They permit us in certain cases to interpret a dream without questioning the dreamer who, aside from this, has no explanation for the symbol. In the first place, since symbols are permanent or constant translations, they realize, in a certain measure, the ideal of ancient as well as popular dream interpretation, an ideal which by means of our technique we had left behind. Symbolism is perhaps the most noteworthy chapter of dream study. Very interesting discussions center about this, and we will now consider them before we express our own particular observations on symbolism. This fourth is the symbolic relationship here introduced. I then announced that there was a fourth, but did not name it. You will remember that previously, when we were investigating the relationship between dream elements and their actuality, I drew three distinctions, viz., that of the part of the whole, that of the allusion, and that of the imagery. The dream element is itself a symbol of the unconscious dream thought. We call such a constant relationship between a dream element and its interpretation symbolic. The facts that force us to recognize their meaning will appear in the second half of our analysis. After one has gathered a sufficient number of such constant substitutes empirically, he will say that of his own knowledge he should actually have denied that these items of dream interpretation could really be understood without the associations of the dreamer. But a further fact is to be taken into consideration.
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You will say at once that this road to interpretation appears far more uncertain and open to objection than the former methods of free association.
But do not forget that in our association technique we never discover constant substitutes for the dream elements.
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In this manner we derive constant translations for a whole series of dream elements just as constant translations are found in our popular dream books for all the things we dream. I am expounding all this in rather a schematic manner, but this is permissible for purposes of instruction, and I am not trying to misstate, but only to simplify matters. The accumulation of many similar cases tends to give the necessary certainty to our first timid attempts. The fact that every time we trust to this substitution we obtain a satisfactory meaning is forced upon us until we resolve upon this decision the dream remains meaningless, its continuity is broken. In this way we are tempted to interpret these silent dream elements ourselves, to undertake their translation by the means at hand. Once a person is convinced that in these cases no amount of forcing of associations will avail, he will finally make the discovery that the unwished-for contingency occurs regularly in certain dream elements, and he will begin to recognize a new order of things there, where at first he believed he had come across a peculiar exception to our technique. It also occurs, however, in the interpretation of the dreams of a normal person or in interpreting ones own dreams.
When this happens in the course of a psychoanalytic treatment, then a particular meaning may be attached thereto, with which we have nothing to do here. But still there are certain instances in which no association is forthcoming, or if forced does not furnish what we expected. This does not happen so often as the dreamers maintain in many cases the association can be forced by persistence. I have already admitted that for certain elements of the dream, no associations really occur to the person being analyzed. This other item which makes the dream unintelligible, this new addition to dream distortion, we discover by considering a gap in our technique. That is, even if the dream censorship were eliminated we might not be in a position to understand the dreams the actual dream still might not be identical with the latent dream thought. But, of course, we have not maintained that censorship is the only factor which is to blame for the dream distortion, and we may actually make the discovery in a further study of the dream that other items play a part in this result. W E have discovered that the distortion of dreams, a disturbing element in our work of understanding them, is the result of a censorious activity which is directed against the unacceptable of the unconscious wish-impulses. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis.
Nonfiction > Sigmund Freud > A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
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