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3, 12–28

Apparatus for the Production of an Image 1

Kaja Silverman

To see is to have seen [...] A seer has always already seen. H a v i n g seen in advance
he sees into the future. He sees the future tense out of the perfect. 2

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and h u r t not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
W i l l h u m about mine ears, and sometimes voices
T h a t , if I then had waked after long sleep,
W i l l make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought w o u l d open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that w h e n I waked,
I cried to dream again. 3

In Chapter 2 of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud advances his famous definition of

the discursive f o r m to whose examination that book is devoted. A dream, he writes,
is ‘a (disguised) fulfilment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish’.4 W i t h this definition, Freud
suggests that, far f r o m being the result of a digestive process, or a simple projection
away f r o m postural positionality, the sounds and images w h i c h pass w i t h such
hallucinatory intensity before us w h e n we sleep tell us the t r u t h about ourselves.
From them we can learn what we could never otherwise know: what it is that we
desire. However, this lesson is unavailable so long as we attribute perceptual value
to what we see and hear. We can approach the t r u t h of our desire only by grasping
the sounds and images of our dreams as simple stand-ins or ciphers for what cannot
be directly spoken. Freud might thus be said to derealize the manifest content of
the dream.

N o t surprisingly, in the pages w h i c h follow, Freud always moves quickly away f r o m

the images and sounds of the dreams he analyses to what they disguise. Neither the
visual particularity of a given dream-image, nor the startling f o r m in w h i c h a parental
figure or an infantile object might be reconstituted there, seems significant in its own
right. Indeed, Freud encourages us to treat dream images as parts of a rebus, rather
than as something at w h i c h it is intrinsically pleasurable to look. ‘ I f we attempted to
read [the visual] characters [of a dream] according to their pictorial value instead
of according to their symbolic relations, we should clearly be led into error’, Freud
writes in The Interpretation of Dreams; ‘we can only f o r m a proper j u d g m e n t [...] if [...]

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we try to replace each separate element by a syllable or w o r d that can be represented
by that element in some way or other’. 5

Freud also tells us in Chapter 5 of his dream-book that the dream-work translates
the predominantly verbal memories w h i c h he calls the ‘dream-thoughts’ into
perceptions only out of ‘considerations of representability’. 6 Images, he maintains,
serve the requirements of condensation better than words, since their meaning is
always multivalent. For the same reason, images also aid the censoring mechanism,
w h i c h seeks to conceal the motivating desires behind our dreams; where the
possibilities for meaning are many, a forbidden one can be easily hidden.

In other Freudian texts, vision serves not merely an instrumental, b u t also a

pathological function; it emerges as something like the ‘disease’ for w h i c h language
provides the ‘cure’. In treating the patients whose case studies f o r m Studies on Hysteria,
Freud tells us, he at times used language not only to neutralize the t r a u m a of visual
hallucinations, b u t also to erase the m e m o r y on the p a r t of a patient that she had
at one time even had such a hallucination. 7 Freud’s case histories of D o r a , little
Hans, and the W o l f m a n all feature p r o m i n e n t examples of what might be called
‘visual symptoms’, and in each of these texts the author elaborates further upon the
notion of the ‘talking cure’. 8 A n d in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud celebrates the
capacity of verbal speech to ‘bind’ the t r a u m a of nightmares w h i c h w o u l d otherwise
compulsively return. 9

However, as psychoanalysis teaches us, it is not f r o m consciousness, ostensible seat

of knowledge, that we finally have the most to learn. It is, rather, f r o m the O t h e r
w h o m each of us might finally be said to be. This Other, who does not seem to think
that the dream-work produces images only out of considerations of representability,
speaks eloquently f r o m the site of Freud’s own dreams. B o t h in these dreams, and
in the dream-thoughts out of w h i c h they emerge, the activity of looking occupies an
extraordinarily privileged position.

In Freud’s dream of Irma’s injection, for instance, he plays the role of a diegetic as
well as an extra-diegetic observer. 10 In it, he looks d o w n the throat of I r m a , one of
his hysterical patients, and peruses a spectacle w h i c h is clearly the product of a lavish
amount of dream-work: an ‘extensive whitish grey scabs upon some remarkable curly
structures w h i c h were evidently modeled on the t u r b i n a l bones of the nose’. 11 Freud
invites D r . M to j o i n h i m in front of this spectacle, and shortly thereafter two more
male colleagues collect around I r m a as well, f o r m i n g a grouping as theatrically scopic
as any ever staged by Charcot. The men soon extend their visual inspection beyond
Irma’s throat to her shoulders. In spite of the fact that she is fully clothed, they are
able to detect an ‘infiltration’ in the skin.

In his analysis of this dream, Freud evokes a peculiar visual m e m o r y of a former

patient: the discovery in the m o u t h of a beautiful governess of unsightly dentures. 12
He tells us that this discovery, w h i c h the governess attempted to forestall by not
opening her m o u t h , was the source of dissatisfaction not only to her, b u t also to h i m .
A l t h o u g h Freud locates the figure of the governess behind I r m a , who also seems
reluctant to open her m o u t h , his account of the dream-thoughts does not encourage

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 us to read the dream as a restaging of this particular visual memory. Rather, Freud
intimates in it that the dream of Irma’s injection was inspired by the desire to look
at a very d i e r e n t p a r t of the female body f r o m the oral cavity. I say ‘intimates’
because the author of The Interpretation of Dreams manifests a curious reluctance to
acknowledge what his own analysis demonstrates.

We do not expect coyness f r o m Freud on such matters. He quite unabashedly shares

w i t h us not only the concealed thought whereby he makes his friend O t t o responsible
for Irma’s illness (the thought, that is, that the infusion on Irma’s shoulder must have
come f r o m an injection given to her by him), 1 3 b u t also the double-entendre by means
of w h i c h this medical infraction becomes a sexual infraction: ‘Andprobably the syringe
had not been clean’.14 However, in the passage in w h i c h Freud glosses the words behind
w h i c h his scopic desire lies concealed - ‘in spite of her dress’ - he comes up against
the force of his own resistance to the analysis. The result is consequently not a simple
declarative, b u t rather a negation - an avowal-through-denial: 1 5 ‘We naturally used
to examine the children in the hospital undressed’, Freud writes, ‘and this w o u l d be
a contrast to the manner in w h i c h adult female patients have to be examined. I
remembered that it was said of a celebrated clinician that he never made a physical
examination of his patients except through their clothes. Further than this I could
not see. Frankly, I had no desire to penetrate more deeply at this point’. 1 6

B u t this is not all in Freud’s account of the dream of Irma’s injection to connect it
w i t h a passionate scopophilia. In the course of discussing the contents of Irma’s
m o u t h , the author of The Interpretation of Dreams remarks that ‘there is at least one
spot in every dream at w h i c h it is unplumbable - a navel, as it were, that is its p o i n t
of contact w i t h the unknown’. 1 7 M u c h later in the same book, Freud adds that this
spot marks the location of the (presumably primary) dream wish. 1 8 He attributes the
u n p l u m b a b i l i t y of the dream navel to the thicket-like density of dream-thoughts
surrounding it, thoughts w h i c h branch out in too many directions to admit of an
exhaustive interpretation. 1 9

Freud finds the navel of the dream of Irma’s injection in I r m a herself. Concealed
behind this figure, he tells us, were his wife, his daughter, and a friend of I r m a . 2 0
Surprisingly, however, he does not support the claim that I r m a represents the navel
of the dream by underscoring the abyssal nature of the dream-thoughts out of w h i c h
she was formed. Rather, Freud says that he is not able to give us an exhaustive
account of Irma’s meaning because he didn’t push his interpretation far enough. He
d i d not do so because exploring the ideational motivations for the condensation of
his wife, his daughter and Irma’s friend into this single, composite figure w o u l d have
taken h i m ‘far afield’. 2 1 W i t h these last words, he himself comes close to
acknowledging what we have already surmised: his mention of Irma’s h y b r i d
construction in the footnote is a false lead. Far f r o m representing a crucial moment
in the analytic u n d o i n g of repression, this revelation is itself p a r t and parcel of that
process of censorship through w h i c h what is of secondary importance is pushed to
the foreground, and what is of p r i m a r y importance is concealed in the background.

B u t although Freud himself misidentifies the navel of the dream of Irma’s injection,
he makes it possible for us to rectify his mistake. In his analysis of the words ‘in spite

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of her dress’, he provides the missing trope of unplumbability. He thereby indicates
that it is these words w h i c h mark the ‘point of contact w i t h the unknown’ in the
‘specimen dream’ of psychoanalysis. 22 One of the two sentences following the one
in w h i c h Freud refers to the celebrated physician who always examined his patients
fully clothed - ‘frankly, I had no desire to penetrate more deeply at this point’ - also
helps us to understand that if Freud’s dream escapes interpretation at this crucial
point, this is not because of an overdetermination of meaning. It is, rather, because
the wish of the dreamer not to see what he is seeing is as strong as his desire to see.

Freud’s dream of the botanical monograph is even more saturated w i t h visual longing,
b u t here the force of denial is not nearly as powerful. 2 3 This dream consists in its
entirety of a single act of vision. In it, Freud dreams that a book devoted to a botanical
topic is lying before h i m , and that he is t u r n i n g over one of its coloured plates. 24
O t h e r books w i t h coloured plates figure prominently in the dream-thoughts out of
w h i c h the botanical monograph dream emerges. Freud speaks of the passion he had
for such books d u r i n g his days as a medical student. He was, we learn, ‘enthralled’ by
their images. 25 This m e m o r y leads to another, in w h i c h Freud and his sister as
children disassembled books w i t h coloured plates. A g a i n , this m e m o r y is generative
of extreme pleasure; ‘bliss’ 26 is the w o r d w i t h w h i c h Freud characterizes it. The
author of The Interpretation of Dreams tells us that the ‘picture’ of this act of destruction
was the only ‘plastic memory’ he retained f r o m his childhood, further underscoring
b o t h its visual consistency and its importance. 2 7

The motivating incident for the dream of the botanical monograph was the spectacle
of a botanical monograph in a shop window. 2 8 This spectacle reminded Freud that
he, too, once wrote a k i n d of botanical monograph, a book on the coca-plant. 29 Lest
we imagine for a moment that this last memory, at least, has no visual ramifications,
Freud tells us that it immediately gave rise to a fantasy of eye-surgery, whereby he
was delivered, w i t h the help of cocaine, f r o m an imaginary case of glaucoma. 3 0

Finally, Freud isolates as the most i m p o r t a n t wish behind the dream of the botanical
monograph the desire to see The Interpretation of Dreams ‘lying finished before [ h i m ] ’ . 3 1
He attributes the inspiration for the dream-wish to two sentences f r o m a letter
recently w r i t t e n to h i m by Fliess: ‘I am very m u c h occupied w i t h your dream-book.
I see it lying finished before me and I see myself turning over its pages’.32 However, the
formulation through w h i c h Freud expresses the dream-wish makes evident how m u c h
resonance Fliess’s scopic fantasy found w i t h i n his own psyche: ‘ H o w m u c h I envied
[Fliess] his gift as a seer! If only I could have seen it lying finished before me!’ 3 3

In Freud’s dream of self-dissection, he not only once again functions as a diegetic as

well as an extra-diegetic spectator, he also provides the spectacle at w h i c h he looks.
In this dream, his former teacher old Bru¨cke sets h i m the task of helping Louise N.
to dissect his own pelvis. Freud performs this task p r i m a r i l y through looking at his
own anatomy. W h a t he sees appeals strongly to his aesthetic faculties, inviting h i m
to distinguish between background and foreground, the sculptural and the painterly,
and the natural and the cultural: ‘I [see my pelvis and legs] before me’, he writes,
‘The pelvis ha[s] been eviscerated, and it [is] visible now in its superior, now in its
inferior, aspect, the two being m i x e d together. T h i c k flesh-colored protuberances

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 [...can] be seen.34 Something w h i c h lay over it and was like crumpled silver-paper
had also to be carefully fished out’. 3 5

At a certain p o i n t in his dream of self-dissection, Freud leaves the operating r o o m

where he scrutinizes his pelvis, and is carried t o w a r d a small wooden house. At this
point, he is seemingly subsumed completely to the role of invalid, no longer
functioning as a spectacle in relation to his own look. In fact, however, this p a r t of
the dream attests as fully as the earlier p a r t to a narcissistic scopophilia. Freud
attributes the detail of the wooden house to his desire to be b u r i e d at some future
moment in an Etruscan grave. 36 In The Future of an Illusion, he returns to this dream,
now explicitly connecting it to his love of ancient visual artefacts. It is, moreover,
no longer simply his desire to be b u r i e d in an Etruscan grave w h i c h he represents
the dream as fulfilling. Freud maintains that the dream also satisfied his desire to see
himselflyinginsuchagrave.37

B u t Freud’s dreams are not the only elements in The Interpretation of Dreams attesting
to the psychic centrality of the look. The model of the psyche to w h i c h that work is
committed is at every p o i n t a visual model.

The Psyche as an Optical Device

The psyche, Freud tells us in a famous passage f r o m The Interpretation of Dreams,

resembles ‘a compound microscope or a photographic apparatus’. 38 At first, the basis
for this comparison seems fairly minor. Psychic images, like those inside these two
optical devises, are ‘virtual’ rather than real; they occur at sites where no ‘tangible
component’ of the apparatus is located. B u t a page later, we learn that there is
another ground for the analogizing of psyche and camera, if not psyche and
microscope. The various systems w h i c h constitute the psyche stand in a regular
relation to each other, like the lenses in a camera. Excitation passes through these
systems in a particular order, just as light does through the photographic lenses.

