In looking at Freud’s The
Interpretation of Dreams, I’m interested primarily in discussing his
methodology of self-analysis. Throughout
the text Freud returns again to his own dreams to prove his theories. What’s more, he feels the need to point this
out to the reader, and justify this choice.[1] No doubt, there is an element of
performativity to Freud’s anxiousness, but at the same time, it seems that he
felt that he came up with a new way of understanding the self. I will look at the issue of self-analysis
from two angles. The first is the way that self-analysis falls into Foucault’s
notion of the confessional. The second
deals with the way that Freud uses his own dreams as a way to decode the dreams
of others.
When Freud enters into his own
methodology of interpreting dreams, an analysis that emphasizes self-analysis,
he quotes Delbeouf, “Every psychologist is under an obligation to confess even
his own weaknesses, if he thinks that it may throw light upon some obscure
problem.” (Freud 138 footnote) Thus as
Freud enters into the concept of self-analysis, the notion of confession is
also introduced. It is difficult to
overemphasize the role that this concept plays into the various descriptions of
Freud’s own dreams.
The initial description of the dream
of Irma can act as an excellent example of this “confessional” mode within the
book. Freud goes through his dream and
breaks it down detail by detail. Freud makes
a point of emphasizing particularly embarrassing assertions within the dream. He acknowledges within the description that
the description of the dream is neither flattering to Irma, nor to his
wife. But Freud pushes himself to
continue analysis.
The dream builds up to a series of
reproaches of the logic of his dream. “I
was not to blame for Irma’s pains, since she herself was to blame for them by
refusing to accept my solution. I was not concerned with Irma’s pains,
since they were of an organic nature and quite incurable by psychological
treatment…” (Freud 152) The text continues
on within this vein. What interests me
most is the emphasis on the word ‘I’. It
once again emphasizes the nature of the subject as individuated one. It is a subject that will go to extraordinary
efforts to avoid any sort of culpability.
At the end of the analysis there is
a cathartic moment. The text moves from
a vicious parody of his own dream logic, to a wry recognition of its
ridiculousness, into a calmer examination of some of the other details of the
dream. Also at this point, Freud emphasizes
the fact that the accusations that he makes of his colleague. “It was a noteworthy fact that this material
also included some disagreeable memories, which supported my friend Otto’s
accusation rather than my own vindication.” (Freud 153) Freud ends with an admission of
non-full-disclosure, and in a manner that seems to suggest the need for further
therapy, he suggests, “If anyone should feel tempted to express a hasty
condemnation of my reticence, I would advise him to make the experiment of being
franker than I am.” (Freud 154)
But this emphasis on self-analysis
has another side to it. After all, Freud
makes the point of stating that he has an endless amount of dream material to
work from with his patients. Although
the act of self-analysis plays into, and expands, a certain form of the
confessional, it also has other meanings.
After all, Freud by in large dismisses the empirical efforts on the part
of his colleagues, and he similarly refuses that methodology, by placing his
methodology within some sort of sample or representative population.
In looking at popular methodologies
of analyzing dreams, Freud spends a significant period of time discussing the
idea of the decoding method of dreaming.
“It might be called a form of described as the “decoding” method, since
it treats dreams as a kind of cryptography in which each sign can be translated
into another sign having a known meaning, in accordance with a fixed key.”
(Freud 130) This method can be made even
more specific, a book of interpretation by Artemidorus, “takes into account not
only the content of the dream, but also the character and circumstances of the
dreamer.” This system, in effect, sees a
particular stable tie of the symbolic to the subject.
Freud is arguing something quite different. Although he doesn’t say it explicitly,
symbolic material can represent quite different things for different dreamers
in different circumstances. In later
descriptions of dreams, he shows how dreams are built out of a complex series
of experiences, opinions, and illusions from day to day life. The dream of the failed dinner party is the
best example of that. He even himself
recognizes that, “one might be tempted to agree with the philosophers and the
psychiatrists and like them, rule out the problem of dream interpretation as a
purely fanciful task.” (Freud 132)
Freud, however, anchors his concept
of interpreting dreams built upon a new place of stability, the desiring
subject. The dream becomes, as Freud
puts it, a way of fulfilling a wish. It
becomes the way that the desiring subject expresses their desires that are
suppressed, a way of circumscribing the laws that are contained within the
society and/or the subject.
Freud uses self-analysis in order to
accomplish this. After all, if all desiring
subjects use a number of different images that are tied to a complex series
event in their lives, why not move to the material that is best understood in
the analyst’s life. What’s more in doing
these experiments, Freud uses his own dream material as a test subject for his
work for his patients. He links his own
self-analysis with the attempts of his patients to express ideas without using
their critical facilities.
Both of these elements move into a
certain way of how the subject is formed, and how to form the subject. It gives the beginnings of recognizing how
certain desires are expressed in dreams, and how that repression finds it’s way
even into this realm. Although, it is not as strong as it is in waking life, so
it allows for the understanding of the patient in a way that conscious,
self-aware side will not allow. In
making the doctor recognize these same elements in themselves, it allows for
them to better understand a patient.
[1] “No
doubt I shall be met by doubt of the trustworthiness of “self-analyses” of this kind; and I shall be
told that they leave the door open to arbitrary conclusions. In my judgement the situation is in the fact
more favorable in the case of self-observation
than in that of other people; at all events we may make the experiment and see
how far self-analysis takes us with the interpretation of dreams.” Freud, 137.
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