A General Introduction to PsychoanalysisFreud, Sigmund
Science
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
A second, far more important and more extensive consideration, equally
disregarded by the layman, is the following: A wish-fulfillment
certainly must bring pleasure--but to whom? Naturally, to him who has
the wish. But we know from the dreamer that he stands in a very special
relationship to his wishes. He casts them aside, censors them, he will
have none of them. Their fulfillment gives him no pleasure, but only the
opposite. Experience then shows that this opposite, which must still be
explained, appears in the form of fear. The dreamer in his relation to
his dream-wishes can be compared only to a combination of two persons
bound together by some strong common quality. Instead of further
explanations I shall give you a well-known fairy tale, in which you will
again find the relationships I have mentioned. A good fairy promises a
poor couple, husband and wife, to fulfill their first three wishes. They
are overjoyed, and determine to choose their three wishes with great
care. But the woman allows herself to be led astray by the odor of
cooking sausages emanating from the next cottage, and wishes she had a
couple of such sausages. Presto! they are there. This is the first
wish-fulfillment. Now the husband becomes angry, and in his bitterness
wishes that the sausages might hang from the end of her nose. This, too,
is accomplished, and the sausages cannot be removed from their new
location. So this is the second wish-fulfillment, but the wish is that
of the husband. The wife is very uncomfortable because of the
fulfillment of this wish. You know how the fairy tale continues. Since
both husband and wife are fundamentally one, the third wish must be that
the sausages be removed from the nose of the wife. We could make use of
this fairy tale any number of times in various connections; here it
serves only as an illustration of the possibility that the
wish-fulfillment for the one personality may lead to an aversion on the
part of the other, if the two do not agree with one another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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