Freud : his dream and sex theories / by Joseph Jastrow.

  • Joseph Jastrow
Date:
1948,
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Freud : his dream and sex theories / by Joseph Jastrow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    dream. But instead of that being the rub, “in that sleep what dreams may come when we have shuffled off’ this logical and social coil—that was the golden Freud¬ ian opportunity. Dreams were a godsend. Dream- analysis would supply hints to psychoanalysis, would extend the gospel of Freudian determinism. That dreams might have meaning was known to Joseph; but Joseph was not a Freudian, though a symbolist, nor was Pharaoh a neurotic patient. Freud had in mind a deeper, more vital dream-interpretation. It became an important instrument in his technique. The neurotic repressed the unpleasant; the dreamer under similar stress expressed the pleasant. In dreams the “Freudian wish” escaped; the repressed desire be¬ came the wish fulfillment; the subconscious was set free in a world of its own making. Far more was in¬ volved in this “discovery.” It suggested a principle in psychology of large moment, not wholly new but set in a novel light. For what is dreaming? It is romancing in the wake of desire. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” In dreams, wishes produce horses as readily as fairies produce chariots to take Cinderella to the ball and to her prince. Fairy-tales are folk- dreams set to narrative; myth is racial dream-thought Dream thinking and wish thinking are one; each was a variety of a common tendency. Freud thus arrived at his fertile suggestion of “two orders of thinking.” Dreaming as romancing is older and more universal than so-called (logical) thinking; we are inveterate dreamers all. By the Freudian route, day-dreaming has come to its own as a recognized procedure and a symp¬ tom in mental behavior. There are thus two principles guiding our mental procedures awake or asleep: the pleasure principle which directs our urges awake or asleep; when unconstrained we wish and day-dream
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