Immediately below the passage quoted above, the author of The Interpretation of Dreams
maintains that a psychical locality ‘correspond[s]’ to ‘a p o i n t inside the apparatus at
w h i c h one of the p r e l i m i n a r y stages of an image comes into being’. 3 9 W i t h the vehicle
of this metaphor, Freud stresses the teleological aspect of a photographic apparatus.
A camera, he suggests, is not only a spatial organization through w h i c h light passes,
b u t also a temporal process whose end is the production of an image. The G e r m a n
verb w i t h w h i c h Freud links the vehicle of his metaphor to the tenor, and w h i c h
Strachey translates w i t h the English w o r d ‘correspond’, is ‘entsprechen’,40 w h i c h is
suggestive of more than simple similarity; it means ‘to be equivalent t o ’ , ‘to conform
t o ’ , or ‘to be commensurate w i t h ’ . If psychical locality corresponds to the camera in
the way Freud specifies, it, too, must be the site for the emergence of what might be
called ‘a picture in the making’. The psyche in its entirety, like the camera, must
also constitute a temporal process whose pre-given end-point is the realization of
this picture.

A psychical locality is the site for a p r e l i m i n a r y stage in the making of an image

rather than for the appearance of an image as such because it represents a m e m o r y

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system. Freud is at great pains to establish that perception occurs in a ‘place’ apart
f r o m memory. In The Interpretation of Dreams, as in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and ‘A
Note upon the Mystic Writing-Pad’, he maintains that the psyche is divided between
two incommensurate activities: perception and memory. Where we receive sensory
stimuli, we cannot store them. Conversely, where we store them, we cannot
receive them. 4 1

B o t h the unconscious and the preconscious are psychical localities. 42 However,

memories are inscribed in a very d i e r e n t f o r m in each of these localities.
Unconscious memories are perceptions - and specifically visual perceptions - i n -
potentia. T h e y aspire to become what Freud calls ‘thing-presentations’, i.e.
representations w h i c h are capable of passing themselves o as things. 43 Preconscious
memories, on the other hand, are linguistic in nature, consisting of verbal signifiers
and conceptual signifieds. Freud refers to these memories, w h i c h are subject to other
forms of d i e r e n t i a t i o n as well, as ‘word-presentations’. 4 4

Perception, w h i c h is not a locality, constitutes another psychic division. Freud

attributes it to d i e r e n t b u t interfacing agencies in The Interpretation of Dreams: to what
he calls ‘perception’, and to what he calls ‘consciousness’. In the final diagram w i t h
w h i c h he there schematizes the psychic apparatus, Freud relegates these two parts
of what he w i l l later call the ‘perception/consciousness system’ 45 to opposite ends of
the psychic apparatus. 46 Intervening between them are the unconscious and the
preconscious.

The perception p a r t of the perception/consciousness system is not perception proper,

b u t merely the unconscious psychic registration of an external stimulus. Before a
perceptual stimulus can become conscious, and so be truly perceived, it must coalesce
w i t h an unconscious m e m o r y or cluster of memories. This coalescence, w h i c h Freud
calls ‘perceptual identity’, 4 7 m a y b e e e c t e d through the condensation of perceptual
stimulus and unconscious memory. It may also be e e c t e d through a l i b i d i n a l
displacement f r o m the unconscious m e m o r y to the perceptual stimulus. In b o t h cases,
though, the perceptual moment w i t h i n this process of identification takes place w i t h -
in the consciousness p a r t of the perception/consciousness system. 48 Because
consciousness is for Freud nothing more than the site at w h i c h our psychically worked-
over perceptions become available to us, he does not hesitate to characterize it as a
sensory organ. 4 9

Freud not only compares the psyche to an optical apparatus in The Interpretation of
Dreams; he also provides an emphatically specular gloss upon his revolutionary
definition of a dream. In Chapter 7 of that work, he tells us again, once more in
italics, that a dream is a disguised fulfillment of a suppressed or repressed wish.
However, he now adds a new criterion to the desire out of w h i c h a dream can
emerge. In addition to being p r o h i b i t e d , this desire must be of a visual or ‘scenic’
nature. A dream, Freud writes, is ‘a substitute for an infantile scene modified by being
transferred on to a recent experience. The infantile scene is unable to brings about its own
revival and has to be content w i t h r e t u r n i n g as a dream’. 5 0

Strangely, moreover, Freud here personifies the infantile scene. It is the one seeking
to b r i n g about its own revival, and it is the one w h i c h must be content to r e t u r n in

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 another form. This is not the only time Freud imputes something like subjectivity to
our visual memories. He reverts repeatedly in The Interpretation of Dreams to a peculiar
verbal formula. He suggests that our unconscious memories exercise a powerful force
of ‘attraction’ over our other thoughts and perceptions.

The first time Freud attributes a capacity to attract to the unconscious memories, he
seems to be simply anticipating a claim w h i c h he w i l l later make in ‘Repression’,
w h i c h is that w h e n something is repressed it is not merely repelled by the
preconscious, b u t attracted by the unconscious. 51 However, a few pages later he
suggests that the visual properties of the unconscious memories have an i m p o r t a n t p a r t
to play in the event he is describing. The ‘transformation of thoughts into visual
images’ in our dreams, Freud writes, ‘may be in p a r t the result of the attraction
w h i c h memories couched in visual f o r m and eager for revival b r i n g to bear upon
thoughts cut o f r o m consciousness and struggling to find expression’. 52

The G e r m a n w o r d w h i c h Strachey translates as ‘attraction’ is ‘ die Anziehung ,53 w h i c h

like ‘attraction’ can signify either an attribute or an action. It can designate the
charms w h i c h a person or a t h i n g has for others; or it can signify a p u l l i n g on the
p a r t of that person or t h i n g of other people or things t o w a r d it. Freud seems to be
using the w o r d ‘die Anziehung’ here in b o t h senses. The dream-thoughts, w h i c h are
p r i m a r i l y verbal in f o r m , find the predominantly imagistic qualities of the unconscious
memories fascinating. The unconscious memories flaunt these qualities, in the hope
of drawing the dream-thoughts in their direction. The first of these interpretations
makes evident, once again, how central the visual is to our psychic existence. The
second does even more; it imputes to the unconscious memories a k i n d of agency.
Those memories seem, indeed, to be the site of a certain desire - of a desire for
what might be called ‘ a l i a t i o n ’ .

