; this is associated in our minds with the name of
Copernicus, although Alexandrian doctrines taught something very
similar. The second was when biological research robbed man of his
peculiar privilege of having been specially created, and relegated him
to a descent from the animal world, implying an ineradicable animal
nature in him: this transvaluation has been accomplished in our own time
upon the instigation of Charles Darwin, Wallace, and their predecessors,
and not without the most violent opposition from their contemporaries.
But man’s craving for grandiosity is now suffering the third and most
bitter blow from present-day psychological research which is
endeavouring to prove to the “ego” of each one of us that he is not even
master in his own house, but that he must remain content with the
veriest scraps of information about what is going on unconsciously in
his own mind. We psycho-analysts were neither the first nor the only
ones to propose to mankind that they should look inward; but it appears
to be our lot to advocate it most insistently and to support it by
empirical evidence which touches every man closely. This is the kernel
of the universal revolt against our science, of the total disregard of
academic courtesy in dispute, and the liberation of opposition from all
the constraints of impartial logic. And besides this, we have been
compelled to disturb the peace of the world in yet another way, as you
will soon hear.




                           NINETEENTH LECTURE
                       RESISTANCE AND REPRESSION


We now need more data before we can advance further in our understanding
of the neuroses; two observations lie to hand for us. Both are very
remarkable and at first were very surprising. You are of course prepared
for both of them by the work we did last year.

First: when we undertake to cure a patient of his symptoms he opposes
against us a vigorous and tenacious _resistance_ throughout the entire
course of the treatment. This is such an extraordinary thing that we
cannot expect much belief in it. It is best to say nothing about it to
the patient’s relations, for they invariably regard it as a pretext set
up by us to excuse the length or the failure of the treatment. The
patient, too, exhibits all the manifestations of this resistance without
recognizing it as such, and it is a great step forward when we have
brought him to realize this fact and to reckon with it. To think that
the patient, whose symptoms cause him and those about him such
suffering, who is willing to make such sacrifices in time, money,
effort, and self-conquest in order to be freed from them,—that he
should, in the interests of his illness, resist the help offered him.
How improbable this statement must sound! And yet it is so, and if the
improbability is made a reproach against us we need only reply that it
is not without its analogies; for a man who has rushed off to a dentist
with a frightful toothache may very well fend him off when he takes his
forceps to the decayed tooth.

The resistance shown by patients is highly varied and exceedingly
subtle, often hard to recognize and protean in the manifold forms it
takes; the analyst needs to be continually suspicious and on his guard
against it. In psycho-analytic therapy we employ the technique which is
already familiar to you through dream-interpretation: we require the
patient to put himself into a condition of calm self-observation,
without trying to think of anything, and then to communicate everything
which he becomes inwardly aware of, feelings, thoughts, remembrances, in
the order in which they arise in his mind. We expressly warn him against
giving way to any kind of motive which would cause him to select from or
to exclude any of the ideas (associations), whether because they are too
“disagreeable,” or too “indiscreet” to be mentioned, or too
“unimportant” or “irrelevant” or “nonsensical” to be worth saying. We
impress upon him that he has only to attend to what is on the surface
consciously in his mind, and to abandon all objections to whatever he
finds, no matter what form they take; and we inform him that the success
of the treatment, and, above all, its duration, will depend upon his
conscientious adherence to this fundamental technical rule. We know from
the technique of dream-interpretation that it is precisely those
associations against which innumerable doubts and objections are raised
that invariably contain the material leading to the discovery of the
unconscious.

The first thing that happens as a result of instituting this technical
rule is that it becomes the first point of attack for the resistance.
The patient attempts to escape from it by every possible means. First he
says nothing comes into his head, then that so much comes into his head
that he can’t grasp any of it. Then we observe with displeasure and
astonishment that he is giving in to his critical objections, first to
this, then to that; he betrays it by the long pauses which occur in his
talk. At last he admits that he really cannot say something, he is
ashamed to, and he lets this feeling get the better of his promise. Or
else, he has thought of something but it concerns someone else and not
himself, and is therefore to be made an exception to the rule. Or else,
what he has just thought of is really too unimportant, too stupid and
too absurd, I could never have meant that he should take account of such
thoughts. So it goes on, with untold variations, to which one
continually replies that telling everything really means telling
everything.

One hardly ever meets with a patient who does not attempt to make a
reservation in some department of his thoughts, in order to guard them
against intrusion by the analysis. One patient, who in the ordinary way
was remarkably intelligent, concealed a most intimate love-affair from
me for weeks in this way; when accused of this violation of the sacred
rule he defended himself with the argument that he considered this
particular story his private affair. Naturally analytic treatment cannot
countenance a right of sanctuary like this; one might as well try to
allow an exception to be made in certain parts of a town like Vienna,
and forbid that any arrests should be made in the market-place or in the
square by St. Stephen’s church, and then attempt to take up a “wanted”
man. Of course he would never be found anywhere but in those safe
places. Once I decided to permit a man to make an exception of such a
point; for a great deal depended on his recovering his capacity for work
and he was bound by his oath as a civil servant not to communicate
certain matters to any other person. He was content with the result, it
is true, but I was not: I made up my mind never again to repeat the
attempt under such conditions.

Obsessional patients are exceedingly clever at making the technical rule
almost useless by bringing their over-conscientiousness and doubt to
bear upon it. Patients with anxiety-hysteria sometimes succeed in
reducing it to absurdity by only producing associations which are so far
removed from what is wanted that they yield nothing for analysis.
However, I do not intend to introduce you to these technical
difficulties of the treatment. It is enough to know that finally, with
resolution and perseverance, we do succeed in extracting from the
patient a certain amount of obedience for the rule of the technique; and
then the resistance takes another line altogether. It appears as
intellectual opposition, employs arguments as weapons, and turns to its
own use all the difficulties and improbabilities which normal but
uninstructed reasoning finds in analytical doctrines. We then have to
hear from the mouth of the individual patient all the criticisms and
objections which thunder about us in chorus in scientific literature.
What the critics outside shout at us is nothing new, therefore. It is
indeed a storm in a teacup. Still, the patient can be argued with; he is
very glad to get us to instruct him, teach him, defeat him, point out
the literature to him so that he can learn more; he is perfectly ready
to become a supporter of psycho-analysis on the condition that analysis
shall spare him personally. We recognize resistance in this desire for
knowledge, however; it is a digression from the particular task in hand
and we refuse to allow it. In the obsessional neurosis the resistance
makes use of special tactics which we are prepared for. It permits the
analysis to proceed uninterruptedly along its course, so that more and
more light is thrown upon the problems of the case, until we begin to
wonder at last why these explanations have no practical effect and
entail no corresponding improvement in the symptoms. Then we discover
that the resistance has fallen back upon the doubt characteristic of the
obsessional neurosis and is holding us successfully at bay from this
vantage-point. The patient has said to himself something of this kind:
“This is all very pretty and very interesting. I should like to go on
with it. I am sure it would do me a lot of good if it were true. But I
don’t believe it in the least, and as long as I don’t believe it, it
doesn’t affect my illness.” So it goes on for a long time, until at last
this reservation itself is reached and then the decisive battle begins.

The intellectual resistances are not the worst; one can always get the
better of them. But the patient knows how to set up resistances within
the boundaries of analysis proper, and the defeat of these is one of the
most difficult tasks of the technique. Instead of remembering certain of
the feelings and states of mind of his previous life, he reproduces
them, lives through again such of them as, by means of what is called
the ‘transference,’ may be made effective in opposition against the
physician and the treatment. If the patient is a man, he usually takes
this material from his relationship with his father, in whose place he
has now put the physician; and in so doing he erects resistances out of
his struggles to attain to personal independence and independence of
judgement, out of his ambition, the earliest aim of which was to equal
or to excel the father, out of his disinclination to take the burden of
gratitude upon himself for the second time in his life. There are
periods in which one feels that the patient’s desire to put the analyst
in the wrong, to make him feel his impotence, to triumph over him, has
completely ousted the worthier desire to bring the illness to an end.
Women have a genius for exploiting in the interests of resistance a
tender erotically-tinged transference to the analyst; when this
attraction reaches a certain intensity all interest in the actual
situation of treatment fades away, together with every obligation
incurred upon undertaking it. The inevitable jealousy and the
embitterment consequent upon the unavoidable rejection, however
considerately it is handled, is bound to injure the personal
relationship with the physician, and so to put out of action one of the
most powerful propelling forces in the analysis.

Resistances of this kind must not be narrowly condemned. They contain so
much of the most important material from the patient’s past life and
bring it back in so convincing a fashion that they come to be of the
greatest assistance to the analysis, if a skilful technique is employed
correctly to turn them to the best use. What is noteworthy is that this
material always serves at first as a resistance and comes forward in a
guise which is inimical to the treatment. Again it may be said that they
are character-traits, individual attitudes of the Ego, which are thus
mobilized to oppose the attempted alterations. One learns then how these
character-traits have been developed in connection with the conditions
of the neurosis and in reaction against its demands, and observes
features in this character which would not otherwise have appeared, at
least, not so clearly: that is, which may be designated latent. Also you
must not carry away the impression that we look upon the appearance of
these resistances as an unforeseen danger threatening our analytic
influence. No, we know that these resistances are bound to appear; we
are dissatisfied only if we cannot rouse them definitely enough and make
the patient perceive them as such. Indeed, we understand at last that
the overcoming of these resistances is the essential work of the
analysis, that part of the work which alone assures us that we have
achieved something for the patient.

Besides this, you must take into account that all accidental occurrences
arising during the treatment are made use of by the patient to interfere
with it, anything which could distract him or deter him from it, every
hostile expression of opinion from anyone in his circle whom he can
regard as an authority, any chance organic illness or one complicating
the neurosis; indeed, he even converts every improvement in his
condition into a motive for slackening his efforts. Then you will have
obtained an approximate, though still incomplete, picture of the forms
and the measures taken by the resistances which must be met and overcome
in the course of every analysis. I have given such a detailed
consideration to this point because I am about to inform you that our
dynamic conception of the neuroses is founded upon this experience of
ours of the resistances that neurotic patients set up against the cure
of their symptoms. Breuer and I both originally practised psycho-therapy
by the hypnotic method. Breuer’s first patient was treated throughout in
a state of hypnotic suggestibility; at first I followed his example. I
admit that at that time my work went forward more easily and agreeably
and also took much less time: but the results were capricious and not
permanent; therefore I finally gave up hypnotism. And then I understood
that no comprehension of the dynamics of these affections was possible
as long as hypnosis was employed. In this condition the very existence
of resistances is concealed from the physician’s observation. Hypnosis
drives back the resistances and frees a certain field for the work of
the analysis, but dams them up at the boundaries of this field so that
they are insurmountable; it is similar in effect to the doubt of the
obsessional neurosis. Therefore I may say that true psycho-analysis only
began when the help of hypnosis was discarded.

If it is a matter of such importance to establish these resistances then
surely it would be wise to allow caution and doubt full play, in case we
have been too ready with our assumption that they exist. Perhaps cases
of neurosis may be found in which the associations really fail for other
reasons, perhaps the arguments against our theories really deserve
serious attention, and we may be wrong in so conveniently disposing of
the patient’s intellectual objections by stigmatizing them as
resistance. Well, I can only assure you that our judgement in this
matter has not been formed hastily; we have had opportunity to observe
these critical patients both before the resistance comes to the surface
and after it disappears. In the course of the treatment the resistance
varies in intensity continually; it always increases as a new topic is
approached, it is at its height during the work upon it, and dies down
again when this theme has been dealt with. Unless certain technical
errors have been committed we never have to meet the full measure of
resistance, of which any patient is capable, at once. Thus we could
definitely ascertain that the same man would take up and then abandon
his critical objections over and over again in the course of the
analysis. Whenever we are on the point of bringing to his consciousness
some piece of unconscious material which is particularly painful to him,
then he is critical in the extreme; even though he may have previously
understood and accepted a great deal, yet now all these gains seem to be
obliterated; in his struggles to oppose at all costs he can behave just
as though he were mentally deficient, a form of ‘emotional stupidity.’
If he can be successfully helped to overcome this new resistance he
regains his insight and comprehension. His critical faculty is not
functioning independently, and therefore is not to be respected as if it
were; it is merely a maid-of-all-work for his affective attitudes and is
directed by his resistance. When he dislikes anything he can defend
himself against it most ingeniously; but when anything suits his book he
can be credulous enough. We are perhaps all much the same; a person
being analysed shows this dependence of the intellect upon the affective
life so clearly because in the analysis he is so hard-pressed.

In what way can we now account for this fact observed, that the patient
struggles so energetically against the relief of his symptoms and the
restoration of his mental processes to normal functioning? We say that
we have come upon the traces of powerful forces at work here opposing
any change in the condition; they must be the same forces that
originally induced the condition. In the formation of symptoms some
process must have been gone through, which our experience in dispersing
them makes us able to reconstruct. As we already know from Breuer’s
observations, it follows from the existence of a symptom that some
mental process has not been carried through to an end in a normal manner
so that it could become conscious; the symptom is a substitute for that
which has not come through. Now we know where to place the forces which
we suspect to be at work. A vehement effort must have been exercised to
prevent the mental process in question from penetrating into
consciousness and as a result it has remained unconscious; being
unconscious it had the power to construct a symptom. The same vehement
effort is again at work during analytic treatment, opposing the attempt
to bring the unconscious into consciousness. This we perceive in the
form of resistances. The pathogenic process which is demonstrated by the
resistances we call REPRESSION.

It will now be necessary to make our conception of this process of
_repression_ more precise. It is the essential preliminary condition for
the development of symptoms, but it is also something else, a thing to
which we have no parallel. Let us take as a model an impulse, a mental
process seeking to convert itself into action: we know that it can
suffer rejection, by virtue of what we call “repudiation” or
“condemnation”; whereupon the energy at its disposal is withdrawn, it
becomes powerless, but it can continue to exist as a memory. The whole
process of decision on the point takes place with the full cognizance of
the Ego. It is very different when we imagine the same impulse subject
to _repression_: it would then retain its energy and no memory of it
would be left behind; the process of repression, too, would be
accomplished without the cognizance of the Ego. This comparison
therefore brings us no nearer to the nature of repression.

I will expound to you those theoretical conceptions which alone have
proved useful in giving greater definiteness to the term _repression_.
For this purpose it is first necessary that we should proceed from the
purely descriptive meaning of the word “unconscious” to its systematic
meaning; that is, we resolve to think of the consciousness or
unconsciousness of a mental process as merely one of its qualities and
not necessarily definitive. Suppose that a process of this kind has
remained unconscious, its being withheld from consciousness may be
merely a sign of the fate it has undergone, not necessarily the fate
itself. Let us suppose, in order to gain a more concrete notion of this
fate, that every mental process—there is one exception, which I will go
into later—first exists in an unconscious state or phase, and only
develops out of this into a conscious phase, much as a photograph is
first a negative and then becomes a picture through the printing of the
positive. But not every negative is made into a positive, and it is just
as little necessary that every unconscious mental process should convert
itself into a conscious one. It may be best expressed as follows: Each
single process belongs in the first place to the unconscious psychical
system; from this system it can under certain conditions proceed further
into the conscious system.

The crudest conception of these systems is the one we shall find most
convenient, a spatial one. The unconscious system may therefore be
compared to a large ante-room, in which the various mental excitations
are crowding upon one another, like individual beings. Adjoining this is
a second, smaller apartment, a sort of reception-room, in which, too,
consciousness resides. But on the threshold between the two there stands
a personage with the office of door-keeper, who examines the various
mental excitations, censors them, and denies them admittance to the
reception-room when he disapproves of them. You will see at once that it
does not make much difference whether the door-keeper turns any one
impulse back at the threshold, or drives it out again once it has
entered the reception-room; that is merely a matter of the degree of his
vigilance and promptness in recognition. Now this metaphor may be
employed to widen our terminology. The excitations in the unconscious,
in the antechamber, are not visible to consciousness, which is of course
in the other room, so to begin with they remain unconscious. When they
have pressed forward to the threshold and been turned back by the
door-keeper, they are ‘_incapable of becoming conscious_’; we call them
then _repressed_. But even those excitations which are allowed over the
threshold do not necessarily become conscious; they can only become so
if they succeed in attracting the eye of consciousness. This second
chamber therefore may be suitably called _the preconscious system_. In
this way the process of becoming conscious retains its purely
descriptive sense. Being repressed, when applied to any single impulse,
means being unable to pass out of the unconscious system because of the
door-keeper’s refusal of admittance into the preconscious. The
door-keeper is what we have learnt to know as resistance in our attempts
in analytic treatment to loosen the repressions.

Now I know very well that you will say that these conceptions are as
crude as they are fantastic and not at all permissible in a scientific
presentation. I know they are crude; further indeed, we even know that
they are incorrect, and unless I am mistaken, we have something better
ready as a substitute for them; whether you will then continue to think
them so fantastic, I do not know. At the moment they are useful aids to
understanding, like _Ampère’s_ manikin swimming in the electric current,
and, in so far as they do assist comprehension, are not to be despised.
Still, I should like to assure you that these crude hypotheses, the two
chambers, the door-keeper on the threshold between the two, and
consciousness as a spectator at the end of the second room, must
indicate an extensive approximation to the actual reality. I should also
like to hear you admit that our designations, unconscious, preconscious,
and conscious, are less prejudicial and more easily defensible than some
others which have been suggested or have come into use, e.g.
sub-conscious, inter-conscious, co-conscious, etc.

If so, I should think it more significant if you then went on to point
out that any such constitution of the mental apparatus as I have assumed
in order to account for neurotic symptoms can only be of universal
validity and must throw light on normal functioning. In this, of course,
you are perfectly right. We cannot follow up this conclusion at the
moment; but our interest in the psychology of symptom-development would
certainly be enormously increased if we could see any prospect of
obtaining, by the study of pathological conditions, an insight into
normal mental functioning, hitherto such a mystery.

Do you not recognize, moreover, what it is that supports these
conceptions of the two systems and the relationship between them and
consciousness? The door-keeper between the unconscious and the
preconscious is nothing else than the _censorship_ to which we found the
form of the manifest dream subjected. The residue of the day’s
experiences, which we found to be the stimuli exciting the dream, was
preconscious material which at night during sleep had been influenced by
unconscious and repressed wishes and excitations; and had thus by
association with them been able to form the latent dream, by means of
their energy. Under the dominion of the unconscious system this material
had been elaborated (worked over)—by condensation and displacement—in a
way which in normal mental life, i.e. in the preconscious system, is
unknown or admissible very rarely. This difference in their manner of
functioning is what distinguishes the two systems for us; the
relationship to consciousness, which is a permanent feature of the
preconscious, indicates to which of the two systems any given process
belongs. Neither is dreaming a pathological phenomenon; every healthy
person may dream while asleep. Every inference concerning the
constitution of the mental apparatus which comprises an understanding of
both dreams and neurotic symptoms has an irrefutable claim to be
regarded as applying also to normal mental life.

This is as much as we will say about repression for the present.
Moreover, it is but a necessary preliminary condition, a prerequisite,
of symptom-formation. We know that the symptom is a substitute for some
other process which was held back by repression; but even given
repression we have still a long way to go before we can obtain
comprehension of this substitute-formation. There are other sides to the
problem of repression itself which present questions to be answered:
What kind of mental excitations suffer repression? What forces effect
it? and from what motives? On one point only, so far, have we gained any
knowledge relevant to these questions. While investigating the problem
of resistance we learned that the forces behind it proceed from the Ego,
from character-traits, recognizable or latent: it is these forces
therefore which have also effected the repression, or at least they have
taken a part in it. We know nothing more than this at present.

The second observation for which I prepared you will help us now. By
means of analysis we can always discover the purpose behind the neurotic
symptom. This is of course nothing new to you: I have already pointed it
out in two cases of neurosis. But, to be sure, what do two cases
signify? You have a right to demand two hundred cases, innumerable
cases, in demonstration of it. But then, I cannot comply with that. So
you must fall back on personal experience, or upon belief, which in this
matter can rely upon the unanimous testimony of all psycho-analysts.

You will remember that in the two cases in which we submitted the
symptoms to detailed investigation analysis led to the innermost secrets
of the patient’s sexual life. In the first case, moreover, the purpose
or tendency of the symptom under examination was particularly evident;
in the second case, it was perhaps to some extent veiled by another
factor to be mentioned later. Well now, what we found in these two
examples we should find in every case we submitted to analysis. Every
time we should be led by analysis to the sexual experiences and desires
of the patient, and every time we should have to affirm that the symptom
served the same purpose. This purpose shows itself to be the
gratification of sexual wishes; the symptoms serve the purpose of sexual
gratification for the patient; they are a substitute for satisfactions
which he does not obtain in reality.

Think of the obsessive act of our first patient. This woman has to do
without the husband she loved so intensely; on account of his
deficiencies and short-comings she could not share his life. She had to
be faithful to him; she could not put anyone else in his place. Her
obsessional symptom gives her what she so much desires; it exalts her
husband, denies and corrects his deficiencies, above all, his impotence.
This symptom is fundamentally a wish-fulfilment, in that respect exactly
like a dream; it is, moreover, what a dream is not always, an erotic
wish-fulfilment. In the case of the second patient you could see that
her ritual aims at preventing intercourse between the parents or at
hindering the procreation of another child; you have probably also
divined that fundamentally it seeks to set her in her mother’s place. It
again therefore constitutes a removal of hindrances to sexual
satisfaction and the fulfilment of the subject’s own sexual wishes. Of
the complications referred to in the second case I shall speak shortly.

I wish to avoid making reservations later on about the universal
applicability of these statements, and therefore I will ask you to
notice that all I have just been saying about repression,
symptom-formation and symptom-interpretation has been obtained from the
study of three types of neurosis, and for the present is only applicable
to these three types—namely, _anxiety-hysteria_, _conversion-hysteria_,
and _the obsessional neurosis_. These three disorders, which we are
accustomed to combine together in a group as the TRANSFERENCE NEUROSES,
constitute the field open to psycho-analytic therapy. The other neuroses
have been far less closely studied psycho-analytically; in one group of
them the impossibility of therapeutic influence has no doubt been one
reason for this neglect. You must not forget that psycho-analysis is
still a very young science, that much time and trouble are required for
the study of it, and that not so very long ago there was only one man
practising it: yet we are approaching from all directions to a nearer
comprehension of these other conditions which are not transference
neuroses. I hope I shall still be able to tell you of the developments
that our hypotheses and conclusions have undergone in the course of
adaptation to this new material, and to show you that these further
studies have not yielded contradictions but have led to a higher degree
of unification in our knowledge. Everything that has been said, then,
applies only to the three transference neuroses and I will now add
another piece of information which throws further light upon the
significance of the symptoms. A comparative examination of the
situations out of which the disease arose yields the following result,
which may be reduced to a formula—namely, that these persons have fallen
ill owing to some kind of PRIVATION which they suffer when reality
withholds from them gratification of their sexual wishes. You will
perceive how beautifully these two conclusions supplement one another.
The symptoms are now explicable as substitute-gratifications for desires
which are unsatisfied in life.

It is certainly possible to make all kinds of objections to the
proposition that neurotic symptoms are substitutes for sexual
gratifications. I will discuss two of them to-day. If any one of you has
himself undertaken the analysis of a large number of neurotics, he will
perhaps shake his head and say: “In certain cases this is not at all
applicable, in them the symptoms seem rather to contain the opposite
purpose, of excluding or of discontinuing sexual gratification.” I shall
not dispute your interpretation. In psycho-analysis things are often a
good deal more complicated than we could wish: if they had been simpler
psycho-analysis would perhaps not have been required to bring them to
light. Certain features of the ritual of our second patient are
distinctly recognizable as being of this ascetic character, inimical to
sexual satisfaction; e.g., her removing the clocks for the magic purpose
of preventing erections at night, or her trying to prevent the falling
and breaking of vessels, which amounts to a protection of her virginity.
In other cases of ceremonials on going to bed which I have analysed this
negative character was far more marked; the whole ritual could consist
of defensive regulations against sexual recollections and temptations.
But we have long ago learnt from psycho-analysis that opposites do not
constitute a contradiction. We might extend our proposition and say that
the purpose of the symptom is either a sexual gratification or a defence
against it; in hysteria the positive, wish-fulfilling character
predominates on the whole, and in the obsessional neurosis the negative
ascetic character. The symptoms can serve the purpose both of sexual
gratification and of its opposite so well because this double-sidedness,
or _polarity_, has a most suitable foundation in one element of their
mechanism which we have not yet had an opportunity to mention. They are
in fact, as we shall see, the effects of _compromises_ between two
opposed tendencies, acting on one another; they represent both that
which is repressed, and also that which has effected the repression and
has co-operated in bringing them about. The representation of either one
or another of these two factors may predominate in the symptom, but it
happens very rarely that one of them is absent altogether. In hysteria a
collaboration of the two tendencies in one symptom is usually achieved.
In the obsessional neurosis the two parts are often distinct: the
symptom is then a double one and consists of two successive actions
which cancel each other.

It will not be so easy to dispose of a second difficulty. When you
consider a whole series of symptom-interpretations your first
opinion would probably be that the conception of a sexual
substitute-gratification has to be stretched to its widest limits in
order to include them. You will not neglect to point out that these
symptoms offer nothing real in the way of gratification, that often
enough they are confined to re-animating a sensation, or to enacting
a phantasy arising from some sexual complex. Further, that the
ostensible sexual gratification is very often of an infantile and
unworthy character, perhaps approximating to a masturbatory act, or
is reminiscent of dirty habits which long ago in childhood had been
forbidden and abandoned. And further still, you will express your
astonishment that anyone should reckon among sexual gratifications
those which can only be described as gratifications of cruel or
horrible appetites, or which may be termed unnatural. Indeed, we
shall come to no agreement on these latter points until we have
submitted human sexuality to a thorough investigation and have thus
established what we are justified in calling sexual.




                           TWENTIETH LECTURE
                         THE SEXUAL LIFE OF MAN


One would certainly think that there could be no doubt about what is to
be understood by the term “sexual.” First and foremost, of course, it
means the “improper,” that which must not be mentioned. I have been told
a story about some pupils of a famous psychiatrist, who once endeavoured
to convince their master that the symptoms of an hysteric are frequently
representations of sexual things. With this object, they took him to the
bedside of an hysterical woman whose attacks were unmistakable
imitations of childbirth. He objected, however: “Well, there is nothing
sexual about childbirth.” To be sure, childbirth is not necessarily
always improper.

I perceive that you don’t approve of my joking about such serious
matters. It is not altogether a joke, however. Seriously, it is not so
easy to define what the term sexual includes. Everything connected with
the difference between the two sexes is perhaps the only way of hitting
the mark; but you will find that too general and indefinite. If you take
the sexual act itself as the central point, you will perhaps declare
sexual to mean everything which is concerned with obtaining pleasurable
gratification from the body (and particularly the sexual organs) of the
opposite sex; in the narrowest sense, everything which is directed to
the union of the genital organs and the performance of the sexual act.
In doing so, however, you come very near to reckoning the sexual and the
improper as identical, and childbirth would really have nothing to do
with sex. If then you make the function of reproduction the kernel of
sexuality you run the risk of excluding from it a whole host of things
like masturbation, or even kissing, which are not directed towards
reproduction, but which are nevertheless undoubtedly sexual. However, we
have already found that attempts at definition always lead to
difficulties; let us give up trying to do any better in this particular
case. We may suspect that in the development of the concept “sexual”
something has happened which has resulted in what H. Silberer has aptly
called a ‘covering error.’ On the whole, indeed, we know pretty well
what is meant by sexual.

In the popular view, which is sufficient for all practical purposes in
ordinary life, sexual is something which combines references to the
difference between the sexes, to pleasurable excitement and
gratification, to the reproductive function, and to the idea of
impropriety and the necessity for concealment. But this is no longer
sufficient for science. For painstaking researches (only possible, of
course, in a spirit of self-command maintained by self-sacrifice) have
revealed that classes of human beings exist whose sexual life deviates
from the usual one in the most striking manner. One group among these
“perverts” has, as it were, expunged the difference between the sexes
from its scheme of life. In these people, only the same sex as their own
can rouse sexual desire; the other sex (especially the genital organ of
the other sex) has absolutely no sexual attraction for them, can even in
extreme cases be an object of abhorrence to them. They have thus of
course foregone all participation in the process of reproduction. Such
persons are called homosexuals or inverts. Often, though not always,
they are men and women who otherwise have reached an irreproachably high
standard of mental growth and development, intellectually and ethically,
and are only afflicted with this one fateful peculiarity. Through the
mouths of their scientific spokesmen they lay claim to be a special
variety of the human race, a “third sex,” as they call it, standing with
equal rights alongside the other two. We may perhaps have an opportunity
of critically examining these claims. They are not, of course, as they
would gladly maintain, the “elect” of mankind; they contain in their
ranks at least as many inferior and worthless individuals as are to be
found amongst those differently constituted sexually.

These perverts do at least seek to achieve very much the same ends with
the objects of their desires as normal people do with theirs. But after
them comes a long series of abnormal types, in whom the sexual
activities become increasingly further removed from anything which
appears attractive to a reasonable being. In their manifold variety and
their strangeness these types may be compared to the grotesque
monstrosities painted by P. Breughel to represent the temptations of St.
Anthony, or to the long procession of effete gods and worshippers which
G. Flaubert shows us passing before his pious penitent, and to nothing
else. The chaotic assembly calls out for classification if it is not to
bewilder us completely. We divide them into those in whom the _sexual
object_ has been altered, as with the homosexuals, and those in whom,
first and foremost, the _sexual aim_ has been altered. In the first
group belong those who have dispensed with the mutual union of the
genital organs and who have substituted for the genitals, in one of the
partners in the act, another organ or part of the body (mouth or anus,
in place of the vagina) making light of both the anatomical difficulties
and the suppression of disgust involved. There follow others who, it is
true, still retain the genital organs as object; not, however, by virtue
of their sexual function, but on account of other functions in which
they take part anatomically or by reason of their proximity. These
people demonstrate that the excretory functions, which in the course of
the child’s upbringing are relegated to a limbo as indecent, remain
capable of attracting the entire sexual interest. There are others who
have given up altogether the genital organs as object; and, instead,
have exalted some other part of the body to serve as the object of
desire, a woman’s breast, foot, or plait of hair. There are others yet
to whom even a part of the body is meaningless, while a particle of
clothing, a shoe or a piece of underclothing, will gratify all their
desires; these are the fetichists. Farther on in the scale come those
who indeed demand the object as a whole: but whose requirements in
regard to it take specific forms, of an extraordinary or horrible
nature—even to the point of seeking it as a defenceless corpse and,
urged on by their criminal obsessions, of making it one in order so to
enjoy it. But enough of these horrors!

Foremost in the second group are those perverts whose sexual desires aim
at the performance of an act which normally is but an introductory or
preparatory one. They are those who seek gratification in looking and
touching, or in watching the other person’s most intimate doings; or
those who expose parts of their own bodies which should be concealed, in
the vague expectation of being rewarded by a similar action on the part
of the other. Then come the incomprehensible sadists, in whom all
affectionate feeling strains towards the one goal of causing their
object pain and torture, ranging in degree from mere indications of a
tendency to humiliate the other up to the infliction of severe bodily
injuries. Then, as though complementary to these, come the masochists
whose only longing is to suffer, in real or in symbolic form,
humiliations and tortures at the hands of the loved object. There are
others yet, in whom several abnormal characteristics of this kind are
combined and interwoven with one another. Finally, we learn that the
persons belonging to each of these groups may be divided again: into
those who seek their particular form of sexual satisfaction in reality
and those who are satisfied merely to imagine it in their own minds,
needing no real object at all but being able to substitute for it a
creation of phantasy.

There is not the slightest possible doubt that these mad, extraordinary
and horrible things do actually constitute the sexual activities of
these people. Not merely do they themselves so regard them, recognizing
their substitutive character; but we also have to acknowledge that they
play the same part in their lives as normal sexual satisfaction plays in
ours, exacting the same, often excessive, sacrifices. It is possible to
trace out, both broadly and in great detail, where these abnormalities
merge into the normal and where they diverge from it. Nor will it escape
you that that quality of impropriety which adheres inevitably to a
sexual activity is not absent from these forms of it: in most of them it
is intensified to the point of odium.

Well, now, what attitude are we to take up to these unusual forms of
sexual satisfaction? Indignation and expressions of our personal
disgust, together with assurances that we do not share these appetites,
will obviously not carry us very far. That is not the point at issue.
After all, this is a field of phenomena like any other; attempts to turn
away and flee from it, on the pretext that these are but rarities and
curiosities, could easily be rebutted. On the contrary, the phenomena
are common enough and widely distributed. But if it is objected that our
views on the sexual life of mankind require no revision on this account,
since these things are one and all aberrations and divagations of the
sexual instinct, a serious reply will be necessary. If we do not
understand these morbid forms of sexuality and cannot relate them to
what is normal in sexual life, then neither can we understand normal
sexuality. It remains, in short, our undeniable duty to account
satisfactorily in theory for the existence of all the perversions
described and to explain their relation to normal sexuality, so-called.

In this task we can be helped by a point of view, and by two new
evidential observations. The first we owe to Ivan Bloch; according to
him, the view that all the perversions are “signs of degeneration” is
incorrect; because of the evidence existing that such aberrations from
the sexual aim, such erratic relationships to the sexual object, have
been manifested since the beginning of time through every age of which
we have knowledge, in every race from the most primitive to the most
highly civilized, and at times have succeeded in attaining to toleration
and general prevalence. The two evidential observations have been made
in the course of psycho-analytic investigations of neurotic patients;
they must undoubtedly influence our conception of sexual perversions in
a decisive manner.

We have said that neurotic symptoms are substitutes for sexual
satisfactions and I have already indicated that many difficulties will
be met with in proving this statement from the analysis of symptoms. It
is, indeed, only accurate if the “perverse” sexual needs, so-called, are
included under the sexual satisfactions; for an interpretation of the
symptoms on this basis is forced upon us with astonishing frequency. The
claim made by homosexuals or inverts, that they constitute a select
class of mankind, falls at once to the ground when we discover that in
every single neurotic evidence of homosexual tendencies is forthcoming
and that a large proportion of the symptoms are expressions of this
latent inversion. Those who openly call themselves homosexuals are
merely those in whom the inversion is conscious and manifest; their
number is negligible compared with those in whom it is latent. We are
bound, in fact, to regard the choice of an object of the same sex as a
regular type of offshoot of the capacity to love, and are learning every
day more and more to recognize it as especially important. The
differences between manifest homosexuality and the normal attitude are
certainly not thereby abrogated; they have their practical importance,
which remains, but theoretically their value is very considerably
diminished. In fact, we have even come to the conclusion that one
particular mental disorder, paranoia, no longer to be reckoned among the
transference neuroses, invariably arises from an attempt to subdue
unduly powerful homosexual tendencies. Perhaps you will remember that
one of our patients,[47] in her obsessive act, played the part of a
man—of her own husband, that is, whom she had left; such symptoms,
representing the impersonation of a man, are very commonly produced by
neurotic women. If this is not actually attributable to homosexuality,
it is certainly very closely connected with its origins.

As you probably know, the neurosis of hysteria can create its symptoms
in all systems of the body (circulatory, respiratory, etc.) and may thus
disturb all the functions. Analysis shows that all those impulses,
described as perverse, which aim at replacing the genital organ by
another come to expression in these symptoms. These organs thus behave
as substitutes for the genital organs: it is precisely from the study of
hysterical symptoms that we have arrived at the view that, besides their
functional rôle, a sexual—_erotogenic_—significance must be ascribed to
the bodily organs; and that the needs of the former will be interfered
with if the demands of the latter upon them are too great. Countless
sensations and innervations, which we meet as hysterical symptoms, in
organs apparently not concerned with sexuality, are thus discovered to
be essentially fulfilments of perverse sexual desires, by the other
organs having usurped the function of the genitalia. In this way also
the very great extent to which the organs of nutrition and of excretion,
in particular, may serve in yielding sexual excitement is brought home
to us. It is indeed the same thing as is manifested in the perversions;
except that in the latter it is unmistakable and recognizable without
any difficulty, whereas in hysteria we have to make the _détour_ of
interpreting the symptom, and then do not impute the perverse sexual
impulse in question to the person’s consciousness, but account it to the
unconscious part of his personality.

Of the many types of symptom characteristic of the obsessional neurosis
the most important are found to be brought about by the undue strength
of one group of sexual tendencies with a perverted aim, i.e. the
sadistic group. These symptoms, in accordance with the structure of the
obsessional neurosis, serve mainly as a defence against these wishes or
else they express the conflict between satisfaction and rejection.
Satisfaction does not find short shrift, however; it knows how to get
its own way by a roundabout route in the patient’s behaviour, by
preference turning against him in self-inflicted torment. Other forms of
this neurosis are seen in excessive “worry” and brooding; these are the
expressions of an exaggerated sexualization of acts which are normally
only preparatory to sexual satisfaction: the desire to see, to touch and
to investigate. In this lies the explanation of the very great
importance dread of contact and obsessive washing attains to in this
disease. An unsuspectedly large proportion of obsessive actions are
found to be disguised repetitions and modifications of masturbation,
admittedly the only uniform act which accompanies all the varied flights
of sexual phantasy.

It would not be difficult to show you the connections between perversion
and neurosis in a much more detailed manner, but I believe that I have
said enough for our purposes. We must beware, however, of overestimating
the frequency and intensity of the perverse tendencies in mankind, after
these revelations of their importance in the interpretation of symptoms.
You have heard that _privation_ in normal sexual satisfactions may lead
to the development of neurosis. In consequence of this privation in
reality the need is forced into the abnormal paths of sexual excitation.
Later you will be able to understand how this happens. You will at any
rate understand that a “collateral” damming-up of this kind must swell
the force of the perverse impulses, so that they become more powerful
than they would have been had no hindrance to normal sexual satisfaction
been present in reality. Incidentally, a similar factor may be
recognized also in the manifest perversions. In many cases they are
provoked or activated by the unduly great difficulties in the way of
normal satisfaction of the sexual instinct which are produced either by
temporary conditions or by permanent social institutions. In other
cases, certainly, perverse tendencies are quite independent of such
conditions; they are, as it were, the natural kind of sexual life for
the individual concerned.

Perhaps you are momentarily under the impression that all this tends to
confuse rather than to explain the relations between normal and
perverted sexuality. But keep in mind this consideration. If it is
correct that real obstacles to sexual satisfaction or privation in
regard to it bring to the surface perverse tendencies in people who
would otherwise have shown none, we must conclude that something in
these people is ready to embrace the perversions; or, if you prefer it,
the tendencies must have been present in them in a latent form. Thus we
come to the second of the new evidential observations of which I spoke.
Psycho-Analytic investigation has found it necessary also to concern
itself with the sexual life of children, for the reason that in the
analysis of symptoms the forthcoming reminiscences and associations
invariably lead back to the earliest years of childhood. That which we
discovered in this way has since been corroborated point by point by the
direct observation of children. In this way it has been found that all
the perverse tendencies have their roots in childhood, that children are
disposed towards them all and practise them all to a degree conforming
with their immaturity; in short, _perverted sexuality_ is nothing else
but _infantile sexuality_, magnified and separated into its component
parts.

