Role of Dreams

Freud believed that dreams were one vehicle of unconscious expression. He
viewed dreams as expressing the fulfillment of a wish, generally of a sexual
nature. During sleep, the ego relaxes its restrictions on the id; instinctual
wishes from the id, or repressed material from the unconscious, may be
manifested in a dream. The bizarre sense of time and the confusing combinations
of people and odd incidents in dreams reflect that the unconscious
is without a sense of time, logic, or morality.
In dreams, the ego transforms material from the id to make it less threatening.
Once one awakens, the ego disguises the true meaning of the dream
further. Important points will be repressed and forgotten, and distortions
will occur as the dream is remembered or told. For this reason, it is virtually
impossible, according to Freud, to interpret one’s own dreams accurately. A
psychoanalyst interprets dreams by asking a patient to free associate—to say
whatever comes to mind—about the dream content. In this fashion, the censoring
of the ego may be relaxed, and the true meaning will be revealed to
the therapist.
Revealing unconscious material is at the center of Freudian psychotherapy.
Since Freud, many have viewed psychological problems as the result of
childhood conflicts or traumas. Once the source is revealed, the patient is
expected to improve. The nature of treatment is considerably more complicated
than this might suggest, because the patient’s ego may actively defend
against acknowledging painful unconscious material. One of the few cases
that Freud reported in detail was that of “Dora.” Dora was referred to Freud
because of a persistent cough that was assumed to be of psychological origin.
According to Freud, such physical symptoms often are the result of
childhood sexual conflict. Dora’s cough and other psychosomatic complaints
were found to be rooted in her sexual attraction to her father and to
other men who were seen as resembling him—including a family friend,
and even Freud himself. Her attraction was accompanied by jealousy of her
mother and the family friend’s wife. The situation was complicated, because
Dora’s father was having an affair with the family friend’s wife, to whom
Dora was also attracted, and the family friend had expressed his attraction
for Dora.

All this and more is revealed in two dreams of Dora’s that Freud analyzes
in detail. The first is a dream of being awakened by her father, dressing
quickly, and escaping a house that is on fire. The dream does its work by
equating her father with the family friend, who once really was beside her
bed as she awoke from a nap. This caused her to decide to “dress quickly” in
the mornings, lest the friend come upon her unclothed. Her unconscious attraction
for the friend, however, is belied by the symbol of fire, which might be
likened to consuming passion. In her second dream, Dora dreamed that her
father was dead and that a man said “Two and a half hours more.” The
dream symbolizes both Dora’s turning away from her father as an object of
her sexual interest and her intention (not evident to Freud at the time) of
leaving therapy after two more sessions.
If Dora had not stopped therapy prematurely, Freud would have continued
to bring his interpretation of her unconscious conflicts to the fore. In
particular, he would have used her transference of childhood emotions to
Freud himself as a vehicle for making the material revealed by her dreams,
free associations, and behaviors evident to consciousness. The use of such
transference is a key element of psychoanalysis. While this would not have
completely resolved Dora’s strong instinctual urges, it would have allowed
her to come to terms with them in more mature ways, perhaps by choosing
an appropriate marriage partner. Indeed, Freud reveals at the end of his report
of this case that Dora married a young man she mentioned near the
end of her time in therapy.