A General Introduction to PsychoanalysisFreud, Sigmund
Science
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
The example is pretty enough, but too simple. In other cases we must add
to the first substitute names a long line of associations, and then the
analogy to the dream interpretation becomes clearer. I have also had
such experiences. Once when a stranger invited me to drink Italian wine
with him, it so happened in the hostelry that he forgot the name of the
wine he had intended to order just because he had retained a most
pleasant memory of it. Out of a profusion of dissimilar substitute
associations which came to him in the place of the forgotten name, I was
able to conclude that the memory of some one named Hedwig had deprived
him of the name of the wine, and he actually confirmed not only that he
had first tasted this wine in the company of a Hedwig, but he also, as
a result of this declaration, recollected the name again. He was at the
time happily married, and this Hedwig belonged to former times, not now
recalled with pleasure.
What is possible in forgetting names must work also in dream
interpretation, viz., making the withheld actuality accessible by means
of substitutions and through connecting associations. As exemplified by
name-forgetting, we may conclude that in the case of the associations to
the dream element they will be determined as well by the dream element
as by its unknown essential. Accordingly, we have advanced a few steps
in the formulation of our dream technique.
SEVENTH LECTURE
THE DREAM
_Manifest Dream Content and Latent Dream Thought_
We have not studied the problem of errors in vain. Thanks to our efforts
in this field, under the conditions known to you, we have evolved two
different things, a conception of the elements of the dream and a
technique for dream interpretation. The conception of the dream element
goes to show something unreal, a substitute for something else, unknown
to the dreamer, similar to the tendency of errors, a substitute for
something the dreamer knows but cannot approach. We hope to transfer the
same conception to the whole dream, which consists of just such
elements. Our method consists of calling up, by means of free
associations, other substitute formations in addition to these elements,
from which we divine what is hidden.
Let me ask you to permit a slight change in our nomenclature which will
greatly increase the flexibility of our vocabulary. Instead of hidden,
unapproachable, unreal, let us give a truer description and say
inaccessible or unknown to the consciousness of the dreamer. By this we
mean only what the connection with the lost word or with the interfering
intention of the error can suggest to you, namely, unconscious _for the
time being_. Naturally in contrast to this we may term _conscious_ the
elements of the dream itself and the substitute formations just gained
by association. As yet there is absolutely no theoretical construction
implied in this nomenclature. The use of the word unconscious as a
suitable and intelligible descriptive epithet is above criticism.
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