Chapter 14 Lecture 13: The Primitive and Childish Features of Dreams

We have said that the dream-work, which is influenced by censorship, transforms latent dream thoughts into other forms, and this chapter proceeds from this conclusion.These latent thoughts are of the same nature as the conscious thoughts familiar to us in waking life; but the new forms they express are, because of their many peculiarities, elusive to us.We have already said that this way of expression often returns to the stage of cultural development that has long passed—such as pictographic characters, symbolic relationships, and even the state that existed before the development of language and thought.For this reason we call the representations employed by the dream-work the primitive or regressive archaicorregressive modes.

We may therefore infer that, if we study the dream-work more deeply, we can draw some valuable conclusions about the early cultures which are not very clear at present.I wish it was possible, but no one has done it until now.The period to which the dream-work goes back is primitive and has a double meaning: firstly, it refers to the infancy of the individual; secondly, it refers to the infancy of the race.Because the individual made a simple reenactment of the entire development process of human beings when they were young.I believe it is not impossible to discern underlying psychic processes which are individualistic and rooted in the primacy of the race.Symbolic representation, for example, is never acquired by the individual, but may be regarded as a relic of the development of the race.

This is not, however, the only original characteristic of dreams.From your own practical experience, you can always know that childhood experiences are easily forgotten.Experiences from one year to five, six, or eight do not leave the same traces in memory as later experiences.Although some individuals can boast that they can remember their experiences from childhood to the present without interruption, but the more common ones are just the opposite, that is, the experience of childhood is a blank in memory.In my opinion, the matter has not received enough attention.Children can speak when they are two years old, and they can adapt to complex psychological situations, and the words are forgotten once they are said, and they are no longer remembered when someone mentions them a few years later.However, because the burden of experience is less in childhood, the memory should be stronger than later.And we have no reason to say that memory is a particularly high or difficult mental activity; sometimes people with very low levels of intelligence have stronger memories.

However, I must draw your attention to the second feature, which is based on the first feature—namely, that although the experiences of the first few years of childhood have been forgotten, there are still some recollections, mostly in the form of images, There seems to be no proper reason for its being retained.Memory selects among the impressions it receives in adult life, retaining the important and forgetting the unimportant; this is not the case with memories retained from childhood.These memories are not necessarily important experiences in childhood, nor are they even considered important experiences by children themselves. They are often ugly and meaningless experiences in themselves, so that we have to wonder why this special experience is remembered.I have used analytical methods to study the problems of childhood forgetting and fragmentary recollection, and have found that despite the apparent opposite, children, like adults, retain only important experiences in memory.But the so-called important experience is replaced by those seemingly trivial things in memory due to the effect of compression, especially the result of displacement.For this reason I call these childhood memories screen memories, from which all forgotten experiences can be recalled through thorough analysis.

During psychoanalytic treatment, we often fill in the blanks of childhood memories repeatedly. If the treatment is effective, we can often recall those long-forgotten childhood experiences and bring them to light.In fact, these impressions are never forgotten, but form part of the subconscious mind so that they cannot be contacted.However, these experiences sometimes naturally flow out of the subconscious, thus forming dreams.It can be seen that the dream life can return to these latent and childish experiences.Instances of this kind are frequently found in psycho-analytic writings, and I have given one myself.I once dreamed of a man who seemed to have done me favors, and I saw him very clearly.He has only one eye, is short and fat, with high shoulders; I know from the situation that he is a doctor.Fortunately, my mother was not dead at that time, and I had to ask her what the doctor who came to see us when I left my hometown until I was three years old; she said that the doctor had only one eye, was short and fat, with two shoulders Towering; I also know why this doctor was invited, but I can't remember it.This recall of an experience forgotten in childhood is thus a further "primitive" feature of dreams.

