February 19, 2011
| Category: Freud Works

6 C The Interpretation of Dreams

C. The Means of Representation in Dreams

Besides the two factors of condensation and displacement in dreams, which we have found to be at work in the transformation of the latent dream-material into the manifest dream-content, we shall, in the course of this investigation, come upon two further conditions which exercise an unquestionable influence over the selection of the material that eventually appears in the dream. But first, even at the risk of seeming to interrupt our progress, I shall take a preliminary glance at the processes by which the interpretation of dreams is accomplished. I do not deny that the best way of explaining them, and of convincing the critic of their reliability, would be to take a single dream as an example, to detail its interpretation, as I did (in Chapter II) in the case of the dream of Irma’s injection, but then to assemble the dream-thoughts which I had discovered, and from them to reconstruct the formation of the dream- that is to say, to supplement dream-analysis by dream-synthesis. I have done this with several specimens for my own instruction; but I cannot undertake to do it here, as I am prevented by a number of considerations (relating to the psychic material necessary for such a demonstration) such as any right-thinking person would approve. In the analysis of dreams these considerations present less difficulty, for an analysis may be incomplete and still retain its value, even if it leads only a little way into the structure of the dream. I do not see how a synthesis, to be convincing, could be anything short of complete. I could give a complete synthesis only of the dreams of such persons as are unknown to the reading public. Since, however, neurotic patients are the only persons who furnish me with the means of making such a synthesis, this part of the description of dreams must be postponed until I can carry the psychological explanation of the neuroses far enough to demonstrate their relation to our subject. * This will be done elsewhere.

* I have since given the complete analysis and synthesis of two dreams in the Bruchstuck einer Hysterieanalyse, (1905) (Ges. Schriften, Vol. VIII). “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,” translated by Strachey, Collected Papers, Vol III, (Hogarth Press, London). O. Rank’s analysis, Ein Traum der sich selbst deutet, deserves mention as the most complete interpretation of a comparatively long dream.

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