Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 16 The Examination Function of Dreams (2)
We shall then describe, from a critical point of view, the rebellious tendency of the censorship of the dream, and its unpleasant character.They are often contrary to ethical, aesthetic or social viewpoints.Usually we can't imagine it at all; even if we think about it, we will hate it deeply.And these censored wishes disguised in dreams are expressions of unrestricted self-assertion; since the dreamer's self-presentation plays an important role in the dream, although it also knows how to hide it in the manifest content.The self-sanctification of this dream does not, indeed, have a good relationship with the mental attitude which is necessary during sleep.

The self that breaks through all ethical shackles is completely dominated by the sexual instinct that is rejected by aesthetic education and sanctioned by moral laws.The pursuit of happiness, that is, "primordial desire", will make us unscrupulously choose as our own objects that are forbidden by ordinary people, not only other people's wives, but even more sacred and inviolable, such as mothers and sisters. , father and brother etc.The dream of the old woman in her fifties was also an incest dream, and the object of her "pleasure pursuit" was obviously her son.Others, such as what we consider to be unnatural desires, can also cause dreams.Furthermore, the unrestricted flood of hatred, desire for revenge, desire to kill, and even for the loved ones, such as the dreamer's parents, brothers, sisters, husband or wife, and children, etc. Not uncommon.As with these forbidden desires summoned by demons, if we could understand their meaning, it would not be too much to inflict upon them any of the most severe punishments in waking life.But the dream itself is not responsible for these evil contents.You will recall that the function of dreams is to protect sleep from disturbance.You also understand that evil is not in the nature of dreams, and that some dreams have been thought to satisfy normal wishes and organic cravings.These dreams do not offend the ethics of the self and the aesthetic tendencies of the public when performing their duties, so they are not disguised and do not need to be disguised.You should also remember that the degree of dream disguise is closely related to two factors: first, the more startling the wish under examination, the deeper the disguise;A young girl, therefore, if strictly disciplined and conscientious, will often use this strict censorship, so that the excitement of the dream is disguised, and the doctor will regard this excitement as a permissible and harmless "excitement". The desire to "pursue happiness" may take ten years for the dreamer to have this cognition.

Now, our studies of dream analysis are still fruitless, and you are almost glaring.I do not think that you have yet fully understood the work of dream analysis; but it is incumbent on us first of all to resist some possible attacks.The weaknesses of this study are obvious.Our analysis is also based on the previous hypotheses: dreams are meaningful, the subconscious concept obtained by hypnosis is applicable to the analysis of normal sleep, and all associations are not random and free, etc.If the interpretation and extrapolation of these hypotheses yield reliable results in the analysis of dreams, we can conclude that these hypotheses are correct; but what if we get only the one I have described?Obviously some people will say: "These conclusions are impossible, absurd, or at least very unreliable, and those hypotheses are naturally wrong. Dreams may not be a psychological phenomenon after all, or there are deficiencies in our technology, maybe In normal psychology, there is no subconscious mind. Wouldn’t it be easier and more satisfactory to accept these three hypotheses than to accept the detestable results derived from these hypotheses and deductions?”

Indeed, simple is simple, and perfect is perfect, but it will not make it more correct.We don't have to rush to judge yet, we still need to wait patiently.First, our analysis still invites an outcry, if not an outcry.To say that our conclusions displease, or even disgust, the average person does not affect us very badly.We have analyzed some of the wishes behind the dream, and the protest of the dreamer's insistence on disapproval is all the more powerful.A dreamer said: "What? You proved from my dream that I am unwilling to spend money on dowry or school fees for my younger siblings? But this is impossible. I am the eldest son. My responsibility, I promised my dead mother." Another woman said, "You say I want my husband dead? How can that be? It's so unreasonable! My husband and I live very happily, you may not believe it , if he dies, I will lose everything.” Another person protests to you: “Do you think I have sexual desires for my sister? Years have not passed." If the dreamers neither acknowledge nor deny all the intentions that are theirs, we may perhaps be unimpressed; consider these things to be mere unconsciousness.And if they discover in themselves a wish that is exactly the opposite of our analysis, and devote their lives to the preponderance of confirming this opposite wish, our analysis will have to backfire.Wouldn't now be a good time if we should abandon the study of dream analysis as a work leading to fallacies?

