"The Interpretation of Dreams" by Sigmund Freud

Author(s): Talcott Parsons

Source: Daedalus , Winter, 1974, Vol. 103, No. 1, Twentieth-Century Classics Revisited
(Winter, 1974), pp. 91-96
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024191

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TALCOTT PARSONS

The Interpretation of Dreams

by Sigmund Freud

Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams seems particularly appropriate for discussion

in the present issue of D dalus because it was first published in the opening year of
the twentieth century, 1900, when Freud was forty-four years old. It was the first
major publication of what came to be known as psychoanalytic theory. This field, if
not his unique creation, is overwhelmingly dominated by the figure of Freud. The
main outline of psychoanalytic theory is clearly present in The Interpretation of
Dreams and, indeed, in a surprisingly subtle and fully developed form. In prepara
tion for writing the present article, I entirely reread the book in its seventh German
edition, since I had not read it for a good many years.1 I was more profoundly im
pressed by it than I was originally, essentially because, on the one hand, I have a
much better understanding of psychoanalytic thinking than I did, and secondly,
because I now connect Freud's book with a great many theoretical preoccupations of
my own which have undergone very substantial development since I first read
Freud.
In a great many respects this is a unique book. Although there was a rather exten
sive literature on dreams in his day, which Freud meticulously reviews in his first
chapter, there was surely nothing of a scope and depth comparable to his inter
pretations. Another unusual aspect of this book is the fact that, as Freud himself
points out, many of the theoretical problems it deals with are adaptations of the
problems he had encountered in trying to understand his own field of the psy
choneuroses over a series of years before writing it. So far as we know, Freud him
self was not in any gross or obvious sense a neurotic. Through a variety of
channels?notably through his recognition of the phenomenon called trans
ference?he became increasingly aware that a person who attempts to treat the
91

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 92 TALCOTT PARSONS

neuroses of others through the psychoanalytic procedure must first acquire a very un
usual knowledge of himself. This requirement has, within the psychoanalytic move
ment, been institutionalized in the didactic analysis which is a primary condition to
admission to psychoanalytic practice. Freud was the only psychoanalyst, however,
who ever carried out the procedure of psychoanalysis on himself. Among its other
features, The Interpretation of Dreams is the primary documentation of this self
analysis.
The Interpretation of Dreams contains, as far as I know, Freud's first published
statement about the Oedipus complex, which was to figure so very prominently in his
general theory. It is, I think, highly significant that Freud's father died in 1896, four
years prior to the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams.2 Painful and disturb
ing as it was at the time, there is reason to believe that the death of his father had
the long-run effect of freeing Freud from a good many of the inhibitions that had im
peded his work of self-analysis. In the book, he recounts and analyzes a considerable
number of his own dreams, as well as those recounted to him by his patients then sub
jected to analysis in the course of a therapeutic program. He also draws, though not
so heavily, on dreams from the more general literature.
One might ask why Freud chose, as the primary subject matter of his first major
theoretical work in psychoanalysis, the study of dreams rather than the direct study of
neurotic symptoms and the conditions of their resolution through therapy. Part of
the answer lies in his conviction concerning the importance of his self-analysis for the
furtherance of his work. Through his psychiatric practice, he had come to realize that
neurotic symptoms were very generally connected with dreams. Since he was per
sonally, for the most part, free of neurotic symptoms, dreams provided a particularly
appropriate vehicle for his self-analysis. At the same time, he surely realized that in
the history of science, indirect attacks on fundamental theoretical problems have
frequently proven more fruitful than direct ones. In addition, as a responsible physi
cian, Freud may have considered the very fact that the study of dreams was at one
remove from the focus of his clinical responsibilities as an argument in its favor since
it enabled him to concentrate on psychological problems as such, rather than on the
balancing of therapeutic successes and failures.

The Nature of Psychoanalytic Theory

There can be no doubt about the tremendous impact of psychoanalytic theory on

the culture of the twentieth century, nor about Freud's preponderant creative role in
establishing it as part of our culture. The big main outline of the conceptual scheme
was already quite fully developed in The Interpretation of Dreams, although Freud
was clearly not a man to rest content at one stage in the development of his thinking.
On the contrary, through the rest of his long life?he died in 1939?he never ceased
to extend and modify his theories. He did not, however, turn aside to any radically
different line of thinking, and there is a fundamental continuity between The Inter
pretation of Dreams and all of his subsequent writings.