B u t if unconscious memories flaunt their visual properties at night, in an attempt to

lure words into assuming a visual consistency, it is they themselves who go in search
of visual stimuli w h e n the door to the outside w o r l d is open. Freud explains this
phenomenon through the concept of attention in Project for a Scientific Psychology.
A t t e n t i o n , he suggests there, is not the condition of conscious alertness w h i c h we
usually think of it as being. Rather, it is the sending out of ‘wishful [...] cathexis [...]
to meet all perceptions, since those that are wished-for might be among them’. 5 4
W h a t is wished for is a perception w i t h w h i c h visual m e m o r y can coalesce.55 The
one doing the wishing is again seemingly that m e m o r y itself, w h i c h seeks to make
itself seen once more. W h a t interests this m e m o r y in perception is precisely what it
itself lacks: ‘perceptual quality’. 5 6

Whether they draw verbal memories t o w a r d them, or go out in search of sensory

stimuli, the unconscious memories seem to be driven by the desire to become
conscious perceptions, a desire w h i c h they can realize only by finding a new shape.
In waking life, they achieve this metamorphosis by coalescing w i t h perceptual stimuli.
D u r i n g sleep, they achieve it by i n d u c i n g verbal memories to provide an analogous
visual habitus. If, in t r y i n g to make sense of this strange account of unconscious
memories, I am unable to avoid attributing to them the status of a subject, that is

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because subjectivity itself is in its most profound sense nothing other than a
constellation of visual memories which are struggling to achieve a perceptual form.

The Pleasure Principle

It is not only because of the centrality w h i c h this model of the psyche a o r d s the
visual that it must be attributed to ‘another’ Freud. The passages in w h i c h Freud
elaborates it also defy the usual logic of attribution because making sense of them
requires a completely d i e r e n t understanding of the pleasure principle than the one
explicitly p u t forth in The Interpretation of Dreams and Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
According to the latter text, the pleasure principle represents the urge to reduce
psychic excitation - w h i c h derives in p a r t f r o m external stimuli, b u t more fully f r o m
unsatisfied drives - to a level ‘as low as possible’. 57 At the beginning of life, w h e n
this principle reigns supreme, we seek not only to evacuate such excitation, b u t to
do so as quickly as possible. Freud maintains that for this reason the psyche is a
‘reflex apparatus’. 58 A l t h o u g h a reflex action is one w h i c h returns to its p o i n t of
origin, Freud does not seem to be using it in that sense, b u t more as a synonym for
the drive to expel.

Since hallucination provides the shortest path to pleasure, it is initially the preferred
solution to the problem of psychic excitation; when the infant subject is hungry,
Freud tells us in The Interpretation of Dreams, it simply converts the mnemonic image of
milk into an immediate perception. Before long, though, the unwanted excitation
makes itself felt once again, and over time, the subject learns to tolerate a certain
amount of tension as the precondition for ‘thought’. The goal of the ‘thinking’ psyche
nevertheless remains exactly the same as its ‘thoughtless’ counterpart: it, too, operates
at the behest of the pleasure principle. The only di erence between the two is that
the thinking psyche has learned to distinguish between fantasmatic discharge, and
real discharge, and it knows that the path leading to the latter is generally more
tortuous and circuitous than the path leading to the former.59

The optical apparatus model of the psyche contradicts this account of the pleasure
principle in every respect. N o t only does it represent the end t o w a r d w h i c h the
psyche is driven as the emergence of an image, b u t it also specifies as the precondition
for that event to occur a heightening rather than a d i m i n u t i o n of excitement. Indeed,
in order for perception to take place, not just one, b u t two sources of stimulation
must be present - one external or sensory, and one internal or mnemonic. In
perception, Freud tells us,

Excitatory materials flows into the Cs. sense-organ f r o m two directions,

f r o m the Pcpt. system, whose excitation, determined by qualities, is
probably submitted to a fresh revision before it becomes a conscious
sensation, and f r o m the interior of the apparatus itself, whose
quantitative processes are felt qualitatively in the pleasure-unpleasure
series when, subject to certain modifications, they make their way into
consciousness. 60

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 The excitement elicited by the two stimuli mentioned by Freud is, moreover, not
simply a kind of ‘fore-pleasure’, which is at the service of an evacuatory ‘end-
pleasure’.61 This excitation or ‘quantitative’ force is not ultimately released. Rather,
it is transformed into an a ective judgment about the perceptual thing. A quantity
in the subject is converted into a quality in the object.62

Near the end of The Interpretation of Dreams comes another passage challenging the
canonical account of the pleasure principle. In this passage, Freud subjects the
concept of‘discharge’ to a radical resignification. ‘The p r i m a r y process’, he observes
there, ‘endeavors to b r i n g about a discharge of excitation in order that, w i t h the
help of the amount of excitation thus accumulated, it may establish a perceptual
identity’ [with the experience of satisfaction]’. 63 H e r e , ‘discharge’ means not ‘release
of psychic tension’, b u t rather something like ‘transfer of libido f r o m one m e m o r y
to another for the purpose of allowing the second m e m o r y to take the place of the
first’ i.e. ‘displacement’. It designates, that is, not the evacuation of excitation f r o m
the psyche into the exterior, b u t rather its circulation w i t h i n a closed system.
Discharge is also a process w i t h o u t any logical terminus; libido is no sooner removed
f r o m one m e m o r y than it is invested in another, w h i c h itself releases its cathexis only
so that it can be located in a t h i r d , etc. Finally, perceptual identity does not lead to
discharge; rather, it is that to w h i c h discharge itself leads. T h r o u g h the displacement
of excitation away f r o m one m e m o r y to a perceptual stimulus or another memory,
the latter comes to have the perceptual ‘charge’ of the former.

Since the transfer of libido f r o m one term to another is something w h i c h occurs only
w h e n the drive to expel excitation f r o m the psyche into the ‘outside’ is blocked, it
might nevertheless appear to represent more the frustration than the fulfilment of
the pleasure principle. This is how Freud himself represents the matter in an
i m p o r t a n t passage in Beyond the Pleasure Principle: ‘ W h a t appears in a m i n o r i t y of
h u m a n individuals as an u n t i r i n g impulsion towards further perfection’, he writes in
this passage,

can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon

w h i c h is based all that is most precious in h u m a n civilization. The
repressed instinct never ceases to strive for complete satisfaction, w h i c h
w o u l d consist in the repetition of a p r i m a r y experience of satisfaction.
No substitutive or reactive formations and no sublimations w i l l s u c e
to remove the repressed instinct’s persisting tension; and it is the
d i e r e n c e in amount between the pleasure of satisfaction w h i c h is
demanded and that w h i c h is actually achieved that provides the d r i v i n g
factor w h i c h w i l l p e r m i t of no halting at any position attained, b u t , in
the poet’s words, ‘ungeba¨ndigt immer vorwa¨rts dringt ’ [‘presses ever forward
unsubdued].64

However, Freud here openly acknowledges that it is the inhibition of the impulse
toward energic evacuation which constitutes the driving force behind subjectivity.
He also claims that the frustration of the urge to evacuate leads to the creation of
‘all that is most precious in human civilization’. Freud thereby encourages us to
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understand the controlling principle of psychic life in a way that runs directly counter
to his own definition of it.

