Classics and the Western Canon discussion

(c) On Wish Fulfillment

Freud insists that all dream are wish-fulfillments. He acknowledges that some dreams manifest as anxiety or concern, but these are all distortions. At the root of every dream is a wish. There doesn't seem to be much room for argument with Freud. He next asks where the wish comes from. Ultimately, all wishes come from the unconscious; preconscious wishes may come from unfilfilled daytime wishes, but they will only appear in dreams if there is reinforcement from the unconscious. Daytime concerns seem to be hijacked by unconscious wishes -- even if they appear clothed in the "remains of the day," the wish expressed by the unconscious in dreaming is infantile in origin. Trace memories of infantile satisfaction are taken up and re-cast by adult dream-work; every dream seeks a "perceptual identity" with an unconscious desire from infancy.

Freud frequently looks to the pathology of neurosis for a way to understand dreaming. He says that neurotic symptoms have to be seen as wish-fulfillments from the unconscious.. What is the connection between dreaming and neurosis? Are even healthy stable adults neurotic when they dream?

(d) Arousal by Dreams. The Function of Dreams. Anxiety Dreams.

The Preconscious wishes to sleep and be free of disturbances coming from the unconscious. But unconscious wishes are disguised, distorted, and condensed so that they sometimes get through the resistance encountered by the Preconscious and its wish to sleep. Freud envisages the mechanics of this as a matter of charge. It's worth noting that Freud began his career as a physician, during the course of which he studied the mechanics of neurons. It seems to me that he borrows the notion of electrical stimulus and charge from his medical studies and applies it to his "Psi system". Presumably dreams occur when an unconscious wish builds up enough "charge" to break through the preconscious censorship. A strong enough charge may even wake the dreamer, leaving a vivid impression, but the function of the preconscious is to quiet this effect and vent the discharge.

Freud's psyche is a divided one; the unconscious and the preconscious systems are in a constant struggle with each other. The unconscious wishes for an infantile pleasure that is "strangled" by the preconscious. If the Preconscious fails, the unconscious wish then becomes a source of anxiety in the dream. (I presume this is affiliated closely with guilt -- whatever shameful wish the preconscious wishes to censor is now allowed to express itself.) Freud says that the theory of anxiety dreams belongs to the psychology of neuroses, which in turn arise from sexual sources. Even the nightime anxiety attacks of children are "a matter of stirrings of sexuality which are not understood and rejected."

(e) Primary and Secondary Process. Repression.

Freud starts by saying that a further description of the dream process will challenge his "expository skills." He makes an attempt anyway, but it is admittedly rough sledding. I doubt I'll get this right but I'll give it a shot.

Freud places emphasis on the power of the unconscious and preconscious; he claims that not only do these non-conscious systems think, their thoughts are just as sophisticated and rational as conscious thought. He describes the train of thought as a series of charges that fire from one system to another, sometimes gaining enough excitement that they become noticed by consciousness. Other times they die away. Or they may receive reinforcement from other unconscious thoughts and undergo the distortion and condensation process, take on representability by latching onto images in memory, and manifest as absurd dreams. The first, unconscious but rational process he calls "Primary Process". The second, transformational process, he calls "Secondary Process."

He then takes a weird turn and says that the only way to understand Secondary Process -- the dream-work described in Book VI -- is through the psychology of neurosis and hysteria. At this point he has to explain repression, which is essentially a turning away from "the unpleasurable". Secondary process is in the business of inhibiting the discharge of unpleasurable impulses from the unconscious, sending them back and repressing them. Powerful unconscious thoughts still seek discharge and return to the Preconscious. A struggle ensues. If a compromise solution between the unconscious and the preconscious is not found, these unpleasurable unconscious thoughts will manifest as physical symptoms. During the day these symptoms might take the form of hallucinations and obsessions; at night, they might take the form of dreams.

(f) The Unconscious and Consciousness. Reality.

So here it is, the end of the royal road.

The Unconscious is the true reality of the psyche, its inner nature just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and just as imperfectly revealed by the data of consciousness as the external world is by the information received from our sensory organs.

For Freud, consciousness is a sensory organ for the psyche. It perceives stimulus from the external perceptual system as well as the internal psychical system, including the unconscious. In between the unconscious and consciousness is the screen or control process he calls the Preconscious, where input is rated and passed or repressed based on its qualities of pleasure or unpleasure. He ends the book with two examples of neurosis/hysteria, since these offer the closest analogy to the rating/censorship function of the Preconscious.

