70

Photography and surrealism

71
1he automatic image
1he question ot hov unconscious material in vhat
lreud calls the ideational representative comes to be
represented as a manitest content is also dependent
upon the means ot representation, that is, the available
means ot dramatization tor its mise-en-scne.
33
1he mind
borrovs trom conscious scenes or connictual events
that have usually occurred in the days prior to the
dream to stage the dreams scene. 1he manitest content
ot the dream is then subject to secondary revision as
the dreamer brings to bear conscious censorship vhen
the dream-content is articulated vithin discourse by
suppressing or deleting elements ot the material tound
uncomtortable or unpleasant (discarded as irrelev-
ant etc.,. 1he condensation, displacement, means ot
dramatization and secondary revision are component
mechanisms ot vhat must inevitably take place in the
process ot automatic vriting or its equivalent means. By
the time the image has been transcribed, it is subject
to secondary revision (repression and censorship, in
addition to the means ot dramatization. 1hus, theo-
retically speaking, psychic automatism vould be some-
thing struggled tor, vith conscious censorship and
repression as obstacles to be overcome and measured in
terms ot the realism ot the unconscious. ean Iaplanche:
1hat vhich comes trom the unconscious intervenes as
a reality (itselt connictual, in the midst ot the conscious
text, vhich theretore appears much less coherent:
sometimes lacunary, sometimes, on the contrary, vith
moments ot unjustitable intensity and insistence.
36
1he unnatural image ot Bretons man cut in tvo
by a vindov vould appear to be electable to such
a category ot image, it also has a clear amnity vith
the visual examples given by lreud at the beginning
ot 1he Dream-vork in The Interpretation of Dreams,
vhere he gives rebus picture-puzzles as illustrations
ot a dream-image. (A man vith a comma tor a head, a
house vith a boat on the root, a letter ot the alphabet
vith the tgure ot a man running avay.,
37
lor lreud,
such images could not be read tor their literal content as
representations, but demanded a translation (dream-vork
analysis, ot their distortion (chain ot signiters, enected
by repression. Bretons image is not just an image ot
castration, a man cut in tvo by a vindov (paradoxically
In the Lnglish translation ot
lreud this is the means ot repre-
sentation. I have substituted Llla
Sharpes term dramatization here
to emphasize the sense ot staging
that this gives.
o ean Iaplanche, Essays on
Otherness (Iondon: Poutledge,
+,,,,, p. ::.
; Sigmund lreud, Chapter o
in The Interpretation of Dreams,
PlI , +,:o, p. ::.