The Interpretation of Dreams

In this longer chapter, Freud discusses the myriad sources of the manifest content in dreams. This chapter divides into several lettered subsections that each focus on one source, and this structure is maintained here.

A. Recent and Indifferent Impressions in the Dream

Dreams focus on stimulus "on which one has not yet slept" (117). Very recent memories, and particularly insignificant aspects of these memories, appear often in dreams. This emphasis on insignificant content guises latent content that is much more emotionally or philosophically significant and also often thought upon during the previous day.

Freud gives several examples, including again one extended example of his own dream, which demonstrates that both manifest and latent content can be linked to experiences of the previous day and that insignificant content is, in fact, quite significant when linked to the latent concerns of the dream: “[W]e take pains to dream only in connection with such matters as have given us food for thought during the day” (122). Where manifest content is usually recent, the latent content it expresses may be much older, as long as the subconscious mind finds a way to link it to recent memories through linguistic or symbolic associations. Dream interpretation allows us to see the significant latent content through the insignificant manifest content.

Using interpretation, we see there is no such thing as a “guileless” dream (127): “[W]hatever one dreams is either plainly recognizable as being psychically significant, or it is distorted and [...] after complete interpretation [...] proves [...] to be of psychic significance” (127). Freud relates and interprets several seemingly guileless dreams, showing how their manifest content expresses latent issues in the dreamer’s life, to prove this.

This chapter section embodies Freud’s conceptualization of the unconscious almost as if it were an alternative agent within the self. He claims that dreams have "guile" and that latent content acts almost as a smuggler, seeking manifest content to disguise itself into consciousness. This conceptualization of the psyche as divided into multiple competitive agents without a centralized self is key to the psychodynamic approach. Self, to Freud, is not an individual structure but a composite structure, comprising both the conscious life, with which we identify ourselves, and the unconscious life, which we reject. Where such theories have received mixed support over the decades of psychotherapeutic practice, recent neuroscientific investigation does indeed support the idea that there is no centralized author of experience or perspective in the brain (e.g., the "dialogic self" theory), although this does not necessarily support Freud’s other claims regarding unconscious life.

This section also introduces a crucial problem much contemporary research has with Freudian theory—its lack of falsifiability. In science, falsifiability is the demand condition that any theory must be capable of being disproven. This is not the same as saying it must be false, but that there is some experimental route that can be taken that would result in information that could either prove or disprove the theory. Freud’s concept of manifest and latent content lacks this falsifiability, since Freud's claim that all we can ever observe is manifest content obscures any ultimate proof of the manifest content’s link to latent content. This excludes Freudian dream interpretation from existing as a genuine psychological theory of dreams by today’s scientific standards.

B. Infantile Experiences as the Source of Dreams

Freud begins this section by demonstrating that experiences of early childhood—especially those that occur at an age so early they cannot be recalled—appear often in dreams. A common sign of content from this period of life is the “perennial dream” (132), a dream or piece of dream content that occurs repeatedly throughout life. Often, the perennial component is an infantile experience.

However, infantile experiences and their associated thoughts also often recur as latent content, requiring analysis to perceive. In fact, “a scene from childhood is represented in the manifest dream-content only by an allusion, and must be disentangled from the dream by interpretation” (137). Similarly, in many cases “the very wish which has given rise to the dream [...] has itself originated in childhood” (132). Freud gives multiple examples from his own dream life and that of his patients, asserting that “impressions of childhood, often dating back to the first three years of life, which are remembered obscurely, or not at all” occur “just as frequently” (141) in the dreams of the average person as they do in the dreams of neurotic or hysteric patients.

Considering whether dreams always include latent content from childhood, Freud surmises, “I should say that every dream is connected through its manifest content with recent experiences, while through its latent content it is connected with the most remote experiences [i.e., childhood]," although he adds that he "find[s] it very difficult to prove this conjecture” (151). Throughout the text, Freud will assume that neurotic dreams represent infantile memories with a repressed sexual nature.

Freud then closes the section by noting that, as these in-depth analyses have shown, dreams often include not one, but multiple meanings or wishes, each leading from the other, which he refers to as the "stratification" of dreams. He calls stratification "one of the most delicate but also one of the most fruitful problems of dream-interpretation," insisting, "Whoever forgets the possibility of such stratification is likely to go astray and to make untenable assertions concerning the nature of dreams” (151).

In this section, Freud gestures to the strong associative power childhood experiences have as structuring either the manifest or latent content of the dream. This argument links to the broader work of psychoanalysis, which often focuses on how the formative experiences of childhood come to define our complexes, neuroses, or visions of the world. Indeed, as Freud notes of childhood experiences on his own personality: “I am reminded of a story which I heard often in my childhood, that at my birth an old peasant woman had prophesied to my happy mother [ ...] that she had brought a great man into the world [...] Is it possible that my thirst for greatness has originated from this source?” (133).

