Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts by Herbert Silberer (great book club books txt) 📖

what reservations I make concerning Freud's doctrines.] In them wishes, strivings, impulses work themselves out, rising to the surface from the depths of the soul. When they come in waking life, wish phantasies are sometimes called castles in the air. In dreams we have the fulfillment of wishes that are not or cannot be fulfilled.

But the impulses that the dreams call up are principally such wishes and impulses as we cannot ourselves acknowledge and such as in a waking state we reject as soon as they attempt to announce themselves, as for instance, animal tendencies or such sexual desires as we are unwilling to admit, and also suppressed or “repressed” impulses. As a result of being repressed they have the peculiarity of being in general inaccessible to consciousness. [Freud [pg 024] speaks particularly of crassly egoistic actuations. The criminal element in them is emphasized by Stekel.]

One not initiated into dream analysis may object that the obvious evidence is against this theory. For the majority of dreams picture quite inoffensive processes that have nothing to do with impulses and passions which are worthy of rejection on either moral or other grounds. The objection appears at first sight to be well founded, but collapses as soon as we learn that the critical power of morality, which does not desert us by day, retains by night a part of its power; and that therefore the fugitive impulses and tendencies that seek the darkness and dare not come forth by day, dare not even at night unveil their true aspect but have to approach, as it were, in costumes, or disguised as symbols or allegories, in order to pass unchallenged. The superintending power, that I just now called the power of morality, is compared very pertinently to a censor. What our psyche produces is, so to speak, subjected to a censor before it is allowed to emerge into the light of consciousness. And if the fugitive elements want to venture forth they must be correspondingly disguised, in order to pass the censor. Freud calls this disguising or paraphrasing process the dream disfigurement. The literal is thereby displaced by the figurative, an allusion intimated through a nebulous atmosphere. Thus, in the following example, an unconscious death wish is exhibited. In the examination of a lady's dream it struck me that the motive [pg 025] of a dead child occurred repeatedly, generally in connection with picnics. During an analysis the lady observed that when she was a girl the children, her younger brothers and sisters, were often the obstacles when it was proposed to have a party or celebration or the like. The association Kinder (= children) Hinderniss (= obstacle) furnished the key to a solution of the stereotyped dream motive. As further indications showed, it concerned the children of a married man whom she loved. The children prevented the man separating from his wife in order to marry the lady. In waking life she would not, of course, admit a wish for the death of the embarrassing children, but in dreams the wish broke through and represented the secretly wished situation. The children are dead and nothing now stands in the way of the “party” or the celebration (wedding). The double sense of the word “party” is noticeable. (In German “eine Partie machen” means both to go on an excursion and to make a matrimonial match.) Such puns are readily made use of by dreams, in order to make the objectionable appear unobjectionable and so to get by the censor.

Psychoanalytic procedure, employed in the interpretation of dreams of any person can be called a scientifically organized confession that traces out with infinite patience even to the smallest ramifications, the spiritual inventory of what was tucked away in the mind of the person undergoing it. Psychoanalysis is used in medical practice to discover [pg 026] and relieve the spiritual causes of neurotic phenomena. The patient is induced to tell more and more, starting from a given point, thereby going into the most intimate details, and yet we are aware, in the network of outcropping thoughts and memories, of certain points of connection, which have dominating significance for the affective life of the person being studied. Here the path begins to be hard because it leads into the intimately personal. The secret places of the soul set up a powerful opposition to the intruder, even without the purposive action of the patient. Right there are, however, so to speak, the sore spots (pathogenic “complexes”) of the psyche, towards which the research is directed. Firmly advancing in spite of the limitations, we lay bare these roots of the soul that strive to cling to the unconscious. Those are the disfigured elements just mentioned; all of the items of the spiritual inventory from which the person in question has toilsomely “worked himself out” and from which he supposes himself free. They must be silent because they stand in some contradictory relation to the character in which the person has clothed himself; and if they, the subterranean elements still try to announce themselves, he hurls them back immediately into their underworld; he allows himself to think of nothing that offends too much his attitudes, his morality and his feelings. He does not give verbal expression to the disturbers of the peace that dwell in his heart of hearts.

The mischief makers are, however, merely repressed, [pg 027] not dead. They are like the Titans [On this similarity rests the psychologic term “titanic,” used frequently by me in what follows.] which were not crushed by the gods of Olympus, but only shut up in the depths of Tartarus. There they wait for the time when they can again arise and show their faces in daylight. The earth trembles at their attempts to free themselves. Thus the titanic forces of the soul strive powerfully upward. And as they may not live in the light of consciousness they rave in darkness. They take the main part in the procreation of dreams, produce in some cases hysterical symptoms, compulsion ideas and acts, anxiety neuroses, etc. The examination of these psychic disturbances is not without importance for our later researches.

