468

VII

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-
PROCESSES

AMONG the dreams which have been communicated to me by others there
is one which is at this point especially worthy of our attention. It was told
me by a female patient who had heard it related in a lecture on dreams.
Its original source is unknown to me. This dream evidently made a deep
impression upon the lady, since she went so far as to imitate it, i.e. to
repeat the elements of this dream in a dream of her own; in order, by this
transference, to express her agreement with a certain point in the dream.

The preliminary conditions of this typical dream were as follows: A
father had been watching day and night beside the sick-bed of his child.
After the child died, he retired to rest in an adjoining room, but left the
door ajar so that he could look from his room into the next, where the
child’s body lay surrounded by tall candles. An old man, who had been
installed as a watcher, sat beside the body, murmuring prayers. After
sleeping for a few hours the father dreamed that the child was standing
by his bed, clasping his arm and crying reproachfully: “Father, don’t you
see that I am burning?” The father woke up and noticed a bright light
coming from the adjoining room. Rushing in, he found that the old man
had fallen asleep, and the sheets and one arm of the beloved body were
burnt by a fallen candle.

The meaning of this affecting dream is simple enough, and the ex-
planation given by the lecturer, as my patient reported it, was correct.
The bright light shining through the open door on to the sleeper’s eyes
gave him the impression which he would have received had he been
awake: namely, that a fire had been started near the corpse by a falling
candle. It is quite possible that he had taken into his sleep his anxiety
lest the aged watcher should not be equal to his task.

We can find nothing to change in this interpretation; we can only add
that the content of the dream must be overdetermined, and that the
speech of the child must have consisted of phrases which it had uttered
while still alive, and which were associated with important events for the

465

father. Perhaps the complaint, “I am burning,” was associated with the
fever from which the child died, and “Father, don’t you see?” to some
other affective occurrence unknown to us.

Now, when we have come to recognize that the dream has meaning,
and can be fitted into the context of psychic events, it may be surprising
that a dream should have occurred in circumstances which called for such
an immediate waking. We shall then note that even this dream is not
lacking in a wish-
fulfilment. The dead child behaves as though alive; he
warns his father himself; he comes to his father’s bed and clasps his arm,
as he probably did in the recollection from which the dream obtained the
first part of the child’s speech. It was for the sake of this wish-
fulfilment
that the father slept a moment longer. The dream was given precedence
over waking reflection because it was able to show the child still living.
If the father had waked first, and had then drawn the conclusion which
led him into the adjoining room, he would have shortened the child’s life
by this one moment.

There can be no doubt about the peculiar features in this brief dream
which engage our particular interest. So far, we have endeavoured mainly
to ascertain wherein the secret meaning of the dream consists, how it is
to be discovered, and what means the dream-
work uses to conceal it. In
other words, our greatest interest has hitherto been centred on the prob-
lems of interpretation. Now, however, we encounter a dream which is
easily explained, and the meaning of which is without disguise; we note
that nevertheless this dream preserves the essential characteristics which
conspicuously differentiate a dream from our waking thoughts, and this
difference demands an explanation. It is only when we have disposed of
all the problems of interpretation that we feel how incomplete is our
psychology of dreams.

But before we turn our attention to this new path of investigation, let
us stop and look back, and consider whether we have not overlooked
something important on our way hither. For we must understand that
the easy and comfortable part of our journey lies behind us. Hitherto, all
the paths that we have followed have led, if I mistake not, to light, to
explanation, and to full understanding; but from the moment when we
seek to penetrate more deeply into the psychic processes in dreaming, all
paths lead into darkness. It is quite impossible to explain the dream as a
psychic process, for to explain means to trace back to the known, and as
yet we have no psychological knowledge to which we can refer such ex-
planatory fundamentals as may be inferred from the psychological investi-
gation of dreams. On the contrary, we shall be compelled to advance a
number of new assumptions, which do little more than conjecture the
structure of the psychic apparatus and the play of the energies active in
it; and we shall have to be careful not to go too far beyond the simplest

470

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

logical construction, since otherwise its value will be doubtful. And even
if we should be unerring in our inferences, and take cognizance of all the
logical possibilities, we should still be in danger of arriving at a com-
pletely mistaken result, owing to the probable incompleteness of the
preliminary statement of our elementary data. We shall not be able to
arrive at any conclusions as to the structure and function of the psychic
instrument from even the most careful investigation of dreams, or of any
other isolated activity; or, at all events, we shall not be able to confirm
our conclusions. To do this we shall have to collate such phenomena as
the comparative study of a whole series of psychic activities proves to be
reliably constant. So that the psychological assumptions which we base
on the analysis of the dream-processes will have to mark time, as it were,
until they can join up with the results of other investigations which, pro-
ceeding from another starting-point, will seek to penetrate to the heart
of the same problem.

A. THE FORGETTING OF DREAMS

I propose, then, that we shall first of all turn our attention to a subject
which brings us to a hitherto disregarded objection, which threatens to
undermine the very foundation of our efforts at dream-interpretation.
The objection has been made from more than one quarter that the dream
which we wish to interpret is really unknown to us, or, to be more precise,
that we have no guarantee that we know it as it really occurred.
What we recollect of the dream, and what we subject to our methods
of interpretation, is, in the first place, mutilated by the unfaithfulness of
our memory, which seems quite peculiarly incapable of retaining dreams,
and which may have omitted precisely the most significant parts of their
content. For when we try to consider our dreams attentively, we often
have reason to complain that we have dreamed much more than we re-
member; that unfortunately we know nothing more than this one frag-
ment, and that our recollection of even this fragment seems to us strangely
uncertain. Moreover, everything goes to prove that our memory repro- duces the dream not only incompletely but also untruthfully, in a falsify-
ing manner. As, on the one hand, we may doubt whether what we dreamed
was really as disconnected as it is in our recollections, so on the other
hand we may doubt whether a dream was really as coherent as our ac-
count of it; whether in our attempted reproduction we have not filled in
the gaps which really existed, or those which are due to forgetfulness, with
new and arbitrarily chosen material; whether we have not embellished
the dream, rounded it off and corrected it, so that any conclusion as to
its real content becomes impossible. Indeed, one writer (Spitta)¹ sur-
mises that all that is orderly and coherent is really first put into the dream

¹Similar views are expressed by Foucault and Tannery.

471

during the attempt to recall it. Thus we are in danger of being deprived
of the very object whose value we have undertaken to determine.
In all our dream-interpretations we have hitherto ignored these warn-
ings. On the contrary, indeed, we have found that the smallest, most
insignificant, and most uncertain components of the dream-content in-
vited interpretations no less emphatically than those which were dis-
tinctly and certainly contained in the dream. In the dream of Irma’s
injection we read: “I quickly called in Dr. M,” and we assumed that even
this small addendum would not have got into the dream if it had not
been susceptible of a special derivation. In this way we arrived at the
history of that unfortunate patient to whose bedside I “quickly” called
my older colleague. In the seemingly absurd dream which treated the
difference between fifty-one and fifty-six as a quantité négligeable the
number fifty-one was mentioned repeatedly. Instead of regarding this as
a matter of course, or a detail of indifferent value, we proceeded from
this to a second train of thought in the latent dream-content, which led
to the number fifty-one, and by following up this clue we arrived at the
fears which proposed fifty-one years as the term of life in the sharpest
opposition to a dominant train of thought which was boastfully lavish
of the years. In the dream “Non vixit” I found, as an insignificant inter-
polation, that I had at first overlooked the sentence: “As P. does not un-
derstand him, Fl. asks me,” etc. The interpretation then coming to a stand-
still, I went back to these words, and I found through them the way to the
infantile phantasy which appeared in the dream-thoughts as an inter-
mediate point of junction. This came about by means of the poet’s
verses:—

“Selten habt ihr mich verstanden,
Selten auch verstand ich Euch,
Nur wenn wir im Kot uns fanden
So verstanden wir uns gleich!”

“(Seldom have you understood me,
Seldom have I understood you,
But when we found ourselves in the mire,
We at once understood each other!)”

Every analysis will afford evidence of the fact that the most insignificant
features of the dream are indispensable to interpretation, and will show
how the completion of the task is delayed if we postpone our examina-
tion of them. We have given equal attention, in the interpretation of
dreams, to every nuance of verbal expression found in them; indeed,
whenever we were confronted by a senseless or insufficient wording, as
though we had failed to translate the dream into the proper version, we

472

have respected even these defects of expression. In brief, what other
writers have regarded as arbitrary improvisations, concocted hastily to
avoid confusion, we have treated like a sacred text. This contradiction
calls for explanation.

It would appear, without doing any injustice to the writers in ques-
tion, that the explanation is in our favour. From the standpoint of our
newly-acquired insight into the origin of dreams, all contradictions are
completely reconciled. It is true that we distort the dream in our at-
tempt to reproduce it; we once more find therein what we have called
the secondary and often misunderstanding elaboration of the dream by
the agency of normal thinking. But this distortion is itself no more than
a part of the elaboration of which the dream-thoughts are constantly sub-
jected as a result of the dream-censorship. Other writers have here sus-
pected or observed that part of the dream-distortion whose work is mani-
fest; but for us this is of little consequence, as we know that a far more
extensive work of distortion, not so easily apprehended, has already taken
the dream for its object from among the hidden dream-thoughts. The
only mistake of these writers consists in believing the modification ef-
fected in the dream by its recollection and verbal expression to be arbi-
trary, incapable of further solution, and consequently liable to lead us
astray in our cognition of the dream. They underestimate the determina-
tion of the dream in the psyche. Here there is nothing arbitrary. It can
be shown that in all cases a second train of thought immediately takes
over the determination of the elements which have been left undeter-
mined by the first. For example, I wish quite arbitrarily to think of a
number; but this is not possible; the number that occurs to me is defi-
nitely and necessarily determined by thoughts within me which may be
quite foreign to my momentary purpose.¹ The modifications which the
dream undergoes in its revision by the waking mind are just as little arbi-
trary. They preserve an associative connection with the content, whose
place they take, and serve to show us the way to this content, which may
itself be a substitute for yet another content.

In analysing the dreams of patients I impose the following test of this
assertion, and never without success. If the first report of a dream seems
not very comprehensible, I request the dreamer to repeat it. This he
rarely does in the same words. But the passages in which the expression
is modified are thereby made known to me as the work of points of the
dream’s disguise; they are what the embroidered emblem on Siegfried’s
raiment was to Hagen. These are the points from which the analysis may
start. The narrator has been admonished by my announcement that I
intend to take special pains to solve the dream, and immediately, obedi-
ent to the urge of resistance, he protects the weak points of the dream’s

¹ Cf. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.

473

disguise, replacing a treacherous expression by a less relevant one. He
thus calls my attention to the expressions which he has discarded. From
the efforts made to guard against the solution of the dream, I can also
draw conclusions about the care with which the raiment of the dream has
been woven.

The writers whom I have mentioned are, however, less justified when
they attribute so much importance to the doubt with which our judgment
approaches the relation of the dream. For this doubt is not intellectually
warranted; our memory can give no guarantees, but nevertheless we are
compelled to credit its statements far more frequently than is objectively
justifiable. Doubt concerning the accurate reproduction of the dream, or
of individual data of the dream, is only another offshoot of the dream-
censorship, that is, of resistance to the emergence of the dream-thoughts
into consciousness. This resistance has not yet exhausted itself by the
displacements and substitutions which it has effected, so that it still
clings, in the form of doubt, to what has been allowed to emerge. We can
recognize this doubt all the more readily in that it is careful never to
attack the intensive elements of the dream, but only the weak and in-
distinct ones. But we already know that a transvaluation of all the psy-
chic values has taken place between the dream-thoughts and the dream.
The distortion has been made possible only by devaluation; it constantly
manifests itself in this way, and sometimes contents itself therewith. If
doubt is added to the indistinctness of an element of the dream-content,
we may, following this indication, recognize in this element a direct off-
shoot of one of the outlawed dream-thoughts. The state of affairs is like
that obtaining after a great revolution in one of the republics of antiq-
uity or the Renaissance. The once powerful, ruling families of the nobility
are now banished; all high posts are filled by upstarts; in the city itself
only the poorer and most power'less citizens, or the remoter followers of
the vanquished party, are tolerated. Even the latter do not enjoy the full
rights of citizenship. They are watched with suspicion. In our case, in-
stead of suspicion we have doubt. I must insist, therefore, that in the
analysis of a dream one must emancipate oneself from the whole scale of
standards of reliability; and if there is the slightest possibility that this
or that may have occurred in the dream, it should be treated as an abso-
lute certainty. Until one has decided to reject all respect for appearances
in tracing the dream-elements, the analysis will remain at a standstill.
Disregard of the element concerned has the psychic effect, in the per-
son analysed, that nothing in connection with the unwished ideas behind
this element will occur to him. This effect is really not self-evident; it
would be quite reasonable to say, “Whether this or that was contained
in the dream I do not know for certain; but the following ideas happen
to occur to me.” But no one ever does say so; it is precisely the disturb-
 

474

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

ing effect of doubt in the analysis that permits it to be unmasked as an
offshoot and instrument of the psychic resistance. Psychoanalysis is justi-
fiably suspicious. One of its rules runs: Whatever disturbs the progress
of the work is a resistance.¹

The forgetting of dreams, too, remains inexplicable until we seek to ex-
plain it by the power of the psychic censorship. The feeling that one has
dreamed a great deal during the night and has retained only a little of
it may have yet another meaning in a number of cases: it may perhaps
mean that the dream-work has continued in a perceptible manner through-
out the night, but has left behind it only one brief dream. There is, how-
ever, no possible doubt that a dream is progressively forgotten on waking.
One often forgets it in spite of a painful effort to recover it. I believe,
however, that just as one generally overestimates the extent of this for-
getting, so also one overestimates the lacunae in our knowledge of the
dream due to the gaps occurring in it. All the dream-content that has been
lost by forgetting can often be recovered by analysis; in a number of
cases, at all events, it is possible to discover from a single remaining frag-
ment, not the dream, of course—which, after all, is of no importance—
but the whole of the dream-thoughts. It requires a greater expenditure of
attention and self-suppression in the analysis; that is all; but it shows
that the forgetting of the dream is not innocent of hostile intention.²

¹This peremptory statement: “Whatever disturbs the progress of the work is a
resistance” might easily be misunderstood. It has, of course, the significance merely
of a technical rule, a warning for the analyst. It is not denied that during an analy-
sis events may occur which cannot be ascribed to the intention of the person ana-
lysed. The patient’s father may die, in other ways than by being murdered by the
patient, or a war may break out and interrupt the analysis. But despite the obvious
exaggeration of the above statement there is still something new and useful in it.
Even if the disturbing event is real and independent of the patient, the extent of the
disturbing influence does often depend only on him, and the resistance reveals itself
unmistakably in the ready and immoderate exploitation of such an opportunity.
²As an example of the significance of doubt and uncertainty in a dream with a
simultaneous shrinking of the dream-content to a single element I will cite from
my Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis the following dream, the analysis of
which was successful, despite a short postponement:—
“A sceptical lady patient has a rather long dream, in which it happens that certain
persons tell her of my book on Wit, and praise it highly. Then something is said about
a ‘channel,’ perhaps another book in which ‘channel’ occurs, or something else to do
with ‘channel’ . . . she doesn’t know; it is quite vague.”
“You will, of course, be inclined to think that the element ‘channel’ will resist
analysis, because it is so indeterminate. You are right in assuming this difficulty, but
it is not difficult because it is vague; it is vague for the reason that makes the inter-
pretation difficult. The dreamer could associate nothing with ‘channel’; and of course
I could not suggest anything. A little while later—the following day, to be precise—
she stated that something did occur to her which perhaps referred to ‘channel.’ It
It was, as a matter of fact, a witticism which she had heard someone repeat. On a
steamer running between Dover and Calais a well-known writer was talking to an
Englishman, who in a certain connection quoted the aphorism: Du sublime au ridicule
il n’y a qu’un pas. The writer retorted: Oui, le pas de Calais, whereby he wished to
imply that he thought France sublime and England ridiculous. But the Pas de Calais

475

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-PROCESSES

A convincing proof of the tendencious nature of dream-
forgetting—of
the fact that it serves the resistance—is obtained on analysis by investi-
gating a preliminary stage of forgetting.¹ It often happens that in the
midst of an interpretation an omitted fragment of the dream suddenly
emerges which is described as having been previously forgotten. This
part of the dream that has been wrested from forgetfulness is always the
most important part. It lies on the shortest path to the solution of the
dream, and for that very reason it was most exposed to the resistance.
Among the examples of the dreams that I have included in the text of
this treatise, it once happened that I had subsequently to interpolate a
fragment of dream-content. The dream is a dream of travel, which
revenges itself on two unamiable travelling companions; I have left it
almost entirely uninterpreted, as part of its content is crudely obscene.
The part omitted reads: “I said, referring to a book of Schiller: ‘It is
from . . .’ but corrected myself, as I realized my mistake: ‘It is by
. . .’ Whereupon the man remarked to his sister, ‘Yes, he said it cor-
rectly.’”²

Self-correction in dreams, which to some writers seems so wonderful,
does not really call for consideration. But I will draw from my own
memory an instance typical of verbal errors in dreams. I was nineteen
years of age when I visited England for the first time, and I spent a day
on the shore of the Irish Sea. Naturally enough, I amused myself by pick-
ing up the marine animals left on the beach by the tide, and I was just
examining a starfish (the dream begins with Hollthurn—Holothurian)
when a pretty little girl came up to me and asked me: “Is it a starfish? Is
it alive?” I replied, “Yes, he is alive,” but then felt ashamed of my mis-
take, and repeated the sentence correctly. For the grammatical mistake
which I then made, the dream substitutes another which is quite common
among German people. “Das Buch ist von Schiller” is not to be trans-

is a channel, the Canal la Manche (the sleeve channel). Do I think that this asso-
ciation has anything to do with the dream? I certainly do; it really furnishes the
solution of this enigmatical dream-element. Can you doubt that this witticism al-
ready existed, before the dream, as the unconscious of the dream-element? Can you
assume that it was subsequently invented as an association? The association testifies
to the scepticism concealed behind her obtrusive admiration, and the resistance is,
of course, the common reason for both her hesitation in finding an association and
the indefinite character of the corresponding dream-element. Note the relation of
the dream-element to the unconscious in this case. It is like a fragment of this uncon-
scious, like an allusion to it; by its isolation it has become quite unintelligible.”
Concerning the intention of forgetting in general, see my The Psychopathology of
Everyday Life.

²Such corrections in the use of foreign languages are not rare in dreams, but they
are usually attributed to foreigners. Maury (p. 143), while he was studying English,
once dreamed that he informed someone that he had called on him the day before
in the following words: “I called for you yesterday.” The other answered, correctly:
“You mean: I called on you yesterday.”

476

lated by “,” but by “.” That the dream-
work accomplishes this substitution, because the word , owing to its
consonance with the German adjective (pious, devout) makes a
remarkable condensation possible, should no longer surprise us after all
that we have heard of the intentions of the dream-work and its uncrupu-
lous selection of means. But what relation has this harmless recollection
of the seashore to my dream? It explains, by means of a very innocent
example, that I have used the word—the word denoting gender, or 
or the —in the wrong place. This is surely one of the keys to
the solution of the dream. Those who have heard of the derivation of the
book-title (Matière est-elle laudable?—A Motion of the bowels) will readily be able
to supply the missing parts.

Moreover, I can prove conclusively, by a , that
the forgetting of the dream is in a large measure the work of the resist-
ance. A patient tells me that he has dreamed, but that the dream has van-
ished without leaving a trace, as if nothing had happened. We set to
work, however; I come upon a resistance which I explain to the patient;
encouraging and urging him, I help him to become reconciled to some dis-
agreeable thought; and I have hardly succeeded in doing so when he ex-
claims: “Now I can recall what I dreamed!” The same resistance which
that day disturbed him in the work of interpretation caused him also to
forget the dream. By overcoming this resistance I have brought back the
dream to his memory.

In the same way the patient, having reached a certain part of the work,
may recall a dream which occurred three, four, or more days ago, and
which has hitherto remained in oblivion.¹

Psychoanalytical experience has furnished us with yet another proof
of the fact that the forgetting of dreams depends far more on the resist-
ance than on the mutually alien character of the waking and sleeping
states, as some writers have believed it to depend. It often happens to
me, as well as to other analysts, and to patients under treatment, that
we are waked from sleep by a dream, as we say, and that immediately
thereafter, while in full possession of our mental faculties, we begin to
interpret the dream. Often in such cases I have not rested until I have
achieved a full understanding of the dream, and yet it has happened that
after waking I have forgotten the interpretation-work as completely as I
have forgotten the dream-content itself, though I have been aware that
I have dreamed and that I had interpreted the dream. The dream has far
more frequently taken the result of the interpretation with it into forget-
ting.

¹Ernest Jones describes an analogous case of frequent occurrence; during the analy-
sis of one dream another dream of the same night is often recalled which until then
was not merely forgotten, but was not even suspected.

477

fulness than the intellectual faculty has succeeded in retaining the dream
in the memory. But between this work of interpretation and the waking
thoughts there is not that psychic abyss by which other writers have
sought to explain the forgetting of dreams.—When Morton Prince objects
to my explanation of the forgetting of dreams on the ground that it is
only a special case of the amnesia of dissociated psychic states, and that
the impossibility of applying my explanation of this special amnesia to
other types of amnesia makes it valueless even for its immediate purpose,
he reminds the reader that in all his descriptions of such dissociated states
he has never attempted to discover the dynamic explanation underlying
these phenomena. For had he done so, he would surely have discovered
that repression (and the resistance produced thereby) is the cause not of
these dissociations merely, but also of the amnesia of their psychic con-
tent.

That dreams are as little forgotten as other psychic acts, that even in
their power of impressing themselves on the memory they may fairly be
compared with the other psychic performances, was proved to me by an
experiment which I was able to make while preparing the manuscript of
this book. I had preserved in my notes a great many dreams of my own
which, for one reason or another, I could not interpret, or, at the time
of dreaming them, could interpret only very imperfectly. In order to ob-
tain material to illustrate my assertion, I attempted to interpret some of
them a year or two later. In this attempt I was invariably successful;
indeed, I may say that the interpretation was effected more easily after
all this time than when the dreams were of recent occurrence. As a pos-
sible explanation of this fact, I would suggest that I had overcome many
of the internal resistances which had disturbed me at the time of dream-
ing. In such subsequent interpretations I have compared the old yield of
dream-thoughts with the present result, which has usually been more
abundant, and I have invariably found the old dream-thoughts unaltered
among the present ones. However, I soon recovered from my surprise
when I reflected that I had long been accustomed to interpret dreams of
former years that had occasionally been related to me by my patients as
though they had been dreams of the night before; by the same method,
and with the same success. In the section on anxiety-dreams I shall in
clude two examples of such delayed dream-interpretations. When I made
this experiment for the first time I expected, not unreasonably, that
dreams would behave in this connection merely like neurotic symptoms.
For when I treat a psychoneurotic, for instance, an hysterical patient, by
psychoanalysis, I am compelled to find explanations for the first symp-
toms of the malady, which have long since disappeared, as well as for
those still existing symptoms which have brought the patient to me; and
I find the former problem easier to solve than the more exigent one of to-

478

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

day. In the Studies in Hysteria,¹⁾ published as early as 1895, I was able to
give the explanation of a first hysterical attack which the patient, a
woman over forty years of age, had experienced in her fifteenth year.²⁾

I will now make a few rather unsystematic remarks relating to the
interpretations of dreams, which will perhaps serve as a guide to the
reader who wishes to test my assertions by the analysis of his own
dreams.

