Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 19 Dream Work (1)
Gentlemen, assuming that you have mastered the censorship and symbolism of dreams, most dreams are analyzable, although not all their disguises are understood.There are two methods at your disposal, which are complementary to each other. First, to trigger associations in the dreamer until the original hidden meaning is found in its substitute; The knowledge complements the meaning represented by the symbolism of the dream.And those difficult problems that arise because of this will be analyzed later.

We have also studied the relationship between the elements of dreams and their hidden meanings before, but we were not fully prepared at that time, so we will discuss them in detail here.We have cited a total of four relationships: first, the part replaces the whole; second, metaphor; third, symbol; fourth, image.The discussion may now be extended to compare the manifest dream-content with the latent dream-content obtained by analysis.

I hope you will never confuse the manifest and latent dreams.If you can clearly distinguish the two, your understanding of dreams is probably far beyond the reach of most readers of "The Interpretation of Dreams".However, it is necessary to repeat the following point: the passage from the latent dream-content to the manifest dream-content is called dream-work, and conversely, the passage from the manifest dream-content back to its latent dream-content is called dream-analysis; The purpose of dream analysis is to reveal the dream-work.For children's dreams, it is easy to understand that dreams are the fulfillment of wishes, but the dreamwork must have a process of activity. Often daytime wishes enter dreams and become reality, and visual images replace thoughts.There is no need to analyze children's dreams, and we can only trace the course of these two changes.Dreams with more complex working procedures in other styles can be distinguished by calling them dream disguises.For disguised dreams, we must interpret them in order to restore the original hidden meaning of the dream.

Now that we have carried out a comparative study of various dream interpretations, we can now describe in detail how the dream-work deals with the latent dream-content information.But please don't have too much hope: You must listen to the following passage quietly.

The first fruit of the dream-work is condensation.Condensation means that the manifest content of the dream is simpler than the latent content, like an abbreviation of the latent dream.Although dreams may sometimes not be condensed, they generally do, and sometimes to a high degree.As for the claim that the manifest dream-content is wider than the latent dream-content, or that its content is richer than the latent dream-content, that is unique.Concerning the methods of dream condensation, there are roughly the following types: one is that a certain latent content disappears completely, the other is that among the many thoughts of the latent content, a certain fragment enters the manifest content of the dream; the third is that A number of latent elements of the same nature are fused together in the manifest dream content.

If you want, you might as well keep the word "condensation" in the description of the third method. It is not difficult to list such examples.In your own dreams also find condensed instances of Many in One.This kind of fused image looks like A, clothes like B, and occupation like C, but you know that he is actually D.The common characteristics of the four are therefore very obvious.Thus, mixed images of an object or place may also appear, provided that the objects or places have several things in common for the latent dream content to use.Therefore, with these common properties as the core, it seems to construct a new concept of instability.After the condensation, the various components are fused with each other, often forming some blurred pictures, as if several images are projected on a photosensitive film at the same time.

The formation of mixed images is an extremely important part of dream-work, and we can verify that initially the common features required for those mixed images were not present and were made on purpose, such as choosing a particular kind for a thought. language.We have also seen this kind of condensation or mixing in previous instances, and they are an important cause of slips of the tongue.You should always remember that the example of the young man "delivering" a lady was a slip of the tongue when "insulting" and "escorting" were mixed.Some witty language is also more conducive to condensation.Also, I would venture to say that instances of condensation are uncommon.In many fantasies, there are naturally many phenomena of merging with several people in dreams. In fact, many components are not related to each other, but they are combined into one through fantasy, such as the centaur (half horse) in ancient mythology. centaur) or exotic animals or Berkelin paintings and the like.The so-called "creative" fantasy does not in fact invent anything new, but is just a rearrangement of various materials.The dream-work process is characterized by the fact that, in spite of some unpleasant and even reprehensible thoughts in the dream-work material, the dream gives them the correct form of expression.The dream-work transforms these thoughts into another form, and it cannot but be surprising that a hybrid method is employed in this translation into other words or languages.Elsewhere, the translator always preserves all the differences of the original text, especially the differences of things that are similar; and the dream-work, like a tongue-in-cheek, double entendre, expresses two thoughts at the same time, and thus combines two different thoughts. condensed into one.We do not want to understand this feature of dreams in depth at once, but it plays an extremely important role in our analysis of dream-work.

