[314] The realm of unconscious infantile fantasies has become the real object of psychoanalytic research, for it seems to offer the key to the aetiology of neurosis. Here, quite otherwise than with the trauma theory, we are forced by all the reasons we have mentioned to assume that the roots of the psychological present are to be found in the family history of the patient.
[315] The fantasy systems which patients present on being questioned are mostly of a composite nature and are elaborated like a novel or a drama. But, despite their elaboration, they are of relatively little value in investigating the unconscious. Just because they are conscious, they defer too much to the demands of etiquette and social morality. They have been purged of all painful personal details, and also of everything ugly, thereby becoming socially presentable and revealing very little. The more valuable and evidently more influential fantasies are not conscious, in the sense previously defined, and so have to be dug out by the psychoanalytic technique.
[316] Without wishing to enter fully into the question of technique, I must here meet an objection that is constantly heard. It is that the so-called unconscious fantasies are merely suggested to the patient and exist only in the mind of the analyst. This objection is on the same vulgar level as those which impute to us the crude mistakes of beginners. Only people with no psychological experience and no knowledge of the history of psychology are capable of making such accusations. No one with the faintest glimmering of mythology could possibly fail to see the startling parallels between the unconscious fantasies brought to light by the psychoanalytic school and mythological ideas. The objection that our knowledge of mythology has been suggested to the patient is without foundation, because the psychoanalytic school discovered the fantasies first and only then became acquainted with their mythology. Mythology, as we know, is something quite outside the ken of the medical man.
[317] As these fantasies are unconscious, the patient is naturally unaware of their existence, and to question him about them directly would be quite pointless. Nevertheless it is said over and over again, not only by patients but by so-called normal persons: “But if I had such fantasies, surely I would know it!” But what is unconscious is in truth something that we do not know. Our opponents, too, are firmly convinced that such things do not exist. This a priori judgment is pure scholasticism and has no grounds to support it. We cannot possibly rest on the dogma that consciousness alone is the psyche, for we have daily proof that our consciousness is only a part of the psychic function. When the contents of our consciousness appear they are already in a highly complex state; the constellation of our thoughts from the material contained in our memory is a predominantly unconscious process. We are therefore obliged to assume, whether we like it or not, the existence of a non-conscious psychic sphere, even if only as a “negative borderline concept,” like Kant’s Ding an sich. Since we perceive effects whose origin cannot be found in consciousness, we are compelled to allow hypothetical contents to the sphere of the non-conscious, which means presupposing that the origin of those effects lies in the unconscious precisely because it is not conscious. This conception of the unconscious can hardly be accused of “mysticism.” We do not pretend to know or to assert anything positive about the state of psychic elements in the unconscious. Instead, we have formulated symbolical concepts in a manner analogous to our formulation of conscious concepts, and this terminology has proved its value in practice.
[318] This way of thinking is the only possible one if we accept the axiom that “principles are not to be multiplied beyond the necessary.” We therefore speak about the effects of the unconscious just as we do about the phenomena of consciousness. Great objection was taken to Freud’s statement: “The unconscious can only wish.” This was regarded as an unheard-of metaphysical assertion, something like a tenet from von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious. The indignation was due simply to the fact that these critics, unknown to themselves, evidently started from a metaphysical conception of the unconscious as an ens per se, and naively projected their epistemologically unclarified ideas on to us. For us the unconscious is not an entity in this sense but a mere term, about whose metaphysical essence we do not permit ourselves to form any idea. In this we are unlike those arm-chair psychologists who are not only perfectly informed about the localization of the psyche in the brain and the physiological correlates of mental processes, but can assert positively that beyond consciousness there are nothing but “physiological processes in the cortex.”
[319] Such naïvetés should not be imputed to us. When Freud says that the unconscious can only wish, he is describing in symbolical terms effects whose source is not conscious, but which from the standpoint of conscious thinking can only be regarded as analogous to wishes. The psychoanalytic school is, moreover, aware that the discussion as to whether “wishing” is a suitable analogy or not can be reopened at any time. Anybody who knows a better one will be welcome. Instead of which, our opponents content themselves with denying the existence of these phenomena or else, if certain phenomena have to be admitted, they abstain from all theoretical formulations. This last point is understandable enough, since it is not everyone’s business to think theoretically.
[320] Once one has succeeded in freeing oneself from the dogma of the psyche’s identity with consciousness, thus admitting the possible existence of extra-conscious psychic processes, one cannot, a priori, either assert or deny anything about the potentialities of the unconscious. The psychoanalytic school has been accused of making assertions without sufficient grounds. It seems to us that the abundant, perhaps too abundant case-material contained in the literature offers enough and more than enough grounds, yet it does not seem sufficient for our opponents. There must be a good deal of difference as to the meaning of the word “sufficient” in regard to the validity of these grounds. So we must ask: Why does the psychoanalytic school apparently demand far less exacting proofs of its formulations than its opponents?