On the basis of these three crucial irruptions of unconscious t r u t h into Freud’s

iconoclastic discourse, I w o u l d like to suggest that the pleasure principle is not the
nirvana principle w h i c h he himself claims it to be. It has nothing whatever to do
either w i t h a zero state of excitation, or w i t h the recovery of a lost satisfaction.
Rather, the pleasure principle is psychoanalysis’s name for what governs us
psychically w h e n we find our pleasure in not being satisfied - w h e n we give ourselves
over to the metonymical and metaphorical ‘slide’ w h i c h leads away f r o m , rather
than back to, the ostensible p o i n t of origin. 6 5 The pleasure principle therefore does
not t r i u m p h w h e n we succeed in possessing again what we imagine ourselves once
to have h a d , b u t rather when, through a series of associative connections, we succeed
in representing what we yearn for in a new way.

I w o u l d also like to suggest that the pleasure principle does not constitute a
generalized principle of repetition, b u t rather one w h i c h is specifically visual. The
pleasure principle can best be defined as the enabling force behind a particular k i n d
of looking: the k i n d of looking w h i c h is creative of beauty or preciousness. It is the
impetus d r i v i n g us to find visual gratification in perceptions that only imperfectly
replicate our memories, and in so doing to ennoble ever new creatures and things.
It is that to w h i c h we owe our capacity to a r m the phenomenal multiplicity of our
earthly habitus: to become w o r l d spectators. 66

If the pleasure principle is what leads the subject f r o m one visual signifier to another,
rather than, as Freud at times maintains, a nearly physiological force pushing for a
zero state of excitation, then it is clearly not something i m m a n e n t w i t h i n the new-
b o r n subject. It must depend for its activation upon a symbolic rather than a
biological agency. T h a t agency, as I argue elsewhere, is kinship.

The Age of the World Picture

The w o r d which Freud consistently uses to refer to the image toward whose production
the psyche moves is ‘Sachvorstellung’.67 James Strachey translates‘Sachvorstellung’ as ‘thing-
presentation’. W i t h this translation, he succeeds in communicating the perceptual
nature of psychic images. However, ‘thing-presentation’ is in other respects a less than
satisfactory translation of the original text. A compound noun, ‘Sachvorstellung’ brings
together one of a series of German words for ‘thing’ - ‘Sache’ - w i t h the semantically
rich w o r d ‘Vorstellung’. The verbal form of ‘Vorstellung’, which can be translated as
‘presentation’, ‘representation’, ‘introduction’, ‘performance’, ‘idea’, or ‘show’, literally
means ‘to position or stand before’.

For the Heidegger of ‘The Age of the W o r l d Picture’, the literal signification is the
p r i m a r y meaning of Vorstellung. This meaning makes manifest something w h i c h is at
the heart of all representation: the aspiration on the p a r t of the one who represents
to order everything in relation to herself. To represent is not merely to set something
‘in place before oneself, and ‘to have it fixedly before oneself as set up in this way’. 6 8

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 It is also to make of the one who looks ‘that being upon w h i c h all that is, is grounded
as regards the manner of its Being and its truth’ - to make of her the ‘center of that
w h i c h is as such’. 69

The viewer I have just described is for Heidegger the m o d e r n or Cartesian subject.
It is characteristic of this subject not merely to treat isolated phenomena in this way,
b u t to regard the w o r l d itself as a picture. For the one for w h o m the w o r l d is a
picture, writes Heidegger in the same essay, ‘an essential decision takes place
regarding what is, in its entirety. The Being of whatever is, is sought and found in
the representedness of the latter’. 7 0 W i t h this development, the category of the object
- w h i c h constitutes, finally, a category of possession - emerges as such. Everything
that I succeed in representing belongs to me, or should belong to me. It is mine (or
should be mine) to do w i t h as I see fit. It is, in other words, for me.

The language which Freud uses to describe the desire driving the dream of the botanical
monograph - ’. If only I could have seen it lying finished before me!’ - echoes to an
uncanny degree the desire which Heidegger locates at the heart of modernity. Freud’s
dream of Irma’s injection is vulnerable to the same critique. It attests powerfully to
the subject/object binary which Heidegger locates at the heart of what he calls ‘the
age of the world picture’. I r m a is not merely a convenient representation, for Freud,
of a host of other women; she is, in addition, an object to be handled, manipulated,
and known. The third dream which I discussed earlier in this essay - the dream of
self-dissection - also speaks to a desire for visual mastery. In it, Freud attempts to
internalize the public look in relation to which his sexuality will be placed by the future
publication of The Interpretation of Dreams by consolidating himself as the one who looks
at his private parts. Although vividly dramatizing the visual nature of desire, these
three dreams are far from testifying to the generosity of the look.

For M i k k e l Borch-Jacobsen, who has also noted the centrality of vision in Freud, the
concept of the Sachvorstellung has no value other than the one Heidegger w o u l d impute
to it. ‘ I f the ‘content’ of the unconscious is defined essentially as representation, as
Vorstellung [...] can we avoid asking in front ofwhat, in front of what ‘agency’, this Vor-
stellung is posited or presented? W h a t is this psyche [...] unless it is, still and always
a subject [of representation]?’, 7 1 he asks in The Freudian Subject. However, it does not
follow f r o m the p r i m a c y w h i c h Freud gives to the Sachvorstellung that we are all
doomed to a constant reenactment of the Cogito. Borch-Jacobsen finds no descriptive
value in Freud’s account of the psyche. In his view, the dreamers whose dreams
Freud recounts do not desire to have what they see; rather, they desire to be it. 7 2 At
the moment that this mimetic desire is fulfilled, the spectator loses all distance f r o m
the scene of representation, and becomes purely and simply p a r t of the picture.
Consequently, the k i n d of ‘seeing’ in w h i c h each of us engages in our dreams could
not be farther removed f r o m the k i n d Descartes inaugurated in the Discourse on Method
and the Meditations on First Philosophy.

W h i l e I do not subscribe to the notion that Borch-Jacobsen succeeds where Freud

fails, it does seem to me that he identifies another of the forms w h i c h the unconscious
look can assume. 73 Clearly, there are times w h e n each of us looks in an identificatory
rather than a possessive way at what we see. However, I do not find in this expanded

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account of our spectatorial options much cause for celebration. Whereas the desire
to possess expresses itself at the level of vision through the belong-to-be quality of
certain kinds of representation,74 mimetic desire classically expresses itself at the level
of vision through the aspiration to incorporate the ideal image. It is, as Borch-
Jacobsen himself makes clear, therefore the most altruicidal of all desires; it can
achieve its end only by negating the other as such. ‘Mimesis is [...] the matrix of
rivalry, hatred, and (in the social order) violence’, he writes in The Freudian Subject;
‘ “ I want what my brother, my model, my idol wants and I want it in his place”.
And, consequently, “I want to kill him, to eliminate him’”.75

Fortunately, although the relations of ‘being’ and ‘having’ have monopolized

psychoanalytic attention to the virtual exclusion of any other, they do not constitute
our only scopic options. As The Interpretation of Dreams helps us to understand, the
look can also relate to what it sees in the mode of showing. And when we show what
we see, instead of seeking to replace it or take possession of it, the Vorstellung no
longer has the status Heidegger imputes to it. Instead, it becomes the agency whereby
the things of our world begin to shimmer and shine, becoming in the process not
less, but rather more real.

