A General Introduction to PsychoanalysisFreud, Sigmund
Science
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
The displacement of emphasis is unheard of as a means of expressing
thoughts. In conscious thinking we occasionally admit it to gain a comic
effect. I can probably give you an idea of the confusion which this
produces by reminding you of the story of the blacksmith who had
committed a capital crime. The court decided that the penalty for the
crime must be paid, but since he was the only blacksmith in the village
and therefore indispensable, while there were three tailors, one of the
latter was hung in his stead.
The third process of the dream-work is the most interesting from a
psychological point of view. It consists of the _translation_ of
thoughts into visual images. Let us bear in mind that by no means all
dream thoughts undergo this translation; many of them retain their form
and appear in the manifest dream also as thought or consciousness;
moreover, visual images are not the only form into which thoughts are
translated. They are, however, the foundation of the dream fabric; this
part of the dream work is, as we already know, the second most constant,
and for single dream elements we have already learned to know "plastic
word representation."
It is evident that this process is not simple. In order to get an idea
of its difficulties you must pretend that you have undertaken the task
of replacing a political editorial in a newspaper by a series of
illustrations, that you have suffered an atavistic return from the use
of the alphabet to ideographic writing. Whatever persons or concrete
events occur in this article you will be able to replace easily by
pictures, perhaps to your advantage, but you will meet with difficulties
in the representation of all abstract words and all parts of speech
denoting thought relationships, such as particles, conjunctions, etc.
With the abstract words you could use all sorts of artifices. You will,
for instance, try to change the text of the article into different words
which may sound unusual, but whose components will be more concrete and
more adapted to representation. You will then recall that most abstract
words were concrete before their meaning paled, and will therefore go
back to the original concrete significance of these words as often as
possible, and so you will be glad to learn that you can represent the
"possession" of an object by the actual physical straddling of it.[32]
The dream work does the same thing. Under such circumstances you can
hardly demand accuracy of representation. You will also have to allow
the dream-work to replace an element that is as hard to depict as for
instance, broken faith, by another kind of rupture, a broken leg.[33] In
this way you will be able to smooth away to some extent the crudity of
imagery when the latter is endeavoring to replace word expression.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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