Now you will see the perversions in an altogether different light and no
longer ignore their connection with the sexual life of mankind; but what
distressing emotions these astonishing and grotesque revelations will
provoke in you! At first you will certainly be tempted to deny
everything—the fact that there is anything in children which can be
termed sexual life, the accuracy of our observations, and the
justification of our claim to see in the behaviour of children any
connection with that which in later years is condemned as perverted.
Permit me first to explain to you the motives of your antagonism and
then to put before you a summary of our observations. That children
should have no sexual life—sexual excitement, needs, and gratification
of a sort—but that they suddenly acquire these things in the years
between twelve and fourteen would be, apart from any observations at
all, biologically just as improbable, indeed, nonsensical, as to suppose
that they are born without genital organs which first begin to sprout at
the age of puberty. What does actually awake in them at this period is
the reproductive function, which then makes use for its own purposes of
material lying to hand in body and mind. You are making the mistake of
confounding sexuality and reproduction with each other and thus you
obstruct your own way to the comprehension of sexuality, the
perversions, and the neuroses. This mistake, moreover, has a meaning in
it. Strange to say, its origin lies in the fact that you yourselves have
all been children and as children were subject to the influences of
education. For it is indeed one of the most important social tasks of
education to restrain, confine, and subject to an individual control
(itself identical with the demands of society) the sexual instinct when
it breaks forth in the form of the reproductive function. In its own
interests, accordingly, society would postpone the child’s full
development until it has attained a certain stage of intellectual
maturity, since educability practically ceases with the full onset of
the sexual instinct. Without this the instinct would break all bounds
and the laboriously erected structure of civilization would be swept
away. Nor is the task of restraining it ever an easy one; success in
this direction is often poor and, sometimes, only too great. At bottom
society’s motive is economic; since it has not means enough to support
life for its members without work on their part, it must see to it that
the number of these members is restricted and their energies directed
away from sexual activities on to their work—the eternal primordial
struggle for existence, therefore, persisting to the present day.

Experience must have taught educators that the task of moulding the
sexual will of the next generation can only be carried out by beginning
to impose their influence very early, and intervening in the sexual Life
of children before puberty, instead of waiting till the storm bursts.
Consequently almost all infantile sexual activities are forbidden or
made disagreeable to the child; the ideal has been to make the child’s
life asexual, and in course of time it has come to this that it is
really believed to be asexual, and is given out as such, even at the
hands of science. In order then to avoid any contradiction with
established beliefs and aims, the sexual activity of children is
overlooked—no small achievement, by the way—while science contents
itself with otherwise explaining it away. The little child is supposed
to be pure and innocent; he who says otherwise shall be condemned as a
hardened blasphemer against humanity’s tenderest and most sacred
feelings.

The children alone take no part in this convention; they assert their
animal nature naïvely enough and demonstrate persistently that they have
yet to learn their “purity.” Strange to say, those who deny sexuality in
children are the last to relax educative measures against it; they
follow up with the greatest severity every manifestation of the
“childish tricks” the existence of which they deny. Moreover, it is
theoretically of great interest that the time of life which most
flagrantly contradicts the prejudice about asexual childhood, the years
of infancy up to five or six, is precisely the period which is veiled by
oblivion in most people’s memories; an oblivion which can only be
dispelled completely by analytic investigation but which is nevertheless
sufficiently penetrable to allow of the formation of single dreams.

I will now tell you the most clearly recognizable of the child’s sexual
activities. It will be expedient if I first introduce you to the term
LIBIDO. In every way analogous to _hunger_, Libido is the force by means
of which the instinct, in this case the sexual instinct, as, with
hunger, the nutritional instinct, achieves expression. Other terms, such
as sexual excitation and satisfaction, require no definition.
Interpretation finds most to do in regard to the sexual activities of
the infant, as you will easily perceive; and no doubt you will find it a
reason for objections. This interpretation is formed on the basis of
analytic investigation, working backwards from a given symptom. The
infant’s first sexual excitations appear in connection with the other
functions important for life. Its chief interest, as you know, is
concerned with taking nourishment; as it sinks asleep at the breast,
utterly satisfied, it bears a look of perfect content which will come
back again later in life after the experience of the sexual orgasm. This
would not be enough to found a conclusion upon. However, we perceive
that infants wish to repeat, without really getting any nourishment, the
action necessary to taking nourishment; they are therefore not impelled
to this by hunger. We call this action “_lutschen_” or “_ludeln_”
(German words signifying the enjoyment of sucking for its own sake—as
with a rubber “comforter”); and as when it does this the infant again
falls asleep with a blissful expression we see that the action of
sucking is sufficient in itself to give it satisfaction. Admittedly, it
very soon contrives not to go to sleep without having sucked in this
way. An old physician for children in Budapest, Dr. Lindner, was the
first to maintain the sexual nature of this procedure. Nurses and people
who look after children appear to take the same view of this kind of
sucking (_lutschen_), though without taking up any theoretic attitude
about it. They have no doubt that its only purpose is in the pleasure
derived; they account it one of the child’s “naughty tricks”; and take
severe measures to force it to give it up, if it will not do so of its
own accord. And so we learn that an infant performs actions with no
other object but that of obtaining pleasure. We believe that this
pleasure is first of all experienced while nourishment is being taken,
but that the infant learns rapidly to enjoy it apart from this
condition. The gratification obtained can only relate to the region of
the mouth and lips; we therefore call these areas of the body
_erotogenic zones_ and describe the pleasure derived from sucking
(_lutschen_) as a _sexual_ one. To be sure, we have yet to discuss the
justification for the use of this term.

If the infant could express itself it would undoubtedly acknowledge that
the act of sucking at its mother’s breast is far and away the most
important thing in life. It would not be wrong in this, for by this act
it gratifies at the same moment the two greatest needs in life. Then we
learn from psycho-analysis, not without astonishment, how much of the
mental significance of this act is retained throughout life. Sucking at
the mother’s breast (_saugen_) becomes the point of departure from which
the whole sexual life develops, the unattainable prototype of every
later sexual satisfaction, to which in times of need phantasy often
enough reverts. The desire to suck includes within it the desire for the
mother’s breast, which is therefore the first _object_ of sexual desire;
I cannot convey to you any adequate idea of the importance of this first
object in determining every later object adopted, of the profound
influence it exerts, through transformation and substitution, upon the
most distant fields of mental life. First of all, however, as the infant
takes to sucking for its own sake (_lutschen_) this object is given up
and is replaced by a part of its own body; it sucks its thumb or its own
tongue. For purposes of obtaining pleasure it thus makes itself
independent of the concurrence of the outer world and, in addition, it
extends the region of excitation to a second area of the body, thus
intensifying it. The erotogenic zones are not all equally capable of
yielding enjoyment; it is therefore an important experience when, as Dr.
Lindner says, the infant in feeling about on its own body discovers the
particularly excitable region of its genitalia, and so finds the way
from sucking (_lutschen_) to onanism.

This assessment of the nature of sucking (_lutschen_) has now brought to
our notice two of the decisive characteristics of infantile sexuality.
It appears in connection with the satisfaction of the great organic
needs, and it behaves _auto-erotically_, that is to say, it seeks and
finds its objects in its own person. What is most clearly discernible in
regard to the taking of nourishment is to some extent repeated with the
process of excretion. We conclude that infants experience pleasure in
the evacuation of urine and the contents of the bowels, and that they
very soon endeavour to contrive these actions so that the accompanying
excitation of the membranes in these erotogenic zones may secure them
the maximum possible gratification. As Lou Andreas has pointed out, with
fine intuition, the outer world first steps in as a hindrance at this
point, a hostile force opposed to the child’s desire for pleasure—the
first hint he receives of external and internal conflicts to be
experienced later on. He is not to pass his excretions whenever he likes
but at times appointed by other people. To induce him to give up these
sources of pleasure he is told that everything connected with these
functions is “improper,” and must be kept concealed. In this way he is
first required to exchange pleasure for value in the eyes of others. His
own attitude to the excretions is at the outset very different. His own
fæces produce no disgust in him; he values them as part of his own body
and is unwilling to part with them, he uses them as the first “present”
by which he can mark out those people whom he values especially. Even
after education has succeeded in alienating him from these tendencies,
he continues to feel the same high regard for his “presents” and his
“money”; while his achievements in the way of urination appear to be the
subject of particular pride.

I know that for some time you have been longing to interrupt me with
cries of: “Enough of these monstrosities! The motions of the bowels a
source of pleasurable sexual satisfaction exploited even by infants!
Fæces a substance of great value and the anus a kind of genital organ!
We do not believe it; but we understand why children’s physicians and
educationists have emphatically rejected psycho-analysis and its
conclusions!” Not at all; you have merely forgotten for the moment that
I have been endeavouring to show you the connection between the actual
facts of infantile sexual life and the actual facts of the sexual
perversions. Why should you not know that in many adults, both
homosexual and heterosexual, the anus actually takes over the part
played by the vagina in sexual intercourse? And that there are many
persons who retain the pleasurable sensations accompanying evacuations
of the bowels throughout life and describe them as far from
insignificant? You may hear from children themselves, when they are a
little older and able to talk about these things, what an interest they
take in the act of defæcation and what pleasure they find in watching
others in the act. Of course if you have previously systematically
intimidated these children they will understand very well that they are
not to speak of such things. And for all else that you refuse to believe
I refer you to the evidence brought out in analysis and to the direct
observation of children and I tell you that it will require the exercise
of considerable ingenuity to avoid seeing all this or to see it in a
different light. Nor am I at all averse from your thinking the
relationship between childish sexual activities and the sexual
perversions positively striking. It is a matter of course that there
should be this relationship; for if a child has a sexual life at all it
must be of a perverted order, since apart from a few obscure indications
he is lacking in all that transforms sexuality into the reproductive
function. Moreover, it is a characteristic common to all the perversions
that in them reproduction as an aim is put aside. This is actually the
criterion by which we judge whether a sexual activity is perverse—if it
departs from reproduction in its aims and pursues the attainment of
gratification independently. You will understand therefore that the gulf
and turning-point in the development of the sexual life lies at the
point of its subordination to the purposes of reproduction. Everything
that occurs before this conversion takes place, and everything which
refuses to conform to it and serves the pursuit of gratification alone,
is called by the unhonoured title of “perversion” and as such is
despised.

So let me continue my brief account of infantile sexuality. I could
supplement what I have told you concerning two of the bodily systems by
extending the same scrutiny to the others. The sexual life of the child
consists entirely in the activities of a series of component-instincts
which seek for gratification independently of one another, some in his
own body and others already in an external object. Among the organs of
these bodily systems the genitalia rapidly take the first place; there
are people in whom pleasurable gratification in their own genital organ,
without the aid of any other genital organ or object, is continued
without interruption from the onanism habitual in the suckling period of
infancy to the onanism of necessity occurring in the years of puberty,
and then maintained indefinitely beyond that. Incidentally, the subject
of onanism is not so easily exhausted; it contains material for
consideration from various angles.

In spite of my wish to limit the extent of this discussion I must still
say something about sexual curiosity in children. It is too
characteristic of childish sexuality and too important for the
symptom-formation of the neuroses to be omitted. Infantile sexual
curiosity begins very early, sometimes before the third year. It is not
connected with the difference between the sexes, which is nothing to
children, since they—boys, at least—ascribe the same male genital organ
to both sexes. If then a boy discovers the vagina in a little sister or
play-mate he at once tries to deny the evidence of his senses; for he
cannot conceive of a human being like himself without his most important
attribute. Later, he is horrified at the possibilities it reveals to
him; the influence of previous threats occasioned by too great a
preoccupation with his own little member now begins to be felt. He comes
under the dominion of the castration complex, which will play such a
large part in the formation of his character if he remains healthy, and
of his neurosis if he falls ill, and of his resistances if he comes
under analytic treatment. Of little girls we know that they feel
themselves heavily handicapped by the absence of a large visible penis
and envy the boy’s possession of it; from this source primarily springs
the wish to be a man which is resumed again later in the neurosis, owing
to some mal-adjustment to a female development. The clitoris in the
girl, moreover, is in every way equivalent during childhood to the
penis; it is a region of especial excitability in which auto-erotic
satisfaction is achieved. In the transition to womanhood very much
depends upon the early and complete relegation of this sensitivity from
the clitoris over to the vaginal orifice. In those women who are
sexually anæsthetic, as it is called, the clitoris has stubbornly
retained this sensitivity.

The sexual interest of children is primarily directed to the problem of
birth—the same problem that lies behind the riddle of the Theban Sphinx.
This curiosity is for the most part aroused by egoistic dread of the
arrival of another child. The answer which the nursery has ready for the
child, that the stork brings the babies, meets with incredulity even in
little children much more often than we imagine. The feeling of having
been deceived by grown-up people, and put off with lies, contributes
greatly to a sense of isolation and to the development of independence.
But the child is not able to solve this problem on his own account. His
undeveloped sexual constitution sets definite limits to his capacity to
understand it. He first supposes that children are made by mixing some
special thing with the food taken; nor does he know that only women can
have children. Later, he learns of this limitation and gives up the idea
of children being made by food, though it is retained in fairy tales. A
little later he soon sees that the father must have something to do with
making babies, but he cannot discover what it is. If by chance he is
witness of the sexual act he conceives it as an attempt to overpower the
woman, as a combat, the sadistic misconception of coitus; at first,
however, he does not connect this act with the creation of children; if
he discovers blood on the mother’s bed or underlinen he takes it as
evidence of injury inflicted by the father. In still later years of
childhood he probably guesses that the male organ of the man plays an
essential part in the procreation of children, but cannot ascribe to
this part of the body any function but that of urination.

Children are all united from the outset in the belief that the birth of
a child takes place by the bowel; that is to say, that the baby is
produced like a piece of fæces. Not until all interest has been weaned
from the anal region is this theory abandoned and replaced by the
supposition that the navel opens, or that the area between the two
nipples is the birthplace of the child. In some such manner as this the
enquiring child approaches some knowledge of the facts of sex, unless,
misled by his ignorance, he overlooks them until he receives an
imperfect and discrediting account of them, usually in the period before
puberty, which not infrequently affects him traumatically.

Now you will probably have heard that the term “sexual” has suffered an
unwarrantable expansion of meaning at the hands of psycho-analysis, in
order that its assertions regarding the sexual origin of the neuroses
and the sexual significance of the symptoms may be maintained. You can
now judge for yourselves whether this amplification is justified or not.
We have extended the meaning of the concept “sexuality” only so far as
to include the sexual life of perverted persons and also of children;
that is to say, we have restored to it its true breadth of meaning. What
is called sexuality outside psycho-analysis applies only to the
restricted sexual life that is subordinated to the reproductive function
and is called normal.




                          TWENTY-FIRST LECTURE
           DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIBIDO AND SEXUAL ORGANIZATIONS


It is my impression that I have not succeeded in bringing home to you
with complete conviction the importance of the perversions for our
conception of sexuality. I wish therefore, as far as I am able, to
review and improve upon what I have already said on this subject.

Now I do not wish you to think that it was the perversions alone that
required us to make the alteration in the meaning of the term sexuality
which has aroused such vehement opposition. The study of infantile
sexuality has contributed even more to it, and the unanimity between the
two was decisive. But, however unmistakable they may be in the later
years of childhood, the manifestations of infantile sexuality in its
earliest forms do seem to fade away indefinably. Those who do not wish
to pay attention to evolution and to the connections brought out by
analysis will dispute the sexual nature of them, and will ascribe in
consequence some other, undifferentiated character to them. You must not
forget that as yet we have no generally acknowledged criterion for the
sexual nature of a phenomenon, unless it is some connection with the
reproductive function—a definition which we have had to reject as too
narrow. The biological criteria, such as the periodicities of
twenty-three and twenty-eight days, suggested by W. Fliess, are
exceedingly debatable; the peculiar chemical features which we may
perhaps assume for sexual processes are yet to be discovered. The sexual
perversions in adults, on the other hand, are something definite and
unambiguous. As their generally accepted description implies, they are
unquestionably of a sexual nature; whether you call them marks of
degeneration or anything else, no one has yet been so bold as to rank
them anywhere but among the phenomena of sexual life. In view of them
alone we are justified in maintaining that sexuality and the
reproductive function are not identical, for they one and all abjure the
aim of reproduction.

I notice a not uninteresting parallel here. Whereas, for most people,
the word ‘mental’ means ‘conscious,’ we found ourselves obliged to widen
the application of the term ‘mental’ to include a part of the mind that
is not conscious. In a precisely similar way, most people declare
‘sexual’ identical with ‘pertaining to reproduction’—or, if you like it
expressed more concisely, with ‘genital’; whereas we cannot avoid
admitting things as ‘sexual’ that are not ‘genital’ and have nothing to
do with reproduction. It is only a formal analogy, but it is not without
deeper significance.

However, if the existence of sexual perversions is such a forcible
argument on this point, why has it not long ago done its work and
settled the question? I really am unable to say. It seems to me that the
sexual perversions have come under a very special ban, which insinuates
itself into the theory, and interferes even with scientific judgement on
the subject. It seems as if no one could forget, not merely that they
are detestable, but that they are also something monstrous and
terrifying; as if they exerted a seductive influence; as if at bottom a
secret envy of those who enjoy them had to be strangled—the same sort of
feeling that is confessed by the count who sits in judgement in the
famous parody of _Tannhäuser_:

         So in the Mount of Venus conscience, duty, are forgot!
         —Remarkable that such a thing has never been my lot!

In reality, perverts are more likely to be poor devils who have to pay
most bitterly for the satisfactions they manage to procure with such
difficulty.

That which makes perverse activities so unmistakably sexual, in spite of
all that seems unnatural in their objects or their aims, is the fact
that in perverse satisfaction the act still terminates usually in a
complete orgasm with evacuation of the genital product. This is of
course only the consequence of adult development in the persons
concerned; in children, orgasm and genital excretion are not very well
possible; as substitutes they have approximations to them which are
again not recognized definitely as sexual.

I must still add something more in order to complete our assessment of
the sexual perversions. Abominated as they are, sharply distinguished
from normal sexual activity as they may be, simple observation will show
that very rarely is one feature or another of them absent from the
sexual life of a normal person. The kiss to begin with has some claim to
be called a perverse act, for it consists of the union of the two
erotogenic mouth zones instead of the two genital organs. But no one
condemns it as perverse; on the contrary, in the theatre it is permitted
as a refined indication of the sexual act. Nevertheless, kissing is a
thing that can easily become an absolute perversion—namely, when it
occurs in such intensity that orgasm and emission directly accompany it,
which happens not at all uncommonly. Further, it will be found that
gazing at and handling the object are in one person an indispensable
condition of sexual enjoyment, while another at the height of sexual
excitement pinches or bites; that in another lover not always the
genital region, but some other bodily region in the object, provokes the
greatest excitement, and so on in endless variety. It would be absurd to
exclude people with single idiosyncrasies of this kind from the ranks of
the normal and place them among perverts; rather, it becomes more and
more clear that what is essential to the perversions lies, not in the
overstepping of the sexual aim, not in the replacement of the genitalia,
not always even in the variations in the object, but solely in the
_exclusiveness_ with which these deviations are maintained, so that the
sexual act which serves the reproductive process is rejected altogether.
In so far as perverse performances are included in order to intensify or
to lead up to the performance of the normal sexual act, they are no
longer actually perverse. Facts of the kind just described naturally
tend to diminish the gulf between normal and perverse sexuality very
considerably. The obvious inference is that normal sexuality has arisen,
out of something existing prior to it, by a process of discarding some
components of this material as useless, and by combining the others so
as to subordinate them to a new aim, that of reproduction.

The point of view thus gained in regard to the perversions can now be
employed by us in penetrating more deeply, with a clearer perspective,
into the problem of infantile sexuality; but before doing this I must
draw your attention to an important difference between the two. Perverse
sexuality is as a rule exceedingly concentrated, its whole activity is
directed to one—and mostly to only one—aim; one particular
component-impulse is supreme; it is either the only one discernible or
it has subjected the others to its own purposes. In this respect there
is no difference between perverse and normal sexuality, except that the
dominating component-impulse, and therefore the sexual aim, is a
different one. Both of them constitute a well-organized tyranny; only
that in one case one ruling family has usurped all the power, and in the
other, another. This concentration and organization, on the other hand,
is in the main absent from infantile sexuality; its component-impulses
are equally valid, each of them strives independently after its own
pleasure. Both the lack of this concentration (in childhood) and the
presence of it (in the adult) correspond well with the fact that both
normal and perverse sexuality are derived from the same source, namely,
infantile sexuality. There are indeed also cases of perversion which
correspond even more closely to infantile sexuality in that numerous
component-instincts, independently of one another, with their aims, are
developed or, better, perpetuated in them. With these cases it is more
correct to speak of infantilism than of perversion of the sexual life.

Thus prepared we may now go on to consider a suggestion which we shall
certainly not be spared. It will be said: “Why are you so set upon
declaring as already belonging to sexuality those indefinite
manifestations of childhood out of which what is sexual later develops,
and which you yourself admit to be indefinite? Why are you not content
rather to describe them physiologically and simply to say that
activities, such as sucking for its own sake and the retaining of
excreta, may be observed already in young infants, showing that they
seek _pleasure in their organs_? In that way you would have avoided the
conception of a sexual life even in babies which is so repugnant to all
our feelings.” Well, I can only answer that I have nothing against
pleasure derived from the organs of the body; I know indeed that the
supreme pleasure of the sexual union is also only a bodily pleasure,
derived from the activity of the genital organ. But can you tell me when
this originally indifferent bodily pleasure acquires the sexual
character that it undoubtedly possesses in later phases of development?
Do we know any more about this ‘organ-pleasure’ than we know about
sexuality? You will answer that the sexual character is added to it when
the genitalia begin to play their part; sexuality simply means genital.
You will even evade the obstacle of the perversions by pointing out that
after all with most of them a genital orgasm occurs, although brought
about by other means than the union of the genitalia. If you were to
eliminate the relation to reproduction from the essential
characteristics of sexuality since this view is untenable in consequence
of the existence of the perversions, and were to emphasize instead
activity of the genital organs, you would actually take up a much better
position. But then we should no longer differ very widely; it would be a
case of the genital organs _versus_ the other organs. What do you now
make of the abundant evidence that the genital organs may be replaced by
other organs for the purpose of gratification, as in the normal kiss, or
the perverse practices of loose living, or in the symptomatology of
hysteria? In this neurosis it is quite usual for stimulation phenomena,
sensations, innervations, and even the processes of erection, which
properly belong to the genitalia to be displaced on to other distant
areas of the body (e.g. the displacement from below upwards to the head
and face). Thus you will find that nothing is left of all that you cling
to as essentially characteristic of sexuality; and you will have to make
up your minds to follow my example and extend the designation ‘sexual’
to include those activities of early infancy which aim at
‘organ-pleasure.’

And now will you permit me to bring forward two further considerations
in support of my view. As you know, we call the doubtful and indefinable
activities of earliest infancy towards pleasure ‘sexual,’ because in the
course of analysing symptoms we reach them by way of material that is
undeniably sexual. They would not thereby necessarily be sexual
themselves, let us grant; but let us take an analogous case. Suppose
that there were no way to observe the development from seed of two
dicotyledonous plants—the apple-tree and the bean; but imagine that in
both it was possible to follow back its development from the
fully-developed plant to the first seedling with two cotyledons. The two
cotyledons are indistinguishable in each; they look exactly alike in
both plants. Shall I conclude from this that they actually are exactly
alike and that the specific differences between apple-tree and
bean-plant arise _later_ in the plant’s development? Or is it not more
correct biologically to believe that this difference exists _already_ in
the seedlings, although I cannot see any in the cotyledons? This is what
we do when we call infantile pleasurable activities sexual. Whether each
and every organ-pleasure may be called sexual or whether there exists,
besides the sexual, another kind of pleasure that does not deserve this
name is a matter I cannot discuss here. I know too little about
organ-pleasure and its conditions; and I am not at all surprised that in
consequence of the retrogressive character of analysis I arrive finally
at factors which at the present time do not permit of definite
classification.

One thing more. You have on the whole gained very little for what you
are so eager to maintain, the sexual ‘purity’ of children, even if you
can convince me that the infant’s activities had better not be regarded
as sexual. For from the third year onwards there is no longer any doubt
about sexual life in the child; at this period the genital organs begin
already to show signs of excitation; there is a perhaps regular period
of infantile masturbation, that is, of gratification in the genital
organs. The mental and social sides of sexual life need no longer be
overlooked: choice of object, distinguishing of particular persons with
affection, even decision in favour of one sex or the other, and
jealousy, were conclusively established independently by impartial
observation before the time of psycho-analysis; they may be confirmed by
any observer who will use his eyes. You will object that you never
doubted the early awakening of affection but only that this affection
was of a ‘sexual’ quality. Children between the ages of three and eight
have certainly learnt to conceal this element in it; but nevertheless if
you look attentively you will collect enough evidence of the ‘sensual’
nature of this affection, and whatever still escapes your notice will be
amply and readily supplied by analytic investigation. The sexual aims in
this period of life are in closest connection with the sexual curiosity
arising at the same time, of which I have given you some description.
The perverse character of some of these aims is a natural result of the
immature constitution of the child who has not yet discovered the aim of
the act of intercourse.

From about the sixth or eighth year onwards a standstill or
retrogression is observed in the sexual development, which in those
cases reaching a high cultural standard deserves to be called a _latency
period_. This latency period, however, may be absent; nor does it
necessarily entail an interruption of sexual activities and sexual
interests over the whole field. Most of the mental experiences and
excitations occurring before the latency period then succumb to the
infantile amnesia, already discussed, which veils our earliest childhood
from us and estranges us from it. It is the task of every
psycho-analysis to bring this forgotten period of life back into
recollection; one cannot resist the supposition that the beginnings of
sexual life belonging to this period are the motive for this forgetting,
that is, that this oblivion is an effect of repression.

From the third year onwards the sexual life of children shows much in
common with that of adults; it is differentiated from the latter, as we
already know, by the absence of a stable organization under the primacy
of the genital organs, by inevitable traits of a perverse order, and of
course also by far less intensity in the whole impulse. But those phases
of the sexual development, or as we will call it, of the
_Libido-development_, which are of greatest interest theoretically lie
before this period. This development is gone through so rapidly that
direct observation alone would perhaps never have succeeded in
determining its fleeting forms. Only by the help of psycho-analytic
investigation of the neuroses has it become possible to penetrate so far
back and to discover these still earlier phases of Libido-development.
These phases are certainly only theoretic constructions, but in the
practice of psycho-analysis you will find them necessary and valuable
constructions. You will soon understand how it happens that a
pathological condition enables us to discover phenomena which we should
certainly overlook in normal conditions.

Thus we can now define the forms taken by the sexual life of the child
before the primacy of the genital zone is reached; this primacy is
prepared for in the early infantile period, before the latent period,
and is permanently organized from puberty onwards. In this early period
a loose sort of organization exists which we shall call _pre-genital_;
for during this phase it is not the genital component-instincts, but the
_sadistic_ and _anal_, which are most prominent. The contrast between
_masculine_ and _feminine_ plays no part as yet; instead of it there is
the contrast between _active_ and _passive_, which may be described as
the forerunner of the sexual polarity with which it also links up later.
That which in this period seems masculine to us, regarded from the
standpoint of the genital phase, proves to be the expression of an
impulse to mastery, which easily passes over into cruelty. Impulses with
a passive aim are connected with the erotogenic zone of the rectal
orifice, at this period very important; the impulses of skoptophilia
(gazing) and curiosity are powerfully active; the function of excreting
urine is the only part actually taken by the genital organ in the sexual
life. Objects are not wanting to the component-instincts in this period,
but these objects are not necessarily all comprised in one object. The
sadistic-anal organization is the stage immediately preceding the phase
of primacy of the genital zone. Closer study reveals how much of it is
retained intact in the later final structure, and what are the paths by
which these component-instincts are forced into the service of the new
_genital organization_. Behind the sadistic-anal phase of the
Libido-development we obtain a glimpse of an even more primitive stage
of development, in which the erotogenic mouth zone plays the chief part.
You can guess that the sexual activity of sucking (for its own sake)
belongs to this stage; and you may admire the understanding of the
ancient Egyptians in whose art a child, even the divine Horus, was
represented with a finger in the mouth. Abraham has quite recently
published work showing that traces of this primitive _oral_ phase of
development survive in the sexual life of later years.

I can indeed imagine that you will have found this last information
about the sexual organizations less of an enlightenment than an
infliction. Perhaps I have again gone too much into detail; but have
patience! what you have just heard will be of more use when we employ it
later. Keep in view at the moment the idea that the sexual life—the
_Libido-function_, as we call it—does not first spring up in its final
form, does not even expand along the lines of its earliest forms, but
goes through a series of successive phases unlike one another; in short,
that many changes occur in it, like those in the development of the
caterpillar into the butterfly. The turning-point of this development is
the _subordination of all the sexual component-instincts under the
primacy of the genital zone_ and, together with this, the enrolment of
sexuality in the service of the reproductive function. Before this
happens the sexual life is, so to say, disparate—independent activities
of single component-impulses each seeking _organ-pleasure_ (pleasure in
a bodily organ). This anarchy is modified by attempts at _pre_-genital
‘organizations,’ of which the chief is the sadistic-anal phase, behind
which is the oral, perhaps the most primitive. In addition there are the
various processes, about which little is known as yet, which effect the
transition from one stage of organization to the next above it. Of what
significance this long journey over so many stages in the development of
the Libido is for comprehension of the neuroses we shall learn later on.

To-day we will follow up another aspect of this development—namely, the
relation of the sexual component-impulses to an _object_; or, rather, we
will take a fleeting glimpse over this development so that we may spend
more time upon a comparatively late result of it. Certain of the
component-impulses of the sexual instinct have an object from the very
beginning and hold fast to it: such are the impulse to mastery (sadism),
to gazing (skoptophilia) and curiosity. Others, more plainly connected
with particular erotogenic areas in the body, only have an object in the
beginning, so long as they are still dependent upon the non-sexual
functions, and give it up when they become detached from these latter.
Thus the first object of the oral component of the sexual instinct is
the mother’s breast which satisfies the infant’s need for nutrition. In
the act of sucking for its own sake (_lutschen_) the erotic component,
also gratified in sucking for nutrition (_saugen_), makes itself
independent, gives up the object in an external person, and replaces it
by a part of the child’s own person. The oral impulse becomes
_auto-erotic_, as the anal and other erotogenic impulses are from the
beginning. Further development has, to put it as concisely as possible,
two aims: first, to renounce auto-erotism, to give up again the object
found in the child’s own body in exchange again for an external one; and
secondly, to combine the various objects of the separate impulses and
replace them by one single one. This naturally can only be done if the
single object is again itself complete, with a body like that of the
subject; nor can it be accomplished without some part of the auto-erotic
impulse-excitations being abandoned as useless.

The processes by which an object is found are rather involved, and have
not so far received comprehensive exposition. For our purposes it may be
emphasized that, when the process has reached a certain point in the
years of childhood before the latency period, the object adopted proves
almost identical with the first object of the oral pleasure impulse,
adopted by reason of the child’s dependent relationship to it; it is,
namely, the mother, although not the mother’s breast. We call the mother
the first _love_-object. We speak of ‘love’ when we lay the accent upon
the mental side of the sexual impulses and disregard, or wish to forget
for a moment, the demands of the fundamental physical or ‘sensual’ side
of the impulses. At about the time when the mother becomes the
love-object, the mental operation of repression has already begun in the
child and has withdrawn from him the knowledge of some part of his
sexual aims. Now with this choice of the mother as love-object is
connected all that which, under the name of ‘_the Oedipus complex_,’ has
become of such great importance in the psycho-analytic explanation of
the neuroses, and which has had a perhaps equally important share in
causing the opposition against psycho-analysis.

Here is a little incident which occurred during the present war. One of
the staunch adherents of psycho-analysis was stationed in his medical
capacity on the German front in Poland; he attracted the attention of
his colleagues by the fact that he occasionally effected an unexpected
influence upon a patient. On being questioned, he admitted that he
worked with psycho-analytic methods and with readiness agreed to impart
his knowledge to his colleagues. So every evening the medical men of the
corps, his colleagues and superiors, met to be initiated into the
mysteries of psycho-analysis. For a time all went well; but when he had
introduced his audience to the Oedipus complex a superior officer rose
and announced that he did not believe this, it was the behaviour of a
cad for the lecturer to relate such things to brave men, fathers of
families, who were fighting for their country, and he forbade the
continuation of the lectures. This was the end; the analyst got himself
transferred to another part of the front. In my opinion, however, it is
a bad outlook if a victory for German arms depends upon an
‘organization’ of science such as this, and German science will not
prosper under any such organization.

Now you will be impatiently waiting to hear what this terrible Oedipus
complex comprises. The name tells you: you all know the Greek myth of
King Oedipus, whose destiny it was to slay his father and to wed his
mother, who did all in his power to avoid the fate prophesied by the
oracle, and who in self-punishment blinded himself when he discovered
that in ignorance he had committed both these crimes. I trust that many
of you have yourselves experienced the profound effect of the tragic
drama fashioned by Sophocles from this story. The Attic poet’s work
portrays the gradual discovery of the deed of Oedipus, long since
accomplished, and brings it slowly to light by skilfully prolonged
enquiry, constantly fed by new evidence; it has thus a certain
resemblance to the course of a psycho-analysis. In the dialogue the
deluded mother-wife, Jocasta, resists the continuation of the enquiry;
she points out that many people in their dreams have mated with their
mothers, but that dreams are of no account. To us dreams are of much
account, especially typical dreams which occur in many people; we have
no doubt that the dream Jocasta speaks of is intimately related to the
shocking and terrible story of the myth.

It is surprising that Sophocles’ tragedy does not call forth indignant
remonstrance in its audience; this reaction would be much better
justified in them than it was in the blunt army doctor. For at bottom it
is an immoral play; it sets aside the individual’s responsibility to
social law, and displays divine forces ordaining the crime and rendering
powerless the moral instincts of the human being which would guard him
against the crime. It would be easy to believe that an accusation
against destiny and the gods was intended in the story of the myth; in
the hands of the critical Euripides, at variance with the gods, it would
probably have become such an accusation. But with the reverent Sophocles
there is no question of such an intention; the pious subtlety which
declares it the highest morality to bow to the will of the gods, even
when they ordain a crime, helps him out of the difficulty. I do not
believe that this moral is one of the virtues of the drama, but neither
does it detract from its effect; it leaves the hearer indifferent; he
does not react to this, but to the secret meaning and content of the
myth itself. He reacts as though by self-analysis he had detected the
Oedipus complex in himself, and had recognized the will of the gods and
the oracle as glorified disguises of his own Unconscious; as though he
remembered in himself the wish to do away with his father and in his
place to wed his mother, and must abhor the thought. The poet’s words
seem to him to mean: “In vain do you deny that you are accountable, in
vain do you proclaim how you have striven against these evil designs.
You are guilty, nevertheless; for you could not stifle them; they still
survive unconsciously in you.” And psychological truth is contained in
this; even though man has repressed his evil desires into his
Unconscious and would then gladly say to himself that he is no longer
answerable for them, he is yet compelled to feel his responsibility in
the form of a sense of guilt for which he can discern no foundation.

There is no possible doubt that one of the most important sources of the
sense of guilt which so often torments neurotic people is to be found in
the Oedipus complex. More than this: in 1913, under the title of _Totem
und Tabu_, I published a study of the earliest forms of religion and
morality in which I expressed a suspicion that perhaps the sense of
guilt of mankind as a whole, which is the ultimate source of religion
and morality, was acquired in the beginnings of history through the
Oedipus complex. I should much like to tell you more of this, but I had
better not; it is difficult to leave this subject when once one begins
upon it, and we must return to individual psychology.

Now what does direct observation of children, at the period of
object-choice before the latency period, show us in regard to the
Oedipus complex? Well, it is easy to see that the little man wants his
mother all to himself, finds his father in the way, becomes restive when
the latter takes upon himself to caress her, and shows his satisfaction
when the father goes away or is absent. He often expresses his feelings
directly in words and promises his mother to marry her; this may not
seem much in comparison with the deeds of Oedipus, but it is enough in
fact; the kernel of each is the same. Observation is often rendered
puzzling by the circumstance that the same child on other occasions at
this period will display great affection for the father; but such
contrasting—or, better, _ambivalent_—states of feeling, which in adults
would lead to conflicts, can be tolerated alongside one another in the
child for a long time, just as later on they dwell together permanently
in the Unconscious. One might try to object that the little boy’s
behaviour is due to egoistic motives and does not justify the conception
of an erotic complex; the mother looks after all the child’s needs and
consequently it is to the child’s interest that she should trouble
herself about no one else. This too is quite correct; but it is soon
clear that in this, as in similar dependent situations, egoistic
interests only provide the occasion on which the erotic impulses seize.
When the little boy shows the most open sexual curiosity about his
mother, wants to sleep with her at night, insists on being in the room
while she is dressing, or even attempts physical acts of seduction, as
the mother so often observes and laughingly relates, the erotic nature
of this attachment to her is established without a doubt. Moreover, it
should not be forgotten that a mother looks after a little daughter’s
needs in the same way without producing this effect; and that often
enough a father eagerly vies with her in trouble for the boy without
succeeding in winning the same importance in his eyes as the mother. In
short, the factor of sex preference is not to be eliminated from the
situation by any criticisms. From the point of view of the boy’s
egoistic interests it would merely be foolish if he did not tolerate two
people in his service rather than only one of them.

As you see, I have only described the relationship of a boy to his
father and mother; things proceed in just the same way, with the
necessary reversal, in little girls. The loving devotion to the father,
the need to do away with the superfluous mother and to take her place,
the early display of coquetry and the arts of later womanhood, make up a
particularly charming picture in a little girl, and may cause us to
forget its seriousness and the grave consequences which may later result
from this situation. Let us not fail to add that frequently the parents
themselves exert a decisive influence upon the awakening of the Oedipus
complex in a child, by themselves following the sex attraction where
there is more than one child; the father in an unmistakable manner
prefers his little daughter with marks of tenderness, and the mother,
the son: but even this factor does not seriously impugn the spontaneous
nature of the infantile Oedipus complex. When other children appear, the
Oedipus complex expands and becomes a family complex. Reinforced anew by
the injury resulting to the egoistic interests, it actuates a feeling of
aversion towards these new arrivals and an unhesitating wish to get rid
of them again. These feelings of hatred are as a rule much more often
openly expressed than those connected with the parental complex. If such
a wish is fulfilled and after a short time death removes the unwanted
addition to the family, later analysis can show what a significant event
this death is for the child, although it does not necessarily remain in
memory. Forced into the second place by the birth of another child and
for the first time almost entirely parted from the mother, the child
finds it very hard to forgive her for this exclusion of him; feelings
which in adults we should describe as profound embitterment are roused
in him, and often become the groundwork of a lasting estrangement. That
sexual curiosity and all its consequences is usually connected with
these experiences has already been mentioned. As these new brothers and
sisters grow up the child’s attitude to them undergoes the most
important transformations. A boy may take his sister as love-object in
place of his faithless mother; where there are several brothers to win
the favour of a little sister hostile rivalry, of great importance in
after life, shows itself already in the nursery. A little girl takes an
older brother as a substitute for the father who no longer treats her
with the same tenderness as in her earliest years; or she takes a little
sister as a substitute for the child that she vainly wished for from her
father.

So much and a great deal more of a similar kind is shown by direct
observation of children, and by consideration of clear memories of
childhood, uninfluenced by any analysis. Among other things you will
infer from this that a child’s position in the sequence of brothers and
sisters is of very great significance for the course of his later life,
a factor to be considered in every biography. What is even more
important, however, is that in the face of these enlightening
considerations, so easily to be obtained, you will hardly recall without
smiling the scientific theories accounting for the prohibition of
incest. What has not been invented for this purpose! We are told that
sexual attraction is diverted from the members of the opposite sex in
one family owing to their living together from early childhood; or that
a biological tendency against in-breeding has a mental equivalent in the
horror of incest! Whereby it is entirely overlooked that no such
rigorous prohibitions in law and custom would be required if any
trustworthy natural barriers against the temptation to incest existed.
The opposite is the truth. The first choice of object in mankind is
regularly an incestuous one, directed to the mother and sister of men,
and the most stringent prohibitions are required to prevent this
sustained infantile tendency from being carried into effect. In the
savage and primitive peoples surviving to-day the incest prohibitions
are a great deal stricter than with us; Theodor Reik has recently shown
in a brilliant work that the meaning of the savage rites of puberty
which represent rebirth is the loosening of the boy’s incestuous
attachment to the mother and his reconciliation with the father.