[321] The reason is simple. An engineer who has built a bridge and calculated its load needs no further proof of its holding capacity. But a sceptical layman, who has no notion how a bridge is built, or what is the strength of the material used, will demand quite different proofs of its holding capacity, since he can have no confidence in it. It is chiefly the profound ignorance of our opponents about what we are doing that screws their demands up to such a pitch. In the second place, there are the countless theoretical misunderstandings: it is impossible for us to know them all and to clear them up. Just as we find in our patients new and ever more astounding misconceptions about the ways and aims of psychoanalysis, so our critics display an inexhaustible ingenuity in misunderstanding. You can see from our discussion of the concept of the unconscious just what kind of false philosophical assumptions can vitiate understanding of our terminology. Obviously a person who thinks of the unconscious as an absolute entity is bound to require proofs of a totally different kind, utterly beyond our power to give, as our opponents in fact do. Had we to offer proof of immortality, mountains of proofs of the weightiest nature would have to be furnished, very different from what would be required to demonstrate the existence of plasmodia in a malaria patient. Metaphysical expectations still bedevil scientific thinking far too much for the problems of psychoanalysis to be seen in their own frame of reference.
[322] But, in fairness to our critics, I must admit that the psychoanalytic school has itself given rise to plenty of misunderstandings, even though in all innocence. One of the principal sources is the confusion that reigns in the theoretical sphere. Regrettable though it is, we have no presentable theory. You would understand this if you could see in concrete instances the enormous difficulties we have to wrestle with. Contrary to the opinion of nearly all the critics, Freud is anything rather than a theorist. He is an empiricist, as anyone must admit who is willing to go at all deeply into Freud’s writings and to try to see his cases as he sees them. Unfortunately, our critics are not willing. As we have repeatedly been told, it is “repulsive and disgusting” to see them as Freud does. But how can anyone learn the nature of Freud’s method if he allows himself to be put off by disgust? Just because people make no effort to accommodate themselves to Freud’s point of view, adopted perhaps as a necessary working hypothesis, they come to the absurd conclusion that he is a theorist. They readily assume that Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is simply a theory, invented by a speculative brain, and that everything is put into the patient’s head by suggestion. But that is turning things upside down. This makes it easy for the critics, which is just what they want. They pay no attention at all to the “couple of case-histories” with which the psychoanalyst conscientiously documents his theoretical statements, but only to the theory and the formulation of technique. The weak spots of psychoanalysis are not to be found here—for psychoanalysis is essentially empirical—though here, undoubtedly, is a large and insufficiently cultivated field where the critics can romp to their heart’s content. In the field of theory there are many uncertainties and not a few contradictions. We were conscious of this long before our learned critics began to honour us with their attentions.
[323] After this digression we will return to the question of unconscious fantasies which occupied us before. Nobody, as we have seen, has the right to assert their existence or define their qualities unless effects of unconscious origin are observed which can be expressed in terms of conscious symbolism. The only question is whether effects can in fact be found that comply with this expectation. The psychoanalytic school believes it has discovered such effects. I will mention the principal phenomenon at once: the dream.
[324] Of this it may be said that it enters consciousness as a complex structure compounded of elements whose connection with each other is not conscious. Only afterwards, by adding a series of associations to the individual images in the dream, can we show that these images had their origin in certain memories of the recent past. We ask ourselves: Where have I seen or heard that? And then, by the ordinary process of association, comes the memory that certain parts of the dream have been consciously experienced, some the day before, some earlier. So far there will be general agreement, for these things have been known for a long time. To that extent the dream presents itself to us as a more or less unintelligible jumble of elements not at first conscious and only recognized afterwards through their associations.1 It should be added that not all parts of the dream have a recognizable quality from which their conscious character can be deduced; they are often, and indeed mostly, unrecognizable at first. Only afterwards does it occur to us that we have consciously experienced this or that part of the dream. From this standpoint alone we may regard the dream as a product of unconscious origin.
[325] The technique for exploring the unconscious origin is the one I have just mentioned, used as a matter of course long before Freud by every dream-investigator. We simply try to remember where the parts of the dream came from. The psychoanalytic technique of dream elucidation is based on this very simple principle. It is a fact that certain parts of the dream are derived from our waking life, from events which, on account of their obvious unimportance, would have fallen into oblivion and were already on the way to becoming definitely unconscious. It is just these parts that are the effects of “unconscious ideas.” Exception has been taken to this expression too. Naturally we do not take things nearly so concretely, not to say ponderously, as our critics. Certainly this expression is nothing more than conscious symbolism—we were never in any doubt on that point. But it is perfectly clear and serves very well as a sign for an unknown psychic fact. As I have said before, we have no alternative but to conceive the unconscious by analogy with the conscious. We do not pretend that we understand a thing merely because we have invented a sonorous and all-but-incomprehensible name for it.
