Sigmund Freud - The Collected Works of Sigmund Freud

To abandon figures, the lower level of the unconscious may under certain circumstances win a partial victory, and some feature of the old complex may arise in our minds. This may happen in the following way. Suppose that a train of thought broken off during the day, and sinking to the upper level of the unconscious, works out there to a conclusion which permits it to be brought into associative connection with one of the complexes on the lower level. The whole process has been unconscious; we are not aware that such a connection has been made, and yet in the trivial event of the day there has been some ele- ment, some common feeling tone, some phrase, some suggestion, which is like enough to the old complex to form an associative connection with it. Suppose that during the day we express some slight concern about the health of a near relative, and, in the pressure of work, forget about the matter. Under the threshold, on the upper level, this train of thought may spread further. Now it is one of the traits of children that they have at first little sympathy and love for their younger brothers and sisters. It is not uncommon for them to express a wish that they would die, that they might have more attention from their parents. For death for the child means of course only an absence ; he has no conception of its real significance. But such an idea is foreign to the adult mind ; it has been so repressed and was expressed at so early a stage that we can hardly realize that it ever existed. However, on Freud's theory, it still does exist, and is continually being repressed by the upper levels. Suppose now that the train of thought having to do with the health of the relative in question works out to a conclusion below the threshold which tends to call up the old complex. This is at once given new energy, its repression is more difficult. And yet it does not emerge consciously. But at night, when the inhibitions are down in sleep, when the repressive force is not quite so great, it makes a supreme effort, and gets through — in a dream. We may awaken terri- fied from a dream of the death of the same relative who caused us the concern during the day; what gave the motive force to the dream was the old childhood complex, which in this case has, by the help of the new energy, succeeded in breaking through into consciousness. For Freud, the motive force behind a dream is always that of some old com- plex in the depths of the soul ; the dream is a deeply significant revela- tion of the true nature of our unconscious life, to him who knows how to read it.

This last qualification is important, for it usually happens that the inhibiting force, though not able to completely prevent the emergence of the buried complex, distorts it almost beyond recognition, so that the dream seems to us absurd, disconnected, void of all meaning. This distortion is sometimes so complete that there is only here and there a hint of the true meaning of the dream; it seems to be made up from trivial events of the day alone ; but in such cases close examination will show that rational association of such events has been carried on through the complex, which has served as the connecting link and given new energy which permits the trivial events to recur in the dream, though openly the complex does not appear at all. Such was the dream of the woman who saw her nephew lying dead, and yet felt no grief. Now it chanced that on the day before, she had bought a ticket to see her lover, from whom she had parted, in a public performance, and was looking forward eagerly to the event. Some of the details of the dream seemed to suggest that there was some association with this fact; and, indeed, it was found on analysis that the last time she had seen her lover was at the funeral of another nephew. It was as though she had said to herself, " If my other nephew dies, I shall see him again.'* Do we not perhaps see here the activity of the old childish way of thinking that would sacrifice anything for a moment's happiness for the individual ? And yet that complex had not appeared at all in the dream as such. It is thus Freud's thesis that the dream never says what it means, that it is the product of a compromise between the two systems of energy. The complex is distorted in getting around the censor, and thus there arise all sorts of symbolic and indirect ways of expression; the complex is only alluded to in the dream in allegorical ways, or under cover of the trivial events of the day that stand in con- nection with it ; it is not expressed directly. Blood and fire in dreams may appear as sexual symbols ; the symbolism may be very complex, as in the case of some of the symbols of primitive man ; associations may be determined in the most superficial ways; for example, one person may stand for another in a dream on no more basis of identification than that both wear eyeglasses. The complex makes use of any pos- sible associative connections in order to utilize a little energy to strengthen itself. And it is of course also true that the more indirect and symbolic the associations, the less likely we are to suspect the complexes which are manifesting themselves through them, and so much the more likely will the complex be to avoid the censor. It is as though the complex, in its mad desire to escape, disguised itself and slipped around the back way. It succeeds in escaping, but its disguise alters it so beyond recognition that even its best friends will not recognize it.

Thus in the dream we see the conflict of the two systems of energy, and, if we are skilled, we may even interpret the signs as the woodsman would do, and tell what complex has passed that way, and how it was clad. For the first time the psychology of dreams is thus given a co- herent setting, which shows it as a type of activity not foreign to our usual modes of thought, but of one piece with them. For the dream is only one illustration of this conflict. What, says Freud, are the symbols of the artist and the poet but just such disguises, the product of the conflict in his own soul between the primitive and the civilized ways of thought ? Other observers have already shown that the root of art is in sex ; here we see that it is through the symbolism of a sex-conflict that it develops.

Now, suppose that the complexes are a little stronger, have not been as well suppressed as in the normal individual ; in such a case they may break out as hysterical symptoms or obsessions — yet the emergence is not complete, though more complete than in the dream, for the individ- ual still has gaps in his conscious memory with regard to the ways in which the complexes are connected with his symptoms, or he may have forgotten the origin of some of his symptoms altogether. And yet in every case his neurosis goes back and roots in the strength of just such complexes, which have seized on events of his adult life somewhat sim- ilar to them in nature, and through the breaches thus made have burst forth into a real, if detached, life.

Shocks, traumatic experiences, cause forgetfulness and splitting of personality, on this theory, because they resemble sufiiciently in some respect the old childhood complexes, and these latter are for one reason or another so strong that the experience forms its associative connec- tions with the older complexes, and not with conscious personality. So it drops below the level of consciousness, to in turn strive to rise to the surface. The hysterical symptom is then a symbol of the conflict be- tween the two tendencies. If there were no conflict the old complex would emerge wholly; that it emerges in indirect and symbolic ways is additional proof of the conflict which is going on. One must, then, have reached a certain stage of ethical development, must have repressed old tendencies, in order to develop a neurosis.

It is of course true that this repression of the lower by the upper is in general good for the organism; it is well that consciousness should be left free. The fact that it miscarries at times and a neurosis or a nightmare ensues is only because of the relative strength of the com- plexes, and not because of a defect inherent in the system itself.