A General Introduction to PsychoanalysisFreud, Sigmund
Science
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
The same information may be made use of in another of the puzzles that
have presented themselves to us. You will recall how astonished people
were when we came to the conclusion that the stimuli which gave rise to
dreams were extremely bad and licentious sexual desires which have made
dream-censorship and dream-distortion necessary. After we have
interpreted such a dream for the dreamer and he, in the most favorable
circumstances does not attack the interpretation itself, he almost
always asks the question whence such a wish comes, since it seems
foreign to him and he feels conscious of just the opposite sensations.
We need not hesitate to point out this origin. These evil wish-impulses
have their origin in the past, often in a past which is not too far
away. It can be shown that at one time they were known and conscious,
even if they no longer are so. The woman, whose dream is interpreted to
mean that she would like to see her seventeen-year old daughter dead,
discovers under our guidance that she in fact at one time entertained
this wish. The child is the fruit of an unhappy marriage, which early
ended in a separation. Once, while the child was still in the womb, and
after a tense scene with her husband, she beat her body with her fists
in a fit of anger, in order to kill the child. How many mothers who
to-day love their children tenderly, perhaps too tenderly, received them
unwillingly, and at the time wished that the life within them would not
develop further; indeed, translated this wish into various actions,
happily harmless. The later death-wish against some loved one, which
seems so strange, also has its origin in early phases of the
relationship to that person.
The father, the interpretation of whose dream shows that he wishes for
the death of his eldest and favorite child, must be reminded of the fact
that at one time this wish was no stranger to him. While the child was
still a suckling, this man, who was unhappy in his choice of a wife,
often thought that if the little being that meant nothing to him would
die, he would again be free, and would make better use of his freedom. A
like origin may be found for a large number of similar hate impulses;
they are recollections of something that belonged to the past, were once
conscious and played their parts in the psychic life. You will wish to
conclude therefrom that such wishes and such dreams cannot occur if such
changes in the relationship to a person have not taken place; if such
relationship was always of the same character. I am ready to admit this,
only wish to warn you that you are to take into consideration not the
exact terms of the dream, but the meaning thereof according to its
interpretation. It may happen that the manifest dream of the death of
some loved person has only made use of some frightful mask, that it
really means something entirely different, or that the loved person
serves as a concealing substitute for some other.
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