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 The Interpretation of Dreams 93
It is often said that Freud's greatest discovery was that of the Unconscious. Seen
in the proper perspective, I think this is correct. In more general terms, his great
achievement was to have worked out, with considerably greater theoretical sophis
tication than his predecessors, an account of the structure and functioning of
the human person as a psychological entity operating as a self-regulating system. In
the formulation of this scheme, the Unconscious was already, in The Interpretation
of Dreams, one of three subsystems in his total psychological system, the other two
being the Conscious system and the Preconscious system. Many years later, he
modified this tripartite division slightly, calling the new subsystems the Id, the Ego
and the Superego, but the continuity between the two formulations is patent.
Freud's discourse throughout the book deals with the meaning of psychic
events?meaning, that is, in some kind of subjective rereferable sense, rather than
simply as an index of somatic processes. Thus he decisively repudiates any form of
somatic reductionism. Freud's concept of the Unconscious is built primarily around
his concept of psychic energy, in German, Triebe, usually mistranslated into English
as "instinctual. This energy is basically a common pool, not irrevocably attached to
particular objects of "desire." It is transferable through various processes, one of the
most important of which is called, in psychoanalytic vocabulary, displacement, or, in
later statements, cathexis. The tendency of this psychic energy source is unidirec
tional, tending always toward the achievement of states of gratification. This is the
focus of the concept, wish, which figures so prominently in The Interpretation of
Dreams, especially in Freud's dictum that a wish-fulfillment component is present in
every dream and, in fact, provides the motive force for dream activity.
Freud attributes the property of unconsciousness to things which are not
remembered because they are protected by certain mechanisms from gaining access
to the conscious components of the personality. The Unconscious is clearly, in his
view, not a competely fluid pool, but one distributed in relation to what might be
called the unconscious cathexis of a system of objects. Freud adheres rigorously to
the psychic character of the Unconscious and strongly emphasizes the importance of
childhood experience. My rereading of the book has reinforced my conviction3 that
its primary structure at the object level is the internalized object system of childhood
experience, which is, of course, very heavily affected by the social structure of the
human family. This is closely connected with Freud's own emphasis on the sex
ual?or better, perhaps, erotic?component in the motivation of unconscious wishes.
In the development of the individual, this has roots in the very special role played by
eroticism in childhood, eroticism connected primarily with the child's motivational
attachment to human objects in his environment, but transferable to nonhuman
objects such as animals and indeed physical objects. Freud's contribution to the un
derstanding of the eroticism of childhood is crucial. Fellow members of the child's
family are clearly the most important of these objects, followed by nonfamilial
household members. Central to Freud's analysis is the significance of these objects as
potential sources of pleasure or fulfillment gratification, and of the blocking of such
gratifications. This is the main axis of the famous Freudian concepts of pleasure and
unpleasure. The arousal of an impulse or desire always induces unpleasurable

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94 TALCOTT PARSONS

feelings, but in the process of gratification the unpleasure is converted into pleasure;
when the cycle is complete, however, with full consummation, the whole affective
tone, as he calls it, disappears.
In his remarkable final chapter, Freud speaks of the Unconscious as tending to
maintain a rather stable equilibrium of energy potential and allocation. Only in
rather carefully regulated ways and in relatively small doses is its underlying energy
released into the Preconscious and the Conscious sectors of the personality. It can be
released through dreams, or through what later came to be called ego-activity, or
through pathological symptoms. It is important to realize that there is a cognitive
component in the structure of the Unconscious.4 Objects on the one hand, and
wishes on the other, clearly fit into the paradigm of goal-orientation, a paradigm
familiar in the sciences of human action and behavior and in biology as well. The
processes of the Unconscious, however, are not primarily those of cognitive reason
ing; rather, they are what Freud calls affective processes, essentially those which deal
with the "investment of psychic energy" in wishes and the objects through which
they can be gratified, and the reallocation of such energy within systems of objects.
The relevant system of objects extends past the boundaries of the Unconscious into
the Preconscious and eventually into the Conscious subsystems.
The endowment of an object with psychic energy is what has come to be known
as cathexis (German Besetzung). Freud's term for the paths by which energy is
transmitted from one object to another is association. This kind of association?quite
different from the processes of logical inference in conscious thinking and
reasoning?connects objects with primarily affective meanings according to their
symbolic properties. These may be either resemblances or contrasts, and actual
reversal is a very eommon phenomenon in dream processes. Freud is insistent on the
difference between what he ends up calling the primary process of the Unconscious
and the secondary process of the Conscious world. One of his most important
propositions in The Interpretation of Dreams is that the objects which enter the
manifest content of actual Ireams should be regarded as the nodes where several
complex association paths ir ersect. By these association paths the dream content is
related in turn to the latent dream thoughts" which he contends are predominantly
of preconscious origin?though some are actually conscious, notably references to
the previous day's experiences. The main task of dream interpretation is tracing out
these paths of association to significant objects and events.
The principles of organization of the Unconscious and the Conscious sectors of
the personality are radically different. I think that it is because of this difference that
Freud holds that unregulated interchange and interp?n?tration between them can
not fail to be disorganizing on both sides of the boundary. Since Freud's own ap
proach as therapist and analyst of dreams had necessarily been from the point of
view of the consciousness system, he was particularly impressed by the functioning
of agencies which prevented components of the Unconscious from crossing the
boundaries to the Conscious and vice versa in an unregulated manner. First he for
mulated the concept of an agency which he called the censor, which essentially
prevented boundary crossings from the Unconscious to the Conscious, then he

