On Dreams

Introduction:
In the late 19thcentury, after having discovered the complexities of the human mind
and the influence of the ‘unconscious’ on human behavior along with his colleague
Dr. Breuer, Sigmund Freud was faced with the challenge of understanding the
workings of this unconscious mind in greater detail. In year 1900 Freud published
his groundbreaking work in ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ which launched
psychoanalysis and a year later wrote an abridged version of the book called ‘On
Dreams’.

In ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’, Freud attempts to answer questions like: what is a

dream’s relation to our waking life? Can dreams be interpreted? Do they have a
meaning? Why dreams are forgotten after waking? He takes us through examples of
many dreams and introduces us to a psychological technique of interpreting a
dream, and argues that it is deeply related to our waking life and conscious
thoughts.

Freud begins ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ by giving a brief account of scientific

literature on dreams, and makes a distinction between psychological explanations of
the phenomena of dreaming (dreams being a product of workings of one’s own
mind) versus supernatural explanations (dreams being work of some demonic or
divine higher power). He quickly distances himself from the claims of supernatural
explanations on workings of the mind as he consistently did throughout his career
and draws our attention to its psychological aspects.

Psychoanalysis as a method of interpreting dreams:

Freud noted two contradictory views about dreams prevailing in his time: one
where they were simply a product of disconnected activity of separate organs or
groups of cells in an otherwise sleeping or inactive brain, and another where they
had a meaning and were related to our waking life. Freud, to his astonishment, came
to discover that the latter view was closer to reality. He then went on to attempt to
interpret dreams through a technique called ‘Psycho-analysis’.

To understand the dream, one should not take a dream in the whole of its whole, but
only individual elements of its content. Different people can dream similar dreams,
but each of them will have its own meaning and desire.

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In ‘On Dreams’ Freud gives an example of his own dream and attempts to interpret
it through ‘psycho-analysis’. Under this method he divides the dream into different
fragments and tries to find associations attaching to each of those fragments
separately. As Freud followed the train of thoughts beginning from each of the
fragments the dream became more clear and intelligible. In addition to this, he
found out that the process of psycho-analysis had given the dream a different
context altogether.

He also discovered that it was no coincidence that psychological problems like

phobia and obsessions were as alien to waking consciousness as dreams. The
patient in question is expected to direct his attention to whatever comes to his mind
without exception and report it to the analyst. As the patient continues to pursue the
trains of thoughts, there shall emerge some connections of his thoughts to the
pathological idea of his and once this idea is brought to light, it can be replaced with
a new idea.

Freud contends that the logic of dreams is ruled by obscurity. Images and
figures exist in the dream as random elements which we must associate with other
elements both within and outside of the dream (that is, both within and outside of
our unconscious minds, and between the latent and manifest contents of the
dream). The process of free association is a central part of the dream-work process,
whereby the patient is asked to make immediate connections to words or thoughts
expressed by the analyst.

Latent Dream and Manifest Dream:

Freud noticed that as he pursued the train of thoughts of the different fragments of
the dream the thoughts behind the dream were quite comprehensive in comparison
to the contents of the dream. He gave these two different sections of content new
terminologies; the thought behind the dream was termed as ‘latent content of the
dream’ and the original dream content as ‘manifest content of the dream’.

After having discovered this, Freud was faced with two new problems: 1) what is
the psychological process which is responsible for transformation of this latent
dream content into manifest dreams? 2) Why was this transformation necessary to
the mind? As Freud sought to answer these questions, he called the process of
transformation of manifest dream content into latent dream as the ‘dream-work’. In
other words, the dream-work refers to the process of translating the “latent

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content” of a dream (which is the unconscious dream “thought” – or we can
perhaps say it is the dream itself in its most “primal” state) into its “manifest
content,” which is simply its remembered and retold form.

In simpler terms, we can say that the latent content is the unconscious dream
thought, and the manifest content is the form the dream takes on in our conscious
memory. The dream-work is all that takes place between the latent content and the
manifest content of the dream. Freud argued that the dream work process is ruled
by distortion, dramatization, displacement and condensation/compression.

Freud categorizes dreams into three different groups: one where the dreams are
easily intelligible and have a clearly apparent connection to our waking life, two
where dreams have a meaning in itself, but are difficult to understand with context
to our waking life (Freud gives an example of a loved one dying of plague in the
dream), and three where the dreams are without any sense and which seem
disconnected, confused and meaningless. He adds that in the latter groups of dreams
(second and third) the contrast between latent content and manifest content is
more evident.

Dreams as ‘Wish-Fulfillments’:
In ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’, Freud asserts that dreams serve as a function to
fulfill certain repressed wishes. Dream is the fulfillment of a desire unsatisfied in
reality. In the dream, the desire seems fulfilled.

