The Interpretation of Dreams

In the first chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams, “The Scientific Literature of Dream Problems,” Sigmund Freud provides an overview of the existing literature on dreams. Providing this survey helps to set the stage for his own ideas, much like a literature review, which usually occurs at the outset of a research paper.

Freud begins by discussing the ancient beliefs surrounding dreams. “In spite of thousands of years of endeavour,” little progress has been made to penetrate “the true nature of the dream” (4). In ancient times, it was taken “for granted that dreams [...] brought inspiration from gods and demons” (4-5) and could tell the future (oneiric divination). Freud details several ancient classification systems on dreams and their theorists, coming mostly from the classical Greek world and, later, the European Middle Ages.

Throughout this history, certain figures such as Aristotle and Hippocrates began to take a more naturalistic outlook on dreams. For instance, Aristotle believed “that a dream converts the slight sensations perceived in sleep into intense sensations” (5). Freud's overview is important, as it establishes the historical background of the topic of dreams, the deep historical interest in dreams, and the long-standing belief in the supernatural and mystical nature of dreams prior to its scientific investigation.

Both ancient and modern scholars relate the events in dreams to reproductions of events in waking life, including matters that most entice our attention, passions, or imagination. However, Freud here notes a contradiction, in that dreams may be concerned with the events of waking life but are also highly unrealistic in their depiction of it, usually depicting “something absolutely divorced from the reality experienced during the waking state” (9). On this contradiction, Freud sides with the earlier scholar Hildebrandt that “However extraordinary the dream may seem, it [...] must always borrow their elementary material either from that which our eyes have beheld in the outer world, or [...] our waking thoughts” (10). In this way, Freud resolves this contradiction and continues to lay the foundations for his eventual theory that dreams manifest concerns of the individual, usually in the guise of metaphors.

Several theories emphasize the capacity of memory in dreams, stating “dreams have at their disposal recollections which are inaccessible to the waking state”; Freud calls these “hypermnesic dreams” (11). However, the selection of which memories the dream uses to generate content “may be dependent on chance” (13) or drawn particularly from childhood or recent experiences. They often blend features of several memories or are “highly fragmentary in their reproduction” (17). Again quoting Hildebrandt, he states, “all our dream-images could be generally explained if we devoted enough time and material to the tracing of their origin [in memory]" (15). This allows Freud to note the significance of the role of memory in explaining dreams, in that dreams demonstrate that “nothing which we have once psychically possessed is ever entirely lost” (16); therefore, dreams offer a window into knowledge and experiences we did not know we possessed but still exist in our unconscious.

This direct connection of dreams to the unconscious through memory is central to Freud’s conception of the use of dreams in psychoanalysis. Furthermore, Freud’s observation that dreams regularly repeat recent memories—but do so in a distorted fashion—demonstrates his keen and systematic approach to explaining all facets of dreaming. Such observations on the peculiar nature of dreams will continue throughout the text.

Other theories Freud covers suggest dreams are the result of external or internal stimuli experienced during sleep. While this is true in some cases, Freud remarks that since we cannot systematically “succeed in producing dreams corresponding to these stimuli” (20), such theories are lacking. Freud, however, dwells on such cases for several pages, demonstrating that, for instance, dreams of issues in certain organs or actions may assist in predicting medical afflictions prior to the patient’s awareness of a malady, and that such dreams can be systematically harnessed by doctors to investigate illness. Freud’s emphasis on how organic excitation (arising from a malady of an organ or peculiar movement of a limb) produces dream images helps him to base his own argument that dream images arise from similar psychic excitations: “We shall learn later that the problem of dream-formation may be solved by the disclosure of an entirely unsuspected psychic source of excitation” (31).

Freud then turns to why we forget dreams, owing in part to their lack of sensibility, making them hard to recall, and their lack of import to most people. He notes that dream recollection can be improved with training.

