Chapter 10 Lecture 9: The Checking Function of Dreams

From the study of children's dreams we already know their causes, their main properties and functions.Dreams are a means of neutralizing the psychic stimuli that disturb sleep by the gratification of hallucinations.Of the dreams of grown-ups there is indeed only one class which we can interpret, the so-called infantile type.As to other kinds of dreams, they are neither discussed nor understood.But the results we have achieved are not to be taken lightly.A dream, if fully intelligible, always indicates wish-fulfillment; this is no mere coincidence, and therefore must be important. Other kinds of dreams I regard as disguised substitutes for an unknown content which must be investigated; our assumption is due, among other reasons, to the resemblance between dreams and faults.We must therefore investigate in order to understand this so-called disguise of dreams.

The reason why dreams are strange and incomprehensible is because of their disguise.What we need to know is: 1. The cause of dressing up is the motive, 2. The function of dressing up, 3. The method of dressing up.We can also say that makeup is the product of "dream work" dream-Work.It is now possible to describe the dream-work and describe all its forces. Please describe a dream first, which was recorded by a well-known lady in the field of psychoanalysis.She said that the dreamer was a well-educated and respected woman.This dream has not been analyzed, and the dream recorder thinks that it is self-evident and needs no explanation from the perspective of the psychoanalyst.The dreamer did not explain it, but just criticized and reprimanded it, as if she knew the hidden meaning of the dream, she said, "Look at an old woman in her fifties who only worries about her children day and night, there is such a ridiculous dream!"

Now it is time to describe the dream, which is about the "love service" during the Great War. "She went to the First Military Hospital and told the gate guard that she wanted to serve in the hospital and that she had to talk to the director. When she spoke, she put so much emphasis on the word 'service' that the police officer immediately realized that she was referring to 'love service'. Because she was an old woman, the police officer hesitated, and later, she was allowed to enter the hospital, but she did not go to see the director, but walked into a large dark room, where many officers and military doctors were standing or sitting in a large dark room. At the dinner table. She explained her purpose to a military doctor; ' ended in a murmur. But she knew from the half-baffled and half-malicious faces of the officers that they had understood her. She went on: 'I know our decision is very important. Strange, but we are all very earnest. A soldier in the field is never asked if he wants to die." Then there was a minute's awkward silence; the doctor put his arms around her waist and said: 'Madam, If that's the case, then...then the murmur.' She stepped back, thinking, 'They're probably all the same', and replied, 'My God, I'm an old woman, maybe There is no such thing. There is one condition that has to be observed: age must always be taken into account, and an old woman and a child may not... murmur; Understood'; but several officers, and a lad who had professed his love to her, laughed aloud, and the old woman went to the abbot, and asked to make things clear; the abbot was known to her. But she was taken aback because she didn't know the director's name. The military doctor showed her great respect and told her that on the way to the third floor, there was a narrow spiral iron staircase leading from this dark room to the upper floor. As she climbed the ladder, she heard an officer say: 'No matter how old she is, this decision is amazing enough; pay tribute to her!' She felt that she was just doing her duty, walking up an endless iron ladder".

The dream occurred twice in a few weeks, with slight variations, but, according to the lady, none of the variations were of any significance or importance. The progress of this dream is very similar to that of a day dream, with very few inconsistencies, and many points which can be understood only by asking: but you know that this has not been done.Most surprising and interesting are the many breaks in tone; there are three places where the content seems to become indistinct, and when the tone breaks, it is replaced by a murmur.Because we have not analyzed this dream, strictly speaking, we have no right to speculate on its meaning; however, there are some clues, such as the word "love slave", which can be used as a material for conclusion; The intermittent words can also be supplemented according to the meaning.After making up, the result is a dream, which means that the dreamer is ready to devote himself to fulfilling the sexual needs of various personnel in the army.This is indeed a shameless and terrible sexual phantasy, but-the dream does not talk about it at all, and whenever there should be something revealed in the context, there will be indistinct murmurs in the manifest dream; The secret meaning has been suppressed or eliminated.

