Chapter 15 Lecture 14 The Satisfaction of Desires

It may be necessary to revisit the course of our research.When we first encountered the disguise of dreams when we were about to apply the analytical method, we decided to suspend the question of disguise for the time being and study the dreams of children in order to gain some insight into the nature of dreams in general.When the study of children's dreams has yielded results, we will proceed directly to the study of dream disguises. I hope that we will gradually gain some confidence in the study of dream disguises.But we have to admit that the results obtained from these two aspects are not coherent with each other, so seeking the coherence of results is what we should do at this time.

From both investigations it appears that the main quality of dreams consists in the experience of transfiguring thoughts into hallucinations.How this process is accomplished is astonishing.But this is a matter of general psychology, which we need not ask here.We already know from children's dreams that the purpose of the dream-work is to obtain the gratification of a certain desire and thereby eliminate the stimulus which disturbs sleep.Of course we cannot say the same about the dreams of masquerade until we know how to interpret them, but at the outset we hope to be able to connect our ideas about these dreams with those about the children's dreams.Our hope can be realized if we know that all dreams are in fact children's dreams, that they make use of childish material, and that they are characterized by the child's psychic impulses and mechanisms.Now that we know something about dream disguises, we are compelled to ask further: Does the idea that dreams are wish-fulfillments also explain dreams of disguise?

We have just explained many dreams, but we have not dealt with the question of the "fulfillment of wishes".I think you must have felt the question many times before in our previous interpretations of dreams: "Has the fulfillment of the desire which you assume to be the object of the dream-work been proved?" family often raised.You must know that human beings are born with an emotion of aversion to new knowledge and original ideas. One of the ways to express this emotion is to narrow any new solution to an irreducible range, and if possible, give it a label. "Desire-fulfillment" has become the designation by which this new theory of our dreams is summed up.As soon as they heard that dreams are the fulfillment of desires, they asked: "Where in dreams is the fulfillment of desires?"They recall at once their own innumerable dreams, all of which are accompanied by very unpleasant emotions, sometimes frightening; the psychoanalytic dream theory therefore seems very unreliable.However, the question is not difficult to answer; since in the disguised dream the fulfillment of the desire is not openly revealed, but is left to be sought, its proof must wait until the dream has been interpreted.We also know that all the desires behind the disguised dream are forbidden by the censorship, and that it is the very existence of these desires that constitutes the cause of the disguise and the motive of the censorship.But it is not easy for ordinary critics to understand the fact that we must not ask which desire a dream fulfills until it has been interpreted; they always forget this layer.In fact, their reluctance to accept the theory of fulfillment of desires is also the result of the censorship of dreams, which makes him deny these censored dream desires by substituting fakes for real thoughts.

In ourselves, of course, we need to explain why we have so many unpleasant dreams; and we hope to understand why we have so-called "anxiety dreams".Here we encounter for the first time the problem of the affections of dreams; a question which deserves a special study, but which, unfortunately, cannot be discussed at present.If dreams are wish-fulfillments, of course there is no possibility of intrusion by unpleasant emotions: the usual critics seem to be right on this point.However, the problem is complicated because the following three points are ignored by them. A dream work may sometimes not be able to fully create a desire-fulfilling situation.Thus, a part of the unpleasant emotion in the latent thought appears in the manifest dream.The results of the analysis show that the unhappiness of these latent thoughts is much stronger than the dreams resulting from them.This can be proved in any example.We therefore admit that the dream-work cannot achieve its purpose at this time, just as thirst cannot be quenched by dreaming of drinking water.The dreamer woke up still feeling thirsty and had to get up to drink water.However, this is also a legitimate dream, since it still retains the character of a dream.We need to say "Utdesint vires, tamen est laudanda volun-tas" ["Lack of strength, but still the practice of desire"].In any case, its clearly recognizable intentions are still to be applauded.There are indeed many examples of failures of this kind of work; one of the reasons for the failure is that although dream-work is easy to transform facts, it is far more difficult to use dream-work to produce the required emotional changes; Is very stubborn.Therefore, while the dream-work is in progress, the unpleasant content of the dream-thoughts is transformed into a desire-fulfillment, while its unpleasant emotion remains unchanged.Affection and content are thus at odds, and critics take the opportunity to say that dreams are not at all desire-gratifications, and that even innocuous contents are accompanied by unpleasant emotions.Against this crude criticism we may say that it is in these dreams that the desire-fulfilling tendency of the dream-work is most evident.For this tendency only appears separately in these dreams.The reason why their criticism is wrong is that people who are not familiar with neurotics always think that the relationship between content and emotion is closer than what actually exists; therefore they cannot understand that when the content changes, the accompanying emotion can remain unchanged.

