Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 21 Examples of Dreams and Their Analysis (1)
Don't be disappointed, gentlemen, that what I am telling you now is still fragments of dream analysis, and I do not invite you to participate in the interpretation of long dreams.Maybe you think that after a long preparation, you should always be able to analyze a long dream; maybe you think that after I have successfully analyzed thousands of dreams, I should come up with many good examples early to prove myself Understanding of dream work and latent meanings.This is certainly good, but there are still many difficulties in satisfying your wishes.

First, I have to admit that our main task is definitely not dream analysis.But under what circumstances do we analyze dreams?Sometimes we study friends' dreams, or analyze our own dreams for a long time, without specific goals, just for training in psychoanalysis.Our main task is to study the dreams of neurotic patients and to carry out psychoanalytic treatment.The patients' dreams are as rich in materials as those of normal people. We analyze these dreams for the purpose of treatment. We only need to get things that are beneficial to treatment from the dreams, and we don't need to explain the rest.On the other hand, there are many dreams which cannot be adequately interpreted during therapy. We do not yet understand all of these material originating in the unconscious, and so it is impossible to understand dreams until the therapy is effective.In order to treat this, we would have to reveal all the secrets of the neurotic; this is impossible for us, who study dreams only as a preparation for the study of neuroses.

Now, I would prefer that you voluntarily give up this material and analyze the dreams of normal people or your own.But the analysis of the content of these dreams is permitted.If the analysis of dreams is to be thorough, many taboos must be broken. You understand that dreams often invade the most secret part of the heart, and this is unacceptable to others and yourself.In addition to the difficulties posed by the "material" of the dream, there is also the difficulty of what to say about the dream.The dreamer himself is astonished by the dream, but it is even more astonishing in the eyes of unrelated others.In psychoanalytic writings, too, there are many elaborate and detailed analyzes of dreams; and the psychoanalytic examples I have published illustrate the whole history of the development of the disease.The best example of the analysis of dreams is perhaps the analysis of two related dreams of a young girl published by Ranke.In this case the dream record is about two pages long, whereas there is a 76-page presentation of the dream analysis.If you want to describe it in detail, I am afraid it will take a whole semester.If we choose a long and disguised dream, we must carry out multiple analyzes, start with so many materials, start with free associations and retrospective memories, and seek confirmation through winding paths. We form a clear and complete conception of the dream.Therefore, I have to ask you to rest easy, if I choose the easier method, extract a few passages from the dreams of neurotic patients and briefly describe them, so that I can discover each independent feature of the dream.Of these the symbolism is the most obvious, followed by the various features of the regressive-reductive process of dream representation.Each of the following dreams is worth telling, and I will show you where it is worth.

In one, a dream contained only two brief images of the dreamer's uncle smoking a cigarette, even though it was a Saturday.A woman is hugging and soothing the dreamer, as if he were a child.

As far as the first picture is concerned, the dreamer is a Jew, and the uncle is a devout believer. He has never smoked on the Sabbath, and he will never do so in the future.The woman in the second picture reminds the dreamer of his mother.Clearly, the two images are related, but how are they related?He had made it clear that in fact his uncle would never have behaved as in the dream, so the word "if" could be inserted immediately into the dream. "If my uncle, being such a pious believer, smokes on the Sabbath, then it doesn't matter if my mother hugs me." This dream obviously implies that the mother's hug and smoking on the Sabbath are all for devout Jews strictly prohibited.You should remember that I said before that all the thoughts in the latent will be eliminated under the action of dream-work; the thoughts in the dream are broken down into the most primitive materials, and the work of dream analysis is to destroy the eliminated relations. Revert back.

Second, I have published many books on dreams, and the society regards me as a public advisor on dreams. Over the years, people from all walks of life have written to tell their dreams and ask for opinions.They also provided me with a wealth of material which made dream analysis possible, and occasionally they suggested interpretations of dreams, for which I am naturally most grateful.The following is the dream of a medical student in Munich, from 1910, in this category.I enumerate this dream here to make you understand that if the dreamer does not tell it truthfully and in detail, his dream will not be easy to understand.I guess you have in your minds the idea that the best method of dream analysis must be the translation of symbols, and therefore prefer not to make free associations, and I hope you will not follow this fallacy.

According to the student, at dawn on July 1910, 7, he had the following dream: I was riding a bicycle to the street in Duppingen, and suddenly a dog ran out from behind and bit my heel.I walked a few steps forward, got out of the car immediately, and sat on the stone steps.Since the dog was biting my heel tightly, I beat the dog hard to drive it away.I was outraged by the dog bite and the whole experience.At this time, two old ladies sat across from each other, staring at me with grim smiles, and I woke up. Just like the previous dream, I slowly woke up and understood the dream.

Symbols do not help us much in this instance, but the dreamer goes on to tell us: "Recently I saw a woman in the street, whom I admired; but I had no way to strike up a conversation. I would very much like to use her dog as a matchmaker. She knew her; because I originally loved animals very much, and I knew her too, and I was very moved." He also recounted how many times he saw the fights and skillfully mediated, which made everyone on the sidelines happy.We also learn that the woman he admired often took the dog for walks.However, in his manifest dream, he only saw his dog but not the woman.Perhaps the old lady staring at him with a grinning grin was the incarnation of a woman, but what he said next could not resolve this doubt.The dream of riding a bicycle is merely a direct expression of his experience, and he rides every time he meets the girl leading her dog.