The reason why these details cause depression is because their nature is too frightening. I think you can easily deduce this layer.Similar things abound lately.Take any political newspaper, and you will find that there are cuts everywhere, and there are blank spaces.Where these blanks occupied, there must have been something that the censors would have disapproved of, and so they were deleted to nothing.You probably think this is a pity, because the deleted news must be the most interesting material in the news. Sometimes not whole sentences are censored; the author, anticipating that certain passages are likely to be criticized by the censor, softens these sentences, or modifies them slightly, or only hints at them.Therefore, there are no gaps in the news, but from those ambiguous expressions that turn a corner, we can know that the author has done some internal inspection when writing.

According to this analogy, we can say that the words omitted in the dream or pretended to be murmurs must also be victims of the censorship.We do indeed use the term dream censorship as one of the causes of dream disguise.Whenever there is a discontinuity in the manifest dream, we know it to be due to censorship; furthermore, whenever there appears, among other more definite elements, one which is vaguer in memory, less definite, and more suspect. , which we consider to be evidence of the checking effect.In any case, however, the censorship is seldom as straightforward and cheerful as in the "love bondage" dream; the second method mentioned above is more common for the censorship: that is, the use of embellishments, hints and insinuations to represent the real meaning.

The censorship of dreams has a third way of exercising its powers, which cannot be compared with the censorship regulations; I can illustrate this special mode of operation of the censorship of dreams by referring to a dream analyzed above.You remember the dream of "buying three bad seats for one and a half volts."As for the hidden meaning behind this dream, "too hasty, too early" plays an important role; it means "it is stupid to get married so early, it is also stupid to buy theater tickets so early, and it is also stupid for sister-in-law to spend money on jewelry in such a hurry." Ridiculously stupid".This central idea is not revealed in the manifest dream, which focuses on watching a theater and buying tickets.Because of such a transplantation and reorganization of the dream elements, the manifest dream-content is so different from the latent dream-content that no one doubts its existence anymore.This shifting of the center of gravity is one of the chief methods of disguise; and it is for this reason that the dream is so strange that the dreamer is reluctant to admit that it is a product of his own mind.

Omissions, alterations and rearrangements of material—these are the modes of censorship and disguise of the dream.We are now concerned with disguise, and censorship as the main cause, or one of the main causes, of disguise.The term "displacement" often includes changes and replacements in arrangement. Now that the operation of the dream examination has been briefly described above, we may now turn our attention to its dynamics.I hope you don't use the anthropomorphic sense to look at the "inspection function", and describe the inspection as a serious little ghost, living in a small room in the brain to exercise power; and don't rigidly determine its location, thinking that there is a "brain center" produced The strength of the inspection, once the center is injured, the strength will stop immediately.We can now just use it as a useful noun to express a dynamic relationship.We need not therefore not ask the tendencies of those who exercise and those who receive this power; nor should we be surprised if we find ourselves confronted with censorship without seeing it.

Yet it is true.It must be remembered that when we apply the method of free association, we have had a strange experience: we know that there is a kind of resistance that we will inevitably meet from the dream elements when we try to reach out to the unconscious thoughts behind them.We have said that this resistance is sometimes great and sometimes very small.If the resistance is small, dream interpretation only needs a few associations; if the resistance is large, we have to have a lengthy association, which takes us far away from the original idea, and we have to resist all kinds of criticisms caused by associations along the way.This resistance encountered in the dream-interpretation is now the censorship in the "dream-work"; the rebellion is only the objectified censorship; thus it can be shown that the force of the censorship is not exhausted by promoting the disguise of the dream. , it remains as a permanent institution for the purpose of maintaining the masquerade that has been made.And just as the degree of resistance in dream-interpretation varies with each element, so the degree of disguise induced by the censorship varies with the elements of the dream as a whole.A comparative study of manifest and latent dreams shows that some latent elements are completely eliminated, some are slightly altered, and some are still present in manifest dreams, or even intensified.

But our purpose is to find out what tendencies are being examined, and what tendencies are being examined.This question is important both in understanding sleep dreams and in people's lives, and it is not difficult to answer if we take a general look at the dreams that have been interpreted.The censorship tendencies are tendencies that the dreamer recognizes or approves of when he is waking.If you deny the correct interpretation of your dreams, your motive at this time is to promote the examination and thus the motive of disguise, so there is a need for dream interpretation.Please go back to the dream of the fifty-year-old woman: although this dream has not been interpreted by us, she herself was deeply surprised.Had Dr. von Huger-Hellmus told the truth of the undoubted meaning of the dream, she would have been even more furious.It is precisely because of this attitude of criticism and rejection that the obscene words in the dream become murmurs.

