Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/438

420 and more profound connection between the two which succumbs to the resistance of the censor.

The correct explanation for the predominance of the superficial associations is the pressure of the censor, and not the suppression of the end-presentations. The superficial associations supplant the deep ones in the presentation whenever the censor renders the normal connective paths impassable. It is as if in a mountainous region a general interruption of traffic, e.g., an inundation, should render impassable the long and broad thoroughfares; traffic would then have to be maintained through inconvenient and steep footpaths otherwise used only by the hunter.

We can here distinguish two cases which, however, are essentially one. In the first case the censor is directed only against the connection of the two thoughts, which, having been detached from each other, escape the opposition. The two thoughts then enter successively into consciousness; their connection remains concealed; but in its place there occurs to us a superficial connection between the two which we would not otherwise have thought of, and which as a rule connects with another angle of the presentation complex instead of with the one giving rise to the suppressed but essential connection. Or, in the second case, both thoughts on account of their content succumb to the censor; both then appear not in their correct but in a modified substituted form; and both substituted thoughts are so selected that they represent, through a superficial association, the essential relation which existed between those which have been replaced by them. Under the pressure of the censor the displacement of a normal and vital association by a superficial and apparently absurd one has thus occurred in both cases.

Because we know of this displacement we unhesitatingly place reliance even upon superficial associations in the dream analysis.

The psychoanalysis of neurotics makes prolific use of the