This knowledge is quite relevant for another problem, but this other problem has not yet been solved.We know that dreams originate from evil thoughts, or from excessive sexual desire, and that the censorship of dreams and the disguise of dreams are therefore necessary; you will always remember the astonishment caused by this theory.Suppose we interpret such a dream. The dreamer does not dispute the interpretation itself, but he must ask how the wish came into his mind, since he seems to know nothing about it and is conscious of it. wishes backfired.We can tell him without hesitation the origin of that wish which he denies: these evil impulses often originate in the past or the near past.It can be shown that he was aware of these impulses, although he does not remember them now.For example, a certain woman had a dream in which she hoped that her only daughter would die at the age of seventeen.With the help of our analysis, she realized that she had indeed had the evil intention of wishing her child to die.Girls are the product of unhappy marriages, and soon after the marriage the couple divorces.When the child was not yet born, the mother raised her fist and beat her belly in a rage because of the quarrel with her husband, intending to kill the fetus.In fact, there are many mothers like this woman. They love and even dote on their children now, but in the past, pregnancy was not what they wanted. After pregnancy, they also hoped that the baby in their bodies would not develop; the consequences.So this wish to have a loved one die, astonishing as it is, stemmed from all their early relationships.

A man expressed in a dream that he had the desire to have his first beloved son die, and he admitted that he had had this idea.His marriage turned out to be a disappointment.So when his child was a baby, he often thought that if the child died, he would be free again, and he could do whatever he wanted.There are many similar abhorrent impulses, all of which have the same origin; they are all memories of something in the past which has operated in consciousness and in psychic life.From this you may be inclined to conclude that this dream and this wish could not have come to pass if the relationship between the two had not changed or remained the same.I think you can agree with this conclusion, but I want to warn you that your thoughts should not be based on the superficial meaning of the dream, but the meaning obtained from the interpretation.A manifest dream of the death of a loved one may be used as a dreadful mask, but the actual meaning is quite different. Perhaps the beloved is a substitute for another person.

But this situation can cause you another, bigger problem.You would think: "Even if the wish to die did exist and could be verified by memory, this would not be the real explanation; for the wish has long since been overcome and now exists only as a memory in the unconscious. Without emotional value, it is not enough to be a strong stimulus. So your hypothesis just now lacks evidence. Why did you recall that wish in your dream?" You have reasons to ask this question; if you want to answer , inevitably involves too much, and compels us to determine our attitude towards one of the most important points of the theory of dreams.But I must limit the scope of the discussion to this issue, so please forgive me.We shall now be satisfied if we can prove that this long-overcome desire is indeed the origin of the dream; thereafter we may proceed to inquire whether other evil thoughts can also be traced back to the past.

We will limit ourselves to the "death wish" for the time being. We must know that this wish mostly originates from the unrestricted egoism of the dreamer and is often the main cause of dreams.If any one person becomes an obstacle in our life--we human beings are so complicated in relation to each other, so this situation often happens--we are immediately ready to drive him away in our dreams, regardless of whether this person is a parent, Husband and wife brother or sister.It is so strange that such malice should be inherent in human beings that, without further evidence, we must be reluctant to admit that this dream interpretation is correct.But once we realize that the origin of this desire must lie in the past, it is not difficult to see that at a certain period in the individual's past, this egoism and this desire were not enough even for the dearest person. It's weird.A child whose experience in infancy is later forgotten often expresses this egoism openly.Because a child always loves himself first, and then he knows how to love others and sacrifice himself.Even if he loves another, it is only because his own needs are met—so also from selfish motives.It is only later that the impulse to love is freed from egoism, so that the child learns how to love in fact out of selfishness.

Here it is best to compare the child's attitude towards his brothers and sisters with his attitude towards his parents.A child is not necessarily in love with his brothers and sisters, and he often confesses it frankly.He regards his brothers and sisters as his enemies, and therefore he hates them; this attitude often remains unchanged for many years, until or even after adulthood.Tenderness is then often substituted, or we may say often replaced or overshadowed by a dearer affection.But a hostile attitude always seems to develop earlier.Children between the ages of two and a half and four, when a baby brother or sister is born, are often unfriendly, saying that they do not like the new child, or that they wish the stork would take it back.Thereafter, whenever the opportunity arises, it is often reported that the new child will be vilified with excuses; and even tried to attack and hurt.If the age difference is small, when the child's psychological activities are more fully developed, the younger siblings he regards as the enemy already exist, and he has to adapt himself to the situation; Arouse benevolent emotions, and treat him as an object of interest, a living doll; if the two are as much as eight years apart in age, and the older child is a girl, it can immediately arouse protective maternal impulses.Frankly, however, we should not be surprised if in our dreams we feel a wish for the death of a brother or sister, since it is not difficult to find its origin in childhood, or, if they still live together, often at a later date. Its origin can be found in the middle of the year.

