What Life Could Mean to You

by Alfred Adler

  At first this may seem a contradiction to our waking life; but there is no contradiction. We may stir up feelings in precisely the same way when we are awake. If someone meets a difficulty and wishes not to face it by using his common sense, but to continue in his old style of life, then he will do everything he can to justify his style of life and make it seem sufficient. His goal, for example, is to get money in an easy way, without struggling and working for it, without making a contribution to others. Gambling occurs to him as a possibility. He knows that many people have lost their money and suffered disaster through gambling; but he wishes to have an easy time, he wishes to enrich himself in an easy way. What will he do? He fills his mind with thoughts of the advantages of money. He pictures himself making money through speculation, buying a car, living in luxury, being known by his fellows as a rich man.

  By these pictures he is stirring up feelings to push him forward. He turns away from common sense and begins to gamble. The same thing hap pens in more commonplace circumstances. If we are working and someone tells us of a play he has seen and enjoyed, we begin to feel like stopping our work and going to the theater. If a man is in love he pictures the future for himself; and if he is really attracted he will picture the future as pleasant. Sometimes, if he feels pessimistic, he will have gloomy pictures of the future, but in any case he will be stirring up his feelings, and we can always tell what sort of man he is by noticing the kind of feelings which he arouses.

  But if nothing remains behind from a dream but feelings, what has happened to common sense? Dreaming is the adversary of common sense. We shall probably find that people who do not like to be deluded by their feelings, who prefer to proceed in a scientific way, do not dream often or do not dream at all. Others, who are further away from common sense, do not want to solve their problems by normal and useful means.

  Common sense is an aspect of cooperation; and people who are badly trained for cooperation dislike common sense. Such people have very frequent dreams. They are anxious that their style of life should conquer and be justified; they wish to avoid the challenge of reality. We must arrive at the conclusion that dreams are an attempt to make a bridge between an individual's style of life and his present problems without making any new demands of the style of life. The style of life is the master of dreams. It will always arouse the feelings that the individual needs. We can find nothing in a dream that we shall not find in all the other symptoms and characteristics of the individual. We would approach problems in the same way whether we dreamed or not; but the dream offers a support and justification for the style of life.

  If this is true, we come to a new and most important step in understanding dreams. In dreams we are fooling ourselves. Every dream is an auto-intoxication, a self -hypnosis. Its whole purpose is to excite the mood in which we are prepared to meet the situation. We should be able to see in it exactly the same personality that we find in everyday life; but we should see him, as it were, in the workshop of the mind, preparing the feelings which he will utilize during the day. If we are right, we shall be able to see self-deception even in the construction of a dream, in the means which it employs.

  What do we find? First of all, we find a certain choice of pictures, incidents, occurrences. We have mentioned these selections before. When an individual is looking back on his past he makes an anthology of pictures and incidents. We have found that his selection is tendentious; that he chooses from memory only those incidents which support his personal goal of superiority. It is his goal that rules his memory. In the same way in the construction of a dream we pick out only such incidents as agree with our style of life and express what the style of life demands when confronted by our present problems. The meaning of the selection can be nothing but the meaning of the style of life in relation to the difficulties in which we find ourselves. In a dream the style of life is demanding its own way. To meet the difficulties realistically would call for common sense, but the style of life refuses to give way.

  On what other means does a dream draw? From the earliest times it has been observed, and in our own day Freud has especially emphasized, that dreams are mainly built up out of metaphors and symbols. As one psychologist says, “We are poets in our dreams." Now why does dream not speak in simple straightforward language instead of in poetry and metaphors? If we speak plainly, without metaphors or symbols, we cannot escape common sense. Metaphors and symbols can be abused. They can combine different meanings; they can say two things at the same time, one of which, perhaps, is quite false. Illogical consequences can be drawn from them. They can be employed to stir up feelings. We find it, again, in everyday life. We wish to correct someone and say, “Don't be a baby!" We ask, “Why do you cry? Are you a woman?” Something irrelevant, something addressed merely to the feelings, always creeps in when we use metaphors. Perhaps a large man is angry with a small man and says, “He is a worm. He ought to be trodden on." By his metaphor he is making it easy to support his anger.

  Metaphors are wonderful instruments of speech; but by them we can always deceive ourselves. When Homer describes the army of the Greeks overrunning the fields like lions, he gives us a magnificent image. Do we believe that he really wished to say exactly how these poor, dirty soldiers crept over the fields? No; he wanted us to think of them as lions. We know that they are not really lions; but if the poet had described how the soldiers breathed heavily and sweated, how they stopped to pluck up courage or to avoid danger, how old their armor was and a thousand such details, we should not be so much impressed.