Mythology will show you that incest, ostensibly so much abhorred by men,
is permitted to their gods without a thought; and from ancient history
you may learn that incestuous marriage with a sister was prescribed as a
sacred duty for kings (the Pharaohs of Egypt and the Incas of Peru); it
was therefore in the nature of a privilege denied to the common herd.

Incest with the mother is one of the crimes of Oedipus and parricide the
other. Incidentally, these are the two great offences condemned by
totemism, the first social-religious institution of mankind. Now let us
turn from the direct observation of children to the analytic
investigation of adults who have become neurotic; what does analysis
yield in further knowledge of the Oedipus complex? Well, this is soon
told. The complex is revealed just as the myth relates it; it will be
seen that every one of these neurotics was himself an Oedipus or, what
amounts to the same thing, has become a Hamlet in his reaction to the
complex. To be sure, the analytic picture of the Oedipus complex is an
enlarged and accentuated edition of the infantile sketch; the hatred of
the father and the death-wishes against him are no longer vague hints,
the affection for the mother declares itself with the aim of possessing
her as a woman. Are we really to accredit such grossness and intensity
of the feelings to the tender age of childhood; or does the analysis
deceive us by introducing another factor? It is not difficult to find
one. Every time anyone describes anything past, even if he be a
historian, we have to take into account all that he unintentionally
imports into that past period from present and intermediate times,
thereby falsifying it. With the neurotic it is even doubtful whether
this retroversion is altogether unintentional; we shall hear later on
that there are motives for it and we must explore the whole subject of
the ‘retrogressive phantasy-making’ which goes back to the remote past.
We soon discover, too, that the hatred against the father has been
strengthened by a number of motives arising in later periods and other
relationships in life, and that the sexual desires towards the mother
have been moulded into forms which would have been as yet foreign to the
child. But it would be a vain attempt if we endeavoured to explain the
whole of the Oedipus complex by ‘retrogressive phantasy-making,’ and by
motives originating in later periods of life. The infantile nucleus,
with more or less of the accretions to it, remains intact, as is
confirmed by direct observation of children.

The clinical fact which confronts us behind the form of the Oedipus
complex as established by analysis now becomes of the greatest practical
importance. We learn that at the time of puberty, when the sexual
instinct first asserts its demands in full strength, the old familiar
incestuous objects are taken up again and again invested by the Libido.
The infantile object-choice was but a feeble venture in play, as it
were, but it laid down the direction for the object-choice of puberty.
At this time a very intense flow of feeling towards the Oedipus complex
or in reaction to it comes into force; since their mental antecedents
have become intolerable, however, these feelings must remain for the
most part outside consciousness. From the time of puberty onward the
human individual must devote himself to the great task of _freeing
himself from the parents_; and only after this detachment is
accomplished can he cease to be a child and so become a member of the
social community. For a son, the task consists in releasing his
libidinal desires from his mother, in order to employ them in the quest
of an external love-object in reality; and in reconciling himself with
his father if he has remained antagonistic to him, or in freeing himself
from his domination if, in the reaction to the infantile revolt, he has
lapsed into subservience to him. These tasks are laid down for every
man; it is noteworthy how seldom they are carried through ideally, that
is, how seldom they are solved in a manner psychologically as well as
socially satisfactory. In neurotics, however, this detachment from the
parents is not accomplished at all; the son remains all his life in
subjection to his father, and incapable of transferring his Libido to a
new sexual object. In the reversed relationship the daughter’s fate may
be the same. In this sense the Oedipus complex is justifiably regarded
as the kernel of the neuroses.

You will imagine how incompletely I am sketching a large number of the
connections bound up with the Oedipus complex which practically and
theoretically are of great importance. I shall not go into the
variations and possible inversions of it at all. Of its less immediate
effects I should like to allude to one only, which proves it to have
influenced literary production in a far-reaching manner. Otto Rank has
shown in a very valuable work that dramatists throughout the ages have
drawn their material principally from the Oedipus and incest complex and
its variations and masked forms. It should also be remarked that long
before the time of psycho-analysis the two criminal offences of Oedipus
were recognized as the true expressions of unbridled instinct. Among the
works of the Encyclopædist Diderot you will find the famous dialogue,
_Le neveu de Rameau_, which was translated into German by no less a
person than Goethe. There you may read these remarkable words: _Si le
petit sauvage était abandonné à lui-même, qu’il conserva toute son
imbecillité et qu’il réunit au peu de raison de l’enfant au berceau la
violence des passions de l’homme de trente ans, il tordrait le cou à son
père et coucherait avec sa mère_.

There is yet one thing more which I cannot pass over. The mother-wife of
Oedipus must not remind us of dreams in vain. Do you still remember the
results of our dream-analyses, how so often the dream-forming wishes
proved perverse and incestuous in their nature, or betrayed an
unsuspected enmity to near and beloved relatives? We then left the
source of these evil strivings of feeling unexplained. Now you can
answer this question yourselves. They are dispositions of the Libido,
and investments of objects by Libido, belonging to early infancy and
long since given up in conscious life, but which at night prove to be
still present and in a certain sense capable of activity. But, since all
men and not only neurotic persons have perverse, incestuous, and
murderous dreams of this kind, we may infer that those who are normal
to-day have also made the passage through the perversions and the
object-investments of the Oedipus complex; and that this is the path of
normal development; only that neurotics show in a magnified and
exaggerated form what we also find revealed in the dream-analyses of
normal people. And this is one of the reasons why we chose the study of
dreams to lead up to that of neurotic symptoms.




                         TWENTY-SECOND LECTURE
            ASPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT AND REGRESSION. ÆTIOLOGY


As we have heard, the Libido-function goes through an extensive
development before it can enter the service of reproduction in the way
that is called normal. Now I wish to show you the significance of this
fact for the causation of the neuroses.

I think that it will be in agreement with the doctrines of general
pathology to assume that such a development involves two dangers; first,
that of _inhibition_, and secondly, that of _regression_. That is to
say, owing to the general tendency to variation in biological processes
it must necessarily happen that not all these preparatory phases will be
passed through and completely outgrown with the same degree of success;
some parts of the function will be permanently arrested at these early
stages, with the result that with the general development there goes a
certain amount of inhibited development.

Let us seek analogies to these processes in other fields. When a whole
people leaves its dwellings in order to seek a new country, as often
happened in earlier periods of human history, their entire number
certainly did not reach the new destination. Apart from losses due to
other causes, it must invariably have happened that small groups or
bands of the migrating people halted on the way, and settled down in
these stopping-places, while the main body went further. Or, to take a
nearer comparison, you know that in the higher mammals the seminal
glands, which are originally located deep in the abdominal cavity, begin
a movement at a certain period of intra-uterine development which brings
them almost under the skin of the pelvic extremity. In a number of males
it is found that one of this pair of organs has remained in the pelvic
cavity, or else that it has taken up a permanent position in the
inguinal canal which both of them had to pass through on the journey, or
at least that this canal has not closed as it normally should after the
passage of the seminal glands through it. When as a young student I was
doing my first piece of scientific research under v. Brücke, I was
working on the origin of the dorsal nerve-roots in the spinal cord of a
small fish, still very archaic in form. I found that the nerve-fibres of
these roots grew out of large cells in the posterior horn of the grey
matter, a condition which is no longer found in other vertebrates. But
soon after I discovered that similar nerve-cells were to be found
outside the grey matter along the whole length to the so-called spinal
ganglion of the posterior roots, from which I concluded that the cells
of this ganglion had moved out of the spinal cord along the nerve-roots.
Evolutionary development shows this too; in this little fish, however,
the whole route of this passage was marked by cells arrested on the way.
Closer consideration will soon show you the weak points of these
comparisons. Therefore let me simply say that we consider it possible
that single portions of every separate sexual impulse may remain in an
early stage of development, although at the same time other portions of
it may have reached their final goal. You will see from this that we
conceive each such impulse as a current continuously flowing from the
beginning of life, and that we have divided its flow to some extent
artificially into separate successive forward movements. Your impression
that these conceptions require further elucidation is correct, but the
attempt would lead us too far afield. We will, however, decide at this
point to call this _arrest_ in a component-impulse at an early stage a
FIXATION (of the impulse).

The second danger in a development by stages such as this we call
REGRESSION; it also happens that those portions which have proceeded
further may easily revert in a backward direction to these earlier
stages. The impulse will find occasion to _regress_ in this way when the
exercise of its function in a later and more developed form meets with
powerful external obstacles, which thus prevent it from attaining the
goal of satisfaction. It is a short step to assume that fixation and
regression are not independent of each other; the stronger the fixations
in the path of development the more easily will the function yield
before the external obstacles, by regressing on to those fixations; that
is, the less capable of resistance against the external difficulties in
its path will the developed function be. If you think of a migrating
people who have left large numbers at the stopping-places on their way,
you will see that the foremost will naturally fall back upon these
positions when they are defeated or when they meet with an enemy too
strong for them. And again, the more of their number they leave behind
in their progress, the sooner will they be in danger of defeat.

It is important for comprehension of the neuroses that you should keep
in mind this relation between fixation and regression. You will thus
acquire a secure foothold from which to investigate the causation of the
neuroses—their ætiology—which we shall soon consider.

For the present we will keep to the question of regression. After what
you have heard about the development of the Libido you may anticipate
two kinds of regression; a return to the first objects invested with
Libido, which we know to be incestuous in character, and a return of the
whole sexual organization to earlier stages. Both kinds occur in the
transference neuroses, and play a great part in their mechanism. In
particular, the return to the first incestuous objects of the Libido is
a feature found with quite fatiguing regularity in neurotics. There is
much more to be said about the regressions of Libido if another group of
neuroses, called the narcissistic, is taken into account; but this is
not our intention at the moment. These affections yield conclusions
about other developmental processes of the Libido-function, not yet
mentioned, and also show us new types of regression corresponding with
them. I think, however, that I had better warn you now above all not to
confound _Regression_ with _Repression_ and that I must assist you to
clear your minds about the relation between the two processes.
_Repression_, as you will remember, is the process by which a mental act
capable of becoming conscious (that is, one which belongs to the
preconscious system) is made unconscious and forced back into the
unconscious system. And we also call it _repression_ when the
unconscious mental act is not permitted to enter the adjacent
preconscious system at all, but is turned back upon the threshold by the
censorship. There is therefore no connection with sexuality in the
concept ‘_repression_’; please mark this very carefully. It denotes a
purely psychological process; and would be even better described as
_topographical_, by which we mean that it has to do with the spatial
relationships we assume within the mind, or, if we again abandon these
crude aids to the formulation of theory, with the structure of the
mental apparatus out of separate psychical systems.

The comparisons just now instituted showed us that hitherto we have not
been using the word ‘_regression_’ in its general sense but in a quite
specific one. If you give it its general sense, that of a reversion from
a higher to a lower stage of development in general, then repression
also ranges itself under regression; for repression can also be
described as reversion to an earlier and lower stage in the development
of a mental act. Only, in repression this retrogressive direction is not
a point of any moment to us; for we also call it repression in a dynamic
sense when a mental process is arrested before it leaves the lower stage
of the Unconscious. Repression is thus a topographic-dynamic conception,
while regression is a purely descriptive one. But what we have hitherto
called ‘_regression_’ and considered in its relation to fixation
signified exclusively the return of _the Libido_ to its former
halting-places in development, that is, something which is essentially
quite different from repression and quite independent of it. Nor can we
call regression of the Libido a purely psychical process; neither do we
know where to localize it in the mental apparatus; for though it may
exert the most powerful influence upon mental life, the organic factor
in it is nevertheless the most prominent.

Discussions of this sort tend to be rather dry; therefore let us turn to
clinical illustrations of them in order to get a more vivid impression
of them. You know that the group of the transference neuroses consists
principally of hysteria and the obsessional neurosis. Now in hysteria, a
regression of the Libido to the primary incestuous sexual objects is
without doubt quite regular, but there is little or no regression to an
earlier stage of sexual organization. Consequently the principal part in
the mechanism of hysteria is played by repression. If I may be allowed
to supplement by a construction the certain knowledge of this neurosis
acquired up to the present I might describe the situation as follows:
The fusion of the component-impulses under the primacy of the genital
zone has been accomplished; but the results of this union meet with
resistance from the direction of the preconscious system with which
consciousness is connected. The genital organization therefore holds
good for the Unconscious, but not also for the preconscious, and this
rejection on the part of the preconscious results in a picture which has
a certain likeness to the state prior to the primacy of the genital
zone. It is nevertheless actually quite different. Of the two kinds of
regression of the Libido, that on to an earlier phase of sexual
organization is much the more striking. Since it is absent in hysteria
and our whole conception of the neuroses is still far too much dominated
by the study of hysteria which came first in point of time, the
significance of Libido-regression was recognized much later than that of
repression. We may be sure that our points of view will undergo still
further extensions and alterations when we include consideration of
still other neuroses (the narcissistic) in addition to hysteria and the
obsessional neurosis.

In the obsessional neurosis, on the other hand, regression of the Libido
to the antecedent stage of the sadistic-anal organization is the most
conspicuous factor and determines the form taken by the symptoms. The
impulse to love must then mask itself under the sadistic impulse. The
obsessive thought, “I should like to murder you,” means (when it has
been detached from certain superimposed elements that are not, however,
accidental but indispensable to it) nothing else but “I should like to
enjoy love of you.” When you consider in addition that regression to the
primary objects has also set in at the same time, so that this impulse
concerns only the nearest and most beloved persons, you can gain some
idea of the horror roused in the patient by these obsessive ideas and at
the same time how unaccountable they appear to his conscious perception.
But repression also has its share, a great one, in the mechanism of this
neurosis, and one which is not easy to expound in a rapid survey such as
this. Regression of Libido without repression would never give rise to a
neurosis, but would result in a perversion. You will see from this that
repression is the process which distinguishes the neuroses particularly
and by which they are best characterized. Perhaps, however, I may have
an opportunity at some time of expounding to you what we know of the
mechanism of the perversions, and you will then see that there again
nothing proceeds so simply as we should like to imagine in our
constructions.

I think that you will be soonest reconciled to this exposition of
fixation and regression of the Libido if you will regard it as
preparatory to a study of the _ætiology_ of the neuroses. So far I have
only given you one piece of information on this subject, namely, that
people fall ill of a neurosis when the possibility of satisfaction for
the Libido is removed from them—they fall ill in consequence of a
‘privation,’ as I called it, therefore—and that their symptoms are
actually substitutes for the missing satisfaction. This of course does
not mean that every privation in regard to libidinal satisfaction makes
everyone who meets with it neurotic, but merely that in all cases of
neurosis investigated the factor of privation was demonstrable. The
statement therefore cannot be reversed. You will no doubt have
understood that this statement was not intended to reveal the whole
secret of the ætiology of the neuroses, but that it merely emphasized an
important and indispensable condition.

Now in order to consider this proposition further we do not know whether
to begin upon the nature of the privation or the particular character of
the person affected by it. The privation is very rarely a comprehensive
and absolute one; in order to have a pathogenic effect it would probably
have to strike at the only form of satisfaction which that person
desires, the only form of which he is capable. In general, there are
very many ways by which it is possible to endure lack of libidinal
satisfaction without falling ill. Above all we know of people who are
able to take such abstinence upon themselves without injury; they are
then not happy, they suffer from unsatisfied longing, but they do not
become ill. We therefore have to conclude that the sexual
impulse-excitations are exceptionally ‘plastic,’ if I may use the word.
One of them can step in in place of another; if satisfaction of one is
denied in reality, satisfaction of another can offer full recompense.
They are related to one another like a network of communicating canals
filled with fluid, and this in spite of their subordination to the
genital primacy, a condition which is not at all easily reduced to an
image. Further, the component-instincts of sexuality, as well as the
united sexual impulse which comprises them, show a great capacity to
change their object, to exchange it for another—i.e. for one more easily
attainable; this capacity for displacement and readiness to accept
surrogates must produce a powerful counter-effect to the effect of a
privation. One amongst these processes serving as protection against
illness arising from want has reached a particular significance in the
development of culture. It consists in the abandonment, on the part of
the sexual impulse, of an aim previously found either in the
gratification of a component-impulse or in the gratification incidental
to reproduction, and the adoption of a new aim—which new aim, though
genetically related to the first, can no longer be regarded as sexual,
but must be called social in character. We call this process
SUBLIMATION, by which we subscribe to the general standard which
estimates social aims above sexual (ultimately selfish) aims.
Incidentally, sublimation is merely a special case of the connections
existing between sexual impulses and other, asexual ones. We shall have
occasion to discuss this again in another context.

Your impression now will be that we have reduced want of satisfaction to
a factor of negligible proportions by the recognition of so many means
of enduring it. But no; this is not so: it retains its pathogenic power.
The means of dealing with it are not always sufficient. The measure of
unsatisfied Libido that the average human being can take upon himself is
limited. The plasticity and free mobility of the Libido is not by any
means retained to the full in all of us; and sublimation can never
discharge more than a certain proportion of Libido, apart from the fact
that many people possess the capacity for sublimation only in a slight
degree. The most important of these limitations is clearly that
referring to the mobility of the Libido, since it confines the
individual to the attaining of aims and objects which are very few in
number. Just remember that incomplete development of the Libido leaves
behind it very extensive (and sometimes also numerous) Libido-fixations
upon earlier phases of organization and types of object-choice, mostly
incapable of satisfaction in reality; you will then recognize fixation
of Libido as the second powerful factor working together with privation
in the causation of illness. We may condense this schematically and say
that Libido-fixation represents the internal, predisposing factor, while
privation represents the external, accidental factor, in the ætiology of
the neuroses.

I will take this opportunity to warn you against taking sides in a quite
superfluous dispute. It is a popular habit in scientific matters to
seize upon one side of the truth and set it up as the whole truth, and
then in favour of that element of truth to dispute all the rest which is
equally true. More than one faction has already split off in this way
from the psycho-analytic movement; one of them recognizes only the
egoistic impulses and denies the sexual; another perceives only the
influence of real tasks in life but overlooks that of the individual’s
past life, and so on. Now here is occasion for another of these
antitheses and moot-points: Are the neuroses exogenous or endogenous
diseases—the inevitable result of a certain type of constitution or the
product of certain injurious (traumatic) events in the person’s life? In
particular, are they brought about by the fixation of Libido and the
rest of the sexual constitution, or by the pressure of privation? This
dilemma seems to me about as sensible as another I could point to: Is
the child created by the father’s act of generation or by the conception
in the mother? You will properly reply: Both conditions are alike
indispensable. The conditions underlying the neuroses are very similar,
if not exactly the same. From the point of view of causation, cases of
neurotic illness fall into a _series_, within which the two
factors—sexual constitution and events experienced, or, if you wish,
fixation of Libido and privation—are represented in such a way that
where one of them predominates the other is proportionately less
pronounced. At one end of the series stand those extreme cases of whom
one can say: These people would have fallen ill whatever happened,
whatever they experienced, however merciful life had been to them,
because of their anomalous Libido-development. At the other end stand
cases which call forth the opposite verdict—they would undoubtedly have
escaped illness if life had not put such and such burdens upon them. In
the intermediate cases in the series, more or less of the disposing
factor (the sexual constitution) is combined with less or more of the
injurious impositions of life. Their sexual constitution would not have
brought about their neurosis if they had not gone through such and such
experiences, and life’s vicissitudes would not have worked traumatically
upon them if the Libido had been otherwise constituted. In this series I
can perhaps admit a certain preponderance in the effect of the
predisposing factor, but this admission again depends upon where you
draw the line in marking the boundaries of nervousness.

I shall now suggest to you that we should call series such as these
_complemental series_, and will inform you beforehand that we shall find
occasion to establish others of this kind.

The tenacity with which the Libido holds to particular channels and
particular objects, the ‘_adhesiveness_’ of the Libido, so to say, seems
to be an independent factor, varying in individuals, the determining
conditions of which are completely unknown to us, but the importance of
which in the ætiology of the neuroses we shall certainly no longer
underestimate. At the same time we should not overestimate the close
relation between the two things. A similar ‘adhesiveness’ of the Libido
occurs—from unknown causes—in normal people under numerous conditions,
and is found as a decisive factor in those persons who in a certain
sense are the extreme opposite of neurotics—namely, perverted persons.
It was known before the time of psycho-analysis that in the anamnesis of
such persons a very early impression, relating to an abnormal
instinct-tendency or object-choice, is frequently discovered, to which
the Libido of that person henceforth remains attached for life (Binet).
It is often hard to say what has enabled this impression to exert such
an intense power of attraction upon the Libido. I will describe a case
of this kind observed by myself. A man to whom the genitals and all the
other attractions in a woman now mean nothing can be roused to
irresistible sexual excitation only by a shoe-clad foot of a certain
shape; he can remember an event in his sixth year which determined this
fixation of Libido. He was sitting upon a stool by the side of his
governess who was to give him an English lesson. She was a plain,
elderly, shrivelled old maid, with watery blue eyes and a snub nose, and
on this day she had hurt her foot and had it therefore stretched out on
a cushion in a velvet slipper, with the leg itself most decorously
concealed. Later on, after a timid attempt at normal sexual activity
during puberty, a thin sinewy foot like that of the governess became his
only sexual object; and if still other features in the person reminded
him of the type of woman represented by the English governess the man
was helplessly attracted. This fixation of the Libido, however, rendered
him not neurotic but perverse; he became, as we say, a foot-fetichist.
So you see that although an excessive and, in addition, premature
fixation of Libido is an indispensable condition in the causation of
neurosis, the extent of its influence far exceeds the boundaries of the
neuroses. This condition by itself is also as little decisive as the
privation mentioned previously.

So the problem of the causation of the neuroses seems to become more
complicated. In fact, psycho-analytic investigation acquaints us with
yet a new factor, not considered in our ætiological series, and best
observed in someone whose previous good health is suddenly disturbed by
falling ill of a neurosis. In these people signs of contradictory and
opposed wishes, or, as we say, of _mental conflict_, are regularly
found. One side of the personality stands for certain wishes, while
another part struggles against them and fends them off. There is no
neurosis without such a CONFLICT. There might seem to be nothing very
special in this; you know that mental life in all of us is perpetually
engaged with conflicts that have to be decided. Therefore it would seem
that special conditions must be fulfilled before such a conflict can
become pathogenic; we may ask what these conditions are, what forces in
the mind take part in these pathogenic conflicts, and what relation
conflict bears to the other causative factors.

I hope to be able to give you answers to these questions which will be
satisfactory although perhaps schematically condensed. Conflict is
produced by privation, in that the Libido which lacks satisfaction is
urged to seek other paths and other objects. A condition of it then is
that these other paths and objects arouse disfavour in one side of the
personality, so that a veto ensues, which at first makes the new way of
satisfaction impossible. This is the point of departure for the
formation of symptoms, which we shall follow up later. The rejected
libidinal longings manage to pursue their course by circuitous paths,
though not indeed without paying toll to the prohibition in the form of
certain disguises and modifications. The circuitous paths are the ways
of symptom-formation; the symptoms are the new or substitutive
satisfactions necessitated by the fact of the privation.

The significance of the mental conflict can be defined in another way,
thus: in order to become pathogenic _external_ privation must be
supplemented by _internal_ privation. When this is so, the external and
the internal privation relate of course to different paths and different
objects; external privation removes one possibility of satisfaction,
internal privation tries to exclude another possibility, and it is this
second possibility which becomes the debatable ground of the conflict. I
choose this form of presentation because it contains a certain
implication; it implies that the internal impediment arose originally,
in primitive phases of human development, out of real external
obstacles.

But what are these forces out of which the prohibition against the
libidinal longings proceeds, the other parties in the pathogenic
conflict? Speaking very broadly, we may say that they are the non-sexual
instincts. We include them all under the name ‘_Ego-instincts_’;
analysis of the transference neuroses offers no adequate opportunity for
further investigation of them; at most we learn something of them from
the resistances opposed to the analysis. The pathogenic conflict is,
therefore, one between the Ego-instincts and the sexual instincts. In a
whole series of cases it looks as though there might also be conflict
between various purely sexual impulses; at bottom, however, this is the
same thing, because of the two sexual impulses engaged in a conflict one
will always be found ‘consistent with the Ego’ (_ichgerecht_) while the
other calls forth a protest from the Ego. It remains, therefore, a
conflict between Ego and sexuality.

Over and over again when psycho-analysis has regarded something
happening in the mind as an expression of the sexual instincts indignant
protests have been raised to the effect that other instincts and other
interests exist in mental life besides the sexual, that one should not
derive “everything” from sexuality, and so on. Well, it is a real
pleasure for once to be in agreement with one’s opponents.
Psycho-analysis has never forgotten that non-sexual instincts also
exist; it has been built upon a sharp distinction between sexual
instincts and Ego-instincts; and in the face of all opposition it has
insisted, _not_ that they arise from sexuality, but that the neuroses
owe their origin to a _conflict_ between Ego and sexuality. It has no
conceivable motive in denying the existence or the significance of the
Ego-instincts while it investigates the part played by sexual instincts
in disease and in life generally. Only, psycho-analysis has been
destined to concern itself first and foremost with the sexual instincts,
because in the transference neuroses these are the most accessible to
investigation, and because it was obliged to study what others had
neglected.

It is not any more accurate to say that psycho-analysis has not occupied
itself at all with the non-sexual side of the personality. The very
distinction between the Ego and sexuality has shown us with particular
clearness that the Ego-instincts also undergo an important development
which is neither entirely independent of the development of the Libido
nor without influence upon the latter. We certainly understand the
development of the Ego much less well than the development of the
Libido, because it is only by the study of the narcissistic neuroses
that we have just reached some hope of insight into the structure of the
Ego. Nevertheless, we have already a notable attempt on the part of
Ferenczi[48] to reconstruct theoretically the developmental stages of
the Ego; and there are at least two points at which we have a secure
foothold from which to examine this development further. We are not at
all disposed to think that the libidinal interests of a human being are
from the outset in opposition to the interests of self-preservation; the
Ego is rather impelled at every stage to attempt to remain in harmony
with the corresponding stage of sexual organization and to accommodate
itself to that. The succession of the separate phases in the development
of the Libido probably follows a prescribed course; it is undeniable,
however, that this course may be influenced from the direction of the
Ego. A certain parallelism, a definite correspondence between the phases
in the two developments (of the Ego and of the Libido) may also be
assumed; indeed, a disturbance in this correspondence may become a
pathogenic factor. More important to us is the question how the Ego
behaves when the Libido has undergone a powerful fixation at an earlier
point in its development. The Ego may countenance the fixation and will
then be perverse to that extent, or, what is the same thing, infantile;
it may, however, hold itself averse from this attachment of Libido, the
result of which is that where the Libido undergoes a _fixation_ there
the Ego institutes an act of _repression_.

In this way we arrive at the conclusion that the third factor in the
ætiology of the neuroses, the susceptibility to conflict, is as much
connected with the development of the Ego as with the development of the
Libido; our insight into the causation of the neuroses is thus enlarged.
First, there is the most general condition of privation, then the
fixation of Libido (forcing it into particular channels), and thirdly,
the _susceptibility to conflict_ produced by the development of the Ego
having repudiated libidinal excitations of that particular kind. The
thing is therefore not so very obscure and intricate—as you probably
thought it during the course of my exposition. To be sure, though, after
all, we have not done with it yet; there is still something new to add
and something we already know to dissect further.

In order to demonstrate the effect of the development of the Ego upon
the tendency to conflict and therewith upon the causation of the
neurosis, I will quote an example which, although entirely imaginary, is
not at all improbable in any respect. I will give it the title of
Nestroy’s farce: _On the Ground-Floor and in the Mansion_. Suppose that
a caretaker is living on the ground-floor of a house, while the owner, a
rich and well-connected man, lives above. They both have children, and
we will assume that the owner’s little girl is permitted to play freely
without supervision with the child of lower social standing. It may then
very easily happen that their games become “naughty,” that is, take on a
sexual character: that they play “father and mother,” watch each other
in the performance of intimate acts, and stimulate each other’s genital
parts. The caretaker’s daughter may have played the temptress in this,
since in spite of her five or six years she has been able to learn a
great deal about sexual matters. These occurrences, even though they are
only kept up for a short period, will be enough to rouse certain sexual
excitations in both children which will come to expression in the
practice of masturbation for a few years, after the games have been
discontinued. There is common ground so far, but the final result will
be very different in the two children. The caretaker’s daughter will
continue masturbation, perhaps up to the onset of menstruation, and then
give it up without difficulty; a few years later will find a lover,
perhaps bear a child; choose this or that path in life, perhaps become a
popular actress and end as an aristocrat. Probably her career will turn
out less brilliantly, but in any case she will be unharmed by the
premature sexual activity, free from neurosis, and able to live her
life. Very different is the result in the other child. She will very
soon, while yet a child, acquire a sense of having done wrong; after a
fairly short time she will give up the masturbatory satisfaction, though
perhaps only with a tremendous struggle, but will nevertheless retain an
inner feeling of subdued depression. When later on as a young girl she
comes to learn something of sexual intercourse, she will turn from it
with inexplicable horror and wish to remain ignorant. Probably she will
then again suffer a fresh irresistible impulse to masturbation about
which she will not dare to unburden herself to anyone. When the time
comes for a man to choose her as a wife the neurosis will break out and
cheat her out of marriage and the joy of life. If analysis makes it
possible to obtain an insight into this neurosis, it will be found that
this well-broughtup, intelligent and idealistic girl has completely
repressed her sexual desires; but that they are, unconsciously, attached
to the few little experiences she had with the childish play-mate.

The differences which ensue in these two destinies in spite of the
common experiences undergone, arise because in one girl the Ego has
sustained a development absent in the other. To the caretaker’s daughter
sexual activity seemed as natural and harmless in later years as in
childhood. The gentleman’s daughter had been “well-brought-up” and had
adopted the standards of her education. Thus stimulated, her Ego had
formed ideals of womanly purity and absence of desire that were
incompatible with sexual acts; her intellectual training had caused her
to depreciate the feminine rôle for which she is intended. This higher
moral and intellectual development in her Ego has brought her into
conflict with the claims of her sexuality.

I will explore one more aspect of the development of the Libido to-day,
both because it leads out upon certain wide prospects, and also because
it is well-suited to justify the sharp, and not immediately obvious,
line of demarcation we are wont to draw between Ego-instincts and sexual
instincts. In considering the two developments undergone by the Ego and
by the Libido we must emphasize an aspect which hitherto has received
little attention. Both of them are at bottom inheritances, abbreviated
repetitions of the evolution undergone by the whole human race through
long-drawn-out periods and from prehistoric ages. In the development of
the Libido this phylogenetic origin is readily apparent, I should
suppose. Think how in one class of animals the genital apparatus is in
closest relation with the mouth, in another it is indistinguishable from
the excretory mechanism, in another it is part of the organs of
motility; you will find a delightful description of these facts in W.
Bölsche’s valuable book. One sees in animals all the various
perversions, ingrained, so to speak, in the form taken by their sexual
organizations. Now the phylogenetic aspect is to some extent obscured in
man by the circumstance that what is fundamentally inherited is
nevertheless individually acquired anew, probably because the same
conditions that originally induced its acquisition still prevail and
exert their influence upon each individual. I would say, where they
originally created a new response they now stimulate a predisposition.
Apart from this, it is unquestionable that the course of the prescribed
development in each individual can be disturbed and altered by current
impressions from without. But the power which has enforced this
development upon mankind, and still to-day maintains its pressure in the
same course, is known to us; it is, again, the privation exacted by
reality; or, if we give it its great real name, it is _Necessity_, the
struggle for life, _’ANATKH_. Necessity has been a severe task-mistress,
and she has taught us a great deal. Neurotics are those of her children
upon whom this severity has had evil effects, but that risk is
inevitable in any education. Incidentally, this view of the struggle for
existence as the motive force in evolution need not detract from the
significance of “inner evolutionary tendencies,” if such are found to
exist.

Now it is very noteworthy that sexual instincts and self-preservative
instincts do not behave alike when confronted with the necessity of real
life. The self-preservative instincts and all that hangs together with
them are more easily moulded; they learn early to conform to necessity
and to adapt their development according to the mandates of reality.
This is comprehensible, for they cannot obtain the objects they require
by any other means, and without these objects the individual must
perish. The sexual instincts are less easily moulded; for in the
beginning they do not know any lack of objects. Since they are connected
parasitically, as it were, with the other physical functions and at the
same time can be auto-erotically gratified on their own body, they are
at first isolated from the educative influence of real necessity; and in
most people they retain throughout life, in some respect or other, this
character of obstinacy and inaccessibility to influence which we call
“unreasonableness.” Moreover, the educability of a young person as a
rule comes to an end when sexual desire breaks out in its final
strength. Educators know this and act accordingly; but perhaps they will
yet allow themselves to be influenced by the results of psycho-analysis
so that they will transfer the main emphasis in education to the
earliest years of childhood, from the suckling period onward. The little
human being is frequently a finished product in his fourth or fifth
year, and only gradually reveals in later years what lies buried in him.

To appreciate the full significance of this difference between the two
groups of instincts we must digress some distance, and include one of
those aspects which deserve to be called _economic_; we enter here upon
one of the most important, but unfortunately one of the most obscure,
territories of psycho-analysis. We may put the question whether a main
purpose is discernible in the operation of the mental apparatus; and our
first approach to an answer is that this purpose is directed to the
attainment of pleasure. It seems that our entire psychical activity is
bent upon _procuring pleasure_ and _avoiding pain_, that it is
automatically regulated by the PLEASURE-PRINCIPLE. Now of all things in
the world we should like to know what are the conditions giving rise to
pleasure and pain, but that is just where we fall short. We may only
venture to say that pleasure is _in some way_ connected with lessening,
lowering, or extinguishing the amount of stimulation present in the
mental apparatus; and that pain involves a heightening of the latter.
Consideration of the most intense pleasure of which man is capable, the
pleasure in the performance of the sexual act, leaves little doubt upon
this point. Since pleasurable processes of this kind are bound up with
the distribution of quantities of mental excitation and energy, we term
considerations of this kind _economic_ ones. It appears that we can
describe the tasks and performances of the mental apparatus in another
way and more generally than by emphasizing the attainment of pleasure.
We can say that the mental apparatus serves the purpose of mastering and
discharging the masses of supervening stimuli, the quantities of energy.
It is quite plain that the sexual instincts pursue the aim of
gratification from the beginning to the end of their development;
throughout they keep up this primary function without alteration. At
first the other group, the Ego-instincts, do the same; but under the
influence of necessity, their mistress, they soon learn to replace the
pleasure-principle by a modification of it. The task of avoiding pain
becomes for them almost equal in importance to that of gaining pleasure;
the Ego learns that it must inevitably go without immediate
satisfaction, postpone gratification, learn to endure a degree of pain,
and altogether renounce certain sources of pleasure. Thus trained, the
Ego becomes “reasonable,” is no longer controlled by the
pleasure-principle, but follows the REALITY-PRINCIPLE, which at bottom
also seeks pleasure—although a delayed and diminished pleasure, one
which is assured by its realization of fact, its relation to reality.

The transition from the pleasure-principle to the reality-principle is
one of the most important advances in the development of the Ego. We
already know that the sexual instincts follow late and unwillingly
through this stage; presently we shall learn what the consequences are
to man that his sexuality is satisfied with such a slight hold upon
external reality. And now in conclusion one more observation relevant in
this connection. If the Ego in mankind has its evolution like the
Libido, you will not be surprised to hear that there exist
‘Ego-regressions’ too, and will wish to know the part this reversion of
the Ego to earlier stages in development can play in neurotic disease.




                          TWENTY-THIRD LECTURE
                     THE PATHS OF SYMPTOM-FORMATION


In the eyes of the general public the symptoms are the essence of a
disease, and to them a cure means the removal of the symptoms. In
medicine, however, we find it important to differentiate between
symptoms and disease, and state that the disappearance of the symptoms
is by no means the same as the cure of the disease. The only tangible
element of the disease that remains after the removal of the symptoms,
however, is the capacity to form new symptoms. Therefore for the moment
let us adopt the lay point of view and regard a knowledge of the
foundation of the symptoms as equivalent to understanding the disease.

The symptoms—of course we are here dealing with mental (or psychogenic)
symptoms, and mental disease—are activities which are detrimental, or at
least useless, to life as a whole; the person concerned frequently
complains of them as obnoxious to him or they involve distress and
suffering for him. The principal injury they inflict lies in the expense
of mental energy they entail and, besides this, in the energy needed to
combat them. Where the symptoms are extensively developed, these two
kinds of effort may exact such a price that the person suffers a very
serious impoverishment in available mental energy, which consequently
disables him for all the important tasks of life. This result depends
principally upon the amount of energy taken up in this way, therefore
you will see that “illness” is essentially a practical conception. But
if you look at the matter from a theoretical point of view and ignore
this question of degree you can very well say that we are all ill, i.e.
neurotic; for the conditions required for symptom-formation are
demonstrable also in normal persons.

Of neurotic symptoms we already know that they are the result of a
conflict arising when a new form of satisfaction of Libido is sought.
The two powers which have entered into opposition meet together again in
the symptom and become reconciled by means of the _compromise_ contained
in symptom-formation. That is why the symptom is capable of such
resistance; it is sustained from both sides. We also know that one of
the two partners to the conflict is the unsatisfied Libido, frustrated
by reality and now forced to seek other paths to satisfaction. If
reality remains inexorable, even when the Libido is prepared to take
another object in place of that denied, the Libido will then finally be
compelled to resort to regression, and to seek satisfaction in one of
the organizations it had already surmounted or in one of the objects it
had relinquished earlier. The Libido is drawn into the path of
regression by the fixations it has left behind it at these places in its
development.

Now the path of perversion branches off sharply from that of neurosis.
If these regressions do not call forth a prohibition on the part of
the Ego, no neurosis results; the Libido succeeds in obtaining a real,
although not a normal, satisfaction. But if the Ego, which controls
not merely consciousness but also the approaches to motor innervation
and hence the realization in actuality of mental impulses, is not in
agreement with these regressions, conflict ensues. The Libido is
turned off, blocked, as it were, and must seek an escape by which it
can find an outlet for its ‘_charge of energy_’ in conformity with the
demands of the pleasure-principle: it must elude, eschew the Ego. The
fixations upon the path of development now regressively
traversed—fixations against which the Ego had previously guarded
itself by repressions—offer just such an escape. In streaming backward
and re-‘investing’ these repressed ‘positions,’ the Libido withdraws
itself from the Ego and its laws; but it also abandons all the
training acquired under the influence of the Ego. It was docile as
long as satisfaction was in sight; under the double pressure of
external and internal privation it becomes intractable and harks back
to former happier days. That is its essential unchangeable character.
The ideas to which the Libido now transfers its ‘charge of energy’
belong to the unconscious system and are subject to the special
processes characteristic of that system—namely, condensation and
displacement. Conditions are thus set up which correspond exactly with
those of dream-formation. Just as the latent dream, first formed in
the Unconscious out of the thoughts proper, and constituting the
fulfilment of an unconscious wish-phantasy, meets with some
(pre)conscious activity which exerts a censorship upon it and permits,
according to its verdict, the formation of a compromise in the
manifest dream, so the ideas to which the Libido is attached
(‘libido-representatives’) in the Unconscious have still to contend
with the power of the preconscious Ego. The opposition that has arisen
against it in the Ego follows it as a ‘_counter__charge_’ and forces
it to adopt a form of expression by which the opposing forces also can
at the same time express themselves. In this way the symptom then
comes into being, as a derivative, distorted in manifold ways, of the
unconscious libidinal wish-fulfilment, as a cleverly chosen ambiguity
with two completely contradictory significations. In this last point
alone is there a difference between dream-formation and
symptom-formation; for the preconscious purpose in dream-formation is
merely to preserve sleep and to allow nothing that would disturb it to
penetrate consciousness; it does not insist upon confronting the
unconscious wish-impulse with a sharp prohibiting “No, on the
contrary.” It can be more tolerant because a sleeping person is in a
less dangerous position; the condition of sleep is enough in itself to
prevent the wish from being realized in actuality.