Excitation in the Organ of Vision

Freud’s account of the production of a perception often makes that process seem
more exhibitionistic than scopophilic. The driving force behind perception appears
to be the desire on the part of a past perception to make itself seen once again,
rather than the desire on the part of a seer to see. The Interpretation of Dreams seems
to provide us with an unambiguous explanation for this desire to show. At several
di erent moments in that text, Freud maintains that the dreamer herself always
occupies the center of the scene. To be more precise, he writes that all dreams are
‘completely egoistic: the beloved ego appears in all of them, even though it may be
disguised’.76 He thereby suggests that it is because it is primarily our own image
which we seek to see in our dreams that the latter often seem more concerned with
exhibiting than with seeing.

However, in Chapter 7 of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud makes a directly contrary

claim. He compares the dreamer not to the hero of a story, but to the author of a
play, and he goes so far as to insist that we are always aware in our dreams that we
are performing this role.77 The author of a play is generally a writer who composes
with the aim of showing someone or something else. And in another passage in The
Interpretation of Dreams, Freud describes a kind of looking which also aims to show: a
looking which helps what it sees realize itself as spectacle. He also implicitly opposes
the pleasure which such looking provides to the pleasure entailed in looking at oneself.

‘Scherner supposes that, when dreams exhibit particularly vivid and copious visual
elements, there is present a state of visual stimulation’, that is, of ‘internal excitation
in the organ of vision’, Freud writes at the beginning of this passage.78 Although the
words he utters derive from another author,79 he goes on in the immediately following
passage to signal his fundamental agreement with the latter’s theoretical formulation.
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 Freud then describes one of his own dreams. It is one which induced precisely that
state of ‘visual stimulation’ described by Scherner.

The dream in question is first discussed in Chapter 6 of The Interpretation of Dreams 80

It seems at first glance to provide so transparent an instantiation of the principle
that our dreams are narcissistically motivated as to render interpretation superfluous.
In it, Freud finds himself in a castle by a sea in w h i c h a naval battle is taking place.
He is a volunteer naval o c e r , under the command of a Governor. This Governor,
H e r r P., dies quite suddenly, leaving a v a c u u m w h i c h only Freud can fill. He is thus
implicitly p r o m o t e d f r o m lowly subordinate to commander-in-chief.

Surprisingly, though, in the interpretation w h i c h immediately follows, Freud reads

the dream as a narrative of his own death, rather than that of H e r r P. He does so
by emphasizing the very substitutory logic w h i c h seems to work at the behest of
narcissistic pleasure. ‘The analysis showed’, writes Freud, ‘[...]that H e r r P was only
a substitute for my own self. (In the dream I was a substitute for him.) I was the
Governor who suddenly died’. 8 1 At the same time, Freud traces the dream back to
what he calls ‘the most cheerful recollections’, recollections w h i c h are b o t h
emphatically visual, and decidedly worldly:

It was a year earlier, in Venice, and we were standing one magically

beautiful day at the windows of our r o o m on the Reva degli Schiavoni
and were looking across the blue lagoon on w h i c h that day there was
more movement than usual. English ships were expected and were to
be given a ceremonial reception. 8 2

W h e n Freud returns to the topic of this dream later in The Interpretation of Dreams, he
makes no reference to the role he himself played in it. Instead, he talks only about
the pleasure of looking, w h i c h now seems to have been his p r i m a r y experience not
only on the day he stood looking at the Reva degli Schiavoni, b u t also on the occasion
of the dream itself. ‘ W h a t was it that had brought my visual organ into this state of
stimulation?’, Freud asks. His scopic excitation, he then explains, derived f r o m the
coalescence of an external perceptual stimulus w i t h a series of earlier memories:

A recent impression, w h i c h attached itself to a n u m b e r of earlier ones.

The colors w h i c h I saw were in the first instance those of a box of toy
bricks w i t h w h i c h , on the day before the dream, my children had p u t
up a fine b u i l d i n g and shown it o for my admiration. The b i g bricks
were of the same dark red and the small ones were of the same blue
and b r o w n . This was associated w i t h color impressions f r o m my last
travels in Italy: the beautiful blue of the Isonzo and the lagoons and
the b r o w n of the Carso. 83

Freud concludes this remarkable passage w i t h the astonishing claim that ‘the beauty
of the colors in my dream was only a repetition of something seen in my memory’. 8 4
In characteristic fashion, he cannot ‘see’ the manifest content of this dream, even
though the pleasure he took in the latter clearly inhered in a very particular red, a
very particular blue, and very particular b r o w n . Nevertheless, what Freud reveals to

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us here about his dream makes possible another account altogether of the k i n d of
looking it entailed.

First, this dream w o u l d seem to fulfill in a very precise way the second formulation
w i t h w h i c h Freud defines a dream. In it, a cluster of scenes w h i c h are unable to
b r i n g about their own perceptual revival r e t u r n in the guise of another. T h a t the
dream satisfies in a transformative guise the wish to see once again what has been
seen before is concealed in Freud’s original account of it. The marine setting in
w h i c h the desired blue, red and b r o w n r e t u r n evokes not pleasure in the dreamer,
b u t rather ‘a tense and sinister impression’. 8 5 The a e c t has been turned into its
opposite ‘cheerfulness into fear’. 8 6 Freud attributes this a e c t i v e reversal to the latent
meaning signified by the colors in his dream, w h i c h presumably means the
anticipation of his own death. However, in the later passage, the a e c t i v e reversal
has been undone. N o t only does Freud openly acknowledge that the dream gave h i m
a great deal of pleasure, b u t he also attributes that pleasure to the dream’s images
themselves, rather than to some non-visual signified.

B u t this passage provides more than a v i v i d dramatization of the principle that it is

above all the desire to resee that motivates our dreams. It also attests to the excitatory
nature of visual pleasure. W h e n Freud looks at the colours in his dream, he does not
experience a release of tension. Rather, he is stimulated, and this stimulation brings
pleasure. Freud’s state of excitement is, moreover, creative of exciting things. The
toy bricks w h i c h were the perceptual stimulus for Freud’s dream become precious,
or - as he himself puts it - beautiful. This passage thus dramatizes in a very precise
way the change f r o m the ‘quantitative’ into the ‘qualitative’.

