REGARD FOR REPRESENTABILITY

We have hitherto been concerned with investigating the manner in which our dreams
represent the relations between the dream-thoughts, but we have often extended our
inquiry to the further question as to what alterations the dream-material itself undergoes
for the purposes of dream-formation. We now know that the dream-material, after being
stripped of a great many of its relations, is subjected to compression, while at the same
time displacements of the intensity of its elements enforce a psychic transvaluation of this
material. The displacements which we have considered were shown to be substitutions of
one particular idea for another, in some way related to the original by its associations, and
the displacements were made to facilitate the condensation, inasmuch as in this manner,
instead of two elements, a common mean between them found its way into the dream. So
far no mention has been made of any other kind of displacement. But we learn from the
analyses that displacement of another kind does occur, and that it manifests itself in an
exchange of the verbal expression for the thought in question. In both cases we are
dealing with a displacement along a chain of associations, but the same process takes
place in different psychic spheres, and the result of this displacement in the one case is
that one element is replaced by another, while in the other case an element exchanges its
verbal shape for another.
This second kind of displacement occurring in dream-formation is not only of great
theoretical interest, but is also peculiarly well-fitted to explain the appearance of fantastic
absurdity in which dreams disguise themselves. Displacement usually occurs in such a
way that a colourless and abstract expression of the dream-thought is exchanged for one
that is pictorial and concrete. The advantage, and along with it the purpose, of this
substitution is obvious. Whatever is pictorial is capable of representation in dreams and
can be fitted into a situation in which abstract expression would confront the dreamrepresentation
with difficulties not unlike those which would arise if a political leading
article had to be represented in an illustrated journal. Not only the possibility of
representation, but also the interests of condensation and of the censorship, may be
furthered by this exchange. Once the abstractly expressed and unserviceable dreamthought
is translated into pictorial language, those contacts and identities between this
new expression and the rest of the dream-material which are required by the dream-work,
and which it contrives whenever they are not available, are more readily provided, since
in every language concrete terms, owing to their evolution, are richer in associations than
are abstract terms. It may be imagined that a good part of the intermediate work in
dream-formation, which seeks to reduce the separate dream-thoughts to the tersest and
most unified expression in the dream, is effected in this manner, by fitting paraphrases of
the various thoughts. The one thought whose mode of expression has perhaps been
determined by other factors will therewith exert a distributive and selective influence on
the expressions available for the others, and it may even do this from the very start, just
as it would in the creative activity of a poet. When a poem is to be written in rhymed
couplets, the second rhyming line is bound by two conditions: it must express the
meaning allotted to it, and its expression must permit of a rhyme with the first line. The
best poems are, of course, those in which one does not detect the effort to find a rhyme,
and in which both thoughts have as a matter of course, by mutual induction, selected the
verbal expression which, with a little subsequent adjustment, will permit of the rhyme.
In some cases the change of expression serves the purposes of dream-condensation more
directly, in that it provides an arrangement of words which, being ambiguous, permits of
the expression of more than one of the dream-thoughts. The whole range of verbal wit is
thus made to serve the purpose of the dream-work. The part played by words in dreamformation
ought not to surprise us. A word, as the point of junction of a number of ideas,
possesses, as it were, a predestined ambiguity, and the neuroses (obsessions, phobias)
take advantage of the opportunities for condensation and disguise afforded by words
quite as eagerly as do dreams.1 That dream-distortion also profits by this displacement of
expression may be readily demonstrated. It is indeed confusing if one ambiguous word is
substituted for two with single meanings, and the replacement of sober, everyday
language by a plastic mode of expression baffles our understanding, especially since a
dream never tells us whether the elements presented by it are to be interpreted literally or
metaphorically, whether they refer to the dream-material directly, or only by means of
interpolated expressions. Generally speaking, in the interpretation of any element of a
dream it is doubtful whether it
(a) is to be accepted in the negative or the positive sense (contrast
relation);
(b) is to be interpreted historically (as a memory);
(c) is symbolic; or whether
(d) its valuation is to be based upon its wording.
In spite of this versatility, we may say that the representation effected by the dream-work,
which was never even intended to be understood, does not impose upon the translator any
greater difficulties than those that the ancient writers of hieroglyphics imposed upon their
readers.
