A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

by Sigmund Freud

All your material is irreproachable, but I do not believe that it justifies your conclusions in two directions, namely, that dream interpretation as we practice it is sacrificed to arbitrariness and that the deficiency of our results makes the justification of our method doubtful. If you will substitute for the arbitrariness of the interpreter, his skill, his experience, his comprehension, I agree with you. We shall surely not be able to dispense with some such personal factor, particularly not in difficult tasks of dream interpretation. But this same state of affairs exists also in other scientific occupations. There is no way in which to make sure that one man will not wield a technique less well, or utilize it more fully, than another. What might, for example, impress you as arbitrariness in the interpretation of symbols, is compensated for by the fact that as a rule the connection of the dream thoughts among themselves, the connection of the dream with the life of the dreamer, and the whole psychic situation in which the dream occurs, chooses just one of the possible interpretations advanced and rejects the others as useless for its purposes. The conclusion drawn from the inadequacies of dream interpretation, that our hypotheses are wrong, is weakened by an observation which shows that the ambiguity and indefiniteness of the dream is rather characteristic and necessarily to be expected.

Recollect that we said that the dream work translates the dream thoughts into primitive expressions analogous to picture writing. All these primitive systems of expression are, however, subject to such indefiniteness and ambiguities, but it does not follow that we are justified in doubting their usefulness. You know that the fusion of opposites by the dream-work is analogous to the so-called "antithetical meaning of primitive words," in the oldest languages. The philologist, R. Abel (1884), whom we have to thank for this point of view, admonishes us not to believe that the meaning of the communication which one person made to another when using such ambiguous words was necessarily unclear. Tone and gesture used in connection with the words would have left no room for doubt as to which of the two opposites the speaker intended to communicate. In writing, where gesture is lacking, it was replaced by a supplementary picture sign not intended to be spoken, as for example by the picture of a little man squatting lazily or standing erect, according to whether the ambiguous hieroglyphic was to mean "weak" or "strong." It was in this way that one avoided any misunderstanding despite the ambiguity of the sounds and signs.

We recognize in the ancient systems of expression, e.g., the writings of those oldest languages, a number of uncertainties which we would not tolerate in our present-day writings. Thus in many Semitic writings only the consonants of words are indicated. The reader had to supply the omitted vowels according to his knowledge and the context. Hieroglyphic writing does not proceed in exactly this way, but quite similarly, and that is why the pronunciation of old Egyptian has remained unknown to us. The holy writings of the Egyptians contain still other uncertainties. For example, it is left to the discretion of the writer whether or not he shall arrange the pictures from right to left or from left to right. To be able to read we have to follow the rule that we must depend upon the faces of the figures, birds, and the like. The writer, however, could also arrange the picture signs in vertical rows, and in inscriptions on small objects he was guided by considerations of beauty and proportion further to change the order of the signs. Probably the most confusing feature of hieroglyphic writing is to be found in the fact that there is no space between words. The pictures stretch over the page at uniform distances from one another, and generally one does not know whether a sign belongs to what has gone before or is the beginning of a new word. Persian cuneiform writing, on the other hand, makes use of an oblique wedge sign to separate the words.

The Chinese tongue and script is exceedingly old, but still used by four hundred million people. Please do not think I understand anything about it. I have only informed myself concerning it because I hoped to find analogies to the indefinite aspects of the dream. Nor was I disappointed. The Chinese language is filled with so many vagaries that it strikes terror into our hearts. It consists, as is well known, of a number of syllable sounds which are spoken singly or are combined in twos. One of the chief dialects has about four hundred such sounds. Now since the vocabulary of this dialect is estimated at about four thousand words, it follows that every sound has on an average of ten different meanings, some less but others, consequently, more. Hence there are a great number of ways of avoiding a multiplicity of meaning, since one cannot guess from the context alone which of the ten meanings of the syllable sound the speaker intended to convey to the hearer. Among them are the combining of two sounds into a compounded word and the use of four different "tones" with which to utter these syllables. For our purposes of comparison, it is still more interesting to note that this language has practically no grammar. It is impossible to say of a one-syllable word whether it is a noun, a verb, or an adjective, and we find none of those changes in the forms of the words by means of which we might recognize sex, number, ending, tense or mood. The language, therefore, might be said to consist of raw material, much in the same manner as our thought language is broken up by the dream work into its raw materials when the expressions of relationship are left out. In the Chinese, in all cases of vagueness the decision is left to the understanding of the hearer, who is guided by the context. I have secured an example of a Chinese saying which, literally translated, reads: "Little to be seen, much to wonder at." That is not difficult to understand. It may mean, "The less a man has seen, the more he finds to wonder at," or, "There is much to admire for the man who has seen little." Naturally, there is no need to choose between these two translations, which differ only in grammar. Despite these uncertainties, we are assured, the Chinese language is an extraordinarily excellent medium for the expression of thought. Vagueness does not, therefore, necessarily lead to ambiguity.

Now we must certainly admit that the condition of affairs is far less favorable in the expression-system of the dream than in these ancient languages and writings. For, after all, these latter are really designed for communication, that is to say, they were always intended to be understood, no matter in what way and with what aids. But it is just this characteristic which the dream lacks. The dream does not want to tell anyone anything, it is no vehicle of communication, it is, on the contrary, constructed so as not to be understood. For that reason we must not be surprised or misled if we should discover that a number of the ambiguities and vagaries of the dream do not permit of determination. As the one specific gain of our comparison, we have only the realization that such uncertainties as people tried to make use of in objecting to the validity of our dream interpretation, are rather the invariable characteristic of all primitive systems of expression.

