Interpretation of the dreams according to Freud and the psychoanalysis

For Sigmund Freud and according to the principle of the psychic determinism, the Dream, far from being an absurd or magic phenomenon, has a direction: it is the achievement of a desire. It has as a function to satisfy the dreamer, so that this one does not awake. This function of the dream constitutes in fact a mine of information as for the desires of the dreamer.

More precisely, the dream is the achievement of a desire Inconscient. Its direction must be interpreted, because the desires are not represented such as they are, because at the same time is implemented the reaction-formation being opposed to this realization of the desire. It is necessary to release the manifest content of the dream of the deformation which it underwent. The dream is presented then in the form of an invaluable means of knowing the neurosis. Freud will however write, in 1911, in the foreword with the third edition of Die Traumdeutung , that the knowledge of the neurosis is also a means of more in connection with the dreams.

The book the interpretation of the dreams

The fundamental work the interpretation of the dreams of Sigmund Freud writes in 1899 marks an important date in the Histoire of the psychoanalysis. For the first time a scientific approach of the Rêve is tried. On the one hand it is about one moment of systematization of the analytical theory, which will become the Métapsychologie, and on the other hand it was a book which made known the psychoanalysis, not without making emerge moultes critical.

Freud will write into 1921 which if this book had formerly as a role to inform, “ it is necessary for him now to cure, with very as many care, with incomprehension tétue that this information meets”.

Indicative list of the chapters of the book

scientific literature concerning the problems of the dream
method of interpretation of the dreams. analyzes of an example of dream.
the dream is a wish-fulfilment
the deformation in the dream
the material and the sources of the dream
the dream-work
Psychologie of the processes of the dream

Method of interpretation

Freud proposes one of the first descriptions of the method suitable for analytical interpretation. In fact, it describes the rule of the free Association which will remain, still today, one of the essential pillars of the psychoanalytical practice.

One can note that Freud delivers several of its own dreams: it is that it still cruelly misses material to be presented. This can call several remarks, which it is a question of criticizing this characteristic, to admire the effort freudien at the beginnings of the analysis or to be interested in what will be named self-analysis of Freud. The dream does not reveal the future: it is not a question of one predicts on which the dreamer could rest. On the contrary, the dream reveals, precisely, the past, that of the dreamer. The unconscious desire corresponds to the infantile Sexualité, enigma whose neurotic does not include/understand any more the elements, that it refuses to conceive, these unconscious Représentations being irreconcilable with the requirements of the conscience.

Wish-fulfilment and deformation

The dream as the dreamer tells it is called the manifest content. It achieves a desire driven back. The purpose of interpretation is to detect this Latent content. The idea of the dream like a symptom, at the same time carrying out a desire and being defended some, described completely the base of psychopathology suitable for the psychoanalysis. The symptom is studied there like compromise-formation.

Freud describes the dream like an invaluable information source as for the neurosis. However, the technique of free association, will lead the psychoanalysts to formulate many theories which in return will enrich their comprehension by the dream.

Freud, for example, note in 1911 qu ' at the time of the publication of Die traumdeutung there was no yet theory of sexuality - the tests on the sexual theory being appeared in 1905. If Freud studies already a material Inconscient thus infantile, it did not develop yet its theory of the psycho infantile Sexualité.

Symbolism will be largely worked over again thereafter, Freud gives equivalences: for example a hat can represent the male genitals, or a child can symbolize the phallus. This last unconscious equivalence besides will be largely enriched thereafter, being posed the equation

child = phallus = fécès

If sexual symbolism is largely used by the analytical community, however the characteristic of analytical interpretation remains to remain faithful to the speech of the patient rather than to interpret it without him. The symbols indexed by Freud often correspond to fragments of analyzes.

Dream-work

The dream is in fact only known through a manifest content. But these contents are, precisely, which does not interest the Psychanalyse, the relevant data being those which are veiled, hidden, and which one names Latent content. Still is necessary it to specify the psychic operations which make pass from the latent content - unconscious desires - to this manifest content become if not very interesting.

The remainder diurre: any dream is related to the events of the day which will make calls with unconscious memories more or less old.

Representability: the transformation of an idea into image. The dream represents the unconscious desire in images.

The displacement is the operation which veils what has really interest. What makes the unconscious one is presented like a not very important element, while what makes the essence of a dream corresponds only little to the unconscious desires. Displacement, more technically, is the fact that a Affect, associated with a representation - for example the excitation related to a naked body - moves and joins another less awkward representation, like that of a beautiful landscape. The condensation is the fact that several representations amalgamate and do nothing any more but one of them. Thus, only one element of the dream can correspond well to several unconscious elements. Besides this theory does one of the characteristics of the Métapsychologie, which considers the same element under several angles, and which interprets it in fact several times.

The figuration, or consideration of representability , is also called secondary revision. It is the narrative form of the dream, which can present a structured scenario, where the unconscious desire makes fun about it well. All the effort of romancer the dream makes forget what interests really the dreamer.

Freud will give more and more importance to this mechanism. Symbolism will be studied more and more: Freud will note which elements represent in fact which other thing. For example, according to Freud, the dream of escape through rooms is “ a dream of closed house or harem ”.

Latent content

According to Freud, “ the desire represented in the dream is necessarily infantile ”. The latent content thus returns to the infantile Sexualité. Freud theorizes, at the time of describing the dream, the Inconscient as the place of the Primary process S. satisfaction of the Pulsion there is not deferred, but takes place on the hallucinatory mode. Moreover, the impulse is not symbolic system there, with the direction where the representations of things are not attached to representations of words. The dream then proves the means of theorizing what will become a Métapsychologie.

The later theories of the Psychanalyse will give credit to the assumption of a Death instinct: latent content being able well then to return to wishes of destruction of oneself or others.

Critical elements

In its book “the psychoanalysis with the test”, Professor Adolf Grünbaum studies the effectiveness asserted by Freud of its method of interpretation of the dreams, starting from free associations of the patients, to validate its theories on unconscious repression. Grünbaum proposes that Freud would erect scaffolding of the fallacious inférences, which would not enable him to highlight satisfactorily driven back in the dream. The principal made reproach with Freud by Grünbaum, is not to have never given an independent clinical confirmation for its theses on repression in the dream, confirmations which are not contaminated by theoretical waitings of Freud. Grünbaum concludes some with total collapse from the psychoanalytical etiology, which would radically ruin the relevance of the method of investigation of free association in the control of the etiologic investigation. Because Freud, explains Grünbaum, “had stated this fundamental rule of free association like a maxim of clinical research, because he thought that associations controls by it made it possible to identify in a reliable way the unconscious disease-causing agents of the neurosis” .

Notes of reference

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