I have already given several examples of dream-representations which are held together
only by ambiguity of expression (`her mouth opens without difficulty', in the dream of
Irma's injection; `I cannot go yet after all', in the last dream related, etc.). I shall now cite
a dream in the analysis of which plastic representation of the abstract thoughts plays a
greater part. The difference between such dream-interpretation and the interpretation by
means of symbols may nevertheless be clearly defined; in the symbolic interpretation of
dreams the key to the symbolism is selected arbitrarily by the interpreter, while in our
own cases of verbal disguise these keys are universally known and are taken from
established modes of speech. Provided one hits on the right idea on the right occasion,
one may solve dreams of this kind, either completely or in part, independently of any
statements made by the dreamer.
A lady, a friend of mine, dreams: She is at the opera. It is a Wagnerian performance,
which has lasted until 7.45 in the morning. In the stalls and pit there are tables, at which
people are eating and drinking. Her cousin and his young wife, who have just returned
from their honeymoon, are sitting at one of these tables; beside them is a member of the
aristocracy. The young wife is said to have brought him back with her from the
honeymoon quite openly, just as she might have brought back a hat. In the middle of the
stalls there is a high tower, on the top of which there is a platform surrounded by an iron
railing. There, high overhead, stands the conductor, with the features of Hans Richter,
continually running round behind the railing, perspiring terribly; and from this position
he is conducting the orchestra, which is arranged round the base of the tower. She
herself is sitting in a box with a friend of her own sex (known to me). Her younger sister
tries to hand her up, from the stalls, a large lump of coal, alleging that she had not
known that it would be so long, and that she must by this time be miserably cold. (As
though the boxes ought to have been heated during the long performance.)
Although in other respects the dream gives a good picture of the situation, it is, of course,
nonsensical enough: the tower in the middle of the stalls, from which the conductor leads
the orchestra, and above all the coal which her sister hands up to her. I purposely asked
for no analysis of this dream. With some knowledge of the personal relations of the
dreamer, I was able to interpret parts of it independently of her. I knew that she had felt
intense sympathy for a musician whose career had been prematurely brought to an end by
insanity. I therefore decided to take the tower in the stalls verbally. It then emerged that
the man whom she wished to see in the place of Hans Richter towered above all the other
members of the orchestra. This tower must be described as a composite formation by
means of apposition; by its substructure it represents the greatness of the man, but by the
railing at the top, behind which he runs round like a prisoner or an animal in a cage (an
allusion to the name of the unfortunate man2), it represents his later fate. `Lunatic-tower'
is perhaps the expression in which the two thoughts might have met.
Now that we have discovered the dream's method of representation, we may try, with the
same key, to unlock the meaning of the second apparent absurdity, that of the coal which
her sister hands up to the dreamer. `Coal' should mean `secret love'.
No fire, no coal so hotly glows
As the secret love of which no one knows.
She and her friend remain seated3 while her younger sister, who still has a prospect of
marrying, hands her up the coal `because she did not know that it would be so long.'
What would be so long is not told in the dream. If it were an anecdote, we should say `the
performance'; but in the dream we may consider the sentence as it is, declare it to be
ambiguous, and add `before she married'. The interpretation `secret love' is then
confirmed by the mention of the cousin who is sitting with his wife in the stalls, and by
the open love-affair attributed to the latter. The contrasts between secret and open love,
between the dreamer's fire and the coldness of the young wife, dominate the dream.
Moreover, here once again there is a person `in a high position' as a middle term between
the aristocrat and the musician who is justified in raising high hopes.
In the above analysis we have at last brought to light a third factor, whose part in the
transformation of the dream-thoughts into the dream-content is by no means trivial:
namely, consideration of the suitability of the dream-thoughts for representation in the
particular psychic material of which the dream makes use -- that is, for the most part in
visual images. Among the various subordinate ideas associated with the essential dreamthoughts,
those will be preferred which permit of visual representation, and the dreamwork
does not hesitate to recast the intractable thoughts into another verbal form, even
though this is a more unusual form, provided it makes representation possible, and thus
puts an end to the psychological distress caused by strangulated thinking. This pouring of
the thought-content into another mould may at the same time serve the work of
condensation, and may establish relations with another thought which otherwise would
not have been established. It is even possible that this second thought may itself have
previously changed its original expression for the purpose of meeting the first one halfway.
Herbert Silberer4 has described a good method of directly observing the transformation of
thoughts into images which occurs in dream-formation, and has thus made it possible to
study in isolation this one factor of the dream-work. If while in a state of fatigue and
somnolence he imposed upon himself a mental effort, it frequently happened that the
thought escaped him, and in its place there appeared a picture in which he could
recognise the substitute for the thought. Not quite appropriately, Silberer described this
substitution as `auto-symbolic'. I shall cite here a few examples from Silberer's work, and
on account of certain peculiarities of the phenomena observed I shall refer to the subject
later on.
