(b) The Work of Displacement
Another sort of relation, which is no less significant, must have come to our notice while we were collecting examples of dream condensation. We have seen that those elements which obtrude themselves in the dream content as its essential components play a part in the dream thoughts which is by no means the same. As a correlative to this the converse of this thesis is also true. That which is clearly the essential thing in the dream thoughts need not be represented in the dream at all. The dream, as it were, is eccentric; its contents are grouped about other elements than the dream thoughts as a central point. Thus, for example, in the dream about the botanical monograph the central point of the dream content is apparently the element “botanical”; in the dream thoughts we are concerned with the complications and conflicts which result from services rendered among colleagues which put them under obligations to one another, subsequently with the reproach that I am in the habit of sacrificing too much to my hobbies, and the element “botanical” would in no case find a place in this nucleus of the dream thoughts if it were not loosely connected with it by an antithesis, for botany was never among my favourite studies. In the Sappho dream of my patient the ascending and descending, being upstairs and down, is made the central point; the dream, however, is concerned with the danger of sexual relations with persons of low degree, so that only one of the elements of the dream thoughts seems to have been taken over into the dream content, albeit with unseemly elaboration. Similarly in the dream about June bugs, whose subject is the relation of sexuality to cruelty, the factor of cruelty has indeed reappeared but in a different connection and without the mention of the sexual, that is to say, it has been torn from its context and transformed into something strange. Again, in the dream about my uncle, the blond beard, which seems to be its central point, appears to have no rational connection with the wishes for greatness which we have recognised as the nucleus of the dream thoughts. It is only to be expected if such dreams give a displaced impression. In complete contrast to these examples, the dream of Irma’s injection shows that individual elements can claim the same place in the formation of dreams which they occupy in the dream thoughts. The recognition of these new and entirely variable relations between the dream thoughts and the dream content is at first likely to excite our astonishment. If we find in a psychic process of normal life that an idea has been culled from among a number of others, and has acquired particular vividness in our consciousness, we are in the habit of regarding this result as a proof that the victorious idea is endowed with a peculiarly high degree of psychic value—a certain degree of interest. We now discover that this value of the individual elements in the dream thoughts is not preserved in the formation of the dream, or does not come into consideration. For there is no doubt as to the elements of the dream thoughts which are of the highest value; our judgment tells us immediately. In the formation of dreams those elements which are emphasized with intense interest may be treated as though they were inferior, and other elements are put in their place which certainly were inferior in the dream thoughts. We are at first given the impression that the psychic intensity[[DR]] of the individual ideas does not come into consideration at all for the selection made by the dream, but only their greater or smaller multiplicity of determination. Not what is important in the dream thoughts gets into the dream, but what is contained in them several times over, one might be inclined to think; but our understanding of the formation of dreams is not much furthered by this assumption, for at the outset it will be impossible to believe that the two factors of manifold determination and of integral value do not tend in the same direction in the influence they exert on the selection made by the dream. Those ideas in the dream thoughts which are most important are probably also those which recur most frequently, for the individual dream thoughts radiate from them as from central points. And still the dream may reject those elements which are especially emphasized and which receive manifold support, and may take up into its content elements which are endowed only with the latter property.
This difficulty may be solved by considering another impression received in the investigation of the manifold determination of the dream content. Perhaps many a reader has already passed his own judgment upon this investigation by saying that the manifold determination of the elements of the dream is not a significant discovery, because it is a self-evident one. In the analysis one starts from the dream elements, and registers all the notions which are connected with them; it is no wonder, then, that these elements should occur with particular frequency in the thought material which is obtained in this manner. I cannot acknowledge the validity of this objection, but shall say something myself which sounds like it. Among the thoughts which analysis brings to light, many can be found which are far removed from the central idea of the dream, and which appear distinguished from the rest as artificial interpolations for a definite purpose. Their purpose may easily be discovered; they are just the ones which establish a connection, often a forced and far-fetched one, between the dream content and the dream thoughts, and if these elements were to be weeded out, not only over-determination but also a sufficient determination by means of the dream thoughts would often be lacking for the dream content. We are thus led to the conclusion that manifold determination, which decides the selection made by the dream, is perhaps not always a primary factor in dream formation, but is often the secondary manifestation of a psychic power which is still unknown to us. But in spite of all this, manifold determination must nevertheless control the entrance of individual elements into the dream, for it is possible to observe that it is established with considerable effort in cases where it does not result from the dream material without assistance.