He must not expect that it will be a simple and easy matter to inter-
pret his own dreams. Even the observation of endoptic phenomena, and
other sensations which are commonly immune from attention, calls for
practice, although this group of observations is not opposed by any psy-
chic motive. It is very much more difficult to get hold of the “unwished
ideas.” He who seeks to do so must fulfil the requirements laid down in
this treatise, and while following the rules here given, he must endeavour
to restrain all criticism, all preconceptions, and all affective or intellec-
tual bias in himself during the work of analysis. He must be ever mind-
ful of the precept which Claude Bernard held up to the experimenter in
the physiological laboratory: “Travailler comme une bête”—that is, he
must be as enduring as an animal, and also as disinterested in the re-
sults of his work. He who will follow this advice will no longer find the
task a difficult one. The interpretation of a dream cannot always be ac-
complished in one session; after following up a chain of associations you
will often feel that your working capacity is exhausted; the dream will
not tell you anything more that day; it is then best to break off, and to
resume the work the following day. Another portion of the dream-content
then solicits your attention, and you thus obtain access to a fresh stratum
of the dream-thoughts. One might call this the “fractional” interpreta-
tion of dreams.

It is most difficult to induce the beginner in dream-interpretation to
recognize the fact that his task is not finished when he is in possession of
a complete interpretation of the dream which is both ingenious and coher-
ent, and which gives particulars of all the elements of the dream-content.
Besides this, another interpretation, an over-interpretation of the same
dream, one which has escaped him, may be possible. It is really not easy
to form an idea of the wealth of trains of unconscious thought striving
for expression in our minds, or to credit the adroitness displayed by the
dream-work in killing—so to speak—seven flies at one stroke, like the

¹⁾Translated by A. A. Brill, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Publishing Co.,
New York.

²⁾Dreams which have occurred during the first years of childhood, and which have
sometimes been retained in the memory for decades with perfect sensorial freshness,
are almost always of great importance for the understanding of the development
and the neurosis of the dreamer. The analysis of them protects the physician from
errors and uncertainties which might confuse him even theoretically.

479

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-
PROCESSES

journeyman tailor in the fairy-
tale, by means of its ambiguous modes of
expression. The reader will constantly be inclined to reproach the author
for a superfluous display of ingenuity, but anyone who has had personal
experience of dream-
interpretation will know better than to do so.

On the other hand, I cannot accept the opinion first expressed by H.
Silberer, that every dream—or even that many dreams, and certain
groups of dreams—calls for two different interpretations, between which
there is even supposed to be a fixed relation. One of these, which Silberer
calls the psychoanalytic interpretation, attributes to the dream any mean-
ing you please, but in the main an infantile sexual one. The other, the
more important interpretation, which he calls the anagogic interpretation,
reveals the more serious and often profound thoughts which the dream-
work has used as its material. Silberer does not prove this assertion by
citing a number of dreams which he has analysed in these two directions.
I am obliged to object to this opinion on the ground that it is contrary to
facts. The majority of dreams require no over-
interpretation, and are
especially insusceptible of an anagogic interpretation. The influence of
a tendency which seeks to veil the fundamental conditions of dream-
formation and divert our interest from its instinctual roots is as evident
in Silberer’s theory as in other theoretical efforts of the last few years.
In a number of cases I can confirm Silberer’s assertions; but in these the
analysis shows me that the dream-
work was confronted with the task of
transforming a series of highly abstract thoughts, incapable of direct rep-
resentation, from waking life into a dream. The dream-
work attempted
to accomplish this task by seizing upon another thought-
material which
stood in loose and often allegorical relation to the abstract thoughts, and
thereby diminished the difficulty of representing them. The abstract inter-
pretation of a dream originating in this manner will be given by the
dreamer immediately, but the correct interpretation of the substituted
material can be obtained only by means of the familiar technique.

The question whether every dream can be interpreted is to be answered
in the negative. One should not forget that in the work of interpretation
one is opposed by the psychic forces that are responsible for the distor-
tion of the dream. Whether one can master the inner resistances by one’s
intellectual interest, one’s capacity for self-
control, one’s psychological
knowledge, and one’s experience in dream-
interpretation depends on the
relative strength of the opposing forces. It is always possible to make
some progress; one can at all events go far enough to become convinced
that a dream has meaning, and generally far enough to gain some idea of
its meaning. It very often happens that a second dream enables us to con-
firm and continue the interpretation assumed for the first. A whole series
of dreams, continuing for weeks or months, may have a common basis,
and should therefore be interpreted as a continuity. In dreams that fol-

480

low one another we often observe that one dream takes as its central
point something that is only alluded to in the periphery of the next dream,
and conversely, so that even in their interpretations the two supplement
each other. That different dreams of the same night are always to be
treated, in the work of interpretation, as a whole, I have already shown
by examples.

In the best interpreted dreams we often have to leave one passage in
obscurity because we observe during the interpretation that we have
here a tangle of dream-thoughts which cannot be unravelled, and which
furnishes no fresh contribution to the dream-content. This, then, is the
keystone of the dream, the point at which it ascends into the unknown.
For the dream-thoughts which we encounter during the interpretation
commonly have no termination, but run in all directions into the net-
like entanglement of our intellectual world. It is from some denser part
of this fabric that the dream-wish then arises, like the mushroom from
its mycelium.

Let us now return to the facts of dream-forgetting. So far, of course,
we have failed to draw any important conclusion from them. When our
waking life shows an unmistakable intention to forget the dream which
has been formed during the night, either as a whole, immediately after
waking, or little by little in the course of the day, and when we recognize
as the chief factor in this process of forgetting the psychic resistance
against the dream which has already done its best to oppose the dream
at night, the question then arises: What actually has made the dream-
formation possible against this resistance? Let us consider the most
striking case, in which the waking life has thrust the dream aside as
though it had never happened. If we take into consideration the play of
the psychic forces, we are compelled to assert that the dream would never
have come into existence that the resistance prevailed at night as it did
by day. We conclude, then, that the resistance loses some part of its force
during the night; we know that it has not been discontinued, as we have
demonstrated its share in the formation of dreams—namely, the work of
distortion. We have therefore to consider the possibility that at night
the resistance is merely diminished, and that dream-formation becomes
possible because of this slackening of the resistance; and we shall readily
understand that as it regains its full power on waking it immediately
thrusts aside what it was forced to admit while it was feeble. Descriptive
psychology teaches us that the chief determinant of dream-formation is
the dormant state of the psyche; and we may now add the following
explanation:

The state of sleep makes dream-formation possible by re-
ducing the endopsychic censorship.

We are certainly tempted to look upon this as the only possible con-
clusion to be drawn from the facts of dream-forgetting, and to develop

481

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-
PROCESSES

from this conclusion further deductions as to the comparative energy op-
erative in the sleeping and waking states. But we shall stop here for the
present. When we have penetrated a little farther into the psychology of
dreams we shall find that the origin of dream-formation may be differ-
ently conceived. The resistance which tends to prevent the dream-
thoughts from becoming conscious may perhaps be evaded without suffer-
ing reduction. It is also plausible that both the factors which favour
dream-formation, the reduction as well as the evasion of the resistance,
may be simultaneously made possible by the sleeping state. But we shall
pause here, and resume the subject a little later.

We must now consider another series of objections against our pro-
cedure in dream-interpretation. For we proceed by dropping all the
-">directing ideas which at other times control reflection, directing our at-
tention to a single element of the dream, noting the involuntary thoughts
that associate themselves with this element. We then take up the next
component of the dream-content, and repeat the operation with this; and,
regardless of the direction taken by the thoughts, we allow ourselves to
be led onwards by them, rambling from one subject to another. At the
same time, we harbour the confident hope that we may in the end, and
without intervention on our part, come upon the dream-thoughts from
which the dream originated. To this the critic may make the following
objection: That we arrive somewhere if we start from a single element
of the dream is not remarkable. Something can be associatively connected
with every idea. The only thing that is remarkable is that one should
succeed in hitting upon the dream-thoughts in this arbitrary and aimless
excursion. It is probably a self-deception; the investigator follows the
chain of associations from the one element which is taken up until he
finds the chain breaking off, whereupon he takes up a second element; it
is thus only natural that the originally unconfined associations should
now become narrowed down. He has the former chain of associations still
in mind, and will therefore in the analysis of the second dream-idea hit
all the more readily upon single associations which have something in
common with the associations of the first chain. He then imagines that
he has found a thought which represents a point of junction between two
of the dream-elements. As he allows himself all possible freedom of
thought-connection, excepting only the transitions from one idea to an-
other which occur in normal thinking, it is not difficult for him finally to
concoct out of a series of “intermediary thoughts,” something which he
calls the dream-thoughts; and without any guarantee, since they are
otherwise unknown, he palms these off as the psychic equivalent of the
dream. But all this is a purely arbitrary procedure, an ingenious-looking
exploitation of chance, and anyone who will go to this useless trouble

482

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

can in this way work out any desired interpretation for any dream what-
ever.

If such objections are really advanced against us, we may in defense
refer to the impression produced by our dream-interpretations, the sur-
prising connections with other dream-elements which appear while we
are following up the individual ideas, and the improbability that anything
which so perfectly covers and explains the dream as do our dream-inter-
pretations could be achieved otherwise than by following previously
established psychic connections. We might also point to the fact that the
procedure in dream-interpretation is identical with the procedure fol-
lowed in the resolution of hysterical symptoms, where the correctness of
the method is attested by the emergence and disappearance of the symp-
toms—that is, “where the interpretation of the text is confirmed by the
interpolated illustrations. But we have no reason to avoid this problem—
namely, how one can arrive at a pre-existent aim by following an arbi-
trarily and aimlessly maundering chain of thoughts—since we shall be
able not to solve the problem, it is true, but to get rid of it entirely.

For it is demonstrably incorrect to state that we abandon ourselves to
an aimless excursion of thought when, as in the interpretation of dreams,
we renounce reflection and allow the involuntary ideas to come to the
surface. It can be shown that we are able to reject only those directing
ideas which are known to us, and that with the cessation of these the un-
known—or, as we inexactly say, unconscious—directing ideas immedi-
ately exert their influence, and henceforth determine the flow of the in-
voluntary ideas. Thinking without directing ideas cannot be ensured by
any influence we ourselves exert on our own psychic life; neither do I
know of any state of psychic derangement in which such a mode of
thought establishes itself.¹ The psychiatrists have here far too prema-

¹Only recently has my attention been called to the fact that Ed. von Hartmann took
the same view with regard to this psychologically important point. Incidental to the
discussion of the rôle of the unconscious in artistic creation (Philos. d. Unbew., Bd.
i, Abschn. B., Kap. V) Eduard von Hartmann clearly enunciated the law of asso-
ciation of ideas which is directed by unconscious directing ideas, without however
realizing the scope of this law. With him it was a question of demonstrating that
“every combination of a sensuous idea when it is not left entirely to chance, but is
directed to a definite end, is in need of help from the unconscious, and that the con-
scious interest in any particular thought-association is a stimulus for the unconscious
to discover from among the numberless possible ideas the one which corresponds to
the directing idea. “It is the unconscious that selects, and appropriately, in accord-
ance with the aims of the interest, and this holds true for the associations in ab-
stract thinking (as sensible representations and artistic combinations as well as for
flashes of wit).” Hence, a limiting of the association of ideas to ideas that evoke
and are evoked in the sense of pure association-psychology is untenable. Such
a restriction “would be justified only if there were states in human life in which man
was free not only from any conscious purpose, but also from the domination or co-
operation of any unconscious interest, any passing mood. But such a state hardly
ever comes to pass, for even if one leaves one’s train of thought seemingly altogether

483

turely relinquished the idea of the solidity of the psychic structure. I
know that an unregulated stream of thoughts, devoid of directing ideas,
can occur as little in the realm of hysteria and paranoia as in the forma-
tion or solution of dreams. Perhaps it does not occur at all in the en-
dogenous psychic affections, and, according to the ingenious hypothesis
of Lauret, even the deliria observed in confused psychic states have mean-
ing and are incomprehensible to us only because of omissions. I have
had the same conviction whenever I have had an opportunity of observing
such states. The deliria are the work of a censorship which no longer
makes any effort to conceal its sway, which, instead of lending its sup-
port to a revision that is no longer obnoxious to it, cancels regardlessly
anything to which it objects, thus causing the remnant to appear dis-
connected. This censorship proceeds like the Russian censorship on the
frontier, which allows only those foreign journals which have had cer-
tain passages blacked out to fall into the hands of the readers to be pro-
tected.

The free play of ideas following any chain of associations may perhaps
occur in cases of destructive organic affections of the brain. What, how-
ever, is taken to be such in the psychoneuroses may always be explained
as the influence of the censorship on a series of thoughts which have been
pushed into the foreground by the concealed directing ideas.¹ It has been
considered an unmistakable sign of free association unencumbered by
directing ideas if the emerging ideas (or images) appear to be connected
by means of the so-called superficial associations—that is, by assonance,
verbal ambiguity, and temporal coincidence, without inner relationship
of meaning; in other words, if they are connected by all those associa-
tions which we allow ourselves to exploit in wit and in playing upon
words. This distinguishing mark holds good with associations which
lead us from the elements of the dream-content to the intermediary
thoughts, and from these to the dream-thoughts proper; in many analy-
ses of dreams we have found surprising examples of this. In these no con-
 

to chance, or if one surrenders oneself entirely to the involuntary dreams of phan-
tasy, yet always other leading interests, dominant feelings and moods prevail at one
time rather than another, and these will always exert an influence on the association
of ideas.” (Philos. d. Unbew. 11^e Aufl. i, 246). In semi-conscious dreams there al-
ways appear only such ideas as correspond to the (unconscious) momentary main
interest. By rendering prominent the feelings and moods over the free thought-
series, the methodical procedure of psycho-analysis is thoroughly justified even from
the standpoint of Hartmann’s Psychology (N. E. Pohorilles, Internat. Zeitschrift. f.
Ps.A., 1, 1913, p. 605).—Dr. Prel concludes from the fact that a name which we
vainly try to recall suddenly occurs to the mind that there is an unconscious but none
the less purposeful thinking, whose result then appears in consciousness (Philos. d.
Mystik, p. 107).

¹Jung has brilliantly corroborated this statement by analyses of dementia praecox.
(Cf. The Psychology of Dementia Praecox, translated by A. A. Brill. Monograph
Series, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Publishing Co., New York.)

484

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

nection was too loose and no witticism too objectionable to serve as a
bridge from one thought to another. But the correct understanding of
such surprising tolerance is not far to seek. Whenever one psychic ele-
ment is connected with another by an obnoxious and superficial associ-
ation, there exists also a correct and more profound connection between
the two, which succumbs to the resistance of the censorship.

The correct explanation for the predominance of the superficial associ-
ations is the pressure of the censorship, and not the suppression of the
directing ideas. Whenever the censorship renders the normal connective
paths impassable, the superficial associations will replace the deeper ones
in the representation. It is as though in a mountainous region a general
interruption of traffic, for example an inundation, should render the
broad highways impassable: traffic would then have to be maintained
by steep and inconvenient tracks used at other times only by the hunter.

We can here distinguish two cases which, however, are essentially one.
In the first case, the censorship is directed only against the connection of
two thoughts which, being detached from one another, escape its oppo-
sition. The two thoughts then enter successively into consciousness; their
connection remains concealed; but in its place there occurs to us a super-
ficial connection between the two which would not otherwise have oc-
curred to us, and which as a rule connects with another angle of the
conceptual complex instead of that from which the suppressed but essen-
tial connection proceeds. Or, in the second case, both thoughts, owing
to their content, succumb to the censorship; both then appear not in
their correct form but in a modified, substituted form; and both substi-
tuted thoughts are so selected as to represent, by a superficial associa-
tion, the essential relation which existed between those that they have
replaced. Under the pressure of the censorship, the displacement of a
normal and vital association by one superficial and apparently absurd
has thus occurred in both cases.

Because we know of these displacements, we unhesitatingly rely upon
even the superficial associations which occur in the course of dream-
interpretation.¹

The psychoanalysis of neurotics makes abundant use of the two prin-
ciples: that with the abandonment of the conscious directing ideas the
control over the flow of ideas is transferred to the concealed directing
ideas; and that superficial associations are only a displacement-substitute

¹The same considerations naturally hold good of the case in which superficial asso-
ciations are exposed in the dream-content, as, for example, in both the dreams re-
ported by Maury (p. 50, pélérinage—pelletier—pelle, kilometer—kilograms—gilolo,
Lobelia—Lopez—Lotto). I know from my work with neurotics what kind of remi-
niscence is prone to represent itself in this manner. It is the consultation of encyclo-
pedias by which most people have satisfied their need of an explanation of the sexual
mystery when obsessed by the curiosity of puberty.

485

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-PROCESSES

for suppressed and more profound ones. Indeed, psychoanalysis makes
these two principles the foundation-stones of its technique. When I re-
quest a patient to dismiss all reflection, and to report to me whatever
comes into his mind, I firmly cling to the assumption that he will not be
able to drop the directing idea of the treatment, and I feel justified in
concluding that what he reports, even though it may seem to be quite
ingenuous and arbitrary, has some connection with his morbid state.
Another directing idea of which the patient has no suspicion is my own
personality. The full appreciation, as well as the detailed proof of both
these explanations, belongs to the description of the psychoanalytic tech-
nique as a therapeutic method. We have here reached one of the junc-
tions, so to speak, at which we purposely drop the subject of dream-
interpretation.¹

Of all the objections raised, only one is justified and still remains to
be met: namely, that we ought not to ascribe all the associations of the
interpretation-
work to the nocturnal dream-
work. By interpretation in
the waking state we are actually opening a path running back from the
dream-
elements to the dream-
thoughts. The dream-
work has followed
the contrary direction, and it is not at all probable that these paths are
equally passable in opposite directions. On the contrary, it appears that
during the day, by means of new thought-
connections, we sink shafts that
strike the intermediary thoughts and the dream-
thoughts now in this
place, now in that. We can see how the recent thought-
material of the day
forces its way into the interpretation-
series, and how the additional re-
sistance which has appeared since the night probably compels it to make
new and further detours. But the number and form of the collaterals
which we thus contrive during the day are, psychologically speaking, indif-
ferent, so long as they point the way to the dream-
thoughts which we are
seeking.

B. REGRESSION

Now that we have defended ourselves against the objections raised, or
have at least indicated our weapons of defence, we must no longer delay
entering upon the psychological investigations for which we have so long
been preparing. Let us summarize the main results of our recent investi-
gations: The dream is a psychic act full of import; its motive power is
invariably a wish craving fulfilment; the fact that it is unrecogniz-
able
as a wish, and its many peculiarities and absurdities, are due to the influ-
ence of the psychic cen-
sorship to which it has been subjected during its
formation. Besides the necessity of evading the censorship, the following

¹The above statements, which when written sounded very improbable, have since
been corroborated and applied experimentally by Jung and his pupils in the Diagno-
stische Assoziationsstudien.

486

factors have played a part in its formation: first, a need for 
condensing-
the psychic material; second, regard for representability in sensory im-
ages; and third (though not constantly), regard for a rational and in-
telligible exterior of the dream-structure. From each of these propositions 
a path leads onward to psychological postulates and assumptions. Thus, 
the reciprocal relation of the wish-motives, and the four conditions, as 
well as the mutual relations of these conditions, must now be investi-
gated; the dream must be inserted in the context of the psychic life.

At the beginning of this section we cited a certain dream in order that 
it might remind us of the problems that are still unsolved. The interpre-
tation of this dream (of the burning child) presented no difficulties, al-
though in the analytical sense it was not given in full. We asked ourselves 
why, after all, it was necessary that the father should dream instead of 
waking, and we recognized the wish to represent the child as living as 
a motive of the dream. That there was yet another wish operative in the 
dream we shall be able to show after further discus-
sion. For the present, 
however, we may say that for the sake of the wish-fulfilment the thought-
process of sleep was transformed into a dream.

If the wish-fulfilment is cancelled out, only one characteristic remains 
which distinguishes the two kinds of psychic events. The dream-
thought 
would have been: “I see a glimmer coming from the room in which the 
body is lying. Perhaps a candle has fallen over, and the child is burning!” 
The dream reproduces the result of this reflection unchanged, but repre-
sents it in a situation which exists in the present and is percepti-
ble by the 
senses like an experience of the waking state. This, however, is the most 
common and the most striking psycho-
logical characteristic of the dream; 
a thought, usually the one wished for, is objectified in the dream, and rep-
resented as a scene, or—as we think—experi-
enced.

But how are we now to explain this characteristic peculiari-
ty of the 
dream-work, or—to put it more modestly—how are we to bring it into 
relation with the psy-
chic processes?

On closer examination, it is plainly evident that the manifest form of 
the dream is marked by two characteristics which are almost indepen-
dent 
of each other. One is its represen-
tation as a present situation with the 
omission of “perhaps”; the other is the transla-
tion of the thought into 
visual images and speech.

The transformation to which the dream-
thoughts are subjected because 
the expectation is put into the present tense is, perhaps, in this particu-
lar 
dream not so very striking. This is probably due to the special and really 
subsidiary rôle of the wish-fulfilment in this dream. Let us take another 
dream, in which the dream-wish does not break away from the continua-
tion 
of the waking thoughts in sleep; for example, the dream of Irma’s 
injection. Here the dream-thought achieving represen-
tation is in the con-

487

ditional: “If only Otto could be blamed for Irma’s illness!” The dream
suppresses the conditional, and replaces it by a simple present tense:
“Yes, Otto is to blame for Irma’s illness.” This, then, is the first of the
transformations which even the undistorted dream imposes on the dream-
thoughts. But we will not linger over this first peculiarity of the dream.
We dispose of it by a reference to the conscious phantasy, the day-dream,
which behaves in a similar fashion with its conceptual content. When
Daudet’s M. Joyeuse wanders unemployed through the streets of Paris
while his daughter is led to believe that he has a post and is sitting in
his office, he dreams, in the present tense, of circumstances that might
help him to obtain a recommendation and employment. The dream, then,
employs the present tense in the same manner and with the same right
as the day-dream. The present is the tense in which the wish is repre-
sented as fulfilled.

The second quality peculiar to the dream alone, as distinguished from
the day-dream, is that the conceptual content is not thought, but is trans-
formed into visual images, to which we give credence, and which we be-
lieve that we experience. Let us add, however, that not all dreams show
this transformation of ideas into visual images. There are dreams which
consist solely of thoughts, but we cannot on that account deny that they
are substantially dreams. My dream “Autodidasker—the day-phantasy
about Professor N.” is of this character; it is almost as free of visual
elements as though I had thought its content during the day. Moreover,
every long dream contains elements which have not undergone this trans-
formation into the visual, and which are simply thought or known as we
are wont to think or know in our waking state. And we must here reflect
that this transformation of ideas into visual images does not occur in
dreams alone, but also in hallucinations and visions, which may appear
spontaneously in health, or as symptoms in the psychoneuroses. In brief,
the relation which we are here investigating is by no means an exclusive
one; the fact remains, however, that this characteristic of the dream,
whenever it occurs, seems to be its most noteworthy characteristic, so
that we cannot think of the dream-life without it. To understand it, how-
ever, requires a very exhaustive discussion.

Among all the observations relating to the theory of dreams to be found
in the literature of the sub-
ject, I should like to lay stress upon one as being
particularly worthy of mention. The famous G. T. H. Fechner makes the
conjecture,¹ in a discussion as to the nature of the dreams, that the dream
is staged elsewhere than in the waking ideation. No other assumption en-
ables us to comprehend the special peculiarities of the dream-life.
The idea which is thus put before us is one of psychic locality. We
shall wholly ignore the fact that the psychic apparatus concerned is

¹ Psychophysik, Part II, p. 520.