Example 1. -- I remember that I have to correct a halting passage in an
essay.
Symbol. -- I see myself planing a piece of wood.
Example 5. -- I endeavour to call to mind the aim of certain metaphysical
studies which I am proposing to undertake.
This aim, I reflect, consists in working one's way through, while seeking
for the basis of existence, to ever higher forms of consciousness or levels
of being.
Symbol. -- I run a long knife under a cake as though to take a slice out of
it.
Interpretation. -- My movement with the knife signifies `working one's
way through'. . . . The explanation of the basis of the symbolism is as
follows: At table it devolves upon me now and again to cut and distribute
a cake, a business which I perform with a long, flexible knife, and which
necessitates a certain amount of care. In particular, the neat extraction of
the cut slices of cake presents a certain amount of difficulty; the knife
must be carefully pushed under the slices in question (the slow `working
one's way through' in order to get to the bottom). But there is yet more
symbolism in the picture. The cake of the symbol was really a `doboscake'
-- that is, a cake in which the knife has to cut through several layers
(the levels of consciousness and thought).
Example 9. -- I lost the thread in a train of thought. I make an effort to
find it again, but I have to recognise that the point of departure has
completely escaped me.
Symbol. -- Part of a form of type, the last lines of which have fallen out.'
In view of the part played by witticisms, puns, quotations, songs, and proverbs in the
intellectual life of educated persons, it would be entirely in accordance with our
expectations to find disguises of this sort used with extreme frequency in the
representation of the dream-thoughts. Only in the case of a few types of material has a
generally valid dream-symbolism established itself on the basis of generally known
allusions and verbal equivalents. A good part of this symbolism, however, is common to
the psychoneuroses, legends, and popular usages as well as to dreams.
In fact, if we look more closely into the matter, we must recognise that in employing this
kind of substitution the dream-work is doing nothing at all original. For the achievement
of its purpose, which in this case is representation without interference from the
censorship, it simply follows the paths which it finds already marked out in unconscious
thinking, and gives the preference to those transformations of the repressed material
which are permitted to become conscious also in the form of witticisms and allusions,
and with which all the fantasies of neurotics are replete. Here we suddenly begin to
understand the dream-interpretations of Scherner, whose essential correctness I have
vindicated elsewhere. The preoccupation of the imagination with one's own body is by no
means peculiar to or characteristic of the dream alone. My analyses have shown me that it
is constantly found in the unconscious thinking of neurotics, and may be traced back to
sexual curiosity, whose object, in the adolescent youth or maiden, is the genitals of the
opposite sex, or even of the same sex. But, as Scherner and Volkelt very truly insist, the
house does not constitute the only group of ideas which is employed for the
symbolisation of the body, either in dreams or in the unconscious fantasies of neurosis.
To be sure, I know patients who have steadily adhered to an architectural symbolism for
the body and the genitals (sexual interest, of course, extends far beyond the region of the
external genital organs) -- patients for whom posts and pillars signify legs (as in the Song
of Songs), to whom every door suggests a bodily aperture (`hole'), and every water-pipe
the urinary system, and so on. But the groups of ideas appertaining to plant-life, or to the
kitchen, are just as often chosen to conceal sexual images;5 in respect of the former
everyday language, the sediment of imaginative comparisons dating from the remotest
times, has abundantly paved the way (the `vineyard' of the Lord, the `seed' of Abraham,
the `garden' of the maiden in the Song of Songs). The ugliest as well as the most intimate
details of sexual life may be thought or dreamed of in apparently innocent allusions to
culinary operations, and the symptoms of hysteria will become absolutely unintelligible if
we forget that sexual symbolism may conceal itself behind the most commonplace and
inconspicuous matters as its safest hiding-place. That some neurotic children cannot look
at blood and raw meat, that they vomit at the sight of eggs and macaroni, and that the
dread of snakes, which is natural to mankind, is monstrously exaggerated in neurotics --
all this has a definite sexual meaning. Wherever the neurosis employs a disguise of this
sort, it treads the paths once trodden by the whole of humanity in the early stages of
civilisation -- paths to whose thinly veiled existence our idiomatic expressions, proverbs,
superstitions, and customs testify to this day.
I here insert the promised `flower-dream' of a female patient, in which I shall print in
Roman type everything which is to be sexually interpreted. This beautiful dream lost all
its charm for the dreamer once it had been interpreted.
