Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 14 Children's Dreams
Folks, I find we're moving too fast, so let's take a few steps back.Before interpreting dream disguises analytically, we have said that it is best to narrow our attention for the time being to those dreams which are not or less disguised, in order to avoid difficulties caused by dream disguises.According to this method, it is inevitable to run counter to the historical process of psychoanalysis; in reality, the existence of undisguised dreams is only known after the consistent use of our dream-interpretation technique and the thorough analysis of disguised dreams.

The kind of dream we are looking for is the dream of a child: a child's dream is short, clear, easy to understand, its meaning is not obscured, but it is still a dream.But children's dreams are not all of this type.Dreams with make-up appear in early childhood, and it has been recorded that the dreams of children between the ages of five and eight already have all the characteristics of adult dreams.If you limit yourself to the beginning of mental activity or the period of four or five years of age, you will find a series of so-called infantile dreams, which are still present at the end of childhood, until adulthood, under certain circumstances, There are also childish dreams like those of babies.

Analyzing the dreams of these children it is not difficult to gain a solid idea of ​​their main properties.

One is that in order to understand these dreams we do not have to analyze them, we do not have to use any technique, and we do not have to ask the dreaming child.As for his life, we must know that every dream can be explained by the experience of the previous day.Dreams are the reflection of the mind during sleep on the experience of the previous day.

A number of examples are listed below as a basis for further discussion.

1. A child who is one year old and ten months old wants to send a basket of cherries to other children as a birthday present.Evidently he hated it, and he could get some cherries himself; next morning he said he dreamed that Hermann had eaten them all.

2. A three-year-old and three-month-old girl went swimming in the lake for the first time. When she came back, she burst into tears and refused to go ashore. From her point of view, the time on the lake passed quickly.The next morning, she said that she had dreamed that she went swimming in the lake again last night.We can surmise that she must have spent more time in the sleepwalking lake than in the daytime.

3. A boy, five years and three months old, was playing with others in Oschental near Harstad.He had heard that Hallstatt was at the foot of the Deckstein Mountain before, and he was fascinated by the mountain.From the house by Lake Auss, you can see the Deckstein Mountain, and you can see the Simeone Hut on the top of the mountain through the telescope.The boy had looked through binoculars at the hut on the hilltop several times, but no one was sure he had seen it.The excursion began with a pleasant hope, and each time he saw a new mountain he asked if it was Mount Deckstein.However, every time he got a negative answer, he felt disappointed, kept silent, and was unwilling to take a few steps with others to see the waterfall.Others thought he was too tired, but the next morning, he said happily: "Last night I dreamed that I was in Simeone's cabin." Therefore, he came here to play with this hope.Regarding the distance, he repeated what he had heard before: "You have to walk on the mountain for six hours to get to the top of the mountain."

These three dreams are enough for us to get a glimpse.

Second, childhood dreams are not meaningless, they are complete and understandable psychological activities.I said before that you must remember the medical point of view on dreams. Someone once compared dreams to the random playing on the piano by people who don't understand music.The above-mentioned cases of children's dreams absolutely contradict this statement.The strangest thing is that, in the same situation, a child can make a complete mental movement during sleep, while an adult can only have a intermittent response, and we have many reasons to infer that children sleep more maturely than adults. Deeper.

Thirdly, the child's dream is undisguised, and therefore need not be analyzed; its manifest and latent are identical.From this we can deduce that disguise is not the main attribute of dreams.I think you must believe this statement.After several investigations, however, we must admit that these dreams are also disguised, and that there is always a difference, albeit to a lesser degree, between the manifest and latent dreams.

Fourth, children's dreams are a reaction to the previous day. If they had regrets, hopes or unsatisfied wishes the previous day, they would be reflected in their dreams.The child fulfills these wishes directly and unabashedly through dreams.The part which stimuli, internal or external, play in disturbing sleep and in inducing phantoms, may be discussed here.We already know some definite facts about this, although the number of dreams it can only explain is very small.In the dreams of children it is difficult to detect the influence of bodily stimuli, because children's dreams are completely obvious.But we need not for this reason abandon the idea that dreams are responses to stimuli.All we have to do is to ask, besides physical stimuli, why the mental stimuli were forgotten in the first place, which interfere with sleep in adults?We know that in adults it is mostly psychological stimuli that disturb sleep; these stimuli often prevent the formation of the mental situation required for sleep, that is, complete isolation from the outside world.They prefer to continue what they are doing rather than interrupt their life, and that is why they do not sleep.Therefore, the psychological stimulus that disturbs the child's sleep is the unfulfilled wish, and this reaction forms a dream.

Fifthly, it is from this shortcut that we know the function of dreams.If dreams are reactions to psychic stimuli, their value consists in seeking an outlet for excitement, removing the stimulus in order to continue sleep.It's just that we still don't know why this catharsis is realized in the form of dreams, but we already know that dreams are not sleep disruptors (although many people blame them for this), but to protect sleep from affected by interference.Our original view that sleep is deep without dreams is obviously incorrect; in fact, we can sleep well with dreams.Dreams, however, do not prevent us from distractions completely, any more than a policeman cannot avoid the sound of a gun when he quells a riot.

