Most people often dream at night. When they wake in the morning they say to themselves, “What a strange dream I had! I wonder what made me dream that.”

    Sometimes dreams are frightening. Sometimes, in dreams, wishes come true. At other times we are troubled by strange dreams in which the world seems to have been turned upside-down1and nothing makes sense.

    In dreams we do things which we would never do when we're awake. We think and say things we would never think and say. Why are dreams so strange and unfamiliar? Where do dreams come from?

    No one has produced a more satisfying answer than a man called Sigmund Freud. He said that dreams come from a part of one's mind which one can neither recognize nor control. He named this the “unconscious mind.”

    Sigmund Freud was born about a hundred years ago. He lived most of his life in Vienna, Austria, but ended his days in London, soon after the beginning of the Second World War.

    The new worlds Freud explored were inside man himself. For the unconscious mind is like a deep well, full of memories and feelings. These memories and feelings have been stored there from the moment of our birth. Our conscious mind has forgotten them. We do not suspect that they are there until some unhappy or unusual experience causes us to remember, or to dream dreams. Then suddenly we see the same thing and feel the same way we felt when we were little children.

    This discovery of Freud's is very important if we wish to understand why people act as they do. For the unconscious forces inside us are at least as powerful as the conscious forces we know about. Sometimes we do things without knowing why. If we don't, the reasons may lie deep in our unconscious minds.

    When Freud was a child he cared about the sufferings of others, so it isn't surprising that he became a doctor when he grew up. He learned all about the way in which the human body works. But he became more and more curious about the human mind. He went to Paris to study with a famous French doctor, Charcot.

    At that time it seemed that no one knew very much about the mind. If a person went mad, or 'out of his mind', there was not much that could be done about it. People didn't understand at all what was happening to the madman. Had he been possessed by a devil or evil spirit? Was God punishing him for wrong-doing? Often such people were shut away from the ordinary people as if they had done some terrible crime.

    This is still true today in many places. Doctors prefer to experiment on those parts of a man which they can see and examine. If you cut a man's head open you can see his brain. But you can't see his thoughts or ideas or dreams. In Freud's day few doctors were interested in these subjects. Freud wanted to know how our minds work. He learned a lot from Charcot.

    He returned to Vienna in 1886 and began work as a doctor in nerve diseases. He got married and began to receive more and more patients at home. Most of the patients who came to see him were women. They were over-excited and anxious, sick in mind rather than in body. Medicine did not help them. Freud was full of sympathy but he could do little to make them better.

    Then one day a friend, Dr Josef Breuer, came to see him. He told Freud about a girl he was looking after. The girl seemed to get better when she was allowed to talk about herself. She told Dr Breuer everything that came into her mind. And each time she talked to him she remembered more about her life as a little child.

    Freud was excited when he heard this. He began to try to cure his patients in the same way. He asked about the events of their early childhood. He urged them to talk about their own experiences and relationships. He himself said very little. 

    Often, as he listened, his patients relived moments from their past life. They trembled with anger and fear, hate and love. They acted as though Freud was their father or mother or lover.

    The doctor did not make any attempt to stop them. He quietly accepted whatever they told him, the good things and the bad. 

    One young woman who came to him couldn't drink anything, although she was very thirsty. Something prevented her from drinking.

    Freud discovered the reason for this. One day, as they were talking, the girl remembered having seen a dog drink from her nurse's glass. She hadn't told the nurse, whom she disliked. She had forgotten the whole experience. But suddenly this childhood memory returned to mind. When she had told it all to Dr Freud—the nurse, the dog, the glass of water —the girl was able to drink again.

    Freud called this treatment the 'talking cure'. Later it was called psychoanalysis. When patients talked freely about the things that were troubling them they often felt better.

    The things that patients told him sometimes gave Freud a shock. He discovered that the feelings of very young children are not so different from those of their parents. A small boy may love his mother so much that he wants to kill his father. At the same time he loves his father and is deeply ashamed of this wish. It is difficult to live with such mixed feelings, so they fade away1into the unconscious mind and only return in troubled dreams.