488

known to us also as an anatomical preparation, and we shall carefully
avoid the temptation to determine the psychic locality in any anatomical
sense. We shall remain on psychological ground, and we shall do no more
than accept the invitation to think of the instrument which serves the
psychic activities much as we think of a compound microscope, a photo-
graphic camera, or other apparatus. The psychic locality, then, corre-
sponds to a place within such an apparatus in which one of the prelimi-
nary phases of the image comes into existence. As is well known, there
are in the microscope and the telescope such ideal localities or planes, in
which no tangible portion of the apparatus is located. I think it super-
fluous to apologize for the imperfections of this and all similar figures.
These comparisons are designed only to assist us in our attempt to make
intelligible the complication of the psychic performance by dissecting it
and referring the individual performances to the individual components
of the apparatus. So far as I am aware, no attempt has yet been made to
divine the construction of the psychic instrument by means of such dis-
section. I see no harm in such an attempt; I think that we should give
free rein to our conjectures, provided we keep our heads and do not mis-
take the scaffolding for the building. Since for the first approach to any
unknown subject we need the help only of auxiliary ideas, we shall prefer
the crudest and most tangible hypothesis to all others.

Accordingly, we conceive the psychic apparatus as a compound instru-
ment, the component parts of which we shall call instances, or, for the
sake of clearness, systems. We shall then anticipate that these systems
may perhaps maintain a constant spatial orientation to one another, very
much as do the different and successive systems of lenses of a telescope.
Strictly speaking, there is no need to assume an actual spatial arrange-
ment of the psychic system. It will be enough for our purpose if a definite
sequence is established, so that in certain psychic events the system will
be traversed by the excitation in a definite temporal order. This order
may be different in the case of other processes; such a possibility is left
open. For the sake of brevity, we shall henceforth speak of the com-
ponent parts of the apparatus as “ψ-systems.”

The first thing that strikes us is the fact that the apparatus composed
of ψ-systems has a direction. All our psychic activities proceed from
(inner or outer) stimuli and terminate in innervations. We thus ascribe
to the apparatus a sensory and a motor end; at the sensory end we find
a system which receives the perceptions, and at the motor end another
which opens the sluices of motility. The psychic process generally runs
from the perceptive end to the motor end. The most general scheme of the
psychic apparatus has therefore the following appearance as shown in
Fig. 1 on page 489. But this is only in compliance with the requirement,
long familiar to us, that the psychic apparatus must be constructed like

489

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-PROCESSES

a reflex apparatus. The reflex act remains the type of every psychic activ
ity as well.

We now have reason to admit a first differentiation at the sensory
end. The percepts that come to us leave in our psychic apparatus a trace
which we may call a memory-trace. The function related to this memory-
trace we call “the memory.” If we hold seriously to our resolution to con-
nect the psychic processes into systems, the memory-trace can consist
only of lasting changes in the elements of the systems. But, as has already

P M

FIG. 1

been shown elsewhere, obvious difficulties arise when one and the same
system is faithfully to preserve changes in its elements and still to remain
fresh and receptive in respect of new occasions of change. In accordance
with the principle which is directing our attempt, we shall therefore
ascribe these two functions to two different systems. We assume that an
initial system of this apparatus receives the stimuli of perception but re-
tains nothing of them—that is, it has no memory; and that behind this
there lies a second system, which transforms the momentary excitation
of the first into lasting traces. The following would then be the diagram
of our psychic apparatus:—

P Mem Mem' Mem'' M

FIG. 2

We know that of the percepts which act upon the P-system, we retain
permanently something else as well as the content itself. Our percepts
prove also to be connected with one another in the memory, and this is
especially so if they originally occurred simultaneously. We call this the

490

fact of association. It is now clear that, if the P-system is entirely lacking
in memory, it certainly cannot preserve traces for the associations; the
individual P-elements would be intolerably hindered in their functioning
if a residue of a former connection should make its influence felt against
a new perception. Hence we must rather assume that the memory-system
is the basis of association. The fact of association, then, consists in this—
that in consequence of a lessening of resistance and a smoothing of the
ways from one of the mem-elements, the excitation transmits itself to a
second rather than to a third mem-element.

On further investigation we find it necessary to assume not one but
many such mem-systems, in which the same excitation transmitted by the
P-elements undergoes a diversified fixation. The first of these mem-
systems will in any case contain the fixation of the association through
simultaneity, while in those lying farther away the same material of ex-
citation will be arranged according to other forms of combination; so that
relationships of similarity, etc., might perhaps be represented by these
later systems. It would, of course, be idle to attempt to express in words
the psychic significance of such a system. Its characteristic would lie in
the intimacy of its relations to elements of raw material of memory—
that is (if we wish to hint at a more comprehensive theory) in the grada-
tions of the conductive resistance on the way to these elements.

An observation of a general nature, which may possibly point to some-
thing of importance, may here be interpolated. The P-system, which
possesses no capacity for preserving changes, and hence no memory, fur-
nishes to consciousness the complexity and variety of the sensory quali-
ties. Our memories, on the other hand, are unconscious in themselves;
those that are most deeply impressed form no exception. They can be
made conscious, but there is no doubt that they unfold all their activities
in the unconscious state. What we term our character is based, indeed, on
the memory-traces of our impressions, and it is precisely those impres-
sions that have affected us most strongly, those of our early youth, which
hardly ever become conscious. But when memories become conscious
again they show no sensory quality, or a very negligible one in comparison
with the perceptions. If, now, it can be confirmed that for consciousness
memory and quality are mutually exclusive in the ψ-systems, we have
gained a most promising insight into the determinations of the neuron-
excitations.¹

What we have so far assumed concerning the composition of the psy-
chic apparatus at the sensible end has been assumed regardless of dreams
and of the psychological explanations which we have hitherto derived
from them. Dreams, however, will serve as a source of evidence for our

¹ Since writing this, I have thought that consciousness occurs actually in the local-
ity of the memory-trace. (Cf. Notiz über den Wunderblock, 1925, Ges Schriften,
Bd. vi.)

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-PROCESSES

knowledge of another part of the apparatus. We have seen that it was
impossible to explain dream-
formation unless we ventured to assume two
psychic “instances,” one of which subjected the activities of the other
to criticism, the result of which was exclusion from consciousness.

We have concluded that the criticizing “instance” maintains closer
relations with the consciousness than the “instance” criticized. It stands
between the latter and the consciousness like a screen. Further, we have
found that there is reason to identify the criticizing “instance” with that
which directs our waking life and determines our voluntary conscious
activities. If, in accordance with our assumptions, we now replace these
“instances” by systems, the criticizing system will therefore be moved to
the motor end. We now enter both systems in our diagram, expressing, by
the names given them, their relation to consciousness.

FIG. 3

The last of the systems at the motor end we call the preconscious (Pcs.)
to denote that the exciting processes in this system can reach conscious-
ness without any further detention, provided certain other conditions are
fulfilled, e.g. the attainment of a definite degree of intensity, a certain
apportionment of that function which we must call attention, etc. This
is at the same time the system which holds the keys of voluntary motility.
The system behind it we call the unconscious (Ucs.), because it has no
access to consciousness except through the preconscious, in the passage
through which the excita-
tion-
process must submit to certain changes.¹

In which of these systems, then, do we localize the impetus to dream-
formation? For the sake of simplicity, let us say in the system Ucs. We
shall find, it is true, in subsequent discussions, that this is not altogether
correct; that dream-
formation is obliged to make connection with dream-
thoughts which belong to the system of the preconscious. But we shall
learn elsewhere, when we come to deal with the dream-
wish, that the

¹The further elaboration of this linear diagram will have to reckon with the as-
sumption that the system following the Pcs. represents the one to which we must
attribute consciousness (Cs.), so that P = Cs.

492

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

motive-power of the dream is furnished by the Ucs., and on account of
this factor we shall assume the unconscious system as the starting-
point
for dream-formation. This dream-excitation, like all the other thought-
structures, will now strive to continue itself in the Pcs., and thence to
gain admission to the consciousness.

Experience teaches us that the path leading through the preconscious
to consciousness is closed to the dream-thoughts during the day by the
resisting censorship. At night they gain admission to consciousness; the
question arises, In what way and because of what changes? If this admis-
sion were rendered possible to the dream-thoughts by the weakening,
during the night, of the resistance watching on the boundary between the
unconscious and the preconscious, we should then have dreams in the
material of our ideas, which would not display the hallucinatory charac-
ter that interests us at present.

The weakening of the censorship between the two systems, Ucs. and
Pcs., can explain to us only such dreams as the “Autodidasker” dream
but not dreams like that of the burning child, which—as will be remem-
bered—we stated as a problem at the outset in our present investiga-
tions.

What takes place in the hallucinatory dream we can describe in no
other way than by saying that the excitation follows a retrogressive course.
It communicates itself not to the motor end of the apparatus, but to the
sensory end, and finally reaches the system of perception. If we call the
direction which the psychic process follows from the unconscious into the
waking state progressive, we may then speak of the dream as having a
regressive character.¹

This regression is therefore assuredly one of the most important psy-
chological peculiarities of the dream-process; but we must not forget
that it is not characteristic of the dream alone. Intentional recollection
and other component processes of our normal thinking likewise necessi-
tate a retrogression in the psychic apparatus from some complex act of
ideation to the raw material of the memory-traces which underlie it. But
during the waking state this turning backwards does not reach beyond
the memory-images; it is incapable of producing the hallucinatory re-
vival of the perceptual images. Why is it otherwise in dreams? When we
spoke of the condensation-work of the dream we could not avoid the as-
sumption that by the dream-work the intensities adhering to the ideas

¹The first indication of the element of regression is already encountered in the
writings of Albertus Magnus. According to him the imaginatio constructs the dream
out of the tangible objects which it has retained. The process is the converse of that
operating in the waking state. Hobbes states (Leviathan, 1651): “In sum our dreams
are the reverse of our imagination, the motion, when we are awake, beginning at
one end, and when we dream at another” (quoted by Havelock Ellis, loc. cit., p. 112).

493

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-PROCESSES

are completely transferred from one to another. It is probably this modi-
fication of the usual psychic process which makes possible the cathexis ¹
of the system of P to its full sensory vividness in the reverse direction to
thinking.

I hope that we are not deluding ourselves as regards the importance of
this present discussion. We have done nothing more than give a name to
an inexplicable phenomenon. We call it regression if the idea in the dream
is changed back into the visual image from which it once originated. But
even this step requires justification. Why this definition if it does not
teach us anything new? Well, I believe that the word regression is of
service to us, inasmuch as it connects a fact familiar to us with the scheme
of the psychic apparatus endowed with direction. At this point, and for
the first time, we shall profit by the fact that we have constructed such a
scheme. For with the help of this scheme we shall perceive, without
further reflection, another peculiarity of dream-formation. If we look
upon the dream as a process of regression within the hypothetical psychic
apparatus, we have at once an explanation of the empirically proven fact
that all thought-relations of the dream-thoughts are either lost in the
dream-work or have difficulty in achieving expression. According to our
scheme, these thought-relations are contained not in the first mem-sys-
tems, but in those lying farther to the front, and in the regression to the
perceptual images they must forfeit expression. In regression the structure
of the dream-thoughts breaks up into its raw material.

But what change renders possible this regression which is impossible
during the day? Let us here be content with an assumption. There must
evidently be changes in the cathexis of the individual systems, causing
the latter to become more accessible or inaccessible to the discharge of the
excitation; but in any such apparatus the same effect upon the course of
the excitation might be produced by more than one kind of change. We
naturally think of the sleeping state, and of the many cathetic changes
which this evokes at the sensory end of the apparatus. During the day
there is a continuous stream flowing from the ψ-system of the P toward
the motility end; this current ceases at night, and can no longer block the
flow of the current of excitation in the opposite direction. This would
appear to be that “seclusion from the outer world” which according to
the theory of some writers is supposed to explain the psychological char-
acter of the dream. In the explanation of the regression of the dream we
shall, however, have to take into account those other regressions which
occur during morbid waking states. In these other forms of regression the
explanation just given plainly leaves us in the lurch. Regression occurs in
spite of the uninterrupted sensory current in a progressive direction.

¹[From the Greek Kathexo, to occupy, used here in place of the author’s term
Besetzung, to signify a charge or investment of energy.—Trans.]

494

The hallucinations of hysteria and paranoia, as well as the visions of
mentally normal persons, I would explain as corresponding, in fact, to
regressions, i.e. to thoughts transformed into images; and would assert
that only such thoughts undergo this transformation as are in intimate
connection with suppressed memories, or with memories which have re-
mained unconscious. As an example I will cite the case of one of my
youngest hysterical patients—a boy of twelve, who was prevented from
falling asleep by “green faces with red eyes,” which terrified him. The
source of this manifestation was the suppressed, but once conscious mem-
ory of a boy whom he had often seen four years earlier, and who offered a
warning example of many bad habits, including masturbation, for which
he was now reproaching himself. At that time his mother had noticed that
the complexion of this ill-mannered boy was greenish and that he had red
(i.e. red-
rimmed) eyes. Hence his terrifying vision, which merely deter-
mined his recollection of another saying of his mother’s, to the effect that
such boys become demented, are unable to learn anything at school, and
are doomed to an early death. A part of this prediction came true in the
case of my little patient; he could not get on at school, and, as appeared
from his involuntary associations, he was in terrible dread of the remainder
of the prophecy. However, after a brief period of successful treatment his
sleep was restored, his anxiety removed, and he finished his scholastic
year with an excellent record.

Here I may add the interpretation of a vision described to me by an
hysterical woman of forty, as having occurred when she was in normal
health. One morning she opened her eyes and saw her brother in the
room, although she knew him to be confined in an insane asylum. Her
little son was asleep by her side. Lest the child should be frightened on
seeing his uncle, and fall into convulsions, she pulled the sheet over his
face. This done, the phantom disappeared. This apparition was the re-
vision of one of her childish memories, which, although conscious, was
most intimately connected with all the unconscious material in her mind.
Her nurserymaid had told her that her mother, who had died young (my
patient was then only eighteen months old), had suffered from epileptic
or hysterical convulsions, which dated back to a fright caused by her
brother (the patient’s uncle) who appeared to her disguised as a spectre
with a sheet over his head. The vision contains the same elements as the
reminiscence, viz. the appearance of the brother, the sheet, the fright, and
its effect. These elements, however, are arranged in a fresh context, and
are transferred to other persons. The obvious motive of the vision, and
the thought which it replaced, was her solicitude lest her little son, who
bore a striking resemblance to his uncle, should share the latter’s fate.

Both examples here cited are not entirely unrelated to the state of
sleep, and may for that reason be unfitted to afford the evidence for the

495

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM–PROCESSES
sake of which I have cited them. I will, therefore, refer to my analysis of
an hallucinatory paranoic woman patient ¹ and to the results of my
hitherto unpublished studies on the psychology of the psychoneuroses, in
order to emphasize the fact that in these cases of regressive thought-
transformation one must not overlook the influence of a suppressed mem-
ory, or one that has remained unconscious, this being usually of an in-
fantile character. This memory draws into the regression, as it were, the
thoughts with which it is connected, and which are kept from expres-
sion by the censorship—that is, into that form of representation in which
the memory itself is psychically existent. And here I may add, as a result
of my studies of hysteria, that if one succeeds in bringing to consciousness
infantile scenes (whether they are recollections or phantasies) they ap-
pear as hallucinations, and are divested of this character only when they
are communicated. It is known also that even in persons whose memories
are not otherwise visual, the earliest infantile memories remain vividly
visual until late in life.

If, now, we bear in mind the part played in the dream-thoughts by the
infantile experiences, or by the phantasies based upon them, and recollect
how often fragments of these re-emerge in the dream-content, and how
even the dream-wishes often proceed from them, we cannot deny the
probability that in dreams, too, the transformation of thoughts into vis-
ual images may be the result of the attraction exercised by the visually
represented memory, striving for resuscitation, upon the thoughts severed
from consciousness and struggling for expression. Pursuing this concep-
tion, we may further describe the dream as the substitute for the infantile
scene modified by transference to recent material. The infantile scene can-
not enforce its own revival, and must therefore be satisfied to return as a
dream.

This reference to the significance of the infantile scenes (or of their
phantastic repetitions) as in a certain degree furnishing the pattern for
the dream-content renders superfluous the assumption made by Scherner
and his pupils concerning inner sources of stimuli. Scherner assumes a
state of “visual excitation,” of internal excitation in the organ of sight,
when the dreams manifest a special vividness or an extraordinary abund-
ance of visual elements. We need raise no objection to this assumption;
we may perhaps content ourselves with assuming such a state of excita-
tion only for the psychic perceptive system of the organ of vision; we
shall, however, insist that this state of excitation is a reanimation by the
memory of a former actual visual excitation. I cannot, from my own ex-
perience, give a good example showing such an influence of an infantile
memory; my own dreams are altogether less rich in perceptual elements

¹Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses, p. 165, translated by A
A. Brill, Monograph Series, Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases Publishing Co.

496

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

than I imagine those of others to be; but in my most beautiful and most
vivid dream of late years I can easily trace the hallucinatory distinctness
of the dream-contents to the visual qualities of recently received impres-
sions. On page 437 I mentioned a dream in which the dark blue of the
water, the brown of the smoke issuing from the ship’s funnels, and the
sombre brown and red of the buildings which I saw made a profound and
lasting impression upon my mind. This dream, if any, must be attributed
to visual excitation, but what was it that had brought my organ of vision
into this excitable state? It was a recent impression which had joined it-
self to a series of former impressions. The colours I beheld were in the
first place those of the toy blocks with which my children had erected a
magnificent building for my admiration, on the day preceding the dream.
There was the sombre red on the large blocks, the blue and brown on the
small ones. Joined to these were the colour impressions of my last journey
in Italy: the beautiful blue of the Isonzo and the lagoons, the brown hue
of the Alps. The beautiful colours seen in the dream were but a repetition
of those seen in memory.

Let us summarize what we have learned about this peculiarity of
dreams: their power of recasting their idea-content in visual images. We
may not have explained this character of the dream-work by referring it
to the known laws of psychology, but we have singled it out as pointing
to unknown relations, and have given it the name of the regressive char-
acter. Wherever such regression has occurred, we have regarded it as an
effect of the resistance which opposes the progress of thought on its nor-
mal way to consciousness, and of the simultaneous attraction exerted
upon it by vivid memories.¹ The regression in dreams is perhaps facili-
tated by the cessation of the progressive stream flowing from the sense-
organs during the day; for which auxiliary factor there must be some
compensation, in the other forms of regression, by the strengthening of
the other regressive motives. We must also bear in mind that in patholog-
ical cases of regression, just as in dreams, the process of energy-transfer-
ence must be different from that occurring in the regressions of normal
psychic life, since it renders possible a full hallucinatory cathexis of the
perceptive system. What we have described in the analysis of the dream-
work as “regard for representability” may be referred to the selective
attraction of visually remembered scenes touched by the dream-thoughts.

As to the regression, we may further observe that it plays a no less im-
portant part in the theory of neurotic symptom-formation than in the
theory of dreams. We may therefore distinguish a threefold species of

¹In a statement of the theory of repression it should be explained that a thought
passes into repression owing to the co-operation of two of the factors which in
fluence it. On the one side (the censorship of Cs.) it is pushed, and from the other side
(the Ucs.) it is pulled, much as one is helped to the top of the Great Pyramid. (Cf.
the Chapter Die Verdrängung in Ges. Schriften, Bd. v.)

497

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-PROCESSES
regression: (a) a topical one, in the sense of the scheme of the ψ-systems
here expounded; (b) a temporal one, in so far as it is a regression to older
psychic formations; and (c) a formal one, when primitive modes of
expression and representation take the place of the customary modes.
These three forms of regression are, however, basically one, and in the
majority of cases they coincide, for that which is older in point of time
is at the same time formally primitive and, in the psychic topography,
nearer to the perception-end.

We cannot leave the theme of regression in dreams without giving ut-
terance to an impression which has already and repeatedly forced itself
upon us, and which will return to us reinforced after a deeper study of the
psychoneuroses; namely, that dreaming is on the whole an act of regres-
sion to the earliest relationships of the dreamer, a resuscitation of his
childhood, of the impulses which were then dominant and the modes of
expression which were then available. Behind this childhood of the in-
dividual we are then promised an insight into the phylogenetic childhood,
into the evolution of the human race, of which the development of the
individual is only an abridged repetition influenced by the fortuitous cir-
cumstances of life. We begin to suspect that Friedrich Nietzsche was right
when he said that in a dream “there persists a primordial part of hu-
manity which we can no longer reach by a direct path,” and we are en-
couraged to expect, from the analysis of dreams, a knowledge of the
archaic inheritance of man, a knowledge of psychical things in him that
are innate. It would seem that dreams and neuroses have preserved for
us more of the psychical antiquities than we suspected; so that psycho-
analysis may claim a high rank among those sciences which endeavour to
reconstruct the oldest and darkest phases of the beginnings of mankind.

It is quite possible that we shall not find this first part of our psycholog-
ical evaluation of dreams particularly satisfying. We must, however, con-
sole ourselves with the thought that we are, after all, compelled to build
out into the dark. If we have not gone altogether astray, we shall surely
reach approximately the same place from another starting-point, and then,
perhaps, we shall be better able to find our bearings.

C. THE WISH-FULFILMENT

The dream of the burning child (cited above) affords us a welcome op-
portunity for appreciating the difficulties confronting the theory of wish-
fulfilment. That a dream should be nothing but a wish-fulfilment must
undoubtedly seem strange to us all—and not only because of the contra-
diction offered by this anxiety-dream. Once our first analyses had given us
the enlightenment that meaning and psychic value are concealed behind
our dreams, we could hardly have expected so unitary a determination of
this meaning. According to the correct but summary definition of Aris-

498

totle, the dream is a continuation of thinking in sleep. Now if, during the
day, our thoughts perform such a diversity of psychic acts—judgments,
conclusions, the answering of objections, expectations, intentions, etc.—
why should they be forced at night to confine themselves to the produc-
tion of wishes only? Are there not, on the contrary, many dreams that
present an altogether different psychic act in dream-form—for example,
anxious care—and is not the father’s unusually transparent dream of the
burning child such a dream? From the gleam of light that falls upon his
eyes while he is asleep the father draws the apprehensive conclusion that
a candle has fallen over and may be burning the body; he transforms this
conclusion into a dream by embodying it in an obvious situation enacted
in the present tense. What part is played in this dream by the wish-fulfil-
ment? And how can we possibly mistake the predominance of the thought
continued from the waking state or evoked by the new sensory impres-
sion?

All these considerations are justified, and force us to look more closely
into the rôle of the wish-fulfillment in dreams, and the significance of the
waking thoughts continued in sleep.

It is precisely the wish-fulfillment that has already caused us to divide
all dreams into two groups. We have found dreams which were plainly
wish-fulfillments; and others in which the wish-fulfillment was unrecog-
nizable and was often concealed by every available means. In this latter
class of dreams we recognized the influence of the dream-censorship. The
undisguised wish-dreams were found chiefly in children; short, frank
wish-dreams seemed (I purposely emphasize this word) to occur also in
adults.

We may now ask whence in each case does the wish that is realized in
the dream originate? But to what opposition or to what diversity do we
relate this “whence”? I think to the opposition between conscious daily
life and an unconscious psychic activity which is able to make itself per-
ceptible only at night. I thus find a threefold possibility for the origin of
a wish. Firstly, it may have been excited during the day, and owing to ex-
ternal circumstances may have remained unsatisfied; there is thus left
for the night an acknowledged and unsatisfied wish. Secondly, it may have
emerged during the day, only to be rejected; there is thus left for the
night an unsatisfied but suppressed wish. Thirdly, it may have no rela-
tion to daily life, but may belong to those wishes which awake only at
night out of the suppressed material in us. If we turn to our scheme of the
psychic apparatus, we can localize a wish of the first order in the system
Pcs. We may assume that a wish of the second order has been forced back
from the Pcs. system into the Ucs. system, where alone, if anywhere, can
it maintain itself; as for the wish-impulse of the third order, we believe
that it is wholly incapable of leaving the Ucs. system. Now, have the

499

wishes arising from these different sources the same value for the dream,
the same power to incite a dream?

