KAFKA AND THE DREAM
65
story, or, more exactly, in putting this memory into the form of a
story?" By doing this Kafka attempts to get rid of the painful effects
of this memory through repetition, through experiencing it once again
in order to overcome it. He gives the childhood event a second exis–
tence in the story. The original conflict led to disaster because the
antagonists were a small boy and his powerful father. In the new edi–
tion he tries out the event once again with the antagonists a young
man and an old and wheezing merchant, as if this time there might
be hope for a different outcome. But the young man is defeated by the
old man once again as if the problem can find no solution
in
the im–
agination either.
We have seen the connection between details in the dream, a
memory, and a story, but in reading the story of Messner-Kette we
feel that in the process of re-working these details into a story some–
thing got lost. There is an emptiness in this story which we cannot
immediately account for when we consider its source in a dream and
a memory which were highly charged with emotion. Now the effect
of this story is certainly intended by Kafka; it is satirical, absurd, and
its author is saying, "Here is a spectacle for you! A young man and an
aging man are like a small boy and his father, but the old man still
has his power and the young man is still a weakling, a child who
whimpers at night outside his father's room." But even the irony is
weakened in this story by the absence of any emotional quality.
It seems that in the process of utilizing a dream detail and a
memory in a story the ideational content was preserved but the emo–
tional content was lost. We have already mentioned as one of the
advantages of a conscious fantasy over a dream that the conscious ego
can control the quantities of affect and can admit into consciousness
only those quantities which can be tolerated. It is even possible for the
ego to permit a fantasy or a memory to emerge into consciousness
while its accompanying affects are held back by the repressive me–
chanisms. In this way once painful memories appear in
conscio~
ness as empty or disembodied images, ghosts of themselves which
hold no real terror because they are not alive, are not animated by
the original full charge of energy. Similarly, the grossest, the most
naked sensual fantasies can be admitted to conscious expression
if
they are deprived of their accompanying affects. The quality of the