You see that this escape of the Libido under the conditions of conflict
is rendered possible by the existence of fixations. The regressive
investment (with Libido) of these fixations leads to a circumventing of
the repressions and to a discharge—or a satisfaction—of the Libido, in
which the conditions of a compromise have nevertheless to be maintained.
By this détour through the Unconscious and the old fixations the Libido
finally succeeds in attaining to a real satisfaction, though the
satisfaction is certainly of an exceedingly restricted kind and hardly
recognizable as such. Let me add two remarks on this outcome. First,
will you notice how closely connected the Libido and the Unconscious, on
the one hand, and the Ego, consciousness, and reality, on the other,
show themselves to be, although there were no such connections between
them originally; and secondly, let me tell you that all I have said and
have still to say on this point concerns the neurosis of hysteria only.

Where does the Libido find the fixations it needs in order to break
through the repressions? In the activities and experiences of infantile
sexuality, in the component-tendencies and the objects of childhood
which have been relinquished and abandoned. It is to them, therefore,
that the Libido turns back. The significance of childhood is a double
one; on the one hand the congenitally-determined instinct-dispositions
are first shown at that time, and secondly, other instincts are then
first awakened and activated by external influences and accidental
events experienced. In my opinion we are quite justified in laying down
this dichotomy. That the innate predisposition comes to expression will
certainly not be disputed; but analytic observation even requires us to
assume that purely accidental experiences in childhood are capable of
inducing fixations of Libido. Nor do I see any theoretical difficulty in
this. Constitutional predispositions are undoubtedly the after-effects
of the experiences of an earlier ancestry; they also have been at one
time acquired; without such acquired characters there would be no
heredity. And is it conceivable that the acquisition of characters which
will be transmitted further should suddenly cease in the generation
which is being observed to-day? The importance of the infantile
experiences should not, however, be entirely overlooked, as so often
happens, in favour of ancestral experiences or of experiences in adult
life; but on the contrary they should be particularly appreciated. They
are all the more pregnant with consequences because they occur at a time
of uncompleted development, and for this very reason are likely to have
a traumatic effect. The work done by Roux and others on the mechanism of
development has shown that a needle pricked into an embryonic cell-mass
undergoing division results in serious disturbances of the development;
the same injury to a larva or a full-grown animal would be innocuous.

The Libido-fixation of an adult, which we have referred to as
representing the constitutional factor in the ætiology of the neuroses,
may therefore now be divided into two further elements: the inherited
predisposition and the predisposition acquired in early childhood. Since
a schematic mode of presentation is always acceptable to a student, let
us formulate these relations as follows:

 _Causation of               Predisposition                + Accidental
  Neurosis_ =                resulting from                (_traumatic_)
                             Libido-fixation                Experiences
                           ↙                 ↘
               ————————————                  ————————————
                     ↓                             ↓
                  Sexual                       Infantile
               Constitution                   Experiences
                (_Ancestral
               experiences_)

The hereditary sexual constitution provides a great variety of
predispositions, according as this or that component-impulse, alone or
in combination with others, is specially strongly accentuated. Together
with the infantile experiences the sexual constitution forms another
‘complemental series,’ quite similar to that already described as being
formed out of the predisposition and accidental experiences of an adult.
In each series similar extreme cases are met with, and also similar
degrees and relationships between the factors concerned. It would be
appropriate at this point to consider whether the most striking of the
two kinds of Libido-regression (that which reverts to earlier stages of
sexual organization) is not predominantly conditioned by the hereditary
constitutional factor; but the answer to this question is best postponed
until a wider range of forms of neurotic disease can be considered.

Now let us devote attention to the fact that analytic investigation
shows the Libido of neurotics to be attached to their infantile sexual
experiences. In this light these experiences seem to be of enormous
importance in the lives and illnesses of mankind. This importance
remains undiminished in so far as the therapeutic work of analysis is
concerned; but regarded from another point of view it is easy to see
that there is a danger of a misunderstanding here, one which might
delude us into regarding life too exclusively from the angle of the
situation in neurotics. The importance of the infantile experiences is
after all diminished by the reflection that the Libido reverts
regressively to them _after_ it has been driven from its later
positions. This would lead us towards the opposite conclusion, that the
Libido-experiences had no importance at the time of their occurrence,
but only acquired it later by regression. You will remember that we
discussed a similar alternative before, in dealing with the Oedipus
complex.

To decide this point is again not difficult. The statement is
undoubtedly correct that regression greatly augments the investment of
the infantile experiences with Libido—and with that their pathogenic
significance; but it would be misleading to allow this alone to become
decisive. Other considerations must be taken into account as well. To
begin with, observation shows in a manner excluding all doubt that
infantile experiences have their own importance which is demonstrated
already during childhood. There are, indeed, neuroses in children too;
in their neuroses the factor of displacement backwards in time is
necessarily much diminished, or quite absent, the outbreak of illness
following immediately upon a traumatic experience. The study of
infantile neuroses guards us from many risks of misunderstanding the
neuroses of adults, just as children’s dreams gave us the key to
comprehension of the dreams of adults. Neurosis in children is very
common, far more common than is usually supposed. It is often
overlooked, regarded as a manifestation of bad behaviour or naughtiness,
and often subdued by the authorities in the nursery; but in retrospect
it is always easily recognizable. It appears most often in the form of
anxiety-hysteria; we shall learn what that means on another occasion.
When a neurosis breaks out in later life analysis invariably reveals it
to be a direct continuation of that infantile neurosis, which had
perhaps been expressed in a veiled and incipient form only; as has been
said, however, there are cases in which the childish nervousness is
carried on into lifelong illness without a break. In a few instances we
have been able to analyse a child actually in a condition of neurosis;
far more often we have had to be satisfied with the retrospective
insight into a childhood-neurosis that can be gained through someone who
has fallen ill in mature years, a situation in which due corrections and
precautions must not be neglected.

In the second place, it would certainly be inexplicable that the Libido
should regress so regularly to the time of childhood if there had been
nothing there which could exert an attraction upon it. The fixation upon
certain stages of development, which we assume, only has meaning if we
regard it as attaching to itself a definite amount of libidinal energy.
Finally, I may point out that a complemental relationship exists here
between the intensity and pathogenic importance of the _infantile_ and
of the _later_ experiences, again a similar relationship to that found
in the other two series we have already studied. There are cases in
which the whole accent of causation falls on the sexual experiences in
childhood; cases in which these impressions undoubtedly had a traumatic
effect, nothing more than the average sexual constitution and its
immaturity being required to supplement them. Then there are others in
which all the accent lies on the later conflicts, and the analytic
emphasis upon the childhood-impressions seems to be the effect of
regression alone. There exist, therefore, the two extremes—‘inhibited
development’ and ‘regression’—and between them every degree of
combination of the two factors.

This state of things has a certain interest for those looking to
pedagogy for the prevention of neuroses by early intervention in the
matter of the child’s sexual development. As long as attention is
directed mainly to the infantile sexual experiences one would think
everything in the way of prophylaxis of later neurosis could be done by
ensuring that this development should be retarded and the child secured
against this kind of experience. But we know that the conditions causing
neurosis are more complicated than this and that they cannot be
influenced in a general way by attending to one factor only. Strict
supervision in childhood loses value because it is helpless against the
constitutional factor; more than this, it is less easy to carry out than
specialists in education imagine; and it entails two new risks, which
are not to be lightly disregarded. It may accomplish too much; in that
it favours an exaggerated degree of sexual repression which is harmful
in its effects, and it sends the child into life without power to resist
the urgent demands of his sexuality that must be expected at puberty. It
therefore remains most doubtful how far prophylaxis in childhood can go
with advantage, and whether a changed attitude to actuality would not
constitute a better point of departure for attempts to forestall the
neuroses.

Let us return to consideration of the symptoms. They yield a
satisfaction in place of one lacking in reality; they achieve this by
means of a regression of the Libido to a previous time of life, with
which regression is indissolubly connected, a reversion to earlier
phases in the object-choice or in the organization. We learned some time
ago that the neurotic is in some way _tied_ to a period in his past
life; we know now that this period in the past is one in which his
Libido could attain satisfaction, one in which he was happy. He looks
back on his life-story, seeking some such period, and goes on seeking
it, even if he must go back to the time when he was a suckling infant to
find it according to his recollection or his imagination of it under
later influences. In some way the symptom reproduces that early
infantile way of satisfaction, disguised though it is by the censorship
implicit in the conflict, converted as it usually is into a sensation of
suffering, and mingled with elements drawn from the experiences leading
up to the outbreak of the illness. The kind of satisfaction which the
symptom brings has much about it which estranges us, quite apart from
the fact that the person concerned is unaware of the satisfaction and
perceives this that we call satisfaction much more as suffering, and
complains of it. This transformation belongs to the mental conflict, by
the pressure of which the symptom had to be formed; what was at one time
a satisfaction must to-day arouse resistance or horror in him. We are
familiar with a simple but instructive instance of such a change of
feeling: the same child that sucked milk with voracity from its mother’s
breast often shows, some years later, a strong dislike of milk which can
with difficulty be overcome by training; this dislike is intensified to
the point of horror if the milk or any other kind of liquid containing
it has a skin formed upon it. It is possible that this skin calls up
reverberations of a memory of the mother’s breast, once so ardently
desired; it is true that the traumatic experience of weaning has
intervened meanwhile.

There is still something else which makes the symptoms seem remarkable
and inexplicable as a means of libidinal satisfaction. They so entirely
fail to remind us of all that we are accustomed normally to connect with
satisfaction. They are mostly quite independent of an object and thus
have given up a relation to external reality. We understand this as a
consequence of the rejection of the reality-principle and the return to
the pleasure-principle; it is also, however, a return to a kind of
amplified auto-erotism, the kind which offered the sexual instinct its
first gratifications. In the place of effecting a change in the outer
world they set up a change in the body itself; that is, an internal
action instead of an external one, an adaptation instead of an
activity—from a phylogenetic point of view again a very significant
regression. We shall understand this better when we consider it in
connection with a new factor yet to be learnt from among those which
analytic research has yielded in regard to symptom-formation. Further,
we remember that in symptom-formation the same unconscious processes are
at work as in dream-formation, namely, condensation and displacement.
Like the dream, the symptom represents something as fulfilled, a
satisfaction infantile in character; but by the utmost condensation this
satisfaction can be compressed into a single sensation or innervation,
or by farthest displacement can be whittled away to a tiny detail out of
the entire libidinal complex. It is no wonder that we often find it
difficult to recognize in the symptom the libidinal satisfaction which
we suspect and can always verify in it.

I have indicated that we have still to learn of a new element; it is
really something most surprising and bewildering. You know that from
analysis of symptoms we arrive at a knowledge of the infantile
experiences to which the Libido is fixated and out of which the symptoms
are made up. Now the astonishing thing is that these scenes of infancy
are not always true. Indeed, in the majority of cases they are untrue,
and in some cases they are in direct opposition to historical truth. You
will see that this discovery is more likely than any other to discredit
either the analysis which leads to such results, or the patient, upon
whose testimony the analysis and comprehension of the neuroses as a
whole is built up. There is besides this still something utterly
bewildering about it. If the infantile experiences brought to light by
the analysis were in every case real we should have the feeling that we
were on firm ground; if they were invariably falsified and found to be
inventions and phantasies of the patient’s we should have to forsake
this insecure foothold and save ourselves some other way. But it is
neither one thing nor the other; for what we find is that the
childhood-experiences reconstructed or recollected in analysis are on
some occasions undeniably false, while others are just as certainly
quite true, and that in most cases truth and falsehood are mixed up. So
the symptoms are thus at one minute reproductions of experiences which
actually took place and which one can credit with an influence on the
fixation of the Libido; and at the next a reproduction of phantasies of
the patient’s to which, of course, it is difficult to ascribe any
ætiological significance. It is hard to find one’s way here. We may
perhaps find our first clue in a discovery of a similar kind, namely,
that the meagre childish recollections which people have always, long
before analysis, consciously preserved can be falsified in the same way,
or at least can contain a generous admixture of truth and falsehood;
evidence of error in them is nearly always plainly visible, and so we
have at least the reassurance that not the analysis, but the patient in
some way, must bear the responsibility for this unexpected
disappointment.

After a little reflection we can easily understand what it is that is so
bewildering in this matter. It is the depreciation of reality, the
neglect of the difference between reality and phantasy; we are tempted
to be offended with the patient for taking up our time with invented
stories. According to our way of thinking heaven and earth are not
farther apart than fiction from reality, and we value the two quite
differently. The patient himself, incidentally, takes the same attitude
when he is thinking normally. When he brings forward the material that
leads us to the wished-for situations (which underlie the symptoms and
are formed upon the childhood-experiences), we are certainly in doubt at
first whether we have to deal with reality or with phantasies. Decision
on this point becomes possible later by means of certain indications,
and we are then confronted with the task of making this result known to
the patient. This is never accomplished without difficulty. If we tell
him at the outset that he is now about to bring to light the phantasies
in which he has shrouded the history of his childhood, just as every
race weaves myths about its forgotten early history, we observe to our
dissatisfaction that his interest in pursuing the subject further
suddenly declines—he also wishes to find out facts and despises what is
called “imagination.” But if we leave him to believe until this part of
the work has been carried through that we are investigating the real
events of his early years, we run the risk of being charged with the
mistake later and of being laughed at for our apparent gullibility. It
takes him a long time to understand the proposal that phantasy and
reality are to be treated alike and that it is to begin with of no
account whether the childhood-experiences under consideration belong to
the one class or to the other. And yet this is obviously the only
correct attitude towards these products of his mind. They have indeed
also a kind of reality; it is a fact that the patient has created these
phantasies, and for the neurosis this fact is hardly less important than
the other—if he had really experienced what they contain. In contrast to
_material_ reality these phantasies possess _psychical_ reality, and we
gradually come to understand that _in the world of neurosis_ PSYCHICAL
REALITY _is the determining factor_.

Among the occurrences which continually recur in the story of a
neurotic’s childhood, and seem hardly ever absent, are some of
particular significance which I therefore consider worthy of special
attention. As models of this type I will enumerate: observation of
parental intercourse, seduction by an adult, and the threat of
castration. It would be a great mistake to suppose that they never occur
in reality; on the contrary, they are often confirmed beyond doubt by
the testimony of older relatives. Thus, for example, it is not at all
uncommon for a little boy, who is beginning to play with his penis and
has not yet learnt that he must conceal such activities, to be
threatened by parents or nurses that his member or his offending hand
will be cut off. Parents will often admit the fact on being questioned,
since they imagine that such intimidation was the right course to take;
many people have a clear conscious recollection of this threat,
especially if it took place in later childhood. If the mother or some
other woman makes the threat she usually shifts the execution of it to
someone else, indicating that the father or the doctor will perform the
deed. In the famous _Struwelpeter_ by the Frankfort physician for
children, Hoffmann, which owes its popularity precisely to his
understanding of the sexual and other complexes of children, you will
find the castration idea modified and replaced by cutting off the thumbs
as a punishment for stubborn sucking of them. It is, however, highly
improbable that the threat of castration has been delivered as often as
would appear from the analysis of a neurotic. We are content to
understand that the child concocts a threat of this kind out of its
knowledge that auto-erotic satisfactions are forbidden, on the basis of
hints and allusions, and influenced by the impression received on
discovering the female genital organ. Similarly, it is not at all
impossible that a small child, credited as he is with no understanding
and no memory, may be witness of the sexual act on the part of his
parents or other adults in other families besides those of the
proletariat; and there is reason to think that the child can
_subsequently_ understand the impression received and react to it. But
when this act of intercourse is described with minute details which can
hardly have been observed, or when it appears, as it most frequently
does, to have been performed from behind, _more ferarum_, there can be
little doubt that this phantasy has grown out of the observation of
copulating animals (dogs) and that its motive force lies in the
unsatisfied skoptophilia (gazing-impulse) of the child during puberty.
The greatest feat achieved by this kind of phantasy is that of observing
parental intercourse while still unborn in the mother’s womb.

The phantasy of seduction has special interest, because only too often
it is no phantasy but a real remembrance; fortunately, however, it is
still not as often real as it seemed at first from the results of
analysis. Seduction by children of the same age or older is more
frequent than by adults; and when girls who bring forward this event in
the story of their childhood fairly regularly introduce the father as
the seducer, neither the phantastic character of this accusation nor the
motive actuating it can be doubted. When no seduction has occurred, the
phantasy is usually employed to cover the childhood period of
auto-erotic sexual activity; the child evades feelings of shame about
onanism by retrospectively attributing in phantasy a desired object to
the earliest period. Do not suppose, however, that sexual misuse of
children by the nearest male relatives is entirely derived from the
world of phantasy; most analysts will have treated cases in which such
occurrences actually took place and could be established beyond doubt;
only even then they belonged to later years of childhood and had been
transposed to an earlier time.

All this seems to lead to but one impression, that childhood experiences
of this kind are in some way necessarily required by the neurosis, that
they belong to its unvarying inventory. If they can be found in real
events, well and good; but if reality has not supplied them they will be
evolved out of hints and elaborated by phantasy. The effect is the same,
and even to-day we have not succeeded in tracing any variation in the
results according as phantasy or reality plays the greater part in these
experiences. Here again is one of those complemental series so often
referred to already; it is certainly the strangest of all those we have
encountered. Whence comes the necessity for these phantasies, and the
material for them? There can be no doubt about the instinctive sources;
but how is it to be explained that the same phantasies are always formed
with the same content? I have an answer to this which I know will seem
to you very daring. I believe that these _primal phantasies_ (as I
should like to name these, and certainly some others also) are a
phylogenetic possession. In them the individual, wherever his own
experience has become insufficient, stretches out beyond it to the
experience of past ages. It seems to me quite possible that all that
to-day is narrated in analysis in the form of phantasy, seduction in
childhood, stimulation of sexual excitement upon observation of parental
coitus, the threat of castration—or rather, castration itself—was in
prehistoric periods of the human family a reality; and that the child in
its phantasy simply fills out the gaps in its true individual
experiences with true prehistoric experiences. We have again and again
been led to suspect that more knowledge of the primordial forms of human
development is stored up for us in the psychology of the neuroses than
in any other field we may explore.

Now these things that we have been discussing require us to consider
more closely the origin and meaning of that mental activity called
“phantasy-making.” In general, as you know, it enjoys high esteem,
although its place in mental life has not been clearly understood. I can
tell you as much as this about it. You know that the Ego in man is
gradually trained by the influence of external necessity to appreciate
reality and to pursue the reality-principle, and that in so doing it
must renounce temporarily or permanently various of the objects and
aims—not only sexual—of its desire for pleasure. But renunciation of
pleasure has always been very hard to man; he cannot accomplish it
without some kind of compensation. Accordingly he has evolved for
himself a mental activity in which all these relinquished sources of
pleasure and abandoned paths of gratification are permitted to continue
their existence, a form of existence in which they are free from the
demands of reality and from what we call the exercise of ‘testing
reality.’ Every longing is soon transformed into the idea of its
fulfilment; there is no doubt that dwelling upon a wish-fulfilment in
phantasy brings satisfaction, although the knowledge that it is not
reality remains thereby unobscured. In phantasy, therefore, man can
continue to enjoy a freedom from the grip of the external world, one
which he has long relinquished in actuality. He has contrived to be
alternately a pleasure-seeking animal and a reasonable being; for the
meagre satisfaction that he can extract from reality leaves him
starving. “There is no doing without accessory constructions,” said
Fontane. The creation of the mental domain of phantasy has a complete
counterpart in the establishment of “reservations” and “nature-parks” in
places where the inroads of agriculture, traffic, or industry threaten
to change the original face of the earth rapidly into something
unrecognizable. The “reservation” is to maintain the old condition of
things which has been regretfully sacrificed to necessity everywhere
else; there everything may grow and spread as it pleases, including what
is useless and even what is harmful. The mental realm of phantasy is
also such a reservation reclaimed from the encroaches of the
reality-principle.

The best-known productions of phantasy have already been met by us; they
are called day-dreams, and are imaginary gratifications of ambitious,
grandiose, erotic wishes, dilating the more extravagantly the more
reality admonishes humility and patience. In them is shown unmistakably
the essence of imaginary happiness, the return of gratification to a
condition in which it is independent of reality’s sanction. We know that
these day-dreams are the kernels and models of night-dreams;
fundamentally the night-dream is nothing but a day-dream distorted by
the nocturnal form of mental activity and made possible by the nocturnal
freedom of instinctive excitations. We are already familiar with the
idea that a day-dream is not necessarily conscious, that unconscious
day-dreams also exist; such unconscious day-dreams are therefore just as
much the source of night-dreams as of neurotic symptoms.

The significance of phantasy for symptom-formation will become clear to
you in what follows. We said that under privation the Libido
regressively invests the positions it had left, but to which
nevertheless some portions of its energy had remained attached. We shall
not retract or correct this statement, but we shall have to interpolate
a connecting-link in it. How does the Libido find its way back to these
fixation-points? Now the objects and channels which have been forsaken
by the Libido have not been forsaken in every sense; they, or their
derivatives, are still retained to some degree of intensity in the
conceptions of phantasy. The Libido has only to withdraw on to the
phantasies in order to find the way open to it back to all the repressed
fixations. These phantasies had enjoyed a certain sort of toleration; no
conflict between them and the Ego had developed, however sharp an
opposition there was between them, as long as a certain condition was
preserved—a condition of a _quantitative_ nature, now disturbed by the
return of the Libido-stream on to the phantasies. By this accession, the
investment of the phantasies with energy becomes so much augmented that
they become assertive and begin to press towards realization; then,
however, conflict between them and the Ego becomes unavoidable. Although
previously they were preconscious or conscious, now they are subject to
repression from the side of the Ego and are exposed to the attraction
exerted from the side of the Unconscious. The Libido travels from the
phantasies, now unconscious, to their sources in the Unconscious—back to
its own fixation-points again.

The return of the Libido on to phantasy is an intermediate step on the
way to symptom-formation which well deserves a special designation. C.
G. Jung has coined for it the very appropriate name of INTROVERSION, but
inappropriately he uses it also to describe other things. We will adhere
to the position that _introversion_ describes the deflection of the
Libido away from the possibilities of real satisfaction and its
excessive accumulation upon phantasies previously tolerated as harmless.
An introverted person is not yet neurotic, but he is in an unstable
condition; the next disturbance of the shifting forces will cause
symptoms to develop, unless he can yet find other outlets for his
pent-up Libido. The unreal character of neurotic satisfaction and the
disregard of the difference between phantasy and reality are already
determined by the delay at this stage of introversion.

You will doubtless have noticed that in these last remarks I have
introduced a new factor into the concatenation of the ætiological
chain—namely, the _quantity_, the magnitude of the energies concerned;
we must always take this factor into account as well. A purely
qualitative analysis of the ætiological conditions does not suffice; or,
to put it in another way, a purely _dynamic_ conception of these
processes is insufficient, the _economic_ aspect is also required. We
have to realize that the conflict between the two forces in opposition
does not break out until a certain intensity in the degree of investment
is reached, even though the substantive conditions have long been in
existence. In the same way, the pathogenic significance of the
constitutional factor is determined by the preponderance of one of the
component-instincts in _excess_ over another in the disposition; it is
even possible to conceive disposition as qualitatively the same in all
men and only differentiated by this quantitative factor. No less
important is this quantitative factor for the capacity to withstand
neurotic illness; it depends upon the _amount_ of undischarged Libido
that a person can hold freely suspended, and upon _how large_ a portion
of it he can deflect from the sexual to a non-sexual goal in
sublimation. The final aim of mental activity, which can be
qualitatively described as a striving towards pleasure and avoidance of
pain, is represented economically in the task of mastering the
distribution of the quantities of excitation (stimulus-masses) present
in the mental apparatus, and in preventing the accumulation of them
which gives rise to pain.

I set out to tell you as much as this about symptom-formation in the
neuroses. Yes, but I must not neglect to mention once more that
everything said to-day relates only to symptom-formation in hysteria.
Even the obsessional neurosis shows great differences, although the
essentials are the same. The ‘counter-charges’ from the Ego against the
demands made by instincts for satisfaction, mentioned already in
connection with hysteria, are more strongly marked in the obsessional
neurosis and govern the clinical picture in the form of what we call
‘reaction-formations.’ Similar and more extensive deviations still are
found in the other neuroses, in which field researches into the
mechanisms of symptom-formation are not yet complete in any direction.

Before you leave to-day I should like to direct your attention for a
moment to a side of phantasy-life of very general interest. There is, in
fact, a path from phantasy back again to reality, and that is—art. The
artist has also an introverted disposition and has not far to go to
become neurotic. He is one who is urged on by instinctive needs which
are too clamorous; he longs to attain to honour, power, riches, fame,
and the love of women; but he lacks the means of achieving these
gratifications. So, like any other with an unsatisfied longing, he turns
away from reality and transfers all his interest, and all his Libido
too, on to the creation of his wishes in the life of phantasy, from
which the way might readily lead to neurosis. There must be many factors
in combination to prevent this becoming the whole outcome of his
development; it is well known how often artists in particular suffer
from partial inhibition of their capacities through neurosis. Probably
their constitution is endowed with a powerful capacity for sublimation
and with a certain flexibility in the repressions determining the
conflict. But the way back to reality is found by the artist thus: He is
not the only one who has a life of phantasy; the intermediate world of
phantasy is sanctioned by general human consent, and every hungry soul
looks to it for comfort and consolation. But to those who are not
artists the gratification that can be drawn from the springs of phantasy
is very limited; their inexorable repressions prevent the enjoyment of
all but the meagre day-dreams which can become conscious. A true artist
has more at his disposal. First of all he understands how to elaborate
his day-dreams, so that they lose that personal note which grates upon
strange ears and become enjoyable to others; he knows too how to modify
them sufficiently so that their origin in prohibited sources is not
easily detected. Further, he possesses the mysterious ability to mould
his particular material until it expresses the ideas of his phantasy
faithfully; and then he knows how to attach to this reflection of his
phantasy-life so strong a stream of pleasure that, for a time at least,
the repressions are out-balanced and dispelled by it. When he can do all
this, he opens out to others the way back to the comfort and consolation
of their own unconscious sources of pleasure, and so reaps their
gratitude and admiration; then he has won—through his phantasy—what
before he could only win in phantasy: honour, power, and the love of
women.




                         TWENTY-FOURTH LECTURE
                          ORDINARY NERVOUSNESS


After such a difficult piece of work as we got through in our last
lecture I shall leave the subject for a time and turn to my audience.

For I know that you are dissatisfied. You imagined that _Introductory
Lectures on Psycho-Analysis_ would be something quite different. You
expected illustrations from life instead of theories; you will tell me
that the story of the two children, on the ground-floor and in the
mansion, revealed something of the causation of neurosis to you, except
that it ought to have been an actual fact instead of an invention of my
own. Or you will say that, when at the beginning I described two
symptoms to you (not also imaginary, let us hope), and unfolded the
solution of them and their connection with the lives of the patients, it
threw some light on the meaning of symptoms, and you had hoped I would
continue in the same way. Instead of doing so I gave you long-drawn-out
and very obscure theories which were never complete, and to which I was
constantly adding something; I dealt with conceptions which I had not
yet introduced to you; I let go of descriptive explanation and took up
the dynamic aspect and dropped this again for a so-called economic one;
made it difficult for you to understand how many of these technical
terms mean the same thing and are only exchanged for one another on
account of euphony; I let vast conceptions, such as those of the
pleasure and reality principles, and the inherited residue of
phylogenetic development, appear, and then instead of explaining
anything to you I let them drift away before your eyes out of sight.

Why did I not begin the introduction to the study of the neuroses with
what you all know of nervousness, a thing that has long roused your
interest, or with the peculiar nature of nervous persons, their
incomprehensible reactions to human intercourse and external influences,
their excitability, their unreliability, and their inability to do well
in anything? Why not lead you step by step from an explanation of the
simple everyday forms of nervousness to the problems of the enigmatic
extreme manifestations?

Indeed, I cannot deny any of this or say that you are wrong. I am not so
much in love with my powers of presentation as to imagine that every
blemish in it is a peculiar charm. I think myself that I might with
advantage to you have proceeded differently, and, indeed, such was my
intention. But one cannot always carry through a reasoned scheme;
something in the material itself often intervenes and takes possession
of one and turns one from one’s first intentions. Even such an ordinary
task as the arrangement of familiar material is not entirely subject to
the author’s will; it comes out in its own way and one can but wonder
afterwards why it happened so and not otherwise.

One of the reasons probably is that my theme, an introduction to
psycho-analysis, no longer covers this section dealing with the subject
of the neuroses. The introduction to psycho-analysis lies in the study
of errors and of dreams; the theory of neurosis is psycho-analysis
itself. I do not think that in such a short time I could have given you
any knowledge of the material contained in the theory of the neuroses
except in this very concentrated form. It was a matter of presenting to
you in their proper context the sense and meaning of symptoms, together
with the external and internal conditions and mechanisms of
symptom-formation. This I attempted to do; it is more or less the core
of what psycho-analysis is able to offer to-day. In conjunction with it
there was much to be said about the Libido and its development, and
something about that of the Ego. You were already prepared by the
preliminary lectures for the main principles of our method and for the
broad aspects involved in the conceptions of the Unconscious and of
repression (resistance). In one of the following lectures you will learn
at what point the work of psycho-analysis finds its organic
continuation. So far I have not concealed from you that all our results
proceed from the study of one single group only of nervous
disorders—namely, the transference neuroses; and even so I have traced
out the mechanism of symptom-formation only in the hysterical neurosis.
Though you will probably have gained no very thorough knowledge and have
not retained every detail, yet I hope that you have acquired a general
idea of the means with which psycho-analysis works, the problems it has
to deal with, and the results it has to offer.

I have ascribed to you a wish that I had begun the subject of the
neuroses with a description of the neurotic’s behaviour, and of the ways
in which he suffers from his disorder, protects himself against it, and
adapts himself to it. This is certainly a very interesting subject, well
worth studying, and not difficult to treat; nevertheless there are
reasons against beginning with this aspect. The danger is that the
Unconscious will be overlooked, the great importance of the Libido
ignored, and that everything will be judged as it appears to the
patient’s own Ego. Now it is obvious that his Ego is not a reliable and
impartial authority. The Ego is after all the force which denies the
existence of the Unconscious and has subjected it to repressions; how
then can we trust its good faith where the Unconscious is concerned?
That which has been repressed consists first and foremost of the
repudiated claims of the sexuality; it is perfectly self-evident that we
shall never learn their extent and their significance from the Ego’s
view of the matter. As soon as the nature of repression begins to dawn
upon us we are advised not to allow one of the two contending parties,
and certainly not the victorious one, to be judge in the dispute. We are
forewarned against being misled by what the Ego tells us. According to
its evidence it would appear to have been the active force throughout,
so that the symptoms arise by its will and agency; we know that to a
large extent it has played a passive part, a fact which it then
endeavours to conceal and to gloss over. It is true that it cannot
always keep up this pretence—in the symptoms of the obsessional neurosis
it has to confess to being confronted by something alien which it must
strenuously resist.

It is certainly plain sailing enough for anyone who does not heed these
warnings against taking the falsifications of the Ego at their
face-value; he will escape all the opposition which psycho-analysis has
to encounter in accentuating the Unconscious, sexuality, and the
passivity of the Ego. He can agree with Alfred Adler that the “nervous
character” is the cause of the neurosis, instead of the result; but he
will not be in a position to account for a single detail of
symptom-formation or a single dream.

You will ask: May it not be possible to do justice to the part played by
the Ego in nervousness and in symptom-formation without absolutely
glaring neglect of the other factors discovered by psycho-analysis? I
reply: Certainly it must be possible, and some time or other it will be
done; but the work which lies at hand for psycho-analysis is not suited
for a beginning at this end. One can, no doubt, predict the point at
which this task also will be included. There are neuroses, called by us
the _narcissistic_ neuroses, in which the Ego is far more deeply
involved than in those we have studied; analytic investigation of these
disorders will enable us to estimate impartially and reliably the share
taken by the Ego in neurotic disease.

One of the relations the Ego bears to its neurosis is, however, so
conspicuous that it was quite appreciable from the beginning. It never
seems to be absent; but it is most clearly discernible in a form of
disorder which we are far from understanding, the traumatic neurosis.
You must know that in the causation and mechanism of all the various
different forms of neurosis the same factors are found at work over and
over again, only that in one type this factor and in another type that
factor is of greatest significance in symptom-formation. It is just the
same as with the personnel of a theatrical company, where every member
plays a special type of part—hero, confidant, villain, etc; each of them
will choose a different piece for his own benefit-performance. Hence,
the phantasies which are transformed into the symptoms are nowhere so
manifest as in hysteria; the ‘counter-charges’ or reaction-formations of
the Ego dominate the picture in the obsessional neurosis; the mechanism
which in dreams we called ‘secondary elaboration’ is the prominent
feature in the delusions of paranoia, and so on.

In the _traumatic neuroses_, especially in those arising from the
terrors of war, we are particularly impressed by a self-seeking,
egoistic motive, a straining towards protection and self-interest; this
alone perhaps could not produce the disease, but it gives its support to
the latter and maintains it once it has been formed. This tendency aims
at protecting the Ego from the dangers which led by their imminence to
the outbreak of illness; nor does it permit of recovery until a
repetition of the dangers appear to be no longer possible, or until some
gain in compensation for the danger undergone has been received.

The Ego takes a similar interest in the origin and maintenance of all
the other forms of neurosis; we have said already that the symptom is
supported by the Ego because one side of it offers a satisfaction to the
repressing Ego-tendency. More than this, a solution of the conflict by a
symptom-formation is the most convenient one, most in accordance with
the pleasure-principle; for it undoubtedly spares the Ego a severe and
painful piece of internal labour. There are indeed cases in which the
physician himself must admit that the solution of a conflict by a
neurosis is the one most harmless and most tolerable socially. Do not be
astonished to hear then that the physician himself occasionally takes
sides with the illness which he is attacking. It is not for him to
confine himself in all situations in life to the part of fanatic about
health; he knows that there is _other_ misery in the world besides
neurotic misery—real unavoidable suffering—that necessity may even
demand of a man that he sacrifice his health to it, and he learns that
such suffering in one individual may often avert incalculable hardship
for many others. Therefore, although it may be said of every neurotic
that he has taken ‘_flight into illness_,’ it must be admitted that in
many cases this flight is fully justified, and the physician who has
perceived this state of things will silently and considerately retire.

But let us continue our discussion without regard to these exceptional
cases. In the ordinary way it is apparent that by flight into neurosis
the Ego gains a certain internal ‘_advantage through illness_,’ as we
call it; under certain conditions a tangible external advantage, more or
less valuable in reality, may be combined with this. To take the
commonest case of this kind: a woman who is brutally treated and
mercilessly exploited by her husband fairly regularly takes refuge in a
neurosis, if her disposition admits of it. This will happen if she is
too cowardly or too conventional to console herself secretly with
another man, if she is not strong enough to defy all external reasons
against it and separate from her husband, if she has no prospect of
being able to maintain herself or of finding a better husband, and last
of all, if she is still strongly attached sexually to this brutal man.
Her illness becomes her weapon in the struggle against him, one that she
can use for her protection, or misuse for purposes of revenge. She can
complain of her illness, though she probably dare not complain of her
marriage; her doctor is her ally; the husband who is otherwise so
ruthless is required to spare her, to spend money on her, to grant her
absence from home and thus some freedom from marital oppression.
Whenever this external or ‘accidental’ advantage through illness is at
all pronounced, and no substitute for it can be found in reality, you
need not look forward very hopefully to influencing the neurosis by your
therapy.

You will now say that what I have just told you about the ‘advantage
through illness’ is all in favour of the view I have rejected, namely,
that the Ego itself desires the neurosis and creates it. But just a
moment! Perhaps it means merely this: that the Ego is pleased to accept
the neurosis which it is in any case unable to prevent, and that if
there is anything at all to be made out of it it makes the best of it.
This is only one side of the matter. In so far as there is advantage in
it the Ego is quite happy to be on good terms with a neurosis, but there
are also disadvantages to be considered. As a rule it is soon apparent
that by accepting a neurosis the Ego has made a bad bargain. It has paid
too heavily for the solution of the conflict; the sufferings entailed by
the symptoms are perhaps as bad as those of the conflict they replace,
and they may quite probably be very much worse. The Ego wishes to be rid
of the pain of the symptoms, but not to give up its advantage through
illness; and that is just what it cannot succeed in doing. It appears
therefore that the Ego was not quite so actively concerned in the matter
throughout as it had thought, and we will keep this well in mind.

If, as physicians, you have much to do with neurotics, you will soon
cease to expect that those who complain most bitterly of their illness
will be most ready to accept your help and make least difficulty—quite
the contrary. You will at all events easily understand that everything
which contributes to the advantage through illness reinforces the
resistance arising from the repressions, and increases the therapeutic
difficulties. And there is yet another kind of advantage through
illness, one which supervenes later than that born with the symptom, so
to speak. When such a mental organization as the disease has persisted
for a considerable time it seems finally to acquire the character of an
independent entity; it displays something like a self-preservative
instinct; it forms a kind of pact, a _modus vivendi_, with the other
forces in mental life, even with those fundamentally hostile to it, and
opportunities can hardly fail to arise in which it once more manifests
itself as useful and expedient, thus acquiring a _secondary function_
which again strengthens its position. Instead of taking an example from
pathology let us consider a striking illustration in everyday life. A
capable working-man earning his living is crippled by an accident in the
course of his employment; he can work no more, but he gets a small
periodical dole in compensation and learns how to exploit his mutilation
as a beggar. His new life, although so inferior, nevertheless is
supported by the very thing which destroyed his old life; if you were to
remove his disability you would deprive him for a time of his means of
subsistence, for the question would arise whether he would still be
capable of resuming his former work. When a secondary exploitation of
the illness such as this is formed in a neurosis we can range it
alongside the first and call it a ‘_secondary_ advantage through
illness.’

I should like to advise you in a general way not to underestimate the
practical importance of the advantage through illness, and yet not to be
too much impressed by its theoretical significance. Apart from the
exceptions previously recognized, this factor always reminds one of the
illustrations of “Intelligence in Animals” by Oberländer in _Fliegende
Blätter_. An Arab is riding a camel along a narrow path cut in the side
of a steep mountain. At a turn in the path he suddenly finds himself
confronted by a lion ready to spring at him. There is no escape; on one
side the abyss, on the other the precipice; retreat and flight are
impossible; he gives himself up for lost. Not so the camel. He takes one
leap with his rider into the abyss—and the lion is left a spectator. The
remedies provided by neurosis avail the patient no better as a rule;
perhaps because the solution of the conflict by a symptom-formation is
after all an automatic process which may show itself inadequate to meet
the demands of life, and involves man in a renunciation of his best and
highest powers. The more honourable choice, if there be a choice, is to
go down in fair fight with destiny.