[326] The principle of psychoanalytic elucidation is, therefore, extraordinarily simple and has actually been known for a long time. The subsequent procedure follows logically along the same lines. If we get really absorbed in a dream—which naturally never happens outside analysis—we shall succeed in discovering still more reminiscences about the individual dream-parts. But we are not always successful in finding reminiscences about some of them. These must be put aside for the time being. (When I say “reminiscences” I do not mean only memories of actual experiences; I also mean the reproduction of meaningful associations and connections.) The reminiscences so gathered are called the “dream-material.” We treat this material in accordance with a generally accepted scientific principle. If you have any experimental material to work up, you compare its individual parts and classify them according to their similarities. You proceed in exactly the same way with dream-material; you look for the common features, whether of form or content.
[327] In doing this one has to get rid, so far as possible, of certain prejudices. I have observed that the beginner is always looking for some special feature and then tries to force his material to conform to his expectations. I have noticed this particularly with colleagues who, because of the well-known prejudices and misunderstandings, were once passionate opponents of psychoanalysis. If it was my fate to analyse them, and they at last obtained real insight into the method, the first mistake they generally made in their psychoanalytic work was to do violence to the material by their own preconceived opinions. That is, they now vented their previous attitude to psychoanalysis on their material, which they could not assess objectively but only in terms of their subjective fantasies.
[328] Once embarked on the task of examining the dream-material, you must not shrink from any comparison. The material usually consists of very disparate images, from which it is sometimes very difficult to extract the tertium comparationis. I must refrain from giving detailed-examples, as it is quite impossible to discuss such voluminous material in a lecture. I would, however, like to call your attention to a paper by Rank on “a dream which interprets itself.”2 There you will see how extensive is the material that must be taken into account for purposes of comparison.
[329] Hence, in exploring the unconscious, we proceed in the usual way when conclusions are to be drawn by the comparative method. It has often been objected: Why should a dream have any unconscious content at all? This objection is in my view about as unscientific as it could possibly be. Every psychological element has its special history. Every sentence I utter has, besides the meaning consciously intended by me, its historical meaning, which may turn out to be quite different from its conscious meaning. I am expressing myself somewhat paradoxically on purpose: I do not mean that I could explain the historical meaning of every individual sentence. That is easier in the case of larger and more complex structures. Thus, it will be clear to everyone that, apart from the manifest content of a poem, the poem itself is especially characteristic of the poet in regard to its form, content, and manner of origin. While the poet merely gave expression in his poem to the mood of the moment, the literary historian will see things in it and behind it which the poet would never have suspected. The analysis which the literary historian makes of the poet’s material is exactly comparable with the method of psychoanalysis, not excluding the mistakes that may creep in.
[330] The psychoanalytic method can be compared with historical analysis and synthesis in general. Suppose, for instance, we did not understand the meaning of the baptismal rite practised in our churches today. The priest tells us: baptism means the admission of the child into the Christian community. But this does not satisfy us. Why is the child sprinkled with water? In order to understand this ceremony, we must gather together from the whole history of ritual, that is, from mankind’s memories of the relevant traditions, a body of comparative material culled from the most varied sources:
1. Baptism is clearly a rite of initiation, a consecration. Therefore we have to collect all memories in which any initiation rites are preserved.
2. The act of baptism is performed with water. For this special form another series of memories must be collected, namely, of rites in which water is used.
3. The person to be baptized is sprinkled with water. Here we have to collect all those rites in which the neophyte is sprinkled, immersed, etc.
4. All reminiscences from mythology, folklore, as well as superstitious practices, etc., have to be recalled, in so far as they run in any way parallel to the symbolism of the baptismal act.
[331] In this way we build up a comparative study of the act of baptism. We discover the elements out of which the baptismal act is formed; we ascertain, further, its original meaning, and at the same time become acquainted with the rich world of myths that have laid the foundation of religions and help us to understand the manifold and profound meanings of baptism. The analyst proceeds in the same way with a dream. He collects the historical parallels to every part of the dream, even the remotest, and tries to reconstruct the psychological history of the dream and its underlying meanings. Through this monographic elaboration we obtain, just as in the analysis of baptism, a profound insight into the marvellously delicate and meaningful network of unconscious determination—an insight that may legitimately be compared with the historical understanding of an act which we had hitherto regarded in a very superficial and one-sided way.
