The Dream as Night-Watchman
Freud proves himself a capable composer of figurative prose in a section which outlines the roles and duties of dreams. One of the purposes Freud attributes to the process of dreaming is quite utilitarian: it is a means of keeping the mind from external distractions which carry the potential for interrupting slumber. That the opposite is also true---that dreams can serve the purpose of shaking the sleeper awake—is framed in precisely constructed metaphorical terms in which the dream
“acts like a conscientious night-watchman, who first does his duty by quelling disturbances so as not to waken the citizen, but equally does his duty quite properly when he awakens the street should the causes of the trouble seem to him serious and himself unable to cope with them alone.”
Dreams of Rescue
Metaphors and similes flow freely throughout this text because dream imagery is so intensely suited to such figurative comparisons. Sometimes the metaphorical comparison seems to make a lot of sense as in Freud’s interpretation of dreams of being rescued from the water:
“To save, especially to save from the water, is equivalent to giving birth when dreamed by a woman; this sense is, however, modified when the dreamer is a man.”
"`Smooth’ walls are men."
Other examples of metaphor as dream imagery for the purpose of psychoanalysis, however, seem far less evidently obvious. This is so even when the metaphor is preceded by explanation:
“Smooth walls over which one is climbing, façades of houses upon which one is letting oneself down, frequently under great anxiety, correspond to the erect human body, and probably re-peat in the dream reminiscences of the upward climbing of little children on their parents or foster parents. `Smooth’ walls are men.”
The Chicken or the Egg
Freud engages a simile to provide a quick and effective distinction between an irrational fear known as a phobia and the underlying anxiety that stimulates that irrational fear as the conclusion of a scenario. A phobia such as a fear of heights or fear of cats is cast as a protective expression of a much deeper-seated fear that is expansive enough to be termed an anxiety. Dream psychoanalysis would therefore be useful in plumbing the depths of the unconscious mind to determine how the specific phobia is linked to the broader anxiety. The controlling metaphor is to learn what the manifestation of phobia is trying to protect:
“The phobia is thrown before the anxiety like a fortress on the frontier.”
What is the Unconscious?
Any reader who has ever wondered exactly what is meant by the unconscious in psychology can get very insightful answer through a distinct and unambiguous metaphor courtesy of the grandfather of psychoanalysis himself. Figurative language does not get much more concrete and discernible:
“Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs.”