How far the dream can really be understood can be determined only by practice and experience. My opinion is, that that is very far indeed, and the comparison of results which correctly trained analysts have gathered confirms my view. The lay public, even that part of the lay public which is interested in science, likes, in the face of the difficulties and uncertainties of a scientific task, to make what I consider an unjust show of its superior scepticism. Perhaps not all of you are acquainted with the fact that a similar situation arose in the history of the deciphering of the Babylonian-Assyrian inscriptions. There was a period then when public opinion went far in declaring the decipherors of cuneiform writing to be visionaries and the whole research a "fraud." But in the year 1857 the Royal Asiatic Society made a decisive test. It challenged the four most distinguished decipherors of cuneiform writing, Rawlinson, Hincks, Fox Talbot and Oppert, each to send to it in a sealed envelope his independent translation of a newly discovered inscription, and the Society was then able to testify, after having made a comparison of the four readings, that their agreement was sufficiently marked to justify confidence in what already had been accomplished, and faith in further progress. At this the mockery of the learned lay world gradually came to an end and the confidence in the reading of cuneiform documents has grown appreciably since then.

2. A second series of objections is firmly grounded in the impression from which you too probably are not free, that a number of the solutions of dream interpretations which we find it necessary to make seem forced, artificial, far-fetched, in other words, violent or even comical or jocose. These comments are so frequent that I shall choose at random the latest example which has come to my attention. Recently, in free Switzerland, the director of a boarding-school was relieved of his position on account of his active interest in psychoanalysis. He raised objections and a Berne newspaper made public the judgment of the school authorities. I quote from that article some sentences which apply to psychoanalysis: "Moreover, we are surprised at the many far-fetched and artificial examples as found in the aforementioned book of Dr. Pfister of Zurich.... Thus, it certainly is a cause of surprise when the director of a boarding-school so uncritically accepts all these assertions and apparent proofs." These observations are offered as the decisions of "one who judges calmly." I rather think this calm is "artificial." Let us examine these remarks more closely in the hope that a little reflection and knowledge of the subject can be no detriment to calm judgment.

It is positively refreshing to see how quickly and unerringly some individuals can judge a delicate question of abstruse psychology by first impressions. The interpretations seem to them far-fetched and forced, they do not please them, so the interpretations are wrong and the whole business of interpretation amounts to nothing. No fleeting thought ever brushes the other possibility, that these interpretations must appear as they are for good reasons, which would give rise to the further question of what these good reasons might be.

The content thus judged generally relates to the results of displacement, with which you have become acquainted as the strongest device of the dream censor. It is with the help of displacements that the dream censor creates substitute-formations which we have designated as allusions. But they are allusions which are not easily recognized as such, and from which it is not easy to find one's way back to the original and which are connected with this original by means of the strangest, most unusual, most superficial associations. In all of these cases, however, it is a question of matters which are to be hidden, which were intended for concealment; this is what the dream censor aims to do. We must not expect to find a thing that has been concealed in its accustomed place in the spot where it belongs. In this respect the Commissions for the Surveillance of Frontiers now in office are more cunning than the Swiss school authorities. In their search for documents and maps they are not content to search through portfolios and letter cases but they also take into account the possibility that spies and smugglers might carry such severely proscribed articles in the most concealed parts of their clothing, where they certainly do not belong, as for example between the double soles of their boots. If the concealed objects are found in such a place, they certainly are very far-fetched, but nevertheless they have been "fetched."

If we recognize that the most remote, the most extraordinary associations between the latent dream element and its manifest substitute are possible, associations appearing ofttimes comical, ofttimes witty, we follow in so doing a wealth of experience derived from examples whose solutions we have, as a rule, not found ourselves. Often it is not possible to give such interpretations from our own examples. No sane person could guess the requisite association. The dreamer either gives us the translation with one stroke by means of his immediate association—he can do this, for this substitute formation was created by his mind—or he provides us with so much material that the solution no longer demands any special astuteness but forces itself upon us as inevitable. If the dreamer does not help us in either of these two ways, then indeed the manifest element in question remains forever incomprehensible to us. Allow me to give you one more such example of recent occurrence. One of my patients lost her father during the time that she was undergoing treatment. Since then she has made use of every opportunity to bring him back to life in her dreams. In one of her dreams her father appears in a certain connection, of no further importance here, and says, "It is a quarter past eleven, it is half past eleven, it is quarter of twelve." All she can think of in connection with this curious incident is the recollection that her father liked to see his grown-up children appear punctually at the general meal hour. That very thing probably had some connection with the dream element, but permitted of no conclusion as to its source. Judging from the situation of the treatment at that time, there was a justified suspicion that a carefully suppressed critical rebellion against her loved and respected father played its part in this dream. Continuing her associations, and apparently far afield from topics relevant to the dream, the dreamer relates that yesterday many things of a psychological nature had been discussed in her presence, and that a relative made the remark: "The cave man (Urmensch) continues to live in all of us." Now we think we understand. That gave her an excellent opportunity of picturing her father as continuing to live. So in the dream she made of him a clockman (Uhrmensch) by having him announce the quarter-hours at noon time.