On surveying the dream-forms at our disposal with a view to answering this
question, we are at once moved to add as a fourth source of the dream-
wish the actual wish-impetus which arises during the night (for example,
the stimulus of thirst, and sexual desire). It then seems to us probable
that the source of the dream-wish does not affect its capacity to incite a
dream. I have in mind the dream of the child who continued the voyage
that had been interrupted during the day, and the other children’s dreams
cited in the same chapter; they are explained by an unfulfilled but un-
suppressed wish of the daytime. That wishes suppressed during the day
assert themselves in dreams is shown by a great many examples. I will
mention a very simple dream of this kind. A rather sarcastic lady, whose
younger friend has become engaged to be married, is asked in the day-
time by her acquaintances whether she knows her friend’s fiancé, and
what she thinks of him. She replies with unqualified praise, imposing
silence on her own judgment, although she would have liked to tell the
truth, namely, that he is a commonplace fellow—-
one meets such by the
dozen (Dutzendmensch). The following night she dreams that the same
question is put to her, and that she replies with the formula: “In case of
subsequent orders, it will suffice to mention the reference number.”
Finally, as the result of numerous analyses, we learn that the wish in all
dreams that have been subject to distortion has its origin in the uncon-
scious, and could not become perceptible by day. At first sight, then, it
seems that in respect of dream-formation all wishes are of equal value and
equal power.

I cannot prove here that this is not really the true state of affairs, but I
am strongly inclined to assume a stricter determination of the dream-
wish. Children’s dreams leave us in no doubt that a wish unfulfilled during
the day may instigate a dream. But we must not forget that this is, after
all, the wish of a child; that it is a wish-impulse of the strength peculiar
to childhood. I very much doubt whether a wish unfulfilled in the day-
time would suffice to create a dream in an adult. It would rather seem
that as we learn to control our instinctual life by intellection we more and
more renounce as unprofitable the formation or retention of such intense
wishes as are natural to childhood. In this, indeed, there may be indi-
vidual variations; some retain the infantile type of the psychic processes
longer than others; just as we find such differences in the gradual decline
of the originally vivid visual imagination. In general, however, I am of
the opinion that unfulfilled wishes of the day are insufficient to produce a
dream in adults. I will readily admit that the wish-impulses originating in
consciousness contribute to the instigation of dreams, but they probably

500

do no more. The dream would not occur if the preconscious wish were not
reinforced from another source.

That source is the unconscious. I believe that the conscious wish be-
comes effective in exciting a dream only when it succeeds in arousing a
similar unconscious wish which reinforces it. From the indications ob-
tained in the psychoanalysis of the neuroses, I believe that these uncon-
scious wishes are always active and ready to express themselves whenever
they find an opportunity of allying themselves with an impulse from con-
sciousness, and transferring their own greater intensity to the lesser inten-
sity of the latter.¹ It must, therefore, seem that the conscious wish alone
has been realized in the dream; but a slight peculiarity in the form of the
dream will put us on the track of the powerful ally from the unconscious.
These ever-active and, as it were, immortal wishes of our unconscious
recall the legendary Titans who, from time immemorial, have been buried
under the mountains which were once hurled upon them by the victorious
gods, and even now quiver from time to time at the convulsions of their
mighty limbs. These wishes, existing in repression, are themselves of in-
fantile origin, as we learn from the psychological investigation of the
neuroses. Let me, therefore, set aside the view previously expressed, that
it matters little whence the dream-wish originates, and replace it by an-
other, namely: the wish manifested in the dream must be an infantile
wish. In the adult it originates in the Ucs., while in the child, in whom no
division and censorship exist as yet between the Pcs. and Ucs., or in whom
these are only in process of formation, it is an unfulfilled and unrepressed
wish from the waking state. I am aware that this conception cannot be
generally demonstrated, but I maintain that it can often be demonstrated
even where one would not have suspected it, and that it cannot be gen-
erally refuted.

In dream-formation, the wish-impulses which are left over from the
conscious waking life, are, therefore, to be relegated to the background. I
cannot admit that they play any part except that attributed to the
material of actual sensations during sleep in relation to the dream-
content. If I now take into account those other psychic instigations
left over from the waking life of the day, which are not wishes, I shall
merely be adhering to the course mapped out for me by this line of
thought. We may succeed in provisionally disposing of the energetic

¹) They share this character of indestructibility with all other psychic acts that are
really unconscious—that is, with psychic acts belonging solely to the system Ucs.
These paths are opened once and for all; they never fall into disuse; they conduct
the excitation-process to discharge as often as they are charged again with uncon-
scious excitation. To speak metaphorically, they suffer no other form of annihilation
than did the shades of the lower regions in the Odyssey, who awoke to new life the
moment they drank blood. The processes depending on the preconscious system are
destructible in quite another sense. The psychotherapy of the neuroses is based on
this difference.

501

cathexis of our waking thoughts by deciding to go to sleep. He is a good
sleeper who can do this; Napoleon I is reputed to have been a model of
this kind. But we do not always succeed in doing it, or in doing it com-
pletely. Unsolved problems, harassing cares, overwhelming impressions,
continue the activity of our thought even during sleep, maintaining
psychic processes in the system which we have termed the preconscious.
The thought-impulses continued into sleep may be divided into the fol-
lowing groups:—

1. Those which have not been completed during the day, owing to
some accidental cause.

2. Those which have been left uncompleted because our mental powers
have failed us, i.e. unsolved problems.

3. Those which have been turned back and suppressed during the day.

This is reinforced by a powerful fourth group:—

4. Those which have been excited in our Ucs. during the day by the
workings of the Pcs.; and finally we may add a fifth, consisting of:—

5. The indifferent impressions of the day, which have therefore been
left unsettled.

We need not underrate the psychic intensities introduced into sleep by
these residues of the day’s waking life, especially those emanating from
the group of the unsolved issues. It is certain that these excitations con-
tinue to strive for expression during the night, and we may assume with
equal certainty that the state of sleep¹⁾ renders impossible the usual con-
tinuance of the process of excitation in the preconscious and its termina-
tion in becoming conscious. In so far as we can become conscious of our mental
processes in the ordinary way, even during the night, to that extent we
are simply not asleep. I cannot say what change is produced in the Pcs.
system by the state of sleep, but there is no doubt that the psychological
characteristics of sleep are to be sought mainly in the cathectic changes
occurring just in this system, which dominates, moreover, the approach
to motility, paralysed during sleep. On the other hand, I have found
nothing in the psychology of dreams to warrant the assumption that sleep
produces any but secondary changes in the conditions of the Ucs. system.
Hence, for the nocturnal excitations in the Pcs. there remains no other
path than that taken by the wish-excitations from the Ucs.; they must
seek reinforcement from the Ucs., and follow the detours of the uncon-
scious excitations. But what is the relation of the preconscious day-resi-
dues to the dream? There is no doubt that they penetrate abundantly into

1)I have endeavoured to penetrate farther into the relations of the sleeping state and
the conditions of hallucination in my essay, Metapsychological Supplement to the
Theory of Dreams (Collected Papers, vol. iv, p. 137 (Metapsychologische Ergänzung
zur Traumlehre, Int. Zeitschr. f. Ps.A. iv, 1916–18, Ges. Schriften, Bd. v, p. 520).

502

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

the dream; that they utilize the dream-
upon consciousness even during the night; indeed, they sometimes even
dominate the dream-
day; it is also certain that the day-
other character as that of wishes. But it is highly instructive, and for the
theory of wish-
ditions they must comply with in order to be received into the dream.

Let us pick out one of the dreams cited above, e.g. the dream in which
my friend Otto seems to show the symptoms of Basedow’s disease (p.
313). Otto’s appearance gave me some concern during the day, and this
worry, like everything else relating to him, greatly affected me. I may
assume that this concern followed me into sleep. I was probably bent on
finding out what was the matter with him. During the night my concern
found expression in the dream which I have recorded. Not only was its
content senseless, but it failed to show any wish-
to search for the source of this incongruous expression of the solicitude
felt during the day, and analysis revealed a connection. I identified my
friend Otto with a certain Baron L. and myself with a Professor R. There
was only one explanation of my being impelled to select just this substi-
tute for the day-
identify myself with Professor R., as this meant the realization of one of
the immortal infantile wishes, viz. the wish to become great. Repulsive
ideas respecting my friend, ideas that would certainly have been repudi-
ated in a waking state, took advantage of the opportunity to creep into
the dream; but the worry of the day had likewise found some sort of ex-
pression by means of a substitute in the dream-
which was in itself not a wish, but on the contrary a worry, had in some
way to find a connection with some infantile wish, now unconscious andsuppressed, which then allowed it—duly dressed up—to “arise” for con-
sciousness. The more domineering the worry the more forced could be
the connection to be established; between the content of the wish and
that of the worry there need be no connection, nor was there one in our
example.

It would perhaps be appropriate, in dealing with this problem, to in-
quire how a dream behaves when material is offered to it in the dream-
thoughts which flatly opposes a wish-
painful reflections and distressing realizations. The many possible results
may be classified as follows: (a) The dream-
all painful ideas by contrary ideas, and suppressing the painful affect be-
longing to them. This, then, results in a pure and simple satisfaction-
dream, a palpable “wish-
more to be said. (b) The painful ideas find their way into the manifest
dream-
content, more or less modified, but nevertheless quite recognizable.

503

This is the case which raises doubts about the wish-theory of dreams, and
thus calls for further investigation. Such dreams with a painful content
may either be indifferent in feeling, or they may convey the whole painful
affect, which the ideas contained in them seem to justify, or they may
even lead to the development of anxiety to the point of waking.

Analysis then shows that even these painful dreams are wish-
fulfilments. An unconscious and repressed wish, whose fulfilment could only
be felt as painful by the dreamer’s ego, has seized the opportunity offered
by the continued cathexis of painful day-residues, has lent them its sup-
port, and has thus made them capable of being dreamed. But whereas in
case (a) the unconscious wish coincided with the conscious one, in case
(b) the discord between the unconscious and the conscious–the repressed
material and the ego–is revealed, and the situation in the fairy-tale, of
the three wishes which the fairy offers to the married couple, is realized
(see below, p. 520). The gratification in respect of the fulfilment of the
repressed wish may prove to be so great that it balances the painful affects
adhering to the day-residues; the dream is then indifferent in its affective
tone, although it is on the one hand the fulfilment of a wish, and on the
other the fulfilment of a fear. Or it may happen that the sleep ego plays
an even more extensive part in the dream-formation, that it reacts with
violent resentment to the accomplished satisfaction of the repressed wish,
and even goes so far as to make an end of the dream by means of anxiety.
It is thus not difficult to recognize that dreams of pain and anxiety are, in
accordance with our theory, just as much wish-fulfilments as are the
straightforward dreams of gratification.

Painful dreams may also be “punishment dreams.” It must be admitted
that the recognition of these dreams adds something that is, in a certain
sense, new to the theory of dreams. What is fulfilled by them is once
more an unconscious wish–the wish for the punishment of the dreamer
for a repressed, prohibited wish-impulse. To this extent these dreams
comply with the requirement here laid down: that the motive-power be-
hind the dream-formation must be furnished by a wish belonging to the
unconscious. But a finer psychological dissection allows us to recognize
the difference between this and the other wish-dreams. In the dreams of
group (b) the unconscious dream-forming wish belonged to the repressed
material. In the punishment-dreams it is likewise an unconscious wish,
but one which we must attribute not to the repressed material but to the
“ego.”

Punishment-dreams point, therefore, to the possibility of a still more
extensive participation of the ego in dream-formation. The mechanism of
dream-formation becomes indeed in every way more transparent if in
place of the antithesis “conscious” and “unconscious,” we put the antith-
esis: “ego” and “repressed.” This, however, cannot be done without

504

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

taking into account what happens in the psychoneuroses, and for this
reason it has not been done in this book. Here I need only remark that
the occurrence of punishment-
dreams is not generally subject to the pres-
ence of painful day-
residues. They originate indeed most readily if the
contrary is true, if the thoughts which are day-
residues are of a gratifying
nature, but express illicit gratifications. Of these thoughts nothing then
finds its way into the manifest dream except their contrary, just as was
the case in the dreams of group (a). Thus it would be the essential char-
acteristic of punishment-
dreams that in them it is not the unconscious
wish from the repressed material (from the system Ucs.) that is re-
sponsible for dream-
formation, but the punitive wish reacting against it,
a wish pertaining to the ego, even though it is unconscious (i.e. pre-
conscious).¹

I will elucidate some of the foregoing observations by means of a dream
of my own, and above all I will try to show how the dream-
work deals
with a day-
residue involving painful expectation:

Indistinct beginning. I tell my wife I have some news for her, some-
thing very special. She becomes frightened, and does not wish to hear it.
I assure her that on the contrary it is something which will please her
greatly, and I begin to tell her that our son’s Officers’ Corps has sent a
sum of money (5,000 k.?) . . . something about honourable mention
. . . distribution . . . at the same time I have gone with her into a small
room, like a store-
room, in order to fetch something from it. Suddenly I
see my son appear; he is not in uniform but rather in a tight-
fitting sports
suit (like a seal?) with a small cap. He climbs on to a basket which stands
to one side near a chest, in order to put something on this chest. I address
him; no answer. It seems to me that his face or forehead is bandaged, he
arranges something in his mouth, pushing something into it. Also his hair
shows a glint of grey. I reflect: Can he be so exhausted? And has he false
teeth? Before I can address him again I awake without anxiety, but with
palpitations. My clock points to 2.30 a.m.

To give a full analysis is once more impossible. I shall therefore confine
myself to emphasizing some decisive points. Painful expectations of the
day had given occasion for this dream; once again there had been no news
for over a week from my son, who was fighting at the Front. It is easy to
see that in the dream-
content the conviction that he has been killed or
wounded finds expression. At the beginning of the dream one can observe
an energetic effort to replace the painful thoughts by their contrary. I
have to impart something very pleasing, something about sending money,
honourable mention, and distribution. (The sum of money originates in a
gratifying incident of my medical practice; it is therefore trying to lead

¹Here one may consider the idea of the super-
ego which was later recognized by
psychoanalysis.

505

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-
PROCESSES

the dream away altogether from its theme.) But this effort fails. The boy’s
mother has a presentiment of something terrible and does not wish to
listen. The disguises are too thin; the reference to the material to be sup-
pressed shows through everywhere. If my son is killed, then his comrades
will send back his property; and I shall have to distribute whatever he has left
among his sisters, brothers and other people. Honourable mention is fre-
quently awarded to an officer after he has died the “hero’s death.” The
dream thus strives to give direct expression to what it at first wished to
deny, whilst at the same time the wish-fulfilling tendency reveals itself by
distortion. (The change of locality in the dream is no doubt to be under-
stood as threshold symbolism, in line with Silberer’s view.) We have in-
deed no idea what lends it the requisite motive-power. But my son does
not appear as “falling” (on the field of battle) but “climbing.”—He was,
in fact, a daring mountaineer.—He is not in uniform, but in a sports suit;
that is, the place of the fatality now dreaded has been taken by an acci-
dent which happened to him at one time when he was ski-running, when
he fell and fractured his thigh. But the nature of his costume, which
makes him look like a seal, recalls immediately a younger person, our
comical little grandson; the grey hair recalls his father, our son-in-law,
who has had a bad time in the War. What does this signify? But let us
leave this: the locality, a pantry, the chest, from which he wants to take
something (in the dream, to put something on it), are unmistakable al-
lusions to an accident of my own, brought upon myself when I was be-
tween two and three years of age. I climbed on a foot-stool in the pantry,
in order to get something nice which was on a chest or table. The foot-
stool tumbled over and its edge struck me behind the lower jaw. I might
very well have knocked all my teeth out. At this point, an admonition
presents itself: it serves you right—like a hostile impulse against the
valiant warrior. A profounder analysis enables me to detect the hidden
impulse, which would be able to find satisfaction in the dreaded mishap
to my son. It is the envy of youth which the elderly man believes that he
has thoroughly stifled in actual life. There is no mistaking the fact that it
was the very intensity of the painful apprehension lest such a misfortune
should really happen that searched out for its alleviation such a repressed
wish-fulfilment.

I can now clearly define what the unconscious wish means for the
dream. I will admit that there is a whole class of dreams in which the
incitement originates mainly or even exclusively from the residues of the
day; and returning to the dream about my friend Otto, I believe that even
my desire to become at last a professor extraordinarius would have al-
lowed me to sleep in peace that night, had not the day’s concern for my
friend’s health continued active. But this worry alone would not have
produced a dream; the motive-power needed by the dream had to be

506

contributed by a wish, and it was the business of my concern to find such
a wish for itself, as the motive power of the dream. To put it figuratively,
it is quite possible that a day-thought plays the part of the entrepreneur
in the dream; but the entrepreneur, who, as we say, has the idea, and
feels impelled to realize it, can do nothing without capital; he needs a
capitalist who will defray the expense, and this capitalist, who contrib-
utes the psychic expenditure for the dream, is invariably and indisput-
ably, whatever the nature of the waking thoughts, a wish from the
unconscious.

In other cases the capitalist himself is the entrepreneur: this, indeed,
seems to be the more usual case. An unconscious wish is excited by the
day’s work, and this now creates the dream. And the dream-processes
provide a parallel for all the other possibilities of the economic relation-
ship here used as an illustration. Thus the entrepreneur may himself con-
tribute a little of the capital, or several entrepreneurs may seek the aid of
the same capitalist, or several capitalists may jointly supply the capital
required by the entrepreneurs. Thus there are dreams sustained by more
than one dream-wish, and many similar variations, which may be readily
imagined, and which are of no further interest to us. What is still lacking
to our discussion of the dream-wish we shall only be able to complete
later on.

The tertium comparationis in the analogies here employed, the quanti-
tative element of which an allotted amount is placed at the free disposal
of the dream, admits of a still closer application to the elucidation of the
dream-structure. As shown on p. 338, we can recognize in most dreams a
centre supplied with a special sensory intensity. This is as a rule the direct
representation of the wish-fulfilment; for if we reverse the displacements
of the dream-work we find that the psychic intensity of the elements in
the dream-thoughts is replaced by the sensory intensity of the elements in
the dream-content. The elements in the neighbourhood of the wish-ful-
filment have often nothing to do with its meaning, but prove to be the
offshoots of painful thoughts which are opposed to the wish. But owing
to their connection with the central element, often artificially established,
they secure so large a share of its intensity as to become capable of repre-
sentation. Thus, the representative energy of the wish-fulfilment diffuses
itself over a certain sphere of association, within which all elements are
raised to representation, including even those that are in themselves with-
out resources. In dreams containing several dynamic wishes we can easily
separate and delimit the spheres of the individual wish-fulfilments, and
we shall find that the gaps in the dream are often of the nature of
boundary-zones.

Although the foregoing remarks have restricted the significance of the
day-residues for the dream, they are none the less deserving of some

507

further attention. For they must be a necessary ingredient in dream-
formation, inasmuch as experience reveals the surprising fact that every
dream shows in its content a connection with a recent waking impression,
often of the most indifferent kind. So far we have failed to understand the
necessity for this addition to the dream-mixture (p. 249). This necessity
becomes apparent only when we bear in mind the part played by the un-
conscious wish, and seek further information in the psychology of the
neuroses. We shall then learn that an unconscious idea, as such, is quite
incapable of entering into the preconscious, and that it can exert an in-
fluence there only by establishing touch with a harmless idea already
belonging to the preconscious, to which it transfers its intensity, and by
which it allows itself to be screened. This is the fact of transference,
which furnishes the explanation of so many surprising occurrences in the
psychic life of neurotics. The transference may leave the idea from the
preconscious unaltered, though the latter will thus acquire an unmerited
intensity, or it may force upon this some modification derived from the
content of the transferred idea. I trust the reader will pardon my fondness
for comparisons with daily life, but I feel tempted to say that the situa-
tion for the repressed idea is like that of the American dentist in Austria,
who may not carry on his practice unless he can get a duly installed
doctor of medicine to serve him as a signboard and legal “cover.” Further,
just as it is not exactly the busiest physicians who form such alliances
with dental practitioners, so in the psychic life the choice as regards
covers for repressed ideas does not fall upon such preconscious or con-
scious ideas as have themselves attracted enough of the attention active
in the preconscious. The unconscious prefers to entangle with its con-
nections either those impressions and ideas of the preconscious which
have remained unnoticed as being indifferent or those which have im-
mediately had attention withdrawn from them again (by rejection). It
is a well-known proposition of the theory of associations, confirmed by all
experience, that ideas which have formed a very intimate connection in
one direction assume a negative type of attitude towards whole groups of
new connections. I have even attempted at one time to base a theory of
hysterical paralysis on this principle.

If we assume that the same need of transference on the part of the
repressed ideas, of which we have become aware through the analysis of
the neurosis, makes itself felt in dreams also, we can at once explain two
of the problems of the dream: namely, that every dream-analysis reveals
an interweaving of a recent impression, and that this recent element is
often of the most indifferent character. We may add what we have al-
ready learned elsewhere, that the reason why these recent and indifferent
elements so frequently find their way into the dream-content as substitutes
for the very oldest elements of the dream-thoughts is that they have the

508

least to fear from the resisting censorship. But while this freedom from
censorship explains only the preference shown to the trivial elements, the
constant presence of recent elements points to the necessity for trans-
ference. Both groups of impressions satisfy the demand of the repressed
ideas for material still free from associations, the indifferent ones because
they have offered no occasion for extensive associations, and the recent
ones because they have not had sufficient time to form such associations.

We thus, see that the day-residues, among which we may now include
the indifferent impressions, not only borrow something from the Ucs.
when they secure a share in dream-formation—namely, the motive-
power at the disposal of the repressed wish—but they also offer to the uncon-
scious something that is indispensable to it, namely, the points of attach-
ment necessary for transference. If we wished to penetrate more deep-
ly into the psychic processes, we should have to throw a clearer light on the
play of excitations between the preconscious and the unconscious, and
indeed the study of the psychoneuroses would impel us to do so; but
dreams, as it happens, give us no help in this respect.

Just one further remark as to the day-residues. There is no doubt that
it is really these that disturb our sleep, and not our dreams which, on the
contrary, strive to guard our sleep. But we shall return to this point later.

So far we have discussed the dream-wish; we have traced it back to
the sphere of the Ucs., and have analysed its relation to the day-
residues, which, in their turn, may be either wishes, or psychic impulses of any
other kind, or simply recent impressions. We have thus found room for
the claims that can be made for the dream-forming significance of our
waking mental activity in all its multi-fariousness. It might even prove
possible to explain, on the basis of our train of thought, those extreme
cases in which the dream, continuing the work of the day, brings to a
happy issue an un-solved problem of waking life. We merely lack a suitable
example to analyse, in order to uncover the infantile or repressed source
of wishes, the tapping of which has so successfully reinforced the efforts
of the preconscious activity. But we are not a step nearer to answering
the question: Why is it that the unconscious can furnish in sleep nothing
more than the motive-power for a wish-fulfilment? The answer to this
question must elucidate the psychic nature of the state of wishing: and it
will be given with the aid of the notion of the psychic apparatus.

We do not doubt that this apparatus, too, has only arrived at its pres-
ent perfection by a long process of evolution. Let us attempt to restore it
as it existed in an earlier stage of capacity. From postulates to be con-
firmed in other ways we know that at first the apparatus strove to keep
itself as free from stimulation as possible, and therefore, in its early-
structure, adopted the arrangement of a reflex apparatus, which en-
abled it promptly to discharge by the motor paths any sensory excitation reach-
ing it.