Psychoanalysis, which has not at any time been limited to medical practice, but soon began with its torch to illumine the activity of the human spirit in all its forms (poetry, myth-making, etc.), was decried as pernicious in many quarters. [The question as to how widely psychoanalysis may be employed would at this time lead us too far, yet it will be considered in Sect. 1, of the synthetic part of this volume.] Now it is indeed true that it leads us toward all kinds of spiritual refuse. It does so, however, in the service of truth, and it would be unfortunate to deny to truth its right to justify itself. Any one determined to do so could in that case defend a theory that sexual maladies are acquired by catching a cold.

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The spiritual refuse that psychoanalysis uncovers is like the manure on which our cultivated fruits thrive. The dark titanic impulses are the raw material from which in every man, the work of civilization forms an ethical character. Where there is a strong light there are deep shadows. Should we be so insincere as to deny, because of supposed danger, the shadows in our inmost selves? Do we not diminish the light by so doing? Morality, in whose name we are so scrupulous, demands above everything else, truth and sincerity. But the beginning of all truth is that we do not impose upon ourselves. “Know thyself” is written over the entrance of the Pythian sanctuary. And it is this inspiring summons of the radiant god of Delphi that psychoanalysis seeks to meet.

After this introductory notice, it will be possible properly to understand the following instructive example, which contains exquisite sexual symbolism.

Dream of Mr. T. “I dreamed I was riding on the railroad. Near me sat a delicate, effeminate young man or boy; his presence caused erotic feelings in me to a certain extent. (It appeared as if I put my arm about him.) The train came to a standstill; we had arrived at a station and got out. I went with the boy into a valley through which ran a small brook, on whose bank were strawberries. We picked a great many. After I had gathered a large number I returned to the railway and awoke.”

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Supplementary communication. “I think I remember that an uncomfortable feeling came over me in the boy's company. The valley branched off to the left from the railway.”

From a discussion of the dream it next appeared that T., who, as far as I knew, entertained a pronounced aversion to homosexuality, had read a short time before a detailed account of a notorious trial then going on in Germany, that was concerned with real homosexual actions. [In consciousness, of course. In the suppressed depths of unconsciousness the infantile homosexual component also will surely be found.] An incident from it, probably supported by some unconscious impulse, crowded its way into the dream as an erotic wish, hence the affectionate scene in the railway train. So far the matter would be intelligible even if in an erotic day dream the image of a boy, considering the existing sexual tendency of T., had been resolutely rejected by him. How are the other processes in the dream related to it? Do they not at first sight appear unconnected or meaningless?

And yet in them are manifested the fulfillment of the wish implied in the erotic excitement in the company of the boy. The homosexual action of this wish fulfillment would have been insufferable to the dream censor; it must be intimated symbolically. And the remainder of the dream is accordingly nothing but a dextrous veiling of a procedure hostile to the censor.

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Even that the train comes to a standstill is a polite paraphrase. [Paraphrase as the dreamer communicated to me, of an actual physical condition—an erection.] Similar meaning is conveyed by the word station, which reminds us of the Latin word status (from stare, to stand). The scene in the car recalls moreover the joke in a story which often used to occur to T. “A lady invited to a reception, where there were also young girls, a Hungarian [accentuated now, on account of what follows] (the typical Vienna joker), who is feared on account of his racy wit. She enjoined him at the same time, in view of the presence of the girls, not to treat them to any of his spicy jests. The Hungarian agreed and appeared at the party. To the amazement of the lady, he proposed the following riddle: ‘'One can enter from in front, or from behind, only one has to stand up.’ Observing the despair of the lady, he, with a sly, innocent look, said, ‘But well then, what is it? Simply a trolley car.’ Next day the daughter of the house appeared before her schoolmates in the high school with the following:‘'Girls, I heard a great joke yesterday; one can go in from in front or behind, only one must be stiff.’ ” [A neat contribution, by the way, to the psychology of innocent girlhood.] The anecdote was related to T. by a man later known to him as a homosexual. T. had been with few Hungarians, but with these few, homosexuality had been, as it happened, a favorite subject of conversation.

In the above we find many highly suggestive elements. [pg 031] The most suggestive is, however, the strawberries. T. had, as appeared during the process of the analysis, a couple of days before the dream read a French story where the expression (new to him) cueillir des fraises occurred. He went to a Frenchman for the explanation of this phrase and learned that it was a delicate way of speaking of the sexual act, because lovers like to go into the woods under the pretext of picking strawberries, and thus separate themselves from the rest of the company. In whatever way the dream wish conceived its gratification, the valley (between the two hills!) through which the brook flowed furnishes a quite definite suggestion. Here also the above mentioned “from behind” probably gets a meaning.

The circumstance that the dream has, as it were, two faces, with one that it openly exposes to view, implies that a distinction must be made between the manifest and the latent material. The openly exposed face is the manifest dream content (as the wording of the dream report represents the dream); what is concealed is the latent dream thoughts. For the most part a broad tissue of dream thoughts is condensed into a dream.