I still owe you a further explanation of my motive in not taking
ordinary nervousness as my starting-point. Perhaps you think I avoided
doing so because it would have been more difficult to bring in evidence
of the sexual origin of the neuroses in that way; but in this you would
be mistaken. In the transference neuroses the symptoms have to be
submitted to interpretation before we arrive at this; but in the
ordinary forms of what are called the ACTUAL NEUROSES the ætiological
significance of the sexual life is a crudely obvious fact which courts
notice. I became aware of it more than twenty years ago, as one day I
began to wonder why, when we examine nervous patients, we so invariably
exclude from consideration all matters concerning their sexual life.
Investigations on this point led to the sacrifice of my popularity with
my patients, but in a very short time my efforts had brought me to this
conclusion: that no neurosis—actual neurosis, I meant—is present where
sexual life is normal. It is true that this statement ignores the
individual differences in people rather too much, and it also suffers
from the indefinite connotation inseparable from the word “normal”; but
as a broad outline it has retained its value to this day. At that time I
got so far as to be able to establish particular connections between
certain forms of nervousness and certain injurious sexual conditions; I
do not doubt that I could repeat these observations to-day if I still
had similar material for investigation. I noticed often enough that a
man who contented himself with some kind of incomplete sexual
satisfaction, e.g. with manual masturbation, would suffer from a
definite type of actual neurosis, and that this neurosis would promptly
give way to another form if he adopted some other equally unsatisfactory
form of sexual life. I was then in a position to infer the change in his
mode of sexual life from the alteration in the patient’s condition; and
I learnt to abide stubbornly by my conclusions until I had overcome the
prevarications of my patients and had compelled them to give me
confirmation. It is true that they then thought it advisable to seek
other physicians who would not take so much interest in their sexual
life.

It did not escape me at that time either that sexuality was not always
indicated as the cause of a neurosis; one person certainly would fall
ill because of some injurious sexual condition, but another because he
had lost his fortune or recently sustained a severe organic illness. The
explanation of these variations was revealed later, when insight was
obtained into the interrelationships suspected between the Ego and the
Libido; and the further this subject was explored the more satisfactory
became our insight into it. A person only falls ill of a neurosis when
the Ego loses its capacity to deal in some way or other with the Libido.
The stronger the Ego the more easily can it accomplish this task; every
weakening of the Ego, from whatever cause, must have the same effect as
an increase in the demands of the Libido; that is, make a neurosis
possible. There are yet other and more intimate relations between the
Ego and the Libido, which I shall not go into now as we have not yet
come to them in the course of our discussions. The most essential and
most instructive point for us is that the fund of energy supporting the
symptoms of a neurosis, in every case and regardless of the
circumstances inducing their outbreak, is provided by the Libido, which
is thus put to an abnormal use.

Now I must point out to you the decisive difference between the symptoms
of the _actual neuroses_ and those of the _psychoneuroses_, with the
first group of which (the transference neuroses) we have hitherto been
so much occupied. In both the actual neuroses and the psychoneuroses the
symptoms proceed from the Libido; that is, they are abnormal ways of
using it, substitutes for satisfaction of it. But the symptoms of an
actual neurosis—headache, sensation of pain, an irritable condition of
some organ, the weakening or inhibition of some function—have no
‘meaning,’ no signification in the mind. Not merely are they manifested
principally in the body, as also happens, for instance with hysterical
symptoms, but they are in themselves purely and simply physical
processes; they arise without any of the complicated mental mechanisms
we have been learning about. They really are, therefore, what
psychoneurotic symptoms were for so long held to be. But then, how can
they be expressions of the Libido which we have come to know as a force
at work in the mind? Now, really, the answer to that is very simple. Let
me resurrect one of the very first objections ever made against
psycho-analysis. It was said that the theories were an attempt to
account for neurotic symptoms by psychology alone and that the outlook
was consequently hopeless, since no illness could ever be accounted for
by psychological theories. These critics were pleased to forget that the
sexual function is not a purely mental thing, any more than it is merely
a physical thing. It affects bodily life as well as mental life. Having
learnt that the symptoms of the psychoneuroses express the mental
consequences of some disturbance in this function, we shall not be
surprised to find that the actual neuroses represent the direct somatic
consequences of sexual disturbances.

Clinical medicine gives us a useful hint (recognized by many different
investigators) towards comprehension of the actual neuroses. In the
details of their symptomatology, and also in the peculiarity by which
all the bodily systems and functions are affected together, they exhibit
an unmistakable similarity with pathological conditions resulting from
the chronic effect or the sudden removal of foreign toxins—i.e. with
states of intoxication or of abstinence. The two groups of affections
are brought still closer together by comparison with conditions like
Basedow’s disease[49] that have also been found to result from
poisoning, not, however, from poisons derived externally, but from such
as arise in the internal metabolism. In my opinion these analogies
necessitate our regarding the neuroses as the effects of disturbances in
the sexual metabolism, due either to more of these sexual toxins being
produced than the person can dispose of, or else to internal and even
mental conditions which interfere with the proper disposal of these
substances. Assumptions of this kind about the nature of sexual desire
have found acceptance in the mind of the people since the beginning of
time; love is called an “intoxication,” it can be induced by
“potions”—in these ideas the agency at work is to some extent projected
on to the outer world. We find occasion at this point to remember the
erotogenic zones, and to reflect upon the proposition that sexual
excitation may arise in the most various organs. Beyond this the subject
of ‘sexual metabolism’ or the ‘chemistry of sexuality’ is an empty
chapter: we know nothing about it, and cannot even determine whether to
assume two kinds of sexual substances, to be called ‘male’ and ‘female,’
or to content ourselves with _one_ sexual toxin as the agent of all the
stimuli effected by the Libido. The edifice of psycho-analytic doctrine
which we have erected is in reality but a superstructure, which will
have to be set on its organic foundation at some time or other; but this
foundation is still unknown to us.

As a science psycho-analysis is characterized by the methods with which
it works, not by the subject-matter with which it deals. These methods
can be applied without violating their essential nature to the history
of civilization, to the science of religion, and to mythology as well as
to the study of the neuroses. Psycho-Analysis aims at and achieves
nothing more than the discovery of the unconscious in mental life. The
problems of the actual neuroses, in which the symptoms probably arise
through direct toxic injury, offer no point of attack for
psycho-analysis; it can supply little towards elucidation of them and
must leave this task to biological and medical research. Now perhaps you
understand better why I chose this arrangement of my material. If I had
intended an _Introduction to the Study of the Neuroses_ it would
undoubtedly have been correct to begin with the simple forms of (actual)
neuroses and proceed from them to the more complicated psychical
disorders resulting from disturbances of the Libido. I should have had
to collect from various quarters what we know or think we know about the
former, and about the latter psycho-analysis would have been introduced
as the most important technical means of obtaining insight into these
conditions. An _Introduction to Psycho-Analysis_ was what I had
undertaken and announced, however; I thought it more important to give
you an idea of psycho-analysis than to teach you something about the
neuroses; and therefore the actual neuroses which yield nothing towards
the study of psycho-analysis could not suitably be put in the
foreground. I think too that my choice was the wiser for you, since the
radical axioms and far-reaching connections of psycho-analysis make it
worthy of every educated person’s interest; the theory of the neuroses,
however, is a chapter of medicine like any other.

However, you are justified in expecting that we should take some
interest in the actual neuroses; their close clinical connection with
the psychoneuroses even necessitates this. I will tell you then that we
distinguish three pure forms of actual neurosis: _neurasthenia_,
_anxiety-neurosis_ and _hypochondria_. Even this classification has been
disputed; the terms are certainly all in use, but their connotation is
vague and unsettled. There are some medical men who are opposed to all
discrimination in the confusing world of neurotic manifestations, who
object to any distinguishing of clinical entities or types of disease,
and do not even recognize the difference between actual neuroses and
psychoneuroses; in my opinion they go too far, and the direction they
have chosen does not lead to progress. The three kinds of neurosis named
above are occasionally found in a pure form; more frequently, it is
true, they are combined with one another and with a psychoneurotic
affection. This fact need not make us abandon the distinctions between
them. Think of the difference between the science of minerals and that
of ores in mineralogy: the minerals are classified individually, in part
no doubt because they are frequently found as crystals, sharply
differentiated from their surroundings; the ores consist of mixtures of
minerals which have indeed coalesced, not accidentally, but according to
the conditions at their formation. In the theory of the neuroses we
still understand too little of the process of their development to
formulate anything similar to our knowledge of ores; but we are
certainly working in the right direction in first isolating from the
mass the recognizable clinical elements, which are comparable to the
individual minerals.

A noteworthy connection between the symptoms of the actual neuroses and
the psychoneuroses adds a valuable contribution to our knowledge of
symptom-formation in the latter; the symptom of the actual neurosis is
frequently the nucleus and incipient stage of the psychoneurotic
symptom. A connection of this kind is most clearly observable between
neurasthenia and the transference neurosis known as conversion-hysteria,
between the anxiety-neurosis and anxiety-hysteria, but also between
hypochondria and forms of a neurosis which we shall deal with later on,
namely, paraphrenia (dementia præcox and paranoia). As an example, let
us take an hysterical headache or backache. Analysis shows that by means
of condensation and displacement it has become a substitutive
satisfaction for a whole series of libidinal phantasies or memories; at
one time, however, this pain was real, a direct symptom of a sexual
toxin, the bodily expression of a sexual excitation. We do not by any
means maintain that all hysterical symptoms have a nucleus of this kind,
but it remains true that this very often is so, and that all effects
(whether normal or pathological) of the libidinal excitation upon the
body are specially adapted to serve the purposes of hysterical
symptom-formation. They play the part of the grain of sand which the
oyster envelopes in mother-of-pearl. The temporary signs of sexual
excitation accompanying the sexual act serve the psychoneurosis in the
same way, as the most suitable and convenient material for
symptom-formation.

There is a similar process of special diagnostic and therapeutic
interest. In persons who are disposed to be neurotic without having yet
developed a neurosis on a grand scale, some morbid organic
condition—perhaps an inflammation, or an injury—very commonly sets the
work of symptom-formation in motion; so that the latter process swiftly
seizes upon the symptom supplied by reality, and uses it to represent
those unconscious phantasies that have only been lying in wait for some
means of expression. In such a case the physician will try first one
therapy and then the other; will either endeavour to abolish the organic
foundation on which the symptom rests, without troubling about the
clamorous neurotic elaboration of it; or will attack the neurosis which
this opportunity has brought to birth, while leaving on one side the
organic stimulus which incited it. Sometimes one and sometimes the other
procedure will be found justified by success; no general rules can be
prescribed for mixed cases of this kind.




                          TWENTY-FIFTH LECTURE
                                ANXIETY


You will certainly have judged the information that I gave you in the
last lecture about ordinary nervousness as the most fragmentary and most
inadequate of all my accounts. I know that it was; and I expect that
nothing surprised you more than that I made no mention of the ‘anxiety’
which most nervous people complain of and themselves describe as their
most terrible burden. Anxiety or dread can really develop tremendous
intensity and in consequence be the cause of the maddest precautions.
But in this matter at least I wished not to cut you short; on the
contrary, I had determined to put the problem of nervous anxiety to you
as clearly as possible and to discuss it at some length.

_Anxiety_ (or _dread_)[50] itself needs no description; everyone has
personally experienced this sensation, or to speak more correctly this
affective condition, at some time or other. But in my opinion not enough
serious consideration has been given to the question why nervous persons
in particular suffer from anxiety so much more intensely, and so much
more altogether, than others. Perhaps it has been taken for granted that
they should; indeed, the words “nervous” and “anxious” are used
interchangeably, as if they meant the same thing. This is not
justifiable, however; there are anxious people who are otherwise not in
any way nervous and there are, besides, neurotics with numerous symptoms
who exhibit no tendency to dread.

However this may be, one thing is certain, that the problem of anxiety
is a nodal point, linking up all kinds of most important questions; a
riddle, of which the solution must cast a flood of light upon our whole
mental life. I do not claim that I can give you a complete solution; but
you will certainly expect psycho-analysis to have attacked this problem
too in a different manner from that adopted by academic medicine.
Interest there centres upon the anatomical processes by which the
anxiety condition comes about. We learn that the medulla oblongata is
stimulated, and the patient is told that he is suffering from a neurosis
in the vagal nerve. The medulla oblongata is a wondrous and beauteous
object; I well remember how much time and labour I devoted to the study
of it years ago. But to-day I must say I know of nothing less important
for the psychological comprehension of anxiety than a knowledge of the
nerve-paths by which the excitations travel.

One may consider anxiety for a long time without giving a thought to
nervousness. You will understand me at once when I describe this form of
anxiety as REAL ANXIETY, in contrast to neurotic anxiety. Now _real_
anxiety or dread appears to us a very natural and rational thing; we
should call it a reaction to the perception of an external danger, of an
injury which is expected and foreseen; it is bound up with the reflex of
flight, and may be regarded as an expression of the instinct of
self-preservation. The occasions of it, i.e. the objects and situations
about which anxiety is felt, will obviously depend to a great extent
upon the state of the person’s knowledge and feeling of power regarding
the outer world. It seems to us quite natural that a savage should be
afraid of a cannon or of an eclipse of the sun, while a white man who
can handle the weapon and foretell the phenomenon remains unafraid in
the same situation. At other times it is knowledge itself which inspires
fear, because it reveals the danger sooner; thus a savage will recoil
with terror at the sight of a track in the jungle which conveys nothing
to an ignorant white man, but means that some wild beast is near at
hand; and an experienced sailor will perceive with dread a little cloud
on the horizon because it means an approaching hurricane, while to a
passenger it looks quite insignificant.

The view that real anxiety is rational and expedient, however, will on
deeper consideration be admitted to need thorough revision. In face of
imminent danger the only expedient behaviour, actually, would be first a
cool appraisement of the forces at disposal as compared with the
magnitude of the danger at hand, and then a decision whether flight or
defence, or possibly attack, offered the best prospect of a successful
outcome. Dread, however, has no place in this scheme; everything to be
done will be accomplished as well and probably better if dread does not
develop. You will see too that when dread is excessive it becomes in the
highest degree inexpedient; it paralyses every action, even that of
flight. The reaction to danger usually consists in a combination of the
two things, the fear-affect and the defensive action; the frightened
animal is afraid _and_ flees, but the expedient element in this is the
‘flight,’ not the ‘being afraid.’

One is tempted therefore to assert that the development of anxiety is
never expedient; perhaps a closer dissection of the situation in dread
will give us a better insight into it. The first thing about it is the
‘readiness’ for danger, which expresses itself in heightened sensorial
perception and in motor tension. This expectant readiness is obviously
advantageous; indeed, absence of it may be responsible for grave
results. It is then followed on the one hand by a motor action, taking
the form primarily of flight and, on a higher level, of defensive
action; and on the other hand by the condition we call a sensation of
‘anxiety’ or dread. The more the development of dread is limited to a
flash, to a mere signal, the less does it hinder the transition from the
state of anxious readiness to that of action, and the more expediently
does the whole course of events proceed. The _anxious readiness_
therefore seems to me the expedient element, and the _development_ of
anxiety the inexpedient element, in what we call anxiety or dread.

I shall not enter upon a discussion whether the words anxiety, fear,
fright, mean the same or different things in common usage. In my
opinion, _anxiety_ relates to the condition and ignores the object,
whereas in the word _fear_ attention is directed to the object; _fright_
does actually seem to possess a special meaning—namely, it relates
specifically to the condition induced when danger is unexpectedly
encountered without previous anxious readiness. It might be said then
that anxiety is a protection against fright.

It will not have escaped you that a certain ambiguity and indefiniteness
exists in the use of the word ‘anxiety.’ It is generally understood to
mean the subjective condition arising upon the perception of what we
have called ‘developed’ anxiety; such a condition is called an affect.
Now what is an affect, in a dynamic sense? It is certainly something
very complex. An affect comprises first of all certain motor
innervations or discharges; and, secondly, certain sensations, which
moreover are of two kinds—namely, the perceptions of the motor actions
which have been performed, and the directly pleasurable or painful
sensations which give the affect what we call its dominant note. But I
do not think that this description penetrates to the essence of an
affect. With certain affects one seems to be able to see deeper, and to
recognize that the core of it, binding the whole complex structure
together, is of the nature of a _repetition_ of some particular very
significant previous experience. This experience could only have been an
exceedingly early impression of a universal type, to be found in the
previous history of the species rather than of the individual. In order
to be better understood I might say that an affective state is
constructed like an hysterical attack, i.e. is the precipitate of a
reminiscence. An hysterical attack is therefore comparable to a
newly-formed individual affect, and the normal affect to a universal
hysteria which has become a heritage.

Do not imagine that what I am telling you now about affects is the
common property of normal psychology. On the contrary, these conceptions
have grown on the soil of psycho-analysis and are only indigenous there.
What psychology has to say about affects—the James-Lange theory, for
instance—is utterly incomprehensible to us psycho-analysts and
impossible for us to discuss. We do not however regard what we know of
affects as at all final; it is a first attempt to take our bearings in
this obscure region. To continue, then: we believe we know what this
early impression is which is reproduced as a repetition in the
anxiety-affect. We think it is the experience of _birth_—an experience
which involves just such a concatenation of painful feelings, of
discharges of excitation, and of bodily sensations, as to have become a
prototype for all occasions on which life is endangered, ever after to
be reproduced again in us as the dread or ‘anxiety’ condition. The
enormous increase in stimulation effected by the interruption of the
renewal of blood (the internal respiration) was the cause of the anxiety
experience at birth—the first anxiety was therefore toxically induced.
The name _Angst_ (anxiety)—_angustiæ_, _Enge_, a narrow place, a
strait—accentuates the characteristic tightening in the breathing which
was then the consequence of a real situation and is subsequently
repeated almost invariably with an affect. It is very suggestive too
that the first anxiety state arose on the occasion of the separation
from the mother. We naturally believe that the disposition to reproduce
this first anxiety condition has become so deeply ingrained in the
organism, through countless generations, that no single individual can
escape the anxiety affect; even though, like the legendary Macduff, he
‘was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped’ and so did not himself
experience the act of birth. What the prototype of the anxiety condition
may be for other animals than mammals we cannot say; neither do we know
what the complex of sensations in them is which is equivalent to fear in
us.

It may perhaps interest you to know how it was possible to arrive at
such an idea as this—that birth is the source and prototype of the
anxiety _affect_. Speculation had least of all to do with it; on the
contrary, I borrowed a thought from the naïve intuitive mind of the
people. Many years ago a number of young house-physicians, including
myself, were sitting round a dinner-table, and one of the assistants at
the obstetrical clinic was telling us all the funny stories of the last
midwives’ examination. One of the candidates was asked what it meant
when the meconium (child’s excreta) was present in the waters at birth,
and promptly replied: “That the child is frightened.” She was ridiculed
and failed. But I silently took her part and began to suspect that the
poor unsophisticated woman’s unerring perception had revealed a very
important connection.

Now let us turn to neurotic anxiety; what are the special manifestations
and conditions found in the anxiety of nervous persons? There is a great
deal to be described here. First of all, we find a general
apprehensiveness in them, a ‘free-floating’ anxiety, as we call it,
ready to attach itself to any thought which is at all appropriate,
affecting judgements, inducing expectations, lying in wait for any
opportunity to find a justification for itself. We call this condition
‘_expectant dread_’ or ‘anxious expectation.’ People who are tormented
with this kind of anxiety always anticipate the worst of all possible
outcomes, interpret every chance happening as an evil omen, and exploit
every uncertainty to mean the worst. The tendency to this kind of
expectation of evil is found as a character-trait in many people who
cannot be described as ill in any other way, and we call them
‘overanxious’ or pessimistic; but a marked degree of expectant dread is
an invariable accompaniment of the nervous disorder which I have called
anxiety-neurosis and include among the actual neuroses.

In contrast to this type of anxiety, a second form of it is found to be
much more circumscribed in the mind, and attached to definite objects
and situations. This is the anxiety of the extraordinarily various and
often very peculiar phobias. Stanley Hall, the distinguished American
psychologist, has recently taken the trouble to designate a whole series
of these phobias by gorgeous Greek titles; they sound like the ten
plagues of Egypt, except that there are far more than ten of them. Just
listen to the things that can become the object or content of a phobia:
darkness, open air, open spaces, cats, spiders, caterpillars, snakes,
mice, thunder, sharp points, blood, enclosed places, crowds, loneliness,
crossing bridges, travelling by land or sea, and so on. As a first
attempt to take one’s bearings in this chaos we may divide them into
three groups. Many of the objects and situations feared are rather
sinister, even to us normal people, they have some connection with
danger; and these phobias are not entirely incomprehensible to us,
although their intensity seems very much exaggerated. Most of us, for
instance, have a feeling of repulsion upon encountering a snake. It may
be said that the snake-phobia is universal in mankind. Charles Darwin
has described most vividly how he could not control his dread of a snake
that darted at him, although he knew that he was protected from it by a
thick plate of glass. The second group consists of situations that still
have some relation to danger, but to one that is usually belittled or
not emphasized by us; most situation-phobias belong to this group. We
know that there is more chance of meeting with a disaster in a railway
train than at home—namely, a collision; we also know that a ship may
sink, whereupon it is usual to be drowned; but we do not brood upon
these dangers and we travel without anxiety by train and boat. Nor can
it be denied that if a bridge were to break at the moment we were
crossing it we should be hurled into the torrent, but that only happens
so very occasionally that it is not a danger worth considering. Solitude
too has its dangers, which in certain circumstances we avoid, but there
is no question of never being able to endure it for a moment under any
conditions. The same thing applies to crowds, enclosed spaces,
thunderstorms, and so on. What is foreign to us in these phobias is not
so much their content as their intensity. The anxiety accompanying a
phobia is positively indescribable! And we sometimes get the impression
that neurotics are not really at all fearful of those things which can,
under certain conditions, arouse anxiety in us and which they call by
the same names.

There remains a third group which is entirely unintelligible to us. When
a strong full-grown man is afraid to cross a street or square in his own
so familiar town, or when a healthy well-developed woman becomes almost
senseless with fear because a cat has brushed against her dress or a
mouse has scurried through the room, how can we see the connection with
danger which is obviously present to these people? With this kind of
animal-phobia it is no question of an increased intensity of common
human antipathies; to prove the contrary, there are numbers of people
who, for instance, cannot pass a cat without attracting and petting it.
A mouse is a thing that so many women are afraid of, and yet it is at
the same time a very favourite pet name;[51] many a girl who is
delighted to be called so by her lover will scream with terror at the
sight of the dainty little creature itself. The behaviour of the man who
is afraid to cross streets and squares only suggests one thing to
us—that he behaves like a little child. A child is directly taught that
such situations are dangerous, and the man’s anxiety too is allayed when
he is led by someone across the open space.

The two forms of anxiety described, the ‘free-floating’ expectant dread
and that attached to phobias, are independent of each other. The one is
not the other at a further stage; they are only rarely combined, and
then as if fortuitously. The most intense general apprehensiveness does
not necessarily lead to a phobia; people who have been hampered all
their lives by agoraphobia may be quite free from pessimistic expectant
dread. Many phobias, e.g. fear of open spaces, of railway travelling,
are demonstrably acquired first in later life; others, such as fear of
darkness, thunder, animals, seem to have existed from the beginning. The
former signify serious illness, the latter are more of the nature of
idiosyncrasies, peculiarities; anyone exhibiting one of these latter may
be suspected of harbouring others similar to it. I must add that we
group all these phobias under _anxiety-hysteria_, that is, we regard
them as closely allied to the well-known disorder called
conversion-hysteria.

The third form taken by neurotic anxiety brings us to an enigma; there
is no visible connection at all between the anxiety and the danger
dreaded. This anxiety occurs in hysteria, for instance, accompanying the
hysterical symptoms; or under various conditions of excitement in which,
it is true, we should expect some affect to be displayed, but least of
all an anxiety-affect; or without reference to any conditions,
incomprehensible both to us and to the patient, an unrelated
anxiety-attack. We may look far and wide without discovering a danger or
an occasion which could even be exaggerated to account for it. These
spontaneous attacks show therefore that the complex condition which we
describe as anxiety can be split up into components. The whole attack
can be represented (as a substitute) by a single intensively developed
symptom—shuddering, faintness, palpitation of the heart, inability to
breathe—and the general feeling which we recognize as anxiety may be
absent or may have become unnoticeable. And yet these states which are
termed ‘anxiety-equivalents’ have the same clinical and ætiological
validity as anxiety itself.

Two questions arise now: Is it possible to bring neurotic anxiety, in
which such a small part or none at all is played by danger, into
relation with ‘real anxiety,’ which is essentially a reaction to danger?
And, how is neurotic anxiety to be understood? We will at present hold
fast to the expectation that where there is anxiety there must be
something of which one is afraid.

Clinical observation yields various clues to the comprehension of
neurotic anxiety, and I will now discuss their significance with you.

(_a_) It is not difficult to see that expectant dread or general
apprehensiveness stands in intimate relation to certain processes in the
sexual life—let us say, to certain modes of Libido-utilization. The
simplest and most instructive case of this kind arises in people who
expose themselves to what is called frustrated excitation, i.e. when a
powerful sexual excitation experiences insufficient discharge and is not
carried on to a satisfying termination. This occurs, for instance, in
men during the time of an engagement to marry, and in women whose
husbands are not sufficiently potent, or who perform the sexual act too
rapidly or incompletely with a view to preventing conception. Under
these conditions the libidinal excitation disappears and anxiety appears
in place of it, both in the form of expectant dread and in that of
attacks and anxiety-equivalents. The precautionary measure of _coitus
interruptus_, when practised as a customary sexual régime, is so
regularly the cause of anxiety-neurosis in men, and even more so in
women, that medical practitioners would be wise to enquire first of all
into the possibility of such an ætiology in all such cases. Innumerable
examples show that the anxiety-neurosis vanishes when the sexual
malpractice is given up.

So far as I know, the fact that a connection exists between sexual
restraint and anxiety conditions is no longer disputed, even by
physicians who hold aloof from psycho-analysis. Nevertheless I can well
imagine that they do not neglect to invert the connection, and to put
forward the view that such persons are predisposed to apprehensiveness
and consequently practise caution in sexual matters. Against this,
however, decisive evidence is found in the reactions in women, in whom
the sexual function is essentially passive, so that its course is
determined by the treatment accorded by the man. The more ‘temperament,’
i.e. the more inclination for sexual intercourse and capacity for
satisfaction, a woman has, the more certainly will she react with
anxiety manifestations to the man’s impotence or to _coitus
interruptus_; whereas such abuse entails far less serious results with
anæsthetic women or those in whom the sexual hunger is less strong.

Sexual abstinence, which is nowadays so warmly recommended by
physicians, of course only has the same significance for anxiety
conditions when the Libido which is denied a satisfactory outlet is
correspondingly insistent, and is not being utilized to a large extent
in sublimation. Whether or not illness will ensue is indeed always a
matter of the quantitative factor. Even apart from illness, it is easy
to see in the sphere of character-formation that sexual restraint goes
hand in hand with a certain anxiousness and cautiousness, whereas
fearlessness and a boldly adventurous spirit bring with them a free
tolerance of sexual needs. However these relations may be altered and
complicated by the manifold influences of civilization, it remains
incontestible that for the average human being anxiety is closely
connected with sexual limitation.

I have by no means told you all the observations which point to this
genetic connection between Libido and anxiety. There is, for instance,
the effect upon anxiety states of certain periods of life, such as
puberty and the menopause, in which the production of Libido is
considerably augmented. In many states of excitement too, the mingling
of sexual excitation with anxiety may be directly observed, as well as
the final replacement of the libidinal excitation by anxiety. The
impression received from all this is a double one; first, that it is a
matter of an accumulation of Libido, debarred from its normal
utilization; and secondly, that the question is one of somatic processes
only. How anxiety develops out of sexual desire is at present obscure;
we can only ascertain that desire is lacking and anxiety is found in its
place.

(_b_) A second clue is obtained from analysis of the psychoneuroses, in
particular, of hysteria. We have heard that anxiety frequently
accompanies the symptoms in this disease, and that unattached anxiety
may also be chronically present or come to expression in attacks. The
patients cannot say what it is they fear; they link it up by
unmistakable secondary elaboration to the most convenient phobias: of
dying, of going mad, of having a stroke, etc. When we subject to
analysis the situation in which the anxiety, or the symptom accompanied
by anxiety, arose, we can as a rule discover what normal mental process
has been checked in its course and replaced by a manifestation of
anxiety. To express it differently: we construe the unconscious process
as though it had not undergone repression and had gone through
unhindered into consciousness. This process would have been accompanied
by a particular affect and now we discover, to our astonishment, that
this affect, which would normally accompany the mental process through
into consciousness, is in every case replaced by anxiety, no matter what
particular type it had previously been. So that when we have a
hysterical anxiety condition before us, its unconscious correlative may
be an excitation of a similar character, such as apprehension, shame,
embarrassment; or quite as possibly a ‘positive’ libidinal excitation;
or an antagonistic, aggressive one, such as rage or anger. Anxiety is
thus general current coin for which all the affects are exchanged, or
can be exchanged, when the corresponding ideational content is under
repression.

(_c_) A third observation is provided by patients whose symptoms take
the form of obsessive acts, and who seem to be remarkably immune from
anxiety. When we restrain them from carrying out their obsessive
performances, their washing, their ceremonies, etc., or when they
themselves venture an attempt to abandon one of their compulsions, they
are forced by an appalling dread to yield to the compulsion and to carry
out the act. We perceive that the anxiety was concealed under the
obsessive act and that this is only performed to escape the feeling of
dread. In the obsessional neurosis, therefore, the anxiety which would
otherwise ensue is replaced by the symptom-formation; and when we turn
to hysteria we find a similar relation existing—as a consequence of the
process of repression either a pure developed anxiety, or anxiety with
symptom-formation, or, symptom-formation without anxiety. In an abstract
sense, therefore, it seems correct to say that symptoms altogether are
formed purely for the purpose of escaping the otherwise inevitable
development of anxiety. Thus anxiety comes to the forefront of our
interest in the problems of the neuroses.

We concluded from our observations on the anxiety-neurosis that the
diversion of the Libido away from its normal form of utilization, a
diversion which releases anxiety, took place on the basis of somatic
processes. The analyses of hysterical and obsessional neuroses furnish
the additional conclusion that a similar diversion with a similar result
can follow from opposition on the part of psychical agents
(_Instanzen_). We know as much as this, therefore, about the origin of
neurotic anxiety; it still sounds rather indefinite. But for the moment
I know of no path which will take us further. The second task we
undertook, that of establishing a connection between neurotic anxiety
(abnormally utilized Libido) and ‘real anxiety’ (which corresponds with
the reaction to danger), seems even more difficult to accomplish. One
would think there could be no comparison between the two things, and yet
there are no means by which the sensations of neurotic anxiety can be
distinguished from those of real anxiety.

The desired connection may be found with the help of the antithesis, so
often put forward, between the Ego and the Libido. As we know, the
development of anxiety is the reaction of the Ego to danger and the
signal preparatory to flight; it is then not a great step to imagine
that in neurotic anxiety also the Ego is attempting a flight, from the
demands of its Libido, and is treating this internal danger as if it
were an external one. Then our expectation, that where anxiety is
present there must be something of which one is afraid, would be
fulfilled. The analogy goes further than this, however. Just as the
tension prompting the attempt to flee from external danger is resolved
into holding one’s ground and taking appropriate defensive measures, so
the development of neurotic anxiety yields to a symptom-formation, which
enables the anxiety to be ‘bound.’

Our difficulty in comprehension now lies elsewhere. The anxiety which
signifies the flight of the Ego from its Libido is nevertheless supposed
to have had its source in that Libido. This is obscure, and we are
warned not to forget that the Libido of a given person is fundamentally
part of that person and cannot be contrasted with him as if it were
something external. It is the question of the topographical dynamics of
anxiety-development that is still obscure to us—what kind of mental
energies are being expended and to what systems do they belong? I cannot
promise you to answer this question also; but we will not neglect to
follow up two other clues, and in so doing will again summon direct
observation and analytic investigation to aid our speculation. We will
turn to the sources of anxiety in children, and to the origin of the
neurotic anxiety which is attached to phobias.

Apprehensiveness is very common among children, and it is difficult
enough to decide whether it is real or neurotic anxiety. Indeed the very
value of this distinction is called in question by the attitude of
children themselves. For on the one hand we are not surprised that
children are afraid of strangers, of strange objects and situations, and
we account for this reaction to ourselves very easily by reflecting on
their weakness and ignorance. Thus we ascribe to the child a strong
tendency to real anxiety and should regard it as only practical if this
apprehensiveness had been transmitted by inheritance. The child would
only be repeating the behaviour of prehistoric man and of primitive man
to-day who, in consequence of his ignorance and helplessness,
experiences a dread of anything new and strange, and of much that is
familiar to him, none of which any longer inspires fear in us. It would
also correspond to our expectations if the phobias of children were at
least in part such as might be attributed to those primeval periods of
human development.

On the other hand, it cannot be overlooked that children are not all
equally apprehensive, and that the very children who are more than
usually timid in the face of all kinds of objects and situations are
just those who later on become neurotic. The neurotic disposition is
therefore betrayed, amongst other signs, by a marked tendency to real
anxiety; apprehensiveness rather than nervousness appears to be primary;
and we arrive at the conclusion that the child, and later the adult,
experiences a dread of the strength of his Libido, simply because he is
afraid of everything. The derivation of anxiety from the Libido itself
would then be discarded; and investigation of the conditions of real
anxiety would logically lead to the view that the consciousness of
personal weakness and helplessness—inferiority, as A. Adler calls
it—when it is able to maintain itself into later life is the final cause
of neurosis.

This sounds so simple and plausible that it has a claim on our
attention. It is true that it would involve shifting the point of view
from which we regard the problem of nervousness. That such feelings of
inferiority do persist into later life—together with a disposition to
anxiety and symptom-formation—seems so well established that much more
explanation is required when, in an exceptional case, what we call
‘health’ is the outcome. But what can be learnt from the close
observation of apprehensiveness in children? The small child is first of
all afraid of strange people; situations become important only on
account of the people concerned in them, and objects always much later.
But the child is not afraid of these strange people because he
attributes evil intentions to them, comparing their strength with his
weakness, and thus recognizing in them a danger to his existence, his
safety, and his freedom from pain. Such a conception of a child, so
suspicious and terrified of an overpowering aggressivity in the world,
is a very poor sort of theoretical construction. On the contrary, the
child starts back in fright from a strange figure because he is used
to—and therefore expects—a beloved and familiar figure, primarily his
mother. It is his disappointment and longing which are transformed into
dread—his Libido, unable to be expended, and at that time not to be held
suspended, is discharged through being converted into dread. It can
hardly be a coincidence too that in this situation, which is the
prototype of childish anxiety, the condition of the primary anxiety
state during birth, a separation from the mother, is again reproduced.

The first phobias of situations in children concern darkness and
loneliness; the former is often retained throughout life; common to both
is the desire for the absent attendant, for the mother, therefore. I
once heard a child who was afraid of the darkness call out: “Auntie,
talk to me, I’m frightened.” “But what good will that do? You can’t see
me;” to which the child replied: “If someone talks, it gets lighter.”
The longing felt _in_ the darkness is thus transformed into fear _of_
the darkness. Far from finding that neurotic anxiety is only secondary
and a special case of real anxiety, we see on the contrary that there is
something in the small child which behaves like real anxiety and has an
essential feature in common with neurotic anxiety—namely, origin in
undischarged Libido. Of genuine ‘real anxiety’ the child seems to bring
very little into the world. In all those situations which can become the
conditions of phobias later, on heights, on narrow bridges over water,
in trains and boats, the small child shows no fear—the less it knows the
less it fears. It is much to be wished that it had inherited more of
these life-preserving instincts; the task of looking after it and
preventing it from exposing itself to one danger after another would
have been very much lightened. Actually, you see, a child overestimates
his powers, to begin with, and behaves without fear because he does not
recognize dangers. He will run along the edge of the water, climb upon
the window-sill, play with sharp things and with fire, in short, do
anything that injures him and alarms his attendants. Since he cannot be
allowed to learn it himself through bitter experience, it is entirely
due to training that real anxiety does eventually awake in him.

Now if some children embrace this training in apprehensiveness very
readily, and then find for themselves dangers which they have not been
warned against, it is explicable on the ground that these children have
inherently a greater amount of libidinal need in their constitution than
others, or else that they have been spoiled early with libidinal
gratifications. It is no wonder if those who later become nervous also
belong to this type as children; we know that the most favourable
circumstance for the development of a neurosis lies in the inability to
tolerate a considerable degree of pent-up Libido for any length of time.
You will observe now that here the constitutional factor, which we have
never denied, comes into its own. We protest only when others emphasize
it to the exclusion of all other claims, and when they introduce the
constitutional factor even where according to the unanimous findings
both of observation and of analysis, it does not belong, or only plays a
minor part.

Let us sum up the conclusions drawn from the observation of
apprehensiveness in children: Infantile dread has very little to do with
real anxiety (dread of real danger), but is, on the other hand, closely
allied to the neurotic anxiety of adults. It is derived like the latter
from undischarged Libido, and it substitutes some other external object
or some situation for the love-object which it misses.

Now you will be glad to hear that the analysis of phobias has little
more to teach us than we have learnt already. The same thing happens in
them as in the anxiety of children; Libido that cannot be discharged is
continuously being converted into an apparently ‘real’ anxiety, and so
an insignificant external danger is taken as a representative of what
the Libido desires. The agreement between the two forms of anxiety is
not surprising; for infantile phobias are not merely prototypes of those
which appear later in anxiety-hysteria, but they are a direct
preliminary condition and prelude of them. Every hysterical phobia can
be traced back to a childish dread, of which it is a continuation, even
if it has a different content and must be called by a different name.
The difference between the two conditions lies in their mechanism. In
order that the Libido should be converted into anxiety in the adult it
is no longer sufficient that the Libido should be momentarily unable to
be utilized. The adult has long since learned to maintain such Libido
suspended, or to apply it in different ways. But, when the Libido is
attached to a mental excitation which has undergone repression,
conditions similar to those in the child, in whom there is not yet any
distinction between conscious and unconscious, are re-established; and
by a regression to the infantile phobia a bridge, so to speak, is
provided by which the conversion of Libido into anxiety can be
conveniently effected. As you will remember, we have treated repression
at some length, but in so doing we have been concerned exclusively with
the fate of the _idea_ to be repressed; naturally, because this was
easier to recognize and to present. But we have so far ignored the
question of what happened to the _affect_ attached to this idea, and now
we learn for the first time that it is the immediate fate of the affect
to be converted into anxiety, no matter what quality of affect it would
otherwise have been had it run a normal course. This transformation of
affect is, moreover, by far the more important effect of the process of
repression. It is not so easy to present to you; for we cannot maintain
the existence of unconscious affects in the same sense as that of
unconscious ideas. An idea remains up to a point the same, whether it is
conscious or unconscious; we can indicate something that corresponds to
an unconscious idea. But an affect is a process involving a discharge of
energy, and it is to be regarded quite differently from an idea; without
searching examination and clarification of our hypotheses concerning
mental processes, we cannot tell what corresponds with it in the
Unconscious—and that cannot be undertaken here. However, we will
preserve the impression we have gained, that the development of anxiety
is closely connected with the unconscious system.

I said that conversion into anxiety, or better, discharge in the form of
anxiety, was the immediate fate of Libido which encounters repression; I
must add that it is not the only or the final fate of it. In the
neuroses, processes take place which are intended to prevent the
development of anxiety, and which succeed in so doing by various means.
In the phobias, for instance, two stages in the neurotic process are
clearly discernible. The first effects the repressions and conversion of
the Libido into anxiety, which is then attached to some external danger.
The second consists in building up all those precautions and safeguards
by which all contact with this externalized danger shall be avoided.
Repression is an attempt at flight on the part of the Ego from the
Libido which it feels to be dangerous; the phobia may be compared to a
fortification against the outer danger which now stands for the dreaded
Libido. The weakness of this defensive system in the phobias is of
course that the fortress which is so well guarded from without remains
exposed to danger from within; projection externally of danger from
Libido can never be a very successful measure. In the other neuroses,
therefore, other defensive systems are employed against the possibility
of the development of anxiety; this is a very interesting part of the
psychology of the neuroses. Unfortunately it would take us too far
afield and also it would require a thorough grounding in special
knowledge of the subject. I will merely add this. I have already spoken
of the ‘counter-charges’ that are instituted by the Ego upon repression,
which must be maintained so that the repression can persist. It is the
task of this counter-charge to carry out the various forms of defence
against the development of anxiety after repression.