Secondly, we may use this inner-critical point of view to describe the unpleasant character of the tendencies which the dream-censorship opposes.They often violate ethical, aesthetic, or social viewpoints, and we don't dare to think about them at ordinary times, and even if we think about them, we would be deeply disgusted.Moreover, these censored wishes disguised in dreams are expressions of unlimited egoism; for the dreamer's ego is present in the dreams and occupies an important place, although it also knows how to be invisible in manifest dreams. method.The ego-sacroegoism of this dream is certainly not unrelated to the psychic attitude necessary for sleep—that is, the attitude of non-communication with the entire external world. The self that breaks all ethical shackles is dominated by sexual needs that are rejected by aesthetic education and sanctioned by moral laws.And the pursuit of happiness, we call it "libido"—it unscrupulously chooses things that are forbidden by ordinary people as its objects: not only other people's wives, but even ordinary people regard it as sacred and inviolable— Such as mother and sister, father and brother, etc.Even the dream of the woman in her fifties was an incestuous dream, her "libido" apparently directed at her son.Other desires, such as those we consider incompatible with human nature, are also sufficient to make dreams come true.Hate overflows without limit; the desire for revenge and the desire to kill are also common, and it is even more aimed at the closest relatives-the dreamer's parents, brothers, sisters, couples and children, etc.-target them.These forbidden desires seem to be inspired by a kind of demon; if we know their meaning, we feel that the most severe punishment can be imposed on them in waking life.But the dream itself is not responsible for this evil content; the function of dreams is to protect sleep from disturbance, as you always remember.Evil is not in the nature of dreams; and you also know that some dreams may be considered to fulfill legitimate desires and exigencies of the body.These dreams are not disguised and need not be, since they function without offending the ethical and aesthetic inclinations of the ego.You also remember that the degree of masquerade is proportional to the following two factors: (1) the more frightening the desire to be examined, the greater the degree of masquerade;So a strictly disciplined and overly conscientious girl often uses a strict censorship, which obliges a little disguise to the dream excitement, which the doctor would regard as some permissible and harmless "libido". Desire, the dreamer himself will come to the same conclusion ten years later. You "we" in the original text still haven't allowed yourself to dare to denounce the results of our dream-interpretation studies.I think that "we" in your original text do not yet have a considerable understanding of the work of dream-interpretation; yet it is our duty to defend ourselves against certain possible attacks in the first place.The weaknesses of this study are not difficult to see.Our explanation is based on the assumptions adopted above: that dreams do have some meaning; that subconscious ideas derived from hypnosis can be used to explain normal sleep;Now if deduction from these hypotheses yields reliable results for the interpretation of dreams, we may perhaps conclude that these hypotheses are correct.But what if what is sought is only that which I have described?Of course someone will say: "These results are impossible, absurd, or at least very unreliable, so there must be something wrong with those assumptions. Maybe dreams are not a psychic phenomenon after all, or there is no unconscious in the normal psyche. Perhaps our technique is flawed. Is it not simpler and more satisfactory to make such assumptions than to accept the hideous conclusions deduced from our assumptions? Yes, simple is simple, and perfect is perfect, but it is not necessarily more correct because of this.You still have to wait for "we" in the original text, and you can't make a quick judgment at this time.First, our interpretation is likely to provoke an even stronger protest.You say that our results are unpleasant and repulsive to the average person, and that does not affect us very much after all; it is indeed a more powerful protest that we have explained some wishful tendencies behind the dream, and that the dreamer himself insists on dissenting.A dreamer said, "What? Do you want to prove from my dream that I don't want to spend money on my sister's dowry and my younger brother's education? But this is impossible. I work hard all day for my younger siblings. The only thing I want to do is to do my duty as an elder brother, because I am the eldest son, and I have promised this to my dead mother." Another woman said, "Do you say I want my husband to die? That is nonsense! Maybe you don't Believe it, not only my married life is happy, but if he dies, I will lose everything in the world." Another person said: "Do you think I have sexual desires for my sister; this is ridiculous; I am indifferent to her; our brother and sister are at odds and haven't spoken to each other for years." If these dreamers neither acknowledge nor deny the inclinations that are theirs, we may be unimpressed; These are the things they are not aware of.But if they discover in themselves a desire exactly the opposite of what we have explained, and if their life behavior proves that this opposite desire predominates, we shall have to retreat.Wouldn't it be time for us to dismiss the whole study of dream-interpretation as a work leading to fallacies? No, now is not the