On careful examination of children’s dreams (which served with two advantages: 1.

An argument against dreams being simply a product of cerebral activity of the brain,
and 2. Children’s dreams may be simplified versions of the dreams of adults which
may turn out to be a prelude to the investigation of dreams of adults), Freud
discovered that these were realization of unfulfilled wishes during the waking
period of the individual’s life. He backed us this claim with a number of examples of
children’s dreams.

Examples:
1) A nineteen months old girl had been kept without food for a day as she had had
an attack of vomit in the morning, since her nurse declared that she had been ill
because of eating strawberries. During the night after this day of starvation she was
heard saying her own name in her sleep and adding: ‘stwawbewwies, wild

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stwawbewwies, omblet, pudden!’ This girl in question was anticipating smaller
qualities of strawberries in near future and therefore she fulfilled her wish of having
strawberries in her dream.

2) Another child of 8 had dreamt of driving in a chariot with Achilles and that
Diomede was the charioteer. It was shown that the day before he had been reading a
book of legends about the Greek heroes. The boy perhaps took those Greek heroes
as his models and was sorry not to be living in their days.

Freud also reported some of the adults dreams which served to the person as ‘wish-
fulfillments’. For example, people living under extreme condition show this
characteristic more commonly: the leader of the polar expedition, while they were
wintering in the ice field and living on a monotonous diet and short rations,
regularly dreamt like children of large meals, of mountains of tobacco, and of being
back at home.

The Dream-Work:
The dream-work refers to the process of translating the “latent content” of a dream
(which is the unconscious dream “thought” – or we can perhaps say it is the dream
itself in its most “primal” state) into its “manifest content,” which is simply
its remembered and retold form. In simpler terms, we can say that the latent
content is the unconscious dream thought, and the manifest content is the form the
dream takes on in our conscious memory. The dream-work is all that takes place
between the latent content and the manifest content of the dream. Freud argued
that the dream-work process is ruled by distortion, including five mechanisms
which essentially distort the latent content of the dream as this content is being
recalled by the dreamer (in its manifest form).

1)Compression/Condensation:

Freud realized that dreams are brief compared to the range and abundance of
dream thoughts. Through condensation or compression, dream content can be
presented in one dream. Freud gives example of one of his own dreams where he
dreamt of a swimming pool, in which bathers were scattering in all directions. The
situation, according to Freud was put together from a memory of an experience he
had during his puberty, and from two paintings, one which he saw shortly before the
dream and one from a series illustrating the scattering of bathers in the dream.

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The material of thoughts which is put together for construction of a dream- situation
must have some common elements in all components according to Freud. He uses
the Francis Galton family photograph analogy on dreams to explain this. Just like in
Galton’s family photographs the different components are superimposed upon one
another and then the common element stands out clearly whereas the contradictory
details wipe one another out. Freud also believed that this characteristic of dreams
explained the vagueness of some if its contents.

Based on this discovery Freud laid out a rule for the dream interpretation. He
writes: “If an uncertainty can be resolved into an ‘either-or’ we must replace it for
the purposes of interpretation by an ‘and’, and take each of the apparent
alternatives as an independent starting point for a series of associations.”

Freud goes on to add that if such common element in dream does not exist, then the
dream work goes on to give two different dream-thoughts a common representation
in dream. One of the ways in which this is done is to alter the verbal form of one of
them and bringing it half way to meet the other. A parallel process of this is involved
in making rhyming sentences, where similar sound has to be sought for in the same
way as a common element in the case. In ‘On Dreams’ Freud illustrated one of his
own dreams where this kind of common representation can be seen in the manifest
dream.

The dream as Freud reported it was as follows: “company at table or table d’hôte. . .
spinach was being eaten. . . Frau E. L. was sitting beside me; she was turning her
whole attention to me and laid her hand on my knee in an intimate manner. I
removed her hand unresponsively. She then said: “but you’ve always had such
beautiful eyes.”. . . I then had an indistinct picture of the two eyes, as though it were
a drawing or like the outline of a pair of spectacles. . . .”

The analysis of this sample dream that Freud had chosen had revealed some of the
latent content behind the dream like: Freud’s liking to get something sometimes
without paying for it (therefore without cost), now here the word cost is similar to
German word “kosten” who’s second sense can be represented in the spinach which
was served in the dream (since “kosten” means ‘to taste’ in German).

Freud summarized his idea of condensation in dreams in following words: “each

element in the content of a dream is ‘over determined’ by material in dream
thoughts; it is not derived from a single element in the dream thoughts, but may be
traced back to a whole number. These elements need not necessarily be closely

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related to each other in the dream-thoughts themselves; they may belong to the
most widely separated regions of the fabric of those thoughts.”