To return to the phobias: I may now hope that you realize how inadequate
it is to attempt merely to explain their content, and to take no
interest in them apart from their derivation—this or that object or
situation which has been made into a phobia. The content of the phobia
has an importance comparable to that of the manifest dream—it is a
façade. With all due modifications, it is to be admitted that among the
contents of the various phobias many are found which, as Stanley Hall
points out, are specially suited by phylogenetic inheritance to become
objects of dread. It is even in agreement with this that many of these
dreaded things have no connection with danger, except through a
_symbolic_ relation to it.

Thus we are convinced of the quite central position which the problem of
anxiety fills in the psychology of the neuroses. We have received a
strong impression of how the development of anxiety is bound up with the
fate of the Libido and with the unconscious system. There is only one
unconnected thread, only one gap in our structure, the fact, which after
all can hardly be disputed, that ‘real anxiety’ must be regarded as an
expression of the Ego’s instinct for self-preservation.




                          TWENTY-SIXTH LECTURE
                  THE THEORY OF THE LIBIDO: NARCISSISM


We have repeatedly, and again quite recently, referred to the
distinction between the sexual and the Ego-instincts. First of all,
repression showed how they can oppose each other, how the sexual
instincts are then apparently brought to submission, and required to
procure their satisfaction by circuitous regressive paths, where in
their impregnability they obtain compensation for their defeat. Then it
appeared that from the outset they each have a different relation to the
task-mistress Necessity, so that their developments are different and
they acquire different attitudes to the reality-principle. Finally we
believe we can observe that the sexual instincts are connected by much
closer ties with the affective state of anxiety than are the
Ego-instincts—a conclusion which in one important point only still seems
incomplete. In support of it we may bring forward the further remarkable
fact that want of satisfaction of hunger or thirst, the two most
elemental of the self-preservative instincts, never results in
conversion of them into anxiety, whereas the conversion of unsatisfied
Libido into anxiety is, as we have heard, a very well-known and
frequently-observed phenomenon.

Our justification for distinguishing between sexual and Ego-instincts
can surely not be contested; it is indeed assumed by the existence of
the sexual instinct as a special activity in the individual. The only
question is what significance is to be attached to this distinction, how
radical and decisive we intend to consider it. The answer to this
depends upon what we can ascertain about the extent to which the sexual
instincts, both in their bodily and their mental manifestations, conduct
themselves differently from the other instincts which we set against
them; and how important the results arising from these differences are
found to be. We have of course no motive for maintaining any difference
in the fundamental nature of the two groups of instincts, and, by the
way, it would be difficult to apprehend any. They both present
themselves to us merely as descriptions of the sources of energy in the
individual, and the discussion whether fundamentally they are one, or
essentially different, and if one, when they became separated from each
other, cannot be carried through on the basis of these concepts alone,
but must be grounded on the biological facts underlying them. At present
we know too little about this, and even if we knew more it would not be
relevant to the task of psycho-analysis.

We should clearly also profit very little by emphasizing the primordial
unity of all the instincts, as Jung has done, and describing all the
energies which flow from them as ‘Libido.’ We should then be compelled
to speak of sexual and asexual Libido, since the sexual function is not
to be eliminated from the field of mental life by any such device. The
name Libido, however, remains properly reserved for the instinctive
forces of the sexual life, as we have hitherto employed it.

In my opinion, therefore, the question how far the quite justifiable
distinction between sexual and self-preservative instincts is to be
carried has not much importance for psycho-analysis, nor is
psycho-analysis competent to deal with it. From the biological point of
view there are certainly various indications that the distinction is
important. For the sexual function is the only function of a living
organism which extends beyond the individual and secures its connection
with its species. It is undeniable that the exercise of this function
does not always bring advantage to the individual, as do his other
activities, but that for the sake of an exceptionally high degree of
pleasure he is involved by this function in dangers which jeopardize his
life and often enough exact it. Quite peculiar metabolic processes,
different from all others, are probably required in order to preserve a
portion of the individual’s life as a disposition for posterity. And
finally, the individual organism that regards itself as first in
importance and its sexuality as a means like any other to its own
satisfaction is from a biological point of view only an episode in a
series of generations, a short-lived appendage to a germplasm which is
endowed with virtual immortality, comparable to the temporary holder of
an entail that will survive his death.

We are not concerned with such far-reaching considerations, however, in
the psycho-analytic elucidation of the neuroses. By means of following
up the distinction between the sexual and the Ego-instincts we have
gained the key to comprehension of the group of transference neuroses.
We were able to trace back their origin to a fundamental situation in
which the sexual instincts had come into conflict with the
self-preservative instincts, or—to express it biologically, though at
the same time less exactly—in which the Ego in its capacity of
independent individual organism had entered into opposition with itself
in its other capacity as a member of a series of generations. Such a
dissociation perhaps only exists in man, so that, taken all in all, his
superiority over the other animals may come down to his capacity for
neurosis. The excessive development of his Libido and the rich
elaboration of his mental life (perhaps directly made possible by it)
seem to constitute the conditions which give rise to a conflict of this
kind. It is at any rate clear that these are the conditions under which
man has progressed so greatly beyond what he has in common with the
animals, so that his capacity for neurosis would merely be the obverse
of his capacity for cultural development. However, these again are but
speculations which distract us from the task in hand.

Our work so far has been conducted on the assumption that the
manifestations of the sexual and the Ego-instincts can be distinguished
from one another. In the transference neuroses this is possible without
any difficulty. We called the investments of energy directed by the Ego
towards the object of its sexual desires ‘Libido,’ and all the other
investments proceeding from the self-preservative instincts its
‘interest’; and by following up the investments with Libido, their
transformations, and their final fates, we were able to acquire our
first insight into the workings of the forces in mental life. The
transference neuroses offered the best material for this exploration.
The Ego, however,—its composition out of various organizations with
their structure and mode of functioning—remained undiscovered; we were
led to believe that analysis of other neurotic disturbances would be
required before light could be gained on these matters.

The extension of psycho-analytic conceptions on to these other
affections was begun in early days. Already in 1908 K. Abraham expressed
the view after a discussion with me that the main characteristic of
dementia præcox (reckoned as one of the psychoses) is that in this
disease _the investment of objects with Libido is lacking_. (_The
Psycho-Sexual Differences between Hysteria and Dementia Præcox_). But
then the question arose: what happens to the Libido of dementia patients
when it is diverted from its objects? Abraham did not hesitate to answer
that it is turned back upon the Ego, and that _this reflex reversion of
it is the origin of the delusions of grandeur in dementia præcox_. The
delusion of grandeur is in every way comparable to the well-known
overestimation of the object in a love-relationship. Thus we came for
the first time to understand a feature of a psychotic affection by
bringing it into relation to the normal mode of loving in life.

I will tell you at once that these early views of Abraham’s have been
retained in psycho-analysis and have become the basis of our position
regarding the psychoses. We became slowly accustomed to the conception
that the Libido, which we find attached to certain objects and which is
the expression of a desire to gain some satisfaction in these objects,
can also abandon these objects and set the Ego itself in their place;
and gradually this view developed itself more and more consistently. The
name for this utilization of the Libido—NARCISSISM—we borrowed from a
perversion described by P. Näcke, in which an adult individual lavishes
upon his own body all the caresses usually expended only upon a sexual
object other than himself.

Reflection then at once disclosed that if a fixation of this kind to the
subject’s own body and his own person can occur it cannot be an entirely
exceptional or meaningless phenomenon. On the contrary, it is probable
that this _narcissism_ is the universal original condition, out of which
_object-love_ develops later without thereby necessarily effecting a
disappearance of the narcissism. One also had to remember the evolution
of object-Libido, in which to begin with many of the sexual impulses are
gratified on the child’s own body—as we say, auto-erotically—and that
this capacity for auto-erotism accounts for the backwardness of
sexuality in learning to conform to the reality-principle. Thus it
appeared that auto-erotism was the sexual activity of the narcissistic
phase of direction of the Libido.

To put it briefly, we formed an idea of the relation between the
Ego-Libido and the object-Libido which I can illustrate to you by a
comparison taken from zoology. Think of the simplest forms of life
consisting of a little mass of only slightly differentiated protoplasmic
substances. They extend protrusions which are called pseudopodia into
which the protoplasm overflows. They can, however, again withdraw these
extensions of themselves and reform themselves into a mass. We compare
this extending of protrusions to the radiation of Libido on to the
objects, while the greatest volume of Libido may yet remain within the
Ego; we infer that under normal conditions Ego-Libido can transform
itself into object-Libido without difficulty and that this can again
subsequently be absorbed into the Ego.

With the help of these conceptions it is now possible to explain a whole
series of mental states, or, to express it more modestly, to describe in
terms of the Libido-theory conditions that belong to normal life; for
instance, the mental attitude pertaining to the conditions of “being in
love,” of organic illness, and of sleep. Of the condition of sleep we
assumed that it is founded upon a withdrawal from the outer world and a
concentration upon the wish to sleep. We found that the nocturnal mental
activity which is expressed in dreams served the purpose of the wish to
sleep, and, moreover, that it was governed exclusively by egoistic
motives. In the light of the Libido-theory we may carry this further and
say that sleep is a condition in which all investments of objects, the
libidinal as well as the egoistic, are abandoned and withdrawn again
into the Ego. Does not this shed a new light upon the recuperation
afforded by sleep and upon the nature of fatigue in general? The
likeness we see in the condition which the sleeper conjures up again
every night to the blissful isolation of the intra-uterine existence is
thus confirmed and amplified in its mental aspects. In the sleeper the
primal state of the Libido-distribution is again reproduced, that of
absolute narcissism, in which Libido and Ego-interests dwell together
still, united and indistinguishable in the self-sufficient Self.

Two observations are in place here. First, how is the concept
‘narcissism’ distinguished from ‘egoism’? In my opinion, narcissism is
the libidinal complement of egoism. When one speaks of egoism one is
thinking only of the _interests_ of the person concerned, narcissism
relates also to the satisfaction of his libidinal needs. It is possible
to follow up the two separately for a considerable distance as practical
motives in life. A man may be absolutely egoistic and yet have strong
libidinal attachments to objects, in so far as libidinal satisfaction in
an object is a need of his Ego: his egoism will then see to it that his
desires towards the object involve no injury to his Ego. A man may be
egoistic and at the same time strongly narcissistic (i.e. feel very
little need for objects), and this again either in the form taken by the
need for direct sexual satisfaction, or in those higher forms of feeling
derived from the sexual needs which are commonly called “love,” and as
such are contrasted with “sensuality.” In all these situations egoism is
the self-evident, the constant element, and narcissism the variable one.
The antithesis of egoism, “altruism,” is not an alternative term for the
investment of an object with Libido; it is distinct from the latter in
its lack of the desire for sexual satisfaction in the object. But when
the condition of love is developed to its fullest intensity altruism
coincides with the investment of an object with Libido. As a rule the
sexual object draws to itself a portion of the Ego’s narcissism, which
becomes apparent in what is called the ‘sexual overestimation’ of the
object. If to this is added an altruism directed towards the object and
derived from the egoism of the lover, the sexual object becomes supreme;
it has entirely swallowed up the Ego.

I think you will find it a relief if, after these scientific phantasies,
which are after all very dry, I submit to you a poetic description of
the ‘economic’ contrast between the condition of narcissism and that of
love in full intensity. I take it from a dialogue between Zuleika and
her lover in Goethe’s _Westöstliche Divan_:—

                               ZULEIKA:

               The slave, the lord of victories,
               The crowd, with single voice, confess
               In sense of personal being lies
               A child of earth’s true happiness.
               There’s not a life he need refuse
               If his true self he does not miss:
               There’s not a thing he cannot lose
               If he remains the man he is.

                               HÂTEM:

               So it is held! so well may be!
               But down a different track I come
               Of all the bliss earth holds for me
               I in Zuleika find the sum.
               Does she expend her being on me,
               Myself grows to myself of cost;
               Turns she away, then instantly
               I to my very self am lost.
               And then with Hâtem all were over;
               Though yet I should but change my state;
               Swift, should she grace some happy lover,
               In him I were incorporate.[52]

The second observation is an amplification of the theory of dreams. The
way in which a dream originates is not explicable unless we assume that
what is repressed in the Unconscious has acquired a certain independence
of the Ego, so that it does not subordinate itself to the wish for sleep
and maintains its investments, although all the object-investments
proceeding from the Ego have been withdrawn for the purpose of sleep.
Only this makes it possible to understand how it is that this
unconscious material can make use of the abrogation or diminution in the
activities of the censorship which takes place at night, and that it
knows how to mould the day’s residue so as to form a forbidden
dream-wish from the material to hand in that residue. On the other hand,
some of the resistance against the wish to sleep and the withdrawal of
Libido thereby induced may have its origin in an association already in
existence between this residue and the repressed unconscious material.
This important dynamic factor must therefore now be incorporated into
the conception of dream-formation which we formed in our earlier
discussions.

Certain conditions—organic illness, painful accesses of stimulation, an
inflammatory condition of an organ—have clearly the effect of loosening
the Libido from its attachment to its objects. The Libido which has thus
been withdrawn attaches itself again to the Ego in the form of a
stronger investment of the diseased region of the body. Indeed, one may
venture the assertion that in such conditions the withdrawal of the
Libido from its objects is more striking than the withdrawal of egoistic
interests from their concerns in the outer world. This seems to lead to
a possibility of understanding hypochondria, in which some organ,
without being perceptibly diseased, becomes in a very similar way the
subject of a solicitude on the part of the Ego. I shall, however, resist
the temptation to follow this up, or to discuss other situations which
become explicable or capable of exposition on this assumption of a
return of the object-Libido into the Ego; for I feel bound to meet two
objections which I know have all your attention at the moment. First of
all, you want to know why when I discuss sleep, illness, and similar
conditions, I insist upon distinguishing between Libido and ‘interests,’
sexual instincts and Ego-instincts, while the observations are
satisfactorily explained by assuming a single uniform energy which is
freely mobile, can invest either object or Ego, and can serve the
purposes of the one as well as of the other. Secondly, you will want to
know how I can be so bold as to treat the detachment of the Libido from
its objects as the origin of a pathological condition, if such a
transformation of object-Libido into Ego-Libido—or into Ego-energy in
general—is a normal mental process repeated every day and every night.

The answer is: Your first objection sounds a good one. Examination of
the conditions of sleep, illness, and falling in love would probably
never have led to a distinction between Ego-Libido and object-Libido, or
between Libido and ‘interests.’ But in this you omit to take into
account the investigations with which we started, in the light of which
we now regard the mental situations under discussion. The necessity of
distinguishing between Libido and ‘interests,’ between sexual and
self-preservative instincts, has been forced upon us by our insight into
the conflict from which the transference neuroses arise. We have to
reckon with this distinction henceforward. The assumption that
object-Libido can transform itself into Ego-Libido, in other words, that
we shall also have to reckon with an Ego-Libido, appears to be the only
one capable of solving the riddle of what are called the narcissistic
neuroses, e.g. dementia præcox, or of giving any satisfactory
explanation of their likeness to hysteria and obsessions and differences
from them. We then apply what we have found undeniably proved in these
cases to illness, sleep, and the condition of intense love. We are at
liberty to apply them in any direction and see where they will take us.
The single conclusion which is not directly based on analytical
experience is that Libido is Libido and remains so, whether it is
attached to objects or to the Ego itself, and is never transformed into
egoistic ‘interests’ and vice versa. This statement, however, is another
way of expressing the distinction between sexual instincts and
Ego-instincts which we have already critically examined, and which we
shall hold to from heuristic motives until such time as it may prove
valueless.

Your second objection too raises a justifiable question, but it is
directed to a false issue. The withdrawal of object-Libido into the Ego
is certainly not pathogenic; it is true that it occurs every night
before sleep can ensue, and that the process is reversed upon awakening.
The protoplasmic animalcule draws in its protrusions and sends them out
again at the next opportunity. But it is quite a different matter when a
definite, very forcible process compels the withdrawal of the Libido
from its objects. The Libido that has then become narcissistic can no
longer find its way back to its objects, and this obstruction in the way
of the free movement of the Libido certainly does prove pathogenic. It
seems that an accumulation of narcissistic Libido over and above a
certain level becomes intolerable. We might well imagine that it was
this that first led to the investment of objects, that the Ego was
obliged to send forth its Libido in order not to fall ill of an
excessive accumulation of it. If it were part of our scheme to go more
particularly into the disorder of dementia præcox I would show you that
the process which detaches the Libido from its objects and blocks the
way back to them again is closely allied to the process of repression,
and is to be regarded as a counterpart of it. In any case you would
recognize familiar ground under your feet when you found that the
preliminary conditions giving rise to these processes are almost
identical, so far as we know at present, with those of repression. The
conflict seems to be the same and to be conducted between the same
forces. Since the outcome is so different from that of hysteria, for
instance, the reason can only lie in some difference in the disposition.
The weak point in the Libido-development in these patients is found at a
different phase of the development; the decisive fixation which, as you
will remember, enables the process of symptom-formation to break out is
at another point, probably at the stage of primary narcissism, to which
dementia præcox finally returns. It is most remarkable that for all the
narcissistic neuroses we have to assume fixation-points of the Libido at
very much earlier phases of development than those found in hysteria or
the obsessional neurosis. You have heard, however, that the concepts we
have elicited from the study of the transference neuroses also suffice
to show us our bearings in the narcissistic neuroses, which are in
practice so much more severe. There is a very wide community between
them; fundamentally they are phenomena of a single class. You may
imagine how hopeless a task it is for anyone to attempt to explain these
disorders (which properly belong to psychiatry) without being first
equipped with the analytic knowledge of the transference neuroses.

The picture formed by the symptoms of dementia præcox, incidentally a
very variable one, is not determined exclusively by the symptoms arising
from the forcing of the Libido back from the objects and the
accumulation of it as narcissism in the Ego. Other phenomena occupy a
large part of the field, and may be traced to the efforts made by the
Libido to reach its objects again, which correspond therefore to
attempts at restitution and recovery. These are in fact the conspicuous,
clamorous symptoms; they exhibit a marked similarity to those of
hysteria, or more rarely of the obsessional neurosis; they are
nevertheless different in every respect. It seems that in dementia
præcox the efforts of the Libido to get back to its objects, that is, to
the mental idea of its objects, do really succeed in conjuring up
something of them, something that at the same time is only the shadow of
them—namely, the verbal images, the words, attached to them. This is not
the place to discuss this matter further, but in my opinion this
reversed procedure on the part of the Libido gives us an insight into
what constitutes the real difference between a conscious and an
unconscious idea.

This has now brought us into the field where the next advances in
analytic work are to be expected. Since the time when we resolved upon
our formulation of the conception of Ego-Libido, the narcissistic
neuroses have become accessible to us; the task before us was to find
the dynamic factors in these disorders, and at the same time to amplify
our knowledge of mental life by a comprehension of the Ego. The
psychology of the Ego, at which we are aiming, cannot be founded upon
data provided by our own self-perceptions; it must be based, as is that
of the Libido, upon analysis of the disturbances and disintegrations of
the Ego. We shall probably think very little of our present knowledge of
the fate of the Libido, gained from the study of the transference
neuroses, when that further, greater work has been achieved. But as yet
we have not got very far towards it. The narcissistic neuroses can
hardly be approached at all by the method which has availed for the
transference neuroses; you shall soon hear why this is. With these
patients it always happens that after one has penetrated a little way
one comes up against a stone wall which cannot be surmounted. You know
that in the transference neuroses, too, barriers of resistance of this
kind are met with, but that it is possible bit by bit to pull them down.
In the narcissistic neuroses the resistance is insuperable; at the most
we can satisfy our curiosity by craning our necks for a glimpse or two
at what is going on over the wall. Our technique will therefore have to
be replaced by other methods; at present we do not know whether we shall
succeed in finding a substitute. There is no lack of material with these
patients; they bring forward a great deal, although not in answer to our
questions; at present all we can do is to interpret what they say in the
light of the understanding gained from the study of the transference
neuroses. The agreement between the two forms of disease goes far enough
to ensure us a satisfactory start with them. How much we shall be able
to achieve by this method remains to be seen.

There are other difficulties, besides this, in the way of our progress.
The narcissistic disorders and the psychoses related to them can only be
unriddled by observers trained in the analytic study of the transference
neuroses. But our psychiatrists do not study psycho-analysis and we
psycho-analysts see too little of psychiatric cases. We shall have to
develop a breed of psychiatrists who have gone through the training of
psycho-analysis as a preparatory science. A beginning in this direction
is being made in America, where several of the leading psychiatrists
lecture on psycho-analytic doctrines to their students, and where
medical superintendents of institutions and asylums endeavour to observe
their patients in the light of this theory. But all the same it has
sometimes been possible for us here to take a peep over the wall of
narcissism, so I will now proceed to tell you what we think we have
discovered in this way.

The disease of paranoia, a chronic form of systematic insanity, has a
very uncertain position in the attempts at classification made by
present-day psychiatry. There is no doubt, however, that it is closely
related to dementia præcox; I have in fact proposed that they should
both be included under the common designation of _paraphrenia_. The
forms taken by paranoia are described according to the content of the
delusion, e.g. delusions of grandeur, of persecution, of jealousy, of
being loved (erotomania), etc. We do not expect attempts at explanation
from psychiatry; as an example, an antiquated and not very fair example,
I grant, I will tell you the attempt which was made to derive one of
these symptoms from another, by means of a piece of intellectual
rationalization: The patient who has a primary tendency to believe
himself persecuted draws from this the conclusion that he must
necessarily be a very important person and therefore develops a delusion
of grandeur. According to our analytic conception, the delusion of
grandeur is the direct consequence of the inflation of the Ego by the
Libido withdrawn from the investment of objects, a secondary narcissism
ensuing as a return of the original early infantile form. In the case of
delusions of persecution, however, we observed things which led us to
follow up a certain clue. In the first place we noticed that in the
great majority of cases the persecuting person was of the same sex as
the persecuted one; this was capable of a harmless explanation, it is
true, but in certain cases which were closely studied it appeared that
the person of the same sex who had been most beloved while the patient
was normal became the persecutor after the disease broke out. A further
development of this becomes possible through the well-known paths of
association by which a loved person may be replaced by someone else,
e.g. the father by masters or persons in authority. From these
observations, which were continually corroborated, we drew the
conclusion that persecutory paranoia is the means by which a person
defends himself against a homosexual impulse which has become too
powerful. The conversion of the affectionate feeling into the hate
which, as is well-known, can seriously endanger the life of the loved
and hated object then corresponds to the conversion of libidinal
impulses into anxiety, which is a regular result of the process of
repression. As an illustration I will quote the last case I had of this
type. A young doctor had to be sent away from the place where he lived
because he had threatened the life of the son of a university professor
there who had previously been his greatest friend. He imputed superhuman
power and the most devilish intentions to this friend; he was to blame
for all the misfortunes which had occurred in recent years to the family
of the patient and for all his ill-luck in public and in private. This
was not enough, however; the wicked friend and his father, the
professor, had caused the war and brought the Russians over the border;
he had ruined his life in a thousand ways; our patient was convinced
that the death of this criminal would be the end of all evil in the
world. And yet his old love for him was still so strong that it had
paralysed his hand when he had an opportunity of shooting his enemy at
sight. In the short conversation which I had with the patient it came to
light that this intimate friendship between the two men went right back
to their school-days; on at least one occasion it had passed beyond the
boundaries of friendship, a night spent together had been the occasion
of complete sexual intercourse. The patient had never developed any of
the feeling towards women that would have been natural at his age with
his attractive personality. He had been engaged to a handsome,
well-connected girl, but she had broken off the engagement because her
lover was so cold. Years after, his disease broke out at the very moment
when he had for the first time succeeded in giving full sexual
gratification to a woman; as she encircled him in her arms in gratitude
and devotion he suddenly felt a mysterious stab of pain running like a
sharp knife round the crown of his head. Afterwards he described the
sensation as being like that of the incision made at a post-mortem to
bare the brain; and as his friend was a pathological anatomist he slowly
came to the conclusion that he alone could have sent him this woman as a
temptation. Then his eyes began to be opened about the other
persecutions of which he had been the victim by the machinations of his
former friend.

But how about those cases in which the persecutor is of a different sex
from that of the persecuted one, and which appear therefore to
contradict our explanation of this disease as a defence against
homosexual Libido? Some time ago I had an opportunity of examining a
case of the kind, and behind the apparent contradiction I was able to
elicit a confirmation. A young girl imagined herself persecuted by a man
with whom she had twice had intimate relations; actually she had first
of all cherished the delusion against a woman who could be recognized to
be a mother-substitute. Not until after the second meeting with him did
she make the advance of transferring the delusional idea from the woman
to the man; so that in this case also the condition that the sex of the
persecutor is the same as that of the victim originally held good also.
In her complaint to the lawyer and the doctor the patient had not
mentioned the previous phase of her delusion and this gave rise to an
apparent contradiction of our theory of paranoia.

The homosexual choice of object is originally more closely related to
narcissism than the heterosexual; hence, when a strong unwelcome
homosexual excitation suffers repudiation, the way back to narcissism is
especially easy to find. I have so far had very little opportunity in
these lectures of speaking about the fundamental plan on which the
course of the love-impulse during life is based, so far as we know it;
nor can I supplement it now. I will only select this to tell you: that
the choice of object, the step forward in the development of the Libido
which comes after the narcissistic stage, can proceed according to two
types. These are: either _the narcissistic type_, according to which, in
place of the Ego itself, someone as nearly as possible resembling it is
adopted as an object; or _the anaclitic type_ (_Anlehnungstypus_)[53] in
which those persons who became prized on account of the satisfactions
they rendered to the primal needs in life are chosen as objects by the
Libido also. A strong Libido-fixation on the narcissistic type of
object-choice is also found as a trait in the disposition of manifest
homosexuals.

You will remember that in the first lecture given this session I
described to you a case of delusional jealousy in a woman. Now that we
have so nearly reached the end you will certainly want to know how we
account for a delusion psycho-analytically. I have less to say about it
than you would expect, however. The inaccessibility of delusions to
logical arguments and to actual experience is to be explained, as it is
with obsessions, by the connection they bear to the unconscious material
which is both expressed by, and held in check by, the delusion or the
obsession. The differences between the two are based on the
topographical and dynamic differences in the two affections.

As with paranoia, so also with melancholia (under which, by the way,
very different clinical types are classified), it has been possible to
obtain a glimpse into the inner structure of the disorder. We have
perceived that the self-reproaches with which these sufferers torment
themselves so mercilessly actually relate to another person, to the
sexual object they have lost or whom they have ceased to value on
account of some fault. From this we concluded that the melancholic has
indeed withdrawn his Libido from the object, but that by a process which
we must call ‘narcissistic identification’ he has set up the object
within the Ego itself, projected it on to the Ego. I can only give you a
descriptive representation of this process, and not one expressed in
terms of topography and dynamics. The Ego itself is then treated as
though it were the abandoned object; it suffers all the revengeful and
aggressive treatment which is designed for the object. The suicidal
impulses of melancholics also become more intelligible on the
supposition that the bitterness felt by the diseased mind concerns the
Ego itself at the same time as, and equally with, the loved and hated
object. In melancholia, as in the other narcissistic disorders, a
feature of the emotional life which, after Bleuler, we are accustomed to
call _ambivalence_ comes markedly to the fore; by this we mean a
directing of antithetical feelings (affectionate and hostile) towards
the same person. It is unfortunate that I have not been able to say more
about ambivalence in these lectures.

There is also, besides the narcissistic, an hysterical form of
identification which has long been known to us. I wish it were possible
to make the differences between them clear to you in a few definite
statements. I can tell you something of the periodic and cyclic forms of
melancholia which will interest you. It is possible in favourable
circumstances—I have twice achieved it—to prevent the recurrence of the
condition, or of its antithesis, by analytic treatment during the lucid
intervals between the attacks. One learns from this that in melancholia
and mania as well as other conditions a special kind of solution of a
conflict is going on, which in all its pre-requisites agrees with those
of the other neuroses. You may imagine how much there remains for
psycho-analysis to do in this field.

I also told you that by analysis of the narcissistic disorders we hoped
to gain some knowledge of the composition of the Ego and of its
structure out of various faculties and elements. We have made a
beginning towards this at one point. From analysis of the delusion of
observation we have come to the conclusion that in the Ego there exists
a faculty that incessantly watches, criticizes, and compares, and in
this way is set against the other part of the Ego. In our opinion,
therefore, the patient reveals a truth which has not been appreciated as
such when he complains that at every step he is spied upon and observed,
that his every thought is known and examined. He has erred only in
attributing this disagreeable power to something outside himself and
foreign to him; he perceives within his Ego the rule of a faculty which
measures his actual Ego and all his activities by an _Ego-ideal_, which
he has created for himself in the course of his development. We also
infer that he created this ideal for the purpose of recovering thereby
the self-satisfaction bound up with the primary infantile narcissism,
which since those days has suffered so many shocks and mortifications.
We recognize in this self-criticizing faculty the Ego-censorship, the
‘conscience’; it is the same censorship as that exercised at night upon
dreams, from which the repressions against inadmissible wish-excitations
proceed. When this faculty disintegrates in the delusion of being
observed, we are able to detect its origin and that it arose out of the
influence of parents and those who trained the child, together with his
social surroundings, by a process of identification with certain of
these persons who were taken as a model.

These are some of the results yielded by the application of
psycho-analysis to the narcissistic disorders. They are still not very
numerous, and many of them still lack that sharpness of outline which
cannot be achieved in a new field until some degree of familiarity has
been attained. All of them have been made possible by employing the
conception of Ego-Libido, or narcissistic Libido, by means of which we
can extend the conclusions established for the transference neuroses on
to the narcissistic neuroses. But now you will put the question whether
it is possible for us to bring all the disorders of the narcissistic
neuroses and of the psychoses into the range of the Libido-theory, for
us to find the libidinal factor in mental life always and everywhere
responsible for the development of disease, and for us never to have to
attribute any part in the causation to the same alteration in the
functions of the self-preservative instincts. Well now, it seems to me
that decision on this point is not very urgent, and above all that the
time is not yet ripe for us to make it; we may leave it calmly to be
decided by advance in the work of science. I should not be astonished if
it should prove that the capacity to induce a pathogenic effect were
actually a prerogative of the libidinal impulses, so that the theory of
the Libido would triumph all along the line from the actual neuroses to
the severest psychotic form of individual derangement. For we know it to
be characteristic of the Libido that it refuses to subordinate itself to
reality in life, to Necessity. But I consider it extremely probable that
the Ego-instincts are involved secondarily and that disturbances in
their functions may be necessitated by the pathogenic affections of the
Libido. Nor can I see that the direction taken by our investigations
will be invalidated if we should have to recognize that in severe
psychosis the Ego-instincts themselves are primarily deranged; the
future will decide—for you, at least.

Let me return for a moment to anxiety, in order to throw light upon the
one obscure point we left there. We said that the relation between
anxiety and Libido, otherwise so well defined, is with difficulty
harmonized with the almost indisputable assumption that real anxiety in
the face of danger is the expression of the self-preservative instincts.
But how if the anxiety-affect is provided, not by self-interest on the
part of the Ego-instincts, but by the Ego-Libido? The condition of
anxiety is after all invariably detrimental; its disadvantage becomes
conspicuous when it reaches an intense degree. It then interferes with
the action that alone would be expedient and would serve the purposes of
self-preservation, whether it be flight or self-defence. Therefore if we
ascribe the affective component of real anxiety to the Ego-Libido, and
the action undertaken to the Ego-preservative instincts, every
theoretical difficulty will be overcome. You will hardly maintain
seriously that we run away _because_ we perceive fear? No, we perceive
fear _and_ we take to flight, out of the common impulse that is roused
by the perception of danger. Men who have survived experiences of
imminent danger to life tell us that they did not perceive any fear,
that they simply acted—for instance, pointed their gun at the oncoming
beast—which was undoubtedly the best thing they could do.




                         TWENTY-SEVENTH LECTURE
                              TRANSFERENCE


Now that we are coming to the end of our discussions you will feel a
certain expectation which must not be allowed to mislead you. You are
probably thinking that I surely have not led you through all these
complicated mazes of psycho-analysis only to dismiss you at the end
without a word about the therapy, upon which after all the possibility
of undertaking psycho-analytic work depends. As a matter of fact I could
not possibly leave out this aspect of it; for some of the phenomena
belonging to it will teach you a new fact, without knowledge of which
you would be quite unable to assimilate properly your understanding of
the diseases we have been studying.

I know you do not expect directions in the technique of practising
analysis for therapeutic purposes; you only want to know in a general
way by what means the psycho-analytic therapy works and to gain a
general idea of what it accomplishes. And you have an undeniable right
to learn this; nevertheless I am not going to tell you—I am going to
insist upon your finding it out for yourselves.

Think for a moment! You have already learnt everything essential, from
the conditions by which illness is provoked to all the factors which
take effect within the diseased mind. Where is the opening in all this
for therapeutic influence? First of all there is the hereditary
disposition,—we do not often mention it because it is so strongly
emphasized in other quarters and we have nothing new to say about it.
But do not suppose that we underestimate it; as practitioners we are
well aware of its power. In any event we can do nothing to change it;
for us also it is a fixed datum in the problem, which sets a limit to
our efforts. Next, there is the influence of the experiences of early
childhood, which we are accustomed in analysis to rank as very
important; they belong to the past, we cannot undo them. Then there is
all that unhappiness in life which we have included under ‘privation in
reality,’ from which all the absence of love in life proceeds—namely,
poverty, family strife, mistaken choice in marriage, unfavourable social
conditions, and the severity of the demands by which moral convention
oppresses the individual. There is indeed a wide opening for a very
effective treatment in all this; but it would have to follow the course
of the dispensations of Kaiser Joseph in the Viennese legend—the
benevolent despotism of a potentate before whose will men bow and
difficulties disappear! But who are we that we can exert such
beneficence as a therapeutic measure? Poor as we are and without
influence socially, with our living to earn by our medical practice, we
are not even in a position to extend our efforts to penniless folk, as
other physicians with other methods can do; our treatment takes too much
time and labour for that. But perhaps you are still clinging on to one
of the factors put forward, and believe you see an opening for our
influence there. If the conventional restrictions imposed by society
have had a part in the privations forced upon the patient, the treatment
could give him the courage and even directly advise him to defy these
obstacles, and to seize satisfactions and health for himself at the cost
of failing to achieve an ideal which, though highly esteemed, is after
all often set at naught by the world. Health is to be won by “free
living,” then. There would be this blot upon analysis, to be sure, that
it would not be serving general morality; what it gave to the individual
it would take from the rest of the world.

But now, who has given you such a false impression of analysis? It is
out of the question that part of the analytic treatment should consist
of advice to “live freely”—if for no other reason because we ourselves
tell you that a stubborn conflict is going on in the patient between
libidinal desires and sexual repression, between sensual and ascetic
tendencies. This conflict is not resolved by helping one side to win a
victory over the other. It is true we see that in neurotics asceticism
has gained the day; the result of which is that the suppressed sexual
impulses have found a vent for themselves in the symptoms. If we were to
make victory possible to the sensual side instead, the disregarded
forces repressing sexuality would have to indemnify themselves by
symptoms. Neither of these measures will succeed in ending the inner
conflict; one side in either event will remain unsatisfied. There are
but few cases in which the conflict is so unstable that a factor like
medical advice can have any effect upon it, and these cases do not
really require analytic treatment. People who can be so easily
influenced by physicians would have found their own way to that solution
without this influence. After all, you know that a young man living in
abstinence who makes up his mind to illicit sexual intercourse, or an
unsatisfied wife who seeks compensation with a lover, does not as a rule
wait for the permission of a physician, still less of an analyst, to do
so.

In considering this question people usually overlook the essential point
of the whole difficulty—namely, that the pathogenic conflict in a
neurotic must not be confounded with a normal struggle between
conflicting impulses all of which are in the same mental field. It is a
battle between two forces of which one has succeeded in coming to the
level of the preconscious and conscious part of the mind, while the
other has been confined on the unconscious level. That is why the
conflict can never have a final outcome one way or the other; the
antagonists meet each other as little as the whale and the polar bear in
the well-known story. An effective decision can be reached only when
they confront each other on the same ground. And, in my opinion, to
accomplish this is the sole task of the treatment.

Besides this, I can assure you that you are quite misinformed if you
imagine that advice and guidance concerning conduct in life forms an
integral part of the analytic method. On the contrary, so far as
possible we refrain from playing the part of mentor; we want nothing
better than that the patient should find his own solutions for himself.
To this end we expect him to postpone all vital decisions affecting his
life, such as choice of career, business enterprises, marriage or
divorce, during treatment and to execute them only after it has been
completed. Now confess that you had imagined something very different.
Only with certain very young or quite helpless and defenceless persons
is it impossible to keep within such strict limitations as we should
wish. With them we have to combine the positions of physician and
educator; we are then well aware of our responsibility and act with the
necessary caution.

You must not be led away by my eagerness to defend myself against the
accusation that in analytic treatment neurotics are encouraged to “live
a free life” and conclude from it that we influence them in favour of
conventional morality. That is at least as far removed from our purpose
as the other. We are not reformers, it is true; we are merely observers;
but we cannot avoid observing with critical eyes, and we have found it
impossible to give our support to conventional sexual morality or to
approve highly of the means by which society attempts to arrange the
practical problems of sexuality in life. We can demonstrate with ease
that what the world calls its code of morals demands more sacrifices
than it is worth, and that its behaviour is neither dictated by honesty
nor instituted with wisdom. We do not absolve our patients from
listening to these criticisms; we accustom them to an unprejudiced
consideration of sexual matters like all other matters; and if after
they have become independent by the effect of the treatment they choose
some intermediate course between unrestrained sexual licence and
unconditional asceticism, our conscience is not burdened whatever the
outcome. We say to ourselves that anyone who has successfully undergone
the training of learning and recognizing the truth about himself is
henceforth strengthened against the dangers of immorality, even if his
standard of morality should in some respect deviate from the common one.
Incidentally, we must beware of overestimating the importance of
abstinence in affecting neurosis; only a minority of pathogenic
situations due to privation and the subsequent accumulation of Libido
thereby induced can be relieved by the kind of sexual intercourse that
is procurable without any difficulty.

So you cannot explain the therapeutic effect of psycho-analysis by
supposing that it permits patients free sexual indulgence; you must look
round for something else. I think that one of the remarks I made while I
was disposing of this conjecture on your part will have put you on the
right track. Probably it is the substitution of something conscious for
something unconscious, the transformation of the unconscious thoughts
into conscious thoughts, that makes our work effective. You are right;
that is exactly what it is. By extending the unconscious into
consciousness the repressions are raised, the conditions of
symptom-formation are abolished, and the pathogenic conflict exchanged
for a normal one which must be decided one way or the other. We do
nothing for our patients but enable this one mental change to take place
in them; the extent to which it is achieved is the extent of the benefit
we do them. Where there is no repression or mental process analogous to
it to be undone there is nothing for our therapy to do.

The aim of our efforts may be expressed in various formulas—making
conscious the unconscious, removing the repressions, filling in the gaps
in memory; they all amount to the same thing. But perhaps you are
dissatisfied with this declaration; you imagined the recovery of a
nervous person rather differently, that after he had been subjected to
the laborious process of psycho-analysis he would emerge a different
person altogether, and then you hear that the whole thing only amounts
to his having a little less that is unconscious and a little more that
is conscious in him than before. Well, you probably do not appreciate
the importance of an inner change of this kind. A neurotic who has been
cured has really become a different person, although at bottom of course
he remains the same—that is, he has become his best self, what he would
have been under the most favourable conditions. That, however, is a
great deal. Then when you hear of all that has to be done, of the
tremendous exertion required to carry out this apparently trifling
change in his mental life, the significance attached to these
differences between the various mental levels will appear more
comprehensible to you.

