The Dream-Work Does Not Think

Abstract

It should come as no surprise that the problematics of wo rk versus discourse is the nub of chapter six of The Interpretation of Dreams. In the course of this chapter Freud examines the dream-work and enumerates the essential operations by wh i ch it proceeds. It is easy to show that each of these operat ions is conducted according to rules wh ich are in direct opposi t ion to those governing discourse. The dream is not the language of desire, bu t its wo rk . Freud, however, makes the opposit ion even more dramatic (and in doing so lets us in on a f igural presence in discourse), by claiming that the wo rk of desire is the result of manhandl ing a text . Desire does not speak; it does violence to the order of utterance. This violence is pr imordial : the imaginary fu l f i l lment of desire consists in this transgression, wh ich repeats, in the dream workshop, wha t occurred and cont inues to occur in the manufacture of the so-called primal phantasm. The f igure is hand in glove w i t h desire on at least t w o counts . A t the margin of discourse it is the density w i th in wh ich wha t I am talking about retires f rom view; at the heart of discourse it is its ' f o r m ' . Freud himself says as much when he introduces the term Phantasie, wh i ch is at once the ' fagade' of the dream and a fo rm forged in its depths. 1 It is a matter of a 'seeing' wh ich has taken refuge among words , cast ou t on their boundaries, irreducible to 'say ing ' . W e wi l l dwel l a little on secondary revision because the Fliegende Blatter inscript ions, in spite of their dismaying aesthetic impover ishment, provide an excellent oppor tun i ty