No, we cannot give up now.On second thought, even this forceful protest is unlikely to stand.If there are indeed subconscious tendencies in psychic life, and it is not of the utmost importance that the opposite tendencies predominate consciously, perhaps two conflicting or contradictory tendencies are contained in one corner of the mind; Let the opposite tendency fall into the subconscious.The preceding first objection was merely a complaint that the conclusions of dream-analysis were both unsimplistic and unpleasant.As far as the first point is concerned, we think that no matter how much you love simplicity, you cannot solve any problem of dreams by this, and you must admit the complexity of dreams from the very beginning if you are determined.As for the second point, it is an obvious mistake to judge whether science is right or wrong based on likes and dislikes.What does it matter if the conclusions of the dream analysis are unpleasant and even irritating?When I practiced medicine when I was young, my teacher taught me that if we want to have a real understanding of the world, we must lower our profile and calmly ignore our feelings of like and dislike.If a physicist proves that life on Earth will be extinct any time soon, you don't have to protest: "We don't like this prediction, it's impossible." Without another physicist proving that the first physics If the assumptions or predictions of scientists are wrong, you should keep silent.If you only act according to likes and dislikes, you are only simulating the structure of dreams, not trying to understand dreams.

You may have overlooked the unpleasant nature of the dream-desires examined, and have moved on to another objection, that human nature cannot possibly be mostly evil.But can you prove that statement in your own words?I will not say for a moment what you think you are; you may see goodness in your superiors or equals, your enemies are heroic, and your friends will not be jealous, so you may not Don't you refute the idea of ​​sexual evil?Don't you know that the average person is uncontrollable and unreliable when it comes to sex?Or you don't even know that all the extreme and abnormal behaviors in our dreams are the crimes that people commit every day when they are awake?Psychoanalysis is only here to confirm Plato's famous saying: "The evil that the evil man actually commits, the good man stops in a dream."

Now, leaving personal matters aside, look at the Great War which still rages in Europe: imagine the brutality of the civilized world, where violence and deceit abound.Do you actually believe that if you don't have a large number of followers who help each other with evil, but only some ambitious people who kill people and fight for land, can this latent evil be rampant?In such a cruel scene, do you still want to argue that human nature is not evil?
You may charge me with prejudice against the Great War, and add that the noblest and best human natures, heroism, self-sacrifice, and disinterestedness, are also fully expressed in the Great War.This is true, but you cannot attack it and deny another just because psychoanalysis affirms one aspect. This is why we are often wronged.We absolutely do not want to deny the nobility of human nature, nor have we ever belittled the value of human nature.We just proved the evil of the censored wishes, and discussed the censorship suppressing these evil thoughts and making them invisible.It is precisely because of others' strong objections to evil thoughts that we emphasize the evil of human nature, which not only fails to improve people's spiritual world, but on the contrary makes their spiritual life more confusing.If we can give up one-sided moral theory, we will find a more correct formula for the relationship between good and evil in human nature.

This ends the problem.The unavoidably bizarre conclusions of the analysis of dreams need not dissuade us from the study.In the future there may be other ways of explaining these conclusions in greater depth, but for the present we must insist on the fact that the disguise of the dream is that some evil thought during the night's sleep is checked by the tendency of self-approval and has to be changed.Why and how these evil thoughts arise at night are the future research directions and unresolved problems.

If we ignore the other results of this study, we will be wrong.The sleep-disturbing dream-wishes are not originally known to us and only become known to us through dream-analysis; we therefore regard them as "then unconscious" in the sense stated above.We explicitly admit, however, that they are not merely unconscious at the time; we have discussed many times how, after dream analysis, the dreamer insists on his denial, although he is aware of their existence.This situation is like analyzing the "hiccup" slip of the tongue, and the speaker at the banquet retorted angrily, saying that he would never disrespect his boss at any time or anywhere.At that time, we will not be so gullible that what he said is true, we think that the speaker will never understand that he has such thoughts in his heart.And the same thing happens when we analyze complex dreams that have been disguised, so this adds more meaning to our theory.Now, we can almost say that there are certain processes and tendencies in the life of the mind that we do not understand, have not understood, or have not understood for a long time, or never understand.In this way, the word "subconscious" is endowed with a new meaning: "at that time" or "temporarily" are no longer the essence of these words, and the subconscious is not only "hidden at the time", but may also be "hidden forever".We will discuss this below.

(End of this chapter)