How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
If I examine my own experience on the subject of the origin of the elements included in the content of dream, I must begin with an assertion that in every dream it is possible to find a point of contact with the experiences of the previous day. This view is confirmed by every dream I look into, whether my own or anyone else's. (5.2.1)
For Freud, an intriguing characteristic of dreams is that they always seem to incorporate a very recent memory—an experience from the day before the dream—but they also combine this memory with others from any moment whatsoever in the dreamer's life. As Freud says later in the book: "Dreams can select their material from any part of the dreamer's life, provided only that there is a train of thought linking the experience of the dream-day (the 'recent' impressions) with the earlier ones" (5.2.5).
Quote #5
It was distressing to me to think that some of the premises which underlay my psychological explanations of the psychoneuroses were bound to excite skepticism and laughter when they were first met with. For instance, I had been driven to assume that impressions from the second year of life, and sometimes even from the first, left a lasting trace on the emotional life of those who were later to fall ill, and that these impressions—though distorted and exaggerated in many ways by the memory—might constitute the first and deepest foundation for hysterical symptoms. (6.8.45)
Lots of people today take it for granted that our experiences in infancy and early childhood shape us for life, but in Freud's day, this concept was still fairly new. Freud felt sure that infantile and early childhood experiences were often at the root of his patients' illnesses, but he also knew that he was asking his contemporaries to make radical changes in the way they understood memory and the past.
Quote #6
Patients, to whom I explained this at some appropriate moment, used to parody this newly-gained knowledge by declaring that they were ready to look for recollections dating from a time at which they were not yet alive. (6.8.45)
Clearly, Freud had his work cut out for him when it came to convincing his patients that experiences from their infancies and early childhoods were still wreaking havoc on their lives.