I will digress a moment to enquire whether you know what ‘a causal
therapy’ means? This name is given to a procedure which puts aside the
manifestations of a disease and looks for a point of attack in order to
eradicate the cause of the illness. Now is psycho-analysis a causal
therapy or not? The answer is not a simple one, but it may give us an
opportunity to convince ourselves of the futility of such questions. In
so far as psycho-analytic therapy does not aim immediately at removing
the symptoms it is conducted like a causal therapy. In other respects
you may say it is not, for we have followed the causal chain back far
beyond the repressions to the instinctive predispositions, their
relative intensity in the constitution, and the aberrations in the
course of their development. Now suppose that it were possible by some
chemical means to affect this mental machinery, to increase or decrease
the amount of Libido available at any given moment, or to reinforce the
strength of one impulse at the expense of another—that would be a causal
therapy in the literal sense, and our analysis would be the
indispensable preliminary work of reconnoitring the ground. As you know,
there is at present no question of any such influence upon the processes
of the Libido; our mental therapy makes its attack at another point in
the concatenation, not quite at the place where we perceive the
manifestations to be rooted, but yet comparatively far behind the
symptoms themselves, at a place which becomes accessible to us in very
remarkable circumstances.

What then have we to do in order to bring what is unconscious in the
patient into consciousness? At one time we thought that would be very
simple; all we need do would be to identify this unconscious matter and
then tell the patient what it was. However, we know already that that
was a short-sighted mistake. Our knowledge of what is unconscious in him
is not equivalent to his knowledge of it; when we tell him what we know
he does not assimilate it _in place of_ his own unconscious thoughts,
but _alongside_ of them, and very little has been changed. We have
rather to regard this unconscious material topographically; we have to
look for it in his memory at the actual spot where the repression of it
originally ensued. This repression must be removed, and then the
substitution of conscious thought for unconscious thought can be
effected straightaway. How is a repression such as this to be removed?
Our work enters upon a second phase here; first, the discovery of the
repression, and then the removal of the resistance which maintains this
repression.

How can this resistance be got rid of? In the same way: by finding it
out and telling the patient about it. The resistance too arises in a
repression, either from the very one which we are endeavouring to
dispel, or in one that occurred earlier. It is set up by the
counter-charge which rose up to repress the repellent impulse. So that
we now do just the same as we were trying to do before; we interpret,
identify, and inform the patient; but this time we are doing it at the
right spot. The counter-charge or the resistance is not part of the
Unconscious, but of the Ego which co-operates with us, and this is so,
even if it is not actually conscious. We know that a difficulty arises
here in the ambiguity of the word ‘unconscious,’ on the one hand, as a
phenomenon, on the other hand, as a system. That sounds very obscure and
difficult; but after all it is only a repetition of what we have said
before, is it not? We have come to this point already long ago.—Well
then, we expect that this resistance will be abandoned, and the
counter-charge withdrawn, when we have made the recognition of them
possible by our work of interpretation. What are the instinctive
propelling forces at our disposal to make this possible? First, the
patient’s desire for recovery, which impelled him to submit himself to
the work in co-operation with us, and secondly, the aid of his
intelligence which we reinforce by our interpretation. There is no doubt
that it is easier for the patient to recognize the resistance with his
intelligence, and to identify the idea in his Unconscious which
corresponds to it, if we have first given him an idea which rouses his
expectations in regard to it. If I say to you: “Look up at the sky and
you will see a balloon,” you will find it much more quickly than if I
merely tell you to look up and see whether you can see anything; a
student who looks through a microscope for the first time is told by the
instructor what he is to see; otherwise he sees nothing, although it is
there and quite visible.

And now for the fact! In quite a number of the various forms of nervous
illness, in the hysterias, anxiety conditions, obsessional neuroses, our
hypothesis proves sound. By seeking out the repression in this way,
discovering the resistances, indicating the repressed, it is actually
possible to accomplish the task, to overcome the resistances, to break
down the repression, and to change something unconscious into something
conscious. As we do this we get a vivid impression of how, as each
individual resistance is being mastered, a violent battle goes on in the
soul of the patient—a normal mental struggle between two tendencies on
the same ground, between the motives striving to maintain the
counter-charge and those which are ready to abolish it. The first of
these are the old motives which originally erected the repression; among
the second are found new ones more recently acquired, which it is hoped
will decide the conflict in our favour. We have succeeded in revivifying
the old battle of the repression again, in bringing the issue, so long
ago decided, up for revision again. The new contribution we make to it
lies, first of all, in demonstrating that the original solution led to
illness and in promising that a different one would pave the way to
health, and secondly, in pointing out that the circumstances have all
changed immensely since the time of that original repudiation of these
impulses. Then, the Ego was weak, infantile, and perhaps had reason to
shrink with horror from the claims of the Libido as being dangerous to
it. To-day it is strong and experienced and moreover has a helper at
hand in the physician. So we may expect to lead the revived conflict
through to a better outcome than repression; and, as has been said, in
hysteria, anxiety-neurosis, and the obsessional neurosis success in the
main justifies our claims.

There are other forms of illness, however, with which our therapeutic
treatment never is successful, in spite of the similarity of the
conditions. In them also there was originally a conflict between Ego and
Libido, leading to repression—although this conflict may be
characterized by topographical differences from the conflict of the
transference neuroses; in them too it is possible to trace out the point
in the patient’s life at which the repressions occurred; we apply the
same method, are ready to make the same assurances, offer the same
assistance by telling the patient what to look out for; and here also
the interval in time between the present and the point at which the
repressions were established is all in favour of a better outcome of the
conflict. And yet we cannot succeed in overcoming one resistance or in
removing one of the repressions. These patients, paranoiacs,
melancholics, and those suffering from dementia præcox, remain on the
whole unaffected, proof against psycho-analytic treatment. What can be
the cause of this? It is not due to lack of intelligence; a certain
degree of intellectual capacity must naturally be stipulated for
analysis, but there is no deficiency in this respect in, for instance,
the very quick-witted deductive paranoiac. Nor are any of the other
propelling forces regularly absent: melancholics, for instance, in
contrast to paranoiacs, experience a very high degree of realization
that they are ill and that their sufferings are due to this; but they
are not on that account any more accessible to influence. In this we are
confronted with a fact that we do not understand, and are therefore
called upon to doubt whether we have really understood all the
conditions of the success possible with the other neuroses.

When we keep to consideration of hysterical and obsessional neurotics we
are very soon confronted with a second fact, for which we were quite
unprepared. After the treatment has proceeded for a while we notice that
these patients behave in a quite peculiar manner towards ourselves. We
thought indeed that we had taken into account all the motive forces
affecting the treatment and had reasoned out the situation between
ourselves and the patient fully, so that it balanced like a sum in
arithmetic; and then after all something seems to slip in which was
quite left out of our calculation. This new and unexpected feature is in
itself many-sided and complex; I will first of all describe some of its
more frequent and simpler forms to you.

We observe then that the patient, who ought to be thinking of nothing
but the solution of his own distressing conflicts, begins to develop a
particular interest in the person of the physician. Everything connected
with this person seems to him more important than his own affairs and to
distract him from his illness. Relations with the patient then become
for a time very agreeable; he is particularly docile, endeavours to show
his gratitude wherever he can, exhibits a fineness of character and
other good qualities which we had perhaps not anticipated in him. The
analyst thus forms a very good opinion of the patient and values his
luck in being able to render assistance to such an admirable
personality. If the physician has occasion to see the patient’s
relatives he hears with satisfaction that this esteem is mutual. The
patient at home is never tired of praising the analyst and attributing
new virtues to him. “He has quite lost his head over you; he puts
implicit trust in you; everything you say is like a revelation to him,”
say the relatives. Here and there one among this chorus having sharper
eyes will say: “It is positively boring the way he never speaks of
anything but you: he quotes you all the time.”

We will hope that the physician is modest enough to ascribe the
patient’s estimate of his value to the hopes of recovery which he has
been able to offer to him, and to the widening in the patient’s
intellectual horizon consequent upon the surprising revelations entailed
by the treatment and their liberating influence. The analysis too makes
splendid progress under these conditions, the patient understands the
suggestions offered to him, concentrates upon the tasks appointed by the
treatment, the material needed—his recollections and associations—is
abundantly available; he astonishes the analyst by the sureness and
accuracy of his interpretations, and the latter has only to observe with
satisfaction how readily and willingly a sick man will accept all the
new psychological ideas that are so hotly contested by the healthy in
the world outside. A general improvement in the patient’s condition,
objectively confirmed on all sides, also accompanies this harmonious
relationship in the analysis.

But such fair weather cannot last for ever. There comes a day when it
clouds over. There begin to be difficulties in the analysis; the patient
says he cannot think of anything more to say. One has an unmistakable
impression that he is no longer interested in the work, and that he is
casually ignoring the injunction given him to say everything that comes
into his mind and to yield to none of the critical objections that occur
to him. His behaviour is not dictated by the situation of the treatment;
it is as if he had not made an agreement to that effect with the
physician; he is obviously preoccupied with something which at the same
time he wishes to reserve to himself. This is a situation in which the
treatment is in danger. Plainly a very powerful resistance has risen up.
What can have happened?

If it is possible to clear up this state of things, the cause of the
disturbance is found to consist in certain intense feelings of affection
which the patient has transferred on to the physician, not accounted for
by the latter’s behaviour nor by the relationship involved by the
treatment. The form in which this affectionate feeling is expressed and
the goal it seeks naturally depend upon the circumstances of the
situation between the two persons. If one of them is a young girl and
the other still a fairly young man, the impression received is that of
normal love; it seems natural that a girl should fall in love with a man
with whom she is much alone and can speak of very intimate things, and
who is in the position of an adviser with authority—we shall probably
overlook the fact that in a neurotic girl some disturbance of the
capacity for love is rather to be expected. The farther removed the
situation between the two persons is from this supposed example, the
more unaccountable it is to find that nevertheless the same kind of
feeling comes to light in other cases. It may be still comprehensible
when a young woman who is unhappily married seems to be overwhelmed by a
serious passion for her physician, if he is still unattached, and that
she should be ready to seek a divorce and give herself to him, or, where
circumstances would prevent this, to enter into a secret love-affair
with him. That sort of thing, indeed, is known to occur outside
psycho-analysis. But in this situation girls and women make the most
astonishing confessions which reveal a quite peculiar attitude on their
part to the therapeutic problem: they had always known that nothing but
love would cure them, and from the beginning of the treatment they had
expected that this relationship would at last yield them what life had
so far denied them. It was only with this hope that they had taken such
pains over the analysis and had conquered all their difficulties in
disclosing their thoughts. We ourselves can add: ‘and had understood so
easily all that is usually so hard to accept.’ But a confession of this
kind astounds us; all our calculations are blown to the winds. Could it
be that we have omitted the most important element in the whole problem?

And actually it is so; the more experience we gain the less possible
does it become for us to contest this new factor, which alters the whole
problem and puts our scientific calculations to shame. The first few
times one might perhaps think that the analytic treatment had stumbled
upon an obstruction in the shape of an accidental occurrence, extraneous
to its purpose and unconnected with it in origin. But when it happens
that this kind of attachment to the physician regularly evinces itself
in every fresh case, under the most unfavourable conditions, and always
appears in circumstances of a positively grotesque incongruity—in
elderly women, in relation to grey-bearded men, even on occasions when
our judgement assures us that no temptations exist—then we are compelled
to give up the idea of a disturbing accident and to admit that we have
to deal with a phenomenon in itself essentially bound up with the nature
of the disease.

The new fact which we are thus unwillingly compelled to recognize we
call TRANSFERENCE. By this we mean a transference of feelings on to the
person of the physician, because we do not believe that the situation in
the treatment can account for the origin of such feelings. We are much
more disposed to suspect that the whole of this readiness to develop
feeling originates in another source; that it was previously formed in
the patient, and has seized the opportunity provided by the treatment to
transfer itself on to the person of the physician. The transference can
express itself as a passionate petitioning for love, or it can take less
extreme forms; where a young girl and an elderly man are concerned,
instead of the wish to be wife or mistress, a wish to be adopted as a
favourite daughter may come to light, the libidinous desire can modify
itself and propose itself as a wish for an everlasting, but ideally
platonic friendship. Many women understand how to sublimate the
transference and to mould it until it acquires a sort of justification
for its existence; others have to express it in its crude, original,
almost impossible form. But at bottom it is always the same, and its
origin in the same source can never be mistaken.

Before we enquire where we are to range this new fact, we will amplify
the description of it a little. How is it with our male patients? There
at least we might hope to be spared the troublesome element of sex
difference and sex attraction. Well, the answer is very much the same as
with women. The same attachment to the physician, the same
overestimation of his qualities, the same adoption of his interests, the
same jealousy against all those connected with him. The sublimated kinds
of transference are the forms more frequently met with between man and
man, and the directly sexual declaration more rarely, in the same degree
to which the manifest homosexuality of the patient is subordinated to
the other ways by which this component-instinct can express itself.
Also, it is in male patients that the analyst more frequently observes a
manifestation of the transference which at the first glance seems to
controvert the description of it just given—that is, the hostile or
_negative_ transference.

First of all, let us realize at once that the transference exists in the
patient from the beginning of the treatment, and is for a time the
strongest impetus in the work. Nothing is seen of it and one does not
need to trouble about it as long as its effect is favourable to the work
in which the two persons are co-operating. When it becomes transformed
into a resistance, attention must be paid to it; and then it appears
that two different and contrasting states of mind have supervened in it
and have altered its attitude to the treatment: first, when the
affectionate attraction has become so strong and betrays signs of its
origin in sexual desire so clearly that it was bound to arouse an inner
opposition against itself; and secondly, when it consists in
antagonistic instead of affectionate feeling. The hostile feelings as a
rule appear later than the affectionate and under cover of them; when
both occur simultaneously they provide a very good exemplification of
that ambivalence in feeling which governs most of our intimate
relationships with other human beings. The hostile feelings therefore
indicate an attachment of feeling quite similar to the affectionate,
just as defiance indicates a similar dependence upon the other person to
that belonging to obedience, though with a reversed prefix. There can be
no doubt that the hostile feelings against the analyst deserve the name
of ‘transference,’ for the situation in the treatment certainly gives no
adequate occasion for them; the necessity for regarding the negative
transference in this light is a confirmation of our previous similar
view of the positive or affectionate variety.

Where the transference springs from, what difficulties it provides for
us, how we can overcome them, and what advantage we can finally derive
from it, are questions which can only be adequately dealt with in a
technical exposition of the analytic method; I can merely touch upon
them here. It is out of the question that we should yield to the demands
made by the patient under the influence of his transference; it would be
nonsensical to reject them unkindly, and still more so, indignantly. The
transference is overcome by showing the patient that his feelings do not
originate in the current situation, and do not really concern the person
of the physician, but that he is reproducing something that had happened
to him long ago. In this way we require him to transform his
_repetition_ into _recollection_. Then the transference which, whether
affectionate or hostile, every time seemed the greatest menace to the
cure becomes its best instrument, so that with its help we can unlock
the closed doors in the soul. I should like, however, to say a few words
to dispel the unpleasant effects of the shock that this unexpected
phenomenon must have been to you. After all, we must not forget that
this illness of the patient’s which we undertake to analyse is not a
finally accomplished, and as it were consolidated thing; but that it is
growing and continuing its development all the time like a living thing.
The beginning of the treatment puts no stop to this development; but, as
soon as the treatment has taken a hold upon the patient, it appears that
the entire productivity of the illness henceforward becomes concentrated
in one direction—namely, upon the relationship to the physician. The
transference then becomes comparable to the cambium layer between the
wood and the bark of a tree, from which proceeds the formation of new
tissue and the growth of the trunk in diameter. As soon as the
transference has taken on this significance the work upon the patient’s
recollections recedes far into the background. It is then not incorrect
to say that we no longer have to do with the previous illness, but with
a newly-created and transformed neurosis which has replaced the earlier
one. This new edition of the old disease has been followed from its
inception, one sees it come to light and grow, and is particularly
familiar with it since one is oneself its central object. All the
patient’s symptoms have abandoned their original significance and have
adapted themselves to a new meaning, which is contained in their
relationship to the transference; or else only those symptoms remain
which were capable of being adapted in this way. The conquest of this
new artificially-acquired neurosis coincides with the removal of the
illness which existed prior to the treatment, that is, with
accomplishing the therapeutic task. The person who has become normal and
free from the influence of repressed instinctive tendencies in his
relationship to the physician remains so in his own life when the
physician has again been removed from it.

The transference has this all-important, absolutely central significance
for the cure in hysteria, anxiety-hysteria, and the obsessional
neurosis, which are in consequence rightly grouped together as the
‘transference neuroses.’ Anyone who has grasped from analytic experience
a true impression of the fact of transference can never again doubt the
nature of the suppressed impulses which have manufactured an outlet for
themselves in the symptoms; and he will require no stronger proof of
their libidinal character. We may say that our conviction of the
significance of the symptoms as a substitutive gratification of the
Libido was only finally and definitely established by evaluating the
phenomenon of transference.

Now, however, we are called upon to correct our former dynamic
conception of the process of cure and to bring it into agreement with
the new discovery. When the patient has to fight out the normal conflict
with the resistances which we have discovered in him by analysis, he
requires a powerful propelling force to influence him towards the
decision we aim at, leading to recovery. Otherwise it might happen that
he would decide for a repetition of the previous outcome, and allow that
which had been raised into consciousness to slip back again under
repression. The outcome in this struggle is not decided by his
intellectual insight—it is neither strong enough nor free enough to
accomplish such a thing—but solely by his relationship to the physician.
In so far as his transference bears the positive sign, it clothes the
physician with authority, transforms itself into faith in his findings
and in his views. Without this kind of transference or with a negative
one, the physician and his arguments would never even be listened to.
Faith repeats the history of its own origin; it is a derivative of love
and at first it needed no arguments. Not until later does it admit them
so far as to take them into critical consideration if they have been
offered by someone who is loved. Without this support arguments have no
weight with the patient, never do have any with most people in life. A
human being is therefore on the whole only accessible to influence, even
on the intellectual side, in so far as he is capable of investing
objects with Libido; and we have good cause to recognize, and to fear,
in the measure of his narcissism a barrier to his susceptibility to
influence, even by the best analytic technique.

The capacity for the radiation of Libido towards other persons in object
investment must, of course, be ascribed to all normal people; the
tendency to transference in neurotics, so-called, is only an exceptional
intensification of a universal characteristic. Now it would be very
remarkable if a human character-trait of this importance and
universality had never been observed and made use of. And this has
really been done. Bernheim, with unerring perspicacity, based the theory
of hypnotic manifestations upon the proposition that all human beings
are more or less open to suggestion, are ‘suggestible.’ What he called
suggestibility is nothing else but the tendency to transference, rather
too narrowly circumscribed so that the negative transference did not
come within its scope. But Bernheim could never say what suggestion
actually was nor how it arises; it was an axiomatic fact to him and he
could give no explanation of its origin. He did not recognize the
dependence of ‘suggestibility’ on sexuality, on the functioning of the
Libido. And we have to admit that we have only abandoned hypnosis in our
methods in order to discover suggestion again in the shape of
transference.

But now I will pause and let you take up the thread. I observe that an
objection is invading your thoughts with such violence that it would
deprive you of all power of attention if it were not given expression.
“So now at last you have confessed that you too work with the aid of
suggestion like the hypnotists. We have been thinking so all along. But
then, what is the use of all these roundabout routes by way of past
experiences, discovering the unconscious material, interpreting and
retranslating the distortions, and the enormous expenditure of time,
trouble, and money, when after all the only effective agent is
suggestion? Why do you not suggest directly against the symptoms, as
others do who are honest hypnotists? And besides, if you are going to
make out that by these roundabout routes you have made numerous
important psychological discoveries, which are concealed in direct
suggestion, who is to vouch for their validity? Are not they too the
result of suggestion, of unintentional suggestion, that is? Cannot you
impress upon the patient what you please and whatever seems good to you
in this direction also?”

What you charge me with in this way is exceedingly interesting and must
be answered. But I cannot do that to-day; our time is up. Till next
time, then. You will see that I shall be answerable to you. To-day I
must finish what I began. I promised to explain to you through the
factor of the transference why it is that our therapeutic efforts have
no success in the narcissistic neuroses.

I can do it in a few words, and you will see how simply the riddle is
solved, and how well everything fits together. Experience shows that
persons suffering from the narcissistic neuroses have no capacity for
transference, or only insufficient remnants of it. They turn from the
physician, not in hostility, but in indifference. Therefore they are not
to be influenced by him; what he says leaves them cold, makes no
impression on them, and therefore the process of cure which can be
carried through with others, the revivification of the pathogenic
conflict and the overcoming of the resistance due to the repressions,
cannot be effected with them. They remain as they are. They have often
enough undertaken attempts at recovery on their own account which have
led to pathological results; we can do nothing to alter this.

On the basis of our clinical observations of these patients we stated
that they must have abandoned the investment of objects with Libido and
transformed object-Libido into Ego-Libido. By this we differentiated
them from the first group of neurotics (hysteria, anxiety, and
obsessional neurosis). Their behaviour during the attempt to cure them
confirms this suspicion. They produce no transference, and are,
therefore, inaccessible to our efforts, not to be cured by us.




                         TWENTY-EIGHTH LECTURE
                          THE ANALYTIC THERAPY


You know what we are going to discuss to-day. When I admitted that the
influence of the psycho-analytic therapy is essentially founded upon
transference, i.e. upon suggestion, you asked me why we do not make use
of direct suggestion, and you linked this up with a doubt whether, in
view of the fact that suggestion plays such a large part, we can still
vouch for the objectivity of our psychological discoveries. I promised
to give you a comprehensive answer.

Direct suggestion is suggestion delivered directly against the forms
taken by the symptoms, a struggle between your authority and the motives
underlying the disease. In this struggle you do not trouble yourself
about these motives, you only require the patient to suppress the
manifestation of them in the form of symptoms. In the main it makes no
difference whether you place the patient under hypnosis or not.
Bernheim, with his characteristic acuteness, repeatedly stated that
suggestion was the essence of the manifestations of hypnotism, and that
hypnosis itself was already a result of suggestion, a suggested
condition; he preferred to use suggestion in the waking state, which can
achieve the same results as suggestion in hypnosis.

Now which shall I take first, the results of experience or theoretical
considerations?

Let us begin with experience. I sought out Bernheim in Nancy in 1889 and
became a pupil of his; I translated his book on suggestion into German.
For years I made use of hypnotic treatment, first with prohibitory
suggestions and later combined with Breuer’s system of the fullest
enquiry into the patient’s life; I can therefore speak from wide
experience about the results of the hypnotic or suggestive therapy.
According to an old medical saying an ideal therapy should be rapid,
reliable and not disagreeable to the patient; Bernheim’s method
certainly fulfilled two of these requirements. It was much more rapid,
that is, incomparably more rapid in its course than the analytic, and it
involved the patient in no trouble or discomfort. For the physician it
eventually became monotonous; it meant treating every case in the same
way, always employing the same ritual to prohibit the existence of the
most diverse symptoms, without being able to grasp anything of their
meaning or significance. It was a sort of mechanical drudgery—hodman’s
work—not scientific work; it was reminiscent of magic, conjuring, and
hocus-pocus, yet in the patient’s interests one had to ignore that. In
the third desideratum, however, it failed; it was not reliable in any
respect. It could be employed in certain cases only and not in others;
with some much could be achieved by it, and with others very little, one
never knew why. But worse than its capricious nature was the lack of
permanence in the results; after a time, if one heard from the patient
again, the old malady had reappeared or had been replaced by another.
Then one could begin to hypnotize again. In the background there was the
warning of experienced men against robbing the patient of his
independence by frequent repetitions of hypnosis, and against
accustoming him to this treatment as though it were a narcotic. It is
true, on the other hand, that at times everything fell out just as one
could wish; one obtained complete and lasting success with little
difficulty; but the conditions of this satisfactory outcome remained
hidden. In one case, when I had completely removed a severe condition by
a short hypnotic treatment, it recurred unchanged after the patient (a
woman) had developed ill feeling against me without just cause; then
after a reconciliation I was able to effect its disappearance again and
this time far more thoroughly; but it reappeared again when she had a
second time become hostile to me. Another time I had the following
experience; during the treatment of an especially obstinate attack in a
patient whom I had several times relieved of nervous symptoms, she
suddenly threw her arms round my neck. Whether one wished to do so or
not, this kind of thing finally made it imperative to enquire into the
problem of the nature and source of one’s suggestive authority.

So much for experience; it shows that in abandoning direct suggestion we
have given up nothing irreplaceable. Now let us link on to the facts a
few comments. The exercise of the hypnotic method makes as little demand
for effort on the part of the patient as it does on the physician. The
method is in complete harmony with the view of the neuroses generally
accepted by the majority of medical men. The practitioner says to the
nervous person: “There is nothing the matter with you; it is merely
nervousness, therefore a few words from me will scatter all your
troubles to the winds in five minutes.” But it is contrary to all our
beliefs about energy in general that a minimal exertion should be able
to remove a heavy load by approaching it directly without the assistance
of any suitably-devised appliance. In so far as the circumstances are at
all comparable, experience shows that this trick cannot be performed
successfully with the neuroses. I know, however, that this argument is
not unassailable; there are such things as explosions.

In the light of the knowledge we have obtained through psycho-analysis,
the difference between hypnotic and psycho-analytic suggestion may be
described as follows: The hypnotic therapy endeavours to cover up and as
it were to whitewash something going on in the mind, the analytic to lay
bare and to remove something. The first works cosmetically, the second
surgically. The first employs suggestion to interdict the symptoms; it
reinforces the repressions, but otherwise it leaves unchanged all the
processes that have led to symptom-formation. Analytic therapy takes
hold deeper down nearer the roots of the disease, among the conflicts
from which the symptoms proceed; it employs suggestion to change the
outcome of these conflicts. Hypnotic therapy allows the patient to
remain inactive and unchanged, consequently also helpless in the face of
every new incitement to illness. Analytic treatment makes as great
demands for efforts on the part of the patient as on the physician,
efforts to abolish the inner resistances. The patient’s mental life is
permanently changed by overcoming these resistances, is lifted to a
higher level of development, and remains proof against fresh
possibilities of illness. The labour of overcoming the resistances is
the essential achievement of the analytic treatment; the patient has to
accomplish it and the physician makes it possible for him to do this by
suggestions which are in the nature of an _education_. It has been truly
said therefore, that psycho-analytic treatment is a kind of
_re-education_.

I hope I have now made clear to you the difference between our method of
employing suggestion therapeutically and the method which is the only
possible one in hypnotic therapy. Since we have traced the influence of
suggestion back to the transference, you also understand the striking
capriciousness of the effect in hypnotic therapy, and why analytic
therapy is within its limits dependable. In employing hypnosis we are
entirely dependent upon the condition of the patient’s transference and
yet we are unable to exercise any influence upon this condition itself.
The transference of a patient being hypnotized may be negative, or, as
most commonly, ambivalent, or he may have guarded himself against his
transference by adopting special attitudes; we gather nothing about all
this. In psycho-analysis we work upon the transference itself, dissipate
whatever stands in the way of it, and manipulate the instrument which is
to do the work. Thus it becomes possible for us to derive entirely new
benefits from the power of suggestion; we are able to control it; the
patient alone no longer manages his suggestibility according to his own
liking, but in so far as he is amenable to its influence at all, we
guide his suggestibility.

Now you will say that, regardless of whether the driving force behind
the analysis is called transference or suggestion, the danger still
remains that our influence upon the patient may bring the objective
certainty of our discoveries into doubt; and that what is an advantage
in therapy is harmful in research. This is the objection that has most
frequently been raised against psycho-analysis; and it must be admitted
that, even though it is unjustified, it cannot be ignored as
unreasonable. If it were justified, psycho-analysis after all would be
nothing else but a specially well-disguised and particularly effective
kind of suggestive treatment; and all its conclusions about the
experiences of the patient’s past life, mental dynamics, the
Unconscious, and so on, could be taken very lightly. So our opponents
think; the significance of sexual experiences in particular, if not the
experiences themselves, we are supposed to have “put into the patient’s
mind,” after having first concocted these conglomerations in our own
corrupt minds. These accusations are more satisfactorily refuted by the
evidence of experience than by the aid of theory. Anyone who has himself
conducted psycho-analyses has been able to convince himself numberless
times that it is impossible to suggest things to a patient in this way.
There is no difficulty, of course, in making him a disciple of a
particular theory, and thus making it possible for him to share some
mistaken belief possibly harboured by the physician. He behaves like
anyone else in this, like a pupil; but by this one has only influenced
his intellect, not his illness. The solving of his conflicts and the
overcoming of his resistances succeeds only when what he is told to look
for in himself corresponds with what actually does exist in him.
Anything that has been inferred wrongly by the physician will disappear
in the course of the analysis; it must be withdrawn and replaced by
something more correct. One’s aim is, by a very careful technique, to
prevent temporary successes arising through suggestion; but if they do
arise no great harm is done, for we are not content with the first
result. We do not consider the analysis completed unless all obscurities
in the case are explained, the gaps in memory filled out, and the
original occasions of the repressions discovered. When results appear
prematurely, one regards them as obstacles rather than as furtherances
of the analytic work, and one destroys them again by continually
exposing the transference on which they are founded. Fundamentally it is
this last feature which distinguishes analytic treatment from that of
pure suggestion, and which clears the results of analysis from the
suspicion of being the results of suggestion. In every other suggestive
treatment the transference is carefully preserved and left intact; in
analysis it is itself the object of the treatment and is continually
being dissected in all its various forms. At the conclusion of the
analysis the transference itself must be dissolved; if success then
supervenes and is maintained it is not founded on suggestion, but on the
overcoming of the inner resistances effected by the help of suggestion,
on the inner change achieved within the patient.

That which probably prevents single effects of suggestion from arising
during the treatment is the struggle that is incessantly being waged
against the resistances, which know how to transform themselves into a
negative (hostile) transference. Nor will we neglect to point to the
evidence that a great many of the detailed findings of analysis, which
would otherwise be suspected of being produced by suggestion, are
confirmed from other, irreproachable sources. We have unimpeachable
witnesses on these points, namely, dements and paranoiacs, who are of
course quite above any suspicion of being influenced by suggestion. All
that these patients relate in the way of phantasies and translations of
symbols, which have penetrated through into their consciousness,
corresponds faithfully with the results of our investigations into the
Unconscious of transference neurotics, thus confirming the objective
truth of the interpretations made by us which are so often doubted. I do
not think you will find yourselves mistaken if you choose to trust
analysis in these respects.

We now need to complete our description of the process of recovery by
expressing it in terms of the Libido-theory. The neurotic is incapable
of enjoyment or of achievement—the first because his Libido is attached
to no real object, the last because so much of the energy which would
otherwise be at his disposal is expended in maintaining the Libido under
repression, and in warding off its attempts to assert itself. He would
be well if the conflict between his Ego and his Libido came to an end,
and if his Ego again had the Libido at its disposal. The task of the
treatment, therefore, consists in the task of loosening the Libido from
its previous attachments, which are beyond the reach of the Ego, and in
making it again serviceable to the Ego. Now where is the Libido of a
neurotic? Easily found: it is attached to the symptoms, which offer it
the substitutive satisfaction that is all it can obtain as things are.
We must master the symptoms then, dissolve them—just what the patient
asks of us. In order to dissolve the symptoms it is necessary to go back
to the point at which they originated, to review the conflict from which
they proceeded, and with the help of propelling forces which at that
time were not available to guide it towards a new solution. This
revision of the process of repression can only partially be effected by
means of the memory-traces of the processes which led up to repression.
The decisive part of the work is carried through by creating—in the
relationship to the physician, in “the transference”—new editions of
those early conflicts, in which the patient strives to behave as he
originally behaved, while one calls upon all the available forces in his
soul to bring him to another decision. The transference is thus the
battlefield where all the contending forces must meet.

All the Libido and the full strength of the opposition against it are
concentrated upon the one thing, upon the relationship to the physician;
thus it becomes inevitable that the symptoms should be deprived of their
Libido; in place of the patient’s original illness appears the
artificially-acquired transference, the transference-disorder; in place
of a variety of unreal objects of his Libido appears the one object,
also ‘phantastic,’ of the person of the physician. This new struggle
which arises concerning this object is by means of the analyst’s
suggestions lifted to the surface, to the higher mental levels, and is
there worked out as a normal mental conflict. Since a new repression is
thus avoided, the opposition between the Ego and the Libido comes to an
end; unity is restored within the patient’s mind. When the Libido has
been detached from its temporary object in the person of the physician
it cannot return to its earlier objects, but is now at the disposal of
the Ego. The forces opposing us in this struggle during the therapeutic
treatment are on the one hand the Ego’s aversion against certain
tendencies on the part of the Libido, which had expressed itself in
repressing tendencies; and on the other hand the tenacity or
‘adhesiveness’ of the Libido, which does not readily detach itself from
objects it has once invested.

The therapeutic work thus falls into two phases; in the first all the
Libido is forced away from the symptoms into the transference and there
concentrated, in the second the battle rages round this new object and
the Libido is made free from it. The change that is decisive for a
successful outcome of this renewed conflict lies in the preclusion of
repression, so that the Libido cannot again withdraw itself from the Ego
by a flight into the Unconscious. It is made possible by changes in the
Ego ensuing as a consequence of the analyst’s suggestions. At the
expense of the Unconscious the Ego becomes wider by the work of
interpretation which brings the unconscious material into consciousness;
through education it becomes reconciled to the Libido and is made
willing to grant it a certain degree of satisfaction; and its horror of
the claims of its Libido is lessened by the new capacity it acquires to
expend a certain amount of the Libido in sublimation. The more nearly
the course of the treatment corresponds with this ideal description the
greater will be the success of the psycho-analytic therapy. Its barriers
are found in the lack of mobility in the Libido, which resists being
released from its objects, and in the rigidity of the patient’s
narcissism, which will not allow more than a certain degree of
object-transference to develop. Perhaps the dynamics of the process of
recovery will become still clearer if we describe it by saying that, in
attracting a part of it to ourselves through transference, we gather in
the whole amount of the Libido which has been withdrawn from the Ego’s
control.

It is as well here to make clear that the distributions of the Libido
which ensue during and by means of the analysis afford no direct
inference of the nature of its disposition during the previous illness.
Given that a case can be successfully cured by establishing and then
resolving a powerful father-transference to the person of the physician,
it would not follow that the patient had previously suffered in this way
from an unconscious attachment of the Libido to his father. The
father-transference is only the battlefield on which we conquer and take
the Libido prisoner; the patient’s Libido has been drawn hither away
from other ‘positions.’ The battlefield does not necessarily constitute
one of the enemy’s most important strongholds; the defence of the
enemy’s capital city need not be conducted immediately before its gates.
Not until after the transference has been again resolved can one begin
to reconstruct in imagination the dispositions of the Libido that were
represented by the illness.

In the light of the Libido-theory there is a final word to be said about
dreams. The dreams of a neurotic, like his “errors” and his free
associations, enable us to find the meaning of the symptoms and to
discover the dispositions of the Libido. The forms taken by the
wish-fulfilment in them show us what are the wish-impulses that have
undergone repression, and what are the objects to which the Libido has
attached itself after withdrawal from the Ego. The interpretation of
dreams therefore plays a great part in psycho-analytic treatment, and in
many cases it is for lengthy periods the most important instrument at
work. We already know that the condition of sleep in itself produces a
certain relaxation of the repressions. By this diminution in the heavy
pressure upon it the repressed desire is able to create for itself a far
clearer expression in a dream than can be permitted to it by day in the
symptoms. Hence the study of dreams becomes the easiest approach to a
knowledge of the repressed Unconscious, which is where the Libido which
has withdrawn from the Ego belongs.

The dreams of neurotics, however, differ in no essential from those of
normal people; they are indeed perhaps not in any way distinguishable
from them. It would be illogical to account for the dreams of neurotics
in a way that would not also hold good of the dreams of normal people.
We have to conclude therefore that the difference between neurosis and
health prevails only by day; it is not sustained in dream-life. It thus
becomes necessary to transfer to healthy persons a number of conclusions
arrived at as a result of the connections between the dreams and the
symptoms of neurotics. We have to recognize that the healthy man as well
possesses those factors in mental life which alone can bring about the
formation of a dream or of a symptom, and we must conclude further that
the healthy also have instituted repressions and have to expend a
certain amount of energy to maintain them; that their unconscious minds
too harbour repressed impulses which are still suffused with energy, and
that _a part of the Libido is in them also withdrawn from the disposal
of the Ego_. The healthy man too is therefore virtually a neurotic, but
the only symptom that he _seems_ capable of developing is a dream. To be
sure when you subject his waking life also to a critical investigation
you discover something that contradicts this specious conclusion; for
this apparently healthy life is pervaded by innumerable trivial and
practically unimportant symptom-formations.

The difference between nervous health and nervous illness (neurosis) is
narrowed down therefore to a practical distinction, and is determined by
the practical result—how far the person concerned remains capable of a
sufficient degree of capacity for enjoyment and active achievement in
life. The difference can probably be traced back to the proportion of
the energy which has remained free relative to that of the energy which
has been bound by repression, i.e. it is a quantitative and not a
qualitative difference. I do not need to remind you that this view
provides a theoretical basis for our conviction that the neuroses are
essentially amenable to cure, in spite of their being based on a
constitutional disposition.

So much, therefore, in the way of knowledge of the characteristics of
health may be inferred from the identity of the dreams dreamt by
neurotic and by healthy persons. Of dreams themselves, however, a
further inference must be drawn—namely, that it is not possible to
detach them from their connection with neurotic symptoms; that we are
not at liberty to believe that their essential nature is exhausted by
compressing them into the formula of ‘a translation of thoughts into
archaic forms of expression’; and that we are bound to conclude that
they disclose dispositions of the Libido and objects of desire which are
actually in operation and valid at the moment.


We have now come very nearly to the end. Perhaps you are disappointed
that under the heading of psycho-analytic therapy I have limited myself
to theory, and have told you nothing of the conditions under which the
cure is undertaken, or of the results it achieves. I omit both, however:
the first, because in fact I never intended to give you a practical
training in the exercise of the analytic method; and the last, because I
have several motives against it. At the beginning of these discussions I
said emphatically that under favourable conditions we achieve cures that
are in no way inferior to the most brilliant in other fields of medical
therapy; I may perhaps add that these results could be achieved by no
other method. If I said more I should be suspected of wishing to drown
the depreciatory voices of our opponents by self-advertisement. Medical
“colleagues” have, even at public congresses, repeatedly held out a
threat to psycho-analysts that by publishing a collection of the
failures and harmful effects of analysis they will open the eyes of the
injured public to the worthlessness of this method of treatment. Apart
from the malicious, denunciatory character of such a measure, however, a
collection of that kind would not even be valid evidence upon which a
correct estimate of the therapeutic results of analysis might be formed.
Analytic therapy, as you know, is still young; it needed many years to
elaborate the technique, which could only be done in the course of the
work under the influence of increasing experience. On account of the
difficulties of imparting instruction in the methods the beginner is
thrown much more upon his own resources for development of his capacity
than any other kind of specialist, and the results of his early years
can never be taken as indicating the full possible achievements of
analytic therapy.