2) Dramatization:

This aspect of the dream-work illustrates the visual quality of dreams. Dreams are a
set of pictures represented by the words used to describe them. These juxtaposing
images are not logical or ordered. It is our task to take apart the ‘pictorial
arrangement’ and attempt to discover the meaning in each of the picture’s parts.

3)Displacement:
Similar to condensation, displacement in the dream-work is a mechanism whereby a
figure in the latent content of the dream is in fact a replacement of another figure
discovered in the dream’s manifest content. Freud saw displacement as a means of
distortion, involving a shift of emphasis from important to unimportant elements.

He considered the process of displacement chiefly responsible for our being unable
to discover dream-thoughts from dream-content. Freud also believed that our
dream thoughts arrived at through analysis are not represented in the dream
content in its usual form but in similes and metaphors. He wrote that out of the
three i.e. compression, dramatization and displacement, the process which
contributes the most to concealment of meaning of dreams is displacement.

4) Dream Composition:

This is a process in the dream-work whereby the images that make up the dream
are restructured through the process of interpretation into a coherent, narrative
whole. Freud argues that it is unlikely, not impossible, that the way in which we
describe our dreams are accurate to the original dream form. Rather, by way of
narration (essentially story-telling), we re-order the dream images so that they can
be understood in the form of a coherent story. As we know, when we tell of our
dreams we generally do so in the same way that we tell a story. The temptation to
tell of a dream as a coherent story is only natural, but Freud scrutinizes this
temptation and asserts without a doubt that dreams in their latent (original) form
are far from structured in a way that would allow us to tell of them in a whole
manner.

To Freud the motive of this part of the dream work was obvious; he believed that
this part was meant to make the dream unintelligible. To illustrate, he gives an
example of one of his patient’s dreams: “she was going to pay for something. Her
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daughter took 3 florins and 65 kreuzers from her (her mother’s) purse. The dreamer
said to her: ‘What are you doing? It only costs 21 kreuzers.”

Upon analysis of this dream, it was revealed that the figures given in the dream only
became significant when we remember that ‘time is money’. So one year/365 days
was represented in money i.e. 3 florins 65 kreuzers and the 21 kreuzers represented
3 weeks.

5)Association:

Freud contends that the logic of dreams is ruled by obscurity. Images and
figures exist in the dream as random elements which we must associate with other
elements both within and outside of the dream (that is, both within and outside of
our unconscious minds, and between the latent and manifest contents of the
dream). The process of free association is a central part of the dream-work process,
whereby the patient is asked to make immediate connections to words or thoughts
expressed by the analyst.

Other Aspects of the Dream-Work:

There are still other aspects of the dream-work that are secondary to the process
itself. They include day residue (remnants of the day of or day prior to the dream
which are immediately recognizable in the dream as having had an effect on the
conscious mind in waking life. Another aspect is screen memory, which involves
three temporal aspects: a past memory, a present recollection, and a future wish.

Dream work also helps in avoiding anxiety in dreams. Freud categorized dreams
into 3 classes: one where dreams are clear wish fulfillments (these are rare in
adults), two where a wish is fulfilled in a disguised form, three where dreams fulfill
a repressed wish but with insufficient disguise (these dreams can also take form of a
nightmare). The third class of dreams is extremely anxiety inducing according to
Freud.

The dream is affected by an experience or event in the present, it refers back to an

experience from the past, and it is a kind of future prediction or projection of the
dreamer’s conflict into the future. In the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud saw all
dreams as being related to the fulfillment of an unconscious wish or desire. Finally,
Freud discusses the role of symbols in dreams, which he claims are not part of the

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dream-work process, but exists in their own context, within the dream itself.
Symbols for Freud can be attained through a process of free association in analysis,
and can help immensely in structuring a coherent picture of a dream’s meaning.

Repression:
After having understood the peculiar process of the dream work, it was necessary to
discover the motive of the unconscious undertaking this process. Freud realized that
the dream thoughts arrived upon through analysis are not only apparently alien to
the subject but also disagreeable. And the purpose of the dream-work was to keep
these unconscious and disagreeable thoughts concealed from us. In other words, the
dream work serves to disguise the dream thoughts. Freud argues that we repress
whatever ideas, desires, and experiences are most disturbing to us - in other words,
whatever impressions seem to threaten our safety.

Examples: 1) The Case of Little Hans

Little Hans had been affected by a traumatic event which had occurred when he was
four years old in which he had witnessed an accident: a horse carrying a heavily
loaded cart collapsed in the street. After the event, the boy’s parents noticed that he
had begun to develop a fear of horses, particularly those carrying a heavy load or
those with black around their eyes, or wearing blinkers.

The dream: ‘In the night there was a big giraffe in the room and a crumpled one:
and the big one called out because I took the crumpled one away from it. Then it
stopped calling out: and I sat down on top of the crumpled one’.