The assumption is not now far distant that a psychic force is expressed in dream activity which on the one hand strips elements of high psychic value of their intensity, and which on the other hand creates new values, by way of over-determination, from elements of small value, these new values subsequently getting into the dream content. If this is the method of procedure, there has taken place in the formation of the dream a transference and displacement of the psychic intensities of the individual elements, of which the textual difference between the dream and the thought content appears as a result. The process which we assume here is nothing less than the essential part of the dream activity; it merits the designation of dream displacement. Dream displacement and dream condensation are the two craftsmen to whom we may chiefly attribute the moulding of the dream.
I think we also have an easy task in recognising the psychic force which makes itself felt in the circumstances of dream displacement. The result of this displacement is that the dream content no longer resembles the core of the dream thoughts at all, and that the dream reproduces only a disfigured form of the dream-wish in the unconscious. But we are already acquainted with dream disfigurement; we have traced it back to the censorship which one psychic instance in the psychic life exercises upon the other. Dream displacement is one of the chief means for achieving this disfigurement. Is fecit, cui profuit. We may assume that dream displacement is brought about by the influence of this censor, of the endopsychic repulsion.[[DS]]
The manner in which the factors of displacement, condensation, and over-determination play into one another in the formation of the dream, which is the ruling factor and which the subordinate one, all this will be reserved as the subject of later investigations. For the present we may state, as a second condition which the elements must satisfy in order to get into the dream, that they must be withdrawn from the censor of resistance. From now on we shall take account of dream displacement as an unquestionable fact in the interpretation of dreams.
(c) Means of Representation in the Dream
Besides the two factors of dream condensation and dream displacement which we have found to be active in the transformation of the latent dream material into the manifest content, we shall come in the course of this investigation upon two other conditions which exercise an unquestionable influence upon the selection of the material which gets into the dream. Even at the risk of seeming to stop our progress, I should like to glance at the processes by which the interpretation of dreams is accomplished. I do not deny that I should succeed best in making them clear, and in showing that they are sufficiently reliable to insure them against attack, by taking a single dream as a paradigm and developing its interpretation, as I have done in Chapter II. in the dream of “Irma’s Injection,” and then putting together the dream thoughts which I have discovered, and reconstructing the formation of the dream from them—that is to say, by supplementing the analysis of dreams by a synthesis of them. I have accomplished this with several specimens for my own instruction; but I cannot undertake to do it here because I am prevented by considerations, which every right-minded person must approve of, relative to the psychic material necessary for such a demonstration. In the analysis of dreams these considerations present less difficulty, for an analysis may be incomplete and still retain its value even if it leads only a short way into the thought labyrinth of the dream. I do not see how a synthesis could be anything short of complete in order to be convincing. I could give a complete synthesis only of the dreams of such persons as are unknown to the reading public. Since, however, only neurotic patients furnish me with the means for doing this, this part of the description of the dream must be postponed until I can carry the psychological explanation of neuroses far enough—elsewhere—to be able to show their connection with the subject matter under consideration.[[DT]]
From my attempts synthetically to construct dreams from the dream thoughts, I know that the material which is obtained from interpretation varies in value. For a part of it consists of the essential dream thoughts which would, therefore, completely replace the dream, and which would in themselves be sufficient for this replacement if there were no censor for the dream. The other part may be summed up under the term “collaterals”; taken as a whole they represent the means by which the real wish that arises from the dream thoughts is transformed into the dream-wish. A first part of these “collaterals” consists of allusions to the actual dream thoughts, which, considered schematically, correspond to displacements from the essential to the non-essential. A second part comprises the thoughts which connect these non-essential elements, that have become significant through displacement with one another, and which reach from them into the dream content. Finally a third part contains the ideas and thought connections which (in the work of interpretation) conduct us from the dream content to the intermediary collaterals, all of which need not necessarily have participated in the formation of the dream.
At this point we are interested exclusively in the essential dream thoughts. These are usually found to be a complex of thoughts and memories of the most intricate possible construction, and to possess all the properties of the thought processes which are known to us from waking life. Not infrequently they are trains of thought which proceed from more than one centre, but which do not lack points of connection; almost regularly a chain of thought stands next to its contradictory correlative, being connected with it by contrast associations.