    It was hard to believe that people could become blind, or lose the power of speech, because of what had happened to them when they were children. Freud was attacked from all sides for what he discovered. But he also found firm friends. Many people believed that he had at last found a way to unlock the secrets of the human mind, and to help people who were very miserable. He had found the answer to many of life's great questions.

    He became famous all over the world and taught others to use the talking cure. His influence on modern art, literature and science cannot be measured. People who wrote books and plays, people who painted pictures, people who worked in schools, hospitals and prisons; all these learned something from the great man who discovered a way into the unconscious mind.

    Not all of Freud's ideas are accepted today. But others have followed where he led and have helped us to understand ourselves better. Because of him, and them, there is more hope today than there has ever been before for people who were once just called 'crazy'. 

    每個(gè)人都愛做夢 想知道夢的成因嗎 

    大多數(shù)人夜晚經(jīng)常做夢，早上醒來便自語：“做了個(gè)好奇怪的夢！不知道怎么會(huì)夢見這個(gè)。”

    有時(shí)候夢令人毛骨悚然，有時(shí)候夢卻使愿望成真，還有的時(shí)候怪夢會(huì)來打擾我們，夢里的世界好像亂七八糟，不知所云。

    在夢里我們會(huì)做一些醒著的時(shí)候絕不會(huì)做的事情，我們想的和說的也非平日所思所言。為什么夢會(huì)如此怪異和陌生？夢又是從哪兒來的呢？

    迄今為止，除了一個(gè)名叫西格蒙特 弗洛伊德的人，沒有人能給出更令人滿意的答案。據(jù)他說夢來自于人無法識(shí)別和控制的那部分意識(shí)，他稱之為“潛意識(shí)”。

    西格蒙特 弗洛伊德出生于大約一百年前，一生大部分時(shí)間生活在奧地利的維也納，二戰(zhàn)爆發(fā)后不久在倫敦終了一生。

    弗洛伊德探索的新世界是人自身的內(nèi)心世界，因?yàn)闈撘庾R(shí)就像一口深井，裝滿了各種記憶和情緒。這些記憶和情緒自我們出生之日起就已經(jīng)儲(chǔ)存在那兒了，而我們有意識(shí)的大腦卻已將它們遺忘，直到某次不愉快或不尋常的經(jīng)歷使我們回憶或讓我們做夢，我們才不懷疑它們的存在。我們會(huì)突然看見兒時(shí)見過的東西，感覺也一如從前。

    如果我們希望了解人的所作所為，弗洛伊德的這一發(fā)現(xiàn)就非常重要，因?yàn)槲覀儍?nèi)心潛意識(shí)的力量至少與我們了解的意識(shí)力量同樣強(qiáng)大。有的時(shí)候我們做事情卻不知道為什么要這么做，原因可能就在我們深層的潛意識(shí)里。

    兒時(shí)的弗洛伊德就表現(xiàn)出對他人疾苦的關(guān)心，所以長大之后做了醫(yī)生就不足為奇了。他學(xué)習(xí)掌握了人體各部分的工作原理，但他卻對人的意識(shí)越來越感興趣。于是他去了巴黎，師從法國名醫(yī)夏科特。

    那時(shí)似乎還沒有人對人的意識(shí)有太多的了解。如果一個(gè)人瘋了，或“精神失常”了，基本就只能聽之任之了。人們完全不知道這個(gè)瘋子怎么了，是魔鬼附體呢，還是因做孽受到上帝的懲罰呢？這些人常常被關(guān)起來，同常人隔離，就像他們犯了什么大罪一樣。

    即便現(xiàn)在許多地方還是如此。醫(yī)生們更愿意對人體看得見的器官進(jìn)行檢查、試驗(yàn)，比如你給一個(gè)人的頭部開刀就可以看到大腦，但你卻看不到他的思維、思想或者夢。在弗洛伊德那個(gè)時(shí)代，幾乎沒有醫(yī)生對這些東西感興趣，他卻想知道我們的意識(shí)是如何工作的。他從夏科特那兒獲益匪淺。

