FREUD'S THEORIES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS 361 



concern during the day; what gave the motive force to the dream was 

 the old childhood complex, which in this case has, by the help of the 

 new energy, succeeded in breaking through into consciousness. For 

 Freud, the motive force behind a dream is always that of some old com- 

 plex in the depths of the soul ; the dream is a deeply significant revela- 

 tion of the true nature of our unconscious life, to him who knows how 

 to read it. 



This last qualification is important, for it usually happens that the 

 inhibiting force, though not able to completely prevent the emergence 

 of the buried complex, distorts it almost beyond recognition, so that 

 the dream seems to us absurd, disconnected, void of all meaning. This 

 distortion is sometimes so complete that there is only here and there a 

 hint of the true meaning of the dream; it seems to be made up from 

 trivial events of the day alone ; but in such cases close examination will 

 show that rational association of such events has been carried on 

 through the complex, which has served as the connecting link and given 

 new energy which permits the trivial events to recur in the dream, 

 though openly the complex does not appear at all. Such was the 

 dream of the woman who saw her nephew lying dead, and yet felt no 

 grief. Now it chanced that on the day before, she had bought a ticket 

 to see her lover, from whom she had parted, in a public performance, 

 and was looking forward eagerly to the event. Some of the details of 

 the dream seemed to suggest that there was some association with this 

 fact; and, indeed, it was found on analysis that the last time she had 

 seen her lover was at the funeral of another nephew. It was as though 

 she had said to herself, " If my other nephew dies, I shall see him 

 again.'* Do we not perhaps see here the activity of the old childish 

 way of thinking that would sacrifice anything for a moment's happiness 

 for the individual ? And yet that complex had not appeared at all in 

 the dream as such. It is thus Freud's thesis that the dream never says 

 what it means, that it is the product of a compromise between the two 

 systems of energy. The complex is distorted in getting around the 

 censor, and thus there arise all sorts of symbolic and indirect ways of 

 expression; the complex is only alluded to in the dream in allegorical 

 ways, or under cover of the trivial events of the day that stand in con- 

 nection with it ; it is not expressed directly. Blood and fire in dreams 

 may appear as sexual symbols ; the symbolism may be very complex, as 

 in the case of some of the symbols of primitive man ; associations may 

 be determined in the most superficial ways; for example, one person 

 may stand for another in a dream on no more basis of identification 

 than that both wear eyeglasses. The complex makes use of any pos- 

 sible associative connections in order to utilize a little energy to 

 strengthen itself. And it is of course also true that the more indirect 

 and symbolic the associations, the less likely we are to suspect the 

 complexes which are manifesting themselves through them, and so much 