Later, when discussing why dreams have a peculiar nature, he suggests the restricted activity of the senses and psyche, including the psyche’s capacity of discernment, during sleep. This is coupled with the increased activity of the imagination, leading to events deemed impossible in waking life.

Overall, scholars debate whether dreams are strongly irrational and often inconsequential or if they offer access to all the mental faculties of waking life, such as intelligence and will. Freud takes a middle path, suggesting, “The dream is neither pure derangement nor pure irrationality” (46). Instead, “dreaming is itself a form of thinking” (48) with a unique structure. Instead of working directly in ideas, “The image in a dream is a copy of an idea. The main thing is the idea” (46, emphasis added). The incoherence of the dream thereby becomes coherent through interpretation by an analyst trained to find the idea within the image.

Regarding the ethical nature of dreams, Freud notes scholars who indicate that moral imperatives are still perceived in dreams, although dreams may also allow immoral fantasies suppressed in waking life. These notes allow Freud to bring forward his central contribution to the scientific literature on dreams—namely, that they represent unconscious desires: “[D]reams permit us an occasional glimpse of the deepest and innermost recesses of our being, which are generally closed to us in our waking state [...] dreams disclose to us what we do not wish to admit to ourselves” (52). To Freud, dreams are only intelligible through a dynamic relationship of the conscious and unconscious mind, with the conscious censoring unconscious content and producing the typically absurd imagery in dreams.

Following up on his idea that “dreaming is itself a form of thinking” (48), Freud reviews several theories on psychic activity in sleep and dreams. These include theories that the psyche is completely active, is diminished in its capacity, represents only external events or internal physical processes, or is tasked exclusively with eliminating thoughts unfelt or suppressed in wakefulness. Freud focuses particularly on the argument that in eliminating waking thoughts, the mind unburdens itself via dreams.

However, the psyche is also unburdened from logic in dreams, allowing dreams to express ideas “in the freest possible manner” (62), replacing ideas and objects experienced in life with metaphorical versions: “[T]he phantasy plays a tantalizing game with them, and represents the organic source of the stimuli of the dream in question by any sort of plastic symbolism” (63). Freud then notes some common images, such as a house for an organ or organism, and different phallic imagery in dreams. Overall, “a phantastic symbolizing activity remains as the central force of every dream” (64).

Freud closes the chapter by discussing the relation between dreams and mental afflictions. Dreams can both be the result of a mental affliction or, as hallucinations, represent the first break with reality that signals oncoming delusional disorders. Some individuals may have “nocturnal insanity” (66). Other scholars, in fact, term all dreams a temporary insanity: As Freud notes, “the lunatic is a dreamer in the waking state” (66), according to Kant. Dreams may also represent breaks with reality in the form of “wish-fulfilment” (67), such as a mother dreaming of her departed child. “Here,” says Freud, “is to be found the key to a psychological theory of dreams and of the psychoses” (67), as wish fulfillment is a central notion he will return to in depth in Chapter 3.

In covering the scientific and ancient interpretations of dreams so far, Freud sets the stage for a blended approach that aims to synthesize all existing data and perspectives on dreams into a psychoanalytic theory. The breadth of this chapter indicates Freud’s genuine expertise in the literature on dreams, as well as his open approach to varied spiritual, psychological, and physiological explanations. Freud’s central contribution to this literature will be to examine dreams as a product of a division in the psyche between the unconscious and the conscious mind—a notion not commonly held before Freud’s time.

Throughout this introductory chapter, several of the most important aspects of this theory are briefly mentioned: the concept that all dream content is a distortion of thoughts and memories experienced in waking life; that dreams have access to repressed infant memories; that dream images have complex sources, including stimulus encountered during sleep; and that dreams are wish fulfillments. Freud also asserts that dream interpretation serves as an insight into the workings of the unconscious, which can offer psychiatrists information on mental disorders—something which Freud also interprets through a psychodynamic lens.