2. The second point is more important, but it is also neglected by ordinary people.The satisfaction of a desire can produce pleasure, but we have to ask: "Who does it cause pleasure?" Of course, the person who feels pleasure is the person who has this desire.We know, however, that the dreamer's attitude towards his desires is peculiar: he rejects them, reproaches them, in short, does not want them.The fulfillment of these desires, therefore, does not please him, but displeases him.Experience has shown that such unhappiness, though it remains to be explained, are the main causes of anxiety.As far as his desires are concerned, the dreamer is like two people, united by some common point.I don't want to extend this question any further, but just want to tell you a famous fairy tale.You can see these relationships in this story.A loving rishi said to satisfy the first three desires of a poor man and his wife.The two of them were overjoyed, and they were very cautious about the choice of desire.The woman wished to have two sausages because she smelled the smell of her neighbor's sausages.In a moment of thought, the sausage was placed in front of him, and the first desire was thus satisfied.The man didn't take it seriously, and wished that the two sausages were hung on the end of his wife's nose, besides resentment, so the two sausages were hung on the end of her nose and could not be moved, and the second desire was fulfilled.But this is a man's desire, but a woman suffers from it.You can imagine the ending of this story; because they are husband and wife after all, their third desire had to make the sausage leave the woman's nose.This fairy story, which we may often use as a metaphor for other things, is used here only to illustrate the fact that the satisfaction of one person's desire can deeply displease another, unless the two are completely of one mind.

It is now easy to give a more complete interpretation of the so-called anxiety dreams.One more point must be taken into account before adopting the hypothesis which is commonly supported by several quarters.This is the fact that the content of anxious dreams is often undisguised; it seems to have escaped the attention of the examiner.Such dreams are often the fulfillment of an undisguised desire, but of course this desire is not one the dreamer is about to admit, but one that he has repelled; and anxiety then takes the place of the censorship.The child's dream is the blatant fulfillment of a desire admitted by the dreamer, the ordinary dream of masquerade is the covert fulfilment of a repressed desire, and the formula of the anxiety dream is the blatant gratification of a repressed desire.It can be seen that anxiety means that the power of the repressed desire is too great to be subdued by the censorship function. Therefore, although there is a constraint by the censorship function, its satisfaction can still be obtained or roughly obtained.Because we stand on the standpoint of inspection, we should know that the satisfaction of suppressed desires can only make us unhappy and cause our resistance.The anxiety manifested in the dream, therefore, arises from the forces which were unable to subdue the desire at that time.Why this resistance turned out to be anxiety we cannot know from the study of dreams alone: ​​we must obviously discuss it elsewhere.

The hypotheses available for undisguised anxiety dreams may also be used to explain those with only a slight disguise, as well as other dreams that produce unpleasant or equivalent anxiety.Roughly speaking, anxiety dreams often wake us up; we are often awakened first, before the repressed desire behind the dream can overcome the censor and achieve full satisfaction.As far as these dreams are concerned, their original purpose is not achieved, but their main character is not changed by this.We have compared dreams to the guardians or guardians of sleep, with the purpose of protecting sleep from disturbance.If the current power of this guardian is not sufficient to protect against disturbances or dangers alone, it will have to wake up the sleeper like a dream; but we sometimes continue to snore despite the unrest and anxiety caused by dreams.We masturbate in our sleep and say, "After all, it's only a dream," and thus continue to sleep without waking up.

