Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 13 Explicit and Implicit (2)
You must think that the water-course itself mentioned in the dream, being vague, is inexplicable.You think it is true that the dream is difficult to understand, but the difficulty is not due to the vagueness but to something else, the same cause which caused the blurring of this element.The dreamer can't associate with the waterway, and naturally we don't know what to say.Not long after, the next day to be exact, she told me of a possible association with waterways.She remembered someone saying a joke: On the ferry from Dover to Calais, an Englishman once said when talking about a certain issue: "There is only a gap between the noble and the ridiculous." A famous writer Answer him: "Indeed, there is only one English Channel (Le Pas-de-Calais) across." That means France is noble, and England is ridiculous.The English Channel is what is called a waterway.Or do you ask whether this association has anything to do with dreams?The answer is, of course, relevant: that is the true meaning of this inexplicable dream element.You may find it hard to believe that the jokes the dreamer had heard before became subconscious thoughts hidden behind the element "waterway", perhaps you thought they were made up after the fact.This association shows that her suspicion has been disguised as excessive admiration, and the emergence of resistance is undoubtedly the belated association and the blurring of the dream element.In this instance, the relation of all the elements of the dream to the subconscious mind behind it, you notice, is that it is like a fragment of thought that is compared to something else; the dream elements are so far removed from the subconscious mind that It's incomprehensible.

Example [-], a patient had a very long dream. In the dream, there was the following fragment: Several of his family members were sitting around a table with a special shape... This table reminded the dreamer that he was occasionally in a certain place. The man had seen the same picture at home, so he had the following association: the relationship between father and son in that family was special, and the dreamer went on to say that it was the same in his own home.The table in the dream thus points out this resemblance.

The dreamer was already familiar with dream analysis, otherwise he would not have been able to study such a trivial matter—the shape of the table.It is true that nothing in a dream arises without a cause, and that we must investigate these trivial details, apparently without motive, if we are to arrive at a conclusion.Perhaps you will wonder why this dream chooses the table to imply the idea of ​​"our relationship is the same as theirs".You can understand this if you know the family name "Tischler". Tisch means table, and the dreamer dreams of family members sitting around the table, which means that they are also Tischler (Tischler).In addition, we still need to pay attention to one thing. Such an analysis and narrative will inevitably be ridiculed as "frivolous".This is one of the many difficulties in choosing dreams.Or we may take another example, where, however, the defect of imprudence is avoided, it is replaced by other defects.

It seems best for me here to explain the two new terms that could have been cited earlier.The dream that can be uttered is called the "manifest dream content", while the hidden meaning behind it, obtained by association, is called the "latent dream content".So far we have had to discuss how all the manifest and implicit senses in the above examples are related.In the first two cases the manifest content of the dream was only a part, a fragment, of its latent content.The subconscious thought of the dream enters the dream in part, forming a fragment or metaphor, like an abbreviation in a telegraph code.The analysis of dreams is to restore this fragment or metaphor to its full meaning, and the second example is more perfect.Therefore, one of the functions of dream camouflage is to refer to other things with a single fragment or metaphor, and the explicit and latent content in Example [-] is another relationship. We can see the relationship through the following example.

Example [-]: The dreamer dreamed of rescuing a woman he knew from a ditch.The dreamer knows the meaning of the dream through the first association, that is, he has taken a fancy to her and thus "chosen her".

Example [-], another person dreamed that his brother was holding bamboo knots, and the first thought was that the Mid-Autumn Festival was coming, and it was only in the second association that the hidden meaning of the dream was that his brother was in thrift.

Example [-], the dreamer climbed a mountain and looked far away in the dream.This dream seems reasonable, and perhaps no explanation is needed, as long as it is enough to understand the dreamer's memories related to this dream.But this is wrong, and this dream needs analysis just as much as the disorganized ones.The dreamer does not remember the mountaineering, but instead recalls that a friend is publishing a commentary called "The Lookout", which discusses man's relation to the farthest part of the earth: the dreamer therefore considers himself a commentator, the "lookout". The "measurer", that is, the hidden meaning of the dream - the "measurer".

Here you learn of a new relationship between the manifest and latent dream-content.Rather than saying that the explicit meaning is a disguise for the latent meaning, it is better to say that it is its representative—a kind of plastic concrete image triggered by the sound of the word.As far as the result is concerned, it can also be called a kind of makeup. Since we have long forgotten which specific image the word originated from, we naturally cannot recognize the word when it is replaced by an image.If you understand that the manifest content of dreams is mostly presented as visions, and less of thought and words, you will know that the relationship between the manifest and latent content is of special importance for the construction of dreams; and you will also know a long list of The abstract thought of a dream can form a substitute image in the manifest content of the dream in order to hide the original meaning.This method is also used to draw puzzle pictures.How this imagery is related to the psychology of jokes is a question beyond our consideration here.

