Chapter 16 Lecture 15 Questions and Critical Observations

Before we conclude our discussion of dreams, we must discuss the most general points of difficulty raised by this new theory.After you have listened carefully to the lectures these few times, you may inevitably have the following criticisms. You may think that even if we stick to consistent techniques in dream interpretation, it is difficult to decide where to go when there are ambiguous meanings.Therefore, it is difficult to translate manifest dreams into hidden thoughts correctly.You must think, first, that it is impossible to guess whether a certain element in a dream takes on its superficial or symbolic meaning, since the thing which has been used as a symbol remains the same thing.In the absence of objective evidence for the conclusion of this question, the interpretation of a particular feature is at the discretion of the dream interpreter.Secondly, in the dream-work two opposite things can be conflated, so that in any instance it is not easy to decide whether a certain dream-element should be given a positive or a negative meaning—and this again This is an opportunity for the dream interpreter to make any choice.Third, there are frequent instances of inversions in dreams, and the dream interpreter can arbitrarily assume their presence or absence.Fourth, you may have heard it said that no one dares to judge whether a given explanation is the only possible one, and that no one can avoid the possibility of ignoring other perfectly permissible explanations.Under these circumstances, you might think that since the dream-interpreter is free to decide, the results would seem objectively unreliable.Or you think that the fault is not in the dream, but because our concepts and premises are wrong, so that our interpretation of dreams is not very satisfactory.

What you said is of course undeniable, but I think it is still not enough to prove your following two conclusions: 1. Our dream interpretation work is decided by the dream interpreter at will; The procedure may be unavoidable or not correct.If you blame the dream-interpreter not for his arbitrary decisions, but for his skill, experience and understanding, then I agree with you.Such personal factors are naturally unavoidable.Especially when explaining particularly difficult problems.This is also the case with regard to other scientific researches; there is no way for one person to use the same technology, or be inferior to others, or better than others.For example, the interpretation of symbols may seem arbitrary, but as long as you think about the relationship between dream thoughts, the relationship between dreams and the dreamer and the whole state of mind during the dream, we are only allowed to give one explanation, and all other explanations are useless. You can correct your original wrong impression.You suppose that the incompleteness of the explanation is due to the fallacy of the hypothesis, but this conclusion loses its force if you know that ambiguity or indeterminacy is the proper nature of dreams.

You will recall that I have said that the dream-work is the translation of dream-thoughts into primitive representations similar to hieroglyphs.None of these primitive languages ​​is free from ambiguity or uncertainty; yet we cannot therefore doubt their practical value.And opposite words are mixed together in the dream-work just like the meaning of primal Words in the "primitive language" in the most ancient writings, which you already know.This knowledge is provided to us by the linguist Abel.He wrote the book in 1884, thinking that although the ancients used this pun to communicate with each other, they would not misunderstand each other.The meaning in the speaker's heart, whether it is positive or negative, can be determined by the tone of voice and posture of the speech, as well as the entire context.When writing, you can’t see the posture, but use small pictures instead, such as the pictographic character ken, if it is attached with a picture of a kneeling person, it means "weak", and if it is attached with a picture of a standing person, it means "weak". "powerful".Therefore, although the phonetic characters are puns, they are not misleading.

Modern writing refuses to accommodate the uncertain meanings which are common to the oldest languages.For example, the Semitic Writings of the Semitic people mostly have only consonants: the omitted vowels must be supplemented by readers according to their knowledge and context.Hieroglyphic writing also uses the principle of similarities with minor differences; so the pronunciation of Egyptian writing cannot be guessed.In the sacred writings of Egypt there were other uncertainties: whether, for example, a picture read from right to left or from left to right was at the discretion of the author.If you want to read it, you have to look at the human face on the picture, or the bird, or other directions.The author can arrange the pictures in a straight line arbitrarily. If the inscription is on a smaller object, the author can change the order of the symbols according to his own preferences and the status of the object.Another most doubtful point about Egyptian characters is that there is no place between characters.The distances between the pictures on each page are equal, and it is not easy for us to decide whether a certain symbol is the end of a previous word or the beginning of a new sentence.Conversely, in Persia, in cuneiform writing, there is a slash between two words as a symbol of separation.