Finally, the egoic death w h i c h Freud undergoes in this dream seems to be the
precondition for the pleasure he takes in its visual s i g n i f i e s I qualify this death as
‘egoic’ because it does not denote the end of Freud as subject, b u t rather the
dissolution of that ‘mirage’ w h i c h blinds h i m to who he is. 87 W h a t might be called
the ‘toy brick dream’ is, in a sense, a call to desire: a solicitation to Freud to begin
speaking his very particular language of desire, and in so doing to come to ‘ h i m s e l f .
Freud does not hear this call. B u t at least in the b r i e f period it took h i m to compose
the sentences quoted above, he could be said to have looked not for his own sake,
b u t rather for the sake of what looking makes possible: the enrichment of w o r l d l y
forms. He became a seer who passed over a e c t i v e l y to the side of what he saw.

Freud tells us that w h e n we sleep, the door to the w o r l d is closed. 88 It w o u l d thus

seem d i c u l t to posit this dream as an instance of w o r l d spectatorship, as I have
been implicitly doing. However, d u r i n g the minutes or hours d u r i n g w h i c h Freud
exercised his creative faculties in the way I have just described, he was not asleep.
Rather, he was dreaming while awake. A n d not only was the door to the w o r l d open,
b u t Freud went through it. He returned, bearing gifts, to the perceptual stimulus
w i t h w h i c h the dream itself began: to the red, blue and b r o w n bricks w i t h w h i c h his
children constructed their ‘fine’ b u i l d i n g , w h i c h thereafter shone w i t h the radiance
of the Isonzo, the lagoons, and the Carso.

N o w at last we are able to make sense of Freud’s claim that the psychical apparatus
is ‘constructed like a reflex apparatus’. As long as we r e m a i n faithful to the notion

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 that the pleasure principle decrees the evacuation of excitation, this is an inexplicable
assertion. The accumulation of excitation at one end of the psychic apparatus and
its release at the other does not constitute a reflex, w h i c h involves what the Oxford
English Dictionary calls the ‘bending back’ of something f r o m whence it came. 89
However, once we understand the pleasure principle as the force behind perceptual
identity, we have no d i c u l t y in explaining its reflex nature. Insofar as the action
w h i c h begins w i t h the reception of a sensory stimulus in fact ends w i t h the production
of an image, it necessarily bends back t o w a r d the sensory stimulus itself. In so doing,
it imparts to that stimulus what the latter could not otherwise have: psychic value.
Something like a reflex arc also figures prominently in Heidegger’s own account of
the look. 9 0 It is the shape of care. 91

My reader may therefore not be surprised to learn that the w o r l d is not in competition
w i t h our dreams. On the contrary, it intends t o w a r d the newness and braveness
w h i c h they alone can provide. M u c h in the spirit of Caliban in The Tempest, the trees
are m u r m u r i n g to the brooks, and the birds to the clouds: ‘ I f this be sleep, let them
go on dreaming’.

Notes

1 10
This essay is a shortened and slightly altered T h e w o r d s ‘diegetic’ a n d ‘ e x t r a - d i e g e t i c ’ , w h i c h
version of Chapter 4, inWorld Spectators (Stanford: are extensively d e p l o y e d in film studies, mean
Stanford University Press, 2000). ‘ i n t e r i o r to the fiction, a n d ‘ e x t e r i o r to the fiction.
2 11
Martin Heidegger,‘The AnaximanderFragment’, F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.107.
12
Early Greek Thinking: The Dawn of Western Philosophy, F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.109.
13
David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (trans.) F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.117.
14
(San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1975), p.34. F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.118.
3 15
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, III.2.138-46. I T h i s is Freud’s o w n d e f i n i t i o n of n e g a t i o n , as
here quote from p.1181 of the version of The oered in ‘Negation’, The Standard Edition, vol.
Tempest, in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, I X X , pp.235-39.
16
Compact Edition, Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.113.
17
(General eds.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. IV,
4
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, The pp. 11 1 .
18
Standard Edition, vol. V, p.160. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V,
5
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. I V , p.525.For an excellent discussion of the n a v e l of
pp.277–78. the dream, and one which r e m a i n s closer to
6
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V, Freud’s o w n account of it t h a n my o w n , see S a m
pp.339–49. W e b e r , The Legend of Freud ( M i n n e a p o l i s : U n i v e r s i t y
7
Joseph Breuer and Sigmund Freud, Studies on of M i n n e s o t a Press, 1982), p p . 6 5 - 8 3 .
19
Hysteria, The Standard Edition, vol. I I , pp.59, 84. For F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . V, p.525.
20
a further discussion of the capacity of words to For a very fine analysis of this logic of
erase images, see the next chapter. substitution, and o f the sexual politics which
8
See Freud’s discussion of Dora’s two dreams in subtends it, see Shoshana F e l m a n , ‘Postal S u r v i v a l ,
Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, The or the Q u e s t i o n of the N a v e l ’ , Yale French Studies,
Standard Edition, vol. I I , pp.64–111; his discussion 69 (1985), 4 9 - 7 2 .
21
of Hans’s horse phobia in Analysis of a Phobia in a Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. IV,
Five-Year-Old Boy, in The Standard Edition, vol. X, pp. 11 1 .
22
pp.23–25; and his account of the Wolfman’s dream T h i s is h o w F r e u d h i m s e l f refers to the d r e a m
and the primal scene in From the History of an of I r m a ’ s i n j e c t i o n in The Interpretation of Dreams,
Infantile Neurosis, The Standard Edition, vol. X V I I , vol. I V , pp.107-21.
23
pp.29–47. F r e u d discusses this d r e a m in detail on two
9
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, The d i e r e n t occasions in The Interpretation of Dreams,
Standard Edition, vol. X V I I I , pp.12–18. vol. I V , pp. 169-76, and pp.281-84.