Sixth, dreams are caused by wishes, and the content of dreams is to express this wish, which is one of the main characteristics of dreams.In addition, dreams not only give a thought an opportunity to express, but also express the fulfillment of wishes by means of hallucinatory experience, which is the eternal characteristic of dreams. "I want to swim in the lake" is the wish that caused the dream, and the content of the dream is "I am swimming in the lake".Even in these simple childhood dreams there is still a slight difference between the latent and manifest content, which is disguised and interprets wishes as experiences.When interpreting dreams, these disguises must be removed to restore them.If this were the most common feature of all dreams, we would know how the previous dreams were interpreted: "I saw my brother holding a bamboo knot" does not mean "My brother is thrifty", but "I expect my brother to cut back." Of these two general characteristics, the second is often easier for the public to recognize than the first.Only after extensive research can we be sure that it is always a wish, and not a prejudice, purpose, or condemnation, that causes a dream.However, the other properties of the dream are not changed by this, in other words, the dream not only repeatedly elicits this stimulus, but also interprets it as an experience, which leads to the disappearance of the stimulus and quiets down.

Seventh, from the characteristics of these dreams, we can compare dreams with faults.We have distinguished in the fault a disturbing tendency and a disturbed tendency, and the fault is the reconciliation of the two.Dreams also belong to the same category, and the disturbed tendency is naturally sleep, and the disturbed tendency is a kind of psychic stimulus which we call "desire to gratify".So far we have found no other psychological stimuli that interfere with sleep.Dreams can also be regarded as a result of mediation.We sleep, but the desire remains unfulfilled, and our desire is fulfilled while sleep continues.Both tendencies have thus had partial success or failure.

Eighth, do you still remember that we used "daydreams" to explain dreams?We believe that "daydreaming" is indeed the fulfillment of wishes, ambitions or passions by means of thought or imagination, no matter how vivid, there is no hallucinatory experience.The two indeterminate properties of dreams are therefore also possessed by daydreams, while the 'daydreams' which are waking are completely lacking the property peculiar to sleep.We thus find an important clue that the fulfillment of wishes is a central property of dreams.If the experience in dreams is just a way of repeating imagination, and this way can only appear in special circumstances of sleep, let us call it "daydream at night", so that we can understand how dreaming eliminates stimuli and thus eliminates stimuli. Wish-fulfilling; daydreaming is also a wish-fulfilling mental activity, which is the only reason people have daydreams.

In addition, some proverbs also have the same meaning.For example, "pigs dream of acorns, geese dream of corn", "what do chickens dream of? dream of grains", etc. These proverbs describe the object from children to animals, and also advocate that the content of dreams is the fulfillment of wishes.There are also some idioms that also express this point of view, such as "beautiful as a dream", "this matter is beyond the reach of dreams", "even the most absurd dream can hardly be imagined like this", it can be seen that these popular idioms Meaning echoes our insights.There are also so-called "anxious dreams", painful dreams and innocuous dreams, but there is no corresponding idiom.Although we already have the word "nightmare", according to the most common usage, "dream" always has a wish-fulfilling connotation in it.No matter what kind of proverb it is, it is impossible to say that pigs and geese dream of being slaughtered.

It is, however, puzzling that the wish-fulfilling character of dreams has been neglected by ordinary dream talkers.In fact, they often see this meaning too, but they never admit that it is a characteristic of dreams, but only serve as clues for dream analysis.What is their purpose in doing this can be known after a little thought, and it will be left for future discussion.

Looking back now at the study of children's dreams, how much knowledge has we acquired with so little effort!We already know: first, that dreams have a protective effect on sleep; second, that dreams arise from two mutually restraining tendencies, one of which is sleep, and the other needs to satisfy a certain psychological stimulus; third, that dreams are meaningful. Fourthly, dreams have two main characteristics, namely, the fulfillment of wishes and the experience of hallucinations.However, we seem to forget that we are studying psychoanalysis.Excluding dreams and slips from previous studies, our research does not have any clear signs.Any psychologist, even ignorant of the postulates of psychoanalysis, might analyze the dreams of children in this way.However, no one has explained this, why?

If all dreams were so childish, our research would have been done long ago, the problem of dreams would have been solved long ago, and there would be no need to question the dreamer, or discuss unconscious thoughts or the method of free association.Obviously, this should be the direction of our future efforts.We have found many times that certain properties of dreams which are said to be universal have turned out to apply to only a very small number of people.Therefore, the question that needs to be solved urgently is whether the characteristics presented by children's dreams are stable, and whether such properties also exist in dreams whose meaning is not obvious and it is not easy to see wishes?We think that these dreams have been disguised many times, and we should not rush to conclusions.We still think that the assumption that these disguises are broken down to their original appearance requires the help of psycho-analysis, and that the study of children's dreams is not necessary.