Chinese language and characters are the oldest.But it is still commonly used by 40 million people.Do not assume that I understand Chinese; I have acquired a little knowledge of Chinese because I hoped to find in it uncertainties similar to dreams; People are surprised.You know that this script has various sounds that represent syllables, either monophonic or polyphonic.One major dialect has about four hundred sounds, and since this dialect has about four thousand words, it follows that each sound has an average of about ten different meanings—some less, some more.Various means are therefore devised to avoid misunderstandings, since the context alone is not sufficient to determine which of these ten possible meanings the speaker intends to convey to the listener.Among these methods, one is to combine two sounds to form a character, and the other is to apply four "sounds".For the sake of our comparison, there is a more interesting fact that the language has practically no grammar: no one can be sure whether these single-syllable words are nouns, verbs or adjectives; To indicate gender, number, case, tense, or mood and so on.Or we may say that this language has only raw materials; just as the language we use to express thoughts is raw materials by reduction of the dream-work, and does not express their mutual relations.Whenever there is uncertainty in Chinese, it is up to the listener to judge according to his own meaning according to the context.For example, there is a saying in China that "the rare is the most strange".This is all very easy to understand.Its meaning can be translated as: "The less a person sees, the more he is surprised." It can also be translated as: "Those who have little knowledge will inevitably be surprised." These two translations are only slightly grammatical. There is a difference, we naturally do not have to choose between the two.However, despite these uncertainties, the Chinese language is still a very convenient tool for conveying ideas. Therefore, we can understand that uncertainty is not necessarily the cause of misunderstanding.

Of course we must admit that the status of dreams is even more difficult to compare with these ancient languages ​​and writings; for the latter were originally used as vehicles for the communication of ideas; whatever the method used, the purpose is to be understood by everyone.As for dreams, this is not the case; the purpose of dreams is to conceal; therefore they are by no means vehicles for conveying thoughts, and it is important not to be understood.Therefore, we need not be surprised or perplexed if there are many difficult points in the dream which cannot be resolved.Based on the results of our comparative study, we are convinced that this uncertainty is often used by people to deny the correctness of our dream interpretation, and it should be considered as a generality of various primitive written languages.

In fact, only practice and experience can determine the extent to which our understanding of dreams reaches.In my opinion, this limit is very large; and a comparative study of the results obtained by these skilled analysts will suffice to prove my opinion.Ordinary people, even scientists, tend to be skeptical when encountering scientific difficulties to show their superiority; I think they are wrong to do so.You may not know that this phenomenon also happened when the inscriptions in Babylon and Assyria were first translated into modern languages ​​by the neighbors.The general opinion is that the translators of these cuneiform scripts were judging by mere fantasies, and that their whole research was nothing more than a hoax.But the "Royal Asiatic Society" The Royal Asiatic Society in 1857 had made a test to distinguish right from wrong.The Society asked four of the most eminent persons engaged in such research—Rawlinson, Hinks, Fox Talbot, and Opate—to enclose the newly discovered inscriptions, each with their own translations.After comparing the four translations, the members of the meeting announced their verdicts, thinking that the translations are roughly the same, so the existing achievements can be trusted, and future progress can be predicted.Gradually, scholars who did not know how to do this stopped ridiculing, and the translation of those cuneiform documents became clearer from then on.

2. Some people think that the results we get from dream interpretation are mostly haphazard, or even ridiculous, so they refute psychoanalysis, and I think you can't avoid it.There have been many criticisms of this nature, but I will give an example of what I have heard recently.Switzerland is known as a free country, but recently, the principal of a certain school was forced to dismiss because of his interest in psychoanalysis.Although he protested, a newspaper in Burren published the resolution of the education authority on the matter.The few sentences about psychoanalysis in the article are as follows: "The examples cited in the book of Professor Festel of the University of Zurich are so convincing and shocking. . . . This theory and this evidence make a teacher The principal of the college is convinced, and it is really unexpected." It is said that these few sentences are the result of their calm judgment.I would rather think that this so-called "calmness" is self-deception. Now let us conduct a more precise study on this issue. I think adding a little consideration and knowledge will not hurt the judgment of "calmness".

We are indeed refreshed by the instant correctness of a man's opinion on the more abstruse and important questions of psychology, based only on his first impressions, and our explanations seem to him preposterous and inadequate. Therefore, the interpretation is wrong and the whole study is worthless.It never occurred to these critics that there might be quite good reasons why these explanations make this impression--if they had thought of this, they might have gone further to inquire for some good reasons. The origin of this criticism is mainly related to the displacement effect.This effect is the most powerful instrument of the censorship of dreams, as you already know.Because of the displacement, the substitutes which we call metaphors are formed; these metaphors themselves are not easily recognized, nor are they easily traced back to the underlying ideas themselves.For allusions and metaphors are related by a most curious and unessential association.The whole problem lies in the attempt to conceal latent thoughts; this is the purpose of the censorship of dreams.But we cannot search for this concealed thought in its usual place.The inspectors at the frontiers these days are much wiser than the Swiss educational authorities on this point; for if they want to search for documents and proposals, these inspectors are not satisfied with checking letter boxes; Hidden where it shouldn't belong and is extremely difficult to detect, such as between the soles of boots.If contraband is found in such a place, it is certainly a "hard pull", but it is still a very delicate "discovery".

