Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for BeginnersFreud, Sigmund
Science
Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners
Freud, Sigmund
Dreams; Psychoanalysis
The other motive for counter wish-dreams is so clear that there is
danger of overlooking it, as for some time happened in my own case. In
the sexual make-up of many people there is a masochistic component,
which has arisen through the conversion of the aggressive, sadistic
component into its opposite. Such people are called "ideal" masochists,
if they seek pleasure not in the bodily pain which may be inflicted upon
them, but in humiliation and in chastisement of the soul. It is obvious
that such persons can have counter wish-dreams and disagreeable dreams,
which, however, for them are nothing but wish-fulfillment, affording
satisfaction for their masochistic inclinations. Here is such a dream. A
young man, who has in earlier years tormented his elder brother, towards
whom he was homosexually inclined, but who had undergone a complete
change of character, has the following dream, which consists of three
parts: (1) _He is "insulted" by his brother._ (2) _Two adults are
caressing each other with homosexual intentions._ (3) _His brother has
sold the enterprise whose management the young man reserved for his own
future._ He awakens from the last-mentioned dream with the most
unpleasant feelings, and yet it is a masochistic wish-dream, which might
be translated: It would serve me quite right if my brother were to make
that sale against my interest, as a punishment for all the torments
which he has suffered at my hands.
I hope that the above discussion and examples will suffice--until
further objection can be raised--to make it seem credible that even
dreams with a painful content are to be analyzed as the fulfillments of
wishes. Nor will it seem a matter of chance that in the course of
interpretation one always happens upon subjects of which one does not
like to speak or think. The disagreeable sensation which such dreams
arouse is simply identical with the antipathy which endeavors--usually
with success--to restrain us from the treatment or discussion of such
subjects, and which must be overcome by all of us, if, in spite of its
unpleasantness, we find it necessary to take the matter in hand. But
this disagreeable sensation, which occurs also in dreams, does not
preclude the existence of a wish; every one has wishes which he would
not like to tell to others, which he does not want to admit even to
himself. We are, on other grounds, justified in connecting the
disagreeable character of all these dreams with the fact of dream
disfigurement, and in concluding that these dreams are distorted, and
that the wish-fulfillment in them is disguised until recognition is
impossible for no other reason than that a repugnance, a will to
suppress, exists in relation to the subject-matter of the dream or in
relation to the wish which the dream creates. Dream disfigurement,
then, turns out in reality to be an act of the censor. We shall take
into consideration everything which the analysis of disagreeable dreams
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