509

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM–PROCESSES

ing it from without. But this simple function was disturbed by the ex
igencies of life, to which the apparatus owes the impetus toward further
development. The exigencies of life first confronted it in the form of the
great physical needs. The excitation aroused by the inner need seeks an
outlet in motility, which we may describe as “internal change” or “expres
sion of the emotions.” The hungry child cries or struggles helplessly.
But its situation remains unchanged; for the excitation proceeding from
the inner need has not the character of a momentary impact, but of a
continuing pressure. A change can occur only if, in some way (in the case
of the child by external assistance), there is an experience of satisfaction,
which puts an end to the internal excitation. An essential constituent of
this experience is the appearance of a certain percept (of food in our
example), the memory-
image of which is henceforth associated with the
memory-
trace of the excitation arising from the need. Thanks to the
established connection, there results, at the next occurrence of this need,
a psychic impulse which seeks to revive the memory-
image of the former
percept, and to re-
evoke the former percept itself; that is, it actually
seeks to re-
establish the situation of the first satisfaction. Such an impulse
is what we call a wish; the reappearance of the perception constitutes the
wish-
fulfilment, and the full cathexis of the perception, by the excitation
springing from the need, constitutes the shortest path to the wish-
ful-
filment. We may assume a primitive state of the psychic apparatus in
which this path is actually followed, i.e. in which the wish ends in hallu-
cination. This first psychic activity therefore aims at an identity of per-
ception: that is, at a repetition of that perception which is connected with
the satisfaction of the need.

This primitive mental activity must have been modified by bitter
practical experience into a secondary and more appropriate activity. The
establishment of identity of perception by the short regressive path
within the apparatus does not produce the same result in another respect
as follows upon cathexis of the same perception coming from without.
The satisfaction does not occur, and the need continues. In order to make
the internal cathexis equivalent to the external one, the former would
have to be continuously sustained, just as actually happens in the hallu-
cinatory psychoses and in hunger-
phantasies, which exhaust their per-
formance in maintaining their hold on the object desired. In order to
attain to more appropriate use of the psychic energy, it becomes necessary
to suspend the full regression, so that it does not proceed beyond the
memory-
image, and thence can seek other paths, leading ultimately to
the production of the desired identity from the side of the outer world.¹
This inhibition, as well as the subsequent deflection of the excitation, be-
comes the task of a second system, which controls voluntary motility, i.e.
¹In other words: the introduction of a “test of reality” is recognized as necessary.

510

a system whose activity first leads on to the use of motility for purposes
remembered in advance. But all this complicated mental activity, which
works its way from the memory-image to the production of identity of
perception via the outer world, merely represents a roundabout way to
wish-fulfilment made necessary by experience.¹⁾ Thinking is indeed noth-
ing but a substitute for the hallucinatory wish; and if the dream is called
a wish-fulfilment, this becomes something self-evident, since nothing but
a wish can impel our psychic apparatus to activity. The dream, which
fulfils its wishes by following the short regressive path, has thereby
simply preserved for us a specimen of the primary method of operation
of the psychic apparatus, which has been abandoned as inappropriate.
What once prevailed in the waking state, when our psychic life was still
young and inefficient, seems to have been banished into our nocturnal
life; just as we still find in the nursery those discarded primitive weapons
of adult humanity, the bow and arrow. Dreaming is a fragment of the
superseded psychic life of the child. In the psychoses those modes of
operation of the psychic apparatus which are normally suppressed in the
waking state reassert themselves, and thereupon betray their inability to
satisfy our demands in the outer world.²⁾

The unconscious wish-impulses evidently strive to assert themselves
even during the day, and the fact of transference, as well as the psychoses,
tells us that they endeavour to force their way through the preconscious
system to consciousness and the command of motility. Thus, in the cen-
sorship between Ucs. and Pcs., which the dream forces us to assume, we
must recognize and respect the guardian of our psychic health. But is it
not carelessness on the part of this guardian to diminish his vigilance at
night, and to allow the suppressed impulses of the Ucs. to achieve expres-
sion, thus again making possible the process of hallucinatory regression?
I think not, for when the critical guardian goes to rest—and we have proof
that his slumber is not profound—he takes care to close the gate to
motility. No matter what impulses from the usually inhibited Ucs. may
bustle about the stage, there is no need to interfere with them; they re-
main harmless, because they are not in a position to set in motion the
motor apparatus which alone can operate to produce any change in the
outer world. Sleep guarantees the security of the fortress which has to be
guarded. The state of affairs is less harmless when a displacement of

¹⁾Le Lorrain justly extols the wish-fulfilments of dreams: “Sans fatigue sérieuse,
sans être obligé de recourir à cette lutte opiniâtre et longue qui use et corrode les
jouissances poursuivies.”

²⁾I have further elaborated this train of thought elsewhere, where I have distin-
guished the two principles involved as the pleasure-principle and the reality-princi-
ple. “Formulations regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning,” Collected
Papers, vol. iv, p. 13 (Formulierungen über die zwei Prinzipien des psychischen
Geschehens in Ges. Schriften, Bd. v, s. 409).

511

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-PROCESSES

energies is produced, not by the decline at night in the energy put forth
by the critical censorship, but by the pathological enfeeblement of the
latter, or the pathological reinforcement of the unconscious excitations,
and this while the preconscious is cathected and the gates of motility are
open. The guardian is then overpowered; the unconscious excitations sub-
due the Pcs., and from the Pcs. they dominate our speech and action, or
they enforce hallucinatory regressions, thus directing an apparatus not
designed for them by virtue of the attraction exerted by perceptions on
the distribution of our psychic energy. We call this condition psychosis.

We now find ourselves in the most favourable position for continuing
the construction of our psychological scaffolding, which we left after in-
serting the two systems, Ucs. and Pcs. However, we still have reason to
give further consideration to the wish as the sole psychic motive-power
in the dream. We have accepted the explanation that the reason why the
dream is in every case a wish-fulfilment is that it is a function of the
system Ucs., which knows no other aim than wish-fulfilment, and which
has at its disposal no forces other than the wish-impulses. Now if we want
to continue for a single moment longer to maintain our right to develop
such far-reaching psychological speculations from the facts of dream-
interpretation, we are in duty bound to show that they insert the dream
into a context which can also embrace other psychic structures. If there
exists a system of the Ucs.—or something sufficiently analogous for the
purposes of our discussion—the dream cannot be its sole manifestation;
every dream may be a wish-fulfilment, but there must be other forms of
abnormal wish-fulfilment as well as dreams. And in fact the theory of all
psychoneurotic symptoms culminates in the one proposition that they,
too, must be conceived as wish-fulfilments of the unconscious.¹ Our ex-
planation makes the dream only the first member of a series of the great-
est importance for the psychiatrist, the understanding of which means the
solution of the purely psychological part of the psychiatric problem.²
But in other members of this group of wish-fulfilments—for example, in
the hysterical symp-
toms—I know of one essential charac-
teristic which I
have so far failed to find in the dream. Thus, from the investigations often
alluded to in this treatise, I know that the formation of a hysterical symp-
tom needs a junction of both the currents of our psychic life. The symp-
tom is not merely the expression of a realized unconscious wish; the latter
must be joined by another wish from the preconscious, which is fulfilled
by the same symptom; so that the symptom is at least doubly determined,

¹Expressed more exactly: One portion of the symptom corresponds to the uncon-
scious wish-fulfilment, while the other corresponds to the reaction-formation op-
posed to it.

²Hughlings Jackson has expressed himself as follows: “Find out all about dreams
and you will have found out all about insanity.”

512

once by each of the conflicting systems. Just as in dreams, there is no limit
to further over-determination. The determination which does not derive
from the Ucs. is, as far as I can see, invariably a thought-stream of reac-
tion against the unconscious wish; for example, a self-punishment.
Hence I can say, quite generally, that a hysterical symptom originates
only where two contrary wish-fulfillments, having their source in different
psychic systems, are able to meet in a single expression.¹⁾ Examples would
help us but little here, as nothing but a complete unveiling of the com-
plications in question can carry conviction. I will therefore content myself
with the bare assertion, and will cite one example, not because it proves
anything, but simply as an illustration. The hysterical vomiting of a fe-
male patient proved, on the one hand, to be the fulfilment of an uncon-
scious phantasy from the years of puberty—namely, the wish that she
might be continually pregnant, and have a multitude of children; and this
was subsequently supplemented by the wish that she might have them by
as many fathers as possible. Against this immoderate wish there arose a
powerful defensive reaction. But as by the vomiting the patient might
have spoilt her figure and her beauty, so that she would no longer find
favour in any man’s eyes, the symptom was also in keeping with the puni-
tive trend of thought, and so, being admissible on both sides, it was al-
lowed to become a reality. This is the same way of acceding to a wish-
fulfilment as the queen of the Parthians was pleased to adopt in the case
of the triumvir Crassus. Believing that he had undertaken his campaign
out of greed for gold, she caused molten gold to be poured into the throat
of the corpse. “Here thou hast what thou hast longed for!”

Of the dream we know as yet only that it expresses a wish-fulfilment of
the unconscious; and apparently the dominant preconscious system per-
mits this fulfilment when it has compelled the wish to undergo certain
distortions. We are, moreover, not in fact in a position to demonstrate
regularly the presence of a train of thought opposed to the dream-wish,
which is realized in the dream as well as its antagonist. Only now and
then have we found in dream-analyses signs of reaction-products as, for
instance, my affection for my friend R— in the “dream of my uncle” (p.
220). But the contribution from the preconscious which is missing here
may be found in another place. The dream can provide expression for a
wish from the Ucs. by means of all sorts of distortions, once the dominant
system has withdrawn itself into the wish to sleep, and has realized this
wish by producing the changes of cathexis within the psychic apparatus.

¹⁾ Cf. my latest formulation of the origin of hysterical symptoms in the treatise on
“Hysterical Phantasies and their Relation to Bisexuality,” Collected Papers, vol. ii,
p. 51. This forms Chapter X in the English edition of Selected Papers on Hysteria
and Other Psychoneuroses.

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-PROCESSES

which are within its power; thereupon holding on to the wish in question
for the whole duration of sleep.¹

Now this persistent wish to sleep on the part of the preconscious has a
quite general facilitating effect on the formation of dreams. Let us recall
the dream of the father who, by the gleam of light from the death-cham-
ber, was led to conclude that his child’s body might have caught fire. We
have shown that one of the psychic forces decisive in causing the father to
draw this conclusion in the dream instead of allowing himself to be
awakened by the gleam of light was the wish to prolong the life of the
child seen in the dream by one moment. Other wishes originating in the
repressed have probably escaped us, for we are unable to analyse this
dream. But as a second source of motive-power in this dream we may add
the father’s desire to sleep, for, like the life of the child, the father’s sleep
is prolonged for a moment by the dream. The underlying motive is: “Let
the dream go on, or I must wake up.” As in this dream, so in all others,
the wish to sleep lends its support to the unconscious wish. On page 209
we cited dreams which were manifestly dreams of convenience. But in
truth all dreams may claim this designation. The efficacy of the wish to
go on sleeping is most easily recognized in the awakening dreams, which
so elaborate the external sensory stimulus that it becomes compatible
with the continuance of sleep; they weave it into a dream in order to rob
it of any claims it might make as a reminder of the outer world. But this
wish to go on sleeping must also play its part in permitting all other
dreams, which can only act as disturbers of the state of sleep from
within. “Don’t worry; sleep on; it’s only a dream,” is in many cases the
suggestion of the Pcs. to consciousness when the dream gets too bad; and
this describes in a quite general way the attitude of our dominant psychic
activity towards dreaming, even though the thought remains unuttered. I
must draw the conclusion that throughout the whole of our sleep we are
just as certain that we are dreaming as we are certain that we are sleeping.
It is imperative to disregard the objection that our consciousness is never
directed to the latter knowledge, and that it is directed to the former
knowledge only on special occasions, when the censorship feels, as it were,
taken by surprise. On the contrary, there are persons in whom the re-
tention at night of the knowledge that they are sleeping and dreaming
becomes quite manifest, and who are thus apparently endowed with the
conscious faculty of guiding their dream-life. Such a dreamer, for ex-
ample, is dissatisfied with the turn taken by a dream; he breaks it off
without waking, and begins it afresh, in order to continue it along differ-
ent lines, just like a popular author who, upon request, gives a happier
ending to his play. Or on another occasion, when the dream places him in

¹This idea has been borrowed from the theory of sleep of Liébault, who revived
hypnotic research in modern times ( Du Sommeil provoqué, etc., Paris, 1889).

514

a sexually exciting situation, he thinks in his sleep: “I don’t want to
continue this dream and exhaust myself by an emission; I would rather
save it for a real situation.”

The Marquis Hervey (Vaschide) declared that he had gained such
power over his dreams that he could accelerate their course at will,
and turn them in any direction he wished. It seems that in him the wish to
sleep had accorded a place to another, a preconscious wish, the wish to ob-
serve his dreams and to derive pleasure from them. Sleep is just as com-
patible with such a wish-
resolve as it is with some proviso as a condition
of waking up (wet-
nurse’s sleep). We know, too, that in all persons an
interest in dreams greatly increases the number of dreams remembered
after waking.

Concerning other observations as to the guidance of dreams, Ferenczi
states: “The dream takes the thought that happens to occupy our psychic
life at the moment, and elaborates it from all sides. It lets any given
dream-
picture drop when there is a danger that the wish-
fulfilment will
miscarry, and attempts a new kind of solution, until it finally succeeds in
creating a wish-
fulfilment that satisfies in one compromise both instances
of the psychic life.”

D. WAKING CAUSED BY DREAMS. THE FUNCTION OF DREAMS.

THE ANXIETY-
DREAM

Now that we know that throughout the night the preconscious is ori-
entated to the wish to sleep, we can follow the dream-
process with proper
understanding. But let us first summarize what we already know about
this process. We have seen that day-
residues are left over from the waking
activity of the mind, residues from which it has not been possible to with-
draw all cathexis. Either one of the unconscious wishes has been aroused
through the waking activity during the day or it so happens that the two
coincide; we have already discussed the multifarious possibilities. Either
already during the day or only on the establishment of the state of sleep
the unconscious wish has made its way to the day-
residues, and has ef-
fected a transference to them. Thus there arises a wish transferred to
recent material; or the suppressed recent wish is revived by a reinforce-
ment from the unconscious. This wish now endeavours to make its way to
consciousness along the normal path of the thought processes, through
the preconscious, to which indeed it belongs by virtue of one of its con-
stituent elements. It is, however, confronted by the censorship which still
subsists, and to whose influence it soon succumbs. It now takes on the
distortion for which the way has already been paved by the transference
to recent material. So far it is on the way to becoming something re-
sembling an obsession, a delusion, or the like, i.e. a thought reinforced by
a transference, and distorted in expression owing to the censorship. But

515

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-
PROCESSES

its further progress is now checked by the state of sleep of the precon-
scious; this system has presumably protected itself against invasion by
diminishing its excitations. The dream-process, therefore, takes the re-
gressive course, which is just opened up by the peculiarity of the sleeping
state, and in so doing follows the attraction exerted on it by memory-
groups, which are, in part only, themselves present as visual cathexis,
not as translations into the symbols of the later systems. On its way to
regression it acquires representability. The subject of compression will
be discussed later. The dream-process has by this time covered the second
part of its contorted course. The first part threads its way progressively
from the unconscious scenes or phantasies to the preconscious, while the
second part struggles back from the boundary of the censorship to the
tract of the perceptions. But when the dream-process becomes a percep-
tion-content, it has, so to speak, eluded the obstacle set up in the Pcs. by
the censorship and the sleeping state. It succeeds in drawing attention to
itself, and in being remarked by consciousness. For consciousness, which
for us means a sense-organ for the apprehension of psychic qualities, can
be excited in waking life from two sources: firstly, from the periphery of
the whole apparatus, the perceptive system; and secondly, from the ex-
citations of pleasure and pain which emerge as the sole psychic qualities
yielded by the transpositions of energy in the interior of the apparatus.
All other processeses in the ψ-systems, even those in the preconscious, are
devoid of all psychic quality, and are therefore not objects of conscious-
ness, inasmuch as they do not provide either pleasure or pain for its per-
ception. We shall have to assume that these releases of pleasure and pain
automatically regulate the course of the cathectic processes. But in order
to make possible more delicate performances, it subsequently proved
necessary to render the flow of ideas more independent of pain-signals.
To accomplish this, the Pcs. system needed qualities of its own which
could attract consciousness, and most probably received them through
the connection of the preconscious processes with the memory-system of
speech-symbols, which was not devoid of quality. Through the qualities
of this system, consciousness, hitherto only a sense-organ for perceptions,
now becomes also a sense-organ for a part of our thought-processes.
There are now, as it were, two sensory surfaces, one turned toward per-
ception and the other toward the preconscious thought-processes.

I must assume that the sensory surface of consciousness which is turned
to the preconscious is rendered far more unexcitable by sleep than the
surface turned toward the P-system. The giving up of interest in the
nocturnal thought-process is, of course, an appropriate procedure. Noth-
ing is to happen in thought; the preconscious wants to sleep. But once
the dream becomes perception, it is capable of exciting consciousness
through the qualities now gained. The sensory excitation performs what

516

is in fact its function; namely, it directs a part of the cathetic energy
available in the Pcs. to the exciting cause in the form of attention. We
must therefore admit that the dream always has a waking effect—that is,
it calls into activity part of the quiescent energy of the Pcs. Under the
influence of this energy, it now undergoes the process which we have de-
scribed as secondary elaboration with a view to coherence and compre-
hensibility. This means that the dream is treated by this energy like any
other perception-content; it is subjected to the same anticipatory ideas as
far, at least, as the material allows. As far as this third part of the dream-
process has any direction, this is once more progressive.

To avoid misunderstanding, it will not be amiss to say a few words as
to the temporal characteristics of these dream-processes. In a very inter-
esting discussion, evidently suggested by Maury’s puzzling guillotine
dream, Goblot tries to demonstrate that a dream takes up no other time
than the transition period between sleeping and waking. The process of
waking up requires time; during this time the dream occurs. It is sup-
posed that the final picture of the dream is so vivid that it forces the
dreamer to wake; in reality it is so vivid only because when it appears
the dreamer is already very near waking. “Un rêve, c’est un réveil qui com-
mence.”

It has already been pointed out by Dugas that Goblot, in order to gen-
eralize his theory, was forced to ignore a great many facts. There are also
dreams from which we do not awaken; for example, many dreams in
which we dream that we dream. From our knowledge of the dream-work,
we can by no means admit that it extends only over the period of wak-
ing. On the contrary, we must consider it probable that the first part of
the dream-work is already begun during the day, when we are still under
the domination of the preconscious. The second phase of the dream-work,
viz. the alteration by the censorship, the attraction exercised by uncon-
scious scenes, and the penetration to perception, continues probably all
through the night, and accordingly we may always be correct when we re-
port a feeling that we have been dreaming all night, even although we
cannot say what we have dreamed. I do not, however, think that it is nec-
essary to assume that up to the time of becoming conscious the dream-
processes really follow the temporal sequence which we have described;
viz. that there is first the transferred dream-wish, then the process of dis-
tortion due to the censorship, and then the change of direction to regres-
sion, etc. We were obliged to construct such a sequence for the sake of
description; in reality, however, it is probably rather a question of simul-
taneously trying this path and that, and of the excitation fluctuating to
and fro, until finally, because it has attained the most apposite concen-
tration, one particular grouping remains in the field. Certain personal ex-
periences even incline me to believe that the dream-work often requires

517

more than one day and one night to produce its re-
sult, in which case the extraordinary art manifested in the con-
struction of the dream is shorn of its miraculous character. In my
opinion, even the regard for the comprehensibility of the dream as
a perceptual event may exert its influence before the dream attracts
consciousness to itself. From this point, however, the process is
accelerated, since the dream is henceforth subjected to the same
treatment as any other perception. It is like fire works, which
require hours for their preparation and then flare up in a moment.

Through the dream-
work, the dream-
process now either gains sufficient intensity to attract conscious-
ness to itself and to arouse the preconscious (quite independently
of the time or profundity of sleep), or its intensity is insufficient,
and it must wait in readiness until attention, becoming more alert
immediately before waking, meets it half-
way. Most dreams seem
to operate with relatively slight psychic intensities, for they wait
for the process of waking. This, then, explains the fact that as a
rule we perceive something dreamed if we are suddenly roused from
a deep sleep. Here, as well as in spontaneous waking, our first
glance lights upon the perception-
content created by the dream-
work, while the next falls on that provided by the outer world.

But of greater theoretical interest are those dreams which are
capable of waking us in the midst of our sleep. We may bear in
mind the purposefulness which can be demonstrated in all other
cases, and ask ourselves why the dream, that is, the unconscious
wish, is granted the power to disturb our sleep, i.e. the fulfilment of
the preconscious wish. The explanation is probably to be found in
certain relations of energy which we do not yet understand. If we
did so, we should probably find that the freedom given to the
dream and the expenditure upon it of a certain detached attention
represent a saving of energy as against the alternative case of the
unconscious having to be held in check at night just as it is during
the day. As experience shows, dreaming, even if it interrupts our
sleep several times a night, still remains compatible with sleep. We
wake up for a moment, and immediately fall asleep again. It is like
driving off a fly in our sleep; we wake ad hoc. When we fall asleep
again we have removed the cause of disturbance. The familiar
examples of the sleep of wet-
nurses, etc., show that the fulfilment of
the wish to sleep is quite compatible with the maintenance of a
certain amount of attention in a given direction.

But we must here take note of an objection which is based on a
greater knowledge of the unconscious processes. We have ourselves
described the unconscious wishes as always active, whilst nevertheless
asserting that in the daytime they are not strong enough to make
themselves perceptible. But when the state of sleep supervenes, and
the unconscious wish has shown its power to form a dream, and with
it to awaken the preconscious.

518

scious, why does this power lapse after cognisance has been taken of the
dream? Would it not seem more probable that the dream should continu-
ally renew itself, like the disturbing fly which, when driven away, takes
pleasure in returning again and again? What justification have we for
our assertion that the dream removes the disturbance to sleep?

It is quite true that the unconscious wishes are always active. They rep-
resent paths which are always practicable, whenever a quantum of ex-
citation makes use of them. It is indeed an outstanding peculiarity of the
unconscious processes that they are indestructible. Nothing can be
brought to an end in the unconscious; nothing is past or forgotten. This
is impressed upon us emphatically in the study of the neuroses, and espe-
cially of hysteria. The unconscious path of thought which leads to the dis-
charge through an attack is forthwith passable again when there is a
sufficient accumulation of excitation. The mortification suffered thirty
years ago operates, after having gained access to the unconscious sources
of affect, during all these thirty years as though it were a recent experi-
ence. Whenever its memory is touched, it revives, and shows itself to be
cathected with excitation which procures a motor discharge for itself in
an attack. It is precisely here that psychotherapy must intervene, its task
being to ensure that the unconscious processes are settled and forgotten.
Indeed, the fading of memories and the weak affect of impressions which
are no longer recent, which we are apt to take as self-evident, and to ex-
plain as a primary effect of time on our psychic memory-residues, are in
reality secondary changes brought about by laborious work. It is the
preconscious that accomplishes this work; and the only course which
psychotherapy can pursue is to bring the Ucs. under the dominion of the
Pcs.

