Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 24 The Primitive and Childish Features of Dreams (2)
From the child's point of view, the relationship between mother and daughter and father and son is naturally closer, and this is what we expect: we think that the lack of loving affection between parents and children is more sinful than the lack of brotherly and sisterly love.The latter's love is profane, but the former's love is considered sacred by us.However, through observation of daily life, the relationship between parents and adult children is often not as ideal and lofty as society stipulates; there is also hidden hostility between them. If children are not bound by filial piety, parents will not have the concept of love. , The hostility between them will break out one day.The motives for this mutual hostility are well known.We all know that relatives of the same sex, daughter and mother, son and father, are more likely to alienate one another.The daughter resents the mother's restriction of her will, because the mother always uses society's requirements to restrict her daughter's sexual freedom; sometimes the mother still wants to fight for favor and is unwilling to be abandoned.The situation between father and son is even worse.The son believes that his father represents the social oppression he does not want to endure. Because he is restricted by his father, as a son, he cannot do whatever he wants, indulge in pleasure prematurely, and cannot enjoy family wealth.If the father is a king, the son's wish for his father's death is stronger.It seems difficult to have such a tragic situation between father and daughter and mother and son. There is only full love in it, and it is not disturbed by any selfish thoughts.

You may ask me, what's the point of discussing these well-known but unspoken phenomena?People always deny the importance of these facts in real life, but exaggerate too much the number of times that social ideals are actually realized.However, compared to sarcastic remarks, the truth is still safer for psychologists.And this kind of denial is only limited to actual life. As for novels and dramas, these ideals have been completely destroyed, and this motivation is nakedly presented.

It is not at all surprising, therefore, if many people have dreams expressing the wish to exclude parents, especially those of the same sex.We assume that such wishes are also present in waking life and are conscious.If there is another motive that can provide a hiding place, such as the third example mentioned above, the dreamer hides his original intention behind the filial piety of pity for his father's illness.This hostile attitude seldom predominates, but is often overwhelmed by softer emotions, repressed, and presents itself in dreams.Since this wish is amplified by the isolating effect of the dream, our analysis restores it to its rightful place in the rest of the dreamer's life.However, there are times when this wish for a loved one to die can be unreasonable in life and never occurs to an adult in a waking state.For this hostile attitude, especially of sons to their fathers and daughters to their mothers, originates in infancy.

Obviously, the emotional rivalry I'm talking about has a sexual overtone.Boys have a special tenderness for their mothers from an early age, and regard their mothers as their own property, while their fathers become enemies fighting for their mothers; similarly, a little girl also believes that her mother has invaded her territory and interfered with her tenderness for her father.We call these emotions the "Oedipus complex," and their provenance is ancient.In the myth of Oedipus, the two extreme desires produced by the son: killing the father and marrying the mother, are only expressed in slightly changed ways.Originally I did not argue that the "Oedipus complex" fully expresses all relationships between parent and child, which may be more complex.Besides, this emotion sometimes develops, sometimes retreats, or even reverses, but the child's psychology is always the most important part of it; we are always easy to ignore or pay little attention to its influence and results.Parents also tend to favor children of the opposite sex, so that fathers tend to favor daughters and mothers tend to love sons more; or if the love between husband and wife is no longer there, the children are seen as substitutes for the lost lover.Children are also more prone to this "Oedipus complex".

After psychoanalysis put forward the "Oedipus complex", it did not arouse the sympathy of the world; on the contrary, adults expressed the strongest opposition to it.Some people do not deny the existence of this taboo emotion, but although the explanation they give goes against the facts, it also deprives this complex of its due value, and the result is still denied.I have always believed that it needs neither to be denied nor to be concealed.Our choice is to admit the facts frankly, because in Greek mythology, the inevitable fate has been seen from the facts. Although the "Oedipus complex" was rejected by real life and exiled in the unofficial history, it is intriguing that it was finally displayed in the myth.Ranke has carefully studied this question, and has penetratingly described the many stimuli which this complex brings to poetry and drama, undergoing infinite transformations, transformations, and disguises, endowed with the same metamorphosis as the censorship of dreams induces.Therefore, some dreamers may have an "Oedipus complex" when they are adults, although they are lucky to have no conflicts with their parents.Closely related to this complex is the so-called "castration complex", which arises from the father's reaction to threats to childish sexual life.