In modern psychotherapy, the impact of childhood experiences on adult psychology is still a very important area, now backed by neuroscience. The brain is at its most plastic in childhood, and so our experiences in childhood—even during the period of infancy—have significant impact on the framework and function of our thought throughout our life. For instance, certain mental disorders, such as dissociative identity disorder and violent sociopathy, are understood as a product of genetic predispositions linked to childhood experiences of trauma. However, this confirmation of Freud’s general statement does not support Freud’s concept of perennial dreams, or that all dreams in some way relate to infantile experiences. Importantly, since such experiences would not be remembered, an analyst could suggest any experience is indicated by the manifest content, with no way to validate it. This is another example of the lack of falsifiability in Freudian theory.

C. The Somatic Sources of Dreams

Freud now reviews the opinion of several writers, referenced in Chapter 1, that dreams originate in three kinds of somatic stimuli experienced during sleep: “objective sensory stimuli which proceed from external objects, the inner states of excitation of the sensory organs, and the bodily stimuli arising within the body” (152). Although sometimes relevant to dream content, Freud argues these stimuli are not sufficient to explain all dream content. Specifically, Freud cites the theory of Strumpell, which states that "the mind interprets in sleep the impressions of nervous [i.e., nerve, sensory] stimuli” (153) and produces from them psychic interpretations that become dream images. Freud points out that this theory lacks capacity to explain the mind’s “peculiar choice" (154) of images—why certain images are chosen over others.

Freud turns to integrating the somatic source of some dream content into the theory of dreams he has so far developed. To do so, he links the images produced via somatic experience to those already produced from wish fulfillment: “[T]he stimuli which occur during sleep are elaborated into a wish-fulfilment, of which the other components are the psychic remnants of daily experience with which we are already familiar” (158). The images created from somatic stimuli have a symbolic value that is not predetermined but unique to the dreamer and the dream’s latent content.

Freud again gives an example of his own dream, here of horseback riding when in reality Freud had a painful boil on his perineum. The dream is a wish fulfillment of painless action, and the horseback riding is related to his recent experience of a colleague who “likes to ride the high horse with me” (160). In this way the dream serves as a wish fulfillment suppressing the nerve stimulus concocted from distortions of the dreamer’s own recent mental content: a meeting with this colleague.

Most deeply, the wish of many nerve-stimulus dreams is to suppress the nerve stimulus and, therefore, “of continuing to sleep instead of waking. The dream is the guardian of sleep, not its disturber” (161). All dreams help to serve this goal, so when a stimulus that cannot be ignored in sleep is encountered, the dream “seeks that interpretation of the [stimulus] which will represent the actual sensation as a component of a desired situation which is compatible with sleep” (162) and suppresses it.

This section is an example of the systematicity of Freud’s approach to dreams. Freud does not solely focus on the point that dreams emerge from the unconscious but looks to the specific processes by which they emerge in concert with varied other psychic processes. The complexity of this theory helps to explain the complexity and uniqueness of dreams, adding credence to Freud’s theory: “I imagine [...] a co-operation of individual, physiological and accidental factors, which depend on the circumstances of the moment [...] in conjunction with the intensity of the stimulus” (158). In this section, it is physiological, and not mnemonic or emotional sources, that take the fore, indicating Freud’s interest in both medical and more psychological/spiritual approaches to dreams. It is this ecumenical approach to dreams as a topic that assists in the longevity of Freud’s theories.

D. Typical Dreams

Freud starts this section with a challenge faced by his method of dream interpretation: “Generally speaking, we are not in a position to interpret another person's dream if he is unwilling to furnish us with the unconscious thoughts which lie behind the dream-content, and for this reason the practical applicability of our method of dream-interpretation is often seriously restricted” (166). This is not true, however, of "Typical Dreams," which are “dreams which almost everyone has dreamed in the same manner, and of which we are accustomed to assume [...] have the same significance in the case of every dreamer” (166). Notably, the problem which Freud cites of the recalcitrant patient serves as an advertisement for psychoanalysis. Dream interpretation cannot be conducted alone but only in tandem with an analyst who gains insight into the psyche by being skilled enough to bypass patient resistance.

Since everyone dreams typical dreams, they are “particularly fitted to provide us with information as to the sources of dreams” (166)—that is, reasons people dream in the first place. Freud gives examples of a few typical dreams. The first is “The Embarrassment—Dream of Nakedness” (167), in which someone is embarrassed to appear nude or in inappropriate clothing, usually in front of strangers. Based on the rate “in which such dreams appear during [his] analysis of neurotics,” Freud assumes “a memory of the dreamer's earliest childhood lies at the foundation of the dream” (168). These dreams are “exhibition dreams” with roots in “infantile delight in exhibitionism” (169)—a wish fulfillment of the freedom experienced in youth.