One gets the feeling that there is much more work to be done...

One thought I have is that if dreams are the expression of our unconscious desires, since the unconscious is active even when we are awake, we must, in a sense, be dreaming all the time, even when we are awake, although, in our waking state, we're not conscious of it. Dreams are like the stars, always present in the sky, though we can't see them during the day because the sun is so much brighter.

Beautifully put.

Somewhere I heard a psychiatrist explain psychosis as being stuck in a dreaming state. People experiencing psychosis don't dream because they are already dreaming, even when they are awake.

Freud talks a bit about daydreams in the section on secondary revision. He makes secondary revision -- the half-conscious awakening attempt to make sense and revise the absurdity of the dream -- sound a lot like daydreaming. This is still an expression of the unconscious, but a much more censored one, and one that happens when we are awake. The primary difference between night dreams and day dreams is content. When the lights go out the unconscious is free to play.

"When the lights go out the unconscious is free to play. "
Not exactly free. The preconscious is there to rein it in.

The preconscious certainly tries, but whatever thoughts it doesn't allow are distorted and condensed and express themselves in dreams anyway. So maybe not free, but able to escape the prison of the unconscious in disguise.

I found this to be a fascinating book. I'm not convinced by a lot of it, but it was definitely an intellectual adventure. A couple of takeaways for me:

I started out thinking that Freud’s method would have a grounding in science. At the end of the day, I don’t think it does, despite the fact that it proceeds methodically enough. On a number of occasions Freud says that he has effected cures of neurotic patients though psychoanalysis, and that dream interpretation is part of that process, but I’m not convinced that the process has any scientific validity. Psychoanalysis seems to be based on the notion that exposing the shameful or disturbing thoughts that lurk in the unconscious “discharges” their energy, rendering them harmless. Like Oedipus at Colonus, when the pain of discovery subsides, there is relief. But I’m not sure that in reality it works that way.

Dream interpretation reminds me more of literary interpretation than science. In some cases they seem to be working the same field, as in the Oedipus story. Sophocles’ play is far more refined than any dream, but Freud's interpretation of the story as a model of the unconscious has a very literary ring for me.

One thing I do like about Freud’s method is that it is always specific to the individual. There is no universal interpretation of dream objects, as one finds in dream dictionaries. Dream material is only the start, a launchpad for the patient’s free associations. I have concerns about the logical connection between the dream and the associations, but what matters is whether that connection is meaningful for the patient. Anyone can be their own analyst if they are willing to make the dark trek through the unconscious.

This turned out to be a much more challenging read than I expected. Thanks to everyone who made an attempt, and more thanks to those who left comments.

Thomas wrote: "Dream interpretation reminds me more of literary interpretation than science ..."

Then again, I think a lot of literary interpretation is psychoanalysis.

Freud stumbles around science as a metaphor, but which science? Perhaps thermodynamics or chemistry, or physics,
Donnally mentions literary interpretation as psychoanalysis. I see that literary interpretation owes much of its substance to Freud's work, as do Dadaism, Surrealism, and the pervasiveness of psychology, which are the primary underpinnings of twentieth-century thought.

First of all, I want to congratulate everyone who managed to finish this book, this was not an easy read, at least not for me.

Thomas wrote: "Dream interpretation reminds me more of literary interpretation than science ..."

What Thomas wrote has resonated with me for a long time, but I struggled to put it into words. Thank you!

Freud's dream interpretation has nothing scientific in it, but I am sure it can help a lot of patients just because it is encouraging them to reflect upon their feelings.

I don't think it is possible to interpret our dreams, there's too much chaos and noise in them. But I do believe that interpreting our dreams can be a healing process and a self-discovery journey.

Emil wrote: "Freud's dream interpretation has nothing scientific in it..."

I have to disagree. Norman Campbell says, "Science is the study of those judgments concerning which universal agreement can be obtained." Freud has done this. He has posited laws and identified causes and effects. True, his laws can at times appear quite elastic, but he has developed theories of manifest and latent dream content, the special language of dreams, dreams as wish fulfillments, and the significance of childhood experiences and tested them against the results of experiments.