[332] This excursus seemed to me unavoidable. In view of the numerous misunderstandings of all those who constantly seek to discredit the psychoanalytic method, I felt obliged to give you a very general account of the method and its position within the methodology of science. I do not doubt that there are superficial and improper applications of this method. But an intelligent critic should not allow this to detract from the method itself, any more than a bad surgeon should be used to discredit the value of surgery in general. I do not doubt, either, that not all the expositions of dream-psychology by psychoanalysts are entirely free from misunderstandings and distortions. But much of this is due to the fact that, precisely because of his training in the natural sciences, it is difficult for the medical man to get an intellectual grasp of a very subtle psychological method, even though he instinctively handles it correctly.
[333] The method I have described is the one I adopt and the one to which I hold myself scientifically responsible. To give advice about dreams and to make direct attempts at interpretation is, in my opinion, absolutely wrong and scientifically inadmissible. It is not a methodological but a quite arbitrary proceeding which defeats itself by the sterility of its results, like every false method.
[334] If I have made the attempt to illustrate the principles of the psychoanalytic method by means of dream-analysis it is because the dream is one of the clearest examples of psychic contents whose composition eludes direct understanding. When someone knocks in a nail with a hammer in order to hang something up, we can understand every detail of the action; it is immediately evident. It is otherwise with the act of baptism, where every phase is problematic. We call these actions, whose meaning and purpose are not immediately evident, symbolic actions, or symbols. On the basis of this reasoning we call a dream symbolic, because it is a psychological product whose origin, meaning, and purpose are obscure, and is therefore one of the purest products of unconscious constellation. As Freud aptly says, the dream is the via regia to the unconscious.
[335] There are many products of unconscious constellation besides dreams. In the association experiment we have a means of determining exactly the influence of the unconscious. We see these effects in the disturbances which I have called “complex indicators.” The task which the association test sets the subject of the experiment is so extraordinarily simple that even children can accomplish it without difficulty. It is all the more surprising that, despite this, so many disturbances of the intended action should be registered. The only things that can regularly be shown to be causes of these disturbances are the partly conscious, partly unconscious constellations caused by complexes. In the majority of cases the connection of these disturbances with feeling-toned complexes can be demonstrated without difficulty. But very often we must have recourse to the psychoanalytic method in order to explain the connection; that is, we must ask the patient what associations he can give to the disturbed reactions.
[336] In this way we obtain the historical material on which to base our judgment. It has been objected that the patient could then say whatever he liked—in other words, any old nonsense. This objection is made, I believe, on the unconscious assumption that the historian who gathers material for his monograph is an imbecile, incapable of distinguishing real parallels from apparent ones and authentic reports from crude falsifications. The professional has means at his disposal for avoiding clumsy mistakes with certainty and more subtle ones with some probability. For anyone who understands psychoanalytic work it is a well-known fact that it is not so very difficult to see where there is coherence and where there is none. In addition, fraudulent statements are in the first place very significant of the person who makes them, and secondly they are easily recognized as fraudulent.
[337] (There is, however, another objection to be considered, which is more worth mentioning. One can ask oneself whether the reminiscences subsequently produced were really the basis of a dream. If, in the evening, I read an interesting account of a battle, and at night dream of the Balkan War, and then during analysis remember by association certain details in the account of the battle, even the most rigorous critic will fairly assume that my retrospective association is right and true. As I mentioned earlier, this is one of the most firmly entrenched hypotheses regarding the origin of dreams. All we have done is to apply this working hypothesis consistently to all the remaining associations relating to all other parts of the dream. Ultimately, we are saying no more than that this dream-element is linked with this association, that it therefore has something to do with it, that there is a connection between the two things. When a distinguished critic once remarked that, by means of psychoanalytic interpretations, one could even connect a cucumber with an elephant, this worthy showed us, by the very fact of associating “cucumber” with “elephant,” that these two things somehow have an associative connection in his mind. One must have a lot of nerve and a magisterial judgment to declare that the human mind produces entirely meaningless associations. In this instance, only a little reflection is needed to understand the meaning of the association.)
[338] In the association experiment we can ascertain the extraordinarily intense effects emanating from the unconscious precisely through the interference of complexes. The slips and faults in the experiment are nothing but prototypes of the mistakes we make in everyday life, the majority of which must be regarded as due to the interference of complexes. Freud has gathered this material together in his book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. It includes the so-called symptomatic actions–which from another point of view might equally well be called “symbolic actions” and real slips like lapses of memory, slips of the tongue, and so on. All these phenomena are effects of unconscious constellations and are therefore so many gateways to the realm of the unconscious. When they are cumulative, we have to call them a neurosis, which from this point of view looks like a dysfunction and must be understood as the effect of an unconscious constellation.
[339] Thus the association experiment is, not infrequently, a means of unlocking the unconscious directly, although mostly it is simply a technique for obtaining a wide selection of faulty reactions which can then be used for exploring the unconscious by psychoanalysis. At least, this is its most reliable form of application at present. However, it is possible that it will furnish other, especially valuable facts which would give us direct glimpses of the unconscious, but I do not consider this question sufficiently ripe to speak about yet.