Status Updates From Introductory Lectures on Ps...

But just as dreams prepare the way to an understanding of the neuroses, so, on the other hand, a true appreciation of dreams can only be achieved after a knowledge of neurotic phenomena.

the system of expression by dreams occupies a far more unfavorable position than any of these ancient languages and scripts [of ambiguous nature]. For after all they are fundamentally intended for communication,.. meant to be understood. But precisely this characteristic is absent in dreams. A dream does not want to say anything to anyone. It is not a vehicle for communication; it is meant to remain un-understood.

Whereas we can say of an infantile dream that it is the open fulfilment of a permitted wish, and of an ordinary distorted dream that it is the disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish,.. an anxiety-dream.. is the open fulfilment of a repressed wish. the anxiety is a sign that the repressed wish.. has put through, or is on the point of putting through, its wish fulfilment inspite of the censorship.

Children love themselves first, it is only later that they learn to love others and to sacrifice something of their own ego to others. Even those people whom a child seems to love from the beginning are loved by him at first because he needs them and cannot do without them - once again from egoistic motives. Not until later does the impulse to love make itself independent of egoism..HIS EGOISM HAS TAUGHT HIM TO LOVE.

.. the remarkable amnesia of childhood. I mean the fact that the earliest years of life, up to the age of five, six or eight, have not left behind them traces in our memory like later experiences... There has not been enough astonishment over this fact.

Joke, too, often make use of allusions. They drop the precondition of there being an association in subject-matter, and replace it by unusual external associations such as similarity of sound, verbal ambiguity, and so on. But [unlike dreams] they retain the precondition of intelligibility: a joke would lose all its efficiency if the path back from the allusion to the genuine thing could not be followed easily.

In myths about the birth of the heroes - to which Otto Rank [1909] has devoted a comparative study, the oldest being that of King Sargon of Agade (about 2800 B.C.) - a predominant part is played by exposure in the water and rescue from the water. Rank has perceived that these are representations of birth, analogous to those that are usual in dreams.

And now turn your eyes away from individuals and consider the Great War which is still laying Europe waste. Think of the vast amount of brutality, cruelty and lies which are able to spread over the civilized world. Do you really believe that a handful of ambitious and deluding men without conscience could have succeeded in unleashing all these evil spirits if their millions of followers did not share their guilt?

Omission, modification, fresh grouping of the material - these then are the activities of the dream-censorship and the instruments of dream-distortion. The dream-censorship itself is the originator, or one of the originators, of the dream-distortion... we are in the habit of combining the concepts of modification and re-arrangement under the term 'displacement'.

It was discovered one day that the pathological symptoms of certain neurotic patients have a sense. On this discovery the psycho-analytic method of treatment was founded. It happened in the course of this treatment that patients, instead of bringing forward their symptoms, brought forward dreams. A suspicion thus arose that the dreams too had a sense.

If you recall the tricks of mnemotechnics, you will realize with some surprise that the same chains of association which are deliberately laid down in order to PREVENT names from being forgotten can also lead to our FORGETTING them.