Children in the nursery often have violent conflicts, competing for the love of their parents, for common goods, or even for space in the house.The target of this kind of hostility can be siblings or siblings.George Bernard Shaw said: "If a young English lady hates anyone more than her own mother, it must be her sister." , How can there be a sense of hatred between mother and daughter and father and son? The relationship between mother and daughter and father and son is also naturally closer from the child's point of view, which is what we expect: we feel that the relationship between parents and children is more reliable than that between brothers and sisters without affection. Annoyed.The love of the latter is profane, while the love of the former is enshrined as sacred.However, according to daily observations, the mutual affection between parents and grown-up children is often not as ideal and noble as society stipulates; If one is not restrained by the concept of benevolence on the one hand, then this kind of hostility will inevitably erupt one day.The motives for this mutual hostility are well known.We know that same-sex couples tend to alienate each other like daughters towards their mothers and sons towards their fathers.The girl resents the mother for restricting her will, because the mother often restricts her daughter's sexual freedom by social opinion;As for the situation between father and son, it is even more violent.From the son's point of view, the father is the concrete representative of the social oppression he is unwilling to endure. Because of the father's obstacle, the son can't do whatever he wants, he can't indulge his early sexual pleasures, and he can't enjoy the family property. benefit.If the father is a king, the son's wish for his father's death is all the stronger.The relationship between father and daughter or mother and child does not seem to be prone to such tragic situations, because there is only love here, which will not be disturbed by any selfish considerations. You may ask me, why do I talk about this fact that everyone knows but no one dares to say?For people tend to deny the importance of these facts in actual life, and to exaggerate the number of times that social ideals have actually been realized.However, it is safer to let psychologists speak the truth than to let sarcastic people tell the truth.In fact, this denial is limited to real life; for the novel and the drama have completely overturned these ideals and described this motive nakedly. It is not surprising, therefore, that most people's dreams express a wish to exclude parents, especially fathers or mothers of the same sex.We may assume that this wish is also present in waking hours; and that it may exist within consciousness.If it can be hidden behind another motive, as in the third example mentioned above, the dreamer hides his true intention behind a feeling of pity for his father's illness.This hostile attitude seldom prevails alone,--it is often overcome by softer emotions, lies still, and then appears alone in the dream.The exaggerated form it manifests alone in the dream restores its true proportions when our interpretation keeps it in its proper place in relation to the rest of the dreamer's life.But this wish for the death of a loved one can sometimes have no basis in real life, and adults never admit to harboring such a wish in waking life.This is because this deep-seated hostility, especially in sons to their fathers and daughters to their mothers, originates within the earliest years of childhood. What I mean by love rivalry, obviously has a sexual undertone.A boy has long developed a special tenderness towards his mother, regarding his mother as his property, and his father as an enemy fighting for this property; in the same way, a little girl also believes that her mother interferes with her relationship with her father. Tenderness invaded her own rightful place.According to the observation results, it can be known that these emotions originated very early, and we call it the "Edipus complex" Edipus complex, because in the myth of Oedipus, there are two extreme desires arising from the side of the son—namely, The desire to kill the father and marry the mother—only slightly changed the way of presentation.I did not claim that the Oedipus complex exhausted all relations between parent and child; these relations could be much more complex.Moreover, this complex sometimes develops, sometimes recedes, and sometimes even reverses the relationship, but in any case it is always the most important component of the child's psychology; and its influence and results are often easy to ignore and not pay attention to.Moreover, parents themselves often stimulate their children, causing Oedipus complex reactions.Because they tend to favor children of the opposite sex, fathers always favor their daughters and mothers their sons; or, if the love of marriage has cooled, the children are regarded as substitutes for lovers who have lost their attractiveness. After the Oedipus complex was brought up by psychoanalytic research, it cannot be said that the world expressed sympathy; on the contrary, adults expressed the most violent opposition to this