  Metaphors are used for beauty, for imagination and fantasy. We must insist, however, that the use of metaphors and symbols is always dangerous in the hands of an individual who has a mistaken style of life. A student is faced with an examination. The problem is straightforward and he should approach it with courage and common sense. But if it is his style of life that he wants to run away, he may dream that he is fighting in a war. He pictures this straightforward problem in a heightened metaphor and now he is far more justified in being afraid. Or he dreams that he is standing before an abyss and that he must run back to avoid falling in. He must create feelings to help him to avoid the examination, to escape from it; and he fools himself by identifying the examination with the abyss. In this we can find another means employed very frequently in dreams. It is to take a problem and to curtail it and boil it down until only a part of the original problem is left.

  The remainder is then expressed in a metaphor and treated as if it were the same as the original problem. Another student, for ex ample, more courageous and looking more towards the future, wishes to complete his task and go through with his examination. He still wishes for support, however; he still wishes to reassure himself — his style of life demands it. The night before the examination he dreams that he is standing on top of a mountain. The picture of his situation is very much simplified. Only the smallest part of all the circumstances of his life is represented. The problem is a great one to him; but by excluding many aspects of it and concentrating himself on his prospect of success, he stirs up feelings to help him. Next morning he gets up feeling happy, fresh, and more courageous than before. He has succeeded in minimizing the difficulties he must face. In spite of the fact that he has reassured himself, he has really been fooling himself. He has not been occupied in facing the whole problem in a common sense way, but he has been stirring up a mood of confidence.

  This stirring up of feelings is nothing unusual. A man who wants to jump over a stream will perhaps count three before he jumps. Is it really so important that he should count three? Is there a necessary connection between jumping and counting three? Not the slightest connection. He counts three, however, to stir up his feelings and to collect all his powers. We have all the means ready in our human minds to elaborate a style of life, to fix it and to reinforce it, and one of the most important means is the ability to stir up feelings. We are engaged in this work every night and every day; but it comes out more clearly, perhaps, in the nig
ht.

  Let me illustrate the way in which we fool ourselves by a dream of my own. During the war I was the head of a hospital for neurotic soldiers. When I saw soldiers who were not prepared for war, I tried to relieve them as much as I could by giving them easier tasks. A great deal of tension was taken from them and this practice was often quite successful. One day a soldier came to me who was one of the best built and strongest men I have ever seen. He was very depressed and as I examined him I wondered what could be done with him. I should have liked, of course, to send home every soldier who came to me; but all my recommendations had to pass before a superior officer and my benevolence had to be kept within bounds. It was not easy to decide in this soldier's case; but when the time came I said, “You are neurotic, but you are very strong and healthy. I will give you easier work to do so that you need not go to the front."

  The soldier looked pitiable and answered, “I am a poor student and I have to support my old father and mother by giving lessons. If I cannot give lessons they will starve. They will both die if I can't help them." I thought that I should have to find him still easier service — send him back home to work in an office; but I was afraid that if this was my recommendation my superior officer would get angry and send him to the front. In the end I decided to do the utmost I honestly could. I would certify him as fit only for service on guard. When I went home at night and slept I had a terrible dream. I dreamed that I was a murderer and was running round in dark, narrow streets trying to think whom I had murdered. I could not remember who, but I felt, “Because I have committed murder I am done for. My life is over. Everything is finished." And so, in the dream, I stood still and sweated.

  My first thought when I awoke was, “Whom have I murdered?” Then it occurred to me, “If I don't give this young soldier service in an office, perhaps he will be sent to the front and killed. Then I should be the murderer." You see how I stirred up feelings to deceive me. I had not been a murderer; and if this disaster really occurred, I should still not be guilty. But my style of life would not permit me to run the risk. I am a doctor; I am to save life, not to endanger it. I thought again that if I gave him an easier job my superior would send him to the front and the position would be no better. It occurred to me that if I wanted to help him the only thing to do was to follow rules of common sense and not bother about my own style of life. I, therefore, certified him as fit for service on guard. Later events confirmed the fact that it is always better to follow common sense.

  My superior read my recommendation and struck it out. I thought, “Now he is going to send him to the front. I should have given him office service after all." My superior wrote, “Six months' office service." It turned out that this officer had been bribed to let the soldier off easily. The youth had never given a lesson in his life and nothing he said had been true. He had told his story only so that I should give him an easier task and the bribed superior should be able to sign my recommendation. Since that day I have thought it better to give up dreaming.

  The fact that dreams are designed to fool us and intoxicate us accounts for the fact that they are so rarely understood. If we understood our dreams they could not deceive us. They could no longer arouse in us feelings and emotions. We should prefer to proceed in common-sense ways, and we should refuse to follow the promptings of our dreams. If dreams were understood, they would lose their purpose. The dream is a bridge between the present real problem and the style of life; but the style of life should need no reinforcement. It should be directly in contact with reality. There are many varieties of dreams and every dream reveals where reinforcement of the style of life is felt to be necessary in view of the particular situation which confronts the individual. The interpretation of dreams is therefore always individual. It is impossible to interpret symbols and metaphors by formula; for the dream is a creation of the style of life, drawn from the individual's own interpretation of his own peculiar circumstances. If I describe briefly some of the more typical forms of dreams, I am not doing it to provide a rule-of-thumb interpretation; but only to help towards understanding dreams and their meaning.

