a-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud

TWELFTH LECTURE
THE DREAM
Analysis of Sample Dreams
I HOPE you will not be disappointed if I again lay before you excerpts from
dream analyses instead of inviting you to participate in the interpretation of a
beautiful long dream. You will say that after so much preparation you ought to
have this right, and that after the successful interpretation of so many thousands
of dreams it should long ago have become possible to assemble a collection of
excellent dream samples with which we could demonstrate all our assertions
concerning dream-work and dream thoughts. Yes, but the difficulties which
stand in the way of the fulfillment of your wish are too many.
First of all, I must confess to you that no one practices dream interpretation
as his main occupation. When does one interpret dreams? Occasionally one
can occupy himself with the dream of some friend, without any special
purpose, or else he may work with his own dreams for a time in order to
school himself in psychoanalytic method; most often, however, one deals with
the dreams of nervous individuals who are undergoing analytic treatment.
These latter dreams are excellent material, and in no way inferior to those of
normal persons, but one is forced by the technique of the treatment to
subordinate dream analysis to therapeutic aims and to pass over a large
number of dreams after having derived something from them that is of use in
the treatment. Many dreams we meet with during the treatment are, as a
matter of fact, impossible of complete analysis. Since they spring from the
total mass of psychic material which is still unknown to us, their
understanding becomes possible only after the completion of the cure.
Besides, to tell you such dreams would necessitate the disclosure of all the
secrets concerning a neurosis. That will not do for us, since we have taken
the dream as preparation for the study of the neuroses.
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