You may ask at what point the desire of the dream overwhelms the censor.That depends both on desire and on censorship; perhaps for some reason the power of desire can become very strong; Attitude.We have already seen that the censorship varies in intensity from time to time for the different dream elements, and thus varies in severity; we may now add that the general behavior of the censorship is not constant, nor is it always the same for the same element. Stern expression.If the examiner suddenly feels powerless to contend with a certain desire, he throws off his disguise and resorts to the last resort: that is, to awaken the dreamer with anxiety.

Why do these sinful, repelled desires arise at night to disturb our sleep?We find this strange, but we cannot yet explain it.To answer this question we have to resort to another hypothesis based on the nature of sleep.During the day, the heavy pressure of censorship is placed on these desires, making them impossible to intrude into consciousness.But at night the censorship, like all other functions of mental life, is perhaps temporarily relaxed by sleep, or at least greatly weakened.Now that the censorship has been relaxed, the forbidden desires take advantage of the opportunity to act.Some insomniac neurotics attribute their initial insomnia to automaticity; they dare not fall asleep because they are afraid of dreams—that is to say, they are deeply afraid of the consequences of the relaxation of the censorship.You can easily see that the weakening of the censorship is harmless: because sleep weakens the faculties of action; so that evil thoughts, even if they take advantage of this opportunity, can at best produce dreams, but are actually harmless.For this reason, the dreamer can masturbate at night and say, "It's just a dream," let it go, and go on falling asleep.

3. If you remember that the dreamer opposes his own desires as if they were two different persons, united by a close relationship, you will see that there is another way in which the fulfillment of desires can cause very unpleasant events. : This method is punishment.Here again we can borrow the fairy tale mentioned above as a help for illustration.The sausage on the plate in front of him is the direct satisfaction of the desire of the first person, the wife; the sausage on the nose is the satisfaction of the desire of the second person, the husband; at the same time, it is the punishment for the stupid desire of the wife.In neurosis we also see desires similar to the third desire in this story.The psychic life of man is rich in such punishing tendencies, and they are all so powerful that they may be regarded as the main cause of certain painful dreams.You may now think that so-called desire-gratification has little ground.However, after careful study, it can be seen that your opinion is wrong.The terms fulfillment of desires, fulfillment of anxieties, fulfillment of punishment, etc., are of course in very narrow sense when compared with the various possibilities of what a dream may or may not be.However, anxiety is the absolute opposite of desire, and the opposite is easily associated with the positive. As far as we know, the two are the same thing in the subconscious, and punishment itself is also a kind of satisfaction of desire. What it satisfies is examiner's desire.