(a) Preliminary dream: She goes to the two maids in the kitchen and scolds them for
taking so long to prepare `a little bite of food'. She also sees a very large number of
heavy kitchen utensils in the kitchen, heaped into piles and turned upside down in order
to drain. Later addition: The two maids go to fetch water, and have, as it were, to climb
into a river which reaches up to the house or into the courtyard.6
(b) Main dream:7 She is descending from a height8 over curiously constructed railings, or
a fence which is composed of large square trelliswork hurdles with small square
apertures.9 It is really not adapted for climbing; she is constantly afraid that she cannot
find a place for her foot, and she is glad that her dress doesn't get caught anywhere, and
that she is able to climb down it so respectably.10 As she climbs she is carrying a big
branch in her hand,11 really like a tree, which is thickly studded with red flowers; a
spreading branch, with many twigs.12 With this is connected the idea of cherry-blossoms
(Blüten = flowers), but they look like fully opened camellias, which of course do not grow
on trees. As she is descending, she first has one, then suddenly two, and then again only
one.13 When she has reached the ground the lower flowers have already begun to fall.
Now that she has reached the bottom she sees an `odd man' who is combing -- as she
would like to put it -- just such a tree, that is, with a piece of wood he is scraping thick
bunches of hair from it, which hang from it like moss. Other men have chopped off such
branches in a garden, and have flung them into the road, where they are lying about, so
that a number of people take some of them. But she asks whether this is right, whether
she may take one, too.14 In the garden there stands a young man (he is a foreigner, and
known to her) toward whom she goes in order to ask him how it is possible to transplant
such branches in her own garden.15 He embraces her, whereupon she struggles and asks
him what he is thinking of, whether it is permissible to embrace her in such a manner. He
says there is nothing wrong in it, that it is permitted.16 He then declares himself willing to
go with her into the other garden, in order to show her how to put them in, and he says
something to her which she does not quite understand: `Besides this I need three metres
(later she says: square metres) or three fathoms of ground.' It seems as though he were
asking her for something in return for his willingness, as though he had the intention of
indemnifying (reimbursing) himself in her garden, as though he wanted to evade some
law or other, to derive some advantage from it without causing her an injury. She does
not know whether or not he really shows her anything.
The above dream, which has been given prominence on account of its symbolic elements,
may be described as a `biographical' dream. Such dreams occur frequently in
psychoanalysis, but perhaps only rarely outside it.17
I have, of course, an abundance of such material, but to reproduce it here would lead us
too far into the consideration of neurotic conditions. Everything points to the same
conclusion, namely, that we need not assume that any special symbolising activity of the
psyche is operative in dream-formation; that, on the contrary, the dream makes use of
such symbolisations as are to be found ready-made in unconscious thinking, since these,
by reason of their ease of representation, and for the most part by reason of their being
exempt from the censorship, satisfy more effectively the requirements of dreamformation.
1 cf. Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious.
2 Hugo Wolf.
3 [The German sitzen geblieben is often applied to women who have not succeeded in
getting married. -- TRANS.]
4 Bleuler-Freud Jahrbuch, i, 1909.
5 A mass of corroborative material may be found in the three supplementary volumes of
Edward Fuchs's Illustrierte Sittengeschichte; privately printed by A. Lange, Munich.
6 For the interpretation of this preliminary dream, which is to be regarded as `causal', see
p. 199.
7 Her career.
8 Exalted origin, the wish-contrast to the preliminary dream.
9 A composite formation, which unites two localities, the so-called garret (German: Boden
= floor, garret) of her father's house, in which she used to play with her brother, the
object of her later fantasies, and the farm of a malicious uncle, who used to tease her.
10 Wish-contrast to an actual memory of her uncle's farm, to the effect that she used to
expose herself while she was asleep.
11 Just as the angel bears a lily-stem in the Annunciation.
12 For the explanation of this composite formation, see pp. 202-03; innocence,
menstruation, La Dame aux Camélias.
13 Referring to the plurality of the persons who serve her fantasies.
14 Whether it is permissible to masturbate. [`Sich einen herunterreissen' means `to pull off'
and colloquially `to masturbate'. -- TRANS.]
15 The branch (Ast) has long been used to represent the male organ, and, moreover,
contains a very distinct allusion to the family name of the dreamer
16 Refers to matrimonial precautions, as does that which immediately follows.
17 An analogous `biographical' dream is recorded on p. 242, among the examples of dream symbolism.