innumerable, and are a constant stumbling-block to our learned critics, for—incredible dictu—they still cannot grasp the simple distinction between the manifest and the latent content of the dream. We must guard against such an error; the conflict dealt with in the dream is an unconscious one, and equally so also is the manner of its solution. Our dreamer has, as a matter of fact, the wish to get away from her mother—expressed in the language of the unconscious, she wants her mother to die. Now we know that a certain section of the unconscious contains all our lost memories, and also all those infantile impulses that cannot find any application in adult life—a series, that is, of ruthless childish desires. We may say that for the most part the unconscious bears an infantile stamp; like the child’s simple wish: “Daddy, when Mummie is dead, will you marry me?” In a dream that infantile expression of a wish is the substitute for a recent wish to marry, which is painful to the dreamer for reasons still undiscovered. This thought, or rather the seriousness of its corresponding intention, is said to be “repressed into the unconscious” and must there necessarily express itself in an infantile way, for the material which is at the disposal of the unconscious consists chiefly of infantile memories. As the latest researches of the Zürich school have shown,[1] these are not only infantile memories but also “racial” memories, extending far beyond the limits of individual existence.
Important desires which have not been sufficiently gratified, or have been “repressed,” during the day find their symbolic substitution in dreams. Because moral tendencies usually predominate in waking hours, these ungratified desires which strive to realise themselves symbolically in the dream are, as a rule, erotic ones. It is, therefore, somewhat rash to tell dreams before one who understands, for the symbolism is often extremely transparent to him who knows the rules! The clearest in this respect are “anxiety-dreams” which are so common, and which invariably symbolise a strong erotic desire.
Often the dream apparently deals with quite irrelevant
- ↑ Compare Jung, “The Psychology of the Unconscious.”