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24 52
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.169. F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . V, p.546.
25 53
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.172; F r e u d , Die Traumdeutung, p.522.
54
m y emphasis. S i g m u n d F r e u d , Project for a Scientifc Psychology,
26
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.172. The Standard Edition, v o l . I, p . 3 6 1 .
27 55
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.172. F r e u d , Project, v o l . I V , p . 3 6 1 .
28 56
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.169. F r e u d , Project, v o l . I V , p.309.
29 57
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.170. F r e u d , Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p.9. A l t h o u g h
30
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.170. on p.8 of Beyond the Pleasure Principle F r e u d correlates
31
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.172. the degree of pleasure e x p e r i e n c e d by the subject
32
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.172. to the degree of diminution in the state of
33
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . I V , p.172. excitation, making complete evacuation the
34
A l t h o u g h Strachey renders the entire t r a n s c r i p t e p i t o m e of pleasure, on p.9 he suggests t h a t the
of the d r e a m in the past tense, Freud himself pleasure principle may also be a constancy
renders it in the present up to this p o i n t . See Die p r i n c i p l e . As J e a n L a p l a n c h e argues in Life and
Traumdeutung, in S i g m u n d F r e u d , Studienausgabe, v o l . Death in Psychoanalysis, J e r e y Mehlman (trans.)
II (Frankfurt am M a i n : Fischer Verlag, 1972), ( B a l t i m o r e : Johns H o p k i n s U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1976),
pp.436-37. p p . 1 0 3 - 2 4 , the t w o definitions are i n c o m p a t i b l e
35
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . V, p.452. w i t h one another.
36 58
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V, Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, The Standard
pp.454-55. Edition, v o l . V , p.538. The G e r m a n here reads
37
Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, The ‘Reflexapparat ’.
59
Standard Edition, v o l . X X I , p.17. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V,
38
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . V, p.536. pp.56-67.
39 60
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . V, p.536. F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . V, p.616.
40 61
Sigmund Freud, Die Traumdeutung, Freud- T h e d i s t i n c t i o n b e t w e e n fore-pleasure a n d e n d -
Studienausgabe, vol. II, Alexander Mitscherlich, pleasure is one F r e u d makes in Three Essays on a
Angela Richards and James Strachey (eds.) Theory of Sexuality, The Standard Edition, v o l . V I I ,
( F r a n k f u r t : S. Fischer, 1972), p.512. p.210.
41 62
See F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . V, The notion that excitatory quantity can be
p p . 6 1 5 - 1 6 ; Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p.25; a n d ‘A c o m m u t e d into a e c t i v e q u a l i t y i s one w h i c h F r e u d
N o t e u p o n the “ M y s t i c W r i t i n g P a d ” ’ , The Standard h i m s e l f broaches in Project for a Scientifc Psychology,
Edition, v o l . I X X , p p . 2 2 7 - 3 2 . p p . 3 0 9 a n d 312.
42 63
T h e notion of a l o c a l i t y is only one of the F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . V, p.602.
64
m e t a p h o r s t h r o u g h w h i c h F r e u d conceptualizes the F r e u d , Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p.42.
65
preconscious and the unconscious in The Lacan provides a similar definition of the
Interpretation of Dreams. He also conceptualizes t h e m pleasure p r i n c i p l e in The Seminar of Jacques Lacan,
later as processes. See The Standard Edition, v o l . V, Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960,
pp. 588-609 for this more dynamic account of D e n n i s Porter (trans.) ( N e w Y o r k : N o r t o n , 1992).
the psyche. O n p.58, h e w r i t e s : ‘ T h e pleasure p r i n c i p l e governs
43
S i g m u n d F r e u d , ‘ T h e U n c o n s c i o u s ’ , The Standard the search for the object a n d imposes the detours
Edition, v o l . X I V , p . 2 0 1 . w h i c h m a i n t a i n the distance in r e l a t i o n to its e n d
44
Freud, ‘The Unconscious’, p.201. [...] T h e transference of the q u a n t i t y f r o m Vorstellung
45
F r e u d , Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p.24. to Vorstellung always m a i n t a i n s the search at a
46
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . V, p . 5 4 1 , certain distance from that which it gravitates
figure 3. Consciousness does not overtly figure a r o u n d ’ . See also p.51 a n d p.57.
66
within this diagram. Rather, the preconscious For a much fuller discussion of world
seems to represent the final destination of any spectatorship than I can oer here, see my
given perception. However, ‘preconscious’ here World Spectators.
67
signifies not only the reserve of v e r b a l l y - o r g a n i z e d See, for instance, Das Unbewuste, in
m e m o r i e s , b u t the last stage before consciousness. Studienausgabe, vol III, p.159.
47 68
T h e G e r m a n here is ‘ Wahrnehmungsidentita¨ t ’, Die Martin Heidegger, ‘The Age of the World
Traumdeutung, p.539. P i c t u r e ’ , A Question Concerning Technology and Other
48
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V, Essays, W i l l i a m L o v i t t (trans.) ( N e w Y o r k : H a r p e r
pp.566-67. & R o w , 1977), p.129.
49 69
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . V, p.616. Heidegger, ‘The Age o f the World Picture’,
50
F r e u d , The Interpretation of Dreams, v o l . V, p.546. p.128.
51 70
Sigmund Freud, ‘Repression’, The Standard Heidegger, ‘The Age o f the World Picture’,
Edition, vol IVX, p.148. p.130.

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 71 80
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, The Freudian Subject, Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V,
Catherine Porter (trans.) (Stanford: Stanford pp.463–68.
81
University Press, 1988), pp.4-5. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V,
72
Borch-Jacobsen, The Freudian Subject, pp. 1-52. pp.464–65.
82
73
As I will indicate in a moment, Freud himself Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V, p.465.
83
acknowledges that it is often ourselves whom we Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V, p.547.
84
most seek to see. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V, p.547.
85
74
I take the notion of ‘belong-to-me-ness’ from Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V, p.464.
86
Lacan. In Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis,87 Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V, p.465.
In Seminar VII, Lacan suggests that the ego is a
Alan Sheridan (trans.) (New York: Norton, 1978),
mirage concealing the subject’s manque-a`-ˆetre.
p.81, he writes, in tacit reference to Heidegger:
(p.298).
‘The privilege of the subject seems to be established 88
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V, p.544.
here from that bipolar reflexive relation by which, 89
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, p.1542.
as soon as I perceive, my representations belong 90
For the passage to which I refer, see Martin
to me’.
75
Heidegger,Parmenides, Andre´ Schuwer and Richard
Borch-Jacobsen, The Freudian Subject, p.27. Rojcewicz (trans.) (Bloomington: Indiana
76
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. I V , p.267. University Press, 1992), p.107. Although in this
See also Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. I V , passage the look once again provides Heidegger
p p . 3 2 2 - 2 3 ; a n d v o l . V , pp.440-41. with a metaphor for talking about disclosure, it
77
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V, comes close at moments to subordinating what it
pp.571-72. ostensibly represents.
78 91
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, vol. V, p.546. Although this is a crucial Heideggerianconcept,
79
The text from which Freud here quotes is Karl it does not appear in the passage in Parmenides
Albert Scherner, Das Leben des Traumes (Berlin: devoted to the look. I am here reading this passage
Verlag con Heinrich Shindler, 1861). together with Being and Time.

K a j a Silverman is Class of 1941 Professor of Rhetoric and Film at the University

of California. Her books are World Spectators (Stanford, 2000), Speaking About Godard
( N Y U , l998; with Harun Farocki), The Threshold of the Visible World (Routledge, 1996),
Male Subjectivity at the Margins (Routledge, l992), The Acoustic Mirror (Indiana, l988),
and The Subject of Semiotics (l983).

Silverman
28
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