“As to the first scene” (by technical methods of analysis) “a rich collection of memories was obtained. It appeared that on the previous morning the subject had walked with a poor Jewess through the slums, and had passed by some men who had been drinking. This led her to think at the time of the lives of these poor people; of the temptations to which they were exposed; of how little we know of this side of life and of its temptations. She wondered what the effect of such surroundings, particularly of seeing people drinking, would have upon the child of the Jewess. She wondered if such people ought to be condemned if they yielded to drink and other temptations. She thought that she herself would not blame such people if they yielded, and that we ought not to condemn them. Then in the psychoanalysis there came memories of her mother, whose character she admired and who never condemned any one. She remembered how her mother, who was an invalid, always had a glass of whisky and water on her table at night, and how the family used to joke her about it. Then came memories again of her husband sending bottles of whisky to her mother; of the latter drinking it at night; of the men whom she had seen in the slums and who had been drinking. These, very briefly, were the experiences accompanied by strong feeling tones which were called up as associative memories of this scene of the dream. With these in mind, it is not difficult to construct a logical, though symbolic, meaning of it. In the dream a Jewess (not the Jewess, but a type) is in the act of drinking whisky—in other words, the poor, whom the Jewess represents, yield to the temptation which the dreamer had thought of with considerable intensity of feeling during the day. The dreamer’s own judgment, after considerable cogitation, had been that such people were not to be condemned. Was she right? The dream answers the question, for the Jewess changes in the dream to her mother, for whose judgment she had the utmost respect. Her mother now drinks the whisky as she had actually done in life, a logical justification (in view of her mother’s fine character and liberal opinion) of her own belief, which was somewhat intensely expressed in her thoughts of that morning, a belief in not condemning poor people who yield to such temptations. The dream scene is therefore the symbolical representation and justification of her own belief,[[113]] and answers the doubts and scruples that beset her mind.”
Whether or not this is the correct interpretation of this dream depends entirely upon whether the true causal factors were found. If through the analysis this was the case, as I believe—namely, the scruple or ethical problem whether poor people who yield to temptation ought to be condemned—then the interpretation given is logically sound and the dream is an answer to the doubts and scruples that beset the dreamer’s mind. But the answer is a pictorial symbolism and therefore requires an intervening subconscious process which induces and finally expresses itself in the symbolism. We may suppose that this process in response to and as a subconscious incubation of the ethical problem took some form like this: “Poor people like the Jewess are not to be condemned for yielding to the temptation (of drinking) for my mother, who was beyond criticism, showed by her life she would not have condemned them.”
This may or may not be the true subconscious process and the correct interpretation of the dream. But it is one possible and logical interpretation based upon the actually found antecedent experiences and associative memories of the dreamer. Now it so happens that this interpretation and that of other dreams[[114]] which I endeavored to trace to antecedent experiences have been warmly challenged by certain clinicians because the inferred causal factors were not found to be antecedent repressed sexual wishes. It is insisted on theoretical grounds that the content of the dreams plainly indicated that there must have been such wishes and that if these had been found this dream would have been unfolded as a logical symbolical fulfilment of a sexual wish. Which interpretation is correct is inconsequential for our present purpose. The controversy only relates to the universality of the sexual theory of dreams. The point is that this difference in interpretation shows the possibility of error in the determination of the causal factor and the subconscious process by clinical methods. The dream may be logically related to two or more antecedent experiences and we have no criterion of which is the correct one. To insist upon one or the other savors of pure dogmatism.[[115]] Indeed, the justification for the postulation in a dream of any subconscious process in the last analysis depends upon the soundness of the postulation of the antecedent experience as the causal factor. If this factor falls to the ground the subconscious process falls with it.
The second point to which this discussion leads us is that the latitude of interpretation allowed by the method of analysis has given rise to different views as to the specific character of the subconscious process found in many dreams. According to the theory of Freud, to whose genius we are indebted for the discovery of this process, it is almost always a sexual wish and the dream is always the imaginary, even though cryptic, fulfilment of that wish. On the other hand, as a result of my own studies, if I may venture to lay weight upon them, I have been forced to the conclusion that a dream may be the symbolical expression of almost any thought to which strong emotional tones with their impulsive forces have been linked, particularly anxieties, apprehensions, sorrows, beliefs, wishes, doubts, and scruples, which function subconsciously in the dream. It may be a solution of unsolved problems with which the mind has been occupied,[[116]] just as in the waking state a mathematical or other problem may be solved subconsciously. In some subjects the problem is particularly apt to be one involving a conflict between opposing impulses, therefore one which has troubled the dreamer.[[117]]
We have seen that in experimental and spontaneous hallucinatory phenomena, where the causal factor is known, a subconscious process is the essential feature of the mechanism. In this respect the mechanism is identical with that of certain dreams. Indeed, dreams are one type of hallucinatory phenomena. In fact we met with one dream the chief element of which was repeated afterward in the waking state as a vision. We are justified, then, in applying the principle of a subconscious process to the elucidation of the visions of normal people, although it may be difficult to determine exactly the specific content of the process and the antecedent thought from which it was derived. Sometimes the content of a vision and the known circumstances under which it occurred are sufficient to enable us to interpret the phenomenon with reasonable certainty. In the following historical examples it is not difficult to recognize that the vision was a symbolic answer to a problem which had troubled the conscience of the Archduke Charles of Austria. Unable to solve his problem consciously and come to a decision, it was solved for him by a subconscious process. Indeed, as a fact, the vision was accepted by Charles as an answer to his doubts and perhaps changed the future history of Austria.
“The Archduke Charles (the father of the present Emperor of Austria) was also greatly troubled in his mind as to the right to waive his claim to the crown in favor of his son. According to his own statement he only finally made up his mind when, while earnestly praying for guidance in his perplexity, he had a vision of the spirit of his father, the late Emperor Francis, laying his hand on the head of his youthful grandson and thus putting all his own doubts to rest.”[[118]]
The likeness in type of the dream which we have just discussed to this vision is instructive. In the former the mother of the dreamer answers the question of conscience by drinking the whisky; in the latter the father of the visualizer does the same by laying his hand on the head of the object of the doubt.
I have already pointed out the evidence for a subconscious process underlying the hallucinatory phenomena of sudden religious conversion.[[119]] I may further cite here, as an analogous phenomenon, the following historical example of not only hallucinatory symbolism, but of explicitly conscious processes of thought which were elaborated by subconscious processes. It is Margaret Mary’s vision of the Sacred Heart. Margaret earnestly desired (according to her biographer)——
“To be loved by God! and loved by him to distraction (aimé jusqu’à la folie)!—Margaret melted away with love at the thought of such a thing. Like St. Philip of Neri in former times, or like St. Francis Xavier, she said to God: ‘Hold back, O my God, these torrents which overwhelm me, or else enlarge my capacity for their reception.’”
The answer and the form of the fulfilment of this wish came as an hallucination. She had a vision of Christ’s Sacred Heart