I think what Emil meant is that his theories cannot be measured numerically and thus there is an inevitable aura of subjectivity about them. But anyone can assess their applicability to his own experience, and what Freud succeeded in doing was placing the interpretation of dreams on a scientific footing, as opposed to the state it was in before, which he documented in the first chapter.

I lost faith in psychoanalysis as a science during his descriptions of dream analysis: Freud's interpretation of the dream relies on the free association of the patient to provide meaning to the dream material, and this free association is anything but scientific. The dream material is distorted beyond recognition, and the patient's free association often loses track of the dream entirely. Free association is completely subjective, and it must be for it to be of any value. I think Freud wants his conjectures to be scientific, but close examination reveals his psychic processes to be less scientific than useful hypotheses. Take Freud's invention of the "preconscious." for example. It's useful for explaining his theory, but how is the existence of such a structure to be proven scientifically?

Freud's theories explain the phenomena, but there's no way to replicate these phenomena or use his theories to predict future phenomena. which I believe are basic tenets of any science.

But it doesn't need to be science to be valuable. I picked up Bruno Bettelheim's book on Freud, Freud and Man's Soul: An Important Re-Interpretation of Freudian Theory, where he maintains that Freud's English translators have actually mistranslated hiis works in order to give psychoanalysis scientific panache. It's an interesting read.

I agree that Freud's Interpretation of Dreams is not in itself Scientific. But his placing himself in a quasi-scientific milieu prepared the way for what would become a science -- psychology. It's lasting value is its place in history of culture, breaking open the doors of Art, for artists to pursue art into the interiority of surrealism.

Thomas wrote: "I picked up Bruno Bettelheim's book on Freud, Freud and Man's Soul: An Important Re-Interpretation of Freudian Theory, where he maintains that Freud's English translators have actually mistranslated hiis works in order to give psychoanalysis scientific panache. It's an interesting read..."

This is very interesting. I have read the German text, and it never occurred to me that the English translations made this work sound more ‘scientific.’ If I think about it, Freud always sounded to me more like a wise old uncle, not really like a scientist.


Here is a random text from the first chapter:

[...]er ist zwar kein psychischer Vorgang, hat keine Stelle unter den psychischen Vorgängen des Wachens, er ist ein allnächtlicher somatischer Vorgang am Apparat der Seelentätigkeit und hat eine Funktion zu erfüllen, diesen Apparat vor Überspannung zu behüten oder wenn man das Gleichnis wechseln darf: die Seele auszumisten.


This is the translation from A. A. Brill (1913)

To be sure, it is not a psychic process, and has no place among the psychic processes of the waking state; it is a nocturnal somatic process in the apparatus devoted to mental activity, and has a function to perform, viz. to guard this apparatus against overstraining, or, if the comparison may be changed, to cleanse the mind.


I would translate the text like this:

It is indeed not a psychic process and does not have a place among the psychic processes of the waking state. It is a nocturnal somatic process in the apparatus devoted to soul activity, and it has a function to fulfil, namely, to guard this apparatus against overstraining. Alternatively, if the comparison may be changed, it serves to tidy up the soul.”



The obvious translation of "Seele" is soul. You can use "psyche" or "spirit", but I wouldn't use "mind" in this context.

Emil wrote: "This is very interesting. I have read the German text, and it never occurred to me that the English translations made this work sound more ‘scientific.’ If I think about it, Freud always sounded to me more like a wise old uncle, not really like a scientist."

Bettelheim's epigraph is a quote from a letter Freud wrote to Jung: "Psychoanalysis is in essense a cure through love." He argues throughout the book that Freud never meant psychoanalysis to be a medical specialty, as it was treated in the U.S. at the time, and that the Interpretation of Dreams in particular was not supposed to be a scientific analysis of the psyche but a much less precise exploration of the soul. The translation of "Seele" as "mind" is at the center of all this. Bettelheim reads Freud as a humanist rather than a scientist or physician, and maintains that psychoanalysis is far more an emotional exercise than a mental one.

He also says that Freud wrote for an audience of readers who had a classical education and would implicitly link his concept of Psyche with the story of Cupid and Psyche from Apuleius. This kind of cultural underpinning was Bettelheim's field of expertise, but I think it does open a new perspective: the story is one of desire and secrecy. A perfect backdrop for Freud's description of the unconscious.