MORAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR DREAMS

I F someone reports that he had been thinking that he would

very much like to seduce his sister, an appropriate comment
might be: "Shame on you for having such a nasty idea." But
if one reports that he dreamt he seduced his sister the situation
appears quite different, for while we might be repulsed by the
dream shaming seems, to say the least, far less appropriate.
We do not ordinarily, if ever, say things like, "It was bad
(naughty, immoral, etc.) of you to dream that." A child may be
sent to bed without supper for saying that he hates his father, but
not for reporting a dream which clearly expresses hate for his
father.
The reason for this appears obvious. There is a fairly clear-cut
difference between conscious thought, waking mental acts, and
the sort of "thinking" which occurs during sleep. We might say
about the latter that it characteristically lacks direction and
control, that ideas and images come to us, pop into our minds;
that when we dream something is happening to us, that we are
not doing anything. And so, if nothing like an intentional mental
act is involved in dreaming it makes no sense to either praise or
blame the dreamer.
With this in mind one is apt to find Freud's comments on the
matter puzzling:
"Must one assume responsibility for the content of one's dreams?
. . . Obviously one must hold oneself responsible . . . In what
other way can one deal with them? Unless the content of the
dream (rightly understood)1 is inspired by alien spirits, it is
part of my own being. If I seek to classify the impulses that are
present in me according to social standards into good and bad,
I must assume responsibility for both sorts; and if, in defense,
I say that what is unknown, unconscious and repressed in me is
not my 'ego', then I shall not be basing my position upon psycho-
analysis"2.
1
That is, correctly interpreted.
4
Sigmund Freud, "Moral Responsibility for the Content of Dreams,"
Collected Papers, Vol. V , p . 156.

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 MORAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR DREAMS

It seems clear that no one would want to deny that there is an

important difference between conscious ego-controlled mental
activity and the mental activity which takes place during sleep.
So when Freud talks about the necessity of assuming responsi-
bility for the content of one's dreams he must have in mind
something rather special. Part of what he has in mind, I suggest,
are the principles involved in psychoanalytic therapy and cure,
that is, most briefly, that one can attain control over one's
impulses by uncovering repressions, and through insight change
one's behaviour and character radically. Freud would certainly
object to the attitude which he apparently feels is implicit in one's
refusing to accept any responsibility for one's dreams,—an
attitude that might be expressed this way: "The content of my
dreams is a reflection of my unconscious id impulses, my uncon-
scious ego and super-ego. My conscious ego really never enters the
picture, so I can in no way be held responsible since I have nothing
to do with the whole affair."
Freud would insist that the content of one's dreams and, more
generally (and of course much more significantly) the content of
one's unconscious is, in a very important sense, not beyond our
control. Consider the following line of argument.
It is not sufficient to say, as one may be inclined to say, that a
certain sort of activity is voluntary (and hence open to praise or
blame) if and only if one can do it, or refrain from doing it, when
commanded or told to do it or not to do it. If we find, with respect
to certain sorts of activities, that there is no "imperative," we
cannot conclude that they are of a kind such that questions of
responsibility are always inappropriate. The "imperatives,"
(1) Blush!
(2) Approve of x!
(3) Stop having those nasty dreams!
all have an odd ring, surely, but it does not follow that blushing,
having a feeling or an attitude of approval, and having "immoral"
dreams are responses over which one can exert no control.
Blushing is ordinarily not something that can be done at
will, although one might work at it as an actor works at crying
on cue. With practice, an individual may be able to blush pretty
much at will, and this need not involve recalling (at least con-

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sciously) a particularly embarrassing experience. He could perhaps

become skillful enough so that he might correctly say that he
just "wills it" 3 .
It is less far-fetched to talk about one's trying to avoid blushing.
"I musn't blush or I'll give myself away" does not sound particu-
larly queer. One can try not to blush and not blush as a result
of the effort. And we can certainly think of cases where approval
or disapproval of a blusher might be appropriate. A woman who
blushes at the faintest sign of praise might be told that she is a
fool and that she should try to control herself. The suggestion
might even take the form of a straightforward imperative:
"Don't blush every time someone pays you a compliment."
It has been argued that (2) is odd because one cannot be
ordered or instructed how to feel about something. There is a
point to saying this, but it is not the case that we are not held
responsible for the feelings and attitudes we have, nor that we are
never told to change our attitude or acquire certain feelings.
We don't say, "Don't hate your little sister," but rather, "You
shouldn't hate your little sister," and part of what we can mean
by the latter is that one should try to get rid of such feelings.
Like blushing or not blushing it is something that can be worked
at; it is a case where commands are inappropriate, but it is not a
situation about which we can do nothing. Even though there
is an enormous difference between "Blow your nose!" and "Love
thy neighbor!" both can be construed as imperatives despite the
fact that "this instant" cannot sensibly be added to the latter
while it can to the former4.
3
There are some ticklish questions which could be sorted out here. To
mention one, if a person is really blushing must it follow that he is really
ashamed or embarrassed? Holding one's breath until one's face becomes
flushed or standing on one's head could not, presumably, be cases of blushing,
or for that matter, instances of one's pretending to blush. (Can one pretend
to cough? See John Austin's "Pretending", Philosophical Papers, p. 206.)
4
It would not be correct to say that "Approve of x!", "Love thy neighbor!",
etc., can only refer to one's behavior, or that the "imperative element" in
them can only refer to behavior. Of course, one's primary interest in saying to
a child, "It is wrong to hate your sister" is very likely an interest in changing
the child's behavior. But the feelings count for something over and above their
possible behavioral consequences. If a child's hate for his sister makes him
miserable, it is sensible to urge him to get rid of such feelings for this reason