There are, therefore, two possible issues for any single unconscious
excitation-
process. Either it is left to itself, in which case it ultimately
breaks through somewhere and secures, on this one occasion, a discharge
for its excitation into motility, or it succumbs to the influence of the
preconscious, and through this its excitation becomes bound instead of
being discharged. It is the latter case that occurs in the dream-
process.
The cathexis from the Pcs. which goes to meet the dream once this has
attained to perception, because it has been drawn thither by the excita-
tion of consciousness, binds the unconscious excitation of the dream
and renders it harmless as a disturber of sleep. When the dreamer
wakes up for a moment, he has really chased away the fly that threat-
ened to disturb his sleep. We may now begin to suspect that it is really
more expedient and economical to give way to the unconscious wish, to
leave clear its path to regression so that it may form a dream, and then
to bind and dispose of this dream by means of a small outlay of pre-
conscious work, than to hold the unconscious in check throughout the

519

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-
PROCESSES
whole period of sleep. It was, indeed, to be expected that the dream, even
if originally it was not a purposeful process, would have seized upon some
definite function in the play of forces of the psychic life. We now see what
this function is. The dream has taken over the task of bringing the excita-
tion of the Ucs., which had been left free, back under the domination of
the preconscious; it thus discharges the excitation of the Ucs., acts as a
safety-valve for the latter, and at the same time, by a slight outlay of
waking activity, secures the sleep of the preconscious. Thus, like the other
psychic formations of its group, the dream offers itself as a compromise,
serving both systems simultaneously, by fulfilling the wishes of both, in
so far as they are mutually compatible. A glance at Robert’s “elimination
theory” will show that we must agree with this author on his main point,
namely, the determination of the function of dreams, though we differ
from him in our general presuppositions and in our estimation of the
dream-process.¹

The above qualification—in so far as the two wishes are mutually com-
patible—contains a suggestion that there may be cases in which the func-
tion of the dream fails. The dream-process is, to begin with, admitted as
a wish-fulfilment of the unconscious, but if this attempted wish-fulfilment
disturbs the preconscious so profoundly that the latter can no longer
maintain its state of rest, the dream has broken the compromise, and has
failed to perform the second part of its task. It is then at once broken
off, and replaced by complete awakening. But even here it is not really
the fault of the dream if, though at other times the guardian, it has now
to appear as the disturber of sleep, nor need this prejudice us against

¹Is this the only function which we can attribute to dreams? I know of no other.
A. Maeder, to be sure, has endeavoured to claim for the dream yet other “secondary”
functions. He started from the just observation that many dreams contain attempts
to provide solutions of conflicts, which are afterwards actually carried through. They
thus behave like preparatory practice for waking activities. He therefore drew a
parallel between dreaming and the play of animals and children, which is to be con-
ceived as a training of the inherited instincts, and a preparation for their later serious
activity, thus setting up a fonction ludique for the dream. A little while before
Maeder, Alfred Adler likewise emphasized the function of “thinking ahead” in the
dream. (An analysis which I published in 1905 contained a dream which may be
conceived as a resolution-dream, which was repeated night after night until it was
realized.)
But an obvious reflection must show us that this “secondary” function of the
dream has no claim to recognition within the framework of any dream-interpre-
tation. Thinking ahead, making resolutions, sketching out attempted solutions which
can then perhaps be realized in waking life—these and many more performances are
functions of the unconscious and preconscious activities of the mind which continue
as “day-residues” in the sleeping state, and can then combine with an unconscious
wish to form a dream (see p. 507). The function of “thinking ahead” in the dream
is thus rather a function of preconscious waking thought, the result of which may
be disclosed to us by the analysis of dreams or other phenomena. After the dream
has so long been fused with its manifest content, one must now guard against con-
fusing it with the latent dream-thoughts.

520

its averred purposive character. This is not the only instance in the or-
ganism in which a contrivance that is usually to the purpose becomes in-
appropriate and disturbing so soon as something is altered in the condi-
tions which engender it; the disturbance, then, at all events serves the
new purpose of indicating the change, and of bringing into play against
it the means of adjustment of the organism. Here, of course, I am think-
ing of the anxiety-dream, and lest it should seem that I try to evade this
witness against the theory of wish-fulfilment whenever I encounter it, I
will at least give some indications as to the explanation of the anxiety-
dream.

That a psychic process which develops anxiety may still be a wish-ful-
filment has long ceased to imply any contradiction for us. We may explain
this occurrence by the fact that the wish belongs to one system (the
Ucs.), whereas the other system (the Pcs.) has rejected and suppressed
it.¹ The subjection of the Ucs. by the Pcs. is not thoroughgoing even in
perfect psychic health; the extent of this suppression indicates the degree
of our psychic normality. Neurotic symptoms indicate to us that the two
systems are in mutual conflict; the symptoms are the result of a com-
promise in this conflict, and they temporarily put an end to it. On the
one hand they afford the Ucs. a way out for the discharge of its excita-
tion—they serve it as a kind of sally-gate—while, on the other hand, they
give the Pcs. the possibility of dominating the Ucs. in some degree. It is
instructive to consider, for example, the significance of a hysterical
phobia, or of agoraphobia. A neurotic is said to be incapable of crossing

¹A second consideration, much more important and far-reaching, but equally over-
looked by the laity, is the following. A wish-fulfilment must certainly bring some
pleasure; but we go on to ask: ‘To whom?’ Of course to the person who has the
wish. But we know that the attitude of the dreamer towards his wishes is a peculiar
one: he rejects, censors them, in short, he will have none of them. Their fulfil-
ment, then, can afford him no pleasure, rather the ‘opposite’, and here experience
shows that this ‘opposite’, which has still to be explained, takes the form of anxiety.
The dreamer, whose his wishes are concerned, is like two separate people closely
linked together by some important thing in common. Instead of enlarging upon this
I will remind you of a well-known fairy-tale in which you will see these relationships
repeated. A good fairy promised a poor man and his wife to fulfil their first three
wishes. They were delighted, and made up their minds to choose the wishes care-
fully. But the woman was tempted by the smell of some sausages being cooked in
the next cottage and wished for two like them. Lo! and behold, there they were—
and the first wish was fulfilled. With that, the man lost his temper and in his resent-
ment wished that the sausages might hang on the tip of his wife’s nose. This also
came to pass, and the sausages could not be removed from their position; so the
second wish was fulfilled, but it was the man’s wish and its fulfilment was most un-
pleasant for the woman. You know the rest of the story: as they were after all man
and wife the third wish had to be that the sausages should come off the end of the
woman’s nose. We might make use of this fairy-tale many times over in other con-
texts, but here it need only serve to illustrate the fact that it is possible for the fulfil-
ment of one person’s wish to be very disagreeable to someone else, unless the two peo-
ple are entirely at one!” Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, London, 1929,
pp. 182–183.

521

the street alone, and this we should rightly call a “symptom.” Let some-
one now remove this symptom by constraining him to this action which
he deems himself incapable of performing. The result will be an attack
of anxiety, just as an attack of anxiety in the street has often been the
exciting cause of the establishment of an agoraphobia. We thus, learn
that the symptom has been constituted in order to prevent the anxiety
from breaking out. The phobia is thrown up before the anxiety like a
frontier fortress.

We cannot enlarge further on this subject unless we examine the rôle
of the affects in these processes, which can only be done here imperfectly.
We will therefore affirm the proposition that the principal reason why
the suppression of the Ucs. becomes necessary is that if the movement
of ideas in the Ucs. were allowed to run its course, it would develop an
affect which originally had the character of pleasure, but which, since
the process of repression, bears the character of pain. The aim, as well as
the result, of the suppression is to prevent the development of this pain.
The suppression extends to the idea-
content of the Ucs., because the
liberation of pain might emanate from this idea-
content. We here take as
our basis a quite definite assumption as to the nature of the development
of affect. This is regarded as a motor or secretory function, the key to the
innervation of which is to be found in the ideas of the Ucs. Through the
domination of the Pcs. these ideas are as it were strangled, that is, in-
hibited from sending out the impulse that would develop the affect. The
danger which arises if cathexis by the Pcs. ceases thus consists in the
fact that the unconscious excitations would liberate an affect that—in
consequence of the repression that has previously occurred—could only
be felt as pain or anxiety.

This danger is released if the dream-
process is allowed to have its
own way. The conditions for its realization are, that repressions shall
have occurred, and that the suppressed wish-
impulses can become suffi-
ciently strong. They, therefore, fall entirely outside the psychological
framework of dream-
formation. Were it not for the fact that our theme
is connected by just one factor with the theme of the development of
anxiety, namely, by the setting free of the Ucs. during sleep, I could
refrain from the discussion of the anxiety-
dream altogether, and thus
avoid all the obscurities involved in it.

The theory of the anxiety-
dream belongs, as I have already re-
peatedly stated, to the psychology of the neuroses. I might further add
that anxiety in dreams is an anxiety-
problem and not a dream-
problem.
Having once exhibited the point of contact of the psychology of the
neuroses with the theme of the dream-
process, we have nothing further
to do with it. There is only one thing left which I can do. Since I have
asserted that neurotic anxiety has its origin in sexual sources, I can sub-

522

ject anxiety-dreams to analysis in order to demonstrate the sexual ma-
terial in their dream-thoughts.

For good reasons I refrain from citing any of the examples so abun-
dantly placed at my disposal by neurotic patients, and prefer to give
some anxiety-dreams of children.

Personally, I have had no real anxiety-dream for decades, but I do
recall one from my seventh or eighth year which I subjected to inter-
pretation some thirty years later. The dream was very vivid, and showed
me my beloved mother, with a peculiarly calm, sleeping countenance,
carried into the room and laid on the bed by two (or three) persons
with birds’ beaks. I awoke crying and screaming, and disturbed my
parents’ sleep. The peculiarly draped, excessively tall figures with beaks
I had taken from the illustrations of Philippson’s Bible; I believe they
represented deities with the heads of sparrowhawks from an Egyptian
tomb-relief. The analysis yielded, however, also the recollection of a
house-porter’s boy, who used to play with us children on a meadow in
front of the house; I might add that his name was Philip. It seemed to
me then that I first heard from this boy the vulgar word signifying sex-
ual intercourse, which is replaced among educated persons by the Latin
word coitus, but which the dream plainly enough indicates by the choice
of the birds’ heads.¹⁾ I must have guessed the sexual significance of the
word from the look of my worldly-wise teacher. My mother’s expression
in the dream was copied from the countenance of my grandfather, whom
I had seen a few days before his death snoring in a state of coma. The
interpretation of the secondary elaboration in the dream must there-
fore have been that my mother was dying; the tomb-relief, too, agrees
with this. I awoke with this anxiety, and could not calm myself until
I had waked my parents. I remember that I suddenly became calm
when I saw my mother; it was as though I had needed the assurance:
then she is not dead. But this secondary interpretation of the dream
had only taken place when the influence of the developed anxiety was al-
ready at work. I was not in a state of anxiety because I had dreamt that
my mother was dying; I interpreted the dream in this manner in the pre-
conscious elaboration because I was already under the domination of the
anxiety. The latter, however, could be traced back, through the repres-
sion to a dark, plainly sexual craving, which had found appropriate ex-
pression in the visual content of the dream.

A man twenty-seven years of age, who had been seriously ill for a year,
had repeatedly dreamed, between the ages of eleven and thirteen, dreams
attended with great anxiety, to the effect that a man with a hatchet was
running after him; he wanted to run away, but seemed to be paralysed,

¹⁾ The German of the word bird is “Vogel,” which gives origin to the vulgar ex-
pression vögeln, denoting sexual intercourse.—TRANS.]

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-PROCESSES

and could not move from the spot. This may be taken as a good and typi-
cal example of a very common anxiety-dream, free from any suspicion of
a sexual meaning. In the analysis, the dreamer first thought of a story told
him by his uncle (chronologically later than the dream), viz. that he was
attacked at night in the street by a suspicious-looking individual; and he
concluded from this association that he might have heard of a similar
episode at the time of the dream. In association with the hatchet, he re-
called that during this period of his life he once hurt his hand with a
hatchet while chopping wood. This immediately reminded him of his
relations with his younger brother, whom he used to maltreat and knock
down. He recalled, in particular, one occasion when he hit his brother’s
head with his boot and made it bleed, and his mother said: “I’m afraid
he will kill him one day.” While he seemed to be thus held by the theme
of violence, a memory from his ninth year suddenly emerged. His parents
had come home late and had gone to bed, whilst he was pretending to be
asleep. He soon heard panting, and other sounds that seemed to him
mysterious, and he could also guess the position of his parents in bed. His
further thoughts showed that he had established an analogy between this
relation between his parents and his own relation to his younger brother.
He subsumed what was happening between his parents under the notion
of “an act of violence and a fight.” The fact that he had frequently noticed
blood in his mother’s bed corroborated this conception.

That the sexual intercourse of adults appears strange and alarming to
children who observe it, and arouses anxiety in them, is, I may say, a fact
established by everyday experience. I have explained this anxiety on the
ground that we have here a sexual excitation which is not mastered by
the child’s understanding, and which probably also encounters repul-
sion because their parents are involved, and is therefore transformed into
anxiety. At a still earlier period of life the sexual impulse towards the
parent of opposite sex does not yet suffer repression, but as we have seen
(pp. 249–51) expresses itself freely.

For the night terrors with hallucinations (pavor nocturnus) so fre-
quent in children I should without hesitation offer the same explanation.
These, too, can only be due to misunderstood and rejected sexual im-
pulses which, if recorded, would probably show a temporal periodicity,
since an intensification of sexual libido may equally be produced by acci-
dentally exciting impressions and by spontaneous periodic processes of
development.

I have not the necessary observational material for the full demonstra-
tion of this explanation.¹ On the other hand, pædiatrists seem to lack the
point of view which alone makes intelligible the whole series of phenom-

¹This material has since been provided in abundance by the literature of psycho-
analysis.

524

ena, both from the somatic and from the psychic side. To illustrate by a
comical example how closely, if one is made blind by the blinkers of
medical mythology, one may pass by the understanding of such cases, I
will cite a case which I found in a thesis on pavor nocturnus (Debacker,
1881, p. 66).

A boy of thirteen, in delicate health, began to be anxious and dreamy;
his sleep became uneasy, and once almost every week it was interrupted
by an acute attack of anxiety with hallucinations. The memory of these
dreams was always very distinct. Thus he was able to relate that the devil
had shouted at him: “Now we have you, now we have you!” and then
there was a smell of pitch and brimstone, and the fire burned his skin.
From this dream he woke in terror; at first he could not cry out; then
his voice came back to him, and he was distinctly heard to say: “No, no,
not me, I haven’t done anything,” or: “Please, don’t; I will never do it
again!” At other times he said: “Albert has never done that!” Later he
avoided undressing, “because the fire attacked him only when he was un-
dressed.” In the midst of these evil dreams, which were endangering his
health, he was sent into the country, where he recovered in the course of
eighteen months. At the age of fifteen he confessed one day: “Je n’osais
pas l’avouer, mais j’éprouvais continuellement des picotements et des
surexcitations aux parties;¹ à la fin, cela m’énervait tant que plusieurs
fois j’ai pensé me jeter par la fenêtre du dortoir.”

It is, of course, not difficult to guess: 1. That the boy had practised
masturbation in former years, that he had probably denied it, and was
threatened with severe punishment for his bad habit. (His confession:
Je ne le ferai plus; his denial: Albert n’a jamais fait ça.) 2. That under
the advancing pressure of puberty the temptation to masturbate was re-
awakened through the titillation of the genitals. 3. That now, however,
there arose within him a struggle for repression, which suppressed the
libido and transformed it into anxiety, and that this anxiety now gathered
up the punishments with which he was originally threatened.

Let us, on the other hand, see what conclusions were drawn by the
author (p. 69):

“1. It is clear from this observation that the influence of puberty may
produce in a boy of delicate health a condition of extreme weak-
ness, and that this may lead to a very marked cerebral anaemia.²
“2. This cerebral anaemia produces an alteration of character, demono-
maniacal hallucinations, and very violent nocturnal, and perhaps
also diurnal, states of anxiety.
“3. The demonomania and the self-reproaches of the boy can be traced

¹The emphasis is my own, though the meaning is plain enough without it.
²The italics are mine.

525

to the influences of a religious education which had acted upon
him as a child.

“4. All manifestations disappeared as a result of a lengthy sojourn
in the country, bodily exercise, and the return of physical strength
after the termination of puberty.

“5. Possibly an influence predisposing to the development of the boy’s
cerebral state may be attributed to heredity and to the father’s
former syphilis.”

Then finally come the concluding remarks: “Nous avons fait entrer
cette observation dans le cadre délires apyrétiques d’inanition, car c’est
à l’ischémie cérébrale que nous rattachons cet état particulier.”

E. THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY PROCESSES. REPRESSION

In attempting to penetrate more profoundly into the psychology of the
dream-
processes, I have undertaken a difficult task, to which, indeed, my
powers of exposition are hardly adequate. To reproduce the simultaneity
of so complicated a scheme in terms of a successive description, and at
the same time to make each part appear free from all assumptions, goes
fairly beyond my powers. I have now to atone for the fact that in my ex-
position of the psychology of dreams I have been unable to follow the
historic development of my own insight. The lines of approach to the
comprehension of the dream were laid down for me by previous investi-
gations into the psychology of the neuroses, to which I should not refer
here, although I am constantly obliged to do so; whereas I should like
to work in the opposite direction, starting from the dream, and then pro-
ceeding to establish its junction with the psychology of the neuroses. I am
conscious of all the difficulties which this involves for the reader, but I
know of no way to avoid them.

Since I am dissatisfied with this state of affairs, I am glad to dwell upon
another point of view, which would seem to enhance the value of my
efforts. As was shown in the introductory section, I found myself con-
fronted with a theme which had been marked by the sharpest contradic-
tions on the part of those who had written on it. In the course of our
treatment of the problems of the dream, room has been found for most
of these contradictory views. We have been compelled to take decided
exception to two only of the views expressed: namely, that the dream is
a meaningless process, and that it is a somatic process. Apart from these,
we have been able to find a place for the truth of all the contradictory
opinions at one point or another of the complicated tissue of the facts,
and we have been able to show that each expressed something genuine
and correct. That our dreams continue the impulses and interests of wak-
ing life has been generally confirmed by the discovery of the hidden
dream-
thoughts. These concern themselves only with things that seem

526

to us important and of great interest. Dreams never occupy themselves
with trifles. But we have accepted also the opposite view, namely, that
the dream gathers up the indifferent residues of the day, and cannot
seize upon any important interest of the day until it has in some measure
withdrawn itself from waking activity. We have found that this holds
true of the dream-
content, which by means of distortion gives the dream-
thought an altered expression. We have said that the dream-process,
owing to the nature of the mechanism of association, finds it easier to
obtain possession of recent or indifferent material, which has not yet been
put under an embargo by our waking mental activity; and that on ac-
count of the censorship it transfers the psychic intensity of the significant
but also objectionable material to the indifferent. The hypermnesia of
the dream and its ability to dispose of infantile material have become the
main foundations of our doctrine; in our theory of dreams we have as-
signed to a wish of infantile origin the part of the indispensable motive-
power of dream-formation. It has not, of course, occurred to us to doubt
the experimentally demonstrated significance of external sensory stimuli
during sleep; but we have placed this material in the same relation to
the dream-wish as the thought-residues left over from our waking activ-
ity. We need not dispute the fact that the dream interprets objective sen-
sory stimuli after the manner of an illusion; but we have supplied the
motive for this interpretation, which has been left indeterminate by other
writers. The interpretation proceeds in such a way that the perceived
object is rendered harmless as a source of disturbance of sleep, whilst it
is made usable for the wish-fulfilment. Though we do not admit as a spe-
cial source of dreams the subjective state of excitation of the sensory
organs during sleep (which seems to have been demonstrated by Trum-
bull Ladd), we are, nevertheless, able to explain this state of excitation by
the regressive revival of the memories active behind the dream. As to the
internal organic sensations, which are wont to be taken as the cardinal
point of the explanation of dreams, these, too, find a place in our concep-
tion, though indeed a more modest one. These sensations—the sensations
of falling, of soaring, or of being inhibited—represent an ever-ready
material, which the dream-work can employ to express the dream-thought
as often as need arises.

That the dream-process is a rapid and momentary one is, we believe,
true as regards the perception by consciousness of the preformed dream-
content; but we have found that the preceding portions of the dream-
process probably follow a slow, fluctuating course. As for the riddle of
the superabundant dream-content compressed into the briefest moment
of time, we have been able to contribute the explanation that the dream
seizes upon ready-made formations of the psychic life. We have found
that it is true that dreams are distorted and mutilated by the memory,

527

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-PROCESSES

but that this fact presents no difficulties, as it is only the last manifest
portion of a process of distortion which has been going on from the very
beginning of the dream-
work. In the embittered controversy, which has
seemed irreconcili-
able, whether the psychic life is asleep at night, or can
make the same use of all its faculties as during the day, we have been
able to conclude that both sides are right, but that neither is entirely so.
In the dream-
thoughts we found evidence of a highly complicated intel-
lectual activity, operating with almost all the resources of the psychic
apparatus; yet it cannot be denied that these dream-
thoughts have origi-
nated during the day, and it is indispensable to assume that there is a
sleeping state of the psychic life. Thus, even the doctrine of partial sleep
received its due, but we have found the characteristic feature of the sleep-
ing state not in the disintegration of the psychic system of connections,
but in the special attitude adopted by the psychic system which is domi-
nant during the day—the attitude of the wish to sleep. The deflection
from the outer world retains its significance for our view, too; though not
the only factor at work, it helps to make possible the regressive course
of the dream-
representation. The abandonment of voluntary guidance
of the flow of ideas is incontest-
able; but psychic life does not thereby
become aimless, for we have seen that upon relinquish-
ment of the volun-
tary directing ideas, involuntary ones take charge. On the other hand, we
have not only recognized the loose associative connection of the dream,
but have brought a far greater area within the scope of this kind of con-
nection than could have been suspected; we have, however, found it
merely an enforced substitute for another, a correct and significant type
of association. To be sure, we too have called the dream absurd, but ex-
amples have shown us how wise the dream is when it simulates absurdity.
As regards the functions that have been attributed to the dream, we are
able to accept them all. That the dream relieves the mind, like a safety-
valve, and that, as Robert has put it, all kinds of harmful material are
rendered harmless by representation in the dream, not only coincides
exactly with our own theory of the twofold wish-
fulfilment in the dream,
but in its very wording becomes more intelligible for us than it is for
Robert himself. The free indulgence of the psyche in the play of its facul-
ties is reproduced in our theory as the non-
interference of the precon-
scious activity with the dream. The “return to the embryonal standpoint
of psychic life in the dream,” and Havelock Ellis’s remark that the dream
is “an archaic world of vast emotions and imperfect thoughts,” appear
to us as happy anticipations of our own exposition, which asserts that
primitive modes of operations that are suppressed during the day play
a part in the formation of dreams. We can fully identify ourselves with
Sully’s statement, that “our dreams bring back again our earlier and suc-
cessively developed personalities, our old ways of regarding things, with

528

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

impulses and modes of reaction which ruled us long ago”; and for us, as
for Delage, the suppressed material becomes the mainspring of the
dream.

We have fully accepted the rôle that Scherner ascribes to the dream-
phantasy, and his own interpretations, but we have been obliged to trans-
pose them, as it were, to another part of the problem. It is not the dream
that creates the phantasy, but the activity of unconscious phantasy that
plays the leading part in the formation of the dream-thoughts. We re-
main indebted to Scherner for directing us to the source of the dream-
thoughts, but almost everything that he ascribes to the dream-work is
attributable to the activity of the unconscious during the day, which
instigates dreams no less than neurotic symptoms. The dream-work we
had to separate from this activity as something quite different and far
more closely controlled. Finally, we have by no means renounced the rela-
tion of the dream to psychic disturbances, but have given it, on new
ground, a more solid foundation.

Held together by the new features in our theory as by a superior unity,
we find the most varied and most contradictory conclusions of other
writers fitting into our structure; many of them are given a different
turn, but only a few of them are wholly rejected. But our own structure
is still unfinished. For apart from the many obscure questions in which
we have involved ourselves by our advance into the dark regions of psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit together with perfect
logic. We cannot, therefore, doubt that these thoughts have their own
origin in our normal mental life. All the qualities which we value in our
thought-processes, and which mark them out as complicated performances
of a high order, we shall find repeated in the dream-thoughts. There is,
however, no need to assume that this mental work is performed during
sleep; such an assumption would badly confuse the conception of the psy-
chology, we are now, it would seem, embarrassed by a new contradiction.
On the one hand, we have made it appear that the dream-thoughts pro-
ceed from perfectly normal psychic activities, but on the other hand we
have found among the dream-thoughts a number of entirely abnormal
mental processes, which extend also to the dream-content, and which we
reproduce in the interpretation of the dream. All that we have termed the
“dream-work” seems to depart so completely from the psychic processes
which we recognize as correct and appropriate that the severest judg-
ments expressed by the writers mentioned as to the low level of psychic
achievement of dreams must appear well founded.

Here, perhaps, only further investigations can provide an explanation
and set us on the right path. Let me pick out for renewed attention one
of the constellations which lead to dream-formation.