Since we admit very strange or even ridiculous relations between latent dream elements and superficial substitutes, there are many examples whose significance cannot as a rule be ascertained, and our analysis of dreams relies on the conclusions of past experience. guide.Our own efforts to interpret these dreams are often in vain; for the waking mind would never have guessed the link between latent thoughts and manifest dreams.This puzzle can be solved by the dreamer citing his own direct associations. He has this ability, because the substitute originates from his mind. The solution—in the answer, or he provides the materials so that we can solve it without much effort— —The answer itself reveals itself to us without the help of either of these two methods, and the elements of the manifest dream would never be possible to understand.Now let me tell you about a recent example.I have a female patient whose father died suddenly while she was being treated. Therefore, she often looked for opportunities to revive her father in her dreams.Once she dreamed that her father said: "It's a quarter past eleven, it's half past eleven, it's a quarter past eleven." How to explain this kind of time report?All she could say was that her father loved watching the older children keep their lunch in the cafeteria on time.Although this association is consistent with the elements of the dream, it does not explain the origin of the dream.Given the circumstances of the treatment at that time, we have every reason to suspect that her secret critical hostility towards her beloved father was a factor in the dream.We therefore let her make arbitrary associations, apparently far off topic, and she then said that she had heard a discussion of psychological problems the day before, and that a relative had said the following: "The primitive Urmensch is resurrected in us. "From this sentence we can understand the meaning of the dream.Therefore, she imagined that her dead father was also resurrected, so in the dream she actually made her father a "time teller" Uhrmensch, telling the time moment by moment until lunch time.Readers, please pay attention to the original texts of "Original Man" and "Time Teller".

