We now reach the fifth stage of progressive understanding. The coming to terms with the unconscious is a technical performance to which the name of _transcendental function_ has been given because a new function is produced, which being based upon both real and imaginary, or rational and irrational data, makes a bridge between the rational and irrational functions of the psyche. The basis of the transcendental function is a _new method of treating psychological materials_ such as dreams and phantasies. The theories previously discussed were based upon an exclusively causal-reductive procedure, which reduces the dream or phantasy to its component reminiscences, and the instinctive processes that underlie them. I have already stated the justification as well as the limitations of this proceeding. It reaches the end of its usefulness at the moment when the dream symbols no longer permit of a reduction to personal reminiscences or aspirations; that is when the images of the absolute unconscious begin to be produced. It would be quite inappropriate to reduce these collective ideas to what is personal, and not only inappropriate but even actually pernicious, a fact that has been impressed upon me by disagreeable experiences. The values of the images or symbols of the absolute unconscious are only disclosed if they are subjected to a synthetic (not analytical) treatment. Just as analysis (the causally reductive procedure) disintegrates the symbol into its components, so the synthetic procedure synthesises the symbol into a universal and comprehensible expression. The synthetic procedure is by no means easy; I will therefore give an example, by means of which I can explain the whole process.
A patient had the following dream. She was just at the critical juncture between the analysis of the personal unconscious and the commencement of the production of the absolute unconscious. "_I am on the point of crossing a broad and rapid stream. There is no bridge, but I find a ford where I can cross. As I am just on the point of doing so, a big crab that lay hidden in the water seizes my foot and does not let it go._" She awoke in fear. Associations with the dream were as follows:--
1. _Stream._--It forms a boundary that is difficult to cross. I must surmount an obstacle; I suppose it refers to the fact that I am getting on very slowly; I suppose I ought to reach the other side.
2. _Ford._--An opportunity for getting safely across, a possible way; otherwise the stream would be too difficult. The possibility of surmounting the obstacle lies in the analytical treatment.
3. _Crab._--The crab lay quite hidden in the water; I did not see it at first. Cancer is a fearful incurable illness. (A series of recollections of Mrs. X., who died of cancer, followed.) I am afraid of this illness. A crab[242] is an animal that walks backwards; obviously it wants to pull me down into the stream. It clutched me in a gruesome way, and I was awfully afraid. What prevents my getting across? Oh yes, I had another great scene with my friend.
It must be explained that there is something special about this friendship. We have here an ardent attachment, bordering on the homosexual. It has been going on for years. The friend is in many respects like the patient, and is also nervous. They have pronounced artistic interests in common. But the patient is the stronger personality of the two. They are both nervous, and their mutual relation being too engrossing, cuts them off too much from other possibilities of life. In spite of an "ideal friendship" they have at times tremendous scenes, owing to their mutual irritability. Evidently the unconscious wishes to put some distance between them, but they refuse to pay attention to it. A "scene" usually begins by one of them finding that she does not yet understand the other well enough, and that they ought to talk more openly together; whereupon both make enthusiastic endeavours to talk things out. Misunderstandings supervene almost directly, provoking fresh scenes, each worse than the last. The quarrel was in its way and _faute de mieux_ a pleasure to both of them, which they were unwilling to relinquish. My patient, especially, was unable for a very long time to renounce the sweet pain of not being understood by her best friend, although, as she said, every scene "tired her to death." She had long since realised that this friendship had become superfluous, and that it was only from mistaken ambition that she clung to the belief that she could yet make something ideal out of it. The patient had formerly had an extravagant, fantastic relation to her mother, and after her mother's death had transferred her feelings to her friend.
VII.--ANALYTICAL (CAUSAL-REDUCTIVE) INTERPRETATION.[243]
This interpretation may be summed up in a sentence: "I understand that I ought to get to the other side of the stream (that is, give up the relation with the friend), but I would much rather that my friend did not let me out of her claws (embrace)." That is, expressed as an _infantile wish_: Mother would like to attract me to herself again by the well-known mode of enthusiastic embraces. The incompatibility of the wish lies in the strong under-current of _homosexuality_, the existence of which had been abundantly proved by obvious facts. The crab seizes her foot. The patient having big, "manly" feet, she plays a masculine part towards her friend, having also corresponding sexual fantasies. The foot is known to have phallic significance. (Detailed evidence of this is to be found in _Aigremont's_ writings.) The complete interpretation would run as follows: The reason why she will not let her friend go is because her unconscious homosexual wishes are set upon her. As these wishes are morally and æsthetically incompatible with the tendency of the conscious personality, they are repressed, and therefore unconscious. The fear is an expression of this repressed wish.
This interpretation is exceedingly depreciative of the patient's high-pitched conscious ideal of friendship. It is true at this point in analysis she would no longer have taken this interpretation amiss. Some time before certain facts had sufficiently convinced her of her homosexual tendency, so that she was able to acknowledge the existence of this inclination frankly, although it was of course painful for her to do so. Therefore if, at this stage of the treatment, I had informed her that this was the interpretation, I should not have encountered resistances from her. She had already overcome the painfulness of this unwelcome tendency by understanding it. But she would have said to me: "Why do we analyse this dream at all? It is only repeating what I have now known for a long while." It is true this interpretation does not reveal anything new to the patient, and it is therefore uninteresting and ineffective. This kind of interpretation would at the beginning of the treatment have been impossible in this case, because the patient's prudishness would under no circumstances have acknowledged it. The "venom" of understanding had to be instilled very carefully, and in the smallest of doses, until the patient gradually became more enlightened. But when the analytical or causal-reductive interpretation, instead of furnishing something new, persistently brings the same material in different variations, then the moment has come when another mode of interpretation is called for. The causal-reductive procedure has certain drawbacks. First, it does not take strictly into account the patient's associations--_e.g._ in this case the association of the illness ("cancer") with "crab" (Krebs = cancer). Second, the particular choice of symbol remains obscure. For instance, why does the friend-mother appear as a crab? A prettier and more plastic representation would have been a nymph. ("Half dragged she him, half sank he down,"[244] etc.) An octopus, a dragon, a serpent, or a fish could have performed the same services. Third, the causal-reductive procedure completely ignores that a dream is a subjective phenomenon, and that consequently even an exhaustive interpretation can never connect the crab with the mother or the friend, but only with the dreamer's idea of them. The whole dream is the dreamer; she is the stream, the crossing, and the crab. That is to say these details are expressions of psychological conditions and tendencies in the subject's unconscious.
I have therefore introduced the following terminology. I call interpretations in which the dream symbols are treated as representations of the real objects _interpretation upon the objective plane_. The opposite interpretation is that which connects every fragment of the dream (_e.g._ all the persons who do anything) with the dreamer himself. This is _interpretation upon the subjective plane_. Objective interpretation is _analytical_, because it dissects the dream contents into complexes of reminiscence, and finds their relation to real conditions. Subjective interpretation is _synthetic_, because it detaches the fundamental underlying complexes of reminiscence from their actual causes, regarding them as tendencies or parts of the subject, and reintegrating them with the subject. (In experiencing something I do not merely experience the object, but in the first place myself, although this is only the case if I render myself account of the experience.)
The synthetic or constructive procedure of interpretation[245] is therefore based upon the version on the subjective plane.