We have learned that the dream serves as a substitute for a number of
thoughts derived from our daily life, and which fit

529

chic state of sleep to which we have hitherto adhered. On the contrary,
these thoughts may very well have their origin in the daytime, and, unre-
marked by our consciousness, may have gone on from their first stimulus
until, at the onset of sleep, they have reached completion. If we are to con-
clude anything from this state of affairs, it can only be that it proves that
the most complex mental operations are possible without the coöperation
of consciousness—a truth which we have had to learn anyhow from every
psychoanalysis of a patient suffering from hysteria or obsessions. These
dream-
thoughts are certainly not in themselves incapable of conscious-
ness; if we have not become conscious of them during the day, this may
have been due to various reasons. The act of becoming conscious depends
upon a definite psychic function—attention—being brought to bear. This
seems to be available only in a determinate quantity, which may have
been diverted from the train of thought in question by other aims. An-
other way in which such trains of thought may be withheld from con-
sciousness is the following: From our conscious reflection we know that,
when applying our attention, we follow a particular course. But if that
course leads us to an idea which cannot withstand criticism, we break
off and allow the cathexis of attention to drop. Now, it would seem that
the train of thought thus started and abandoned may continue to develop
without our attention returning to it, unless at some point it attains a
specially high intensity which compels attention. An initial conscious re-
jection by our judgment, on the ground of incorrectness or uselessness
for the immediate purpose of the act of thought, may, therefore, be the
cause of a thought-
process going on unnoticed by consciousness until the
onset of sleep.

Let us now recapitulate: We call such a train of thought a preconscious
train, and we believe it to be perfectly correct, and that it may equally
well be a merely neglected train or one that has been interrupted and sup-
pressed. Let us also state in plain terms how we visualize the movement
of our thought. We believe that a certain quantity of excitation, which
we call “cathectic energy,” is displaced from a purposive idea along the
association paths selected by this directing idea. A “ne-
glected” train of
thought has received no such cathexis, and the cathexis has been with-
drawn from one that was “suppressed” “or rejected”; both have thus
been left to their own excitations. The train of thought cathected by some
aim becomes able under certain conditions to attract the attention of con-
sciousness, and by the mediation of consciousness it then receives “hyper-
cathexis.” We shall be obliged presently to elucidate our assumptions as
to the nature and function of consciousness.

A train of thought thus incited in the Pcs. may either disappear spon-
taneously, or it may continue. The former eventuality we conceive as fol-
lows: it diffuses its energy through all the association paths emanating

530

from it, and throws the entire chain of thoughts into a state of excitation,
which continues for a while, and then subsides, through the excitation
which had called for discharge being transformed into dormant cathexis.
If this first eventuality occurs, the process has no further significance for
dream-
formation. But other directing ideas are lurking in our precon-
scious, which have their source in our unconscious and ever-active wishes.
These may gain control of the excitation in the circle of thoughts thus
left to itself, establish a connection between it and the unconscious wish,
and transfer to it the energy inherent in the unconscious wish. Henceforth
the neglected or suppressed train of thought is in a position to maintain
itself, although this reinforcement gives it no claim to access to conscious-
ness. We may say, then, that the hitherto preconscious train of thought
has been drawn into the unconscious.

Other constellations leading to dream-formation might be as follows:
The preconscious train of thought might have been connected from the
beginning with the unconscious wish, and for that reason might have met
with rejection by the dominating aim-cathexis. Or an unconscious wish
might become active for other (possibly somatic) reasons, and of its own
accord seek a transference to the psychic residues not cathected by the
Pcs. All three cases have the same result: there is established in the pre-
conscious a train of thought which, having been abandoned by the pre-
conscious cathexis, has acquired cathexis from the unconscious wish.

From this point onward the train of thought is subjected to a series of
transformations which we no longer recognize as normal psychic proc-
esses, and which give a result that we find strange, a psychopathological
formation. Let us now emphasize and bring together these transforma-
tions:—

1. The intensities of the individual ideas become capable of discharge
in their entirety, and pass from one idea to another, so that individual
ideas are formed which are endowed with great intensity. Through the
repeated occurrence of this process, the intensity of an entire train of
thought may ultimately be concentrated in a single conceptual unit. This
is the fact of compression or condensation with which we became ac-
quainted when investigating the dream-work. It is condensation that is
mainly responsible for the strange impression produced by dreams, for
we know of nothing analogous to it in the normal psychic life that is
accessible to consciousness. We get here, too, ideas which are of great
psychic significance as nodal points or as end-results of whole chains of
thought, but this value is not expressed by any character actually mani-
fest for our internal perception; what is represented in it is not in any
way made more intensive. In the process of condensation the whole set
of psychic connections becomes transformed into the intensity of the
idea-content. The situation is the same as when in the case of a book I

531

italicize or print in heavy type any word to which I attach outstanding
value for the understanding of the text. In speech I should pronounce
the same word loudly and deliberately and with emphasis. The first simile
points immediately to one of the examples which were given of the dream-
work (trimethylamine in the dream of Irma’s injection). Historians of
art call our attention to the fact that the most ancient sculptures known
to history follow a similar principle, in expressing the rank of the persons
represented by the size of the statues. The king is made two or three times
as tall as his retinue or his vanquished enemies. But a work of art of the
Roman period makes use of more subtle means to accomplish the same
end. The figure of the Emperor is placed in the centre, erect and in his full
height, and special care is bestowed on the modelling of this figure; his
enemies are seen cowering at his feet; but he is no longer made to seem a
giant among dwarfs. At the same time, in the bowing of the subordinate
to his superior, even in our own day, we have an echo of this ancient prin-
ciple of representation.

The direction followed by the condensations of the dream is prescribed
on the one hand by the true preconscious relations of the dream-thoughts,
and on the other hand by the attraction of the visual memories in the un-
conscious. The success of the condensation-work produces those inten-
sities which are required for penetration to the perception-system.

2. By the free transference of intensities, and in the service of the con-
densation, intermediary ideas—compromises, as it were—are formed (cf.
the numerous examples). This, also, is something unheard of in the nor-
mal movement of our ideas, where what is of most importance is the se-
lection and the retention of the right conceptual material. On the other
hand, composite and compromise formations occur with extraordinary
frequency when we are trying to find verbal expression for preconscious
thoughts; these are considered “slips of the tongue.”

3. The ideas which transfer their intensities to one another are very
loosely connected, and are joined together by such forms of association
as are disdained by our serious thinking, and left to be exploited solely by
wit. In particular, assonances and punning associations are treated as
equal in value to any other associations.

4. Contradictory thoughts do not try to eliminate one another, but
continue side by side, and often combine to form condensation-products,
as though no contradiction existed; or they form compromises for which
we should never forgive our thought, but which we frequently sanction in
our action.

These are some of the most conspicuous abnormal processes to which
the dream-thoughts which have previously been rationally formed are
subjected in the course of the dream-work. As the main feature of these
processes, we may see that the greatest importance is attached to render-
ing

532

ing the cathecting energy mobile and capable of discharge; the content
and the intrinsic significance of the psychic elements to which these
cathexes adhere become matters of secondary importance. One might
perhaps assume that condensation and compromise-
formation are ef-
fected only in the service of regression, when the occasion arises for
changing thoughts into images. But the analysis—and still more plainly
the synthesis—of such dreams as show no regression towards images, e.g.
the dream “Autodidasker: Conversation with Professor N.,” reveals the
same processes of displacement and condensation as do the rest.

We cannot, therefore, avoid the conclusion that two kinds of essentially
different psychic processes participate in dream-
formation; one forms
perfectly correct and fitting dream-thoughts, equivalent to the results of
normal thinking, while the other deals with these thoughts in a most
astonishing and, as it seems, incorrect way. The latter process we have
already set apart in Chapter VI as the dream-work proper. What can we
say now as to the derivation of this psychic process?

It would be impossible to answer this question here if we had not pene-
trated a considerable way into the psychology of the neuroses, and espe-
cially of hysteria. From this, however, we learn that the same “incorrect”
psychic processes—as well as others not enumerated—control the pro-
duction of hysterical symptoms. In hysteria, too, we find at first a series
of perfectly correct and fitting thoughts, equivalent to our conscious ones,
of whose existence in this form we can, however, learn nothing, i.e. which
we can only subsequently reconstruct. If they have forced their way any-
where to perception, we discover from the analysis of the symptom formed
that these normal thoughts have been subjected to abnormal treatment,
and that by means of condensation and compromise-formation, through
superficial associations which cover up contradictions, and eventually
along the path of regression, they have been conveyed into the symptom.
In view of the complete identity between the peculiarities of the dream-
work and those of the psychic activity which issues in psychoneurotic
symptoms, we shall feel justified in transferring to the dream the conclu-
sions urged upon us by hysteria.

From the theory of hysteria we borrow the proposition that such an
abnormal psychic elaboration of a normal train of thought takes place
only when the latter has been used for the transference of an unconscious
wish which dates from the infantile life and is in a state of repression.
Complying with this proposition, we have built up the theory of the
dream on the assumption that the actuating dream-wish invariably origi-
nates in the unconscious; which, as we have ourselves admitted, cannot
be universally demonstrated, even though it cannot be refuted. But in
order to enable us to say just what repression is, after employing this

533

term so freely, we shall be obliged to make a further addition to our psy-
chological scaffolding.

We had elaborated the fiction of a primitive psychic apparatus, the
work of which is regulated by the effort to avoid accumulation of excita-
tion, and as far as possible to maintain itself free from excitation. For this
reason it was constructed after the plan of a reflex apparatus; motility, in
the first place as the path to changes within the body, was the channel of
discharge at its disposal. We then discussed the psychic results of experi-
ences of gratification, and were able at this point to introduce a second
assumption, namely, that the accumulation of excitation—by processes
that do not concern us here—is felt as pain, and sets the apparatus in
operation in order to bring about again a state of gratification, in which
the diminution of excitation is perceived as pleasure. Such a current in
the apparatus, issuing from pain and striving for pleasure, we call a wish.
We have said that nothing but a wish is capable of setting the apparatus
in motion and that the course of any excitation in the apparatus is regu-
lated automatically by the perception of pleasure and pain. The first oc-
currence of wishing may well have taken the form of a hallucinatory
cathexis of the memory of gratification. But this hallucination, unless it
could be maintained to the point of exhaustion, proved incapable of bring-
ing about a cessation of the need, and consequently of securing the pleas-
ure connected with gratification.

Thus, there was required a second activity—in our terminology the
activity of a second system—which would not allow the memory-cathexis
to force its way to perception and thence to bind the psychic forces, but
would lead the excitation emanating from the need-stimulus by a detour,
which by means of voluntary motility would ultimately so change the
outer world as to permit the real perception of the gratifying object. Thus
far we have already elaborated the scheme of the psychic apparatus;
these two systems are the germ of what we set up in the fully developed
apparatus as the Ucs. and the Pcs.

To change the outer world appropriately by means of motility requires
the accumulation of a large total of experiences in the memory-systems,
as well as a manifold consolidation of the relations which are evoked in
this memory-material by various directing ideas. We will now proceed
further with our assumptions. The activity of the second system, groping
in many directions, tentatively sending forth cathexes and retracting
them, needs on the one hand full command over all memory-material,
but on the other hand it would be a superfluous expenditure of energy
were it to send along the individual thought-paths large quantities of
cathexis, which would then flow away to no purpose and thus diminish
the quantity needed for changing the outer world. Out of a regard for
purposiveness, therefore, I postulate that the second system succeeds in

534

maintaining the greater part of the energic cathexes in a state of rest,
and in using only a small portion for its operations of displacement. The
mechanics of these processes is entirely unknown to me; anyone who se-
riously wishes to follow up these ideas must address himself to the phys-
ical analogies, and find some way of getting a picture of the sequence of
motions which ensues on the excitation of the neurones. Here I do no
more than hold fast to the idea that the activity of the first ψ-system aims
at the free outflow of the quantities of excitation, and that the second
system, by means of the cathexes emanating from it, effects an inhibition
of this outflow, a transformation into dormant cathexis, probably with
a rise of potential. I therefore assume that the course taken by any
excitation under the control of the second system is bound to quite dif-
ferent mechanical conditions from those which obtain under the control
of the first system. After the second system has completed its work of
experimental thought, it removes the inhibition and damming up of the
excitations and allows them to flow off into motility.

An interesting train of thought now presents itself if we consider the
relations of this inhibition of discharge by the second system to the proc-
ess of regulation by the pain-
principle. Let us now seek out the counter-
part of the primary experience of gratification, namely, the objective ex-
perience of fear. Let a perception-
stimulus act on the primitive apparatus
and be the source of a pain-
excitation. There will then ensue uncoordi-
nated motor manifestations, which will go on until one of these with-
draws the apparatus from perception, and at the same time from the
pain. On the reappearance of the percept this manifestation will imme-
diately be repeated (perhaps as a movement of flight), until the percept
has again disappeared. But in this case no tendency will remain to re-
cathect the perception of the source of pain by hallucination or otherwise.
On the contrary, there will be a tendency in the primary apparatus to
turn away again from this painful memory-
image immediately if it is in
any way awakened, since the overflow of its excitation into perception
would of course, evoke (or more precisely, begin to evoke) pain. This
turning away from a recollection, which is merely a repetition of the
former flight from perception, is also facilitated by the fact that, unlike
the perception, the recollection has not enough quality to arouse con-
sciousness, and thereby to attract fresh cathexis. This effortless and regu-
lar turning away of the psychic process from the memory of anything
that had once been painful gives us the prototype and the first example of
psychic repression. We all know how much of this turning away from the
painful, the tactics of the ostrich, may still be shown as present even in the
normal psychic life of adults.

In obedience to the pain-
principle, therefore, the first ψ-system is quite
incapable of introducing anything unpleasant into the thought-
nexus. The

535

system cannot do anything but wish. If this were to remain so, the activity
of thought of the second system, which needs to have at its disposal all
the memories stored up by experience, would be obstructed. But two
paths are now open: either the work of the second system frees itself com-
pletely from the pain-principle, and continues its course, paying no heed
to the pain attached to given memories, or it contrives to cathect the
memory of the pain in such a manner as to preclude the liberation of pain.
We can reject the first possibility, as the pain-principle also proves to act
as a regula-
tor of the cycle of excitation in the second sys-
tem; we are
therefore thrown back upon the second possibility, namely, that this sys-
tem cathects a memory in such a manner as to inhibit any outflow of
excitation from it, and hence, also, the outflow, comparable to a motor-
innerva-
tion, needed for the development of pain. And thus, setting out
from two different starting-points, i.e. from regard for the pain-principle,
and from the principle of the least expenditure of innerva-
tion, we are led
to the hypothesis that cathexis through the second sys-
tem is at the same
time an inhibition of the discharge of excitation. Let us, however, keep a
close hold on the fact—for this is the key to the theory of repres-
sion—
that the second system can only cathect an idea when it is in a posi-
tion to
inhibit any pain emanating from this idea. Anything that withdrew itself
from this inhibition would also remain inaccessi-
ble for the second sys-
tem,
i.e. would immediately be given up by virtue of the pain-principle. The
inhibi-
tion of pain, however, need not be complete; it must be permitted
to begin, since this indicates to the second system the nature of the mem-
ory, and possibly its lack of fitness for the pur-
pose sought by the process
of thought.

The psychic process which is alone tolerated by the first system I shall
now call the primary process; and that which results under the inhibiting
action of the second sys-
tem I shall call the secondary process. I can also
show at another point for what purpose the second system is obliged to
correct the primary process. The primary process strives for discharge of
the excita-
tion in order to establish with the quantity of excitation thus
col-
lected an identity of perception; the secondary process has aban-
doned
this intention, and has adopted instead the aim of an identity of thought.
All think-
ing is merely a detour from the memory of gratifica-
tion (taken
as a purposive-
idea) to the identical cathexis of the same mem-
ory, which
is to be reached once more by the path of motor expe-
riences. Thought
must concern itself with the connect-
ing-paths between ideas without
allowing itself to be mis-
led by their intensities. But it is obvious that
condensa-
tions of ideas and intermediate or compro-
mise-formations are
obsta-
cles to the attain-
ment of the identity which is aimed at; by substi-
tut-
ing one idea for another they swerve away from the path which would
have led onward from the first idea. Such proce-
dures are, there-
fore, care-

536

fully avoided in our secondary thinking. It will readily be seen, more
over, that the pain-
principle, although at other times it provides the
thought-
process with its most important clues, may also put difficulties in
its way in the pursuit of indentity of thought. Hence, the tendency of the
thinking process must always be to free itself more and more from ex-
clusive regulation by the pain-
principle, and to restrict the development
of affect through the work of thought to the very minimum which remains
effective as a signal. This refinement in functioning is to be achieved by a
fresh hyper-
cathexis, effected with the help of consciousness. But we are
aware that this refinement is seldom completely successful, even in normal
psychic life, and that our thinking always remains liable to falsification
by the intervention of the pain-
principle.

This, however, is not the breach in the functional efficiency of our
psychic apparatus which makes it possible for thoughts representing the
result of the secondary thought-
work to fall into the power of the pri-
mary psychic process; by which formula we may now describe the opera-
tions resulting in dreams and the symptoms of hysteria. This inadequacy
results from the converging of two factors in our development, one of
which pertains solely to the psychic apparatus, and has exercised a deter-
mining influence on the relation of the two systems, while the other ope-
rates fluctuatingly, and introduces motive forces of organic origin into
the psychic life. Both originate in the infantile life, and are a precipitate
of the alteration which our psychic and somatic organism has undergone
since our infantile years.

When I termed one of the psychic processes in the psychic apparatus
the primary process, I did so not only in consideration of its status and
function, but was also able to take account of the temporal relationship
actually involved. So far as we know, a psychic apparatus possessing only
the primary process does not exist, and is to that extent a theoretical
fiction; but this at least is a fact: that the primary processes are present
in the apparatus from the beginning, while the secondary processes only
take shape gradually during the course of life, inhibiting and overlay-
ing the primary, whilst gaining complete control over them perhaps only
in the prime of life. Owing to this belated arrival of the secondary pro-
cesses, the essence of our being, consisting of unconscious wish-
impulses,
remains something which cannot be grasped or inhibited by the precon-
scious; and its part is once and for all restricted to indicating the most
appropriate paths for the wish-
impulses originating in the unconscious.
These unconscious wishes represent for all subsequent psychic strivings a
compulsion to which they must submit themselves, although they may
perhaps endeavour to divert them and to guide them to superior aims. In
consequence of this retardation, an extensive region of the memory-
ma-
terial remains in fact inaccessible to preconscious cathexis.

537

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-PROCESSES
Now among these wish-impulses originating in the infantile life, inde-
structible and incapable of inhibition, there are some the fulfilments of
which have come to be in contradiction with the purposive ideas of our
secondary thinking. The fulfilment of these wishes would no longer pro-
duce an affect of pleasure, but one of pain; and it is just this conversion
of affect that constitutes the essence of what we call “repression.” In what
manner and by what motives forces such a conversion can take place con-
stitutes the problem of repression, which we need here only touch upon
in passing. It will suffice to note the fact that such a conversion of affect
occurs in the course of development (one need only think of the emer-
gence of disgust, originally absent in infantile life), and that it is con-
nected with the activity of the secondary system. The memories from
which the unconscious wish evokes a liberation of affect have never been
accessible to the Pcs., and for that reason this liberation cannot be in-
hibited. It is precisely on account of this generation of affect that these
ideas are not now accessible even by way of the preconscious thoughts to
which they have transferred the energy of the wishes connected with
them. On the contrary, the pain-principle comes into play, and causes the
Pcs. to turn away from these transference-thoughts. These latter are left
to themselves, are “repressed,” and thus, the existence of a store of in-
fantile memories, withdrawn from the beginning from the Pcs., becomes
the preliminary condition of repression.

In the most favourable case, the generation of pain terminates so soon
as the cathexis is withdrawn from the transference-thoughts in the Pcs.,
and this result shows that the intervention of the pain-principle is ap-
propriate. It is otherwise, however, if the repressed unconscious wish re-
ceives an organic reinforcement which it can put at the service of its
transference-thoughts, and by which it can enable them to attempt to
break through with their excitation, even if the cathexis of the Pcs. has
been taken away from them. A defensive struggle then ensues, inasmuch
as the Pcs. reinforces the opposite to the repressed thoughts (counter-
cathexis), and the eventual outcome is that the transference-thoughts
(the carriers of the unconscious wish) break through in some form of
compromise through symptom-formation. But from the moment that the
repressed thoughts are powerfully cathected by the unconscious wish-
impulse, but forsaken by the preconscious cathexis, they succumb to the
primary psychic process, and aim only at motor discharge; or, if the way
is clear, at hallucinatory revival of the desired identity of perception. We
have already found, empirically, that the “incorrect” processes described
are enacted only with thoughts which are in a state of repression. We are
now in a position to grasp yet another part of the total scheme of the
facts. These “incorrect” processes are the primary processes of the psychic
apparatus; they occur wherever ideas abandoned by the preconscious

538

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

cathexis are left to themselves and can become filled with the uninhibited
energy which flows from the unconscious and strives for discharge. There
are further facts which go to show that the processes described as “in-
correct” are not really falsifications of our normal procedure, or defective
thinking, but the modes of operation of the psychic apparatus when freed
from inhibition. Thus we see that the process of conveyance of the pre-
conscious excitation to motility occurs in accordance with the same pro-
cedure, and that in the linkage of preconscious ideas with words we may
easily find manifested the same displacements and confusions (which we
ascribe to inattention). Finally, a proof of the increased work made neces-
sary by the inhibition of these primary modes of procedure might be
found in the fact that we achieve a comical effect, a surplus to be dis-
charged through laughter, if we allow these modes of thought to come to
consciousness.

The theory of the psychoneuroses asserts with absolute certainty that
it can only be sexual wish-impulses from the infantile life, which have
undergone repression (affect-conversion) during the developmental pe-
riod of childhood, which are capable of renewal at later periods of de-
velopment (whether as a result of our sexual constitution, which has, of
course, grown out of an original bi-sexuality, or in consequence of un-
favourable influences in our sexual life); and which therefore supply the
motive-power for all psychoneurotic symptom-formation. It is only by
the introduction of these sexual forces that the gaps still demonstrable in
the theory of repression can be filled. Here, I will leave it undecided
whether the postulate of the sexual and infantile holds good for the theory
of dreams as well; I am not completing the latter, because in assuming
that the dream-wish invariably originates in the unconscious I have al-
ready gone a step beyond the demonstrable.¹ Nor will I inquire further

¹Here, as elsewhere, there are gaps in the treatment of the subject, which I have
deliberately left, because to fill them up would, on the one hand, require excessive
labour, and, on the other hand, I should have to depend on material which is for-
eign to the dream. Thus, for example, I have avoided stating whether I give the word
“repressed” a different meaning from that of the word “repressed.” No doubt, how-
ever, it will have become clear that the latter emphasizes more than the former the
relation to the unconscious. I have not gone into the problem which obviously arises,
of why the dream-thoughts undergo distortion by the censorship even when they
abandon the progressive path to consciousness and choose the path of regression, and
so with other similar omissions. I have, above all, sought to give some idea of the
problems to which the further dissection of the dream-work leads, and to indicate
the other themes with which these are connected. It was, however, not always easy
to decide just where the pursuit should be discontinued.—That I have not treated
exhaustively the part which the psycho-sexual life plays in the dream, and have
avoided the interpretation of dreams of an obviously sexual content, is due to a
special reason, which may not perhaps be that which the reader would expect. It
is absolutely alien to my views and my neuropathological doctrines to regard the sex-
ual life as a pudendum with which neither the physician nor the scientific investigator
should concern himself. To me, the moral indignation which prompted the trans

539

into the nature of the difference between the play of psychic forces in
dream-
formation and in the formation of hysterical symptoms, since there
is missing here the needed fuller knowledge of one of the two things to be
compared. But there is another point which I regard as important, and I
will confess at once that it was only on account of this point that I en-
tered upon all the discussions concerning the two psychic systems, their
modes of operation, and the fact of repression. It does not greatly matter
whether I have conceived the psychological relations at issue with ap-
proximate correctness, or, as is easily possible in such a difficult matter,
wrongly and imperfectly. However our views may change about the in-
terpretation of the psychic censorship or the correct and the abnormal
elaboration of the dream-
content, it remains certain that such processes
are active in dream-
formation, and that in their essentials they reveal the
closest analogy with the processes observed in the formation of hysterical
symptoms. Now the dream is not a pathological phenomenon; it does not
presuppose any disturbance of our psychic equilibrium; and it does not
leave behind it any weakening of our efficiency or capacities. The objec-
tion that no conclusions can be drawn about the dreams of healthy per-
sons from my own dreams and from those of my neurotic patients may be
rejected without comment. If, then, from the nature of the given phe-
nomena we infer the nature of their motive forces, we find that the psychic
mechanism utilized by the neuroses is not newly-
created by a morbid dis-
turbance that lays hold of the psychic life, but lies in readiness in the nor-
mal structure of our psychic apparatus. The two psychic systems, the
frontier-
censorship between them, the inhibition and overlaying of the
one activity by the other, the relations of both to consciousness–
or what-
ever may take the place of these concepts on a juster interpretation of the
actual relations–
all these belong to the normal structure of our psychic
instrument, and the dream shows us one of the paths which lead to a
knowledge of this structure. If we wish to be content with a minimum of
perfectly assured additions to our knowledge, we shall say that the dream
affords proof that the suppressed material continues to exist even in the
normal person and remains capable of psychic activity. Dreams are one
of the manifestations of this suppressed material; theoretically, this is
true in all cases; and in tangible experience, it has been found true in at
least a great number of cases, which happen to display most plainly the
more striking features of the dream-
life. The suppressed psychic material,
¹⁾

¹⁾lator of Artemidorus of Daldis to keep from the reader’s knowledge the chapter on
sexual dreams contained in the Symbolism of Dreams is merely ludicrous. For my
own part, what decided my procedure was solely the knowledge that in the expla-
nation of sexual dreams I should be bound to get deeply involved in the still unex-
plained problems of perversion and bisexuality; it was for this reason that I reserved
this material for treatment elsewhere.