Therefore, in general terms, although you oppose the theory of desire fulfillment, I have not given in; but we are not willing to shirk the work: that is, to prove the existence of desire fulfillment in every disguised dream.Now come back to the dream explained above, that of a florin and a half buying tickets for three bad seats, from which we learned a great deal about dreams.I hope you still remember it.The woman heard from her husband one day that her friend Alice, who was three years younger than him, was engaged. That night, she dreamed that she was going to a play with a man, and one side of the theater was almost empty.The man told her that Alice and her fiancé would have liked to come too, but had not come because they would not pay a florin and a half for three bad seats.It's still cheaper for them, she said.We already know that in her dream thoughts she was dissatisfied with her husband and deeply regretted her hasty marriage.We may wonder how such thoughts of regret can be turned into desire-gratifications.And in manifest dreams, how to show considerable traces.We already know that the element "too soon, too hastily" has been censored; the empty seats in the theater are a metaphor for this element. The statement "Three tickets for a florin and a half" was originally puzzling; but it is easier to understand now that we have a knowledge of symbolism. The number "three" is actually a representative of a man, so it is not difficult to translate this manifest component of the dream as: "I can buy a man with a dowry" and "I can buy a man ten times better with my dowry." "To the theater," apparently referring to marriage. "Too early to buy a ticket," actually refers to getting married too early.This substitution is the work of desire fulfillment.Although the dreamer feels dissatisfied with getting married too early, it is not as strong as the day when he heard that his girlfriend was engaged.She also boasted about her marriage, thinking she was happier than her girlfriend.We often hear of innocent girls who, when the day of their betrothal comes, take pleasure in thinking that they will soon be able to see plays which they were not allowed to see before. The manifestations of curiosity and the desire to "look on" certainly have their origin in the sexual "voyeuristic impulse," especially as regards parents, which contributes to a strong motive for early marriage in girls; It is a substitute for marriage.Now that she deeply regrets marrying too early, she thinks back to the time when she used this same marriage to satisfy her "voyeuristic desire" skoptophilia; The idea of ​​going to the theater replaces the idea of ​​getting married. We may perhaps say that the example just taken does not seem to be easy to account for the fulfillment of latent desires; indeed, as with any other masquerade dream, our interpretation has to proceed in such a detour.Here and now, we can't talk about it in detail, so we just want to declare that this research method must have achieved considerable results.In theory, however, I would like to discuss this point more: for experience has shown us that this is one of the most contradictory and misleading points of the whole theory of dreams.And you may still feel that I have withdrawn part of my theory, for I have said that dreams can be desire-fulfillment, and also the opposite of desire-fulfillment, such as anxiety or punishment; you may think this is another good opportunity, but Forcing me to make further concessions.At the same time, it has been said that I have presented my own obvious facts too briefly to be convincing. Although you have come to this point in your study of dream interpretation, and have accepted all our conclusions to this extent, you often cannot help but stop and ask when it comes to the fulfillment of desires: Even if you admit that all dreams have meaning, and this The meaning can be studied by psychoanalysis, but why do we deny all the evidence to the contrary, and reluctantly put this meaning in the formula of desire satisfaction?Why must our thoughts at night be less multifaceted than our thoughts during the day?Why can't a dream be sometimes the fulfillment of a desire, sometimes its opposite, such as fear, and sometimes a resolution, a warning, a consideration of the pros and cons of a problem, or a condemnation, a conscience sting, or preparation for a career—or something else?Why insist that it is a desire, or at most just the opposite of desire? We might say that it is of little importance to disagree on this point, if all other points are agreed upon.Are we not satisfied now that we have discovered the meaning of dreams and the means of finding them?If we limit the meaning of dreams too strictly, the achievements made in the past may inevitably be discarded.However, this statement is incorrect.For misunderstandings on this point have an important bearing on our knowledge of dreams and, as a result, would jeopardize the value of this knowledge for the understanding of neuroses.There is another layer, although "yielding oneself and obeying others" is valuable in dealing with the world, but in science, it is not only useless but also harmful. Why aren't dreams multifaceted?The first answer to this question is trivial.I don't know why they don't, they do, and I don't disagree.As far as I'm concerned, they might as well be.There is, however, a small obstacle to this broader conception of dreams—namely, that the meaning of the dream is not actually the same.My second answer will focus on the following: namely, that the idea that dreams can represent the multiple