There is a fourth relation between the explicit and the latent, which needs to be dealt with later.We won't even list all these possible relationships until then, just to satisfy the need.

Do you now have the courage to analyze the whole dream?Let's see if preparation is enough.Naturally, I cannot choose the most difficult dream to analyze, but it must also have the characteristics of a dream.

A young woman had been married many years ago.One night she had a dream: she and her husband were watching a play in a theater, and the seats in the front row of the hall were still empty.Her husband told her that Alice and her betrothed were also coming to the play, but they could only get three worse seats for a florin and a half, and of course they would not come.She replied that, in her opinion, they had lost nothing by it.

The first event narrated by the dreamer, the event from which the dream arose, has its traces hidden in the manifest content: her husband did tell her that her friend Alice, her age, was engaged, and the dream was a reaction to this news.We have seen that in many dreams what happened the previous day is easy to discover and easier for the dreamer to trace.For this dream, other elements of manifest meaning have also been provided by the dreamer.What is the meaning of this "one side of the seat is completely empty" detail?This refers to a week ago when she was going to the theater and had to pay more for the ticket because the seat was booked early.When I entered the arena, I found that my worries were obviously unnecessary, and there were almost no seats on one side.Even if she bought tickets on the day of the play, she would not be out of tickets, so her husband laughed at her for being too hasty.Again, what is the meaning of the one and a half florins?This had nothing to do with watching a play, it was a piece of news she had heard the day before.After receiving 150 florins from her husband, her sister-in-law hurried to the jewelry store and bought a piece of jewelry like a fool with all the money she had. What does the number "three" mean?Nor did she know anything about it, unless the thought counted as an association: she had been married ten years, and Alice, her betrothed friend, was only three months younger than herself.And why do two people have three tickets?She no longer explained, and even refused to make further associations.

However, the data provided by the associations we have come across are sufficient for finding out the latent content of the dream.Oddly enough, she makes several references to time, which form the common basis of the whole dream.She ordered theater tickets too early, and paid too much in too much haste; her sister-in-law rushed to the jewelry store with money as if she was too late to buy anything.If we look at these points that are particularly important, "too early", "too hasty", and her girlfriend who is three months younger than her is only now engaged, and there are severe criticisms of her sister-in-law, who thinks that she is too hasty to be too hasty. Silly, wait.Then the hidden content of the dream will appear naturally, and the manifest content is of course a carefully disguised substitute!
"I am so stupid to get married so early. I can tell when I see Alice, and I can get engaged to someone later." She also booked tickets too early, and her sister-in-law was eager to buy jewelry. .Watching a play represents marriage, which is the hidden meaning of the dream.We can also continue to analyze, but because the conclusions obtained from the analysis must not conflict with the dreamer's statement, the conclusions will not be clear enough.For example, "I can use this money to get a hundred times her benefit", 150 florins are exactly one hundred times that of one and a half florins, if this money replaces the dowry, then it means that the husband can buy Dowry, from which jewels and bad seats are substitutes for the husband.It is easier to explain if you link "three tickets" with "one husband".Yet our knowledge is too limited to do this.We can only analyze this dream to show that the dreamer does not like her husband and deeply regrets marrying too early.

It seems to me that the results of our first analysis of dreams, instead of satisfying us, surprise and confuse us.Just because there are too many concepts, we cannot clarify them one by one.We already know that the analysis of this dream has not yet come to an end.Now I list the points that have been clarified as follows:
First of all, we must know that the latent meaning of this dream focuses on "hurry", but the meaning of "hurry" is not shown in the manifest meaning of the dream.If it is not analyzed, this implicit meaning will not be discovered.Thus, the core of the subconscious mind does not seem necessarily present in the conscious mind.This fact necessarily brings about a fundamental change in our impression of the whole dream.Secondly, by combining meaningless ideas in the dream, such as "buy three for one and a half florins", we discover an implicit meaning in the dream thought: "It would be foolish to marry too early." Isn't the hidden meaning of "too stupid" expressed from the meaningless elements of the explicit meaning?Finally, by comparing the results, we can learn that there is not a single corresponding relationship between explicit and implicit, and an obvious element may not always replace a latent element.The two are the intersection of two different groups, so that one apparent element may represent several underlying ideas, and one underlying idea may also be represented by several apparent elements.

We have discovered many surprising facts concerning the meaning of dreams and the dreamer's perception of their meaning.The woman, despite her acceptance of our analysis, was still amazed; she did not know that she despised her husband so much, much less why.Therefore, there are still many details of this dream that are not yet fully clarified, and we are not yet sufficiently prepared for dream analysis, so that we have to continue to do further training.

(End of this chapter)