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 The Interpretation of Dreams 95
developed the concept into what he called repression. Especially in the field of
pathological symptom formation, he was greatly impressed by the amount of conflict
which opuld be generated in this area of boundary relationships. He seems to have
felt, however, that, in the relatively integrated and mentally healthy adult per
sonality, the elements of conflict could at least be minimized to the point where they
were tolerable. In the dream, he clearly saw a kind of safety valve which, under the
protection of sleep, permitted expression of unconscious wishes and thus a kind of
gratification of them which would result in minimal disturbances to the conscious
life. It is important to realize that there are direct parallels here to the process of psy
choanalytic therapy. In the analytic relation the therapist encourages the verbal ex
pression of any and all thoughts, deliberately seeking to stimulate the expression of
those which belong primarily in the Unconscious. There is, however, a fundamental
distinction in psychoanalytic procedure between verbal expression on the one hand
and what is called "acting out" on the other. Thus, to use a familiar example, if a
patient has displaced his hostility toward his father onto his analyst, he may express
his hostility verbally in very bitter terms without its leading to retaliation. However,
a physical attack on the analyst is strictly forbidden and would be promptly sup
pressed. Sleep seems to provide an analogous situation in that, motor activity having
been suspended by sleep, the acting out of dream wishes is precluded.

The Integration of Psychoanalytic Theory in the Sciences Dealing with

Living Systems

It is not clear to me how far Freud was aware of the similarity of the theory of the
human psyche he developed in The Interpretation of Dreams and the parallels which
have just been sketched to certain more general movements in the theoretical analysis
of living systems, both organic and human, at the psychological, social, and cultural
levels. It strikes me quite forcibly that there is an important parallel between Freud's
conception of the Unconscious as a relatively stabilized and rather tightly controlled
system and the conception of the internal environment of the organism developed in
physiology, especially by Freud's contemporary Claude Bernard and Bernard's
successor Walter B. Cannon. The forces and mechanisms are different but the main
theoretical format is strikingly similar. Both are subsystems which, because of their
effective insulation in certain fundamental respects from fluctuations in the environ
ment, are able to maintain a higher level of constancy than free interchange with the
environment would permit.
Such a parallel throws light on the sharp differences which Freud himself
emphasizes between primary and secondary processes?processes which he connects
directly with affective process and cognitive process respectively. The cognitive func
tion organizes a set of mechanisms which enhance the individual's chances of coping
successfully with the contingencies?dangers as well as the opportunities?inherent

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 96 TALCOTT PARSONS

in the environment external to his own personality. Though the psychic components
of the environment and the internal system may in certain respects be the same, their
combinations are quite different. The components we associate with such concep
tions as rationality and reasoning are far more prominent in relation to the environ
ment than they are to the internal system.
This is only one of a number of similarities which suggest themselves between
Freud's analytical schemes and those developed in a variety of neighboring dis
ciplines. Somewhat similar theoretical constructs have appeared in the fields dealing
with human societies and cultures. Particularly prominent beginnings are found in
the work of Emile Durkheim, who sees society as a "reality sui generis," functioning
as the internal environment of a general system of human action.5

Conclusion

Psychoanalytic theory has, of course, been highly controversial ever since its first
massive promulgation through The Interpretation of Dreams. Indeed, it is still
drastically repudiated in some quarters. There can be little doubt, however, that it
has been one of the most important intellectual movements of the century. It is my
own view that, far more than is generally realized, it is in accord with the main
movement of science, extending all the way from sciences on the biological side and
psychology to those dealing with human phenomena at the social and cultural levels.
In tackling the task of systematically analyzing the individual human personality,
Freud stood at a particularly crucial nodal point in this larger intellectual movement.
He made advances in theoretical penetration, comprehensiveness, and clarity far
beyond the points reached by any of his predecessors. Certainly I regard The Inter
pretation of Dreams as one of the great landmarks in the intellectual development of
the twentieth century.

References

1. My rereading was done, as I noted, in the 7th German edition (Wien: Franz Deuticke, 1945).

2. Freud's relation to Wilhelm Fliess was particularly important to Freud. On this and the whole background
of Freud's life, see the monumental biography in three volumes by his close English associate and
friend Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic Books, 1953, 1955, 1957).
The relation to Fliess is discussed in Vol. I, ch. 13.

3. Talcott Parsons, Social Structure and Personality (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964).

4. Marshall Edelson, "Dreams and Language," Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, ed. Ruth S. Eissler et al.
(New York: International Universities Press, 1973).

5. Talcott Parsons, "Durkheim on Religion Revisited: Another Look at the Elementary Forms of the
Religious Life," Beyond the Classics? Essays in the Scientific Study of Religion, ed. Charles Y. Clock and
Phillip E. Hammond (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1973), pp. 156-180.

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