If I keep in mind the idea of the two psychic instances and their relations to consciousness, I find in the sphere of politics a very exact analogy for the extraordinary affection which I feel for my friend R., who suffers such degradation in the course of the dream interpretation. I turn my attention to a political state in which a ruler, jealous of his rights, and a live public opinion are in conflict with each other. The people are indignant against an official whom they hate, and demand his dismissal; and in order not to show that he is compelled to respect the public wish, the autocrat will expressly confer upon the official some great honour, for which there would otherwise have been no occasion. Thus the second instance referred to, which controls access to consciousness, honours my friend R. with a profusion of extraordinary tenderness, because the wish activities of the first system, in accordance with a particular interest which they happen to be pursuing, are inclined to put him down as a simpleton.[1]
Perhaps we shall now begin to suspect that dream interpretation is capable of giving us hints about the structure of our psychic apparatus which we have thus far expected in vain from philosophy. We shall not, however, follow this track, but return to our original problem as soon as we have cleared up the subject of dream-disfigurement. The question has arisen how dreams with disagreeable content can be analysed as the fulfilments of wishes. We see now that this is possible in case dream-disfigurement has taken place, in case the disagreeable content serves only as a disguise for what is wished. Keeping in mind our assumptions in regard to the two psychic instances, we may now proceed to say: disagreeable dreams, as a matter of fact, contain something
- ↑ Such hypocritical dreams are not unusual occurrences with me or with others. While I am working up a certain scientific problem, I am visited for many nights in rapid succession by a somewhat confusing dream which has as its content reconciliation with a friend long ago dropped. After three or four attempts, I finally succeeded in grasping the meaning of this dream. It was in the nature of an encouragement to give up the little consideration still left for the person in question, to drop him completely, but it disguised itself shamefacedly in the opposite feeling. I have reported a "hypocritical oedipus dream" of a person, in which the hostile feelings and the wishes of death of the dream thoughts were replaced by manifest tenderness. ("Typisches Beispiel eines verkappten Oedipustraumes," Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, Bd. 1, Heft 1-11, 1910.) Another class of hypocritical dreams will be reported in another place.