Many attempts at treatment made in the beginning of psycho-analysis were
failures because they were undertaken with cases altogether unsuited to
the procedure, which nowadays we should exclude by following certain
indications. These indications, however, could only be discovered by
trying. In the beginning we did not know that paranoia and dementia
præcox, when fully developed, are not amenable to analysis; we were
still justified in trying the method on all kinds of disorders. Most of
the failures of those early years, however, were not due to the fault of
the physician, or to the unsuitability in the choice of subject, but to
unpropitious external conditions. I have spoken only of the inner
resistances, those on the part of the patient, which are inevitable and
can be overcome. The external resistances which the patient’s
circumstances and surroundings set up against analysis have little
theoretic interest but the greatest practical importance.
Psycho-Analytic treatment is comparable to a surgical operation and,
like that, for its success it has the right to expect to be carried out
under the most favourable conditions. You know the preliminary
arrangements a surgeon is accustomed to make—a suitable room, a good
light, expert assistance, exclusion of the relatives, and so on. Now ask
yourselves how many surgical operations would be successful if they had
to be conducted in the presence of the patient’s entire family poking
their noses into the scene of the operation and shrieking aloud at every
cut. In psycho-analytic treatment the intervention of the relatives is a
positive danger and, moreover, one which we do not know how to deal
with. We are armed against the inner resistances of the patient, which
we recognize as necessary, but how can we protect ourselves against
these outer resistances? It is impossible to get round the relatives by
any sort of explanation, nor can one induce them to hold aloof from the
whole affair; one can never take them into one’s confidence because then
we run the danger of losing the patient’s trust in us, for he—quite
rightly, of course—demands that the man he confides in should take his
part. Anyone who knows anything of the dissensions commonly splitting up
family life will not be astonished in his capacity of analyst to find
that those nearest to the patient frequently show less interest in his
recovery than in keeping him as he is. When as so often occurs the
neurosis is connected with conflicts between different members of a
family, the healthy person does not make much of putting his own
interest before the patient’s recovery. After all, it is not surprising
that the husband does not favour a treatment in which, as he correctly
supposes, his sins will all come to light; nor do we wonder at this, but
then we cannot blame ourselves when our efforts remain fruitless and are
prematurely broken off because the husband’s resistance is added to that
of the sick wife. We had simply undertaken something which, under the
existing conditions, it was impossible to carry out.

Instead of describing many cases to you I will tell you of one only, in
which I had to suffer for the sake of professional conscientiousness. I
took a young girl—many years ago—for analytic treatment; for a
considerable time previously she had been unable to go out of doors on
account of a dread, nor could she stay at home alone. After much
hesitation the patient confessed that her thoughts had been a good deal
occupied by some signs of affection that she had noticed by chance
between her mother and a well-to-do friend of the family. Very
tactlessly—or else very cleverly—she then gave the mother a hint of what
had been discussed during the analysis; she did this by altering her
behaviour to her mother, by insisting that no one but her mother could
protect her against the dread of being alone, and by holding the door
against her when she attempted to leave the house. The mother herself
had formerly been very nervous, but had been cured years before by a
visit to a hydropathic establishment—or, putting it otherwise, we may
say she had there made the acquaintance of the man with whom she had
established a relationship that had proved satisfying in more than one
respect. Made suspicious by her daughter’s passionate demands the mother
suddenly _understood_ what the girl’s dread signified. She had become
ill in order to make her mother a prisoner and rob her of the freedom
necessary for her to maintain her relations with her lover. The mother’s
decision was instantly taken; she put an end to the harmful treatment.
The girl was sent to a home for nervous patients, and for many years was
there pointed out as an “unhappy victim of psycho-analysis”; for just as
long I was pursued by damaging rumours about the unfortunate results of
the treatment. I maintained silence because I supposed myself bound by
the rules of professional secrecy. Years later I learned from a
colleague who had visited the home and there seen the girl with
agoraphobia that the intimacy between the mother and the wealthy man was
common knowledge, and that in all probability it was connived at by the
husband and father. To this “secret” the girl’s cure had been
sacrificed.

In the years before the war, when the influx of patients from many
countries made me independent of the goodwill or disfavour of my native
city, I made it a rule never to take for treatment anyone who was not
_sui juris_, independent of others in all the essential relations of
life. Every psycho-analyst cannot make these stipulations. Perhaps you
will conclude from my warnings about relatives that one should take the
patient out of his family circle in the interests of analysis, and
restrict this therapy to those living in private institutions. I could
not support this suggestion, however; it is far more advantageous for
the patients—those who are not in a condition of severe prostration, at
least—to remain during the treatment in those circumstances in which
they have to struggle with the demands that their ordinary life makes on
them. But the relatives ought not to counteract this advantage by their
behaviour, and above all should not oppose their hostility to one’s
professional efforts. But how are you going to induce people who are
inaccessible to you to take up this attitude? You will naturally also
conclude that the social atmosphere and degree of cultivation of the
patient’s immediate surroundings have considerable influence upon the
prospects of the treatment.

This is a gloomy outlook for the efficacy of psycho-analysis as a
therapy, even if we may explain the overwhelming majority of our
failures by taking into account these disturbing external factors!
Friends of analysis have advised us to counterbalance a collection of
failures by drawing up a statistical enumeration of our successes. I
have not taken up this suggestion either. I brought forward the argument
that statistics would be valueless if the units collated were not alike,
and the cases which had been treated were in fact not equivalent in many
respects. Further, the period of time that could be reviewed was too
short for one to be able to judge of the permanence of the cures; and of
many cases it would be impossible to give any account. They were persons
who had kept both their illness and their treatment secret, and whose
recovery in consequence had similarly to be kept secret. The strongest
reason against it, however, lay in the recognition of the fact that in
matters of therapy humanity is in the highest degree irrational, so that
there is no prospect of influencing it by reasonable arguments. A
novelty in therapeutics is either taken up with frenzied enthusiasm, as
for instance when Koch first published his results with tuberculin; or
else it is regarded with abysmal distrust, as happened for instance with
Jenner’s vaccination, actually a heaven-sent blessing, but one which
still has its implacable opponents. A very evident prejudice against
psycho-analysis made itself apparent. When one had cured a very
difficult case one would hear: “That is no proof of anything; he would
have got well of himself after all this time.” And when a patient who
had already gone through four cycles of depression and mania came to me
in an interval after the melancholia and three weeks later again began
to develop an attack of mania, all the members of the family, and also
all the high medical authorities who were called in, were convinced that
the fresh attack could be nothing but a consequence of the attempted
analysis. Against prejudice one can do nothing, as you can now see once
more in the prejudices that each group of the nations at war has
developed against the other. The most sensible thing to do is to wait
and allow them to wear off with the passage of time. A day comes when
the same people regard the same things in quite a different light from
what they did before; why they thought differently before remains a dark
secret.

It is possible that the prejudice against the analytic therapy has
already begun to relax. The continual spread of analytic doctrine and
the numbers of medical men taking up analytic treatment in many
countries seem to point in that direction. As a young man I was caught
in just such a storm of indignation roused in the medical profession by
the hypnotic suggestion-treatment, which nowadays is held up in
opposition to psycho-analysis by the “sober-minded.” As a therapeutic
instrument, however, hypnotism did not bear out the hopes placed in it;
we psycho-analysts may claim to be its rightful heirs and should not
forget how much encouragement and theoretic enlightenment we owe to it.
The harmful effects reported of psycho-analysis are essentially confined
to transitory manifestations of an exacerbation of the conflict, which
may occur when the analysis is clumsily handled, or when it is broken
off suddenly. You have heard an account of what we do with our patients,
and you can form your own judgement whether our efforts are likely to
lead to lasting injury. Misuse of analysis is possible in various ways:
the transference especially, in the hands of an unscrupulous physician,
is a dangerous instrument. But no medical remedy is proof against
misuse; if a knife will not cut, neither will it serve a surgeon.

I have now reached the end. It is more than a conventional formality
when I say that I myself am heavily oppressed by the many defects of the
lectures I have delivered before you. I regret most of all that I have
so often promised to return again in another place to a subject that I
had just touched upon shortly, and that then the context in which I
could keep my word did not offer itself. I undertook to give you an
account of a thing that is still unfinished, still developing, and now
my short summary itself has become an incomplete one. In many places I
laid everything ready for drawing a conclusion, and then I did not draw
it. But I could not aim at making you experts in psycho-analysis; I only
wished to put you in the way of some understanding of it, and to arouse
your interest in it.




                                 INDEX


 ABEL, C., 150, 194

 ABRAHAM, K., 275, 346

 Act:
   accidental, 48
   sexual, 271, 297, 326
     introductory, 257, 260, 271
   symptomatic, 48, 209, 215

 Actions, erroneous performance of, 62

 Actual neuroses, 322–7

 ADLER, A., 201, 318, 339

 ‘Advantage through illness,’ 320

 Ætiology of neuroses, 216, 287–93, 295, 303–5, 308, 313, 322

 Affects:
   anxiety and, 330, 337
   in dreams, 181–2
   James-Lange theory of, 331
   repression and, 336, 341–2

 Agoraphobia, 224, 229, 334, 386

 ALEXANDER, the Great, 14
   dream of, 69, 200

 Altruism, 348

 Ambivalence, 279, 357, 370, 377

 Amnesia:
   of childhood, 168, 239, 263, 274
   of neuroses, 239, 240

 Anal-erotism, 265, 268

 Anal-sadistic stage of libido-development, 275–6, 289

 ANDREAS, LOU, 265

 _Anthropophyteia_, 137–8

 Antithetical sense of primal words, 150, 194

 Anus, 257, 265

 Anxiety, 225, 328–44, 359
   development of, 330, 338, 342
   ‘free-floating,’ 332, 334
   in children, 338
   in dreams, 181–3, 230

 Anxiety-equivalents, 334

 Anxiety-hysteria, 229, 244, 252, 304, 334, 372

 Anxiety-neurosis, 325, 332, 335, 337, 365–6, 374

 Anxious readiness, 330

 _Apotropaea_, 138

 Apprehensiveness, 338–40

 ARISTOTLE, 71

 Art, and phantasy, 314

 Association-experiment, 90

 Associations:
   resistance against, 96, 243
   to dreams, 87, 90, 94–102, 126, 198
   to names, 88
   to numbers, 88

 Attention theory, 22

 Auto-erotism, 199, 265, 276, 298, 307–10


 BERNHEIM, 84, 234, 373, 375

 BINET, 292

 BINZ, 70

 Birth:
   experience of, 331
   infantile theories of, 135, 268
   symbolism of, 128, 135

 BLEULER, 90, 357

 BLOCH, I., 258

 BOECKLIN, 145

 BÖLSCHE, W., 297

 Breasts, 131, 165

 BREUER, J., 218, 228, 232, 247
   FREUD and, 233, 236, 246, 375

 BREUGHEL, P., 256

 Brothers and sisters, 172, 280
   symbols of, 128, 134

 BRÜCKE, von, 286


 Castration, 175, 267, 309–11
   circumcision and, 139
   symbolism of, 131, 139, 161, 227

 CHARCOT, 122

 ‘Charge of energy,’ 301

 Childhood-experiences, 169, 302–11, 360, 378

 Childhood-memories, 169, 281, 308

 Children:
   anxiety in, 338
   birth-phantasies of, 135, 268
   dreams of, 105–13, 180
   egoism in, 172, 279
   intimidation of, 266, 309
   neurosis in, 304
   phobias in, 340
   purity of, 177, 263, 273
   sexual curiosity of, 176, 186, 190, 267, 274, 280
   sexual life of, 176, 261–84, 296, 302–11

 Clitoris, 130, 226, 267

 _Coitus interruptus_, 335

 Complex, 90
   the castration, 175, 267
   the Oedipus, 175, 277–84

 Component-instincts (component-impulses), 266, 271–2, 275–6, 288–90,
    302–3, 313

 Compromise-formations, 52, 108, 253, 300

 Compulsions, 220, 337

 Condensation, 301, 307
   in dreams, 144, 160, 199, 250, 307

 Conflict, mental, 260, 293–5, 300–2, 306, 312–13, 319, 345, 351, 361–3,
    366, 372, 379

 Conscience, 358

 Conscious, _see_ Mental Processes

 Consciousness, 16, 211, 239, 248–50, 301–2, 336, 363
   psychology of, 16, 235

 Conversion-hysteria, 252, 326, 334

 Convictions, 207

 COPERNICUS, 241

 ‘Countercharge,’ 301, 314, 342, 365


 DARWIN, C., 61, 241

 Day-dreams, 80, 109, 312, 314

 Death, symbols of, 129, 136

 Death-wishes, 282
   in dreams, 119, 159, 166, 170–4

 ‘Degeneration,’ 221, 235, 258, 269

 Delusions, 69, 211–17, 346, 354–7

 Dementia præcox, 228, 326, 346, 351–2, 366, 384

 Determinism, 21, 87

 DIDEROT, 283

 Displacement, 220, 290, 301, 307
   in dreams, 117, 146, 198, 250, 307

 Disposition, hereditary, 213, 297, 302–4, 313, 352, 360

 Dream:
   of Alexander the Great, 69, 200
   of an obsessional neurotic, 166
   of “love service,” 115, 119, 178
   of “three bad theatre tickets,” 102, 117, 149, 186, 190

 _Dream, The Prisoner’s_, 113

 Dreams:
   affects in, 181–2
   anxiety in, 181–3, 230
   archaic features in, 152, 168–79
   compared with hieroglyphics, 147, 168, 194
   condensation in, 144, 160, 199, 250, 307
   confounded with latent thoughts, 153, 188, 200–2
   death-wishes in, 119, 159, 166, 170–4
   displacement in, 117, 146, 198, 250, 307
   distortion in, 95, 97, 101–8, 113–20, 125, 142–4, 152, 178, 180–4
   examples of, 98–102, 106, 111, 115, 155–67, 199
   experimentally produced, 74, 202
   form of, 149, 179
   hallucinatory experience in, 80, 108, 180
   indefiniteness of, 68, 149, 194, 195
   incestuous desires in, 119, 177, 278, 284
   infantile features in, 168–80
   inversion in, 164, 193
   manifest and latent content of, 94–104, 107, 118, 143, 146, 152
   mathematical calculations in, 153
   medical view of, 70, 106, 149
   neurotic symptoms and, 190, 202, 250, 383
   no associations to, 87, 125
   objectionable tendencies in, 119, 170, 178, 284
   occasioned by physical needs, 77, 110, 182
   of animals, 109
   of children, 105–13, 180
   opposites in, 150, 164, 182
   preserving sleep, 107, 112, 184
   problems, resolves, etc., in, 187
   reactions to stimuli, 72–9, 107, 180, 201, 250
   regression in, 152, 177–9, 189
   residue from previous day, 179, 191, 201, 250, 349
   secondary elaboration in, 153
   sexual need and, 77, 129
   symbolism in, 125–42, 151, 161–6
   theory of, 181, 349, 381–3
   thought-relations in, 148
   two possible interpretations of, 145, 193, 201
   typical, 230, 278
   undistorted, 105, 107, 110
   visual images in, 73, 78, 101, 143, 147, 152
   wish-fulfilment in, 107–13, 121, 130, 143, 171, 180–92, 301, 382
   wit in, 99, 199, 200
   word-representation in, 101, 147

 Dream-censorship, 114–24, 142, 175, 178–9, 181–4, 250, 349, 358

 Dream-interpretation:
   ancient and popular, 69, 126
   doubts and criticisms of, 181, 187, 193–203
   resistance against, 96, 118, 121, 181, 197, 200
   in analytic treatment, 125, 155, 382
   results of, 120–3, 193, 197
   technique of, 86, 95, 193, 242

 Dream-work, 114, 118, 143–54, 168, 179, 180–1, 189

 Dropping and breaking objects, 42, 61

 DU PREL, 111

 Dynamic conception of mental life, 53, 238, 246, 288, 313, 338

 Dynamics of cure, 365, 372


 ‘Economic’ aspect of mental processes, 232, 298, 313

 Education, 262, 298, 305, 377

 Ego:
   character-traits of the, 245, 251
   counter-charges from the, 301, 314, 342
   development of the, 295–9
   disintegrations of the, 353, 358
   Libido and, 312, 318, 323, 338, 345–7, 366, 380
   neurosis and the, 319–21
   psychology of, 352, 357
   repression and, 248
   sexuality and, 294, 318, 346

 Ego-ideal, 357

 Ego-instincts, 291, 294–5, 297–9, 344–6, 350, 358

 Ego-Libido, 347, 350, 358, 374

 Egoism:
   in children, 172, 279
   in dreams, 119, 172, 191
   in neurosis, 319
   narcissism and, 348

 Erotogenic zones, 259, 264–5, 270, 275–6, 324

 Errors:
   accumulated and combined, 43
   attention theory of, 22
   counter-will in, 58, 59
   fatigue, excitement, etc., as a cause of, 21, 35–6
   interference of two tendencies in, 33, 36, 48–54
   subsequent confirmation of meaning in, 45

 Excretory functions, 257, 265, 268

 Excretory organs, 260

 Expectant dread, 332, 334–5


 Fact, a mental, 37

 Fairy tales, 133, 134, 140, 158, 182, 268

 Faith, 372

 Faith-healers, 15

 Family relationships, 172–5

 Father:
   erotic attachment to, 228, 231, 233
   hostility towards, 173, 245, 282–3

 FECHNER, G. T., 73

 FEDERN, P., 130

 FERENCZI, 295

 Fetichism, 257, 292

 Fixation:
   neurosis and, 233
   of Libido, 286–97, 301–3, 305, 308, 312, 347, 352
   upon traumata, 231–3

 FLAUBERT, G., 256

 _Fliegende Blätter_, 22, 322

 FLIESS, W., 269

 ‘Flight into illness,’ 320

 Folk-lore, 133, 139, 141

 Forgetting, 19, 22, 44
   as an excuse, 41
   names, 21, 40, 59–61, 91
   resolutions, 41, 57
   to avoid pain, 60

 Free association, 88, 95, 128, 157, 242, 381

 “Free living,” 361


 Gazing-impulse, _see_ Skoptophilia

 Genital organs:
   replaced by other organs, 176, 257, 259–60, 265, 271–2
   symbols of, 129–33, 136–8, 161–4, 226, 227

 Genital zone, primacy of, 275–6, 288, 290

 GOETHE, 30, 283, 349

 Grief, 233


 Hate-impulses, 119, 171–4, 280, 282

 Homosexuality, 176, 256, 259, 370
   and paranoia, 354

 HUG-HELLMUTH, FRAU DR. v., 114

 Human nature:
   good and evil in, 12, 122–3
   self-love in, 240
   sense of guilt in, 279

 Hypnosis:
   experiments under, 85, 234
   treatment by, 246, 373–9

 Hypochondria, 325–6

 Hysteria, 219, 244, 252, 288, 351–2, 365–7, 372, 374
   agoraphobia and, 229
   amnesia in, 239, 240
   attacks, 240, 331
   Breuer’s case of, 218, 228, 232, 246
   symptoms of, 229, 239, 253, 259, 273, 302, 314, 326, 334


 Identification, 222, 357

 _Imago_, 141

 Incest, horror of, 177, 281

 Inferiority, feeling of, 339

 Inhibition, 285, 305, 314, 323

 Insomnia, 184

 Interference of two tendencies, 33, 36, 48–54

 _Interpretation of Dreams_, 143

 Intra-uterine existence, 71, 348

 Introversion, 313


 JANET, P., 218

 JENNER, 387

 JODL, 70

 Jokes, 34, 133, 145, 146
   in dreams, 99, 199, 200

 JONES, ERNEST, 44

 JUNG, C. G., 90, 228, 313, 345


 Kiss, the, 270, 273

 Knowing, various kinds of, 237

 Knowledge, unconscious possession of, 51, 84, 124, 139, 234

 KOCH, 387

 KRAUS, F. S., 137.


 Language:
   development of, 140, 150, 154
   implications in, 80, 109, 133, 140
   of sexual origin, 141
   the Chinese, 195

 Latency period, 274, 277

 LEURET, 218

 LEVY, L., 136

 Libido, 119, 263
   ‘adhesiveness’ of, 292, 380
   anxiety and, 335–43, 359
   attachment to objects, 284, 350–6, 373, 374, 379–81
   regression of, 285–9, 301–6, 312
   symptom-formation and, 300–15, 323
   theory of the, 344–59, 379–81

 Libido-development, 274–7, 285–99, 352–3
   genital stage of, 275–6, 290
   inhibition of, 285, 305
   pre-genital stage of, 275–6

 LICHTENBERG, 30, 56

 LIÉBAULT, 84

 LINDNER, DR., 264

 Looking-impulse, _see_ Skoptophilia

 Losing and mislaying objects, 42, 44, 61

 Love-impulse, 172, 277, 289

 LÖWENFELD, 208

 _Lutschen_, 263–4


 MAEDER, A., 45, 200

 Magic:
   ceremonies, 227
   precautions, 231
   words and, 13

 Masochism, 257

 Masturbation, 254, 260, 274, 296, 322

 MAURY, 70
   experiments by, 74–6

 Meaning:
   in dreams, 67, 70, 72, 74, 82, 86
   in errors, 27–63
   in symptoms, 67, 218–30, 235, 237, 323, 372

 Melancholia, 356, 366, 387

 Memory, _see_ Amnesia

 Mental activities, systems of, 248–50, 287–8, 301

 Mental life, conceptions of:
   dynamic, 53, 238, 246, 288, 313, 338
   economic, 232, 298, 313
   topographic, 249, 287–8, 338, 364, 366

 Mental processes:
   conscious, 16, 94, 121, 249–50, 287–8, 301, 312, 362
   preconscious, 199, 249–50, 287–8, 301, 312, 362
   unconscious, 16, 94, 121, 124, 202, 301
     in symptom-formation, 234–8, 307
     made conscious, 237, 239, 363, 372
     symbolism and, 127, 139
     under repression, 248–50, 287, 336
     wishes as, 123, 125, 171, 189, 278–9

 MERINGER and MAYER, 25

 Milk, dislike of, 306

 Mind:
   a psychological attitude of, 15
   distribution of forces in, 203
   play of forces in, 53
   psycho-analytical definition of, 16
   the scientific habit of, 40

 Misprints, 23

 Misreading, 56

 Mistaking of objects, 62

 Mother:
   daughter and, 173–4
   love-object, 156, 174–7, 277–82, 339

 MOURLY VOLD, J., 70, 74, 130, 202

 Mouth, 257, 270, 275

 Myths, mythology, 133, 135, 139, 141, 145, 281, 308


 NÄCKE, P., 347

 Names:
   forgetting of, 21, 40, 59–61, 91
   wrong pronunciation of, 33

 Narcissism, 347–59, 381
   object-love and, 347–9

 Narcissistic neuroses, 287–8, 318, 351–3, 358, 374

 Necessity, 298, 344, 358

 Nervousness, 316–27

 Neurasthenia, 325–6

 Neuroses:
   actual, 322–7
   ætiology (or causation) of, 216, 287–93, 295, 303–5, 308, 313, 322
   amnesia of, 239–40
   characteristics of, 231, 235, 239, 289, 339
   dynamic conception of, 246
   grief and, 233
   in children, 304
   narcissistic, 287–8, 318, 351–3, 358, 374
   prevention of, 305
   transference, 252, 287–8, 294, 323, 346, 350, 352, 366, 372
   traumatic, 232, 319
   with organic disease, 327

 NORDENSKJÖLD, 111

 Nutrition:
   function of, 263, 265
   organs of, 260


 Object-choice:
   incestuous, 119, 177, 274–88
   types of, 356

 Object-Libido, 347, 350, 374

 Object-love, 347

 Obsessional neurosis, 252, 337, 365–7, 372–4
   a case of, 221, 224, 239, 251, 259
   doubt in, 220, 225, 230, 244
   masturbation and, 260
   rituals of, 224, 229, 239, 253
   sadism and, 260, 289
   symptoms of, 219–21, 229, 231, 235, 239–40, 314, 318, 337, 352

 Obsessions, 219, 257, 289, 351, 356

 Obsessive acts, 219, 221, 234, 239, 259, 260, 337

 Obsessive ideas, 68, 235, 289

 Oedipus complex, 175, 277–84

 Omens, 46

 Onanism, 160, 264, 266, 310
   castration and, 131, 139

 Opposites (polarity):
   in dreams, 150, 164, 182
   in the mind, 61, 121, 185, 220, 253, 275

 Oral phase of Libido-development, 275–6

 ‘Organ-pleasure,’ 272, 273


 Pain, avoidance of, 60, 298, 313

 Paranoia, 53, 259, 319, 326, 366, 384
   and homosexuality, 354

 Paraphrenia, 326, 354

 Parents:
   coitus of, 186, 227, 252, 268, 309
   detachment from, 283
   relationship to, 172–5, 277–83
   symbols of, 128, 134

 Patient, relatives of, 13, 237, 367, 384–6

 Penis, 129, 267, 309

 Perversions, 176, 256–62, 266, 269–72, 289, 292, 297, 301

 PFISTER, DR., 197

 Phantasies, 80, 116, 227, 254, 258, 260, 307–15
   artists and, 314
   symptom-formation and, 312
   typical, 309

 ‘Phantasy-making, retrogressive,’ 282

 Philosophy, 15, 70, 79

 Phobias, 332–4, 341–3
   in children, 340
   symbolism in, 343

 Phylogenetic development, 168, 307

 Phylogenetic inheritance, 297, 311

 Physician, 319, 321
   transference to, 245, 367–81

 PLATO, 122

 Pleasure, 265

 Pleasure-principle, 299, 307, 319

 Polarity, _see_ Opposites

 Preconscious, _see under_ Mental Processes

 Primacy of genital zone, 275–6, 288, 290

 Privation, 252, 260, 289–91, 293–5, 301, 312, 360

 Psychiatry, 16, 207–17, 218, 221, 235, 353

 Psychical systems, 248–50, 287–8, 301

 Psycho-Analysis:
   as a science, 325
   attitude to sexual matters, 129
   based on observations, 208
   compared with mineralogy, 326
   conventional morality and, 362
   criticisms of, 247, 294, 378
   difficulties of, 11–18
   implicit in literature, 28, 29, 133, 175, 278, 283
   infancy of, 84, 252, 383
   opposition against, 12, 17, 37, 63, 175, 208, 240, 244, 318, 383
   prejudices against, 16, 18, 387
   study of, 12, 14
   treatment (or therapy), 11–13, 155, 169, 217, 219, 226, 237, 239,
      242, 252, 360–88
     advice and guidance during, 362
     education by, 377, 381
     fundamental rule of technique in, 243
     misuse of, 387
     repetition and recollection during, 371
     resistances during, 242–47, 267, 353, 369, 379, 384
     suggestion in, 373–9
     technique of, 242, 353, 378
   warnings against, 11, 12

 Psychology, experimental, 15, 79, 88, 90

 Psycho-neuroses, 323, 336

 _Psycho-pathology of Everyday Life_, 43

 Puberty, 262, 282

 Puberty-rites, 139, 281


 RANK, O., 29, 112, 135, 141, 156, 175, 283

 Rationalization, 354

 Reaction-formations, 314, 319

 Real anxiety, 329, 335, 337–41, 343, 359

 Reality:
   depreciation of, 308
   material and psychical, 56, 309
   the ‘testing’ of, 311

 Reality-principle, 299, 307, 344, 347

 Reason under affective influence, 208, 247

 Regression:
   in dreams, 152, 177–9, 189
   of Ego, 299
   of Libido, 285–9, 301–6, 312
   to phantasies, 312

 REIK, TH., 281

 Repetition of previous experience, 331

 Repression, 248–51, 295, 297, 306, 342, 351, 354, 361, 363–7, 380, 382
   regression and, 287, 289
   transformation of affect and, 337, 341

 Reproduction, function of, 255, 262, 266, 268, 269, 271

 Resistance:
   against associations, 96, 243
   during treatment, 242–47, 267, 353, 369, 379, 384
   overcoming of, 246, 365, 374, 378–81
   to dream-interpretation, 96, 118, 121, 181, 197, 200

 ROUX, 303


 SACHS, H., 141, 174

 Sadism, 257, 260, 268, 275–6, 289

 SCHERNER, K. A., 77, 127, 133

 SCHILLER, 28

 SCHUBERT, 137

 Screen-memories, 169

 Secondary elaboration:
   in dreams, 153
   in paranoia, 319

 Seduction, 309–10

 Self-analysis, 15

 Self-preservation, 295, 298, 329, 343–6, 350, 358

 Self-punishment, 62, 185, 278

 Series, complemental, 292, 303, 305, 310

 Sexual:
   abstinence, 290, 336, 361, 363
   act, 255, 271, 297, 326
     introductory, 257, 260, 271
   aim, 257–8, 277, 311
   anæsthesia, 267
   curiosity, 186, 275
     in children, 176, 186, 190, 267, 274, 280
   experiences, in childhood, 302–11
   instinct and civilization, 17, 262, 290
   instincts and Ego-instincts, 291, 294–5, 297–9, 344–6, 350
   intercourse, 226, 265, 296, 355, 363
     parental, 186, 227, 252, 268, 309
     sadistic conception of, 268
     symbols of, 132, 138, 164
   object, 256–8, 264, 277, 311
     of component-impulses, 276
   organizations, _see_ Libido-development
   the term, 255, 264, 268–70, 273
   toxins, 324, 326

 Sexuality:
   infantile, 176, 261–84, 296, 302–11
   perverted, 176, 256–62, 266, 269–72, 289, 292, 297, 301

 SHAKESPEARE, 29, 78

 SHAW, G. B., 42, 173

 SILBERER, H., 201, 255

 Skoptophilia (gazing-impulse), 186, 190, 257, 260, 271, 275–6, 310

 Sleep, the condition of, 71, 86, 184, 348, 350, 382

 Slips of the pen, 55

 Slips of the tongue, 24–40, 49–54, 82, 145, 199

 Slips of the tongue in literature, 28, 29

 Spatial, _see_ Topographical

 SPERBER, H., 140

 STEKEL, W., 201

 Struggle for existence, 262, 298

 _Struwelpeter_, 309

 Sublimation, 17, 290, 314, 381

 Sucking:
   for nourishment, 263–4, 306
   for pleasure, 263–4, 275

 Suggestion, treatment by, 373–9

 Symbolism:
   a mode of expression, 139, 168
   in dreams, 125–42, 151, 161–6
   in phobias, 343
   in symptom-formation, 222, 226–7

 Symptomatic acts, 48, 209, 215

 Symptom-formation, 293, 300–15, 318–19, 326, 352
   phantasy and, 312
   repression and, 251

 Symptoms, Neurotic:
   analysis of, and past life, 232, 237, 261
   ascetic character of, 253, 361
   conflict expressed in, 260, 300, 306, 319
   dreams and, 190, 202, 250, 383
   meaning of, 67, 218–30, 235, 237, 323, 372
   purpose of, 223, 251, 253
   substitutes, 236, 248, 251, 253, 259, 293, 306, 323, 326, 372, 380
   typical, 229
   ‘whence,’ and ‘whither’ or ‘why’ of, 234, 240

 Systems of mental activities, 248–50, 287–8, 301


 Taboos, 216

 Topographical (spatial) conception of mental life, 249, 287–8, 338,
    364, 366

 _Totem und Tabu_, 216, 279

 Toxins, 324, 326

 Transference, 245, 367–81

 Transference neuroses, 252, 287–8, 294, 323, 346, 350, 352, 366, 372

 Traumatic neuroses, 232, 319

 Treatment, _see under_ Psycho-Analysis


 Unconscious, _see under_ Mental Processes

 Unconscious, the:
   affects and, 342
   dreams and, 127, 312
   Ego and, 318, 349
   Janet’s view of, 218
   meaning of term, 248
   mechanisms of, 179, 199, 202, 307
   memories in, 169
   opposites in, 185
   psycho-analysis and, 235, 325
   symbolism and, 127, 139
   symptoms and, 238–40
   system, 178–9, 248–50, 287–8, 301–2, 365
   wishes in, 278–9

 Urination, 265, 268


 Vagina, 257, 265, 267

 Virginity, 226, 253


 War, the, 12, 122, 387

 Wish-fulfilment:
   in dreams, 107–13, 121, 130, 143, 171, 180–92, 301, 382
   in phantasy, 311
   in symptoms, 223, 252, 260, 302

 _Wit_, 98

 Word-association, 90

 Words:
   an exchange of, 13
   magic and, 13
   sound-values of, 36
   verbal images, 352

 WUNDT, 36, 70, 90


 ZOLA, ÉMILE, 221


                     _Printed in Great Britain by_
     UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, LONDON AND WOKING


-----

Footnote 1:

  [Literally: “that wishes to build in the dark and fish in murky
  waters.”—TR.]

Footnote 2:

  In German—_Versprechen_.

Footnote 3:

  _Verschreiben._

Footnote 4:

  _Verlesen._

Footnote 5:

  _Verhören._

Footnote 6:

  _Vergessen._

Footnote 7:

  _Verlegen._

Footnote 8:

  [The equivalent English prefix is “mis-,” but is not so widely
  employed.—TR.]

Footnote 9:

  In German—_Vergreifen_.

Footnote 10:

  [English example.—TR.]

Footnote 11:

  [_Komfortabel_ is a slang Viennese expression for a one-horse cab. An
  English example of this is as follows: In a play during a scene of a
  funeral procession the actor was made to say, “Stand back, my Lord,
  and let the _parson cough_!” instead of “the coffin pass.”—TR.]

Footnote 12:

  [English examples.—TR.]

Footnote 13:

  [English examples.—TR.]

Footnote 14:

  “Ja, das draut” = das _dauert_ ... eine _traurige_ Geschichte.

Footnote 15:

  “Dann aber sind Tatsachen zum _Vorschwein_ gekommen” = _Vorschein_ ...
  _Schweinerei_.

Footnote 16:

  [The two words “_begleiten_” and “_beleidigen_” are a good deal more
  obvious in the German “_begleidigen_” than in the translation.—TR.]

Footnote 17:

  [Two untranslatable examples are given in the text, _apopos_ for
  _apropos_ and _Eischeissweibchen_ for _Eiweisscheibchen_. (Meringer
  and Mayer.)—TR.]

Footnote 18:

  _Vor_schussmitglieder instead of _Aus_schussmitglieder.

Footnote 19:

  From C. G. Jung.

Footnote 20:

  From A. A. Brill.

Footnote 21:

  From B. Dattner.

Footnote 22:

  Also in the writings of A. Maeder (_French_), A. A. Brill and Ernest
  Jones (_English_), and J. Stärcke (_Dutch_) and others.

Footnote 23:

  From R. Reitler.

Footnote 24:

  [German: _Zurückdrängen_ = to force back. This word is stronger than
  _unterdrücken_ = to press under, which we translate by suppress (not a
  technical term); _zurückdrängen_ contains already the _drängen_ of
  _verdrängen_, the technical word used by Freud to denote the strongest
  pressure of all, _repression_. In the examples discussed here, the
  agency withholding the intention from expression may be either
  conscious or unconscious (groups one, two, and three, according to the
  degree of unconsciousness); Freud does not use _verdrängen_ =
  “repression,” the technical word for _unconscious_ agency only, here,
  but one very near to it in sense.—TR.]

Footnote 25:

  Joseph Breuer, in the years 1880–1882. Cf. my Lectures on
  Psycho-Analysis, delivered in the United States in 1909.

Footnote 26:

  [It should be noted that in using the word “unconscious” to translate
  the German “_unbewusst_” we are deflecting it from its customary
  English sense, which is “absence of unawareness,” such as in the
  phrases “he lay unconscious,” “a stone is unconscious,” etc.
  _Unbewusst_ is rather “unconscious’d,” i.e. something of which the
  subject is not aware. Of it two statements may therefore be
  predicated, not only that it is not conscious in itself or of itself,
  but also that the subject is not conscious of its existence.—TR.]

Footnote 27:

  [Lit.: “Tablers”—TR.]

Footnote 28:

  [This example has been altered in translation to bring in the play
  upon words in English.—TR.]

Footnote 29:

  [See note on preceding example.—TR.]

Footnote 30:

  See Frontispiece.

Footnote 31:

  Frau Dr. von Hug-Hellmuth.

Footnote 32:

  [_Liebesdienst_ = “love service,” a popular expression adapted from
  “military service.”—TR.]

Footnote 33:

  [Cf. sweetheart, sweetest.—TR.]

Footnote 34:

  [In German, an old acquaintance is often addressed as “old house”
  (_altes Haus_); the expression “giving him one on the roof” (_einem
  eins aufs Dachl geben_) corresponds to “hitting him over the head.”]

Footnote 35:

  [The _portal_ vein carries nourishment from the bowels to the body
  _via_ the liver. The _pylorus_ (from πύλη = gate) is the entrance to
  the small intestine. In German, the apertures of the body are called
  _Leibespforten_ (gates of the body).—TR.]

Footnote 36:

  [Cf. the Russian expression, “Little father.”—TR.]

Footnote 37:

  [Cf. “I am a wall and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes
  as one that found favour.” Cant. viii. 10.—TR.]

Footnote 38:

  [This is certainly so with English patients.—TR.]

Footnote 39:

  Whilst correcting these pages, my eye happened to fall upon a
  newspaper paragraph which I reproduce here as affording unexpected
  confirmation of the above words.


                            DIVINE RETRIBUTION

                 A BROKEN ARM FOR A BROKEN MARRIAGE-VOW.

  Frau Anna M., the wife of a soldier in the reserve, accused Frau
  Clementine K. of unfaithfulness to her husband. In her accusation she
  stated that Frau K. had had an illicit relationship with Karl M.
  during her husband’s absence at the front, and while he was sending
  her as much as 70 crowns a month. Besides this, she had already
  received a large sum of money from her (Frau M.’s) husband, while his
  wife and children had to live in hunger and misery. Some of her
  husband’s comrades had informed her that he and Frau K. had visited
  public-houses together and remained there drinking late into the
  night. The accused woman had once actually asked the husband of the
  accuser, in the presence of several soldiers, whether he would not
  soon leave his “old woman” and come to her, and the caretaker of the
  house where Frau K. lived had repeatedly seen the plaintiff’s husband
  in Frau K.’s room, in a state of complete undress.

  Yesterday, before a magistrate in the Leopoldstadt, Frau K. denied
  knowing M. at all: any intimate relations between them were out of the
  question, she said.

  Albertine M., a witness, however, gave evidence of having surprised
  Frau K. in the act of kissing the accuser’s husband.

  M., who had been called as a witness in some earlier proceedings, had
  then denied any intimate relations with the accused. Yesterday, a
  letter was handed to the magistrate, in which the witness retracted
  his former denial and confessed that up to the previous June he had
  carried on illicit relations with Frau K. In the earlier proceedings
  he had denied his relations with the accused only because she had come
  to him before the action came into court and begged him on her knees
  to save her and say nothing. “To-day,” wrote the witness, “I feel
  compelled to lay a full confession before the court, for I have broken
  my left arm and regard this as God’s punishment for my offence.”

  The judge decided that the penal offence had been committed too long
  ago for the action to stand, whereupon the accuser withdrew her
  accusation and the accused was discharged.

Footnote 40:

  [Both senses of cleave are still alive in English: to cleave (=
  separate) and to cleave to (= adhere).—TR.]

Footnote 41:

  [The principal park of Vienna.—TR.]

Footnote 42:

  Another interpretation of the number _three_, occurring in the dream
  of this childless woman, lies very close; but I will not mention it
  here, because this analysis did not furnish any material illustrating
  it.

Footnote 43:

  _Verranntheit._

Footnote 44:

  Cf. _Totem und Tabu_, 1913.

Footnote 45:

  [_Zwangsneurose_, sometimes called in English
  compulsion-neurosis.—TR.]

Footnote 46:

  E. Toulouse, _Émile Zola. Enquête medico-psychologique._ Paris, 1896.

Footnote 47:

  See p. 222.

Footnote 48:

  Ferenczi, _Contributions to Psycho-Analysis_. English translation by
  Ernest Jones, 1916. Chap. viii, p. 181.

Footnote 49:

  [I.e. Grave’s disease, exophthalmic goitre.—TR.]

Footnote 50:

  [_Angst._ The German word denotes a more intense feeling than the
  English ‘anxiety’; the latter however, derived from the same root, has
  become established as the technical English term.—TR.]

Footnote 51:

  [In Germany it replaces the use of “duck” for this purpose in
  English.—TR.]

Footnote 52:

  [Taken, with very slight modifications, from Ernest Dowden’s
  translation.—TR.]

Footnote 53:

  [This name is based on a reference to a relationship with an older
  person in early life.—TR.]


                          _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_


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------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 ● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
 ● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
     chapter.
 ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75810 ***