Third, after we lose a loved one, we often have a special kind of dream for a period of time, in which the fact of his death is reconciled with our own desire to bring him back to life.Sometimes it is dreaming of the dead, even though they are dead, they are still alive.The dreamer does not have the consciousness that he is dead, it seems that he can only truly die after he accepts it; sometimes he seems to be half dead and half alive, wandering in the gap between life and death, and each dream has a special symbol.We cannot say that these dreams are meaningless, because the resurrection is admitted in dreams and fairy tales, and the resurrection of the dead in mythology is often very common.According to my analysis, there seems to be a reasonable explanation for the results of this dream, and the wish to resurrect the dead is prone to the most novel manifestations.I would like to detail one of these dreams.It is true that these sounds absurd, but the analysis results can confirm the various theories mentioned above.The dreamer's father passed away a few years ago, and his dream is as follows:

My father was dead, but he was dug up, sick looking, and he went on living while I tried to keep his attention.Later, when I dreamed about my father again, the dream became farther and farther away.

The fact we know is that his father is dead, but it is not the fact that the body was exhumed, the real problem has nothing to do with what happened afterwards.The dreamer also said that after returning from the funeral, the tooth decay began to hurt.There is a famous Jewish saying: "Toothache, you can pull it out." He also wanted to do the same, so he visited the dentist, but the doctor said that toothache is not the best way, toothache is patient.The dentist told him again: "I want to put some medicine in the tooth to kill the subdental nerve. Come back in three days and I will take out the dead nerve for you." The dreamer suddenly said: "'Take out' invades the dream Became a 'burial'."

Are his words correct?In fact, the parallelism of these two events is not absolute; the removal is of the dead inferior nerve of the tooth and not of the tooth.We know from experience that such omissions exist in dream-works.We must assume that the dreamer united the dead father with the teeth that were dead but still in the mouth by condensation.No wonder the manifest content of the dream was so absurd. It was clear that everything that had been said about the teeth did not apply to the father.But what is the similarity between the father and the teeth?
This similarity must exist, because the dreamer tells us that he knows the common saying that "tooth loss in a dream is a harbinger of death in the family."

We all know that the analysis of this common saying is wrong, maybe it is just a fallacy.Therefore, we can discover the true meaning of the dream through the content of the dream, which cannot but make people feel shocked.

We did not pursue him further, but the dreamer began to detail his father's illness, death, and their relationship.His father was bedridden for a long time, and the patient's service and treatment expenses made his son a heavy burden. However, he did not mind his filial piety, and never had the idea of ​​wishing his father to die early.He claims to stick to the Jewish creed and cannot violate the Jewish concept of filial piety.On the one hand, he used Jewish methods to treat toothache, and on the other hand, he respected his father with self-discipline according to Jewish teachings. As a son of man, he did not need to care about money and fatigue, and took care of his father without feeling resentment.Wouldn't the similarity of the situation be more convincing if the dreamer felt the same about his sick father and his aching teeth, or if he wished for his father's early death, a quicker end of pain and great expense?
I do not doubt that it is indeed the dreamer's attitude towards his long-ill father, and I also believe that the filial piety he is proud of prevents himself from this idea.Under the same circumstances, people often unavoidably hope that the sick will die early, but on the surface they pretentiously think that "for the father, this is also a kind of happy liberation."What I want you to pay special attention to is that at this time the barrier of the hidden meaning has collapsed.We can believe that the first part of his thoughts was only temporary and unconscious, and only in the course of the dream-work; his childhood.During the days of his father's illness, this secret of his was disguised and invaded the subconscious.We are more certain of this assertion with regard to the other "latent content" which forms the dream.Although he did not express any resentment against his father in the dream, the dreamer had masturbation in childhood and was strictly prohibited by his father repeatedly, and the same was true in adolescence, so he resented and feared his father.This is their father-son relationship, and the dreamer's feelings for his father are tinged with awe.This emotional characteristic stems from early discipline in masturbation.

We shall now analyze the other episodes of the dream in terms of the "masturbation complex". "He looks sick" alludes to another sentence of the doctor - "It would be too ugly if there were no teeth here." At the same time, it also implies that he showed or was afraid of showing his "sickness" due to excessive indulgence in adolescence.The transfer of the sickness to the father in the manifest content of the dream, and thus the mental relief, is one of the specialties of the dream-work. "He continues to live", on the one hand, it expresses the desire to ask his father not to die, which coincides with the dentist's promise - not to pull out his teeth. "I tried my best to prevent his attention" also subtly guides us to complete this sentence with "he died", but this addition actually implies the "masturbation complex".Naturally, the youth tries to hide his sex life from his father.Finally, I will tell you that dreams of "toothache" often suggest masturbation and its punishment.

From this you can see how this inexplicable dream is constructed by three things: first, the condensation leads astray; , a substitute for constructing a pun, expressing the hidden meaning of the earliest origin.

Fourth, some ordinary and direct dreams do not have the slightest weirdness and absurdity in themselves, but they will arouse our questions: why do we dream about these trivial and boring things?We've wanted to explore why this is so many times before, so I'm going to introduce a new example of this.In this case, three dreams occurred on the same night, related to each other, and the dreamer was a young girl.

(End of this chapter)