concept.Although some people do not deny the existence of this taboo emotion, the result is tantamount to denying it, because the explanation they put forward obviously goes against the facts and deprives the complex of its due value.I have always believed that there is no need to deny or embellish this.The inevitable fate of all is seen in Greek mythology in these facts, which we can only willingly admit.Although the Oedipus complex was rejected by real life and exiled in the unofficial history, it was finally revealed in the myth, which is very intriguing.Ranke has studied this question at length, and has shown how this complex provides many stimuli to poetry and drama, undergoing infinite variations, transformations, and disguises, in short, with the same metamorphosis as that produced by the censorship of dreams.Therefore, some dreamers may show an Oedipus complex when they are old, although they do not have conflicts with their parents.And closely related to this complex is the so-called "castration complex", which is the reaction caused by the father's intimidation of early childish sexual activities. From those facts which have been ascertained, we can go on to study the spiritual life of children.The origin of another forbidden wish in the dream, that of excessive sexual desire, is now or may be expected to be explained in the same way.Therefore, we had to study the development of children's sexual life, and discovered the following facts from different aspects.First, it is an implausible fallacy to say that children do not have sexual life and to assume that the first sexual desire occurs when the genitals mature in adolescence.In fact, children already have a rich sex life, although there are many differences from the normal sex life that adults regard as it.The so-called perverted sexual activities in adult life are different from the normal in the following points: 1) Regardless of the boundaries of species, such as the difference between humans and animals; 2) There is no feeling of disgust; 3) Break the boundaries of relatives, that is, the boundaries of non-marriage of the same race; 4) Break the boundaries of gender 5. Treat other organs and other parts of the body as equal to the genitals.None of these boundaries existed at the beginning, but were gradually formed due to development and education.The child is not bound by these boundaries: he does not know that there is a great difference between man and beast, and it is only when he is a little older that he considers himself superior to other animals.At the beginning of his life, he did not show any disgust towards feces, but he gradually developed a feeling of disgust due to the influence of education; he did not pay much attention to the difference in sex at first, and in fact thought that the genitals of men and women were the same. his earliest sexual desires and curiosity are aimed at those closest to him or for other reasons--parents, brothers, sisters, or nurses--parents, brothers, sisters, or nurses; Another characteristic can be seen, which can also be expressed when the relationship reaches a high level later-that is, he not only seeks pleasure in the genitals, but also thinks that many other parts of the body can feel the same way. Produces similar pleasure and therefore has the same function as the genitals.We may therefore say that the child is poly-morphously perverse, and even if we find only traces of these impulses in his body, this is due, on the one hand, to their lesser intensity than the sexual activities of later life, and, on the other hand, to education. Immediately and forcefully deter all sexual manifestations of the child.This suppression may be said to form a theory; some of these manifestations are strenuously ignored by adults, others are misinterpreted and rendered sexual, and the whole fact is later denied.These people often start by berating children in the nursery for their sexual "naughtiness," and then sitting at their desks arguing for their sexual purity.In fact, children can often display extremely perverted sexual activities when they live alone or when they are seduced.It is natural for adults to call such activities "children's tricks" or "tricks" and not punish them too severely, because a child cannot be judged morally or legally, as if he has grown up and wants to be judged by himself. It seems entirely responsible; yet these facts do exist and are important, both as evidence of innate tendencies on the one hand;If we could see these perverted wishes behind the disguise of the dream, it would only mean that the dream, too, had completely reverted to its infantile state. Among these forbidden desires, the desire for incest, that is, the desire to have sexual intercourse with parents, brothers, and sisters, is particularly important.You know how human society abhors—or at least professes to abhor—this animal desire, and prohibits it.The abhorrence of incest has been given by scholars the most absurd explanations: some have thought it a way of the Creator's preservation of the species, since the marriage of kin would degenerate the race; Sexual desire has been avoided.If these things were true, human beings would naturally be free from incest, and