There is at least one kind of dream which, like the dreams of children, is undisguised, and it is easy to discover the fulfilled wish.This kind of dream is caused by urgent physiological needs, such as hunger, thirst and sexual desire, etc., as the satisfaction of wishes lies in the response to these internal stimuli.I have recorded a case where a little girl of one year and seven months dreamed of a menu with her name written on it (Anna... strawberries, mulberries, eggs and brioche), and the day before she had eaten fruit And it led to food accumulation and had to starve for a day. This dream is the reaction to the previous situation.And her grandmother, 68 years and five months old, had to fast for one day because of her "floating kidney". That night, she dreamed of a dinner party, with delicacies from mountains and seas in front of her.In addition, such as some hungry prisoners, travelers and explorers who have run out of food often dream of feasting before delicious food.In his Discussion of the South Pole (1904), Nordenskelder described his wintering at the South Pole with his expedition: "It is evident that our dreams were the direction of our thoughts at the time, which we had never done before. So many and so vivid dreams. A friend rarely dreams, and when we talk about dreams in the morning, he often talks about his long dreams. All dreams point to the distant hometown, and sometimes we dream of environment, most of the impressions in dreams are eating and drinking. A friend often chews at night and says that he is very happy after eating three dishes in the morning; another friend dreams that the mountains are full of tobacco; another friend dreams I saw a ship sailing towards me, and then I could no longer see the iceberg. Finally, there is such a dream that is worth mentioning: the dream is that the postman came with a lot of mail, and repeatedly explained why he was late. First, he delivered the wrong letter. I finally got the letter back after many twists and turns. Although there are more sudden and strange things in sleep, the most amazing thing is that no matter whether it is my own dream or the dream of others I have heard, there is no exception. If I recorded all these dreams, the psychologist would be very interested. Dreams fulfill our desires, so you can imagine how we yearn for sleep." Besides, I think Quoting a passage from Duripur again: "When Pike was traveling in Africa, when he was dying of thirst, he often dreamed of the valley with abundant water in his hometown; Dreamed of being surrounded by good food; George Buck, when he was starving to death on Franklin's first expedition, used to dream of good food all he could eat."

No matter who eats more delicious food for dinner, when you are thirsty at night, you will dream of drinking water.However, hunger and thirst will never be stopped by dreams, and only when you wake up from thirst will you have to drink water.At this time, the dream has no practical effect. It is obvious that the purpose of the dream is to protect the sleep from stimuli that awaken the dreamer."Wish-fulfilling dreams" often fulfill the purpose of fulfillment when the wish is weak.

In the same way, dreaming can also satisfy erotic stimuli, but this fullness makes its specificity worthy of our attention.Since the impulse of sexual desire is not like hunger and thirst, it seldom depends on external objects, so nocturnal emission can make the dreamer obtain real satisfaction; its relationship with external objects is also very important, but this will be discussed later. It is therefore inevitable that this real satisfaction be involved with the dream object, but only in a disguised indistinctness.This feature of the nocturnal emissions, as Rank says, makes a reasonable object for the study of the disguise of dreams.For adults, wish dreams often have other purely psychological things besides the fulfillment. To understand this dream, it must be analyzed and interpreted.

However, if adults have childish wish-fulfilling dreams, they are not all responses to the urgent needs of the organism.We also know that such dreams are short and clear, and that some of them are caused by a strong situation, which is obviously also the result of psychic stimulation.For example, in some "anxious dreams", the dreamer dreams of preparing to travel, watch a play, give a speech, or visit friends, and his wishes will be realized in the dream; the night before or dreaming of arriving at the destination, dreaming that he is in the theater, or It is to dream of exchanging heartfelt feelings with friends you want to visit.There are also "lazy dreams". In order to continue to sleep, the dreamer will dream that he has gotten up, even washed his face, or in the campus, but he is actually still sleeping. Obviously, the meaning of this dream is to get up in the dream without wanting to sleep. Really get up.We have previously affirmed that the wish to sleep plays an important role in the formation of dreams, in which it is the manifestly expressed wish which is the cause of the dream.Therefore, the needs of dreams are as important as other important bodily needs.

At this point, I am going to refer you to a copy of Schwendt's painting in the Saack Gallery in Munich, entitled "The Prisoner's Dream", and you must note that the painter's very specific and strong desires cause dreams.The theme of this painting is of course the prisoner's escape. The prisoner wanted to escape through the window, only because the sunlight came in through the window and woke him up in sleep.The overlapping dwarf in the picture is where he stood when he climbed the window; if I have not misunderstood or added to the artist's original intention, the face of the dwarf at the top near the window is exactly similar to the face of the dreamer.

As I said before, except for children's dreams and infantile dreams, other dreams are inevitably disguised and difficult to explain.Although we suspect that they are wish-fulfilling dreams, it is not yet possible to say that this is the case, nor to determine from the manifest content what stimulus caused them, or to prove that they are similar to other dreams and that their purpose is also Eliminate or reduce irritation.Obviously they still have to be interpreted or analysed, studying the course of their masquerade down to the source, the explicit replacing the latent, before we can draw definitive conclusions about the applicability of the knowledge we have acquired in the study of children's dreams. to interpret all dreams.

(End of this chapter)