time.After careful consideration, even this strong defense is hardly tenable.If there are indeed unconscious tendencies in psychic life, it is of little importance that the opposite tendencies predominate in conscious life.There may be room in the mind for two opposing or contradictory tendencies; perhaps the superiority of one tends to cause the opposite to descend into the unconscious.The first objection above is therefore only that the results of dream-interpretation are both unsimplistic and unpleasant.On the first point we can say that, however much you love simplicity, it will by no means solve a single problem of dreams; you have to make up your mind to recognize the complex relations of dreams from the very beginning.As for the second point, if you use likes and dislikes as the motivation for judging science, it is obviously wrong.What does it matter if the results of dream interpretation are unpleasant, or even irritating? Can'empechepasd'exister. 〔This is harmless to existence〕——When I was practicing medicine in my youth, I heard my master Shake say so.If we want to understand the reality of this universe, we have to bow our heads and put aside our feelings of like and dislike.If a physicist proved that organic life on earth would soon be extinct, you would not dare to protest to him, "That's impossible; I don't like such predictions very much." Without a second physicist, I think, If a scientist came out to prove that the first physicist's premise or estimate was wrong, you would probably be silent.If you act only according to your likes and dislikes, you are imitating the mechanism of dream structure instead of trying to understand dreams. You may let go of the repulsive nature of the dream-desires examined, and make another protest, that human nature can never be so largely evil.However, can you confirm your statement with your own experience?What kind of person you think of yourself, I will not say, but you have seen people who are better than you and equal to you are full of good intentions, your enemies are chivalrous, and your friends are seldom jealous, so you must not Don't you refute the notion that sex is evil?Don't you know that the average person is very difficult to control and trust in their sexual life?Or do you not know that all the excesses and abnormalities of our night dreams are sins committed every day in our waking hours?Psychoanalysis here, too, only confirms Plato's maxim: "The wicked man breaks the law himself, but he who lives in the dream is a good man." Putting that aside now, look at the great war which still ravages Europe: imagine that violent fraud on a large scale prevails in civilized nations.Do you really think that a few careerists who kill people and fight for territory can fully expose this hidden malignity if they don't have millions of followers who fight with each other?Under such circumstances, who would dare to argue that human nature is not evil? You may attack me for being prejudiced against the Great War, but tell me that all heroism, self-sacrifice, and supreme good qualities of public service are also expressed in the Great War.That is true; but do not denigrate psychoanalysis because it affirms one aspect, saying that it denies others, as we are often wronged.We are never willing to deny the nobility of human nature, and we have never belittled the value of human nature.On the contrary, I not only showed you the evil thoughts that were checked, but also said that there is a censorship effect to suppress these evil thoughts and make them invisible.We emphasize the evil of human nature only because others deny it, which does not improve the spiritual life of people, but makes it difficult to understand.If we give up this one-sided moral view now, we will surely find a more correct formula for the relationship between good and evil in human nature. This question can be closed.Although the results of dream interpretation are unavoidable and strange, we need not give up the work of dream interpretation because of this.In the future there may be another way of understanding these results; for the present we must stick to the fact that the disguise of dreams is the result of the self-approved tendency to check the evil thoughts that arise during the night's sleep.If we ask why or how these evil thoughts arise at night, there are still many points to be studied and many questions to be answered. It would be a mistake if we ignored another result of these studies at this time.We are not aware of dream-wishes which disturb sleep; we know them at first only through dream-interpretation; that is why we have called these wishes "currently unconscious", in the sense given above.But we have to admit that they were not only unconscious at the time; for we have said many times that the dreamer does not change his attitude of denial even though he knows of their existence through dream interpretation.The situation is as if, in explaining the 'hiccup' slip of the tongue, the after-dinner orator angrily declared that he never, or at any time, meant to insult his leader.We could not believe at that time that he was telling the truth, and we really thought that the speaker never knew what he meant.Whenever we interpret dreams of masquerade and complexity, we inevitably invoke the same situation, and thus add an additional layer of meaning to our theory.We may now almost say that there are certain courses and tendencies in the spiritual life which we do not understand;This gives the word subconscious a new meaning: adjectives such as "at that time" or "temporarily" are no longer the meaning of the word.This point will be discussed further later.