Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/124

 1 1 6 COLLECTIVE REVI EWS

"on the basis and with the help of repressed Infantile-sexual material, the dream regularly represents the fuirilincnt of current and usually also erotic wishes which are veiled and clothed in symbolic form".

This formula which in the first place is concerned only with the material of the dreain, and leaves out the theory altogether, in the second place permits one freely to subsume under it the so-called comfort-dreams (dreams of hunger, thirst, and desire to urinate), and while it designates the current wishes as "usually" also erotic, it admits the possibility of exceptions. As a matter of fact the most so-called comfort-dreams of adults prove not to be exceptions from tlic rule, disjilaying as they do a very considerable erotic "lining" if the dreamer submits them to analysis, instead of simply acknowledging their apparent comfort-character by a "comfort-interpretation". The erotic stimulus is for example often represented in the dream under the infantile guise of a desire to urinate, indeed the urinatitni dream which sul)servcs the comfort tendency is frequently caused by a sexual stimulus. On the other hand the pollution dreams betray in their result with more or less experimental clearness the sexual meaning of the seemingly harm- less dream images. Sadger(71) has recently emphasised the relation of the pollution dreams to urethral erotism as well as to ejaculatio praecox and p.sychic impotence. In all these problems the stratifi- cation of meanings of a dream must never be lost sight of; to attach proper value to this may j)reserve one from premature commitments on the nature of the dreain.

As regards Silberer's positive c(»nlribution to the interjiretation of dreams appraised in the last collective review {Jahrbuch d. Psa., Jahrg. VI, S. 277) viz. the so-called "functional" phenomenon (erroneously described by some as functional "symbolism"), Freud recognises this as a second factor in dnvim formation originating from the side of waking thought, less constant but next in importance to the far more significant "secondary elaboration": The theory of the functional plienonienon is, however, open to abuse in that it leads back to the tend<'ncy to abstract symbolic interpretation of dreams. In particular the "threshold" symbolism perpetually emphasised by Silbcrer is one that Freud is far from being able to discover as often as might be expected from Silberer's examples (23, S. 344). These describe the behaviour of a psychic moment merely registrativo in function which establishes