    1886年他回到維也納，開始了精神病醫(yī)生的職業(yè)。他成了家，在家里接待的病人越來越多。她們大多是女性，顯得過于激動(dòng)、焦慮，心病多于體疾，藥物幫不了她們的忙。弗洛伊德對此充滿同情卻無法緩解她們的痛苦。

    有一天一個(gè)叫約瑟夫?布律爾的醫(yī)生朋友來看弗洛伊德，說起他正在治療的一個(gè)女孩。當(dāng)這個(gè)女孩能夠暢談自己的時(shí)候她似乎就有所好轉(zhuǎn)。她把腦子里出現(xiàn)的所有事情都和布律爾醫(yī)生談，每次談的時(shí)候她都會(huì)想起更多兒時(shí)的事情。

    弗洛伊德聽完非常激動(dòng)，他開始嘗試用這種方法來治療他的病人。他詢問他們童年的早期生活，鼓勵(lì)他們談自己的經(jīng)歷和人際關(guān)系，而他自己卻言語無幾。

    他就這么聽著，他的病人們常常說著說著就回到了過去，那些憤怒恐懼、愛恨情仇讓他們?nèi)�身�?zhàn)栗，仿佛面前的弗洛伊德就是他們的父母或戀人。

    我們的醫(yī)生卻不去阻止他們，他只是默默地聽著他們訴說一切，不論好壞。

    其中一位來看病的青年女子，什么都喝不進(jìn)去，雖然她已非�？诳�。一定有什么原因使她無法喝水。

    弗洛伊德發(fā)現(xiàn)了此事的根源。一天他們談話的時(shí)候，這個(gè)女孩回憶起曾見過一只狗在喝她的看護(hù)玻璃杯里的水，她不喜歡那個(gè)看護(hù)，因而沒有告訴她。整個(gè)事情她都已經(jīng)忘了，但突然這一兒時(shí)的記憶又回到了腦海。她將這一切都告訴了弗洛伊德醫(yī)生 —— 看護(hù)、狗，還有那杯水，這時(shí)她又可以喝水了。

    弗洛伊德將這樣的治療稱為“傾訴療法”，后被命名為“精神分析”。病人們暢談那些困擾他們的事情時(shí)他們的感覺往往就好多了。

    有的時(shí)候病人們的傾訴讓弗洛伊德震驚，他發(fā)現(xiàn)早期兒童的情感與其父母的情感并無多大差別。一個(gè)小男孩對母親的愛戀可能深到想要?dú)⑺雷约旱母赣H，而同時(shí)他又愛自己的父親，因而為自己的想法深感慚愧。這些混雜的情感很難讓人接受，所以它們被淡忘于潛意識(shí)里，只有在擾人的夢境中才會(huì)重現(xiàn)。

    很難相信人會(huì)因?yàn)閮簳r(shí)的經(jīng)歷而失明或失語，因而弗洛伊德的這一發(fā)現(xiàn)遭到來自各方面的攻擊，但是他也找到了堅(jiān)定忠實(shí)的朋友。許多人認(rèn)為他最終找到了一條破解人類意識(shí)之謎的途徑，從而幫助了那些備受折磨的人們。他找到了解答人生許多重大問題的答案。

    他成了世界名人，并向他人傳授傾訴療法。他對現(xiàn)代藝術(shù)、文學(xué)和科學(xué)的影響是不可估量的，不論是作家、劇作家、畫家，還是學(xué)校、醫(yī)院和監(jiān)獄的工作人員，都從這位發(fā)現(xiàn)了通往人類潛意識(shí)之路的偉人那兒學(xué)到了東西。

    并不是弗洛伊德所有的思想都被當(dāng)今社會(huì)接受，但是沿著他的道路進(jìn)行探索的人們卻使我們更多地了解了自己。因?yàn)樗�，還有他們，那些曾經(jīng)被稱為“瘋子”的人如今有了前所未有的希望。