Another typical dream is “Dreams of the Death of Beloved Persons” (171). Dreams in which this occurs and the dreamer experiences grief are typical. These dreams “mask another wish of some kind" which is not a wish for the beloved's death, but "merely [...] the wish to see a certain beloved person again after a long separation” (171). Here, the latent content of the dream, the emotion of longing and grief, is manifested in content that gives situation to this emotion: death.

In dreams in which “the death of a beloved relative is imagined, and in which a painful affect is felt” (172), the death of this relative is genuinely wished for. Freud notes these dreams relate to desire for the death of loved ones, often siblings, repressed during childhood development but lingering in the subconscious. Although the adult person may “now love their brothers and sisters, and [...] would feel bereaved by their death," they may still "harbour in their unconscious hostile wishes" that are "survivals from an earlier period" (173). Freud notes this dream as very common—“I have met it in all my female patients” (175)—but encourages the reader not to see it as wicked due to both the limited moral development of the child and their lack of understanding of the true meaning of death: “Being dead means, for the child [...] much the same as being gone, and ceasing to annoy the survivors” (176).

Freud segues from this discussion to dreams of the death of a parent, beginning his discussion of the Oedipal complex—a significant Freudian theory that originates in this text. Freud begins by noting: “The very great majority of dreams of the death of a parent refer to the parent of the same sex as the dreamer” (177, emphasis added). Explaining this, Freud notes, “it is as though [...] the boy regarded his father, and the girl her mother, as a rival in love—by whose removal he or she could but profit” (177). This is coupled with the preference opposite-sex parents show to their children, leading to resistance to the same-sex parent: “[I]t is a natural tendency for the father to spoil his little daughters, and for the mother to take the part of the sons [...] The child is perfectly conscious of this partiality, and offers resistance to the parent who opposes it” (178).

These two statements are the essential elements of the Oedipal (for male children) or Elektra (for female children) complex. Freud gives some examples of the complex from his own psychoanalytic treatment, noting that neurotic patients are particularly afflicted with this complex, but that “psychoneurotics do no more than reveal [...] by magnification, something that occurs less markedly and intensively in the minds of the majority of children” (180). Freud then officially names this theory (181) and explains it via recounting the plot of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex.

Freud closes the discussion of typical dreams by making a broader statement about the role of anxiety, such as pain at wishing for the death of a loved one, in a dream. These represent failure to completely censor latent content through manifest content distortion: An “anxiety-dream occurs only when the censorship is entirely or partially overpowered” (185). Another typical dream is “The Examination Dream” (190), the dream of having to take difficult exams in school, despite having already passed them in reality. Freud covers this topic only very briefly, noting they emerge “whenever we feel the burden of responsibility” (190) in our life.

This section knits together several of the threads expressed in previous chapters and sections. These include the importance of childhood experience in dream formation and the notion that dreams are governed by a symbolic language. Where earlier Freud noted that these symbols are not static, here he expresses a few examples of common symbols and their regular relationships to psychic problems, a step back toward acceptance of the symbolic theory of dreams.

However, the discussion of typical dreams, as well as the Oedipal complex and its relationship to human concerns recorded in mythic works, also reaches forward to another important psychoanalytic theory: Jung’s concept of the "Collective Unconscious." In this theory, all humans have a shared set of unconscious characteristics related to our shared evolutionary history. This collective unconscious includes archetypes—recurrent figures of human history and psyche that define the landscape of unconscious life—and perhaps also the capacity for extrasensory communication through semi-supernatural, unconscious links.

Freud’s suggestion regarding the typicality of some dreams and their relation to myths indicates some implicit support for the general concept of this theory, with dreams serving as representations of these unconscious components. As Freud writes, “Sometimes the penetrating insight of the poet has analytically recognized the process of transformation of which the poet is otherwise the instrument, [the poet has] traced a poem to a dream” (170).

The discussion of the Oedipal complex in this section marks a significant moment in the history of psychology, as this theory goes on to have great influence both in psychological sciences and culture more broadly. There is, however, a lack of scientific justification in Freud’s theory. Freud introduces the Oedipal complex by noting “the very great majority of dreams of the death of a parent refer to the parent of the same sex as the dreamer” (177). This is not supported by evidence yet serves as a foundation for the whole of the following theory. When reading Freud, it is important to be aware of these assumptions that underlie theories in order to best grasp their true value. While influential, the theory of the Oedipal complex has largely been discredited, simply for the lack of evidence of childhood sexual desires for parents.