  Many people have experienced dreams of flying. The key to these dreams, as to others, is in the feelings they arouse. They leave behind them a mood of buoyancy and courage. They lead from below to above. They picture the overcoming of difficulties and the striving for the goal of superiority as easy; and they allow us to infer, therefore, a courageous individual, forward looking, and ambitious, who cannot get rid of his ambition, even when he is asleep. They involve the problem, “Should I go on or not?”; and the answer suggested is, “There are no obstacles in my way." There are very few people who have not experienced dreams of falling. This is very remarkable; it shows that the human mind is more often occupied with self-preservation and the fear of defeat than with a striving to overcome difficulties. This becomes comprehensible when we remember that our tradition of education is to warn children and put them on their guard. Children are always admonished, “Don't get on the chair! Leave the scissors alone! Keep away from the fire!" They are always being surrounded by fictitious dangers. Of course, there are real dangers too; but to make an individual cowardly will never help him in meeting these dangers.

  When people dream frequently that they are paralyzed or that they failed to catch a train the meaning is generally, “I should be glad if this problem would pass by without any need for interference on my part. I must make a detour, I must arrive too late, so that I am not confronted. I must let the train go by." Many people dream of examinations. Sometimes they are astonished to find themselves taking an examination so late in life, or having to pass an examination on a subject in which they have already passed long ago. With some individuals the meaning would be, “You are not prepared to face the problem before you." With others it would mean, “You have passed this examination before and you will pass the test before you at present." One individual's symbols are never the same as another's. What we must consider chiefly in the dream is the mood residue and its coherence with the whole style of life.

  A neurotic patient, thirty-two years of age, came for treatment. She was a second child and, like most second children, was very ambitious. She always wished to be the first and to solve all her problems in an irreproachable manner. She came with a nervous breakdown. She had had a love relation with a married man who was older than herself, and her lover had failed in his business. It had been her wish to marry him, but he was unable to get a divorce. She dreamed that a man to whom she had rented her apartment while she was in the country married shortly after he moved in but earned no money. He was not an honest or hard-working man. Because he could not pay the rent for his apartment she was compelled to evict him. At the first glance we can see that this dream has some connection with her present problem. She was considering whether she should marry a man who has failed in business. Her lover was poor and unable to support her. What especially strengthened the comparison is that he had taken her out to dinner without having enough money to pay for it. The effect of the dream is to stir up feelings against marriage. She is an ambitious woman, and she does not wish to be connected with a poor man. She uses a metaphor and asks herself, “If he had rented my apartment and could not pay for it, what could I do with such a tenant?” The answer is, “He would have to leave."

  This married man, however, is not her tenant and he cannot properly be identified with him. A husband who cannot support a family is not the same as a tenant who cannot pay the rent. To relieve her problem, however, to follow her style of life with more assurance, she gives herself the feeling, “I must not marry him”; and by this means she avoids approaching the whole problem in a common-sense way and selects only a small part of it. At the same time she minimizes the whole problem of love and marriage as if it could be sufficiently expressed by the metaphor, “A man rents my apartment. If he cannot pay he must be thrown out."

  As the technique of Individual Psychological treatment is always directed towards increasing the i
ndividual's courage in meeting the problems of life, it is easy to understand that dreams will change in the course of treatment and reveal a more confident attitude. The last dream of a melancholiac patient before her cure was as follows:

  "I was sitting all alone on a bench. Suddenly a heavy snowstorm came on. Fortunately I escaped it, since I hurried indoors to my husband. Then I helped him to look for a suitable position in the advertisement columns of a newspaper."

  The patient was able to interpret the dream for herself. It shows clearly her feeling of reconciliation with her husband. At first she had hated him and had complained bitterly of his weakness and lack of enterprise in failing to earn a good living. The meaning of the dream is, “It is better to stay by my husband than to expose myself to dangers alone." Though we may agree with the patient in her view of the circumstances, the way in which she reconciles herself to her husband and her marriage still suggests too much the sort of advice which anxious relatives are accustomed to give. The dangers of being alone are overemphasized and she is still not quite ready to cooperate with courage and independence.

  A boy of ten years of age was brought to the clinic. His school teacher complained that he was mean and vicious with other children. He stole things at school and put them in the desks of other boys, so that they should get blamed. Such conduct is only possible if a child feels a need to bring others down to his own level. He wants to humiliate them, to prove that they are mean and vicious, not he. If this is his approach, we can guess that it must have been trained in the family circle, that there must be someone at home whom he wished to make guilty. When he was ten years old, he threw stones at a pregnant woman in the street and got into trouble for it. If he was ten years old he probably knew what pregnancy is. We can suspect that he does not like pregnancy and we must look to see if there is not a younger brother or sister whose arrival did not please him. On the teacher's report he is called cc the pest of the neighborhood”; he bothers his fellow children, calls them names and tells scandals about them. He chases small girls and strikes them. Now we are prepared to believe that it is a younger sister with whom he is in competition.