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

control of the ego by drawing a part of it to ourselves in the process of
transference.
It is to be remembered that we cannot reach a direct conclusion as to the
disposition of the libido during the disease from the distributions of the libido
which are effected during and because of the treatment. Assuming that we
have succeeded in curing the case by means of the creation and destruction
of a strong father-transference to the physician, it would be wrong to
conclude that the patient had previously suffered from a similar and
unconscious attachment of his libido to his father. The father-transference is
merely the battlefield upon which we were able to overcome the libido; the
patient's libido had been concentrated here from its other positions. The
battlefield need not necessarily have coincided with the most important
fortresses of the enemy. Defense of the hostile capital need not take place
before its very gates. Not until we have again destroyed the transference can
we begin to reconstruct the distribution of the libido that existed during the
illness.
From the standpoint of the libido theory we might say a last word in regard to
the dream. The dreams of neurotics, as well as their errors and haphazard
thoughts, help us in finding the meaning of the symptoms and in discovering
the disposition of the libido. In the form of the wish fulfillment they show us
what wish impulses have been suppressed, and to what objects the libido,
withdrawn from the ego, has been attached. That is why interpretation of
dreams plays a large role in psychoanalytic treatment, and is in many cases,
for a long time, the most important means with which we work. We already
know that the condition of sleep itself carries with it a certain abatement of
suppressions. Because of this lessening of the pressure upon it, it becomes
possible for the suppressed impulse to create in the dream a much clearer
expression than the symptom can furnish during the day. So dream-study is
the easiest approach to a knowledge of the libidinous suppressed unconscious
which has been withdrawn from the ego.
Dreams of neurotics differ in no essential point from the dreams of normal
persons; you might even say they cannot be distinguished. It would be
unreasonable to explain the dreams of the nervous in any way which could
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