Trigger and Screen: Shame Dynamics and the Problem of Instigation in Freud's Dreams

This paper concerns the problem of instigation, that is to say, the dynamic triggering, of the dream in Freud's “The Interpretation of Dreams” (1900)/1953). The problem of instigation came to the author's attention in the course of studying treatment difficulties and failures outside of the psychoanalytic situation, specifically the dynamics of impulsive actions and of posttraumatic nightmares, which the author then used in the consideration of problems associated with conceptualizing instigation in “The Interpretation of Dreams.”

Instigatory dynamics other than Freud's metaphor of “capitalist and entrepreneur” have attracted scant attention; and that metaphor as Freud applied it is an incomplete example of the instigatory process since its theoretical formulation are discrepant with Freud's clinical sensitivity to the instigation of his own dreams. Four of Freud's major dreams reveal an instigatory experience consisting of a contemporaneous egoideal conflict due to an anticipation of professional status as denied or lost. This contemporaneous egoideal conflict resonates with early and unconscious shame dynamics and shame fantasies involving tension from the egoideal that result from Freud's seeing himself as relegated to inferior or asexual status. The wish to possess an object of desire was not primary in any of these dreams. The complex nexus of shame dynamics, in turn, instigates more visible competitive wishes; these strive to alter the circumstances that threaten to give rise to shame or turn the tables on the shamer. The instigating shame dynamics are thus screened by the more visible dynamics of hostile competition. This formulation offers an expanded view of the dynamics of instigation which leads to a more balanced understanding of the nature and components of instigatory shame dynamics and their relationship to the dynamics of conflicts involving hostility, competition, and guilt.