We can't let go of this kind of pun. In fact, the puns of the dreamer are often attributed to the dream interpreter; moreover, there are many examples, and it is not easy for us to decide whether they are jokes or dreams.However, you have to remember that some slips of the tongue can also cause the same problem.A man said that he dreamed that he and his uncle were in the same car, and his uncle hugged him and kissed him.The dreamer immediately interpreted it automatically, thinking that the dream had the meaning of auto-erotism. The word "self-indulgence" is used in our theory of "libido" to express the meaning of not borrowing external things to satisfy lust.Has this man concocted a joke to deceive us, and pretended the sound of auto-autoerotism to be part of a dream?I never take it for granted: he did have this dream.But why on earth do dreams and jokes have this amazing resemblance?This question has led me many detours in the past, since I have thereby been obliged to make a thorough study of the problem of wit itself.As a result of the research, it is believed that the origin of jokes is as follows: First, there is an idea that is manipulated by the subconscious mind, and then it develops into a humorous way.As influenced by the unconscious, it is also subject to compression and displacement; in other words, to the same effect as the dream-work.Here lies the resemblance which sometimes arises between dreams and jokes.The difference is that unintentional "dream jokes" are not as ridiculous as ordinary jokes; and the reason for this will become apparent after a further study of the joke. A "dream joke" is a poor kind of joke; not good enough to make people laugh, not interesting. In this respect, we are following the old dream-interpretation technique of the ancients; this method of dream-interpretation, besides giving us a lot of useless rubbish, has also provided us with many valuable examples of dream-interpretation according to criteria.I would like to give an example of a historically important dream.Plutarch and Artemidorus of Dordis have slightly different accounts of this dream, and the dreamer is Alexander the Great.When he besieged the city of Tyre, the city's soldiers and civilians resisted very strongly. In 322 BC, Alexander dreamed of a dancing satyr, a half-man, half-goat monster.Aristandros, the dream interpreter accompanying the army, interpreted the dream and divided the word "satyros" into ρaTυρoζ "Tyre is yours", thus wishing Alexander the great victory.This explanation inspired King Alexander's determination to continue to attack the city, and finally captured the city.Although this explanation seems far-fetched, it is undoubtedly true. 3. I think if you hear that some psychoanalysts who have studied dream interpretation also oppose our dream theory, you will definitely pay attention to it.It may be rare to have such a superior opportunity to make new mistakes.On the one hand, due to the confusion of ideas, on the other hand, assertions are made on the basis of incorrect generalizations, and the result is almost as erroneous as the medical dream theory.There is a saying that you already know: Dreams are supposed to seek to adapt to the current situation and solve future problems; in other words, dreams have a "prospective tendency" or purpose.This is Middle's insight.We have already said that this view ignores the dream-work because it does not distinguish between dreams and dream-thoughts.If those who speak of the "proclination to foreknowledge" use this term to refer to the unconscious psychic activities to which the latent thoughts belong, then on the one hand what they are advocating is not originality, and on the other hand what they describe is flawed, because the unconscious Mental activities have many other tasks besides dealing with the future.There is another fallacy, which is even more confusing, that underlies every dream is the idea of ​​"wanting others to die"; the meaning of this hypothesis is not quite clear to me, but I suspect that this statement is due to the confusion of dreams. and the result of the whole personality of the dreamer. It is also said that all dreams can have two interpretations: one is the so-called psychoanalytic interpretation mentioned above, and the other is the allegorical "anagogic" interpretation, which aims at ignoring instinctive tendencies and describing them. Higher spirituality.This is Silberier's doctrine.This theory, also an unreasonable generalization, is based on a few special cases.Such dreams occur occasionally, but it would be in vain for us to exaggerate the concept to include most dreams.In addition, there is another theory that all kinds of dreams can be interpreted by both sexes, and can be interpreted as a mixture of masculine and feminine tendencies.This is Adler's doctrine.Although you have heard these speeches many times, you may still not understand Adler's words.Of course, dreams of this kind also occur occasionally, and later on you will learn that the structure of such dreams resembles a certain symptom of hysteria.I shall point out the general features of these newly discovered dreams in order to warn you against taking them for granted, or at least to dissuade you from doubting my opinion of dreams. Fourth, some people think that patients undergoing psychoanalytic treatment deliberately match the content of their dreams with the theory believed by the doctor. Therefore, some people dream mainly of sexual impulses, some dream of dominating others, and some even dream of rebirth. Tekel, therefore, the study of dreams lacks objective value and seems implausible.In fact, the strength of this argument is weak because: 1 people have been dreaming long before the so-called psychoanalytic treatment can affect their dreams; .The facts contained in this argument, though self-evident, are of no importance in the theory of dreams.For the "memory" of the previous day from which the dream arose is a relic of an experience which was of interest only in waking life.If the doctor's words and stimuli had an important influence on the patient, they must be mixed in this "memory" and become the stimuli of the dreaming spirit, just like other stimuli that arose and did not subside the day before. Sentimental values ​​are of general interest; their effect is similar to that of bodily stimuli which disturb the sleeper's sleep.And the thoughts aroused by the doctor, like the other elements of the dream, are either found in the manifest dream or revealed in the latent thought.We know that dreams can be caused by experiments, or, more precisely, that part of the dream-matter can be introduced into dreams by experiments.The psychoanalyst has the same influence over the patient as the experimentalist.For example, Volde placed the limbs of the subject in a certain position during the experiment. We are often able to transfer the material of other people's dreams, but never the purpose of their dreams; for the mechanism of the dream-work and the unconscious dream-desires are by no means within the reach of external influences.When we discussed dreams that arise from bodily stimuli, we have seen that the peculiarity and independence of the dream life can be seen clearly in the reflection of physical or mental stimuli received by the dreamer, so if you say The study of dreams has no objective value, and it would be confusing dreams with their material. We have already said a great deal about dreams.You should know that I have omitted most of them, and the discussion of every point is not exhaustive enough.But this is because the phenomenon of dreams is too closely related to the phenomenon of neurosis.Our plan is to use the study of dreams as a lead for the study of neurosis.This method is indeed superior to studying the neurosis first and then the dream; but since we use the dream as a preparation for the understanding of the neurosis, we have to wait until we have a general understanding of the manifestations of the neurosis before we can have a precise understanding of the dream. I don't know about you, but I think it's worth spending so much time discussing the subject of dreams.If you want to quickly understand the theoretical accuracy of psychoanalysis, there is no other way.Many months and years of hard work would have to be required if we were to show that neurotic symptoms are meaningful, purposeful, and shaped by the dreamer's lived experience.As far as dreams are concerned, although they seem extremely messy and incomprehensible at first, it is necessary to point out these facts in the dream, and to confirm the various premises of psychoanalysis-such as the subconscious mental function, and the special mechanism it follows and what it expresses. Instinctive drive, etc. - only a few hours of effort will suffice.If we remember how similar the structure of dreams is to that of neurotic symptoms, and if we consider carefully how quickly the dreamer becomes a waking and rational person, we can be convinced that neuroses arise only from a change in the balance of forces in psychic life. That's all.