why it is necessary for society to prohibit it is beyond us to understand; the existence of this prohibition is enough to prove the existence of a strong desire.Psycho-analytic research has clearly established that the child must first have a relative as an object of sexual love, and only later expresses his objection to this idea, which cannot be traced to the psychology of the individual. The results of the study of child psychology in relation to the interpretation of dreams may now be summarized as follows.We already know that not only the forgotten material of the child's experience can enter the dream, but also that the child's psychic life and its peculiarities, such as egoism, choice of objects for incest, etc., continue to exist in the unconscious.And so we revert every night to this childish period by dreaming. Since the belief that "the subconscious mind is the mental life of young children" can be proved, the annoying impression of "human nature is inherently evil" can be gradually weakened.For this terrible evil refers only to the first, primitive and childish part of the psychic life, acting only in childhood.On the one hand, we do not pay much attention to it because its weight is not large; on the other hand, we do not pay much attention to it because we do not require a high ethical standard for children.Our dreams, by reverting to this infantile period, seem to expose our sinfulness; but this appearance is incredible, although we have been surprised by it; we are not so bad as the dream-interpretation supposes. It would be unreasonable to be ashamed of our sinful dreams if they were merely childish or a return to a primitive period of ethical development, if they only made us children again in thought and emotion. .Rationality, however, is only part of our mental life; there is much more to it than rationality, so that we are ashamed of these dreams even though we know they are irrational.With these dreams we are subjected to the censorship of dreams; and if one of these desires were to be recognized by an exceptionally naked intrusion into consciousness, we would be outraged; We still feel terribly ashamed.Just imagine that year when the respected wife had a dream about "love servant", even though she hadn't explained the meaning of the dream to her, she also angrily denounced the absurdity of the dream.The question is therefore unresolved; if we continue to study the problem of the evil of dreams, we may perhaps arrive at another conclusion and another valuation of human nature. Our whole research has yielded two results, but these two results can only be regarded as the starting point of new problems and doubts.First, the retrogression of dreams, the regression indreams, not only formal but substantial; not only translating our thoughts into a primitive mode of expression, but awakening the peculiarities of primitive psychic life—the ancient The primordial drive of dominion and sexuality restores us even to the intellectual riches of the ancients, if symbols can be regarded as intellectual possessions.Secondly, that these ancient and childish traits, which formerly predominated, have now been relegated to the unconscious, and have altered and expanded our conception of it. The term "subconscious" no longer resembles the idea used elsewhere; the subconscious is now a special domain, with its own desires and modes of expression, and special psychological mechanisms.But latent dream-thoughts derived from dream-interpretation do not belong to this sphere; rather, they seem to be of the same kind as our waking thoughts; although they still belong to the unconscious: how can this contradiction be explained?We recognize the need for discernment here.Some ideas originate in the conscious life and features of the conscious life - which may be called the "memory" of the previous day - and certain ideas from the subconscious area come together to form the dream, and it is in these two areas that the dream-work is completed. between.The influence of the unconscious on this memory may constitute the condition of the regressive action.This may be regarded as the deepest understanding of the nature of dreams until further investigations of the mind are made; but we shall soon be able to give another name to the unconscious quality of the latent dream-thoughts, and to distinguish it from the Subliminal material of origin. Of course, we can also ask: what kind of force compels our mental activities to have this retrograde effect during sleep?Why can't sleep-disturbing psychic stimuli be dealt with without this retrogression?If, because of the censorship of the dream, psychic activity has to be disguised and adopt ancient and now incomprehensible forms of expression, why should these old impulses, old desires and old characteristics, which have now been overcome, be reactivated?In short, what is the use of retrogression, both in substance and in form?To answer this question fully, we have to say that this is the only possible method of dream formation.And as far as the movement is concerned, there is no other way of getting rid of the stimulus that caused the dream.For this answer, however, we cannot at present give a considerable reason.