The other motive for counter-wish-dreams is so clear that there is a danger of overlooking it, as happened in my own case for a long time. In the sexual constitution of many persons there is a masochistic component, which has arisen through the conversion of the aggressive, sadistic component into its opposite. Such people are called ideal masochists if they seek pleasure not in the bodily pain which may be inflicted upon them, but in humiliation and psychic chastisement. It is obvious that such persons may have counter-wish-dreams and disagreeable dreams, yet these are for them nothing more than wish-fulfilments, which satisfy their masochistic inclinations. Here is such a dream: A young man, who in earlier youth greatly tormented his elder brother, toward whom he was homosexually inclined, but who has since undergone a complete change of character, has the following dream, which consists of three parts: (1) He is “teased” by his brother. (2) Two adults are caressing each other with homosexual intentions. (3) His brother has sold the business the management of which the young man had reserved for his own future. From this last dream he awakens with the most unpleasant feelings; and yet it is a masochistic wish-dream, which might be translated: It would serve me right if my brother were to make that sale against my interests. It would be my punishment for all the torments he has suffered at my hands.
I hope that the examples given above will suffice- until some further objection appears- to make it seem credible that even dreams with a painful content are to be analysed as wish- fulfilments. * Nor should it be considered a mere matter of chance that, in the course of interpretation, one always happens upon subjects about which one does not like to speak or think. The disagreeable sensation which such dreams arouse is of course precisely identical with the antipathy which would, and usually does, restrain us from treating or discussing such subjects- an antipathy which must be overcome by all of us if we find ourselves obliged to attack the problem of such dreams. But this disagreeable feeling which recurs in our dreams does not preclude the existence of a wish; everyone has wishes which he would not like to confess to others, which he does not care to admit even to himself. On the other hand, we feel justified in connecting the unpleasant character of all these dreams with the fact of dream-distortion, and in concluding that these dreams are distorted, and that their wish-fulfilment is disguised beyond recognition, precisely because there is a strong revulsion against- a will to repress- the subject-matter of the dream, or the wish created by it. Dream-distortion, then, proves in reality to be an act of censorship. We shall have included everything which the analysis of disagreeable dreams has brought to light if we reword our formula thus: The dream is the (disguised) fulfilment of a (suppressed, repressed) wish. *(2)
* I will here observe that we have not yet disposed of this theme; we shall discuss it again later.
*(2) A great contemporary poet, who, I am told, will hear nothing of psycho-analysis and dream-interpretation, has nevertheless derived from his own experience an almost identical formula for the nature of the dream: “Unauthorized emergence of suppressed yearnings under false features and names” (C. Spitteler, “Meine fruhesten Erlebnisse,” in Suddeutsche Monatshefte, October, 1913).
I will here anticipate by citing the amplification and modification of this fundamental formula propounded by Otto Rank: “On the basis of and with the aid of repressed infantile-sexual material, dreams regularly represent as fulfilled current, and as a rule also erotic, wishes in a disguised and symbolic form” (Ein Traum, der sich selbst deutet).
Nowhere have I said that I have accepted this formula of Rank’s. The shorter version contained in the text seems to me sufficient. But the fact that I merely mentioned Rank’s modification was enough to expose psycho-analysis to the oft-repeated reproach that it asserts that all dreams have a sexual content. If one understands this sentence as it is intended to be understood, it only proves how little conscientiousness our critics are wont to display, and how ready our opponents are to overlook statements if they do not accord with their aggressive inclinations. Only a few pages back I mentioned the manifold wish-fulfilments of children’s dreams (to make an excursion on land and or water, to make up for an omitted meal, etc.). Elsewhere I have mentioned dreams excited by thirst and the desire to evacuate, and mere comfort- or convenience-dreams. Even Rank does not make an absolute assertion. He says “as a rule also erotic wishes,” and this can be completely confirmed in the case of most dreams of adults.
The matter has, however, a different aspect if we employ the word sexual in the sense of Eros, as the word is understood by psycho- analysts. But the interesting problem of whether all dreams are not produced by libidinal motives (in opposition to destructive ones) has hardly been considered by our opponents.
Now there still remain to be considered, as a particular sub- order of dreams with painful content, the anxiety-dreams, the inclusion of which among the wish-dreams will be still less acceptable to the uninitiated. But I can here deal very cursorily with the problem of anxiety-dreams; what they have to reveal is not a new aspect of the dream-problem; here the problem is that of understanding neurotic anxiety in general. The anxiety which we experience in dreams is only apparently explained by the dream- content. If we subject that content to analysis, we become aware that the dream-anxiety is no more justified by the dream-content than the anxiety in a phobia is justified by the idea to which the phobia is attached. For example, it is true that it is possible to fall out of a window, and that a certain care should be exercised when one is at a window, but it is not obvious why the anxiety in the corresponding phobia is so great, and why it torments its victims more than its cause would warrant. The same explanation which applies to the phobia applies also to the anxiety-dream. In either case, the anxiety is only fastened on to the idea which accompanies it, and is derived from another source.
On account of this intimate relation of dream-anxiety to neurotic anxiety, the discussion of the former obliges me to refer to the latter. In a little essay on Anxiety Neurosis, * written in 1895, I maintain that neurotic anxiety has its origin in the sexual life, and corresponds to a libido which has been deflected from its object and has found no employment. The accuracy of this formula has since then been demonstrated with ever-increasing certainty. From it we may deduce the doctrine that anxiety-dreams are dreams of sexual content, and that the libido appertaining to this content has been transformed into anxiety. Later on I shall have an opportunity of confirming this assertion by the analysis of several dreams of neurotics. In my further attempts to arrive at a theory of dreams I shall again have occasion to revert to the conditions of anxiety-dreams and their compatibility with the theory of wish-fulfilment.
* See [previous reference] above.
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