Based on these ascertained facts, we can further study children's mental activities.It is hoped that another forbidden wish in the dream, namely excessive sexual desire, will likewise discover its source now or later.Therefore, we still need to study the growth of children's sexual life, so as to discover the following facts from various aspects.First, the idea that children have no sexual life or the assumption that first sexual desire occurs after the genitals mature in adolescence are fallacies and cannot be trusted.In fact, early childhood sexual life is rich in content, but it is different from the normal sexual life in the eyes of adults in many ways.The so-called perverted sex life of adults has the following differences compared with normal ones: first, it does not care about the boundaries of species, such as the difference between humans and animals; second, there is no sense of disgust; third, it breaks the boundaries of relatives, that is, incest; Break the boundaries of the same sex; the fifth is to treat other organs and other parts of the body as equal to the genitals.These boundaries do not exist initially, but are formed gradually through development and education.Children, however, are not restricted by these boundaries and do not yet understand the difference between humans and animals. They only feel superior to other animals as they grow up.At the beginning of his life, he didn't have aversion to feces, and he developed disgust because of education; he didn't pay special attention to gender at the beginning, but thought that the genital structure of men and women were the same; sexual desire and curiosity in early childhood , whose targets are those closest to one's own or those whom one thinks to be favorites, such as parents, brothers, sisters, or nurses; finally, we find another characteristic in children, which is later when the relationship reaches its peak. The characteristic can also be revealed, that is, he not only pursues the pleasure of the genitals, but also thinks that other parts of the body will have the same feeling, and thus produce similar pleasures, and thus have the same function as the genitals.Therefore, we consider the child to be "polymorphic".Even if we find that traces of these impulses are left on them, it is because on the one hand their later sexual life is not strong, and on the other hand, it is also due to the immediate suppression of children's sexual performance by education, which gradually becomes a theory.Adults often try to ignore these manifestations, or deprive them of their gender significance by misinterpreting them, and finally, completely deny these facts.These are the ones who scold children for their sexual naughtiness in the nursery, but when they sit down at their desks they vehemently defend their sexual purity.In fact, children often display extremely perverted sexual activities when left alone or when they are being seduced.Such activities are called "children's tricks" and "tricks" and are not severely punished, which is certainly true, since children's behavior cannot be judged morally or legally as if they were adults for whom they were fully responsible; but it does There are important facts which, on the one hand, confirm their innate tendencies, and on the other hand, shape their later development; from which we gain access to the child's sexual life and the secrets of all mankind.If we discover these perverted wishes behind the disguise of the dream, it is only a sign of the complete degeneration of the dream to the infantile state in this respect.

The desire for incest is especially important among all the forbidden desires, the desire to have sex with parents, brothers and sisters.You know how human society abhors, or at least professes to abhor, such animalistic desires as taboo.Scholars have given the most absurd accounts of incest abhorrence: some hold that the marriage of close relatives leads to the degeneration of the race, and that the prohibition of incest is a way of the Creator to preserve the species; relationship, sexual desire has been shunned.If these facts are true, then there would be no incest in human beings, and of course there is no need for society to set it as a taboo, which is beyond our comprehension; this strict prohibition is enough to prove that there is indeed a strong desire.The origin of the notion that psycho-analysis has clearly established in its studies that children's sex objects must first be their relatives, and later rejects this notion, cannot be ascertained by Individual Psychology.

We now conclude with the results of the application of child psychology research to the analysis of dreams.We have seen that the forgotten experiences of the child can be dreamed up and that the child's psychic life and characteristics such as egoism, incest object choice, etc., can be preserved in the subconscious.Therefore, we can return to this childish period of life in dreams. The belief that "the subconscious mind is the psychological life of young children" is thus confirmed, and at the same time the annoying impression that "human nature is inherently evil" is gradually weakened.This terrible evil is only the first, primitive, and infantile part of mental life, and it appears only in childhood.Because it accounts for a small proportion, on the one hand, we do not pay attention to it, and on the other hand, we do not require children to abide by a high ethical standard.Because our dreams have regressed to this childish stage, it seems that this evil has reappeared, but this appearance is implausible, although we are also surprised by it; we are not as evil as the analysis of dreams supposes.

If the sinful desires in our dreams are only childish, or if they are only returning to the beginning of primitive ethical development, dreams are nothing more than making us children again in thought and emotion, and it stands to reason that these sinful dreams should not make us feel ashamed. .In fact, rationality only accounts for part of our psychological activities, and many irrational elements still exist. Even though we know it is unreasonable, we still feel deeply ashamed for these dreams.We subject these dreams to institutional scrutiny and restraint, and if one of these desires should accidentally intrude into our consciousness and is undisguised, we will inevitably be outraged when we recognize it; Still feel ashamed afterwards.Just imagine, that noble lady raged against the absurdity of the dream of "love service," even though she did not understand its meaning.The question therefore remains open; if we study evil dreams more deeply, we shall perhaps come to other conclusions or estimates of human nature.

We have obtained two results from all the research, but these two results can only be regarded as the basis of new problems or doubts.First, the regressive effect of the dream is both formal and substantial; it not only presents our thoughts in an original way of expression, but also recalls the characteristics of the original spiritual life, the original impulse of sexual life and the original ego. Domination.Second, although these primitive and naive features of dreams once dominated the early stages of human development, they can only retreat into the subconscious now, changing and expanding our understanding of the subconscious. The term "subconscious mind" has changed the idea it expresses elsewhere, and is now a special domain, with its own desires, modes of expression, and special psychic mechanisms.The latent thoughts arising from the analysis of dreams do not belong to this sphere; rather they resemble those of the waking state, although they still belong to the unconscious; how is this contradiction to be explained?We know it's important to be discerning here.Some concepts originating from the subconscious but having the characteristics of consciousness can be called the "remnants" of the previous day, and some concepts originating from the subconscious gather to form a dream, and the dream work is completed between these two areas.The action of the unconscious on this remnant probably constitutes the condition of the regressive action.This is the deepest knowledge we have of the nature of dreams, without going further into the mysteries of the mind; and we shall soon assign new names to the unconscious character of dreams, to distinguish them from unconscious material of childish origin.

Of course, we still have this question: What kind of force coerces our mental activities during sleep to cause this degeneration?Is it impossible to stimulate sleep-disturbing stimuli without this degradation?If the censorship of dreams makes it necessary for psychic activity to be disguised and to employ expressions which are current in antiquity and which are incomprehensible today, why should these old impulses, desires and traits, which have been overcome today, make a comeback?All in all, what is the significance of this formal and substantive degeneration?We have to answer this question satisfactorily by saying that this is the only possible way of dream formation, just as there is no other way of eliminating the stimulus than dynamic consideration of the stimulus that caused the dream.But we currently don't have good reasons to support this answer.

(End of this chapter)