Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/324

312 require the dreamer to tell all that occurs to him when he directs his attention, not to the whole of the dream, but to a definite part of it, to a particular event or word-image occurring in it. This association must, however, be wholly free, consequently the single thing forbidden is the dominance of critical choice among the irruptive ideas. Any halfway intelligent man can be brought to tell out all the thoughts associated with the fragments of the dream, whether clever or stupid, coherent or senseless, pleasant or unpleasant, suppressing the shame perhaps bound up with them. In this way also are worked over the other fragments of the dream and so we assemble the latent dream material, that is to say, all the thoughts and memories of which the conscious dream picture is to be considered the condensation-product (Verdichtungsprodukt). It is an error to believe that the activity of association when left free is devoid of any regulation by law. As soon as in the analysis we disregard the conscious terminal idea (Zielvorstellung) of our thinking, the directive forces of the unconscious psychic activities prevail in the choice of associations, that is to say, just the same mental forces which functioned in the creation of the dream. We have been for a long time familiar with the thought that there is no chance in the physical world, no event without sufficient cause; on the ground of psychoanalytic experience we must suppose just as strong a determination of every mental activity, however arbitrary it may seem. It is therefore an unjustified fear that the activity of association when freed from all restraints in such analysis, will give results which have no value. The subject of the analysis, who at first reproduces his apparently senseless ideas with scornful scepticism, soon discovers, to his own surprise, that the train of associations, uninfluenced by conscious aids, leads to the awakening ot thoughts and memories which were long since forgotten, or repressed on account of the pain they caused. But through the emergence of these the fragment taken from the dream is made intelligible or capable of interpretation. If we repeat this process with all the parts of the dream, we see that the trains of thought which radiate out from the different fragments converge in a very essential train of thought, which was stimulated the day before the night of the dream the dream thoughts themselves. Once these are recognized, not only the single fragment, but also the dream as a whole seems coherent and intelligible. If, finally, we compare the point of departure of the dream, the dream thoughts, with the content of the naively related dream, we see that the dream is nothing else than the concealed fulfillment of a repressed wish.

This sentence contains the most essential results of Freud's investigation of dreams. The idea that the dream fulfills