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"Don't be depressed" could be understood as being more than

a consoling remark; a person who utters it may be urging the
listener to pull himself out of a depressed state. One cannot
ordinarily do it "upon command"; it is more difficult and takes
longer than blowing one's nose, but it can be done. While it would
be, in general, inappropriate to call overcoming a depression a
"voluntary action," it is nonetheless something which can be
done through will-power, if not by an act of will5. And if this
is the case it is clearly fitting, in some instances, to hold a person
responsible for his state of mind ("He could have tried harder
not to let himself fall into a black mood"), and to issue a "long-
term" imperative urging him to do something about it. ("You
have mourned the death of your wife too long already. Snap out
of it before it's too late!")
With respect to dreaming, the situation is in some ways similar.
Imperatives like (3) are obviously out of order, and yet it will
not do to say that since they are we do not have, in any sense,
control over the content of our dreams. We have some degree
of control because it is possible for a person to uncover repressed
material which is the "cause" of the character of dreams, by
making a very special and prolonged effort. It can also be said
that the content of one's dreams could have been different (less
"objectionable") because it is possible that in the past one
could have been stronger, could have faced a problem squarely
rather than "putting it aside." It at least makes sense to say that
one could have avoided repressing something even though
"repressing" is not anything one does. We do not choose to repress
something; a repression does not come about as the result of
either a reflective or an impulsive decision. We do not in any
sense decide what to repress and what to retain in our precon-
scious for future reference. Yet, though repression is something

alone. "Everyone that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed
adultery with her already in his heart" emphasizes, in what might be an
overbearing way, the importance of feelings.
6
Franz Kafka wrote not altogether paradoxically: "To lift oneself out of a
miserable mood, even if you have to do it by a strength of will, should be easy.
I force myself out of my chair, stride around the table, exercise my head and
neck, make my eyes sparkle, tighten the muscles round them. I defy my
feelings...."

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that happens to us, one can be on one's guard; one can assume
an attitude of self-examination that would in general enable
one to avoid repressing much which might otherwise become
unconscious.
Though this seems essentially correct there is a sense in which
it needs to be qualified. Consider the following.
If a young child, with a particularly seductive mother and a
harsh and tyrannical father, has dreams which reflect severe
oedipal problems, there may simply be no point whatever in
holding him responsible for the content of such dreams. Suppose
that "rightly understood" the dreams express intense sexual
urges towards the mother and equally intense murderous impulses
with respect to the father. It would be absurd to say that the child
should have (or could have) exerted more effort and self-control
when confronted with such a situation, since, to use the jargon,
his ego was not sufficiently developed to withstand such pressures.
It is simply not reasonable, in such a case, to assert that a child
of (say) four could be expected to cope with a problem of such
magnitude.
This kind of argument can be applied with the same force
to a case of a disturbed adult. One's ego can be so severely
damaged before it ever gets a chance to develop that one might
say, with respect to certain cases, that a person's immoral thoughts
and behavior are no fault of his, that he could not be expected
to have developed in any other way. And if such an individual's
dreams have an especially "immoral" content it would be foolish
to invoke Freud's argument. To say of a dreamer whose ego has
never developed, that he is to be held "responsible" for his dreams
because they stem from his id and no one else's, because his
dreams are not "inspired by alien spirits," is hardly sensible.
There are cases, then, where it is necessary to insist that
questions of responsibility are in no sense appropriate, cases
where it would be fruitless to talk about "effort" or "control"
or "insight." It could be put this way: If a man had an ego and
lost it, we might correctly talk about responsibility, since it is con-
ceivable that he could have faced situations of stress when he had
something to face them with; but if he never had an ego we cannot
hold him responsible for his dreams or anything else. Someone

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who is, in effect, all id and always was, cannot be praised or

blamed even though it is his id and his alone.
Freud's assertion, then, that "one must hold oneself res-
ponsible" for one's dreams could hardly have been intended to
mean that everyone is responsible, but rather must mean that,
for most of us, the content of our dreams is not something over
which we have no influence.
It is worth pointing out, as Freud does, that as a matter of
fact we do assume responsibility for the character of our dreams.
An individual who consistently dreams that he engages in the
vilest sexual practices with his mother may feel guilty about it,
and the guilt might be perfectly fitting, might be, as we should
say, appropriate in the circumstances. If a person who has such
dreams gloats about them, it could be said that his attitude is
unseemly and that he ought rather to feel guilty. And this can be
said even though it is perfectly obvious that in having these foul
dreams he is not doing anything wicked.
So, while dreaming is not like figuring out a mathematical
problem in one's head, it is not like a knee jerk or the dilation
of one's pupils either. It's something like blushing where attaining
control involves considerable effort and something like loving
one's neighbor which, though very difficult, is still something
that can be worked at.
HARVEY MULLANE
University of Cincinnati

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