According to Freud, repressed desires, as a rule, concern the Oedipus complex,

according to which the child unconsciously seeks to own the mother and eliminate
the father and brothers. These children's experiences never get out, being a
powerful source of dreams.

Little Hans’ fear of horses could be understood in symbolic terms. Freud felt that the
large genitals of the animals led to him experiencing the displacement of a fear of his
father onto the horses. The black surrounding their eyes reminded Little Hans of his
father, with their blinkers resembling the man’s glasses.

Freud saw Hans' phobia as an expression of the Oedipus complex (which he has
repressed). Horses, particularly horses with black harnesses, symbolized his father.
Freud interpreted the dream/fantasy as being a reworking of the morning
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exchanges in the parental bed. Hans enjoyed getting into his parents bed in a
morning but his father often objected (the big giraffe calling out because he had
taken the crumpled giraffe - mother - away).

2) The Case of Dora

Dora lived with her parents, who had a loveless marriage, but one which took place
in close concert with another couple, Herr and Frau K. The crisis that led her father
to bring Dora to Freud was her accusation that Herr K had made a sexual advance to
her, at which she slapped his face—an accusation which Herr K denied and in which
her own father disbelieved.

The first dream: ‘the house was on fire. My father was standing beside my bed and
woke me up. I dressed quickly. Mother wanted to stop and save her jewel-case; but
Father said: 'I refuse to let myself and my two children be burnt for the sake of your
jewel-case.' We hurried downstairs, and as soon as I was outside I woke up.’

The second dream: ‘I was walking about in a town which I did not know. I saw
streets and squares which were strange to me. Then I came into a house where I
lived, went to my room, and found a letter from Mother lying there. She wrote
saying that as I had left home without my parents' knowledge she had not wished to
write to me to say Father was ill. "Now he is dead, and if you like you can come." I
then went to the station and asked about a hundred times: "Where is the station?" I
always got the answer: "Five minutes." I then saw a thick wood before me which I
went into, and there I asked a man whom I met. He said to me: "Two and a half
hours more." He offered to accompany me. But I refused and went alone. I saw the
station in front of me and could not reach it. At the same time, I had the unusual
feeling of anxiety that one has in dreams when one cannot move forward. Then I
was at home. I must have been travelling in the meantime, but I knew nothing about
that. I walked into the porter's lodge, and enquired for our flat. The maidservant
opened the door to me and replied that Mother and the others were already at the
cemetery.’

Freud reads both dreams as referring to Dora’s sexual life - the jewel case that was
in danger being a symbol of the virginity which her father was failing to protect
from Herr K. Freud saw Dora as ‘repressing’ a desire for her father, a desire for Herr
K, and a desire for Frau K as well.

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Why dreams are forgotten after waking up?
Freud talks about two agencies in our mind: the first agency which is dependent
upon second one has something disagreeable to say to it (Freud calls this daemonic
element). He adds that the first agency has full access to all our thoughts and
memories where as the second agency is unaware of many parts.

When we are asleep the first agency loses its power of censorship and allows some
thoughts into the consciousness but as soon as we wake up the censorship quickly
gains its strength and causes the dream to sink into the unconscious making us
forget the dream.

Symbolism in Dreams:
According to Freud, the great majority of symbols in dreams
are sexual symbols. For example, the number three is a symbolic substitute for the
entire male genital, whereas the penis alone is represented by long and upright
objects such as sticks, umbrellas, poles, trees, or the Washington Monument. It can
also be symbolized by objects that can penetrate the body and cause injury – like
knives, daggers, lances, swords, and firearms (especially revolvers). Also
substituted for male genitalia are objects out of which water flows, such as faucets
and fountains, or objects that can be elongated such as telescopes and collapsible
pencils.

The female genitals are symbolically represented by objects which enclose a space
capable of being filled by something: For example, pits, caves, bottles, boxes, trunks,
jars, suitcases, pockets, ships, the mouth, churches, and shoes. Wooden and paper
objects are symbols of women, whereas breasts are represented by apples, peaches,
and fruits in general. Jewels and treasure may represent a beloved person, while
sweets frequently stand in for sexual delight.

Sexual intercourse may be symbolized by a number of scenes and interaction

between male and female symbols.

Conclusion:
In conclusion Freud writes that his discoveries do not throw light upon all problems
of dreams, but instead have raised a number of new psychological problems dealing
with the mechanism of the dream work. Dreams in Freud's view are formed as the
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result of two mental processes. The first process involves unconscious forces that
construct a wish that is expressed by the dream, and the second is the process of
censorship that forcibly distorts the expression of the wish.

Freud regarded The Interpretation of Dreams as “the royal road to knowledge of the
unconscious activities of the mind”.

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