Although condensation obscures the dream, it does not make us feel the same influence as the censorship of the dream, but leads us to think that the condensation is due to mechanical or economic reasons.Regardless, however, the implications of the role of inspection are there.

Sometimes condensation can produce surprising results: two completely different latent thoughts are often combined into one manifest dream idea, so that we seem to have a somewhat satisfactory explanation for the dream, but we ignore another possibility. meaning.

Condensation has another effect on the relationship between the manifest and latent dreams, that is, the relationship between the elements of the two is extremely complex; because the elements are intertwined with each other, one manifest element represents several at the same time. Implicit elements, one implicit element can turn into several explicit elements.When interpreting a dream, we again see various associations of a manifest element of the dream, which do not appear in sequence; if we want it to appear, we have to wait until the dream has been fully analyzed.

Therefore, we say that the dream-work is the expression of dream thoughts in a special way, not the comparison of individual words, or the translation of one symbol into another; Preserving consonants is not yet a representation of a commonly used element replacing several other elements.It takes a very different and extremely complex approach.

The "transferring effect" is the second fruit of the dream-work.It is a fluke that no new problems arise here, we understand that these are the work of the censorship of the dream.There are two ways of dream transfer: first, the elements in the latent meaning are not represented by a part of themselves, but replaced by other things that are far away from each other, which is closer to metaphor; second, the center of gravity of the dream can be represented by a Important elements are moved to unimportant elements, the center of gravity has been shifted, and the dream appears, as it were, with a different guise.

In waking life our thoughts often substitute metaphors for the original meaning, but the metaphors of dreams are very different from them; the meaning of the waking metaphors is obvious, and the content of the substitutes is equivalent to the original meaning.The method of metaphor is also often used in witty and ironic words, but at this time the association of the content has been omitted and replaced by an uncommon superficial association.For example, take homonyms or puns.The association is still understandable: if the real meaning of the metaphor is difficult to grasp, it means that the original meaning of the joke is lost.The metaphor used in the dream is not subject to such restrictions at all. It has a shallow and distant relationship with the original meaning, so it is quite difficult to understand; Hard feeling.The purpose of the censorship of the dream is only fulfilled if we cannot go back from the metaphor to the original meaning of the dream.

If our aim is to express our thoughts, the method of shifting the center of gravity is not reasonable, although we occasionally use it to humorous effect when we are waking.We can illustrate this with the following story.There was a coppersmith in the village who had committed a capital crime, and the court pronounced him guilty.However, there is only one coppersmith in the village, but there are three tailors, so the coppersmith will not be executed, but a tailor will replace his death penalty.

The third fruit of the dream-work, which is most interesting from a psychological point of view, is the method of transforming thoughts into images.I should know that in dreams not all thoughts undergo this transformation, that many thoughts remain in their original form, taking the form of thought or knowledge in the manifest content of the dream; and images are not the only possible means of transformation of thought .However, it is an important feature of the dream, and it must be ruled out that this part of the dream-work is almost invariant.The element of images becoming dreams is also familiar to all of us.

Obviously, this method is not easy.You have to understand its difficulty. You can imagine that you are going to say a political essay in a newspaper, and you need to turn words into pictures as much as possible.It is not difficult to describe all the people, things, and things in the text, and it can make the expression more perfect; however, if it is required to convert all the abstract words into the form of pictures, all the relative words, conjunctions, etc. Turned into a picture, the difficulty immediately becomes apparent.For abstract text, you may be able to use several other methods, such as first translating the content of the article into other words, perhaps these words are not common, but its "basic language" is very specific and has the ability to be easily transformed. possible for images.Maybe you will think of the fact that the abstract words were originally very concrete, but the concrete original meaning has disappeared in the development.Therefore, when possible, you will inevitably trace back to their original concrete meaning.For example, to "possess" something, its first concrete meaning is to "sit" on it, and this is the method of dream-work.In this case we cannot, of course, demand exact representation, nor can we complain that the dream-work substitutes elements which are more difficult to visualize.For example, the idea of ​​breaking a marriage contract can be reduced to other kinds of injury, such as a broken arm or leg, so as to overcome the problem of turning words into pictures.

(End of this chapter)