Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult ArtsSilberer, Herbert
Religion
Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts
Silberer, Herbert
Alchemy; Society of Rosicrucians; Symbolism (Psychology)
To the Secondary Elaboration we have to credit the last polishing of the
dream fabric. It looks after the logical connection in the pictorial
material, which is created by the displacing dream work. “This function
(i.e., the secondary elaboration) proceeds after the manner which the poet
maliciously ascribes to the philosopher; with its shreds and patches it
stops the gaps in the structure of the dream. The result of its effort is
that the dream loses its appearance of absurdity and disconnectedness and
approaches the standard of a comprehensible experience. But the effort is
not always crowned with complete success.” (Freud, “Traumdeutung,” p.
330.) The secondary elaboration can be compared also to the erection of a
façade.
Of the entire dreamwork Freud says (“Traumdeutung,” p. 338)
comprehensively that it is “not merely more careless, more incorrect, more
easily forgotten or more fragmentary than waking thought; it is something
qualitatively quite different and therefore not in the least comparable
with it. It does not, in fact, think, reckon, or judge, but limits itself
to remodeling. It may be exhaustively described if we keep in view the
conditions which its productions have to satisfy. These productions, the
dream, will have first of all to avoid the censor, and for this purpose
the dream work resorts to displacement of psychic intensities even to the
point of changing all psychic values; thoughts must be exclusively or
predominantly given in the material of visual and auditory memory images,
and from this grows that demand for representability which it answers with
new displacements. Greater intensities must apparently be attained here,
than are at its disposal in dream thoughts at night, and this purpose is
served by the extreme condensation which affects the elements of the dream
thoughts. There is little regard for the logical relations of the thought
material; they find finally an indirect representation in formal
peculiarities of dreams. The affects of dream thoughts suffer slighter
changes than their image content. They are usually repressed. Where they
are retained they are detached from images and grouped according to their
similarity.”
Briefly to express the nature of the dream, Stekel gives in one place
(“Sprache des Traumes,” p. 107) this concise characterization: “The dream
is a play of images in the service of the affects.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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