ways in which thought and intellect operates is by no means a new idea to me.Once when I was researching the development of a certain pathology, I recorded a dream that lasted three nights and then stopped.According to my interpretation at the time, this dream was equivalent to a resolution, and once the resolution became a reality, there was no need to dream again.Later, I published another dream, thinking that this dream was used to express repentance.Why should I now contradict myself and say that dreams are always nothing but the fulfillment of desires? For me, I would rather contradict than admit a foolish distortion, which might lose all the results of all our painstaking research on the question of dreams; If you read it like this, then the dream must also be like this.Dreams can indeed represent or restore the various modes of thought just mentioned; such as determination, warning, reflection, preparation for action, and planning.But if you look closely, you will see that this is only for the latent thoughts that become dreams.From your experience in dream interpretation, you know that people's subconscious processes are full of such determination, preparation and reflection, and become the material of dream scenes through dream work.Whenever your interest is not in the dream-work, but in the subconscious processes of people, you can disregard the formation of the dream, and say that the dream itself may represent a warning, a resolution, or something else. In fact, it is not wrong.The same method is often used in psychoanalytic research: roughly speaking, we only try to dismantle the surface form of the dream and replace it with the corresponding latent idea from which the dream arises. Therefore, when we estimate the latent thoughts of dreams, we inadvertently know that the high-level and complex psychological actions we just mentioned can be completed in the subconscious—this conclusion is indeed amazing and equally confusing. . Now, however, to get down to business: you are quite right, if you say that dreams represent various modes of thought, if you take this as a short form of expression, and do not regard these modes of thought as an important quality of dreams.When you speak of a dream, you mean either the manifest dream, the product of the dream-work, or the dream-work itself, the psychic process by which the latent dream-thoughts are transformed into the manifest dream.If you think that there are other meanings besides this, it is enough to confuse your mind and make you fall into wrong opinion.If what you say refers to the latent thoughts of a dream, please say so clearly, and don't make the matter more obscure by being unclear.The latent thoughts of the dream are the material with which the dream-work produces the manifest dream.Why do you always confuse materials with procedures for making them?Some people only know the final product. Note: the manifest dream without being able to explain its origin. Note: the origin of the dream and the process of making it. How much smarter than these people? The only point of the dream is the dream-work which deals with the material of thought; we have no right to neglect this matter in regard to theory, although in certain practical situations it may well be neglected.Furthermore, analytical observations show that the dream-work is never merely a translation of latent thoughts into the primitive or regressed modes of representation mentioned above.On the contrary, there is always something added to it that "although it does not belong to the hidden thoughts of the day, but is actually the motive of dreaming", this indispensable element is the desire of the subconscious; the transformation of the content of the dream is for this purpose. satisfaction of desires.So if you are only discussing the thoughts that dreams represent, then dreams can be anything--a warning, or a resolution, or a preparation, and so on.But besides that, it can often itself be the fulfillment of an unconscious desire; if you regard the dream as the product of the dream-work, it has no other meaning than the fulfillment of the desire.So dreams must not only be expressions of resolutions, of warnings: but also resolutions, or otherwise, are often translated in dreams into their original form by means of an unconscious desire, and the result of the translation is the fulfillment of that desire.In short, the fulfillment of desires is this characteristic which is the main quality of dreams; other components are dispensable. All of this is very clear to me, but I don't know if it has made it clear to you.It is naturally not easy to prove this point; because on the one hand, the proof needs evidence, and the evidence can only be obtained after careful analysis of many dreams; on the other hand, the most important thing about the concept of dreams This point can only be convincing if it is discussed in conjunction with other phenomena, and the discussion of these phenomena remains to be seen in the future.If you know how closely related various phenomena are, you can know the nature of one phenomenon, but if you do not study it, you will not know the nature of another phenomenon.Since we do not yet know anything about dream-like phenomena—symptoms of neurosis—we have to be satisfied with what we know for the time being. Let us now give another example and draw a new inference. Let us still take the already discussed dream of three tickets for one and a half Volorins, and I can tell you clearly that I have chosen this example without any particular motive.We know that the hidden thoughts of