Because we know of this displacement we unhesitatingly place reliance even upon superficial associations in the dream analysis.[[FN]]
The psychoanalysis of neurotics makes prolific use of the two axioms, first that with the abandonment of the conscious end-presentation the domination of the train of presentation is transferred to the concealed end-presentations; and, secondly, that superficial associations are only a substitutive displacement for suppressed and more profound ones; indeed, psychoanalysis raises these two axioms to pillars of its technique. When I request a patient to dismiss all reflection, and to report to me whatever comes into his mind, I firmly cling to the presupposition that he will not be able to drop the end-idea of the treatment, and I feel justified in concluding that what he reports, even though seemingly most harmless and arbitrary, has connection with this morbid state. My own personality is another end-presentation concerning which the patient has no inkling. The full appreciation, as well as the detailed proof of both these explanations, belongs accordingly to the description of the psychoanalytic technique as a therapeutic method. We have here reached one of the allied subjects with which we propose to leave the subject of the interpretation of dreams.[[FO]]
Of all the objections only one is correct, and still remains, namely, that we ought not to ascribe all mental occurrences of the interpretation work to the nocturnal dream-work. In the interpretation in the waking state we are making a road running from the dream elements back to the dream thoughts. The dream-work has made its way in the opposite direction, and it is not at all probable that these roads are equally passable in the opposite directions. It has, on the contrary, been shown that during the day, by means of new thought connections we make paths which strike the intermediate thoughts and the dream thoughts in different places. We can see how the recent thought material of the day takes its place in the groups of the interpretation, and probably also forces the additional resistance appearing through the night to make new and further detours. But the number and form of the collaterals which we thus spin during the day is psychologically perfectly negligible if it only leads the way to the desired dream thoughts.
(b) Regression.
Now that we have guarded against objection, or at least indicated where our weapons for defence rest, we need no longer delay entering upon the psychological investigations for which we have so long prepared. Let us bring together the main results of our investigations up to this point. The dream is a momentous psychic act; its motive power is at all times to fulfil a wish; its indiscernibleness as a wish and its many peculiarities and absurdities are due to the influence of the psychic censor to which it has been subjected during its formation. Apart from the pressure to withdraw itself from this censor, the following have played a part in its formation: a strong tendency to the condensation of psychic material, a consideration for dramatisation into mental pictures, and (though not regularly) a consideration for a rational and intelligible exterior in the dream structure. From every one of these propositions the road leads further to psychological postulates and assumptions. Thus the reciprocal relation of the wish motives and the four conditions, as well as the relations of these conditions to one another will have to be investigated; and the dream will have to be brought into association with the psychic life.
At the beginning of this chapter we cited a dream in order to remind us of the riddles that are still unsolved. The interpretation of this dream of the burning child afforded us no difficulties, although it was not perfectly given in our present sense. We asked ourselves why it was necessary, after all, that the father should dream instead of awakening, and we recognised the wish to represent the child as living as the single motive of the dream. That there was still another wish playing a part in this connection, we shall be able to show after later discussions. For the present, therefore, we may say that for the sake of the wish-fulfilment the mental process of sleep was transformed into a dream.
If the wish realisation is made retrogressive, only one quality still remains which separates the two forms of psychic occurrences from each other. The dream thought might have read: “I see a glimmer coming from the room in which the corpse reposes. Perhaps a candle has been upset, and the child is burning!” The dream reports the result of this reflection unchanged, but represents it in a situation which takes place in the present, and which is conceivable by the senses like an experience in the waking state. This, however, is the most common and the most striking psychological character of the dream; a thought, usually the one wished for, is in the dream made objective and represented as a scene, or, according to our belief, as experienced.
But how are we now to explain this characteristic peculiarity of the dream-work, or, to speak more modestly, how are we to bring it into relation with the psychic processes?
On closer examination, it is plainly seen that there are two pronounced characters in the manifestations of the dream which are almost independent of each other. The one is the representation as a present situation with the omission of the “perhaps”; the other is the transformation of the thought into visual pictures and into speech.
The transformation in the dream thoughts, which shifts into the present the expectation expressed in them, is perhaps in this particular dream not so very striking. This is probably in consonance with the special or rather subsidiary rôle of the wish-fulfilment in this dream. Let us take another dream in which the dream-wish does not separate itself in sleep from a continuation of the waking thoughts, e.g., the dream of Irma’s injection. Here the dream thought reaching representation is in the optative, “If Otto could only be blamed for Irma’s sickness!” The dream suppresses the optative, and replaces it by a simple present, “Yes, Otto is to blame for Irma’s sickness.” This is therefore the first of the changes which even the undistorted dream undertakes with the dream thought. But we shall not stop long at this first peculiarity of the dream. We elucidate it by a reference to the conscious phantasy, the day dream, which behaves similarly with its presentation content. When Daudet’s Mr. Joyeuse wanders through the streets of Paris unemployed while his daughter is led to believe that he has a position and is in his office, he likewise dreams in the present of circumstances that might help him to obtain protection and a position. The dream therefore employs the present in the same manner and with the same right as the day dream. The present is the tense in which the wish is represented as fulfilled.