Dream Psychology

The motives for this part of the dream work are easily gauged. This
final elaboration of the dream is due to a _regard for
intelligibility_--a fact at once betraying the origin of an action which
behaves towards the actual dream content just as our normal psychical
action behaves towards some proffered perception that is to our liking.
The dream content is thus secured under the pretense of certain
expectations, is perceptually classified by the supposition of its
intelligibility, thereby risking its falsification, whilst, in fact, the
most extraordinary misconceptions arise if the dream can be correlated
with nothing familiar. Every one is aware that we are unable to look at
any series of unfamiliar signs, or to listen to a discussion of unknown
words, without at once making perpetual changes through _our regard for
intelligibility_, through our falling back upon what is familiar.

We can call those dreams _properly made up_ which are the result of an
elaboration in every way analogous to the psychical action of our waking
life. In other dreams there is no such action; not even an attempt is
made to bring about order and meaning. We regard the dream as "quite
mad," because on awaking it is with this last-named part of the dream
work, the dream elaboration, that we identify ourselves. So far,
however, as our analysis is concerned, the dream, which resembles a
medley of disconnected fragments, is of as much value as the one with a
smooth and beautifully polished surface. In the former case we are
spared, to some extent, the trouble of breaking down the
super-elaboration of the dream content.

All the same, it would be an error to see in the dream facade nothing
but the misunderstood and somewhat arbitrary elaboration of the dream
carried out at the instance of our psychical life. Wishes and phantasies
are not infrequently employed in the erection of this facade, which
were already fashioned in the dream thoughts; they are akin to those of
our waking life--"day-dreams," as they are very properly called. These
wishes and phantasies, which analysis discloses in our dreams at night,
often present themselves as repetitions and refashionings of the scenes
of infancy. Thus the dream facade may show us directly the true core of
the dream, distorted through admixture with other matter.

Beyond these four activities there is nothing else to be discovered in
the dream work. If we keep closely to the definition that dream work
denotes the transference of dream thoughts to dream content, we are
compelled to say that the dream work is not creative; it develops no
fancies of its own, it judges nothing, decides nothing. It does nothing
but prepare the matter for condensation and displacement, and refashions
it for dramatization, to which must be added the inconstant last-named
mechanism--that of explanatory elaboration. It is true that a good deal
is found in the dream content which might be understood as the result of
another and more intellectual performance; but analysis shows
conclusively every time that these _intellectual operations were already
present in the dream thoughts, and have only been taken over by the
dream content_. A syllogism in the dream is nothing other than the
repetition of a syllogism in the dream thoughts; it seems inoffensive if
it has been transferred to the dream without alteration; it becomes
absurd if in the dream work it has been transferred to other matter. A
calculation in the dream content simply means that there was a
calculation in the dream thoughts; whilst this is always correct, the
calculation in the dream can furnish the silliest results by the
condensation of its factors and the displacement of the same operations
to other things. Even speeches which are found in the dream content are
not new compositions; they prove to be pieced together out of speeches
which have been made or heard or read; the words are faithfully copied,
but the occasion of their utterance is quite overlooked, and their
meaning is most violently changed.

It is, perhaps, not superfluous to support these assertions by examples:

1. _A seemingly inoffensive, well-made dream of a patient. She was going
to market with her cook, who carried the basket. The butcher said to her
when she asked him for something: "That is all gone," and wished to give
her something else, remarking; "That's very good." She declines, and
goes to the greengrocer, who wants to sell her a peculiar vegetable
which is bound up in bundles and of a black color. She says: "I don't
know that; I won't take it."_

The remark "That is all gone" arose from the treatment. A few days
before I said myself to the patient that the earliest reminiscences of
childhood _are all gone_ as such, but are replaced by transferences and
dreams. Thus I am the butcher.

The second remark, _"I don't know that"_ arose in a very different
connection. The day before she had herself called out in rebuke to the
cook (who, moreover, also appears in the dream): "_Behave yourself
properly_; I don't know _that_"--that is, "I don't know this kind of
behavior; I won't have it." The more harmless portion of this speech was
arrived at by a displacement of the dream content; in the dream thoughts
only the other portion of the speech played a part, because the dream
work changed an imaginary situation into utter irrecognizability and
complete inoffensiveness (while in a certain sense I behave in an
unseemly way to the lady). The situation resulting in this phantasy is,
however, nothing but a new edition of one that actually took place.

2. A dream apparently meaningless relates to figures. _"She wants to pay
something; her daughter takes three florins sixty-five kreuzers out of
her purse; but she says: 'What are you doing? It only cost twenty-one
kreuzers.'"_

The dreamer was a stranger who had placed her child at school in Vienna,
and who was able to continue under my treatment so long as her daughter
remained at Vienna. The day before the dream the directress of the
school had recommended her to keep the child another year at school. In