540

which in the waking state has been prevented from expression and cut off
from internal perception by the mutual neutralization of contradictory
attitudes, finds ways and means, under the sway of compromise-forma-
tions, of obtruding itself on consciousness during the night.

Flectere si nequeo Superos, Acheronta movebo.

At any rate, the interpretation of dreams is the via regia to a knowledge
of the unconscious element in our psychic life.

By the analysis of dreams we obtain some insight into the composition
of this most marvellous and most mysterious of instruments; it is true
that this only takes us a little way, but it gives us a start which enables
us, setting out from the angle of other (properly pathological) forma-
tions, to penetrate further in our disjoining of the instrument. For disease
—at all events that which is rightly called functional—does not neces-
sarily presuppose the destruction of this apparatus, or the establishment
of new cleavages in its interior; it can be explained dynamically by the
strengthening and weakening of the components of the play of forces, so
many of the activities of which are covered up in normal functioning. It
might be shown elsewhere how the fact that the apparatus is a combina-
tion of two instances also permits of a refinement of its normal function-
ing which would have been impossible to a single system.¹

F. THE UNCONSCIOUS AND CONSCIOUSNESS. REALITY

If we look more closely, we may observe that the psychological considera-
tions examined in the foregoing chapter require us to assume, not the
existence of two systems near the motor end of the psychic apparatus, but
two kinds of processes or courses taken by excitation. But this does not
disturb us; for we must always be ready to drop our auxiliary ideas, when
we think we are in a position to replace them by something which comes
closer to the unknown reality. Let us now try to correct certain views
which may have taken a misconceived form as long as we regarded the two
systems, in the crudest and most obvious sense, as two localities within the
psychic apparatus—views which have left a precipitate in the terms “re-
pression” and “penetration.” Thus, when we say that an unconscious
thought strives for translation into the preconscious in order subsequently
to penetrate through to consciousness, we do not mean that a second idea
has to be formed, in a new locality, like a paraphrase, as it were, whilst

¹The dream is not the only phenomenon that permits us to base our psycho-
pathology on psychology. In a short unfinished series of articles in the Monatsschrift
für Psychiatrie und Neurologie (Über den psychischen Mechanismus der Vergesslich-
keit, 1898, and Über Deckerinnerungen, 1899) I attempted to interpret a number of
psychic manifestations from everyday life in support of the same conception. (These
and other articles on “Forgetting,” “Lapses of Speech,” etc., have now been published
in the Psychopathology of Everyday Life.)

541

the original persists by its side; and similarly, when we speak of penetra-
tion into consciousness, we wish carefully to detach from this notion any
idea of a change of locality. When we say that a preconscious idea is re-
pressed and subsequently absorbed by the unconscious, we might be
tempted by these images, borrowed from the idea of a struggle for a par-
ticular territory, to assume that an arrangement is really broken up in
the one psychic locality and replaced by a new one in the other locality.
For these comparisons we will substitute a description which would seem
to correspond more closely to the real state of affairs; we will say that an
energic cathexis is shifted to or withdrawn from a certain arrangement,
so that the psychic formation falls under the domination of a given in-
stance or is withdrawn from it. Here again we replace a topographical
mode of representation by a dynamic one; it is not the psychic forma-
tion that appears to us as the mobile element, but its innervation.¹

Nevertheless, I think it expedient and justifiable to continue to use the
illustrative idea of the two systems. We shall avoid any abuse of this
mode of representation if we remember that ideas, thoughts, and psychic
formations in general must not in any case be localized in organic ele-
ments of the nervous system but, so to speak, between them, where re-
sistances and association-tracks form the correlate corresponding to them.
Everything that can become an object of internal perception is virtual,
like the image in the telescope produced by the crossing of light-rays. But
we are justified in thinking of the systems—which have nothing psychic
in themselves, and which never become accessible to our psychic percep-
tion—as something similar to the lenses of the telescope which project
the image. If we continue this comparison, we might say that the censor-
ship between the two systems corresponds to the refraction of rays on
passing into a new medium.

Thus far, we have developed our psychology on our own responsibility;
it is now time to turn and look at the doctrines prevailing in modern psy-
chology, and to examine the relation of these to our theories. The prob-
lem of the unconscious in psychology is, according to the forcible state-
ment of Lipps,² less a psychological problem than the problem of psy-
chology. As long as psychology disposed of this problem by the verbal
explanation that the “psychic” is the “conscious,” and that “unconscious
psychic occurrences” are an obvious contradiction, there was no possi-
bility of a physician’s observations of abnormal mental states being turned
to any psychological account. The physician and the philosopher can meet

¹This conception underwent elaboration and modification when it was recognized
that the essential character of a preconscious idea was its connection with the residues
of verbal ideas (The Unconscious, Collected Papers, vol. iv, p. 98).

²Der Begriff des Unbewussten in der Psychologie. Lecture delivered at the Third
International Psychological Congress at Munich, 1897.

542

only when both acknowledge that “unconscious psychic processes” is “the
appropriate and justified expression for an established fact.” The physi-
cian cannot but reject, with a shrug of his shoulders, the assertion that
“consciousness is the indispensable quality of the psychic”; if his respect
for the utterances of the philosophers is still great enough, he may per-
haps assume that he and they do not deal with the same thing and do not
pursue the same science. For a single intelligent observation of the psychic
life of a neurotic, a single analysis of a dream, must force upon him the
unshakable conviction that the most complicated and the most accurate
operations of thought, to which the name of psychic occurrences can surely
not be refused, may take place without arousing consciousness.¹⁾ The
physician, it is true, does not learn of these unconscious processes until
they have produced an effect on consciousness which admits of commu-
nication or observation. But this effect on consciousness may show a psy-
chic character which differs completely from the unconscious process, so
that internal perception cannot possibly recognize in the first a substitute
for the second. The physician must reserve himself the right to penetrate,
by a process of deduction, from the effect on consciousness to the uncon-
scious psychic process; he learns in this way that the effect on conscious-
ness is only a remote psychic product of the unconscious process, and that
the latter has not become conscious as such, and has, moreover, existed
and operated without in any way betraying itself to consciousness.

A return from the over-estimation of the property of consciousness is
the indispensable preliminary to any genuine insight into the course of
psychic events. As Lipps has said, the unconscious must be accepted as
the general basis of the psychic life. The unconscious is the larger circle
which includes the smaller circle of the conscious; everything conscious
has a preliminary unconscious stage, whereas the unconscious can stop at
this stage, and yet claim to be considered a full psychic function. The
unconscious is the true psychic reality; in its inner nature it is just as
much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as
imperfectly communicated to us by the data of consciousness as is the
external world by the reports of our sense-organs.

We get rid of a series of dream-problems which have claimed much at-
tention.

¹⁾I am happy to be able to point to an author who has drawn from the study of
dreams the same conclusion as regards the relation between consciousness and the
unconscious.

Du Prel says: “The problem: what is the psyche, manifestly requires a pre-
liminary examination as to whether consciousness and psyche are identical. But
it is just this preliminary question which is answered in the negative by the dream,
which shows that the concept of the psyche extends beyond that of consciousness,
much as the gravitational force of a star extends beyond its sphere of luminosity”
(Philos. d. Mystik, p. 47).

“It is a truth which cannot be sufficiently emphasized that the concepts of con-
sciousness and of the psyche are not co-extensive” (p. 306).

541

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DREAM-PROCESSES

tention from earlier writers on the subject when the old antithesis be-
tween conscious life and dream-life is discarded, and the unconscious
psychic assigned to its proper place. Thus, many of the achievements
which are a matter for wonder in a dream are now no longer to be at-
tributed to dreaming, but to unconscious thinking, which is active also
during the day. If the dream seems to make play with a symbolical repre-
sentation of the body, as Scherer has said, we know that this is the work
of certain unconscious phantasies, which are probably under the sway of
sexual impulses and find expression not only in dreams, but also in hys-
terical phobias and other symptoms. If the dream continues and com-
pletes mental work begun during the day, and even brings valuable new
ideas to light, we have only to strip off the dream-disguise from this, as
the contribution of the dream-work, and a mark of the assistance of dark
powers in the depths of the psyche (cf. the devil in Tartini’s sonata-
dream). The intellectual achievement as such belongs to the same psychic
forces as are responsible for all such achievements during the day. We are
probably much too inclined to overestimate the conscious character even
of intellectual and artistic production. From the reports of certain writers
who have been highly productive, such as Goethe and Helmholtz, we
learn, rather, that the most essential and original part of their creations
came to them in the form of inspirations, and offered itself to their aware-
ness in an almost completed state. In other cases, where there is a con-
certed effort of all the psychic forces, there is nothing strange in the fact
that conscious activity, too, lends its aid. But it is the much-abused
privilege of conscious activity to hide from us all other activities wherever
it participates.

It hardly seems worth while to take up the historical significance of
dreams as a separate theme. Where, for instance, a leader has been im-
pelled by a dream to engage in a bold undertaking, the success of which
has had the effect of changing history, a new problem arises only so long
as the dream is regarded as a mysterious power and contrasted with other
more familiar psychic forces. The problem disappears as soon as we re-
gard the dream as a form of expression for impulses to which a resistance
was attached during the day, whilst at night they were able to draw rein-
forcement from deep-lying sources of excitation.¹ But the great respect
with which the ancient peoples regarded dreams is based on a just piece
of psychological divination. It is a homage paid to the unsubdued and
indestructible element in the human soul, to the daemonic power which
furnishes the dream-wish, and which we have found again in our uncon-
scious.

It is not without purpose that I use the expression in our unconscious,

¹Cf. here (p. 190) the dream (Σὰ-τύρος) of Alexander the Great at the siege of
Tyre.

544

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

for what we so call does not coincide with the unconscious of the philos-
ophers, nor with the unconscious of Lipps. As they use the term, it merely
means the opposite of the conscious. That there exist not only conscious
but also unconscious psychic processes is the opinion at issue, which is so
hotly contested and so energetically defended. Lipps enunciates the more
comprehensive doctrine that everything psychic exists as unconscious, but
that some of it may exist also as conscious. But it is not to prove this doc-
trine that we have adduced the phenomena of dreams and hysterical
symptom-formation; the observation of normal life alone suffices to es-
tablish its correctness beyond a doubt. The novel fact that we have learned
from the analysis of psycho-pathological formations, and indeed from the
first member of the group, from dreams, is that the unconscious—and
hence all that is psychic—occurs as a function of two separate systems,
and that as such it occurs even in normal psychic life. There are conse-
quently two kinds of unconscious, which have not as yet been distin-
guished by psychologists. Both are unconscious in the psychological
sense; but in our sense the first, which we call Ucs., is likewise incapable
of consciousness; whereas the second we call Pcs. because its excitations,
after the observance of certain rules, are capable of reaching conscious-
ness; perhaps not before they have again undergone censorship, but
nevertheless regardless of the Ucs. system. The fact that in order to at-
tain consciousness the excitations must pass through an unalterable series,
a succession of instances, as is betrayed by the changes produced in them
by the censorship, has enabled us to describe them by analogy in spatial
terms. We described the relations of the two systems to each other and to
consciousness by saying that the system Pcs. is like a screen between the
system Ucs. and consciousness. The system Pcs. not only bars access to
consciousness, but also controls the access to voluntary motility, and has
control of the emission of a mobile cathectic energy, a portion of which is
familiar to us as attention.¹

We must also steer clear of the distinction between the super-conscious
and the subconscious, which has found such favour in the more recent
literature on the psychoneuroses, for just such a distinction seems to em-
phasize the equivalence of what is psychic and what is conscious.

What rôle is now left, in our representation of things, to the phenome-
non of consciousness, once so all-powerful and over-shadowing all else?
None other than than of a sense-organ for the perception of psychic quali-
ties. According to the fundamental idea of our schematic attempt we can
regard conscious perception only as the function proper to a special sys-
tem for which the abbreviated designation Cs. commends itself. This

¹Cf. here my remarks in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol.
xxvi, in which the descriptive, dynamic and systematic meanings of the ambiguous
word “Unconscious” are distinguished from one another.

545

system we conceive to be similar in its mechanical characteristics to the
perception-
system P, and hence excitable by qualities, and incapable of
retaining the trace of changes: i.e. devoid of memory. The psychic ap-
paratus which, with the sense-organ of the P-systems, is turned to the
outer world, is itself the outer world for the sense-organ of Cs., whose tele-
ological justification depends on this relationship. We are here once more
confronted with the principle of the succession of instances which seems
to dominate the structure of the apparatus. The material of excitation
flows to the sense-organ Cs. from two sides: first from the P-system, whose
excitation, qualitatively conditioned, probably undergoes a new elabora-
tion until it attains conscious perception; and, secondly, from the in-
terior of the apparatus itself, whose quantitative processes are perceived
as a qualitative series of pleasures and pains once they have reached con-
sciousness after undergoing certain changes.

The philosophers, who became aware that accurate and highly compli-
cated thought-structures are possible even without the co-operation of
consciousness, thus found it difficult to ascribe any function to conscious-
ness; it appeared to them a superfluous mirroring of the completed psy-
chic process. The analogy of our Cs. system with the perception-systems
relieves us of this embarrassment. We see that perception through our
sense-organs results in directing an attention-cathexis to the paths along
which the incoming sensory excitation diffuses itself; the qualitative exci-
tation of the P-system serves the mobile quantity in the psychic appara-
tus as a regulator of its discharge. We may claim the same function for
the overlying sense-organ of the Cs. system. By perceiving new qualities,
it furnishes a new contribution for the guidance and suitable distribution
of the mobile cathexis-quantities. By means of perceptions of pleasure
and pain, it influences the course of the cathexes within the psychic ap-
paratus, which otherwise operates unconsciously and by the displacement
of quantities. It is probable that the pain-principle first of all regulates the
displacements of cathexis automatically, but it is quite possible that con-
sciousness contributes a second and more subtle regulation of these quali-
ties, which may even oppose the first, and perfect the functional capacity
of the apparatus, by placing it in a position contrary to its original design,
subjecting even that which induces pain to cathexis and to elaboration.
We learn from neuro-psychology that an important part in the functional
activity of the apparatus is ascribed to these regulations by the qualitative
excitations of the sense-organs. The automatic rule of the primary pain-
principle, together with the limitation of functional capacity bound up
with it, is broken by the sensory regulations, which are themselves again
automatisms. We find that repression, which, though originally expedient,
nevertheless finally brings about a harmful lack of inhibition and of
psychic control, overtakes memories much more easily than it does per-

546

ceptions, because in the former there is no additional cathexis from the
excitation of the psychic sense-
organs. Whilst an idea which is to be
warded off may fail to become conscious because it has succumbed to re-
pression, it may on other occasions come to be repressed simply because
it has been withdrawn from conscious perception on other grounds. These
are clues which we make use of in therapy in order to undo accomplished
repressions.

The value of the hyper-
cathexis which is produced by the regulating
influence of the Cs. sense-
organs on the mobile quantity is demonstrated
in a teleological context by nothing more clearly than by the creation of a
new series of qualities, and consequently a new regulation, which con-
stitutes the prerogative of man over the animals. For the mental processes
are in themselves unqualitative except for the excitations of pleasure and
pain which accompany them: which, as we know, must be kept within
limits as possible disturbers of thought. In order to endow them with
quality, they are associated in man with verbal memories, the qualitative
residues of which suffice to draw upon them the attention of consciousness,
which in turn endows thought with a new mobile cathexis.

It is only on a dissection of hysterical mental processes that the mani-
fold nature of the problems of consciousness becomes apparent. One then
receives the impression that the transition from the preconscious to the
conscious cathexis is associated with a censorship similar to that between
Ucs. and Pcs. This censorship, too, begins to act only when a certain quan-
titative limit is reached, so that thought-
formations which are not very
intense escape it. All possible cases of detention from consciousness and
of penetration into consciousness under certain restrictions are included
within the range of psychoneurotic phenomena; all point to the intimate
and twofold connection between the censorship and consciousness. I shall
conclude these psychological considerations with the record of two such
occurrences.

On the occasion of a consultation a few years ago, the patient was an
intelligent-
looking girl with a simple, unaffected manner. She was
strangely attired; for whereas a woman’s dress is usually carefully thought
out to the last pleat, one of her stockings was hanging down and two of
the buttons of her blouse were undone. She complained of pains in one
of her legs, and exposed her calf without being asked to do so. Her chief
complaint, however, was as follows: She had a feeling in her body as
though something were sticking into it which moved to and fro and shook
her through and through. This sometimes seemed to make her whole body
stiff. On hearing this, my colleague in consultation looked at me; the
trouble was quite obvious to him. To both of us it seemed peculiar that
this suggested nothing to the patient’s mother, though she herself must
repeatedly have been in the situation described by her child. As for the

547

girl, she had no idea of the import of her words, or she would never have
allowed them to pass her lips. Here the censorship had been hoodwinked
so successfully that under the mask of an innocent complaint a phantasy
was admitted to consciousness which otherwise would have remained in
the preconscious.

Another example: I began the psychoanalytic treatment of a boy of
fourteen who was suffering from tic convulsif, hysterical vomiting, head-
ache, etc., by assuring him that after closing his eyes he would see pic-
tures or that ideas would occur to him, which he was to communicate to
me. He replied by describing pictures. The last impression he had received
before coming to me was revived visually in his memory. He had been
playing a game of checkers with his uncle, and now he saw the checker-
board before him. He commented on various positions that were favour-
able or unfavourable, on moves that were not safe to make. He then saw
a dagger lying on the checker-
board—an object belonging to his father,
but which his phantasy laid on the checker-board. Then a sickle was lying
on the board; a scythe was added; and finally, he saw the image of an old
peasant mowing the grass in front of his father’s house far away. A few
days later I discovered the meaning of this series of pictures. Disagreeable
family circumstances had made the boy excited and nervous. Here was a
case of a harsh, irascible father, who had lived unhappily with the boy’s
mother, and whose educational methods consisted of threats; he had
divorced his gentle and delicate wife, and remarried; one day he brought
home a young woman as the boy’s new mother. The illness of the four-
teen-year-old boy developed a few days later. It was the suppressed rage
against his father that had combined these images into intelligible allu-
sions. The material was furnished by a mythological reminiscence. The
sickle was that with which Zeus castrated his father; the scythe and the
image of the peasant represented Kronos, the violent old man who de-
vours his children, and upon whom Zeus wreaks his vengeance in so un-
filial a manner. The father’s marriage gave the boy an opportunity of
returning the reproaches and threats which the child had once heard his
father utter because he played with his genitals (the draught-board; the
prohibited moves; the dagger with which one could kill). We have here
long-impressed memories and their unconscious derivatives which, under
the guise of meaningless pictures, have slipped into consciousness by the
devious paths opened to them.

If I were asked what is the theoretical value of the study of dreams, I
should reply that it lies in the additions to psychological knowledge and
the beginnings of an understanding of the neuroses which we thereby ob-
tain. Who can foresee the importance a thorough knowledge of the struc-
ture and functions of the psychic apparatus may attain, when even our
present state of knowledge permits of successful therapeutic intervention

548

in the curable forms of the psychoneuroses? But, it may be asked, what of
the practical value of this study in regard to a knowledge of the psyche
and discovery of the hidden peculiarities of individual character? Have
not the unconscious impulses revealed by dreams the value of real forces
in the psychic life? Is the ethical significance of the suppressed wishes to
be lightly disregarded, since, just as they now create dreams, they may
some day create other things?

I do not feel justified in answering these questions. I have not followed
up this aspect of the problem of dreams. In any case, however, I believe
that the Roman Emperor was in the wrong in ordering one of his subjects
to be executed because the latter had dreamt that he had killed the Em-
peror. He should first of all have endeavoured to discover the significance
of the man’s dream; most probably it was not what it seemed to be. And
even if a dream of a different content had actually had this treasonable
meaning, it would still have been well to recall the words of Plato—that
the virtuous man contents himself with dreaming of that which the wicked
man does in actual life. I am therefore of the opinion that dreams should
be acquitted of evil. Whether any reality is to be attributed to the uncon-
scious wishes, I cannot say. Reality must, of course, be denied to all
transitory and intermediate thoughts. If we had before us the unconscious
wishes, brought to their final and truest expression, we should still do well
to remember that psychic reality is a special form of existence which must
not be confounded with material reality. It seems, therefore, unnecessary
that people should refuse to accept the responsibility for the immorality
of their dreams. With an appreciation of the mode of functioning of the
psychic apparatus, and an insight into the relations between conscious
and unconscious, all that is ethically offensive in our dream-life and the
life of phantasy for the most part disappears.

“What a dream has told us of our relations to the present (reality) we
will then seek also in our consciousness, and we must not be surprised if
we discover that the monster we saw under the magnifying-glass of the
analysis is a tiny little infusorian” (H. Sachs).

For all practical purposes in judging human character, a man’s actions
and conscious expressions of thought are in most cases sufficient. Actions,
above all, deserve to be placed in the front rank; for many impulses which
penetrate into consciousness are neutralized by real forces in the psychic
life before they find issue in action; indeed, the reason why they fre-
quently do not encounter any psychic obstacle on their path is because
the unconscious is certain of their meeting with resistances later. In any
case, it is highly instructive to learn something of the intensively tilled
soil from which our virtues proudly emerge. For the complexity of human
character, dynamically moved in all directions, very rarely accommodates

541

itself to the arbitrament of a simple alternative, as our antiquated moral
philosophy would have it.

And what of the value of dreams in regard to our knowledge of the
future? That, of course, is quite out of the question. One would like to
substitute the words: “in regard to our knowledge of the past.” For in
every sense a dream has its origin in the past. The ancient belief that
dreams reveal the future is not indeed entirely devoid of truth. By repre-
senting a wish as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future;
but this future, which the dreamer accepts as his present, has been shaped
in the likeness of the past by the indestructible wish.