IX.

This conception of repression once fixed, to-
gether with the distortion of the dream in
relation to repressed psychical matter, we
are in a position to give a general exposition
of the principal results which the analysis
of dreams supplies. We learnt that the
most intelligible and meaningful dreams
are unrealised desires; the desires they pic-
tured as realised are known to conscious-
ness, have been held over from the daytime,
and are of absorbing interest. The analysis
of obscure and intricate dreams discloses
something very similar; the dream scene
again pictures as realised some desire which
regularly proceeds from the dream ideas,
but the picture is unrecognisable, and is
only cleared up in the analysis. The desire
itself is either one repressed, foreign to
consciousness, or it is closely bound up with

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ON DREAMS

repressed ideas. The formula for these
dreams may be thus stated: They are con-
cealed realisations of repressed desires. It is
interesting to note that they are right who
regard the dream as foretelling the future.
Although the future which the dream shows
us is not that which will occur, but that which
we would like to occur. Folk psychology
proceeds here according to its wont; it
believes what it wishes to believe.

Dreams can be divided into three classes
according to their relation towards the
realisation of desire. Firstly come those
which exhibit a non-repressed, non-concealed
desire; these are dreams of the infantile
type, becoming ever rarer among adults.
Secondly, dreams which express in veiled
form some repressed desire; these constitute
by far the larger number of our dreams,
and they require analysis for their under-
standing. Thirdly, these dreams where
represssion exists, but without or with but
slight concealment. These dreams are in-
variably accompanied by a feeling of dread

86

which brings the dream to an end. This
feeling of dread here replaces dream-
placement; I regarded the dream work as
having prevented this in the dream of the
second class. It is not very difficult to
prove that what is now present as intense
dread in the dream was once desire, and is
now secondary to the repression. }

There are also definite dreams with a
painful content, without the presence of
any anxiety in the dream. These cannot be
reckoned among dreams of dread; they
have, however, always been used to prove
the unimportance and the psychical futility
of dreams. An analysis of such an example
will show that it belongs to our second class
of dreams—a perfectly concealed realisation
of repressed desires. Analysis will demon-
strate at the same time how excellently
adapted is the work of displacement to the
concealment of desires.

A girl dreamt that she saw lying dead
before her the only surviving child of her
sister amid the same surroundings as a few
years before she saw the first child lying

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ON DREAMS

dead. She was not sensible of any pain,
but naturally combated the view that the
scene represented a desire of hers. Nor
was that view necessary. Years ago it
was at the funeral of the child that she had
last seen and spoken to the man she loved.
Were the second child to die, she would be
sure to meet this man again in her sister’s
house. She is longing to meet him, but
struggles against this feeling. The day of
the dream she had taken a ticket for a
lecture, which announced the presence of
the man she always loved. The dream is
simply a dream of impatience common to
those which happen before a journey,
theatre, or simply anticipated pleasures.
The longing is concealed by the shifting of
the scene to the occasion when any joyous
feeling were out of place, and yet where it
did once exist. Note, further, that the
emotional behaviour in the dream is
adapted, not to the displaced, but to the
real but suppressed dream ideas. The scene
anticipates the long-
hoped-for meeting;
there is here no call for painful emotions.