“The distortion in Dreams”
Sigmund Freud
Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
 Born to Jewish parents in Moravia, the
Czech Republic (aloof, authoritarian
father and warm mother)
 His family moved to Vienna, where he
was educated (the Bible, Darwin’s
theories)
 After reading ‘a beautiful essay on
Nature’ he decided that he would
become a medical student; at the
University of Vienna excluded from
the academic community because
of his background, which furnished his
independent thought
 Turned his attention to the study of
nervous diseases (neuroses have a
psychological and not physiological
origin)
 In his treatment of hysteria he relied
on electrotheraphy and hypnosis
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
What do we owe Freud?
the father of psychoanalysis: a therapy
he defined the realm of the ‘unconscious’ and
opened it up to a systematic study
psychoanalytic principles are applied to the
study of literature (psychoanalytic criticism)
providing language and methodology for
dealing with neurosis
neurosis
Introductory Lectures
on Psychoanalysis
(1916 -1917)

Neurosis: all human beings must be repressed in some
way or another, people are “neurotic animals”

We are prepared to put up with repression as long as
there’s something in it for us, but we fall sick when too
much is demanded of us

Neurosis: desires reside in the unconscious; some
desires can be neither denied nor fulfilled and so the
desire forces its way from the unconscious but is
blocked by the ego

Psychosis: the ego can’t stop the desire from entering
consciousness

Intimate connection between anxiety in dreams and
in neuroses
Function of psychoanalysis:

to uncover the hidden causes of neurosis and bring
the patient relief, to dissolve distressing symptoms and
get rid of the problem

an analyst “investigates the interaction between the
conscious and the unconscious elements in the mind”

the patient talks freely, the fears and conflicts
repressed in the mind are brought into the conscious
mind and the patient faces them openly
Freudian dictionary
 Repression: the forgetting or ignoring unresolved conflicts,
unadmitted desires, past time traumas, which are forced out into
the realm of the unconscious.
 Sublimation: is how we cope with desires that cannot be fulfilled the repressed material is promoted into something grander, or
disguised as something “noble” (for ex. sexual urges are sublimated
in the form of intense religious experiences).
 How did civilisation come about?
 By switching and harnessing our instincts to higher goals, e.g sexual
frustration finds an outlet in building bridges or cathedrals, etc.
Freudian dictionary
Defence mechanisms
1. Transference: the patient under analysis recollects
some painful emotions and directs them against
the psychoanalyst
2. Projection: negative aspects of ourselves are not
recognised as part of ourselves but are attributed
to another (we ‘disown’ what we don’t like about
ourselves)
Freudian dictionary
The dream-work: the process in which real events or
desires are transformed into dream images.
 Displacement
 Condensation
 A three part model of the psyche:
1. the ego (the consciousness)
2. the id (the unconscious)
3. the super-ego (the conscience)
The topography of the psyche by Freud
 the id (das es): unconscious,
forbidden, painful, shameful
desires, memories, drives and
wishes (inherited by individuals,
uncontrolled, where our
impulses sit)
 the ego (Ich): mediator b-n the
outside world and the id;
conscious perception of the
world, controls the stimuli which
are too strong and could
destroy the id
 the superego (über ich): side of
norms which develop with an
individual’s experience of
social world; superego protects
the ego from the impact of the
id, it keeps up on the straight
and narrow
Descartes
Freud
 Cogito, ergo sum
 the unconscious = the
unknown, uncontrolled
 opponent of the unconscious
 power of reason
 mind=consciousness (the
mental processes are fully
controlled by individuals)
 embraces a variety of
meanings (a thing, activity)
 to talk about the unconscious
we have to use the conscious
discourse; the unconscious
can only be described by
figurative language: images,
symbols, metaphors
Definition of the unconscious
Place
Energy
 topographical model of the
mind:
 vivid, living force, not easily
repressed
 the layer lying below
consciousness (a barrier
separates the conscious from
unconscious)
 flow of energy that gets
through to our consciousness
and manifests itself in our
dreams, slips of the tongue,
jokes, puns
 a secret chamber in the
mind which stores memories,
thoughts, desires, traumas
(painful or shameful so
people want to forget them)
 the store room for keeping
the taboo
Definition of the unconscious
Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
2 levels in a dream:
 1) dream thoughts (deep level)
 2) manifest content (a/n un/related series of images which an analysant
can remember and is ready to tell)
 Freud’s aim: to discover where the manifest content comes from and thus
what the dream is about)
1. The work of
condensation
2. The work of
displacement
 a (long) story can be condensed in a
number of images
 how meaning and emotions or
fears are transferred onto
another object, e.g. the horror of
a car accident is transferred on
adjacent element
 dreams are very brief and laconic in
comparison with dream thoughts
 the patient’s view of their dream is
absurd, and bears a number of
meanings
 linguistic parallel: Jakobson’s
metaphor – both characterised by
similarity, likeness of 2 items; in
dream desire is revealed by the
metaphorical substitution for surface
meaning of the repressed meaning;
metaphor reveals the repressd desire
and provides access to the
unconscious
 linguistic parallel: Jakobson’s
metonymy – both characterised
by contiguity (displacement of
meaning); the subject does not
understand the chain of
connections in his words as they
proceed
DREAMWORK 1 → 2
Do you agree?
 “the assertion of every dream is
the fulfilment of a wish” (159)
 “pain and unpleasure are more
common in dreams than
pleasure … 57.2 per cent of
dreams are disagreeable and
only 28.6 per cent positively
pleasant” (160)
 “it still remains possible that
distressing dreams and anxiety
dreams, when thay have been
interpreted, may turn out to be
fulfilments of wishes” (160)
Distorted dreams: on the example of
Freud’s own dream about R. and N.
 “If my dream was distorted in this respect from its latent content – and
distorted into its opposite – then the affection that was manifest in the
dream served the purpose of this distortion. In other words, distortion was
shown in this case deliberate and to be a means of dissimulation. My
dream thoughts had contained a slander against R.; and, in order that I
might not notice this, what appeared in the dream was the opposite, a
feeling of affection for him” (166).
 Why the manifest content (the dream we remember) is often inverted in
relation to the (latent) dream thoughts?
Dreams with distressing content as
wish-fulfilments
 I wanted to give a supper party,
but I had nothing in the house but
a little smoked salmon. I thought I
would go out and buy something,
but remembered then that it was
Sunday afternoon and all the
shops would be shut. Next, I tried
to ring up some caterers but the
phone was out of order. So I had
to abandon my wish to give a
supper-party. (171)
 “Instigation to a dream is found in
the events of a previous day”
(171)
 A jurist arrested for infanticide –
the dreamer’s wish for his illicit
lover not to ger pregnant
 A dream is a (disguised) fulfilment
of a (supressed or repressed) wish
(183)