Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/123

 DREAM INTERPRETATION 115

against these charges through a diversion of the day-remnants into regressive paths and so to obtain gratification. This is achieved by means of a dream-wish that represents an unconscious instinctive impulse. Consequently the dreams would be "agents for removal of sleep-disturbing (psychic) stimuli by the method of hallucinatory satisfaction" (21, S. 145).

This formula while it in no way contributes anything new, but merely supplies the logical working out of the wish-theory already developed in the "Traumdeutung", allows in its general scope for psychic stimuli of widely differing kind (originating from the ego as well a from the sexual impulses) without tying itself to a deter- minant remaining invariably sexual, as superficial and antagonistic opinion has represented it. If in dream-interpretations, especially ot neurotics, but also of normal adults, sexual -material ^repondevatos such material has nothing directly to do with the real dream- forming unconscious wish of the theory, but is merely a method of expression and serves as a proof to us that the sexual takes a very large place in the psychical, and naturally particularly in the repressed states of the human being. But the statement that all dreams demand a sexual interpretation, a statement which is the object of unceasing polemic, is entirely foreign to Freud's "Traum- deutung". It is not to be found in the five editions of this book, and stands in palpable contradiction to its other contents (23, S. 270). The present reviewer might feel himself to blame for the obstinate repetition of the statement as due to his own extension and modi- fication of the Freudian basic formula, but the reproach was already levelled quite unjustifiably at Freud and his theory of the neurosis before the reviewer's contribution was included in the "Traum- deutung" (3. Aufl., 1919, S. 117 Anmkg.). How unscrupulously writers who are closely associated with psycho-analysis proceed in this respect is shown by the fact that Silberer (74, S. 63) after an inaccurate reproduction of the Freudian formula quotes that of the present reviewer without giving any name and in such a way that the impression is inevitably gained that it is a more exact formulation of Freud's own. The whole extremely characteristic passage runs as follows "one may certainly take up a standpoint from which the dream excitant is always seen as the 'wish' " (Freud). The formula most exactly expressing this point of view, the full comprehension of which can only be achieved of course by a much more exhaustive study of the Freudian system, runs as follows: