Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/125

 DREAM INTERPRETATION 117

the fact that in certain circumstances a kind of self-observation takes place with the censorship, supplying a quota to the dream- content, without contributing anything further to the comprehension of the dream as a psychic product.

One assertion of Silberer's cannot be too energetically contra- dicted, since though it is up to now entirely without proof yet it is eagerly repeated by all who would like to disguise the funda- mental relations existing in dream-making and to draw away attention from its roots in instinct. It is a question of a proof for which we are still waiting and which is vainly sought in Silberer's last work, that besides the psycho-analytic interpretation the dream demands further the so-called "anagogic" one for its full com- prehension, an interpretation which aims at the exposition of the loftier activities of the soul. Silberer does not bring forward in proof of this assertion any series of dreams analysed along both lines. According to our own analytic experience such a state of things has no existence : most dreams do not even require a further interpretation, much less are they capable of an anagogic one. In cases where such a meaning can be given, it is usually independently supphed by the dreamer, while the correct "interpretation" of tlie material submitted has to be sought by aid of the well-known technique (23, S. 391). If it be thought desirable to publish as "anagogic" interpretations the trainso f thought of the patients under analysis as to the meaning of the dreams, relating as they do to sublimation (as well as to transference and resistance), the warning must be repeated as to the danger of confusing the dream with the dream-material: a warning which Freud has lodged against those who would make use of the "dirigibility" of the dreams by the analyst as an argument against the objectivity of dream research. "In testing these influences on his patient the analyst only plays the part of the experimenter who arranges the limbs of his subject in certain positions. It is frequently possible to influence the dreamer as to what he shall dream ahout, but never to influence him in addition as to what he will dream. The mechanism of dream elaboration and the unconscious dream-wish are withdrawn from any foreign influence" (21, S. 269).

We have seen that there is an obstinately recurring tendency to confuse the dream with the latent thoughts, which are then employed as objections to the wish-fulfilment theory. In the course of our refutation of this line of thought, we are repeatedly brought