this dream are as follows: the dreamer heard that her friend had just got engaged, and regretted that she had married too early, and thought that if she could be patient, she might marry a better husband, so , I am a bit contemptuous of my current husband.We also know that the desire for these hidden thoughts to become dreams is a desire for voyeurism, and I want to be able to watch plays freely because of this—this may be the product of an ancient curiosity to see what will happen after marriage.We all know that this curiosity of the child is often aimed at the sexual life of the parents; in other words, it is an infantile impulse, and if it is present in adults, it must also have its origin in infancy.However, the translation of the news obtained the day before the dream: the news of the girlfriend's engagement does not arouse voyeurism; it only arouses remorse.This voyeuristic impulse is initially not connected with the latent thoughts, so that even if the voyeurism is not involved in the analysis, the result of dream interpretation can be obtained.Regret, however, cannot be dreamed of itself: the thought of a premature mistake in marriage is never sufficient for dreaming, unless the thought aroused a former desire to see what it would turn out to be.This desire constitutes the content of the dream, and uses going to the theater instead of marriage; its form is the fulfillment of an earlier desire: "Now I can go to the theater and see everything I was not allowed to see before; but you cannot. I'm married, you'll have to wait." Thus, the actual situation happens to be reversed, and old victories are replaced by new regrets; as a result, both voyeurism and boasting satisfy.And it is the satisfaction of the latter that determines the content of the manifest dream; for in the manifest dream the dreamer is seated in the theater and her friend is alone in her arms.The rest of the dream presents all the incomprehensible variations of this satisfying situation, behind which hidden thoughts are still hidden.The task of dream interpretation is to ignore those parts that represent the fulfillment of desires, and pursue the hidden thoughts of pain behind them. This long paragraph is nothing more than to ask you to pay attention to the hidden thoughts of these dreams.First, do not forget that the dreamer is ignorant of these hidden thoughts.Secondly, these latent thoughts are all easily plausible and interconnected, and may therefore be regarded as a proper response to whatever stimulus provoked the dream.Thirdly, they are as valuable as any mental impulse and intellectual activity.I would like to give these hidden thoughts a more limited name than before, and call them theresidue from the previous day. The dreamer can admit or deny them.I can therefore establish a distinction between these "remnants" and latent thoughts, and everything discovered by dream interpretation is called latent thoughts of dreams.This is what has been used before; and the "memory of the previous day" is only a part of these hidden thoughts.We can then sketch the conception of the dream-passage situation as follows: In addition to the "memory of the previous day" there is a powerful and repressed impulse of unconscious desire which makes the dream possible.Because this impulse of desire acts on the so-called "remembrance", the other parts of the latent thought, that is, the part that is not comprehensible when awake, are formed accordingly. I have used an analogy to illustrate the relationship between the memory and the unconscious desire, and it is best to repeat it here.In any kind of business, there is always a capitalist who pays for it, and a planner who designs it and knows how to carry out his plan.As far as the structure of dreams is concerned, capitalists often provide the necessary resources of mental energy for dream-making for subconscious desires; as for planners, they determine the way to consume energy for the memories of the previous day.The capitalist himself could have both the plan and the special knowledge it requires, and the planner could well have the capital himself.This would have simplified the practical situation; however, it has increased the theoretical difficulty; economically speaking, the same person often distinguishes between his functions as a capitalist or his capacity as a planner, With this distinction, our analogy can have considerable basis.There are similar changes in the formation of dreams: I won't say, let you think about it yourself. At this point, we cannot go any further; I think you may have already raised a question, and now it seems time to raise it.You may ask: "The so-called 'remembrance' is subconscious. Is it really the same as the desire required for the formation of dreams to be subconscious?" Your question is good: this is the important point in the whole incident .They are both unconscious, but with different meanings.Dream desires are another unconscious, both of infantile origin and of a peculiar mechanism, which we already know.It is certainly convenient for us to use different names to distinguish these two kinds of unconsciousness.We prefer, however, to wait until we have become acquainted with the phenomena of neurosis.If the concept of the subconscious mind is already fantastic, it would be even more objectionable to conclude that there are two subconscious minds. So we end here.This is again an unfinished story; but we may just hope that this knowledge will be improved somewhat by our own efforts or by the studies of others.And it is novel and surprising enough, even insofar as we know it.